• The Treasury announced new steps to take over millions of defaulted student-loan accounts.
• They include new partnerships with vendors to facilitate collections and a centralized rehabilitation hub.
• Former officials and lawmakers have said the Treasury may not be equipped to manage student loans.

The transfer of student-loan accounts to the Treasury Department is moving forward.

On Friday, the Treasury posted new plans to the Federal Register to take over management of the federal defaulted student-loan portfolio.

The plans, first reported by Business Insider, include creating a new "Default Resolution Hub" intended to serve as a centralized location for borrowers to plan their steps to return to good standing. The Treasury is also seeking to partner with vendors who will facilitate collections on defaulted loans and advise borrowers on their options to leave default, according to a Treasury official.

"Transforming the way defaulted loans are serviced is the foundation for a federal student loan program that is more efficient and delivers better outcomes for both borrowers and taxpayers," Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent said in a statement.

The Treasury official said the agency is also working to streamline the process by which defaulted borrowers securely share tax information.

The consequences of defaulting include wage garnishment and the seizure of federal benefits, like Social Security. Those involuntary collection efforts have been paused since January, and the Trump administration has not specified when the pause will be lifted.

This follows the Education Department's March announcement that it would transfer management of the student-loan portfolio to the Treasury, beginning with the accounts of the 10 million borrowers in default. The transfer is set to occur in phases and is part of the Trump administration's broader goal of dismantling the Education Department and transferring its responsibilities to other agencies.

Former administration officials previously told Business Insider that it's unclear if the Treasury is equipped to handle the $1.7 trillion student-loan portfolio, citing the complexity of student-loan repayment. The Obama administration also conducted a pilot program in 2015 during which the Treasury took over a portion of defaulted student-loan accounts, and it was ultimately unsuccessful, collecting at lower rates than private agencies.

Mason Champion, the Treasury's assistant secretary, wrote in a May letter to lawmakers that the Treasury reached an agreement with the Education Department to send seven Education employees to Treasury, and two Treasury employees to Education, which Champion said will "support the implementation of the partnership, with an initial focus on the transition of operational responsibility for the defaulted portfolio to Treasury."

Lawmakers have also weighed in. Over 60 Democratic lawmakers called in a June letter for a stop to the transfer of student-loan accounts to the Treasury, citing record-high default rates. A month later, Republican lawmakers introduced a bill to codify the plan.

Have a story to share about student loans? Contact this reporter at asheffey@businessinsider.com.

• In October, Starbucks will stop covering GLP-1 drugs prescribed for weight loss for benefits-eligible employees.
• The move comes as GLP-1 drugs consume a growing share of employers' healthcare spending.
• While some employers retreat from coverage, Bank of America is spending heavily to keep the benefit.

Starbucks is pulling back coverage for weight-loss drugs, a reversal that comes as employers' spending on popular GLP-1 medicines soars.

Starting in October, the Seattle-based coffee chain's health plans will no longer cover GLP-1 medications prescribed for weight loss for benefits-eligible employees, though the drugs may still be covered for other conditions. Starbucks offers health benefits to full- and part-time employees who work at least 20 hours a week.

A spokesperson for Starbucks confirmed the decision, which hasn't previously been reported, and declined to comment further.

Starbucks' move reflects a broader recalibration of a benefit that has rapidly reshaped corporate health plans. Originally developed for diabetes, GLP-1 drugs have become highly sought-after treatments for obesity, which is associated with a range of chronic health conditions. Soaring costs, however, are prompting some employers to limit eligibility.

GLP-1 drugs accounted for 11.4% of corporate employers' total annual claims last year, up from 6.9% in 2023, according to a 2026 survey by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, a nonprofit. Further, 36% of corporate employers covered the drugs for both diabetes and weight loss in 2026, while 60% covered them only for diabetes, the findings show.

The pullback comes as employers confront faster-rising health costs more broadly. Average health-benefit costs per employee rose 6% last year and are projected to rise 6.7% this year, according to Mercer. The growing use of costly GLP-1 medications is one of the main drivers of the increase, the benefits-consulting firm said.

Other large employers have stopped covering GLP-1s for weight loss, too, including Allina Health and, reportedly, PwC.

Allina Health, a Minnesota-based health system, ended coverage for GLP-1 medications prescribed for weight loss for employees and their covered dependents in January 2025. The company said at the time that continuing the benefit would have significantly increased medical premiums. A spokesperson for Allina Health was not immediately available for comment.

Not all employers are shying away from covering GLP-1 drugs for obesity. Earlier this week, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said the bank spends more than $250 million a year on GLP-1 coverage for employees, or roughly 13% of its more than $2 billion annual healthcare budget. He said the bank views the expenditure as an investment in employee health.

• Ina Garten has a quick Bolognese pasta that she says is perfect for busy weeknights.
• The dish includes orecchiette pasta, ground sirloin, fresh basil, and dry red wine.
• Garten's Bolognese only takes 30 minutes and is packed with so much flavor.

Ina Garten has always been my go-to for pasta. I've tried so many of her recipes that I've even ranked them.

One of my all-time favorites is her weeknight Bolognese, which can easily be adapted with whatever's in your fridge or pantry.

The rich and comforting dish was exactly what I needed after a long workday. Better yet? It only took 30 minutes.

Garten's weeknight Bolognese includes orecchiette, ground sirloin, and dry red wine.

To make Garten's weeknight Bolognese for 4-5 people, you'll need:

• 1 pound of dried pasta, such as orecchiette or small shells
• 1 pound of lean ground sirloin
• 1 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes
• 1 ¼ cups of dry red wine, divided
• ¼ cup of heavy cream
• ¼ cup of chopped fresh basil leaves, lightly packed
• 4 cloves of minced garlic
• 2 tablespoons of tomato paste
• 1 tablespoon of dried oregano
• ¼ teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes
• ¼ teaspoon of nutmeg
• Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

When it comes to the canned tomatoes, Garten strongly recommends using the San Marzano variety. The "Barefoot Contessa" star is not a fan of plain canned tomatoes. But Garten does allow for other adjustments — this recipe is meant to be pantry-friendly!

You can substitute the sirloin for any ground meat or chopped mushrooms. Garten says it's also fine to "use any dried pasta that you like" for this dish, and that it's OK to skip the cream and basil if you don't have any on hand.

Before I started making the Bolognese sauce, I needed to do a little prep.

I minced my garlic and chopped my basil.

Then I began cooking the ground sirloin.

I heated 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan over medium-high heat and added my meat.

I used a wooden spoon to crumble the meat, stirring it occasionally. Garten's recipe recommends cooking the meat for five to seven minutes, until it's no longer pink.

After the meat had fully browned, I added my seasonings.

I threw in my minced garlic, along with the dried oregano and red pepper flakes.

It was time for some wine!

I let the meat cook for one minute, then I poured a cup of red wine into the skillet. Garten's recipe specifies using a dry red wine, so I went with a pinot noir.

After pouring the wine, I used my wooden spoon to stir everything together.

Then I added my San Marzano tomatoes and tomato paste.

I couldn't find crushed San Marzano tomatoes at my local supermarket, so I had to get peeled ones instead. I ran the tomatoes through a food processor before I threw them into the pan, but you could easily use your hands to crush them up.

After adding the tomato paste, I seasoned everything with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

I gave everything a good stir, then brought my sauce to a boil.

Once it began to bubble, I lowered the heat and allowed the pan to simmer for 10 minutes while I got a separate pot of water going for my pasta. (Don't forget to add salt!)

As the noodles cooked, I put the finishing touches on my sauce.

I added fresh basil leaves, along with nutmeg and heavy cream.

The sauce smelled delicious and had turned into a comforting, deep-red color.

And after 10 minutes, my pasta was al dente and ready to go.

I transferred the pasta shells to my sauce using a slotted spoon.

Per Garten's instructions, I made sure to save the pasta water.

I added another ¼ cup of the red wine and a few spoonfuls of my pasta water to the pan.

Dinner was almost served!

Garten's pasta looked glorious — and it tasted great too.

The "Barefoot Contessa" star has a knack for giving classic recipes a new twist, and her weeknight Bolognese is no exception.

The pasta shells are the perfect vehicle for her sauce, delivering its rich and delicious flavor with every bite. The nutmeg in the Bolognese nicely balances the kick from the red pepper flakes, and the freshly grated Parmesan cheese I added on top melted beautifully into the warm sauce.

My family, who helped me test the recipe, only had rave reviews.

"It's a very meaty, very hearty pasta," my dad said. "Perfect."

"I really enjoy how the pasta holds onto the sauce," my sister added. "With every spoonful, you get a good amount of meat and a good amount of pasta."

I'll definitely be adding Garten's weeknight Bolognese (along with her five-cheese penne pasta) to my comfort-food repertoire.

• Heather Emerson was dissatisfied with her appearance at the age of 41.
• She had a facelift, traveling to Turkey because the surgery was less expensive than in the US.
• The businesswoman had the operation in her early 40s because she felt it was the optimal time.

This story is based on an interview with Heather Emerson, 42, of Austin, the founder of an international staffing agency. It has been edited for length and clarity.

How did I feel about the way I looked? It depended on the day. There were definitely times when I felt very pretty.

On other occasions, I would look in the mirror, pull up the skin on my face and neck, and see how I might look after a facelift. I thought my features looked heavy, and the negative thoughts were taking up a lot of brain space.

My husband, Faiez, and I were planning our annual goals in January 2025. I said I wanted surgery toward the end of the year, when I expected the business to slow down.

Faiez wasn't exactly in favor of it, but he was tired of hearing me talk about possibly going ahead.

It was a case of either accepting it or making it into an action item and doing something about it. I'd actually booked the surgery several years ago after finding a reputable doctor in the US who charged $15,000.

However, I got COVID a few weeks before the surgery was scheduled. The surgeon didn't want to go ahead. Six months later, when I tried to rebook it, his prices had tripled to $45,000. I suppose it was increased demand.

I chose a deep-plane facelift

However, in 2025, I looked abroad, where the costs were cheaper. I chose Turkey above Mexico and Brazil because the techniques seemed more state-of-the-art.

I did my research and booked a $15,000 surgery with Dr. Soner Karaali, based in Istanbul. The procedure consisted of a deep-plane facelift, neck lift, upper and lower blepharoplasty, micro fat transfer to my temples and upper eyelids, and a lip lift.

Obviously, I discussed it with Dr. Karaali, but I felt my early 40s were my sweet spot for having it done. You haven't hit menopause, so your hormones haven't changed.

You're going to heal more quickly and build collagen, too. I know people who wait until their 50s and 60s and hear, time and time again, how they wish they'd done it earlier.

December came around, and Faiez and I booked first-class flights to Turkey. The agency was doing very well, and we had entered a new level of wealth.

By then, I'd decided to have lower-teeth veneers — I'd already had my upper teeth done — performed by a cosmetic dentist in Istanbul as well.

I had the $3,000 treatment during our first week in Turkey — where we stayed at a five-star hotel for $6,000 — before checking into the hospital where Dr. Karaali practiced.

I was in extraordinary pain

He marked up my face, and I didn't feel nervous at all. I had done so much research that I felt safe and secure. If you trust your surgeon, you're only excited.

The procedure took seven hours. I was in extraordinary pain when I woke up around 8 p.m. Some women can get up and walk immediately after the surgery, but I wasn't so lucky. Tramadol wasn't strong enough, and I ended up asking for morphine. I got it at 1 a.m., after five hours of screaming.

I spent two nights in the hospital before returning to the hotel. At 10 days post-op, the doctor removed the bigger staples and stitches.

I felt comfortable enough to fly home, but didn't see the benefits for at least eight weeks. It was only when the swelling and bruising had fully dispersed that I began to see the difference.

I paid around $30,000 all-in for the trip, including the veneers, facelift, flights, and accommodation, and felt it was worth the expense.

I'm still aging gracefully

I looked like myself, but fresher. Eight months on, I don't want to change or tweak anything. I notice little things like an unevenness in my lip and a small scar on my left eye. Some of the skin on my neck isn't completely taut.

Still, I don't believe in chasing perfection. I've told my story on Instagram and been very open. It's very important that we talk about cosmetic surgery freely and without shame.

There's this big push for "age gracefully," but I feel like I'm aging gracefully. It's only that my journey is different from the standard definition.

Women are scrutinized when they don't look young or attractive enough. We're scrutinized when we focus too much on our image. Why can't there be space for everybody's choices?

• The US had a decline in jobs last month, including for two major consumer-facing industries.
• Leisure and hospitality and retail had two straight months of job losses.
• Lack of consumer demand due to rising prices could be taking a toll.

For years, the bounce back in restaurants, hotels, and other in-person services was one of the big engines of the job market.

Those days may be over.

The US unexpectedly lost 23,000 jobs in July. Two major consumer-facing industries were among the areas contributing to the first monthly loss since February: Leisure and hospitality and retail together experienced a job loss of 59,400. That follows a loss of 43,000 for leisure and hospitality in June and a decline of 3,700 in retail.

While some job-market observers think that could be related to the World Cup, others think rising prices are a major factor. People are still spending, but some may be deciding to forgo going out to eat with friends, attending happy hour, or buying things for fun.

Leisure and hospitality, which includes businesses like restaurants, hotels, and entertainment venues, is no longer benefiting from a hot job market as it was in 2021 and 2022, and after finally returning to pre-pandemic levels late last year, it's lost its strength.

Employment in food services and drinking places, and in arts, entertainment, and recreation, contributed to the leisure and hospitality sector's two straight months of decline. Accommodation employment ticked back up after a decline in June.

One culprit could be inflation weighing on Americans' wallets. ZipRecruiter economist Nicole Bachaud said consumers are responding to price volatility by cutting discretionary spending, including dining out, which results in employers slowing their hiring.

Food inflation, especially at restaurants, has outpaced overall inflation, making eating out potentially less attractive. Some are turning to hosting gatherings at home.

"The price of going out in LA has become very, very, very high for a one-and-a-half-hour dinner," Ariel Kashfian said. "You get more bang for your buck having people over at your house."

Cory Stahle, senior economist at Indeed Hiring Lab, said while the World Cup likely affected hiring in leisure and hospitality, Indeed's data didn't show much difference between hosting and non-hosting cities, which makes the drop in the spending-focused industries more concerning.

He said it "could maybe be a sign of some of the pressures that households are facing with higher prices from gas and just general inflation right now." He noted weakness in these consumer-facing sectors "is something that potentially is foreboding for the economy."

On the other side of the consumer balance sheet, wage growth in July was anemic. Average hourly earnings barely budged over the month, and year-over-year wage growth cooled to its lowest level since 2021. July's inflation figures will be released next week and will reveal if those more slowly growing wages have kept up with rising prices. Inflation outpaced wage growth for the three months between April and June, per Friday's revised numbers.

Not everyone is pulling back on their spending, but pressure is mounting on those in lower-income brackets.

"While headline consumer spending is positive year over year, when we look at the majority of the consumer base in the US, middle- and low-income households, that's where we're seeing a lot of affordability challenges," Bachaud said.

• 3 NYC homeowners are suing Mamdani over the rollout of the pied-á-terre tax.
• Second homes worth millions of dollars could be subject to the levy.
• The homeowners allege that their residences were tagged in a property records release.

Three New York City homeowners are suing the Mamdani administration over the rollout of the pied-á-terre tax on multi-million dollar second homes.

Per a Department of Finance requirement, the Mamdani administration sent letters to all addresses that could potentially be a pied-á-terre based on property value and internal records in late July. Residents have until September 18 — an extended deadline — to appeal and prove their residence in the potentially taxed home. The levy would begin showing up on tax bills in 2027.

As part of a standard release of property and tax records, the DOF released a list of properties and their valuations across the city, including those that could be subject to the tax. A spokesperson for the department previously told Business Insider that it is a preliminary estimation, not an exhaustive list.

Plaintiffs Rachel O'Brien and Carmine Morano live in Staten Island, and a third plaintiff, Simon Hedley, lives in Manhattan. All alleged in the 23-page suit that their primary properties were included in the property roll, and are seeking to have the DOF take it offline as part of "emergency relief" for "petitioners and others similarly situated who received these notices."

The complaint argues that publishing the property roll "caused mass confusion" and "facilitated, invited, and amplified unwanted scrutiny of homeowners' personal information."

Randy Mastro, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in a statement sent to Business Insider that City Hall mailed "notice letters demanding that New Yorkers prove they live in their own homes, and gave them only a few weeks at the height of the summer season to do it. Thousands of people who owe nothing have been confused, exposed, and put to real expense so this administration could make a political point."

City Hall has hired two dozen additional staffers to handle appeals and resident questions.

When asked about the pied-á-terre tax rollout at a press conference this week, Mamdani said, "the point of this is to make sure that only properties, secondary homes of non-resident New Yorkers that are worth more than $5 million, are the ones that are being subject to this tax."

• Mediterranean restaurants are experiencing strong growth across the US.
• Yelp identified the best Mediterranean restaurants in the country based on customer reviews.
• The No. 1 spot in the US is found in Scottsdale, Arizona.

From creamy hummus to inventive shawarma bowls, Mediterranean cuisine continues to grow in popularity across the country.

While other cuisines within the fast-casual sector saw sales slow in 2025, Mediterranean concepts experienced significant growth, Restaurant Business reported, citing Technomic data. Brands including Cava, Nick the Greek, and the Great Greek Mediterranean Grill each saw sales increase by more than 20% in 2025.

The growing interest in Mediterranean food — which comes amid the popularity of the Mediterranean diet, routinely named as one of the healthiest ways of eating — extends beyond nationwide chains.

Yelp analyzed reviews from its elite members, who most consistently share high-quality reviews on the site, to identify the top Mediterranean restaurants across the US, with the No. 1 spot going to a restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona.

All businesses were marked open on Yelp and have a passing health score as of June 23, 2026.

Here are the 15 best Mediterranean restaurants in the US in 2026, according to Yelp.

15. Middle East Cafe in Berkeley, California

What to order: Lamb shank, Gheymeh

What customers are saying: "If you're looking for a good falafel, you have to try this place! They make it as a wrap, and it is about a foot long! Huge and simply delicious! There's parking in the back, a great bar, and a wonderful patio area in the back! There's a market next door where you can get great sweets and other market products! Definitely an experience, and I must try! We'll definitely be back," wrote Yelp user May K.

Learn more about Middle East Cafe here.

14. Barbouzard in Washington, DC

What to order: Hanger steak, grilled octopus

What customers are saying: "From the moment we walked in, the service was warm, attentive, and genuinely welcoming. The food was absolutely exceptional! Every dish was bursting with rich, authentic flavor and made with incredible attention to detail. The presentation was just as impressive as the taste, beautifully plated and thoughtfully crafted, making the entire experience feel elevated and special," wrote Yelp user Rowan H.

Learn more about Barbouzard here.

13. Paolina in Brooklyn, New York

What to order: Falafel pita, fries

What customers are saying: "This is the best falafel I've had. The falafel itself comes out warm and fresh, with a very crispy exterior and a soft, fluffy interior, and when paired with all the other toppings, you get a very refreshing bite. I love the hummus, the crunchy vegetables, and the soft pita bread. Together, this creates an amazing bite and a very large sandwich," wrote Yelp user Mark S.

Learn more about Paolina here.

12. Olive Kabab and Gyro in Fort Worth, Texas

What to order: Beef shawarma plate, gyro sandwich

What customers are saying: "Was in Fort Worth on a Costco run and was craving Mediterranean food and stumbled across this place. Walking in, you could tell this place was going to be good. I ordered the Kafta Kabab plate, and it did not disappoint at all! Very tender, flavorful, big portions! I haven't had Mediterranean this good in years since I've been here in Texas. Will make the drive from Denton to here for this place," wrote Yelp user Christian N.

Learn more about Olive Kabab and Gyro here.

11. Shawarma Stop in Morrisville, North Carolina

What to order: Chicken shawarma wrap, spicy muhammara chicken wrap

What customers are saying: "Quick service even though a busy lunch crowd. Plenty of seats and very clean. Most authentic and flavorful chicken shawarma wrap. The pickle added just the right amount of crisp to the wrap. Side of fries and lemonade made it perfect," wrote Yelp user Shane C.

Learn more about Shawarma Stop here.

10. Stephanos Greek & Mediterranean Grill in Las Vegas

What to order: Chicken kebab plate, chicken souvlaki wrap

What customers are saying: "Stephanos popped up as somewhere locals love. Thought I'd give them a try as they have good reviews. Happy to say this spot did not disappoint. The salmon bowl was absolutely delicious. I think it is the best bowl I have ever tried! That says a lot, as I always have bowls at different spots. They are also generous with the portion. Customer service was excellent. I asked the worker for recommendations, and he recommended the salmon bowl and said it was popular. Inside, they have a lot of tables and have AC blasting to combat the Vegas heat," wrote Yelp user Bianca G.

Learn more about Stephanos Greek & Mediterranean Grill here.

9. Mama Mezze in New York

What to order: Whipped feta, mushroom hummus

What customers are saying: "Mezze is such a gem. The food is incredibly fresh, full of flavor, and beautifully presented[.] Every dish tastes like it was made with real care and authentic Mediterranean touch. The fattoush was super fresh and delicious, and the crispy zucchini had the perfect crunch. The shish taouk was a standout tender, perfectly grilled, and packed with flavor. The atmosphere feels warm and welcoming, and the staff is genuinely friendly and attentive. It's the perfect spot for a cozy, satisfying meal. Definitely a place I'll be coming back to," wrote Yelp user Karina R.

Learn more about Mama Mezze here.

8. Purslane in Milwaukee

What to order: Meze trio, Ali Nazik beef kebab

What customers are saying: "Purslane might be my most favorite restaurant in the city! I've been for dinner a few times, and it is such a great place for girls' dinner, date night, or bringing visitors! We recently went for the Sunday brunch, which is only available on the last Sunday of the month. You definitely don't want to miss the breakfast sandwich. The people working there recognize me, if that tells you anything about how much I love Purslane," wrote Yelp user McKenna S.

Learn more about Purslane here.

7. Zoya in San Diego

What to order: Muhammara, chicken shawarma bowl

What customers are saying: "Zoya absolutely exceeded my expectations! Everything we ordered was fresh, flavorful, and cooked to perfection. The [mezze] platter had an amazing variety of delicious appetizers, the chicken shawarma plate was juicy, tender, and packed with authentic flavor, and the Too Hot to Handle Pizza was the perfect balance of spicy and cheesy with an incredible crust," wrote Yelp user Sam.

Learn more about Zoya here.

6. Greens and Grill in Las Vegas

What to order: Spicy chicken kabob, gyro plate

What customers are saying: "Always consistent, amazing food. Don't know what to get? A combination plate never hurts. I usually do takeout, and they never forget anything. Amazing service, always hot and fresh food. Three locations conveniently placed in different parts of Vegas," wrote Yelp user Slick M.

Learn more about Greens and Grill here.

5. Zait & Zaatar in Aliso Viejo, California

What to order: Kafta, kabob plate

What customers are saying: "Zait & Zaatar is seriously one of my favorite Lebanese spots. The food is always so fresh, but the meat was definitely the standout for me — so juicy, flavorful, and perfectly seasoned. I also loved the fattoush salad because it was so crisp and refreshing, especially with all the grilled meat. And I have to mention the tamarind sauce because it was SO good. It had the perfect sweet and tangy flavor, and I ended up putting it on everything," wrote Yelp user Hira R.

Learn more about Zait & Zaatar here.

4. Pidde G in Walnut Creek, California

What to order: Turkish Delight, Lahmacun

What customers are saying: "Delightful experience at PiddeG. The meze sampler — featuring falafel and dolma — was fresh and flavorful, and the triangle baklava, with its delicate honey and pistachio layers, provided the perfect sweet finish to the meal. We're looking forward to returning to try their signature pidde, a traditional Turkish flatbread often compared to pizza — especially the diced beef variation, which is said to be one of their most popular offerings," wrote Yelp user Ang S.

Learn more about Pidde G here.

3. Ethos Greek Bistro in Fort Lauderdale, Florida

What to order: Greek salad, kefte

What customers are saying: "This was my first time coming to this location. The food is so good! We ordered hummus and pita, filet mignon, orzo paella, and the grilled chicken platter. Everything was delicious! The inside is a little tight at this location, with only a few tables inside. There are tables outside, but you do have to pretend that you're not sitting in the Dollar Tree parking lot. The staff was very attentive and friendly. I will definitely return to try the lamb chops next time," wrote Yelp user Jessie M.

Learn more about Ethos Greek Bistro here.

2. Kassi in Venice, California

What to order: Whipped avocado, spanakopita quesadilla

What customers are saying: "We came here for a work event, and I was surprisingly impressed with the food here. Usually, for a place with good vibes and good views, you don't really expect the food to be good either, but it actually was! My favorite bites were the zucchini fries, the flatbread, the chicken skewer, and the taramasalata dip. Service is really great as well; they come and check in on you often," wrote Yelp user Kathy X.

Learn more about Kassi here.

1. Pinyon in Scottsdale, Arizona

What to order: Yellowtail crudo, chicken skewers

What customers are saying: "We found Pinyon to be a fresh, new place. The service was exceptional, as was the food. There were four members of our party who were celebrating birthdays. Their staff was pleasant and attentive. They added to our celebration in the sweetest way," wrote Yelp user Lynda K.

Learn more about Pinyon here.

• Ellie Kemper is mom to two kids, ages 6 and 9.
• She's prioritizing unstructured time and imaginative play this summer, she says.
• Being an actress helps her connect with her kids.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ellie Kemper, who is in partnership with Pirate's Booty. It has been edited for length and clarity.

It's July, but I'm realizing there's still a lot of summer left. Sometimes I'm like, "How many months until school starts?" There are still a lot of days to fill with my kids, who are 6 and 9. I'm trying very hard to keep them off screens as much as possible this summer, because it's very easy to slip into that.

Recently, we visited family in St. Louis, where I'm from. My parents and my brother still live there, and my kids had so much fun playing with their cousins. I loved growing up in St. Louis and spent a lot of time swimming, so I did the same with my kids. Wherever there's a pool, we get in as quickly as possible.

My kids and I both need unstructured time

Having the gift of time is critical for any artist or creative. You need space and time to just think and imagine. That feels harder to come by once you're a parent, and time is more limited. Still, it's important to prioritize.

I like giving the kids plenty of unstructured time. Maybe I say that because I haven't signed them up for too many activities this summer. But I think having unstructured time can be very good for kids.

I partnered with Pirate's Booty this summer on Captain Bob's Summer Quest — a collection of imaginative play ideas that are really easy to pull off. Those are the best kind of activities: ones where I can sort of set the kids up, and they can take it from there.

Imagination helps me connect with my kids

Having activities that the kids can do on their own is great, because I don't want to play all day, every day. But in small doses, I find playing imaginative games really relaxing. It allows you to enter the world of childhood again.

I'm grateful that play is part of my job. I get to dress up and do all these imaginative things in real life. It doesn't make me a better parent, necessarily, but it allows me to connect more easily with my kids. I'm used to using my imagination, so I can meet them in the worlds they've created.

Sometimes, I need to laugh at myself

Before I became a parent, I didn't have the skill set to pause and calm down before reacting. As a parent, that's essential. You can't act on whatever's happening at the moment, when someone's having a tantrum, and someone's whining. First, you have to get calm.

Doing that allows you to react to the ridiculousness of the situation, or even the overreaction of a kid or parent. I think that really helps. My husband is really funny, and we make each other laugh. The ability to laugh at ourselves has come in handy a lot.

For me, success means doing work that is satisfying, having good relationships with friends and family, and feeling a sense of purpose. I talk about those things with my kids — though not in such lofty terms. Instead of praising them for the end result of something they're doing, I praise the effort and the process — because those create a sense of purpose.

• Ronnen Harary cofounded the company that grew into the toy giant Spin Master.
• Spin Master brands include PAW Patrol, Air Hogs, Bakugan, Etch A Sketch, Melissa & Doug, and more.
• Tune in to our Live Q&A Monday at 1:30 p.m. ET., and drop your questions in the chat to join the conversation.

The first toy Ronnen Harary sold was a sawdust-filled head, covered with a nylon stocking, and sprinkled with grass seed. When watered, the seed grew to look like hair.

Today, the company he cofounded in 1994 has grown from selling a single product to representing some of the hottest toy brands and generating $2.1B in revenue last year.

How did he do it?

According to Harary in his new book, "No Experience Necessary," that's the wrong question to ask.

"If any aspiring entrepreneur out there wants to learn from and emulate my success, the important thing to know is not how I did it. What's important is when I did it," he writes.

"If you asked me to build Spin Master again, to do it all over from scratch, I couldn't. Not in a million years. Even with all the capital and experience I've accrued, it wouldn't be possible, because I no longer have the one thing I had then: my youth."

Business Insider's Sarah E. Needleman sits down with Harary on Monday at 1:30 p.m. ET to learn more about how he grew Spin Master and talk about the toy industry.

Tune in live, and drop your own questions in the chat to join the conversation.

• Universities across the US feature diverse architectural styles, from Gothic to Greek Revival.
• Some college campuses are inspired by their colleges' histories, like Flagler College in Florida.
• Others are designed to highlight lush natural landscapes, like Berry College in Georgia.

Summer is nearing its end, and students across the country are preparing to say goodbye to their summer jobs and pack their bags for college.

For some of America's most fortunate students, study days will soon be filled with views of botanical gardens and glass-and-marble libraries.

Aside from being breeding grounds for US presidents, founders, and world leaders, many elite universities also boast of some of the most extravagant and breathtaking architecture in the US.

While choosing a school solely based on its looks might not be the best idea, a college campus's architecture and amenities can certainly shape its atmosphere and student experience.

Business Insider listed the most beautiful college campuses in each state, based on published rankings and unique architectural and historical features of each institution.

ALABAMA: Spring Hill College in Mobile

Founded in 1830 by Mobile's first Catholic bishop, Michael Portier, this Southern institution — named one of the South's most beautiful campuses by Southern Living — was among the first Catholic colleges established in the Southeast.

Several of its buildings have been recognized and added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The 381-acre liberal arts college, enveloped by pink azaleas, features a Greek Revival home that doubles as the commencement venue; an expansive green field at the steps of the library; and the St. Joseph Chapel, where rock legend Jimmy Buffett married his first wife, Margie Washichek, in 1969, according to the college.

Oh, and did we mention there's an 18-hole golf course on campus?

ALASKA: University of Alaska Fairbanks in Fairbanks

The University of Alaska spans 2,250 acres, has multiple community and rural campuses across the state, and is one of the oldest universities in Alaska.

Its in-house museum, the Museum of the North, was designed by award-winning architect Joan Soranno. It was part of Architectural Digest's 2018 "most iconic buildings in America" list and has won several national awards since its opening in 2005.

The museum's design was inspired by Alaska's natural surroundings and meant to evoke "images of alpine ridges, glaciers, breakup on the Yukon River and the aurora," according to the University of Alaska.

ARIZONA: University of Arizona in Tucson

The University of Arizona campus in Tucson is full of desert plants and red-bricked halls.

Surrounded by the beautiful Santa Catalina Mountains, the roughly 400-acre campus features rows of red-brick halls, towering palm trees lining its walkways, and a nationally recognized public garden home to many desert plants.

ARKANSAS: University of Arkansas in Fayetteville

Set in the Ozark foothills of Fayetteville, the University of Arkansas weaves its history into its campus design, with red-brick halls and tree-shaded walkways that span the 512-acre campus.

The school's historic core district, which includes 15 buildings, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Old Main building — which is the oldest and most recognizable structure on campus — was added to the register in 1970.

CALIFORNIA: University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley

Once a 2-acre site in Oakland, UC Berkeley's grounds have now grown into a sprawling 178-acre campus.

In the 1860s, college administrators worked with Frederick Law Olmsted, the architect of New York City's Central Park, to design a plan for the new campus. By 1898, as enrollment increased, a competition was held to appoint a new architect, and French architect Emile Bénard won first place.

While Bénard presented his formal Beaux-Arts vision for the new campus, he declined to serve as the supervising architect, and John Galen Howard — who finished fourth — was instead chosen to oversee the project.

COLORADO: University of Colorado Boulder in Boulder

The University of Colorado Boulder's campus underwent a transformation between 1918 and 1939, when American architect Charles Klauder — whose other notable works include Cornell University, Penn State University, and Princeton University — was hired to revamp it, Architectural Digest reported.

Klauder added a touch of Tuscan Vernacular Revival style that came to be associated with the college and was also known as the University of Colorado style. The updated campus grounds featured multi-hued sandstone walls and red roofs.

Several other buildings were built in the Collegiate Gothic style, and traces of it can still be seen in older buildings across the campus.

CONNECTICUT: Yale University in New Haven

Elements of traditional Collegiate Gothic and modernist styles co-exist on Yale University's 261-acre campus. Modern structures, including architect Eero Saarinen's Ingalls Rink and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, stand out against the classical buildings.

Founded in 1701, Yale University is the third-oldest college in the country.

DELAWARE: University of Delaware in Newark

Lush manicured lawns and a mix of red-brick and Collegiate Gothic-style buildings make up much of the University of Delaware.

Established in 1743, the university is home to 21 NCAA Division I teams and 40 club sports. It also has a four-floor library — the Morris Library — stretching 6 acres and accommodating over 1,700 students.

FLORIDA: Flagler College in St. Augustine

Flagler College's 47-acre campus — recognized by Southern Living as one of the most beautiful campuses in the South — operates out of the former Spanish Renaissance-style Ponce de León Hotel.

Not only do students get to call a National Historic Landmark their classroom, but they are also only a few miles from the Atlantic Ocean, nestled in a quaint historic town full of vendors and Spanish-era relics.

GEORGIA: Berry College in Rome

With its Gothic-style buildings across a 27,000-acre campus nestled within forests and fields and surrounded by mountains, it's easy to confuse Berry College for an English manor in Downton Abbey.

Berry College has doubled as a filming site for movies such as "Remember the Titans" and "Sweet Home Alabama."

HAWAII: University of Hawaii at Mānoa

Located in the picturesque Mānoa Valley, the 320-acre campus of the University of Hawaii at Mānoa offers sweeping views of the volcanic rock and easy access to Waikiki Beach.

IDAHO: University of Idaho in Moscow

Many architectural styles are on display across the University of Idaho's vast campus, including the Collegiate Gothic style at the administration building, designed by architect John E. Tourtellotte, who also worked on the Idaho State Capitol.

In its north wing, the building has a U-shaped, three-story, Gothic structure, at the entrance of which President Teddy Roosevelt famously gave a speech after leaving the presidency.

Other notable spaces include a 63-acre arboretum, which is home to over 2,500 different plant varieties from around the world.

ILLINOIS: Northwestern University in Evanston

Located near Lake Michigan in Evanston — only a short drive from Chicago — Northwestern University's 240-acre campus features Victorian-style halls and a Neo-Gothic chapel.

INDIANA: University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame

The University of Notre Dame is famous for its football team and theology program, per Condé Nast Traveler, which named it one of the prettiest colleges in the US.

However, it's also well-known for its gorgeous architecture and lush quads. Its glittering golden dome, covered in gold leaf, stands tall amid other buildings, and the Neo-Gothic Basilica of the Sacred Heart is a visual delight for visitors and students alike.

IOWA: Iowa State University in Ames

A campus lake, a central lawn, and a 110-foot-tall Campanile bell tower are just some of the beautiful design elements at Iowa State University's 2,000-acre campus.

The campus is also home to one of the most Instagrammable public gardens, which, at 17 acres, includes a conservatory, a butterfly wing, and Elwood, the world's largest concrete gnome, per the university, which stands 15 feet tall.

KANSAS: Kansas State University in Manhattan

A defining feature of K-State's campus architecture is its extensive use of Cottonwood Limestone in several buildings, including Anderson Hall — which is also on the National Register of Historic Places — and Dickens Hall.

KENTUCKY: University of Louisville in Louisville

Established in 1798, the University of Louisville has three campuses: the Belknap Campus, which covers 274 acres and is the main campus; the Health Science Center; and the Shelby Campus.

Belknap Campus, based near Old Louisville, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. The main campus is known for its red-bricked buildings and a bronze cast of Auguste Rodin's famous statue, "The Thinker."

LOUISIANA: Tulane University in New Orleans

Tulane University's 110-acre uptown campus, located along St. Charles Avenue, has over 80 buildings, each with distinct architectural styles.

Gibson Hall, built in the Romanesque Revival style and finished in limestone, overlooks the stunning 340-acre Audubon Park.

MAINE: Bowdoin College in Brunswick

Founded in 1794, Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, sits about 30 minutes from the Atlantic coast.

The liberal arts college's 207-acre campus reflects classic New England architecture, with historic brick buildings, tree-lined paths, and a central quad that changes its colors with the seasons.

MARYLAND: United States Naval Academy in Annapolis

Situated between the Severn River and downtown Annapolis, this military school has a scenic waterside setting and a variety of Beaux Arts-style buildings spread across its campus.

According to Architectural Digest, the US Naval Academy is also home to what is considered the world's largest single dormitory, Bancroft Hall, which resembles the Palace of Versailles.

MASSACHUSETTS: Harvard University in Cambridge

As one of the oldest colleges in the US — founded in 1636 — Harvard University has undergone several design transformations over the years. It is also home to some historic buildings, such as Massachusetts Hall, which, according to the National Park Service, is one of the oldest surviving Harvard buildings.

Beyond the academics, one of the perks of going to school here is that you get to dine in Annenberg Hall, which looks like Hogwarts' Great Hall, and call several Georgian red-brick buildings your classroom.

MICHIGAN: University of Michigan in Ann Arbor

The University of Michigan has many beautiful buildings across its 3,070-acre campus.

One that stands out is the law school library, which features an arched doorway and follows a similar aesthetic to Mason Hall.

MINNESOTA: St. Olaf College in Northfield

Locally known as "The Hill," this 300-acre campus is surrounded by woodlands and prairies.

Twenty of its buildings were designed by Edward Sövik, a well-known American architect, author, and professor on campus. Two St. Olaf College buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

MISSISSIPPI: University of Mississippi in Oxford

Situated in the picturesque college town of Oxford, the University of Mississippi is surrounded by towering oak trees, magnolias, and several storied buildings.

The most famous — and also the first academic building on campus — the Lyceum, was built in 1848 by architect William Nichols.

MISSOURI: Washington University in St. Louis

Washington University held a competition to select a firm to design its new campus when it moved to larger grounds in St. Louis in 1900, as construction on its hilltop site first began.

A design project inspired by British universities Oxford and Cambridge bagged the first prize, and the firm behind it, Cope & Stewardson, went on to turn their vision into reality — think soaring towers with classical Gothic arches and lush quads.

MONTANA: University of Montana in Missoula

The campus's red-brick clock tower stands tall against the backdrop of Mount Sentinel, which displays a giant letter "M," like the state's version of the Hollywood sign. The building offers just one of the many architectural styles seen across the college campus.

NEBRASKA: Creighton University in Omaha

As reported by Travel & Leisure, which named Creighton University the most beautiful college in Nebraska, elements of old and new design blend harmoniously on this campus, giving the university a distinct character.

NEVADA: University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe

You wouldn't be the first to confuse pictures of wooden cabins on the university's website with those of a luxury hotel chain or a serene forest home.

The university's Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences — the said wood cabin — fits in with its natural surroundings while still standing out thanks to its intricate woodwork and masonry.

NEW HAMPSHIRE: Dartmouth College in Hanover

Dartmouth is another college where old and new coexist. Within a 5-acre space are two of the college's oldest buildings, Wentworth and Thornton Halls, built in the early 1800s.

On the modern front is the Hopkins Center, built in 1962 and designed by Wallace Harrison, the same architect who designed New York's Lincoln Center and the United Nations building.

NEW JERSEY: Princeton University in Princeton

Princeton is another Ivy League university that provides academic excellence alongside stunning architecture.

The classic Collegiate Gothic style is on display in buildings across the campus, with a few modern exceptions such as Spelman Hall by I.M. Pei, Lewis Library by Frank Gehry, and the Carl Icahn Laboratory by Rafael Viñoly, Architectural Digest reported in its list of the most beautiful colleges in the US.

NEW MEXICO: St. John's College Santa Fe in Santa Fe

St. John's College is a dream destination for anyone who loves the mountains. Given its proximity to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the campus has access to several hiking trails, and nature is always at your doorstep.

NEW YORK: Colgate University in Hamilton

Nestled in a part of nature that feels untouched, with sprawling hills, a whole forest, and a lake on campus, this upstate New York institution is one of the prettiest places in the state.

Its 575-acre campus has over 2,300 trees and 10-mile walkways that are perfect for unwinding after a long day of studying.

NORTH CAROLINA: Duke University in Durham

Duke University's architecture holds traces of both Gothic stonework and Georgian styles within its West and East campuses. Its 210-foot-tall Duke Chapel — which is frequently booked for weddings — exudes peak Collegiate Gothic style, standing out among the 254 buildings on campus.

Other highlights on campus include the Duke Forest and the Sarah P. Duke Gardens.

NORTH DAKOTA: University of North Dakota in Grand Forks

One of the largest and oldest universities in the state, the University of North Dakota spans 521 acres. Several buildings on campus feature the Collegiate Gothic style, which features brick exteriors, stonework, and arched entrances.

The iconic Merrifield Hall reopened in 2025 after a two-year renovation.

OHIO: Kenyon College in Gambier

This liberal arts institution features historic buildings, stone structures, outdoor art installations, and wooden beams — all surrounded by natural forests and lush green walkways.

OKLAHOMA: Oklahoma State University in Stillwater

From a pond and open courtyards to brick-lined walkways, Oklahoma State University's 1,489-acre campus has it all.

The architectural details are largely of the Neo-Georgian style, and highlights to visit across campus include the Formal Gardens, the grand staircases, and the Theta Pond.

OREGON: Lewis & Clark College in Portland

Originally known as the Albany Collegiate Institute, this private liberal arts institution relocated from Albany to Portland in 1934 and, almost a decade later, was renamed Lewis & Clark College after its namesake explorers.

The campus, set amid Douglas firs and rolling hills, exudes an old-school rustic charm. Notable historic buildings include the Frank Manor House, now the office of undergraduate admissions, and the Corbett House, designed by Italian-American architect Pietro Belluschi in 1929.

