Last Month, A New Social-Media App Started Making the Rounds. On Sociali, The Pitch Goes, You ‘Always the “Main Character,” You’ll Always Get Engagement, Your Replies Will Always Be Full, and You Exactly the Types of Followers You Want. The Catch is that none of these followers are people – They’re all characters generated by he.
It ‘sort of joke-saped start-up that seams to exist solely to make a point. Its Creator Suggested As Much, emphasizing the “thesis” of His App Rather than Why People Might Actually Want to use it: that there are “tons of use caesa a broodcast model of llm interaction” Maybe that’s true, but not on Sociali, not now. In Practice, Posting for A Crowd of Unconvincing He Characters is About As Boring and Uncomfortable As It Sounds. The App’s Founder, Facebook Former Employe Michael Sayman, Said That He Had Big Plass to Improve the App and SEEMED to take the predictable mixed Feedback – “This is maybe the most embarrassing i’ve ever seen?” – in strides, spread Because a lot of People in The industry were cheering Him on.
Photo: Screenshot, Social he
This Week, he shared an update: “I’m excited to share that after the success of socialii,’ll be jaining meta to help the futures of Generation he as the next chapter of this journey,” he posted on human social media. “Building Sociali and Seeing the Impact the Social Network Had Across the Tech Industry Made It Clear that there was a natural alignment with meters in shining to he.”
What does meta, a company built on winging Money Out of Massive Amounts of Actual Human Attention, SEE in a Project like this? Sayman Says he “Can’t Share Every Detail” but is Looking forward to “Pushing the Boundaries of What’s Possible with Generation he,” and “Create the tools that Shape the Future of How We Connect and Interact Online.” What COULD THAT MEAN? A Facebook with more he and Fewer People? An Instagram Stocked With Sycophantic Bots? Do whatsapp for talking with he agents?
A full automated Facebook, à laSociali, is of the absurd – at the Very Least, A Social Network with Content Created by People is No Longer A Social Network. A substantially automated Facebook, Howver, Is Plausible, Not Least Because A partially Automated Facebook – a Facebook Where users prompt contra out he, and where he strands gaps in their feeds automatically – is already here. While a single hire at a 70,000-person Company probably can’t tell us, the state of meta’s actual platforms and its recent product deciss can Certainly us something: it is going to try it all.
In the Broadest Sense, modern social media is all about automation, in that users are induced to post by automated systems, thyir content is collected, sorted, distributed, and recommended Mostly automatically, and advertising is sold, and dysplayed through a centralized software. There is a still plenty of human participation and intervention involved in running meta-hence the 70,000 Employees and Tens of Thousands of Non-Employe Contractors Beind Competition BetWeen Platforms ALSO ABOUTH NEW FORMS OF AUTOMATION.
Social Media Still Depends on the Creation, by People, of Enormous Amounts of Content. If users don’t post, other users won’t have much to look at. Social platforms can automate a lot of processses, but they can’t easily automate the content itelf. The Business Model Has Always Faced A Risk: What Happens if users Stop Making as Much Good Stuff? AS A Result, in Recent Years, Social Media Companies Have Been Approaching the Question of What You Might Call User automation In Both Subtle and, More Recently, Fairly Direct Ways.
You Might Characterize the Rise of Instagram As a Story About Streamlined Photo Editing or Attribute Some of Snapchat’s Success to Its (Automated) Face Filters. Tiktok has pushed this concept stover, prompting users to participate in trends and Making it extramely Easy to produce videos. (The Company is Working on a Feature in Tiktok Shop that will will be “Generation Scripts USING Artificial Intelligence, SO CREATORS HAVE ENOUGH TO SAY AND CAN SELL MORE PRODUCTS DURING LIVESTREAMS,” according to the information.) Lend it your face and a bit of your personal, and tiktok’s video creation tools will streamline the creation of Postable stuff. The platform has already succeeded at Replacing Feed-Based Social Media, which Drew on the USSERS ‘Sharing and Following Activities to Out What to Show NEXT, with Pure Machine Learning.
Meta, for its part, has long pursured Similara strategies. The Company’s Recent and Massive Investment in Generation he has acceled this trendance, trickling down to its social platforms in the form of Features that are inching closer and closer to Simply Posting form users. The Company Has Added Its Chatbot to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, Where It Play Multiple Role. In whatsapp and messenger, it behaves a bit like another user on the platform, which has at least some conceptual overlap with sociali. On Instagram, Merged With The Search Function, but Also Prompts User to Generate Content – “Generate a 1990s Arcade” – for posting in their feeds. IT’S ALSO Experimenting with Customizable He Characters and Suggesting Users Chat with Their Real Friends. Bots, The Scourge of Social Media, Are Now of Its Product Road Map.
On Facebook, Meta’s Oldest and Shabbest Platform, The Experimentation Has Been More Extensive. He is Generating Content Summaries, showing up to the Answer Questions in Groups, and Suggesting Comment Responses. In a september announcementMeta described a new suite of tools that, youd together, will sis of the posting for you:
We’re expanding meta it imagine features, so you can now imagine yourSelf as a superhero or anything else right in feed, stories and your Facebook profile Pictures. You can say easily share your ai-gereated images so your friends can see, react to or mimic say. Meta he Can Also Suggest Captions for Your Stories on Facebook and Instagram.
Like Sociali, these Announuncements Read a bit Like a punch line to a long and obivious joke: who needs People on social media? In adding to nudging it uses to start posting it-genred Content, Including it-GENERED IMAGES OF THEMELVES, META ALSO SAID THAT IT IT START SHOVELING AI-GENERED CONTENT INTO ‘FEEDS ITSELF, AS A TEST. “(W) e’re testing new meta he-genered content in your Facebook and Instagram Feeds, so you may see images from meta it just for you (Based on your interests or Current trends),” The Company said.
Illustration: Facebook
It ‘Committed to the bit! ITHO ALSO REALLY JUST PUSHING OLD Concepts a Bit Further, Exploring the Limits of How Much “Help” Its users or will tolerate. A goofy tiktok face filter with it-genreated backgrounds and a clumsily promoted generator on Facebook are Features that Share a Category but are distinguished by execution and, spreads, self-awareness. You know something has entered the water supply at meta hq you would start seeing posts like this:
Illustration: Threads
Or May’s Extremely Self-Aware? Spreads the wider conceptual argument Behind the artificial-intelligence boom and/or bubble is that self-awareness is overrated and unnecessary.
The Company Could Also Just Be Responding, As it Long Has, to Trends by Its USSERS. Without meta’s intentional help, facebook has Become the primary platform for the distribution and monetization of surreal, disgusting, and generaly awful it slop. It has haen widly takeen as a sign that the Facebook platform is irredeemably Lost and that Such Slop is destined to take over the rest of the Internet. Meta Clearly Disagrees, at Least With The First Point. By providing tools for its users to “Easily Share … Ai-Generated Images” and by injecting it-Genered images that uses didn’t as ino their feeds, meta is enthusiastically and all but explicitly intoo the slop business itself.
And Why wouldn’t it? Facebook he slop, as reported in this Magazine, is a Growing and Lucrative Business, Aligned Well Both with Facebook’s General Tendency to Reward Engaging Content As Its Specific Circle Schemes 2024:
(He slop) Page Make Money Through Facebook’s Performance Bonus Program, Which, for The Social Network’s Description, “Give Creators the Opportunity to Earn Money” Based on “The Amout of Reach, Reacetions, on Their Posts. It is, in effect, a slop subsidy. The one images Produced on Stevo’s Pages – Rococo Pictures of Jesus; Muscular Police Officers Standing on the Beach Holding Large Bibles; Grotesquely Armored Gargidal Helicopters – Are Neither Scams Nor Enticements Nor Eve, neither far nor Facebook is Concerned, Junk. They are precisely what the Company Wants: Highly Engaging Content.
