• Matt Phillips is an assistant VP in AT&T's benefits department.
• He shared 5 tips for making the most of your employee benefits.
• He touched on how to avoid redundant dependant coverage and utilizing HSAs.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Matt Phillips, 45, the assistant vice president of benefits, health operations at AT&T, from Dallas. Business Insider verified his employment with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

The benefits enrollment process is a two-way street. My department spends a lot of time on our package, but employees also need to understand and engage with those benefits so they can make the most of them.

I've worked in the HR benefits department at AT&T for over 10 years. We spend a lot of time trying to educate and inform employees on what they need to know about their benefits.

Prior to that, I worked as an actuarial consultant, where I consulted on post-employment benefits, such as pension and retiree health, and also worked for a nonprofit.

Since joining AT&T in 2013, I've worked in multiple areas of our benefits department, including in strategy and in running savings plans. Five years ago, I moved into my current role, overseeing all health and well-being operations.

Here are some of my top tips about benefits enrollment for employees:

1. Ask yourself key healthcare questions and consider virtual options

Asking yourself key questions can help you pick the best health plan during enrollment season.

For example, do you want to pay more or less now for your health plan?

Choosing a high-deductible plan that's cheaper in terms of what comes out of your paycheck exposes you to higher out-of-pocket costs throughout the year. I think a good idea is to pair a plan like this with an additional ancillary medical plan, like a critical illness, hospital indemnity, or accident insurance plan.

For example, my son runs cross country, and in 2022, he fractured his tibia. There were significant costs for urgent care, imaging, and a specialist appointment, but through my accident plan, I got a payment from the insurer to provide more financial security at this time.

Also, virtual care has come a long way. I often hear employees say they don't have time for preventive check-ups with primary care physicians. However, it's possible to establish an ongoing relationship with a primary care physician virtually, so I'd encourage employees to look into virtual benefits options.

This can also include virtual mental health counseling. If you feel you don't have time in your day to go see a therapist or coach, you may be able to do it over the phone.

2. Go beyond a medical plan

I spend a lot of time telling employees not to just focus on their medical plan but to ensure they're taking advantage of all the other benefits available to them.

For example, at AT&T we offer employees a robust legal plan. If you may need to do something like write a will or set up an estate plan, a legal plan can help provide services around that.

My family has also benefited from an elder care planning service under my benefits plan. The company paid for a professional to come and meet with my wife, her cousin, and me about making a plan for caring for my wife's aging aunt.

While you do have to specifically enroll in something like a legal plan, companies may give other benefits to all employees automatically. Our dependant care and mental health benefits are given to all employees without a need for enrollment, for example. Ask the HR or benefits person at your company what you're entitled to that you don't even have to enroll in.

3. Max out your 401(k) contributions and use retirement planning tools

My advice for those thinking about retirement is to make sure you're not leaving any free money on the table.

Look into your company's 401(k) match and make sure you're maxing that out.

Many employers also have a retirement planning tool that can help you. We have an online one where you can say, "I want to retire at this age, I want this much money in retirement," and it helps you build a plan for how much you should contribute to hit that goal by the time you retire.

People should also be thinking about healthcare expenses for retirement. That's likely to become a larger share of your out-of-pocket expenses once you leave a company, especially if you retire before you become Medicare-eligible. Make sure you speak about this with your advisor and think about leveraging a Health Savings Account for that.

You don't lose your HSA when you leave a company. You can contribute tax-free, interest is tax-free, and if you use it on qualified healthcare expenses, it comes out tax-free. Plus, your employer might offer to contribute to or match your HSA contributions as part of a benefits plan.

4. Avoid redundant dependant coverage

When both spouses work and have children, it doesn't make sense to cover the children under both benefits plans. You'll end up paying double out of your paychecks but not necessarily getting double the benefits out of it.

If one parent's insurer agreed to cover or make a payout for a claim, then the other parent's insurer likely wouldn't, on the basis that the family has already received coverage and potentially a payout for the claim. Insuring dependents under both parents' plans could cover potential gaps in one parent's coverage, but it's often not worth it.

Instead, parents should compare potential costs under each plan and pick the best option.

5. Reach out to people in your company who can help you

There's usually someone in your company you can contact to talk about benefits options. If it's not your direct HR person, because you're at a really large company, they will have hired resources to help you. Call that phone number, download that app, or chat with that person.

Your company will hopefully have invested in those resources to help you navigate the process; you just need to reach out and take them.

Are you a professional or consultant with advice for employees to maximize their employment? Email Charissa Cheong at [email protected]

• Ashley Dunham's experience of the festive season changed after she started using a weight loss drug in 2022.
• Semaglutide, one of several appetite suppressing drugs called GLP-1s, helped dampen her "food noise."
• Several of Dunham's family members are also on GLP-1s, and their Thanksgiving food bill is much lower now.

The holiday season used to be conflicting for Ashley Dunham.

It was a joyous time to get together with family and friends over delicious food and drinks. But as someone who wanted to lose weight, navigating that brought internal turmoil and what felt like tests of her willpower.

Between Christmas and Thanksgiving, she expected to gain 15 pounds "just by eating pretty regularly, how I would typically eat for the holiday," she told Business Insider. And then came the grueling diets in January.

Now, everything is different.

In August 2022, Dunham, 33, from St John's, Florida, started taking a compounded form of the buzzy weight loss drug semaglutide (marketed as Ozempic and Wegovy).

The appetite-suppressing medication silenced the "food noise" in Dunham's head, meaning she ate less without trying and no longer felt guilty when she did eat. She also found she had more mental capacity to think about things aside from weight loss.

With family and friends now also on similar medications, known as GLP-1 agonists, Dunham's festive get-togethers have changed drastically, she said.

Her family isn't alone: The KFF Health Tracking Poll estimated in June 2024 that one in eight Americans either take or has taken one of these medications. While the drugs have been game-changing for many, others have experienced negative side effects, such as nausea and constipation that was so bad that they came off them.

Dunham experienced nausea, migraines, and constipation in her first few months on the medication but they faded with time.

Dunham used to gain weight every holiday season

2024 is Dunham's third holiday season on the weight loss drug.

In 2022, the year she started semaglutide, injecting it once a week, she lost 12 pounds between Thanksgiving and Christmas. "I could barely finish my plate," she said.

After 17 months on the medication, Dunham transitioned to what she described as a maintenance dose, which she continues to take every 10 to 14 days. In 2023, she was able to finish her plates of food, but prioritized protein and was satisfied without overindulging. Those on GLP-1s are advised to eat a high-protein diet and regularly exercise, including strength training, to minimize muscle loss.

Before taking semaglutide, Dunham used to tell herself she couldn't have any festive treats and then feel guilty if she did.

Now, she said she can happily go to festive events, enjoy one drink and one cookie, and be satisfied.

"I'm not scared that the cookie is going to have some negative repercussion," Dunham said. "I've lost a lot of the guilt from enjoying the holidays."

Dunham's Thanksgiving food shop was significantly smaller this year

At her Thanksgiving table this year, half the group was on a weight loss medication, Dunham said.

This meant that instead of buying and preparing green beans for 10, for example, Dunham cooked for six to reduce food waste, she said.

Dunham lives with her husband and six-year-old son, and since he started using GLP-1s five months ago, the family's grocery bill has dropped by about 50%, Dunham said.

"On a crazy month, we would typically spend $1,200 or £1,300 on groceries, but now we spend more like $600 or $700," she said.

She no longer makes weight loss New Year's resolutions

Before taking semaglutide, Dunham would resolve to lose weight at the start of every year.

"I don't really recall a year, even when I was in a smaller body, that I didn't have a resolution to lose weight," Dunham said. "Even when I was really skinny, it was always just about losing weight."

At the turn of 2024, for the first time, Dunham decided she no longer needed to.

Dunham said semaglutide has also come with cognitive benefits, such as improved focus. Her goals were to read more books and achieve things that had nothing to do with her weight, food, or calories.

"It was so freeing," Dunham said, "and a little jarring too because when your life no longer revolves around your weight, you have so much more brain space to actually achieve for your greater good, and even the greater good of society. Who knows?"

• The AI computing market may shift in 2025, opening opportunities for smaller companies.
• Nvidia dominates AI computing. Evolving workloads could benefit competitors.
• Companies like Groq, Positron, and SambaNova focus on inference to challenge Nvidia's market hold.

In 2025, the tides may turn for companies hoping to compete with the $3 trillion gorilla in AI computing.

Nvidia holds an estimated 90% of the market share for AI computing. Still, as the use of AI grows, workloads are expected to change, and this evolution may give companies with competitive hardware an opening.

In 2024, the majority of AI compute spend shifted to inference, Thomas Sohmers, CEO of chip startup Positron AI, told BI. This will "continue to grow on what looks like an exponential curve," he added.

In AI, inference is the computation needed to produce the response to a user's query or request. The computing required to teach the model the knowledge needed to answer is called "training." Creating OpenAI's image generation platform Sora, for example, represents training. Each user who instructs it to create an image represents an inference workload.

OpenAI's other models have Sohmers and others excited about the growth in computing needs in 2025.

OpenAI's o1 and o3, Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, and a handful of other AI models use more compute-intensive strategies to improve results after training. These strategies are often called inference-time computing, chain-of-thought, chain-of-reasoning, or reasoning models.

Simply put, if the models think more before they answer, the responses are better. That thinking comes at a cost of time and money.

The startups vying for some of Nvidia's market share are attempting to optimize one or both.

Nvidia already benefits from these innovations, CEO Jensen Huang said on the company's November earnings call. Huang's wannabe competitors are betting that in 2025, new post-training strategies for AI will benefit all purveyors of inference chips.

