Handsome Humidifiers To Make Your Home Healthier
Boost your space’s moisture with one of these stylish misters?
By Margo Ghertner
Tue, Mar 9, 2021 1:50am
3 min
3 min
The chemist humidifier has been a sick-day essential since the 1920s, when the electric version replaced its predecessor, the perilous open-flame alcohol croup kettle. But it’s also essential to maintain moisture in your everyday air, said Dr. Stephanie Taylor, an infection-control consultant at Harvard Medical School. Our immune systems function best when indoor relative humidity levels are at 40%-60%, she said. That ideal range can also decrease the number of harmful airborne particles—including respiratory viruses like Covid-19—in indoor environments.
Today’s evolved humidifiers, no longer the obtrusive, glugging gadgets of the past, elevate air quality without destroying ambience. Here are four picks:
For WFH Warriors
Like a mini water cooler, Canopy’s namesake humidifier can perch on a home office desk and hydrate up to 500 square feet. Available in white and three pastel colours, it includes an old-school, paper-based filter with embedded UV lights that prevent mould. To help you focus, diffuser pucks scent the air with essential oils such as eucalyptus and lavender. A subscription option sends fresh filters and aroma-kit refills every 45 days for $25 a shipment.
For Aesthetes
If the idea of placing any kind of appliance in your living space makes your nostrils flare with indignity, look to the H4 Hybrid humidifier from the equally design-obsessed brand Objecto. Its graceful teardrop silhouette blends discreetly into any space. Ultra-quiet, the machine comes with a remote control in a matching miniature shape.
For Problem Sleepers
Shaped like a cartoon cloud, Pure Enrichment’s device not only emits a cool mist, it glows. Choose a single colour for a night light, or cycle through eight for a bedtime light show. “Most people tend to sleep with their mouths open, so the already dry winter air causes our mucus to thicken, clogging our nasal passages,” explained Dr. Casey Kelley, founder of the Chicago clinic Case Integrative Health. With a humidifier, mouth-breathers can wake up less congested and dry.
For Skin-Care Zealots
According to Los Angeles aesthetician Shani Darden, whose clients include Jessica Alba and Chrissy Teigen, using a moisturising humidifier can help offset the aging effects of free radicals in polluted air. As compact as a coffee mug—not to mention super-portable and USB-chargeable—Hey Dewy’s facial humidifier can be used in a skin-care routine in the morning and at night or as a pick me up throughout the day. The angled spout directs the spray, evoking a fancy spa device.
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Meta is betting on a human-first AI future, but growing legal battles and declining public trust are putting Mark Zuckerberg’s vision to the test.
By Adam Levine
Thu, Aug 13, 2026 3 min
3 min
“Call us optimists. Call us dreamers. Call us whatever the hell you want, but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds. The future is for everyone.”
That ad copy is from the voice-over of a July Meta Platforms META -3.38%.
spot that’s been part of a public-relations blitz to position Meta as the humanist AI company. The message was undercut by the ad’s inclusion of David Bowie’s “Five Years,” a brooding 1972 song about an impending apocalypse. But this week CEO Mark Zuckerberg left no ambiguity, publishing a 6,500-word manifesto—about 10 times the length of this newsletter—with a title that echoed the ad: “The Future is for Everyone.”
That seems to be Meta’s new tagline. In light of sinking public opinion and the company’s thousands of lawsuits from states, school districts, parents, and users, Meta’s public relations have been defensive. This push represents a return to offense, with a chance to distinguish Meta’s approach to AI from other labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, or SpaceX SPCX +9.65%.
“It is surprising that the discourse from many developing AI is so filled with doom,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I do not understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity’s relevance would rush to build that future.”
Zuckerberg frames what sort of future we build with AI as the central issue of our time. “We believe that delivering superintelligence to everyone is the way to answer this question,” he says. “This has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where individuals can use this powerful new capability to reach their full potential, pursue their interests, and improve their lives and the world more than ever before.”
The flood of words belies the situation on the ground in mid-2026. Americans, at least, have a love-hate affair with social media. A November Pew Research Center poll reported that 71% of U.S. adults used Facebook, and 51% used Instagram. Worldwide, 3.6 billion people use at least one Meta app every day.
But in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in July and August, 61% of respondents said they wanted more government oversight of social media, and two-thirds supported laws to keep children under 16 years old off the platforms. When it comes to Meta in particular, in the 2026 Axios Harris 100, an annual poll about corporate reputation, Meta placed 96th out of 100. It’s only above two other social media companies, Chinese ultracheap retailer Temu, and Spirit Airlines, a defunct air carrier. Regarding ethics, Meta came in last, and it was only ahead of TikTok in trust.
The steady drip of headlines in the teen social media trials isn’t helping. Last week, Meta lost a judgment in New Mexico state court that raised their liability in that relatively small jurisdiction to nearly $1 billion dollars. On Wednesday, jury selection began for a federal case with four states suing Meta over addictive product design, and false marketing that said its platforms were safe for teenagers. In July, Meta claimed that the states are asking for a total of $1.4 trillion in damages, in addition to design changes in the apps. This is part of a multidistrict litigation, where thousands of federal trials with social media defendants are coordinated in Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ district courthouse in Oakland, Calif.
There is a separate such group of thousands of cases in California state court, mostly with individual plaintiffs. The steady drip of bad headlines from the courts will continue unless Meta decides to settle en masse.
Meanwhile, in the second quarter, Meta booked “$2.40 billion of charges related to legal proceedings,” according to its quarterly filing. That may be just the beginning.
Zuckerberg spent 6,500 words getting his utopian message out, but I can sum it up in two: Trust us. The evidence is that Meta has a long way to go to win back that trust.