USSERS ARE USING OFF-PLATORFI AI to Generate Content to Which Other User SEEM to Respond. For a social-media platform, the most natural next step in the world to try to bring to that action in-house and to have it all unfold on the company’s Own Terms. Meta’s Challenge here, as usual, is that it can’t quite go all the way – it can give ussers tools to generate infinite uncanny content, but it can’t give say tools shrimp jesus and reverent steroid. Slop is engaging Becuses Maximally Strange, Bad, Weird, Or Cynical. It has, at Least Compared to the Examples Meta is putting out itself, a disgument, malign, but distinctly recognizable human.
Still, Event Against This Grimdrrop, Sociali Feels Extreme, Like a Cautionary Tale About What Happens AFTER YOU PASS THE TIPPING POINT FROM Social Media (Engagement Heaven) to automated social media (empty unmoneizable hell). As its founder suggests, Sociali is probably best understood as a different way to interact with it Rather than a model for social media. From Certain Perspectives, Though-Like that of, Say, A Social-Media Executive Who SEEMS quite fed up with friction and criticism from real people – it also represents a fantasy Serene: a platform on which everyone dies exactly what you want, infinitely and forever.
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One night in 2016, Laura Modi was facing an acute episode of an eternal parenting problem: trying to get your infant to eat. Modi had just given birth to her first child, a girl, and she was attempting to breastfeed, in part because she wanted to and in part because the American Academy of Pediatrics encouraged it. But Modi was struggling to produce milk and dealing with mastitis, a painful breast-tissue inflammation that can lead to infection — just two of the many medical, professional, and societal obstacles that can make breastfeeding impossible. Like three out of four new parents, Modi was going to have to use formula to keep her infant fed.
As Modi paced the aisle of a pharmacy in San Francisco, where she worked as Airbnb’s director of hospitality, the decision didn’t feel so simple. She was fighting off a fever, her daughter was screaming, and she couldn’t kick the feeling that she had somehow failed. The cans on the shelf didn’t look like the kinds of products that parents like Modi — millennial, coastal, Whole Foods shoppers — were used to buying. The formula was packaged in primary colors and had a list of multisyllabic ingredients on the back: cholecalciferol, cyanocobalamin. And some of them used corn syrup? Forget about it. Feeding her child a can full of powdered ingredients she would never buy for herself felt like a betrayal. In the harsh fluorescent glare of a late-night drugstore aisle, Modi came face-to-face with the emotion that dominates much of 21st-century parenting: the feeling that no matter how much you are doing for your baby, it is never enough. Modi says she was so embarrassed by the can of Similac she bought that she hid it in the back of her cabinet.
Luckily for Modi, she was struck by two other powerful feelings: “a mother’s intuition that there had to be a better option” and a disruptor’s nose for an opportunity. Her comrades elsewhere were already optimizing breast pumps and outfitting bassinets with “smart technology.” They had even invented Soylent, a formula for adult babies.
But no one had touched the $4 billion domestic market for infant formula, which had been dominated for decades by just three large corporations. “We know science has evolved; we know consumer taste has evolved. So why is it that I’m buying the same boomer brands that existed 40, 50 years ago?” Modi told me recently, after recounting her well-worn founder origin story. “Infant formula is one of the last remaining industries where we haven’t seen some level of disruption. That was appealing.”
In 2018, Modi left Airbnb to start Bobbie, named after the word her daughter used for her bottle. Bobbie promised American parents something they couldn’t find at CVS or Target: a “European style” formula, closer in recipe to what mamans and Mütter were serving in Lyon and Berlin. It cost more than three times as much as standard American formulas but came with organic milk and the trappings we’ve come to expect from hip direct-to-consumer brands: a package delivered to your door with a soothing Key-lime-green font and printed with an image of Bobbie’s bovine mascot, Moonique, who is meant to represent all the grass-fed cows who produce the formula inside. Modi says she “wanted to create a formula that wouldn’t leave me with even more mom guilt,” and Bobbie was calibrated to help millennial parents — today’s primary childbearing demographic — feel less stressed about one of the countless choices they have to make. She closed a $2.4 million seed-funding round a week before giving birth to her second child.
Bobbie launched three years later, in 2021. It only took a year for Moonique to become a critical component of America’s supply chain. In February 2022, following the deaths of two infants seemingly from a bacterial infection from contaminated baby formula, an Abbott Laboratories plant in Sturgis, Michigan, that makes its Similac formula was shut down after the Food and Drug Administration launched an investigation. (No concrete link has been established between the infections and formula produced by Abbott; Abbott announced a voluntary recall on February 17.) The plant produced a fifth of all formula in the U.S., and neither the industry nor the government seemed to have a plan for what to do. By May, many retail shelves were empty. Desperate parents resorted to driving from store to store for hours, deploying internet shopping bots, serving dangerously watered-down bottles, and cooking up homemade formulas with recipes that dated from the Eisenhower administration. At least two children were hospitalized as a result of the shortage.
Modi is careful not to talk about the shortage as a business opportunity — but that’s what it was. She had hoped to disrupt an industry, then the industry had disrupted itself. New parents are reluctant to switch infant-formula brands so long as their babies aren’t spitting it up, but the shortage gave some of them no choice: An expensive formula looked like a good deal as long as it could get to your door. Within a week of the Sturgis shutdown, Bobbie’s sales doubled; eventually, the company was so overwhelmed with orders that it had to stop taking new customers. By August, it had scored a spot on the shelf in Target stores nationwide, right alongside the cans Modi had once objected to.
Formula supplies remain low in parts of the country with Abbott announcing last week that the Sturgis plant would finally start producing Similac again. But the crisis has started to recede, opening room for questions about the future of an industry revealed to be broken — and who will profit. Bobbie isn’t alone in having good timing. In March, just weeks after the recall, Ron Belldegrun and Mia Funt, two siblings in Manhattan, launched another direct-to-consumer formula company called ByHeart that promised its own special recipe. ByHeart’s sales exceeded projections by 15 times, and it too had to stop taking new customers. Both companies have collectively raised more than $250 million in venture capital on the notion that nearly 3 million American infants are formula-fed every year, and that capturing the kind of parents wooed by Moonique and organic ingredients — and willing to spend any amount to give their child every perceived advantage — could be wildly lucrative.
A critical reading of ByHeart and Bobbie is that they are Goopified versions of cheaper formulas that already exist, and which are every bit as nutritious — that they are catering to consumer preferences, rather than pediatric ones, and preying on the “mom guilt” Modi promised to alleviate. A different interpretation, which Bobbie and ByHeart are promoting, is that they are transformational businesses in the classic start-up mode, breaking into an industry that has grown complacent. “I got into this to reform this industry,” Modi told me multiple times. When I spoke to the founders of ByHeart, they seemed genuine but also used variations of the word innovate more times than any start-up founder I’ve ever met — and I once spent half an hour with Adam Neumann. Both companies launched into a crisis and pitched themselves as heroes. They promised to deliver American parents from their latest insecurity — at least so long as they didn’t create a new one.
From left: The old school. Photo: SimilacThe new school. Photo: Bobbie
From top: The old school. Photo: SimilacThe new school. Photo: Bobbie
The quirks of the baby-formula industry that made room for ByHeart and Bobbie — and led to the shortage this year — have been brewing since the 1950s. The postwar baby boom introduced new customers, and developments in formula-making brought convenience that outweighed the cost. Similac (“similar to lactation”) came to market in 1951, followed a few years later by Enfamil (“infant meal,” if you squint). They remain the predominant formulas today. Younger mothers were especially quick to adopt a product that promised scientifically calibrated benefits as well as liberation from the tyranny of breastfeeding. The early 1970s saw the lowest rates of breast-feeding in decades — only 6 percent of infants were being breastfed six months after birth — and in 1980, a researcher in New York City’s Bureau of Maternity Services said that, for some women, the ability to feed your child formula was “a kind of status symbol.”
