I'm a 65-year-old personal trainer who stocks my kitchen with healthy foods from Costco.
My cart always has frozen protein sources, like wild shrimp and organic chicken breasts.
I also love buying healthy snacks, including macadamia nuts and grass-fed beef sticks.
As a 65-year-old fitness trainer, I prioritize consistency and simplicity over perfection in my workouts and diet. I avoid fads and strict rules, instead sticking to simple, easy-to-follow habits I can maintain.
The key to following through on these habits is preparation — hence why I love grocery shopping at Costco. Buying food in bulk means I'm prepared to make meals that support my energy, strength, and overall health on even my busiest days.
Nutrition, like exercise, doesn't have to be complicated. It just has to be maintainable, and certain products make that easier.
Kirkland Signature Greek yogurt is an excellent protein source when I don't want to cook an elaborate meal.
I buy the 1.36-kilogram tub of Greek yogurt from Costco.
Janet Osborne
I always have a tub of Greek yogurt in my refrigerator and reach for it almost every day.
I use it for yogurt bowls, which I dress up with berries and nuts, and sometimes mix it into my smoothies. It's also useful for cooking, as I often swap it for sour cream in recipes.
The yogurt has a rich, creamy texture, and the large container is an excellent value. Most importantly, it makes it easy for me to get more protein, which is important for aging women.
When I want a nutritious meal that feels special, I reach for the Nanuk Coho smoked salmon in my refrigerator.
I buy the Nanuk Coho smoked salmon.
Janet Osborne
Adding Coho smoked salmon to my meals instantly makes them feel more elevated.
It's rich in omega-3 fatty acids, high-quality protein, and key nutrients like vitamin D and B12 — all of which are important for heart, brain, and immune health.
I love having smoked salmon ready to pull out when I host guests at my home. I have it with eggs and avocado for brunch and also arrange it on my charcuterie boards.
Kirkland Signature wild Argentine shrimp is a high-quality protein I can prepare in minutes.
The frozen shrimp is ready to serve in minutes.
Janet Osborne
Kirkland Signature wild Argentine shrimp is one of my freezer staples. It requires minimal cook time and makes meal-prep so much easier.
It's a low-fat, high-protein option loaded with nutrients like selenium, vitamin B12, iron, and iodine. The shrimp also contains antioxidants and omega-3s that support overall health.
I prefer wild shrimp over farmed shrimp (I think it tastes better and is of higher quality), and because I don't always have the easiest time finding it, I like having this bag ready in my freezer.
Having Kirkland Signature organic chicken in my freezer keeps me from reaching for less nutritious options.
Chicken breasts at Costco
Janet Osborne
I buy organic chicken breasts or thighs in bulk and freeze them in small portions.
It saves money, reduces the number of trips I have to take to the grocery store, and ensures I always have a protein source ready to prepare.
Keeping chicken available is one of the simplest ways I stay on track. When I have healthy, delicious options at my disposal, it's much easier to make choices that align with my health goals.
Kirkland Signature grass-fed beef sticks are the perfect size to slip into my purse or travel carry-on.
Kirkland Signature grass-fed beef sticks from Costco.
Janet Osborne
Kirkland Signature grass-fed beef sticks, which each have 10 grams of protein, are one of my go-to snacks, especially when I'm running errands.
My days out of the house often last longer than I expect, so having a snack with me helps me avoid grabbing fast food or making impulsive choices when I get hungry.
The sticks are also a great travel snack. Because they're so easy to slip into my purse, I always have them with me.
Bags of Nature's Touch frozen mixed berries fill my freezer.
I put frozen berries in my smoothies and yogurt bowls.
Janet Osborne
I use this mix of frozen fruit to make smoothies and top yogurt bowls almost every day.
They're packed with antioxidants and fiber, and I love how affordable and convenient they are compared to fresh berries.
Frozen berries also carry all of the same benefits, and they're perfectly ripe whenever I need them.
Frozen riced cauliflower and broccoli make it easy to incorporate more vegetables in my diet.
Frozen cauliflower lasts long in my freezer.
Janet Osborne
I always store frozen organic broccoli and cauliflower rice in my freezer to make sure I eat enough vegetables.
They're just as nutritious as fresh vegetables. Plus, they're typically less expensive, take less time to chop, and don't spoil within mere days.
Avocados are one of the most versatile foods in my kitchen.
I buy avocados at Costco.
They're full of healthy fats, fiber, and important nutrients that support heart health and my overall well-being.
I also like to keep Kirkland Signature macadamia nuts on hand for snacking and dressing up my meals.
