Inside the war over leaf blowers tearing millionaire Hamptons homeowners apart

Gail Pellet and her husband, Stephan Van Dam. "We all became driven insane by this noise," Pellet says.

Jeremy Garretson for BI

When Charles Leak and his wife purchased his home in East Hampton, they thought they'd found an oasis of quiet. Far away from their Tribeca apartment in the Near Northwest Woods, a neighborhood known for its secluded calm, their contemporary saltbox style sits back on a one-acre lot, surrounded by Japanese cedars and bamboo.

About five years after he moved in, the leaf blower roars started.

"You know what a chainsaw sounds like? These are louder. Usually, there are multiple. It becomes a symphony," Leak, who has worked as a contractor and a fine artist, tells me. "It's quieter in the city."

Leak and many other East Hampton residents say leaf blowers have instilled a reign of terror in their idyllic hamlet, home to the summer estates of billionaires like Barry Rosenstein and Len Blavatnik. They're far from alone. From Palm Beach to Aspen, homeowners say they're being plagued by the near-constant hum and toxic hiss of these motorized monsters. Most commercial blowers burn a mixture of oil and gas and release as much as 30% of their unburned fuel into the air. And they're not just whirring in the spring. With wealthy homeowners hungry for bigger lawns and ultra-manicured landscaping, more homes have hired weekly or twice-weekly crews, year-round.

Charles Leak, photographed at home with his electric leaf blower, came to East Hampton for quiet. Now, he says, it's louder than his Tribeca apartment.

Jeremy Garretson for BI

Driving down his street, Leak points out each house and its noisiness. One property's owner employs landscapers who work until 8 p.m.; another has multiple leaf blowers running at once.

"We should have bought it way back just to keep it quiet," he says, pointing to the neighboring lot. Leak, who eschews traditional grass in favor of moss, has his landscaper use good old-fashioned rakes and gives a $200 tip for the extra effort.

How do we get people to stop thinking of their lawn as their living room rug?Edwina von Gal, landscape designer

His neighbors have organized against the cacophony. The pages of The East Hampton Star are riddled with articles and letters to the editor about the issue. In East Hampton, gas leaf blowers have been prohibited between May 20 and September 20 since 2021, but local groups say the enforcement is virtually nonexistent. The town's ordinance enforcement department received 140 calls related to leaf blowers last year, and 133 the year prior.

Now, some are pushing for a year-round ban on gas-powered blowers. It would be a costly switch. Customers, no matter how rich, don't want to swallow a price increase by switching to pricier electric blowers, local landscapers say, and with private equity firms hoovering up mom-and-pop landscaping shops, the bottom line is emphasized now more than ever.

Across America, leaf blowers have become a political lightning rod: More than 200 cities and several states have issued bans or restrictions on gas-powered leaf blowers. The pursuits of two different bourgeois dreams — a perfect lawn or quietude — are at war.

"It's about privilege and what constitutes privilege these days," says Setha Low, an East Hampton homeowner and anthropology professor at the City University of New York. "Very wealthy people want to control their environment."

Behind the gates and hedges, East Hampton homeowners favor lawns that require near-constant care.

Jeremy Garretson for BI

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Even on a rainy day in May, East Hampton's landscapers are busy prepping for the summer season. Their trucks are all over town, stopped at red lights in front of the Louis Vuitton and Prada stores, and parked by eight- and nine-figure mansions.

Outside Town Hall, Gail Pellet shows off a pollinator garden she and her husband, Stephan Van Dam, have tended through the ChangeHampton, an ecological organization they run together. In between pointing out flower species, she stops person after person to mention the group's latest initiative: abolishing gas leaf blowers for good.

Everyone has an opinion: "They're disgusting and ridiculous," says one resident. "We can't enjoy this beautiful place," says another.

Several residents say COVID-19 was when the clamor got unbearable. Summer and weekend people who migrated east to ride out the pandemic became exposed to the cacophony of spring and fall, when heavy-duty landscaping takes place. Trying to work, socialize, or think became impossible.

"We all became driven insane by this noise," Pellet says.

Gail Pellet, the cofounder of ChangeHampton, is spearheading a petition to extend the gas leaf blower ban year-round.

Jeremy Garretson for BI

One of Van Dam's favorite things about his time in East Hampton is access to Three Mile Harbor, where he swims every morning. Except on certain Thursdays, one of the busiest days for landscapers as they prep for weekend residents. The noise becomes intolerable, and the water turns murky.

"They come in like a hovercraft for an hour and a half. The noise. The dust," he says.

A few summers ago, the blowers woke him up from a late summer nap. "I was so incensed," he says. "I ran over there and told the owner to shut them up."

Drive down Further Lane, where houses sell for upward of $100 million, and you'll see lawns so pristine they look like carpeting. That's exactly the problem, says Edwina von Gal, a landscape designer who has lived and worked in East Hampton for decades.

"How do we get people to stop thinking of their lawn as their living room rug?" she says, is among the questions that now inform her practice, which focuses on ecological land care and the cultivation of native species.

For years, before leaf blowers were common, von Gal designed what her clients wanted: the bright green lawns they saw in magazines. The richer the Hamptons got, she says, the bigger and smoother the lawns got. "It's a symbol of wealth and control. It's equating size with money and uniformity with money," she says.

Achieving that putting green-style perfection requires chemical sprays, the destruction of naturally occurring vegetation, and a cavalcade of leaf blowers.

"They just want to make sure it's all looking good when they come out," Jeff Peters, who has been a landscaper in the Hamptons for decades, said. "God forbid if not."

