Connexion
A variety of music-focused content is streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime in May. First up is the second season of Behind the Music (May 1) with episodes featuring Bell Biv DeVoe, Trace Adkins, and Wolfgang Van Halen, followed by Kiss The Future (May 7), a documentary film about U2's awareness-raising campaign for the crisis in Sarajevo, Bosnia, during their 1993 tour. Later in the month, catch LOLLA: The Story of Lollapalooza (May 21) about the birth and impact of the music festival.
On the drama side, there are new episodes of The Chi (May 10) following the characters' lives on the South Side of Chicago, and the final season of the supernatural series Evil (May 23). And on May 17, catch the premieres of both RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars (season 9) and RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars: Untucked (season 6).
Here’s everything else coming to the service in May. Note that titles with an asterisk are exclusive to Paramount+ With Showtime; everything else is also available to subscribers on the ad-supported plan. Those with two asterisks are available to Paramount+ With Showtime users streaming live on CBS and to all subscribers the following day.
Behind the Music, Season 2 premiere
Kiss The Future, premiere
The Chi Season 6, new episodes
Pillowcase Murders, premiere
Mourning in Lod, premiere
RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars, Season 9 premiere
RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars: Untucked, Season 6 premiere
LOLLA: The Story of Lollapalooza, premiere
Evil, final season premiere
Pyramid Game, premiere
Charles: The New King
PAW Patrol (Season 9)
PAW Patrol: Dino Rescue
PAW Patrol: Rescue Knights
The Mightiest (Season 1)
Teen Mom: The Next Chapter (Season 1)
Love & Hip Hop: Miami (Season 5)
Aerial Adventures (Season 1)
CMT Giants (2022)
CMT Storytellers (Seasons 1-2)
CMT Summer Camp Seasons (2022-2023)
CMT Summer Sessions (Season 2)
All About the Benjamins
Annihilation
Anything for Fame*
Baywatch
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Belly*
Belly 2: Millionaire Boyz Club*
Big Jake
Big Night
Black Lotus*
Boogie Nights
Clockstoppers
Crawl
Days of Heaven
Double Jeopardy
Ella Enchanted
Everybody Wants Some!!
Faster
Fences
Fire In The Sky
Flight Of The Intruder
Four Brothers
Frida*
Ghost
Harriet The Spy
Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth
Hellraiser IV: Bloodline
Hellraiser V: Inferno
Hellraiser VI: Hellseeker
Hellraiser VII: Deader
Hellraiser VIII: Hellworld
How She Move*
I Know What You Did Last Summer*
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer*
I'll See You in My Dreams*
Imagine That
In the Cut
Indecent Proposal
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
Joy Ride
Kelly & Cal*
Kinky Boots*
Maid in Manhattan*
Margot At The Wedding*
Marvin's Room*
Mommie Dearest*
No Country for Old Men
Once Upon A Time In The West
Point Break
Revolutionary Road*
Rocketman
Romy and Michele's High School Reunion
Serpico
Shall We Dance?*
Shane
Sliver
Stand By Me*
Terms of Endearment
The Accused
The Back-up Plan
The Gift*
The Golden Child
The Guilt Trip
The Hateful Eight*
The Haunting
The Joy Luck Club
The Longest Yard
The Mechanic
The Original Kings of Comedy*
The Prince Of Tides
The Terminal
True Grit
True Grit
Vantage Point
Virtuosity
What's Eating Gilbert Grape*
What's Your Number?
Zoolander 2
The Boss Baby 2: Family Business
Supernova*
National Lampoon's Van Wilder - The Rise of Taj*
3 Generations*
Black Christmas*
No one ever brags about their roof. We all have know people who actually send you photos of their perfectly manicured garden, or someone who speakings lovingly of their new kitchen backsplash. But the roof? No one thinks about their roof—until it starts leaking.
Roof leaks always happen at the least opportune moment—like, when it’s actively pouring out. If you experience the horror of water dripping from places water’s not supposed to drip from, hopefully you have a roofer in your contacts and can get them over for an inspection pronto. But before you make that call, don’t waste any time—you’ve got some roof triage to do if you want to limit the damage from a roof leak.
Your first priority is preventing damage. This is the moment to spring into action:
Move stuff out of the way. Any furniture, electronics, or rugs should be immediately removed from the area where the water is dripping.
Cover the stuff you can’t move, like a big, heavy couch or any built-in furniture. Any kind of plastic sheeting will do in a pinch. If the water leak is significant, you might also place the furniture legs in plastic containers or raise it up on risers if you’re unable to move it.
Contain the water—place a bucket underneath the stream and mop up the floor to prevent the water from soaking into the flooring. If the water leak is causing your ceiling or wall to bulge like a balloon, pop the bulge to let the water drain; otherwise, the water will just slowly soak into areas far away from the leak.
Consider keeping a roof leak diverter (or two) in storage. These tarp-like contraptions attach to the ceiling and divert the water into a hose that can be run to a drain. This way you don’t have to worry about emptying a bucket while keeping your floors dry.
Once you’ve restored order to the interior of your house, it’s time to see if you can put a temporary fix into place.
Start in the attic, if you have one. You might see the source of your leak immediately, or you might have to go hunting for it. Bring a flashlight and look for damp spots, slow seeping water, or literal holes in your roof. If you see obvious damage, you can try patching it from the inside with some roof cement or roofing tape, but keep in mind that while a successful interior patch might spare the inside of your house from further damage, the leak in your roof will still be there and will require repair.
If you don’t have an attic or you can’t see any obvious leaks from inside, your next step might be to get up on your roof. This is where you should be very careful—it’s a bad idea to head up onto your roof during a rainstorm. Wait for the storm to pass, and follow best safety practices at all times when you do go up there. When you do get up on your roof, it’s time for some detective work:
Remember that water flows, so the source of your leak might not be directly above or even near the spot where the water came out inside your house.
First, look for obvious damage: Missing or visually damaged shingles, flashing that has pulled away, stains or sunken areas, tears or cracks in the roof membrane.
If you don’t see anything immediately obvious, look at the most common problem areas: places where vent pipes emerge from the roof, where two planes meet, flashing around chimneys or skylights, and roof valleys.
Once you’ve identified one or more potential sources of the leak, you can apply some roof cement (make sure it’s explicitly for use in wet conditions if the roof is still damp or if it’s lightly raining) or even some Flex Paste. If you’re dealing with discrete damage to your roof, this might stop the leak until you can have a proper repair done.
If you can’t identify a specific area to patch (or as an added layer of protection if you do patch), you can throw a tarp over the area where you suspect the leak is. The tarp should be at least six millimeters thick, and you’ll need enough of it to extend several feet around the leaking area. In a pinch, you can just weigh the tarp down with some lumber, but ideally you would secure the tarp to your roof using roofing nails.
Finally, document the damage, especially if you have an insurance policy that includes roof coverage. If you wait until after the repairs are done, you might find your insurer reluctant to pay out on the claim. A few quick photos of the inside and outside as well as any damaged furniture or electronics will go a long way toward making that claim go smoothly. Plus, when you contact a licensed roofer about getting your roof repaired or replaced, you can send them the photos so they can determine the scale of the problem.
It's no secret that Apple products work well with one another. But you might not know you can actually turn your iPad into a high-quality secondary display for your Mac. Whether you have a desktop setup, or you’re traveling, you can use your iPad as a wireless display to showcase any app from your computer. It’s as easy as screen mirroring your Mac to your TV, thanks to a relatively hidden macOS feature called Sidecar.
First, the requirements. You’ll need a Mac running macOS Catalina or higher, and an iPad running iPadOS 13 or higher. There are some hardware restrictions as well, though every MacBook Pro released after 2016, and MacBook Air released after 2018 will work. In general, the latest Macs from the last 5 years are supported. The same goes for the iPads as well. All models of iPad Pros work, and every iPad 6th generation and newer, as well as iPad Air 3rd generation and newer will work here.
Still, you might need to do some work on the software side. First, both devices have to be signed in from the same Apple ID, and you have to use two-factor authentication. To use this feature wirelessly, you have to enable Bluetooth, wifi, and Handoff on your iPad. To enable Handoff, go to Settings > General > Airplay & Handoff > Handoff. If you’re using tethering on your iPad or your Mac, this feature won’t work.
Now that the housekeeping is done, you can set up your iPad as a secondary display. First, place the iPad next to the Mac, turn on the display, and unlock it.
Next, go to Control Center on your Mac, click Screen Mirroring, and choose your iPad from the list.
To use it as a secondary monitor, make sure you choose the Use As Separate Display option. You’ll notice your iPad will instantly show your Mac’s screen, including the menu bar, and some apps might even move to the iPad screen. To help you out, the iPad can show a sidebar, plus touch bar controls that are useful if you’re using the iPad away from your Mac. If you want more screen space for your Mac apps, we suggest disabling both the sidebar and the touch bar. You can do this on your Mac under System Settings > Displays.
The above instructions will work if you’re using macOS Monterey and higher. If you’re using macOS Big Sur, you’ll find the mirroring menu in Control Center's Display section.
Lastly, make sure how you’ve placed your iPad in physical space aligns with how your macOS software is set up. If you’ve ever attached an external monitor to your Mac, and tried to use it next to your MacBook, you’ll be familiar with this.
Essentially, you can tell macOS that your iPad sits on the left or right of the Mac so that your cursor can seamlessly move from one screen to another. To do this, go to System Settings > Displays. Here, you’ll see the current arrangement of your displays. If the default option works for you, then you don't need to do anything.
If you want to move your iPad screen position, click the Arrange button, freely drag the iPad screen to where it is in your physical space, and click the Done button.
Now that you're all set up, you can freely move your cursor between your Mac display and your iPad, and you can use the iPad like it's any other external display. This is similar to Apple’s other feature, Universal Control, where you can use the keyboard and mouse on your Mac with a connected iPad. The crucial difference with Sidecar, however, is that your Mac screen is also extended to the iPad. With Universal Control, your iPad still displays iPadOS.
If you don’t like dragging and dropping windows between the Mac and the iPad, there’s a shortcut for you. Hover over the Maximize button on any macOS window, and you’ll see an option to move the window to the iPad. I like using this option because it automatically resizes the window to take up the full iPad display.
This feature does disables the touch screen on your iPad, so it's not the touch screen Mac of your dreams. That said, Sidecar does support Apple Pencil. You can use your Pencil to draw on the screen, and you can even go to System Settings > Displays to enable the double-tap feature on the Apple Pencil, which lets you make selections on your iPad.
The gardening world is full of old wives' tales full of purported methods to grow the biggest tomatoes or tallest sunflowers. One of those stories is that tea is beneficial for your garden because it creates nitrogen, and the tannic acid benefits the pH of the soil. In truth, while tea will compost in your garden just like any other organic matter and likely isn’t doing any harm, there’s no science to suggest that tea, itself, has any specific benefit to your yard, either. Absolutely everything you compost will produce nitrogen, and any acid will affect the pH of your soil (which isn’t always desirable). I consulted with many garden centers as well as Concentrates, a well-regarded farm supply known for their mineral and fertilizer supplement stock, as well as their considerable knowledge of organic farming. No one working there had ever practiced this or could figure out any particular way tea would benefit your yard.
Growing herbs in your garden is probably one of the most rewarding crops, particularly perennial herbs. While many herbs, like chamomile and mint, can be used to make herbal tea on their own, real tea leaves come from a tea plant, camellia sinensis. While it’s unlikely your local nursery will sell it, you can order this flower online as a start and plant it in your garden. Once the plant flowers, you can harvest and dry the buds and make your own tea. No matter what you make your tea with, whether it be herbal or camellia, when you’re done drinking, what’s left is bound for the trash unless you compost it. If you’re making tea with what you grew yourself, you likely aren’t using tea bags, so you can just place the spent tea in your compost and go back to your life. It should compost just fine, and would count as a green part of your compost (which is made up of wet, nitrogen-rich matter balanced with dry, carbon-based matter).
If you buy tea, then you need to consider what the teabag is made of. While most teabags are compostable, some have polypropylene in them and those should not be composted. Remove any staples or string, unless you are sure it is 100% cotton string, and remove the paper tag in case it has any coating on it. If you’re concerned about the teabag, you can just empty it into your compost and toss the bag.
Your soil has a delicate pH. Most plants enjoy a neutral pH, and gardeners go to the trouble of measuring the soil’s pH to determine that its in the right range. Some plants benefit from slightly more acidic pH, but slightly is the key word there. Blueberries, azaleas and strawberries are examples of plants that benefit from that higher acidity. Any acid is going to make your soil more acidic, and real tea (not herbal) contains tannins, which produce tannic acid. Just like tea is a plant, tannic acid is produced by trees and other plants as they decay, too. It’s not that tannic acid is specifically bad, it’s that it’s not particularly beneficial, either. If you are adding it into the environment on purpose, you’ll want to ensure the soil pH isn’t becoming too acidic for what you’re trying to grow.
