This week has flown by, and I can't believe it's already Friday! We had some cloudy days this week, but it's supposed to be sunny this weekend, so I'm excited to get my family outside to enjoy the fresh air and vitamin D. ☀️🏃What are your plans for the weekend?
Before we get the weekend started, I wanted to share some awesome products (and sales) I think you'll love.
ButcherBox
After a long and busy day, there's nothing better than knowing I have food I can trust already waiting for me in my freezer. It makes meal times so much easier. No more last-minute trips to the grocery store!
ButcherBox is my favorite source of high-quality meat. They partner with farmers with high standards to bring you great-tasting meat you can feel good about, delivered right to your doorstep (with free shipping). They are running a one-day promotion today and new members will receive 3 lbs of free-range, organic wings for FREE in every order for the lifetime of their membership.
Zip Top
You probably know how much I dislike plastic (read more here) and avoid using it in our home. But taking food on the go can sometimes be a challenge without using plastic. That's why I love Zip Top. Their containers are made with 100% Platinum Silicone and are microwave, dishwasher, and freezer safe.
One Zip Top can replace 5000+ plastic bags! What a great way to help the environment and reduce your family's exposure to plastic. My kids love taking their fruits, veggies, or any other snacks they have when we head out. They even make a reusable breast milk storage bag! You can try them out and save 15% off your order here and use code WELLNESSMAMA15.
Stay healthy!
Katie
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Pete called himself "a steal" and a "diamond in the trash" amid all the continuous questions around him and Kim Kardashian dating, days after Kanye said he wanted to "beat" him in harsh new lyrics.
Sia previously defended casting a neurotypical actor in the role by saying that an autistic actor she'd initially cast "found it unpleasant and stressful."
Fans were especially outraged after spotting a pair of secondhand Cat and Jack tights being sold by Khloé for $20, despite being available for just $6.99 at Target.
This lemon garlic Israeli couscous recipe will be a new one pot staple in your house. It is packed with vegetables, protein, and topping wit a salty whipped feta. Veggie-Packed Couscous Dish Hellloooooo, veggie lovers! This lemon garlic Israeli couscous is as healthy as it is delicious. And did we mention it's veggie-packed?! You'll find ...
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Kicking back after eight hours on the slopes with tasty food and drinks among friends—aka indulging in the all-important après-ski ritual—has long been the cherry on top of a perfect ski day. Often hosted at lodges and other cozy spots around ski resorts, après-ski gatherings have moved outdoors, mainly due to the pandemic. Take it in stride; we have all the gear for a perfect après-ski parking lot tailgate.
To properly have a great time huddled around your truck in a snowy lot at the base of your favorite ski hill or mountain takes some planning, extra effort, and a lot more gear than a typical resort-hosted event. Thankfully there's a ton of great stuff out there—some borrowed from the camping and overlanding world—that'll make your next après-ski tailgater a memorable blast. Here's how to equip yourself (and your rig) for an epic après-ski parking lot tailgate.
Everything You Need for an Après-Ski Parking Lot Tailgate
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1. Weber Traveler Portable Gas Grill
Put fussing with a charcoal grill in the past with this slick little propane-powered beauty from Weber. You won't have any trouble lighting this grill in a gusty ski resort parking lot as it has a push-button fire starter—and the large, 320-square-inch cast iron grilling grate is spacious enough to keep a crowd fed. The best part of this compact and portable workhorse is the gas strut hidden in the bottom that assists with opening and closing it. Use the small green propane bottles to fire it up or hook up a more environmentally friendly 5- or 20-pound tank for a longer lasting burn time.
Your tailgating truck is probably already packed with a bunch of bursting duffels, piles of ski clothes, and mounds of grocery bags, so cramming in a leaky trash bag after the party isn't ideal. That's where you can make après-ski clean up easier by taken a cue from overlanders and attaching a durable trash bag like this one from Kelty to your spare tire. The 85-liter Trash Pak—made from tough 600D nylon and lined with water-resistant vinyl—has interior loops to secure a liner bag with attachment points galore on the outside and a padded back to protect vehicles without a rear-mounted tire.
If the vehicle you're driving to the local ski hill is a pickup, you'll want to check out a Decked Drawer System. The durable and waterproof storage solution greatly increases the usability of the bed and makes stashing your gear a simple and secure task. Made in the USA, it has two full-length drawers that roll smoothly on sealed bearings so you won't have to hop in the back to fetch any errant supplies. Plus, each can be configured in a multitude of ways to fit your needs, and can hold up to 200 pounds. You won't be losing much bed utility as the top will support up to 2,000 pounds.
It can get kinda chilly out there in the resort parking lot—especially as night falls. Toss your old raggedy, non-heated camp chair and go with this toasty throne instead at your next snowy event. Powered by a 7.4 volt lithium polymer battery, this comfy chair can keep your backside warm for up to nine hours. Three heat settings—low (113°F), medium (122°F), and high (131°F)—will make sure you're the right temp, no matter the chill in the air.
Pulling off your tight ski boots after a day of charging down the ski hill is one of life's greatest pleasures. Add to that feeling by slipping on a pair of Danner's new snow boots. Built with Danner's proprietary waterproof liner and stuffed with a generous amount of Primaloft insulation, these perfect après-ski boots are also shod with Vibram's anti-slip Arctic Grip outer sole that will keep you from skating on ice. The soft suede and durable textile upper gives you all-day comfort whether stomping around snowy streets or chilling by a parking lot fire pit.
Popping on an eye-catching, cool and comfy pom-pom beanie (a.k.a. bobble hat) is de rigueur these days on the slopes. Pump up your après-ski style with this colorful chunky knit hat from Rab. The classic Nordic-style beanie is crafted from 100 percent acrylic so it performs well no matter how far the temp drops as the slopes empty. Also vital is the comfy fleece headband sewn inside which eliminates the itch factor.
Ski gloves modeled after traditional leather work gloves have been in style on the slopes for years. These Weston hand-savers are an affordable and durable option that work just as well handling a few cold beers as they do clutching ski poles. Made with soft and supple pigskin, they're lined with Weathertherm insulation to keep the chill away and come with Nikwax waterproofing cream for good leather protection without compromising breathability.
Keep this collapsible, 16-ounce cup in your ski pack to pop open at your next après-ski gathering without having to resort to plastic cups. Made from BPA-free, food-grade silicone, the ridged sides provide for a comfortable grip on a hot toddy—or with any combination of cocktail or wine.
You've never known how much you need a wheeled cooler until you use one—and this feature-packed chill box from RovR is one of the best out there. It boasts all of the similar perks as most modern, roto-molded coolers: thick insulated walls for long-lasting ice retention; airtight gasket and rubber latches; plus a lockable lid that's rated to withstand a grizzly attack. The pneumatic, all-terrain tires coupled with a dual-grip handle makes pulling this cooler down bumpy stairs or challenging surfaces a back-saving breeze. Extra bonus is the removable, foldable storage bin that attaches to the top for carrying snacks and supplies.
Nothing says parking lot après-ski party like a cooler full of beers—and this new brew from 10 Barrel is made for all after-slopes celebrations. Touted as the breweries "most awarded beer ever," this 7 percent ABV winter warmer offers notes of chocolate, coffee, citrus, and berries. Proceeds from this American stout go to Protect Our Winters, which helps outdoor adventurers protect the places where they play from climate change.
11. High West High Country American Single Malt Whiskey
No outdoor winter event would be the same without at a least a little bit of whiskey to pass around. This unique American single malt distilled in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah is one you'll want to introduce to your flask. Aged a minimum of two years in both charred and second-use oak barrels, this Scotch-inspired whiskey brings a weighted mouthfeel and nutty malt character to your chapped lips. It's absolutely essential for a top-notch après-ski parking lot tailgate.
When you go to get your mail, you expect to find the typical wad of bills, coupons, and paper junk. But not today: Your monthly subscription box is on the porch. The contents of the cardboard box are a mystery until you slice through the packing tape to find a thoughtfully curated selection of gear that you can use on your next outdoor adventure. Sound like something you might like? Time to sign up for a subscription service—and there are plenty to choose from.
Subscription box services provide a fun twist on shopping for gear you're into. Each company offers a cost-saving benefit, usually because the subscription costs less than the package's total retail price. There's a box for nearly any outdoor interest, and the gear selections include everything from puffy jackets and headlamps to knives, snacks, guidebooks, and more. The best part? The sense of anticipation as you await your next shipment, and the surprise of opening up a new box each month or quarter.
There are lots of options for outdoor enthusiasts. To guide your search, we've rounded up our favorite outdoor gear subscription boxes for nature lovers, survivalists, and adventure seekers alike. Here are the boxes to try.
Bespoke Post offers a range of themed boxes for all outdoorsy archetypes: Switchback for the hiker, Peak for the athlete, Flip for the knife geek. Unlike most other subscriptions, Bespoke lets you review your items ahead of time to ensure you're happy with your order. You can customize styles and colors, swap for another curated box, or skip a shipment entirely. Before signing up, you'll take a quiz to help Bespoke hone in on your interests.
This is a great option for upgrading your gear kit with a mix of the newest adventure accessories. A past Nomadik box included a Grand Trunk hammock, UCO Gear spork, Skratch Labs hydration mix, Ursa Major face wipes, and Gear Aid tenacious tape patches. You can choose either monthly or quarterly boxes, and they'll save you up to 40 percent off retail prices. Answer a few questions about your favorite activities—camping or kayaking?—to customize your selections.
In addition to the latest gadgets, Cairn's Obsidian Collection includes apparel, shoes, frame packs, and other spendy outdoor equipment. This quarterly box contains up to $350 worth of gear for a $250 subscription fee. Cairn's Monthly Collections are smaller and more budget-friendly, and they include things like insulated bottles and daypacks. But you can't go wrong: Both choices are high-quality boxes for gearheads and outdoor enthusiasts.
This subscription is best for hunters, anglers, bushcrafters, and survivalists. You could get a shovel and shooting handbook one month and then a sleeping bag and camp stove the next. Four tiers of membership—Basic, Advanced, Pro, and Pro Plus—allow you to scale back or level up depending on how much gear you want. Watch the brand's comprehensive What's In the Box videos to get a sense for what's inside each package.
This kit will help you finally learn how to tie your own flies, or you can opt for a box with pre-made flies for specific kinds of fishing (like trout, warm water, and saltwater). Every box comes with a mystery item plus educational materials and unique stickers to decorate your tackle box, and members get 20 percent off anything in the company's Supply Shop. Boxes are curated by avid anglers, so you know you're getting the good stuff.
When one knife isn't enough, get a new blade every month. Founded in 2019 and based in Maine, the Knife-A-Month team selects top-quality pieces for use in everyday, hunting, survival, and self-protection scenarios. Four tiers of membership get you between one and three tactical knives or tools in each box. The company promises you'll never receive the same knife twice.
Subscribe to the RunnerBox or RiderBox, and you'll always have fuel for your next long run or ride. Each package is loaded with endurance products that have been hand-picked and tested. It's mostly full of bars and nutrition items, but it also includes useful gear like socks, a pocket light, or natural deodorant. Pay for one year or six months up front to save, or pay month to month. There's also an option to send a curated box to someone as a gift.
Ideal for surfers and beach bums, Beachly provides tees, board shorts, sandals, hoodies, hats, sunscreen, and other items for exploring the ocean. Delivered quarterly for each season, each subscription box contains four to five items worth over $180 total. Plus, Beachly is mission-driven: Money from every purchase helps support coastal ecosystem restoration and protection.
Get your kiddos away from the screen and into nature with this family-friendly box. The Think Outside Jr. program is for kids ages four to seven, while the Think Outside program is for kids seven to 16 years old. Monthly themes range from stargazing to shelter building to navigation. The boxes include booklets with educational activities and stories, three to five pieces of gear, water-resistant reference cards, and other goodies to spark kids' interest in the outdoors.
This article was produced in partnership with Kettlebell Kings
The kettlebell is an extremely versatile piece of training equipment to have at home. Kettlebells offer unique training benefits over dumbbells—the uneven weight distribution will challenge you to control the weight as you swing, press, or pull. Plus, kettlebells will add extra challenges when it comes to grip and core stability. It's a good idea to have your home equipped with a nice set of kettlebells—you never know when you'll be stuck inside, especially during the winter.
These 10 workouts were provided by Luke Pelton, C.S.C.S., NSCA-C.P.T., a competitive powerlifting coach and weight-training instructor based in New York. All you need: a set of kettlebells and a physio ball.
Before you begin, you need to know what your goals are, so that you work in the appropriate rep range. According to Pelton:
A lighter kettlebell used for a few sets of higher reps (15+) will promote muscular endurance. Try Kettlebell Kings' 10- to 40-lb Adjustable Kettlebell.
A heavier kettlebell used for multiple sets of a few reps (5-8) will promote more hypertrophy and strength. Try Kettlebell Kings' Kettlebell Set – Powder Coat Kettlebells (5-lb increments).
In both cases, choose a kettlebell heavy enough so that you're nearing muscle failure by the end of the set. Each workout will consist of a lower-body movement, an upper-body movement, and a core/grip movement. These movements will challenge your stability flexors in a way you've never experienced before.
Here's how to do each of the following workouts:
For endurance: perform 3 sets of 15+ reps (on both sides when required), with 45 seconds of rest.
For strength/hypertrophy: perform 4–5 sets of 5–8 reps (on both sides when required) with 90–120 seconds of rest.
Kettlebell Workout 1
Kettlebell Goblet Squat
Kettlebell Press on Physio Ball: Keep the physio ball under the shoulder blades. Keep the hips extended so the back is flat. Press with the bell hanging behind your hand.
Bottoms-up Shoulder Press: Hold the bell bottom-up at shoulder height and raise it above your head to full arm extension. Brace your core and make sure to stabilize the kettlebell.
Kettlebell Workout 2
Kettlebell Deadlift: Approach the kettlebell as you would a deadlift, with the kettlebell between your feet. Pull straight up by driving your hips forward. Lower with control to the ground.
Kettlebell Single-arm Shoulder Press on Physio Ball: Hold the kettlebell in your hand, with the bell hanging behind your hand. Sit on the physio ball and engage your core. Press the kettlebell overhead.
Farmer's Carry: Focus on maintaining proper core bracing and stability of the kettlebell.
Kettlebell Workout 3
Kettlebell Split Squat: With one foot behind you on a bench (or chair), lower that knee to the ground while holding the kettlebell at chest height.
Kettlebell Renegade Row: Get into pushup position with your hands on the kettlebell handles. Row one arm up, place it down on the ground, regain your balance, and row the other arm up. That's one rep. Try to keep your core and hips as still as possible—don't rock back and forth too far.
Overhead Carry: Focus on maintaining proper core bracing and stability of the kettlebell.
Kettlebell Workout 4
Single-arm Deadlift: Stay balanced and keep your core tight so no compensations occur.
Standing Overhead Press: Keep the core braced to avoid compensatory movement. Press with the kettlebell hanging behind your hand.
"Alphabets": Hold two light kettlebells in front of your body, with your arms bent and your forearms held straight out. Moving at the wrists only—this is a forearm—exercise spell out each letter of the alphabet. See how far you can make it!
Kettlebell Workout 5
Squat to the Floor: Hold the kettlebell in front of you and let it hang between your legs. Squat, letting the kettlebell touch the ground before coming up.
Kettlebell Pushup: Place the kettlebells on the ground, hold the handles, and do pushups.
Kettlebell Single-arm Shoulder Press
Kettlebell Workout 6
Kettlebell Romanian Deadlift: Hold the kettlebell in front of your body with feet shoulder-width or narrower. Perform a hip hinge so your hips travel backwards and the weight is lowered over the midfoot. When you feel a stretch in the hamstrings, contract your glutes to return to the starting position. To make this more difficult, hold the kettlebell in one arm as shown.
Single-arm Kettlebell Shoulder Press: Sit on the ball and engage your core. Press with the bell up so the kettlebell is upside-down for extra grip and stability work.
Farmer's Carry: Walk about 30 feet, then turn around and walk back.
Kettlebell Workout 7
Single-arm Overhead Kettlebell Squat: Hold the kettlebell in one hand over your head. Squat down, keeping the kettlebell overhead the whole time. Make sure not to lean over too far to compensate for the imbalanced weight—tighten your core and your glutes.
Kettlebell Renegade Row
Overhead Carry: Walk about 30 feet, then turn around and walk back.
Kettlebell Workout 8
Kettlebell Deadlift
Standing Overhead Kettlebell Press
Kettlebell Swing
Kettlebell Workout 9
Kettlebell Goblet Squat
Kettlebell Single-arm Press
Kettlebell Suitcase Carry: Walk about 30 feet, then turn around and walk back.
Kettlebell Workout 10
This will give you some extra work.
Goblet Squat: Done with lighter kettlebell as a warmup.
Split Squat
Romanian Deadlift
Bottom-up Standing Overhead Press
Kettlebell Pushup to Renegade Row: Perform renegade rows with each arm, then do a pushup without taking your hands off the kettlebells.
Not sure what to read in 2022? Well, get ready to have a new stack of can't-put-down books in your possession. With self-improvement selections, fiction, nonfiction, and short stories to choose from, there's something enthralling for every kind of reader to enjoy. Heck, our bedside table and current need for a nap is a testament to just how engrossing these reads are.
What to Read in 2022: Most Highly Anticipated Books (So Far)
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1. The Latinist by Mark Prins
For literary fiction fans, this January release has it all: a study on obsession, power struggles, love, the twisted underbelly of academia, and—oh yeah—a modern-day retelling of the ancient Greek myth of Apollo and Daphne. If you like psychological thrillers, go ahead and order this lustrous debut for yourself (and maybe a few copies for fellow fans of the genre, too).
2. Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments by Erin L. Thompson
Out February 8, brace yourself for a non-fiction winner. In recent times, the role statues and monuments play in society has been thrust into the spotlight. Here, an American art historian and lawyer who's said to be the only professor specializing in art crime, explores the contentious issue of statues by looking at Freedom statue perched above the U.S. Capitol, knocking down Columbus statue at the Minnesota State Capitol, and other examples in our nation's toppled history.
3. Blood and Rui ns: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945 by Richard Overy
In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews called this upcoming April 2022 tome, "Startling yet persuasive…a brilliant, mildly controversial interpretation of the history, conduct, and aftermath of WWII." We agree. Author and military historian Richard Overy proves his narrative bravado as he argues World War II was the "last imperial war," following a near century of global imperial expansion, culminating in greed for global domination by Italy, Germany, and Japan in the 1930s and early 40s. Given the state of the world today, you'll finish this captivating book not only rethinking what's come before, but with a new perspective for how to avoid repeating the disastrous decisions of our past.
4. Don'y Worry: 48 Lessons on Relieving Anxiety from a Zen Buddhist Monk by Shunmyo Masuno; Translated by Allison Markin Powell
It's a good time to brush up on your Resilience Amidst Hard Time Skills, huh? First stop: This primer on quelling anxiety and its clawing presence, arriving April from renowned Zen Buddhist and author of The Art of Simple Living. Considering 90 percent of your worries don't come true (we repeat: 90 percent), it's amazing how much time we spend caught up in our thoughts. Here, learn how to break free from unhealthy thoughts that bind us, doing so with straightforward, Zen principles.
The author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs proves his prowess at cultural commentary yet again in a recap of the 90s. As Kelefa Sanneh, author of Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres, puts it, "This might be the book Chuck Klosterman was born to write: a witty and unpredictable history of the decade that just won't go away. From OJ to AOL to the GOP, he has a theory about everything, and a story about how all of it fits together."
6. Myung Sung: The Korean Art of Living Meditation by Jenelle Kim, DACM, L.Ac
If your New Year's resolution is to meditate more, try this January newcomer that teaches simple, effective strategies to weave meditation into your daily life. If greater purpose and more inner peace sounds good to you for 2022, pick up this book from a doctor of Chinese meditation and remember to thank us with a deep exhale.
7. Homespun: True Tales of Tweed by J. Joseph Pastrana
Another January arrival, this nonfiction work will captivate you with the fascinating history of tweed, looking at its use across cultures and time. You'll get a glimpse at fashion powerhouses' relationships with the material (think Alexander McQueen, Ralph Lauren, and Joseph Abboud). Throughout, you'll journey to the cobblestone streets of London, sound stages of Hollywood, the prefectures of Japan. Hold on to your herringbone hat.
