Author: openjargon

• Apple is planning to revamp the Watch as its 10th birthday nears.
• The improvements include larger displays and thinner builds, Bloomberg reported.
• The revamped watches may also get a new chip, which could enable some AI enhancements.

The Apple Watch is about to turn 10, so Apple is planning a birthday revamp including larger displays and thinner builds, Bloomberg reported.

Both versions of the new Series 10 watches will have screens similar to the large displays found on the Apple Watch Ultra, according to the report.

The revamped watches are also expected to contain a new chip that may permit some AI enhancements later on.

Last month, Apple pulled back the curtain on its generative AI plans with Apple Intelligence.

It hopes the AI features will prove alluring enough to convince consumers to buy new Apple products.

The announcement has been generally well received by Wall Street.

Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities wrote in a Monday note that the "iPhone 16 AI-driven upgrade could represent a golden upgrade cycle for Cupertino."

"We believe AI technology being introduced into the Apple ecosystem will bring monetization opportunities on both the services as well as iPhone/hardware front and adds $30 to $40 per share," he added.

Apple stock closed on Friday at just over $226 a share, up 22% this year and valuing the company at $3.47 trillion. That puts it just behind Microsoft, which was worth $3.48 trillion at Friday's close. The pair have been vying for the title of the world's most valuable company in recent months — with chip maker Nvidia also briefing claiming the crown.

Apple also announced some software updates for the Watch at its Worldwide Developers Conference last month.

The latest version of Apple's Watch software, watchOS 11, emphasizes fitness and health, introducing new tools that allow users to rate workouts and adjust effort ratings.

WatchOS 11 will also use machine learning to curate the best photos for users' displays.

Apple has used product birthdays to release new versions of devices in the past.

The iPhone X was released to mark the 10th anniversary of the smartphone. However, it's not clear exactly when Apple plans to release the revamped watches, per Bloomberg.

Apple announced the Watch in September 2014, with CEO Tim Cook calling it "the most personal product we've ever made."

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

• I went to the world's biggest Starbucks — the Reserve Roastery on Chicago's Magnificent Mile.
• It sells food and drinks not available at normal Starbucks stores, which diners can take to its rooftop terrace.
• I ordered avocado toast, tiramisù, tea, and a strawberry spritz. It came to $43 with tax and tips.

While I was in Chicago for a conference in May, I decided to check out the world's biggest Starbucks — the Chicago Reserve Roastery.

It opened in late 2019, making it the sixth and most recent Reserve Roastery to open. It joined two other Reserve Roasteries in the US — New York and Seattle.

The upscale coffee houses roast their own coffee beans, sell food, drinks, and merchandise not available at normal Starbucks stores, and host tours and classes as well.

The 35,000-square-foot Reserve Roastery is located on Chicago's Magnificent Mile. It's just a couple of minutes from the iconic John Hancock Center, since renamed 875 North Michigan Avenue.

Source: Starbucks

The store has four floors, each serving a range of hot and cold drinks — including coffee and alcoholic beverages — and food from the exclusive Starbucks Reserve menu.

I got my meal from the second floor, which hosts the Princi café and bakery. This is the main place to get food at the Reserve Roastery.

Savory items on the menu include pizza, focaccia sandwiches, and croissants with prosciutto and fontina cheese. Most are priced at just under $10 pre-tax.

There's a huge selection of desserts, too, with most selling for around $10 pre-tax. They include cheesecake, chocolate tarts, olive oil cake, and pastries.

I opted for avocado toast with cherry tomatoes, tiramisù, and tea.

The Reserve Roastery is much more upmarket than regular Starbucks stores, but there still wasn't table service. Customers were given buzzers, though, so that they could find a seat while they waited for their orders.

The food was served on a wooden tray, but it wasn't served with proper silverware. Instead, there was disposable — but compostable — cutlery for customers to take.

I took my tray up to the rooftop terrace on the fifth floor. It was a bit difficult to take my tray with a cup of tea up to the top floor in an elevator and open the door to the terrace.

The avocado toast was delicious. I opted for one served with cherry tomatoes, arugula, and herbs. The toppings were generous, but I was disappointed in the overall portion size for $9 pre-tax. It also, strangely, wasn't served on a plate.

There was no English Breakfast tea on the menu, but a staff member advised me to get the Golden Monkey black tea instead, which I ordered with steamed oat milk.

