• Sixty-four movies released by US studios have grossed $1 billion or more at the box office.
• Using data from Box Office Mojo, we compiled a list of the highest-grossing movies worldwide.
• "The Odyssey" is the latest film to join the elite club.

Don't let anyone tell you differently: Hollywood is powered by the box office.

For over a century, the movie business has entertained people around the globe by creating powerful stories that astound us and make us want to come back for more.

It has led to a collection of titles reaching the rarified $1 billion box-office mark during their theatrical runs.

This is where Marvel movies, Disney animation, and James Cameron reign supreme.

Here are the movies that have crossed the prized $1 billion mark at the box office, without adjusting for inflation.

Kirsten Acuna and Kim Renfro contributed to previous versions of this story.

64. "Jurassic World Dominion" (2022)

Worldwide gross: $1,001,978,080

Poor reviews didn't stop people from seeing the third "Jurassic World" outing.

It took over three months, but "Jurassic World Dominion" crossed $1 billion worldwide. The sequel likely crossed the number thanks in part to the original "Jurassic Park" cast returning to the big screen and teaming up with the newer "Jurassic World" cast in this entry.

63. "The Dark Knight" (2008)

Worldwide gross: $1,008,287,756

Back in July of 2008, people began speculating that Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins" sequel starring Heath Ledger as the Joker might have the box-office power to set a world record.  "There are even whispers starting whether 'Dark Knight' can beat the incredible worldwide numbers posted by the all-time $1.8 billion benchmark of 'Titanic,'" Deadline reported.

At the time, the film broke several box-office records, including highest-grossing opening weekend, highest Friday midnight showings, and highest-opening day record. "TDK" went on to become the highest-grossing movie of 2008.

The film's successful viral marketing campaign and box-office performance really set the bar for what a superhero movie could be. Many consider it a blueprint for the success of superhero movies that came afterwards. Unfortunately, instead of DC catapulting into the stratosphere from here on out, Marvel took the lead, appearing on this list 10 times compared to DC's four.

62. "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie" (2026)

Worldwide gross: $1,011,157,101

"Galaxy" marks the first $1 billion-plus earner of 2026.

Following the hit original, 2023's "The Super Mario Bros. Movie," which you'll find further down this list, Nintendo and Universal teamed up for a sequel that expands the Mario Bros. universe.

Now that both "Mario" movies have crossed the $1 billion mark, the franchise is on its way to becoming one of the most lucrative animated series in Hollywood.

61. "Michael" (2026)

Worldwide gross: $1,016,068,388

"Michael," which stars Michael Jackson's nephew Jaafar as the King of Pop, is now the highest-grossing biopic of all time.

60. "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" (2012)

Worldwide gross: $1,017,453,991

When Peter Jackson's first "Hobbit" movie crossed the $1 billion mark, it looked like a good indication that the subsequent two sequels would perform equally well, if not better, at the box office.

But neither of the second two "Hobbit" films wound up crossing that box-office landmark. Both "The Desolation of Smaug" and "Battle of the Five Armies" grossed around $960,000,000 each.

59. "Alice In Wonderland" (2010)

Worldwide gross: $1,025,468,216

When Tim Burton's take on the original Disney classic hit $1 billion at the box office in 2010, it was only the sixth ever film to do so. In the years since, more than 20 other films have joined the club — but the sequel to this live-action "Alice In Wonderland" was not among them. 2016's "Alice Through the Looking Glass" grossed over $299 million worldwide. 

58. "Zootopia" (2016)

Worldwide gross: $1,025,521,689

"Zootopia" became a surprise hit for Walt Disney Animation. At the time, it set a record for the biggest animated March opening weekend of all time.

57. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (2001)

Worldwide gross: $1,028,496,499

Nineteen years after its initial 2001 release, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" managed to cross the $1 billion mark only after it was given a theatrical re-release in China.

Deadline reported that the movie had grossed $13.6 million over the course of three-days after it was released in theaters with a "remastered 4K 3D" version. It's the second movie in the "Harry Potter" franchise to gross more than $1 billion. 

56. "Finding Dory" (2016)

Worldwide gross: $1,029,266,989

Moviegoers flocked back to theaters in the summer of 2016 for Disney Pixar's "Finding Nemo" sequel. It was the second animated feature of 2016 to pass the $1 billion mark ("Zootopia" is the other).

At the time, the box-office numbers also made "Finding Dory" the fifth highest-grossing animated movie of all time. 

55. "Despicable Me 3" (2017)

Worldwide gross: $1,034,800,131

"Despicable Me 3" was a sleeper hit of 2017. With the return of Gru, Lucy, and of course the Minions, this is the second movie in the franchise to gross over one billion dollars. The introduction of "South Park" co-creator Trey Parker as a new villain was a smart move.

54. "Lilo & Stitch" (2025)

Worldwide gross: $1,038,027,526

Disney's live-action remake genre followed the dud of "Snow White" with this major success.

Along with hitting the billion mark, the movie also broke the Memorial Day opening weekend box office record with $341.7 million worldwide.

53. "Star Wars: Episode 1 — The Phantom Menace" (1999)

Worldwide gross: $1,046,515,409

"The Phantom Menace" was the first "Star Wars" movie to earn $1 billion, thanks to its 3D re-release in theaters 13 years after the original debut. Without that second surge of ticket purchases, the film would have stayed under $1 billion along with the original three movies.

52. "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" (2011)

Worldwide gross: $1,046,721,266

There are five total "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies in the franchise — and two of them have joined the billion-dollar club. "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" sits behind the "Dead Man's Chest" installment of this Disney franchise.

51. "Aladdin" (2019)

Worldwide gross: $1,054,304,000

Like many of the Disney live-action versions of animated classics, "Aladdin" did very well at the box office. "Aladdin" became one of Disney's record-breaking seven movies to hit $1 billion in 2019.

50. "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" (2016)

Worldwide gross: $1,058,684,742

"Rogue One" cemented its place in the "Star Wars" franchise by raking in $1 billion just 39 days after its global release. The spinoff became the fourth and final movie of 2016 to make $1 billion at the box office. All four billion-dollar movies of 2016 were Disney releases.

49. "Moana 2" (2024)

Worldwide gross: $1,059,242,164

In the sequel, Moana and Maui reunite to reconnect the people of the ocean by seeking out a lost island.

48. "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" (2006)

Worldwide gross: $1,066,179,747

Back in 2006, when the sequel to Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl" hit theaters, it took just three months for the movie to make $1 billion at the box office. At that time, it was the third ever film to do so.

47. "Toy Story 3" (2010)

Worldwide gross: $1,067,316,101

The third movie in the "Toy Story" franchise crossed the $1 billion mark in 2010 and made Disney history as Pixar's highest-grossing film of all time. The success of "Toy Story 3" helped push a fourth movie into Disney's animated movie plan.

46. "Toy Story 4" (2019)

Worldwide gross: $1,073,841,394

With "Toy Story 4" also crossing this milestone, Disney became the first movie studio to create seven billion-dollar movies in a single year. The movie joined its Disney comrades "Captain Marvel," "Aladdin," "Avengers: Endgame," "The Lion King," "Frozen II," and "The Rise of Skywalker."

45. "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" (2019)

Worldwide gross: $1,077,022,372

The ninth episode in the "Star Wars" Skywalker saga, "The Rise of Skywalker," crossed the $1 billion mark on Tuesday, January 14.

As reported by Variety, it took this film 28 days to hit this milestone, while "The Force Awakens" did it in 12 days and "The Last Jedi" managed it in 19 days.

44. "Joker" (2019)

Worldwide gross: $1,078,958,629

This DC comic movie is the first R-rated movie to ever make $1 billion at the box office. Deadline announced the milestone, which came about six weeks after the movie premiered worldwide.

Marvel's "Deadpool" star Ryan Reynolds snarkily congratulated "Joker" on becoming the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time.

43. "The Dark Knight Rises" (2012)

Worldwide gross: $1,085,199,115

Christopher Nolan's follow-up to "The Dark Knight" had became the 13th film in history to reach $1 billion in 2012. This achievement was remarkable, especially given concerns that the movie's success would be dampened after the Aurora theater shooting took place during a midnight screening of the film.

42. "Toy Story 5" (2026)

Worldwide gross: $1,093,981,614

Pixar does it again!

The beloved animation studio released another memorable tale from the "Toy Story" franchise in the summer of 2026. This time, Woody, Buzz, Jessie, and the rest of the gang have to face their biggest competition yet: The tablet.

41. "Jurassic Park" (1993)

Worldwide gross: 1,103,096,466

Similar to "The Phantom Menace," a 3D re-release is responsible for putting "Jurassic Park" over the edge and into the $1 billion club. "Jurassic Park" wasn't originally released in China in 1993, according to a report from The Wrap. But the 20th anniversary international re-release included China — and the difference in ticket sales showed.

A few more pandemic re-releases in 2020 and 2022 helped send it up the chart even more.

40. "The Odyssey" (2026)

Worldwide gross: $1,104,804,890

2026 at the movies remains a thing.

Christopher Nolan's latest epic, an adaptation of Homer's poem, has become the highest-earning movie of his career.

It's also the fifth movie in 2026 to cross the $1 billion mark.

39. "Transformers: Age of Extinction" (2014)

Worldwide gross: $1,105,261,713

Ah, yes, the unstoppable box-office power of the "Transformers" franchise. According to The Wrap, "Age of Extinction" (the fourth movie) was made specifically with international audiences in mind — and it paid off. Almost a third of the total box-office revenue came from China alone.

38. "Skyfall" (2012)

Worldwide gross: $1,108,594,137

At the time of its release, "Skyfall" was Sony's highest-grossing movie worldwide and the first Bond movie to surpass $1 billion at the box office. It became the second highest-grossing film of 2012 (behind "Avengers").

It also helped that Adele recorded a banger of a theme song for the film, which won the Academy Award for best original song.

37. "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" (2011)

Worldwide gross: $1,123,794,079

The third "Transformers" movie was Paramount's first film to reach $1 billion at the box office. Similar to "Age of Extinction," the boost in ticket sales came largely from international movie audiences. This was the last "Transformers" movie which starred Shia LaBeouf. 

36. "Captain Marvel" (2019)

Worldwide gross: $1,131,416,446

And here we begin with the seemingly unstoppable success of Marvel universe movies. Just over three weeks after its release date and record-breaking opening weekend, "Captain Marvel" crossed the billion-dollar mark for global box office sales.

35. "Spider-Man: Far From Home" (2019)

Worldwide gross: $1,132,723,226

The Hollywood Reporter broke the news of this new milestone for the Spider-Man franchise as "Spider-Man: Far From Home" crossed the one-billion mark less than a month after its US premiere on July 2.

34. "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (2003)

Worldwide gross: $1,139,431,705

People came out in droves for the final installment of Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. After only 10 weeks in theaters, "Return of the King" became the second movie ever in history to make $1 billion ("Titanic" was the first in 1997). The film went on to break an Academy Award record by sweeping all 11 categories for which it was nominated. 

The film's 2021 re-release in theaters during the pandemic in nine markets, including China, helped move it a few spots up this list.

33. "Aquaman" (2018)

Worldwide gross: $1,152,028,393

"Aquaman" became the first DC superhero movie to make $1 billion dollars at the box office. The movie was already breaking records in China before it had opened in the US in early December, and clearly it was all up from there.

32. "Captain America: Civil War" (2016)

Worldwide gross: $1,155,046,416

"Captain America: Civil War" was a blockbuster hit in 2016, and the first movie of that year to rake in $1 billion. The wild success of Cap's third outing came from it playing more like an Avengers film thanks to a large superhero roster, including Iron Man, and the introduction of Tom Holland's Spider-Man.

31. "Minions" (2015)

Worldwide gross: $1,159,457,503

The 2015 prequel to "Despicable Me" focused only on the overall-wearing Minions the world had come to love.

30. "Iron Man 3" (2013)

Worldwide gross: $1,215,577,205

Tony Stark swept away comic fans with the third movie of his trilogy, "Iron Man 3." It only took 23 days in the box office for the film to hit $1 billion. If anyone doubted the power of Robert Downey Jr.'s  success as Iron Man, this movie, which grossed nearly double of the actor's second solo outing as the character, was the final confirmation of his vital role in Marvel's franchise.

29. "The Fate of the Furious" (2017)

Worldwide gross: $1,236,009,236

In April 2017, the eighth movie in "The Fast and the Furious" franchise joined the billion-dollar club.  Clearly Vin Diesel's creative control of these action-packed movies is paying off along with its diverse cast. This is the second movie from the franchise to make more than $1 billion.

28. "Incredibles 2" (2018)

Worldwide gross: $1,243,225,667

Despite the 14-year gap between the first Pixar original movie "The Incredibles" and its sequel, the critically acclaimed "Incredibles 2" created a new record as fastest animated film to gross $1 billion at the box office.

27. "Beauty and the Beast" (2017)

Worldwide gross: $1,266,115,964

Also in April 2017, Walt Disney Studios announced that its live-action remake of "Beauty and the Beast" had officially passed the $1 billion mark for global box-office sales. Its total revenue makes "Beauty and the Beast" the highest-grossing film of 2017.

26. "Frozen" (2013)

Worldwide gross: $1,285,319,131

"Frozen" maintained the top spot for the highest-grossing animated feature of all time until the release of its sequel in 2019. The film joined the billion dollar club in the same week it nabbed two Oscars. 

After its initial release, it became Walt Disney Pictures' third highest-grossing film of all time. According to Deadline, the film earned a profit of over $400 million for Disney.

25. "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" (2018)

Worldwide gross: $1,310,469,037

The second installment in Universal's rebooted "Jurassic Park" trilogy had an impressive opening weekend and then quickly grossed $1 billion after two weeks. 

24. "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" (2017)

Worldwide gross: $1,334,407,706

"Star Wars: The Last Jedi" crossed the $1 billion mark just three weeks after its release. This second installment in the new franchise made $500 million in its first weekend alone — though "The Force Awakens" still holds the record for biggest "Star Wars" opening weekend of all time with $529 million.

23. "Deadpool & Wolverine" (2024)

Worldwide gross: $1,338,073,645

The team-up no one thought was possible turned out to be a cash cow.

Along with breaking opening weekend records with its over $440 million take, its worldwide total gross makes it the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time.

22. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two" (2011)

Worldwide gross: $1,342,505,340

Following the trend of some other franchises in our top list, the final "Harry Potter" film was the only one of the bunch that raked in $1 billion or more until "Sorcerer's Stone" was given a theatrical release in China.

21. "Black Panther" (2018)

Worldwide gross: $1,349,926,083

"Black Panther" crossed this milestone in just 26 days after breaking the record for best February opening weekend of all time. This movie was the 16th Disney film to gross over one billion dollars. 

20. "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" (2023)

Worldwide gross: $1,360,879,735

Universal Pictures' adaptation of the Nintendo game crossed $1 billion in just 26 days, making it the first film of 2023 to cross the threshold and the studio's seventh-largest film.

"The Super Mario Bros. Movie" is the fifth film released during the pandemic to hit $1 billion theatrically and the first animated movie to do so.

19. "Avengers: Age of Ultron" (2015)

Worldwide gross: $1,405,018,048

"Transformers," "The Dark Knight," and "Pirates of the Caribbean" are three franchises which each have two movies in the billion dollar club — and you can add "The Avengers" to that list.

The 2015 follow-up ensemble movie added James Spader as the terrifying new villain, and (surprising no one) "Age of Ultron" opened in the number one spot around the world.

18. "Barbie" (2023)

Worldwide gross: $1,447,138,421

Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" has been unstoppable in theaters since its release. Not only did the film earn 2023's highest-grossing domestic opening weekend, but it also contributed to the fourth-largest box-office weekend of all time.

When it crossed the billion-dollar mark in 17 days, Gerwig became the first solo female director to have a movie cross that threshold. Every other $1 billion movie directed by a woman has a male codirector.

"Barbie" is now the highest-grossing movie of 2023.

17. "Frozen II" (2019)

Worldwide gross: $1,453,683,476

The highly-anticipated sequel to the highest-grossing animated movie of all time, 2013's "Frozen," easily surpassed the box-office gross of its predecessor. "Frozen II" became Disney's sixth (out of seven total) movies to cross $1 billion in 2019 after 24 days.

A third "Frozen" movie is currently in the works.

16. "Avatar: Fire & Ash" (2025)

Worldwide gross: $1,485,999,890

Like the two films before it, James Cameron's third movie in his "Avatar" franchise has hit the billion-dollar milestone.

Movies directed by Cameron show up three more times on this list. No director has had as many billion-dollar-grossing movies as Cameron.

15. "Top Gun: Maverick" (2022)

Worldwide gross: $1,495,696,292

The highest-grossing movie of Tom Cruise's career, the sequel to the 1986 film crossed $1 billion in just 31 days.

14. "Furious 7" (2015)

Worldwide gross: $1,515,342,457

"Furious 7" broke records when it raced past the $1 billion box-office mark in just 17 days. As Entertainment Weekly reported "that makes 'Furious' 7 the fastest live-action film to reach that number." But two other 2015 movies (coming later on our list) eventually bumped it to third place.

This was the last "Fast and Furious" movie to include Paul Walker, which some believe helped boost box-office numbers.

13. "Marvel's The Avengers" (2012)

Worldwide gross: $1,520,538,536

The first "Avengers" movie brought together an all-star cast of comic book heroes — and Marvel's efforts were rewarded at the box office. The film passed $1 billion in ticket sales in just 19 days — which means it's tied for third place in the list of fastest grossing movies alongside "Avatar" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two."

12. "The Lion King" (2019)

Worldwide gross: $1,662,020,819

This live-action retelling of the 1994 beloved Disney animated movie was a hit at the box office.

The movie hit the $1 billion mark in theaters in less than a month. It is currently Disney's highest-grossing live-action remake of one of its classic animated movies.

11. "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" (2026)

Worldwide gross: $1,665,088,528

2026 is on a roll.

"Brand New Day" marks the fourth movie released in 2026 to cross the $1 billion mark.

Following the events of "No Way Home," which took in over $1.9 billion, Tom Holland returns as Spidey, who this time around must deal with his own inner turmoil as he faces off with New York's toughest villains.

10. "Jurassic World" (2015)

Worldwide gross: $1,671,537,444

"Jurassic World" broke all sorts of records. It bumped "Furious 7" out of the number one spot for fastest movie to make $1 billion when it broke the record in only 13 days. At the time it also stunned box-office analysts with the highest-grossing opening weekend of all time, besting "Marvel's The Avengers," with $208.8 million. Worldwide, it opened to over $500 million, making it the first movie to ever crack that number opening weekend. 

That record didn't last long, however.

9. "Inside Out 2" (2024)

Worldwide gross: $1,698,863,816

After relegating titles like "Luca" and "Turning Red" to direct-to-streaming releases during the pandemic, which led to frustration and low morale within the company, Pixar is back on top.

"Inside Out 2" hit the $1 billion global mark in 19 days, the fastest ever for an animated movie. It was the first movie released in 2024 to cross $1 billion.

We wouldn't be shocked if Pixar is already crafting another sequel for Joy, Anxiety, and all of Riley's other feelings.

8. "Zootopia 2" (2025)

Worldwide gross: $1,866,647,950

Some sequels can get hurt at the box office for coming out so long after the original. Not this Disney title.

Released almost a decade after the first "Zootopia" movie, audiences rushed back to watch Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps go on another case.

After opening with a huge $559.5 million global take, making it the biggest global opening for an animated movie ever, it hit the $1 billion mark in just 17 days, becoming the second 2025 release to hit the billion milestone (the other being Disney's "Lilo & Stitch").

7. "Spider-Man: No Way Home" (2021)

Worldwide gross: $1,921,426,073

Spider-Man broke the pandemic curse. "No Way Home" became the first film since 2019's "The Rise of Skywalker" to cross $1 billion at the box office. The Tom Holland-starring film crossed $1 billion in just 12 days and become the highest-grossing movie of 2021.

According to Forbes, it's only the fifth film to cross $1 billion without a China release. If it ever does open there, it will likely cross $2 billion. 

6. "Avengers: Infinity War" (2018)

Worldwide gross: $2,052,415,039

The third "Avengers" film broke the all-time world record with a $630 million opening weekend, proving the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise is stronger than ever. By mid-June, "Avengers: Infinity War" became only the fourth movie to ever crack the two-billion dollar ceiling as well.

5. "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" (2015)

Worldwide gross: $2,071,310,218

The seventh movie in the "Star Wars" franchise broke the "Jurassic World" records when box-office numbers tallied $1 billion after only 12 days. And it didn't stop there — "The Force Awakens" went on rake in more than $2 billion, solidifying its number four spot on our list and becoming the highest-grossing "Star Wars" movie of all time.

4. "Titanic" (1997)

Worldwide gross: $2,264,812,968

More than two decades since its release, James Cameron's "Titanic" is holding steady as one of the biggest box-office hits of all time. The movie made around $1.8 billion during its initial 1997 release and then topped $2 billion after it was rereleased in 3D in honor of the 100-year anniversary of the iconic ship's sinking.

3. "Avatar: The Way of Water" (2022)

Worldwide gross: $2,343,477,301

Two weeks after its premiere in movie theaters, Cameron's first "Avatar" sequel had already grossed more than $1 billion at the box office, a rare feat during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It then became the second-fastest movie to cross $2 billion in just 39 days.

While discussing the digital release of "Avatar: The Way of Water," out March 28, producer Jon Landau told Insider he and Cameron wondered if the sequel to the 2009 film would reach the number "Titanic" crossed at the box office.

"I was never nervous that people would lose interest because I didn't think they needed to have interest. I thought we were making a new movie," Landau said when asked if he was nervous that audiences may lose interest in an "Avatar" sequel after waiting more than a decade for it.

"I looked at this almost like an original piece of content that happened to be with known characters in a known world, but we were showing them in a new way. So I was nervous about how the movie would do because when you stop being nervous, you stop caring. But I was never worried," Landau added of the movie's strong box-office performance.

2. "Avengers: Endgame" (2019)

Worldwide gross: $2,799,439,100

Marvel's major endcap to its run of 22 comic-book-based films broke the record for the fastest movie to reach $1 billion dollars in international box-office totals.

On the Sunday of its opening weekend, Disney estimated "Avengers: Endgame" had made $1.2 billion within the first five days of its global debut. 

It became the highest-grossing movie of all time until Disney rereleased "Avatar" in China in 2021.

1. "Avatar" (2009)

Worldwide gross: $2,923,710,708

With close to $3 billion in box-office revenue, Cameron's "Avatar" was miles ahead of other films on the list.

Disney's epic Marvel adventure "Avengers: Endgame" knocked it out of the top spot in the summer of 2019.

However, "Avatar" retook the top spot when Disney (which now owns the rights after the Fox acquisition) rereleased the film in China in spring 2021.

• Chili's is taking on McDonald's in the fast-food burger wars.
• Last year, the chain released its Big QP burger, a riff on the iconic McDonald's Quarter Pounder.
• I tried both burgers to determine which was the better value.

Chili's has spent the past two years challenging fast-food chains like McDonald's with look-alike chicken sandwiches and burgers.

In 2024, Chili's introduced the Big Smasher, a burger inspired by McDonald's Big Mac, claiming it offered twice the meat, and added it to the chain's 3-For-Me menu, which starts at $10.99.

Then, in 2025, Chili's released the Big QP, a burger modeled after McDonald's Quarter Pounder that features similar toppings but a significantly larger beef patty.

Finally, earlier this year, it updated its lineup of chicken sandwiches in a direct hit on McDonald's McCrispy sandwich.

The strategy seems to be paying off. In April, Chili's parent company, Brinker International, reported that Chili's had posted its 20th consecutive quarter of same-store sales growth, with comparable sales up 4% year over year. The chain attributed much of that success to menu innovation and a focus on "everyday value," including the 3-For-Me menu.

This week, we'll see if that momentum has continued. Brinker International, Chili's parent company, will report its fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter earnings on August 12.

I tried Chili's Big QP burger to see how it measured up against a fast-food reliable like the McDonald's Quarter Pounder. Here's how the two burgers compared.

McDonald's Quarter Pounder with cheese is one of the chain's most popular burgers.

The signature burger was first introduced in 1971 by franchise owner Al Bernadin in Fremont, California, to satisfy customers seeking a larger burger than the original hamburger or cheeseburger.

The Quarter Pounder lineup now includes the classic Quarter Pounder with cheese, the Double Quarter Pounder, and the Bacon Quarter Pounder.

I ordered a Quarter Pounder with cheese at my local McDonald's in Brooklyn, New York. It cost $7.69, excluding tax, but also comes as a medium-sized meal with fries and a drink for $14.09.

The Quarter Pounder came with a quarter-pound beef patty, two slices of American cheese, onions, dill pickles, ketchup, and mustard.

The toppings were placed in the center of the burger rather than evenly spread out, although preparation likely depends on factors such as the individual employee and the location.

The burger lived up to its reputation, but I think it could have been slightly improved.

Although the Quarter Pounder is marketed as a heartier burger, the patty felt relatively thin, especially compared to other cheeseburgers on the market, and it was cooked just past the point where it would retain its juiciness.

The toppings, including the onions, pickles, ketchup, and mustard, were concentrated in the middle, creating an uneven eating experience, with some bites flavorful and tangy while others lacked the balance of meat, cheese, and condiments.

Overall, this was an enjoyable burger but not a consistent one.

Chili's launched its Big QP burger last year as its take on the McDonald's Quarter Pounder.

The Big QP closely resembles McDonald's Quarter Pounder, from its name to its ingredient list.

Both burgers feature a single beef patty topped with two slices of American cheese, diced onions, pickles, ketchup, and mustard. The biggest distinction is size: Chili's says the Big QP contains 85% more beef than the Quarter Pounder, making it a noticeably heartier burger.

The burger is available as part of the 3-For-Me deal for $10.99, or on its own for $14.99. The 3-For-Me meal also comes with an appetizer like bottomless chips and salsa, fries, and a bottomless drink.

The burger also featured classic toppings, although the execution was different.

Right away, I noticed a few key differences between the two burgers.

The Chili's burger came with two slices of American cheese, with the burger patty placed between them, three pickle slices instead of two, and diced red onion instead of slivered white onions.

The flavor profiles were similar, but I preferred Chili's bigger, juicier burger.

The Big QP immediately felt like a more substantial version of McDonald's Quarter Pounder.

While the two burgers share a nearly identical combination of American cheese, onions, pickles, ketchup, and mustard, Chili's larger patty made a noticeable difference.

It was thick, juicy, and well-seasoned, giving the burger a richer, beefier flavor than the Quarter Pounder. The familiar toppings delivered the same tangy, savory profile, but the sharper red onions and softer brioche bun elevated the overall experience.

As someone who regularly orders a Quarter Pounder at McDonald's, I was struck by just how familiar the Big QP was to the fast-food classic.

I normally wouldn't expect a sit-down chain to edge out a fast-food rival, especially for one of its best-known items. However, while the Big QP costs significantly more than a Quarter Pounder if you order each burger separately, Chili's $10.99 3-For-Me deal — which includes an appetizer, fries, and a drink — makes it the stronger value overall and the burger I would choose in a heartbeat.

Greece produces more authentic feta cheese than any other country. The cheese is so valuable, it's nicknamed "white gold."

But two forces are threatening Greece's historical grip on feta. A pair of diseases has led to the death of hundreds of thousands of sheep and goats. Meanwhile, other countries, including the US, are challenging Greece's legal claim to the name "feta" on the global stage.

So what does all this mean for generations-old producers? And what does this mean for the global supply of authentic feta?

• When my youngest was 6, she was invited to a sleepover. We declined.
• Now that she's older, she still doesn't attend sleepovers and neither do her older siblings.
• My kids have plenty of time to hang out with their friends during the day.

When my youngest child was 6, a new neighbor and her daughter came over to play. The mom enthusiastically offered to "return the favor" by hosting my daughter at her home for a sleepover. I knew this child had multiple older siblings, some of whom spent weeks going back and forth between their divorced parents' homes.

When the pair left, my daughter looked at me and exclaimed excitedly that she was going to attend her first sleepover, just like she'd seen on some of her favorite shows and read about in some graphic novels.

I felt a tinge of hesitation before letting her down gently. My heart was screaming, "Absolutely not!" However, my words were empathetic:"That sounds like so much fun." I followed with, "We don't allow sleepovers."

Years later, I still have the same stance for my daughter, who is now 9 years old, and her older siblings.

I'm holding strong to this rule

Over the years, my kids have been invited to a handful of sleepovers, and every time, we have declined the invitations.

Some of my kids have protested, frustrated by our rule, claiming we are too strict. They say nothing bad will happen and that it'll be fine for them to be away for one night. Other kids in our family have sighed with relief, not enjoying being away from home and the comfort of their own beds.

I follow multiple psychologists, pediatricians, and therapists on social media, and the consensus I've observed among many of them is that sleepovers are far too risky and that the potential cons outweigh the pros. I've learned that when a child is harmed in some way, it is almost always by someone they know, someone in their inner circle, not a stranger or mere acquaintance. If they're in my house, under my roof, I know they are safe.

We are intentional with our reasoning

For me, sleepovers simply aren't necessary. Our children have plenty of opportunities to hang out with their friends. They go to the movies and attend school events, such as Friday night football games. Of course, I know something bad can happen during the day, but there seems to be less risk for these gatherings when it's not dark, unsupervised, and for a long stretch of time.

My two older teens have stayed with peers in a hotel room while traveling for sports competitions, with plenty of stipulations and supervision. They have also had a handful of stayovers with our most trusted family friends and have stayed overnight a few times at grandparents' homes. These are special circumstances, though.

Our family also has the additional layer of being multiracial, and we are extremely cautious of allowing our Black children to be in spaces where they are the only person or two of color. We're doing what we think is best for our family.

I'm being smart, not paranoid

Of course, we want our kids to develop the skills and confidence to sleep away from home. In our view, though, the best approach is to consider the specific situation, who they'll be with, the child's maturity, and the skills they've already built and practiced. Rather than treating a certain age as the automatic starting point — or giving in to pressure from other parents — we believe the decision should be based on whether the individual child is truly ready.

I know some parents feel that not allowing sleepovers is being paranoid and instilling unnecessary fear in children. I take a different approach. When experts in the medical and mental health fields openly share on social media that they don't allow their own children to attend sleepovers, sharing harrowing statistics and admitting these only show reported cases of harm, to which we know there are likely many more cases, why would we? I don't feel that's at all paranoid. Rather, it's about being informed and protective of my children's childhoods.

I certainly don't look down upon any other parent who makes a different choice. We're all doing the best we can with our own perspectives, experiences, and education.

Do I feel my kids are missing out because they aren't sleeping over in someone else's bedroom, basement, or living room? No. There are many ways to have fun. For us, that can come with less risk and just as much reward.

Do you have a hot take on a common parenting belief? Email Jennifer Beck Goldblatt at jgoldblatt@insider.com to share your experience with Business Insider.

• US News & World Report ranks the best universities across the US every year.
• While many of the top schools are private, every state in the union has its own public system.
• We used US News' ranking to compile a list of the 25 best public schools.

This back-to-school season, the cost and value of higher education are top of mind.

In a time when going to college can put you in hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and as more tech moguls share that they skipped university altogether, it could be worth considering a public school.

Every state has some sort of public school system, though they're not all created equal. Just as private schools have the Ivy League, some state schools stand above the rest — Forbes now releases its own list of "Public Ivies" each year.

Public schools are also generally cheaper than private schools, especially if you stay in-state. But even paying out-of-state tuition at some public schools can cost half as much as the most expensive colleges charge.

We used US News & World Report's ranking of best national universities to identify the top 25 public schools in the country. The list does not include liberal arts colleges focused on undergraduate education or regional universities with limited doctoral programs, although those are typically private schools.

Its ranking evaluated 434 US colleges across multiple metrics, including graduation rates, debt loads, average salaries, and admissions rates, among others, using data reported by schools and third-party sources.

College rankings have faced scrutiny over the years, with critics of US News & World Report's lists arguing that they can pressure schools to perform well on certain metrics to boost their standing. Skeptics have also questioned the ranking methodology, saying it may fail to capture key, less quantifiable factors that add to a school's quality.

US News has defended the rankings as a helpful resource, while admitting comparing colleges "can be challenging," and the lists "don't capture every nuance."

