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Gen Z has seen its credit scores drop more than any other generation over the past year, largely because of student loan debt, according to a new report out this week. The total national average credit score dropped two points this year to 715, according to the report from credit scoring company FICO. But Gen Z’s average score dropped three points to 676, the largest year-over-year decrease among any age group since 2020. A credit score is a mathematical formula that helps lenders determine how likely you are to pay back a loan. Credit scores are based on your credit history and range from 300 to 850. The report found that 34% of Gen Z consumers have open student loans, compared to 17% of the total population, and the decline in credit scores is primarily due to the resumption of student loan delinquency reporting. The U.S. Department of Education paused federal student loan payments in March 2020, offering borrowers relief during the economic chaos of the coronavirus pandemic. Though payments were set to resume in 2023, the Biden administration provided a one-year grace period that ended in October 2024. This summer, the Trump administration restarted the collection process for outstanding student loans, with plans to seize wages and tax refunds if the loans continue to go unpaid. Roughly 5.3 million borrowers who are in default could have their wages garnished by the federal government. Between student loans, a tough job market, and high inflation, young consumers are struggling to make payments on time, according to the report. A low credit score makes it more complicated or more expensive to obtain car loans, mortgages, credit cards, auto insurance, and other financial services. Theyve had so many different ongoing causes of economic instability that have really been with them as theyve been growing up; those factors make it a lot harder for this generation to stay financially stable, said Courtney Alev, consumer advocate at Credit Karma. However, younger consumers also have the advantage of having the most potential for score improvement, Tommy Lee, senior director at FICO. If your credit score has dropped recently, here are some experts recommendations: Dont avoid knowing your score Its common to be afraid of checking your credit score, but its best not to avoid it, Alev said. Knowing your current score, whether it’s good or not great, can help you make a plan for the future. You need to know where you stand to be able to take action, Alev said. Experian, FICO and Credit Karma are among the companies that let you check your credit score for free. While your credit score is essential to keep your financial life healthy, its important to remember that its just a number and it doesnt define you as a person, added Alev. Pay on time When it comes to the score calculation, one of the most critical factors is paying on time, whether that’s the minimum payment or the full balance. The one most important factor in the FICO score calculation is whether you make your payments on time. And thats about 35% of the score calculation, Lee said. If youre juggling several credit card payments and other debts, Alev recommends that you set automatic payments. Keep your credit balance low Keeping your credit utilization low and avoiding acquiring new debt can help you increase your credit score. Credit utilization is the percentage of the credit you’re currently using from across all your available credit. While a low percentage is good for your credit score, it’s not recommended to have your credit utilization at 0%. Instead experts recommend you keep it between 10% and 30%. If youre struggling to pay off the debt you currently have, its best if you dont acquire more debt if you can avoid it. Credit scores change as your financial behavior does, so Lee recommends that if youre not happy with your current credit score, you look to implement new habits in your financial life. The FICO score is dynamic. It changes based on how you make your payments. So your score, if you want to maintain it or improve it, you can do so by exhibiting good credit behavior, Lee said. ___ The Associated Press receives support from Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism. Adriana Morga, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
It was an ambitious goal, but Hollywood was built on ambitious goals. Jason Carman gave himself until his 20th birthday to make a high-concept, effects-driven short film that would capture the attention of studio executives, convincing them to toss him the keys to a megabudget feature. Now at age 25, having missed his deadline by a smidge, Carman is on the verge of enjoying a splashy debut for his sci-fi short, Planet, at San Franciscos Palace of Fine Arts on Saturday. The question is whether studio executives will take noticeand, if they do, whether Carman can parlay that attention into his bigger ambition: injecting a sense of techno-optimism into Hollywood movies. Stranger things have happened, both onscreen and off. Following a two-year stint as head of content at aerospace hub Astranis, Carman launched the creative studio Story Company in 2024. If any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, as Arthur C. Clarke famously put it, Carman was blown away by his time backstage at the magic show, and wanted to sell more tickets. With Story, the young filmmaker could extend his tech-evangelism to branded work for new clients like medicinal robot-maker Multiply Labs, while also making documentaries and sci-fi projects of his own. My goal with our movies is to give people a taste of what I experienced working at a company like Astranis, he tells Fast Company, where I got to feel what it’s like building cutting-edge hardware and science every day. [Photo: Courtesy of Jason Carman] In his former role, Carman had spent a metric ton of time with aerospace engineers. They were the most interesting people hed ever met: die-hard sci-fi heads who named meeting rooms after Star Wars characters and would not shut up about the latest Andy Weir novelall while building spacecraft that pantheon-straddling sci-fi writers like Isaac Asimov could only dream of. Those tech workers enthusiasm for building a bridge to the future proved infectious, and it was something Carman sensed was sorely missing from multiplexes. He wanted to be the one to provide it. All he