But the industry had also come into disrepute. Nestlé and other companies were using salespeople dressed as nurses to push formula in developing countries, where parents sometimes unknowingly overdiluted their formula or mixed it with contaminated water. Breastfeeding rates started to rise again, and, in 1980, Congress passed the Infant Formula Act, which set nutritional and safety requirements managed by the FDA. “This is much more like producing a drug than a food,” says Belldegrun, the CEO of ByHeart, who started the company after spending eight years at a health-care-focused hedge fund. The regulations brought welcome standards and reassurance for parents but also made breaking into the market even more difficult. Since 1980, Abbott and Mead Johnson, which makes Enfamil, have controlled more than 80 percent of the market.
That consolidation was cemented by the federal government’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children — WIC, for short — a crucial program that provides nutritional support for lower-income families. WIC has always encouraged breastfeeding, but it also covers the cost of formula. During the 1980s, formula prices increased by more than 150 percent, vastly outpacing the price of milk. In response, President George H.W. Bush mandated that each state run a competitive process in which the lowest bidder would win an exclusive contract to sell formula to WIC families. (The program is federally funded but administered separately by each state.) The system limited choices for lower-income families but worked as a cost-cutting measure. States now pay as little as 15 percent of the retail price, saving taxpayers more than a billion dollars every year. The large players that dominate the industry — since the mid-’90s, every WIC contract in all 50 states has gone to Abbott, Mead Johnson, or Nestlé — are willing to make this deal not only because the program accounts for more than half of all baby formula sold in the U.S. but also because retailers are more likely to stock the WIC-approved formula, which can then be sold to other consumers at retail prices. When California switched its contract from Similac to Enfamil in 2007, Enfamil’s share of the state’s market grew from 5 to 95 percent.
Modi encountered the industry’s barriers to entry right away. In 2019, she and her co-founder, Sarah Hardy — Modi’s “work wife” from Airbnb — launched a trial with 100 families in San Francisco, offering a “companion” formula for toddlers. But confusion about its marketing, and whether it could be safely served to an infant, got the attention of the FDA, and Bobbie voluntarily recalled its product. When Bobbie relaunched in 2021, its formula was made by Perrigo, a white-label manufacturer that helps new brands get to market by creating recipes that don’t run afoul of FDA rules.
The powdery contents of baby formula are one of the many mysteries that greet new parents. So what is it? The primary ingredient in most formula is milk, most often from a cow and typically skim. The milk is mixed in a giant vat with a protein called whey; a sugar, usually lactose, which serves as a necessary carbohydrate for growth; and several different vegetable oils — sunflower, safflower, rapeseed, soybean — that provide babies with the fatty acids they need to grow. Sprinkle in some vitamins and minerals meant to approximate some of the contents of breastmilk, and maybe toss in a prebiotic, then run the mix through a spray dryer to turn it into a powder. Mix with water, and serve. There are different recipes for babies born prematurely, or who suffer from particular allergies, but most pediatricians agree that as long as your baby is drinking the stuff, there is little functional difference between most formulas on the market.
But this is modern parenting, which means the situation could not be so straightforward. In the formula world, there are now countless websites that scrutinize the variable nutrient levels of every product. Abbott alone produces a dozen versions of powdered Similac, including several designed “for fussiness and gas.” Lisa Richardson, a pediatric dietitian who runs the site Formula Sense, told me that many of these were “solutions in search of a problem.”
The aesthetic and ethical preferences of millennials have followed them into parenthood. Instead of Pampers, there are Jessica Alba’s plant-based diapers printed with avocados and sweet potatoes; instead of Desitin, you can buy Kristen Bell’s diaper-rash cream, packaged in millennial pink; and if Gerber doesn’t feel good enough, Jennifer Garner sells squeezable pouches of organic baby goo. (The old-school brands, including the formula giants, now have organic versions, too.) A tech company called Hatch Baby — no relation to the bougie maternitywear brand of the same name — makes a diaper-changing pad that doubles as a scale, allowing nervous parents to keep track of their baby’s weight after every feeding rather than waiting for their next pediatrician’s visit. If there is something for a parent to fret about, there is likely a product promising to ease their mind.
Modi’s decision to position Bobbie as a European-style formula was driven by a market demand: Many parents in her cohort had suddenly begun taking the drastic step of importing formula from Europe. A study from 2018, the year Bobbie launched, found that 20 percent of formula-feeding parents at a New York City pediatrician were importing formula from Europe. (The demographic most likely to do this: white moms with college degrees and household incomes greater than $200,000.) Only 8 percent had received any guidance about European formulas from their doctor, but the survey respondents said they had become convinced that imported formula was the healthier choice for their babies. In short: Brest was best. “I remember being on Park Slope Parents” — a notoriously hyperactive online forum — “and people would post at the beginning of summer, ‘Is anyone going to Europe? I will pay you whatever you want to smuggle formula back for me in a suitcase,’ ” one parent of two children who are safely beyond formula-drinking age told me. Bobbie sells cans measured by the gram — the European way — and the company’s Instagram profile advertises the brand as “Organic Infant Formula for your bébé.”
There are differences between American and European formulas both in what regulators require and in what they prohibit. (Europe, in general, has stricter regulations about the use of pesticides.) But there is no scientific evidence that European formulas are safer or more nutritious than American ones. While Modi had been concerned about all the scary-looking words on the formula cans, they were there because FDA regulations require listing scientific ingredient names, such as cholecalciferol and cyanocobalamin; European companies can use their common names, vitamins D and B12. Many parents blanch at the inclusion of corn syrup in some American formulas, but it’s not the high-fructose kind and is only used in formulas for babies who can’t tolerate lactose. In a post on Formula Sense, Richardson gave a rating of “three dirty diapers” to the claim that European formulas “are more like breastmilk,” noting that both “have extremely similar nutrient profiles.”
But consumers wanted it, and having formula delivered by an American company rather than imported through the black market was appealing. When ByHeart launched this year, it did so without the explicit European connection, focusing on the fact that it is the only U.S. formula that uses whole milk, rather than skim, which some pediatricians believe is a promising innovation. ByHeart conducted a clinical trial — 100 babies on its formula, 100 breastfed babies, and 100 babies on Enfamil — in which the authors found that ByHeart’s babies spat up less than the Enfamil kids and showed “more efficient growth.” Bobbie and ByHeart have inevitably been compared to each other, and many pediatricians are glad to have new products pushing the established players in the market. But if you’re going to pay more than three times the cost of Wirecutter’s pediatrician-approved recommendation — a Costco generic, also produced by Perrigo — how to choose? Do you like the idea of ByHeart’s whole milk or Bobbie’s two extra milligrams of DHA, a fatty acid that studies suggest is critical for brain function? And before you make any final decisions, are you really okay giving your child a formula without taurine, a nutrient found in breastmilk that studies show may or may not be beneficial to your kid? Neither ByHeart nor Bobbie have any.
Both start-ups insist that the stuff inside their cans is what attracts parents. “People come to us for a simple reason: ‘Baby eats it, baby doesn’t spit it up, and baby shits it out well,’ ” Kim Gebbia Chappell, Bobbie’s vice-president of marketing, told me. But they have both put effort into making parents feel good about the choice they’re making. Modi has spoken about Bobbie as a product that should “spark joy,” as if she were selling The Life-Changing Magic of Not Spitting Up. Each can of Bobbie is printed with a quirky sticker — MILK DRUNK IN LOVE, BOTTLE SERVICE — and the company’s website features a diverse set of parents. ByHeart’s chief brand officer previously worked for J.Crew and Hatch, the Alex Mill of maternitywear, and has published a book on modern French couture. Both companies market their products as gluten free, even though virtually every formula is gluten free by default. “We did the work on everything from what’s in the formula to social — everybody else had overlooked this, and it’s the stuff that matters to millennial parents,” Chappell said. “We normalized what it means that you are unboxing your formula on Instagram — Reeves, this did not happen before Bobbie.”
