Things To Do In SW Florida

By ANNE D’INNOCENZIO, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — The first day of Amazon’s Prime Day event and competing retail sales that kicked off on Tuesday drove solid online spending compared to a year earlier, according to two data sources.

Adobe Digital Insights, which tracks visits to e-commerce sites, reported that U.S. consumers spent $7.9 billion at online stores on Tuesday, a 9.9% increase from the comparable day last year.

Retailers offered discounts in the range of 9% to 23%, on par with July 2024 sales events, Adobe said.

Shoppers appeared especially eager to take advantage of deals on appliances, electronics and home improvement products, the data company said. Online sales of appliances were 135% higher than last month’s daily average, according to Adobe’s data.

Back-to-school items also were popular. Spending increased threefold on school supplies like backpacks, lunchboxes and stationery, and was two times higher for college dorm fixtures like mattresses, mini refrigerators and microwave over, Adobe said. read more

By Bernadette Joy, Bankrate.com

“Renting is throwing money away.” Has anyone ever told you this? Well, I’m here to say: It’s bad financial advice.

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  Universal’s Woodbury set for IAAPA Expo session

My husband and I have owned four different homes in three cities since 2010. If I wanted to, I could buy a house in cash today. But for the last three years, I’ve chosen to rent instead — and my net worth has grown by leaps and bounds because of that choice, not in spite of it.

This is always a hot topic, especially because renting challenges the traditional rhetoric that homeownership is the ultimate path to wealth. And I get it — owning a home is part of the “American Dream.” But if it doesn’t lead to financial freedom, homeownership may be more like a nightmare. read more

Mark Woodbury, chairman and CEO of Universal Destinations & Experiences, will be the speaker at IAAPA Expo’s leadership breakfast in November.

Among Woodbury’s recent achievements is the opening of Epic Universe, the first theme park to debut in the Orlando area in more than 25 years.  He has worked for the company for more than 30 years, becoming CEO in 2021.  His purview extends to Universal attractions worldwide, including parks in California, Japan and Beijing.  Universal Destinations & Experiences also is developing Universal Horror Unleashed, a year-round horror attraction that’s set to open in August; Universal Kids, a small-scale theme park for families with young children that’s going up near Dallas; and a Universal park in England.

Universal Horror Unleashed picks Chicago for 2nd site

“It’s just a transformational moment for us,” Woodbury said in an interview on CNBC on the day before Epic opened to the public in May.

“It’s an exciting process, a fascinating journey, from a blank piece of paper when you start imagining what you could create,” he said. read more

The Associated Press

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company said Wednesday that it’s taking down “inappropriate posts” made by its Grok chatbot, which appeared to include antisemitic comments that praised Adolf Hitler.

Grok was developed by Musk’s xAI and pitched as alternative to “woke AI” interactions from rival chatbots like Google’s Gemini, or OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Musk said Friday that Grok has been improved significantly, and users “should notice a difference.”

Since then, Grok has shared several antisemitic posts, including the trope that Jews run Hollywood, and denied that such a stance could be described as Nazism.

“Labeling truths as hate speech stifles discussion,” Grok said.

It also appeared to praise Hitler, according to screenshots of posts that have now apparently been deleted.

After making one of the posts, Grok walked back the comments, saying it was “an unacceptable error from an earlier model iteration, swiftly deleted” and that it condemned “Nazism and Hitler unequivocally — his actions were genocidal horrors.” read more

By JOSH BOAK

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump singled out Brazil for import taxes of 50% on Wednesday for its treatment of its former president, Jair Bolsonaro, showing that personal grudges rather than simple economics are a driving force in the U.S. leader’s use of tariffs.

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Trump avoided his standard form letter with Brazil, specifically tying his tariffs to the trial of Bolsonaro, who is charged with trying to overturn his 2022 election loss. Trump has described Bolsonaro as a friend and hosted the former Brazilian president at his Mar-a-Lago resort when both were in power in 2020. read more