Business Insider spoke to three challengers about their hopes and expectations for 2025. Here are their New Year's resolutions.

What's one thing within your control that could make 2025 a big year for alternative chips?

Mark Heaps, chief technology evangelist, Groq:

"Execution, execution, execution. Right now, everybody at Groq has decided not to take a holiday break this year. Everyone is executing and building the systems. We are all making sure that we deliver to the opportunity that we've got because that is in our control.

I tell everyone our funnel right now is carbonated and bubbling over. It's unbelievable, the amount of customer interest. We have to build more systems, and we have to stand up those systems so we can serve the demand that we've got. We want to serve all those customers. We want to increase rate limits for everybody."

Rodrigo Liang, CEO, SambaNova Systems:

"For SambaNova, the most critical factor is executing on the shift from training to inference. The industry is moving rapidly toward real-time applications, and inference workloads are becoming the lion's share of AI demand. Our focus is on ensuring our technology enables enterprises to scale efficiently and sustainably."

Thomas Sohmers, CEO, Positron:

"My belief is if we can actually deploy enough compute — which thankfully I think we can from a supply chain perspective — by deploying significantly more inference-specific compute, we're going to be able to grow the adoption rate of 'chain of thoughts' and other inference-additional compute."

What's one thing you're hoping for that's not in your control for 2025?

Heaps:

"It's about customers recognizing that there are novel advancements against incumbent technologies. There's a lot of folks that have told us, 'We like what you have, but to use the old adage and rephrase it: No one ever got fired for buying from — insert incumbent.'

But we know that it's starting to boil up. People are realizing it's hard for them to get chips from the incumbent, and it's also not as performant as Groq is. So my wish would be that people are willing to take that chance and actually look to some of these new technologies."

Liang:

"If I had a magic wand, I'd address the power challenges around deploying AI. Today, most of the market is stuck using power-hungry hardware that wasn't designed for inference at scale. The result is an unsustainable approach — economically and environmentally.

At SambaNova, we've proven there's a better way. Our architecture consumes 10 times less power, making it possible for enterprises to deploy AI systems that meet their goals without blowing past their power budgets or carbon targets. I'd like to see the market move faster toward adopting technologies that prioritize efficiency and sustainability — because that's how we ensure AI can scale globally without overwhelming the infrastructure that supports it."

Sohmers:

"I would like people to actually adopt these chain of thought capabilities at the fastest rate possible. I think that is a huge shift — from a capabilities perspective. You have 8 billion parameter models surpassing 70 billion parameter models. So I'm trying to do everything I can to make that happen."

What's your New Year's resolution?

Heaps:

"In the last six months, I've gone to a number of hackathons, and I've met developers. It's deeply inspiring. So my New Year's resolution is to try to amplify the signal of the good that people are doing with AI."

Liang:

"Making time for music. Playing guitar is something I've always loved, and I would love to get back into it. Music has this incredible way of clearing the mind and sparking creativity, which I find invaluable as we work to bring SambaNova's AI to new corners of the globe."

Sohmers:

I want to do as much to encourage the usage of these new tools to help, you know, my mom. Part of the reason I got into technology was because I wanted to see these tools lift up people to be able to do more with their time — to learn everything that they want beyond whatever job they're in. I think that bringing the cost down of these things will enable that proliferation.

I also personally want to see and try to use more of these things outside of my just work context because I've been obsessively using the o1 Pro model for the past few weeks, and it's been amazing for my personal work. But when I gave access to my mom what she would do with it was pretty interesting — those sort of normal, everyday person tasks for these things where it truly is being an assistant."

• Navigating a career can be challenging, especially at the start.
• BI asked senior Wall Street leaders for their best pieces of advice for climbing the ranks.
• Interviewees hold top positions at Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, BlackRock, and more.

What does it take to get to the top? Well, who better to ask than those who are already there?

Navigating a career can be challenging, especially in a rapidly changing economy. But those in senior leadership roles on Wall Street have cracked that code, climbing the ranks through their decades of experience.

Because these top Wall Street money managers, economists, and strategists are among those best-positioned to offer career advice, BI asked them in recent interviews for the top pieces of wisdom they would pass along to those just starting out.

David Kostin, chief US equity strategist at Goldman Sachs

Takeaway: Prioritize going to the office

"Show up in the office," Kostin said. "I can't imagine how a young person is going to actually absorb all the dimensionality of what's happening in the client relationships and with their work and colleagues and not be in the office."

Kostin's advice is simple, but it comes at a time when a massive debate is raging about various companies' RTO policies. In Kostin's view, working in person is critical to developing your career early on.

Mike Wilson, CIO and chief US equity strategist at Morgan Stanley

Takeaway: Bet on yourself, and be OK with being wrong

"You've got to be willing to go take a stand on stuff, whether it's in a meeting, with people you report to, pointing out things that you don't agree with, kind of making a firm stance," Wilson said.

Wilson says this boils down to being open to taking on "personal risk," or the chance that the argument you're making could be wrong — or right.

"On Wall Street, personal risk often means taking contrarian views because that's where the real money is made and accepting the idea that you're going to be wrong along the way. I think ultimately how you deal with those consequences will determine whether you're successful or not," he added.

Rick Rieder, CIO of global fixed income at BlackRock

Takeaway: Understand how technology is trending

As the biggest firms in the world pour money into AI development, Rieder said that those who are early in their careers should think about how the economy might look in the years ahead as robotics and AI increasingly augment our lives.

"I think the world's changing faster than anybody really recognizes," Rieder, who oversees $3 trillion, said.

"For young people today, understand where that's going to happen and how you take advantage of that — I think it's a really, really big deal," he continued. "I think we've left status quo, and we're moving to a whole new era."

Anna Wong, chief US economist at Bloomberg Economics

Takeaway: Be curious despite consensus, and come to a conclusion only after stress-testing it

"Constantly being curious, even if there might not be an obvious payoff to it," Wong, who previously worked at the Federal Reserve, said for her first piece of advice. "If investing is about finding what the market has not priced in, then what people have not priced in usually are in the details. For me, I have learned to be attuned to that little voice inside my head that sounds a tiny alarm in cases where I am about to make some broad assumptions."

Second, when it comes to forecasting, Wong said to consider if a conclusion is still valid after considering multiple arguments and points of view.

"The way I decide on whether to make an out-of-consensus call is to see whether it's possible to arrive at a forecast in many different ways," she said. "Most times I take as the forecast the middle of those ways — and that could at times be totally out of consensus, and at times be smack in the middle of consensus."

One of Wong's current out-of-consensus calls is that there's a 60% chance the US economy is headed toward or already in a recession.

Michael Feroli, chief US economist at JPMorgan

Takeaway: Treat every job as a learning opportunity, even if it's not what you see yourself doing long-term

Landing your dream job at the very start of your professional life is a rare occurrence. More often than not, you may find yourself at a job that isn't a great fit or isn't aligned with your long-term goals.

However, there's a lot to be learned while figuring out your career. "Do your hardest at the job you're currently at, even if it's not the job you love," Feroli said. "Whatever you're doing now will help you get to where you want to be."

Rob Arnott, founder of Research Affiliates

Takeaway: Enjoy what you do, and challenge widely accepted beliefs

"First piece of advice: Do what you love," Arnott said. "Because if you don't do what you love, you probably won't be very good at it. And if you do what you love, you're going to have fun even if you're not wildly successful."

He continued: "Second: Never accept conventional wisdom as true. Always be curious. I've made a career out of listening to conventional wisdom and thinking, 'Gosh, has anyone tested that?' And I go and test it, and half the time it turns out to be true — and fine — and half the time it turns out to be a myth."

Invesco, PIMCO, and Charles Schwab all use Arnott's alternative indexes as the bases of various mutual funds and ETFs they offer. Arnott recently told BI that market consensus around AI could be too bullish, and large-cap growth stocks may be in for a rough patch.

Wei Li, global chief investment strategist at BlackRock

Takeaway: Take time to explore interests outside of work

It may seem counterintuitive, but the key to Li's career success has been making time for new experiences outside work.

"Don't only spend time on the things immediately useful to you in your seat right now," Li said. "The world is so unpredictable. Other things you could absorb may end up being helpful to you in ways that you don't even know."

Hobbies that she's picked up over the years, such as learning about cryptocurrency or studying Italian, have opened doors in her life that she could not have foreseen.

Li believes having diverse experiences is especially important in a post-AI world: "These days, I really force myself to experience things that have nothing to do with my job because it trains my brain in ways that my job doesn't. Who knows, it could become useful in the future and in an environment where we just don't know where the future is," she said.

• Institutionalization was one of the biggest themes in hedge funds this year.
• A once-scrappy industry is starting to resemble private equity and venture capital.
• The biggest firms and new launches have evolved significantly from the days of a couple of guys and a Bloomberg.

The game has changed.

Hedge funds, led by the industry's biggest names who set the agenda for the multi-trillion-dollar sector, were once known for their scrappiness, speed, and reliance on the brains and vision of their founders.

Now, as the industry's investor base has shifted to long-term institutions from wealthy families and small funds-of-funds, hedge funds have become institutions of their own. 2024 may be the turning point for the space that, in 10 years' time, industry observers will look back on as the beginning of the next era.

The biggest managers in the space are preparing for life beyond their founders, long-standing funds are becoming more formulaic and bureaucratic, and new entrants need to raise more money than ever before.

Multistrategy managers like Millennium, Citadel, and Point72 have long been moving in this direction, but recent moves by each of the firms' founders point to a world in which these giants outlast their larger-than-life leaders.