Peters, who was using an electric leaf blower so quiet I couldn't hear it through the phone when we spoke ahead of Memorial Day weekend, charges his clients as much as $60,000 a year for planting, maintenance, and cutting. When they arrive after a traffic-riddled Jitney ride, they want it to look like they're getting their money's worth.

Stephan Van Dam and Gail Pellet have championed East Hampton's natural landscape, including spearheading the community pollinator garden.

Jeremy Garretson for BI

Hamptons residents also want to get their money's worth for solitude. The wealthy "don't want any kind of intrusion," Low says, and that includes sound.

"Here in East Hampton, the regime is a very, very, very elite white kind of culture," which is a culture of silence, she says. "No leaf blowers; you don't want to hear construction. You don't want to hear work."

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Beyond East Hampton, leaf blowers have become a pet issue of libertarians across America. In March, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reversed a gas leaf blower ban across the state.

"I like gas-powered better," he said after signing the bill into law. "And if that's what you believe, then you should be able to do that."

Gas leaf blowers have been the subject of growing scrutiny over their health and environmental impacts — as well as the noise.

Jeremy Garretson for BI

"They're making it a partisan issue," Pellet says.

So far, her organization's petition to ban gas leaf blowers year-round in East Hampton has received close to 400 signatures; she'll make another push for signatures when the seasonal ban ends in the fall. But not everyone in the community is supportive.

An Instagram post about the petition from The East Hampton Star received 618 comments — more than nearly every other post from the local newspaper since. Many of them flagged the high costs the ban would entail.

54% of landscapers say they've been approached about selling their company in the past 12 months.

Electric-powered professional-grade leaf blowers from outdoor tool manufacturer Husqvarna retail for between $310 and $500. Add in the charger and a battery, and it comes to nearly $1,800. The company's gas-powered, professional-grade blowers start at $300 and max out at just under $900. Landscapers say they also have to buy extra batteries, which last about an hour and a half, and pay for outfitting a trailer with chargers and a generator.

"It's getting to the point now that maybe in a couple years I would say screw it, it's not worth it," Peters says.

For the past two decades, private equity shops have been buying up local landscaping businesses, collecting lucrative recurring revenue. In Lawn & Landscape Magazine's annual industry survey last year, 54% of respondents said they'd been approached about selling their company in the past 12 months.

"The services are recurring, your grass continues to grow," Robert Tymowski, a managing director at Livingstone Partners, tells me. When it comes to leaf blowing, he says there is little reason to switch to electric: "You really don't have an economic incentive to care about your customer's neighbor necessarily." He noted that he uses an electric blower on his own property.

"There's kind of a misincentive or misalignment between the costs associated with going with a quieter solution and also just the, call it the quality of the work," he adds, citing the need for batteries and chargers and the reduced power of electric blowers. "There's a number of things happening there, but they kind of all conspire against making a pivot to the quieter technology."

Following the law would be one incentive.

While the larger and more established landscapers in East Hampton tend to adhere to the summer ban, many of the smaller ones don't, locals say. That leaves rule-following shops like Peters' at a competitive disadvantage, as they have to charge customers more to adopt the technology that adheres to the rules.

Better enforcement could solve that. The East Hampton law states that violating the ban could result in suspension or revocation of licenses and fines up to $5,000.

In East Hampton, where privet hedges and status trees cost a premium, landscaping bills can add up to six figures annually.

Jeremy Garretson for BI

East Hampton residents say oversight is nonexistent. Code enforcement typically shows up well after the violating party has left, some say, and that's only if you manage to reach something.

"They're already done and gone, so that doesn't work," Leak says, "Then when you call them to complain about it, they start to get this attitude that you're like some kind of crazy radical."

Many would like to see the homeowners shouldering the burden of the fines and more extreme repercussions. Pellet suggested that neighbors should be able to videotape violators to report them in a sort of vigilante justice — or at least send them to journalists.

On the morning of May 20, the day East Hampton's seasonal ban went into effect, Leak took a video of his property. Drowning out the bird chirps was the hum of a leaf blower.

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Madeline Berg is a correspondent at Business Insider, where she covers the wealthy, famous, and powerful.

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She tried to fire her real estate agent. It turned into a nightmare.

Getty Images; iStock; Tyler Le/BI

Kirsten Ganas was ready to fire her real estate agent.

It was late March, right in the thick of homebuying season in southwest Pennsylvania. Ganas and her partner, Austin McCarley, had recently learned they were expecting their second child, and they were thrilled at the prospect of upgrading from their two-bedroom rental. They were less enthused, however, about the services provided by their agent, Dan Waterhouse. He'd reached out to them in early January, after they requested their first home tour on Zillow; since then, Waterhouse had shown them roughly two dozen properties. He was nice but sometimes slow to respond, Ganas says, and he lived far from their desired area — no good in a fast-moving market. Shortly after getting outbid on a property, Ganas texted to let him know they'd be moving on.

There was just one problem. When they met Waterhouse for that first home tour, he'd handed them a couple of documents: standard paperwork, he explained, that they would have to sign before seeing the home together. One of those documents contained language that exclusively bound the pair to Waterhouse's brokerage for a year. The only way to terminate that agreement, Waterhouse said, would be to get permission from Rita Sumney, the head of the brokerage. When Ganas contacted Sumney, she got more bad news: getting out of the agreement would come at a cost. Unless they paid an "early termination fee" or found another brokerage willing to pay Sumney a referral fee, they'd be tied to her brokerage well into January 2027. If they bought a home any earlier — even without using an agent at all — they'd still owe the full commission they'd agreed to: a flat fee of $995 plus a percentage of the sale price, which would likely amount to thousands of dollars.

