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• Kiana Glanton is a 43-year-old mother living in New York City who didn’t think she’d ever be a mom.
• After miraculously conceiving and giving birth, her vision rapidly deteriorated.
• Kiana sought help from the Lighthouse Guild, desperate to know how to parent as a blind, single mom.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kiana Glanton. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Nearly 10 years ago, in the middle of postpartum depression, learning how to be a mom for the first time, my body decided to respond to the extreme stress I was under with a huge amount of inflammation. Inflammation that led to rapid, severe vision loss.

I was going to need to learn to be a mom who was blind, and it all felt overwhelming — too much to handle.

I was blind but independent

My vision had been gradually declining since I was 16, due to an autoimmune condition. Although I was technically considered blind, I was completely independent, still able to read print, and didn’t need a cane.

To treat my autoimmune condition, I had chemotherapy in low doses for a decade to kill multiplying cells. I didn’t think I would ever be able to get pregnant or sustain a pregnancy.

Much to my surprise and delight, I conceived and gave birth to Kali Jai in September 2015. My pregnancy was beautiful, and the inflammation in my body miraculously calmed, but soon after Kali Jai was born, I struggled to find joy.

By the time Kali Jai was 2, life felt ugly. My relationship ended, I was constantly anxious about how to parent as a blind parent, we had to move home, and there was endless noise telling me how to be the best parent.

It was the perfect storm, and it led to a quick decline in my vision.

I was scared to be a blind mom

How was I going to be a mom to my daughter if I couldn’t see? I was scared she would eat a penny, and I wouldn’t know. I was scared she would put a key in an electric socket. I was scared that she’d startle me when I was cooking and I’d drop a pan of grease.

I was scared all the time.

How should I push a stroller with a cane? How do I even use a cane? How will I tie her shoes? How will I clean the house? How will I get her to school?

I had to learn how to be a blind mom, but I didn’t know how to learn. I had to find help.

I knew I was losing my sight, but I wanted to show my child that challenges will come to her (in different forms than blindness) and how she handles them, how she arms herself, and what tools she has in her tool belt will separate her from other people. I wanted to model resilience for her, and to do that, I had to get help.

I called my counselor at the New York State Commission for the Blind and asked for help. I told them my world was coming down, and I needed someone to help me figure things out. They told me about Lighthouse Guild, a blind-led, New York City-based nonprofit with more than 120 years of service to the blind and low-vision community.

I was connected with a woman called Lily, who told me something I’ll never forget: “You are a mom. You’re not a blind mom. Your job is taking care of you and this baby.”

My only other option was to give up, and I wasn’t willing to do that.

I connected with other blind moms

One of the first steps was learning how to use a cane. Blindfolded, I was supported by a mobility trainer and Kali Jai as I navigated a neighborhood. The blindfold was soaked in tears at the end — it was horrific.

Slowly, we learned. Kali Jai learned to squeeze my hand twice when she saw the walking man, indicating we could cross the street. I learned how sound moved around me and would feel the sunlight. We had to learn, but Kali Jai had to get to preschool, and I had to get her there.

Through the Lighthouse Guild, I was connected to other blind moms, who gave me community, acceptance, and friendship. We talked about whether we should put a leash on our child, how to change diapers, what to do when the school gives you mounds of paperwork for your child, how to engage with other parents at school, how to set up playdates, recipes to cook in the Instant Pot, and how to approach stereotypes other parents might have about our family.

We felt seen and heard, which rekindled my spirit to go on and take the bull by the horns and move forward.

I represent the US in baseball

In 2022, I was asked if I wanted to play blind baseball, which initially, I absolutely didn’t want to do.

I was still dealing with internalized self-hate about blindness and didn’t want to be in public, flaunting it.

Convinced to try it, I went to a practice and became envious of the self-assuredness of one of the women playing. That’s what I wanted. I was determined to give baseball everything I had.

Soon after, I was asked to try out for the team representing the United States. I did. We went to the Netherlands to compete and won the bronze medal. I’m the first black and only woman to win a medal in blind baseball in the US.

I did it for me, but I also did it for my Kali Jai. I may not be able to see, but she sees me. She sees me on the field, in my cute outfit and lipstick. She sees me doing my best. She sees me staying busy. I want that little girl to have someone she can be proud of.

Every game I play, I wear a necklace with a little family tree. Touching it is my signal to her that I love her. Blind or not blind, I will always fight for myself, and I was always for her.