Hitting book stores and virtual shelves in March, this fictional tale chronicles a saga that gets going when Julius Caesar is kidnapped before his assassination in 44 B.C. Things get crazy when the Roman ruler is teleported to Los Angeles in 1999. There are funny moments—like when the statesman journeys to Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas—and thought-provoking explorations of philosophy and science. Above all, expect an action-packed thriller that's certainly a welcome distraction from today's relentless news cycles.
9. The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale by John A. List
This February, carve out some time for this nonfiction page-turner from University of Chicago professor and Lyft's chief economist. To lift a line from his Wall Street Journal essay adapted from the book, "Growing up in small-town Wisconsin in the 1970s, I was raised on the gritty gospel of revered Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, who famously said: 'Winners never quit and quitters never win.' " Throughout some 250 pages, you'll have the chance to learn about how to maximize your wins, through case studies like chef Jamie Oliver's attempt to scale his restaurant business and why the failure to detect false positives on drug tests created issues in the Reagan-era drug-prevention program.
10. Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long and Well You Live by Becca Levy, Ph.D.
According to this upcoming book from Yale epidemiology and psychology professor, your mere beliefs about aging can add or steal up to eight years of your life. Everybody wants to know how to live longer and more joyfully, and this guide uses insights to help you enhance your odds of doing just that. Available in April, pre-order this book if you want research-backed strategies to make the most of your time on this Pale Blue Dot.
11. The Family Chao: A Novel by Lan Samantha Chang
Coming in February, this book zooms in on a family-owned restaurant in the town of Haven, Wisconsin, with twists and turns aplenty. We're talking a potential murder of the family's despotic patriarch and the trial that follows. Penned by the current director of the esteemed Iowa Writers' Workshop, it's an intimate look at one Chinese-American family and a universal look at small-town America.
On sale in January, this follow-up to New York Times bestseller Unfu*k Yourself is a must-read for strategic advice on how to have lasting, fulfilling relationships. If you're single and hoping to sharpen up your Cupid's arrow and find a partner, this book is for you. If you're in a committed relationship and facing some pain points, this book is for you. If you're divorced, this book is for you. Simply put, a better you awaits some 200 pages from now.
13. People from Bloomington by Budi Darma; Foreword by Intan Paramaditha; Translation & Introduction by Tiffany Tsao
If you're unfamiliar, Darma was an acclaimed Indonesian novelist and short story writer who got his PhD in English literature from the University of Bloomington, Indiana, and taught at State University of Surabaya in Indonesia. As the title implies, this book is a deep dive on the Illinois town where Darma lived as a graduate student in the 1970s. Through a moving collection of fictional short stories, he touches on loneliness and isolation, connecting with others, and the power of our thoughts all through the lens of small-town American life. The 40th anniversary English translation debuts this April.
Okay, so it's not technically new for 2022 (it was released in spring of last year), but it's now in paperback, so we'll give it points for that and if you haven't devoured this New York Times bestseller already, do so now. Named one of the best mystery books of 2021 by the New York Times Book Review and the Washington Post, this book tells the story of Tessa and Marian, Irish sisters who become involved with the IRA. Tessa's a new parent and producer at the BBC and Marian is a ski mask-wearing, well, you'll see.
Thinking of signing up for a 5K or 10K this year? You might want to upgrade your kicks: The new Nike ZoomX Streakfly is designed for exactly those kinds of events. Utilizing proven Nike innovations like ZoomX foam, the new shoe is optimized for shorter-distance races on the pavement.
"We learned there was a bit of a gap in our racing line between what we offered for the full and half marathon, and what we offered for competition on the track," Elliott Heath, footwear product manager at Nike Running, said in a statement. "To better serve athletes who race and train on the roads for the 10K and 5K, we set out to develop a shoe that would still offer them a comfortable, lightweight, propulsive ride with more connection to the ground."
Compared to racing models like the Alphafly, with its thick sole and Zoom Air unit, the ZoomX Streakfly has a decidedly streamlined silhouette. It features a ZoomX midsole (Nike's lightest and most responsive foam) that runs the entire length of the shoe. While other Nike racing shoes utilize a carbon fiber plate in the midsole for a snappy feel underfoot, the Streakfly has a Pebax plate embedded in the midsole at midfoot. This provides added stiffness and response, but the shorter plate helps keep the stack height down, which gives the shoe a close-to-the-ground feel. Translation: This shoe is built to feel springy and fast on the pavement.
The upper is made from an engineered mesh that's tailored to the different areas of the foot. Toward the front of the shoe, the mesh is designed for added structure and support around your foot, but has a more open pattern at the rear for improved breathability and lower weight. Nike also added a contoured heel pod to the upper for a comfier fit. Overall, the upper offers support where you need it without weighing down your feet.
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Nike also paid attention to grip. The ZoomX Streakfly features a unique ridged pattern on the outsole, the product of extensive data collection on runners' footstrike patterns. Based on that data, Nike fine-tuned the outsole design for optimal traction on the road.
The end result? A fast, versatile shoe for shorter distances.
"In addition to being an approved road racing shoe, we expect athletes to use it as part of their training both on the road and the track," says Heath. "For runners perhaps not wanting to make the jump into spikes, or those running on a surface that doesn't allow them to be in spikes during their training, the Streakfly is a perfect solution."
At first, the shoe will be offered in "Prototype" white, but Nike promises more colors are on the way. It's not super splashy, but it does feature some interesting details, including a "5K/10K" label—a nod to the shoe's intended purpose—and a wear test number on the medial side of the outsole, a reference to the wear testing process that Nike uses to develop its models.
The shoe will retail for $160 and go on sale next month.
The NFL playoffs divisional round is my favorite football weekend of the year. With eight teams playing four games in two days, it's the best mix of football in terms of both quantity (games all afternoon and into the evening on Saturday and Sunday) and quality—only excellent teams remain. It's hard to fake your way to this point in the postseason.
The games start with the Cincinnati Bengals at the Tennessee Titans at 4:30 p.m. (EST) on Saturday, followed by the San Francisco 49ers visiting the Green Bay Packers at 8:15 p.m. (EST). Sunday's slate has the Los Angeles Rams visiting the defending champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers at 3 p.m. (EST), then the Buffalo Bills playing at the Kansas City Chiefs at 6:30 p.m. (EST).
Below are five big questions that'll define the action this weekend.
1. The Bengals and the Titans have different identities. Who will dictate the style in Tennessee?
The Bengals have a pretty lousy offensive line and not much of a running game despite a talented tailback in Joe Mixon. Their offense hums because second-year QB Joe Burrow has morphed into one of the best passers in the NFL and developed excellent chemistry with a trio of star receivers: rookie Ja'Marr Chase (who's the best of the bunch) second-year man Tee Higgins, and sixth-year slot receiver Tyler Boyd.
The Titans score their points differently. They call runs on almost half their plays (about 46 percent, to be exact), and at 32 carries per game, they're the most solidly run-heavy team in the NFL. They have a dominant run-blocking offensive line that loves to bulldoze, and they've done that enough to claim the No. 1 seed in the AFC despite a midseason injury to elite running back Derrick Henry. They signed D'Onta Foreman after Henry's injury, and the offense has barely missed a beat.
The teams' defenses could do different things to take the opposing offenses out of their comfort zones. The Bengals could load the box to stop the run or the Titans could scheme up a way to limit Chase's targets. But if either offense is fully operational, that team will probably win.
2. Can a battered 49ers defense hold up against Aaron Rodgers?
Short answer: Probably not.
Longer answer: The 49ers really need defensive end Nick Bosa, who suffered a concussion in the wild card round against the Dallas Cowboys, to be at full strength. That's a lot to ask.
The Packers have Aaron Rodgers, one of the sport's great quarterbacks, and he's accustomed to playing in the frigid conditions of Lambeau Field in January. They have a strong offensive line to protect him, especially now that cornerstone tackle David Bakhtiari is back from a long-term injury.
The 49ers have a pretty good pass defense, but that's more due to Bosa and company generating consistent pressure than the secondary keeping opposing receivers on lockdown. Bosa's absence—or even limited effectiveness—would be a big problem, especially since the 49ers's star linebacker Fred Warner is also hurt.
3. Do the Bucs have enough juice left on offense to beat the Rams?
Tom Brady's defending champs have dealt with more attrition than any team left in the NFL playoffs. Wideout Chris Godwin was already out for the season when Antonio Brown quit the team and/or was cut right before the postseason began. Running back Leonard Fournette is on injured reserve, and backfield mate Ronald Jones II has also shown up on the injury report this week. The biggest worry for Tampa Bay: All-Pro right tackle Tristan Wirfs hurt his ankle in the wild card round and may or may not play on Sunday.
For their part, the Rams have maybe the best cornerback in the NFL in Jalen Ramsey, and they could use him to neutralize just about any Bucs receiver (Mike Evans seems a likely target). The Rams also have some good coverage linebackers who could deal effectively with Rob Gronkowski. And the front still includes the best player in football, tackle Aaron Donald, plus good edge players like Von Miller and Ogbonnia Okoronkwo. Taken together, that's a hell of a lot for the injury-plagued Buccaneers to manage.
Five touchdowns against the No. 2 scoring defense.
4. Can Josh Allen repeat his performance from the wild card round?
The Bills quarterback is coming off quite possibly the best NFL playoffs performance a QB has ever posted. In a game against the New England Patriots last week, Allen completed 21 of 25 passes for 308 yards and five touchdowns, and the Bills scored a TD on every single drive except those that killed the clock at the end of the first and second halves—something no team had ever done. His 98.5 QBR (on a 100-point scale) means he played an almost perfect game.
But the Chiefs defense he'll face at Arrowhead Stadium has been one of the best in the NFL over the back half of the season. Since Week 11, they've held some of the league's better QBs (Dak Prescott, Derek Carr, and Justin Herbert) to some of the worst games of their careers while twice destroying Pittsburgh's Ben Roethlisberger.
They did give up a bunch of yards and touchdowns to Burrow in Week 17, however, so maybe Allen can find some operating space. He's likely to be important on the ground, as the Chiefs have had issues stopping quarterbacks as ball-carriers. (Just a few weeks ago, the Broncos QB Drew Lock, who's not nearly the runner Allen is, had 23- and five-yard scoring runs against them.)
Mahomes finds Pringle on the double move to take the lead
5. Can the Bills repeat their previous win against Patrick Mahomes?
Excellent as he is, Allen is not the best quarterback in the game. That title belongs to Kansas City's Mahomes, who shook off some early-season problems and has been dominant since Week 14. He's thrown for at least 8.6 yards per pass in all but one game since then (a mostly meaningless Week 17 win over the Broncos) and should be in a much better place than he was in Week 5, when the Bills beat him 38–20, held him to 5 yards per throw, and intercepted him twice.
Mahomes is a magician, and he has one of the league's best offensive brain trusts in coordinator Eric Bieniemy and head coach Andy Reid. The Chiefs will have a sound plan for this NFL playoffs rematch, and it'll be difficult for Buffalo to produce a repeat performance.
This article was produced in partnership with Blu Atlas
A good cologne is like armor for men. Even on days when you're running late and have just rolled out of bed, a spritz or two of your favorite cologne gives you the confidence to take on your day. Not to mention, cologne makes the perfect subtle accessory for dates, long days at the office, or a night out with friends. Below, we've listed 22 of the best colognes and fragrances for young men that can be with you for a season or become a favorite you keep on your shelf for years to come.
Atlantis is earthy and aromatic with notes of bergamot, clary sage, and patchouli. The balanced fragrance embodies the best qualities of youthfulness and sophistication, so no matter what your future holds, Atlantis will grow with you.
For a cologne that makes you feel luxe and boujee, there's Gentle Fluidity by Maison Francis Kurkdjian. The entrancing fragrance is bright yet soft with nutmeg, vanilla, and juniper berries.
This classic fragrance is a great budget buy for young men wanting a fresh, clean cologne. The aquatic scent has a sporty and masculine vibe thanks to notes of coriander, mint, and rosemary.
This best-selling cologne works for any event, season, and moment in your life. In this fresh, versatile fragrance, you'll discover notes of sea salt, sage, and ambrette seeds.
The Best Date Night Cologne for Young Men: Versace Eros
Make the most out of date night with a cologne that's as romantic and sensual as you are. Eros is passionate and alluring with tonka beans, vanilla, fresh mint, and green apple notes.
Going out with friends? Opt for the lighthearted, youthful scent of Replica's Music Festival. This cologne (inspired by Woodstock) is all about embracing the good vibes with notes of cannabis, red apple, incense, cypress, and tobacco.
If you want a cologne that will never go out of style, there's Acqua di Gio. This popular cologne is inspired by the relaxing vibe and clear water of the Mediterranean with notes of peach, green tangerine, rosemary, white musk, and oakmoss.
This 2021 release by Louis Vuitton is all about growth, possibility, and achieving your dreams. The cologne is warm and sensual with notes of Ambrox, Calabrian bergamot, black tea, and Tunisian neroli.
Inspired by the crisp coolness of the sea, this aquatic take on the classic Ralph Lauren fragrance features water-inspired notes alongside a balanced composition of basil, verbena, and musk.
For the young men who aren't afraid to defy convention and pave their own path, there's Atlantis. This eau de parfum is earthy and aromatic with notes of enlivening bergamot, herbaceous clary sage, and grounding patchouli.
The scent is citrusy and woodsy, perfectly blending the fresh youthfulness of citrus with the maturity and sophistication of overgrown woods. Atlantis encourages you to be brave, bold, and explore the wonders of life, no matter where they take you.
2. Maison Francis Kurkdjian Gentle Fluidity Silver Edition
Maison Francis Kurkdjian is one of the most well-known and respected fragrance brands around the world. Their Silver Edition eau de parfum 'Gentle Fluidity' is a free-flowing, powerful, entrancing fragrance ideal for young men who want to push boundaries.
The cologne is vibrant and fresh with top notes of juniper berries that echo the scent of a good gin and tonic, yet soft and comforting with warming notes of nutmeg, vanilla, and amber wood.
This best-selling fragrance by Jo Malone marries the woody earthiness of sage with the lapping, mineral-rich waters of the ocean. The scent is everything you want in a cologne that will carry you from day to night, from the east coast to the west coast, and everything in between. Key notes include ambrette seeds (for sophistication), sea salt (for a touch of fresh ocean spray), and sage (for an earthy, aromatic base).
Tap into the boundless, dreamy, creative powers of your imagination with this 2021 cologne launch by Louis Vuitton. Imagination is a citrus cologne for men that's inspired by one's desire to make their dreams their reality.
The cologne's key notes include Ambrox, a reinvention of the ambery accord that creates a contemporary, masculine scent. The warmth and sensuality of Ambrox is contrasted against notes like Calabrian bergamot, Tunisian neroli, and black tea from China, which embodies freedom and discovery in its fresh, intoxicating scent.
For the twenty-somethings who want a signature cologne that will age with them, let us introduce you to Acqua di Gio by Giorgio Armani. This incredibly popular cologne has maintained its cult following since its launch in 1996. The scent is fresh and clean, so you can wear it practically anywhere at any time, so it's the best cologne for young men to wear for all occasions.
The fragrance opens with water-inspired marine notes of Calabrian bergamot, neroli, and green tangerine. These top notes then relax into more sea notes, alongside the scent of peach, rosemary, and hyacinth, echoing the sweetness and saltiness of the Mediterranean. The long-lasting base notes are relaxed and woody with white musk, cedar, oakmoss, patchouli, and amber.
Inspired by the whimsy and lightheartedness of Woodstock, Music Festival by Maison Margiela is a cologne that instantly brings your mind and body back to those feel-good vibes. The universal scent appeals to both avid music festival goers and those who'd rather avoid the crowd, with hypnotic notes of cannabis, red apple, incense, cypress, and tobacco. If you can get your hands on this unique, beloved fragrance, we guarantee it's one you'll want in your collection forever.
Cool off with this aquatic cologne for young men. In 1988 Davidoff launched Cool Water, a cologne that revolutionized men's fragrance by breathing in freshness and the aquatic inspiration of water. The iconic scent has been loved by men for decades, thanks to its sporty, masculine vibe that is youthful yet mature, so it's guaranteed to age with you. The ocean-inspired scent features fresh notes of coriander, green nuances, lavender, mint, and rosemary.
Versace Eros is a cologne for the passionate, masculine types who love to celebrate life's vibrancy. The scent is cool with vibrant notes of fresh mint, Italian lemon zest, and green apple, yet warm and alluring with notes of tonka beans, ambroxan amber, vanilla, and geranium flowers.
Eros is inspired by the Greek god of love, Eros, so its fragrance represents a purposeful sensuality and intensity—something that is so Versace. Eros is everything you want in a date-night cologne. Plus, the turquoise blue bottle adorned with Medusa's head makes this a cologne collectors must-have.
This aquatic take on the classic Ralph Lauren fragrance launched in 2016, becoming an instant go-to cologne for young men looking for a fresh, distinctly aquatic scent. Its oceanic vibe comes from top notes of the sea, nestling amongst bergamot and cardamom.
Fresh middle notes of basil, clary sage, and verbena are balanced with the masculine profiles of suede, vetiver, and musk for a cologne that embodies the richness and openness of the ocean. You don't need much of this cologne to make a statement, so the deep blue frosted bottle will last you a while.
For a cologne that's as fresh and youthful as you are, there's Aesop's Tacit. Tacit (launched in 2015) is a crisp and citrusy unisex fragrance inspired by the fresh notes of traditional colognes and the abundant vegetation cultivated on the Mediterranean coast. Uplifting top notes of yuzu, basil, and clove blend seamlessly with the fresh greenery of rosemary, mint, and fennel. To bring it all together are deeper, more masculine notes of cedarwood, vetiver heart, and amber whose long-lasting composition provides subtle warmth.
Santal 33 is Le Labo's (one of the best luxury perfumeries in the world) most adored scent, so it makes the ideal cologne for young men who want to start their collection off with a bang. Le Labo is inspired by the American West and man's desire for personal freedom. It embodies the soul of those western icons that made their way through the world with little else but their horse and leather saddle. Its masculine aroma comes from top notes of cardamom, iris, violet, and ambrox that diffuse into the smokiness of Australian sandalwood, cedarwood, and papyrus. *Cowboy hat not included.
Jump into the crystal-clear waters of the Mediterranean with Dolce & Gabbana's Light Blue. This eau de toilette is everything young men want in an aquatic cologne. It's fresh, juicy, and light but doesn't hide its sensual masculine side. The scent is uplifted with notes of bergamot, Sicilian mandarin, frozen grapefruit peel, and aromatic juniper. The citrusy top notes sink into muskier, more masculine notes of Sichuan pepper, rosewood, American muskwood, incense, and oakmoss.
As one of the most innovative colognes for young men on our list, Forest Lungs by The Nue Co was purposely designed to be an anti-stress fragrance. How does that work? The body's olfactory system regulates our sense of smell and is closely linked to stress and how stress affects our well-being.
This fragrance formula uses clean, natural fragrances, olfactory chemistry, and phytoncides (molecular compounds produced by trees known for their positive health benefits) to reduce stress by 96% and anxiety by 91%. This unisex cologne has citrus and woodsy notes of vetiver, cedarwood, benzoin, pine, patchouli, and bergamot that instantly get you back to feeling cool, calm, and collected.
Musk is a classic men's fragrance that makes you feel like your best, most powerful self. So no matter what your day has in store, this musky eau de parfum can be your go-to. Top notes of Italian bergamot and Madagascar ginger lap into the heart of the fragrance with notes of Indian amyris, Haitian vetiver, and Iranian galbanum. The base is carried by clean, musky notes that are soft, timeless, and casually elegant.
For a tailored cologne experience perfectly aligned with your scent preference, body chemistry, and pheromones—there's Hawthorne's Work + Play fragrances. All you have to do is take a short quiz and let Hawthorne's award-winning perfumers do their magic. Each cologne is crafted with 10x higher quality ingredients than other brands (so you know you're getting the good stuff). The fragrances are also free of all the bad stuff, including sulfates, parabens, phthalates, aluminum, and talc.