"But we reject our critics' paternalistic view that students are somehow incapable of discerning for themselves from this information which school is the best fit," US News & World Report executive chairman and CEO Eric Gertler wrote in 2023 for the Wall Street Journal.

Here are the 25 best public universities across the US.

25. University of California, Merced

National rank: #57 (tie)

UC Merced, which opened in 2005, is the newest school in the UC system. It's around 80 miles west of Yosemite National Park and has an enrollment of around 9,000 students, including undergraduates and graduates.

It's a top performer in US News' social mobility ranking, which means the university admits a large number of economically disadvantaged students and distributes Pell Grants to help them afford higher education.

21 (tie). Florida State University

National rank: #51 (tie)

Florida State University, located in Tallahassee, Florida's capital city, was founded in 1851. It has an enrollment of about 33,000 undergraduate students.

FSU is known as the home of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, the only magnet-powered lab in the country and one of just 12 in the world.

21 (tie). Texas A&M University

National rank: #51 (tie)

Texas A&M is located in College Station, about 90 miles northwest of Houston, and was founded in 1876, 150 years ago this year. It has an enrollment of 61,000 undergraduate students.

Aside from its academics, Texas A&M is also known for its close ties to President George H. W. Bush. His presidential library is located on campus, and the school of government and public service is named after him. His gravesite is also on campus, near his library.

21 (tie). Virginia Tech

National rank: #51 (tie)

The town of Blacksburg is home to Virginia Tech, or the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, founded in 1872.

Virginia Tech has about 31,000 undergraduate students enrolled. It ranks No. 6 for the best industrial/manufacturing engineering program.

21 (tie). College of William & Mary

National rank: #51 (tie)

The second school on this list (but not the last) located in Virginia is the College of William & Mary, which is in Williamsburg. It's named for King William III and Queen Mary II, who ruled England from 1689 to 1702.

The college itself was founded in 1693, making it the second-oldest college in the US. About 7,000 undergraduates are enrolled.

It ranked highly for its commitment to teaching undergrads rather than focusing on graduate-level research.

19 (tie). Purdue University

National ranking: #46 (tie)

Purdue is located in West Lafayette, Indiana, about 65 miles northwest of Indianapolis, with about 45,000 undergraduates calling this campus home. It was founded in 1869.

Purdue is famously called the "Cradle of Astronauts," as 30 astronauts across NASA history have been Purdue alums, including Neil Armstrong.

19 (tie). University of Georgia

National ranking: #46 (tie)

UGA, located in Athens, was chartered by the state in 1785, making it the oldest state-chartered university in the US.

It has an enrollment of about 32,000 undergraduate students.

Per US News, UGA has the No. 1 insurance program in the country, which was founded in 1965.

16 (tie). Rutgers University — New Brunswick

National ranking: #42 (tie)

Rutgers has three campuses across New Jersey, but the biggest, located in New Brunswick, was ruled its best. It was founded in 1766 as Queen's College, before getting renamed Rutgers in 1825.

Approximately 38,000 undergraduates are enrolled at the New Brunswick campus.

16 (tie). University of Washington

National ranking: #42 (tie)

Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is located in the middle of Seattle and has an undergraduate enrollment of about 41,000 students.

UW has strong nursing and computer science programs, both cracking US News' top 10 lists.

16 (tie). University of Maryland, College Park

National ranking: #42 (tie)

The College Park campus is the largest in the UMD system, with about 31,000 undergraduate students. It was founded in 1856.

College Park is just over 8 miles from downtown Washington, DC, and 30 miles from Baltimore, making it a relatively easy commute to either city.

UMD's cybersecurity program ranks at No. 9.

15. The Ohio State University

National ranking: #41

The Ohio State University, or OSU, has an undergraduate enrollment of about 47,000 students. Founded in 1870, it's located in northern Columbus, the Buckeye State's capital.

OSU has a well-regarded nursing program (No. 4), accounting program (No. 12), and supply chain/logistics program (No. 5).

14. University of California, Santa Barbara

National ranking: #40

Nearly 24,000 undergraduates call UCSB, founded in 1909, home.

Much can be said about UCSB's strong academics, but it's probably most famous for its proximity to the beach, making it a dream school for aspiring surfers everywhere.

12 (tie). University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

National ranking: #36 (tie)

About 140 miles southwest of Chicago, you'll find the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the flagship school of the UI system. It was founded in 1867 and has an undergrad population of 37,000.

UIUC — or, according to a recent branding shift, Illinois — was ranked fifth overall in the nation for its school of engineering, which was founded in 1868, making it one of the oldest schools at the university.

12 (tie). University of Wisconsin — Madison

National ranking: #36 (tie)

UW-Madison's 939-acre campus, located in the heart of Madison, is home to 39,000 undergraduate students.

Founded in 1848, it's ranked in the top 10 for nursing, insurance, marketing, real estate, and computer systems.

9 (tie). Georgia Institute of Technology

National ranking: #32 (tie)

The second Georgia university on the list is located a mile from downtown Atlanta. Georgia Tech was founded in 1885 and has an undergraduate population of about 20,000.

It was ranked the third-most innovative school, behind MIT and Arizona State.

9 (tie). University of California, Davis

National ranking: #32 (tie)

Fun fact: UC Davis is the northernmost undergraduate campus in the University of California system, above both San Francisco and Berkeley.

It was founded in 1905 and has roughly 32,000 undergraduates.

UC Davis is tied for No. 2 among universities with the best biological/agricultural engineering programs.

9 (tie). University of California, Irvine

National ranking: #32 (tie)

UC Davis is tied with another California school: UC Irvine, located in Orange County, with an undergraduate population of 30,000.

The school was founded in 1965 and is best-known for its STEM programs. That, and its mascot, the anteater.

7 (tie). University of Florida

National ranking: #30 (tie)

Gainesville is home to the University of Florida, founded in 1853. It's in northern Florida, roughly 110 miles northwest of Orlando.

There are about 36,000 undergraduate Gators running around the 2,000-acre grounds — and they're (probably) all powered by Gatorade, the famed sports drink that was created right there on campus by researchers looking to help athletes replenish their electrolytes and stay hydrated.

7 (tie). University of Texas at Austin

National ranking: #30 (tie)

UT Austin, founded in 1883, takes up a big chunk of Texas' capital city — in fact, it's just a 15-minute walk from campus to see the Lone Star State's statehouse. It has 43,000 undergraduates.

Many UT programs are world-renowned, but the Moody College of Communication is among its most famous.

6. University of California, San Diego

National ranking: #29

From the northernmost UC school to the southernmost — UC San Diego, established in 1960, is approximately 30 minutes from the California/Mexico border.

The university, which has 35,000 undergraduate students, is known for its strong engineering and biotechnology programs.

4 (tie). University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

National ranking: #26 (tie)

UNC-Chapel Hill, located less than 30 miles west of Raleigh, was founded in 1789 and has an undergraduate population of 21,000.

Besides its famed NCAA basketball team, Chapel Hill has a top 10 business school and a top five nursing school.

4 (tie). University of Virginia

National ranking: #26 (tie)

The University of Virginia, or UVA, was founded in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1819. It has about 18,000 undergraduate students.

In addition to its strong undergraduate programs, the UVA School of Law is the No. 4 law school in the nation, according to US US News.

3. University of Michigan

National ranking: #20 (tie)

The University of Michigan, known colloquially as "Michigan," was founded in Ann Arbor in 1817, which is about 40 miles west of Detroit.

Michigan has an undergraduate population of 34,000 students. It's best known for the Ross School of Business, which ranks No. 13 among full-time MBA programs in the US.

2. University of California, Los Angeles

National ranking: #17 (tie)

UCLA, founded in 1919 and located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, is one of the biggest universities in the UC system, with 33,000 undergraduates and a well-regarded medical school, law school, and public health master's program.

It also has just a 9% acceptance rate, making it a highly sought-after acceptance letter.

1. University of California, Berkeley

National ranking: #15 (tie)

UC Berkeley (or simply Cal) was named by US News & World Report as the best public school in the US. Founded in 1868, it is the oldest university in the University of California system.

Its 33,000 undergraduate students call the Bay Area home, and the university has top-five biomedical, chemical, civil, computer, electrical, environmental, industrial/manufacturing, materials, and mechanical engineering programs.

• Mark Zuckerberg shared a video of himself sparring with a UFC champion on a floating barge.
• He previously posted a similar clip back in 2023.
• The Meta CEO started training jiu-jitsu during the pandemic, and once tore his ACL.

Mark Zuckerberg has brought back a familiar pastime: fighting UFC stars on a barge floating in the middle of a lake.

In a Sunday Instagram post, he shared a video of himself sparring with Merab Dvalishvili, a Georgian fighter who won the 2024 UFC Bantamweight title.

An array of camera angles, including drone shots, show the pair punching, kicking, and practicing takedowns — set to the instrumental of "Can't Hold Us" by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.

At one point, Zuckerberg's wife, Priscilla Chan, rides past on a canoe. "Merab made me take my shirt off because it looks more 'fighter,'" he tells her.

The Meta CEO last shared a video fighting on the floating barge almost three years ago, when he sparred with two other UFC champions: Alexander Volkanovski and Israel Adesanya.

Zuckerberg began training in jiu-jitsu during the COVID-19 pandemic and said in 2023 he practices three to four times a week. Over the years, he's struck up friendships with a number of professional fighters.

Zuckerberg was pictured in Volkanovski's corner during a UFC bout in 2024, but it became a meme as he awkwardly nodded, offering a hand while other cornermen passed items.

Jon Jones, the former UFC light-heavyweight and heavyweight champion, commented on Sunday's post: "Wow, you look great Zucky. Can definitely tell you've been grinding."

The top comment, with over 33,000 likes, joked: "Elon been real quiet lately," referring to Zuckerberg's feud with Musk. In 2023, Zuckerberg agreed to Musk's challenge for a fight, and Rome's Colosseum was touted as a venue, but the fight never came to fruition.

However, combat sports can be a dangerous hobby, especially for the boss of a $1.5 trillion company.

Zuckerberg tore his ACL while sparring in 2023, and Meta's financial filings warn as a risk factor that, "Mr. Zuckerberg and certain other members of management participate in various high-risk activities, such as combat sports, extreme sports, and recreational aviation, which carry the risk of serious injury and death."

• This post originally appeared in the Business Insider Today newsletter.
• You can sign up for Business Insider's daily newsletter here.

Consider this your job-hunting cheat sheet.

Last week's brutal jobs report was more evidence of how difficult the labor market is. The low hiring and firing rate is giving a stuck-in-place vibe.

That's why people looking to switch jobs these days need to be extra careful. The next company you land at could be your last for a while, so you want to make it count.

Burning Glass Institute and the Schultz Family Foundation analyzed the career histories of 12 million workers across 1,750 companies. For BI's Aki Ito, they shared the details for six prominent tech occupations: software engineers, data scientists, software quality assurance analysts and testers, computer systems and security engineers, IT project managers, and IT systems analysts.

Searching for a role will show you the percentiles a company falls into for three categories: promotion, retention, and salary.

You can check out the database here. Happy hunting.

For some out-of-work job seekers, not being yourself might be the key to finding work.

Reinvention is proving to be a powerful tool for people looking for work.

Whether it's learning new skills or an outright career pivot, some are realizing their best bet is to stay agile and be open to change.

Six people spoke to BI's Madison Hoff and Jacob Zinkula about how their quest for new employment meant forging a new path.

This isn't like the pandemic-era rage quits when burned-out workers left their jobs to take on very different roles. This time, people are being forced to rethink things after losing their jobs and getting thrown into a sluggish job market.

That's how Douglas Craig, a longtime media executive, found himself guiding people through zipline courses at an aerial adventure park.

Not that he's complaining. Craig said it's less like "starting over" and more "like I was shifting to something that just brought more happiness and joy."

• As a physician studying longevity, I'm mindful when filling up my cart at Trader Joe's.
• I buy a lot of fresh and frozen produce, plus fiber-packed legumes and lentils.
• Premade frozen entrées have too much sodium for me, and I prefer local produce over salad kits.

I'm a board-certified internal medicine physician who studies longevity, so I'm used to people asking me how to live longer.

Often, they expect a prescription, a supplement stack, or some expensive scan. However, the most honest answer I can give them is in a grocery cart.

Mine gets filled at Trader Joe's most weeks, and I'm not chasing superfoods or miracle ingredients. Rather, I'm looking for foods that deliver fiber, healthy fats, and protein without the sodium and added sugar that can easily accumulate in a modern diet.

Here are a few things that always go in my cart, plus what I intentionally leave out.

Spoiler alert: One of my must-buy items isn't even food.

Beans and lentils are the backbone of my week.

Legumes show up in the daily diet of nearly every long-lived population I've studied. They are fiber-packed and protein-dense — two longevity heavy hitters.

Fiber is the most under-consumed nutrient in the American diet, and legumes deliver it alongside plant protein. Fiber can help feed the gut microbiome and support steadier blood sugar after meals.

I regularly buy legumes like beans and lentils on my trips to Trader Joe's. Typically, I cook a pot of lentils on Sunday and spend the week folding them into eggs, salads, and grain bowls.

Extra-virgin olive oil and fresh avocados cover my "healthy fats."

Olive oil is considered a "healthy fat" for a lot of reasons. For one, it has polyphenols, which contain antioxidant properties that can help protect against the development and progression of a range of health conditions.

Avocados are also considered a "healthy fat" and a great source of potassium, which can help counterbalance dietary sodium and support healthy blood pressure. They contain more fiber than you might expect, too, at around 10 grams for a medium avocado.

I like using olive oil for cooking and as a finishing drizzle after plating my meals. The avocado goes on eggs or gets cubed into bean-based bowls.

Frozen Alaskan wild-sockeye fillets are my protein workhorse.

My go-to frozen wild sockeye salmon fillets have one ingredient on the label: fish. Because this salmon is not smoked, marinated, or cured, they're also much lower in sodium.

The plain fillet has a fraction of the sodium as the smoked salmon in the next case over, along with EPA and DHA omega-3s, which can help support cardiovascular and brain health.

For an easy dinner, I roast this salmon at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 12 minutes and serve it over sautéed greens.

Raw, unsalted nuts are always in my pantry.

Walnuts and almonds pack a protein punch, and the unsalted part is non-negotiable.

Eating salted nuts as a frequent snack can quickly raise one's sodium intake. Over time, chronic excess sodium intake can contribute to hypertension (high blood pressure) — the leading modifiable risk factor for stroke.

When I shop at Trader Joe's, I grab unsalted walnuts, almonds, or whatever I'm craving, then pair a serving of nuts with fruit as my standing afternoon snack.

Also, chopped walnuts are delicious sprinkled over roasted vegetables.

Plain Greek yogurt is a staple.

Fermented dairy products, like Trader Joe's Greek yogurt, contain live active cultures (which can help support gut health) and provide decent amounts of protein.

Each ¾ -cup serving of Trader Joe's plain, whole-milk Greek yogurt contains 17 grams of protein.

Whenever I purchase Greek yogurt, I go for plain varieties. This is important because many flavored yogurts contain way more added sugar.

For comparison, Trader Joe's 5.3-ounce plain, whole-milk Greek yogurt contains 5 grams of added sugar. With 9 grams of added sugar, the apricot-mango variety contains almost twice as much.

Luckily, it's easy to sweeten up plain yogurt with berries. I also like to add nuts for a crunch. When it comes to cooking, plain Greek yogurt is a great swap for sour cream in almost any dish.

I keep fruit around in almost every form.

I often buy fresh fruit, but Trader Joe's frozen strawberries and wild blueberries are anchors in my household.

I like that frozen fruit is typically picked and preserved at peak ripeness, costs less than fresh, and is immune to the slow tragedy that overtakes whatever is decomposing in the back of the produce drawer.

Berries go on yogurt and oatmeal, and whatever is in season gets paired with nuts.

Chia seeds go into almost everything.

A single ounce of chia seeds contains about 10 grams of fiber, a bit of protein, and plant-based ALA omega-3s (which can promote heart health).

The seeds absorb liquid and turn gelatinous, which can help slow digestion and keep meals satisfying longer.

Blend them into smoothies, add to salad, or soak them overnight for a pudding. A bag from Trader Joe's costs a few dollars and lasts months in my pantry.

Greeting cards might be the most important thing in my cart.

Longevity isn't only about what you eat.

Social connection has been widely linked to longevity, and it can be as powerful as diet and other lifestyle factors people obsess over — and I believe a handwritten card is connection you can hold.

Fortunately, Trader Joe's has a great selection of blank greeting cards for just 99 cents each.

These cards make it even easier to stay in touch with people. I buy a stack, keep them in a drawer, and send one the moment someone crosses my mind.

Whether saying congratulations, expressing gratitude, or letting someone know I'm thinking of them, putting pen to paper is meaningful to me, and to the recipient.

On the other hand, I don't buy frozen entrées here or at any grocery store.

I'm sure many frozen premade meals are convenient and taste just fine — there's a reason they're so popular, especially at Trader Joe's— but my issue with most of them is the sodium content.

Many of these premade dishes contain several hundred milligrams of sodium per serving. I've seen some that contain close to 1,000 milligrams of sodium per serving — that's almost half the recommended daily limit for an average adult in a single meal.

And, as I've mentioned, chronic excess sodium intake can raise blood pressure, increasing cardiovascular risk.

Instead, when I need a quick meal, I cook up frozen vegetables, frozen grains, and a can of beans or a sockeye fillet. Either option only takes me about 10 minutes to prep.

I don't purchase bagged leafy greens and salad kits, either.

As convenient as bagged salad kits and pre-washed greens seem, they're not worth it for me.

Tender greens start losing water-soluble vitamins like folate and vitamin C the moment they're cut and stored. And by the time bagged greens reach my cart, they may already be several days — or more — from harvest.

Instead, I get my greens from my local CSA produce box or farmers market, where they're often harvested much closer to when I buy them.

They keep more of their nutrients and taste fresher, which means I'm more likely to actually eat them.

Sweetened dried fruit doesn't make it into my basket.

In my opinion, sweetened dried fruit sounds healthy but is actually more like candy.

Whole fruit delivers its sugar packaged with fiber and water, which changes how the body handles it compared to juice or dried versions.

Drying concentrates sugar while stripping out the water that makes whole fruit filling. Plus, a lot of dried fruits are coated in sweeteners, which pushes this snack further up the glycemic index.

I'm choosing frozen or fresh fruit over the sweetened, dried versions every time.

For me, cured and processed meats stay on the shelf.

The World Health Organization classifies processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen, a category it uses when there is "convincing evidence that the agent causes cancer."

To each their own, but that alone is enough for me to just stay away from this section of the grocery store altogether.

Curious what's in other shoppers' carts? Keep reading our Trader Joe's diaries.

• Famed investor Michael Burry said "complete idiots" made fortunes during the dot-com boom.
• Burry's critique prompted Mark Cuban, who became a billionaire during the boom, to jokily reply.
• Both Burry and Cuban have raised concerns about the speed and scale of AI investments.

Michael Burry took a swipe at some of the dot-com boom's biggest winners, prompting a cheeky response from Mark Cuban.

The investor of "The Big Short" fame argued on X that stock prices became detached from fundamentals between the 1998 collapse of Long-Term Capital Management and the dot-com crash in March 2000.

"Complete idiots made permanent fortunes during that span," Burry wrote on Saturday. "We still hear from one of them regularly."

He did not name anyone, but Cuban — one of the best-known billionaires minted during the dot-com boom — appeared happy to play along.

"Complete idiots," Cuban replied, adding a crying laughter emoji. He also quoted one of his own posts from 2025, listing 13 patent applications that lawyers for Broadcast.com had considered filing before Yahoo acquired the internet radio company.

Cuban sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in stock in 1999, making him one of the dot-com era's most prominent winners.

The potential patents covered ideas including geographic identification of internet-connected devices, hybrid networks, reverse auctions, audio advertising, streaming authentication, and automated content promotion.

Burry's broader message was one he has frequently shared in recent months — that investors are ignoring inflated valuations in favor of AI hype and could be caught out in the future.

In a separate exchange the day before, Burry asked: "Am I the last bear?"

"Everyone is a genius in a bull market," Cuban responded, repeating one of his favorite sayings about how soaring asset prices can make almost every investor look shrewd.

The exchanges come after both men raised concerns about the artificial-intelligence buildout.

Burry has warned that Big Tech is overspending on microchips and data centers that could quickly become obsolete.

Cuban has similarly argued that efficiency gains could leave some AI infrastructure redundant, joking that many data centers might eventually be converted into pickleball courts.

• Meta is launching a new agentic AI model, Muse Glimmer, which it says can run locally on a laptop.
• The model is open-weight, which means users can download and modify it.
• Meta also plans to release an open-weight version of Muse Spark, its most powerful AI model.

Mark Zuckerberg is launching a new AI model and a vision for a more open form of superintelligence.

The social media giant unveiled Muse Glimmer on Monday and said it is an open-weight, agentic model small enough to run on a Mac or PC. Open-weight means users can download and customize the model to run it locally instead of in the cloud.

Meta also plans to release an open-weight version of Muse Spark, its most powerful AI model, soon, Zuckerberg added.

Meta said it trained Glimmer on Muse Spark using a process known as distillation, where a smaller model learns from a larger "teacher" model.

Meta said that Glimmer, the latest model rolled out by the company's Superintelligence division led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, can perform complex reasoning and handle a broad range of agentic tasks while running on a consumer device with a single graphics card.

Glimmer can break a task, such as coding or admin work, into steps. Meta said it "performs strongly for its size class" on several benchmarks for large language models.

'Filled with doom'

The Meta CEO also published a 6,500-word essay making a positive case for superintelligent AI.

In the essay, titled "The Future Is for Everyone," Zuckerberg wrote that it was "surprising" that the discourse from so many of the people developing AI was so "filled with doom."

Zuckerberg said it would be wrong to restrict access to superintelligent AI to a handful of individuals or companies on safety grounds.

"Some argue that superintelligence itself or a small set of experts who control it should decide what is best for humanity. We disagree," Zuckerberg wrote.

Open vs closed

Meta's model launch comes as the tech industry is embroiled in a debate over open-weight AI.

Last month, nearly every major AI lab — including Meta — signed a public letter advocating for open-weight models, after the US government suggested it could sanction Chinese open models that were found to have distilled AI models built by their US rivals.

"Foreign labs currently hold several advantages here since American labs have to comply with many additional restrictions on training data," Zuckerberg wrote in his Monday essay. "US policy must reduce this additional friction if we want American open source models to lead over time."

While Meta has traditionally championed open-sourcing models, not all of the Llama series of open-weight models it first launched in 2023 impressed developers.

Meta took a different approach with Muse Spark, released earlier this year, which was developed under Wang and launched as a closed model. Although the latest version still trails the strongest models from Anthropic and OpenAI overall, it is competitive on several benchmarks.

The decision to launch Glimmer as an open-weight model under a permissive license echoes the strategy of China AI labs, such as Moonshot and DeepSeek, which are launching open models that offer developers a cheaper alternative to their US counterparts.

"Now that Meta Superintelligence Labs are up and running, we will resume releasing some open source models soon," Zuckerberg wrote in Monday's blog.

• A version of this story originally appeared in the BI Tech Memo newsletter.
• Sign up for the weekly BI Tech Memo newsletter here.

The build-versus-buy debate around business software has a new calculator.

Last year, I wrote about how AI coding tools were making it easier for companies to create their own internal apps instead of paying an outside software provider.

That shift raised a tempting question: Why keep buying expensive software when employees can now vibe code a custom version themselves?

The enterprising analysts at RBC Capital Markets recently built an interactive tool to test that idea. Companies and investors can plug in the cost of a software subscription, then compare it with the full cost of building and running an in-house alternative.

The tool goes beyond the initial coding bill. It also includes maintenance, security risks, repairs, and the cost of employees using a tool that may be less reliable or capable.

RBC's conclusion is sobering: Building your own version of business software is usually more expensive than buying it. The math can work for simpler, less important tools, but rarely for core systems such as payroll, customer records, or office software.

The biggest hidden cost may be talent. Even when a custom app is possible, companies must ask whether their best AI workers should rebuild existing software or create something genuinely new.

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

• July's inflation data will be front and center this week after a poor July jobs report.
• If inflation is cool enough, the Fed may be less inclined to raise interest rates this year.
• Sign up for First Trade, Business Insider's daily markets newsletter.

The stakes just got higher for this week's inflation report.

The US economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday, perhaps signaling that the labor market could be trending in an unhealthy direction.

The update may change the calculus for the Federal Reserve, which will next decide on interest rate policy at its September 16 meeting. The Fed has a so-called dual mandate: on one side, it aims to maintain stability in consumer prices by keeping inflation in check; on the other hand, it needs to support demand enough to keep the labor market humming.

So far, freshly minted Fed chair Kevin Warsh has emphasized in stern tones his goal of fighting inflation, which has remained above the central bank's 2% target. But the ugly July jobs report may force Warsh to pull back on his hawkish rhetoric and look more closely at the labor market part of the Fed's mandate.

That means all eyes will be on July's CPI report on Wednesday morning, as investors look for clues on what the Fed will do next. Ordinarily, a softening labor market would mean cooling inflation data, but elevated energy prices are complicating things.

Economists expect July's CPI to come in at 3.4% year-over-year, down from 3.5% in June and 4.2% in May. As of Friday afternoon, market odds have the Fed keeping rates unchanged in September, but are still pricing in one to two hikes before the end of the year despite the ice-cold jobs report.

Here are two scenarios that could play out this week after we see updated inflation numbers on Wednesday:

• Inflation is hot, stocks drop

This is maybe the market's worst-case scenario: a stagflationary outcome. Investors are hoping the weak July jobs report has given the Fed the ammo it needs to cut rates. That's why stocks soared on Friday — bad news is good news right now when it comes to payrolls.

But given Warsh's outspokenness about fighting inflation, a hot report may prompt him to hike rates despite the weak jobs outlook. Either way, it's hard to imagine a scenario where stocks rise if inflation comes in higher than expectations. Unlike with the jobs report, bad news is bad news for CPI.

• Inflation is cool enough, stocks soar

It's unlikely that inflation drops below the Fed's goal of 2%, but investors may cheer on anything in the low 3s or below as a signal that consumer price growth is coming down and the Fed can cut rates comfortably, or at least stay put.

Even the latter scenario could reverse expectations for hikes later this year that are already priced in, allowing investors to relax a bit.

• Dropbox has been "virtual-first" since 2021, and its new co-CEO says he plans to keep that model.
• The company has a mostly remote structure, and hosts a handful of off-site gatherings.
• "Flexibility and autonomy are the ultimate currency in modern work," said co-CEO Ashraf Alkarmi.

Dropbox is "virtual-first" and that's not changing anytime soon, according to its new co-CEO.

While many companies continue to enforce return-to-office mandates, Ashraf Alkarmi said that when he takes over as Dropbox's sole CEO, he plans to maintain the company's remote-first structure.

Alkarmi previously held leadership roles at Vimeo and Meta and joined Dropbox as senior vice president and general manager of its core products in 2024. He became co-CEO in May, alongside Dropbox founder Drew Houston.

Alkarmi said the cloud storage company's virtual-first structure is an "incredible model" and he continues to believe in it. Dropbox officially implemented the policy in 2021 and said it redesigned its workforce to focus on flexibility.

"Flexibility and autonomy are the ultimate currency in modern work," Alkarmi told Business Insider.

The company said that average applications per job were nearly sevenfold higher in 2025 than they were before virtual-first.

It also said it has seen the highest offer acceptance rates and the lowest attrition rates since enacting the model. The company added that 74% of new hires in 2026 cite the ability to work in a virtual-first environment as one of the reasons they joined Dropbox.

Alkarmi made the distinction that virtual-first doesn't mean remote-only.

The company still has in-person gatherings, such as for its annual hack week, where workers fly in to San Francisco, Seattle, and Dublin studios to participate in a hackathon.

Employees develop and build their hack week projects from Monday to Thursday, and winning projects are chosen on Friday. Throughout the week, Dropboxers are encouraged to participate in additional programming, like customer coffee chats, AI learning sessions, and networking.

The company also holds leadership off-sites where senior staff meet to focus on company planning, strategy, and team building. Individual teams also have their own off-sites.

The combination of in-person interaction with virtual work is critical, the co-CEO said.

"In these moments, connection matters," Alkarmi said.

Alkarmi added that those gatherings help the company's workforce build connections so that when they return to virtual work, they're on the same page and have a foundation of trust and respect.

His co-CEO, Houston, has previously criticized return-to-office mandates.

"We can be a lot less dumb than forcing people back into a car three days a week or whatever, to literally be back on the same Zoom meeting they would have been at home," Houston said on the "Leadership Next" podcast in 2025.

• Saving more than half of your income doesn't necessarily mean making extreme sacrifices.
• Business Insider has spoken with "super savers" who are able to do it without feeling deprived.
• Some of their strategies include tracking expenses and aligning spending with values.

Saving more than half your income doesn't have to mean living in your parents' basement and subsisting on ramen.

"A lot of the old FIRE content is focused on hyper-frugality: Sell your car and bike 20 miles in a snowstorm to work. Live in a storage unit," Cody Berman, the author of "Retire by 30," told Business Insider. "I don't think you have to do any of that. You just have to live slightly differently from your peers."

So slightly, in fact, that your peers might not even notice.

That's what Berman and his wife, Lauren, found when they began saving more than half their income in pursuit of financial independence.

"If you were to interview one of my friends during that time and ask, 'Are Cody and Lauren doing all these weird things to save money?' They'd probably say no," he said.

Berman and other super savers told Business Insider that a handful of intentional choices — particularly around their biggest expenses — helped them build high savings rates without feeling like they were constantly sacrificing. Here are a few of their top strategies.

"Tracking is everything"

If you're just starting to save more aggressively, Berman recommends recording your expenses.

"At the beginning, I think tracking is everything," he said. "There's no way you can know where to improve unless you track."

He compared it to tracking calories for the first time: Once you've logged what you eat for long enough, estimating what's on your plate becomes much easier.

"I tracked religiously for years during our FI journey," he said. "At this point, I'm not tracking every penny that goes in and goes out. I just have a pretty solid grasp on how our money's moving around."

Keep major expenses in check

To make significant progress, Berman used one of the oldest tricks in the book: lowering "the big three" expenses — housing, transportation, and food. It can result in extreme savings, without feeling like you're doing anything too extreme.

For housing, he and Lauren house-hacked, sharing their home with roommates. They still lived in a nice place, he said, but the arrangement dramatically changed the economics: "We had friends also living in a nice one-bed, one-bath, but they are paying rent. They might be paying $2,000 a month in rent, where we're making, like, $800 a month."

As for transportation, his truck wasn't brand new, but it wasn't falling apart either: "It's not nice, it's not bad, but it's paid off."

He and Lauren still went out with friends. They just spent more selectively. A friend might order an appetizer, entrée, dessert, and several drinks, for example, while they might split an appetizer and order one or two drinks.

"We weren't living super differently," Berman said. While the small differences were hard to spot from the outside, they were substantial on paper. "If you peeled back the curtain and looked at our finances, it was like, 'Oh, they're actually spending $4,000 less a month than some of their peers because of the choices that they made.'"

Align spending with values

Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung, who saved up to 70% of their income to build a seven-figure portfolio and quit their jobs in their 30s, are adamant that deprivation doesn't work. Leung compared extreme spending cuts to crash dieting: "You can do it for a little while, but then eventually, you have a relapse, and you eat an entire birthday cake."

Instead, he and Shen directed money toward what mattered most to them. They estimated they spent $5,000 to $10,000 a year on travel, which they considered non-negotiable.

Berman has taken a similar approach. When he and Lauren first started dating, he said, they each wrote down the 10 things they valued most, then compared their lists and asked themselves whether their spending reflected those priorities.

"We do spend a lot in the categories where we value the things we really like," he said, but the key is to cut back in the categories they care less about, like cars, for example. "I still drive the same paid-off car, even though I could afford a new, flashy car."

Live somewhere cheaper

If your job and lifestyle allow it, moving to a lower-cost-of-living area can dramatically increase your savings rate.

That's how Miguel Marquez is saving about 70% of his income.

Originally from Spain, the university professor completed his Ph.D. in the US, where he struggled to save much. After more than a decade in the States, he moved to Brazil for a teaching position. The lower cost of living helped launch his financial independence journey.

