• My 21-year-old son wanted to visit a lively beach club during our family vacation.
• I never expected my parents, both in their 70s, to get up and dance to ABBA.
• Seeing their joy reminded me that getting older doesn’t mean giving up new experiences.

My 75-year-old dad told me he’ll feel like he’s closer to dying if our annual family vacations stop. He’s not ready for that. Neither am I.

It stopped me in my tracks and frankly scared me a little. While I know my parents are aging, I haven’t begun thinking about life without them, and I found myself spending the rest of the vacation looking through this new lens.

For the last 12 years, my husband, my parents, my son, and I have traveled all over the world on an annual multigenerational trip. And while the sights have been spectacular, what struck me most on this last vacation is just how much each of us has grown to value these trips.

I’m in the middle between my parents and my son

The dynamic has certainly evolved. My son was 9 when we started, is now 21, and brings his girlfriend along. My parents are now in their mid-70s, with some health challenges that require more patience and care. And I’m in the middle, adjusting the trip so everyone can still participate. I used to plan for adventure. Now I’m thinking about walking distances, downtime, unpacking, and what my parents can comfortably do, while still making it fun for the 21-year-olds.

But what I learned on this trip was that sometimes, when choosing something for the youngest generation, a magical memory is created for the oldest, like when we went to Nikki Beach in St. Tropez at my son’s request. We had been there for lunch a few years prior, and we wanted to return, this time when we could see the true Euro summer beach club vibe in action, complete with waving white napkins and ABBA blasting from the DJ booth.

I never would have guessed it, but both of my parents were up and dancing that day. My mom has since declared the whole day one of her favorites. Who knew? Maybe all they need is a “darty” (day party, as my college kid tells me!).

These are not just vacations for my parents

After what my dad had said earlier in the trip, I watched him differently that day. Seeing him dancing with my mom, laughing and completely in the moment, I understood a little more of what he meant. These trips aren’t just vacations to him. They are something he still gets to look forward to, proof that there are more places to go, more memories to make, and more life ahead of him.

The thing is, for the first few years of these trips, I just wanted to knock places off my bucket list. Now, I want to figure out how to bottle the time and have lasting pictures in my head because a time will come when they stop, when it is no longer feasible for my parents to travel, and when my son will be busy with work and his own family.

I know the finality of life all too well, as I still struggle with the loss of my son Jake after 15 years. I know firsthand the fragility of life and how it can all change in an instant.

My dad’s comment also made me realize that I’ve been thinking about these trips mostly from my own perspective as planner and caregiver. I worry about how much walking they can do, whether they need an afternoon off, or if I’ve planned too much. He’s thinking about something entirely different. He’s thinking about what it means to still be able to go.

The goal is to spend time together

The success of these trips used to be measured by where we went and what we saw. Now they are measured by how much uninterrupted time we have together. As we’ve shifted from bucket-list places like Africa and the Galápagos, we’ve begun to choose places where we don’t have to pack and unpack every three or four days, where we can settle in and spend time together.

We’ve all learned that the real moments of these trips do not lie in the over-the-top experiences. They lie in the moments after the excursion, when we are all having cocktails by the pool and sharing time, the most valuable gift we all have. It’s in the final glass of wine, listening to music, or playing Flip 7 or Pass the Pigs. It’s when we are tired from exploring and stop to have a beer on a random street in a random place that we may never find again.

I don’t know how many more years the five, now six, of us will be able to do this together. I hope it’s many. But my dad’s comment made me realize that counting the years almost misses the point. We got this trip, and while we were there, everyone could still dance.

Perhaps the most important thing is that when my parents started this tradition all those years ago, they started something that won’t end with them. I know someday these trips will be for my son and his family. I love knowing my parents gave us that tradition. I’m just in absolutely no hurry to inherit it.

• When a member of Gen Z smells good, you can probably thank Sol de Janeiro.
• I’m a millennial and new to the brand, so I tried six of its popular fragrances.
• The best scent, in my opinion, is also one of the brand’s most underrated.

Millennials had Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works. Gen Z has Sol de Janeiro.

The body, hair, and fragrance brand, founded in 2015, has become a major player in the industry. A 2025 fiscal year report from L’Occitane Group, Sol de Janeiro’s parent company, said the brand accounted for 31.6% of the group’s sales. The report also described Sol de Janeiro as Sephora North America’s No. 1 beauty brand and the No. 1 fragrance brand on Amazon US at the time.

