Tag: News

• Kettlebell exercises offer efficient full-body workouts, building strength, endurance, and speed.
• The unique design of kettlebells enhances both cardiovascular fitness and muscle strength.
• Kettlebell training can make workouts enjoyable and offer longevity benefits like better stability. 

If you're not using kettlebells in your workouts, you might miss out on major gains.

Kettlebell exercises like swings, cleans, and presses can make for an efficient workout routine, according to personal trainer Jennifer Hintenberger, an elite vegan athlete with multiple world records in kettlebell sport.

The dynamic movement of kettlebells allows you to train multiple aspects of fitness without spending a long time in the gym.

"It's heavy weight, so we're building strength, but we're also building endurance and speed," Hintenberger told Business Insider.

She said the benefits of kettlebell training can help you get stronger and healthier, and have fun working out too.

Kettlebells can help you train strength and cardio at the same time

Instead of having to choose what to focus on in a workout, kettlebells can help you develop multiple athletic skills at once.

"You're getting cardiovascular work, you're building stamina and strength simultaneously," Hintenberger said.

Kettlebells are unique because of how the weight is distributed below the handle, making them ideal for explosive movements, trainers previously told Business Insider.

The big advantage of using a kettlebell compared to other weights like a barbell or dumbbells is that controlling the momentum raises your heart rate while challenging your muscles.

Kettlebell training can boost stability, a key factor in living longer

Hintenberger, 43, has been training with kettlebells for more than a decade. She also taught her mother, who started working out at age 58 and had set her own age group records with kettlebells by age 63.

Unlike powerlifting or Olympic lifting, kettlebell sport doesn't involve lifting the heaviest weight possible. It's scored based on how many repetitions of a certain exercise you can complete at a set weight during a specific time period.

"There's less risk because it's not a one-rep max," Hintenberger said.

Working with kettlebells can help you improve fitness metrics linked to longevity.

Research has linked strength training to a longer life since it helps maintain muscle mass, prevent chronic disease, and prevent frailty that can lead to injury, according to research.

Cardio exercise is also great for keeping your heart healthy, another key to longevity.

Finally, kettlebell exercise also helps to build a strong core. That's key for better balance and stability, two essential components of a longevity workout.

To learn kettlebell exercise, start by mastering the kettlebell swing

The caveat of kettlebell training is that proper technique is necessary to see results and avoid injury, so it's important to find a good trainer to help you start working out with kettlebells.

Beginners should start with the kettlebell swing, a full-body exercise that teaches the basics of how to use the weight, Hintenberger said.

"The kettlebell swing is a great foundation for other movements. You want to be learning from somebody qualified," she said.

Adding kettlebells to a workout can help keep you motivated

Beyond all the physical benefits of kettlebell training, it can offer the huge psychological advantage of keeping you engaged.

"They're more fun because you can use them in different ways. There's a lot of versatility that's very exciting," Hintenberger said. "My clients enjoy the workouts because they never know what's coming."

It's not necessary to overcomplicate your workouts to see results, but the best workout is one you like enough to do consistently.

"You don't need 100 movements to be fit, but people do really enjoy different types of exercise," she said.

• My sons have a lot of energy, and they like to play in the mud. 
• They also get rowdy and often wrestle with each other and their friends.
• However, I don't mind, as long as everyone is having fun. We also have a household safe word. 

As obvious as it may sound, my biggest parenting hack is that I choose my battles. For the most part, my husband and I focus on the things that matter and avoid the ones that don't. So when my kids want to play outside and get dirty, we let them — we even encourage it. Their imaginations have let them build cities, slop in mud troughs like pigs, and fill the kiddie pool with dirt — and it's all fair game.

I just hose them off before they come in for showers. They think it's funny, which only adds to the fun.

Sure, it makes for extra laundry and a few more baths. But I have a solution there, too: I don't let it bother me. Laundry is constant; there's no such thing as being "caught up." And it's pointless to try to keep the house spotless — it would just be an endless cycle of chores. Instead, I choose to relax and spend time with my kids. It's a reality in which I have made peace.

And here's the thing: my kids are happy. They're good at coming up with things to do on their own, they love playing outside, and they don't beg for screen time. (I mean, they do occasionally, let's be honest, but it's rare.) They're making memories, and unless they're doing something dangerous or being disrespectful, I want them to run with it.

