Category: Business

• Donna Kopman was laid off from her job as a sales operations manager in December.
• After having only two interviews from 400 applications, she's relying on benefits and savings.
• Kopman said she felt some employers were being ageist when assessing her application.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Donna Kopman, from Portland, Oregon, about her experience getting laid off at 57 and her job search. Business Insider has verified her previous salary. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I managed a sales support team of 15 employees for a software company, Milestone Systems, for three years.

The company told people managers there were going to be layoffs in November. I found out on my birthday. I spent my Thanksgiving holiday worried about being laid off. I had a gut feeling it was going to be me. When I got back, I found out it was.

I didn't have any hard feelings, but it sucked.

Job searching is a full-time role

My first thought was that finding another job at this age and stage in my career would be difficult. The older you are when you get laid off, the harder it is to find an equivalent position.

I took a break to clear my head and started my job search in January. I updated my résumé and looked on LinkedIn, Indeed, and job posting apps. From Sunday to Tuesday and a bit of time on Wednesday, I spend eight hours a day researching and applying for jobs. I treat it like a day job. Then, I take a few days off, which keeps me healthy.

I'm applying to jobs around Portland, where I live, and some remote jobs, too.

I've found a few jobs that are very similar to the one I had. Half a dozen times, I spent two hours tailoring my résumé to a job, showing how my qualifications directly matched the role and then got back an auto-generated rejection response within the day.

It's frustrating. Some days, I've felt a little defeated. But I have to remind myself it's not a human at the other end of the line. It's probably AI.

I've applied for 400 jobs and landed 2 interviews

Since January, I've applied for around 400 roles. It's a numbers game.

I've broadened my search to include some junior roles, such as executive assistant jobs. Part of that is a choice: I'm not sure I want to manage people again. The other part is simply to get a job that gives me a paycheck.

I've had two interviews with hiring managers. It feels like an employer's market in the US. For every job I apply for, there seem to be hundreds of other applicants. When I was a hiring manager in my previous role, we'd be lucky to get 20 applications.

I don't think employers have time to screen all those applicants, so they're relying on AI. I understand why they have to automate the process, but it removes human beings from it.

Employers can be ageist

Employers might look at an older person and think they'll require a higher salary because they have more experience. They might automatically screen older people out for that if they have to balance their budget.

But many older people would be willing to get paid less to stay in the job market.

Hiring managers might also assume that older people are stuck in their ways and can't learn new technology. But it's a misconception. I take pride in challenging myself to learn new things to stay relevant.

More junior employees might also have doubts about hiring someone more qualified than them if they feel insecure in their careers. They might worry that an older person will replace them. I try to balance that in interviews and not come off too strong.

Ageism is everywhere in US work culture, but people don't seem to want to acknowledge it. How do we change that? Having a diverse team creates a better work culture.

I'm willing to be paid less

In my previous role, my salary was $110,000 a year, including bonuses. I've been applying for jobs for as little as $60,000 a year.

It's a balancing act. I'm willing to accept that to stay in the workforce, especially given healthcare is tied to employment. I'm paying $900 a month for COBRA right now to maintain the same health policy I had before.

I'm getting unemployment benefits, but they don't cover my expenses, so I'm having to draw from my savings. I hope I get a job before I no longer get the benefits.

Since being laid off, I don't go out to eat as much. I'd love to take advantage of having the time off to go on vacation, but I have to watch my expenses and don't know how long I'll be unemployed. It's a strange limbo.

Being unemployed delays my retirement

I was hoping to retire in my early to mid-60s. But I won't qualify for full Social Security payments until I'm 67. That's 10 years I need to bridge, and if I wanted to retire earlier, I'd have to find a way to build my finances.

We need to do more to keep older people in the workforce. People are drawing down from their 401(k) out of necessity, and that's scary.

Taking longer to find a job or accepting a lower-paid job might delay my retirement. I hope I don't have to do that.

But I remain hopeful. I know I've got a lot of value to add to employers, and I know I will land somewhere that is good for me.

Not many of Jess Munday's San Francisco friends live alone. But Munday, a 29-year-old who works in tech marketing, was able to swing it.

It took living with her parents for a few months during the pandemic, during which time she saved some money. Then, she struck in January 2021 when, according to Zillow, rent prices in the city were the lowest they've been in the past five years.

She pays about $2,600 for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco's Mission neighborhood and makes $175,000 annually. It's a deal compared with the median rent of about $2,900 for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco.

"I even know people who are a lot older than me who are living with roommates in San Francisco," Munday said. "I'm thankfully in a financial situation where I don't have to do that."

The 30-something American dream used to look a little like this: You're married, you have two or three kids, and you own your starter house (white picket fence optional).

But things have shifted. Millennials are getting married later, if at all. They're having kids later, if at all. And forget owning a sprawling suburban home.

That's helping establish a new millennial milestone for some: Ditching roommates, moving out from the family home, and landing on living alone.

