Author: admin

• I got rare access inside Intel’s factory, where it makes some of the world’s most advanced chips.
• The plant is so tightly controlled that paper, white light, and even footsteps can become problems.
• The trip made me realize that making the chips powering everyday life means protecting them from us.

I knew visiting Intel’s chip factory would be different when they told me I couldn’t wear my regular deodorant.

Or lotion. Or hairspray. Or makeup.

Before I’d even boarded the plane to Oregon, Intel sent my videographer and me a long list of things we couldn’t wear or bring into its factory in Hillsboro. No Velcro. No Bluetooth. No phones unless they were on airplane mode. The list kept going.

That was my first clue I was about to step into a place governed by a very different set of rules.

In March, after months of planning with Intel, I got rare access to one of its chip factories — the kind of place the tech industry calls a fabrication plant, or fab. Inside, Intel makes some of the most advanced semiconductors in the world.

Chips run almost every part of modern life: laptops, phones, chatbots, washing machines, fighter jets, and the data centers behind AI.

Demand for these chips is skyrocketing, with annual semiconductor sales expected to reach $1 trillion by 2027. I went behind the scenes to see the complicated and delicate manufacturing process that’s so controlled, it permanently changed how I think about what it means to be clean.

What it takes to get inside Intel’s fab

I arrived on a rainy Oregon morning in my best walking shoes, per Intel’s instructions. We’d be covering a lot of ground, and they weren’t kidding. The fab in front of us was enormous — bigger than an aircraft carrier.

We walked about 10 minutes to the gear-cleaning room. Just beyond it sat a room full of what I estimated to be billions of dollars in Intel chips.

“Each little tiny speck can cause a defect, which would destroy the chip,” Chris Auth, Intel’s vice president of manufacturing development and our guide for the day, told me.

We scrubbed down every piece of camera equipment with sterilizing wipes. Not just the obvious surfaces. We extended the tripod legs, wiped them down one by one, collapsed them, and wiped them down again, hunting for any nook that might be hiding dust.

Then came the gowning room, a chamber so big it could have swallowed my New York studio apartment many times over. It was packed wall-to-wall with bunny suits, each worth about $1,000, according to Intel.

I got to wear one for the day. But first, I had to figure out how to put it on.

“So you kinda wanna scrunch up your suit so that the sleeves don’t touch the ground here,” Auth said, once he’d slipped on his hood.

Every piece had to connect in the right order. The onesie snapped onto the hood. The boots attached to the suit. My first pair of gloves got tucked under the sleeves. A second pair went on top to trap the skin particles my hands were shedding.

I’ve visited factories before that worried about visible contaminants — a bracelet falling off, an earring coming loose. Intel worried about invisible ones. The kind your body releases constantly without asking permission.

That also explained why my notebook had to stay outside. Regular paper sheds microscopic particles, and here, even that can be enough to ruin a chip. Intel handed me a special cleanroom notebook that doesn’t shed.

Then I stepped onto the fab floor.

Intel’s most precious room

In a place this tightly controlled, I was oddly thrilled by what looked like hot-pink equipment everywhere. But it wasn’t actually pink.

The gigantic room glowed under yellow light to protect the chips. Any other wavelength could damage a chip while it’s being made.

“Under yellow light, everything that looks pink to your eyes is actually red,” Tyler Osborn, Intel’s director of advanced packaging technology development, later told me, gently bringing me back to reality.

Nothing about the fab felt quite real, though.

There were more robots than people. The few people who were there all looked the same in hooded suits. Employees told me they often recognize one another by how they move.

“You get to know people’s gait,” Osborn said, his voice muffled by the layers covering everything but his eyes.

Robots zipped by on overhead tracks, carrying sealed boxes of wafers — the thin slices of silicon that chips are built on — around the factory, keeping them out of human hands.

People, I learned, are too inefficient for this work. Robots need to move thousands of wafers a day. Not to mention, humans can be clumsy.

I couldn’t stop wondering what would happen if someone in a rush tripped and sent a box of wafers flying.

“Mistakes are very, very costly,” Auth said. “You’re somewhere in the $50,000 to $500,000 range just for one wafer.”

