Mark Zuckerberg wearing a t-shirt that reads "Carthago delenda est," a famous Latin phrase. Also pictured are his wife, Pricilla Chan, and their three girls, August, Maxima, and Aurelia.
Mark Zuckerberg/Instragram
Mark Zuckerberg made a telling fashion choice for a celebration of his 40th birthday.
His shirt read "Carthago delenda est," a Latin phrase familiar to generations of schoolboys.
It has a special significance for Zuckerberg, who used it as a call to arms in early Facebook history.
Carthago delenda est — mean anything to you?
It certainly meant a lot to people hanging around the Roman Senate some 2,200 years ago. And also to Mark Zuckerberg.
In a series of photos showing the Meta founder celebrating his 40th birthday, Zuckerberg had a striking black shirt with a Latin phrase on it.
"Carthago delenda est" means — very emphatically — Carthage must be destroyed.
I don't have that much in common with Zuckerberg, but we did both study Latin at school, which is probably the only reason any person currently alive would recognize it.
It's attributed to a Roman senator called Cato the Elder, and boy did that guy hate Carthage.
Carthage, a city in modern-day Tunisia, was a rival civilization to Rome back in the day — the one with Hannibal and elephants.
Cato was famous for ending all his speeches with those words, or something like them. It was his obsession — Rome must destroy Carthage.
Not just beat it, like it had in two previous wars. Annihilate it. ("Delenda" shares an origin with the English "delete.")
That phrase, actually an abbreviation of what Cato said, is widely known by people who study Rome; the internet is littered with jokes and memes about it.
Its sense is to convey that something ought to happen or has to happen to the thing in question.
In this case — Carthage has got to go down. It's not an opinion or an idea — going down is in Carthage's very nature.
Cato got his way, for what it's worth; the Romans sacked Carthage in 146 BC and it faded into relative obscurity, its territories subsumed into the Roman Empire. Delenda.
As well as being a throwback to Roman history, it's a throwback to Zuckerberg's own history.
Zuckerberg seems to have a real Roman streak, from his erstwhile Caesar-style haircut to giving his kids Latinate names like Aurelia and Maxima.
As Business Insider reported back in 2016, Zuckerberg made "Carthago delenda est" a rallying cry within Facebook back when it had its own version of Carthage: Google.
Google had launched its Google+ social network, and Zuckerberg worried that it might threaten Facebook's dominance.
The answer was war — a "lockdown" culture where Facebook staff went hard to defeat the foe. The company seemed to go along with the reference too, putting up posters with the phrase on them.
Google still exists, of course, but Google+ very much does not. Delenda.
Zuckerberg's birthday post seemed to be all about revisiting his past, including recreations of his childhood bedroom and Harvard dorm. So it seems appropriate that a throwback — if obscure — Latin phrase should be at the center of it.
A missile launches from a US Navy warship in the Red Sea in February.
US Central Command
From Ukraine to the Middle East, air-defense systems have been put under immense stress this year.
These big engagements show why it's important for militaries to have a strong air-defense network.
They also offer the US military valuable lessons for a potential war with China in the Pacific.
Air-defense systems have been tested in unprecedented ways in conflicts around the world by global military powers and smaller militant forces alike.
Massive aerial assaults that occurred over the past few months have underscored the importance of having a robust, layered air-defense network to protect civilian and military targets from ballistic, cruise, and anti-ship missiles, as well as one-way attack drones.
The engagements offer the US military valuable lessons for a potential war in the Pacific, where a clash with China could feature thousands of long-range missiles and a demand for air defenses on a very large scale.
As engagements in Ukraine, Israel, and the Red Sea have shown, to be ready for such a daunting scenario, the US will need to substantially strengthen its air-defense capabilities in the region and produce more missile interceptors, former US Navy officers and air-defense experts say.
China has a "very large arsenal of very capable weapons," Bradley Martin, a retired Navy surface warfare captain, told Business Insider. "We don't want to be in a battle of having to exchange missile-for-missile because we'll run out much faster and it'll be harder for us to come up with replacements."
The need for air defense and the dangers of not having enough
Modern, game-changing technologies, like drones, have defined the Ukraine war, but decades-old air defenses have proven to be among the most valuable elements in an existential fight for Ukraine.
A Ukrainian air-defense system intercepts a Shahed drone mid-air above Kyiv on May 30, 2023.
AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File
The war has shown how effective air defenses can be at denying air superiority, protecting key areas, and threatening high-value aircraft, as well as the costs when capabilities are degraded.
Ukraine's air defenses, like its Soviet-era S-300s and US-supplied Patriots, have defeated enemy missile and drone strikes, hindered Russian air operations, and shot down numerous fighter-bombers and other Russian planes.