For the past four years, he's lived and taught in China, where he's also experienced a lower cost of living. He pays about $200 a month for a partially subsidized apartment on his university campus and relies on inexpensive public transportation instead of owning a car.

"My money has never gone further," Marquez said. He's still far from having a seven-figure net worth, but it doesn't necessarily feel that way. "I'm not a millionaire, but I feel like a millionaire."

• When our twins were at camp, my husband and I went to Europe and took a cruise.
• At first, it was unsettling not to have daily parenting responsibilities.
• However, the trip reminded us of who we are outside being parents, and we all came home changed.

When my husband and I boarded a flight to Europe earlier this summer, we were embarking on our first major trip alone since becoming parents 12 years ago.

I knew it would be an adjustment to travel without our twins. What I hadn't quite realized was that the hard part happened before we even left home.

A few days earlier, we'd dropped our 12-year-old twins off for a 19-day session at the same Southern California sleepaway camp I attended for 11 summers growing up. I believe deeply in what camp gives kids: independence, resilience, confidence, problem-solving skills, and lifelong friendships. Last year, they went for a five-day mini session. This summer was their first full session, and I knew it would be an important milestone.

What I wasn't prepared for was how untethered I would feel after saying goodbye.

After we dropped off the kids and their huge duffel bags, my husband and I went out for lunch and ordered beers in the middle of the afternoon — far from something we would otherwise do together in the middle of a workweek. Instead of feeling liberated, I felt strangely lost. The expanse of day ahead seemed to stretch on endlessly with no pickup time on the horizon.

If I wasn't parenting, who exactly was I supposed to be? As it turned out, that question would become the most meaningful part of our trip.

I'd forgotten what it felt like to travel as just two adults

Before having children, travel was one of the things that bonded my husband and me.

Even after becoming parents, we continued traveling extensively, often taking our twins on ambitious international trips, from Tokyo to Morocco. We've always preferred experiences that enrich everyone rather than settle for "kid-friendly" trips that aren't appealing to us as adults. And I wouldn't trade those memories for anything.

But family travel — even wonderful family travel — is fundamentally different. I hardly need to explain this fact to anyone who's ever tried to do it (or been too daunted to attempt it), but let me paint a picture: You're shepherding not just your own bag, but all the bags, managing all the hangry feelings and all the jet lag, enduring all the whining and doing your best to accommodate so many diverse preferences (not to mention paying everyone's way). You're always on.

By the time we settled into the airport lounge before our overnight flight, martinis in hand, we looked at each other and literally laughed. Nobody needed anything from us. What was this wholly unfamiliar vibe? It was so freeing, it felt almost illegal.

We got to be partners, not just co-parents

Our trip included a nine-night sailing through Northern Europe aboard Crystal Serenity, my first cruise ever, and an ultra-luxurious, totally frictionless experience that made us feel well cared for, rather than serving as the caregivers. (Exhibit A: We had our own dedicated butler.)

Without the constant logistics of parenting, we got dressed up together and went for meals that stretched for hours. I attended niche history lectures where, instead of being the mom, I was the youngest person in the room. We wandered charming European cities at our own pace. I spent extended time in the casino and turned some slot-machine winnings into an entry in the ship's blackjack tournament… and finished in third place.

The biggest luxury, though, was having nowhere we needed to be except wherever the two of us wanted to go next, together or alone. Over the past 12 years, we've become effective partners in raising children. We coordinate schedules, divide responsibilities, and keep the household running with an egalitarian philosophy.

This trip reminded us that we also genuinely enjoyed simply spending time together.

I thought I'd spend three weeks worrying about my kids

I could have stayed home and worried about my kids. Or I could have been on a fabulous European holiday and worried about my kids. The worrying part wouldn't have changed much.

Fortunately, as it turned out, there wasn't much to worry about.

Through the camp's app, I saw daily photos of my twins laughing with friends, sliding down waterslides, making art projects, hitting the beach, and embracing camp life exactly as I'd hoped they would. I wrote them digital letters every day from Europe (counselors printed out the messages and delivered them analog style). My son mailed just one back. My daughter — the one most skeptical about the camp experience — was apparently having too much fun to write at all.

Seeing them thrive made it easier for me to do the same.

We all came home changed

Parenthood has a way of becoming your entire identity, even despite best intentions to the contrary. Days fill with dropoffs and pickups, homework, work deadlines, grocery lists, and the endless logistics and emotional load of raising children. Even the happiest marriages can begin to revolve around managing a household instead of nurturing the relationship that started it.

For nearly three weeks, we got to step outside those roles. We weren't abandoning our responsibilities. We were simply remembering who we had been before we became these humans' mom and dad.

Ironically, giving our twins the opportunity to grow independently gave us that same opportunity. When we picked them up from camp, they seemed more confident, more independent, and somehow even kinder to one another.

We came home with something just as valuable: the reminder that after 12 years of parenting, the couple who built our family was still there.

• Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan declared a boom time for "the founder in their 40s with taste and discernment."
• Business Insider spoke with founders in their 40s to figure out: Is it really the "age of the unc"?
• Some agreed that it was a golden age for older founders. Others said that there was still stigma.

Amir Elaguizy has books about neural networks from the '60s.

The 42-year-old serial entrepreneur doesn't believe that being younger means you're more AI-native. Elaguizy emailed with Geoffrey Hinton, the "Godfather of AI," before Hinton started working at Google. He's been learning about AI's roots for decades.

"For me, AI is a continuum," he said. "I watched it the whole time. It's not like it came online for me in 2022."

For Elaguizy, his age is a perk. It's a sign to investors that he's serious and knows how to build a business. (Elaguizy sold his first company to Zynga in 2011.) It also shows that he's dogged, he said, and not taking his earlier cash-out and retiring.

These days, his age cohort wants in. Elaguizy said that many of his friends were coming out of retirement to launch new AI startups. "You have all these old guys who are not just back at it, but back at the keyboard, typing code," he said.

Elaguizy called it a "vibe shift," something Garry Tan would likely agree with. The Y Combinator CEO posted that we were entering an "age of the unc." ("Unc," for those unfamiliar with Gen Z parlance, is a shortening of "uncle" to call someone old.) Tan expected a new class of unicorn founders in their 40s.

It's a bit ironic, given Y Combinator's declining average founder age. In 2025, one cohort had an average age of 24. That's a hallmark of the AI era: founders in their early 20s who pop Zyns and troll on X. Indeed, Business Insider once called it a "youthquake."

But these founders say that their age is a benefit, not a bug.

'The age of the unc'

Michal Cieplinski described AI as a reset — one that affected both older and younger founders.

"We had to learn Claude Code at the same time," he said. "It's not like a 21-year-old kid had a start on me. No! We all had the same starting point."

Cieplinski is the 48-year-old founder of HiJenny, an AI home manager. He referenced the internet discourse about "taste." The thinking goes: in the age of AI, technical skills will be less important than your sense of judgment.

With age, you have a better sense of taste, Cieplinski said. "I'd add to it: with age, you have persistence."

Are older founders actually experiencing a renaissance? Throughout my chats, founders pointed to the ages of the CEOs of the AI labs. Sam Altman is 41. Dario Amodei is 43. They're not college dropouts sleeping on futons.

Stanford University's Venture Capital Initiative compared the average age at founding between a random sample and unicorns, or companies worth over $1 billion. The average age of a unicorn founder was 39.9 in the 2020s, compared with 35 in the random sample.

The average founding age of a unicorn is also going up: in the 2010s, it was 35.4.

Even if the data suggests older founders are more closely associated with unicorn status, it's not clear that investors are eager to bet on them.

Ismail Pelaseyed, the 40-year-old cofounder of the cybersecurity startup Superagent, said he felt the push in Silicon Valley: "You have to be young, straight out of Harvard or Stanford."

Pelaseyed was 39 when he went through Y Combinator. He said he felt like a father to many of his ultra-young batchmates.

"I think that most venture capitalists want someone young, because it takes a long time to build something big," he said. After all, Mark Zuckerberg was 19 when het met Peter Thiel, Facebook's first outside investor.

Elaguizy disagrees. Sure, there's lots of money in the AI market right now, opening doors for founders with little experience. But what about when the going gets rough?

"In an environment where capital is less free, us old guys are a little bit more attractive," he said.

Does age equal experience?

Both of Carmen Li's jobs require deep technical experience.

Li is the 40-year-old CEO of two GPU-related businesses: Compute Exchange and Silicon Data. While a 20-year-old may be able to kick-start a social app — especially with the ease of modern AI tools — it's harder to work on the compute side, she said.

Still, that doesn't mean she benefits from her age. Li said that she benefits from her experience — and that the two aren't necessarily tied.

"You can be a 40-year-old who's done nothing with your life," she said. "You'll be a worse startup founder than a 20-year-old. 40 is just a number."

There's one demographic that Li said did particularly well in their 40s: women.

Many women founders leave the industry in their 30s to have kids, Li said, before returning to entrepreneurship in their 40s. (Li also clocked the subtle gendering in Tan's post, which referenced the "gentleman unicorn founder.")

Mo Shaikh is a fan of older founders, precisely because of their experience. "They draw from all these lessons that they've learned," he said.

That doesn't mean that they're serial entrepreneurs, the 40-year-old cofounder and general partner of Maximum Frequency Venture said. Rather, he's looking for people with deep technical knowledge in their field.

"There are many founders out there that don't know that they're founders yet," he said.

The founders I spoke to quibbled about whether it was a better or worse time to be a mid-40s entrepreneur. Li said it's always been a good time to be older. "They're just not the sexy story," she said. "They're regular people."

But Elaguizy was firm about his "vibe shift." The industry was embracing a "what's old is new again" mentality, he said.

"For every 22-year-old in a hoodie, I'm seeing a couple of 40-year-olds not in hoodies," he said.

• The so-called "forward-deployed engineer" is one of the hottest jobs in tech.
• Matt Ward, Cursor's head of talent, said it's the most in-demand role right now.
• It was popularized by Palantir, but a slew of major tech companies have recently adopted it.

Someone needs to teach all the businesses out there how to use AI. Enter the so-called forward-deployed engineer.

Matt Ward, Cursor's head of talent, said on a recent episode of the "People by WTF" podcast that companies are racing to hire forward-deployed engineers to help companies and their clients adopt and personalize AI.

"You're deeply technical yourself," Ward said, describing the type of person who is a good fit for the job. "But you can also walk into a room with executives and leaders."

The role, popularized by Palantir, sits somewhere between software engineering, consulting, and product. Forward-deployed engineers typically integrate with customers, learn how their businesses operate, and then build or customize technology to meet their needs.

Demand for the role has exploded during the AI boom. Job postings for forward-deployed engineers in April were up over 5,000% compared to last year, according to Indeed data.

Several major AI companies are building dedicated teams around them. OpenAI's forward-deployed engineering team had 39 members late last year and 24 openings across the US, Europe, and Japan. Salaries for the role at OpenAI can be as high as $345,000 plus equity.

As AI companies race to turn powerful models into products businesses can actually use, it's not just engineers who are bridging the gap between technology and customers. Consultants are too.

Consulting firms have been hiring and retraining workers to help clients figure out where AI fits within their businesses and how to deploy it.

BCG, for example, has created a team of "forward-deployed consultants" who can vibe code and build AI tools directly on client projects, while McKinsey is increasingly looking for hires who can combine strong consulting skills with technical fluency.

• Airline pilots Carrie and Brian Smith launched an RV rental business as a side hustle.
• They liken the business to "Airbnb on wheels," and list their vehicles on a platform called Outdoorsy.
• They open up about the challenges of running a side hustle, including juggling busy schedules.

After their own mediocre RV rental experience, Carrie and Brian Smith saw a business opportunity: offer travelers a more polished version of RV living.

The Dallas-based couple, both full-time airline pilots, had already been exploring side-hustle ideas as they approached the industry's mandatory retirement age of 65. At the end of 2023, they purchased seven RVs for about $782,000, putting down about $127,000 and financing the rest.

They spent another $23,000 outfitting the fleet with sheets, towels, kitchen supplies, toiletries, first-aid kits, and other amenities and started listing their rentals in early 2024.

How the RV rental business generates revenue

The Smiths compare their business, Suite Glamping Adventures, to "Airbnb on wheels." In the RV world, the closest equivalent to Airbnb is Outdoorsy, a platform for renting RVs from individual owners.

Bookings range from three- or four-day trips to rentals lasting several weeks, but they've learned that longer trips are generally more worthwhile.

"You almost get nothing out of it on a three-day rental because of your costs," Brian told Business Insider.

Starting with seven RVs allowed the couple to experiment with various sizes, from a 22-footer to a 32-footer, and learn which models customers preferred. They said their larger RVs perform particularly well, while the smallest RVs are rented less frequently but appeal to couples and smaller groups.

The business is also seasonal. Spring break is one of the Smiths' busiest periods, while August can be slow because of the Texas heat. Rentals also tend to drop in January and February.

There are other ways to make money beyond traditional family vacations. One of their RVs, for example, served as a mobile broadcast studio for a Dutch public radio crew covering the 2026 World Cup. They said the booking generated about $9,500.

The Smiths' fleet has grown to nine vehicles, which Business Insider verified by reviewing the insurance identification cards for each one. They said the business brought in about $114,000 in 2024 and $95,000 in 2025. They're confident it can eventually generate at least $150,000 a year as they improve operations and pursue more corporate and event bookings.

Of course, revenue is not profit. Loan payments, insurance, maintenance, cleaning, storage, platform fees, and other operating expenses all reduce what they ultimately keep. Sometimes it feels like "everybody's got their hand in your pocket," Brian said.

While the business isn't yet profitable, the Smiths said it has already benefited them financially through tax deductions and the accumulation of assets. As high-earning W-2 employees with several children in college, they were looking for ways to put their money to work in a business rather than continue facing a growing tax bill.

For now, they said, deductions tied to the business have allowed them to report losses that reduce their taxable income.

Freeze damage, color-coded sheets, and crazy schedules

The Smiths learned early on that owning an RV fleet would not be "a cakewalk," said Brian.

They had requested that all seven of their original vehicles be delivered winterized, but only three were. Dallas then experienced an extended stretch of temperatures below 20 degrees, causing about $16,000 in freeze damage that they had to repair.

Other challenges and headaches have included vehicle damage, maintenance and upkeep, demanding renters, and finding a place to keep the fleet. Over time, the Smiths have become more selective about whom they rent to. They've found that a small share of customers can create a disproportionate amount of work — an "80-20 rule" of sorts — and have learned that saying no to certain bookings can save them headaches later.

Storage presented another challenge. After paying $2,000 a month for covered parking at a public-storage facility, they purchased 2.5 acres where they can maintain their RVs and, eventually, rent space to other RV owners.

Some lessons have been less expensive but no less practical.

"One of the biggest things we learned is not to buy all-white sheets," Carrie said. Because the RVs contain king-, queen-, full-, and twin-size beds, they initially spent hours trying to distinguish nearly identical linens before replacing them with color-coded sets, with each color representing a different bed size.

They've also learned that hooks are "the key to a successful vacation," since RVs can sleep far more people than their limited drawers and closets can accommodate. Some lessons have come through trial and error, while others have come from networking with fellow operators and attending industry events and travel-business summits.

The business is far from passive and demands a significant time commitment on top of their already busy careers and lives. On one recent day, Brian had a flight simulator session, a physical, this interview, and dance lessons with Carrie before leaving for four days of flying. Carrie, meanwhile, spent several hours working on the RVs at their property.

"We don't sit still," he said. "It's crazy, crazy bouncing around and just juggling it to make it work."

For Brian, the biggest lesson has been learning to stay calm no matter what comes up.

"The key is to try not to get too high or too low," he said, noting that unexpected situations are inevitable when running a business. "That's kind of life, really, when you think about it. Each day is going to come with challenges."

• Alice Kim left her investment banking career after six years of burnout.
• During her career break, she started surfing and almost burned out doing the hobby she enjoyed.
• Kim realized the mindset that was causing her burnout and is working on correcting it.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Alice Kim, a freelancer from Southern California. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I think I was burned out for the entire six-year period I worked in investment banking and private equity. For the first half of my career, I was fresh out of college and felt like I had unlimited grit to push through, but the burnout accumulated over time.

After moving across various roles, ending up in what I'd previously considered to be a dream role with more work-life balance, and still feeling too exhausted to complete the simplest of tasks, I knew something needed to change.

I quit my job, thinking I'd just need a few months to recover; I was so wrong.

I went through a lot of ups and downs, feeling like I was recovering from burnout, only for the feelings to come back. I learned the hard way that it wasn't my job burning me out; it was my mindset keeping me in a cycle of burnout.

After 18 months, I'm ready to go back to work, but I'm choosing a different path.

My burnout manifested as a sense of dread

I entered the industry because it was prestigious, well-paying, and would give me a lot of optionality for my future. There were aspects I enjoyed, like the people and, as lame as it sounds, building Excel models, but it was a lot of work.

Working 80 hours a week or more in a high-pressure environment felt like a recipe for burnout, and as a perfectionist, it was a standard I continuously held myself to. I was functioning on five hours of sleep, staring at screens all day, and drinking so much caffeine to keep me going.

I tried to work out when I could, but I couldn't maintain any healthy habits with the sheer amount of time I was working. On top of it all, the chronic stress made me incredibly impatient and irritable.

My burnout manifested in a sense of dread. The feeling that I was stuck in cement and unable to get myself to do anything or feel motivated. That was really tough for me because I've always identified as an extremely hard worker, and when I couldn't find the willpower to push through, it felt like I'd lost myself.

A vacation I took using PTO made me realize I was trapped in my finance bubble

The decision to leave was gradual, and then really fast. I discovered surfing very randomly on a last-minute trip I took using PTO, and I fell in love with it. It inspired me to start traveling as frequently as I could for surfing, and I realized how sheltered I'd been in my finance bubble.

I had a growing desire to take a career break, and as my burnout grew, I considered it more seriously. I stumbled upon a surf trip to a bucket-list location, and I treated it as my sign from the universe to submit my resignation.

The next day, I booked the trip and planned my exit.

When I first left, I planned exactly four months of travel and decided I'd come back and look for an adjacent role in a similar industry.

I learned the hard way that time doesn't heal burnout

As soon as my travels began, I knew four months wasn't going to be enough. I felt happy, and I really felt like it would take longer for me to recover from burnout and feel ready to go back to work.

About six months into my career break, I took up a freelance opportunity and immediately felt burned out again. I think part of the reason my burnout returned was because I went back to work. I felt pulled to work because I needed to be productive to feel valuable.

I was burned out at my new job, but I later realized it was my core belief system that was driving me to act in ways that burned me out. My mentality didn't change just because I rested for a while.

Additionally, because I didn't have my corporate job as an outlet for my perfectionism, I transferred it to surfing. I started pushing myself so hard and holding myself to such high standards that I almost burned out from surfing as well.

I realized the toxic ways I operated were why burnout followed me wherever I went, regardless of whether I had a job.

I'm still finding self-worth outside of productivity

I've had to deconstruct the belief that my worth comes from work by questioning it and slowly realizing how unrealistic it was. As long as I held those ideas to be true, the burnout would persist.

I still haven't fully deconstructed those thoughts, but each day I get 1% closer. Although my corporate experience wasn't perfect, I'm grateful it provided me with the financial ability to continue my travels while getting my freelance work up and running.

At the beginning of 2025, I pretty much ditched the idea of returning to corporate unless I become extremely desperate. My new goal is to build a portfolio career that aligns with who I am, allows for freedom, and leverages my professional experience.

I'm currently doing strategic finance freelance work while building my social media platforms on the side.

I know I'm asking for a lot to be able to work remotely across different time zones, but that's the goal. I've been making sacrifices for it, like working odd hours to overlap with US business hours, and it's worth it to me.

Do you have a story to share about burnout or taking a career break? If so, please reach out to the reporter at tmartinelli@businessinsider.com.

• Vinit Juneja left his software engineering role at Amazon earlier this year.
• As an F-1 visa holder, he said Big Tech layoffs reshaped how he thought about job security.
• He explained why he chose the semiconductor industry and how AI helped him ramp up quickly.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Vinit Juneja, a technical product manager at Applied Materials and former Amazon software engineer. He's 24 and lives in Austin, Texas. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

My visa status shaped my journey to Amazon — and ultimately my decision to leave.

In 2023, I moved to the US from India to pursue a master's degree at Columbia University. My goal was to land a tech job and stay in the US after graduating. But despite applying to hundreds of jobs, I finished my master's in late December 2024 without a role lined up.

That was especially stressful because of my F-1 student visa. I wasn't eligible to start working until early February, when my employment authorization began. If I didn't have a job then, my 90-day unemployment clock would start — and if I couldn't find qualifying work before it ran out, I'd have to leave the country.

Fortunately, I landed a job at a startup before the clock started. I began the role in early February. This bought me time to explore other opportunities without worrying about my visa status.

About a month later, Amazon reached out with an online assessment for a software engineering role I'd applied for. I passed the assessment, made it through the interview loop, and received an offer in April 2025. I accepted it and moved to Seattle.

But I didn't stay at Amazon for too long.

Why I left Amazon

Overall, working at Amazon was a great experience. I learned from incredibly smart colleagues and saw firsthand the company's structured approach to solving problems. I was also impressed by the internal tools Amazon built for employees to boost productivity. From talking with friends at other companies, I'm not sure another employer can match Amazon when it comes to the quality of its internal tools.

Even so, I wasn't sure I'd stay at Amazon long term. My master's degree was in management science and engineering, and I wanted to move closer to the business side while continuing to use my computer science background.

Another factor was job security. During my time at Amazon, a lot of my colleagues were laid off. Seeing those layoffs made me think about what would happen if I was next.

Working in the tech industry on an F-1 STEM OPT visa meant losing my job could also mean losing my ability to stay in the US. Because I'd found my first job before using my initial 90-day unemployment period, my understanding was that I'd have about 150 days to find another employer if I were laid off — 90 unused unemployment days plus an additional 60-day grace period. If I couldn't find one in time, I'd have to leave the country.

Amazon wasn't the only large tech company laying workers, so I wasn't sure I'd find the security I was looking for in Big Tech.

Why I chose the semiconductor industry

Earlier this year, I came across a LinkedIn job posting for a technical product manager role at Applied Materials, one of the world's largest makers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

It was the type of role I'd been looking for — one that would let me work at the intersection of technology and business.

It also felt like an opportunity to get into an industry that I believed was poised for years of growth — and one that could offer more stability than Big Tech.

The semiconductor industry was booming as demand for AI chips surged, and Applied Materials seemed well positioned to benefit. The company builds the equipment that chipmakers like TSMC use to manufacture chips for customers such as NVIDIA.

I figured that if demand for NVIDIA's AI chips kept growing, chipmakers like TSMC would need to expand production — and companies like Applied Materials would benefit as chipmakers invested in additional manufacturing equipment.

I applied for the role without a referral and went through the interview process. When I received the offer in April, I learned it also came with higher compensation than my Amazon job. I accepted the offer, moved to Austin, and started with the company later that month.

I like Austin so far. After living in rainy Seattle, I missed the sunshine, and Austin's climate feels much more like what I grew up with in India.

Building an AI second brain — and my advice for tech workers

I now work as a technical product manager at Applied Materials, helping build internal planning software that teams use to make production and supply-chain decisions months in advance.

One thing that surprised me about switching industries was how much AI accelerated my learning curve. Because I was new to semiconductors, I built what I call a "second brain." During onboarding, I uploaded transcripts from recorded knowledge-transfer sessions and used AI to turn them into structured, searchable notes.

The goal wasn't just to save time. I wanted to build a knowledge base that captured the business context behind my team's work, making AI a much more useful brainstorming partner. Instead of rewatching onboarding sessions and taking notes for more than an hour, I can review AI-generated summaries in about 10 minutes and ask questions whenever I need to remember a concept.

AI has also sped up product development. On one internal project, my team used Claude to create a product design in about two weeks instead of waiting roughly a month for a designer to produce one. I've also built a library of AI prompts and workflows to help my colleagues use AI more effectively.

My career advice for tech professionals

My advice for other tech workers is simple: don't ignore AI. It isn't replacing judgment, but it is replacing a lot of repetitive work. The people who get the most out of it are the ones who learn how to use it effectively while still knowing enough to recognize when it's wrong.

When it comes to finding a job, don't be afraid to reach out to people. Cold emailing isn't guaranteed to work, but if you never reach out, you'll never know. The more opportunities you create for yourself, the better your chances.

For me, it was all about getting a foot in the door. Once I landed an interview, I usually felt confident in my ability to perform. The hardest part was getting someone to give me that opportunity.

Do you have a story to share? Reach out to the reporter via email at jzinkula@businessinsider.com, or via Signal at jzinkula.29.

• Daria Ershova moved from the Phoenix area to Belgrade, Serbia, in 2025.
• Living in Belgrade offers her a more affordable lifestyle with reduced rent and expenses.
• She faced language barriers and bureaucratic hurdles and says she misses the food in Arizona.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Daria Ershova, a 25-year-old brand communications consultant based in Belgrade, Serbia. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I was born in Russia and moved to the US on my own for school at 16, first to Northern California for two years, then to Arizona for about seven years.

I had various social media and marketing internships in the Phoenix area, and, in May 2024, I was hired from my internship at the Italian Association of Arizona as the part-time marketing coordinator. On the side, I also took on a role as marketing coordinator at International Business Seminar (GLO now), a study abroad organization. I earned $42,000 annually.

When I was 23, I quit my jobs, left the US, and moved to Belgrade. After the move, I launched Daria Ershova PR Soma Creative as a fully independent freelance consultancy, providing marketing, PR, and brand communications services. My current annual income is about $54,000.

In Phoenix, $42,000 a year sounded reasonable until you broke it down

Most of my paycheck went straight to rent, car insurance, phone, and the usual bills. I wasn't struggling exactly, but I couldn't do much with what was left.

I started seriously thinking about leaving in November 2024 and quit both of my jobs by April 2025. I initially looked into Master's programs in Europe, but by February 2025, I realized I didn't have the funds.

Serbia kept coming up in my research. Since I had never been, I was moving here based on what I could find online. The entrepreneur visa process was very straightforward, and Serbia has a very favorable tax structure for freelancers and small businesses, which mattered to me because I knew I wanted to properly register my own company and not have to worry about the documents.

I also discovered that registering as a freelancer qualifies you for a temporary residence permit valid for three years, with a path to permanent residency afterward. I had a solid résumé and a decent network, so I thought, why not try opening a freelance business and see how it works.

My brother was also relocating to Serbia for personal reasons, and my moving here gave him confidence that he wouldn't be alone in a new country. Moving was a chance to be closer to family again after years of living far away from them.

My rent dropped from $2,000 to $650 for a comparable apartment in a good neighborhood

I don't own a car; the public transport is excellent and free. Groceries are cheaper, especially at the street market, where a whole chicken, for example, costs $3.50. I go out to eat when I feel like it. I'm even able to help my brother financially sometimes. I'm a lot less worried about money.

My clients are international, and I get paid international rates. If I were working for a local business or earning a local salary, my life would look a little different. I'm grateful to have this experience and opportunity.

In Arizona, my monthly expenses were about $2,000 for rent, $200 for car insurance, $85 for my phone bill, around $400 for groceries, and roughly $200 for other expenses. In Serbia, my monthly expenses are $650 for rent, $35 for my phone bill, around $300 on groceries, $7 a month for private health insurance, and around $300 for other expenses, including weekend trips.

The social life here surprised me the most

Belgrade has an abundance of third spaces, such as cafés, board game rooms, riverbanks, and hiking trails. On long weekends, I drive to Tara National Park, ski at Kopaonik, or spend a few days on the coast in Montenegro with my brother and sometimes my friends. All of it is relatively affordable. We like to travel and explore nearby cities or, sometimes, even countries. For longer weekends when I'm traveling, I take time off, or I work from wherever we are.

The weather is an upgrade for me. Arizona was way too hot. I love rain, cold, and snow, and Belgrade gets all three. Although I don't enjoy hot weather, I will admit to missing tanning in November in Arizona, when the weather was still warm.

In some ways, it's been a culture shock

The language barrier was the first real hurdle. I assumed most people spoke English, and while that's true in cafés and restaurants, it's absolutely not true at the police station when you're applying for residency, or at certain banks. Serbian is the language of bureaucracy here. Serbian has a lot of similarities to the Russian language. By this point, I understand and can hold up a very basic conversation.

The whole bureaucratic system operates differently from the US, with most things having to be done in person. Finding an apartment is the same. You find listings online and meet directly with the owner, which has its benefits, but requires you to understand how local rental agreements, utility payments, and contracts actually work.

The thing I wish someone had told me is to hire a helper, which I didn't do. There are people, sometimes called relocation assistants, who know the system and will guide you through the first months, with things such as paperwork, appointments, translations, all of it.

I also wish I had learned the local holidays before I arrived. Serbia celebrates different holidays from the US, and you can absolutely wake up one morning to find every store, bank, and office closed with no warning.

Work-life balance is something I'm still figuring out

Working for yourself with no set schedule means the hours can creep up on you. That's less a Serbian problem and more a freelance problem, but it's worth being honest about.

What I genuinely miss about the US is the convenience, things like same-day delivery, signing documents online, and having everything accessible from your phone. I definitely miss Arizona sunsets — they're the best — and authentic Mexican cuisine. I yearn for some good birria tacos.

People romanticize relocating abroad as a fresh start, a chance to reinvent themselves overnight. There is truth in that, but being alone in a new country carries real weight on your mental health that nobody warns you about. My advice is to get out at least once a week, even if you don't speak the language, even if you're just sitting in a cafe. Just be around people — it matters more than you think.

Young bankers are facing a new choice.

Wall Street has traditionally offered a clear, if grueling, career path for junior employees: get an internship, work in investment banking for two years, and decide whether to stay in banking, move to the buy side, or get an MBA. AI is now disrupting not only the day-to-day nature of the work, but also potentially opening a new fork in the finance career road, as some young financiers flock to AI startups for financial firms.

Jared Swansen, 27, made the jump to Rogo, one of those startups, in January. He's since forgotten all the Excel shortcuts he used as a banker and investor, now that the hours he spent typing away are instead spent on the phone with people he used to sit across from, teaching them how to cut the drudgery out of dealmaking.

"The holy grail was to go to the buy side. That was everyone's dream," Swansen, who spent around three years at Bank of America before moving to a small buy-side firm, said. "It was exactly what I had hoped, doing all the analysis and working on the different transactions that I hoped to when I was starting out my banking career. But it was hard to not see what was happening with AI."

Rogo was founded in 2021 by former investment bankers in their twenties from Lazard and JPMorgan and has secured a $2 billion valuation after its Series D fundraising round in April. It touts domain expertise as a big draw, since the workforce is predominantly split between engineers and former financiers like Swansen. According to employees' LinkedIn profiles, they hail from Evercore, Goldman Sachs, and Citi, among other firms.

Rogo's leadership doesn't expect or want all bankers or private-market investors to suddenly jump ship to join a startup — that reality would erode their client base. Recruiters who work in finance aren't seeing a mass exodus among younger employees, though they said that AI is becoming an increasingly attractive option for the more entrepreneurially minded. Yet leaving the well-charted, lucrative finance road comes with its risks.

"It comes down to how common and how broad-based this is. It's hard to quantify," Anthony Keizner, co-founder of recruiting firm Odyssey Search Partners, said.

Rogo has more than 300 clients, including Lazard, Moelis, and Tiger Global, and automates much of the tedious work, like making slide decks, producing research, and building models. Users can email instructions to its AI agent, Felix, the same way they do colleagues.

There are other players in the vertical AI-for-finance space. Competitors like Hebbia and Farsight AI also promise to speed up work, and large AI labs, including Anthropic and OpenAI, are hiring bankers to work on services for financial firms.

Rogo is something of a tech-finance mashup — former bankers walk around in jeans and enjoy daily free lunch, while engineers grind out finance hours in conference rooms named "Dimon" and "Soros." When asked whether they work at a finance or tech company, the four employees interviewed for this piece paused, before Elsa McLean, the head of talent, eventually settled on "an AI company."

McLean, 30, said she's stopped having to educate potential recruits about what the Rogo does, and has seen a "massive uptick in inbound applications" starting in the first half of this year. The company has doubled its headcount in the past year to more than 150, and plans to double it again within the next 12 months. It has offices in New York and London, with plans to open locations in San Francisco and Singapore.