Two Sol de Janeiro products have led that charge. First, millennials embraced the $48 Brazilian Bum Bum Cream after it launched in 2015, turning it into a skincare staple.

Tweens and teens have now become obsessed with the $39 Cheirosa perfume mists, the first of which debuted in 2020. The sprays have become a staple of young people’s shopping hauls, holiday wish lists, and what’s-in-my-bag videos.

The brand confirmed to Business Insider that its three most popular scents are Cheirosa 62, 40, and 68.

I’m a big fragrance fan myself, but I had yet to try the perfume mists. So I went to Ulta Beauty, purchased a $49 sample set of six Sol de Janeiro scents, and tested them on my skin.

Considering each mist’s scent, staying power, wearability, and personal preference, here’s how I’d rank them from worst to best.

I wish the Cheirosa 71 mist had more depth.

If there’s one thing I love more than fragrances, it’s sweet treats — so Cheirosa 71 should have worked for me.

Sol de Janeiro says the scent is inspired by the iconic Confeitaria Colombo bakery in Brazil, with notes of caramelized vanilla, toasted macadamia nut, sea salt, white chocolate, and tonka bean.

When I tried it, the mist smelled more like a gingerbread cookie to me. Then, as it settled, it transformed into something more reminiscent of a graham cracker drizzled with caramel.

Some critics of this scent say it smells like buttered popcorn. I didn’t notice that on my skin.

Instead, it reminded me of a holiday hand sanitizer from Bath & Body Works. I can appreciate the scent for a moment, but I don’t want it to linger all day. It’s too strong and sickly sweet for me.

Cheirosa 62 is Sol de Janeiro’s most famous scent, but it’s not my favorite.

I’ll be honest. I was never that impressed by Cheirosa 62, the scent made famous by the brand’s Brazilian Bum Bum Cream.

Sol de Janeiro describes the fragrance as “irresistible and sunny.” It’s a nod to Brazil in 1962, when “The Girl from Ipanema” was written.

With notes of pistachio, almonds, heliotrope flower, jasmine petals, vanilla, salted caramel, and sandalwood, Cheirosa 62 is exactly that. I’d describe it as summer in a bottle.

That said, it also makes the fragrance seasonal for me. It just doesn’t feel right to wear in the fall, winter, or spring.

I also think the notes lend themselves better to a richer, creamier product, like the Bum Bum cream.

The Cheirosa 39 mist stands out, which I appreciate.

If any Sol de Janeiro scent smells like buttered popcorn, I think it’s this one.

This scent is meant to be beachy, as if you were lounging on a hammock with the breeze in your hair, Sol de Janeiro says. It has notes of coconut cream, toasted vanilla, tropical orchid, sandalwood, and praline.

When I first spray the mist, that combination smells like buttered popcorn on my skin. That’s not any reflection of Sol de Janeiro. Perfumes smell different on everyone because of their individual skin chemistry.

But I’m not complaining. I actually like the scent. It’s decadent, intriguing, and different than anything else in my fragrance collection.

The coconut and vanilla notes come through more as it settles, with florals peeking through. It takes some time, but it eventually transports me to an island.

So while I might not wear Cheirosa 39 every day, I will add it to my perfume rotation.

I feel fresh, youthful, and like I’m on vacation when I wear Cheirosa 68.

The Cheirosa 68 scent was inspired by Brazil’s Tropicália Movement in 1968, which influenced the country’s art, music, and culture.

It includes notes of dragonfruit, lychee essence, Brazilian jasmine, ocean air, hibiscus, vanilla, and musk.

To me, it smells sweet, sunny, and refreshing. I could see myself wearing it to the beach or for a night out with friends.

Considering my current fragrance lineup, I’ll probably wear this on occasion when the weather is warmer. If I were a teen in 2026, though, I’d probably wear this Sol de Janeiro scent every day.

Cheirosa 40 reminds me of my favorite scent from Victoria’s Secret.

The famous Carnaval Ball in Rio inspired the Cheirosa 40 perfume mist.

On its website, Sol de Janeiro says it’s meant to be sultry and delicate, with notes of black amber plum, crème de cassis, jasmine, Brazilian orchid, vanilla, and musk.

In my experience, each of those notes comes through with a single spray of the fragrance. It’s one of the most mature and longest-lasting scents in the lineup I tried.

It also reminds me of my favorite Victoria’s Secret scent: Bombshell Intense. Naturally, I have to recommend it to fellow millennials looking to get in on the Sol de Janeiro trend.

