• My family and I tried and ranked five brands of jarred pickles to see which one we liked best.
• We didn't like the Vlasic pickles and thought they had an unpleasant aftertaste.
• Claussen's kosher dill pickles were the best option by far.

Everyone in my family of four enjoys pickles, but I don't normally give much thought as to which brand to buy.

However, in an effort to be more intentional about my purchases, I recently bought and tasted five brands of supermarket dill pickles to see which ones we liked best.

Here's how they stacked up from worst to first.

We ranked the Vlasic pickles last due to their aftertaste.

The Vlasic kosher dill baby pickles at my local supermarket cost about $6 for a 16-ounce container, making them the most expensive per ounce of the pickles I tried.

They had a nice crunch to them, and although they initially had a mild and pleasant briny flavor, there was an off-putting aftertaste. As a result, my entire family placed these at the bottom of the list.

The taste was so unpleasant that I bought a second jar from a different supermarket to see if the first one was an anomaly. It was not.

I wouldn't seek out the 365 pickles from Whole Foods again.

I grabbed a 16-ounce jar of 365 organic kosher baby dill pickles from Whole Foods for $5.

When I took a bite, however, I didn't think these pickles were as good as some of the others I tried. They weren't especially crunchy, and I didn't love the flavor. I thought they were heavy on garlic and lacked the crisp, vinegary bite I seek in good pickles.

I'd eat them again if someone served them to me, but I'd opt for other brands if I were shopping for my family.

To be fair, these were my 7-year-old's favorite, but he's by far the most averse to spicy foods in our family.

Trader Joe's kosher dill pickles were OK, but I wouldn't go out of my way to buy them again.

The Trader Joe's kosher dill pickles were the least expensive of the group, at $3 for a well-stuffed 24-ounce jar.

These pickles had a satisfying snap with each bite but a fairly mild vinegar flavor and some seasoning resembling caraway, which felt unfamiliar. They also didn't have the palate-cleansing zest I sometimes want.

Overall, they tasted like something you'd serve on a cheese board rather than with a cheeseburger.

I'd buy these again — especially considering the price — if I were shopping at Trader Joe's and needed pickles. However, they're not something I'd go out of my way for.

I'd buy the Mt. Olive pickles again for the sake of nostalgia.

I took home a 24-ounce jar of Mt. Olive dill-pickle spears that was on sale for $4 (about $2 off the supermarket's usual price).

I wasn't sure if I'd ever bought a jar of Mt. Olive pickles before, but when I opened it, I recognized the smell immediately — these were the pickles that came with every sandwich at a popular and delicious deli near where I went to college.

They were a touch mushy and didn't have much crunch, but they won me over with their assertive, classic pickle flavor, which was so tangy it was almost spicy.

I might buy them again if I start feeling nostalgic for that sandwich shop or am looking for a budget-friendly option.

Claussen is my new favorite pickle brand.

Claussen's kosher dill pickles cost $7 for a 32-ounce jar at my local supermarket. These pickles were the only of the five brands I tried that came from the grocer's refrigerated section.

Having to refrigerate the Claussen pickles made them slightly less convenient to store, but they were so much better than the other pickles we tasted. Vibrant with dill, they were crunchy without being heavy and had a bright vinegary tang.

My wife, our 4-year-old, and I all ranked this as the best pickle by far — so far superior to the others that the extra cost was easily justified.

I will seek out Claussen whenever I'm buying pickles at the supermarket in the future.

• Meta's content moderation changes aim to appease Donald Trump and conservative allies.
• Mark Zuckerberg's moves follow efforts to align with Trump, including meetings and policy shifts.
• Meta's new approach includes ending third-party fact-checking and demoting its Trust and Safety team.

Sometimes the obvious thing is the obvious thing.

Which is to say: You can make pro and con arguments for many of the massive changes Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced about the way his company is going to moderate — or not moderate — content. It's a complicated topic.