In the UK, black tea is just served with a splash of milk, but what I ended up with was a cup of very milky tea that was lacking in flavor. I didn't enjoy drinking it — and neither did the Brits sat opposite me, sipping at their own tea.

I wanted to order whatever the most popular dessert was. A member of staff told me that it was the tiramisù, followed by the cheesecake.

The tiramisù was the most expensive thing I ordered, at $11.50 pre-tax. I enjoyed the creamy mascarpone filling, but the cake layers were a little bit dry and not as strongly flavored as I'd expected.

This little bird enjoyed my leftovers, though.

Starbucks is a cold drink pioneer. Though many of its most popular iced drinks contain coffee, like its cold brew and lattes, it's also known for its Refreshers and Frappucinos. On my way out, I decided to try something available only at the Reserve locations — the Strawberry Balsamic Spritz.

It was made up of sparkling water, "muddled" strawberry, and balsamic vinegar, and cost $7 for a grande. It tasted nice and was really refreshing, but I couldn't taste the vinegar at all. The portion of the lightly mashed strawberry was generous — this is how much was left when I finished the liquid.

I was glad I'd kept my fork from my lunch. I used it to scoop out the tasty chunks of strawberry.

I loved being able to sit on the roof terrace with views of Chicago's skyscrapers, though it did get really busy up there. And I thought the avocado toast was delicious.

But my toast, tiramisù, and two drinks came to $37, or $43.09 including tax and tips. For that price, you could get a deep-dish pizza for two, garlic bread to share, and a drink each from Chicago pizza staple Lou Malnati's, which has a location just down the street. I know which I'd pick.

• Europe has been dependent on Elon Musk's SpaceX to reach space — but that could be about to change.
• The Ariane 6, Europe's answer to SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, is set to launch on Tuesday. 
• Officials hope it will compete with SpaceX's rockets, but Elon Musk isn't so sure.

SpaceX is dominating the global space industry — but Europe is hoping a new rocket will change that.

On Tuesday, the 200-foot tall Ariane 6 rocket plans to launch for the first time after years of delays from a spaceport in French Guiana, carrying the hopes of Europe's space industry and its ambition of competing with Elon Musk's rocket firm into orbit.

Over the past few years, Europe has been largely dependent on SpaceX to launch satellites into space, thanks to lengthy delays to Ariane 6 and the war in Ukraine, which left European nations unable to use Russia's Soyuz rockets.

In 2023, European Union officials struck a reported $195 million deal to have SpaceX launch four of its Galileo global navigation satellites.

More recently, the Ariane 6 suffered a major blow when European weather satellite operator Eumetsat announced it would use SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket to launch its next-generation weather satellite, rather than the Ariane 6 as planned.

That decision stunned European officials, with French space agency head Philippe Baptiste calling it a "quite brutal change" and criticizing Eumetsat for not buying European.

Those officials hope a successful launch will lessen Europe's reliance on Elon Musk, with the billionaire's satellite internet service Starlink already playing a crucial — and controversial — role in Ukraine's fight against Russia.

"This powerful rocket is the culmination of many years of dedication and ingenuity from thousands across Europe and, as it launches, it will re-establish Europe's independent access to space," said Josef Aschbacher, Director General of the European Space Agency, in a press release.

It remains to be seen whether Ariane 6 is capable of competing with SpaceX, which dominates the global space industry.

Arianespace, the firm behind the rocket, says it will offer prices that are competitive with SpaceX's current rockets.

But unlike Space X's Falcon, the Ariane 6 is not reusable, with ESA executive Toni Tolker-Nielsen telling Space News that there aren't enough launches planned to justify building a multi-use rocket.

That decision has attracted criticism from Musk. "They need to go all-in on reusability or be utterly uncompetitive," he wrote in a post on X last year.

"Rockets are no different from other transport technologies," he said, adding: "No one would buy a single-use airplane."

• Boeing agreed to plead guilty to one count of fraud conspiracy.
• Its government contracts, worth 37% of last year's revenue, could be in jeopardy.
• Plus Boeing faces other investigations and lawsuits from Alaska Airlines passengers.

Boeing has agreed to plead guilty to one count of fraud conspiracy, the Justice Department said in a Sunday court filing.

The DoJ said Boeing violated a 2021 deferred prosecution agreement. This deal was reached after 346 people died in two 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019.

