It’s one thing to invent something cool within controlled laboratory environments. It’s entirely another to scale that new baby for sale.  The tension between innovation and commercialization is something we regularly wrestle with at Abstrax. Every morning, we don lab coats and ask the same question: “How do you make money from research done in a lab?”  Balance innovation with commercial reality  Discovery for its own sake isn’t enough. Many R&D-heavy companies discover that brilliant ideas can languish for years if they don’t have a system for bringing them to market.   We decided early on to build that bridge proactively. This meant investing heavily not just in research, but in the systems and machinery that connect lab work to real-world products. Our scientists don’t concoct in ivory towers, they work hand-in-hand with product developers to ensure (most) experiments align with market needs.  This pragmatic approach focuses our curiosity. We poured resources into advanced analytical technology. Among other exquisite toys, we operate an ultra-sensitive aroma analysis platform nicknamed OMNI. With it, we can break down a complex flavor into hundreds of molecular components and pinpoint the ones that matter. By capturing a “3D metabolite fingerprint” of a material (cannabis flower, hop varietals, etc.), we get a complete map of that sample’s aroma chemistry.  Why go to these extremes? Because understanding a flavor at that granular level is the key to replicating it, enhancing it, and ultimately monetizing it. We can identify over 500 distinct compounds in a single hop strain. That level of resolution lets us see opportunities others might miss, like the trace molecules that round out pineapple, or a sulfur compound responsible for “skunky” notes.   From breakthrough to beer glass  To illustrate how lab research turns into revenue, take our recent work with Citra, one of the most celebrated hops in craft brewing. Citra’s appeal lies in its remarkably juicy, complex flavor—think grapefruit, lime, peach, and passionfruit steamrolled into one. This tropical medley makes a Citra-hopped beer delicious. But here’s the rub: Achieving that same flavor consistently at scale is hard. Hops are agricultural products, subject to the whims of weather and yearly variation. The Citra you get this year might not taste exactly like last year’s crop.  This is where our lab-to-market philosophy shines. Using OMNI, we profiled Citra’s chemical makeup in exquisite detail. Armed with that “blueprint,” we developed an Omni Hop Profile extract that mirrors Citra’s flavor profile with uncanny accuracy. For brewers, this is a game-changer. Instead of being at the mercy of Mother Nature, they can rely on our Citra extract to deliver the exact same flavor in every batch, forever. And because it’s made from botanically derived ingredients, it stays true to the clean-label standards brewers abide by. We even worked with veteran brewmasters on pilot brews to fine-tune the extract’s performance in different beer styles. By the time our Citra profile hit the market, it was brewer-tested and production-ready.   Our Citra victory highlights our core principle of reasonable innovation. We didn’t stop at discovering what makes that hop special, we pushed to make it a tangible solution to a real problem. That is the essence of monetizing R&D: moving from “Eureka!” to a viable SKU.   No fluff, only real solutions  In avant-garde industries like cannabis and craft beer, it’s easy to get caught up in hype and bold claims. We prefer a different tack: Let the results speak. If we say our new formulation improves a beer’s shelf-life or an extract boosts an IPA’s aroma, we’ve got the data to back it up. Grounding innovation in evidence keeps us credible and ensures we stay focused on real market value.  We also recognize that not every experiment will pan out, and that’s okay. Part of our system is knowing never to become 100% pot committed. We’ll test 10 ideas, then swiftly double down on the one or two that show commercial promise. By failing fast and smart, we conserve resources for the innovations that count.  The new R&D playbook  Our journey from lab to market hasn’t been quick or easy. It took patience and a willingness to invest up front. But that patience is paying off. Today, Abstrax’s approach is turning niche scientific insights into mainstream products. What others consider to be a cost center is our engine for growth.   When scientists and strategists work in sync, every discovery is viewed through the lens of real-world impact. The healthy tension between invention and commercialization keeps us sharp. As it turns out, the lab and the market are pretty good at balancing each other.   Kevin Koby is CEO and cofounder of Abstrax. 

