They include the speaker of the House, one governor, and several senators and House members.
It's an effort to show loyalty — and for some, boost their VP chances.
Former President Donald Trump's hush-money trial in New York is suddenly the biggest magnet for ambitious Republican politicians hoping to demonstrate their loyalty.
In recent weeks, the Manhattan criminal courthouse has played host to the speaker of the House, several GOP senators and vice-presidential contenders, over a dozen House members, and even two state attorneys general.
It's resulted in at least one senator missing a vote, the postponing of a congressional mark-up, and a bevy of Republican heavyweights turning themselves into attack dogs for the presumptive 2024 nominee — who remains barred from criticizing jurors and witnesses via a gag order.
Here are all of the Republicans who've flocked to the trial so far.
Sen. Rick Scott was the first elected Republican to show up. He ended up missing a vote.
Florida Sen. Rick Scott walks behind Trump at the trial on May 9.
Jeenah Moon/Pool Photo via AP
On Thursday, May 9, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida became the first elected Republican to show up to the trial.
"What he is going through is just despicable," Scott told reporters outside the courtroom, arguing the trial was "clearly criminal" and was being run by "political thugs."
Scott's visit came in the middle of the week, while the Senate was taking votes on a bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration for the next five years.
The Florida senator, who's up for reelection in November, ended up missing a procedural vote on the bill later that day.
That prompted his Democratic opponent, former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel Powell, to slam him as "sucking up to a defendant found liable for sexual abuse" and putting his "own extreme agenda before the people he was elected to represent."
Sen. JD Vance was the first VP contender to show up.
Sen. JD Vance snaps a photo at the trial on May 13.
Mark Peterson/AFP via Getty Images
On Monday, May 13, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio was among the next crop of senators to show up — and the first vice presidential contender to do so.
He later took to social media, calling the courtroom "dingy" while suggesting that the "main goal of the trial is psychological torture."
Sen. Tommy Tuberville
Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama at the trial on May 13.
Mark Peterson/Getty Images
Tuberville came to the trial alongside Vance, where he derided jurors as being "supposedly American."
He later told the conservative network Newsmax that he came to the trial to help Trump "overcome this gag order."
Gov. Doug Burgum was the 2nd VP contender to show up.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum at the trial on May 14.
Justin Lane/Getty Images
Burgum — another VP contender whose political stock has been on the rise recently — attended the trial on Tuesday, May 14.
He and the other Republicans in attendance quickly made waves on social media for wearing apparently matching outfits.
Former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy at the trial on May 14.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Vivek Ramaswamy, the tech entrepreneur and 2024 presidential candidate, showed up to the trial on the same day as Burgum.
He also happens to be a vice presidential contender — albeit, a lower-tier one.
House Speaker Mike Johnson
Johnson speaking to reporters outside the trial on May 14.
Alex Kent/AFP via Getty Images
The highest-ranking Republican to visit the trial has been House Speaker Mike Johnson, who traveled to Manhattan on the same day as Burgum and Ramaswamy.
The speaker delivered a series of remarks — including slamming the district attorney, the judge, and Michael Cohen — without taking questions afterwards.
"He is soon to be officially the nominee of one of the major parties in our country," Johnson said of Trump. "Running for president, and they have him tied up here in this ridiculous prosecution. That is not about justice, it's all about politics, and everybody can see that."
He concluded by insisting that he came to the trial "on my own" because he's "deeply concerned about this."
Over a dozen other House Republicans have also shown up
Nine House Republicans, including Rep. Matt Gaetz, attended the trial on Thursday, May 16.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
On Thursday, May 16, the biggest crop of House Republicans yet attended Trump's trial.
That included Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who was met with chants of "Beetlejuice" as she took to the microphones outside the courtroom.
I’ll never stop standing up for President Trump, even if I’m the last one standing. pic.twitter.com/ywPQpVWChR
Here are the 14 rank-and-file House Republicans who've attended the trial so far:
Andy Biggs of Arizona
Lauren Boebert of Colorado
Michael Cloud of Texas
Eli Crane of Arizona
Byron Donalds of Florida
Matt Gaetz of Florida
Bob Good of Virginia
Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee
Cory Mills of Florida
Nicole Malliotakis of New York
Ralph Norman of South Carolina
Andy Ogles of Tennessee
Anna Paulina Luna of Florida
Mike Waltz of Florida
The top law enforcement officials in Iowa and Alabama have also flocked to a criminal defendant's defense.
