Author: openjargon

• A three-bedroom, four-bathroom home has hit the market in Connecticut for $2.9 million. 
• The home features the only FAA-approved private paved airstrip in the state. 
• It also features an airplane hangar among other amenities. 

Connecticut's only home with an FAA-approved private paved airstrip is selling for $2.9 million.

The three-bedroom, four-bathroom home is located down a long, winding driveway intersected with the 1,800-foot-long airstrip in Bristol. Property records viewed by Business Insider showed the land is owned by Barbara Hackman Franklin, a former US Secretary of Commerce, and her late husband, Wallace Barnes.

Ellen Sebastian of Sotheby's International Realty shared the listing in December 2023.

The home sits on a 49-acre lot that includes two garages, including one hangar that can hold a small plane, a car collection, or a helicopter.

Take a look inside.

The home — dubbed Sky Bight — spans thousands of square feet in the Chippens Hill neighborhood.

According to the listing, the contemporary-style home measures 5,654 square feet and was built in 1988.

People arriving at Sky Bight will notice the natural charms and scenic views. The home is surrounded by a sprawling yard that offers privacy via nearby trees.

Chippen Hills is in the city's north corner near the Chippanee Golf Club.

The home's windows have "strategic" placement for optimal views.

The windows were strategically placed around the home with the surrounding views and Connecticut's weather in mind.

"In every room, the strategic placement of windows frames the landscape like a living masterpiece, ensuring that the beauty of each season is celebrated year-round," the listing reads.

The outdoor deck is another great spot to enjoy the seasons each year.

The home's airstrip is a unique feature ideal for pilots and aviator enthusiasts.

Living at Sky Bight can revolutionize how its future homeowners will travel. The Zillow listing said Sky Bight is officially registered as Green Acres Airport.

Bristol is about 30 minutes away by plane from New York City and 90 minutes from Washington, DC, according to the listing.

One garage at Sky Bight doubles as a small airplane hangar.

The hanger — a standout feature — is designed as part of the main home.

In addition to a small airplane, the hangar can also hold a helicopter or a car collection.

Natural light filters into the living room, where future homeowners can enjoy modern amenities.

The living room has high ceilings, wood floors, and an eye-catching curved arch above a fireplace. Sky Bight has two fireplaces in the residence.

Large windows complement the room, allowing people to enjoy the captivating landscape.

Future homeowners can expect modern amenities throughout the home, including heating, laundry features, and energy sourced from solar power.

The home also features a greenhouse, kitchen, basement, office, study, and gym.

The home has an indoor gym with a decent amount of room.

The home boasts a resistance pool and space to incorporate several exercise machines.

The spa is the perfect place to relax after swimming laps in the pool.

The indoor spa is a calming sanctuary with a sauna, which is a perfect transition after hitting the gym.

The jetted tub is next to several large windows overlooking the property.

Future homeowners will get access to an office and a study.

The home has an office with wood bookshelves and plush carpets. One end of the office appears to faces the house, while the other leads to the backyard.

There's also a study at Sky Bight, where people can find solitude and tackle tasks from home.

Sky Bight offers a once-in-a-lifetime living experience.

The accessible private airstrip, hangar, and other features make this home a rare find.

"This is not just a home; it is a lifestyle—an invitation to elevate your living experience to new heights," the listing says.

A video tour of Sky Bight is available on its official website.

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• Many Fortune 500 CEOs have previously worked at McKinsey.
• These include Google's Sundar Pichai and ex-Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg.
• The firm has become known as a CEO factory, but has sparked controversy in the past, too.

McKinsey is back in the headlines.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the Department of Justice is conducting a criminal investigation into the management consultancy, related to how it had previously advised opioid firms on sales strategies.

The "Big Three" firm has previously raised eyebrows over some of the work it's carried out, including advising Enron and helping Saudi Arabia's government diversify its economy.

But another, perhaps equally notable thing to know about the management consultancy is its history as an incubator for top leadership talent.

Fortune reported last year that 17 Fortune 500 CEOs were McKinsey alumni at the time, including Alphabet boss and man of the moment Sundar Pichai.

Liberty Media chairman John Malone, former Meta Platforms COO Sheryl Sandberg, ex-Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, and Louis Vuitton executive Delphine Arnault are among others who've worked there. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) also had stints at the firm.

Last year, leadership professor Graham Ward told The Financial News that McKinsey had earned its status as a CEO factory by instilling good analytical skills in employees and spending heavily on its learning and development programs.

"McKinsey partners have three things going for them — they are deeply analytical, have broad industry coverage by getting parachuted into customer service teams in a variety of situations and a massive internal investment in their learning and development," said Ward, who was also a former head of European equities at Goldman Sachs and now works at France's INSEAD business school.

In the post-pandemic era, employees might not be developing their skills in the same way.

Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that there isn't enough work for new recruits at top consulting firms anymore, leaving some employees earning $175,000 to sit around and do nothing.

Meanwhile, one former McKinsey associate recently told Business Insider that the firm had clearly overhired in recent years, with rising interest rates causing client demand to dry up.

McKinsey did not immediately respond to a BI request for comment.

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• Chris Pratt and his wife demolished a 1950s LA house to make way for a new mansion.
• The couple paid $12.5 million to acquire the "Zimmerman House," designed by architect Craig Ellwood. 
• Ellwood's daughter said it could have been shown "some honor" before its demolition.

Chris Pratt and his wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger, faced backlash last week following reports that they had demolished a historic 1950s house in Los Angeles to build a sprawling new mansion.

Now, the daughter of the architect behind the original house has weighed in, saying the home could have been shown "some honor" before its unceremonious demolition.

The property, situated in Brentwood, was designed by Craig Ellwood and is known as the "Zimmerman House."