Max is changing its name back to HBO Max, and much like The Joker in one of Warner’s DC Universe films, I can’t stop laughing. Three years have passed since the mega-merger that birthed Warner Bros. Discovery and led to a new name for its flagship streaming service. The Max brand was supposed to emphasize a breadth of programming beyond the HBO catalog, but Warner’s executives now say the forthcoming rebrand (or unbrand) represents a return to quality over quantity. This would be easier to accept if HBO’s owners had any credibility left. But over the past few years, pretty much everything the Warner-Discovery merger was supposed to accomplish has failed. Now, the company can no longer articulate what it’s aiming for, other than to squeeze a little extra profit from a flailing enterprise. It’s as funny as it is sad. Max’s broken promises Let’s go back to when AT&T announced it would spin off WarnerMedia into a new company and merge it with Discovery. (The spin-off itself acknowledged that AT&T shouldn’t have bought Warner in the first place, but that’s a whole other story.) Here’s what the companies’ 2021 press release claimed the merger would accomplish: Increase investments in original programming for its streaming services. Enhance programming options “across its global linear pay TV and broadcast channels.” Create new opportunities for “under-represented storytellers and independent creators.” Give viewers “innovative video experiences and points of engagement.” Here’s what the company actually did: Became the first streamer to remove popular original programming from its catalog. Axed completed films for the sake of tax write-offs. Lost the rights to live NBA games, the crown jewel of its sports programming, starting next season. Quickly started cancelling shows that highlighted underrepresented communities. Did not deliver any notable video innovations, but did start charging extra for 4K video and will soon shake down password sharers for more money. Raised prices for ad-free streaming. Paying more for less (again) More broadly, Warner Bros. Discovery promised to deliver what CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels called a “blowout DTC (direct-to-consumer) product.” At a 2022 industry conference, Wiedenfels said this service would be “one of the most complete, sort of four quadrant, old-young-male-female products out there.” Over time, the company did take some steps to bulk up Max’s offerings. It brought in Discovery’s catalog of reality TV programming, launched a live feed of CNN programming, and added live sports from TNT and other Warner cable channels. But with the name reverting back to HBO Max this summer, Warner says completeness is no longer the goal. President and CEO of streaming JB Perrette said in a press release that HBO Max will offer “not everything for everyone in a household, but something distinct and great for adults and families.” That likely means less of what Max added over the past few years. Its sports offerings will be slim without the NBA; CNN will have its own separate subscription service, raising questions about the future of Max’s CNN programming; and cable channels such as Discovery could be spun off into a separate company. “The things subscribers want from us are HBO programming, scripted dramas, comedies, documentaries, the pay-one [licensing window] movies, library movies, and basically the Warner Bros. TV library,” CEO of HBO and Max Content Casey Bloys said. News, sports, and reality programming are conspicuously absent from that statement. While Warner hasn’t announced any immediate changes to HBO Max’s content, the likely outcome is that you’ll be paying more for less. If it makes you feel any better, this hasn’t worked out for Warner Bros. Discovery’s business, either. Like other TV programmers, Warner has been leaning on profits from traditional pay TV bundles to fund its forays into streaming. The merger was supposed to help, as the combined entity would have more bargaining power to increase pay TV carriage fees. But with the loss of NBA rights and the overall trend toward hollowing out original pay TV programming, those channels have become increasingly worthless. Carriage fees for TNT are now flat or in decline, and cable companies such as Comcast and Spectrum are getting Max thrown into their TV packages at no extra charge, hurting Warner’s streaming revenues. Last August, Warner took a $9 billion write-down on the value of its TV assets and may now look to spin them off; meanwhile, the company’s stock price has fallen from $24.88 on the day of the merger to $9.05 as of this writing. All this just so we can get back to where we started, with a service supposedly focused on quality again. Given what we’ve seen over the past three years, you’d be justified in seeing this as just an excuse to cut more corners and fatten executives’ pay packages instead. Sign up for Jared’s Cord Cutter weekly newsletter to get more streaming advice every Friday

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)It's possibly becoming a bit of a hard sell these days, the old roguelike dungeon-crawling adventure, replete with retro/pixel visuals. We know it. However, as busy and as overstuffed with pale imitators to the greats as this genre is, it's still well worth keeping an eye out for the odd gem. And here we have an example of said gem. Into the Restless Ruins is a fantastic thing - put simply, a game that takes a whole bunch of mechanics you might think you're tired of, and weaves them together into something entirely fresh and unique. Edinburgh-based Ant Workshop Studios has melded deckbuilding, dungeon-crawling, dungeon-building, a fiendishly moreish memory game, and delightful, Vampire Survivors-esque, auto-combat to beguiling effect in its Switch debut. The delicately judged balance here, in how each of these mechanics is given an equal share of your time, ensures that, from the first dungeon drop to the very last battle of the campaign, you may find yourself immobilised, such is the addictiveness of the core gameplay loops running in tandem. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked) Kicking off in a dank catacomb, in a region known as Eorisdale, Into the Restless Ruins sees you take charge of a cloaked protagonist, a Celtic champion, who's on the hunt for the Harvest Maiden. This figure from Scottish folklore, according to the game, can satisfy any heart's greatest desires - in return for a little toil. And so off we pop down some dungeons as we've got a hot tip-off that's where she goes to chill out. This first dungeon gently introduces the flow of the gameplay. Starting a run, you're procedurally-generated a single piece of dungeon, perhaps a crossroads, with a spawn point in the centre. You also have a deck with five cards. Each card has a little part of a dungeon displayed on it, alongside the number of BP (Build Points) you'll need to play it, and a note of any other effects the card may have. An armoury will raise your attack stat, a camp lets you regenerate a little of your torch, whilst faded groves give you a little health regen, and so on through more complex fare. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked) You start off from your spawn point and use your cards, choosing a piece of dungeon to fit — in a lovely clicky way — to the piece you're currently on. The aim now is to build and expand, using your given turns and BP, to reach several clouded areas spread around you, some of which contain seals. These seals must be found and broken to advance further to a final boss confrontation. All good. Now, once you've done your planning and played your cards, you hold in 'Y' to drop right down into the dungeon (and it's nice how the game just seamlessly zooms right in for this bit) where the auto-combat battling begins. The combat here will come as no surprise to anyone who's survived vampires: it's all about positioning and timing, avoiding explodey rats and mice, weaving through wizard's spells, and knowing when to press or pull back. Once this part starts, you'll likely quickly realise that you've made some mistakes in the planning (especially if you are us). You see, as your dungeons expand, as you reach a seal and break it and are then faced down by a horde of angry beasties, the importance of dungeon design is fully revealed. Accessibility Features GameplayAssistsControlsVisualAudioFull Accessibility Report Data by Family Gaming Database Campsites, first up, need to be placed along routes with some thought to ensure you can keep your torch lit, because they've only gone and put your light supply on a tightly-timed gauge. Tension has entered the chat! You also have a bar dictating your health, which doesn't take much to empty either, so the positioning of those regenerating faded groves is now of critical import. Once you complete a run you'll be taken back to your deck and another gauge is deployed. This purple addition to the fun shows you how cursed you are, you see. It gets added to with each complete run, and so doing well, not dying, and playing clever will help you keep this bar filling up as slowly as possible. Dying and making a mess, on the other hand, will add some hefty chunks, putting you at risk of being overwhelmed before you manage to break all the seals and beat the boss. Phew! The first dungeon's leisurely pace and straightforward layout gives you a chance to get used to spinning and placing parts of your dungeon onto the map, as well as getting to grips with how you'll need to time everything just so to push on to victory. The combat keeps itself varied by providing new weapons and collectibles, too, as well as giving you new options through a vast selection of upgradeable and changeable cards (116 base varieties, we believe). Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked) There are further layers provided through build synergies — certain placement patterns provide surprise boons — and there's also a whole bunch of Cantrips to unlock and use, allowing you to add both positive and negative effects to raise or lower the amount of XP you gain in a run, or "harvest" to use the correct lingo. So, lots of moving parts to consider. You've also got a few characters to meet out in these ruins that you've built around yourself, strange NPCs who'll upgrade your cards, duplicate particular faves, and more besides, whilst imparting some folklore upon you. Upgrading here, it has to be said, is also just really cool and satisfying because, besides the usual numbers-going-up, you get new entrances onto your card pieces. So, for example, a long corridor with three doors that you couldn't use because it wouldn't fit, now gets an extra door for you to work with. It's addictive, puzzley-time stuff that just gets better as it gets harder. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked) Of course, when a clouded area within any of your dungeons doesn't contain a seal, you've wasted a lot of resources making your way towards it, and this aspect also brings enough tension to your planning time that the building is every bit as enjoyable as the combat. Wandering through dungeons brings the added danger of getting lost, too, as there's no map, so the memory game starts to rear its head as you move onto the later catacombs, which mix things up by spreading the clouds you need to uncover in various directions. This means way more pre-planning is required to avoid coming a cropper to the tight time and health constraints placed on you. Beyond this, you've also got cursed cards that'll be played into your deck once you've been cursed, these add some rough negatives to proceedings if you let them sit in your hand, and so you need to consider when to play them (they cost a BP) in order to do the least amount of damage to your chances and get them out of your deck. These are offset by favour cards you'll get from breaking seals and levelling up, so you could, as an example, play a cursed card that means you can't heal up at groves, but then play a card that gives you +500% damage, so it nullifies the negative somewhat and removes it from your deck. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked) There are so many wrinkles here that it could have become very tedious and/or messy, so the best thing is how it's all so effortless and easy to learn, even if you don't really do cards as a regular thing. Every aspect is explained well (there's a tutorial in the menus when you need it), and you can take your time in the planning phase. As the catacombs get harder, things progress along perfectly from relaxing and addictive, to tension-filled and even more bloody addictive. The lovely pixel art style, quick shots of Scottish folklore, and solid soundtrack all work to give you exactly the kind of ambience you need to settle in for the long haul. In terms of negatives, well, the story aspects are light, really, so this one isn't gonna be challenging any of the more narratively bombastic examples of the genre to a straight-up auto-fight in the school playground. We guess, too, that the graphical style is one that's been done quite a bit, but honestly, we're picking for the sake of it now. This is some premium-grade roguelike, in the end - a uniquely fresh take that borrows inspirations from all over its chosen genre, and cobbles them together into a wonderful indie game that's very much its own thing. Just be warned that the 'one more run' factor here is high. Conclusion Into The Restless Ruins has taken us totally by surprise. This is a belting addition to the Switch's lineup of roguelikes that manages to make itself fresh and unique in a category full of bland copycats. The melding of deckbuilding, combat, memory challenges, and construction of dungeons makes for a game that draws you right in every time, robbing you of hours as you work your way through its delightful catacombs. A little more narrative oomph may have taken it even further, but you're still looking at a bit of a must-play here. A wonderfully clever melding of mechanicsCombat is fun with good variety in enemies and weaponsPacing is spot on, with dungeons getting more complex as you goEasy to get to grips with but deep as the darkest dungeon, too Story is very lightPixel art style has been done quite a bit before Excellent 9/10

Harvard GSD has announced the Class of 2026 Loeb Fellows. The 10 winners come from varied disciplines and places—Quito, Pittsburgh, Stockholm, Los Angeles, London, Rio de Janeiro, and Glasgow. The Loeb Fellowship gives mid-career professionals the chance to stay at Harvard and MIT for 10 months, and engage with students, participate in round tables, convene workshops, and more. Harvard GSD dean Sarah M. Whiting said this year’s batch are “inspiring individuals” and represent “exceptional practitioners in their respective fields.” She said she looks forward to the fellows “sparking new conversations and challenging us all to consider how design can address global challenges.” Oliver Wainwright, The Guardian’s London-based architecture critic, is among the fellows. Wainwright follows in the foot steps of past architecture critics to have earned the fellowship, like Inga Saffron, Mark Lamster, Alexandra Lange, Pilar Viladas, Henry Grabar, and others. Both Saffron and Lange were fellows prior to winning Pulitzer Prizes for Criticism. Loeb Fellow Daniela Chacón Arias is cofounder and executive director of TANDEM, a Quito, Ecuador–based consultancy. Other fellows participating in the 2026 iteration include, Cecilia Cuff, founder of The Nascent Group in Chicago; Jeremiah Ellison, Ward 5 City Councilmember in Minneapolis; and  Brazilian architect Pedro Évora Amaral. Jennifer Hughes of the National Endowment for the Arts; Natalia Rudiak, director of special projects at ReImagine Appalachia in Pittsburgh; Jacek Smolicki, founder of Ekoton in Stockholm; Andy Summers, founder and co-director of Architecture Fringe in Glasgow; and Julia Thayne, founder of Twoº & Rising in Los Angeles, are also 2026 Loeb Fellows. Jacek Smolicki is the 2026 Loeb/ArtLab Fellow. Architect John Loeb is the Loeb Fellowship’s namesake. John Peterson—an architect, activist, and a Loeb Fellow in the class of 2006—now curates the fellowship. “In his autobiography, John Loeb reflected that among his many philanthropic endeavors, the Loeb Fellowship stood out as the most personally rewarding,” Peterson said. “Until their passing in 1996, John and his wife, Frances, hosted a luncheon for each year’s class of fellows at their home,” Peterson continued. “It was not the program alone, but the people—their talents, aspirations, and potential—that inspired their deep appreciation for this unique investment. In difficult times, when the future can feel bleak, it is the vision and actions of individuals with a shared purpose that rekindle hope and remind us that better futures are possible.” Tosin Oshinowo, Shana M. griffin, Tawkiyah Jordan, and others were among the 2025 Loeb Fellows. The 2026 Loeb Fellowship will commence in August 2026.