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird speaks to reporters outside the trial on May 13.
AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah
One other intriguing cohort of trial attendees: two Republican state attorneys general.
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird and Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall were among the cohort of Republicans who attended the trial on Monday, May 13.
Their attendance is particularly striking: both are the top law enforcement officials in their respective states, and they're publicly taking the side of a criminal defendant in another state.
Both may be seeking to burnish their credentials with the MAGA-right ahead of future gubernatorial or US Senate races.
Sam Altman celebrated his return to OpenAI with four "heavy" entrees from a diner.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty
Sam Altman said he was in an "adrenaline-charged state" when he was ousted as OpenAI CEO.
Altman said he didn't eat or sleep much, and wasn't fazed by texts he received from world leaders.
His takeaway from the experience is the "remarkable" human ability to adapt to new circumstances.
As the CEO of OpenAI, the last couple of years have been a whirlwind for Sam Altman.
Following the release of ChatGPT, Altman has been at the forefront of the AI race. He's met with world leaders, feuded with Elon Musk, joined the billionaire club, and was fired from the company he cofounded before quickly securing his return.
If he had "a little bit more mental space to step back," there would be something crazy to note every day, Altman said recently on the tech podcast "The Logan Bartlett Show."
But if he had to choose a surreal moment that stuck out to him, he said it would be the four-day period when he was ousted from OpenAI — and not because of the actual ousting. On the contrary, the time was surreal because of how he navigated what, in hindsight, was a very unusual series of events.
Altman describes the time as an "insane super jammed" four and a half days where his body was in an "adrenaline-charged state."
Within a day of his ousting, Altman said he received 10 to 20 texts from presidents and prime ministers around the world. At the time, it felt "very normal," and he responded to the messages and thanked the leaders without feeling fazed.
"It was just like weird," Altman told podcast host Logan Bartlett. "Like not sleeping much, not really eating, energy levels like very high, very clear, very focused."
Once he secured his reinstatement as CEO a few days later, he said he stopped at a diner on the way to Napa the day before Thanksgiving and realized he hadn't eaten in days. So naturally, he ordered four "heavy" entrées, including "two milkshakes just for me," he said.
Altman said the celebratory meal was "very satisfying."
But the CEO said the situation still didn't really hit him until he received a text from a president who said they were happy everything was resolved.
"Then it hit me that like, oh yeah, like all of these people had texted me and it wasn't weird," Altman said.
Altman said the odd part was realizing that it should've been weird to have multiple world leaders texting him during this situation — but it wasn't.
The CEO said the situation made him realize humans' ability to adapt to any circumstance.
"My takeaway is human adaptability to almost anything is just like much more remarkably strong than we realize," Altman said on the podcast. "And you can get used to anything as the new normal, good or bad, pretty fast."
Altman said this wasn't the first time he learned that lesson, and he's learned it many times over the last couple of years.
"But I think it says something remarkable about humanity and good for us and good as we stare down at this like big transition," he said.
Inflation be higher for longer than people think because of multiple factors, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon told Bloomberg TV.
Markets are too optimistic about inflation, interest rates, and the US economy, Dimon said.
"I think the chance of inflation staying high or rates going up are higher than people think," he said.
Markets underestimate inflation's likely endurance, as an array of factors keep price upside churning, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon told Bloomberg TV.
"I think the underlying inflation may not go away the way people expect it to," he told the outlet at the JPMorgan Global Markets Conference. He added: "I think there are a lot of inflationary forces in front of us that may keep a little bit higher than people expect."
Looking to the future, Dimon listed examples such as the green energy transition, infrastructure buildout, and geopolitical remilitarization as worrying sources of accelerating price growth.
Upcoming policy changes could also play a role here: rising trade restrictions or continued fiscal overspending could propel price momentum.
It's a point Dimon keeps reiterating despite market bullishness, as investors keep trading on the premise that subsiding inflation allows interest rates to eventually ease.
To Dimon, this "a lot of happy talk," he said simply. In his view, chances that monetary policy stays unchanged — or that it tightens — are higher than most expect. What's more, soft landing hopes should be half of what they are, he added.