"We just got that sick feeling about being stuck in this contract," Ganas tells me.

Ganas and McCarley had signed a "buyer representation agreement," a contract outlining the terms of the relationship between buyer and broker. Until just a couple of years ago, this would have been unusual — agents typically waited to hand their client any formal documentation until later in the process. But thanks to a seismic legal settlement in 2024, most agents are now required to get a written agreement before they step through the front door with a client. One broker I spoke with at the time called it "the biggest change in 100 years."

The new rule was intended to make sure buyers know exactly what they're signing up for when they enlist an agent. But consumer advocates warn that millions of prospective buyers risk being tethered to inept agents or agreeing to inordinate fees before they've had a chance to get a feel for the relationship. In many ways, these contracts are the most tangible byproducts of a settlement designed to shore up consumer protections. Two years in, though, the results are mixed.

"The idea that buyer-broker agreements have to be signed before they show any houses is great," says Doug Miller, a real estate lawyer in Minnesota who helped craft the class-action lawsuits that led to the settlement. "But the practice of springing this on a consumer at the threshold is amazingly unfair and dishonest."

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Not so long ago, many buyers' agents readily advertised their services as "free." Of course, this wasn't true — nobody works for free — but it may have felt true to buyers because of the roundabout way in which their agents got paid. The vast majority of buyers never cut a check to their representative. Instead, both brokers quietly banked a slice of the seller's haul. Here's how things would generally go:

1. Jackie is selling her $500,000 home and agrees to pay a 6% commission to the brokers who make the deal happen.
2. Her agent lists the house on the multiple listing service, or MLS — a local database where agents advertise homes for sale — and promises to pay a 3% commission to any agent who delivers the winning buyer.
3. Jerome, with the help of an agent from another brokerage, offers to buy Jackie's home for the full asking price. The two sides hammer out a deal.
4. After the sale closes, Jackie pays $30,000 to her broker, who then splits that amount with Jerome's broker. Both brokers walk away with $15,000.

All of this money comes from the buyer's down payment and mortgage, but from Jerome's perspective, it's out of sight, out of mind.

This state of affairs was upended in the fall of 2023, when the National Association of Realtors, the industry's main trade group, lost a multibillion-dollar, class-action lawsuit over agent commissions. The plaintiffs, a group of aggrieved sellers, argued that this method of paying agents forced them to accept inflated fees and opened the door to tactics such as "steering," which discouraged negotiations over commissions. The ensuing settlement, unveiled in the spring of 2024, included a few rule changes. Key among them was a new requirement for the vast majority of agents: before so much as touring a home with a client, they'd need to agree on the terms of the relationship — in writing.

For much of the 21st century, many buyers' agents readily advertised their services as "free."

Bloomberg/Getty Images

The exact details of these contracts can vary dramatically. When it comes to specifics like fees or term length, it's up to buyers and their agents to fill in the blanks. The agreements can range from one day to an entire year, or from "exclusive" to "non-exclusive" — a version that allows a buyer to work with multiple brokerages at once, though they'll likely owe a commission to the agent who shows them the winning home. Some agents might initially have buyers sign a "touring agreement" to show them a property or two before deciding whether to enter a lengthier relationship.

The practice of springing this on a consumer at the threshold is amazingly unfair and dishonest.Doug Miller, real estate lawyer in Minnesota

Prior to the settlement, at least 15 states required buyers' agents to have a signed agreement in hand at some point in the process, though not necessarily at the very beginning, researchers at the Federal Reserve found. In the rest of the country, a buyer's agent may never have bothered to get one signed, since the MLSs could be counted on to step in and ensure everyone was paid according to the advertised commission. The new rule's aims seemed noble. Agents work for a fee, after all, and both broker and client should be clear on what they'll get out of the relationship and how long they'll be tied together. Almost immediately, though, problems arose. State Realtor associations and individual brokerages began crafting lengthy forms that some lawyers and consumer-advocacy groups lambasted as needlessly dense. Any buyer, critics argued, would struggle to parse the thick legalese and unfamiliar terms.

"For a lot of buyers, this is completely new," says Sharon Cornelissen, director of housing at the Consumer Federation of America. "They're not used to having to sign a contract."

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Ganas and McCarley were unaware of all the contractual hubbub when they began their house hunt at the end of December. After scrolling through Zillow for a bit, they clicked the blue "request a tour" button for a place that caught their eye. This shuttled their contact information to Dan Waterhouse, one of many thousands of agents who pay Zillow a fee in exchange for leads on potential buyers. The house quickly went under contract, but he arranged to show them a few other properties, starting with a handsome three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in Somerset, Pennsylvania.

It wasn't until they were standing at the house's entrance, eager to begin the tour, that Waterhouse mentioned the representation agreement. By then, more than a week had passed since their initial contact over text. The conversation about the contract was brief, Ganas says, with Waterhouse explaining it in broad strokes — stuff like "you're not going to work with multiple Realtors at a time," she recalls. Ganas and McCarley took turns holding their daughter while they signed on the wall of the home's entryway. "It was really naive of us," Ganas tells me. But at that early stage, she says, they hadn't expected to enter such a binding arrangement.

"It just didn't feel like it was a proper setting, or properly explained," Ganas says. "All those things kind of added up to us not realizing the extent of that document."

Waterhouse disputes this. He tells me via email that he explained the primary differences between the "exclusive" and "non-exclusive" contracts, and that both Ganas and McCarley said they'd prefer the exclusive (Ganas denies that he presented them with this choice). He also says that he provided a summary of the numerous items on each page, including the term length and his typical fees, "and they each had an opportunity to read through it in detail."