Going solo as a younger worker has become increasingly popular in the past few decades, though it's still relatively uncommon in the US. Census data indicates that in the late 1960s and early 1970s, under 3% of Americans between 18 and 34 lived alone; by 2023, that number had tripled. Business Insider's analysis of American Community Survey microdata from IPUMS found that 10.5% of millennials lived alone in 2022.

Bella DePaulo, a social scientist who studies single people and who wrote the book "Single at Heart," said the rise in solo living could be a result of Americans delaying marriage.

"Marriage is no longer the marker of adulthood that it once was. Now younger people are more likely to feel like they're an adult if they've had other accomplishments, and sometimes living alone is one of them," DePaulo said. "Living alone can mean that you can afford to do so, and that's something to feel proud of."

For this article, Business Insider spoke to nine millennials who live alone. While their situations vary, they all said that living alone is very much a sacrifice — but one worth making.

In doing so, they outlined the promises and pitfalls of hitting this new millennial milestone.

Munday acknowledged that if she lost her job, she'd most likely have to move back home or get roommates, but for now, it's worth the risk.

"I personally like living alone. I can control the space, how I decorate," Munday said. "I do enjoy having space and being able to clean or leave it messy depending on my mood."

The singles tax

Aria Velasquez, 32, lives alone in her one-bedroom apartment in Chicago, paying about $1,500 in rent and service fees. She was laid off from her journalism job earlier this year.

She said the biggest challenge is taking on the financial burden alone. Her partnered friends, on the other hand, get a break.

"Now that we're in our early to mid-30s, a lot of people are getting married or partnering up so they're moving in with their partners even if they're not married," Velasquez said. "They will cite living with someone to split the bills with as a benefit of moving in with someone."

Zillow recently estimated that people living alone in one-bedroom rentals spent over $7,000 more annually on housing costs than people living with others — a difference often described as the singles tax.

Velasquez said that she loves living alone and that it has always been her goal. She values privacy and quiet and loves coming home to nothing but the "hum of the fridge." At the same time, she acknowledged that the cost of many items, including groceries, had risen, adding that there's "no discount for single-person shopping."

"You buy a loaf of bread, but you may not eat the entire loaf in a short period of time because maybe you don't want a sandwich every day," Velasquez said.

Though she's able to rent on her own, buying her own place feels like a distant dream: "I view it the same way people think about winning the lottery."

More millennials living with Mom and Dad

Erica Charles, 28, a publicist in Washington, DC, said that while she and many of her peers live alone, others had moved back in with family in recent years. She said she's considered it as well.

"I could save $700 a month," Charles said, adding that it could go toward saving for her graduate school tuition. "I'm thinking about how I can scale back a lot. I'm thinking about jobs that pay more and how to bring in more money through freelancing."

Rick Fry, a senior researcher at Pew, said the share of 18- to 34-year-olds living in their families' homes has been slowly rising since 1971 "and particularly kind of picked up during the Great Recession," per Pew's research. As of 2023, he said, it was about 32%.

"If you look at the metro areas that have the highest median rents, those are the metro areas where you see the young adults most likely to be living with Mom and/or Dad," Fry said. Per BI's analysis of American Community Survey data via IPUMS, 16% of millennials lived with at least one parent as of 2022. (The data doesn't specify if that means they're living with their parents or if their parents are living with them.)

Charles said that before the pandemic, she liked living alone. "I thought it was a rite of passage into young adulthood," she said.

This year, Charles has been rethinking her living situation. Her lease is ending in June. She says she's been laid off three times since 2020. Because of finances, she's put plans to pursue a Ph.D. in media communications on hold, and she's not planning to have children anytime soon. She'd also like to buy a house in the next three years. Housing prices in Florida, where she's from, have increased significantly over the past five years.

She's thought about whether she wants to move in with her family or with a roommate. She's been cutting back on spending and has been doing more budgeting. She's even taken on part-time food-delivery and freelancing gigs.

"It's really a privilege to live alone," Charles said. "Now it's become a luxury."

Subsidized solo living

Some lower-earning millennials are able to get assistance reaching the solo-living milestone — but it's not always easy.

Garak Clibborn, 39, a veteran in California, has been homeless before. He's also cycled through at least eight roommates while renting a room in a house and applying for housing assistance so he could live on his own. After waiting nearly a year, his name was called for a housing voucher, he said — and he was told he had 60 days to find a place before it expired.

Many apartments had yearslong waitlists, and others wouldn't accept vouchers, which is government rental assistance. After calling over 350 places, he finally found a spot. He's been living alone there since 2012. His rent just went up, to over $1,900. With his subsidy, he pays about $380 a month; he uses the money from his VA pension to help cover the cost.

"Even with a subsidy, it's extraordinarily difficult" to live alone, Clibborn said. He added that he still has to cover many other expenses on his own.