But the most important takeaway is that all of Tuesday's news has been rolled out specifically for Donald Trump, and the new political regime that officially kicks into gear on January 20.

That includes the language Zuckerberg and his company are using to describe the changes — like when Zuckerberg criticizes "legacy media" and declares that "the recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point" in a video posted Tuesday morning.

It includes the venue Meta used to announce the changes — Fox News, Trump's favorite TV channel. And, of course, the changes themselves. We'll get to those in a second.

But first, some crucial context: Tuesday's news follows a series of moves Zuckerberg and Meta have made to make nice with Trump and Republicans, which began before November's election.

A reminder of that timeline:

• In July, Zuckerberg praised Trump as a "badass" after surviving an assassination attempt.
• In August, Zuckerberg sent Republican Congresssman Jim Jordan a letter where he acknowledged moderation mistakes in the past.
• In November, Zuckerberg traveled to Mar-a-Lago for a postelection audience with Trump, then pledged $1 million to Trump's inaugural committee.
• Last week Zuckerberg announced that he was replacing his head of policy: Nick Clegg, the former British politician, was out, replaced by Joel Kaplan, a longtime Republican.
• On Monday, Zuckerberg announced that he was adding Dana White, the head of the CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship and a prominent Trump backer, to his board of directors.

Add it all up and there's no way to see Zuckerberg's moves as anything other than a straightforward attempt to please Trump and the incoming president's conservative allies, who have often complained that Zuckerberg's properties were biased against them. It's crystal clear.

As far as the changes themselves: It's entirely possible that some of the stuff Zuckerberg and his team announced Tuesday reflects what Zuckerberg actually believes. (I've asked Meta PR if Zuckerberg wants to expand on his comments.)

Figuring out the best way to moderate — or not moderate — giant platforms that depend on free contributions from their users has bedeviled all of the Big Tech companies for years. And Zuckerberg has never seemed comfortable with the various moderation layers and rules his company has added over time.*

He has also been signaling that he's particularly unhappy about the way the company responded to criticism and regulation following the 2016 election and subsequent revelations like the Cambridge Analytica data breach.

So getting rid of third-party fact-checking of controversial posts in favor of the "Community Notes" system Elon Musk's Twitter/X uses, might very well be what Zuckerberg thinks makes sense. It certainly fits a Silicon Valley ethos that's much more comfortable using a combination of users and software to make decisions about what people see on those platforms, rather than asking executives to take responsibility for those calls.

The same goes for the demotion of Meta's Trust and Safety team — which is most definitely what Zuckerberg intends by moving those operations from California to Texas, which, at a minimum, is an attrition play. Zuckerberg has long talked about wanting those roles to eventually become automated, and in the meantime, hiring humans to do that work has been difficult, messy, or worse. Simply doing less of it is one way to get at the problem. (Worth noting: In 2023, Meta investor and board member Marc Andreessen described Trust and Safety operations as part of "The Enemy" he wanted tech to fight back against.)

And figuring out how to run a platform that's based in America but subject to regulation around the world is a problem that all US tech companies struggle with. You can imagine the appeal of Zuckerberg's new approach — simply announcing that the rest of the world is anti-growth.

There will be a lot of devil in the details here. For instance, Zuckerberg certainly can't fully adopt Elon Musk's next-to-anything-goes approach for his companies. Unlike Musk, he isn't in a position to scare off users and advertisers who want a clean, well-lit space.

But those are all details to hash out in the future. Tuesday's news is simple: It's Donald Trump's world, and Mark Zuckerberg is living in it.

*Criticisms of Meta/Facebook's moderation attempts don't only come from the right. I always remember the prime minister of Norway, among others, complaining when Facebook took down posts that used a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo from the Vietnam War — a move Facebook first defended, then reversed.

• Natalia Grace Mans speaks about her boyfriend Neil in "The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: The Final Chapter."
• Natalia and Neil met online, and he helped her leave her home with the Mans family.
• Neil is from the United Kingdom, and his identity is concealed in the docuseries.