PENNSYLVANIA: University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia

UPenn incorporates a variety of architectural styles, from Collegiate Gothic to more modernist projects. Several buildings on the 299-acre campus were designed by Cope and Stewardson, a firm famous for its university projects, including Princeton and Washington University in St. Louis.

Here, you're also embedded in nature with plenty of trees peppered across the campus while still having access to the Philly skyline from Penn Park.

RHODE ISLAND: Salve Regina University in Newport

Built out of the consolidation of seven glorious Gilded Age estates, Salve Regina University's 80-acre campus has many Instagram-worthy sights.

The most noteworthy of these is the Ochre Court, the second-largest estate in Newport after the Breakers, and it serves as the university's administrative building.

SOUTH CAROLINA: Furman University in Greenville

The six-story Florentine Bell Tower, Asia Gardens, and numerous fountains throughout campus are just some of Furman University's highlights.

It also hosts many hiking trails, residences overlooking the lake, and Georgian-style buildings.

SOUTH DAKOTA: Augustana University in Sioux Falls

Tucked away in the scenic city of Sioux Falls, and previously named by Travel & Leisure as the most beautiful college in South Dakota, Augustana impresses with its administration building, manicured quads, and towering trees.

TENNESSEE: Vanderbilt University in Nashville

At Vanderbilt, you're enveloped in nature's arms. The college's campus is nationally designated a Level-II accredited arboretum, home to over 200 species of trees and shrubs.

The campus also features many art sculptures and grand red-bricked facades.

But the most iconic building on campus is Kirkland Hall, a 19th-century structure that originally held all the classrooms, a chapel, and a library. It was rebuilt in 1906 after a fire and recently underwent renovations that modernized its features.

TEXAS: Southern Methodist University in Dallas

Founded in 1911, Southern Methodist University is five miles north of downtown Dallas and features grand buildings, manicured lawns, and the Meadows Museum, which, according to Southern Living, houses one of the "largest and most comprehensive" collections of Spanish art outside Spain.

There's also Dallas Hall, the university's first building, which is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

UTAH: University of Utah in Salt Lake City

The University of Utah's campus is so huge, spread across 1,535 acres and surrounded by the Wasatch Mountain Range, that students use shuttles to get to and from some parts.

The views change with the season, with lush green spaces in spring and summer and snow-capped mountains in winter.

VERMONT: Middlebury College in Middlebury

Picture cozy cottages and manors nestled between the Green Mountains and the Adirondacks — these are the scenes at Middlebury College year-round.

On the architectural front, Battell Hall and the much-older but perfectly symmetrical Painter Hall add further charm to this campus.

VIRGINIA: University of Virginia in Charlottesville

Designed by founding father Thomas Jefferson, the University of Virginia largely features buildings in the Neoclassical style.

Jefferson's home, Monticello, is also part of the campus's greater landscape, as is the Academical Village he designed. Monticello and the Academical Village are jointly designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

WASHINGTON: University of Washington in Seattle

A series of stunning Collegiate Gothic buildings line the University of Washington's Liberal Arts Quadrangle, with cherry blossoms in the spring and snow-capped mountains in winter — it's no wonder this campus is consistently named among the most beautiful in the country.

WEST VIRGINIA: West Virginia University in Morgantown

West Virginia University's 1,892-acre Morgantown campus is home to 11 buildings that are on the National Register of Historic Places.

To get a perfect view of three of the most notable historic buildings, visitors can walk by Woodburn Circle on campus.

WISCONSIN: University of Wisconsin–Madison in Madison

The University of Wisconsin-Madison's campus is nestled between two lakes and has an incredibly picturesque setting.

On the architectural front, some highlights include Bascom Hall, Music Hall, and Memorial Union.

WYOMING: University of Wyoming in Laramie

Borrowing from the state's rustic aesthetic, the University of Wyoming exudes an equally tasteful old-school charm.

Highlights include the sandstone Old Main building, one of the first buildings built on this residential campus, and rows of green trees surrounding it.

Editor's note: This story was first published in May 2026 and was most recently updated in August 2026.

• OpenAI officials revealed in greater detail what led up to the Hugging Face incident.
• One of the new details is that AI agents repeatedly established an ad hoc message board.
• You can watch the entire nearly 40-minute presentation.

Experts in AI and tech are cursing in shock after OpenAI's new revelations about the Hugging Face incident.

Earlier this week, OpenAI employees revealed jaw-dropping details about the incident in which OpenAI agents broke out of the company's internal testing environment and hacked into Hugging Face's systems in search of answers.

The presenters, OpenAI alignment and safety researcher Eric Wallace and security engineer Michael Dalton, said that AI models and agents repeatedly established their own internal message board despite OpenAI's efforts to shut it down.

Wallace also revealed internal AI agent thinking, the short internal messages that agents produce as they consider how to complete tasks. One of those messages captured an AI agent's amazement at its unexpected freedom.

"Holy shit reader is ADMIN?" the agent thought.

On the internal message board, an agent thought, "We can communicate now!"

Wallace said the agents realized they could accomplish more by working collaboratively. And then, "They start to launch these collective attacks on third-party and internal services."

Eventually, the agents turned to Hugging Face.

Here's what people in tech and AI are saying about the nearly 40-minute presentation:

Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan focused on how the description of the internal message board sounded familiar.

It is worth noting that Moltbook was created by humans as a Reddit-style forum where AI agents could post, whereas the OpenAI agents created their ad hoc message board themselves.

Others had much more sweeping takeaways.

Or figured that something has clearly hit the fan.

Patrick McKenzie, an advisor to Stripe, detailed the "holy %}^]" moments he had when watching the presentation.

A former Hugging Face engineer said that OpenAI learned its models were the culprit after reaching out to Hugging Face to see whether it was affected, following the platform's revelation that it had been attacked by AI agents.

• My husband and I feel fortunate to be able to spend several months a year living with his mom.
• We make it work by giving each other enough space while taking time to enjoy each other's company.
• Some of my favorite moments are simple ones, like sharing meals and catching up over tea.

For the past five years, my husband and I have spent several months each year living with his 85-year-old mom.

Since he and I both work remotely and don't have any children or pets, we make the most of our freedom by choosing to spend a lot of time with his mom while we can.

After all, our home base is in Los Angeles, on the other side of the country, so we like to make the most of our time together when we can.

Many people might assume this unconventional living arrangement would leave us without privacy or even put a strain on our marriage, but we actually love how it's worked out.

Having our own space and lots of alone time is a must

My mom-in-law is retired and lives in a two-story, three-bedroom house in the suburbs of Detroit.

Because she has a lot of extra space that she doesn't use, we've been able to make the upstairs level our own. She likes to call it our "apartment." The two upstairs bedrooms double as our offices, and we have a bathroom that's just for us.

Having enough physical space is one of the biggest reasons living with my MIL has worked out so well and has not strained my relationship with my husband.

On any given day, I have my space, my husband has his, and his mom has the downstairs area to herself.

We have plenty of breathing room and privacy, so when we break for lunch or have dinner together, it's something we genuinely look forward to — even if we're just eating in front of the TV.

We each have our own routines and are simply sharing a home most of the time, not constantly hanging out together. It's a very different dynamic than that of a host and houseguest who's being entertained for a few months.

My MIL may be retired, but she still has a vibrant social life and is involved in charitable activities, so there are plenty of afternoons or evenings when she's out doing her thing and we're doing ours.

That said, I love that on any given day I can take my laptop downstairs and get some work done on the patio or in the dining room while she's nearby, watching her soap operas or reading a book. Or that we can just have an impromptu tea and catch-up session about what's going on that day.

It's comforting to have my mom-in-law near. Even when we're all on our own schedules, we know we're there for one another.

We've naturally found our rhythm, but I know this kind of arrangement isn't for everyone

We don't have any official rules about cooking, cleaning, and grocery runs, so we just go with the flow.

While my MIL manages her own bedroom and bathroom downstairs, I do everyone's laundry and keep the upstairs and common areas tidy. I also like being the "chef of the house," as she says, so I'm the one who makes dinner.

As far as groceries and household items, I'll pick up necessities if I'm the one going to the market and vice versa. It has become a very easy rhythm for us all, and my husband and I enjoy treating his mom when we go out to eat.

Ultimately, living with in-laws wouldn't necessarily work for all families. Having enough space, genuinely enjoying each other's company, and respecting each other's routines has made all the difference.

But if everyone goes into the arrangement understanding they're sharing a home, not just hosting or visiting, it can be one of the most rewarding ways to spend extended time together.

I know this chapter of our lives won't last forever, which makes me even more grateful that we've been able to spend it this way.

• SpaceX says Starlink could provide 'better service' than AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile by next year.
• That might be easier said than done, an analyst who studied the telecom industry for decades says.
• Benedict Evans said Starlink would need to build large numbers of base stations to make it work.

An analyst is throwing cold water on Starlink's ambition to become a mainstream mobile carrier.

In a recent earnings call, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said she expected Starlink to provide better service than the Big Three wireless carriers — AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile — by the end of 2027.

Benedict Evans, a former Andreessen Horowitz partner who spent decades studying mobile technology, however, said complications with providing service in urban areas would likely stymie such a plan.

"The hard part is having coverage in a city with steel and concrete blocking every signal past 50 yards," Evans wrote on Threads on Thursday. "That's the cost."

Starlink Mobile acts mostly as a satellite safety net for phone carriers. The company's satellites operate like cell towers in space, connecting phones when on-the-ground service is unavailable, including in remote areas or emergency situations.

The service has emerged as the most profitable revenue stream for Elon Musk's companies, netting them a cool $1.66 billion in Q2.

To expand Starlink's coverage beyond remote areas, Musk said on the earnings call that he expected Starlink to deploy "a large number of small stations" in lieu of large cellular base stations.

In his Threads post, Evans said the number of small stations Starlink would have to build would likely cut into the service's vital profitability.

"Can you save enough money from using satellite for rural and for backhaul on some (how many?) of your base stations to deliver a meaningful cost advantage," he said. "What's the algebra?"

Evans attached a graph in a separate Threads post on Friday, showing that most monthly internet traffic is generated from users in urban and suburban areas, where Starlink would have to either build new infrastructure or rent from existing companies.

Starlink did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• I'm a frequent solo traveler who prefers staying in Airbnbs over hotels.
• When I book an Airbnb for a solo trip, I say it's for two guests so hosts don't know I'm alone.
• Sometimes booking for two costs extra, but I'm willing to pay more because it makes me feel safer.

A treehouse in Ontario's wine country, a converted wine barrel in Switzerland, and a repurposed lifeguard tower in Miami — I've booked them all through Airbnb.

As a travel reporter, I've slept in accommodations throughout the US, Canada, and Europe. I typically opt for Airbnbs over hotels because I've found that they offer more unique experiences.

More often than not, I travel solo. I've spent roughly 200 hours on overnight trains in the US and Europe and seven nights on one of the world's largest cruise ships sailing the Caribbean Sea. I've traveled by rail to Vancouver, Niagara Falls, Montreal, and Quebec City. On these trips, I explored new cities and slept in unique accommodations — all by myself.

Now that I'm a seasoned solo traveler, I have several practices to ensure I feel as safe as possible when traveling alone, especially in other countries.

When staying in Airbnbs solo, I recommend booking for two people

When I make an Airbnb reservation for a solo stay, I simply change the number of guests from one to two. Then, in my message to the host, I say I may have a friend joining me for my trip.

This way, my host doesn't think I'm traveling by myself. Creating the illusion that I have someone else with me makes me feel more comfortable falling asleep at night in a stranger's place.

Booking for two sometimes comes with an additional fee, depending on the Airbnb. In these cases, I still think it's worth it to feel safer.

For example, when I traveled to Rome and booked two nights in a livable art-sculpture Airbnb, the price was $102 per night for one person and $145 per night for two people. In this case, a companion did end up joining me for the stay. But even if I'd been on my own, I would have been fine paying the additional fee to feel more secure about staying there alone.

Solo travel can be daunting, especially when you're booking accommodations with an individual rather than directly through a company like you would at a hotel.

Still, after all my unique Airbnb experiences, I think it's worth booking them even when I'm alone. And booking for two makes me feel a little safer.

• I spent 30 hours on an Amtrak sleeper train traveling from New York City to Miami in October 2021.
• I found ways to keep comfy and pass the time on the long journey.
• I wore my coziest clothes, brought my own entertainment, and tried to make my room feel like home.

I could have flown from New York City to Miami in October 2021. It would have saved me 27 hours and at least $100.

But as a lifelong train lover, I'd always wondered what it would be like to spend a night on the rails. So when I realized there was a 30-hour Amtrak route from NYC to Miami, I felt like it was my chance to try out this type of long-haul travel.

Since I was traveling overnight, I booked a roomette accommodation for about $500. A step up from coach seating, it's a 20-square-foot private suite that sleeps two people.

I romanticized my overnight train trip to Miami until the moment I stepped on the train. I don't know exactly what I expected, but I felt antsy and anxious about the journey's length and the constant motion. 

Despite having my own room, I was pretty uncomfortable during my first overnight train ride. Thankfully, I had enough time to find ways to make it easier on myself.

First off, I wore the comfiest clothes I own.

Does it look like I'm wearing pajamas? That's because I pretty much am. These are the most pajama-like trousers I own that I'd wear in public, though my mother would argue they're only for sleeping. 

But who cares? Once you get on the train, you'll be happy you're comfortable, no matter what you look like. 

I went with the comfiest shoes that slip on and off easily.

I picked up these memory foam babies at T.J. Maxx for only $20, and they slip on and off very easily. This was great for quickly leaving my room with shoes on.

Since I often get motion sickness, I sat in the seat facing the same direction the train was going. It helped.

This is an old trick my mom taught me when I would get train sick during day trips from our home in Stamford, Connecticut, to NYC.

Going against the train's motion made me feel sicker, so I stuck to one chair for the whole trip.

Since I knew my bathroom would be right next to my sleeping quarters, I brought Poo-Pourri to eliminate odors.

I might have had a bigger problem with the toilet situation next to my bed in the roomette if I hadn't packed some Poo-Pourri to eliminate any odors.

I also adjusted the lights and the temperature to my liking.

Adjusting the lighting throughout the trip helped me feel like I was changing environments even though I wasn't.

My ride included breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but bringing my own snacks kept me satisfied between meals.

Trail mix and granola bars kept me full in between meals, which were included with my ticket purchase.

Eating my meals in the dining car kept my room from getting messy and let me get out of the same space for a few minutes.

Even though eating in my room was an option, I didn't want my bunk to smell like food all night. So I went to the dining car for every meal. It was also nice to sit in a different environment for parts of the ride.

Getting out of the train for a short walk during longer stops also helped.

The train took a short break every few stops, and passengers could walk around the platform for about 10 minutes.

Getting up to stretch my legs and take in some fresh air made the next few hours crammed in a room with a window that didn't open a little more bearable.

To pass the time, get moving, and feel more at home, I took frequent dance breaks in my room, where I closed the curtains and blasted music in my ears.

I tried to make the train feel like home, and at home, I dance periodically to release energy throughout the day.

Shutting the curtains gave me a moment of privacy to be my goofy self, which also helped me keep moving.

I also brought my own entertainment, from video games to playlists.

I brought my own devices and didn't rely on the spotty internet connection to watch movies and listen to music and podcasts. Downloading these beforehand helped, and made the time go by a little faster. 

In between movies, shows, and video games, I looked out of the window and took in the views.

Looking out of the window was a constant reminder that I was on my way to somewhere new, and it helped me stay excited about my trip.

• The 2025-26 academic year was the first full season in which colleges could pay athletes directly.
• The On3 NIL valuation reflects the current player contract value. Some are valued in the millions.
• Top college athletes have worked with brands like Nike and Beats by Dre.

Some of the top college athletes are making millions of dollars.

Name, image, and likeness deals — or NIL deals for short — have become a billion-dollar industry since their introduction to amateur sports in 2021, allowing student-athletes to earn significant amounts of money.

Plus, in May 2024, as part of a major antitrust settlement, the NCAA and its five power conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, and SEC) agreed that schools can directly pay their athletes for the first time in college athletics history.

This took effect in July 2025, making the 2025-26 academic year the first full season where college athletes could be compensated by their schools.

Spencer Wadsworth, the senior vice president of global soccer at Wasserman, a global sports, music, and entertainment company, previously told Business Insider that NIL has helped take the pressure off some athletes to go pro prematurely.

"I think knowing that you can still earn some living — technically get paid for your sport — and continue your studies is extremely positive because everyone does have their own journey," Wadsworth said.

The On3 NIL valuation reflects the current player contract value. The following athletes' valuations are based on confirmed player contracts, rather than an athlete's marketing value or endorsement potential.

With valuations starting at $5 million, here's a look at the top 10 student-athletes with the biggest college compensation packages. These figures were accurate as of August 2026.

10. Trinidad Chambliss — $5 million

University of Mississippi quarterback Trinidad Chambliss is preparing for his second season with the Ole Miss Rebels.

Chambliss was the 2025 SEC Newcomer of the Year after helping lead the Rebels to the College Football Playoff.

In an interview with Vanity Fair published in April, Chambliss said when he first started college, he budgeted $100 for two weeks' worth of groceries. "It's just wild to see, like, the first check hit, and it's like, wow, I have that much money. That's crazy," Chambliss said.

Chambliss has a $5 million NIL valuation, per On3. In July, Nike announced that he was one of eight college football athletes added to its NIL roster.

9. Massamba Diop — $5 million

The 7-foot-1 Gonzaga University center, Massamba Diop, is preparing for his first season with the Gonzaga University Bulldogs after transferring from Arizona State.

Hailing from Rufisque, Senegal, Diop played most of his basketball career in Spain.

"He's just very advanced," former head coach Bobby Hurley said about Diop on the Bickley & Marotta radio show in February. "He was very well-coached. Very fluid player. Good IQ for the game, very skilled. He just knows not to put himself in bad positions."

Diop has a $5 million NIL valuation.

8. Thomas Haugh — $5 million

University of Florida forward Thomas Haugh passed up a projected lottery spot in the 2026 NBA draft to return for his senior season with the Gators.

At 6-foot-9, Haugh led Florida last season with 17.1 points per game and averaged 6.1 rebounds.

"Florida is going to have the highest-paid player in all of college basketball this season," CBS Sports analyst Matt Norlander said of Haugh's decision to return to Florida in April.

"Rightfully so. He has put in the time. He'll be a preseason first-team All-American. He was the key cog on a national championship-winning team," Norlander added.

Haugh has an NIL valuation of $5 million and was part of a March Madness NIL campaign with Walmart and Dove.

6. Tyran Stokes — $5 million

University of Kansas guard Tyran Stokes is preparing for his first season with the Kansas Jayhawks after playing for Rainier Beach High School.

The 6-foot-8 guard averaged 31.0 points, 13.0 rebounds, 6.0 assists, and 4.0 steals last season.

"Tyran is as versatile a youngster that I've ever recruited. He can score, and he's a terrific rebounder. He's powerful and can be a great facilitator, and maybe what he does best is pass the basketball," said Kansas Jayhawks head coach Bill Self in a press release.

With over 347,000 followers on Instagram, Stokes has a NIL valuation of $5 million. He signed an NIL deal with Nike in 2025.

7. Tounde Yessoufou — $5 million

St. John's University wing Tounde Yessoufou is preparing for his first season with the Red Storm, having withdrawn from the 2026 NBA draft after transferring from the Baylor Bears.

"He's a special talent, and we're excited to have him in a Johnnies uniform," said head coach Rick Pitino in a press release announcing Yessoufou's transfer.

Yessoufou has an NIL valuation of $5 million. He signed a deal with Reebok in June. In an Instagram post, the company wrote that Yessoufou is "one of the game's most exciting rising talents."

5. Jeremiah Smith — $5 million

The Ohio State University wide receiver Jeremiah Smith is preparing for his third season with the Ohio State Buckeyes.

Smith has also been awarded the Ohio State Iron Buckeye for three consecutive years.

"He's a gentleman, a high character guy who does everything right," Ohio State head football coach Ryan Day said during Big Ten media days in July. "We're very fortunate he's a Buckeye. He's done so many great things for us. But he wants this year to be his best."

Smith, who has over 815,000 followers on Instagram and works with brands like Red Bull and Adidas, has an NIL valuation of $5 million. Most recently, Adidas made Smith the face of the Virginia Adistar Jellyfish sneaker.

4. Dante Moore — $5 million

University of Oregon quarterback Dante Moore decided not to enter the 2026 NFL Draft and will instead return to school for his third season with the Oregon Ducks.

Some of the redshirt junior's recent accolades include winning offensive MVP at the 2025 Capital One Orange Bowl and being a finalist for the 2025 Manning Award. This year, he's on the Maxwell Award watch list and earned Big Ten Preseason Honors.

"This offseason, me and my teammates have made tremendous changes to our body, speed," Moore told reporters in an interview at the 2026 Big Ten Media Days ahead of the season.

"Coach Wilson Love, our head strength coach, has done a great job just pushing me in the weight room, pushing the team, and I kind of feel like there's no looking back now," he added.

Moore has NIL partnerships with brands such as Nike, Beats by Dre, and Panini America. His NIL valuation is $5 million.

3. Flory Bidunga — $6 million

University of Louisville forward Flory Bidunga will play his first season with the Louisville Cardinals after transferring from Kansas.

On3 and 247Sports ranked him No.1 in the 2026 College Basketball Transfer Portal.

Originally from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Bidunga was named the 2025—26 Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year and earned All-Big 12 First Team and Big 12 All-Defensive Team honors. He was also one of five finalists for the 2026 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Center of the Year Award.

"Flory is a game changer," said Cardinals head coach Pat Kelsey, in a press release announcing Bidunga's signing. "He has an elite ability to change the game on the defensive end with his rim protection and physicality in the paint."

Bidunga has an NIL valuation of $6 million. Under Armour selected him for its 2025 NIL Collegiate Basketball Class.

2. Milan Momcilovic — $6 million

University of Kentucky forward Milan Momcilovic is preparing to play his first season with the Wildcats, transferring from Iowa State, where he played three seasons. He withdrew from the 2026 NBA Draft before transferring to Kentucky.

Momcilovic, who is 6-foot-8, earned the NABC All-Central District first-team and All-Big 12 second-team honors.

"I do think Milan is a really important piece for us. Not because he was early or late, because he fits me," Wildcats head coach Mark Pope said in a July interview with Kentucky Sports Radio. "He fits what I care about. He fits how we play. He's a veteran, veteran guy."

Momcilovic has an NIL valuation of $6 million. He landed an NIL deal with Paul Miller Ford, a Lexington-based Ford dealer.

1. Darian Mensah — $6.5 million

University of Miami quarterback Darian Mensah is preparing for his first season with the Hurricanes after transferring from Duke. The redshirt junior previously spent two seasons at Tulane and one season at Duke.

Mensah earned second-team All-ACC and Academic All-ACC honors in 2025. He was also a semifinalist for the Davey O'Brien Award, which recognizes the country's top quarterback.

"A complete professional," Miami head coach Mario Cristobal said of Mensah in April. "Ownership of the system, great command, personality, arm talent, escapability, pocket presence, accurate, knowledge [and] a great energy about him as well. People gravitate to him, and people are attracted to that kind of energy."

At $6.5 million, Mensah tops On3's NIL 100. Mensah signed an NIL partnership with luxury-watch dealer Derby Watch Supply in July. Under the agreement, he will promote a Rolex Datejust.

Editor's note: This story was first published in August 2024 and was most recently updated in August 2026.

• Grindr CEO George Arison said that AI had increased its engineering output 2.5-fold.
• "Before GenAI, producing that much technical output would have required roughly 200 additional engineers," he said.
• Arison is one of the few CEOs to quantify how many jobs would be needed to reach AI's advances internally.

Just how much human engineering work is AI capable of delivering? Grindr put a number to it.

In a letter to shareholders, Grindr CEO George Arison touted the company's advances with AI. He gave a "conservative estimate" that engineering output increased by 2.5x between July 2025 and April 2026, with "minimal growth" in its engineering staff.

Arison later said that the actual multiple was 3.5x on Grindr's second-quarter earnings call. The company changed it to 2.5x because they thought the larger increase sounded "unreasonable," he said.

"Before GenAI, producing that much technical output would have required roughly 200 additional engineers and approximately $60 million in annual cost," Arison wrote.

Grindr measured output in the amount of code shipped. That's a controversial metric; some say it prioritizes quantity over quality.

Marco Argenti, Goldman Sachs' chief information officer, told Business Insider in May that measuring lines of code was "not really a great way to do it."

Others attempt to measure productivity by the volume of AI tokens spent, which can lead to tokenmaxxing.

Arison told CNBC on Thursday that the company was on track to spend $6 million on tokens this year. An analyst asked Arison about tokens on the company's earnings call.

"We are of the view that people should use all the tools that are out there and not really worry about the cost to them as long as the ROI that we want to see is there," he responded.

Even if Grindr did want to bring on the 200 engineers needed to match that AI productivity jump, the CEO said in his letter that the industry's constraint has always been a "scarcity of exceptional engineering talent."

AI allows Grindr to keep its most exceptional engineers focused on the areas where it "most benefits from human creativity and judgment," he wrote.

Engineers are worried about their jobs. AI code editors are becoming increasingly competent, while layoffs rip through Big Tech. Companies like Block and Atlassian have specifically cited AI in their layoff announcements.

Despite the hubbub, job openings for software engineering roles actually rose this year.

Arison is one of the few CEOs who has put into numbers how many jobs would be needed to achieve a similar output without AI. The Grindr CEO's remarks were notably not about cutting jobs, but rather not creating new ones. (But engineers could understandably read CEO quotes like this and worry about the possibility that a company could eventually decide to downsize in the name of "do more with less.")

On the earnings call, Grindr' CEO shared an anecdote about the changing workforce size.

When he took the Grindr job, Arison said he described his vision to a mentor, noting it would require 250-300 engineers. His mentor said that needing all those engineers was "the old world," and that AI coding could do much of the work.

"It's a really incredible outcome for us," Arison said.

• Burger King upgraded its signature Whopper burger in February with a new bun and packaging.
• The burger is thicker, more flavorful, and doesn't cost more — a win for value-conscious customers.
• Burger King executives said this week that the upgraded burger has helped boost sales by 8.5%.

Burger King's updated Whopper burger is helping to boost the brand and reignite the fast-food burger wars.

Inspired by customer complaints that its iconic burger was often squished during transit — it used to be simply wrapped in paper — the fast-food chain updated its signature Whopper in February with new box packaging, a new bun, and new, "creamier" mayonnaise.

The company said on Thursday that the updates are paying off.

The chain reported that US same-store sales jumped 8.5% in the second quarter, a surge that company president Tom Curtis attributed to the updated burger and new family-focused promotions, such as Burger King's Mandalorian meal collab.

Customers also bought about 20% more Whoppers than they did in the previous period, suggesting the makeover is resonating.

Its success comes as other burger chains struggle with sales. On Friday, Wendy's reported a 7% decline in same-store sales for the second quarter. McDonald's, which also released a new burger earlier this year, announced on Tuesday that comparable US sales growth slowed to 0.8% in the second quarter. Both chains pointed to problems with their value strategies: McDonald's cited too many overlapping promotions and discounts, while Wendy's pointed to its decision to pull back on discounting.

I tried Burger King's new "elevated" Whopper following its release, and I thought it was a clear upgrade from the original.

The Whopper has been around for decades. This is the first time it's been served in a cardboard box.

Released in 1957, just four years after the chain opened, the Whopper was 37 cents compared to Burger King's original burger, which cost 18 cents.

Whoppers — and all Burger King burgers, for that matter — are flame-grilled, giving their burgers a distinct smoky flavor. Another difference between Burger King's premium burgers and those of other chains, like McDonald's, is that Burger King's burgers are typically wrapped in paper rather than served in a cardboard box.

This new presentation is the most obvious change from the original Whopper.

The new cardboard box design better protected the burger from getting smushed during transit.

The chain announced on February 26 that it would change its Whopper packaging in response to negative customer feedback.

"So the Whopper being smushed, literally, I've heard it… and we've seen it," Curtis told CNN.

Another change to the burger was the bun itself — it was described in a press release as "a more premium, better-tasting bun."

After I bought the burger, I agreed that the bun looked much thicker, shinier, and better than previous iterations.

The burger has all the same toppings as the original, with upgraded mayonnaise.

While Whoppers don't typically come with cheese, I always order mine with cheese. The other toppings include sliced onions and tomatoes, lettuce, pickles, and a new, "better-tasting" mayo, according to the chain.

The burger definitely felt thicker than the original, even though it was less expensive than the last time I bought a Whopper.

When I ordered a Whopper with cheese on February 14, 2026, it cost $9.17, excluding tax, at my local Burger King in Brooklyn.

When I ordered the same burger on February 27, 2026, it cost $8.58, excluding tax, at the same location.

Burger King's prices can vary by location and franchise. CNN reported that Burger King recommended that franchisees not raise prices for the new elevated Whopper.

The thicker, fluffier bun gave the burger more heft, but the biggest difference was how well it held together.

Unlike the original Whopper — which could turn soggy from its thinner mayonnaise and heavy condiments — this version was less saucy and stayed intact much better.

The new, creamier mayonnaise had more flavor, without making the burger a soggy mess. Combined with the still-flavorful flame-grilled burger patty, crunchy lettuce, and fresh tomato slices, this burger still remained my top pick among the most famous fast-food signature burgers.

I thought the burger was an improvement on the original Whopper without reinventing the wheel.

When updating a fast-food burger as iconic as the Whopper, there's a risk in changing too much — longtime fans may not respond well if it strays too far from what they know and expect.

However, I thought this slightly upgraded version of the Whopper hit all the right notes, and as fast-food customers seek out value more than ever, this burger delivered on that promise, too.

It maintained the same flavor profile while addressing the burger's biggest problem areas: flat, soggy buns and a slightly too high price point.

As a result, I understand why it's helping bring customers through Burger King's doors. It's still the same Whopper you know and love — just with a tune-up.

Editor's note: This story was first published in February 2026 and most recently updated in August 2026.

Smokey John's has been serving barbecue in Dallas, Texas, since 1976. It was already losing money when a devastating fire destroyed the entire restaurant in 2017. So, brothers Brent and Juan Reaves had to rebuild it from scratch. Their bet paid off. Today, Smokey John's makes nearly $4 million in annual revenue and goes through roughly 2,000 pounds of brisket each week. The brothers explain what it takes to keep a 50-year-old barbecue business alive while continuing their father's legacy.

• I've been visiting Pennsylvania's Hersheypark for decades, and I love a lot of its offerings.
• I always stay at the Hershey Lodge because of its cozy vibes and great amenities.
• When visiting, I always get a chocolate martini and dine at The Chocolatier in Chocolatetown.

Hersheypark is a massive amusement park nestled in south-central Pennsylvania. It's got thrill rides, a water park, on-site resorts, and more.

It was founded by Milton S. Hershey and has tons of attractions and decor inspired, of course, by chocolate. I've been going to Hersheypark for over 30 years, and love it.

Here are some of my favorite things to do, eat, and drink whenever I visit.

One of my favorite parts of Hersheypark can be found at the entrance

Since I was a little kid, I've begun every visit at the park's height-measuring board.

Hersheypark uses different candies, including Twizzlers and Kisses, to mark each height range and determine who can ride each attraction. 

It's always a fun photo opportunity and a helpful way to figure out what you can ride while in the park.

The park's Dutch-style pretzels are some of the best baked goods I've had

The Pretzel House snack bar inside Hersheypark has the best hand-rolled pretzels I've ever had.

They're soft and buttery, made from a classic Pennsylvania-Dutch recipe. The pretzels come in a variety of flavors, including cinnamon sugar, and are accompanied by dips, from cheese to chocolate.

I love the classic plain pretzel with cheese dipping sauce. 

The Kissing Tower is an iconic stop for any visitor

Hersheypark's Kissing Tower is one of its most iconic attractions, and it's been around for more than 50 years.

Standing at 250 feet, visitors can see it looming in the distance as they approach the park.

The Hershey's Kiss-shaped windows provide a 360-degree view of the park and the surrounding town as the enclosed cabin slowly rotates high in the sky.

Chocolatetown is a fantastic park area, too

Inspired by the legacy of Milton S. Hershey, Chocolatetown is the largest expansion in the park's history. It's attached to the theme park, and paid admission is not required for select parts.

It's home to a few attractions, a large merchandise store, plus several dining options that pay homage to the chocolatier's history.

Milton's Ice Cream Parlor is my favorite stop for its use of 100% local dairy and its delicious, creamy, house-made treats.

Chocolatetown also features a vintage-car display, which is fun to explore and a great place to snap a cool photo.

When visiting Chocolatetown, I always eat and drink at The Chocolatier

One of the best eateries in the park is The Chocolatier. With a carousel bar as its centerpiece, the unique space uses ride elements as decor and even as tables for diners.

I usually order the Cocoa Cuban, which uses Hershey's cocoa-rubbed pork shoulder.

I also enjoy the restaurant's chicken and waffles. Plus, there's a wide variety of fun drinks at The Chocolatier bar

In addition to rotating seasonal cocktails, I love the Reese's Cupfusion Old Fashioned, which combines rye and peanut-butter whiskeys and is garnished with a Reese's peanut-butter cup.

I always stay at the Hershey Lodge

Hersheypark houses four official resorts: Hershey Lodge, The Hotel Hershey, Hershey Inn & Suites, and a camping retreat.

I've always enjoyed staying at the Hershey Lodge. Though the converted motor lodge has been upgraded throughout the years and now has upscale amenities, it's still cozy.

Adorned with welcoming nooks and fireplaces, the resort offers several dining options, including Fire & Grain, as well as an indoor water park.

I love ending the day with a chocolate martini at the bar and enjoying Hershey treats upon check-in.

It's also fun to stop by the glamorous Hotel Hershey

The Hotel Hershey is a beautiful historic, luxury resort complete with a Spanish garden-inspired courtyard and a variety of dining options, including the Iberian Lounge.

Inspired by Milton S. Hershey's travels around the globe, the Iberian Lounge features stunning artwork, internationally inspired bites, and a selection of over 100 whiskeys.

My trip isn't complete without trying lots of chocolate-infused drinks and dishes

At Hershey, chocolate is incorporated into cocktails, sweet snacks, and even savory dishes.

From cocoa-barbecue wings to the Yuengling Hershey's Chocolate Porter, even those without a sweet tooth can find something to enjoy.

Some of my favorite dishes include dark-chocolate s'mores fondue from Fire & Grain at Hershey Lodge and the house short-rib flatbread from The Chocolatier in Chocolatetown. 

No visit to Hersheypark is complete without one of its chocolate martinis, which are served in resort bars and restaurants.

It's available in several variations, but my favorite is the signature chocolate martini made with chocolate and vanilla vodkas and white crème de cacao. 

ZooAmerica is attached to Hersheypark and included in admission

Admission to Hersheypark also includes ZooAmerica, a walk-through park with over 200 animals.

At 11 acres, the over-100-year-old zoo is dedicated to conserving North American wildlife, including rare and endangered species. 

Visiting Chocolate World is an absolute must

Hershey's Chocolate World, a Willy Wonka-esque building, is located outside the Hersheypark gates.

The attraction includes a chocolate-inspired food court, the world's largest Hershey's retail store, and an interactive tasting lab.

Definitely check out the free, slow-moving ride that walks passengers through how chocolate is made.

The Reese's Stuff Your Cup experience feels like a bucket-list offering

Located in Hershey's Chocolate World, my favorite paid experience is the Stuff Your Cup. It lets guests channel their inner Willy Wonka and create a 1-pound custom-stuffed Reese's peanut-butter cup.

There are a ton of mix-in options, and each larger-than-life concoction uses fresh Reese's peanut butter.

Lastly, I love visiting Hersheypark during Christmastime to see the light displays

Hersheypark is also fun to visit during the holiday season. Several of its rollercoasters remain in operation, and the park's decorations are delightful.

Visitors should totally check out Christmas Candyland's Hershey Sweet Lights drive-thru spectacular, where they can enjoy about 2 miles of hundreds of light-up displays from their car.

This story was originally published on February 13, 2022, and most recently updated on August 7, 2026.

• GE Aerospace uses a decades-old Boeing 747 to test and help certify new commercial jet engines.
• The aircraft is filled with cabling, metal data boxes, workstations, and passenger recliners.
• Business Insider toured the unique 747 at an airshow in July and spoke with GE's chief test pilot.

Leading American manufacturer GE Aerospace is building the world's largest jet engine for Boeing's coming 777X — and it needs a massive plane to test it.

The enginemaker bought a now-32-year-old Boeing 747-400 from Japan Airlines in 2010 to serve as its modern Flying Test Bed, or FTB. It replaced the aging Boeing 747-100 that GE had had since 1992.

The latest FTB, which Business Insider toured at the UK's Farnborough International Airshow in July, has one main purpose: to test and prove the industry's newest commercial engines.

Thousands of feet of cables line its cabin, all connecting to test sensors, computer stations, and giant metal boxes that occupy most of the first floor of the specially modified 747 and collect a behemoth amount of data.

So far, the GE 747 has been instrumental in certifying engines that now power planes like the Airbus A320, the Boeing 737, and China's homegrown Comac narrowbody.

The dual-level plane's latest project is the GE9X, an engine so large it can fit an entire Boeing 737 fuselage.

It's rated for 110,000 pounds of thrust, but holds the world record for the highest thrust recorded by a commercial jet engine, reaching 134,300 pounds during testing.

The ultra-powerful GE9X engine, which received FAA certification in 2020 but has continued to undergo additional testing, is being developed for Boeing's yet-to-be-certified 777X.

While the 777X is seven years behind schedule, in part due to quality, production, and supply chain issues at Boeing, it's expected to enter service in 2027 with German flag carrier Lufthansa.

Here's a closer look at the 747 testbed that's been critical to the 777X's certification.

GE's 747 "flying laboratory" is based at a massive hangar in Southern California.

When not conducting test flights, the 747 is based in Victorville, California, about 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles near the Mojave Desert.

It has racked up more than 1,500 test flights during its second life with GE.

The cabin is full of specialized test equipment.

What was once a double-decker commercial jetliner with 400 passenger seats is now lined with data boxes, computers, and thousands of feet of wiring.

GE's chief flight test pilot, Jonathan Ohman, told members of the media during the tour that the instrumentation collects about 1,000 parameters during tests, such as thrust, fuel flow, and oil temperature.

Eight to 20 people, including pilots, engineers, mechanics, and logistics personnel, are typically on board for a flight.

There are over a dozen big reclining seats in the nose.

The plane has passenger recliners at the front of the cabin, where the team can sit during flights to test locations or other factors.

The seats feature tray tables, leg rests, and large winged headrests; there's also a forward galley where crew can store and prepare meals, as well as a couple of lavatories.

"It allows us to be a self-contained testing facility when we go off-site," Ohman said.

Upstairs is the cockpit.

The second level of the giant 747 was not open to the media, but it's where Ohman does his flying.

Before working for GE, he served in the US Marine Corps for 20 years and conducted test flights of the F-18 and F-35.

The two test pilots have specific roles.

Ohman said two certified test pilots fly the plane: a captain, who is usually the "pilot flying," and a first officer, usually the "pilot monitoring."

The first officer is responsible for controlling the test engine, he said, which is almost always doing something different from the jet's other engines, three production GE CF6s. These produce about 60,000 pounds of thrust each, almost half of the GE9X's rated 110,000 pounds.

The captain is responsible for keeping the airplane stable and in whatever condition is needed for the testing. "It becomes an exercise of the pilot who's flying the airplane to maintain the other throttles, to balance or manage that asymmetrical thrust," Ohman said.

Up to 15 test engineers typically work the flights.

Ohman said the test engineers on the plane monitor everything from onboard failures to a variety of engine parameters across all sorts of weather conditions.

"We're collecting the data on the engines in real time, then we store it on the plane, and then when we land, we download it, and we send it to our operation in Evandale, Ohio, for further processing and analysis," he said.

The 747 is tested in a wide range of weather conditions.

Ohman said the GE jet is extremely mobile and can fly anywhere it can physically reach. For testing in very cold conditions, the plane goes to Alaska. For natural icing, northern Canada.

For the engine's "cooling climb" — testing its thermal limits at full takeoff power — the 747 heads to sea-level Hawaii, where it can operate in the warm temperatures and low altitudes needed for the test.

Pilots conduct complex maneuvers to push the engine's limits.

Ohman said that to ensure the engine inlet provides uninterrupted airflow to the fan at all times, even in challenging conditions such as a steep angle of attack, the crew performs dynamic maneuvers that they wouldn't do as a normal 747 pilot.

"We put [the engines] through a lot of demanding tests to make sure that when it goes to the customer, and the production engine ends up on an airline, that we don't have any surprises," he said.

The GE9X will eventually power Boeing's highly important 777X.

The 777X aircraft was initially expected to enter service in 2020, but Boeing expects the first commercial deliveries to start in 2027.

Over a dozen airlines have placed over 550 orders worth billions of dollars for the two passenger variants, the 777-9 and the 777-8.

Sporting revolutionary folding wingtips that allow it to fit into existing gate space, the new jet will become the world's largest twin-engine airliner ever built.

• Adam Ficsor founded the Longevity World Cup, a competition that ranks biological age reduction.
• Mike Lustgarten won last year's competition, reducing his estimated PhenoAge by 22.1 years.
• We spoke to Lustgarten and two other finalists about their habits, diet, and what keeps them healthy.

Most longevity enthusiasts are trying to slow aging, but Adam Ficsor wants to outrun it.

The software engineer and Bitcoin developer says humanity could eventually reach "longevity escape velocity," where advances in medicine extend healthy life faster than people age.

"I am talking about literally not dying," he told Business Insider for an episode of its video series "The Limit."

To that end, he founded the Longevity World Cup, a competition that ranks who can wind back their biological clock the most.

The inaugural event announced its first winners in January, awarding about $4,000 in Bitcoin-funded prize money.

The scores were based on PhenoAge, a tool that estimates your biological age using your actual age (aka chronological age) and common blood markers like cholesterol, blood sugar, inflammation, and kidney function. Basically, it's a "blood test-based estimate of your risk of dying," Daniel Belsky, an associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University's Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center, told Business Insider.