"If I run out of money, I'm screwed. I don't have anything to help me," he said.

Way behind in homeownership

Chaz Zimmer, a 28-year-old who sells cars at a Subaru dealership, has lived alone in his apartment in Waverly, New York, since February 2021. He pays $550 a month in rent. He tried to purchase a home last year, but interest rates made it expensive. He'd eventually like to move to a bigger place, but his rent is so cheap that it's hard to justify moving, he said.

An analysis of American Community Survey data published last year found that non-college-educated millennials were half as likely to own homes at 30 as non-college-educated baby boomers were at that age. It also found that 38% of college-educated millennials owned homes at 30, less than the 54% of college-educated boomers who owned a home at that age.

Tomasz Piskorski, a professor of real estate at Columbia Business School, said it's become more difficult to buy a home because of the increases in home prices and interest rates after 2022.

"For the millennial generation, it could take years to catch up in homeownership," Piskorski said.

Zimmer hasn't given up hope. "Some of it comes down to opportunity and timing," Zimmer said. He works on commission, so his salary has ranged from $62,000 to $79,000 in the last couple of years. He said he's "fortunate to have a pretty good job that makes a decent enough salary."

Rent versus a mortgage

James Paniagua, 30, lives in Oakland, California. Throughout college, he lived at home and stayed there until right before the pandemic. He briefly lived in Los Angeles with a roommate, but the pandemic sent him back home.

"I have essentially been living at home for the majority of my twenties," he said. Last year, he decided to move up north for work and was lucky enough to find his own place in Oakland. Before making that move, a few financial pieces had to fall into place: He had to fix his credit score, and he needed to find a job that paid him enough to move out.

Today, he makes around $125,000; his 700-square-foot apartment with a parking spot costs him around $2,100 in monthly rent.

"Starting to pay rent was the biggest adjustment, which is obviously a huge payment adjustment, but I took the time to plan out that as much as possible and shift some things around to be able to live alone, but still live the lifestyle that I had had before," he said.

He's stopped making weekly mall trips and eats at home more regularly now. He said he likes to stay at home and wants to make his space as cozy as possible.

While he said he's getting a good deal for what he has, some older adults can't believe how much he's paying for rent, "they're shook."

"It's more than some of my relative's mortgages," Paniagua said.

The experience of living alone has evolved

For those who are able to buy, snagging a solo property is a pivotal life event, and may provide comfort amid the uncertainty of other traditional milestones.

After attending graduate school in London, Julia Mazur, now 30, moved back home with her parents for two years. She worked a tech job that paid a six-figure salary and offered a generous equity package, she said. At age 25, she saved up enough to buy her own condo in Los Angeles.

During the pandemic, she refinanced her mortgage and got a lower rate; she said her monthly costs totaled about $3,000. Now she's swapping homes with a couple in Austin who have a similarly priced mortgage.

For her, living alone is empowering. She said she thinks some millennials are finding their person and settling down while others, including her, are finding fulfillment in different aspects of their lives.

"For me, I like the ability to move around and to travel, to get to experience what living on my own is like and the responsibilities that come with it. I feel very fulfilled by that," she said. "And I also think that with living alone, there does come a need to connect with humans in real life. And so I kind of make myself go and do things to try and connect with people, go to tennis classes, go sit up alone at bars, go to meetups and friend dates."

DePaulo said the experience of living alone has changed significantly in the past few years. She's found that people living alone are more likely to be connected to more diverse people — and more people overall — and engage more with civic life and community institutions.

Living alone is worth it for many, despite the challenges.

Kathy Pierre, 31, pays $1,280 a month in base rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Charlotte, North Carolina. When she moved to Charlotte, she didn't know anyone there and didn't want to take risks with living with a stranger after past experiences with roommates. "I needed to make myself afford it," she said.

At the same time, she says if she lived with family or a roommate, she'd be able to save money and get closer to buying a home. All the bills, including food, utilities, and rent, are her own when living alone. What's more, it can be easy not to talk to another human in person while working from home.

"It's just very lovely to be able to live on my own and have my own space," Pierre said. "I don't have to negotiate with other people about what happens here. I think that is really awesome. I say jokingly, but not jokingly, I would move out of Charlotte before I look for a roommate."

• Bill Gates said he learned an important scheduling lesson from fellow billionaire Warren Buffett.
• The Microsoft founder used to schedule his day down to the minute.
• But Buffett's intentionally light calendar helped him ditch the overbooked schedule. 

Microsoft founder Bill Gates says you should stop overbooking your calendar.

The billionaire shared a scheduling tip in a Friday Threads post, citing fellow billionaire Warren Buffett.

"It took far too long for me to realize that you don't have to fill every second of your schedule to be successful," Gates wrote. "(In hindsight, it's a lesson I could have learned a lot sooner had I taken more peeks at Warren Buffett's intentionally light calendar.)"

