Latest from Time Magazine
Time Magazine
19 minutes ago
- Business
- Time Magazine
New Development Could Improve Small Business Owners' Credit
This article is published by a partner of TIME. By Levi King I've spent my life in the trenches of American small business—fixing signs in the Idaho cold, sweating payroll in manufacturing, and later, building fintech platforms to help entrepreneurs like me navigate the labyrinth of credit. So when I read the news that FICO is launching credit scores that finally incorporate Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) data, I felt a jolt of hope and a twinge of caution. This is a watershed moment for credit history in America, and it's going to ripple through every Main Street and startup hub in the country. What This Means for Small Business Owners' Personal Credit Let me break down what this means specifically for small business owners, why it matters for your personal credit, and what you should take away from this announcement. For years, BNPL has been the wild child of consumer finance—ubiquitous, easy to use, but invisible to the credit bureaus. That's always struck me as a disconnect, especially for small business owners who often rely on every available tool to manage cash flow. Millions of entrepreneurs have used BNPL to bridge gaps, buy inventory, or simply keep the lights on. Yet, until now, their responsible use (or misuse) of these products didn't show up on their personal credit reports. FICO's move to include BNPL data in their new Score 10 BNPL and Score 10 T BNPL models is a long-overdue correction. As someone who's seen firsthand how invisible credit behaviors can torpedo a business loan application, I can't overstate how important this is for small business owners' personal credit. Lenders will finally get a more complete, nuanced picture of your financial life—not just the traditional credit cards and loans, but also the BNPL plans you may rely on to run your business. One of my lifelong missions has been to expand access to capital for the underdog—the entrepreneur with grit but no generational wealth, the immigrant starting a food truck, the single mom launching an Etsy shop. Historically, if your first credit experience was with BNPL, you were invisible to lenders. Now, FICO's new models promise to help small business owners build a legitimate personal credit history from day one. This is more than a technical tweak; it's a step toward leveling the playing field. If you pay your BNPL bills on time, that positive behavior will finally count for something. For small business owners who bootstrap with every tool available, this could be the difference between a 'yes' and a 'no' from the bank. One of the biggest risks with adding BNPL to credit scores was always the potential for unfair penalties. If each BNPL plan was treated as a separate loan, someone using BNPL for multiple purchases could look overleveraged—even if they were managing it responsibly. FICO's solution? Aggregate the loans, so the model sees the big picture, not just the raw number of accounts. That's smart. It means the system recognizes patterns and context, not just raw data. I've seen too many business owners get dinged for technicalities or misunderstood behaviors. This approach is a win for fairness and accuracy, especially for entrepreneurs juggling multiple short-term obligations. There's always anxiety when a new scoring model rolls out. But FICO's research shows that for more than 85% of BNPL users, the impact on their credit score will be about 10 points—and for most, it will be positive or neutral. That's huge. It means responsible BNPL use can actually help your personal credit, not hurt it. For small business owners who rely on every point to qualify for loans or better rates, this matters. Of course, missed payments will hurt you. That's always been true, and it's a necessary guardrail. But the days of being penalized just for using BNPL are over. I've been on both sides of the lending desk. When lenders can't see the full scope of a borrower's obligations, they either overreact (decline or price too high) or underreact (approve risky loans). Both outcomes are bad for small businesses. Now, with BNPL data in the mix, lenders can make smarter, more informed decisions. That means more approvals for deserving borrowers and fewer surprises down the road. For business owners, this also means you can finally see how all your credit behaviors—traditional and BNPL—affect your personal score. Transparency is power. This change is a wake-up call for everyone, especially small business owners who often mix personal and business finances (sometimes out of necessity; sometimes out of confusion). If you use BNPL, those habits are now part of your personal credit story. It's time to get educated: understand your payment schedules, avoid overextending, and monitor your credit reports like a hawk. Knowledge is your first line of defense. If you're not sure how BNPL is showing up on your credit, ask. If you're using it to manage cash flow, make sure you're not setting yourself up for a surprise down the road. Here's the bottom line: this is an opportunity. If you're a small business owner who uses BNPL to buy inventory, manage expenses, or smooth out cash flow, you can now build personal