I buy macadamia nuts in bulk.
Janet Osborne
I often buy a range of nuts, but my current favorite is macadamia nuts. They're rich in heart-healthy monounsaturated fats.
I throw a couple of the nuts into my yogurt bowls or snack on a handful to keep me full between meals.
For cooking and making salad dressings, I use Kirkland Signature Italian extra-virgin olive oil.
I use the olive oil for cooking and salad dressings.
Janet Osborne
Kirkland Signature Italian extra-virgin olive oil is cold-pressed and high-quality. It's a kitchen staple, and I feel good using it daily for cooking and making salad dressings.
My dinner plates often include a small serving of Wildbrine raw organic sauerkraut.
Wildbrine raw organic sauerkraut.
Janet Osborne
I enjoy cooking with Wildbrine raw organic sauerkraut, often adding 1 or 2 teaspoons of it to simple recipes.
My beloved Kindle 5 with physical buttons is going to become useless soon.
Katie Notopoulos / Business Insider
Amazon announced that Kindles released before 2012, including the first Paperwhite, will no longer be supported.
You can still read your existing titles, but you can't add anything new.
As a devoted Kindle 5 user, I'm pissed as heck!
Please be kind to me. I received some devastating news yesterday. An email from Amazon telling me that older model Kindles from before 2012 will no longer be supported, and I won't be able to add new titles to the device. This means my beloved Kindle 5 — the kind with physical buttons on the side to turn the page — is effectively useless to me.
Here's what the email said:
Thank you for being a longtime Kindle customer. We're glad our devices have served you well for as long as they have. Starting May 20, 2026 — 14 to 18 years after their initial launches — we are discontinuing support for Kindle devices released in 2012 or earlier. Here's what this means for you:
* You can continue to read books already downloaded on these devices, but you will not be able to purchase, borrow, or download additional books on them after that date.
* If you deregister or factory reset these devices, you will not be able to re-register or use these devices in any way.
Affected devices include Kindle 1st and 2nd Generation, Kindle DX and DX Graphite, Kindle Keyboard, Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Kindle 5, and Kindle Paperwhite 1st Generation.
Arrggggggg!!!! I love my Kindle 5! I like using the clicky buttons on the side instead of the touchscreens of the newer Paperwhites. Years after it was discontinued, my screen cracked, so I hunted down a $30 replacement Kindle 5 on eBay. I was that committed to the physical buttons.
Beyond the pleasing click of a real button, the bigger issue is that I'm left-handed. When the new Paperwhites came out, I went to a Best Buy to test one, expecting to love it. But I discovered that they had a right-handed bias: To turn the pages forward, you tap the right side of the screen (left for back). This is awkward if you're holding the device in your left hand! I read a fair amount on the Kindle app on my iPhone, which uses the same left/right page turn method, and I'm constantly flipping backward by accident. It's a frustrating experience for a lefty!
(Caveat here: not all newer Kindle models work this way; my husband has a Kindle Voyage, which has a different page turning method where you tap an upper button on either side for back, and a lower button for forward.)
It seems like it may still be possible to add new content to your old Kindle by alternative methods, like sending a file to your Kindle email address or using an actual USB cord to add a file. I asked Amazon for clarification here, and a company rep responded with a quote from the same statement they gave customers. They offered no further information.
There may be other unofficial ways, too. There's a whole world of people who "jailbreak" their Kindles, or change the file formats, or strip off the DRM (digital rights management) of ebooks to make them compatible with various types of devices.
Within this world, there is a subset of people who pirate ebooks. This doesn't appeal to me, not even on principle so much as practicality: It sounds annoying and hard to do. As a cheap person, I hate paying my hard-earned cash for books, too — but that's why I have a library card and use the Libby app for ebooks.
I am happy for anyone who finds satisfaction with this arrangement, but it is not for me. I want ease and convenience. I don't want to be messing around with downloading things to my computer first. I want to do a few taps on my phone and get a book instantly. I don't want to do any "jailbreaking" of this device. I don't want to mess around with weird third-party platforms. I like my Kindle for convenience and speed; I'm not looking to complicate things.
Amazon didn't give a specific reason for why it's stopping support for these older models, but this isn't unprecedented. It's not so unusual for older hardware to experience forced obsolescence like this — there's a reason you don't see people using an iPhone 1 too often these days. Supporting software updates for older models takes time and resources, and Amazon probably doesn't see it as worth it.
What makes this slightly unusual is that these old Kindles are workhorses that are operating just fine after 14 years. My Kindle 5 is one of the few personal tech devices that I haven't had to upgrade in the last decade. I've probably gone through six iPhones and at least two laptops in my Kindle's lifetime.
