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• Most days, I found myself feeling exhausted, burned out, and glued to my phone after work.
• So, I began attending reading parties, laid-back hangs where people gather to read independently.
• It’s the perfect low-pressure social activity for me to feel refreshed and get off my phone.

After work each day, I found myself feeling mentally exhausted and burned out.

Seemingly endless emails and a phone that buzzes long after 5 p.m. left me craving a more balanced lifestyle, particularly one that didn’t make me feel constantly available.

However, I was struggling to find activities and plans that would actually stick.

I know exercise can be mood-boosting, so I tried going to the gym after work. Most of the time, though, I ended up canceling because I was too tired and it didn’t sound like much fun.

I also attempted to make regular plans to go to happy hour with coworkers. This didn’t stick, either, and I didn’t exactly want all my social interactions to revolve around alcohol.

Instead, I continued spending most evenings sitting on my couch, doomscrolling on Instagram, waiting for my husband to get home from work.

At one point, after checking my screen-time settings, I was horrified to realize I was spending an average of four hours a day on my phone.

When I told my friend about my unsuccessful attempts to fix my post-work habits, she suggested I attend a reading party (or Silent Book Club).

I’d seen people around the world posting about attending these low-pressure events, where attendees gather to read books independently and silently, then have discussions afterward.

It seemed strange to turn an activity I usually do alone into a group one, but I was willing to give it a try.

I was skeptical, but the reading party helped me get off my phone in a fun way

Shortly after, I headed to a reading party at a café near me with a copy of “The Handmaid’s Tale” in hand.

As I arrived, I was worried I’d be the only one in attendance. Instead, I was surprised to see about a dozen people spread out at tables in the back corner of the café — all with books in hand, coffees nearby, and no phones in sight.

A woman smiled at me and scooted over, so I could sit at the empty seat beside her. I pulled out my book, ordered an oat-milk latte, and tried to start reading.

Instead, I kept getting distracted and couldn’t get comfortable in the chair. I shifted from side to side and had to reread the same page three times because I kept looking up at the sound of the espresso machine or someone walking by.

I wondered how long I could possibly sit here like this as I resisted the urge to grab my phone to check the time. Everyone else’s were away, and I didn’t want to be judged for having mine out.

After about 20 minutes, I finally got comfortable and was able to really dive into my book.

Our group read, uninterrupted, for one and a half hours, and then the woman who had organized the event got our attention and said the reading part of the event was finished. She motioned for us to go around in a circle, introduce ourselves, and share what we were reading.

Once everyone was through, attendees chatted with the people beside them. The conversations flowed naturally. We all liked reading and set aside time in our schedules to go there, so it was easy to break the ice.

I found out the girl next to me was also a big Bukowski fan, and it was nice to pick each other’s brains about our favorite works of his. Shortly after, the event came to a close.

People began to leave, and I liked not feeling pressured to exchange Instagram handles or phone numbers with anyone. I simply thanked the host and said I’d be back.

I left feeling refreshed and calm.

It’s nice having semi-regular plans that help me connect with others in a low-pressure way

Instead of looking down at my phone during my walk home, I found myself enjoying the beauty of my neighborhood — people walking their dogs, chatting in cafés.

As I continued, a buzz in my bag snapped me out of the present moment. Without thinking, my hand shot into my purse and grabbed it. I laughed when I saw that I had no important messages, only a promotional email about a sale at Ikea. I had missed nothing.

I won’t say this event was a magic cure that’s made me never reach for my phone or feel stressed after work. However, it helped me to connect with others and myself in a more present way.

I’ve now been attending these parties every other week or so for about six months. It’s gotten easier to get comfortable, stay focused on the page I’m reading, make post-reading conversation, and not feel tempted to grab my phone.

And when I’m truly desperate to know what time it is, I just look at the watch that I’d forgotten I owned.

• Microsoft is the latest tech giant to raise prices due to the memory shortage; Xbox prices will go up $100-$150 on August 1.
• It said memory and storage prices have increased by “more than 2.5x” and it expects “another doubling by the fall of 2027.”
• The news follows Apple raising MacBook and iPad prices by as much as $300 on Thursday.