credit with those transactions—if you do it wisely. Pay on time, don't overextend, and keep records. This could help you qualify for better financing, lower rates, and more favorable terms. But beware: BNPL is not free money. Overspending or missing payments will hurt your score and your business. The same discipline you bring to your business books, you should bring to your BNPL accounts. A Call for Business Credit Bureaus to Step Up I started my first business in a world where credit was a black box. I learned the hard way that what you don't know can kill your dreams. FICO's inclusion of BNPL data is a long-awaited leap toward a more accurate, inclusive, and transparent credit system, especially for small business owners' personal credit. But let's not stop here. I hope the business credit bureaus are paying attention and will follow FICO's lead by updating their scoring models to include SMB BNPL data as well. Small business owners deserve the same recognition for responsible borrowing on their business credit profiles as they are starting to get on their personal credit reports. This is how we build a stronger, fairer financial future for Main Street—together. About the Author: Levi King is CEO, co-founder, and chairman of A lifelong entrepreneur and small business advocate, Levi has dedicated over ten years of his professional career to increasing business credit transparency for small businesses. After starting and selling several successful companies, he founded Nav both to help small business owners build their credit health and to provide them with powerful tools to make their financing dreams a reality.
Time Magazine
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
Jamie Lee Curtis on Her Big Moment in 'The Bear' Season 4
Jamie Lee Curtis manifested her role on The Bear. She remembers watching the show's first episode—specifically a scene between Carmen 'Carmy' and Natalie, when the chef doesn't have enough money for his restaurant's food supply, so his sister brings him his jacket to sell. Before she leaves, she asks him a question. 'Have you called mom?' He hasn't. 'You should,' she tells him. At that moment, sitting at home inside what she calls her 'witness protection cabin,' Curtis began envisioning what their mother might be like. 'Oh, I think I'm going to be her,' she thought. It didn't take long. In 'Fishes,' the sixth episode of the second season, she debuted as Donna Berzatto, embodying Carmy and Natalie's mother whose alcoholism and mania has turned her home—and large family gatherings—into a mental trauma zone. Though very different from her character, Curtis could relate to Donna's substance abuse issues and mothering challenges, and leaned into her most toxic traits. By the end of the electric and overwhelming episode, for which Curtis won an Emmy, Donna has drunkenly left the Christmas dinner table and crashed a car into her house, effectively fracturing her relationship with her son. But in Season 4, Donna gets a chance to make amends. About five years after the disastrous holiday, she spends the majority of the ninth episode, 'Tonnato,' sharing her regrets with Carmy inside her home. While looking at old family photos together, Donna admits she's been sober a year and then reads an apology letter, acknowledging the pain she's caused and explaining the reasons for her poor choices. Carmy eventually reciprocates, sharing his guilt for leaving the family and expressing his love for her. It's a powerful, emotional exchange that crystallizes the season's redemptive, healing themes. Then, as an act of reconciliation, Carmy prepares for his mother a chicken dinner that he learned to make while training as a chef at The French Laundry. Here, Curtis unpacks that emotionally charged sequence as she talks about the experience of playing Donna, and how her own life informed parts of the character. I'll be honest, I get anxiety every time your character appears on the show—and I think it's mostly because we've only really seen you through Carmy's perspective. What was genius from the beginning was you don't meet Donna for 16 episodes. The anxiety is built up through hearing about her from other people and the amount of anxiety Carmen carries. She's designed to create instability. What I found beautiful is that in episode 10 of Season 2, when they're opening the restaurant and Donna's out front chain smoking—I said to [creator Chris Storer], 'I think [Donna] is sober four months. She has enough self knowledge now to know that she has an effect on people, particularly when she's drinking. And so the pacing in front of the restaurant is the 'Do I? Don't I?' push and pull of addiction, which, when you're newly sober, you're very fragile. You show up in a couple episodes this season, specifically for Episode 9's conversation with Carmen. How does it feel for you to parachute in and out of Donna's headspace every year? We shot Season 3 and 4 simultaneously. So the truth is, I did the scene with Sugar in the hospital, which was an entire episode. And two days later, I did my part at the wedding. And then the next day, my scene with Jeremy at the house. So it was a lot of Donna, which was not dissimilar to the Christmas episode where I came in for like a three-day bombardment and then was gone. I've been