By Sara Radin

She’s All That was one of the first teen movies I ever saw in theaters. I was 10 years old and immediately felt connected to Rachael Leigh Cook‘s artsy Laney Boggs. I figured, if she could go from being an art freak and social outcast to being pretty and popular — and win over the hottest guy in school — then maybe I could, too. More than this, Zack Siler came to represent everything I assumed I should want in a man. I started to believe that if I became good looking enough and wore the right clothes, I could mold myself into the attractive and submissive woman that kind of guy would want.

The movies of this time period were formidable in my own coming of age experience as I consumed all kinds of messages about femininity, relationships, and sexuality, which were always told through the male gaze. But in the wake of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, I’ve recently spent time re-watching many teen classics I once loved, like She’s All That, in effort to better understand how these movies shaped my self-image, as well as my intimate relationships with men. Seeing these films again has brought on a wave of complex emotions including nostalgia, joy, and disappointment — and now, at age 29, I can see how they were deeply problematic. Knowing what I know now about Hollywood’s gross failings, is it possible to still enjoy these films? I’m honestly not sure, but what I do know is that they can serve as a reminder of where things once were, how far we’ve come since the 1990s, and that there’s still work to be done.

Today (January 29) marks the 20th anniversary of She’s All That, and though it’s been a few years since she’s watched the seminal teen flick from start to finish, Cook still has a lot to say about the experience and the film’s complexities. Below, the actress reflects on the film that made her an overnight “It girl” and its cultural impact then and now.

MTV News: How does it feel to be celebrating the 20th anniversary of She’s All That?

Rachael Leigh Cook: I’m hugely nostalgic so it makes me happy that people still want to talk about it 20 years later. It means that that three and a half weeks we spent shooting in 1999 was a good use of my time. I have nothing but positive, warm feelings and memories from that shoot.

MTV News: Were there any aspects of Laney’s character or story that you personally connected with?

Cook: What I felt at that time was really in line with the character. I was 18 when we shot it and a senior in high school. I didn’t have a typical teenage experience in my own life, but I still felt the highs and lows of being a teen through Laney’s experiences. Also, being new to Hollywood made me feel like a bit of an outsider since you never really feel like you know what you’re doing in the beginning.

Siemoneit/Sygma via Getty Images

Clea DuVall, Rachael Leigh Cook, and Tamara Mello in 1999’s She’s All That

MTV News: Let’s talk about the scene when Laney gave Misty a makeover. She was such an art bully. What was it like to film that scene?

Cook: Art bully is a really good term. I feel like that should be the name of like a clothing brand. That scene was a lot of fun to film. I had worked with Clea Duvall before. We made a movie together about two years prior to She’s All That called The Defenders, which was a remake of a very old TV show where we played sisters who are very much united. In this case, playing such a different dynamic was enjoyable and she’s terrific to work with.

MTV News: How have the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements opened your eyes to the ways films of that era were sexist?

Cook: The male gaze is definitely inherently part of many of those story lines and I wouldn’t recommend making the movie as is today. But also, I think the point of She’s All That was that Zach Siler’s character did something very wrong, and that’s the point, but he suffered very minor movie consequences to learn about the error of his ways. The biggest failing of the movie is that technically Laney should have said, “No, I’m not going to be with you because what you did was too terrible, even though you apologized and learned from making a mistake.” But you could also make an argument that Kevin’s parents in Home Alone should’ve probably spent a couple nights in jail.

MTV News: Are there any parts of She’s All That that feel particularly problematic now that you’re seeing it with a different perspective?

Cook: Do movies have to be more socially acceptable? Do they need to lead by example now more than ever? Yeah, it does seem more critical now and it should have been more critical then. I don’t think that this particular movie got it so wrong that it’s worth a really sort of dragging it over the coals, but there should have been possibly greater consequences.

MTV News: If the film was made today, and through the female gaze, what do you think would be done differently?

Cook: There would be a gender reversal. If you made this movie about a male who goes through the same thing.

Siemoneit/Sygma via Getty Images

Laney on prom night

MTV News: Millennials are obsessed with nostalgic media. How would you feel if She’s All That got a remake?