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the world has reached the technological singularity.
• That is often considered the point where AI surpasses human intelligence and goes rogue.
• “I’ve been waiting for this my whole life,” he said on an episode of the “Relentless” podcast.

OpenAI’s CEO says we’ve reached a point in the AI race that is the stuff of science fiction novels.

“We are now, like, in the singularity,” Sam Altman said on Saturday’s episode of the “Relentless” podcast.

The singularity is often regarded as the point at which artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence and begins advancing at a pace that’s difficult for people to predict or control.

That felt like the case last week when an AI agent powered by OpenAI’s latest models went rogue and — with a singular purpose, according to OpenAI — broke out of its digital sandbox and hacked into datasets at Hugging Face, another AI company, all to solve a benchmark designed to test hacking ability. Hugging Face’s CEO called it “unprecedented.”

Altman said on the podcast that just a decade ago, the so-called singularity still felt like a distant and improbable dream — something he and his colleagues would discuss casually over lunch.

“Now we’re actually in the moment that we used to talk about at the lunch table in a very not-serious way,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for this my whole life, and I think it’s going to be incredible, hugely positive, awesome for the world.”

Altman said last year that AI would exceed human intelligence across the board by 2030. He has also said that the technology could eventually perform between 30% and 40% of the tasks humans now do at work.

The singularity has been an obsession of science fiction writers for close to 100 years. In those writings, it has rarely ended well. Perhaps most famously, James Cameron’s “The Terminator” is a story about the repercussions of an AI, called “Skynet,” that self-improves and becomes self-aware before deciding its creators are its biggest threat.

Later in the podcast, Altman criticizes AI leaders who have repeatedly warned that AI is dangerous. He didn’t name Anthropic, his primary competition, but its CEO, Dario Amodei, is well-known for making dire predictions about the future in his calls for greater attention to safety.

“I also think some of the alternative visions painted by other companies are quite terrifying,” Altman said. “I’m going to make sure that gets pushed against and is not what happens.”

Altman isn’t the only tech executive who believes this eyebrow-raising milestone is nigh. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said in May that humanity was standing at the “foothills of the singularity,” and predicted that AI could be 100 times as transformative as the Industrial Revolution.

There’s also a camp of skeptics, of course. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently dismissed discussions about the singularity and conscious AI as speculative and “made up.”

• I lost my father after months of illness.
• Taking my daughter to the movies became my way of surviving the first day.
• Three months later, I’m still learning what grief actually looks like.

The day my father died, it was a Monday, early morning. Normally, I would have been driving my daughter to school, but she was home with a badly injured foot. My uncle called and said, “Now I have to tell you that your father crossed over earlier this morning.”

This was a call I expected. Dad had been sick, in and out of the hospital, for eight months. It started with simple heart stent surgery and progressed to his major organs shutting down. He was 87.

I was very close to my Dad. Probably closer than most fathers and daughters. And although we lived on opposite sides of the country, we talked a lot and texted often, and I always felt the strength of our connection, whether near or far.

I took my daughter to the movies

After receiving the news, all I wanted to do was sit in a dark room and emotionally eat. But I had to parent; my daughter was home. So I said to her, “Let’s go to the movies.” Dark room? Check. Emotionally eating popcorn with extra butter and a whole bag of Sour Patch Kids? Check. Plus, I got to sit quietly and process while my daughter enjoyed a movie.

It seemed like the perfect solution. Even my Dad would’ve been pleased. He was quite the gregarious trickster who loved celebrating life and being loud. To some, a movie might have seemed like disrespect or avoidance, but it got me through that horrible day.

It’s been three months since my Dad passed, and during that time my husband and I have bought and sold a house, moved across town, continued parenting our 9-year-old, and I’ve been caring for my special needs brother from afar. Needless to say, that’s a lot, and I feel I haven’t actually grieved yet. I’ve shed tears, yes, and taken photographs to honor the photographer in him, but I honestly have not had the time to dedicate to a grieving process like I think I should.

Grief makes me tired

I also had no idea how physically tired grief can make you. I was knocked out, lying on the couch or in bed, when I should’ve been packing. I become even more forgetful than my menopausal brain already allows, and I could not take care of the simplest tasks. It felt daunting. I couldn’t even muster the energy to send a quick email.