While at Microsoft, Gates was known for his meticulous schedules, literally planning his day down to the minute — an approach Tesla CEO Elon Musk has also been said to take.

Last year, Gates admitted that he previously thought sleep was "lazy" and competed with his colleagues to see who could get the least rest.

"I thought that was the only way you could do things," Gates said of his packed schedule in a 2017 interview alongside Buffett.

Gates said things changed for him when he saw Buffett's intentionally sparse calendar.

"You control your time," Gates said. "It's not a proxy of your seriousness that you fill every minute in your schedule."

Buffett, who is CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, has long been a champion of increasing productivity by decreasing busy work — an approach supported by science.

People who have the freedom to focus their time on creative work as opposed to performative busywork are happier, more productive, and more engaged at work, Business Insider previously reported. 

After seeing Buffett's schedule, Gates relaxed his own calendar. In 2020, BI documented a day in the life of the Microsoft billionaire, which included ample amounts of time for playing tennis, reading, blogging, and spending time with his family.

• Signal's CEO criticized OpenAI's handling of the Scarlett Johansson controversy in a TechCrunch interview.
• Meredith Whittaker said OpenAI's leadership is pulling "disrespectful" and "unnecessary" "Edge Lord bullshit."
• Johansson accused OpenAI of stealing her voice for its "Sky" assistant, which OpenAI denies.

Meredith Whittaker isn't holding back against OpenAI.

Signal's CEO has weighed in on the OpenAI-Scarlett Johansson controversy, accusing the buzzy AI company of having a "dorm room" culture.

In an interview with TechCrunch published on Friday, Whittaker was asked what she thought about allegations that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman asked Scarlett Johansson to provide her voice for the company's AI assistant and then, after Johansson declined, released a voice for their product that sounded similar to the actor.

"It's just like … 'Edge Lord' bullshit. It's so disrespectful. It's so unnecessary," Whittaker told TechCrunch.

She continued: "And it really tears the veil on this mythology that you're all serious people at the apex of science building the next Godhead, when it's very clear that the culture is dorm room high-jinks egged-on by a bunch of 'Yes men' who think every joke you say is funny, because they're paid to do that, and no one around there is taking this leadership by the shoulders and saying 'What the fuck are you doing!?'" 

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider on Whittaker's interview.

Earlier in the week, Whittaker took to X, formerly Twitter, to voice her opinions on the topic.

In response to an account reposting Johansson's statement accusing OpenAI of ripping off her voice, Whittaker wrote on Tuesday, "The edge lord disrespect, unprofessionalism, strategic blundering typical of actual decision making in the AI industry speaks infinitely louder than all the voluntary safety pledges ever could."

"In fact," Whittaker continued, "Those pledges serve mainly to highlight how far the walk is from the talk."

OpenAI unveiled the "Sky" artificial intelligence voice option last week alongside an announcement about the company's new GPT-4o large language model. People immediately began noting the voice's similarity to Johansson's, particularly her performance in the 2013 film "Her," where the actor played an AI assistant that the main character falls in love with.

On Monday, Johansson released a statement alleging that Altman had previously approached her about voicing Sky, which she declined.

Altman has said in a blog post that OpenAI did not intend for Sky's voice to resemble Johansson's, and that the voice belongs to a different actress the company hired. But Altman had posted a single-word statement on X after the product's launch: "her."

The company has paused using the Sky voice in its products, OpenAI said.

• AI tools have become increasingly popular in the workplace, but adoption can feel daunting.
• Three business leaders told Business Insider education is the key to unlocking AI's possibilities.
• The discussion was part of BI's event "Human-AI Collaboration: The Key to Workplace Efficiency and Innovation," presented by Dell Technologies and held on April 23.
• Click here to learn more.

Artificial intelligence is virtually everywhere now. Companies are recognizing that they need to adopt the technology in their businesses, but given all the possibilities it offers, it's hard to know where to start.

During Business Insider's virtual event "Human-AI Collaboration: The Key to Workplace Efficiency and Innovation," presented by Dell Technologies, a panel of business leaders and innovation experts advised workplaces on how to integrate AI into their systems.

One of the biggest hurdles to adopting AI is demystifying the technology and shifting its narrative to being a learnable tool. "This is well within your reach," said Matt Baker, the senior vice president of AI enablement at Dell Technologies. "And that big ecosystem is something that is approachable today."

Baker described AI's "embarrassment of riches." The market has exploded with new AI systems in the past year that tackle many different processes from task management to generative writing with competence. But with almost limitless applications, refining the use cases of AI will be the key to guiding its future in the workplace.

"We are so early in this phase of this really tremendous new technology that it's important to keep an open mind and also to just see what works and what doesn't work," said Dr. Mozziyar Etemadi, the medical director of advanced technologies at Northwestern Medicine. "The last thing we want is for this to create just another big vendor lock-in piece of software that everyone has to use and nobody likes using."

