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While back-to-school shopping is certainly an end of summer expense that many families dread, this year is shaping up to be even more financially straining. Binders, backpacks, calculators, and even laptops (which about 94% of high school students use), definitely don’t come cheap. This year, the stress over having to purchase the items seems to be mounting higher than ever. According to a newly released Intuit Credit Karma report, which surveyed 1,022 parents with at least one school-aged child, more than a third (39%) said they can no longer afford the back-to-school shopping trip. Likewise, 44% say they’ll have to take on debt to pay for the school supplies for the 2025/2026 school year. That figure has jumped by 10% (from 34%) in just one calendar year. The data around back-to-school shopping gets even more concerning, too. According to the report, more than half of parents (54%) say they will need to sacrifice on essentials like groceries in order to get their children the necessary school supplies. And a large portion of parents45%say they can no longer afford after-school programs, sports, or other extracurriculars. 32% even said they’re considering leaving their jobs or trimming their working hours to care for their kids after school pickup. Courtney Alev, consumer financial advocate at Credit Karma, spoke to the financial strain families are feeling this year in a press release. Back-to-school shopping can place a significant financial burden on families, often leaving them with little choice but to stretch their budgets, Alev said. In particular, parents seem to be worried about how expensive items have gotten. 60% said that skyhigh prices on items is the reason they will struggle with shopping lists this year, with 38% revealing they expect to spend between $501 to $1,500. According to a new Deloitte report, they aren’t far off. While prices on items have gone slightly down since last year, back-to-school spending for K12 students is massively expensive, costing parents $570 per child on average, or around $30.8 billion total. Adding to parents’ expenses are their kids’ own list of “must-haves,” or, nonessential items they see on social media and sometimes feel (because it appears online like everyone has them) are necessary commodities. JellyCats and Labubu Dolls are particularly huge this year. And 51% of parents say their kids are begging for trending items. More than half (54%) say they do feel pressured to get their kids the items their IRL friends or social media friends have, too. Alev urges parents to trim what they can, staying away from buying the nonessential trending items, saying, “consider using it as an opportunity to have a thoughtful, age-appropriate conversation with your kids about money, teaching them the importance of budgeting and prioritizing needs over wants.
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E-Commerce
Kindness, maybe thats the real punk rock, says James Gunns Superman, which hit theaters this past weekend. Its a message that seems to have resonated deeply with Gen Z. One X user said: I havent felt depressed even once since watching it. The film brought in $125 million at the U.S. box office and is earning praise across TikTok and Reddit for returning the superhero to his hopecore roots, The Daily Dot reported. Hopecorea trend that emerged on TikTokserves as an antidote to an internet overwhelmed by ragebait, manosphere content, and AI slop. At a time when nihilism dominates, incel culture and toxic masculinity are on the rise, anti-immigrant sentiment is shaping policy, and political divides are deepening, be kind feels like a radical, even revolutionary messageone Gen Z seems ready to embrace. The superman movie I just watched really said no one is an alien, everyone is a human, billionaires are evil, war is created, journalism is important, superheroes are hope, empathy is a superpower, and being soft hearted is punk rock, one TikTok user posted. @ericadanlle #superman made me cry #dc Punkrocker (feat. Iggy Pop) – Teddybears The masculine urge to help others in need, another TikTok post reads. This movie is going to do for the boys what Barbie did for the girls and I support it, one user commented. On Reddit, one post summed it up best: We finally made it out of the But WHAT IF Superman was a big asshole/ ackshually superheroes would be dicks IRL zeitgeist that swept the late 2010s of comic book media. They continued: We have genuine hope and wholesome superman again and its refreshing. In a world where we are increasingly socialised and incentivised to act purely out of self interest, Superman 2025 dares to tackle the rebellious act of being kind. As one X user added: Ill take Hopecore Superman over a dozen dark, edgy or evil Superman any day. Ill take Hopecore Superman over a dozen dark, edgy or evil Superman any day. https://t.co/b9EiKD3HnN— BBally (@BBally81) July 15, 2025 This is exactly the response Gunn was hoping for. This Superman does seem to come at a particular time when people are feeling a loss of hope in other peoples goodness, Gunn said in an interview with The Times of London. “Im telling a story about a guy who is uniquely good, and that feels needed now because there is a meanness that has emerged due to cultural figures being mean online.” Or, as one X user posted: I asked grok I asked chatgpt well I asked Superman and he said kindness is the new punk rock.
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E-Commerce
When Mark Zuckerberg announced on July 14 that his company Meta was embarking on a project to build massively power-hungry data centers to support its ambitions for advancing artificial intelligence, the imagery that accompanied his posts on Facebook and Threads was stark. The data centers he was announcing would have power requirements upwards of five gigawatts and, to show just how big that would be, Zuckerberg’s post included a visual of a gigantic rectilinear block covering a sizable portion of Manhattan. It was as if the city were suddenly snuffed out by millions of square feet of artificial intelligence infrastructure. A detail that was not included in Zuckerberg’s initial announcement was the curious way these massive data centers are currently being built. In an interview with the Information, Zuckerberg briefly explained that part of the way Meta is building out its multi-gigawatt data centers is by using quickly constructed hurricane-proof tents. “We have a very strong infrastructure team that is doing novel work to build up data centers,” Zuckerberg said. “I wanted them to not just take four years to build these concrete buildings, so we pioneered this new method where we’re basically building these weatherproof tents and building up the networks and the GPU clusters inside them in order to build them faster.” A Meta spokesperson confirmed to Fast Company that tents are currently being set up as part of at least one of the multi-gigawatt data centers the company is building, located in New Albany, Ohio. Dubbed “rapid deployment structures,” the tents are long rectangular buildings made of puncture- and water-proof fabric supported by an aluminum substructure with a mushroom-esque pitched roof. The Ohio data center, which Meta has named Prometheus, is an already existing complex that is having additional computing capacity added through these server tents. Meta expects the facility to be big enough to draw more than one gigawatt of power by 2026. It is one of the worlds largest AI training clusters, according to the AI and semiconductor research company SemiAnalysis. The rapidly built tent structures there are part of the way Meta aims to meet its gigawatt goal next year. Tents may be part of another multi-gigawatt data center Meta is building in Richland Parish, Louisiana. Named Hyperion, it’s anticipated to pull two gigawatts of power by 2030, with the potential to grow to five gigawatts. Meta’s spokesperson says construction has been underway in Louisiana for months. The data center being built there will encompass 11 buildings adding up to more than four million square feet. The site covers roughly three square miles, so there’s plenty of space to expand. But even at capacity, it’s far less than the 22 square miles of land that makes up Manhattan. How much of this space will be initially made up of tents remains to be seen. But as the arms race and talent competition heat up between AI-focused companies like Meta, OpenAI, Alphabet, and Microsoft, the size of these tents may be less important than how quickly they can be constructed. “I’m very excited about building them in an innovative way,” Zuckerberg said.
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E-Commerce
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