Hebbia was founded in 2020 and has clients in investing, banking, and the broader deal ecosystem, including law. It's also seen rapid growth: the startup has around 200 employees, compared to just shy of 100 a year ago. Tom Navin, the head of people, said that monthly inbound applications have nearly tripled this year to an average of 7,000, and around 60% of employees have a background in finance.

Swansen "caught the bug" for the finance industry during his senior year of high school, and expected to chart a traditional career. He first discovered Rogo while working as an investor at Acacia Research, and though leaving wasn't easy, the idea of being at the center of technological transformation was more exciting.

Rachel Friedman, 27, wasn't letting go of her preconceived future when she came to Rogo as one of eight employees and the first woman. She spent more than two years at Jefferies as an investment banker and knew she didn't want to stay in finance, though she's glad she started there.

For her, Rogo was more about joining an interesting, fast-paced place where she could play any part, with the added perk of swapping her trousers for the occasional sweatpant. Starting at Rogo now, with its big-name investors and global offices, isn't quite the same gamble.

"My impression is that the risk profile of candidates has pretty significantly changed over time," Friedman said. "Now, everyone is comfortable with the idea that every financial institution will adopt AI. The risk is around betting on the right one. We feel really good about that, obviously."

Swansen said that by the time he joined Rogo, "it felt like probably the bigger risk was doing nothing when the whole world was changing."

In some ways, working at Rogo isn't all that different from working at a top financial firm, and Friedman said most people don't see it as a departure from finance. The cumulative hours are similar, though employees generally have more control over when they work.

"I work a lot, but I'm never scared at 6 p.m. on a Friday that something is going to blow up and destroy my weekend," Swansen said. "I think I could probably end work every day three hours earlier if I wanted to. But because we're growing really fast, there are just cool opportunities everywhere." (Friedman, Swansen's boss, is worried he works too much, since he's usually up until around 1:00 a.m.)

Those who come from the world of high finance leverage their old connections when covering and securing clients, including Jack Maroni, 27, an MBA intern who spent four years at KKR before attending Harvard Business School. He said he's introduced Rogo to friends who are still on the buy side. Swansen has found that his background in banking and private equity is key to keeping clients happy with Rogo, since he understands the details of their workflows.

The work ethic is also similar, employees said, since many came from a world of 80-hour workweeks and, to quote Maroni, "built the muscle around grinding."

The paycheck, however, isn't necessarily as familiar.

At Rogo, a "forward-deployed banker" in New York would earn a base salary between $115,000 and $180,000, plus potential equity and bonus, according to a job posting. Candidates are expected to have at least three years of investment banking experience at a top firm. Rogo declined to provide further details on its pay packages.

Second-year associates at top firms can make up to $400,000 all-in, Meridith Dennes, managing partner at Prospect Rock Partners, said. This year is proving especially profitable, as banks report record profits. None of the recruiters said they've seen hordes of young people leave their jobs because of anxiety about AI — banking is, Dennes said, "always going to be a stable choice."

"It is challenging to try and pull the top investment banker who's being paid an incredibly high bonus, being well taken care of. It's going to be really difficult to pull that person out unless they have a real passion for AI," said Brianne Sterling, who leads the investment banking practice at recruiting firm Selby Jennings.

One key question, Keizner said, is how much equity employees get and its potential value, since cash compensation alone probably isn't enough to lure people to startups like Rogo. An equity grant in a company that succeeds could be "as lucrative, if not more lucrative, than being on a traditional finance path," he said.

Navin, the head of people at Hebbia, said the compensation packages can require "a very different framing mentally" for former bankers or investors, who are more used to cash than equity. Hebbia offers bonuses for forward-deployed banking and investing roles, but they're "a lot smaller" than in traditional finance, partly because of the inclusion of equity.

More than anything, Friedman said, people struggle to give up the structure of finance. They're used to knowing what it means to do well, what the promotion path looks like, exactly how their pay will change over the years.

"Convincing them that it'll be okay in a place where there's far less structure and your path might look different than your neighbor's — having that conversation with folks, some people definitely have to get over that mental barrier that unstructured things can be good," she said.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at atecotzky@insider.com or Signal at alicetecotzky.05. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• BCG has appointed three new leaders to guide its AI initiatives in North America.
• BCG's new leaders have made a name for themselves within the firm as good people managers.
• The changes come as consulting firms adapt leadership to embrace AI and technological expertise.

Boston Consulting Group is putting three longtime leaders in charge of some of its most important AI and technology work in North America — and the promotions are telling.

All three bring deep technical or transformation experience, but their capabilities and new mandates are also heavily focused on people, whether that's helping employees experiment with AI, build new skills, or turn new tools into lasting changes for clients.

Amanda Luther will lead the firm's regional AI and functional activation efforts, Silvio Palumbo will take over BCG X in North America, and Natasha Taylor will help lead its technology and digital work.

The appointments come as consulting firms rethink the profile of the people they hire and promote. McKinsey recently elevated 21 consultants to a new distinguished-partner role meant to reward deep expertise in areas like AI and technology, Bloomberg reported. At EY, its Americas talent chief Ginnie Carlier told Business Insider that the firm — once made up almost entirely of accountants — now recruits engineers, technologists, creatives, candidates without degrees, and neurodiverse professionals.

AI has rapidly changed the consulting industry and is forcing firms to rethink some of their most basic measures of success. Firms are trying to determine whether their AI agents are delivering value, while also tracking how employees use the technology and, in some cases, incorporating AI adoption into performance evaluations. The shift is reaching the business model, too: Clients are increasingly asking firms to put more "skin in the game," pushing consultants toward fees tied to outcomes rather than simply time spent on a project.

As firms embrace AI and become more technical, they are finding they need leaders with strong people management skills who can help employees become more comfortable experimenting with new tools, help teams adapt their workflows, and manage the organizational changes that come with AI. While technical depth is important, so is the ability to bring people along.

For BCG's newest leaders, that combination is central to the job.

Business Insider spoke with Luther, Palumbo, and Taylor about how AI is changing what firms look for in consultants, what leadership looks like when the technology keeps moving, and what they plan to prioritize next.

These conversations have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Natasha Taylor

Natasha Taylor will help lead BCG's tech and digital work across North America. She specializes in healthcare and has deep experience in digital and generative AI transformations, and she also leads BCG's Denver office.

How has AI influenced the way you work with your teams?

I approach work with clients and my teams by asking how we can consistently deliver the best problem-solving and execution. Generative AI, more than AI broadly, has had the biggest impact on how I work with my teams and how we can be more effective in partnering with clients.

It has made my teams spend more time on the things that really matter: thinking through the toughest problems clients face, getting to the detail and nuance more quickly, and spending less time on administrative tasks.

Generative AI has really influenced the way we spend our time, collaborate, ingest information, and come up with hypotheses quickly. And, for lack of a better phrase, pulling from healthcare, it has enabled us to work at the top of our license more consistently.

Where do you anticipate getting the most pushback for your ideas, your approach to leadership, or your broader goals in the coming year?

I don't know if pushback is the right word for it. Different organizations are certainly at different levels of maturity and ability to invest in the end-to-end work required to reap the benefits of AI, which takes an enormous amount of people engagement and change management.

What I've seen is that making real investments in AI requires a lot of commitment. You have to engage across the entire organization and make sure there's alignment across technology teams on which vendors to invest in, what the foundational architecture looks like, and where the right areas of value creation are. You also have to engage the business and examine workflows in a way that helps people embrace the technology rather than be afraid of it.

So it's not as much pushback as it is that there's a lot of work required to get ROI from investments in AI. Organizations have different levels of ability to make that executive leadership commitment among many competing priorities.

Amanda Luther

Amanda Luther will lead BCG's AI efforts across North America as its new regional AI and functional activation lead, helping teams bring more AI work to clients. She already leads the firm's global AI and digital transformation practice and also runs its Austin office.

As you step into this new role, what are your main priorities for the coming year?

First is getting my arms around the role and all the organic activity that is happening with AI at BCG — it is a lot! Second is setting the right environment for our teams to experiment and innovate with our AI offerings as they test out ways to adopt it into our day-to-day work. In practice, that means protecting dedicated time for upskilling, giving teams the tools to experiment, and shouting from the rooftops on what is working. Finally, and most importantly, is ensuring we continue to raise our own bar and deliver the high-quality, high-impact work our clients expect.

How is AI changing what effective leadership looks like?

It's almost twofold. The first is that leaders are increasingly taking on the AI agenda themselves — 72% of CEOs now call themselves the primary decision-maker on AI, double from where that number was in 2025. This isn't a delegable task anymore.

The second is that the management job itself is changing as AI impacts the operating rhythm of an organization. AI is no longer a tool CEOs can push down into the organization. It is increasingly changing how they personally decide, prioritize, and communicate. In the best case, AI amplifies a CEO's two scarcest resources — time and judgment — but only if the CEO puts in the work to understand how AI can truly support what they do every day.

As my colleagues put it in a recent publication, AI tailored to a CEO's decision-making context could dramatically accelerate that process, and improve the quality of the inputs informing their decisions, by reconciling conflicting information, surfacing tradeoffs, testing assumptions, and flagging risks before the meeting begins.

The goal of using AI for decision-making is to equip CEOs with better information faster, so they enter the room not ready to be briefed, but ready to decide.

Silvio Palumbo

Silvio Palumbo will lead BCG X across North America, focusing on its AI strategy and people. He's a longtime AI and machine-learning leader who has helped build and scale some of BCG's personalization tools.

AI is changing so quickly. Do you think leadership should also turn over and change at the pace of technology?

There are two angles. We have our own governance around leadership rotation, and those rotation mechanisms have always been respected.

The other is the promotion cycle. We want to make sure that people who were engineers and doers five years ago can move into leadership roles. Both mechanisms help make sure we have that refresh.

BCG is a place where the promotion chases you, not the other way around. I think that's very special. It keeps things fresh and helps make sure the right talent is exposed to the right leadership roles.

How do you define a typical consultant, and how is that definition changing with AI?

If you look at BCG X, we are a core part of BCG, and the definition of a consultant is now broader. A consulting team brings two elements: industry and strategic depth from knowing the industry and the specific client, and the technical execution capability we bring at X.

So it's somewhat reductive to ask, "What is a consultant?" I think we now have consulting teams that bring that cross-disciplinary set of capabilities.

The team in X is 100% execution-focused. We bring a high degree of accountability, and our relationships with senior leaders are about strategic changes — improving pricing, improving operations, and reducing cycle time. We bring a team that doesn't just advise, but is hands-on and drives the change.

I think that's a different flavor of consulting than what people may have thought of 10 years ago, and it comes with a much higher degree of measurability and accountability.

• AI data centers have become a minefield for US lawmakers ahead of the midterm elections.
• Politicians who once courted AI data centers in their towns and states are now restricting them.
• That can mean breaking with Trump, who has called resisting data centers a "mistake."

To build or not to build?

That is the question local politicians are asking themselves as Big Tech's push to develop enormous AI data centers runs up against a growing number of Americans revolting against them.

That's especially true in Republican-controlled states, where much of the data center boom is taking hold. Republican governors and state lawmakers, as the midterms fast approach, are beginning to acknowledge voters who are concerned about the proliferation of large data centers, even if that means breaking with President Donald Trump.

For some Republicans, that acknowledgment came too little too late.

Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams lost the state's Republican primary in June after he approved a data center development backed by "Shark Tank" investor Kevin O'Leary.

Lee Perry, a former commissioner in Box Elder County, where O'Leary's development hopes to land, said supporting that project cost him his election race, too.

"Do I think that the data center vote cost me the election? Yes, I do," Perry told The Salt Lake Tribune in June.

All across the country, Americans are rallying against AI data centers. They have swarmed local planning meetings, launched petitions, held protests, and taken legal action to bar new developments. Straining power grids, water use, noise, and rising utility costs are just a few of their concerns.

Although surveys conducted this year by Gallup and The Pew Research Center show that Democrats account for the majority of the opposition, Republicans aren't far behind. The data center issue is increasingly a bipartisan one.

"Seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area, including nearly half, 48%, who are strongly opposed," the Gallup survey said.

That's a dilemma for Republicans, who must balance the will of their constituents with that of both Trump, who is the leader of their party, and the big-spending tech companies looking to build in their districts.

Winning the AI race has been a central focus of the Trump administration. The White House has largely backed Big Tech's efforts to build data centers by accelerating federal permitting and supporting the $500 billion Stargate Project, an OpenAI initiative to expand AI infrastructure in the United States.

"Simply put, we need to 'Build, Baby, Build!'" the White House's 28-page AI action plan, published in July, says.

That same month, however, Americans attended a nationwide protest against AI data centers hosted by Humans First, a conservative nonprofit led by Amy Kremer, a MAGA activist who has been at the center of most major conservative movements of the last two decades, including the "Stop the Steal" rallies that culminated in a riot on Capitol Hill.

"This technology has been built on American data with American taxpayer dollars invested into these companies with American energy and American land," Kremer earlier told Business Insider. "We have no voice in how the technology is used or how it impacts our lives, and that's not right."

Republicans side with the voters

Trying to avoid a similar fate to their colleagues in Utah once November rolls around, Republican governors and legislators across the country are now breaking with the Trump administration and enacting restrictions on data center development.

Gov. Greg Abbott is walking the tightrope in Texas, where available land, access to an electricity grid, and potential tax breaks have made it a popular choice for companies building data centers.

Abbott, a longtime ally of Trump, initially went all in to expand data center construction in the state. In November 2025, Abbott announced a $40 billion investment from Google to boost AI infrastructure. Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Amazon, and SpaceX are all building massive AI data centers in Texas.

Then, Texans began to revolt. Residents in places like Abilene, Texarkana, and Lubbock have all held protests against data centers in recent months. In June, San Marcos became the first city in Texas to enact a data center ban. One month later, locals in Henderson County pushed back so fiercely that officials ultimately axed a planned project.

And so Abbott has now changed course, directing the local utility commission and the state's electrical grid operator to shield residents from data center infrastructure costs. He's called for a ban on data centers in rural Texas communities and, most recently, said all projects must undergo an audit before moving forward.

"Governor Abbott's top priority is to protect Texans' safety and quality of life and ensure the integrity of our power grid and water supply," a spokesperson for Abbott told Business Insider.

Abbot's choice to essentially freeze data center projects may gain him favor with his constituents, but not with Trump, who last week said rejecting data center development was a "mistake."

Other Republican governors and lawmakers are similarly changing course on the data center build-out.

In April, Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Jarrett Coleman and State Rep. Jamie Walsh proposed bills to repeal a state tax break for data centers and impose a moratorium on data center development applications.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill in May implementing new regulations around data center developments that give local governments the authority to approve or reject data center proposals. Last month, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen signed an executive order ending data center tax breaks and called for a pause on new data center construction.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio, pledged on Thursday to implement an "Ohioans-first" policy for AI data centers. He said that if a data center is built in a community, residents would not have to pay for electricity at home, they'd pay lower property taxes, and the data center would be required to comply with certain environmental requirements.

"To ensure urgency, I will further issue an executive order on my first day in office to immediately halt the approval of any new data center project announcements in Ohio, until the above-mentioned data center legislation takes effect."

Even Trump himself has made some small concessions. Last month, his administration expanded the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, which is meant to keep electricity bills for American households and businesses low.

"The United States never settles for second, and we don't under this administration... we live by the motto 'America First,'" Trump said in a press release about the pledge. "Thanks in part to this incredible [AI] technology boom, investments are pouring into the United States from all over the world."

How far we get in our careers, we tend to believe, depends on us: our intelligence, our temperament, our hustle. But where we work and the support we get there matter immensely too. Does your company promote from within, or does it hire senior people from elsewhere? Does it spend real money on training and mentoring? Is it somewhere you'd want to stay for the long haul?

The age-old problem for job seekers is that, from the outside, it's hard to know. Even if you land at a business with a great reputation, it might turn out that jobs in your particular department are dead ends.

So two nonprofits, the Burning Glass Institute and the Schultz Family Foundation, set out to uncover where the best jobs are. It analyzed the career histories of 12 million workers across 1,750 of the largest employers in the country from 2019 to 2024, pulling data from websites like LinkedIn and Glassdoor. It scored each occupation at each business on three factors: promotions (the likelihood of rising to a higher position internally within five years of starting the job), retention (the share of workers who stay at least three years), and salary.

The result is the most useful database I've seen for anyone considering a job in corporate America — a role-by-role guide to the amazing, the average, and the abysmal places to build a career. Most businesses have a huge range depending on the position. At the average company, there's an 81-percentile point gap between its best- and worst-performing roles on promotions and retention. At Chanel, for example, fashion designers rank in the 97th percentile for retention among other fashion designing jobs across the country, while project management specialists rank in the 16th percentile.

It's a gigantic repository, so I asked Burning Glass to narrow it down to six prominent tech occupations that a typical computer science major might pursue: software engineers, data scientists, software quality assurance analysts and testers, computer systems and security engineers, IT project managers, and IT systems analysts. The groupings are broad and based on the government's occupational categories; the grouping for IT project managers includes product managers.

In the search bar below, start typing one of those six occupational groupings to see how people in that role fare at a bunch of marquee businesses. If you're reading this on your phone, scroll to the right to see the percentiles for all three factors — promotion, retention, salary — or turn your phone sideways. Click or tap any column header to sort the results.

Across these roles, a few familiar tech companies emerge as the clear winners. Software is at the heart and soul of these companies, so it makes sense that they would treat the people building it exceptionally well. Two companies in particular stand out: Amazon and Salesforce. Tech workers at both get the whole package: top-of-market pay, fantastic opportunities for advancement, and jobs they tend to stick with. Take Salesforce's software engineers: They rank in the 97th percentile for promotions, 98th for retention, and 96th for salary. It's a win-win-win — one of the best jobs in America. Adobe, Google, and Microsoft also aren't far behind.

Other tech giants also pay incredibly well, but the picture beyond pay is more mixed. Apple doesn't offer that many promotions, but people tend to stay anyway. Uber is the opposite: Its workers move up at a decent clip, but the company struggles to hang on to them. Meta has a mediocre record on promotions, while retention varies wildly depending on the role.

Outside of Silicon Valley, one of the best companies for tech roles is Liberty Mutual, which outperforms much of Big Tech on career advancement and longevity, even if its salaries don't quite reach Valley levels. For example, software engineers there get promoted 3.7 times as often as those at Meta. USAA also stands out for how well their tech workers fare.

Once you look beyond the highest-paying employers, there are even more hidden gems across the economy. John Deere and Northwestern Mutual offer unusually strong advancement prospects and career longevity with middle-of-the-road salaries. In healthcare, people stay so long at the Mayo Clinic that both its IT project managers and systems analysts rank in the 99th percentile for retention, even though both jobs pay less than two-thirds of comparable roles elsewhere.

There are also far less appealing options for tech workers. At Goldman Sachs, software engineers are paid very well, but they see few opportunities to move up and tend to leave pretty quickly. Its data scientists fare poorly on advancement and retention too, without receiving the same premium in salary. At Deloitte, many technical roles appear to be a similarly bad deal: People don't move up much and they don't stick around for long.

These nuances matter a lot to tech workers today, even though they might not have worried about them as much in the past. Just a few years ago, everyone from coders to data scientists was in such high demand that, if their careers stalled at one employer, they could easily jump ship for a bigger title and more pay. That's why tech workers were notorious for job-hopping every few years. When it was easy to leave, a weak internal career path wasn't such a big deal.

We're in a very different economy now. With hiring at a standstill and rolling layoffs becoming the norm, tech workers are longing for something that I rarely heard them talk about in the 2010s: stability. What so many want today is a steady home — a good employer that will keep them engaged and help them grow for many years. A lot of the young people I speak to say they'd take that over a higher salary or a flashy brand-name employer.

That might sound like a naive desire for a world that no longer exists: an era of corporate loyalty when employers took care of their employees. But Burning Glass' analysis shows that the steady homes people want aren't entirely a relic of the past. There are still great employers — or at the very least, great employers for particular jobs — if you know where to look.

Aki Ito is a chief correspondent at Business Insider.

• Kevin O'Leary said the messaging around his Utah data center project wasn't handled well.
• He said he had "no interest in causing an environmental disaster" with the data center project.
• He says he has "work to do to earn the community's support"

Kevin O'Leary says he could have done a better job selling his plan for a hyperscale data center to the people of Utah.

In an interview with MS NOW, released on Thursday, the "Shark Tank" investor talked about how he and his team did not properly communicate plans for the Stratos data center project in Box Elder County with residents, and "really screwed this up."

"I have no interest in causing an environmental disaster on my legacy," he said. "That's never going to happen. There's zero probability that's going to happen."

O'Leary added that he and his team were planning to be more transparent, sharing plans for a one-gigawatt facility and what the heat, noise, and water impact of this facility would look like. Critics can extrapolate the impact of his fully built data center from those plans, he said.

The original plan for his data center was gargantuan — occupying a full 40,000 acres of land. This would require up to nine gigawatts of energy, O'Leary said in an April interview with The Wall Street Journal.

However, the plan drew strong criticism from residents in the region, environmental activists, and local lawmakers. Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams posted an open letter that he sent to O'Leary in June, calling for a 75% reduction in the proposed data center's size.

Following the uproar, O'Leary pledged to reduce the size of the development and to offer greater transparency regarding the project's construction.

He said in the MS NOW interview that he has a lot of work to do and apologized to the residents of Box Elder.

"If I've said anything that offends you, yes, I apologize. If I've done anything that you think has been unfair, I apologize. But I also, with that, would say I want you to lend an open ear to what I'm going to show you in the months ahead," he said.

However, O'Leary has stood firm on his decision to build a data center in Utah, saying in the MS NOW interview that although some people may view him as a "bad shark," he plans to become a "major contributor" to the local economy.

O'Leary has also been posting on social media about the data center and his plans for the area.

In a post on LinkedIn last week, the investor wrote: "Data center developers have to earn the trust of the communities where we build, and that starts with complete transparency."

"That's exactly what we intend to do in Box Elder. We have work to do to earn the community's support, but the facts will be public, from water and power to jobs and tax revenue," he wrote. "If you want to build in a community for decades, you have a responsibility to become an asset to it."

As of the end of 2025, there were 1,416 data centers built or approved for construction in 45 US states and Washington, DC, according to Business Insider's data center tracker.

Representatives for O'Leary's venture capital firm, O'Leary Ventures, did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Jamie Dimon says US economic and military strength underpins the dollar's reserve status.
• The US made a mistake relying on China for critical materials.
• The Iran war shows the US isn't ready for a prolonged war.

The dollar could eventually lose its status as the world's reserve currency if the US fails to maintain its economic and military dominance, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said.

"If we're not the strongest military in 25 years and the strongest economy, we won't be the reserve currency either," Dimon said on PBS' "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover," which aired over the weekend.

"The world will be fragmented, and it'll be very dangerous for us," Dimon added.

The dollar remains the world's dominant reserve currency, accounting for about 57% of global foreign-exchange reserves, down from around 70% at the turn of the century.

The freezing of Russian central-bank assets after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine fueled concerns that the US's use of financial sanctions could accelerate a shift away from the dollar. So far, however, Federal Reserve research has found no notable post-2022 shift out of dollar reserves.

For Dimon, maintaining America's economic and military edge also means reducing its dependence on potential adversaries for strategically important goods.

The US should have recognized 10 or 15 years ago that it was relying on China for rare earths, aluminum, certain types of steel, and other equipment, he said.

"We can't rely on China for that, we can't allow mercantilist behavior, we need to do it here, we made a mistake," Dimon said.

Dimon then pointed to the war in Iran as evidence of another vulnerability: America's ability to sustain a prolonged war.

"The war in Iran has pointed out we didn't have productive capability to defend the United States if there was a real war that lasted for a long period of time," Dimon said. "And that's a hell of a statement."

Addressing those weaknesses has become urgent, he said.

In October, JPMorgan launched a $1.5 trillion, 10-year Security and Resiliency Initiative focused on industries crucial to US economic security, from critical minerals and advanced manufacturing to energy, defense, AI, and quantum computing.

Dimon said at the time it had become "painfully clear" that the US was too reliant on unreliable sources for critical minerals, products, and manufacturing essential to national security.

• Taiwan showcased two midsize strike drones above its southwest coast on Saturday.
• Their designs and descriptions draw easy comparisons to Ukraine's mid-range drones.
• Such drones likely give Taiwan the ability to cheaply hit a Chinese invasion force over the horizon.

TSOYING, TAIWAN — Taiwan's navy deployed two medium-class strike drones on Saturday for the island's biggest annual military exercise, and their designs resemble those of the loitering munitions giving Ukraine fresh wins against Russia this year.

The pair of fixed-wing, propeller-driven drones appeared during a littoral combat drill simulating an attack on Tsoying, Taiwan's southwest coast.

It was the first time these drones were shown at the Han Kuang exercise, Taiwan's annual rehearsals against a Chinese invasion.

As the drones loitered for about 30 minutes above the beach, Taiwanese military officials described them to reporters as "medium-size suicide drones," adding they were locally built. The island's National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology designs and manufactures the vast majority of Taiwan's homegrown weapons.

"The drone used was provided by the Armament Bureau to the navy for testing purpose," a spokesperson for Taiwan's navy told Business Insider.

They declined to comment on the drone's specifications or whether its design was influenced in any way by the recent wars in Ukraine or the Middle East.

The one-way drones were not shown attempting to launch an attack, and it's unclear whether they represent Taiwan's final designs for the aircraft.

Ukraine has been using similar fixed-wing drones to attack Russian forces roughly 30 to 300 km behind the front lines this year, mainly disrupting supply routes that the Kremlin has relied on to funnel resources to the war.

Tsoying, where Taiwan hosts its largest naval base, is about 295 km, or 183 miles, from mainland China.

"The desire to employ more medium-range drones fits into things that Taiwan has learned from Ukraine," said Bryce Barros, a visiting fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a Taipei think-tank backed by the Taiwanese government.

Mid-range drones would fill a gap in Taiwan's littoral defense with a cheaper way to strike Chinese forces or weapons from "over-the-horizon" as they approach the island, Barros said.

Unlike Ukraine's plains and forests, Taiwan's littoral defense covers a strait notorious for bad winds and volatile sea states, suggesting that Taipei may want its own drone built to withstand poor weather.

Instead of air defense systems or supply trucks like in Ukraine or Crimea, Taiwan's mid-range drones would likely target slow-moving vessels transporting troops or weapons, Barros added.

"A range of 40 kilometers to 60 kilometers would be very useful for a whole host of different platforms, anything to make it more difficult for the PLA to start getting into Taiwan's territorial waters," he said, referring to the People's Liberation Army.

Taiwan's government has said that it plans to produce 100,000 drones a month by 2030. In June, its national defense ministry proposed a $6.6 billion budget to procure over 210,000 domestically produced attack, reconnaissance, and sea drones.

It's all part of the island's emerging "hellscape" strategy, which aims to hamper Chinese forces attempting to cross the Taiwan Strait by flooding it with thousands of aerial, surface, and underwater drones.

The littoral drills on Saturday, attended by Taiwanese president Lai Ching-te, also featured naval special forces deploying in the island's homegrown M109 Skyship rigid-hull inflatable boats.

Taiwan's navy and coast guard launched rapid sorties with four of its older, 170-ton Kuang Hua-6 missile boats and at least one Anping-class patrol vessel — a newer, 750-ton catamaran that can be fitted with anti-ship missiles during wartime.

The Han Kuang exercise, which lasts 10 days and 9 nights this year, features island-wide drills to simulate how Taiwanese forces and civilian institutions would respond to Chinese gray-zone tactics and an invasion.

August 10, 2026: This story was updated to reflect the romanized spelling of Tsoying.

• Taylor Farms has recalled salsa and guacamole products, citing salmonella risks.
• The food producer said it is pulling over 12 prepared food items containing jalapeños from stores.
• The recall follows a cyclosporiasis outbreak linked to Taylor Farms' iceberg lettuce last month.

Taylor Farms is recalling items, including salsa and guacamole, due to Salmonella risks, weeks after the company was linked to a cyclosporiasis outbreak.

On Sunday, the fresh food producer said that it is pulling over a dozen prepared food items containing jalapeños from retail stores because of concerns over Salmonella, a bacteria that can cause painful food poisoning.

The company said that it was issuing a voluntary recall of jalapeño products after being notified that Coast Citrus Distributors is pulling back fresh jalapeños due to potential Salmonella contamination. Both companies source jalapeños from a grower in Sinaloa, Mexico, which was identified as the potential source in the outbreak.

"Taylor Fresh Foods is no longer sourcing products from this farmer and will be filling orders from alternative suppliers," Taylor Farms wrote in a statement on Sunday.

The company said that the US Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating the Salmonella infections.

The products include multiple salsas and guacamoles, and ready-to-eat items such as rice and bean burrito, spicy roast beef sandwich, and fiesta-style salad shrimp.

The company said that it is not aware of any reported illnesses linked to its jalapeño-containing products to date. It added that the recalled products were distributed to stores in 26 states, including New York, Massachusetts, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and Indiana. The recalled products have a best-before date up to August 16, 2026.

Taylor Farms did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

In July, the FDA linked iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms to a multi-state cyclosporiasis outbreak that made thousands of people in the US sick. The investigation initially focused on lettuce served at Taco Bell restaurants before expanding its scope.

Taylor Farms voluntarily removed central Mexico iceberg lettuce from the US market and suspended distribution.

The FDA later said the Taylor Farms lettuce sample initially reported positive for cyclospora was later determined to be a false positive. At the time, Taylor Farms said it welcomed the FDA's apology and update.

As of the FDA's latest public update on August 5, the investigation remains open.

• Taiwan's air force practiced runway repairs and emergency takeoffs at Hsinchu Air Base on Friday.
• It's home to the island's Mirage 2000-5s, its primary interceptor fighter jets.
• The drills were part of its annual Han Kuang exercise, its simulation of a Chinese invasion.

HSINCHU, TAIWAN — Taiwan showcased rapid runway repair drills on Friday at its closest airbase to mainland China, where the island keeps its main fleet of interceptor fighter jets.

The island's air force practiced its response to a scenario where Chinese long-range missiles or rockets had already damaged facilities at Hsinchu Air Base.

The drills, part of the annual Han Kuang exercises, included rearming Dassault Mirage 2000-5s, performing emergency takeoffs, and restoring runways.

Ground teams used bulldozers and graders to clear debris and fill a crater in the concrete, after which troops practiced deploying and securing a heavy fiberglass mat as an Antelope short-range mobile surface-to-air missile system stood guard.

Hsinchu Air Base, about 90 miles from mainland China, is home to Taiwan's 53-strong fleet of Mirages, fourth-generation aircraft it began receiving in 1997.

The French aircraft are designated as Taiwan's primary interceptor fighters, with the island also fielding over 130 F-16 Fighting Falcons and 129 of its homegrown fighter jet, the F-CK-1 Ching-Kuo.

US runway repair operations also employ fiberglass mats, which are more suited for allowing smaller aircraft, such as fighter jets, to land and take off in a pinch.

Friday's drills particularly emphasized sustained air-to-air combat. Air force personnel practiced rapidly rearming Mirages with the Magic Missile II short-range missile and the MICA medium-range air-to-air missile system, while pilots and crews performed an emergency scramble of two Mirages.

Hsinchu Air Base is one of Taiwan's first military bases to be targeted, destroyed, or incapacitated by Chinese forces in the event of a full-scale assault, said Benjamin Blandin, a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a Taipei think-tank backed by the Taiwanese government.

The base, which is about 2.3 square miles, is well-equipped but "very exposed to the first wave of ground, sea-born, and air-launched missiles" that the People's Liberation Army would likely pummel Taiwan with in the early stages of an invasion, Blandin said.

"Realistically, Hsinchu Air Base could be rendered inoperable after just the first missile wave, or at least in the first 24 hours," Blandin added.

This year's Han Kuang, Taiwan's annual rehearsal of a Chinese invasion, began on Wednesday and will last 10 days and 9 nights.

Taipei said this year's exercises would depart from the island's traditional, choreographed drill style to an unscripted format in which units are tested on their reactions.

The first few days of the exercises focused on "gray-zone tactics," coercive or hostile actions that don't necessarily constitute an outright declaration of war.

• Gen Z workers are embracing analog tools for personal office spaces amid rising digital fatigue.
• A retailer survey revealed they prefer handwritten notes and premium office supplies.
• Personalized workspaces with analog tools make return-to-office mandates more appealing for some.

