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• In one week, I lost my dream tech career, a family member, and my long-term relationship.
• On a whim, I decided to move to Ireland (which I’d never visited) and pursue my sailing dreams.
• Now, I’m living out my bucket list in Dublin and can’t imagine being anywhere else.

I knew from my first week in Toronto that it wasn’t the place for me.

However, it took me six years, one death, a breakup, and the loss of my dream job for me to buy a one-way ticket out of there.

It was never my intention to settle in Toronto, but when love had called, I’d answered. The partner I’d met while living in Australia had a job there. We decided we’d stay here for a few years, then move back to the country where we’d met.

Still, I had a hard time acclimatizing to the concrete sprawl, especially after living in the lush Australian landscape and growing up surrounded by the rugged natural beauty of British Columbia.

If I was going to stick this out, I realized I needed to appreciate Toronto for what it was — a commercial hub. I set my sights on the ultimate distraction: professional fulfillment.

Luckily, I’d landed a contract job I loved in tech marketing in Toronto. I found that if I focused on work, it was easy to ignore other problems and pretend I didn’t miss living near the ocean.

For a while, focusing on my career helped me ignore parts of my life that weren’t working

After several contract extensions, I was finally offered a permanent role on my dream team, but something felt off.

On one hand, I was doing work I enjoyed with people I liked and respected. On the other, the gap between my partner and me had become a chasm, and our plan to move back to Australia together felt less likely the closer it got.

I had achieved the career goal I’d spent a year hustling toward, yet I was deeply unhappy. So, I decided to spend a month in Canada’s Pacific Northwest.

Surfing in Tofino, I realized I hadn’t been in the water for six years. I hadn’t done a lot of things I loved or taken any steps toward my lifelong dream of learning to sail.

I’d put all my personal ambitions and passions aside to be in a city I didn’t like, in service of someone else’s dreams, and wound up pouring myself into work as a coping mechanism.

I began to wonder, if I didn’t live by the ocean, doing these things I loved so much, who was I? And if my partner decided he didn’t want to leave Toronto, where would I go?

I still wasn’t ready to face reality, so I returned to Toronto and focused on the thing I knew would keep me tethered: my job. I turned into an ostrich, burying my head in my work, unwilling and unsure of how to fill the void.

After a restructuring and a breakup, I finally pushed myself to a new place: Ireland

Sometimes, when you’re ignoring your intuition, the world stops nudging you and starts shoving.

I was good friends with my coworkers, so when the group chat started to buzz while I was on vacation, I took note. One by one, my former teammates were pulled into meetings to notify them of their termination due to restructuring. I felt for them, but I was also relieved I wasn’t on their team anymore. I felt safe.

When my manager texted me to ask if I could hop on a quick call, I was a bit surprised but thought it was nice of him to notify me of the staffing changes while I was on vacation.

I wasn’t prepared to be part of the restructuring. Or for my relationship of seven and a half years to end the day after I got back to Toronto. Or for my beloved grandma to die not long after.

Sometimes, life shoves so hard the tether snaps.

That’s how I found myself lying on the air mattress in the spare bedroom of the Toronto house I’d grown to loathe, wondering where to go next.

For me, doing something new had to start with going somewhere new.

I knew I needed to be by the water again, a place with accessible hiking, surfing, and nature. And, most importantly, I had to be somewhere I could get a visa as an unemployed person over 30.

Eventually, I set my sights on Ireland, a country I’d never visited. I secured a temporary visa and booked my flight for November 8, a date I picked because it just felt lucky.

Eighteen months later, I’m living a 20-minute walk from the beach in Dublin. I have a great tech marketing job again, but without the sacrifice of living somewhere that doesn’t feel like home. I have been surfing, I finally learned to sail, and I have found a vibrant community.

Somehow, with plenty of hope but little expectation, a decision I made on a whim has led to the life of my dreams. Now, I’m working on securing my next visa so I can continue to live in Dublin, where I hope to stay for a long time.

• In 2024, Cara West moved from the US to Greece with her husband and young daughter.
• The family wanted a better quality of life, more affordability, and a greater sense of community.
• West told BI that their family is happier, but raising a child abroad isn’t always smooth sailing.

After Cara West became a mother in 2022, she began rethinking the kind of life she wanted for her family. She grew increasingly concerned about the cost of living in the US, the lack of community she felt in Houston, and the quality of education her child might receive.

