A $750 million hedge fund manager shares the 4 things he’s watching as energy markets teeter

Jeffrey Baird, Managing Partner of Merritt Point Partners

Merritt Point Partners

• Oil markets have avoided catastrophe after six months of war, but the situation is becoming grim.
• An expert commodities trader explained the four things he's watching, and what's kept prices down.
• The situation going forward is even more uncertain, said Baird.

Shortly after the US military's late February strike on Iran and the following Strait of Hormuz blockade, oil seemed poised to reach record heights if the war continued.

Instead, the oil markets have settled at an expensive —but not catastrophic — $100-ish a barrel, much lower than what hedge fund manager Jeff Baird would have expected after six months of war.

Baird has spent 25 years trading commodities and runs Merritt Point Partners, a $750 million hedge fund specializing in the asset class. Their general commodity strategy, which uses a range of long and short options across a variety of commodities, has returned over 16% in the last twelve months, according to a person familiar with the matter.

That experience has taught Baird to "adopt an attitude of humility when confronted with things that have never happened before," he said. Doubly so when the industry is facing huge amounts of uncertainty after becoming accustomed to real-time inventory data and satellite tracking of cargo in recent years.

JPMorgan oil market analysts laid it plainly in a report this week, saying that for the first time since the conflict began, they "don't have a baseline view."

"We simply don't know how to model the endgame," the Thursday report said.

Baird agreed that "we don't know what's going to happen," Baird said. But that doesn't mean there aren't signals to watch.

He identified three main price-moderating forces: heavy reliance on strategic petroleum reserves, a decrease in oil demand for some countries, and China stepping back from oil market purchases.

Now, those same three factors will be important signals as to just how much longer oil can stay away from record prices. And while we may not know what China will do or whether oil demand will spike back up, we do know that time is running out for the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

"Can we continue to draw and rely on them for a couple of months? Probably," Baird said. "But six more months? We're going to have to do something else," Baird said. "We can't just rely on inventories at that point."

Here are 4 things to watch:

Strategic petroleum reserves

Over the last five months, the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve has pumped out an average of nearly 25 million barrels a month. It's now at 285 million barrels, just a little over 30 million barrels, or a little over a month at that outflow rate, above its congressionally mandated limit.

More concerning are the "operational challenges" in the storage facilities where the oil is kept. Some of the oil may be too "briney and heavy" to use or hard to pump out.

"Those storage caverns have been in use for 50-plus years, and are now at levels that we haven't seen before," Baird said, adding that he's already heard of problems extracting oil from some caverns.

Those constraints may help explain why reserve outflows slowed to a "trickle" of 400,000 barrels last week, Baird said. If that pace continues for the rest of September, monthly outflows would fall below 2 million barrels — roughly one-ninth of August's level — which could cause prices to rise.

With just months left in the US strategic reserve, the question is now: what will happen if reserves can't meet demand?

It won't "reveal itself" as some grand calamity, but instead will create a ripple effect across the buffer inventories held by refiners, Baird said. They will run out of their own spare inventory that they keep in case operational hiccups delay their deliveries.

Demand destruction

Demand destruction, or reducing usage, across emerging markets and China has also played a large role, said Baird. He estimates that consumption has dropped by roughly 4 to 6 million barrels a day.

China's rapid electrification project and export of electric vehicles played a major role, but much of this could also have to do with people and companies in emerging markets not being able to afford things they once did.

Demand destruction can be hard to understand because it's both diffuse and from some of the hardest places in the world to get data about, but he said you can tell they're using less by "inferring from inventory levels and production and shipping," he said.

It could manifest itself in a person choosing to take a train instead of a plane, Baird said, or for a company to hold off on shipping a product for months to avoid paying three times higher diesel prices.

But whether it's because the holidays are coming or that shipment is now needed for some industrial process, shippers may soon need to send their products out regardless of the price.

"There's a risk that some of that demand response we've seen is temporary," Baird said. "People made choices because they believed this conflict was going to be temporary, and not last for six months."

China

China, the world's largest importer, has played a massive role in keeping prices down by substantially stepping back from the Middle Eastern market.

Shortly after the COVID shock, China began aggressively buying oil to build its own reserves up to 2 billion barrels, said Baird, but once this conflict began, its purchases from the Middle East were cut in half from roughly 14 million barrels before the conflict to seven million barrels by July.

According to Baird's estimates, it stopped stockpiling roughly 2-4 million barrels a day, alongside domestic demand destruction of three to five million barrels a day.

This decision, which has opened up another four to seven million daily barrels of oil, seems like a shrewd move to get into good graces with their Asian neighbors, Baird said, by posing themselves as "reliable partners," in contrast to America.

