Lifehacker

The days of rushing through an airport like an old-timey sheriff at high noon—loose coins clink-clankin’ around in your pockets—are over, my friends.Read more...

Those long, awkward tubes of gift wrap don’t have to be piled up willy-nilly at the back of your closet. It’s true! There are actually dedicated gift wrap organizing solutions out there, and this bag is only $7 today on Amazon, an all-time low. Gift it to yourself.

I have a hypothesis: when it comes to finding a cool older car for sale, nice ones with higher mileage are where it’s at.Read more...

Slow-cooked pork belly is pretty hard to improve upon. The uncured bacon steak is meaty and tender, with melty portions of delicious pork fat running through. It’s already indulgent, but you should make it even more so by giving it a sweet and crackly brûlée crust.Read more...

Shortly after we moved into our home several years ago, my son started preschool. Suddenly, he was bringing home giant finger-paintings, holiday scenes and stick figure drawings multiple times a week.

Ask a financial professional when the “best” time to invest is, and they’ll tell you: yesterday. Assuming you didn’t start yesterday, the next best answer is today.

The Root University Dean Resigns Over Chick-fil-A Campus Ban | Deadspin Hmm, Maybe The Warriors With DeMarcus Cousins Aren’t Invincible After All | Jezebel R. Kelly Thinks His Problem Is ‘His Big Heart’ | Splinter Shout Out to a Real One | TV Club Ricky Gervais’ dour new Netflix series belongs on the Hallmark Channel…Read more...

To form habits, financial or otherwise, you have to put in the work. Often that means making small changes or tweaks consistently over a long period of time. Days, weeks, months, years—if you really want to change your behavior, you have to commit yourself to something for a long time.

For part of my childhood, from about 9 to 13 years old, I lived in a house with a creek just beyond its backyard. I’d go down to my friend’s house on the corner and we’d “creek-walk” our way up the street and around our neighborhood.Read more...

Adequate Man What Is The Optimum Office Food? | The Muse Oprah Winfrey Asks Michael Jackson’s Leaving Neverland Accusers Tough Questions | The A.V. Club Corey Feldman calls Leaving Neverland “one-sided,” says Michael Jackson never abused him | Splinter What Exactly Is AOC Trying to Say About Ilhan Omar? | The Grapevine…Read more...

When a teenager is really upset, parents often feel the need to do something—gather information (“Who hurt you and what’s their phone number?”), launch into a profound lecture, or maybe try a problem-solving technique they heard about in a TED talk.

With the rise of zero-waste grocery stores, it’s now easier than ever to reduce your environmental impact when shopping for food. But what exactly is “zero waste,” you ask?

There’s an app for everything, many promising to help people “fix” something in their lives. Productivity apps will turn you into a superhuman worker, for example, and financial apps will help you attain Rockefeller-levels of wealth.

I have a Roku TV mounted to the wall above my desktop PC—which will surely kill me one day here in earthquake-prone California—and I always have to look through piles of stuff to find the remote. Sure, I could turn it on with my universal remote as well, but that’s all the way across the room.Read more...

I can make a delicious tasting cake but—when it comes to decorating—I am an episode of Nailed It! come to life. I suspect my problems lie mostly in my lack of patience, but it’s worth noting that I am incapable of drawing most stick figures, and it may be an issue of a complete lack of artistic talent.

Some of us are huddled under our comforters cursing the cold right now, so the idea of washing that life-sustaining layer may seem outrageous. But you gotta—it’s dirty.Read more...

Dating’s hard as it is. For those in recovery from substance abuse, or simply don’t drink, it can be even harder. It’s not an easy conversation to have on a first date, after all, and it can complicate those first few outings when the option of having a date at a bar is out of the question.

After spending a few wonderful, exhausting months at home with my newborn son Max, I’m back, blinking into the sun (or rather, my LED desk lamp) as I try to navigate this transition back to work. Here’s some advice for fellow travelers, both from my experience and from the wise parents in the Offspring Facebook group.Read more...

Chrome: I write long emails. It’s a habit I should break, but I tend to err on the side of thorough replies over brief ones. A few adverbs later and boom! It’s like reading a New Yorker piece in your inbox.Read more...

Cleaning pet hair off any surface is always a chore, but fabrics are very much the worst. Tempting as it may be, giving up and tossing a hair-coated blanket in with the rest of the wash will only transfer that hair to the rest of the load—and send the rest straight down your pipes. There’s a better way: Just throw…Read more...

My first introduction to the concept of garlic bread was extremely low-brow. Slices of white bread, slathered with margarine, sprinkled with garlic salt and toasted, weren’t exactly authentic, but they were quite delicious, and they set a foundation for a lifetime of garlic bread exploration and appreciation.Read more...

In an effort to encourage hospitals to provide better care, the federal government penalizes those institutions that have had the highest rates of infections, readmissions and patient injuries. Under the Affordable Care Act, the government reduces Medicare payments to these hospitals by as much as 3 percent per…Read more...

We talk a lot about VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) around here, and with good reason. There are numerous reasons why using a VPN—both legal and otherwise—is in your best interest. As more internet users have become technologically savvy and security-minded, VPNs have broken into the mainstream. Some would even have…Read more...

A baseball and softball Gold Box, Anker chargers, and our readers’ favorite cutting boards lead off Tuesday’s best deals from around the web.

Usually, when I walk home late at night, I keep my eyes peeled for creepy humans, but last evening I was followed down the street by a coyote. I had no idea what to do.Read more...

Deadspin The Lakers Are Exhausted And Depleted And Probably Dead | The A.V. Club The dream of the ’90s is alive in the underwhelming Captain Marvel | Splinter Batshit QAnon Book Is Currently One of the Highest Ranked Politics Books on Amazon | Jezebel Riverdale Took the Day Off to Mourn Luke Perry | The Root Black…Read more...

