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<ul class="summary-list"><li>On a trip to Melbourne, Adrian Chia envisioned a holiday home to unplug from the world.</li><li>He sold his IT business and partnered with two friends to build Big Tiny, a tiny house startup.</li></ul>How nice would it be to leave everything behind, unplug from the world, and relax abroad?This thought lingered in Adrian Chia's mind after a two-week family vacation exploring the Great Ocean Road in Melbourne in 2016.Shortly after returning home to Singapore, he floated the concept of <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/millennial-city-life-quits-job-build-tiny-house-wood-denmark-2024-9">living an unplugged life</a> by his friend Dave Ng, whom he'd met in his 20s during mandatory national service."We were just chitchatting, but Dave started thinking about it seriously," Chia, now 43, told Business Insider. Ng came up with the idea of creating a tiny house on wheels — a mobile house that could be easily relocated if a particular location did not attract guests.In 2017, the pair decided to sell their businesses — Chia had been working in IT and Ng in waste management — and start a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-build-own-tiny-home-company-plans-2023-4">tiny house business</a> called Big Tiny. They invested 100,000 Singapore dollars, or around $77k, each, and dove into brainstorming their first prototype."I knew I was venturing into uncharted territory," said Chia, who was married with two young kids and had a newborn at the time.<h2 id="b90f8f35-563a-4d9d-9797-e15f7148fc10">An early obstacle</h2>With no experience in architecture or building, their first roadblock was figuring out how to build a tiny house."I can't even change the door knob at home," said Chia, adding that the thought of having to fit a kitchenette, a bedroom, and a living room into a 20-foot space was daunting.They hired an architect to help with the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/couple-lives-in-tiny-home-on-wheels-with-office-bedroom-2023-6">design of the house</a> and agreed on a few essentials. First, the house had to be on wheels. Next, they had to ensure that the house did not feel claustrophobic.Six months of trial and error later, Chia and Ng assembled the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/built-tiny-house-parents-backyard-rent-free-saved-money-2024-3">first prototype home in Chia's garden in Singapore</a>.<div type="image" title="A tiny home" height="3024" width="4032" msid="113509611" hostid="261" sizebytes="1381548"></div>They began scaling the business by sending tiny houses overseas. The first two were sent to Australia, one to Victoria and the other to New South Wales.In 2018, Chia convinced a friend from elementary school, Jeff Yeo, to join the team of founders and help with branding. Yeo had worked as an account director and manager at several marketing agencies.Together, they raised around SG$4.2 million over two funding rounds, Chia said. That includes SG$3.8 million in the second round, which took place in 2021.<h2 id="2f26daf1-a207-42de-80b6-4a8c216f56ad">Developing their tiny houses into a profit-sharing business</h2>After garnering attention from local media, the team started to receive inquiries on how to purchase tiny houses, Chia said.So, in 2017, the team started a program that allowed people to buy a tiny house for around SG$90,000. In return, they managed the hotel side of the business by renting the unit back from the buyer. They either rented the tiny house for two years and paid 8% a year or five years and paid 10% a year. Big Tiny then earns from the profit of nightly stays, Chia said.Although the headquarters is in Singapore, Big Tiny's first move was to send <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/live-in-a-tiny-mansion-home-so-could-afford-california-2023-10">tiny houses</a> out to the rest of the world. The homes had a modular design — flat packed "like Ikea furniture," as Chia describes.<h2 id="86541299-29a2-4f07-931a-d1593e686640">In 2023, they set up tiny houses in Singapore</h2><a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiny-home-village-atlanta-south-park-cottages-photos-booker-washington-2024-3">The tiny house movement</a> encourages <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiny-house-new-yorker-first-time-experience-2022-7">minimalistic and sustainable living</a>. Although the movement has taken off in <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiny-house-movement-future-2021-1">countries like the US</a> and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiny-home-tube-shape-surprising-things-europe-slube-photos-2023-2">Germany</a>, it has been less popular in Singapore.In 2021, an opportunity arose for Big Tiny to set up houses in Singapore under a government initiative promoting innovative business ideas.The government awarded Big Tiny state land, for which the company pays rent, to build their <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/stay-tiny-home-remote-lazarus-island-singapore-2024-8">tiny houses on Lazarus Island</a> — one of the eight Southern Islands in Singapore."We jumped on it," Chia said.In an email response to BI, a representative from the Sentosa Development Corporation, an organization under Singapore's Ministry of Trade and Industry, said the initiative aimed to complement the existing environment of Lazarus Island by introducing "light-touch" recreational uses.Additionally, the response noted that Big Tiny's houses were equipped with sustainable features, which were in line with their goal of reducing vacationers' carbon footprint on the island.The government also awarded another company a chance to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/luxury-tent-glamping-into-the-woods-lazarus-island-singapore-2024-9">build nine tents nearby.</a>Since opening the tiny house resort in April 2023, Chia said, it has been running on an average of about 90% occupancy. Guests have to book a few months in advance to secure their stay. He added that they have been cash-flow positive since their inception.In August, BI was able to book a stay for SG$380 a night, less than three weeks in advance, although only a few tiny houses remained available at the time. All of the houses were full during BI's stay.<h2 id="4f271ca1-9272-4f7b-83ed-2c77ec2a4d51">Each tiny house is placed in nature</h2><div type="image" title="An accommodation in Lake Stella, New Zealand" height="3459" width="5189" msid="113509618" hostid="261" sizebytes="2539654"></div>Seven years on, Big Tiny has placed more than 400 tiny houses in more than 10 countries worldwide, from Taiwan to Europe and Australia.On Singapore's Lazarus Island, guests are surrounded by lush greenery and can swim in the sea. At Lake Stella in New Zealand, two hours north of central Christchurch, guests can hike the surrounding mountains or take a dip in the lake. In Yilan, Taiwan, guests can sleep in a tiny forest cottage and gaze at the stars when night falls.<div type="image" title="The cofounders of Big Tiny take a selfie" height="2736" width="3648" msid="113509620" hostid="261" sizebytes="240580"></div><h2 id="a0ebf152-35eb-4037-bc31-9862591a586e">Working with friends can be challenging</h2>Looking back on the journey, Chia said he learned that ideas never come fully formed. "When I was speaking with Dave, it was just an idea of putting tiny houses in rural areas so that people can recharge themselves in nature," he said.He said they never thought they could build tiny houses in his own garden — let alone transport them worldwide.And although <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/business-partnership-ended-friendship-partners-friends-2024-1">working with close friends</a> can be tricky, Chia credits their successful collaboration to clearly defining their roles.While Chia oversees revenue and strategic development, Ng heads operations and production, and Yeo focuses on branding."Whenever we face problems, we will call for a discussion. Everyone will have ideas on how to get things resolved," he said."But at the end of the day, the person leading the aspect of the business will take ownership and decide on what is the best course ahead."

