• Founders are publicly airing their "nightmare" interactions with venture capitalists.
• They shared on X what they say have been some of their worst experiences with investors.
• Legendary VC Vinod Khosla joined the fray.

Over the past few days, some Silicon Valley tech founders have taken to the internet to publicly roast the venture capitalists they once pitched.

The kefuffle began last week when Greg Isenberg, the host of "The Startup Ideas Podcast," posted to X about his experience raising a $15 million Series A.

"12 people in the meeting. One of the GPs fully fell asleep. Out cold for 30+ minutes. Nobody acknowledged it. Everyone just kept going," Isenberg wrote, referring to an unnamed general partner.

Isenberg said he continued his presentation, sharing slides with an investor he called an "unconscious man in a Herman Miller chair."

"That's venture capital," he wrote.

Venture capital is the financial engine of the tech industry. Founders with an idea rely on them to kick-start or turbocharge their fledgling companies. Typically, this is not a loan, but an equity exchange. The earlier a VC invests, the riskier the investment. When a company succeeds, however, the returns can be astronomical.

Uber founder Travis Kalanick, responding to Isenberg, said that the venture world has changed over the years. Investors, he said, once took a more casual approach to pitch meetings.

In 2001, Kalanick said he pitched an investor who was sitting in his "parked Lexus." Kalanick was sitting in the passenger seat.

Kalanick said the investor "grabbed" his laptop, placed it "on his large belly," pressed it against the steering wheel, and began flipping through the slides himself.

"2001 fundraising hit different," he said.

The back-and-forth went viral among the niche community of already-successful millionaire and billionaire founders who are terminally online, and the pile-on began.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said a Sequoia partner passed on Cloudflare because "he didn't think a woman could lead a security infrastructure company." Cloudflare was founded in 2009 by Prince, Lee Holloway, and Michelle Zatlyn. The internet services company is now valued at almost $90 billion.

Prince said he also once met with Khosla Ventures about investing in Cloudflare's Series C.

Vinod Khosla, the legendary tech investor and the firm's namesake, took Prince and his fellow founders out to dinner, Prince wrote. Near the end of the conversation, Prince recalled, Khosla leaned over and said, "I'm impressed with you, not so much with them, what if you fire them and I'll give you all their stock?"

Prince said he was so offended he never spoke to Khosla again. Other founders responded to Prince, adding their own experiences dealing with Khosla.

It was enough for Khosla to spend his Saturday responding to the accusations, firing off over a dozen X posts. In some, he denied the stories and asked for evidence, but in most, he repeated a single mantra: Honesty is the best policy.

"I am often wrong but always give honest opinions. Some find this harsh, but hypocritical politeness hurts founders," he wrote in one post. "Brutal honesty gives them a chance to evaluate it and accept or reject the opinion. Great founders elect for honesty. It is not fun to offer brutal honesty."

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

Some industry insiders came to Khosla's defense. Blake Byers, an early-stage investor and founder, said Khosla founded one of the pioneering companies of the modern computer industry — Sun Microsystems — before becoming one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture capitalists.

"He is one of the truest VCs to ever do it," he wrote.

Mark Cummins, an angel investor and robotics expert, said he began pitching a partner at a French firm, only for the investor to interrupt with questions about his parents' careers.

"What did your father do?' the partner asks me in a thick French accent," Cummins wrote.

When Cummins said his father had trained as a theoretical physicist before going into business, the partner replied: "Aha! Your father was a failure!" Then, after Cummins said his mother had been a biochemist before becoming a schoolteacher, the investor said, "Also a failure!"

Cummins said he responded, "I have a hundred employees and we need funding. 'Would you like to hear about my company?'"

In a conversation largely dominated by men, Claire Vo, the founder of ChatPRD, an AI product management platform, said an investor once interrupted her pitch to say he was glad she wasn't trying to have kids while building a company.

"I love an opportunity to tell a nightmare VC story!" she wrote.

She later turned one of Khosla's posts defending himself into what she called a "pop punk banger."

TV tech can feel bewildering, weighed down by confusing terminology and tons of acronyms, like HDR, QLED, and OLED. All that jargon can start to seem like marketing speak, but one term you'll see often — Mini LED — is genuinely worth paying attention to.

This small but mighty technology plays a major role in picture quality for some of the best TVs, enabling improved contrast and searing brightness. But just when we thought Mini LED had reached its peak, in comes a new display tech, RGB LED, which offers a few cool advancements. Though the technology has some quirks to keep in mind, RGB LED models present an exciting step forward for TV innovation.

So what are RGB LED TVs, and how do they compare to more traditional Mini LED TVs? Below, we break it all down, so you can make an informed decision about your next TV purchase. Here's everything you need to know about RGB and Mini LED, and how they stack up against other TV types.

What is a Mini LED TV?

The majority of consumer TVs have used the same basic structure for decades now: an array of white or blue LEDs (Light-Emitting Diodes) shining through a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), along with filters and other substrates to produce color. This is the baseline for most TV tech, including Mini LED TVs.

But as its name implies, Mini LED takes standard LED backlighting to another level by using smaller backlight modules. These smaller LEDs enable all sorts of improvements, including more advanced contrast control, which is key to better picture quality.

This is accomplished through full-array local dimming, which allows a TV to dim certain LEDs while lighting others. Imagine a bright spaceship floating across a black, starry backdrop on your screen. Without local dimming, such images tend to look washed out, especially in dark rooms, but local dimming improves contrast between the brightest and darkest areas, enhancing realism and detail.

The more individual dimming sections, or zones, an LED TV has, the more accurate its picture will look. Think back to that space scene again, and the need to light not just the ship, but each of those tiny stars set amid the blackness of space. That's where Mini LEDs come in, offering enhanced precision for greater accuracy and realism than standard LEDs. Today's most advanced Mini LED TVs feature thousands of light modules and dimming zones to achieve deeper black levels and higher brightness.

While backlighting is important, displays can also be enhanced in other ways, such as with quantum dots, tiny nanoparticles that glow when light passes through them. In TVs, quantum dots are commonly red and green, which, when exposed to blue LEDs, can reproduce a broad spectrum of vibrant colors. This advancement spawned another TV acronym, QLED (Quantum LED). These days, most Mini LED TVs are also QLED TVs.

What is an RGB LED TV?

RGB LED TVs can be seen as a new type of advanced Mini LED TV. They still employ thousands of miniature LEDs as backlights, but instead of only white or blue LEDs, they use RGB LEDs with thousands of tri-colored red, green, and blue diodes. This allows RGB LED TVs to produce a brighter, purer, and more expansive range of colors.

Most TV makers now offer some form of RGB tech, including Hisense, TCL, Sony, Samsung, and LG. From the beginning, we've been calling these displays RGB LED, but each manufacturer has put its own spin on the name, which can lead to some confusion.

Most notably, Hisense and TCL use the RGB Mini LED branding, Sony uses True RGB, and Samsung and LG are calling their RGB TVs Micro RGB. There are some differences in how each brand is implementing RGB tech, including the actual size of the LEDs being used in each panel, but the underlying idea is the same.

Here's a rundown of recently released RGB LED TV models:

What are the advantages of RGB LED?

The most obvious advantage of RGB LED is enhanced color, including greater accuracy and a higher overall color volume. In Sony's press release for its new Bravia 9 II and Bravia 7 II RGB LED TVs, the brand says its True RGB TV models achieve the largest color volume in Sony TV history, alongside better accuracy from wider viewing angles.

Other RGB TV makers have been more specific, with brands like Hisense, Samsung, and LG all saying their top RGB models can reproduce an incredible 95-100% (or higher) of the next-gen BT.2020 color gamut, which goes well beyond the DCI-P3 color space currently used for most Hollywood productions.

That said, our initial measurements with RGB LED TVs like the Samsung R95H and Hisense UR9 have been closer to 91% of BT.2020. That's not quite as high as each brand touts, but it's still the widest color gamut we've ever seen. For comparison, most traditional Mini LED and OLED TVs top out at around 70-85% of BT.2020.

However, there are some caveats to keep in mind about the benefits of BT.2020 color. Most notably, it's important to remember that most movies and TV shows don't fully utilize BT.2020. That will likely change in the future, but right now, most Hollywood colorists don't take advantage of such a wide gamut.

That said, colors aren't the only potential advantage of RGB LED displays. Top models are also incredibly bright, with some flagship RGB LED TVs, like the Hisense 116UX, rated at up to 8,000 nits in small highlights.

Again, there are some important caveats here. Most consumer RGB LED TVs won't actually get that bright in real-world viewing. The few models we've tested so far have approached 3,000 and 4,000 nits. That's still impressive, but it's no different from what we've already seen from high-end Mini LED models.

Likewise, even if future RGB LED TVs consistently hit 10,000 nits, there isn't a lot of content that requires that level of brightness right now. Most streaming video is mastered for a max of around 1,000 nits, and the best 4K HDR Blu-rays generally don't go beyond 4,000 nits in their most searing highlights, like sunlight bouncing off a window.

Other potential RGB LED advantages include better off-axis viewing thanks to the new structure of their light modules and improved local dimming, which enhances contrast and reduces light bleed or blooming around bright objects. When our team viewed a Sony Bravia 9 Mini LED TV side-by-side with a new Sony Bravia 9 II True RGB TV, the advantages of the RGB LED tech were clearly evident.

Though the Mini LED TV still looked good, its colors were slightly faded compared to the RGB LED model, which produced noticeably richer hues. Likewise, the RGB LED TV's image distorted less at angles, and its black levels were deeper with less blooming around bright objects.

Do RGB LED TVs have disadvantages?

As with any display tech, RGB LED TVs aren't perfect. This new backlight technology can introduce its own flaws. Despite having thousands of light modules, even the most advanced RGB LED TVs still don't have enough dimming zones to match the 8.3 million pixels in a 4K image. As a result, some RGB LED TVs are prone to an issue called crosstalk (also known as color blooming).

Since RGB LEDs produce color from their backlight, that color can spread into areas of an image that it shouldn't, creating crosstalk. For instance, an RGB LED TV displaying a vibrant green car against a white background might cause the green light to bloom into the surrounding white area, tinting it green.

Each brand uses its own local dimming algorithm to help prevent crosstalk by intelligently controlling a TV's LED zones to create color and light as precisely as possible. Some RGB LED TVs even switch to white or blue light during scenes that are too complex to display without crosstalk.

Our team has observed crosstalk on RGB LED TVs during side-by-side comparisons hosted by various TV brands. These demos have also shown instances in which certain TVs revert to white or blue backlighting rather than using their RGB LEDs. However, in our initial hands-on reviews with different RGB LED models, including the Samsung R95H, Hisense UR9, Sony Bravia 7 II, and Sony Bravia 9 II, we've yet to see this issue during normal viewing.

So, while it's certainly possible that some RGB LED TVs, especially lower-end models, are susceptible to crosstalk, so far it hasn't been a notable problem in our testing.

What about OLED TVs?

While most modern TVs use some form of LED backlighting, the major exception in the current market is OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode). OLED TVs can control each of their 8.3 million pixels independently for unparalleled contrast — no backlighting required. This eliminates the potential for blooming or crosstalk.

While OLED TVs can't get as bright or colorful as the most powerful RGB LED TVs, they have other advantages, including near-perfect off-axis viewing and true black levels for contrast that RGB and Mini LED TVs still can't match.

This is why the best OLED TVs have traditionally been the go-to choice for videophiles. But because OLEDs are tough to manufacture, they're more expensive than LED technology. This is especially true in larger screen sizes. That's why various LED TVs are so prominent, and why manufacturers have made so many cool advancements over time to improve their performance. You can learn more about how OLED tech stacks up against other display types in our OLED vs. QLED comparison.

The bottom line

We'll need more time with RGB LED TV models to truly assess just how much of an improvement they offer over Mini LED. On paper, their advantages are clear, and certain models, like Sony's flagship Bravia 9 II, have delivered noticeably better picture quality than any Mini LED TV we've seen.

However, it all comes down to how each brand and specific TV model uses the technology. Mini LED TVs are still impressive in their own right, as TCL continues to prove with its new "SQD" lineup of souped-up Mini LED models. SQD TVs still use traditional white or blue backlights, but they feature larger quantum dots and improved color filters to produce results similar to an RGB backlight. You can learn more in our reviews of the TCL X11L and TCL QM8L SQD TVs.

It's a lot to take in, especially since RGB LED and SQD arrived at the same time. Still, even if you don't have it all down, it's an exciting time for display tech. As RGB backlighting improves, displays will continue to get better, brighter, and more colorful at an even faster pace. Acronyms or no, it's hard to complain about that.

• I started teaching my daughter to pack when she was 3 years old.
• Packing together helps build her independence and decision-making.
• I hope the extra effort now will pay off as she grows older.

I started teaching my daughter to pack when she was 3 years old, which, I know, sounds inefficient at best and slightly unhinged at worst.

Packing with a preschooler is slow. It turns a 30-minute task into a 90-minute one. It involves delicate negotiations over which stuffed animals are "essential," last-minute outfit swaps as she re-discovers her favorite sparkly boots, and frequent distractions. If saving time today were the goal, I would simply do it myself.

But my perspective changed after I heard versions of the same complaint from multiple mothers; they were still packing for their teenagers. Not just occasionally helping or reminding, but fully responsible for it. That dynamic doesn't appear suddenly at 13; it builds over time.

So I decided to start while my toddler still craves independence with a fervor, hoping it will pay off over the next decade.

The first step was participation, not decision-making

The first time we "packed together," I did almost all of the work in advance. I pulled everything she would need and laid it out on the floor of her room, alongside an open suitcase. My toddler wasn't choosing items or deciding quantities. She happily folded clothes with me, shoved them into packing cubes, and put the packing cubes into the suitcase.

This participation also helped her mentally prepare for the coming travel. As we packed bathing suits, we talked about going to the pool and the beach. Her blankie gets packed because we'll be sleeping in a new place, so she'll want to have something familiar. She'll wear her sneakers to the airport because we'll be walking more than usual.

Especially with toddlers, a smooth trip starts with helping them understand what the experience will be like before we get there. That mental preview reduces friction later.

The next step was constrained choice

Once that baseline was established, I shifted one variable: selection. Instead of laying everything out myself, I told her what we needed, and she got to pick: six T-shirts, five pairs of shorts, two bathing suits. Then she went to her drawers and chose them.

That changed the task meaningfully. She still wasn't determining quantities or planning for contingencies, but she was making decisions within a defined framework. I separated "what do we need?" from "which specific items do we bring?" and introduced them in sequence.

She's also responsible for helping put everything into her suitcase, which makes it easier to say no to the constant requests to bring additional toys and books. For shorter trips, if it fits into her carry-on after her essentials, she can bring it. On longer trips with a checked bag, she gets one packing cube for toys and books so she can decide what she most wants to bring.

One major step is that now she has a suitcase that is clearly hers. For our coming trip to Asia, she's packing into a light pink MiaMily suitcase that I gave her for her most recent birthday, now enthusiastically decorated with stickers. It's a ride-on suitcase that she sits on proudly, like her travel throne.

That shift sounds small, but it changes how she approaches the task. It's no longer a shared family suitcase or something I'm managing on her behalf—it's her suitcase, and she treats it that way.

The goal is a gradual handoff

I'm not trying to create unrealistic independence at 3. Over time, I can shift more of that responsibility to her by asking her to suggest quantities, to think through activities, and to identify what might be missing.

It does take longer now. There's no way around that. But if the alternative is still packing for her a decade from now, the tradeoff is worth it.

• My dad planned to travel and do so much once he retired, but he died at 52 before he had the chance.
• Losing him pushed me to live life differently, like skipping college to travel to Europe instead.
• I'm grateful I live a life focused on new experiences and adventure, not stability and savings.

Throughout his life, my dad was incredibly focused on being successful and providing for our family, trying to ensure all of us had the best possible future.

He was good at it, too. He built us a beautiful home by the beach, studied with me so I'd get straight A's, and took our family on countless vacations to Hawaii and Yosemite — all while running a business and putting money into his retirement fund.

Along the way, he postponed a lot of things he wanted to do, like finally taking that trip to Europe, buying his dream car, and relocating to Hawaii with my mom so they could spend their days sipping mai tais under the shade of a palm tree.

It was OK, he'd say, because once he retired, maybe in his 60s or 70s, he'd do all of those things. But then he got sick at 51. One year later, at 52, he was gone.

I was only 15 then, and I didn't know how to handle losing the bravest man I knew. It was so unfair, and life suddenly felt incredibly short.

My dad planned to travel and experience so many grand things after retirement, but never got the chance. I didn't want the same to happen to me.

His death changed my priorities and how I thought about the future

Losing my dad left me yearning to experience things he didn't get to. I didn't want to wait until an uncertain retirement; I wanted to live my life now.

After high school, I didn't end up going to college, which, before my dad's death, was the only option I saw for my future. Instead, I started working and saving up money to travel. By the following summer, I was able to make my way to Europe.

As I ate fresh slices of pizza in Naples and took in the sights from the top of the Eiffel Tower, I felt like my dad was right there with me.

That trip gave me a taste of a life I wanted to live.

Shortly after, I decided to pursue teaching English abroad in Mexico. It was another chance to see more of the world, but starting from scratch in a new country and learning a new language wasn't easy.

It took time to find friends, and I didn't always have a steady paycheck — but what I didn't make up for in my savings account, I was making up for in life experiences.

After a few years, I had become fluent in Spanish, traveled throughout Mexico, and found a passion for writing and playing guitar. My confidence grew, and I felt I could do this somewhere else.

So in my early 30s, where years prior I would've thought I would be married with children, I packed up and moved to Europe, single, with some savings and no steady job waiting for me on the other side.

I landed in Spain and started building a life from scratch again in Barcelona. It was incredibly lonely at times, and I often compared myself to friends back home in Los Angeles, who had steady careers and were beginning to have kids.

But then I would think of my dad and how he'd always tell me I could achieve anything I put my mind to. I reminded myself that I chose this path. I was seeing the world and making my way in it, even if it wasn't always easy.

I'm glad I've chosen to plan a life around experiences, not stability

I'm nearly 40, and I've been in Barcelona for almost seven years now. In that time, I've built a community and met and married the love of my life. I don't have children yet, and my writing career is still blossoming.

I still haven't prioritized growing my savings account or making concrete retirement plans. It can be a risky way to live, and sometimes I'm scared of what the future may bring, but losing my dad so young made me realize that nothing in life is guaranteed.

I'd rather enjoy the present and grab opportunities as they arise rather than wait and potentially never get to take them — and I'm grateful for everything my dad taught me, even if I only had him for 15 years.

• I got rare access inside Intel's factory, where it makes some of the world's most advanced chips.
• The plant is so tightly controlled that paper, white light, and even footsteps can become problems.
• The trip made me realize that making the chips powering everyday life means protecting them from us.

I knew visiting Intel's chip factory would be different when they told me I couldn't wear my regular deodorant.

Or lotion. Or hairspray. Or makeup.

Before I'd even boarded the plane to Oregon, Intel sent my videographer and me a long list of things we couldn't wear or bring into its factory in Hillsboro. No Velcro. No Bluetooth. No phones unless they were on airplane mode. The list kept going.

That was my first clue I was about to step into a place governed by a very different set of rules.

In March, after months of planning with Intel, I got rare access to one of its chip factories — the kind of place the tech industry calls a fabrication plant, or fab. Inside, Intel makes some of the most advanced semiconductors in the world.

Chips run almost every part of modern life: laptops, phones, chatbots, washing machines, fighter jets, and the data centers behind AI.

Demand for these chips is skyrocketing, with annual semiconductor sales expected to reach $1 trillion by 2027. I went behind the scenes to see the complicated and delicate manufacturing process that's so controlled, it permanently changed how I think about what it means to be clean.

What it takes to get inside Intel's fab

I arrived on a rainy Oregon morning in my best walking shoes, per Intel's instructions. We'd be covering a lot of ground, and they weren't kidding. The fab in front of us was enormous — bigger than an aircraft carrier.

We walked about 10 minutes to the gear-cleaning room. Just beyond it sat a room full of what I estimated to be billions of dollars in Intel chips.

"Each little tiny speck can cause a defect, which would destroy the chip," Chris Auth, Intel's vice president of manufacturing development and our guide for the day, told me.

We scrubbed down every piece of camera equipment with sterilizing wipes. Not just the obvious surfaces. We extended the tripod legs, wiped them down one by one, collapsed them, and wiped them down again, hunting for any nook that might be hiding dust.

Then came the gowning room, a chamber so big it could have swallowed my New York studio apartment many times over. It was packed wall-to-wall with bunny suits, each worth about $1,000, according to Intel.

I got to wear one for the day. But first, I had to figure out how to put it on.

"So you kinda wanna scrunch up your suit so that the sleeves don't touch the ground here," Auth said, once he'd slipped on his hood.

Every piece had to connect in the right order. The onesie snapped onto the hood. The boots attached to the suit. My first pair of gloves got tucked under the sleeves. A second pair went on top to trap the skin particles my hands were shedding.

I've visited factories before that worried about visible contaminants — a bracelet falling off, an earring coming loose. Intel worried about invisible ones. The kind your body releases constantly without asking permission.

That also explained why my notebook had to stay outside. Regular paper sheds microscopic particles, and here, even that can be enough to ruin a chip. Intel handed me a special cleanroom notebook that doesn't shed.

Then I stepped onto the fab floor.

Intel's most precious room

In a place this tightly controlled, I was oddly thrilled by what looked like hot-pink equipment everywhere. But it wasn't actually pink.

The gigantic room glowed under yellow light to protect the chips. Any other wavelength could damage a chip while it's being made.

"Under yellow light, everything that looks pink to your eyes is actually red," Tyler Osborn, Intel's director of advanced packaging technology development, later told me, gently bringing me back to reality.

Nothing about the fab felt quite real, though.

There were more robots than people. The few people who were there all looked the same in hooded suits. Employees told me they often recognize one another by how they move.

"You get to know people's gait," Osborn said, his voice muffled by the layers covering everything but his eyes.

Robots zipped by on overhead tracks, carrying sealed boxes of wafers — the thin slices of silicon that chips are built on — around the factory, keeping them out of human hands.

People, I learned, are too inefficient for this work. Robots need to move thousands of wafers a day. Not to mention, humans can be clumsy.

I couldn't stop wondering what would happen if someone in a rush tripped and sent a box of wafers flying.

"Mistakes are very, very costly," Auth said. "You're somewhere in the $50,000 to $500,000 range just for one wafer."

Each robot carries 25 wafers at a time.

"So now you're into the millions for just one box," he said.

Even my footsteps felt like a risk

The chips are about the size of a fingernail. But Intel isn't just controlling that tiny patch of space. It is trying to steady an entire factory around something microscopic.

"We're building the world's smallest features in some of the world's biggest factories," Auth said.

The fab is built in layers, with a foundation designed to absorb outside shocks — earthquakes, nearby machinery, even low-frequency vibrations from air-conditioning units in neighboring buildings.

"It comes down to microvibrations," Bob McMillan, Intel's life safety and systems manager, told me.

That was the moment I became unusually aware of my own footsteps. I felt like a giant moving through a world built for things far smaller and more delicate than me.

Everything in the fab was choreographed to protect the chip, which made me wonder what would happen if all that control failed in the smallest possible way.

So I asked what would happen if a beard hair got into one of these machines.

"You're done," McMillan said.

"A hair is huge," Auth later explained.

A single human hair can be a million atoms thick. Some of the structures Intel is building are just a few atoms wide.

The entire factory works like a machine

It was hard to hear anyone over the constant hum of gigantic tools.

Then I realized the building wasn't just full of machines. It was one.

Even the floor was working.

It stretched beneath us like a giant metal sieve, perforated with holes as far as I could see. They were there to pull particles away from the wafers — catching anything rogue that escaped our suits in less than 60 seconds.

"We change all the air in this factory about that quickly," McMillan told me.

They filter the air over and over because, at any given moment, there can't be more than eight particles bigger than a micron floating in every cubic meter of air. The room you're sitting in right now probably has millions.

To me, that was hard to fathom.

I was standing inside one of the cleanest places on Earth, which was reassuring and also vaguely unsettling. Regular life suddenly seemed impossibly filthy.

Why making chips is so hard

A single chip takes about three months to make, and almost nothing can go wrong. In that time, it moves through roughly 2,000 steps, and thousands of machines spread across the factory.

"There's 12 football fields of clean room space here," Auth said.

He later told me it costs about $20 billion to build a fab like this. By comparison, One World Trade Center cost about $3.9 billion to build.

Despite the price tag, the US government has made building chips in America a top priority.

About 90% of the world's most advanced chips are made in Taiwan, which Washington sees as a major geopolitical risk as China threatens to take the island by force.

That's why, no matter how hard these chips are to build, the White House says the US needs more factories like this one. Right now, Intel is the only American company designing and manufacturing advanced logic chips on US soil.

I left thinking about how fragile modern life is

When we got back to the gowning room and took off our hoods, I realized I'd almost forgotten what everyone we'd spent the day with actually looked like.

Then I got my phone back, stepped back into normal life, and had a thought I still can't shake: we live in a world that runs on chips.

To make them, however, we have to create an entire environment designed to protect them from us.

• Cara Katz is a 36-year-old working mom to a toddler.
• She has been using AI at work for at least six years.
• She said people shouldn't judge moms who use AI — they aren't the ones to blame for the ethical concerns around it.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Cara Katz. It has been edited for length and clarity.

A little over a year ago, AI became more prevalent in my mom communities than it had been in years prior.

I had been familiar with and using AI for about six years at work, where there was a lot of skepticism about its use — and back then, it wasn't something we used at home. Fast-forward to about 18 months ago, and parents started using it to increase efficiency, saving time and maximizing output in their personal lives.

At first, it was mainly parents in tech and marketing, but now it's being used by parents with no tech experience. We didn't feel any shame about it at first, but things have changed thanks to the explosion of public opinion about using AI.

Since I've started using it at home, I've saved myself at least 10 hours a week. I'm tired of being judged for it.

I use it to plan our week

Scheduling is my favorite way to use AI at home because it saves me the most time, though it can be slightly complicated.

I used to spend most Sundays planning our week as a family of three. I work from home, and my husband works from home two days a week. My daughter goes to transition school, which is two hours of school two days a week. We don't have any organized childcare, but she does have enrichment activities like music and gym.

My husband and I take turns caring for our daughter, but if both of us are busy, I plan for a babysitter to have her in the house or to take her out.

It makes for a really busy schedule to arrange and remember.

I started using Claude Code, which sounds scary, but it's just a chatbot for code writing. It can be used exactly the same way as Claude.

It walked me through how to organize our Google calendars — our daughter's calendar and our separate work calendars. Claude reads them all, and I prompted Claude to create this beautiful, color-coded HTML calendar.

I also fed it my daughter's periphery schedules — like library events for the month — and trained it on her preferences. Every week, it sources events that she would be interested in, and puts them into the calendar.

It sends our babysitters' recommended times, based on their previous work-time preferences, and asks them to agree to the date and time provided to have our daughter.

We then publish the schedule on Netlify, press "deploy," and it creates a password-protected website that caregivers can view. If there is any chance, I enter that change, and it automatically updates and emails everyone a link leading us back to the website.

These days, I spend five minutes here and there on scheduling.

It also plans my shopping list

AI does all of my grocery planning. It runs a full inventory of my pantry to know what we already have, knows all of our preferences, knows my daughter and husband are celiac, and even knows my husband's blood results. It uses all of this information to design a shopping list and meal plan.

I connect Claude to DoorDash and Uber Eats to get our groceries delivered. You can set it up so that this happens automatically, but I like to have a look at the list before I pay.

I followed my daughter's developmental milestones with AI

I think moms get freaked out by developmental milestones — we know milestones exist, but aren't taught that there is a range within these milestones.

When my daughter was a baby, I built a Claude project that researched which milestones she should be hitting. I asked for an updated list of activities we could do each week to help her achieve her developmental milestones. We printed it out and ticked off the activities.

