The federal government shutdown, now in its 38th day, prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a temporary emergency order Thursday prohibiting commercial rocket launches from occurring during “peak hours” of air traffic.
The FAA also directed commercial airlines to reduce domestic flights from 40 “high impact airports” across the country in a phased approach beginning Friday. The agency said the order from the FAA’s administrator, Bryan Bedford, is aimed at addressing “safety risks and delays presented by air traffic controller staffing constraints caused by the continued lapse in appropriations.”
The government considers air traffic controllers essential workers, so they remain on the job without pay until Congress passes a federal budget and President Donald Trump signs it into law. The shutdown’s effects, which affected federal workers most severely at first, are now rippling across the broader economy.
Thanksgiving should be one of the least stressful holidays—the sole achievement you’re trying to unlock is to eat yourself into a coma, which many of us can do any time, with zero prep. But there are some sneaky sources of stress, from the expense of pulling it all together to the travel arrangements needed to make sure everyone arrives in time for appetizers—not to mention the stress of cooking Thanksgiving dinner. The unlucky host has the responsibility of not only feeding a large group of people, but making sure everything comes out more or less on time—and then cleaning up the spectacular mess afterward.
Luckily, modern science and engineering have occasionally turned their genius toward the kitchen, and the result is a list of tools and gadgets you might not immediately think of, but that can make cooking, serving, and cleaning up after Thanksgiving dinner a lot easier.
Automatic pan stirrer
Do you have an automatic stirrer? Probably not. Do you need one? Probably yes. One of the key stress points of Thanksgiving dinner (or any large dinner party) is the balancing act of cooking multiple dishes so they’re all ready at the right time. Plenty of dishes require constant stirring to ensure they thicken correctly, don’t lump up, and don’t burn, but it’s one of the easiest things to forget when you’re juggling a dozen other things. Having one of these on hand means you’ll never burn the gravy ever again.
Electric turkey fryer
If you’re a purist, you think of a Thanksgiving turkey as something that gets pulled from the oven with much fanfare. If you’re a little adventurous, you might try to deep-fry your turkey, which results in injuries and property damage every year (because turkeys tend to explode when deep-fried), including about five deaths each year. But if you want a faster, crispier turkey than your oven can give you, invest in an electric turkey fryer. You’ll get a crispy, tender bird in much less time without the danger of your turkey transforming into a bomb. Plus, using this will leave your oven free for other things, giving you a little more capacity.
Don’t have a stuffing cage? That’s okay, no one has a stuffing cage. But you should get a stuffing cage, because it makes getting all that stuffing out of the turkey much easier. You form your stuffing into the cage and insert it into the bird, and when the cooking’s done you just pull it out and you have all your stuffing ready to go—no annoying scraping and much less mess.
Fat separator
You will be judged on many aspects of your Thanksgiving meal, but people get judgier about gravy than anything else. If you want smooth, silky, delicious gravy, you want a fat separator. Just pour your drippings in and let it filter out the solids. The fat will rise to the top, and then you can pour those delicious, filtered drippings into a bowl for gravy preparation. It’s a simple tool, but its impact on your gravy game will be striking.
Electric buffet
Here’s the secret: No one gets the timing right. Your sides will be ready before you’re ready. Something will delay the main course, and you’ll have bowls of mashed potatoes or stuffing sitting around. Or dinner will be generally delayed, or your guests will be delayed, and your hot appetizers will glaze over and go cold. Enter the compact buffet: Keep several dishes nice and warm for as long as you need. Whether you need to buy time with side dishes so you can finish a recalcitrant turkey or your guests are delayed by traffic jams, this is the difference between a microwaved Thanksgiving and having piping hot food ready to go.
Measuring stuff can be maddening. You pour, weigh, then scoop and hope you don’t spill any. At some point every year, I just give up measuring things accurately and start winging it, eyeballing everything. By the time guests start arriving, I’m usually just tossing stuff into bowls and pots with something that could be described as “wild abandon.” A digital measuring spoon cuts out the middle step of using a scale or measuring cup. Just scoop what you need and pour off the excess until you have the right amount. Then dash it into your dish and move on to the next ingredient you need to measure. Over time, those saved seconds will add up.
Mini pie-maker
Are you making some pies for Thanksgiving? Does everyone on your guest list agree on the pie they want? Or will you make four full-sized pies that will be half leftover when everyone’s gone? Leftover pie isn’t exactly a crisis, but if you’re not going to dedicate your life to eating pie, it can be a huge waste. A mini pie-maker means you can a) make a variety of pies for your guests that b) won’t be left over. Plus, it can bake up pies quickly, so if you miscalculate how much pie you need you can whip up a few more at the last minute.