My kids love to play outside and get dirty, and I encourage it

Summer comes with weekend camping trips where they dig in the sand and swim to their hearts' content. Once, we had to remind our 7-year-old to put his life jacket on to fish, and my 5-year-old had to be coaxed into taking his daily naps — there is no tired like sun tired.

My biggest complaint was one I kept to myself: endless amounts of sand in the camper. But even that can be taken care of with a quick sweep-up. Meanwhile, they're making core memories and having a blast.

We also don't mind when they wrestle, though we do have a few rules

We have a similar outlook on wrestling. They like to play rough — and it will happen whether I like it or not. So, instead of waiting for this specific type of energy to come out another way, we channel it. They are allowed to wrestle so long as everyone involved is still having a good time.

It's mostly our two children, but they have been known to create gauntlets with friends, too. Last winter, they lined up the Nugget Couch and pitted like sizes against one another. They did the same at the lake on the water trampoline and dubbed it "Battle Island." It was like watching a real-life episode of American Gladiator, and this 90s-raised mama couldn't have been more proud.

Wrestling also comes with stipulations, like no dirty moves. Hair pulling, kicking, hitting, and similar moves are banned and punishable by the nearest parent. If you're going to play rough, you have to be tough, is one of my most common sayings, too. I only want them to participate if they can handle it.

Wrestling also happens at appropriate times: never in public, as it's too loud and obnoxious and could stress others out. Also, they have to learn to live in society, and cannon-balling onto your brother just isn't appropriate grocery store etiquette.

Finally, we have a household safe word. If anyone yells, "Garfunkel!" the opposing wrestler is to stop immediately. We needed a silly yet memorable word for the kids, and it just stuck!

There's a fine line between being rowdy and disrespectful, and we hover it often. But our young kids with ideas and imagination, and we want to celebrate their fun-natured energy as often as possible.

• South Korea plans to deploy a low-cost laser weapon to shoot down North Korean drones.
• The weapon, called Block-I, will cost around just $1.45 a shot.
• Interest in laser weapons has increased in recent years due to their cheap operating cost and accuracy.

South Korea is set to deploy a low-cost laser weapon that can melt North Korean drones, the country's arms agency said earlier this week.

The weapon, known as Block-I, will cost around 2,000 South Korean won ($1.45) a shot and "is capable of precise strikes against small unmanned aerial vehicles," according to South Korea's Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA).

The "Star Wars project" is set to be ready for "full-scale operation" this year, per the DAPA, which added that the laser system would help strengthen South Korea's ability "to respond to North Korea's drone provocations."

Lee Sang-yoon, a DAPA official, told AFP that the laser worked by transferring heat to oncoming drones.

"When a laser weapon transfers heat to a drone, its surface melts. As the surface melts, the internal components catch fire, causing the drone to eventually fall," Lee said.

It follows calls from South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in 2022 for stronger air defenses after the South Korean military failed to bring down a number of North Korean drones that had ventured across the border for the first time in five years.

Laser weapons have been garnering increasing international interest in recent years.

According to the think tank RAND, Israel, China, Russia, France, India, Turkey, Iran, South Korea, and Japan are just some of the countries investing in national programs.

Earlier this year, the UK announced that it had tested a new high-power laser that could be used against Russian drones in Ukraine.

According to the UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD), the DragonFire weapon typically costs less than $13 a shot.

The US has also previously hinted that laser systems may be available to protect bases in the Middle East from drone and missile attacks, although it's unclear whether they have been used.

"Competing nations are pouring so much investment into DEWs because, if the technology can be matured, such systems hold the potential to tip both the military and economic calculus of modern warfare in their users' favour," RAND said in a report.

• Rising home values in recent years have helped many millennials boost their wealth. 
• But an investing expert says Gen Z might not be so lucky. 
• High home prices, mortgage rates, and the costs of homeownership could make it a subpar investment. 

Homeownership is helping some millennials get rich — but Gen Zers might have a hard time following in their footsteps.

About 55% of millennials owned a home as of 2023, per a Redfin analysis of Current Population Survey data. Many of them became homeowners before home prices and mortgage rates spiked in 2021 and 2022.

As buying a home reached record unaffordability levels in recent years, these millennials kept getting richer on paper due to their rising home values. According to Federal Reserve data, millennials held $3.5 trillion in real estate wealth as of the fourth quarter of 2019. In the first quarter of 2024, this more than doubled to $8.6 trillion.