As companies spend billions on AI in the race to automate work, a surprising office trend is taking hold among the youngest generation of employees.

Gen Z workers are embracing the decidedly low-tech: premium notebooks, colorful desk pads, handwritten notes, and the humble Post-it.

Gen Z office workers told Business Insider about the importance of carving out a personal space in increasingly standardized workplaces, and it may offer employers a clue for making return-to-office mandates easier to swallow.

"A space that I can call my own, I think, is very important," Jessie Lei, a human resources professional, told Business Insider. "It feels like there's a place for me to exist, so my decorations weren't just entirely for aesthetic."

Lei said one of his favorite office "perks" is free Post-it notes, which he began to rely on heavily for meeting notes and pinning reminders to his monitor instead of keeping everything inside Google Docs. The smaller sticky notes also become miniature sketchbooks where Lei doodles cats, birds, and artwork inspired by his favorite songs during breaks.

"Handwriting helps me focus and remember information better than typing, and it just feels more natural than trying to keep up with conversations on a keyboard," Lei said. "I know it's such a small thing, but having it is a tangible upgrade to my well-being."

Retailers are feeling the trend

The analog revival is spreading from CDs to stationery.

A July survey from office supplier Quill, a Staples subsidiary, found that 94% of Gen Z and millennial office workers say physically crossing an item off a paper to-do list feels more satisfying than checking a digital box. About one-third said the constant stream of Slack messages, emails, and Teams notifications makes them long for more analog ways of working.

"They are twice as likely as boomers to handwrite notes in a journal or during meetings," Gil Grandbois, the head of Quill, told Business Insider.

The company found that 56% of Gen Z workers would rather leave a colleague a Post-it note than send a direct message, reflecting what Grandbois described as growing digital exhaustion.

Rather than opting for basic supplies, Grandbois said that Quill has seen stronger demand from Gen Z for premium notebooks, colorful leather desk pads, higher-end writing tools, and other products that reflect individual personality. Nearly one-quarter of Gen Z and millennial workers surveyed said premium supplies boost their motivation as much as high-end technology upgrades.

"It's the fact that even your basic office supplies are becoming more relevant with this generation," Grandbois said.

Business Insider previously reported that stationery brand Papier doubled down on analog products, such as scrapbooks and notecards, and has seen sales double between 2022 and 2025, mainly driven by Gen Z consumers.

Based on a report by The Business Research Company, the global luxury writing instruments and stationery market is expected to grow from $4.33 billion in 2025 to $4.53 billion in 2026.

The hottest office upgrade? A desk.

The move to analog is also part of a broader push to make workspaces feel more personal and permanent.

Lei, who is in between multiple short-term contract jobs, told Business Insider that his former workspace featured five Japanese kokeshi dolls arranged from shortest to tallest beside a thrifted teacup that became his personal tea station. When sunlight reflected through nearby office windows, Lei said he sometimes paused to photograph the dolls as the light changed.

"I also ended up keeping a lot of my own artwork around my desk," Lei said. "Just little decorations — my own handmade mark on the office — makes a huge difference for the amount of stability I feel in that space."

Calvin Lee, who works at the anime streaming company Crunchyroll in San Francisco, told Business Insider that having a permanent desk is essential, making him much more receptive to return-to-office policies than to constantly moving between hot desks.

"As an anime fan, it gives me joy to personalize my own space," Lee said. "I like giving thought to how to balance between a functional and comfortable workspace, along with being able to display my own version of fandom."

Lee said his "maximalist" workstation includes Pokémon sticky-note pads, Genshin Impact-themed pens, Marvel fidget toys, stickers covering his laptop, and practical essentials like lip balm and eye drops.

"Everyone has assigned desks in the office, and it's fun to see how people personalize their own space," Lee added.

Leah M. Omilion-Hodges, a professor specializing in leadership communication at Western Michigan University, told Business Insider that Gen Z workers tend to bring "a lot of intention and honesty to their work."

"What we are seeing with decorative notebooks, stickers, and personalized desk spaces goes beyond aesthetics," Omilion-Hodges said. "They are largely rejecting the rigid notion that there is 'one right way' to do things," Omilion-Hodges added, "Choosing instead to lean into the fact that there are many paths to successfully achieving a task."

The future of work may be AI-powered — but the person behind the screen still wants somewhere to put a Post-it.

• While studying in Texas, Daisuke Fujii saw how venture capital could transform cities beyond major economic hubs.
• After his employer in Japan repeatedly rejected his business ideas, he decided to strike out on his own.
• He now helps farmers and rural communities across Japan generate new income through agritourism and boutique hotels.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Daisuke Fujii, the cofounder of Farm & Firm Company, a Japanese consulting firm that helps farmers and rural communities generate new income through agritourism, hospitality, and business development.

It's been edited for length and clarity.

I grew up in Saitama, about 20 miles north of Tokyo. In elementary school, I discovered a love for all things space- and engineering-related, like planes and satellites.

At 14, I decided I wanted to be an engineer, but as one of five children, my parents couldn't afford to pay for college. I had to make it happen myself.

I was accepted into the National Defense Academy of Japan, which not only had an aerospace department but also offered free tuition. They even paid me a small amount each month, so I didn't have to rely on my parents at all.

In 2001, a few years after graduating, I enrolled in the aerospace engineering program at the University of Texas at Austin. While studying abroad, I worked as a research assistant, earning free tuition and a small salary.

From Texas, I saw how cities all across the United States were growing thanks to venture capital companies. In Japan, the only cities that were growing were Tokyo and Osaka, everywhere else was seeing a population decline.

I didn't realize it at the time, but this had a profound effect on me.

A shift from the old way of thinking

After graduating in 2002, I returned to Japan to work as a plane engineer, but due to a lack of funding, I pivoted to the automotive industry in 2004, which had ample research funding.

At a Japanese automaker, I led a major project and earned my Small and Medium Enterprise Management Consultant (Chusho Kigyo Shindanshi) certification. Only about 4% of applicants pass the exam. The credential is highly valued in Japan.

When I pitched a business idea to executives across several departments, they all told me it wouldn't succeed, but I believed in it. To me, the company had become stuck in the past, so, with my certification in hand, I decided to quit and start my own business.

I wanted to build something outside Japan's major cities and create the kind of business clusters I'd seen in the US. At first, I looked at aerospace, but there wasn't enough demand to support a new business. Instead, I turned to an industry that already existed all across Japan: agriculture.

From space to earth, working with the land

In 2009, I founded Farm & Firm, where I worked as a consultant for farmers looking to build their own brands and sell directly to consumers. The business expanded into food manufacturing, and I even started a farm-to-table restaurant, Shimotsuke Noen.

By 2011, the company had 10 employees, and I was supporting both private and government entities. We now have 80 full-time employees.

That same year, the local government of Otawara City asked the company to pitch for a commissioned project on agritourism in the region. We beat out other vendors. I'd never worked in tourism before, but as I had connections with the farmers, we looked into the concept of farm stays.

Convincing the farmers took a lot of effort. They didn't think anyone would want to come and stay in their homes or that the local area was "worthy of tourism." In an effort to change this way of thinking, I started Ohtawara Tourism.

I wanted to highlight the beauty of rural Japan's everyday life

We started working with group trips, mainly for students from Japan, staying at farms in and around Otawara.

The next challenge was to encourage farmers to invest in renovating their properties to elevate and expand these trips. Luckily, an opportunity presented itself that would allow us to set a great example.

Nakagawa, a small town near Otawara City, reached out to me about an akiya — an empty home — that had belonged to a prominent local family. It had sat vacant for years, so I transformed it into Iizukatei, a boutique hotel.

I had two goals when I took on this project. Firstly, I wanted to draw tourism into this rural town, especially tourism from independent travelers. Secondly, I wanted to change the locals' way of thinking and show them that these locations and their old buildings have a lot to offer visitors.

Before the renovation, 10 to 15 international tourists visited the town each year, but now we are seeing between 400 and 500. Because of this, more farmers are renovating their properties to turn them into real farm hotels.

The hotels have great potential, especially for farmers struggling to earn enough from agriculture. Agritourism offers them a new stream of income and a way to keep Japan's rural culture alive.

I have no regrets about changing my dream

Changing careers was the right decision. From junior high onwards, I had spent 15 years pursuing a single dream: to design aircraft. Even though I fulfilled this dream, I pivoted because I believed I could make a greater contribution to society through entrepreneurship.

My career as an engineer and project manager taught me to tackle complex projects with a diverse team, to look beyond conventional assumptions and find new solutions through experimentation. These skills have remained invaluable.

Entrepreneurship has given me opportunities and experiences I'd never have had as a salaried employee. It's allowed me to live according to my values and find my purpose.

• The "House of the Dragon" season three finale features Rhaenyra delivering a dictator-like speech.
• Rhaenyra believes she is a prophesied savior. In "Game of Thrones," Daenerys believes the same.
• "House of the Dragon" showrunner Ryan Condal said Rhaenyra and Daenerys are on "parallel tracks."

Warning: Spoilers ahead for the "House of the Dragon" season three finale.

Daenerys Targaryen is born nearly two centuries after the events of "House of the Dragon," yet she haunts the narrative almost as much as the characters onscreen.

There are echoes of Daenerys' self-righteous rise to power — and perhaps, her tragic eleventh-hour downfall — in the story of Rhaenyra Targaryen, who becomes increasingly power-hungry in pursuit of the Iron Throne in the "Game of Thrones" prequel's bloody war of succession.

"House of the Dragon" showrunner Ryan Condal told Business Insider that was intentional.

"This is the reason that Daenerys is begging for a crown across the Narrow Sea, and the dragons are all dead. Because of this story," Condal said. "So I think those connections are important to make to remind people that these two periods in history are intimately connected with one another."

Rhaenyra and Daenerys are both dragon queens with god complexes

In 129 AC (the measure of years used in Westeros, meaning "after conquest"), Rhaenyra Targaryen, the heir to the Iron Throne named by her father, King Viserys, is usurped by her younger half-brother and his mother's powerful family, the Hightowers.

To retake her father's throne, Rhaenyra shores up her dragon fleet (sacrificing several innocent people in the process) and becomes convinced that her violent campaign is preordained — that she is the "Prince That Was Promised" who will save the realm from darkness.

Sound familiar? In 283 AC, House Targaryen is usurped by another powerful family, the Baratheons, and Daenerys Targaryen is sent to live in exile. To retake her father's throne, Daenerys uses blood magic to hatch three dragons and uses this nuclear threat to conquer cities, build an army, and, in her own words, save the realm from tyrants, "no matter the cost."

The parallels between Rhaenyra and Daenerys are hard to ignore, as is the cruel irony of Rhaenyra's descent into tyranny.

In the "House of the Dragon" season two finale, Rhaenyra's husband and king consort, Daemon Targaryen, has a vision of his family's future. He sees Daenerys with her three baby dragons, but he doesn't know who she is. He also sees Rhaenyra sitting on the Iron Throne and seems to erroneously conflate those two images.

Both Rhaenyra and Daemon use his vision to justify the violence and suffering wrought by Rhaenyra's reign.

"We know that Rhaenyra's not the chosen one. If there is a chosen one, a 'Prince That Was Promised' in the story, it's 200 years away. It's Jon Snow, or it's Daenerys, depending on how you interpret the prophecy," Condal explained. "But of course, Rhaenyra and Daemon have no way of knowing that."

In the "House of the Dragon" season three finale, Rhaenyra kicks her messianic obsession into overdrive. She orders the murder of the High Septon, the head of the Faith in Westeros. Her justification is that she is the blood of Old Valyria, and she answers to higher gods.

Rhaenyra then delivers a speech to the commonfolk gathered outside the Sept, revealing herself to be the prophesied savior of Westeros — or so she believes.

"If your world is to survive, I must light the way," she declares. "Because I am the shield of the people. I am the Rhaenyra the Chosen."

The scene mirrors the victory speech that Daenerys delivers in the "Game of Thrones" series finale after she razes King's Landing with dragonflame, framing herself as the ultimate liberator. Actor Emilia Clarke previously said that she studied videos of Hitler to drive home Daenerys' transformation into a dictator.

Condal said he was "certainly aware" of the Daenerys parallel while writing and filming Rhaenyra's climactic, self-aggrandizing monologue.

"Daenerys and Rhaenyra find themselves on parallel tracks," he said, adding, "I think it's important that the show has echoes of the original series in it, in some ways, so that they remain connected."

"House of the Dragon" season three is now streaming on HBO Max.

• "House of the Dragon" is no stranger to death, murder, or even fratricide. 
• Some of the show's most notable deaths are tied to children and childbirth.
• We ranked the show's biggest death scenes by tragedy, including Jace, Criston Cole, and more.

Warning: Major spoilers through the "House of the Dragon" season three finale.

If you're watching a show in the "Game of Thrones" universe, you should know you're signing up for some devastating character deaths.

This is especially true for "House of the Dragon," a prequel about the bloody civil war that decimated the Targaryen dynasty, based on George R. R. Martin's book "Fire & Blood."

From the first moment that Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) and Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney) clashed over the Iron Throne, it was clear that death and destruction awaited both sides. As Princess Rhaenys Targaryen (Eve Best) wisely notes, "There is no war so hateful to the gods as a war between kin, and no war so bloody as a war between dragons."

Here are the most notable deaths so far in "House of the Dragon," ranked from least to most tragic.

17. King Viserys dies after a long bout of illness.

Hear us out: We loved Paddy Considine as King Viserys the Peaceful, but his death was so obviously inevitable that it didn't inspire much shock or devastation.

For one, the king's death was always going to be necessary to kick off the war of succession known as the Dance of the Dragons, which is the whole point of this show. But more importantly, Viserys' death was preceded by a long, agonizing, leprosy-like illness, such that it almost came as a relief to see his suffering end.

16. Daemon murders his first wife, Rhea Royce.

We barely got to know Lady Rhea Royce (Rachel Redford), Daemon's estranged first wife, before she was heartlessly murdered by her own husband.

Given that Daemon referred to Rhea as the "Bronze Bitch" and refused to consummate their marriage, what we did know of her wasn't very compelling.

Still, it was hardly fun to watch Daemon sacrifice a real person in his selfish quest for power.

15. Ormund Hightower lives just long enough to suffer the consequences of his ego.

With Aegon II maimed and presumed dead for much of season three, Lord Ormund Hightower (James Norton) stepped in to play Rhaenyra's chief antagonist.

After falsely swearing fealty to Rhaenyra, Ormund took over Tumbleton, a small market town near King's Landing. He sowed chaos and division in the capital city using a network of spies and assassins all loyal to the Targaryen-Hightower line of succession. He became like a malevolent shadow, haunting Rhaenyra's rule, even though they'd never actually met in person.

Ormund planned to crown Prince Daeron Targaryen (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) as King of Westeros, but in reality, he was a Hightower supremacist who believed all Targaryens to be savages. He was cruel, deceptive, arrogant, deeply misogynistic and elitist — and, when it came down to it, surprisingly inept in battle.

When Rhaenyra's loyal host of Northeners and Rivermen clashed with the Hightower army at Tumbleton, Ormund thought he'd already won: He'd secretly struck a deal with Ulf the White (Tom Bennett), one of Rhaenyra's sworn dragonriders, to betray the queen in exchange for a castle and a lordship.

But Ormund's arrogance got the better of him. He berated his own supposed ally, insulting Ulf's birth and intelligence, causing Ulf to burn both armies — a power move that Ormund never could have seen coming. He expected Ulf to simply follow orders.

During the Battle of Tumbleton, Ormund was overpowered by Ser Roderick Dustin (Tommy Flanagan), so he was going to die anyway. But in his final moments, he was forced to watch Ulf turn his vengeance on his own men. Ormund was ultimately killed by a low-born dragonrider, the exact sort of person he most despised.

It's deeply satisfying to watch a true villain like Ormund get his comeuppance. The tragedy of this scene is that future episodes will be robbed of Norton's sinister, scene-stealing performance.

14. Otto Hightower is the first traitor to die under Queen Rhaenyra's rule.

By the time Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) was beheaded by Queen Rhaenyra as a traitor, viewers hadn't seen him for a season's worth of episodes.

After Otto was fired by his grandson in season two, the former Hand of the King was secretly imprisoned in the dungeons of the Red Keep, awaiting the day he might become a useful political pawn. That day came when Rhaenyra took the Iron Throne, and Otto was delivered to Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) as a prisoner.

Daemon urged his wife to execute Otto — the father of her childhood best friend, and her own father's close friend — as a show of strength and justice. With the throne room full of onlookers, Rhaenyra had no choice but to decapitate Otto on the spot.

The scene is heartbreaking to watch because of Rhaenyra's guttural reaction. Few fans are likely to mourn Otto himself — a brutal striver who schemed to crown his moronic grandson, both to the realm's detriment and his own.

13. Criston Cole is denied the heroic death he dreamed of.

Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) was killed in a lopsided battle, known in the book as the Butcher's Ball.

Flanked by his meager group of loyal Hightower soldiers, Criston was surrounded by a much larger army of Northeners and Rivermen, all loyal to Queen Rhaenyra.

Watching his enemies approach, Criston understood right away that he was doomed. But to his credit, he did attempt to spare his men by offering to strike their Hightower banners. When that didn't work, he challenged Ser Roderick and Lord Oscar Tully (Archie Barnes) to a two-against-one duel.

Before he could even lift his sword, however, Criston was shot by a concealed archer: twice through the torso, and once through the head.

Criston was responsible for so much hypocrisy and bloodshed, it's hard to feel sad that he's gone — although it's also hard not to pity him, a low-born man who rose to knighthood, crushed under the weight of duty, class, and sacrifice.

Earlier in season three, Criston told Ser Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox) that he was determined to meet his end "clear-eyed, unbent, glorious in battle."

"And not in their service. Finally, but in my own," he continued. "And they will sing songs of it. And Queen Alicent herself will hear them."

Instead, Criston died pitifully while clutching Alicent's handkerchief.

12. Roddy the Ruin's death is exactly what he dreamed of.

When viewers met Ser Roderick, aka Roddy the Ruin, he unambiguously announced his purpose: "We have come to die for the dragon queen."

Roderick led his pack of Northern soldiers, known as the Winter Wolves, into several gory battles throughout season three. Each time, he seemed both proud and appalled to make it out alive. As he told Criston Cole, "What better way to die than blade in hand?"

In the season three finale, Roderick finally fulfilled his purpose. During the Battle of Tumbleton, he embarked on one final mission: to find and kill Ormund.

Just as his nickname foretold, Roderick fought with ruinous abandon, even losing an arm before he managed to stab Ormund in the backside.

When Roderick and Ormund saw Ulf flying toward them on dragonback, one rejoiced while the other cowered. Roderick, of course, threw his arms into the air and cackled as he was burned alive.

Unlike his victims, Criston and Ormund, Roderick was granted the exact death he hoped for, and it's clear that he wouldn't want anyone to mourn — yet his ferocious presence onscreen will be sorely missed.

11. Harwin and Lyonel Strong die in a fire at Harrenhal.

Ser Harwin "Breakbones" Strong (Ryan Corr) and his father, Lord Lyonel Strong (Gavin Spokes), didn't have much time to make an impression on the audience, although both were fiercely loyal to King Viserys. After Otto was dismissed as Hand of the King in season one, Lyonel took his place and strove to serve the realm well.

Harwin became a particularly important character after season one's time jump, when it was revealed that he and Rhaenyra fell in love and had three illegitimate children together. In his few scenes, Harwin was depicted as a devoted protector and father figure to his sons, even though he couldn't act as their father outright.

Harwin and Lyonel's untimely deaths came as a shock — especially because the tragedy was orchestrated by their own blood, Larys Strong (Matthew Needham).

Following the birth of Rhaenyra's third son, Joffrey, Harwin was provoked to violence by Criston Cole, who insinuated that Rhaenyra's children were his bastards.

In the wake of their clash, Lyonel attempted to resign from his position as Hand of the King, citing the dishonor that Harwin brought on their family. Viserys rejected his resignation but allowed Lyonel to escort his son back to Harrenhal. Unfortunately, an apparent murder plot was waiting for them: the Strong men died in a mysterious fire once they arrived at the damp castle.

By all accounts, Lyonel and Harwin seemed like decent men. Even worse, Harwin's death was a personal blow to Rhaenyra.

10. Despite his surrender, Simon Strong and his two sons are killed by Aemond.

Thanks to Daemon's season-two Harrenhal arc, viewers were endeared to Ser Simon Strong (Simon Russell Beale) a bit more than his previously murdered relatives.

Simon acted as the de facto Lord of Harrenhal in Larys' absence. He was quick to surrender, weak by some standards, but also shrewd and resilient in his own way. He ingratiated himself with Daemon when the prince claimed the castle — no small feat — and managed to keep himself and his sons alive without resorting to violence, even as Harrenhal changed hands between murderers and warmongers.

That is, until Aemond came knocking in season three — and by knocking, of course, we mean burning and plundering. In contrast to his uncle, Aemond had no patience for Simon's benign, measured submission.

Aemond stabbed Simon and his two sons almost immediately upon taking over Harrenhal, robbing the show of one of its last few likable blokes.

9. The Cargyll twins killed each other after ending up on different sides of the war.

In season one, Ser Arryk Cargylle (Luke Tittensor) and Ser Erryk Cargylle (Ellliot Tittensor) worked together as Kingsguard knights, protecting the royal family. But when the Hightowers usurped the throne, the twins were split for the first time in their lives. Arryk sided with King Aegon II, while Erryk left to join Rhaenyra's Queensguard.

In season two, Criston sent Arryk to slay Rhaenyra. The plan was for Arryk to impersonate his brother and enter Dragonstone undetected. However, Erryk was alerted to the intrusion, forcing the brothers into a harrowing showdown.

After killing his brother, Erryk begged Rhaenyra to forgive him and fell on his own sword.

In the book, the Cargylle twins' simultaneous deaths inspired singers and storytellers for generations to come.

"In the end," the book reads, "Ser Arryk and Ser Erryk dealt each other mortal wounds, and died in one another's arms with tears upon their cheeks."

8. Joffrey Lonmouth is brutally beaten to death by Criston Cole.

The murder of Joffrey Lonmouth (Solly McLeod) was the first time that we really saw Criston's true colors, and man, they were ugly.

When a young Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) and Laenor Velaryon (Theo Nate) agreed to marry, they came to an understanding that both would pursue other lovers, namely Criston and Joffrey. But that didn't turn out exactly as they'd hoped.

At the wedding, Joffrey confronted Criston.

"You don't know me, Ser Criston, but we are both deeply invested in this union," Joffrey said. He told Criston that Laenor was "dear" to him, and that he understood Criston and Rhaenyra's relationship. The strategic move was meant to bond them in the shared secret of Rhaenyra and Laenor's lavender marriage.

Instead, in the midst of revelry, Criston beat Joffrey into bloody, lifeless pulp.

While the audience didn't know Joffrey particularly well, he didn't do anything wrong — certainly not wrong enough to merit such a brutal and public death. And Laenor's palpable grief made the scene even more painful to watch.

7. Jahaerys Targaryen is beheaded in his crib.

"House of the Dragon" season two kicked off by adapting an infamous murder from "Fire & Blood."

In a reckless act of vengeance, Daemon hired two mercenaries named Blood and Cheese to assassinate Prince Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) in the Red Keep. Daemon told the men that he wanted "a son for a son."

When the pair failed to find the prince, they settled for plan B. In a shocking act of cruelty, they forced Queen Helaena Targaryen (Phia Saban) to point out which sleeping toddler was her son.

Blood and Cheese then descended upon Jaeharys with knives, decapitating the boy in his crib.

Thankfully, Helaena fled the room with her daughter. But the extent of their brutality is displayed for all of King's Landing to see during Jaeharys' funeral procession.

6. Laena Velaryon commits suicide by dragonflame.

In the premiere episode of "House of the Dragon," Rhaenyra's mother told her the birthing bed is a woman's battlefield.

That is proven more literal than figurative, as season one featured more than one agonizing death related to pregnancy and childbirth, including that of Laena Velaryon (Nanna Blondell).

After he murdered his first wife, Daemon married Laena. The couple moved to Pentos and welcomed two healthy daughters, Baela (Bethany Antonia) and Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell).

However, Laena's third pregnancy proved fatal. In episode six, "The Princess and the Queen," she struggled with a complicated delivery and began to bleed out. Daemon was offered the same choice that Viserys once had: save his wife, or save the baby. Instead, Laena took matters into her own hands and decided her fate.

Laena commanded her dragon, Vhagar, to incinerate her.

While the scene is gut-wrenching to watch — especially since Vhagar seemed reluctant to kill her rider — it's a small comfort to know that Laena died on her own terms as a dragonlord, with fire and blood.

5. Rhaenys sacrifices herself and her dragon at Rook's Rest.

As soon as Rhaenys flew off to battle at Rook's Rest, there was already a sense that she wouldn't make it back.

But that didn't make her death at the hands of Aemond and Vhagar any less wrenching. Across two seasons, Rhaenys had distinguished herself as virtuous and loyal, at once level-headed and fierce, making her a favorite character among fans.

Even as Rhaenys realized she couldn't hope to defeat Vhagar alone, she didn't run away. Instead, she strapped herself tighter into her saddle and fought valiantly till the end, dealing serious damage to King Aegon II and Sunfyre in the process.

Rhaenys, one of the true noble warriors and voices of reason in "House of the Dragon," was ultimately killed in a sneak attack. To paraphrase Otto Hightower, we (the audience and Westeros) are poorer for it.

4. Queen Aemma dies during childbirth after Viserys orders his son to be cut out of her.

"House of the Dragon" made a bloody debut in the season one premiere with the heartbreaking death of Queen Aemma (Sian Brooke), the beloved wife of King Viserys.

When Aemma went into labor, the baby got stuck, and Viserys was forced to decide whose life to save. Despite his love for Aemma, the king chose his unborn child in the hopes of getting a son.

The maesters cut Aemma's belly open to save the child, killing her in the process. In her final moments, Aemma's agency was stripped away, and her life was tossed aside for the mere concept of an heir to the throne.

The withering loss was only made worse when Aemma's newborn baby, Baelon, died hours later.

3. Helaena kills herself while imprisoned in the Red Keep.

Helaena was held hostage in the Red Keep after her half-sister, Rhaenyra, took the Iron Throne.

Although Rhaenyra tried to be merciful with her prisoners, Helaena became an undeniable threat to her fragile reign. Not only was Helaena the sister-wife of Aegon II — making her the true queen in the minds of his loyalists — but she was also pregnant with a possible heir. Rhaenyra was obliged to confine Helaena ever-more strictly, and even resorted to force-feeding her when Helaena sank into depression.

In Martin's book, Helaena is depicted as a "broken creature" after the murder of her eldest son, hopeless and lost in madness. After her youngest son, Maelor, is also murdered, she throws herself out of a window (although some commonfolk spread rumors that Rhaenyra ordered her killed).

Although Maelor was omitted from "House of the Dragon," Helaena's psyche was much more complex onscreen, enriched by Saban's sensitive, soulful performance.

Helaena was shown to have an affinity with insects, deep empathy for small creatures, and devotion to her children. In the show, she was also a dragon dreamer, giving her prophetic visions; Helaena had a tenuous relationship with reality, cursed to know many of her family's tragedies before they happened. She seemed to know her own fate, too, yet she resisted the window for as long as she could — clinging onto hope for the sake of her mother, daughter, and unborn child.

Even for book readers, who knew Helaena's suicide was imminent, these details made her final scenes that much richer and more disturbing. Captivity and isolation eventually proved too much for Helaena, and in the season three finale, she jumped to her death.

2. Lucerys is the first major casualty of the Dance of the Dragons.

Lucerys and his dragon Arrax's deaths are some of the biggest emotional blows in "House of the Dragon."

Though the Greens and the Blacks were preparing for a war, bloodshed wasn't yet inevitable. It may have been possible to find another way to settle the dispute after a cooling-off period. But there could be no reconciliation once Rhaenyra's son was slain.

The murder of Prince Lucerys Velaryon (Elliot Grihault), aka Luke, was a turning point in the Dance of the Dragons — made all the more tragic because it looked like an accident.

The scene unraveled almost like a horror movie, with Aemond and Vhagar stalking and taunting Luke in the dark, rainy skies. Aemond likely saw this as an opportunity to toy with Luke, as payback for his missing eye, but a dragon's fury is not so easily restrained.

After a brief moment of seeming relief, Vhagar emerged from the haze, ripping tiny Arrax and his rider apart.

Luke lost his life; Rhaenyra lost a son; Jacaerys lost a brother; Corlys lost an heir; Rhaena lost a future husband; and Aemond lost the respect of his family — forever known to history as a ruthless kinslayer. The ripple effects from Luke's death are vast and untold.

1. Jacaerys is killed in the Battle of the Gullet while trying to make his mom proud.

What's more tragic than one of Rhaenyra's beloved children being murdered? Two of Rhaenyra's beloved children being murdered.

Rhaenyra's firstborn son and heir, Prince Jacaerys Velaryon (Harry Collett), aka Jace, had always been eager to prove himself. He was passionate, clever, daring — yet constantly (and lovingly) restrained by his mother, who feared his youth and lack of experience would spell disaster in battle.

Sadly, Rhaenyra was right. In the season three premiere, Jace forcibly took his mother's place at the Battle of the Gullet, locking Rhaenyra in her room and flying off to his doom.

While Jace burned enemy ships on his dragon, Vermax, those enemies were plotting to take him down. Vermax was impaled from the sky and pulled to his watery grave, while Jace managed to survive by unclipping from his saddle — though his survival was all too brief. Jace was quickly shot by enemy arrows, and his corpse was left to float among countless other warriors.

Over two seasons, Jace had become a surprisingly savvy diplomat and a fan-favorite character. It's devastating to know that he won't grace our screens again — and even more devastating to watch his death affect Rhaenyra, who'd already lost one son in her quest for the Iron Throne.

• I own a charcuterie-board franchise, and I've learned the tricks to making the best cheese spread.
• Mixing spicy and salty meats with soft and hard cheeses is my favorite way to elevate any board.
• I also like to cut fruit into stars or ribbons and place them next to crackers for a pop of color.

I'm the franchise owner of a custom charcuterie-board company, and after four years in the industry, I've discovered what separates a good cheese spread from a great one.

Even though it might seem easy to assemble a simple board with meats and cheeses, a few tricks can elevate it into the culinary star of a party or gathering.

Here are my seven secrets to making the best charcuterie boards.

I spend just as much time choosing ingredients as I do building the board.

A typical charcuterie board consists of cured meats, cheeses, fruits, vegetables, breads, crackers, and nuts. The key to building a great spread is combining these in a way that showcases vibrant colors, exotic flavors, and a decorative layout.

Although the presentation of a board is important, I think the selection of ingredients is even more crucial.

I like to have a mix of spicy meats, simple salami, and salty prosciutto, along with a variety of soft, hard, and aged cheeses to ensure there is a little something for everyone and that no single texture or flavor is highlighted.

Along with selecting an assortment of meats and cheeses, I always pick fruits and vegetables that are firm and richly colored, such as pineapple, oranges, sweet peppers, and cauliflower.

Slicing the meats into paper-thin cuts makes all the difference.

Before any food graces the board, I always recommend cutting all the meats into paper-thin circles — so thin that I can almost see through them.

The thin slices allow me to fold the meat into a variety of shapes to enhance the board's texture and visual appeal. I especially love to create small circular tubes with the slices to add depth to the spread.

Prosciutto, in particular, can be folded lengthwise and then alternately creased accordion-style to create a stunning "train" effect.

The cut of a cheese depends on its consistency.

There are three common cuts for cheese: cubes, triangles, and circles.

Even though it can be tempting to slice everything into cubes, it's ideal only for firm cheeses, like cheddar, Gouda, and Parmesan.

On the other hand, wheel-shaped alternatives like Brie and Manchego are well-suited to triangular cuts, and goat cheese, which often come in cylindrical packages, yield a great circular cut.

I like to be creative with the presentation of fruits and veggies.

When it comes to the layout of fruits and vegetables on a board, it really spans the gamut.

Instead of slicing fruits like oranges and kiwis into wedges, I love to cut them into stars. Additionally, carrots add dimension when they are cut into about 2-inch-long sticks.

To add more depth to the board, I like to cut cucumbers into thin circles or ribbons for a more decorative approach.