Ken Griffin, Citadel's billionaire founder, said in November that he would be open to selling a stake in his $66 billion Miami-based asset manager. Millennium and the world's largest asset manager BlackRock have reportedly had talks about the latter taking a stake in the former.

Both firms are set to outlast their founders, with built-out infrastructure and leadership teams littered with former Goldman Sachs partners. $72 billion Millennium, for example, created the office of the CIO in late 2022 and promoted longtime executive Ajay Nagpal to president, providing investors with a clear line into the next level of leadership beyond founder Izzy Englander.

The legendary founder of $35 billion Point72, meanwhile, has stepped away from trading his own book of stocks, which is how he burst onto the scene decades ago.

While Steve Cohen spends plenty of time and money on the baseball team he owns, the New York Mets, a person close to the firm said the decision to step back from running a book was not an indication that he's spending any less time working at his manager.

In a recent internal town hall, this person said, he described no longer having a book under his purview as "freeing" as he can spend more time on strategic initiatives for the firm. Without a portfolio to manage, the market's hours no longer dictate Cohen's schedule — a flexibility he appreciates as he balances running the manager and his baseball team.

For example, in mid-October, Cohen was set to appear on a panel at investment consultant Albourne Partners' annual conference in New York, but canceled because the Mets had gone on a run in the playoffs, people familiar with the event told Business Insider.

Succession, quality launches, and a promising environment

Beyond the main multistrategy names, a number of long-running firms across the industry are, structurally, starting to look more like peers in private equity than smaller rivals in the hedge fund space.

Places like Elliott Management centralized decision-making and created more internal structure, which has frustrated some veterans of Paul Singer's asset manager but provides the needed hierarchy.

Meanwhile, firms like Two Sigma and Bridgewater have officially moved on from their founders with new leadership. Brevan Howard's billionaire founder Alan Howard no longer trades for his firm.

At the other end of the industry, the bar for new launches has increased substantially, and the next generation of industry leaders are starting the firms with a much more institutional feel than even five years ago. Bobby Jain's $5.3 billion launch in July, for example, had plenty of big-name hires and titles right from the start.

In 2023, the average fund launched with $300 million, according to Goldman Sachs' prime brokerage division. PivotalPath, the industry data tracker run by Jon Caplis, said in an end-of-year report that it expects 2024 to be similar, driven by the increase of multi-managers allocating externally.

It's been driven by a focus from allocators on "quality" launches, PivotalPath's report states; the firm is tracking 145 new funds launching between the start of 2024 and the second quarter of 2025 with founders who come from funds with more than $1 billion.

If you're able to command enough capital — either from a platform like Millennium or big allocators like pensions, sovereign wealth funds, and endowments — it should be worth it. Longtime industry players and investors believe it is shaping up to be a strong period for the industry thanks to increased volatility that will allow actively managed investment firms to shine.

"Our underlying hedge fund managers are active, fundamental stock pickers who seek to identify the best opportunities and offer differentiated exposure," wrote New York-based fund-of-funds Old Farm Partners in a recent note that focused on why active management should shine in the coming years.

"Given the argument that we have laid out in this paper, we think the current market backdrop should provide a favorable setup for our strategy going forward."

• Crisis PR is in the spotlight after Blake Lively filed a blockbuster complaint against Justin Baldoni.
• Lively's suit alleges Baldoni smeared her in the press in retaliation for harassment complaints.
• Crisis management experts say tough tactics are part of the game but warned against going too far.

What started as the story of a bombshell lawsuit from a famous actor against her director and costar has since turned into a tale of two PR campaigns and a reckoning in the broader public relations industry.

After Blake Lively filed a complaint Friday accusing Justin Baldoni of sexual harassment on the set of their film "It Ends with Us" and a retaliatory smear campaign in the press, publicists were abuzz picking apart how both camps responded to the news.

A key asset in Lively's suit is the reams of messages included that paint a picture in which Baldoni, his publicist Jennifer Abel, and crisis management expert Melissa Nathan detail plans to direct the conversation away from Lively's sexual harassment allegations by enlisting journalists and an online fixer to create, publish, and amplify negative stories about her.

The messages in the suit — and its allegations of astroturfing, a controversial practice in public relations that exists in a legal grey area — offer a peek behind the curtain of crisis PR, one that industry figures who spoke with BI say is giving their profession a bad name.

"Who is the real victim behind the smear campaign?" Molly McPherson, a crisis communications manager, said in an Instagram post breaking down her thoughts on Lively and Baldoni's ordeal. "It's PR. It's public relations."

The lawsuit introduced crisis PR and the practice of astroturfing to the general public

Hollywood is full of public relations firms big and small. Most work with studios, distributors, or directly with talent in the day-to-day grind of promoting their work, building relationships with the media and influencers.

Crisis management is an entirely different animal. They're called in when a controversy or scandal hits the client that's too out of hand for the publicist to deal with on their own.

"A crisis management person is hired to make sure all the assets are protected," a veteran crisis management publicist told BI. Unlike regular publicists, who "don't want to get their hands dirty," crisis PR firms are trained for this very purpose. "I know how to bob and weave, jump in and jump out," the source added.

The proposed campaign to damage Lively's reputation, as outlined in her complaint via quotes from Nathan's messages to Abel and Baldoni, included "social manipulation" on platforms like Reddit and "full social account take downs." In the messages, Nathan suggested having a full social crisis team on hand to "start threads of theories" about Lively and Baldoni's rumored feud, and the "creation of social fan engagement to go back and forth with any negative accounts, helping to change [sic] narrative and stay on track."

"All of this will be most importantly untraceable," Lively's suit quotes Nathan as saying.

Lively's lawsuit argues that these tactics in Abel and Nathan's alleged smear campaign on behalf of Baldoni went "well beyond standard crisis PR" by deploying the controversial practice of astroturfing, a tactic that, when applied to public relations, involves publishing sentiments on the internet or in the media to falsely create the illusion of public consensus or a "grassroots movement."

"Millions of people (including many reporters and influencers) who saw these planted stories, social media posts, and other online content had no idea they were unwitting consumers of a crisis PR, astroturfing, and digital retaliation campaign," Lively's suit reads, adding that the campaign blurred "the line between authentic and manufactured content, and creating viral public takedowns."

The crisis management experts who spoke to BI didn't see anything wrong with Baldoni's team coming up with worst-case scenarios for how to change the narrative were Lively to take her harassment allegations public. Several PR people say tough tactics are part of the game. But they were split on the tactic of astroturfing.

"It's not frowned upon, just amateurish," the veteran crisis management publicist said. "It gives experts a bad name. Like they saw it work in a movie and thought it was a brilliant idea."

Other Hollywood publicists were more stern in their assessment.

"I honestly thought it was used more in politics than entertainment," one longtime entertainment publicist told BI. "That's just a dirty tactic."

Baldoni's lawyer Bryan Freedman called Lively's claims against Baldoni "completely false, outrageous, and intentionally salacious."

In a follow-up statement, he said Nathan's company The Agency Group (TAG PR), which was hired by Baldoni, "operated as any crisis management firm would when hired by a client experiencing threats by two extremely powerful people with unlimited resources," a reference to Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds.

"The standard scenario planning TAG PR drafted proved unnecessary as audiences found Lively's own actions, interviews and marketing during the promotional tour distasteful, and responded organically to that which the media themselves picked up on," the statement added.

BI contacted Abel and Nathan and didn't receive a response about PR tactics.

Experts say Baldoni's camp also made one key mistake

For all the PR wizardry happening as both sides respond to the story in the press, there's one move Abel and Nathan made that the veteran crisis management publicist said was a huge mistake.

"Never put anything in texts," the vet crisis management publicist said. "That was a rookie move."

The consequences are still unfolding. On Tuesday, Stephanie Jones, the owner of the publicity firm that represented Baldoni before Abel broke out on her own, sued the actor, Abel, and Nathan accusing Abel and Nathan of orchestrating a smear campaign against both Lively and herself behind her back and accusing Abel of covertly stealing Jones' clients when exiting the firm.

In an email Tuesday, Abel provided BI with a different account of how she left Jones' firm, including text messages showing she submitted her resignation and was open with plans to start her own public relations firm.

Now, even crisis managers need crisis managers to repair the profession's image.

"It does give the industry a black eye, and I think it should be a cautionary tale," a prominent industry figure who runs a crisis management firm told BI.

"If you don't know that you can't go that far," the person said, if you don't know that you can't "dupe media, that's troublesome."

• More than 3,400 older Americans have shared their financial and other regrets with Business Insider.
• Some older adults reflected on how parenthood shaped their finances.
• This is part of an ongoing series about older Americans' regrets.

For many people, raising children is the most fulfilling aspect of their lives. But dozens of older US parents told Business Insider that knowing what they know now, they might have made different financial decisions.

Since mid-September, over 3,400 Americans ages 48 to 96 have responded to Business Insider reader surveys or emailed reporters about their life regrets. One survey included the question "What advice would you give someone trying to decide when — or if — they have children?"

Hundreds of respondents said they had children when they were too young and financially unstable, delayed their career to raise a family, or spent too much or too little on their kids. Many said their decisions as young parents had lasting effects. Though many more mothers shared their parenting regrets than fathers, both shared very similar parenting regrets.

It's not all bad, though. Many parents said their financial and professional sacrifices were worth it to build strong relationships with their children. Others said that they did the best they could but that some parenting costs were unavoidable.

All of them stressed that despite having some financial or professional regrets, they love their children and had few regrets about how they raised them.

BI identified five common financial parenting regrets and interviewed seven parents. This story is part of an ongoing series.

We want to hear from you. Are you an older American with any life regrets you'd be comfortable sharing with a reporter? Please fill out this quick form.