Some Gen Zers managed to get in on the fun — about a quarter of Gen Zers between the ages of 19 and 26 owned a home as of 2023, per Redfin. But the majority who didn't purchase a home could have a much harder time growing their wealth through home ownership in the years to come, Dr. Roger Silk, a former treasury officer at the World Bank and author of "The Investor's Dilemma Decoded," told Business Insider via email.

He pointed to a few key reasons.

First, while mortgage rates could tick lower in the years ahead, experts don't expect the roughly 3% rates of a few years ago to return anytime soon. Additionally, a lack of housing supply is expected to continue propping up home prices.

This means that, for the foreseeable future, home affordability levels could remain far from where they were a few years ago. And these elevated costs could make it more difficult for Gen Z homeowners to get a return on their investment.

"Higher interest rates and higher home prices make it harder for a new buyer to earn a high return on owning a home," Silk said.

What's more, Silk said there's a larger reason Gen Zers shouldn't count on homeownership to boost their wealth. That's because historically, it hasn't had a great track record as an investment.

Citing US home price and inflation data between 1890 and 2023, Silk said single-family home prices have historically exceeded inflation by an average of only about 0.5% each year. For Gen Zers, buying a home at an elevated price could make it less likely that their home values appreciate more than inflation.

Additionally, the significant costs of owning a home can make homeownership even less attractive.

"It's not guaranteed to provide any investment return," Silk said of homeownership. "Even if the price rises, the person still has to pay a mortgage, property taxes, insurance, maintenance, etc. If you factor all those things in, many people don't make money even if their home rises in price."

These costs are already putting pressure on current homeowners, and by the time more Gen Zers buy homes, they could be even more burdensome. For example, home insurance costs have risen roughly 20% over the past two years — and could rise an additional 6% this year, according to the insurance comparison shopping site Insurify.

Buying a home doesn't guarantee increasing your wealth

Some people think renting is throwing away money, and in one sense, they're correct. Their monthly payment is gone forever, and it has zero chance of providing an investment return.

In comparison, many people view their downpayment and mortgage payments as investments — money they could earn a return on when they sell their home someday.

But according to Silk, a sizable return is far from guaranteed. And even if a person sells their home for more than they bought it for, that doesn't mean it was necessarily successful from an investment perspective.

"The question from an investment point of view is whether or not the price increases are large enough to cover both inflation and the cost of owning the home," he said. "If your cost of ownership is 8% a year — e.g. interest plus taxes plus maintenance — the home price would have to rise by 8% a year just to break even."

Additionally, Silk said people sometimes forget about the ways homeownership can go wrong. In 2023, there were roughly 357,000 US homes with foreclosure filings, according to the real estate data firm Attom.

While homeownership may have a so-so track record as an investment, Silk said this doesn't mean everyone should rent forever.

"It's not clear," Silk said of whether buying or renting is better from a financial perspective. "It depends on the local real estate markets and the needs and expectations of the person."

Silk said a low mortgage rate, living in the same home for many years, and residing in an area where future housing demand is expected to be strong can give current and future homeowners the best chance of achieving a strong investment return on their home. Of course, checking these three boxes is easier said than done, since people can't predict the future.

Being geographically flexible could also be helpful. In the coming years, some experts think home prices will stagnate or decline in certain areas of the US as new homes are built and retirees sell their homes.

If home prices and rents continue to rise in line with historical levels — something Silk said is far from a guarantee — the "overall cost of owning" a home over the next 30 years could be lower than renting one for the average person, per his calculations.

This means that from a financial perspective, buying could be better than renting for many Americans. But it's not guaranteed to be a home run as an investment — or a ticket to wealth.

Have you gone to great lengths to find a home in your budget? Are you willing to share your story? If so, reach out to this reporter at jzinkula@businessinsider.com.

• Larry Fink cofounded BlackRock with seven partners in 1988.
• Today, it's the world's largest money manager, and Fink is one of the most powerful people on Wall Street.
• Here's a look at Fink's career rise to become one of the most influential players in finance.

After more than 35 years at the helm of BlackRock, Larry Fink is preparing to vacate his CEO position in the not-too-distant future.

Fink, now 71, has said he "would prefer to not be at BlackRock in his late 70s," meaning he's likely in his final era at the asset management firm.