I can’t get enough of Cheirosa 48.

Sol de Janeiro says on its website that this scent should be as liberating as the “energy of 1948, when the bikini was first spotted in Brazil.”

Liberating is accurate, but I’d also say this scent is exhilarating. Its notes blend guava nectar, coconut water, orchid, lemon, wild orris, pink musk, and vanilla.

Together, they create a fragrance that’s as refreshing and exciting as a poolside drink in the summer. Still, the musk notes make it more versatile than a basic summer scent.

Cheirosa 48 is the Sol de Janeiro mist I’ll be wearing year-round.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that speed restrictions on Ukraine’s Starlink connection have been lifted.
• His comments marked the end of a chaotic 10-day period where connection speeds were throttled.
• Ukraine uses Starlink to fly its drones and interceptors.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday that his military’s access to a network of Elon Musk’s satellites, which it relies on for targeting and defense, had been restored.

Zelenskyy’s comment, made in an X post, came after a chaotic 10 days that began when an advisor to the Ukrainian president said that drones and other projectiles were losing access to the Starshield network.

Starshield is the military application of Musk’s Starlink satellite network. In the no-man’s-land of war-torn eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian military relies on Starshield satellites to give it control of fast-flying, exploding drones and interceptors.

“I thank all Americans and all our partners who took this seriously and truly helped — members of Congress, senators, all the media, the State Department, and the President,” Zelenskyy said in a video he posted to X on Saturday.

Though Musk, as the CEO of SpaceX, to some degree owns the network of satellites, he said in an X post that “any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk himself had ordered the slowdown. Earlier this month, after Ukraine targeted Russian oil facilities, both Musk and President Donald Trump made statements disparaging Zelenskyy. Trump has tried to ease high gas prices — which spiked after the US attacked Iran in February — by loosening sanctions on Russian energy.

“Zelensky has gone too far,” Musk said in an X post on October 10.

For his part, Trump told reporters that he didn’t know who ordered the slowdown. “I don’t know who it was, but I’d like to find out,” he said on October 19.

As Russia attempts to bombard Kyiv into submission ahead of what is widely expected to be one of the most brutal winters of the nearly seven-year-long war, a Starlink connection allows Ukraine to intercept some of Russia’s slower-paced drones.

The throttling of Starlink prompted a rare outburst from Ukraine’s leader, who has sought to control his demeanor after a disastrous Oval Office meeting last year, when Trump berated Zelenskyy for not adequately appreciating US support.

In an interview with Piers Morgan on his YouTube channel on October 14, Zelenskyy called the Starlink slowdown “a big mistake.”

“This decision will bring a lot of human losses,” he said.

SpaceX and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent on Saturday.

A Korean beauty treatment is taking the skin care world by storm. It’s made from the skin of dead American donors.

These products, which promise to reduce signs of aging, are projected to generate $75 million in sales this year in South Korea.

Business Insider traced the supply chain to understand how donor tissue from, say, San Antonio can end up in products for sale at a clinic in Seoul — and how much money is being made along the way.

Meta’s AI gamble is suddenly looking like a win for Mark Zuckerberg.

That was far from a given. Even the Meta CEO was doubting himself. He’d poured hundreds of billions of dollars into AI investments with largely unproven results.

“Are you sure this is going to work?” he asked his 29-year-old AI chief, Alexandr Wang, at the end of last year, he recalled on a recent episode of the “Cheeky Pint” podcast.

Those risky AI bets — which one analyst compared to throwing spaghetti at the wall — as well as the massive layoffs and reorganization that came with them, are now starting to pay off. Meta beat its AI rivals to the punch with its new AI assistant, Muse, and it finally released a frontier AI model. Although Muse is bleeding cash amid high compute costs, analysts are excited by its moneymaking potential.

Zuckerberg is riding high, too. Sipping a Guinness alongside Wang during a recent podcast interview, the pair extolled Meta’s AI prowess.

“You never know when you launch something how it’s going to be received,” the CEO said. “There’s always the case where you get a home run, which in this case it was, right? And it’s just like extremely well received right off the bat.”

And Meta seems to believe in Zuckerberg’s leadership more than ever. His latest coup: Convincing the company to issue a new class of shares after he threatened to list his Palo Alto compound and leave California as voters weigh a billionaire tax.

The big question is how long the good vibes will last. Meta is still spending gobs of money on AI without a concrete financial payoff. Some remain skeptical.

“The bill is huge,” David Wagner, a portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors, told Business Insider.