Some parents wish they'd waited to have children until their careers were more established

Many respondents said they wished they had waited to have a baby until they were more financially stable. The high costs of childcare and housing made it difficult for some parents to set aside savings for emergencies or retirement, especially early in their careers. An analysis by Northwestern Mutual last year found that the average cost to raise a child until age 18 was about $300,000.

Judy Taylor, 72, told BI she loves her children but regretted having them in her early 20s. Taylor, who lives in Georgia, said she and her husband weren't established enough professionally to afford children and build savings for retirement. When they divorced after 16 years, Taylor shouldered additional costs as a single parent.

Taylor said she had little savings left and relied on slightly over $2,000 in monthly Social Security. If she missed a check, she'd be "dead in the water," she said.

"Babies are so precious," Taylor said. "But having another life to be responsible for can be overwhelming. Just be sure you're ready for that."

Jessica Douieb, the head of wealth partners at JPMorgan, advised that families build a wealth plan focused on short- and long-term goals that factors in education, tax planning, cash-flow management, investments, charitable giving, insurance, and estate planning.

"A frequent misstep is failing to plan for the long term," Douieb said. "In many cases, having children can delay retirement, requiring parents to work longer to support their children, which can affect financial security in later years."

Roxanne Lewis, 61, a mental-health case manager, relied on child support and food stamps to pay her bills as a single mother, though she later remarried and held stable jobs. She said she wished she'd had a nest egg and an established career before having the first of her seven children.

"When I was younger, I didn't think about retirement," Lewis said. "It was mainly about getting the bills paid, making sure the children had clothes and food. It wasn't even a thought in my mind, and nobody had ever mentioned it."

Lewis, who lives in East Texas, said she didn't often speak with them about retirement savings. She intends to work until 67, and while her finances improved after a raise in 2022, she's worried about how retirement may look with a few thousand dollars in the bank.

"I wish that I spent more time with my kids," Lewis said. "Money was a big thing for me, focusing on having enough money so they had what they needed, so I was always stressed."

Some said they spent too much on their children

A few dozen respondents said that while they felt that many of their financial investments in their children were worth it, they regretted spoiling their children — such as buying them a car when finances were tight — or not encouraging them to become financially independent. A few said they were burdened by letting their children live with them after college or stay on their insurance plans.

Douieb said parents who want to be generous with their children should prioritize nurturing their confidence and self-esteem over materially rewarding them.

"I cannot emphasize enough the importance of having ongoing, open discussions about money, reinforcing values like responsibility and self-sufficiency," Douieb said. "When they reach the right age, teaching children about saving, investing, and planning can help them become financially literate and independent, which will help them in the long run."

Some divorced parents described the financial toll of raising children alone or with limited support

Several respondents said divorce and single parenting affected their retirement plans. Some said they struggled to support a family without a second income or with limited child support, while others said being a stay-at-home parent meant they didn't have much savings after a divorce.

A BI analysis of 2023 individual-level census data found that divorced people had lower average 401(k) balances, less savings, and a more limited monthly retirement income than married people. It also found that just 38% of divorced people had a retirement account.

Nina Teasley, 65, lives on less than $2,000 in Social Security in Bethesda, Maryland. Teasley, a mom of four, was a stay-at-home mom for most of her adult life but divorced about 25 years ago. Though Teasley's children are now adults, she said she still felt the financial impact of her divorce.

Teasley said that while being so present in her children's lives was wonderful, she had no savings or retirement plan. When she and her husband split, Teasley took a customer-service job to support herself and her children, but the income wasn't enough to build a nest egg. Now Teasley isn't sure she can fully retire and worries about becoming a financial burden on her adult children.

"I thought I would be married forever," Teasley said. "I married a man who wanted to take care of me and the kids. But I wish I had not let that be. I wish I had decided to go to work and stay at work."

Michelle Patello, a vice president and wealth-management advisor at TIAA, said that there isn't one single approach to raising children after a divorce and that splitting expenses equally isn't always the answer.

"It's important to consider the different income levels when splitting costs," she said.

Some said they regretted being stay-at-home parents

The Pew Research Center found in 2023 that about four in five stay-at-home parents were women. Spending time outside the workforce to raise children meant many moms had less income to build savings and lower Social Security checks.

Older Americans' monthly Social Security income is based on the years they spent in the workforce. Stay-at-home parents' time spent raising children isn't counted toward their retirement benefit.

Wendy DeBord, 73, said she returned to work too late after having her children. DeBord, who lives in Toledo, Ohio, had her first child at 23 and had two more by 28. For 12 years she was a stay-at-home mom and ran a day care at her house. At 45, with little work experience, she took a job as a receptionist at an orthodontist's office. She worked her way up to becoming a public-relations coordinator.

"When I entered the workforce at age 45, I had to start on the bottom rung, so I barely made it to the middle of the ladder by age 70," DeBord said, adding she had a divorce at 50 that hurt her retirement planning.

She said that staying home with her children still felt like the right move, and she cherished watching them grow up. But she said that she started building her 401(k) late and that she reached $300,000 in savings, which she described as sufficient, at 70. She gets about $2,000 monthly in Social Security, which she claimed at 70.

Douieb stressed that stay-at-home-parenting considerations go beyond a parent's finances.

"A child's financial future will be more determined by instilling strong values around money management and savings from an early age," Douieb said. "Parents can create a nurturing environment where financial literacy is emphasized, teaching children the importance of budgeting, investing, and responsible spending."

Adults without children have regrets, too

Though many older parents said they regretted how they handled finances while raising a family, few said they regretted having children. "Every parent wants their child to have a better life than they did — he is the one thing I did right," one survey respondent wrote.

Others said they were happily child-free. "I have no children and no regrets," one person said.

Christopher Gilbert, 61, said he helped raise his nephew but might have been more fulfilled if he had raised children of his own, even with the financial burden. He said he couldn't start a family because of laws banning same-sex marriage, which became fully legal in the US in 2015.

Now gay people "can get married and have kids," Gilbert said, "but that came a little bit late for me."

Gilbert, who lives in Bradenton, Florida, said that while he had some retirement savings, he planned to work his job at a convenience store for as long as possible because it keeps him active and social.

Patello said that Americans should proactively plan for retirement regardless of whether they're parents. "The earlier, the better," Patello said. Even reducing your contributions but continuing to save can make all the difference for you and your family."

Are you an older American with any life regrets you'd be comfortable sharing with a reporter? Please fill out this quick form.

• Research identifies digital hoarding as a subtype of hoarding disorder, affecting mental health.
• Digital hoarding is linked to anxiety, causing stress and disorganization.
• Accumulation of digital photos and videos over the years has caused me severe stress.

"No way, I'd completely forgotten about this video! I'm so glad you held on to it for so many years!"

I used to love hearing my friends tell me any variation of this sentence. It was a glowing affirmation that holding on to my 6TB iCloud storage plan was the right move.

For years I'd taken it upon myself to be the group historian, to record the small moments at every event.

Then one day, I found myself curled up sobbing on the floor after being locked out of my 867 GB-strong Google Photos app.

Surely that was an extreme reaction, my friends said" "They're just pictures. Wait, you said how many GB?!"

I looked it up, and their concern was warranted. It turns out, I may be a digital hoarder.

What is digital hoarding?

Digital hoarding was first introduced as a potential subtype of hoarding disorder in 2015 after a case report in the British Medical Journal described a man who took thousands of pictures a week and showed reluctance to discard any of them.

The paper described digital hoarding as the "accumulation of digital files to the point of loss of perspective, which eventually results in stress and disorganization."

Although hoarding disorder has been documented as a mental illness in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, there has been very little research done on the digital aspect of it, save testimonials on the internet.

In a 2022 study with 846 participants, Darshana Sedera, assistant Dean at Southern Cross University, found that there was a definite link between digital hoarding and anxiety.

Nick Neave, director of the Hoarding Research Group, told me it was a sort of chicken-and-egg situation.

"A person whose levels of anxiety are slightly higher anyway tends to be driven toward digital hoarding and then tends to be more anxious when things start to unravel," said Neave.

"You want to take a very good picture, but you're anxious that you take the wrong picture or that you would delete that picture by mistake, so that you take many more pictures."

"Then you get even more anxious because you start to worry about storage, you start to worry about the cost, and oh no, what happens if all of those pictures get deleted?" he continued.

The signs were all there

He said that even though there's no formal diagnosis, I "ticked all the boxes" for being a digital hoarder.

When I looked back, the signs were all there. A screenshots folder filled to the brim with chat snippets from a decade ago, multiple Instagram accounts I created to upload my memories onto in case my Google Drive storage ran out, hundreds of GB worth of video call screen recordings I never once watched again.

The worst part is the accumulation over the years means that it will take me a long, long time to sit and delete the things I don't want anymore — and that doesn't just apply to photos and videos.

The internet seems bent on building up digital assets on my online presence with every minute.

Do you want to make cute compilation videos about the trip you just went on? Better be ready with about 50 different clips and 20-ish backup ones to be safe.

Instagram and TikTok let you post at least 20 pictures on one single carousel post now.

My bills all come online, which means I download the PDFs but also take screenshots because what if I can't find the PDF when I need it? My inbox is full of spam, but I can't hit "delete all" because what if there were useful promo codes in there, or my flight tickets went to the wrong folder and accidentally got deleted?

What's the alternative? Sift through hundreds of emails to find the three useful ones and delete the rest? Best to hold on to all of it, I told myself, ignoring the red notice that I've used up 96% of my storage.

Unpacking why exactly I can't part with my towering stash is probably best addressed through multiple therapy sessions, but my digital hoarding tendencies definitely have something to do with an underlying fear of forgetting and being forgotten.