Pratt and Schwarzenegger paid $12.5 million for the house in an off-market deal last year, per Robb report.

Speaking to The Los Angeles Times, Ellwood's daughter, Erin Ellwood, called the house a "time capsule" that preserved a "beloved" midcentury modern design that's said to be vanishing across the US.

However, she said she didn't "feel bitter" and could understand why the Hollywood couple wanted to live there, as Schwarzenegger's mother, Maria Shriver, reportedly lives on the same street.

"I understand the love of family, I understand wanting to be close to my mother or my mother-in-law," she said. "I understand being a multimillionaire and wanting to build exactly what I want and keep my family close. I get all that."

"Unfortunately, it involved tearing something down," she added.

With the demolition complete, Pratt, 44, and Schwarzenegger, 34, are now in the process of building a 15,000-square-foot, two-story home on the lot, Architectural Digest reported. It will designed by architect Ken Ungar.

On their plans to transform the lot, Ellwood said: "I think it would have been really cool to keep it and do something … add to it in a really interesting, innovative way. But you know, maybe this just isn't their style. I mean, it clearly isn't if they're building a farmhouse."

Representatives for Pratt and Schwarzenegger did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

The Zimmerman House

The Zimmerman House was a 2,770-square-foot home named after its first owners, Martin and Eva Zimmerman. It had all of the hallmarks of a midcentury modern home: Floor-to-ceiling glass windows, open floor plans, and a stone fireplace.

The home also featured a garden curated by celebrated landscape designer Garrett Eckbo. It has likewise been razed to make way for Pratt and Schwarzenegger's new mansion.

The Eichler Network, a website focusing on midcentury modern homes in California, has shared photos of what appears to be the leveled Zimmerman House.

Ellwood said she would have appreciated it if the house was given some kind of sendoff so that architectural students and enthusiasts could see it one last time.

"Is there something more creative that could've been done in the process of taking it away that could've given it some honor?" she said, also suggesting that Pratt and his wife could have given back to the architecture community by donating materials.

"I think what people are responding to is [the home] is like this time capsule," Ellwood added. "I think that's what hurts people so much — is that there aren't that many great ones."

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• Aisha Canfield is a single mom of two daughters aged 6 years and 22 months
• She moved from California, to Lisbon, Portugal in August 2023.
• She says it's hard to parent in the US when there's so much individualism. 

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

I had been playing with the idea of moving to Portugal when I was still married, and my first child was very young. The end of my marriage and the birth of my second child really tore down the structures I was a part of, and the loss of my life as I knew it made room for me to dream again.

I had this sense of freedom that I could create a life for my daughters and me that my marriage and the US couldn't provide. I had been to Portugal a few times and felt drawn to the shared value of community.

I wanted something different for my daughters

In the US, individualism really makes it difficult to parent, especially as a single parent. There is an expectation of martyrdom for mothers, shaming of single mothers, and praise for working like we don't have children and raising children like we don't work.

I realized I wanted a break from the socialization and messaging of capitalism, and Portugal offered that. I wanted to break the generational expectations of women and the mothers in my family. I wanted to model something different for my own daughters.

I had spent 18 very happy years in the San Francisco Bay Area, and while I loved it deeply, I needed to be in a place that allowed me to begin reimagining motherhood. I knew I needed to feel a sense of wonderment. I wanted somewhere I could feel and see the culture. I needed somewhere that embraced diversity. Importantly, I also knew I needed to live somewhere with some shared socio-political values.

I also wanted safety for all of us

As a gay woman, I wanted to live somewhere where I could have rights, community, and safety. For my children, being able to sit in a classroom and learn without the threat of being murdered was a driving force out of the US. My oldest at the time was 4 and in Pre-K and was already participating in active shooter drills. The idea that gun rights take precedence over children's rights is unconscionable.

Children's well-being and safety aren't something that's politicized or even up for debate in Portugal — there are no school shootings here, and I can't imagine there ever would be. As a country, it seems like Portugal makes decisions based on the collective well-being.

Children are integrated into life here

Children are much more integrated into adults' daily lives in Portugal than in the US, where parents are constantly juggling their own lives with their children's under this unnecessary delineation. In Portugal, children of all ages are found in restaurants at all hours with their families, and parks have kiosks for parents to enjoy drinks while their children play.

While life with children is hectic under any circumstance, the integration in Portugal eases the anxiety I have as a single mother to show up as multiple people every day. There isn't an expectation for single moms to show up as if they aren't single moms. We are offered a lot of grace that isn't widely extended to us in the US beyond our immediate friends and family.

I've been invited to so many homes where I'm not expected to bring anything except two hungry children. I've had people bring meals and groceries to give me respite. Children are coveted so much so that we don't always wait in line at the grocery store if the baby is screaming. Strangers stop to soothe the baby on the street, sometimes even offering to hold her to give me a break.

At the airport here, there is a line just for families. When airport employees see that I'm alone, they personally leave their posts, grab all my luggage, and take me to where I need to be next. In general, time is enjoyed much more slowly here, so I am not expected to always be punctual, which helps with two little kids.

More so, Portugal is allowing me to be conscious of my parenting style and gives me an opportunity to recreate myself as a mother. I'm aware of when I'm parenting from a place of survival, and I'm working on pausing. The slower and more present lifestyle in Portugal reminds me of how unnecessarily urgent everything was in the US and how, in turn, I became an "urgent" parent.

I am grateful that Portugal models other ways of being a parent: prioritizing ourselves, our children, and our time.

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• Fisker has warned it faces the possibility of bankruptcy.
• Fisker Ocean owners are worried their cars might be bricked if the company goes under.
• Some owners have experienced multiple software issues with the car since its release last year.