When we went to the pediatrician for a check-up, we knew where she was developmentally before we even walked through the door. We could then have empowered conversations with the doctor.

I get more time with my kid

I love going back to my mom communities after being pelted with strong opinions from people who say that hate AI. We are buying back time with our kids using AI. My mental workload has lightened.

It's hard for me to take people who are angry about AI seriously. It is easy to be theoretically morally angry.

It is quite different to sit across from a single mom, stay-at-home mom, or a working mom who struggles to pay bills, or spend time with their family, and tell her not to use AI because it probably uses less water than big organizations do.

• Ali Hynek is a 45-year-old mom of four in Utah whose children had been asking for smartphones.
• Instead of smartphones, Ali bought her kids a boom box, a recorder, a rotary-style phone, and a Walkman.
• Her 10-year-old son, Ethan, is particularly keen on the Walkman and spends hours listening to music.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ali Hynek. It has been edited for length and clarity.

For a couple of years, my four kids have been asking for smartphones.

Being aware of the negative impacts of smartphones, for kids and adults, my husband and I have told the kids they won't be getting smartphones until they are at least 17.

We've discussed with them about why we've made this decision, explaining our reasoning rather than just making a blanket rule. Even though I think they understand why they aren't allowed smartphones, I'm aware that they sometimes feel they are missing out, as so many kids in school have them.

But they've had watches they can make phone calls from, and we'd be open to getting them a little brick phone (like the old Nokia ones) to communicate with family and friends, as we don't have a house phone.

A little over a year ago, inspired by my sister's love of VHS tapes, I went thrift shopping to find some "old school" analog ways to listen to music. It would be a chance for the kids to tinker and learn how we used to listen to music before smartphones and streaming.

They started making their own mixtapes

I found a stereo boombox, the kind that had a CD and tape player, an old rotary-style phone, and a radio that you have to manually change the channels with a little knob.

When I brought it all home, the kids were intrigued and curious about each item. While this once had been the only way I listened to music, my kids had never even seen these devices. It was all new to them.

To hold their interest, I took them thrifting to find tapes and CDs to listen to, but the music we found early on was a bit boring for the kids.

Instead, I suggested they could make their own mixtapes — like I used to do when I was a kid. I bought a bunch of blank tapes and one of those 90s recording devices and let them experiment by finding songs on the radio, and pressing "record" when a song came on that they liked and "pause" when the song finished. By the end, they had personalized mixtapes with all their favorite songs.

It brought back many good memories of my childhood.

I got my 10-year-old a Walkman at his request

Ethan, my 10-year-old son, particularly liked our experimentation with analog music devices.

At the same time, he was watching "Guardians of the Galaxy" and saw that one of the characters often walks around with a Walkman and headphones.

"Can I get one of those?" he asked me.

I took him to several thrift stores, and we couldn't find one. They were really expensive on eBay, but I found one on Amazon for a little over $30. I bought it, and we found Aerosmith and "Guardians of the Galaxy" tapes that he could listen to.

Soon after we got the Walkman, we went on a long road trip. Ethan sat for hours, looking out the car window while his music played on repeat. It was like road trips in the 90s, when all you could do was listen to music and watch the world passing you by.

At home, he just walks around with the Walkman attached to his side, headphones in. I often find him lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling, and listening to his music.

Since then, my other three children have also had their own Walkman and headphones, and have taken to listening just like Ethan.

My 4 kids want to shop for cassette tapes

All four of them often want to go to thrift stores with me to hunt for cassette tapes to play. We recently found a Madonna tape, and I bought a Billie Eilish tape online.

I doubt this is just a fad. It feels more like what it's like to learn to ride a bike — once you've done it, you'll always love it. They have latched onto this way of listening to music, and I haven't sensed that their excitement is waning. If anything, they get more and more excited to hunt for new tapes to listen to — it's like a treasure hunt.

I love watching them enjoy music. I love that we have another hobby we can do together. I love that their faces aren't always glued to a screen. I love having flashbacks to my own childhood.

• Massachusetts ranked as the most educated state in the US.
• It also has the highest median household income among the 50 states, at $104,828.
• The state combines a high density of universities with a highly skilled, high-earning workforce.

Education across the US varies significantly across regions and state lines, but one place dominates national rankings for the opportunities it offers students.

Business Insider recently ranked the most and least educated US states based on the share of adults 25 and older with a bachelor's degree or higher, using 2024 Census data.

Massachusetts ranked highest, with 48.3% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and it also had the highest share of adults with advanced degrees, with 22.6% having a professional and graduate degree.

That means nearly half of Massachusetts adults have a bachelor's degree, and more than 1 in 5 have advanced further in their academic path, earning a professional or graduate degree.

Massachusetts is home to some of the country's top universities

The state has a high education density: Hubs like Cambridge and Boston have long been known as higher education powerhouses in the US and are home to institutions such as Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Northeastern University, and Tufts University, among many others.

Together, those schools make Massachusetts a magnet for students, professors, researchers, startups, and employers. They also support the state's economy and its concentration of fields that prize advanced degrees, including biotech, healthcare, finance, education, engineering, and technology.

The state stands out in K-12 education

The state's education pipeline starts long before college, with the state budget prioritizing funding for its rank-topping education.

In 2024, Massachusetts spent about $22 billion on public-school expenditures, or $23,165 per student, according to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. The state ranked seventh-highest in per-student expenditures for elementary and secondary education that year, according to Census data.

This investment in schools is visible in national rankings. In 2025, the Massachusetts Academy of Math & Science, one of the highest-achieving public high schools in the state, ranked third among all public schools nationwide.

The elementary and secondary education in the state then funnels into the public and private colleges and universities.

In the 2024-2025 school year, about 65% of Massachusetts' high school graduates who enrolled in college after graduation did so at Massachusetts colleges and universities, according to the state's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Massachusetts' emphasis on higher education aligns with its economy, which is driven by ambitious workers in highly skilled fields — and ranked as the best state economy in the US.

Massachusetts also has some of the nation's highest-earning households

In 2024, the state had the highest median household income among all 50 states at $104,828, ranking slightly ahead of New Jersey and Maryland, which had similar median household incomes.

For a lot of Massachusetts residents, however, a large portion of their household income goes towards affording to live in the state, which has the third-highest housing burden in the US.

On average, renters spend 51.5% of their income on housing, while homeowners spend 33.7%, making the state less affordable than other states with similar median incomes, such as New Jersey and Maryland.

Some of the state's most famous institutions also produce some of the nation's highest-earning graduates. MIT topped the list, with former students having a median income of $162,000 four years after graduation, according to Department of Education College Scorecard data.

The result is an economy influenced by education: Massachusetts is home to top universities and research institutions, strong educational outcomes, and well-paying roles that lean on advanced knowledge.

Together, these factors help explain why the state scores highest in both degree attainment and household income.

We got rare access inside Intel's semiconductor operation in Oregon to see how some of America's most advanced chips are made. As tensions with China rise, Washington is betting on Intel, the only American company that both designs and manufactures advanced chips in the US, to help rebuild domestic chipmaking. We visited its cleanroom, its R&D lab, and a packaging operation no media had ever visited before to see how Intel plans to do it.

• I've never been much of a sports fan.
• That is, until my son got me into soccer.
• Now, I'm desperately trying to get us tickets to the World Cup.

For most of my life, I thought I hated all sports. My current quest to go to the World Cup doesn't make sense to most people who know me. Yet, I am feverishly searching for World Cup tickets that won't require me to take out a second mortgage on my house.

I'm often mistaken for a sports fan

I grew up in Philadelphia, which arguably has the most passionate fan base in the world. I can frequently be spotted in Eagles or Phillies gear. Like most Philadelphians, I have a huge crush on Gritty, the unhinged Flyers' mascot who rose from the sewers beneath the city to become the most beloved, and perhaps most controversial, mascot on the planet. It would be easy to mistake me for a sports fanatic, so I often have to explain my passion isn't for sports-ball. Instead, I love Philadelphia and (almost) everything associated with the city, including its unyielding passion for sports.

On the rare occasions I attend baseball games, I find excuses to leave my seat and wander the stadium, and sometimes make an excuse to leave early. I have watched every Super Bowl the Eagles have played and even went to Philadelphia to celebrate a win with an epic Super Bowl parade. However, I still need someone to explain the rules of football to me because, despite my ride-or-die loyalty to the Birds, I'm not interested enough in the sport to learn how the game is played.

My son introduced me to soccer, and I never looked back

My boredom and disinterest in the nitty-gritty of sports took an abrupt turn when my youngest son started playing soccer at school and quickly became a zealot. When I took my son to his first soccer match, a DC United game where we now live in Washington, DC, I was dreading it. I tried to feign excitement for his sake, but I knew deep down I would be incredibly bored. However, what I found surprised me and got me hooked on the sport almost immediately.

The soccer stadium was much smaller than the enormous arenas I usually associate with major league sports. That meant I could see well and feel immersed in the action, even from the cheap seats. There were fireworks at the start of the game and every time our team scored, and I loved the celebration with a spectacle usually reserved for the Fourth of July.

Plus, soccer is much easier for me to follow than other sports. As someone with a relatively short attention span, I appreciate that the game is short at just 90 minutes. Additionally, the fans are fun. I love that supporters' clubs at matches make a lot of noise with drums, adding energy to the experience.

Soccer has become a way of life

Since I went to that first match, soccer has become a way of life. My son is on a travel team and plays several times a week. The first chapter book my son read, The Academy by TZ Layton, was about soccer, and I recently picked him up from school early so he could meet the author and get his books signed among throngs of other young soccer fans asking pointed questions about plays in the books.

My family travels frequently, and we visit soccer stadiums whenever and wherever we can to take tours and learn about the sport's history. When the Club World Cup, a FIFA tournament to determine the world's best men's soccer team, was in the United States last summer, we traveled to Philadelphia to see my son's favorite team, Real Madrid, and waited outside the hotel where the players were staying so my son could catch a glimpse of the players up close.

Then, I sat enthralled through the entire match, even through a torrential downpour, and didn't mind a bit. Sometimes I don't recognize myself. Who is this person who genuinely knows players, strategy, and the names of more than a few teams in the league? I now understand why soccer is the world's most popular sport.

Now, I have World Cup fever

As soon as my son and I learned that the United States would be hosting World Cup games in 2026, we were excited and determined to make it to at least one match. Yet I have tried repeatedly to get tickets and failed. I struck out repeatedly in various World Cup lotteries, including several "exclusive" presales I could access with my credit card. Still, I am committed to finding a way to experience the World Cup with my son, and not just for him.

As a newly minted bona fide soccer fan, I know I will love the experience as well. Moreover, spending my formative years around Philadelphia sports fans who pride themselves on rioting whether they win or lose has prepared me well for any soccer hooligans I might encounter. I am ready for the biggest sporting event in the world, if I could only find a ticket.

My son constantly reminds me that since I found a way to bring my daughter to see Taylor Swift, I can make this work, too. Like many disappointed soccer fans, I am hoping outrageously inflated resale prices drop as the World Cup draws closer, although that was not my experience with the Eras Tour. Nevertheless, if my son and I can't make it to an actual match, we will still enjoy the World Cup by going to watch parties and any other special events we can find, but it won't be the same. I'm not sure what my next step will be, but I am in too deep to give up now.

• I started my life and career in Mexico, so my first language is Spanish.
• But I now work in London, so I work exclusively in English.
• Even though I'm fluent in English, everything I say in the office requires more work and attention.

I built the first part of my career in Mexico, in Spanish, surrounded by a professional culture where I understood almost everything about my day-to-day life.

After relocating to the UK, that shifted. English became the language of my entire working day — not just formal presentations or important calls, but emails, feedback, meetings, quick messages, office small talk, and the situations where being clear matters almost as much as being right.

It was not a matter of adjusting in places; it required rebuilding everything.

I'm more confident in Spanish

I am fluent in English, and I have worked in it for years. I understand the conversations around me, I can do my job, and I do not feel like I am constantly translating every word in my head.

But fluency is not the same as having the instinct you have in your first language.

In Spanish, I know how I sound. I know when I am being too formal or too funny. I can adjust in real time because the language feels like a natural extension of my personality, not like another tool I have to manage.

I started overthinking almost everything I said in the office

In English, there is often an extra layer of attention. I may know exactly what I want to say in a meeting, but I still need a second to find the version that reads as natural, professional, and precise. I may want to make a joke, but first I have to decide whether it will land as dry, rude, awkward, or simply not funny.

That small delay can be frustrating at work because it is invisible to other people. They only hear the final sentence, not the effort behind it. It does not mean I am less capable, but it does mean that some ordinary exchanges require more energy than they would in Spanish.

Email etiquette is probably the clearest example. A message that should be simple can become a small exercise in tone management. I write a sentence, then wonder if it reads too direct. I soften it, then worry it comes across as weak. I make it warmer, then wonder if it feels fake or like I am trying too hard to pass as British.

The same happens in meetings, especially when I need to disagree or challenge something. In Spanish, I can push back quickly while still maintaining control of the tone. In English, I am more likely to build the sentence first, check the structure, and choose a safer version if I am not sure the sharper one will land properly.

This has left me more careful, but also more self-conscious. There have been times when I had something useful to say and waited too long because I was still deciding how to say it.

It has made me more responsible at work

Over time, I realized I was compensating by becoming more prepared. If I had less room to improvise, I needed better structure. Before important meetings, I started writing down the points I wanted to make so I could focus less on finding the right words and more on the actual discussion.

That extra preparation has made me better at some basic professional skills. My work product is clearer because I do not trust a sentence just because it reads fine in my head. Explanations are more structured because I know I cannot rely only on instinct. And listening is sharper because I pay close attention to how people phrase urgency, hesitation, disagreement, or approval.

I'm exhausted some days

There is a real cost to working this way. By the end of some days, I am not only tired from the work itself. I am tired from the precision required to make the work visible, especially in a language that still asks me to prove myself in small ways.

But there is also a benefit. English has forced me to slow down and become more intentional with how I communicate.

I still miss the ease of Spanish, but working in my second language has changed me.

It has made some moments harder, but it has also made me more careful, more disciplined, and probably better at communicating than I would have been if I had never had to think this much about every word.

• My partner is from the UK, and I'm from Vancouver, Canada.
• We wanted to choose somewhere to live, but couldn't decide between our hometowns.
• We chose a neutral third city to avoid resentments and start fresh.

Being in a long-distance relationship certainly has its challenges. One of the biggest is deciding where to live when you do decide to merge your lives.

The choice is often narrowed down to two options: your city or your partner's. It's something that my husband and I struggled with, until we realized we had another — and arguably better — option. Choosing a completely different and neutral third city.

We tried each other's hometowns, but they didn't work out

My husband and I met in 2018 in my hometown of Vancouver, Canada. He was traveling through the country on a soon-to-expire working holiday visa, which meant he had to go home to Birmingham, England, not long after we started dating. I decided to make the move the following year after dating long-distance for a bit so we could be together, and we got married in 2021.

I arrived in the UK with an open mind. I had always wanted to experience living abroad, and I was genuinely curious about where my husband was from. We agreed that this move would be a test, with no obligation to remain.

At first, I enjoyed the novelty of living abroad. There were a lot of things I liked about the UK, like the architecture, the bustling cities and quaint villages, the fashion and music scenes, and the new friends I'd made. Plus, it made financial sense for us since Birmingham was more affordable than Vancouver. But I started getting homesick after a few visits back to Canada. I missed Vancouver's beaches, mountains, forests, diversity, and the more laidback lifestyle. It felt a world apart from post-industrial Birmingham's pubs and canals, and the culture in the UK.

My husband could tell I was getting homesick, but we found ourselves at a standstill. He enjoyed his time in Vancouver, but not enough to move back. He had a very valid point: we'd likely be working so much that we'd barely get to enjoy all of Vancouver's natural beauty, given its high cost of living, especially with post-pandemic inflation. I understood where he was coming from, but the longer I stayed in the UK, the more I missed Canada.

Then we went on a trip that changed everything.

Visiting a third city made us realize we had more options

On a visit home in 2022, we stayed with some of my family in Victoria. It was my husband's first time in the city, and he fell in love with it. Like Vancouver, Victoria is a coastal city with easy access to nature, but its smaller size makes life less stressful and slightly more affordable. He enjoyed his time in Victoria so much that he suggested moving by the end of the trip.

Victoria was our perfect compromise. It's culturally and geographically close enough to Vancouver that I'm happy, and the lower cost of living and slower pace of life feel more worthwhile to my husband. Now I get to enjoy the West Coast lifestyle that I love so much (and that he also appreciates), and we still feel like we're on track toward our goals. There's also a significant British population here in Victoria, which has helped him feel more at home, from being able to watch football games with his favorite UK foods to making friends at work.

Living in a third city has brought balance to our relationship

Choosing a third city hasn't completely eradicated the sense of sacrifice and guilt that often comes with being in an international relationship. Sometimes I still feel bad that we're so far away from my husband's family, and it's not as easy to visit as we'd like. I also know there are certain cultural elements that he'll never quite get behind, as I felt the same in the UK.

Still, it's made a big difference. I believe it's a choice that has helped us avoid future resentment. Knowing how homesick I got during those last few years in the UK, I don't think I would have wanted to stay there forever. And knowing how my husband feels about Vancouver, I also don't think that would have been the best choice for us.

Moving to Victoria has created a more level playing field. We've both had to start from scratch, so we can empathize with each other more about re-establishing our jobs, social circles, and lives in general. But more importantly, we both love it here, and we're excited about the future we can build in the city we both chose.

• "Diary of a CEO" host Steven Bartlett is trying to turn his podcast company into a talent incubator.
• One protégé, "Hot Smart Rich" host Maggie Sellers Reum, described working in Bartlett's orbit.
• She adopted Bartlett's operational approach, but kept touches geared toward her female audience.

Star podcaster Steven Bartlett better watch his back.

"I tell Steven all the time, I'm coming for you, because I think the most valuable consumer in the world is a female consumer," Maggie Sellers Reum, Bartlett's podcast protégé and the host of "Hot Smart Rich," told Business Insider. "So be ready."

Bartlett is looking to turn his "Diary of a CEO" podcast into a multifaceted media empire. One piece: signing and nurturing other talent. His first big test case is Sellers Reum, who he recently invested seven figures in through his media company, FlightStory.

Sellers Reum described how Bartlett is applying his playbook to "Hot Smart Rich" — and why she thinks her show, while it's a fraction of the size of Bartlett's today, can match him. She's even willing to put a timeframe on it, saying she believes that milestone is 12 to 18 months away.

That may sound ambitious. His show is the No. 1 business podcast on Spotify in the US, and has 17 million subscribers on YouTube. She's sitting at No. 13 in business on Spotify, with about 33,000 YouTube subscribers.

Sellers Reum's argument is that she has a large potential audience among women, who control the majority of consumer spending and are key decision-makers at home and at work.

Bartlett's bet on Sellers Reum is part of a trend of superstar creators — including Alex Cooper and Dude Perfect — bringing on other talent to form a network. Results have been mixed overall. Cooper's Unwell Network has had growing pains, notably splitting with Alix Earle last year. Theorist, meanwhile, outlasted its founders, who sold to a startup, and Mythical Entertainment has spawned multiple shows that live under its umbrella.

Jocelyn Florence, a consultant on creators for the management company Soft Shock, said operational support is key to this model working because the creator-founder is busy making their own content. It's also important for the creator to have a well-defined brand that extends to the people they bring into their network.

"It's easier to sell a brand on a more unified vision," she said.

FlightStory has five shows featuring creators, in addition to "DOAC," including Davina McCall, who speaks to the midlife experience, and relationships podcaster Paul Brunson. Its "Hot Smart Rich" deal is the only one structured as an equity investment, with Sellers Reum being the majority owner.

Applying the Bartlett playbook

Bartlett's company has been applying its operational blueprint to grow Sellers Reum's show, honing guest selection and amplifying the podcast through social media clips. FlightStory helped expand her guest list beyond her immediate network to include broader cultural figures such as entrepreneur Codie Sanchez and tech educator CatGPT.

There are some key differences between how "DOAC" and "Hot Smart Rich" operate, though.

One is the trailers. Instead of emphasizing the "hero's journey" as Bartlett does with "DOAC," "Hot Smart Rich" trailers focus on why the audience should care about the guest and what they'll learn from the episode.

Sellers Reum also adapted Bartlett's intensive pre-show research process for her female audience, but instead of calling the resulting 18-page document a "research brief," she calls it a "gossip thread."

"We're trying to reclaim what it means to gossip for women," she said. "Like, let's gossip about things that make us hotter, smarter, and richer, not about other people. And so we call it a gossip thread. He calls it a research brief. For Maggie and 'Hot Smart Rich,' it's a gossip thread."

She's also retained her interview style. Sellers Reum said while Bartlett's are "expert-driven," she positions herself as more conversational. She conducts her interviews from a comfy chair, legs folded, and always hits on the same five topics of money, power, relationships, business, and femininity.

"This is just more my gut; I feel that female voices in media are preferred by the female listener to be conversational," she said. "If you look at 'Giggly Squad,' Amy Poehler, 'Call Her Daddy,' it's actually like the viewer or the listener wants to hear the host's opinion a lot more than what I've seen in male-dominated podcasts."

When FlightStory proposed she do a Q&A-style show telling people how to solve their business problems, Sellers Reum pushed back.

"I said, 'I can't do that,' because I'm not better than anyone that listens to me. I was investing $2,500 checks," she said. "I wasn't a billion-dollar founder."

In the near term, she envisions launching a behind-the-scenes YouTube show. Long term, the plan is to expand "Hot Smart Rich" beyond the podcast and its WhatsApp community of fans whom Sellers Reum calls "angels," potentially to books, TV shows, or products.

For now, the priority is growing the long-form podcast. She'd love to have guests like Alix Earle (who's done a "phenomenal job" taking equity ownership in companies) or Reese Witherspoon (whose book club was "very underestimated").

"There's just such a big opportunity, but we have to earn the right to grow," she said.

• My husband and I grew up in the Northeats. We thought moving away would give us independence.
• After we had kids, we realized that we didn't have much of a support system nearby.
• We moved from Florida to New York while I was pregnant and it was one the best decisions we've made.

Shortly after college, my then-boyfriend (now husband) and I moved several states away. We had both grown up and lived our entire lives up until that point in the Northeast, he in New York and me in Connecticut. But now, in our early 20s, we wanted a change. When he was offered a job in Florida, we saw it as the perfect opportunity to gain some independence.

We did so pretty successfully for nearly a decade. During our time in Florida, we got engaged, got married, adopted a cat, held a variety of jobs, and sheltered through a pandemic.

All the while, we only really got to see our families a few times a year. In a weird way, it felt like a point of pride. I felt like we had accomplished so much in a state far away from our families, proving we could be independent and on our own.

However, things changed in 2022, when we welcomed our daughter to the world, and I started to question whether being far from family was still worth it.

I began missing the Northeast pre-kids

By the time my daughter Sadie was born, we had lived in Florida for about six years. At that point, there were already parts of living in the South that had begun grating on me, a born and raised Northeasterner.

For one, the summers were brutal. While everyone (rightly) complains about the horrid winters up north, I would say there's a similar sentiment for the summers in Florida. Sometimes, it's so hot you don't want to go outdoors, which isn't too dissimilar from being homebound during the brutal cold of winter in New York or Connecticut. It's hard to get used to though.

We also started to feel less aligned and connected with some of our neighbors in the Sunshine State. When we started thinking about where we wanted our family to put down roots, it was clear that living in the Northeast would offer the values, educational opportunities, and sense of community we wanted.

Living away from family with a kid changed things

Having kids completely changed our mindset on being a plane ride away from family. As soon as my daughter was born, my thinking on the positives of independence quickly shifted.

The life we had carefully built was starting to feel harder to sustain. Every daycare illness became a logistical nightmare.

I very quickly learned the importance of the village everyone talks about when having a kid, and the downside to not having one.

A second kid finalized our decision to move back

What ultimately cemented our decision to move back to the Northeast was finding out I was pregnant with my second child in 2025. We decided the benefits of moving back to be with family outweighed our major stresses of leaving a place we had called home for a decade, and my husband leaving a job that was tied to the state.

We made the leap when I was in my third trimester, moving in with my in-laws for a few months while we found a job for my husband and a new place to live. While I, ideally, would not recommend making so many life changes at once (especially while heavily pregnant), it ended up being the best thing we've ever done for our family.

Being closer to family means our kids get to see their grandparents and cousins weekly. When we've had sick days where we couldn't miss work, someone has been able to help step in and watch the kids. My husband and I have more opportunities to spend intentional time together because support no longer feels so limited.

I no longer see needing support as a weakness

The biggest surprise, though, was how much my mental health improved. I didn't realize how exhausting it had been trying to manage parenting, marriage, work, and daily life entirely on our own until we stopped doing it alone.

For a long time, I believed independence was the ultimate sign of adulthood. Now I think there's something equally mature about recognizing when you need support and building your life around the things that actually matter to you.

Before kids, I thought moving closer to family would mean moving backward. Now, it feels like one of the best decisions we've ever made.

It's official: Amazon Prime Day is coming in just a few weeks, from June 23 to 26. With it comes the promise of summer's best deals on everything, from tech and TVs to beauty and fashion must-haves. But are Prime Day deals actually good? If they are, how can you tell?

The Business Insider Reviews team has been covering the event for years, which is why you can trust us to highlight only the best discounts on products we trust. As Deals Editor, I'm our team's expert on the matter, with countless days and nights writing sale coverage under my belt. With that in mind, I've broken down what you need to know to be your own deals expert, below.

For when we're not around, I've listed our tips and tricks for Prime Day deals shopping below. These are the hacks for scoring the best discounts during the Amazon-exclusive event to help you tell when a Prime Day deal is actually a good deal.

Lightning Deals and coupons

Amazon offers Lightning Deals and coupons throughout the year, but for Prime Day, the limited-time offers are much more frequent.

• Lightning Deals: Short-lived offers displayed on product listings, bringing items to incredible low prices. These are typically limited to a specific time and quantity before they expire.
• Coupons: Opt-in discounts available by selecting a checkbox on the product page or, more rarely, entering a coupon code at checkout. These can be pretty great deals, but they're not always all-time lows.

As a rule of thumb, Lightning Deals are always excellent deals. At worst, they'll match the previous all-time low, if not beat it by a landslide.

Coupons, on the other hand, aren't necessarily as good. Rather than assuming the best of them, it's best to keep an eye out for them on every product you buy. Typically, they're not the most obvious and can sometimes amount to only a few cents off, making them forgettable. However, it's worth keeping an eye out for the occasional gold mine that knocks an extra $50 off your purchase.

• See today's Lightning deals

Price tracking

Price history is valuable when evaluating a deal's "goodness." Short of watching prices regularly throughout the year and taking notes on rises and falls (like I do), it can be difficult to acquire this knowledge. Luckily, there are some tools you can use to bolster your confidence when adding to the cart.

• Camelcamelcamel: Perhaps the simplest to use, this website gives you a full price history graph when you enter a product page URL. It's pretty accurate, but fluctuations from third-party sellers, coupons, and Lightning Deals can introduce some confusion.

• Keepa: A plug-in for frequent deal hunters, this can be installed on most major browsers to generate price history graphs on every Amazon product page you visit. It's generally less fine-tuned than Camelcamelcamel, lacking the same amount of detail, but it's good for an overall pricing view.

These tools can offer priceless knowledge that can help steer you in the right direction. They're both free, too, so there's no reason to skip out on them for your biggest purchases.

List price vs. typical price

More often than not, deals on Amazon come with a vibrant red "Limited time deal" tag, complete with a crossed-out "List Price" to show you just how much you're saving. While this may, at first, pique your interest for potential savings, it doesn't take long to realize that "List Price" is often far from a product's typical price.

When I say "typical price," I'm referring to the price an item is available at for most of the year. The price-tracking tools I mentioned above help inform this number, along with cross-referencing other stores (like Walmart or DTC brand sites) and the overall knowledge I've gained from keeping tabs on these items for so long.