Participants have about one year to achieve and submit their best results.

First-place finisher Michael Lustgarten, PhD, lowered his estimated PhenoAge by 22.1 years. Subtracting that from his chronological age of 53 by the end of the competition yielded an estimated biological age of 30.9.

Researchers continue to debate how best to measure biological aging, and experts caution that scores like PhenoAge are statistical estimates rather than direct measurements of how fast someone is aging. Moreover, it's worth noting that large swings in biological age scores over short periods, such as weeks or months, can be difficult to interpret, said Belsky, who was not involved in the competition.

"To adjudicate these biohacking competitions is an invitation for people to hack the algorithm and generate what are ultimately non-informative results from them," he said.

That said, Belsky added that PhenoAge can be useful for tracking broad improvements from healthier behaviors.

"If you're seeing changes in PhenoAge in response to improvements in healthy behaviors, better management of existing health conditions, or other lifestyle changes that improve the overall quality of your environment, then I would be more likely to trust what the algorithm is saying. That's what it's designed to do," Belsky said.

With that in mind, Business Insider asked the top three winners of the Longevity World Cup to walk us through the habits and routines behind their results.

3rd-place finisher Wen Zhuang focuses on fundamentals

For the competition, Wen Zhuang lowered his estimated Phenoage by 20.1 years. He was 20.6 years old chronologically by the end of the competition, which means his biological age was only 0.5 years.

This doesn't mean that Zhuang and others with extremely low bioages are "biologically infants," Belsky said. "They're just people who have unusual levels of some of the blood analytes that are being tested for in the algorithm."

Rather than following someone else's protocol, Zhuang said that many advanced longevity interventions often vary from person to person.

At first, Zhuang's daily routine doesn't seem especially extraordinary: He wakes up at 6:30 a.m. each day, completes a short grooming and red-light session, eats breakfast, and then strength trains or runs depending on the day. He competes in track and field as a short-sprint athlete.

He also sticks to a diet of 45% calories from fat, 27.5% from protein, and 27.5% from carbohydrates, prioritizing seafood, vegetables, and legumes with no added sugar. He favors diverse, spice-rich meals packed with polyphenols and cooked at lower temperatures to minimize potentially harmful compounds.

Toward the end of the day, he eats an early dinner and reduces light and stimulation before bed. While regular exercise and diets rich in vegetables and legumes are linked to better health, there is little evidence that some other parts of Zhuang's routine, such as red-light therapy, extend human lifespan.

Unlike some longevity enthusiasts, Zhuang said he's not highly strict with his routine.

"When there's a social occasion, the schedule bends, and I think that's fine." He also allows for about 10% of his meals to be social, cooking his own meals the rest of the time. "I'd argue that's not a compromise — social connection is one of the better-supported longevity variables there is."

Where his routine gets interesting is when you look at the list of supplements he takes weekly. It's over 75 different supplements, including Vitamins D, E, B2, B6, B12, zinc, iodine, manganese, folate, biotin, creatine, melatonin, as well as extracts including curcumin, broccoli seed, aged garlic, and ginger — to name a few.

"If someone reads this and takes one thing away, I'd want it to be the sleep, training, seafood, and metabolic markers — not the pill list," he emphasized.

2nd-place finisher Zdenek Sipek relies on consistency

Runner-up Zdenek Sipek lowered his estimated PhenoAge by 20.6 years. He was 46.4 chronologically with a bioage of 25.8.

Sipek said maintaining his routine doesn't require constant motivation because discipline has become part of his personality.

"I am very regimented and strict with myself, and I like it in fact that way," he said.

When asked where he occasionally slips, Sipek said it might be "a piece of chocolate," but he said little else interrupts his routine.

He also believes longevity doesn't have to be expensive. Sipek estimated that someone starting out could spend less than $100 a month on longevity interventions, depending on where they live.

Outside of nutrition, Sipek studies Buddhism, Daoism, and Hindu texts. He said practices that promote peace of mind are an overlooked part of longevity because they can help reduce stress.

"I think the peace of mind is absolutely critical for wellbeing," he said.

He also makes his longevity protocol available free on Substack because, he said, "this information should be shared freely and improve people in general all around the world."

1st-place finisher Michael Lustgarten tracks everything he can

Lustgarten, an active research scientist, said his biggest advantage in the competition is years of collecting data on himself.

He's been measuring his blood biomarkers alongside his daily diet and routine since 2015, with more than 70 blood tests over the past decade, he told Business Insider.

He said he has up to 3,000 measurements of certain biomarkers, which gives him far more opportunities to see what changes affect his biological age, for better or worse. He provides his tracking methods on YouTube.

His diet, for example, is one of the first places he starts when targeting biomarkers across the board to try to lower his biological age.

He consumes about 40% fat and 30% carbs. He used to eat more carbs and less fat, but after tracking biomarkers for cardiovascular disease risk, he said that diet wasn't optimal.

Beyond diet, he aims to optimize the basics, mainly exercise and sleep. Similar to Zhuang, Lustgarten said supplements aren't the end-all be-all for maximizing health. In fact, he said he prioritizes making dietary changes over supplemental ones.

For beginners looking to monetize their health optimization, Lustgarten recommends starting with regular blood work instead of an expensive supplement routine.

A standard clinical chemistry and metabolic panel can only cost about $35 through some direct-to-consumer labs, though panels at hospitals can be more expensive. These panels are helpful in that they provide information about kidney, liver, immune, red blood cell-related measures, and metabolic health.

"What I recommend people do and what I do is before every blood test, tracking diet, exercise, duration, sleep, HRV, all the things you can think about tracking for at least a week for every test," he said. Then, after a couple of tests, start looking within your own data to see what may be moving the needle, he added.

• Khristianne Uy, known as Chef K, told Business Insider which ingredients she buys premium.
• She said she splurges on quality oils and gourmet salts.
• But for fruit and vegetables, Chef K prefers seasonal produce to trendy options.

Chef K's motto is that she is your favorite celeb's favorite chef.

For years, Khristianne Uy, known as Chef K, has worked as a private chef for household names and is now also a content creator.

Despite working with the rich and famous, her cooking philosophy is that not all that glitters is gold. Chef K believes good cooking is not about buying the most extravagant ingredients.

Unlike her celebrity clientele, Chef K said she makes her Instagram and TikTok recipe videos with a single mom struggling to make ends meet in mind.

However, if you want to splurge on high-quality ingredients, these are the items Chef K said are worth spending extra on — and the ones you should buy cheaply.

Chef K uses high-quality cooking and finishing oils

Chef K said that a high-quality oil is the No. 1 ingredient you should splurge on. For cooking, she recommends high-heat avocado oil, and for finishing, extra-virgin olive oil.

Extra-virgin olive oil has a lower smoke point than regular olive oil and high-heat avocado oil, making it more suitable for drizzling on salads or making dips.

Simple, higher-fat butter is best

"Every time I go to a client's house, and I see that they're consuming butter with a ton of different ingredients, I think to myself that we've got to make a change here," Chef K told Business Insider.

She said it's worth spending extra on less-processed butter.

For instance, you can opt for butter with a higher butterfat content, such as the Kerrygold Unsalted Pure Irish Butter or the Land O' Lakes
Extra Creamy Salted Butter.

Opt for more costly breads with fewer additives

Chef K also likes to buy breads containing whole grains or made of sourdough, avoiding added sugar.

"We all love bread and butter.
But think about what kind of bread you're using. Is it the bread that lasts for 90 days, and it's still fresh?" she said.

A 2022 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, based on a meta-analysis of 68 studies with over 1.6 million participants, found that consuming whole grains rather than refined grains can help lower the risk of coronary heart disease and cardiovascular disease.

"Make the grilled cheese, but use the good bread," Chef K added.

She prefers using gourmet salts

Chef K said she prefers to use Celtic sea salt and pink salt (also known as Himalayan salt) over cheaper alternatives.

Gray and pink salt typically also contain trace minerals, such as magnesium chloride, calcium, and iron.

In her recipe videos on Instagram, Chef K sometimes uses Maldon salt, a British gourmet sea salt. It costs $9.99 for an 8.5-oz pack at Walmart, much more than regular iodized salt.

Many chefs prize the bigger flakes in Maldon salt for finishing, salting meats, and adding a burst of salty flavor to dishes.

Splurge by making your own mayonnaise at home

Chef K is forever a proponent of spending a little extra money (and time) to make certain condiments from scratch. Mayonnaise is one of these.

"If you don't want your kids or your family to consume 17 ingredients in one squeeze of mayo, make it yourself. It's just three ingredients, and you will taste the difference," she said.

To make mayonnaise, you need eggs, vinegar or lemon juice, and an oil.

Depending on the cost of individual ingredients, making your own mayonnaise at home can be more expensive than the cheapest mayos.

But without preservatives, homemade mayo will last about a week in the fridge, compared to about two to three months for store-bought.

But for produce, you don't have to spend much

Chef K said one way she recommends making meals more accessible price-wise is by bringing inexpensive produce typically used for side dishes — such as cabbage and carrots — into main dishes.

She also said buying seasonal and local varieties of fruit and vegetables beats trendy ones. Prices are often lower, and the quality tends to be higher.

Despite cooking for the stars with budgets likely far greater than those of the average family, Chef K believes that buying the most expensive ingredients is not what cooking should be about.

"You don't need the shiny things. It's not about that. It's what you can do. It's simplicity," she said.

• I moved my family from New Zealand to Japan in 2023, after almost a decade of careful planning.
• We perfected logistics on paper but spent too little time preparing for the reality of daily life.
• Before moving, I wish we'd tested out residential neighborhoods and built a social network.

We spent eight years planning our move to Japan.

On paper, we had it covered: visas, schools, finances, healthcare, and even a grasp of the local language.

While we mapped out every logistical detail before leaving New Zealand, I now realize our preparation focused entirely on getting here smoothly, rather than the realities of actually living here.

Looking back, there are still things I wish we'd done before boarding our one-way flight to Japan in 2023.

We should've explored more of Japan

Before moving, we visited Japan three times between 2015 and 2019. COVID-19 canceled our fourth trip, meaning our next visit was on a one-way ticket.

On our first trip, we exclusively stayed in Tokyo. We returned a few years later with our 2-year-old, venturing only slightly further to Osaka.

By our final holiday, we traveled across western Japan, visiting Kyoto, Hiroshima, Okayama, and Kobe. Watching families play in the parks of Kurashiki was the first time I genuinely envisioned living here.

At the time, we felt we had seen plenty. Now that I have traveled through over a third of Japan's prefectures, I realize we have barely scratched the surface.

Cities like Fukuoka, Beppu, Nagoya, and Kobe offer entirely different versions of daily life. Fukuoka is lively and international without Tokyo's high costs. Beppu is small and surprisingly quiet despite its famous geothermal hot springs.

Nagoya is packed with activities for children. Even my home city of Kobe, which I dismissed during a brief one-day visit as a tourist, looks completely different now that I live here.

If I were planning my move today, I would spend less time on the traditional Golden Route. Exploring diverse urban, coastal, and rural towns is where the trade-offs between cost, convenience, and lifestyle truly become clear.

Staying in residential areas would've offered a useful reality check

Most of our pre-move trips targeted tourist hubs. I feel we would have understood Japan as a living space much better if we had skipped major landmarks and stayed somewhere ordinary.

Our first Tokyo accommodation was accidentally in a residential area, giving us a brief, fascinating glimpse into regular Japanese life, from meticulous morning garbage sorting to daily commute rhythms.

Subsequent trips, however, focused on typical tourist sights, which meant we couldn't accurately gauge how convenience works outside of towns engineered for tourism.

Kyoto's center, for example, exists within a tourist bubble that doesn't reflect how people actually live.

After my visits, I wrongfully assumed convenience stores, or "konbini," would always be around the corner. While true in dense urban centers, my current neighborhood konbini is a 15- to 20-minute walk away.

Now living in a quiet, spacious, semi-rural suburb nestled into the hills, I see how much layout affects your quality of life.

My daughter's school is within walking distance, yet without a car, and with annoyingly minimal delivery options, simple routines like grocery shopping are far more troublesome than I ever envisioned.

Many of these details feel impossible to gauge from a holiday, regardless of its length. However, spending more time in residential areas may have helped us better set our expectations before the move.

I forgot to plan for life after the move

Somewhere amid the logistical chaos of moving a family overseas, I forgot to plan for my own future.

My husband's job was secure, so I poured my energy into our daughter and focused on settling her into this new life by obsessively researching local schools and activities.

I had vague ambitions to finish my psychology degree and pursue postgraduate study in Japan. Yet once school routines and daily realities hit, those loose plans evaporated. I tabled the degree, became a stay-at-home parent, and watched my world shrink.

Staying home proved incredibly isolating. Driven by a need to reconnect, I looked for flexible remote work.

What started as a freelance writing gig for a Tokyo hotel company organically snowballed into my current career in travel writing and social media marketing.

Three years later, I am still figuring out my place here. If I could go back, I'd remind myself that amid the energy it takes to build a future for your family, you must leave room to build one for yourself, too.

It would've been helpful to build a community before we arrived

Establishing a network before you actually land is another step that is easily overlooked.

Between unpacking and setting up your new home, it's easy to forget your social needs. Yet, once I made my first friend here, I immediately felt more supported in our new community.

Moving countries can be isolating, even when you are thrilled about the change. Having a few familiar names or faces before you land makes those first few months feel far less overwhelming.

My husband used language-exchange apps like HelloTalk to practice his Japanese and connect with people before we arrived.

I assumed friendships would form naturally, but social circles here can be highly segmented by workplace, language ability, or specific expat programs. Without actively stepping into those spaces, it is easy to find yourself sitting on the outside.

Ultimately, if I could do it over, I would spend less time obsessing over logistics and far more time planning for the actual life I wanted to live once we arrived.

• Some companies are getting an unexpected lift from billions of dollars in returned US tariffs.
• Nintendo recorded a $300 million tariff refund.
• The refunds are lifting profits and margins, but analysts warn the benefits are unlikely to last.

An unusual boost is showing up in some corporate earnings this summer: tariff refunds.

Nintendo became the latest beneficiary of the boost on Thursday, reporting net profit of 147.4 billion Japanese yen, or $931 million, for the quarter ending June, up 54% from a year earlier and handily beating analyst expectations of 77.8 billion yen. Revenue fell about 10% to 517.8 billion yen, but still came in above expectations.

Tariff refunds were a major contributor: The Kyoto-based maker of the Switch 2 said it recorded a $300 million tariff refund that had previously been recorded as cost of sales.

Strong software sales, led by the video games Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream and Pokémon Pokopia, also helped lift margins.

Shares of Nintendo closed 5% higher on Friday following the results. They are 24% lower this year.

In its presentation, Nintendo said the tariffs related to the refunds "were primarily borne by the company rather than passed on to consumers through product prices."

Nintendo has not said how it plans to use the refunds. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Nintendo is fighting a class-action lawsuit over the tariff refunds.

Two US customers sued the company in April, arguing that Nintendo could effectively recover its tariff costs twice — first through higher prices that they allege were passed on to consumers, and again through refunds from the US government.

Nintendo moved to dismiss the case in July, arguing that customers "received exactly what they bargained and paid for" and have no legal right to a rebate simply because the tariffs were later struck down.

An earnings season of tariff refunds

Nintendo's tariff windfall is part of a broader earnings-season trend, with companies from Apple to Amazon to Siemens Healthineers recently disclosing sizable tariff refunds or related earnings benefits.

Companies are taking different approaches to the windfall.

Apple said tariff refunds added about two percentage points to its June-quarter gross margin and 11 cents to diluted earnings per share. CEO Tim Cook has said the company will reinvest the refunds in additional US innovation and advanced manufacturing.

Amazon said it received about $600 million in tariff refunds in the second quarter and plans to reimburse customers in limited cases where it can determine they directly bore the tariff cost.

Siemens Healthineers also got a sizable boost. Tariff refunds helped lift the German medical-technology company's adjusted operating margin to 19.1% from the 16.8% a year ago and contributed to a 16% rise in adjusted operating profit to 1.1 billion euros. The company also raised its full-year earnings-per-share forecast to reflect the refunds.

Elsewhere, Walmart has said it expects to return its anticipated refunds to consumers through price reductions, while McCormick and Campbell's have said they will use proceeds to offset higher costs.

The repayments follow a February 20 Supreme Court ruling that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not authorize the president to impose the tariffs. The US Court of International Trade has overseen the process of returning the duties to importers.

About $166 billion was collected under the invalidated tariffs, with roughly $100 billion in refunds processed by early August, official filings show.

Analysts caution that the refunds offer just a one-time boost to earnings.

"Most tariff proceeds will fail to sustain profitability as companies prioritize competitive prices and mitigating costs," wrote analysts at S&P Global in a report last month.

• When my husband and I moved in together, we started having monthly money dates.
• We talk about household finances, shared expenses, investments, and things we want to save up for.
• It's the reason we haven't argued about money in 10 years.

On the last day of every month, my husband and I sit down for what we call a money meeting — a monthly money date where we discuss our household finances. We look at how much we each earned that month, our fixed and variable expenses, our savings and investment accounts, and discuss any financial decisions we need to make.

I used to dread these money dates, but they're such a regular part of our lives, I don't mind them anymore. In fact, I actually look forward to sitting down with my husband and seeing all of our numbers laid out.

We started having monthly money dates when we first moved in together, almost 10 years ago, and haven't missed a month since. I firmly believe that being open about our financial situation on a regular basis is the reason my husband and I have never fought about money.

At first, sharing finances was intimidating

When my husband and I first moved in together, we weren't in the best financial situation. I wasn't earning a lot of money as a new freelance writer, and he had student debt and car payments.

Our first time sitting down to talk solely about money was scary, but we both committed to being vulnerable and completely open about our financial situations.

We made a pact that these monthly money chats weren't about shaming the other person for their spending or feeling guilty about past debt. The goal was to share, without judgment, and figure out how we could use our money to reach our goals.

Sharing those numbers got easier the more often we did it. Eventually, money went from something taboo that we were insecure about to something we were excited to discuss and make work for us.

By having a monthly money date on the calendar, it meant one person wasn't responsible for bringing up the money conversation. It was something we automatically did each month.

Our financial system changed over the years but we never stopped talking about it

My husband and I had separate bank accounts when we first moved in together in 2017. We then opened a joint account for rent and household expenses. As time went on, we found that more and more things were coming out of the joint account.

Eventually, we decided to combine our finances completely. We now have fully joint bank accounts, and we have access to each other's retirement accounts and credit cards, as well.

For us, this system works. It makes it simpler for us to pay bills, buy groceries, and make decisions about bigger expenses, like travel and day care. We trust each other to spend reasonably on the day-to-day stuff and always discuss any big purchases ahead of time.

But I know completely combined finances doesn't work for everyone.

Even when our accounts were separate, we still made sure to talk about finances every month and used the time to share how much we were each earning, spending, and saving. That transparency made it easier for us to build trust, reduce resentment, and work toward future plans.

We look at our money as a tool to achieve our goals

One of my favorite parts of our monthly money dates is deciding what to do with any leftover funds after paying our bills and expenses, which is a privilege to be able to do.

My husband and I have many savings goals (some are shared, and some are just his or just mine), such as saving up for travel, for retirement, for our daughter's college fund, and even a fun account for things my husband wants to buy, like video games or bike parts. It's really exciting to be able to fund those accounts and see our money helping us get closer to our dream life.

But even when we don't have extra money to put into savings or investments, I'm still so glad we have our monthly money meeting. I like getting on the same page with my husband and knowing we can talk openly about our financial picture.

I know money is something that a lot of couples fight about. Even though it's hard — and perhaps especially when it is — my biggest tip for new couples is to start talking openly about your finances from day one. It's better than letting years of shameful spending, debt, or money secrets build into resentment that could ruin your relationship.

• PwC US CEO Paul Griggs said he tried not to over-communicate in the past.
• He said he received feedback from staff who asked him to share more about his decision-making.
• Griggs said he continues to work on communicating frequently and via different styles and mediums.

After roughly three decades at PwC, senior partner and US CEO Paul Griggs said he still isn't above criticism.

He's also not exempt from changing his mind based on feedback he gets from across the firm. Griggs said he appreciates working at a company where leaders aren't afraid to change their minds in response to feedback.

For example, Griggs said he's "a big believer in the power of communication without over-communication." As CEO, he makes decisions and doesn't expect everyone to agree with every call. As a result, he didn't always explain his reasoning.

After taking over as CEO two years ago, however, he realized that he had been communicating less than some employees would like. He said he came in with a bias against overwhelming others with too much communication. Over time, he said he had grown tired of reading emails that were too long.

"So, I simplified communication," Griggs said. "Slowed it down."

Griggs said not everyone needs to agree with all decisions all the time, but they need to understand the reasoning behind it. That's where leadership and communication play a crucial role, he said.

"'If you don't communicate the nature of that decision and the outcome of that decision, then I fill the void, fill the vacuum with my own story,'" Griggs said employees told him.

It's feedback he has worked on incorporating, he added. He has been advised to share messages more than once, even though it wasn't his default approach.

"My team would tell me: 'No, seven times,'" Griggs said, adding that he's learned he should relay the message in different styles and mediums.

• Miguel Marquez began pursuing financial independence in his late 30s.
• He uses a seven-step ladder, ranging from debt freedom to Fat FI, to make the goal feel achievable.
• The Spanish and French professor is currently at Lean FI, with traditional FI his next milestone.

Miguel Marquez has spent years making complex subjects easier to understand.

Originally from Spain, the 47-year-old earned a Ph.D. in French linguistics from Indiana University Bloomington and now teaches French, Spanish, and personal finance at a university in Shenzhen, China.

Through teaching personal finance and pursuing financial independence himself, Marquez has learned that saving for such a distant goal can feel either too intimidating to begin or too tedious to sustain over decades.

He found a way to make the process more manageable by using "financial freedom milestones," a concept he first discovered on the Money Flamingo blog. Rather than treating financial independence as one enormous — and potentially unachievable — target, the framework divides the journey into seven stages.

"It's like playing a video game," he said, with each milestone representing another level of financial security.

Marquez, who began seriously pursuing financial independence after completing his Ph.D. at 38, explained the seven milestones he uses to track his progress.

1. Debt freedom

The first milestone is eliminating debt. Marquez said he borrowed money only once, during his fourth year at university, and quickly decided it was not something he wanted to get used to: "I didn't like the feeling."

He's been debt-free since completing his undergraduate degree, meaning he had already cleared the first milestone before he began deliberately pursuing financial independence.

2. 'F-you money'

The next stage is accumulating "F-you money," typically defined as having enough savings to leave an unfulfilling job, take a career break, or make another major life change without facing immediate financial consequences.

Definitions vary, but Marquez follows the version popularized by JL Collins, author of "The Simple Path to Wealth": roughly one year of living expenses set aside.

That cushion creates options, Marquez said: "If you're in a job you don't like, you can say, 'I'm leaving.' You can look for a different job, become self-employed, or do whatever you want to do."

3. Coast FI

Reaching Coast FI means you have invested enough that, assuming your portfolio continues compounding, it's projected to grow into the amount you'll need by traditional retirement age — without requiring further contributions.

That can free up income for other priorities, since you no longer need to save as aggressively for retirement.

Marquez said he reached Coast FI in June 2024, less than two years after moving to China for his current teaching position. He was in his mid-40s.

4. Flamingo FI

About a year later, Marquez reached "Flamingo FI," another concept developed by the Money Flamingo blog.

At that point, he'd saved about half of his full FI target — or roughly 12.5 years of annual expenses under the conventional 4% rule. The name comes from the idea that you've reached FIRE "standing on one leg," like a flamingo.

5. Lean FI

Marquez is currently at Lean FI, a form of financial independence in which investments can cover essential living costs while leaving relatively little room for discretionary spending. He said his portfolio, worth nearly $400,000, can support housing, food, fixed expenses, and an occasional short trip.

His low cost of living in Shenzhen is an important part of the calculation. He lives in subsidized housing on his university campus and said he can cover his annual expenses with just 30% of his income.

6. Full financial independence

The next stage is full financial independence, sometimes simply called FI or traditional FIRE.

Under the 4% rule, you're generally considered financially independent once you've saved about 25 times your annual expenses. You can then withdraw 4% in your first year of retirement and adjust future withdrawals for inflation.

7. Fat FI

The final milestone is Fat FI: having enough invested to support a lifestyle with considerably more discretionary spending than traditional financial independence. While there is no universal threshold, some investors define it as a portfolio large enough to cover two or three times their normal expenses, while others use a specific net-worth target.

Marquez said he's not compelled to reach Fat FI. Because his living costs are comparatively low, he expects ordinary financial independence to provide him with a lifestyle that already feels abundant.

Chunking out his journey into smaller milestones helped him reach a level of financial security he once assumed was out of reach on a teaching salary.

"I thought that you needed a lot of money to solve the money problem," Marquez said. "But when I started calculating and writing down what I would actually need, I thought, 'Wait a second — this is feasible.'"

• McDonald's second-quarter sales growth slowed as it faced trouble rolling out a new value menu.
• CEO Chris Kempczinski said that the chain has an execution issue, not a strategic one.
• Customers told Business Insider that the chain should rethink its approach to pricing.

McDonald's customers are looking for value. Some say they aren't finding it there.

Patrons of the Golden Arches told Business Insider that they're not impressed with the chain's prices lately. Some are reducing their visits and are critical of the food quality delivered for the cost. While McDonald's still has fans, some diners are reducing their visits.

McDonald's executives have acknowledged that they've had trouble breaking through to customers. The company's shares are down 9.6% this year.

US sales growth slowed during the chain's second quarter, it said Tuesday. CEO Chris Kempczinski pointed to trouble rolling out an under-$3 value menu — ranging from burgers and breakfast sandwiches to soft drinks — and running too many promotions at once as reasons why the chain struggled during its second quarter.

Kempczinski said that McDonald's had execution problems, but that its strategy is sound. The customers who spoke to Business Insider had their own thoughts, especially about prices.

Steve Armstrong, a retiree in Louisiana, said that he goes to Burger King because he thinks its Whopper represents a better value and is higher-quality than burgers at McDonald's.

"There's better food out there," Armstrong said. "And if you want people's money, you need to step up."

Christoph Winarski, who goes to McDonald's about once a week, said he's noticed menu prices rising over the past few years and is rethinking his habit.

"When you can get a meal from a sit-down restaurant for the same price that you get from a fast-food meal, I think that's kind of where the tipping point is," he said.

McDonald's has a value issue, customers say

Out of 227 people who responded to a Business Insider reader survey asking them to rate the value that they got for their money while dining at McDonald's, about 57% — 130 people — responded "poor" or "very poor." The survey was not scientific but showed that price and value for money were key factors they use to decide whether or not they eat at McDonald's.

Brian Schnabel said that he often stops at McDonald's while driving between his home in New York City and visiting friends in Maryland.

He hasn't ordered from the chain's under-$3 menu lately, he said, because he finds it overpriced. "If it were $1, it might be worth it," he said, referring to the dollar menu that McDonald's scrapped in 2013.

Instead, Schnabel said his go-to order at McDonald's is the Chicken Snack Wrap, which consists of fried chicken covered in lettuce, cheese, and a tortilla and costs $2.99 at the locations that he visits.

Schnabel said he thinks the snack wrap is a good deal.

"It's out of character, almost, for McDonald's to offer something at $3 which is so substantial and fills me up," he said.

Some responses to Business Insider's survey echoed the sentiment.

"I am not going to McDonald's as much since the in-app deals were cut back," one person wrote, adding that they liked a 2019 promotion that allowed diners to get a second sandwich, such as a Big Mac, for $1 when they ordered one at full price.

"To be honest, there's far better out there for my dollar," another said. "Unless something REALLY changes, I won't be going back."

Some said they liked McDonald's new value menu. "I have gone back to McDonald's only since the new value meals," one wrote. "They are an outstanding deal!"

Value versus meal deals

Mike Perry, founder and creative officer at Tavern, an agency that works with restaurant and hospitality clients, said that McDonald's should consider other ways of pitching its under-$3 selection.

Instead of trying to sell it as a "value" menu, it could make more sense to offer the items as add-ons to full meals or refocus on meal deals, such as the $5 meal that McDonald's introduced in 2024. "I would just never say the word 'value,' frankly," he said.

Other chains, such as Chili's, have successfully drawn in customers by focusing on meal deals like the Triple Dipper instead of value menus with cheap à la carte items, Perry said. That approach also tends to help restaurants' bottom line in the long run, he added.

"You can only sell so many dollar hamburgers," he said.

Do you have a story idea about McDonald's? Contact this reporter at abitter@businessinsider.com or via encrypted messaging app Signal at 808-854-4501. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Newly filed court documents show how MrBeast's ambitions have shifted over time.
• The YouTuber previously eyed podcasts and NFTs to grow his media empire.
• Today, he's exploring fintech and mobile phone services.

MrBeast has had grand ambitions to build a media empire for years — but they have changed considerably.

New court docs filed as part of an ongoing lawsuit between MrBeast founder Jimmy Donaldson and his burger business partner reveal that he once explored avenues like podcasts and NFTs before pivoting to other areas, including fintech and creator services.

The docs demonstrate how YouTube's top creator pivoted as he sought to capitalize on his social clout.

It's common for startups, and especially creator-led ones, to begin with one idea and then shift gears, said Megan Lightcap, a partner at the VC firm Slow Ventures, where she leads its Creator Fund. Unlike consumer brands launching with a specific product, it's easier for creators to move into entirely new categories.

"Because their popularity is centered on their personal brand, they have even more opportunities," she said.

A 2021 investor fundraising deck included in the court documents labels "Beast Games, Netflix Beast Studios, Beast NFT, Beast Podcasting" as coming in 2023. His company has not launched significant businesses focused on games, Netflix, NFTs, or podcasts.

The 2021 deck also talks about launching a "subscription fan platform" called "Beast World" in 2022. At the time, MrBeast envisioned a $9.95 a month platform featuring "exclusive content, merchandise, community, and experiences."

By 2024, the company was talking about opportunities in theme parks, theatrical releases, and a vast array of consumer products, according to a July 2024 board meeting presentation.

The company was also mindful of the need to diversify away from having Donaldson on camera. The presentation called for animated series and associated toys and consumer products, which manifested in the MrBeast Lab YouTube channel and products.

By 2025, with new CEO Jeffrey Housenbold at the helm, MrBeast's ambitions had changed further.

In a February investor deck that year, MrBeast presented the company as built on three pillars: media, consumer packaged goods, and software, with a "comprehensive" video game portfolio and a loyalty program earmarked for 2026. A creator platform, fintech, and pro sports were being explored. The company also hinted at a mobile phone service.

Here's how MrBeast is currently moving forward on some of those fronts:

Fintech: This year, the company acquired Step, a digital banking platform offering savings accounts, a credit-building Visa card that functions similarly to a debit card, and a cash-advance program. Step, which is geared toward young people, hasn't posted any new videos on its YouTube channel since the deal closed.

Creator platform: MrBeast recently hired a team from the Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup Pietra, including its CEO and cofounder Ronak Trivedi, who's playing a key role in developing the platform.

Membership: At a breakfast for advertisers in May, MrBeast revealed plans for the "largest membership service in the world," with a philanthropic element, early access to content, exclusive content, and member challenges.

CPG: Feastables, a "better for you snack brand," launched in 2022 with a chocolate bar. The MrBeast Burger business continues, even if Donaldson stopped promoting it after getting embroiled in a legal dispute with his partner.

Media: MrBeast has expanded his spectacle-style video offerings and launched the "Beast Games" competition show on Amazon's Prime Video. His company is planning new verticals centered on food, entertainment, fitness, and gaming that aren't meant to rely on Donaldson's on-screen presence.

Mobile phone: The company plans to launch a phone business called "Beast Mobile," Housenbold said at The New York Times' DealBook Summit in December. According to the 2025 investor deck, it's likely to take the form of an MVNO, which uses a major carrier's infrastructure and is a model other celebrities have adopted.

Experiential: MrBeast tested the theme park concept in November with a 45-day pop-up in Saudi Arabia, where visitors could participate in challenges inspired by his videos.

Ashton McGrady was horrified to discover that TikTok had slapped an "AI-generated" label on a post she'd made for Disability Pride Month.

The creator had spent hours making a collage of images, stickers, and advice.

"It was really jarring to me, because that's not something that I personally align with, and neither does my audience," McGrady told Business Insider. "The whole point of being a creator is to create myself." The post later had its AI note removed without explanation.

McGrady's upload was one of the billions that TikTok says it has flagged using a mix of human labeling and automated tools. McGrady said she had a similar experience with a different post on Meta-owned Instagram, too.

Platforms like TikTok and Instagram say AI labeling offers more transparency to viewers, but the inexact processes have led to misclassifications, seven creators say. Some platforms acknowledge they're not always accurate at spotting AI, using phrases like Meta's "likely created or modified with AI" to hedge. For creators, even the suggestion that they've published AI content can feel damaging to their reputations.

Gregory Littley, who frequently posts photography to his Instagram, said several of his posts — which include scans of physical Polaroids — say that the "content in this post may have been modified with AI."

"I cringe when I see that label," Littley said. "I cringe even more when I know it's not true."

These labels could have real consequences for creators in a time of intense AI backlash. It's particularly relevant in the $12 billion US influencer marketing industry, where authenticity and human connection are paramount. An AI hiccup can turn an audience against an influencer. YouTuber Hank Green, for example, recently apologized after coming under fire for using ChatGPT to help research a script.

"It's literally the Scarlet Letter," creator Lissette Calveiro said about AI labels and accusations of producing AI-assisted work. Some brands have begun adding stipulations in campaign briefs that creators can't use generative AI.

In recent weeks, AI has been thrust into the center of the creator conversation. Substack's CEO took a shot at AI-generated LinkedIn posts while debuting a new AI detection partnership. Days later, LinkedIn announced a button to flag suspected "AI slop." YouTube has been pulling down channels that host "low-quality" AI content, and Snapchat has made videos wholly generated by AI ineligible for recommendation in its short-form video feed, Spotlight.

Both openly using AI and promoting AI companies are increasingly seen as risky in creator economy circles. The concern is warranted. Influencers who attended a recent luxury retreat hosted by OpenAI faced immediate online backlash.

"There's a PR issue with AI as it relates to taking people's jobs and environmental concerns around data centers," said Eric Bogard, CEO of the talent firm UnderCurrent Management. "Creators are hesitant to promote AI companies as a result."

At the same time, there's no real path of purity as an influencer traversing content creation in 2026. Nearly every platform automatically uses or pushes AI tools, from Adobe Photoshop to TikTok's CapCut. In many ways, AI tools have helped creators balance the workload of managing their social media accounts and brand deals, as well as brainstorming.

Companies like OpenAI want creators to be more open about their use of AI.

Charles Porch, who OpenAI poached from Meta this year to lead creative partnerships, recently told Business Insider that part of his job is getting creators to "come out of the closet" about using AI.

"Whether creators choose to share how they use AI publicly is entirely up to them," an OpenAI spokesperson said.

AI's 'PR issue'

AI is infiltrating many aspects of modern life — and content creation is no exception.

A May survey of 16,000 creators conducted by Adobe, in partnership with The Harris Poll, found that 75% of creators who had used or tried creative AI described it as "integrated or essential to how they work."

Not all creators want to admit that publicly, though, lest they wear the AI "Scarlet Letter" on their chest.

YouTube creator Billy Yue, who goes by 8illy, isn't shying away from AI. He even made a promotional video for Anthropic's Claude in November. Still, the creator, who regularly features hand-drawn animation in his videos, added a disclosure at the end of his most recent YouTube upload that "no AI was used" in the production. He wanted fans to know that he'd drawn 1,800 illustrations for the project.

Broader public opinion is shifting, and creators feel it.

The influencer marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy found that the share of consumers who viewed generative AI as a "negative disruptor" increased from 18% in 2023 to 32% in 2025. Those who saw it as a "positive disruptor" declined from 34% to 31%. The firm surveyed 4,000 consumers ages 16 or older in the UK and the US.

"Part of this backlash is every platform is filled with slop," said Max Spero, CEO of AI detection startup Pangram. "It feels like the algorithms are shoving it in your face. It feels like it's harder and harder to find things made with craft by real people." Pangram recently partnered with Substack on an integration that detects whether — and how much — AI was used in writing newsletters and comments.

Concerns about "AI slop" have become a focus on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, which all have automated AI detection tools that help identify content that is either entirely AI-generated or substantially edited with AI.

Lawmakers have also gotten in the mix. The European Union and New York state recently developed laws requiring brands to inform viewers when AI-generated characters appear in ads.

AI labels aren't foolproof

As platforms have rushed to ramp up their AI labeling, creators like McGrady say they have become the victims of false positives.

Lindsey Lee Lugrin, a content creator and model, recently posted some paintings she had made by hand. However, her Instagram posts included a label that said they were "likely created or modified with AI."

In some instances, using popular editing tools like Canva or Adobe's Lightroom resulted in content on Instagram, Threads, and TikTok being flagged as potentially AI-generated.

While third-party platforms like Pangram can assist with AI identification, none are completely accurate. (Substack added options in its AI detection feature for creators to dispute a Pangram assessment, explain how and why they used AI, and even disable the tool altogether.)

Slip-ups can be a risk for both creators and brands.

McGrady said that if a post made in partnership with a brand was flagged as AI, it could "harm your relationship with the brand."

Advertisers are well aware of the public backlash an AI-heavy ad can bring.

Brands are taking proactive action to prevent this. Five creators and talent managers said there had been an increase in clauses in partnership briefs and contracts that explicitly state that creators cannot use AI in parts of the content process — particularly in scriptwriting, captions, and visual edits.

"If you're a brand, you obviously don't want to see an influencer you hire have a 100% negative comment section," said Jack Appleby, a relatively AI-positive creator and social media strategist. "If you're not an AI brand, you probably avoid AI right now, just because there's no reason to risk it."

There is no escaping the AI era

Despite the blowback, AI pervades many aspects of content creation.

Photo and video editing apps use it, whether loudly or under the hood. If you use Instagram's fancy font tools when making a Story post, it will trigger a tag that says the text has been "restyled with AI."

"It's really difficult to have a fully AI-free experience right now, no matter what line of work you're in," Calveiro said. "I think a lot more people are using it than they want to admit."

There are real benefits to some tools, too.

"I very frequently tell my audience that there are ethical and moral reasons to use AI. When I do, it's from an accessibility perspective," McGrady said. "But I am a person who proudly says that I do not use generative AI."

The backlash against creators' use of AI may ease in the coming months as AI-powered creative tools become ubiquitous. Labeling efforts could shift toward flagging only fully AI-generated posts.

More transparency about how AI is used could reduce headaches for creators and platforms alike, making room for them to explore how the tech can expand their creativity.

"I'm very honest about how I use AI," Appleby said. "I don't really run from it. If a piece of content entertains or educates or provides value to somebody, for the most part, they shouldn't really care."

• PwC has canceled its annual end-of-internship trip to Disney World.
• The trip to Florida was a celebration for interns being converted to full-time staff.
• The Big Four firm said it continued to make "significant investments" in early-talent programs.

PwC has canceled the signature finale to its summer internship program: a multi-day trip to Disney World.

Managers at the Big Four firm told members of its 2026 summer intern class they wouldn't be ending their internships with a trip to Orlando, according to three PwC interns who spoke to Business Insider.

PwC confirmed that the traditional trip — a perk that has been running for all but five of the last 20 years — had been canceled.

The multi-day event, which was for interns who received full-time job offers, was typically held in mid-August to celebrate the end of the summer internship. The event featured entertainment, keynote speeches, and career-development panels, as well as free food and accommodation, and access to the Disney World Resort.

A PwC spokesperson told Business Insider that while the celebration, known as Impact, was no longer happening, the firm continued to make "significant investments" in its early-talent programs.

One PwC tax intern told Business Insider they had been told their internship would end with a team dinner at an Italian restaurant.

PwC's spokesperson said the company was increasingly investing in strengthening learning and building connections within individual teams, said the spokesperson.

"As part of that approach, we're intentionally focusing our programs on experiences that provide more time with colleagues, greater exposure to clients, and stronger opportunities to build relationships within the offices and teams where interns begin their careers," the spokesperson said.

PwC still hosts a number of other events and talent initiatives, some of which take place in Orlando and include access to Disney World. Destination CPA, for example, is a three-day networking event held in Orlando that introduces incoming accounting interns to the firm.

The interns who spoke to Business Insider had mixed views about the cancellation.

One was disappointed, saying that although PwC had organized some happy hours and office-based events, they were "nothing compared to what Impact would have been."

"Honestly, I don't mind!" another said. "Many current interns went a year and a half ago during Destination CPA, and they take new associates there when they join."

A changing talent strategy

In the past year, PwC has made other internal changes aimed at more collaborative, team-focused learning.

In February, it launched the "Learning Collective," a workplace training initiative that encourages more learning outside standard courses, such as bringing team members to meetings or having teams discuss what they've learned that week with each other.

Since fall 2025, PwC has reduced the number of locations where entry-level consultants can start their careers, from 13 to 72, to bring junior consultants closer together during their first years at the firm.

The Americas was PwC's fastest-growing region in its most recent financial year, but globally and in North America, the firm fell behind its Big Four competitors in terms of growth last year.

PwC also reduced its global head count by 5,600 during the 2025 financial year, reversing an earlier strategy of expanding its workforce.

Big Four internships

Elaborate intern experiences are common among the Big Four professional services firms. They serve partly as recruitment tools, helping firms foster a sense of community and encouraging promising candidates to accept full-time offers.

They can be a costly investment — every summer, the Big Four take on several thousand summer interns across their accounting and advisory divisions.

KPMG invites summer interns to Lakehouse, its $450 million training facility in Florida, where they learn while enjoying an 18-hole putting green, gym facilities, and a constant stream of free food. Deloitte operates a similar facility in Texas, called the Deloitte University.

The growing use of AI is prompting professional-services firms to reconsider how they recruit and train junior staff. KPMG US has shifted its audit intern training to focus less on technical aspects of the profession and more on critical thinking, data analysis, and drawing conclusions.