But in early 2024, as Russia was ramping up strikes, Ukraine's network of air defenses capable of intercepting these attacks was stretched thinly as US aid remained stalled in Congress.
Ukraine rationed its defenses, moving them from the front lines to protect cities and other population centers. As it ran critically low on interceptors, the lack of air defenses played a direct role in costing Ukraine the city of Avdiivka, as Russia gained brief and localized air superiority. The impact has continued into spring 2024, as Russian bombardments continue and Ukraine's defenses increasingly fail to intercept the attacks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly said additional air-defense systems were vital to keeping Ukrainian cities safe and protecting the front lines. This week, he asked the US for more, requesting at least two more Patriots alone to protect Kharkiv, which is under heavy Russian fire.
Just last week, an overnight attack targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure included dozens of Russian missiles and drones. In its assessment of the attack, the Institute for the Study of War think tank said "Russian forces will likely continue to conduct mass strikes to cause long-term damage to Ukrainian energy infrastructure as degraded Ukrainian air defense capabilities persist." And that continues to be far from the only problem.
Firefighters put out fire caused by fragments of a Russian rocket after it was shot down by air-defense systems during an attack in Kyiv on May 16, 2023.
Ukrainian Emergency Situations Ministry via AP
There are lessons for the US and its allies in this fight.
"If Ukraine is a guide, in a conflict NATO air defenses may down most drones and missiles, but some will get through," experts at the RAND Corporation think tank wrote earlier this year. "Ukraine and NATO might reduce risks with a two-prong strategy of strengthening air defenses and boosting infrastructure resilience."
Testing air defenses in more places
Far from Ukraine, off the coast of Yemen, another air battle is taking place, as the Houthis continue to target ships transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, waterways facilitating global trade.
The Iran-backed Houthi rebels have fired on ships with one-way attack drones and anti-ship missiles — even making history by being the first group to use anti-ship ballistic missiles in combat. The group has struck a handful of merchant vessels, sunk one, and killed civilians on another. But many attacks have been defeated by Western navies.
US and coalition warships routinely shoot down many of these threats, defending both merchant vessels and themselves.
"What we did works, and it works well, and it does what it's intended to do," Archer Macy, a retired US Navy admiral, told BI. "Very few ships have been hit."
A missile launches from a US Navy destroyer in the Red Sea in February.
Screengrab/US Central Command
Among the systems in play is the Navy's advanced Aegis Combat System, an automated and centralized weapons control system. US destroyers and cruisers are equipped with this capability, which provides air and missile defense.
"The air-defense systems that the Navy has are very capable," Martin, now a senior policy researcher at RAND, said, "and the type of layer defense that it tries to apply has been very effective."
Aegis also came into play during the Middle East's biggest air battle since the region descended into turmoil following Hamas' Oct. 7 terror attacks against Israel. In mid-April, Iran and its proxies launched more than 320 cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and one-way attack drones at the country.
American warships and a Patriot battery helped Israel's Arrow systems down many of the ballistic missiles, while US, UK, and French fighter jets destroyed many of the drones. Altogether, around 99% of the threats were eliminated — a remarkable air-defense success.
Shaan Shaikh, a fellow with the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said the engagement last month demonstrated just how effective a robust air-defense network can be.
"These systems work. We've seen in multiple campaigns now evidence of them working," he told BI. "We've proven the technology at some degree, and I think that shows that this investment, in general, is worth it."
An Arrow 3 ballistic missile interceptor is seen during its test launch near the Israeli city of Ashdod on Dec. 10, 2015.
REUTERS/Amir Cohen TPX
But the supply of interceptors is insufficient. The US might not even have what it needs for an extended campaign against Iran. In the Pacific, Shaikh said, "China is going to be a whole separate ball game."
China is a 'different ballgame'
In a fight against China, the US would face a missile force unlike anything it's fought before able to threaten US bases in South Korea, Japan, and Guam housing troops and aircraft, as well as US warships in strategic waterways.
Last fall, the Pentagon published its annual report on China's military, documenting staggering increases in its long-range missile stockpiles and launcher numbers.
China's arsenal of missiles, some with nicknames like the "Guam Express" and "Carrier Killer," and the threat it poses are quite different from what is being seen in battles around the world right now.
Iran's attack against Israel earlier this year was on a smaller scale than what might be seen from China, and the attack, although substantial, was not enough to overwhelm the defenses of Israel and its partners.
Chinese missiles haven't been tested in combat, but Houthi threats appear far less sophisticated, with many of those failing as some Iranian missiles have and falling into the sea.