If you garden enough, you’ll hear the phrase “compost tea” and how good it is for your garden, but that phrase does not refer to actual tea. Rather, this is the drippings of your worms or compost, which can produce a highly nutritious water fertilizer for your garden. Many worm towers actually come with spigots to collect this brew for use, but you would never drink this.
I’m a big believer in growing your garden up using trellises, arbors and other supports. Growing up provides three exceptional benefits in a garden. First, it provides more room to grow. While some items naturally grow up, like bean vines, others, like pumpkins don’t traditionally grow up, but rather sprawl out across the ground, taking up a lot of space. Second, creating vertical points of interest in your yard makes the space so much more interesting. Lastly, it creates shade and sun. For the items growing on the support, they’re going to get more sun than they would on the ground, and on the other side of that trellis, shade is created. The shade is good for people and animals, who need respite in the summer, but also for your plants. It creates a microclimate. There’s a screen for wind, and the temperature on the other side is going to dip down a few degrees through the lack of sun.
The key to all of this is to choose the right support and the right plant. A trellis is simply a vertical structure that may be flat or accordion-style. An obelisk-type trellis has a smaller footprint, but more support, as they tend to be round or square, coming to a point at the top. Arches can be skinny or wide, but cross a space that people can walk under. An arbor has vertical and horizontal supports for plants such as berries, grapes or figs. Finally, a pergola or cabana is more specifically for creating a space under for tables, chairs, or whatever you’d want to do with the space. While all of these structures look nice on their own, they have open designs specifically so you can grow plants on them. Now you just have to decide what to grow.
I always like to consider ways to grow food—if not for me, then birds and other local wildlife. Figs and grapes are two plants that love support and can be molded around a structure, but are going to require a lot of hand-holding (this is true generally of both, not just on a pergola). Figs and grapes both grow vigorously and need to be pruned yearly, and should be treated to prevent fungal infections like rust. These both produce fruit, which sounds delightful, but if you do not harvest it, that fruit will drop and make a mess and bring pests. You can work to reduce this problem by thinning the fruit, which means reducing the amount of fruit as a trade-off for bigger, better fruit. Both figs and grapes offer huge leaves that can also be used on their own for eating but will work to provide shade as well. While these plants are perennial, they are not evergreen, so during the winter, you’ll see the vines but not the leaves.
Hops and passionfruit are edge-case edibles. Hops are essential to brewing beer, but even if you don’t, they are magnificently scented flowers on a very prolific vine that will climb on its own. The same is true for passionfruit, which doubles in size year to year and features gorgeous passionflowers. If you let it grow, you will eventually develop passionfruit, too. Because of how prolific these plants are, you really want to consider how you’ll handle them in fall. Passionflower really shouldn’t be pruned much, but hops can be cut almost to the ground year to year and will just come back stronger. Even in the short summer season, they can cover your entire pergola.
If you’d like to fill your space with hummingbirds, bees and other beneficial pollinators, you need to give them something to eat. Floral vines like jasmine, trumpet vines, honeysuckle, clematis and cup-and-saucer vine all provide scented flowers that attract these pollinators while providing shade on the structure. In fact, there are enough varieties of these vines that you can choose multiple honeysuckle vines, each with a different bloom time, and have an entire season of flowers, with different-colored flowers. Vines all have different rules about when and how much you prune them. Clematis has three different pruning groups alone, so you’ll want to make sure you look up how to prune your specific vines.
A great idea for a pergola or trellis is regular vining beans. Beans like scarlet runner or hyacinth beans are edible (but really meant to be grown for their looks) but there’s a whole world of shelling beans that grow prolifically for a season; then, after you harvest the beans, you cut the vines down. These are all annuals, meaning they only live for the season. If you allow the beans to just drop, they will reseed on their own and might eventually perennialize. You’ll want to ensure that you’re choosing pole beans, not bush beans—that information will always be on the seed packet. Most green beans are pole beans, and also grow prolifically in one season. We’ve previously covered how pumpkins and squash can be trellised; if you just grew them alone, they’d provide a lot of shade. You don’t have to choose just one option: You can grow multiple things together, like beans and pumpkins.
Although some people love them, vines like ivy or wisteria can do real damage to a structure and take over a space. Akebia is not technically invasive, but can grow out of hand too easily. Obviously, don’t plant kudzu. Other problematic invasive vines include wintercreeper, porcelain berry, and oriental bittersweet.
Depending on the structure of your trellis or pergola, your plants might be fine on their own finding the support, but if not, consider loose garden ties to train the plants onto the structure. You want to ensure these are never tight, or they won’t allow growth. You need to plant the vines into good soil that is loose and loamy, and has some nutrition in it. If the pergola is planted on the ground rather than a cement or rock base, you can work the soil around the pergola to aerate it and add fertilizer with a broadfork or shovel. If your structure is on cement, you’ll need planters, and they need to be appropriately sized for the plant—so larger than you imagine. You’ll fill them with potting soil, and since potted plants dry out more easily, you’ll need to ensure they get watered routinely and fed yearly with fertilizer. The nice thing about planters is that you can move them around, so if a plant isn’t getting sunlight, you can move it where it will.
It’s been a few years since Lifehacker looked at the slang of Generation Z—long enough that Generation Alpha has had time to develop and spread some of its own special buzzwords and jargon. Below is an alphabetized collection of slang taken from both Gen Z and Gen A, in case someone younger than you says something you don't understand. As with all slang, if you need an online list to know what a word means, you are too old to say it aloud.
Ate/eat: Done particularly well, particularly regarding clothing. ie: "You ate that outfit." See also: "serving"
Aura: Someone who is mysterious and cool is said to "have aura."
Bed-rotting: Staying in bed all day. You may know it as “lazing around.” See also: "Hurkle-durkle."
Bop: A girl who sleeps around. Also: a great song.
Brain-rot: A description of the overuse of stupid slang. See also: “Skibidi”
Bubba truck: A lifted or otherwise modified pick-up truck
Chad: An attractive man; i.e. an “alpha male”
Chat: A reference to streamers addressing their chat windows aloud. Saying “chat” in real life is an ironic joke.
Coomer: A man who masturbates too often
Corn: “Corn” is algo-speak that means “porn.” Used in online spaces where the word might cause your account to be flagged or banned.
Coworker-core: A catch-all description for things that are unfunny or uninteresting in a way that appeals to older people
Delulu: Delusional
Doomer: A person who is overly negative and/or cynical
Drip: A fashionable or stylish look
Edgar: A variation of the Caesar haircut worn especially among hispanic males. Also refers to the kind of person who wears the haircut.
Fanum tax: The theft of food between friends. Named for streamer Fanum, known for “taxing” his friends by taking bites of their meals or stealing fries.
Fent-fold: A description of the bent-over posture of people nodding on heavy drugs
Gamer dent: The temporary indentation left on someone’s hair or skin after wearing headphones for too long
Geeker: Someone who uses a lot of drugs
Glaze: To overly praise someone, often insincerely, or with the hope of getting something in return
Green fn: An interjection one might used when someone does something cool or impressive. Often used ironically.
Gooning: Extended masturbation without orgasm done for the purpose of entering an altered state of consciousness
Gyatt or Gyat: Once an interjection used when seeing someone sexy, like “god-DAMN,” “gyatt” has come to mean “attractive booty.”
Hurkle-durkle: Based on an archaic Scottish word, “hurkle-durkle” means to lounge in bed after it is time to get up. See also: “bed-rotting."
"It's so over": The situation is hopeless. The opposite of "we're so back." See also: "Doomer."
Jelqing: The use of stretching or weights in an attempt to increase penis size
Jit: A kid. Used ironically online
JOMO: A play on FOMO (fear of missing out) JOMO is an acronym that stands for “joy of missing out.”
"Learn Chinese": Sports slang directed at failing players. They are in danger of being sent to play in China, so they should "learn Chinese."
Looksmaxxing: Maximizing one’s physical attractiveness through personal grooming, working out, and dressing stylishly. See also: “-maxxing.”
-maxxing: A suffix used with any word to indicate trying to improve. Seeing your friends could be called "friendmaxxing," working out could be called "gymmaxxing," making jokes could be called "jestermaxxing" etc.
Mewing: A facial exercise meant to strengthen the jawline
Mirror sex: Using a mirror to watch yourself have sex
Mog: To be more attractive than someone, usually in an intentional or aggressive way. Example: "I was rizzing up this girl, but he walked in and totally mogged me."
Neurospicy: A different way of saying “neuro-divergent”
Opp: Short for "opposition." Someone who is out to get you. An enemy.
Regarded: “Regarded” is algo-speak for “retarded"
Rizz: As a noun, "rizz" means charisma. As a verb, rizz or rizz up means attracting someone with your charisma.
Serve: Wearing a particularly stylish outfit. See also: "ate."
Serve cunt: To act in a powerfully and unapologetically feminine way; to slay
Skibidi Toilet: Named after “Skibidi Toilet,” a popular series of YouTube videos, “skibidi” itself has no specific meaning, beyond ridiculing the overuse of slang itself. See “brain-rot.”
Sigma: A “sigma male” is a lone wolf who is powerful and competent, as opposed to a traditional alpha male stereotypes.
Sweat: A person who tries too hard, usually used in reference to video games. The adjective form is "sweaty."
Soyjack: a cartoon image of an emasculated man with an open-mouthed smile and an excited expression. Based on “soy-boy,” or weak man.
Spoopy: Spooky
Striker: Stolen/no-title car
Tradwife: Believer in traditional married gender roles
Unc: Short for "uncle," used to describe slightly older people. Example: "The class of 2024 are unc-status to the class of 2028."
Twelve: Police
Twin: Best friend.
"We're so back": Opposite of "it's so over"
Yapping: Describes a presentational style often seen on online streams of talking a lot and/or quickly while not saying anything worthwhile
Zoomer Perm: A curly on top, short on the sides haircut popular among young people.
There are new seasons of two Max Originals headlining May's lineup. First up is the third installment of comedy series Hacks (May 2), starring Emmy Award winner Jean Smart and nominee Hannah Einbinder. The season debuts with two episodes, with two additional episodes premiering each week until the finale on May 30. Drama series Pretty Little Liars: Summer School (May 9) will follow a similar format, with episodes dropping weekly through June 20.
There's also a new standup special from Nikki Glaser—Someday You'll Die (May 11) covers topics like aging and sexual fantasies—and two film projects from production house A24. The first, Stop Making Sense (May 3), is a restored 4K version of the 1984 Talking Heads concert film shot at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood, followed by The Iron Claw (May 10), a biographical sports drama starring Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, and Harris Dickinson as the Von Erich brothers, who were professional wrestlers in the 1980s.
Finally, catch HBO Original documentary MoviePass, MovieCrash (May 29), which chronicles the rise and fall of movie subscription service MoviePass.
Here’s everything else coming to Max in May.