For example, the AirPods Pro 3 may look enticing at only $199. However, many Apple aficionados can tell you that the brand's products are almost always on sale. A quick glance at price history shows the earbuds are almost always available at $199, making that price more of a baseline than a can't-miss deal worth jumping on. In this case, I'd say the Pro 3's typical deal price is $199, and you should avoid ever paying any more than that.

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• My looming empty nest filled me with sadness, so I made exciting plans.
• But as my twins headed off for college, my oldest moved back in.
• I'm learning midlife transitions rarely unfold the way we imagine.

I hadn't known that choosing to be a parent was also saying yes to an inevitable series of heartbreaks.

It starts small. In their early teen years, you realize they've started keeping secrets. The number of subjects they'll only discuss with friends keeps growing, while your role as confidant shrinks and fades (for the time being).

In later teen years, the internal clock that tracks your waning time together begins to tick louder. Your home becomes a changing station — a pitstop between other, more exciting destinations — as your offspring come and go.

When they leave for college, every visit, followed by every leaving, becomes a mini-earthquake — shaking your entire nervous system.

So when my firstborn moved across the country for his first real job, and my twins started looking toward college, I knew I had to prepare myself for the ultimate heartbreak: an empty nest.

Learning how to fill an empty nest

As my twins chattered on — hypothesizing about what roommates and campus life would be like, researching room décor, furniture, and sundries for college dorm living — I conducted my own research.

I've always believed words carry weight, so I found it interesting that the word "empty" could feel so heavy. Ironically, "empty" also points to a solution. When a glass is empty, we fill it. When writers fill empty pages, they become authors. Even an empty heart can fill with an act of caring.

I Googled "how to ease transition to empty nest." Then I studied the leading advice. Researching art classes to fill the coming void, I discovered a multitude of nearby opportunities for creative exploration and expression.

By subscribing to local music and entertainment venues to fill the anticipated gap in joy, I discovered vibrant communities for liberated adults. Diving deep into forgotten dreams to fill the hole in my heart, I revisited passions, goals, and wishes I'd let go as sacrifices to parenthood.

Then, informed and inspired, I sat down with a blank sheet of paper and listed all the ways I could fill my "empty" nest. Each item on my list inspired excitement, enthusiasm, and hope, but more importantly, shifted my focus from a perception of loss to the prospect of future possibilities.

Free from school schedules and daily child obligations, I'd once again become the architect of my own life.

My empty nest was short-lived

Fall arrived, and our twins went off to their respective colleges. Although I grappled with the familiar tangle of feelings that accompany letting go, I knew the coming months held promise for us all.

The twins would meet new friends and learn new things. My husband and I would reconnect and explore new hobbies, places, and interests.

Then one day, we got the call. Our oldest — the one who'd moved across the country for work — said his role had been cut and that he was struggling to secure a new position.

Within a few months, he'd moved back home, reshaping the future we'd just begun imagining.

My son has moved back in, and I'm learning to be fluid

The joys of having him home far outnumber the challenges. His presence tempers the feeling of emptiness we'd otherwise have experienced. The house doesn't feel as quiet, I notice, as his laughter drifts down the stairs. And the nights of quietly hoping he's safe somewhere across the country have quieted and given way to restful sleep.

Soon, he'll move away again to start a new graduate program, while the twins, for now at least, appear to be settled. But I'm learning that this stage of life is filled with ever-changing seasons and new surprises.

So, I'm making a concerted effort to practice fluidity — refusing to stay stagnant and learning to adapt without fear or resistance when life changes direction unexpectedly. While I've learned it's good to have a plan, it's better to know when to loosen your grip on it.

Life is always moving around us. I'm learning to soften enough to change with it.

• Commuting, and how long it takes, is a huge aspect of daily working life in New York City.
• Mayor Zohran Mamdani has focused on making buses faster; longer commutes can be a drag for workers.
• We looked at how New Yorkers commute, and who commutes the longest.

New Yorkers, famously, are walking here. But just about 25% of them are driving too.

Commuting undergirds New York's economy, and shapes the daily lives of its workers. New York's robust public transit system carries around six million passengers daily, and around 1.6 million people drive into Manhattan's Central Business District daily.

But not all commutes are created equal. As politicians like Zohran Mamdani eye affordability measures, proposals like free and fast buses have taken the spotlight. Longer commutes can have real health impacts, lower worker satisfaction, and dent productivity. In New York City, bus riders, and those in further-flung, historically more working-class neighborhoods experience that more acutely.

"Most New Yorkers are traveling much farther in their daily commutes than people would be if they were living in a less expensive city, a smaller city," said Lauren Melodia, the director of fiscal and economic policy at the Center for New York City Affairs.

To understand how commutes affect New Yorkers across transit methods, income bands, and occupations, we analyzed 2024 American Community Survey data compiled by the University of Minnesota's IPUMS programs. We looked at survey results in the New York metro area, which includes suburban New Jersey and Westchester counties. From priests to Rockaway residents, here's what it's like for different New Yorkers to get around.

How New Yorkers commute

In New York City, the subway is king.

Driving is the second-most prevalent way of getting to work and back. A solid chunk of New Yorkers work from home, and a decent share take the bus or walk. A rarified few take taxis or ride shares.

Workers using long-distance or commuter trains, unsurprisingly, have the longest commutes. Subway riders still spend a decent amount of time in transit.

And while New York's reliance on public transit is anomalous for the US, it has challenges.

"It's another variable that you need to account for for your workday, basically," said Ege Aksu, a NYC-based economist for Revelio Labs. "You need to plan accordingly because there will be delays on your commute. The subway is going to be a little messed up, maybe." That can have its own trickle-down effects on productivity, Aksu said; long commutes can feel like "another hustle."

How long different workers spend commuting

To understand what commuting looks like across professions, we looked at occupations in the New York City metro area with at least 100 survey respondents.

Some of the longest commutes belong to lower-paid or hourly workers: The median annual wage for baggage porters and bellhops in the New York metro area is $48,610, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Similarly, the annual median wage for cleaners of vehicles and equipment is $41,540. Both of those are well below the New York City metro area's median household income of $99,852.

Higher-paid workers tend to have easier, although not necessarily shorter, commutes.

"If you have more flexibility in your job, then you can have a more pleasant commute with a seat on a train, compared to if you need to work a job where you're required to be there for a specific shift that kind of coincides with rush hour traffic," Melodia said.

Commutes are quite consistent across income bands. Workers in middle-income roles face longer commutes than their lower-paid counterparts. Some workers in more WFH-friendly knowledge industries may choose to trade a longer commute for fewer days in the office, said Randall Reback, an economics professor at Barnard College: if you move out to Long Island, you may spend more time commuting, but go in less often.

A slew of occupations have their own commute advantages. Tutors, who likely often work from home or Zoom into class with their pupils, had the shortest commutes. They were followed closely by clergy, who often live at or near their parishes.

Father Chris Lawton, a priest with the Paulist Fathers at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in New York City, lives around the corner from his office at the Paulist Fathers' Motherhouse. He finds his stroll-next-door commute convenient and reflective of his ministry, as the priesthood is more encompassing than just a job.

"Sometimes it's a little too close, and sometimes I long for a little more distance just to kind of create a separation in my head and heart of work and home," Fr. Lawton said. His boss has a rule: Out of the office once a day, out of the neighborhood once a week, and out of the city once a month.

Transit is still top of mind for many clergy and parishioners. Last fall, Lawton hosted a commuting-focused community talk called "mass transit."

"What we talked about was how stressful commutes can be, and how stressful our daily routines can be," Lawton said, "And where do we find God amidst that?" Attendees left with tools like prayer rituals and stress-reducing breathing techniques, as well as an appreciation for who they're commuting with.

"In New York City, even whether someone has a short or long commute, there's so much richness," Lawton said. "A real blessing of living in the city is that no matter who you are, unless you're taking private cars everywhere, we have the unique privilege of being in proximity to all kinds of people regularly."

• Jacqueline Matwick moved from Arizona to Turin, Italy, hoping to earn Italian citizenship by descent.
• Then Italy changed its citizenship laws, leaving Matwick and her family in legal limbo.
• Matwick is now considering her options to secure a stable future for her family in Italy.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jacqueline Matwick, 38, who moved from Arizona to Turin, Italy, with her family in 2024. Matwick was anticipating receiving citizenship by descent through her husband, but the Italian government changed the requirements after they moved, and the Matwicks no longer qualified. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

We were in New York for a long time. I was there eight years, my husband was there seven, and our oldest child was born there.

We were new parents in New York City, and childcare was insane — it's expensive everywhere, but in New York City, it's insanely expensive, and housing's really expensive. So you end up with almost a second rent payment just for childcare in New York. It was really hard to make that work.

We thought, "Where can we make our lives work as parents in a way that feels comfortable for us?"

We decided to move in with my in-laws in Arizona in 2020, when our daughter was a year and a half old. We thought maybe the Phoenix suburbs would offer us more affordability — we were thinking we were going to stay in Phoenix and buy a house, but the housing prices had shot up. So we were facing these same financial struggles in New York and in Arizona. It just felt like the math wasn't really working anywhere.

That was the pivotal moment that sent me looking abroad.

We were living with my in-laws — it's my husband's family who has Italian ancestry — and my father-in-law had talked about the fact that moving to Italy and becoming a citizen was an option, so I started digging into it.

At the time, a lot of these digital nomad visas didn't exist. Spain didn't actually have a digital nomad visa at the time, nor did Italy. Neither of us were remote workers, either, so that wasn't something that we were really thinking about.

At the time, citizenship was the way for us to expand our horizons and look beyond the US.

Starting the citizenship process took us years, and we moved to Italy to finish it there

It can take a long time to do the paperwork depending on your family line and how many generations back your Italian ancestry is. If you have inconsistencies in names or dates, you have to go and get documents corrected, and that can be a really tedious process.

It took us a year and a half from when we started looking at the paperwork in 2022 to getting everything corrected, lined up, and stamped in February of 2024.

If you have your paperwork meeting Italy's standards, you can apply at a consulate in the US, which takes a very long time. Or you can move to Italy and apply. So we moved to Italy in August 2024.

They created this permit that allows you to move to Italy and apply at your town, because everything in Italy is processed locally — even permitting is processed at the town level. So you can move here, establish residency, and then submit your paperwork here. It gets you citizenship faster, and it allowed us to move here faster.

If we had done it in the States, it would have taken us years, and it would have meant that our daughter was in second or third grade when we uprooted her, rather than letting her start kindergarten here. It was easier for her to learn the language when she was younger, and it made more sense for us to do it faster for our kids.

We were expecting to get approved for citizenship within about six to eight months, and at that point, my husband and kids would have citizenship — I could apply for a permit as the spouse, and then we would live here as citizens. I would have the option to get citizenship, too, with a language exam and all these other things, but we'd be able to legally work here and basically live here as citizens.

That was the expectation. What ended up happening was they changed the citizenship law before we were approved.

I don't think the government thought about what it would do to people who were caught in the middle.

We no longer qualify for Italian citizenship, but we're still hopeful

There were two law changes. One happened in April of 2025, but that's not the one that affected us. The one that affected us happened in October of 2024; it has to do with naturalization.

Basically, before, you could think of citizenship like lighting a candle.

When my husband's great-grandfather had his daughter, he was an Italian citizen. He lit her candle, so she was a citizen. Later, he became an American citizen, and he stopped being Italian. But once his daughter was Italian, she was good, and nothing he did would affect her, so she could pass that citizenship to her son, and her son could pass it to his son.

Italy changed it in October 2024 and said that whatever an adult did affected any children who were still minors. We wouldn't have moved here if that had initially been the case, because we wouldn't have been eligible.

They just changed their interpretation of the law very suddenly, and they didn't grandfather anybody in, even though we were already here and in the process.

We periodically contacted a lawyer for advice, and at that point, the lawyer suggested that there wasn't a lot of clarity over how people in the middle would be handled. They told us, "Just keep going and see what happens," so we did.

Our town told us we were the first people who had come in with the problem of arriving before officially gaining citizenship and then no longer qualifying.

The agent gave us a lot of false hope. He was like, "I think you guys are going to be fine because you were already here." We were pretty hopeful until we got a letter in January 2025 saying that we were rejected.

We came up with a plan to file a case in court. Even though the law changed, once you have a case, you can get a permit.

The law is still highly contentious. So it's not a slam dunk, but it was enough of a possibility for us to file the citizenship case even though we don't qualify under these current rules. The case is scheduled for January 2027.

We're still in Italy, but we're torn on what to do next

It's not clear what will feel the best for us moving forward. We're still in that same mode we were in in 2019, just trying to figure out where we want to raise our family.

We'd like to go back to the US — we miss everybody, but we're a little uneasy about it for all the reasons that brought us here in the first place. We're still thinking about Italy or maybe Spain. Spain isn't too far; we could drive a U-Haul from here if we had to. But that's a conversation we're having.

What feels the best? What's going to give us the lifestyle that we want and give us safety and give us security, and not have us on a work hamster wheel where we feel like we're never getting to relax and have time for our family?

We're trying to make it work like everybody else.

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

The next battle in AI will have less to do with model quality and more to do with customer lock-in.

For the past few years, OpenAI and Anthropic have competed relentlessly on model performance. But according to Samuel Colvin, CEO of AI startup Pydantic, the economics are changing.

"A year ago, what they cared about was revenue," Colvin told me recently. "Now, when one assumes they're both trying to IPO, their profit margin becomes really important."

The problem is that competing solely on model quality is expensive. Frontier labs must spend billions training ever-better models that are soon emulated. That's not a great recipe for durable profits.

Instead, Colvin believes OpenAI and Anthropic are increasingly focused on building products that are harder for customers to leave.

"They are doing their very best to find ways of locking people in that are not related to model quality," he said. "That's where I think Claude Code and Codex and all that work is coming from."

AI coding services already look like better businesses than chatbots. Developers can quickly consume huge numbers of tokens while running Claude Code or Codex on complex projects, generating far more usage (and revenue) than a typical chat session.

These tools could also become exceptionally sticky. Claude Code and Codex help companies generate software at unprecedented speed, creating codebases that grow beyond what human developers can realistically manage. Companies could find themselves dependent on the same AI tools to maintain, update, and understand the software those tools helped create.

That may help explain why Anthropic and OpenAI are racing to turn Claude Code and Codex into broader AI-powered work platforms rather than standalone coding products. Anthropic is pushing in this direction with Cowork, while OpenAI is planning to merge Codex into ChatGPT.

The catch is that customers are moving the other way.

Consider Walmart's home-grown coding assistant, Code Puppy. It's designed to avoid dependence on any single AI provider, and give the retail giant more control over its codebase. The system can switch between models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and others, helping Walmart control costs and reduce vendor lock-in.

That's the tension increasingly shaping the AI market. OpenAI and Anthropic want sticky, high-margin products that keep customers inside their ecosystems. Enterprise buyers want flexibility, portability, and lower token bills.

The winners of the next phase of AI may be the companies that best navigate this conflict.

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

• Johnny Hilbrant's character PE Guy has gone from a cult hit to a $1 million business in one year.
• PE Guy makes money through Cameo, TikTok, brand partnerships, and appearances at corporate events.
• We sat down with Hilbrant to walk through his business, and whether PE guy would want to invest.

The growth of Johnny Hilbrant's PE Guy character over the past year has been, to borrow one of his favorite phrases, "substantial."

What had started as a joke has turned into a real business, one that PE Guy might even want to invest in. While people in finance might complement Hilbrant on "his little skits," they might be surprised to learn just how much money he's taking home — $1 million in the past year.

Hilbrant, who is based in the suburbs of Boston, walked us through how he makes money, why he chose to manage himself, and how he stays sane while parodying finance bros.

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider fully verified Hilbrant's income claims from TikTok and Cameo. We also verified a spreadsheet that shows his brand deals and personalized videos by sampling documentation for some of these services.

I first started this character for fun in March of last year. I was posting two videos a week, but it wasn't on my radar as a way to make money until May, when The Black Tux offered me my first brand deal.

I turned to ChatGPT to ask how much I could charge based on my social platform, shared that number with The Black Tux, and they agreed. Once companies saw that I had done one brand deal, others reached out.

I started posting more often, and people started asking me if I was on Cameo. I wasn't at the time, but I told people they could Venmo me what they thought was a fair price for a personalized video. People offered between $200 and $400, which made me realize "Wow, there's a market for this." Soon after, Cameo reached out. I have now done nearly 1200 personalized videos and Cameos in the past year.

I've made over a $1 million in revenue in the last year, with the amount I make growing almost every month. Every time a new opportunity happens, I'm still dumbfounded. My email inbox went from maybe 1 email a day to 20 every day.

Diversified Revenue Streams

I've since done other brand deals with B2B software companies and extensive work with fintech Ramp. Their marketing team had come up with a viral marketing stunt where I'd interview their "CFO," Brian Baumgartner, Kevin from The Office.

I've also been working with consumer businesses like Boll and Branch and Daily Harvest. Typically, it's been that a founder or CEO of a company has reached out, said they love my character, and that they want to do an ad with me. I can go from an intro to a post in under a week.

The best-case scenario is that I become friendly with the CEOs and founders at the brand. That's the ultimate for me. Money is nice, but expanding your circle of peers is better.

While brand deals are my biggest source of income, in-person appearances at financial industry events are starting to rival them.

At events, I usually show a two-minute video with the filter, and then come out for a 45-minute Q&A as myself, and then mingle afterwards.

Some of the companies are in private equity, but others work with PE or are owned by PE, like insurance or investment banking. Every time I do one, there's an NDA. They tell me that they don't want the PE guys to know they've been making fun of them at the conference.

During the Q&A's, people will ask me about private equity's impact on the world and the character's origin story. It turns out people want me more than PE guy, which is really flattering.

I also sell merch, and share the revenue with a company that produces it and handles shipping for me. On top of that, there's TikTok, which pays you for high-performing videos. That makes up roughly 2% of my take-home pay.

Self-managed

I received reachouts from people who wanted to manage me and take up to 40% cut, which freaked me out. I decided to manage myself, and was like, "Thanks, I'll just use ChatGPT as a manager." I have since been signed by UTA, but they only get a cut of whatever they bring me. I still manage myself and my books 100%.

PE Guy is kind of my baby, and I don't want to give up control. I don't want someone telling me which videos to do or writing scripts for me. It's my voice, and I don't want it to change.

I never use AI to write scripts, but it is helpful for my administrative work. It's a lot of busy work, like managing my outreaches and email conversations as well as my accounting.

At this point, private equity is mentioned in only 20% of my videos. He's turning into a fake lifestyle influencer commenting on the world around him. If I work with a brand that's not the best, I get commenters saying PE Guy would never use that product.

As I get access to more experiences, he gets to go on them too: going on a yacht, going on a private plane, or going to the US Open.

I have a similar love-hate relationship with the character as the one my followers have developed. When I finish filming five or six Cameos, I'm exhausted. I'm breathing heavier because of the way I have to hold myself to make these noises.

Sometimes a Cameo will come in, and at first, I think I can do it in five minutes, but then I decide I've had enough of him today. He exists in me, but his not allowed to just come out. I've set boundaries with him.

Early on, some people asked me whether the character would age quickly. It's been 14 months, and it's getting stronger. I do think about if the popularity will go away, but it's kind of like thinking about how we're all going to die. I'm alive right now, so why think about that?

I do understand there's less job security. I am prepared for it to change eventually, but not go away, because now I have 333,000 Instagram followers. (Editor's note: We spoke to Hilbrant on May 28th. Hilbrant now has 340,000 followers)

Hilbrant's career journey

I started this character while working in fitness, but I realized at the end of last year that I no longer needed that job. I've been in the industry for 10 years, and at 36, it felt like time to do something different.

I knew things were changing when I started developing in-person PE Guy fans while teaching fitness classes at Barry's Bootcamp and SoulCycle.

I started the character partly to parody how people in these jobs seemed to look down on me for my fitness career.

Sometimes people in the finance world say things to me, "Oh, that's funny, that cute little thing that you do." I'm not saying that people should take me seriously, but this is a business now.

PE Guy would be shocked if he found out about this revenue. (Editor's note: At this point, Hilbrant started to speak more and more like PE Guy) His eyes would get wide, and he'd start to sweat a little. He'd say "Wait a second. Are you telling me in a year you made over $1 million? Let me talk to my team and get back to you."

He'd then come back to me and would want to buy some of my IP or something. He'd for sure want in on it as a little side investment. If it blows up and becomes the next big thing, PE guy would profit from it.

He'd definitely love the fact that there's no staff, because, as you know, PE loves to cut head count. He'd be like "Head count of one? Amazing." He would also try to make an AI version of me so he could eliminate me from the equation as well.

• Aiming for the "perfect diet" can be a one-way ticket to failure and misery.
• The nutritionist Sophie Gastman uses the odd convenience food when she can't be bothered to cook.
• Instant noodles with vegetables or fish sticks with peas are quick and nutritious meals, she said.

Sophie Gastman tries to balance protein, fiber, carbs, and healthy fats in every meal, and she's not scared to use convenience foods and store-cupboard staples when she's low on energy or time.

"There's a lot of guilt that comes with buying certain ingredients," Gastman, a nutritionist who fights misinformation and the author of "Find Your Healthy," told Business Insider.

Leaning on store-bought foods like fish sticks might be the difference between you making a homemade meal and ordering takeout, Gastman said.

"In nutrition, it's never black and white. There's always the middle ground," she said.

Gastman shared the three convenience foods she leans on to make quick, nutritious meals.

Fish sticks

On days she's feeling exhausted or nostalgic, Gastman reaches for the jumbo fish sticks she always has stocked in her freezer.

She typically throws them into her air fryer with some chopped potatoes to make homemade fries, and pairs them with peas.

In about 15 minutes, she has a plate filled with protein from the fish, and fiber and nutrients from the peas and potatoes.

Tinned fish

Tinned fish is having a moment because it's versatile, high in protein and healthy fats, and minimally processed.

"I always have tinned fish. I've got tuna, sardines, mackerel, salmon, literally always," Gastman said.

She chucks them onto a salad, smashes them on toast, or stirs them through a stir-fry or a bowl of rice.

"You could literally put them on anything," she said.

Instant noodles

Gastman always keeps instant noodles in her cupboard.

She likes to have hers with edamame beans, which she always has in the freezer, frozen dumplings, an egg, and whatever veggies she has on hand.

Gastman asks herself, "What can I add to a very basic meal, like an instant noodle, to make it a bit more balanced?"

• Danny Moses of "The Big Short" fame uses prediction markets as a tool.
• The trader recently detailed how he uses Kalshi in a post on his Substack.
• He told Business Insider more how he uses the platform to inform his investment views.

When he spoke to Business Insider in December 2025, Wall Street trader Danny Moses of "The Big Short" said that he was fascinated by prediction markets. Now, he says he begun using them to inform his investing views.

Platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket have taken betting far beyond sports, allowing users to place wagers on everything from political events to tech layoffs to the weather. Moses wrote on his Substack these platforms have strong use cases for investing pros.

"Often, prediction markets serve as better indicators of sentiment and potential outcomes than traditional data sources," Moses said. "Several times a day, I peruse Kalshi to see if a new or trending contract sparks my interest or adds color to an ongoing investment thesis."

Moses isn't the only one to tout the benefits of prediction markets for investors. In February, the Federal Reserve published a study that suggested Kalshi could be used to accurately measure macroeconomic expectations.

But as Moses sees it, the same may hold true for stock investing. In his post, he recalled using the betting markets as a barometer for the likelihood of a major corporate event, in this case, the merger of SpaceX and Tesla, and how it was impacting Tesla stock.

"I spotted this event contract well before the rumors surfaced in traditional information channels, and I noticed TSLA's stock began to percolate just as the odds of a merger on Kalshi started to climb," he stated. "Other times, it might be a broader industry indicator, such as predicting 90-day auto delinquency rates."

Moses said that he uses Kalshi to monitor the flow of information, but also to place bets on events he believes are mispriced.

He said that he recently placed multiple bets on when Anthropic will begin trading after news broke of its IPO filing. After noting that Kalshi placed the odds that it would happen before October 1 at more than 60%, he opted to play the contract both for that event and the September 1 contract with a "yes" bet.

Moses told Business Insider that the categories he watches most closely are finance, commodities, economics, and sports. During his time using the platform, he has used Kalshi both as a means of generating standalone trades and as a tool for adding conviction to trades he's already put on.

"There have been countless times that I have seen an event contract trading on Kalshi that led me to research a specific company as a result," he said. "If you believed there was a macro catalyst for either the markets or a specific stock that might occur, you could express it in traditional trading (stocks/indices) or just trade the event contract.

As for what the future holds, Moses says that big institutions will start integrating prediction markets into trading strategies.

"It's only a matter of time before hedge funds start utilizing event contracts to express macroeconomic views or hedge current exposures."

• Madalyn Conchola, 62, adopted her four granddaughters, facing financial and emotional challenges.
• Conchola, an IT analyst, manages work and family life while supporting her granddaughters' needs.
• Despite financial strain, Conchola ensures her granddaughters' stability, focusing on mental health.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Madalyn Conchola, 62, who lives in Phoenix. Conchola adopted four of her granddaughters, ages 7 to 19. She said the financial hit has been tough, but her granddaughters have been thriving. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I was briefly an empty nester; now I've adopted four of my granddaughters, ages 7 to 19. My son's 7-year-old daughter was placed with me when she was 10 months old in 2019. I received my daughter's 12-, 16-, and 19-year-old daughters in 2021.

I'm an IT analyst in healthcare technology, which I've been doing for 16 years. I've worked remotely to balance work with raising my youngest daughter, who's now 26. She lives with me but works and has her own life; I don't want to put any responsibility on her to raise the grandkids. When I was an empty nester, I was pursuing ministry in foreign missions and an artistic career change.

My two older children were doing well and had children of their own. Then I found out both of them were dealing with substance abuse issues.

I got my son's daughter first, and not long after, I got my older daughter's girls safely with me with the help of Child Protective Services.

I had a lot of family resistance

My extended family felt that if I had intervened, I would have left my daughter to her own devices once she didn't have the responsibility of the children. My daughter had a lot of anger about the situation, but I didn't want the kids to be involved in whatever she needed to do to heal. I told her I wasn't going to let her drag her kids through that. I had recently downsized before getting the kids, but I needed a bigger vehicle and a larger house.

Around the time all of this was happening, I buried my mother in 2020 and my brother in 2021. My granddaughters and I lived in my mom's house for three years while I was trying to get her affairs in order, and I settled her estate in early 2026. Once we were ready to put her house up for sale, I moved into a rental.

Everything was happening so fast. I could sense that the girls didn't want to live with their grandmother. They were having a lot of mental issues, and I got them into therapy. There was no handbook on grandparents "reparenting," and it felt surreal, as though this wasn't my life.

I looked for resources through my church and family, but wasn't receiving the kind of support I felt like I needed. When I was fostering them, an agency provided beds, and a consignment shop let me get clothes. Still, I felt there should have been more accessible organizations set up to address the needs of families affected by the opioid crisis.

I isolated myself, put my head down, went to work, and did what I needed to do. I was putting one foot in front of the other and trying to keep the kids active. A lot of my friends are not grandparents yet, or their kids are doing well and can't relate to my story.

The economy has really affected our living expenses

I earn over $70,000 annually, but my rent is now $2,250 because I needed a place big enough for all of us. My food bill is up to $400 a month because food's so expensive now. Gasoline costs a few hundred dollars a month. My monthly expenses, including insurance and household bills, total a few thousand.

I don't know how I do it, but I've done it. I do receive a state subsidy of a little over $2,000 for the children, but that doesn't cover all the costs. Once they get older, that will go away, even if they're still living with me.

When I saw that neither my son nor daughter was able to comply with what was needed for them to be reunited with their children, I started the adoption process because I didn't want the girls to go into the system. I was adopted and didn't find out until I was almost 29. I know that pain and that hurt, and I wanted to alleviate further trauma to the children.