Will I get a new one? I guess. I have been curious about some other ereaders, especially the Boox Palma, which seems perfectly pocket-sized. But I'm not happy about it.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says one of his biggest career lessons is to avoid making big decisions when you're tired on a Friday.
John Lamparski/Getty Images
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said making big decisions when you're tired is a mistake.
Dimon said avoiding decisions on Fridays is a key career lesson he has "learned and relearned."
He said purpose — not happiness — is what really drives success in work and life.
Thinking about making a big decision at the end of a long week? JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says it's worth waiting.
"Making big decisions on a Friday when you're tired is a really bad idea," Dimon said in an interview with NPR's "Newsmakers" on Tuesday.
Dimon shared that insight during an answer about what he wished he knew earlier in life, after nearly 22 years running the world's largest bank by market capitalization, and after he turned 70 last month.
Thomas Roulet, a professor of organizational sociology and leadership at the University of Cambridge, told Business Insider that Dimon is correct about the dangers of "decision fatigue."
"As a CEO, if you have taken decisions throughout the week without time to recharge, cognitive resources — a CEO's ability to juggle and process all information they have to make the right decision — are depleted by Friday," Roulet said.
A CEO might also be "in a rush to make a decision because of the end of the week approaching, which can mean lacking all information to make the right decision or lacking time to consult the right people," he added.
During the interview, Dimon pointed to emotional discipline as another key leadership skill.
"Anger doesn't help," he said, describing the kinds of habits that can quietly undermine judgment.
He framed these insights as lessons "learned and relearned" over time.
"I still make some of those mistakes, unfortunately," Dimon said.
Have a 'purpose in life'
Dimon said he was raised to "have a purpose in life, treat everyone well, do the best you can, leave the world a better place," and "that hasn't changed."
He also pointed to his latest annual letter to shareholders, released Monday, which highlights the USA's upcoming 250th anniversary as a moment to "rededicate ourselves to the values that made this great nation of ours — freedom, liberty, and opportunity."
In the interview, Dimon said the meaning of happiness in the phrase "the pursuit of happiness" from the US Declaration of Independence is often misunderstood.
"When they said the pursuit of happiness, they didn't mean happiness like we mean happiness," he said, but rather "purpose."
Dimon said the idea of purpose can take many forms — from business and politics to everyday life.
"That purpose could be an artist, politician, reporter, you know, business person," he said. "You could be just a caregiver, a mother."
He recalled reading an op-ed about a Medal of Honor recipient who, decades later, came to see that the real heroes were those who quietly helped others every day — though he did not specify which piece he was referring to.
"They never gave up, and they did it through health and sickness and things like that," Dimon said.
"So that's the purpose. You made the world a better place in the way you can contribute," he added.
OpenBuilder is challenging dominant vibe coding startups with fixed pricing.
The Y Combinator startup has raised $2.2 million in seed funding.
Customers can pay for human support when they get stuck.
Vibe coding startup OpenBuilder wants to take on vibe coding giants like Lovable and Replit, arguing that the pricing models of dominant products are unsustainable and profit when non-technical users get stuck.
OpenBuilder participated in Y Combinator's Fall 2025 batch and has raised $2.2 million in seed funding from Focal, Founder Factor, Pascal Capital, and others.
While vibe coding is transforming software, OpenBuilder's cofounder and CEO, Paul Li, told Business Insider that bugs leave projects unfinished and drive up costs.
Rather than credit-based pricing, OpenBuilder charges a fixed subscription for unlimited use, with the option to pay for human developer support when needed.
The tool is built on open-source coding models from Z.ai and the Chinese startup DeepSeek, which are cheaper and offer greater flexibility. As AI costs fall over time, Li says pay-per-use business models will become untenable.
"Our bet is that over time, users are going to become educated and aware enough of the landscapes that eventually it will shift to more fixed pricing," he said.
In addition to OpenBuilder's three employees, the company works with four contractors to provide developer support. It will use the seed funds for hiring and marketing.
Li and cofounder and CTO James Jiang dropped out of the University of Waterloo to cofound a virtual reality gaming company called Mirage VR, and in 2023 pivoted to a coding assistant for software developers called EasyCode, which attracted roughly 1.5 million installs.
They went through Y Combinator with EasyCode, too, though they opted not to raise funds because the company was growing quickly and had already conducted a raise. Li said he regretted that decision as competition within the field intensified.
OpenBuilder targets non-technical builders, including hobbyists and aspiring entrepreneurs. It largely targets small businesses building tools to avoid pricey software products, Li said.
