Day: November 30, 2025

• Non-surgical cosmetic procedures or ‘tweakments’ are growing in popularity.
• Sonal Chavda-Sitaram, a pharmacist with a Ph.D, said she would only do one type of tweakement.
• Microneedling is FDA-approved for treating acne scars and lessening wrinkles.

From CO2 laser skin resurfacing to platelet-rich plasma therapy, there are countless “tweakments” that promise to make your skin look flawless.

But Sonal Chavda-Sitaram, a pharmacist with a Ph.D in topical and transdermal drug delivery, told Business Insider there’s one she recommends above the rest: microneedling.

For the uninitiated, tweakements are non-surgical cosmetic procedures, like fillers or laser treatments. The number performed worldwide grew by nearly 2 million between 2017 and 2020. The number of dermal filler procedures and body procedures is expected to hit 23 million and 14.6 million, respectively, by the end of 2025, according to Allergan Aesthetics, one of the leading providers of Botox.

Chavda-Sitaram, 43, who believes the most important part of skincare is leading a healthy lifestyle, said: “There are lots of new trendy procedures, but for me, microneedling is probably the one that I find is most effective and makes sense in terms of the science behind what you’re doing. ”

She has had microneedling twice, but would do it more often if she had the time.

Microneedling stimulates collagen production

Microneedling involves puncturing the skin with tiny needles to make micro-injuries. When the body responds by healing the holes, it produces collagen, the primary building block of skin that we naturally make less of as we age. This can lead to smoother, tighter-looking, and more even-toned skin.

The skin barrier, the outermost layer that keeps toxins and bacteria out of the body, is very good at its job, Chavda-Sitaram said. So most skincare products don’t reach the deeper layers. But, by creating “micro-channels” in the dermis, which lies beneath the skin barrier, products can be absorbed more deeply, she said.

Microneedling is generally considered safe and effective, and has been cleared by the FDA for use as a treatment to improve the appearance of facial acne scars, wrinkles, and abdominal scars in people aged 22 and above. The skin might be red, swollen, and feel tight or dry after treatment, but this usually resolves itself within a few days.

Chavda-Sitaram tried microneedling in preparation for a big event, but depending on your goals, you might need multiple sessions over weeks or months to see results.

An inside-out approach

Facial treatments can be incredibly effective, Chavda-Sitaram said, but they work best when the skin is already optimized from within. Eating a balanced diet, getting enough sleep and exercise, as well as managing stress, are all important for skin health.

“When you undertake these invasive procedures, you’re essentially damaging your tissue and then waiting for it to heal and rebuild,” she said. “If your skin doesn’t have the necessary building blocks, these treatments are just going to be very expensive and not as effective.”

“I’m not anti-procedure at all, but I am pro-foundation,” Chavda-Sitaram said.

• “Learning with Lyrics” is a surprise hit on Reels and TikTok.
• It features AI-generated songs about how things are made.
• A 21-year-old college student in California created the account, which uses Taylor Swift-sounding songs.

Have you ever wondered why manhole covers are round instead of square? Or who invented the steamroller? Or why giant steel coils are transported on their sides instead of flat?

Sure, you can do a simple Google search to find out. But what you really might need is a video set to an AI-generated song that sounds like Taylor Swift if she went through a messy breakup with construction equipment.

This is Learning with Lyrics, which has an Instagram account with 900,000 followers and a TikTok account with 548,000 followers. I kept coming across these videos, so I did some investigating: I was surprised to find that a 21-year-old marketing major at California State University in Long Beach was behind the account.

It’s an illustration of what someone with an idea and access to off-the-shelf AI tools can make these days. It’s pretty fascinating.

“I’ve always been someone who’s curious about stuff,” Cashen Tomlinson told me about his inspiration for starting the channels, which launched in September. Tomlinson said he loved videos about how things were made, and came up with the idea to make some of his own, setting them to songs.

Tomlinson comes up with the ideas for the subjects of the videos: like how vending machines detect fake coins, how Post-it Notes work, or what causes airplane contrails. Then, he gets to work — with AI at his side.

“I use AI to generate a detailed research brief on the topic at hand, then I personally verify everything to ensure my facts are 100% correct,” he said.

Then, that’s where the catchy songs come in. He instructs Google’s Gemini to create a rough draft of the lyrics. “The real work during the lyrics creation is the polish, where I rewrite all the hooks, simplify or reword complex terms, reduce wordiness and increase clarity, ensure the outro is memorable, etc.,” he said.

Tomlinson then uses the AI music generator tool Suno to produce a song — often the same melody for different videos, with the sound of an AI-generated female vocalist.

For the visuals, he uses a mix of stock footage, his own custom animations, and video clips he generates with AI tools like Veo or Sora.