Most real estate agents are now required to get buyers to sign an agreement before touring homes together — a stark change.

Bloomberg/Getty Images

Upon closer inspection, the agreement contained several provisions that have long raised concerns among consumer advocates. For one, the yearlong lockup was far lengthier than the two- to three-month term recommended by groups like the Consumer Federation of America and Consumer Policy Center. "You can always extend it," says Wendy Gilch, a fellow at the CPC. "It is much more difficult to get out of it." Ganas and McCarley had also agreed to pay Waterhouse a commission of 4% of the home's sale price — well above the national average of 2.7% — plus a $995 flat fee (the CFA has referred to this additional charge, often called an admin fee, as a "junk fee"). The contract didn't mention anything about the buyer's options to terminate the agreement. And if Ganas and McCarley decided not to buy, and ended up leasing a property at any point during the one-year timeframe, they'd still owe the brokerage one month's rent plus the $995 fee.

"I saw that, and my heart dropped," Ganas tells me. "I didn't even realize that was in there. I didn't know that was even a thing."

All of these details are perfectly legal, and Ganas readily admits that she and McCarley are adults who signed a contract. But she can't shake the feeling that they entered the conversation at a disadvantage. Real estate agents live and breathe this stuff, while the typical consumer buys or sells a home only a handful of times in their life.

"How many people could read that contract and understand all the implications of it?" says Prentiss Cox, who teaches consumer-protection law at the University of Minnesota.

How many people could read that contract and understand all the implications of it?Prentiss Cox, consumer-protection law professor

A common refrain in the industry is that any broker worth their salt would release a buyer if the relationship truly isn't working — handcuffing them to a contract isn't worth the negative online reviews or harsh word-of-mouth. "We're not interested in tying people up in an agreement they don't want to be in," says Laura Ellis, a brokerage executive in Illinois.

Sumney, the broker Waterhouse works under, maintains a different view. "To be honest with you, I really hate that perspective," she tells me. "When you let somebody out of an exclusive buyer-agency contract, you've just devalued that contract for every Realtor in our industry." A home search may very well take a year, Sumney says, and even then, a real estate agent has no guarantee of a payday. (Waterhouse tells me that he has worked with other clients for over three years while they searched for a home.) Though agents partner with a brokerage, most are independent contractors who rely on commissions — all those weekends and evenings spent working don't yield a cent unless a deal goes through. As for the fees, the buyer representation agreement clearly says they're negotiable before signing, Sumney says. Even after the agreement was finalized, Ganas was able to bargain Waterhouse's commission down to a more typical 3%, from the initial 4%, when she and McCarley made an offer on a home.

Waterhouse tells me via email that Ganas generally had "high expectations" regarding property availability, her "large and varied search area," and response times.

"Dan is one of our top agents," Sumney tells me. "He has the numbers to show it. So one bad review next to all of these other clients that he has, that appreciated Dan, had no problem paying Dan, understood what his commission was — you know, you've got to weigh it."

Requiring signed agreements doesn't appear to affect real estate commissions, Federal Reserve researchers found.

Bloomberg/Getty Images

On March 31, an incensed Ganas called Sumney to seek a release from the agreement. It didn't go well. "I did kind of raise my voice," Ganas tells me. "I was a little emotional." Eventually, Ganas calmed down, and Sumney offered to find another agent at her brokerage who lived closer to them. If they wanted to enlist a different brokerage, Sumney said, she could work out a referral fee. Ganas asked about paying to end the contract, and Sumney said she could calculate an early termination fee based on the work Waterhouse had done for them so far. After talking with McCarley, though, Ganas turned resolute: "I'm like, 'No. You do not get any money from me.'"

The next day, Sumney posted a video on her TikTok. Seated at her desk and speaking directly into her phone camera, she issued an impassioned primer on buyer representation agreements — and the importance of understanding that "contracts are legal and binding."

"Please, guys, if you are signing anything, please understand what you are signing and allow the Realtor to explain it," Sumney said. "And if you have a Realtor who will not explain these forms to you, who is only sending them over and signing them right there, then get another one."

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Perhaps we expected too much of these agreements. A few extra signatures were never going to fix the squabbling over real estate commissions or the often messy relationship between buyer and agent. An NAR spokesperson tells me via email that the rule changes have "further empowered consumers to negotiate compensation and promoted transparency in the marketplace." But research published last year by the Federal Reserve found that, prior to the settlement, state laws requiring signed buyer representation agreements had no significant impact on commissions — in other words, buyers weren't suddenly more likely to bargain down fees if they were handed a contract to sign. And despite the rule changes, most sellers are still offering to cover buyers' agent commissions, keeping the old, roundabout way of paying brokers intact. Almost two years after the settlement went into effect, predictions of a massive shift in real estate fees haven't come to pass.

The consumer advocates, lawyers, and brokers I spoke with all offered some version of this advice for prospective buyers: Think like a seller. If you choose to work with an agent, interview at least a few of them to get a sense of which one might best suit your needs. Make sure you're clear-eyed about the terms of your arrangement and the fact that, one way or another, you could be on the hook for thousands of dollars. Ask whether those services are worth it, and what your alternatives might look like.

"Really do your research upfront," Cornelissen, from the CFA, tells me. "Because once you sign, you may be stuck with them for a while."

Ganas and McCarley continue to keep tabs on the market, but for now, their home search is on pause. Their plan is to wait until their agreement expires in January, when they'll resume the hunt — this time with a year's worth of harsh lessons under their belt.

"When we're ready to buy a house," Ganas tells me, "I will be much more versed, I guess, in these things."