My focus has been on meeting the children's mental, emotional, and spiritual needs

They've all dealt with mental health challenges at times, but are thriving currently. They're doing better in school, and I think they feel stable and safe with me. I feel like I'm getting my footing and able to breathe a little now.

I'm a tough grandma, but I meet every child where they are and try to provide them with resources.

My 19-year-old granddaughter is in college for dance education. I'm still supporting her, but she's working part-time. My 16-year-old is in a high school aerospace program and wants to be a commercial pilot, though she's also interested in psychology. The 12-year-old did cheer this year. The 7-year-old runs the family and can hold her own.

My age and ability to work loom over me

I recently took a mini-vacation to Los Angeles to get away. I'm able to think about some things that I want to do with my life because I still have some life to live.

My eldest daughter is now clean and actively healing her relationship with her children. Having her back in their lives has been helpful to the 12-year-old, especially. She has her own apartment and works. They've also been back in touch with their paternal side, which has been helpful. The paternal family is out of state, but they provide needed emotional support, send gifts, and fly in for graduations.

My son is still struggling. I did my best to keep my family together and to ensure the children have the stability and support they need to be successful in life.

Now, my daughter will say, "Mom, I won't say they wouldn't have turned out well with me, but I know they wouldn't have turned out as well as they have with you. It's like I've carried the torch for so long, and then I passed the baton to you, and you'll get them the rest of the way."

Still, as time goes on, my age and my ability to work and earn money loom over me. I'm looking for other ways to try to generate an income so that when I'm at the point where I can't work, I can find help through my art and writing. I'm making sure my credit card debt is extremely low.

I'm preparing to gather my thoughts into a memoir about my life. For a long time, I wasn't ready to tell my story, but I think it's part of my healing. There's nothing that I'm ashamed of.

It's 4 a.m., and Whitney Stefko Dover's family "chief of staff" has already sent her the daily briefing.

It's called the "Daily Dover."

The early morning operations briefing helps Stefko Dover and her husband, Chris, coordinate their complicated lives with two young sons. An AI assistant scans their emails and calendar apps to map out the day ahead — school schedules, au pair or babysitter coverage, camp drop-offs, travel plans, family birthdays, recycling-bin reminders, and anything else that might otherwise rattle around in Stefko Dover's brain until it is either handled or forgotten.

At the bottom of the email, the AI drafts two quick texts with the reminders: one to her husband and another to Sara, the family's au pair. The texts also include affirmations.

"It sounds so silly, but it has really improved my marriage," Stefko Dover told Business Insider. "I don't feel resentful now around having to carry around these additional mental tasks."

Stefko Dover, a director and senior counsel of policy and legal operations at Ford, built an assistant named Claudette using Anthropic's tools, including Claude Code and Claude Cowork.

Her husband — who uses AI to build apps to track his supplements and finances — also told Business Insider it's been a lifesaver.

Stefko Dover is one of a growing number of people without a coding background building AI assistants to manage the repetitive, annoying, and emotionally loaded parts of everyday life. They've built products that help them grocery shop or find the right foods for their families.

Instead of writing code line by line, they describe the tasks they want their agents to perform in plain English — a practice called "vibe coding."

'Let me figure out how to automate that'

Stefko Dover first turned to AI to help organize the family's daily activities during a trip in March. While she was away from the family's home in Scottsdale, Arizona, her husband asked her to make a to-do list. There were babysitters to coordinate, soccer schedules to track, and daily logistics to explain.

"I kind of thought to myself, 'Sure, let me figure out how to automate that,'" Stefko Dover said.

That week, using her $17 a month Claude Pro subscription, she described which apps the tools should monitor and what to include in the daily email.

She quickly shipped the first version of Claudette — but it needed some editing.

Early iterations sent text messages that were far too detailed. For example, the proposed texts to her husband included hour-by-hour reminders. One prompt reminded her husband when the children should brush their teeth.

She continually adjusted the system — including through voice reminders on her Claude app on her phone — so it would tell the family what they actually needed to know: when Dover was on duty, when the au pair was taking over, which appointments or school events mattered, and what was coming up next.

She said she uses Claude enough that she often runs into the AI plan's token limits.

She still serves as Claudette's editor from time to time, mostly to fine-tune the affirmations into her voice. She called her system "human in the loop."

But it's getting much better, she said — and might not need as many edits soon.

A May 21 Claudette-drafted message to Chris began: "Good morning. It's going to be a glorious day, day two of summer, and it's really heating up."

Then it moved into business: It was his mother's birthday, and he should send a quick text or flowers, Claudette advised. Recycling also went out the next morning, and Claudette could see, via access to Stefko Dover's Gmail, that she had recently purchased new furniture. It arrived in large cardboard boxes that needed to be broken down and discarded. And there were a lot of them.

"Your wife really has a shopping problem," Claudette wrote, according to Stefko Dover. She kept the line in.

A personal life organizer

Stefko Dover said Claudette has helped organize two main family frontiers: birthday parties and school emails.

"There's just 9 million birthday parties every weekend. It's a lot to manage manually," she said. Reminders of birthdays alone have "probably saved our marriage."

Still, Stefko Dover said she doesn't have specific plans to share Claudette with the world. If she were to make it available, she told Business Insider she would open-source the prompts so other families can build their own scheduling tools.

"This has been one of my greatest hacks," she said. "It's made things so much better, and really has alleviated a lot of the mental load I have at home."

Stefko Dover still has to make the final call on what makes the cut for the text messages to the people in her life. But she knows that by 4 a.m. her chief of staff has already organized her family's daily priorities.

All that's left to do is review the slate and press send.

• Hashim Mahmoud, a strategy and operations manager, found his job by taking networking to the extreme.
• The 30-year-old tracked his efforts in a spreadsheet to remember to send thank-yous and follow-up notes.
• He shared one template for LinkedIn connection requests and another for asking contacts to make intros.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 30-year-old Hashim Mahmoud, a strategy and operations manager at Angi, an online home-services marketplace formerly known as Angie's List. His identity and background have been verified. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

I found my current position after just a few months of job hunting in 2024, largely thanks to how I went about networking. I reached out to more than 1,200 people, spoke with about 150 of them, and got about 20 interviews before landing the position I have now at Angi. The job market may be more competitive today, but I think my experience still applies.

My strategy was to leverage my LinkedIn network. To stay organized, I started a spreadsheet of people that included former coworkers, secondary connections, people at companies I admired, and people in roles I wanted to better understand.

When I sent connection invites on LinkedIn, I always included a personalized note. I would say who I am and that I would love to connect to learn more about their background and company.

I kept it short and respectful. I wasn't saying: Can you help me get a job? I was asking for 15 to 20 minutes to talk. Here's an example:

Hi XX,

I noticed you're a Strategy Director at [Company name]. I'm seeking new opportunities and would love to discuss how my experience in strategy and operations might fit at [Company name]. I look forward to connecting!

Best,

Hashim

Some people would accept my invite, but not reply to my personalized note. When that happened, I would immediately send a follow-up thanking them for connecting with me, and then asking for 15 to 20 minutes of their time.

I did this because I had set up alerts on LinkedIn to be notified when anyone accepted one of my connect invitations. This meant they were likely active on the platform at that moment. Most would then quickly respond.

Those calls were essentially informational discussions. I would share a little bit more about myself, and then I approached them with curiosity. I would ask about their career paths, the skills that mattered in their field, and the culture of their teams.

I kept it very soft. Toward the end, I would ask if my background would be a good fit. If they said yes and there was any opening, they would typically ask for my résumé.

If they said no, I'd ask if it would be OK to stay in touch. I'd also ask if they could make introductions to people in their networks, and I would offer to provide them with a prewritten message they could basically copy and paste. For example:

Hi XX,

I'd like to introduce you to Hashim, who is currently exploring new career opportunities. He has a strong background in strategy and operations and I thought it would be great for the two of you to connect. Hashim would like to learn more from your experience and I believe you could have some insightful exchanges.

Hashim, meet XX, who is currently a Strategy Director for [XX] Company.

I'll let you both take it from here!

Best regards,

[Name of sender]

After every networking conversation, I sent each person a thank-you message. Always, no matter what, you send that thank-you note. I don't care if you had a bad time talking to somebody. You thank them for taking the time to talk to you.

With networking, you can get a lot more information than what's in a job description, such as how different teams operate within a particular company and the problems that they were trying to solve. You may be able to use that to your advantage.

During one job interview, I remember talking about how I planned a lot of team-building events at my previous job, such as a trip to a Lakers versus Golden State game. I brought that up because I knew from talking to a networking connection I'd made at the company that it wanted someone with a lot of energy.

All of those networking conversations also helped sharpen my interviewing skills, which made me more confident. You do tend to get asked the same questions over and over, so with each one, I got better at explaining my background.

Most of these conversations didn't lead to a potential job opportunity right away. But some did bear fruit, and that's what happened with Angi. A former colleague of mine had a friend who worked there, and he agreed to make an intro.

She agreed to talk, and told me about the team she leads, which was in my field of strategy and operations. I then shared a little bit more about my background and explained why I would be a good fit for her team. She said there weren't any openings at the time, but she would like to stay in touch.

Fast forward a few months, and I reached out to my new connection at Angi just to check in. She said that they had a new role on her team that would be posted online the next day. I applied, listed her as a referral, and ultimately got the job. I now work for her.

The data center boom is accelerating.

A Business Insider analysis of US data center permits reveals a staggering escalation in data center power use. Data centers across the US are growing in number and in size. If all data centers permitted through 2025 come online, they will use between 224.3 terawatt-hours and 358.8 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, an increase of 50% over the previous year across the range, Business Insider's analysis found.

At the midpoint, that's more than all the electricity used by any one US state in 2024, except Texas.

The vast majority of this power use is driven by hyperscale data centers, mammoth facilities that use 40 megawatts or more each, Business Insider estimates.

Tech giants have an insatiable appetite for more computing power to fund their AI ambitions. In 2025, permits were issued for 176 new data centers across 34 states — the most new permits in one year since the first was issued in 1976, Business Insider found. Many of them are mammoth facilities destined for rural areas — enormous complexes blanketing prairies, green spaces, and farmland.

Amazon's planned 14-building data center complex in Ridgeland, Mississippi, would transform nearly 800 acres of rural woodland. In the village of Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, Microsoft's nine data center buildings would command a collective footprint of over 5.2 million square feet built on a property nearly the size of New York City's Central Park, according to planning documents. And just outside Eagle Mountain, Utah, QTS — one of the nation's biggest data center operators — is building one that is expected to demand between 1.9 and 3 terawatt-hours a year once fully online, according to Business Insider's estimate. On average, that's the same amount of electricity used by 227,000 US homes.

The race by tech companies to reach ever-greater AI ambitions has sparked a sweeping backlash from local residents and state and local officials wary of data center impacts on the environment, economy, and communities. And development-friendly lawmakers could face a reckoning in this year's midterms, in which data centers are emerging as a key issue for many voters.

'Digital roots in rural soil'

Kaitlyn Gruenbacher lives on a third-generation farm in Sedgwick County, Kansas. Farms quilt the vast majority of the state. From the window of her home, she can see a cattle pasture and her neighbor's tilled fields stretching far into the horizon.

Developers see something entirely different. Access to necessary infrastructure, cheap power, plentiful land, and available water make south-central Kansas attractive to prospectors looking for new data center sites. It's the perfect state, one academic wrote in a 2025 presentation at an economic forum, to set "digital roots in rural soil."

Early this year, Gruenbacher learned that a developer had proposed a data center site across the road from her home. It had purchased or signed sale agreements for more than 300 acres, according to property records. Gruenbacher was first shocked, then furious. A data center like that would devastate her way of life, she told Business Insider.

The developer didn't respond to requests for comment.

The news exploded into Gruenbacher's community, she said. In fiery town halls, neighbors opposed the data center near Gruenbacher's property and two more proposed in nearby locations. As little as 30 feet below the soil, the Equus Beds Aquifer feeds crop irrigation and drinking water to residents across southcentral Kansas. Sedgwick County residents feared the data centers would threaten the fragile aquifer amid a yearslong drought, drive up electricity bills, jeopardize their health with noise and air pollution, and displace multigenerational farming families.

Data centers like those proposed in Kansas are extremely resource-intensive; some of the largest use up to several million gallons of water a day and as much electricity as a small city. Nationwide, their water and electricity draws have decreased neighbors' water pressure, strained electric grid systems, and increased reliance on heavily polluting fossil fuels, such as natural gas or, as in Nebraska, coal. States and local governments have also granted large tax exemptions to data center developers, some amounting to more than a billion dollars in forgone annual tax revenue. In Ohio, for example, a recently suspended state-level data center tax exemption totaled nearly $1.6 billion in lost tax revenue in 2025, the state reported.

Their expansion could also increase electricity costs, multiple analyses have shown. Utilities scrambling to meet data centers' skyrocketing power demands are investing billions of dollars in new grid infrastructure and power generation. Some utilities have recouped that cost by raising electricity prices for all their ratepayers, including residential customers.

At PJM Interconnection — which operates an electric grid serving 67 million people across 13 states and Washington, DC — data centers contributed to a 76% increase in wholesale power costs in the first quarter of 2026, compared to the year-earlier period, according to a May 2026 report by Monitoring Analytics, PJM's independent market monitor.

"Customers are already bearing billions of dollars in higher costs as a direct result of existing and forecast data center load," the Monitoring Analytics report found.

PJM said it is working to establish new rules to integrate data centers without unfair impacts on consumers.

Amazon, Google, Meta, OpenAI, and other Big Tech companies pledged in late 2025 to pay their fair share for future grid investments needed to support their data centers, so residential customers wouldn't have to foot the bill.

Gruenbacher said she and her neighbors worry about the impact data centers could have on their land and their livelihoods. "They're going to take our finite resources," Gruenbacher said. "And what are we getting in return? Nothing."

Proponents of data centers say build-out is crucial for US economic growth, both for the country's AI advances to remain competitive on the world stage and for the number of jobs created in their construction. In Kansas, supporters see data centers as an opportunity to garner local tax revenue and high-wage construction jobs. A developer of a 290-acre data center project in De Soto, Kansas, for example, agreed to pay more than $460,000 a year to the city in lieu of property taxes and, once operational, is expected to pay a 3.75% franchise fee on all electricity used, amounting to an estimated $1.5 million in city revenue a year, according to a report commissioned by the Wichita-Sedgwick County Metropolitan Area Planning Department.

The AI arms race

Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet, the parent company of Google, are in an artificial-intelligence arms race. Collectively, they are set to spend over $600 billion in 2026, funneling most of that capital expenditure into even more data center build-out.

Amazon and QTS criticized Business Insider's methodology, which was developed in close consultation with industry and academic experts and is the same methodology used for an award-winning series published by Business Insider last year. Microsoft said it is working with utilities to plan energy use and invest in grid infrastructure so it can bring data centers online "without taking resources away from local customers or driving up electricity prices."

Business Insider's power-use estimates for Meta and Google are likely understatements. Our calculations are based on permits for backup generators installed at each facility. As of 2025, Meta had permits for four data centers with their own dedicated power plants, including two that disclosed no plans to install backup generators, so they aren't represented in Business Insider's analysis. And, for four of Meta's 38 data centers and 17 of Google's 53 data centers, the companies had their permits fully or partially redacted under public disclosure exemptions for trade secrets.

Business Insider's analysis of permits shows that Meta had 38 US data centers at the end of 2025, a figure that Meta says is too high. Meta says it currently has 28 data centers in the US, and that some of the permitted facilities in Business Insider's analysis are offices. Offices could have backup generators for small, on-site servers. Business Insider included these facilities because they received air permits issued with federal industry codes associated with data centers. These facilities represent 0.2% of Meta's total data center power use, according to Business Insider's estimate.

Power hungry

Data centers have transformed into a bipartisan political flashpoint.

Fights have erupted in communities across the country. "Shark Tank" investor Kevin O'Leary in early June pledged to roughly halve the size of his proposed 40,000-acre data center in Box Elder County, Utah, after backlash from community members and lawmakers concerned about electricity prices, water use, and environmental damage.

In Nebraska, lawmakers are considering a mandate that all new data centers proposed in the state must build their own dedicated power generation sources, such as large natural gas turbines. These efforts are meant to prevent electricity price hikes and ensure Big Tech pays its share for grid improvements made to support data centers' relentless power draw.

This requirement, while expensive, has been largely embraced by Big Tech companies. Business Insider identified at least 20 permits issued to developers through the end of 2025 for power plants intended to serve data centers. Far more have been announced, are in various stages of planning, or received their permit in 2026. Cleanview, an energy data company, identified 46 data centers that plan to build their own power generation sources.

In Nebraska, Gruenbacher and her neighbors used social media to share news articles, analyses, and videos of Kansans speaking out at community meetings against proposed data centers. In their crop fields and along rural county roads, they staked signs reading: "No data center!"

Gruenbacher now spends hours each day writing to state officials and coordinating with grassroots activists in Barber, Miami, and Leavenworth counties, where residents have packed town halls and city council meetings to oppose proposed hyperscale data centers.

In her own county, she and her neighbors recently notched the latest in a series of wins. Bending to community pressure, Sedgwick County leaders in May voted to extend the study period on new data center applications for another 90 days.

Our methodology:

To investigate the rapid proliferation of US data centers, Business Insider filed requests with all 50 states and Washington, DC, for the air permits issued through 2025 that regulate backup generators installed at data centers. Business Insider used data in these permits to identify data center location and ownership, and estimate facility power use. (Read more about Business Insider's methodology here.)

Data center power use varies based on factors including the types and frequency of use of servers, cooling systems, and other infrastructure. To account for this, Business Insider calculated a range of estimated annual data center electricity use. In our data visualizations, we used the midpoint of that range for clarity.

Business Insider's analysis is dependent on estimating data centers' electricity use based on the number and type of backup generators installed at each facility. Where developers are building entire power plants, some are forgoing installing backup generators altogether. As a result, Business Insider's electricity estimates are certainly an undercount, as facilities known to be huge and built with dedicated on-site or nearby power generation, such as xAI's data center complex in Memphis, Tennessee, or Meta's Hyperion Campus in Richland Parish, Louisiana, appear far smaller in Business Insider's analysis, due to a lack of permitted backup diesel generators.

Amazon said Business Insider's methodology is misleading because it includes a range of electricity estimates. QTS said the company's current electricity use is lower than our estimates, which project future use. Equinix says it had 79 data centers either built or under construction at the end of 2025. Business Insider identified permits for 56 Equinix data centers.

Have a tip or a question about our reporting? Reach out to Business Insider's enterprise team at investigations@insider.com.

• Roman & Erica is a lifestyle management firm that handles all aspects of their clients' leisure.
• They work with 10 to 12 families who pay at least $150,000 a year for 24/7 access.
• Erica Jackowitz said every day is different, from planning last-minute trips to kids' sleepovers.

This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with Erica Jackowitz, who runs the New York and Aspen-based lifestyle management company Roman & Erica alongside her husband, Roman Chiporukha. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

As a lifestyle management company, we handle all facets of our clients' leisure, including their travels, homes, yachts, planes, cars, and social events.

If it relates to their leisure at all, we handle it, whether it's traveling for their kids' hockey tournament, throwing a dinner party at home, or a vacation to the Arctic.

We're essentially a personal assistant to all things leisure. Our clients pay upward of $150,000 a year and have access to Roman and me directly, 24/7. We represent about 10-12 families at a time. We have to keep it super exclusive and limited so I can make sure I can answer a client's call at 8 p.m. on a Saturday night. Our ethos is always so that clients feel like they're the only one.

We have really deep connections with our clients and really try to understand who they are and what their needs are. I know what they want for their children's birthday party, how they want to have dinner, and what they should order. I know who will deliver the best flowers and how to send unique, customized gifts to their friends and family, and how to manage their miles.

What we offer is better allocation of resources. Instead of a client spending seven hours trying to figure out what they should do and where they should eat in Paris, we do it for them. They're running major companies, and they're busy people. We also advocate for them. Unlike a traditional travel agent whose bottom line is based on commission, we're salary-based.

We are there to help people style their own lives and make it seamless, so at the end of the day, they can show up to the lives they've built and not have to spend the time planning.

Everyday is different

I'll have a list of all the things I need to achieve the next day, and by the time I open my eyes in the morning, that list is usually not what transpires. That's what I love about what I do.

Right now, the Knicks have really taken over our phone, with people calling to adjust their travel itineraries to be here in New York for this moment. Last week, a client had a four-hour delay at JFK, which meant he was going to miss the private plane that was meeting him in Southeast Asia. Reallocating all those logistics kept me up all night. This morning, I got a call from a client who wants me to plan a "Back to New York" party in September for their friends and family when everyone returns from their summers away from the city.

One of the most unique requests I got was last year. I was at a party in Capri, and I got a phone call from a client whose friends were stuck in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea on a yacht with a group of people they were not comfortable with. The client called and said, "Save my friends. Get them off this boat." We sent a helicopter out there and got them off the boat. It was bananas. We actually refer to it today with the client as the rescue mission.

A lot of requests are more related to daily life, like a last-minute dinner reservation at a hot restaurant in another city. I've rented full carnivals for clients just for "Sunday fun day," with water slides, slip-and-slides, bouncy houses, as well as pizza, taco, and candy trucks.

You need to have the resources to make all that happen, and we do. Our clients are used to on-demand services whenever they want and however they want.

I love solving hard problems

I'm actually a lawyer by education, but as a child I was one of those people that if someone told me something was impossible, doing it was my adrenaline rush. It was my high. I'd be like, 'Well, I'm going to make that happen." If someone told me something was sold out, I would find a way to source it even if I didn't need it.

What I do for a living is an extension of my own lifestyle and my passion for travel, restaurants, and good food. I don't have a boundary between what is my lifestyle and what is my work because they blend with everything I do.

Friends and family say to me all the time, "Erica, you're never not working." I say, "Well, this is my lifestyle, so there's no separation between my work and my actual life." I was just smart enough to turn my passion in this lifetime into my career.

We spend the summer in Europe because that's where the bulk of our clients spend their summers, so it's easier for us to be onsite in the time zone. I just turn a hotel cabana into my office.

Ten years ago, I dreamed about that being the case, but in the past couple of years it's been actualized. It's incredible to be able to actually say, "I live in Europe over the summers, and that's part of my job."

• Jill Dooley and her family sold their house to move into an RV full time last year.
• They decided to make the change due to work burnout and to spend more quality time together.
• They've traveled through Florida and are now on their way to Maine.

Jill Dooley said she's her "family's cruise director." She's been planning trips and homeschooling lessons on the road after her family of four decided to sell their house to live in an RV full-time.

"We did the normal life thing, where we both had a really good job, kids were in sports, they were going to school, all the right things," Jill, a mom of two daughters, said.

Jill was a math and science teacher, but realized her love of teaching was being overshadowed by burnout. Because she was feeling exhausted, it felt hard to be fully present for her daughters after work. It also felt like the family wasn't spending enough quality time together during the week.

Her husband Derek joked about moving into an RV as the solution; his retired dad had done some traveling that way, so Derek was intrigued by the lifestyle. However, the casual joke turned into a serious plan — researching RV models and dealerships, buying their new home and a truck, selling most of their items, and enlisting the help of a family member who's a real estate agent to get their house on the market. They sold their Florida house for about $400,000.

So far, the children are loving the change, and Derek and Jill's stress levels have dropped, even with all the new things they have had to learn.

The Dooleys are among the families and empty nesters who have sold their homes to live in an RV. Some are working from the road, while others are enjoying their retirement years. People have enjoyed figuring out how to make this new lifestyle work, saving on house expenses, and meeting new people.

Derek thinks there used to be more of a stigma about living in an RV, but that the lifestyle is viewed differently now. "Ours is very nice, but some of the ones that we've seen and some of the rigs that people have, it's literally a small mansion. It's unbelievable," he said.

Moving from about 1,900 square feet to roughly 450 square feet

The Dooleys wanted to make sure they found something that had enough room for all of them, including space for the kids to play. The roughly 450-square-foot RV has a lot of areas that would be found in a house — a primary bedroom, a living room, and a kitchen. The daughters also have a playroom with a loft above it for sleeping. Jill said it's easier to clean the RV than their previous roughly 1,900-square-foot house.

Jill has left teaching, while Derek works remotely and can do his job from a laptop outside, weather permitting, or use his portable office, where he stores his desk and chair. "When I'm working in the mornings, I pull it out and set up my office there in the bedroom," he said. "It's away from everything, it's quiet, and so it makes it easy to be able to do that."

He was a nurse during COVID and now works in healthcare data analytics. He added that his team has been supportive of his RV lifestyle, and if he does have to go into work, he will do so.

How RV life has been going

The family kicked off their RV life last year in Florida, seeing more of their home state than they had before. They rented a boat to hang out in the Florida Keys and also traveled to Jupiter, where they explored the Blowing Rocks Preserve.

The Dooleys feel more prepared about venturing further now that they have had time to figure out what the lifestyle is like and how to maintain their new home. They recently began their next adventure, traveling through the states to reach Maine, with an expected return to Florida in mid-September.

Their trips involve a lot of planning and coordination, including how long to stay at campgrounds and which activities to do. "I always call myself the cruise director because I've got to figure out where we're going, is there a reservation, what are we going to do when we get there?" Jill said. "That part's a little bit exhausting, but once we're there, it's fabulous."

Spending less money

Derek said they have to factor in different locations' cost of living and see where they can cut back. However, the couple added that they have started making better financial decisions since they've learned what's really a need versus a want.

Overall, they think they're spending less than before the RV lifestyle, partly because they were overspending to make up for family time during the week.

"We were doing everything all weekend long, and I think spending so much money just to feel like we were spending quality time with the family," Jill said. "That was when we realized this was not actual quality time; we're just spending a ton of money."

Derek said there were some upfront costs, such as buying tools and other things he thought he would need to maintain the RV himself. He said taking care of little things like bearings helps save money in the long run.

Their recent biggest cost fluctuation has been gas. They've budgeted between $500 to $800 for fuel on their 14-week trip along the East Coast. They use fuel discount programs to help offset costs.

The Dooleys pay for memberships to maintain their fitness goals while traveling. Derek has a $159 a month Orangetheory Fitness membership, while Jill has a Club Pilates membership for $299 a month.

They have a Thousand Trails membership, which offers advance reservations at campgrounds and other perks, for more than $200 a month. They said it saves them money because water, electricity, and sewer are included and allows them to have long stays. "I calculated it out: We're spending $9 a night this month to stay at the campgrounds," Jill said.

Being a family on the road

Jill was worried about the transition to homeschool, but she said the children have been excited about learning on the road, partly because they get to do a lot of field trips that fit their curriculum. For instance, she said her oldest child is doing a civics unit, so she will get to see Washington, DC, up close when they visit. They also have a membership for science museums in the US, another way the kids get hands-on learning.

Still, homeschooling on the road has its challenges, such as teaching two different ages. "It takes a little bit longer for me to figure out what one needs versus what the other one needs," Jill said.

Derek said he enjoys traveling and seeing new things, but a main benefit is getting to spend so much time together as a family. The RV lifestyle has helped him and Jill be more involved parents and see how their kids' emotions and personalities change.

"Before we were missing it," he said, because previously, "by the time we asked about their day, it was almost over, and they don't remember things. So I think just all in all, overall, we've been able to really be there and be more involved."

• Luis Noguera's father is selling a Miami home and is open to accepting AI company stocks as payment.
• The family believes AI stocks like OpenAI, Anthropic, or SpaceX offer better long-term investment.
• The house sale reflects a shift in investment strategy, favoring innovative tech over real estate.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Luis Noguera, whose father is selling a luxury home in Miami and accepting shares in Anthropic, OpenAI, or SpaceX as payment. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My father owns a modern waterfront home in South Florida that's currently on the market. Most sellers are hoping for cash offers or conventional financing.

We're open to something different.

If the right buyer came along and wanted to use shares in OpenAI, Anthropic, or SpaceX as part of the deal, we'd seriously consider it.