How 3 friends without any hospitality experience started renting out over 400 tiny homes in remote locations around the world

In America, when you're charged with a crime, you're afforded the right to face your accuser. But what happens when your accuser isn't human?In 2022, over five days in Akron, Ohio, jurors in the murder trial of a 19-year-old named Adarus Black heard from 17 witnesses, none of whom could place Black at the scene of the drive-by shooting that killed Na'Kia Crawford. They viewed surveillance footage, none of which showed Black in the car from which the bullet was fired. They were told the police had tried and failed to find Black's DNA in the car.Witnesses saw Black with the driver of the car at a party shortly before the shooting. One witness testified that he saw Black leave with the driver; another witness said they saw the driver with someone but couldn't identify the person. The car was seen speeding past Crawford at the time of the shooting. But prosecutors had no direct evidence tying Black to the location of the murder, an Ohio appellate court later said.What they did have was a secret weapon: the testimony of Adam Mosher and his AI-powered crime-fighting tool, Cybercheck. Mosher testified in court that Cybercheck, using a million lines of code and 740 proprietary algorithms, spent 21 days poring over hundreds of terabytes of publicly available data to triangulate Black's cellphone at the time of the murder and place him within a few feet of the crime scene with more than 90% accuracy. Mosher told jurors that his technology could detect when a phone pings a nearby WiFi network in a fully automated process that could be performed without the phone itself. A lawyer for Black who had been appointed by the court four days before the start of the trial never questioned these claims.Jurors deliberated for less than four hours before returning a guilty verdict. Black's attorneys, who interviewed members of the jury after the verdict, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25032836-adarus-black-petition-for-post-conviction-relief">claimed in a posttrial motion</a> that the jurors said they would not have convicted Black without Mosher and his Cybercheck report. Mosher and Cybercheck were the "sole basis for conviction," Black's attorneys wrote.Black is one of many criminal defendants whose fates were determined in part by Cybercheck's secret algorithm. The program has popped up in cases in Colorado, New York, and Florida. On its website, the company claims to have "proven success" in more than 300 cases, including 209 homicide cases. As <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/ai-tool-used-thousands-criminal-cases-facing-legal-challenges-rcna149607">NBC News said</a> in a story about Cybercheck's widespread use, at least one prosecutor in New York claimed in a legal filing that it had been used in nearly 8,000 cases.Business Insider has identified more than 100 law-enforcement agencies that have contracted with Cybercheck, including police departments in Philadelphia, Houston, and Denver.But serious questions have been raised about the program and its reliability. At least one attorney in Akron has called out inconsistencies in Mosher's résumé, including trials he claims to have testified in that never happened and a university peer review that was never performed. In one case, a judge threw out Cybercheck evidence. Prosecutors in two others have withdrawn Cybercheck reports. Mosher could face contempt-of-court charges in another case. And the sheriff's department for Summit County, Ohio, is investigating whether he provided false information in court, according to two people familiar with the matter.Little is known about Mosher, who launched Cybercheck in 2016. An archived version of his LinkedIn page, which has since been deleted, lists two years of education in media arts and film at a for-profit art school in Canada, three years of education in "Police Science and Law" at Fleming College in Toronto, and certifications in computer forensic analysis and ethical hacking. (In court documents, a defense lawyer said Mosher had no college degree and had never served in law enforcement.) It also says he worked as a security director and forensic consultant before founding Cybercheck.Mosher stepped down as <a target="_blank" href="https://cybercheck.ai/press-release/">the CEO of Cybercheck</a> in September, transitioning into the role of CTO. He was replaced by a former Salesforce employee, Chris Ramsey, who left the company a few months later.In June, Mosher was removed as a director of Cybercheck, according to business documents obtained by Business Insider. It's unclear whether he still works for the company he founded.Adam Mosher and Cybercheck did not reply to a request for comment.AI technology has at times been ascribed almost magical capabilities. It can write computer code, analyze legal documents, generate hit pop songs, and fake photos indistinguishable from reality. It's said to be coming for all our jobs, from warehouse worker to Hollywood actor.Many of these claims have been hard to verify. AI models, with their mountains of training data and billions of parameters, are often black boxes. Even their creators can't always say exactly what's going on inside them. That's left an opening for some who might seek to use the halo of artificial intelligence as a cover for technology that's less than reliable.Police departments and prosecutors across the country are increasingly relying on AI software to <a target="_blank" href="https://innocenceproject.org/when-artificial-intelligence-gets-it-wrong/">recognize faces</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://cu-citizenaccess.org/2023/12/champaigns-trial-run-of-gunshot-detection-program-fires-blanks/">detect gunshots</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://thehill.com/business/personal-finance/4571982-ai-black-box-legal-system/">forecast crime</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/25/san-jose-homelessness-ai-detection">spot homeless encampments</a>, and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/documents-reveal-how-dc-police-surveil-social-media-profiles-and-protest">generate lists of activists, "thought leaders," and "disrupters"</a> to be targeted for surveillance.But defense attorneys face an uphill battle in trying to challenge the reliability of evidence generated using AI. After all, you can't cross-examine a black-box model. Though prosecutors are generally required to turn over all evidence during the discovery process, companies like Cybercheck can argue the algorithms and training data that power these AI tools are proprietary trade secrets of the private companies that develop them and therefore can't be disclosed.In many cases, prosecutors themselves don't even have access to the source code and haven't reviewed the underlying technology. It then falls to local judges, who likely don't have doctorates in computer science or an understanding of high-level matrix math, to decide whether to grant access to the defense.In Summit County, Ohio, prosecutors were using Cybercheck for nearly two years before someone started asking questions. That someone was Donald Malarcik, a defense attorney in Akron who has represented eight clients in Summit County who've been prosecuted using Cybercheck evidence.He first encountered the software in 2022 when he took on the case of Javion Rankin, who was charged with murder in the death of Tyraye Carter in 2020. In that case, court filings say, a Cybercheck report linked Rankin to an email address — babygirlcrawford2003@yahoo.com — and an IP address that together placed Rankin at the scene of the crime."I hired some digital-forensic experts, and they started looking at it, and they're like, I don't know what the hell this thing is," Malarcik told BI. "The first thing they say is let's get access to it." Malarcik said that the judge in the case ordered prosecutors to turn over the source code for Cybercheck — but that prosecutors refused."The prosecutor says no, we don't have it, we can't get it, and Adam Mosher won't give it to you," he said.Malarcik went looking for other cases where Mosher's technology had appeared. That led him to a defense attorney named Eric Zale, who was representing a client in Boulder, Colorado, facing evidence generated by Cybercheck.Malarcik and Zale agreed to pursue a similar strategy. They asked their judges to issue orders requiring Mosher to provide comprehensive details about his past testimonies, including case names, dates, and locations where he had served as an expert witness.While he initially claimed during testimony in court to have been an expert witness in more than a dozen cases, Mosher could identify only two cases, both in Canada, where he had testified, according to transcripts of the Ohio proceeding. Zale dispatched a private investigator to contact prosecutors in both cases. They disputed Mosher's recollections — and one said no criminal trial had ever occurred."Mr. Mosher has not testified as a witness (expert or otherwise) on one of our files (in trial or any other type of proceeding)," Shara Munn, a New Brunswick crown prosecutor, wrote in an email attached <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25032836-adarus-black-petition-for-post-conviction-relief">as an exhibit in a court filing</a>. She wrote that the first time she'd even heard of Mosher was when he approached law enforcement of his own accord offering his services as an expert witness. The suspect in that case was an employee of a company Mosher had done consulting work for. No one was ever charged."Mr. Mosher has apparently testified he provided expert evidence on one of my cases. This is not accurate," Richelle Freiheit, a Calgary crown prosecutor, wrote in a similar email attached as an exhibit in a court filing. She wrote that Mosher reached out to her office offering a trove of data he said was evidence of child-sexual-abuse material. The suspect in that case was Mosher's brother-in-law, Freiheit wrote."Technicians were unable to read or analyze it or locate anything pertaining to CSAM," she wrote. The defendant in that case pleaded guilty on the first day of trial, and no one ever testified, the email said.Mosher never produced transcripts of his testimony in either case, even after a judge ordered him to do so.The prosecutor in the Colorado case, after learning about these inconsistencies in Mosher's story, dropped the charges against Zale's client."Based upon information recently obtained, the People no longer have a reasonable likelihood of conviction should this case proceed to trial," Meghan "Breck" Roesch, a deputy district attorney, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25032836-adarus-black-petition-for-post-conviction-relief#document/p35">wrote in a legal filing at the time</a>.Back in Akron, the judge in Rankin's case ordered the Cybercheck evidence excluded after prosecutors failed to turn over the source code.The "defendant cannot prepare a defense when denied access to an undisclosed proprietary software program and framework that cannot be replicated," she <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25032837-order-to-exclude-in-rankin">wrote in her ruling.