Here's a look at the pitch deck OpenBuilder used to raise its $2.2 million seed. Slides have been redacted so that the deck can be shared publicly.
I watch as my crimson-red blood quickly fills two small glass vials, then gets packed into an ice-cold sleeve to be shipped off to a cancer-hunting lab.
I've just completed my first cancer blood draw. There's about two teaspoons worth here, and I'm shelling out $824 to get it analyzed. (A seasonal discount brought it down from the listed price of $950.)
The process is simple and close to painless. A phlebotomist comes to your house, draws a little blood, you check the paperwork to ensure everything is correctly labeled, and off it goes to a lab. It will be tested for more than 50 different cancers. I'll have results in about a week, my phlebotomist says.
Zoë Meyers for BI
My stomach does a few flips, which surprises me. I don't think there's any reason to be nervous. I'm 40, still 10 years shy of the age when the test is recommended. I don't have any cancer symptoms, and I'm not considered high risk. I don't have a family history of cancer. But the thought of something lurking in my seemingly healthy body is unnerving. What if something is amiss and I just don't know it yet? The wait for results begins.
I've taken the Galleri test from Grail, a blood-testing startup for early cancer detection, one of a handful of tech companies that are Silicon Valley's latest answer to our collective cancer anxiety.
The sales pitch is basically this: If you can spot cancer in your bloodstream right now, you might be able to do something about it.
A third of us will get cancer in our lifetimes. Many of us won't catch it as quickly as we'd like, and there are deadly cancers, like liver and pancreatic cancer, that aren't routinely screened for. Cancer is meanwhile becoming less of an older person's predicament. More young people are getting diagnosed with late-stage colon cancer, a trend researchers and doctors don't fully understand. More young women are getting lung cancer and uterine cancer.
This and similar blood tests aim to get ahead of all that with good tech. They're designed to detect a cancer signal — traces of cancer DNA shed into the blood — and identify where in the body the signal is coming from.
That's the idea, at least. In a laboratory study Grail conducted in 2021, it caught 51.5% of cancers overall. That's a coin toss. Its accuracy fell to 16.8% for stage 1 cancers. Disappointing results from several real-world rollouts, including from a major, three-year trial in the UK, have dimmed the company's outlook. The test is catching cancer, but it's not clear it's really saving lives. At least not yet.
As I await my results, I worry about bad news. But I also worry I won't learn much of anything at all.
Grail has its origins in the human sequencing boom of the early 2000s.
When the Human Genome Project released the first draft of our genetic blueprint in 2000, a wave of biotech companies sprang up, focused on making sequencing more accessible across research, medicine, and eventually consumer testing. Early players like 23andMe were followed by companies that offered more advanced clinical applications, like prenatal tests for Down's Syndrome and other genetic abnormalities.
One of these companies, the genome-sequencing giant Illumina, was among the first and biggest providers of non-invasive prenatal blood tests (NIPTs). In the mid-2010s, Rick Klausner, Illumina's chief medical officer and the former director of the National Cancer Institute, noticed something interesting. When a phlebotomist showed him some unusual chromosomal patterns she'd spotted in a series of prenatal tests, he guessed, correctly, that they could be signs of cancer in the mothers' bodies.
"I immediately thought this could be the breakthrough we've long looked for: a screening test for cancer," Klausner says.
Rick Klausner, the former National Cancer Institute, founded GRAIL.
Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images
Getting that idea to market would require spending a lot of money, likely to the tune of $1 billion, on development and testing. With that in mind, Grail was spun off in 2016.
A few years later, Illumina reacquired Grail for $8 billion and then spun it off again. Grail went public in 2024 with a $500 million valuation.
"I called it Grail because this is one of the holy grails of cancer: Can you create a blood test for early detection?" Klausner says.
Jeff Huber, a former Google executive who helped develop Google Maps and had served on Illumina's board, was tapped to be Grail's first CEO. As it happened, Huber's interest in cancer detection had just become deeply personal. His wife, Laura, died at age 47 of a late-stage cancer that doctors were slow to diagnose. Huber says he was excited by the idea of harnessing data to increase a patient's odds.
"When cancer is diagnosed late, you are starting behind, and it's an uphill fight the whole way," he tells me. "There are times where you can make progress. But, ultimately, the dominant outcome is you lose because of the starting point."
Huber, who left Grail in 2021, says he still does the Galleri test every year alongside his annual check-up as part of a broader bouquet of cancer screening options. Every other year, he also does a full-body MRI, which costs about $2,500 and can catch abnormal growths. "I do feel deeply offended by the current state of things where Grail is a rich people product," he tells me.