had to do was convince everyone else hes up to the task. The future, according to Hollywood Carman grew up a couple hours north of Silicon Valley, in Vacaville. He was a child obsessed with movies, especially blockbuster multi-film franchises like Star Wars. From the age of 9, he was convinced he was destined to launch a company that creates them. He did not wait until he was old enough to know what an LLC was before getting started. At age 14, Carman won a Best VFX Award at the All-American High School Film Festival for his sci-fi short Vacuum Wars, which is not what it sounds like. The early efforta precocious pursuit not unlike Steven Spielbergs own early sci-fi feature Firelightfeatures grunts facing off against nimble, neon-flecked robots in all manner of combat. It does not look like it was executed by a high school freshman, even if the dialogue admittedly sounds like it was conceived by one. Carmans short film was impressive enough, though, that the University of Advancing Technology in Arizona offered him a full scholarship, which he declined. I had YouTube tutorials and access to open source forums, he says, citing technology unavailable to every preceding generation of aspiring filmmakers. After high school, Carman quickly found work at 2K Games, the company behind the NBA2K and Borderlands video game series. While directing trailers for new titles and assembling social media content, his quest to make the short film that announced his talent to Hollywood slowly migrated to the backburner. It wasnt until he later took the job at Astranis that his passion for sci-fi filmmaking reinvigorated, sparked by his new proximity to ground zero for science fact. These exceptional people in this industry were all deeply influenced by science fiction, he says, and I think it’s because they felt like it was a blueprint for what they wanted to build. [Photo: Courtesy of Jason Carman] At a certain point, he grew weary of the popular cinematic suggestion that all their efforts would ultimately be in vain, or worse. Carman cites Netflixs anthology series Black Mirrorin which someones device is always leading them to their demiseas a particularly egregious example of tech-based fear-porn. But humanity has been routinely hurtling toward doom in sci-fi films, often courtesy of Big Tech, for decadesfrom Terminator to The Matrix, and from Ex Machina to M3GAN. The entire Alien franchise depicts corporations using tomorrows state-of-the-art technology in despicable wayswith the latest entry, the Hulu series Alien: Earth, reaching the only logical conclusion, its titular monster finally attack our home planet. When movies arent depicting the fall of mankind, theyve lately portrayed the heads of tech companies as bumbling creeps, in projects like Glass Onion and Mountainhead. Adam McKays Dont Look Up even managed to feature both a wackadoo tech CEO and the apocalypse. Carman has a theory about why so many sci-fi filmmakers seem pessimistic about the future. We as humans naturally have a negativity bias, he says. It’s what’s allowed us to survive for tens of thousands of years. And I always say its easier to scare people with a negative story than it is to inspire people with an optimistic one. Perhaps darker sci-fi films in the lineage of 2001: A Space Odyssey are meant as stark, necessary warnings about the dangers of playing with Promethean fire. Or maybe the reason this pattern runs so deep is because hubris makes for a compelling narrative target, and some corners of the tech sector are objectively rife with it. Either way, there appears to be a rising sense in Silicon Valley that Hollywood needs to lighten up and let technology simply be awesome. I love sci-fi movies but I think we’ve hit a spot where a lot of them have just gotten too dystopia-based, says Jim OShaughnessy, the CEO of O’Shaughnessy Ventures, which recently backed Carmans company. There’s a place for those movies, for sure, but it would be nice to see a more optimistic view of what the future can be, and I love that Jason [Carman] has one. A filmmaker is born Theres a long history of science fiction concepts paving the way for technological breakthroughs. The Personal Accessory Display Devices from Star Trek, for instance, predicted the form-factor of the iPad and other tablets. The guy who envisioned the look of the memorable gesture-based tech from Minority Report ended up inventing a version of it in real-life much later. The Metaverse from Neal Stephensons 1992 novel Snow Crash influenced, well, you know. With a front-row seat to the forefront of aeronautics, Carman vibrated with excitement over the possibilities his new cohort might bring to lifeand the idea that he might one day conceive of a sci-fi idea that could influence the next wave of tech workers. [Photo: Courtesy of Jason Carman] He became so inspired while making videos to promote the aerospace companys innovations, he started spending his Saturdays with different tech startups, and making short documentaries about everything from joyriding jetpacks to literal rainmakers. He made dozens of these films, working so many nights and weekends he got sick seven times in a year. It was exactly this level of bone-deep dedication and enthusiasm, along with the progression of Carmans craft, that convinced OShaughnessy to back Story Company last year. We read his fellowship application and watched the videos he had made and we said, This seems like a guy who really could become a younger version of Spielberg. Part of the reason for Silicon Valleys burgeoning sense of betrayal over how tech is portrayed in movies may be due to the fact that filmmakers have a lot in common with founders. They command large staffs, work wild hours, and sometimes have billions of dollars on the line. David Senra, host of the popular Founders podcast, seems to admire the actual Steven Spielberg more for his galactically lucrative deal securing a cut of Universal Studios theme park ticket sales than for making some of the most enduring works of art in modern history. [Photo: Courtesy of Jason Carman] Increasingly, those who are sick of watching AI portrayed onscreen as humanitys death drive made manifest are now branching out into making films of their own. Its a proud tradition going back at least to when David Sacks used his PayPal windfall to produce the 2005 film, Thank You for Smoking, with the help of