• I’ve been vacationing in Punta del Este, Uruguay, since I was a toddler.
• I live in Maine now, but I make an effort to bring my family to the same beach every year.
• The endless beachfront and excellent food options make it a favorite destination for us.

Ever since I was 2 years old, my family has been spending the holiday break at the same beach: Punta del Este, in Uruguay.

The beach town is hands down one of my favorite places in the world, not only because of our long-standing family tradition — which I’ve now kept up with my own kids — but because it’s a hidden gem in South America that deserves to be visited at least once.

Here’s why.

There are endless beaches to enjoy

Uruguay has opposite seasons to the US, which means it’s summer during our winter. For my family of five, that means it’s the perfect place to take a break from the sub-zero temperatures of Maine during the holidays.

Punta del Este has endless miles of beach, with options for everyone. If you like surfing, there’s a popular beach where you can find people sitting on their boards waiting for the perfect wave. For families with young children, there’s Playa Mansa, which rarely has waves, making it ideal for kids to wade around in the water. For more experienced swimmers, there’s Playa Brava, which offers big waves and strong tides.

You can often find merchants walking around with towels, bikinis, dresses, ice cream, and coffee. Some beaches have beach restaurants where you can buy food and drinks, although they can get crowded during peak season.

There’s so much for kids to do

Uruguayans are known for being incredibly kind to kids. You can expect priority lines for families with young children at airports and supermarkets. In my experience, people often go above and beyond at restaurants and shops to ensure kids are happy.

Beyond that, there are endless activities to keep kids happy. From ice cream shops to try on every block downtown, to an extensive (and free!) playground called El Jaguel, where families can spend the day exploring the grounds, having lunch, and riding horses.

My kids also love the day camps at Portal del Bosque in La Barra, which cost $2,000 Uruguayan pesos, or about $50, where they spend half a day exploring activities such as art, stop-motion animation, soccer, and more. My kids also love visiting the downtown hippie market, getting temporary tattoos, and getting threaded braids.

The quality of food is next level

Despite having been coming here for 40 years, I still haven’t tried all the restaurants that Punta del Este has to offer.

There are historical ones, like La Huella in Jose Ignacio, which is loved by both locals and tourists (although securing a table during peak season can be challenging). Highlights include grilled octopus and fish, as well as a dessert volcano of dulce de leche.

Lo de Tere in the port, which is so fun to spend New Year’s Eve at, as people dance on the street once the clock hits midnight. On other days, you can enjoy food with an emphasis on local products.

And for a quick, casual bite, Rex, which has the best chivitos in town, is excellent to go with kids because of its quick service and lively atmosphere. One year, my kids spent the entire meal petting the restaurant’s dog, while my husband and I enjoyed the coldest beer I’ve ever had.

While Uruguay is known for its excellent steak, there are restaurants for every palate. My kids love eating fondue at Bungalow Suizo. I always enjoy getting fresh, local fish, and anything with dulce de leche (a local caramel) is a hit with the whole family.

But these are just a few of the endless options for food. You really can find something for everyone’s taste.

The holiday season is the most fun, but also more expensive

Summer here runs from December to March, which is the ideal time to come to enjoy the beach, as well as when most restaurants are open.

That said, the weeks between Christmas and New Year’s can be really expensive and hard to get reservations for. Another factor to consider is that while there are direct flights from Miami to Montevideo and from Buenos Aires to Punta del Este, these can be particularly expensive during high season. To get an idea, for my family of five, return tickets to the US for January 2nd were running at $18,000. We opted to fly on December 31st instead and spend New Year’s in the air.

I hope we can continue spending more family vacations in Punta del Este, as seeing my kids enjoy the things I used to do as a kid brings me so much joy.

• I made Ina Garten’s brownie pudding, which has been going viral on TikTok for the past month.
• The delicious dessert requires only a few ingredients and minimal prep.
• It’s a warm and comforting dish that’s perfect for the holidays.

It’s time to gather our loved ones and ring in the most important holiday of the year.

I’m talking, obviously, about Ina Garten‘s wedding anniversary.