Boeing had to pay $2.5 billion — mostly to the victims' families — and agreed to strengthen its compliance program.

The DPA was due to expire just two days after January's Alaska Airlines blowout. In May, the Justice Department said Boeing failed to "design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program."

Sunday's plea deal will see Boeing pay an additional $243.6 million — the same criminal penalty as in 2021. Plus, it has been ordered to invest at least $455 million in its compliance and safety program and impose an independent monitor.

The court will determine the restitution to be paid to the families of the 2018 and 2019 crash victims.

But it's not the end of the fallout just yet.

Paul Cassell, an attorney for the families of victims of the 2018 and 2019 crashes, slammed Sunday's plea deal and called on the judge to reject it.

"This sweetheart deal fails to recognize that because of Boeing's conspiracy, 346 people died," he said in a statement. "A judge can reject a plea deal that is not in the public interest, and this deceptive and generous deal is clearly not in the public interest."

Government contracts

By pleading guilty to fraud conspiracy, Boeing will have committed a felony — jeopardizing its government contracts.

According to the company's last annual report, 37% of its revenue came from government contracts.

They are primarily in the defense and space sectors, which have been a saving grace for Boeing as its commercial airplanes division suffered from January's blowout. Without them, Boeing's stock price would likely have fallen even further than the 26% it has dropped since the start of the year.

However, each government agency has been left to decide whether to continue business with Boeing. As such a valued firm, it seems unlikely to suffer much here.

In a Senate hearing about Boeing's safety culture, Richard Blumenthal, chair of the subcommittee, said: "Boeing needs to succeed for the sake of the jobs it provides, for the sake of local economies it supports, for the sake of the American traveling public, for the sake of our military."

Then, there are other investigations that Boeing is facing.

In March, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department opened an investigation into Boeing following the Alaska Airlines blowout, in tandem with the review of the DPA.

Later that month, the FBI wrote to passengers on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, saying, "We have identified you as a possible victim of a crime."

Numerous passengers are also suing Boeing in relation to the blowout.

In short, Boeing's headache looks set to continue. Regaining the trust of regulators and customers will prove difficult for its next CEO.

• UPFs dominate the Western diet and are linked to serious health issues including diabetes.
• Food companies use sensory scientists to make ultra-processed foods irresistible.
• Senses expert professor Barry Smith cut out UPFs and lost weight without trying. 

A professor of the senses, who used to help multinational food companies create ultra-processed foods, lost weight without trying after he cut them out of his diet when he learned about their health risks.

Professor Barry Smith, director of the University of London Institute of Philosophy, told Business Insider he previously worked with Kellogg's, Coca-Cola, and Ferrero, and UPFs accounted for around 30 to 40% of his diet.

UPFs, which are made using ingredients and processes you wouldn't find in a regular kitchen, are a key feature of the Western diet. They make up 73% of the US food supply, according to a 2024 research paper by Northeastern University's Network Science Institute, which hasn't been peer-reviewed.

These hyper-palatable foods contain the perfect fat-to-carbohydrate ratio, which makes it near impossible for us to stop eating them, Smith said.

"These are foods that are so desired by our system that they actually slow down our satiety mechanisms," he said. Research published in Nature Food in 2023 found that the more hyper-palatable foods were included in a meal, the more calories participants tended to eat overall.

Smith started to cut down on UPFs around 2020 after Dr. Chris Van Tulleken, the author of the bestselling book "Ultra Processed People," which shines a light on the harms of industrial food processing, asked him on his podcast.

"They wanted to find out from me what are all the sensory tricks and the hacks of our senses that go on in food manufacture and food formatting that get us to consume, desire, crave these foods," Smith said.

It made him more conscious of the health concerns (a study published in February in The BMJ linked UPFs to a higher risk of 32 health problems, including type 2 diabetes, depression, and cardiovascular disease) and reflect on his work.

"I came to see how in a slightly unknowing way, I was maybe aiding and abetting these moves by the food industry and began to think, no, I simply can't in good conscience do that," he said.

Food companies hire sensory scientists and chemists to help make their ultra-processed foods irresistible, but they tend not to eat the products they help create, according to Smith.

"They know what the design, the formatting, the industrial processing is about. So they don't necessarily want to eat them themselves," he said.

Smith no longer works with UPF companies (although he said he never advised on how to make food that people can't stop eating).

