Insider Finance - Business - SBF’s ex pleads guilty

December 22, 2022

Hello, Insiders. Do you send out holiday cards? Every couple years my wife and I will — but maybe we should start sending them regularly! Because they seem like a really great opportunity to overshare and embarrass the hell out of our nearest and dearest. 

That's what Laura Kinney's mom did to her. Laura got divorced this year. You might think all the details of the split should be kept private — but Laura's mom does not agree. Instead, the mom wrote a very long holiday letter with all the nitty-gritty details of the divorce and sent it to basically everyone she knows. 

Good for Laura, though — she’s being a good sport. "I am not thrilled," she writes, "However, if I were to be the recipient of a letter like this, that would be the best thing that I had ever received. I would frame it."

— Nicholas Carlson

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The latest

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• Flight delays and cancellations will likely impact millions of travelers over the holidays. Here’s what to do if you’re one of them.

The big story

June Jiuxing Xie, Tyler

She says she was fired for retaliation. Hearst Magazines said she was insubordinate. How Delish's hit YouTube show “Budget Eats” came crashing down.

June Jiuxing Xie was a rising star at Hearst Magazines, where she charmed millions of viewers with her no-frills home kitchen YouTube show "Budget Eats," cooking eight dinners for two on just $15 or living off pantry staples for a week.

Produced by the Hearst-owned food brand Delish, "Budget Eats" was the kind of digital success story that traditional magazine giants crave. But on October 6, Xie was fired. 

For some staffers, Xie was a hero, a union organizer whose star power gave her the internal clout to make noise. But for Hearst, a 135-year-old institution, Xie's behavior was a nuisance. 

The implosion of "Budget Eats" is a modern digital media tragedy — one about a legacy publisher trying to expand a video hit into something larger, the simmering disputes between organized labor and management, the rise of a young woman of color inside a traditional behemoth, and a generational workplace clash.

Top reads

Beate Folesky / EyeEm/Getty, urfinguss/Getty, Peter Cade/Getty, stevecoleimages/Getty, Tyler Le/Insider

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• A 35-year-old explains why he and his girlfriend sleep in separate rooms. One in four Americans — including Philadelphia-based John Deary — chooses to sleep separately from their partners, a concept that’s now popular and polarizing enough to have a name: "sleep divorce." Experts explain how it can actually improve relationships.

• Parental leave is the greatest benefit workers don't take. Despite more and more workers having access to family leave, financial pressures, career considerations, and workplace stigma make it difficult for many to take it — here’s why.

• "Code red" at Google. The increasing popularity of the AI chat bot ChatGPT has sparked serious concern at the tech giant, per The New York Times. CEO Sundar Pichai has directed multiple teams to address the threat posed to Google’s search engine business, the report says. Get the full story here.

• These symptoms of cancer are easy to miss. A headache, a spell of fatigue, or stomach pain can often be dismissed as no big deal — even by doctors. But Insider spoke with five women who were later diagnosed with stage 4 cancer after these signs were missed. Read their stories.

Watch this

The Supreme Court temporarily extended the Title 42 policy that keeps migrants out of the US just days before it was expected to expire. Thousands of migrants are left waiting at the southern border. Watch now.

Today's team

This edition was curated by Nicholas Carlson, and edited by Hallam Bullock, Lisa Ryan, Jordan Parker Erb, Shona Ghosh, and Nathan Rennolds. Get in touch: insidertoday@insider.com.

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