Author: openjargon

• Meghan Trainor said that her son sat on his potty while she sat on the toilet bowl. 
• The Grammy-winning singer shared her parenting method on Dax Shepard's podcast, "Armchair Expert".
• Experts say potty training methods should be tailored to each child's needs.

Meghan Trainor has a trick for potty training her son and it involves answering nature's call together.

In an interview with Dax Shepard on his podcast "Armchair Expert" on Monday, the "Made You Look" singer shared her potty training method while discussing anal fissures.

"We're potty training my kid, so don't attack me internet, but I pooped with him," Trainor, 30, told Shepard. "He was on his little potty, and I was over here. I know I can smell my poop, but we were like, 'We did it, buddy!'"

This is not the first time Trainor has brought up toilet talk. In 2021, she was interviewed with her brother Ryan Trainor on the "Why Won't You Date Me?" podcast hosted by Nicole Byer. "They poop together. She's pooping and Daryl's like, 'I'm going to go hang out with you now!'" Ryan said about his sister and her husband on the show.

Trainor told Byer that she and her husband, actor Daryl Sabara, had installed two toilet bowls side by side in their house. The setup has also helped ease nighttime parenting duties.

"Because we have young babies, so we're getting up every hour on the hour, and this dude pees like a girl. So I was like, get out of my way, I have to piss," she told Shepard. "So I solved this crime, and I was like, we're gonna pee at the same time."

She clarified, however, that their shared bathroom time was limited to peeing.

Trainor and Sabara married in December 2018 after dating for almost two years. They welcomed their son, Riley, in February 2021 and their second son, Barry Bruce, in July 2023.

Since then, Trainor has been open about motherhood and parenting, including developing post-traumatic stress disorder after the complicated birth of her first son.

Trainor is not the only celebrity sharing her potty training methods. In 2020, actor Kristen Bell said in her podcast "Momsplaining with Kristen Bell" that when her older daughter was 21 months, she and her husband, Dax Shepard, had simply suggested she use the toilet.

"We were lying in bed giggling about this, my husband and I, like, 'Why does everyone make a big deal out of this potty training? It's so easy. Just tell the kid to use the toilet,'" she said.

She went on to explain that it wasn't as easy with her younger daughter, who was still wearing diapers at 5.

While methods for potty training vary, Paul Patterson, MD, a board-certified pediatrician, told Business Insider that potty training should be tailored to each child's needs.

"Each child and family is unique and thus so must the approach be to potty training," he said.

• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has upped his style game dramatically since the pandemic.
• The billionaire has ditched his array of gray t-shirts for shearling brown jackets and gold chains.
• But Zuckerberg's transformation may have been part of a plan to appear more relatable.

Mark Zuckerberg has certainly stunned the world with his transformation from a hoodie-loving nerd to a chain-wearing tech bro.

However, the extreme makeover may have less to do with Zuckerberg's evolving taste in fashion than with a concerted plan to make the billionaire more relatable to people his age.

In January 2020, the Meta CEO exchanged a series of emails with his colleagues and then-board member Peter Thiel on how they could better sell Facebook to millennials.

But what's more interesting was the personal brand that Zuckerberg hoped to cultivate as part of Meta's plan to woo millennials, as outlined in one email exchange.

"While our company has a special role in the lives of this generation, this is likely particularly important for how I show up because I am the most well-known person of my generation," Zuckerberg wrote in an email on January 4, 2020.

Zuckerberg's emails, first reported by the newsletter Internal Tech Emails, were among the company documents and correspondence that the state of Tennessee filed as evidence in its lawsuit against Meta.

In October, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti filed a lawsuit against the social media giant. The lawsuit, which was filed alongside 41 other states, accused the company's product Instagram of causing "mental health harms to its young users."

Interestingly, Zuckerberg wasn't the only one who saw himself as a youth icon.

In an email on December 31, 2019, Thiel said that the company's popularity among the young meant that Zuckerberg "has been cast as the spokesman for the Millennial generation."

Zuckerberg, Thiel said, is seen as "the single person who gives voice to the hopes and fears and the unique experiences of this generation, at least in the USA."

"I think this overall shift is something we should consider for how our company communicates and shows up more broadly, but it's something I'm definitely going to think about more in terms of how I communicate," Zuckerberg wrote in response several days later on January 4.