All About My Mother (1999)
Black Christmas (2019)
Crank (2006)
Crank: High Voltage (2009)
The Dead Don't Die (2019)
Don Jon (2013)
Eddie the Eagle (2016)
The Edge (1997)
The Florida Project (2017)
Genius (2016)
Guy's Grocery Games, Season 35 (Food Network)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)
Jack and the Beanstalk (1952)
Jersey Boys (2014)
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
The Lighthouse (2019)
Mad Max (1979)
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
My 600-lb Life: Where Are They Now? (TLC)
Poltergeist (2015)
Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)
Poltergeist III (1988)
Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
Sisters (2015)
The Upside of Anger (2005)
Wild Mountain Thyme (2020)
Wonderland (2003)
Hacks, Season 3 (Max Original)
Selena + Restaurant, Season 1 (Food Network)
Six Is Not A Crowd (Felices Los 6), Season 1 (Max Original)
Turtles All the Way Down (Max Original)
Batwheels, Season 2B (Cartoon Network)
Stop Making Sense (A24 2023 Re-Release)
Teen Titans Go!, Season 8 (Cartoon Network)
Zillow Gone Wild, Season 1 (HGTV)
America's Backyard Gold, Season 1 (Discovery Channel)
People Magazine Killer Investigates, Season 1 (ID)
Mini Beat Power Rockers, S4B
Next Baking Master: Paris, Season 1 (Food Network)
Yellowstone Wardens, Season 4 (Animal Planet)
Mecum Full Throttle: Houston TX 2024 (Motor Trend)
Outdaughtered, Season 10 (TLC)
In Pursuit with John Walsh, Season 5 (ID)
Stupid Pet Tricks, Season 1 (TBS)
Pretty Little Liars: Summer School (Max Original)
The Iron Claw (2023) (A24)
Nikki Glaser: Someday You’ll Die (HBO Original)
Expedition From Hell: The Lost Tapes (Discovery Channel)
Naked and Afraid XL, Season 10 (Discovery Channel)
SMILING FRIENDS, Season 2 (Adult Swim)
Summer Baking Championship, Season 2 (Food Network)
Doubling Down with the Derricos, Season 5 (TLC)
Botched Bariatrics, Season 1 (TLC)
Ghost Adventures, Season 28 (Discovery Channel)
Home Sweet Rome (2023) (Max Original)
Sleepless (2017)
Murder in the Heartland (ID)
My Lottery Dream Home, Season 15 (Discovery Channel)
Design Down Under, Season 2 (Magnolia Network)
Ciao House, Season 2 (Food Network)
Space Shuttle Columbia: The Final Flight, Limited Series (CNN Original Series)
STAX: Soulsville U.S.A (HBO Original)
Elephants vs. Man with Nick Paton Walsh (CNN Original)
Hell on Earth: The Verónica Case (La Mano En El Fuego) (Max Original)
Moonshiners: Master Distiller (Discovery Channel)
Last Chance Garage, Season 1 (Motor Trend)
Romário: The Guy (Romário: O Cara), Season 1 (Max Original)
Texas Metal's Loud and Lifted, Season 2 (Motor Trend)
Thirst with Shay Mitchell (Max Original)
Caught: Wild and Weird America (Discovery Channel)
Diary of an Old Home, Season 4 (Magnolia Network)
Mysteries of the Abandoned: Hidden America (Discovery Channel)
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
90 Day Fiancé: UK, Season 3
Two Guys Garage, Season 23 (Motor Trend)
Homicide Hunter: American Detective, Season 4 (ID)
MoviePass, MovieCrash (HBO Original)
Traces of Love (Evidências Do Amor) (Max Original)
Outchef'd, Season 3 (Food Network)
Gold Rush: Parker's Trail, Season 3 (Discovery Channel)
La NASA s'apprête à mettre l'écologie en orbite. L'administratrice adjointe de l'agence spatiale américaine, Pam Melroy, a récemment levé le voile sur la première phase du programme Space Sustainability Strategy. Au cours des prochains mois, la NASA dévoilera d'autres segments de cette stratégie dont l'objectif est de nettoyer le voisinage spatial de la Terre, mais également d'assurer un partage équitable et durable des ressources de l'espace.
« Il était grand temps », souligne Melroy. Différents départements de l'agence appliquent déjà le principe de durabilité à leur échelle avec une approche qui leur est propre ; la NASA souhaite désormais généraliser cet effort, explique l'ex-astronaute américaine.
La NASA a choisi d'axer le premier chapitre de cette stratégie sur les débris en orbite autour de la Terre. À vrai dire, le problème des déchets orbitaux est sans aucun doute la principale source de préoccupation spatiale à l'heure actuelle. Près de 10 000 satellites opérationnels survolent notre planète en permanence, mais notre voisinage est également encombré par un nombre encore plus grand de sondes désaffectées, de fusées abandonnées et de fragments divers filant autour de la Terre à près de 27 000 km/h.
Les astronomes qui ont lancé l'alerte au sujet de l'encombrement de l'orbite terrestre applaudissent le nouveau programme, mais ils sont nombreux à trouver que les États-Unis sont à la traîne par rapport à d'autres pays et devraient s'attaquer au problème de pollution orbitale avec plus d'entrain.
« Je suis très heureux de voir que la NASA se lance. La question est de savoir si le Congrès leur accordera le budget nécessaire pour apporter un réel changement », déclare Darren McKnight, membre de la direction technique de LeoLabs, une société basée à Menlo Park, en Californie, spécialisée dans la localisation des engins et des débris spatiaux.
Lorsqu'un satellite traverse une zone encombrée, il s'expose à un risque accru de collision avec un fragment de métal à la dérive, ce qui lui vaudrait d'être à son tour classé parmi les débris orbitaux.
Ce qui inquiète particulièrement Melroy et ses collègues de la NASA, ce sont les risques pour la Station spatiale internationale et les astronautes qui l'occupent, des risques portés au grand écran en 2013 dans le film Gravity qui voit Sandra Bullock contrainte de fuir la station orbitale. Dans ce type de scénario catastrophe, les modules critiques de l'ISS seraient compromis et les astronautes n'auraient alors que deux options : embarquer sur une navette spatiale ou mourir.
Plus il y a de satellites, plus le danger est grand. Prenons le cas d'une collision entre un étage de fusée à l'abandon et un satellite à la retraite, cela produirait encore plus de débris, ce qui augmenterait le risque de collision et rendrait cette orbite inutilisable pendant des années voire des décennies. La situation s'apparente à un carambolage sur l'autoroute, sauf qu'il n'y a pas de services de secours dans l'espace et aucune façon de nettoyer la scène sans dépenser des millions, si ce n'est des milliards de dollars à travers plusieurs années de travaux.
Dans le nouveau rapport, la NASA présente la première partie de sa stratégie pour la durabilité dans l'espace. L'agence y évoque notamment la prolifération des satellites et l'encombrement de l'orbite terrestre basse, sans oublier la menace incarnée par ces débris spatiaux, quelle que soit leur taille. Le rapport mentionne par ailleurs la récente expansion des constellations artificielles dont les satellites se comptent par milliers. À ce jour, c'est le projet Starlink de SpaceX qui possède la plus grande flotte avec près de 5 800 satellites opérationnels et l'entreprise souhaite en lancer plus de 40 000 au total. Avec son projet Kuiper, Amazon prévoit de talonner ce chiffre.
Les modèles à long terme de la NASA sont utiles, indique McKnight, car ils nous montrent la façon dont les débris pourraient continuer à s'accumuler sur plusieurs décennies. Cependant, l'agence oublie un détail important : la situation pose d'ores et déjà problème et c'est maintenant qu'il faut apporter des solutions, insiste-t-il.
Par exemple, le 28 février dernier, la sonde TIMED de la NASA, qui étudie le rayonnement solaire dans les hautes couches de l'atmosphère, a failli percuter un satellite russe de 32 ans à la retraite. Le satellite n'était plus opérationnel et n'aurait donc pas pu manœuvrer pour éviter l'impact. Si ces deux objets s'étaient trouvés sur une trajectoire de collision, personne n'aurait pu l'empêcher.
Du côté de la Station spatiale internationale, les enjeux sont encore plus importants, car elle abrite des astronautes. La station a été menacée à plusieurs reprises par ces débris orbitaux au cours des dernières années, une fois par un morceau de fusée russe et une autre fois à cause des éclats propulsés par un essai de missile antisatellite russe survenu en 2021, suite auquel la NASA avait dû reporter une sortie extravéhiculaire car les débris peuvent facilement transpercer les combinaisons spatiales.
Les États-Unis, la Chine et l'Inde ont également procédé à des essais de missiles antisatellite sur leurs propres satellites, en créant au passage des débris spatiaux. En 2022, la gravité du sujet était telle que la vice-présidente des États-Unis, Kamala Harris, a appelé la communauté internationale à un moratoire sur ces essais d'armes qui polluent l'espace.
Pour l'explorateur National Geographic Moriba Jah, ingénieur en aérospatiale de l'université du Texas et cofondateur de Privateer Space avec Steve Wozniak d'Apple, la NASA et les autres agences ou entreprises spatiales doivent prendre conscience du fait que « le destin de tout ce que nous lançons dans l'espace est de devenir un débris, et cela doit changer. »
Certaines agences s'attellent déjà à faire ce que suggère Jah et la NASA essaie de les rattraper. L'Agence spatiale européenne a dévoilé sa Charte zéro débris il y a plus d'un an. Cette charte fixe des objectifs précis que l'agence s'engage à atteindre d'ici 2030 pour réduire les risques de collision satellite-débris en orbite. De son côté, l'agence spatiale du Royaume-Uni a annoncé faire de la durabilité dans l'espace sa priorité en 2023 et le Japon a commencé à investir dans les entreprises spatiales privées dédiées au problème des débris orbitaux. Le Japon collabore également avec l'Organisation des Nations unies (ONU) pour éveiller les consciences à travers le monde.
Si la NASA a pris du retard, certains organismes américains de réglementation disposent déjà de leurs propres mesures contre la pollution orbitale, c'est notamment le cas de la Commission fédérale des communications (FCC). En 2022, la FCC a imposé de nouvelles règles obligeant les compagnies de télécommunications à éliminer leurs anciens satellites au lieu de les laisser dériver en orbite pendant des décennies. La Federal Aviation Administration a également proposé de contraindre les entreprises spatiales à débarrasser l'espace des étages supérieurs de fusées abandonnés en orbite.
Malgré tout, la stratégie de la NASA pourrait entraîner de réels progrès, ajoute Jah, même si elle n'a pas su faire le lien avec les principes de gestion des déchets déjà mis en œuvre pour la pollution terrestre, océanique et atmosphérique.
« La communauté spatiale essaie de réinventer la roue », déplore Jah. Contrairement à ses homologues européens, la NASA manque également d'un plan concret pour développer une économie spatiale circulaire, ce qui impliquerait de revoir la conception des engins spatiaux, de mettre à l'épreuve de nouveaux matériaux et de nouveaux carburants, mais aussi de réutiliser et de recycler des satellites au lieu de déployer un si grand nombre de satellites à usage unique.
D'autres pays n'ont pas attendu la NASA pour commencer à nettoyer les débris. Au Japon, l'entreprise Astroscale-Japan, ou ADRAS-J, a lancé en février sa mission Active Debris Removal qui tente actuellement de s'approcher en toute sécurité d'un fragment de fusée abandonné en orbite il y a quinze ans. L'objectif de l'équipe est de photographier l'imposant déchet spatial, d'analyser son état et ses mouvements, puis de synchroniser la rotation de la sonde avec celle du débris de façon à préparer son retrait de l'orbite, ce qui pourrait être accompli par une future mission.
En Europe, l'Agence spatiale européenne et une entreprise privée, appelée Clearspace, ont programmé pour 2026 le lancement d'un engin qui utilisera des bras robotisés pour capturer un morceau de fusée de 110 kg afin de le remorquer dans l'atmosphère où la sonde et son butin se consumeront sans représenter de danger. D'après l'United States Space Force, la fusée ciblée par l'agence semble avoir été frappée par un débris plus petit l'été dernier, ce qui démontre là encore le problème et la nécessité d'agir.
D'après Melroy, les Étas-Unis ne manqueront pas de mener leurs propres missions de nettoyage orbital, mais l'agence doit encore étoffer son plan pour la durabilité dans l'espace avant de prendre des décisions majeures. La scientifique n'est pas étrangère à la multitude de concepts imaginés pour désencombrer l'orbite terrestre, ayant elle-même travaillé pour DARPA, une agence qui explore les idées les plus farfelues allant du harpon au filet en passant par le gant de baseball orbital pour attraper les déchets en suspension dans l'espace.
Au bout du compte, les budgets annuels de la NASA dépendent du Congrès des États-Unis, qui a déjà réduit de 2 % le budget de l'agence pour 2024, faisant ainsi perdre de précieux financements à la mission de retour d'échantillons martiens et à d'autres programmes. Une mission de nettoyage des débris constituerait un nouvel investissement majeur.
À en croire l'analyse coût-bénéfice réalisée par la NASA, le retrait des 50 objets les plus dangereux de l'orbite terrestre basse serait onéreux, certes, mais profitable au long terme. Pour la plupart, ces objets sont des fragments de fusée et d'autres objets à l'abandon dont l'orbite frôle des satellites critiques. Toujours selon cette analyse, il serait également intéressant, sur le plan financier, de développer des lasers et d'autres technologies nous permettant de pousser ces débris hors de leur trajectoire afin d'éviter les collisions imminentes.
Cela dit, il faudra des années pour concevoir et déployer ce genre de technologie et encore plus de temps pour les mettre à l'échelle.
Au final, même s'il est important de se débarrasser des débris orbitaux dès maintenant, « le retrait actif des débris n'est pas une panacée », déclare Aaron Boley, planétologue à l'université de Colombie-Britannique et cofondateur de l'Outer Space Institute, un réseau d'experts de l'espace.
« Je suis ravi qu'ils aient élaboré cette stratégie pour la durabilité dans l'espace. Il y a beaucoup de travail », dit-il. Il est également nécessaire de modifier notre comportement, par exemple, puisqu'il est impossible de remédier à ce désordre si d'autres personnes continuent de polluer en laissant toujours plus de débris en orbite.
Par ailleurs, il soutient que la réflexion de la lumière sur les engins spatiaux qui altère le ciel nocturne devrait également être visée par cette stratégie. Boley et ses collègues ont écrit un article en mars sur la visibilité des satellites pendant l'éclipse solaire totale du 8 avril 2024, observée par des millions de personnes en Amérique du Nord.