In June, President Biden held a roundtable with formula-company executives to discuss long-term solutions to the shortage. The government had followed the lead of Park Slope Parents and was now flying formula in from Europe, but the 60 million bottles arriving from the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, England, and Australia were a temporary salve: They amounted to a week’s supply. While Abbott was notably absent at the roundtable, Belldegrun had scored an invite. ByHeart’s launch just weeks after the Sturgis shutdown had been fortuitous and hectic. “My wife and I just had our second this past weekend,” Belldegrun told the group.
“Good luck with the new babe, ol’ buddy,” Biden said.
ByHeart had scored a seat, rather than Bobbie, because the company had taken a different path to market. Instead of going through Perrigo, the white-label manufacturer Modi had used, Belldegrun and Funt decided to create a recipe from scratch that would have to go through a clinical trial to get approved, and to buy a factory of their own. The facility in Reading, Pennsylvania, is the first new formula plant approved by the FDA in 15 years. This had been costly — ByHeart has raised nearly three times as much money as Bobbie — but when the shortage hit, the company was better able to position itself as a potential solution. Belldegrun told Biden that his company was waiting on approval from the FDA to open two additional facilities and that ByHeart believed it was on a path to feed 500,000 babies — more than 10 percent of American infants, enough to challenge Nestlé for third place. Belldegrun told me ByHeart expected to hit that target within two years and had even more ambitious goals. “We didn’t go buying factories, and conducting clinical trials, and raising $190 million to be a one-product company,” he said. “We built this to be a nationally accessible brand.” He suggested that ByHeart would be expanding into specialized recipes and “showing up as a feeding partner throughout the nourishment continuum from pregnancy through toddler.”
When Modi and I spoke in August, six months after the recall, she said that Bobbie still had “tens of thousands of people” on its waiting list. She wanted to increase production, but doing so would take months. Bobbie had even asked its “suite of influencers” to stop posting about the product. In a time of genuine crisis, the classic start-up playbook — virality, growth at all costs, breaking things — simply didn’t work. “For us to increase production, we need to invest in manufacturing,” she said. “That will take years, not months.”
Neither start-up is in a position to solve the formula crisis, but they are both interested in shaping the industry’s future. Modi had moved to Washington, D.C., mostly to be a few time zones closer to her family in Ireland, but she admitted that “it doesn’t hurt” being close to the policymakers who will play a large role in determining her company’s future. In September, the White House is hosting a conference on health and nutrition — the first in more than 50 years — and Politico recently reported that this summer saw a “mini lobbying boom” around the formula industry. Bobbie and ByHeart both hired lobbyists, and the major players were devoting additional resources to courting lawmakers. (Even Amazon has gotten involved: WIC sales currently have to take place in a store, but Amazon is hoping the crisis might push the government to allow them online.) One possibility is giving WIC families more choice about which formulas they can buy; an Ohio Republican has introduced the Improving Newborn Formula Access for a Nutritious Tomorrow Act — yes, it spells INFANT — to that effect.
The FDA also announced that it was considering allowing European imports permanently. Both Bobbie and ByHeart support this in the short term, but a lasting shift would put them in a bind. Modi has long argued that European formulas were special and that its domestic imitation of them was the crucial advantage Bobbie offered to parents. Now, she was arguing that we should be wary of anything crossing the Atlantic. “The moment we take a temporary solution and apply it permanently raises a lot of questions,” she said, asking how the FDA would guarantee safety and manage recalls from abroad. She cautioned against “a ‘made in China’ situation.” Christina Berberich, Bobbie’s head of regulatory and safety issues, who previously worked at Abbott, echoed Modi’s concerns. But when I asked Berberich whether European formula had a history of safety issues or recalls worse than the U.S., she couldn’t point to anything in particular.
As an alternative, both Modi and Belldegrun said they hoped the government would support more domestic manufacturers. Modi said that could be Bobbie’s future, and with all of the market disruption this year, other competitors will almost certainly emerge. Several start-ups, here and abroad, have spent the past few years trying to develop a formula derived from breastmilk stem cells. Max Rye, the co-founder of a company called TurtleTree Labs, has said its attempt to create infant formula is merely a test case for a more ambitious goal: “to replace all milk.”
So what’s a dedicated, caring, and confused parent to do? The FDA has proved itself unworthy of our blind faith, as has the biggest company in the industry — but the past decade of blitzscaling start-ups hasn’t necessarily given us reason to put a critical food source in the hands of people new to the business. The theoretical arrival of stem-cell breastmilk isn’t likely to make the choice any clearer.
Modi often talks about her company as a “cultural movement,” as start-up founders tend to do. Her particular mission, she says, is to fight the stigma that forced her to shamefully hide her formula can in her pantry, and to put formula feeding on equal footing with breastfeeding. When Bobbie launched its first major marketing campaign last year, it intentionally did so in August — National Breastfeeding Month. “Did we poke a few bears? Yes,” Chappell told me. “But we like to say that we are radically centrist.”
This is a favorite Bobbie catchphrase, meant to position the company between Big Bottle — the makers of Abbott and Similac — and “what we call ‘lactivists,’ ” as Chappell put it. Breastfeeding rates in America have gone up and down over the years, driven by medical discoveries, activism, and political and societal choices. (Some studies have shown higher rates of breastfeeding in countries with paid parental leave.) Neither ByHeart nor Bobbie would argue their formula is more nutritious than breastfeeding — a ByHeart ad: “Breast is best. We’re next” — and both the medical Establishment and those skeptical of it recommend breastfeeding whenever possible. But the exact benefits are unclear. It’s difficult to separate breastfeeding from other factors, and clinical trials are hard to design: No ethical researcher is going to blindly assign different feeding practices to new parents in a maternity ward.
The American Academy of Pediatrics didn’t necessarily help matters this summer, when it released its first updated guidance on breastfeeding in a decade. The AAP renewed its recommendation that infants breastfeed exclusively for six months — but it encouraged parents to continue doing so for a full two years. Many exhausted mothers threw their breast pumps across the room. The AAP said its goal wasn’t to stigmatize parents who use formula but rather, in fact, to fight a different stigma, against parents who choose to breastfeed their children. In 2021, the journal Maternal & Child Nutrition published a paper titled “Guilt, Shame, and Postpartum Infant Feeding Outcomes: A Systematic Review.” The paper found that whether parents choose to breastfeed or give their infant formula — well, pretty much all of them feel like failures.
The pandemic years have taught us a lot about the difficulty of public-health messaging, but it’s still depressing to see the system fail on a topic as fundamental to the species as feeding infants. Modern parenting has become a buffet of choices with no perfect option and a battle against stigmas on every flank. Bobbie’s mission to destigmatize formula feeding even risked creating a negative perception of its own: that parents who can’t afford its formula weren’t giving their kid the same chance as parents they saw posting about Moonique on Instagram. “Are we creating second-class-nutrition citizens?” Richardson, who runs Formula Sense, asked me. “The most innovative formula from ten years ago — that’s what the WIC kids get.”
Modi was aware of that danger. “ This probably is the biggest thing that keeps me up at night,” she said. “This is not a situation where Kind Bar can say something critical about Clif Bar. Shame on any formula company or brand for positioning another formula in a bad light.” The right answer to all of this was to support parents no matter what choice they made. Doing so would require meaningful parental-leave policies, boosting the funding for the WIC program, better guidance and more understanding from health-care providers, and generally relieving parents of the anxious feeling that their best isn’t enough. But where’s the profit in that? Modi was still in pitch mode when I asked her about this, insisting there was “room to uplevel” the standard for formula in the U.S. But she also offered a message to parents that would have been comforting to her younger self: “If you feed your baby Similac, like I did with my first child, your baby is going to be perfect.”
Photo-illustration: The strategist; Photos: Retilers
You may have noticed some posts from our friends at strategist on the cut. They’ll be dropping in every now and again, sharing their expertise on the Basics you don’t have time to research and the weird and wonderful you don’t know you need.
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“Trust is a huge thing with Syril. He’s never comfortable in relationships, and he’s only learning to be comfortable in his skin on Ghorman.” Photo: Lucasfilm Ltd.