Food-warming mats
Keeping food warm is a challenge for most Thanksgiving cooks. Dishes come off the stove and then sit for a while while you figure out the rest of the meal, herd the crowd from the television into the dining room, and go through the ceremony of toasts and carving. By the time the gravy gets passed around, it’s lukewarm, the temperature of disappointment. A warming mat is the solution. While an electric buffet can keep side dishes warm, a warming mat can keep everything else ready to eat, and all you have to do is set plates and bowls on it until they’re needed.
A 5-in-1 tool
If you’re me, you know that you lose significant minutes searching for tools when you’re cooking a big meal. First, you can’t find what you need. Then, you find what you need, but after you use it, it needs to be cleaned for its next use. Then it gets buried under the pot holders or kitchen towels, and you spend a frantic two minutes searching for it while trying to affect a cool, calm demeanor to your guests. Make life easier with this 5-in-1 tool or something similar. It combines a cutting tool, a spoon, a spatula, a slotted spoon, and a turner into one silicone wonder. Use, wipe clean, use again—and eliminate the need to have all those extra implements crowding your counter space.
Whisk wiper
If you’re going to be using a hand mixer to make some of your Thanksgiving dishes, like mashed potatoes or desserts, the whisk wiper is a must. Instead of having to scrub your whisks and bowls in the sink to prep them for the next dish on the menu, you can wipe them clean in seconds and jump right back into the fray. Plus, it lets you scrape every last bit of your food into the serving, so you’re not dumping a big glob of it down the sink.
Splatter guard
If you fry stuff, you know that a splatter guard is a necessity. But traditional screens make it tough to stir and flip food while you’re cooking, because you have to keep lifting the guard away. This splatter guard works differently, protecting your surroundings from, well, splatter while giving you full access to the cooking surface and your food so you can flip, stir, baste, or season as needed without risking a splatter disaster. This won’t necessarily speed up cooking, but it will make the eventual cleanup a lot easier and faster, since you won’t need to scrub down the walls.
Turkey lifter
If you’ve cooked a turkey (or a roast), you know that there’s a “last mile” problem: Getting it from the pan to the serving dish or carving station. If you’ve done your job, your turkey will be tender and easy to pull apart, which can make transferring it a comedy of messy errors. A Turkey Lifter is the dumb solution you didn’t know you needed. Place the lifter under the turkey when you put it in the oven, and when it’s finished, you can just lift the whole thing out easily.
Zwift Camp: Build begins this Monday, November 10. This is a 5-stage route-based workout series, with each stage lasting one week and focusing on developing power over a specific time interval.
My plan is to do each of the five workouts before their weeks begin, so I can write a post unpacking the workout and delivering some tips along the way. This post covers Stage 1’s workout on Glasgow Crit Six, but before we get there, let’s talk a bit about what Zwift Camp: Build is… and isn’t.
Setting Expectations
Zwift Camp: Build is the second in a series of three Camps planned for the 2025/26 season. We began with Zwift Camp: Baseline, which featured four workouts that pushed us to set maximal power numbers for 5 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, and 20 minutes.
Now we have Zwift Camp: Build, which features workouts where we repeatedly go hard across approximately the same intervals as Baseline used, to build fitness in those systems. (Important note: “approximately” is the keyword here, because the workouts aren’t precisely targeting 5-second, 1-minute, 5-minute, and 20-minute power intervals. Route-based workouts use distance instead of time-based efforts, so Zwift has chosen segments that come close to the target intervals.)
Lastly, in the spring of 2026, we’ll have Zwift Camp: Breakthrough. This Camp will feature some competition and analysis of our power performances.
Who Is It For?
These Zwift Camps are designed as an accessible entry into structured training and analysis. The workouts are fairly short, so the vast majority of riders will be able to complete them. And you only need to do one workout per week to complete the program, meaning most riders can fit Zwift Camp into their current training load.
If you’re a newer cyclist who hasn’t done much structured training, or if you’re a more experienced rider looking to bring a bit of focus and specificity to your training, Zwift Camps may be helpful.
But this isn’t a full-blown periodized training program like you get from a coach, TrainerRoad, or even Zwift’s own training program library. If you’re an intermediate to experienced rider who already trains with even a medium level of structure and specificity, you’ll probably find Zwift Camps don’t offer what you need. Yes, you can do the same Zwift Camp workout more than once to further train a particular system. But experienced riders will probably need to focus much more than one week and a couple of sessions on a particular energy system to see results.