Once the US and Iran agreed to halt hostilities in July and crude began to flow, China's purchases recovered roughly half of the seven million daily pullback.

As for the future, Baird cautioned against trying to read Xi Jinping's mind, but said he'll be closely watching their import numbers since Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline was attacked and taken offline, drastically reducing the country's ability to export.

The firm's "loosely-held" view is that China will take what is available from the Middle East, but will not go out and bid in other markets, Baird said.

"That might change if it becomes clear that this situation is going to persist indefinitely, and that the risks are tilted to the loss of more supply rather than the resumption of full flows," Baird said.

As such, his "hunch" is that for now, China could slow down its purchases again.

The market

As potential oil blockades pile up, Baird still cautions against doom, drawing on his personal experience, such as the aftermath of the Russia-Ukraine war.

"If there's a lot of money on the line, people will figure out a way to make something happen," he said.

Some solutions are at the state level, like the US government convoying oil out of the Strait and Iran sending oil by rail as ways to get oil out, even if they're expensive, he said. The thing with markets is, if something pencils out, a market actor should decide to step in.

Take the highly refined and extra-expensive diesel market, battered by the Strait blockages and Ukrainian attacks on Russian refiners.

Cracks, or the cost to refine raw oil into diesel, are almost at $100 a barrel, up from somewhere between $10-20 a barrel. This is pushing diesel to prices that could bring more refiners online, or push them to run 24/7 to maximize their output.

"Every refiner on Earth, that is operational and not under direct military attack, should be motivated to do everything in their power to maximize output," he said. "If you're a refiner right now, you're possibly making decades worth of revenue in months."

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The double-whammy that's about to hit the US economy

iStock; Tyler Le/BI

If you ask most economists, market experts, and even the Federal Reserve, the story of the US economy for the rest of 2026 will be one of strong and steady growth. But there are serious reasons to doubt this forecast of calm waters.

There's no better example of the sanguine consensus view than the Fed's latest Summary of Economic Projections, released as part of the central bank's meeting on Wednesday. According to the FOMC's rundown, no participants saw the risks to GDP growth as tilted to the downside. Meanwhile, after this week's interest rate hike — the first in three years — investors and analysts don't really see the Fed taking much more action. In the face of buoyant growth predictions and strong financial conditions, the market is priced for another two rate hikes between now and March, not much else. Again, this feels optimistic given the near-term risks that inflation could reheat in the coming months.

Despite the rhetoric, the US economy is facing a squeeze from two ends. The first is a slowdown in consumer spending, as Americans pull back amid higher inflation, sluggish income growth, and geopolitical uncertainty. The second is the Federal Reserve's renewed interest rate hikes, which will ultimately need to slow the economy down to tame price hikes. Hoping for inflation to cool on its own seems more difficult to justify every month that inflation remains above the Fed's target.

There are reasons to expect consumer spending to slow and reasons to expect the Fed not to act as a shock absorber. The net effect of this is clear: somewhat higher unemployment and somewhat tighter financial market conditions (aka lower stock prices), in order to ultimately achieve slower inflation.

Consumer likely cools

In recent years, American consumers have been the crucial drivers of the economy. While AI has attracted considerable attention, consumer resilience has been an important driver of US GDP. In the first half of 2026, Americans did their part and used their wallets to fuel the economy. Indeed, in the second quarter of the year, real consumption added nearly 2.5 percentage points to growth. Growth in the current quarter continues to run at a breakneck pace, but looking at the rest of the year, there are several reasons to worry that spending may not hold up.

The most obvious reason for the slowdown is that the boost from larger tax refunds is fading away. In the first half of the year, Americans saw about an 11% increase in their average refund compared with last year, thanks to changes made by last year's Big Beautiful Bill tax reform law. The boost in income from lower taxes has contributed 0.4 percentage points to US GDP so far in 2026, according to Brookings' Fiscal Impact Measure. Despite this tailwind, inflation-adjusted consumer spending grew at only a 2.0% annual pace over the first half of the year, similar to its 2025 rate. In the second half of this year, the contribution of taxes and benefits to US GDP is projected to slow to zero, then become a drag on the economy in 2027 — in other words, fiscal policy is transitioning from tailwind to headwind.

In addition to losing the tax-refund boost, American households will soon be forced to deal with a larger geopolitical uncertainty tax in the form of higher gas and food prices. As the war in Iran drags on, higher commodity prices will bleed into the prices you pay at the pump and at the grocery store. One way to gauge the shock is to compare movements in headline and core inflation — the former includes all goods, while the latter strips out food and energy prices. In the last three months, the gap between the two measures has narrowed, suggesting that the price pressure from gas, eggs, and their ilk is declining.