“He’s won the narrative. He hasn’t proven the return yet.”

Meta’s social reckoning era

Zuckerberg is no stranger to public discourse. He’s undertaken multiple personas: the nerdy wunderkind in hoodies, the jacked wife guy, the unapologetically masculine Trump ally.

At the beginning of this year, it looked as if he was headed for a new reckoning, and it wasn’t just because of the aptly named sequel to “The Social Network.”

Zuckerberg was on trial, taking the stand in a landmark lawsuit that alleged Meta’s platforms harmed the mental health of young people. (Meta was found negligent and is appealing.) It was one of three major lawsuits this year that put the company on the defensive against claims that its technology posed safety risks to children.

And there were the more typical Zuckerberg cringe moments, too, like his front-row appearance at a Prada fashion show that raised eyebrows across the internet.

On the inside, employee morale was waning. Though the billionaire CEO had called 2026 “the year of AI,” Meta had little momentum, and unpopular decisions — including a program to track employee keystrokes — amplified the discontent.

Also, Meta had one of its largest rounds of layoffs, ever. Meta began trimming staff in March, followed by a huge round in May, when it laid off about 10% of its workforce.

Separately, Meta reshuffled another 7,000 workers as part of an AI-focused reorganization of its tech and product teams. Many engineers were relegated to individual contributor status. Meta later asked some of the employees it had demoted to return to their managerial roles.

The AI push didn’t seem to be paying off: In the second quarter of this year, 98% of revenue came from its traditional advertising business — not AI.

Morale was “maybe not the worst it’s ever been in 20 years here, but it’s probably up there,” Meta’s chief technology officer, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, said during an internal call in June.

The groundwork for Meta’s comeback

Amid the chaos, Zuckerberg laid the groundwork for a comeback. Wang and Meta’s elite AI researchers moved their desks to sit near Zuckerberg.

Starting last year, Zuckerberg and Wang also went on a talent-hiring spree, dangling pay packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars to poach top researchers.

Zuckerberg empowered key lieutenants, including former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, to go ham on any vision they had, including on his pet project, an AI assistant. It all fit into Zuckerberg’s longtime playbook of embracing small teams and overseeing reorgs until something works — move fast and break things, as he has infamously put it.

It worked.

Muse, the long-awaited Meta AI agent, became a breakout hit. A week after it launched, it shot to the top of the app store, and has since achieved more than 10 million downloads in North America. The team was stunned to have beaten OpenAI to market, a person familiar with the matter said. OpenAI’s rival product, Dots, launched three weeks later.

Meta also threw unprecedented compute and talent at building a series of frontier AI models, called Muse Wonder, that could keep up with those from giants like OpenAI and Anthropic.

On Meta’s third-quarter earnings call, Zuckerberg was optimistic that Meta’s AI and hardware investments could soon become cash cows, as people shop through Muse and buy more virtual-reality glasses powered by the company’s growing AI chops.

Meta, meanwhile, views Zuckerberg as more critical than ever to its long-term fortunes.

Key board members abruptly excused themselves from a dinner with Zuckerberg in September after he told them he was going to sell his Palo Alto estate in response to California’s proposed billionaire tax, Meta disclosed in a filing on Wednesday.

Four days later, a special committee returned with a deal that would give Zuckerberg $20 billion in “immediate liquidity” to cover the tax — if it passes — without reducing his controlling stake in Meta. Meta also made plans to ensure that billions in fresh AI fundraising wouldn’t dilute Zuckerberg’s control.

“Meta’s track record of significant value creation for its shareholders is in large part due to his strong leadership, unique and creative vision, and exceptional management abilities,” the company said in a press release.

The personal win comes as some of his other problems have blown over. Meta settled a major lawsuit brought by attorneys general across states, Washington, DC, and US territories. As part of the settlement, the company committed to make changes to its apps, such as daily time limits and pausing notifications overnight. The agreement was part of an August settlement, a move that allowed Meta to call out its competitors such as YouTube and TikTok.

“All platforms should empower parents and support teens by putting the same measures in place, because we know that when teens are restricted on one app, they simply move to another,” the company said in a blog post at the time.

Big questions still loom. The day after Meta reported strong earnings and Muse adoption, its stock fell 7% as investors absorbed the scale of the company’s hundreds of billions of dollars in future spending commitments.

And the legal troubles keep on coming. This week, a New Mexico jury also ordered Meta to pay a staggering $25 billion over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a case that Meta plans to appeal.

