Lifehacker

Have you ever wondered what you’d do if you were just minding your own business as the resident of a major metro area and looked up to see a missile coming straight at you? Well, you’re in luck: this week, the New York City Emergency Management Department released new guidance on what to do in the event of a nuclear…Read more...

Like a great blues ballad or country song, sad movies can make us feel like we’re not alone. They can also provide the catharsis. Or just wallow. A sad movie, though, isn’t quite the same thing as a feel-bad movie: Beaches might make you cry, but something like The Road, on the other hand, can shatter your fundamental…Read more...

As the global economy increasingly begins to resemble the “this is fine” meme, people are naturally seeking creative solutions to their money challenges. In the past, economic downturns have bolstered ideas like the tiny house movement and the #VanLife subculture, as people try to figure out more flexible and…Read more...

Your cellular connection is constant, but your wifi connection is anything but. You probably have multiple locations where your phone automatically connects to the local network: your home, your office, the coffee shop you frequent, your friend’s place, or even a public square. Your iPhone or Android smartphone saves…Read more...

Chrome is a notorious resource hog—one of the reasons many users have abandoned it in favor of other browsers like Firefox, Safari, or even the Chromium-based Edge. But there is some good news for those still using Google’s browser: The company is testing a new setting that could alleviate Chrome’s annoyingly high…Read more...

I’m hardly a domestic goddess—I hate cleaning, I’m laissez faire about tidying, and I take no satisfaction from a toilet-scrubbing job well done. But sometimes, as Mary Poppins says, when there’s a job that must be done, there is an element of fun. Cue my favorite procrastination tool: TikTok cleaning hacks like this…Read more...

With so many credit card options available, it can be hard to sort through everything from earnings rates, additional benefits, and included insurance protections to decide which option is right for you. Deciding wether you want to earn flexible credit card points or frequent flyer miles with a specific airline is a…Read more...

As a host, nothing gives me more pleasure than preparing a beautiful and inviting spread of snacks and treats for my guests—but making things too pretty can actually discourage people from eating the food. “I don’t want to mess it up!” they say, hovering around the hummus. “It looks too pretty!”Read more...

I love cake decorating but it is, without a doubt, a skill that can require the meditative-like patience of a school teacher. Depending on what you’re trying to do, it can take hours or days to make a cake look as perfect as the image in your head. Not all of us have that kind of time. Being a skilled cake decorator…Read more...

There is much to say about the difficulties of traveling with young children, but the Department of Transportation is doing at least one thing to make the process simpler. According to a notice released last Friday by the DoT, the Office of Aviation Consumer Protection (OACP) has issued a notice urging U.S. airlines…Read more...

It’s been a long pandemic, and COVID is still going strong. But along the way, we’ve at least learned a lot of things. Just as we stopped obsessing over hand-washing, there are plenty of other ideas we once had (or still have) about COVID that need to be updated. Here are some of the biggies.

There is no shame in wanting some fabulous photos of yourself to spice up your Instagram grid. Hell, some people make a living this way. Sure, you can hope you happen upon a nice location that will serve as the perfect backdrop, but you can also force the hand of fate and head to beautiful or unique spots with the…Read more...

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In my twenty years of baseball fandom, I’ve attended hundreds of games and caught exactly one foul ball. I remember every detail of it perfectly: It’s the crowning achievement of my professional-baseball-attending career, and a height of pure bliss I’m unsure I’ll ever replicate. If you’re a fan of the game, odds are…Read more...

The Ford Motor Company has announced that it will be issuing yet another recall due to a fire risk—this time, for more than 100,000 hybrid trucks and SUVs, Reuters reports. This comes less than a month after the automaker recalled roughly three million vehicles because they had the potential to roll away.Read more...

Apple announced iOS and iPadOS 16 during its WWDC event today, Monday, June 6. The new update sports some big changes, such as a customizable Lock Screen, revamped notifications, and the ability to edit and undo messages, while bringing some macOS window management to the iPad (finally). While the software won’t be…Read more...