L'orbite terrestre marque le début de l'espace et la durabilité devra s'étendre au-delà de cette frontière.
Le reste de la stratégie de la NASA inclura des mesures pour la Lune et son orbite, mais aussi pour l'espace lointain, notamment Mars et les astéroïdes.
À travers le programme Artemis, la NASA est entrée dans la course au développement d'une station lunaire et d'une station spatiale, alors que la Chine, la Russie et les entreprises spatiales affichent également leurs propres ambitions pour la Lune.
Cependant, notre satellite naturel dispose de ressources limitées. Pour exploiter les éventuelles réserves d'eau présentes sous forme de glace sur la Lune, la NASA devra tenir compte du besoin des autres pays et des générations futures. De telles considérations entreront également dans la stratégie de durabilité établie par l'agence américaine, indique Melroy. « Je pense que ces idées se préciseront à mesure que nos connaissances évoluent, mais notre objectif restera de préserver les zones d'intérêt scientifique, d'intérêt historique et de beauté naturelle. »
D'après Melroy, la stratégie de la NASA pour la durabilité dans l'espace s'apparente à son approche du changement climatique. L'agence spatiale étudie depuis des dizaines d'années le climat de la Terre comme un système holistique, en encourageant la durabilité sur notre propre planète.
L'analogie avec le climat s'applique également d'une autre façon à la crise des déchets orbitaux, reprend McKnight. « C'est un peu comme le réchauffement climatique dans le sens où tout le monde le voit venir, mais personne ne veut agir tant que ça ne pose pas de problème », souligne-t-il.
« On attend un événement grave qui nous force à réagir, mais il est toujours préférable de prévenir ou d'empêcher une menace plutôt que d'en réparer les dégâts. J'applaudis la NASA pour ce premier pas, mais j'espère que l'agence a conscience de l'urgence nécessaire. »
Cet article a initialement paru sur le site nationalgeographic.com en langue anglaise.
If you’re looking to meet people in your neighborhood, buy a robot lawn mower. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been amazed at the traffic generated by using my Mammotion Luba 2. People stop to watch it work, they bring their kids by, and cars have slowed down, backed up, and then pulled over to observe. But the best outcome I discovered by using a robot lawn mower is this: If you can share your robot lawn mower with your closest neighbors, what was a good value becomes a great one.
I live in the city on a street with reasonably sized residential lots of 3,000ish square feet, and almost every house on the block has a lawn. The lawns vary in size, but all are large enough to need a lawnmower, and many people on the block use a lawn service. Since our lots are small enough and the Mammotion Luba 2 is built to handle a lot more space, I found myself wondering if I could make the Luba think additional houses on the block were all part of the same map, and mow them, too. Spoiler: It works. The more houses a single robot can mow, the more value you’re getting from a robot lawnmower (and I generally feel they are a valuable buy, anyway).
An interesting aspect of robot lawnmowers came from a conversation with the team at Husqvarna, who pointed out that robots aren’t great at perceived boundaries like property lines, which is why lots of lawnbots have needed buried wire to mark perimeters with precision. Now that most bots are wireless, we teach the bot where the boundary is by walking them around the perimeter the first time and mapping paths between the different areas. A single property can have multiple mapped areas, just like your home has many rooms for a robot vacuum to consider. Your next door neighbor’s lawn can be just another area, and you can map a pathway to it. Even the street itself is just another area for the robot to cross to get to another mapped area, just like a sidewalk or driveway. At a minimum, robot vacuums are a great way to keep a hellstrip (the narrow space between your sidewalk and street curb) mowed and looking uniform across many properties.
Once I got permission from my neighbors to test this out, I parked the GPS tower for the Luba in a spot that gave line of sight for the two houses across the street and the house next door. Remember, you place that GPS tower with the mapped areas in mind, but if you plan to use it on multiple houses, that mapped area just expands, and you may need to consider a new location for the tower.
Using the remote control, I walked the robot over to the new areas to map and continued adding mapped areas in each of the yards, naming them and making connection pathways between the mapped areas. So, my neighbor across the street had her yard mapped with pathways between the areas on her property, and then my next door neighbor had the same. I did not make a pathway between the homes, which I’ll explain in a moment. At some point, all four homes, two on each side of the street, were mapped, and once the robot was in those spaces, it mowed the areas as well as it would the main home it was mapped to.
While on a lawn, the safety of the robot isn’t really in question (the biggest threat is someone walking up and nabbing it). It also isn't a major safety concern for people or pets while cutting the grass—it just moves too slow. But unattended in the street, it can get run over, and it's more likely to encounter people and dogs on sidewalks. The bottom line is: The robot is safe on your lawn, but when you map a walkway and ask it to leave your lawn, it can engage with the rest of the world, which could be a liability, a risk to your investment, or just a hassle. A better way to handle it is to manually walk the robot over, using the remote, especially across a street.
Now that it’s all mapped, remember that multiple people probably won’t have access to the controls for the robot, because the association lives on one phone. With some robots, you can add additional users, and for others, I’m sure that’s coming. Until then, one solution is scheduling, which would mean that as long as the robot is in mapped area or there’s a walkway mapped to it, it will run a set scheduled mow. If there’s no walkway, you’d need to be responsible for walking the robot over, but it’s not more labor than taking the trash to the curb. A second solution is keeping a cheap tablet with the robot, with the app loaded, so that anyone who wants to use the robot can walk over, grab the tablet and use it to walk the robot to their property and mow and then return it.
Robot lawn mowers range in price from about $1,500 to $5,000. The Mammotion Luba 2 we used for this experiment is $2,899 and while I think that’s a reasonable price to pay for a robot lawnmower, it would be a lot less when shared with a few neighbors. You all agree to maintain the robot collectively and share in the expenses, such as new blades, as needed.
Marie Kondo and Peter Walsh are great organizational masterminds in their own right whose tips on decluttering people's homes and lives have helped tons of people. While their techniques have some similarities, they also have a few differences that make them better suited to different styles and situations, so before you choose one to follow, here’s what you need to know.
Marie Kondo’s infamous KonMari method of organizing follows a few simple steps designed to ensure “you will never again relapse to clutter.” Here’s what she calls for:
Commit yourself to tidying up.
Imagine your ideal lifestyle.
Finish discarding first.
Tidy by category and not by location.
Follow the right order.
Ask yourself if it sparks joy and get rid of it if it doesn't.
In this method, you’re first committing to tidying up and imagining what your life would look like if you were organized and decluttered all the time, then throwing away trash, sticking to a routine, and assessing your clutter so you only keep the things you truly value.
Walsh’s method is a little more intense. The five steps are sort of like Kondo’s, but you’ll notice some differences:
Empty your space.
Create a vision for the space and set an intention for it.
Sort everything you removed into a “vision” pile and an “out-the-door” pile.
Get rid of the “out-the-door pile” by donating or throwing everything away.
Move everything from the “vision” pile back into the space.
Walsh calls on you to remove everything from a space or room, set a specific goal for that room, and be a little brutal by discarding anything that doesn’t align with the vision.
While both Kondo and Walsh advocate for taking some time to visualize how a decluttered space could and would look in your life, their approaches to meeting the goal you set are different.
First, KonMari involves cleaning up by category, not location. Walsh’s technique, on the other hand, is very space-oriented; he suggests doing it room by room. Kondo asks you to start with your clothes, then your books, papers, and miscellaneous items before finishing up with anything that may have some sentimental value. Walsh is much less interested in sentimentality and advises you to chuck out anything that doesn’t align with your “vision” for your future space.
To really perform Walsh's method as he prescribes, you have to totally empty a space or room, then slowly refill it. That can be a little overwhelming, especially when the parameters around what you can keep are so tight. Kondo’s steps are slightly more relaxed and welcoming; they leave some space for you to hold onto things that have meaning to you and work at your own pace.
Both techniques are valuable in their own way; Kondo and Walsh have both sold books and starred in shows because they both have an audience of people who find real benefit in their ideas. Which method you choose depends on a few factors, like how attached you are to your possessions, how much space you have to declutter, and whether you find the task overwhelming.
Eufy is a company that, in general, makes products I really like. They make some of the best security cameras in the industry, enough that after testing lots of brands, Eufy’s Solocams are what I keep installed at my house. Anker, their parent company, makes some of my favorite power banks, and I really like my Eufy doorbell. Like a lot of companies making smart tech, they also make vacuums.
The Eufy Robot Vacuum Omni S1 Pro is interesting in a number of ways. Even though Eufy is a well-established brand that has produced and launched many products including other robot vacuums, for this model, they went back to Kickstarter, where their goal was blown out of the water in hours. Second, instead of going for the compact tower design almost all companies have chosen for robot vacuums lately, the S1 has a giant retro tower look to it. Despite my brand loyalty, the interesting design and the vacuum's decent performance, however, I think the Omni S1 Pro isn’t a good buy—there’s a disconnect between the robot Eufy thinks they built and the one I tested. Currently priced at $999 on Kickstarter, the S1 will become available for retail purchase later this spring or early summer at a much higher price.
Generally, robot vacuums and mops now come with a dock and tower that will refill the clean water, empty the dirty water and vacuum, and clean the mop. These towers are impossible to ignore due to size, but brands generally try to make them generic-looking enough so they’ll blend into the landscape of the room around them. Eufy went a different way with the S1. The tower is tall enough you might mistake it for a stick vacuum, and bears the word “MACH” right on the front, which is also the name of the app. Made of molded transparent black plastic, the contents of the tower are veiled, but only barely. While it’s likely made of the same materials as other brands, which are also molded plastic, the see-through plastic occasionally looks cheap. Despite the vertical size, the tower also doesn’t take up much less horizontal space than other robots have. The footprint is about the same, but you can’t tuck this under tables and counters as easily.
The robot itself is like a lot of other modern robot vacuums, with a roller, rotating sweeping brushes and mop brushes—and to its credit, Eufy ships the S1 Pro with plenty of replacement parts, including extra rollers, brushes and filters. But Eufy has promoted this robot as a premium floorbot, with a premium price. In the marketing for the robot, you routinely see words like “groundbreaking” used. In fact, the marketing materials used to say “The World’s First Floor-Washing Robot Vacuum with All-in-One Station” until I asked what was different from other floor-washing robots, since they’re pretty common now. The language disappeared from Kickstarter but remains on the Eufy website. The problem is, it’s not groundbreaking: While this robot was being developed, floor washing robots became routine, and the technology surpassed what this robot offers, with other brands offering extending brushes and mops, on board video, voice assistants and direct connection to water lines. While the S1 includes a lot of features I like on other robots—like a place for cleaning solution built into the tower, and an easy way to divide and merge rooms in the app—most of the other premium robots have that, too.
Most robots come ready to roll out of the box, and the S1 isn’t any different. After unboxing, it just needed to be filled with water and have a few brushes popped into places. In the case of many robot mop combos, you can add cleaning solution to the clean water, but recently, models like Roborock have added a bay for cleaning solution to the dock, so you always have the right amount. As I mentioned, Eufy included this feature, but it relies on Eufy branded cleaning solution in a sealed bottle that you install—to replace it, you’d need to purchase more from Eufy, while other models allow you to choose any solution you want to use. The MACH app is separate from the Eufy Clean app, and I’ve previously talked about how every one of Eufy’s products uses a different app (Clean, Security, Pet, etc), so this was just one more to add to the bunch. Still, it’s a good app, and has the same user interface as most brands. A map is made using LiDAR the first time the robot goes out, and then you can break it into rooms, dividing and merging spaces as you like and naming them. Of all the robots I’ve tested, the S1 mapped the space better than any other (and I’ve had six or seven robots map the same space).
One aspect I did really like was that you can set cleaning preferences per room, instead of doing so per run, and you can also set a priority of rooms rather than let the robot decide. If you want to wash the kitchen floor multiple times but the hallway only once, you can, and you can ask the bot to always clean the bathroom last. The app has schedules, and the same general settings you expect, including the remote control. The app lacks two features I’m seeing in many robots these days: pin and go, or “spot cleaning,” and onboard video. While I don’t think video is all that useful, it’s still a feature you’d get in other models. Pin and go is actually very useful—you can just drop a pin on your map and the robot cleans that spot specifically.
As a floor cleaner, the S1 does an okay job. This is how I felt about the Eufy X10 Pro Omni I reviewed a few months ago. It vacuumed up a lot of debris on the floor, but after three passes on my kitchen had missed a deliberately left onion peel in the dead center of the floor. The S1 does not hug the wall; it lacks those extending arms other models now offer. As a mop, it certainly cleaned up surface level spills, but the rotating brushes did not dig into grime at all, leaving the white tile looking dirty. On 11 ventures out, I’d let the Eufy run at max settings, the highest level of suction and mopping, going over each space two times. In each instance, I would then ask my Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra to make a single run afterwards, and I could watch it grab everything the S1 missed. It happened over and over.