Nicole Crowley (left) and products she got for free or near-free through couponing. Courtesy of Nicole Crawley 2025-05-16T13:07:11Z Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Nicole Crawley has saved $2,000 in the past 2 years using a couponing app to manage household expenses. Crawley, a stay-at-home mom, has honed her strategy to save on baby products and essentials. Crawley has been couponing since she was 15, and says it's worth it to learn how to save. Nicole Crawley has been couponing since she was 15.Now, at 28 and a mom of three, she takes money-saving seriously. Over the past two years, she's saved $2,000 using a couponing app. That can make a real difference in her household, which lives on one income since she's a stay-at-home mother. High day care costs drove her to stay home with her kids; losing her salary means leaning even more into couponing."I still use a lot of the skills and a lot of the shopping techniques to be able to afford the lifestyle that we have kept up," she said, referring to the money-saving methods she learned growing up in a "very, very poor" family. Though she now mainly uses a couponing app, she first accrued savings the old-school way: a couponing binder, rifling through the recycling center for coupon inserts, and even collecting coupons from people in her community who wanted to help out.Those skills are coming in handy in an age when products, especiall those for children and babies, have seen price fluctuations. Tariffs might only increase costs. An April 10 survey of 1,1014 US consumers by market research data firm Numerator found that 83% of consumers are planning on changing up their shopping behaviors in preparation for tariffs, and 48% said that they'll look for sales or coupons. Crawley said that tariffs are a stressor — she's been picking up her couponing to ensure that they have staples in their household."If prices do increase significantly, which I do see happening, it won't hit home as hard and as abruptly," she said.Couponing to save money on kids' stuffWhen she was younger, Crawley watched TLC's "Extreme Couponing," a TV show about people seeking to save as much money as possible and competing to see who can get their bills to be the smallest. While Crawley said the show itself is unrealistic, it did help her launch her own couponing passion. Crawley said that when she first moved out of her house at 18, she paused her couponing for a little while she got settled. But when her first child was born a few years later, and she was trying to make it on her own, she discovered how expensive baby gear was. That's when she threw herself back into the couponing lifestyle. She was able to accumulate so many baby items that she could donate some to her local women's care center; her hauls included baby soap, lotions, and diaper wipes. She also said she took her couponing ethos to other ways of saving — she utilized thrift stores, and would barter her coupon items for other items she needed, like baby clothes or toys.Couponing these days looks a bit different. Paper coupons are less common, and retailers will only allow consumers to use a few at a time, she said. Instead, rebate apps like Ibotta are the place to be these days. That app has helped Crawley save over $2,000. She also takes advantage of retailers' online coupons and online loyalty accounts. One of her most recent household finds: Eight toilet bowl cleaners for $5 at Walgreens. With a universe of deal options, Crawley said she's been focusing her efforts on diapers, formula, and other baby accoutrements.Getting discounts and trying out new productsCrawley also capitalizes on a strategy retailers use to potentially hook new customers: She'll often try new products just because they have a steep discount. When Ragu announced a new kids veggie sauce, she was able to get jars for 25 cents each; it ended up being a hit in her household, and she has 12 jars currently sitting in her pantry.Crawley is still trying to be mindful of overconsumption — she doesn't want to just accrue things she doesn't need for the sake of couponing. She said that she tries to clear some things out when she's run out of space, or they might not be able to use them before they go bad."If I get anything extra that, we might not use this in time, it automatically gets donated to a family in need. I'll post on Facebook, 'Hey, who needs this? Come get it," she said. "Or I'll take it to our woman's care center and they'll dish it out to whoever needs it there."Couponing has been worth it for Crawley's household. She knows it can be daunting to explore, but the work is worth it."When you're planning your grocery excursion with it, making your list, it can be time-consuming," she said. "You're checking multiple apps, you're checking all the coupons, you're checking the ads, you're writing everything down. But I think just an hour to sit down and do it and saving the money makes it worth it."Do you have a story to share about finding ways to save money? Contact this reporter at jkaplan@businessinsider.com. Recommended video

Clerkenwell Design Week is nearly upon us… Are our friends and readers in the London area ready for some exciting programming?! If so, you can RSVP here. Next week, Design Milk managing editor Joseph Sgambati III will join SieMatic’s Director of Brand Experience Marc Sporer on stage at the Church of Design for an engaging dialogue on 21 May at 13:00. Presented by SieMatic, “The Art of Intuitive Individuality” will explore the nuance of leveraging architecture and personal identity for timeless design. But what does that look like in practice? How can designers, specifiers, and clients operate outside of trends to craft something with a deeper meaning and some serious staying power? Since 1929, SieMatic has positioned the kitchen as the home’s creative hub through pioneering solutions with innovations that extend well beyond the culinary space. An example of this industry-leading design includes the handleless kitchen concept, which they are credited with introducing to the world having popularized it in the 1960s. During the talk, Sporer and Sgambati will consider personal taste as it applies to space making, touch on elements of neuroarchitecture, and argue the function of beauty for the sake of wellness – with plenty of opportunity for the audience to contribute. Attendees will be invited to participate forging their own connections between materiality, mood, and memory. The smooth, soft close of a drawer locking into place. The ambient glow of backlit casework made warmer by fragrant cuisine. And the visual excitement of high-contrast material connections. As times change, lifestyles evolve, and technology advances at near-light speed, so too does the designer’s role in keeping concepts human centric. It is paramount that architecture and interiors tap into the senses in an ever-shifting landscape of commodities vying for people’s precious attention. To learn more about this and other Design Dialogues by SANDOW, visit clerkenwelldesignweek.com or RSVP to “The Art of Intuitive Individuality” talk here. Photography courtesy of SieMatic.