Fisker is poised to break ground in the EV market, just not the way it wanted to.

As the electric-vehicle startup founded by millionaire car designer Henrik Fisker teeters on the verge of bankruptcy, no one is quite sure what will happen to the roughly 6,000 vehicles already delivered to customers since June 2023.

If Fisker folds — as it warned is possible for the third time on April 16 — it will be among the first EV startups of the modern age to go belly-up, testing the longevity of a fleet of vehicles dependent on proprietary software and technology to keep them running.

"We're running into uncharted territory," said Sam Fiorani, the vice president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions. "Nearly any mechanic can work on a traditional internal combustion engine, but when you have a software-defined vehicle, it takes somebody who understands all the lines of code to keep it up to date."

Business Insider spoke with seven Fisker Ocean owners who shared their anxieties about what will happen to their cars if Fisker is no more.

"If Fisker goes bankrupt, who is going to keep the software running?" said Kurt Mechling, who returned his Fisker Ocean in January after a series of technology failures that he said left the car so undrivable he had to put soap under the locked wheels to get it on a tow truck bed.

"These cars are basically computers, and they need software updates," Mechling said. "If they get stuck on what's out there right now, pretty quickly they'll be bricked just like mine was."

Since the Ocean's release last year, owners have raised several safety-related concerns, including ADAS errors, issues with the car's seat monitor not recognizing a driver's weight for airbag activation, and shifting issues. In other cases, owners reported difficulties charging or instances when the vehicle's 12-volt battery, which powers the vehicle's infotainment system and lock and unlock functions, died altogether.

Fisker has also stopped giving customers new key fobs, due to a shortage of available equipment, two current employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity told Business Insider. At the time of delivery, owners were only given a single key fob to access the car in addition to the Fisker app which can lock and unlock the vehicle. Multiple owners told BI their key fobs have died repeatedly or failed to connect with the car, making it difficult to access the vehicle.

A spokesperson for Fisker did not respond to a request for comment.

The deadline is approaching to get your Fisker repaired

Chris Salvo, the CEO of EV repair shop Electrified Garage, told BI his company has received more than a dozen calls from Fisker Ocean owners asking whether his shop could service the vehicle if Fisker went out of business. Salvo said they likely won't.

Aside from minor servicing like tire fixes, Salvo said it would be difficult to diagnose the car because Fisker hasn't open-sourced its software.

"There's no real financial incentive for repair shops to spend the money it would take to fix it," Salvo said.

Fisker has been struggling to respond to a backlog of customer service complaints, one of the employees who spoke to BI said, especially as owners rush to get repairs done before any potential bankruptcy filing.

"People are now acknowledging that we are probably going bankrupt and asking for service/parts before we do so they can have working cars," the employee said. "People are genuinely worried they won't have a working car if we go under."

It's unlikely that every Fisker will be bricked overnight if the company goes bankrupt, Fiorani said, but some cars may stop working over time due to bugs or other maintenance issues that can't be fixed by a company that doesn't exist anymore.

Some Fisker owners said they are already struggling to get service and parts.

Three Fisker ocean owners described instances where the vehicle was bricked for days after their 12-volt battery died. The owners were only able to access their vehicle after a Fisker technician installed a new battery — a process that took up to nine days, the owners said.

Patrick Burrell, a Fisker owner in California, said his car has been in a Fisker-approved repair shop for 10 weeks for a minor repair to a portion of its trim and paint job.

What Fisker's failure would mean for its competitors

If Fisker files for bankruptcy, there are likely to be ripple effects for other EV startups, Fiorani said.

The high-profile failure of an electric car startup couldn't come at a worse time for the EV market, which is already experiencing a new wave of pressures that have thrown industry executives through a loop.

Electric car shoppers are becoming a more practical group — favoring legacy car companies over unproven startups. That change in attitude, plus a renewed interest in hybrids, is already taking a toll on newer EV companies, including industry leader Tesla.

Fisker's contemporaries, like Rivian and Lucid, should be taking note of the worry among Fisker owners and doing their best to reassure their customers and potential buyers that they have the money to take care of their fleets for the long run, Fiorani said.

"If Fiskers start falling off the side of the road in the next few months because there's no one to update them, that's going to put fear into a lot of electric vehicle owners — not just Fisker owners," Fiorani said.

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• New regulations will require airlines to provide refunds for delayed or canceled flights.
• The refunds, which airlines have to implement over the next six to 12 months, must be automatic and prompt.
• Passengers can also get refunds for delays to checked bags. Here's which situations will be eligible.

Airlines are going to be required to provide automatic refunds for delayed or canceled flights under new Department of Transportation regulations, announced on Wednesday.

The regulations, which airlines must adapt to over the next six to 12 months, define a range of criteria that they say constitutes a "significant change" to a flight that would entitle a customer to a refund.

The new rules also entitle passengers to automatic refunds for delays to checked bags and for airlines' failure to provide extra services that customers have paid for.

The airlines will have to provide refunds that are automatic, meaning passengers don't have to request them, and prompt, which the DOT describes as within seven business days for credit card purchases and 20 calendar days for other payment methods.

The refunds must be in whatever payment method the passenger originally used, whether cash, credit card, or airline miles. The refunds should only be provided as vouchers or travel credits if the passenger explicitly accepts them.

The DOT says that the refund must also be paid in full, including all government-imposed taxes and fees and airline-imposed fees.

Passengers will be eligible for a refund in the case of:

• A canceled flight.

• A domestic flight delayed by at least three hours.

• An international flight delayed at least six hours.

• A domestic flight scheduled to depart at least three hours earlier than the original departure time.

• An international flight scheduled to depart at least six hours earlier than the original departure time.