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James Rodriguez is a correspondent on Business Insider's Discourse team.

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Why South Korea's stock market is driving wild Wall Street swings

South Korea's Kospi price swings are increasingly reverberating through global technology markets.

Jung Yeon-je/AFP/Getty Images

• South Korea's has become an unlikely bellwether for the AI trade.
• Its stock market swings are increasingly spilling into Wall Street.
• Chip stocks and leveraged bets are fueling the turbulence.

South Korea's stock market is becoming one of the world's most important gauges for the AI trade, with its sharp swings increasingly spilling over into Wall Street and beyond.

On Tuesday, the country's benchmark Kospi index closed 3.6% higher following a program trading halt, extending another volatile stretch that began when a record-setting rally earlier this year gave way to a sharp pullback in recent weeks. Samsung Electronics' stock closed 6.2% higher while SK Hynix's shares ended 4.1% up.

Once dismissed as a market trading at a discount to its global peers, South Korea has become a focal point for investors as AI spending turbocharged chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, reshaping the country's stock market.

That's becoming a problem for global markets.

"What may be most unsettling to investors, though, is the degree to which the violent moves in Korea have become the 'Tail' that 'Wags the Dog' of global asset markets broadly, and NDX specifically," wrote analysts at Evercore ISI, referring to the Nasdaq-100 index.

They added in the Sunday note that the correlation between the Kospi and the Nasdaq 100 has reached "an astounding .95," suggesting the two markets have recently moved almost in lockstep as investors increasingly treat South Korea as a proxy for the AI trade.

South Korea's market has become "effectively a barometer for the AI trade," Michelle Gibley, the director of international equity research and strategy at the Schwab Center for Financial Research, wrote in a Monday note.

Gibley attributed the market's volatility to memory chips' critical role in the AI supply chain, booming chipmaker profits, South Korea's heavy concentration of semiconductor stocks, and growing leverage.

Those forces helped propel the Kospi to record highs earlier this year, alongside optimism over President Lee Jae Myung's market reforms aimed at narrowing the country's longstanding "Korea discount."

Leveraged bets amplify market swings

Retail investors have added another layer of volatility by pouring money into leveraged single-stock ETFs, particularly those tied to Samsung and SK Hynix, magnifying swings in the market's biggest AI stocks.

The result has been dramatic gains and equally dramatic losses that have already triggered the Kospi's circuit breaker seven times this year.

"Korea has become a focal point for investors, where intensifying memory scarcity meets unusually concentrated exposure across its economy and equity market, while a risk-seeking retail base magnifies that concentration through leveraged single-stock bets, driving violent index price action," Evercore's analysts wrote.

The volatility became so extreme that South Korean regulators have paused approvals for new leveraged single-stock ETFs, seeking to rein in speculative trading.

The regulators' move underscores just how heated the market had become. Evercore said the boom-and-bust pattern is typical of major investment themes like AI.

"The six-week drawdown has been relentless, but tech investors know the pattern: powerful secular themes overshoot in both directions, lasting 'longer than investors can stay solvent,' particularly when copious leverage is involved," the analysts wrote.

The Kospi is 18% lower over the past month but remains 113% higher over the past year. The index is 60% higher year to date.

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My husband had a severe stroke. I went back to work to help pay for his roughly $5,000 a month care costs.

Brenda Eicher-Beard's husband had a stroke in 2023.

Courtesy of Brenda Eicher-Beard

• Brenda Eicher-Beard quit working once her husband had a stroke in 2023.
• She returned to the workforce after Medicare stopped covering care.
• She thinks assisted living wouldn't meet his needs, and it's cheaper to care for him at home.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brenda Eicher-Beard, in her 70s and living in Virginia. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I spent most of my career life in Maryland, but I moved to Virginia a decade ago because my daughter lives and works there.

We kept our home in Maryland because we intended to return after helping with childcare. However, we ended up staying due to my husband's health declining, to be near my daughter for her assistance, and for the medical facilities and physicians.

When my grandson was in kindergarten, my husband was in good health and helped with childcare while I continued to work. He picked him up from school and things like that. His health started to decline a bit in 2021, and we were trying to figure out a diagnosis. After seeing several different neurologists, the doctors said that he had atypical Parkinson's.

He also had blood pressure issues that we were dealing with, and then he had a hemorrhagic stroke in January 2023, just a few months after the Parkinson's diagnosis, and I quit working. This fall I went back to work full time as a reading specialist to afford keeping him at home with private paid care.

He never really took a day off work

My husband was a very healthy person. He never really took any time off from work. He was an athlete, went to college on a basketball scholarship, and was a teacher. He taught US history for decades and coached football and basketball. He was placed in the Maryland High School Coaches Hall of Fame for his football coaching.

His stroke a few years ago has impaired him health-wise. They medevaced him from the local hospital to another. He was in intensive care for a month. Then he was in their stroke ward for several days before being in a rehabilitation hospital for a month.

He came home, but went back into rehab a few months after. He had some other issues, but he's been home since then. Medicare was covering home healthcare for the first few months. It also covered occupational and physical therapy, but that ended in June 2025 based on the progress he had made. So I've been paying for home health and physical therapy; my husband no longer needs occupational therapy.

We did speech therapy as an outpatient, but he was released from that. I paid privately for a speech therapist, but they're very limited, so it's hard to find. If Medicare does cover it, sometimes it's through an online call, which doesn't work for everybody, certainly not for older adults.

We used money from selling our home because Medicare only covered so much

We sold our home in Maryland in 2021, and we had some of those financial resources to use, but Medicare only covered so much. It covered a lot, don't get me wrong, but it stopped covering once he was out of the rehab hospital, and he did a little bit of therapy. To have more therapy, I had to pay individually. I was somewhat astounded that Medicare would stop paying, but they did.