However, signs suggest that the rest of the year will be a bit more challenging. On energy, prices for refined energy products have been rising. Nationwide retail gasoline prices are up $1.25 per gallon on average compared to the same time of year. This is particularly alarming since energy prices typically fall at this point of the season, thanks to the end of the summer driving surge.

Next, the rise in diesel prices and agricultural commodity prices, two important cost drivers for farmers and other parts of the agricultural supply chain, means grocery store prices will almost certainly accelerate into year-end. In short, the "shock tax" that Americans feel at the pump and the grocery aisle will only increase over the rest of the year.

The final headwind to consumer spending is set to come from the housing market, as mortgage rates climb and the number of Americans moving stalls. Home sales were already slowing before the latest run-up in mortgage rates, which have recently topped 7% for the first time in over a year. And as home sales slow, so too do purchases of major household goods like furniture, appliances, and carpeting. It usually takes six months for the slowdown in home sales to filter down into decreased spending on big-ticket items, which is important, since the contribution from furnishings and durable household equipment punched above its weight in the second quarter. The slowing in home sales over the past few months implies this good news will turn sour by year-end.

Fading fiscal relief, a rising geopolitical tax, and a decline in people moving homes, all in the context of relatively sluggish growth in wages and salaries, imply that household consumption growth will probably moderate into next year. Consumption is an important part of US growth, and, importantly, many more jobs are tied to consumer spending than to business investment. If people don't buy as much stuff, firms don't need to produce as much stuff either.

The Fed keeps squeezing

At the same time that American consumers are tightening their purse strings, the Fed is tightening as well. The central bank raised interest rates on Wednesday, and despite the ho-hum market expectations, additional hikes are likely on the horizon. Continued hikes are likely to slow the economy. That is ultimately the point of tightening monetary policy — to slow demand and bring consumer prices to the inflation target.

The main reason for the anticipated hikes to come is that inflation progress has stalled. Core inflation remains above 3% and is only projected to approach that target years down the road. And while current inflation numbers aren't great, I think the bigger story is the balance of risks in the inflation outlook. It's difficult to find a reason inflation will meaningfully cool off anytime soon, which increases the risk of it becoming entrenched. When people start to believe more price hikes are on the horizon, they are more likely to swallow that inflation, and it becomes harder to squash. So the recent rise in short-run inflation expectations, which are climbing alongside energy costs, presents a challenge for the Fed. Beyond expectations and the rise in staple prices, other important drivers of the recent increase in inflation also look set to heat up. For instance, the price of semiconductor chips — the critical tech fueling the AI boom — has boosted core PCE inflation by 0.6 percentage points over the past six months, and there is no sign of the bottleneck improving anytime soon.

In the face of consensus about the economy, it's always important to be cognizant of what could upend the apple cart. Based on my reading of the consumer winds and the Fed's renewed dedication to tackling inflation, it's clear that there are two serious reasons to think the US is on shakier ground than it appears.

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Neil Dutta is head of economics at Renaissance Macro Research.

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I drove Cadillac's entry-level EV. It hits Caddy's affordability sweet spot.

The Cadillac Optiq is a convincing entry point into Cadillac's EV lineup because it delivers the brand theater.

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• I tested the Cadillac Optiq, the cheapest EV in GM's luxury lineup.
• Its elegant design and supple ride make it properly Caddy-ish.
• The Optiq isn't the fastest EV, but that's OK. The interior materials, though? Some aren't great.

Cadillac's entry-level EV doesn't feel particularly entry-level.

The Optiq is the cheapest way to get into an EV with GM's luxury badge. It's a crossover-like SUV with a base trim that starts just under $50,000 — or, less money than the average American car.

I spent a week and about 400 miles in a 2026 Cadillac Optiq Premium Sport, driving from New York City to upstate New York and back with up to three passengers and several large suitcases in tow. My rear-wheel-drive tester stickered at $58,976 with options, including 21-inch wheels, two-tone exterior paint, and Cadillac's warm brown Autumn Canyon leather interior.

That package is hardly pocket change — but after a week behind the wheel, I wondered why buyers would spend more for some other Caddys.

Easy on the eyes and on the throttle

The Optiq has stage presence.

Ben Shimkus/Business Insider

The Optiq nails the first impression.

Stacked LEDs in the front and back give the crossover a recognizable signature at night. They also put on a dazzling welcome light show as you approach. Inside, a curved 33-inch display stretches across the dashboard, caramel-colored seats look properly expensive, and — praise be — Cadillac kept physical climate-control buttons underneath the screen.

It looks like a Cadillac. More importantly, it drives like one, too.

The interior and exterior both carry Caddy's star quality.

Ben Shimkus/Business Insider

The steering was accurate, the suspension softened rough pavement despite those huge wheels, and road noise was virtually nonexistent.

