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On Tuesday night, if you were browsing Sheins selection of pastoral style gentleman shirts for every day, you might have noticed a familiar face modeling the clothing: a smiling Luigi Mangione. Mangione, the prime suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, is currently in jail at the Brooklyn Federal Prison as he awaits trial. Given his imprisonment, its unlikely that Mangione posed for the photo or even knew his likeness was being used. Shein regularly uses AI to generate models for its site and to power its fast-fashion business by projecting consumer demand, instituting dynamic pricing, and getting consumers’ recommendations to help them navigate the thousands of clothes available on the site. [Screenshot: Shein] It’s possible that the unusual choice of model could be chalked up to the actions of a rogue employee or vendor (Mangione has become, to some, a folk hero)especially as the lighting on the face and awkward positioning of the head on the body suggests photoshopping rather than AI generation. The listing has since been taken down, and Shein has not responded to Fast Companys request for comment. A representative from the company told the BBC, The image in question was provided by a third-party vendor and was removed immediately upon discovery, adding that the company is investigating the oversight. The development comes at a bad time for Shein as the company deals with President Trumps decision to close the de minimis loophole, which had allowed businesses like Shein to ship products to the United States for free if the orders were under $800. Now, the company will likely have to pay extra to ship items and may pass on some costs to its already price-sensitive consumers. Shein is not a public company, but has been preparing an IPO for the second half of this year.
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E-Commerce
Rather than a headache and hangxiety, a new viral cocktail recipe is claiming to lower cortisol levels and reduce stress. The nonalcoholic drink, known as the cortisol cocktail, has racked up millions of views, with influencers saying it can lower stress hormones, boost energy, and balance adrenal function. @tennesseegirlx #cortisolcocktail #health #healingtiktok #cortisilbalancecare #viralcortisolcocktail original sound – tennesseegirlx Recipes differ, but most include orange juice, coconut water, and sea salt. Some add extras like cream of tartar or sparkling water. The idea is that vitamin C from juice, potassium from coconut water or cream of tartar, and sodium from sea salt help replace nutrients depleted by stress. @liveleantv Cortisol Cocktail = The viral adrenal drink to help you chill Heres how to make it + the science behind it. #CortisolCocktail #StressRelief #cortisol #AdrenalSupport #WellnessTrends #LiveLeanTV #fitnesstips original sound – Live Lean | Fitness Tips Daily But does it actually deliver? The cocktail takes its name from cortisol, a hormone produced by the adrenal glands in response to stress. Cortisol is essential for survival, but both excess and deficiency can cause health problems. Still, Everlywell senior medical director Gabe Gaviola urges caution with quick fixes that promise to fix cortisol levels. Some ingredients in these cortisol cocktails like electrolytes or coconut water can provide a quick energy lift and help with hydration, Gaviola tells Fast Company. Thats why you might feel better short-term, but you may just be masking symptoms rather than addressing the real root cause. Theres no scientific research to support the cocktails broad claims, and the suggested doses are unlikely to meaningfully affect cortisol. That said, the ingredients do have recognized benefits. Vitamin C supports immune health, tissue repair, collagen production, and iron absorption. Potassium helps regulate blood pressure, nerve signaling, and muscle function, and high-potassium diets are linked to lower risks of hypertension and stroke. Sodium, in moderation, supports fluid balance, nerve activity, and muscle contraction. But overdoing it has downsides. “Too much of these ingredients that are high in sugar and sodium can stress your body further, impact your sleep, or even raise your blood pressure, Gaviola warns. Stress levels in the U.S. continue to climb, with nearly half of Americans49%reporting they frequently feel stressed. To manage it effectively, Gaviola recommends consistent sleep, mindful movement like yoga or walking, balanced nutrition, and stress-reduction practices such as meditation or journaling. The best way to support healthy cortisol isnt a trendy cocktail, he adds. Its daily habits backed by science.