Chinese military vehicles carry DF-16 short-range ballistic missiles past Tiananmen Gate during a military parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in Beijing on Sept. 3, 2015.
AP Photo/Andy Wong
The closest comparison is probably Russia, which has sophisticated missiles and the ability to launch large-scale attacks, but it's "nothing like what we could see from" China, Thomas Shugart, an adjunct senior fellow with the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security, said.
China could launch a preemptive strike that would leave American forces with little time to defend and potentially do serious damage. An attack could come on a tremendous scale that could overwhelm defenses. And a strike could come in waves.
A first wave could include hypersonic missiles fired at defensive systems, such as headquarters, radars, and missile defenses. Then, ballistic missiles could strike runways, trapping aircraft and preventing a quick response.
China's arsenal affords it a number of strike options. The threat from China is one that demands air-defense solutions unlike any conflict seen today, a "very different ballgame in terms of scale and types of weapons," Shugart said.
Needing more interceptors for the Pacific
From the fights this year, the US can see how it'll need to employ air defenses in a potential showdown with China. Shugart said he believes the real world, unscripted experience against the Houthis, as well as the data gathered from Ukraine shooting down Russian missiles, is giving American forces necessary lessons and experience that may be bad for China.
"The takeaway for these experiences might help us to prepare for dealing with something that's a lot scarier," he said.
A US Air Force B-1B Lancer assigned to the 37th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron takes-off from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam on Oct. 10, 2017.
Staff Sgt. Joshua Smoot/US Air Force/Handout via REUTERS
To prepare for a conflict with China, the US will need a robust, concentrated combination of active and passive measures — ballistic missile defenses, systems like Patriots and Aegis, but also hardened bases, dispersed forces, runway repair crews, and mobile command centers, something that lawmakers sounded alarms on last week in a letter to US military leaders.
The military isn't blind to the threat though.
"The sheer number of missiles that are out there today and that we're seeing utilized in some of the more minor engagements is mind-boggling," Air Force Lt. Gen. Heath Collins, the director of the Missile Defense Agency said earlier this year. "We've got to be prepared for major engagements."
Former Navy officers say it's crucial that the US has enough air-defense interceptors to sustain an extensive missile fight in the Pacific. That means it is important to produce more missiles like the SM-3, a capability that Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro recently warned lawmakers would be needed in greater numbers to deter threats like China.
"Every time you engage something, you're expending a missile, and after a while it starts to turn into a round-for-round calculation," Martin said. "We would be using weapons at a much higher rate than we're capable of replacing them."
Ultimately, military leaders will need to consider how long air-defense capabilities will last when planning their campaign, said Macy, now a senior associate at CSIS' Missile Defense Project.
This Dec. 10, 2018 photo shows the launch of the US military's land-based Aegis missile defense testing system from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on the island of Kauai in Hawaii.
Mark Wright/Missile Defense Agency via AP
Air defense alone can't end a conflict, he said, but it can defend critical assets long enough that another force can end the threat by other means, like attack operations. Running out of air defenses before the enemy runs out of air threats spells trouble.
"We've demonstrated we can deal with a high-end threat, we can deal with the low-end threat," Macy said. "It comes down to inventory."
Jeff Bezos emailed Amazon execs asking why more AI firms aren't using its cloud services, CNBC reported.
Amazon's founder appears concerned about keeping pace with rivals OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google.
Amazon is investing in AI tools and startups to remain competitive in the AI race.
It seems like Jeff Bezos is concerned about Amazon lagging behind rivals in the AI race.
The founder and former CEO has been emailing Amazon executives asking why more AI firms aren't using its cloud services, according to an unnamed source who spoke to CNBC.
The person reportedly said Amazon is considered the "most vulnerable" Big Tech company in the AI arena. Aware of that perception, Bezos is "very involved" in its AI efforts and has been mapping out the competitive playing field, according to CNBC.
Bezos has also been seeking to make introductions for Amazon to AI startups, the report says.
The news comes amid a leadership shake-up at its cloud division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), after hundreds of layoffs in the unit last month.
CEO Andy Jassy announced Adam Selipsky was stepping down from his role leading AWS in a memo on Tuesday, which was viewed by Business Insider and later posted to Amazon's website.
OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google are considered frontrunners in the generative AI race, but Amazon has been making strategic moves in an apparent bid to remain competitive.
But the rollout of Amazon's AI chatbot Q in November was met with negative reactions, which came as a result of a "rushed" launch, insiders previously told BI.
Its AI platform for businesses called Amazon Bedrock, which lets AWS customers build chatbots and generate images, was unveiled in April and launched in September.