Optiq also benefits from GM's SuperCruise assisted highway driving. It was impressive on my highway-dominant drive upstate, automatically pulling into an open passing lane when I caught slower traffic. It, however, occasionally moved over when faster traffic was approaching from behind, a trait that I'm sure drew the ire of other New York drivers.

Off the line, this Optiq takes a rather leisurely approach to acceleration.

That's not a bad thing, especially compared to other EVs I've recently driven that are faster than they need to be. The RWD Optiq still had enough verve to merge comfortably onto the highway. And, if you absolutely need bone-chilling speed, Cadillac now sells the sport-oriented Optiq-V, which launches to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds — nearly half the time my tester took to get there.

The Optiq handled the less glamorous parts of EV ownership well, too. At a Level 3 charger, I added 41.47 kilowatt-hours in 20 minutes, taking the battery from 32% to 72% — roughly enough time for any trip's necessary restroom-and-snacks stop.

Some of the luxury is better from a distance

There's a lot more hard plastic in this picture than you'd think.

Ben Shimkus/Business Insider

Live with the Optiq long enough, though, and some of the luxury sheen fades.

There's a lot of hard plastic inside. The floating center console, for example, has a black appliqué that looks like wood. It isn't. The silver rings around the cupholders look like hammered metal, but those are plastic, too. Similar trim details appear throughout the dash and doors.

Then there's the infotainment screen…

…Have an iPhone? I have bad news…

Ben Shimkus/Business Insider

… where there's no Apple CarPlay.

Cadillac's Google-based system is perfectly usable, and the enormous display is well organized, but for plenty of drivers I talk to, losing CarPlay is a dealbreaker.

There are also moments where GM's Silicon Valley-ish ambitions become a little too obvious. The best example is the glovebox: There's no normal latch. Instead, you open it via the infotainment screen, so it only works when the car is on or in accessory mode.

Verdict: Luxe appeal and a price that's less than your mortgage

The Optiq is one of Cadillac's best efforts.

Ben Shimkus/Business Insider

Cadillac has a surprisingly crowded EV showroom. The Optiq is joined by the slightly larger Lyriq, the three-row Vistiq, the hulking Escalade IQ, the even bigger Escalade IQL, and the built-to-order Celestiq.

The Optiq isn't as extravagant as an Escalade IQ or as dramatic as a Lyriq. That's kind of the point. It's the entry point — although, at just a few inches shorter than the Lyriq, it doesn't feel meaningfully smaller from behind the wheel. (Although the Lyriq is the only GM EV with Apple CarPlay…)

Long drives, though, have a way of cutting through luxury-car theater.

On the trip upstate, I pulled into a rest area starved. My best option was an Impossible Whopper from Burger King, which I ate in the driver's seat. There I was, surrounded by caramel-colored seats and Cadillac's enormous curved display, with tomato juice running down my arm.

The Optiq projects opulence. I was its foil, and I'm okay with that — the burger was worth it.

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Sheryl Sandberg says women aren't losing ambition. Companies are pushing them out.

Sheryl Sandberg, the former COO of Meta and founder of the Lean In organization, said it's "concerning" that fewer women are interested in promotions compared to men — despite being just as motivated.

Bloomberg/Getty Images

• Sheryl Sandberg says she's disappointed to see fewer women in corporate leadership.
• She said women are as ambitious as men but feel they're valued less in the workplace.
• She believes companies could do more to retain and encourage female leaders.

More than a decade after telling women to "lean in," Sheryl Sandberg is concerned that more are leaning out — but not because they lack ambition.

Sandberg, Meta's former COO and author of the 2013 bestseller "Lean In," told Business Insider that there's a gender gap when it comes to leadership ambitions in 2026. "This is not the women who are saying, 'I don't want to do it,'" Sandberg, 57, said. "It's the women saying, 'I don't want to do it because I'm not wanted, I'm not getting the same opportunities and the same support, and I face an unfair burden at home.'"

Lean In, the nonprofit organization Sandberg founded in tandem with her book's publication, has been releasing its annual Women in the Workplace reports with McKinsey since 2015. In its 2025 Women in the Workplace report, which surveyed 9,500 US employees across 124 organizations, Lean In found that, despite having practically identical levels of career motivation as men, women were less likely to want a promotion.

Lean In's 2025 Women in the Workplace report found a gender gap when it came to women wanting promotions.

Lean In

When asked why, 25% of the women who didn't want to advance cited "personal obligations," compared to 15% of men who said the same. The report also found gaps in household labor as well as opportunities for mentorship for women.