Each robot carries 25 wafers at a time.

“So now you’re into the millions for just one box,” he said.

Even my footsteps felt like a risk

The chips are about the size of a fingernail. But Intel isn’t just controlling that tiny patch of space. It is trying to steady an entire factory around something microscopic.

“We’re building the world’s smallest features in some of the world’s biggest factories,” Auth said.

The fab is built in layers, with a foundation designed to absorb outside shocks — earthquakes, nearby machinery, even low-frequency vibrations from air-conditioning units in neighboring buildings.

“It comes down to microvibrations,” Bob McMillan, Intel’s life safety and systems manager, told me.

That was the moment I became unusually aware of my own footsteps. I felt like a giant moving through a world built for things far smaller and more delicate than me.

Everything in the fab was choreographed to protect the chip, which made me wonder what would happen if all that control failed in the smallest possible way.

So I asked what would happen if a beard hair got into one of these machines.

“You’re done,” McMillan said.

“A hair is huge,” Auth later explained.

A single human hair can be a million atoms thick. Some of the structures Intel is building are just a few atoms wide.

The entire factory works like a machine

It was hard to hear anyone over the constant hum of gigantic tools.

Then I realized the building wasn’t just full of machines. It was one.

Even the floor was working.

It stretched beneath us like a giant metal sieve, perforated with holes as far as I could see. They were there to pull particles away from the wafers — catching anything rogue that escaped our suits in less than 60 seconds.

“We change all the air in this factory about that quickly,” McMillan told me.

They filter the air over and over because, at any given moment, there can’t be more than eight particles bigger than a micron floating in every cubic meter of air. The room you’re sitting in right now probably has millions.

To me, that was hard to fathom.

I was standing inside one of the cleanest places on Earth, which was reassuring and also vaguely unsettling. Regular life suddenly seemed impossibly filthy.

Why making chips is so hard

A single chip takes about three months to make, and almost nothing can go wrong. In that time, it moves through roughly 2,000 steps, and thousands of machines spread across the factory.

“There’s 12 football fields of clean room space here,” Auth said.

He later told me it costs about $20 billion to build a fab like this. By comparison, One World Trade Center cost about $3.9 billion to build.

Despite the price tag, the US government has made building chips in America a top priority.

About 90% of the world’s most advanced chips are made in Taiwan, which Washington sees as a major geopolitical risk as China threatens to take the island by force.

That’s why, no matter how hard these chips are to build, the White House says the US needs more factories like this one. Right now, Intel is the only American company designing and manufacturing advanced logic chips on US soil.

I left thinking about how fragile modern life is

When we got back to the gowning room and took off our hoods, I realized I’d almost forgotten what everyone we’d spent the day with actually looked like.

Then I got my phone back, stepped back into normal life, and had a thought I still can’t shake: we live in a world that runs on chips.

To make them, however, we have to create an entire environment designed to protect them from us.

• Cara Katz is a 36-year-old working mom to a toddler.
• She has been using AI at work for at least six years.
• She said people shouldn’t judge moms who use AI — they aren’t the ones to blame for the ethical concerns around it.

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

A little over a year ago, AI became more prevalent in my mom communities than it had been in years prior.

I had been familiar with and using AI for about six years at work, where there was a lot of skepticism about its use — and back then, it wasn’t something we used at home. Fast-forward to about 18 months ago, and parents started using it to increase efficiency, saving time and maximizing output in their personal lives.

At first, it was mainly parents in tech and marketing, but now it’s being used by parents with no tech experience. We didn’t feel any shame about it at first, but things have changed thanks to the explosion of public opinion about using AI.

Since I’ve started using it at home, I’ve saved myself at least 10 hours a week. I’m tired of being judged for it.

I use it to plan our week

Scheduling is my favorite way to use AI at home because it saves me the most time, though it can be slightly complicated.

I used to spend most Sundays planning our week as a family of three. I work from home, and my husband works from home two days a week. My daughter goes to transition school, which is two hours of school two days a week. We don’t have any organized childcare, but she does have enrichment activities like music and gym.

My husband and I take turns caring for our daughter, but if both of us are busy, I plan for a babysitter to have her in the house or to take her out.