British lawyer Ramya Nagesh was accused of misconduct after falling asleep during a coroner's inquest.
Nagesh was representing a nurse witness but nodded off and missed her client giving evidence.
A tribunal cleared her of all professional misconduct charges after she cited medical issues.
British barrister and sleepwalking expert, Ramya Nagesh, has been cleared of all professional misconduct charges by the Bar Standards Board after she fell asleep during an inquest.
Nagesh had appeared remotely from a hotel room to represent her client, a nurse witness, at a coroner's inquest in December 2022.
But questions were raised about Nagesh's whereabouts when she failed to answer questions aimed at her by the coronor, The Telegraph reported.
The tribunal heard that Nagesh returned to the inquest 15 minutes late after she took a nap during the court's 45-minute lunch break. She then drifted off again, for another two hours, this time missing her client giving evidence.
Multiple people from the court and her own chambers tried to reach Nagesh by phone but no one could get through to her.
During the tribunal on Tuesday, Nagesh claimed that she had suffered from "excessive sleepiness" caused by undiagnosed effects of long Covid, vitamin D deficiency, and a sleep disorder involving bad dreams, The Telegraph reported.
Nagesh, who has previously written an academic book about how cases of sleepwalking are treated in criminal law, was cleared of all professional misconduct charges by the tribunal.
Business Insider contacted Nagesh for comment but didn't immediately hear back.
Other people suffering with long Covid have reported that symptoms of fatigue and "brain fog" impact their daily job performance.
A report from the Brookings Institute in 2022 estimated that long Covid could have caused around 1.6 million Americans to be missing from the workforce at that time.
Some consumers are running out of cash as they battle rising prices and higher interest rates.
Getty Images
People are spending almost every dollar they have to keep up with rising prices and interest costs.
They're cutting back wherever they can, paving the way for an economic slump, Stephanie Pomboy said.
She warned of dire implications for pension funds, banks, real estate groups, and other businesses.
Steep rises in prices and monthly interest payments have left people on the brink of financial disaster, setting the stage for the economy to crater, says Stephanie Pomboy.
"The consumer is spent up and lent up," the Macro Mavens founder said on the latest episode of the "Thoughtful Money" podcast.
"They're spending every dollar they have, and then some, just to keep up with the basic necessities."
"This is not consumers running out and taking vacations and buying second homes and a new car or anything like that, quite the contrary," she said.
The economist underscored that households are drawing down their savings and running up their credit cards just to cover everyday expenses, and cutting back on non-essential purchases.
Inflation spiked to a 40-year high of more than 9% in 2022, and has been tracking close to 4% in recent months — well above the Federal Reserve's 2% target.
The US central bank has responded by hiking interest rates from nearly zero to north of 5%, which has raised the monthly amount that people owe on their mortgages, credit cards, car loans, and other debts.
The one-two punch of surging prices and soaring borrowing costs has put the squeeze on households, forcing them to raid their piggy banks, rack up additional debt, save less each month, and slash their outgoings.
Pomboy pointed to the National Restaurant Association's monthly performance index, which had a "shockingly weak" reading in January as consumers dined out less, and remained depressed in March.
She also emphasized that retail sales have barely budged in two years once adjusted for inflation. Moreover, she highlighted recent cautions from Starbucks and McDonald's about waning consumer demand.
Pomboy worked for more than a decade at ISI — a trading group acquired by Evercore in 2014 — before launching her own investment-research firm in 2002.
She underscored that consumer spending is the engine of the economy, and company profits tend to suffer when it falters.
As a result, Pomboy predicted a "real slowdown in economic activity" with "problems around servicing debt among consumers and corporations."
She flagged disappointing data for consumer confidence, wage growth, and employment gains in recent months as warning signs.
Pomboy also underlined the risks to underfunded pensions of a broader downturn, and mounting pressure on banks as deposits are yanked and loan delinquencies rise among consumers and commercial real estate businesses.
"We've got a lot of painful time ahead of us," she said. "God forbid there's a reversion to the mean in the stock market or credit — that's gonna be ugly."
Pomboy is personally betting on hard assets with gold as her biggest holding, followed by real estate and some cash. She "wouldn't touch corporate credit with a 10-foot pole," and advised being "very defensive" on stocks as higher interest rates and cooling economic growth threaten to weigh on them.
The expert researcher has been sounding the alarm on consumers running out of cash for over a year, echoing other gurus including Michael Burry of "The Big Short" fame.
Yet the economy has skirted recession, the stock market has surged to record highs instead of crashing, unemployment remains historically low, and corporate profits have mostly held up, meaning Pomboy's warnings have been off the mark so far.