A mix of cash and private-company stock would probably make the most sense. We still have practical things to think about, like paying real-estate commissions and handling the transaction itself. But we're willing to be creative because we think owning a piece of these companies could be a better long-term investment than continuing to hold the property.

My background is in technology and data. I spent several years working on data teams, including in San Francisco, and I've followed the AI industry closely. My father and I recently formalized the structure of our family office, and we've been thinking more intentionally about where we want to invest our capital over the long term.

The house no longer fits that strategy.

We bought the property years ago as an investment. It was a new construction home in a gated community with a lake view, a pool, and a nearby golf course. We rented it out for several years and earned a solid return.

After the tenant moved out recently, we refreshed the property and started thinking about what came next.

No one in our family planned to live there. We weren't particularly interested in continuing to manage rentals. As we looked at the asset, we began to wonder whether there were better opportunities elsewhere.

That's what led us to consider AI stocks.

A lot of people talk about the hype surrounding companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, and I understand why. Valuations have skyrocketed, and there's plenty of speculation.

But I also think AI is a transformational technology.

I've worked in data long enough to see how dramatically these tools are changing the way people work. My colleagues use AI every day. I use it every day — I don't even write much code anymore. AI agents handle a lot of that for me.

I use AI for everything from administrative work to building systems for personal accounting and reporting. Tasks that used to require multiple tools can now be handled through AI workflows. The productivity gains are real.

That's why I believe the opportunity extends beyond the current excitement.

Could these investments go down? Absolutely. There's risk in any emerging technology. That's one reason we'd likely prefer a combination of stock and cash rather than an all-stock transaction.

We're still in the very early stages of exploring this idea. The home has received multiple showings, but we haven't received an offer involving AI-company shares yet.

Even if nobody ultimately buys the property this way, I think the fact that we're having the conversation says something about where investing is headed.

My generation looks for opportunities differently from previous generations. We're more comfortable exploring unconventional structures if we believe the underlying investment thesis is strong.

Years ago, people might have looked at a rental property and assumed it was the obvious asset to keep. My family looks at that same property and thinks we'd rather own a piece of the companies building the future.

• Ukraine's top interceptor drone makers have developed remote operations for pilots.
• Pilots can now control interceptor drones from hundreds of miles away, rather than dozens.
• It is designed to keep interceptor pilots safe from Russian targeting.

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian drones were once hunted by Ukrainian air defense crews on the ground nearby; their signal and ability to communicate with an interceptor could only stretch so far.

Pilots operating the P1-Sun, a bullet-shaped interceptor drone made by the Ukrainian company Skyfall, used to have a range of roughly 20 miles to identify and take down Russian uncrewed aircraft, limiting their coverage area.

But now, the pilots can operate from hundreds or thousands of miles from the front lines via satellite-based internet, a Skyfall representative told Business Insider. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive industry developments.

As the battlefield grows increasingly dangerous for Ukrainian drone pilots, some of its top interceptor drone manufacturers have figured out how to move the operators farther from the action — possibly to another continent — without compromising their mission.

Skyfall's representative referred to this as an "extremely important" development. "Pilots are being constantly targeted on the front line," they said, and remote operations keep them safer from the Russians.

Continents, not countries

Interceptor drones emerged last year as a crucial air defense tool for Ukraine as Russia dramatically ramped up production of its deadly one-way attack drones, commonly referred to as Shaheds or Gerans.

Ukrainian interceptor drones are generally propeller-driven, armed with small warheads, and can destroy their targets by colliding with them or by exploding nearby. They are cheap — some worth as little as $2,000 — and designed to cost a fraction of what a Shahed attack drone costs, typically tens of thousands of dollars.

Mykhailo Fedorov, the Ukrainian defense minister, told reporters last month that the share of Shaheds shot down by interceptor drones has doubled since the start of the year, underscoring their growing role in Kyiv's air defense network.

An instructor with Wild Hornets, a Ukrainian company that makes a leading interceptor drone called "Sting," said pilots are facing greater risk on the battlefield compared to earlier in the war due to increased Russian reconnaissance operations with a deeper reach into Ukrainian lines.

The instructor, who goes by the call sign "Nazar" for security reasons, told Business Insider that pilots face the same risks on the front lines as in the rear. "It doesn't matter how far you are from the enemy. You always have to think about concealment."

Nazar said that "the more reconnaissance there is, the more strike drones are directed at air defense crews," and that this elevated risk to pilots prompted Wild Hornets to develop remote operations.

Wild Hornets announced the remote-control technology "HORNET VISION Ctrl" in March and said pilots could fly interceptors hundreds of kilometers from their launch point. "Shahed drones can be downed even from your apartment," the company said in a social media post, adding that large-scale deployment of the system has begun.

This evolution of control resembles how US pilots operate MQ-9 Reaper strike drones around the world from the confines of Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.

Sting can be piloted from a distance of more than 1,200 miles using Starlink internet connectivity, Wild Hornets personnel said.

"Right now, we are working on making it possible to operate Stings, for example, from another continent, not only from another country," a Wild Hornets spokesperson told Business Insider. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive developments.

Ground crews, not the remote operators, will typically prepare the interceptors for launch.

Oleksiy Vyskub, Ukraine's first deputy defense minister, said Russia is changing its drone tactics on a weekly basis, and it can be difficult to predict their corridors of attack.

That's why Ukraine developed remote-control interceptor drones, he told Business Insider. A limited number of pilots could be posted in a comfortable office somewhere, and with this tech, they have the connectivity and situational awareness to defeat incoming Russian Shaheds.

The remote-control drones aren't just limited to interceptors, either. Ratel Robotics, a Ukrainian company that makes uncrewed ground vehicles, or UGVs, is working on similar technology.

"We are increasing the distance from the platform to our operator," an instructor with Ratel, who spoke on the condition of anonymity over security concerns, told Business Insider. "If we operate the machine via Starlink, the operator can be safe, for example, in any other country."

The remote operations are among several ways Ukrainian interceptor makers are trying to stay ahead of Russia in the air battle. Skyfall and Wild Hornets are expanding their use of artificial intelligence for targeting, though plans remain to keep humans in the loop.

The companies are also developing interceptors that can fly faster to keep pace with Russia's high-speed, jet-powered Shaheds. Skyfall's P1-Sun, for instance, can reach nearly 200 mph, and plans are to boost that to 250 mph.

Russia is adapting, too. It has equipped some drones with electronic warfare technology to fend off Ukrainian interceptors and has started using a new jet-powered Shahed that can travel up to 310 mph — an upgrade from predecessors that typically cruise at roughly 200 mph.

• I find Gulf Air's "Apex Suite" offers competitive business class comfort at a lower price point.
• The Boeing 787 provides aisle access and coziness despite the 2-2-2 layout.
• My Gulf Air fare from Bahrain to Bangkok was $2,044, much cheaper than Emirates or Qatar.

Middle Eastern giants Emirates and Qatar Airways used to be my go-to airlines for business class. But after flying Bahrain-based Gulf Air, I can't justify their higher fares anymore.

I first flew Gulf Air's "Apex Suite" business class in 2023 and was surprised by how competitive it felt. Despite a 2-2-2 layout that would usually signal limited privacy and mobility, the Boeing 787 offered coziness while still allowing every passenger to freely access the aisle.

The unique cabin may not be as posh as Emirates and Qatar's modern premium seats with sliding doors or mini bars, but it offers the privacy, space, and comfort I want at a significantly lower price.

My most recent trip from Dubai to Bangkok reinforced this: Emirates was selling business-class tickets for $3,460, Qatar for $2,940, and Gulf Air for $2,044. Gulf Air was an easy choice.

While there are a few easy ways it could improve its premium experience, Gulf Air delivers everything I need for a long-haul flight — and I haven't booked Emirates or Qatar on comparable routes since.

I flew Gulf Air from Dubai to Bangkok via Bahrain in May.

I enjoyed a drink at Gulf Air's luxe "Falcon Gold Lounge" in Bahrain before my 7-hour trek to Bangkok.

It was well-stocked with Champagne and spirits. The buffet had a salad bar, Arabic dishes, live cooking, and desserts. There's also a business center, a pool table, and even PlayStation 5 consoles.

Falcon Gold strikes a happy middle ground between its bigger competitors: less flashy than Qatar's flagship lounge, but quieter and more relaxed than Emirates' often-crowded Dubai offering.

I boarded my red-eye flight to Bangkok around 10 p.m. via a dedicated jetbridge for premium flyers.

There were two jet bridges, one mainly for priority groups, which meant I was among the first on the plane.

Boarding was well organized, with dedicated lanes for business-class and higher-status passengers.

The Boeing 787-9 featured Gulf Air's unique Apex Suite.

The unique suite has 26 seats in a 2-2-2 layout, with two seats by each window and two in the middle. Window seats sit slightly further back than aisle seats, creating a private walkway into your space that doesn't force anyone to climb over their neighbor.

Once settled, I raised the privacy shield and cocooned myself away from the other passengers.

My favorite seats are by the window, but not all are equal.

One neat design element of the Apex Suite is that most window seats have three or four windows.

My seat, 3K, however, only had two due to the fuselage design. I normally book 2A or 2K to avoid this, but they were both taken.

The pre-boarding service is five-star, but the amenity kit was inconsistent.

A welcome drink and cold towel were offered during boarding, followed by gahwa — a traditional Arabic coffee — and dates.

Slippers and pajamas were also handed out before departure, a nice touch for an overnight flight. Qatar and Emirates also offer sleepwear on select long-haul flights.

At the seat were menus in English and Arabic, water, and an amenity kit. The kit was noticeably stripped back from previous flights, with only an eye mask, socks, and earplugs.

Earlier kits included lip balm, hand cream, body mist, and a toothbrush. It may have been a one-off, as the kit on my return flight had the missing items.

The 22-inch screen matched newer cabins, but don't expect 8,000 movies.

The seat had a 22-inch screen, standard for business class, and a touchscreen remote that doubled as a controller. Gulf Air's smaller entertainment library is inferior to Emirates' or Qatar's, but it's ample for a long-haul flight.

Emirates' refurbished 777s — which ditched the 2-3-2 layout for one without middle seats — offer 23-inch displays. Qatar's Qsuite comes in at around 21.5. Their older aircraft typically have smaller screens.

There was more storage than expected, and the massage function actually worked.

The storage was better than most business-class seats I've used, with dedicated space for water bottles, a phone, headphones, and even a backpack and shoes under the screen.

The tray table easily fit my 14-inch MacBook Pro and headphones, while the built-in massage function was a relaxing touch at 35,000 feet.

The bathroom had a bidet.

The two business-class-only lavatories up front were kept clean throughout the flight and featured Japanese-style bidet toilets.

Though the amenities were basic, a light upgrade would go a long way to match the premium cabin experience.

Dinner was tasty and well-paced.

I had mushroom soup to start, which was hot enough to be comforting. Warm bread, including multigrain, white, and garlic, came on the side.

Prawn salad followed, with green papaya, cucumber, carrots, and chili salsa. For mains, the options were Bahraini chicken biryani, Thai beef curry, Cajun salmon, and Pad Thai.

I was tempted by the Thai options but held off for Bangkok. I went with the salmon, which tasted fresh. Champagne flowed throughout, with other solid wine options also available.

I was served dessert from a dedicated trolley.

The dessert trolley had several options.

I went with the cheesecake, fruit, and the cheese platter, which they plated on the spot.

The turndown service has changed.

In the past, the crew would usually mention turndown service, especially on red-eye flights. Now, you have to ask. Still, I slept very well.

A mattress topper and fitted bedding made a real difference to what, underneath it all, is a converted seat.

The cabin ran slightly warm at night.

The cabin was well dimmed and quiet.

The only downside was the temperature. The 787-9 doesn't have individual air vents, so you're at the mercy of the cabin setting, which ran slightly warm. I prefer it colder.

Breakfast was simple but well-timed.

The lights gradually brightened, signaling it was time for breakfast.

There were no hot options, but I could choose from fruit, yogurt, pastries, and drinks.

Gulf Air is overall a better value for me than Emirates and Qatar.

The Apex Suite gets the basics right: the privacy works, the bed is comfortable, and the service is good.

But there are a few gaps. I had to request turndown service and the inflight library trails both Emirates and Qatar. Those are easy wins left on the table.

Despite all that, I won't stop booking the Apex Suite. Gulf Air runs roughly $1,400 less than Emirates and $900 less than Qatar on this route — that's equal to a few nights at a five-star hotel in Bangkok and a Michelin-level dinner.

If it's your first time in business class, this is a smart place to start. If you already fly often and are open to a unique way to fly business class, you're getting the same experience without the brand premium.

The best cat litter boxes come in many designs, from basic high-sided plastic or stainless steel pans to high-tech, self-cleaning models. Choosing the right one means balancing your cat's preferences with what works best for your home. The ideal litter box will be comfortable for your cat to use and easy for you to maintain.

To find the best options, Insider Reviews reporters tested 39 litter boxes and consulted veterinarians and cat behaviorists about the features that matter most for cats of different ages, sizes, and lifestyles, including seniors, large breeds, and multicat households. Whatever litter box you choose, it should measure at least 1.5 times the length of your cat from nose to base of tail, says Molly DeVoss, certified cat behavior specialist. That's a size many traditional boxes fall short of.

My top pick is the Frisco High Sided Extra Large Cat Litter Box, which our reporters tested in two homes with four different cats. Its roomy size comfortably accommodates many cats, and its 10-inch sides do a great job of containing litter. For larger cats, those with limited mobility, or homes with specific needs, I also recommend several alternatives that strike a good balance between your cat's comfort and your household's needs.

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

Our top picks for the best cat litter boxes

Best overall: Frisco High Sided Cat Litter Box, Extra Large - $24 at Chewy

Best low-entry for seniors and kittens: Kitty Go Here Senior Cat Large Litter Box - $50 at Chewy

Best stainless steel: Frisco Stainless Steel Cat Litter Box - $46 at Chewy

Best for large cats: Kitty Go Here Jumbo Litter Box - $75 at Chewy

Best automatic: Whisker Litter-Robot 4 - $699 at Chewy

Best covered: Frisco Hooded Cat Litter Box - $34 at Chewy

Best DIY: Sterilite Storage Bin, 41 Quart Clear Plastic Storage Container - $10 at Walmart

Best top-entry: Modkat XL Litter Box - $190 at Chewy

Best overall

House cats vary in size, but most litter boxes don't provide enough room for them to do their business, including circling and digging. The Frisco High Sided Extra Large Litter Box offers most cats the room they need with a 24-by-18-inch footprint and 10-inch-high sides that help contain mess.

"I appreciate that its high sides prevent litter from scattering outside of the box," says associate home editor Kinsley Searles, whose cat has been using the box for four months. "I have a petite cat, but she's never had issues entering the Frisco litter box." The 5.6-inch entrance might be too high for cats with mobility issues, but you can add a ramp or cut a lower entrance and cover the edges with duct tape to accommodate them.

I also like its simple design. With litter boxes, simpler is better, says Sung and cat behaviorist Daniel "DQ" Quagliozzi, a certified feline behavior and training specialist. With fewer crevices, there are fewer places for urine and odors to build up, which also means there's less scrubbing for you to do. That's important, says Dr. Elena Shirley, lead veterinarian and partner at CityVet in Charlotte Uptown, who recommends replacing the litter weekly and thoroughly cleaning the box with soap and water every four to six weeks. The box is made from smooth, BPA-free, recyclable plastic that resists sticking, which makes daily scooping and deep cleaning quick and easy.

This box doesn't come with a cover, and that's another benefit. "Most cats prefer litter boxes that are uncovered," says Samantha Bell, a cat enrichment expert at Best Friends Animal Society. Covers trap ammonia odors, making the box unpleasant for cats. Open boxes also help cats feel more secure with better visibility and easy escape routes.

Best low-entry for seniors and kittens

In some cases, short- or long-term medical conditions can influence the best cat litter box choice, Shirley says. DeVoss adds that a box with a low entry is even better than ramps or stairs. My 6-year-old cat, Lyra, has a bad knee and early-onset arthritis, so I prefer low-profile boxes that she can step in and out of comfortably.

The Kitty Go Here Senior Cat Large Litter Box has a 3-inch-tall front entry for easy access. Even with a low entry, some cats — like mine — still hop over the sides. "Cats are masters at hiding their pain," says Dr. Carly Fox, a senior veterinarian at the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center. They may also not recognize their own limitations. That's why I appreciate the short 5-inch rim on this litter box in addition to its low entrance — it can help reduce overexertion, no matter the route taken. That said, I was pleasantly surprised to see my cat gingerly step out through the entrance of this box, perhaps because it's a generous 11 inches wide. DeVoss also says there's no such thing as a litter box that's too big, making this model a great choice for itty-bitty kittens as well.

One drawback of this box is that the low entry limits the litter depth. Some cats prefer digging in a few inches, but the fill line on this box sits at about an inch. I filled it just slightly above the line, and while litter reached the edge of the entry after my cats used it, none actually tumbled out. An aggressive digger, however, will likely cause some litter to spill from the entryway. Shallow litter depth also means less clean litter is available for your cat after they eliminate, so you should scoop the box more frequently. To help manage litter scatter, I recommend pairing the box with a litter mat, such as the Gorilla Grip Cat Litter Trapping Mat.

Best stainless steel litter box

The durable Frisco Stainless Steel Cat Litter Box offers a significant advantage over traditional plastic litter boxes: It resists the scratches that plastic boxes accumulate over time. Those scratches can harbor bacteria and unpleasant odors, even when the box is cleaned regularly.

"Once you see scratches on the bottom of the box, it is time to replace it," DeVoss says. Since plastic boxes are prone to scratches, they typically need to be replaced every six months. To eliminate the need for frequent replacements, DeVoss recommends stainless steel litter boxes that can withstand a cat's claws. The downside of a stainless steel litter box is that it amplifies sound, which can be bothersome to noise-sensitive cats and people.

Priced around $46, the pan offers ample space for small and medium-sized cats at an affordable price. Its nonskid base keeps it firmly in place, even during enthusiastic digging or post-litter-box zoomies. However, it lacks a tapered entry, which may make it tougher for seniors, kittens, or cats with mobility limitations to climb in and out.

Best for large cats

If you have a large cat, you need an even larger litter box. When a box is too small, your cat might perch on the edge, be smooshed against the sides, unable to turn around, dig outside the box, or worse, go somewhere else, says DeVoss. She recommends the Kitty Go Here Jumbo Litter Box, which is our top pick among the best large litter boxes.

At about $70, it is pricier than other traditional boxes, but DeVoss says its size and functionality are well worth the investment. The box measures more than 1.5 times the length of an 18-inch cat, giving many larger cats room to comfortably stretch out and cover their waste. "Cats are indeed different sizes, so you'll need to measure," she says. Large cat breeds like Ragdolls, Norwegian Forest Cats, and Savannahs are larger than the average kitty, but often still fit comfortably in an extra-large box like this one. For jumbo cats like the Maine Coon, I recommend a larger DIY box, like the Sterilite 41-Quart Storage Bin in this guide.

The Kitty Go Here Jumbo Litter Box also features relatively high ramped sides to reduce litter scatter from the sides. However, you may want to pair this box with one of the best cat litter mats to catch any stray litter that tumbles from the low entryway. You can also install the included gate to reduce litter scatter, but it does increase the entry height to 4.5 inches from 3.5. Without the gate, we collected 2 tablespoons of scattered litter over three days, and only 1.5 tablespoons with the gate installed.

The pan is made from durable plastic that's easy to clean and has an oversized rim for easy lifting.

Best automatic

The fourth version of Litter-Robot is a reliable machine that cleans itself and notifies you when it's time to empty the waste drawer or replace litter. You can also add a LitterHopper for automated litter replenishment. My cats happily use their Litter-Robot boxes, including previous generations 2 and 3.

The Litter-Robot 4 runs a cleaning cycle a few minutes after a cat leaves the box, so even cats in multi-cat households will never be without a clean litter box. Thanks to laser-light technology, the cylinder stops cycling if a cat enters while the cleaning cycle is running. The machine also weighs your cat every time they enter, recognizing each cat by body weight so owners can assign profiles and monitor individual bathroom activity — one of 11 optional push notifications.

The machine sifts waste into a lined tray that you'll need to empty every week to two times a week, depending on the frequency of use. Even if the waste bin isn't full, emptying it proactively is recommended because cats have a heightened sense of smell. Brains says he received cleaning notifications before they seemed necessary and found that if he shook the drawer to distribute the waste more evenly, the sensor would reset. The "empty" cycle works well to remove all the litter when it needs replacing, but Brains still wipes down stuck-on debris inside and deep cleans the globe every one to three months. Weight monitoring is only accurate when the machine is placed on a hard floor or a Litter-Robot Carpet Tray. Nonetheless, I consider this self-cleaning litter box worthy of the investment.

If your cat is small or has mobility issues, you can add an attachable ramp. However, the ramp still has a 5-inch rise from the floor to the first step, so it won't work for every cat. The biggest downside is the Litter-Robot 4's high cost ($700), but it comes with a one-year warranty. If you or your cat isn't happy with the Litter-Robot 4, you can also return it within 90 days for a refund, although return shipping will be deducted.

To learn more, check out our Whisker Litter-Robot 4 review and our guide to the best automatic litter boxes.

Best covered

What a cat desires in a litter box often differs from what appeals to us humans. Case in point, covered litter boxes. While they hide mess and odors from us, they're far from feline-friendly. "Cats dislike covered boxes because this blocks the visual field," says Rachel Geller, a certified cat behavior and retention specialist and founder of All Cats All the Time, Inc. In multi-cat homes and ones with dogs, it's even more important for cats to have a clear view of their surroundings. Plus, the trapped odors inside a covered box can quickly turn it into a place cats avoid.

That said, some cats don't mind a covered box — as long as it's large, clean, and comfortable. That's why I chose the Frisco Extra-Large Hooded Cat Litter Box as the best covered litter box option. It has a larger interior compared to other covered boxes and a removable cover, giving you the flexibility to adjust the setup if your cat is hesitant. With the cover in place, a built-in charcoal filter provides extra odor control between cleanings. Even without the cover, the high sides help contain messes, which is especially useful for cats who tend to "elevator pee."

The box has a semi-opaque plastic door to help prevent odors from escaping. As you might guess, that just traps smells inside with your cat and can make the space feel even more confining. For these reasons, it's best to remove the door, which easily snaps off.

Best DIY

When it comes to creating a DIY litter box, a wide, flat plastic storage container is an ideal and cost-effective stand-in for a traditional box. In fact, Quagliozzi and Sung often recommend their clients consider this DIY version since many traditional litter boxes are too small for more than one cat to use several times a day.

The Sterilite 41-Quart Storage Box is made from durable, clear plastic. Its interior dimensions of 29 3/8 inches by 18 inches provide a cat with plenty of room to perform natural behaviors like digging and covering their waste. A box this big is especially important for extra-large breeds such as the Maine Coon, the biggest domestic cat, which can reach up to an astonishing 40 inches in length. Because the box is waterproof, it won't leak any excess urine that goes uncaptured by the litter.

With 6-inch-high sides, the box is shallow enough for most cats to enter and exit easily, but you can also cut a low front entry. Use a pair of wire cutters to cut the entrance to your desired height and width, then tap over the edges with duct tape. People with cats that aggressively scratch and kick their litter may need to do more floor cleanup than they would with a litter pan with higher sides.

Best top-entry

Sung and Quagliozzi say cats need choices to feel secure, which includes having at least two litter box areas per cat in your home. Having more than one way in and out of a box can also make a big difference. While an uncovered box with unlimited exit routes is best, a covered box with both a top and side entrance gives your cat more control over how they come and go. For this reason, Modkat's XL Litter Box is our top recommendation for the best top-entry litter boxes.

If you'd prefer your cat not use the front entry, you can close the built-in sliding door, though our experts don't recommend it. The lid folds back for easy cleaning, and litter tracked onto the roof returns to the pan through perforations. The box comes with two reusable plastic liners and a scoop. However, Bell advises against using litter box liners. "Cats often get their claws stuck in the liner, tearing a hole in it, which causes them to dislike the box," she says.

A downside of the Modkat XL is its price, typically $190. It's one of the roomiest top-entry models available, but if you're looking for a larger box, a traditional open-top pan is your best bet.

Our top litter box picks compared

What to look for in a cat litter box

The best cat litter boxes are spacious, easy for a cat to access, designed to fit their preferences, and simple for guardians to maintain.

Size: Sung says cats need a space at least 1.5 times their length to scratch at the litter and bury their waste. Many litter pans advertised as "large" or "jumbo" have far smaller dimensions than our top picks. You can determine whether a box is big enough by measuring your cat's length from its nose to the base of its tail and comparing it to the dimensions of the box.

Accessibility: Not every cat is agile or motivated enough to jump up into a litter box, and top-entry boxes can be especially challenging for some cats to access. When selecting a box, consider your cat's mobility needs. Kittens, senior cats, and those with injuries or mobility limitations may benefit from a box with an entry height of about 3 inches or less. If choosing a box with a high entry and sides, look for one made of a material that you can safely modify to create a lower entry that better suits your cat's needs.

Design: Quagliozzi says cats prefer a box that doesn't distract them from their business or require them to contort their body into unnatural positions. Look for boxes that offer easy entry and allow a cat to stand flat on all four paws rather than curved or angled boxes. An open-topped litter pan is the most universally accepted by cats of all types. Some cats may be intimidated by hooded or covered litter boxes, especially if the top is low enough that the cat must crouch to do their business.

Ease of cleaning: In general, boxes with simpler designs are easier to clean. Litter boxes should be scooped at least once a day, though more frequent scooping is ideal. Geller says healthy adult cats typically use the litter box two to five times a day for both peeing and pooping. However, factors like age and health can influence this. Senior cats may urinate more often due to conditions like kidney disease, while kittens usually urinate after each feeding and may poop up to three times a day. If having a cover over your litter pan makes you forget to scoop it daily, then a litter box without a hood is a more hygienic option. If you struggle to scoop your litter box daily, an automatic or smart litter box may be the best option, though even self-cleaning litter boxes still require deep cleaning. Our experts say you'll also need to deep-clean your litter boxes every four to six weeks using water and unscented dish soap.

Material: I included metal and plastic options in this guide to the best cat litter boxes. Plastic litter boxes have a lower upfront cost, but our experts recommend replacing them every six months or at the first sign of scratch marks. DeVoss says that no matter how well the box is cleaned, scratch marks accumulate bacteria and, therefore, odors. On the other hand, stainless steel and metal litter boxes may have a higher initial cost, but they offer a longer lifespan compared to plastic options. However, noise-averse people and cats alike may dislike the sound of cat claws on metal.

How we tested the best cat litter boxes

Over the past five years, we've researched popular litter boxes from major online retailers, selecting models to test based on criteria provided by the experts we consulted. Freelance reporter Shoshi Parks conducted the initial reporting for this guide and tested litter boxes with her two cats. Since then, freelance reporter Janelle Leeson and three Insider Reviews editors and reporters have tested additional boxes with six more cats. Although we haven't tested our DIY pick, it meets our experts' criteria and comes from a trusted brand.

Each litter box we tested was used for at least one month and evaluated using the methods described below. Unless a box required a specific type of litter to operate effectively, testers used their preferred substrates, including some of the best cat litters and best natural cat litters.

Ease of entry test: We measured the sides of each box and the height of any openings, and observed whether our cats appeared to have difficulty accessing the boxes. We also observed how our cats responded to each box, noting which they preferred to use more frequently.

Tracking test: For each litter box we tested, we collected the litter tracked onto the floor over three days and then compared the quantity of litter between boxes.

Cleaning test: We cleaned each litter box twice daily, observing how easy it was to access and remove the waste and how much litter stuck to the bottom and sides of the pan. After a month of use, we thoroughly cleaned each box, disposing of the litter and wiping it out completely. We noted how challenging the boxes were to clean and approximately how long it took.