But in Bank of America's latest Global Fund Manager survey, positivity did shine through. In fact, Tuesday's report marked the highest bout of investor optimism since late 2022, brought on by rising confidence in interest rate cuts this year.
Dimon's push back has been ongoing. In his annual letter to JPMorgan shareholders published last month, he expressed similarly doomy outlooks concerning inflation, interest rates and the economy's trajectory. Geopolitical tensions are also worrying the bank's head, he then said.
But recently, he's offered calming rhetoric when it comes to at least one global competitor: China. On this front, Dimon has argued that the US should not shy away from competitive engagement with Beijing, despite the country's growing ties to Russia.
"Engagement is the right thing to do. China is not a natural enemy to the United States, they have a lot of their own problems. So to me, we can work together as best we can," he told Bloomberg.
People shop during the going-out-of-business sale at Target Canada in Toronto, February 5, 2015. Target Corp is closing its stores in Canada after the insolvent retailer came to an agreement with its landlords to start liquidation.
REUTERS/Mark Blinch
Consumers are finally slowing their spending and experts say that's a warning sign of the economy.
Americans have propped up the economy with a powerful spending spree in the last two years.
But consumer confidence is starting to wane amid elevated inflation and a weakening job market.
Consumer spending is slowing, and it's a warning shot for the US economy as it navigates the approach to a soft or a hard landing.
Americans are showing signs of strain under a higher cost of living and a cooling job market. After a wild spending spree that propped up the economy for most of the last two years, retail sales were unexpectedly soft in April, coming in basically flat compared to the 0.4% growth economists expected for the month. Meanwhile, March retail sales were revised downward, with spending rising 0.6% instead of the initially reported 0.7%.
"The American consumer is losing some luster. The retail sales number was sluggish with a capital 'S,'" economist David Rosenberg said in a note this week. "The downward revisions to the sales numbers are an important yellow flag to macro 'perma-bulls,' Because these suggest the economy has been far less strong than previously displayed."
Rosenberg has been calling for a recession for months, predicting the economy to face a downturn later this year. A hard landing has been postponed partly because of the strength of consumer spending in 2023, he wrote previously.
Americans are showing other signs that they're struggling to keep up with the pace of inflation. A survey conducted by financial services firm Primerica found that 67% of middle-class respondents said their income was falling behind the cost of living over the first quarter. Among those people, 74% said they were pulling back on discretionary purchases, such as eating out.
Americans are also saving less, though they likely depleted their excess savings from the pandemic in March of this year. The personal savings rate slumped to 3.2% in March, according to government data, down from 5.2% a year ago.
Meanwhile, the bills are piling up for US households. Total household debt surged to a record $17.6 trillion over the first quarter, according to the New York Fed's latest Household Debt and Credit Report. Nearly 9% of credit card loans and 8% of car loans became delinquent over the first quarter, Fed data shows.
The percentage of credit card loans that were at least 90 days overdue, which qualifies as serious delinquency, rose to 10.6% in the first quarter. That's the highest 90-day delinquency rate recorded since 2012, when the job market was still reeling from the 2008 financial crisis.
Danielle DiMartino Booth, a top forecaster who's been making the case the US is already in a recession, says consumer spending has taken a hit partly due to the weakening job market. Job growth has slowed in recent months, with the US adding a softer-than-expected 175,000 jobs in April. Meanwhile, consumer confidence declined for the third month in a row, with just 12% of Americans expecting more jobs to be available in the future, according to the Conference Board's latest survey.
"Americans had been so confident that they were spending a lot on their credit cards, hoping that the income gains would follow through and allow them to spend beyond their means," Booth said in an interview with Schwab network last week. "The household is finally saying: oh wait a minute, those income gains that I've been planning for, those income gains that allowed me to buy that plane ticket when I should have mabe driven with the family on spring break, I shouldn't have spent that money."
The US hasn't entered a recession, but fears of a downturn have been rising as interest rates look poised to stay higher for longer. The New York Fed sees a 50% chance that the economy will tip into recession by April 2025.
The HBO documentary "MoviePass, MovieCrash" explores the rise and fall of movie-ticket subscription company MoviePass.
"MoviePass, MovieCrash" is based on award-winning reporting from Business Insider.
The documentary debuts May 29 on HBO and Max. Watch the trailer below.
The upcoming HBO documentary, "MoviePass, MovieCrash" chronicles the meteoric rise and fall of the movie-ticket subscription company MoviePass.