Shoppers got a double whammy of bad news on Thursday as Microsoft announced yet another round of Xbox price hikes hours after Apple boosted prices.

Taken together, the price increases — which both companies say are due to spiking memory and storage costs — are set to make holiday shopping significantly more expensive. For gamers, it makes gaming increasingly feel like a luxury hobby.

Microsoft’s popular Xbox game consoles are set to increase by $100-$150 on August 1. The 512 GB models will go up by $100, and the 1 TB versions will increase by $150. The Xbox with the highest available storage configuration of 2 TB will be discontinued entirely.

“Last October, we increased XBOX console price by $20-$70 in the U.S. We hoped another price increase would not be necessary, and we have spent the last several months working with suppliers on options,” Microsoft said in a blog post. “Unfortunately, console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5x and we expect another doubling by the fall of 2027.”

The new price hikes will apply worldwide.

This is the third time Microsoft has raised prices on its latest Xbox generation, following increases in May and October 2025. The Xbox Series X is now $250 to $300 more expensive than it was when it launched in 2020.

The memory shortage has impacted a broad range of consumer electronics companies, many of which have raised prices in the last 8 months.

Microsoft’s chief rivals in the gaming wars, PlayStation and Nintendo, have both previously announced price increases for the PS5 and Nintendo Switch 2, respectively.

Computers, which also rely on memory and storage chips, have also become more costly to produce, and Apple followed many of its peers in boosting MacBook and iMac prices, along with the iPad, Apple TV, HomePod, and Vision Pro, on Thursday — by as much as $300.

“The entire consumer electronics industry is struggling with the current components crisis, but the effects are particularly hard on consoles,” Microsoft said. “Unlike phones, computers, speakers, and other consumer devices, consoles are typically not sold at a profit, but instead for less than they cost to make.”

In its blog post announcing the coming price hikes, Microsoft shared details on programs it said “make XBOX consoles more accessible,” such as buy-now-pay-later and interest-free financing services, along with efforts to make previously used game consoles available via retailers to purchase.

• Ford says AI and automation helped its quality turnaround, but they were not enough on their own.
• Execs told reporters they hired or brought back 350 technical specialists to catch defects earlier.
• The overhaul helped Ford top JD Power after years of quality problems and expensive recalls.

Ford staged a quality comeback. The automaker credits part of the turnaround to pairing AI with something more old-school: veteran engineers.

Executives at Ford told reporters this week that the company had hired, promoted, or brought back about 350 experienced technical specialists as part of a sweeping effort to fix vehicle-quality problems. Those engineering veterans have helped mentor younger staff, lead design reviews, and improve the AI and automated quality tools Ford uses to catch defects before vehicles reach customers, they said.

They also offered a striking admission: AI and automation were not enough on their own.

“Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it’s only as good as information you use to train it,” Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, said. “Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high-quality product.”

Poon said Ford had not done enough in prior years to preserve the knowledge of its most experienced engineers, some of whom left the company before their expertise was fully integrated into Ford’s systems. He said quality problems often showed up at the boundaries between teams, where design, manufacturing, software, and hardware collide.

Quality win, recall hangover

The comments came as Ford celebrated a major milestone.

Consumer data analytics firm JD Power named Ford the top mass-market brand in its latest initial-quality study, trailing only Porsche and Genesis overall, according to the study released Thursday. Ford narrowly beat Lexus, which has long been one of the strongest performers in the rankings.

That’s a big turnaround. Just three years ago, Ford ranked 15th out of 25 major automakers in the same study.

For years, Ford has faced headwinds on its product quality. In 2025, Ford issued 152 recalls, nearly doubling the previous record set by General Motors in 2014 with 77 safety bulletins.

As of Thursday, Ford had issued 51 recalls this year, according to the NHTSA’s dashboard. That’s still more than double Chrysler, the next-closest automaker, which had issued 19.