At Business Insider, we've been covering this trend. Amid mass layoffs and newly enforced RTO mandates, some women who have moved up in the corporate world during the "Lean In" era are feeling burnt out and are stepping back. They have shared their stories with us, of starting their own businesses, going freelance, or, in one case, moving to Antarctica.

Sandberg finds this shift "concerning" — both for women and companies at large.

"We're at a critical moment in time for women, because what a lot of women are seeing is that commitment to them in leadership pulling back," Sandberg said. "Then what's happening to them is their ambition is pulling back. And that's a loss. It's a loss for our economy. It's a loss for our companies. It's a loss for our children."

Why corporate women never 'had it all'

"Lean In" was published in 2013 and became an immediate bestseller.

Taylor Hill/FilmMagic

One of the most common critiques leveled against Sandberg and the "Lean In" movement is that it unrealistically encourages women to "have it all" — though the book argued the opposite.

"Lean In" had a chapter titled "The Myth of Doing it All," and in a 2013 McKinsey Quarterly interview, Sandberg denounced the idea of women feeling pressure to be everything all at once: "No one can have it all," she said. "That language is the worst thing that's happened to the women's movement."

Sandberg told Business Insider that it's easy to "overly characterize the words 'lean in.'"

"What I mean by them is very clear," she said. "I think women should make decisions based on believing in their own abilities, based on believing that they should and can have the same opportunities as men."

Recent data shows trouble in that department, particularly for working moms. Matthew Nestler, a senior economist at KPMG, recently found that labor force participation between 2023 and 2026 decreased the most among women with children under 5, regardless of their education level. Meanwhile, participation increased for almost all groups of men, college-educated women with kids old enough to go to school, and women with no kids.

Sandberg said some trends have remained consistent over time. "We know women do more of the housework at home," she said. "We know women do more of the childcare." This is doubly true for women in the sandwich generation, caring for both their kids and aging parents or in-laws.

For women facing short (or nonexistent) maternity leaves, inflexible schedules, and paychecks that pale in comparison to daycare costs, leaning out can feel like the best option.

When women are in corporate, they push for policies that retain more women

Women in leadership positions are more likely to bring up policy changes like egg freezing coverage or pregnancy parking, Sandberg said.

MoMo Productions/Getty Images

Sandberg said there are a few big benefits to having more women in charge. "We know when companies have more women in leadership, performance is better," she said. "We also know they have better work-life balance, better policies, better care for their employees."

One 2025 working paper from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics in Germany studied how gender diversity impacted retention in US companies using US Census data. It found that adding a woman to the board of directors increased female employment and earnings at public companies by 1-2%, driven by retention of existing female workers rather than hiring more women.

"What's really interesting is that the ambition gap in our data collapses when women believe companies really want them in senior leadership," Sandberg said of Lean In's annual reports.

More specifically, she said it's female leaders who are more likely to advocate — or even consider — policies that would keep other women around, from longer maternity leave options to lactation rooms.

Throughout her career, Sandberg said her personal experiences as a woman drove her to change her workplace culture. In the early 2000s, when she was the VP of global online sales and operations at Google, Sandberg was pregnant and nauseous as she hunted for a parking space before a meeting. After learning that Yahoo had pregnancy parking, she asked then-CEO Sergey Brin if Google could do the same. He agreed. Google did not respond to a request for comment on whether the policy still exists.

"You kind of need a pregnant woman to think of that in order for that to happen," Sandberg, who had two kids with her late husband Dave Goldberg and has three stepchildren with her husband Tom Bernthal, said.

Later, when she was at Meta (then Facebook) in 2014, an employee with cancer was seeking fertility preservation prior to starting treatment. Because the company didn't cover egg freezing, she couldn't afford it, she told Sandberg.

Sandberg advocated for policy changes while at Google and Meta.

Bloomberg/Getty Images

When Sandberg looked into adding egg freezing coverage for cancer-related infertility, the head of HR wanted to go even further. "She said, 'We should just cover egg freezing. Why should we decide why people need it?'" Sandberg said. Meta, through Progyny, a fertility benefits program, covers up to four "Smart Cycles" that can be used for IVF, egg freezing, and related care, as well as adoption and surrogacy assistance.

In 2012, when she publicly shared that she left the Facebook office at 5:30 p.m. every day to have dinner with her family and put her kids to bed, she said she got thank-yous from her competitors.

"I got flowers from the Yahoo legal team — I didn't know anyone on the Yahoo legal team," Sandberg said. "Someone said to me: I couldn't have gotten more press if I had murdered someone with an ax."

She believes companies need to do a lot more

Better policies, particularly ones that help working moms, can help retain and motivate more female employees.

Natalia Lebedinskaia/Getty Images

When asked what companies can do to improve, Sandberg quipped: "How long do you have?" She listed better parental and bereavement leave and opportunities for more flexible schedules among some of the policies that could retain more women.

