Setting Up Your Home Office

As someone who's planning to buy the Nintendo Switch 2, I've had my eye on the accessories I'd need to get with the console. Since Super Mario Party Jamboree, which is getting some new mini-games in its Switch 2 port, is one of the games I'm very interested in, the Switch 2 Camera accessory caught my eye. After all, who doesn't want to make dramatic faces while playing with their friends? You can even use it for chat, too. However, I'm not sure I can justify spending $50 on an accessory that'll probably gather dust after I'm done with Mario Party. Fortunately, it looks like the Switch 2 Camera is not the only way to play camera-based games or video chat with your friends …

Popular culture for kids has fragmented so much lately that what's familiar to one 14-year-old might be utterly foreign to another. But the progress toward everyone having their own personal culture isn't complete. So I'm taking a look at some of things all (well, most) kids relate to and love, including A Minecraft Movie, Labubus, and the literary techniques developed by Spanish author Jorge Luis Borges in the 1940s (for real). Will A Minecraft Movie become a generational touchstone? I'm writing this on the day A Minecraft Movie comes out, and signs point to the release being one of those vanishingly rare events that capture the collective imaginations (and dispo…

This week, I explain why generations A and Z are eating rotten meat, making fun of cave explorers, showing off their emergency contacts, and becoming very emotionally invested in an angler fish. Everyone is having a very normal week. What do all the cave diving memes mean?If your various social media feeds are full of videos of upside down shoes and boots in different locations, you're witnessing "cave diving" memes. While "cave diving" actually refers to underwater cave exploration, the memes are not about that: Younger people are making jokes about the way cave explorers will wedge themselves into tiny crevices until all anyone can see are the bottoms of their boots. H…

The real 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, is a saying that asserts 80% of outcomes come from 20% of all causes. You can use it to organize your to-do list, among other things. But to many young men, 80/20 means something very different. Young men are not alright. Masculinity is growing more toxic by the day. Online incel communities are growing, and the most receptive audience to poisonous ideas about gender seems to be children. This week's column isn't going to be fun: I'm explaining one of the guiding principles of the incel movement, and discussing a TikToker devoted to changing her red pill son's mind. And I can't talk about toxic masculinity without …

Saturday, March 8, was International Women's Day. March is a whole women's month, even if Google erased it from its calendar. So I'm taking a look at young women—and not in a creepy way. I want to know: what's up with young women? What are they about? What are their dreams? How are they feeling deep in their hearts? So I'm checking out Reddit's woman-centric corners, listening to Doechii and "Call her Daddy," and consulting some "coochie doctors." The state of young women in two subredditsTo try to get some insight on young women between the ages of 18 and 25 or so, I took a look at some Reddit communities ostensibly made for, by, and about women. I started at Reddit's…

In this week's trip into the cultural zeitgeist of people too young to rent cars, I explain why everyone is arguing over robot abuse, take a look at a niche TikTok subculture dedicated to sticks, and explain why you should never say "sigh name cuff" on video. All that, plus warnings of dangerous TikTok trends and a look at gleeking. Viral video of the week: Kai Cenat buys a $70,000 robot Massively popular YouTube and Twitch streamer Kai Cenat may have doomed humanity in this week's viral video. On a recent live stream, Cenat and his pals unbox and assemble a human-like robot that set Cenat back $70,000. The video begins as a hilarious demonstration of impressive …

This week's biggest event was the Super Bowl. While the game was a snore-fest reminiscent of the lopsided Super Bowl blowouts of the past, the halftime show was nothing like the performances of 1980s Super Bowl favorites "Up with People." If you compare the two performances (and you should), you'll see how far we have come as a society. Kendrick's jeans win the Super Bowl Super Bowl 2025 may have been more of beatdown than an exciting football game, but luckily Kendrick Lamar was around at halftime to provide some much needed drama. From "Uncle" Samuel L. Jackson providing a preemptive critique of the show from "mainstream" America, to Serena Williams crip walki…

This week, I'm taking a look at a brain-rot creator Cookie King, whose constant output of brain-rot videos is shaping the internal lives of millions of kids under 15. I'm also taking a look at what people think ChatGPT would be like if it were a person, introducing the clueless to Beabadoobee, and dunking on "millennial burger joints." Meet Cookie King, the brain behind the brain rotI think of brain-rot internet memes as springing fully formed from the collective unconscious of the internet like Athena sprang from the head of Zeus, but the culture vultures at KnowYourMeme tracked down the actual person who is probably most responsible for brain-rot. Demir Basceri, known …

Dropping things on your foot and rating how much it hurts is a growing trend on TikTok. The meme's popularity may be indicative of something deep and troubling in youth culture. So, maybe, is injecting butterflies and turning goth. You be the judge. What is "Amialivecore?" On his substack "The Trend Report," Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick pulled together a ton of disparate cultural expressions among online youth to identify a style he calls "Amialivecore." Fitzpatrick posits that young people are subconsciously unsure if they are actually living human beings. I think he's onto something. My interpretation of the meaning of amialivecore: Since they were babies, young people's …

This week's trip into the minds of people who aren't old enough to rent a car is like a potpourri of unrelated trends and memes that present a picture of the variety of ways young people are relating to the world. Some TikTokers are memorializing peak moments in their lives with a "Hozier yell," while others are spending their precious time on Earth creating brain-rot "juggtok" videos, or getting really, really angry about chess and chubbiness. It's a big world. What is a Hozier yell?A "Hozier yell" is used in TikTok videos to refer to a peak, climactic, awe-inspiring moment. Literary types might substitute "barbaric yamp." The end result is videos like these: The…

