We may earn a commission from links on this page.

The only thing I didn’t love about the Mammotion Luba robot lawn mower I tested last summer was its size. It’s a hulking four-wheel-drive robot and I live in the city, where we don’t have huge lawns. Enter the Luba Mini, a halved version of the Luba meant for smaller lawns (and tighter budgets). In fact, if you paid attention this spring, miniaturized versions of some of my favorite technology were everywhere. These mini-me versions seem to be driven, according to the companies themselves, by two market needs. While smart home tech is incredible in terms of functionality and independence, it often comes at a steep cost. But it’s not just price driving the shrinking of our tech; many companies realized was that many folks wanted the automation even when they didn’t have an acre of lawn to mow or a wall of windows to clean. Here’s how a few of my favorite pieces of technology have shrunk themselves to become more accessible and affordable.

Mini lawn mowers

Yuka full size on the left and mini on the right
Credit: Amanda Blum

Mammotion released mini models of both the Luba (AWD) and Yuka (2WD) robot mowers, and I’ve been testing them for the last month. In terms of size, they’re perfect for most suburban and urban lawns under ¼ acre and have almost the same functionality as the larger models. That’s the point, according to Senior Product Manager David Cheng, who told me, “We weren’t just shrinking our existing models—we were filling a real gap in the market for homeowners seeking smart, perimeter wire-free lawn care that fits smaller outdoor spaces.”

Mammotion’s mowers require an RTK tower, which is a highly accurate GPS method that allows for triangulation between the mower, the tower and satellites. Using your phone as a remote control, you walk the robot around the perimeter of your lawn to set up zones, and create pathways between zones so the robot can navigate on its own. The minis have a new benefit, which is the ability for them to map spaces on their own, without you walking them around. If your yard has clear borders, I found it worked as well as mapping the area on your own.   

The larger Yuka comes with a hopper for grass clippings, which you can teach to dump the clippings anywhere you like—the mini doesn’t have that option. Still, I didn’t find the hopper very usable on the large version, so no loss there.  

I did find the minis had trouble, regardless of which version of mapping you used, getting to some edges of the yard. If there were overhanging shrubs casting a long shadow, the AI would interpret that as a no-go zone, avoiding it altogether. Still, that was the only degradation of features I found between the models. The mini has another benefit: It’s a lot less conspicuous parked at the dock, given the size. While you can install a 4g chip in your robot and set up notifications in case someone grabs it and goes, you just know where someone has absconded with it to.  

The models use the same app, and the minis mowed as well as the original models. At a dramatically lower price point, this gives you an excuse to invest in a robot mower if the thing holding you back was how large or expensive they are.

Mammotion Luba full size robot mower

at Amazon

at Amazon

Mammotion Luba Mini robot lawn mower

$1,999.00
at Amazon

$1,999.00
at Amazon

Mammotion Yuka mini robot lawn mower

$999.00
at Amazon

$1,098.00
Save $99.00

$999.00
at Amazon

$1,098.00
Save $99.00

Mammotion Yuka 2000 robot lawn mower

$2,448.00
at Amazon

$2,448.00
at Amazon

  Smaller smart grills

The original Brisk It Origin
Credit: Amanda Blum

Last summer I tested all the smart grills on the market, and my favorite was the Brisk It Origin. Through the fall, winter, and this spring, I have used it extensively because it turns smoking (a merciless task that involves a lot of overnight grill babysitting) into a flawless, hands-off experience. You tell the grill what you want to make, and AI kicks in to tell the grill how to make it, and it will notify you when it’s time to flip things over or add a baste; when it’s done, the grill turns itself off.

You can, of course, edit the smoking program, create one on the fly, or just use the smoker manually as a grill. I went from someone who never rarely smoked on the grill to someone who does so once a week. On my recommendation, a BBQ devotee up the block added a Brisk It to their three-smoker lineup and revealed to me that it has become their favorite. Still, the original Brisk It clocks in just under $600 so I was excited to test the Zelos, a smaller, less expensive Brisk It with all the functionality of the Origin, albeit with less real estate.