Customers will be eligible for a refund in the case of the following if it means that they no longer wish to undertake the journey:

• A change in the departure or arrival airport.

• An increase in the number of connections.

• A downgrade to a lower class of service.

• A change to a connection at a different airport that is less accessible for a person with a disability.

• A change to an aircraft that is less accessible for a person with a disability.

Passengers will be eligible for a refund of their checked bag fee if their bag is delayed and they file a mishandled baggage report, provided:

• The checked bag isn't delivered within 12 hours of a domestic flight arriving at the gate.

• The checked bag isn't delivered within 15 hours of an international flight that's 12 hours long or less arriving at the gate.

• The checked bag isn't delivered within 30 hours of an international flight that's more than 12 hours long arriving at the gate.

Passengers will be eligible for refunds of paid-for extra services that then aren't provided by the airline, including:

• Advance seat selection.

• Seat upgrades.

• Transportation of checked or carry-on baggage.

• Airport lounge access.

• In-flight entertainment and WiFi.

• In-flight meals, beverages, and snacks.

• In-flight blankets and pillows.

Customers will be eligible for travel credits or vouchers in the following cases related to serious communicable diseases:

• If they're restricted or prohibited from traveling by a governmental entity or are required to quarantine for a substantial portion of the trip.

• If they're advised by a medical professional not to travel during a public health emergency to protect themselves from a serious communicable disease, in the case of the ticket being purchased before the public health emergency was declared.

• If they're advised by a medical professional not to travel, irrespective of a public health emergency, because they have or are likely to have contracted a serious communicable disease.

The travel credits or vouchers must be valid for at least five years. Airlines have 12 months to meet the new DOT requirements.

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• A Delta flight from NYC to LA had to turn back after its emergency exit slide detached.
• The Boeing 767 landed safely at JFK about an hour after taking off.
• It is the latest in a string of safety mishaps to befall a Boeing plane.

A Boeing plane was forced to make an emergency landing on Friday after an emergency slide fell off the aircraft.

Delta Air Lines flight 520 from New York's JFK airport aborted its trip to LA on Friday and landed back where it started.

It touched down again at around 8:30 a.m., just an hour into its journey, according to the tracking site Flightradar24.

"After the aircraft had safely landed and proceeded to a gate, it was observed that the emergency slide had separated from the aircraft," a Delta spokesperson said in a statement to NPR.

The airline didn't offer any detail on when, how, or why the slide detached — or where it ended up.

The Delta spokesperson said the airline was "fully supporting retrieval efforts and will fully cooperate in investigations."

In a second statement, Delta said that the incident set off an emergency alarm.

The cabin crew had been alerted by a "flight deck indication related to the right wing emergency exit slide, as well as a non-routine sound from near the right wing."

"As nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and people, Delta flight crews enacted their extensive training and followed procedures to return to JFK," the Delta spokesperson said.

"We appreciate their professionalism and our customers' patience for the delay in their travels."

No injuries were reported aboard the aircraft, which had been carrying 176 customers, two pilots, and five flight attendants.

Delta Air Lines did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, sent outside regular working hours.

In a statement, the Federal Aviation Administration said "Delta Air Lines Flight 520 returned safely to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York around 8:35 a.m. local time on Friday, April 26, after the crew reported a vibration."

"The FAA will investigate."

Delta said it had removed the plane in question from service.

It was a Boeing 767-300ER plane, delivered to the airline in 1990.

According to Flexport, a global logistics workflow company, an aircraft is generally assumed to be operable for an average of 30 years before it is decommissioned, which would put this one at the older end of its service life.

The incident is the latest to hit Boeing following a series of other safety mishaps.

In January, the aircraft maker was forced to ground its fleet of 737 Max planes after a door plug blew out on an Alaska Airlines flight that took off from Portland, Oregon.

The disaster wiped nearly $30 billion off Boeing's market value and saw share prices plummet by as much as 20 percent.

Boeing was also thrust into the spotlight on Capitol Hill by testimony from whistleblowers who told a committee they were met with death threats when they tried to flag safety concerns with their superiors.  

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• Hannah Tooker, a senior vice president at a marketing agency, has been a manager for six years.
• She told Business Insider she found managing Gen Z employees different from her fellow millennials.
• Tooker said Gen Z is more likely to say what they want and maintain a better work-life balance.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Hannah Tooker, a 32-year-old senior vice president of customer engagement at LaneTerralever, a marketing agency based in Phoenix. It's been edited for length and clarity.

There are many things I love about managing Gen Z. They're creative, and they're fearless.

I work at a full-service marketing agency. I lead a handful of teams here, mostly responsible for content, user experience, and quality assurance.

I've been a manager for six years, and I manage seven people. I like helping people grow and figure out their next steps. It's my favorite part of the job.

Working with Gen Z is different from managing millennials

I've been managing Gen Z workers for about three years. This new generation approaches work in interesting ways compared with millennials.

Some people complain that they're hard to work with, but having high expectations and wanting work-life balance and an employer who cares isn't a bad thing.

When people get stuck on the challenging aspects of working with Gen Z, they miss out on all the positives.

If I ask a Gen Z team member to do something they don't know about, they'll go away, watch a YouTube video, and work it out.

I like teaching my Gen Z team members but also learning from them. Here's what they've taught me:

1) Communication can take many forms

Before I started managing Gen Z, I mainly used traditional channels to communicate with my colleagues, such as email.

My Gen Z co-workers didn't like using those channels and preferred to message me on social media. This is partly because of the nature of our work — we use social media a lot. But also, they like to communicate on the platforms from which they find inspiration.

They'll exchange direct messages with me on TikTok and Instagram about ideas they think clients might be interested in.