Size test: For this test, we measured the length of each of our cats when standing in a relaxed position from the nose to the base of the tail. We then measured the length of each of the litter box contenders and compared the numbers. We favored larger litter boxes over smaller ones.

We also interviewed seven experts about feline litter box habits and the qualities to look for in a good litter box.

Dr. Liza Cahn is a veterinarian and consultant for Embrace Pet Insurance. She is also a freelance veterinary writer.

Molly DeVoss is a certified feline training and behavior specialist (CFTBS), certified cat behavior consultant, and Fear Free certified trainer who specializes in using positive reinforcement to modify and prevent unwanted behaviors in cats. She is the founder and owner of Cat Behavior Solutions.

Dr. Mark Freeman is a specialist veterinarian who is board-certified in canine/feline practice through the American Board of Veterinary Practitioners and assistant professor of community practice at Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine. Freeman's academic and research interests include feline and canine behavior.

Daniel "DQ" Quagliozzi is a cat behavior consultant and owner of Go Cat Go! in San Francisco, California. For two decades, Quagliozzi has worked with cats at the San Francisco SPCA, San Francisco Animal Care and Control, and through his private practice, Go Cat Go!

Dr. Jamie Richardson is head of veterinary medicine at Small Door Veterinary in New York City. Richardson has worked with animals around the world, from South Africa to Hong Kong. At Small Door Veterinary, her primary interests besides general practice include preventative care, dentistry, and internal medicine.

Dr. Karen Sueda is a board-certified veterinary behaviorist who was practicing at VCA West Los Angeles Animal Hospital when Parks interviewed her. She is also the founder of Karen Sueda Veterinary Behavior Inc., where she uses positive, pet-friendly behavior modification techniques to help pet owners work with their pets.

Dr. Wailani Sung is a board-certified veterinary behaviorist who was the director of behavior and welfare programs at the San Francisco SPCA Veterinary Hospital when Parks interviewed her. She writes on animal behavior for Vetstreet, PetMD, and Healthy Pet magazine.

Meet the expert behind this guide

Janelle Leeson, cats reporter and product tester: I combine rigorous research and reporting, real-world testing, and feline-focused insights to help readers find the best products for their cats. For this guide on litter boxes, I evaluated 39 different boxes based on their use in real homes with actual cats, consulted veterinarians and certified cat behavior specialists to understand what features matter most for cats of all sizes and life stages, and assessed each box for cat-friendliness, ease of cleaning, and odor control. My own cats were part of the testing process, helping me judge how well some of my top picks performed in everyday use.

Cat litter box FAQs

What type of litter box do vets recommend?

There isn't a single best litter box for every cat. Our experts say that most cats prefer open-top litter boxes that provide good airflow, easy entry and exit, unobstructed sightlines, and plenty of room to circle and dig. However, some cats may favor enclosed litter boxes that offer more privacy. Regardless of the style, the litter box should be at least 1.5 times the length of your cat from their nose to the base of the tail. Offering multiple types of litter boxes on different floors of your home and in various rooms gives your cat the opportunity to choose their preferred design and location. Ease of access is also important. "Make sure the sides aren't too high for your cat," says Dr. Jamie Richardson, chief medical officer at Small Door Veterinary in New York City. Boxes with tall sides and ones that are fully enclosed or top-entry can make some cats feel trapped, which may cause them to avoid the box altogether.

Do cats prefer open or hooded litter boxes?

Open-topped litter pans are the most widely accepted boxes by all types of cats. Some cats may feel trapped and be afraid to enter hooded or covered litter boxes, particularly if the interior height is so limited that they need to crouch while eliminating. "If your cat feels vulnerable and unsafe in the litter box, she may not take the time to bury her waste after elimination because she wants to get out of there quickly and prevent being ambushed in the box," Geller says. In some cases, this may lead your cat to avoid the box altogether. Additionally, Bell says covered boxes trap odors, intensifying the smell for cats, which can make them reluctant to use the box. Doors on litter box entrances, especially opaque or swinging ones, can make both matters worse.

What type of cat litter do vets recommend?

According to Dr. Liza Cahn, a veterinarian and consultant for Embrace Pet Insurance, most cats do best with litter that's unscented, clumping, and made of fine grains, such as clay litter. This type of litter closely resembles sand or dirt, which cats might choose to use in the wild.

Can a litter box be too big?

No. "Most cats won't mind a box that is a bit larger than they need, provided you keep it very clean," Richardson says. "The main concern is with litter boxes being too small."

How many litter boxes do I need?

Sung says a good general rule of thumb is to have one litter box per cat plus an extra. Dr. Karen Sueda, a board-certified veterinary behaviorist, notes that some multi-cat households can get by with fewer boxes if they're extra large and scooped at least twice a day. You should also place boxes in different areas throughout your home.

Where should I put my cat's litter box?

Litter boxes should be placed in multiple locations throughout your home, including on each level, and kept away from noisy appliances like washers or dryers that could startle your cat. While you'll want to avoid busy, high-traffic areas, the box should still be close to where your cat likes to spend time with you. Geller says that a cat's field of vision also matters. Rather than placing a litter box tightly in a corner, setting it about 12 inches away from walls can improve your cat's view of their surroundings and help them feel more secure. Richardson also notes that litter boxes should be separated from the feeding areas. "Cats typically don't like to go where they eat," she says.

How often should I clean the litter box?

To keep a cat happily using their litter boxes, our experts recommend scooping them at least once a day, if not several times. In addition to daily maintenance, the litter box should be cleaned with unscented dish soap and water every four to six weeks.

How frequently does a cat use their litter box?

The typical cat uses the litter box as many as half a dozen times a day, urinating two to four times and defecating once or twice. Some cats may go more or less frequently on average. Cleaning your litter boxes at least once a day will help you monitor for medical or behavioral changes that may indicate a health problem, such as feline lower urinary tract disease (FLUTD).

Why is my cat peeing outside the litter box?

"If your cat is urinating or defecating outside of the litter box, see your vet to rule out medical issues, such as urinary tract infection, cystitis, or arthritis," Cahn says. If your cat gets a clean bill of health, she recommends taking a closer look at your litter box setup: Do you have the recommended number of boxes placed in different areas — one per cat, plus one extra? Are the boxes spread throughout your home in easily accessible locations? Do you scoop them daily? Cahn also recommends thoroughly cleaning any soiled areas, offering a variety of litter types (both clumping and non-clumping), reducing stressors, increasing enrichment, and finally, consulting a veterinary behaviorist if needed.

• I gave my daughter a "Yes Day" for her 7th birthday.
• The experience showed me how much kids value being trusted.
• Saying yes helped my daughter build confidence and independence.

Parenting young kids often feels like saying no on repeat.

No, not today. No, that's enough. No, maybe later.

So for my daughter's 7th birthday, I decided to try something different. I decided to give her a "Yes day" and say yes to whatever request and desire she had, within resonable boundaries.

I first heard about it years ago, before I became a mom. A good friend told me about an annual tradition in their home called "Kids in charge day," where her children picked the meals, the outings, and the flow of the day.

At the time, I had questions. What if they ask for something unrealistic? What if it gets out of hand?

She told me something I didn't fully appreciate then, but that has stayed with me ever since: kids aren't as impressed with extravagance. What they want is attention, time, and a sense that their voice matters.

We introduced the idea when our daughter was 4, and it quickly became one of her favorite traditions. So this year, we made it her birthday gift, something she already loved, arriving right on time.

I set boundaries, but kept them simple

"Yes" doesn't mean anything goes. For us, it meant choices that were safe, local, and doable within the day. My daughter didn't need endles options. She needed the opportuity to make her own choices.

I let her lead, even when it was uncomforable

Her first request was breakfast: a cream cheese bagel. Easy.

Then came her outfit: red heart socks, faded floral print pants, and an old pink shirt. Something I would've picked out for play or painting, not a birthday outing.

I almost redirected her, but stopped short. "Is that what you want to wear?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, beaming. Confidence is built in moments when kids get to trust their own thinking without being corrected.

The small things seemed to matter most

We headed to National Harbor, just outside of D.C., where she planned to build a bear using gift cards she'd been saving.

When we pulled up, I asked if I could grab a coffee before we got started. "Yes!" she shouted, delighted. That moment surprised me. She wasn't just receiving the yes. She was learning how to give it.

We wandered into a Black-owned bookstore, hand in hand. She picked out a chapter book. Then, just as excitedly, she grabbed a "Gracie's Corner" book, a series she used to love as a toddler and one I was almost certain she'd outgrown.

I almost said no again. Then I remembered the assignment. "Yes. And yes."

I enjoyed watching what she did with the freedom

At Build-A-Bear, she made thoughtful choices. She picked the birthday bear that cost as much as her age so she could spend more on accessories, instead of choosing a more expensive plush that would eat into her budget. I'm not surprised though, my girl loves to save a coin.

By midday, it was "yes, yes, yes." A candy shop stop. A few treats. There was an ice cream counter inside, and after trying a few flavors, she decided on her own to wait until after lunch.

No prompting. No correction. Just her own good judgment. She felt trusted in the moment and rose to the occasion.

I needed to stretch my comfort too

Later, she asked to ride the Capital Wheel. She was ready. I was not.

Her dad had joined us by then, and they walked hand in hand toward the oversized Ferris wheel while I followed a few steps behind, snapping photos. At the ticket booth, my husband asked for three tickets.

"Wait, Mom, you're doing this?!" she asked. I took a breath. "Yes." She squealed.

Sometimes a "Yes Day" isn't just about your child. It's about saying yes to yourself, too. To your own confidence and courage. I know my fear of heights is irrational, but in that moment it felt very real. I was, and still am, proud of myself for pushing through.

She reminded me I deserve yeses too

At the nail salon I typically visit solo, she was treated like royalty. Apple juice in a bejeweled glass. Chocolates at checkout. A cascade of bubbles as we left. We stopped next door at a craft store and picked up stickers and bookmarks.

And then, near the end of the day, she surprised me. She asked if we could go to the makeup store to get something for me. I reminded her it was her day, not mine.

"Yes, but I want to share it with you, Mama."

That night, we ordered cheeseburgers and fries and sat around the table, her legs swinging as she recapped her favorite parts of the day. Proud. Confident. Already just a little bit bigger.

In that moment, my friend's words came back to me. A "Yes Day" isn't about indulgence. It's about intention. It gives your child space to make decisions, feel heard, and trust their voice.

The goal isn't just to say yes for a day. It's to raise kids who know how to use their voice for a lifetime.

• Motherhood changed my perspective on the World Cup.
• The six-week tournament on the global stage creates a tangible connection to heritage.
• It makes memories and deepens relationships between families and across oceans.

It all started with a onesie, as so many parenthood journeys do.

The Ipswich Town Tractor Boys gear traveled across the Atlantic before I snuck it onto my then-infant son, just before my husband arrived home. Adorable photos of the drool-covered shirt followed, sent back across the pond to Ipswich, England, the epicenter of my father-in-law's family.

It was a reason to connect — one that wouldn't have happened without our family's shared love of country and capturing moments that remind us of one another.

The onesie spurred a different reaction when my Belgian grandmother and father saw their pride and joy, the one and only baby wearing the colors of an English football club. "The English?! He should be wearing Red Devil red!" exclaimed my grandmother, with a delivery that bordered on genuine betrayal.

Becoming a parent made me see these interactions between family members as long-lasting connections and pivotal memories, not just silly quips at a sporting event.

Motherhood changed my perspective

By the time of the Women's World Cup later that summer, a lighthearted rivalry had formed (Belgium didn't even qualify that year, but that didn't simmer my family's bubbling pride). My 4'5", 80-pound grandmother had outsize opinions about every decision on the pitch.

Cheering my grandfather on at years of weekend games, she wielded words capable of besting anyone's strongest kick. Other countless memories help fill the multi-year gaps between tournaments, like my grandmother and father-in-law's sheepish chuckles and simultaneous "santé!" and "cheers!" as glasses chinked. Or the audible disbelief at a call that was simply unjust to everyone on the pitch. And, all the proud comments about my son's various traits as evidence of his Belgian or English heritage.

In stark contrast, I can't tell you a thing about prior World Cups. I likely passively watched, enjoying the game, but not for the reasons that matter now.

Multigenerational moments are fleeting

I became a mom, and suddenly the moments on screen were truly part of the background; I was watching the moments in the room.

Motherhood has made me keenly aware of these fleeting multi-generation interactions and how readily they slip away without intention. My dear grandmother died in 2024. I will miss her elegant outrage at the ref's calls and the players' decisions. I know my Dad will represent Belgium in this year's World Cup, complete with a click of the tongue and an exasperated sigh, unwittingly echoing my grandmother's to a tee.

Add in shared culture, country-themed snacks, and friendly competition, and you have cherished memories in the making. I daydream about my rambunctious toddler dashing into the yard to greet his grandfathers, surprising them in his Belgium, England, or even US kit. Jeers will be hurled based on his selection, but so will love and enthusiasm.

The World Cup is a time to connect with our heritage

For my children, this summer is a rare at-home immersion into the cultures that define their grandfathers and of which their great-grandmother was deeply proud.

I imagine US parents living abroad may experience similar feelings on Super Bowl Sunday or during March Madness, but it can't compete with the World Cup. More than 100 games spread over six-ish weeks extends the tradition, winning it the title of my favorite sporting event — an admittedly unexpected statement for an American (who grew up watching the Super Bowl).

This World Cup will ground my children in family legacy, strengthen connections in the present, and create memories and shared interests for the future.

Unlike a book or photos, the stadium's palpable energy, chants and songs, and the homemade family recipes at watch parties make culture easy to grasp — no matter how small the tiny hands. My son will experience why one side of the family wears black, yellow, and red, and the other red and blue, knowing he can feel at home in each.

This will be the first time my son sees Belgium and England play in the World Cup, heightening the rivalry and making the experience more tangible.

The further Belgium, England, the US, (or any other team for which we have a smidgen of affinity) make it, the longer the family connections and memory-making magic — that's what I'm in it for.

• Christina Nicolson is the mother of 11-year-old Landon Nicholson. They live in Wellington, Florida.
• Landon approached her about starting a vending machine business over a year ago.
• Christina, a business owner herself, shares what it's been like so far.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Christina Nicholson, the mother of Landon Nicholson. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My son, Landon, and I own a vending machine together. We started when he was 10, over a year ago. Landon got the idea for his vending machine business at one of his sister's basketball games. He was helping at the concession stand during a Wellington Wolves tournament and started noticing just how many people wanted snacks and drinks.

That was the moment the lightbulb went off. First, he wanted to have a candy store, and I said, "Let's start smaller."

I'm a business owner, so I was game to do it

Landon has always wanted to make his own money. Maybe it's because he's seen me do it; I started my own media company right after he was born. He's always seen me be my own boss and seen the flexibility that comes with that. To start, we got a book and watched some YouTube videos to learn about it.

First, we had to find a spot for it. He was taking acting lessons at our community center during the summer, and he went to the front desk and asked if they had a vending machine. They said that they used to, but didn't anymore. He said, "Do you want one? That's my business."

They gave him the contact person, and we set up a meeting with the village of Wellington. We put together a proposal that included what we'd put in there and how much we would sell it for, and they okayed it. They had a contract. The agreement was that 26% of the commission would go to them, and Landon and I would split the profits 50/50.

In September of 2024, we bought a vending machine for $1,500 and had it shipped for $843. We also purchased a credit card reader for $385, bought $265 worth of items from Costco, and put $17 in change in the machine to start.

We're still in the hole, but have learned some important lessons

The community center is not very busy. We're not splitting profits yet, but I still think it's been worthwhile.

A big lesson for him was that just because you make money, it doesn't mean it's your money. For example, the first time we went to the vending machine to get money, he was so excited to have all the dollar bills. But I told him that we had to pay the machine off, that 26% goes to the village of Wellington for letting us put our machine in there, and so on. He quickly learned the difference between revenue and profit.

He was also very excited at the beginning of this to go and check on it once a week. He liked to see what needed filling up, what people were liking, and so on. Now, he's not as excited to go. He still enjoys doing it, but that initial excitement has worn off.

I'm being patient with him

Sometimes, you just have to be patient. We're almost there. I encourage him to review the numbers every month; I'll print out the P&L for him to see. He's very impatient, but I remind him that to make a business work, you have to work.

He's learning different business models, how much time they take, and how busy you are going to be. This has been good because of his age; he goes to the community center and checks on it once a week for 15 minutes. He also likes to see what's working. He still asks me every once in a while if he's making money yet.

I wasn't expecting his confidence. It really impressed me. He walked right up to the community center's front desk, asked if they wanted a vending machine, and came home with a business card. I love that he's not afraid. I think this experience will help him with the confidence to start more businesses.

• I traveled to the UK, the Netherlands, and France during my recent European vacation.
• I planned a packed itinerary, and was pleasantly surprised that I fit so much into eight days.
• That said, I wish I'd booked our hotels sooner and done research into customs and security.

Ever since my first trip to France at 18, I've been enamored with Europe.

Don't get me wrong, I love exploring the US, but there's something about leaving the country that helps me dive into vacation mode quickly, since I'm an ocean away from life's daily stressors.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, I started feeling a familiar itch to travel abroad, so we visited France together two years ago. The following year, we upped the ante and headed to two countries: France and Italy.

When it came time to plan our annual vacation this year, I proposed our most ambitious one yet — three European countries in eight days with a travel day tacked onto both ends — then mapped out a whirlwind itinerary that included two full days in London and two and a half days in both Amsterdam and Paris.

It was an adventure of a lifetime, and we packed so much into a short period of time. Still, I made a few mistakes and learned several important lessons along the way.

I didn't do enough research on security and customs protocol

When we traveled from London to Amsterdam on the Eurostar train, it took an hour to get through airport-level security and customs. Since I anticipated a similar experience traveling from Amsterdam to Paris, we arrived at the train station extra early, but there was no security checkpoint.

This minor mistake only cost us an hour of wasted time, but I regretted it. I could've hopped on an earlier train to Paris had I known that traveling from one EU country to another is a lot easier than entering the European Union from the United Kingdom.

With a tight itinerary, minutes and hours matter, so I learned to pay more attention to security requirements during the planning stage.

I waited too long to book one of my hotels

When looking into Amsterdam hotels, I found one in the city center, right near the main train station. I usually book things well in advance, but this time, I took a gamble and waited to see if the prices would drop.

By the time I went to book my preferred hotel, no rooms were available for my travel dates. As it turns out, there were a few big events in town that week, so rooms filled up quickly.

I've had luck finding last-minute deals on Booking.com before, so I took a look and booked another hotel that was a quick train ride away from the city center. Everything worked out, but the experience taught me to always research whether there are major events going on in a city when you're traveling.

After all, you can always book the hotel when you see it, then cancel the reservation and rebook it if prices drop.

I learned you can't see everything in one trip, and you don't have to

When you only have a few days in a city, you're forced to home in on the must-see items on your bucket list rather than seeing every major tourist attraction. For instance, my husband and I aren't into art, so we usually skip art museums and seek out cool architecture, beautiful gardens, and meaningful experiences.

When we first started charting our own course on vacation rather than letting the fear of missing out guide us, we worried that we might regret seeing some of the major sights. But we quickly realized that it's freeing to pick and choose the activities that matter most to you.

In Amsterdam, we could've seen the Anne Frank House since it's a popular tourist spot. Instead, we spent an afternoon at the Heineken Experience in honor of my late father, who adored Heineken.

I don't drink beer, but it was still incredibly rewarding to enjoy an experience that he never got to have himself.

Walking is often the best way to see a city — but don't be a hero

Whenever I travel, I prefer to see new cities on foot rather than spending time (and money) on public transportation.

Since we only had two days in London, my husband and I took the scenic route to Kensington Palace and walked an hour from our hotel.

On a nice day, it would've been a lovely walk through a gorgeous park, but London's weather is unpredictable. It ended up being rainier and windier than we'd expected, making the stroll pretty miserable.

Sure, we could've popped into the nearest train station, but the intermittent rain lulled us into a false sense of security. Next time, I'll hop on a train instead, even if it means missing out on seeing a pretty park.

• Movie theaters are on a comeback tour.
• Gen Z and millennials are driving ticket sales, seeing an average of seven films a year.
• AMC's CEO said "The Odyssey" had the highest first-day ticket sales of any studio release since 2022.

Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" is already breaking records, and it hasn't hit theaters yet.

In an X post on Friday, AMC CEO Adam Aron said "The Odyssey" recorded the company's "highest first-day ticket sales for any studio-released movie title since 2022."

"My apologies if you encountered a long ticketing line on the AMC web site and app yesterday," Aron said.

"The Odyssey," based on Homer's Greek epic poem, has seen worldwide excitement since Universal Pictures announced the film adaptation in late 2024. The film's trailer raked in over 120 million views in its first 24 hours, in part due to the star-studded cast.

Matt Damon helms the film as Odysseus, while fans can also expect to see Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattison, Zendaya, Tom Holland, Charlize Theron, Mia Goth, Lupita Nyong'o, and more.

"The Odyssey" comes three years after Nolan struck cinematic gold with "Oppenheimer," which won seven Academy Awards and became a pop culture phenomenon alongside Greta Gerwig's "Barbie."

"The Odyssey" debuts on July 17, but the build-up around ticket sales has been long in the making. In an unusual decision, IMAX announced that it would sell tickets for select screens and showtimes a year in advance. Fans who missed the first ticket drop had another opportunity on Thursday with advanced tickets for premium large-format showtimes.

On X, Aron said the only AMC releases to outpace "The Odyssey" were driven by two musical juggernauts: Beyoncé and Taylor Swift.

"Ironically, the only first-day AMC ticket sales results since 2022 that topped The Odyssey were for our very own music-oriented projects from our own AMC Theatres Distribution, namely first-day ticket sales for the Renaissance concert film from Beyonce in 2023 and our two Taylor Swift efforts in 2023 and again in 2025," Aron said.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic and the streaming revolution dealt a harsh blow to movie theater attendance, it's on the rebound. A Fandango report published in April said Gen Zers and millennials were driving momentum at movie theaters, spending more money and time compared to other generations.

The report said a good slate of films in 2025, the desire for out-of-the-home experiences, and social opportunities drove Gen Zers toward the movies. Both Gen Z and millennials saw an average of seven films in 2025.

"For Gen Z, it is a form of social gathering. For Millennials, it is an escape from daily routine," the report said.

AMC has seen the boost firsthand. On Monday, the company said more than 25 million people attended its theaters in May, marking the highest May attendance since 2019.

"These immensely satisfying results reflect the strength of a diverse film slate, one that was driven both by established blockbusters with their well-known characters along with entirely new IP," Aron said in a press release. "This current measure of success, combined with the many compelling movies coming to our screens in the weeks and months ahead, gives us great confidence as we look to the rest of 2026."

• WalletHub ranked states where people have the highest income, using several different measurements.
• Some states with mega-high earners didn't rank high due their fairly average median incomes.
• California landed outside of the top 10 as many high earners are leaving the state.

The median income in the US is about $83,000 — and you could make more or less than that number depending on where you live. But which states are the highest earning overall?

A new WalletHub study used three income-related measures to rank states: the average annual income of the top 5%, the average annual income of the bottom 20%, and the median annual household income of the state's entire population.

The resulting rankings include some surprises. None of the states known for being home to billionaires, like New York, California, and Florida, took the top spot.

WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo said New York's income disparity is a reason it came up just short of the No. 1 ranking. While the top 5% makes a lot, the state's middle class isn't making nearly as much.

"In terms of just the median annual income, which I think is what most people are interested in as far as that's a reflection of the middle class, New York is a little above average in terms of its median annual income at $96,000," Lupo told Business Insider.

One state that barely cracked the top 15 is California; a state known for movie stars and moguls. Lupo posited that the Golden State's lower ranking on the list may have been impacted by several top earners leaving.

"What's going on in California also is the number of high-wealth individuals that are fleeing the state," Lupo said. "A lot of wealth is moving out of the state and into more tax-friendly states like Texas, Florida, and Tennessee. So that's a huge driver."

Read on for the 15 states where people have the highest income, according to WalletHub.

15. Florida

Total score: 49.89

Average annual income of top 5%: $507,073

Median annual income: $75,737

Average annual income of bottom 20%: $16,378

14. Georgia

Total score: 52.76

Average annual income of top 5%: $516,260

Median annual income: $72,437

Average annual income of bottom 20%: $17,301

13. California

Total score: 53.45

Average annual income of top 5%: $482,584

Median annual income: $133,974

Average annual income of bottom 20%: $14,662

12. District of Columbia

Total score: 54.11

Average annual income of top 5%: $488,074

Median annual income: $174,287

Average annual income of bottom 20%: $9,579

11. Texas

Total score: 54.93

Average annual income of top 5%: $520,378

Median annual income: $75,905

Average annual income of bottom 20%: $17,651

10. Massachusetts

Total score: 57.11

Average annual income of top 5%: $498,062

Median annual income: $137,563

Average annual income of bottom 20%: $14,440

9. Illinois

Total score: 57.88

Average annual income of top 5%: $533,840

Median annual income: $83,277

Average annual income of bottom 20%: $16,813

8. Minnesota

Total score: 58.66

Average annual income of top 5%: $500,074

Median annual income: $90,632

Average annual income of bottom 20%: $20,662

7. Colorado

Total score: 59.65

Average annual income of top 5%: $498,587

Median annual income: $106,187

Average annual income of bottom 20%: $19,588

6. Utah

Total score: 61.24

Average annual income of top 5%: $475,515

Median annual income: $98,858

Average annual income of bottom 20%: $24,307

5. Connecticut

Total score: 64.73

Average annual income of top 5%: $543,016

Median annual income: $122,032

Average annual income of bottom 20%: $15,095

4. Washington

Total score: 65.23

Average annual income of top 5%: $522,328

Median annual income: $112,933

Average annual income of bottom 20%: $19,082

3. New Jersey

Total score: 66.08

Average annual income of top 5%: $527,376

Median annual income: $125,766

Average annual income of bottom 20%: $17,418

2. New York

Total score: 66.27

Average annual income of top 5%: $585,523

Median annual income: $96,746

Average annual income of bottom 20%: $13,633

1. Virginia

Total score: 67.57

Average annual income of top 5%: $545,097

Median annual income: $95,339

Average annual income of bottom 20%: $19,671

• Neither high school relationships nor Hollywood relationships are known for longevity.
• But these 19 celebrity couples met as teens, and many of them are still together today.
• Knicks star Jalen Brunson met his wife, Ali, when they were in high school.

Even in the most stable environment, it's hard to maintain a relationship that moves from high school to the real world.

Now imagine doing it as a celebrity.

Nevertheless, these 19 couples all met as high schoolers (or in some cases, even earlier), and made it work for years after, even if not all of them are still together today.

Here are 19 celebrity couples who met back when they were just regular teenagers.

Jalen Brunson and Ali Marks

The Knicks superstar has been dating his wife, Ali Marks, since high school — their 2015 prom photo is still on his Instagram, captioned, "Went to prom with the best date anyone could ask for."

They got engaged in 2022 and married in 2023.

"She's always been by my side and I'm lucky to have her," Brunson told People after the big day.

In a nod to their long relationship, Marks wore her prom dress as her second look at the wedding.

They welcomed their first child, Jordyn, in 2024.

Patrick and Brittany Mahomes

The 2023 Super Bowl champion has been with Brittany, his now-wife, since they were classmates in Tyler, Texas.

In 2020, Patrick proposed to Brittany, captioning an Instagram post with "#RingSZN." A few days later, the couple revealed they were expecting their first child together. Their daughter, Sterling, was born in February 2021.

They married in March 2022. Their second child, a boy named Patrick "Bronze" Lavon Mahomes III, was born in November 2022. Their third baby, Golden, was born in January 2025.

Brittany and Sterling were at the stadium to watch the Chiefs quarterback win his second Super Bowl in February 2023.

Snoop Dogg and Shante Broadus

Their first son, Cordé, was born in 1994, and they were married three years later in 1997. Snoop even shared an adorable throwback shot of the two at prom on Instagram. The ups and downs of their marriage were all documented on their reality TV show, "Snoop Dogg's Father Hood."