Ford executives said many of the continued recall issues are tied to vehicles and platforms designed between 2013 and 2020, calling recalls a “lagging indicator.” They framed the JD Power win as proof that a new approach is taking hold, and said internal data shows “clear improvement” in newer vehicles.

Still, the initial-quality study measures problems in new vehicles, not long-term durability, making it an early signal rather than a full verdict on whether Ford has solved its recall problem.

Ford says it changed how it catches problems

Ford launched its quality reset in 2023.

In that time, Kumar Galhotra, Ford’s COO, said the company has more than doubled its technical specialist population. Those specialists now lead mandatory design reviews and look for failure points before parts ever reach the plant floor.

“They hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor,” he said.

The company also created an industrial system team to bring engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain closer together. Before that approach, Galhotra said Ford had previously relied too heavily on a “find and fix” approach — identifying problems after they appeared and trying to resolve them quickly.

Now, Ford says it is trying to prevent problems before they happen.

Ford previously told Business Insider that it had developed two bespoke AI-enhanced scanning tools that helped validate that cars were properly assembled before rolling off the lot. The tools, called AiTriz and MAIVs, both debuted in 2024.

While Ford has previously said the tools are helping improve product quality, the company did not say whether the 350 specialists worked directly on them.

• REI faced backlash after an Instagram ad featured a bike with two sets of handlebars.
• REI said the ad was generated by Meta’s AI ad tool.
• Meta has said its AI creative tools for ads are used by millions of advertisers.

A recent Instagram ad from outdoor retailer REI Co-op drew backlash after some users noticed that the bike in the image seemed to have a unique feature: two sets of handlebars.

“REI using AI slop now. So much for caring about the environment,” read a Reddit post over the weekend about the ad that received hundreds of upvotes.

Turns out the image was the result of AI adjustments, with REI pointing to an AI tool from Meta, Instagram’s parent company.

“Meta auto-enrolled us in an AI personalization tool that produced an inaccurate and inappropriate alteration of a vendor-provided image in some of our ads,” an REI spokesperson said in a statement to Business Insider. “While a two-handled bike might be interesting, it is not something you will find in our assortment.”

The image, which promoted a bike from the brand Van Rysel, showed a woman in a park standing beside the oddly shaped bike.

Van Rysel North America confirmed to Business Insider that the original image supplied to REI came from a Van Rysel photo shoot featuring cyclist Amity Rockwell, adding, “Any later alterations were not made by Van Rysel.”

Meta declined to comment when reached by Business Insider.

The company’s terms for its generative AI ad tools state that AI-generated ad outputs may be “inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, offensive, and/or inappropriate” and that advertisers are responsible for evaluating them before use.

The REI spokesperson said the company unenrolled from the Meta tool, adding, “This does not align with our values or how we manage our brand. Product accuracy and our vendor relationships matter. We apologize for the confusion this caused.”

REI is not the first advertiser to report unexpected results from Meta’s AI ad tools. As Business Insider previously reported, several advertisers said Meta’s AI tool had also generated bizarre or nonsensical ads for their products, and that some settings, like “test new creative features” and “automatic adjustments,” had automatically been toggled to “on.”

A Meta spokesperson at the time said advertisers who use full image generation “have the opportunity to review the generated images before running their ad.” They also said millions of advertisers had found their AI ad creative tools valuable and that the tools improved their ad performance.

• Demonstrators gathered outside Poetica Coffee’s Williamsburg location on Wednesday.
• The protest came after Poetica said on social media that Rep. Dan Goldman was not welcome back after a visit.
• Protesters and counter-protesters traded insults. One passerby suggested the barbs hyperbolic.

Roughly 65 protesters and counter-protesters gathered outside a Brooklyn coffee shop on Wednesday after the chain banned Rep. Dan Goldman over his stance on Israel.

The demonstrations at Williamsburg Poetica Coffee shop came days after the chain’s now-deleted Instagram post showing Goldman inside its Park Slope café — and said he was not welcome back.