How it all started

I know it started from a good place. Every time I saw a picture of little Hannah or heard my brother's voice before its current cracked adult iteration, I would smile and be infinitely glad I saved it.

Every time I chanced across a conversation from my teenage Google Hangouts phase, I sent it to my friends and we laughed about who we used to be and how far we've come.

I'm not sure when exactly it intensified into the obsession that it became, one that sent me into a weeklong spiral when I realized Instagram story archives from five years ago had irreversibly turned all my videos into static frames.

It genuinely felt like chunks of my memory were gone forever.

And what of the way forward? "Our possessions determine our self," Neave told me.
"It all tells a story about you; it's much more normal to be a hoarder than it is to be a minimalist, because hoarding is part of our human nature."

"The onus is largely and squarely on the online storage providers to provide us with indexing," said Darshana Sedera, adding that it would help with categorizing digital assets and make it easier to decide which ones to let go of.

He also said that setting aside time regularly to declutter your digital life is crucial to minimizing buildup.

Down the minimalist decluttering rabbit hole I go then. Hopefully, I come out the other side with a happier headline and several TBs lighter.

• South Korea's national assembly impeached acting president Han Duck-soo on Friday.
• Han took over from President Yoon Suk Yeol on December 14.
• Yoon was impeached after declaring martial law for several hours.

South Korean lawmakers impeached the country's acting president, Han Duck-soo on Friday, just two weeks after he had taken up the post.

Han, who is also the country's prime minister, took over from President Yoon Suk Yeol. Yoon was impeached after declaring martial law in South Korea on December 3.

The Democratic Party, South Korea's main opposition party, filed a motion to impeach Han on December 26.

While impeaching a president requires a two-thirds majority in the 300-seat National Assembly, impeaching a prime minister only requires a simple majority of lawmakers. 192 lawmakers voted on Friday to impeach Han.

Han has been suspended from his duties immediately. The country's finance minister, Choi Sang-mok, is next in line for the acting presidency.

The opposition moved against Han after he refused to appoint three judges to fill the nine-member constitutional court bench.

The constitutional court is the bench that will rule on Yoon's removal from office.

There are currently six justices, and six votes are needed to remove Yoon. This poses a potential obstacle ousting Yoon permanently, as the loss of one vote will allow him to continue to remain president.

The South Korean won on Friday fell to its lowest level against the dollar since 2009.

This story is developing, please check back for more updates.

• Taiwan has held its first tabletop war game amid rising tensions with China.
• The exercise simulates military escalation and involves government and civil groups.
• Taiwan aims to train 50,000 volunteers for emergencies amid China's military drills.

Taiwan's Presidential Office held its first-ever tabletop war games on Thursday in a sign of heightened tensions with Beijing.

The exercise simulates a military escalation with China, which claims Taiwan as its territory. It took place at the island's Whole-of-Society Defense Resilience Committee meeting.

"The Taiwanese society must race against time to build capabilities that can counter threats of large-scale disasters and deter enemy aggression," Lai said at the opening of the event, without naming any country as an aggressor.

The three-hour wargame exercise involved central and local governments, as well as civil groups. It simulated various scenarios, including one in which self-governed Taiwan is "on the verge of conflict" and "high intensity" grey-zone warfare, Lai said.

Liu Shyh-fang, Taiwan's interior minister, said the island's government aims to train over 50,000 volunteers to respond to emergencies by next year. Authorities hope to involve a range of people, including taxi drivers and security guards, in the effort.

Taiwan's focus on emergency preparedness comes amid escalation with China in recent years. Beijing conducted two major exercises around Taiwan this year, in addition to other drills.

In October, China's military surrounded Taiwan during the "Joint Sword-2024B" exercise to show it could blockade key ports, execute strikes, and assault positions.

In May, China launched the "Joint Sword-2024A" exercise following the inauguration of Lai, whom Beijing has branded a separatist.

"The peace and stability in the first island chain is being collectively challenged by authoritarian states," Lai said, referring to an arc of archipelagos from Indonesia to Japan.

Taiwan's tensions with China are not just about the two sides.

Taiwan — a $775 billion economy with a population of about 23 million — is the world's semiconductor chip hub, so any national security development on the island has broader implications for the global economy.

Meanwhile, the US is obliged to ensure that Taiwan has the means to defend itself under the Taiwan Relations Act.

Just last week, the US State Department approved $295 million in arms sales to Taiwan. China said that it "strongly deplores and firmly opposes" the move.

Taiwanese President Lai has challenged the notion that mainland China is Taiwan's "motherland." In July, he said the government of Taiwan — whose official name is the Republic of China — is older than Beijing.

• OpenAI and Microsoft have an internal definition for AGI, per The Information.
• The two companies agreed to define AGI as a system that can generate $100 billion in profits.
• OpenAI says on its website that AGI refers to AI systems that are smarter than humans.

OpenAI and Microsoft have a definition for artificial general intelligence, and it hinges on the money the emerging technology can bring in.

The two companies signed an agreement in 2023 that defined AGI as a system that can generate $100 billion in profits, The Information reported on Thursday, citing documents it had obtained.

OpenAI has, however, publicly defined AGI on its website as "a highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work."

The ChatGPT maker added that its nonprofit board would decide whether AGI has been achieved.

"Such a system is excluded from IP licenses and other commercial terms with Microsoft, which only apply to pre-AGI technology," the company wrote on its website.

OpenAI and Microsoft did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Based on its agreement with Microsoft, OpenAI still has some way to go before it can achieve AGI.

The company expects to accumulate losses of around $44 billion between 2023 to 2028, and could hit $100 billion in revenue in 2029, The Information reported in October, citing financial documents it had obtained.

"My guess is we will hit AGI sooner than most people in the world think and it will matter much less," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin at The New York Times DealBook Summit on December 4.

In November, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI is in preliminary talks with California's attorney general's office about becoming a for-profit company.

OpenAI was initially launched as a nonprofit research organization in 2015. The company closed a $6.6 billion funding round in October, valuing it at $157 billion.

• A plot next to Jeff Bezos' Miami properties is on sale for $200 million.
• The land is on Indian Creek, a private island that's home to several billionaires.
• The sellers remain unknown, but their broker said they are open to negotiating the price.

A plot of land next to Jeff Bezos' properties in South Florida is on sale for $200 million.

The property is about 1.84 acres in size and is located at Indian Creek, a private artificial island in Miami-Dade County. Called the "Billionaire Bunker," the island houses properties belonging to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, Tom Brady, Carl Icahn, and recent arrival Jeff Bezos.

The asking price — $200 million for the land — is more than what Bezos paid for any of his three properties on the island. In 2023, the Amazon founder purchased a $68 million mansion and an adjacent property for $79 million. In September, he made a third purchase for $90 million. Last year, Bezos said he would be moving to Miami after living in Seattle for 29 years.

The listing was first reported by The New York Post.

Ilya Reznik is representing the owners, who did not want to be identified. Reznik told the New York Post that the owners originally wanted to build on the land but changed plans and decided to sell. He said that the owners bought the land for $27.5 million in 2018.

Reznik told Bloomberg that the sellers are willing to negotiate on price, but he is "confident that in the end the buyer will pay a little extra because Bezos is a neighbor." Reznik added, "Those prices just didn't exist before he came to Indian Creek."

The broker also said that the sellers drew pre-designs for a 25,000-square-foot estate on the property that would be available to the buyer.

The New York Post reported that the land also comes with 200 feet of Biscayne Bay waterfront, which allows the owner to build a deep-water dock for a 180-foot megayacht.

The highly secure island is located about 15 miles from Miami and is only accessible via a single bridge connecting it to the mainland. It has about 40 homes over 300 acres and an ultra-exclusive country club. The island's police department monitors the area's only entrance and patrols the perimeter around the clock.

• "Squid Game" season three will premiere in 2025.
• It will wrap up the season two story and is intended to end the entire show.
• Here's what we know so far about the plot and cast.

It took Netflix three years to debut a second season of the surprise hit K-drama "Squid Game."

However, seasons two and three were filmed simultaneously, meaning there will be less of a wait after the second season, which released on December 26.

Netflix announced in July 2024 that season three, which will premiere in 2025, would be the last.

The third season will follow Seong Gi-hun's crusade against a secret organization that is manipulating people with huge debts to compete in deadly games for money.

Warning: Major spoilers ahead for season two.

"Squid Game" season 3 will likely be set directly after the end of season 2

Season two ended on a tragic cliffhanger, with the games' guards defeating Gi-hun's rebellion against the games.

After finding himself competing in the deadly games again, Gi-hun persuades his fellow players to stage a rebellion against the guards, steal their weapons, and storm toward the command center.

This plan is foiled by a saboteur in Gi-hun's ranks: Hwang In-ho, the game's leader, who entered the competition as Player 001 to spy on Gi-hun.

In-ho splits the rebels, making them easier to defeat, and fakes his own death. After his guards crush the uprising, In-ho, hiding his identity behind a mask, kills Gi-hun's best friend right in front of Gi-hun.

Outside the games, Gi-hun recruited a group of people to help find the game's island to shut down the competition. The season finale shows that they have a traitor among them, too — Captain Park, a fisherman who owns the boat the team is using to find the island.

"Squid Game" creator Hwang Dong-hyuk told Entertainment Weekly in December that seasons two and three were written as one story, but split into two seasons to accommodate all the episodes.

Since the games were not finished by the end of season two, season three will show the second half of the same competition. Gi-hun and his allies' will also likely have their last attempt to destroy the games.

One of the new games will be based around another creepy doll.

The most popular game in "Squid Game" season one was "Red Light, Green Light," in which the players race to the finish line without being spotted by a giant rotating creepy doll.