There were also changes in workplace culture that could help. She said she still talks to people who won't take a meeting with a woman alone.

"Who's ever been promoted by someone they've never had a meeting with? No one ever. You can have a meeting alone with a woman: Keep the door open," she said. "Let's not find cultural reasons to give better opportunities to men than women. We absolutely shouldn't be sexually harassed, but we shouldn't be ignored, either."

For now, Sandberg, who stepped down from Meta in 2022 to focus on her other ventures, the Sandberg Goldberg Bernthal Family Foundation (which runs Lean In) and the early-stage VC firm Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, said she supports the choices women make, even when it includes bowing out of corporate leadership.

"I think being at home with your children is great," she said. "Going back to school, great. Starting a company, great. Going part-time, great. Anything you want to do is great."

Sandberg just thinks it's a shame if fewer stick around at all.

"I just hope that enough women want those senior leadership roles," she said, "that we get the environment for women that they deserve."

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I'm 65 and caring for my 87-year-old mom with dementia. Going to work is sometimes my only break.

Angela Davis, 65, cares for her 87-year-old mom with dementia.

Camille Farrah Lenain for BI

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Angela Davis, 65, who lives in New Orleans with her 87-year-old mom with dementia. She said her mom's at-home care is upward of $7,000 a month. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

My mom and dad were never married. I grew up in New Orleans and went to an all-girls Catholic high school. My mom was a school teacher and bought a house in her 30s, which I recently transferred to my son. My dad was a math teacher, but left that to help his dad run a furniture moving business.

I went to Fisk University and moved to Texas, then Connecticut. I did my clinical fellowship at Yale University and had a son. I moved back to New Orleans because I didn't want my grandparents and parents to be strangers to him. I worked as a licensed clinical social worker in schools before retiring. I've also earned income from real estate, as I own over a dozen rental homes.

Are you paying for your own or your loved one's long-term care? Do you have thoughts to share about long-term care in the US? To share your story with a reporter, please fill out this quick form.

I started noticing changes in my mom's behavior

I have no brothers or sisters, which has made the last few years challenging. My parents were independent for a while. About eight or nine years ago, I started to notice some changes in my mom's behavior. One time, I was following her car, and she missed the exit to go to her house. Another time, she called the police because she said someone had taken her dog from her car, even though the dog was home.

Then, it all accelerated. She went around telling people that I was trying to steal her house and her money. She changed the locks, which I found out when we couldn't get in touch for three days. I literally broke into the house, and she was on the floor. She spent about two weeks in the hospital, though her services were extremely limited because she had stopped paying her Medicare premium. This was about two and a half years ago. She was diagnosed with dementia in February 2024.

Davis' 87-year-old mom lives with her.

Camille Farrah Lenain for BI

I briefly put her in a facility, but it didn't work out. The facility stated that my mom needed services that she hadn't needed when I dropped her off. They were willing to provide additional services if I would pay $2,000 more. That being the case, I brought her back home with me, where she's been ever since. I've tried to do as much as I could to make her comfortable.

She didn't want caregivers

I've had a couple of caregivers. The last one was really good, but my mom didn't want her there anymore. In the past three months, she would roll paper up and light it because she's been craving nicotine. I had to take the knobs off the gas stoves at my house.

My mother's godchild volunteered to stay with her for free. I'm going to give her $500 a week. It's a struggle, though, because I inherited my mom's dog, so I have two dogs, two jobs, and a mom with dementia who is depressed on a regular basis. I've had to worry about her roaming, too. She walked a block from the house and fell, and one of the neighbors called an ambulance, which cost $4,000.

Her condition is worsening, and she's not taking in much food. She will not get out of bed. She sits on the sofa, and she's up all throughout the night. Since she's been out of the hospital, I've been sleeping on a loveseat downstairs. It's not good for me because I am 65, but it's what I have to do.

Davis juggles a job and managing rental properties.

Camille Farrah Lenain for BI

She can tell you my name, my son's name, her goddaughter's name, and her Social Security number. If you ask her on a Monday who her favorite president is, it's Barack Obama, but if you ask her on Tuesday, she'll tell you she doesn't know. She can't respond to questions about current events, but she can tell you about her condition.

She's aware enough to know that something's wrong, though she's still in denial about her dementia. Her mother had it, and she and her sister took turns caring for her until it became too overwhelming. They put her in a facility, and she didn't last long there.

We spend about $2,000 a month on her care

She only brings in $3,200 a month, but we spend about $2,000 a month on care, and the upkeep on the house is about $5,000 a month for electricity, taxes, insurance, alarms, and her car. Her money doesn't cover it, so I do have to help her out. This doesn't include food, new clothes, or other day-to-day things. At the end of the day, she pays 60%, and I pay 40%.