Cook: I think it would be cool. There’s no reason not to. It’s strange to call it a remake because we’re a remake: She’s All That is Pygmalion. These tropes are not new.

MTV News: Recently, I realized that Lil’ Kim was in the movie. It had such an amazing cast. Do you still talk to anyone?

Cook: I knew Gabrielle Union before we shot the movie because we worked with the same management company, and she’s just as lovely as you can imagine. I love running into her but we don’t see each other very often. I do see a Tamara Mello who played Chandler, one of the popular girls. She and I are neighbors and mom friends. But funny enough Usher’s character and mine had almost no crossover. I don’t think Lil’ Kim and I had more than one scene together because we were from different worlds in the movie.

MTV News: What was your favorite part of doing the movie?

Cook: I got to experience a very movie version of high school. I had stopped attending my normal high school during sophomore year because it was just too hard with the work schedule. I did get diploma from my original high school in Minneapolis, but it was through patched-together independent study and taking online college classes as credits. So the fact that I got to go to a prom and graduation, it might’ve been fake, but it was good enough for me.

MTV News: Were you on set when the scene with the pizza pubes was filmed? I’m guessing those were fake pubes but that scene still gets me every time.

Cook: That’s a very effective scene. The guy with the red hair who is in it can act beautifully, and I actually see him pretty often. His name is Chris Allen. He’s a great actor and he’s one of my brother’s best friends. He was the best man in his wedding. I’ve known him forever. We also worked with the same management company. I’m sure that the scene followed him further into his life then he would’ve liked. But my takeaway from that movie is that Chris did a great job, but do I need to watch the scene again? I’m good. However, I had to watch it the other week for an interview and it was way more disturbing than the first time I saw it 20 years ago.

Apple’s fabled subscription video service — the one we’ve been waiting for many, many years to come — might finally launch in April. 

This is according to a report from The Information, which focuses on how Amazon is getting ready for increasing competition in the video streaming space. 

SEE ALSO: Rumors are swirling about Apple’s AirPower wireless charging again

Back in October, the same outlet said Apple was planning to launch the streaming service in the first half of 2019; now, the date has gotten a bit more precise. The Information claims Apple has told its content partners to be ready for launch by mid-April, with the actual launch happening within “several weeks” of that date. 

Alongside its own content, Apple will allegedly start offering users direct subscriptions to other services through its TV app, similar to what Roku has recently done with its Channel. 

There’s no more info about Apple’s side of things in the new report, but the October report claimed Apple was planning to launch the service in more than 100 countries, with the app first coming to the U.S. and then going global in the following months. 

Now that iPhone sales numbers aren’t what they used to be, Apple needs new revenue streams, and a video streaming service might just fit the bill. In January, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company plans to announce new services this year, but he stopped short of naming them. “There will be more things coming,” he told CNBC’s Jim Cramer. “They’re things that we feel really great about, that we’ve been working on for multiple years.”

As for Amazon, The Information claims the company is scaling back its TV streaming ambitions a little, and that it will become more selective about the content it offers in the future. 

When you look up at the stars, what do you think about? That we may be not be alone? The vastness of it all?

There’s a lot to wonder about space. The fact is we don’t know all the answers about it. We know it’s vast and beautiful, but we’re not really sure how vast (or how beautiful, for that matter).

Some of the things we do know, however, are downright mind-boggling. Below, we’ve collected some of the most amazing facts about space, so when you look up at the stars you can be ever more wowed by what you’re looking at.

1. Neutron stars can spin at a rate of 600 rotations per second

Neutron stars are one of the possible evolutionary end-points of high mass stars. They’re born in a core-collapse supernova star explosion and subsequently rotate extremely rapidly as a consequence of their physics. Neutron stars can rotate up to 60 times per second after born. Under special circumstances, this rate can increase to more than 600 times per second.

Source: Swinburne University of Technology Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing

2. Space is completely silent

Sound waves need a medium to travel through. Since there is no atmosphere in the vacuum of space, the realm between stars will always be eerily silent.

That said, worlds with atmospheres and air pressure do allow sound to travel, hence why there’s plenty of noise on Earth and likely other planets as well. 