Easy like Sunday morning vibes are what'll you get with this cologne by Byredo. This expertly-crafted fragrance features top notes of bergamot, cardamom, and star anise that relax into heart notes of geranium, incense, and lavender. Base notes of moss, patchouli, and vetiver are in it for the long haul (meaning they'll still be smelling fresh after your Sunday afternoon nap). Sunday's classic, crisp, and citrusy scent is perfect for young guys who would rather sport their at-home lounge clothes than a formal tailored suit.
This eau de parfum by Baxter of California perfectly captures those memorable late nights spent on Venice Boardwalk feeling young and invincible. Pacific Cannabis begins with spicy top notes of pink pepper, rosemary, and bergamot before softening into middle notes of cannabis accord, lavender, and sage.
The long-lasting fragrance then lingers on the base notes of driftwood accord, patchouli, and tonka absolute for a soft, beachy vibe. And while this cologne for young men may be inspired by cannabis, it doesn't actually contain the plant, so there's no chance of you getting high from it (sorry).
Black Tea by Murdock London is smooth and subtle, just like a cup of English breakfast. This quintessential British cologne is spicy, woody, and evocative with its masculine middle note of leather and balancing base notes of musty woods, musk, and birch tar. The scent's spiciness comes from top notes of clove, nutmeg, basil, and pepper. This alluring cologne for young men is ideal for office wear or a night out.
Launched in 2015, this eau de toilette by Dior is raw, relying on the scent of its natural essences to portray a sense of wide-open spaces and endless desert landscapes spreading under the vast blue sky. This timeless, versatile cologne for young men is earthy and woody, with simple top notes of Calabrian bergamot and pepper that diffuse into a melody of middle notes.
Sichuan pepper, lavender, pink pepper, vetiver, and patchouli are just some of the middle notes that make this cologne so fresh. Sauvage will dry down to a base of ambroxan, cedar, and labdanum, perfectly capturing the scent of warm woods.
Blue marks the spot with this classic cologne for young men. Jack Black's Blue Mark is fresh and flirty with top notes of watermint, cilantro, and bergamot that blend gingerly into deeper notes of Japanese juniper, ginger essence, patchouli, and driftwood. The revitalizing scent instantly transports you to an all-inclusive resort on the beach, so we don't blame you if you envision yourself sipping a mojito in a cabana with each spritz.
If you're not already having enough rum in your life, get your fix with Malin+Goetz Dark Rum eau de parfum. Inspired by the old-world sailors who would transport rum throughout the Caribbean, this cologne balances dark and spicy notes with warm, fresh, and tropical scents.
Top notes bergamot, plum, and anise fade into the warm, alluring middle notes of leather, rum, and vanilla. Dark Rum settles onto the skin with base notes of patchouli, amber, and milk, adapting to perfectly fit your unique fragrance profile the longer you wear it.
19-69 is a revolutionary, contemporary luxury fragrance brand that pushes gender boundaries and lights a creative fire wherever they go. Their unisex fragrances are inspired by iconic moments in counterculture that have left their mark on the world, whether through art or music. Rainbow Bar is inspired by the 1980s LA music scene and the lifestyle of the West Coast during the 60s and 70s.
The result? An incredibly earthy, aromatic cologne that stuns with notes of cypress, warwood, fresh basil, and guaiac wood. It's the ideal cologne for young men who want to express their individuality and show the world exactly who they are.
The Dos and Don'ts of Applying Cologne to Make It Last
1. Dab, Don't Rub
You might be tempted to rub your wrists together after spritzing your fragrance, but the key to getting the most out of your cologne is to dab, not rub. Rubbing in your cologne breaks down the fragrance molecules, weakening the scent. Instead, gently dab it onto your skin.
2. Apply to Pulse Points
Pulse points are areas on the body where your blood is closest to your skin. Because these areas are warmer than others, they're ideal for applying fragrances and diffusing the scent across your body. To make the scent of your cologne last longer, apply it onto pulse points such as behind your ears, your wrists, inside your elbows, on your neck, lower jaw, below your midriff, and behind your knees.
3. Apply Cologne After the Shower
Applying a few spritzes of cologne after you get out of the shower (while your skin is still warm and hydrated) will activate the fragrance molecules, enhancing the scent and locking it in your skin.
4. Keep Your Skin Moisturized
Applying an unscented lotion (or matching scented lotion) to your skin will help lock in the fragrance for ultimate staying power. To avoid altering the scent of your cologne, stick to a lotion or cream that's unscented or only lightly fragranced.
5. Lock it in with Vaseline
Similarly to applying your fragrance onto freshly moisturized skin, you can prep your pulse points with a skin occlusive like Vaseline or Aquaphor before spritzing. The occlusive locks the scent on the skin, so you smell incredible for longer.
6. Reapply Every 4 Hours
If necessary, reapply your fragrance every four hours or so. Don't overdo it with cologne by applying too much too often, or you risk smelling too strong and giving people a headache.
7. Keep Your Cologne Out of Your Bathroom
While your go-to cologne probably looks fantastic sitting on your bathroom counter, the bathroom is a less than ideal location for storing your fragrances. A bathroom is a place where light, humidity, and heat are constantly shifting, creating an environment that breaks down perfume molecules—resulting in a less intense fragrance.
8. Know the Concentration
The concentration of perfume to alcohol in your cologne can help you determine how long the smell will last on your skin. A parfum be made of 20-30% perfume, so it will be the longest lasting. An eau de parfum has about 15-20% perfume and will have a more intense, long-lasting fragrance (about five hours), while an eau de toilette will have 5-15% perfume, so it is lighter and less long-lasting (about three hours).
9. Skip the Cologne Cloud
You've probably seen people spray cologne into the air and then walk through it. And while it might look cool, this application method is really ineffective. Walking through that cologne cloud doesn't evenly distribute the fragrance since most of it goes onto the floor or scatters in the air rather than landing on your clothes and skin.
Apply your cologne by spritzing (about three to six inches away from your skin) and then gently dab it in with your wrist. If you'd like, you can also apply a few spritzes directly onto your clothing to make the fragrance last longer.
Cologne FAQs
Can you wear too much cologne?
Yes! It's definitely possible to wear too much cologne—all it really takes is a few too many sprays. When applying cologne, follow the motto "less is more." Excessive amounts of fragrance can be highly irritating and distracting for those around you, often causing headaches or allergic reactions.
Instead of going crazy with the cologne and spraying it everywhere, stick to just one or two spots on the body. Apply two to three spritzes on pulse points like your wrists or lower jaw, where the scent is more likely to spread and be more impactful. Remember, you can always apply more if needed.
What do fragrance notes mean?
Fragrance notes refer to the ingredients that make up a cologne. The ingredients are carefully selected to blend together and create a fragrance experience. The scents are categorized into top notes, middle notes (or heart notes), and base notes. The fragrance notes and how they affect the scent and longevity of a cologne can be visualized as a pyramid.
The top notes form the top layer of the fragrance and are what you'll initially smell after spritzing. The top notes are typically lighter and have a smaller molecule structure, so they will evaporate quickly (lingering for about five to fifteen minutes) before blending into the middle notes.
The middle or heart notes tend to be the bulk of the fragrance, making up around 70% of the scent. The heart notes tend to be full-bodied and aromatic with a medium evaporation and duration length, lasting up to an hour on the skin before transitioning into the base notes.
Base notes form the foundation of a fragrance, so they tend to be the richest and heaviest scents (think notes like musk, sandalwood, and cedarwood). Base notes linger the longest on your skin and (depending on the cologne or perfume) can last up to six hours or more.
When should you wear cologne?
The joy of cologne is that it's something you can wear as frequently or infrequently as you'd like. So whether you want to wear cologne every day or only on special occasions is totally up to you and your preferences.
With that being said, certain colognes and fragrance compositions are better suited for different events. For instance, one cologne might be light and fresh, making it perfect for casual wear. Another might be stronger and more decadent, making it better suited for special events or evening wear. There's a lot of factors to consider when selecting the best cologne for young men.
This article was produced in partnership with Blu Atlas
We put a lot of stock in our facial skincare products. From clarifying face washes to hydrating serums and moisturizing face creams, the skin on our face gets a lot of attention. But what about the skin on the rest of our body (you know, the majority of our skin)? Our body skincare routines need love too, and body lotions are a great way to nourish the skin with brightening vitamins, protective antioxidants, and rich emollients.
For those with dry skin, body lotion is also crucial for replenishing moisture loss and healing the skin barrier. Body lotions help prevent dryness and moisture loss, so it's an essential body care product to have with you no matter the season or your skin type. Below, you'll find our picks for the 21 best body lotions for men. We've included a range of different price points and moisturizing capabilities, so there's a lotion for every skin type and concern.
Blu Atlas' Moisturizing Cream nourishes dry, dull skin with seaweed extract and mango seed butter. The moisturizer's natural ingredients are also full of anti-aging vitamins, antioxidants, minerals, and fatty acids, so skin looks visibly smoother and more youthful.
The Best Drugstore Body Lotion for Men: Cetaphil Moisturizing Cream
For a classic body cream you can find practically anywhere, there is Cetaphil's Moisturizing Cream. The non-greasy, fragrance-free formula contains nourishing ingredients like sweet almond oil, glycerin, and vitamin E to soothe very dry, sensitive skin.
The Best Splurge Body Lotion for Men: Josie Maran Skin Dope CBD Body Butter
This luxurious body cream contains 100 milligrams of CBD to calm sensitivity and improve skin texture and tone. The body butter also includes coconut oil, mango seed butter, and jojoba seed oil for deep, long-lasting moisture.
The Best Daily Body Lotion for Men: The Body Lotion by Nécessaire
This body lotion by Nécessaire can be used daily to tackle dry skin and restore lost nutrients. The formula contains beneficial plant oils, vitamins, and omega fatty acids for ultra-nourished skin.
The Best Body Lotion for Men with Normal Skin: La Roche-Posay Lipikar Daily Repair Moisturizing Lotion
For men with normal skin, a lightweight, hydrating formula is exacting what you need in a body lotion. This one by La Roche-Posay hydrates and strengthens skin with Prebiotic Thermal Water, shea butter, glycerin, and niacinamide.
The Best Body Lotion for Men with Dry Skin: EltaMD Moisture-Rich Body Creme
Restore dry, compromised skin with this moisturizing Body Creme. The rich conditioning formula includes ingredients like mango seed butter, ceramides, and kiwi fruit extract to calm inflammation, restore moisture, and firm the skin.
The Best Body Lotion for Men with Sensitive Skin: Bioderma Atoderm Intensive Baume
This gentle, fragrance-free body lotion is made for those with very dry, sensitive skin. Its dermatologically-approved formula is also suitable for treating eczema and psoriasis.
The Best Body Lotion for Men with Aging Skin: Eminence Organic Skin Care Monoi Night Body Cream
Firm skin and combat wrinkles with this anti-aging body cream by Eminence Organic. The body lotion uses antioxidants, rich emollients, and argan stem cell technology to give you more youthful-looking (and feeling) skin overnight.
The Best Exfoliating Body Lotion for Men: Glytone Exfoliating Body Lotion
An exfoliating body lotion like this one by Glytone will soften and improve skin texture, so you can say goodbye to rough, bumpy skin once and for all. This formula uses a potent concentration of glycolic acid along with glycerin and vitamin E to smooth skin.
The Best Body Lotion for Men with SPF: Supergoop! PLAY SPF 50 Everyday Lotion
Your body needs daily SPF protection to fight the aging effects of UVA and UVB sun rays. To give your skin the sun protection it needs, this SPF 50 body lotion by Supergoop! is lightweight, sweat-resistant, hydrating, works for all skin tones, and can be used on the face and body.
Packed with nourishing, all-natural ingredients, Blu Atlas' Moisturizing Cream is designed to transform dry, dull skin into smooth, hydrated skin with a healthy glow. This ultra-hydrating cream uses key ingredients seaweed extract, vitamin C, and mango seed butter to provide skin with anti-aging vitamins, antioxidants, minerals, and fatty acids.
Mango seed butter is the star of this moisturizer since it treats dry skin, soothes itchiness and inflammation, nourishes with fatty acids and vitamins A, C, and E, and protects the skin against environmental stressors. The result is skin that instantly looks more youthful. This Moisturizing Cream is suitable for all skin types. Plus, since it's marketed as a face moisturizer, it can be used from head to toe.
Nécessaire is all about elevating skincare essentials into body care rituals that feel luxurious and indulgent. Their coveted The Body Lotion treats dry skin and aids in restoring skin to total health and vitality with ingredients like niacinamide, vitamin C, vitamin E, omega-6, and omega-9.
The formula also nourishes and promotes skin maintenance with nourishing plant oils and extracts like meadowfoam seed oil and sugar cane extract, which moisturize and lock in hydration. In addition to being a great body lotion for all skin types, the formula is also vegan, clean, non-comedogenic, hypoallergenic, and dermatologist-tested.
For skin that's ultra-dry, try Bioderma's Atoderm Intensive Baume. This body lotion is a dermatological solution known for instantly moisturizing very dry and sensitive skin, as well as soothing eczema and psoriasis. Key ingredients include a lipigenium complex composed of biolipids naturally found in our skin's epidermis, which help improve the health and structure of the skin barrier.
PEA (also known as palmitoylethanolamide) instantly soothes feelings of dryness and discomfort, while glycerin and mineral oil provide deep, long-lasting hydration. Because the formula is so gentle, it can also be used on the face to try severely dry, irritated skin.
A dry, compromised skin barrier not only feels itchy and irritating, but the appearance of redness and flakes can also make you want to stay inside and hide your skin. If your skin is in need of repair and craving a rich body cream to do the job, there's this Moisture-Rich Body Creme by EltaMD. The dermatologist-tested brand created this clean, fragrance-free moisturizing formula to tackle skin dryness, dehydration, and itchiness.
The formula is non-greasy and non-comedogenic (so it won't clog your pores). It focuses on ultra-nourishing ingredients like mango seed butter (to calm inflammation and soothe irritation), ceramides (to restore the skin barrier), hyaluronic acid (to draw in hydration), and kiwi fruit extract (to firm skin and supply helpful nutrients).
5. La Roche-Posay Lipikar Daily Repair Moisturizing Lotion
La Roche-Posay is another dermatologically tested skincare brand that's great for those with eczema. Their Lipikar Daily Repair Moisturizing Lotion is a lightweight, fragrance-free formula that moisturizes dry to normal skin types. Its simple formula uses potent skincare ingredients to instantly treat dryness, texture, and sensitivity.
La Roche-Posay's patented Prebiotic Thermal Water hydrates and provides the skin with important minerals and antioxidants. Shea butter and glycerin moisturize and attract water to the skin. While niacinamide (a form of vitamin B3) soothes and strengthens the skin's protective barrier.
If you want a simple yet effective body lotion, you can't go wrong with CeraVe's Daily Moisturizing Lotion. This beloved formula is lightweight and absorbs quickly into the skin, so you don't feel greasy or sticky.
To provide your skin with 24 hours of non-stop hydration, the formula uses hyaluronic acid to draw water into the skin and three essential ceramides to restore and retain your skin's moisture barrier. This fragrance-free, non-comedogenic, eczema-friendly body lotion can be used on all skin types and ages.
CBD is making its way through the skincare world thanks to its ability to soothe irritation and improve skin texture and tone. In this body butter by Josie Maran, non-psychoactive CBD-rich cannabis sativa hemp extract blends with other nourishing ingredients like pure argan oil, shea butter, and coconut oil to balance skin and provide long-lasting moisturization.
This moisturizer isn't like a lightweight body lotion. But its silky, churned body butter texture still absorbs quickly into the skin. The clean formula is derived from all-natural, organic ingredients and doesn't contain any sulfates, phthalates, or parabens.
Cetaphil's Moisturizing Cream is another dermatologist-recommended body lotion for those with dry to very dry, sensitive skin. The non-greasy, fragrance-free formula uses nourishing ingredients like sweet almond oil, glycerin, and vitamin E to instantly hydrate, lock in moisture for 24 hours, and soothe irritated skin.
The formula has been shown to restore a broken skin barrier in just one week, so if you have dry, itchy, flaky skin—this cream is for you. You can buy this moisturizing cream in a variety of different sizes, but we recommend the 20-ounce tub for easy access.
9. Eminence Organic Skin Care Monoi Night Body Cream
Men with mature, aging skin need an enriched body cream packed with youth-preserving ingredients. In this Night Body Cream by Eminence Organics, anti-aging ingredients work with your body's natural sleep cycle to repair cellular damage and restore skin. A PhytoCellTec biocomplex uses argan stem cell technology and nutmeg seed extract to increase skin firmness and reduce the appearance of wrinkles.
Other rich emollients and hydrators like monoi oil, shea butter, and hyaluronic acid give long-lasting moisture and improve skin elasticity. The formula is also rich in anti-aging antioxidants vitamin E, vitamin C, and Coenzyme Q10 to protect skin against cellular damage. Use this luxurious body cream in the evening and wake up with younger-looking skin.
For guys with dry, bumpy skin, incorporating an exfoliating body lotion once to twice a week into your routine can transform your skin from rough and textured to soft and smooth. This Exfoliating Body Lotion by Glytone uses 17.5% glycolic acid as its exfoliating powerhouse.
This AHA helps to reduce the appearance of uneven skin tone, give skin a smoother texture, and prevent razor bumps and ingrown hairs. The formula is simple but effective with moisturizing ingredients like glycerin (to relieve dryness and bring water into the skin), vitamin E (to protect skin from environmental aggressors), petrolatum (to lock in moisture), and allantoin (to moisturize and smooth skin).
Protecting your skin with SPF, especially if you're outside a lot or live in a hot, sunny climate, is crucial for maintaining skin health and youthfulness. This daily body lotion by Supergoop! boasts an SPF of 50 PA++++ for ultimate protection against UVA, UVB, and IRA rays.
The lightweight, fast-absorbing formula is moisturizing with ingredients like glycerin and sunflower extract and is sweat resistant. It's suitable for all skin types and tones (don't worry, it won't leave a white cast), can be used on the face and body, and has a fresh, clean scent.
Hydration and healthy skin—what more can you ask for? Dermalogica's Body Hydrating Cream utilizes conditioning ingredients like glycerin and vitamin E to moisturize and soften skin without making it look or feel greasy. Skin-benefiting ingredients like green tea calm skin and add antioxidant protection, vitamin C treats dullness and discoloration, and lactic acid sloughs away dead skin cells for more hydrated, smoother skin. The formula also contains a variety of plant extracts such as tea tree leaf oil, Camellia sinensis leaf extract, and chamomile flower extract to soothe inflammation and assist in wound healing.
Art of Sport is a men's skincare brand known for creating affordable, high-quality products perfectly fit for athletes and men with an active lifestyle. In their Daily Skin Lotion, naturally moisturizing ingredients like shea butter and aloe vera provide skin with long-lasting hydration and barrier protection.
This daily body lotion also includes beloved skincare ingredients like sunflower seed oil (for calming inflammation and preventing aging), jojoba seed oil (for moisturizing and controlling oil production), Panthenol (for improving skin hydration and elasticity), and vitamin E (for antioxidant protection and reducing UV damage).
Lumin's Conditioning Body Balm is a daily moisturizing body lotion for men that soothes and firms skin after just one use. This everyday body lotion for men targets redness, skin damage, and moisture loss with Centella asiatica, a natural plant known for visibly calming redness and irritation. To condition the skin and heal a weakened skin barrier, the body balm uses shea butter, rich in hydrating fatty acids and natural healing properties. Plus, the body lotion comes with a pump dispenser for easy application.
Pro-vitamin B5 is another beneficial vitamin that keeps skin soft, smooth, and hydrated. In addition to being incredibly hydrating, the vitamin is naturally anti-inflammatory and speeds up the skin's healing processes (which is great for those with dry, sun-damaged skin). It's also the star of the show in Malin+Goetz' Vitamin B5 Body Lotion.
This body lotion for men has a lightweight formula that absorbs quickly into the skin and doesn't leave behind any annoying residue. Alongside pro-vitamin B5 are other nourishing ingredients like fatty acids, avocado oil, and grapeseed oil, which deliver lasting hydration and restore lost moisture.
For a body lotion formula that's not too heavy and not too light, there's this one by Hawthorne. The Medium Weight Body Lotion for men delivers skin with moisture and beneficial plant extracts to support healthy, strong, balanced skin.