</a> The filing also included screenshots of a Google search she performed in which she was able to link the email address in the Cybercheck report, babygirlcrawford2003@yahoo.com, to a disc-golf player in Nevada and the IP address to a computer in Pennsylvania.But unlike Roesch in Colorado, Ohio prosecutors weren't ready to give up on Cybercheck. They've appealed the judge's decision, arguing that because they themselves don't have Mosher's underlying code, they aren't required to turn it over. Rankin, who's still on trial, has been released while the appeal is pending.Malarcik, for his part, isn't finished with Mosher and Cybercheck."Now I just find every murder case in Summit County that's using Cybercheck and I volunteer," he said. "I say I'm going to join your defense team pro bono. I won't charge a dime, and we're going to stop this nonsense."One of those cases was the murder trial of 61-year-old Phillip Mendoza. On the evening of August 2, 2020, gunshots rang out on Fifth Avenue in East Akron, Ohio. Kimberly Thompson and Brian James were struck in the legs as they exited their car, sustaining non-life-threatening injuries. Thompson's 20-month-old grandson, Tyree Halsell, was struck in the head and later died at a local hospital.Two years later, at the request of the Akron Police Department, Cybercheck's automated system, ostensibly without any human in the loop, searched publicly available data and issued a report that placed Mendoza's phone at the location of the shooting with 93.13% accuracy. The only problem? The report, a copy of which was attached to a court filing, claims Mendoza's phone was at the crime scene on August 20, 2020, 18 days after the shooting.This went unnoticed for four months, until the police department informed Cybercheck of the discrepancy on January 24, 2023, according to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25032831-mendoza-objection-to-mtc-2-1-output">documents included in a court filing.</a> That day Cybercheck issued a word-for-word identical report, citing the same data with the same 93.13% accuracy rate. But the date was changed to August 2, 2020. One month later, Mendoza was arrested and charged with murder.The Akron Police Department did not reply to a request for comment.Vestige Digital Investigations, a forensics company Malarcik hired to review Cybercheck's evidence, submitted a report to the court calling into question "the accuracy and legitimacy of the CyberCheck system" for producing two identical reports with different dates. "It is implausible that the same number of cyber profile hits, for the same cyber profile, was picked up by the same wireless routers at the same time on two different days," the report concluded.In a motion in Mendoza's trial, Malarcik <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25032831-mendoza-objection-to-mtc-2-1-output">also challenged Mosher's claims</a> about Cybercheck's use in another case in Ohio. Mosher had testified in two Summit County murder trials about using Cybercheck to help locate a suspect hiding in a tree in Portage County. In court transcripts, Malarcik said that he spoke to the head of the criminal division in Portage County, Steve Michniak, who had never heard of Mosher or Cybercheck, and that the details of the homicide Mosher described didn't match any of the three homicides in Portage County that year. Malarcik said Michinaik told him that officers did find a suspect in a tree, but not as part of a homicide investigation, and that the officers found the suspect with a drone using an infrared camera.During Mendoza's trial, Mosher testified that Cybercheck had been peer-reviewed by scientists at the University of Saskatchewan, a claim that the university later denied."The University of Saskatchewan was not involved in the creation of this document nor did they create any content for this document," a university representative wrote in an email attached to a court filing.Following that revelation, the judge in the case referred Mosher to Summit County's sheriff's department, which opened an investigation into whether he provided false information to the court, two people familiar with the matter said.When reached for comment, William Holland at the department said he could not comment on an ongoing investigation.Prosecutors in Mendoza's case ultimately decided to withdraw Cybercheck's evidence before it could be subjected to a hearing to determine its reliability. Mendoza is still on trial.Indeed, Summit County prosecutors seem to be souring somewhat on Mosher and his model. They've withdrawn Cybercheck evidence in at least two cases. Nearly two years after they began using Mosher's company, prosecutors said in court documents that they were looking for experts to study the validity of its evidence."Not to put too blunt a point on it," one prosecutor, Brian Stano, said in court transcripts, "Mr. Mosher, great at software, great at open-source intelligence, a work in progress on the law."The Summit County Prosecutor's Office declined to comment when reached by BI.Adarus Black remains in a medium-security prison on the shores of Lake Erie, serving a life sentence for murder. He's appealing the conviction, arguing that his lawyer failed him at trial by not challenging Mosher's testimony.His lawyer would have had little time to challenge anything — he was appointed only four days before the start of the trial. Before the trial began, according to a court transcript, the judge warned Black that he was facing a new kind of evidence, "something that's a little more unusual than we typically see in trial." Black's attorney responded that he had more than 20 years of experience handling murder cases and had "a good idea of what to expect and how to handle the case."Black's attorneys did not reply to a request for comment.It's unclear how many others may be behind bars because of Cybercheck evidence that was never rigorously scrutinized."AI is so new, and there's so much hype," Malarcik said. "These police officers and prosecutors just bought into the latest, greatest claims that AI will solve everything."Additional reporting by Katherine Long and Jack Newsham

Prosecutors used an AI tool to send a man to prison for life. Now the person who created it is under investigation.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>When my sister died of cancer, I struggled with my grief.</li><li>I turned to wellness hacks like cold plunges to try and move past the loss, but that didn't help.</li></ul>I'm standing in the corner of the only unoccupied room in Sunnybrook Hospital's emergency center in Toronto, making a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/eight-minute-phone-call-challenge-improved-my-friendships-2024-4">phone call</a>. I'm about to say the hardest sentences of my life.<a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/born-after-dads-first-kids-improved-older-father-2024-6">My dad</a> picks up the line. I pause. I don't want my voice to crack, but it does, anyway. "Well, Dad, I have some hard news..."Our call ends, and the weight of the day crashes down on me. I'm physically sick, but I make it to the bathroom before causing another issue for the busy medical staff to deal with.I was calling to break the news to my parents that my sister, Rachel, had <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/boomer-retirement-social-security-insurance-cancer-diagnosis-2024-7">late-stage cancer</a>, and they needed to get home fast. Less than a year later, Rachel lost her battle with cancer.<h2 id="8b738e4e-5029-4b94-9a0c-6a98cc11abd0">I struggled with the loss of my sister</h2>I knew I wasn't coping well with my sister's death. And so, when a high-achieving friend pitched the idea of meditation, I listened. When a second and third friend brought up meditation, I gave it a go. I felt better. I felt in control.Next came therapy and then reading. From here, I went full Tim Ferriss. I spent every free moment reading books on self-improvement. I tried several personal wellness experiments, such as intermittent fasting, polyphasic sleeping, and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/daily-cold-plunge-at-home-benefits-not-worth-it-review-2024-5">cold plunges</a>. For months, I'd start my day in freezing cold water, often opting for a dip in a lake on the brink of a frigid Canadian winter.At the beginning of my cycle of experimentation, I noticed leaps and bounds in the improvement of my <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/quit-6-figure-tech-job-mental-health-collapsed-2024-7">mental health</a>. But then it plateaued, and I had diminishing returns.I realized that all of these experiments had a limit because I was ignoring my job. Back then, I was your typical Type-A, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/am-i-a-workaholic-wellbeing-productivity-problems-2022-1">borderline workaholic</a> (OK, total workaholic). I had founded multiple companies, been a relatively early employee at Airbnb, and was in the middle of building an AI company. I worked hard and told myself I'd be happy once I'd "made it."When I stepped back, I realized I was over-invested in the future and under-invested in the moment.