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• Packing my 11-year-old’s lunch box with healthy food she’ll actually eat isn’t easy.
• As a dietitian and mom, I rely on budget-friendly, nutritious staples from Aldi.
• Some of my go-to purchases for school lunches are peanut butter and whole-grain bread.

Mornings in my house feel like a race against the clock. Getting out the door on time requires a tight schedule, one that doesn’t allow for an entire morning preparing a healthy meal.

As a dietitian and a mom, I aim to feed my 11-year-old daughter foods that keep her energized throughout the day without blowing our grocery budget or requiring too much time in the kitchen.

Whether I’m making a school lunch for my kid or sending her off to summer camp, I rely on easy, packable foods from Aldi to stay on track.

The Reggano classic pasta salad kit requires minimal effort.

The Reggano classic pasta-salad kit is one of my favorite time-savers. It comes with semolina pasta along with seasonings like garlic and parsley and vegetables like onion and red bell pepper.

All I have to do is boil the noodles and mix everything together. After that, lunch is ready.

Sometimes, I toss in extra vegetables, mozzarella pearls, or leftover chicken for an extra protein boost. It makes enough for several lunches, and everyone in my family loves it, including my daughter.

Goldhen eggs are a simple protein source.

Eggs are a staple in my refrigerator.

I cook a batch of them at the beginning of each week and peel them right away. They’re a low-effort protein source (each one has 6 grams of protein) that requires zero preparation on busy mornings.

Sometimes, I mash them up with a little mayonnaise to make a quick egg salad that my daughter loves as a sandwich filling. If I put it in her freezable lunch box, the egg salad stays chilled until midday.

Slices of the Dave’s Killer Bread with 21 whole grains and seeds are perfect for sandwiches.

When I make sandwiches, I look for whole-grain bread that isn’t too dense. This thin-sliced bread from Dave’s Killer Bread fits the bill perfectly.

Each slice has 3 grams of fiber, which supports digestion and satiety, and 14 grams of carbohydrates, which help support energy.

My daughter enjoys the bread’s soft texture, and I appreciate the nutrient-dense ingredient list, which includes organic flax seeds, organic sunflower seeds, and organic pumpkin seeds.

Simply Nature organic creamy peanut butter is a versatile plant-based protein packed with healthy fats.

Peanut butter is a reliable addition to my daughter’s lunch box.

The Simply Nature organic creamy peanut butter is a plant-based protein with healthy fats that keep my daughter full until she gets home. Each 32-gram serving has 16 grams of fat and 8 grams of protein.

I use it for peanut butter sandwiches or as a dip for apples and celery.

My daughter loves how crisp and sweet Pink Lady apples are.

Whenever possible, I try to include produce in my daughter’s lunch, and Pink Lady apples are one of my most frequent purchases. Each one has about 3 grams of fiber along with micronutrients like vitamin C and potassium.

My daughter loves the apples’ crispiness and sweet flavor, and I love that they’re reasonably priced at Aldi.

When I’m preparing her lunch, I usually pack a sliced apple and pair it with a small container of nut butter for a boost in protein and healthy fats.

Simply Nature freeze-dried strawberries snack packs deliver the nutrition of fresh fruit.

Fresh berries are great, but they often end up squished by the time the lunch bell rings. These Simply Nature freeze-dried strawberries solve that problem completely.

The freeze-drying process removes water while leaving nutrients like iron and potassium intact. These snacks stay perfectly crisp in my daughter’s lunch box and never turn mushy.

The BelGioioso fresh mozzarella snacking cheese is a delicious source of calcium.

I try to include a source of calcium in my daughter’s lunches to support bone health, and these individual mozzarella packs make that easy.

I just grab one from the fridge and toss it into her freezable lunch box. She loves the mild flavor, which pairs nicely with crackers, raw vegetables, or pasta salad.

Baby carrots add a satisfying crunch to my daughter’s meals.