Whether Zuckerberg’s strategy is sustainable or not, the vibe shift has been notable — and may have proven naysayers wrong, at least until the next period of chaos erupts.

“Meta is cool again,” Jesse Cohen, an analyst at Investing.com, said in a note. “That’s the Muse effect.”

• PHP, the open-source computer programming language, had two major vulnerabilities exposed.
• Yonaton Keller woke on Wednesday to panicked messages about the two PHP vulnerabilities.
• He shares three steps you can take to protect your website.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Yonaton Keller, a 46-year-old product manager at Zafran Security, based in Tel Aviv. His words have been edited for length and clarity.

When I woke up at 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday, I had multiple messages from around 4:45 a.m. alerting me that two vulnerabilities in the PHP programming language had been disclosed.

I immediately understood that this was a very serious situation.

Websites run different versions of PHP, and it’s estimated that around 70% of websites worldwide use it. This isn’t the first time PHP vulnerabilities have been found, but these ones require essentially no authentication on the attacker’s part.

It’s a very tricky situation. If it were a year and a half ago, nobody would have really responded to this so urgently. But this might be one of the first major incidents of its kind in this AI era, and the cycle of how attackers operate and how we typically respond is broken.

AI enhances detection and response times, but it also means that any limited-technical person could exploit these vulnerabilities within minutes.

My team was very concerned and had to act fast

I’m based in Israel, so when it was 6:30 a.m., my time, it was the middle of the night in the US. This time gap worked in our team’s favor, as we had time to figure out what was going on before our customers woke up.

PHP is an open-source computer programming language used to create websites and web applications. It’s such a widely used programming language that we immediately understood that every one of our customers, which includes major corporations and businesses, would likely be affected by this.

With bugs or critical flaws in the infrastructure, like the two that were found in PHP, exploitation is actually quite easy, especially if you use AI agents. That was the first thing we understood: even completely unskilled attackers can use these vulnerabilities to take down sites.

The PHP Foundation said it would disclose the details of the vulnerabilities and release a fix for newer versions of the language around 5 p.m. Israel time. But some details had already been informally disclosed on an online forum. The post was deleted minutes afterward, but screenshots spread around the internet quite quickly in unofficial forums.

So, my team and I dropped everything else and spent all day on Wednesday gathering informal information to see whether we could mitigate the risk of exploitation before an official fix was released.

How to tell if you’re at risk

The first step people can take to figure out if they’re impacted is to look at their websites and web applications, and try to understand where PHP is involved. You can also assume that most, if not all, of them will use PHP in some way, unless you have very basic HTML-based pages.

The second step would be to look at what vulnerability scanners online are telling you. Tenable, Qualys, and Rapid7 are usually the big three for releasing detection rules and actually detecting the vulnerability. In this case, these vulnerabilities have caused such widespread panic worldwide that they were quick to respond. This is also a way to understand the exact vulnerabilities in your internet-facing assets.

After taking these steps, immediately look online to upgrade your website to the current PHP version. It’s quite easy to upgrade that, and it’s free. There are some technical steps to do after the fix, so you might need a tech guy to implement them. If you don’t update your PHP version, the impact on your business and website can be very, very serious.

Some people are also fully taking their sites offline, and I think that can be the right call if you have evidence that you are being targeted. However, 70% of the internet can’t and shouldn’t be taken offline just because those sites have some vulnerabilities. It’s an emergency step to take if you have evidence of potential exploitation, but it can’t be a step taken by everyone.

This was not just about attackers disrupting your website or web application; it was about them taking control of your server, stealing sensitive documents, moving inside your network, and then carrying out malicious operations, such as deploying ransomware or other actions they intended.

The situation has calmed down, but my cybersecurity team is still very concerned

Things have calmed down a bit since Wednesday, but we’re still very, very concerned. Patching 70% of worldwide websites doesn’t take a minute or two.

Hours after the fix was disclosed by the PHP Foundation, there were already tons of exploitation attempts popping up online. Attackers are getting quicker. I think that in this AI era, when in a matter of minutes, many attackers can attack, you don’t have the time you used to.

The whole traditional process of scoping the attack surface, establishing a remediation plan, then calling a guy who’s going to be responsible for this remediation plan, et cetera, is broken.

For a long period of time, organizations were investing a lot in what we call post-compromise scenarios. I think the AI era of cybersecurity will involve a lot more security investments in the pre-compromise realm, so defenses can be pre-built and ready for attacks in situations like this.