<h2 id="4349e023-790d-40ad-8ba8-09f21c546d9f">I turned my grief toward work</h2>To focus on the here and now, I applied a similar experimentation approach to my job. Instead of a therapist, I got a coach. I began meditating on the job and read dozens of <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/happiness-at-work-employee-engagement-fulfillment-flexibility-four-days-2023-12">workplace improvement</a> books. I paid attention to my energy levels at work and how I approached tasks. I questioned everything that I thought I knew about productivity.In my cycle of wellness experimenting, adding activities led to the most improvement. At work, it was the opposite. I always assumed that doing better at work meant adding a better project, a bigger promotion, or a brilliant <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/applied-hundreds-jobs-struggling-get-hired-bridge-job-2024-6">new job</a> entirely. In contrast, tactics that removed frustrations from the job improved my well-being at work the most.For example, once I started paying attention to miscommunications, I noticed that I would regularly lose 15 minutes on Monday or half an hour on Tuesday. It turns out the average employee <a target="_blank" href="https://go.grammarly.com/2024-state-of-business-communication-report">loses a full day</a> of productivity every week due to miscommunications. That meant I could accomplish five days of work in four if I could stop miscommunications.I spent weeks looking for a solution and found a simple one used by soldiers that works by repeating back your understanding. It's called a brief back, and all I had to do was take a tactic meant for the battlefield and adapt it to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bessie-watts-vista-board-diversity-business-case-perform-better-2022-12">the boardroom</a>.Brief backs take less than 30 seconds and often save me weeks of wasted effort. Rather than assume alignment, I confirm it before a miscommunication occurs.Focusing on the day-to-day problems at work helped me stay present in my life — better than any of my personal <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mindfulness-experiment-thinking-egg-product-wellness-2019-10">wellness experiments</a>. I finally felt I had control again. Ultimately, it helped me heal the loss of my sister.<h2 id="bbb25cf6-18b1-4b70-88cd-538f3a506c67">The experiments returned a sense of agency to me</h2>What began as a search for anything that could help me cope with losing Rachel turned into a borderline obsession with emotion and wellness. I couldn't control that I lost Rachel to cancer, but I could control how I responded to the grief of losing her.Although I plateaued with the life hacks, tweaking how I work day-to-day has led to endless gains. I still work hard, but now I work better. I feel better, too — and not just at work. The better I do at <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/white-collar-blue-collar-relationship-work-career-perspective-2024-7">my job</a>, the more joy I feel in my life overall. I'm less stressed, more driven, and more productive now than ever.I'd trade everything I've learned to bring Rachel back if I could, but I can't. So, instead, I'm on a mission to share these lessons so you can have my gains without my grief.

When my sister died, I focused on improving my work life. It helped me stay present and deal with my grief.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Doctors working in ERs, ICUs, and urgent care clinics across the US are seeing a spike in RSV cases.</li><li>Some infants and toddlers have needed help breathing and clearing out mucus to survive the illness.</li></ul>There is one illness taking up more pediatric beds in ERs and ICUs than any other right now. It may feel like just a typical cough or cold for many adults and older kids, but for newborns, young toddlers, and elderly people, it can be very dangerous.It's called respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV for short, and this year it's shown up earlier than usual.Emergency doctors from Texas, California, Washington, Utah and Maryland told Insider they fear the RSV surge they're seeing now may be just the beginning of a monthslong wave of nasty viral winter illnesses in kids. There's been chatter in the media about a "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/23/health/flu-covid-risk.html">tripledemic</a>" on the horizon — an incoming storm of RSV, influenza, and COVID. For now, RSV is leading the way.<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6768705/">RSV hospitalization</a> rates for small children are worse than for flu or for COVID. In some of the <a href="https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2021/han00443.asp">worst cases</a>, children are having trouble breathing on their own, needing oxygen and mucus-suctioning to clear their airways."It's kind of like a roller-coaster ride — we feel like we're climbing up the big steep hill now and expect to continue to see increasing RSV activity," Dr. Per Gesteland, a pediatric hospitalist at the University of Utah Health and Intermountain Primary Children's Hospital, told Insider.<h2>The beginning of a big wave</h2><div type="image" title="RSV graph showing cases climbing" height="626" width="831" msid="95152449" hostid="261"></div>Dr. Christina Johns, an emergency physician at PM Pediatric Care in the Washington, DC suburbs, told Insider that doctors know how to treat kids with RSV and deal with surges, which happen yearly. The "hard part" is that this year's RSV spike has come early and amidst a wave of other illnesses, including flu.Additionally, this surge comes on the back of summer spikes in enterovirus, <a href="https://www.insider.com/rsv-respiratory-syncytial-virus-children-hospital-symptoms-signs-risk-prevent-2022-10">RSV</a>, and <a href="https://www.insider.com/healthy-newborn-died-parechovirus-signs-symptoms-2022-7">parechovirus</a>. Hospitals are already short staffed, with fewer pediatric beds available. "It's wild," she said. Between 2008 and 2018, the number of inpatient pediatric units decreased by almost 20%, according to a January 2020 study in the journal <a href="https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/148/1/e2020041723/179950/Availability-of-Pediatric-Inpatient-Services-in?autologincheck=redirected?nfToken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000">Pediatrics</a>. During the pandemic, the shortage has only gotten <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/11/health/pediatric-closures-hospitals.html">worse</a>. It's tough to be precise about how rampant RSV spread is right now, because most cases can be managed at home without a test. Even in the hospital, not everyone who's sick gets tested.Dr. Melanie Kitagawa, medical director of the pediatric intensive care unit at Texas Children's Hospital, told Insider more than 40 kids there are hospitalized with RSV, and more than 10 of them are in her ICU."I don't have a medication that can take this virus away," Kitagawa said. "I just have to help the kids through, and give their bodies time to fight."<div type="image" title="nurse in mask caring for baby in ICU" height="1115" width="1486" msid="95152452" hostid="261"></div>Dr. Behnoosh Afghani, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at <a href="https://www.ucihealth.org/find-a-doctor/a/behnoosh-afghani">UCI Health</a> in Orange County, California, said the number of RSV patients in her hospital is also increasing "rapidly" this week. Gesteland helped develop a "<a href="https://intermountainhealthcare.org/health-information/germwatch/">GermWatch</a>" illness forecasting system at his hospital in Utah, and while RSV activity is "moderate" for now, he expects the illness will be "filling up our beds pretty significantly in the coming weeks." During an October 23 weekend shift, Johns said about half of the kids she saw had flu-like illnesses. Among them, roughly 30% tested positive for RSV, and 25% for the flu. Across the country at Seattle Children's, it's a similar story: nearly a third of the tests done for viral illnesses are coming back positive for RSV. "We are seeing about 20 to 30 positives per day," Dr. Russell Migita, a clinical leader of Emergency Services at Seattle Children's, told Insider. That's double what's normal for October in the Pacific Northwest, where RSV typically peaks in February and March. Cases this year are both earlier and more severe, exacerbating the status of Migita's already overburdened ER, which he says is routinely running at 200% capacity. ER patients are constantly "waiting for inpatient beds," and more than half are there due to respiratory illnesses. Migita, like the other doctors interviewed for this story, expects the number of RSV cases is only "likely to go higher" in the coming months.<h2>'Don't kiss the baby' — or the toddler</h2><div type="image" title="baby with tubes in, doctor using machine" height="600" width="1200" msid="95152454" hostid="261"></div>RSV is typically a milder illness for toddlers and school-age kids, hitting only newborns hard. But Dr. Kurt Lucas, an emergency medicine physician working in the Houston metro area, has noticed a troubling trend of 3 and 4 year-old kids getting very sick with RSV this year. Johns and Gesteland have seen the same thing.Migita said that typically "children get many viral infections spread out over their first two years of life," but now those illnesses are all being "clustered" as COVID restrictions relax and more toddlers re-emerge into school and daycare."They're having a pretty significant infection with a viral pneumonia, needing oxygen, needing support," Gesteland said. "It seems like it's the first time they've seen RSV."There is no vaccine for RSV, though there is one for pregnant women in late-stage clinical trials, as well as another for elderly patients in development. High-risk infants can receive a <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/rsv/clinical/index.html#:~:text=It%20is%20given%20in%20monthly%20intramuscular%20injections%20during%20the%20RSV%20season%2C%20which%20generally%20occurs%20during%20fall%2C%20winter%2C%20and%20spring%20in%20most%20locations%20in%20the%20United%20States.">monoclonal antibody</a> treatment developed for RSV, but it's expensive and requires monthly injections during flu season. "Just be careful about exposure to other people with colds," Afghani cautioned. What may be a sniffly nuisance RSV infection for a healthy mom, dad, or older sibling, could be a serious illness for a newborn. "Don't kiss the baby," Johns said. "If there ever was a time not to do it, it's now."