After gaining millions of subscribers when the company dropped its monthly price to $10 a month back in 2017, MoviePass was hyped as the Netflix for movie theaters as moviegoers headed to their local cineplexes in droves. But it all turned out too good to be true as the company burned through hundreds of millions of dollars, eventually going bankrupt in 2019 (cofounder Stacy Spikes has since relaunched it).
"MoviePass, MovieCrash," based on my award-winning reporting, delves into what was happening behind the scenes at the company that led to its downfall, including the ousting of its cofounders, Spikes and Hamet Watt, and questionable activities done by the company's CEO, Mitch Lowe, and Ted Farnsworth, the head of MoviePass' parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics. (Both Lowe and Farnsworth were charged with securities fraud in 2022 and are awaiting trial.)
"MoviePass, MovieCrash" is produced by Assemble Media and Mark Wahlberg's Unrealistic Ideas ("McMillions"). It debuts Wednesday, May 29 on HBO and will stream on Max.
Retrieval-augmented generation is enhancing large language models' accuracy and specificity.
However, it still poses challenges and requires specific implementation techniques.
This article is part of "Build IT," a series about digital tech trends disrupting industries.
The November 2022 launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT kicked off the latest wave of interest in AI, but it came with some serious issues. People could ask questions on almost any topic, but many of the large language model's answers were uselessly generic — or completely wrong. No, ChatGPT, the population of Mars is not 2.5 billion.
Such problems still plague large language models. But there's a solution: retrieval-augmented generation. This technique, invented in 2020 by a group of researchers at Meta's AI research group, is rewriting the rules of LLMs. The first wave of vague, meandering chatbots is receding, replaced by expert chatbots that can answer surprisingly specific questions.
"For a long time we were looking at databases, and we had a lot of excitement for AI. But what was the unique use case? RAG was the first," said Bob van Luijt, the CEO and cofounder of the AI data infrastructure company Weaviate. "From a user perspective, there was a simple problem, which is that generative models were stateless." (Meaning they couldn't update themselves in response to new information.) "If you tell it, 'Hey, I had a conversation with Bob,' the next time you use it, it won't remember. RAG solves that."
Bob van Luijt, the CEO and cofounder of Weaviate.
Weaviate
The innovation that's sweeping AI
"Every industry that has a lot of unstructured data can benefit from RAG," van Luijt said. "That ranges from insurance companies to legal companies, banks, and telecommunications." Companies in these industries often have vast troves of data, but sifting through it to gain insights is a difficult task. "That's where RAG adds a lot of value. You throw that information in, and you're like, 'Make sense of that for me.' And it does."
That's accomplished by adding a step when an LLM generates a reply. Instead of offering a response rooted only in how the model was trained, RAG retrieves additional data provided to it by the person or organization implementing RAG — most often text, though the latest methods can handle images, audio, and video — and incorporates it into its reply.
That magic makes RAG the go-to technique for those looking to build a chatbot grounded in specific, often proprietary data. However, van Lujit warned, "Like any tech, it's not a silver bullet."
Any data used for RAG must be converted to a vector database, where it's stored as a series of numbers an LLM can understand. This is well-understood by AI engineers, as it's core to how generative AI works, but the devil is in the details. Van Lujit said developers need to adopt specific techniques, such as "chunking strategies," that manipulate how RAG presents data to the LLM.
Fixed-size chunking, the most basic strategy, divides data like a pizza: every slice is (hopefully) the same size. But that's not necessarily the best approach, especially if an LLM needs to access data that's spread across many different documents. Other strategies, such as "semantic chunking," use algorithms to pick out the relevant data spread across many documents. This approach requires more expertise to implement, however, and access to powerful computers. Put simply: It's better, but it's not cheap.
Overcoming that obstacle can immediately lead to another issue. When successful, RAG can work a bit too well.
Kyle DeSana, the cofounder of the AI analytics company Siftree, warned against careless RAG implementations. "What they're doing without realizing it, without analytics, is that they're losing touch with the voice of their customer," DeSana said.
Kyle DeSana, the cofounder of Siftree.
Courtesy of Kyle DeSana
He said that a successful RAG chatbot could carry its own pitfalls. A chatbot with domain expertise that replies in seconds can encourage users to ask even more questions. The resulting back-and-forth may lead to questions beyond the chatbot's scope. This becomes what's known as a feedback loop.