“I considered the possibility of moving abroad to live more affordably and comfortably,” West, 35, told Business Insider. “I didn’t want my child to attend a traditional public school in the US, and I wanted to teach her through travel and real-life experiences.”

The following year, West and her family tested out living in Lisbon for a few months. In Portugal, they found a lower cost of living and a quality of life that better aligned with how West and her husband wanted to raise their daughter.

“After two weeks in Portugal, we knew we’d made the right decision and were ready for bigger changes,” she said.

In 2024, the family made their move to Europe permanent, choosing Syros, Greece — a small Cycladic island west of Mykonos — as their new home. West is a travel blogger, while her husband is a stay-at-home dad. This month, they signed a lease on a new house and renewed their visas, while their 4-year-old daughter prepares to start kindergarten.

West shared with Business Insider what she sees as the biggest pros and cons of moving across the world and raising a child abroad, from learning a new language to living far from friends and family.

My daughter is growing up with a strong community

While West lived in Houston, she hardly knew her neighbors and rarely spoke with them. And while she had friends, making plans was difficult, especially given the amount of time and effort it took to get something on the calendar.

In Syros, West said, she’s finally been able to build a community.

“I would say one of the biggest pros, at least for us, is the community that we have here, from other digital nomad and expat families to the local families,” she said. “The community is something that my daughter gets to grow up with. It’s so special and everything I could have hoped for.”

In Syros, the island’s small size makes it easier for her to see friends regularly. On a typical day, she often runs into someone she knows while walking around town.

“We bump into each other in the streets, you know, and may go, ‘oh, let’s go play tomorrow, or let’s meet up for coffee,'” West said. “It’s much easier to make plans and for us to be in community with people.”

Balancing an old and new language is a delicate dance

West and her husband want their daughter to grow up feeling connected to Greek culture rather than like “an outsider,” and they see learning the language as an important part of that.

They’ve been helping her develop her Greek skills by encouraging her to speak with locals, watch Greek shows, and read Greek books.

“At first, she saw it as a negative thing that she was learning Greek,” West said. “Now, she’s a lot more receptive and gets really excited every time she makes a local friend who speaks Greek.”

This year, her daughter will start at a private school where teachers will primarily speak Greek, though they will translate for English-speaking students.

“I worry that as she gets settled into school, speaking Greek will be really difficult for her, but at the same time, I’m grateful that we’re starting it at such a young age because I do think that she’ll adapt way faster,” West said.

As her daughter learns Greek, West said she’ll also be keeping an eye on her English skills. It’s a concern many other English-speaking moms on the island share.

“It’s so interesting because we’ve been really focused on our kids feeling comfortable and confident speaking Greek, but now we’re like, ‘Maybe they’re forgetting English,'” she said.

I’m raising a worldly, open-minded child

One reason the family decided to relocate to Europe was the ease of traveling to other countries. This month alone, they visited Lisbon, Venice, and Paris.

“She’s only four, and we just got done visiting her 20th country,” West said. “She’s being exposed to customs, cultures, foods, and experiences before she even reads about them in a textbook.”

From hearing the Call to Prayer in Turkey to seeing the northern lights in Iceland, West’s young daughter has already experienced more of the world than many people do in a lifetime.

West said these experiences have helped her daughter understand early on that people live, eat, worship, and move through the world in different ways.

“It’s always the things that you don’t think are going to stick with her,” she added. “I love that she is seeing so many different ways of doing things.”

It’s difficult being far away from family

For West, living abroad also means raising her daughter far from family. It’s a major concern for her, especially because her daughter is an only child.

“I worry sometimes that she is missing out on things happening back in the states with my husband’s and my family, and that she may not be as close to certain family members like her cousins back home,” she said.

To help maintain those bonds and keep up with milestones in everyone’s lives, West makes sure they regularly FaceTime with family.

“We just make sure that’s a regular cadence for her, so she doesn’t feel that disconnect when she sees them in person,” she said. “And we also try at least once a year to get back to the States as well.”

We feel safer in Europe

West’s daughter was about 3 months old in 2022 when the Uvalde school shooting happened. At the time, West and her husband were living in Houston, roughly four hours away. The tragedy pushed her to think more seriously about where her daughter would go to school — and how safe she would be.