Doctors say RSV is hitting toddlers hard this year as sick kids line up for hospital beds across the US

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Ruby Barker said she was hospitalized due to her <keyword id="11902572" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="mental-health" source="Orion">mental health</keyword> in an Instagram video Thursday. </li><li>Barker, 25, said she sought help for "intergenerational trauma" and has been "really unwell." </li></ul>"<keyword id="12012626" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="bridgerton" source="Orion">Bridgerton</keyword>" star Ruby Barker revealed she's currently hospitalized for mental <keyword id="11894571" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="health" source="Orion">health</keyword> issues.Barker, 25, said in an Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CeBLu_aDKmm/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">video</a> shared on Thursday that she sought professional help because she wanted to address the "intergenerational trauma bundled up inside." "I am better," Barker said. "I've been really unwell for a really long time. I just want to be honest with everybody — I've been struggling." Barker continued that she was admitted into a hospital but will be discharged soon and plans to take a break for a while."And I want to encourage others, if you are struggling, please do yourself a favor. Take a break. Stop being so hard on yourself. And people used to always tell me not to be so hard on myself, and I never really, really knew what that meant," Barker said. In the video, Barker added that she used to be "rage-filled, frustrated, angry — all this intergenerational trauma bundled up inside me, and I was carrying the weight of the world on my back.""I'm at a point where I have a diagnosis, and I will talk to you about that at another time," Barker said. "But I have a diagnosis, and I am relinquishing myself and forgiving myself and drawing a line in the sand. I can't carry on the way that I've been carrying on. I need to change. So, that's what I'm trying to do."Barker finished the video by thanking "Bridgerton" executive producer Shonda Rhimes. "I need to thank <keyword id="11892922" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="netflix" source="Orion">Netflix</keyword>, Shonda Rhimes, [and] Shondaland for giving me an opportunity — for saving me," Barker said.On Saturday, Barker thanked her fans for sending messages of support in a Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/RealRubyBarker/status/1530519743567896576" target="_blank" rel="noopener">post. </a>"Sorry I've been quiet, I guess people are finding out why now," Barker wrote. "Just want to say thank you for all the messages of support. I hope speaking out can help destigmatise mental health even a tiny bit, and encourage others to seek help if they need it."Barker appeared in Season 1 of "Bridgerton" as Marina Thompson, the love interest for <a href="https://www.insider.com/bridgerton-season-3-focus-on-penelope-and-colins-love-story-2022-5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Colin Bridgerton. </a>Season 2 of the hit series premiered on March 25.Season 3 will focus on the <a href="https://www.insider.com/bridgerton-season-3-focus-on-penelope-and-colins-love-story-2022-5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">love story between Colin, played by Luke Newton, and Penelope Featherington, played by Nicola Coughlan. </a>

'Bridgerton' star Ruby Barker hospitalized due to mental health after feeling 'really unwell'

As the dancers make their way to rehearsal, air-raid sirens blare throughout Kharkiv. When the city first came under siege, the alarms would have sent them rushing to the nearest underground shelter, where they'd wait out the shelling. Now, more than <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-says-war-will-last-until-2025-wanted-to-beat-ukraine-in-days-2023-9">500 day</a>s later, the dancers have learned to ignore the sirens. The wails have become part of their soundtrack as they prepare for showtime in Ukraine's easternmost major city, only 15 miles from the Russian border.By mid-afternoon, nine women have gathered around the dance pole at Flash Dancers, the only women-owned exotic dance club in Kharkiv. Prostitution is illegal in Ukraine, putting strip clubs in a legal gray area. But the law was seldom enforced even before the war — the country boasted one of the most thriving sex-tourism scenes in Eastern Europe, with an estimated <a href="https://bmcinthealthhumrights.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12914-019-0201-y" target="_blank" rel="noopener">80,000 sex workers</a> in 2016. Today, with Kharkiv's <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/09/world/europe/ukraine-war-kyiv-police.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">police preoccupied</a> with defending the city from Russian saboteurs and helping with the fallout of missile strikes, Ukrainians seem to accept that a modicum of vice might need to be tolerated, or even embraced, amid the grinding <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-shouldnt-follow-us-military-doctrine-warfare-better-trainer-russia-2023-9">austerity of war</a>. "Our goal is to be a switch from what is happening," says Valeriya Zavadskaya, the club's 24-year-old co-owner.Under the club's dim red lighting, Valeriya leads the dancers through a rehearsal as Christina Aguilera's "Express" blares over the PA:E-X-P-R-E-S-S Love, sex Ladies, no regrets"One, two, go backwards," Valeriya orders. "Take two steps and then do bam! bam! bam!" With her arms stretched behind her head, she demonstrates the move, lifting herself upside down onto the pole, splitting her legs, spinning in midair, and landing on beat.<div type="image" title="Women dancing under red light at nightclub." height="842" width="2442" msid="104106344" hostid="261"></div>One dancer looks stupefied. She tries the move but barely gets airborne before stumbling. "I won't do that," she says."Yes, you will!" says Valeriya, demonstrating again. Over the next two hours, with indefatigable drill-sergeant precision, she works the dancers through each pop and pirouette of the routine, as Aguilera's power ballad plays on a seemingly endless loop:All ladies confident, flaunt it Boys throw it up if you want it Can you feel me? Can it feel it? It's BurlesqueValeriya shouts the last line as she navigates the dancers through the song, changing "burlesque" to "Flash Dance." That's the name Valeriya's mother, a former professional Soviet dancer, gave the club when she opened it a decade ago. ("Express," a song from the movie "Burlesque," in which Cher plays a nightclub owner and mother figure to Aguilera's character, is a wink to their mother-daughter proprietorship.) <div type="image" title="Women training under a blue light." height="754" width="2292" msid="104106347" hostid="261"></div>The signs of war are everywhere. The windows on the three floors above the club remain boarded up after an explosion last year in the center of Kharkiv shattered every window on the block. Because Flash Dancers is in the basement, it doubles as an air-raid shelter, where staff members and tenants living above the club can wait out rocket strikes in the red-leather booths surrounding the dance pole. The club has lost three employees to the war, two of them a married couple who met there. More than a million residents have fled Kharkiv, and few who remain can afford to spend an evening at Flash Dancers, where a drink costs three times what it did before the war. There are never more than 20 guests. On some nights, no one shows up.Yet despite a strict 11 p.m. curfew mandated by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the club remains open seven nights a week. At this point it's not a living, it's a lifeline — part of a nationwide, defiant attempt at normality in the midst of war. As Valeriya leads the dancers to the dressing room to change into the night's costumes, she talks about why she fell in love with the world of dance her mother introduced her to. It also sums up what the club strives to offer beleaguered patrons and employees alike."It's something you can't say with words," she says, "but can tell with your body."A few hours before rehearsal, I meet with Valeriya's mother, Valeriia Kseniya, in her office at her day job, as director of a small hotel a short drive from the club. "For most of us in Ukraine today, it's difficult to earn a living in just one job," she says. We sit on the couch as she displays pictures from her life in show business — dancing with a chimpanzee in her days with a Chinese circus group, sauntering at a cabaret in South Korea. Every few minutes we can hear the lull of a train carrying soldiers and civilians passing through the railway station next door.Growing up in Kharkiv under Soviet rule, Kseniya found herself "irritated by reality." She worked as a gymnast for the Komsomol, the communist youth league, and tried to focus on the joy of performance and ignoring the Communist Party. By the time the Iron Curtain fell and Ukraine gained its independence in 1991, she was 23. For much of the next two decades she was frequently on the road: dancing in clubs in Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia, modeling lingerie in Italy, touring with ballet troupes in Asia.