To be sure, Meta may no longer be the most popular social media platform for millennials. The company has seen increased competition from the likes of TikTok, which hooked users with its focus on short-form videos.

Zuckerberg, on the other hand, might've been able to stick to the plan. The billionaire has ditched his once-standard uniform of gray t-shirts for shearling brown jackets and gold chains.

The results speak for themselves. This year alone, Zuckerberg has gone viral every couple of weeks with his striking fashion choices.

Last week, Zuckerberg got some attention when he posted an Instagram video of himself hydrofoiling while wearing a tuxedo on Independence Day.

"Happy birthday, America!" Zuckerberg wrote in his post.

The image makeover has also delivered a huge PR boost for Zuckerberg, who wasn't always seen as the coolest guy in tech.

After all, Zuckerberg's reputation was tarnished during the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, when Facebook was accused of allowing the data of millions of users to be improperly accessed by the political analytics firm.

The Meta chief's image revamp did not go unnoticed by his fellow billionaires. Spotify founder Daniel Ek told Forbes in an interview last year that he thinks Zuckerberg's new public persona is "a lot more authentic."

"He's learned a lot over these past few years and he has a new fire in the belly," Ek, who has known Zuckerberg for years, told the outlet. "He's realized he needs to act responsibly because he's got this enormous platform."

Representatives for Zuckerberg didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

• Canva bans its AI tool from creating images of political candidates or medical terms.
• The decision aims to prevent harmful or inappropriate content, CEO Melanie Perkins told The Verge.
• Canva's AI policies appear more artist-friendly than Adobe and Meta, which faced backlash.

Design juggernaut Canva has drawn hard lines around what its AI tool can and can't make.

Canva's AI feature, called Magic Media, doesn't work with medical or political terms, because such content may be harmful or inappropriate, CEO Melanie Perkins said in an interview with The Verge published on Monday. Canva's software can be used to create anything from party invitations to social media content to presentation templates.

"Canva has been designed to be a platform where you can come in and take your idea and turn it into a design, but there are certain things we shouldn't be generating," Perkins, who cofounded the 11-year-old company, said.

For example, Perkins said that if the tool is prompted to create images of political candidates, it will simply tell the user: "You can't do that."

Users can still create designs with political or health content on the platform on their own.

Canva also does not allow AI to be used for generating contracts, legal or financial advice, spam, or adult content, according to its AI product terms.

The company also has a clear policy on AI scraping. Canva does not train its AI on creators' content without permission, and users can opt out of their designs being used for AI training any time, according to a company blog.

By default, all users are opted out of private design content from being used to train AI models, a Canva spokesperson told Business Insider.

Last year, the company created a $200 million fund to pay users who opt into AI training in the next three years.

Canva's stance on AI differs markedly from those of other content creation giants, Adobe and Meta, which have come under fire within the creative community in recent months.

Last month, Meta faced backlash from artists who were angered by Meta using their public photos on Instagram and Facebook to train its artificial intelligence models. Several artists told BI that they're moving to platforms like Cara that ban the use of AI. Meta did not respond to a request for comment at the time.

Around the same time, artists protested how Adobe sent users a re-acceptance of its "Terms of Use," which led some people to think AI would scrape their art and content. A wave of artists boycotted Adobe, boosting sign-ups for alternatives like Linearity, and Affinity, which Canva acquired earlier this year.

At the time, Adobe said in a blog post that content belongs to users and it would never be used to train generative AI tools.

A spokesperson for Adobe referred BI to the company's AI guidelines, which direct users not to create hateful or adult content and not seek medical advice from AI features. The guidelines do not mention whether such content can be generated in the first place.

• Russia's economy is boosting wealth for of oligarchs, some of whom are sanctioned.
• A dozen Russian tycoons pocketed $11.4 billion in dividends for all of 2023 up until the first quarter of 2024.
• The payouts illustrate how Russia's biggest companies are still raking it in despite the West's isolation of its economy.

Russia's wartime economy has not only made some poor people better off — some of Russia's oligarchs are getting richer, too.

At least 12 businesspeople received more than 1 trillion rubles, or $11.4 billion, in dividends for all of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024, according to Bloomberg on Tuesday. The outlet based its calculations on publicly disclosed information.

Many of the tycoons who received the dividend windfall are closely tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to the news outlet. Some of them have been sanctioned by the West.