The couple filed for divorce in 2004, but reconciled and renewed their vows in 2008.

According to VH1, Snoop told Queen Latifah in 2013 that "[he] had no understanding of how I was hurting her and how I was betraying myself, until I [realized] I need to love this woman who loves me and had my kids. [I needed to] put my life in perspective and let my music and my business become secondary."

Lin-Manuel Miranda and Vanessa Nadal

Miranda and Nadal attended the same New York City high school, but they never actually spoke — though that didn't stop Miranda from developing a crush on his future wife.

"She was gorgeous and I'm famously bad at talking to women I find attractive. I have a total lack of game," Miranda told The New York Times in 2010.

They reconnected on Facebook years later, after they both graduated from college. They tied the knot in September 2010. They now have two sons.

Jeff Daniels and Kathleen Treado

Daniels and Treado grew up in Chelsea, Michigan, and met in high school. They've been together ever since. Throughout his highly successful career, the couple still call Chelsea their home, and they raised their three kids there.

In 2014, Daniels told MLive about why he chose to stay close to home rather than move out to industry hubs Los Angeles or New York City, saying, "[Chelsea] was home. Kathleen and I had both been raised here; good enough for us, good enough for them."

LeBron James and Savannah Brinson

Brinson told Harper's Bazaar in 2010 about their first date at Outback, calling it "basic," but she shared that it was also when she knew he loved her.

"I knew he loved me when I left my leftovers from dinner in his car," Brinson said. "I'd totally forgotten about them, and he brought them to me. I think he just wanted another excuse to come and see me."

Brinson became pregnant with their first child, Bronny, while she was still in high school, and she was nervous that it would derail their lives, but James assured her that everything would be OK.

James finally proposed to his longtime girlfriend in 2011, after 10 years of dating, per the Los Angeles Times. They tied the knot in 2014. They also had two more kids.

LL Cool J and Simone Smith

LL Cool J shared the story of how he met his wife during an interview on "Jimmy Kimmel Live."

The rapper told Kimmel in 2012 that he "was just 19, something like that," when he was driving down the block on Easter Sunday. His friend asked him if he wanted to meet one of his friend's cousins, and once he got a look at Smith, he told his friend, "Oh yeah, I'll meet your cousin."

Smith recalled she was 17 years old when they met. The pair married in 1995 after dating for 8 years, and they have 4 kids together.

Bono and Ali Hewson

Bono and Hewson met when they were teenagers at school. Hewson played hard to get, since she didn't want to be known as "just another of Bono's girls," but eventually his pursuit of her was successful.

Their first date culminated with him walking her to the bus stop, per the Huffington Post.

The U2 star has called their relationship "a magic carpet ride." She "sees me as a figure of amusement," said Bono while speaking to The Sun.

Kendrick Lamar and Whitney Alford

The "Not Like Us" rapper is pretty private about his personal life, but we know that he met his fiancée when they were both high schoolers in Compton, California, according to Billboard.

"She's been here since day one," Lamar said of Alford in a 2014 New York Times Magazine profile.

They got engaged in 2015 and have two children together. The entire family appears on the cover of his fifth album, "Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers" in 2022.

Steph and Ayesha Curry

Even though they're basketball's golden couple, Ayesha had never even attended a game until she was 19 — five years after she met her future-husband Steph, ABC News reported.

The two met as teenagers in Charlotte, North Carolina. They never officially dated when they were that young, but according to Ayesha, they'd talk on the phone sometimes. "It was that shy middle school, high school stuff," she said.

When the basketball star was flown out to Los Angeles for the ESPY Awards, his first thought was of his childhood crush. They met up, saw the sights, and the rest is history.

Now, he's widely regarded as one of the greatest basketball players in the game, and she's turned herself into a brand. Ayesha has written cookbooks, opened a barbecue restaurant, hosted a cooking show on the Food Network called "Ayesha's Home Kitchen," and founded a skincare brand called Sweet July.

They welcomed their fourth child in 2024.

Jon Bon Jovi and Dorothea Hurley

People reported the couple met at Sayreville War Memorial High School in their New Jersey hometown, and have been together ever since. They have four kids together.

At the peak of Bon Jovi's fame in 1989, the couple decided to elope in Las Vegas and were married by an Elvis impersonator. And though Bon Jovi has die-hard fans, Hurley isn't concerned.

"I think it's great they love the music," she told People in 2016.

Ron Howard and Cheryl Alley

Even though getting married young (they were both 21) might seem like a risky endeavor, these two have beaten the odds, successfully navigating Hollywood and parenthood.

"I felt really lucky when we met. It's crazy — we were teenagers, it shouldn't have worked. We got married young, that shouldn't have worked either, and yet it really and truly has," Howard told the Huffington Post about his decades-long marriage to Alley in 2013.

And now their kids are famous, too — their daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard, starred in the "Jurassic World" franchise and regularly directs episodes of the "Star Wars" TV shows.

Thomas Rhett and Lauren Akins

While they had known each other since they were kids (since first grade, to be exact, according to Country Living), Rhett and Akins didn't start dating until they were teenagers — and it didn't stick at first. The two broke up soon after, and actually almost both married other people, according to People.

But thankfully (for Rhett), Akins broke up with her boyfriend, and Rhett "moved in for the kill." They dated for six months and married in 2013, when they were both 22. They now have four daughters and a son, born in 2026.

Ja Rule and Aisha Atkins

According to Ja Rule, the two have been together since middle school. He told Ebony magazine in 2002 that "the first time I met her I was getting off the school bus, and she was the new girl in school." 

The couple were married in 2001 and have three kids together.

Besides dealing with the normal issues that couples go through and constantly being scrutinized by the media, they also had to spend almost two years apart while Ja Rule was in prison for tax evasion and illegal gun possession. He was released in 2013, per TMZ.

Mariano and Clara Rivera

Famed baseball player Rivera met his wife in elementary school, and the pair have been together ever since, The New York Times reported.

They were married in Panama in 1991, and they lived there until 2000, when they moved to Westchester County, New York.

Eminem and Kim Scott

Their long and tumultuous relationship began when they were just kids.

Even if you have just cursory knowledge about Eminem, you know about Kim, the subject of many of the rapper's most disturbing songs, like "Kim," and "'97 Bonnie and Clyde."

The two met when they were just kids (she was 13 and he was 15). Kim and her twin, Dawn, had previously run away from an allegedly abusive home, and eventually began living with Eminem and his mother.

In 1995, they welcomed their daughter Hailie (the subject of more Eminem songs), and were married in 1999.

But things quickly went downhill — Eminem was accused of pistol-whipping a man he claimed he saw kissing his wife, according to NME. The charge was dropped in favor of a reduced charge of carrying a concealed weapon, and he was sentenced to two years' probation. The couple divorced in 2001.

Five years later, they shocked the world and remarried. But just three months after that, the rapper filed for divorce. Their second divorce was finalized in 2006, per People.

Though Eminem built his brand around graphic songs, he apologized to his former wife on the track "Bad Husband" from his 2017 album, "Revival."

Joey Fatone and Kelly Baldwin

Fatone and Baldwin had been dating for 10 years and had a daughter together in 2001 before they were married in 2004, per People. Their second daughter was born in 2010.

Their relationship was plagued with rumors of infidelity from outlets such as Page Six, reaching a high in 2013 after his appearances on two seasons of "Dancing with the Stars." At the time, when Baldwin was asked for a comment, she simply responded, "I don't really want to talk about this."

In 2020, Fatone confirmed to Us Weekly that they were getting divorced.

Robin Thicke and Paula Patton

Thicke and Patton's 21-year-long relationship began when they were 16.

Thicke told Essence in 2011 that their relationship began when they were teenagers, and Patton was "the president of the Black student union and [Thicke] was just a silly white boy."

But they had actually met a year prior at a teen club where, according to Thicke, he serenaded his future wife with the Stevie Wonder song "Jungle Fever."

They were together for 21 years and married for nine before filing for divorce in 2014 and engaging in a particularly nasty custody battle for their son, Julian.

Misha Collins and Victoria Vantoch

Collins and Vantoch got married in 2001, though they met way back in high school — Collins was the only boy in one of Vantoch's English classes.

The two separated at some point before 2021. He acknowledged the split in the author's note in his poetry book, "Some Things I Still Can't Tell You."

• As a kid, Brian Winch helped his father clean parking lots to support their family.
• Years later, he turned it into a business, and his brothers joined in.
• Now, he helps others learn about "America's Simplest Business," carrying on his dad's legacy.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brian Winch, the founder of Clean Lots. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

As a young kid, I watched my parents work hard to keep food on the table. What is now called picking up a few side hustles was then just a way of life: they'd head to second, or even third jobs, to ensure we could make ends meet.

As one of three boys, once we became teenagers, we found ourselves helping too. So, it wasn't a surprise when my dad told me we were going to head out at the crack of dawn to clean trash from business parking lots.

While some kids today might hate everything about this, that wasn't how I was raised. My parents never complained about their lot as poor, working-class people doing what they needed to do. And I far from hated it. In fact, I found it peaceful to wake up early, watch the sunrise, and help a business owner clear their parking lot so it looked fresh and clean when their customers arrived.

Better yet, I was with my dad, something most 12-year-olds love deep down.

My father inspired me to start a simple business

My Dad's name was Joseph Winch, and he was a World War II refugee immigrant from Poland to where I grew up, in Calgary. He'd worked on the kill floor at a meatpacking plant when he got here. He'd laid track for the railroad. He'd been a hospital orderly.

When I was 21, my father died suddenly. I didn't have time to tell him that while my friends headed for other careers, I was secretly considering following his footsteps.

Deep in grief but motivated to make a path for myself, I started reaching out to properties to offer cleanup services. I established Winch Janitorial Services, which later became Winch Enterprises.

I now run Clean Lots, where I am also an author, educating others on what I call "America's Simplest Business." In a tech-fueled world, it's one that has remained AI-proof, as no robot can, as of now, truly scour the entire property for every little cigarette butt in the bushes and hard-to-reach places.

Around 45 years later, I'm not only proud of the career I've built helping others, but grateful I pursued my father's legacy over those other career options.

My family works alongside me

A few years into my janitorial career, where I'd make sure every last piece of trash was out of the bushes and owners knew if any fresh graffiti had been added to their buildings overnight, my two twin brothers started getting involved.

They both helped with their specific talents: the one who operated a forklift helped with cleanup, and the other focused on the project bidding and outreach.

We scaled to over $700,000 per year. Working with my brothers has gone better than some would expect — in fact, it's a way to keep the family together through the years.

But the family member I didn't expect to feel walking alongside me was my dad. Some days, I can sense his presence in the parking lots right next to me.

I've even heard him speaking to me in my head: "Brian, take a few steps that way." Once, I followed this voice and found a wallet. At first, I thought I was crazy, but that day I realized how real it is.

I want to help others find the same success in a simple business

After building my career, I realized I wanted to mentor others through their own business builds in this industry.

One high school teacher in Chicago built his business to make money during the summers off and, after partnering with some buddies, grew it to operate in multiple states.

Through these stories, I realized my father's legacy — and now my own — was never about trash; it was about being of service to others.

• Several restaurant chains have shared plans to close locations in 2026.
• Wendy's planned to close up to 350 US restaurants in the first six months of the year.
• Pizza Hut said it would shutter 250 US locations in the first half of the year.

Some fast-food and fast-casual chains across the US are shrinking their footprints, with several planning to scale back locations in 2026.

Restaurant chains, including Wendy's, Papa John's, Pizza Hut, and Red Lobster, have announced plans to close locations in 2026.

The planned closures come amid a challenging few years for restaurant chains, driven by factors such as inflation, rising labor costs, and changing customer preferences. Some brands have leaned on value meals and innovations in an attempt to bring more customers in the door.

"What's really worked within quick service hasn't been value, as much," TD Cowen analyst Andrew Charles previously told Business Insider. "Value is important, but you look at when McDonald's, Burger King, etc, have done well — it's really when they have great menu innovation or great marketing that they really see customers respond."

Several restaurant chains have announced plans to close locations in 2026, while others have suddenly shuttered locations since the start of the year. Here's what to know.

In February, Wendy's revealed plans to close up to 350 US restaurants.

In February, Wendy's said it intended to close roughly 5% to 6% of its US footprint — about 298 to 358 restaurants — in the first half of the year as it grappled with sliding sales and profits.

At the time, then-Interim CEO Ken Cook said the brand's focus was "to strengthen our foundation and position Wendy's for long-term success."

The Associated Press reported that Wendy's shuttered 28 restaurants in the fourth quarter of 2025, leaving it with 5,969 locations across the US at the end of the year.

Company data shows systemwide US sales dropped 5.2% in 2025, while same-store sales declined 5.6% compared with the previous year.

In May, Wendy's announced that global systemwide sales totaled $3.2 billion in Q1, down 5.5% from the same period the previous year. In a statement at the time, Cook remained optimistic, citing Q1 improvements such as upgrading its hamburgers, launching new chicken sandwiches, and a "focus on operational excellence."

"While our first quarter results reflect a business in the early stages of a turnaround, we are making progress to improve our US business and are confident in the direction we are heading," he said.

Pizza Hut said it intended to shutter 250 US locations in the first half of the year.

Pizza Hut, founded in 1958 by brothers Dan and Frank Carney in Wichita, Kansas, and best-known for its pan pizza, has more than 6,000 locations in the US.

In a February earnings call, its parent company, Yum! Brands, said Pizza Hut intended to shutter 250 US locations by July 1. The closures would impact "underperforming" locations, Yum! Brands said.

In April, Fortune reported it had identified around 50 locations that had closed, with most affected restaurants in California, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.

Yum! Brands said late last year that it was exploring a potential sale of the chain, after reporting a 1% decline in same-store sales during the third quarter, the eighth consecutive quarterly drop. Citing a source, Reuters reported in May that Yum! was in talks with LongRange Capital, a private-equity firm, about a potential sale.

"The Pizza Hut team has been working hard to address business and category challenges," Chris Turner, chief executive of Yum! Brands, said in November. "However, Pizza Hut's performance indicates the need to take additional action to help the brand realize its full value, which may be better executed outside Yum! Brands."

The chain has faced tough competition from other chains, especially with the rise of value meals. Internationally, it is faring better, with same-store sales increasing by 1% last year.

Jack in the Box reportedly plans to close up to 100 locations.

Jack in the Box — the fast-food chain that's been flipping burgers since 1951 — has built a following at its more than 2,100 locations with a menu that includes curly fries, tacos, chicken sandwiches, and milkshakes. But even this drive-thru staple has hit some bumps in the road.

In 2025, the company rolled out its "Jack on Track" turnaround plan to boost performance and strengthen its finances. Part of this was selling off Del Taco for $119 million, which was completed in December.

By the end of June, the brand expects 50 to 100 closures and around 20 openings, QSR Magazine reported in February.

Same-store sales across its restaurants dropped 6.7% in Q1 year over year, the company reported, according to QSR Magazine. Its fiscal second-quarter sales "did not meet expectations," Interim CEO Mark King said in May, with same-store sales falling 3.8% year over year and revenue declining 4.3% to $254.3 million.

But, King said, sales trends had improved entering the third quarter and that the company was committed to its turnaround plan.

"Jack in the Box is an iconic brand, and I'm eager to dive in with our passionate team and franchisees to further improve operating results. After being on the Board and now as interim CEO, my excitement for the potential of this brand has only grown," he said.

The brand's goal this year is to focus on innovation, customer service, cosmetic updates, and fewer, stronger limited-time offers, QSR reported.

Papa John's plans to close approximately 200 stores in 2026.

Papa John's announced in a February earnings call that it plans to close about 200 North America restaurants in 2026 as part of a broader effort to shut down 300 underperforming locations by the end of 2027.

The closures will primarily affect franchise-owned stores that are more than 10 years old and do not indicate long-term profitability, Ravi Thanawala, Papa John's CFO, said on the call.

Papa John's reported a 3% decline in global systemwide sales in the first quarter. North America comparable sales declined 6.4%, though international comparable sales rose 3.6% for the sixth consecutive quarter of growth.

CEO Todd Penegor said, "We are taking action to better align corporate and field resources with our transformation priorities and optimize spans and layers in our organizations."

Papa John's was founded in 1984 by John Schnatter in Jeffersonville, Indiana, when he began selling pizzas out of a converted broom closet in his father's tavern. The brand quickly grew into one of the largest pizza chains in the world, known for its "Better Ingredients. Better Pizza." slogan.

Red Robin has abruptly closed some restaurants nationwide.

Some Red Robin locations in Illinois, California, and New Jersey abruptly closed this year, The Independent reported.

The company, which has nearly 500 locations across the United States, said in February 2025 that it intended to shutter roughly 70 underperforming restaurants as part of a plan to pay down debt, USA Today reported.

Later in the year, executives shared during an earnings call that turnaround efforts at several locations had been more successful than expected, reducing the need for as many closures.

A Red Robin spokesperson told Business Insider in March that 20 closures in 2026 were mentioned on the company's Q4 earnings call; however, these are potential, not confirmed, closures. They concern corporate locations, rather than franchise-operated locations.

"As the company reported in its Q4 earnings, Red Robin beat the casual dining industry on traffic in December, a trend that continued into January," the spokesperson said, adding that there was "a lift in traffic, thanks to its new value menu, the Big YUMMM Deals starting at $9.99."

"This gives the company confidence as they look ahead and expect to continue that progress in 2026 as they introduce more guests to the new-and-improved Red Robin," the spokesperson said.

Red Robin was founded in 1969 in Seattle, Washington, when local restaurateur Gerry Kingen expanded and renamed a neighborhood tavern that had originally opened in the 1940s.

The company grew into a national casual-dining chain known for its gourmet burgers, its Bottomless Steak Fries, onion rings, and thick, hand-spun milkshakes.

Some Denny's have also closed without advance notice.

Denny's, which operates more than 1,650 locations globally and is recognized for comfort-food staples, confirmed in January that it had completed its plan to close 150 restaurants by the end of 2025.

Since the start of 2026, there have been reports of restaurants closing without advance notice, including locations in Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, Michigan, as well as Midland, Texas, per Mashed.

Denny's did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment on the recent closures. It has not been said if there will be others this year.

It comes amid broader corporate shifts at the company. In January, a $620 million acquisition by TriArtisan Capital, Yadav Enterprises, and Treville Capital was completed. The company reported that CEO Kelli Valade would leave in February.

Denny's was founded in 1953 in Lakewood, California, by Harold Butler and Richard Jezak, originally operating under the name Danny's Donuts before evolving into a full-service coffee shop and eventually rebranding as Denny's.

Noodles & Company expects to close between 30 and 35 locations in 2026.

Fast Company reported Noodles & Company plans to shutter more restaurants as part of a broader effort to shore up its finances.

In a January announcement, the fast-casual chain said it expects to close between 30 and 35 locations in 2026 to improve profitability and strengthen its overall performance.

By the end of 2025, the brand operated 340 company-owned restaurants and 83 franchised locations. The company had already downsized its footprint the previous year, closing 42 restaurants, including 33 corporate locations and nine franchise units.

"Decisions like this are made thoughtfully and with a long-term view of the business," CEO and President Joe Christina said, adding that fourth-quarter results showed stronger performance when resources were focused on higher-opportunity restaurants. He said the moves are designed to bolster the brand's financial position and support long-term, profitable growth.

Noodles & Company was founded in 1995 by Aaron Kennedy in Denver, Colorado. The chain is known for its diverse menu that spans flavors from around the world, including Wisconsin Mac & Cheese, Pad Thai, Japanese Pan Noodles, and Pasta Fresca. In addition to noodle bowls, the restaurant offers soups, salads, and shareable sides, positioning itself as a quick-service spot for comfort food with an international twist.

Red Lobster is closing its Times Square flagship location, among others, in 2026.

Since filing for bankruptcy in 2024 — and closing dozens of restaurants that year — Red Lobster has begun a turnaround: It's appointed a new CEO, updated its menu, collaborated with celebrities, and exited Chapter 11 protection. The new CEO, Damola Adamolekun, told The Wall Street Journal in February that its sales were up 10% year over year.

Still, the company announced this week that it will shutter its flagship Times Square location on June 14, ending a 23-year run in one of the world's busiest tourist destinations.

A spokesperson for Red Lobster told Business Insider the chain "remains focused on strengthening the business, investing in the guest experience, and building momentum across the system."

It cited "extensive and prolonged construction" at the sprawling location, which affected foot traffic and sales.

"Times Square has been an important chapter in Red Lobster's history, and we are grateful to the team members and guests who have made this restaurant special over the years," the chain said.

In May, the brand closed its oldest continuously operating location, in Tallahassee, Florida, after 56 years, following typical performance and lease reviews, the company said. Other closures have included restaurants in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and Overland Park, Kansas.

Red Lobster operates around 550 restaurants, a decline from around 700 a few years ago, Fortune reported. Adamolekun told The Wall Street Journal that Red Lobster is still looking closely at leases, with a view to close or update underperforming locations. He added that the chain is also open to opening more locations in some underrepresented regions.

Founded in 1968, Red Lobster grew into one of the largest casual dining seafood chains in the United States. The company is best known for its seafood-focused menu, including shrimp, lobster, and crab dishes, as well as its signature Cheddar Bay Biscuits, which have become a staple of the brand.

• I made both Guy Fieri's and Gordon Ramsay's 10-minute burgers. 
• Fieri's recipe is simpler than Ramsay's, which features far more ingredients. 
• Both burgers tasted delicious, but Fieri's took the top spot in my celebrity-chef showdown.

Guy Fieri and Gordon Ramsay both have 10-minute burger recipes, so I decided it was time for a little showdown.

Ramsay's bacon cheeseburger recipe is featured in his "Ramsay in 10" cookbook, and Fieri himself gave me his burger recipe when I asked for his top burger tips. 

"This may be a more complicated answer than you bargained for, because it's not just about a burger recipe," Fieri told me. "It's about the execution of the whole deal. You can get down with whatever toppings you want, but the basics have to be covered." 

I whipped up both recipes at home to decide who truly had the best — and quickest — burger. Here's how it went.

Fieri's burger is all about classic ingredients.

To make Fieri's perfect burger at home, you'll need: 

• Ground beef (Fieri recommends 80% lean, 20% fat)
• American cheese slices 
• Brioche buns 
• Lettuce
• Tomato 
• Onion 
• Pickles

And there's very little prep.

Fieri told me it's important to shred the lettuce, slice your tomato, and "cut those white onions so thin that they only have one side." 

I also buttered the brioche buns and popped them into the oven so they could get nice and toasty, per Fieri's recommendation.

Then I made my patties.

I seasoned my ground beef with salt and pepper, then shaped it into balls. 

Once my patties were ready, I threw one on the griddle and smashed it with a spatula.

Fieri said it was essential that I cook my burgers "on the hottest griddle or cast iron pan you can get." 

"You smash it down hard — we're talking a half-inch thick," he added.

The Mayor of Flavortown also told me it was important to let my patty crisp up to "get all that delicious caramelization going." I waited until the edges of my patty got crunchy before flipping it over.

After flipping my patty, I added the cheese.

Fieri loves using American cheese slices on burgers because "they melt really well," he told me. 

Next, it was time for Fieri's special cheese-melting trick.

First, I sprayed some water around my burger. Then, per Fieri's instructions, I had to place "some sort of dome or metal bowl" over my patty. 

"That steam will melt your cheese before you overcook your burger," he said. 

I didn't have a metal bowl on hand, so I used an old Marie Callender's pie tin I found in my parents' kitchen. 

My cheese melted perfectly.

Look at how beautiful it is!

Constructing my burger was super easy.

I placed my patty on the bottom bun, then added the tomato, onion slices, and pickles. I placed the shredded lettuce on the top bun and voilà — I was done! 

Fieri's burger tasted just as good as it looked.

What impressed me the most about Fieri's burger was how juicy it tasted, with just the right amount of crispiness. The perfectly cooked patty truly stood on its own; it didn't even need any condiments!

The brioche bun added a nice hint of sweetness, and the beautifully melted cheese tasted almost buttery. The burger was pure perfection. 

Read my full review of Guy Fieri's perfect burger here. 

Ramsay's burger has quite a few more ingredients than Fieri's.

To make Ramsay's cheeseburgers at home, you'll need: 

• Ground beef
• Brioche buns 
• Cheddar cheese
• Egg yolks
• Frozen red chile
• Tomato 
• Onion 
• Bacon
• Little Gem lettuce 
• Mayonnaise 
• Sriracha 

First, I prepped my burgers.

I added 16 ounces of ground beef to a bowl along with two egg yolks. I sprinkled some salt and freshly ground black pepper on top, plus one grated frozen chile. 

After mixing everything by hand, I made four patties, each about 1 inch thick. 

"Remember that the thicker you make the patties, the longer they will take to cook," Ramsay writes in his cookbook. "So if you want these on the table in under 10, press your burgers until they are a little thinner for a quicker cooking time."

I drizzled vegetable oil on my griddle and threw my patties on top.

I let my patties cook for four minutes over medium-high heat, seasoning them with more salt and pepper. Never forget to season!

After adding my bacon and onion slices, I increased the heat to high and let everything cook together.  

I prepped Ramsay's special sauce as my burgers cooked.

I mixed four tablespoons of mayonnaise with two teaspoons of Sriracha, plus some salt and pepper. 

I also toasted my buns and prepped my veggies.

I washed some gem lettuce leaves and sliced one tomato for the bottom of my burgers.

I also toasted my buns in the oven for about two minutes.

I flipped the burgers, bacon, and onions, and let them cook for another five minutes.

I took the bacon and onion slices off the griddle first, placing them on a plate lined with a paper towel.

Ramsay and Fieri use the same trick to melt cheese.

Ramsay also covers the patties to help the cheese melt. But, unlike the Mayor of Flavortown, he doesn't spray the burger with water first. 

Per Ramsay's recipe, I added some butter to the griddle, placed the cheese slices on top of my patties, then covered both with a metal bowl.

The cheese melted beautifully.

This is such an easy trick and clearly worked well for both Fieri's and Ramsay's burgers. I now consider it an essential step for making a great cheeseburger at home. 

Once my patties were ready, I built my burgers.

First, I spread some of Ramsay's Sriracha mayonnaise on my bottom buns. Then I added the lettuce, tomato, and onion slices, along with my cheeseburger and bacon. 

After I threw a few more onion slices on top and spread more sauce on my top buns, my burger was ready to go. 

Ramsay's burger looked straight out of a restaurant.

There's no denying how impressive this burger looks, and it tasted great, too. The patty was plump and juicy, and I loved the kick of heat from the Sriracha mayonnaise and grated chile. 

The bacon and onion also gave some nice crunch and savoriness, while the tomato and lettuce added a dose of freshness. 

Read my full review of Gordon Ramsay's perfect burger here.

Both Fieri and Ramsay have fantastic burgers, but the Mayor of Flavortown takes my top spot.

You have to keep track of quite a few steps to make Ramsay's burger happen in 10 minutes. Fieri's recipe is far simpler, and still delivers fantastic results. 

Plus, I couldn't believe Fieri's burger tasted so good without any sauce or condiments. I've found his burger to outshine those I've had from places like Five Guys, and it's comparable to the gourmet burgers I've tried all over New York — for a fraction of the cost. 

But at the end of the day, you really can't go wrong with Fieri or Ramsay. Either way, you're going to have one very delicious burger. 

• Worchihan Zingkhai is a lifelong football fan, but seeing the World Cup in person felt out of reach.
• He lives in a town in northeast India where salaries are low. He'd been saving up for a new laptop.
• Instead, he pooled his earnings to afford two World Cup tickets in Atlanta. He has no regrets.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Worchihan Zingkhai, 40, a content creator from a village in Manipur, India. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I've loved football for as long as I can remember.

Growing up in a village in Manipur, in northeast India, football is everywhere. We don't have proper equipment, so we make footballs out of plastic and old clothes rolled into a ball.