Ginger root extract (known for its anti-aging properties) protects the skin's collagen supply and acts as an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory. Panthenol (also known as pro-vitamin B5) improves skin's hydration, elasticity, and texture. Lime fruit extract (which is super high in vitamin C) defends against environmental stressors for skin that's healthy and bright. The unscented formula also means it's perfect for layering under your cologne or body spray.
This Moisturizing Body Lotion by Oars + Alps is lightweight and helps lock in moisture, especially when applied right after the shower. The formula moisturizes skin with natural ingredients like shea butter, sunflower oil, and vitamin E to quench dryness without making skin feel greasy.
This moisturizing body lotion for men also contains arnica and magnesium, two natural ingredients known for soothing muscle tightness and soreness—which is great for guys who work out or have an active job. It's fragranced with notes of cedarwood, lime, and fresh greens for a crisp, cool smell.
18. Marlowe No. 002 Extra Moisturizing Body Lotion
Deep sea algae extract is the star of the show in this Extra Moisturizing Body Lotion by Marlowe. This natural skincare ingredient has shown anti-aging potential by inhibiting the breakdown of collagen, thus improving skin elasticity and preventing wrinkles. Sea algae extract is also great for treating dry skin and soothing sensitivity.
Alongside deep sea algae extract, you'll find passionflower extract (rich in vitamin C and iron), green tea extract (high in antioxidants to protect and repair skin), and willow bark extract (to calm inflammation and irritation). This gentle formula can be used twice a day, so dry, scaly skin doesn't even have a chance.
This best-selling body lotion by Kiehl's is beloved for its ability to treat dry skin without weighing it down. The lotion works for all skin types (normal, dry, combination, and oily), so whether you struggle with dryness on the regular or seasonally, it will soon become a thing of the past.
The formula is rich and hydrating with squalane, cocoa butter, shea butter, sweet almond oil, vitamin E, and more. This body lotion for men is also considered "clean," meaning it doesn't have any harmful and potentially unsafe ingredients like phthalates, parabens, lead, formaldehyde, or talc.
Another favorite exfoliating body lotion on our list is this Renewing Body Cream by Skinfix. This body cream—designed to smooth rough, bumpy skin and keratosis pilaris—uses a blend of AHA and BHA exfoliants to buff away dead skin cells, reduce discoloration, smooth texture, and unclog congested pores.
The formula also uses conditioning ingredients to create a luxurious moisturizing experience. Shea butter, coconut oil, and jojoba oil moisturize skin and lock in hydration, while soothing ingredients like bisabolol calm the skin and prevent any adverse effects from the exfoliation.
If you want a nourishing daily body lotion that also smells incredible, look no further. Naturopathica uses Sicilian bergamot as its scent-spiration alongside Valencia orange, clementine, and pink grapefruit for a clean, fresh, and enlivening fragrance.
This body lotion for men is rich in natural, skin-benefiting ingredients like rosemary (known for its antioxidant and cleansing properties), sunflower seed oil (to deeply moisturize and soothe skin), and aloe vera leaf juice (to hydrate and heal dry skin).
Emollients are moisturizing agents you'll find in both face and body moisturizers. They'll commonly look like butters, oils, esters, lipids, and fatty acids, which are rich (sometimes heavy) ingredients that form a protective barrier on the skin to protect against water loss. Some of our favorite emollients in moisturizers are natural ones like shea butter, mango butter, and nourishing plant oils like jojoba, sweet almond, or coconut.
Emollients are amazing for repairing and moisturizing dry skin. For one, they work to replenish the skin's delicate moisture barrier. A compromised skin barrier (which is often super dry, flaky, red, and itchy) lets water and moisture escape and enables irritants and pollutants to penetrate the skin—exacerbating any skin issues you might be facing. To protect the skin barrier so it can get repaired, emollients smooth over skin and form an occlusive layer, preventing moisture loss.
Due to their conditioning, smoothing nature, emollients are helpful for anyone dealing with skin conditions such as eczema, psoriasis, or contact dermatitis. They can soothe inflammation and repair the skin barrier, so you experience less redness, itchiness, and overall irritation.
Hydrators
Hydrators are humectants that draw water from the environment into the skin. Though hydrators are often described as moisturizers (and vice versa), the terms are not interchangeable. Hydrators put water into the skin, so the skin looks healthy and plump; moisturizers lock in that moisture, so the skin doesn't experience water loss. Some of the best hydrating skincare ingredients that you absolutely want in a body lotion include glycerin, hyaluronic acid, and lactic acid.
Antioxidants
Antioxidants are uber important compounds for the skin. Their primary job is to prevent and reverse free radical and environmental damage such as harmful sun exposure and air pollution—which is great for our skin since free radicals cause cellular damage, loss of collagen, inflammation, hyperpigmentation, and other signs of premature aging.
Thankfully, antioxidants work as a powerful army defending the skin against stressors and aggressors, repairing damage and hunting free radicals so they can't cause more damage. Antioxidants are also anti-inflammatory and brightening, which is just the cherry on top of what these mighty compounds do for our skin. Some of our favorite antioxidants you should look out for in your body lotion include vitamin C, vitamin E, niacinamide, coenzyme Q10, green tea, and vitamin A.
Nourishing Plant Extracts
Plant or botanical extracts have been used for centuries as the basis of ancient skin and body care. In the modern world, more and more skincare brands are using plant extracts to help their customers achieve radical skin health. With thousands of different plant extracts currently being used, all of which have their own unique properties, there are endless benefits you can experience.
Here are just a few different plant extracts we love to see in our skin and body care products.
Willow bark extract: Willow bark extract is a naturally rich supply of salicin (an acne-fighting ingredient also found in salicylic acid). This plant extract is fantastic for skin because it is gentle, calms redness, is naturally anti-inflammatory and rich in antioxidants, and balances oil production.
Seaweed and algae extracts: Seaweed and algae extracts are naturally rich in vitamins and minerals, which help strengthen skin. Algae and seaweed are also incredibly hydrating and rejuvenating, so they can improve skin elasticity and plumpness.
Camellia sinensis leaf extract: This plant extract is obtained from the leaves of tea plants. In skincare, this anti-aging compound promotes skin hydration, protects against DNA damage, and is naturally anti-inflammatory.
Ceramides
Ceramides are lipids naturally found in the upper layers of the skin. They're so abundant they actually make up over half of our skin's composition, forming a protective layer that helps prevent moisture loss and environmental damage. You'll often find ceramides in moisturizing skincare products like body lotions and creams because they reinforce your skin's moisture barrier, which is especially important for treating or preventing dry skin. Ceramides also make skin firmer, smoother, plumper, less sensitive, and more youthful-looking.
This article was produced in partnership with Blu Atlas
Dandruff is one of those pesky conditions that we try to avoid at all times. But, it's not always as easy as it sounds. There are a lot of symptoms associated with dandruff: we're talking dryness, flaking, itching, redness, oiliness, the list goes on. So if you want to prevent dandruff from becoming an issue for you, or if you're struggling to get rid of dandruff, we've gathered a list of the 15 best anti-dandruff shampoos and shampoo treatments that will help you stay flake-free.
But before we get into our 15 best dandruff shampoos for men roundup, let's first talk about what exactly dandruff is and what causes it. We most often recognize dandruff by the dry, white flakes of skin that are littered throughout your hair and on the collar of your shirt or shoulders. These flakes can also appear in your eyebrows, beard, or mustache.
While these dry, white flakes are harmless, that doesn't mean they aren't annoying. Not only can dandruff be embarrassing, but it can have your scalp constantly feeling dry, itchy, red, and irritated. So why do you get dandruff? Dandruff can have several causes, such as having skin that's too dry or too oily or if the skin is irritated and inflamed. But the most common cause of acne is an overgrowth of the yeast-like fungus Malassezia. Which is why you'll see many of the shampoos on our list use antifungal ingredients like pyrithione zinc, selenium sulfate, and tea tree oil (to name a few).
Below, you'll find our list of the 15 hardest working anti-dandruff shampoos on the market you might want to consider adding to your flake-fighting routine.
This all-natural shampoo expertly leverages jojoba protein and aloe vera to target redness and irritation while moisturizing the scalp. Blu Atlas offers this product with a full money-back guarantee, so you risk nothing by giving it a try.
Best Luxury Anti-Dandruff Shampoo: SACHAJUAN Scalp Shampoo
This anti-dandruff shampoo by SACHAJUAN uses ingredients like salicylic acid, piroctone olamine, climbazole, rosemary oil, and lactic acid to hit dandruff and an irritated scalp from all angles.
Best Clinical Strength Anti-Dandruff Shampoo: Head & Shoulders Clinical Strength Dandruff Shampoo
This clinical strength shampoo by Head & Shoulders uses selenium sulfide and ketoconazole for dandruff and flaking relief. This shampoo may be clinical strength, but it's at an affordable price that won't break the bank.
Best Anti-Dandruff Scalp Treatment: Phyto PHYTOSQUAM Intense Exfoliating Treatment Shampoo
This exfoliating treatment shampoo utilizes incredible ingredients like black pepper, Guyana wood, and willow extracts to loosen dandruff flakes, alleviate itching, balance the scalp's skin barrier, and prevent dandruff from coming back.
Best Dandruff Shampoo for an Oily Scalp: AROMATICA Tea Tree Purifying Shampoo with Salicylic Acid
Treat an oily scalp with this clarifying shampoo by AROMATICA. This anti-dandruff shampoo uses salicylic acid, tea tree oil, hyssop, and burdock extract to balance sebum production and give the scalp a good clean.
Best Dandruff Shampoo for a Dry, Itchy Scalp: Philip Kingsley Flaky Scalp Cleansing Shampoo
If a dry, irritated scalp is your main concern, reach for this cleansing shampoo on your next hair wash day. It uses gentle clarifiers to lift away flakes and soothe scalp irritation. Plus, this shampoo has a fresh apple scent that makes your dandruff stresses fade away.
Best Dandruff Shampoo for Hair Health: Jupiter Balancing Shampoo
Zinc pyrithione is the star of this anti-dandruff show, but its hair-healthy co-stars include ingredients like squalane, coconut oil, and sugar kelp extract to hydrate hair and scalp, calm inflammation, and control dandruff irritation.
Best Multi-Purpose Dandruff Shampoo: Typology Anti-Dandruff Shampoo
This anti-dandruff shampoo by Typology targets dry and oily dandruff with Piroctone olamine 1% and a plant-based blend of extracts like jujube, atlas cedar essential oil, and clary sage essential oil.
If you're looking to nurture your scalp for dandruff control, why further bombard it with toxic agents and chemicals? Go all-natural with Blu Atlas' gentle formula, which features jojoba protein and aloe vera to provide your scalp with much-needed hydration and relief. Continue using this eco-friendly product even after your dandruff has resolved, as jojoba is known to take care of clogged hair follicles and stimulate hair growth.
This product is suitable for all hair types, and like the entire Blu Atlas line, comes with a full money-back guarantee. Now that's a sweet deal.
2. Selsun Blue Medicated with Menthol Dandruff Shampoo
Selsun Blue Medicated with Menthol Dandruff ShampooAmazon
This medicated, over-the-counter anti-dandruff shampoo is one of the best dandruff treatments on the market. Selsun Blue effectively treats dandruff and seborrheic dermatitis by utilizing maximum strength anti-dandruff ingredient selenium sulfide to target redness, itchiness, flaking, and irritation. And because it's "anti-infective," it will also slow yeast growth, contributing to dandruff. Bonus: it has a cooling, soothing sensation thanks to the ingredient menthol.
Nizoral is a clinically proven anti-dandruff shampoo that reduces the notorious side effects that dandruff is known for (we're talking flaking, scaling, and itchiness). To make an anti-dandruff treatment that does the job well, Nizoral uses the active ingredient ketoconazole at a concentration of 1%. This antifungal ingredient helps combat a specific yeast overgrowth on the scalp, known to cause dandruff. The Nizoral formula is powerful at treating dandruff, but it is also gentle enough to use on gray or color-treated, chemically processed hair.
4. Head & Shoulders Clinical Strength Dandruff Shampoo
Head & Shoulders Clinical Strength Dandruff ShampooAmazon
If you have or have had dandruff in the past, you probably know of Head & Shoulders. The brand has made its way to the most-popular list with its Clinical Strength Dandruff Defense Shampoo. This anti-dandruff shampoo combines 1% selenium sulfide and 2% ketoconazole to fight flaking and the dandruff-causing yeast Malassezia. It's been proven to have 35% more dandruff fighting power than other shampoos on the market, and 100% of users were shown in clinical studies to have improved anti-dandruff protection with regular use. Thanks to its anti-flaking and anti-itching formula, it's also a viable option for those with seborrheic dermatitis.
5. Neutrogena T/Gel Daily Control 2-in-1 Anti-Dandruff Shampoo Plus Conditioner
Neutrogena T/Gel Daily Control 2-in-1 Anti-Dandruff Shampoo Plus ConditionerNeutrogena
This popular drugstore anti-dandruff shampoo contains the active ingredient pyrithione zinc to help control scalp itching and flaking. What's unique about this formula, compared to others on our list, is that it also contains vitamin E, a potent antioxidant and moisturizer that nourishes the scalp, and wheat protein to strengthen hair and defend against damage. Its gentle shampoo and conditioner combination ensures the anti-dandruff treatment isn't drying. Plus, it's safe for color-treated hair.
This anti-dandruff shampoo really is a healthy hair and scalp shampoo. It targets dandruff with hard-hitting ingredients like salicylic acid, piroctone olamine, and climbazole. But it also utilizes plant botanicals and extracts like rosemary oil, menthol, and ginger extract to calm irritation and itchiness. Additional scalp-benefiting ingredients like lactic acid help regulate oil production for a healthy moisture balance. Use this anti-dandruff shampoo as you would a normal shampoo, by massaging it into wet hair and focusing on the scalp, but leave it to sit for one to two minutes to do its job before rinsing and following with conditioner.
Many anti-dandruff shampoos are actually scalp treatments, such as this one by Phyto. This exfoliating scalp treatment cleanses hair and targets severe dandruff and itching with its botanical blend of dandruff-fighting extracts. In this vegan, fragrance-free formula, you'll find black pepper and Guyana wood extracts which team up to loosen dandruff flakes from the scalp and nourish the skin barrier, salicylic acid and tea tree leaf oil to target dandruff directly, and antioxidant-rich willow extract which amplifies the anti-dandruff properties of the formula.
You'll apply this exfoliating treatment differently than your standard shampoo. Start by applying it section by section onto a dry scalp, give each section a gentle massage, then let it sit for five to seven minutes before washing it out.
This soothing, medicated anti-dandruff shampoo by Jupiter targets dandruff directly with the active ingredient zinc pyrithione at a concentration of 1%. The formula removes flakes, calms irritation, minimizes excess sebum, clears away buildup and residues, and moisturizes for a healthy scalp. In addition to its dandruff-fighting arsenal, this balancing shampoo includes hair-healthy ingredients like squalane to increase shine and prevent breakage, coconut oil to soften and hydrate, and sugar kelp extract for its anti-aging and antibacterial properties. This anti-dandruff shampoo doesn't smell like a medicated hair wash; its uplifting scent is just downright heavenly with notes of mint, vanilla, sage, and lavender.
Philip Kingsley Flaky Scalp Cleansing ShampooCourtesy Image
Soothe a dry, irritated scalp with this anti-dandruff cleansing shampoo by Philip Kingsley. The formula is designed to gently cleanse the hair with clarifying agents that lift away dandruff flakes for good, all while calming any scalp irritation and inflammation. As a multi-award-winning formulation with hundreds of 5-star reviews, this anti-dandruff shampoo is a great option for those who want a gentle yet effective shampoo for daily use. To get the most out of this scalp shampoo, apply it to wet hair and create a lather by gently kneading the scalp. Rinse (repeat if necessary) and follow with conditioner.
To get dandruff under control, BIOLAGE Scalpsync Anti-Dandruff Shampoo uses the active ingredient pyrithione zinc to help stop the yeast Malassezia and relieve scalp irritation and dry, visible flakes. You'll use this dandruff fighting shampoo at least twice a week on a rinse-and-repeat schedule. Gently massage the treatment into wet hair and scalp and then rinse. You'll then reapply but this time, let the treatment sit on the scalp for one to two minutes before rinsing. And because this shampoo has a tropical coconut scent, your hair won't have that medicinal smell of traditional anti-dandruff shampoos.
Whether your dandruff stems from a dry scalp or an oily scalp, this purifying shampoo by Davines can help. The formula uses antioxidants, dandelion root extract, and selenium sulfide to calm inflammation and target dandruff on the microbial level. You can use it as you would your regular shampoo once a week and leave it on for a few minutes before rinsing. Or, you can use it as a more intensive hair and scalp treatment twice a week. And, according to its multiple 5-star reviews, this shampoo smells so good people might stop you in the streets to ask what scent you're wearing.
Like we mentioned earlier, there can be two different types of dandruff that may sound counterintuitive. There's oily dandruff caused by the overproduction of sebum on the scalp, and there's dry dandruff, which looks like the characteristic white flakes we picture when we think of this common scalp condition. To make it simpler for you, Typology created an anti-dandruff shampoo that targets both types. Its primary dandruff-fighting ingredient is piroctone olamine, which packs an antifungal punch to put Malassezia in its place. Piroctone olamine is also known to stimulate new hair growth (which is just the cherry on top). Other plant-based ingredients include jujube extract, atlas cedar essential oil, and clary sage essential oil.
13. AROMATICA Tea Tree Purifying Shampoo with Salicylic Acid
AROMATICA Tea Tree Purifying Shampoo with Salicylic AcidAmazon
This cleansing, purifying shampoo uses tea tree oil and salicylic acid as its anti-dandruff soldiers. It's especially great for those with an itchy, oily scalp as its soothing blend of ingredients like Perilla fruescens, Arctium lappa, hyssop, chamomile, and fenugreek extract control excess sebum production, soothe the scalp, and provide an effective clean. This anti-dandruff shampoo is also cruelty-free, vegan, eco-friendly, free of silicones and sulfates, and has a lovely hint of peppermint oil for a cool, refreshed feeling.
If dandruff is something you're constantly trying to control, then using a shampoo that's suitable for everyday use can help maintain the health of your hair and scalp. This best-selling shampoo by Paul Mitchell uses superstar ingredient tea tree oil to purify and invigorate the scalp and hair. And because tea tree oil is naturally antibacterial and antifungal, it can help keep dandruff at bay. The formula also uses hair and skin-friendly ingredients like white ginger, algae, rosemary, and aloe vera leaf extracts to calm inflammation, soothe irritations, and protect the scalp. This shampoo is made for all hair types, as well as color-treated hair.
One of the most frustratingly annoying parts of dandruff is the dry, itchy scalp. Hawthorne's Dry Scalp Shampoo aims to balance and restore hydration to the scalp while also relieving irritation and removing dryness and flakes. In this formula, you'll find natural ingredients like aloe vera (for soothing itchiness and repairing the scalp), peppermint oil (for increased circulation and a boost of freshness), rosebay extract (to calm irritation and remove flakes), and vitamin B5 (to strengthen and soften hair). Together, they improve hair and scalp health.
Pyrithione zinc (also known as zinc pyrithione) is one of the most popular anti-dandruff ingredients on the market. It is naturally antibacterial, antimicrobial, and antifungal, so it's an amazing ingredient for targeting the growth of dandruff-causing yeast.
Find it in BIOLAGE's Scalpsync Anti-Dandruff Shampoo, Jupiter's Balancing Shampoo, Neutrogena's T/Gel Daily Control 2-in-1 Anti-Dandruff Shampoo Plus Conditioner
Salicylic Acid
Salicylic acid is a beta-hydroxy acid that works to exfoliate away dry, dead skin cells and improve the overall health of the scalp. Because it's oil-soluble, it can also clear and prevent sebum and Malassezia buildup for a balanced scalp with healthy moisture levels.
Find it in AROMATICA's Tea Tree Purifying Shampoo, Phyto's Intense Exfoliating Treatment Shampoo, SACHAJUAN's Scalp Shampoo
Selenium Sulfide
Another widely used ingredient to treat dandruff is selenium sulfide. This ingredient is known to help relieve itching, flaking, redness and can remove dry skin cells from the scalp.