It was an adjustment to get the right balance between work and socializing when communicating on social media. I figured if it worked for them, I wasn't going to shame them. It might've been a way of working I wasn't used to, but it's still work. I've got used to it now, and it works well for us.

2) It's better to ask for clarification

Gen Z isn't shy about asking for clarity. I appreciate that.

When I gave one of my Gen Z team members feedback, they said: "I appreciated the feedback you gave me. Could you show me what you meant or sit with me and walk me through it?" It lets me know they need more help understanding something.

Often, I review work by making changes to it myself. One of my team members asked me to show them what I would do differently by "marking up" the document. That way, they could refer to it moving forward.

Older workers might never ask for that. We'd just take the feedback and run with it. I like that Gen Z wants to get to the root of a problem.

3) Team members' emotional needs are important

Gen Z needs a little more reassurance than other generations.

For example, I often send notes to team members if I need to discuss something with them. A typical note might say: "Got a second to chat?" My Gen Z team members said that made them panic.

I altered the way I approached them to account for that. Now I'll say: "Got a second to chat? Good thing!" or "Got a second to chat, question about XYZ client." That works better.

I've noticed that because this is the first professional role for many Gen Z employees, they can bring their personal life into the workplace more than previous generations did. When this happens, I've learned to help them take a pause, work through what's going on, and proceed with their work. It's taxing at times, but it's worth it.

I've learned how to balance someone's emotional needs with the needs of a business.

4) Good work-life balance is more sustainable

I graduated from college and started work after the 2008 recession. I had great managers, but there was a strong hustle culture and a need to be "on constantly."

Burnout was a badge of honor for the first half of my career.

Since entering the workforce, Gen Z has said, "That's not for me." They want a better work-life balance. I hear my Gen Z colleagues talk about what they're doing after work or how they're taking a day off to do nothing. At first, I found it challenging to grasp that their life came first and work came second.

It's made me reevaluate how I balance work and life. I used to work in the evenings for several hours, but I don't do that anymore. I also take breaks during the day.

I've realized that burnout doesn't benefit anyone down the line. If someone on my team hasn't had any paid time off days in their calendar for three months, I'll ensure they take one. I want to be a good example for them.

Managing Gen Z has changed me

If you do the work as a manager to figure out how to work with Gen Z and how to help them become successful, you're going to get smart, passionate young people who want to do a good job.

There'll always be people who want to stick to the old style of management and work culture.

But as the world changes and new generations enter the workplace, we have to change too.

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• A host of warning signs point to China preparing for military action against Taiwan.
• Experts say China could be readying for a showdown over the island.
• US involvement, and Chinese leader Xi's goals, also factor into the timeline.

Tensions between China and Taiwan are reaching a boiling point, and many signs point to Chinese military action to seize the island by force, possibly in just a few years.

While a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be an incredibly complex and dangerous operation, influential China watchers are sounding the alarms over preparations almost certainly needed to seize the island — a buildup of China's naval forces, energy and food stockpiles, and large-scale military drills just off its coast.

"I don't think they lack for anything that they need," Lyle Goldstein, director of Asia engagement at Defense Priorities, said of China's forces. "You could always ask the question, 'Could they be more ready?' and I suppose there are some certain areas, but I, for a long time, maintained they have what they need to undertake the campaign."

What China needs for an all-out attack

China has pushed a rapid modernization of its armed forces over the past two decades that has alarmed US military officials and opened China leader Xi Jinping's options for how to reunify Taiwan, the democratic island of 24 million that Beijing views as a breakaway. China's navy, for example, has surpassed the size of the US fleet and its shipbuilding capacity is easily the largest in the world.

But there are questions around the quality of China's warships despite the sheer numbers, and whether it has the capacity for an amphibious assault against Taiwan's advanced weapons.

Taiwan's Ministry of Defense assessed in 2021 that China "lacks the landing vehicles and logistics required to launch an incursion into Taiwan." The US Department of Defense largely concurred, and the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission wrote something similar in its 2020 report, noting that while China had a "shortage of amphibious lift, or ships and aircraft capable of transporting troops the [Chinese military] needs to successfully subjugate the island," the PLA was looking into using civilian vessels to supplement that.

Chinese ships and aircraft that try to invade or blockade the island into submission would be highly vulnerable to Taiwan's arsenal of advanced weapons like F-16 fighter jets, Patriot missile batteries, and Harpoon anti-ship missiles. The question is whether China has built an invasion force that can sustain the damage from these weapons in what would be the first amphibious invasion in seven decades.

Others have seen signs that China is corralling the civilian shipping needed to meet the heavy material needs of an amphibious invasion armada.

Thomas Shugart, a former US Navy submarine commander who's now an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security think tank, wrote for War on the Rocks in August 2021 that "Chinese leaders have already begun organizing civilian shipping into auxiliary units of the military," highlighting examples of large roll-on/roll-off ferries being employed in amphibious assault exercises, something Chinese media later confirmed, and adding that the civilian vessels were carrying both Marine Corps and ground force units.

While these ferries aren't necessarily designed for landing assault troops, Shugart noted, they are built to carry a large number of people, load ground forces quickly and with little warning, disembark their troops, and return for more; the US military also has fast-transport vessels and cargo ships to support operations.

"The evidence shows that these fleets are all ready to mobilize, really at a moment's notice," Goldstein said. "China has the biggest ports in the world and they're full of these ships, so putting them together into fleets to make this attack would be very quick, within days."

Xi is a year-and-a-half into his third term as China's leader, and many of his recent moves suggest China is preparing for war. Xi successfully consolidated control over Hong Kong in 2020, and may have his eyes on a bigger prize.