an actress since I was 19. I've done a lot of different work. Some of it good, some of it great, some of it awful—much of it awful. Everybody works differently. I also didn't know how Chris worked before we met on the Christmas episode. Our entire relationship was a text relationship where he said, 'So excited you're coming!' And I said, 'How do you want her hair to look?' And he sent me a picture of Monica Vitti. And then I said, 'What about her nails?' And he sent me a picture of the desperate housewives of New York and that was the entirety of the background that I got from him before I walked in the kitchen the day we shot 'Fishes.' I got a sense that he understood that I was going to show up fully-loaded ready to shoot. That gave me a lot of confidence and a lot of freedom because I knew, having seen the level of intensity, what the show was like. What was your initial impression when you read this scene between Donna and Carmy, and how did you want to approach it? People forget that she hasn't seen Carmen since Christmas five years earlier. It's not like there's a chyron that's under the screen that reminds the audience at the wedding. And obviously she has seen the rest of the family. She attended the birth of her granddaughter. She goes to family birthdays. She sees Lee. She sees Jimmy. So there's an indication that she is a part of this interesting melting pot family, but she hasn't seen Carmen. So that moment when she sees him at the wedding—and the way all his friends come around him and are like, 'Hey, they need you in the kitchen right now.' Donna knows what's going on. She's very smart so she understands that this is a big moment for both of them. And then she has that lovely scene with Sydney and then she gets the f-ck out, because she understands. In recovery, there's a phrase, 'We suit up and show up.' So Donna is suiting up and showing up. And of course who does she run into? Michelle. And Michelle says, 'Are you good?' And we all know that question is Donna's fire starter. Right. That is the fire starter, one of those clicking flame things that we all have in our houses to light matches. It's that click. And her response, which is, 'I'm good.' And then get the f-ck out. I'm not going to play Michelle. I'm going to go. And so we've teed it up beautifully. Yep. I'm sober. I've been sober a long time. I talk to a lot of sober people. Part of being sober is acknowledging the past. There is a process within being a sober alcoholic or sober drug addict that in order to move freely into the future, you have to acknowledge the past. I don't think Donna wanted to acknowledge it with him for a long time. I think she's been working on that for the better part of a year. She's had that little piece of paper in her desk drawer, and when he comes over, I think the intention was to see him and keep it light and polite—another phrase we use in recovery. And I think that was her plan until she started going through the pictures and saw Mikey. Yeah, I wondering if you wrote that letter yourself. It was from the script, but of course I did! Was that a cathartic experience—thinking about what that symbolizes generally for a mother to a son, but then also specifically for Donna to Carmy? Very much cathartic. We both knew what we're doing. The script is beautiful. I learned that having a kid who you don't know how to help is one of the most powerless experiences as a parent. I personally have a child with special needs. I have a child who has a learning difference. And the powerlessness you feel when you can't actually help them—you can find people who can help them, but you can't. So the part of that scene that gets me every time is when she talks about Mike. Because clearly Mike had that problem since he was a little boy. And being a parent and not being able to help your kid and not knowing what to do to help them—and finding that alcohol just made it all more palatable and easy—to play a woman who has struggled with that, and then to have the beautiful writing that articulates that exact powerlessness and turmoil, and resulting shame and self-hatred, and then the addiction on top of it—I just thought it was a beautifully constructed. The line that hits me the hardest throughout your interplay is when you tell Carmy, 'I don't know you, and you don't know me, and I did that.' Was there a line or a moment in this conversation that impacted you the most? Oh yeah—what I just said about Mike. I did that as a statement of fact. I have to live with that. She also says it to Sugar in the hospital when Sugar says, 'You scared me and I don't want my baby to feel scared.' I said, 'I scared you?' Hearing that you have that effect on a human being's life is powerful. And so I can totally accept that we're operating as strangers in this family. That is when she really is showing the pain and suffering of her own childhood, her marriage, her being a mother to three. That is when Carmen really softens and says, 'I'm sorry, I wasn't there for you.' What does Leonard Cohen say? "There has to be cracks because that's where the light comes in." That's the moment when you understand that Carmen is now understanding the multitude of Donna and what she has struggled with. What was it like working with Jeremy that day? I feel very motherly