If you have some sort of air conditioning in your home, you are among the lucky ones—at least it feels that way until the energy bill arrives. If epic utility bills are making you sweat, there’s one strategy you can try that may seem counterintuitive on the surface but can keep your home cool and your bills manageable…Read more...

We all held our collective breath late last year when NASA launched the long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope on its monthlong journey to a destination nearly a million miles away. After a successful deployment, the JWST has been hard at work with testing and calibration, and it’s time to see what the telescope is…Read more...

Over the last few years, Microsoft has made great strides toward making Windows more accessible to a wider audience. Windows 11 includes a dedicated Accessibility section intended to help users adapt the display and the behavior of the OS according to their needs. This section is very helpful for users with visual…Read more...

Sometimes—especially in the heat of summer—you just want a dessert to be as easy as possible. This new 3-ingredient no-bake key lime pie recipe released by Kirbie’s Cravings is exactly that. The recipe just calls for three ingredients: limes, sweetened condensed milk, and a pre-made graham cracker crust. And it makes…Read more...

A faster workout recovery is a good indicator of overall fitness level and is essential for improving performance, whether it’s lifting more, running faster, or building endurance. And for years, the advice has been to recover from a high-intensity workout by holding your hands above your heads. You maybe had a…Read more...

Open, free-floating ice trays—even the silicone ones—are no way to store ice. They’re prone to breaking, being stinky, and there’s always one ice cube that will never let go.Read more...

There are very few cake “improvements” that I trust right away. I’m a food skeptic by nature, and I usually stare at viral hacks and food tricks with squinted eyes until I’m convinced. That’s how I was when I assessed Renee Erickson’s peach cobbler with hot sugar crust before testing it out. But after taking one bite,…Read more...

There are so many things to consider when buying a new car—especially at a time when gas prices are high and inflation has made everything else more expensive, too. And while you’re picturing yourself driving around town in your new vehicle, taking it in for service is probably not part of the fantasy. After all, it’s…Read more...

As much as we love our pets, sometimes our furry friends provide us with more than love and affection: They also leave hair all over our homes and clothing. And while there are ways to deal with the fur coating everything you own, somehow, no matter what you do, some always ends up in the laundry.Read more...

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Perennials have earned a place in the hearts and yards of people who enjoy having foliage around, but don’t necessarily want to spend time planting it each year. And while perennials do tend to be lower-maintenance than their annual relatives, that doesn’t mean that they’re completely hands-off.Read more...

Now that we’re in the third summer of the COVID-19 pandemic, some people who weren’t comfortable traveling in 2020 or 2021 have opted to do so this year. Unfortunately, a combination of factors—including high gas prices, a shortage of rental cars, increasing airfare, and fewer flights—mean that traveling during the…Read more...

When you change the air filter in your furnace, you expect the old one to be dirty. But let’s say that when you go to make your regularly scheduled switch, you find that your old filter isn’t just a little grimy—it’s completely filthy. And it’s not as though you left more time between filter changes, so it somehow…Read more...

Traveling via any means is bonkers right now, so you may not be thinking about booking a trip anytime soon. Or maybe you are revenge traveling and booking all of the trips—either way, if you have e-credits or vouchers from trips that were canceled during the pandemic, you should probably use them soon or find out how…Read more...

If you live overseas or travel frequently, make sure you aren’t giving more money than you have to to ol’ Uncle Sam back in the United States. The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE) allows a U.S. taxpayer to exclude up to $112,000 in income (the 2022 figure—it’s annually adjusted for inflation) from taxation.…Read more...

I have long been on the record about my loyalty to silk sheets, but what I less frequently disclose is what a pain in the ass they are to wash and de-wrinkle. They’re finicky, fragile, and they’re so shiny that every wrinkle is magnified, which almost defeats the purpose of having something so obnoxiously luxurious in…Read more...