In March, China dropped "peaceful reunification" when referring to Taiwan and announced a 7.2% increase in defense spending. Food and energy security, like petroleum reserves, have been stockpiled for years. New laws around civilian mobilization and economic self-reliance indicate Xi is preparing his people and the Chinese economy for the possibility of war. Military forces are being deployed nearer to Taiwan than ever, effectively shortening Taiwan's reaction time. Stockpiling of China's rocket force, too, suggests it would have more than enough missiles and rockets to target Taiwan.

Earlier this month, Mike Studeman, former commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence and director for intelligence for US Indo-Pacific Command, wrote in War on the Rocks: "There is no apparent countdown to D-day for initiating a blockade or invasion, but major strategic indicators clearly show that General Secretary Xi Jinping is still preparing his country for a showdown. Developments under way suggest Taiwan will face an existential crisis in single-digit years, most likely in the back half of the 2020s or front half of the 2030s."

Some experts assess China would lean into the element of surprise, a core facet in their military doctrine. One common concern is that as China's military exercises around Taiwan have grown in frequency and size, the line between exercise and potential attack is becoming blurred. "The bad news" with such a scenario, Dean Cheng, a senior advisor to the China program at the US Institute of Peace, said, "is they go to war with what they have on hand, because they probably haven't had a chance to deploy more forces forward, stock up munitions, get everything loaded and ready to go. How important is surprise versus how important is being able to sustain the operation?"

That ploy resembles the massive Russian build-up on Ukraine's borders prior to the 2022 invasion that officials had claimed was for field exercises.

Goldstein's estimate is that while it's still risky, "they have what they need, and they're ready to undertake" an attack. "I don't think we'll have a lot of warning," he added, noting a sudden set of actions that only unfolds over a period of hours would be more likely than many other clearer, long-term signs.

US involvement also factors in. "There is a possibility of American intervention which then goes to the question of how well can China conceal its preparations for an invasion?" Cheng said.

A Chinese ring of steel

Experts, as well as US and Taiwan lawmakers and military officials, have long debated about the readiness of the People's Liberation Army as China's military is known.

"The PLA's modernization plan, we think, is still on track, and is aimed at a 2027 period," Cheng explained, with goals of being a fully modernized fighting force by then.

Before then, there's a higher risk that an assault attempt would fail or shatter Beijing's forces. "The PLA isn't going to make the call, however, about whether to invade Taiwan, that's going to be up to Chinese leadership, Xi in particular, and the rest of the Politburo Standing Committee," top leadership in the CCP, Cheng said.

China has indicated it will use force if necessary, but a full-scale invasion likely has dire consequences for China. Other actions — such as an air and maritime blockade, as noted in DoD's China report, limited force campaigns, air and missile campaigns, and seizure of Taiwan's smaller occupied islands — could be preferable, and China boats much of those capabilities already.

A blockade, for example, would give the US and its allies more time to respond than a sudden, bolt-from-the-blue surprise attack. "It's less risky in the sense that you're not going to have necessarily thousands killed, but you're giving Taiwan and the Americans time to organize a response," Cheng said.

There's also precedent at play: The US blockaded Cuba after it detected a deployment of Soviet nuclear missiles to the island in 1962 in what would become the Cold War's most dangerous crisis.

US involvement in defending Taiwan from China is a major unknown. A war game analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies from January 2023 reported that in most of the 24 runs, the US, Taiwan, and Japan defeated a conventional amphibious invasion by China, but suffered heavy and severe losses.

But with all of this comes the consideration that Xi's biggest priority is to reunify with Taiwan. As US Army Maj. Kyle Amonson and retired US Coast Guard Capt. Dane Egli wrote in 2023, much of when Xi decides to invade Taiwan comes down to how he wants to maintain his legacy in the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese society, as well as what accomplishing such a feat would do for him.

Scene for a showdown

Cross-Strait relations have soured in recent years, especially with the Democratic Progressive Party in power since 2016, raising worries that military action for reunification is more likely and other options, such as diplomacy, aren't. The worst case scenario is a full-scale invasion, which would unleash all-out war and potentially trigger responses from the US, Japan, the Philippines, and others.

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, Beijing's economy was booming, Taiwanese students were traveling to the mainland for school work, and Chinese leadership likely believed Taiwan would eventually accept reunification.

"But the state of the economy and society, and the Chinese crackdown on Hong Kong, as well as other elements such as American actions, led Beijing to think time is no longer on their side," Cheng said. "Tensions are definitely higher now, but where I would draw the line is that it doesn't necessarily mean Beijing is about to launch an invasion."

Goldstein said that in tracking Chinese media closely, calls for reunification are more frequent and heated. "I am concerned that China may see some reason to go earlier rather than later," he explained.

Xi himself told US President Joe Biden in late 2023, "Look, peace is… all well and good, but at some point we need to move towards resolution."

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• Scientists have been extracting huge fossils from the La Brea tar pits since 1913.
• Many of the animals lived during the Ice Age, as far back as 50,000 years ago.
• The tar pits have preserved an entire ecosystem, from mammoths to pollen.

Tens of thousands of years ago, dire wolves hunted ground sloths and camels while herds of gigantic mammoths lumbered past cypress trees. All of this happened where Los Angeles now stands, and many of these animals are still well preserved in the bubbling black goo below.

Since 1913, scientists have been pulling bones and other fossils out of the La Brea tar pits. In fact, some of the best evidence for these species comes from the pits, which are just steps from an art museum and office supply store.

Despite the name, the thick liquid in the pits isn't tar. It's asphalt. "It's this crude oil that's just coming up and has been up for the last thousand years," Matt Davis, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, told Business Insider.

The tar pits have preserved everything from massive mammoths to specks of pollen. "That's really rare for a fossil site," Davis said. It's unusual that both plants and animals fossilize in the same place, he said.