It makes for a really busy schedule to arrange and remember.

I started using Claude Code, which sounds scary, but it’s just a chatbot for code writing. It can be used exactly the same way as Claude.

It walked me through how to organize our Google calendars — our daughter’s calendar and our separate work calendars. Claude reads them all, and I prompted Claude to create this beautiful, color-coded HTML calendar.

I also fed it my daughter’s periphery schedules — like library events for the month — and trained it on her preferences. Every week, it sources events that she would be interested in, and puts them into the calendar.

It sends our babysitters’ recommended times, based on their previous work-time preferences, and asks them to agree to the date and time provided to have our daughter.

We then publish the schedule on Netlify, press “deploy,” and it creates a password-protected website that caregivers can view. If there is any chance, I enter that change, and it automatically updates and emails everyone a link leading us back to the website.

These days, I spend five minutes here and there on scheduling.

It also plans my shopping list

AI does all of my grocery planning. It runs a full inventory of my pantry to know what we already have, knows all of our preferences, knows my daughter and husband are celiac, and even knows my husband’s blood results. It uses all of this information to design a shopping list and meal plan.

I connect Claude to DoorDash and Uber Eats to get our groceries delivered. You can set it up so that this happens automatically, but I like to have a look at the list before I pay.

I followed my daughter’s developmental milestones with AI

I think moms get freaked out by developmental milestones — we know milestones exist, but aren’t taught that there is a range within these milestones.

When my daughter was a baby, I built a Claude project that researched which milestones she should be hitting. I asked for an updated list of activities we could do each week to help her achieve her developmental milestones. We printed it out and ticked off the activities.

When we went to the pediatrician for a check-up, we knew where she was developmentally before we even walked through the door. We could then have empowered conversations with the doctor.

I get more time with my kid

I love going back to my mom communities after being pelted with strong opinions from people who say that hate AI. We are buying back time with our kids using AI. My mental workload has lightened.

It’s hard for me to take people who are angry about AI seriously. It is easy to be theoretically morally angry.

It is quite different to sit across from a single mom, stay-at-home mom, or a working mom who struggles to pay bills, or spend time with their family, and tell her not to use AI because it probably uses less water than big organizations do.

• I gave my daughter a “Yes Day” for her 7th birthday.
• The experience showed me how much kids value being trusted.
• Saying yes helped my daughter build confidence and independence.

Parenting young kids often feels like saying no on repeat.

No, not today. No, that’s enough. No, maybe later.

So for my daughter’s 7th birthday, I decided to try something different. I decided to give her a “Yes day” and say yes to whatever request and desire she had, within resonable boundaries.

I first heard about it years ago, before I became a mom. A good friend told me about an annual tradition in their home called “Kids in charge day,” where her children picked the meals, the outings, and the flow of the day.

At the time, I had questions. What if they ask for something unrealistic? What if it gets out of hand?

She told me something I didn’t fully appreciate then, but that has stayed with me ever since: kids aren’t as impressed with extravagance. What they want is attention, time, and a sense that their voice matters.

We introduced the idea when our daughter was 4, and it quickly became one of her favorite traditions. So this year, we made it her birthday gift, something she already loved, arriving right on time.

I set boundaries, but kept them simple

“Yes” doesn’t mean anything goes. For us, it meant choices that were safe, local, and doable within the day. My daughter didn’t need endles options. She needed the opportuity to make her own choices.

I let her lead, even when it was uncomforable

Her first request was breakfast: a cream cheese bagel. Easy.

Then came her outfit: red heart socks, faded floral print pants, and an old pink shirt. Something I would’ve picked out for play or painting, not a birthday outing.

I almost redirected her, but stopped short. “Is that what you want to wear?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, beaming. Confidence is built in moments when kids get to trust their own thinking without being corrected.

The small things seemed to matter most

We headed to National Harbor, just outside of D.C., where she planned to build a bear using gift cards she’d been saving.

When we pulled up, I asked if I could grab a coffee before we got started. “Yes!” she shouted, delighted. That moment surprised me. She wasn’t just receiving the yes. She was learning how to give it.