toward all three of these kids. I've stayed a little in contact with them in the most cursory way. I'm not pretending we're buddies, but I also reach out occasionally. So he and I have that. Again, not with any supposition that it's more than it is. He's just a beautiful performer. We use the term scene partner a lot in actor talk, but he's a scene partner. We don't rehearse it. We don't talk about it. We stay away from each other until it begins, and then it begins. And he has beautiful eyes, and they are expressive and soulful and sorrowful and very alive at times and very emotional at times. And I think you see all of that in this whole season, but in that scene in particular. And then the coup de grace, which is him cooking for her. I really love that he goes back to his time at French Laundry where he learned to make roast chicken. Do you feel like a meal is one of the kindest gifts you can give somebody? For sure. I'm not a foodie. I was raised by a very skinny woman. Food was not a friend in a generation of women in her industry who starved themselves under the tutelage of the studio system. My mother was incredibly beautiful and she held it all the way through her life. While many of her other friends succumbed to middle age, she starved it away. So I was raised around cereal and a grilled cheese sandwich, which would be like gold for me. But apparently I make really good penne with butter, garlic salt and a little parmesan cheese and my elder daughter, Annie, was talking with her friends about memories in their high school years of having me make that penne. Hearing that that is a memory for my daughter is something comforting. I'm kind of embarrassed by it because it's not a French Laundry chicken. And yet the act of making it and the act of receiving it as something special is very moving to me. Of course Carmy is going to truss and baste and bake and broil a beautiful chicken for his mother. It's a wordless moment and, needless to say, very moving. It's very clear that there's a path forward through that act that is him basically saying, 'I'm sorry that I didn't kind of meet you, that I stayed away from you and that I didn't face this.' It's pretty powerful to end a series on a full-circle moment. He also tells you not to wash chicken in the sink. Yeah, because, of course! What he's saying is that the salmonella goes all over the place. You think it's just going down the drain, but in fact, you're polluting your sink. This season felt very redemptive and healing in a lot of ways. What it was like to have a moment of reconciliation with Donna, as opposed to playing such a vicious antagonist? I'm the child of alcoholics. I'm a sober drug addict and alcoholic. I have lost so many friends to alcoholism and drug addiction. My baby brother died at 21 of an accidental heroin overdose. We're also living in a world that doesn't feel redemptive. When you talk about an antagonist, it feels like there are antagonists running the world right now. So from a spiritual place, if we're not healing, we're dying. And I didn't know if Donna was going to heal or get a chance to. I saw it in Season 3, but as I said to you, I already knew that Season 4 was coming. I don't know the origin stories necessarily, but if we're not healing, what are we doing? And so I'm beyond grateful that Chris gave everybody a moment of grace—every single person's story! The end of Season 3, Carmen says that in his vision for the restaurant, 'to make it good, you have to filter out the bad.' And I think this whole season was in line with that mission statement. It's just gorgeous work. The grace note at the end—you know those sandwich shops are going to be successful. We know what the numbers are going to be. They're going to blow the place up. But Carmen also knows he has to step away from this and let these people do it. And the fact that that's the gift that he's giving everybody, and that he'll now go figure out who Carmen is. And he'll be able to do it with a mother in his life now. Yeah, and Donna is sober now. Can Donna stay sober? I hope so. I've stayed sober. What was wack to me—the same day that this season of the show dropped, I woke up in the morning and a friend of mine in Los Angeles sent me a picture of a billboard on Sunset Boulevard. It's the Foundation for a Better Life, a program they run called 'Pass It On.' Inspirational people and ideas. And there's a billboard with my picture that says, 'My Bravest Thing? Getting Sober. Recovery. Pass it On.' And for Jamie and Donna, who had different stories but the same disease, to have that happen simultaneously was kind of another grace note. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity
Time Magazine
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
M3GAN 2.0 Is a Horror Sequel With No Horror
