10 Things That Delighted Us Last Week: Plastic-Free Leggings and Gifts for Picky Dads

Father’s Day is officially a week away — next Sunday June 21. We’ve published gift guides for just about every type of dad — the golfer, the foodie, the picky one — and this week, updates coordinator Najwa Jamal rounded up the 100-plus best ideas from all of our guides. One classic gift: The Meater meat thermometer that chef Tom Colicchio says is the best he’s ever used. It connects to your phone via Bluetooth so you can track the temperature of whatever you’re cooking and alerts you on your phone when something’s fully cooked. “I get perfect meat every time,” he says.

For the picky dad — which, generally, is most of them — there’s no one better prepared to find a gift than senior writer Michael Zhao, our “Ask a Picky Guy” columnist. For the coffee snob, he suggests the Subminimal Subscale, a cup with a built-in scale for measuring coffee beans. “It’s not often that I’m wowed by a new gadget,” Zhao says, but this one got him. “It works so well that it immediately felt like something I’d been using for years.” And odds are good your dad doesn’t own it yet.

“As someone who works from coffee shops, airplanes, Pilates studios, and my 9-month-old’s play mat, my laptop is often subject to the harshest conditions,” writes contributor Oset Babür-Winter. She recently reached her breaking point and went to Amazon for a “keyboard cleaner” solution. She landed on this inexpensive and well-reviewed 10-tool cleaning kit that sent her into a de-gunking tizzy. “The amount of crud I unearthed with each tool was both unsettling and satisfying,” she says. After an initial sweep of her Macbook’s keyboard with the kit’s small and large brushes, she got deeper into the nooks and crannies of just about every device she owns: her iPhone, Airpods, Kindle, and iPad. After using the kit’s camera dabbing tool and spray, her photos afterward have never looked clearer.

The unthinkable recently happened to author Mary H.K. Choi: Her go-to eyeliner for the last 20 years, L’Oréal’s Lineur Intense Felt Tip Liquid Liner in 610 Black Mica, was discontinued. And so she quickly began a “desperate hunt” for a suitable replacement — something that’s just as precise, easy to use, affordable, and stocked at drugstores. Benefit’s was “far and away” her top pick of the seven eyeliners she tested. It’s pricier, and she has to order it online, but Choi says it’s “worth the forethought, planning, and price. The nib is exceptionally long, precise, and yielding enough that it doesn’t skip.” And the formula is a perfect matte black that’s easy enough to remove at the end of the day without making a mess in her sink.

The World Cup started this week, and to kick it off, we asked American soccer player Midge Purce about her favorite things. One of her and her teammates’ favorites is this weighted sleep mask from Therabody. “I have never had a sleep mask that’s this efficient,” she says. “It’s weighted on the outsides, and it has these eye craters so that it’s not flat on your eyes and gives you some space. You don’t even know what time it is when you have it on.” It also has a vibration feature that some of her teammates use, though Purce says she’s never needed to turn it on “because it’s so good at blocking out all the light.”

As the Summer House star put it to beauty writer Arielle Avila: “It’s summer. It’s time to be sculpt-y, bronzy, glowy.” And to achieve that “summertime glow,” Miller relies on this CoverGirl serum. “For my day-to-day, I put this on my highlight points and just go,” she says, but it also looks great on your collarbone, arms, and legs.

Writer Katherine Gillepsie knew from the moment she put on Mate’s leggings that they were the winning pair from her hunt for plastic-free workout leggings that perform as well as nylon or polyester ones. “The leggings have a high, wide waistband that compresses your abs, reinforced seams on the sides to provide more structure, and plenty of stretch,” she says. Their 92 percent cotton and 8 percent spandex makeup feels apt for high-intensity workouts, she notes, and she didn’t have to adjust them or hike them higher while running or doing Pilates.

New York has been a whole vibe this past week with the Knicks in the NBA playoffs, and for those who want to show their pride (or hop on the bandwagon), senior writer Liza Corsillo rounded up over two dozen tees, sweaters, hats, and more. But, she says, “if you’re looking for something blue and orange that’s not explicitly a Knicks hat, there’s no better option than this New York logo hat.” Go New York, go!