GPT-4o, the company's newest multimodal model, can input and output a combination of text, audio, and images. The technology represents a major advancement of the artificial intelligence of the recent past.
OpenAI announced the model in a series of demo videos on Monday, showcasing the technology's improved vision and voice abilities. The videos elicited both wonder and mockery, with people quickly making comparisons to the 2013 sci-fi movie "Her" and Elon Musk saying the reveal made him "cringe."
While it's too early to predict how exactly the model will disrupt the workforce, GPT-4o and other multimodal models will inevitably change the way we work, said Maribel Lopez, an AI analyst and founder of research and strategy consulting firm Lopez Research.
"The concept of multimodal models will impact a lot of different industries because it handles text, video, and audio," Lopez told Business Insider.
But not all of those impacts will necessarily be negative, Lopez said. For example, electricians, plumbers, and other tactile workers could use multimodal AI to make their jobs easier, she said.
"For workers who fix specialized equipment, AI might be very helpful in troubleshooting or fixing problems," Lopez said. "But it won't replace them because they have to be there to do it."
While some companies are working on AI robots that can do physical work, those models are typically better suited for repeated menial tasks like welding bolts than complex blue-collar labor.
However, other industries could have more of a challenge adapting to the implementation of multimodal AI in the workplace.
"AI will impact any job that has data," Lopez said, pointing to industries like supply chain and finance.
The general consensus is that anywhere from 20% to 30% of tasks completed by "computer workers" will eventually be offset by AI, Lopez said. But that doesn't mean computer workers will find themselves unemployed.
Using paralegals as an example, Lopez said their jobs could shift from tracking down documents and writing up summaries — two tasks that can take a person hours but which AI can complete in minutes — to tasks yet unknown.
"The AI challenge is that it forces all of us to enhance our skillsets," Lopez said. "It will be a change for all of us."
And it appears that OpenAI doesn't want GPT-4o to feel like doomsday for computer workers, either.
The company included a demo video showing the technology acting as a personal assistant, suggesting changes to code in real time, and offering a one-sentence summary of text.
Yaroslav Zubko moved to the US to work for a startup in New York.
Natalia Azarkina
Yaroslav Zubko moved to New York in 2017 after building up his tech career in Ukraine.
He's noticed key differences in the US and Ukraine tech work culture.
Zubko said people in the US overwork more and place more emphasis on idea generation.
This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with 34-year-old Yaroslav Zubko, who lives in New York, about his experience moving to the US for a tech job. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
In 2015, I traveled to New York for a two-week business trip. It was the first time I'd ever left Ukraine, where I grew up. I looked at all the huge buildings in the city and couldn't believe my eyes. New York was even more impressive than it seemed in the movies.
I made a promise to myself that I was going to move to New York.
In 2016, I was offered a role as a director of product design at a New York tech startup called UpTop. I hadn't been actively applying for US jobs at the time. They supported me in getting a visa, and I moved to NYC in June 2017.
Moving to America has been the biggest adventure of my life. But the tech culture is very different in the US than in Ukraine. I've had to navigate these differences and assimilate into the work culture.
How I got a job at a New York tech startup
I studied business law at college in Ukraine but decided I wanted to follow my passion and become a designer. I started studying graphic design online and taught myself how to use design tools. I landed my first job as a web designer in 2012, working for a sporting goods website.
I worked at three other companies in Ukraine before moving to the US, doing UX and product design. I felt that every role I had added to my arsenal of skills. My last role before moving was as a product designer for SoftServe, a tech giant in the country.
When UpTop gave me an offer, we discussed visa options for my move to the US. Because I didn't have a formal education in the tech field, I wasn't eligible for a H1-B visa. The company decided to apply for an O-1 visa for "extraordinary" professionals on my behalf.
They hired an immigration attorney who talked me through the documents I'd need for the process. I gathered proof of my professional competency, including awards, media interviews, and letters from previous managers. I launched my own design project, Interaction Library, in 2016, which had already gotten attention online. I think this also helped me secure the visa.
I worked at UpTop for around a year and then moved to Tinder in 2018 as a lead product designer. I left in September 2019 and started focusing on my own design agency, Zubko Studio.
People are more attached to their work in the US
The US is a great place to work with many opportunities. I love that it's progressive and more culturally diverse than Ukraine. When I arrived, I wanted to immerse myself in the community and get a feel for living here.
In Ukraine, the tech sector is more consultancy-based. Money comes from overseas, from companies who outsource their IT needs to us. In the US, I feel that big companies are developing original ideas and patents, while in Ukraine, the biggest tech companies provide consultancy services.