Peeling and chopping vegetables can be time-consuming, but these baby carrots are a breeze to pack.

They deliver a satisfying crunch and healthy dose of vitamin A, which supports vision and immune health.

They also maintain their texture well throughout the day and taste fresh when my daughter reaches for them hours after I pack them. It’s an added bonus that Aldi sells them at a great price point.

Curious what other shoppers are loving? Keep reading our Aldi Diaries!

• YouTube is the world’s biggest video site.
• So it makes sense that young directors would distribute their movies there, and find big audiences.
• Now Hollywood has realized those same directors could make “real” movies, and get big audiences, too.

Hollywood has been struggling to compete with YouTube for years.

Now it’s trying a new strategy: hiring YouTubers. The early results look promising.

This weekend, “Backrooms,” a moody horror movie based on an internet meme, looks like it could bring in astonishing $60 million at the box office — which means it will likely beat out Disney’s new “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu.” Director Kane Parsons has made stuff on YouTube for years, but this is his first film for theaters, which makes sense: He is 20 years old.

That follows the success of “Obsession,” which has grossed $74 million in the last two weeks. It’s made by 26-year-old Curry Barker, another YouTube veteran making his theatrical debut.

And those films came after Mark Fischbach, better known to his 38 million YouTube fans as Markiplier, brought out his “Iron Lung” movie, which he made for a reported $3 million and has now grossed $50 million.

Journalism Rules require me to point out that three things make up a bona fide trend. But I think we’re actually talking about two different ideas here.

• When Fischbach made his movie, he self-financed and produced the whole thing, and asked his fans for help with distribution as well. Going to see “Iron Lung” was something you did because you liked Markiplier and wanted to support him.
• Parsons and Barker also benefit from YouTube fandom. But their followings there are smaller than Fischbach’s. More important: They are actively working within the Hollywood system, by making movies with established studios — A24 for “Backrooms,” Blumhouse for “Obsession.” That looks a lot more like Hollywood using YouTube as a farm team, where it can pluck promising online prospects and give them a shot at the big leagues.

Which isn’t a new idea. Mainstream media has been using the internet broadly and YouTube specifically as an incubator for years, which is why you know who Justin Bieber and Issa Rae are. It’s true for directors, too: Dan Trachtenberg, who made last year’s “Predator: Badlands,” announced himself to Hollywood back in 2011, with a 7-minute short based on the video game Portal.

It seems quite likely we will see a lot more of the “Backrooms” and “Obsession” model, simply because “making movies and putting them on YouTube” is such an obvious route for any young filmmaker. Martin Scorsese would have done the same thing, if he started out with an iPhone and a broadband connection.

To me, the more intriguing question is whether we will see more Markipliers: people who develop real followings on YouTube (or any other digital platform) who can convince their followers to look up from their phones and buy tickets to something.

That remains rare, but less than it used to be, which is why it’s no longer shocking when podcasters (podcasters!) fill up theaters. Let’s see if more directors go the “Iron Lung” route.

• A version of this story originally appeared in the BI Tech Memo newsletter.
• Sign up for the weekly BI Tech Memo newsletter here.

Micron crossed $1 trillion in market value this week, a milestone that would have sounded absurd to most investors even a few years ago. The memory-chip business has long been one of the cruelest corners of tech: brutal booms followed by catastrophic busts.

I’ve covered this story before. Back in 2017, I wrote about Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy arguing that the DRAM market had finally changed for good. His thesis was that fewer suppliers and rising demand from cloud computing and AI would reduce the industry’s historic tendency to destroy itself through overproduction.

That argument turned out to be early, not wrong.

Micron shares have soared roughly twentyfold since then. Samsung crossed the $1 trillion market-cap threshold earlier this month, and SK Hynix joined the party on Tuesday. There are fundamentals behind these moves: Samsung made more than $30 billion in profit during the first quarter alone.

Now investors are asking the most dangerous question in finance: Is this time different?