My experience isn’t that unique, according to Christopher Huang, CEO at Brisk It. “Over 70% of U.S. adults say they want to cook more at home, but cite time and effort as their biggest barriers…and while more than half of home cooks express interest in smart kitchen tech, only 15% actually use it regularly.”

the mini has about 80% of the space of the original, seen here. I fit a whole rack of ribs plus a tray of chicken, but couldn’t fit two racks of ribs.
Credit: Amanda Blum

Even as a highly enthusiastic home cook willing to put in the time, I cannot deny how much utility I get out of smart home automation in the kitchen. A smart grill is out of this world, since the notifications and temperature reporting of the grill and food means I don’t have to stand over the grill. Brisk It even helps control the stall that barbecued meats often experience.

Last month, I set up the Zelos (a thirty-minute affair) and invited neighbors over. I was worried about the smaller grill space (the Origin has 580 inches of grill space to the Zelos’ 450 inches). While I could fit more racks of ribs on the Origin, the Zelos accommodated a full rack, plus a whole tray of chicken thighs, and I used the upper rack to smoke an array of vegetables.

It didn’t escape my attention that because the smaller grill uses less fuel (both are powered by pellets, although the control unit requires electricity), I’d be more likely to use it more often.

Again, the app experience is the same on both models, and is highly functional and, dare I say, pretty fun. The AI the program uses is great for finding new recipes, a function I find underwhelming in practice on other products. At a reduced price, the Zelos makes an awfully appealing Father’s Day gift, since it will also free up Dad from watching the grill all day.

Brisk It Origin 940 Smart Smoker and Grill

$849.99
at Amazon

$849.99
at Amazon

Brisk It Origin 580 Smart Smoker and Grill

$549.99
at Amazon

$599.99
Save $50.00

$549.99
at Amazon

$599.99
Save $50.00

Brisk It Zelos Smart Smoker and Grill

$449.99
at Amazon

$449.99
at Amazon

A smaller window-washing robot

In full disclosure, the only reason I haven’t tested a Winbot, the window washing robot, is that I simply don’t have the window real estate. The Winbot is about 13 inches square, and works by suctioning itself to your window and then putting it through a four-step wash process. I know people with Winbots, and if you have large square or rectangular windows, particularly those where some portion of the window is out of reach, it seems worthwhile. If you’ve got arched windows, though, the Winbot struggles with shapes that don’t match the design of the robot itself, which has 90-degree angles. The Winbot also isn’t for curved glass. These may seem like a lot of limitations, but I spent the winter in Arizona looking at a lot of glass patio doors, patio rooms, and walls of dusty windows and thought, “Ah…this is what the Winbot is for.”

Except now, there’s a Winbot Mini, with an 8.5-inch square footprint. At that size, almost all my windows are fair game, so I’m excited to try it out. That was the point, according to Michelle Jones, U.S. spokesperson for ECOVACS, who said, “We saw an opportunity to bring the power of our larger window-cleaning robots to homeowners in the U.S. who have smaller or segmented window panes and don’t need a fixed cleaning station.”

But Ecovacs also points to a more specific problem that a lot of smart tech products suffer from, in my opinion: By the time the company has worked out the tech, the solution is often overly complicated. Ecovacs recognized that, as well, and simplified the offering in the Winbot Mini. The Mini ditches the rubber bumpers of the larger model, but that means better edge-to-edge cleaning. The mini also gains more portability by not having a heavy station like the full size model.

What the mini lost seems like a worthwhile tradeoff for the price: The large Winbot has twice as many cleaning programs and more safety features (12 to the Mini’s 9), but in both cases, what the Mini has seems sufficient. Priced around $250, the WinBot Mini feels like a luxurious piece of tech within reach for most folks.

[add to list https://www.amazon.com/ECOVACS-WINBOT-Window-Cleaning-Robot/dp/B0DR8W696Y]

Ecovacs Winbot W2 Pro Omni

$499.99
at Amazon

$599.99
Save $100.00

$499.99
at Amazon

$599.99
Save $100.00

Ecovacs Winbot Mini

$199.99
at Amazon

$199.99
at Amazon

The Shelfy Lite

the original Shelfy
Credit: Amanda Blum

For the last six months, I’ve had a Shelfy installed in my fridge. A small, charegable device, the Shelfy uses a catalyst on a ceramic filter, activated by LED lights in the device to mimic chlorophyll photosynthesis. To simplify, it purifies the air in your fridge to remove ethylene gas that ripens vegetables, and it removes odors and prevents cross contamination.