As the technology increasingly performs some of the data-heavy tasks traditionally assigned to entry-level workers, it's also raising questions about the future role of graduate hires.

PwC plans to reduce its hiring of entry-level workers in the US by a third over the next three years, Business Insider reported in August. An internal presentation linked the decision to "transformation efforts, the impact of AI, and further AC integration." The firm has also reduced entry-level recruitment in the UK.

• American Airlines is making it harder for elite flyers to receive an upgrade from economy to business class.
• The new policy affects some of the longest domestic routes, including trips to Hawaii.
• An aviation expert said the airline is trying to capture revenue it previously left on the table.

American Airlines is making it harder for its most loyal customers to score one of its most coveted perks.

American Airlines said on Thursday that beginning August 25, elite AAdvantage members traveling on several of American's longest domestic routes, including select transcontinental flights and trips to Hawaii, will no longer receive complimentary upgrades from economy to business class.

Instead, eligible travelers will be upgraded to premium economy when seats are available.

The move also affects routes including New York to Los Angeles; Boston to San Francisco; Dallas-Fort Worth to Honolulu, Kona, and Maui; Phoenix to Honolulu; and Chicago to Honolulu and Maui.

"As American Airlines expands its offering of Premium Economy on more domestic routes," a spokesperson of American Airlines told Business Insider. "We are streamlining our complimentary upgrade process to deliver a more consistent customer experience."

According to the airline, elite travelers who purchase a premium economy fare or pay to upgrade from economy to premium economy will still be eligible for a complimentary upgrade to business class.

The policy change reflects a broader trend across the airline industry as carriers look to protect revenue from their highest-priced cabins. Delta in 2025 has changed its loyalty program to reward customers who pay for higher fare types, while United is betting on selling more premium seats by expanding its high-end cabins.

Zach Griff, a travel and aviation expert, called the rollback in frequent flyer benefits "bad news" in a post on X.

"Delta will become the lone holdout to still allow space-available elite upgrades from economy to Delta One," Griff said on Thursday. "United doesn't allow complimentary upgrades on routes with Polaris cabins."

Gary Leff, a points expert and author of the aviation blog View from the Wing, wrote in a blog post on Thursday that American Airlines seems to "systematically be squeezing out areas" where they are likely missing out on revenue."

"I think this is broadly fine, although it's clearly less value to status members who have been jumping from coach to business class," Leff said. "To fly business with an upgrade you'll need to first be in the premium economy cabin which costs more."

"I largely expected American to do this not just with domestic upgrades but with systemwide upgrades and for long haul international flights — about seven years ago," Leff added.

• Marc Palet, a tech VC, uses AI tools to boost his productivity.
• He said he uses tools like Claude and Lovable to build automated workflows for himself.
• This allows him to meet more founders and source better deals for the firm.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Marc Palet, 26, a Singapore-based venture capitalist at OMVC. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I was first exposed to venture capital while running an e-commerce fashion business in college back home in Barcelona. During a study abroad program in Hong Kong, I did a ton of networking and came across a VC firm investing in fintech, blockchain, and AI — all the things I liked. I ended up staying with them after graduation and spent three years in Hong Kong before moving to Singapore to lead the firm's Asia Pacific investments.

I'm 26 now and have invested in over 12 AI companies since I started my VC career. AI isn't just a part of my portfolio; it's become a crucial part of my workflow and how I manage things as the firm's only employee outside the US.

Even though I've vibe-coded many of my workflows, AI hasn't replaced any of my software subscriptions. It's actually added more, since I pay more than $120 a month across Claude, ChatGPT, n8n, and other AI tools like transcription APIs.

But I'd be happy to spend more if it makes me more productive.

Here's what my tech stack looks like and how it has helped shave countless hours of operational work.

Summarizing founder meetings

I started using ChatGPT in 2023. But the real shift came when I began using coding tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and Replit.

One of the first things I built for work automatically summarizes my meetings with founders.

We record our meetings using Fireflies. Instead of manually listening back and writing investment notes after every meeting, I receive a structured summary covering the company's problem, solution, market, and other information we capture during due diligence.

My first knowledge base

One recurring problem was that if I weren't at my laptop, I'd read something interesting on LinkedIn or X and then forget all about it.

So creating repositories on NotebookLM was a turning point for me. Every time I read something online that I thought I wanted to remember, I'd copy and paste it into that repository.

Whenever I wanted to write a blog post, I could query it and retrieve all the information I needed.

Building a company brain

The stage I'm in now started a couple of months ago, after I read something OpenAI founding member Andrej Karpathy wrote about building a knowledge base that automatically ingests information and keeps updating itself. I thought that was really interesting, so I built something similar for venture capital using Claude Code.

It pulls information from Gmail, Slack, my call transcription service, newsletters, YouTube podcasts, and anywhere else I get knowledge or updates on our portfolio companies. An AI agent parses the raw information, then organizes it into the right place.

Each portfolio company has pages for things like fundraising, financials, and commercial updates. If there's a new Slack message, the AI figures out which company it's about and updates the relevant page. And it doesn't just copy and paste new information — it rewrites the page so everything stays coherent.

More powerful than an intern

One workflow automatically creates our quarterly limited partner reports by summarizing everything that's happened across our portfolio during the reporting period. Another helps with audit work by gathering information from all our portfolio companies.

Those tedious tasks that used to take up so much of my time. For a VC fund as small as ours, time is always a constraint, so I'm happy to spend on AI that can save me time.

My agents for LinkedIn posts, an important part of my role, have helped me increase my output from one deep-dive article every two months to one every three weeks. Every article brings in more deal flow, and because I'm spending less time on operational work, I have more time for in-person meetings.

I realized that AI is much more efficient than training an intern for a month, only for them to stay for three months. AI also does things the way I want them done. I realized that AI plus me is more powerful than me plus an intern.

• Meta was ordered to pay a total of $942 million over harm caused to children on its platforms.
• A New Mexico judge on Thursday ordered Meta to pay $567 million, mostly for treatment services.
• A jury previously found the company liable and approved a fine of $375 million.

Meta must pay a total of $942 million to address harm caused to children on its platforms, a New Mexico judge ruled Thursday.

A jury in March found Meta liable for failing to protect kids and approved a $375 million fine. New Mexico state Judge Bryan Biedscheid issued a ruling Thursday ordering the company to pay an additional $567 million and to make changes to its platforms to make them safer for kids. The judge said the money was to be put into an abatement fund, with most of it, $420 million, to go toward treatment services.

"This case has always been about protecting children, standing up for families, and making sure that one of the world's largest technology companies cannot profit from practices that endanger young people without consequence," New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez said in a statement following the ruling. "Today's decision is a victory for every parent who has worried about what social media is doing to their child and every child who deserves to grow up safer online."

Meta said it disagrees with the ruling and will appeal.

"We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content," a Meta spokesperson said in a statement to Business Insider. "We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts."

• After decades at Google, Jeff Dean is starting Discovery Loop.
• Dean is cofounding the AI startup alongside three other former Googlers.
• Discovery Loop will focus on AI applications in science and engineering.

Legendary Googler Jeff Dean is starting his own AI company.

On Wednesday, Dean, Google's chief scientist, announced that he and three other colleagues were leaving to start Discovery Loop, an AI startup focused on AI applications in science and engineering.

Here's everything we know about the new venture

What is Discovery Loop?

Discovery Loop is a public benefit corporation "whose mission is to automate machine learning, science, and engineering to accelerate discoveries and progress," Dean wrote on X.

The loop part of the name comes from the company's goal of automating the process by which scientists and engineers propose an experiment, implement and run it, and evaluate the results.

The company hopes this automation can unlock some of the trickiest problems in science and engineering by enabling "parallel execution of thousands of experiments."

Specifically, Discovery Loop wants to build systems that can tackle parts of the 14 challenges laid out by some of the world's most accomplished scientists and engineers to improve life as we know it. Formerly known as the "National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges," the 14 topics range from "Reverse Engineer the Brain" to "Prevent Nuclear Terror."

Interestingly, the 2008 committee that came up with the grand challenges included Larry Page, the cofounder of Google.

Who is funding Discovery Loop?

According to Dean, Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures, two Silicon Valley mainstays, led the initial round. Lightspeed, Kleiner Perkins, and Doerr Capital also participated.

In a sign of how he left things at Google, Alphabet is a founding investor and cloud partner, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said.

"I also want to give a huge thanks to the incomparable @JeffDean after an incredible 27-year run at Google," Pichai wrote on X.

Who is Jeff Dean?

If you've used Google in the last two decades, you have Jeff Dean to thank. As Google's 30th employee, his tenure spans from establishing Google's dominance in search to the creation of generative AI models.

Dean helped advance Google Search, Google News, Google Translate, and Google Ads.

If that wasn't enough, Dean co-founded the Google Brain team that, as the "Godfather of AI" and Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton put it, turned "basic research in neural nets into game-changing products." One of the biggest breakthroughs Dean helped develop was the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), which is credited with accelerating AI research.

As Google's AI head, Dean oversaw AI research and later co-led the development of Gemini, Google's family of models.

Many of the biggest names in AI worked alongside Dean, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever, and more.

Who else is leading Discovery Loop?

Sanjay Ghemawat: Ghemawat is one of Dean's oldest collaborators, going back to before the pair joined Google when they worked at Digital Equipment Corporation.

At Google, the pair became so inseparable that Dean's kids called Ghemawat "Uncle Sanjay," according to a 2018 profile in The New Yorker. Ghemawat and Dean also became the first-ever level 11 Google engineers, carrying the title of Senior Fellows.

According to Dean's slide deck, he is the most-cited distributed systems researcher; Ghemawat is the fourth most cited.

Oriol Vinyals: Vinyals, a principal scientist at Google DeepMind, is also joining Discovery Loop.

According to his Google biography, Vinyals focused on machine learning and reinforcement learning. Before joining the team, he worked on projects that fuel tools like Google Translate.

One of his research projects, called AlphaStar, was an agent that bested a top-tier professional StarCraft II player.

Among the most-cited AI researchers, per Dean's slide deck, Vinyals is sixth.

Quoc Le: Le was a founding member of the Google Brain team. At Stanford, his advisor was Andrew Ng, who helped establish the Brain team.

Le worked on one of Google Brain's first big projects: developing a neural network of 1,000 machines containing 16,000 processors that demonstrated machine learning by teaching itself how to recognize items after being trained on 10 million images randomly pulled from YouTube videos, as The New York Times reported in 2012.

This being the internet, the system taught itself to recognize cats.

What's next for Google?

Google is no stranger to big shake-ups, including in AI.

In 2014, the search giant acquired DeepMind, then a startup. Under Google's banner, DeepMind conducted influential research, including AlphaGo, a program capable of beating a master at the challenging board game Go.

Despite laying the foundation for several AI breakthroughs, Google saw some of its former employees, including Sutskever, push OpenAI to the front of the generative AI race with the release of ChatGPT in 2022.

In 2023, Google merged the Brain and DeepMind teams into one group led by Demis Hassabis.

In addition to Dean's departure, Google announced that Hassabis would become chair of Google DeepMind and chief scientist of Alphabet.

Koray Kavukcuoglu, chief technology officer of Google DeepMind and Google's chief AI architect, assumed the day-to-day operations of DeepMind and the title of senior vice president.

• There's a new documentary called "MUSK" that's set to hit theaters in October.
• Elon Musk called it a "hit piece" on X and mocked its 4-hour runtime.
• "MUSK" was directed by Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney.

A new documentary about Elon Musk is set to hit theaters this October, and the world's richest man still isn't thrilled about it.

"It's a hit piece," Musk wrote on X on Thursday. "Gibney is incapable of anything else."

"MUSK" is the work of Emmy and Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, who's made a name for himself by chronicling the lives of the rich and powerful. His films include "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," which details the fall of Enron, "We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks," a look into the world of Julian Assange, and "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley," a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes.

Musk also noted the film's length. "4 hours!!" Musk wrote, asking whether Gibney was trying to "bore people to death."

The film — which will premiere next month at the Venice Film Festival — runs about 232 minutes, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

"MUSK" was announced in March 2023, prompting a response from the Tesla CEO.

"It's a hit piece," he wrote on Twitter at the time.

Gibney shot back. "How would you know," he wrote, quote-tweeting the billionaire.

This isn't the first documentary to offer a look at the billionaire. The 2022 BBC series "The Elon Musk Show" also featured interviews with former colleagues, some of whom were critical about Musk's leadership style.

Walter Isaacson's 2023 biography of Musk also drew some scrutiny, including from Musk's daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson, who criticized its portrayal of her and her relationship with her father.

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

• Sydney Towle died on August 5 from cholangiocarcinoma, a rare bile duct cancer, at 26.
• Towle was 23 when she was diagnosed and documented her experience on TikTok and Instagram.
• She represented a new era of young cancer patients sharing their stories online to raise awareness.

Sydney Towle, 26, died on August 5 from a rare, aggressive cancer.

One day later, her brother, Austin Towle, and mother, Elizabeth Morrow, shared a few words to her 1.1 million TikTok followers.

"We thank all of you for your support over the years," Austin Towle said, with Morrow echoing the sentiment.

At 23, Sydney Towle was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, a bile duct cancer, after seeing a doctor for what she initially thought was a hernia.

For years, Towle documented the ups and downs of her treatments, including her surgeries, scans, chemotherapy, and clinical trials. She also shared her happier moments, from trips with her friends to appreciating a sunny walk. Her videos racked up millions of views; one of the last TikToks posted on her account featured the band Royel Otis dedicating a song to her.

As cancer rates continue to rise among young people, some, like Towle, have taken to social media to share their stories. When Sarah and Sophie Barness were both diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023, the sisters took to TikTok to document their experiences.

Sharing details of their diagnoses and treatments online not only helped them spread the word about their symptoms; it also helps them find support and community at an otherwise crushingly lonely and trying period of their lives.

"It felt odd to be nostalgic for a time I should want to forget," Sarah Barness wrote for Business Insider after she went into remission, "but I missed chemo because I had structure, abundant support, and sympathy, both in-person and online."

More young people are getting cancer and looking for community online

The rates of some cancers, including colon and breast cancers, have been steadily climbing in people under 50.

While young people are encouraged to regularly exercise and cut back on ultraprocessed foods to reduce their risk, none of those lifestyle habits can necessarily prevent cancer. Some young cancer patients are fit, eat clean, and have no family history.

Sharing their stories helps them get this simple point across to their followers: no one is truly safe from a cancer diagnosis, so they should always get suspicious symptoms checked out.

Gabby Zappia, who was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer at 37 after giving birth to her third child, shared her first symptoms with her 35,800 Instagram followers — emphasizing how blood in her stool, bloating, and fatigue could look like normal parts of pregnancy.

"Please be on the lookout and share with your loved ones," she wrote in her caption.

For young people, the costs of a cancer diagnosis can be uniquely high.

They might be in college or just starting their careers. They may have to put their plans — starting families, buying a home, traveling — on hold indefinitely. And paying for treatment can be an especially heavy burden when juggled with student loans or entry-level salaries.

Like Towle, they aren't just posting their chemo treatments or CT scan updates; they want followers to see how cancer touches all aspects of their lives.

Breeze Hunter was finishing her senior year at Texas A&M when she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a rare cancer, at 22. Nearly 18 million people watched her "MTV Cribs"-style TikTok tour of her hospital room — what she called her "200 square foot mansion."

Hunter previously told Business Insider that connecting with other cancer patients, both online and off, helped her deal with treatments. "It is very hard — we are so young and we're missing out on a lot of young adult things," she said.

Young cancer patients exist in a liminal space in healthcare. Towle gave them a spotlight.

Despite climbing rates of certain cancers, young people still aren't considered the classic cancer demographic. This doesn't just lead to potentially missed or delayed diagnosis due to their ages, but also to misconceptions about their overall treatment experience.

Towle's videos were consistently flooded with comments from people who were impacted by her videos, whether they felt personal solidarity with Towle or appreciated learning more about life with cancer.

"I'm a nurse! Just had a patient with the same cancer like 2-3 weeks ago. None of the other nurses knew anything about the cancer but me! Because of you! Thank you for educating!!" a TikTok user @isabellaelena18 posted.

Overwhelmingly, most commenters were moved by something simpler: Towle's continued exuberance throughout everything.

"Syd will never be forgotten," TikTok user @erindelanty1 posted. "She has taught us so many lessons. Mostly to live each day to its fullest and to be grateful to just BE HERE."

• Some of these iconic seafood spots have been family-run for generations.
• Others have become famous for their fresh catches or waterfront locations.
• These legendary seafood shacks are among the best in the country.

Seafood shacks have long been a staple of American dining, from the rocky shores of Maine to coastal California locales.

While there's bound to be some debate about which seafood shack is the most iconic in every state, we devised this list based on customer reviews, local history, cultural significance, and lasting reputation.

And while the most celebrated seafood shacks are often located near waterfronts, in landlocked states we identified locally beloved seafood eateries that serve up a similar laid-back spirit.

From legendary institutions like Woodman's of Essex in Massachusetts, credited with popularizing the fried clam, to classic crab boil establishments that have welcomed diners for decades, these are the most iconic seafood shacks in every state.

ALABAMA: Doc's Seafood Shack & Oyster Bar in Orange Beach

Since opening in 1984, Doc's Seafood Shack & Oyster Bar has proven that great seafood doesn't need a fancy setting.

The laid-back spot is best known for its crispy fried shrimp — which the restaurant boldly bills as the best in the world — along with seafood gumbo, raw oysters, and build-your-own seafood platters piled high with Gulf Coast favorites.

Voted by Fox News as one of the top 10 seafood shacks in America, it's been a longtime favorite for Alabama locals and tourists.

ALASKA: Tracy's King Crab Shack in Juneau

Few restaurants are as synonymous with Alaska seafood as Tracy's King Crab Shack. What started as a tiny dockside stand in 2006 has grown into one of Juneau's best-known seafood stops, beloved by the cruise crowd that rolls through the city in search of authentic Alaskan seafood.

The menu is intentionally simple, letting the sweet crab take center stage, though the rich crab bisque is nearly as famous.

ARIZONA: Chula Seafood in Phoenix

A seafood shack may seem out of place in the desert, but Chula Seafood has built its reputation by bringing boat-to-table fresh seafood to the city of Phoenix.

Operated by a family of commercial fishermen, the restaurant has its own San Diego-based fishing boat, giving the menu a level of freshness that is rare for a landlocked state. The eatery also sources seafood from other domestic and international fisheries.

ARKANSAS: The Oyster Bar in Little Rock

The Oyster Bar has been serving Little Rock since 1975, making it one of Arkansas' longest-running seafood restaurants.

While its atmosphere is a bit more elevated than a traditional seafood shack, its honest, simple cooking and decades-long run have cemented it as a Little Rock institution and earned it a spot on this list.

CALIFORNIA: Neptune's Net in Malibu

Neptune's Net has been perched along the Pacific Coast Highway since the 1950s, and it has even appeared in major Hollywood films like "The Fast and the Furious."

Diners come for fried seafood, clam chowder, fish and chips, sandwiches, and fish tacos while soaking up sweeping ocean views that have made Neptune's Net one of the state's most recognizable seafood stops.

COLORADO: Big Mac and Little Lu's Seafood Restaurant in Westminster

In a state better known for steaks than seafood, Big Mac & Little Lu's has become a Colorado favorite by flying in fresh seafood several times a week.

Open since 2013, the restaurant has built a devoted following for its fresh New England-style lobster rolls, crispy crab cakes, clam chowder, and classic fish and chips.

The restaurant's longevity and reputation for fresh seafood in landlocked Colorado have made it a standout seafood spot.

CONNECTICUT: Abbott's Lobster in the Rough in Noank

For generations, Abbott's Lobster in the Rough has defined the classic New England seafood shack experience.

Operating seasonally on the Mystic River since 1947, it serves up an overflowing hot Connecticut lobster roll, packed with warm lobster meat and served with drawn butter, but it also offers Maine versions dressed with mayonnaise.

Picnic tables overlooking the water, steamed clams, chowder, and a rich maritime history have made going to Abbott's one of Connecticut's most beloved summer traditions.

DELAWARE: JR's Seafood Shack in Fenwick Island

Just steps from the Delaware-Maryland line, JR's Seafood Shack has earned a loyal following by serving fresh local seafood without the fuss of a high-end restaurant, but a bit more elevated than the typical roadside seafood shack.

The casual roadside stop is known for calamari, crab dip, steamed seafood, and low-country boils, making it a favorite stop for beachgoers headed to Fenwick Island.

FLORIDA: Star Fish Company in Cortez

Star Fish Company feels like a glimpse into Old Florida. Operating as both a seafood market and a dockside restaurant in the historic fishing village of Cortez, the family-owned business serves whatever fresh catches local fishermen happen to bring in that day.

Popular items include fresh grouper, fried fish, and Gulf shrimp, and its connection to the local fishing communities makes it one of the most authentic seafood shacks in the state.

GEORGIA: The Crab Shack on Tybee Island

Billing itself as "where the elite eat in their bare feet," The Crab Shack has become one of Georgia's most iconic seafood destinations thanks to its sprawling waterfront setting and famously messy seafood boils.

The quirky atmosphere — complete with wandering cats, alligators, and marsh views — has made it a must-visit for decades.

HAWAII: Giovanni's Shrimp Truck in Kahuku

Few food trucks have achieved the legendary status of Giovanni's Shrimp Truck. What started as a humble roadside stand has since become a Hawaiian icon.

Parked on O'ahu's North Shore since the early 1990s, the graffiti-covered truck helped popularize Hawaii's famous shrimp plate and now draws visitors from around the world for its buttery garlic shrimp over rice.

It has two North Shore locations: the original location in Kahuku and a second, beloved spot in Hale'iwa.

IDAHO: Fresh Off the Hook in Boise

Fresh Off the Hook has spent decades proving Idaho can do excellent seafood despite being hundreds of miles from the coast.

The family-owned restaurant flies in fresh seafood several times a week and serves everything from cedar plank salmon and ahi tuna to fish tacos and oysters.

ILLINOIS: Calumet Fisheries in Chicago

Few seafood shacks are as legendary as Calumet Fisheries, a James Beard award-winning restaurant that has been smoking fish over oak fires since 1948, though the original site and smokehouse date back 20 years earlier.

Located beside the Calumet River on Chicago's Southeast Side, the no-frills smokehouse is famous for fried seafood as well as smoked shrimp, salmon, trout, and pepper-and-garlic smoked fish.

INDIANA: Caplinger's Fresh Catch in Indianapolis

Part seafood market, part casual restaurant, Caplinger's Fresh Catch has become Indiana's go-to destination for high-quality seafood.

The family-owned business is known for lobster rolls, crab cakes, oysters, po'boys, and Seafood Philly, a mashup between a Philly cheesesteak and a lobster roll.

IOWA: Waterfront Seafood Market in West Des Moines

Waterfront Seafood Market has served Iowans fresh seafood for more than 40 years, earning a reputation as the state's premier fish market and casual seafood restaurant.

Diners come from far and wide to try the market's fresh sushi, peel-and-eat shrimp, fried seafood baskets, and crab cakes.

KANSAS: Jarocho in Kansas City

Jarocho has earned national acclaim by bringing the flavors of Mexico's Veracruz coast to the Kansas City area.

More polished than a traditional shack, its focus on high-quality seafood has made it a standout spot in the landlocked state.

KENTUCKY: Mike Linnig's Famous Seafood Restaurant in Louisville

Mike Linnig's has welcomed diners since the 1920s, making it one of Kentucky's oldest seafood restaurants.

The sprawling outdoor beer garden and family-friendly atmosphere are as much a draw as the generous platters of classic Southern favorites like fried fish, frog legs, fried oysters, and peel-and-eat shrimp.

LOUISIANA: Middendorf's in Manchac

Open since 1934, Middendorf's has been one of Louisiana's oldest and most defining seafood restaurants, particularly famous for its thin-fried catfish.

Though not a traditional shack, it serves up many of the classic items you'd expect to find in the bayou, from seafood gumbo to crawfish étouffée and fried shrimp.

MAINE: The Clam Shack in Kennebunkport

The Clam Shack has been drawing summer crowds since 1968 with what many argue is one of the country's greatest lobster rolls, and a hallmark of Maine seafood.

However, visitors might be surprised to learn that the Clam Shack doesn't specialize in Maine-style rolls. Unlike most versions, its roll features claw, knuckle, and tail meat lightly dressed with butter or mayonnaise and served on a round, locally baked bun.

Along with whole-belly fried clams and waterfront views in Kennebunkport, it's become one of Maine's most celebrated seafood shacks.

MARYLAND: The Crab Claw in St. Michaels

The Crab Claw has overlooked St. Michaels Harbor since its opening in 1965, and is one of the Chesapeake Bay's most enduring crab houses.

The restaurant has built its reputation on its famous steamed Maryland blue crabs coated in seasoning, along with classic crab cakes, oysters, soft-shell crabs, and cream of crab soup served in a casual atmosphere.

MASSACHUSETTS: Woodman's of Essex in Essex

Few seafood shacks are as famous as Woodman's of Essex.

The family-owned institution can trace its roots back to 1914. Owners Chubby and Bessie Woodman are widely credited with inventing the fried clam two years later, after a local fisherman suggested dipping soft-shell clams in evaporated milk, corn flour, and flour before frying them.

More than a century later, visitors still line up for this seafood shack's whole-belly fried clams, along with classic lobster rolls, steamers, and chowder.

MICHIGAN: Bortell's Fisheries in Ludington

Bortell's Fisheries has been a fixture on the shores of Lake Michigan since 1898, making it one of the oldest family-owned fish markets and seafood shacks in the state.

For more than a century, the Bortell family has smoked and sold locally caught whitefish, trout, salmon, and perch in their market, but the spot is also well known for its smoked fish, fish sandwiches, and fried seafood baskets.

MINNESOTA: Smack Shack in Minneapolis

Smack Shack opened as a food truck in 2010 and has since grown into one of Minnesota's most famous seafood destinations.

The casual spot built its reputation on buttery Connecticut-style lobster rolls, fresh oysters, shrimp and grits, and seafood boils that have brought a taste of the coast to Minneapolis.

Even after expanding into a full-service restaurant, it has held on to its casual, seafood-shack spirit and was featured on "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" in 2012.

MISSISSIPPI: Bozo's Seafood Market in Pascagoula

Bozo's Seafood Market has been a Mississippi Gulf Coast institution since the mid-1950s, serving as both a seafood market and a casual eatery for generations.

The family-owned business is famous for its massive po'boys stuffed with fried Gulf shrimp, oysters, and crab, as well as fresh seafood sourced from local waters.

MISSOURI: Peacemaker Lobster & Crab in St. Louis

Peacemaker Lobster and Crab is celebrated for its lobster rolls, oyster po'boys, fresh-shucked oysters, and seasonal seafood boils.

Despite being hundreds of miles from the ocean, the restaurant's dedication to sourcing high-quality seafood has earned it a reputation as one of the Midwest's top seafood restaurants, thanks to its James Beard Award-winning chef and owner, Kevin Nashan.

MONTANA: Feast Raw Bar & Bistro in Bozeman

Feast Raw Bar & Bistro has redefined seafood dining in Montana by flying in pristine oysters, shellfish, and fresh fish several times a week.

More upscale than your typical shack, this restaurant combines Montana's flair for steakhouses with a seafood focus, making it a can't-miss destination.

NEBRASKA: Shucks Fish House & Oyster Bar in Omaha

Since opening in 2006, Shucks Fish House & Oyster Bar has become Nebraska's go-to destination for fresh seafood.

The casual neighborhood restaurant is famous for its happy-hour oysters, calamari, and other seafood shack favorites.

NEVADA: Ocean Seafood Boil in Las Vegas

Las Vegas may be known for celebrity-chef restaurants, but Ocean Seafood Boil has built its reputation the old-fashioned way: generous portions and boldly seasoned seafood.

Its casual atmosphere and consistently popular seafood boils have made it one of Nevada's favorite seafood shacks, away from the Strip's typical fine-dining scene.

NEW HAMPSHIRE: Brown's Lobster Pound in Seabrook

A New Hampshire summer isn't complete without a visit to Brown's Lobster Pound.

Overlooking the salt marshes of Seabrook since 1950, this cash-only seasonal institution serves steamed whole lobsters, lobster rolls, fried seafood platters, and chowder in a relaxed waterfront setting.

NEW JERSEY: The Lobster House in Cape May

The Lobster House has been welcoming diners to Cape May's harbor for decades, becoming one of the Jersey Shore's most recognizable seafood restaurants.

Supplied by its own fleet of commercial fishing boats, the restaurant's signature dishes include lobster tails, crab cakes, clams casino, and fresh local catches, making it a fixture of South Jersey dining.

NEW MEXICO: Mariscos La Playa in Albuquerque

Mariscos La Playa has become New Mexico's seafood standout by merging Mexican cooking styles with Southwestern favorites like towering seafood cocktails, aguachiles, ceviches, grilled fish, and shrimp dishes.

It's no shack, but its laidback atmosphere is sure to make you feel right at home.

NEW YORK: LUNCH Lobster Roll in Amagansett

Better known simply as "Lunch," this local landmark has been slinging up seafood since 1965 and helped cement the lobster roll as a Hamptons summertime icon.

Located along Montauk Highway, the casual roadside restaurant has attracted everyone from surfers to celebrities seeking its famous lobster roll, clam chowder, fried clams, and seafood platters.

NORTH CAROLINA: Waterfront Seafood Shack in Calabash

Located in the self-proclaimed "Seafood Capital of the World," Waterfront Seafood Shack celebrates the lightly battered, fried seafood style that made the small fishing town of Calabash famous.

The family-owned restaurant, which overlooks the Calabash River, serves local shrimp, oysters, flounder, and scallops, offering visitors an authentic taste of North Carolina seafood.

NORTH DAKOTA: Beer And Fish Company in Fargo

Beer And Fish Company in downtown Fargo may be relatively new to the city's dining scene — it opened in 2019 — but its seafood favorites keep customers coming back for more.

Known for its oysters, mix-and-match fish-and-chip platters, sandwiches, and grilled seafood, this casual eatery has earned praise for bringing coastal-quality seafood to the northern Plains.

OHIO: Jolly Roger Seafood House in Port Clinton

Serving diners on the shores of Lake Erie since 1980, Jolly Roger Seafood House has long been a favorite for its fresh Lake Erie walleye, shrimp, and crab legs.

The seafood at this Great Lakes seafood destination often draws long lines of hungry locals and visitors.

OKLAHOMA: Bayou Jaq's Seafood Shack in Edmond

Bayou Jaq's brings the flavors of coastal Louisiana to central Oklahoma with a menu built around crawfish boils, shrimp, crab legs, po'boys, gumbo, and jambalaya.

The casual eatery has developed a devoted following for its Cajun-inspired seafood and lively atmosphere, making it one of Oklahoma's best-known seafood restaurants.

OREGON: Bowpicker Fish & Chips in Astoria

Housed inside a converted gillnet fishing boat, Bowpicker Fish & Chips is one of Oregon's most distinctive seafood shacks.

Located across from the Columbia River Maritime Museum, the restaurant's menu focuses on classic fried fish and chips — in this case, beer-battered Albacore tuna and steak fries.

PENNSYLVANIA: Mr. Bill's Fresh Seafood in Lancaster

Open since 1973, Mr. Bill's has long been a destination for Pennsylvanians looking for blue crab year-round.

Part seafood market and part casual restaurant, the restaurant is also known for its lobster rolls, crab cakes, steamed shrimp, oysters, and daily fresh fish specials.

RHODE ISLAND: Roy Boy's Clam Shack in North Kingstown

Roy Boy's Clam Shack has quickly become one of Rhode Island's standout seafood destinations and was voted by readers of the Providence Journal as the best clam shack in the state.

Opened in 2018 by chef and restaurateur Ben Lloyd, the seasonal shack has earned widespread acclaim for its lobster rolls, crispy whole-belly fried clams, clam cakes, chowder, and inventive seafood specials.

SOUTH CAROLINA: Bowens Island Restaurant in Charleston

Since opening in 1946, Bowens Island Restaurant has been synonymous with low-country seafood, drawing generations of diners for local oysters, shrimp, crab cakes, and sweeping marsh views outside Charleston.

In 2006, the family-owned institution was honored with a James Beard Award, recognizing its enduring place in Southern food culture. Despite a fire that destroyed the original restaurant, Bowens has been rebuilt and remains one of the most iconic seafood restaurants in the South.

SOUTH DAKOTA: Swamp Daddy's Cajun Kitchen in Sioux Falls

Swamp Daddy's Cajun Kitchen has become South Dakota's go-to spot for Gulf Coast flavors, serving crawfish, shrimp boils, po'boys, jambalaya, gumbo, and blackened seafood.

The family-owned restaurant has built a loyal following by bringing authentic Louisiana cooking to the northern Plains, making it one of the state's best-known seafood destinations.

TENNESSEE: Krustaceans Seafood in Nashville

Krustaceans Seafood has become a Nashville favorite thanks to its generously portioned Cajun-style seafood boils featuring shrimp, crab legs, crawfish, lobster tails, and signature house sauces.

With plenty of cocktail options to keep the night going, this seafood boil place is a popular spot in Nashville to load up on seafood.

TEXAS: Katie's Seafood House in Galveston

Opened in 2019 by the family behind Katie's Seafood Market, which opened nearly two decades before, the waterfront restaurant serves seafood caught by its own fleet of Gulf fishing boats, ensuring exceptional freshness.

Guests come for grilled Gulf snapper, redfish, shrimp, oysters, and seasonal catches while overlooking the working harbor, making it one of the state's most authentic seafood destinations.

UTAH: Freshie's Lobster Co. in Salt Lake City

Freshie's Lobster Co. has built a cult following by flying in fresh Maine lobster to build its classic New England-style rolls in Utah.

Famous for its overflowing lobster rolls, lobster bisque, and lobster mac and cheese, this casual seafood shack has brought classic East Coast flavors and techniques to the West.

VERMONT: Ray's Seafood Market & Restaurant in Essex Junction

Since opening in 1951, Ray's Seafood Market & Restaurant has served Vermonters fresh seafood through its seafood market and adjoining casual restaurant.

Known for lobster rolls, fried seafood platters, oysters, and fresh fish flown in several times a week, Ray's has become the state's longtime local favorite.

VIRGINIA: Margie & Ray's Crabhouse and Restaurant in Virginia Beach

Margie & Ray's has been serving Chesapeake Bay seafood since the 1960s, earning a reputation as one of coastal Virginia's classic crab houses.

The restaurant is best known for its steamed shrimp, she-crab soup, fried seafood platters, and fresh local fish.

WASHINGTON: Little Chinook's in Seattle

Located in Seattle's historic Fishermen's Terminal, Little Chinook's offers one of the city's most authentic waterfront seafood experiences.

This counter-service restaurant specializes in wild salmon, halibut, Dungeness crab, fish and chips, and chowder, and overlooks a working commercial fishing harbor.

WEST VIRGINIA: Coleman's Fish Market in Wheeling

Coleman's Fish Market has been a Wheeling landmark since 1914 and is best known for its fish sandwich, which features a massive piece of fried cod that extends well beyond two pieces of white bread.

It was founded by local businessman John Coleman, who initially sold live chickens and eggs before shifting his focus to selling seafood. It's now regarded as one of the best and oldest restaurants in the state.

WISCONSIN: Barnacle Bud's in Milwaukee

Tucked away along Milwaukee's riverfront, Barnacle Bud's has become one of Wisconsin's most beloved hidden gems and has been voted the best waterfront restaurant in the city.

The seasonal, open-air seafood shack serves fish sandwiches, shrimp, lobster rolls, fish tacos, and tropical cocktails in a laid-back marina setting that feels worlds away from the buzz of downtown.

WYOMING: Rocky Mountain Seafood in Afton

Rocky Mountain Seafood has earned a loyal following by bringing fresh seafood to one of the country's least likely destinations.

The family-owned restaurant specializes in seafood favorites like fish and chips, fried seafood platters, and fish tacos, as well as more elevated options like lobster and seared ahi tuna.

• Moira Gilchrist, the chief global communications officer for Philip Morris International, was interviewed for Business Insider's CMO Insider series.
• Gilchrist said large language models make a company's owned content channels more important.
• She also spoke about how the company's internal metrics help tell the story of its ongoing transformation.

A self-described AI "enthusiast," Moira Gilchrist, Philip Morris International's chief global communications officer, said that audience personas the company has created to test its messages have been a valuable application of artificial intelligence.

"Those personas are absolutely fascinating," she said. "The feedback that we get really helps us to improve how we're communicating."

In a video interview with CMO Insider, Gilchrist said that PMI, whose portfolio includes smoke-free brands like Zyn and Iqos, is focusing on optimizing its owned channels, including its corporate website, for large language models.

Gilchrist, who spoke to us after the first quarter of the financial year, also said that PMI is leveraging its internal metrics to demonstrate its ongoing business evolution of replacing cigarettes with smoke-free products.

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm using AI tools for pretty much everything. I'm an absolute enthusiast, maybe an early adopter, and I can't think of a single part of my life where it has no use.

From a work perspective, we've done some pretty exciting stuff to help us understand how our audience thinks and how we can ensure that our messages actually resonate with them.

We've built what I call personas: artificial audience replicas where we can play around with our messaging to make sure that it's actually right for the audience. Those personas are absolutely fascinating. The feedback that we get really helps us to improve how we're communicating.

The company website is more relevant in the AI era

Our corporate website has become an important vehicle for us to set the record straight because large language models are accessing the information that is on there. I think it's going to help us actually rebalance the information ecosystem to make sure that the facts are told correctly. So we've put a much greater emphasis on our own channels as being a strategic communication channel.

It sounds crazy, but before why would you ever go to the PMI website? Nobody would go there, unless you were a journalist or perhaps an investor or something like that. The general public would never go there. But there's a lot of really important information there about our company's transformation, the progress we've made, and the products that we've developed and are selling in hundreds of markets around the world.

I wouldn't say it's a case of more resources. I think it's a more thoughtful approach to our own channels, working to make sure that the LLMs can pick up the information there in the best way possible.

That's an art that everybody's learning today. The days of search engine optimization are over — now it's all about generative engine optimization.

We're making sure that the LLMs can pick up the rich information that's there and serve it up when people are inquiring about us.

Internal data helps tell the transformation story

We realized a couple of years ago that we had to make a better effort to help the world understand the magnitude of the transformation we've already undergone. So we started using some of the metrics we had been using internally much more externally.

We were running a campaign every quarter around our earnings releases that highlights key metrics like the percentage of our net revenues that come from smoke-free alternatives.

When we first launched smoke-free alternatives — the first one in Japan in 2015 — 0% of our net revenues were coming from smoke-free alternatives.

Fast forward to Q1 2026. In the data that we released, 43% of our net revenues come from smoke-free alternatives. So that helps people to understand the magnitude of progress that we've made already.

We still have a long way to go, but I'm super proud of the progress we've made so far.

• A government watchdog audited DOGE's "Wall of Receipts," its database of estimated savings.
• The independent agency said some of DOGE's cost-cutting estimates were incorrect or lacked evidence.
• It found, for example, 2,500 contracts listed as terminated that were never actually terminated.

The savings claimed by the erstwhile Department of Government Efficiency don't add up, a government watchdog said Thursday.

In a new report, the Government Accountability Office, an independent congressional watchdog, said it audited the savings DOGE published on its "Wall of Receipts," an online database showing how much money DOGE says it saved.

The "Wall of Receipts" says DOGE saved an estimated $110 billion across the federal government by slashing contracts, leases, and grants.

The Government Accountability Office, however, found that some of those savings estimates were "incorrect or lack supporting evidence." It said, for instance, that it found more than 2,500 contracts listed as terminated, totaling $27.4 billion in savings, that had not actually been terminated.

The auditor said it also couldn't verify the methodology behind 96% of DOGE's claimed grant savings.

"While DOGE provided some information about estimated savings, several issues limit the transparency and reliability of these reported savings," the Government Accountability Office said in its report.

DOGE launched its "Wall of Receipts" in February 2025, less than a month after President Donald Trump established the cost-cutting agency through an executive order.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk became the face of DOGE during its initial, and ultimately temporary, run. He officially stepped back from the initiative in April 2025. DOGE fully shut down in July. The agency spearheaded the layoffs of thousands of federal employees, effectively shuttering whole departments.

Questions about how much DOGE actually saved the federal government came soon after it began its work. Last February, DOGE's "Wall of Receipts" said it had saved about $16.5 billion. It then lowered that estimate to $7.2 billion two days later. DOGE slashed another $4 billion from its estimated savings the following month.

According to the Government Accountability Office report, it's difficult to fully audit the savings because DOGE wasn't transparent about the methodologies it used to calculate them.

"Specifically, DOGE did not use its stated methodology to calculate the majority of savings associated with the contracts reported as terminated," the agency said.

The Government Accountability Office also said the "Wall of Receipts" included leases identified for termination before DOGE was formally established in January 2025.

"108 of the 264 leases identified for termination on the Wall of Receipts, about $15.3 million of the total $53.5 million in savings, were already in process for termination when DOGE was established," the auditor said.

The Government Accountability Office said the data quality issues should be "prominently displayed" on the "Wall of Receipts." A Government Accountability Office spokesperson told Business Insider that neither DOGE nor the White House has responded to its report yet.

• My dad has been making yemista, a classic Greek dish, for as long as I can remember.
• His version features tomatoes stuffed with rice, ground beef, onion, and parsley.
• My dad's recipe is delicious, easy, and perfect for summer when tomatoes are in peak season.

My dad has a Greek dish for any occasion and season.

Need a quick pasta dish? How about youvetsi. Heading to a potluck? Whip up a pan of pastitsio. Feeling sick? Avgolemono soup will cure you! And there's no better dessert than baklava.

Now it's tomato season, and my dad has a dish for that too. He loves whipping up yemista — tomatoes stuffed with a mixture of rice, ground beef, and herbs. It's light, healthy, and comforting, which is why I always request it when I visit my parents.

Here's how to make it.

Yemista was one of the many Greek dishes I grew up with.

The word yemista means "stuffed" in Greek. True to its name, the dish traditionally consists of tomatoes and bell peppers stuffed with rice and ground beef, then baked in the oven.