Spoilers ahead for the second season of Andor through episode eight, “Who Are You?”
Here’s the thing about Syril Karn, Andor’s resident ideological romantic and bureaucrat king: If he grew up in, say, modern-day Connecticut, he probably would’ve aspired to be a management consultant, or a tech bro, or a wellness influencer … anything that would’ve given him a structure and the frisson of a higher purpose. But the sad, noodly guy with mommy issues who’s searching the galaxy for something to be a part of, and someone to tell him what to do, grew up in the context of Emperor Palpatine’s Empire, and so the thing he wants is to be a good foot soldier.
In “Who Are You?,” the poor guy meets his end. After spending much of the season embedded in Ghorman to infiltrate the Ghorman Front on behalf of Dedra (Denise Gough), his handler (and romantic partner?!), festooned in a broad belief that he’s there to suss out rebels but also coming to a gradual awareness that his job isn’t quite what it seems, his foundations are shaken when the Empire proceeds to massacre the Ghormans on what even Syril understands to be illegitimate grounds. But before he can fully process what’s changing inside of him, he spots Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), the source of his prior misfortunes. This sends him into a rage as he redirects all of his emotions into attacking the Rebel. In the ensuing melee, Syril miraculously gets the upper hand, but he’s stunned when Andor — the man he’s been obsessed with for years — doesn’t actually recognize him. And that’s when he’s shot in the head.
Played with impeccable precision by Kyle Soller, who did, in fact, grow up in Connecticut and now resides in London, Syril receives an ignoble end. But it’s one that felt right to Soller, who is both pleased with how his character went out and sad to see him go — but at least he got to keep some of Syril’s “awesome coats” to remember him by.
Syril is probably one of my favorite characters I’ve seen on television in a while. He’s just so odd and particular. How did you feel about his grand exit? I was very pleased about it. He had an ignominious end. It was so fitting for someone who has delusions of grandeur, who is a fantasist and an utter romantic about his standing in the Empire. It was perfect.
I’m also a bit sad to see him go, because ultimately he’s the victim of his own ideological worship. Season two surprised me with how much heart is in him as well. I feel for him. He’s just misunderstood. We’re all our own worst enemies, you know? I feel sorry for him when the revelations were coming thick and fast and he realizes he was just a patsy — though one who’s actually making a huge impact on one of the most important points in Star Wars history, which he’ll never be remembered for.
Yet in an interesting way, Syril ties into one of Andor’s major themes, which is this idea that everybody is part of a larger system they might not understand but still have an impact on. So in that sense he’s a truly ironic and tragic figure. One hundred percent. The other thing about Syril is that he’s someone who’s not yet fully formed. It’s like a coming-of-age story for him. Of course, Syril would think that Andor is his story, but he’s trying to find himself within the structure of the Empire.
I kind of felt like he could’ve ended up on the other side. Not that I was hoping for Syril to have a redemption arc or anything. He just represents so clearly the banality of evil. The everyman who said yes way too often or drank the Kool-Aid one too many times growing up in a place like Coruscant. I mean, look at his mother and you understand why he’d latch onto a dominating behemoth like the Empire. After his meeting with Partagaz, he’s like, “This is the best moment of my life,” even though he just exchanged six words with the guy.
Bootlicker is a word that gets thrown around for him a lot, and it’s not wrong. He’s desperate to please and be recognized. In season two, when he’s promoted in the Bureau of Standards and gets to flex his voice and power a little bit, he loves that. That’s something we didn’t get to fully investigate for him because there’s only so much time, but he would’ve been the perfect yes-man at the right level. Though, it’s funny — I don’t know if he would’ve really succeeded at a very high level.
Some viewers have described him as a fascist, but I don’t think I agree with that. He strikes me more as a dude who just wants to be part of a bigger, prestigious system. If the Empire wasn’t his dominant context, he’d probably aspire to work for Goldman Sachs or something. Right. He’d want to be among people with really good sartorial choices, who take shit seriously, who work really hard and have high standards.
I appreciate your description of Syril being a fantasist because he does seem to have a rich interior life. One of my favorite details is the fact that, as he settles into Ghorman, he starts dressing well and meaningfully decorates his apartment. By this last batch of episodes, I got the sense he really vibes with the place. Is that where you placed him in his emotional journey? Yeah. A lot of that comes out through the strength of the detail in the costume design by Mike Wilkinson and the hair and makeup by Emma Scott. In episode seven, you see him walk into the plaza and his hair is a bit longer, it looks more Ghorman. He’s got a new Ghorman jacket, but instead of it being tightly fitted, it’s letting loose a bit. Because Mike and Emma are amazing at constructing looks based on how we were feeling in our own character psychology, I saw this as a part of an individuation from his former self. Literally, the costumes I had in the first season, I could only stand one way. But in Ghorman, he’s starting to let that version of himself go. He’s also starting to become aware. He knows he’s a plant on Ghorman and has been for a few years now, but the information coming in from Dedra is different from what he’s gathering in the field. So he’s known for a while now he’s not getting the full story.
Trust is a huge thing with Syril. He’s never comfortable in relationships, and he’s only learning to be comfortable in his skin on Ghorman. Then by episode eight, he begins to understand his role in betraying Rylanz. I always thought Syril would’ve seen him as a pseudo-father figure he never had, though you don’t really get those scenes. We had to fill in some gaps. But I always leaned in that direction, because it makes the devastation more real and affecting for everybody when Rylanz confronts him and then he confronts Dedra. He’s met with the ultimate betrayal by Dedra, the person he loves in his own particular way of loving — and by the Empire, his most dear love. It’s utterly life shattering. He’s very human. He’s not this fascist people might’ve pigeonholed him into. He’s so much more complicated than that. All the characters are.
The Ghorman massacre really shakes that faith in him, but when he sees Andor, he becomes hyperfocused in redirecting all that anger at him. Walk me through that beat. In that moment, he’s met with the realization that everything he held to be true is false. It’s soul-crushing and life-altering. It’s kind of leaving a cult. He doesn’t know if the sky is actually blue anymore. He’s not on firm ground.
Then he sees the guy that he has blamed over the last four years of his life. The one true thing he knows is that he hates this guy. So what’s unleashed is just this primal anger and frustration. A mixture of everything we know about Syril and everything he’s experienced in the last ten minutes is just unleashed on Cassian. He isn’t even thinking, like, If I capture him now, I can save everything. After seeing the massacre, he’s out. But when he sees Cassian, his response is more: I want to hurt you and I want to punish you, but I also want to punish myself. The fight is so quick, but there are moments we worked in where Syril’s okay with getting hit because he wants to feel something, to be flagellated in some way. Any other day, Cassian would’ve just beaten the shit out of him, but Syril’s imbued with this superhuman ferocity from his whole world crashing down around him. He’s gone completely.
I’m curious: How much of Kyle Soller is in Syril Karn? We’re like 100 percent the same. (Laughs.) I sympathize with him so much, man. I have a lot of compassion for him. I don’t think I’m as obsessive as him, but I have obsessive qualities. I hope I’m not as angry either, but that’s something I tried to build in way, way, way in the beginning. His anger is zipped up so tight that it’s in his jaw. I remember Toby Haynes, who directed a lot of the first season, was using a reference picture for me for a hair color, and he was like, “I like this photo, it looks like you’re chewing on a wasp.” And I was like, That’s Syril. Chewing all his bitterness, constantly so disappointed with everyone. So yeah, obviously, there are major differences, but I feel for the guy.
That wasp story really does speak to the specific physicality you brought to the character. He’s so ramrod and uptight. He’s very clenched from the bottom up. Did you have anybody particular in mind when you were modeling him? Oh no, that came the more I sat with Syril and worked on him. I had only gotten three episodes when I had to make a decision on this role, and I think it was in the third episode where you get the scenes with Eedy at the breakfast table. That’s when I was like, “Oh yeah, I know exactly who this guy is now.”