I feel that people are much more attached to their work in the US because they are working on their ideas. In Ukraine, I worked with overseas clients, executing tasks for other companies and people.
At SoftServe, I was placed on a project for Deloitte. They had established brand guidelines, which presented limitations for me as a designer. I couldn't create many new user interface elements from scratch and had to use the ones from the guide. I felt less ownership over the work.
Meanwhile, I've worked on projects and products I've felt more ownership of in the US. As a product design director at UpTop, I could choose which features to research and test and decide how a certain feature would be implemented.
I loved the responsibility, but it's been much more challenging not to take my work home. There were nights when I couldn't fall asleep because I was thinking about ideas for the product.
In the US, ideas and pitching are prioritized over execution
In Ukraine, my work was about execution. Because my work was in consulting, ideas came from our clients, and I focused on implementing them.
In the US, ideation is more important than execution in the startup world, particularly because the tech scene is more saturated. Big ideas sell. They're how you sell to investors and raise funds. I think this is a positive difference — a great product should start with an idea, which you test over and over to make sure it's worth investing in.
At Tinder, most of my time was spent on idea generation and testing. I animated and presented over 20 versions of Tinder's app, and used A/B testing methods to understand what ideas were worth implementing. I worked on several products that made the user experience more seamless, including Tinder U, Tinder Gold Home, and Super Boost.
People skills are highly valued in US companies. Having spoken in Russian and Ukrainian at my previous jobs in Ukraine, I struggled with self-expression and making jokes in English when I moved to New York.
I initially found it challenging to think about structuring my thoughts when selling my ideas. It would take me a while to think of the right combination of words and I felt people around me didn't have the time to think through my convoluted explanations.
People overwork in the US
In general, I think efficiency is put on a pedestal in American culture. People value working as much as possible and making as much money as possible.
When I first joined Tinder, I would stay late in the office to finish some of my work. I witnessed people staying until 9 or 10 p.m. to finish their commitments. In Ukraine, there were times when the office would be empty at 4 or 5 p.m. Sticking to my hours and going home whenever I wanted felt easier. But the projects were more fun in the US, so I was more motivated to work longer hours.
I plan to live between the US and Ukraine when the war is over
Ukraine will always be my home, but I'm staying in the US for the foreseeable future. I wasn't in Ukraine when Russia's invasion happened in 2022. Growing up, I had nightmares about war, but I was still taken aback when it happened.
After the war, I see myself returning to Ukraine and living between the US and Ukraine. I'd like to use my skills to help rebuild the country, like a phoenix coming from the ashes.
In 2021, Boeing reached a deal with prosecutors after 346 people died in two 737 Max crashes.
The Justice Department said Tuesday that Boeing violated that deal and is now subject to prosecution.
It worsens the crisis at the planemaker which began with January's Alaska Airlines blowout.
Boeing could face criminal charges after the Justice Department determined the planemaker violated a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA).
The DPA, reached in 2021, meant Boeing didn't face charges related to the deaths of 346 people in two 737 Max 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019. As part of the settlement, Boeing paid $2.5 billion and promised to strengthen its compliance program.
The DPA expired just two days after January's Alaska Airlines blowout, which has renewed scrutiny of Boeing's quality-control processes. Safety investigators said the 737 Max involved had left Boeing's factory missing key bolts.
In a Tuesday court filing seen by Business Insider, the Justice Department said Boeing violated the DPA, "by failing to design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of the US fraud laws throughout its operations."
It added: "For failing to fulfill completely the terms of and obligations under the DPA, Boeing is subject to prosecution by the United States."
Boeing has until June 13 to respond to the DoJ. In a statement shared with BI, the planemaker said: "We believe that we have honored the terms of that agreement, and look forward to the opportunity to respond to the Department on this issue."
"As we do so, we will engage with the Department with the utmost transparency, as we have throughout the entire term of the agreement, including in response to their questions following the Alaska Airlines 1282 accident," it added.
The Justice Department is continuing to meet with the families of victims of the 2018 and 2019 crashes, as it determines whether to bring charges against Boeing.
Robert Clifford, an attorney for the families of victims of the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash, said in an email: "This is a way for Boeing to be held criminally responsible in court. It's what the families have wanted. They want answers as to what really happened in the crashes and for the safety of the public to be protected."
The Justice Department told the court it will decide whether to prosecute Boeing by July 7.
Historically, female drivers in the US have lower insurance premiums because they're less likely to engage in risky driving behaviors.
Kathrin Ziegler/Getty Images
A French road safety group is telling people to "drive like a woman" to cut fatalities.
The campaign aims to debunk the "misogynistic" stereotype that men are better drivers than women.