The doll was based on a statue in South Korea of Young-hee, a character from old school textbooks. In June 2022, Hwang said in a statement teasing the second season that the show will introduce Cheol-su, a character often paired with Young-hee.

Giant dolls of Cheol-su and Young-hee appear in a post-credit scene in the season two finale. The scene seems to be teasing one of the game settings in season three, but it is not clear yet what the game will actually be.

Season 3 is the final season of "Squid Game."

In December, Hwang told Entertainment Weekly that he decided to end the show after the third season because the story he is "capable of telling through Gi-hun" ends there.

He later told Variety that he was "sick" of making "Squid Game."

"I'm so sick of my life making something, promoting something," Hwang said. "I'm just thinking about going to some remote island and having my own free time without any phone calls from Netflix."

Since Netflix owns the rights to "Squid Game," it could create more spin-offs without Hwang's involvement. It already has a reality show, "Squid Game: The Challenge," and the video game "Squid Game: Unleashed." Variety reported that Hwang has been kept in the loop with these projects but has not been involved with them.

Deadline reported in October, citing unnamed sources, that an English-language version of "Squid Game" was in the works and that David Fincher may be hired to develop the show.

The surviving players from season 2 will return in season 3.

This includes: Player 388, Dae-ho (Kang Ha-neul), the ex-marine; Player 222, Kim Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri), the pregnant woman; Player 007, Park Yon-sik (Yang Dong-geun) and his mother, Player 044, Jang Geum-ja (Kang Ae-sim); Player 044, Seon-nyeo (Chae Kook-hee), the mystical lady; and Player 120 Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon), an ex-special forces officer and transwoman.

Lee Jung-Jae and Lee Byung-hun will reprise their roles as the main protagonist, Seong Gi-hun, and the antagonist, Hwang In-ho. Other non-player characters who are still alive at the end of season two will also return, including former Detective Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) and Woo-seok (Jeon Seok-ho).

• An undersea cable in the Baltic Sea that provides power to Estonia was cut on Wednesday.
• Finnish authorities say they've seized an oil tanker they suspect caused the outage.
• Finland's president raised concerns of Russia's "shadow fleet" on social media.

Finnish authorities said they've seized an oil tanker on Thursday as part of its probe into the cutting of an undersea cable in the Baltic Sea which provides electricity to Estonia.

Finnish customs authorities and the European Union's executive commission said the tanker may be part of Russia's "shadow fleet" of oil tankers, The Associated Press reported.

Finland police said in a news release that the vessel, Eagle S, was registered in Cook Islands. MarineTraffic, a global ship tracking website, also stated that the ship was flying under the flag of Cook Islands and was sailing between St. Petersburg, Russia, and Port Said, Egypt.

On Wednesday, Finnish authorities began investigating the rupture of Estlink-2, an undersea power cable connected between Finland and Estonia, Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said on X.

Finland police said in the press release that the case is being investigated as "aggravated criminal mischief."

A spokesperson for Finland's police did not respond to a request for comment sent outside of working hours.

Russia has been using a network of mostly aging ships that are difficult to trace back to the country in order to evade costly Western sanctions that were imposed after the start of the Ukraine war in 2022.

According to the Center for Research on Energy and Clear Air, a Finland-based think tank, more than half of the 369 vessels exporting Russian crude oil and oil products in November were shadow tankers.

"Our main task is to find effective means to stop the shadow fleet," Orpo said at a news conference, according to The New York Times. "The shadow fleet pumps money into Russia's war fund so that Russia can continue to wage its war in Ukraine against the people of Ukraine, and it has to be stopped."

Finland's President Alexander Stubb also said in a post on X that the risks of Russia's shadow fleet need to be addressed.

The damage to the Estlink-2 further highlights growing concerns among countries around the risks of sabotage against undersea power cables and pipelines.

In November, two data cables were cut under the Baltic Sea, linking Germany and Finland as well as Sweden and Lithuania.

German Foreign Minister Boris Pistorius said without evidence that the incident was no accident.

"We have to assume, without certain information, that the damage is caused by sabotage," he said.

• On Thursday, season two of "The Flipping El Moussas" premiered on HGTV.
• Tarek and Heather Rae El Moussa flipped a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in Los Angeles.
• The flip took longer than they anticipated, but they still made a profit on the property.

Tarek El Moussa and Heather Rae El Moussa are back to flipping houses on HGTV.

In January, the couple will appear in the competition series "The Flip Off" with Tarek's ex, Christina Haack. And on Thursday, season two of Heather and Tarek's show, "The Flipping El Moussas," premiered on HGTV, diving into the couple's house-flipping business.

In the episode, Tarek and Heather flipped a three-bedroom house in Los Angeles that was filled to the brim with trash when they started the project.

In the season premiere of "The Flipping El Moussas," Tarek and Heather took on a trash-filled home in Los Angeles.

As the episode opens, Tarek and Heather check out a three-bedroom, two-bath house in Los Angeles.

Tarek's company, Tarek Buys Houses, had purchased the 1,200-square-foot property for $430,000, which they said was on the low end for the area because the house was in disarray, filled with trash, rat droppings, and human feces.

They originally intended to sell the home to another flipper at wholesale, but because it was so dirty, Tarek and Heather would have had to invest money in cleaning it out before they could sell it to another flipper.

Instead, they decided to flip it themselves. They set a budget of $184,000 for renovations and hoped to sell the home for close to $1 million.

The home's large living area was full of garbage when Tarek and Heather started working on it.

The large living area had an open-concept feel, though it was difficult to see the layout when Tarek and Heather first toured the property because it was covered in debris.

Tarek said in the premiere that it took his team three days and 10 trips to the dump to clean out the property.

Tarek and Heather decided to fully open the living area during the flip.

The new living space felt large and airy after the renovation.

Tarek and Heather took down the wall that separated the kitchen from the rest of the living area, making the space feel larger.

The space was full of light thanks to its white walls and the sliding glass doors that took up nearly a whole wall in the living room. Touches like beachy lighting modernized the space.

The backyard wasn't much to look at before the renovation.

The fenced-in backyard offered privacy, but that was the only redeeming quality when the El Moussas worked on the project. The grass had died, and the house wasn't in great shape.

However, the El Moussas noticed that a raised patio would create a view of the area, so they decided to add it to the property.

A patio made the house feel more luxurious.

The episode revealed that adding the patio to the home wasn't simple. The team originally constructing it built an unstable structure and burned a hole through it, to Heather and Tarek's dismay.

But the final version of the patio created an indoor-outdoor living vibe thanks to the sliding doors.

The El Moussas also added a new fence, grass, and a gravel area to the yard for additional seating.

The kitchen was originally full of dark cabinetry.

To make the kitchen feel grander, the El Moussas decided to place the oven and gas range in the center of the space so they were visible when you entered the home.

They had to move some windows around to make the change, which ended up causing them weeks of delays on the flip.

The delays were worth it, as the range became the centerpiece of the kitchen.

The kitchen looked cohesive with the living room, featuring white counters, appliances, and built-in open shelves.

A window above the sink overlooked the patio the El Moussas added to the backyard.

Tarek and Heather wanted to modernize the fireplace in the living room.

A stone fireplace took up much of the central wall in the living room, but the dark color was dated and didn't fit the clean look Tarek and Heather were creating for the home.

Floating shelves and white brick made the space feel fresh.

The new fireplace featured vertical white brick framed by built-in shelving made of wood.

Large windows sat opposite the sliding glass doors, so light flooded the home.

The primary bedroom wasn't as private as it could have been.

When Tarek and Heather first walked through the house, they found that the primary bedroom had a bathroom attached to it, but it was accessible from the home's laundry room and kitchen as well.

The El Moussas decided to close off the bathroom and move the laundry room to a closet to make the bedroom bigger and have a true en suite.

They made the space feel fresher.

Rather than one large window, the El Moussas added two windows framing the bed in the primary to give it a sense of grandeur.

A sliding door led the way to the en suite.

The bathroom featured a large walk-in shower and double vanity.

Heather and Tarek's vision for the bathroom paid off, as they were able to use the former laundry room to add square footage to the bathroom.

The walk-in shower featured a bench, and tile floors with a star-shaped pattern brought a pop of color to the room.

The wooden cabinetry also matched the shelving in the living area, giving the home a sense of cohesion.

The flip took longer than the El Moussas wanted, but they still made a profit.

Due to project delays, Tarek and Heather spent 12 months flipping the property in Los Angeles.

They also spent nearly $100,000 over their original budget on the renovation and invested $276,000 in the flip. Considering the carrying and selling costs, Tarek and Heather's breakeven price for the house was $793,000.

They originally listed the house for $999,999 and got an offer of $920,000.

• Meta's Horizon app topped Apple's App Store on Christmas Day, signaling strong VR headset demand.
• Quest headsets, starting at $299, are gaining mainstream traction in virtual reality.
• Despite strong demand, Meta's Reality Labs faces significant financial losses.

Meta's virtual reality ambitions got a Christmas boost this year.

On Christmas Day, the company's Meta Horizon app, which users must download to set up the Quest virtual reality headsets developed by Meta, was the top free app in Apple's App Store in the US and the UK, indicating strong holiday demand.

Meta has never disclosed how many Quest headsets it has sold. The surge in app downloads suggests that the Quest is solidifying its status as one of the most mainstream VR headsets. The devices, which start at $299 and are developed by Meta's Reality Labs division, are a relatively affordable gateway to virtual and mixed-reality experiences. They let people watch movies on giant virtual screens, play immersive games, and even work out.

Meta did not respond to a request for comment about Quest sales from Business Insider.

Quest competes with VR headsets from other companies, including Sony, HTC, and Apple, although Apple's Vision Pro headset costs much more, at $3,500.