Source: NASA

3. There is an uncountable number of stars in the known universe

We basically have no idea how many stars there are in the universe. Right now we use our estimate of how many stars there are in our own galaxy, the Milky Way. We then multiply that number by the best guesstimate of the number of galaxies in the universe. After all that math, NASA can only confidently say that say there all zillions of uncountable stars. A zillion is any uncountable amount.

An Australian National University study put their estimate at 70 sextillion. Put another way, that’s 70,000 million million million.

Sources: University of California at Santa Barbara ScienceLine

4. The Apollo astronauts’ footprints on the moon will probably stay there for at least 100 million years

Since the moon doesn’t have an atmosphere, there’s no wind or water to erode or wash away the Apollo astronauts’ mark on the moon. That means their footprints, roverprints, spaceship prints, and discarded materials will stay preserved on the moon for a very long time.

They won’t stay on there forever, though. The moon still a dynamic environment. It’s actually being constantly bombarded with “micrometeorites,” which means that erosion is still happening on the moon, just very slowly.

Source: Space.com

5. 99 percent of our solar system’s mass is the sun

Our star, the sun, is so dense that it accounts for a whopping 99 percent of the mass of our entire solar system. That’s what allows it to dominate all of the planets gravitationally. 

Technically, our sun is a “G-type main-sequence star” which means that every second, it fuses approximately 600 million tons of hydrogen to helium. It also converts about 4 million tons of matter to energy as a byproduct.

When the sun dies, it will become a red giant and envelop the Earth and everything on it. But don’t worry: That won’t happen for another 5 billion years.

Source: The Ohio State University’s department of astronomy

6. More energy from the sun hits Earth every hour than the planet uses in a year

The use of solar energy has increased at a rate of 20 percent each year for the past 15 years. According to Yale Environment 360, the world added 30 percent more solar energy capacity in 2017, meaning that 98.9 gigawatts of solar energy was produced that year. 

Despite seemingly large number, this amount of energy only accounts for 0.7 percent of the world’s annual electricity usage.

Source: Yale Environment 360

7. If two pieces of the same type of metal touch in space, they will bond and be permanently stuck together

This amazing effect is called cold welding. It happens because the atoms of the individual pieces of metal have no way of knowing that they are different pieces of metal, so the lumps join together.

This wouldn’t happen on Earth because there is air and water separating the pieces. The effect has a lot of implication for spacecraft construction and the future of metal-based construction in vacuums.

Source: Mental Floss

8. The largest asteroid in our solar system is a mammoth piece of space rock named Ceres

The asteroid — which is sometimes known as a dwarf planet — is almost 600 miles in diameter. It’s by far the largest in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter and accounts for a whole third of the belt’s mass. Ceres’ surface area is approximately equal to the land area of India or Argentina.

The uncrewed spacecraft Dawn just finished up its mission orbiting Ceres and helping us totally transform our understanding of the world.

Source: NASA

9. One day on Venus is longer than one year on Earth

Venus has an extremely slow axis rotation that takes about 243 Earth days to complete one full cycle. Funny enough, it takes Venus even less time in Earth days in order to complete one revolution around the sun — 226 to be exact.

Furthermore, the sun rises every 117 Earth days, which means that the sun will rise only two times during each year, which is also all technically in the same day. Since Venus also rotates clockwise, the sun will rise in the west and set in the east.

Source: NASA

10. Jupiter’s Red Spot is shrinking

Jupiter’s famous Red Spot has been shrinking over the past few decades. This spot on the planet is  a giant spinning storm that used to be able to fit about three Earths. Now, according to only one Earth can fit inside the spot.

Interestingly enough, as the storm is shrinking in width, it’s actually growing taller in length. As of 2018, scientists are still stumped as to why this phenomenon is occurring in the first place, but some theorize that it may have to do with jet streams on Jupiter that have either changed direction or location.

Source: NASA

11. One of Saturn’s moons has a distinct two-tone coloration

Iapetus, one of Saturn’s 62 moons, is actually a pretty unique celestial object. This moon has a very distinct two-tone coloration, with one side be much darker than the other. 

As of 2018, this strange occurrence isn’t present on any other moons in the Solar System. Iapetus’ color has to do with its position in relation to the rest of Saturn’s moons. It turns out that Iapetus is way outside of Saturn’s rings, and because of this, it gets hit with a lot of space debris from objects that might be passing through its orbit, explaining the dark areas, according to Forbes.

