Airfares are climbing. Hotels are charging more. Rental cars cost what they cost — which is to say, too much. Summer travel costs are rising again, and the collective response seems to be a shrug followed by a credit card swipe. According to Axios, domestic airfare is up 8% compared…
Category: Economy
Economy
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Power Prices Is Higher Because ChatGPT Needs to Think Really Hard
Turns out training large language models to write mediocre marketing copy costs more than anyone expected — specifically, it costs 67 million Americans a 76% jump in wholesale electricity prices in three months. PJM Interconnection, which operates the largest power grid in the U.S., just released a report that reads…
Culture
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Adults Are Pregaming Again — Because Cocktails Cost $20 Now
Somewhere between 2019 and now, the price of a cocktail became a moral question. Twenty dollars for a margarita. Eighteen for a beer and a shot. Thirty-five if you’re feeling adventurous and order something with mezcal and a torched rosemary sprig. So adults — the same people who swore they’d…
Culture
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The Optimism Gap: Why Fewer Americans See a Better Tomorrow
The Gallup poll dropped this week with a stat that should make everyone pause: only 59.2% of Americans expect their lives to be better in five years. That’s the lowest number since they started tracking this nearly 20 years ago — and it’s down from 68.3% just five years ago….
AI
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AI Rent Human Bodies — And We’re All Just Tenants Now
The machines came for the jobs. Now they want the bodies. RentAHuman.ai launched this week with a pitch so blunt it almost sounds like satire: “Robots need your body.” Founder Alexander Liteplo — a software engineer with apparently zero interest in subtlety — built a platform where AI agents can…
Culture
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Six Years of Receipts — And The Groceries Aren’t Getting Cheaper
A 5-pound family pack of chicken breast cost $15.01 in January 2020. Today, that same pack runs about $20.40. The eggs you bought for breakfast doubled in price, then crashed. Ground beef climbed 45%. Coffee — because the universe has a sense of humor — shot up 54%. MLive crunched…