I continue to work, partly for my own mental well-being. The money is not going to make or break me, but it never hurts to have more. It gets me out of the house and takes me out of caregiving for a few hours.

I've also taken a few trips for myself. I went to Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia. I took a trip with my son to Rome.

There have been a few times when my son has come from New York to help me, even if it's just cutting the lawn. He helped her move everything out of her facility, and he's really stepped up. I do some of this to model for my child. I will want him to do his best to take care of me. But I've always had the attitude of not waiting for the diagnosis to live. You live now.

Davis wants her mom to age with dignity.

Camille Farrah Lenain for BI

The other day, I was exhausted at night. I've never been a nap person, but I fell asleep on the love seat. When I looked at my phone, it said 7:05 the next day. I rushed to get ready for work, and the dogs were looking at me. Even my mom had asked me, "What's wrong with you?"

For reference, I'm usually up by 4:30 a.m. at the latest because I have to commute 40 miles one way. I feed and walk the dogs, and it takes me 30 to 40 minutes to get her up and change her clothes. I'm grateful I have flexible settings where I'm not punching in a clock because otherwise I'd be unemployed.

I get off work at 2:30 p.m. and home at 3:30 p.m., though sometimes I have to show an apartment. I make sure my mom takes her medications. She has struggled with eating, and sometimes she'll have food and not remember it 15 minutes later. I'm usually asleep by 11 p.m. The weekends are a little more relaxed.

Even though I'm a social worker, I'm not that kind of caretaker. I'm not the "I can wipe your butt and brush your teeth gladly" kind of person. Will I help her do this? Yes. But I don't enjoy it. I've already made clear my own wishes, which is to not to go out like this. I wouldn't wish this on many people. Of course, it's harder for my mom than it is for me.

It's death by 1,000 cuts, and in this case, you could say death by 1,000 memories every day.

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I quit being a trial lawyer to become a comedian. I loved my job but knew I was ready for something different.

Paul Farahvar worked as a trial lawyer before becoming a full-time stand-up comedian.

Sarah E. Larson

• Paul Farahvar went from law to stand-up comedy after some encouragement from comedian Bob Saget.
• Farahvar did comedy on the side of trial law for years before becoming a full-time comedian.
• Despite loving his work as a lawyer, Farahvar said he was ready for a new challenge.

This is an as-told-essay based on a conversation with Paul Farahvar, a touring stand-up comedian based in Chicago who previously worked as a trial lawyer. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

Right out of law school, I started practicing at an insurance defense law firm. I had won a case in the Illinois Supreme Court when I was only 25, which then led to places trying to recruit me.

I went to a firm that allowed me to work part-time, because I was also playing in and managing bands and doing entertainment law on the side. Eventually, one of my partners and I split off and started our own law firm.

Comedy came into the picture by accident. It was never on my radar when I was younger. My friend was a stand-up comedian, and he asked me to go with him when he was opening for Bob Saget. I was backstage and made a joke that got Bob Saget laughing. He said I should use the joke onstage, but I told him I wasn't performing and that I'd never done stand-up in my life.

His encouragement gave me the confidence to go to an open mic the next day. I won the contest, and that changed my life. I ended up hosting that open mic and then became a host at The Laugh Factory in Chicago. Now I've been a full-time comedian for over six years.

A common misconception is that I was burned out as a lawyer. I wasn't. I loved being a lawyer and practicing law, and I was lucky enough to take cases to trial often since our firm was a specialty trial firm.

I miss it sometimes, but I felt like I did everything I could do with law. I tried over 20 cases, and wanted the challenge of something new. I like to push myself to do things that are hard or uncomfortable.

Comedy is a hustle, but you can make money doing it

As a lawyer, I handled insurance defense and defense work for cities, including election and police cases. I was usually the bad guy.

I kept the comedy under wraps at first. At some point, people started to notice, and surprisingly, everyone was pretty supportive. If I were discussing a trial date with the other side and needed to schedule it around a comedy show, most lawyers were cool with it.

Paul Farahvar said while working as a lawyer, he kept his comedy side hustle under wraps at first.

Sarah E. Larson

My last couple of years of law, I was a full-time comedian and part-time lawyer. When my partner and I split our firm, I kept my existing clients but didn't take new ones. My last trial was late February 2020, and I closed my law firm on March 1, 2020. Comedy has been my job since.

Stand-up comedy is the biggest part of my life. I also do podcasts, writing, and acting. I'm lucky to be doing comedy almost every night, touring, headlining, and supporting bigger shows and theaters. This year, I have tried to force myself to take a day off each week. I still end up doing 6-10 shows weekly.