With that said, let’s get into Stage 1’s workout!
Stage 1 Walkthrough: Neuromuscular (~5 Seconds)
The first stage of Zwift Camp: Build focuses on short-term sprint power. To do so, it puts you on the new Glasgow Crit Six route, which takes you on six laps of the Glasgow Crit Circuit for a total distance of 18.3km and 199m of elevation gain.
The key part of this route-based workout is the five maximal sprints on the Champion’s Sprint segment, which comes up at the end of each lap and takes most riders 12-15 seconds to complete. The route actually takes you through the Champion’s Sprint seven times, but if you follow the simple instructions on screen, you won’t sprint the first or last time through the segment.
I went into the workout with semi-tired legs, so I planned to just push hard for the final ~5 seconds of each sprint. (The on-screen instructions have you pushing hard throughout the sprint, but this is your workout, and you can do with it what you will.) I did do a longer sprint on the final effort, just to say I’d followed the rules somewhat!
You’ll notice some HUD changes in these route-based workouts. First, if you’re using virtual shifting, your current gear is shown top-center at all times.
Additionally, after your first sprint, the Splits and Ride Stats HUD elements automatically pop up. Ride Stats goes away after a few seconds, but Splits remains throughout the ride, automatically creating a new lap split at the start of each lap. (This auto-lapping is a handy feature some ride organizers might like to use!)
I actually found the Ride Stats HUD more useful for this particular workout, as I wasn’t chasing lap times. (The Splits HUD will be handy, though, in other workouts, including Stage 3, where we ride Volcano Circuit laps as a VO2 workout.) I liked the Ride Stats block because it showed my 5-second power best for the ride, giving me a target to beat.
The on-screen prompts make it clear that you are supposed to rest in between sprints. Even up the Clyde Kicker, your goal is to spin easy so the legs can recharge for another full-gas sprint effort.
I was riding this as a solo test event, so there was nobody else on screen for me to chase. That made it easy to go easy. Fair warning: if you execute this workout in a group event, it may be harder to dial it down and spin between sprints. (Because, as they say, if two cyclists show up, it’s a race…)
At the end of the workout, you’ll earn the Glasgow Crit Six achievement badge, along with a 360 XP bonus.
HoloReplay Tips
Zwift’s HoloReplay may be a very helpful feature in these route-based workouts, giving you a target to beat on each segment effort. Admittedly, I spent more time confused and slightly annoyed at HoloReplay during my workout than I did chasing the ghosts, but for future workouts I’ll try to be more intentional about chasing my previous self!
You’ll want to set up HoloReplay in a specific way so it enhances your experience without detracting from it. Here are the settings to use:
Note: if you set “HoloReplay Privacy” to “Public” instead of “Private”, you’ll get a second HoloReplay of yourself at each segment, which corresponds to your best effort currently listed on that segment’s leaderboard. This is the mistake I made when doing the Stage 1 workout, but really, it seems more like a bug, based on the description of what the setting does, and the fact I had “Leaderboard HoloReplay” set to “Hide”…
It powers maximal efforts lasting up to ~15 seconds
It’s like a high-powered battery in that it produces a lot of power quickly, depletes quickly, but can also recharge if you rest for a few minutes
It’s the least adaptable of your three energy systems
Sprint Training Tips
While this workout won’t lead to significant neuromuscular energy system adaptations – it is the least adaptable energy system, after all – it can help you improve your sprinting form and efficiency. And you can make big sprint gains by improving form and efficiency!
Whoever put together the script for this route-based workout seemed to know this, as there are several prompts which focus on form and efficiency, such as, “Think about your gear choice. Maybe try a quicker wind-up this time. Keep your body relaxed and ride efficiently.”
I would have liked to see more prompts like this, though, because many riders could use a bit of coaching to maximize their sprints! I hosted a ride called Sprintapalooza for years, where we rode short circuit routes with sprint segments, going all-in to set segment PRs and compete for the green jersey while working on our sprint form. Through that, I learned a lot about sprinting.
Here are a few tips to maximize your sprint power:
Proper gearing is very important. Too easy a gear and you’ll spin out without enough resistance to push against. Too hard and you’ll be mashing and unable to maximize your power either. Experiment with different gearing in your maximal sprints, and you’ll come to learn which one or two gears work for you in most situations.
Check your form: I’m a big fan of rocker plates, partly because they let me rock the bike back and forth naturally when sprinting on Zwift. If you have one, make sure you aren’t riding it backwards, and be sure to take advantage of its movement. (If you don’t have a rocker plate, your form will differ greatly from good outdoor form.)