Maybe.

The first big change is consolidation.

In the early 1990s, there were more than 20 meaningful DRAM makers globally. Today, the industry is effectively controlled by three companies: Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron.

For decades, memory makers responded to rising demand by flooding the market with new supply. Prices eventually collapsed and profits evaporated. Fewer competitors may mean fewer incentives to repeat that cycle.

The second change is AI demand itself.

Modern AI systems are ravenous consumers of memory because they constantly move and process huge amounts of data inside giant data centers. Even advanced techniques designed to reduce computing bottlenecks still run into memory constraints. Startup Lightmatter is using photonics — essentially light instead of copper — to speed up AI data centers, but CEO Nick Harris told me recently that this does nothing to eliminate the memory bottleneck.

So, rampant AI demand is colliding with constrained supply. UBS analysts noted this week that memory makers are signing multi-year agreements with cloud giants that lock in both volume commitments and partially fixed pricing. That should add another layer of stability. UBS estimates these deals could keep the DRAM market undersupplied into 2028.

Of course, this could still prove to be an unusually large up-cycle that eventually ends. The remaining players could flood the market again. New entrants could emerge. AI demand could cool, or a new technology might reduce the need for memory.

But investors clearly believe the old memory business may finally be becoming something new.

Sign up for BI’s Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.

• The head of the DHS says he wants to punish sanctuary cities by limiting customs processing at certain airports.
• That sparks a lot of questions. And industry watchers say it would unleash massive travel chaos.
• A major airline trade group and the administration’s transportation secretary are against the plan.

If the Department of Homeland Security follows through on a threat to yank customs agents from major airports housed in sanctuary cities, industry watchers say fliers would face travel chaos that would make long TSA lines look like child’s play.

Airlines would be forced to redraw route maps on the fly — triggering all kinds of questions about staffing, facilities, and travelers themselves.

Consider, for instance, just one flight: American Airlines Flight 101, scheduled to depart London-Heathrow each day at 10:30 a.m. and land at New York’s JFK at 1:20 p.m.

• Where to land the plane? The airline would have to reroute Flight 101 to another one of its hubs that can accept international flights — but only in a city that isn’t a so-called “sanctuary city.” That means its hubs in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia are off the list. So it could use its hubs at Dallas-Fort Worth, Charlotte, or Miami.
• Do those airports have room? DFW, Charlotte, and Miami are already busy airports, and American has only so many gates and so much room in its schedule at each airport each day. How does it weave in Flight 101 and the two other flights from London that arrive at JFK each day?
• What about staffing? The airline has gate agents, ramp workers, baggage handlers, and contracts with caterers, cleaners, and other staff at the airport. Will there be enough people to work the additional flights that are diverted to different airports? If not, what does the airline do? Send workers from JFK to Dallas? If so, for how long? And where does it house them? Who pays?
• What about passengers? Of the passengers aboard Flight 101, from London, let’s say one was going on to Santa Ana, California; two were going to Des Moines, Iowa; and five were going to Chicago. What happens if American lands the flight at its Miami hub? It doesn’t have direct flights to Santa Ana from there. So does it have to pay to put those passengers on another airline to get them to their destinations? Or does it have to fly them to somewhere else in its network — say, Dallas-Fort Worth — that can get them to their final destinations? In that case, who pays?

  And those Chicago and Des Moines passengers: Let’s say the American flights are already full that day. Are the passengers just stranded? If not, how do they get to where they want to go? Does American have to figure that out, or are the passengers on their own? And again, who pays?

And that’s just one example flight on one airline. There are so many variables that removing customs agents from major gateways like JFK, LAX, or Newark, New Jersey, could cripple the entire international flight operation to the US — or at least slow it way down.

DHS hasn’t detailed its potential plan, so it’s unclear which airports would be affected if it were put into place. When asked for comment, DHS referred to recent television interviews by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

“They don’t want us to enforce immigration, but they want us to process immigration at their facilities? Nothing about that makes sense to me,” Mullin said.