Grail filed for FDA approval of its Galleri test in late January. It scored a major win in February, with a new law that says that Medicare will cover FDA-approved "multi-cancer early detection tests" (MCEDs) starting in 2028, even though none of the tests have made it that far.
The one blood test for cancer screening that's FDA approved is Guardant Health's Shield test, but, so far, it only screens for colon cancer. A recent clinical trial found it detected around 83% of colon cancer cases in people over 45, and the National Cancer Institute is running a trial to determine if the test could eventually be used more broadly.
Other companies may not be far behind, though they're still gathering data. Cancerguard, the makers of Cologuard colon cancer stool testing tests, offers a $690 test that also screens for around 50 cancers and, thus far, performs about as well as the Galleri test. MCED tests are also offered through OneTest and Episeek.
In the meantime, Grail has partnered with lab-testing startups to enable easy, at-home tests at lower prices. Telehealth giant Hims and Hers began offering the Galleri test this year, as did Superpower, a San Francisco-based health coaching startup.
Zoë Meyers for BI
The question is whether Grail's technology, and the tech behind MCEDs in general, is as good as those promoting it say, or if it's more of a work in progress.
The American Cancer Society doesn't recommend MCED tests since "much still needs to be learned about the accuracy." The US Preventive Services Task Force, the independent expert panel that approves tests for insurance coverage, has yet to weigh in.
Several major rollouts of the Galleri test — one involving California firefighters; another done in collaboration with the UK's National Health Service — have yielded disappointing results.
In late 2022, the San Francisco Firefighters Cancer Prevention Foundation spent over $1 million to offer the Galleri test to 1,786 active and retired firefighters, hoping this new test might save some lives.
A cancer "signal" was detected in 11 tests, according to a foundation press release. Cancer was later confirmed in five of those cases. The diseases were late-stage in all five cases the test flagged and each of the patients have since died. In the other six cases where the Galleri test detected a "cancer signal," follow-up tests found no evidence of cancer.
Within six months, at least three other firefighters who had no cancer signal detected by the test were diagnosed with either melanoma, prostate cancer, or lymphoma.
"We were sort of disappointed," says Tony Stefani, president of the San Francisco Firefighters Cancer Prevention Foundation. "We were under the impression when we talked to them that this was a state-of-the-art type of new screening tool and it would definitely give us an opportunity to catch some of these cancers at their earliest stages."
The foundation now says it "cannot support the routine use" of the Galleri or similar tests due to "false reassurance, missed cancers, unnecessary follow-up procedures, or added stress."
"If they fine-tune this thing to where it does catch these cancers at early stages, like they said, then it's a phenomenal thing," Stefani says. "But right now, it's just not working."
When I asked Grail about this, a spokesperson pointed to the test's success in identifying cancers that aren't routinely screened for, as well as cancers that other screening has missed.
Klausner says it was never expected that the test would have "a positive predictive value of 100%," and that finding even one new cancer is a good thing.
"It's been very strange to me, the extraordinary skepticism of the cancer community," he says. "I'm cautiously optimistic that the performance is going to continue to hold up, and hopefully will demonstrate real meaningful clinical benefit."
Disappointing results have continued to pile up.
Preliminary results from a Grail trial, released in October and involving 23,000 people in the US and Canada found the test detected cancer in 133 people that was later confirmed. However, it missed 196 cases that were diagnosed by doctors within a year, and it produced 83 positive signals that could not be confirmed as cancer.
Zoë Meyers for BI
Then, in mid-February, just three weeks after Grail filed for FDA approval, Grail released preliminary results from a major trial of its test in the UK.
Grail had partnered with the UK's National Health Service on a controlled, three-year trial of 140,000 people between the ages of 50 and 77. The NHS had called the testing "potentially revolutionary" if it could reduce the number of cancers found at stage 3 and stage 4, when the chances of survival are lower, and the overall costs are higher.
When Grail announced it hadn't met that goal, its share price fell 50%. The full results won't be released until later this spring, and an NHS spokesperson told the BBC that "the NHS will carefully study the full results from this major trial in the coming months to help determine how blood tests like this could be used in the future."
Grail has pointed out that the test reduced the number of stage 4 cancer diagnoses by more than 20%, at least for a particular subset of 12 especially deadly cancers, when used a second and third time. Grail also said its testing had led to a fourfold improvement in the detection of breast, colon, lung, and cervical cancers.