I guess I had the false conception of — my husband and I worked for school systems, we have a decent pension, we have Social Security, we have Medicare — Medicare would kind of come in and cover those things that we didn't. I worked for Baltimore County Public Schools for 30 years, and when I retired, they covered my health benefits until I reached Social Security and Medicare age. I just had no concept that Medicare wouldn't cover his nursing home care other than the initial 30 days of the rehab.

We spend about $5,000 a month

I pay at least $240 a month for a private certified nursing assistant to come and assist with his showers. I was paying $140 an hour for physical therapy twice a week, but now paying $110 an hour for three times a week with a different company for an exercise physiotherapist. My husband can do limited walking with a walker and assistance. Working with the exercise physiotherapist allows my husband to stay home, because if he gets to the point where he's totally bedfast, I won't be able to take care of him by myself.

Now that I work again in the education system, I'm basically there with him from 4:30 p.m. until I leave at 7:30 a.m. or 8 a.m. to come to school. I employ multiple caregivers, but only one would come for a day; the pay is from $20 an hour to $29 an hour for home healthcare in this area.

We spent about $5,000 a month, with over $1,000 coming from physical therapy and the rest from other expenses, including the shower assistance and eight to nine hours a day for multiple caregivers. Since school was out in June, I paid very little for caregiving since I wasn't working. I'll be paying for more care again in July since I'll be getting surgery and need the help. I'll be working full time again in August.

It's cheaper than assisted living memory care units. It's what I can afford at this point in time without going bankrupt, so I can still have money for expenses and other things. I can keep and maintain my car. If I need to buy clothing or decide I want to buy a gift for my grandchildren, I'm not at the bare-bones broke, which I would be if he were in assisted living.

I don't know if assisted living would meet his needs

I feel better about doing care this way because I don't know that assisted living or a nursing home would actually meet his needs at this point in time.

He doesn't speak as much as he used to, but he still reads and maintains an interest in sports and history. At a lot of the places I visited, I didn't see things that would actually keep him entertained.

I just feel more comfortable with him at home because he can go to plays or we can go to things that he's interested in, even though his mobility is limited. He still requires a lot of care, but there are also important things for his quality of life.

We've gone to football games. We went to the University of Maryland in April because my husband got an award for his high school coaching, and a lot of his former players and people associated with his coaching career were there. The local university does a lot of summer theater and plays. My daughter usually takes us, and we usually go to at least one or two of those during the summer. We watch football games or lectures or things through my Chromebook online. He's very interested in that. He likes to read. A couple of them, nursing homes and rehab centers, really don't have anything for people to read.

I like working

I retired from Baltimore County after 30 years, and then I worked in Pennsylvania in literacy for a period of time, and I actually had enough time there to meet the qualifications to retire from them. So I had two retirement things going on, and then we moved to Virginia. I was still working, so I worked here in the school systems. I did retire briefly, and we did a bit of traveling and other things.

When he started to have some issues with Parkinson's, I left the school system. I did a little tutoring and some work at a preschool. When he had a stroke, I was scheduled to work with another school system, but that kind of shut everything down because that was a full-time job.

Then I went back to work full-time with the school system again, and they were incredibly generous, giving me all my years of experience. So I went in at the top of the pay scale, which made it conceivable for me to hire people to stay with my husband because someone has to be with him all of the time. He is in a wheelchair or in his lift chair. He can't move on his own without assistance, and he needs someone to prepare his meals.

I'm a reading specialist. I like my job and don't mind working. I'm going to be working probably for a long time. I recently renewed my teaching certificate, so I'm good until I'm 80.

I'm sure I'll be working until then because that's the only way we'll be able to manage all the things we're doing for my husband's care. If he declines more, because he does have atypical Parkinson's, and if that leads to more decline and he does require more help, either in-home or a nursing home situation, then definitely I'll be working.

I'm not really concerned about future caregiving needs for myself. I'm fairly healthy. My father lived until his late 80s. I have a grandmother who lived well into her 90s, so I hope I have some long-winded genes in there. I have a good family practice person here. We have good medical care here, so I keep up with that. I'm trying to stay healthy myself so that I can swing all this that we're doing.

I know that if push came to shove, my daughter and son would be helpful, and they have helped with their dad in a lot of different ways, but I don't really look ahead. I look at it as one season at a time.

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China's latest star AI model is putting 2 tech giants back in the spotlight

Kimi K3 has intensified the debate over China's growing influence in the global AI race.

Long Wei/VCG/Getty Images

• Kimi K3 is fueling fresh excitement around China's AI ambitions.
• Alibaba and Tencent stand to benefit beyond their Moonshot stakes, Bernstein says.
• Kimi's breakthrough is reigniting debate over AI spending and chip stocks.

China's Kimi K3 has emerged as the latest AI model sensation, drawing so much interest that developer Moonshot AI temporarily paused new subscriptions just days after launch.

"K3 represented another instance where the ability of China's top AI labs to keep pace with the US frontier has surprised global investors," Bernstein analysts led by Robin Zhu wrote in a Friday note.

Beyond the excitement surrounding Moonshot itself, Kimi's breakout is bringing fresh attention to Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Tencent, both investors in the startup.

Alibaba acquired a 36% stake in Moonshot during a February 2024 funding round, while Tencent is also a known investor.

But their opportunity extends beyond their Moonshot stakes, Bernstein's analysts wrote. As AI models become more competitive, cloud providers and internet platforms stand to gain bargaining power over the model makers.