This week, the “Barefoot Contessa” star and her beloved husband Jeffrey celebrated 57 years of marriage. There’s no better way to honor these two lovebirds than with Garten’s famous brownie pudding, which pays tribute to the very first dessert she whipped up to win his heart.

Here’s how to make it.

Ina Garten’s brownie pudding has been going viral on TikTok for the past month.

Garten’s brownie pudding first appeared in her 2008 cookbook “Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics.” It has found newfound popularity after the Food Network posted an old clip of Garten making the recipe on her “Barefoot Contessa” cooking show to its official TikTok page on November 7.

During the episode, Garten revealed she was making the brownie pudding to celebrate her and Jeffrey’s 40th wedding anniversary because she used to send him boxes of brownies after they first met as teenagers.

“I think he was the most popular guy in the dorm when they arrived,” she said. “So, I think brownie pudding is very romantic for our anniversary.”

Garten learned the brownie pudding recipe from the late chef Anna Pump, whom she met while running her Barefoot Contessa store in 1978.

“Mom was hired to cook, but the beginning of a beautiful friendship began,” Sybille van Kempen, Pump’s daughter, previously told Business Insider. “Mom and Ina motivated each other. They shared ideas and supported each other’s growth.”

Garten’s brownie pudding only requires a few ingredients.

To make Garten’s brownie pudding at home, you’ll need:

• 4 eggs, at room temperature
• 2 cups of sugar
• ¾ cup of good cocoa powder
• ½ pound of unsalted butter, plus extra for buttering the baking dish
• ½ cup of all-purpose flour
• Seeds scraped from 1 vanilla bean
• Vanilla ice cream, for serving
• 1 tablespoon of framboise liqueur, optional

Framboise, by the way, is a raspberry liqueur. According to Garten, it’s an ingredient that you “really can’t quite taste, but it makes everything else taste better.”

Before I could start, I needed to bring my eggs to room temperature.

I forgot to take my eggs out of the fridge before I started this dish, so I let them soak in a bowl of warm water while I prepared the rest of my ingredients.

If you try this trick at home, just make sure the water isn’t too hot — you don’t want the eggs to start cooking!

Then, I preheated my oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit and began melting the butter.

Garten takes butter seriously, especially when it comes to this dish. The ingredient is essential for making the brownie pudding “very wet and delicious.”

“You can’t make brownies without butter,” Garten says while demonstrating this dish on a “Barefoot Contessa” episode. “Anyone who tries to make brownies without butter should be arrested!”

A quick tip: cut each stick of butter into knobs if you want them to melt quickly.

I also needed to butter my baking dish.

Garten recommends using an oval baking dish that measures 9 inches by 12 inches, but she said “any similar size will work with this.” The closest dish I could find was 8 inches by 11.5 inches, and it worked great for this recipe!

While two sticks of butter were melting on the stove, I used another knob to lightly butter my dish. I recommend using cold butter, which will glide over your dish with ease and speed.

I used Garten’s quick tip to prep the vanilla bean.

“I’m just gonna snip off the end, and then run my knife right down the middle and scrape out the seeds,” Garten explains on her show.

Don’t forget to sift your dry ingredients!

Before I began making the batter, I sifted my cocoa powder and flour together and set my bowl aside.

If you have a stand mixer at home, you can do a lot of this prep while your mixer is beating the eggs and sugar. Since I only have a handheld mixer, I wanted to get everything done beforehand.

Once my ingredients were ready, I could begin making the batter.

I cracked my four eggs into a bowl and added the sugar.

I set my mixer to medium-high speed and beat the eggs and sugar together for 10 minutes.

This task is obviously much easier with a stand mixer, but it wasn’t too tough with a handheld one. Plus, I’ll take any extra exercise I can get during the holiday season.

Garten says you’ll know when the egg-and-sugar mixture is ready once it turns “very thick and light yellow.”

Then, I reduced the speed to low and added the vanilla seeds and framboise.

“There’s always one ingredient in a dish that you really can’t quite taste, but it makes everything else taste better, and in this one, it’s one tablespoon of framboise,” Garten explains on her show.

I also added my mixture of sifted cocoa powder and flour.

A deliciously chocolatey scent filled the kitchen as I mixed everything together until the ingredients had just combined.