He shared three things that helped him change his diet.

Take a break from UPFs first (and you might not want to go back)

The more Smith learned about the health risks of UPFs, the less he wanted to eat them, so he decided to cut them out entirely.

He realized he didn't like that they had a physiological effect on him, and over time he started to actively dislike them.

"They seem too intense, over-flavored, too shouty in some sense," he said.

And he noticed that he felt better for it. "I was consciously cutting out ultra-processed food because of the bad things it might do for my health. And then found the effects were so desirable," he said.

He felt more energetic, full for longer, and able to stop eating when he felt full. He also lost weight without trying.

He believes this is because he was hooked on UPFs before, rather than actually enjoying them, and taking a break from them allowed him to see them for what they were.

"Cutting out that craving, you find yourself resorting to quite natural intake regulation where you don't overeat," Smith said. "It's not that these are foods that we necessarily like more than anything else, but they're foods that we want and can't seem to stop wanting."

While this worked for Smith, going cold turkey isn't for everyone. As registered dietitian Linia Patel previously told BI on the topic of cutting back on UPFs, creating any new habit involves changing our behavior, so it's helpful to unpack what works for you.

Check food labels

Smith said that checking the nutrition labels on food items helps him choose products that are minimally processed.

He's found that even some items you'd expect to be "perfectly OK," like a tin of grocery store kidney beans, can contain gelling agents or stabilizers. He gets around this by opting for the organic versions.

Unfortunately, this highlights how eating a healthy diet can be dependent on a person's food environment and socioeconomic status.

Find genuinely tasty alternatives

As a professor of the senses, Smith is interested in the multisensory experience of tasting. "How things look, how they smell, the feel on the fingers, even the sound of the food when you're snapping something or when you're shaking something up. All of those things are part of the experience of tasting and eating," he said.

It's crucial to take this into account when shifting away from UPFs that have been manufactured to be delicious, he said.

"You're not going to persuade people to move away from ultra-processed food by telling them it's bad for them. It's got to be flavor first," he said.

Although nutritious, vegetables can be quite boring, he said, but there are many ways to make them interesting such as roasting, pickling, and fermenting.

"You need to make them really tasty so that people realize I can actually make something reasonably cheap and reasonably well that I'm actually going to enjoy eating," he said.

• "The Boys" actor Chace Crawford said he almost had a panic attack before a sex scene with an octopus. 
• Crawford told Rolling Stone the showrunner helped to make him feel more comfortable. 
• Crawford is the latest to speak out about the challenges of shooting intimate scenes. 

"The Boys" actor Chace Crawford said he nearly had a panic attack the day before filming a scene where he has sex with an octopus.

"The Boys," Amazon Prime's hit Emmy-winning superhero show, is known for its numerous grotesque and weird sexual moments.

Initially, fans loved these sensational scenes, but they are starting to question whether the series prioritizes shock value over its storyline after a sexual assault scene in season four.

One such shocking sex scene occurs in season three, episode six when Crawford's character, The Deep, is caught by another character with an octopus on his penis.

In an interview with Rolling Stone published on Sunday, Crawford said he was initially worried about the sex scene.

"I was in total denial about it," Crawford said. "And then it got 24 hours out from the first day I had to shoot it, and I almost had a panic attack."

Crawford said the series has an intimacy coordinator to ensure actors are comfortable filming sex scenes, but he said they weren't involved during the octopus scene.

Instead, Crawford called Eric Kripke, "The Boys" showrunner, about his apprehensions. Kripke organized a closed set, with only the actors and necessary crewmembers in the room, and changed how the scene was filmed.

"I was worried about the scene. I'm like, 'How are we gonna do this? What are the angles gonna be? How naked do I have to be?'" Crawford said. "He changed one shot for me. And it was great."

He added: "But yeah, just the act of picking up the octopus and getting a wet octopus in the bed was so funny and weird. And then it doesn't come out for a year almost, and you're like, 'How is this going to be received?' But everyone loved it."

Film and TV have long featured sex scenes, but it's only recently that multiple stars, including Victoria Justice and Emilia Clarke, have spoken up about how uncomfortable it is to film them.

Over the last six years, intimacy coordinators have become more prominent in major movie and TV productions in light of concerns after the #MeToo Movement.

Actors, including many "Bridgerton" stars, have said this has helped improve their experience of filming sex scenes.