“That, honestly, for me, was the biggest catalyst,” West said. ” I was like, okay, we really do need to look into what it would be like to live abroad, especially somewhere where gun laws are much more restrictive.”

Greece has very strict gun laws, with firearm possession generally prohibited unless a permit is issued by authorities. In Syros, West said, life on the island feels “incredibly safe.”

• A version of this story originally appeared in the BI Tech Memo newsletter.
• Sign up for the weekly BI Tech Memo newsletter here.

Here’s some delicious AI irony for you.

For years, tech giants have argued that if information is available on the internet, it can be used for AI model development and outputs. They call it fair use. Content owners have tried to prevent this, with no success.

Now Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google are discovering what the rest of the internet has already learned through painful experience: once you put something online, people will find ways to use it in ways you don’t like and can’t stop.

The latest flashpoint is something called “distillation,” using the outputs of one AI model to improve another. Anthropic says competitors are harvesting its outputs at scale, turning billions of dollars of research into a shortcut for rivals. OpenAI and Google have made similar warnings recently.

The fear is obvious. Why spend billions building the best AI models if someone else can recreate much of this intelligence for a fraction of the cost?

That’s a legitimate business concern. But here’s the awkward part.

Symmetry

From 30,000 feet, distillation looks an awful lot like what AI companies have been doing to the rest of the internet. Scrape web content for free and without permission. Turn it into a product you sell. Argue it’s fair use. Hope the lawyers sort out the details later.

Anthropic says rivals are extracting intelligence from its top models. Website owners have spent the past three years saying Anthropic extracted intelligence from them. Both sides argue this is against their terms of service. The symmetry is hard to ignore.

And despite pitching itself as the most ethical AI company, Anthropic is by far the worst actor here. Its data-sucking bots crawl webpages thousands of times for every one referral the company sends back to the web.

Bots on both sides

Anthropic, OpenAI, and especially Google, frame this as a cybersecurity issue, pointing to swarms of bots “attacking” their models to extract intelligence. But, they’ve been doing the same to many websites, bombarding them with so much bot crawling activity that site owners have seen their operating costs skyrocket. Not only are some websites having their content used without permission, they are paying more for the privilege.

AI researchers say distillation is different from web scraping. But the AI industry can’t even decide whether distillation is OK or not, or where to draw the line.

There’s the original, benign form of distillation, where labs use outputs from their own models to create different, often smaller, models. Then, there’s what Anthropic calls “distillation attacks,” where rivals use other people’s AI outputs to develop or improve their own offerings.

Even here, though, the lines blur, with some AI researchers now worrying that Anthropic’s aggressive stance will hurt all types of distillation. Open-source AI expert Nathan Lambert calls this “distillation panic.”

So, let me wrap this up for you, from the AI giants’ perspective: They can extract intelligence from the web for free and without permission. That’s different from distillation, which is OK. Oh, but not when distillation involves using their content in ways they don’t like.

“A cat-and-mouse game”

This contorted argument is being demolished by the brutal realities of the modern internet. Anthropic has spent months tightening access to its top models to stop competitors from learning too much. Those efforts have either backfired, or they’re just spurring more elaborate workarounds.

Once information goes online, clever people will figure out how to collect it, remix it, and profit from it. That’s true for blogs, photos, software code, videos, and yes, AI giants’ precious model outputs.

“It’s always a kind of a cat-and-mouse game,” Zilan Qian, a researcher at the Oxford China Policy Lab, told Business Insider. As long as AI model outputs are out in the world, “people will probably find a way to get access to it.”

Indeed, distilling another company’s AI model may even be fair use. These legal arguments can cut both ways.

Welcome to the new internet, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google. Get used to it.

Sign up for BI’s Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.

• I canceled Amazon Prime to save money and curb impulse purchases.
• The change made me rethink my dependence on one retailer.
• Running errands has become one of the unexpected joys of my week.

I didn’t get an Amazon Prime membership until the pandemic, when the allure of delivery finally outweighed the yearly cost for me.

I was impressed by the convenience, and never looked back — until three months ago when my Prime membership was about to renew. My budget has tightened, and I thought that if I’d lived without it before, surely I could do it again, right?

Plus, I knew I’d save money when the ease of ordering was no longer an option. There have been far too many times when I’ve regretted late-night purchases that I wouldn’t make in the light of day. Over the holidays, for instance, I woke up to see if I could cancel the $25 Amazon order of gourmet gummy bears I had placed the night before, but it was too late.