Find it in: Davines' Purifying Anti-Dandruff Shampoo, Head & Shoulders' Clinical Strength Dandruff Shampoo, Selsun Blue's Medicated with Menthol Dandruff Shampoo
Ketoconazole
Ketoconazole is an antifungal agent that can be used in over-the-counter medications to slow the growth of dandruff-causing fungi. It is also beneficial for controlling scalp flaking, scaling, and itching.
Find it in Head & Shoulders' Clinical Strength Dandruff Shampoo, Nizoral's Anti-Dandruff Shampoo
Piroctone Olamine
Piroctone olamine is an active ingredient commonly found in dandruff shampoos to treat dryness, relieve itchiness, and stop the spread of Malassezia. In addition to fighting dandruff, it's known to promote new hair growth and decrease hair loss over time.
Find it in Typology's Anti-Dandruff Shampoo, Philip Kingsley Flaky Scalp Cleansing Shampoo, Phyto's Intense Exfoliating Treatment Shampoo, SACHAJUAN's Scalp Shampoo
Tea Tree Oil
Tea tree oil is a fantastic ingredient to look for in your hair and scalp treatments if your dandruff results from yeast overgrowth. This essential oil is a naturally powerful antiseptic (meaning it relieves pain), antifungal, and antibiotic that targets the source of dandruff as well as its symptoms. Even if your dandruff isn't the result of Malassezia, it can still be beneficial for soothing scalp inflammation, irritation, dryness, and maintaining scalp health.
Find it in Paul Mitchell's Tea Tree Special Shampoo, AROMATICA's Tea Tree Purifying Shampoo, Phyto's Intense Exfoliating Treatment Shampoo
Plant Extracts
Plant extracts are the dream team for calming an inflamed, irritated scalp or balancing oil production. With thousands of plants and botanicals, each with its own unique properties, it's a good idea to look for plant-based ingredients in your anti-dandruff shampoo for optimal benefit. Extracts like rosemary, green tea, hyssop, and burdock can provide the hair and scalp with necessary antioxidants, moisturization, and anti-inflammatory compounds that speed up the healing process and get your hair and scalp back to normal in no time.
Find them in Hawthorne's Dry Scalp Shampoo, Typology's Anti-Dandruff Shampoo, Jupiter's Balancing Shampoo
The Best Practices for Using an Anti-Dandruff Shampoo
Even though an anti-dandruff shampoo is labeled as a 'shampoo' that we associate with hair washing, they're actually a type of scalp treatment or medication targeted towards treating dandruff and its associated causes or symptoms. To see the best results with your anti-dandruff shampoo, you want to avoid using it how you would typically use your shampoo. And by that, we mean quickly slathering it in your hair just to rinse it out 40 seconds later. The best practice for using an anti-dandruff shampoo is to use it like you would another hair treatment.
You want to focus the shampoo on your scalp (especially in those areas you see the most flaking) and in the roots of your hair, then let it sit for a few minutes. You can even apply the anti-dandruff shampoo a few minutes before hopping into the shower and rinse it out once you get in. Even if a brand or dandruff shampoo gives you the okay to use it as you would a regular shampoo, it's always a good idea to let the product sit on the scalp for one to two minutes. This will give the active ingredients more time to do their magic.
Things That May Actually Be Making Your Dandruff Worse
Not washing your hair often enough
To get rid of excess oil and dandruff flakes, washing your hair on a regular basis is a must. If your dandruff is really bad, dermatologists recommend using an anti-dandruff shampoo twice a week (or as suggested on the label) with a gentle, balancing shampoo in between on days you need it.
Skipping the Conditioner
Conditioners are an essential part of a haircare routine. Even if you think you don't need one because your hair is short, the truth is that conditioners help add moisture, proteins, vitamins, and nutrients back into both the hair and scalp. So not using conditioner on days when you wash your hair could lead to over-dried hair, scalp, and eventually, dandruff.
Scrubbing and scratching your scalp
While it may seem like a good idea to scrub or "exfoliate" away the dandruff flakes, this method can actually make the condition worse. The scratching and scrubbing can lead to an inflamed, irritated scalp, which could make the situation much more dry and itchy or even lead to infection.
Not washing your hair after a sweaty workout
If you frequently go to the gym and get your sweat on, it's essential that you wash your hair after your workout. Because the dandruff-causing yeast Malassezia loves a warm, moist environment (aka a sweaty scalp), not washing away the sweat, oils, and bacteria from your workout can lead to more, harder to get rid of dandruff.
Letting it go on for too long
We won't sugar coat it: dandruff can be a pain to get rid of. But it also shouldn't be an issue that you're always dealing with, especially if you have constant flakes, itchy skin, or odor. Going to see a board-certified dermatologist can help guide you in the right direction when it comes to treatments and ensure that what you're dealing with is dandruff and not seborrheic dermatitis or fungal infection.
Tips for Finding the Best Anti-Dandruff Shampoo for You
Dandruff Symptoms and Causes
Dandruff doesn't look the same for everybody. It has different causes and symptoms, some of which you may experience and others which you may not. When choosing an anti-dandruff shampoo, opt for one that targets your symptoms as well as the cause of your dandruff: yeast overgrowth, dryness, oiliness, etc.
If the dandruff symptoms you most commonly experience include flakes and dry scalp, you're going to want an anti-dandruff shampoo that targets flakes and dryness. Or, if itchiness is your main concern, go for a shampoo that treats an itchy scalp and calms irritation. Likewise, if you know your dandruff was caused by an overgrowth of the fungal yeast Malassezia, choose a formula that has antifungal properties and ingredients.
Look at the Ingredients
Ingredients matter big time when it comes to anti-dandruff shampoo. Active ingredients like selenium sulfide, salicylic acid, and zinc pyrithione (or pyrithione zinc) are the most important ingredients in an anti-dandruff solution. Think of them as the star of the show. But to ensure overall hair and scalp health, supporting ingredients like plant extracts and moisturizing agents can provide additional benefits that really make the formula shine. And if a brand is transparent about what ingredients go into its formulation, that's a good sign that the brand and product are trustworthy and have nothing to hide.
Hair Color
Some anti-dandruff shampoos can influence the appearance of color-treated hair. So if you dye your hair or get highlights/lowlights, make sure the anti-dandruff shampoo you reach for is safe for color-treated hair.
Are Men More Likely to Have Dandruff Than Women?
We all know that dandruff is a common condition—anyone can have it, even babies. With that being said, men are still more likely than women to have dandruff. One reason for this could be hormone-related and testosterone's role in oil production, which, in excess, can lead to dandruff.
However, men are less likely than women to tell their doctor or dermatologist about their frustrations with dandruff. And we're here to remind you that you don't need to suffer silently—dandruff can be controlled and cured. If you can't get your dandruff to go away (no matter how many different shampoos you've tried), schedule an appointment with your dermatologist and see if they can cure your case.
Eli Manning hung up his pads nearly two years ago, and at the time, it looked like he was getting a break—retiring from the NFL and its hectic schedule. Then the pandemic hit, and whatever plans he had for his post-NFL life mostly went out the window.
"I basically became a substitute teacher," he tells Men's Journal.
Like many parents across the country, Manning had to step in to help his kids with remote learning, and that meant brushing up on his math skills: "Teaching about rhombuses and trapezoids and quadrilaterals," he says.
Although moving from NFL star to grade school math teacher was a big adjustment, Manning has been enjoying spending more time with his family. Last year he was able to coach all three of his girls' basketball teams, and he's been using retirement as an opportunity to do new things with his kids, from fishing to skiing and beyond.
"We had some great moments," he says, looking back on his first two years post-NFL.
More family time is a welcome change from his football days, when the rigors of an NFL schedule kept him away from home and focused on his duties as a quarterback. Tom Brady recently opened up about how hard it is to play pro football and also be an active father and husband, a sentiment that Manning shares. Now that he's spending more time at home, it's become very clear just how much he missed before.
"I knew I missed a lot playing, but you kinda realize now how you miss, how much went into those weekends," Manning says.
Of course, Manning hasn't totally left football behind. He's still an NFL fan, and with the Super Bowl coming up, we had to get his take on what teams have the best shot at hoisting the Lombardi Trophy this year. Manning has his eye on two teams: The Green Bay Packers and the Tennessee Titans.
"I think Green Bay's going to be tough to beat," he says, noting that their opponent will have to play them in a chilly Lambeau Field filled with raucous fans. "Someone's gonna have to go there and win in the cold."
As for the Titans, he loves their underdog spirit.
"They're kind of the underdog, even though they're the top seed," he says. "No one's really giving them a chance, and I think that's the way they like it. They just surprise you and beat you."
Check out our full conversation with Eli Manning above.
Since retiring at the end of the 2019 NFL season, Eli Manning has been enjoying some well-deserved time off. In his 16 seasons as a quarterback for the New York Giants, Manning set several franchise records, including records for passing yards, touchdown passes, and completions (over 4,800 of his throws met their intended target). On top of that, he's known for leading the Giants to one of the greatest Super Bowl upsets in history—beating the undefeated Patriots in Super Bowl XLII in 2008. But is he flaunting his success and flashing his Super Bowl rings around? Absolutely not.
"They don't come out much," he tells Men's Journal. "My kids didn't even know I had them."
That fateful Super Bowl XLII created all kinds of incredible moments, but perhaps none is more iconic than Giants receiver David Tyree's incredible one-handed "Helmet Catch" in the fourth quarter of the game. That catch was a key part of the offensive drive that ended with the Giants scoring the go-ahead touchdown to win the game. Looking back, Manning couldn't believe the catch was real. After running down the field to catch up with Tyree after the play, he had just one question for his teammate: "Did you catch it?"
He did. And soon enough, Manning and the Giants would be Super Bowl champions.
Of course, not every game in his career was so glorious. We also talked with Manning about some of his toughest opponents; linebacker DeMarcus Ware was a particular standout. Ware racked up more sacks on Manning than any other player, and he became a scary presence on the opposing defensive line—especially when he played for the Cowboys, who played the Giants two or even three times a season.
"He's such a nice guy," says Manning, "but I was happy when he left and went to Denver."
Recently Manning's been getting involved in other ventures, including joining the investment firm Brand Velocity Partners and dabbling in cryptocurrency.
"I'm still kinda learning what exactly it is and how it's to be used," he says, "but I think it's here to stay."
Other things in his life haven't changed, however: He still gets into arguments with his brother, Peyton. One recent spat ended with them stranded on the side of the highway in Louisiana. Check out the video above to see how that story ends.
The Bloody Mary is a noble brunch drink. Hungover? Have a Bloody Mary. Want to get a day's worth of vitamin C during breakfast? Put some vodka in your nutrient-rich tomato juice. Bam! Bloody Mary. Think a slab of delicious bacon makes a good stir stick? We think you get the point: The Bloody Mary is for you.
But if you're going to do the Bloody Mary justice, your V8 simply won't cut it. You need a real Bloody Mary mix that delivers a good deal of spice (and maybe some heat, too). Once you mix that with vodka, your Bloody Mary is prime for garnishing—so bring on the hunks of cheese, fresh celery stalks, olives, lemon wedges, and pickled peppers.
Here are seven Bloody Mary mixes that'll help you build a respectable base for your brunch cocktail. And try our top vodka recommendations for a perfect pairing.
Best Bloody Mary Mixes for the Ultimate Boozy Brunch
Courtesy of Manny's Mixers
1. Manny's Ultimate Bloody Mary
Rich and savory, this Bloody Mary mix is a proprietary blend that was created by former bartender Manny Ferreira. While Ferreira suggests mixing it with a medium-bodied vodka that's been three to five times distilled, you could also use this mix in your favorite gazpacho, tomato sauce, cocktail sauce, and other recipes. The mix (lower in sodium than many others on the market) could also complement a Bloody Maria that's made with tequila or a Bloody Moon with moonshine.
The Real Dill, a small-batch artisan pickle maker in Colorado, has entered the Bloody Mary game. The result is a bottle of Bloody Mary mix that's loaded with horseradish, dill, garlic, and habaneros. Add some Real Dill pickles to your order, too. The Habanero Horseradish Dill pickles will give a fiery bite to your cocktail.
An absolute classic, Zing Zang is beloved by bartenders and chefs alike. The mix was created 25 years ago by retiree Richard Krohn, who developed the recipe for friends and family. They loved it so much, he bottled it and started selling it out of the trunk of his car to Chicago bartenders. Aside from Bloody Marys, Zing Zang can be splashed into a lager for a Michelada.
In Mexico, tequila pairs with tomato juice, citrus, and spices to make Sangritas. Made with tomato paste, citrus, peppers, and agave, the Tres Agaves Organic Bloody Mary Mix can help you recreate these Mexican-style Bloody Marys. The secret blend goes nicely with vodka, but it really shines when it comes to adding balance to tequila's bolder flavor profile.
The plot twist with this Bloody Mary mix is that it contains no tomato juice. Instead, Eric "ET" Tecosky, a former bartender with a couple of decades of experience behind the bar, uses olive juice in the mix to create a full umami flavor profile. Because a little goes a long way, the 16-ounce bottle of mix can yield 20-30 cocktails, depending on how much spice you like. To make a Bloody Mary, use 1.5 ounces of your favorite vodka, 0.5-0.75 ounces of the mix, and 3 ounces of tomato juice. The Bloody Mary mix can also level up stews and chilis.
For those who love a smoky drink, this Bloody Mary mix from Traeger (yes, as in the grill company) will fast become a favorite. It's got a kick of cayenne pepper, and it's also a marinade so take that as your cue to smother it on some wings.
Also a pickle maker, McClure's makes a bold and tangy Bloody Mary mix with its pickle brine. Dill, garlic, and black pepper add a layer of complexity to the tomato juice. You can get this mixer in mild or spicy.
In Scotland, whisky plays a part in many celebrations, but none more so than Burns Night on January 25. The annual event celebrates national poet Robert Burns, who wrote widely in the Scots dialect. His compositions often provided sharp, incisive commentary on social and political issues, but also encompassed humor, love, and epic storytelling. You probably already know one of his most famous works: Auld Lang Syne, sung every New Year's Day (which is called Hogmanay in Scotland).
On Burns Night, people gather to recite the bard's poetry, sing songs, eat haggis, and give multiple whisky toasts. Although at one time he served as an exciseman, which did not endear him to the distilleries compelled to pay the tax, Burns was a devoted whisky drinker and featured it in many of his works.
You don't have to be Scottish to celebrate Burns Night, and doing so requires no elaborate planning or preparation—though feel free to go as big as you feel like. The essential elements are poetry, food, whisky, and a spirit of celebration.
And if even that's too much to manage during pandemic times, no problem: Scotch expert (and "Braveheart" actor—really!) Andrew Weir is hosting a virtual Burns Night you can stream from anywhere. The event will include all the traditional parts of the evening, plus special guests like Outlander star Steven Cree, to immerse guests in the world and story of Robert Burns. The full experience ticket even includes four whisky samples and haggis-flavored chips—as close as most people will want to get to the Scottish delicacy. Tickets are available at burnsdistilled.com.
Everything You Need for Burns Night
Food
The traditional meal at a Burns Supper always includes haggis, a Scottish dish traditionally comprising chopped sheep's heart, lungs, and liver, mixed with oats and spices, cooked inside a sheep's stomach. Authentic haggis is illegal in the U.S., where consuming lungs is forbidden, but you can purchase a modified—or vegetarian—version from Scottish Gourmet USA. Often the haggis is introduced as part of a procession with bagpipes, then a master of ceremonies recites Burns' "Address to a Haggis" before the dish is served to guests. "Neeps and tatties"—boiled and mashed turnips and potatoes—usually accompany the haggis, along with a whisky-cream sauce.
This is the occasion to break out a kilt, which can be rented from a number of online merchants. Or dress up in your finest formalwear, accented by something plaid, if possible.
Poems and songs
Other than "Address to a Haggis" and "Auld Lang Syne," which usually closes out the evening, no particular Burns poems are mandatory. He wrote over 550 works, so there are plenty of options. Encourage guests to choose a poem, and deliver it with plenty of emotion. Robertburns.org has a complete list to peruse.
Toasts
Anyone can offer a toast on Burns Night, but the Toast to the Lassies is most common. It should be humorous but heartfelt, meant to praise the work of women both in general and those in attendance, while gently teasing as well. The lassies are then entitled to make a reply to the laddies with their own clever retorts.
And for all those toasts, of course, you need whisky. Choose any scotch you like, or check out one of the recommendations below.
Truly the most fitting scotch for a Burns Night celebration, this single malt has been officially endorsed by the World Burns Federation since 1998. It's made at Isle of Arran Distillery, located on an island within sight distance of the village where Burns was born.
Courtesy Image
2. Kilchoman Machir Bay
Packed with smoke and peat and bottled at a beefy 100 proof, this Islay whisky stands up to even the most pungent bites of haggis, though you don't need to eat anything to enjoy it.
Courtesy Image
3. Highland Park 15-year-old Viking Heart
Cool, damp, and windy year-round, the Orkney Islands are home to ideal maturation conditions, helping this lightly peated 15-year-old achieve a perfect mix of strength and elegance with full flavor.
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4. Compass Box Artist Blend
A balanced, easy-drinking blend that works equally well for sipping neat and cocktails—really. Slip in a few ice cubes or a generous glug of sparkling water to lengthen your pour for a long evening.
Courtesy Image
5. Benromach 10-year-old
This Speyside distillery is committed to old-fashioned methods of production as well as flavor profiles. The result is a gentle, smoky whisky with full body and complementary sweet flavors, great for multiple rounds of toasting.
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Editorial Team posted: "Barrick Gold Corp., Gold Fields Ltd., AngloGold Ashanti, Royal Gold Inc. and Yamana Gold Inc are highlighted in this Industry Outlook article. Find out more at https://ift.tt/3qOtDIe via Entrepreneur.com"
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Dinty W. Moore posted: " In our new issue's Craft Essay section, Australian poet Lesh Karan discusses how she had "pretty much given up on prose," until she met the lyric essay. It was as if I found myself a new lover. I was on a cloud-nine high: I didn't have to write a "
In our new issue's Craft Essay section, Australian poet Lesh Karan discusses how she had "pretty much given up on prose," until she met the lyric essay.
It was as if I found myself a new lover. I was on a cloud-nine high: I didn't have to write a tightly knitted argument required of a critical essay. I could loosely stitch fragments—even seemingly unrelated ones. I could leave gaps. Lean on poetic devices such as lyricism and metaphor. Let juxtaposition do the talking. I did not need to know the answer, nor did I need to offer one. It was up to the reader to intuit meaning. Whew!
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Five days after Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed a law meant to provide stronger oversight of the more than 100 residential youth treatment programs operating in the state, a 12-year-old boy arrived at one of them, Provo Canyon School. Before long, he was forced into seclusion, denied communication with his family and given antipsychotic medication without parental permission, according to relatives.
Trish Leon, aunt of the 12-year-old, Logan, contacted various state agencies, the Utah governor’s office, elected officials and youth rights nonprofits — but soon discovered the law’s limits. Secluding a student from others is still allowed under the new rules, for example, but program operators must now report to regulators when they do so. Leon’s complaints about what happened to her nephew while he was at Provo Canyon School were dismissed as unsubstantiated or hit dead ends.
Leon said the dismissals show the state law isn’t enough to hold accountable an industry that makes billions of dollars treating kids with behavioral or substance use problems.
“If we’re still doing the same thing, there’s never going to be a change,” Leon said.
For groups pressing for more accountability for these programs, Leon’s story shows that the new law doesn’t go far enough. Further, they say, oversight is often weak and enforcement of the new law has been lax.
No federal laws govern these private, for-profit residential treatment programs, boot camps, and wilderness programs. Efforts to pass federal legislation that would regulate them failed every year for more than a decade, even after a 2007 Government Accountability Office report detailed allegations of abuse and neglect, along with deaths and deceptive marketing practices at programs across the country.
That’s left regulation largely to the states, with mixed results. A handful of states besides Utah have passed laws to bolster protections for young people in these programs. Among them is Montana, whose 2019 law led to the closure of several programs; California, whose 2016 law required residential treatment programs to operate on a nonprofit basis to ensure that financial incentives do not affect the quality of care; and Oregon, whose various laws have aimed to crack down on the so-called troubled teen industry, including a 2021 law that regulates “secure transport” companies hired to forcibly take kids to wilderness or residential programs. But in many other states, there is little to no oversight.