Solving for the feedback loop
Analytics are essential for identifying shortcomings in a RAG-powered AI tool, but those are still reactive. AI engineers are eager to find more proactive solutions that don't require constant meddling with the data RAG provides to the AI. One cutting-edge technique, generative feedback loops, attempts to harness feedback loops to reinforce desirable results.
"A RAG pipeline is usually one direction," van Luijt explained. But an AI model can also use generated data to improve the quality of the information available through RAG. Van Lujit used vacation-rental companies such as Airbnb and Vrbo as an example. Listings on these sites have many details, some of which are missed or omitted by a listing's creator (does the place have easy access to transit?), and AI is quite good at filling in these gaps. Once that's done, the data can be included in RAG to improve the precision and detail of answers.
"We tell the model, 'Based on what you have, do you think you can fill in the blanks?' It starts to update itself," van Lujit said. Weaviate has published examples of generative feedback loops in action, including a recreation of Amazon's AI-driven review summaries. In this example, the summary can not only be published for people to read but also placed into a database for later retrieval through RAG. When new summaries are required in the future, the AI can refer to the previous answer rather than ingesting every published review — which may span tens or hundreds of thousands of reviews — again.
At this point, the computing resources required are beyond all but the largest tech giants: Google's announcement said its February test pushed its hardware to its "thermal limit." RAG, on the other hand, can be implemented by a single developer in their spare time. It scales to serve millions of users, and it's available now.
"Maybe in the future RAG will go away altogether, because it's not perfect," Taiyab said. "But for now, this is all we have. Everyone is doing it. It's a core, fundamental application of large language models."
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Aditya Agarwal wrote on X that "1:1s descend into nitpicking sessions."
Nuthawut Somsuk/Getty Images
Former Facebook director Aditya Agarwal argues weekly 1:1 meetings often do more harm than good.
Weekly check-ins, he says, lead to nitpicking and inhibit holistic feedback.
Agarwal suggests quarterly meetings and real-time availability for better guidance.
A former Facebook director thinks the weekly 1:1 meeting with your manager needs a reboot.
In a post on X, Aditya Agarwal wrote that after more than a decade of running these meetings with his direct reports, he determined the weekly check-ins did more harm than good.
"They condition people to do spot checks on happiness and constantly be critical about things that aren't ideal. In practice, 1:1s descend into nitpicking sessions," he wrote as part of a thread.
Agarwal was once the chief technology officer at Dropbox and one of Facebook's early engineers. He's now a partner at South Park Commons, a Silicon Valley group that aims to build community among founders, entrepreneurs, and technologists.
Agarwal suggested bosses give feedback every three to six months rather than weekly. This would, he said, push managers to uncover patterns and offer "holistic" guidance instead of spot checks each week.
"Frankly, I hated it and found it useless. But it's what "good" managers did," Agarwal wrote of the weekly appointments.
The critique of the 1:1 isn't the first. But before you go canceling yours — if you can get away with that — there are ways to improve what is likely the most important meeting on your calendar.
Aditya Agarwal was one of Facebook's first engineers.
Courtesy of Aditya Agarwal
Steven G. Rogelberg, an organizational psychologist and a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, studies 1:1s. He previously told Business Insider that one of the biggest no-nos in these meetings is when the boss dominates the conversation or runs through a to-do list —a practice Agarwal called "archaic."
Rogelberg said the meeting was designed to address a worker's tactical and personal needs. Going deep on personal requirements means saying things like, "Tell me more," so the boss can better understand where a worker might need help. Too often, he said, bosses gloss over the personal stuff because wading through it can be extra work.
To make 1:1s better, Rogelberg suggests bosses and their direct reports meet every two weeks for perhaps 25 to 50 minutes. He said meeting more often can make workers feel micromanaged.
Agarwal made a similar point in his post: "Excessive 1:1s are a distraction," he wrote. Instead, Agarwal suggested that bosses should save themselves and their direct reports' time to focus on getting work done and making the company successful.
On the other hand, Rogelberg told BI, that meeting too infrequently can make people feel as though their boss doesn't care.
But, Agarwal suggested that rather than holding frequent meetings, mangers be available so workers can go to them with questions. He added that managers can have a deeper conversation about a worker's career development once a quarter or so over a meal.
"This is a more effective cadence," Agarwal wrote.