<div type="image" title="Image of same woman young and old." height="1475" width="1967" msid="104106349" hostid="261"></div>By 2014, with a teenager and a toddler in tow (she also had a grown son, who works in Ukraine's energy sector and was then 23), Kseniya decided to settle in Kharkiv. That spring, Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and orchestrated a rebellion of its Donbas region, plunging Ukraine into a recession. Inflation approached 30%, while unemployment climbed to nearly 11%. But for Kseniya, the timing was fortuitous. A strip club in the center of the city was going out of business. Here was her chance, she thought, to bring the world of dance home. With visions of building a modern-day Moulin Rouge, the legendary 19th-century Parisian cabaret, Kseniya hired a handful of attractive women who knew how to dance, and then began choreographing elaborate, acrobatic numbers set to American and Europop songs. The police were suspicious: In the club's first year, they showed up multiple times to question her and the dancers about whether Flash Dancers was a front for a prostitution ring. Patrons expecting strip-club fare, meanwhile, were flummoxed by the unusual customer experience."Everyone initially thought it was a club with happy endings," says Kseniya, now 55. The choreography looks more like that of a modern dance company than the Hustler Club, the dancers do not get topless, and sex with customers is strictly forbidden. "Our position is that girls are not meat," Kseniya says. "Girls are about aesthetics, about femininity, about beauty." Eventually, the club built a reputation for its performances — several pre-2022 Google reviews appear to be from women who took their husbands to the show ("wonderful, soulful atmosphere!" one wrote) — and the business grew. In 2020, needing a business partner she could trust, Kseniya brought on Valeriya as co-owner. Then early in her studies at the National University of Kharkiv, Valeriya was majoring in dance and law. ("Dance is for your soul," she explains. "Law is forever.") She took on an after-hours leadership role at the club, choreographing new numbers, helping manage the books, and running the club's Instagram and TikTok feeds. <div type="image" title="Woman wearing a big red bow with red background." height="3944" width="5259" msid="104106353" hostid="261"></div>Then came Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Kharkiv immediately became a brutal battleground, battered by relentless shelling and cluster bombs. On the day of the invasion — February 24, 2022 — Kseniya and Valeriya reached all 20 dancers. Many were already fleeing. Most would not return.With the city under siege, Kseniya continued working at the hotel to help lodge civilians who were waiting in huge numbers to leave the train station. In the first two weeks, some <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/26/we-decided-to-be-useful-ukraine-the-kharkiv-citizens-who-stayed-behind" target="_blank" rel="noopener">600,000 people</a>, more than a third of the city, left by rail alone. On March 8, after Russian fighter jets bombed several nearby homes, Kseniya joined the exodus. She and her daughters — accompanied by Valeriya's lapdogs, Sara and Lady — journeyed 15 hours by train to Drohobych, near the Polish border. There, they waited to see whether they would one day have a home to return to.In May 2022, after nearly three months of fighting, Ukrainian troops pushed Russian forces away from Kharkiv. Valeriya and her family returned to find parts of their city unrecognizable, and the rubble-strewn streets quiet. Rocket strikes and shelling had damaged or destroyed apartment complexes, government buildings, churches, an opera house, a concert hall, and an economic building at the university where Valeriya was finishing her degree. The stone walls of the Flash Dancers facade were pockmarked with shrapnel. <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/06/ukraine-hundreds-killed-in-relentless-russian-shelling-of-kharkiv-new-investigation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">More than 600 civilians</a> were thought to have been killed in the Kharkiv region.Nearly <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/ukraine/development-impact-war-ukraine-initial-projections-enuk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">half of all businesses</a> in Ukraine shut down, and 90% of Ukrainians were facing poverty. But Kseniya refused to let Flash Dancers sit empty. She decided to reopen it with the cash she had left from the club's earlier success. And once again, she found herself grimly fortunate. Though she and Valeriya had to replace almost all of the club's staff, many women who had been working at local restaurants and strip clubs were now looking for jobs. "Everything was closed, and people began to come to us," Valeriya said. Few of them, however, had ever danced.Now, in the afternoon before the club opens, Valeriya cleans the toilet, calls the plumber to fix a leak, and makes sure the bar is stocked and the prices are set for the evening. With inflation, liquor costs up to three times what it did before Russia's full-scale invasion. "We have a huge markup on everything," says Valeriya. <div type="image" title="A woman stands in front of ruins in Ukraine." height="4160" width="5546" msid="104106357" hostid="261"></div>Thirty minutes before the club opens for the evening, the dancers are gathered in the dressing room. Some are putting on their makeup; others shimmy into a wide array of erotic costumes: a maid's outfit, a police uniform, frilly French cancan skirts, a black sequined ball gown. The mood is buoyant. It all feels very far from the war-ravaged streets aboveground.I sit next to Dana, a 23-year-old Kharkiv native who asked that Insider use only her first name to protect her privacy, as she slips into a pair of white-feathered angel wings. Before the war, she worked at a strip club in the city. Now, she feels relieved to be working in a club owned by women — one that isn't a place "where everyone tries to touch you." Flash Dancers is different, attempting to strike a balance between art and entertainment. "I'm not ashamed of it," Dana says. "I can tell people I work in cabaret."<div type="image" title="Dancer gets ready backstage." height="4160" width="5546" msid="104106358" hostid="261"></div>When Dana first joined Flash Dancers, Valeriya said, she was shy, silent, and not open to speaking with the team. For many of the new, wartime employees, the challenge hasn't been just the difficulty of the routines. It's a lack of confidence and self-esteem. "They don't believe in themselves," Kseniya says. Part of that, she believes, stems from a lack of positive feedback growing up — "complications that were given to them by their parents as part of the USSR heritage." But part of it comes from the ongoing fear and uncertainty created by the war. Valeriya and her mother both make a point of complimenting the dancers frequently. Kseniya does their makeup, and Valeriya makes and tailors their outfits, so the exact fit "helps their confidence."Still, setting aside the traumas of war while they're at work is a daily battle for everyone at Flash Dancers. "You have to smile when you don't want to," Valeriya says while inspecting a dancer's mascara. "You have to entertain when you don't want to." Gyrating to the Pussycat Dolls in pumps and a sheer pearl-sequined leotard while your country is under attack doesn't come naturally to anyone. Valeriya often reminds the dancers that their customers — many of them Ukrainian soldiers — are in dire need of a distraction. Making sure "they leave with positive emotions" is good for the cause — and for tips.<div type="image" title="Woman dancer getting ready backstage." height="3995" width="5992" msid="104106360" hostid="261"></div>"When the military comes in, they're so tense," Kseniya says. "It's really, really tough."Occasionally they have to toss out an unruly man. But most are cordial. Many of the soldiers ask the dancers to sit with them, and the night becomes more group therapy than cabaret. They talk about their children and wives who have fled the city, the lives they've left behind, their own floundering businesses, what they've seen on the battlefield. Dancers sometimes get more tips from listening than from dancing.One night back in March I met a 26-year-old soldier named Yurii Tryfan who sat alone wearing camo fatigues, nursing his Jägermeister. He told me he had just come from Bakhmut, the besieged city that has witnessed some of the most vicious fighting of the war. (Yevgeny Prigozhin, the now-deceased head of the Russian private army Wagner, claimed he had <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/head-of-russian-private-army-says-more-than-20000-fighters-died-in-bakhmut-battle" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lost 20,000 of his fighters</a> in Bakhmut alone.) Tryfan was reluctant to talk, but he had nothing but praise for the club and the solace it provided. "Amazing place," he says. "Wonderful staff, the best girls. And most importantly, the core lineup, the songs."Over the past year, several soldiers who were regulars at Flash Dancers have been killed in the fighting. And the horrors of war have reached beyond the front lines. Last September, a dancer named Lyuda, one of the few who