I kept the mixer on low as I slowly poured in the cooled butter.

As with the previous step, I made sure to mix the ingredients until just combined.

And just like that, my batter was ready!

I poured my batter into the buttered dish, then placed it in a larger baking pan.

Per Garten’s instructions, I added the “hottest tap water” to the pan until it came halfway up the side of the smaller baking dish.

Cooking the brownie pudding in a water bath ensures that “it bakes really evenly,” Garten explained during the “Barefoot Contessa” episode.

I baked my brownie pudding for exactly one hour.

Garten says you can check if your pudding is ready by inserting a cake tester 2 inches from the side, which should come out “¾ clean.” She also warned that the center of the dish could “appear very under-baked.”

My brownie pudding didn’t look under-baked at all. I was actually worried I had overbaked it. So I just took it straight out of the oven.

Once the brownie pudding had cooled, I scooped some into a bowl with ice cream and dug in.

As I cracked through that satisfying brownie crust, I breathed a sigh of relief. My fears that the dish had been overbaked were unfounded as my spoon revealed the gooey middle. I immediately took a bite and let the dessert wrap me up in its rich decadence.

Garten’s brownie pudding is definitely sweet, but I didn’t find it overwhelming. While the framboise was optional, I think it helped balance the flavors. My editor — who has also made this dish — recommended sprinkling some sea salt on top, which was fantastic advice. It added even more depth and interest to each bite, especially with a little vanilla ice cream on the side.

It’s obvious why Garten likes to whip this up for her and Jeffrey’s wedding anniversary in the winter. The brownie pudding is so warm and comforting — the kind of dessert you tuck into on the couch while watching a holiday movie you’ve seen a million times before.

With so little prep, it’s also a great recipe to make ahead and enjoy during this week of festivities. If your family finishes it too fast — a likely story — well, you can just make it again.

After all, what else are you going to do with that bottle of framboise?

• The US announced visa bans on five Europeans over tech rules it says censor American speech.
• Marco Rubio accused Europe of coercing US platforms to silence views it opposes online.
• France’s Emmanuel Macron condemned the move and vowed to defend Europe’s digital sovereignty.

The US just escalated its clash with Europe over tech regulation.

The State Department said it has barred five Europeans, including the EU’s former Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton and four members of digital campaign groups, from entering the country over what it called “censorship” of tech platforms.

The visa bans were met with backlash from European leaders on X, who accused Washington of intimidation and political overreach.

The dispute centers on the EU’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, which imposes obligations on major tech platforms — many of which are based in the US — to police content and curb anti-competitive behavior. Companies in breach of it can be fined up to 6% of their global annual revenue.

In a post on X late Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department would block leading figures of what he called “the global censorship-industrial complex” from entering the US.

“For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose,” Rubio wrote. “The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship.”

In follow-up posts on Tuesday, Sarah B. Rogers, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, named Breton among the five European individuals sanctioned, accusing him of using the EU’s Digital Services Act to pressure Elon Musk and X during his tenure as commissioner for the internal market.

She also named Imran Ahmed of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, Clare Melford of the Global Disinformation Index, and HateAid co-CEOs Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon, accusing them of pressuring US platforms over online speech. None of the four campaigners immediately responded to a Business Insider request for comment.

Rubio added that the US was “ready and willing to expand this list” unless officials reversed course, framing the move as a defense of free expression and US sovereignty.

European backlash

The back-and-forth has largely played out on X, a platform that was hit with a $140 million fine earlier this month for breaching the Digital Services Act.

Breton responded in Tuesday X post by invoking McCarthy-era politics, asking, “Is McCarthy’s witch hunt back?”

He added, “To our American friends: ‘Censorship isn’t where you think it is.'”

French President Emmanuel Macron also condemned the visa restrictions, describing them in a Wednesday X post as coercive measures aimed at undermining Europe’s digital sovereignty.

“The rules governing the European Union’s digital space are not meant to be determined outside Europe,” he said.

The European Commission “strongly” condemned the US decision, adding that the EU has the sovereign right to regulate its digital market and would seek clarification from US authorities.

“Freedom of speech is the foundation of our strong and vibrant European democracy,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X on Wednesday. “We are proud of it. We will protect it.”