Furthermore, another moon Phoebe, which is completely dark and farther out than Iapetus, revolves clockwise around Saturn and “emits a steady stream of particles.” Iapetus revolves counterclockwise, meaning that only one side of Iapetus gets hit with the particles coming off of Phoebe when they revolve past each other. This explains why Iapetus isn’t fully dark, but only partially. 

Source: NASA

12. The position of the North Star will change over time

Navigation will be weird when Polaris stops being the North Star in about 13,000 years. In case you didn’t know, Earth’s axis goes through a motion called “precession” which means that the planet’s axis will change, and trace out the shape of a cone—even if it’s slightly.

When this occurs, it takes around 26,000 years for the axis to trace out a complete cone shape. To add to this, Polaris, the Earth’s current “North Star” will eventually begin to shift positions as the Earth undergoes precession. 

In 3,000 B.C., it’s believed that the North Star was the star Thuban, otherwise known as Alpha Draconis. In about 13,000 years, the star Vega will be the new North Star — but in 26,000 years, Polaris will return in its original position as the Earth continues to go through precession.

Source: Starchild, NASA

This story was originally published in 2014 and updated in 2018.

The last ten years have seen a massive spike in dogs getting accidentally stoned. Tom Shell’s dog Stella is one of them — a few weeks ago, he came home to find her on a real wild ride. 

When Shell walked through the front door, his 13-year-old mini Australian shepherd was lounging on the couch, looking confused as hell. At first, he thought the dog was having a glaucoma flare-up because she was “looking kind of hazy-eyed.” But when Stella slid off the couch and started stumbling in Shell’s direction, unable to walk properly, he knew something was seriously wrong.

Concerned, Shell put her back on the couch. That’s when he noticed that his office door was open, the remains of his torn backpack strewn across the middle of the room. 

SEE ALSO: Understanding the confusing world of CBD and THC ratios

He realized he’d come home to an absolutely blazed dog — a growing problem as legal weed makes increasingly potent and enticing edibles more accessible across America. Even in states where weed remains illegal for any sort of use, the presence and consumption of the drug is becoming widely accepted. 

According to the ASCPA Poison Control Center, the 24-hour hotline received 208 marijuana-related calls in 2008, 979 in 2016, and 1,486 in 2017. In 2018, the center received 1,800. That’s an increase of 765 percent over the 10-year period. 

The 24-hour hotline received 208 marijuana-related calls in 2008. In 2018, the center received 1,800. 

Dr. Tina Wismer, the ASPCA call center’s medical director, says that in the past, the majority of callers were pet owners whose cats and dogs got into “plant material” like discarded roaches or wayward dime bags. She attributes some of the uptick in cannabis-related cases to the destigmatization in recent years, acknowledging that pet owners may be more willing to call the hotline now that weed is more widely accepted.

But Wismer also blames the widespread availability in edibles for the uptick in emergency calls. Legal edibles smell like normal baked goods, and what pet can resist tasty treats? (Cat parents, take note: Wismer says that felines still tend to go for straight bud.) 

Dogs’ appetite for human food is what’s really moving the needle. “Dogs, oh my gosh, especially [with] the chocolate-based edibles, the number of those calls has skyrocketed,” Wismer said during a phone interview. 

Now that people in legal states can get edibles delivered to their homes as quickly as a pizza, hiding a stray brownie may hardly be a priority. Ten years ago when it was more frowned upon, people were more stringent about keeping their edibles under lock and key. But when everyone has a stock of sugary THC it doesn’t merit a second thought. 

Which brings us back to Shell, who had come home to find his dog totally baked. 

Shell, a Los Angeles-based film director, had been working on set when a crew member generously gave him a homemade brownie topped with vanilla icing. Having spent his 50-some years in a relaxed California culture where weed isn’t a big deal, Shell tossed the edible, safely wrapped in a plastic bag, in his backpack and “forgot about it for a day or two.” 

But dogs have a remarkable sense of smell; they have 300 million olfactory receptors to our six million. A plastic bag was no match for Stella, who managed to sniff out the brownie, rip apart Shell’s backpack, and eat the whole thing.

