When you’re everyone’s unpaid emotional support intern
Guess who’s spying from your bookshelf
With more than 500 million Alexa-enabled devices sold worldwide, odds are you’ve got one sitting on your counter or desk, quietly glowing, always listening. Ever mutter something like, “I need new jeans,” and suddenly your phone’s serving up Levi’s ads? Creepy coincidence or hot mic in action?
You’re sitting on eBook gold
You’re sitting on a gold mine made of random facts and questionable life skills. I’m talking about things you know, say gardening, budgeting, baking, fixing stuff, navigating tech, prepping, accounting, car repairs, parenting, teaching, you name it.
🧽 AI’s dirty dishes: AI was supposed to save time. Instead? You’re cleaning up its mess. A new Stanford study says 41% of workers are busier with “workslop” since tools like ChatGPT and Copilot showed up, thanks to sloppy drafts, useless decks and bad edits. The bots aren’t just taking your job, they’re trying to give you theirs.Â
đź’ľ Windows 10’s doomsday date: Microsoft is pulling the plug on Windows 10 support Oct. 14. Europe gets free updates for a year, but here in the U.S.? You’ve got three options: cough up $30, burn 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, or back up your stuff to OneDrive and pray you don’t run out of storage. Protection ends October 2026.Â
📞 Paid to spill: A new app called Neon pays you to record your calls: 30¢ a minute, max $30 a day for a little self-spying. It then sells your voice data to AI companies. It’s already No. 2 in Apple’s social charts. Once your voice is out there, it could be cloned, hacked or scammed into oblivion. I think you should pass.
🧞‍♂️ Wish granted, kind of: A Virginia widow asked ChatGPT for lottery numbers. It spat out some digits. She won $150,000. And she’s donating all of it. I won’t be surprised if GPT starts getting thousands of new magic number requests per day. You know, a lottery ticket is a weird gift to give someone. It’s like “Here, this has a 99% chance of being disappointing. I saw it and thought of you.”
Inbox, outsourced: Perplexity just launched an AI “Email Assistant” that moves into your Gmail or Outlook, auto-sorts messages, drafts replies in your tone and books meetings. Cool, but it’s locked behind their $200/month Max plan. For those not trying to drop part of your rent money on your inbox, just smash that “mark all as read” button.Â
Uber’s new Costco energy: You might want to check out using prepaid passes for routes you take often, so you save money up front. You can buy bundles of five, 10, 15 or 20 rides, and the bigger the bundle, the bigger the discount (5%‑20% off), which means no surge price surprise for your daily commute.