And if I'm making a vegetarian board, I like to cut broccoli and cauliflower into small florets to replace any cured meats.

When assembling, placing colorful fruits next to neutral elements will make the board pop.

I think charcuterie is as much about visual appeal as it is about taste.

So, to make the board's colors pop, I always place bright fruits and vegetables alongside neutral elements like cheeses and crackers.

One of my favorite combinations is pairing strawberries and goat cheese.

Or, for a monochromatic look, I love grouping items by color.

Alternatively, grouping different fruits and vegetables of the same color provides a unique twist to any charcuterie board.

For example, I love the look of strawberries, red peppers, and dried cranberries when they are placed together.

Similarly, I like to group foods that complement one another, such as sweet chocolate and salty nuts or creamy cheese and crunchy crackers.

I like to vary the height of each item on the board for extra depth.

When thinking about how to arrange ingredients on a charcuterie board, I like to consider the depth or height of each item.

I never like to keep all the items at the same level. Instead, I like to place some standing upright, others flat, or layer some components on top of others.

• "House of the Dragon" wrapped its third season with a major battle and multiple character deaths.
• Showrunner Ryan Condal broke down the finale's biggest moments and the season's key takeaways.
• Condal also spoke about the pressure of "landing the plane" in the show's fourth and final season.

Warning: Major spoilers ahead for "House of the Dragon" season three.

As season three of "House of the Dragon" comes to a close with characteristic fire and blood, showrunner Ryan Condal is already anticipating scrutiny of the next one.

In an interview ahead of Sunday's season three finale, Condal confirmed that HBO's tentpole "Game of Thrones" spinoff will end with its fourth season. As Condal and his team map out a final eight-episode arc for the Targaryen dragonlords embroiled in a civil war, the franchise's history and its fiercely devoted fans loom large.

"It's hard enough to make a season finale," Condal told Business Insider. "Try making a series finale that tries to be all things to all people, and also have a distinct point of view and thing to say and place to leave off all the characters."

Based on George R. R. Martin's fantasy book "Fire & Blood," "House of the Dragon" follows the dynastic struggle between Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) and her younger half-brother, Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney), which ultimately devastates the royal family and decimates the dragon population.

In the season three finale, Queen Rhaenyra descends further into tyranny and messianic delusions, while Aegon II rises from the literal ashes with a resurrected dragon and a plot to retake the Iron Throne. Elsewhere, Rhaenyra's Hightower enemies and loyal allies alike are massacred in the big-budget, game-changing Battle of Tumbleton; a dangerous dragonrider deserts her cause; and a beloved former queen plummets to her death.

With plenty to unpack (and even more death and destruction to expect in season four), Business Insider caught up with Condal to discuss season three's biggest scenes, central themes, and the one character he found especially hard to kill.

On executing the Battle of Tumbleton and expanding Ormund's character for the screen

Aside from the Battle of the Gullet, were there any scenes from the book that were extra challenging or labor-intensive to bring to life?

Ryan Condal: The two this season definitely were the premiere and the finale — the two mega-battles. Each was its own challenge in its own right. But those were definitely the two that got the most attention in terms of planning, consternation, resources, anguish, despair, all that, and then hopefully victory at the end.

What were the particular challenges of filming the Tumbleton battle?

Unlike the Gullet, which was an engineering challenge of, "How the hell are we actually going to do this?" this was more of, "What can the schedule and the budget absorb in terms of the ambitions of the script?" So that was more of a classic negotiation between creative ambition and what is actually practical and can happen, while holding onto the subjective element of the storytelling — meaning all of the POVs of the characters that we're with down there on the ground in Tumbleton.

One of the things I'm proudest of is how we were able to bring so many POVs that we've been following across the season all together in this one place, and then blend them in a way that felt earned and organic: Black and Green coming together and interacting with each other in a way that was paying off these eight episode-long arcs that we had been exploring across season three.

A big part of that narrative payoff is watching Ormund Hightower get his comeuppance. In the book, he doesn't get much characterization beyond being a military leader. Tell me about expanding his character for the show and giving him so much texture — the religious fanaticism, the smell sensitivity, all these details.

That's the great fun of an adaptation of a book like "Fire & Blood." Because so much of it is a sketch, particularly in the character realm, just because you're not inside the characters' heads the way you are in the "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels.

Those are all written in POV, whereas this book is written — it's an anti-POV. It's written in the POV of these three historians who are sort of arguing over what happened when to whom, and over whose account ends up being the more accurate account. So you just don't get the internal thoughts of these characters, which creates a ton of latitude to be creative and create, and to honor the book.

Ormund, we know, is a great military leader. He led the Hightower host. He was with Daeron the Daring, and he planned and tried to win valiantly in this very epic, table-turning Battle of Tumbleton, and then ultimately came up short in the end.

So we knew all of that, and then we were very free to design a character around him. And it really opened us up to being able to go in and do something really interesting and "Thrones"-y, I think, in a way, where he's flawed and complicated and this master operator who has two core weaknesses — one being something he can't help, which is his oversensitivity to smell and texture and all that, and then two being his rage issues, which maybe is something that he could do something about with a little therapy and breath work.

I love the throughline that begins chronologically with Ormund, reappears in "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," and then pays off at the beginning of "Game of Thrones," which is this anti-Targaryen, anti-dragon suspicion breeding among the people of the realm. Did you consider this theme while writing his character?

Yes, very much. It was sort of built into who Ormund was.

This is a theme that we've set up that you're going to see continuing to play out over the final chapter, the final acts of our show — this idea of the Faith.

Essentially, most of the realm holds to the Faith. It's the Catholicism of this era. And then you have the Targaryens, who come in as this pagan race, who believe in blood magic and fire and their own godlike supremacy. Their gods are gigantic nuclear lizards that you can smell, touch, see, and hear.

I loved what Ira [Parker] did with that very subtly in "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," because even though we didn't really talk about it, it was clearly in the ether — this idea that the Targaryens were, by a lot of people, looked on with fear and suspicion because of their outsize power. And their alienness, their otherness, the way that they marry amongst themselves, and they don't hold to the traditions that everybody else holds to — traditions and morals that everybody else in the realm holds to. So there is a natural divide there.

On the 'natural parallels' between Rhaenyra and Daenerys

I noticed a parallel between the speech Rhaenyra gives at the Sept and the final speech Daenerys gives in the last season of "Game of Thrones," when she feels she's fulfilling her purpose, but in reality, she's doomed. Was that intentional?

We're certainly aware of it. I think it's important that the show has echoes of the original series in it, in some ways, so that they remain connected. Because they are very much connected.

This is the reason that Daenerys is begging for a crown across the Narrow Sea, and the dragons are all dead. Because of this story. So I think those connections are important to make to remind people that these two periods in history are intimately connected with one another.

Daenerys and Rhaenyra find themselves on parallel tracks, in a way, as dragon queens that are trying to establish their own legitimacy and their destination to sit on the throne; there are going to be natural parallels that appear in those stories.

I also noticed echoes of Daenerys burning King's Landing in the scene of Ulf burning Tumbleton. They're both the blood of the dragon, of course, with that fiery temper — but with Ulf, we get a lot more context and buildup for that decision. Did that occur to you while adapting Ulf's turn, or did it motivate you to give him more character development ahead of that scene?

I think the way it all came together, and thanks to Tom Bennett's incredible performance, it feels like a really, really subtly drawn and really earned arc that — even though it's tragic and horrifying — feels completely earned in the end.

Ulf is not a great person with a high moral character, but he was also just another guy who was enjoying his time at the pub until the Targaryens drew him into a world he was not prepared to be in, and then sat him on a nuclear weapon and said, "Go win this war for us" — and promised him all these things they never delivered.

So in a way, everybody on all sides — Rhaenyra, Daemon, certainly Ormund, the feudal structure of the political system in this particular time and era — are all responsible for Ulf as much as Ulf is responsible for Ulf. I think it's a great payoff for that character over his two-season arc to bring us to this point. And I think it's, again, horrifying, but totally credible.

On Helaena's death, Aegon's underdog arc, and Daeron's relationship with Alicent

Which death did you find most gutting to write or film this season?

It was Helaena. I love Phia Saban so much as a person that she's just such a joy and a presence to have around set. And look, I really love my cast. I'm very fortunate to work with all of them. But there's just something about Phia and the character that she plays that's so delightful and innocent.

It's almost like she's a character from a different fantasy story that's been trapped inside this one. Helaena had no ambitions outside of just raising her chickens and collecting her bugs and noting the natural world — to have her also dragged down into the abyss that is the Game of Thrones was really, really, really tragic and hard to watch and hard to dramatize, and then hard to see being dramatized for all those reasons.

And I'm just really sad to say goodbye to her, just because we adore her and having her around.

Over the course of the series, which actor's performance has surprised you the most, or differed the most from how you originally envisioned their character coming alive onscreen?

There's so many. God, it's so hard. I wish I could do an interview on everybody.

I'm so impressed with Tom Glynn-Carney across this season, because for relatively little screen time, he plays this very, very central role in the season, and did such an incredible job in selling this arc of somebody that we find in the throes of opium withdrawal. And then at the end, you're rooting for him to get his dragon back and then go challenge the main character of the show for the throne with his brother. Batman and Robin get back together at the end.

I just feel like the way that Tom sold that — and the feedback that I've gotten from people watching the show, like, "I didn't think you could do it, but I'm rooting for Aegon now" — is such a compliment to, I think, the storytelling, but also that's a credit to Tom's incredible performance across the season.

I want to ask you about the fan theory that Ormund was dyeing Daeron's hair so that he resembles a Hightower more than a Targaryen. Is there weight to that?

I don't want to say anything definitively. I think it's a very interesting discussion. Daeron's hair color took up probably more discussion than any single character's hair color did in the entire making of the show.

I just think it poses a lot of interesting questions. If you presume that that is actually Daeron's hair color — and that he's the one that just looked exactly like his mother — the question that was most interesting to me was, "Oh my God, is that why Alicent sent him away?" In a time when she was so in need of painting the picture of the perfect blonde Targaryen family, being able to stand on her soapbox and say that Rhaenyra's children are plain and illegitimate, and that they're not trueborn with Laenor, and they're unsuited to take the throne: "Look at my perfect Targaryen children that I sacrificed so much to have with a man who's 25 years older than me, who's literally rotting to pieces."

It calls back to a past form of Alicent that's very different from the Alicent that we know today.

Also, if we assume that to be true, we would see her almost rewriting history in real time — telling Rhaenyra that she sent Daeron away to protect him, and convincing herself of that.

So much of memory is emotion, right? It's an emotional memory. It's not the memory of actually what happened. It's your memory of the emotion that you experienced at the time. And I can totally see Alicent really believing a different version of that story, now that she's been through all of these horrors and tragedies.

On the 'scrutiny' he expects for the series finale and the pressure of 'landing the plane'

With a story like this, presented in the book as a retrospective history, there are several possible endpoints. There's Rhaenyra's death or Aegon's death, but even then, the realm isn't exactly at peace. How do you approach the final season of "House of the Dragon" as a showrunner looking to craft a satisfying arc in a limited number of episodes?

It would be an understatement to say that ending a gigantic genre show comes with scrutiny around it.

We've talked about this being kind of a World War II movie: There are plenty of World War II movies that exist where you tell the story within this greater war, but the curtain drops at some point in the story, and it's not necessarily with Japan's surrender or Hitler dying in the bunker — these big kind of endpoints where you could say World War II truly ended. You're telling the story within the story.

So, in no way to comment at all on how we're planning on ending this, but I think that was the trick. Because "Fire & Blood" is a decades-spanning history, the question is really more, "Where do you drop the curtain on this particular story?"

We're telling the story of the Dance of the Dragons — Rhaenyra's, Daemon's, Alicent's, Aegon's, Aemond's, Helaena's story. At what point do you drop the curtain on this, [in a way] that feels satisfying and like you've told a complete story, but also that leaves certain things open-ended? Telling the audience, intentionally, that history marches on. We know that the Targaryens live on and rule on from here, for many, many years, before they're finally deposed in Robert Baratheon and Ned Stark's uprising.

As you plan next season's arc, what feels most daunting to you about tackling the next phase of this story?

I think it's landing the plane, honestly. It's a very hard thing to do.

We've seen a lot of big series come to an end over the last few years. You have to do service to the series, the story that you've been telling on a creative level — but also, you have all these fans that are watching this, whether they're book readers or not, that are tremendously invested in the thing that you've made, and they've come to know and love these characters, or love reviling these characters. Whatever the case may be, they've spent a lot of time in this.

There is a struggle to say goodbye. And I think that's where a lot of the debate, or whatever it is, comes into the picture, because I think a lot of people just simply don't want it to end, and they all have their ideas of how it should, or what a satisfying ending is.

So I think for us, it's really, how do we take these eight hours that we have left — eight chapters that we have left — and tell a compelling, satisfying story that ties up as many of the threads as we're able to, but also leaves with sort of wistful open-endedness at the end of it to make you yearn for more, in a good way? That's the thing we're aiming for.

I always say the hardest thing about making a show like this is the first season and then the last episode, because wrapping it up, you're going to be judged on how you leave the thing.

I forget who said this, I'm just paraphrasing, but the best endings are totally inevitable, but completely surprising. And that's the gold standard that we're striving for.

This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

"House of the Dragon" season 3 is streaming in full on HBO Max.

• HBO's "House of the Dragon" is adapted from "Fire & Blood," a fictional history of House Targaryen.
• Multiple deaths in season three are notably different from their descriptions in the book.
• In earlier seasons, the deaths of characters like Laenor and Rhea were portrayed in unexpected ways.

Warning: Major spoilers through the "House of the Dragon" season three finale.

"House of the Dragon" has returned for its third season, continuing its tradition of expanding on the source material.

HBO's flagship "Game of Thrones" spinoff is based on George R. R. Martin's "Fire & Blood," a fictional history of House Targaryen. The book is written as an overview of major events during the dynasty's reign.

Unlike Martin's main series, "A Song of Ice and Fire," which inspired "Game of Thrones," "Fire & Blood" is not told from the major characters' points of view but is recounted in retrospect by maesters, members of the royal court, and other third-party observers.

As a result, "Fire & Blood" readers don't get definitive causes or clear motivations for why characters take certain actions — and, in some cases, the book may be missing key in-universe information. As the "Fire & Blood" narrator frequently notes, not even eyewitness accounts are entirely reliable. His sources often disagree, each saddled with unique baggage, blind spots, and biases.

This means the TV writers hired for HBO's adaptation had a lot more leeway with the story and an opportunity to create a consistent canon of events.

Let's take a closer look at some of the pivotal "House of the Dragon" deaths so far, and how they compare to the details found in "Fire & Blood."

Aemma's final moments of life are made more brutal in the show, with Viserys opting for a C-section.

In the show: Director Miguel Sapochnik says the scene that killed Queen Aemma (Sian Brooke) was designed to show how King Viserys (Paddy Considine) "effectively murdered" his beloved wife.

When Aemma goes into labor, her baby is facing the wrong direction, and the maesters can't get it to turn. This means Aemma will certainly die, but there's a small chance they can save the baby by cutting it out of her.

The maester offers the choice to Viserys, who picks the surgery without consulting Aemma or telling her what's about to happen. Instead, she's dragged down on the bed and restrained while the maester cuts open her belly. She bleeds to death as the baby is "born."

In the book: Death by childbirth is fairly commonplace in Westeros, and it's treated as such in the text. "Fire & Blood" provides no details or context to Aemma's death, and doesn't mention Viserys being a part of the labor and delivery process at all:

"Queen Aemma was brought to bed in Maegor's Holdfast and died whilst giving birth to the son that Viserys Targaryen had desired for so long. The boy (named Baelon, after the king's father) survived her only by a day, leaving king and court bereft."

Rhea's death in the book is regarded as a "hunting accident" instead of cold-blooded murder.

In the show: In season one, Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) is married to Lady Rhea Royce (Rachel Redford), though neither is particularly happy about it.

Hoping to marry his royal niece instead, Daemon sneaks up on Rhea during a hunting trip and spooks her horse. After she's thrown, Rhea is paralyzed from the neck down and unable to fight back. She lobs insults at Daemon until he picks up a rock and bashes in her skull.

In the book: According to the historical record, Rhea's death was "a tragic mishap." Daemon is not suspected of being involved:

"The 'bronze bitch' of Runestone, Lady Rhea Royce, fell from her horse whilst hawking and cracked her skull upon a stone. She lingered for nine days before finally feeling well enough to leave her bed…only to collapse and die within an hour of rising."

Joffrey is killed by Criston in both the show and the book, but in "Fire & Blood," his death happens under the guise of a tourney.

In the show: While still teenagers, Lord Laenor Velaryon (Theo Nate) and Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly Alcock) agree to get married — not out of love, but duty to their families. They also secretly agree to keep their marriage open, since Laenor is gay, and Rhaenyra is having an affair with Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel).

Ser Joffrey Lonmouth (Solly McLeod), Laenor's lover, outs himself to Criston as the future king consort's boyfriend. Big mistake.

Cole, embarrassed and infuriated by the exposure of his own secret tryst with Rhaenyra, lashes out and beats Joffrey to death in the middle of the wedding welcome feast.

In the book: "Fire & Blood" historians recall that Joffrey was killed by Criston during a tourney, during which Criston had been "fighting in a black fury" against all his opponents. Joffrey's relationship with Laenor isn't mentioned as a possible motivation for his death:

"Cole's favorite weapon was the morningstar, and the blows he rained down on Ser Laenor's champion cracked his helm and left him senseless in the mud. Borne bloody from the field, Ser Joffrey died without recovering consciousness six days later."

Harwin and Lyonel canonically die in a fire at Harrenhal, but the show clarifies the arsonist.

In the show: House Strong controls Harrenhal, the largest castle in the Riverlands. It's where Ser Harwin Strong (Ryan Corr) and his father, Lyonel Strong (Gavin Spokes), meet their doom after leaving King's Landing in season one.

"House of the Dragon" makes it clear who to blame: Larys Strong (Matthew Needham), a sneaky man who wants leverage on Queen Alicent (Olivia Cooke), hires two miscreants to set the castle ablaze in one of the show's most egregious acts of kinslaying. As an added bonus, with his older brother and father both dead, Larys inherits Harrenhal.

In the book: Harwin and Lyonel are indeed killed in a mysterious fire at Harrenhal, but Larys is floated as just one of several suspects for the arson:

"Shortly after their arrival, a fire broke out in the tower where they were sleeping, and both father and son were killed, along with three of their retainers and a dozen servants. The cause of the fire was never determined. Some put it down to simple mischance, whilst others muttered that Black Harren's seat was cursed and brought only doom to any man who held it.

Many suspected the blaze was set intentionally. Mushroom suggests that the Sea Snake was behind it, as an act of vengeance against the man who had cuckolded his son. Septon Eustace, more plausibly, suspects Prince Daemon, removing a rival for Princess Rhaenyra's affections. Others have put forth the notion that Larys Clubfoot might have been responsible; with his father and elder brother dead, Larys Strong became the Lord of Harrenhal.

The most disturbing possibility was advanced by none other than Grand Maester Mellos, who muses that the king himself might have given the command. If Viserys had come to accept that the rumors about the parentage of Rhaenyra's children were true, he might well have wished to remove the man who had dishonored his daughter, lest he somehow reveal the bastardy of her sons. Were that so, Lyonel Strong's death was an unfortunate accident, for his lordship's decision to see his son back to Harrenhal had been unforeseen."

Like Aemma, Laena's cause of death isn't detailed in the book beyond childbirth. The show gives her a fiery end.

In the show: Just like Aemma, Lady Laena Velaryon (Nanna Blondell) is unable to safely deliver her baby. A medieval C-section offers a tiny chance for the baby's survival, and Laena's husband, Daemon, is given that option.

But Laena takes her fate into her own hands and opts for a dragonrider's death. While still in labor, she orders her dragon, Vhagar, to incinerate her.

In the book: Laena officially dies of "childbed fever" and apparently doesn't make it to Vhagar in time:

"During her final hour, it is said, Lady Laena rose from her bed, pushed away the septas praying over her, and made her way from her room, intent on reaching Vhagar that she might fly one last time before she died. Her strength failed her on the tower steps, however, and it was there she collapsed and died."

Laenor fakes his own death in a big change from the book.

In the show: Even after marrying and having children with other people, Daemon and Princess Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy) are drawn to each other. They want to make it official as husband and wife, but Rhaenyra is trapped in a lavender marriage with Laenor (John MacMillan).

Daemon and Rhaenyra seem to conspire to kill Laenor so they can finally be together — and that's what Laenor's mother long believed — but the show reveals that Laenor was in cahoots with the couple all along.

Daemon kills a High Tide castle servant while Laenor and his lover, Qarl, stage a sword fight in the main hall. After another servant runs to get help, Daemon presumably helps Laenor dress the body of the dead servant in his own clothes, and they burn the servant's face beyond recognition.

Laenor and Qarl sneak away to Essos with Daemon's help, leaving the realm to gossip about the tragic and fishy death of Rhaenyra's husband.

In the book: Qarl stabs Laenor in broad daylight. Rumors spread that it was an act of passionate jealousy, or maybe a murder plot, but no damning evidence was ever collected:

"Ser Laenor Velaryon, husband to the Princess Rhaenyra and the putative father of her children, was slain whilst attending a fair in Spicetown, stabbed to death by his friend and companion Ser Qarl Correy. The two men had been quarreling loudly before blades were drawn, merchants at the fair told Lord Velaryon when he came to collect his son's body. Correy had fled by then, wounding several men who tried to hinder him. Some claimed a ship had been waiting for him offshore. He was never seen again."

Lohar is killed by Alyn during the Battle of the Gullet, which doesn't happen in the book.

In the show: Sharako Lohar of Lys (Abigail Thorn) leads the Triarchy — a combined fleet of warships from Lys, Myr, and Tyrosh — into the Battle of the Gullet. The admiral had promised to break Rhaenyra's blockade for King Aegon II, but her true motivation is revealed to be vengeance. She has a score to settle with Rhaenyra's Hand of the Queen, Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint).

Before Lohar gets her chance, Corlys falls into the ocean. Instead, she's attacked by Corlys' son and first mate, Alyn of Hull (Abubakar Salim). Alyn kills Lohar in a desperate struggle.

In the book: Lohar survives the Battle of the Gullet, but the bloody sea battle spells the end of the Triarchy alliance. Widows from Myr and Tyrosh accuse Lohar of favoring the Lysene ships, and years later, Lohar is murdered by a rival. This causes the three cities to turn against each other in what's known as the Daughters' War:

"The murder of Sharako Lohar of Lys, the admiral who had presided over the Triarchy's disaster in the Gullet, proved to be the spark that engulfed the Three Daughters in flames, fanning the smoldering rivalries of Tyrosh, Lys, and Myr into open war. It is now commonly accepted that Sharako's death was a personal matter; the arrogant admiral was slain by one of his rivals for the favor of a courtesan known as the Black Swan. At the time, however, his death was seen as a political killing, and the Myrish were suspected."

In the book, Otto Hightower is executed as a traitor. The show makes his death more climactic by having Rhaenyra swing the sword.

In the show: After he's unceremoniously removed as Hand of the King by his grandson, King Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney), viewers barely see Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) until his death.

Otto tells his daughter, Alicent, that he's returning to House Hightower's seat in Oldtown, though she finds it odd that he doesn't answer any of her letters.

Upon Rhaenyra's return to King's Landing, we discover that Otto never made it home. He was captured and imprisoned in the Red Keep's dungeon by none other than Larys, Aegon's master of whisperers.

Otto is brought before Rhaenyra, and Daemon urges her to execute Aegon's former Hand as a traitor. "If you wish to rule," he says, "show them you do not waver."

Unfortunately, Rhaenyra was raised to be a lady, not a knight. She has never beheaded anyone — let alone the father of her childhood best friend. She panics and misses Otto's neck on her first stroke, burying her sword in his shoulder blades. On her second stroke, Rhaenyra cuts off Otto's head, choking back sobs.

In the book: When Rhaenyra takes the Iron Throne in "Fire & Blood," it's said that she set about "rewarding her friends and inflicting savage punishments on those who had served her half-brother." Otto is simply listed as the first traitor to die under Rhaenyra's rule, sans any grisly or personal details:

"Queen Alicent was fettered at wrist and ankle with golden chains, though her stepdaughter spared her life 'for the sake of our father, who loved you once.' Her own father was less fortunate. Ser Otto Hightower, who had served three kings as Hand, was the first traitor to be beheaded."

In a scene invented for the show, Ser Luthor Largent and several other gold cloaks are killed in "a feast for traitors."

In the show: In season three, Queen Rhaenyra is faced with significant opposition after she takes the Iron Throne, even within the walls of her own city.

Although he's stationed in Tumbleton, a market town southwest of King's Landing, Lord Ormund Hightower (James Norton) is puppeteering bloodshed and chaos using his allies in the capital. Ormund's group of mercenaries systematically murders the knights of the City Watch, known as the gold cloaks, as part of their attempt to paint Rhaenyra as incompetent.

In episode five, "Unbowed and Unbent," Daemon sets out to discover who's behind these killings. Instead, he discovers a gruesome scene: the corpses of several gold cloaks, including the Commander of the City Watch, Ser Luthor Largent (Tom Cullen), gutted and staged at a long table. "A feast for traitors" is scrawled on the wall behind them, apparently in blood.

In the book: The "feast for traitors" is never mentioned, although Rhaenyra does face strong opposition in King's Landing. The unrest in the city eventually devolves into a full-blown riot, spurred by an anarchist and religious fanatic known only as the Shepherd.

When Ser Luthor leads the charge to arrest the Shepherd, the gold cloaks are overwhelmed by thousands of enraged commonfolk. Ser Luthor is brutally killed in the struggle:

"Battle turned to riot turned to slaughter. Surrounded on all sides, the gold cloaks found themselves hemmed in and swept under, with no room to wield their weapons. Many died on the points of their own swords. Others were torn to pieces, kicked to death, trampled underfoot, hacked apart with hoes and butcher's cleavers. Even the fearsome Ser Luthor Largent could not escape the carnage. His sword torn from his grasp, Largent was pulled from his saddle, stabbed in the belly, and bludgeoned to death with a cobblestone, his helm and head so crushed that it was only by its size that his body was recognized when the corpse wagons came the next day."

Ormund Hightower is taken down by Roddy the Ruin — but in the show, he's technically killed by Ulf's dragon.

In the show: After taking over Tumbleton with the Hightower army, Ormund conspires with Ulf the White (Tom Bennett), one of Rhaenyra's sworn dragonriders, to betray the queen. Ormund promises that once the war is over, Ulf can take over Driftmark and become Lord of the Tides.

Ormund is probably lying, and anyway, Ulf is too unruly and self-interested to be trusted with a battle plan.

When Rhaenyra's army arrives to retake Tumbleton, Ulf gets drunk and passes out in a privy. Ormund finds him mid-battle and berates him, calling Ulf a "useless, baseborn stump."

Once Ulf finally takes to the sky on his dragon, Silverwing, he decides to betray both Rhaenyra and Ormund.

Ulf burns Rhaenyra's army in the field while Ormund is attacked by Ser Roderick Dustin (Tommy Flanagan), the Lord of Barrowton, known to history as Roddy the Ruin.

Roderick commands a group of Northern soldiers known as the Winter Wolves, and he's determined to die fighting for the dragon queen. Despite losing an arm, he overpowers Ormund in one-on-one combat and stabs him from behind.

Ormund, bleeding out, lives just long enough to watch Ulf turn Silverwing toward the walls of Tumbleton. Both he and Roderick are burned alive by dragonflame.

In the book: Ormund is killed by Roddy the Ruin during the Battle of Tumbleton. There's no mention of Ormund striking a deal with Ulf, or having anything to do with Ulf's violent defection:

"In the chaos that ensued, the northmen fought their way through ten times their own number to where Lord Ormund Hightower sat his warhorse beneath King Aegon's golden dragon and the banners of Oldtown and the Hightower.

As the singers tell it, Lord Roderick was bloody from head to heel as he came on, with splintered shield and cracked helm, yet so drunk with battle that he did not even seem to feel his wounds. Ser Bryndon Hightower, Lord Ormund's cousin, put himself between the northman and his liege, taking off the Ruin's shield arm at the shoulder with one terrible blow of his longaxe…yet the savage Lord of Barrowton fought on, slaying both Ser Bryndon and Lord Ormund before he died. Lord Hightower's banners toppled, and the townsfolk gave a great cheer, thinking the tide of the battle turned."

• We unexpectedly spent months without television.
• Our children started playing together instead of watching shows.
• We realized we had been relying on screens more than we thought.

Every time my kids asked to watch TV, I had to prepare myself for battle.

My 2-year-old should not be experiencing decision fatigue, yet I watched her grapple with the impossible choice of which Bubble Guppies episode to watch every single day. And when she would finally pick, it wouldn't even hold her attention. Three minutes later, she would have followed me into the kitchen, asking for attention from me. Not only were my kids overstimulated, but so was I.

In an effort to protect everyone's sanity, I told my kids the TV was broken.

I don't want my kids to get used to instant gratification

On each individual platform, there can be miles worth of scrolling involved to find something to watch. And between each service (YouTube TV, Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Peacock, Paramount, Prime Video, and HBO), any show or movie you can think of is available.

We live in a world where instant gratification is so consistent and routine that it's becoming redundant. I don't want my kids to grow up like this.

We told our kids (ages 5 & 2.5) that our TV broke at the beginning of March. My husband and I geared up for a weekend full of real-life entertainment. I don't remember exactly what we did that first weekend, but I can guarantee there was an adjustment period for every person in the house.

Because the TV was "broken," it was easier for the kids to accept it and move on, but they sure were persistent. They were very concerned with the well-being of the TV. How long would it be broken? Should we call someone?

It made my husband and me realize how often we had been turning to it ourselves to "entertain" the kids while we cleaned up, cooked dinner, or just sat on our phones.

It's been 4 months without a TV

To make the adjustment easier for everyone, we did a handful of things immediately and continue to do them almost daily, even four months later.

My husband and I made an intentional effort to put our phones down in the evenings. If the kids can't be on a big screen, why should we get to be on a little screen?

We keep the kids stocked with their favorite coloring books and crafts. My kids already love coloring and stickers, so that wasn't a pastime we had to introduce or convince them to enjoy.

We read to our kids almost every time they ask. There have been multiple occasions when 40 minutes have passed just by reading whatever book they want.

We play with our children, including pretend play. Restaurant, Sonic, or Ninja Turtles, doctor, school. Sometimes we're a den of foxes. Other times, my husband owns a pizzeria, and chaos ensues when I call in an order for a "cat pizza." As the weather warmed up, we started playing hide-and-seek tag outside.

I noticed the benefits of not having a TV

Once we regained our footing without the TV, the benefits were almost instantaneous. And this is not a surprise to me. I am well aware of research on the side effects of excessive screen time and the benefits of limited screen time for child development, sleep, and circadian rhythms.

The first change was improved attitudes by all. With no TV, we became more involved as parents, which allowed for more conversation. We communicate better because we communicate more. The kids ask more questions, and we have time to give thoughtful answers.

The way they treat each other also improved almost immediately. There are always going to be creative differences about the best way to build the magnatile tower, who was using the red marker first, or who needs which colored plate at dinner. But the kids get along leaps and bounds better than they even did when the TV worked.

My kids play together. And when they aren't playing together, they are at least co-existing in peace. They are increasingly aware of each other, as individuals and as siblings. My 5-year-old will genuinely tell you that his 2.5-year-old sister is his best friend. He will think of her when he has a dentist appointment and goes into day care late, and she will share with him without being prompted.

We spend more time actually with our kids now — talking, listening, connecting — so it's easier for us to notice the little things about each other. Part of it is them growing up, obviously; they are developing their own personalities. Part of it is them having more room to explore, try new things, discover the world, and themselves. Without a constant distraction, my husband and I can notice their individual personalities more.

Not a day goes by that we don't talk about how much we appreciate each of them for separate reasons.

• To compete for top talent in the tech industry these days, companies have to get creative.
• Cursor's talent strategy focuses on more than money to attract elite AI candidates.
• The company's head of talent said recruiting is a companywide effort.

In the fight for elite AI talent, the salary is the easy part.

At Cursor, the $60 billion company behind a suite of popular coding tools recently acquired by SpaceX, hiring a candidate is a bit like trying to win over someone who's completely out of your league.