• Ray Dalio cast doubt on the idea of universal basic income on the "Lex Fridman Podcast" in 2019.
• The elite investor warned cash handouts could fuel bad habits and defund superior social programs.
• Programs with proven outcomes that boost productivity are a better bet, Dalio said.

Universal basic income is winning support from some as a powerful tool to combat poverty, but Ray Dalio thinks it could be harmful and pull cash away from better social programs.

The general concept of UBI is to make recurring cash payments to people regardless of their wealth, with no restrictions on how they spend the money.

Dalio is the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund, and the official mentor to its three co-chief investors.

He questioned the wisdom of handing $1,000 a month to everyone on an episode of the "Lex Fridman Podcast" in December 2019.

"What is going to happen with that $1,000? Will that $1,000 come from another program? Does that come from an early childhood developmental program? Who are you giving the $1,000 to, and what will they do with that $1,000?" he asked.

Dalio said that giving people some financial "wiggle room" would be great, but cash payments could produce negative outcomes as they may "use that money detrimentally, not just productively."

He drew a distinction between responsible parents who'd use the money to help their children, and an "alcoholic or drug-addicted parent" who might use the cash to fund their habit, which would "produce more harm than good."

He also warned that UBI could siphon money from public budgets, hurting efforts to realize equal opportunities for all, such as funding high-quality education and ensuring a meritocratic job market.

Costly and inefficient

Dalio shared a UBI primer prepared by Bridgewater's researchers in a LinkedIn post in July 2018. They estimated that paying $1,000 a month to every American would cost $3.8 trillion annually — about 21% of US GDP at the time.

Even if the government cut all social spending apart from infrastructure and education programs, that would still only provide about 92% of the money required, they noted.

In a follow-up post, Dalio emphasized that he sees the wealth-and-opportunity gap as the "greatest threat" to the US. He bemoaned that nearly 30% of American children live in relative poverty, calling it "institutionalized intellectual child abuse."

But he questioned whether "giving poor people the free money to make their own choices" was a better solution than funding programs aimed at helping them, such as low-income classes, school lunch programs, and support services.

The author and financial historian added that increasing people's productivity is shown to have psychological and physical benefits, and improves living standards for society as a whole.

"I'd much prefer directing money into severely budget-constrained programs that we know enable people, especially programs that we know have great productivity paybacks," he said.

Dalio gave the examples of early-age job training, microfinance, and earned-income tax credits that reward people for working. Yet he also called for the US opportunity gap to be declared a national emergency, and for an expert commission to tackle to problem.

Pushing back

UBI experts counter skepticism about how cash grants are spent by pointing to trial results showing recipients mostly use the funds for essentials like groceries, clothing, housing, healthcare, and transportation.

They also underscore the importance of treating people with dignity and trusting them to make the best decisions for their own lives.

As for Dalio's worries about blowing the budget, experts say UBI could be financed by a more progressive tax system that makes the wealthy net losers from the program.

UBI could even boost economic growth and productivity by relieving financial stress and allowing people to pick jobs that pay better and make them happier, they say.

• Vaishali Gauba dreamed of being a journalist in the US but wasn't able to secure an H-1B visa. 
• Years later, Gauba secured a work visa in Canada after moving there to study. 
• She said she likes Canada's quality of life and found the visa process is friendlier to immigrants. 

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Vaishali Gauba, 29, about her experience navigating the US and Canadian immigration systems. Business Insider verified her visas. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I moved to the US when I was 17, with ambitions of being a journalist.

I grew up in Gurugram, India, and moved to New Jersey in 2012 for my undergraduate degree. I studied journalism, media studies, and business management at Rutgers University.

I worked with major US news outlets during and after college and wanted to keep working in America, but couldn't secure an H-1B work visa. I returned to India feeling defeated. Five years later, I relocated to Canada.

In Canada, I found a clearer path to securing a work permit, and I'm less worried about being uprooted by the immigration system.

I interned at US media companies at university

I came to the US on an F-1 visa, which is for full-time students.

During my studies, I worked for the student newspaper, The Daily Targum, and also did news internships at CNBC, NBC, and CBS, which each lasted around four months.

I remember having to get permission from international student services and the journalism department to do the internships, as there were restrictions around working off-campus for F-1 students. The work had to be related to my field of study.

I remember feeling anxious about needing to get so many approvals to work as an international student, but thankfully, I was permitted to do the internships.