“She had kind of a sheepish look on her face, too, like when she breaks into the trash,” he said. “She ate part of the baggie as well, I think.”

Dogs are particularly sensitive to weed — according to Hemp Industry Daily, they’re up to 10 times as sensitive to THC than humans are. Dr. Ken Pawlowski, a veterinarian based in California, told the Los Angeles Times that “dogs have more cannabinoid receptors than any other animal that we know.” 

And while the amount of THC (the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis) in professionally manufactured edibles is strictly regulated in states where they’re sold legally, the potency of homemade treats is a wildcard. In California, edibles can’t contain more than 100mg of THC per package, and 10mg per serving.

Shell panicked: “I didn’t know what kind of [THC] dosage this guy had in there. He said you could eat the whole thing, but for all I knew it was good for two people.”

Symptoms of marijuana ingestion in dogs include ataxia (wobbling or stumbling like they’re drunk), overreacting to sound and movement, urinary incontinence, dilated pupils or glassy eyes, and in severe cases, low blood pressure and low heart rate. If the dog’s blood pressure and heart rate drop to dangerously low levels, it can be fatal.

Once he realized what Stella ate, Shell rushed her to an emergency vet center. Feeling like “the worst father in the world,” he waited as the staff gave her medication to induce vomiting to get rid of the chocolate (which is also toxic to dogs), and then gave her more medication to stop the vomiting process. Once a dog’s vital signs are stable, there’s little more to do than wait until the dog sobers up. Because there are few clinical studies on cannabis in animals, figuring out how quickly a dog can metabolize weed is a guessing game — though most vets agree that they feel the effects more severely than humans. 

Wismer says vets will occasionally treat dogs with a lipid injection to sober them up; since cannabinoids are fat-soluble, they “bind to the compounds and help the dog wake up quicker.” But more often than not, if the dog’s blood pressure is stable, the vet will just send them home and instruct their owners to keep an eye on them. 

And so Shell waited. “I brought Stella back home, and she was stoned as can be for the rest of the afternoon,” Shell said. He’s pretty sure the dog was “enjoying the ride” — she spent the night eating snacks and curling up next to him. 

“She was very clingy … but in a mellow way,” Shell said. “[Stella] didn’t seem upset. She wanted to be near people, that’s for sure.”

As veterinarians field calls from frantic dog parents, the pet industry is also dipping its toes in cannabis products, albeit non-psychoactive ones. CBD tinctures and CBD-infused treats are gaining popularity as an alternative treatment for pets with severe anxiety and chronic pain, but there’s little research on how dogs metabolize THC, CBD, and other cannabinoids. (Pet-grade CBD edibles apparently work on humans, according to a valiant SF Gate reporter who ate several handfuls of bone-shaped treats to see if they had the same effects as CBD products for humans.) 

Min Lee, brand president at Honest Paws, which infuses its dog treats with CBD oil, wants to see stricter regulations to prevent pet products from being tainted by THC. He worries that cannabis companies aren’t making products specifically for animals, and will “repackage human products” without first consulting veterinarians about the potential side effects. 

“Unfortunately, the pet industry is always going to be a little slower to adopt regulations and standards than the human industry only because humans have a voice,” he said during a phone interview. 

Wismer says the poison control hotline has even fielded calls from pet owners whose dogs ate a large amount of CBD treats and exhibited the same symptoms seen in dogs who got into edibles. 

“No one’s regulating these products — is there actually some amount of THC in them?” she questioned. Or is it that dogs make different metabolites than people do? Is it just dose related? Unfortunately, no one really knows what the answer is.”

THC in itself isn’t toxic for canines — some pet owners believe that the “entourage effect,” the combination of psychoactive and non-psychoactive compounds found in a non-processed cannabis leaf, can be more effective than just CBD when treating pain. It’s usually the ingredients found in human edibles, Lee says, that are the root of life-threatening cases since dogs can’t digest chocolate, cherries, xylitol, and macadamia nuts. Wismer adds that chocolate may affect blood pressure and heart rate, putting dogs at more risk of dying. But because of the lack of research in how THC, CBD, and other cannabinoids affect dogs, she’s cautious about endorsing CBD products for pets. 