If you haven’t been already, you’re about to start hearing a lot about the so-called “blackout challenge,” which is causing an uproar online. TikTok is being sued by the families of two young girls who died, allegedly due to the viral challenge. The families call the app’s algorithms “dangerous” and blame the social…Read more...

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Amazon’s “Prime Day” event is back for another year: another complex, multi-tentacled web of alleged discounts. But at its heart, it’s the same thing as any old sale or coupon—a way of getting you to spend more money while pointing out that technically, if you do the math a certain way, you can tell yourself you’re…Read more...

From the Weather Underground movement of the 1960s to the Capitol attacks of January 6, 2021, the stories of radicals and radicalist movements are often violent, mysterious, and packed with fascinating characters.

While aging is inevitable, spending money on your birthday is not. Thanks to a combination of the digital revolution and late-stage capitalism, every chain restaurant is vying for your business by offering perks via their app’s loyalty programs, with a frequent incentive being a free reward on your birthday. With the…Read more...

Congratulations, you just bought your first home! After years of apartment living, exotic stuff like extra bedrooms, garage space, and a backyard seems pretty exciting, right? Even a modest starter home can make you feel like an aristocrat—for a while, until you think about all the stuff you need to buy to make it…Read more...

There are films and TV series that make cooking (and eating) feel like joyous, unifying activities that bring families and cultures together. There are others that remind us that the business of preparing food is stressful, harried, and sweaty. FX’s buzzy new series The Bear, starring Jeremy Allen White as the head…Read more...

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Many kids with one of the various diagnoses that fall under the umbrella of neurodivergency exhibit behaviors that, to the untrained or unsympathetic eye, look like bad behavior. When my son is anxious, for example, he doesn’t hide behind my skirts—that’s a “flight” response, and my child’s stress response looks more…Read more...

There’s lots of content out there to help you decide what to cook with your fancy sous vide precision, immersion, circulation, sans conflagration tool, or so I’ve heard. I’ve read about all the cool things one can sous vide with tantalizing results—juicy steaks, cheesecakes, buttery lobster tails, and the silkiest of…Read more...

The main thing that separates kids from older people isn’t the technological divide or that kids haven’t fully internalized the inevitability of their own death. It’s that young people have so much more time on their hands than we do. The freedom from having to support themselves and clean everything leaves plenty of…Read more...

We all need more sleep. Although adults typically should get more than seven hours a night, more than one-third of Americans average less than that despite chronic sleep deprivation having well-known impacts on our overall health—like increasing the risk for heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. But although there’s no…Read more...

Biscuits can stir up a great deal of tension when you suggest tinkering with a traditional recipe. Well, things are about to get awkward. I made biscuits with a cherry fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt cup, and I liked it. Frankly, I prefer it to other biscuits. I completely understand that some family recipes are great, and…Read more...

The popular online wisdom holds that Amazon is evil and you should stop giving them your money. Yet some 76.6 million households in the United States use Amazon Prime, so either the message just hasn’t gotten through to some of us, or we’ve resigned ourselves to our fates. And if you’re going to make a deal with the…Read more...

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The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which you can reach at 1-800-273-8255, will be getting an easier-to-remember number as of July 16. The old number will still work, but after the switch you will also be able to connect with the service by calling 988. (That’s the entire number: it’s a special code like 911.)Read more...

I get a lot of spam texts. A lot. They’re immediately recognizable: The source number doesn’t look familiar, and is attached to a message so obviously a phishing attempt it’s insulting. But lately, I’ve noticed an uptick in a new type of spam text, typically arriving from an email, rather than a phone number, with a…Read more...

When you rent an Airbnb, you’re obviously staying on else’s private property. And those property owners all have different ideas about how to run their DIY hotel—and a lot of them like security cameras and other recording devices. On the one hand, this makes perfect sense: The property owners worry that the randos…Read more...