For Alibaba, Bernstein said Kimi's success is "probably a positive for Alicloud revenue growth."

Tencent, meanwhile, may have an overlooked asset in Workbuddy, its desktop AI assistant, which has 8 million to 9 million monthly visits.

Alibaba shares rose as much as 6% in Hong Kong on Monday, while Tencent gained 4%. The Hang Seng Tech Index climbed 4%, as Kimi reignited the AI narrative that DeepSeek helped spark last year. The broader Hang Seng Index added over 2%.

The enthusiasm for Kimi has also fueled a broader debate over AI economics.

AI chip stocks sold off sharply on Friday, with investors questioning whether lower-cost Chinese models could reduce the need for the massive AI infrastructure spending underpinning the current boom.

Chinese AI models are approaching frontier-level performance while priced closer to mid-tier US systems.

"That challenges the economics of the current US-led AI stack, where frontier capability has been associated with very high compute and capital intensity," Deutsche Bank analyst Jim Reid wrote in a note on Monday.

The concerns weighed on South Korea's stock markets, which were on a red-hot rally until late last month,

On Monday, South Korea's benchmark Kospi index closed 4% lower as index heavyweight Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix both lost over 4%. The Kospi is now 28% lower than a month ago, although it's still 55% higher this year to date.

The Japanese markets were closed for a public holiday.

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I'm a mom of 2 kids. Sending voice memos to Claude helps me organize my life.

Erin Kee says voice memos to Claude has helped her as a working mom.

Erin Kee

• Erin Kee is a mom of two kids under four. She sends at least one long voice memo to Claude a day.
• "I don't think moms need any more information," Kee said. "We actually need a system."
• Kee uses Claude to manage her schedule and aggregate parenting advice.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Erin Kee, the 38-year-old founder of Kee To Wellness and writer of The Mental Load Memo. She also works in tech sales and lives in Austin. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I have a 3.5-year-old daughter named Claire and 1.5-year-old son named Liam.

We're in the thick of things right now. We're transitioning to a new school in the fall, as her old school is closing. It's summer, so we're doing swim lessons. My husband just started a new job. There's a lot of stuff happening in the calendar that needs to be managed.

I didn't realize that going from one to two kids felt like going from one to four. We had to get a lot more granular on how we were going to be managing our week.

Being able to link that into an AI automation has been really helpful. I'm not trying to spend my whole weekend doing logistics. I actually want to enjoy myself as a working mom.

I feel like every single week I'm finding a new way to use it.

In the beginning, I was messing around with ChatGPT and learning what I could do there. About a year ago, I started leaning more into Claude, which I think has way more functionality with the projects and automations.

One of the things I love the most that I've set up is an automated Sunday briefing. Every Sunday morning, it scours all of my calendars: from work, from my personal Gmail, from my wellness email. It gives me a briefing of what I can expect for the week and if anything is overlapping or needs to be rescheduled.

Kee has Claude send her a Sunday briefing with her week's schedule.

Erin Kee

It gets things I didn't realize, like a birthday party I need to get a present for. It'll even read those birthday invites and be like: "This is for a 4-year-old boy, here are some Amazon ideas that would be delivered by that day."

I also have a family briefing that gets sent to my husband and me. That includes our meal plans for the week. I have it connected to my Skylight recipe box, and it'll build a grocery list for me.

Why I send Claude multi-minute voice notes

I'm a big voice-noter. My friends and I voice note all day long. It's helpful when you have something more detailed to say.

I do a long voice note into Claude at least once a day. If I have a lot of feedback, or I have an idea and I need to get it out, I feel like it's easier than typing.

Most of the time, I'm doing voice-to-text, so I can go in and edit some of the words to make sure everything is correct. I can talk to it for three to five minutes sometimes. It depends on what I'm building.

There was a weird rash on my son. I'll open Claude up, sometimes add photos, and use voice-to-text. I'll be at my desk, I'll be walking around, I'll be in my car. If it hits my brain, I'm like: "I've got to get it out right now."

Sometimes, my daughter is like, "Who are you talking to?" She's aware of FaceTime. My mom, stepdad, and brothers all live up in Dallas. I think she thinks if I'm talking into my phone, it's FaceTime, and she gets to talk to Meemaw.

Sometimes she gets confused, and I have to let her know: "We're not on FaceTime, no one's here, I'm just talking to my phone."

Kee's daughter sometimes misinterprets voice memos to Claude as FaceTime calls with relatives.

Erin Kee

I'm struggling with getting her to sleep in her room at the moment. We've been trying to figure out different ways to get her to sleep up there.

I gave Claude: "She's starting a new school in August, and we have these different trips coming up." It said: "It's summer, she's going to bed later, so this makes sense. Over the next six weeks leading up to school, here are some ways you can optimize it. Maybe try: 'You can sleep in our bed during school nights, but on Friday night, you need to sleep in your own bed.'"

I told Claude to research a bunch of parenting experts like Dr. Becky and pull in tips on what people are doing in similar situations. We have a transition plan: "Mom will sleep in your bed one night, Dad will sleep in your bed the next night, and then moving forward, you're going to sleep in your own bed all the time."

There's so much information out there. I don't think moms need any more information. We don't need more things on our to-do list. Every time I get on the internet, it's: I need to be doing this with my kid, I need to be doing gentle parenting, I need to be building resilient children.

We actually need a system. How do we build and optimize a system that is taking things off their plate, and not adding more? That's what I'm thinking about as I automate.

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A data center bathhouse? Architects are rethinking what AI infrastructure owes its neighbors.

Forma's "Pink Thermal Baths" imagines an underground data center that transfers the heat it emits to a public bathhouse above ground.