Meta has been working to make VR more accessible to a broader audience. In October, the company launched the Quest 3S, a less expensive version of the more advanced Quest 3, priced at $299 — $200 less than the standard model. Like the Quest 3, the 3S lets people experience mixed reality in full color, making it a compelling entry point for VR newcomers.

Meta's quarterly revenue from Reality Labs, which includes $299 Ray-Ban glasses that let people take pictures and talk to Meta's AI chatbot, was $270 million — an increase of 29% compared to the same quarter the year before, the company announced in October.

Still, Reality Labs continues to bleed money. In the third quarter of 2024, Meta reported that Reality Labs lost $4.4 billion, up from $3.7 billion in the same quarter of 2023. For the first nine months of 2024, Reality Labs lost nearly $13 billion, Meta's earnings report said, and the company has warned investors that it expects the division to lose even more money.

"Overall, I'd say Reality Labs is clearly one of our strategic long-term priorities," said Susan Li, Meta's chief financial officer, responding to a question about Reality Labs' losses on the earnings call. She added that Meta expects it to "be an area of significant investment as we build out towards the very ambitious product road map that we have there."

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has remained bullish on the company's VR strategy. On the call, Zuckerberg highlighted the company's strong demand for its Ray-Ban glasses and expressed optimism about Orion, an early prototype of its glasses that superimpose digital elements onto the real world.

"We're not too far off from being able to deliver great-looking glasses that let you seamlessly blend the physical and digital worlds," Zuckerberg said on the earnings call.

Unlike the Meta Horizon app for Quest headsets, Meta View, the app for setting up the Ray-Ban glasses, however, isn't on the App Store's top charts.

• For some New Yorkers, winning the NYC housing lottery is the only way they can afford to stay in the city.
• But competition is tough: There are about 3.5 million applications each year.
• Those who have won say it often took multiple applications and months of waiting before they heard back.

Louis Ciprian, 29, moved around New York City a lot when he was younger.

His father died when he was 11, and Ciprian and his mother fell on hard times. At 15, he entered the foster care system. For the next couple of years, he bounced from place to place and even graduated from high school while living in a homeless shelter.

After college, he started couch surfing, living with different roommates while looking for a more permanent place to call home.

In 2022, he started applying for the New York City affordable housing lottery, which is run by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and the Housing Development Corporation (HDC).

Two years later, in July, Ciprian finally received the call that he'd been waiting for: He won the lottery for a one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx, where rent is $1,481 a month.

He was thankful and relieved.

"To be able to get an opportunity like that where I'm paying rent that is affordable and not going to hit more than 30% of my income, it's an amazing feeling," Ciprian, a customer success manager at a real estate technology company, told Business Insider.

After years of grappling with homelessness, he now has a place of his own.

1 in 450 chance of winning

NYC is experiencing a severe housing affordability crisis.

From 2022 to 2023, rents in NYC increased seven times as fast as wages, a Zillow and StreetEasy analysis found. Even tech workers — who make an average of $135,000 annually — can only afford 35% of rentals in the city.

It's not surprising that many lower-earning New Yorkers are choosing to leave the city or even the country entirely in order to enjoy a lower cost of living.

For those still in NYC, the outlook is far from rosy. Over the past decade, the city grew by nearly 800,000 people, but only added 200,000 new homes, mayor Eric Adams said in a speech in December 2022.

Not only that, the city has also lost some 100,000 apartments — many in wealthy neighborhoods — because New Yorkers keep consolidating multi-family buildings and turning them into one- or two-family homes.

A 2023 city housing and vacancy survey found that only 1.4% of NYC apartments were available to rent last year, and over 40% of all renters spend 30% or more of their income on rent.

For many New Yorkers like Ciprian, winning the housing lottery is their only hope of securing an affordable apartment in an increasingly expensive city.

While the application is free, each household must meet specific income requirements to qualify for an apartment. But winning the affordable housing lottery is a feat in itself.

The HPD receives about 3.5 million applications a year, Natasha Kersey, an HPD representative, told BI.

On average, there are 450 applications received per rental unit.

With competition so stiff, it is not uncommon for people to apply for multiple apartments offered in the lottery.

Nkenge Clarke, 30, told BI previously that she had sent out over 130 applications before she finally succeeded in her bid.

"It took me maybe over a year before I started hearing back from different properties that I applied to," Clarke said. "Some of them I ended up not qualifying for, some of them I didn't provide enough documentation for."

Now, she pays about $1,000 in rent every month for a one-bedroom apartment in Chelsea, a neighborhood on the west side of Manhattan. The timing was impeccable; her previous landlord was looking to raise her rent had she renewed her lease.

"This place literally came just in time, like a few months before my second-year lease ended," Clarke said.

While the process took a lot of paperwork and patience, it was well worth the effort, she added. After all, living in an affordable apartment in the heart of the city was like a dream come true.

Stabilized rent in an ever-expensive market

Interested parties can apply for the affordable housing lottery online via the Housing Connect portal or by mail. Once the deadline passes, all applications are combined to create a pool from which the lottery is conducted, Aileen Reynolds, the assistant commissioner of housing opportunity at HPD, told BI.

A computer algorithm randomizes all the applications and assigns everyone a number, known as a lottery log number. That number, she added, dictates the order in which the developers have to contact the applicants.

While it helps applicants get a sense of where they stand, it's not a perfect science since there might be people who applied but do not qualify for the apartments.

It can take any time between weeks to months for an applicant to hear back, Reynolds said.

In Josh Ayala's case, it took him eight months to receive a call back after he had applied for his apartment.

"I was like, wait, what? I totally forgot I applied to this," Ayala, 26, told BI in August.

Thankfully, it all worked out for him; He signed the lease for the apartment within a month of the viewing. Now he pays $2,345 in monthly rent, which is stabilized.

"Around COVID-19 time, people were moving into apartments, and for one year, it was a great price. But the next year, the landlord would just increase their rent exorbitantly," Ayala said. "I didn't want that to happen to me, so I wanted something that was more secure, too."

Likewise, rent stabilization was the main reason Brynne McManimie and Peter Romano started applying for the housing lottery.

In 2021, they lived in a $2,600-a-month apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. They had gotten a good deal on their lease due to the pandemic, but it didn't last long.

"After a year, our landlord raised our rent by like 25% and it made us very nervous about staying in that apartment," McManimie told BI in June. Their new rent was going to be $3,300 a month, and they decided it was too expensive for them to afford.

But luck was on their side: Within a month of applying for the housing lottery, they were contacted about a one-bedroom unit in Brooklyn.

The couple ended up signing a two-year lease. Now, they pay $2,800 in monthly rent.

"Since it's rent-stabilized, they can't raise it like a ton," Romano told BI. "Which is honestly really attractive to us, given what happened with our last landlord."

The income and household eligibility criteria for the lottery apartments only apply at the initial stage.

"Folks only need to qualify based on house size and income at the time they move in," Reynolds said.

'Native New Yorkers deserve to stay here'

But the housing lottery isn't without its criticism.

For years, the city's "community preference" policy dictated that half of new affordable apartments must first be offered to those already living in the area.

However, in 2015, three women filed a lawsuit against the city, saying that the policy reinforced segregation.

After almost a decade, the city finally agreed to settle the lawsuit in January. Under the terms of the settlement, the city will reduce the percentage of affordable houses set aside for those already living in the same community to 20%, down from the original 50%, per court documents. In May 2029, it will drop to 15%.

"Although the preference has been reduced, the outcome allows us to preserve it and continue to do our work by advocating for New Yorkers that need more housing at deeply affordable levels," Kersey said.

Still, NYC residents do get priority in the affordable housing lottery — although applicants don't need to be US citizens, Reynolds said.

In the meantime, the housing lottery will still be one of the best ways for New Yorkers to stay in affordable apartments in the city.

"As much as I'm for the housing lottery, I think that it does suck that as a native, sometimes the only hope and dream of staying in the city affordably is this route," Ceronne Mitchell, who pays $1,600 a month for her one-bedroom lottery housing apartment in Queens, told BI previously.

"Native New Yorkers deserve to stay here, and I'm always proud when one can," she added.

• Lindsay Jang moved to Hong Kong 15 years ago and has launched five businesses.
• Despite not all of Jang's ventures being successful, she says she has learned something from each.
• At 43, the entrepreneur and mom says she's finally found ways to disconnect and find work-life balance.

Lindsay Jang moved to Hong Kong 15 years ago and has kept herself busy, very busy.

Since relocating, she's launched five businesses — including a one-Michelin-starred restaurant and a workout technique listed on Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop. Now, at 43, she balances her time between running her companies and raising her two kids.

Born in Alberta, Canada, Jang is the eldest of three sisters. Her dad was a civil engineer, and her mom worked as a special needs teacher. A stroke of luck changed her family's path when her parents won a gold brick, valued at 100,000 Canadian dollars, in a local carnival lottery in 1981, the year she was born.

Shortly after, when her dad got laid off, he invested in a Chinese-Canadian restaurant in Sherwood Park, near her hometown. Her dad went on to run the restaurant, and her mom decided to be a stay-at-home mom. "Growing up, the restaurant was a huge part of our lives and really shaped who I am today," she told Business Insider.

Jang struggled to find the right career path. "I had scholarships for science and French, and I explored a few different paths — science, art school, digital publishing, and business management — but none of them fully resonated with me. I didn't graduate from any of those programs," she said.

She dropped out of college when she decided she wanted to become an actor.