American Airlines referred Business Insider to a statement from the industry’s trade group, Airlines for America, which also represents United and Delta. The group said reducing Customs and Border Protection staffing at major US airports would “have a devastating effect on the airline and tourism industries.” It warned of major disruptions to airlines, travelers, and international cargo.

Richard Aboulafia, managing director of the aerospace consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory, said that people clear customs at their point of entry, not necessarily their final destination. “The idea of hitting entry points in blue states and not having this impact businesses in red states is just extremely foolish,” he said.

Why Markwayne Mullin is suggesting changes at customs

Mullin has said taking customs agents out of US airports that are housed in sanctuary cities might be necessary to protect the country. He first floated the idea in April and reiterated his support for it again this week.

“If they’re a sanctuary city and they’re receiving international flights, and we’re asking them to partner with us at the airport, but once they walk out of the airport, they’re not going to enforce immigration policy — maybe we need to have a really hard look at that,” Mullin said on Fox in April.

Mullin’s idea has been questioned by President Donald Trump’s transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, who said during a congressional hearing earlier this month that it would be “a bad idea to start restricting travel based on political views.”

The US Travel Association, which represents airlines, hotel chains, and other travel-industry businesses, said what Mullin has floated would affect American citizens traveling home from abroad more than it would international visitors.

“Secretary Mullin’s suggestion is impractical,” Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst and the president of Atmosphere Research Group, told Business Insider. “The secretary needs to remember that regardless of where a hub is located, it serves travelers from both red and blue states, and sanctuary and non-sanctuary cities.”

How the DHS plan could affect airports

New York-JFK alone handles roughly 34 million international passengers a year and is the US’ busiest gateway; that’s far more traffic than any single replacement hub would suddenly be expected to absorb.

Mullin said that the policy wouldn’t affect “all” airports across US sanctuary cities, but said situations like those in New Jersey — where he singled out Newark over protests at a Homeland Security detention center — force the department to “prioritize” where it puts federal employees. One solution, Mullin said, is to pull customs officers from nearby airports to help at the ICE facilities.

Airlines can’t simply pack up and move

Forcing airlines to operate within a more restricted landscape would be a bear of a task. One of the biggest obstacles is logistics: Many airports in non-sanctuary cities cannot simply absorb hundreds of additional international flights each day.

Some airports are too small, too old, or already operating near capacity. Expanding terminals, gates, customs facilities, staffing, and ground operations would take years and cost billions of dollars.

Flights from places like Sydney or Tokyo may not be able — or even willing amid sky-high fuel prices — to bypass West Coast gateways like Los Angeles or Seattle for farther-inland non-sanctuary airports.

Plus, security and air traffic control systems across the nation are already dealing with staffing shortages, exacerbated by government shutdowns in late 2025 and early 2026. Concentrating even more flights into already-busy airports could trigger long lines and flight disruptions.

Take the entire state of Texas, for example. It has a blanket “no-sanctuary-cities-allowed” policy, so airports such as Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio could, in theory, take on additional traffic under Mullin’s proposal.

But not every airport can handle every aircraft. San Antonio, for example, has a shorter runway than larger hubs, which can limit larger long-haul widebodies and reduce passenger or cargo capacity, and therefore, revenue.

• Reid Hoffman responded on X to reports of a DOJ probe tied to E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuits.
• Hoffman accused Trump of using the federal government to punish critics.
• The reported scrutiny centers on Hoffman-linked funding for Carroll’s legal fees.

Reid Hoffman is accusing President Donald Trump of retaliation.

The LinkedIn cofounder and Democratic donor responded on Friday to reports that the Justice Department is investigating issues tied to his financial support for E. Jean Carroll’s litigation against Trump, calling the scrutiny “absurdly false” and accusing the president of using the federal government to punish his critics.