pals Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Now, Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar is raising funds to launch the aptly named Founders Films, which would focus less on optimistic sci-fi than Ayn Rand adaptations and other projects about American exceptionalism, while Andreessen Horowitz is backing the new studio, Promise, which will produce films and series using generative-AI tools. Every major figure in tech right now is trying to fund movies, Carman says. Unlike those other nascent studios, Carman says Story Company will be less focused on creating a sort of Shadow Hollywood than in telling stories that celebrate technology as the tool that differentiates humans from every other species in the animal kingdom. He sees the studios branded work for clints like Rangeview, Valar Atomics, and his former employer Astranis serving a similar purpose as the sci-fi trilogy he plans to make: using wow factor to hack viewers inspiration receptors. One of Carmans future projects is adapting the Bell Labs biography, The Idea Factory, into a feature for OShaughnessys Infinite Films shingle. But first, of course, theres Planet. [Photo: Courtesy of Jason Carman] Storys first sci-fi short adds a dash of Interstellar-style world-building to the logistical dynamism that impressed Carman in the tech world. Even the process of making Planet, which is about an astrobiologist who creates an artificial planet, surprised Carman by being so similar to what hed previously only documented. It was an iterative feat, in service of making a minimum viable product, which he hopes will prove Storys functionality in ways a pitch deck cannot. [Photo: Courtesy of Jason Carman] If the film ultimately does convince some intrepid studio executive to throw Carman a hefty budget, it will be a real Hollywood ending. Or maybe more of a Silicon Valley ending.
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E-Commerce
A team of researchers from Japan wondered if painting cows with zebralike stripes would prevent flies from biting them. Another group from Africa and Europe pondered the types of pizza lizards preferred to eat. Those researchers were honored Thursday in Boston with an Ig Nobel, the prize a handmade model of a human stomach for comical scientific achievement. In lieu of a big paycheck, each winner was also given a single hand wipe. When I did this experiment, I hoped that I would win the Ig Nobel. It’s my dream. Unbelievable. Just unbelievable, said Tomoki Kojima, whose team put tape on Japanese beef cows and then spray-painted them with white stripes. Kojima appeared on stage in stripes and was surrounded by his fellow researchers who harassed him with cardboard flies. As a result of the paint job, fewer flies were attracted to the cows and they seemed less bothered by the flies. Despite the findings, Kojima admitted it might be a challenge to apply this approach on a large-scale. The years winners, honored in 10 categories, also include a group from Europe that found drinking alcohol sometimes improves a persons ability to speak a foreign language and a researcher who studied fingernail growth for decades. Every great discovery ever, at first glance seemed screwy and laughable, Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of the magazine, said in an email interview ahead of the awards ceremony. The same is true of every worthless discovery. The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate ALL these discoveries, because at the very first glance, who really knows? The 35th annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony is organized by the Annals of Improbable Research, a digital magazine that highlights research that makes people laugh and then think. Its usually held weeks before the actual Nobel Prizes are announced. The ceremony to celebrate winners Thursday night at Boston University began with a longtime tradition: the audience pelting the stage with paper airplanes. Several of those who couldn’t attend had their speeches read by actual Nobel laureates including Esther Duflo, who won the Nobel Prize for her experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. There was also a mini-opera about gastroenterologists and their patients, inspired by this years theme which is digestion. Several people sang about all the challenges of treating stomach bugs and being feted by patients who bring them pizza and chili dogs. There was also a section called the 24-second lecture where top researchers explain their work in 24 seconds. Among them was Gus Rancatore, who spent most of his time licking an ice cream cone and repeatedly saying yum and Trisha Pasricha, who explained her work studying smartphone use on the toilet and the potential risk for hemorrhoids. When any winner appeared to be rambling on too long, a man wearing a dress over his suit would appear at their side and repeatedly yell, Please stop. I’m bored. Other winners this year included a group from India that studied whether foul-smelling shoes influenced someones experience using a shoe rack, and researchers from the United States and Israel who explored whether eating Teflon is a good way to increase food volume. There was also a team of international scientists that looked at whether giving alcohol to bats impaired their ability to fly. Its a great honor for us, said Francisco Sanchez, one of the researchers from Colombia who studied the drunken bats. It’s really good. You can see that scientists are not really square and super serious and can have some fun while showing interesting science. Sanchez said their research found that the bats weren’t fans of rotten fruit, which often has higher concentrations of alcohol. Maybe for good reason. When they were forced to eat it, their flying and echolocation suffered, he said. They actually got drunk similar to what happens to us, Sanchez said. When you take some ethanol, you move slower and your speech is impaired. Among the most animated of the winners was a team of researchers from several European countries who studied the physics of pasta sauce. One of the researchers wore a cooks outfit with a fake mustache to accept the award while another dressed as a big ball of mozzarella cheese got pummeled by several people holding wooden cookware. They ended by handing out bowls of pasta to the Nobel laureates. Michael Casey, Associated Press
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