remained from before the war, went into labor. She was living in the commuter town of Kupyansk, which had fallen under Russian occupation soon after Russia invaded. She and her husband, Maksyum, a bartender she had met at Flash Dancers a few years earlier, left their home headed for the hospital. On their way, Russian soldiers shot at the car, killing them both. That same month, Pavlo, the club's business administrator, was shot dead by Russian soldiers while driving in Bakhmut. <div type="image" title="Woman dancing at strip club with men chanting her on." height="3925" width="5888" msid="104106364" hostid="261"></div>At 6 p.m. sharp, the Flash Dancers sign outside the club lights up. Kate, a 19-year-old host who's majoring in English at a nearby college, hands out flyers to passersby. She's wearing a long red dress, red wings, and a red masquerade mask. No one bites. Inside, the dancers chat before the dance floor's mirror.The International Monetary Fund says the Ukrainian economy has begun to show signs of "remarkable resilience" as critical infrastructure has been restored and inflation has begun to come down. And though Ukrainians have little spending power, nightlife is resurgent. In Kyiv, according to some reports, there are now more bars and restaurants open than there were before the war. Still, fewer than half of all small businesses in Ukraine are operating at full capacity, and inflation remains punishingly high. "Prices are constantly going up even now. It's scary," Kseniya says. She fears that if rates continue to climb, "people will stop going."<div type="image" title="Woman wearing angel wings dancing on strip club." height="3901" width="5852" msid="104106366" hostid="261"></div>The evening at Flash Dancers could serve as a microcosm of Ukraine's tentative but determined return to normality. By 7, two men trundle down the red-carpeted staircase. As more trickle in, some women take turns dancing while others sit with them, offering them company as they watch the performers. At 9 p.m., just after sunset and with barely an hour before close, a large group arrives. In the final hour, there's an avalanche of constant, acrobatic motion around the pole — syncrhonrized spins and shimmies and sashays as Aguilera croons. When one dancer finishes onstage, another immediately replaces her. "We've sped up the relaxation process" for the customer, Valeriya says, by "distracting him with a beautiful fuss around him.""We reopened the club to create another world, where everything is magical," Valeriya says. "Diamonds and rhinestones do the trick."<div type="image" title="Woman wearing angle wings with purple light beaming through the back." height="3614" width="5421" msid="104106368" hostid="261"></div><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/anna-conkling">Anna Conkling</a> is a journalist based in Berlin. Her writing has been featured in Rolling Stone, Elle, The Daily Beast, and elsewhere.

A night inside a strip club near Ukraine’s front lines

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Yale neuroscientists restored some cellular function, heartbeat, and blood flow in dead <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/man-with-pigs-heart-transplant-died-pig-virus-report-2022-5">pigs</a>, they said Wednesday.</li><li>The discovery shows that intervention can stop cells from dying and preserve <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/doctors-changed-human-lungs-blood-type-for-the-first-time-2022-2">organs</a> after death.</li></ul>In a feat that blurs the boundary between life and death, researchers at Yale School of Medicine have restored some cell function in the organs of dead pigs. The achievement, which was <a href="https://affiliate.insider.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41586-022-05016-1">published</a> in Nature on Wednesday, ignites hopes for future medical breakthroughs that could save thousands of lives.One hour after death, researchers connected pigs to a system of pumps, heaters, and fillers called OrganEx. By artificially flushing the pigs' organs with blood — a process called perfusion — they restored molecular and cellular function in the heart, brain, liver and kidneys.The hearts even contracted to pump blood, indicating renewed electrical activity, and restored full blood circulation in the pigs' bodies. There was no sign of electrical activity in the brain. Still, the scientists say they've uncovered a previously unknown capacity for mammal cells to recover after blood has stopped flowing."Cells actually don't die as quickly as we assumed that they do, which basically opens up the possibility for intervention," Zvonimir Vrselja, a neuroscientist on the research team at Yale, said in a press briefing. "If properly intervened, we can maybe tell them not to die."Unlocking that ability could allow clinicians to preserve more human organs for donation after death, reducing the transplant-organ shortage and saving thousands of lives. The new technology could also revolutionize life-support treatment. Some researchers said the discovery could even pave the way for bringing people back to life hours after death."Death is not an instantaneous event, but rather a gradual process, and we have gained a further tool to nudge it," Anders Sandberg, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford Future of Humanity Institute, who was unaffiliated with the study, said in a statement.The same research group previously developed a perfusion system called BrainEx. In 2019, that system restored some structure and function in the brains of dead pigs four hours after they'd been decapitated.<h2>Death is more reversible than scientists thought</h2><div type="image" title="electrocardiogram shows mostly flat heartbeat with image of muted cells on the left versus clear heartbeat and bright cells on the right" height="1620" width="2732" msid="93330899" hostid="261" sizebytes="117944"></div>The OrganEx process could one day save people who die from drowning, heart attacks, massive bleeding from car accidents, or athletes who suddenly die from a heart defect, according to Dr. Sam Parnia, director of critical care and resuscitation research at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, who was unaffiliated with the new study.With the organ tissues preserved and cell death delayed, doctors would have time to unblock the artery that caused the heart attack, or repair the torn vessel that caused the patient to bleed out."Otherwise healthy people, including athletes who die, but in whom the cause of death is treatable at any given time, can potentially be brought back to life. And if the cause of death is not treatable, then their organs can be preserved to give life to thousands of people every year," Parnia said in a statement."Scientifically, death is a biological process that remains treatable and reversible for hours after it has occurred," he added.Still, the Yale researchers cautioned against getting too excited about life after death."This is very far away from use in humans," Dr. David Andrijevic, a neuroscientist from the research team at Yale, said in the briefing, adding, "It doesn't restore all function in all organs."<h2>Better organ preservation could save thousands of lives</h2>Normally, when a heart stops beating and blood stops flowing, it causes other organs to swell. Blood vessels collapse and prevent new blood flow.By preventing swelling and restoring full circulation, the new OrganEx technology could one day extend the window for salvaging organs from healthy people who have died. That would allow for more organ donations, potentially saving thousands of people who otherwise die on transplant waitlists.This newfound capacity for restoring organ cell function could also lead researchers to more effective life support.To sustain patients whose heart or lungs have stopped working, hospitals use a technique called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) to flush blood through the dysfunctional organ, a process called perfusion. ECMO only slows the death of cells, and it often fails to fully saturate organs with blood, leaving some smaller blood vessels to collapse.<div type="image" title="three medical staff in protective plastic suits masks operate machine and tubes connected to a patient lying flat" height="1462" width="1950" msid="93330900" hostid="261" sizebytes="147656"></div>OrganEx is "like ECMO on steroids," said Dr. Nenad Sestan of the Yale neuroscience team, and in the new study it performed much better than ECMO. The organs showed signs of being fully flushed with blood and fully oxygenated, with less hemorrhage and inflammation. The researchers even observed patterns of gene expression in certain cells that indicated the tissues were repairing themselves.These potential new abilities — preserving more organs for transplant, making more effective life support, and reviving people whose blood has stopped flowing — require much more research. They carry ethical implications, too."There is a challenging ethical issue in determining when radical life support is just futile, and as technology advances we may find more ways of keeping bodies alive, despite being unable to revive the person we actually care about. Much work remains to find criteria for when further treatment is futile, and also in how to get people back from the brink," Sandberg said.