She stopped in NYC before moving to Hong Kong

In 2002, Jang left Canada and moved to New York City to study acting. She took on a job as a floor captain at Nobu Fifty Seven, and began contributing to the restaurant's special events department. In 2009, at 27, she relocated to Hong Kong with her then-romantic partner, Matt Abergel, who had accepted a job offer as an executive chef.

They had two kids during their relationship before separating in 2011. Despite the split, they remain close. "We're best friends, co-parents, and business partners," Jang said.

In 2011, Jang said they raised around $500,000 to open Yardbird, the restaurant that went on to earn a Michelin star in 2021. It was followed up with Ronin — another izakaya-style dining bar — in 2012.

Jang said the primary investor in both restaurants had been a regular customer of theirs in New York. "He ate at Masa, where Matt worked, every week and would occasionally come to Nobu Fifty Seven," she said.

The team managed to find their rhythm at Yardbird early on. "We hit capacity within just a few weeks thanks to word-of-mouth, and once the media discovered us, it brought in a steady stream of guests," Jang said. "We didn't rely on traditional PR or marketing — instead, we gave out stickers and T-shirts to build the brand."

Social media was still an early concept — Instagram had just launched the year before — and it didn't play much of a role in the hype. Jang did, however, face challenges online in the early stages, when she was sharing the restaurant's no reservations and no service charge policies. "People didn't like those ideas and weren't shy about voicing their concerns," she said.

The restaurant has continued to draw in crowds over the past 13 years, despite the policies. "The main draw is without doubt the 20-plus types of yakitori skewers made with local 'three-yellow' chicken from beak to tail, grilled over binchotan charcoal," per the Michelin website. An extensive Japanese whisky collection has also added to its appeal.

After the couple split, they went back to being friends. "Between sharing businesses and kids, we take pride in giving each other the space and time to do the things that we need to do to be happy," Abergel, co-owner of the restaurant, told BI. "Things are pretty great most of the time, and when things are hard, we know that the foundation we have as friends is stronger than whatever we are facing."

Not all of Jang's ventures have been successful

Jang has also seen some of her companies fail.

Sunday's Grocery, which started as an extension of the Yardbird brand, opened in 2014 and closed in 2016. "We took over an existing business to test the concept, but the location wasn't ideal, and the costs were too high to make it sustainable," Jang said. "It was a valuable experiment, and while it didn't last, it taught us to prioritize scalability and the importance of location."

Jang went on to launch Sunday's Spirit in 2017, before wrapping it up in 2023 due to challenges with margins, certain team dynamics, and working within Japan's highly specific market structure. "Both of these ventures taught us that not every concept needs to be forever," she said. "Letting go of ideas that no longer resonate or fit the bigger picture is OK. The key is to embrace adaptability while staying true to the vision."

She continues to run Hecho, a creative agency she launched in 2017. Previous clients include Hongkong Land, a property investment company and Swire, a conglomerate working in sectors ranging from aviation and beverages to healthcare.

Finding balance and staying healthy

In the past, Jang found it difficult to find a work-life balance. "I don't put rules on myself when it comes to disconnecting because my work and my life are about being connected," Jang said in an interview with Compare Retreats in 2020. However, more recently, she has found ways to decompress.

"I've been making a concerted effort to disconnect more," she told BI. Flexibility plays a central role in her time management. "I run my entire life from my phone and computer, which allows me the freedom to manage my schedule. So even though I'm technically always plugged in, I still make time for myself and my family," she added.

Her daily routine now includes a 20- to 45-minute session in the infrared sauna. She said it was a trip to HigherDOSE in New York almost 10 years ago that got her interested in the heat. "It was intense, but it felt productive. Since I had space at home, it made more sense to own one than to pay by the minute elsewhere."

A few years after the sauna was installed, during COVID-19, Jang transformed her TV room into a workout studio. "The space was better used as a place where I could sweat and move every day," she said.

Her most recent lifestyle adjustment was to stop drinking. "I cut alcohol out of my life over a year and a half ago, which was significant given my F&B background," she said. "I was nervous about what social situations would be like without alcohol, but I've found that my life has improved in every way."

Her career has also shifted toward fitness

Four years ago, she co-launched Family Form, a workout technique and studio in Hong Kong. She said the mat-based workout aims to use movement and infrared heat to strengthen and balance the body.

"People connect with it on a deeper level because it's approachable yet challenging, and it becomes part of their daily routine," she said.

Classes are often at full capacity with waiting lists. On Google reviews, nearly all of its ratings are five stars.

Expanding to mainland China is part of the plan and has come with hurdles. "We are building our China community for when we launch in Shanghai in a few months, and it's been interesting to navigate the approach in such a different market," she said. "It's been a grassroots effort mostly, and we're so grateful for the word-of-mouth support from our community."

In July 2024, Family Form received support for the directory listing of Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop. The listing states, "It's intense but also totally cathartic. "

"Someone from their team reached out to us," Jang said, regarding the posting, adding that they did not pay for the listing. "It was purely an organic connection." A representative for Goop did not respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider.

In November, the company launched classes in Manila and will start in Shanghai in early 2025.

As for her future, Jang hasn't planned too far ahead. "I prefer to remain flexible and open to opportunities as they arise," she said. Jang said she has a few projects in the works, including a new wellness product brand that will launch next year.

"While Hong Kong will always be home, I plan to spend more time in a more relaxed environment once my kids are in university," she said. "Running multiple businesses has taught me the importance of balancing ambition with sustainability. The biggest life lesson I've learned is that success comes from staying true to your vision while remaining flexible enough to adapt to change."

• Netflix didn't crash when it streamed two NFL games on Christmas.
• Even better for the NFL and Netflix: The streaming-only games got audiences that were only a bit smaller than a TV game.
• Streaming live sports used to be a novelty. Not anymore.

Netflix passed two tests on Wednesday when it streamed live NFL football games for the first time in its history.

First: Netflix managed to stream the games around the world without widespread tech foul-ups that plagued its Mike Tyson-Jake Paul boxing exhibition/stunt last month.

Second: Netflix managed to attract the kind of audience for the games that you'd expect from the NFL, which is continually the most popular thing on conventional TV.

The NFL and the streamer say that both of Wednesday's games — the Kansas City Chiefs vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens vs. the Houston Texans — averaged around 24 million viewers in the US. That's a record for streaming NFL games in the country. (Those initial numbers may swell a bit once the NFL, Netflix, and Nielsen scour for additional viewers.)

The biggest audience — around 27 million viewers — showed up for the "Beyoncé Bowl" — a halftime performance during the Ravens/Texans game, featuring, of course, Beyoncé.

For comparison, last year, the NFL attracted an average of some 28 million US viewers for the two games it broadcast on Christmas Day, via conventional TV networks. (Netflix's numbers don't include viewers outside the US; it says it will report back on those on December 31. Netflix says the audience for the Tyson/Paul event peaked at 65 million worldwide and 38 million in the US.)

All of which means that when Netflix streams Christmas games again next year, and again in 2027, it won't seem like a novelty. It will just be the most popular sport on TV, delivered via a streaming service.

This is what both Netflix and the NFL want, for slightly different reasons. The NFL is always looking for another outlet that will pay it top dollar for the right to show its games — Netflix paid the NFL a reported $150 million for this year's games — and Netflix wants high-profile live events as a way to boost its nascent ad business.

Win-win. This is what the NFL has been finding every time it sells streaming rights to digital players over the years, including Yahoo, Twitter, Amazon, and Google.

While we are here, a couple other notes:

• While there was some discussion of Netflix trying to make its NFL coverage unique, I couldn't discern anything meaningfully different about the games from any others I've watched this year. Which, again, is the point: The NFL wants the product to look the same no matter where you see it. (And if there is a desire for something different on the part of fans, I have yet to discern it.)

• Netflix streaming NFL games for the first time is meaningful to the NFL, Netflix, and people who pay attention to the media business. But in my 100% unscientific poll of people in the real world, no one knew Netflix had the games. And when they found out, they didn't care, which makes sense: Neither game was particularly important, or suspenseful. But for Netflix and the NFL that wasn't the point.

• Monica Barbaro plays Joan Baez in "A Complete Unknown," which follows Bob Dylan's early career.
• Barbaro told BI that she and Timothée Chalamet, who plays Dylan, first met at a music rehearsal.
• Barbaro did vocal training to sing like Baez and duet with Chalamet's Dylan.

In "A Complete Unknown," Timothée Chalamet and Monica Barbaro inhabit two musical legends: Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. True to form, the actors first met on set at a music rehearsal.

The film, directed by James Mangold, stars Chalamet as a young Dylan during the early years of his career, from his 1962 debut self-titled album through his controversial pivot to electric instrumentation. It features many of Dylan's contemporaries from the era, including Baez (Barbaro), Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), and Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook).

The film's greatest strength is its music, much of which was recorded live on set. Not only does Chalamet perform live as Dylan, but he duets in-character with his collaborators. That led to the perfect meeting for the actors.

"We heard each other's voices in recording studio sessions, because I would sing duets to his voice," Barbaro told Business Insider. "The first time we met was a music rehearsal, and it was just the most beautiful experience to me."

Like Chalamet, Barbaro also did vocal training to play Baez in the film, working to emulate the singer's trilling vibrato while also researching Baez's life and career. The actor told BI that she knew the music was going to be "the biggest hill to climb," and she knew that Chalamet — who spent five years preparing to play Dylan — had been practicing. By the time they first met, she felt ready to hold her ground not only as an actor, but as a musician.

"Getting to play next to him and hear the harmonies of our voices and the accompaniment, so complementary of each other — that was a career highlight," Barbaro said.

"I'm so glad we waited until that point to meet each other and to work with each other," she continued. "It was more true to a Bob and Joan version of the meeting that we'd have these musical proficiencies, that we could collaborate and play together."