Working at big-name publications felt like a milestone, but it was also difficult to balance the internships with two college majors.

I wasn't able to secure an H-1B visa to stay in the US

I became accustomed to the reality that anything related to my professional life required a lot of paperwork. I knew that to continue working in the US, I needed to apply for optional practical training, which allows F-1 students to work for a year in a field related to their studies.

I graduated in May 2016, and after my OPT was approved, I started on the CBS Page Program, a rotational program for graduates.

I had several assignments there, including on the evening news and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. I talked with Stephen Colbert at the show's rooftop parties and saw many celebrities on the job.

But my time there was limited. The Page Program lasted a year, around the time my OPT expired. After six months on the program, I asked CBS about the possibility of sponsoring me for an H-1B visa but was told they don't offer sponsorships.

I didn't realize this when I started working there, but I wanted the experience and to work on my OPT, so I would have done the program regardless.

I applied to other jobs, but many applications included a question about whether I'd need a visa sponsorship now or in the future. I felt that this one question was already filtering me out as a candidate and I wasn't getting called for interviews.

I spoke with two lawyers about my options. They told me about the O-1 visa for people with "extraordinary" ability in certain fields. I tried gathering references for the application, but as time went on, I felt my chances were slim.

This is partly because the lawyers shared case studies of people who received O-1 visas with me, and I felt they were more arts-orientated than journalism-orientated. I felt the lawyers weren't confident I had a good chance, so I decided not to apply.

Extended family members and lawyers suggested I continue my education to stay in the US on another F-1 visa. I eventually decided against this as I didn't think I could learn anything about news from a school program I wasn't already learning at CBS.

I went back to India feeling defeated

I started to feel lost. I remember lashing out at my dad on the phone when he suggested I come home, but in the end, I had a gut feeling that it was time to return to India, so I left the US in August 2017.

It felt like a defeat. I knew I wanted to be a journalist in America, but I couldn't do it. I'd given so much to the US in terms of time, energy, and money, and it was hard to accept that I had to give up on it because of visa stuff.

I spent the next five years in India, working in journalism before pivoting into a brand and communications position. In 2021, I began freelancing in PR and marketing strategy.

I planned on doing a master's in digital media to boost my PR career. My boyfriend at the time, who's my husband now, moved to Canada for his MBA in 2021, so I started exploring master's options there.

I've found the Canadian immigration system to be more immigrant-friendly

I came to Canada on a study permit and started my master's program at Toronto Metropolitan University in September 2022.

I applied for a work visa in September 2023 after finishing my studies. While it took a long time to get my study permit because of the backlog created by COVID-19, the work visa process took less than a month and was fairly easy.

Graduating from my master's program made me eligible for an open work permit, which isn't tied to a specific employer. I'm self-employed as a freelancer.

Unlike the US H-1B process, I didn't need an employer to sponsor me, and there was no lottery system.

While I'm aware that some people have a hard time coming to Canada, my overall experience of Canadian immigration processes has been smooth. I feel it's more favorable to immigrants than the US processes.

I couldn't get a work visa in the US, but there was a clearer and more stable path to getting one in Canada.

When I left the US in 2017, Donald Trump had just become president. My understanding is that it's become harder to get a work visa in the US since.

My work visa expires in October 2024, and I'm open to options for settling in Canada beyond that. Moving back to India is still a small possibility as my partner, and I have family there, but I like the quality of life in Canada, and I'm less concerned about my life being uprooted here than I was in the US.

• Gila Pfeffer is a humor writer who splits her time between NYC and London.
• The following is an adapted excerpt from her memoir, "Nearly Departed: Adventures in Loss, Cancer, and Other Inconveniences."
• It chronicles her journey as a cancer previvor and survivor, determined to reverse the cycle of death in her family.

Eleven years after my mother died in 1994, when I was 31, I learned that a simple blood test could confirm whether I was a carrier of a BRCA gene mutation. Named for the first two letters of "breast" and "cancer," a positive result would place my odds of developing breast cancer at 87%.

As an added bonus, BRCA carriers have a 66% chance of being hit with ovarian cancer. Those sound pretty high until you consider my insanely strong family history of cancer, which cranked my risk up even further. A blood test would be nothing more than a formality, a scientific breakthrough to tell me what I instinctively knew. I would 100% be BRCA-positive.

