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The extreme tariffs that President Donald Trump has applied to nations across the world have had a whipsaw effect on global trade, with markets nosediving and countries scrambling to strategize a response. Supply chains in particular have been upended: Clothes-makers fear fluctuations across the entire production system, the cost of furniture and other home goods is likely to soon spike, and companies like Apple, which manufacture much of their high-tech products in China, have been caught in a trade-war nightmare. The same strains and stresses will impact the car industry. In addition to levies placed on foreign carmakers like BMW and Toyota, even American-made cars tend to rely on a complex web of parts and labor from both Mexico and China. Currently, about 6 out of every 10 auto replacement parts used in the U.S. are imported from Mexico, Canada, and China, according to the American Property Casualty Insurance Association (APCIA). And the sharp rise in costs wont just impact those looking to buy a new ride. Higher replacement costs mean insurers will likely foot a much bigger bill to resolve claims and fix damaged automobiles. That means higher costs trickling down to consumers, and increases in insurance rates that may be some of the highest in recent history. Robert Passmore, department vice president at the APCIA, estimates the industry might see anywhere between $30 and $60 billion more in personal auto insurance claim costs in 2025 alone. Individual annual car insurance costs will vary, but the average American, who pays roughly $2,000 a year, will see an increase. Insurify, an insurance shopping marketplace, predicts insurance costs will spike 19% this year after the impacts of Trump’s “Liberation Day” cycle through supply chains. Without the tariff increase, insurance rates would have only gone up 5%. Thats a huge increase in cost due to tariffs, specifically the levies on automobiles and auto parts introduced in late March. In addition, the Canada and Mexico-specific tariffs that impact many automaker supply chains, and the steel and aluminum tariffs, also made replacing busted cars more expensive. That adds up to about $350 extra per household per year. Insurance companies need a few months of data to get exact costs, and it takes a while for new premium costs to cycle in across the population, but by the end of the year, unless Trump backs off the tariffs, higher prices should be widespread. Matt Brannon, a data journalist at Insurify, said hes seen reports that insurance companies are already prepping agents to explain to their customers that these are tariff-driven increases in their insurance costs. Roughly 95% of Americans drive at least occasionally, per the AAA. Due to our car-centric transportation network, the vast majority dont have the option to get around without a car and the compulsory insurance. The cost of covering your car has whipsawed in recent years, dropping dramatically during the pandemic, due to less travel and few drives to work, and therefore fewer accidents to cover. It spiked once driversaccustomed to empty streets and faster speedsgot back on the road and accident rates increased. It jumped by 11% and 16% in 2023 and 2024, respectively, according to data from ValuePenguin, and was forecast to stabilize and slow down this year, until tariffs significantly increased the cost of anything related to a car. Any time your insurance rates go up, it eats into your household budget, said Rob Bhatt, insurance analyst for ValuePenguin. You have to have car insurance to drive legally, and so, you know, this isn’t really discretionary spending we’re talking about. Its more bad news for consumers. Insurance companies feel compelled to raise premiums to cover the more costly claims they need to pay; it doesnt help that, as cars have become more high-tech with bumper cameras and computer systems, theyve also become more expensive to fix. Analysts say that the insurance industry is attempting to lobby local, state, and federal governments to pass more stringent speed limits and safety laws to help reduce accidents and their exposure, but its not making much headway. Some Americans may attempt to lower their monthly insurance burden by increasing the deductible amount on their insurance, but that risks much more financial damage in the wake of an accident. At this point, short of Trump reversing the tariffs, the only hope for lower insurance rates seems to be if Americans miraculously and simultaneously become better drivers.
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E-Commerce
A dispute between a pair of pro athletes who both use the number 8 has been resolved, thanks to a change in font. Former NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Friday his NASCAR team, JR Motorsports, had secured the rights to a stylized 8 mark through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The announcement came after attorneys for quarterback Lamar Jackson, who wears the No. 8 jersey for the Baltimore Ravens, filed a notice of opposition with the USPTO over JR Motorsports’s trademark claim to the mark, arguing it falsely suggests a connection with Jackson. pic.twitter.com/uZWk8kPlcW— Dale Earnhardt Jr. (@DaleJr) April 4, 2025 Earnhardt and his team have raced before as No. 8; and in 2019, when the team got the No. 8 car, he said the number was very special to me and to JR nation. Theres a lot of history with the No. 8 in my family and in NASCAR. Its time to write some new stories and continue to add to the numbers rich heritage, according to Autoweek. But the number also means something to Jackson, who played with a No. 8 jersey at the University of Louisville, which the school retired, as well as for the Ravens since being drafted by the team in 2018. Jackson’s attorneys went after another No. 8 athlete last year, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman. At the time, Aikman joked in a post on X, Hey LamarLooks like a worthy conversation over a couple cold EIGHT beers! Maybe Steve Young can arbitrate?? (Aikman was referring to his beer brand Eight; and Young, a former San Francisco 49ers No. 8 player.) Aikman’s joke showed how a single number can refer to multiple well-known athletes simultaneously, potentially watering down the case a single athlete can make to lay absolute claim to a number. Earnhardt didn’t say much about how the dispute was resolved except that his JR Motorsports team would no longer use the forward-leaning 8 mark that they’ve used since 2019 and instead use a backward-leaning mark that resembles the No. 8 car Earnhardt raced with in the 2000s for Dale Earnhardt Inc., the team founded by his father. The resolution seems to suggest that the styling of a number plays a role in how the public perceives it in connection to specific athletes. Jackson has proven litigious over the number, but he said in 2021 that he’d change from No. 8 to No. 1 if he ever won a Super Bowl. So if you see Earnhardt, Aikman, Young, and other No. 8 athletes cheering for the Ravens, you might figure out why.