Baker and Etemadi were joined by Peter Miscovich, the global consulting practice lead, future of work for JLL. Miscovich said the biggest hurdle in AI adoption is figuring out exactly how to use the tech. "The need for training and change management and education could not be greater. I think I use generative AI every day, and it's taken me a year to become comfortable with that intervention and interface," he said.

At Dell, Baker's team has made education a core aspect of their AI adoption. "We have an entire educational pillar of what we're doing to ensure that we move our team members through that process so that they understand the technology," he said. "It's going to lead to better outcomes for them and ultimately and more importantly, better outcomes for our customers."

The panel also warned against a timid approach to AI. Demystifying the technology requires fully embracing AI's capabilities. For Dr. Mozziyar, that comes down to the design of the AI itself. "People should design the AI to kind of interact as close as you would interact with a person in a similar role," he said.

Baker added that building new systems around AI, rather than plugging AI into existing workflows, is crucial: "If it's a garbage process to begin with, you get a garbage outcome."

There should be intentionality behind these systems as well, Baker continued. "There's a framework for thinking through how you develop your own approach to that so that it's tailored to your company, your business, your organization," he said.

"We're very strong believers in use-case diagnostics," said Miscovich of his team's approach to configuring better ways to use AI. He explained that they first evaluate "how current processes are organized" before figuring out how generative AI can help make those processes "much more efficient and much more effective."

JLL recently launched multiple AI initiatives, including an HVAC energy-optimization platform to help reduce energy and service costs, and JLL GPT, a generative AI project built for the commercial-real-estate industry.

For Dr. Mozziyar, AI's greatest potential in the medical field is its ability to assess patients' conditions. His team is currently using AI tools that can analyze texts of patient appointments to find issues to follow up on. They're also using an in-house AI assistant that helps radiologists catch critical issues.

"We want the interaction with AI, or the use of AI, to paradoxically remove the barriers between, in our case physician and the computer," said Dr. Mozziyar. "Ideally it's just you and the patient."

But as the AI landscape accelerates and more companies begin adoption, Baker said that those who get on board now will reap the greatest rewards. "Run your own race, understand how it best applies, but understand it is a race," he said. "So get started."

• Trump threatened legal action over "The Apprentice" biopic that played at the Cannes Film Festival.
• It depicts Trump's rise in New York under the tutelage of Roy Cohn.
• Even if a lawsuit isn't successful, the threat can make it difficult for the movie to be released.

In the 1970s, the lawyer Roy Cohn taught Donald Trump a simple playbook for political fights: attack, counterattack, and never apologize.

Trump is employing that strategy on "The Apprentice," an independently produced biopic about him that premiered this week at the Cannes Film Festival.

In a cease-and-desist letter, one of Trump's attorneys threatened to sue over the movie's release, calling it "direct foreign interference in America's elections."

"If you do not immediately cease and desist all distribution and marketing of this libelous farce, we will be forced to pursue all appropriate legal remedies," lawyer David Warrington wrote in the letter, obtained Friday by Business Insider.

The movie depicts the rise of Trump as a New York real estate mogul in the 1970s and 1980s. Trump is played by Sebastian Stan, who is best known for his role in Marvel movies as an American soldier brainwashed by Russians.

In the biopic, he rises as a New York power broker under the tutelage of Cohn (played by "Succession" actor Jeremy Strong), a colorful and controversial figure in American politics who made his name in the 1950s as a Senate lawyer rooting out Communist Party members with US Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

According to critics who have seen it, the biopic depicts Trump undergoing liposuction, receiving surgery for hair loss, living with erectile dysfunction, and rejecting his brother, who suffered from alcohol addiction. It also shows Trump raping his first wife, Ivana.

"The Apprentice," produced by Dublin-based production company Tailored Films, is still seeking deals with distribution companies that would put it in American theaters and on streaming services. Although a lawsuit against the filmmakers may not be successful, the threat of litigation may chill those negotiations.

The threat of a lawsuit may also work in the other direction, creating a Streisand Effect that draws more eyes to a movie that may have been otherwise relegated to the arthouse film market.

Warrington works for Dhillon Law, a firm that has represented Trump in several other cases — it collected nearly $900,000 from Trump's donor-funded PACs last year — and has brought defamation lawsuits against journalists in the past.

The cease-and-desist letter is addressed to director Ali Abbasi and screenwriter Gabriel Sherman, who directed Business Insider to a statement attributed to the movie's producers.

"The film is a fair and balanced portrait of the former president," the producers. "We want everyone to see it and then decide."

At a Cannes Film Festival press conference this week, Abbasi said the movie was really about "the way the system is built and the way the power runs through the system," according to the Los Angeles Times, and seemed unconcerned about a potential lawsuit.

"Everybody talks about him suing a lot of people," he said. "They don't talk about his success rate, though."

In a statement issued earlier this week, Strong compared Trump's attacks on journalism to rhetoric from Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong — comparisons Warrington called "unhinged."