Gérard Araud, France’s former ambassador to the US, said the dispute reflects a deeper rupture, writing on X that “the West” no longer exists and that Europe is now alone in defending its interests and values.

Hodenberg and Ballon told Business Insider in a joint statement that they are “not surprised” by the move, calling it an “act of repression by a government that is increasingly disregarding the rule of law and trying to silence its critics by any means necessary.”

“Despite the significant strain and restrictions placed on us and our families by US government measures, we will continue our work with all our strength — now more than ever,” the duo said.

Daniel Fried, a former US ambassador to Poland and longtime US sanctions official, told Business Insider he could not recall a precedent for Washington imposing visa bans on a former European official in retaliation for policy decisions made in the course of their duties.

Similarly, Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, told Business Insider that he could not recall any historical precedent for the move, describing the visa bans as largely symbolic and unlikely to trigger meaningful retaliation.

Musk in the middle

The dispute has been years in the making — and Musk’s X has often been at the center of it.

Musk cheered the US move to sanction the officials, writing on X: “This is so great.”

Breton repeatedly clashed with Musk after he bought Twitter in 2022 and pledged to loosen moderation in the name of free speech.

As the then-internal market commissioner, Breton warned that X could face fines or even be barred from the European Union if it failed to comply with EU law, later overseeing a formal investigation into the platform regarding disinformation and content moderation.

Those confrontations turned X into a symbol of the broader transatlantic fight over who sets the rules for online speech — a conflict that has now spilled from regulation into geopolitics.

The Navy’s Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Newport, Rhode Island, is a 13-week course that turns civilians and enlisted sailors into naval officers.

Candidates face intense physical, mental, and leadership challenges across three phases: indoctrination, academic, and applied leadership. The training includes drills and physical challenges led by Marine instructors, as well as intense academic study in weapons, engineering, navigation, and leadership.

OCS is designed to push candidates to their limits before they earn the right to lead enlisted sailors.

Business Insider’s Jason Guerrasio sat down with Laura Dern to get the inside scoop on all of her major acting roles. She admitted that during the filming of “Jurassic Park,” while working with fake dinosaurs, she was worried the movie would flop.

This article is part of the “How AI is Changing Talent” series, which explores how AI is reshaping hiring, development, and retention.

Twelve months ago, Jacqui Canney was ServiceNow’s chief people officer, focused on talent strategy. Today, she’s also the company’s chief AI enablement officer — a title that didn’t exist until recently.

The two roles aren’t separate, Canney told Business Insider. “They’re one strategy, and the companies that understand that are going to be the winners.”

That shift, though, requires letting go of how most organizations have always structured work: by function, head count, and department. “Companies can’t treat this as ‘We’re going to run an AI program over here, and it’ll add capacity,'” she says.

Instead, they need to ask: how does AI change the work across departments? “AI doesn’t follow the same silos people do. That’s why you build the workforce around the new workflow.”

Canney’s approach isn’t an outlier. Rather, it’s a signal of how quickly AI has become part of work and our daily lives.

Three years after the launch of ChatGPT, adoption has reached 54.6%. That’s staggering compared to adoption rates for personal computers (19.7%) and the internet (30.1%) three years after they were widely introduced, according to research by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Meanwhile, about 21% of US workers say that at least some of their job is now done with AI, an increase from 16% roughly a year ago, according to Pew Research Center.

AI is transforming everything about work, from the jobs people do to how they do them. Organizations, meanwhile, are racing to prepare their people for what comes next. While the long-term impact remains uncertain, early patterns are emerging about what’s working and what isn’t.

New job titles, big expectations

AI’s effect on the labor market is showing up everywhere: in how companies screen candidates, which skills command premium salaries, and how performance gets evaluated. Two structural shifts, in particular, stand out: new jobs are emerging, and old jobs are evolving.

An authoritative count of new AI-specific job titles is hard to come by, but data show rapid growth. A report from software company Autodesk found that demand for roles like AI engineer jumped 143.2% in 2024, while prompt engineer rose 135.8%, and AI content creator increased 134.5%. Meanwhile, the number of jobs requiring AI skills rose 7.5% last year, even as total job postings fell 11.3%, according to research from consultancy PwC.