Rogelberg, the author of "Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings," suggests managers ask about hurdles workers might be facing, how the manager can better help, and what's working and what's not. He said it's possible to reserve periodic 1:1s to focus on longer-term issues so they don't get overlooked.
Agarwal noted that if a worker is having a hard time, it's wise to have more regular check-ins.
"But for most folks, quarterly big picture conversations and real-time availability are sufficient," he wrote.
Agarwal said he wanted the people under him to be resilient.
"Not every week or month will be happy and pleasant. I want them to deal with it without constantly feeling bad. Weekly 1:1s undermine this," he wrote.
Work-life balance seems like it wouldn't be controversial, but some of the nation's top CEOs aren't big fans of the term.
Photo by Lucas Schifres/Getty Images
Over the years, CEOs and business leaders have shared their thoughts on the idea of work-life balance.
Some aren't a fan of the phrase and think workers should take a different approach to navigating work and life.
Jeff Bezos, for example, thinks the relationship between work and life is a "circle" instead.
You wouldn't necessarily think the phrase "work-life balance" would be controversial.
But while some people view it as an important equilibrium to maintain, some CEOs outright hate it or call it a "lie."
Here are some of top business execs' hottest takes on work-life balance:
Jeff Bezos says work and life should make a circle, not a "balance"
Jeff Bezos has called the phrase "work-life balance" debilitating.
Clive Mason – Formula 1
In 2018, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said that workers should aim for work-life harmony, not "balance," at an event hosted by Business Insider's parent company Axel Springer. Bezos also called the concept of work-life balance "debilitating" because it hints that there's a trade-off.
Bezos said that if he feels happy at home then it energizes him and makes him more productive at work, and vice versa.
Satya Nadella thinks you should focus on "work-life harmony"
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella thinks people should strive for work-life "harmony."
Associated Press
Microsoft's CEO also thinks that "work-life balance" isn't the goal. Instead, he says to focus on work-life "harmony." In 2019, he shared his thoughts with the Australian Financial Review, saying he used to think that he needed to balance relaxing and working. But, he's since shifted his approach, aligning his "deep interests" with his work.
TIAA's CEO thinks the entire concept is a "lie"
TIAA's CEO says work-life balance is a "lie."
Paras Griffin/Getty Images
"Work-life balance is a lie," TIAA CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett told Fortune CEO Alan Murray in 2023. Brown Duckett has previously said she used to struggle with guilt and balancing her demanding job with being a mother.
Brown Duckett says that she views her life as a "portfolio," and that she takes time to perform different roles like mother, wife, and business executive. Though she may not always physically be with her children, she says she strives to be fully present during the time she is able to spend with them.
Arianna Huffington says you shouldn't have to choose between work and life
Arianna Huffington, founder of Thrive Global and HuffPost, told Great Place to Work that we shouldn't view productivity and relaxation as two opposing forces. Huffington said that when one area of your life improves, the other does as well.
According to research from Oxford University in 2019, happy employees are 13% more productive compared to those who aren't happy. Huffington told Great Place to Work that employees should focus more on "work-life integration" since "we bring our entire selves to work."
Still, Huffington believes that your personal life should always come first.
"While work is obviously important and can give us purpose and meaning in our lives, it shouldn't take the place of life," she told Great Place to Work. "Work is a part of a thriving life, but life should come first."
Don't expect work-life balance if you work for Elon Musk…
Elon Musk is famous for demanding grueling work hours and personally sleeping overnight at work.
In 2022, just after Musk took ownership of X, formerly Twitter, he sent out an email to employees telling them to either dedicate their lives to working or leave the company. Musk reportedly made X employees work 84 hours a week. While some people think remote work improved their work-life balance, Musk has often criticized it and called it "morally wrong."
According to Walter Isaacson's biography about Musk, Musk held an even tighter working schedule for himself. The billionaire would stay at the office overnight and shower at the YMCA when he joined the workforce in 1995, Isaacson wrote. Musk has continued the habit while working at Tesla and buying Twitter, often spending the night at work.
In 2018, Musk said that he works 120 hours a week, amounting to 17 hours a day.
Jack Ma has also actively endorsed long work hours
Jack Ma supports the "996" work culture popular in many workplaces in China.
"Many companies and many people don't have the opportunity to work 996," he said in 2019. "If you don't work 996 when you are young, when can you ever work 996?"