"The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: The Final Chapter" recounts how Natalia Grace Mans ultimately left the Mans family to live with Nicole and Vince DePaul, a couple with dwarfism who previously tried to adopt her when she was a child.

She does so with the assistance of her boyfriend Neil, who lives in the UK and is not shown onscreen or fully identified in "The Final Chapter." In the docuseries, Nicole DePaul says Neil contacted her via social media and told her that Natalia needed help leaving the Mans family, who adopted her in 2023. As a result, Nicole and her daughter Mackenzie traveled to Nashville, where the Mans family had relocated, to pick her up and bring her to their home in New York.

Natalia's saga was first publicized in 2019, when it was reported that her first set of adoptive parents, Kristine and Michael Barnett, had moved away to Canada and left Natalia on her own in an apartment after coming to believe that the Ukrainian orphan was really an adult woman posing as a child. They alleged that Natalia was disturbed and had threatened their family, which Natalia has repeatedly denied.

Neil is a relatively new addition to the story that's been unfolding on the Investigation Discovery docuseries since the first of its three seasons premiered in 2023. He's an off-screen presence in "The Final Chapter," which premiered Monday, but Natalia, Nicole, and Natalia's adoptive parents, Cynthia and Antwon Mans, all speak about him. Here's everything we know about Neil.

Neil and Natalia met over social media, and their relationship prompted conflict with her adoptive parents

Neil and Natalia first came into contact via social media while she was living with Antwon and Cynthia Mans, she recalls in "The Final Chapter."

"At first it was just like a small message, and then I grew feelings," Natalia says in the series. "He claimed he grew feelings, and I just opened my heart. It felt really good."

In December 2023, Antwon and Cynthia called producers to say that they were "done" with Natalia and that she wanted to live alone. Producers traveled to Tennessee, but when they arrived, Antwon and Cynthia told them that they had "come to an understanding" with Natalia and she had decided to stay at home.

During an interview with producers at that time, Antwon and Cynthia said that Natalia had "trashed" them in messages and that Neil had framed them as an "enemy" who sought to "control" her.

"I think it's definitely important to put parameters in place with the internet so these things won't happen again," Antwon said during the interview. "Look, we gotta cut the internet off. We can't allow this to happen. It's just got to be cut."

Natalia said during the interview that she believed she was in love with Neil, "but it wasn't right" and she wasn't "thinking clearly." However, she eventually did decide to leave her adoptive family to live with the DePauls in New York.

Antwon and Cynthia Mans did not immediately respond to BI's requests for comment sent to their personal Facebook profiles, their family Facebook page, and an email listed on the Facebook page.

Neil contacted Nicole so she could help Natalia leave the Mans

Neil reached out to Nicole DePaul over social media to request that she help Natalia leave the Mans family. "The Final Chapter" executive producer Eric Evangelista says in a confessional that Neil also contacted producers to say that she needed to leave.

"It was like, out of the blue," Nicole said. "At first, I didn't even believe him. I didn't even know if he was legit, or if I should trust him."

Natalia was still able to stay in contact with Neil, who in turn relayed information to Nicole. Eventually, he put Natalia and Nicole into contact, and they coordinated a pick-up.

After Nicole and her daughter Mackenzie retrieved Natalia in Tennessee, Natalia was able to speak on the phone with Neil.

"I am so, so thankful you found me. I love you so much," Natalia told Neil.

Neil and Natalia finally met in person while she was living with the DePauls

Natalia continued her long-distance relationship with Neil while living with Nicole and Vince DePaul. Natalia told People she was in love, and that she and Neil had met in person.

Now, Natalia tells the publication that she hopes to have a family of her own one day.

"I'm a girl who loves kids and wants to get married and have children," she said. "But one of my biggest things is not making promises I can't keep. I've had too many promises that have been broken. I'm just ready to move on."

"The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: The Final Chapter" premieres on Investigation Discovery and Max on January 6.