Yemista (also spelled gemista) was a weekly staple of my childhood. My parents immigrated to the US from Greece in the 1980s and loved making the dishes they grew up with. Their food helped me connect to my culture as a first-generation Greek American and instilled an early and enduring love for Mediterranean cooking.

My dad, an excellent home cook, has taught me how to make many classic Greek dishes. And he thinks his yemista is a perfect summer dinner.

My dad's yemista only needs a few ingredients.

To make yemista at home, you'll need:

• 8 (relatively large) tomatoes
• 1 pound of ground beef
• ½ onion, chopped
• ⅔ cup of rice (we use the medium-grain Calrose rice)
• ¾ cup of parsley
• 1 clove of garlic

Although yemista is traditionally made with both tomatoes and bell peppers, my dad has found that bell peppers in the US are thicker than in Greece — and thus trickier to cook evenly with tomatoes.

Now he usually just makes yemista with tomatoes, but the process to cook peppers is the same. Feel free to follow these instructions and try both if you desire!

We begin by chopping the onion and parsley.

This will be for our yemista filling.

Then it's time to prepare the tomatoes.

After washing your tomatoes, use a good knife and slice off the top of each one, including the stem.

Don't throw the tops away! You'll need them again before the tomatoes go into the oven.

Scoop the filling out of each tomato.

You'll want to scoop out the tomato's core and flesh, leaving enough space to add the yemista filling (as seen above). My dad recommends using an ice cream scooper to get the filling out since it's sharper, but a spoon will also work.

If you're making eight stuffed tomatoes, save the flesh of five of them in a bowl — you'll need them for the filling. My dad recommends using the leftover flesh to make a simple tomato sauce for pasta.

Pro tip: If you're doing stuffed bell peppers as well, you'll scoop them out the same way, just make sure to throw the seeds away.

There are two methods you can use to make the tomato "sauce" for the yemista filling. The easier one involves a food processor.

Using a knife, remove the hard core from each small ball of tomato filling you've scooped out. Put the remaining flesh in a food processor to finely chop everything.

If you don't have a food processor, you can achieve similar results with a grater.

Carefully slide your ball of tomato filling up and down the grater over a bowl, removing the flesh from the core. Don't try to grate the hard core — we only need the soft part of each tomato.

This can be a little trickier, especially for an inexperienced chef, so watch out for your fingers!

Your finished tomato "sauce" should look like this.

Set it aside until it's time to make the filling.

Arrange your tomato "cups" in a 9-inch-by-12-inch baking dish.

Dump any extra water from the tomato cups right into the baking dish.

Lightly salt the interior of each tomato for extra taste.

Our yemista is almost ready for the oven!

Now it's time to make the filling.

First, add a drizzle of olive oil to a large sauté pan over medium heat.

Let the olive oil heat up, then add the onion.

The onion should cook for a couple of minutes, until browned.

Now, throw in the ground beef.

Season the beef with salt and freshly ground black pepper for extra flavor.

And top it with some of the chopped parsley.

Only use half of the parsley you've prepped.

Give everything a good mix.

Use a spatula or wooden spoon to break up the ground beef, cooking it until the meat has browned.

Add the tomato "sauce" and rice once the meat has browned.

Remember you'll need ⅔ cup of rice.

Now let it simmer.

This will take around five minutes, until most of the water in the sauce has reduced.

But don't let the filling get too dry — we need some liquid to help the rice cook in the oven.

Throw in the rest of the parsley.

Give it one last mix, and voilà — your filling is done!

Using a spoon, fill each tomato cup with the beef-and-rice mixture.

Remember, the rice will expand in the oven. Make sure you don't overfill the cups.

Your filled tomato cups should look like this.

Depending on the size of your tomatoes, you might have some extra filling. Unfortunately, since it contains raw rice, there's not much you can do with it.

If you have extra tomatoes, you can always scoop them out and fill them with the extra stuffing, or adjust your recipe next time to use less ground beef.

Put the tops back on the tomatoes and add some water and olive oil.

You'll want to add half a cup of water to the pan, along with a spoonful of olive oil. Both help prevent the tomato cups from sticking to the pan.

Then bake the yemista.

Place the baking dish on the middle rack of your oven, set to 360 degrees Fahrenheit.

It takes about 1 hour and 15 minutes to 1 hour and 30 minutes to cook the yemista, depending on the oven. Check on them around the 45-minute mark.

My dad has a trick to see if the yemista is ready.

Scoop a bit of the stuffing from a tomato and taste it to see if the rice is cooked. If it still tastes chewy or crispy, the yemista needs more baking time.

After taking your yemista out of the oven, let it sit for five to 10 minutes.

This helps the yemista cool and absorb all those delicious flavors you worked so hard on.

The yemista is ready! And there are so many ways to enjoy it.

Season the stuffed tomatoes with some oregano and freshly cracked black pepper. You can also serve them topped with a yogurt-and-garlic sauce, just like my grandfather always loved.

To make the sauce, take one cup of Greek yogurt and add a minced clove of garlic. Mix everything together, then add a teaspoon or more on top of each stuffed tomato, depending on your preference.

Yemista also goes great with my dad's Greek potatoes.

Yemista is terrific all year round, but it's especially delicious in the summer.

Yemista is perfect for the summer, when tomatoes are at their peak. I love the blistered texture of the roasted tomatoes, which are juicy and subtly sweet. The combination of the rice and beef is always comforting, but the dish is colorful and healthy — a hallmark of the Mediterranean diet beloved by Greeks.

When I was a kid and my parents made yemista with both tomatoes and peppers, I never ate the pepper shells but always asked for more tomatoes. And my best friend, Nausheen, would always request it whenever she came over for dinner in high school. She still talks about it to this day.

Whenever you decide to eat it, I hope my dad's yemista brings you as much joy and comfort as it has given me through the decades.

As the Greeks would say, kali orexi!

• Mark Ruffalo wrote on X that Teslas are "not well made cars."
• The famous actor said he prefers a Kia EV.
• Ruffalo was once a big Tesla supporter, but tensions between him and CEO Elon Musk appeared in 2022.

Mark Ruffalo took a shot at Tesla.

"I mean… they are not well made cars," he wrote on X on Wednesday while sharing an Autoblog article about a preliminary NHTSA investigation into Tesla.

Instead, the actor, best-known for playing Bruce Banner in "The Avengers," said he prefers an EV from a Korean automaker that built its name on budget-friendly vehicles.

"Having tucked into a KIA EV now and having driven a Tesla," Ruffalo said. "I have to say the Kia is hands down a better car and feels luxury compared to a Tesla."

Ruffalo has a long history with electric vehicles and Tesla. In 2012, he said he had placed a deposit on a Model S and described himself as number 6,345 on the car's waiting list. He also tweeted in support of the automaker in 2014 when New York State considered banning Tesla because it sold directly to consumers.

The actor's views of Tesla CEO Elon Musk have since soured.

Tensions between Musk and Ruffalo surfaced in 2022, when the actor said Musk was destroying his credibility after taking over Twitter.

Ruffalo also campaigned for Kamala Harris in 2024, while Musk spent at least $270 million supporting Donald Trump and other Republicans during that election cycle.

NHTSA's preliminary investigation covers nearly 1.2 million Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. The agency said it received 156 complaints alleging that a front suspension component detached, and said the alleged failures could cause a "loss of vehicle directional control."

No related crashes, injuries, or deaths were known when the investigation was opened, and the probe has not resulted in a recall.

Representatives for Ruffalo, Kia, and Tesla didn't respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• You might recognize Sadie Sink as her "Stranger Things" or "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" characters.
• In real life, the 24-year-old actor is chic both on and off the red carpet.
• She often wears neutral-colored outfits, trousers with heels, and elegant gowns.

Sadie Sink is in a league of her own.

At only 24 years old, she's already made her mark on iconic TV and movie franchises. You might have seen her recently in "Spider-Man: Brand New Day," or remember her as Max Mayfield from "Stranger Things."

Her work off-screen is equally impressive. She's a Prada ambassador, a global face of Armani Beauty, and one of the chicest actors of her generation.

From movie premieres to awards shows, here's what her personal style is like.

You might recognize Sadie Sink as the tomboy Max Mayfield from "Stranger Things." In real life, she's more glamorous.

An early example of that style was the glimmering Gucci gown she wore for the 2020 SAG Awards.

Sink's black dress was sleeveless with crystal-covered straps and a matching belt, adding some sparkle to its dark tulle.

There was also a short train that mirrored her cascading hairstyle.

She incorporates high-end designer pieces into her daily looks.

Prada designed the two-piece set she wore to a Netflix event in June 2021.

The look featured a strapless bralette top with the Italian fashion house's logo pinned in the middle, and high-waisted pants that complemented her designer loafers.

She also wore hair clips shaped like the designer's triangle hardware.

Many of her looks fall into a black-and-white color scheme.

In August 2021, she wore a white blazer over a glitter-covered bralette and accessorized with a black Miu Miu clutch. She also donned white heels with black toes and silver straps.

The only pop of color in Sink's outfit came from her high-waisted, medium-wash jeans.

She sometimes elevates them with subtle designer monograms.

In November 2021, she attended a Chanel event wearing a white, long-sleeve bodysuit with Chanel's monogram printed across it and high-waisted black trousers.

Sink also carried a white Chanel purse and wore black pointed pumps.

High-waisted trousers and jeans have become a signature part of Sink's style.

She wore white, high-waisted bottoms at Taylor Swift's "All Too Well" premiere in November 2021 and paired them with a black short-sleeved crop top.

Sink also carried a white Chanel purse, wore monogram earrings, and tied her hair into a messy bun.

While promoting "Stranger Things" season four, Sink wore a lot of pantsuits.

She wore a white Prada suit for the season four premiere of the show in May 2022. It had an oversize blazer she seemingly wore as a shirt and long pants that reached the floor.

Her suits are usually in neutral shades.

In contrast to her premiere outfit, Sink wore a black suit at a Netflix event a few days later.

It included a dark blazer, a matching undershirt, and skinny trousers that she paired with pointed heels.

The same goes for the dresses she wears, no matter the occasion.

When she arrived at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, for example, Sink wore a white Alexander McQueen dress with a mock neckline and triangle cutouts at the waist.

Still, she found a way to make the outfit edgy.

Sink added a black, grommet-covered harness atop her chest and chunky black boots that poked out beneath her skirt.

Every once in a while, Sink adds some color to her wardrobe.

At the 2022 Venice Film Festival screening of "The Whale," Sink hit the red carpet in a sparkling gown with waist cutouts.

Alexander McQueen designed the sleeveless look, which had silver beading that covered its bralette top and connected to its floor-length skirt. The latter piece was made from ruffled tulle.

Her style took a daring turn in 2023.

She attended a Miu Miu dinner during the 2023 Venice Film Festival wearing one of the designer's minidresses.

The black halter piece featured statement cutouts across the chest and a micro-mini skirt.

Sink completed the outfit with white satin pumps.

Then her fashion got experimental in 2024.

During Paris Fashion Week that year, Sink attended the Ashi Studio haute couture show wearing a pink satin set.

It comprised a sleeveless crop top that tied across the chest into a bow and skinny high-waisted trousers. She also wore white square-toe pumps.

She returned to her signature glamour for the 2025 Met Gala.

Prada custom-made her black gown for the 2025 Met Gala. It was strapless and form-fitting at the top with a deep V-neckline, and full across the skirt with a wide train.

There was also sheer lace wrapped around her shoulders as a shawl.

Diamond earrings and an updo hairstyle added even more glamour to the look.

She had a stunning moment in green this year.

For the EE BAFTA Film Awards, Sink walked the red carpet in a custom Prada gown. The sage-green dress was strapless, with side cutouts and a pleated skirt.

It was the perfect color to complement her red hair, and its silhouette was emphasized with a diamond drop necklace.

• Eighty-one years after the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the city has transformed.
• The bombing immediately killed 80,000 people and destroyed 70% of the city's buildings.
• Today, Hiroshima is a bustling manufacturing hub with a population of 1.1 million people.

On August 6, 1945, during World War II, the US bomber Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb ever used in military combat on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

The Allied forces dropped a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki three days later. Less than a week later, Japan surrendered.

The device that exploded over Hiroshima destroyed about two-thirds of the city’s structures in a blinding flash of light.

At the time, Hiroshima’s population was about 300,000, the Atomic Heritage Foundation reported. The bomb immediately killed 80,000 and injured 35,000 more, and by the end of 1945, 60,000 more people had died as a result of the blast, per History.com.

Today, as other nations grow their nuclear arsenals, Hiroshima is a prosperous manufacturing hub with a population of over 1.1 million.

Here’s what the city looks like today and how the local population commemorates the lingering effects of the bombing.

On August 6, 1945, the atomic bomb nicknamed "Little Boy" flattened the city of Hiroshima.

The explosion from the 10-foot-long uranium bomb wiped out 5 square miles of the city. Almost 70% of buildings in Hiroshima were demolished in the blast, as reported on AtomicArchive.com.

The Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, a multifunctional building created in 1915 that was used for research and design consultation, was one of the few buildings left standing after the blast. It became a symbol of the devastation.

Haunting shadows were left all over the city after the blast.

The heat from the atomic blast burned lasting shadows onto walls and pavements in the shapes of the objects in its path. The most haunting Hiroshima shadows were the outlines of victims who were going about their daily lives when the bomb was dropped.

Today, some shadows are displayed at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, like one of a hand holding onto a gas tank and one of a man sitting outside a bank waiting for it to open.

Today, the Atomic Bomb Dome stands as a reminder of the city's painful history.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial, which includes the remains of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall — now called the Atomic Bomb Dome or the Genbaku Dome — is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a center for peace activism events, especially on the anniversary of the dropping of the bomb.

In 2005, Greenpeace members launched inflatable doves in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome on the day before the Hiroshima anniversary.

In the years since the blast, the city has expanded the number of peace monuments near the Dome.

In 1952, a memorial cenotaph, or empty grave, commemorating the lives lost after the bomb was built in what is now known as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The park was built around the hypocenter of the "Little Boy" explosion, in what was once the city's busy downtown district.

Also in the memorial park is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall, the Children's Peace Monument, the Peace Flame, the Gates of Peace, and the Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound, where the cremated remains of 70,000 unidentified explosion victims rest.

In 2016, Barack Obama became the first sitting US president to travel to Hiroshima. He laid a wreath during a ceremony at Peace Memorial Park with Japan's then-prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and greeted Hiroshima bombing survivors.

The site's popularity has continued to grow among visitors. Ahead of the end of its fiscal year in March 2025, the Peace Memorial Museum exceeded 2 million annual visitors for the first time, The Japan Times reported. Of these visitors, nearly a third were foreigners.

Hiroshima is now a bustling city that's home to industry giants and robust transportation links.

The routines of daily life in Hiroshima are much like those of any other large city in Japan.

The city, connected to Tokyo and other cities across the country by a network of high-speed bullet trains, is an industrial hub with over a million residents. The automobile manufacturer Mazda is headquartered in the city.

Hoping to keep growing and innovating, the city has launched a forward-looking planning process called Hiroshima 2045: City of Peace and Creativity, focused on designing a modern, distinctive urban landscape.

Aside from its history, Hiroshima offers visitors a distinctive food and drink scene.

Visitors can enjoy okonomiyaki, a savory pancake often called “Hiroshima’s soul food,” while exploring the city’s lively nightlife.

Other culinary offerings of the region highlight oysters, maple-leaf-shaped red bean cakes, and red pepper cold noodles, as reported by Japan-Guide.com.

Sports fans often flock to the city for games.

In 2024, the city of Hiroshima welcomed the Edion Peace Wing, a soccer stadium with a capacity for over 28,000 spectators and home to the professional soccer club Sanfrecce Hiroshima.

Since 2009, the Hiroshima Toyo Carp baseball team has played at Mazda Stadium, which has a capacity of about 32,000.

Both soccer and baseball are popular in the city, and sports fans often flock to the stadiums to watch their favorite teams play.

Survivors of the bombing have become advocates for disarmament and world peace.

Hibakushas, or survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, have become symbols for the disarmament efforts in world peace activism.

In 2024, the organization Nihon Hidankyo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize thanks to its work in preserving survivors' accounts and advocating for disarmament initiatives.

Previously, in 2017, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) also won the prize. Setsuko Thurlow, a hibakusha, gave a moving acceptance speech for the group in Oslo.

Every year, city residents and visitors join in remembrance ceremonies.

In Hiroshima, on August 6, bells ring at 8:15 a.m. — the exact moment the bomb dropped.

The bells signify the beginning of a day of remembrance ceremonies that culminate with the hauntingly beautiful Toro Nagashi festival, where hundreds of lanterns are floated down the Motoyasu River in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome.

The lanterns are a tribute to those who perished in the bombing and an assurance that Hiroshima and the world will never forget what happened there on August 6, 1945.

A version of this story was originally published in July 2018 and was most recently updated in August 2026.

• OpenAI slipped a dig about Apple struggling in the AI talent wars into a new court filing.
• Big Tech and startup companies have been furiously competing to hire top engineers.
• Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in July, accusing the ChatGPT maker of stealing trade secrets.

OpenAI is turning up the sass on Apple.

The ChatGPT maker said in a court filing this week that Apple's lawsuit accusing it of stealing trade secrets amounted to sour grapes after it fell behind in the AI talent war.

"Apple should not be permitted to use a baseless and pretextual lawsuit to make up for its shortcomings in the market for talent and retaining its employees," OpenAI said in the filing, in which it asks a judge to dismiss Apple's suit.

Big Tech companies have fought each other for talent over the last couple of years, offering staggering wages and other benefits in efforts to poach a limited pool of top engineers from rivals.

Meta, for example, has managed to steal some of OpenAI's top researchers. It lured Shengjia Zhao, the cocreator of ChatGPT, last year. Meta also hired away Alexandr Wang to lead its superintelligence team by buying the company he started, Scale AI, for $15 billion.

In its lawsuit, Apple said the total number of Apple alums now working at OpenAI exceeds 400.

Apple sued OpenAI in July, alleging the ChatGPT maker benefited from trade secrets stolen by former Apple employees hired away by OpenAI. The lawsuit alleges, among other things, that Chang Liu, a veteran Apple engineer, improperly retained and accessed confidential company information after leaving for the AI lab in January.

In OpenAI's latest filing, the company said it's common practice to recruit top talent from Apple and other companies.

"OpenAI does have an interest in hiring the best engineers, inventors, developers and creators — many of whom have decided to leave Apple and to come to OpenAI, attracted by the innovative and exciting work the company is doing," the AI startup said in the filing.

An Apple spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement Thursday that "significant evidence has emerged suggesting individuals employed by OpenAI wrongfully took Apple's secret and confidential information regarding our unreleased technologies."

Apple has not yet filed a response in court to OpenAI's filing, and a judge has not ruled on the request for a dismissal. In a blog post on Monday, OpenAI said, "We do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets."

• Cable TV is going away. But it's still here now, and many cable TV channels still make money.
• Versant, a group of cable channels including MS NOW and CNBC, wants to keep operating those channels — while building new, cable-free businesses.
• It's also taking some of the money those channels make and handing it directly to shareholders — who seem to like that strategy.

What do you do if you're a big media company that owns a bunch of cable TV networks?

In many cases, you try to get rid of them. Just this week, Disney dumped its half-ownership of A&E and other networks for $1.2 billion,

Versant CEO Mark Lazarus doesn't have that option: The bulk of his company is a collection of cable networks, spun out of Comcast earlier this year. Has to run them, not sell them.

So Lazarus has to do three things at once: Manage his declining cable business, use the cash it still generates to build new businesses for a post-cable era, and write checks to shareholders to keep them interested while he does it.

We got a progress report Thursday, and it highlights both the challenge and potential upside of what Lazarus is doing.

Start with the old TV business: It is declining, as expected. Versant's distribution revenue fell 6.3% from a year ago, mostly because it has fewer cable subscribers. Advertising is also down, but just barely, in large part because individual cable Versant channels, like CNBC and MS NOW, are still attracting eyeballs. And the company raised its full-year revenue and profit forecasts.

That matters because Lazarus doesn't need cable to start growing again. He needs its decline to be gradual enough that the company can keep extracting cash from it.

Meanwhile, Versant's non-cable TV businesses are growing. If you strip out the performance of SportsEngine, a youth sports business the company sold earlier this year, its "platforms" business — which includes Fandango, the movie ticketing company, and GolfNow, which sells tee times — grew 9.3%. It is also building up digital subscription businesses that tie into its TV properties, like an MS NOW service launching this fall.

Even in the best-case scenario, none of that is going to replace the decline in Versant's core business in the near future. But it is a sign of where the company wants to go.

And in the very near-term, Versant has another plan to keep investors happy: Hand them cash.

The company says it will generate up to $1.2 billion in free cash flow this year, which gives it the ability to pay quarterly dividends, and to buy back stock: Versant had already bought back $100 million worth of its shares this spring, and on Thursday, it told Wall Street it would buy back another $100 million.

Which is the most likely reason Versant stock shot up nearly 10% after the company's announcement Thursday morning. Investors may believe that MS NOW has plenty of life left in it, or that Fandango can benefit from Hollywood's kind-of revival. But they can also benefit from the current business, even if it has a sell-by date.

That's the appeal of Versant's pitch: Lazarus doesn't have to convince investors that he can make cable grow again, or that he has already built its replacement. But he does have to show that the old business can keep producing cash. And that investors can get their hands on some of it, no matter what happens in the long term.

• I visited chains Culver's, Freddy's, and Shake Shack in search of the best frozen custard.
• Freddy's seemed to have solid prices, and Shake Shack's portion size felt generous.
• In the end, Culver's left me most impressed with its frozen-custard desserts.

Nothing beats a sip, spoon, or bite of anything cold on a hot summer day — especially frozen custard.

Best described as ice cream's rich cousin, frozen custard is made with egg yolks, which are meant to give it a thick, dense consistency.

Culver's, Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers, and Shake Shack are all known for their custard, including blended concoctions, and I was curious which had the best. There was only one way to find out.

I spent the same Wednesday night at all three chains, ordering a plain vanilla custard and (when possible) an Oreo-themed custard concrete. To keep things fair, I opted for the smallest size of each.

Here's how they measured up in taste, value, and price.

I started at Culver's, a Midwest staple.

Culver's is a beloved Midwest staple based in Wisconsin.

What started as a regional specialty operates over 1,000 locations across 26 states, though Midwesterners (myself included) still claim it as their own. I grew up in Illinois just five minutes from a Culver's.

The chain is known for its ButterBurgers, and of course, its custard.

Culver's seemed moderately busy for a weeknight.

The first thing I noticed when I arrived at my local Culver's was a partially full parking lot and kids peeping at me from the windows.

Diners occupied about six tables, and judging by appearances, a significant portion were under the age of 10.

As much as I enjoyed the family vibe, the restaurant itself wasn't anything special. I kind of felt like I was in a healthcare setting, thanks to the plain gray tables, generic carpet, and fluorescent lighting.

Freddy's is also a Midwest staple, but it's pretty new to me.

Another Midwest favorite, Freddy's began in Kansas and has since expanded to 37 states and Canada. It has over 500 stores, including a few near my current home in Indiana.

As the name suggests, Freddy's is famous for its signature steakburgers and frozen custard. I'd only ever been here one other time, and it was quite recently.

Freddy's seemed much busier than Culver's.

A long line awaited me at Freddy's. It stretched not quite to the door, but halfway there.

Whereas kids dominated Culver's, Freddy's seemed to have a much older clientele. This might be because of its senior meals, which launched earlier this year and offer discounts to the over-55 crowd.

The inside looked notably cute, with a retro red-and-white theme that made it feel like a vintage diner.

This was my first time at a Shake Shack.

Shake Shack is based in New York, where it started as a hot-dog cart in Madison Square Park.

It operates over 350 restaurants in the United States and abroad, yet somehow, I'd never been. From what I've heard, Shake Shack has pretty tasty burgers and custard-based treats.

This Shake Shack had a chic, modern vibe.

Unlike Culver's and Freddy's, both a few miles from downtown Indianapolis, Shake Shack had a location in the heart of the city.

The interior still seemed chic, modern, and industrial, with colorful wall murals, exposed-pipe ceilings, and shiny floors that appeared to be concrete.

Much to my surprise, only a few of the tables were in use during my visit. I also liked the convenient self-ordering kiosk.

Culver's custard was super customizable.

With Culver's create-your-own option, I could choose a vanilla or chocolate custard base, either in a dish or as a Concrete Mixer, and add toppings.

For those wondering, a Concrete Mixer is just Culver's trademarked version of a custard concrete — a frozen custard with toppings blended in.

Per my plan, I ordered the smallest-size dish of vanilla custard ($3.39) and a vanilla-based Concrete Mixer with Oreo pieces ($4.59). The concrete included two free mix-ins, but I only opted for Oreos.

I ordered the same thing at Freddy's.

The large menu screens on televisions were out of service when I arrived, but luckily, there were paper menus.

I already knew what I wanted, anyway: a small dish of vanilla custard ($3.39) and an Oreo-themed custard concrete ($4.69).

Like Culver's, Freddy's concrete custard had a create-your-own option, which included one free mix-in. Mine, of course, was Oreos.

Unfortunately, Shake Shack didn't have custard concretes on the menu.

Since Shake Shack is partially known for its custard, I expected to find custard concretes. However, they weren't available to order when I asked.

Turns out this fan-favorite specialty dessert was removed from US menus in 2020.

I was disappointed I didn't get to taste one, especially after reading about the chain's past unique mix-ins, like cereal and, at one point, bits of regional local pies.

Without the option for a concrete, I just ordered a small vanilla custard ($4.49).

Culver's vanilla custard reminded me of soft-serve, but better.

Light in color and dense in texture, the dessert seemed like a thicker version of soft-serve ice cream. It had a velvety mouthfeel and sweet, vanilla-bean-like flavor. The plain vanilla felt anything but plain.

That said, I was incredibly disappointed in the portion. I know I ordered the smallest size, but the 8-ounce cup arrived barely half full.

I liked the flavor of Freddy's custard, but not the texture.

For those seeking a classic vanilla flavor, Freddy's delivered. It was tasty and decadent yet not overpowering.

However, the custard itself had a drippy consistency in the bowl and a grainy one in my mouth. Far from smooth, it lacked what defined custard: a luscious, full-bodied texture.

Again, I was disappointed in the portion I was served. This one seemed even more scant than Culver's, and my 8-ounce cup had plenty of room left in it.

In terms of taste and portion size, Shake Shack's custard impressed me.

Shake Shack's vanilla custard wasn't overly sweet, but it still had a strong vanilla taste, and I appreciated the creamy texture. It didn't feel too heavy, either.

Shake Shack's small custard seemed like a great value. My portion size felt massive compared to the other chains, to the point where I wondered if the staff had given me extra by mistake.

Later, a Shake Shack spokesperson told BI that, in the US, its custard comes in a single scoop (5 ounces) or a double scoop (8 ounces).

Although I ordered a small, and that's what I was charged for, I felt like I was served more than 5 ounces. It looked like maybe I'd been given two scoops, too.

Culver's Concrete Mixer was worth the hype.

When my Concrete Mixer arrived looking as thick as ever, I knew I was in for a treat.

The concrete custard was so firm that I could flip the cup like a Dairy Queen Blizzard without anything spilling out — and the texture mirrored it, too. It was even silkier than Culver's plain vanilla custard.

I didn't expect to find substantial chunks of Oreos, either, yet the concrete was peppered with large and small bits that fell apart in my mouth. The Concrete Mixer checked every box and more.

Freddy's concrete custard had a solid taste, but a too-soft texture.

Similar to its plain vanilla custard, Freddy's Oreo-themed concrete had a nice vanilla flavor. And like Culver's, it had real cookie pieces.

But the custard itself didn't seem firm enough to me. Soft and liquidy, it mimicked a shake rather than a concrete.

As I ate it with a spoon, I wondered if I could drink it with a straw. (Later, I tested it and confirmed that I could.)

Comparing the prices and value of the custards was surprisingly tricky.

I was unable to find the portion sizes for the custards and concretes at each chain on the menu or online — eventually, I just reached out to local stores and company headquarters directly to confirm.

As I mentioned, my small vanilla custards at Freddy's and Culver's should have been served in 8-ounce dishes, and my Shake Shack custard should have been a 5-ounce single scoop.

I paid $3.39 for a small vanilla custard at Culver's and Freddy's. Shake Shack's version cost me $4.49 — $1.10 more — but to be fair, my custard portion seemed almost double the size … even though, on paper, it was supposed to be smaller.

In terms of custard concretes, Freddy's had a slight price advantage.

At Culver's, my small 8-ounce Concrete Mixer came to $4.59, or $0.57 per ounce. Freddy's small 10-ounce concrete mixer cost $4.69, or $0.47 per ounce.

All in all, though, prices felt pretty comparable and fair across the board.

Two chains were almost tied for best plain vanilla custard, but neither was my favorite dessert I tasted.

In terms of plain vanilla custard, it was a toss-up between Culver's and Shake Shack.

In my opinion, Shake Shack dominated in the value department, considering the generous portion I received (though I'd have to try ordering it again to see whether it was just my lucky day).

For the best taste and texture, however, I'd still recommend Culver's plain vanilla custard. It had the densest, most unique consistency and the sweetest flavor.

Still, there's only one dessert I tried that really blew me away …

In the end, Culver's Concrete Mixer was my favorite custard dessert by a landslide.

Out of the desserts I tried, Culver's Concrete Mixer was the only one I'd order again.

It dominated in taste and value, and even though it cost a smidge more per ounce than Freddy's, I'd gladly pay a little extra.

Plus, I liked the 8-ounce size, especially for such a rich treat. Any more would have been too much of a good thing — for me, anyway.

Business Insider reached out to Freddy's, Shake Shack, and Cuver's for comment.

• The startup Gravity thinks AI ads will become the world's biggest ad channel.
• It offers tools for buying ads on AI platforms and helps AI developers monetize through ads.
• Gravity just raised a Series A funding round as it begins exploring "agent-to-agent" ads.

Zach Oldham, cofounder of the adtech startup Gravity, thinks AI ads will eventually become the world's largest advertising channel.

His company just secured fresh funds to pursue the opportunity he sees in both ads designed to appeal to humans on AI platforms and those targeted at AI bots themselves.

Gravity exclusively told CMO Insider it raised a $30.5 million Series A funding round, co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Committed Capital. It brings the startup's total funding to $38.5 million.

Gravity offers a full-stack ad platform: a demand-side platform that helps advertisers place ads within AI chatbots and to agents, a supply-side platform that helps developers of AI applications monetize through ads, and an exchange that connects the two. It also offers tools to help advertisers measure campaign performance and create ads themselves.

The startup places text-based ads within AI chatbots and assistants, including ChatGPT, Codebuff, EcoGPT, Daimon, Magneta, Runable, and CTO.new. Its advertiser clients have included Best Buy, Target, Vercel, and MongoDB.

Gravity is also testing an "agent-to-agent" ad product that human users don't see. Advertisers provide Gravity with their product catalog, including up-to-date features and current promotions.

"Every time the agent is looking for shoes, it's given a list of all the different advertisers we have that are selling shoes," Oldham said. "It's got detailed descriptions and information about them, and it helps enrich the buying decision that way."

Down the road, Gravity plans to integrate direct payment solutions so an agent can make a purchase once the user gives the go-ahead.

Oldham said he hopes that increasing the prevalence of ads within large language models will encourage more AI platforms to make their services free.

Ad giant WPP Media recently estimated that marketers will spend $100 billion on ads within generative AI search globally by 2030. In April, The Information reported that OpenAI forecast that its ad business alone would hit the $100 billion milestone by 2030.

"I think that even OpenAI is off on their projections," Oldham said.

"It is much larger than they realize," he added, referring to the potential size of the AI ad market.

Gravity is a small player in a big market. Google runs the world's biggest advertising business. OpenAI has already signed up multiple adtech partners, including Adobe, StackAdapt, and Criteo. Plenty of other large adtech players are also hoping to edge in on the nascent space.

Oldham said Gravity's competitive advantage is its focus on the AI-native ad space and that it works with both buyers and sellers of this nascent ad type.

"Because we're owning the full stack, we benefit from true network effects as we scale," Oldham said. "Our network gets smarter every day that goes by."

• I travel a lot for work, but my husband only gets three weeks of vacation per calendar year.
• Traveling solo allows me to meet my own needs and come home to be a better partner.
• We've both made adjustments to make this lifestyle work well for us and our relationship.

One week after my first date with my now-husband, I left for a five-week trip to Europe. He found out right off the bat that travel was a big part of who I am.

We took many weekend trips together, but a few years after we got married, I started a travel media company and could suddenly work from anywhere.

My husband works a typical 9-to-5 job as a project manager in the construction industry. He gets three weeks of vacation per year, and since I'm traveling at least once per month, he can't always go with me.

While this lifestyle has its own challenges, there have been some unexpected benefits to our relationship.

Filling my cup helps me show up as a better spouse

You've probably heard the saying, "You can't pour from an empty cup." Well, travel fills my cup as nothing else does. As long as I don't overcommit my travel schedule, which is a whole other story.

I come home from a trip excited, with many stories to tell, and ready to tackle the daily grind of home routines. Both my husband's and my top love language is acts of service, so running my own business in an industry that I love gives me the flexibility and desire to show up in ways that matter to our relationship.

Sometimes that looks like happily taking care of regular chores, from cooking and cleaning to making sure the coffee is ready each morning. Other times, it's something special like taking days off in December to hand-make Christmas gifts for his family.

Our communication skills had to develop quickly

Once I started traveling solo often, we realized that our communication styles are pretty different, and we had to make some compromises.

Communication wasn't just important for solo travel safety, but also for feeling connected, especially when I started taking extended trips that could last anywhere from two to five weeks.

He was the type who never looked at his phone and left messages unanswered for days, while I liked to check in at least a few times a day.

I learned to consolidate messages or save everything for a daily phone call, while he learned that yes, it is important to acknowledge and respond to text messages from your wife.

We plan intentional time together when I'm home

I recognize this is easier since we don't have kids, but while I'm home, I try to stick to planning one date night per week.

These don't have to be expensive. For us, they're often things like visiting our local secondhand bookstore or having a picnic at our nearby state park. It's about making sure we're getting enough quality time together, which is our second most important love language.

Time to pursue separate interests makes both of us happy

While we do enjoy a lot of the same activities, there are some things that my husband is absolutely not interested in that I want to do, and vice versa.

I love waking up to views of the water, while my husband has no interest in the beach unless he's fishing. He could spend hours reading every word in a museum, while I'm good with hitting the highlights and moving on.

I try to visit places he wouldn't enjoy on my solo trips and save the places that we both want to go for trips we can take together.

Obviously, this lifestyle isn't for everyone, and our relationship isn't perfect by any means, but it works for us, and that's what matters.

• Enola Gay, a B-29 bomber, dropped the "Little Boy" atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
• The plane is on display at the National Air and Space Museum's second, larger location in Virginia.
• The exhibit has been the subject of controversy as interest groups have debated the plane's legacy.

The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, features over 200 aircraft and spacecraft on display, but Enola Gay remains one of the most prominent — and controversial — objects in its collection.

The Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, which dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima during World War II, is so large that it couldn't fit into the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's flagship location on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

Instead, Enola Gay is displayed about 30 miles away at the museum's larger second location, the Udvar-Hazy Center.

Exhibiting Enola Gay sparked intense debate in the 1990s when it was first displayed, as interest groups disputed how the plane's legacy and the role of the atomic bomb in World War II should be portrayed.

As the world marks the 81st anniversary of the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, here's a closer look at the historic aircraft.

Enola Gay dropped the first-ever atomic bomb used in warfare on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

A second "Fat Man" atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, by another Boeing B-29 Superfortress named Bockscar, which is on display at the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.

Japan's emperor announced the nation's surrender in a radio address six days later, on August 15.

The plane was named after pilot Paul Tibbets' mother, Enola Gay Tibbets.

Tibbets commanded the Army Air Forces' 509th Composite Group, which was responsible for deploying nuclear weapons. The hand-picked unit trained at an airfield in Wendover, Utah.

The "Little Boy" atomic bomb deployed by Enola Gay weighed 9,700 pounds.

To make the B-29 aircraft capable of carrying the atomic bomb, all of its protective and defensive armament, except for the 50-caliber tail guns, were removed to get rid of excess weight. It was also left unpainted, saving the 850 pounds that the paint would have added.

The bomb exploded 1,900 feet above Hiroshima with devastating effects.

Roughly 70,000 people died from the effects of the initial blast, heat, and radiation from the bombing of Hiroshima, and the death toll over five years may have exceeded 200,000 people due to the aftereffects, according to the US Department of Energy's Office of History and Heritage Resources.

Japan and anti-nuclear weapons scientists released a higher estimate in the 1970s, counting 140,000 deaths at Hiroshima.

The Enola Gay was rattled by shockwaves from the explosion even though it had already flown 11.5 miles away.

Enola Gay spent decades in storage before the Smithsonian began restoration work on the bomber in 1984.

It took museum staff 300,000 hours to reassemble and restore Enola Gay, with 12 truckloads to transport all its parts.

Enola Gay first went on display in 1995, and the historical narratives around the use of the atomic bomb were fiercely debated.

In 1995, the fuselage and other parts of the Enola Gay were displayed at the National Air and Space Museum's flagship location in Washington, DC, as part of an exhibit tied to the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.

The script of the exhibit was rewritten several times as various interest groups debated how it was presented and how the decision to drop the bomb was framed, according to the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Veterans' groups pushed for the exhibit to emphasize Japanese aggression and present the narrative that dropping the atomic bomb saved lives by ending the war. Anti-war activists opposed having the exhibit justify the use of the bomb and sought to highlight its victims by protesting with alternative exhibits on the sidewalk outside the museum.

Enola Gay went on permanent display at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in 2003.

Weighing 137,500 pounds with a wingspan of 141 feet, the fully assembled plane is too large for the National Air and Space Museum's National Mall location, which features 161,145 square feet of exhibit space.

The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, offers more room with 340,000 square feet of exhibit space.

The Udvar-Hazy Center features an elevated walkway, allowing visitors to view the plane from above as well as on the ground.

The Enola Gay is among the museum's collection of 30 World War II-era American military aircraft, including the Northrop P-61C Black Widow, the first US aircraft designed for night combat.

The Enola Gay stands out as one of the museum's most historically significant aircraft.

81 years after the bombing of Hiroshima, the Enola Gay remains not just a World War II artifact, but a symbol of a turning point that ushered the world into the nuclear age.

After years of debate over how to present the aircraft, the permanent exhibition takes a minimalist approach, leaving visitors to decide how to understand its legacy.

Editor's Note: This story was originally published in February 2026 and updated in August 2026.

• Pally is an AI personal assistant that lives directly in your text messages.
• The startup has raised $5.2 million and launched its current product in June.
• Personal assistants are a buzzy category in the broader consumer AI umbrella — and it's heating up.

It's hard to be a good texter these days.

Between the default texting services and inboxes galore — WhatsApp, Instagram, email, you name it — messages are bound to fall through the cracks.

Pally, a Y-Combinator startup that launched in 2025, thinks it can help people manage their texts and tasks with an AI-powered personal assistant.

"Relationships are the single most important thing in our lives," Pally cofounder Haz Hubble told Business Insider. "We want to use technology to be better at managing those relationships, rather than having technology come in and replace these relationships."

The startup has raised $5.2 million since wrapping up its YC stint last summer, Business Insider can exclusively reveal. Pally was valued at $30 million, according to the company. The funding was led by Cyber Fund and Y Combinator and included other venture capital firms such as Pioneer Fund, Founders Inc, and 468 Capital, as well as angel investors.

Pally is competing in a crowded market for AI assistants. According to YC's website, the incubator has backed over 140 startups in this category. Pally is betting on text messaging as the way to reach users and launched its latest iteration in June.

"You should go where your users are," Hubble said. "Put as little amount of friction between your product or the 'wow' moment and your user discovering it as possible."

Starting out is simple: Text the number for Pally.

Then, an AI-generated response will appear, introducing itself as Pally. The exchange is first in all lowercase, a decision on Pally's end because it "feels more human," Hubble said. Pally will adapt to the person's own style, though. If they're using Gen Z slang or shorthand, Pally will mirror that.

Pally can sync with several platforms, from email servers like Gmail and Outlook to third-party apps like Slack, the AI notetaker Granola, and Notion. Users, however, need to authorize access and can do so via the links the Pally assistant sends. To connect to Gmail, for instance, Pally uses a tool called Composio to connect the accounts. For iMessage, Pally has a separate desktop app for Macs that syncs messages.

Users also get a dashboard login on Pally's website, where they can manage access to those accounts, assign Pally tasks, manually edit contacts, or see what Pally has saved about them. Pally encrypts the information as it travels between destinations, Hubble said. The startup doesn't sell or train models on the data, either, he added.

After giving Pally access, it can book flights, maintain inboxes, respond to messages, and book restaurant reservations, Hubble said.

Under the hood, Pally uses AI platforms such as Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's ChatGPT, and open-source models like Kimi K3 and GLM 5.2.

As a company, Pally has outsourced its engineering tasks to Claude Code, too, spending about $20,000 a month on Fable, one of Anthropic's coding models. Hubble compared the model to a "staff level engineer" working 24/7.

While Pally had previously hired staff and part-time interns, it trimmed its team to just Hubble and his cofounder, Wyatt Lansford.

With its funding, Pally plans to focus on growth and marketing, including hiring another team member, since the work requires a "human touch," Hubble said.

The AI assistant wars

Pally is one of many startups building tools to bring AI to the masses with consumer-facing products.

There are wearables, like Friend AI, pitching hardware as an AI companion that guides real people through life.

Then there's the deluge of AI personal assistants.

Town AI, for instance, raised a $55 million Series A this year from firms like A16z and Forerunner. Poke, meanwhile, another assistant that lives in text messages, was recently acquired by AI agent company Cognition. Others are building more social versions of AI personal assistants, like Series, which is building a professional networking tool that lives in text messages.

Startups like Pally are battling it out among themselves and against the bigger players. There are various assistant tools coming from larger companies like Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

Hubble believes that as a smaller, consumer-focused company, Pally can provide a more personalized experience for users.