"If you find a job you like, the 996 problem does not exist," he added. "If you're not passionate about it, every minute of going to work is a torment."
The hardest decision you make on a cruise vacation is what to eat for dinner.
In 2023, the cruise giants Royal Caribbean Group and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings accommodated more than 10.3 million travelers.
That's a lot of mouths to feed — and to do so, their floating hotels have around-the-clock kitchen operations and nearly endless onboard dining options, from buffets to steak houses.
The question is: Where are the companies getting all this food from? And are their promises for more environmentally friendly food sourcing truly sustainable?
Both companies have been increasingly shopping local
Both Norwegian and Royal Caribbean want to be net zero emissions by 2050.
Brittany Chang/Business Insider
Norwegian reported that 37% of its food and drink sourcing in 2022 was local to its global destinations.
Similarly, Linken D'Souza, Royal Caribbean's senior vice president of food and beverage, told reporters in January that the company had spent the past two years shifting its supply chain to Europe to stock its cruises there with less food from the US.
As a result, 86% of the food for Royal Caribbean's European cruises was sourced locally in 2023, its sustainability report from that year said. Last year, the company also stopped supplying its Seattle- and Vancouver-based ships with frozen food shipped from Florida, opting to buy locally instead.
Bambi Semroc, the senior vice president of sustainable lands and waters for the nonprofit environmental group Conservation International, told Business Insider that increasing destination-based sourcing is a step in the right direction, especially if it helps stimulate a developing country's local economy and demand for its sustainably-produced foods.
But it's not always the best choice for the environment — it depends on how the goods are shipped.
Take American wine versus European wine. If you're drinking a California-made wine while in New York City, that bottle was delivered via truck and therefore has a higher carbon footprint than European-produced wine delivered via ship, Ravi Anupindi, a professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, said.
Both companies have similar animal-welfare goals
Several of Royal Caribbean's largest ships have its Hooked Seafood restaurant.
Brittany Chang/Business Insider
By 2025, Norwegian wants to buy all its seafood from suppliers certified by groups like the Marine Stewardship Council and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council. Royal Caribbean has the same deadline for a similar goal: Source 90% of wild seafood and 75% of farm-raised seafood from fisheries certified by the same nonprofits.
Back on land, both cruise giants aim to buy cage-free eggs, gestation-crate-free pork, and chickens exclusively from Global Animal Partnership-certified suppliers by 2025.
However, switching from a trusted supplier to a new, albeit more environmentally friendly, one can be "humongously challenging," Anupindi told BI.
So it should be no surprise that at least one of the companies has had to tweak its deadlines. According to Royal Caribbean's previous sustainability reports, the company has had to push its goals for cage-free eggs and gestation-crate-free pork back by three years and its seafood goals by five years.
Royal Caribbean did not respond to an inquiry about the delays.
Beef sourcing remains a missing sustainability puzzle piece
Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings' most luxurious cruise line, Regent Seven Seas, serves dishes like beef tenderloin topped with seared foie gras.
However, neither of the companies' food-sourcing goals touch on cattle.
Norwegian told BI in a statement that its "net zero [emissions] by 2050" goal "applies to our shipboard and shoreside operations (Scopes 1 and 2) as well as value chain (Scope 3)," adding that beef would be part of Scope 3.
To address this beefy problem, Semroc said, cruise companies could choose beef suppliers that promote more sustainable practices or have committed to "no deforestation, no conversion."
Or, ideally for sustainability, they could replace steak dinners with more plant-based dishes.
One sustainability expert said she saw the opportunity for cruise ships to source sustainably produced goods from the developing countries that they visit.
Brittany Chang/Business Insider
It seems Norwegian has already been following this advice. Its upcoming Norwegian Aqua ship is expected to debut in 2025 with the company's first-ever plant-based-food restaurant. Over the past few years, the cruise giant has rolled out more than 200 vegetable-based meals across its Oceania and Regent Seven Seas fleets.
Royal Caribbean did not respond to an inquiry about its beef initiatives or plans to expand its plant-based offerings.
Evidently, "beefing up" sustainability in the food supply chain can be a complex and nuanced topic, especially for companies that feed as many people as Royal Caribbean and Norwegian do. That's not to mention all the heat that cruise companies already take for operating ships that are bad for the environment.