Started by Fink and seven other partners in 1988, BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager and has earned Fink a spot among the most powerful players in finance.

Here's a look at Fink's career rise and creation of the money-managing giant BlackRock.

Laurence Douglas Fink was born November 2, 1952. He grew up in Van Nuys, California, located in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles.

Fink's father owned a shoe store, and his mother was a professor at California State University at Northridge.

He earned his bachelor's degree in political science from the University of California at Los Angeles, graduating in 1974.

He also got his MBA with a concentration in real estate from UCLA in 1976.

After graduating, Fink worked at First Boston, the investment bank later bought by Credit Suisse.

He rose to become First Boston's youngest managing director at 28 years old and a member of its management committee at 31.

Vanity Fair reported in 2010 that Fink "added, by some estimates, about $1 billion to First Boston's bottom line."

In 1986, he took a hit when his department lost roughly $100 million from incorrectly predicting interest rates would rise when they in fact fell.

Years later, in his 2016 commencement address to graduates of UCLA, Fink reflected on the loss.

"We lost the company a lot of money. And all of a sudden, we went from 'partners' to outcasts," he said. "I was upset with how we were sidelined. But I was even more upset with myself, because I had become complacent…too sure of what I thought I knew. I believed I had figured out the market, but I was wrong — because while I wasn't watching, the world had changed."

He talked more about risk management and that time in his career in an interview with Crain's.

"We probably should have been fired for the amount of risk we were taking during those times," he once told Crain's. "They should have been raising questions: 'How are you making so much money? Are you taking too much risk?' And they didn't ask. They asked it when you had the losses."

Fink later left First Boston for Blackstone Financial Management.

The similarity of Blackstone and BlackRock's names was intentional, despite outside advice to distinguish them to avoid confusion, Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman told CNBC in 2017.

"Larry and I were sitting down and he said, 'What do you think sort of about having a family name with "black" in it?'"

It was under Blackstone's umbrella that BlackRock later got its start. Fink started BlackRock with seven partners in 1988.

His big loss at First Boston inspired a subsequent focus on risk management at BlackRock.

"The greatest lesson for me was: know your risk," he told Crain's of his First Boston loss. "That was a major genesis for the formation of BlackRock. When we started the firm, we focused on risk management."

BlackRock went public in 1999, with shares priced at $14 in its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. The company also began selling its proprietary investment management system, Aladdin, that year.

The firm has made several big acquisitions under Fink's leadership.

Among them are BlackRock's acquisitions of Merrill Lynch Investment Managers in 2006 and Barclays Global Investors, with its iShares exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, in 2009. BlackRock today is the world's largest ETF issuer.

More recently, BlackRock announced plans this year to acquire private equity firm and infrastructure investor Global Infrastructure Partners for roughly $12.5 billion in cash and stock in its biggest deal since 2009.

The deal will create the second-biggest global infrastructure manager with more than $150 billion in assets, according to an internal memo Fink and BlackRock president Robert Kapito sent to employees that was seen by Business Insider.

"We believe this will be one of the fastest growing areas of our industry over the next 10 years," the memo read.

The Fed has enlisted BlackRock's help in key crises.

These include the 2008 financial crisis and the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Throughout his career, Fink has been a proponent of environmental, social, and corporate governance principles in business.

He has been vocal about the climate crisis, for example, writing in 2020 that "climate risk is investment risk," adding that "every government, company, and shareholder must confront climate change."

Fink, however, no longer uses the term "ESG," saying it's become "weaponized" in politics and "misused by the far left and the far right."

Fink has been hit with criticism from both sides of the political spectrum in recent years.

Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called Fink "king of the woke industrial complex, the ESG movement, the CEO of BlackRock, the most powerful company in the world," at the fourth Republican presidential debate in December.

In a response on LinkedIn, Fink noted BlackRock was accused of "pursuing an ideological agenda."

"The only agenda we have is delivering for our clients," he said. "Now I know why they call this the political silly season."

Fink also has critics on the political left. Climate activists, for example, have protested outside Fink's home and BlackRock's New York headquarters in recent years, calling for a divestment from fossil fuels.

Fink's annual letters have helped build his and BlackRock's influence and signal where he's focusing efforts.

In addition to his annual letter to investors, he also wrote an annual letter to CEOs for several years but has since stopped publishing the latter. Key figures in business and politics closely follow his yearly remarks.

