• I’m an American who fell in love with a Frenchman, now my husband, while living abroad in Berlin.
• The start of our relationship was a breeze, but we soon discovered some cultural differences.
• We don’t always agree when it comes to hosting and meal times, but we find ways to compromise.

I moved from New York to Berlin as a single woman in 2017.

Finding love wasn’t at the top of my to-do list, but I was open to the possibility — and aware that the odds of making a dating-app match with someone of another nationality were much higher than if I had stayed stateside.

So I wasn’t exactly surprised when a dashing Frenchman, who’d eventually become my husband, whisked me off my feet.

We managed to ignore the cultural divide during those first six months of honeymoon-phase bliss. It was easy since he was fluent in English and I had a basic knowledge of French, but the longer we went on, the harder it became to pretend we hadn’t had upbringings in countries thousands of miles apart.

We’re lucky to have a lot of common interests and have agreed on our major values since day one — but we’ve come to accept that there are some ways I’ll always be a little too American for him and he a little too French for me.

We have opposite approaches to self-medication

Reliable health insurance was never a sure thing for my family when I was growing up.

That meant that we’d often treat illnesses on our own when possible, keeping the medicine cabinet stocked at all times with Costco-sized bottles of every over-the-counter painkiller you can imagine.

I didn’t think twice when I packed my suitcase with several bottles of ibuprofen, but they were a shock to my husband the first time I took one out in front of him.

In France, painkillers like ibuprofen and acetaminophen aren’t easy to buy in bulk or get at the grocery store — and even at pharmacies, you can’t grab them off the shelf yourself.

Instead, you have to get them straight from the pharmacist, who will then typically debrief you on proper usage and dosage.

From his point of view, I take way too much ibuprofen … but on the other hand, the natural remedies he has always used often don’t cut it for me.

Just this week, I came down with a cold, and he brought me a homeopathic essential-oil treatment when I asked him to pick up medicine. I’ve been using it to appease him, but you better believe I also sent him back to get the ibuprofen I really needed.

My husband’s French dining habits are different from my laid-back, American approach

My husband and I often have trouble aligning when and what we eat because of our different appetites and cultural approaches to dining.

In France, eating routines tend to be pretty rigid. Lunch happens at noon sharp, breakfast is always sweet, and the only time of day most people snack is at 4 p.m. for their “goûter” — the childhood habit of taking a sugary, late-afternoon treat that many French folks, including my husband, carry with them long after they’ve left the schoolyard.

My approach, meanwhile, mirrors the free-form way I ate in the US. Snacks are always on hand, breakfast is often skipped, and dinnertime could easily take place early one night and late the next.

Neither of us has been able to fully adapt to the other’s eating style, but we try to make time to enjoy at least one meal together a day — usually dinner. That way, we can find something we agree on, and a time to eat it, and get what we both want the rest of the time.

We often don’t agree on how or when to share our personal space

I’ve always had an open-door policy for friends and family, and welcomed the opportunity to hire a housesitter or leave my apartment to a friend to watch my cats when I’m out of town.

I don’t mind if they make themselves at home while they’re at it — whether that means sleeping in my bed or using my shampoo and conditioner — possibly because I grew up watching my own parents always offer the same.

This, however, is out of the realm of possibility for my husband. The first time I proposed such an idea before a long vacation, he shut it down.

“In France, people don’t do that,” he said. “We want to sleep in our own beds at the end of the day.” Friends will swing by to feed the cats and change the litter, but that’s it.

There’s also a limit to how long he feels comfortable hosting guests when we are on the premises — but he’s learned to adapt to longer stays in order to accommodate my loved ones who have to travel from afar.

When we first met, the longest stretch he could tolerate was a long weekend, but we’ve since hosted my California-based siblings for several weeks with no complaints on his end (OK, maybe just a few).

So, although we may both never be totally on board with each other’s cultural quirks, at least we know that we’ll always try to meet in the middle.