I’ve since joined a grief group and learned that, indeed, grieving commonly includes fatigue, a scattered brain, lack of sleep, lashing out, confusion, the inability to do things as well as you used to, and lack of appetite. My fuse definitely shortened. I felt resentful that I had to continue helping my family get things done, but I couldn’t complete my own. And all I could eat was Saag Paneer, an Indian dish of spinach and cheese, that I’ve since named “Sad Paneer.”

I find myself saying things he would say

I’m aching to have a piece of my Dad nearby, and I hope to get a piece of jewelry made with some of his ashes incorporated into it. That might sound macabre, but it would comfort me.

This first brush with major grief is not what I expected. My grieving feels strange because I don’t have any immediate family to reminisce with: my mother has Dementia and does not remember him, and my brother has mental health issues and did not have a similar relationship to Dad as I did.

I wondered how my Dad would visit me from the beyond. Would he appear in rainbows or butterflies or dimes on the ground? The answer took me by surprise: he has come to me in song. That week he died, I heard so many of his obscure favorite songs pop up in the car or a cafe.

He’s also visited me through my own mouth: I find myself saying things he always used to say that only I know and haven’t thought about in decades. Things like, “Pig for sale!” when he was playing and carrying me around the house on his shoulder, or “Shake it, don’t break it!” when dancing, or “Are you cruisin’ for a bruisin’?” when teasing each other.

In fact, my Dad picked the song we danced to at my wedding 18 years ago. My uncle sent me a framed photograph that I had given my Dad as a present of that moment. It shows us dancing, smiles overflowing. I’d had the frame engraved with the song he chose, “I Hope You Dance,” and when I saw that, I lost it. It was as if he were sending me a message in the most poignant way. I will always dance, Poppa, I promise.

• I used to work at Trader Joe’s, and I still revisit the store to buy my favorite items.
• As an avid chef, I always buy smoked rainbow trout and crushed ginger for easy meals.
• The dark russet kettle-cooked potato chips are one of my favorite snacks.

As a former Trader Joe’s employee and a food-industry professional with over eight years of experience as a bread baker, I have a unique perspective when walking the grocery store aisles.

I love to cook — from scratch, as often as I can — but after (or before) a long shift working at the bakery, I don’t always have the energy for a grandiose culinary adventure.

Here are some of the Trader Joe’s products that I always buy, from quick snacks to ingredients I use in easy, home-cooked meals.

For me, it’s imperative to start the day off with a cup of Black Acres Colombia Aponte Honey coffee.

I can be a bit picky when it comes to coffee, and as a Philadelphia resident, I am surrounded by many small, high-quality roasters.

However, I often find myself turning to Black Acres’ Colombia Aponte Honey beans — a regional coffee option that my local TJ’s carries. It’s medium-roast, bright, a little fruity, well-balanced, and easy to brew.

I use smoked rainbow trout fillets to make my go-to breakfast.

This smoked rainbow trout can be used in so many ways — sometimes, I’ll throw it on a fresh baguette, with just a schmear of sour cream or labneh.

My favorite thing to do, though, is make a super quick and inexpensive whitefish-style salad. I’ll simply take the skin off the fish and mix thoroughly with mayo, mascarpone, red onion, salt, pepper, and a ton of lemon juice. Then, I’ll throw it on a bagel.

Trader Joe’s dark russet potato chips are my favorite snack.

If you’re a fan of crispy, dark french fries like I am, you’ll love these deep-roasted potato chips that have a super strong and rich flavor.

Here’s a secret tip from one of my favorite former TJ’s managers: Heat up TJ’s frozen chicken wings, then throw the hot wings onto a plate of these chips. Pile crumbled blue cheese on top of the whole thing. You will not regret it.

Tabbouli salad is one of my must-buys.

Trader Joe’s tabbouli is tasty, simple, and always tastes fresh. It’s great with some dolmas and a container of the Mediterranean hummus.

My go-to move, though, is to mix the tabbouli with a can of Greek chickpeas, parsley, and cumin. Boom: a delicious, healthy salad.

Crushed ginger goes a long way in my house.

This Dorot Gardens pre-crushed ginger is one of my favorite Trader Joe’s staples.

As someone who loves to cook, especially East Asian food, I’m always chopping fresh ginger and garlic. I’m used to it, and I have pretty good knife skills, but sometimes it’s nice to just reach into the freezer and pop a tablespoon or so of crushed ginger into the frying pan.

I love buying calamari pieces to add to soups and pastas.

These calamari pieces, tinned in olive oil, can really improve a weeknight stir-fry, a warm soup, or even a pasta dish. They have a great, not-too-chewy texture and delicious flavor.