He’s a little slouched, withdrawn. Yes, and within that withdrawal is a deep steeliness. He’s a caged animal. His rigidity is all in the writing. It’s in how he describes his tailoring and how seriously he takes shit. It’s natural for the guy, who has such high standards for himself and others, to hold himself in a certain way.
Speaking of Eedy, how’s working with Kathryn Hunter? She seems like a great hang. Oh my God. The ultimate, man. She’s a literal genius. She’s so playful. Nothing’s ever the same twice. Not because she’s trying to mess with anything; she’s just that creative. I think Eedy is one of the biggest unsung Star Wars villains out there, personally, and it was so much fun playing with her. She just has this amazing ability to use her voice. She can change octaves within the same sentence and make you feel something instantaneously. She’s magic.
I was pretty delighted when Syril and Dedra were revealed to be a couple. Situationship? How do you think they work? What’s Syril’s love language? (Laughs.) I don’t know what happens when the lights go out, man. That’s something Denise and I just kept on saying to each other: “What do they do together? How do they even eat at the same table, let alone when the lights go out? How would they even touch one another?” It was always a conversation right up until the point of filming, then we tried not to think about it and tried make it as weird as possible — which wasn’t hard because both of our characters are super fucking weird. Maybe you put them in the same place and there’s just a lot of staring. So how it works, I don’t know.
I do think, in season two, you get to see that Syril has a little bit of heart. He comes home before the Eedy lunch and he’s asking her how a meeting went and everything. He’s opening up about how he wishes they wouldn’t have to do this. You see he has a level of vulnerability he hasn’t shown before, and maybe that’s something that allows that relationship to be. Otherwise, I don’t even know if you could call it a relationship. It’s like a strange agreement.
At the same time, she clearly cares about him. She defends him from his mother and strikes a deal with her. I imagine Dedra’s love language naturally involves expressing power in some way. Yeah. I mean, Oscar Wilde has that quote: “Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.” Ultimately, they come together both desiring power and to capture Cassian. Dedra becomes an object of his fixation about power. He was like, “Oh my God, you’re a member of the ISB, I want to be you, but I also think I want to be with you, and I also kind of want to be inside you?”
Plus, there’s some stuff that overlaps between her and his mom. Exactly. “We both come from shitty backgrounds and you’re weird with people and I’m weird with people, so this is good.”
What’s the biggest thing you’ll take away from working on Andor? It’s really so cliché, but it’s hard to choose one, man. It was such an amazing thing to work on, on every level. I’ve never been a part of something that huge and that creatively freeing on a TV set before. But I guess what it would be is the importance of community and leadership. It came from the top down with Tony Gilroy and Diego Luna, and it filtered through to every level. Tony gifted every single person on the crew and the actors with responsibility and freedom to tell their story. Obviously there were scripts and everything, but we were trusted. “This is yours, we’re not going to hold your hand.” I was made aware that it literally takes a village to do something like this. Everybody working at the peak of their capabilities. Every tiny piece was made to be seen, even if it was never shot. I just have so much gratitude. So I guess all that, and I got to take back my awesome coats.
Deborah and ava have effectively killed late Night, so i is to leave the country, i guess. Photo: Jake Giles Netter/Max
I’ve been Watching TV Long Enough to remember a time when the season finals was the episode with the Big Event in it. SINCE the late-priestige-tv wind-Let’s Say the 2010s-it SEEMS the ONCE-SUBVVERIVE BUT-TYPICAL MODEL IS FOR ALL THE BIG STUFF TO HAPPEN IN second-To-last episode of the season, and for the actual final to be a quieter, more meditative stretch of story. I’m not against it, althouough i will think what was once a surpriceg and inventive style has beCome so mainstream as to be ordinary, and it can make a littlerwhelming.
In the case of Hacks finale this season, Waled we have not have ben been better served with Last Week Episode as Our Season Ender? Left Wondering How Deborah Will Pick Up All the Pieces But Knowing She Has Ava by Her Side? Instead, we get this kind of Lost in Translation-Esque Jaunt, Which Give US Some Beautiful Images But Mostly Feels like it represents for Deborah: A LOT of Treading Water and Waiting Around for Action to Resume.
We Start With Deborah Doing What I Simply Cannot Believe She Did Not Do priority to blowing up her jab and her life: consulting an attorney. At this point, she has reached the bottom of the roster; None of the White-Shoe firms she’s calmed up can find a Legal way for Deborah to perform in the Next 18 Months. The ambulance-chasing Layer here disappotes her by saying that he also cannot find a loophole Becuses isn’t one; Eve if there were, no venue woul the risk of tachying on Deborah. All she gets out of this meeting is a guy to call in case she has surgery and they leave an instrument inside her.
Over at Jimmy’s Office, Ava is Considering Other Strategies. “I’ll Suck Bob Lipka’s Dick,” She Says. “My Blowjob’s Not Great, But How Bad Can It Possybly Be?” Jimmy tells ava to focus her energy on getting deborah to write again. Howver, Obstacles Abound As Deborah Reckons with the fact that she does not ows the rights to any of the work, and she can’t simply practs in front of the Mirror. She Needs a stage and an audience, and waiting it out isn’t a gioven becase 18 months is a long time for her. Deborah decides to decide to vegas, alone, ostensibly to figure out her next move but really just to wallow, play with her Grandson, and do crossword puzzles. I love Fear these habitats will age! She Also Visits Marcus, Who Politely Declines Her Invitation to Leave the Stable, Well Paying Work Has Now for the Chaotic Vortex is Her Professional Life. Of Course and Misses Conniving, but Not Enough. Deborah Consoles Herself with Swag From a Touristy Souvenir Shop. While wearing a bedazzled Trucker hat, she mixes a rum and coke. Its… Pretty Depressing.
But Things Turn ARUND WEND SHE GETS AN “EMERGENCY” Call From Marty. Turns out it is a fashion Emergency – The Best Kind! – and a lifeboat. He’s part Owner of a hotel in hawaii and offers Deborah the penthouse suite, free of Charge. Why not Enjoy Doing Nothing As Long As Nothing Is All She Can? This is so aspirational. I HOPE HAVE AN EX LIKE MARTY WHEN I’M AGE AGE.
Deborah Aggrees, and the gang is thrilled. IT’S LIKE WATCHING ALL The CURSED HOUSEHOLD OBJECTS LIGHT UP WEND WEHENGE AGREES TO LET THE BEAST THROW HER THAT DINNER PARTY. Finally, The Resort Collection Will Get Its Day in the Sun! Damien Can Get His Ulcer Removed! Ava Can Dress Like Ace Ventura: Pet detective! Swimmes that needed a reason to do, but still!
Back in Vegas, Marcus and His Loved Ons Watch the Tropicalia Get Demolished and Lamental The Old Vegas, the One That Wasn’t All Sterile and Lame and Full of Chain Stores. IT USED TO BE GRITTY AND Dirty; be did everyeryhing get so corporate?Sounds like a business idea is brewing… but we don’t have time to reflect on that right now! We are Boarding Deborah’s Private Plane.
Ava Happy Pops Her Sleeping Aid of Choice – “Benzo use is highly correlated with dementia, but than’s a tomorrow problem ” – and, as she blabs About all the relaxing they going to do, deborah, clearly, is no way this plan will be going to hawaii. Only prepared to travel domesticity;
On the Flight, Deborah Managed to Secure a Gig at a Casino. There was a loophole after all: she can perform through a translator! It Feels like the end of Tár.
We get a montage, with a cover of “Dreams” by the Cranberries, of Deborah and Ava Looking like they’re on a thriling honeymoon. They’re gambling and drinking champagne and eating by the aquarium. More Shows Get Added. Karaoke. Couples Massages. Deborah’s Jokes Are Extremely Hacky, Hacks’s standards. Deborah’s Happess Swiftly Begins to Resemble Mania and/or Denial. Ava’s Expressions Sour. She must be so lonely. Where is everyone Else? Deborah’s Status Rises to Residency. She Falls Asleep Onstage. Ava is bored out of her mind and desperate to get to work. Deborah is drinking like a fish (aquarium callback) and lashes out at ava for accuratly describing the situation, which is they ben there for months, deborah’s book is a problem, and neoheter of say is really happy.