• A woman in her early 40s thought the blood she saw in the toilet was hemorrhoids.
• More than a year later, she was diagnosed with stage 3b colorectal cancer.
• Experts say rectal cancer is on the rise in people under 50, and destigmatizing toilet talk is key.

Laura Behnke did not have time to worry about cancer when she first saw blood in the toilet.

She was trying in vitro fertilization for the fourth and final time, and her focus was on getting pregnant after three failed rounds with no healthy embryos. Everything else could wait.

A few days before the implantation was scheduled, she saw a kind of red mucus coating her stool, and thought: “‘I have been under an immense amount of stress. I know I’ve been straining. This has to be hemorrhoids, right?'”

“I just told myself, ‘You know what? Calm down, take some deep breaths, stop straining, and this will all go away, and it’ll be fine, and you can go on and have a baby,'” Behnke told Business Insider.

It would be over a year before she discovered she had rectal cancer, joining a growing cohort of younger adults being diagnosed with the disease decades earlier than expected.

Cancer was not on her radar

After that fourth round of IVF, at age 41, Behnke did get pregnant. At first, she was shocked. Hearing a heartbeat at five weeks made it finally feel real. She was overjoyed.

Behnke continued to see some blood in the toilet intermittently, but it was easy to brush off because hemorrhoids are common during pregnancy. She didn’t know the difference between the drops of blood typical for hemorrhoids, and the red mucus she saw that she now knows was characteristic of colorectal cancer.

“Nobody at any point asked me: ‘What’s the bleeding like? How often is it happening?'” Behnke said. “We all just said, ‘Oh, hemorrhoids, cool. Moving on. We have other things to worry about.'”

In her third trimester, Behnke did develop a swollen external hemorrhoid, which made it hurt to sit down. For two days, she tried not to put any pressure on her bottom. In the car, she sat on a donut pillow. On the couch, she laid on her side. This bleeding looked and felt different, like bright red food dye coloring the toilet bowl. She took medication to manage the pain, and got on with the business of getting ready to be a new mom. A few months later, her daughter was born.

After six months of sleepless nights and newborn feedings, Behnke was finally starting to feel like herself again. She was regaining her strength, losing weight, and feeling in control of her body after years of IVF treatments and a pregnancy.

By now though, Behnke saw bloody mucus in the toilet even when she didn’t have a bowel movement, which she attributed to that pesky external hemorrhoid. Her bowels were also changing shape, and her stools sometimes coming out pencil thin.

Behnke decided to see a colorectal surgeon to get the swollen hemorrhoid removed. The doctor asked her about all of her symptoms, sparing no details about the blood or the poop, and then, to her surprise, told Behnke she urgently needed a colonoscopy.

“It could be a whole lot of things other than cancer, but we need a colonoscopy to find out for sure,” Behnke remembers her doctor saying.

After over a year of bloody stools, that was the first time Behnke heard the word “cancer” uttered.

Rectal cancer is on the rise among people in their 40s

When the doctor told Behnke she had late-stage 3b colorectal cancer, she broke down crying. “But we have a seven-month-old!” she wailed into her husband’s shoulder.

“How could I be that sick and feel that good?” she wondered. “I had just had a completely normal and healthy pregnancy.” Suddenly, she felt a debt of gratitude to that annoying little hemorrhoid that led to her diagnosis.

The colonoscopy revealed that cancer had spread to some of the lymph nodes around her rectum, and was edging closer to other parts of her body. She was thankful that the prognosis was still relatively good. With radiation, then chemotherapy, and surgery afterwards to remove part of her colon and rectum, doctors were confident they could wipe the organ clean.

At 42-years-old, Behnke was diagnosed with what has quickly become the deadliest cancer for people under 50 in America.

“The landscape of colorectal cancer is changing rapidly,” Rebecca Siegel, an epidemiologist and the senior scientific director of surveillance research at the American Cancer Society, told Business Insider.

Experts don’t know why, but many of these new, young-onset colon cancer cases are rectal, prompting bloody stools. Other common symptoms in this age group include persistent stomach cramping or severe abdominal pain, low iron levels, and changes to bowel movements, including the narrower stools Behnke saw.