The campaign notes that, in France, 84% of fatal road accidents are caused by men.
A French road safety association is urging people to "drive like a woman" to reduce the number of traffic deaths.
Victimes & Citoyens, a group dedicated to supporting the victims of road accidents, has launched a campaign to try to debunk the "misogynistic" stereotype that men are better drivers than women.
In 2022, according to a French government report, 3,550 people were killed on the roads in mainland France and its overseas territories.
"When we look at the figures, they are clear: to stay alive behind the wheel, the best thing for men to do is adopt the same behavior as women," the campaign's website says.
Victimes & Citoyens also cited data showing that 88% of young drivers are killed by men, 93% of drunk drivers involved in accidents are men, and women are eight times less likely than their male counterparts to have a fatal accident on the road.
"Statistically, driving like a woman means only one thing — staying alive," the group said on its website.
The awareness campaign will run across print, digital, and metro platforms, and will also use a chatbot to respond to posts on X about women driving. according to the campaign's website.
In the US, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the number of male crash deaths was more than twice the number of female crash deaths for almost every year between 1975 to 2021.
The institute said this could be attributed to men typically driving more miles than women but also being more likely to engage in risky driving practices, such as speeding, not wearing seatbelts, and driving under the influence of alcohol.
Historically, men have faced higher insurance premiums, as insurance companies see them as a greater risk, according to Yahoo! Finance.
I think about the Pelotoninstructors an unusual amount. I not only see them during my workouts but also follow a bunch of them on Instagram, where I try to suss out which ones secretly hate each other based on who is or isn't invited to whose wedding. A friend and I have a text chain that's often just Peloton instructor-isms, which include, "You are the CEO of your body," "I already have my stank face on," and "You are a nasty bitch," which was somehow said in reference to push-ups. The Peloton teachers can be cheesy and weird, but I love them. Given this level of attachment, I've also started to wonder what will become of them if and when Peloton goes kaput.
The connected-fitness company is struggling. Its CEO, who joined the company in February 2022, is already stepping down. It recently announced plans to lay off 400 people, which is about 15% of its workforce. Private-equity sharks are reportedly circling. The stock is near record lows. Peloton isn't going under imminently, but let's be real here: No fitness fad lasts forever. At least culturally, the Peloton graveyard is probably on the horizon, right next to the Tae Bo cemetery and ThighMaster crematorium.
Peloton was a bit of a pandemic Cinderella story. The company launched in 2012 and started shipping bikes in 2014, but for much of its history, it operated as the creator of a product designed for a certain type of well-off fitness nut. Its initial equipment wasn't great, and it had a hard time finding investors. Eventually, it took off. It went public in September 2019 — the same year it did that viral holiday ad with that pained-looking woman who gets a Peloton from who we can assume is her not-so-great husband.
When COVID-19 hit in 2020 and gyms shut down, demand for its products skyrocketed. Customers complained of monthslong wait times to get their bikes and treadmills, and Peloton scrambled to get its supply chain in order. Despite the pain points, times were pretty decent: Peloton booked its first $1 billion in quarterly sales in the last three months of 2020, and its market cap peaked at about $50 billion.
The narrative and hype overshadowed its actual market opportunity.
But what goes up often comes down, and in Peloton's case, the comedown was hard. While there was a lot that went wrong, the long and short of it is that Peloton failed to read the room on its pandemic popularity.
"The narrative and hype overshadowed its actual market opportunity," said Rina Raphael, the author of the book "The Gospel of Wellness" and of the newsletter "Well To Do," about the wellness industry. "It's not that Peloton isn't a good business model; it's that it simply isn't a mass product but more of a niche, luxe one," she said.
The pandemic pulled forward a lot of demand, meaning people who would have considered buying Peloton equipment down the road decided to go ahead and pull the trigger in 2020. Much like other pandemic business darlings, Peloton thought the level of demand was a long-term shift, rather than a one-off event, so it invested accordingly. The problem is, by the time the company got its manufacturing and supply chain up to speed, it wasn't necessary.
"Peloton saw their strength in COVID and ran it forward in perpetuity, and that simply is not reality," Simeon Siegel, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets who covers Peloton, said.
Peloton didn't respond to a request for comment for this story.
Beyond cratering demand, the company has faced various headaches in recent years. It has issued multiplerecalls of its devices and has been the subject of public-relations debacles. It's slashed staff and outsourced logistics in an attempt to get on steadier financial footing. It now says it's trying to cut $200 million from its annual expenses by mid-2025, but it's unclear whether that will be enough. Investors have soured on the company, and Peloton's once $50 billion market cap has fallen to under $2 billion.