Forma

• Generative AI has sparked a race among hyperscalers to build large data centers at high speed.
• Some facilities are being built near communities, attracting opposition from concerned residents.
• Architects are designing data centers that could benefit local neighborhoods.

A data center goes up in the middle of a California desert oasis, and in return, a nearby community gets a 32,000-square-foot bathhouse where people lounge in pools warmed by subterranean servers.

Forma, a New York-based architecture studio, designed the "Pink Thermal Baths" concept in 2021, before generative AI ignited a race to build computing facilities across America.

Miroslava Brooks, a founding partner of Forma, told Business Insider the concept wasn't meant to be a blueprint for turning hyperscale AI campuses into spas. Instead, it asks a question that has become more urgent as computing complexes pop up near residential neighborhoods: What can a data center give back to the place that hosts it?

"I really think that the first question is, what does this building give back? And that has to go beyond just energy and the data," Brooks said.

The cloud is getting harder to ignore

Data centers aren't new. Before frontier AI model labs, they've supported banks, websites, streaming services, and cloud storage.

Thomas McGoldrick, a managing director at Gensler who has designed data centers for about 20 years, remembers when they were treated as "back-of-house" facilities supporting individual businesses.

"Now, the transfer of data becomes more and more important," he said. "It's become part of our strategic infrastructure."

A Business Insider analysis found that by the end of 2025, more than 1,400 data centers had been built or approved across the US.

Virginia has become a hotbed of data centers, with some facilities being built near residential communities.

Nathan Howard/Getty Images

Some data centers are being developed near homes. A 2024 Virginia study found that 29% of operational data center properties were within 200 feet of residentially zoned land and said neighborhood impacts could increase as suitable land grows scarcer.

Residents have raised issues about constant noise, water use, and pressure on electricity bills.

A March Gallup poll found 71% of US adults opposed building an AI data center in their local area, including 48% who "strongly oppose" one.

The scale of data centers and the opposition around them have pushed architects into a debate over whether design can reduce those burdens or merely camouflage them.

Making gray boxes fit in

Gensler, a San Francisco-based architecture firm, has multiple hyperscaler clients, including Microsoft, and works with developers building for major cloud companies.

McGoldrick said those clients prioritize speed to market, scale, access to power, and buildings that can adapt as computing equipment changes.

"They're all trying to get their product out there as fast as they can to make their business grow as best they can," he said.

Within those constraints, Gensler tries to make data centers more than blank, industrial boxes. One approach, McGoldrick said, is to treat them like an "office building that houses computers."

For one complex, Gensler repurposed an old call center campus into a 1 million-square-foot computing facility.

Gensler designed a Corten-steel data center that blends in with the local environment.

Gensler

The firm used Corten steel to complement the earthy textures of the local landscape and, through efficient planning, added a one-acre public park.

McGoldrick said the firm often starts with a repeatable prototype, then adjusts the materials and layout for each site.

Beyond aesthetics, data centers have faced increased scrutiny from communities for their energy use and noise. McGoldrick said there are limits to what architects can address.

"There are only so many things that we could control in that environment," McGoldrick said. "So we're openly honest about what we are doing and what we're seeing in other communities."

A data center that gives back

Arup, a UK-based architecture and engineering firm, is exploring how the standardized data center box could change when brought into a city.

Rachel Atthis, an Arup director, said the traditionally long, low building may need a smaller footprint and more height, scaling multiple stories. Bringing a data center into town, she said, means architects have to "turn it on its end."

Arup associate director Marco Mugnai said acoustic screens, landscaped buffers, and changes in site topography can address noise issues.

The firm has also imagined data centers that repurpose structures, such as redundant offshore oil rigs, or pair with tomato farms that use their waste heat.

Arup imagines data centers that can contribute to local farming.

Arup

"I suppose it's about giving back," Atthis said. "I think every building in some way should do that."

Some of the ideas require participation from local governments and developers to build supporting infrastructure, such as district heating networks. Security and backup-power requirements also mean some of Arup's more ambitious concepts may remain years away, Atthis said.

Forma's Pink Thermal Baths makes a similar proposition. Rather than a linear system, in which electricity enters and heat is expelled, Brooks, the Forma founding partner, imagines a "circular model" that turns excess heat into a public use.

Forma's "Pink Thermal Baths" imagines an underground data center that heats a public bathhouse above.

Forma

"A successful data center," she said, would operate across "the ecology, the infrastructure, and the culture or civicness."

When design isn't enough

Marina Otero Verzier, an architect and Harvard Graduate School of Design lecturer, has explored another use for server heat.

Her "Computational Compost" project channels heat generated from a computer into a vermicomposting system, where worms and microorganisms thrive, creating fertile compost for a local garden.

Otero cautioned that reusing heat is not a complete solution.

"I don't think it's enough just to reuse the heat, because the heat is already a waste product," she said.

Parks, lower-carbon materials, and shared heating systems can improve data centers, Otero said, but "it's just not enough."

"Computational Compost" proposes a computer that provides heat for fertile soil.

Tabakalera

She proposed challenging the data center blueprint itself, raising questions about whether every type of data must be immediately available, whether it requires round-the-clock operations, and whether companies' competitive demands should determine how community resources are expended.

This could mean designing facilities for different "ecologies of data," she said — hot, cold, private, temporary — rather than defaulting to the same high-security, always-on model. It could also mean starting with what a community needs, rather than reorganizing housing, energy, and other local infrastructure around a data center.

"The needs of OpenAI, Google, Meta are not the needs of the majority of the world," Otero said. "They are the needs of those companies and their owners."

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