Professor Richard Sullivan, the director of the Institute of Cancer Policy at King's College in London, calls Grail's response "incredibly disingenuous." He points out that the test simply didn't achieve its goal of preventing more stage 3 and stage 4 cancer diagnoses.
"The bar was so low, and they couldn't even show that," he says. "The answer is the test does not work. End of story."
Many cancer researchers still see exciting potential in blood testing, even if the results thus far haven't been as good as some had hoped.
"I actually still think that these tests are our best hope for bending the cancer curve," Dr. Scott Ramsey, a cancer researcher at Fred Hutch Cancer Center, told The Cancer Letter when Grail's NHS results were announced. Ramsey is a co-principal investigator for the National Cancer Institute's ongoing MCED trial, which is trialing products from Guardant and ClearNote, but not Grail. "We're looking at the results for a first-generation test, and perhaps a trial design that wasn't ideal," he told the outlet.
As someone who writes about health for a living, I spend a lot of time monitoring cancer research and talking to cancer patients. And the truth is, we don't always have great options.
Doctors can be dismissive of symptoms, and no screening test is perfect. Mammograms miss about one in every eight cases of breast cancer. Colonoscopies, which are now recommended for adults over 45, can miss about 5% of colorectal cancers.
The demand for more accessible and reliable screening options, from MRIs to blood tests to wearables, is enormous. Most of us want more detailed information about our health so we can take proactive steps to live longer, healthier lives. And it would be great if we didn't have to smash our boobs or stick a probe inside our butts, only to test for one cancer at a time, with imperfect results.
It's no wonder that people who can afford it will shell out for any promising new technology, even if the data is mixed or the potential benefit is marginal. And while we typically set a high bar for screening tests — they should save lives and have real preventative value — are we willing to bend that standard in the name of supporting innovation?
A week passes after the phlebotomist's visit, and there's still no word from Grail. For all my growing ambivalence about the test, I can't kick the feeling of uneasiness.
Caption here Zoë Meyers for BI
Finally, two weeks after my blood draw, my results arrive in an email from Grail. I wait to open them alongside my husband, just in case the news is bad.
Relief passes over me as I read the result: "no cancer signal detected."
Still, there's no detailed analysis to look at, no numbers to track, no data to keep on file or compare to future tests. I think about other blood tests and genetic workups I've done. They almost always included a range of "normal" values so you can see where you rank, or detailed a long list of genetic mutations you do or don't have. There's none of that detail here.
When I tell people I took the Galleri test, the first thing they usually ask is whether they should give it a try.
In weighing my response, I'm haunted by the story of Danielle Hoeg, a mom to three young kids who took the Galleri test at 43 after some routine blood work had come back with confusing results.
Hoeg had received the same email that I got: "no cancer signal detected." Still convinced that something was wrong, she kept digging and, a few months later, went in for a Prenuvo full-body MRI. The scan found stage one lung cancer. Doctors were able to quickly remove her tumor in a single procedure without any chemotherapy or radiation.
It's just one story. But I wonder about others who don't follow their gut as Hoeg did.
In the weeks since I got my results, here's what I've landed on. If it's peace of mind about cancer you're after, comprehensive full-body MRIs will tell you the most about what's going on in your body right now, for about two and a half times the price of a Galleri draw.
The number one thing you can do — and this is something I've heard from nearly every cancer patient I've interviewed — is to talk to your doctor as soon as something feels amiss. Don't wait months or years to go in. And if they dismiss your concerns, go get a second opinion.
I certainly wish we could do more to both catch cancers earlier and treat them more easily. In the absence of a perfect solution, there are at least some imperfect ones out there.
Hilary Brueckis a health correspondent at Business Insider.
Pawel Mniszak vibe coded HrdHat, a tool that managed field level risk assessments on construction sites, and learned a lesson about security along the way.
Pawel Mniszak
Pawel Mniszak works in construction as a superintendent. He vibe coded a tool to manage the paperwork.
Using Cursor and ChatGPT, Mniszak made a site where workers can generate and file their field level risk assessments.
After Mniszak posted it on Reddit, the tool broke. He says he learned a lesson about vibe coding securely.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Pawel Mniszak, a 34-year-old construction superintendent who lives in Vancouver. It's been edited for length and clarity.
My dad made his keep working in construction, specializing in towers. He is dyslexic, so languages and writing comes hard for him. I would translate for him and copy drawings. I learned the industry from my dad.
My parents always pushed me to get an education. I got a degree from Douglas College in programming and business management. I understood the business side more and was better at that than at being a coder.
I tried to get a job in programming, but I'd always talk to people who did the work better than I did. I wasn't the greatest programmer. I tried to do some websites for people here, but they didn't understand how much work it actually takes. Here's $500 for a website, and I'd spend a month on it. The money was never there.