Fink focused on retirement in his most recent letter to investors.

Today, BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager.

BlackRock's assets under management hit a record $10.5 trillion in the first quarter of this year.

Fink's success at BlackRock has made him a billionaire.

Today, his net worth is estimated at $1.2 billion, according to Forbes.

Looking ahead, Fink said in 2023 that he wasn't planning to depart BlackRock "anytime soon."

Though he hasn't shared further specifics on when he aims to retire, he told The Wall Street Journal in May 2023 that he "would prefer to not be at BlackRock in his late 70s."

He added that he and Kapito have been training five possible contenders to succeed him as BlackRock's CEO. One of the five possible candidates, Salim Ramji, has since left the firm to become CEO of Vanguard.

• Tesla appears to have opened a nightclub at its Berlin Gigafactory.
• Elon Musk first floated the idea of a "mega rave cave" at the factory in a 2020 social media poll.
• Berliners have been mocking the club on social media.

Tesla seems to be embracing Berlin's club culture.

The company's Berlin Gigafactory appears to have opened its very own nightclub, according to social media posts.

Andre Thierig, a senior manufacturing director at the factory, shared a LinkedIn post about the new space called Hamster.

"Say hello to our newest 'facility' at Giga Berlin! Hamster is now alive," he said in the post. "Do you know any factory that has its own club? Party on!"

Thierig shared a video of the new club, which was also posted by a verified Tesla account on X.

The video shows what appears to be Tesla workers walking down an illuminated tunnel leading to a dark club with lights and DJ decks.

The video's soundtrack is a modern version of Richard Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" — best known from its use in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Tesla CEO Elon Musk first floated the idea of a club at the German factory four years ago. In a 2020 Twitter poll, the billionaire asked users to vote on whether the Berlin plant should have a "mega rave cave."

The world's richest person added the club would have "an epic sound system & woofers the size of a car."

Berliners have reacted skeptically to the new addition to the city's famous club scene.

One popular Instagram meme account, Berlinclubmemes, mocked the Tesla facility in a series of images. One suggested that Musk decided to open the Tesla club after being rejected from Berghain, one of Berlin's most exclusive clubs that is notoriously hard to get into.

It's unclear if Musk has ever visited the famous club, but he once posted on X about being outside and refusing to enter.

Tesla's Berlin factory, which opened in 2022, manufactures battery cells and has a capacity for about 375,000 Model Y cars annually. The factory is located about 22 miles southeast of central Berlin.

Representatives for Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• YouTuber Lamar MK was barely able to drive his Cybertruck because of a host of glitches.
• He got Tesla to replace it with a new one, which also broke within weeks.
• Despite this, he told Business Insider he still loves the pickup, calling it his "dream car." 

Tesla's Cybertruck hasn't had a very smooth rollout — but one owner has had more issues than most.

Lamar MK, who runs a YouTube channel covering Tesla and EVs, told Business Insider that the futuristic pickup was still his "dream car," even though he has been barely able to drive it after both his original Cybertruck and the replacement provided by Tesla were hit with a huge number of issues.

Lamar, who is a Tesla shareholder but declined to say how many shares he owns, had his Foundation Series Cybertruck, which typically sells for over $100,000, delivered on March 14.

"It was love at first sight," said Lamar, who did not wish to provide his full name but goes by Lamar MK on YouTube. "My family didn't love it at first, but after they saw it in person, they actually came around."

Shortly afterward, the problems began. While driving to film a YouTube video, warning lights began to flicker on the Cybertruck's 18-inch central screen, forcing Lamar to pull over.

"The truck just started to flash with this red screen, and it was totally devastating. It was just like, oh my god, what's happening?" he said. "As soon as we pulled over, the truck just completely shut down."

The issue — which Lamar said involved the truck's wiring — kept the Cybertruck in the repair shop for nearly three weeks.

It was quickly followed by several other faults, including an unsettling loud noise while driving and the Cybertruck refusing to hold a charge when he took it on a road trip.

"For the entire two months of having the truck, I only drove it for barely a week," he said.

"It's still my dream car. When it works, it works. Driving it is the best experience you'll ever have. But when it doesn't work, it really sucks," he added.

In a reaction video posted on his YouTube channel after receiving his Cybertruck, Lamar said the pickup's "steer-by-wire" system, which means there's no mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the wheels, made driving it more intuitive.