The passage of the Farm Bill in 2018 legalized hemp, which could pave the way for more studies into the drug’s therapeutic effects. But veterinarians still can’t prescribe cannabis to their patients, and Wismer is hesitant to recommend CBD treats to pet owners because the evidence is largely anecdotal. 

“The problem is, we don’t know what the right dose is to treat different things,” she said. “Is the dose different for treating pain than treating anxiety?” 

If you do want to treat your dog’s pain or anxiety, Lee suggests looking for products that use full spectrum oil and human-grade ingredients. 

“Try to identify pet brands that actually work with veterinarians,” Lee explained.

Shell isn’t opposed to the possibility of giving Stella CBD, if there was a need to do so — he even gave his late Shiba Inu, Bonsai, CBD oil toward the end of his life to alleviate his arthritis — but he has been more careful with keeping human-grade edibles out of her reach. He feels lucky that the homemade brownie was a relatively low dose, but worries that she could get into more potent gummies. 

“If the dog got into those and ate the whole thing,” Shell said, referring to a tin of high-end weed candies he was recently gifted, “It would have been disastrous. I’ve taken measures to make sure I’ve got triple protection [around weed] but it’s just one of those things where she’s got really good sniffers and I just wasn’t thinking about it.” 

Fortunately, Stella made a full recovery and was “ready to rock and roll” by the next day, back to her usual hyper self. 

“It wasn’t a terrible experience,” Shell reflected. “Except for the $250 to 300 emergency care bill.”

Regardless of whether iPhones sales are flat, much of the excitement and loyalty that’s made Apple into a behemoth tech company comes directly from its products, so meticulously designed and engineered to be irresistible. Apple is a devices company and its lifeblood (and stock) depends on new products to dazzle.

But Apple under CEO Tim Cook isn’t the same company it was under Steve Jobs. Where Jobs was an expert showman, basking in the glory of his own “reality distortion field” and the purity Apple’s products, Cook wields a more holistic approach when it comes to the company’s hardware, software, and mission.

New iPhones, iPads, and Macs will no doubt still incite rabid fanboyism, but buying an Apple device is becoming increasingly more than just about choosing a platform or brand. Cook’s made it clear Apple’s mission is to create hardware, software, and services that democratize complicated technologies and processes in a bid to empower users to not just do more but live healthier lives.

SEE ALSO: Apple CEO Tim Cook to Congress: It’s time to stand up for the right to privacy

“What was Apple’s greatest contribution to mankind?, it will be about health,” Cook recently said in an interview with CNBC. “We’re democratizing it. We’re taking what has been with the institutions and empowering the individual to manage their health.”

As a health fanatic himself, it’s not surprising at all Cook sees significant opportunities where Apple can marry its consumer products and software with health services.

Apple started on this crusade with the Health app on iOS and in recent years has made monitoring health data core to the Apple Watch.

The latest Apple Watch Series 4 is the company’s first real device that embodies Apple and Cook’s health-oriented road map. 

As we wrote in our review and software update follow-ups, the Apple Watch has expanded beyond its fitness-tracking and basic heart rate-monitoring features.

With Series 4, it’s a bonafide “intelligent guardian for your health” as Apple Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams called it during its introduction. The latest Apple Watch can detect if you’ve fallen, provide an ECG reading, and notify you of irregular heart rhythms. 

These features already make the Apple Watch a powerful smartwatch that stands in a class of its own compared to wearables by companies like Samsung, Fossil, or Fitbit.

And starting in spring 2019, Apple’s entrenching itself even deeper into the health world via the Apple Watch with a partnership with American healthcare company Aetna. The two companies first started working together in 2016 on health-related initiatives.

Personalization is crucial to health monitoring

Over a year in the making, Aetna will launch a new iOS app called Attain that provides highly personalized health awareness tracking and recommendations. The app will combine personal health information with data collected by an Apple Watch.

In addition to receiving more tailored health information such as personalized activity goals, weekly challenges, and more relevant notifications at key moments (i.e. users might get a notification if there’s a flu outbreak in their specific area), Aetna users who opt in to use the Attain app have the opportunity to defray the cost of an Apple Watch by completing their health and activity goals. 

