Day: August 1, 2025

• I was looking for a less intense form of exercise and joined a swim class for older adults.
• I was surprised by how well I fit in with the other attendees; they were social butterflies.
• I enjoy taking the class and have been going for a few years now.

When I signed up for a water aerobics class for older adults, I felt embarrassed — I was about 30 years younger than everyone else.

I’d recently moved in with my parents because I became disabled with long COVID. I wasn’t able to take care of myself in the same ways or exercise at the same intensity I was used to anymore, and I started to look for new ways of moving.

When you have chronic fatigue, it can be difficult to get movement in every day, but my doctors have told me it’s still vital to try. The key is finding something that doesn’t push beyond your threshold but also keeps you as active as possible.

I go walking in spring and fall. However, in Southern Illinois, where I live, temperatures and weather conditions in summer and winter are too extreme for me to walk outside. But there’s a gym with a pool down the street, and I love being in the water, so I decided to look at their classes.

I was the youngest person in the class by a few decades

I was surprised to see the variety of pool courses offered. However, many of them looked too vigorous. The only ones that appeared to be within the scope of my abilities were for older adults. Still, I put aside my self-consciousness about being 39 and considering this particular class, and looked at the time slots. This was the next hurdle — most were morning classes, as older people are often early birds.

Another symptom of my illness is insomnia, and I don’t wake up until after most of them take place. However, there was one beacon of light — a one-hour class starting at 5 pm that met three days a week. I decided to shed my pride and sign up.

My first time in the water, it took no time to realize I was in the “social butterfly” class — I would fit right in. Not only did everyone in the class immediately introduce themselves, but they also asked me why I was there. When I explained my disability, they showed genuine support.

Once class started, it became apparent that they all knew each other extremely well. It turned out most of them had been taking this same class together for years and were a tight-knit group. Whenever new people joined, they welcomed us with open arms. Apparently, they also liked this time slot because they weren’t “morning people” either. I felt right at home.

I fit right in with the group

As time went on, I was even more convinced of their party animal ways — they often spent the majority of the class socializing, while occasionally following the teacher. Now, that’s not to say they’re not active, because they definitely are. However, whether or not they are doing the actual exercises we are being shown is another subject entirely.

By the end of the hour, I was also introduced to this particular class’s special activity — they always insist the last 15 minutes are set aside to play with a beach ball.

I joined the game and they cheered each other on, trash-talked in jest, and even got a little competitive. With my age, I’m able to dive for the ball and do some tricks that others can’t. When I used these skills, they cheered loudly and excitedly. In fact, one man commented on “what a strong arm” I have.

Over time, I even made a close friend

Any discomfort I’d felt about joining an exercise class for older adults as a middle-aged woman quickly dissipated. And the surprises kept coming — the next class, I made a special friend. A woman approached me to chat while we were supposed to be exercising. She’d recently moved to the area and had only been attending for a few months.

As we got to know each other, we figured out that we’d both come from big cities to this small area, we shared a liberal mindset in a largely conservative area, and we both loved trying out new restaurants. Knowing she was about my mom’s age, and that my mom also wanted a friend who shared this affiliation, I suggested the three of us go out to dinner.

Now, we regularly go to the movie theater, go out to dinner, and attend local events related to our shared interests. In fact, sometimes she and my mom even go out without me! In the meantime, I’ve been going to these classes for the past three winters and loving every minute.

I didn’t have “become disabled, move home with my parents, join a water aerobics class frequented by retirees, and make new friends from a different generation” on my Bingo card for this stage of my life. However, it has not only been good for my health, but also for my soul.

Thaddeus Daniel Pierce was was implanted into his mum after being frozen as an embryo in 1990. The incredible achievement breaks the record for the world’s oldest baby

• Malik Johnson decided to pursue a construction path after learning about a program in high school.
• He started his career as a concrete laborer and switched to pipe fitting after a pandemic layoff.
• Johnson emphasizes knowing your ‘why,’ progression in the trades, and seizing every opportunity.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Malik Johnson, a 29-year-old union pipe fitter in St. Louis. It has been edited for length and clarity.