“Trump cannot be allowed to use the full weight and power of the US Government to come after women who speak up, or anyone who supports them in doing so,” Hoffman wrote in a five-part thread on X.

His comments came after multiple outlets reported that the DOJ opened a criminal investigation related to Carroll’s civil lawsuits against Trump.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the department was investigating whether Carroll committed perjury. The Washington Post, Reuters, and other outlets reported that the probe was focused more specifically on American Future Republic, a nonprofit backed by Hoffman that helped fund some of Carroll’s legal expenses.

Carroll, a writer and former advice columnist, won two civil judgments against Trump.

In 2023, a Manhattan federal jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation and awarded Carroll $5 million. In 2024, another jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll another $83.3 million for defaming her. Trump has repeatedly denied Carroll’s allegations and appealed the judgments.

The reported scrutiny on Hoffman’s nonprofit appears to center on a 2022 deposition in which Carroll said no one was paying her legal fees. Her lawyers later disclosed that funds from American Future Republic helped cover some litigation costs nearly a year after she filed the lawsuit.

Trump’s lawyers argued that the disclosure showed Carroll had lied under oath; the judge overseeing Carroll’s lawsuits ruled the funding had no bearing on her credibility and blocked questions about it at trial.

Hoffman framed the reported investigation as retaliation.

“He is investigating me because I supported E Jean’s lawsuit — where a jury found Trump liable for sexually assaulting her, and a court of appeals upheld the decision,” Hoffman wrote. “Trump hopes that these fraudulent investigations will silence those who stand up to him. He is wrong. I will not bend the knee.”

Representatives for Hoffman, Carroll, and the White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. The DOJ told Business Insider it does not comment on investigations.

• Zig, an open-source programming language, bans contributors from using AI to code, edit, or debug.
• Zig president Andrew Kelley said that the AI-generated contributions have “no value whatsoever.”
• “They have negative value, because they take review time away from the team,” Kelley said.

Zig has put its foot down: No AI code allowed.

The open-source programming language is maintained by a 501(c)(3) and a network of contributors. Any programmer can submit code to its repository — so long as they follow a code of conduct.

One of Zig’s rules bans the submission of AI-assisted code. The policy is clear: They will accept no LLM-generated content, nothing paraphrased from an LLM, and nothing edited, brainstormed, or debugged by an LLM. In short: Keep AI out of it.

On the JetBrains podcast, Zig President Andrew Kelley called AI-assisted contributions “invariably garbage.”

“People are sending us contributions that have no value whatsoever,” Kelley said. “They have negative value, because they take review time away from the team.”

Code contributions are reviewed by a handful of core team members. That’s the “bottleneck,” as Kelley puts it: There are more pull requests than reviewers. At the time of the recording, Kelley said that Zig had 200 open pull requests.

Those AI-generated “slop contributions” slow the whole team down even more, Kelley said. “We’ve wasted everybody’s time.”

While Zig is relatively small, it’s had an outsize impact. The language was used to create Bun, for instance, which was later acquired by Anthropic. The AI ban later stirred drama between Bun and Zig.

AI-assisted code has ripped through Silicon Valley, thanks to tools like Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex. Some use AI to edit or modify their code; others use it to draft it entirely. Big Tech companies have projected lofty goals for the percentage of code that should be — and already is — written with AI.

Zig doesn’t have a mandate to be maximally efficient like these public companies. Instead, “mentorship” is part of its core mission, Kelley said, making AI contributions counterproductive.

“We’re all trying to get better at programming,” Kelley said. “People who are sending AI pull requests, those people are not helping this goal.”

These AI coders are “drive-by contributors,” those who may submit a pull request or two, but will never join the core team, Kelley said.

The AI ban is also simpler. Kelley said that if he tried to say only “good” AI pull requests would be accepted, the reviewers would have to judge each one.

“If I say none whatsoever, then it’s a very easy policy to enforce,” he said.