I try to write about emerging trends in this column, but this week I'm flipping the script, as they say, and taking a look at the end of four popular things: Neo-medievalism, Kendrick Lamar, memes, and movies are all in the process of being thrown into the garbage heap by young people. Lady Gaga and the death of neo-medievalism If you watched Lady Gaga's appearance on Saturday Night Live on March 8, you might not have known you were witnessing the end of a youth trend, the moment when neo-medievalism went from cool to commodity. Along with hosting, Gaga played her new single "Abracadabra" for the SNL audience, and she was doing a lot. The song's pure pop hooks mi…

Google’s next Pixel phone, the Pixel 9a, has finally been announced. And for the first time in a Pixel since 2020’s Pixel 5, it ditches the camera bar. It’s also, as expected, a little cheaper and comes with a few additional AI tricks not available on the Pixel 8a, but really, it’s the new look that’s the biggest surprise here. That’s because the 9a, unlike the 8a before it, really doesn’t look much like the Pixel 9 or 9 Pro. Dimensions are roughly equivalent to the standard Pixel 9 (although it is a little more lightweight at 6.6 oz vs. 7 oz) and the screen has almost pound-for-pound the same specs except for a halved contrast ratio, but people familiar with the past hal…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Google just announced that its “loss of pulse dectection” feature for the Pixel Watch 3 has received FDA clearance and will be available to U.S. users by the end of March. Read on for more on what this feature does, how well it works (according to one early study), and how you’ll be able to enable it. The feature has been available in several European countries since late 2024. According to a Google help page on the feature, it’s currently available in “Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.” …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. The Powerbeats Pro 2 are a new set of headphones with a really interesting feature—Apple says they can measure your heart rate during workouts. Huge if true—imagine if you could leave your watch at home (or not bother to buy one in the first place) and still get a heart rate reading to go with your workout. But that's only going to be a useful feature if the data is reasonably accurate. I was curious how good a reading they can actually get from your ears, so I compared the Powerbeats Pro 2 to a traditional chest strap, and to the Apple Watch for good measure. So how do these headphones stack up against those established m…

Major data breaches and cybersecurity threats are now a fact of life, the consequence of which is our personal information being exposed at some point. One of the latest significant leaks involves data from PowerSchool, a software provider for thousands of K–12 school districts in the United States and Canada. The incident affected millions of users. What happened in the PowerSchool hack According to reports, PowerSchool discovered that personal information had been stolen from its customer support platform on Dec. 28, 2024. Hackers used compromised credentials to log into and export from its "Students" and "Teacher" database. BleepingComputer is reporting that the hack…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. I know I’m not the only person with exercise equipment an arm’s reach (or a short walk) from where they spend most of their day. And you can pop down to your home gym a couple times a day, is that better than doing a whole workout all at once? Or if not better, is it just as good? Sometimes it is! Let’s discuss the nuances. For purposes of argument, I’ll assume you’re trying to decide between two schedules: A traditional strength workout, where you warm up and then do four or five different exercises, with several sets of each. The whole thing might take you anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half, depending on wha…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Ever since my home was broken into, I've installed as many security cameras, floodlights, and other security measures in place as I could get away with (and they've been working great so far). The video doorbell I chose to go with for my front door is the Reolink Video Doorbell. Right now, you can get one of the best video doorbells of 2025 for a $51.99 (originally $109.99), the lowest price it has ever been, even cheaper than used ones on Amazon, according to price-tracking tools. Reolink Video Doorbell …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. I teach a handful of cycling classes every week, and after each one, I grab a spray bottle of cleaner and a paper towel from the back of the studio and give my stationary bike a wipe-down. It only makes sense: The whole point of being on it is to get all sweaty and gross, and it's inevitable some of that sweat will wind up on the bike. I have no idea what's in the bottle of cleaner, as I trust the gym's cleaning team to provide me with the right tools to keep the equipment in good shape. But when it comes to my Peloton at home, I am the cleaning team, which means I have to be much more on top of things. Here's what I've l…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Americans are predicted to spend a whopping 2.5 billion dollars on flowers this Valentine’s day. If you are one of the people who are considering such a gift to your paramour, you may want to stop for a moment and consider your beloved’s beloved: Many popular flower choices are toxic for dogs and cats. Here's what to know before you choose your bouquet so you won’t have to apologize for a vet visit later. Flowers that aren't safe for petsFirst, consider whether your intended recipient has a cat or dog (or both), as they can have different reactions. For instance, lilies, a common Valentine’s Day choice, can be lethal to c…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. You can think of the Galaxy Buds series as Android's version of the AirPods. The Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 are the open-ear version of the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro, both of which came out last summer. Right now, you can get the Galaxy Buds 3 for $99.99 (originally $179.99) directly from the Samsung website when choosing "no" under the Samsung trade-in credit. This is the lowest price these earbuds have been since their recent release, according to price-tracking tools. Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. If you need a sturdy watch to meet all your athletic and adventurous needs, good news: You can save big right now on the LTE Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra. The watch is currently 39% off during Amazon's Big Spring Sale. Normally priced at $649.99, the current discount brings the smartwatch down to $396.94. This is as low a price as this watch ever gets, according to price-tracking tools. Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. When Samsung dropped the Galaxy Watch Ultra last summer, it was clearly swinging at the Apple Watch Ultra crowd—people who run marathons for fun, hike trails that end in the clouds, or just want a tank of a smartwatch on their wrist. Now that the hype’s settled and the price has dropped to $378 (down from $649.99), its lowest yet according to price trackers, it’s a more interesting pick, especially if you’re big on the outdoors. SAMSUNG Galaxy Watch Ultra 47mm LTE AI Smartwatch …