Molly Roenna, global chief people officer at PR firm Weber Shandwick, sees this firsthand. Her company is increasingly seeking specialists in areas like AI integration and AI ethics, and it’s recruiting from disciplines like behavioral science and data analytics.

“We’re hiring for a fundamentally different environment,” Roenna says. “Meeting client expectations requires people who use technology as a force multiplier for insight and creativity, not just a shortcut for efficiency.”

The hiring process itself has evolved, too. Many of Weber Shandwick’s interviews now include a “technology conversation,” a practice that appears to be gaining traction. This isn’t to test technical skills, but to gauge how candidates use AI.

“What have they built with AI? What excites or worries them about it? We want perspective that comes from actual practice.”

The dynamic playing out at Weber Shandwick and elsewhere isn’t new. After all, every major technological advancement has created roles that were previously unimaginable, made others obsolete, and forced still others to adapt. What’s different about this AI-driven era, however, is both the speed of change (see above) and the breadth, affecting workers across industries and skill levels.

“We didn’t have programmers before computers,” says Esteve Almirall Mezquita, professor of data, analytics, technology and AI at Esade in Madrid.

Setting the goals for widespread use

Creating new roles and demand for expertise is half the equation. The bigger challenge is helping existing workers figure out how to use AI.

Some companies aren’t leaving that to chance. They’re requiring it, notes Dan Schawbel, managing partner at Workplace Intelligence, a research firm. “CEOs are under enormous pressure to have their AI story intact,” he says. “We have to have our workers using AI. It’s good for productivity, yes, but also our story and bottom line.”

Companies such as Microsoft, Coinbase, and Shopify now mandate AI use, according to previous reporting by Business Insider. Meta plans to measure employees’ performance by their “AI-driven impact.”

Schawbel predicts more scrutiny in the year ahead. Employees will need to function like data scientists, continuously proving their value, he says. “Whether you’re in marketing, IT, or HR, every action can be measured and tracked — and maybe even tied directly to your compensation.”

Tracking the ROI of AI 

Measuring AI use and seeing value from it are two different things, however. Even as organizations pour billions into the technology, results have been uneven.

Research by consulting firm BCG of more than 1,250 firms worldwide reports that 60% of companies are investing heavily in AI but seeing minimal returns. Meanwhile, only 5% have taken the step to restructure their operations around AI — and those companies are seeing significant revenue gains over everyone else.

The difference, the BCG research suggests, comes down to several factors. Successful companies have buy-in from the top and have redesigned how work gets done. Most importantly, says Alicia Pittman, BCG’s global people chair, they’ve invested in teaching employees to use AI effectively.

Pittman notes that industries like financial services, insurance, and healthcare are pulling ahead in AI adoption. “We’re seeing companies put real time and energy into this in a way that hasn’t been present before, and that’s good for everybody and good for the global workforce.”

Granted, there’s job displacement that comes with that and some skill sets will go away, she says. “But helping people adapt to AI is a major investment in them as professionals.”

Training AI to work for, not instead of, humans

At Moody’s, the credit ratings firm, that investment involves encouraging employees to teach AI as much as possible.

Ari Lehavi, who runs applied AI there, says this approach frees employees to focus on complex work that requires human expertise.

Take sales, for example. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems can capture basics like company size, contract history, and revenue potential. However, they miss what closes deals: company politics, individual motivations, and who really influences decisions. Lehavi’s team teaches AI systems to learn those details so salespeople can concentrate on managing relationships.

“They can spend their time on things they’re already doing but don’t have enough time for,” he says. “The hard cases, the edge cases, the complex situations, mentoring other people, management, and skill development.”

In other words: the human stuff.

Of course, the path forward isn’t simple or straightforward. Not every company has the resources to retrain its workforce, and some jobs will indeed disappear. Many companies are struggling to make AI work.

Yet, Canney of ServiceNow remains positive. “It’s a human renaissance,” she says. “You’re going to have capacity in your workforce and the chance to guide it toward new revenue streams or creative ways of working. It’s an enormous opportunity, and I’m definitely an optimist about it.”