Earlier this week, I spoke with Eric Villines, Head of Global Communications at Anker about the S1 launch and why they chose Kickstarter. I appreciated how proud the team at Anker seemed to be about the way the Eufy encourages innovation, working like an incubator with at least half the staff devoted to research and development. When teams produce great concepts, crowdfunding allows Eufy to find innovative ways to move those products forward. One of the reasons they like crowdfunding for products like the S1 is that it creates a long runway of feedback from enthusiasts and funders, which Villines said usually impacts the products a lot before launch.
To be clear, Eufy doesn’t make bad robot vacuums; they work just fine. But they seem to only work fine—not great. The S1 is positioned as a premium robot vacuum, but for the current $999 price, i think you can do better with the Roborock S8 Pro, at the same price. When the S1 moves to its full retail price in the mid-$1000 range, I think you’d do better with the Roborock S8 Maxv Ultra at $1799. I am also eagerly awaiting the new S10 from Switchbot; if I were shopping for a robot vacuum right now, I'd wait for that to launch, since Switchbot has already made a really great vacuum before.
Some decluttering techniques are really intense and time consuming, requiring you to use a bunch of storage bins or even clear out entire rooms and rebuild them bit by bit. All of that can be pretty overwhelming and, if you’re overwhelmed enough, you may not want to do it at all. If that feels familiar, a simpler, more laid-back technique might be a better fit.
This decluttering method comes from Dana K. White, who has chronicled her “deslobification” journey on a blog since she began in 2009. She took notes of all her wins and failures, keeping track of what worked and what didn’t—and ultimately published a book, Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff.
Though she’s got lots of great content after 15 years of working on different ways to spruce up a home, her tips can be broken down into five easy steps that don’t require extra purchases, any kind of deep visualization, or fancy tricks. Her technique is simple, straightforward, and built around small bursts of cleaning that anyone can manage, even when the overall task is overwhelming.
To follow White’s method, first identify one small area you want to take care of. Don’t try to do a whole room or the entire house. Keep it manageable and opt for a shelf, a cabinet, a tabletop, the floor, or another very specific area. Then, do these five things:
Start with trash, like receipts, wrappers, bags, anything that is broken, expired food or products, or anything you simply don’t need or use at all. Throw all that away.
Do the easy stuff. This means that anything you see that has a place somewhere else should be removed and put back where it belongs. Don’t put everything in a pile and return it all at once; that will just keep your workspace cluttered. Instead, if you find one thing that goes somewhere else, like a hair tie that could be returned to the bathroom, do a quick scan for anything else that belongs there, too, and bring it all.
Categorize “duh clutter,” or anything that could be donated. Keep a box on hand and toss anything worthy of donation into it.
Ask yourself one or two decluttering questions. First, “If I needed this item, where would I look for it?” If you can instantly think of an answer, take the item where it belongs. If you can’t think of an answer, ask a follow-up: “If I needed this item, would it occur to me that I already had one?” A good example of this one is if you aren’t much of a wino, but find a corkscrew in your drawer. If friends were coming for dinner and you picked up some pinot for them, would you even realize you already had an opener at home or would you buy a cheap one at the liquor store checkout counter? If it’s not something you use or seek out often, donate it. Spending a few dollars to repurchase one on the off chance you ever actually need it in the future will be worth the space you save by not keeping that thing around.
Finally, make it fit. This means you can only keep things that you have space for in the area you’re cleaning. Don’t buy new storage containers or force anything to fit. Only the most necessary items get to stay, or else they have to be stored somewhere more appropriate or gotten rid of.
By working through these steps in small spaces, you make incremental progress without getting overwhelmed. All of the steps are designed to keep this easy, in fact, even the little details about removing trash right away to create a more visually decluttered (and motivated) space to work and returning things to their proper place one at a time instead of all at once to avoid creating a secondary box of clutter while you clean.
This method is also great for people who struggle with decision-making. When you start, you know you can’t keep it all. You’re aiming to reduce the amount of items so everything can fit in the space. Asking the two decluttering questions is a helpful way to discern whether something really is necessary to hold onto and removes the sentimentality or excuse-making from tossing something out. If you struggle with motivation and the ability to make quick decisions when you’re decluttering, this could be the method for you.
You can get this Pop-A-Shade 3-person tent on sale for $27.99 right now (reg. $79.99). It comes in blue, green, or orange and expands from its carrying bag in seconds and folds back up almost as quickly. You can use it for music festivals, tailgating, hiking, or right in your backyard for protection against rain, wind, sun, and bugs with silver-bonded nylon sides, Oxford fabric flooring, and built-in insect netting. It also has a skylight at the top for extra ventilation when the elements allow, or added light when it's closed, as well as an internal hook for hanging a lamp or mini fan.
You can get this Pop-A-Shade 3-person tent on sale for $27.99 right now (reg. $79.99), though prices can change at any time.
If you've been looking for a better alternative to traditional free email services like Gmail, I highly recommend checking out Proton Mail. The service is completely free, and offers some of the best privacy you can find in an email platform. On top of that, it ties into the other services Proton offers, like its VPN, password manager, and even a privacy-centric calendar service.
But where I believe Proton really shines is with its monthly subscription. With so many features already available with the free version of its services, dropping $13 a month ($10 a month when purchased annually) on Proton Unlimited might not seem necessary. But if protecting your privacy online is a priority of yours, Proton Unlimited's extra features are absolutely worth the cost. If you don't feel the entire package is useful to you, Proton breaks some of its services into individual subscriptions as well.
By default, signing up for Proton's services gets you the most important features, like end-to-end encryption, encrypted contact details, and multiple calendars. You'll also get 5GB of Proton Drive storage for free, with end-to-end encryption, making it more private than Google Drive. VPN features are also thrown in (but for just one device), giving you access to medium-speed VPN servers in five countries. Additionally, Proton has its own free password manager in the form of Proton Pass. There's so much to love about Proton before even laying down a dollar that you might not consider subscribing at all. But you should.
Perhaps my favorite thing about Proton Unlimited is the support for three custom email domains in Proton Mail: This lets you change your email address to whatever you want, whether you want a custom domain for your business, or choosing an address that sounds better that @protonmail.com. You also get support for 15 different email addresses in your Proton account, so you can have separate accounts for shopping, social media, etc. It's a convenient way to break up your email notifications without having to sign up for and juggle multiple Proton accounts. You can also send unlimited messages, and set up unlimited folders, labels, and custom filters, an area that's somewhat limited on the free version of Proton Mail.
Proton Unlimited also gives you unlimited "hide-my-email aliases," a feature that lets you give out decoy email addresses which all forward back to your real address. That way, no one needs to know your personal address. Apple offers something similar, but that only works if you sign up on your Apple device. Proton's offering is a lot more accessible, since it can work on Windows PCs, Macs, iPhones, and Android phones.
On the Calendar side of things, your access to separate calendars will jump from three to 25 with Proton Unlimited, and you'll be able to share your calendar with others. Proton Drive gets 500GB of storage with the basic Unlimited plan, though the biggest upgrades definitely come from the expanded Proton VPN (more on that later).
While it's also available on the free version, the fact that your emails are end-to-end encrypted (so not even Proton can't access them) is another huge win for Proton Mail in general, especially if you send and receive private information.
If you don't feel like you need all the features that Proton Unlimited offers, you can also just subscribe to Proton Mail Plus. This service costs $4.99 a month and comes with 15GB of storage, 10 custom email addresses, and support for a single custom email domain. You'll also get unlimited folders, labels, and filters, but you'll miss out on the additional features added with Proton VPN, which might be okay for some.
While Proton VPN is one of the best free VPNs you'll find, Proton Unlimited gives complete access to all of Proton's fastest VPN servers in over 90 countries. You also get P2P/BitTorrent access, NetShield protection, Tor over VPN, a VPN accelerator for faster speeds, a custom DNS if you want to use it, and LAN connections.
P2P and BitTorrent protection help keep your IP hidden when sharing files or downloads, and the built-in NetShield functionality blocks out ads and annoying trackers that keep tabs on your browsing history. Access to Tor over VPN provides even more secure web browsing, too, thanks to the combined power of the Tor browser's functionality and Proton VPN's network routing. If you really want to take things up a notch, the custom DNS functionality lets you further protect yourself from bad actors by providing your own protocol for connecting to the internet.
Every website you visit is always trying to track you in some way, which is why using a VPN has become so important. Proton's free VPN is already great, but Proton Unlimited's VPN is even better at blocking ads and trackers without sacrificing too much of your home internet's speed. I've used ExpressVPN and Nord VPN in the past, and Proton's speeds (even on the free version) beat them out every time.
Without Proton Unlimited, Proton Pass gives you two vaults for storing passwords, 10 email aliases, and the option to share your Proton Pass with up to two others. But if you subscribe to Proton Unlimited, you get up to 50 different vaults, unlimited hide-my-email aliases, built-in two-factor authentication (2FA), and the ability to share with up to ten others. If you're only interested in using Proton Pass, you can also subscribe to Pass Plus, which is $4.99 a month (or $1.99 a month when subscribing annually).
Proton Unlimited's most recent update brings real-time Dark-Web monitoring to the service, which updates you if any of your personal information pops up on the sketchier corners of the internet. These kinds of services are offered by plenty of financial institutes, but having it in a place that you check every day—like your email—is a great way to make sure you're always on top of your personal security.
Again, you don't need to pay for Proton to benefit here: The free version of Proton Mail is feature-rich, and doesn't lock any important privacy settings behind a paywall, so the service is going to protect your privacy without spending a dime. But, if you want even more features to protect your privacy, and additional tools to organize your digital life, Proton Unlimited is the way to go.
Google launched the Gemini app on Android back in February, alongside the AI's general rebrand. (Gemini used to be called Bard, if you recall.) With it, you can access Google's AI to do the general chatbot things you expect from a generative AI model, in addition to the option of setting Gemini as your phone's default assistant.
Until now, however, many Android phones have been locked out of the Gemini app, as Google rolled out the experience with a strict OS minimum: Unless your smartphone was running Android 12 or newer, you couldn't use the Gemini app. You could still access Gemini's website, gemini.google.com, but to use any phone-level features (including, of course, replacing Google Assistant with Gemini), you'd need to upgrade your phone. Probably not worth the cost of admission if your current device is working fine.
Good news, though: This is all changing. As reported by Android Authority, Google quietly reduced the Android OS minimum requirements for the Gemini app from Android 12 and higher to Android 10 and higher. AssembleDebug first discovered this change in the latest version of the app uploaded to APKMirror, and highlighted it to Android Authority. But now, the officially Play Store listing for the Gemini app also says it "requires Android 10 and up." To be clear, Google's official support page for the Gemini app still says it requires Android 12 and newer (in addition to 4GB of RAM, no less) but this will likely change as well.
This problem doesn't affect most Pixel devices, since Google supports Android 12 starting with Pixel 3 and newer. However, if you have a Pixel 2, or an older Samsung Galaxy, OnePlus, Nokia, or any other smartphone stuck on Android 10 or Android 11, you can at least give Gemini a shot on your device without feeling left behind.
If you’re a book fiend and love reading, you probably accumulate books at an alarming rate. They overflow your bookshelves and start stacking up on the floor, on tables, in just about every nook and cranny of your home no matter how weird or inappropriate. Books stacked on the toilet tank? Sure, why not.
You might be able to handle this by buying more bookcases—until you have literally crammed as many bookcases into your space as the laws of physics will allow. And yet I can guarantee that even when you have filled every possible space in your house with books you will continue to buy more books. Such is the nature of this disease. If that describes you, don’t start purging your books just yet. There are ways to double the book capacity of the bookshelves you already have.
One of the easiest and most impactful ways of increasing your bookshelf capacity is to add some risers at the back of every shelf. This instantly and literally doubles the amount of books you can cram onto each shelf, as seen below. Essentially you’re creating a slightly raised second shelf, sort of like a display in a store. Then you can line up a whole second row of books in the back—they won’t be quite so accessible, so it’s best to put the books you don’t grab every day back there, but the extra space is magical.
You can do this the DIY route easily by using unneeded shoeboxes or egg cartons—just line them up in the back and cut them to fit. Or you can make your own—if you’re moderately handy with woodworking, a few pieces of wood will make a sturdy riser with very little effort. Or you can buy risers made of acrylic, like these—they come in a variety of lengths, so you can mix and match to accommodate the width of your shelves.
The riser solution works best with paperback books; hardcovers are larger and probably can’t be doubled up like this on standard shelves. If you have adjustable shelves, you might be able to raise the height of your shelves to make this work with hardcovers and larger books, but that will reduce the space for the other shelves so it might be a wash—you’ll have to do some measuring to see if it’s going to work.