I can still remember staying awake until 3 a.m. to watch my first World Cup in 1998. We had one black-and-white TV for the entire village, and we pooled money to buy fuel for a generator to power it.

Since then, I've watched every World Cup on television. I became a fan of Portugal and later followed the Premier League. However, attending a World Cup match in person always felt impossible.

Now, nearly 30 years later, I'm finally going.

The laptop will have to wait

Making this trip requires a lot more than buying a match ticket.

My village sits about 5,600 feet above sea level, and there isn't an airport nearby. I'll drive about six hours to Imphal before flying to New Delhi, London, Washington, DC, and finally Atlanta. The trip includes four flights and about 27 hours in the air.

The journey would have been much harder without help from my wife's family. My father-in-law paid for our flights from New Delhi to Washington, DC, and my in-laws are helping with accommodations in the US. Having family there has made the trip much more affordable.

Even with that support, I've had to make sacrifices financially.

I'm a content creator who makes videos for YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. This year, I planned to buy a new laptop for video editing. I was looking at models that cost between $2,200 and $2,500.

However, I couldn't afford both the laptop and the World Cup trip, so the laptop will have to wait.

In my area, people often earn about 500 rupees a day, or roughly $5 to $6. Because of that, we're very careful about spending. My family has cut back on other purchases and avoided additional trips to help make this World Cup journey possible.

I missed my first chance at tickets

Getting a World Cup ticket was harder than I expected.

I entered FIFA's ticket sale in February with a budget of $350 per ticket. My dream was to watch Portugal, England, or Argentina.

When I finally got into the system, I had only 15 minutes to buy. The Portugal tickets I wanted were priced between $450 and $650, which was beyond my budget. I spent too much time comparing options and eventually lost my chance.

I thought that was the end of my chance at the World Cup.

I was able to buy tickets in April. This time, I focused on finding a match I could afford instead of chasing the teams I wanted to see most. After waiting in the queue for several hours, I finally got in and bought two category-three tickets for Czech Republic versus South Africa in Atlanta for $140 each — one for me and one for my father-in-law.

High ticket prices make it harder for fans

I understand why demand for the World Cup is so high. Still, I think ticket prices are difficult for ordinary fans.

What frustrates me most is the resale market.

I paid $140 for my ticket. A few weeks later, I checked the resale platform and saw nearby seats listed for about $560.

As a football fan, that's disappointing.

People who genuinely want to attend have a short window to buy tickets, but resellers have much more time to profit from them. I believe some people purchase tickets mainly to resell them rather than attend matches themselves.

For fans like me, that makes an already expensive event even harder to reach.

• Stacy Lentz has co-owned the Stonewall Inn with three others since 2006.
• She went into credit card debt to buy the Inn, and has never made much money.
• Owning it has been the responsibility of a lifetime, and given her purpose, she says.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Stacy Lentz, co-owner of the Stonewall Inn and CEO of the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I grew up middle-class, in the middle of a cornfield, in the middle-of-nowhere Kansas. That's a lot of middles, but once I moved to New York City in my 20s, I felt like I had discovered the center of the world.

I probably knew that I was gay since I was younger, but I fought it. I went to school with the same 16 kids each year. I knew that I tended to develop crushes on my friends who were girls. As for the guys, I wanted to be their best friends, but had no desire to date them.

At 24, I walked into my first gay bar in New York and immediately thought, "Oh, these are my people."

I took on credit card debt to buy the Stonewall Inn

After that, I spent a lot of time in LGBTQ+ bars. There was a piano bar three buildings down from The Stonewall Inn that I just loved. Having grown up as a theater kid, being in a piano bar in New York City has always been fun. I became a regular there, and befriended the manager, a man named Kurt Kelly, who has since become like a brother to me.

I had walked into the Stonewall Inn before, in the 90s. At the time, I knew a bit about the significance, but the site wasn't being treated with any historic reverence. Then, in 2006, Kurt and I heard that the Inn was shutting down.

We realized we had a chance to preserve history for our community. So, along with two other partners, we bought the Stonewall Inn. I had to go into credit card debt to do that, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

I haven't made much, but it's not about the money

My background is in marketing, and by that point, I had become a vocal advocate for the LGBTQ+ community. I knew I could help make the inn a success and raise its profile. Still, the first year was really difficult. We had a roof collapse and needed to put a lot of work into the building.

I made my investment back within the first couple of years, but I've never made much money from the bar. We're very transparent about that. Our rent is $55,000 a month. That's a lot of vodka soda to sell.

For me, it's never been about the money. That wasn't the point. I see myself and my co-owners as stewards of this place. When we purchased it, there was nothing about the history of the Stonewall Inn displayed. Today, there are historic artifacts, including the original "raided property" sign from 1969. Upstairs, we have a community center where we host everything from fundraisers to weddings.

We're honoring the legacy and continuing to take action

Owning the Stonewall Inn has been the responsibility of a lifetime. It's not just about keeping the lights on; it's about keeping the mission alive.

My co-owners and I believe that queer history can't be preserved without providing for queer futures. In 2017, we started a nonprofit, the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative. We provide safe-space training to other establishments, and also provide support to the LGBTQ+ folks in the places where it's most difficult to be queer, like Mississippi, Uganda, or Kansas, where I grew up.

The nonprofit has a small budget of between $60,000 to $120,000 a year. Still, it's something my co-owners and I are really proud of. If we rely on our legacy, without continuing to take action, it just becomes branding. That's why we're determined to not just honor the Inn's past but to also have a real impact on the future of the LGBTQ+ community.

• In 2023, I graduated into a volatile job market, but thankfully, I landed a job.
• I was living in New York, with an inordinately high cost of living, which made staying untenable.
• Moving to Texas, with its much lower cost of living, allowed me to succeed.

After graduating with a bachelor's in computer science in 2023, a software company offered me an exciting job that paid $60,000 a year.

The catch? I had to move away from home.

I had grown up on Long Island all my life, but the company didn't have an office within commuting distance of my parents' house. Moving felt daunting. Moving across the country? Even more so.

But I felt like I had no choice because of the difficult job market and the rising costs in New York, so I packed up and moved to Texas.

The East Coast was nearly impossible to afford

I did the math. The average rent for an apartment in most East Coast states is $2,000 to $3,000 a month.

Over the course of a year, on average, that would be $30,000. This was half of my annual income — before accounting for any other expenses.

New York State income taxes are also high, plus there's federal tax on top. Already, with back-of-the-napkin math, I found that I would be left with less than half of my annual salary before accounting for food, insurance premiums, utilities, and rainy-day savings.

After all that, there would be next to nothing left for student loan repayments, and I wouldn't be able to save any money to eventually buy a house.

Texas was the much cheaper option

Researching my options, I learned the company had an office in San Antonio. As I researched this unfamiliar city, what I found astounded me.

Even in a large city like San Antonio, rent averages $1,000 to $1,500 a month. Texas also has no state income tax.

I would have significantly more of my annual income to spend and save if I lived in Texas with the same job.

I decided to move across the country to Texas

Though the numbers were promising, I had never been south of Virginia until my move. I had no clue what San Antonio was like and had no family or friends there for support.

I found my apartment in this new, unfamiliar city remotely. I scanned Google Maps. I made a list of apartments with ideal locations and read their tenants' reviews. I focused on ones with two to four stars to avoid being misled.

As part of my research, I looked at crime statistics. I was happy to see it was very low. I then narrowed my commute down to five minutes.

I'm financially comfortable in Texas

After the move, I paid about $1,250 a month for a 700-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment with an in-home washer & dryer, community gym, and pool.

There is a rule in personal finance called the 50/30/20 rule. Ideally, you should spend 50% on needs, 30% on wants, and save 20% of what you earn. Living in Texas, I easily spent less than 50% on needs and saved more than 40% of what I earned.

All of that would not have been possible on the East Coast at my entry-level, new-grad salary.

Lastly, home prices in Texas are much lower, so my goal of homeownership finally felt achievable.

I made my cross-country move work for me

As a new graduate, I faced a market with low salary expectations, frequent mass layoffs, and high job volatility.

I made it work by moving away from a state with a high cost of living to one offering a 50% discount on life.

New graduates and early professionals may find success doing the same.

• Higgsfield AI made a sci-fi action thriller called "Hell Grind" starring AI actors.
• The movie cost around $500,000 to produce.
• I went to a screening to see how it held up.

For a brief moment toward the midpoint of the AI-generated film "Hell Grind," I caught myself experiencing something unexpected: genuine emotion.

As the male lead, Roco, gazed at a photo of his recently kidnapped love interest, he flashed back to memories of them growing up together in an orphanage. The sadness and yearning felt real.

The sensation didn't last.

Mid-flashback, Roco and his AI-generated costars began laughing in an eerily synchronized fashion, their eyes peeled wide open. As I sat in New York's Metro Private Cinema this week, scooping up handfuls of popcorn, the uncanny valley of AI came roaring back.

Generative AI has crept into a variety of corners of the entertainment business this year, spooking many creatives who worry what it could mean for their jobs. While post-production teams are turning to the technology for de-aging and other effects, some actors in short dramas are already losing out on roles to AI characters. The shift is a top concern for the actors' union SAG-AFTRA, which approved new contract language this week that pushes producers to bargain over the use of synthetic performers.

"Hell Grind," which takes AI usage to the max, sprang up in May at the Marché du Film in Cannes (a side event that's not the famous Cannes Film Festival). The brainchild of startup Higgsfield AI — which runs an AI platform for creatives, brands, and marketers — it was conceived as a way to show the tech's potential as more than just a tool for making short videos. The company, which crossed a $1 billion valuation earlier this year, spent around $500,000 to produce its 95-minute film, with much of its budget going to computing costs. While AI regularly shows up in bits and pieces of Hollywood productions, "Hell Grind" is the highest-profile film made entirely with AI-generated visuals.

Higgsfield tapped a group of in-house creatives and outside filmmakers who used highly specific text prompts (typically around 3,000 words) to generate around 100 hours of content, which was edited down. The company did not use AI to write the script, except for a few short filler moments, which Higgsfield's CEO, Alex Mashrabov, told me he thought were noticeably less effective in the film.

The result is a visually impressive movie with a passable plot line, landing somewhere between a video game and an effects-heavy project like "Planet of the Apes."

"It's a new workflow, and it's also very important for us so that we show to the world what's possible," Mashrabov told viewers at the screening this week. "The production process looks different where it's actually possible to go back and iterate with AI and deliver exactly the emotion which the creative director was envisioning."

The company is releasing portions of the film on YouTube and plans to open source its workflow, production process, and prompts in the coming weeks.

At various points during "Hell Grind," I was taken out of the story when a character did something that just felt … off. The way Roco held a slice of pizza in one scene looked like it was his first time encountering the food, for example. The synthetic children in the movie generally creeped me out, and the AI-generated voice work didn't always feel consistent (one character seemed to flip between a British and American accent, for instance).

Still, it was hard to shake off the feeling that talented AI prompters may soon be coveted players in Hollywood.

While I wouldn't expect to see AI actors or writers playing a big role in the making of films like "Tár" or "One Battle After Another," it feels like this technology will be hard to resist for budget-sensitive executives angling to speed up movie production. That's especially true in genres like action and sci-fi, where visual effects budgets can be a big constraint. And the technology may open doors for independent filmmakers who have grand ideas but small budgets.

"Budgets and opportunities are not equally distributed across the world," Mashrabov said. "Hopefully, this will spark the next generation of creativity."

• I travel a lot but typically stay in luxury hotels.
• My sister recently asked me to go to an adult summer camp with her, and I was hesitant.
• However, I'm so glad I went, and it changed the way I think about "comfort."

I'm a luxury travel reviewer, so I've spent years refining my standards for comfort. I've stayed at extraordinary hotels and resorts around the world — properties with the plushest bedding and robes, private infinity pools, dedicated butlers, and absolutely no need to take care of myself while on property. Once you get used to that level of comfort, it's hard to un-know it.

So when my sister started trying to convince me to attend a women's retreat at an adult summer camp in Northern California, I was skeptical.

I grew up camping, but stopped doing it over the years

To be fair, I'm not anti-camp. I grew up going to summer camp and even did a fair amount of recreational camping with friends into adulthood. But then I had kids, a life stage that necessitated so much gear schlepping and cleanup that doing so for recreation ceased to appeal. Camping lost its novelty.

Meanwhile, my work as a lifestyle writer moved increasingly toward luxury travel coverage. Over time, I became accustomed to certain elite-level comforts — and, if I'm being honest, attached to them.

My sister asked me to go to an adult summer camp

My sister, whose tastes differ from mine in plenty of ways, recruited two of our closest friends from high school and college to attend, too. It felt like a strategic FOMO operation — and it worked. About a week before the retreat, I finally caved and booked my flight.

I expected rustic accommodations, communal bathrooms, and the general feeling of roughing it.

Instead, I walked into all sorts of surprises.

For one thing, the camp itself had been rebuilt in recent years and felt far more polished than I anticipated — and certainly much more elevated than the Southern California camp of my youth. Our cabin for the four of us had heating and air conditioning, an en-suite bathroom, ample charging ports, and was spotless. The food in the dining hall was genuinely great, including lots of vegetarian options for me.

It felt less like roughing it and more like a conference center situated among trees.

But the accommodations weren't the only type of comforts that surprised me.

The bigger surprise was realizing how many forms comfort can take that have nothing to do with luxury amenities.

I found comfort in community and rest

There were 175 women at the retreat, and many of them were older than we were. My group ranged from age 48 (me) to 51 (my sister), but many attendees were in their 60s, 70s, and even their upper 80s. There was something unexpectedly grounding about being surrounded by women carrying decades of perspective and experience. The atmosphere felt notably free of performance or pressure.

Then there was another luxury I'd almost forgotten: being an off-duty mom in an adults-only environment. My sister has three kids; my two friends and I each have two. For a few days, nobody needed snacks. Nobody needed a ride somewhere. Nobody was making an impassioned case for me to extend their screen time.

Instead, I had time for things I almost never make space for anymore. I tried to learn Mahjong. I made beaded bracelets and dipped my own candles. I dozed through a sound bath and tried forest bathing.

The activities themselves almost felt beside the point.

Luxury hotels are designed to create comfort. That's literally their purpose.

But somewhere along the way, I think I'd unconsciously narrowed my own definition of comfort into something highly curated and highly physical — softer sheets, nicer rooms, better amenities.

I left adult summer camp with the reminder that some of the greatest comforts have nothing to do with thread count at all.

• Facebook Marketplace sellers are using images of women to draw attention to items for sale.
• There's just one thing: The women aren't real. They're AI-generated.
• I talked to one seller who said the tactic got him a lot of views, but not necessarily more sales.

Let's say you've got a 2013 Jeep Wrangler you want to sell. It's a great car — low mileage, good condition, and a custom-lifted suspension. But there's a lot of Jeep Wranglers out there on Facebook Marketplace — how do you make your listing stand out?

For Rogelio Llamas, it was a little sex appeal that was missing. He added an image of a woman in a bikini top, denim shorts, and cowboy boots leaning on the hood of his Wrangler. Now there's a way to draw eyeballs. Just one thing: The woman wasn't real. Llamas generated her with AI.

Llamas, who's in Southern California, is part of a trend I've seen on Facebook Marketplace lately. He told me he got the idea from a YouTuber who makes videos about how to buy items at thrift stores and resell them for a profit.

On Reddit and social media, people have started to notice a strange new trend: scantily clad AI-generated women propped up against everything from cars to dump trucks to other items for sale.

In one listing for a motorcycle, a hot goth girl appears to be sitting on it. In another, three women in nearly identical outfits (yet slightly too tall) lounge across a 2010 Mercedes. In a listing for what appears to be a dilapidated hot tub, three young women in tank tops and short shorts sit atop the filthy plastic.

On X, someone found a listing for some kind of Caterpillar heavy machinery equipment — featuring a sexy woman in a bathing suit posing on the rusted metal. All had hallmarks of AI images — strange figures, slightly off sizes, and generally improbable looks.

Using attractive women to appeal to car or boat buyers isn't a new concept by any means. Sex sells! But the addition of AI-generated babes to Facebook Marketplace listings feels new.

For one thing, images on Facebook Marketplace typically look kind of crummy. The whole point is you're getting a listing of a real used item sold by a normal person, not a professional. As a frequent Marketplace buyer myself, I'm generally wary of any listing that looks too professional or whose photos are too good — to me, that's a sign the seller knows what they have and may be pricing it too high.

Llamas said that in the influencer video he watched, it suggested using a larger body size for the AI-generated woman rather than a slim one, because it creates a curiosity gap that makes someone want to click. (Who knows if that's the case?) The fact that it seems obviously AI is intentional. "It's supposed to be funny, but also be like, damn, is she real??" Llamas told me over Messenger.

The WTF-factor seems to be a trend. In one Marketplace listing someone posted on Reddit, a seller put an AI sumo wrestler standing on the drawers of a large toolbox, presumably to demonstrate the strength of the drawers and also to catch attention.

But the eye-catching tactic doesn't always translate to a sale. Llamas said that, indeed, he got way more views and clicks on his Jeep listing after adding the photo with the woman. Unfortunately, they're not all serious buyers. "They are messaging if she comes with the car, if she's real, or they think I'm her." He said. "I get negative messages like 'go to the gym' or 'you're fat,' very few have actually messaged me for the car itself."

The Jeep has been on the market for 19 weeks so far.

• Business Insider asked six tech workers which task they're saving the most time on with AI.
• Some workers said AI has turned tasks that once took hours into minutes.
• Others said the productivity gains haven't necessarily led to shorter workdays.

Ask a tech worker how AI has changed their jobs, and chances are they'll answer with a single number: hours saved.

In interviews with Business Insider, Big Tech software engineers, product managers, and data scientists described using AI to compress hours of work into minutes. They use it to draft documents, summarize months of meetings, review code, automate reports, and more.

Faster doesn't always mean easier, however. One Amazon data scientist said AI is adding hours to his workweek as he builds the automation systems that should eventually save him time. Another Amazon employee said any time saved is quickly redirected to the next project.

Here's how six tech workers said AI is saving them the most time. (Their responses have been edited for length and clarity.)

The time AI saves me gets reinvested into the next problem

Priyanka Devi Ramesh is a business intelligence engineer at Amazon. She's 30 and lives in Virginia.

Document writing is where AI has had the greatest impact. With the help of an AI tool called Pippin, it's become easy to translate my thoughts about the projects I'm working on into polished documents that can be technical or customer-facing. This saves a massive amount of time — I spend hardly 15 to 20 minutes max to write and finalize a document that would have previously taken me well over an hour.

On the technical side, I use Kiro and Amazon Quick. Kiro is great for brainstorming ideas and making logic updates in minutes. I'm building agents within Amazon Quick to automate common customer questions about dashboards and to surface insights from data.

AI hasn't reduced my work time. We're constantly looking for ways to clean up messy data and finding opportunities to automate wherever possible — so the time saved in one area gets reinvested into the next problem.

AI helps me make sense of months of meetings at Google

Prerit Pathak is a security engineer at Google. He's 27 and lives in New York City.

I use Gemini for a variety of purposes, but recently it has bolstered my note-taking.

I used to take shorthand notes during meetings to record interesting or important information. Now, I let Gemini take notes on my work calls, and the improvement has been incredible. A summarization task — such as understanding what happened over the previous six months — that once would have taken one to two hours now takes five to 10 minutes.

I'm working longer hours now, so AI can save me time later

Sarthak Gupta is a data scientist at Amazon. He's 29 and lives in Seattle.

AI has been most helpful with building end-to-end automation pipelines for recurring workflows.

It used to take 8 to 10 hours over a couple of days to create a monthly stakeholder report that involved pulling data, cleaning it, generating visualizations, and writing the summary. Now, an AI pipeline handles the data pulls, transformations, and dashboard refreshes. I spend maybe 45 minutes reviewing the output and adding context before sending it out.

However, my overall working hours right now are running longer than normal. The reason is that we're in the middle of an automation phase. Building the pipelines, integrating the AI tooling, validating outputs, and onboarding all of this into existing workflows is front-loaded work, and that upfront investment is real. The payoff comes later, when the same task that took a couple of days collapses into a button click.

So in the short term, AI is actually adding hours to my week, not subtracting them. I'd expect that to flip once the foundational pipelines are stable and the automation is doing the heavy lifting on its own.

AI helps me turn messy ideas into polished plans

Tanvi Pisal is a UX designer working as a contractor for Apple via Red Oak Technologies. She's 29 and lives in San Jose.

One of the biggest ways AI saves me time is in early-stage product thinking and documentation.

As a product designer, I used to spend hours drafting product requirement documents, brainstorming user stories, mapping edge cases, outlining use scenarios, and refining ideation before I even got to visual design.

Now, I can start with rough notes or a messy draft, and AI helps turn that into a much more structured document in minutes. What used to take me three to four hours can often be reduced to 30 minutes with feedback and refinements.

AI gets me to the starting line faster at Amazon

Udit Mehrotra is a head of product at Amazon. He's in his 30s and lives in Seattle.

Writing product documents is where I've seen the biggest change. Every major initiative at Amazon starts with a written document, and for years, the first hour or two of that process was building scaffolding: setting up the structure, filling in the sections you know by heart, and building something worth reacting to before you could get to the actual thinking.

Now I can use AI to input the customer problem and constraints and get a solid first draft in minutes. What surprises me is that it's often more comprehensive than what I'd have written on my own under time pressure.

Getting from 80% to 100% is still where the real work lives, and AI doesn't change that. The strategic judgment, the tradeoffs between what customers need and what's technically feasible, the decisions that require years of accumulated context about a specific customer problem — that thinking still takes the same depth and care it always did.

What has changed is that I arrive at the starting line faster, with a more complete structure to react to and push against. The quality of the final document is often better as a result, not because AI did the hard thinking, but because I spent more of my time on it.

What used to take a week can now take a day

Iren Azra Zou is a software engineer at the trucking logistics startup Double Nickel. She's in her 20s and lives in New Jersey.

I use AI, mostly Claude Code, for the majority of my coding. It's honestly hard to quantify the time savings; it feels like what used to take a week can now take a day.

We also rely heavily on AI to review and provide feedback on code, unless a change is particularly risky. That alone saves a huge amount of time. Instead of waiting days for human reviews, you get multiple rounds of feedback within hours. It also means I spend less time reviewing others' code, which probably saves me several hours each week.

There are tradeoffs — less human review can have downsides. But right now, the speed of iteration and innovation is incredibly valuable for us.

Do you have a story to share about how you're navigating a career crossroads? If so, please reach out to the reporter via email at jzinkula@businessinsider.com, or via Signal at jzinkula.29.

• Alexandra Frost is a former teacher who lives in Ohio and has five children.
• During each pregnancy, she faced logistical challenges due to maternity leave rules.
• Self-employment gave her more flexibility, but it blurred the lines between work and parental leave.

I was 38 weeks pregnant when I stopped being able to walk, at age 28, with my first child of five.

I remember the exact moment, standing in a long hallway, where I couldn't race back to my class where 30 high school kids sat waiting for instruction. I grabbed a rolling chair from a nearby classroom and inched my way back from the bathroom, sitting.

I'd developed a painful pelvic bone condition, and I thought for sure I'd be sent home to bed for the rest of my pregnancy.

But that's not what happened next. Instead, I got a call from HR, detailing my options. I could stop working now — since I couldn't walk and all — but that would count as starting maternity leave early. And that would mean two fewer weeks I'd get to spend with my baby.

So I rolled from student to student in that same chair for the next three weeks, until I delivered my baby overdue.

This was the beginning of my abrupt education into the world of maternity leave, and how policies, procedures, and the workplace dictate what's best for you — not your body, your mind, or even your doctor.

Over the decade that followed, I'd go on to have four more babies, work for multiple employers, and experience multiple parental leave policies. Each one shaped the story of my pregnancy, birth, and motherhood in different ways — some that I valued, and some I'd like to forget.

Baby 1: Toughing out the last weeks of pregnancy for a longer leave

Data from around that same time showed a growing trend of moms working right up until birth, a fear I had with my first child — would my water literally break at a student's feet? It's also why, in education, many teachers try to strategically conceive their babies to line up with school breaks.

In 2014, I learned on leave from my first baby that it was the first of many decisions I'd make as a new mom that involved choosing between my own health and well-being or my child's, who benefited from having me home longer after birth. Ultimately, I was glad to have prolonged the start of my maternity leave as long as I could to get the most healing time possible before heading back to work.

Baby 2: Arbitrary leave rules with big impact

Around 18 short months later, I was back in the delivery room in 2016, and navigating leave with another school district. This one had a unique rule that didn't quite make sense to me — if you had banked 12 weeks of sick leave, you could use all 12 for maternity leave, but only six of those could be paid. As a young working mother now with two babies, also married to an educator, this meant going six weeks without pay to get the most time off with my new baby, while trying to pay for our $4,000 hospital bill and double the diapers.

I called HR multiple times to clarify. Clearly, I'd heard wrong that if I had the sick time that I'd saved up, I couldn't use it still for paid time off? Except I hadn't. Their justification was that they had to make sure we had enough "extra" sick time in our bank so that we wouldn't be in a bind if we or our kids got sick. And here I was thinking it was my decision when and how to use my own sick time.

It taught me that the system isn't really built for moms' or babies' needs; it's for the benefit and convenience of the business, corporations, and districts where we work.

Baby 3: Revolving a leave around benefits

My third child arrived within weeks of a job change in 2018. If I had the baby, due ironically on Labor Day, before the start of a new month, I'd have a certain set of leave benefits. If I had the baby after, I'd have a different set, including insurance with a deductible that would reset. The timing was bizarre.

In this birth, I made the decision to be induced early to reap the massive financial and leave benefits I'd accrued at my first job — I'd met my deductible and the birth would be free if the baby came in time. Induction before the body is ready can come with a slew of risks, I found out. It soon turned into a hellish 28-hour labor, with a failed induction that wouldn't progress and I couldn't turn back from.

I learned that I could try to play God and manipulate my circumstances for financial gain and convenience, but that the body and the baby don't follow your best laid plans. In another world, both employers would have had equally great benefits and leave, and the baby could have come when he was ready. I greatly regret how I handled this, and had to work to undo the trauma of this birth that I caused by trying to rush it.

Baby 4: How it was supposed to be

If you have enough babies, eventually, parental leave will go your way. That was the case with my fourth son, in 2021, when I encountered a largely "chill" contact at my employer who was determined to infuse as much flexibility as possible around the company's standard leave practices.

Late in the pregnancy, when my pelvic pain returned, I was able to take up to five regular sick days off consecutively at a time without them counting toward official leave. This meant I could work for a day, take five days, and repeat — which I did, a handful of times — making the end of pregnancy much less stressful and painful.

I learned from this leave that encountering a contact or boss who would allow the policies to stretch as far as possible to benefit the people who need it. Though real nationwide change would be better, this was a step in the right direction.

Baby 5: Self-employment…better, but worse

A few years into parenting four sons, I quit teaching to establish my own writing, content marketing, and strategy business. I was now my own boss — so the policies better be good, right? Turns out, it's not as easy to take leave as a business owner as I thought.

When it was time to have my fifth baby, I had clients on retainers and editors with deadlines. I had a subcontractor who was luckily loyal and helpful who helped me navigate this. But around a month in, even with the help of a few part time, remote assistants, the emails, projects, and missed opportunities were piling up. I tried to walk the line as carefully as possible to avoid missing opportunities for the sake of full-time bonding with my baby. In reality, this meant only five weeks truly off.

From there, the lines blurred between leave and flexible work. I'd sneak in some work at naptime to keep the bank accounts balanced. I'd work as I nursed a fussing toddler during witching hour in the evenings. I worried as a mom of five about the choice to take time off at the expense of our finances. But in the end, I was in control, which felt better.

From this leave, I learned that maybe I didn't need super long leaves; I just needed choice. I didn't regret going back to work "early" when it was my own decision, not being forced on me by an employer or policy.

Do you have a story to share about your career? Contact this editor, Debbie Strong, at dstrong@businessinsider.com.