Brand of the Week is written independently, uninvited, about brands we have no relationship with. We do not contact them, they do not contact us, and their marks stay theirs. The column prints its no-affiliation disclaimer inside every issue.

The Cover Story is the opposite instrument: a disclosed feature on a brand we actually work with. The relationship prints in the article, as loudly as the admiration. Nothing profiled in either instrument is for sale on this floor.

There is no third instrument. Nothing here is paid placement presented as independent — when a relationship exists, it prints.

No health, wellness, or medical claims appear on this floor — not in our words, and not smuggled in through someone else's. When we quote a brand, we quote its values and its craft, not its promised effects. Description ends where promise begins.

A brand's words are quoted exactly — punctuation, capitals, and all — or they are not quoted. We do not smooth, tighten, or improve anyone's voice, including the ones we invented.

Stated potency, contents, and formats are read from the package or the certificate of analysis and reported as printed. Every lot on the floor links its COA. We describe what the label claims; we do not verify chemistry we cannot see, and we say so.

We also keep a plain-language guide to doing this reading yourself — the dose line as arithmetic, the lot, the certificate, the marks.

BOOF is a specimen — a Propinquity exercise, Nº3 in the series — and says so on every surface: the header strip, the footer, the gate. The houses are fictional and labeled as such. Real brands appear only in editorial or in disclosed features, never dressed as merchandise.

The Chart ranks on backend truth — units moved, holds, orders — with the formula printed on the page. Scarcity lines read from the live ledger. There is no engagement theater here: no invented reviews, no follower counts, no metrics we cannot show you the source of.

Imagery runs on this floor only when we hold the rights: our own renders, assets supplied by the brands we work with, or licensed and public-domain work — credited, with license links, at Photo credits. A store built on provenance credits its own.

When we get something wrong, it prints here — dated, specific, and left standing. Corrections are made in the article and logged below; nothing is quietly rewritten.