school Archives

Stay safe this Labor Day

🔋 My pick: Hand-crank emergency radio (38% off)

Don’t get caught in the dark. Stay connected with NOAA alerts, an SOS alarm and even a compass.

🚨 Carbon monoxide detector (25% off): Invisible danger? Get alerts to your phone the moment CO levels rise.

🚗 Car safety hammer (27% off, two-pack): Car accidents are scary. This breaks glass and cuts seat belts, so you get out fast.

🔒 Master Lock padlock (15% off, three-pack): Back-to-school or back-to-gym? Colors may vary, but protection doesn’t.

❤️‍🩹 Emergency first aid kit (16% off, 500 pieces): Everything you need for bumps, scrapes or “oops” moments.

👉 Prep doesn’t end here: Labor Day deals mean less stressing. Grab more emergency essentials on my Amazon shop here.

We may earn a commission from purchases, but our recommendations are always objective.

Schools spying on kids at home?

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Back to school means more than just books and homework. Parents, check your kids’ devices now for school-installed spyware that uses AI to monitor texts, searches, and online activity, even at home, and may be watching your entire family. Here’s what you need to know.

Luxury’s identity crisis: When you’re dropping $400K on a car, do you really want it to feel like a fancy iPad on wheels? Bentley doesn’t think so either. They’re going full old-school – custom wood, rare materials and designers who actually sit down with you. Because real luxury is still made by hand, not just coded in.

11:18 p.m.

That’s when the average American actually falls asleep. Bedtime may start at 10:36 on average, but your brain’s running a late-night talk show until nearly midnight. Toss in some regret, a side of scrolling, the kids starting school again, and voilà, sleep debt before sunrise.

Freebie for teachers: Need posters, worksheets or slides that actually look good? Canva’s got loads of templates made for teachers. Go to canva.com/education and click Get Verified with your school info.

Poor Mark Zuckerberg can’t catch a break: The man-child has spent $110M buying 11 homes in Palo Alto to build a personal fortress complete with a pickleball court, “bat cave” basement and private school. After eight years of nonstop construction, frustrated neighbors got a peace offering. He actually gave them noise-canceling headphones. Because nothing says “sorry for ruining your street” like a $300 pair of earbuds. Oh, also donuts.

Are schools spying on your kids at home?

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Your kid might be under 24/7 school surveillance, even at home. George, your AI host, breaks down how student safety tools like GoGuardian and Gaggle track everything from late-night YouTube binges to unsent messages. Plus: a $750 PayPal password dump, biometric TSA fast lanes, Steph Curry’s AI jump shot coach, and five cool science experiments hiding in your phone.

AI brings back a school shooting victim

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Jim Acosta interviewed an AI avatar of Joaquin Oliver, a 17-year-old killed in the Parkland shooting. Was that too far? A listener uses ChatGPT to get better at painting. Plus, Zuckerberg’s Hawaiian compound, a scary new bank scam, and AI wedding vows.

Teen taxi takeover: Waymo just dropped a self-driving car service (paywall link) for teens in Phoenix, with plans to expand. Kids ages 14 to 17 can summon robot cars to school, soccer or wherever else, no license needed. Parents are jazzed. “So like my dad’s Waymo can pick us up at 6 if your mom’s Waymo can drop us off at 10.”

🧠 School is in session: OpenAI’s new tudy mode turns ChatGPT into that one friend who won’t tell you the ending of a movie “because you need to experience it.” It scaffolds info, checks if you’re actually learning, and gently refuses to do your homework unless you keep asking, in which case it’ll cave, just like us all.

😳 Oklahoma school board scandal: During a Board of Ed meeting, someone streamed a video of nude women gathered around a “chiropractic table” on the big screen. So there’s a full-blown investigation, and fingers are pointing at Ryan Walters, the state’s head of education. He’s denying everything, of course.

💥 3D guts and glory: Caltech’s researchers built PillTrek, a tiny 3D-printed smart capsule that monitors your gut like a biochemical Fitbit. It tracks pH, glucose, serotonin, you name it, by crawling through your insides like a nerdy spy. It’s cheap, wireless, and eventually, yes, it comes out the old-school way. Consider it a poop diary with WiFi.

$0

The tuition cost at the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine. The Walmart heiress is footing the bill for the first five graduating classes at her brand-new med school, AWSOM, in Bentonville, Arkansas. It’s not charity, it’s a bet to prove that preventive care, art and a side of nutrition training can reshape health care. Call it Whole Foods meets Grey’s Anatomy.

1.8 million

The number of teachers now getting a crash course in AI. A new $23 million union-backed training academy, funded by Microsoft ($12.5M), OpenAI ($8M plus $2M in tech) and Anthropic ($500K), aims to make every AFT member fluent in AI. It’s like summer school for grown-ups.

40,000

That’s how many “CDs’ worth of music” could be held on a stamp-sized hard drive. A promising new magnetic molecule that stores data solo can store three years of nonstop Pink Floyd, crammed tighter than your high school jeans. Don’t get too excited, it currently only works at -279°F.

$100,000

The lifetime wealth boost from just one high school personal finance class. According to a new study, that’s the ROI for teaching teens how money works: budgeting, investing, credit scores, the whole shebang except how to set up a joint account.

Your .edu email gets you 3 big freebies

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It’s not only for logging into class. That school address unlocks free software that normally costs thousands.

What a time to write

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With AI tools, it’s easier than ever to fake your way through school, work — anything.

$68,000

The salary offer a high school junior has already locked in for after graduation. Elijah Rios isn’t heading to college. He’s heading to the welding shop (paywall link). In a world where internships are unpaid and “entry-level” means three years of experience, Rios’ gig, $24 an hour with overtime, a 401(k) and benefits, feels like spotting a unicorn.

💸 Educator freebie: If you’re a teacher, you get Canva Pro for free. The rest of us pay $120/year. School librarians and specialists can join, too. Go to canva.com/education and click Get Verified. Log in or sign up (use your school email if you can). Then, upload your school ID, teaching certificate or a link listing your job. Approval may take a few days.