The Paris Hilton Effect
Utah is the troubled teen industry’s epicenter, offering a wide variety of these programs. Its new law, which took effect in March 2021, marks the state’s first attempt in 15 years to bring more regulation to the industry.
Utah’s law was championed by advocates and celebrity heiress Paris Hilton, who testified before the Utah Legislature that she experienced abuse while attending Provo Canyon School as a teenager. Hilton’s revelation and an investigation by The Salt Lake Tribune ushered in calls for change from former program attendees who shared similar experiences.
The law bans chemical sedation and mechanical restraints unless authorized by the Utah Office of Licensing. It also increases the number of inspections per year for each program and requires programs to report use of physical restraints and incidents of seclusion to the licensing office, although it does not ban or significantly restrict the practices. The law does require programs to provide participants with access to unmonitored communication with their families, which Logan’s family said they were denied while he was at Provo Canyon School.
Critics said tighter limits are needed on residential programs’ use of seclusion, restraint, and medication, in addition to more regulation of the use of degrading disciplinary practices and aversive behavioral interventions such as food deprivation.
Pivot to Congress
A new push to pass a federal law is now brewing, with a measure called the Accountability for Congregate Care Act. It would create a commission under the Department of Justice to research and establish best practices for youth congregate care settings and would allow the federal agency to take action or require states to take action when there is abuse. It also would enable the department to consult with states on the closure of facilities that do not meet standards, establish a “bill of rights” for young people in congregate care facilities and define the terms “treatment” and “institutional abuse.”
These residential programs are an “industry that is based on selling treatment even though many of them are not licensed to provide treatment,” said state Sen. Sara Gelser Blouin of Oregon, who sponsored legislation to increase oversight in her state. “That is a change that needs to happen at the federal level.”
In Logan’s case, relatives said in interviews and in formal complaints — copies of which were provided to KHN — that the 12-year-old was placed in seclusion, called “stabilization” by Provo Canyon School officials. During stabilization, Logan was sent to a room, made to stare at a wall all day, and prohibited from talking with other students because of “maladaptive behaviors,” according to Logan and his relatives. The antipsychotic medication he received was prescribed by a psychiatrist under contract with Provo Canyon School against his mother’s wishes.
During his stay at Provo Canyon School, Logan was sent to stabilization multiple times — the longest stint lasted a week. After Logan’s aunt unsuccessfully filed her complaints against the program, she said, he left the Provo school for a different program and later returned to his mother, who had moved from their home in Washington state to Utah while he was in the program.
Provo Canyon School officials did not respond to questions about Leon’s complaints to government authorities but referred to a media statement from August that said the program “is committed to the safety of our students and staff” and “DOES NOT use 'solitary confinement’ as a form of intervention.”
Some States Seek Reform
Utah, California, Oregon, Montana, and Missouri have enacted laws aimed at increasing oversight of residential treatment programs for young people. But each law is tailored to its state, and child advocacy groups said enforcement has been uneven.
And when states identify problems, they sometimes appear to be reluctant to escalate the penalties for repeat offenders, the advocates said.
“We’ve seen facilities in many different states that have been cited again and again and again for noncompliance for dangerous practices, for children dying at their facilities, but if the state doesn’t revoke their license or shut them down, then it’s pointless,” said Caroline Lorson, an advocate helping draft the federal legislation.
In Montana, the 2019 state law created new regulations for programs and moved oversight from an industry-dominated board to the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services. A month after the health department took over oversight of the programs, the state removed 27 children from a program called Ranch for Kids and revoked its license. By late 2020, 11 of Montana’s 19 programs had closed, some because of the new regulatory environment, according to Erica Johnston, head of the state health department’s economic security services.
But the problems haven’t gone away, and critics have questioned the enforcement of the new rules.
A program called Wood Creek Academy near Thompson Falls has undergone three state inspections since September 2020, two that resulted from complaints and one that was regularly scheduled. Inspectors found violations of the law, including that Wood Creek Academy staff members waited more than an hour to call 911 after two boys ran away and then punished the boys by separating them from other students for two days and making them sleep in tents in shorts and T-shirts in below-freezing temperatures.
The program wasn’t penalized for the violations but was required to submit plans detailing how it would prevent the violations from occurring again. Wood Creek Academy closed voluntarily in September.
At another program, Reflections Academy, a 17-year-old girl died by suicide in June. That prompted an inspection, which found that Reflections Academy staff members did not follow program policies for responding to the suicidal ideation of a participant and did not take the patient to the hospital or ensure she received a psychiatric evaluation that was recommended by a physician a day before the girl’s death.
Staff members failed to supervise the girl after she said she was suicidal and harmed herself the day before her death, saying they weren’t sure “how much of this is real or manipulation,” according to the state inspection report.
But the Montana health department did not revoke Reflections Academy’s provisional license. Instead, the department accepted a one-sentence plan of correction from Reflections that stated, “Moving forward, the program will follow the revised policies for child abuse and neglect reporting, child abuse and neglect, self-harm, and suicide policies.”
Reflections Academy program director Michele “Mickey” Manning voluntarily closed the program in October. She previously served as the principal of the now-shuttered Spring Creek Lodge, where a 16-year-old girl killed herself in 2004 after she was put in isolation nearly 30 times in six months, according to the notes and logs that staff members kept on students and were included in a lawsuit filed after the girl’s death.
Spring Creek Lodge closed after lawsuits, controversy, and a drop in enrollment. Manning went on to serve as program administrator of Clearview Horizon until 2015, when she left to open Reflections Academy in 2016.
The 2019 Montana law does not regulate religious programs. After the state health department implemented the 2019 law, Clearview Horizon, now called Clearview Girls Academy, began operating as a “Christian therapeutic boarding school” and is therefore exempt from state oversight.
Manning is named in several lawsuits in which over a dozen former students allege psychological and sexual abuse by staff members whom Manning employed at Clearview Horizon and Reflections Academy. In one lawsuit, 10 former Clearview students allege that the program and its staff employed psychologically harmful practices, including solitary confinement, social isolation, food deprivation, and corporal punishment, according to the complaint.
Manning did not respond to repeated requests for comment. She has previously said in response to a lawsuit against her that she complied with “all applicable standards of therapy and was not negligent,” according to legal documents.
Without federal legislation, advocates said, the few state laws that exist result in inconsistent regulations that allow program owners accused of abuse and mistreatment to hop across state lines and reopen, rebrand, and continue to profit from children.
A former Reflections Academy student, 20-year-old Molly McCready, said that was her concern about the program she attended from 2017 to 2019.
“It’s good that it closed, but another school could pop up somewhere else,” she said.
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.
When he was running for president in 1999, George W. Bush, then governor of Texas, famously fended off the strong anti-abortion wing of his party by suggesting the country ought not consider banning abortion until public opinion shifted further in that direction. “Laws are changed as minds are persuaded,” he said.
But he was clear in urging anti-abortion allies to concentrate on persuading more Americans to take their side before pushing for broader restrictions. “I know as you return to your communities you will redouble your efforts to change hearts and minds, one person at a time,” he told anti-abortion demonstrators at the annual March for Life rally in 2004. “This is the way we will build a lasting culture of life, a compassionate society in which every child is born into a loving family and protected by law.” For many years after that, anti-abortion forces concentrated on more incremental steps, such as putting burdensome health and safety requirements on abortion clinics and requiring waiting periods before abortions.
It seems that strategy is about to be tested. Although public opinion on abortion has budged little in the ensuing two decades and the nation is still bitterly divided, the Supreme Court appears poised to overturn or at least significantly weaken its landmark abortion ruling, Roe v. Wade, decided 49 years ago this week.
Sometime in the coming weeks or months, justices will decide in a case from Mississippi whether bans on abortion before fetal viability can be constitutional. During those arguments in December, most of the justices in the court’s new conservative majority seemed to question the constitutional foundation of the nearly 50-year-old precedent that guarantees the right to abortion nationwide. If a majority answers yes to allowing Mississippi’s ban at 15 weeks of pregnancy, “that undoes Roe,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, who, as president of the Susan B. Anthony List, has been working toward that goal since the organization’s 1992 founding.
Abortion-rights supporters also expect Roe to be overturned. In Texas, all but abortions performed in a pregnancy’s earliest stages have been unavailable since September because of a legal standoff over a state law that bans abortions after six weeks but leaves enforcement to the general public, by authorizing civil suits against anyone who performs an abortion or “aids and abets” one.
“Roe has no meaning,” Dr. Bhavik Kumar, a San Antonio abortion physician, told reporters on a conference call Jan. 18. “We’re living in a place where abortion is essentially banned.” Kumar said the Texas law, which the Supreme Court refused to block last month, means abortion is illegal “as soon as 10 days after a missed period for some women.”
Dannenfelser said that even if the justices roll back Roe, groups like hers still want Americans to come to a consensus on the abortion issue, but it may not be a national agreement. “But that’s what consensus is, it’s the consensus of people living in [each] state,” she said. “So it will be different in Alabama than in North Carolina, which will be different from the state of Washington, from Texas.” And what if lawmakers turn out to be more anti-abortion than the people who elected them? “They get unelected,” she said, but she also envisions the question working the other way. “And if they’re not strong enough in their convictions on life, they’ll be unelected.”
Abortion-rights supporters say the public discussion has too long been marked by a lack of transparency. “We’ve had a decade-long campaign of misinformation and disinformation,” said Kumar. “When people understand reality, when they understand science,” he said, “it has a profound difference on their opinion.”
That’s where the Turnaway Study comes in. It’s a 10-year look at nearly 1,000 women at 30 abortion clinics who got abortions or were “turned away” because they were too far along in their pregnancies. “We were interested in answering the question 'Does abortion hurt women?’” said Diana Greene Foster, the study’s lead researcher and author of the book “The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having — Or Being Denied — An Abortion.” Abortion foes for years have claimed that abortion harms women’s mental health and causes physical problems as well.
Data from the Turnaway Study has resulted in the publication of more than 50 peer-reviewed studies, and the answer to nearly all the questions asked, said Foster, is that the women who got abortions fared better in respect to economics and health, including their mental health, compared with those who did not have abortions.
“We see large immediate differences in the economic well-being where women who were denied abortions are more likely to be poor, less likely to be employed, more likely to say they don’t have enough money for basic living needs,” she said.
Yet that’s not what much of the public hears. “It’s so interesting that this idea that abortion hurts women has gone so far with no data, and that the idea that being denied an abortion hurts women has not yet carried in the same way,” Foster said.
And in the end, public opinion really shouldn’t even matter that much, said Dr. Jamila Perritt, an OB-GYN and abortion provider in Washington, D.C., and president and CEO of the abortion-rights advocacy group Physicians for Reproductive Health. “When you need access” to abortion care, she said, “the opinion of other people, who know nothing about your life, means little.”
But it may help determine whether — and where — legal abortion remains available.
HealthBent, a regular feature of Kaiser Health News, offers insight and analysis of policies and politics from KHN’s chief Washington correspondent, Julie Rovner, who has covered health care for more than 30 years.
As the omicron variant completes its sweep across the U.S., states with scarce supplies of monoclonal antibody therapies continue to use two treatments that federal health officials warn no longer work against the highly contagious version of the virus that causes covid-19. The antibody treatment now most recommended is sotrovimab from GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology, and it’s in short supply.
Use of the newly ineffective treatments produced by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly and Co. is highest in a dozen states. They include several Southern states with some of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates, but also California, which ranks in the nation’s top 20 for fully vaccinated residents, a KHN analysis of federal data shows. Many hospitals and clinics are still infusing the costly treatments — often charging hundreds of dollars a session — that public health officials now say are almost certainly useless.
That’s because of the near-total dominance of omicron, which accounted for 99.5% of new covid infections in the U.S. during the week that ended Jan. 15, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That point was underscored this week by updated guidelines from the National Institutes of Health that now recommend sotrovimab as the primary monoclonal treatment for the disease.
Unless providers are certain they are still treating patients infected with the delta variant, they shouldn’t use the others, said Dr. Mark McClellan, director of the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, who is also a former commissioner of the FDA and former administrator of CMS. And the delta variant is increasingly rare, accounting for 3% of cases in Louisiana, 7% in California, and 10% in Ohio, as examples.
“There’s not a medical justification based on the evidence on the Regeneron and Lilly products,” McClellan said.
Determining which patients are infected with the delta vs. omicron variant is complicated, said Dr. Christian Ramers, chief of population health and an infectious disease specialist at Family Health Centers of San Diego.
His clinic is one of the few sites in the nation using laboratory screening of positive PCR covid tests that can tell whether patients are infected with delta vs. omicron — and then treating them accordingly. “Otherwise, you’re giving this false sense of security to a patient that they’re getting treatment,” Ramers said. “I don’t think it is ethical, and it goes against the principle of doing no harm.”
Overall, U.S. hospitals used about 72,000 doses of the Regeneron and Lilly monoclonal antibody therapies from Jan. 5 through Jan. 18, according to the latest figures from the Department of Health and Human Services. Data regarding hospital-level use of sotrovimab, which became available more recently than the other products, is not yet available on the HHS site.
By comparison, hospitals used about 153,000 courses of the Regeneron and Lilly treatments from Dec. 22 through Jan. 4. They used about 169,000 courses from Aug. 26 through Sept. 8, near the height of the delta surge.
On Jan. 19, hospitals still had about 295,000 doses of the Regeneron and Lilly treatments on hand.
Nationwide, the federal government is distributing more than 50,000 courses of sotrovimab per week, though it remains in short supply. The Biden administration has agreed to buy about 1 million doses, including about 600,000 promised by March, GSK officials said.
Respectively, Michigan, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Louisiana, California, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Ohio, New York, and Mississippi used the most courses of the Regeneron and Lilly treatments from Jan. 5 through Jan. 18, KHN’s analysis showed.
In Florida, which used more than 5,200 courses of the outdated treatments during that two-week period, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has said he is not convinced that the Regeneron and Lilly products don’t work against omicron. In Florida, omicron accounted for 97% of cases as of Jan. 20; delta accounted for 3%.
“We have had practitioners give both of those to people with omicron who said the symptoms got resolved,” he said in a Jan. 5 speech provided by his spokesperson, Christina Pushaw.
Federal health officials managing allocation of the monoclonal antibody therapies paused shipments of the Regeneron and Lilly treatments on Dec. 23, after laboratory tests showed they were less effective against the surging omicron variant than the delta variant. But the Biden administration resumed shipments on Dec. 31, after complaints from DeSantis and some doctors that those therapies could still help people in places where the delta variant persisted.
Regeneron itself has said its antibody treatments are ineffective against the omicron variant. It contains more than 30 mutations in the virus’s spike protein, which makes the variant better at dodging the monoclonal antibody treatments.
“It’s really not justified at this point unless there’s some other underlying secondary gain, political pressure, or perhaps the providers are truly not in touch with the reality of the variant proportions,” Ramers said.
Earlier this month, HHS officials indicated that shipments of the three monoclonal antibody treatments would continue through Jan. 31, despite the growing proportion of omicron cases. A department spokesperson on background said the agency would continue to assess “any impacts to covid-19’s therapeutic allocations.”
Monoclonal antibody treatments are lab-based molecules that mimic the body’s immune response to infection. They are most often given through IV infusion, though some can be delivered with an injection. The federal government has agreed to purchase millions of doses of the Regeneron and Lilly products at a cost of about $2,100 per dose. The medicines are free to consumers, though hospitals and clinics do charge fees for administering the drugs and monitoring patients during the process.
Other treatments expected to be effective against omicron in high-risk, non-hospitalized patients include AstraZeneca’s Evusheld, a long-acting injectable monoclonal antibody for immunocompromised people, and a three-day infusion of Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir, which is approved by the FDA. New oral antiviral pills also are expected to be effective, although they, too, remain in short supply.
Providers in several states that have continued to use the Regeneron and Lilly products have offered varied reasons. Some said they believed delta infections continued to circulate locally; others said they felt desperate to try something.
Officials in Michigan, which used more than 5,800 doses of the Regeneron and Lilly products during the most recent two weeks, and California, which used more than 3,400, have allowed health care providers to use their clinical judgment about which treatment to prescribe.
But in Mississippi, where omicron is rampant and fewer than half of residents have been fully vaccinated, state health officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs called for an end to the use of the treatments.
“We will be recommending that clinicians and physicians do not use these products right now based on the distribution of omicron vs. delta,” he said during a recent press conference.
At Ramers’ clinic in San Diego, care providers have been dispensing scarce doses of the monoclonal antibody treatments only when they’re confident they’ll help. That has meant sending batches of positive PCR tests to a laboratory in nearby Irvine, where they are screened to see whether one of three target genes is not detected, a known marker for an omicron infection.
Patients infected with the delta variant were able to be treated with REGEN-COV, the Regeneron product, preserving sotrovimab for the growing number of omicron cases, said Pauline Lucatero, the clinic’s director of nursing.
“Looking into my patients’ eyes and seeing fear, just fear, all I could tell them is we believe this treatment works and we’re going to do everything we can to save as many people as we can,” she said.
Phillip Reese, an assistant professor of journalism at California State University-Sacramento, contributed to this report.
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.
Ace Worldwide News Group posted: " #AceNewsReport - Jan.21: The tests are completely free. There are no shipping costs, and you don't have to give a credit card or bank account number. You only need to give a name and address. You also can order for other people who may not have online ac"
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"The recipient will be wearing it forever, so making sure that the decisions that go into creating the engagement ring are right for that person is important."
Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott has been fined $25,000 by the league for his postgame comments related to the game officials following Sunday's loss to the 49ers, a source told ESPN on Thursday.
Randall Cobb (abdomen) is expected to return Saturday vs. the Niners, but the news isn't as positive for two other Packers players. Marquez Valdes-Scantling (back) is doubtful, and David Bakhtiari is questionable after practicing just once this week.
Antonio Brown says in an upcoming episode of "I Am Athlete" that his sideline outburst that resulted in his release by the Buccaneers and his previous incidents have been miscategorized as "mental health issues."
Neither Niners linebacker Fred Warner nor quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo appeared on Thursday's injury report, and defensive end Nick Bosa is close to being back, drawing a questionable tag as he continues to go through the concussion protocol.
Tom Telesco said he understands the frustration of Los Angeles Chargers fans, but said the team has "a lot to be proud of" and is focused on getting better in 2022.
Bengals defensive end Trey Hendrickson has cleared the concussion protocol and will play Saturday against the Titans, coach Zac Taylor announced Thursday.
Chiefs linebacker Willie Gay, who started 11 games in addition to last week's wild-card playoff win, has pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor charge of criminal property damage of less than $1,000.
While playing receiver, running back and, occasionally, quarterback, Samuel accounted for 15 total touchdowns on his way to earning first-team All-Pro honors.
When we've talked about any plans to put in online DRM pings when it comes to console gaming, we've typically centered that discussion around the console makers themselves. For older Xbox consoles and, well, all things Nintendo, this has been a particularly annoying problem. Nintendo wanting online checks is just so on brand so as to be only mildly annoying. If you buy Nintendo, you know what you're getting. Microsoft's plan to have online checks for the Xbox made less sense. Piracy of console games isn't nonexistent, but it isn't exactly a massively huge problem given the technical know-how needed in order to use pirated games on modern consoles. Even for game publishers like Activision Blizzard, which has found itself in the headlines for entirely more significant reasons as of late, DRM was typically only included on PC ports of games, not on the console versions themselves.
Until now, it seems. Owners of Diablo 2 Resurrected have discovered that it has an online check that makes the game unplayable if the game hasn't checked in within 30 days, even on consoles.
Here’s an interesting turn of events: it seems that those who own Diablo 2 Resurrected, if you don’t log in (online) at least once in 30 days, you cannot play it offline regardless of platform. This was brought to our attention by Twitter user DoesItPlay1, who tweeted that this can be removed with hacks, and servers no real purpose.
You cannot play Diablo 2 resurrected after 30 days of being offline, one of the first console games to feature check in drm.
It serves no real purpose and can be removed with hacks.
This was later confirmed independently. As the post notes, there doesn't seem to be any real purpose to this. Again, console piracy is not to be equated with PC gaming piracy. Putting this check in place for thousands of legit customers to stave off whatever level of console piracy there is for this Diablo title is essentially solving the math problem wrong. On top of that, for those motivated enough, this online check is easily patched out of the game.