Testing wasn't a common practice yet

It was 2005, and genetic testing was far from commonplace. The famous Human Genome Project, an international effort to generate the first complete sequence of the human genome, had only recently achieved its goal by producing a sequence that decoded 92% of human DNA.

There was growing buzz around mainstream genetic testing and although we were still years away from at-home spit tests like 23andMe or Ancestry.com, this development could tell me exactly what my body was up against. After a decade of playing defense, I'd finally have the chance to shift to offense. I could see a path to reversing my family's health trajectory.

Pregnant with my third child and sick of everyone in my family dying too young, my self-preservationist instincts went into overdrive. I already thought about my own mortality way more than your average 30-year-old, but my obsession didn't stop there. I had my younger sisters and baby daughter to worry about, too. Because my sisters were still children when our mother died, the primary impact on them was that it rendered them motherless.

For me, an adult, it was a wake-up call to get ahead of breast cancer. As the family matriarch, I felt a responsibility to take preventive measures not only for my own sake, but to set a good example for my siblings.

At the same time, my friend had a prophylactic double mastectomy

Shortly after I learned about genetic testing, my friend Stephanie told me she was scheduled to have a procedure called a prophylactic double mastectomy. That's a lot of syllables that amount to electively removing healthy breast tissue before cancer can take root. It was the first I'd ever heard of it, and my immediate reaction was, "I want that."

Reconstruction is usually done at the same time, unless a woman chooses to "go flat." Unlike the modified radical mastectomy my mother eventually underwent, the prophylactic version leaves the outer skin and sometimes the nipple and areola intact. It would be years before Angelina Jolie would make "prophylactic double mastectomy" a household phrase by writing an opinion piece in "The New York Times" about her choice to have the same procedure.

Stephanie and I met when I moved to Highland Park a few years earlier. Our kids were around the same ages, and we were both stay-at-home moms and active volunteers at school. We also had a family history of breast cancer in common, but her mother, who'd been diagnosed in her 20s, had caught it early and survived. By the time Stephanie told me about her upcoming mastectomy, she had already tested positive for the BRCA1 gene.

I went to visit Stephanie while she was recovering at home. My intention was to fulfill the mitzvah (good deed) of Bikur Cholim (visiting the sick), but it was also a reconnaissance mission. Other than a dental implant, I'd never had surgery and came armed with a million questions. How long was the operation? Had she had any reaction to the anesthesia? How much pain was she in, and where? Did her new boobs look natural? And most important of all, on a scale of one to infinity, how relieved did she feel now that breast cancer was no longer a threat?

I knocked on the door and went inside as I announced myself.

"Hellooooooooo! You have a visitor!" I sang as I walked across the foyer. Her mother greeted me and pointed to the living room.

"How's she doing?" I mouthed while unzipping my coat. She gave me a double thumbs-up, touched her palms together, and looked heavenward.

"Thank God," she said quietly.

"So?" I asked Stephanie as I plopped my pregnant self down on the couch, careful not to disrupt the intricate network of tubing that stuck out of her from all angles. All of my questions rolled into one: So??

"I'm OK! The pain meds are working, and my back is pretty sore, but mostly I feel relieved. I'm telling you, Gi, it's like a weight's been lifted. No more worrying. I'm free!" She beamed, all dimples and shining eyes.

She showed me her post-surgical sites, like a guide preparing a tourist for a hike through rocky terrain. Her chest was wrapped many times over in white gauze, and clear plastic bulbs the size of lemons hung off tubes on either side of her rib cage. They were filled about a third of the way with a viscous, rust-colored liquid.

"Surgical drains," she explained, giving each one a little flick with her fingers. "They collect the extra blood and other fluids to stop them from accumulating in my body. I have to dump the contents a couple times a day and keep track of how much comes out to make sure it's less each time."

She showed me a little notebook with a list of dates and measurements in decreasing amounts. "It's a little gross, but they're only there for a few more days, until they stop filling up with gunk."

"More like a lot gross," I said, recoiling slightly, which got a laugh out of Stephanie. I'd been peed on by my kids and caught their vomit in my bare hands without batting an eye, but medical gore made my insides churn.

Of the several options for reconstruction, she'd chosen silicone implants with an overlay of muscle taken from her upper back to give her "foobs" — fake boobs — a more natural look.