One TikTok user shared a brilliant solution for increasing your bookshelf capacity: Makeup palette organizers, like this one, or this one. By filling these with books, you can horizontally stack your books and easily pull them out when you want to browse your collection—six or seven books deep, typically. The holders are easy to pull out, and you can mix them in with some traditionally vertically-stacked books for a more attractive look—or use as many as you can to get as many books as possible in there.
A basic but effective way to increase your bookshelf capacity is to add one or more shelves to the unit. You probably won’t double your capacity this way, but it’s an easy, cheap way to get more books in there. If your bookcase has pre-drilled holes for shelves, this is pretty easy:
Sort your books. First, organize your books by height.
Organize the shelves. Place your shelves so that each one has exactly enough height to fit a specific grouping of books.
Your goal is to be as efficient as possible, opening up enough space in the case for at least one more shelf. You can get standard-width (30-inch) shelves from Ikea individually that will match up well with most finishes (don’t forget to get some extra support pegs if you need them).
If your bookcase doesn’t have pre-drilled holes you’ll have to drill your own, of course. You can buy a shelf-pin jig that can make this a lot easier (and neater). And you can save a small amount of money by buying wood and cutting and finishing it yourself, of course, though you’ll pay in time and sweat equity.
Finally, if you don’t want to physically transform your shelves, you can just stack your books horizontally. If you organize your books carefully, horizontal stacking will generally squeeze a few more books onto your shelves because you can use all the vertical space. You can probably put two layers of books on each shelf—although the back layer will be hidden and difficult to access. This won’t yield a ton of extra space, but it might be worthwhile if you just need to cram a few more tomes on those shelves.
Joining the Android Beta program gives you firsthand look at the latest Android updates, as well as a way to provide feedback about those changes before they reach full release. If you're curious about trying the latest Android betas, then signing up is easy. Here's what you need to know.
The Android Beta program is ongoing, with the latest versions of Android always available to test. To sign up, all you need to do is sign into the primary Google Account associated with your Android device, then navigate to the Android Beta page. Here, you'll be able to see which beta Google is currently working on and learn which of your devices are eligible.
If you have an eligible device, then you'll be able to enroll in the program. From there, beta updates will continue to arrive on your phone through the OTA update service found in your device's settings. You can, of course, opt out of the program at any point if you grow tired of testing out the latest beta updates.
The latest beta, as of this article, is the Android 15 Beta, which offers a first-hand look at upcoming features, including notification cooldown, high-quality webcam mode, partial screen sharing, among many others. There are still a few months of updates before the new operating system drops, but it's a good time to jump in and see what Google has cooking.
If you're tired of beta updates, you can opt out by navigating back to the Android Beta page. From here, ensure you're signed into the primary Google Account tied to your device, and hit Opt Out under "Eligible Devices." This will opt the device out of future beta updates, and you'll be able to move back to the latest release version through the OTA update system.
You used to have to flash the latest Android betas to your devices to check them out, but luckily, Google has made the process a lot easier. Of course, all of this relies heavily on having one of the latest eligible devices, which you can see an updated list of on the Android Beta website. At a glance, here are the phones eligible for the Android 15 beta:
Decluttering is something we all need to do periodically and probably put off too long, which is why there is a whole industry built around decluttering tips and methodologies. While most of the techniques are unique, many of them have something in common: At some point in your decluttering process, you're going to need some storage boxes.
A number of decluttering approaches call for you to sort and categorize your items, usually into at least three categories: Keep, throw away, and donate (with a possible fourth category of items to sell, if you want). You can use boxes for categorizing and sorting when you're employing approaches like 12-12-12 method, the Peter Walsh method, or the "packing party" trick, for instance.
The 12-12-12 method calls on you to throw away 12 items, donate 12, and keep 12—every day. Obviously, you won't bring 12 items to the donation center every day, but you can set them aside and take them all in one go later on. The Peter Walsh method, on the other hand, requires you to clear out an entire room, figure out what you really want from the room, and then only put back items that fit with that vision. The rest get—you guessed it—tossed or donated. While you could use cardboard boxes for these, it might be better to get something sturdier, especially if you plan on repeating your process room by room and reusing the boxes in the process.
First, consider this four-pack of bins from HOMZ if you have larger items or a high volume of stuff to clear out. They have lids, so they're stackable and easy to move without spilling, plus heavy-duty handles that will help you cart them from room to room. They're big enough to hold a considerable amount, too, so your trips to the dump or the donation center won't be so frequent.
These smaller, stackable baskets are also a good option, especially if you're going through smaller areas or items. They have a smaller footprint, so you won't feel as stifled while you're in the thick of decluttering, and they allow you to sort through smaller things, like the stuff you'd find in your junk drawer, without compromising on movability as you go room to room.
The second category of storage bins is the kind you use after you've categorized your possessions and made the tough decisions about what to keep and what to toss. Big, transparent, plastic behemoths like the bins above aren't exactly stylish, nor are they practical in small spaces, but some organizing methods, like Core 4, are pretty explicit that you need bins in your home to keep your stuff in order and prevent everything from getting cluttered again. Simply put, you need function and style. Try these.
There are a few nice things about these StorageWorks boxes: First, they're white and unassuming, so they'll look nice in practically any home, but still have convenient handles and lids. Second, the brand offers a variety of sizes, so you can get the same patterns and boxes no matter what you're looking to store. Even if the contents of the boxes are a little messy, the outer appearance of cohesion will go a long way toward giving a decluttered impression over all.
These are what I've used for years. Simple storage cubes fit nicely on shelves, preventing whatever you're storing on those shelves from looking messy or unappealing. They're great for small spaces where you might have no choice but to put your stuff on open shelving. Best of all, they're collapsible, so if you're not using them, you can just flatten them and stash them away.
Amazon is full of decorative storage bin options, and while it might seem a little clinical or uncreative to have a home full of boxes, the organizational opportunities they provide are worth compromising a little on your self-expression, so take a look for some boxes that match your unique style. If that really is too much to bear, though, Amazon is also full of multi-function storage furniture like ottomans, mirrors, and picture frames with hidden compartments inside.
For the first time in American history, a former president is the defendant in a felony trial, and the misinformation, rumors, and fake news are coming in hot from the Trump trial. Below are some quick fact checks of some of the many dubious claims coming out of the trial.
I’m starting with the most important claim first: Donald Trump farts a lot in court and the stench is so horrendous he’s stinking up half of Manhattan. Even though many people are saying it, the source of the fart rumor is shaky. It comes from this X post from Ben Meiselas of anti-Trump organization Meidas Touch who wrote, “What I’m hearing from credible sources is that Donald Trump is actually farting in the courtroom… I’m hearing it from actual credible people that as he’s kind of falling asleep, he’s actually passing gas and that his lawyers are really struggling with the smell.” While definitely hilarious, secondhand reports from political opponents credited to “credible sources” and “actual credible people” aren’t enough. That said, he’s an old guy, reportedly with a terrible diet, and everyone farts, so it’s not impossible that Trump will fart in court in the future.
Verdict: False
With farts out of the way, let's get down to legal business. Despite the widespread description of this as a “hush money” trial, Donald Trump is not being charged with 34 felonies for paying adult actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 to not talk about an affair. There’s nothing illegal about paying someone to be quiet about having sex with you. Instead, Trump is being charged with falsifying business records related to the hush money payment. But it gets even more granular, because falsifying business records might be charged as a misdemeanor in New York, but according to the prosecution, Trump’s actions rises to the level of a multiple felonies because Trump falsified business records to conceal another, more serious crime.
Verdict: False
On his social media account and during his daily après-trial press harangues, Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that “every legal scholar said this this case is nonsense.” Even if we substitute “most” for “every,” it’s a dubious assertion. But some legal scholars do see problems with the case. In an op-ed published in The New York Times this week, Boston University law professor Jed Handelsman Shugerman expressed concern that the underlying crime that makes Trump’s supposed record falsifications felonies, is a federal crime, so prosecutor Bragg is essentially using a state law to prosecute a federal crime. If what Shugerman is saying is correct, this isn’t a dead-to-right, slam-dunk case like it would be if the issue was “Did Donald Trump pay a porn star to not talk about having sex with him.”
Verdict: Mixed
Another oft-repeated line from Trump is that this trial (and the rest of his trials) are happening under the direction of President Biden, or, as Trump put it on Truth Social, “BIDEN’S DOJ IS RUNNING THE CASE.” There is no evidence that BIDEN’S DOJ is doing anything in connection with the case. In real life, prosector Alvin Bragg is running the case, and he is an elected state official who doesn’t report to the federal government.
Verdict: False
Trump’s legal team requested court be adjourned on May 17 so that Trump could attend Barron Trump's graduation. Judge Juan M. Merchan hasn’t ruled on the request, saying “It really depends on how we’re doing on time and where we are in the trial.” But Trump still told reporters “It looks like the judge will not let me go to the graduation of my son,” and “I can’t go to my son’s graduation.”
Verdict: False
After Trump’s posts about not being able to attend his son’s graduation, random people on X and elsewhere claimed he’d never attended any of his other children’s graduation ceremonies. This isn’t true. Snopes looked into it, and Trump was seen at both the high school and college graduation ceremonies of Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka, and Tiffany Trump.
Verdict: False
It would take forever to debunk the many false assertions that Trump has made about this criminal case (and his other criminal cases, and his civil cases, and really everything) but here are a few of the main themes: The judge is prejudiced against him. The judge’s daughter hates him. The judge’s gag order means that he is “not allowed to talk.” George Soros has something to do with the prosecution. The jury is rigged. You get the picture. All of these things are not true, and in a general sense: Donald Trump lies all the time.
Verdict: False
Donald Trump may not fart all the time during his trial, but he does fall asleep all the time. According to reputable sources within the courthouse, Trump fell asleep numerous times during the jury selection process. New York Times’ Maggie Haberman initially reported: “Trump appears to be sleeping,” and the assertion was backed up by Erik Uebelacker, a reporter for Courthouse News, Law360’s Stewart Bishop, and others who were in the room.
Verdict: True
While it is possible to buy a pizza with littler pizzas on top, Donald Trump did not call room service after having sex with Stormy Daniels and say, “I want a pizza and I want the toppings on the pizza to be littler pizzas, like the size of pepperonis, but they’re actually fully pizzas, just little.” It was a joke. Although Trump does eat pizza with a knife and fork, and he did tell Stormy Daniels that her nose looked like a beet and said, “I hope all the sharks die” according to Daniels.
Verdict: False
I was recently gifted a charming, kitschy magnet, and as I tucked it into my wallet for safekeeping, I couldn't seem to remember: Do magnets spell doom for credit cards? Many of us have held onto vague rumors about the potential dangers of magnets interfering with the functionality of our credit cards. Let's take a look at the relationship between magnets and credit cards, and separate fact from fiction.
Traditional credit cards feature a magnetic strip on the back, which stores important information such as your card number, expiration date, and security code. This magnetic strip is susceptible to demagnetization, which can occur due to prolonged exposure to magnetic fields (or physical damage).
When a magnetic strip becomes demagnetized, the data stored on it can become corrupted or unreadable. This means that card readers at stores or ATMs may have difficulty recognizing your card, potentially leading to declined transactions or other issues.
(Sidebar: This is why you've been told not to keep your hotel key card next to your phone; your phone is a potential source of magnet exposure that renders key cards inoperable.)
While it's unlikely that everyday exposure to weak magnetic fields will cause significant damage to your credit card, it's still wise to exercise caution. Stronger magnets, such as those found in speakers, MRI machines, or certain industrial equipment, can pose a real threat to the integrity of your card's magnetic strip.
Additionally, mishandling or scratching the magnetic strip can also contribute to demagnetization, as the physical damage can disrupt the magnetic particles that store your card's data.
To address the vulnerabilities of magnetic strips, the credit card industry has been transitioning towards EMV chip technology. EMV (which stands for Europay, Mastercard, and Visa) cards feature a small, embedded microchip that generates a unique code for each transaction, providing enhanced security and eliminating the risk of demagnetization.
Unlike magnetic strips, these chips are not affected by magnetic fields or physical damage, ensuring that your card's data remains intact and secure.
While magnetic strips are still present on many credit cards for compatibility with older payment terminals, the EMV chip has become the primary method of transaction processing, significantly reducing the potential impact of magnets on your card's functionality.
To minimize the risk of demagnetization and ensure the longevity of your credit cards, you should keep them away from strong magnetic sources and handle them with care. Avoid storing them near speakers, magnets, or other devices that generate powerful magnetic fields, and be mindful of preventing physical damage to the magnetic strip.
As EMV chip technology continues to be the mainstream, the concern over magnets affecting credit cards will become increasingly obsolete. However, it's always wise to exercise caution and follow best practices to safeguard your financial information and ensure smooth transactions.