Work on cadence: power on the bike is computed using two values: torque (how hard you’re pushing the pedals) and cadence (how fast the pedals are moving). Increase either of these, and your power goes up. Work on high-cadence drills and you may just find you’ve unlocked more sprint power!
Suggestion Box
Overall, I’d say this first workout of Zwift Camp: Build went well. The script was on point, and the course was a good one for sprint repeats. That said, here are a few ways Zwift could improve the experience:
Average segment power history: As mentioned above, I would love to see a HUD element that shows my power average across the target segment every lap, so I can see how those numbers are changing as the workout unfolds.
Improve the event description: Zwift likes to set up these massive event series with a pile of identical text dumped into each and every event’s description. It appears that’s what they’re doing with Zwift Camp: Baseline, too. Why not customize the text for each stage, and make it more useful? Share specifics about what we’re trying to accomplish in that session, and why it matters. And get rid of every word that isn’t needed.
More technique tips: especially when it comes to maximal sprints, form and efficiency are huge factors. Talk about that more during the session. Zwift could even link to further resources in the event description.
Questions or Comments?
Have you done this workout yet? Share your thoughts below, or any questions you may have heading into the workout.
Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) has a ‘for sale’ sign up. And that could mean big changes for subscribers to the company’s most popular streaming service, HBO Max.
After receiving unsolicited acquisition offers, WBD recently declared itself open to “strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value.” WBD drew new attention by being open to selling its streaming business (WBD is also still open to moving forward with previously shared plans to split into a cable company and a streaming and movie studios company next year).
Naturally, mergers and acquisitions talk has heated up since then, with Paramount as one of the most eager suitors. Paramount, which merged with Skydance in August, is reportedly planning to keep “much of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. intact” if a deal happens, per a Bloomberg report that cited unnamed people familiar with the plans of David Ellison, Paramount’s CEO.
An anonymous reader shares a report: On the new MacOS 26 (Tahoe), Apple has mandated that all application icons fit into their prescribed squircle. No longer can icons have distinct shapes, nor even any fun frame-breaking accessories. Should an icon be so foolish as to try to have a bit of personality, it will find itself stuffed into a dingy gray icon jail.
[…] While Apple had previously urged developers to use squircle icons on our apps, they’ve now taken things much further to ensure compliance. It’s a shame. Apple updated their own app icons on Tahoe, for both the squircle shape as well as the new “Liquid Glass” interface. Mostly, these icons seem dumbed-down, with a loss of detail.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is trying to unmask the operator of Archive.is, also known as Archive.today, a website that saves snapshots of webpages and is commonly used to bypass news paywalls.
The FBI sent a subpoena to domain registrar Tucows, seeking “subscriber information on [the] customer behind archive.today” in connection with “a federal criminal investigation being conducted by the FBI.” The subpoena tells Tucows that “your company is required to furnish this information.”
The subpoena is supposed to be secret, but the Archive.today X account posted the document on October 30, the same day the subpoena was issued. The X post contained a link to the PDF and the word “canary.”
At a White House event Thursday, President Trump announced deals with drug makers Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly to offer their popular GLP-1 obesity and diabetes drugs at lower prices for some Americans, namely some on Medicare and Medicaid plans. But questions linger about the significance of the deal.
According to the announcement, Medicare and state Medicaid programs will be able to purchase a month’s supply of Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound at $245 each for eligible patients. Eligible people on Medicare will have a $50 co-pay for them.
The negotiated price is a significant cut from the drugs’ list prices: The list price for Ozempic is $997; Wegovy is $1,350; Mounjaro is $1,080; and Zepbound is $1,086. But, of course, purchasers rarely pay drug list prices. It’s unclear how much Medicare and Medicaid would have paid for the drugs without this deal and what the savings will be.
Last year Brazil saw its biggest drop in emissions since 2009, new data show. The decline comes in the wake of a crackdown on deforestation. From a report: Since returning to power in 2022, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has moved to stem illicit clearing of forest by miners, loggers, and farmers, stepping up enforcement that had been weakened under his predecessor, far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon is now at its lowest level in more than a decade.
In Brazil, forests are largely destroyed to create new cropland and pasture, and together, the loss of forest and raising of cattle are its biggest sources of emissions. Lula’s crackdown on illegal deforesters has put those emissions in check. According to the Climate Observatory, a green group, Brazilian emissions fell by 16.7 percent last year. “The new data shows the impact of the federal government retaking control over deforestation after a deliberate lack of control between 2019 and 2022,” when Bolsonaro held office, the group said in a statement.