Warrington also criticized Sherman, a Vanity Fair reporter, for making what he said were "racist, Marxist, and otherwise disparaging statements" about Trump in the past.

"The Apprentice" was partly funded by foreigners, according to Warrington's letter. The letter warns that the movie's release in the United States would amount to "foreign interference in our elections."

"The Movie, released six months before the November 2024 election, is directed at influencing the 2024 election by falsely defaming President Trump," he wrote.

Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, said the independently produced movie "doesn't even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store" and "is election interference by Hollywood elites, who know that President Trump will retake the White House and beat their candidate of choice because nothing they have done has worked."

"We sent a cease and desist letter to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers," he said in a statement. "This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked.

• While rehearsing for the Eras tour, Taylor Swift wore the $185 posture-correcting Forme Power Bra.
• The bra is designed to "immediately improve upper body alignment" and fix your posture.
• Beth Linker, author of "Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America," is skeptical of such products.

It appears that even global pop stars may have a hard time standing up straight.

In Taylor Swift's profile for TIME's 2023 Person of the Year, photos revealed that she wore the Forme Power Bra while rehearsing for the Eras Tour last year. This is a sports bra designed by an orthopedic surgeon to help improve body alignment.

It comes with a hefty price tag but, at least, for Business Insider's senior editor Conz Preti, it's worth it. "I love this bra so much," Preti said after wearing it for nine months to help prevent her shoulders from hunching forward too much when playing tennis.

For $185, wearers should feel their upper body alignment "immediately improve" as the bra "activates and supports key muscle groups, helping guide the body into proper alignment naturally, without any discomfort," according to Forme's website.

This bra isn't the only posture-fixing product on the market. In fact, there's an entire industry built around posture-enhancing devices and fitness programs, totaling $1.25 billion spent annually worldwide, Beth Linker reported in her new book "Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America."

If you find that one of these products works for you, then go ahead and use it, Linker said. But otherwise, she advised against shopping for a quick solution because you risk wasting money and injuring yourself while using a product that may not be right for you.

Linker is an author, medical historian, and former physical therapist. In "Slouch," she takes readers on a journey through the history of our societal obsession with good posture. From her point of view, trying to fix posture with pricey, one-step products isn't the best approach.

"The kind of bra that Taylor is wearing is incredibly expensive," Linker told BI. Companies can get away with marking up products like this by promising that they'll fix posture, she said, but she's not convinced they'll work for everyone. Forme didn't respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Why she's skeptical

Linker considers posture-fixing products like Taylor Swift's bra to be "one-size-fits-all solutions." They're designed to work for everybody, and that's where Linker takes issue.

These products don't account for the unique, individual physiological characteristics, lifestyle choices, and injuries that could be contributing to a person's "bad" posture.

A quick Google search for "posture-fixing products" yields countless results, ranging in price from a few bucks to a few hundred dollars. For example, you can buy a $16 harness-like posture corrector that uses compression to align the spine, kind of like Swift's bra. Or, you can opt for a bigger purchase, like this $349 "posture pump" that inflates when you lie down on it to align, decompress, and lubricate the spine, according to posturepump.com.

Before purchasing one of these products, Linker recommended asking yourself whether your posture really needs fixing in the first place.

The idea that slouching is bad for your health and well-being isn't grounded in science, but rather decades of "cultural shaming," which Linker outlines in her book. She explains the history and stigma against "bad" posture in the US.

"What I show in the book is that there have been a few studies that indicate that there isn't solid scientific evidence to show that a person who slouches more is more likely to have back pain," she said.

However, if you are experiencing pain or discomfort and think improving your spinal alignment will help, here are some things you can do.

The right way to care for your spine

Linker recommended consulting a doctor, physical therapist, or body-work professional before beginning to work on your posture. That way, they can expertly assess your unique needs and help you achieve your specific goals safely.

"Each person's back pain is individualistic," she said.

Incorporating movement into your daily routine is also a great way to reduce back pain and create better spinal alignment, Linker said, especially for those who sit for long hours during the work week. It's important to get up from your desk, walk around, stretch, and make sure you're not sitting in the same position for too long.

For example, she always keeps a standing desk handy not because standing is necessarily "better" than sitting, but because it gives her the option of changing positions throughout the day.

She also suggests practicing yoga or pilates. These types of exercise stretch and strengthen the muscles throughout the entire body, and can foster healthy alignment.

The bottom line: be skeptical of one-size-fits-all products that promise to "fix" your posture, Linker said. Instead, seek professional advice, move your body, and don't obsess over achieving perfect posture.

• An ex-personal assistant accused in the Gokada CEO's 2020 murder is on trial in NYC.
• Tyrese Haspil was in the throes of  "extreme emotional disturbance," his lawyer told jurors Friday.
• Jurors then heard the 911 call of a cousin who discovered Fahim Saleh's remains in his apartment.