When my parents bought me toys as a child, I always played with the box more than the toy. With Lego bricks, boxes, and trash cans, I’d build small apartment complexes, take a step back, and think, I did that.

My mom saw that in me. She took me to construction sites and encouraged me to pursue my passion for building. She let me have tools, and I would do small projects around the house.

I was making whatever my mind came up with, and that’s what led me on the path toward construction.

I took shop class in high school

My brother introduced me to his soccer coach, who was also the construction teacher. I joined the class.

It was easy for me to adapt and help others improve their craft, too. If someone was scared to use a tool, I’d say, “Hey, try it this way.”

Some people are nervous about messing up, but I love messing up. Sometimes, you find something new that way — a happy accident.

An executive at design-build construction firm Clayco named Dan Lester came in to talk to my class about the Construction Career Development Initiative, or CCDI, a program aimed at exposing underrepresented populations to careers in the construction trades.

Dan talked about how we need to envision a future for ourselves and the opportunities that the construction industry could provide. As I heard Dan speak, I thought, How do I want to live?

I looked at Dan’s confidence when he walked into the room demanding attention, how he carried himself, his family, his background, and all his connections, and I was convinced.

I found the trades

After graduating from high school in May 2015, I started my career as a concrete laborer. I helped build bridges, hospitals, and research labs until 2019.

In spring 2020, after a layoff due to COVID-19, I switched to being a pipe fitter, first as a laborer, then a journeyman, and now as an apprentice with the Local 562 Pipe Fitters Union.

You don’t have to go to college to get into pipe fitting. You go to a training center, which is like a two-year college experience. You have a night class once a week, practice your welding, study blueprints, math, and OSHA, and they pay you to learn. Then, you do an apprenticeship for five years.

I love being a pipe fitter

It gives me confidence knowing I have a set of skills that are needed everywhere in the world. I also like knowing how important pipe fitting is for helping all businesses run efficiently.

Pipe fitting isn’t easy, and not everyone can do it, which makes it a lot more special and gives me a sense of accomplishment.

Here are three takeaways I’d tell anyone interested in entering the trades.

1. Know your why

Before I chose pipe fitting or construction, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I remember my cousin, a high-spirited plumber, asked me, “What is your why?”

My why was that I wanted to help my mom. We were homeless, and she was going through chemotherapy for breast cancer. My brother was in college, so it was just me and her. She made it feel OK, so I didn’t even know how bad it was at the time, but I know I never want to be homeless again.

My advice to someone who says, “I don’t know what I want to do” is to ask yourself why you want it and then figure out the next steps.

2. You can make money, but it’s a progression

You have to work your way up. When I started earning good money, making $33 an hour, I got laid off. Then COVID-19 happened, and I lost all my savings.

I had to start over, and my income dropped to $15 an hour. Things were tough, but a winner finds a way, so I started DoorDash and Instacart to compensate for the income loss.

I worked Monday through Sunday, six to eight hours a day. I also did some odd jobs for family and friends, like simple house projects.

Right now, I’m a fifth-year apprentice and will be a journeyman pipe fitter next year. As a journeyman laborer, I earned $101,000 in a year. When I journey out on June 1, 2026, I will be able to earn over $110,000 a year.

3. Don’t pass over opportunities because of fear

When I was with CCDI — going to school, working, and building the whole program simultaneously— I was nervous and scared the whole time, but they had my back.

What helped me was knowing I wasn’t in this alone and that CCDI and my mentor supported me every step of the way. They had a system to help me succeed as long as I applied myself, and that gave me the confidence to know that even if I don’t know what the future holds, as long as I keep moving forward, things will work out in the end.

If I’d passed over that opportunity, who knows what things would look like now?