Everything old is new again. After killing the pre-TikTok short-form video platform Vine in 2017, Twitter is using its new overhaul as X to relaunch its video initiative. That includes a smart TV app, according to X CEO Linda Yaccarino.
Tweet may have been deleted
In a post on her personal X account yesterday, Yaccarino previewed the app’s UI and laid out some of its earliest features. The result looks like something of a cross between TikTok and YouTube.
On the more YouTube side of things, the app looks like it’ll be structured around various tabs that users scroll through horizontally, with their account info resting in a left hand sidebar. Also in line with YouTube is the length of videos. Despite X’s current association with short videos, some of the examples in Yaccarino’s post are multiple hours long.
But to compete with TikTok (which is facing its own problems), X is also placing a greater emphasis on algorithms and AI. The trending tab is right at the top of the app’s UI, and while YouTube’s TV app does something similar when users aren’t logged in, X is also promising to supplement its algorithm with “AI-Powered Topics” and “Enhanced Video Search.”
It’s unclear how exactly these promises will play out in reality. The announcement follows Yaccarino’s earlier promise that X will become “a video first platform,” as platform owner Elon Musk continues to secure deals with content providers like WWE.
Notable among Musk’s deals is the platform’s spotlight on controversial figures including Tulsi Gabbard and Tucker Carlson, the latter of whom appears in Yaccarino’s preview of the app’s UI.
X is fighting an uphill battle to establish itself as a video platform, especially as its more traditional text-based business is currently being overrun with malware and spam. To help with the transition, X won’t have ads in its app at launch, according to a note to corporate partners seen by The Hollywood Reporter. A release date has not been specified.
Netflix's May lineup is heavy on comedy—headlined by a six-part live event from John Mulaney—coinciding with the 2024 Netflix Is A Joke Fest that runs from May 2–12 in Los Angeles. John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s In L.A will air in installments beginning on May 3 and wrapping up on May 10. Also streaming live are Katt Williams: Woke Foke (May 4) and Roast of Tom Brady (May 5) with an award show special featuring Kevin Hart (Mark Twain Prize Award: Kevin Hart, May 11). Other comedy specials dropping in May are from Udom Taephanich (Deaw Special: Soft Super Power, May 1) and Rachel Feinstein (Big Guy, May 21).
The true crime documentary slate includes The Final: Attack on Wembley (May 8), chronicling the violence that took place at the Euro 2020 final held in July 2021 when ticketless fans stormed the stadium; Cooking Up Murder: Uncovering the Story of César Román (May 10), a docuseries about a murder case involving a Spanish chef; and Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal (May 15) about the data hack of the infamous dating site. Later in the month, three-part docuseries Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult (May 29) covers the TikTok dancers trapped in a cult fronted by management company 7M.
Other May highlights include part one of season 3 of Bridgerton (May 16) and Unfrosted (May 3), a comedy film directed by and starring Jerry Seinfeld (along with Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan, Hugh Grant, and Amy Schumer) that loosely tells the Pop-Tarts creation story.
Here’s everything else coming to (and leaving) Netflix in May.
Buying London—Netflix Series
The Life You Wanted—Netflix Series
Monster—Netflix Film
Deaw Special: Super Soft Power—Netflix Comedy
Down The Rabbit Hole—Netflix Film
Frankly Speaking—Netflix Series
Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar—Netflix Series
Airport
Airport '77
Airport 1975
The Best Man Holiday
Blended
Blue Mountain State: Season 1
Blue Mountain State: Season 2
Blue Mountain State: Season 3
Blue Mountain State: The Rise of Thadland
Eat Pray Love
The Edge of Seventeen
The Equalizer
The Gentlemen
Hellboy (2019)
Hulk
Jumanji (1995)
Liar Liar
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
The Matrix Resurrections
Mortal Kombat (2021)
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
The Nutty Professor
The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps
Outlander: Season 6
Patriots Day
Public Enemies
Ride Along
Shrek
Shrek Forever After
Starship Troopers
Traffic
The Wedding Planner
White House Down
Woody Woodpecker
The Young Victoria
A Man in Full—Netflix Series
Beautiful Rebel—Netflix Film
Lola
Secrets of the Neanderthals—Netflix Documentary
T・P BON—Netflix Anime
2 Hearts
John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s In L.A—Netflix Comedy Special (Live Event)
Postcards—Netflix Series
Selling the OC: Season 3—Netflix Series
The Unbroken Voice: Season 2—Netflix Series
Unfrosted—Netflix Film
The Atypical Family—Netflix Series
Katt Williams: Woke Foke—Netflix Comedy Special (Live Event)
The Peanut Butter Falcon
Roast of Tom Brady—Netflix Comedy Special (Live Event)
30 for 30: Broke
30 for 30: Deion's Double Play
30 for 30: The Two Escobars
Reba: Seasons 1-6
Super Rich in Korea—Netflix Series
The Final: Attack on Wembley—Netflix Documentary
War Dogs
Bodkin—Netflix Series
The Guardian of the Monarchs—Netflix Documentary
Mother of The Bride—Netflix Film
Sing Street
Thank You, Next—Netflix Series
Cooking Up Murder: Uncovering the Story of César Román—Netflix Documentary
Living with Leopards—Netflix Documentary
Pokémon Horizons: The Series Part 2—Netflix Family
The Ultimatum: South Africa—Netflix Series
Mark Twain Prize Award: Kevin Hart—Netflix Comedy Special
Archer: Seasons 1-13
Princess Power: Season 3—Netflix Family
Married at First Sight: Season 15
Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal—Netflix Documentary
The Clovehitch Killer
Bridgerton: Season 3 Part 1—Netflix Series
Dumb and Dumber To
Maestro in Blue: Season 2—Netflix Series
Upgrade
The 8 Show—Netflix Series
Power—Netflix Documentary
Thelma the Unicorn—Netflix Family
A Simple Favor
Golden Kamuy—Netflix Film
The Parisian Agency: Exclusive Properties: Season 4—Netflix Series
Rachel Feinstein: Big Guy—Netflix Comedy
Wildfire: Seasons 1-4
Act Your Age: Season 1
Toughest Forces on Earth
El vendedor de ilusiones: El caso Generación Zoe—Netflix Documentary
Franco Escamilla: Ladies' Man—Netflix Comedy
Garouden: The Way of the Lone Wolf—Netflix Anime
In Good Hands 2—Netflix Film
Tires—Netflix Series
Atlas—Netflix Film
Butterfly in the Sky: The Story of Reading Rainbow
Jurassic World: Chaos Theory—Netflix Family
Mulligan: Part 2—Netflix Series
My Oni Girl—Netflix Film
Burnt
Bionic—Netflix Film
Colors of Evil: Red—Netflix Film
Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult—Netflix Documentary
Patrick Melrose
Eric—Netflix Series
Geek Girl—Netflix Series
A Part of You—Netflix Film
Chola Chabuca
How to Ruin Love: The Proposal—Netflix Series
Raising Voices—Netflix Series
Tòkunbọ̀—Netflix Film
Bennett's War
Magic Mike's Last Dance
Survive the Night
Arctic Dogs
Uncut Gems
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
St. Vincent
Where the Crawdads Sing
Sam Smith: Love Goes - Live at Abbey Road Studios
Fifty Shades of Black
Rosario Tijeras (Mexico): Seasons 1-3
The Boxtrolls
Mako Mermaids: An H2O Adventure: Seasons 3-4
2012
Boyz n the Hood
Burlesque
The Choice
The Disaster Artist
Forever My Girl
The Great Gatsby
Happy Gilmore
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2
The Impossible
Insidious
L.A. Confidential
Lakeview Terrace
The Mick: Seasons 1-2
Noah
Oh, Ramona!
The Other Guys
Silent Hill
Skyscraper
Split
Think Like a Man
Think Like a Man Too
You've Got Mail
Au Japon, un rapport du ministère de la Santé, du Travail et des Affaires sociales indique que le nombre de centenaires a atteint un nouveau record en 2022 : plus de 90 000 personnes auraient ainsi dépassé l’âge de 100 ans, soit environ 4 000 de plus qu’en 2021 ! Et c’est dans le sud-ouest du pays, dans l’archipel d’Okinawa, qu’on en compte le plus. Différentes études sur cette étonnante longévité ont montré que même les habitants d’un âge avancé – souvent surnommés « les immortels » – bénéficient d’un corps et d’un esprit fonctionnels et alertes. Ce qu’ils doivent en grande partie à la combinaison de plusieurs facteurs favorables : un environnement protégé, un mode de vie qui cultive le bien-être, et des habitudes alimentaires spécifiques.
Le positionnement de l’archipel – similaire à celui de pays situés sur le pourtour méditerranéen, caractérisés par un climat chaud et un environnement insulaire – est peut-être l’une des clefs de ce phénomène. Ainsi, la Grèce et la Sardaigne abritent deux des cinq zones bleues (régions du monde connues pour la longévité de leurs habitants) actuellement recensées. Ce positionnement pourrait notamment expliquer des similitudes dans les régimes alimentaires de ces différents pays.
À l’instar du régime okinawaïen, le régime crétois repose sur l’équilibre nutritionnel de ses principaux composants (fruits, légumes, céréales complètes…). Il favorise la consommation de végétaux, la diversité et la saisonnalité des aliments, mais limite la viande rouge, les sucres et les graisses saturées.
Contrairement à une idée largement répandue, ce régime alimentaire ne vise pas spécifiquement la perte de poids – même s’il peut y contribuer. Scientifiquement reconnu pour favoriser l’amélioration de la qualité de la vie de ceux qui l’adoptent, il connaît le même retentissement positif sur la population qui développe moins de maladies chroniques, cardiovasculaires et dégénératives, et dont l’espérance de vie est bien supérieure à la moyenne mondiale.
La santé et le bien-être des centenaires d’Okinawa peuvent être expliqués par des facteurs génétiques, psychosociaux et environnementaux, issus d’un mode de vie basé sur un concept philosophique : le nuchigusui, qui se traduit par « médecine de la vie ».
Ce qu’ils apportent à leur corps – et à leur esprit – est une réelle préoccupation, ils s’alimentent avec modération et leur régime, hypocalorique, est pauvre en graisses et riche en nutriments.
Proche de la cuisine japonaise en général, celle d’Okinawa en diffère malgré tout par certains aspects. Rigoureusement basés sur l’équilibre alimentaire, la qualité nutritionnelle et la préservation du goût, de nombreux plats traditionnels à base de poissons et de fruits de mer sont préparés dans des bouillons de soupe (des dashis), réalisés avec des algues marines (konbu, wakame, mozuku…). Ingrédients essentiels de la cuisine japonaise, les algues marines sont fortement recommandées et utilisées pour leurs saveurs très prononcées et leur faible teneur en sel. Peu consommées, les viandes sont souvent réservées aux grandes occasions. Avec une préférence pour le porc, peu onéreux. Mais sa viande, très grasse, doit mijoter assez longtemps pour pouvoir en extraire la graisse et lui permettre d’atteindre une tendreté idéale sans perdre sa saveur.
Le régime quotidien fait la part belle aux légumes, aux fruits et aux légumineuses, comme les graines de soja, et à la patate douce. Cette dernière est à l’habitant d’Okinawa ce que le pain est à la population française. Son indice glycémique est si bas qu’on peut la consommer sans restriction. Mais pas d’excès dans l’archipel, où l’on pratique le hara hachi bu, qui consiste à cesser de s’alimenter dès que le sentiment de satiété est atteint.
Autres aliments essentiels dans le régime quotidien de l’archipel nippon : les légumes verts, le soja et le tofu, qui participent à une bonne santé cardiaque et à l’équilibre de la flore intestinale ; sans oublier la salade qui éloigne les troubles cognitifs. On retrouve également des superaliments riches en fibres, en vitamine C, en fer, en calcium, en potassium, en polyphénols, en minéraux, et de puissants antioxydants. Ils sont produits et cultivés par les habitants d’Okinawa eux-mêmes, ce qui leur permet de bénéficier à la fois d’une alimentation saine et d’une activité physique quasi quotidienne au grand air.
Dans les champs et les potagers, on retrouve donc le goya (concombre amer), le shikuwasa, un agrume local, le sucre de canne (la plus importante culture de l’archipel), l’acérola (fruit originaire des Caraïbes), le konjac, le curcuma d’Okinawa, appelé « curcuma de printemps », le moringa, petit arbre originaire de l’Inde, qualifié de « plante miraculeuse » pour les 90 nutriments qu’il contient, alliés des fonctions vitales du corps humain.
Pour parfaire cette alimentation saine et équilibrée, le thé (noir, rouge ou vert, dont le matcha) – un excellent antioxydant – fait partie intégrante des repas et souvent consommé à la fin car doté d’importantes propriétés digestives.