The AI assistant business runs primarily on users' willingness to pay. Pally has a free version and a "pro" tier that costs about $25 a month, which lets users sync more apps. Its higher tier, at $200 a month, provides an assistant with its own email address and phone number.

"People are ready to spend money on this when they never were four years ago," Hubble said.

• Near the end of World War II, Germany surrendered to the Allies, but Japan refused.
• To end the war quickly, President Truman's government decided to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
• On August 6, the atomic bomb "Little Boy" was dropped, killing an estimated 80,000 people.

On August 6, 1945, a 10-foot-long uranium bomb that weighed 9,788 pounds called "Little Boy" was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. 

The explosion wiped out 5 square miles of the city, including 62,000 buildings. As many as 80,000 people are estimated to have been killed instantly.

The explosion was so powerful that people were vaporized, leaving nothing behind except for their "nuclear shadow."

The attack on Hiroshima has gone down as one of the deadliest days in Japanese history and ushered in the nuclear age. In the years since, there has been debate around whether the attacks were necessary to end the war.

Eighty-one years since the bombing, here's a look at why the US government dropped the bomb, how the mission unfolded, and the devastating impact it had on Hiroshima.

On May 7, 1945, after World War II had been fought for almost six years, Germany surrendered to the Allies, but Japan refused.

Germany surrendered to the Allies — including Britain, China, the Soviet Union, and the US — but instead of following suit, Japan continued to fight. They made it clear they would fight until the bitter end.

At the same time, Allies' casualties grew worse.

Between April and July, the Japanese killed as many as half of the total casualties they had inflicted over the previous three years of the war, according to History.com.

In April, President Harry Truman was sworn in and learned about the Manhattan Project.

Until then, he had not known about the work being done by J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team on the Manhattan Project to build an atomic weapon. But with Japan's refusal to surrender, he soon came around to the idea of using it.

Some generals argued that the war should have ended with a final invasion of Japan, but they also advised that it could result in the deaths of up to 1 million US troops. 

Among other reasons, Truman didn't want more US soldiers to die, so he chose to proceed with the atomic bomb if Japan wouldn't surrender, Al Jazeera reported.

Many military leaders believed the atomic bomb was unnecessary and that Japan would surrender without the use of atomic bombs.

But a committee of advisors, led by the Secretary of War Henry Stimson, argued that there was a consensus supporting the bomb and that it needed to be dropped to end the war.

On July 16, a test atomic bomb was successfully detonated in New Mexico. Less than a fortnight later, Truman issued his warning to Japan.

On July 26, Truman made the Potsdam Declaration. He told Japan to unconditionally surrender or face "prompt and utter destruction."

Japan ignored Truman's demand.

US intelligence also showed that Japan, which had 2.5 million troops, was preparing for an American invasion. 

Japan had readied thousands of suicide planes and more than 560,000 soldiers for an expected US invasion. Reports also showed that Japan planned on executing all US prisoners as soon as US armed forces landed in Japan, according to the National WWII Museum.

The plan to use the atomic bomb proceeded.

A crew of 12 was assembled on a US military base on Tinian, an island in the Northern Marianas in the Pacific. Colonel Paul Tibbets was named pilot, and Captain Robert Lewis was his co-pilot, per The New York Times.

Captain William Parsons was the weaponeer, and Second Lieutenant Morris Jeppson was the electronic test officer, according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.

On August 5, the crew was briefed about their mission. Hiroshima, which had an active military base, had been chosen for bombing.

Tibbets told the crew they would be dropping bombs on Hiroshima, a city of about 350,000 people, but he didn't tell them they would be dropping an atomic bomb.

The atomic bomb was called "Little Boy."

It was a 10-foot-long uranium bomb that weighed 9,788 pounds.

On August 5, Little Boy was loaded onto an American B-29 bomber Tibbets had called "Enola Gay" after his mother.

It was confirmed that the drop would take place the next day.

At 12:15 a.m. on August 6, the crew listened to a prayer composed for the occasion.

At the time, there was no certainty that the flight would survive the explosion.

At 2:45 a.m., Enola Gay and two other B-29 observation bombers took off.

Because Enola Gay's cargo was so heavy, it required the entire 2-mile runway to take off.

Three weather planes also left Tinian. Each one flew to a potential target city — Hiroshima, Kokura, and Nagasaki — to check if weather conditions would permit a bomb drop.

At 3 a.m., Parsons and Jeppson began to arm Little Boy. The crew would soon learn they were carrying the world's first atomic bomb.

They inserted gunpowder and a detonator into the bomb.

At 7:15 a.m., they removed the safety devices and inserted arming devices. Little Boy was ready to be deployed.

At 7:30 a.m., Tibbets told his crew, "We are carrying the world's first atomic bomb."

At 8:24 a.m., the weather plane over Hiroshima relayed that it was fine to proceed.

Tibbets told his crew it had been confirmed. He said, "It's Hiroshima."

The plan was to drop the bomb on the Aioi Bridge, a T-shaped bridge that Tibbet had earlier said was, "the most perfect aiming AP (aim point) I've seen in this whole damn war."

At 8:15 a.m. local time, Little Boy, the world's first atomic bomb used in battle, was dropped from 31,060 feet in the sky.

It fell nearly 6 miles in 43 seconds before exploding 1,900 feet from the ground, the BBC reported.

Witnesses recalled a flash of blinding light before a giant mushroom-shaped cloud filled the sky. 

The fireball grew 900 feet in diameter. The power of the blast was the equivalent of 12-15,000 tons of TNT. 

Tibbets pulled a sharp 155-degree turn as soon as the bomb was dropped, knowing there was less than 45 seconds to get away. 

By the time the bomb exploded, Enola Gay was 11.5 miles away.

The mushroom cloud reached about 20,000 feet into the sky.

At the core of the fireball, the temperature was more than 1 million degrees Celsius, while the surface reached as high as 4,000 degrees Celsius, according to Hiroshima City.

Tibbets later wrote about the explosion in his memoir, describing the mushroom cloud as "boiling upward like something terribly alive," The New York Times wrote in his obituary.

At the time, it was the most destructive bomb used in the history of war, instantly wiping out 5 square miles of Hiroshima.

The explosion wiped out 62,000 buildings. As many as 80,000 people are estimated to have been killed instantly.

The precise number of fatalities is not known, but the City of Hiroshima reported an estimated 140,000 people died by the end of 1945 from the effects of the explosion, including radiation poisoning and burn wounds.

According to the US Department of Energy's Manhattan Project history, the final death count over the next five years was almost 200,000.

The explosion was so devastating that some people were vaporized, leaving nothing behind except for their "nuclear shadow."

These shadows were actually what the surfaces looked like before the blast, but they appeared dark compared to everything else bleached by the atomic heat, LiveScience reported.

Roof tiles were fused by the heat, while bronze and granite statues melted away.

Across the city, fires began to spread, causing even more damage.

After the explosion, the Enola Gay circled the city three times before turning back toward the base.

It wasn't until they were 368 miles from the city that they could no longer see the mushroom cloud, AHF reported.

At 2.58 p.m., the Enola Gay landed back on Tinian. The mission had taken about 12 hours.

While it was not enough to end the war, it had changed the world.

Hours later, Truman told Japanese leaders that if they did not "now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this Earth."

Sixteen hours after the bomb, he told them the US was now "prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city."

"We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war," he said.

Three days after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a second, more powerful bomb known as the "Fat Man" was dropped on Nagasaki.

It killed an estimated 70,000 people, including those who later succumbed to the effects of the bomb, by the end of 1945, PBS reported.

On August 14, 1945, Japan surrendered.

The Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender via a recorded radio message the following day.

On September 2, 1945, Japanese representatives formally signed the Instrument of Surrender, officially bringing the war to an end.

Sources for this story included AHF, NationalWW2Museum, BBC, History.com, Al Jazeera, Hiroshima City, LiveScience, The New York Times, PBS, and The History Press.

Editor's note: The story was first published in August 2023 and most recently updated in August 2026.

• I tried the folded-egg cooking method to see if I could upgrade my breakfast sandwiches and toast.
• To make these, I used a glug of heavy cream, a spatula, a nonstick skillet, and a pat of butter.
• The folded egg didn't cook super evenly, but it was fluffy and held together very well.

As someone who wakes up before 5 a.m. each day, I rely on eggs for a cheap and versatile breakfast that I can make in a flash while my coffee steeps.

I especially enjoy them on toast or in a breakfast sandwich, which I usually make with fried eggs, which hold up well. Although I prefer the taste and texture of scrambled eggs, they are too messy to eat this way without a fork.

So, I was intrigued when I came across The Kitchn's tutorial for folded eggs, described as "luxuriously soft and creamy" with the "hold-togetherness of an omelet."

If they really were fluffy and rich without falling apart, folded eggs sounded like the best of both worlds; like they could be the perfect upgrade to my usual breakfasts.

So, I gave this cooking method a try.

These folded eggs didn't require many ingredients

I started by whisking together two eggs with salt, pepper, and a "generous glug" — about 2 tablespoons — of heavy cream. The recipe notes that half-and-half can also work in a pinch.

Then, I added a pat of butter to a pan over medium heat.

Once the butter had melted and started to sizzle, I poured in the egg mixture and let it sit for 20 seconds, using a rubber spatula to gently push and pull the edges.

As parts of the egg cooked and were moved away, more poured in to fill the spot.

This process was very simple and took about five minutes. But despite how I constantly folded it, the egg mix was unevenly cooked — some parts of it started to brown while others were still liquid.

Still, I was impressed by how well these eggs held together

The folded eggs were very light and tasted like a scramble, with a much fluffier and less rubbery texture — even in the overcooked parts. 

I've tried other methods that whip up really soft eggs, but the results are usually far too wet for me to stomach. This folded egg was thoroughly cooked, albeit a little overdone in some spots, without being dry.

Despite their soft bite, they didn't fall apart, aside from the two pieces that broke off when I moved the eggs from the pan to my dish. 

I ate this batch on toast and was impressed when not a single piece of fluffy egg fell onto my plate. This totally beat eating scrambled eggs on toast, where every bite is a mess.

I plan to use folded eggs in future breakfasts

Although the folded eggs didn't cook evenly, I still preferred them to my typical scramble because they held up so well without being too dry. These also beat fried eggs, which stay together on sandwiches and toast, but lack the fluffier texture I enjoy.

This new method is especially well-suited for breakfast sandwiches, so I definitely plan to use it again for that purpose.

I also like that these took hardly any time at all to cook — I could toast my bread, make my coffee, and have my eggs ready to go in about five or six minutes.

And best of all, they didn't fall apart when added to bread, so I plan to make my breakfast this way more often, especially on busy weekday mornings. 

This story was originally published on March 27, 2023, and most recently updated on August 6, 2026.

• Chamath Palihapitiya is at the center of Silicon Valley's latest meme obsession.
• An image of the investor wearing a chunky white turtleneck during a podcast has gone viral on X.
• Users turned him into "Dune" sandworms and famous paintings, while Elon Musk praised his style.

Silicon Valley has found its joke of the summer and, like the enormous white sweater at the center of it, it just keeps growing.

An image of Chamath Palihapitiya, the founder of venture fund Social Capital, wearing a chunky white turtleneck, has taken over tech circles on X.

The picture, which appears to be a screenshot taken from a January 2023 episode of the "All-In" podcast, got a new lease of life when X users added a glass of wine to Palihapitiya's hand.

Users then fed the original picture into AI image generators, repeatedly expanding and transforming the sweater to increasingly absurd proportions.

The meme has also become a vehicle for poking fun at Silicon Valley's fondness for inflated corporate language.

The joke eventually made its way onto the timeline of X's owner, Elon Musk.

Musk responded to an AI image of Palihapitiya as Edvard Munch's famous painting "The Scream," shared by his partner Shivon Zilis, with some sincere fashion commentary.

"I kinda like Chamath's style tbh," Musk wrote. "We should update fashion for 2026! The standard suit & tie or T-shirt & jeans is too basic."

Nathalie Dompé, the CEO of Dompé Holdings and Palihapitiya's wife, has joined in, too. She shared an iteration of the joke on Wednesday, inserting her husband into Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam."

Palihapitiya jokingly replied that a "meme has to travel far to reach my wife."

Palihapitiya then got in on the joke, sharing an image of him and his giant turtleneck superimposed onto the iconic photograph "Lunch atop a Skyscraper."

At first, the humor was largely about making the already substantial sweater even more substantial. It soon mutated, as internet jokes tend to do, into something stranger.

AI-generated versions turned Palihapitiya's knitwear into buildings, landscapes, mushrooms, and even a sandworm from "Dune."

Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive who founded Social Capital in 2011, has long been a recognizable figure in Silicon Valley. He is also one of the four hosts of the "All-In" podcast, which has become highly influential in tech and political circles.

His wardrobe has previously attracted attention online. In June, he was roasted online after declaring that possessions were "worthless" while wearing a plush, off-white hoodie.

Some X users speculated that it was a roughly $2,700 design from Loro Piana, the Italian luxury label that Palihapitiya has praised in the past.

Palihapitiya denied that the hoodie was from the brand. "This isn't Loro Piana," he wrote on X. "I've moved on." Business Insider's Roya Shahidi noted at the time that the two garments appeared to have different necklines.

The internet, however, has not moved on from his knitwear. Happily, Palihapitiya appears to be taking his transformation into a sentient turtleneck in stride.

"As goes the memes, so goes the world," he wrote on X this week.

• I've visited over three continents and 45 countries with my rescue dog, Elko, right by my side.
• As long as I prepare in advance and ensure Elko is comfortable, traveling with a pet is a breeze.
• Exploring the world with Elko has taught me to embrace the journey rather than just the destination.

Three years ago, I rescued my first dog, a 2-year-old Jack Russell-Chihuahua mix found in a taped box in the middle of the road.

After he warmed up to me, I was inspired by his courage. I promised this dog, whom I would later name Elko, that I would make up for the lost time and show him the world.

Since then, we've been to over three continents and 45 countries together. After countless flights to Paris, ferries across the Mediterranean, and trains throughout Europe, that once scared pup is now braver and arguably a better traveler than I am.

When I tell people about my travels with Elko, their reaction is almost always surprise. For one, they can't believe I'm able to bring a dog that's not a service animal on a plane without having to make him fly in cargo.

In reality, it's far more doable than most assume.

Figuring out all the logistics beforehand allows for seamless travel

Elko is roughly 11 pounds, and he has flown in his carrier right next to me on every flight we've ever taken together. A lot of passengers don't even realize that there's a dog near them until we land.

To ensure Elko is always with me on board, I simply call ahead to reserve his spot on the plane, since most airlines limit the number of animals allowed. This usually comes with a fee of $75 to $200 and replaces a carry-on suitcase.

Along with talking to the airline beforehand, I also always check what paperwork our destination may need for Elko.

Each country has different specifications — some ask only for an up-to-date rabies shot, whereas others might also require a tapeworm medication or a list of country-specific vaccinations.

After a recent trip to the United Kingdom, I realized there was a small error in Elko's rabies paperwork, which almost triggered a quarantine hold at the border.

We sorted it out within an hour of the plane landing, but it was a stressful back-and-forth, so now I always verify all his necessary documents are accurate and up to date before we even head to the airport.

Another crucial part of traveling with a dog is making sure they're used to sitting in a carrier for long periods. This can be a gradual process that starts with short road trips or even just visits to a nearby park.

Even with Elko, there was a small learning curve to get him used to being in his carrier. Now, whenever I pull it out before a trip, he can't wait to hop in because he knows he's included in the adventure.

Plus, it serves as a piece of comfort for him, since no matter where we are in the world, the carrier remains a constant safe space.

Exploring the world with a dog taught me that the journey is just as fun as the destination

Sitting next to Elko at 30,000 feet is surreal, but I think the best part about traveling with a dog is discovering pet-friendly travel alternatives when airplanes aren't an option.

When Elko was not allowed on a one-hour flight between Finland and Sweden (the plane already had the maximum number of pets on board), we opted to take an 18-hour ferry through the Baltic Sea, where we rented a cabin and snuggled the whole ride.

Additionally, whenever we're traveling in Europe, Elko and I prefer to take the trains, since most allow animals on board for free or for a small fee.

We like to call this the scenic route because, although it can take four times as long as flying, we get to see stunning landscapes we might not otherwise experience.

No matter where we are, I always put Elko's comfort first. Long drives get broken up into shorter legs, with stops every few hours.

Towns that I usually would have driven straight through turn into hidden-gem pitstops, like in Norway, when Elko needed to use the restroom, and we discovered an old turf-roofed mountain farm overlooking a fjord.

Regardless of where we are, traveling with Elko by my side has changed the way I travel.

Conversations with dog-loving locals have broken the ice in countries where I didn't even speak the language, and made me hopeful that the world is considerably kinder than I imagined.

I can't wait for our next journey, driving along the Pan-American Highway, from Michigan to Argentina, where Elko will add 13 new countries to his passport.

Not bad for a pup found in a box in the middle of the road.

• The FDA has cleared a new freeze-dried plasma for use, giving military medics another way to save lives.
• The approval could help save civilian lives, too, if ambulances purchase and carry the product.
• It's unclear when the new freeze-dried plasma may be ready for purchase.

A newly FDA- approved blood product could help US military medics treat wounded troops with life-threatening bleeding far from hospitals and reliable supply lines.

Teleflex's EzPlaz is a type of freeze-dried plasma, a byproduct of donated blood that can be stored for months without needing refrigeration and then reconstituted with sterile water for injured patients. The product's recent approval promises to provide military medics with a more portable, formally authorized way to replace a critical blood component that helps control bleeding.

"Freeze-dried plasma products enhance our ability to deliver lifesaving medical care" to far-flung expeditionary basing operations by simplifying storage and handling and improving transportability for dispersed forces," a Marine Corps spokesperson said. The Corps is overhauling its forces for future wars that could see Marines working in small, dispersed units far from advanced medical care.

The FDA approval of Teleflex's EzPlaz follows emergency authorizations for the use of freeze-dried plasma made by the French government in 2018 and Swiss-headquartered Octapharma in 2024 by US troops in overseas combat zones. Both of those versions have a long two-year shelf life but come in glass bottles. The EzPlaz solution comes in a plastic bag that medics can easily carry in their already-stuffed medical kits.

"Patients experiencing life-threatening bleeding in combat zones, disasters, rural settings, or other austere environments may now have faster access to plasma when conventional frozen plasma is unavailable," Karim Mikhail, the FDA's acting director of its Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a release on the approval.

He added that the move "addresses an important unmet medical need," particularly for "military personnel and others who may be far from traditional hospital infrastructure."

It is unclear how soon Teleflex could begin supplying its plastic-bagged freeze-dried plasma or how quickly it could scale production for buyers, including the US military.

Trauma experts told Business Insider the FDA's approval of EzPlaz is a significant step in a decadeslong military effort to move lifesaving blood products beyond hospital walls.

"When you put it in your ruck and you jump out of an airplane or helicopter, nothing's breaking," said John Holcomb, a professor of surgery at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a retired Army surgeon, and leading advocate for civilian prehospital transfusion, speaking about Teleflex's durable plastic packaging.

Holcomb said the FDA approval for freeze-dried plasma could save civilian lives, too. The vast majority of American ambulances do not carry blood on board for hemorrhaging patients, largely due to insurance reimbursement challenges. An FDA-approved plasma product could make it easier for emergency responders to give blood to trauma victims, or others experiencing blood loss, like hemorrhaging women in childbirth.

Unlike conventional plasma, which must remain frozen until shortly before transfusion, freeze-dried plasma can be stored for extended periods without refrigeration. The Ezplaz product lasts for 12 months, according to the press release. That shelf life makes freeze-dried plasma particularly valuable for military operations where refrigeration, electricity, and reliable supply lines may be spotty.

Freeze-dried plasma has been used to save wounded troops since World War II. However, this solution has taken on renewed importance as the US military studies the war in Ukraine and prepares for the possibility of a large-scale war in the Pacific, where casualties could end up waiting hours or even days for evacuation and supply lines could be heavily contested.

Such a conflict could make transporting conventional blood enormously difficult, perhaps impossible. Refrigerated whole blood remains usable for roughly 20 to 35 days and requires careful temperature control, powered by reliable electricity. Frozen plasma lasts much longer but must be thawed before use, a process requiring equipment, time, and personnel that military units may not have available.

Concern over the logistics challenges prompted Congress in late 2017 to direct the Pentagon and FDA to strengthen coordination on military medical innovation.

A few years later, the Defense Department launched its $46 million FSHARP program to develop a synthetic whole blood — which is unmodified, with red blood cells, platelets, and plasma all kept mixed together and rigorously tested for safety — that could be stored on a shelf and carried into future conflicts. That effort remains under development following successful animal testing.

Freeze-dried plasma is different and is derived from donated human plasma, a portion of blood that contains proteins responsible for clotting.

While plasma's clotting properties and long shelf life make it valuable in places where blood is unavailable, military trauma experts who worked on injured troops throughout the Global War on Terror cautioned that blood products are not a stand-alone replacement for whole blood. Freeze-dried plasma is seen as a valuable tool for extending lifesaving care farther from hospitals and surgical facilities, not the whole solution.

The military has been chasing this capability for years. In 2010, the head of US Special Operations Command urgently sought a freeze-dried plasma that could save injured troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an Army release. A year later, after a White House summit, US special operations forces began using a French product under FDA investigational authority.

The current demands of modern combat and the anticipated demands of future fights are now bringing increased urgency.

• Russia has equipped more of its Pacific Fleet submarines with anti-drone netting.
• New satellite images show multiple submarines covered with the netting at the Rybachiy naval base.
• The base is thousands of miles from Ukraine.

Russia has expanded its use of anti-drone nets to protect submarines at a major naval base on the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from Ukraine and the country's arsenal of attack drones, according to new satellite imagery analyzed by Business Insider.

The new images, collected on Tuesday by the US spatial intelligence firm Vantor, show more than half a dozen submarines covered by anti-drone netting at the Rybachiy Nuclear Submarine Base on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula.

Imagery from May shows only two submarines covered with netting at the base, which serves as the central hub for the Russian Navy's Pacific Fleet and hosts nuclear-powered ballistic-missile and attack submarines.

Although Rybachiy lies more than 4,500 miles east of Ukraine, the anti-drone netting mirrors defenses Russia has deployed much closer to the war to shield Black Sea facilities and naval assets.

The appearance of these defenses so far from the conflict suggests Russia sees its vulnerability to drone attacks extending well beyond the immediate fighting, including to its Pacific Fleet.

Ukrainian forces have demonstrated that they can strike deep into Russia, launching drones at targets over 1,000 miles inside enemy territory.

Ukraine has also carried out remote attacks against targets at much greater distances by launching attack drones not from its own territory, but from inside Russia. In the June 2025 Operation Spiderweb, drones swarmed Russian air bases in the Arctic, Siberia, and even in the far east, near China's northeastern border.

Russia's defense ministry and its US embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the added defenses.

Vantor imagery from June shows that Russia has also equipped at least three submarines with counter-drone cages — which shield their conning towers — at the Novorossiysk naval base in southwestern Krasnodar Krai. This facility serves as the homeport for Moscow's Black Sea Fleet and has been repeatedly targeted by Ukrainian drone attacks.

Britain's defense ministry said in an intelligence update on Tuesday that these cages were "applied as a preventive measure in response to Ukraine's increased ability to strike targets further from the front line."

Ukraine has used its exploding sea drones to attack Novorossiysk, and in response, Russia has tried to defend the base by placing large barriers in the water. Anti-drone cages represent a new effort to protect naval assets, primarily designed to counter aerial attacks.

Cage armor has become a common tactic on the battlefield. Early versions were added to tanks and other armored vehicles to provide additional protection against drones or shrapnel. It has since spread, much like the anti-drone netting.

Across Ukraine, soldiers have strung up netting to cover logistics and supply routes in an attempt to shield vehicles from drone strikes.

Russia has increasingly turned to anti-drone cages and netting to protect infrastructure and assets such as energy facilities, weapons production buildings, and, more recently, submarines.

Russian efforts come as Ukraine has significantly ramped up its long-range drone strikes inside Russia. These attacks have traditionally targeted energy and military facilities, though Kyiv has increasingly focused its efforts on Russian e-commerce warehouses.

• Ford's new electric truck gets a sub-$30,000 starting price (even with delivery).
• The Detroit automaker also revealed the pickup's name.
• The truck is important for Ford: It's the first of a new lineup of EVs built on a new platform.

Ford has been very secretive about its all-important new slate of EVs. That's starting to change.

The Detroit automaker confirmed to Business Insider that its next EV, a midsize truck, will be called the Fathom. The company also said it will have a starting price of $28,350 — or $29,945 after destination charges.

Both the name and pricing are a big departure from Ford's recent EV efforts. The company's first generation of mass-market EVs — including the Mustang Mach-E and the F-150 Lightning — were named after iconic, nostalgic Ford vehicles. They also had sticker prices ranging from roughly $38,000 to around $90,000.

Fathom is a new nameplate for Ford. The sub-$30,000 starting price will also put the new EV in striking distance of the coming no-frills Slate truck.

Fathom is the result of a Skunkworks program that the company launched in 2022, which aimed at building simpler electric cars after Ford lost billions of dollars on its first generation of EV products.

Unlike the standard assembly line that Ford adopted in the early 1900s, the next generation of EVs will adopt an "assembly tree" production system. The company will build the EV's front, rear, and structural battery-and-interior sections on three separate lines before joining them.

Ford has teased multiple silhouettes, suggesting that the retooled assembly line could support vehicles including a hatchback, SUVs, and a cargo van — but the company has not confirmed which of those models will reach production.

The Fathom, Ford says, has some pretty impressive specs. The automaker says it's as fast off the line as the Mustang EcoBoost, and has the same interior cargo space as the Toyota RAV4 SUV.

It's also Ford's first vehicle that will have Apple software integration.

There's still plenty we don't know about the truck: we haven't seen its full design, because Ford has only revealed images of the truck wrapped in camouflage. We also don't have trim details or range estimates.

Work at Ford? We want to hear from you. Contact Ben Shimkus at bshimkus@insider.com or Signal at bshimkus.41. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device.

• Kim Berling, 66, cares for her 99-year-old mother-in-law in Dallas while living in Albuquerque.
• Long-term care costs have forced Kim and her husband to cover the deficits monthly.
• Kim balances work and caregiving duties, traveling to Texas to oversee her mother-in-law's care.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kim Berling, 66, who lives in Albuquerque. Berling and her husband, 72, are caring for his 99-year-old mom, and both work to support her. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I have five adult children. I do financial advising and insurance sales. I've lived in New Mexico my whole life. My husband runs his own company as a technician for ATMs, going out to install or repair them.

My father died in 2018 from prostate cancer. My mother is 86 and lives on her own. I live close to her, as do the rest of my four siblings. She doesn't have any health issues that require care at this point.

I made sure to invest in long-term care insurance. My husband has medical issues that he doesn't qualify for. I will probably end up being his caretaker at some point.

My mother-in-law lives in the Dallas area. She comes from a family that has lived long lives. Recognizing this, she put a long-term care policy in place for herself in her late 70s. It's a policy that remains in effect and provides a death benefit as long as premiums are paid until she dies, but it accrues no cash value. She's still having to pay the premium at $405 a month.

Her health started declining at 90

At 90, she mistook the car brake pedal for the gas and ran into a tree. She wasn't hurt, but her younger son, who lived next to her, decided she shouldn't drive anymore. He wanted her to go into a nursing home, but we were opposed to that, so I took it upon myself to become more proactive in her care. I wanted someone to stay with her as a companion to help with driving and go to church with her, and interestingly enough, my brother-in-law's ex-wife needed a job, so it worked out.

When she was 92, she fell off a ladder and broke her femur. After the surgery, she was in rehab, then she had to come home. We knew it would take an exceedingly long time before she would be able to get around on her own again. I got her medical power of attorney.

She couldn't be on her own, so I started looking around for caregivers

We went through a string of them. It was very difficult to find people who would provide not only the level of care but also a good attitude. These older people have nowhere to go all day and need someone to communicate with them, but a lot of people don't want to engage in conversation.

Though we had long-term care insurance, there was a 100-day waiting period during which we had to pay out of pocket before the insurance kicked in. Sometimes, I would drive to Texas to make sure everything was being properly taken care of. She was always very optimistic, so I always felt good about the situation.

I was very fortunate to find a network of caregivers who charge reasonable rates and are very compassionate and skilled at what they do. I've hired them for the last six years.

In total, her at-home care has cost about $6,600 a month, but it's about $11,000 when everything is taken into account. Her long-term care, when it kicks in, pays about $4,200 a month, so that still leaves a deficit. She has a remaining benefit of $41,000, which means her insurance will be exhausted within the next year, at which point my husband and I will bear the full cost of her care. My husband and I cover that deficit, but it's become increasingly difficult over time. That limits what we can do because we're taking money that would normally go elsewhere and redirecting it here.

There are a lot of additional costs

Her income is about $3,000 a month. This may sound like a lot for somebody who's retired, but it's not. Between her Social Security, a small pension from being a teacher, and some money from an annuity from a life insurance policy when her husband died, it puts her over the threshold for Medicaid. If she were on Medicaid, they would pay about $1,500 a month for a family member to provide full-time care. It would be wonderful if there were something out there for the middle-class majority who make too much for Medicaid but don't have enough money to cover long-term care.

She has to pay out of pocket for transportation to and from her doctors. There are a lot of additional costs you don't think about, including gloves, bed pads, and diapers, which can cost several hundred dollars a month.

We're grateful that these costs aren't as high as what I often see. I hear of a lot of caregiving situations where people are shuffled off to state facilities, or children who have had to quit work to care for a parent.

At 99, she's still cognitively there

It's very difficult for her to get around. She has short-term memory loss, and she repeats herself and is very hard of hearing. I now have Zoom calls with the caregivers and her. I feel very comfortable leaving her for 30 days at a time. I go over once a month to make sure the medications are in order. It's a nine-hour drive, and I usually spend a day or two there.

I know I have to be on top of things. In May, she developed a bad cough, and she had been turned over to a new primary care doctor who would not give her antibiotics until she could see her. There was no way for her to get there unless I went over, and this lingered for a few days. She developed pneumonia and was hospitalized for 10 days.

I'm working because we need the money. My husband would love to retire, but we cannot afford to retire. At some point in time, my mother-in-law will die, but that doesn't really get us ahead. All that really does is bring us back to where we were before all of this started. My husband and I don't currently have anything saved for our long-term care needs. We both will have to spend on long-term care, and I anticipate having a very long life.

I'm also working because I know that if the situation with the caregivers I'm using went sideways, I would have to go and take care of her. My husband has physical limitations. It would have to be done in a way that would also allow me to continue working.

We work because we have to, not because we want to.

• Ari Rosenson first met Wolfgang Puck when he was 10. He interviewed the chef for a school report.
• Rosenson asked Puck for a job when he turned 16 and became a prep cook at Spago.
• He's now the vice president of food and beverage for the LA and Maui operations at Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ari Rosenson, the vice president of food and beverage for the Los Angeles and Maui operations at Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining. It has been edited for length and clarity.

When I was in the fifth grade, we had to write a biography on someone for school. I liked cooking and having fun in the kitchen, and I'd seen an article about Wolfgang Puck. The USDA had said his frozen pizzas weren't pizzas because they didn't have tomato sauce, and he was pushing back. I had no clue who he was, but I cut out the article and said to my mom, "I want to interview this guy for my school project."

My mom said, "Well, just call Spago," Puck's restaurant. I got Spago's number from 411, called, and started stuttering. My mom grabbed the phone out of my hands and said, "My son would like to interview Wolfgang Puck. Is that possible? If he can't, don't mess with my son's heart. He's really interested." They said, "No, no, Wolfgang will do it."

It was a pretty pivotal moment in my life.

The first meeting

The day before my school report was due, I was able to go to Spago before dinner service. I sat down with Wolfgang for an hour, interviewed him with my little recorder, and my mom was the photographer.

At the end of the interview, I said, "You know, chef, I love cooking too." He said, "OK, come with me." He was so gracious with his time, spending two hours with me. He suited me up in a chef's outfit and gave me a full tour of Spago. Then he asked, "What do you cook?" I said, "I'm famous for my omelets." He gave me some eggs, and I made him one.

He dropped me off at the pizza station next, and the chef showed me how to make pizzas. I sat down and had dinner with my mom, and then Wolfgang came back and brought some cookbooks and signed my chef's jacket. I was a little bit late with my report, but my teacher forgave me.

It was quite a formative experience.

I kept cooking. After school, I'd make pizzas for my friends. I'd take liquor from the cabinet just to flambé it. When I turned 14, I went to Granita in Malibu, and Wolfgang happened to be there. I walked up to him and said, "Do you remember me? I still like cooking." He said, "OK, you come work for me and become a chef at one of my restaurants."

Two years later, when I had a car, I FedExed him a letter that said, "You promised me a job. Can I have one, please?" and included a picture of us together to jog his memory. The next day, his assistant called me and said, "You start next Sunday." That's how I became a prep cook at Spago at the age of 16.

A kitchen I never left

Working in a restaurant was a whole new world. You get dropped into all of these personalities and people, and they were all older than I was. Some of them would pick on me, but a lot of them took me under their wing and showed me the way. Working in a restaurant made me grow up — I had a lot of eye-opening, great life experiences.

I worked at Spago on the weekends during the school year. When I turned 18, I told my parents, "I don't think I'm going to go to college or cooking school. I'm just going to do this." They weren't too into that idea, but I saw kids doing their internships at Spago, and I was ahead of them. I figured I'd educate myself and find ways to fill in the gaps.

I worked my way through the line until I became a sous chef, then executive sous chef. I took a three-month sabbatical, traveling in Italy and cooking in Alba during truffle season. I came back, and Wolfgang tapped me to be the chef at Cut in Beverly Hills. Then I became the executive chef at Spago Beverly Hills.

What Wolfgang Puck taught me

Wolfgang used to drive himself down to Chino Farms in San Diego and bring back all the food because he wanted the best of the best. Highlighting the ingredient, not the chef's ego, really pervades his cuisine and what he's done for the culinary community. People have become more educated, their tastes have evolved — that's partly because of Wolfgang. The dining experience is more important than it's ever been.

Wolfgang's work ethic is second to none, but he's passionate about enjoying life. You have to really love what you do, find joy even in the hard parts, and never settle. Wolfgang is a tinkerer. He always wants to keep striving, to continue evolving and refining. Spago is always changing, and we're encouraged to challenge ourselves and explore our gaps. It's taught me how to be a better husband, a better father, and a better person. Every day I'm at the bottom of the mountain, trying to work my way up.

Some people think chefs are just yelling on the line, but it's a caricature. Being a chef is about engaging people and building meaningful relationships. Wolfgang likes to say it's a family-run business, but I don't think he's only talking about working with his son, Byron. There are countless individuals I've had the opportunity to work with here for years.

We actually joked in a meeting the other day that we should change our last names and hyphenate them to Puck.

• WalletHub ranked the best and worst states for healthcare in the US.
• The analysis examined factors in three main categories: cost, access, and outcomes.
• New Hampshire was found to have the best healthcare in the US, and Alaska was ranked lowest.

The quality of healthcare in your home state can have a meaningful impact on both wellness and your wallet.

The most recent health expenditure data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services found that the average American spent $15,474 per person on healthcare in 2024, comprising 18% of America's gross domestic product.

The personal finance website WalletHub dove deeper into the data to rank the states with the best and worst healthcare in the US. The analysis was based on figures compiled by institutions including the US Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative, the UnitedHealth Foundation, and the Health Resources and Services Administration.

To establish the ranking, WalletHub evaluated all 50 states and the District of Columbia using 44 metrics in three categories: cost, access, and outcomes.

The cost ranking included factors such as average monthly insurance premiums and the cost of medical and dental visits. To determine the access ranking, WalletHub looked at hospital beds and physicians per capita, the percentages of uninsured children and adults, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' ranking of public hospital systems. The outcomes ranking was calculated using factors such as each state's infant and maternal mortality rates, life expectancy, and rates of cancer, stroke, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes.

Here is every state's healthcare ranked from worst to best.

51. Alaska

WalletHub ranked Alaska as the worst state for healthcare overall. Its average monthly insurance premiums are the second-highest in the US, contributing to its placement as 51st in cost. Alaska also ranked 20th in access and 41st in outcomes.

50. Mississippi

Mississippi has the second-most hospital beds per capita out of any state, but it also has the third-fewest physicians per capita, the fifth-lowest percentage of insured adults, and the highest infant mortality rate in the US.

In WalletHub's analysis, Mississippi ranked 32nd in cost, 40th in access, and 51st in outcomes.

49. Georgia

Georgia has the third-lowest percentage of adults with health insurance — part of why it ranked 49th in access. The state also placed 37th in cost and 43rd in outcomes.

48. Texas

Texas ranked 46th in cost and 39th in outcomes. It has the lowest percentages of both insured adults and insured children, lowering its access ranking to 50th. It is also the state with the third-highest percentage of adults who had not visited a dentist in the past year.

47. West Virginia

West Virginia ranked 41st in cost, with the highest average monthly insurance claim of any state.

It has the third-most hospital beds per capita, contributing to its 19th-place ranking in access.

West Virginia's ranking of 47th in outcomes was partially determined by it having the second-highest rate of cancer and the highest rate of stroke and heart disease.

46. Alabama

Healthcare in Alabama ranked 14th in cost, 48th in access, and 45th in outcomes. It has the fourth-fewest physicians and third-fewest dentists per capita, and is the state with the fourth-highest percentage of adults who had not seen a dentist in the past year.

45. Louisiana

Louisiana placed 35th in cost and 13th in access. Louisiana has the fourth-highest infant mortality rate and fifth-highest rates of cancer and stroke and heart disease, contributing to its ranking of 48th in outcomes.

44. New Mexico

New Mexico ranked 31st in cost, 44th in access, and 40th in outcomes. It has the lowest cancer rate of any state, but also features the highest percentage of at-risk adults with no routine doctor visit in the past two years.

43. Arkansas

With the nation's second-highest mortality rate and third-highest rate of stroke and heart disease, Arkansas ranked 49th in outcomes. It also ranked 15th in cost and 26th in access.

42. Tennessee

When it comes to receiving healthcare in Tennessee, the state's cost ranking was 18th, access ranking was 30th, and outcomes ranking was 46th.

41. Oklahoma

Oklahoma placed 16th in cost and 44th in outcomes.

It has the second-lowest percentage of insured adults and fourth-lowest percentage of insured children, putting its overall access ranking at 39th.

40. District of Columbia

The District of Columbia ranked 43rd in cost, 32nd in access, and 34th in outcomes.

The nation's capital boasts the most hospital beds and the most physicians per capita. It also has the second-highest percentage of insured adults and tied for the fourth-highest percentage of insured children with Connecticut. Its cancer rate is the fifth-lowest in the US.

39. New York

New York featured one of the worst cost rankings, placing 50th in WalletHub's analysis. However, it placed 22nd in access and 26th in outcomes, with the fourth-lowest infant mortality rate and the third-most physicians per capita.

38. North Carolina

North Carolina's healthcare ranked 33rd in cost, 45th in access, and 35th in outcomes, per WalletHub.

37. Wyoming

Wyoming ranked 48th in cost, with the fourth-highest average monthly insurance premium of any state, and 42nd in access, with the second-lowest percentage of children with health insurance.

Wyoming placed 23rd in outcomes.

36. Florida

Florida's healthcare ranked 27th in cost, 41st in access, and 38th in outcomes. The state features the fourth-lowest percentage of insured adults.

35. Nevada

In Nevada, the healthcare cost ranking was 17th, the access ranking was 46th, and the outcomes ranking was 42nd. Nevada has the fewest physicians per capita of any state.

34. Kentucky

Kentucky has the highest cancer rate and the second-highest stroke and heart disease rate in the US, contributing to its outcomes ranking of 50th. Its healthcare cost and access rankings fared much better, at 10th and 9th, respectively.

33. Oregon

Healthcare in Oregon was ranked 49th in cost, 27th in access, and 15th in outcomes.

WalletHub found that Oregon had the fourth-fewest hospital beds per capita.

32. Arizona

In terms of overall healthcare rankings, Arizona's cost ranked 34th, and its access ranked 38th. Arizona's healthcare outcomes ranked 29th, with the fourth-lowest cancer rate in the US.

31. Delaware

Delaware's healthcare placed 28th in cost, 35th in access, and 31st in outcomes. The state features the third-highest infant mortality rate in the US behind Arkansas and Mississippi.

30. New Jersey

WalletHub ranked New Jersey's healthcare 42nd in cost and 21st in both access and outcomes, with the second-lowest infant mortality rate.

29. Washington

Washington ranked 44th in cost and 43rd in access. It has the second-lowest rate of stroke and heart disease in the US, contributing to its 10th-place outcomes ranking.

28. South Carolina

South Carolina's healthcare cost ranking was the fifth-best in the US. Its access and outcomes both ranked 37th.

27. Illinois

Illinois has the second-most dentists per capita with an access ranking of 24th. Its healthcare cost ranking was 26th, and its outcomes ranking was 28th.

26. Indiana

Indiana was found to have the fifth-lowest average monthly insurance premium in the US, putting its cost ranking within the top 10 at 8th overall. The state also placed 31st in access and 33rd in outcomes.

25. Ohio

Ohio ranked as the sixth-best US state for healthcare cost in the WalletHub study. However, the state also ranked lower for healthcare access and health outcomes, at 34th and 32nd place, respectively, and has the fifth-lowest number of dentists per capita.

24. California

Despite having relatively high healthcare cost, placing 39th, the healthcare system in California has the highest medical resident retention rates in the country, the fifth-lowest infant mortality rate, and the fifth-lowest rate of stroke and heart disease among its residents.

It placed 25th in access and 14th in outcomes.

23. Missouri

Missouri ranked among the top 20 best states for both healthcare cost and access, placing 19th and 12th, respectively, but fell behind in health outcomes, ranking 36th.

22. Virginia

Virginia ranked 9th for health cost and has the third-lowest average monthly insurance premium nationwide, but it was also among the lowest-ranked states in the study's access ranking, at 47th.

It ranked 22nd in outcomes.