I felt free after canceling, but it was scary too

I knew that letting go of Prime meant having to run more errands again, but errands are something I’ve caught myself wanting more of — not less.

I’ve grown to miss running out for even silly things, like milk for my coffee and cereal the next morning. So the idea of being forced to find all of my favorite things out in the physical world again was appealing. I just wasn’t used to it anymore.

I’m adjusting to making lists now for the stuff I need and planning errands, but I didn’t realize I wouldn’t know where to buy anything anymore.

Once I saw the level of dependency I had developed with Prime, I didn’t want to use it anymore

I became determined to figure out where my favorite products are available and have sometimes opted to order directly from the company instead of going to a large superstore for the same thing. I might spend more because of shipping costs, but I feel better about supporting a smaller company. I also feel like I’ve made a connection with the people behind the business, as if my direct sale is a direct thank-you. Plus, I often get some kind of bonus, such as free samples, discounts for later, or a cute memento.

In some cases, I’ve even found new products to replace ones that, for whatever reason, I could only buy through Amazon, such as certain vitamins and supplements, and foregone other products entirely, realizing in their absence that I didn’t really need them.

I’ve returned to a more mindful shopping experience, where I consider the quality of what I’m buying or what I might be supporting through my purchase. In this way, I feel more invested in my purchasing decisions again, and like I’ve reclaimed some of my buying power.

I’ve realized how much I gave up for the convenience of delivery

I’ve learned it helps to give myself a pep talk that I’m only going inside to buy whatever it is I came for. I have failed the most at this in used bookstores and bargain stores. For instance, I went into Five Below specifically looking for a dog bed — and I left without one, but somehow I’d spent $60 on other amazing finds. While I do love everything I found that day, I didn’t necessarily have the budget for it. In this way, running errands again has gotten me into trouble a few times.

I knew I missed getting ready to go out for a morning or an afternoon of errands, but what I had forgotten about missing were the smaller things: hearing just the right song in the car, treating myself to an errand coffee, physically sifting through items like clothes in a store, and the simple joy of just browsing.

And it does seem a little too simple sometimes, because I would have never thought that incorporating more to-dos back into my life would ultimately bring so much back to me.

I’m hoping the shiny new feeling of running errands doesn’t wear off, because what once felt like chores now feel like these mini adventures I’ve just been having so much fun on.

• England and Norway are facing off in the FIFA World Cup quarterfinals on Saturday.
• British Airways and Norwegian Air Shuttle bet on the match’s outcome earlier this week.
• The loser has to use the winner’s logo on social media for a day.

The most exciting bet ahead of England and Norway’s World Cup quarterfinal match isn’t taking place on DraftKings.

Norwegian Air Shuttle proposed a wager against British Airways in an Instagram post after the matchup was set earlier this week. The challenge would pit Scandinavia’s second-largest airline against the United Kingdom’s flag carrier.

“Hey @british_airways, do you wanna make a bet?👀🇳🇴🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿,” Norwegian Air Shuttle wrote on Instagram. “If Norway wins, you have to switch to our logo on Instagram on Sunday (one day). And vice versa. Deal?”

British Airways accepted the challenge with a cheeky comment.

“Don’t make bets you can’t win 😉,” it replied.

The wager caught the attention of other major airlines. “We’ll be watching with our satay in one hand and signature drink in the other.🍹” Malaysia Airlines wrote in the comments.

“You two fight over the logo,” Austrian Airlines wrote. “We’ll bring the Schnitzel.”

On Friday, the airlines posted a joint video featuring an official handshake and the exchange of logos. “After all the comments, all the banter, and all the speculation, the handshake has officially been delivered at @british_airways HQ🤝 The deal is on,” the post’s caption said.

The two airlines continued to take playful jabs at each other in the days leading up to the match. “Today’s the day @flynorwegian, nervous yet? 👀🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇳🇴,” British Airways wrote.

“just chilling innit xx,” Norwegian Air Shuttle replied.

Eivind Hammer Myhre, a spokesperson for Norwegian, told Business Insider that its social media team came up with the idea to challenge another airline.