A Manhattan jury on Friday heard the harrowing 911 call of a woman who discovered the dismembered body of her cousin, Gokada ride-share CEO Fahim Saleh.

"Oh my God. Oh my God," the woman cries in the 911 call, after finding Saleh's torso facing up in a pool of blood on his living room floor.

"Is he breathing?" the operator asks, to which the woman sobs, "No! His head is missing, his arms are missing, and his legs are missing!"

Saleh, a Bangladeshi-American, was an admired international entrepreneur who had made millions through Gokada, his Nigeria-based motorbike ride-share and delivery service.

Manhattan prosecutors say the tech entrepreneur was murdered and sawed into pieces in July, 2020 by Tyrese Haspil, his embezzling former personal assistant, who acted after weeks of planning.

Security footage — undisputed by the defense — shows Haspil shocking his victim from behind with a Taser as the elevator doors open into Saleh's seventh-floor condominium.

"There was quite a struggle," prosecutor Linda Ford told jurors of Saleh's death by multiple stab wounds.

The defense concedes that Haspil, 25, stole from and then killed and dismembered his ex-boss.

But Haspil suffered an extreme emotional disturbance during the weeks it took to plan, execute, and try to cover up the killing, defense lawyer Sam Roberts told jurors in opening statements Friday.

That "disturbance" lay latent after Haspil's traumatic childhood — and was then triggered by the thought of losing his girlfriend, Marine Chavaux, who was soon to return to her native France, Roberts said.

Realizing that his $400,000 embezzlement had been discovered, but desperate to lavish more gifts on Chavaux in time for her 22nd birthday, a "disturbed" Haspil believed his only options were "suicide or homicide," Roberts told jurors.

Selling this defense may prove a tall order. Prosecutors say Haspil had purchased his Taser a full month before the murder and spent the three days after the murder methodically dismembering his victim and shopping with his victim's credit card at luxury retail stores.

Also on Friday, jurors saw photos of a shopping bag from Christian Louboutin that police recovered from the $18,000-a-month Airbnb where Haspil was arrested.

If the jury believes Haspil's defense, he'd be guilty of manslaughter instead of murder, and would face as little as five years in prison.

The 911 tape

"Miss? Miss? Who's the ambulance for?" the 911 operator asks Saleh's cousin in the recording played Friday.

Prosecutors have referred to the cousin only as "Person 1" in court papers. Business Insider is withholding her name for privacy.

"Fahim Saleh!" she answers between gasps.

"For who?" the operator asks, unable to understand her.

"Fahim Saleh!" the cousin shouts again. "Oh my God. Oh my God."

"Miss, OK, take a deep breath," the operator can be heard telling her.

"His body!" the cousin sobs. "His body is dismembered!"

This is the point where the operator, apparently having trouble understanding, asks if the patient is breathing, and the cousin tells her that Saleh's head, arms, and legs are missing.

"They like — I can't — they like, they cut it off," the cousin sobs.

"Who cut it off?" asked the operator, who has meanwhile dispatched first responders to the scene.

"I don't know!" the cousin gasps. "I just came to check in on him."

"It's just you there, right?" the operator asks.

"I left because honestly it looked — there's just like black garbage bags everywhere," the cousin answers.

Prosecutors told jurors that these bags held Saleh's head and limbs.

"There was an electric saw next to his body," the cousin then tells the operator.

"OK, they're already on their way," the operator says. "OK? Just stay on the line with me. OK? Just try to take deep breaths," she says, before adding — apparently still confused — "So he's passed away though, correct?"

"His head is not there anymore!" the cousin exclaims, breaking into fresh sobs.

"His head is cut off?" asks the now shocked-sounding operator. "Yes," the cousin tells her. "His head is not here."

"They're coming. They're coming," the 911 operator consoles the cousin. "Do you want to wait outside?"

"I can wait inside the lobby," the cousin answers. "Honestly, what if they come back and take his body?"

Extreme-emotional-disturbance defenses are usually reserved for sudden acts of violence, though there are exceptions.

In 2014, wealthy Manhattan socialite Gigi Jordan was found guilty of first-degree manslaughter, not murder, after poisoning her eight-year-old autistic son. Her lawyers argued she acted under extreme emotional distress as she planned and executed the boy's death.

The prosecution case against Haspil continues next week.

• NASA and Boeing are proceeding with a space launch after discovering a helium leak.
• Starliner's maiden voyage will carry two US astronauts.
• Boeing VP Mark Nappi said the design vulnerability was "not a safety of flight issue."

NASA and Boeing said a helium leak in its Starliner spacecraft is "stable" and won't prevent two astronauts from launching into space next week in a mission more than a decade in the making.

NASA and Boeing execs said the cause of a leak in Starliner's propulsion system had been identified in a press conference on Friday, and it was safe to fly.

