🙄 Sick of Comcast? Two guys in Michigan got so fed up with the service that they started their own internet company. It’s all fiber (read: reliable), with no data caps or contracts, and it’s already in about 1,500 homes. The twist? Comcast caught wind and started calling ex-customers with discounts and new unlimited deals. Shocker.
Around 1 in 3
U.S. counties have no full-time local journalist. That number has dropped 75% since 2002. The fix? Experts say we need more funding and policy changes. Kinda scary to think no one in the public eye is watching over local government, businesses or schools.
🤳 Hide Instagram stories: If your account’s public, anyone can view your stories by tapping your profile pic. Want to block certain followers? Go to your Profile > tap the Menu (three lines) > Who can see your content > Hide story and live > Hide story and live from, then select accounts. Bye, nosy ex.
🔌 Belkin bricks tech: Say goodbye to 27 models of its Wemo smart home devices, including some sold as recently as 2023. After January 2026, they’ll lose app access, Alexa integrations and cloud features. Warranty users might get partial refunds. Everyone else? Straight to e-waste. Your “smart” hardware’s about to get real dumb.
Twerked, tagged, tracked: Ohio police arrested two brain-trust women who twerked on a parked cop car. The dance party left dents and scratches, so authorities ran footage through Clearview AI facial recognition. Got ’em! Now, the women are facing charges.
What would you do? A San Jose woman got buried in hundreds and hundreds of Amazon packages. Think faux leather cheap car seat covers she never ordered from a seller in China. Turns out, shady return scammers were dumping rejected goods on her doorstep. Amazon’s response? A $100 gift card and radio silence … until the news shamed them into action.
🦎 Gecko gotcha: Carrie just wanted cheaper car insurance, but Google served her scam. She clicked a fake Geico link, handed over everything (yes, even her SSN) and Venmo’d $400 to fraudsters. Didn’t realize the con until Geico HQ had no record of payment. Gotta watch where you click, folks.
Battery boost: If your phone’s nearly dead and you’ve only got 20 minutes, plug it in and switch on Airplane mode. This shuts off Wi-Fi, cellular and Bluetooth, basically all the stuff that quietly drains power. With fewer background processes, your phone can focus on charging faster.
🐻 Motorcyclist feeds bears, ends up on the menu: So sad and very avoidable. A motorcyclist died after stopping to take selfies and feed a wild bear along a Romanian highway, a top-tier route for riders. Authorities say tourists keep feeding the animals like it’s a zoo. Now, bears are basically pawing for snacks. As our very own National Park Service says, “Don’t pet the fluffy cows.”
🌌 You are glowing: Turns out your cells are out there throwing microscopic raves 24/7. Humans emit ultraweak photon emissions — basically cellular sparkle dust — until we die. It’s metabolic, not magic. You just can’t see it unless you’re in a lab with fancy cameras. But yes, you are technically glowing with stress and slowly fading like a bio glow stick.
69%
The biggest cholesterol drop from a single shot of VERVE-102. Forget daily pills, this gene-editing jab might rewrite the cholesterol playbook. One dose in, and someone’s LDL dropped by nearly 70%. The crazy part? It doesn’t just lower your LDL, it turns off the gene behind it. Heart attack prevention just went full sci-fi.
Print, click, bang: Wired just rebuilt a 3D-printed gun tied to a CEO murder plot, and yeah, it works. Despite some federal and state bans, making an untraceable firearm (paywall link) at home is shockingly legal (and easy) in much of the U.S.
$10 million
That’s what someone paid for the original Hermès Birkin prototype. Yes, just the prototype Hermès crafted in 1984 after Jane Birkin sketched it on an airline barf bag when complaining about basket bags on a flight. Oh, after an intense 20-minute bidding war? A two-minute standing ovation.
🚨 Fix Or Repair Daily = Ford: Ford’s racked up 88 safety recalls in six months. That’s more than any other automaker hits in a year. Some are small issues, others are major safety flaws, including one affecting 850,000+ vehicles. The company has doubled their safety teams, tied 70% of exec bonuses to “quality,” and still, the recall parade goes on.
Secret agent lover: Loneliness gets you. A retired U.S. Army colonel turned Air Force contractor admitted to leaking Ukraine war intel to a mystery woman he met on a dating app. She regularly requested classified updates and called him her “secret informant love.” Sentencing is in October, same time as cuffing season. Poetic?
$500 million
That’s how much Microsoft saved by AI-answering your customer service calls. Their AI squads took over (paywall link) call centers, transforming human reps into ghost listeners.
👀 Meta got caught snooping: Turns out Facebook and Instagram were secretly logging Android users’ web activity via a backdoor for months. Not even Google (which owns Android) knew. Meta says it stopped after getting exposed. Should we believe them? My brain says no, and my gut feeling says hell no.
🍿 Find your next movie: Movie-Map is a free site that helps you find films similar to ones you already like. Just type in a favorite, and the screen fills up with other titles. Your pick sits in the center, and the closer the other names are, the more alike they are. Goodbye, endless scrolling.
🙃 Take a people detox: Humans need each other. But sometimes you just want everyone to disappear. That’s not misanthropy, that’s “aloneliness”: the emotional ache of not getting enough alone time. New research shows even 15 minutes of solitude lowers stress, boosts creativity and dials down cortisol. So give yourself some me time today.