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E-Commerce
There are few apps more synonymous with the iPhone than Instagram. It was one of the earliest defining apps on the smartphone, with an ascent made hand-in-hand with Apples App Store. Instagram wouldn’t even go to Android for a full two years. Which is why, through another lens, its absurd that over 15 years, Instagram never launched a dedicated iPad app. Instead, its loyalists have been stuck with a tiny version of the iPhone app running on their iPad screens. That is until today: Instagram is now rolling out its first official iPad app. The companys head of design, Brett Westervelt, took me on an exclusive first tourexplaining the companys evolving strategy to design its way across new platforms. Instagram wants to be everywhere Instagram is something of an aging teen in an internet thats changing every day, but its still bonkers-big. It added an estimated 150 million users between 2022 and 2024 alone, bringing it to 1.4 billion users globally. But naturally, its growth has slowed with scale, and it’s projecting 4.4% growth this year. The same is not true about Instagrams monetization. Its revenue is projected to grow 24% this year to reach $32 billion (which is in part attributed to its Reels videos). Instagram is an impossibly important platform for Meta in that it now generates more than half the revenue of the company overall. [Image: Instagram] From a business perspective, it makes sense that Meta wants to have Instagram available anywhere and everywhere, and as Westervelt explains, the company has spent the last few years considering emerging formats beyond mobileas it considers a world welcoming AR headsets, foldable phones, and new form factors that break the slab smartphone were so used to. Westervelt says that the iPhone was a convergence moment for technology; it became the de facto platform to design on and around. But I think the thing that we started to see a couple of years ago was it does kind of feel like we’re in a divergence moment again,” he says. “So as we just thought about where Instagram was headed and where it was important to take our interfaces, we became more and more convinced that we needed to flex and begin to expand to some of these other form factors . . . [to] be where our community is. A few years ago, Instagram developed its first interface for Samsung and Google foldable phones, and it launched a VR experience on its Quest headset last year. For 2025, the team opted to focus on the iPada decision that might seem surprising a full 15 years into Instagrams life. The iPad is by no means the newest, shiniest tech platform out there (and iPads represent less than 10% of Apples revenue). But Instagram would also be unwise to ignore it at the expense of pursuing shinier platforms. Apple still sold 52 million iPads in 2024, owning about a third of the tablet market by estimates, making it the sort of quietly gargantuan business that only a company like Apple could make feel insignificant. [Image: Instagram] The new design leans back and in When the Instagram design team began working on the iPad app earlier this year, they anchored everything in what makes Instagram work. The core of the service, according to Westervelt, is to be connected with friends and then inspired and entertained by all of the best creativity in the world. But to realize that vision anew, much of the process involved prototyping designs and testing it in their own livesbefore mercilessly rebuilding the experience. A lot of these things we found our way towards by having a build and just, like, ripping on itreally living with the app, says Westervelt. [Image: Instagram] When you open Instagram on iPad for the first time, it still looks like Instagram with its Stories sitting as bubbles on top and a central feed of media. The first big change youll notice is that a navigation bar now sits on the left side of the screen. The second big change might take you a moment: The central feed is no longer your main feed. Instead, its Reels. Instagram welcomes you with big screen video (and in portrait mode, those reels feel almost cinematic in scale as they fill the screen). No doubt, the design team must have felt incentivized to push Reels, which are proving successful for Instagram in the age of TikTok. Westervelt, however, insists that having Reels front and center was inspired by the way we use iPads versus phones. iPads, the team confirmed, are built for lazing on the couch. We kept finding ourselves jumping to the Reels tab . . . because you kind of want to be in this entertaining, lean back mode, and Reels is really good for that, says Westervelt. [Image: Instagram] The decision hardly feels controlling, as Instagram designers are actually using the extra screen real estate to allow a lot more customization over experience. Your feed is now in a tab that features three organizational views listed in a top bar. The first is your feed as it is today. The second is your friends (people you follow who follow you back). And the third is latest, a classic reverse chronological feed that puts everything into the order it was posted. [Image: Instagram] These feeds are more complex than Instagram is on phones, and thats the point. This is kind of going to be more of a power-user feature, says Westervelt. And indeed, Instagram is also using panelsjust swipe right or tap on the right side of your screen to pull up commentsto juggle Instagram’s spartan aesthetic with tools that let you stretch out and drill down in ways that are tricky on the phone. Westervelt even frames the Messages tab as a productivity toolallowing you to follow conversations across Instagram and Threads in an efficient, contained space. In other words, when people arent leaning back with their iPads, Instagram expects them to be leaning in, poking and prodding at a more complex interface with gusto. [Image: Instagram] Westervelt insists these changes arent following Apples decision to make the iPad interface a lot more like a laptops, but the Instagram design team is clearly optimizing for people who want to quickly manage more in the app. I can see how welcome these slight organizational features could be for social media managers or creators, and Westervelt teases that Instagram will soon use the larger screen to offer more robust video editing. In this sense, it appears that Instagram for iPad will take a more-is-more approach, albeit with a UX that keeps getting out of the way of all the content. One notable spot you can see the teams restraint is in how you navigate Stories. When you swipe between each story, Instagram on the phone uses a 3D rotating cube transition. (Trust me, you know this animation, even if you can’t spot it in your mind’s eye.) For iPad, they ditched it in favor of a somewhat flatter, 2D frame-to-frame swap. We initially wanted to bring that to iPad because it just felt like a kind of iconic thing. We have some equity in it, was Westervelt. But the thing we were finding is, it just felt really heavy. [Image: Instagram] An upgraded experience To any poor user who has been suffering through Instagram on their iPad, theres no doubt that they are in for an upgrade. And to the teams credit, it really does seem to walk the line between a mindless visual candy machine, and a functional interface offering you the next level of control. In this sense, the new Instagram app is playing it both ways: It wants to own the couch and the desk, to be a consumption machine and a creative tool. With its increased real estate, perhaps it will succeed in both regards. What the design team wants to know from here is not just if their design works for users, but if it might actually impact what were sharing on it. I think the thing that will be kind of interesting to see is, does having a bigger form factor like this also change what creators create? muses Westervelt. Because if it can, Instagram could be about to get even bigger.
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