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E-Commerce
I’m a writer, not a programmer, so until recently a lot of the hype around ChatGPT’s abitilies as a coding tool went over my head. But then I realized generative AI’s programming powers can be helpful for more than just coders. It can also help anyone else dabble in code to get things done. In my case, that means creating new browser bookmarklets. These are special kinds of bookmarks that use JavaScript to modify or act on web content, and they’ve always been an underrated web browsing superpower. For years, I’ve used bookmarklets to speed up web videos, remove page clutter, and quickly search my favorite sites, but I’ve always been limited to whatever example code I can find online. With AI tools like ChatGPT, I can finally make new bookmarklets myself, and the only limit is what I can think to do with them. ChatGPT’s bookmarklet breakdown Ironically, my aha moment with AI-generated bookmarklets arose while getting frustrated with another AI tool, Amazon’s Rufus shopping assistant. Last year, Amazon removed a feature that let you search through customer reviews and Q&As directly from its product pages, replacing it with the much slower Rufus chatbot. That got me thinking about a faster way to search Amazon reviews directly. After noticing that Amazon has separate pages for products and customer reviews, each with the same product code in the address, I realized that a bookmarklet cloud allow for faster searching. Here’s how I asked ChatGPT to make a bookmarklet that searches the customer reviews from an Amazon product page: Here is a link to an Amazon product page, where the ASIN is B0DHV7LR12: https://www.amazon.com/Baseus-Charging-Certified-Magnetic-Retractable/dp/B0DHV7LR12 Here is a link to a page that searches through customer reviews for that product, where B0DHV7LR12 is still the ASIN, and “test” is the search term: https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B0DHV7LR12/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_viewopt_kywd?pageNumber=1&filterByKeyword=test I want you to make a bookmarklet that, when clicked on an Amazon product page, opens a “Search Amazon reviews:” dialog box. The bookmarklet will then open the corresponding review page with the search term entered in the dialog box. If the bookmarklet is clicked outside of an Amazon product page, display an error message that says “You must be on an Amazon product page to use this bookmarklet.” This link to my ChatGPT conversation includes both the bookmarklet in question and instructions for installing it. By adding it to your browser’s bookmarks bar, you can click a button from any Amazon page to quickly search its corresponding reviews. More AI-generated bookmarklets Feeling satisfied with my Amazon review search bookmarket, I decided to try making some others. If you want to use any of these yourself, click on the links to each ChatGPT conversation, copy the JavaScript at the bottom of the chat, then create a new bookmark in your browser and paste the JavaScript into the address field: Video Speed: YouTube’s speed controls take too many clicks to access, and I don’t like the default speed increments. I had ChatGPT make a speed-control bookmarklet to my exact specifications, and it works on pretty much any video site, not just YouTube. Hide Stickies: Removes annoying web page elements that follow you around when you scroll, such as menu bars and floating video players. Link Card: I use Obsidian for notetaking, and this bookmarklet converts web links into neatly formatted cards that I can paste into my notes. Link and Excerpt: This helps speed up link sharing on social media. If text is highlighted on a page, clicking the bookmarklet wraps the text in quotes and copies it to the clipboard with the URL underneath. If no text is selected, it just copies the address instead. More Links: Sends the current page to Perplexity with a request for more links to stories that cover the same topic. Clean Link: Copies a link to the current address without common tracking parameters and other junk. Google Maps Search: When clicked, this asks for your destination and starting address, then looks up directions. If you leave the starting address field blank, it just looks up the location instead. Archive Link: Loads an archived snapshot of the current page, as hosted at Archive.Today. I don’t expect you to use all of these yourself, but hopefully they’ll get you thinking about the kinds of things bookmarklets can accomplish, and how you might use AI to build your own. One important note: ChatGPT sometimes inserts comment lines (denoted with a // double slash) to explain, but these can prevent the bookmarklets from working properly. Either remove them yourself or instruct the model not to include them. Why this works Generative AI is handy for making bookmarklets for a few reasons: The stakes are low: While AI-generated code is causing all sorts of problems for businesses, here you’re just generating JavaScript to automate and improve your own web browsing. You’re not at risk of breaking anything critical. The results are immediate: No extensive testing is necessary to see how your AI-generated bookmarklets perform. Either they work or they don’t. They’re easy to modify: If you want to change some element of your newly created bookmarklets, you can just ask using natural language. You might learn something: If you aspire to learn a little JavaScript yourself, bookmarklets are a simple application with immediate practical benefits. You can look at the code that comes out, compare it with other examples, and ask questions to understand how things work. In general, bookmarklets work well whenever you want to perform an action on the current URL, modify web page content, or open a specific site’s search page with keywords pre-applied. If you’re not sure where to start, you can always ask your AI chatbot for ideas.
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E-Commerce
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