We wandered into a Black-owned bookstore, hand in hand. She picked out a chapter book. Then, just as excitedly, she grabbed a “Gracie’s Corner” book, a series she used to love as a toddler and one I was almost certain she’d outgrown.

I almost said no again. Then I remembered the assignment. “Yes. And yes.”

I enjoyed watching what she did with the freedom

At Build-A-Bear, she made thoughtful choices. She picked the birthday bear that cost as much as her age so she could spend more on accessories, instead of choosing a more expensive plush that would eat into her budget. I’m not surprised though, my girl loves to save a coin.

By midday, it was “yes, yes, yes.” A candy shop stop. A few treats. There was an ice cream counter inside, and after trying a few flavors, she decided on her own to wait until after lunch.

No prompting. No correction. Just her own good judgment. She felt trusted in the moment and rose to the occasion.

I needed to stretch my comfort too

Later, she asked to ride the Capital Wheel. She was ready. I was not.

Her dad had joined us by then, and they walked hand in hand toward the oversized Ferris wheel while I followed a few steps behind, snapping photos. At the ticket booth, my husband asked for three tickets.

“Wait, Mom, you’re doing this?!” she asked. I took a breath. “Yes.” She squealed.

Sometimes a “Yes Day” isn’t just about your child. It’s about saying yes to yourself, too. To your own confidence and courage. I know my fear of heights is irrational, but in that moment it felt very real. I was, and still am, proud of myself for pushing through.

She reminded me I deserve yeses too

At the nail salon I typically visit solo, she was treated like royalty. Apple juice in a bejeweled glass. Chocolates at checkout. A cascade of bubbles as we left. We stopped next door at a craft store and picked up stickers and bookmarks.

And then, near the end of the day, she surprised me. She asked if we could go to the makeup store to get something for me. I reminded her it was her day, not mine.

“Yes, but I want to share it with you, Mama.”

That night, we ordered cheeseburgers and fries and sat around the table, her legs swinging as she recapped her favorite parts of the day. Proud. Confident. Already just a little bit bigger.

In that moment, my friend’s words came back to me. A “Yes Day” isn’t about indulgence. It’s about intention. It gives your child space to make decisions, feel heard, and trust their voice.

The goal isn’t just to say yes for a day. It’s to raise kids who know how to use their voice for a lifetime.

• Motherhood changed my perspective on the World Cup.
• The six-week tournament on the global stage creates a tangible connection to heritage.
• It makes memories and deepens relationships between families and across oceans.

It all started with a onesie, as so many parenthood journeys do.

The Ipswich Town Tractor Boys gear traveled across the Atlantic before I snuck it onto my then-infant son, just before my husband arrived home. Adorable photos of the drool-covered shirt followed, sent back across the pond to Ipswich, England, the epicenter of my father-in-law’s family.

It was a reason to connect — one that wouldn’t have happened without our family’s shared love of country and capturing moments that remind us of one another.

The onesie spurred a different reaction when my Belgian grandmother and father saw their pride and joy, the one and only baby wearing the colors of an English football club. “The English?! He should be wearing Red Devil red!” exclaimed my grandmother, with a delivery that bordered on genuine betrayal.

Becoming a parent made me see these interactions between family members as long-lasting connections and pivotal memories, not just silly quips at a sporting event.

Motherhood changed my perspective

By the time of the Women’s World Cup later that summer, a lighthearted rivalry had formed (Belgium didn’t even qualify that year, but that didn’t simmer my family’s bubbling pride). My 4’5″, 80-pound grandmother had outsize opinions about every decision on the pitch.

Cheering my grandfather on at years of weekend games, she wielded words capable of besting anyone’s strongest kick. Other countless memories help fill the multi-year gaps between tournaments, like my grandmother and father-in-law’s sheepish chuckles and simultaneous “santé!” and “cheers!” as glasses chinked. Or the audible disbelief at a call that was simply unjust to everyone on the pitch. And, all the proud comments about my son’s various traits as evidence of his Belgian or English heritage.

In stark contrast, I can’t tell you a thing about prior World Cups. I likely passively watched, enjoying the game, but not for the reasons that matter now.

Multigenerational moments are fleeting

I became a mom, and suddenly the moments on screen were truly part of the background; I was watching the moments in the room.