I can confirm that it works to make your fridge smell better, and while I can’t confirm the additional twelve days of freshness in vegetables that Shelfy claims, it has definitely added some shelf life to my fruits and vegetables.

In particular, I notice the change in fruit. I buy strawberries and blueberries with some regularity year round, so I know traditionally how long they’d last before starting to form mold (two to four days). As long as I have Shelfy charged, I can get a full week out of strawberries and ten days out of blueberries. That’s a huge difference that creates savings in my food budget. The CEO of Shelfy, Paolo Ganis, put a number to the savings, explaining that “the average family throws away approximately $1,996 worth of food each year—money that could easily be saved with better food preservation.”

Vitesy Smart Refrigerator Device | Extends Food Freshness

$149.99
at Walmart

$149.99
at Walmart

Shelfy isn’t large or particularly expensive (it’s just under $150) but Vitesy has just introduced a Kickstarter for the Shelfy Lite, which will only be $66 (the project is already funded). “Through a number of user surveys, we consistently heard that people loved the idea behind Shelfy but wanted a version that was more accessible: smaller, more affordable,” Ganis said.

The Lite adds multiple modes to the device, one for the general fridge, one for the crisper drawer and a power mode for when someone buys a particularly stinky cheese. The Lite improves on the battery charging and performance over the original model, and comes in some additional accent colors, if you care about that sort of thing. The Lite is only marginally smaller than the original Shelfy, but at less than half the price, that seems immaterial.

What I’ve enjoyed about the Shelfy is that there are no filters to replace; you simply wash and wet the ceramic filter when you recharge the device every few weeks. If you don’t recharge it, there are no annoying beeps or notifications—it’s been a quiet helper.

A smart home hub for less

Sometimes even I forget there are smart home hubs outside of Samsung, Amazon, Apple, and Google. But Homey, a hub that keeps all your connections local, has gained traction over the last few years since its introduction. Homey has a specific focus on automation through its “Flow” platform, which is a version of routines or automatons in any other platform. Homey fans claim Flow has far more flexibility, and although I’ve never found Alexa or Google Home difficult, Homey is noted for its appeal to beginner smart home fans. Still, at just under $400, the Homey Pro hub was an expensive way to dive into smart home tech, compared to other platforms.

Jasper Foppele, head of marketing at Homey, was transparent about their strategy, explaining that their usage data and feedback made clear they had to rethink their offering. Instead of trying to offer everything (the Homey Pro supports 60 apps), the Homey product team chose the core technology they saw being used in the U.S. market (Matter, Thread, Zigbee) and winnowed the app coverage to the most common 25. “This approach allowed us to significantly reduce cost and complexity,” Foppele said, “a privacy-first, locally running smart home hub priced at $199.”

The Homey Pro Mini still prioritizes local first connection, including backups, but it has an option for cloud backup. The Mini is on pre-order and will ship sometime this month.

Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the nation’s third-largest school district, is now deploying Google’s Gemini chatbots to more than 105,000 high school students — marking the largest U.S. school district AI deployment to date. This represents a dramatic reversal from just two years ago when the district blocked such tools over cheating and misinformation concerns.

The initiative follows President Trump’s recent executive order promoting AI integration “in all subject areas” from kindergarten through 12th grade. District officials spent months testing various chatbots for accuracy, privacy, and safety before selecting Google’s platform.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

In 2013, a deep-sea mining company named UK Seabed Resources contracted marine biologist Diva Amon and other scientists from the University of Hawaii at Manoa to survey a section of the seafloor in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a vast swath of international waters located in the Pacific Ocean that spans around 2 million square miles between Hawaii and Mexico.

The area is known to have an abundant supply of rocky deposits the size of potatoes called polymetallic nodules. They are rich in metals like nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese, which have historically been used to make batteries and electric vehicles.