The biggest winners from the dividend payouts were commodities exporters that have benefited from Russia's pivot of its trade eastward toward China, India, and other countries in the global south. Their key customers were previously from Europe.

The biggest winner was Vagit Alekperov, a key shareholder and former president of oil giant Lukoil, who received 186 billion rubles in dividends, per Bloomberg. He has been sanctioned by the UK and Australia.

Alexey Mordashov, chairman and a main shareholder of steel company Severstal, pocketed 148 billion rubles in dividends. The US, the UK, and the EU have sanctioned him.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Lisin, the chairman of Novolipetsk Steel, raked in 121 billion rubles in dividends.

The payouts illustrate how Russia's biggest companies are still profiting despite the West's isolation of the country's economy, which grew 5.4% in the first quarter of this year from a year ago.

Russia's war-driven economy is so hot that the World Bank upgraded it to a "high-income country" last week.

However, Russia's Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting — a key think tank — warned the country's economy could cool and slip into crisis in the second half of this year should the Bank of Russia hike interest rates, reported Kommersant, a business news outlet, on Monday.

Elvira Nabiullina, Russia's central bank chief, has signaled an interest-rate hike ahead due to higher-than-expected inflation.

Russia's key interest rate is already at 16% to cool price rises, but inflation hit 8.3% in May — well above the official 4% target.

• AI companies have been upfront with their goal to disrupt the creative industry. 
• But they have barely been able to hide their contempt for the artists they are trying to displace.
• A Columbia professor told BI the rivalry stems from both groups "competing for the same pot of revenue."

AI companies may be hard at work disrupting the creative industry, but some firms can barely hide their disdain for the artists their product might hurt.

Last month, OpenAI's CTO Mira Murati raised eyebrows when she appeared to brush aside the seismic impact that AI could have on the job market for creatives.

"Some creative jobs maybe will go away, but maybe they shouldn't have been there in the first place," Murati said at an event at her alma mater, Dartmouth College, on June 8. "You know, if the content that comes out of it is not very high quality."

In fact, Murati isn't the only tech executive who has ruffled the feathers of creatives recently.

Artists and designers were left fuming after Adobe's update to its Terms of Use suggested that the company could use creator content to train its AI models. In June, Adobe uploaded a blog post informing its users that its AI models weren't trained on customer content.

Columbia University marketing professor Olivier Toubia told BI that tech executives' cavalier attitudes could stem from callousness rather than carelessness.

"This might just be insensitivity or snobbism," Toubia said. "Perhaps, some tech executives do not have much respect for creative jobs that rely on 'softer' skills as they live in a world where someone's value is determined largely by their technical skills."

But the friction we are now seeing between AI companies and artists certainly goes beyond culture clashes, says Toubia. In fact, the two groups could be locked in an existential struggle as they battle for the same audiences.

"Unless AI leads to an increase in how much creative and non-creative content we consume, the pie seems to be pretty fixed, and therefore, we are in a zero-sum game," Toubia said.

"Given this, any money that would go to tech firms for the production of creative content will probably be at the expense of more traditional creative producers," he continued. "AI companies and creatives are competing for the same pot of revenue."

Tech companies certainly aren't slowing down their efforts to broaden their share of the creative pie.

Video giant YouTube has entered licensing negotiations with major record labels, such as Sony and Universal, to obtain training material for its AI song generators.

Toubia told BI that such developments could have mixed consequences for artists hoping to make a living from their work.

"On the positive side, if you are a creator with a stable job, you could become much more productive thanks to AI and produce more content," Toubia said. "But if you are a creator looking for a job, there may not be as many jobs available."

"I think AI companies will want to make money," the marketing professor said. "I'm not sure they care about the creative industry or would be motivated to take steps to protect it."

Representatives for Murati at OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular working hours.

• Some people are still mad at Ted Cruz for leaving Texas high and dry during deadly storms in 2021.
• Cruz's post on Hurricane Beryl had people reminding him about how he vacationed in Cancún in 2021.
• "You'll probably avoid it on your flight to Cancun right," said an X user.

Some people still haven't forgiven Sen. Ted Cruz for flying to Cancún while Texas weathered deadly winter storms in 2021.

As Hurricane Beryl slammed Texas as a category one hurricane on Monday and knocked out power for nearly three million homes and businesses, Cruz reposted an X post from "MattressMack."