Warning: This post contains spoilers for M3GAN 2.0. M3GAN became a surprise hit in early 2023, earning nearly $182 million worldwide against a budget of just $12 million, due in part to the balance the movie managed to strike between creepy horror and campy comedy. Here was an AI-powered doll who came pre-loaded with meme-worthy dance moves and the ability to spontaneously burst into an a cappella rendition of Sia's "Titanium," but who was also capable of chasing school children into oncoming traffic and fatally wielding a machete. Over two years later, M3GAN 2.0 brings its sassy titular android back for a sequel that delivers on the comedy front, but strips M3GAN of her horror appeal in favor of a more action-centric plot. When a horror sequel featuring the same big bad as the first movie gets the green light, there's generally one of two routes it can go: a new and improved (or, more often, not so impressive) take on the original story or a Terminator 2-style installment in which the villain comes up against an even greater threat. M3GAN 2.0, written and directed by Gerard Johnstone, opts for the latter, a decision that sends the franchise in a new direction by giving M3GAN (played by Amie Donald and voiced by Jenna Davis) a redemption arc following her previous murderous rampage. "For me, it was just so obvious, because the reaction to the first film happened on this global scale," Johnstone told Variety of the reason for the tonal shift. "The technology that M3GAN has is being fought over by various nations. At the moment, everyone's in this race to be the first to get AGI. It felt like a story that needed to play out on a much bigger canvas." In the two years that have passed since the events of the first film, roboticist Gemma (Allison Williams) has become a staunch advocate for government regulation of AI, while her now-preteen niece Cady (Violet McGraw) has thrown herself into computer science and the martial arts practice of aikido to work through her trauma. But when a team of FBI agents breaks into their home one night, Gemma learns that not only did M3GAN's digital consciousness survive the destruction of her body, but her underlying tech was also stolen to create a military-grade AI super-soldier named AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno). Oh, and AMELIA has gone rogue and wants to destroy humanity. Naturally, this development forces Gemma to team up with M3GAN and build her a new and improved body in order to try to save the world alongside her colleagues Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez) and Tess (Jen Van Epps), and fellow tech activist Christian (Aristotle Athari)—a potential love interest who, surprise, actually turns out to be the person behind AMELIA's creation. While we won't get into the somewhat convoluted details of how exactly AMELIA intends to bring her goals to fruition, just know the movie reads as a satirical cautionary tale about the evolution of AI. Johnstone, however, has said he views the sequel as more of a parenting allegory. "We're not saying, 'Don't build AI.' We're asking, 'What happens when you don't train it right?'" he told Creative Screenwriting. "You don't train kids like dogs. You raise them. That's the same with AI." In the end, an action-packed showdown at a Palo Alto tech campus culminates in M3gan proving she has developed true empathy by sacrificing herself in order to save Cady and Gemma, and eliminate the threat of AMELIA and the mysterious all-powerful Motherboard AI she's after. But worry not, M3GAN 2.0's final moments reveal M3GAN's source code is still alive and well, leaving the door open for future sequels that could fall under a variety of genres. According to Johnstone, the sky is apparently the limit. "I would not be surprised if there's another five of these movies," he told the Hollywood Reporter. "So, who knows, maybe I'll come back for the fifth one."
Time Magazine
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
Danes Could Get Copyright to Their Own Image Under AI Bill
Millions of Danes could soon hold copyright control over their own image, facial features, and voice under an amendment the country is considering to combat AI deepfakes. The Danish government revealed Thursday that a broad coalition of legislators are working on a bill that would make deepfakes illegal to share and put legal protections in place to prevent AI material depicting a person from being disseminated without their consent. 'In the bill we agree and are sending an unequivocal message that everybody has the right to their own body, their own voice and their own facial features, which is apparently not how the current law is protecting people against generative AI,' Danish culture minister, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, told The Guardian. The Danish department of culture will submit a proposed amendment for consultation this summer. The bill, if enacted, would issue 'severe fines' for online platforms that do not abide by the new law. The Danish government said that parodies and satire would not be affected by the proposed amendment. The actions come as deepfakes have become increasingly common, affecting celebrities such as pop star Taylor Swift and even Pope Francis as well as many less famous people, and also grown more cumbersome to identify as AI-generated. More than 200 musicians, including Billie Eilish and J Balvin, penned an April letter speaking out against the use of AI, such as voice cloning, in the music industry. Other countries have enacted some protections. In May, the U.S. passed the Take It Down Act, which criminalizes nonconsensual deepfake imagery and mandates social media companies to remove such material from their platforms 48 hours after they are notified of the deepfake.