At La Brea, "you get a whole ecosystem," he said, "and that lets us really reconstruct what the Ice Age looked like."

During a recent visit, Business Insider visited the pits and spoke with La Brea's scientists who showed us how fossils of mammoths, dire wolves, and other species go from covered in gunk to ready for display.

From huge mammoths to microscopic pollen, the tar pits captured everything.

Perhaps La Brea's most iconic sight isn't all that scientifically accurate. A model of a drowning mammoth sinks into the asphalt as her distressed family watches from dry land.

"This is actually an excavation pit for asphalt," Davis said. The real tar pits likely wouldn't have looked like a black bubbling lake. "This is way deeper than they would've been," he said.

But it helps visitors get a sense of how frightening getting stuck would've been. "It would have been horrible," Davis said. "It would have been slow. You would've been stuck there for days starving until some animal ate you alive."

The pits contain asphalt that becomes very sticky in warm weather.

Methane, not heat, makes the sticky substance in the pits bubble. "It's not hot," Davis said, "it's just gaseous."

However, the tar pits are stickier in summer. "The viscosity of asphalt totally changes," Sean Campbell, a senior paleontological preparator, said. "When it's hot, it's gooey," he said. "It's very likely to trap things." Preparators help ready fossils for study and display.

There are several reasons animals might have stumbled into the tar, Campbell said. They might have been unfamiliar with the area. Water or leaves could've covered the sticky black oil.

"Another huge one is predation," Campbell said. Inexperienced young herbivores trying to outrun a predator might have headed straight for the asphalt.

That's why the makeup of the pits is so carnivore-heavy. The dying animals brought all kinds of scavengers who then got stuck snacking on their last meal.

La Brea contains over 100 pits.

There are over 100 pits at La Brea, and excavators numbered them in the order they were dug up. "Sometimes they started with separate pits and as they dug down, they actually came together," Davis said. For example, Pits 3 and 4 became Pit 3, 4.

The pits still hold onto anything that drifts into them.

"These leaves will be in the fossil record for a paleontologist 50,000 years from now," Davis said of the debris covering one of the pits. In addition to sycamore leaves, future excavators will find the occasional cellphone or scooter, he said.

Scientists have excavated the pits for over 100 years but were initially focused on large bones.

In the early 1900s, after an oil company started drilling wells, scientists started excavating the bones. In 1913, George Allan Hancock, the land surveyor's son, gave Los Angeles County permission to dig.

It wasn't quite the careful process it is now, Campbell said. They were mostly looking for the large bones of mammals and ignoring everything else. "They were really just trophy collecting," he said.

"We're much more careful about things now, and much slower, too," Davis said.

Later excavations started looking for tiny fossils of plants, insects, and small animals.

Between 1913 and 1915, there was a flurry of activity as LA County excavators looked for bones. "They dug 96 deposits in two years, some of them 40 feet down by hand," Campbell said.

Pit 91, shown above, eventually collapsed, but in 1969, a group of scientists started excavating it again. This time they measured everything that was at least a centimeter long, discovering about 450 additional species, Campbell said.

"That's because of Pit 91 and all the meticulous work that all those people did for 40 years," Campbell said.

Today, the scientists collect samples of all the dirt and debris and keep anything larger than 0.841 millimeters, he said.

Asphalt is still piping to the fossils left in Pit 91, keeping it from drying out, so excavating the pit isn't the main priority. There are still giant ground sloths, horses, and much more waiting to be found.

In 1914, excavators found 10,000-year-old human remains in one of the pits.

Only one human's remains have been found in the tar pits. In 1914, excavators found the partial skeleton of La Brea Woman, a teenager who died around 10,000 years ago. Originally, some experts thought she'd been buried with a dog whose bones were close by. But the dog was later found to be 7,000 years younger.

"Because that asphalt is continually churning up, the bones get all mixed up over time," Davis said.

Many museums have recently begun returning human remains to descendants, but much about La Brea Woman is still unknown.

It's unlikely scientists will find more human remains anytime soon. The deposits they're working on are too old, 34,000 to 51,000 years old, Campbell said. "It's double the timeframe that is known for California humans," he said.

During a 2006 construction project, workers found 16 enormous fossil deposits.

In 2006, the nearby Los Angeles County Museum of Art started digging for an underground parking garage. "If you're doing any construction in this area, you're going to hit fossils," Davis said. And that's exactly what happened.

Because regular excavation would have taken too long, workers put large fossil deposits into 23 boxes. La Brea employees and volunteers have been whittling away at what's known as Project 23 ever since.

"It's like a Jenga block," Davis said. Using a combination of tools and chemicals, each fossil is carefully removed, and the surrounding asphalt and sand get sifted through fine mesh to capture smaller objects.

In the box Campbell has worked on for two years, there's a huge range of life: deer, coyote, dire wolf, saber-tooth cat, predatory birds, dung beetles, xanthium pods, and acorns, just to name a few.

It's taken almost 20 years to sort through the large fossil deposits from Project 23.

The deposit preparator Laura Tewksbury has been working on started at 86,000 pounds, measuring 10 feet by 10 feet. Now it fits on a table. There are potentially still thousands of bones left in the chunk.

A fossil deposit is so jumbled, it's like a game of Jenga to remove them.

For each fossil Tewksbury removes, she writes a data tag. One belongs to a desert cottontail rabbit, the same species a group of excited kids saw still hopping around the museum grounds.

"Our story here is so much about extinction, but it's also about survival because almost everything that we have here is still around," Tewksbury said. The megafauna died out about 13,000 years ago, , but the smaller animals are still around.

There are still plenty of species in the tar pits that could use more research.