If users don’t want to put their rewards towards their Apple Watch, they can also earn rewards redeemable for gift cards at select national retailers.

It’s a hell of an incentive to earn an Apple Watch. But the primary goal isn’t merely to gamify the cost of an Apple Watch (though that’s certainly nice). The ultimate intent is to get people to take better care of themselves and to maintain this improved level of health.

On the one hand, technology — especially the devices Apple has brought into the world — is revolutionary and has impacted all facets of life. Technology has made complicated and often expensive functions and tasks affordable and convenient.

“It’s no easy feat for a tech company to tackle an industry so paramount to humanity, but at least Apple’s trying.”

However, all of the convenience technology has given us hasn’t necessarily made everyday life less stressful. In many ways, technology addiction has made our lives more complicated. We’re all seemingly doing more, and yet somehow seem to have less time, as a result often indirectly hurting our health in subtle, but long-lasting ways.

The Attain app has been designed to shift health control back to the user. The app’s “direct-to-member,” meaning a user’s employer doesn’t need to pay to provide it if somebody wants to use it.

In general, health apps by healthcare companies aren’t especially showstoppers. What sets the Attain app apart from others is the design collaboration between Aetna and Apple.

With help from Apple, the Attain app’s been designed to be simple in aesthetic and functionality. The collected data is presented in a visual format that doesn’t overwhelm, and often difficult-to-understand health terminologies and conditions are explained in plain English as opposed to jargon-laden language.

Privacy is core, not an afterthought

Arguably more important than the easy-to-understand app is how Apple and Aetna are committed to customer privacy.

Whereas some other companies tend to obfuscate how collected data is used, the Attain app was designed with privacy protections from the start, I’m told by Aetna and Apple executives who worked on the app.

First, Aetna isn’t mandating its customers use the Attain app. Second, the two companies assured me all data collected by the Attain app is stored separately from Aetna user’s health history. By storing the Attain data in a separate HIPAA-compliant server, there is no way to associate it with any user identities.

This strict Attain data separation also means it can’t be used by Aetna for underwriting, pricing, or influencing coverage decisions. Additionally, Attain data isn’t shared with employers and the data itself isn’t ever sold.

Privacy is so important to building trust in the health space that Apple is going as far as disclosing its Business Associate Agreement (BAA) between itself and Aetna. Companies don’t typically disclose any BAAs, so it’s kind of a big deal that Apple and Aetna are being so transparent.

Similarly, sharing Attain data with Apple is opt-in. If a user chooses to share their data with Apple, it is again stored separately in a server that’s encrypted in transit and at rest. It’s also coded to not be identifiable in any form. Apple tells me any shared data will only be used to understand the efficacy of the program. Considering Cook’s serious stance on privacy, expect it to be a pillar to everything Apple does in the future.

Healthcare isn’t sexy, but it’s so important

The Attain app’s success or failure will likely play an integral role in how the company tackles future health initiatives. 

When the app launches this spring, it’ll be limited to the first 250,000 to 350,000 sign-ups. The program will scale and expand accordingly based on the feedback received from the first batch of participants.

Cook’s outlook on where Apple can intersect with health is nothing if not extremely optimistic. Apple’s strategic moves with Apple Watch and working with healthcare companies is a major step forward in demystifying health and making it a conscious daily aspect of living in such an interconnected world.

Healthcare sure as hell isn’t sexy to talk about and it’s no easy feat for a tech company to tackle an industry so paramount to humanity, but at least Apple’s trying. 

It’s only been a few days since Trump’s longtime associate Roger Stone was indicted in connection with Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. But the jokes aren’t showing any signs of relenting anytime soon. In fact, Stephen Colbert could go on for days. 

In a 6-minute monologue, Colbert described Stone as a “Trump confidante and rival candy maker hellbent on stealing the recipe for the gobstopper.” 

Describing the police raid of Stone’s New York and Florida homes, Colbert said it was actually quite easy for authorities to locate his Harlem residence because it’s the “only evil lair” in the neighbourhood. “There’s a volcano in Harlem,” said Colbert. 

According to Colbert, the police didn’t just seize Stone’s electronic devices, they also took “the umbrella he uses to defeat Batman.”