A previous launch attempt was scrubbed on May 6 hours before takeoff due to a separate issue — after which the "small" leak was discovered on a flange on one of Starliner's thrusters, NASA program manager Steve Stich said during the press conference.

Days after it was discovered, "we proved to ourselves that the leak was stable," added Boeing VP Mark Nappi.

He said the design vulnerability was "very remote" and "not a safety of flight issue."

"We can handle up to four more leaks," Stich said, "and we can handle this particular leak if that leak rate were to grow even up to 100 times."

Now, Boeing's Starliner is set to take NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station (ISS) on June 1 and then back after a one-week stay.

There are backup launch opportunities on June 2, June 5, and June 6.

Boeing is playing catch-up with SpaceX, whose Dragon spacecraft has been transporting astronauts to and from the ISS since 2020. Starliner's maiden voyage comes amid ongoing scrutiny of Boeing's safety culture around its separate passenger plane division.

The Starliner previously encountered issues on uncrewed test flights in 2019 and 2021.

A Boeing spokesperson referred Business Insider to Friday's press conference. NASA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI

• Google is giving users bad, AI-generated answers. Again.
• In February, when this happened before, Google shelved the faulty AI product behind the results.
• But this time feels different — Google has basically committed to this idea as the future of the company.

Step 1: Google rolls out a new, AI-powered search product.

Step 2: Users quickly find the product's flaws, and point them out with social media posts, which become news stories.

Step 3: Google admits that its new, AI-powered search product is fundamentally flawed, and puts it on ice.

Yup, we've seen this drill before. Back in February, Google was shamed into shelving an image-generating feature for its AI chatbot.

Now we are two steps into the same process: Google is widely rolling out its "AI Overview" feature, which replaces its usual answer to search queries — a list of links to sites where you might find the actual answer you want — with an AI-generated answer that tries to summarize the content on those sites. And people are finding examples of Google generating answers that are wrong, and sometimes comically bad.

Which is why colleague Katie Notopoulos constructed, and then ate, a pizza made with glue. (Bless you, Katie! This is truly heroic stuff, and I hope you spend your hazard pay wisely. (We do get hazard pay, right?))

So here's the two trillion-dollar question: Is Google going to have to backtrack on this one, too?

No, says Google, which argues that the dumb answers it has been generating are few and far between. And that most people don't know or care about search answers that tell people how many rocks to eat. Or that you should stare into the sun for 5 to 15 minutes — unless you have darker skin, in which case you can go for twice as long.

And Google also notes that it is quickly swatting down Bad Answers as they crop up. Particularly ones where someone smart enough to use a phone but stupid enough to follow those answers could harm themselves.

Here's the formal version of that answer, via Google comms person Lara Levin:

"The vast majority of AI Overviews provide high quality information, with links to dig deeper on the web. Many of the examples we've seen have been uncommon queries, and we've also seen examples that were doctored or that we couldn't reproduce. We conducted extensive testing before launching this new experience, and as with other features we've launched in Search, we appreciate the feedback. We're taking swift action where appropriate under our content policies, and using these examples to develop broader improvements to our systems, some of which have already started to roll out."

OK.

But like I've said. We've seen a version of this story before. What happens if people keep finding Bad Answers on Google, and Google can't whac-a-mole them fast enough? And, crucially — what if regular people, people who don't spend time reading or talking about tech news, start to hear about Google's Bad And Potentially Dangerous Answers?

Because that would be a really, really big problem. Google does a lot of different things, but the reason it's worth more than $2 trillion is still because of its two core products — search, and the ads that it generates alongside search results. And if people — normal people — lose confidence in Google as a search/answer machine …

Well, that would be a real problem.

Privately, Googlers are doubling down on the notion that these Bad Answers really are fringe problems. And that, unlike its "woke Google" problem from a few months ago — where there really was a problem with the model Google was using to create images — they say that's not the case here. Google never gets things 100% correct (they say even more quietly) because, in the end, it's still just relying on what people publish on the internet. It's just that some people are paying a lot more attention right now because there's a new thing to pay attention to.

I'm willing to believe that answer: I've been seeing Google's AI answers in my search results for about a month, and they're generally fine.

But not every time.

And the thing that's very different between the old Google results and the new ones is the responsibility and authority Google is shouldering. In the past, Google was telling you somebody else could answer your question. Now Google is answering your question.

It's the difference between me handing you a map and me giving you directions that will send your car barreling over a cliff.

You could argue, as my 15-year-old son does (we are weird people so we talk about this stuff at home) that Google shouldn't be replacing its perfectly fine olde-timey search results with AI-generated answers. If people wanted AI-generated answers, they'd go to ChatGPT, right?

But of course, people going to ChatGPT is what Google is worried about. Which is why it's making this major pivot — to disrupt itself before ChatGPT or other AI engines do.

You can argue that it's moving too fast, or too sloppily, or whatever. But it's hard to imagine Google walking this one back now.