In the caption, Poetica said it did not serve “genocide enablers” and told the New York Democrat not to return. It also said it had refunded his order.

“Hey Congressman Dan Goldman, we see that you stopped by our shop today for a coffee,” the deleted post read. “Do you see how it doesn’t taste like genocide juice?”

On Wednesday morning, Business Insider observed a few dozen protesters outside Poetica’s Williamsburg location, along with two smaller, less organized counter-protest groups. NYPD officers separated the groups with barricades as demonstrators shouted competing chants into microphones and megaphones.

The demonstration — organized by #EndJewHatred, a Jewish advocacy group — included several speakers who called on Poetica to apologize, praised the Justice Department’s decision to open a civil-rights investigation into the chain, denounced New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and led a chant supporting the New York City Police Department.

In two other barricaded areas, counter-protesters held signs condemning Israel’s military actions in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. Several of them took turns using a megaphone to chant or address the pro-Israel demonstrators.

NYPD officers directed protesters, counter-protesters, and onlookers to stay behind temporary fencing. Officers also directed traffic, which was mildly slowed by camera crews outside the coffee shop.

A small stream of customers continued to walk into the shop past the protesting groups. One man ate a muffin inside the shop while watching the protests.

Business Insider spoke to several people who walked by, as well as people who came to support both sides. While some demonstrators said they were motivated by strongly held views about antisemitism, Israel, and Palestinian rights, several passersby said they had not heard about the protest beforehand and had stopped because of the spectacle.

One passerby suggested the groups were being hyperbolic. “It’s a lot of mental gymnastics both groups are doing,” the man said.

The controversy surrounding Poetica has already drawn national attention and federal scrutiny. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said it had opened an investigation into the incident, citing federal laws that bar public companies, including coffee shops, from discriminating on the basis of race, religion, or national origin.

Poetica did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The chain’s Instagram account was unavailable on Wednesday afternoon.

Poetica Coffee’s Yelp page also displayed a “public attention alert” after the business received an influx of one-star reviews.

Goldman, who is Jewish and represents parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, said earlier this week that he had stopped by the café with his young daughter and had a pleasant interaction with the staff. In an Instagram comment, he called the shop’s post “sad.”

In a later interview with CNN, the US representative for New York’s 10th congressional district said that he supported human rights and “what is going on in the Middle East is horrific”

“Now, I may disagree as to whether or not there’s a genocide, but come on, we’re better than this, and we need to be better than this,” Goldman said about the incident. He added that Justice Department resources might be better used on antisemitism cases involving people without his public platform.

Goldman lost Tuesday’s Democratic primary for New York’s 10th congressional district to Brad Lander, the former New York City comptroller.

• The release date for Google’s new Gemini 3.5 Pro model has been pushed back to July.
• The company has been improving the model based on feedback from early testers and its Flash model.
• The pressure is on Google to deliver amid intense competition between rival AI labs.

The release date for Google’s next frontier AI model has been pushed to July, Business Insider has learned.

The company previously said it planned to roll out the new Gemini 3.5 Pro model in June. However, it is now targeting a July launch as it spends extra time gathering feedback from early testers and tweaking the model, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Google teased the new model at its I/O developer conference in May but said it wasn’t quite ready. At the time, CEO Sundar Pichai said the model would launch “next month.”

A Google spokesperson declined to comment.

With this upcoming model, the pressure is on for Google at a moment of intense competition among the AI labs. While Gemini 3 outperformed expectations last year, Anthropic and OpenAI are continuing to pull ahead of Google in coding, which has emerged as the first major enterprise use case for modern AI.

The source said that Google pushed the launch date back so it could spend more time gathering real-world use cases from early testers. The new model has been available to some users on Google’s Antigravity platform and on the AI benchmarking site LMArena, they said.

The new Gemini 3.5 Pro model is expected to be better at long-horizon tasks and powering agents.

Google has also incorporated feedback from its recent Flash 3.5 model into 3.5 Pro, the source said, confirming a theory that Business Insider floated at I/O. That includes criticisms that Flash consumed tokens too quickly.

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