I got good at construction, and I stuck with that. There are so many similarities, in a funny way, between construction and programming. You've got to lay a good foundation, stand the walls, and do the plumbing and electrical. There's a structure to it. Now, I've moved on from working with my dad, and I'm a superintendent.
Two years ago, I started my vibe coding journey. I had a second baby, and I had to do something with my time while holding the baby. Every evening, I was plugging away, learning. I got excited. I didn't have to actually memorize languages anymore, which I struggled with.
Then, I started building.
I was feeding my code to ChatGPT. I started to get more into it, solving problems, asking questions. Then, I got Cursor. It was like getting a Ferrari for the first time; I was enamored. But the token usage was becoming expensive. For the last month, I've been using Claude, and it's been amazing.
I always knew I wanted a tool to help me out with paperwork. I know how busy it is on-site. Upper management doesn't realize how much time paperwork can take up in the morning.
Pawel Mniszak built a tool to complete Field-Level Risk Assessments.
Pawel Mniszak
I can have 50 to 110 people on the job site, and the expectation is to have the paperwork completed. Usually, that meant I had to do all of them. They would have to sign off on whatever I wrote. In theory, the foremen are supposed to identify what they're doing, what the hazards are, and how they are going to fix it. That's the basic process of safety.
A superintendent can be stuck doing the paperwork. We've been given software to help do this, but, because of the price and seating, the software is given to me. It didn't trickle down to the subcontractors and workers.
I'm like: Screw it, I'm going to make my own FLRA thing. When a worker comes in, I hand out the tasks for the day, and by 8 a.m., you fill out this form, you send it to me, and I'll audit it. I learned to vibe code it, and the stuff that I learned started coming back to me. It's been an exponential learning curve.
I created a stable-ish copy, which was a website hosted on Vercel. It was as simple as: fill out the form, convert it to a PDF, attach it to an email, and send it to me. I didn't even tell my company I was doing it. I told my guys: "You guys are my guinea pigs." They thought I was a wizard.
I got overly confident, and the worker side was stable, so I created a supervisor layer where you could receive and review the forms. It also helped me with note-taking, the way that I did it. I made a product for the way my brain operates.
I got eager, added Stripe to see what would happen if I monetized it, and posted it on Reddit. It got butchered. My Stripe stuff didn't function, and I added features until it broke.
I had security vulnerabilities. I didn't even realize I had a function where you can communicate to all accounts. One guy used it to broadcast a message to all my workers: "AI slop."
After Mniszak posted his tool on Reddit, one user sent out an "AI slop" notification to his workers.
Screenshot via Reddit
I went down a security rabbit hole. I chatted with him and said, "Thank you for doing this. I obviously need to learn a lot more. Once I make my next version, can you help me?"
He apologized and said, "Sure, I'll help you out."
I don't know; he's a rando on the internet, so we'll see. Either way, it opened up a whole new world for me about security.
After I posted on Reddit, I started again. The old one is still hanging around. It's good for me to use for note-taking.
The new one is going to be a little bit of LinkedIn meets construction management programs like Procore and SiteDocs.
I'm rebuilding now, and trying to start with a strong foundation.
"The best startup launch ever": Amidst a shower of fake $100 bills and a Tiffany's winner's bracelet, Kris Rudeegraap of Sendoso clinches first place at Monaco's high-stakes San Francisco poker tournament. The event signaled a loud return to "fun" for the Silicon Valley startup scene.
Ben Bergman/Business Insider
Monaco sponsored what it billed as "the largest founder poker tournament of all time."
The AI startup, which recently emerged from stealth mode, offered $100,000 in prize money.
Monaco's poker night is part of a trend of startups thinking outside the box to generate buzz.
An AI startup you've probably never heard of just spent $200,000 on a poker tournament, complete with $100,000 in prizes, an array of Silicon Valley tech founders, and Tiffany jewelry. The goal wasn't gambling. It was marketing.
A few weeks ago, Sam Blond, the cofounder and CEO of AI sales startup Monaco, announced an offer that seemed too good to be true: The company was sponsoring "the largest founder poker tournament of all time," with $100,000 in prizes and celebrity guests at "the coolest venue in all of San Francisco." Best of all, there was no entry fee to play.
"Attendees will remember this event for the rest of their lives," Blond promised.
Talk about setting a high bar!
When someone from Monaco's PR team asked if I wanted to play, there was only one correct answer: "I'm all-in."