Read full article

Comments

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.

Building your DIY home maintenance or repair kit can get expensive quickly. If you have some big summer plans for home improvement projects, you might be looking for savings on tools and materials to bring your DIY dreams to life. Luckily, there are some deals on Craftsman tools on Amazon right now that you can check out to help you get your projects finished under budget.

Tools sets

If you’re building a new toolbox from scratch, Craftsman makes a few sets that are invaluable for DIY projects, and a few of them are on sale on Amazon right now:

• The Craftsman 230-piece mechanics tool set is on sale for $99, 50% off its regular price. This set includes a ¼, ⅜, and ½ -inch standard American imperial ratchets and socket sets, a set of box wrenches, a hand-held screwdriver, and several specialty bits. This is a great start for any type of project where you might use wrenches, like DIY appliance repair.

• The Craftsman 7-piece SAE wrench set is on sale for $14.98, 39% off its usual price. This set includes seven box wrenches in standard American imperial sizes. This is a good basic wrench set for any type of project where you might be using nuts and bolts, like installing heavy-duty shelving.

• The Craftsman 14-piece ¼-inch SAE ratchet and socket set is on sale for $14.98, 44% off its typical price. This set comes with deep sockets that are good for any project where you might need a ratchet for tightening nuts and bolts.

Cordless driver

The Craftsman 20-volt, ¼ inch drive cordless impact driver is on sale for $49, 60% off its regular price. This impact driver comes with a 20-volt battery and charger, and can be used with impact drill bits to drill holes as well as drive screws and other fasteners. This is a good basic tool for beginner home maintenance because it comes with the necessary components to get you started, although you will need to buy bits separately.

Hand tools

Craftsman hand tools are known for being durable and well-made, making them a good investment for your DIY toolkit. Here are some deals on hand tools for your home maintenance tool kit.

• The Craftsman ratcheting screwdriver is on sale for $14.99, 38% off its regular price. It comes with six double-ended bits in various sizes to fit most standard Phillips head, flat head, star drive, and square drive hardware. This is a great driver for small jobs around the house, like door hardware maintenance.

• Craftsman folding SAE hex wrench is on sale for $4.98, 40% off its usual price. This set of hex wrenches is useful for DIY home maintenance like tightening the set screws on furniture and knobs.

Blades

An oscillating multitool is rapidly becoming the most essential tool for home DIY projects because of its versatility and speed. If you rushed out to get one, you might have gotten it home only to realize you don’t have the right blade for it. Here are some deals on Craftsman oscillating tool blades from Amazon to cover a variety of DIY applications.

• The Craftsman wood and metal oscillating tool blade 3-pack is on sale for $16.99, 58% off its typical price. These blades are rated for cutting wood or metal and are perfect for trimming out parts of wood furniture that could have nails or screws in them, and can be used to trim the corners on circular saw cuts in the corners where a curved saw blade can’t make a clean cut.

• The Craftsman 3-piece multipack of oscillating tool blades is on sale for $13.99, 57% off its regular price. The set comes with one wood and metal blade, one PVC blade, and one scraper blade. This set will cover you for a wide variety of projects from cutting PVC for a DIY drip irrigation system to trimming screw tips that poke through your fencing.

NVIDIA and Foxconn have teamed up to build what they are calling an AI factory supercomputer in Taiwan. The project, which NVIDIA announced at Computex, will “deliver state-of-the-art NVIDIA Blackwell infrastructure to researchers, startups and industries,” according to the company. NVIDIA is building a new local headquarters in Taiwan as well.

The supercomputer will be powered by 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs. NVIDIA says the project will greatly increase the availability of AI computing and bolster local researchers and businesses. As it happens, the Taiwan National Science and Technology Council is investing in the project. It will offer the supercomputer’s AI cloud computing resources to those in its tech ecosystem.

“Our plan is to create an AI-focused industrial ecosystem in southern Taiwan,” Minister Wu Cheng-Wen of the council said in a statement. “We are focused on investing in innovative research, developing a strong AI industry and encouraging the everyday use of AI tools. Our ultimate goal is to create a smart AI island filled with smart cities, and we look forward to collaborating with NVIDIA and [Foxconn] to make this vision a reality.”