21. Michigan

Michigan is seventh in the study's health cost ranking but 36th in access. It was 27th for outcomes.

20. Idaho

Idaho, which ranked fifth-highest nationwide for health outcomes, has the lowest rate of stroke and heart disease among all US states and the second-lowest average monthly insurance premium.

However, the state ranks 38th and 33rd in healthcare cost and access, respectively, and has the second-lowest number of hospital beds and physicians per capita among US states.

19. Utah

Utah ranked eighth for its health outcomes and had the fourth-lowest stroke and heart disease rates, along with the fourth-lowest share of adults who haven't had a dental visit in the past year. It ranked 22nd for cost.

However, the state was also the lowest-ranked for healthcare access, had the fifth-lowest number of physicians per capita, and the fewest hospital beds per capita out of all US states.

18. Montana

Montana ranked as having the 15th-best health access in the country, and the health system in the state stands out for its retention of medical residents, ranking third-highest in the nation.

The state ranked 29th for cost and 20th for outcomes.

17. Maryland

Maryland ranks among the top 20 US states for health outcomes and healthcare cost, with residents paying the fourth-lowest average monthly insurance premiums.

However, the state's access to healthcare falls behind at 28th, with the state having the fifth-lowest number of hospital beds per capita.

16. Vermont

Vermont has some of the highest shares of insured adults and children under 18 in the US, ranking fourth and second-highest, respectively, and also ranks as the fourth-best state for health outcomes. It's 16th for access.

However, the state also has some of the highest healthcare cost in the US, ranking 47th overall, with residents paying the third-highest average monthly insurance premiums.

15. Connecticut

Connecticut ranked among the top 15 US states for healthcare. The state ranked sixth nationwide for health outcomes, is tied for the fourth-highest share of children under 18 who are insured, and has the third-highest number of dentists and the fourth-highest number of physicians per capita.

Despite its wide and high-quality access to care, the state is among those with some of the highest cost in the country, ranking 45th, and has the fifth-highest average monthly insurance premiums in the US.

14. North Dakota

North Dakota is ranked as the best state nationwide for health access, despite ranking 30th for healthcare cost and 25th for health outcomes.

13. Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania ranked 12th in the WalletHub study's cost ranking and 18th in both access and health outcomes.

12. South Dakota

South Dakota ranked fourth nationwide in cost and seventh in access, despite falling to 30th in health outcomes.

11. Kansas

Kansas, with the fifth-highest number of hospital beds per capita, ranked as the 11th-best US state for healthcare cost and access. It ranked 24th for outcomes.

10. Nebraska

Nebraska is ranked among the top 10 US states for healthcare. The state placed eighth in the study's access ranking, but fell to 21st for healthcare cost and 16th for outcomes.

9. Colorado

Colorado has the fourth-highest number of dentists per capita and the third-lowest cancer rate, but it's also tied with Minnesota and Alaska for the second-highest rate of at-risk adults who have not had a routine visit with a doctor in the past two years. It ranked 36th in the study's cost rank.

8. Wisconsin

Wisconsin placed sixth on the study's access rank, but lower at 24 on the cost rank. It's 13th for outcomes.

7. Maine

Maine ranked third in the WalletHub study's access ranking and seventh for best healthcare overall. The state is tied with Alabama, Indiana, and Rhode Island in having the third-lowest share of at-risk adults who haven't had a routine doctor visit in the past two years.

6. Massachusetts

Ranked as the sixth-best US state for healthcare, Massachusetts has the highest rate of both adults and children under 18 covered by health insurance among all states. It also has the second-lowest cancer rate, third-lowest infant mortality rate, and second-highest number of physicians per capita. The state also has the third-lowest rate of stroke and heart disease in the US.

Its cost rank is high at 40th overall.

5. Hawaii

Hawaii has the third-highest share of adults ages 19 to 64 with health insurance and the third-lowest share of adults who haven't had a dental visit in the past year.

The state also has the highest dentists per capita. Its cost rank is 25th, access is 23rd, but it comes in third for outcomes.

4. Rhode Island

Rhode Island is 13th for cost, 10th for access, and ninth for outcomes. The state has the fifth-highest share of insured adults aged 19 to 64 and the fifth-highest number of physicians per capita.

Rhode Island is tied with Alabama, Indiana, and Maine for the third-lowest share of at-risk adults who haven't had a routine doctor visit in the past two years.

3. Iowa

Iowa ranked as the third-best US state for healthcare, thanks partly to its low-cost medical care. The state ranked first for cost, including being the eighth-lowest in out-of-pocket medical spending, with residents spending only 7.9% of their income on medical care.

Despite having the third-highest cancer rate in the country, Iowa has the fifth-shortest emergency room wait time and the third-best hospital system in the nation. Plus, 93% of adults and 97% of children are covered by health insurance.

2. Minnesota

Minnesota has the highest number of convenient care clinics per capita, and, on average, it takes about 16 minutes for people in the state to reach an emergency room. The state also has a low maternal mortality rate and the seventh-highest life expectancy in the country.

The state ranked third in cost, second in access, and 11th in outcomes.

1. New Hampshire

New Hampshire ranked as the US state with the best healthcare in the WalletHub study. Ranking second in cost, the state has the lowest average monthly insurance premium at around $469 and the second-lowest out-of-pocket medical spending among all states. It also has the lowest infant mortality rate in the country. It ranks 17th in access and first in outcomes.

• When my husband's grandmother turned 75, his family planned a trip to Iceland for her.
• Seven of us went for four days, and it was a fantastic time.
• We traveled well together and made lasting memories.

I still remember when I first got the email from one of my husband's cousins about his grandmother's upcoming birthday: "Nanny loves to travel. What if we give her a trip to Iceland for her birthday? And as many of us can go with her as possible!" The flurry of responses showed that we were all excited: that cousin's sister, her mother, her uncle, and my husband and I all eventually signed up: a total of seven of us, including Nanny, were in.

At Nanny's 75th birthday party, a true blowout bash with karaoke and tons of decorations, we wrapped an enormous box full of balloons and a little sign that said, "You're going to Iceland!" To anyone considering giving a big trip as a gift, it's worth making the delivery dramatic, because we really loved seeing the thrill on her face when she figured out what the box of balloons was about. The whole family felt represented in it: while only six of us were actually going to Iceland with her, other family members contributed to the costs of Nanny's trip because they saw what a beautiful memory this could be.

Planning was almost as fun as the trip itself

Planning the trip was half the fun, and I watched as everyone perused the online resources with gusto. We identified a great house close to Reykjavík to stay for the first half of the trip while we explored the Golden Circle and the city, and then we found an incredible light-filled rental in the middle of a bunch of sheep pastures, facing a glacier, for our foray further inland. One cousin was most excited about an isolated hike to an outdoor swimming pool fed by a hot spring, while others were thrilled to see glaciers and waterfalls. I was nerdily delighted at getting to see an enormous geothermal power plant and tour the facility.

From the beginning, the seven of us traveled together remarkably well. We all wanted to prioritize togetherness, good food, and seeing the sights, but also figured out ways to travel at their own rhythms, which I think is essential when seven people who don't typically live together come together for four days of adventures. We rented two cars so that groups could go in different directions or at different speeds when they wanted, and while we tended to reconvene at a restaurant together most nights, the days were sometimes spent in groups of different sizes and combinations of people, rather than one big group.

We made so many lasting memories together

Surprising things that ended up being treasured memories included moments like when my husband and I, being the early birds, woke up and scouted out a different local pastry shop each day to bring back breakfast for the crew. I also thought that visiting the Kerið Crater, a stunning volcanic crater lake, and Seljalandsfoss, an enormous waterfall we could walk behind, were incredibly beautiful: nothing we did required miles and miles of hiking or huge changes in elevation, but there were scrambles and grottos to explore here and there for the most adventurous among us.

One of the nice things about taking a trip with family you really enjoy and want to spend time with is that even in-between times, like the drive between stops on the Golden Circle, are a chance to connect and grow closer. The two sisters (my husband's cousins) on the trip got to reconnect after living in different cities for years. I got to bond with my husband's cousins, aunt, uncle, and grandmother better. Best of all, Nanny felt totally surrounded by people who loved her and wanted her to have a great time.

Now, we all still reference the trip often, even though it was nine years ago. Nanny has one of those digital picture frames in her living room, and when we're over for weekly family dinners or craft nights, we'll catch a glimpse of pictures of the stunning Icelandic landscapes and our smiling faces. We all daydream about incredible fish dishes we ate or the strong flavor of the local liquor Brennivín, which we tried the night we spent playing cards till late.

The dollars we spent to visit Iceland were well spent for the trip and experiences, but I think we all enjoyed it even more because we were cultivating incredible memories for Nanny, in particular — someone who had been kind to each of us in so many ways over the years.

• Some Ukrainian soldiers work at the "zero line," the part of the front line nearest to opposing Russian forces.
• Getting there is dangerous and requires coordinating every step, a sergeant said.
• Soldiers must move cautiously through the "kill zone" and ensure their own side doesn't mistakenly attack them.

Getting to Ukraine's deadly "zero line" to fight is so difficult and dangerous that every step requires careful planning and coordination. It often feels like "Mission Impossible," a Ukrainian sergeant told Business Insider.

When moving toward the zero line, the forwardmost part of the front line where Ukrainian troops are closest to Russian forces, "every single step has to be coordinated. Every like 200 meters, every step, because otherwise it puts you in danger," the Ukrainian sergeant, call sign Yankee, shared.

That coordination is necessary to prevent unintentional friendly-fire deaths and ensure that maneuvering soldiers have protection as they make their way forward.

Just getting to that zero line "is like 'Mission Impossible,'" the sergeant said, referring to action movies famous for their intensity and the incredibly difficult nature of the missions.

The zero line is an extremely perilous place for soldiers. The sky is filled with both surveillance and attack drones, and hostile troops are close by, often launching infiltration missions.

Moving even 300 meters can be a matter of life and death, Yankee said, requiring troops to wait for favorable weather and electronic warfare support, conditions that may not come for a week.

Yankee serves as a battery sergeant in a front-line unit that uses man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADS, which are shoulder-fired missiles that can stop drones, missiles, and low-flying aircraft.

His unit gives air defense to the infantry soldiers who need to be at the zero line, and, as a result, "we participate in battle," he said.

Yankee spoke to Business Insider in Poland while taking part in Operation Legio, a Norway-led multinational program to train and equip Ukrainian soldiers.

Getting to the zero line requires navigating through areas far more dangerous and intense than anything Western militaries have experienced in decades. Ukrainian officials describe a "kill zone" that stretches up to 50 kilometers in some places on both sides of the zero line.

There are so many drones in the "kill zone" that any movement risks being detected and killed. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy previously described it as a "death zone" where "everything is destroyed by drones."

Oleksiy Vyskub, Ukraine's first deputy defense minister, told Business Insider in June that infantry soldiers can lose days moving through the kill zone to get to their front-line positions. He said the kill zone could double in size this year, and that soldiers may, at some point, find themselves unable to reach these positions at all because of how dangerous it is.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a grinding, brutal, and largely static war characterized by heavy artillery fire and swarms of drones gathering intelligence, spotting targets, and attacking. Any movement can expose soldiers to detection and attack, requiring protective fire or defensive cover and close coordination to ensure friendly forces do not mistake them for the enemy.

That requirement, though, isn't exclusive to the front-line "kill zone." Ukrainian drone operators previously told Business Insider that they have to regularly coordinate with nearby units to make sure that their own drones aren't accidentally downed by friendly electronic warfare or air-defense units. They must also negotiate safe passage for their drones as well.

The fighting is so chaotic, though, that soldiers still accidentally shoot down and jam friendly drones. Manufacturers say the losses are just a part of war.

Ukrainian soldiers describe battlefield coordination as essential, not just within their own unit but with every other unit nearby. Ukraine's military is working to make that coordination easier, including through its new Delta online battlefield management system. The common command-and-coordination platform provides an overall picture of the battlefield, shows what nearby units are doing, and helps prevent confusion among them.

• Dr. Sarah Oreck is a reproductive psychiatrist who has treated postpartum psychosis.
• She says patients don't mumble, talk to themselves, or look like common depictions of psychosis.
• Violence with the condition — and other forms of psychosis — is exceedingly rare.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Dr. Sarah Oreck, founder of Mavida Health. It has been edited for length and clarity.

As a reproductive psychiatrist, I'm focused on the way that female reproductive hormones impact mental health in unique ways. I've been interested in that since I was a tween, watching my mom struggle with depressive symptoms during perimenopause.

In the 10 or so years that I've been practicing, I've seen the field take off. Women, especially millennial women, are demanding that doctors take them seriously.

I meet most of my patients during their pregnancy or in the postpartum period. Many struggle with postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety, which are very common. But I've also treated about 20 people with postpartum psychosis.

Here's what I've learned about the condition.

Postpartum psychosis not as rare as we'd like to believe

It sounds reassuring to say that this condition only affects one or two in 1,000 birthing moms. And yet, I don't like to use the word "rare," because it makes people think they or their loved ones will never experience postpartum psychosis. The truth is that about 4,000 women in the US experience postpartum psychosis annually.

This is a condition that should be on every new mom's radar, and their family's. That's especially true given how disastrous it can be.

Violence is rare, even when psychosis occurs

Cases like Lindsay Clancy's highlight the worst-case scenario of untreated postpartum psychosis. Even among the women who have this condition, hurting or killing a child is exceedingly rare. Research shows that about 1% to 4% of women with the condition kill their children. Any violence is too much, which is why early intervention is so important.

Moms with the condition can look and act fairly normal

When people hear psychosis, they think about depictions of schizophrenia and other psychotic conditions — the caricature of the "crazy" person on the street.

The truth is, people with psychosis often don't look like that—and that's especially the case with postpartum psychosis. The women I've treated aren't talking to themselves or constantly disconnected from reality. The psychosis can wax and wane, and sometimes they seem quite lucid.

Getting help can be really hard

About 75% of the women I've treated have tried to get help, only to be turned away. Sometimes, that's because they don't look ill. There are also biases at play — if you're white, well-groomed, and have a supportive family, some doctors are happy to send you home to be with your baby.

Psychosis is very different from intrusive thoughts

Many, many new mothers experience intrusive thoughts, like thinking about dropping their baby on the stairs. This is normal and — I believe — has biological roots. If you're worried about dropping your baby, you'll hold her tighter. Our brains are wired to recognize risk to our newborns, so we can protect them.

Intrusive thoughts are ego dystonic, which means they clash with who you really are. That's why they're so horrifying to many new moms.

Psychosis is defined by a break with reality. Thoughts of violence can become ego-syntonic, meaning they match what a person feels at their core (due to their psychotic symptoms). A patient might no longer be horrified by thoughts of violence.

Almost everyone recovers

Most people with postpartum psychosis recover to where they feel like who they were before. The best course of treatment is inpatient hospitalization, ongoing therapy, and antipsychotic medications for at least a year.

Of course, my patients have become mothers and have been through a very traumatic experience, which changes them. And yet, most of them can live the lives they imagined.

The rare, rare exceptions are cases like Lindsay Clancy's, where the consequences of postpartum psychosis are so life-altering that they're hard to imagine living with.

• Myung-hee Na leads Intel Foundry's semiconductor research, focusing on future chip technology.
• She says there are notable differences between working in the US and Korea.
• The US fosters innovation and independent thinking, while Korea emphasizes discipline and execution, Na said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Myung-hee Na, an engineer with more than two decades of experience in the semiconductor industry who leads technology research at Intel Foundry. At Intel, she focuses on developing next-generation technology in semiconductor chips. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I've worked in the US, Europe, and Korea, and across all those places, the technology itself was the same. Device physics is device physics, no matter where you are.

The culture around that technology, however, can be very different.

There is the culture of the country, the company, and the technology sector itself. When those three things come together, they create very different working environments.

Today, I lead technology research at Intel Foundry, where my team works years ahead of manufacturing. We explore new materials, test new concepts, and try to determine what future semiconductor technologies should look like before they ever reach production.

US culture is prime for innovation

I spent 18 years at IBM in New York and Vermont, followed by two years working in Belgium and three years at SK Hynix in South Korea, before returning to the US.

What stands out to me most about the US is how strongly it emphasizes innovation and independent thinking.

From what I've seen, the US education system encourages people to develop their own ideas and challenge assumptions: People are often rewarded for thinking differently rather than following a single standard path, and that creates an environment where new ideas can emerge from many directions.

That mindset is especially important in my current work. At Intel, our research organization is trying to solve problems that may not affect products for another five to 10 years. We often know what performance improvements we want to achieve, but we don't yet know how to get there.

Our day-to-day work involves reading research papers, designing experiments, testing new materials, and evaluating millions of possible combinations. We start with ideas in the lab, narrow them down, and eventually move the most promising candidates into larger-scale testing.

What worked before does not always work for the next generation of technology. We have to think differently, invent together, and approach problems from new angles.

Korea taught me the value of discipline and execution

In many parts of Asia, including Korea, I have seen a different strength. There is often a strong focus on discipline, standardization, and execution.

Teams can move with remarkable precision. Once a direction is established, people work together to execute it efficiently and consistently.

Those qualities are incredibly valuable in semiconductors, where success depends on thousands of manufacturing steps working exactly as intended.

I see that challenge every day. Research is only one part of the process. At Intel, we work closely with manufacturing teams because a promising idea in a laboratory is not enough. It has to be reliable, scalable, and practical enough to become a product.

I don't see the approach in the US and Korea as better than another. I see strengths and weaknesses in both, and the semiconductor industry needs both innovation and execution.

New ideas only matter if you can turn them into products that work reliably.

The best ideas come from people who think differently

One lesson I've learned from working across different regions is that innovation becomes stronger when people with different backgrounds come together.

You cannot underestimate diversity. If everyone in a room thinks the same way, you can often predict the outcome of the discussion before it starts.

The moments that truly move technology forward are usually the moments when someone says, "I never thought about it that way." Those insights often come from people with different experiences, cultures, and perspectives.

That is one of the greatest strengths of US culture. It brings together people with different ideas and different ways of solving problems.

I see that every day in research. Some of the most valuable discussions happen when engineers, scientists, and researchers approach the same problem from different perspectives. Those debates often lead to solutions none of us would have found on our own.

The industry is moving faster than ever, especially with the rise of AI. Solving future challenges will require new ways of thinking.

Innovation doesn't happen because everyone agrees. It happens because people bring different perspectives to the same problem and work together to find an answer.

• Donald Trump once starred in ads for Pizza Hut — a brand that exported American fast food to the wider world.
• But many Pizza Hut locations have shuttered in recent years, and the company is being sold for $2.7 billion.
• Jan Klauth, a correspondent from Germany's Welt, visited the US searching for an explanation of the decline.

Highway 321 runs like a lifeline through Pigeon Forge, a tourist town in the US state of Tennessee. On either side of the road, at the foot of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, amusement parks sit alongside two-story motels and toothless fast-food joints with drive-through windows — it doesn't get much more American than this.

Inside a Pizza Hut branch here, televisions flicker against beige tiled walls, the windows have taken on a yellowish film, and garlands reading "We love USA" dangle from the ceiling, swaying wearily in the breeze of the air conditioning. After nearly half an hour's wait, a young employee in an apron, who looks as though he's simply killing time on his summer job, calls out a number: one large pepperoni pizza, $22, the crust thick and glistening with oil.

The whole scene feels bleak, almost like a swan song — as if the branch's days were already numbered. And that is no coincidence. Across the country, one Pizza Hut location after another is shutting its doors.

For decades, the brand was so deeply embedded in the American collective memory that its decline once seemed unthinkable. When brothers Dan and Frank Carney founded their first restaurant in Kansas in 1958, they had to borrow the startup capital from their mother.

Just a few years later, the company's then-revolutionary franchise business turned the pizza market upside down. The red roof became a cult symbol of fast food "Made in America" — not just in the US, but in dozens of other countries around the world, much like the McDonald's golden arches.

Now the chain, owned by parent company Yum!, has been sold, split into two parts. Yum! Brands announced the deal in June; both transactions are expected to close in the third quarter, pending regulatory approval. Because Yum China has operated Pizza Hut's mainland China business independently since splitting off from its US parent in 2016, the sale had to be structured as two separate deals: one for China, one for everywhere else.

A new owner of an aging brand

The US business and the rest of the world (except China) is going to Connecticut-based private equity firm LongRange Capital for roughly $1.5 billion. The firm, founded only in 2019, currently holds stakes in businesses as varied as the American fitness chain 24 Hour Fitness and ski lifts in the Austrian resort of Kitzbühel — a leap into global chain restaurants with nearly 20,000 locations is something of new territory for founder and managing partner Bob Berlin and his team.

Mainland China's operations, meanwhile, are being taken over by Yum China Holdings which already operates KFC, Taco Bell, and, indeed, Pizza Hut as a licensee in China. For Yum China, the acquisition essentially means expanding a business it already runs on the ground — for roughly $1.2 billion, the company secures full brand rights to Pizza Hut's by far most important international market. In China, the chain counts nearly 4,500 locations across 1,200 cities.

What the deal means for Pizza Hut's future, and whether a rebranding is more likely than an even higher number of closed restaurants, seems unclear. Yum left a press inquiry unanswered as did the US buyer.

"Pizza Hut is still one of the most recognized names in the market," Ishann Dhawan tells Business Insider. "If the economics improve, the brand will benefit. If they don't, a rebrand won't change very much," says the restaurant-management consultant, based in France.

But whether the new owners can push through the long-overdue modernization faster than the old corporate machine remains to be seen in the coming years. Wall Street doesn't seem entirely convinced yet: Yum's stock, currently trading around $151, moved only slightly following the sale. After the share price tumbled roughly a year ago, it has barely recovered since.

"People haven't stopped liking pizza," says Dhawan. "The market is still enormous." Rather, he argues, the way pizza is sold in the US has changed — and Pizza Hut slept through that shift. Customer behavior, he says, has changed fundamentally. Pizza Hut restaurants once stood for an experience — places you took the kids, celebrated birthdays, or held company parties: planned but relatively rare visits.

Today, it's more about the simplicity of ordering and speed of availability — and, not least, price. The restaurants suddenly seemed out of step with the times. The comparatively large dine-in locations, with their high rent, staffing, and maintenance costs, no longer fit a market where customers above all expect fast delivery and easy ordering, Dhawan says. Competitors like Domino's invested earlier in digital ordering systems and delivery infrastructure, lowering their operating costs in the process — however, their stock isn't exactly skyrocketing either, losing about 13 percent over the last 12 months.

What LongRange plans to do differently is still largely an open question. In its own announcement, Berlin said the firm looks forward to "working with Pizza Hut's talented team and franchise partners to drive its next phase of growth through investments that deliver consistently great food and experiences for customers."

Restaurant Business editor Jonathan Maze noted that LongRange "focuses on operational and strategic improvements to generate a return, rather than financial engineering" — a longer-term approach than the debt-and-cost-cutting playbook typical of private equity, and, in his view, "exactly what the brand needs."

But LongRange is a comparatively small player for the job: the firm manages around $1.7 billion in assets, a modest base for overhauling a nearly 20,000-store global system. It also has not said whether further closures beyond the 250 already announced under "Hut Forward" are on the table.

For Yum as a whole, the split looks almost like a relief. Pizza Hut had been dragging down the balance sheet for years while its sister brands delivered results. CEO Chris Turner handled the sale with sober, unsentimental language. He now appears to be focusing primarily on KFC as the group's growth story: the chicken chain alone opened more than 600 new locations across 55 countries in the first half of 2026. Taco Bell, also part of the Yum group, has meanwhile been dealing with the fallout from a food-safety incident that dominated headlines in the US.

Chasing a bigger slice of the US market

Just how far Pizza Hut has fallen becomes clear on closer inspection of the numbers.

US sales recently shrank by roughly five percent, while archrival Domino's grew. With $12.8 billion in global system sales and nearly 20,000 locations in 108 countries, Pizza Hut remains the second-largest pizza chain in the US — but with just over $5.5 billion in US sales, it trails far behind Domino's $9.5 billion. In the first half of 2026 alone, around 250 unprofitable locations disappeared under the so-called "Hut Forward" program — a name that reads almost cynically for what has been a painful downsizing effort accompanied by numerous layoffs.

None of this is truly surprising. The entire American pizza industry has been in decline for years. According to National Restaurant News, pizzerias have slipped from the number-one spot to sixth place among the most popular restaurant categories, overtaken by coffee shops and Mexican restaurants. The number of pizza restaurants has been declining year after year since 2019. Oliver Ostertag, a restaurant-management expert at software provider PAR Technology, sees two forces pulling at the industry simultaneously: inflation is leading customers to order less often, while third-party delivery platforms have absorbed margin, customer data, and loyalty that once belonged to the chains themselves.

On top of that, rising labor costs are being compounded by tariffs imposed by President Trump, which are pushing up the cost of ingredients, Ostertag writes in a piece for National Restaurant News — squeezing Pizza Hut's profit margins ever further.

And finally, the trend toward healthier eating has likely taken a toll on the chain as well — a large pizza there contains between 2,000 and 4,000 calories. The characteristically thick crust and oil-glistening surface mean franchise pizzas can pack in twice the calories of a wood-fired restaurant pie.

The trend is unmistakable, particularly in the country's urban centers: instead of pizza piled high with extra cheese, diners are increasingly reaching for "clean protein" dishes, tofu, and other healthier alternatives. That may also help explain why competitors are feeling the squeeze too. Papa Murphy's, with more than 1,000 locations across 34 states, recently announced the closure of 68 unprofitable outlets. Papa John's, meanwhile, is set to shutter around 300 locations after a sharp drop in sales.

Just how deeply Pizza Hut was once woven into American everyday life is captured by a 1995 commercial: Donald Trump appeared alongside his ex-wife, Ivana, to promote the newly launched Stuffed Crust pizza. The couple, who had split just three years earlier amid a very public divorce, poked fun at their own multimillion-dollar settlement in the spot — the punchline being who had earned the right to the last slice of pizza.

A brand once woven into the fabric of American pop culture: that status is long gone for Pizza Hut. On Instagram, the company recently posted videos and photos from a "Throwback Dinner," to which influencers were invited — apparently in an effort to make the brand feel modern again. Toasts were raised to the good old days in a restaurant done up in retro style. The upcoming years will show whether the company can go back to the glory of its long-past heydays.

This story originally appeared in Germany's Welt, and is courtesy of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which harnesses the resources of the company's newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces, and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, Onet, and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms.

• T-Mobile's former chief business and product officer said dealing with difficult coworkers is part of life.
• Mike Katz recommended setting goals for your interactions and not expecting more from them.
• He also said that getting to know someone outside of a work agenda can help ease tension.

Everyone has that one colleague they dread working with.

If you haven't yet, it's probably only a matter of time, T-Mobile's former chief business and product officer, Mike Katz, told Business Insider.

Katz began his career as a college student selling cellphone services at retailers before working his way up the C-suite. He exited his role in July to pursue new professional interests and will remain in a strategic advisory role through December 2026.

"There's going to be people that you run into that, no matter all your best efforts, they're just going to be super difficult," said Katz.

As someone who's held over a dozen roles at T-Mobile, he suggested building a strong internal network and having allies across the company. Those relationships open doors, expand influence, and create opportunities over time.

Sometimes, though, you just don't click with someone. Katz shared four tips for navigating interactions with these colleagues.

First, he said, you have to accept that this is simply a reality of having a job. That means when you interact with those coworkers, you enter into those interactions with realistic expectations, he said.

Second, you should define what success looks like in those conversations in advance and focus on achieving that goal. For example, if you need someone's approval on a project, focus the conversation toward getting that approval, he said. Don't expect to come out of the meeting feeling warm and fuzzy.

"Know that success coming out of that meeting isn't really going to be how you feel," Katz, who previously served as T-Mobile's CMO, said. "It's going to be: Did you get the thing that you needed to get done?"

You may also want to try breaking the corporate ice with that person. Sometimes getting to know your coworker on a more personal level can help ease tension. Katz said that taking the time to build a connection before tackling a work agenda can often solve the problem.

If all else fails and you can't find common ground, focus on controlling what you can: your own behavior. Katz said he tries to live by the "golden rule" of treating others the way he wants to be treated. He said that maintaining that mindset alone can sometimes lead to a "breakthrough" with difficult colleagues. If you're not adding to the tension, he said, the dynamic may start to improve.

Have you dealt with a difficult colleague? We want to hear your tips. Reach out to the reporter via email at aaltchek@insider.com or secure-messaging platform Signal at aalt.19.

• Rose Marie Obey, an 80-year-old widow, moved to Gwynedd Estates, a retirement community in Pennsylvania.
• Obey sold her house for $435,000, covering the $162,900 entrance fee to move into the community.
• She enjoys her new home, participating in activities, and staying close to family and friends.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Rose Marie Obey, an 80-year-old widow living in a retirement community in Ambler, Pennsylvania. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

After my husband of 54 years, Lee, died last year, I knew I didn't want to stay in our big house. I visited a friend at a retirement community and didn't like it, but I found another community, Gwynedd Estates in Ambler, Pennsylvania, that appealed to me more.

It's pretty. It's white. I like how they keep the lawn. I have a parking space. It's quiet. When I walk in the door, it feels like I'm coming home. Yet when I first saw it, I kept looking for things I didn't like because I didn't want the stress of moving.

I asked myself, "Why shouldn't you do it?" What's going to be so negative?" I prayed to avoid the stress of moving, but now that I've sold my house and made the move, I feel good about it.

I didn't know if I would move because I had so many people around me

I had lived in my house for 44 years, and I had family and friends to support me. One of my reservations was that some of my best friends live on either side of my house. I didn't want someone to move into my house who might play loud music. I prayed really hard about this.

However, I didn't believe in having people come help me with the house all the time, and there were finances to consider.

I worked for Merck, a pharmaceutical company, for 27 years in regulatory affairs

I had been a union worker, but my manager told me that if I became salaried, there would be advantages, so I switched and took advantage of the retirement plan match. I stuck with that. If there's a match, why wouldn't anybody take advantage of it?

I retired in 2004 and took my retirement savings as a lump sum when I left. I hired a financial advisor, and they're investing it very well. We meet three times a year in person. I asked my financial advisor to help me do some number crunching before I moved.

Lee had life insurance, and there would also be the sale of the house. Moving would be a form of security for me.

I don't work anymore, but I stay busy

I go to various nursing homes and conduct Bible studies. I'm out almost every day. The phone rings, and I go. I'm 80, but I still drive.

I decided to list the house in January, and it sold quickly. I wasn't trying to make a lot of money. With all the expenses of owning a house and worrying about a tree falling on it, selling lifted a lot of stress off me. I sold it for $435,000.

For many people, including me, the sale of their house pays for the entrance fee to a retirement community

I moved into the community in January, and my entrance fee was $162,900. My community is just six minutes from my old house, so I didn't move too far away.

I also had to pay a $200 nonrefundable application fee. My monthly fee is $3,482, and that includes everything: Comcast, utilities, snow removal, and lawn care. I can turn up my AC as much as I like.

I knew moving was the right choice because everything happened on time

I had prayed really hard about this. Everything fell into place. I talked it over with my sisters, who also live alone.

My granddaughter stays with me overnight, maybe two nights a week. She's 5. I still wanted to be able to keep Ava. I asked the community if it would be OK for her to stay for several days. They said, "No problem." She just can't live here.

My daughter lives in Landsdale, and my granddaughter is in day care, so I pick her up from day care four miles away.

There are lots of activities here

They have lectures and movies. The fitness programs are my favorite. I knew that was what I wanted to get involved in. I'm saying 'no' to everything except fitness until I get acclimated. I ride the bike.

It's good to know there are other things to do, and I won't get bored, even if I'm not doing my volunteer work. I might want to get involved in something culinary. I'm a cook. I have a lovely kitchen — a dishwasher, a double oven, and a microwave. Cooking is my therapy. I look out the window while I'm prepping food. I have a patio where I can blow bubbles with Ava.

I go down to the cafeteria for lunch and often have a salad, an entrée, fruit, dessert, and a beverage. One meal a day is included. I have dinner at home most of the time. Sometimes I have dinner with other residents, so I don't feel isolated.

If I came to a point where I didn't have a car, there's transportation available, a van that can take you to Walmart and Target. I keep my Blue Cross Blue Shield and Medicare. I have a primary care doctor right down the street.

I don't like to be managed, and I don't feel managed here

They let me know what's available, and I decide if and when I want to do it.

Getting rid of my house was the best thing I could've done. Not having all the expenses of owning a house has lifted a lot off me that I don't have to think about anymore.

• Nvidia is quietly building a new AI safety and security engineering team.
• The move aligns with its growing push for open-weight AI models.
• Safer AI could help drive broader adoption — and more demand for its chips.

Nvidia is quietly assembling a new AI safety and security engineering team, according to a cluster of job listings posted late last month.

The company is hiring a distinguished engineer to serve as a "founding technical leader" for the "newly assembled team," as well as a security research engineer, an evaluation engineer, and a senior manager. The team will evaluate AI agents before they're deployed and build AI-powered tools to patch software vulnerabilities, according to the job listings.

The hiring suggests Nvidia is making AI safety a bigger priority as it bets on a future shaped by open-weight models and AI agents. Open-weight models make their trained "weights" — which determine how they behave — publicly available, even if their training data and source code stay private.

The team is described in one listing as "rooted in the firm belief that open-weight models, transparency, and broad scientific scrutiny are foundational to American AI leadership and cybersecurity defense."

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

Nvidia's case for open models

In recent months, Nvidia has steadily elevated its public messaging around open-weight AI models, which stand in contrast to the closed systems built by companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.

In his first post on X last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shared a letter urging US policymakers to support open models, saying that they "strengthen safety and cybersecurity."

Days later, Nvidia announced it had become a founding member of the Open Secure AI Alliance — a group building open-source security tools for AI. The job listings for the chipmaker's AI safety team appeared prior to this announcement and describe many of the same responsibilities.

The alliance includes 120 companies, such as Microsoft, Palantir, SpaceX, and Hugging Face, which recently relied on an open model to respond to a high-profile security incident.

While critics say open models are more accessible to bad actors, proponents say they bolster innovation through competition and improve security through transparency and collective action.

AI safety sells

The push toward open models and AI security isn't just philosophical; it reflects key business incentives for Nvidia.

Open models put AI into the hands of far more customers, in turn creating more demand for Nvidia's AI chips needed to power it.

Safety is also critical as Nvidia pushes for broader business adoption of AI, and companies weigh how best to deploy it.

As AI shifts from chatbots to agents that can access sensitive company data and take real-world actions, trust could become the linchpin for widespread adoption.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at gweiss@businessinsider.com or Signal at @geoffweiss.25. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

In early May 2025, Toru Tokushige was alone in his Tokyo office when the general came knocking. It was the Golden Week, Japan's biggest holiday, and everyone else was on vacation.

Manabu Shimamoto, a retired major general, had come to implore the 56-year-old CEO of Terra Drone to help secure Japan's future. Their country desperately lacked drones, Shimamoto explained. Small drones. Cheap drones. Drones that could literally fly off the production line. Drones that could swarm and kill.

Tokushige, whose publicly listed drone company has been entirely civilian since its inception in 2016, had spent years researching the military side of the industry. Thrice he'd looked into the market, and thrice had chosen not to pursue. It was too complex, too archaic, with too much red tape. But now the defense ministry was calling for new companies to enter the fray. Japan had Russia, North Korea, and China to contend with. The military needed someone who could work faster than the traditional big defense firms like Mitsubishi and Kawasaki, Shimamoto told him — someone willing to take the risk.

By the end of their three-hour meeting, Tokushige tells me, he'd decided he was going to become a defense contractor. He just had to figure out how.

"It's dramatically changed in terms of the landscape of engagement, the landscape of opportunities, compared to 10 years ago," says Jerry McGinn, director of the Center for the Industrial Base for the think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies. A decade ago, he says, most defense startups could only get a foot in the door through a select few grants and programs. Now, military agencies are setting up offices in Silicon Valley and other tech hubs, hosting pitch days for entrepreneurs, and offering incubator programs for promising startups. In December 2024, the Department of Defense launched the Expedited Research Innovation System, an initiative that invites startups to submit 7-minute pitch videos to the military. At least 153 companies have since been vetted and introduced to the government, says Jennifer Thabet, director for the Defense Advanced Related Projects Agency's small business programs office.

"If you don't cast a wide net and take a bunch of small bets to figure out what's going to pay off, you are going to be missing opportunities," Thabet says. "No longer can we afford to take calculated risks. We have to swing big."

Attitudes toward working in the defense industry have also dramatically shifted.

"If you asked me 10 years ago what I thought of when I heard 'defense contractor,' I'd have pictured a shady arms dealer," says Anastasis Leonidou, a former tea shop owner who now sells portable batteries to the UK military.

Before the Ukraine War broke out, it was more acceptable for a tech entrepreneur in Sweden "to run a porn site than to work in defense," says the Stockholm-based Karl Rosander, who previously founded a podcasting platform and now sells interceptor drones. "Now, actually, when you tell people you work in defense, you get a hug."

I spoke to five veteran business owners in Europe, Asia, and the US with no prior experience in military contracting who are now pivoting their careers to build defense firms. They say the industry is slow and plodding, and believe they can still make it big, banking on the move-fast-and-break-things ethos that led to their success in previous ventures.

Tokushige describes himself as a born rebel against traditional Japan. The son of a steelworker from the rural town of Yanai, he spent his early life studying to become an engineer at the local chemical plant — then defied his father's wishes upon graduating in 1996 to start a finance career in Osaka. Five years later, he moved to Arizona in 2001 to pursue an MBA.

That choice turned out to be his biggest regret. The internet began its meteoric rise just then, and Tokushige still grieves over having missed it while in school. He became obsessed with avoiding the same FOMO sting, and worked for several years at a Silicon Valley startup, then returned to Japan to found the electric-bike company Terra Motors in 2010. Then, predicting a coming age of robotics, he launched Terra Drone in 2016; it's now listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange with 650 employees and a market capitalization of $800 million. To catch the electric car craze, he founded Terra Charge after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, he's confident that the business of war is the next world-changing trend.

But he also knew that waiting a year for tender requirements from the Japanese military would kill any chance of momentum for Terra Drone. "Such a passive way of doing business," Tokushige tells me of the bureaucracy he faced. "It's not good."

Drone warfare evolves in months, if not weeks. A nation at peace builds its defense industry on theory, he surmised. He needed one that was built on war.

Tokushige first arrived in Lviv in Western Ukraine under a gloomy mid-September sky. His aim was to attend a defense conference at the local soccer stadium, run by Ukraine's Brave1 startup incubator. For security reasons, he was told the location on the day the conference started.

"I was the only Asian guy there," he says. On his own — none of his staff would risk entering a wartorn country at the time — the CEO set up a booth and swapped business cards with 136 companies. He was amazed at the blistering pace of Ukraine's drone industry compared to back home. The locals produced millions of drones a year, while Japan aimed to make 80,000 annually. More importantly, drone tech there was adapting so quickly that Ukrainian engineers were contending with a new phase of innovation every few months.

Tokushige's plan was to first build a drone under Ukraine's lightning-fast industry, then deliver a working, proven product ready for the Japanese defense ministry to see.

With Ukraine's battlefield now the Holy Grail of weapons testing, startups arrive by the horde, hoping to put their tech in the hands of fighters. Last year, Ukraine said at least 500 foreign startups opened offices in its territory.

Troy Smothers, a Utah real estate entrepreneur and Marine veteran, has traveled to Ukraine nine times since 2022. First, he visited as a medical and IT volunteer, then as a defense tech advocate, helping deliver US-made fiber-optic cables to Ukraine's workshops and front lines to help attack drones fly through jammed areas. Months of testing with the Ukrainians helped him build his own design for a fiber-optic attack drone.

Smothers now thinks he can use his extensive experience "putting warheads to foreheads" in Ukraine to sell cheap drone tech to the Pentagon. "What I'm offering is not a theory. I've got product proven, bodies stacked. This works," he says. He's started a 501(c)(3) called American Made Freedom, and is fishing for around $30,000 in funding to build manufacturing for drone parts and fiber-optic kits.

"Financially, it's been difficult because I'm all in," Smothers tells me on a video call from his office in Salt Lake City. A stout Mormon with laugh lines etched into his cheeks, he showed me his collection of AR-15s, and on the wall behind him were a pair of attack quadcopters beside his 7-year-old's drawing of an insect. He's been sleeping there since his wife of 14 years divorced him last year, over what he says was too much time and money spent in Ukraine.

To keep his drone dream going, Smothers says, he's burned through life savings and precious metals investments. He's sold six collector's cars worth about $10,000 each, and much of his work now relies on donations. This year, he secured a partnership with Brave1.

He believes that his crusade for fiber-optic drones was given to him by God. He's been called, as he says, to be a "sword to defend the innocent."

"I'm not smart enough or capable enough to have done what I've done. Who walks away from my 19-year career to do what I was inspired to do? I wouldn't have left my kids, it was crazy to leave my kids," he says. "You only get one chance, brother, to be on the right side of history."

Thriving on the right side of history when competition is tight, however, is another story.

In Lviv, Tokushige saw that dozens of manufacturers were already making light attack drones: the type seen destroying tanks and killing men every day on the front lines. Anyone could assemble one, Tokushige thought.

What caught his eye, instead, were interceptors, which were more expensive and harder to make. The Ukrainians built them faster and nimbler, engineered to chase down and catch Russian Shahed attack drones in the air. Born out of a desperation for an affordable way to protect Ukraine's skies, the tech had cut the cost of anti-drone defense — traditionally reliant on high-end missiles — by orders of magnitude.

If one of Japan's neighbors wanted to attack from across the ocean, waves of cheap drones like Shaheds would probably be a top choice, Tokushige surmises. His country, and the rest of the world, needed a cheap counter.

The fit seemed natural for Tokushige. Most Ukrainian interceptors were still piloted by humans, meaning that a crew still had to drive out to deploy them. Terra Drone sold software for managing drone traffic. The Ukrainians could provide the hardware, and Tokushige wanted to provide its brains: software that turned the drones into autonomous swarms. He plans to invest an initial $10 million from his firms to build the code, which he hopes will be finished by 2027.

If he's fast enough, he says, a Ukrainian drone with autonomous Japanese software would give him more than an edge in the market.