And yes, the girl in the profile image for the @LearningwithLyrics social accounts is also AI-generated.

Tomlinson told me it usually takes him two or three hours to make the song, and about 5 hours total for each video. So far, he says he’s made a few thousand dollars through the TikTok creator rewards program, which was thrilling for a college kid.

While it may seem, at first glance, that these videos are aimed at children, Tomlinson says his main audience is 25-to 35-year-olds.

The comment sections show a devotion to the catchy songs. Some samples: “This is my favorite Taylor Swift song” (of course, it’s not her), and “How do I download this to my phone and listen to it on repeat forever?”

It’s hard to describe exactly what’s so fun about these videos. Sure, they’re catchy, and “How it’s made” videos have always had an appeal. But there’s something about the AI voice that takes it to a level where you can’t totally tell if it’s ironic or not.

Tomlinson doesn’t think of this as brainrot, however. “I think the reason you might call it [brainrot] is because it’s so captivating and you can’t really look away from it,” he said. “But I think it’s kind of good that these videos are something you can’t look away from, because it’s something that’s actually teaching you something interesting.”

• Navier is developing hydrofoil boats with the hopes of revolutionizing transportation.
• Founder Sampriti Bhattacharyya’s work at MIT inspired her focus on maritime.
• Navier’s energy-efficient vessels target commercial and military markets.

Some imagined we’d have flying cars by 2025. Sampriti Bhattacharyya is betting that vision will be closer to the water. Bhattacharyya’s Bay Area startup, Navier, is building hybrid-electric boats that glide above the water, vessels that she believes could not only change commercial transportation, but also military use.

“Why don’t we have boats at scale that are, like, Uber on the water?” she said in an interview with Business Insider. “If you can move things on the water at the cost, speed, and convenience of land and air, you can build large networks of transportation.”

Bhattacharyya’s interest in maritime — which she sees as a “trillion dollar opportunity” — stemmed from her PhD at MIT, where she worked on underwater drones.

Unlike standard boats, Navier’s hybrid-electric vessels, which the company constructs end-to—end, have underwater wings that lift the hull out of the water. Bhattacharyya says the hydrofoiling technique consumes 90% less energy than its traditional gas counterpart and creates a stable glide even in the choppiest of conditions, eliminating seasickness. And her company’s hybrid-electric boats are ten times cheaper to operate, she added.

‘Build machines to understand the universe’

Born and raised in India, Bhattacharyya first immigrated to the US at around 20 years old for an internship at Fermilab, the particle physics research lab outside Chicago. There, she discovered her interest in building ” machines to understand the universe, mostly, and, you know — the planets, the universe, and all of that.”

Bhattacharyya was then awarded a Department of Energy scholarship and a master’s in aerospace engineering from Ohio State University. While completing her degree, she interned at NASA, where she worked on flight-control algorithms and contributed to research on a subcritical nuclear reactor. That work earned her a spot in MIT’s mechanical engineering PhD program, where Bhattacharyya “started actually working on not designing reactors, but on robots for monitoring boiling water reactors,” she said.

Her academic focus shifted in 2014, when Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 disappeared. “That was a turning point,” she said. “How can we not find an airplane?”

During her PhD, she began building some of the first stealth underwater drones — systems capable of ocean mapping, reconnaissance, pipeline inspection, and other critical functions, Bhattacharyya said.

The work also sparked a key question: “Why do you have to push water if you can glide above?”

‘A high-speed boat that goes from Redwood City to Berkeley’

In late October, Navier announced three hybrid-electric boats, all of which the company builds end-to-end: 30-foot, 80-foot, and 120-foot vessels. The company says each will last for thousands of nautical miles on a single charge, since Navier believes gliding above the water increases its boats’ fuel efficiency.

“Why don’t we have a high-speed boat that goes from Redwood City to Berkeley?” she asked, adding that on one of her boats, “It will take you 20 minutes, rather than one and a half hours.”

The startup isn’t alone in its pursuit of more efficient vessels: Vessev, a startup based in New Zealand, and Candela, based in Stockholm, also make hydrofoil, electric boats.

Navier’s announcement unveiling its bigger boats comes as top military brass have signaled a strong desire to procure tech from startups. Navier already works with the Navy and Defense Department, Bhattacharyya said, which adds Navier to the ever-growing list of dual-use startups — or ones that work with both commercial and government clients.

“You need vessels with a long range because you want to be in the Red Sea, in the South China Sea, and go long distances and have less fueling time,” she added.

Bhattacharyya is vivified by her company’s defense applications: “I came from pretty much nothing,” she said. “To be able to do and build something that can fundamentally change how people will interact with the world is a huge blessing.”