Foxconn, which is providing the supercomputer’s AI infrastructure through its Big Innovation Company subsidiary, will also use the system to further its work in smart cities, electric vehicles and manufacturing. For instance, it aims to optimize connected transportation systems and other “civil resources” in smart cities, and develop advanced driver-assistance and safety systems.

TSMC is looking to benefit from the project as well. The company’s researchers will tap into the supercomputer’s power in the hope of accelerating their R&D work.

NVIDIA made the announcement on the same day that it released its GeForce RTX 5060 GPU. We gave the RTX 5060 Ti a score of 85 in our review.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/nvidia-and-foxconn-are-building-an-ai-factory-supercomputer-in-taiwan-145535818.html?src=rss

New submitter optical_phiber writes: In March 2025, the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education discovered that Microsoft Teams had begun collecting students’ voice and facial biometric data without their prior knowledge. This occurred after Microsoft enabled a Teams feature called ‘voice and face enrollment’ by default, which creates biometric profiles to enhance meeting experiences and transcriptions via its CoPilot AI tool.

The NSW department learned of the data collection a month after it began and promptly disabled the feature and deleted the data within 24 hours. However, the department did not disclose how many individuals were affected or whether they were notified. Despite Microsoft’s policy of retaining data only while the user is enrolled and deleting it within 90 days of account deletion, privacy experts have raised serious concerns. Rys Farthing of Reset Tech Australia criticized the unnecessary collection of children’s data, warning of the long-term risks and calling for stronger protections.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Against all snowy odds, we have almost made it to the unofficial start of summer, Memorial Day. While that brings lots of barbecues and swimming, it also means a bunch of deals. Included in this years Memorial Day sales is the Apple Magic Mouse with a USB-C port. 

Right now, you can pick up the Apple Magic Mouse for $68, down from $79 — a 14 percent discount. The deal brings it to only $5 more than it’s all-time low price. Notably, this deal is only for the white model with a USB-C port. 

The Apple Magic Mouse is a solid wireless and rechargeable option to go with any of your Macs. It should pair automatically with the computer. Plus, one charge should last about a month and you can recharge it with an included woven USB-C Charge Cable. 

Check out our coverage of the best Apple deals for more discounts, and follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/apples-usb-c-magic-mouse-is-on-sale-for-68-for-memorial-day-143823038.html?src=rss

The Gboard interface can be a lot. In addition to the keyboard, there are so many features stuffed inside this little utility that there’s a whole customizable toolbar on top of the keyboard to help you navigate them. And this kind of maximalist interface applies to the Emoji keyboard as well… or at least, it used to. Now, Google is finally doing something about it.

Google has starting rolling out a new beta redesign to the Emoji menu that makes it simpler to use, with a more categorized layout. Gone is the old “All” screen that showed all of your recently used emojis, customized Emoji Kitchen stickers, and GIFs all in one long, confusing list. And, with a little bit of sign up, you can experience this new approach right now.

The old Emoji screen in Gboard.
Credit: 9to5Google

How to try out the new Emoji layout

Google’s new Gboard layout is currently in beta, which anyone on Android can sign up for (unfortunately, there is no beta for the iOS version of the app). Just head over to this Gboard beta link and click Become a Tester. Once you’re signed up, open the Play Store on your Android phone and go to the Gboard app. You’ll now have access to beta updates. Update the app and, once it’s installed, you’re good to go. You’ll have the new Emoji layout and all the new features that Gboard is testing.

How to use the new Emoji layout

Now, instead of opening the All screen, tapping Gboard’s Emoji button directly opens the new Emoji tab, which is just one of many. You can easily switch to other tabs like GIF and Stickers by tapping on them. To go back to the keyboard, you can either use the Back icon or the “ABC” button in the tab bar.