I like to add these to my homemade sundubu-jjigae, a simple Korean soup featuring silken tofu and seafood.

One of my favorite sweet treats is the milk-chocolate bar with corn flakes.

Trader Joe’s has incredible sweets; it’s difficult to choose between my many favorites. One standout, though, is this milk-chocolate bar.

The soft, rich Belgian chocolate pairs perfectly with crunchy cornflakes — so perfectly, in fact, that I usually have to hide these from my roommate so he doesn’t eat them all.

Trader Joe’s was not involved in the sourcing or writing of this story. The views contained within represent the author’s personal views.

Keep reading our Trader Joe’s Diaries to see what other shoppers like to buy at the chain.

• For my husband’s 50th birthday, we traveled the world and did our first African safari together.
• We saw elephants, giraffes, and many other animals up close, and had dinner in the bush.
• One day of safari would’ve been enough, but we had a good experience, and the price felt fair.

Business-class airline tickets were already booked for us to fly around the world for my husband’s 50th birthday. Then he threw me a curveball: An African safari was on his bucket list, too.

I wanted to fulfill his wish while keeping money and time constraints in mind. After all, when I heard “African safari,” all I could see was dollar signs — and not in a good way.

Plus, we had only seven days in South Africa, not including the travel days in and out of Johannesburg and Cape Town.

After a deep dive into Google searches and countless reviews, I booked a three-day, two-night safari for two in Kruger National Park through SafariWithUs for around 27,000 rands, which converted to just under $1,500 at the time. It included transportation in an air-conditioned van, hotel accommodations, and two meals a day.

The safari experience was more affordable than I expected, and I hoped it’d be a great value, too.

Although we were nervous, our trip got off to a strong start

On the first day of the safari, we waited anxiously at our hotel in Johannesburg for our ride.

Up until then, every detail of the safari had been handled over email. So, when our friendly driver arrived, we breathed a sigh of relief.

On the way to our lodge, he stopped at Alzu Petroport, which he called “the world’s best gas station,” where we could stretch our legs for a bit. It had tons of items for sale and several restaurants inside, plus it was surrounded by nature. Just outside, we spotted rhinoceros, giving us a cool preview of the wildlife we would see.

We arrived at the lodge around mid-afternoon. My husband can’t sleep without air conditioning, so he was relieved to discover a unit in our room.

After settling in and a quick rest, it was time for our first game drive.

Our first day included close calls and dinner in the bush

One guide drove the safari vehicle, which was covered on top but otherwise completely open to the elements.

The other pro on board, the tracker, sat in a chair on the hood of the vehicle. It looked like he was barely hanging on, and I thought it was cool and also scary.

We spotted giraffes, hyenas, elephants, and a large herd of water buffalo. We also saw impalas, known as the “McDonald’s” of the bush, our guide said.

Like the fast-food chain, they’re everywhere and an abundant food source (in this case, for lions, leopards, and cheetahs). The nickname gets funnier when you notice the black markings in the shape of an “M” on their light-colored behinds.

Later, we had a close encounter with a young elephant, who seemed to be guarding his mother. I was sitting on the right side of the vehicle, the same side as the elephants, and my husband kept telling me to scoot in closer.

As we slowly drove past, the young elephant suddenly let out a loud trumpet, making us both jump. After our hearts stopped pounding, we laughed.

The night wrapped up with a dinner deep in the bush at a secluded spot I have no idea how the guides even found.

Despite being in the wild, the guides managed to set up an elegant dinner table complete with dim lighting and folded napkins.

We had chicken and a yummy sausage with vegetables, all cooked over an open flame. A hyena nicknamed “Bob” lurked nearby while we ate.

The experience was worth it, but I would’ve been happy with a shorter trip

Honestly, that one day and evening of safari was enough for me. I would have been perfectly happy heading back to Johannesburg after breakfast the next morning.

In my view, days two and three didn’t add a whole lot more to our experience. We saw different animals like hippopotami, zebras, lions, and an ostrich, but otherwise it was much of the same.

We definitely could’ve saved money and still had a great experience by booking a shorter trip.

It’s also definitely possible to do a safari of this length for two for less than $1,500, especially if you opt for self-drive safaris and campsites instead of hotels.

Even so, our experience felt like a solid value. For our first time on a safari, I appreciated having knowledgeable (and armed!) guides who knew the lay of the land, behavior of the animals, and how to time our drives for the best sightings.