"All I have to do is sit on my couch propped up with these pillows, some physical therapy to regain range of motion in my arms, and I'll be good as new," she reassured me. "Better, even."

I asked for the BRCA test, and my doctor agreed

During my next prenatal checkup, I asked my doctor to arrange a BRCA test. The OB-GYN practice had started to see an uptick in requests for this type of blood test. She agreed that for me, it was a no-brainer.

"I'll make sure to have the test kit here for your next check-up," she said. "But are you sure you want to do this while you're pregnant?" She was concerned about the psychological toll of potentially finding out I was a carrier at a time when I was already hormonal enough.

My doctor was cautious but never alarmist. It was hard to say how old she was. Her wiry gray hair was always pulled back into a messy ponytail, and she favored socks with Birkenstocks and rimless glasses, which probably added years to her actual age. What mattered to me was that she'd been in the expectant-mother game for a long time.

"Absolutely," I said without reservation. Whatever the test results, I was already plotting my next preventive steps.

"Have you decided what to do if it turns out you're BRCA positive?" she asked, wheeling her little stool over to her desk to make some notes in my chart.

"Either way, I'm getting rid of these," I announced, grabbing a swollen breast in each hand. "No question. I don't want this threat looming over me anymore."

Excerpted from Nearly Departed: Adventures in Loss, Cancer, and Other Inconveniences by Gila Pfeffer. Copyright 2024, Gila Pfeffer. Published by The Experiment.

• It's been two years since I saw my best friend, and we never talk on the phone. 
• Instead, we text each other throughout the day, and I still feel close to her. 
• I wonder if it's a healthy habit, but it works for us and our priorities. 

My best friend and I haven't seen one another in person since we last saw each other about two years ago. That being said, we "talk" every day by constantly text messaging one another about anything and everything going on in our lives. Sometimes, we have simultaneous conversations via text and DMs.

We have a three-hour drive between us and do our best to visit when possible, but going a couple of years between visits isn't unusual for us. Life just keeps getting in the way. As we each have children, marriage, and work to balance, it's just easier to communicate with one another via text.

But I have wondered if our relationship is somehow false if we don't actually have regular telephone conversations or see each other regularly.

I think talking on the phone would lead to us feeling less close

I've entertained the idea of making time for regular phone calls, but I think it would lead to us connecting less often. The way we text allows us to contact each other at any time of the day, including the middle of the night — with the understanding that we may or may not see it but will reply as soon as we can.

This allows us to talk about things as they happen — whether funny, relatable, or upsetting. Plus, texting at the moment allows us to capture the nuances of the situation when we might forget them later on or no longer be in the mood to talk about it.

More than anything, I think we're such good friends because our values are aligned in that we prioritize our families. Phone calls that felt obligatory would detract from our ability to be present with our children and husbands. They also take up time, which is something we each have so little of outside our responsibilities.

With a quick text here and there all day, we remain part of each other's lives in a more manageable way. That said, we like texting in between quality visits, which we just happen to be sorely overdue for.

I never liked making phone calls

I had a close friend a few years ago who preferred to talk on the phone. I would send her a text, and she would call me. We were friendly enough to joke about it, and I would ask her playfully, "Why did you call me?" She would then bother me about preferring texts and say, "But why didn't you just call me?"

Sometimes, I didn't have the mental bandwidth to have a proper conversation on the phone with her, so I would avoid it by not texting her when I really wanted to. We ended up drifting apart, and I look back now and wonder if it's because we each had a problem meeting each other's needs in a friendship.

When I look at the list of recent calls on my phone, they are primarily to my son's father. As we co-parent, my son calls his dad every night before bed. When he is with his dad, he'll call me every night. The only other time I make a phone call is for doctor's appointments that I can't make through an online portal.

I used to call my husband before we got serious, and I missed him in between dates, but he loathed it. The only reason he put himself through it was for my sake. Now that we're married and live together, I rarely ever have to call him — though we text throughout the day.

This type of friendship works for us

My best friend and I prefer to text each other instead of calling each other. That's our mutual preference of contact that we've unspokenly agreed to. It works for us, but it might not work for you and your relationships,

But if you care about someone who wants to hear your voice — whether it's a friend, significant other, or family member — then you should give them what they need.

At the root of our texting, my friend and I know that if we felt the need to call for some reason, the other would pick up their phone. Through texting, we are giving each other what we need: to feel close to one another while still being able to juggle everything else in our lives.