Motherhood has made me keenly aware of these fleeting multi-generation interactions and how readily they slip away without intention. My dear grandmother died in 2024. I will miss her elegant outrage at the ref’s calls and the players’ decisions. I know my Dad will represent Belgium in this year’s World Cup, complete with a click of the tongue and an exasperated sigh, unwittingly echoing my grandmother’s to a tee.

Add in shared culture, country-themed snacks, and friendly competition, and you have cherished memories in the making. I daydream about my rambunctious toddler dashing into the yard to greet his grandfathers, surprising them in his Belgium, England, or even US kit. Jeers will be hurled based on his selection, but so will love and enthusiasm.

The World Cup is a time to connect with our heritage

For my children, this summer is a rare at-home immersion into the cultures that define their grandfathers and of which their great-grandmother was deeply proud.

I imagine US parents living abroad may experience similar feelings on Super Bowl Sunday or during March Madness, but it can’t compete with the World Cup. More than 100 games spread over six-ish weeks extends the tradition, winning it the title of my favorite sporting event — an admittedly unexpected statement for an American (who grew up watching the Super Bowl).

This World Cup will ground my children in family legacy, strengthen connections in the present, and create memories and shared interests for the future.

Unlike a book or photos, the stadium’s palpable energy, chants and songs, and the homemade family recipes at watch parties make culture easy to grasp — no matter how small the tiny hands. My son will experience why one side of the family wears black, yellow, and red, and the other red and blue, knowing he can feel at home in each.

This will be the first time my son sees Belgium and England play in the World Cup, heightening the rivalry and making the experience more tangible.

The further Belgium, England, the US, (or any other team for which we have a smidgen of affinity) make it, the longer the family connections and memory-making magic — that’s what I’m in it for.

• Christina Nicolson is the mother of 11-year-old Landon Nicholson. They live in Wellington, Florida.
• Landon approached her about starting a vending machine business over a year ago.
• Christina, a business owner herself, shares what it’s been like so far.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Christina Nicholson, the mother of Landon Nicholson. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My son, Landon, and I own a vending machine together. We started when he was 10, over a year ago. Landon got the idea for his vending machine business at one of his sister’s basketball games. He was helping at the concession stand during a Wellington Wolves tournament and started noticing just how many people wanted snacks and drinks.

That was the moment the lightbulb went off. First, he wanted to have a candy store, and I said, “Let’s start smaller.”

I’m a business owner, so I was game to do it

Landon has always wanted to make his own money. Maybe it’s because he’s seen me do it; I started my own media company right after he was born. He’s always seen me be my own boss and seen the flexibility that comes with that. To start, we got a book and watched some YouTube videos to learn about it.

First, we had to find a spot for it. He was taking acting lessons at our community center during the summer, and he went to the front desk and asked if they had a vending machine. They said that they used to, but didn’t anymore. He said, “Do you want one? That’s my business.”

They gave him the contact person, and we set up a meeting with the village of Wellington. We put together a proposal that included what we’d put in there and how much we would sell it for, and they okayed it. They had a contract. The agreement was that 26% of the commission would go to them, and Landon and I would split the profits 50/50.

In September of 2024, we bought a vending machine for $1,500 and had it shipped for $843. We also purchased a credit card reader for $385, bought $265 worth of items from Costco, and put $17 in change in the machine to start.

We’re still in the hole, but have learned some important lessons

The community center is not very busy. We’re not splitting profits yet, but I still think it’s been worthwhile.

A big lesson for him was that just because you make money, it doesn’t mean it’s your money. For example, the first time we went to the vending machine to get money, he was so excited to have all the dollar bills. But I told him that we had to pay the machine off, that 26% goes to the village of Wellington for letting us put our machine in there, and so on. He quickly learned the difference between revenue and profit.

He was also very excited at the beginning of this to go and check on it once a week. He liked to see what needed filling up, what people were liking, and so on. Now, he’s not as excited to go. He still enjoys doing it, but that initial excitement has worn off.

I’m being patient with him

Sometimes, you just have to be patient. We’re almost there. I encourage him to review the numbers every month; I’ll print out the P&L for him to see. He’s very impatient, but I remind him that to make a business work, you have to work.