If you’ve received credit offer after offer in which you’re “pre-approved” for a certain product, you may wonder how the lender made their decision.Read more...

Starting a business is a deceptively complicated process. It’s not as simple as “coming up with a great business idea” and “putting that idea into action.”

For too many people, moving the digits around in some variation of Patriots69Lover is their idea of a strong password. So you might expect something complicated like” “ji32k7au4a83” would be a great password. But according to the data breach repository Have I Been Pwned (HIBP), it shows up more often than one might…Read more...

The Concourse Gamer Was A Batshit Great Bad Movie That Was A Decade Ahead Of Its Time | Jezebel Wendy Williams Is Back!!! | The Grapevine Leaving Neverland: Reconciling With the ‘Man in the Mirror’ | Splinter Democrats Ready to Throw Ilhan Omar Under the Bus, Again | The A.V. Club R.I.P. Luke Perry, Beverly Hills,…Read more...

You’re on a sidewalk, and suddenly, a driver in a Tesla hits a parked car. The car smashes the other’s side-view mirror, leaving shards in its wake. Before you have time to process what’s happened, the driver speeds off. Come back here, you filthy rascal! You won’t last long with your electric charge!

Every once in a while, I get lightheaded to the point of thinking I might faint. (One time, I actually did faint and my husband legit caught me in mid-air, gallant dude that he is.) When it happened again a few weeks ago, and I was home alone with my son, I realized it was time he knew what to do if there was ever an…Read more...

Gift-giving isn’t everyone’s love language; if you have trouble thinking of what to get someone, consider what they enjoy using, and bequeath them with the highest quality version of that item. It’s the perfect combination of luxury and practicality.Read more...

Medical billing mistakes are rampant, as we recently covered. One way to catch a mistake from a biller is to check the charges against your health insurance explanation of benefits (EOB).Read more...

For kids with anxiety, the hardest part about homework is often just starting it. Before even picking up a pencil, they construct in their heads a story about how the assignment is too difficult, too time-consuming, too much to handle. And so they shut down. Pep talks and pleas from Mom and Dad seem to only make…Read more...

I’ve long been a fan of the Castro podcast app, mainly because I paid $5 back when the app was on version 2, which unlocked a subset of features that today’s Castro 3 users can’t get without a subscription. (Ha!) However, Pocket Casts—the Shark to Castro’s Jet—now supports playback on Amazon Echo devices via a useful…Read more...

Facebook’s done it again!

Crispy fried onions are a holiday icon, but their savory, allium-y crunch can bring one joy all year. Even if you’re not a year-round casserole cook, these salty strips of fried goodness can elevate almost any meal, from salad to snack mix.

I’m a fan of beer growlers. My husband and I have a few from our favorite breweries, and they take turns tagging along with us when we go out for dinner so we can bring some fresh draft beer home with us.Read more...

When my baby daughter was getting grumpy in the bathtub, and I put TLC’s “No Scrubs” on Spotify, I knew I had something special to share with the world. There are tons of bathtime songs for children, but most of them are tedious. So I made a bathtime playlist for adults (and people of any age who don’t mind some…Read more...

Interest rates are rising after years of stasis, yet brick-and-mortar banks are still offering customers a piddling 0.10 percent on average on savings, according to the Wall Street Journal. That makes roboadvisor offerings from the likes of Wealthfront and Betterment look more attractive.Read more...

The moment I first became a believer in the power of Daniel Tiger happened when my daughter was 3. She was on a playdate at the park when I announced it was time to get ready to go home. Instead of melting into my lap and whimpering as she’d done in the past (goodbyes are so sad!), she paused, took a deep breath and…Read more...

Unless you live in a very large house, Dyson’s V8 cordless vacuum is probably the only vacuum you need. While it lasts for Prime Day, you can get the Absolute model for just $350 from Amazon (also available at Walmart), the best price we’ve seen since Black Frida. The Absolute features the longest battery life in the…Read more...

At Mobile World Congress last week, the USB Implementers Forum decided to change up the wild and crazy world of USB by renaming what’s now known as “USB 3.2"—the latest and speediest standard expected to hit PCs later this year—as well as USB 3.0 and USB 3.1.Read more...

Deadspin Trae Young Ejected For The Crime Of Staring At Kris Dunn’s Back For Too Long | The A.V. Club Shameless puts Fiona’s exit strategy in motion in the season’s penultimate hour | Splinter Politicians Are Still Losing Their Minds Over Ilhan Omar | Jezebel American Airlines Apologizes After Kicking Mom & Baby Off…Read more...

During a Chicago winter, you can reserve a parking spot with a folding chair, a playpen, or a giant teddy bear. Or at least you can try. It’s one of the greatest parking hacks in the world: If you shovel out a snowed-in parking spot in Chicago, and you put a placeholder in the space, a lot of people will honor your…Read more...

Who ordered a heartwarming comedy series “from the mind of Ricky Gervais” about a man who uses his wife’s death as an excuse to treat everyone like crap? Netflix! What are you thinking? No one is interested in After Life (Friday), Gervais’ “dark comedy” (translation: Gervais’ wife calls him fat, Gervais calls a child…Read more...

If you haven’t interviewed for a job in a long time, then even the most basic of interview questions can potentially throw you for a loop. If you’re currently going through the interview process, then a little bit of prep can mean the difference between you coming off like a polished candidate or just a hot mess.

If you have a newer smartphone, then it likely came with the ability to shoot 3D images, or at least images with some depth of field involved.

We all have a few shows that we love. When that show is one with seven or eight seasons then choosing which episode to rewatch on a Saturday afternoon can be a bit of a challenge. For me, that typically means watching the same five or six episodes over and over again, but there’s something to be said for giving some…Read more...