He also described the Cybertruck as being "like a tank" and told BI it brought back memories of driving heavy equipment vehicles during his time in the military.

Eventually, he got Tesla to replace his broken Cybertruck with a new vehicle, which he coated in a blue and yellow wrap to add more of a personal touch. However, he only had the new pickup for a matter of weeks before things began to go wrong again.

After parking it in the garage and charging it, Lamar says he came back to find the new Cybertruck completely unresponsive and inaccessible.

"I spoke with Tesla roadside service, they said they couldn't even access the vehicle. It was just completely offline to them. It was like a giant brick in my garage," he said.

Once again, he had to have his Cybertruck towed to the Tesla service center, where service technicians managed to regain access to the compartment in the hood of the vehicle by drilling a hole below it.

'Am I cursed?'

Lamar's Cybertruck isn't the only one to report problems since the futuristic pickup began deliveries last November.

In April, Tesla recalled nearly 4,000 Cybertrucks over fears the accelerator pedal could jam open. Last month, the automaker issued separate recalls for over 11,000 Cybertrucks due to problems with the windshield wiper and a part of the truck bed that could come loose and fly off.

Lamar's Cybertruck is now working again, and despite all the issues, he says he has no regrets about buying his Cybertruck in the first place, describing it as his "dream car."

"I still don't have any regrets because it's something that I really wanted; it's so revolutionary. I know once they fix the issue, that issue won't arise again," he said.

"I just hope in the future, no more problems creep up. At this point, I'm really wondering; am I cursed?" he added.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

Do you own a Cybertruck or have a tip? Get in touch with this reporter via email at tcarter@businessinsider.com.

• My son's father moved out of the house he lived in with me and our son. 
• I thought it would be the end of our relationship, but we still spend a lot of time together. 
• It was hard to know what to label our connection at first, but in the end, we're still family.

When my son's father moved out of the house we shared with our 3-year-old, he took his shoe collection, some pictures, and old Father's Day cards. Everything else, he left: his motorcycle, the air fryer his mother had bought us, the cigar box where he kept a stash of $20 bills. Even clothes, so many that I wondered what he planned to wear — until he came over the next day, took a shower, and put on a fresh T-shirt and shorts, as though nothing had changed.

I figured he was just taking time to adjust. I'd wait a few weeks, then have a candid conversation about boundaries. I told myself this until the toilet stopped flushing, and I called him frantically, wondering if there was any way he could come over that night to fix it.

We had told everyone we were breaking up. And so even as the weeks became months and we kept cooking meals together, checking in about minor life decisions, and showing up at each other's houses outside child drop-off times, we continued repeating the same story: that we had given it a good try, but failed. That we had once been a family, but now, we were not.

We continued to spend time together after we separated

What ensued was an odd kind of double life. He wasn't in the family Christmas card, but he was over for the entire holiday. I was a single mom, but my best friend just happened to be my son's father. It was hard to self-identify because every term I tried out seemed misrepresentative of our particular arrangement.

Part of the issue was that our arrangement ebbed and flowed. When I started dating someone, he and I had to negotiate expectations. We still saw each other, but we scheduled it a little more in advance — a planned weekly dinner with our son, rather than a spontaneous movie on a Wednesday night.

Even when neither of us was seeing anyone, we still sometimes crossed our own boundaries and got sick of each other. When this happened, we divided time with our son and did our own thing for a while. Two households cost more than one, but there were no other downsides to living apart. The benefits — space, and freedom — were huge and expansive, impossible to put a price on.

We didn't know how to label our relationship

It turns out, though, that society appreciates standardized labels for our relationships with the people with whom we have children. When registering our son for kindergarten, we discovered that because we did not have a shared address or a formal custody agreement, only one legal parent could be listed on the form. To be allowed to pick our son up from school, my son's father had to self-identify as a "relative or family friend."

This was annoying. But it also made me realize something. Three years after "separating," he and I were, in the simplest terms, relatives — family. We were partners to each other in most things concerning our son, and emotional and logistical partners in other ways, too. We took trips together. We bought each other things like coffee and laundry detergent. We texted every day. Sometimes, when we felt like it, we slept over.

We just weren't exclusive life partners in the way we'd tried to be before. We both spent more time pursuing independent friendships than when we had lived together in a somewhat claustrophobic home. We could each date if we wanted to, although most of the time, this didn't feel like a missing puzzle piece.