“But what wager is fun without risk? And we thought, what’s the most visible thing we can bet? Our logo,” Myhre said. “From there, we created the post, and while we were quite happy with the idea, we would never in a million years have anticipated this kind of reception.”

Myhre said the social media posts have reached tens of millions of people around the world.

“I think the most important thing is that every single comment and feedback has been positive,” he said. “Throughout this, we were a bit worried about the reception at British Airways, but they have been such great sports. This has almost gone from a wager to being a collaboration between two airlines and what seems like the entire internet.”

Still, Myhre couldn’t resist one more jab. “May the best Norwegian team win!” he said.

England and Norway will face off at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami at 5 p.m. ET on Saturday. The quarterfinal match will pit tournament standouts like Harry Kane and Erling Haaland against each other. As of Saturday afternoon, platforms like DraftKings, Polymarket, and Kalshi are predicting England to win.

• Moving to rural Tennessee left my daughter and me feeling isolated.
• It took years of searching before we found a community of local moms.
• Those friendships transformed both my daughter’s childhood and my mental health.

As a native New Yorker, I thought my move to Tennessee was temporary. But I’m a country girl at heart.

Starting over a thousand miles from loved ones is challenging, especially as a new mom aged out of childbearing years. My daughter Violet longed for friends, and I did too. But we couldn’t find any.

I tried going to things even miles away

I joined every mom Facebook group within a hundred miles, driving 50 minutes for mom coffees, hikes, tinker-tots, gymnastics, and play centers.

Coffees and hikes were one-offs; I got lost in the city park looking for tinker-tots, melting down while my daughter happily swung. The play center was great, but families came pre-paired. Gymnastics was amazing but anti-social.

My heart cracked every timeViolet shouted, “Look! Kids!” at our playground, right before they’d leave. Like storytime, everywhere were closed, tight-knit families. One invited us to a creek, but canceled. Like an awkward 4th grader scanning the cafeteria, I kept returning. Every trip North visiting cousins was bittersweet; she loved them so much that I questioned starting a life across the country.

I slowly found community

A flyer on the library’s bulletin board introduced a Friday playgroup, 40 minutes away. Twelve moms awkwardly made small talk while 30 kids ran wild. Violet clung to me. When the playgroup ended two months later, we were just starting to warm up.

Another mom also wanted community, so she reached out. Our smaller group was less overwhelming, and very slowly, organically grew. The kids loved each other. We moms do, too, bonding over stories of new mom fears and the difficulty of finding friends.

Now six families with 12 kids meet four hours multiple times a week — more time than I’ve spent with anyone besides my husband since high-school.

Meeting other moms helped my mental health

Right before Violet’s birth, my husband became disabled, and my mom died. Suddenly transitioning careers, I also navigated the new terrain of motherhood and loss. Denial and newborn demands cushioned me from realizing how alone and frightened I felt. I reached for the phone to call my mother when Violet didn’t latch immediately, or to ask for suggestions for safe bug spray.

After I jumped out of bed at midnight to trim 1-year-old Violet’s tiny nails, convinced she’d scratch her eyes, then an hour later woke her again to change her bedding, sure she’d choke on a nail clipping, my husband gently suggested postpartum depression. I insisted he was wrong.

Finding a community of other moms brought joy and confidence back into my life, and I hadn’t known I’d missed. They gave me a perspective no one else could, helping me relax and enjoy motherhood. Violet sang the names of her friends throughout the day. Another mom said her kids recite their friends’ names in the car, and a third shared her girls say them alongside their bedtime prayers.

Then, the ice storm came. Our Middle Tennessee area was the hardest hit, stuck without power for six days. When my phone reconnected on the third day, I discovered a chain of concerned texts from “The Moms” (as my husband dubbed us). The family closest to us took us in, turning our disaster into a fun sleepover party.

Our relationships deepened as we shared how deeply we appreciated each other — and not just for our kids — and how, from a small library flyer, this mom group had now bettered all our lives.

We support each other

Our ages range from 26 to 43 — but I don’t feel older. We’re from all parts of the country, and include a former engineer and a pandemic nurse. They all plan to homeschool their multiple children. I’m the only mom still working, and with just one child.

The unspoken motto in our group is that different families have different rules, and we support each other. Whenever new moms come to the library, we welcome them.

As birthdays rolled around, Violet eagerly anticipated hers. When we asked what she wanted, she shouted: “Allllll my friends!”