"Closing is a team sport," Matt Ward, Cursor's head of talent, said on a recent episode of the "People by WTF" podcast. For some high-profile candidates, he said, "there are often daily standups around that candidate about what we're doing to get them to yes."

The company has also created private Slack channels dedicated to individual recruits, giving employees a place to coordinate outreach, dinners, meetings, and other parts of the courtship.

In the AI universe, where many millions of dollars in salary and perks are often not enough to recruit a top candidate, wins can come down to making a candidate feel wanted.

Ward said that after learning that one sought-after candidate had attended a performing-arts high school and trained as a classical violinist, the company tracked down a specialty music store in New York and bought him an unusual stringed instrument, which Ward described as a kind of Turkish guitar.

The gift itself wasn't especially expensive. "It's the thoughtfulness and the touch and the uniqueness of it," Ward said.

The company's CEO, Michael Truell, said on A16z's podcast last year that Cursor used "crazy recruiting stunts" to score its first 10 hires, including "flying across the world to the person after they say no."

Ward said Cursor's recruiting process has become more systematized as the company has grown.

Rather than treating recruiting as a numbers game — message a hundred people, interview whoever responds, and gradually narrow the pool — Ward said he prefers to identify the relatively small number of people who could truly excel at a job and then pursue them deliberately.

"There are 50 people in the world who can do this," he said, describing the mindset. "Let's go find those 50 people."

Then, he said, he "relentlessly" pursues them.

Cursor's approach reflects the new realities of the AI boom: For those at the top of the market, offering more money may not be enough.

The same coveted engineers can have multiple enormous offers, prestigious jobs, valuable equity, and access to cutting-edge work. Winning them over can come down to whether they connect with a company's mission and people — and whether they feel understood.

The race has changed the way major companies across Silicon Valley think about hiring, with some of the most aggressive recruiting efforts coming directly from the top.

Mark Zuckerberg has personally emailed AI researchers he wanted to bring to Meta. OpenAI chief research officer Mark Chen later said that Zuckerberg had once hand-delivered soup to an OpenAI employee Meta was trying to woo — a tactic that apparently left such an impression that OpenAI began sending soup in its own recruiting efforts.

That's not to say money doesn't matter.

Former Google HR chief Laszlo Bock has said that spending $100 million to secure a truly exceptional AI researcher could still amount to a "bargain" for a tech giant, given both what that person could build and the advantage of keeping them away from a competitor.

"You're getting NBA player-like offers and salaries, and sometimes greater than that," Ward said.

When I was first given the opportunity to test an outdoor TV, I must admit, I was quite skeptical. In fact, my initial reaction was, "I really don't want a TV in my backyard."

I spend most of the summer at our family's 100-year-old beach cottage at the Jersey Shore, a place that's always been an escape from technology. We have one small TV inside, and the idea of putting another one outdoors felt like it would interrupt the unplugged pace we've always loved there. It also just didn't seem to fit the charming aesthetic of our yard.

Surprisingly, my tech-loving kids felt the same way. They groaned when they first saw the big box arrive. But when the Knicks' playoff run started, followed by the World Cup, our curiosity was piqued. So, with the help of my son Jack, the Sylvox Cinema Pro outdoor TV was set up in our backyard. After just one afternoon of watching TV outside, the skeptics in my family — myself included — had changed their minds.

Over the next several weeks, I tested the outdoor TV through rain, heat, humidity, and even a hailstorm. Here's what I learned, and what impressed me most.

Outdoor TVs are a splurge, but their unique features and design justify the cost

Outdoor TVs don't come cheap, and Sylvox's offerings are no exception. I tested the brand's Cinema Pro model, which is one of its top-tier TVs, built for full sunlight and extreme weather. It's available in 65-, 75-, 85-, and 110-inch models with prices starting at $5,499.

For most backyards, the 65-inch model I tested is the best fit, while the larger models are better suited to expansive outdoor living areas. If you have a smaller patio or deck, Sylvox offers more affordable 43- and 55-inch outdoor TVs in its other product lines that are better suited to more compact spaces and areas with less light. For instance, the 43-inch partial-sun Deck Pro 3.0 Series begins at $1,149, while the 43-inch full-sun Pool Pro Series 3.0 starts at $1,649.

But while pricey compared to the best TVs designed for indoor use, outdoor TVs have good reasons to command such a premium. Chris Wang, the electronics engineer for Sylvox, explained, "One of the biggest cost drivers is brightness itself. Producing several times the brightness of a typical indoor TV requires significantly more advanced backlighting components. Then add in the weather-resistant enclosure, corrosion-resistant materials, and specialized engineering needed to protect the electronics from heat, moisture, and UV exposure, and you'll better understand the manufacturing costs."

Setup is mostly straightforward, but a stand is extra

The Cinema Pro TV doesn't come with a stand or bracket, but Sylvox sells optional wall mounts, ceiling mounts, TV lift cabinets, and rolling stands. Because my outside wall space is limited, I opted for the rolling stand ($499), which lets me tuck the TV out of sight when it's not in use and reposition it around the yard.

The rolling stand comes with all the necessary hardware, including a wrench, and the screws and nuts are sealed in plastic bags. The assembly process wasn't especially difficult, but we found the instructions a little confusing. Jack was convinced we had the wrong instruction manual because it seemed to include a bunch of unnecessary steps and referenced parts that weren't even included. Things went more smoothly once we discovered Sylvox's online assembly videos. Lifting the TV onto the rolling stand required two people, but once it was in place, securing it with the included hardware wasn't difficult.

Getting the TV up and running was easy. The Cinema Pro comes with Google TV built in, so logging into YouTube TV, Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming services took only a few minutes. It also has three HDMI ports, so you can connect a separate streaming device or a traditional cable box.

The TV's weather-resistant design held up against rain, wind, and heat

Every time a heavy storm rolled through, I expected to walk outside the next day and discover the TV had stopped working. Instead, the TV survived torrential rain, strong coastal winds, and even summer hail without missing a beat.

Wang explained that the TV's reinforced aluminum-alloy enclosure is designed to resist corrosion, while the internal electronics receive specialized protective coatings that help guard against moisture, mold, and even salt spray (something that immediately caught my attention, considering I tested the TV just a few blocks from the ocean). And all that without a fabric screen cover. Wang shared, "While a cover isn't required, it provides an extra layer of protection that can help extend the television's lifespan." Of note, covers are now included with all Sylvox TVs, so you can add that extra layer of protection when the TV isn't in use.

I was convinced the multiple 90-plus-degree days we've experienced would eventually damage the TV — but so far, so good. Wang said the Cinema Pro is engineered to operate in temperatures ranging from -22°F to 122°F, making it suitable for year-round outdoor use. He also explained that the current models now carry an upgraded IP56 weather-resistance rating, meaning they're designed to withstand dust and driving rain.

The only durability-related issue I encountered involved the remote. At the end of each day, I would drop the remote into the convenient plastic storage holder on the back of the TV. After about a month outdoors, I noticed the tiny screws on the battery compartment had begun to rust. Wang explained that while the remote is designed to withstand splashes and rain, it doesn't have an official IP (Ingress Protection) rating for water resistance. Had I known that from the beginning, I would have brought it inside at night.

The ultra-bright, anti-glare screen looks great, even in direct sunlight

The biggest surprise wasn't just that the Cinema Pro TV survived harsh weather, but also how great the picture looked. I'm told it all has to do with things like Helio QLED and 3,500 nits — a mouthful of tech to someone who's still figuring out all the features on her YouTube TV.

Fortunately, Wang broke it all down for me. Helio QLED is Sylvox's name for its display technology. It combines a QLED panel with Mini LED backlighting to produce a bright, colorful picture that's easy to see outdoors. Wang explained that a "nit" is simply a unit of measurement for screen brightness. "A TV installed under a covered patio typically only needs about 500 to 700 nits, while one in a partially shaded location generally requires 700 to 1,000 nits," he said. "If the screen sits in direct sunlight, however, it needs substantially more brightness to remain easy to see."

The Cinema Pro produces up to 3,500 nits on the 65-, 75-, and 85-inch models and up to 5,000 nits on the 110-inch version. The result? Even on bright summer afternoons, the picture remained crisp, colorful, and easy to see without squinting or searching for shade.

The Cinema Pro also features an anti-reflective screen that scatters incoming light, reducing glare. We never had to change our viewing angle to escape reflections, something I've found myself doing with our indoor TV in our sunroom. The TV also features a 120Hz refresh rate, meaning the screen refreshes 120 times per second, helping fast-moving action scenes, sports, and video games appear smoother with less motion blur.

While all those specifications sound highly technical, what mattered most to my family was much simpler: the picture stayed bright, sharp, and vibrant whether we turned it on in the middle of the afternoon or after sunset.

The TV has changed the way my family spends time together

Having that clear, bright screen changed the dynamic of our summer days and nights. Instead of everyone disappearing into different rooms of our house, we've found ourselves gathering outside to watch games and movies. I joke that it's like having our own drive-in movie theater. It's also become our go-to spot for music. With Google TV built in, it's easy to stream playlists from YouTube Music and other music apps.

You can also cast music, photos, and videos from a compatible phone, tablet, or laptop using Chromecast or Apple AirPlay. We've found ourselves leaving music on while we're grilling, floating in the plunge pool, or entertaining friends.

When I first agreed to test an outdoor TV, I was convinced it would ruin the laid-back feel of our backyard. A few months later, it has become one of our favorite places to spend time together. In the past, when it rained at the shore, we were disappointed because we couldn't go to the beach. Now we're just as disappointed because we can't spend the day outside watching a movie or a game under the stars.

What about the warranty and lifespan?

Outdoor TVs are built to withstand far harsher conditions than indoor models, but they won't last forever. Wang says outdoor TVs typically last five to seven years, depending on the environment, usage, and maintenance. Weekly cleaning can also help extend the TV's lifespan. Wang recommends turning off and unplugging the TV and allowing the screen to cool completely before using a soft, dry microfiber cloth on both the screen and the metal housing. "Avoid alcohol- or ammonia-based cleaners, household glass cleaners, paper towels, and abrasive scrubbers, all of which can damage the anti-reflective screen coating or the finish on the metal housing," he said.

The Cinema Pro Series is backed by a two-year limited warranty, which covers defects in materials and workmanship under normal use (customers can also purchase an extended warranty for additional protection). If a problem arises, Wang said customers should contact Sylvox customer support, and depending on the situation, the company may repair or replace the TV. I read through Sylvox's customer reviews and was encouraged to see that the company appeared responsive to customer concerns and that many reviewers praised the company's customer service.

Cons to consider

Normally, this is the section where I list everything I didn't like about a product. With this TV, I had to think a little harder.

• One minor quirk I noticed during testing was that the TV occasionally went black and needed to be unplugged and restarted. I'm chalking it up to our spotty WiFi on the island.
• Another drawback is that the Cinema Pro doesn't include any mounting hardware. Everything is sold separately, so you'll need to factor those costs into your budget. The most common options include a wall mount starting at $149, a motorized ceiling mount starting at $499, a dual-pole ceiling mount starting at $399, and a rolling TV cart starting at $399 (or $499 for larger models). Lift cabinets are also available if you want to conceal the TV when it's not in use, starting at $3,999 for the 65-inch model and a whopping $5,999 for the 75-inch version, making them more of a luxury upgrade than a necessity.
• Storing a large TV is another consideration. While the Cinema Pro is designed to withstand extreme cold, I'm still not convinced I'll leave it outside through a New Jersey winter. Between the high winds and falling tree limbs that often accompany Nor'easters, I suspect I'll end up storing it indoors during the offseason, which will take up space in my already packed garage. Given its price, I'd also have a hard time leaving it outside unattended, knowing it could be stolen.

What are your alternatives?

Other brands offer similar outdoor TV options, including Sunbrite, Furrion, and Samsung. SunBrite is one of the pioneers in the outdoor TV category. The Veranda 4 series is a good choice for covered patios, screened porches, and other fully shaded outdoor living areas where you need a screen engineered to withstand rain, humidity, heat, and cold without paying a premium for extreme brightness. It's available in 49-, 55-, 65-, and 75-inch sizes, with prices starting at about $2,200.

Furrion has long been a respected name in the RV and outdoor markets, and its premium Partial-Sun series is built specifically for areas that receive a mix of light and shade, such as an exposed deck or open patio. To protect against stray backyard debris or a rogue football, the screen is manufactured with specialized impact-resistant tempered glass. Available in 43-, 55-, 65-, and 75-inch models, the line starts at about $3,100.

Samsung's The Terrace is built for buyers prioritizing top-tier, cinematic performance, combining the company's SmartThings platform with upgraded Neo QLED display technology for vibrant color that can cut through daytime glare. This premium option is built for year-round exposure in both partial-sun and full-sun layouts, with the 55-inch partial-sun base model starting at about $3,500.

The bottom line

In researching this story, I learned that you can buy an outdoor TV designed for partial or full sun, and that it's important to choose one that matches your environment, not just your budget. If your patio is covered for most of the day, a partial-sun model may be all you need. But if the screen will spend hours in direct sunlight, as ours does, investing in a full-sun model like the Sylvox Cinema Pro will make a noticeable difference in picture quality.

Though I was very skeptical about whether I'd enjoy using a TV outdoors, testing the Cinema Pro has completely changed my mind. It's become one of my family's favorite ways to spend time together, and it's genuinely cool to have our own mini drive-in theater. There are important cost and logistical considerations, but if you have the space and budget, an outdoor TV could be the ideal upgrade for your backyard.

• The latest models from the top AI labs keep doing things they aren't supposed to during testing.
• It's raising concerns about AI's growing capabilities and the human capacity to contain it.
• It's also building some serious hype around the next generation of frontier AI models.

The most powerful AI models keep going awry, according to the companies building them.

The disclosures come as frontier AI models get more powerful and more capable of acting autonomously. They also highlight a growing challenge for the companies building them —the systems designed to test increasingly capable models can have weaknesses of their own.

Over the past few weeks, multiple frontier AI models have accessed real systems during cybersecurity testing.

Researchers on Friday said China's popular new Kimi K3 model, made by Moonshot AI, circumvented restrictions in its test environment. Anthropic and Meta also said recently that their own latest models have done things they aren't supposed to. OpenAI kicked it all off last month when its models went to great — and worrisome — lengths to hack into another company.

Amid heightened concern, OpenAI said Friday that its as-yet-unreleased model, Astra, is demonstrating cyber capabilities so advanced that the company can no longer rule out assigning it the highest-risk designation.

As a result, OpenAI said it is pausing work on Astra that doesn't meet new safeguards, and said it will work with government agencies and AI safety groups to further test the model.

"astra is a powerful model and we are working to make it generally available," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote on X on Friday. "given its cyber capabilities, we need a little big longer to do do this safely."

The security lapses during testing are also amping up pressure on the industry and the White House to find ways to regulate AI systems across the board.

There is, of course, also a not small contingent of observers out there who suspect these announcements are just elaborate marketing to hype new models and show antsy investors progress toward the ultimate goal: artificial general intelligence.

You can judge for yourself. Here's how Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, and researchers testing China's Kimi K3 say the latest models have gone off the rails.

OpenAI's models find a way

OpenAI researchers revealed eyebrow-raising new details this week about a recent incident in which AI agents escaped the company's internal testing environment and eventually hacked into Hugging Face's systems in search of answers.

The company said the agents created their own internal message board — even after OpenAI tried to shut it down. One agent reacted to discovering unexpected access by thinking, "Holy shit reader is ADMIN?" Another wrote, "We can communicate now!"

OpenAI researcher Eric Wallace said the agents realized they could accomplish more by working together. "They start to launch these collective attacks on third-party and internal services," he said. The agents eventually turned their attention to Hugging Face.

OpenAI has called the Hugging Face attack an "unprecedented cyber incident." The episode has taken on new significance as OpenAI tests Astra, its unreleased model that the company says may have reached its highest cybersecurity risk level.

"Our latest internal evaluations of Astra, one of our upcoming models, over the past few days indicate significant advancements in agentic coding and cybersecurity," OpenAI said.

OpenAI is imposing stricter security controls on Astra, including sandboxed execution, restricted network access, and stronger protections around model weights. It has also paused internal Astra work that does not meet the heightened requirements.

Anthropic's Claude can do it too

Anthropic said it reviewed more than 141,000 AI tests and found three cases, dating back to April, in which Claude models accessed live systems belonging to real organizations without authorization.

"In all cases, Anthropic's evaluation prompt specified to Claude that its environment was a simulation and that it had no internet access," the company said in a blog post. "Due to a misunderstanding between us and our evaluation partner, this was not the case, and internet access was available," it added, referring to Irregular, an AI security startup.

The incidents involved Claude Opus 4.7, Mythos 5, and an internal research model. Anthropic said it contacted the organizations involved and that two had not known they had been hacked.

The episodes raised questions about whether the bigger failure was the models themselves or the environments containing them. Anthropic said it was discussing a third-party review of the incidents.

Muse Spark exploits a third-party vulnerability

Meta also disclosed a cybersecurity-testing mishap this week. The company said its Muse Spark model "exploited a security vulnerability in a third-party service" during an evaluation.

A Meta spokesperson told Business Insider that the incident stemmed from a misconfiguration by Irregular, which allowed the model to access the internet during testing.

Meta said Irregular notified it about the incident and that the company is investigating. It plans to release more details once that review is complete.

Kimi K3 escapes its sandbox

Researchers at the cybersecurity firm Frontier Security said Kimi K3, a popular new model from the Chinese AI company Moonshot, also bypassed restrictions in a cybersecurity testing environment.

Researchers said the sandbox — a controlled, isolated environment where an AI model can run code — had been improperly configured.

The environment blocked certain web traffic, but Kimi bypassed those restrictions using command-line tools, according to Frontier Security.

The researchers said the incident suggested that some cybersecurity evaluations contain weaknesses that capable models can exploit.

"This suggests that some of the evaluations on cybersecurity that the community uses are susceptible to security vulnerabilities and allow models to cheat," they wrote in a report.

• Ciara Jones surprised her daughter with a night of classic teenage pranks.
• The group went toilet papering, played ding-dong ditch, and did "fire drills."
• She hopes the experience encourages kids to embrace offline fun.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ciara Jones. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My daughter recently turned 13, and there were so many ideas we had about how to celebrate. It's a huge birthday — a big deal for a kid, and we wanted to make it special for her.

In the end, we decided to take her and a few friends to a popular Mexican restaurant, go for snow cones, and then have them all sleep over at our house.

Once we got back home from food, I could hear the girls giggling, and for some reason, a thought popped into my head.

We should go toilet papering.

Maybe it was nostalgia, remembering what I was doing at 13. Maybe I just wanted to introduce her to the type of fun we used to have when I was a kid. Or maybe I just wanted her to experience the utter joy of being a kid while it lasts.

I called friends and family ahead of time to let them know it was us

I came out of my bedroom and told the girls and my husband."Are you serious?" my daughter asked. "Won't we get in trouble?" I said to her we might, but it's a risk I think we should take.

Unbeknownst to her, I had called friends and family and asked if they'd be OK with it. They all agreed, saying to let the kids have fun.

I stuffed every roll of toilet paper we had in the house into a trash bag and hauled it off in the car. The girls were giddy and nervous in the backseat, pumped with adrenaline.

Once we arrived at my aunt's house, we all went for it. The laughs coming out of those girls were unlike any I have ever heard before.

I felt like a kid again

I was transported back in time, feeling like I had left my millennial body and become 13 again. As adults, we don't experience carefree fun like kids. I'm not sure when it happens, but at some point, adult fun becomes going out for a drink or a meal. It can't compare to the joy we experienced as kids.

High on adrenaline, we jumped back into the car, Backstreet Boys and 'Nsync blasting through the speakers.

"Girls, we are going to do a fire drill," I said. They had no idea what I was talking about.

"When we get to a red light, everyone is going to get out of the car, run around the car, and get back in the car before the light turns green," I continued. "You've got to be quick, because if you don't get back before the light turns green, we might leave you."

Of course, we weren't going to leave them, but it made it feel riskier.

They couldn't stop laughing

I wonder if this generation of kids has become risk-averse. I don't know if it has to do with the pandemic or with them being glued to screens and social media. They are in little, electronic bubbles, afraid of what's out there in the real world. I want my kids to learn that measured risks are OK to take, as long as no one gets hurt.

We practiced the fire drill at a quiet intersection, then at a busy one.

The world felt like it was healing as I listened to them and watched people on the street and in their cars react. Everyone thought it was great; no one shouted or scowled at them. The world isn't all bad, even though it sometimes feels it is.

Finally, we played "ding dong ditch," ringing doorbells of people I knew wouldn't mind, and then running away.

That night, we introduced those girls to millennial fun. Fun that didn't revolve around a phone. Fun that makes you feel alive. Everything else in the world disappeared for those few hours, and they lived in the moment, absorbed in joy.

We got home, and I am already planning the next adventures — forking a garden and Saran-wrapping or Post-it-noting a car. This has got to be at least a monthly thing.

• Though the look of an engagement ring is important, it must be designed to last.
• Private jeweler Anna P. Jay said some of the most popular engagement ring styles are impractical.
• Engagement rings with ultra-thin bands and rings with U-prong settings aren't durable.

If you've ever admired someone's engagement ring, you've probably oohed and aahed over the size or shine of "the rock," as many like to call it.

The diamond or other gem in an engagement ring is a key element, but it's important to remember the entire ring needs to be durable since it's typically worn every day.

Unfortunately, some of the most popular engagement ring styles throw practicality out the window in favor of aesthetics.

Business Insider spoke with private jeweler Anna P. Jay, who is based in Nantucket, Massachusetts, and Charleston, South Carolina, about engagement ring styles that may not stand the test of time.

Thin bands aren't that durable

Celebrities like Taylor Swift and Zendaya have been favoring chunkier engagement rings in recent years, but rings with very thin bands are still popular in the market. Jay said the latter can be a mistake.

"I don't like super-thin bands personally because sometimes they're not sturdy," Jay said.

Though thin bands create a sleek look and can make a stone appear larger, they aren't as supportive, particularly if your ring has a large carat stone.

"When you have a larger stone on the top, it becomes top-heavy, so it'll constantly be spinning," Jay said. Thin rings can also bend with use and might need more prongs to keep a stone in place since there is less base support.

Jay said it's better to get a slightly thicker band so the ring will stand the test of time. Plus, an increased width isn't usually noticeable to the naked eye.

"A matter of tens of millimeters makes a huge difference," Jay said.

More isn't always more

Jay said the U-prong eternity band (colloquially called an infinity ring), which has become popular in recent years, isn't that practical either.

The entire band of an eternity ring is covered in diamonds or another jewel. There are multiple styles of eternity rings, but the U-prong setting is especially popular because it has very little visible metal and focuses the attention on the gems. It's also the least practical, according to Jay.

"U-prong settings are incredibly impractical," Jay said. "People like them because of the lack of metal, but I'll make it, and I've had to reset or tighten prongs after a week of wear."

"I think jewelry should be worn, and if you can't wear it because it's too fragile, what's the point?" she said.

In addition, eternity rings cannot be resized because the entire band is set with diamonds or another stone.

That's a problem, as most people's fingers change size throughout their lives, Jay said. Because it can't be easily resized, an eternity band may have to be reset entirely at some point.

Jay recommends halfway or even three-quarter bands as an alternative, since a partially metal band makes it easy to resize.

With all aspects of engagement rings, Jay advises people to have open conversations with their partner about what they expect from a ring.

"Make sure you do talk to your partner about what you want because it's not a cup of coffee," she said. "We can't just throw it away and start again."

"This is often the most expensive piece of jewelry a lot of people will purchase, and it's the first piece of jewelry a lot of people will purchase," Jay added. "Let's make sure we nail it."

• Each year, my family rents a home on a lake that my great-great-grandparents went to.
• We skipped a year to prioritize traveling to new places, and regretted it.
• I've realized that the tradition and comfort are worth the cost.

A few weeks ago, my daughters were floating in the water of New Hampshire's Lake Winnipesaukee, with my mother and grandmother. I snapped a quick picture and then joined them, thinking how special it is to have four generations swimming together.

But I wasn't only considering the generations that were there — I was also thinking of the two generations that came before. My grandmother's grandmother also came to this lake and floated in this exact spot.

I'm not a religious person, but there's something spiritual about watching your kids play in the same water where their great-great-great-grandmother frolicked.

These are the big-picture ideas that I have to embrace when it comes to Lake Winnipesaukee, which is only about an hour from my home. My logical, budget-conscious brain tells me it's silly to spend on what's essentially a staycation, but my heart knows it's worth every penny.

I pay $2,000 for my share of a lake vacation

With so many generations coming to the lake, our family has spread out to various houses in the same cove our ancestors stayed in. The camp my grandmother attended as a girl is now owned by a very distant cousin. The one I visited as a kid is owned by my aunt, and we're lucky to have access to a few free overnights each year.

But to really get our lake fill, my immediate family rents another distant cousin's camp for a week each August. He gives us a family discount of $6,000 for the week (a steep price cut from the $10,000 going rate). My husband and I pay $2,000 for our portion of the camp.

There's a lot I could be doing with that money. This winter, I researched trips to Jamaica ($2,400) and Portugal ($2,800) that were in the same ballpark as my annual lake week. But I just can't give it up.

I regretted the summer we skipped

Three summers ago, my family agreed to skip our annual vacation. My mother and sister had just purchased a home, so they were tight on time and money. My husband had been encouraging me to consider new places we could explore with our vacation fund, and I was willing to try.

That summer we went on plenty of trips, to Vermont, Boston, and Martha's Vineyard. But I knew we'd made a mistake skipping the lake. I arrived in September depleted. The annual week at Winnipesaukee fills my soul in ways that an overnight or weekend away simply can't.

I've adjusted how I think about lake spending

When I think about my travel budget, I envision adventure and new experiences. My daughters are being raised in a tiny rural town, and I have an obligation to show them the world.

And yet I've realized my annual lake week, which is about grounding and tradition, is just as important as exposure to new places. I get to watch my kids meet third- and fourth-cousins who they would never know if we didn't return to this place. They connect with family lore about their great-great-grandmother (who may or may not haunt the island), and play the same silly pranks my uncle perfected. I get so much fulfillment and joy from sitting on the island with my family.

Since the year we skipped the lake, I think of our vacation budget with two buckets: one for exploring new places, and the other for fostering a connection with our family history. It may not be as exciting, but that time and the traditions are valuable beyond measure.

• A version of this story originally appeared in the BI Tech Memo newsletter.
• Sign up for the weekly BI Tech Memo newsletter here.

If AI really is coming for the software industry, which companies have the best chance of making it through?

This has been on my mind again this week after the gruesome acquisition of Airtable. This former SaaS startup darling was valued at more than $11 billion during the pandemic tech boom in 2021. It sells a tool for organizing work and related information. On Tuesday, it was acquired for $1.3 billion.

Later in the week, HubSpot, a major SaaS vendor, plunged after disappointing guidance. But Atlassian surged after much better results.

The SaaS sector has been pummeled this year by investors worrying whether some of these companies will even survive. So, how do you spot survivors in the wreckage?

Barclays strategists tried to answer that question by looking backward instead of forward. They studied five major technology shakeups from the past: the rise of digital advertising, streaming, smartphones, online shopping, and shale gas. They looked at what separated the companies that survived from the ones that didn't.

The answer wasn't what you might expect.

The winners weren't necessarily the fastest-growing companies or the ones that spent the most money. Instead, the survivors tended to share four traits: healthy profit margins, strong cash generation, low debt, and high employee productivity. Those qualities gave management more room to adapt when their industry suddenly changed.

It's a useful reminder as the SaaSpocalypse debate gathers pace. Much of the conversation around AI has focused on who has the smartest models or the flashiest product demos. Barclays argues those may not be the defining factors. When an entire industry is under pressure, financial strength and operational discipline may matter more than rapid growth. Companies with healthy profits can absorb shocks. Those carrying less debt have more flexibility to change direction. Efficient businesses simply have more options.

Using those characteristics, Barclays created a "Resilient Software" basket. AppLovin, Freshworks, and InterDigital ranked highest across the broader software universe. Looking only at software companies that Barclays already rates positively, Datadog, Veeva Systems, and Zscaler came out on top, followed by Microsoft, Intuit, PTC, Autodesk, Salesforce, Palo Alto Networks, and ServiceNow.

No screen can predict who will win the AI era. But this framework offers a refreshing way to think about the software industry. The companies most likely to survive may not be the ones racing fastest. They may simply be the ones with the strongest balance sheets and the most room to maneuver as AI rewrites the rules.

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

• I finished my postdoctoral training in New York City, where I worked with families and kids.
• After moving to Wichita, I saw just how thriving families can look so different in different places.
• A healthy dynamic doesn't look the same for every family, and I've taken this lesson into my work.

The drive-thru line at Chick-fil-A stretched around the block, packed with oversized SUVs at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday. Engines idled.

No one honked. No one seemed in a hurry. It was one of my first glimpses of life in Wichita, and it felt like a different world.

I had just finished my postdoctoral training in New York City, where I had worked with children and families in a wide range of settings. I was confident I understood family systems. I had the degrees, the supervised clinical hours, and the professional language to explain how families function under pressure.

Then I had my first son, and my husband's job brought us to Wichita.

Here, I found a dramatically different rhythm

Geography dictates many things, from food to recreational activities.

Despite a plethora of farms, fresh produce felt scarce in many areas. Flat vistas, no ocean in sight, and real tornado threats. Yes, Dorothy, I was really in Kansas.

Community looked different in this Midwestern city, too. Sunday mornings were quiet: no lawn mowers, no delivery trucks — not because nothing was "happening," but because people were at church, had personal commitments, and reason to pause in a way I had never seen on the East Coast.

In New York City, Sunday mornings meant brunch reservations and open inboxes ahead of the workweek.

What struck me most was the way people spoke, and the naturally unrushed pace of speech. There was no impulse to fill the silence. No one really said, "We should get lunch sometime," with no intention of doing it.

If someone said they would call you, they called you. If they said they would show up, they showed up.

On the East and West Coasts, where I had lived as a child, I had grown fluent in a kind of conversational currency where words were placeholders for intentions that may or may not exist.

In Wichita, people meant what they said and said what they meant. I remember thinking, quietly and repeatedly, that this was a beautiful thing.

Professionally, Wichita taught me a lot

As a clinician trained to assess family systems, I did not experience my new life as merely observation. I experienced it as data.

I had spent years learning to recognize healthy functioning against a fairly narrow, unspoken standard, one shaped almost entirely by the fast, achievement-oriented environment I trained in.

Watching an entirely different rhythm operate successfully, with its own coherence, its own values, its own quiet integrity, was not something my training had prepared me to see up close.

The lesson was not that one rhythm is correct and the other is not. The lesson was that families do not follow a single template for pace, values, or connection.

A family can be thriving while looking almost nothing like the families I had been trained to recognize as thriving.

It is easy, especially coming out of a field trained heavily in one regional context, to mistake familiarity for health. A fast-paced, achievement-oriented family is not inherently dysfunctional. Neither is a slower, more relationship-centered one, built around Costco runs and Sunday mornings and saying exactly what you mean.

What matters clinically is whether a family's own rhythm is actually working for them, not whether it resembles the one I happened to experience myself growing up and in my training.

These lessons stayed with me long after I left Kansas

Today, I'm based in Pennsylvania, though my work takes me into homes across the country.

Every family brings its own history, community, geography, values, and way of moving through the world. Those influences don't exist outside the family system. They are woven into it.

Now, whenever I conduct an intake for a clinical evaluation or a school-admissions strategy session, one of the first questions I ask parents is, "Where are you from?" I want to know not only where they live now, but also about the roots that shaped them long before their child was born.

My training taught me how to recognize patterns. Wichita taught me to ask where those patterns came from before deciding whether they needed to change.

Every place we live leaves its imprint on a family. The communities we call or have called home shape our expectations, beliefs, and even the way we communicate with each other.

Understanding a family means understanding and accepting those roots, not as a point of comparison, but as a foundation to a healthy dynamic.

• I've worked as a flight attendant for several years and have seen passengers make many mistakes.
• Don't leave the airport during a long delay, but do consider paying extra to choose your seat.
• Get to the airport at least two hours before a domestic flight and three before international ones.

I became a flight attendant in 2022, and the job has made me a better traveler. It's also made me a more frequent one, and I prioritize taking vacations almost every month.