"Family" is what we call each other now. Partner, too, when it applies — or when it makes a bureaucratic phone call easier. "My son's dad," I say sometimes.

But ex-boyfriend? I haven't said those words about him for years. Because there's no "ex" about it — we're doing life together, apart. And we're grateful for it.

• If you've ever been frustrated that a customer service rep can't help, you may be a victim of an "accountability sink."
• Economist Dan Davies uses the term to describe how companies avoid responsibility by deferring decisions to algorithms.
• Davies says customer feedback is often ignored when tech is accountable for decisions.

It's one of every traveler's worst nightmares: You arrive at the boarding gate to be told your flight is overbooked and you've been bumped.

You complain at the counter — you have an important business meeting or you don't want to miss your friend's wedding. Can't they bump someone else?

However, the attendant tells you there's nothing they can do to help. Company policy is final.

While frustrating, the gate attendant is not at fault — and that's the whole point. Companies create algorithms to decide who is bumped from a flight, ensuring that the system's decision is final and no one employee is accountable.

It's an example of what economist Dan Davies calls an "accountability sink" in his new book "The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions — and How the World Lost its Mind."

Corporations absolve their employees of responsibility by delegating decision-making to an algorithm or deferring to company policy. No one person is empowered to make a judgment call, and the customer's frustrations are moot. It's not just at airlines; technology and an increased focus on streamlining processes to cut costs have allowed companies in all kinds of industries to create accountability sinks.

Davies told Business Insider that once a decision like bumping someone from a flight is made, "then it's just natural to create an accountability sink."

"You don't want any accountability there because you don't want to have pressure put on anyone to change the decision," Davies said.

While technology can optimize decision-making processes, it can also prevent customers from reaching someone with the power to make a decision that strays from the corporate script.

In the case of the sympathetic gate attendant telling the disgruntled customer, "'We've got a policy, there's nothing that can be done,'" Davies said, the customer's negative emotions are ignored and poured into a void — or an accountability sink.

"That's the situation that people find so incredibly frustrating," Davies said. "Because it's bad to have decisions go against you, but it's absolutely psychologically intolerable to feel like you're not being listened to."

Sorry, it's company policy

According to Davies, accountability sinks emerged over the past decades of privatization and technological innovation.

In the 1980s, he said, free-market capitalism and profit maximization became the norm, spearheaded by economist Milton Friedman and championed by Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the UK. Since then, companies have focused on profits, growth, and maximizing shareholder value, according to Davies, which in turn has created accountability sinks.

Following the technology boom of the 1990s, Davies said companies developed computer systems to make decisions for them because of the volume and complexity of information.

In addition, middle management and customer service jobs were cut or outsourced as corporations prioritized profits, optimizing costs, and delivering strong quarterly earnings.

"The big problem with cutting the feedback link is that you're cutting off all of your own sources of information," Davies said. "And so your customers can be getting steadily more and more annoyed with you, and you won't really know that."

In the case of the person at the airport, Davies said ideally, any customer bumped from a flight should be able to talk directly with an employee with some level of decision-making power.

"The answer is usually there are no more flights going, and there's nothing that can be done, but just simply having that experience of someone listening to you, in my view, is just really, really important," he said.

Of course, accountability sinks aren't just at the boarding gate. You may have experienced similar frustrations when calling your internet or cellphone provider, bank, or credit card company. It often looks like a customer service representative working within a system with limited options to help.

Accountability sinks can range from customer service to decision-making at major corporations. According to Davies, Boeing is a company rife with accountability sinks. The airline manufacturer is at the center of legal troubles stemming from two deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019, and an incident in January when a Boeing 737 Max's door plug came off mid-flight.

Davies said decision-makers at Boeing have been too focused on share buybacks and optimizing costs in recent years while accountability sinks developed around manufacturing quality.

In March, when Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun announced his resignation, he told CNBC that Boeing had a "bad habit" of focusing too much on delivery time, which might have given the message that "the movement of the airplane is more important than the first-time quality of the product."

Nonetheless, Davies said accountability sinks will eventually catch up with companies.

"Over time, it degrades the brand, and the resentment builds up," he said. "At some point, there's just going to be this huge bump where you get back to reality, and all of the accountability you've been pouring into this sink for the last 10 years comes back and hits you in one massive lump."