He’s learning different business models, how much time they take, and how busy you are going to be. This has been good because of his age; he goes to the community center and checks on it once a week for 15 minutes. He also likes to see what’s working. He still asks me every once in a while if he’s making money yet.

I wasn’t expecting his confidence. It really impressed me. He walked right up to the community center’s front desk, asked if they wanted a vending machine, and came home with a business card. I love that he’s not afraid. I think this experience will help him with the confidence to start more businesses.

• I traveled to the UK, the Netherlands, and France during my recent European vacation.
• I planned a packed itinerary, and was pleasantly surprised that I fit so much into eight days.
• That said, I wish I’d booked our hotels sooner and done research into customs and security.

Ever since my first trip to France at 18, I’ve been enamored with Europe.

Don’t get me wrong, I love exploring the US, but there’s something about leaving the country that helps me dive into vacation mode quickly, since I’m an ocean away from life’s daily stressors.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, I started feeling a familiar itch to travel abroad, so we visited France together two years ago. The following year, we upped the ante and headed to two countries: France and Italy.

When it came time to plan our annual vacation this year, I proposed our most ambitious one yet — three European countries in eight days with a travel day tacked onto both ends — then mapped out a whirlwind itinerary that included two full days in London and two and a half days in both Amsterdam and Paris.

It was an adventure of a lifetime, and we packed so much into a short period of time. Still, I made a few mistakes and learned several important lessons along the way.

I didn’t do enough research on security and customs protocol

When we traveled from London to Amsterdam on the Eurostar train, it took an hour to get through airport-level security and customs. Since I anticipated a similar experience traveling from Amsterdam to Paris, we arrived at the train station extra early, but there was no security checkpoint.

This minor mistake only cost us an hour of wasted time, but I regretted it. I could’ve hopped on an earlier train to Paris had I known that traveling from one EU country to another is a lot easier than entering the European Union from the United Kingdom.

With a tight itinerary, minutes and hours matter, so I learned to pay more attention to security requirements during the planning stage.

I waited too long to book one of my hotels

When looking into Amsterdam hotels, I found one in the city center, right near the main train station. I usually book things well in advance, but this time, I took a gamble and waited to see if the prices would drop.

By the time I went to book my preferred hotel, no rooms were available for my travel dates. As it turns out, there were a few big events in town that week, so rooms filled up quickly.

I’ve had luck finding last-minute deals on Booking.com before, so I took a look and booked another hotel that was a quick train ride away from the city center. Everything worked out, but the experience taught me to always research whether there are major events going on in a city when you’re traveling.

After all, you can always book the hotel when you see it, then cancel the reservation and rebook it if prices drop.

I learned you can’t see everything in one trip, and you don’t have to

When you only have a few days in a city, you’re forced to home in on the must-see items on your bucket list rather than seeing every major tourist attraction. For instance, my husband and I aren’t into art, so we usually skip art museums and seek out cool architecture, beautiful gardens, and meaningful experiences.

When we first started charting our own course on vacation rather than letting the fear of missing out guide us, we worried that we might regret seeing some of the major sights. But we quickly realized that it’s freeing to pick and choose the activities that matter most to you.

In Amsterdam, we could’ve seen the Anne Frank House since it’s a popular tourist spot. Instead, we spent an afternoon at the Heineken Experience in honor of my late father, who adored Heineken.

I don’t drink beer, but it was still incredibly rewarding to enjoy an experience that he never got to have himself.

Walking is often the best way to see a city — but don’t be a hero

Whenever I travel, I prefer to see new cities on foot rather than spending time (and money) on public transportation.

Since we only had two days in London, my husband and I took the scenic route to Kensington Palace and walked an hour from our hotel.

On a nice day, it would’ve been a lovely walk through a gorgeous park, but London’s weather is unpredictable. It ended up being rainier and windier than we’d expected, making the stroll pretty miserable.

Sure, we could’ve popped into the nearest train station, but the intermittent rain lulled us into a false sense of security. Next time, I’ll hop on a train instead, even if it means missing out on seeing a pretty park.