Here’s what the tabs look like.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

The Emoji tab, which is the default, integrates both your regular Emojis and your Emoji Kitchen. You can choose two emojis to see automatic Emoji Kitchen suggestions at the top. Tap the Arrow icon to view more suggestions.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Next, you’ll see the GIF tab. This tab shows suggested GIFs by default, but you can tap the Clock icon to view your recently used GIFs. You can also use the Search bar to search for any GIF.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

The next tab is dedicated to Stickers. This is where you can explore sticker packs, view stickers that you’ve installed, and access your recently used stickers.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

The last two tabs are reserved for Kaomoji and the Bitmoji app.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

The Kaomoji tab shows you a list of text based, simplified emojis, which you can use as an alternative to stickers or emojis. The Bitmoji tab, meanwhile, will only work if you have the Bitmoji app installed and have configured your Bitmoji avatar.

These are a couple videos from Houston of a man who broke down in his Saab and called his girlfriend to help him tow the vehicle, and the two attempting the tow with nothing but a chain. This broke the Saab’s axle, causing the car with the man inside to swing wildly across multiple lanes of traffic and smack the wall while the woman driving the SUV, presumably unfamiliar with rearview mirrors, never looks back to see the car waving like a flag in a hurricane and her boyfriend screaming “HOLY SH!T I’M GONNA DIE WHAT THE F**K IS WRONG WITH YOU STOP STOP STOP I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE DRIVEN!” Shockingly (and I think we can all agree, wrongfully), no tickets were issues for the incident, but the man was arrested on an out-of-state warrant. A solid reminder to always consider your outstanding warrants before doing something this stupid.

Two videos below, the first filmed by another motorist, the second from the sky.

Welcome back to The Out of Touch Adult’s Guide to Kid Culture, your weekly reminder that the internet is raising children in ways no one understands. This week, we’ve got kids setting their laptops on fire for clicks, a clueless millennial stepping into a cultural and linguistic minefield, and chicken Alfredo (but make it R&B).

“Low GPA Activity” trend sees kids burning their laptops

In last week’s column, I explained the “low GPA activity” trend that was taking off on TikTok. To quote me: “It’s the kind of trend that went from funny to a little harmful quickly, so check out these videos now, before TikTok bans the entire genre.”

I must be psychic, because the trend that started with cafeteria sculptures has literally caught on fire: Kids are setting their school-issued Chromebooks alight, then posting videos like this:

Unlike many past sensationalized reports of dangerous online trends, this one seems real. Kids burning their laptops have been reported all over the country, and there are at least two cases of laptop arsonists facing charges. It’s important to note, though, that this is a small number of kids we’re talking about.

There are three flavors of laptop destruction: The more gentle kind involves “stress testing” a laptop by throwing it around some. Kids took that further by forcing staples, paperclips, or other metal objects into their Chromebook’s ports to short it out and produce smoke. The trend’s final form is puncturing the lithium batteries in their laptops to release toxic smoke and/or start a fire.

Despite the news reports, I don’t think it’s entirely accurate to blame these fires on an “online challenge” or a meme. I still vaguely remember how the last days of a teenage school year felt; when things slowed down enough for you to start seeing what a sham everything is, back when that was a dismal revelation instead of something you’d learned to deal with. My response was putting on some Alice Cooper or watching Rock ‘n Roll High School, but only because I didn’t have a laptop to burn.

Gen A slang speech stirs online controversy

Xiaomanyc is a 34 year old YouTuber best known for videos where he speaks different languages with fans and followers all over the world. But a recent speech at a high school proved contentious for this non-controversial streamer. Xiaomanyc chose to deliver the speech about the “Gen Alpha dialect of English.” It was clearly meant to be lighthearted, as you can see from the video below:

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

But he’s inadvertently touched a cultural third rail, particularly to young people. Most of the kids there seemed to like the speech, but some definitely did not. Online types weighed in with their own disapproval. As @hennytwote put it on X:

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

He went on to lay out the issue: “Being a polyglot who studies linguistics and failing to recognize the sociological overlaps of your field that basically have you micro-aggressing Black members of your audience is actually so fucking funny to me. White people are insane.”

“It’s literally just Black slang. What is it with ⚪️ people and erasure? It’s so off putting,” posted X user @Santawave.