• Data from Square shows that the average tip on food and beverage transactions dipped below 15% in Q2.
• Though average tips shrank across the board, bars saw the highest average at 16.9% of the ticket price.
• The average restaurant worker makes nearly 23% of their income in tips, Square found.

Tip fatigue may be pushing us further away from 20% gratuity being the norm.

Square, a financial services and digital payments company, released a report on Thursday. It found that in Q2, average tips were down across the restaurant industry, dipping below 15% of the total ticket price for transactions across full- and quick-service restaurants, cafés, and bars.

While that may be good news for consumers who are tired of leaving tips, the economic impacts could have knock-on effects for the service workers who depend on them.

“As consumer confidence in the economy shifts and tips fall, workers are taking home less, which could lead to a return to labor uncertainties for the industry — adding to the crunch local restaurants are continuing to feel,” Ming-Tai Huh, Head of Food and Beverage at Square, said in a statement.

The data, which compiles information from more than 100,000 restaurants using the Square payment system, analyzed more than 900 million transactions from Q1 2024 to the end of Q2 that were priced between $5 and $300 with a tip of at least $1. The report illuminates trends about tipping culture in the US, which is largely seen as more obligatory than in other countries.

The dip reflects how rattled US consumer confidence has been in recent months. While the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Survey shows consumer attitudes rebounded slightly in July after a dip in the spring, consumers’ assessment of the present economic outlook remains below last year’s levels — and has not yet recovered from the hit they took during the pandemic.

At full-service restaurants and cafés, where American consumers are most comfortable leaving tips, rates have remained relatively flat, reducing by less than half a percentage point since Q1 of last year, according to Square’s data.

More significant fluctuations were seen at bars and quick-service restaurants, Square found: tips at bars reduced 0.4% in the last quarter alone, and QSR tips dipped by 0.6% in the same timeframe.

Despite the lower average tips across the board, transactions at bars still generate the largest gratuities at 16.96% of the total ticket price, Square found. So, while Americans are drinking less, it appears they still appreciate their bartender’s service.

Patrons largely dislike the practice of leaving tips, especially when they feel obligated to do so or are asked to leave gratuities in non-traditional industries. Some say the practice has gotten out of control and have begun to avoid businesses that ask for them, Business Insider previously reported.

However, tipping remains essential to service workers, who depend on gratuities for a large percentage of their income.

“As previous Square research has underlined, tips make up a major part of workers’ wages — the average restaurant employee earned nearly 23% of their income in tips in 2024,” Huh said in a statement to Business Insider.

• AI is driving up the cost of electricity.
• Utilities in Indiana and Ohio are requiring data centers to pay more for power.
• Big Tech is fighting back as other states grapple with how to charge data center customers.

In several states, public utilities are asking power-hungry data centers to cover more of their mounting electricity costs.

Utilities have long enforced special terms and conditions, called tariffs, on their largest customers, to ensure they are paying their fair share.

Facing a historic surge in electricity demand amid Big Tech’s AI race, utilities in states like Indiana and Ohio are now turning to tariffs to protect residents and small businesses from higher power bills as more data centers come online.

Data centers consumed about 4.4% of all electricity in the US in 2023, according to research from the US Department of Energy. That amount could triple by 2028.

That level of demand growth hasn’t been seen since the 1960s, when gains in efficiency tempered the power industry’s costs of growth, protecting consumers from hefty rate hikes.

Now, power plants are more expensive to build, especially the natural gas plants that some utilities are proposing to serve new data centers.

Ratepayer advocates and regulatory experts say that using tariffs for data centers is a good start, but they may not be enough to prevent the full costs of the AI boom from hitting consumer wallets.

The demand surge coming from a handful of very large customers, combined with the rising costs of building new infrastructure, could mean the old rules of utility pricing don’t apply in the age of AI.

“Data center growth is overwhelming long-standing approaches to approving utility rates,” researchers at Harvard Law School’s Electricity Law Initiative wrote in a paper earlier this year, “causing the public to subsidize Big Tech’s power bills.”