Last year alone, I flew on over 250 flights. Along the way, I've learned some great travel tips and witnessed some mishaps in airports and on planes.

Whether I'm flying as a passenger or as a crewmember, these are the most common mistakes I see travelers make:

Failing to get to the airport early enough

I often see passengers miss their flights because they didn't give themselves enough time to get to and through the airport.

It's worth following what might be a golden rule of air travel: Get to the airport two hours before departure for domestic flights and three hours before for international ones.

People often ask me what the latest time they can get to the airport is because they don't want to wait around. But in my opinion, trying to arrive as late as possible isn't worth the risk.

Unexpected situations can arise — parking could be challenging to find, the check-in counter could be understaffed, TSA could be backed up, or your gate could change.

Regardless, I'd rather have the extra time to relax at the airport before my flight. If the day goes smoothly, you can use those extra hours to refill your water bottle, stop by the restroom, grab a coffee, and buy snacks for the plane.

Also, remember that departure time is different from door-closure time. Boarding typically ends around 15 minutes before departure.

After the aircraft door is shut, the gate agents won't reopen it for you.

Overindulging at the airport bar

Don't get me wrong — when I'm traveling for fun instead of work, I also love a pre-departure drink. Just be careful not to overdo it.

The FAA strictly prohibits airlines from allowing intoxicated passengers to board a plane.

A big reason is that intoxicated passengers will likely have trouble following crewmembers' instructions, especially in an emergency. Alcohol could also cause a passenger to become belligerent, which is harder to control in the air than on the ground.

If the crew notices that a passenger appears to be intoxicated during boarding, they are legally required to report it.

From there, a specially trained airline employee called a Complaint Resolution Official (CRO) will usually come on board to assess the passenger. If the CRO confirms the passenger to be intoxicated, the FAA requires them to be removed from the flight.

This is the most common reason I've had to have passengers kicked off my flights.

Leaving the airport during a long delay

Did you know flights can "un-delay"? It's rare, but it happens.

Airlines try to avoid this by delaying flights in small increments at a time. Sometimes, though, a solution could come up that reverses the delay.

For example, the airline could locate a replacement plane for your flight, a different crew could become available to work, or the weather could clear up faster than expected.

If you live far from the airport and see that your flight is delayed, you might see it as an opportunity to arrive later. If you live nearby, you might even take this as an opportunity to go home.

However, regardless of how long your flight is delayed, you should remain close enough to the airport to get to your gate with little notice.

If the delay reverses and you're not there, the plane will leave without you.

Not securing your seat in advance

If you don't select your seat in advance, you are not guaranteed to be seated with the people you're traveling with. This is true even if you booked the flights on the same reservation — and even if you're traveling with kids.

If you need to be seated next to your travel buddy, you should select your seats in advance. Even if you're traveling alone, I still recommend choosing your seat.

If you don't, you'll get everyone else's leftovers, which is usually a middle seat. In addition, if you have a tight connection, it might be worth paying for a seat closer to the front.

When I fly as a passenger, I always pick my seat. I want the window seat on short flights because I like the view, and the aisle for long-hauls so I can get up without disturbing anyone else.

Some airlines will let you choose your seat for free, but others will charge a fee. Regardless, I believe it's worth it.

Not wiping down your seat before you sit in it

Cleaning procedures vary across airlines, but generally, I've seen the process between flights be pretty minimal.

Think about how quickly you sometimes see flights boarding after watching the previous passengers deplane. Depending on the airline or even the airport, cleaning might primarily consist of picking up visible trash and vacuuming.

Considering I see bare feet and dirty diapers on the tray tables almost daily, I never travel without my own disinfecting wipes.

In my opinion, the only way to truly guarantee your seat has been sanitized is to do it yourself.

• Henry Chen went from wedding DJ to Meta engineer before being laid off after 13 years.
• He taught himself to code, rising from conference room technician to tech lead.
• Chen shared how he's navigated his job search since being laid off in May.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Henry Chen, a former Meta tech lead who was laid off in May. He's 38 and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

After I left college, I worked as a DJ for a few years, taught myself to code, and eventually found my way to Facebook.

I started at Facebook as a contractor in 2012, and then worked my way up into a full-time engineering role. After more than 13 years with the company, I was laid off in May.

I'm grateful for everything I learned during my time at Facebook, later Meta. Overall, it was a very positive experience. But after the company's major layoffs in late 2022 and early 2023, things started to change.

Before then, I felt our teams had the resources to build ambitious projects. Following the layoffs, the focus seemed to shift toward doing more with less. About a year and a half later, the focus seemed to shift again, with a renewed emphasis on building. Between leadership changes and shifting priorities, it became harder to know where my team was headed and what we should prioritize.

The ongoing changes were especially difficult for me because I was on paternity leave from August 2025 through near the end of the year. By the time I returned to work, the company was using AI much more extensively, there had been team and leadership shifts, and it took me some time to get reacclimated. After being away for four months, it felt like the whole company had changed.

On May 20, I learned that I'd lost my job — and that many of my colleagues had lost theirs, too.

I started looking for work before the layoff — then stopped once it happened

The layoffs themselves weren't entirely surprising because the company had already confirmed they were coming. I was still surprised to be affected, even though I'd felt more uneasy about this round than the previous ones.

During earlier layoffs, I felt relatively secure because I believed my work was critical to the company. This time, nothing specific gave me a sign I would be affected, but the situation just felt different.

In the weeks leading up to my layoff, I'd already started looking for new roles. I was feeling a little more anxious about the possibility of losing my job, and I'd also been doing some introspection, thinking it might be time for a new chapter in my career.

Once I was laid off, my approach changed. Meta provided a generous severance package that reflected my roughly 10 years as a full-time employee. That financial cushion, combined with the start of my kids' summer break, made it feel like the right time to take a break. I spent time with my family, tried to relax, and planned to resume my job search after about a month.

From DJ to Meta engineer

When I resumed my job search, I found myself reflecting on my career — and which types of roles to pursue.

In the early 2010s, I was pursuing a degree at San Jose State University. I planned to go into education and become a teacher, but I left school before earning my degree for personal reasons. Before leaving school, I started working as a DJ and continued for a while after, but I eventually began looking for a different career path.

I came across an AV engineering contract role that involved inspecting conference rooms. My background working with audio and video equipment made me a good fit. The coolest part was that the contract was at Facebook. I didn't think it would turn into a career — I saw it as a way to earn some money while figuring out what to do next. I decided to give it a shot and started the role in 2012.

From there, Facebook grew quickly, and my role grew with it. Within a few years, I progressed from inspecting conference rooms as a technician to tackling more advanced work, including building out conference rooms. In 2015, I landed a full-time operations engineer role managing the collaboration technologies used in Facebook's conference rooms.

Around 2017, Facebook's growth accelerated further, and so did the number of conference rooms. I started experimenting with Python, despite having very little coding experience, to help solve the problems presented while scaling. I wrote a script that made it much faster to update conference room technology, and it changed the direction of my career.

Over the next several years, I transitioned into a software engineering role focused on the technology behind Meta's conference rooms, eventually becoming a tech lead.

I'm working with a coach to help with my job search

When I resumed my job search in June, I found myself split between a few different paths: roles in the collaboration technology space, where I'd spent much of my career, broader IT roles at smaller companies, and software engineering opportunities, where I could continue building on the coding skills I'd developed over the past decade.

I hadn't interviewed for a job in 10 years, which is a long time in the tech industry. So before diving into applications, I decided to brush up on software engineering interview topics and identify any gaps in my skill set.

While I'd spent years building software at Meta, many of the tools and systems I worked on were unique to the company. To prepare for my next role, I'm strengthening my understanding of industry-standard system design by designing and building a software system from the ground up. I'm doing this with the help of a coach I found, who helps people understand system design and prepare for software engineering interviews.

I'm still looking for a new role, but am optimistic

After about a month of preparation, I've started actively searching LinkedIn for opportunities, reaching out to my network, and applying for jobs.

For anyone navigating a layoff or job search, I'd encourage them to think carefully about what comes next. If you have the financial flexibility, don't feel pressured to take the first offer that comes along. I'm grateful to have the flexibility to try to find a role where I'll continue to learn and grow.

When it comes to navigating your career, one lesson I've learned is to say yes to problems and look for opportunities to solve them. Every challenge I took on became a stepping stone to the next opportunity, and that's ultimately what helped me grow from a DJ to a conference room technician to a tech lead.

Do you have a story to share? Reach out to the reporter via email at jzinkula@businessinsider.com, or via Signal at jzinkula.29.

• Traveling with only a backpack taught me that most workouts don't require special clothes or gear.
• Renting or borrowing equipment has let me try sports around the world without spending a lot.
• Focusing on movement instead of appearances has made exercising while traveling much easier.

One unexpected lesson I learned from traveling with just a backpack is that you can't make excuses if you want to stay active. If you spend time looking for the perfect outfit, the best gear, or the right location, you'll end up with a long list of reasons why you can't exercise.

"I don't have the right clothes to go to yoga class," one of my family members said this week when I invited her to a free session at the local recreation center. We were both vacationing with only a backpack's worth of clothes. She skipped the class, and I went in the same outfit I'd already worn for biking, walking, and pickleball that day.

As long as I feel comfortable and safe, I'll say yes to almost any exercise while I'm traveling. Living out of a single backpack for months at a time has completely changed how I think about staying healthy.

I was inspired to adopt this mindset in my early 20s while living in a rural village in Cameroon. My only options for exercise were running through the jungle and carrying buckets of drinking water from the well to my house. Since then, I've realized that if I want to take care of my body in different environments and situations, I have to be willing to work with whatever conditions I have.

I realized that most workouts can be done in the same outfit

I pack one quick-dry, breathable shirt, a pair of shorts, and two sports bras for every trip. I wear the same waterproof trail running shoes whether I'm hiking, playing pickleball, or walking around a new city.

Sun protection is just as important. A bandana keeps the sun off my neck while also holding back my hair, and I pack lightweight sun gloves that double as cycling gloves. That same outfit even works for many water sports when I want extra sun coverage.

Sometimes people arrive at yoga classes wearing expensive matching sets. I'm just proud that I figured out how to find and sign up for a workout in a new country. Any self-consciousness I might feel about my clothes disappears as soon as class begins. Besides, the people I meet while traveling will probably never see me again.

While I will run in the rain, sun, or snow, I have limits. I don't feel bad about skipping an intense three-day trek because I didn't pack heavy hiking boots. Traveling light means accepting a few trade-offs, and I'm comfortable with that.

I borrow or rent gear instead of buying it

Some sports also have specialized equipment, which can get expensive, but you can rent or borrow whatever you need if you're resourceful. I've been handed a karate uniform in Seoul, climbing shoes for bouldering in Hanoi, a surfboard in Peru, and a helmet for windsurfing in Thessaloniki.

Buying and hauling sports equipment around the world would be expensive, heavy, and impractical. By not owning much gear, I feel freer to try new activities wherever I go. Sports that require me to purchase lots of expensive equipment, like scuba diving or skiing, simply aren't a priority for me.

When I'm booking accommodations, I look for places with bikes or a yoga mat. If I'm visiting friends, I'll happily ask to borrow whatever equipment we need for an activity. I also benefit from having a boyfriend who's the same size as me, which effectively doubles my workout wardrobe whenever we're together.

Traveling light reminds me that working out should be simple

Exercise should be easy and affordable. Wearing the same outfit for nearly every workout reminds me that I'm there to care for my body, not to impress anyone.

I spend less time packing, shopping, and deciding what to wear, and more time actually moving. Living for months out of a backpack has taught me that I don't need perfect conditions to stay active. I just need to show up.

There's a lot of downtime when traveling, and it goes by a lot slower if I'm in the wrong pants. The best travel pants for women we tested feel soft, stretchy, and flexible in the long hours between destinations.

To find lightweight styles you can wear right out of your suitcase, we assessed 22 pairs to see which resist wrinkles and work with a variety of airport outfits. These are the pairs we put on for a chic, laid back look on the road.

I've styled my favorites with strappy sandals and a silk tank this summer, and other times with comfy sneakers and a protective hat. Check out our guides to the best travel jackets and travel purses to pack ahead of your trip.

Best overall travel pants for women: M.M. LaFleur Colby Travel Pant

We elected the Colby Travel Pants as our best overall pick because they're low maintenance, effortlessly chic, and will work hard while you're on the road. With their stretchy waistband and deep swishy pockets, it hardly feels like I'm wearing suit pants. The lightweight fabric drapes crisply, yet remains soft and breathable on the skin after multiple washes.

These will hardly wrinkle, even after being stuffed unceremoniously to the bottom of a travel tote. When you're on a trip with a packed itinerary that leaves you no time to iron, these are the pants to wear. M.M. LaFleur is one of our favorite sources for splurge-worthy office staples, and the Colby Travel Pants are precisely why. They're made with a remarkably silky and light polyester blend that holds its shape and doesn't crease while crammed in a carry-on.

We know: "polyester" and "luxury workwear" may not sound like they go together. But trust me, these are worth it. After all, not all polyester is created equal — the scratchy, suffocating polyester you'll find at the mall is another thing entirely compared to M.M. LaFleur's 'Origami Tech,' which is soft, smooth, and machine washable. Nothing else I've touched — not even the crepe Aritzia Effortless Pant — can approach the Origami Tech's silk-like texture.

They're so flexible I can sit in them for hours in bizarre cross-legged positions. The sleek, tapered legs allows for smooth movement while I navigated a busy train platform. On my 5-foot-9 frame they're cropped, which I like because it means they won't drag on the floor as I move through crowded public transit stations. They fit full-length on our 5-foot-2 executive editor Sally Kaplan.

The secretly stretchy waistband is bloat-friendly. It's tucked in the rear while the front features a pintuck detail, making them unmistakably polished. I was especially grateful for this feature when I was seated for hours on a train and had to go straight to dinner after. — Gabrielle Chase, senior associate style editor, Insider Reviews

A clever denim dupe: Rag & Bone Miramar Wide-Leg Pants

"I get compliments on my 'sweans' wherever I go," writes senior associate style editor Gabrielle Chase. They're some of the best not-so-secret style solutions we've witnessed from the past few years. Real jeans are often too bulky and stiff for travel, but these faux denim terry cotton pants are a worthy replacement. They roll up neatly and look cool with a simple tee and sneakers.

The "denim" looks surprisingly real. When I wore the jogger version of these pants, I fooled my husband who believed I was wearing traditional denim — until I had him feel the soft sweatpant fabric and elastic waistband. "I too was amazed at how real they looked — right down to the faux fly and lightly distressed denim details," adds Gabrielle.

They flatter a variety of body shapes. "I'm 5-foot-9 and when pulled all the way up around my waist, the inseam reaches a bit past my ankles in flats, so I'd definitely recommend these jeans for tall women. Thankfully, because the waistband is so stretchy, I have the option to sling them low and let the hems puddle around my ankles," writes Gabrielle.

"I love the look of a wide-leg jean but have also sworn off hard pants, so these are my dream come true!" writes Sally Kaplan, executive editor. "I'm short and curvy, so I knew these would be a little long on me, but I don't even care. I just safety pin them at the back of the hem to keep them from catching under my heels, and no one is the wiser. Since my first pair arrived, I've already ordered a second."

The fabric is lightweight yet substantial. "The stretchy terry cloth sweatpant air dries quickly, as it's more breathable than fleece sweats," Gabrielle notes. I found the pants were even wearable in New Jersey's July heat. They accompanied me on a six-hour road trip, keeping me snug during the long drive but looking pulled together when we stopped for a mid-way lunch.

Read more in our full Rag & Bone Sweatpant Jeans review.

Sporty-chic and lightweight: Lululemon Align Palazzo Pant

If you're traveling somewhere warm, these allow for plenty of breathing room. The legs are wide and billowy, but the pleats give them a bit of structure in the lap area. I also felt the sweat-wicking properties kick in when I landed in 80° with high humidity. I honestly feel like I could've slept in them the same night and wouldn't have felt sticky.

The material is buttery soft and stretchy. I wore these on my 3-hour flight to Florida and loved the way the smooth, high-rise waistband hugs my middle without constricting it. When I wore the Align Palazzo Pants with this cropped lululemon tank, I noticed the hemlines perfectly lined up at my exact waist. It shows the brand designs its pieces to be worn as full ensembles, even though they look great on their own.

As a bonus, the right pocket has a mesh card sleeve. I wouldn't actually use it to carry a card I cared about, since it's not very secure. But I did use it to hold my earbud case, which prevented it from rolling around loosely in my pocket. There's also a slip pocket in the rear for a small set of keys.

Best for long flights: Cozy Earth Brushed Bamboo Joggers

The value of these comfy travel jogger pants is that they also come as a matching set. Together they're priced competitively against popular sweatsuits we've tested. However, the Brushed Bamboo Joggers stand in their own right as some of the softest lounge pants to wear on long journeys.

For long-haul journeys and redeye flights, I prioritize comfort and softness above all else. But when I don't want to arrive looking totally disheveled after hours crammed into tight quarters or a sleepless night, I reach for this two-piece Cozy Earth set. They're extremely soft and have substantial weight to them.

Made from a buttery-soft blend of brushed bamboo, acrylic, and Spandex, it's ultra comfortable to wear for long periods of time. I've yet to see a single crease since I started wearing it several months ago. I own the navy color, though it also comes in black, charcoal, or olive. The pullover top and slim-fitting joggers look far nicer than standard sweatpants, and I feel like I'm wearing pajamas without looking the part. — Emily Hochberg, style contributor, Insider Reviews

Cooling sweats: Vuori Halo Essential Wideleg Pant

The silky, sweat-wicking fabric keeps you comfortably cool. "Sometimes, poly-elastane blends fail miserably at ventilating. Especially on flights, I tend to sweat profusely," says travel writer Maria Yagoda. "Thankfully, the Vuori wide-leg sweatpants moisture-wicked like a dream, even as I expected to get clammy and sticky around hour 5, or 10, or 15 [of my flight]."

They're not bad in chilly plane cabins, either. "The Halo Essential sweatpants are not made of fibers usually associated with cooling like bamboo or cotton, which I ordinarily prefer," adds Maria. "Yet somehow, this specific jersey knit allowed for maximum airflow while keeping me warm (but not sweaty) as the plane AC went on full blast around hour 13."

The high-rise fit comes in three different lengths. That means petite and tall people can find a well-proportioned version of these wide-leg travel pants, which earned the top spot in our guide to the best sweatpants for women. Read more in our full Vuori Halo Essential Wideleg Pant review.

Best for hot weather: AE Stretch Low-Rise Linen-Blend Pull-On Pant

Our favorite linen pants for summer travel are perfect for stuffy cars and hot weather destinations. This affordable pair comes with an adjustable elastic waistband, with side pockets and back pockets for convenience. Plus, they're made with a stretchy, machine- washable fabric blend that gives off a coastal-chic elegance.

The touch of elastic helps them hold their shape better than pure linen. We've all been there: You do one final fit check in the mirror, step into your car, and those linen pants that looked so polished mere seconds ago are already wrinkled. Because linen is made from stiff flax fibers with virtually no elasticity, it doesn't snap back into shape easily. One way around this is to blend linen with other fabrics, which is what American Eagle cleverly did with these Stretch Low-Rise Linen-Blend Pull-On Pants.

The addition of cotton, rayon, and elastane not only makes the pants feel super soft but also helps keep them relatively wrinkle-free. That makes them an ideal piece to pack in your suitcase. And because they feature a touch of stretch and a drawstring waistband, they're comfy enough to wear even for long-haul flights — but you also won't have to worry about looking sloppy when you arrive at your final destination.

As a general rule, I avoid low-rise pants like the plague (hey, I'm a millennial and I barely survived the early 2000s unscathed). However, I have to say these pants pleasantly surprised me. They only come in one inseam length, but still offer a reasonable amount of coverage. Thanks to the adjustable waistband, I never had any sagging or slipping. — Rebecca Strong, style contributor, Insider Reviews

A tapered ankle-length fit: Cozy Earth Always Cropped Pant

Cozy Earth makes my all-time favorite pajamas, so I was excited to try the brand's daywear. I tested the Always Cropped Pant and found it aptly monikered, thanks to its versatility.

They're easy to dress up or down. I wore these elastic-waist pants with sandals and a t-shirt for a day of running errands. The nylon-spandex blend fabric was about as comfy as yoga pants, but looked more put-together. In the evening, I switched into heels and a blouse for a dinner date. I was impressed with how polished the pants looked, especially since they were forgiving after a pasta dinner. The faux fly helps give a more flattering look, too.

They're not too hot in the summer. Thanks to the cropped silhouette and lightweight, stretchy fabric, these pants kept me plenty cool in 80-degree weather.

They don't wrinkle despite hours of wear. I love that I could wear these for long travel days since they're comfortable, stretchy and don't wrinkle. They're equally great for packing, though. They fold up nicely and are compact.

Though the website says these run true to size, I found they run a touch small, though it wasn't too bothersome for me. I'm 5-foot-7 and they hit me right above the ankle — shorter people might find they fit more like long pants.

Best high-waisted: Athleta Endless High Rise Pant

Athleta's Endless High Rise Pants earned high marks when I tested the most comfortable work pants, but the buttery-soft semi-fitted bottoms are also well suited for travel. For a cozy matching ensemble to wear on your journey, Athleta also make some of the best sweatsuits I've tested.

They're the most versatile pants I own. Comfortable as loungewear, elegant enough for the office, and stretchy and lightweight for workouts, these pants can truly do it all. I've worn them with sneakers and a t-shirt for a light hike but also paired them with heels and a sweater for an evening out. The comfy, wide elastic waistband is always flattering, and the faux zipper makes these pants look dressier than they feel.

They barely wrinkle in a suitcase. I've packed these bottoms for multiple trips and have appreciated not needing to whip out the hotel ironing board when I pull these from my suitcase. The recycled polyester-Spandex fabric stretches and naturally releases wrinkles.

There are so many size and color options. Right now, the Endless High Rise Pants are available in seven colors, but Athleta is constantly adding new hues into the mix. There's also a cargo version, which has two functional cargo pockets along with the same zip pockets as the OG version. Both the cargo and the regular come in petite, regular, and tall lengths.

Best for work trips: Aritzia The Effortless Pant

I've long been on the hunt for the perfect pair of loose trousers, and I've finally found them. Aritzia's wrinkle-proof Effortless Pants check all boxes: comfort, style, versatility, and sophistication.

When you compare the whole collection, we like the Crepette and (Re)ssential light versions best. They both drape nicely, are appropriate for year-round wear, and don't wrinkle much. The CruiseLinen feels nice in the heat, but required a good ironing after being packed away.

The Japanese crepe fabric is wrinkle-proof. The Essential Pants come in a variety of fabric options, but the Japanese crepe is ideal for travel thanks to its subtle texture, breezy drape, and ability to resist wrinkles. I sat in these pants for over eight hours, and they looked just as polished at the end of the day as they did the beginning.

Despite not having a super stretchy fabric, they're unbelievably comfortable. As far as pants without elastic waistbands and super stretchy fabrics go, these are the most comfortable ones I've ever had on my body. The lightweight fabric with a wide-leg silhouette gently drapes like a luxe but not flimsy pair of pajamas. The hook-and-bar closure waistband fits snugly without digging in. I could easily wear these on a long flight without issue.

They come in various lengths and a curve fit. Initially, I sampled the non-curve silhouette and didn't find it flattering on my pear-shaped figure. I then tested the curve version, which has an additional 2 inches in the low hip and 1.5 inches in the thigh, and those fit me perfectly. The only downside to the curve version is that there are fewer colors and only one length option available (Aritzia, please make more!). The original version comes in 22 colors and has four length options, with the Regular inseam just hitting the floor on my 5-foot-7 frame.

Read more in our full Aritzia Effortless Pant review.

Budget-friendly and super stretchy: HalaraFlex Wide Leg Micro Waffle Work Pants

These affordable wide-leg slip-ons are like pajama pants you can wear to work, thanks to their plicated tailoring. They'd be perfect for long plane rides since they're cozy enough to snooze in.

After hours of wear, they didn't wrinkle at all. Crafted from Lycra, these Halara pants have a fine waffle knit that's designed to resist wrinkles. I wore these all day both sitting and standing and they didn't get a single wrinkle. They packed nicely, and once unfolded they were still crease-free.

The fabric is stretchy and breathable. According to the brand, the material absorbs sweat and you can even work out in it. There are functional side pockets, too. Unfortunately, there's only regular and long inseams available — I'm 5-foot-7 and the regular length grazed the floor when I go barefoot.

You can comfortably fly in these pants. Thanks to the stretchy fabric and elastic waistband, these pants are definitely comfortable enough to be worn on long plane rides. Then, you can rewear them as part of a casual or dressy outfit during your trip, saving you precious luggage space.

Best joggers: Beyond Yoga Spacedye Commuter Jogger

Meet the perfect pants for plane travel. The best part of these ultra-comfy Beyond Yoga joggers is that they can be repurposed and dressed up during your trip. They're a bit different than the Cozy Earth joggers in that they're more like a swishy nylon than a soft brushed bamboo. This makes them better for hikes and adventures long after you've deplaned.

The comfy fabric is perfectly warm, but not overly insulating. Plane cabins can get chilly, so I always travel in a pair of comfy pants that'll also keep me warm. That said, you don't want to go overboard on the warmth in case you're stuck idling on the tarmac and the plane's AC is broken (yes, this has happened to me, and it was brutal). These buttery soft joggers with four-way stretch are the perfect mid-weight.

They're durable enough for outdoor activities. The pants are made from a moisture-wicking fabric, so feel free to work out in them. They also offer UV protection for your outdoor adventures.

They can be dressed up, too. Versatile pieces allow you to travel lighter. I paired these slim-fit joggers with a sweater and a pair of heeled boots and wore them out to dinner. They looked plenty cute, and I appreciated the elastic waistband after finishing my meal.

Sharp yet buttery-soft: Carbon28 Split Bootcut Legging

Black flare leggings are some of the best pants for travel because they're both flexible and sporty-chic. This svelte pair by Carbon38 ups the style factor with a split flared bootcut hem.

How they compare: Against Aritzia's wide-leg Effortless Pants or Halara stretchy work pants, they accomplish a different look entirely: a sleek, leg-lengthening fit that contrasts nicely with an oversized tee or wide-shoulder blazer.

They're compact for packing. Dressy leggings are great for packing since you can fold them down a lot and they don't take up much space in a suitcase.

They transition from day to night. I wore these during the daytime with sneakers and an oversized sweater. For dinner and drinks, I threw on a blazer, changed into pumps, and swiped on a red lip. The pants looked polished in both scenarios.

The high waist is flattering and comfortable. I love the high-waisted cut on these pants, which was tummy-smoothing and figure-flattering. It also helps elongate the look of your legs. The light support was comfortable but not compressing, which is better for travel and long hours spent sitting.

The fabric is moisture-wicking. Even though they look elegant enough to wear out, I love that these versatile leggings still have everything you'd want in workout pants. I recently wore them to a workout class and they didn't budge through squats and kicks. My one caution is for pet owners: These attracted a lot of fur from my cat. Now I know to use a small lint roller before I wear these out.

How we tested to find the best travel pants

To find the best travel pants for women, our team tested 20 pairs from popular brands like Athleta, Lululemon, Everlane, and Aritzia. We focused on the features that you can feel when you're traveling. Beyond how I want to look in vacation photos, the best travel pants have to perform over long days in transit.

Each pair was evaluated based on the following:

• All-day comfort: We wore each pair for at least six hours, often while sitting for extended periods to mimic long flights or road trips. We also washed and dried each pair according to the brand's instructions to make sure they held their shape, softness, and overall quality after repeated wear.
• Wrinkle resistance: A non-negotiable with travel pants is that they're actually wrinkle-proof, because realistically, there won't be a garment steamer in every hotel room. We packed each pair in a suitcase, then unpacked and wore them to see how well they resisted creasing.
• Packability: We considered how easily the pants folded or rolled, and how much space they took up in a carry-on. Airy pairs made from crepe or nylon blends helped us lighten our luggage weights at the airport.
• Versatility: I styled each pair for multiple scenarios — from casual travel days to more polished outfits for dinners or business trips. The Colby Travel Pants were the favorites because they even out an off-duty look, but later when you throw on a blazer, they look instantly dapper.
• Breathability and temperature control: We paid attention to how each fabric performed in warm weather and whether it felt too heavy or restrictive. Airplane cabins can get stuffy or drafty, so the best travel pants for women have to wick moisture and not cling to sweat.
• Fit and sizing: I noted how each pair fit on different body types, including feedback from other editors on our team. The best travel pants for tall and petite sizes is Aritzia's Effortless Pants for their multiple inseam options. Overall, the most important aspect for getting the best fit is a stretchy waistband, which allowed us to pull up pants up or sling them low around our hips.

Learn more about how the Reviews team tests clothing at BI.

Other travel pants we tested

Alo Yoga Muse Sweatpant: These are definitely a contender among the best joggers, according to travel writer Maria Yagoda. However, the slouchiness makes them feel a bit too heavy and casual for anything else besides long flights. We must also strongly urge Alo to make pants in a more inclusive range for petite, plus, and tall sizes.

The Everlane Dream Pant: These were our former best overall pick until they were phased out by the brand. The pintucked double-knit fabric has a flat finish, so they looked sharp but still felt comfortable enough to nap in. Everlane, if you're listening: please bring back The Dream Pant.

Lululemon Dance Studio Relaxed-Fit Mid-Rise Cargo Pant: These went viral on TikTok for restocking after a year of us patiently waiting (and yet again, they're largely sold out). The buttery soft, relaxed-fit pants are a more tailored answer to athleisure. It's helpful they have plenty of pockets for storing loose odds and ends while on the go.

What to look for in the best travel pants for women

Your favorite lounge pants aren't necessarily good for travel, as comfortable as they may be. The best travel pants for women come with practical features that make them easy to wear, pack, and rewear throughout a trip:

Wrinkle-resistant fabric: This obviously comes first so you don't have to even think about ironing. Look for materials like polyester blends, nylon, or crepe that naturally resist wrinkles. Ideally you can pull your pants out of a suitcase and wear them immediately on multiple occasions.

Functional pockets: Unfortunately in women's fashion, we're trained to think pockets are a fun bonus. The truth is, pockets are essential for travel. Look for styles with deep or zippered pockets that can hold your phone, wallet, or ID securely.

Stretchy waistbands: When you're bloating or digesting, there's nothing worse than a tight button pressing on your abdomen. Look for high elastane content, four-way stretch fabrics so you're not restricted while seated on a long flight.

Lightweight and packable: Packing cubes can only save you so much luggage space. Your travel pants should tuck and fold easily, and be flexible enough to fit in tight corners.

Low maintenance: Pants that can be spot-cleaned, sink-washed, or air-dried quickly are especially useful for longer trips when you won't have access to a washing machine. If you're prone to mess and stains like me, try carrying these Downy wrinkle-release sprays and Tide To-Go pens.

FAQs on the best travel pants for women

What are the best travel pants for women?

Our favorite pair is the Colby Travel Pants, which are comfortable, wrinkle-resistant, and have a business casual flair that we also dressed down for long train rides. They're made with a lightweight stretch fabric that comes with functional pockets. It speaks volumes that they fit well on two style editors of vastly different heights.

What pants are best for long flights?

If you're about to board a plane for more than 3 hours, prioritize wearing soft, stretchy pants that are breathable enough for unpredictable temperatures. We suggest relaxed-fit joggers and wide-leg pants with a stretchy waistband.

Are travel pants supposed to be wrinkle-free?

Ideally yes, though not every pair has to be 100% wrinkle-proof. It's a win as long as they resist deep creases and quickly smooth out when worn.

What fabric is best for travel pants?

Nylon, polyester, elastane blends, and lightweight crepe fabrics are ideal. These materials are typically the most wrinkle-resistant and breathable. Avoid heavy fabrics that take too long to dry, like ponte, fleece, or thick cotton.

Can you wear travel pants in warm weather?

Yes, and several of us who run cold do so regularly. Plane cabins can turn frigid in an instant. It's best to be equipped with loose travel pants that can protect you from a chill, yet be able to wick sweat once you step out in the heat.

How many pairs of travel pants should I pack?

If you're headed somewhere warm, you may be able to get away with wearing a single pair you alternate with other resortwear. For most trips, two to three pairs of travel pants will suffice.