It’s certainly a fair point, but a lot of the slang used by Xiaomanyc (and Gen A itself) didn’t originate with AAVE. For instance, “giga-chad” and “mog” come from very-online communities’ message-board speak. “Chud” comes from the movie C.H.U.D., and I doubt any Black person wants to take credit for “Skibidi Toilet.” More importantly, even if you have valid concerns about how other people use words, language doesn’t care; it’s a magpie that takes whatever’s shiny.

(If you want to translate some Alpha-speak with both AAVE and other origins, check out my glossary: ‘Aura Farming,’ ‘Huzz,’ and Other Gen Z and Gen Alpha Slang You Might Need Help Decoding.)

What is a “paypig?”

“Paypig” is slang that originated from the BDSM community. It refers to the submissive in a financially dominant lifestyle. So basically submissive dudes (usually) who are aroused by giving money to people who are financially dominant, aka “findoms.” (Capitalism calls them “consumers.”) I bring this up to point to a growing niche of TikTok users who are teaching each other how to find paypigs, giving out their Cash App name for anyone who wants to send a few ducats, and populating hashtags like #findomme and #paypig.

What is “chicken Alfredo boomerang” music?

This phrase is only understood by hyper-online music stans. It needs to be taken apart to be understood by mortals/people who have to work. “Boomerang” here refers to the looping feature on Instagram of that name. Chicken Alfredo refers to the meal, but when you put them together, “chicken Alfredo boomerang” music refers to the weakass R&B someone might put behind an Instagram post of their dinner at a mid-scale restaurant. Referring to commercially released music like this is, obviously, an insult.

Other extremely-specific musical insults include “reheating your own nachos,” “co-worker music” (music a lame co-worker might be playing), and “Love Island music,” (the music that plays when a couple fights during an episode of Love Island).

What is “The 2020 effect?”

The 2020 effect is a TikTok meme where users post videos that seems to show a brighter, more colorful world, as if the darkness of the pandemic years that began in 2020 is finally lifting and the angels in heaven or whatever turned up the saturation. There’s often a reference to the graphics being corrected, but in a metaphorical sense, as you can see in this video:

Or a reference to the last time things looked so bright:

I don’t know if it means anything, but it’s nice that a hopeful, optimistic trend is catching on.

Viral video of the week: I spent $10,000 on Kickstarter Tech

In this week’s viral video, genial tech streamer Mrwhosetheboss illustrates the hope and heartbreak of anyone who is into cutting edge gear. It’s one of those YouTube video where someone does a ridiculous thing that we all want to do, before good sense prevents us from actually doing it. Like, say, buying over-promised tech items on Kickstarter just to see what they send. Like the title says, Mr. Whose spent ten grand on products so advanced they didn’t even exist when he bought them, like a solar powered charging base, an AI-assisted pillow, and a USB powered, robotic desk-pet. No spoilers, but the results are mixed, with some products being flat-out vapor-scams, some being kind of OK, I guess, and some delivering on the promises of their Kickstarter campaigns.

Abstract of a paper featured on NBER: This year marks the 40th anniversary of the NBER Macro Annual Conference, founded in 1986. This paper reviews the evolution of mainstream macroeconomics since then. It presents my views, informed by a survey of a number of researchers who have made important contributions to the field. I develop two main arguments.

The first is that, starting from strikingly different positions, there has been substantial convergence, in terms of methodology, architecture, and main mechanisms. Methodology: Explicit micro foundations, explicit treatment of distortions, with, at the same time, an increased willingness to deviate from rational expectations, neoclassical utility and profit maximization. Architecture: The wide acceptance of nominal rigidities as an essential distortion, although with mixed feelings. Mechanisms: The wide nature of the shocks to both the demand and the supply side.

The second is that this convergence has been, for the most part, good convergence, i.e. the creation of a generally accepted conceptual and analytical structure, a core to which additional distortions can be added, allowing for discussions and integration of new ideas and evidence, rather than fights about basic methodology. Not everything is right however, with too much emphasis on general equilibrium implications from the start, rather than, first, on partial equilibrium analysis of the phenomenon at hand.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.