Research suggests that bloody stools are an early warning sign for about 40% of rectal cancer patients. “There’s an opportunity for earlier diagnosis, but the problem is, especially for younger people, they’re not aware of the symptoms and they don’t want to talk about the symptoms,” Siegel said. “And sometimes they even do go to the doctor with these symptoms, and they’re diagnosed with hemorrhoids or something else.”

A couple of weeks after Behnke had her first dose of radiation, she stopped bleeding into the toilet. After 25 sessions of radiation, then four months of chemotherapy, and finally, surgery that removed parts of her colon and rectum, she landed in diapers alongside her daughter for a few weeks. Doctors said every visible trace of the cancer was gone.

Slowly, over time, her colon has healed and she’s readjusted to a more normal bathroom routine, but she says things will never be quite the same down there. She prioritizes getting plenty of fiber in her diet from colorful vegetables, and also takes fiber pills twice a day, to help with the lingering symptoms.

“I am alive and I am healthy and all of this is workable,” she said.

This is not an ‘old man’s disease’ — talk to your doctor about bloody stools or unexplained stomach pain

Colorectal cancer, Behnke said, is not an “old man’s disease” anymore. After her diagnosis, she urged her younger brother to get a colonoscopy, and doctors discovered he had precancerous polyps developing. Her young daughter, she said, will start having colonoscopies in her early 30s, because of her increased risk of developing colorectal cancer.

Behnke said she’s grateful she met “the right surgeon at the right time,” a doctor who asked the right questions, and didn’t dismiss her symptoms because she was too young or postpartum.

“No rectal bleeding is okay,” she said. “If you do have any sort of symptoms, any sort of concerns, anything that doesn’t feel right, you have every right to go ask a doctor about it and to demand some answers.”

• I packed for a seven-night Caribbean cruise with just a backpack and a carry-on suitcase.
• I was on board Royal Caribbean’s Wonder of the Seas mega ship.
• Look inside my suitcase and backpack, and check out my packing list, from clothes to sunscreen.

In April 2022, I packed my favorite backpack and carry-on luggage and took them from my home in New York City to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for my first cruise.

The seven-night voyage aboard Royal Caribbean’s Wonder of the Seas took me to Honduras, Mexico, and the cruise line’s private island in the Bahamas.

Since I had to fly to Florida, I used a carry-on suitcase to avoid extra fees and the wait at baggage claim.

For a first-time cruiser, I think I packed pretty well.

When boarding the ship, my bag was checked and brought to my stateroom later that night, leaving me with just the backpack for my first day of cruising.

So I had to be thoughtful about what I packed in each bag.

Without access to my suitcase on day one, I also strategically packed my Brevite Jumper backpack.

I like how my Brevite backpack holds and protects my camera gear while also being large and versatile enough to carry everything else I might need.

In the main pocket, I kept essentials like camera gear, sunglasses, and a swimsuit.

I included a bathing suit in my backpack so I could swim on the first day of my cruise before my suitcase arrived at my stateroom.

I also stuffed a fanny pack full of medication in my backpack.

I brought the fanny pack so I could have a smaller bag to carry around when I didn’t need the whole backpack. I stored medications in there to save space while traveling.

I used the front and back pockets of my backpack for my electronics, planner, and a notebook.

I also stuffed my phone charger in the front pocket.

I used an Away carry-on suitcase for this trip.

My Away carry-on luggage has a protective shell, and I think it’s roomier than any other carry-on suitcase I’ve used.

I used packing cubes for my clothing and bathing suits.

The packing cubes kept my belongings consolidated and organized.

I also packed toiletries and a pair of sandals that could get wet for the pool and beach.

I didn’t pack shampoo, conditioner, or body wash because I knew these toiletries would be provided in my cabin.

For clothing, I packed versatile pieces so I could make multiple outfits with the same items.

I brought four pairs of shorts (to wear each pair twice), six shirts (to have a fresh one most days), nine pairs of underwear (so I always had extra), one dress for formal nights on the ship, and one pair of pants.