Christine Farro has cut back on the presents she sends her grandchildren on their birthdays, and she’s put off taking two cats and a dog for their shots. All her clothes come from thrift stores and most of her vegetables come from her garden. At 73, she has cut her costs as much as she can to live on a tight budget.But it’s about to get far tighter.As the Trump administration resumes collections on defaulted student loans, a surprising population has been caught in the crosshairs: Hundreds of thousands of older Americans whose decades-old debts now put them at risk of having their Social Security checks garnished.“I worked ridiculous hours. I worked weekends and nights. But I could never pay it off,” says Farro, a retired child welfare worker in Santa Ynez, California.Like millions of debtors with federal student loans, Farro had her payments and interest paused by the government five years ago when the pandemic thrust many into financial hardship. That grace period ended in 2023 and, earlier this month, the Department of Education said it would restart “involuntary collections” by garnishing paychecks, tax refunds and Social Security retirement and disability benefits. Farro previously had her Social Security garnished and expects it to restart.Farro’s loans date back 40 years. She was a single mother when she got a bachelor’s degree in developmental psychology and when she discovered she couldn’t earn enough to pay off her loans, she went back to school and got a master’s degree. Her salary never caught up. Things only got worse.Around 2008, when she consolidated her loans, she was paying $1,000 a month, but years of missed payments and piled-on interest meant she was barely putting a dent in a bill that had ballooned to $250,000. When she sought help to resolve her debt, she says the loan company had just one suggestion.“They said, ‘Move to a cheaper state,'” says Farro, who rents a 400-square-foot casita from a friend. “I realized I was living in a different reality than they were.”Student loan debt among older people has grown at a staggering rate, in part due to rising tuitions that have forced more people to borrow greater sums. People 60 and older hold an estimated $125 billion in student loans, according to the National Consumer Law Center, a six-fold increase from 20 years ago. That has led Social Security beneficiaries who have had their payments garnished to balloon by 3,000% over the same period, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.An estimated 452,000 people aged 62 and older had student loans in default, according to a January report from CFPB.Debbie McIntyre, a 62-year-old adult education teacher in Georgetown, Kentucky, is among them. She dreams of retiring and writing more historical fiction, and of boarding a plane for the first time since high school. But her husband has been out of work on disability for two decades and they’ve used credit cards to get by on his meager benefits and her paycheck. Their rent will be hiked $300 when their lease renews. McIntyre doesn’t know what to do if her paycheck is garnished.She floats the idea of bankruptcy, but that won’t automatically clear her loans, which are held to a different standard than other debt. She figures if she picks up extra jobs babysitting or tutoring, she could put $50 toward her loans here and there. But she sees no real solution.“I don’t know what more I can do,” says McIntyre, who is too afraid to check what her loan balance is. “I’ll never get out of this hole.”Braxton Brewington of the Debt Collective debtors union says it’s striking how many older people dial into the organization’s calls and attend its protests. Many of them, he says, should have had their debts cancelled but fell victim to a system “riddled with flaws and illegalities and flukes.” Many whose educations have left them in late-life debt have, in fact, paid back the principal on their loans, sometimes several times over, but still owe more due to interest and fees.For those who are subject to garnishment, Brewington says, the results can be devastating.“We hear from people who skip meals. We know people who dilute their medication or cut their pills in half. People take drastic measures like pulling all their savings out or dissolving their 401ks,” he says. “We know folks that have been driven into homelessness.”Collections on defaulted loans may have restarted no matter who was president, though the Biden administration had sought to limit the amount of income that could be garnished. Federal law protects just $750 of Social Security benefits from garnishment, an amount that would put a debtor far below the poverty line.“We’re basically providing people with federal benefits with one hand and taking them away with another,” says Sarah Sattelmeyer of the New America think tank.Linda Hilton, a 76-year-old retired office worker from Apache Junction, Arizona, went through garnishment before COVID and says she will survive it again. But flights to see her children, occasional meals at a restaurant and other pleasures of retired life may disappear.“It’s going to mean restrictions,” says Hilton. “There won’t be any travel. There won’t be any frills.”Some debtors have already received notice about collections. Many more are living in fear. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order calling for the Department of Education’s dismantling and, for those seeking answers about their loans, mass layoffs have complicated getting calls answered.While Education Secretary Linda McMahon says restarting collections is a necessary step for debtors “both for the sake of their own financial health and our nation’s economic outlook,” even some of Trump’s most fervent supporters are questioning a move that will make their lives harder.Randall Countryman, 55, of Bonita, California, says a Biden administration proposal to forgive some student debt didn’t strike him as fair, but he’s not sure Trump’s approach is either. He supported Trump but wishes the government made case-by-case decisions on debtors. Countryman thinks Americans don’t realize how many older people are affected by policies on student loans, often thought to be the turf of the young, and how difficult it can be for them to repay.