Scientists restored dead pigs' cell function and heartbeats, blurring the line between life and death

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="12037533" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="twins" source="Orion">Twins</keyword> Jill Justiniani and Erin Cheplak gave <keyword id="12166983" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="birth" source="Orion">birth</keyword> to sons on May 5. </li><li>Their sons were born in the same hospital with the same measurements, "Good Morning America" reported. </li></ul>Identical twins in California gave birth to newborn sons on the same day, in the same hospital. Jill Justiniani and Erin Cheplak told "<a href="https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/family/story/identical-twin-sisters-give-birth-day-hospital-84659302" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Good Morning America" </a> that their sons, Oliver and Silas, were born hours apart on May 5 at Anaheim Kaiser Hospital. Justiniani gave birth to Oliver at 6:39 p.m., while Cheplak welcomed Silas at 11:31 p.m. The boys were also born with the exact same measurements — seven pounds, three ounces, and measuring 20 inches at birth — the outlet reported."The twinning continues," Cheplak, 30, told GMA. Cheplak explained to GMA that she married her husband in a small ceremony during the COVID-19 pandemic, but held a larger celebration in August 2021. Ahead of the celebration, Justiniani revealed that she was expecting her first child with her husband. One week later, Cheplak discovered she was pregnant during her honeymoon in the Maldives. "I took the pregnancy test and saw the two lines and it was very faint," Cheplak told GMA. "I was second-guessing, am I seeing what I'm seeing, and I FaceTimed Jill from the Maldives and she was like, 'Yes, that's it. That's it.'" The women told GMA that they often leaned on each other during their pregnancies, and their husbands joked that their sons might be born on the same day. Although Justiniani was scheduled for a C-section on May 5 and Cheplak was scheduled to be induced on May 15, Cheplak went into labor ten days early, GMA reported.They recovered in rooms across from each other and were discharged at the same time, according to the outlet. "Part of me was thinking, 'What are the odds of this? I can't believe this is happening,' but there was also a sense of calm about it because it was like of course this is happening," Justiniani told GMA. "We've just been so close and so inseparable, it made complete sense in a very odd way." Justiniani and Cheplak did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Identical twin sisters gave birth to baby boys on the same day at the same hospital — just hours apart

<ul class="summary-list"><li>My client service workload required travel and long nights and weekends, which was hard to manage.</li><li>I made an unthinkable decision to forgo my cushy salary, great benefits, and leadership perks.</li></ul>Working for a global organization is no joke — particularly as a front-line, "the buck stops here" <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/millennial-becoming-manager-regret-job-career-advice-2023-12">client service manager.</a>I recall the interviewing manager telling me I would never be able to keep up with the workload. I passed off the insinuation, thinking, "He has no idea how effective and efficient I am." It turns out no amount of efficiency and effectiveness was sufficient to keep up with domestic travel, schmoozing with clients, leading a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cofounders-motherly-multimillion-dollar-company-myths-running-remote-team">remote cross-functional team</a>, and managing all the administrative processes.Pair that workload with being <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/single-mother-five-children-gave-up-bedroom-daughter-privacy-tiktok-2024-1">a single mom</a> and the primary caregiver for aging parents, and it was a recipe for disaster.I loved my job and was great at it, but something had to give.<h2>My demanding career was affecting all areas of my life</h2>Our team members used to tease, "You're not a true employee until you've forgotten to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hire-college-students-child-care-kids-2024-2">pick up your kids at day care</a>." The sad thing is, it wasn't a joke. I got caught up and missed the 6:30 final call at day care more than once.It wasn't just my kid getting the short end of the stick while I traveled and worked late. My <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/health/essentials-for-better-physical-and-mental-health">physical and mental health</a> dwindled as I tried to pace the never-ending demands of work, parenting, and caregiving. I couldn't keep up, and I felt like I was drowning.<h2>I decided to take a lower-level position with another company</h2>My leader and clients were shocked when I gave my notice. I stayed on past my notice to attend an on-site meeting for one of our largest clients, an international household name. The client leader asked me to name my price to keep me as the service manager on their account. He was dismayed when I replied, "I'm leaving to have a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/news-today-november-18-work-life-balance-job-careers-remote-2023-11">better work-life balance</a>, and that's something you can't provide. No amount of pay is enough to make me stay."Even though I was taking a step down and finances would be tight, standing firm in my decision was one of the times I've felt most resolute in my life.<h2>The transition was challenging, but it set me up in the best way</h2>I quickly whipped all my tasks into shape when I began working for my new employer. It wasn't long before I was bored as an individual contributor with no team members to lead. I even considered returning to my former employer to initiate more of that fire I'd become accustomed to. When you're used to chaos, a slower, more deliberate pace can feel excruciating. Thankfully, my good friend helped me stay the course.After a few months on the job, I <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/meet-elder-millennial-who-took-35000-pay-cut-stay-remote-2023-8">took another pay cut to work part-time</a>, resulting in a nearly 50% pay cut from my client service salary. This time, the move was to be even more present for my growing son, who was in elementary school, and my mother, who'd recently been diagnosed with cancer.<h2>Losing the money was nothing compared to what I gained</h2>I worked for my last employer for 10 years, receiving several promotions and ultimately becoming a director who reported to the CEO. It wasn't long before I surpassed my original salary. Better yet, during my time there, I was blessed with fantastic leadership, minimal travel requirements, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/workers-ditch-9-to-5-jobs-to-work-whenever-schedule-flexibility-2022-10">a flexible schedule</a>, ample paid time off, and the ability to put my family first.It's a good thing, too, because my son was getting older, and I lost both of my parents within five years.When the demands of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sandwich-generation-mom-emotional-burnout-2023-10">the sandwich generation</a> were tough, as they often were, I was supported and even gifted donated PTO from fellow employees. I was able to take my parents to doctor appointments, be with them during frequent hospital stays, and care for them in their dying days at hospice.I'll never regret leaving the fast-paced hustle that made family time an afterthought in exchange for the ability to really be there for my family when they needed it most.

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