Do you see accountability sinks elsewhere in life? This reporter wants to hear from you. Please reach out at jtowfighi@businessinsider.com.

• Former President Donald Trump is a driver's seat to reclaim the White House.
• In fact, he's in the position of any Republican presidential hopeful in over two decades.
• What's all the more remarkable is Trump has kept a lower profile of late.

Donald Trump is on a winning streak, which is all the more remarkable because he's barely played the game.

On Thursday night, CNN aired live footage of a podium. It was the exact kind of shot that got the cable news network harangued in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Only it wasn't a Trump rally. The former president has held few public events since the first debate on June 27.

President Joe Biden's debate performance was so disastrous that it supplanted Trump as the biggest story in politics, a rare occurrence since Trump descended the golden escalator at his namesake New York building in 2015 to kick off his first campaign. That's why CNN was airing a live shot of a presidential podium. Biden, whose remarks have rarely been carried live throughout his presidency, is now must-see TV. Unfortunately for him, it's only because every utterance risks potentially hurting his standing even more.

Trump is set to try to reclaim the spotlight in the days ahead. First, he will name his long-awaited vice presidential pick. Then, he will formally accept the Republican Party's presidential nomination at the national convention in Milwaukee.

Trump is the current favorite to win in November.

Trump can also afford to take time away. He's in the strongest position any Republican presidential hopeful has been in July since George W. Bush in 2000. His top campaign advisors boasted to The Atlantic that Trump could win in a blowout. Democrats are concerned that far-fetched possibility is now quite possible with political prognosticators putting New Hampshire and Minnesota into play. If the bottom falls out, Virginia, New Mexico, and Maine's two-statewide Electoral College votes could follow suit.

"President Biden has spent much of 2024 with a more challenging path to winning a second presidential term in November than Donald Trump," former Clinton advisor Doug Sosnik wrote in The New York Times on Friday. "But for reasons that have become glaringly obvious, that path has all but vanished."

Biden's campaign conceded that their standing has dipped since the debate, but emphasized that they still have "multiple" paths to victory.

"Our internal data and public polling show the same thing: this remains a margin-of-error race in key battleground states," Biden's campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez wrote in a memo to staffers that was first published by The Associated Press and later obtained by Business Insider.

Since the debate, Biden has faced almost daily onslaught of Democrats calling him to step aside. Capitol Hill, once bursting over with liberal schadenfreude as pro-Trump allies like Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia needled their leadership, is now the site of a Democratic Party in disarray. If Biden does stay in the race, Republicans have a plethora of statements from fellow Democrats questioning his ability to lead.

Trump hasn't fundamentally changed. Even as he's refrained from rallies, he's still ranting on social media. He's attacked reporters and even went after George Clooney, an especially odd post given that the actor was in the news for saying Biden should drop out. Trump also handed Biden's campaign a major gift by offering one of his signature "I don't know them" denials about Project 2025. This Heritage Foundation-led project seeks to shape a future Repubican's next administration with proposals to restrict abortion access without passing new laws (including reversal approval of the drug mifepristone), replace a large number of federal employees with political allies, and even consider the elimination of many of the functions for the agency that oversees the National Weather Service.

It wasn't just the debate, either. Less than 24 hours before the faceoff, the Supreme Court handed down a pair of rulings that the former president welcomed enthusiastically as they further weakened the administrative state and narrowed the degree to which federal prosecutors could go after January 6 Capitol rioters. Then, days after the debate, the court handed Trump a much more sweeping than expected victory in ruling that former presidents have some immunity from criminal prosecution related to their official acts while in office. Trump's legal team is even trying to argue that the landmark decision should mean that his New York criminal conviction should be vacated.

The GOP convention will reflect Trump's influence.

The Republican National Convention has all the makings of the two big Trump shows before it. Model Amber Rose, one of Kanye West's exes, is set to speak. So, too, is Dana White; according to The Wall Street Journal, the UFC head will speak right before Trump — the type of high-profile slot that parties used to dole out to rising stars. Trump already has a bare-bones platform that favors his views on key issues like abortion, to the chagrin of more traditional conservatives like his former Vice President Mike Pence.

It remains to be seen if Trump will retake the headlines, particularly if Biden's future is still undecided. Then again, it won't really matter. Even without all the oxygen, the former president is still on fire.