“What’s a young person’s problem today,” he says, “is an old person’s problem tomorrow.”Countryman started working on a degree while in prison, then continued it at the University of Phoenix when he was released. He started growing nervous as he racked up loan debt and never finished his degree. He’s worked a host of different jobs, but finding work has often been complicated by his criminal record.He lives off his wife’s Social Security check and the kindness of his mother-in-law. He doesn’t know how they’d get by if the government demands repayment.“I kind of wish I never went to school in the first place,” he says. Matt Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org and https://x.com/sedensky —Matt Sedensky, AP National Writer

The bird above is not your typical charismatic species. It’s no bald eagle, no peregrine falcon. It’s a groundbird known as the lesser prairie-chicken that lives in the southern Great Plains. It’s not even the greater prairie-chicken, another, related avian species, that’s a bit larger. Today, however, this bird is very much worth paying attention to. In 2023, lesser prairie-chickens — which are actually fascinating birds, not least for their ridiculous mating rituals — were granted protection under the Endangered Species Act, the country’s strongest wildlife law. Scientists say this protection is justified: The population of lesser prairie-chickens has crashed since the last century from hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of birds to roughly 30,000 today. Now the Trump administration is trying to axe those extinction-thwarting protections. In a motion filed earlier this month in a Texas court, the administration argued that federal officials made an error when listing prairie-chickens under the Endangered Species Act. The listing — which makes it illegal to kill or harm the birds, with a number of exceptions — should be tossed out, the administration said. The move isn’t totally unexpected. Prairie-chickens overlap in some areas with oil and gas drilling. And President Donald Trump has signaled that he will prioritize drilling over environmental safeguards. Yet it reveals that his administration will take extreme steps to undo wildlife protections if they stand in the way of his agenda. If his administration is successful in delisting the bird, it will signal that no endangered species is safe — especially those, like these chickens, that happen to live where fossil fuels are buried.Send us a tipDo you have a story idea or a tip to share? Reach Benji Jones at benji.jones@vox.com or at the secure encrypted address benjijones@protonmail.com. You can also find him on Signal at @benji.90.The dance of the prairie-chickenMale lesser prairie-chickens are extremely extra.Each spring, they come together in breeding grounds called leks to dance for females, hoping to attract them as mates. They inflate large sacs on their neck, flare yellow combs above their eyes, and raise wing-like feathers behind their heads. Then they stomp their feet and start booming, producing a noise that sounds like sped-up yodeling. (These are not to be confused with the greater sage-grouse, a bird in the same family that has a similarly spectacular display.)The Great Plains were once filled with these unusual dancing birds, which play important roles in grassland ecosystems: They provide food for raptors, spread seeds, and control insects. But in the last few centuries, prairie-chickens lost most of their habitat — largely to the expansion of oil and gas, commercial farming, housing developments, and, more recently, wind energy. Scientists estimate that the range of lesser prairie-chickens has shrunk by 83 percent to 90 percent since European settlement.“Grasslands are the most threatened ecosystem on the continent and in the world, and nowhere more so than in the southwestern Great Plains,” said Ted Koch, executive director of the North American Grouse Partnership, a bird conservation group. Facing extinction as a result of powerful industries, the prairie-chicken has been caught up in a game of political ping pong. The government first granted them federal protection in 2014. Then, in response to a lawsuit filed by an oil-industry trade group and several counties in New Mexico, the Texas court tossed out the listing in 2015. They were officially delisted in 2016. The suit argued that in granting federal protections the government didn’t adequately consider existing voluntary efforts, such as habitat conservation, to conserve the birds.Shortly after, the Interior Department — the government agency that oversees endangered species listings — reevaluated the bird and once again determined, under the Biden administration, that it is at risk of extinction, even with those voluntary efforts in place. In 2023, Interior added the chickens back on the endangered species list. That brings us to the present day, when these forsaken birds could once again lose protection. Trump moves to strip endangered species protections on a technicalityThe Trump administration is arguing that the Interior Department made a mistake when it recently listed the birds again. It comes down to a somewhat wonky technicality. Briefly, the Endangered Species Act allows the government to grant formal protection to a species or to a population of a species — if those populations are important on their own, and at risk. That’s what the Biden administration did: It determined that there were two distinct populations of lesser-prairie chickens and it granted each of them slightly different protections. One of the populations is in the northern end of the birds’ range, including Oklahoma and Kansas, and the other is in the southern reaches of its range, in Texas and New Mexico. Under the Trump administration, Interior claims that it didn’t provide enough information to show that the two bird populations are distinct. That’s reason enough to delist the birds, the administration argues, while it reviews their status over the next year. If the species is delisted — even temporarily — the government would be able to permit activities, such as energy projects, even if they might harm the bird and the endangered grasslands it’s found in. Male lesser prairie-chickens fight for