When I'm not writing about tech for Business Insider, I spend a lot of time on the felt. I've competed in the World Series of Poker Main Event and play in friendly games in Los Angeles at least once a week.
If I could hold my own with the best players in the world in Las Vegas, surely I could compete with a bunch of nerdy startup founders?
$200,000 to cut through the 'noise'
Stacks of fake hundred-dollar bills and a real Tiffany bracelet were on display.
Ben Bergman/Business Insider
In case you're wondering, Monaco uses AI to automate tedious parts of the sales process, such as researching leads and drafting personalized outreach emails. Backed by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, it came out of stealth mode less than two months ago.
Monaco shelled out around $200,000 on the event, half of that on prize money and the other $100,000 on the swanky ballroom, buffet, dealers, and drinks.
That is not chump change for a Series A startup. Blond told me he sees it as a smart marketing expense to get on the radar of its key customers, which are other startups. He has also been sending poker sets and handwritten notes to founders to get them to demo Monaco.
"Startup founders are notorious for loving poker," he told me. "It felt like an on brand fun thing to do."
Monaco's poker night is part of a trend of startups thinking outside the box to generate buzz, according to C.C. Gong, a principal at Menlo Ventures who played in the tournament and often hosts her own poker nights.
Last month, Listen Labs, a Sequoia Capital-backed startup that uses AI-powered "autonomous researchers" to conduct qualitative customer interviews, spent $25,000 on a Berghain-themed techno party to attract engineering talent.
"It's getting harder to cut through the noise," Gong said. "The founders who are getting through are the ones who are able to create something unique that sticks in your mind."
Poker has long been a staple of Silicon Valley's social fabric, a game of calculated risk that mirrors the startup grind itself. In the last few years, the obsession has hit a fever pitch with the rise of the "All-In" podcast and a post-pandemic hunger for in-person events.
"You can find multiple poker nights every night of the week in San Francisco," said Gong. "It makes sense that poker is a game that appeals to this audience."
$100,000 on the line
The bar at the Monaco Invitational
Ben Bergman/Business Insider
After riding an elevator to the 15th floor, I was handed a poker chip that would be my entry ticket and walked over to a well-stocked bar offering "Pocket Aces" vodka martinis and "Full House" Old Fashioneds. So much for tech founders going dry.
After scarfing down some tacos and sliders, it was time for the cards to be dealt. I wanted to sit at a "soft" table, so when I saw an empty seat next to DoorDash cofounder and high-stakes regular Stanley Teng, I hurried past.
I was happy that my instincts proved correct, as it became apparent I was playing with founders with limited poker experience. I was also getting great cards and, after a few hours, found myself at the last of two tables, next to one founder discussing AI agents and another who had just graduated from the Y Combinator accelerator. He was trying to tell me about how he was in the midst of "pivoting" his startup, but I could barely hear him over the blaring house music.
While I had the biggest stack of chips at my other table, at this one, I found myself short-stacked, which meant other players could bully me around. I missed the lackadaisical play at my first table because here, everyone definitely knew what they were doing.
A player quickly put me all-in. I called with the top pair of kings and doubled up. A few hands later, another player bet, and then I put him all-in with pocket aces. He mucked his cards. I was now building my chip stack, but at the later stages of tournaments, the blinds, or minimum amount you need to put in, keep going up fast, and my stack began to dwindle. A player on my right made a big bet, and I looked down at my hand and was happy to see pocket jacks. I went all-in, and he called, showing ace-five.
I was a 66% favorite, but as the dealer flipped over the cards, he revealed what I did not want to see: Another ace.
I was out of the tournament in 15th place. That is a good outcome out of 108 players, but it was painful finishing just six places away from being "in the money," where I would have pocketed $2,500 for 9th place. (Per Business Insider guidelines, I would have donated the winnings to charity.)
The final table at the Monaco Invitational
Ben Bergman/Business Insider
A short time later, I watched as Kris Rudeegraap, co-CEO of Sendoso, a corporate gifting platform, raised his fists in the air after winning $30,000 for first place with the same hand I had been beaten with: ace-five.
Blond affixed a real Tiffany's bracelet to Rudeegraap's wrist while other founders tossed stacks of fake hundred-dollar bills across the table at him.
"We don't have fun in San Francisco anymore," one founder could be overheard saying as people began to stream out. "This was the best startup launch ever."
Blond declared the event an instant success and says he plans to do more poker nights.
"There was a lot of demand generated from people who saw the posts about the event, were interested in attending, started understanding what Monaco does, and then were interested in partnering with us as a customer," he said. "I also hope people really enjoyed themselves. That was the point."