Time Magazine
9 hours ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Trump and Bondi Say Supreme Court Ruling Will Unblock Agenda
President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters Friday that the Supreme Court's decision limiting nationwide court injunctions—which took the legs out of what has been one of the few checks on Trump's executive authority—will enable the Trump Administration to enact its policies more quickly. The ruling from the high court's conservative majority curtailed lower courts' power to block Trump's policies nationwide, largely wiping away a bulwark that has prevented some of the President's most aggressive actions from going into effect. 'Thanks to this decision we can now promptly file to proceed with numerous polices that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis,' Trump said during a press conference at the White House following the ruling. 'These judges have attempted to dictate the law for the entire nation,' he added, calling the federal judges who have stood in his way 'absolutely crazy, radical left judges.' For months, federal courts have slowed Trump's efforts to expand the use of presidential authority in order to eliminate federal agencies, slash the federal workforce, speed up deportations, and redefine who gets American citizenship at birth. The judicial pushback has been a rare source of restraint on the President's agenda from within the government, as Republicans in control of both the House and Senate have not defended Congressional authority over federal funding. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned Friday that the Supreme Court decision is a 'terrifying step toward authoritarianism' and 'a grave danger to our democracy.' Among the initiatives Trump will try to push forward now that the obstacle of nationwide injunctions has been removed is his directive to deny citizenship to people born inside the U.S., he said. Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office attempting to redefine who should be recognized as a U.S. citizen at birth, challenging a precedent that has been settled law since 1898. Trump's order was blocked nationwide by district court rulings. But the Supreme Court ruled Friday that such court injunctions would only apply in the part of the country where they originated, which could lead to citizenship being granted differently depending where in the U.S. someone is born. The Supreme Court will consider in October the broader question of whether Trump has the authority to redefine the 127-year-old interpretation of citizenship established by the court itself. In 1898, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which states that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States' are citizens of the country, guaranteed the citizenship of a Chinese-American cook named Wong Kim Ark. After a trip to China, immigration officials tried to deny Wong entry back into the U.S. under the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese nationals from migrating to the U.S. at the time. But the court confirmed in a 6-to-2 decision that Wong was a citizen by birth, setting a precedent that birthright citizenship in the U.S. is universal. Trump wants to unwind that precedent. The 14th Amendment was ratified in the wake of the Civil War to clarify who had citizenship rights and equal protection under U.S. law. Trump said the constitutional amendment wasn't designed to broadly define citizenship by birth and instead was 'meant for the babies of slaves.' Birthright citizenship 'wasn't meant for people trying to scam the system and come into the country on a vacation,' Trump said at the White House on Friday. Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the Supreme Court decision against nationwide injunctions will give federal authorities a freer hand to deport people suspected of being gang members. Courts have repeatedly ruled that the Trump Administration has overstepped its authority by deporting people without first presenting evidence to a court that they are public safety threats. "You should all feel safer now that President Trump can deport all of these gangs, and not one district court judge can think they're an emperor over this administration, his executive powers and why the people of the United States elected him,' Bondi said. In March, the Trump Administration deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador more than 230 Venezuelans from the U.S. that it said were members of a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua. But the Administration has not shown evidence to a court or the public that all of those men were gang members or posed a threat to public safety that merits their being imprisoned in another country. On Friday, Bondi said similar arrests have been carried out much more broadly: The Trump Administration, she said, had arrested 2,711 people it says are Tren de Aragua gang members. The Supreme Court's decision to hem in the lower courts may allow Trump to expand his immigration crackdown with even fewer checks on his power.