I also packed three bathing suits and a rash guard.

I was glad I had multiple swimsuits since I had to let each dry for about a day before wearing it again.

In the zip pocket of my suitcase, I packed essentials like sunscreen and a magnet for my stateroom door.

The magnet helped me easily find my room in a hallway of identical doors.

I also packed a rain jacket.

While it didn’t rain during my cruise, the jacket came in handy on windy nights on the ship’s top decks.

I wore a pair of sneakers while traveling, on the ship, and at most port stops, so I didn’t have to pack them.

I wore a light pair of canvas sneakers so my feet wouldn’t get too hot.

I also wore my sun hat during my travels.

Wearing my big, floppy hat saved space in my luggage and kept the brim from getting damaged.

I think I did a pretty good job packing for my first cruise, aside from a few items I missed.

I longed for a waterproof phone case to take pictures underwater, earplugs to help me sleep, and more pants for cold mornings and evenings. I think these items would have fit in my suitcase — had I thought to bring them.

Here’s my full packing list for the cruise, which I thought worked well with limited space.

I’d use this packing list again to avoid having to check a suitcase at the airport.

• A US Navy submarine sank an enemy vessel for the first time since World War II in combat with Iran.
• A WWII expert told Business Insider the attack looked “remarkably similar” to a 1945 US submarine engagement.
• The video suggests that a Virginia-class submarine carried out the attack before dawn.

For the first time since World War II, a US Navy submarine has sunk an enemy vessel in combat.

Earlier this week, a US Navy fast-attack submarine torpedoed an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean in an attack that appeared “remarkably similar” to the last time a Navy submarine sank an enemy ship in 1945, World War II battleship expert Ryan Szimanski told Business Insider.

Szimanski, the curator at Battleship New Jersey in Camden, said that video of the attack released by the Department of Defense on Wednesday strongly resembled the Navy’s last submarine combat engagement 81 years ago, when the USS Torsk sank two Japanese destroyer escorts with acoustic torpedoes on August 14, 1945.

“Much like what we saw with this ship, or what I believe that I saw with the footage from this ship, the torpedo goes right up their tailpipe, homes in on their propeller sounds, and detonates at the stern of each of those ships, sinking them,” he said.

The Navy has not released the name of the submarine that fired the torpedo and sank the Iranian warship, but the video may have provided a clue about the type of sub, Szimanski said.

“My guess is it was a Virginia-class attack submarine that did it because it seems like we’re looking through a photonics mast, i.e., a camera on a pole, as opposed to a traditional submarine periscope,” he said. The older Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarines typically have traditional periscopes unless they’ve been retrofitted.

The black-and-white video could offer additional insight into the military action.

“My best guess is it happened before dawn because it looks like we’re looking through an infrared lens,” Szimanski said. “That’s why it’s a black-and-white video.”

The Department of Defense referred Business Insider to the transcript of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s press conference on Wednesday and declined to comment further. Business Insider also reached out to the US Navy and did not immediately receive a response.

Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a press briefing that the US submarine fired a Mark 48 heavyweight torpedo to sink the Iranian ship. The torpedoes feature a 650-pound warhead and can use both active and passive sonar, or sound navigation and ranging, to hit their targets as far away as 25 nautical miles. The range in the 20-second video released Wednesday suggests a much closer range and shows the submarine’s position broadside.

Szimanski said the video appeared to indicate the use of an acoustic torpedo, a move straight out of World War II.

“When you would fire an acoustic torpedo, typically your boat would be stopped and dead quiet,” he said. “You fire this torpedo, and it will go for the nearest sound source. My guess is our submarine could hear them so well on passive sonar that they fired the torpedo using sonar, knowing it was going to be able to score a hit.”

• Low-rise jeans are making comeback as brands like Lucky Brand launch denim campaigns.
• American Eagle said it’s seeking to push into the low-rise trend amid wider denim market pressure.
• Celebrities like Kylie Jenner and Jennifer Lopez have embraced the return of low-rise jeans.

The jeans millennials once swore off are strutting back into stores.

