Allison Escolastico, a 30-year-old transgender woman, has wanted breast augmentation surgery for a decade. By 2019, she finally thought her insurance company, Aetna, would pay for it, only to find that it considered the procedure cosmetic, not medically necessary, and refused to cover it. “I knew from my case, it wasn’t cosmetic,” said Ms. Escolastico,…
Taking the Wheel My grandparents had a 20-foot-long, “Breaking Bad”-style camper that they would drive from snowy Wisconsin to sunny Florida. When I told my grandfather about my pipe dream to take the van on a graduation road trip, he smiled and said, “I’ll drive.” By the time I graduated college, both the camper and…
Courtesy of Chanel / Anton Corbijn During heavy times, a touch of lightness can be a temporary balm. That’s what Chanel’s spring-summer couture provided. A brief respite, the storied fashion house debuted its newest collection to a near-empty audience, a nod to the times and the hope of returning to a packed house. “I love…
“If it goes well, we can repeat,” Mr. Elbaz said. “If it doesn’t, we stop.” But, he said, “the idea is, by the end of the year, you have everything you need.” Kay Barron, the fashion director of Net-a-Porter, called the collection “modular.” And though, as she said, everyone expected Mr. Elbaz to come back…
Mr. Jackson said that a “large global team supports our partners in a variety of verticals,” doing similar sorts of outreach across Instagram, but did not disclose how many people work on this team, or how many similar meetings are held during any given period of time. Ms. Reichenbach was told she got the meeting…
The transition memos from the left flank of American agriculture began piling up almost as soon as Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidential win was clear. There were pleas small and large. Fix the rules for raising organic livestock, and reverse the department’s track record with Black farmers. Restore school food standards and strengthen G.M.O. labels.…
Video games entered mainstream culture decades ago, but these days, gamers are more like celebrities, with millions of fans online. That means, among other things, that the days of gamers wearing jorts and oversize T-shirts are long past. Esports athletes and streamers alike now dress with urban panache mixed with opulent sensibilities. The result is…
Starter episode: “Urban Rodentology” The premise behind this decade-old show is simple: We all have science stories to tell, because simply existing in the world means we’re interacting with science all the time. The Story Collider is a nonprofit group founded by two physicists who wanted to amplify personal stories that “spark emotional connections to…
Clash, a short-form video app that became available in August, announced today that it had purchased Byte, another short-form video app, released a year ago. In a way, the acquisition is a reunion for Vine, the beloved six-second-video app that announced its shutdown in 2016. Dom Hofmann, the creator of Byte, was a founder of…
Richard Zaro always wanted to open a chicken cutlet joint inspired by the deli sandwiches served across northern New Jersey, but the challenge was coming up with the required capital. The pandemic finally gave him an opportunity. Mr. Zaro’s family has a long history in the restaurant business. In 1927, his great-grandfather Joseph Zarobchik founded…