So, annoying paying customers to combat a problem that really isn't that big a problem via a method that is wildly ineffective. Yup, sounds like DRM to me! As the post notes, this is both an annoyance and a poorly timed one.
Given how much bad publicity Activision and Blizzard Entertainment has been in the past few months, this is probably the last thing gamers want to see from the developers. While I understand that this is a way to combat piracy, why is it activated on consoles too? Or better yet, wasn’t there a better way of implementing it without restricting players who bought it legitimately?
With DRM? Nah, dawg. The only real solution here would be for Activision Blizzard to be more forward-thinking and realizing this online check DRM was fit only for the dumpster to begin with.
China's minority Uighur Muslim population presents an existential threat to a government that is tasked with controlling the hearts and minds of billions of residents. The Uighurs don't buy into the government narrative or whatever passes for a national religion in a country where almost every religious expression has been suppressed.
The Chinese government claims to have no national religion. This may be true. But it will only tolerate so many, and Islam isn't one of them. The government has engaged in the mass disappearance of this minority. And it has done so with an alarming amount of assistance from non-Chinese entities, ranging from American tech companies to foreign government officials.
It's not like anyone's having trouble divining the Chinese government's intent when it comes to its Uighur population. But even multinational entities charged with keeping the (worldwide) peace and preventing large-scale human rights abuses are giving China what it wants.
The United Nations, the very institution created to "reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights," is assisting China in its violent efforts to wipe out the Uyghurs by helping the CCP cover its tracks. These were the findings of a recent report in Le Monde about the efforts of UN human rights officer-turned whistleblower Emma Reilly. Reilly claims that prior to every UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) session in recent years, China has requested the names of Uyghur and other Chinese dissidents who were scheduled to speak. And despite this being explicitly forbidden by the UN's own rules, the UN, according to Reilly, has made it a practice to share this information with Chinese authorities, who use it to harass the dissidents' families who are still based in China.
True? False? Unconfirmed? Gentlepersons, place your bets. But me personally? I'm siding with confirmed. These complaints about the UN's willingness to aid and abet at least indirect harassment of Uighur residents seem to have a pretty solid basis. This isn't a recent development. The Chinese government has wanted Uighurs regulated to the background of their own genocide for years.
Reilly says she first discovered the practice in 2013, when China's Geneva delegation requested confirmation that certain "anti-government Chinese separatists" were set to speak at the Human Rights Council. Listed individuals included, among others, Dolkun Isa, current president of the World Uyghur Congress.
Emma Reilly, of course, is now faring worse than either the UN or the Chinese government atrocities the UN is helping enable. Despite official confirmation of her allegations by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), she was fired from her position the day after French newspaper Le Monde reported on her accusations.
Meanwhile, the UN tries to have it both ways.
The UN in fact confirmed Reilly's allegations in 2017, when the OHCHR acknowledged that it confirms attendees' names with Chinese authorities who "regularly ask the UN Human Rights Office... whether particular NGO delegates are attending the forthcoming session." So too, did a 2019 UN tribunal confirm "the practice of providing names of human rights defenders to the Chinese delegation."
Despite confirming the Chinese government's abuse of UN processes, the UN Secretary-General claimed it blew the Chinese government off when it determined it had no basis to request these names. This assertion was rejected by a UN judge, who said the OHCHR had lied about its actual responses to the Chinese government's demands for names of speakers it wished to silence.
But this declaration hasn't changed the math much for the censorial and violent Chinese government. It still gets to participate in worldwide discussions about governance and demand information on UN speakers it doesn't agree with for the apparent purpose of engaging in witness intimidation. It's not that no one can see what's going on in China. It's that, for the most part, those with the power to attempt to force positive change have decided they're outmatched and outgunned by a government whose bark has proven so efficient it never needs to bite. Someone needs to call China's bluff. But those who can not only refuse to challenge the international bully, but actively participate in actions that consolidate its power.
Last week, we wrote about how entertainer/magician Criss Angel sent a ridiculous threat letter to comedian/magician Harrison Greenbaum after Harrison created a parody website/menu gently mocking Criss Angel's bizarrely named restaurant, CABLP. Greenbaum had announced on Twitter that he wasn't going to stand for this kind of bullying, and apparently he made the very smart decision to have Public Citizen Litigation Group lawyer Paul Levy respond on his behalf. If you've been reading Techdirt for any length of time, you should probably know that if you're on the receiving end of a letter from Paul Levy, you've probably done something very dumb. But, damn, Paul's letters are just so entertaining -- you can just picture the grin on his face as he writes these. And I'm not going to mention all the puns/references to magic, because I'll let you spot them all on your own.
It opens up pretty much as you'd expect: this is the situation, your client sent a dumb letter demanding ridiculous things, and no, my client isn't going to cave to your demands:
I write in response to your January 3, 2022 demand letter on behalf of your clients, Christopher Nicholas Sarantakos, a/k/a/Criss Angel, and unidentified companies, contending that a parody menu created by Harrison Greenbaum and posted on the internet using the domain name CablpRestaurant.com infringed your clients' copyright and trademark. Your demand letter insists that Greenbaum stop making fun of your client's menu and that he transfer the domain name to certain unnamed clients that you promise to identify later. As I now explain, Greenbaum is completely within his rights under well-established precedent, both under the copyright and trademark laws and the First Amendment, and he is not going to take any of the steps that you demand.
Then a little background on the situation, with the little zinger of a link to a news article about how basically everyone is baffled by the name of Angel's restaurant:
First, the facts. Your individual client is, as your letter noted, a well-known magician; in addition, he has, apparently through the unidentified companies, opened a restaurant called Criss Angel Breakfast, Lunch and Pizza, using his professional name; they have chosen eatblp.com and cablp.com as the restaurant's domain names (the latter points to the former). Greenbaum is a magician, but is also an established comedian and professional comedy writer. Greenbaum regularly satirizes the state of magic and other magicians; this year, your client was one of several magicians who received the homage of being featured in his comedy. As one part of this year's jokes, Greenbaum made fun of your clients' restaurant by creating a parody of the menu and posting it online using the domain name CablpRestaurant.com. The name of your clients' restaurant had already been widely pilloried in the industry, see Schwartz, Is Criss Angel's 'Cablp' the Worst Restaurant Name of All Time?, (May 20, 2021), https://www.vice.com/en/article/3aqdqj/is-criss-angels-cablp-the-worst-restaurant-name-of-all-time. Greenbaum's approach was more lighthearted. Not one of the other targets of Greenbaum's jokes has ever threatened to sue over them.
Then there's the obligatory "lemme explain to you how parody works" part:
Your letter says that Greenbaum has "publicly admitted that [he] intentionally [is] infringing" and "admit[s] that [he] illegally registered" the domain name, but this sleight of hand will not deceive federal judges. Greenbaum has openly proclaimed the registration of the domain name and the publication of the parody; he did not admit that anything of this was illegal or intentionally infringing, not surprising given that his speech is lawful and could not possibly cause confusion about source or sponsorship. The parody menu uses many of the same dish names as your clients' menu does, but Greenbaum has replaced your client's food descriptions with humorous references of his own. Each of your clients' prices ends in .99 (such as $4.99 or $12.99), but on the parody menu, most of the prices are absurdly high (starting at $66.99 and going up to $4801.99), while others are absurdly or low (pizza for $1.99). In addition, both the top and bottom of the menu are larded with disclaimers making clear that the page is a joke, not Angel's own restaurant page. Before the menu begins, the following appears: "THIS IS VERY OBVIOUSLY A PARODY. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO ACCESS CABLP'S REAL MENU, CLICK HERE" (and the word "HERE" is hyperlinked to your clients' actual menu). Next to your clients' restaurant logo, featuring the encircled A with the letters blp, Greenbaum placed the word "(NOT)." At the bottom, among the other parody signals is the caption, "THIS IS A PARODY AND NOT THE REAL MENU, I MEAN, C'MON, YOU ALREADY KNEW THAT, RIGHT?," and below that Greenbaum urged his readers to donate to your client's foundation, the Johnny Crisstopher Foundation, providing two hyperlinks to the page on your client's web site that appeals for donations to that charity. Moreover, Greenbaum has included "THIS IS A PARODY (DUH!)" in the title tag, which will appear when the parody page begins to show up in search rankings as the Streisand Effect takes hold.
Then, the legal stuff, that basically says "your threatening schtick may work on those unfamiliar with the law, but Paul Levy knows the law."
You contend that this parody and the domain name violate your client's trademark rights, but the law has already sawed that claim in half. First of all, Greenbaum has made an entirely noncommercial parody of your clients' menu, and his speech about your client is entirely opinion; to the extent that it is factual, it is truthful. His domain name truthfully identifies his web site as being about your clients' restaurant. Truthful speech and opinions are protected by the First Amendment, and that will be his first line of defense. Indeed, in the Ninth Circuit, where your client lives, as well as in many other circuits, such noncommercial uses are not subject to scrutiny under the trademark laws. Bosley Medical v. Kremer, 403 F.3d 672 (9th Cir. 2005); Radiance Found., Inc. v. N.A.A.C.P., 786 F.3d 316, 322 (4th Cir. 2015) (citing cases).
More specifically, many decisions of the federal courts of appeals—including the Ninth Circuit—preclude the use of trademark law to stop the use of domain names in the form www.trademark.com for noncommercial web sites about the trademark holder. In addition to Bosley, these cases include Utah Lighthouse Ministry v. Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research, 527 F.3d 1045 (10th Cir. 2008); Lamparello v. Falwell, 420 F.3d 309 (4th Cir. 2005); Nissan Motor Co. v. Nissan Computer Co., 378 F.3d 1002 (9th Cir. 2004). TMI v. Maxwell, 368 F.3d 433 (5th Cir. 2004); and Taubman v. WebFeats, 319 F.3d 770 (6th Cir. 2003). See also Lamparello and Lucas Nursery and Landscaping v. Grosse, 359 F.3d 806 (6th Cir. 2004) (cyberquatting law cannot be invoked to cancel domain names for critical web sites about the trademark holder); Utah Lighthouse, supra (same); Lamparello, supra (same). Even Houdini could not wriggle out of those constraints if the case proceeds in the Ninth Circuit.
In the Second Circuit, your claim would have to be one of initial interest confusion, which "requires a showing of intentional deception." Savin Corp. v. Savin Group, 391 F.3d 439, 462 (2d Cir. 2004), citing Bihari v. Gross, 119 F. Supp.2d 309, 319 (S.D.N.Y.2000); and BigStar Entm't, v. Next Big Star, 105 F. Supp.2d 185, 207 (S.D.N.Y.2000). Greenbaum's disclaimers are strong evidence of his lack of deceptive intent. Pebble Beach Co. v. Tour 18 I Ltd., 155 F.3d 526, 556 (5th Cir. 1998); Fischer & Frichtel Custom Homes v. Fischer Mgt., 2021 WL 1750174, at *6 (E.D. Mo. May 4, 2021); Smith v. Wal-Mart Stores, 537 F. Supp. 2d 1302, 1338 (N.D. Ga. 2008); Virginia Polytechnic Inst. v. Hokie Real Estate, 2011 WL 926862, at *13 (W.D. Va. Mar. 15, 2011). Your implicit initial interest confusion argument cannot prevail on the facts of this case, considering the many prominent "THIS IS A PARODY" statements. Moreover, because Greenbaum has played off your client's mark as part of an artistic or literary performance, the artistic relevance standard of Rogers v. Grimaldi, 875 F.2d 994, 1000 (2d Cir. 1989), provides a strong defense for Greenbaum's use.
The threat letter also included a copyright claim which was so dumb we didn't even mention it in our original article, but Levy wasn't going to let that slide either:
Your claim of copyright infringement does not levitate your threat of litigation into the realm of the plausible. You do not specify which client owns the alleged copyright, but searching the register for copyrights registered by Sarantakos himself, I see that although he has registered the copyright in a number of his works, it does not appear that his menu is one of them. Such registration is a necessary predicate for an infringement suit. 17 U.S.C. § 411. Indeed, one might question whether the menu is original enough to support a claim of copyright; but if it is, Greenbaum has made fair use. The use is both non-commercial and transformative, providing strong support on the first fair use factor. Greenbaum's use will in no way interfere with the market for your client's use, hence the fourth factor also favors Greenbaum. The menu is a factual description of the food available for purchase at your clients' restaurant, which gives them little support on the second fair use factor. And Greenbaum has only used the basic format of the menu as well as a few of the food categories—the least original part of the work—while substituting his own humorous food descriptions and even some parody food categories, so the third factor favors Greenbaum as well.
And then the closing, which contrary to what that famous movie says, is not called "the prestige," but this works either way:
Greenbaum would prevail whether you sued him in federal court in Las Vegas or in New York, and proceeding under the UDRP would not enable your client to pull a rabbit out of his hat. If you initiate a UDRP proceeding, we will seek a declaratory judgment of noninfringement, and invoke the stay provisions of the URDP so that Greenbaum can defend his First Amendment rights in federal court.
Or, you can just allow your claims to pull a disappearing act. Otherwise, Greenbaum will stand up for his rights rather than complying with your demands.
Anyway, Paul Levy's greatest magic trick is making thuggish legal bullies crawl into a little ball of despair and (if they have any sense at all) disappear.
On a separate note, I will mention that earlier this week, Criss Angel actually released a touching short documentary film about his young son who has been battling cancer (for what it's worth, as mentioned in Levy's letter, in Greenbaum's parody menu, he directed people to the foundation Angel set up, the Johnny Crisstopher Foundation). I recommend watching the film and it's nice to see how much time and effort Angel is putting into trying to help kids with cancer. He deserves praise for that. But it seems pretty silly to wipe away that kind of goodwill with thuggish legal threats over someone making a good-natured parody over your silly restaurant menu.
This week (January 18) marks the ten-year anniversary of the successful campaign against the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the United States. This proposed legislation threw up grave challenges to the future of an open Internet, including freedom of expression and access to information, by creating a blacklist of censored websites to be blocked and made inaccessible to the public.
Although originally intended to target websites having copyrighted and illegal content, this legislation potentially threatened websites containing political and dissident ideas. Joining this fight were a host of organizations in the private sector and civil society who fought for a free Internet.
An integral part of the fight was the campaign to ensure that anti-censorship tools were protected. In the world envisaged by the SOPA, anti-censorship tools like Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), could be banned. VPNs are legitimately used to ensure privacy and anonymity while accessing the Internet. They are also used to access content such as critical commentary or dissident ideas which might have been blocked online in some country contexts.
That would have been the worst possible outcome for people including journalists, whistleblowers, human rights defenders and others who depend on them for secure access to censored material online and for whom these tools allow secure transmission of sensitive information. This would have been true for the United States, and the effect on the American market would have had knock-on effects on the range of products available in other countries.
Although the SOPA fight was won, this fight is far from over in other areas of the world.
Just last week (week of January 9), the Nigerian government finally unblocked Twitter after blocking it for 7 months, beginning June 4 2021. Seven months prior, Twitter removed a Tweet by the Nigerian President in which he threatened the Igbo ethnic group who were agitating for an independent state away from Nigeria. Twitter deemed the Tweet in violation of its rules. The Nigerian government thought otherwise and in response ordered Nigerians to stop using Twitter and instructed ISPs to cut off access to Twitter from the Nigerian cyberspace, commencing the indefinite suspension of Twitter.
Nigerians largely ignored the order not to Tweet, recognizing it as a violation of their fundamental human rights to expression and opinion. Nevertheless, Twitter was now censored in the country and could only be accessed via VPNs by millions of Nigerians whose rush to download VPNs saw a huge spike in VPN adoption from the country by over 1400%.
ExpressVPN, a popular VPN service, reported a 200% increase in downloads from Nigeria on June 6, two days after the Twitter ban. The successful impact of VPNs as anti-censorship tools for accessing Twitter in Nigeria could be observed via Nigerian topics and conversations trending in countries such as Canada and the Netherlands where VPNs used as exit nodes.
The Nigerian government responded to those who continued to use Twitter through VPNs by threatening legal action but relented after public backlash.
However, this is not the case everywhere. An avenue they could have explored was the blocking of VPN services in the country. Russia’s ongoing blocking of the Tor anonymity network and the blocking of VPNs by the Great Chinese FireWall is a case which demonstrates that anti-censorship tools are vulnerable targets for blocking. Australia is another country where VPN use has been threatened. When anti-censorship tools are blocked, it becomes much harder to access the open Internet.
On this anniversary of the campaign against SOPA, we must never lose sight of the broader, ongoing global fight against an open Internet. An important struggle in this fight is to ensure that anti-censorship tool use remains legal and access to them is unfettered. Particularly as we grapple with a world where there is Great Power competition — and thrown in this rivalry are competing versions of how free the Internet should be, what content should be allowed and whether these tools should be freely accessible.
Drawing from the success of the SOPA campaign and the lessons from that struggle — including the indispensable role of a broad and determined coalition in the fight for an open Internet, we can ensure that we dig in and continue the resistance which secures and expands its gains, especially across borders.
Babatunde Okunoye is a researcher on digital society, particularly in the context of the global south. This post was originally posted on his Medium.
This Techdirt Greenhouse special edition is all about the 10 year anniversary of the fight that stopped SOPA. On January 26th at 1pm PT, we'll be hosting a live discussion with Rep. Zoe Lofgren and some open roundtable discussions about the legacy of that fight. Please register to attend.
And, yet, we pay almost no attention to how they massively abuse the power they already have under copyright law to silence people. The latest example is the book review blog, Fantasy Book Critic. I'd link to it, but as I'm writing this all you now see is a message that says "Sorry, the blog at fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com has been removed."
Why? Because two of the largest publishing companies in the world, Penguin Random House and HarperCollins, hired a ridiculously incompetent service provider called "Link-Busters" which specializes in bullshit automated DMCA takedowns for the publishing industry. Link-Busters' website looks like basically all of these sketchy, unreliable services, promising to "protect IP" and (even more ridiculously) "turn piracy into profits."
The company also claims on its website that "you can be assured your work will be protected to the fullest extent," and also: "According to multiple independent metrics, Link-Busters quarantines and/or eliminates more pirated content than other anti-piracy services." Of course, it's easy to get more things taken down if you don't give a shit as to whether or not it's actually infringing. And apparently, that is Link-Busters' secret sauce: sending bogus DMCA takedowns for things like book review websites.
On Monday, Link-Busters, on behalf of Penguin Random House and HarperCollins sent over 50 bullshit takedown notices to Google, claiming that various reviews on Fantasy Book Critic were actually infringing copies of the books they were reviewing. Each notice listed many, many blog posts on the site. This is just a small sample of four such notices.
The actual notices do contain some links to websites that appear to have pirated copies of some books available, but also lots of links to Fantasy Book Critic's reviews. The whole thing just seems incredibly sloppy by Link-Busters. Some of the "allegedly infringing" books in some of these notices didn't even include links to allegedly infringing pages.
And then some show the only allegedly "infringing" links being... Fantasy Book Critic's reviews:
That link, which again, does not exist any more, can be seen on the Internet Archive where you see that not only is it clearly a review, and not piracy, but it directly links visitors to places where they can buy the book. Turning piracy into profits, huh? By taking down review sites pushing people to places where they can buy the book?
Of course, the real problem here is that there are no consequences whatsoever for Link-Busters or Penguin Random House or HarperCollins. While the DMCA has Section 512(f), which is supposed to punish false notifiers, in practice it is a dead letter. This means, Link-Busters can spam Google with wild abandon with blatantly false DMCA notices and face zero consequences. But, more importantly, publishing giants like Penguin Random House and HarperCollins (which are currently suing libraries for offering lendable ebooks), can get away with this abuse of the law over and over again.
Fantasy Book Critic was reduced to begging on Twitter for Google to look more closely at Link-Busters bogus notifications and to restore their blog. They even contacted Link-Busters which admitted that they fucked up (though, perhaps they should have checked before sending these bogus notices?)
(7/n) As a result of this massive amount of wrong #DMCA notices, @Google Blogger removed the blog for the breach of TOS (Terms of Service) immediately. We contacted the service (@linkbusters), & they acknowledged their mistake, and promised to send a retraction notice to @Google.