Deborah Declales that iT’S Pathetic for ava to have no friends but Deborah. Why is ava still here? Well, Ava is worked About Deborah, but she can take a hint, so she Announces that she’s going home.In the Morning, Ava Wakes Up to A Million Texts and A Chilling Headline: TMZ is reporting that Deborah is dead.
Va Severance-Sprints Through All the Halls of the Casino. When she gets to Deborah’s Door, Deborah is Very Much Alive. But what is Dead, accorting to this prewritten obituary, is late Night, alledly killed by none other than Deborah. Some of you have pointed this out in the comments, and i aggree with you: the way this show talks About “late night” does feed a little… dated. I mean, i believe that it still means a lot to deborah and that it is a huge deal for va a head work, etc. Her Competition was that clip show! The Network wasn’t Planning to Keep Doing a Late-Night Show at All!
Anyway, Deborah is horrified to be doing the thing of atttending her own funeral and finding out what People bey about her, Namely that she is “the r-vord: retired. ” (Ava Should Have Known Which R-Word Deborah Meant; IT’S NOT LIKE SHE’S GEN Z.) Again, I find it a bit of a stretch that deborah can only hear from this random tmz reporter what she does not absorb through any other means, but her fire haturned. This will Will swimming Be her legacy.
Gioven that her contract situation is what it is, what do we think means for Deborah’s Next Move? Nurtouring a new generation of female talent? (Not that nurtouring is really Deborah’s Thing.) Producing? Is the Next Season Going to Come with a “One Year Late” Time Jump? Are you still invested in seeing what Deborah Can Pull off at this stage of the game? The creaters envisioned this as a five-season show from the jumpso This Wold Be Deborah’s Last Bite at the Apple: Where Will She Go From Here?
Photo: Laurent Koffel/Gamma-Rapho Via Getty Images
Any real-aestate broker will tel you the best deals are in co-ops, Particularly the Elite, Upper East Side Buildings with Rigid Rules and Palatial apartments have far been abandoned by the currency of blingy condos. But Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost, Both Native New Yorkers, Were Apparently Not Too Put off by the Arcane Board Application to Score a Real-Estate Deal. The Couple Has Purchased A 6,000-Square-Foot pentouse AT 1220 Park Avenue, The Wall Street Journal reported. And they got a great price: Johansson and Jost Paid JUST $ 13 Million, Half the Original Ascing Price, and the Same Amount that Sellers Craig and Deborah Corgut Paid in 2006.
The penthouse, a triplex in the rosario candala-dasigned prewar co-op, has six bedrooms, six and a half bathrooms, six wod-sourning fireplaces, and 65 Windows with four expans, as well as terraces on the top two Floors. IT LOOKS EPIC, THIS IS A LITTLE STODGY. The listing says that the apartment underwent a two -ear renovation, although it doesn’t say it was Completed, but with High-end renovation prices of $ 1,000 per Square Foot, the apartment worth still be a bargain. And if the renovation was recent, it may Only Need Some Aesthetic Changes.
The SIX-BEDROM CO-OP ON PARK Avenue was Purchased for $ 13 Million, the Same Price that the Sellers Bowht it for in 2006.
Photo: Douglas Elliman
The apartment has 65 Windows and Four Exposives, Offering Plented of Light. The Oak-Paneled Library Also Has a Wood-Burning Fireplace.
Photo: Douglas Elliman
Previously, The Hollywood Couple Toured a 4,179-Square-Foot Penthouse At the Wales, a condo also in carnegie hill that sold to another buyer for $ 19 million and was, frankly, far lesson, although it also have two floors of terraces. While Johansson May have grown up downtown, and some might have guessed that she and jost woupe choose there or in brooklyn, the Upper East Side, Which for Years Had a reputation as a stuffy, Old-fashioned Neighborhouod, Has of Late Experienced Something. Resurgency, with Downtown Restaurants, Members’ Clubs, and Revitalized Old-Establishment Spots opening the neighborhood. SO FAR, MANY OF THE WEALTHY NEW BUYERS HAVE GRAVITATED TOWARDS New-DEVELOPMENT CONDOS LIKE The Wales.
While the park avenue apartment was on the market for 69 days at this price-a relatively quick period for co-ops-it ben on and off the market Since 2018. MANY SIMilar Co-Opps have sold for prices on par with what they have traded for in the Early Aughts, and 50 Percent price cuts at all. John Thain, The Form Merrill Lynch Executive, sold The 740 Park Penthouse he paid $ 27.5 million for 2006, then renovated, for $ 28 million Last year. Another co-op sale at 4 E. 66th Closed Last Week for $ 39 Million; The apartment haad been on the market SINCE 2022 and started outing $ 55 million. And Real-Estate Developer Edward Minskoff sold His Park Avenue Apartment for Less Than Half His Initial $ 17.7 Million Ascing Price AFTER Two Years on the Market, Netting Just $ 7.4 Million.
The Triplex was on the market for 69 days, a relatively Quick Time Span for units of this type.
Photo: Douglas Elliman
أطلت النجمة اللبنانية كارول سماحة أمس في برنامج “هنا العاصمة” مع الاعلامية لمصريس الحديديcing وكشفت للمرة الأولى عن سر هذا النفور بينها وبين النجمة إليسا خلال تواجدهما في لجنة تحكيم برنامج ” الماضي.
ولدى سؤال لميس لكارول عن الخلاف بينهما ، أكدت كارول بأنّ خلاف واض mistake أنّ إليسا لم تكن تريد وجودها في البرنامج قائلةً: “سأعترف لأول مرة بشoes لم تكن سعيدة بوجودي معها في “أكس فاكتور” ، وأعتقد أنّ ذلك يفسر أسباب التوتي كانت موجودة في البرنامج “.
وأضافت سماحة: “كنت حزينة في التصوير ، وحاولت قدر المستطاع أن لا أظهر أيّ شيء أمام الجماهير ، حتى ينجح البامج ، ي بالرغم أنني سمعت كلاماً لا يليق بي ”.
أعلن الفنان المصري أحمد سعد عن إالته للوشوم التي رسمها على ذراعه قبل أعوام ، ووصف هذا القرال الأفض فياته بعدما تعرض للعديد من الانتقادات على مدار الفترة الماضية بسبها ، خاصة أن ظهرت واض mistake وقد حظي قراره بتأيد كبير من الجمهور وبعض الفنانين.
أحمد سعد يزيل التاتو من يده
وفي التفاصيل ، وثق أحمد سعد لحظات من الجلسة التي خع لها لهالة التاتو من يده ، وكتب على الفيديو: التاتو وشايف إن ده من أحسن القرات اللي أخدتها “.
وتفاعل عدد كبير من المتابعين والفنانين مع الفيديو ، كان من بينهم … له ، وكذلك منة عدلي القيعي ، فيما كتبت له الفنانة راندا البحيري: “مبروك يا حمادة”. أما الجمهور ، فقد وجه له العديد من كلمات الإادة ، من بينها: “الله ينور ، أizing قرار “،” أحلى حاجة عملتها في حياتك ، ربنا يسعدك “.
كانت الوشوم التي ر رسمها أحمد سعد على يده قد تسبت في حالة شديدة من الجدل خلال عام 2022 ، خاصة حين ظهرت واضديديديديديديديؤديديؤديؤديؤديؤدي. مناسك العمرة مرتديًا ملابس الإحرام.
الفيديديو والم التي نشرها أحمد سنذاك تسبت في موجة من الهجوم الشديد عليه والانتقات من مواد موقع التواصلI الاجتماعي ، واتهمه البعض بعدم احترام قدسية المكان. وتكرر هذا الهجوم بعد عدد من إلالال أحمد سعد المثيرة للجدل مؤراً.