Earlier this month, Ohio regulators approved American Electric Power’s plan to create a tariff specifically for its data center customers. In February, regulators in Indiana approved changes to Indiana Michigan Power’s large customer tariffs, aimed at shielding the utility’s individual and small business customers from higher costs associated with data centers.

Several other states, including Virginia, Texas, Kansas, and California, are considering or have proposed implementing special tariffs for data centers.

The tariffs are a response to the unprecedented demand for electricity coming from Big Tech’s AI data centers.

Investor-owned utilities in the US are on track to build $1.1 trillion in new infrastructure over the next five years, largely to keep pace with that demand, according to industry group Edison Electric Institute. About 72% of electricity customers in the US are served by investor-owned utilities, which profit by building new infrastructure.

This business model was born when population growth and economic development drove electricity demand, and everyone was thought to benefit from system-wide upgrades.

With Big Tech companies driving most of today’s electricity demand, some are questioning which customers exactly should pay for upgrades.

“We really need to think about who should pay for this stuff,” Ari Peskoe, Director of Harvard Law School’s Electricity Law Initiative, told Business Insider.

“I don’t think it’s fair to just have these very wealthy corporations come in and force utilities to build more infrastructure and then just socialize the costs the way we normally do.”

Why am I subsidizing Big Tech’s power bill?

Historically, state regulators have allowed public utilities to recover the cost of investment, plus a rate of return, of new transmission lines and power plants by raising rates for all customers.

The utility business model was based on the assumption that society benefited from the grid’s expansion; therefore, “we should all pay for the infrastructure needed to allow for its growth,” said Peskoe.

Staggering data center power demand has flipped this assumption on its head. At a time when residential electricity use is going down, Big Tech companies stand to gain the most from major utility expansion. Under the old rules of cost allocation, everyone else might have to pay for it.

In Louisiana, customers of the state’s major public utility could be responsible for $5 billion in costs associated with new natural gas plants and transmission lines needed to serve a Meta data center.

Wisconsin ratepayers could pay for a $2 million transmission project for Microsoft’s data center campus outside Milwaukee. In Colorado, Xcel Energy customers could end up paying $1.7 billion for new transmission lines to serve the state’s growing data center load.

What are states doing about it?

In February, Indiana regulators approved changes to Indiana Michigan Power Company’s tariff for large industrial customers, setting the terms for connecting data center customers to the grid.

The changes were part of a settlement agreement between I&M, its three largest data center customers — Amazon, Microsoft, and Google — consumer advocacy groups, and the Data Center Coalition.

The revised tariff requires “large load” customers that use a lot of electricity to make “long-term financial commitments proportional to their size,” I&M said in a press release.

Data centers are driving record load growth in the utility’s Indiana service territory. Peak load — the highest amount of electricity used by customers at a time — is on track to more than double by 2030.

Ben Inskeep, program director at Citizens Action Coalition Indiana, a participant in the IMP settlement, said the revised tariff will help protect ratepayers from the cost of “stranded assets” — infrastructure that gets built, but ultimately doesn’t get used. But it doesn’t address several other aspects of data center growth that could show up in consumer electricity bills, he said.

Many factors account for the final number that customers see on a monthly electric bill, and the cost of new infrastructure is just one of them.

“We’re seeing really high load growth from data centers driving the cost of capacity super high and driving the cost of building new resources super high, and those costs could still end up in consumer bills,” said Inskeep.

For its part, Big Tech is fighting to keep its own electric bills from rising.

In Ohio, a lawyer for Amazon told regulators that AEP had “singled out” data centers for a “discriminatory tariff.” A lawyer for Google called the tariff a “departure from the fundamental rules” of utility regulation.

That’s exactly the point, said Peskoe.

“What we really need is a new approach to allocating the utilities’ costs,” said Peskoe. “That’s what a lot of this comes down to — making sure that the data centers are paying for infrastructure that’s serving them, that’s being built for them.”