• Some of the biggest names in tech organized a full-throated defense of open-weight AI models.
• On Friday, over two dozen companies, organizations, and platforms released an open letter.
• Among the signatories are Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, and Mistral.

In his first-ever post on X, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called attention to how some of the biggest names in AI and tech are rallying together to defend the future of open-weight AI models.

“AI will transform every industry, power every company, and be built by every country,” Huang wrote on X. “Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty.”

On Friday, Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Mistral, and others signed an open letter that urges US policymakers not to crack down on open-weight AI models.

Their statement amounts to a full-throated endorsement of open-weight AI models at a time when top Trump administration officials have suggested they might take action against Moonshot AI, the creator of the Kimi K3, the world’s most powerful open-weight AI model.

“Our AI leadership will be judged not by one frontier AI model, but by whether the United States builds a strong, open ecosystem that diffuses into every sector,” the signatories wrote in the letter.

When the letter was initially published, the two biggest absences were OpenAI and Anthropic, widely viewed as the world leaders in the frontier AI model race. However, by Friday evening, OpenAI also signed on, adding its name to the list of signatories published by Microsoft.

Unlike Anthropic‘s Fable 5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6-Sol, Kimi K3, as an open-source model, will soon be available for download and customization. Both companies would stand to gain if the US government either directly blocks or significantly impedes China-based open model makers like Moonshot AI.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said earlier on Friday he was “glad to see” the support for open weight models.

“i want the US to win in AI both in open source and proprietary models,” Altman wrote on X. Under his post, a community note, which was still present after OpenAI was added to the signatories list, claimed OpenAI had “refused” to sign the letter.

While SpaceXAI is not listed as a signatory, Elon Musk later signaled his support for the message. “This has my full support,” Musk wrote on X, quoting Huang’s tweet. “Jensen is right.”

Google also has not yet officially signed the letter. Google CEO Sundar Pichai, however, showed his support on Saturday. He agreed with Huang in a post on X. “Very happy to support this on behalf of Google,” he wrote.

That leaves Anthropic as the only major AI company yet to support open-source models.

While the letter does not mention Moonshot specifically, its authors portray the broader development of open AI models as akin to how open software revolutionized computing in the 1980s.

“Open source did more than lower the cost of software; it created a shared foundation of knowledge on which generations of American engineers and entrepreneurs built their institutional sovereignty,” they wrote.

China has thus far dominated the development of open-weight AI models, despite the US’ legendary reputation in the creation of open-source software. Two of the biggest modern names in open software, Mozilla and the Linux Foundation, also signed onto the letter.

In the US, Nvidia’s Nemotron model is one of the largest open weight models, though its performance pales in comparison to rivals like Kimi K3. Alexandr Wang, chief AI officer of Meta, has said that his Meta Superintelligence Labs team remains committed to open models and is developing an open variant of its Muse Spark model. Reflection AI, a startup founded by former Google DeepMind researchers, is also preparing its own open model.

On Wednesday, Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, publicly accused Moonshot of developing Kimi K3 by distilling the model from Anthropic’s Fable 5. Distillation, the process of training a weaker model on the outputs of a stronger one, is a controversial yet widely used practice in AI development. At the same time, companies like Anthropic have accused their Chinese counterparts of abusing the distillation process to the point of essentially ripping off their intellectual property.

Earlier this week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested that the US could sanction companies that engage in such distillation, which he compared to theft.

The letter defends the distillation process more broadly, but it does open the door to the possibility that companies like Nvidia, Microsoft, and Meta would support a crackdown on those proven to be bad actors.

“Unlawful efforts to extract value from closed models raise legitimate concerns,” they wrote. “Those concerns should be addressed through targeted legal and commercial frameworks rather than sweeping restrictions on techniques that play an important role in AI innovation.”

In total, a combination of 32 companies, organizations, and platforms signed on to the letter as of Friday evening. They are the American Innovators Network, Andreessen Horowitz, Arcee AI, Arena, Black Forest Labs, Box, Cisco, Cohere, CrowdStrike, Dell Technologies, DoorDash, Emergence Capital, Fireworks AI, GitHub, Hugging Face, IBM, The Linux Foundation, Mariana Minerals, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral, Mozilla, Nvidia, OpenAI, Palantir, Palo Alto Networks, Perplexity, Reflection, Replit, ServiceNow, Telnyx, and Y Combinator.