But it's "admirable that they're beginning to think about this," Anupindi said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meeting with military officials on May 16, 2024.
Office of the President of Ukraine/Telegram
Ukraine's president abruptly canceled foreign trips in the face of critical threats to his country.
Russia's new assault on the Kharkiv region has put further strains on Ukraine's defenses.
The situation could become desperate — at least until Western aid arrives.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has postponed all of his upcoming international trips, in a further sign that Ukraine is at a critical moment of jeopardy in the war with Russia.
Zelenskyy's press secretary, Sergii Nykyforov, made the announcement in a Facebook post on Wednesday, saying new dates would be worked out in the future.
Nykyforov did not provide any reason for the postponements, but unnamed diplomatic sources told Spanish news agency EFE that arrangements to meet King Felipe VI of Spain had been canceled due to the complexities of Ukraine's military situation on the front.
Zelenskyy had also been due to visit Portugal, the outlet reported.
The situation for Ukraine right now appears bleak.
In a comment piece for The Telegraph on Wednesday, former British tank regiment commander Hamish de Bretton Gordon said that Russia could defeat Ukraine within a matter of months.
"In the worst case scenario, Russia could make significant gains this summer and terminally unsettle Ukraine's defense," he wrote.
Zelenskyy's hasty travel cancellations only point to the seriousness of the situation, he added.
De Bretton Gordon blamed the US and NATO's "indecision and procrastination" for emboldening Russian President Vladimir Putin in his offensive.
For months, Ukraine has defended 620 miles of front line on what Institute for the Study of War analyst George Barros told Business Insider in April is a "starvation diet" of military aid.
Ukrainian rear defensive lines are thinned almost to nonexistence in some parts of the Donetsk frontline hotspots of Avdiivka and Chasiv Yar, the Associated Press reported earlier this month.
This has given Russian forces the chance to make small but steady gains.
"All of our forces are either here or in Chasiv Yar," Ukraine's head of military intelligence, Kyryo Budanov, told The New York Times this week of the Kharkiv offensive.
"I've used everything we have," he added. "Unfortunately, we don't have anyone else in the reserves."
Earlier this week, a Ukrainian commander told the BBC that key fortifications had been missing in the Kharkiv town of Vovchansk, and blamed the shortfall on negligence or corruption. "The Russians just walked in," he said.
Vovchansk is not far from the border with Russia and is about 25 miles from Kharkiv city's outer limits.
It's one of 30 settlements that have seen heavy bombardment by Russian forces, Kharkiv Governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Monday. More than 5,700 civilians have been evacuated from the region, he added.
Zelenskyy wrote on social media on Thursday that he had sat down with his commanders to discuss the region's situation — described as extremely difficult — which he nonetheless said Ukrainian forces had begun to stabilize.
The Institute for the Study of War earlier assessed that Russia would need a significantly larger force to take Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, and that the offensive there may simply be a way to draw Ukrainian capabilities away from their positions in the east.
Holding on until Western aid comes
Meanwhile, chronic delays in Western support has left Ukraine badly under-supplied in ammunition.
Months of prevarication in Ukraine over the passing of a new conscription law has also thinned out its fighters.
Unable to move aggressively on the front line in recent months, Ukraine has had to "think in more 3D terms about the battle space," RAND analyst Ann Marie Dailey earlier told BI.
But these successes have little immediate, direct impact back on the front.
The current situation has led to increased calls for Ukraine's allies to contemplate crossing long-held red lines.
Ukrainian officials have renewed their pleas to be allowed to use US-supplied weapons on Russian soil, saying they had watched helplessly without being able to strike when Russian forces massed at the border for their Kharkiv advance, Politico reported.
And some observers areechoing French President Emmanuel Macron's assertion that NATO countries should reconsider their hardline stance against the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine, even if it's simply to dent Putin's confidence.
"Too many Western leaders have ruled this out," de Bretton Gordon wrote.
This critical moment for Ukraine may also be short-lived.
US officials, speaking anonymously to The New York Times, said that once the US military aid package starts to filter through — estimated at around July — it's possible Ukraine will be able to reverse some of Russia's gains.
"This year represents a window of opportunity for Russia," military analyst Michael Kofman told the Times.
"But if the Russian military is not able to turn these advantages into battlefield gains and generate momentum, there's a fair chance that this window will begin to close as we enter 2025."