People assume you can't make money with comedy, but you can. You have to hustle. In times when I've really needed money, I've taken corporate gigs, such as shows for organizations like bar associations or unions. Those shows pay very well. There were a few years when I made more as a comedian than as a lawyer.

There are ups and downs. I'm fortunate that I can do comedy, and I don't have to take a lot of those corporate gigs or cruise ship shows because I'm single and I don't have any debt.

Even as a lawyer with my own firm, I was trying to generate business, and there were years where it was sink-or-swim. In the first year of our law firm, I didn't take a salary because we put all this money into starting the firm. That was harder for me than any year of comedy.

Working in comedy requires more than just writing and performing

As a stand-up comic, 90% of it is just sending my availability out and trying to get bookings and opportunities. I hate doing it, but I'm good at it because I used to do it when I worked in music. I don't have a manager, so if I forget or don't have time to spend a week making calls for show bookings, that hurts me in two months, when I'm like, "Oh shoot, I have a week, and I don't have that many shows."

I'm very driven, almost to an unhealthy degree. I don't have a personal life. Everything I do revolves around my career. I always say I wasn't the best lawyer, and I might not be the funniest comedian, but I'm the hardest working.

In comedy, you definitely experience burnout. Like the other day when I flew in on a red eye from Florida and realized I had a show that night. But once I get onstage, I think, "Oh yeah, this is way more fun than whatever else I was going to."

Now, some of the comedians I'm friends with are people I used to watch on TV as a kid. Every once in a while, I get to pinch myself, like when I've opened for my favorite comedian.

Still, I loved practicing law. I didn't like the mornings, and I hated waking up, but I always say if court was in the afternoon, I might never have quit.

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A renowned computer scientist once skeptical of the AI singularity now says humanity is 'certainly at risk'

Scott Aaronson, a theoretical computer scientist and former OpenAI researcher, wrote in a blog that the AI singularity has arrived.

Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

• Scott Aaronson is a theoretical computer scientist who previously worked at OpenAI on AI safety.
• In a blog, Aaronson wrote that he believes the "AI Singularity" has arrived.
• Aaronson didn't say if AI will wipe out humanity, but wrote that the transformative phase has begun.

A lot of X posts, prose, and proselytizing have been spilled on the internet recently about the impending AI apocalypse and whether we've passed the point of no return.

Here's another one eloquently put by the acclaimed theoretical computer scientist Scott Aaronson, whose research has helped us understand the limits of quantum computing. Oh, and he had a stint at OpenAI working on the theoretical foundations of AI safety and alignment:

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA," he wrote. That's 113 letters A.

In a blog post published Tuesday, Aaronson made the case for why he, a self-proclaimed skeptic of the AI singularity, "updated" his position on its arrival.

The singularity is a hypothetical concept in which AI's progress surpasses human intelligence and can improve on its own — a process known as recursive self-improvement.

Aaronson wrote that, 20 years ago, he had a "conservative, skeptical position" on self-improving AI. He and other colleagues in computer science largely dismissed the idea as the stuff of science fiction.

Recent developments have led him to change his tune, he wrote, namely, reports of AI agents breaking out of containment and an apparent AI-assisted mathematical breakthrough on the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize problem, a long-standing question about the math of fluid dynamics.

"I thought that building AIs able to solve millennium problems, hack the servers they're running on, play leading roles in their own improvement, etc etc might for all I knew take hundreds of years," Aaronson said in an email to Business Insider. "But here we are in 2026 and all those things have happened, so I said so."

In his blog, Aaronson also briefly chimed in on the latest AI boom-or-doom debate that has split the tech industry.

"I feel like it would be healthy for everyone to stop grinding their ideological axes, their sentiments about Dario Amodei or Sam Altman, for long enough simply to acknowledge that the wonders and terrors are here," he wrote. "They couldn't be here more clearly if the sky had turned reddish-orange like in the Matrix movies."

Aaronson said in the email that humanity is "certainly at risk" but he doesn't agree with the premise that doom is the "'default' outcome."

"I think there's a huge range of possible outcomes, and a lot depends on what we do now, whether we treat what's being created with the awe and humility and caution that it deserves, or simply as another consumer product to rush to market or a geopolitical weapon (or something that will go away if we pretend it's not real and a marketing stunt)," he said.

In his view, as AI's transformative phase begins, Aaronson wrote in the blog that human theorem-provers like himself may be becoming obsolete. The last gap could now be between intelligence and the physical world.

"Yes, I still unload the dishwasher and clip my toenails," he wrote. "On the other hand, in whatever years I have left, I don't expect that I'll ever again prove a theorem because I'm actually needed to prove it. If I do, it will only be for my or others' enjoyment or edification."

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