Either way, among the many, many reasons why we opposed SOPA was the recognition that this kind of thing happens all the time, and the "remedies" under SOPA were that entire websites would get blocked at the DNS level under mere accusations of copyright infringement. In this case, it's slightly different because Google (under a different part of the DMCA) is required to shut down "repeat infringer" accounts, and so here it took down the entire blog that was hosted on Google's blogspot. The punishment under SOPA would have been even more draconian -- blocking all access to the blog at the DNS level entirely.
So, as Penguin Random House and HarperCollins and their lobbying arm -- lead by the former director of the Copyright Office, Maria Pallante -- are currently trying to convince Congress to make copyright law even more in their favor and to shut down digital libraries, perhaps we should be looking at moving copyright in the other direction, so that these "mistakes" can't happen any more. Perhaps copyright law shouldn't allow the shutting down of a website based on totally bogus accusations from an automated spammer hired by the largest publishers in the world, where no one cares about what they might actually be taking down?
The problem is not piracy. The problem is copyright law enabling actual censorship -- using the power of the law to silence speech.
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The SOPA blackouts of 2012 marked an important milestone in the power of online activism to influence policy at the highest levels, but it would be a mistake to view it as either the start or the end of the struggle it represents. It is still among the most strikingly-effective examples to date, but it built on years of policy work that continues to this day.
Online activism is notoriously poorly preserved, and it rarely produces the salient visuals of offline protests. Massive crowds of people taking part in an online action can’t be photographed extending down city blocks; no hand-painted signs with powerful slogans or sea of faces with resolute determination will become the iconic image representing the moment.
The SOPA protests provided a counter-example, in part, both because of the memorable visuals of the online “blackouts” and the in-person events coordinated in cities around the country. Images of Aaron Swartz, who had been a key organizer against the bill, addressing crowds at a New York rally illustrated articles about the online protests.
As important as the unprecedented scale of the online actions was the reception by the press, the public, and the political sphere. The SOPA blackout represented a moment of online grassroots activism demanding to be taken seriously, and getting the coverage and reception it deserved. Every major news outlet reported on the protests and, as an indicator of its prominence, each of the candidates vying for the Republican nomination for president were asked onstage about SOPA at a January 19 debate — surely a first for a copyright proposal. Their criticism was ample evidence of the cracks in the bill’s inevitability.
One long-term effect of the SOPA blackouts: it has seemed to meaningfully shift, perhaps permanently, the policy environment around copyright in particular. In 2011 and early 2012, SOPA appeared to be inevitable, in part because earlier industry-favored copyright proposals had both passed with near unanimity and withstood challenges that laid their irrationality bare.
After SOPA’s flame-out, it no longer seems like copyright law is something that can be hammered out by industry representatives behind closed doors (admittedly, this shift has corresponded with the rise of tech companies as lobbying giants with a different copyright agenda than the existing players, which has surely played a role). As just one example: In 2011, SOPA was inevitable, but so was an eventual expansion to the Copyright Term Extension Act, continuing the public domain freeze that had been running since 1998. Of course, that never came to pass, and the public domain has grown on January 1 every year since 2019.
That change wasn’t the result of the “war being won” — far from it. Increasing the costs of pushing through copyright policy has mostly shifted the battlegrounds in two major ways.
First, big changes to how copyright gets enforced in the United States happen through private agreements with online platforms. YouTube’s ContentID system already existed in 2012, but the importance of that tool and others like it has increased immensely in the years since. The result is a landscape of platforms that do what Professor Annemarie Bridy has called “DMCA-plus enforcement,” extending the effective contours of copyright without a change in the law.
If there is an upside to this arrangement, it has been that actual copyright law discussions have had the heat turned down slightly, and may have become less of a fact-free zone. It’s hard to play out the counterfactual, but I think the right-to-repair movement and the Music Modernization Act have been beneficiaries of this change.
Second, and perhaps more nefariously, copyright proposals that had been proxies for regulating online speech more broadly have migrated to other areas of the law. Most notably in the past decade, these attacks have focused on section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. In some cases, the overlap is almost comical, like when op-eds pushing for changes cite the wrong law, and the New York Times has to issue a correction. In other moments the effect is more depressing. Watching FOSTA/SESTA skate through to passage, despite all the organizing against it, was a low point for online speech.
The overwhelming majority of people who are passionate about freedom of expression and access to knowledge online aren’t paid to work on those issues. I have been very lucky that, since 2011 I have been able to focus on these important topics as my job, first at the Electronic Frontier Foundation as a copyright activist, and now as the director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. SOPA was among the very first issues I worked on in this field, and I’ve carried its lessons through the decade of activism that I’ve been fortunate enough to participate in.
Parker Higgins is the director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. From 2011 to 2017, he worked on the activism team at the Electronic Frontier Foundation on copyright and speech issues.
This Techdirt Greenhouse special edition is all about the 10 year anniversary of the fight that stopped SOPA. On January 26th at 1pm PT, we'll be hosting a live discussion with Rep. Zoe Lofgren and some open roundtable discussions about the legacy of that fight. Please register to attend.
We'd already noted that the FAA had been pushing to impose limits on 5G deployments in certain bands due to safety concerns. The problem: the FCC, the agency with the expertise in spectrum interference, has repeatedly stated those concerns are unfounded based on the FCC's own research. The whole feud has been fairly bizarre, with the FAA refusing to transparently "show its math" at several points, but taking the time to leak its scary claims to select press outlets.
More specifically: the FAA (and a big chunk of the airline industry) claims that deploying 5G in the 3.7 to 3.98 GHz "C-Band" will cause interference with certain radio altimeters. But the FCC has shown that more than 40 countries have deployed 5G in this band with no evidence of harm if you implement some fairly basic safety precautions (like limiting deployments immediately around airports, and utilizing a 220 MHz guard band that will remain unused as a buffer to prevent this theoretical interference).
The FCC says there's not actually a problem here. And the wireless industry, having spent billions of dollars on middle band spectrum, obviously wants to move forward with deployment. Especially given criticism that U.S. 5G underperforms many overseas deployments thanks to a dearth of middleband spectrum. The U.S. has deployed substantial low band 5G spectrum (great range, lower speeds), and high band millimeter wave spectrum (poor range, poor building penetration, great speeds), but unlike many nations overseas, not much middle band (both good speeds and good range).
"The aviation industry faces "catastrophic" disruption from the rollout of a new 5G service this week, airline leaders have warned. In a letter sent Monday to United States transportation and economic officials and obtained by NBC News, the CEOs of major carriers said that the launch could ground flights and leave "tens of thousands of Americans" stranded overseas."
To be clear, evidence of actual harm here remains hard to come by. The FAA's own recent memos (pdf) stated there was no "proven reports of harmful interference" with C-Band 5G deployments anywhere in the world. And wireless spectrum policy experts tell me there's been absolutely no new studies that would justify this level of renewed freaking out by airline CEOs:
"We have seen no new evidence of anything," Feld told Motherboard. "No new studies. No lists of altimeter equipment with their sensitivity to potential harmful interference."
When issues have popped up, they've proven relatively trivial to mitigate around the world. U.S. Wireless carriers have already agreed to limit deployment around at least 50 U.S. airports to reduce the chance of interference, and had agreed to a short delay to study harm before this week's deployment. After some initial squabbling between the FCC and FAA, all sides seemed to have basically struck a deal on U.S. 5G deployment in these bands, including that 200Mhz buffer (double what companies like Boeing recommended) to further limit potential harm.
But the real reason for the chaos isn't the actual interference. Some analysts suggest that, as usual, money is playing a role, and that the FAA, tightly wound up with the companies it regulates, wants to push the cost of any mitigation measures off to wireless carriers.
But Consumer groups, FCC sources, and wireless carriers all tell me the real problem is FAA procrastination, hubris and incompetence. Consumer groups and AT&T rarely agree on anything, but they both agree that the FAA didn't respect the expertise of the FCC (who again already studied this problem before the C-band auction and found little need for concern), wasn't willing to offer transparent evidence of their interference claims, didn't bring any of its concerns up years ago during the investigation process, and has lagged on both certifying altimeters it deems safe to use around C-Band 5G--and setting up flight restrictions for planes that have altimeters that don't qualify as safe under FAA guidance. AT&T was fairly blunt:
So it's not really clear why the CEOs of major airlines have dropped a doomsday-esque letter like this into the mix this late in the game (literally a day before initial deployments), given what little safety issues that do exist have already been addressed by the FCC and others. Just like it wasn't really clear why the FAA didn't want to listen to the FCC when it said there wasn't really an issue here that couldn't be easily mitigated. Especially given this same technology has already been deployed in more than 40 countries (in some cases, like Japan, even closer to spectrum ranges used by avionics equipment) with absolutely no evidence of harm. There's being adequately cautious out of respect for human safety, and then there's just being difficult.
from the it's-so-dark-we-could-only-indict-eleven-defendants-at-the-same-time dept
by Tim Cushing - January 20th @ 3:24am
There is no "going dark." Despite the FBI's protestations otherwise -- mostly embodied by FBI directors with axes to grind and narratives to sell -- investigators aren't finding encryption to be much of an impediment.
The FBI claimed -- using stats irrationally inflated by (according to the FBI) malfunctioning software -- that law enforcement agencies were drowning in devices whose content they couldn't access. That turned out to be a lie. Perhaps it wasn't a deliberate lie but it had certainly proved convenient. Once the FBI recognized its error, it promised to deliver an accurate count. In May 2018, the DOJ and FBI promised to release an updated number. The agencies still have yet to do so.
That brings us to the events of last January, when a bunch of dipshits decided the only way to restore democracy was to destroy it. A raid on the Capitol building in Washington DC -- egged on by lame duck president Donald Trump and a handful of Congressional toadies -- culminated in BlueLivesMatter hashtaggers attacking cops who stood between them and their twisted perception of justice. The effort failed, but the stain on American history -- perpetrated by self-declared "patriots" -- will last forever.
Since then, the FBI and DOJ have engaged in hundreds of investigations and prosecutions. The OPSEC of Capitol raiders was sometimes nearly nonexistent, but more than a few participants knew enough to utilize encrypted services for their communications. The fact that the government has investigated, arrested, and charged hundreds of Capitol raiders shows encryption isn't holding it back.
Federal investigators say they accessed encrypted Signal messages sent before the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on the U.S. Capitol, and used them as evidence to charge the leader of Oath Keepers, an extremist far-right militia group, and other defendants in a seditious plot.
In a legal complaint made public on Thursday, the Department of Justice alleges the defendants conspired to forcefully oppose the transfer of power between then-President Donald Trump to Joe Biden, including by trying to take control of the U.S. Capitol.
The complaint references numerous messages sent on Signal, an end-to-end encrypted messaging app, raising questions about how authorities accessed them and recalling a longstanding point of tension between the law enforcement community and tech industry.
Questions have been raised, but there are no answers coming. The DOJ, FBI, and Signal have refused to comment on the news. But the simplest explanation is likely this: the DOJ and FBI found someone they could flip -- a person who gave them access to their account and any stored messages. Other explanations are more speculative, but it's not outside the realm of possibility that a federal agent infiltrated an Oath Keepers group, which gave them access to encrypted messages as a faux participant in the planned insurrection.
Of course, if it's the latter, more questions will be raised. If the FBI had access during the planning, why didn't it act to stop it? If this prosecution of Oath Keepers members has its basis in undercover work, the FBI and DOJ can expect to be asked difficult questions as the congressional investigation into the January 6th events continues.
According to the complaint [PDF], the defendants began their planning in late December 2020, using "encrypted and private communication applications." Oath Keeper members -- using these applications -- agreed to grab their guns and head to Washington DC to stop the election results from being certified.
But the complaint shows the FBI had access before that. Or, at least, was able to access communications -- possibly via another defendant -- that dated back further than the late December messages where the raid plan coalesced. The complaint notes that members were discussing possibly violent responses to the presidential election as early as two days after it occurred. Again, these communications were taken from an "invitation-only, end-to-end encrypted group chat" on Signal.
These communications -- which discussed reconnaissance of DC areas, weapons training, and what methods could be deployed to prevent election certification -- continued all the way until January 6th, utilizing both Signal and encrypted email service, ProtonMail.
The complaint, obviously, does not explain how FBI investigators had access to these communications. But -- in terms of the "going dark" narrative -- this lack of explanation does not matter. The fact is the FBI obtained access to end-to-end encrypted messages. This alone undercuts its claims that widespread use of encrypted services and device encryption makes it impossible to investigate crimes. It can do this. It may occasionally be more difficult, but even people engaged in trying to overthrow the government aren't able to keep the feds locked out of their discussions.
"Going dark" is still a myth. To be sure, encryption may sometimes keep investigators separated from evidence. But the rise of encryption isn't keeping investigators locked out. They still have plenty of options, ranging from grabbing communications from cooperating defendants or witnesses to pulling massive amounts of useful data from cloud services and third parties. Holding onto this narrative when event after event proves it wrong shows the FBI is more interested in obtaining easy access to everything, rather than utilizing its considerable budget and expertise to mitigate the limitations encryption can pose.
Apple's 2018 9.7-inch iPad is currently available to purchase from Amazon for just $203.99. Offered as part of the company's Renewed initiative, the iPad is fully functional and comes fully inspected and ready to be thrust into action.
The wonderful Google Pixel 5 smartphone is currently available to purchase via Amazon with a stunning discount applied. Right now, under Amazon's Renewed initiative, the Pixel 5 can be purchased for just $335.
Amazon is now selling the 3-pack Eero Pro mesh Wi-Fi system for just $399 with no discount codes or on-screen coupons that need to be dealt with. Place an order as you would any other and your new Wi-Fi system will be with you in no time at all.
Amazon is curently selling its 16GB Fire 7 Tablet for the bargain price of just $34.99 if you order now and choose the ad-supported version of the product. You don't need to enter any discount codes or clip any on-screen coupons here, but you do need to make sure that you place your order as soon as possible; Amazon doesn't say when this deal will come to a close so order now to avoid any chance of missing out.
Apple is strongly expected to announce a new iPhone SE refresh within the next few months and a new report by display analyst Ross Young suggests that could happen in late-April, early-May.
GREAT FALLS, Mont. — Louella Fredrickson has long created workarounds to fill gaps in the spotty medical care available to her as a member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana.
The 86-year-old uses dollar-store reading glasses to improve her blurry vision because she’s worried about the cost of an eye appointment. And when she needed hearing aids, she was told it would cost her more than $1,300. So Fredrickson asked a doctor to tweak her husband’s old pair to fit her smaller ears. “My husband had only used them for a few months before he died, so they work OK,” Fredrickson said.
But one thing she hasn’t solved is the 200-mile round trip from her home in Great Falls to the closest Indian Health Service clinic that offers such services to tribal members for free.
Soon, though, getting care will be easier for Fredrickson and other Little Shell members living in and around Great Falls. The Little Shell Tribal Health Clinic is slated to open in this city of about 60,000 people on Jan. 31, roughly two years after the tribal nation achieved its long-sought federal recognition.
For the first time, Little Shell members will have guaranteed access to health services — and see their culture reflected in the offerings. The brick-and-mortar hub is a powerful symbol for a tribe that lacks a reservation, especially given the clinic’s focus on providing care to people who have faced long-standing health barriers that the pandemic underscored.
The building is a tangible example of what Little Shell can become, said tribal member Darrel Rummel, 81. “The clinic, it’s going to be the heart of it all.”
Little Shell became the United States’ 574th federally recognized Indigenous tribe in December 2019, roughly 150 years after Little Shell leaders began advocating for the tribe to be acknowledged as a sovereign nation. That recognition came just months before the covid-19 pandemic took hold and disproportionately killed Indigenous people due to entrenched structural health inequities. Of the nearly 2,800 Montanans who had died by Dec. 3 from covid complications, 12% identified as Native American. Indigenous people make up an estimated 7% of the state’s total population.
Amid the health crisis, the Little Shell Tribe used federal pandemic relief dollars to fast-track the opening of its clinic. It will offer primary and behavioral health care, plus dental, vision, pharmaceutical, lab, and radiological services.
The tribe has had free access to Indian Health Service clinics statewide since Montana recognized it as a tribal nation in 2000. But such clinics can be scattered far afield and, even then, medical services vary. Little Shell members said their access has faltered when health facility budgets tighten and the clinics must prioritize care for tribal members affiliated with local reservations.
Molly Wendland, Little Shell’s tribal health director, said that the new clinic, initially run by the Indian Health Service, will be open to any member of a tribal nation and that the tribe hopes to eventually expand services to anyone else after it takes over daily operations. IHS will oversee it for at least three years.
“Making our community and our members healthy means we have a healthy tribe,” she said. “I wanted this clinic to be comfortable and something new and nice. Our members deserve that.”
On a recent day, Wendland smiled as she pointed to the word boozhoo on the clinic’s entrance, welcoming people with the word in the Ojibwe language that means “greetings.” Inside, above the reception desk, is a massive image of Ayabe-Way-We-Tung, also known as Chief Little Shell III, who began pushing the U.S. government for a reservation in 1872. Historical photos of Little Shell people are displayed nearby. Lines of gray and burnt orange take the shape of abstract tepees along the clinic’s walls and floors.
Plaques, designed with help from the tribe’s language students, name clinic rooms after animals in Ojibwe, such as waagosh alongside its English translation, “fox.” For rooms Wendland calls “talking rooms,” two chairs face each other in place of an exam table and a doctor’s stool, which she said lends more to a conversation between patient and provider. “It really takes down that power differential,” she said.
Upstairs is a small apartment, which Wendland hopes will serve as a place for traveling doctors to stay when they come to offer additional services, such as fittings for hearing aids.
Another room on the main floor is the smudge room, where patients can burn plants such as sage in a ceremony to cleanse a person or place.
“This is a place to pray and just for families to kind of catch their breath,” Wendland said. “If people are going to have to travel, I want everything they need to be here.”
The Little Shell headquarters is in Great Falls, though many members are scattered across Montana, Washington, and beyond. The tribe is still trying to set up ride programs for its members who live in rural parts of Montana.
But for those tribal members in central Montana, the clinic’s opening will be an immediate benefit. Sherlie Bolich, 76, of Great Falls said she has sometimes waited for services amid backlogs of patients at other tribes’ facilities.
When Bolich’s kids were in high school, she changed jobs for more flexible hours to take her kids on the four-hour round-trip drive to a clinic in Browning. Years later, she made those same trips when her aging mom needed more frequent medical care.
Even then, Bolich said, Indian Health Service clinics have felt like safe spaces because Indigenous people are the minority elsewhere, and the costs of health care services outside the federal health service can outpace paychecks — even with insurance. Yet now she’s excited to have something closer, something for her tribe.
“With the clinic here, you feel that you’ve got somebody here watching out for your people and all of us,” Bolich said. “My grandchildren will be able to go in and see somebody right away.”
Little Shell member Rummel also has long traveled beyond Great Falls to places such as Browning for care. Since last fall, she has had spells of vertigo that can make it hard to stand and said she was told she would have to wait until spring to see a doctor.
At the Little Shell clinic’s recent open house, Rummel said, she wore a pair of beaded earrings and a traditional ribbon skirt, with pink, blue, purple, yellow, and white ribbons wrapped horizontally down to just above her moccasins. She’s proud to see her tribal nation reflected on the new clinic’s walls. Like many Little Shell members, Rummel said, she grew up in a predominately non-Indigenous culture and is still working to learn the traditions of her people.
She immediately noticed the Ojibwe words printed on the clinic’s doors and walls — the first time she had seen her tribe’s language in a permanent spot. “I was so impressed with that, I thought, 'That’s going to help us learn our language,’” Rummel said.
And, she said, she hopes she can finally get those dizzy spells checked out once the clinic opens its doors.
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr shouldered the blame for Thursday night's loss to a Pacers team that was missing its starting backcourt as well as center Domantas Sabonis.
Mavericks star Luka Doncic took a hard fall in Thursday night's loss to the Suns and said despite having a "sore" neck he was optimistic he wouldn't miss any time.
Brooklyn assistant coach David Vanterpool was fined $10,000, and the Nets were penalized $25,000 by the NBA on Thursday after he interfered with play in a victory at Washington.
Lakers forward LeBron James has surged past Warriors guard Stephen Curry and into the lead among all NBA players in All-Star voting ahead of polls closing Saturday night at midnight ET.
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