De récentes études effectuées dans les cinq zones bleues répertoriées dans le monde indiquent que se donner un but, une raison de se lever chaque jour (une activité intellectuelle, artistique ou physique, un animal dont il faut prendre soin…) procure un sentiment de bien-être qui diminue le stress, aide à vivre plus longtemps et améliore la qualité de vie. Et c’est justement le ikigai, que l’on peut traduire par « raison d’être », que les habitants d’Okinawa pratiquent.
À Okinawa, la réputée rigueur japonaise se vit de façon moins intransigeante : « Ce qui n’est pas réalisé maintenant le sera plus tard. » De plus, la bienveillance et l’attention portées aux autres font partie des valeurs fondamentales dans les familles, les cercles d’amis et le voisinage. Avoir un moai (groupe social permettant d’entretenir des liens avec autrui, amicaux, sociaux ou familiaux) est essentiel et contribue à l’équilibre et au bonheur de tous. Autant dire que quel que soit son âge, son état de santé et sa configuration familiale, un habitant est loin d’être isolé dans l’archipel ; en cas de besoin, il sera soutenu par sa communauté, comme lui la soutient en retour.
Une enquête sur le bien-être et la satisfaction des besoins menée en 2022 par le Brand Research Institute auprès d’environ 23 000 hommes et femmes habitants les 47 préfectures du Japon, révèle que c’est l’archipel d’Okinawa qui, pour la deuxième année consécutive, obtient le meilleur indice de bonheur.
La spiritualité tient une place importante dans la vie des habitants d’Okinawa, dans la plus pure tradition japonaise de la religion Shintô, mais néanmoins empreinte de pratiques chamaniques locales. Celles-ci sont traditionnellement dirigées par des femmes prêtresses, qui ont hérité leur statut d’une autre femme, en ligne directe ou non. Leurs croyances intègrent le fait que la communication avec le surnaturel leur appartient. C’est donc à elles qu’il revient de communiquer avec les dieux, de prier et de méditer devant de petits autels rustiques édifiés en pleine nature, ici une cabane ou un tas de pierres au pied d’une colline, là au bord de l’eau.
De même, croyant en la continuité de la vie après la mort et en une énergie spirituelle qui interagit avec les deux plans d’existence, un lien étroit est entretenu avec les proches disparus, à qui il faut rendre visite et parler comme s’ils étaient présents. Ces moments participent au positivisme légendaire et au bonheur des habitant d’Okinawa. Une autre clef de leur extraordinaire longévité ?
Not everyone was born to camp. I participate due to peer pressure from friends and a dog, who are all enthusiasts of the great outdoors. Whether you relish the great outdoors or just tolerate it, there’s so much smart gear to improve the experience. While bringing smart tech on a camping trip might feel counter intuitive, the right tech can make nature more accessible, safer and even more comfortable.
Even those who brave the Pacific Coast Trail bring tech along with them (according to the hikers I follow on TikTok, which is as close as I’m getting it). That tech needs power, and your tent is a passive way to collect it. While there have been a lot of concept products, very few seem to have made it to market for consumers. A Green Origin has two for sale (below) that have a flexible solar panel that’s made to attach to the tent itself. The Dragon V1 Solar Tent has been successfully funded on Kickstarter and should ship soon. It, too, has a solar panel, but it’s integrated into the tent itself. In the future, even these flexible panels will likely be obsolete; fabric with energy-harvesting technology woven into the fabric itself will be used for tents as well as clothing.
2-3 People Rechargeable Solar Power Tent ($380.00)
5~6 people High Quality Solar Power Tent ($1,499.00)
Coolers used to be a race against time managing refrigerated and frozen food with ice cubes. Now, many coolers carry on-board power, meaning they can keep the cooler at a temp that ensures safe food handling, and no more ice management. In some cases, these coolers can also act as chargers or speakers, or allow you to manage the cooler via an app. Being able to designate each section as a fridge or freezer means you can use the power you need, and keep food at the right temperature.
Anker EverFrost 50 Powered Cooler ($949.00)
Iceco Jp30 Portable Refrigerator Fridge Freezer, 30 Liters ($399)
When you gather with friends at night to cook, eat, or just relax, you'll probably want a little light—and you've got a couple of options. There are lots of solar lanterns on the market, which just need to sit out during the day to recharge. But for a little more ambiance, bring a power bank with you and string up some LED lights, as they require less energy to run than other lights.
Generally, we think of having wifi anywhere we go now and when it’s not available, we fall back to our cellular signal. When you don’t want to blow through your wireless plan, you can rely on a backup device that provides a signal through the 4G network and you pay as you go.
RoamWiFi 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot Router ($143.99)
Going “off grid” has really changed now that there are so many portable power stations that give you a way to charge up while you’re away through a solar panel. 1,000-watt units are enough to power most of the devices you’ll use while away, while still being light enough to move around.
If you’re trying to upgrade your porch or patio, or if you have some gardening updates planned, your DIY projects can go a lot easier with some simple build plans. Having measurements and scale can help you purchase the right amount of lumber, and most plans also have suggested hardware as well. I've collected some of my favorite build plans for you—and bonus, they're free.
Your yard, deck, or patio can always be made more comfy with some good chairs. For a modern look, you can try this set of plans from The Creative Mom on the Kreg website. This project plan comes with detailed build drawings, a materials list, a cut list, and instructions. While it says this is an easy project, it does require use of a saw, a pocket hole jig, and some other measuring and marking tools. For a chair that doesn’t need cushions, you can try your hand at this one from Ana White. These plans also come with detailed build drawings, a materials list, cut list, and instructions; you can also choose to print out a PDF of the various steps involved so you don’t need to have a phone or tablet out while you’re working.
Building in some seating for gatherings or to stretch out for an afternoon nap can level up your outdoor space. This simple 2x4 bench from Construct 101 is a project you could probably complete in a day. It comes with build drawings, materials and cut lists, and step-by-step instructions with illustrations. The only drawback to the materials list is that it lists the number of boxes of screws you will need instead of the number of screws. Make sure to double check that your count is accurate before heading to the hardware store. There’s also a reclined 2x6 bench plan from Rogue Engineer that comes with drawings, a materials and tools list, and illustrated instructions. If you’d rather have a couch than a bench, you can try your hand at building this outdoor sofa from Angela Marie Made. It has photos, a materials list, detailed instructions, and a link to a video tutorial. In addition, the author regularly posts updates about how to find the right cushions for your DIY couch project.
This porch swing from Plank and Pillow has a materials and tools list, drawings, and detailed instructions. It uses a crib mattress as its cushion, making it a big, comfy swing. You can also try a simpler bench swing from Yellow Brick Home. These plans come with detailed photos, instructions, and a tools and materials list. It’s important when you're planning your porch swing to take weight and proper hanging points into consideration so that you don’t damage your porch (or injure your porch swinger).
To build a deck, you’ll need to make sure to check zoning rules and you will likely also need to dig footings. These require a higher skill level than furniture projects, but if you have some experience, they can be a DIY project. These plans from Decks.com are a good resource for detailed instructions. The plans have materials lists, instructions, drawings, and specs that are all downloadable. You can customize your deck size and get plans that fit with your particular space.
A good set of plans will either have detailed schematics and illustrations or photos that include measurements. In addition, materials and tools lists are helpful, as well as instructions. Look for plans that contain not just finished measurements, but also measurements for each cut, a cut list, and an overview of how to make the cuts with the lumber included in the materials list. If there isn’t a materials list, you should be able to easily calculate what you’ll need from the included dimensions and drawings. If the plans don’t have this info, chances are the instructions aren’t very good.
Qu'il s'agisse de dormir à côté d'un squelette de dinosaure à Londres ou bien d'observer les danseurs de rue dans la capitale maltaise, il existe de nombreuses façons pour les familles de prolonger l'initiation culturelle au-delà des heures de visite diurnes.
Idéal pour : les amoureux des animaux
À deux pas du Science Museum, les billets pour les fameuses soirées pyjama « Dino Snores » sur le thème de la préhistoire destinées aux enfants de sept à onze ans se vendent rapidement. Les familles ont l'occasion d'explorer les galeries avec des lampes torches, de créer des t-shirt dinosaures et d'assister à un spectacle pour enfants présenté par un chercheur en résidence. Les bénéficiaires du titre VIP (Very Important Palaeontologists, ou « Paléontologues très importants » en français) ont également droit à un lit de camp à côté de Sophie le Stégosaure. Ils ont aussi accès à une présentation des animaux ainsi qu'à des encas pour les petits creux de fin de soirée.
Idéal pour : les passionnés d'espace
Le centre d’accueil de la NASA situé au Cap Canaveral, depuis lequel de nombreux lancements spatiaux ont été réalisés, organise des soirées pyjama dans deux lieux différents mais tout aussi passionnants l'un que l'autre : la navette spatiale Atlantis, un véhicule orbital qui n'est plus utilisé, et le centre Apollo/Saturn V, où une fusée lunaire Saturn V est exposée. Ce programme s'adresse à des petits groupes d'enfants et adolescents âgés de dix à quatorze ans accompagnés d'un adulte. Il comporte des éléments éducatifs, notamment des défis et des chasses au trésor axés sur les sciences et technologies.
Idéal pour : les astronautes en herbe
Conçu pour les enfants de sept à onze ans, ce vaste musée dédié au génie humain propose des Astronights sur le thème de l'espace. Ce programme comprend des ateliers, ainsi que des expositions et séances dans la salle de cinéma IMAX du musée et dans son Wonderlab, dont les sept zones sont dédiées aux divers phénomènes scientifiques. Si vous choisissez l'expérience VIP, vous aurez accès à un matelas gonflable au lieu d'un tapis de sol, ainsi que des petites douceurs supplémentaires au petit-déjeuner.
Idéal pour : les amateurs d'Histoire
Créées pour les enfants de huit à quinze ans, les expéditions nocturnes sont organisées dans ce grand musée, où sont entreposés des milliers d'artefacts venant du monde entier. Le thème historique de chacune de ces aventures change constamment. Les ateliers, les activités et les narrations permettent de faire revivre le passé de manière éclatante. Les familles couchent dans les galeries égyptiennes et assyriennes, entourées par des rois et des dieux de l'Antiquité. Le lendemain, après le petit-déjeuner, les visiteurs ont accès à une visite privée des galeries avant l'ouverture du musée au public.
Idéal pour : les paléontologues en herbe
Comme alternative au fameux programme du Musée d'histoire naturelle de Londres, ce site gallois invite les enfants de six à douze ans à des soirées pyjama centrées sur les expositions permanentes de géologie et d'histoire naturelle. Ce programme comprend une marche aux flambeaux, des ateliers manuels inspirés par les fossiles de la collection et un film avant d'aller se coucher. L'expérience VIP comprend également la visite du « Ranger Chris » avec l'un de ses reptiles, puis celle d'un paléontologue et une visite privée de la collection d'ossements de dinosaures du musée.
Idéal pour : les étudiants en théâtre
Institution suisse construite en 1879 et ayant conservé sa façade originale de style Beaux-Arts, cette maison d'opéra et de ballet organise des soirées pyjama ouvertes pour tous les âges. Les séjours comprennent une visite du bâtiment et de ses coulisses labyrinthiques sur fond de musique d'époque. Ensuite, vous vous coucherez sur votre matelas, avec votre sac de couchage ou votre couette, dans le grand foyer doté de lustres, fait de dorures, de fresques, de boiseries et de peintures somptueuses.
Idéal pour : les fans de Top Gun
Les voyageurs qui se rendent à New York peuvent dormir dans ce musée sur l'Hudson, installé à l'intérieur d'un porte-avions de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Les expositions sont axées sur l'histoire militaire et maritime des États-Unis. L'opération Slumber permet aux familles ayant des enfants âgés de six à dix-sept ans de découvrir les consignes permettant de vivre, manger et dormir à bord d'un porte-avions. Ce programme comprend une visite guidée du pont d'envol avec des lampes torches, des simulateurs et l'accès à un planétarium.
Cet article a initialement paru sur le site nationalgeographic.com en langue anglaise.
You can get this 12V battery jump starter and 8,000mAh power bank on sale for $69.99 right now (reg. $119.99). The jumper cables connect to the battery of gasoline engines up to 6.0L or diesel engines up to 3.0L, and the LCD screen gibes step-by-step instructions. The UL-certified jumper has safety features like polarity protection, reverse charging protection, and low-voltage protection, and the gadget also has an LED light that has a flashlight, red flashing light, strobe lights, and Morse code patterns. It also works as an 8,000mAh power bank with a built-in USB-C cable and Qi-wireless charging pad on the flat surface.
You can get this 12V battery jump starter and 8,000mAh power bank on sale for $69.99 right now (reg. $119.99), though prices can change at any time.
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