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ودافع أحمد سعد عن نفسه ضد هذه الانتقادات ، موضحاً سبب لجوئه ،ليها ، مشيراً في تصريحات مع الإعلامي أنه أنه يريد تغية جرح عميق في ذراعه ، لذا رسم هذا التاتو.
وتابع أحمد سعد: “كنت مصاباً بجرح عميق في ذراعي ، والوشم كوسيلة لتغيته” فقط ، وانتقاد الفيديو الذي نشره وسجل فيه أدعية بوته.
وأعرب أحمد سعد عن دهشته من حجم الجدل الذي أثير حول مظهره ق قائلًا إن بعض الأش ذهبوا إلى حد تكفيره الوشم الوشم والسبحة التي ظهرت في الفيديو ، متابعًا: “ناس كفروني وركزوا في التفاصيل (
وأشار إلى أن المجتمع المصري بطبيعته شعب متدين ، حتى وإن لم يكن جميع أفراده من خريجي الأزهر الشريف ، مؤكدًا أن أن لا يُقاس بالمظاهر أو الشهادات ، بل بالسلوك والنية على حد تعبيره.
أحمد يروي مواقف تعرض فيها للتوبيج بسب التاتو
وروى الفنان أحمد سعد العديد من المواقف السابقة التي تعرض فيها للتوبيخ بسب الرسوم على يده ، بالإافة إلىديد مم مم المواقف الأخرى ، مشيراً إلى أنه خلال توجهه لتأدية مناسك العمة تعرض للتوبيخ من شل الحرم المكي ائه ارئه شبشب.
وأوضح أنه طُلب منه الذهاب مع الشص إلى المسؤولين للسؤال حول مدى حر exam وغير محرم ، وهو ما أكد عليه أحمد سعد ساخراً: “حسيت إننا نازل علينا طير أبابيل ممية الهجوم.”
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وكان أحدث ألبومات الفنان أحمد سعد قد طُرح في يناير الماضي ، وضم تسع أغنيات هي: “مفتقدني” تيجي “،” بسيط “،” سودا س “،” تيجي نحارب “،” عمري اللي فات “أنا مشيت” ، “حبيبنا”. وقد لاقى الألبوم نجاحًا لافتًا عند صدوره ، سواء على مستوى الاستماع أو التداول المنصات الرقمية.
وعقب إصدار الألبوم ، و واصل سعد نشاطه الفني من خلال طرح عدد من الأغاني المنفردة أ أبرزها أغنية “ألف تحية ضم ض ضم ض ضra الموسيقى التصويرية لمسلسل كامل العدددد. كما شارك بوته في مجموعة من الحملات الإعلانية ، بلغ عددددها ثمانية إعلانات.
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كسر النجم العالمي براد بيت بيت بيched الصمت مت متحدثا عن تفاصيل حياته الشية ، وموقفه من الصراعات الةوييي believe خاضها مع طليقته الفنانة أنجلينا جولي ، وذلك خلال حوار صريizing GQ.
براد بيت عن طلاقه من أنجلينا جولي
براد بيت ، الذي تجاوز العقد الخامس من عمره ، لم يترد في وصف الهوس الإعلامي بحياته الخة بـ “العبء المستمستمس” مؤكدًا: “حياتي الشصية على عناوين الأخبار منذ ثلاثين عامًا ، وهذا أمر لم أعتده أبدًا رغم التكرار ، لكني تعلّمت either التكيّف معه بدرجات متفاوتة. “
رغم تسليط الأضواء المستمر ، أشار بيت إلى أنه بات ينتقي دوائر الثقة من حوله بعناية ، مضيفًا: أصدقائي ، مع عائلتي ، ومع نفسي.. “
أما عن النزاع القضائي الشهير مع أنجلينا ج ف فرغم تسوية الطلاق رسا في الماضي بعد قضائية بية طST عام 2016 ، لا تزال المعركة مفتوحة بين الطرفين بشأن بيع جولي لحصتها من قصر “ميرافا pr. هذا النزاع القانوني يراه مجرد تفصيل ، قائلاً: “الأمر ليس بهذا الحجم … إنه فجراء قانوني في للنهايةike. “
على الصعيد الفني ، يستعد براد بيت حاليًا لطرح مشروعه السينمائي المرتقب “F1” حول عالم سباقات الفورمولا 1 ، وقد عن عن حماسه لفيلمه الجديد موضحًا أنه يجسد شفه بالسرعة والتحدي ، معتبرًا الفن وسيلة للهروب من الضوضاء والعودة إلى الذات.
يُعدّ الفازلين من أكثر الاختراعات الجمالية التي حظيت بشهرة عالمية ؛ فهو متعدّد الاستعمالات حيث يُمكن استخدام الفازلين للشعر بهدف تقويته وترطيبه ومعالجة أطرافه المتقصّفة ، كما يُستخدم الفازلين للبشرة أيضاً! سنقدم لكم فوائد الفازلين للشعر وطريقة استخدامه.
إن كان شعركِ يعاني من الجفاف ، فحاولي فرك الجذور بالفازلين وأكملي حتى أطراف الشعر. بإمكانكِ مزج مكونات أخرى معه مثل زل زيت جوز الهند لتغية اضافية واستخدام هذا المزيج كماسك للشعر قبل الاستحم بساعة بساعة بساعة بساعة واحدة فقط.
يعمل الفازلين على تنعيم الشعر. لذا ، حاولي وضع القليل من الفازلين على شعركِ المتشابك قبل تمشيطه ، أوسعكِ الفازلين على أسنان المش وا و ومط ثم تمريره برفق من جذور الشعر حتى أطرافه.
إن كان شعركِ يعاني من التقصّف ف فإن الحل الأمثل هو وضع الفازلين على أطرافه. وبهذا ، ستوفّرين له مزيداً من التماسك والقوة كما ستخفين التقصّف من خلال استخدامه.
يعمل الفازلين على تحفيز نمو الشعر وتقويته من خلال فرك جذوره به. احرصي على فرك فروة الرأس بالفازلين قبل الاستحمام بساعة واحدة فقط ، و ، ستضمنين له مزيداً من النمو و والقوة.
على الرغم من شيوع استخدام الفازلين لترطيب الشعر ، إلا أن الإفراط في استخدامه يس once صحة الشعر وفروة الرأس. ومن هذه الأضرار:
في مرات ، قد يتسبّب الفازلين في انسداد مسامات فروة الرأس وبالي إعاقة تنفسها. لذا ، حاولي ألاّ تراكميه على فروة الرأس بشكل كبير.
يعمل الفازلين في مرات على تلبيد الشعر وإعطائه مظه مظهراً ددهنياً ، وبإمكانكِ تilled من خلال عدم مراكمة مراتخداستخداستخداستخداستخداستخداستخداستخداستخدام بشكل مبالغ فيه. ضعي كمية منه بذكاء واستخدمي القدر المناسب للأطراف أو الجذور ، وهكذا.
يؤدي استخدام الفازلين بكثرة إلى تنشيط الخلايا الدهنية ، والتسب بحدوث بعض الأكية الصيرة مناطق استخدامه.
الفازلين عبارة عن مركّب بترولي متعدّد الاستخدامات. يؤدي وظائف جمالية منها الترطيب وإفاء اللمعان. المبالغة في استخدام الفازلين قد يؤدي لبعض الأضرار مثل تسكير مسامات فروة الرأس تنفسها ظ ظهور بع الأكياس الأكياس ظهور الأكياس الدهنية الصيرة في مناطق الاستخدام.
بإمكانكِ حل كثير من مشاكل الشعر من خلال استخدام الفازلين للشعر؛ إ يُستخدم الفازلين لترطيب الشعر ولتطويل الشعر ، لكن عليكِ الانتباه من أضرار للفازلين للشعر مثل سدّ مسامات فروة الرأس أو منح الشعر مظهراً ملبداً. لذا ، يجدر بكِ استخدامه بمنطقية وألا تراكمي طبقات الفازلين فوق بعضها.