territory at a lek in Edwards County, Kansas. Michael Pearce/Wichita Eagle/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesAvian experts, meanwhile, say the reasoning behind the original listing — which was the result of months of work and more than 30,000 public comments — is sound, and these birds are very clearly in trouble. “The North American Grouse Partnership agrees completely that listing of chickens is warranted,” said Koch, a former biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the division within Interior that implements the Endangered Species Act.The move to delist prairie-chickens appears to be an effort by the Trump administration to skirt wildlife regulations that some perceive to stand in the way of the oil industry, said Jonathan Hayes, executive director of Audubon Southwest, a regional office of the National Audubon Society, a large environmental nonprofit. “Whether it’s true or not, this chicken symbolizes a challenge, or an impediment, to oil and gas development for industry,” Hayes told Vox. “We would expect this administration to push back on regulations that may or may not impact oil and gas. That’s what it feels like is happening here.” In a statement to Vox, the Interior Department said it has an “unwavering commitment to conserving and managing the nation’s natural and cultural resources…and overseeing public lands and waters for the benefit of all Americans, while prioritizing fiscal responsibility for the American people.”The new administration can quibble with the technical points of the listing, Koch said, but that will do nothing to change the reality: The bird is at risk of extinction and needs to be protected. “Whether somebody wants to engage in debate on technicalities is up to them, but simply and fundamentally lesser prairie-chickens are threatened with extinction,” Koch said. “Delisting lesser prairie chickens on a technicality is going to do nothing to address the underlying threat to these ecosystems.”The future for threatened species in the US There’s no guarantee that prairie-chickens will lose protection. The Trump administration’s motion to delist the birds came in response to a pair of lawsuits filed by both the state of Texas and groups representing the oil and livestock industries. The suits allege that the Interior Department made a mistake in splitting the birds into two distinct populations and failed to follow the best available information. (Interior’s spokesperson told Vox they will not comment on ongoing litigation.)Before Trump took office, the government was planning to defend its decision to protect the birds — and to split them up — in court, in response to those lawsuits. Now it’s reversing course and agreeing with Texas and the oil industry to toss out the listing.It’s possible that the judge overseeing this case could agree to remove protections, said Jason Rylander, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. In that case, groups like his would try to appeal to block the delisting. The court could also tell the government to review the bird’s status while keeping existing protections in place, Rylander says. What’s key here is that the decision to list lesser prairie-chickens involved a formal rulemaking process with public input. It’s not clear that the government can simply reverse its decision and yank federal protections without going through that process again.“The government can’t act in a capricious way,” Hayes of Audubon said. “It can’t just blow with the wind, and that’s exactly what it did here. They just changed their minds when the administration changed. I’m not sure how they will legally defend their complete 180.”But no matter how this plays out, this effort to delist lesser prairie-chickens puts other threatened species in an even more precarious spot, especially those that live in regions with oil and gas.One example is the endangered dunes sagebrush lizard. It’s a small, scaly reptile that lives in the Permian Basin of Texas, the largest oil-producing region in the country, and nowhere else on Earth.The state of Texas similarly sued the government after it listed the dunes sagebrush lizard as endangered last year. The suit — which asks the court to vacate the endangered listing — alleges, among other things, that the government didn’t rely on the best available data to evaluate the lizard’s extinction risk. That case is still pending, though environmental advocates fear that the Trump administration could side with Texas and claim it made a mistake when listing the lizard. Then there’s the beloved monarch butterfly. Following decades of population decline, the government proposed federal protections for the iconic insect late last year. Monarch habitat similarly overlaps with the oil and gas industry, as well as commercial farmland. Fossil-fuel groups have already asked the Trump administration to reconsider the listing. “As the Trump administration is in power, we can expect that endangered species protections are going to be under attack,” Rylander said. “I think there’s a chance we can stop this in court,” he said of efforts to delist the prairie-chicken, “but I think if we don’t, we will see more efforts to remand and vacate listings that they [the Trump administration] don’t want to have in place anymore.” It’s important to remember that wildlife protections benefit people, Koch said. And prairie-chickens are a good example. Most of the remaining birds live on sustainably managed, private ranchlands in the Great Plains, he said. Those lands — those working grassland ecosystems — are under threat from energy development and other industries that are more profitable. Saving prairie chickens means saving those lands. And saving those lands benefits the ranchers that live on them, he said.“The purpose of the Endangered Species Act is to conserve the ecosystems upon which we and all other species depend,” Koch said. “People depend on grassland ecosystems, and so do lesser prairie-chickens. We need to save grasslands for both of us.”See More:

New papal names often drip with meaning. Pope Francis, in 2013, named himself after Saint Francis of Assisi, signifying his dedication to poverty, humility, and peace. Pope Paul VI, in 1963, modeled himself after Paul the Apostle, becoming the first pope to make apostolic journeys to other continents. When Robert Francis Prevost announced on Saturday he would take the name Leo XIV, he gave an unexpected reason for his choice: the rise of AI. The most recent Pope Leo, Prevost explained, served during the Industrial Revolution at the end of the 19th century, and railed against the new machine-driven economic systems turning workers into mere commodities. Now, with AI ushering in a “new industrial revolution,” the “defense of human dignity, justice and labor” is required, he said. With his name choice and speech, Leo XIV firmly marks AI as a defining challenge facing our world today. But also embedded in the name is a potential path forward. Leo XIII, during his papacy, laid out a vision for protecting workers against tech-induced consolidation, including minimum wage laws and trade unions. His ideas soon gained influence and were implemented in government policies around the world. While it's still unclear what specific guidance Leo XIV may issue on artificial intelligence, history suggests the implications of his crusade could be profound. If he mobilizes the world's one billion Catholics against AI's alienating potential as decisively as his namesake confronted industrial exploitation, Silicon Valley may soon face an unexpected and formidable spiritual counterweight.“We have a tradition that views work from a theological perspective. It’s not simply burdensome; it’s where we develop ourselves,” says Joseph Capizzi, dean of theology and religious studies for The Catholic University of America. “Pope Leo XIV is going to be drawing on our tradition to try to make a case for finding work that dignifies human beings—even while making space for AI to do things that human beings will no longer be doing.” Rerum NovarumAt the heart of Leo XIV’s new name choice is Leo XIII’s formal letter Rerum Novarum, which he wrote in 1891. At the time, the Industrial Revolution was upending society. Mechanized production and factory systems generated unprecedented wealth and productivity, but led to the displacement of many agrarian jobs and people to move into overcrowded, unsanitary urban centers in search of work. The jobs there were grueling, unsafe, and paid terribly. The wealth gap widened dramatically, leading to massive social unrest and the rise of communist ideology. In the midst of these many challenges, Leo penned Rerum Novarum, an encyclical that marked the first major example of a pope commenting on social justice. In it, Leo wrote that “a small number of very rich men” had laid “upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.” There now existed as “the gulf between vast wealth and sheer poverty,” he wrote. To combat this trend, Leo explored potential solutions. First, he rejected communism, arguing that workers had a right to the fruits of their own labors. But he also stressed the need for a living wage, time for workers for family and church, and the right to form Christian trade unions. “He was really championing the rights of workers,” says Dr. Richard Finn, director of the Las Casas Institute at Blackfriars, Oxford. In this colorized print from "La Ilustración Española y Americana," Pope Leo XIII directs a phonograph message to the American Catholic people on the occasion of his jubilee, in 1892. (Getty Images—LTL/Heritage Images)These ideas eventually caught hold. One of the first major advocates of minimum wage laws in the U.S. was the priest and economist John A. Ryan, who cited Pope Leo as a significant influence. Many ideas in his text “A Living Wage and Distributive Justice” were later incorporated into the New Deal, when Ryan was an influential supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the 1960s, the Catholic Church eventually came out in support of César Chávez and the United Farmworkers (UFW), which Chávez told TIME in 1966 was the “single most important thing that has helped us.” In Australia, Rerum Novarum influenced political leaders who forged a basic wage in that country. And in Mexico, the Rerum Novarum spurred the creation of many Catholic labor unions and mutual aid societies. “It really shaped Catholic activism, with organizations working to ensure that Mexico was neither an unfettered capitalist country nor a Marxist state-owned state,” says Julia Young, a professor at the Catholic University of America. “It was successful in creating Catholic associations that were very politically vocal.” The Church and AIMore than a century after the industrial revolution, a similarly impactful technological revolution is unfolding, amidst many similar economic circumstances. “In terms of similarities between now and then, there was rural to urban immigration changing the workplace, widespread exploitation of workers, and seemingly growing poverty in urban areas,” Young says. “And so you had the church trying to respond to that and saying, ‘We have a different response than Marx or the robber barons.” While Leo XIV hasn’t yet explicitly called for any of the same measures as Leo XIII, it is clear that he believes the rise of AI necessitates some sort of counterweight. And his citing of Rerum Novarum also perhaps reveals a hunger to provoke widespread social change and offer a third path in a two-power arms race. “In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution,” he said on Saturday. Across the world, people are expressing intense anxiety about AI causing job displacement. (Some economists contend that these fears are overblown, however.) Like in the industrial revolution, the initial spoils of AI are flowing to a few ultra-powerful companies. And AI companies have also reinforced some of the worst aspects of predatory global capitalism systems: OpenAI, for instance, outsourced some of its most grueling AI training to Kenyan laborers earning less than $2 an hour. Leo’s interest in this area continues that of Pope Francis, who became increasingly vocal about the threats to humanity posed by AI in his later years. Last summer at the G7 Summit, he called for an international treaty to regulate AI, arguing that it could exacerbate social tensions, reinforce dominant cultures, and undermine education. “We would condemn humanity to a future without hope if we took away people’s ability to make decisions about themselves and their lives, by dooming them to depend on the choices of machines,” he said. Some leaders have signaled the importance of prioritizing workers’ rights during the AI revolution, like Senator Josh Hawley. But until a coherent political movement emerges, moral leadership on human dignity in the face of AI may flow from the church, and Pope Leo’s outspoken leadership. “He’s saying AI is going to change the workplace—but it's got to change it in a way that fits with the dignity of employees,” says Dr. Finn.