Once Tewksbury has extracted the fossils, they go to the lab for further identification. She's hoping she's found the lower jaw of a Capromeryx minor, or dwarf pronghorn. It's an antlered, hoofed mammal.

The species is understudied, Davis said, but it's one of the few small species that went extinct during the Ice Age. He's not really sure why. "All the modeling I've done says it should be alive," he said.

Visitors are able to see fossils being studied and prepped for display.

Large windows separate the laboratory from the museum, allowing visitors to watch the preparators and paleontologists work.

"We're one of the main exhibits in the museum, which is pretty cool," Connie Clarke, an assistant preparator, said.

Fossils that come to the lab still need cleaning and sometimes repair.

The samples taken out of the Project 23 deposit boxes still need work after they're freed from the surrounding asphalt and sand. For example, a dire wolf skull had a tibia or a lower leg bone cemented near the eye socket.

Dire wolves are now extinct but were bigger and bulkier than today's species of gray wolves.

"This is what we spend a lot of time doing, is trying to expose all the features like these teeth from this matrix that's currently covering it," Clarke said.

The tar pits are full of predators, especially dire wolves.

Dire wolves are the most common species pulled from the tar pits. There's an entire wall of their skulls at the museum, but it's just a fraction of the whole collection.

With that many specimens, it's easy to see differences between individuals, like wear patterns on their teeth. "There were times when life was tougher," Davis said. "You see more breakage in the teeth as they were gnawing on bones versus just eating flesh."

Cleaning fossils takes chemicals and a lot of patience.

Many paleontology labs work with fossils that are bone turned into stone, Clarke said. "We're dealing with just pickled bones, basically, and hardened asphalt."

They use a chemical Novec 73DE that softens the matrix or surrounding material. The preparators can then use cotton swabs and small sticks to clean away at the asphalt.

The debris early excavators once discarded holds a wealth of mini fossils.

The preparators keep the matrix that surrounds the fossils because it contains microfossils, Clarke said.

A large screen helps magnify what's under the microscope because the microfossils are so tiny. A penny shows the scale of a miniature wood rat tooth, snake backbone, lizard jaw, freshwater shells, and juniper seed.

"It's just sort of a whole ecosystem," she said.

Meet Zed, a 37,000-year-old Columbian mammoth.

One of Project 23's biggest discoveries, literally, was an almost complete Columbian mammoth skeleton. The employees call him Zed.

"He's special," Clarke said. "We usually don't get complete individuals." Preparators have found over 80% of his bones.

They're continuing to clean and stabilize Zed's skull before he goes on display.

Repairing a mammoth skull is delicate work.

Part of Zed's preparation includes using archival glue and archival paper to repair some fissures.

"He's a delicate old man," Clarke said. "Lots of cracks."

During the Ice Age, no land animal was as big as the Columbian mammoth.

The Columbia mammoth was the largest land animal in North America during the Ice Age, Davis said.

It was bigger than a woolly mammoth but not as furry. Los Angeles' weather was a little bit cooler and wetter but not covered in ice like the northern parts of the continent.

That's a misconception about the Ice Age, Davis said. "We don't live in a world of Star Wars planets, where you just have one habitat for the entire planet."

La Brea's collection is overflowing.

The La Brea museum is planning an expansion because it's running out of space.

The collection holds the bones of over 3,600 individual dire wolves. It's such a wealth that paleontologists can actually afford to destructively sample some for radiocarbon dating, Davis said.

"You have to destroy a little bit of the bone, carve it out, pulverize it," he said. "We have so many bones, that's not really a problem."

The collection attracts scientists from all over.

Not every species found in the pits is as abundant as the dire wolves. Excavators have only found a few hundred deer bones, Campbell said.

Still, there's enough to keep a team of scientists with a variety of expertise busy, Davis said.

"We have enough fossils that we could have 10 times the staff, 10 times the paleontologists working here," he said.

The abundance of fossils has helped researchers learn about saber-tooth cats' social lives.

Another common predator that inhabits the tar pits is saber-tooth cats.

In a recent paper, scientists described one older cat with hip dysplasia, a painful condition that affects modern house cats, too.

Since it would have made it difficult for the animal to catch prey, the paleontologists suggested members of its group shared their food with the injured felid.

The American lion was a fearsome predator.

Lions also stalked prey around the tar pits. The gigantic American lion may have weighed up to 900 pounds, over 300 pounds more than a typical lion today.

They had retractable claws like house cats and were big enough to hunt bison and horses.

To get a feel for what Los Angeles once looked like, visit the Pleistocene garden.

The megafauna like dire wolves, mammoths, and saber-tooth cats attract a lot of attention from La Brea's visitors. But the plants are also part of the story.

The Pleistocene garden contains plant species found as fossils in the asphalt. They help document changes in California's climate and vegetation. Over 50,000 years, the landscape changed from a pine forest to woodland to a sage scrub habitat.

From an environment full of trees, it became more open with more grasses and shrubs. Around 7,000 years ago, the region looked similar to modern LA's scrublands.

The museum's founders wanted to create a Pleistocene park.

In the 1920s, Herman Beck created sculptures of the La Brea animals, including the short-faced bear. Even back then, the museum's founders wanted to make a Pleistocene park, Davis said.

"They were using those kind of terms 100 years before Jurassic Park," he said.

The short-faced bear was taller than modern grizzly bears. "It would've been absolutely terrifying," Davis said.

An iconic scene runs along the museum's exterior.

Paleoartist Charles R. Knight created a large mural of the tar pits in 1925, and a modified recreation now runs around the museum's fascia.

The mural lacked the smaller animals that would have filled the landscape, but at least one detail is very true to life.

"This tree appears in just about every tar pits painting, this very particular curved branch," Davis said. That's because excavators actually found that tree, curved branch and all, in the asphalt.

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