The post showed Gallery Furniture owner James McIngvale, also known as "MattressMack," talking about how the furniture retailer would support Texans during this hurricane as it did during Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

"Mack is an American hero," Cruz wrote in his repost.

He added: "Stay safe & avoid high water as the hurricane makes landfall."

But people were not so easy to forgive — or forget. Cruz's post was flooded with comments reminding him of how he went on a vacation to Cancún, Mexico, while winter storms in 2021 took the lives of nearly 250 Texans.

Cruz took his family to the five-star Ritz-Carlton resort in Cancún but cut his trip short after receiving immense backlash for leaving Texas during a crisis.

One X user, calling him "Cancun Cruz," wrote that, unlike Cruz, "Mack actually stays and helps people."

"Got your flight booked to Cancun for Monday?" the user added.

Another X user quipped: "Instead of storm warnings, Texas sends out a text whenever Ted goes to the airport."

Cruz did express some regret for his trip to Cancún back in 2021 after Texans gathered outside his home to protest.

"It was obviously a mistake, and in hindsight, I wouldn't have done it," Cruz said to reporters outside his house in the aftermath of the storms, which left millions without clean drinking water, power, and heat.

However, a year later, he joked about the trip as another winter storm approached Texas.

Writing about inflation, he joked that ticket prices to Cancún were "up 32%" in an X post in February 2022. The joke didn't land well at the time, either, if the comments on that post are anything to go by.

Representatives for Cruz didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.

• China was hit by another major food scandal, this time involving cooking oil in chemical tanks.
• State media found that tank trucks were delivering chemicals and edible oil interchangeably without cleaning.
• The revelation ignited an explosion of backlash from the Chinese public this week and calls for investigations.

A new cooking oil scandal has erupted in China, about a decade after the country's infamous crackdown on restaurants reusing gutter oil and sewage grease.

The furor follows a bombshell investigation published on July 2 by state media outlet Beijing News, which found multiple cases of tank trucks transporting edible cooking oil immediately after delivering chemicals used for coal-to-liquid processing.

The report's author, Han Futao, found that none of the tank interiors were cleaned between loads.

Han described one case in which a tank truck in Hebei province delivered chemicals in Qinhuangdao before rushing to Sanhe days later to be filled with soy oil.

Several truck drivers told Beijing News the practice was a widespread cost-saving measure used by firms with thousands of trucks — an "open secret" in the industry, as Han wrote.

In some seasons, the truckers said, drivers would transport industrial wastewater before delivering edible oils.

These chemicals aren't classified as flammable or hazardous, or Chinese law would mandate that they be transported in special tanks.

But the report has since ignited outrage on China's social media platforms, which have become inundated with viral topics discussing the scandal.

National regulations have been a key target for public anger. They recommend that oil companies only use tank trucks dedicated to edible substances, but the guideline is only encouraged and isn't mandatory.

"Shouldn't a kerosene can be a kerosene can and a cooking oil can be a cooking oil can? Even if they are cleaned, they are not necessarily that clean," said one top comment on Weibo, China's version of X.

The backlash ballooned even further when people began reposting regulatory warnings from 2013 about the practice in Hunan province, indicating its use for more than a decade.

A 2005 local news report describing the mixing of edible oils with "hazardous chemicals" during transport went viral, too.

"They've been caught before, but the problem persists. Is the punishment harsh enough?" one blogger wrote.

"19 years ago, the media reported that the tanks were mixed with food. Why hasn't it been solved yet?" wrote another.

Days after Beijing News' report, state media jumped in with scathing commentary.

"If this is an 'open secret in the industry,' where does it put the public's health and life safety? Where does it put the dignity and justice of the law?" wrote People's Daily columnist Zhang Jingshan on Monday evening.

Sinograin, a state body that oversees China's grain and oil stocks, published a statement on Saturday saying it had launched an investigation into the "mixed-use of tank trucks."

But the statement has been followed by calls online for a wider investigation involving higher authorities.

"Checking your own unit is like covering your ears while stealing a bell," wrote one blogger demanding an explanation. "This needs the attention of the relevant departments. Food is a major issue of people's livelihoods and shouldn't be underestimated!"

Food safety in China has already been sensitive for years, in the wake of multiple scandals involving gutter oil and deadly chemicals in baby milk powder.

The repeated controversies have contributed to growing distrust in cities toward commercially sold foods in supermarkets and grocery stores, sparking a campaign by the central government to promote food safety in the country.