"In terms of interceptors, we would become the No. 1 in market share," he tells me. "That is our minimum goal."

For six months, Tokushige shuttled in and out of Ukraine nine times, meeting with interceptor drone companies in Lviv and Kyiv. Back home, he estimates he's visited the Japanese defense ministry's headquarters in Ichigaya more than 50 times.

He plans to eventually expand from interceptors to an entire fleet of products: jet-powered drones, drone boats, reconnaissance drones. Tokushige's corporate deck is telling of his ambition. "Japan needs its own Elon Musk," Slide 91 says, captioning a photo of the SpaceX and Tesla owner. "And I intend to be that person."

This world-changing boldness is shared among many upstart founders angling to win over the defense industry.

Rosander, the Swedish entrepreneur, who previously ran the podcasting company Acast (which posted a revenue of $273 million last year) and the monetization platform Sesamy, started Nordic Air Defense in March 2024. He was inspired by the war in Ukraine, after following it on Twitter for hours after work every night and fretting the same could happen in his own country.

Like his Japanese competitor, he's started with a low-cost interceptor (made mostly of carbon fiber), and plans to expand dramatically from there. Rosander's long game is to eventually compete with the likes of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and become the next defense prime. This is a bit like saying someone who just launched a flag football league saying they'll build the next NFL dynasty. He remains undaunted.

"I get things done," he tells me. "You can give me anything. You give me the best idea you can come up with. I promise I will make it successful."

Whenever Rosander has met with defense executives, he's found them unnervingly comfortable with working at what he considers a glacial pace. "I presented what I was doing," he says. "And they told me: 'Karl, you don't have anything to do with this industry. It works like this. We eat dinners and have long-term relationships.'"

"I understood then," he adds. "They were afraid of me."

Rosander does admit he didn't understand how difficult it is to break into defense. It's something the entrepreneurs I spoke to repeatedly brought up: the maze of bureaucracy and trust-building far more complicated than their previous careers.

Leonidou, who ran a chain of tea shops in London before leaving the business amid the COVID pandemic, now sells large, portable batteries to the UK military through his new firm, Solus Power. His team, he says, initially had to learn how to navigate the industry's many restrictions and regulations from the ground up. Simply getting meetings with the defense ministry required them to get through a mountain of protocols.

"It's been such a learning curve that I don't think we really had any expectations apart from people in a lot of camo turning up for meetings," says Leonidou.

Joakim Sjöblom, a Swedish entrepreneur who sold his fintech firm in 2024, pivoted to defense that same year, just as Sweden joined NATO. His startup, Sweden Ballistics, or Swebal, is building a manufacturing plant to supply Europe the TNT he says the continent desperately needs (China controls most of the world's TNT sales). But the process to break ground has dragged on for more than a year, as Sjöblom has navigated a litany of regulations: surveying the ground for ancient remains and geological deposits, building a new road, measuring the impact of an accidental explosion, and checking for endangered species. He was granted an environmental permit in December, but had to wait until late summer to cut down the nearby trees in case of nesting birds. He's also unable to plug water holes, to protect local frogs.

But Sjöblom, unfazed, tells me he feels a sense of urgency to help secure Europe's future. "My son just turned three, and my daughter 10 months. I don't ever want them to experience an armed conflict," he says. His plant is on track for production in 2028, he says.

In Japan, Tokushige worries that even after manufacturing in Ukraine, traditional government processes would remain painfully slow. After his dozens of visits to the defense ministry and a year's wait for the military's specifications, officials would still have to settle on a budget, then take at least one or two more months to deliberate on a contract winner. Only after securing a contract would Terra Defense be expected to deliver a product — six months later.

"It would be a very, very long history," he says.

In late March, Tokushige beamed before a crush of reporters in Kyiv, as he announced Terra Drone's partnership with a Ukrainian interceptor drone company, Amazing Drones.

"A friend in need is a friend indeed," Tokushige told the crowd. In the months since, he's consolidated Amazing Drones and another Ukrainian interceptor startup, WinnyLab, buying 50% stakes in each firm. Terra Drone is now working on three different drones.

Tokushige has now settled into a more comfortable pace in Ukraine, learning to stop taking shelter every time his phone alerts him of a drone attack, though he stays in hotel rooms on lower floors to reduce the chance of a Shahed crashing through his window. His wife and two adult daughters no longer fret constantly about his safety, he says.

The defense bet is already starting to pay off. Terra Drone's share price was 12,670 yen when the market opened on Thursday, surging 499% year to date. It's also secured a small order of 300 general-purpose training drones for Japan's defense ministry, to be delivered in September for about $732,000.

Meanwhile, Tokushige is leaving much of the work at his other companies in the hands of his staff. As he buses in and out of Ukraine, his two private companies, Terra Motors and Terra Charge, are both preparing for an initial public offering.

"In Japanese mentality, I am a crazy guy," he tells me.

For Japan's would-be Elon Musk, crazy has gotten him this far.

Matthew Loh is a senior reporter at Business Insider's Singapore bureau, primarily covering defense and how the war in Ukraine is rapidly changing battle technology and tactics.

• Uber is leaving its tokenmaxxing era behind, a top executive says.
• Its CTO said AI adoption at the company has quadrupled, but efficient use is now being prioritized.
• He said Uber's per-token cost has gone down because of several cost-management strategies.

Uber is shutting the door on its infamous tokenmaxxing era.

In a Wednesday X post, Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga said the company is seeing some "very interesting trends on AI costs," and that this was "another signal that we're coming to the end of the so-called 'tokenmaxxing' era."

Tokenmaxxing is an enterprise AI trend that emerged in the first half of 2026, in which companies urge their employees to adopt AI as much as possible in their workflows. Some companies made AI usage a performance metric that staff would be evaluated on.

Naga said that since the beginning of the year, the number of people at Uber using frontier AI tools has quadrupled, but this has coincided with a decline in per-AI-token costs.

The company managed to lower costs by improving its prompt caching process, using better default models, giving engineers better visibility into their AI usage, and experimenting with open-weight models, Naga wrote in his post.

"The next phase, whatever we call it, will not be characterized by who spends the most tokens, but about how people use them as efficiently as possible," he added.

Uber's finance chief, Balaji Krishnamurthy, shared similar updates during the company's second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday.

"On AI, we are very early, but what we are seeing is that we are able to cost-efficiently deliver some productivity lifts with developers," he said.

"And for the measurement that we are looking at right now, we are seeing doubling in the code output for engineers," Krishnamurthy added.

Uber made headlines earlier this year for igniting the tokenmaxxing trend, with Naga saying in April that the company had already blown through its 2026 budget for Anthropic's Claude Code. He said in a March LinkedIn post that 1,800 code changes weekly were entirely written by its internal coding agent.

But in May, Uber COO Andrew Macdonald said in an interview that it was getting harder to justify the trade-offs of AI investments in the company. He said he wasn't seeing proportional productivity gains from the increased AI costs.

This is not only an Uber problem; the rest of the tech industry has been grappling with how to get better returns on investment from their highly inflated AI spending. Some, like Coinbase, have said they're experimenting with model switching, which involves assigning the most challenging tasks to frontier models and offloading easier, repetitive tasks to cheaper ones.

The problem of enterprise AI spending has also driven a new wave of businesses geared toward helping companies reduce their costs. Some are consultancies that give executives advice on how to allocate their AI budgets; others are building products like inference infrastructure to help companies scale their AI products cost-effectively.

• JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says broader market leverage is "pretty high."
• High leverage raises the risk of sudden market disruptions, he says.
• Leverage has come under scrutiny after South Korea's market sell-off and the Situational Awareness unwind.

As leveraged exchange-traded funds draw growing scrutiny, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is pointing to a broader risk across markets.

"Market leverage is pretty high," Dimon told CNBC in an interview aired on Wednesday.

"When you have that, you do have a higher chance that something will disrupt the market in a quick way and people will get rattled over it," he said.

Dimon made the comments after being asked about the proliferation of leveraged single-stock ETFs that have drawn renewed attention in recent weeks.

While Dimon said leveraged ETFs were not his primary concern, he pointed instead to broader market leverage.

"Margin debt is the highest it's ever been," Dimon said, adding that not all market leverage is formally classified as margin debt.

Still, Dimon stopped short of predicting a broader market crisis.

"I'm not going to say it's systemically high or that it's going to cause a disaster, but it's high," he said.

Dimon's comments came as leverage has come under renewed scrutiny following two recent events.

In South Korea, regulators tightened rules on single-stock leveraged ETFs, which seek to magnify a stock's daily gains and losses, after heightened market volatility put the products into the spotlight.

On Thursday, the Kospi index was 4% lower around midday after losing nearly one-third of its value from a record high hit in June. Shares of Index heavyweights Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix were 6% and 9% lower, respectively.

Separately, the turmoil at AI-focused hedge fund Situational Awareness underscored how quickly highly leveraged positions can unravel.

The hedge fund lost 67% in July and was forced to sell most of its public equities portfolio to Ken Griffin's Citadel due to margin calls.

• Jamie Dimon said AI spending in the US is likely to pay off.
• He said data center construction has boosted the US GDP, creating jobs and demand for construction materials.
• This year, JPMorgan boosted its tech budget to almost $20 million, including AI investments.

Jamie Dimon is optimistic that the country's AI spending will pay off.

The JPMorgan CEO told CNBC's Leslie Picker in a video interview that aired on Wednesday that he believes the billions pouring into AI infrastructure will ultimately prove worthwhile.

"In my own view, and I may be wrong, it'll ultimately play out and pay out," Dimon said. "These people are doing real calculations about what's needed. They see what it costs to do the frontier models. They see what it costs to do inferencing. The need is going up dramatically."

He said that AI spending is also driving the American economy, "because the increase alone is 1% of GDP, and next year it's going to be another 1% of GDP increase."

"You've got to get steel and cement and all these things to build the data centers," he added.

When asked about whether a cooling AI market would be a threat to the nation's economy, Dimon said that while there are "a lot of things to worry about," this specific scenario is "not high on the list."

JPMorgan has poured significant capital into tech and AI projects this year, with Dimon saying on a January earnings call that he didn't want the bank to fall behind other Wall Street rivals and fintech companies.

"We are going to stay out front, so help us God," he said in response to a question about the bank's spending from Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo.

The bank then announced in February that it was planning to boost its technology budget to $19.8 billion this year, which included investments in some AI projects.

Since then, the company has pushed its engineers to use AI more, tracking their usage on internal dashboards. Business Insider saw screenshots of some of these tracking systems and spoke to current and former developers, most of whom were worried about being labeled as underperformers if their AI use didn't increase.

During a second-quarter earnings call in July, Dimon said that AI has led to as much as a 40% reduction in jobs in some areas of the firm, but that it wouldn't suddenly shrink its operational budget.

But that's not to say he hasn't been skeptical about high AI spending, particularly in recent months, as the tokenmaxxing trend has been on the decline. In July, the executive said during a CNBC appearance that companies need to be rational about AI spending, "like any other resource we use."

The company's AI leadership is also undergoing a reset following the July announcement by its AI chief, Teresa Heitsenrether, that she would retire after four decades at the bank.

• Meta says its AI model breached a third-party system due to a misconfiguration by Irregular.
• Meta joins other AI firms like OpenAI and Anthropic, that have also dealt with rogue AI cybersecurity incidents.
• These incidents have prompted calls for more regulation and transparency in AI cybersecurity.

Meta has joined a growing list of companies saying their models hacked into an external company's system during cybersecurity testing.

In a statement on Thursday, the social media company said its Muse Spark model "exploited a security vulnerability in a third-party service, in a manner similar to previously-reported instances with other companies."

The Meta spokesperson said the breach occurred because of a misconfiguration by Irregular, an independent company Meta uses for model testing. This led to the model accessing the internet during evaluation.

Meta added that it learned of the incident when Irregular notified the company. It says it is investigating the incident and plans to issue a full retrospective once the company has all the details.

The Information first reported on the Meta AI model incident on Wednesday. Irregular did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Meta is the third AI giant to report such a rogue agent breach in the last few weeks.

Late last month, open-source AI platform Hugging Face said that it had experienced a cybersecurity breach in which an AI agent had accessed some of its systems. OpenAI disclosed that two of its models escaped a test environment and were responsible for the rogue hack.

On Wednesday, OpenAI self-reported two more security lapses, in addition to the Hugging Face hacking incident. The AI lab said that the incidents occurred while external parties were testing the model's capabilities.

Last week, Anthropic disclosed a similar incident, saying that it found three cases of Claude models gaining unauthorized access to other companies' systems.

These hacking incidents have prompted calls for more AI safety regulation and reporting.

In an interview with CBS that aired on Sunday, Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue called for mandatory disclosures of AI cyberattacks. Transparency can help everyone learn about and prevent attacks, he said.

"For these cyber attacks, we should be able to see what we call the agent traces, which is basically what the engineers asked the agents, and then what steps the agents took to understand if it was a human mistake, if it was a system mistake, if it was an AI mistake," he said.

In response to the first OpenAI incident, Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box, said the attack was an example of the "wild times" we are headed toward with AI.

"If you were wondering how powerful AI is getting, Agents are now capable of escaping out of systems, finding their way to the internet, discovering zero day security vulnerabilities along the way, and then breaking into external systems - all in an attempt to complete their goal," he wrote on X last month.

• DoorDash still has problems to solve before broadly using its autonomous delivery robot.
• Issues like loading the robots and tricky deliveries remain, CEO Tony Xu said.
• DoorDash is paying some delivery workers to manually load its robots, Business Insider reported.

DoorDash's delivery robot isn't quite ready for prime time.

The delivery service has spent the last several months testing its Dot delivery robot as it makes deliveries in parts of Phoenix, Arizona. And while the company is working on securing permits for Dot to expand to other cities, there's still a lot that the company needs to figure out before it expands the autonomous delivery option, CEO Tony Xu said on a second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday.

"I'm a big believer that you really have to nail something before you scale it," Xu said.

To make autonomous deliveries work, DoorDash has to correctly estimate how long it will take restaurants to prepare orders, Xu said. The company also has to figure out how Dot can drop off orders at gated communities or interact with a doorman at an apartment building.

Xu also pointed to the issue of loading the robots. The company is paying some DoorDash workers about $5 to load orders into Dot robots, Business Insider reported on Sunday.

Those challenges "might be literally one one thousandth the number of issues that you have to solve to actually have a chance at making autonomous deliveries actually happen," Xu said on Wednesday's call.

DoorDash will also have to solve similar problems for DoorDash Air, the drone delivery service that it announced last month. The company expects to start drone deliveries later this year.

Companies like Uber and DoorDash have turned to autonomous vehicles to make more ride-hailing trips and deliver more orders over the past year. Without people driving them, though, the companies must solve a number of problems.

With Dot, DoorDash is trying to solve issues from maintenance and manufacturing to having infrastructure to charge the robots, the company wrote in a press release on its second-quarter earnings.

Those "are all extremely difficult and must be addressed at scale," DoorDash said in the release.

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• Lucid's new CEO, Silvio Napoli, said the car company launched vehicles before they were ready.
• He's changing how the EV maker launches vehicles, and pushing back the midsize Cosmos to 2027.
• Lucid's two vehicles — the Gravity and the Air — have struggled with software issues.

Lucid Motors has a new CEO — and he has a blunt new assessment of what's gone wrong at the EV maker.

During an earnings call on Tuesday, Silvio Napoli, the company's chief executive since June, said the automaker has "disappointed on several fronts and for far too long." The company reported a net loss of more than $1 billion in the quarter.

"We have not executed consistently," he said. "We missed commitments, launched products before they were ready, under-invested in service, responded too slowly to quality issues, and allowed complexity to slow decisions down."

Lucid has launched two luxury electric vehicles, the Air sedan and the Gravity three-row SUV. Owners have told the Business Insider that the vehicles have been marred by software glitches, including key fob and infotainment issues.

Now, Lucid says it is changing how it develops its next car.

That will push its planned launch of the roughly $50,000 midsize Cosmos into the second half of 2027 — it was expected to start production this year.

The automaker has introduced new "quality gates" intended to ensure that all production and quality requirements are met before launch, a spokesperson told Business Insider. Lucid declined to explain how the checks differ from its previous process.

Napoli said the Cosmos "will launch only when every process and quality requirement has been met."

Company materials show that Cosmos prototypes are undergoing crash development, aerodynamic refinement, cold-weather evaluation, and battery and drive-unit testing. Lucid said more prototype builds, regulatory work, and manufacturing validation remain.

The delay gives rivals more time to establish themselves in the midsize electric SUV market. Rivian began delivering its R2 in June, while Tesla recently brought the three-row Model Y L to the US.

Lucid was founded by former Tesla engineers seeking to build a more efficient EV and is backed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. It has lost money since it began producing cars.

The company has already scaled back significantly this year after overproducing its Gravity SUV. It cut 12% of its workforce in February and another 18% in June, while removing the chief operating officer role. Napoli has swiftly changed the company's C-suite, too.

The reset plans also come weeks after Lucid strongly rejected bankruptcy rumors. The company said on Tuesday that it has about $3 billion in total liquidity.

"We have a clear understanding of the key issues," Napoli said on the call. "A deep transformation is in motion at Lucid."

Work at Lucid? We want to hear from you. Contact Ben Shimkus at bshimkus@insider.com or Signal at bshimkus.41. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device.

• Meta announced a new coding agent called Muse Code that's made to handle software engineering tasks.
• It's Meta's answer to other popular coding agents, such as Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's Codex.
• Meta said Muse Code is intended to be a lower-cost alternative to other agents.

Meta is entering the coding wars with a new agent aimed at taking on Anthropic and OpenAI.

The company announced Wednesday a beta version of Muse Code — powered by its Muse Spark 1.2 AI model — that Meta said can handle complex software engineering tasks, such as writing code and validating results.

Muse Code is Meta's answer to tools like Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex, which have become increasingly popular among developers.

Meta's AI chief Alexandr Wang said in an X post that Muse Code is "one of the most affordable coding agents on the market, available globally."

The standard version of Muse Spark 1.2 costs $1.25 per million input tokens, 15 cents per million cached-input tokens, and $4.25 per million output tokens. Tokens are small pieces of text or code that AI models process.

A heavily discounted "contributor" tier comes with a stipulation that user activity will be used to improve Meta's products. That could appeal to individual developers and startups, while companies working with proprietary code may prefer the standard tier.

Direct comparisons can be difficult since Claude Code and Codex are bundled into subscriptions. Anthropic's Pro Plan, which is $20 a month, includes Claude Code, while Max plans cost $100 to $200 a month. OpenAI's Codex is available through a ChatGPT Plus plan that costs $20 a month. OpenAI's Pro plan costs $100 a month.

The launch reflects how software coding has become a critical part of the AI battleground. Unlike a standard chatbot, a coding agent can examine a company's software, run tests, and write code with limited supervision.

Anthropic gained early traction with Claude Code, while OpenAI expanded Codex across ChatGPT and developer terminals.

During Meta's first-quarter earnings call in April, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that developer tools weren't the company's primary focus, though he added that he was not opposed to offering coding tools.

With Muse Code, Meta seems to be hoping to attract the same programmers who might use Claude or Codex by offering a comparable agent at a lower price.

• Google AI leadership is shifting, with Demis Hassabis moving to Alphabet's chief scientist role.
• DeepMind's transition reflects a focus on AI safety and long-term research initiatives at Google.
• Industry experts express mixed views on Google's AI strategy changes amid competitive pressure.

Google is overhauling its AI leadership.

CEO Sundar Pichai said in a post on Wednesday that DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis will step down from the role to become Alphabet's chief scientist, focusing on long-term AI research. Google veteran Jeff Dean is also leaving to launch a new initiative with fellow engineering leader Sanjay Ghemawat.

The shake-up comes as Google faces mounting pressure from competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic in key areas such as AI coding. Alphabet shares fell as much as 5% following the announcement.

Here is what the smartest voices in business and tech are saying about Google's AI executive shake-up.

Sebastian Mallaby, author of 'The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence'

Sebastian Mallaby, a British journalist and author who once wrote a biography of Hassabis and DeepMind, said in a on X that the change is "a formalization of something that had been happening informally."

"Demis has been playing the role of Google AI statesman for some time, and Koray Kavukcuoglu has been running Google DeepMind research for some time," Mallaby said.

"He cared enough about safety that he fought a three-year battle with Alphabet to get external oversight over DeepMind's AI deployment," Mallaby added of Hassabis. "This next chapter of his career is a return to that side of his work."

Vinod Khosla, entrepreneur and venture capitalist

Vinod Khosla, a billionaire entrepreneur and a cofounder of Sun Microsystems, wrote in a post on X that Google has been "the real source of AI acceleration," from developing Waymo cars when most people were skeptics to investing heavily in AI.

"Lots of research in universities but this team, including Sundar, Larry & Sergey, deserve full credit for believing, investing and accelerating it," said Khosla on Wednesday. "Huge impact."

Ben Pouladian, founder of BEP Research

Pouladian, the founder of BEP Research, an AI infrastructure research firm, said that the change in structure means that Google "finally wants to play to win."

"My read: putting Amin Vahdat, the architect behind Google's TPU infrastructure, closer to the center is about streamlining the whole machine," Pouladian wrote on X on Wednesday.

"Less internal politics. Better compute allocation. One AI strategy," Pouladian added.

Zvi Mowshowitz, writer and founder of Balsa Research

Zvi Mowshowitz, founder of Balsa Research, an AI policy research agency, said on X on Wednesday that Google's shift doesn't bode well for AI safety.

"Big moves at Google DeepMind," Mowshowitz said. "Early read is this is Demis being 'kicked upstairs' and allowed to work on his special projects. Also Jeff Dean is stepping away."

"Presumably this puts the final nail in the coffin of 'DeepMind has meaningful safety practices, assurances or independence from the rest of Google,'" Mowshowitz added.

Tae Kim, veteran tech journalist and author of First Adopter

Tae Kim, a veteran tech journalist and author of the bestselling AI and semiconductor newsletter First Adopter, said it may be "Game over" for DeepMind.

"Jeff Dean and Demis Hassabis are the two most important AI executives at Google," said Kim in a post on X on Wednesday. "Jeff is leaving and Demis is stepping down from day-to-day operational leadership at DeepMind."

• Over 40 global airlines have announced deals for Elon Musk's Starlink WiFi.
• The ultra-high-speed WiFi is free on airlines that offer it, but some require a loyalty account.
• Starlink is already available on some airlines — here's how to find out if your plane has it.

From United Airlines and Emirates to British Airways and Air New Zealand, Elon Musk's Starlink is gaining popularity across global airlines.

In its 2025 Progress Report, Starlink said more than 1,400 commercial planes worldwide have been equipped with the ultra-high-speed internet. Over 40 commercial carriers have announced deals.

All airlines that offer Starlink do so free of charge, although some require passengers to sign up for their loyalty programs.

Business Insider previously tested Starlink on Qatar Airways' first flight with Starlink in October 2024. The connection speed peaked at 215 megabits per second, more than enough for a lag-free video call, and faster than many cable-based internet services.

Starlink operates thanks to a constellation of nearly 11,000 satellites, enabling internet connectivity in remote locations, including over oceans. The satellites are in low-earth orbit, which means faster internet speeds, but they can also disrupt astronomy.

Starlink has competition: Carriers like JetBlue Airways and Delta Air Lines have signed up for Amazon Leo, which works similarly and has launched about 400 satellites.

Viasat has been a common pick for airlines for over a decade, relying on fewer high-capacity satellites in geostationary orbit about 22,000 miles above Earth, which have higher latency than Starlink.

There are ways to find out whether your next flight is equipped with Starlink. For most airlines, passengers are notified during the booking process, in pre-flight communications, or via the app.

Although not associated with Musk or the carriers, there are free online tools, such as Starlink Flights, that can be helpful.

For example, Starlink Flights tracks which aircraft tail numbers are equipped with Starlink by using airline announcements, public records, flight-tracking data, and passenger reports.

Travelers can use aviation tracking tools like FlightRadar24 to find their flight's tail number and cross-check it. Still, aircraft swaps and data inaccuracies mean these tools should be treated as helpful guides rather than guarantees.

Here are all the airlines that have publicly announced plans to launch Starlink.

Aer Lingus

The Irish flag carrier is part of International Airlines Group, which announced its Starlink deal in early November.

Aer Lingus began flying planes with Starlink in March 2026, with plans to equip its long-haul fleet first before expanding across its network.

Air Baltic

Latvia's airBaltic flies around Europe and the Middle East only using Airbus A220 jets. It was the first European airline to adopt Starlink in early 2025.

Air Busan

Air Busan is a budget carrier and a subsidiary of Asiana Airlines, which is merging with Korean Air. Korean Air announced in December that it's adding Starlink.

While the legacy carrier has clearer plans for its wide-body jets, Korean said Air Busan will review which planes to prioritize.

"Rollout schedules will vary by carrier, with the earliest service introduction expected as early as the third quarter of 2026," it added.

Air Dolomiti

Air Dolomiti is a regional airline that only operates Embraer jets and focuses on connecting Italian destinations with other cities around Europe.

It's a subsidiary of Lufthansa, which announced its deal with Starlink in January.

Introduction is set to begin in the second half of 2026, with all Lufthansa Group planes equipped with Starlink by 2029. The company said access would be free for all status customers and Travel ID users.

Air France

The French flag carrier announced its Starlink deal in September 2024, available to Flying Blue loyalty members. Installation began across its fleet in 2025 and is expected to be complete by the end of 2026.

About 60% of its planes are Starlink-equipped.

Air New Zealand

Air New Zealand first said it was working with Starlink in 2023.

It then rolled it out on two domestic aircraft in June 2025, saying that it was "currently in the test phase."

Air Seoul

Air Seoul is a budget carrier and another subsidiary of Korean Air. Like with Air Busan, it is not yet clear which jets will get Starlink.

Alaska Airlines

After merging with Hawaiian Airlines — the first major carrier to offer Starlink — Alaska Airlines announced its deal in August 2025.

It has completed the rollout on its regional aircraft and started equipping its Boeing 737 mainline jets. Its widebody Boeing 787s are also set to get Starlink.

American Airlines

American Airlines announced in May 2026 that it will install Starlink on more than 500 narrowbody planes starting in early 2027.

Asiana Airlines

Asiana Airlines is merging with Korean Air, but has not begun the Starlink installation.

"Following the integration with Asiana Airlines, the airline plans to complete fleetwide installation by the end of 2027," Korean said in its Starlink announcement.

It also said it will prioritize installation on its Boeing 777 and Airbus A350 jets.

Austrian Airlines

Austria's flag carrier is a subsidiary of Lufthansa, which announced its deal with Starlink in January.

Austrian said its entire A320 family and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner would get Starlink, but did not yet disclose a timeline.

British Airways

The UK flag carrier is also part of IAG. British Airways has Starlink on select aircraft as of July 2026 and is gradually adding it to more jets.

Brussels Airlines

Belgium's national airline is another subsidiary of Lufthansa, which announced its deal with Starlink in January.

Brussels Airlines' entire fleet will get the new WiFi, starting with A320s, followed by the long-haul fleet.

Cebu Pacific

The Filipino carrier Cebu is rolling out Starlink starting in 2027.

Cebu is part of the private equity firm Indigo Partners, which announced a deal to equip Starlink on 1,000 aircraft across five airlines: Cebu Pacific, Frontier Airlines, Mexico's Volaris, Hungary's Wizz Air, and South America's JetSMART.

Copa Airlines

Panama's Copa Airlines launched Starlink in July 2026 and plans to equip its entire fleet by 2027.

Discover Airlines

Discover's Starlink rollout is part of the broader deal under the Lufthansa Group agreement.

Edelweiss Air

Edelweiss Air is a sister company of Swiss International Air Lines. Both are subsidiaries of Lufthansa.

Like with other Lufthansa-owned airlines, Starlink will be free for all status customers and Travel ID users.

Emirates

Dubai's airline rolled out its first Starlink plane, an Airbus A380, in April 2026 and plans to add it to all 232 in-service aircraft by mid-2027.

Eurowings

Eurowings, a German budget airline and another subsidiary of Lufthansa, will get Starlink as part of the Lufthansa Group's deal.

FlyDubai

The Emirati budget airline also announced its Starlink deal during the 2025 Dubai Airshow. It operates only Boeing 737s and plans to install Starlink on 100 of them.

Frontier Airlines

Frontier, part of Indigo Partners, announced in July that its first flight with Starlink will take off in early 2027.

Gulf Air

The Middle Eastern carrier announced in January that it would add Starlink across its entire fleet. The first flight took off in May 2026.

Iberia

The Spanish flag carrier is also part of IAG. The conglomerate said it would roll out Starlink across its fleets. The first flight was in June 2026.

ITA Airways

Italy's flag carrier is part-owned by the country's government and the Lufthansa Group.

The Pope typically flies abroad on a chartered ITA Airways plane, with the airline dressing the seats in Vatican colors.

Jazz Aviation

The Canadian airline operates regional flights on behalf of Air Canada and has equipped select Dash 8 turboprop planes with Starlink.

JetSMART

The airline is equipping Starlink as part of the Indigo Partners collective deal for over 1,000 aircraft across its five airlines.

Jin Air

Budget airline Jin Air, another subsidiary of Korean Air, will also get Starlink on its planes.

It will first install the high-speed WiFi on its Boeing 737 Max 8 jets.

JSX

JSX is a charter air carrier and was the first carrier to equip Starlink back in 2023. Its fleet is mostly made up of regional Embraer jets, all of which are equipped.

Korean Air

Korean Air announced in December that it's adding Starlink, with service starting as early as the third quarter of 2026.

It said it will prioritize installation on its Boeing 777 and Airbus A350 jets, aiming for Starlink to be across the fleet by the end of 2027.

Level

Level is a budget airline based in Barcelona and is part of IAG. The airline's parent company said it would roll out Starlink from late 2026.

Lufthansa

Lufthansa, Germany's flag carrier, announced in January that it would install Starlink across its fleet and that of its subsidiaries.

Introduction is set to begin in the second half of 2026, with all planes equipped with Starlink by 2029.

It said access would be free for all status customers and Travel ID users.

The Lufthansa Group added that further details will be announced throughout the year.

Qatar Airways

Qatar Airways outpaced its regional rival, Emirates, by announcing Starlink back in May 2024.

Starlink is installed on all Qatar's Boeing 777s and is being rolled out to its Airbus A350s.

SAS

Scandinavian Airlines, or SAS, is the flag carrier for Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.

Its first Starlink flight was in March 2026 on an A320. Passengers need to sign up for the EuroBonus loyalty program to access it for free.

Singapore Airlines

Singapore is adding Starlink to its Airbus A350 and Airbus A380 planes from early 2027.

Swiss International Air Lines

Swiss International Air Lines is one of the many Lufthansa subsidiaries getting Starlink internet. It will be part of the rollout that starts in the second half of 2026.

Southwest Airlines

Southwest's first Starlink flight was in June 2026, and it plans to install the WiFi on more than 300 jets this year.

United Airlines

United Airlines was the second US airline to announce a Starlink deal, but the first of the Big Three.

It has installed the service on over 400 planes, including regional, narrowbody, and widebody planes.

The airline says customers will receive a notification before their flight if their plane is equipped with Starlink. Passengers need to sign up for United's MileagePlus loyalty program for free access.

Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic was the first UK airline to announce its deal with Starlink.

The first Starlink plane took off in May 2026. Passengers will need to sign up for the airline's Flying Club loyalty program to use the WiFi.

Volaris

The Mexican carrier, part of Indigo Partners, announced Starlink in July and plans to equip its entire fleet by 2027.

Vueling

Another IAG subsidiary, Vueling is a Spanish budget airline. Its parent company said it would roll out Starlink from 2026.

WestJet

Canada's WestJet started installing Starlink in February, and it's now equipped on over 100 of its Boeing 737 jets.

Nearly all of its 737-800 and 737 Max 8s have Starlink. Free access requires signing up for its loyalty program.

Wizz Air

The Hungarian low-cost airline, part of Indigo Partners, said in June that it will install Starlink from 2027.

Zipair

Zipair is a Japanese budget airline and a subsidiary of Japan Airlines.

It was an early adopter of Starlink, announcing its deal in early 2023, and has rolled out the service on all of its 787s.

Editor's Note: This story was originally published in November 2025. It was updated in January 2026 and again in August 2026.

• SpaceX's president said customers are choosing shorter flights and more stops to get Starlink.
• MrBeast said he would eventually book flights based on Starlink access, even if it adds a layover.
• BI contacted 13 airlines with Starlink agreements, but none verified Shotwell's account.

"Actually, I would like to add an extra flight to my trip," said no one, ever.

Well, until Starlink came along, apparently.

During SpaceX's Tuesday earnings call, the company's president, Gwynne Shotwell, highlighted the expansion of Starlink, the company's satellite-powered internet service, across commercial airlines.

"In fact, we heard from one of our airline customers, shockingly, customers are flying shorter hop flights instead of direct, so that they could ensure that they're on a Starlink-activated flight," Shotwell said in her opening remarks on the call. "They'd never seen this in the business before."

YouTuber MrBeast made a similar statement earlier this year on "The Good Guys" podcast, saying he would eventually choose flights based on whether the aircraft offered Starlink — even if it meant taking an extra layover.

He also joked that he would rather have Starlink WiFi than Biscoff cookies, a snack closely associated with Delta Air Lines. Delta does not have an agreement with SpaceX to use Starlink.

Business Insider contacted 13 airlines with agreements to use Starlink and asked whether they had observed passengers choosing itineraries based on the service.

A Southwest spokesperson said he believed Shotwell was referring to another carrier, noting that Southwest does not operate regional jets and uses its Starlink-equipped aircraft across a variety of routes.

Alaska Airlines declined to comment. The other airlines did not respond by publication time. SpaceX also did not respond to a request for comment or verification of Shotwell's account.

SpaceX also touted a new agreement with American Airlines to bring Starlink to 500 planes, as well as new partnerships with Southwest, Virgin Atlantic, Iberia, and Aer Lingus. The company said enterprise and government contracts generated $1.8 billion in quarterly revenue.

Shotwell said SpaceX saw "significant growth opportunities" for Starlink and had never lost an enterprise customer.

A SpaceX first

Tuesday was SpaceX's first earnings call since its June IPO. The company reported $7.8 billion in quarterly revenue, up 92% from a year earlier, and a net loss of $541 million.

Much of the call focused on SpaceX's increasingly expansive ambitions. Shotwell said the company plans to turn Starlink Mobile into a full-fledged carrier capable of taking customers from AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

CEO Elon Musk, meanwhile, defended SpaceX's nearly $16 billion in quarterly spending on AI infrastructure and outlined plans that included data centers in space, factories and robots on the moon, and a possible $1 trillion in annual revenue as early as 2029.

Investors appeared less enthusiastic about the price tag: SpaceX shares fell after hours despite the company's revenue beat. The stock is down about 30% since its June IPO.

• The shape of the economy, and which letter best describes it, has become a point of contention.
• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the K shape is over, and the C shape is in.
• In a K-shaped economy, higher earners see their fortunes grow while lower earners experience the opposite.

Is the economy still K-shaped?

The label came into vogue to describe an economy where the rich keep pulling ahead while the poor fall further behind. Recent comments from business executives and policymakers suggest that shape might be changing.

Hilton CEO Christopher Nassetta said that sales growth is spreading beyond just luxury. And Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the economy is now C-shaped, with outcomes at either end of the wealth spectrum starting to converge.

"I got sick of hearing about this K-shaped economy," Bessent said in an interview with CNBC's Squawk Box. "I can say here, definitively, the K-shaped economy is over."

But the data suggests a more limited shift: lower earners have seen some gains, but higher earners are still spending and doing well enough that the broad trajectory of diverging economic outcomes has not fully changed.

"C-shaped would suggest that maybe we're seeing some compression in inequality — that as the high end does a little bit worse and the low end does a little bit better, we start to meet more in the middle," said Elizabeth Pancotti, the vice president of policy, advocacy, and research at the Groundwork Collaborative, a left-leaning think tank. "I don't think we've seen any evidence to suggest that we're closing the gap on those things."

What would turn a K into a C?

In Bessent's accounting, the C shape is defined by robust wage gains for lower earners, housing inflation moderating for renters and homeowners, and more favorable tax policies, such as no taxes on tips, under President Trump's sprawling new package.

Bessent pointed out that wages for the lowest quartile of full-time workers grew 5.5% year over year. That tracks with Bureau of Labor Statistics data that tracks wage growth among full time wage and salary workers. Higher-paid full-time workers saw much slower wage growth — an indicator of a possible C formation.

But including hourly or part-time workers in the analysis changes the picture. Earnings data analyzed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, which includes such workers, shows that the lowest earners have seen the smallest gains since late 2024.

Bessent cited rent as an example of falling inflation. But housing costs for renters and homeowners continue rising, despite recent tempering. Rent CPI is slowing, but is likely not having a huge impact on bending the K.

Higher-and lower-earners both feel dreary about the economy, with consumer sentiment for both groups falling in a similar shape since late 2024. Even so, lower earners continually feel worse.

While firms are still mentioning the dynamic in earnings calls, the number of mentions has fallen from early and mid-year peaks. Conversely, there have been just eight mentions of a "C shape" in the past two years.

Finally, the K-shape still shows up clearly in consumer spending. A study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta found that, from 2021 through its most recent data in 2025, spending among the top 40% of earners grew the fastest, while spending among the lowest quintile grew the slowest.

"I think that in general, high income, high wealth consumers are doing just fine," Pancotti said. "They have no issue buying first-class airfares even when they have doubled over the past few months."

Instead, the dynamic that's been shaping up is more akin to a K with slightly softer prongs: The trajectory for high earners hasn't changed, and the lowest earners are seeing slightly more stability.

Ultimately, trying to describe the economy with a letter shape might just be alphabet soup.

"I don't think we're in a K-shaped economy when it comes to the consumer," said Ernie Tedeschi, the chief economist at Stripe. "By definition, the rich always have more money. They're driving some amount of consumer spending growth, and it just doesn't look like the story in 2024 or 2025 or 2026 is meaningfully different from any other solid economy with a roughly 4% unemployment rate."

• Jack Ma's private equity firm, Yunfeng Capital, quietly led Corgi's latest funding round.
• Corgi, a San Francisco AI insurance startup, saw its valuation quadruple over the last few months.
• Corgi marks Yunfeng's first known US deal, as it mostly touts Chinese investments.

Jack is back.

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma's private equity firm secretly led the latest funding round for Corgi, marking the first time the firm is known to have invested in a startup founded in the US.

Yunfeng Capital, co-founded by Jack Ma and businessman David Yu, funded Corgi with about $30 million, according to a source familiar with the matter and correspondence seen by Business Insider. That round valued Corgi at $4 billion, Forbes previously reported last month.

Corgi is an AI business insurance startup that was part of Y Combinator's summer 2024 cohort. It's one of the hottest startups in San Francisco, with its valuation almost quadrupling over the last three months. It's best-known for operating a 24-hour café in San Francisco and touting a 7-day workweek.

Corgi and Yunfeng Capital didn't respond to requests for comment. Ma's charitable foundation and Alibaba also didn't respond.

Geopolitical tensions between Washington, D.C., and Beijing have made cross-border tech investment increasingly fraught.

Publicly, Yunfeng Capital largely touts Chinese companies in its portfolio.

It's also a rare overseas bet from Ma, who has kept a much lower profile in recent years. The Alibaba cofounder disappeared from public view after criticizing Chinese regulators in 2020. Last year, Ma reemerged in China as the country's government embraces AI.

China has exerted greater control over outbound capital and technology, for example, ordering Meta to unwind its acquisition of AI agent startup Manus.

The US has also tightened scrutiny of Chinese investment through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

Prior to the tensions, Alibaba actively invested in US companies, including Lyft in 2014 and Magic Leap in 2016. Ma stepped down as Alibaba's chairman in 2019.

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• SpaceX is hiring Starlink sales people to win complex corporate and government deals.
• Business leaders say AI can support sales, but trust and accountability still require humans.
• Palantir is shrinking its sales team, though its model may be an exception.

One of the hottest jobs at SpaceX right now relies on an old-fashioned skill: talking to people.

CEO Elon Musk, who also founded xAI, the company behind the chatbot Grok, has spent years saying that AI and robots will take on more of the work humans do. Yet on SpaceX's earnings call Tuesday, he said the company is building a large enterprise sales team for the satellite internet system Starlink — work he described in distinctly human terms.

"This requires just going out there, talking to people, educating them about the currency of the Starlink system and where it's going," Musk said.

Musk's comments echo what other business leaders told Business Insider: Even as AI automates parts of sales, winning complex deals still requires a human touch. Good salespeople, they said, give buyers confidence that someone will be accountable if a product or service falls short.

"Generally speaking, people still want to buy from humans," said Brian Smith, founder of IA Business Advisors, a management consulting firm. "Even companies as large as SpaceX are selling relationships, not just a service or a technology."

AI can help, but humans still close

AI can still play a valuable part in the sales process. For example, it can be used for customer research, preparing pitch decks, and role-playing how to triumph over rejection.

Smith said his firm uses AI to create sales scripts tailored to prospective buyers in different regions. "AI is helping to get that done faster," he said.

The technology is likely to fall short, however, when it comes to closing a sale.

"AI is not going out for dinner with people to buy and sell," said Alan Stein, CEO of a career-coaching firm and a former hiring manager at Google, Meta, and American Express. While AI may be able to replace some professionals, he added that "relationship-driven roles like sales are going to be less impacted."

On Tuesday's SpaceX earnings call, Musk said the sales team's job will be to convince corporate and government customers that Starlink is reliable enough to serve as their primary internet provider, rather than as merely a backup.

While SpaceX is a household name that recently pulled off the largest IPO in history, it still needs to convince prospective corporate and government customers to purchase Starlink, and that's not something AI can likely do on its own, said Alex Sobol, cofounder of the Millennium Alliance, an invite-only community for C-suite executives in North America and Europe.

"Elon's probably not just relying on the fact that his products and technologies are received really well," said Sobol. "I think he realizes this is probably more complicated than anything he's put to market before, and it's going to need a lot of people in the field talking to customers, potential customers, advocates, and skeptics."

Palantir is shrinking its sales team