Low-rise jeans are back and catching on so much so that denim brands are taking notice.

For years, high-rise and mid-rise jeans dominated the market. Then, baggy jeans caught hold of Gen Z’s attention. But there are signs that those styles are beginning to cycle out, with jeans featuring a lower waist and a bootcut leg ready to take their place.

From Kylie Jenner to Jennifer Lopez, celebrities have been spotted rocking hip-hugging jeans from brands like True Religion, and Lucky Brand just launched a second campaign with singer Addison Rae featuring low-waisted jeans and denim shorts in time for warmer weather.

On the heels of its success of a controversial campaign with Sydney Sweeney, American Eagle Outfitters talked about the trend on its earnings call on Wednesday.

“I think, definitely, the rises are getting lower. You’re seeing more midriffs being shown,” said Jennifer Foyle, American Eagle and Aerie’s president and executive creative director.

The company told analysts on the call that it expects pressure on its denim category as it learns from past missteps like leaning into fits that consumers weren’t as interested in buying.

In 2025, the American Eagle brand found itself caught up in a denim war with Gap and Lucky Brand, as all three companies dropped their own star-studded campaigns to promote their jeans. It looks like it paid off, with Gap and American Eagle reporting strong earnings for the quarter in which the ads dropped.

Meanwhile, millennials are taking their denim in a different direction and entering their mom jeans era, which can be identified by their relaxed fit and high waists. They may get left behind on the new wave of Y2K style they thought they left behind in the early 2000s.

“This business has changed drastically,” Foyle said. “The lower rise is something that we are addressing.”

• Meta hired the engineers behind the vibe-coding app Gizmo.
• The app lets people use AI to create and share interactive content, like mini apps or games.
• The team from Gizmo’s parent company, Atma Sciences Inc., has joined Meta’s Superintelligence Labs unit.

Meta recently hired the team of engineers behind Gizmo, a buzzy AI startup founded by ex-Snapchat staffers.

A spokesperson for Meta confirmed that the team joined Meta earlier this year. The company declined to disclose the financial details of the deal.

Gizmo is the sole product from Atma Sciences Inc., which was founded in 2024. The team includes Josh Siegel (CEO), Daniel Amitay (CTO), Brandon Francis, and Rudd Fawcett, among several other ex-Snapchat engineers, according to LinkedIn.

Meta has a non-exclusive license to Atma Sciences’ technology.

Gizmo lets users create interactive, touch-enabled content — like a tiny game or mini-app — by typing out a prompt. For example, I made an interactive “Gizmo” of a snail that you can drag around the screen, leaving a trail of rainbow goo. Useful? Not really. Fun? Definitely.

In the app, you can scroll through a TikTok-like feed filled with interactive content instead of videos. Popular posts on the platform appear to have tens of thousands of likes.

One LinkedIn post about Gizmo described the app as if “Lovable and TikTok had a baby.” Another post described it as a “TikTok for vibe-coded toy apps.”

The New York-based startup raised about $5.48 million from investors, according to a 2025 SEC filing. VC funds First Round Capital and Uncommon Projects both list Atma Sciences as a portfolio investment.

Gizmo is one of several vibe-coding tools that use AI to create mini apps and have gained traction in the tech scene over the past year. Wabi, a mini app platform, announced a $20 million pre-seed investment in late 2025. Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian led a $9.4 million seed investment in the vibe-coding app Vibecode.

Meta’s spokesperson confirmed that the Atma Sciences team will report into Meta’s Superintelligence Labs (MSL) unit, which is led by Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang and ex-Github CEO Nat Friedman.

Meta has made several recent plays to snag AI talent. Last year, it took a major stake in Scale AI and acquired the Singapore-based agentic AI company, Manus.

It’s not yet clear, however, what the fate of the current Gizmo app will be, or what the Atma Sciences team will be focused on building at Meta.

It’s easy to imagine a product like Gizmo somewhere within the Meta ecosystem. Meta, like many other tech companies, is racing to develop scalable consumer AI applications that could usher in a new era for social media.

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