This is a business that convinces people to pay over $40 a month to get on a piece of equipment in their home. That's an incredibly profitable story, and yet the company loses money.
Its troubles don't necessarily mean all is lost. Siegel thinks Peloton is just too focused on growing instead of looking at its user base and squeezing cash out of that.
"The primary focus should be on bear-hugging their brand loyalists, as opposed to trying to find new, money-losing customers," he said. "This is a business that convinces people to pay over $40 a month to get on a piece of equipment in their home. That's an incredibly profitable story, and yet the company loses money."
Peloton's subscriber business on its own isn't the problem — it's everything else. The company has thin margins on hardware, as in selling bikes and treadmills and rowers and whatever else, but it has more robust margins on subscriptions, Paul Golding, an analyst at Macquarie Capital, said. Instead of spending on getting more bikes into people's homes, it could just keep its attention on discouraging people from unsubscribing. But it's not doing that, so other costs are eating into its subscription margins.
"There are other expenses that the business incurs, including marketing expenses, general administrative expenses, and research and development, given that they are a tech platform as well," Golding said. "Over the last few quarters, there's been stagnating expectations of connected-fitness subscribers as well as declines in the more entry-level app. Those economies of scale have not been working in favor of outpacing the cost structure that the company has been left with."
The path ahead is rocky. Peloton has a decent subscriber base, with more than 3 million paid connected subscribers (meaning people who have the device and a subscription) and 675,000 paid app users (they didn't buy equipment and have the app only) at the end of its most recent quarter. But there is churn. It expects its subscriptions to fall in the current quarter, and its paid app use has been on the downslope. When I went to look up Peloton on Google Trends for this story over the past month, "how to cancel peloton subscription" was the second search listed.
Peloton has plenty of direct competitors in the connected-fitness-hardware space, including Echelon and Tonal. It also has to contend with the gym, which has all sorts of classes and fitness equipment that let people mix things up, including, in many cases, Pelotons or other connected-fitness devices.
"If you can get competing content and do it on demand at your gym and just pay the monthly membership fee of the gym and also be able to use a bunch of other things when you're not feeling a spin ride today, then does that change the value proposition for you when you're thinking about whether it makes sense to buy a $2,000-plus piece of equipment?" Golding said.
There are options if you're shy about working out in public and worried about spending cash on expensive gear or any sort of membership.
"Want to work out from home?" Raphael, the wellness author, said. "Then just log on to YouTube for free."
Beyond the issues specific to Peloton, the company faces an age-old reality of fitness: Trends come and go quickly, whether it be Jazzercise, Zumba, CrossFit, Pilates, Cardio Barre, or, well, you get the point. Fitness is a lot like fashion.
America is a capitalist, consumerist nation, and as such, we experience fitness as a capitalist, consumer product. Yes, the science changes somewhat — we didn't really think cardio was for everyone until the '60s and '70s, or really push strength training until the '90s — but the different packages in which it's presented to us change much faster. As Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a fitness historian, a professor at the New School, and the author of "Fit Nation," put it to me in a 2022 interview, "There is this constant cycle of exercise trends mostly because there's the need to keep creating new products and flashy experiences for people to spend money on."
Fitness companies are good at capitalizing on basic human nature when it comes to exercise. People get bored with their routines and are often eager to switch it up. Fitness requires variety for most people. Hope springs eternal that this workout will finally be the one that gets us in shape and doesn't burn us out. The best fitness advice is to find something you like and stick with it, even if it's just going for a walk. The trouble is, there's no money in that. And regardless, trends just evolve. The spin craze has been on the downswing for a while. High-intensity training isn't entirely out of vogue — some people are getting into whatever Hyrox is — but there's also more emphasis on and interest in gentler, feel-good workouts at the moment.
"It's not uncommon to hear more consumers, especially women, say they're working out for the psychological benefits rather than, say, killer abs or a bikini body," Raphael said. "So you see a share of the market moving towards modalities like yoga or venturing outside."
I personally like my Peloton, and while I don't think I've ever hit a cultlike level of fanaticism, I do some sort of Peloton class most days of the week. But I follow enough people on the app to notice just how many of them have fallen off, and I come across used bikes on Facebook Marketplace regularly. I recognize that, someday, I will move on. Once the bike breaks, I can't imagine I'll get a new one, or maybe the company will cease to exist, and then I will have a bike-sized brick on my hands.
As for the instructors I now care a smidge too much about, I've noticed a lot of them are undertaking other business ventures, whether it be landing sportscasting deals or appearing on "Dancing With the Stars" or just doing more run-of-the-mill influencer stuff. I imagine they see the eventual writing on the wall, too, or at least I hope they do.
Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.