Lula aims to end illegal deforestation entirely by the end of this decade, but as he makes progress on this goal, Brazil is still facing worsening droughts and fires fueled by warming. Last year, fires accounted for two-thirds of the primary tropical forest lost in Brazil, according to the World Resources Institute. Often small fires used to clear land get out of control, burning through larger, drought-ridden areas.
The New York Times has announced a new feature that allows you to make your own Wordle puzzle to share with friends. You need to be a Games or All-Access subscriber to create puzzles, but no subscription is needed to solve them.
You aren’t roped to regular Wordle’s five-letter structure, either: Allowable puzzles can be anywhere from four to seven letters long. They must be on an allowable word list; as with regular Wordle, this means no proper nouns, for the most part. Profanity is not allowed, nor are gibberish entries like “ASDFGJ” (I tried).
Here’s a link to a Wordle-style puzzle with four letters that I created for you—because I consider all of you my friends. (This is not the puzzle I’ve used to create the screenshots in this article, so no worries about spoilers.) Good luck!
How to create your own Wordle on the NYT Games site
Here is the link to the puzzle creator. You need to be a Games (or NYT All-Access) subscriber to use it. When creating a puzzle, you’ll enter your solution word, your name, and an optional clue. After creating the puzzle, you can share it with a message like the one above. Anybody can click the included link and play the puzzle, no subscription required.
When you solve somebody’s puzzle, you can share your results in much the same way as a regular Wordle solution, but there’s also an option to include spoilers. This could be a fun way to show your guesses to the person who created the puzzle.
Yes, I was mean. Credit: Beth Skwarecki
Custom Wordles can be surprisingly challenging
When playing around with this tool, I discovered that Wordle-style puzzles that aren’t five letters are harder than you’d think. I found myself struggling to think of any good seven-letter words at all. The puzzle still gives you six guesses, same as with a standard five-letter Wordle, no matter how many letters are in the solution. Good luck with the longer ones!
Data can paint a much starker contrast than words alone, and US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) appears to get that. On Friday, her office published numbers on Big Tech’s tax breaks in Republicans’ “Big Beautiful Bill.” When compared with the benefits those sums could have provided for working families, it helps to fortify what some might otherwise dismiss as run-of-the-mill rhetoric.
According to Sen. Warren, the bill’s tax breaks for Microsoft alone will total $12.5 billion in 2026. When compared with the average cost of SNAP benefits, that sum could have provided food assistance to 5.2 million people. Or, it could have covered Medicaid for 1.6 million adults (or 3.8 million children), or lowered Affordable Care Act (ACA) premiums for 1.9 million Americans.
Meanwhile, Warren says Amazon is set to score a $16 billion tax break this year. That’s the equivalent of Medicaid for 2 million adults (or 5.4 million children), lower ACA payments for 2.4 million Americans or SNAP benefits for 6.6 million people.
What about the tax breaks Alphabet gets? Warren says Google’s parent company is looking at a $17.9 billion tax cut this year. That could pay for Medicaid for 2.3 million adults (or 5.4 million kids), lower ACA premiums for 2.8 million people or food assistance for 7.5 million people.
If you’re confused about why Big Tech is helping to pay for a lavish White House ballroom, look no further. Regardless, Warren’s analysis goes on to break down the $137 billion in tax breaks for all corporations in 2026, the $132 billion routed to the wealthiest one percent in 2027 and more. You can read the senator’s full report for more details.
“Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are knocking millions of Americans off their health insurance and ripping away food assistance from families — all so they can fund giant tax cuts for billionaires and giant corporations,” Warren said in a statement. “This is a matter of priorities: Trump and Republicans are fighting for their billionaire buddies, while Democrats are fighting for American families.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/sen-warren-big-techs-tax-breaks-could-have-covered-benefits-for-millions-of-americans-174831791.html?src=rss
Fitbit is mostly associated with tracking your steps, workouts and sleep, but also among its arsenal of overall health features is the ability to track your food intake. You can use it to see how many calories you’ve consumed versus how many you’ve burned, and even scan the barcode of pre-made food items to add them to your daily log. But the food log feature in the Fitbit app currently appears to be broken, or at least not working as it’s supposed to.
As spotted by 9to5Google, various problems have been reported during the last 24 hours, and while the page still loads as it should, adding items is proving difficult. Attempting to search for a meal or food pulls up a blank page, while the barcode scanner seems to be completely broken, returning a maintenance error message when you try to use it.
A number of Fitbit users are reporting similar issues, with only the custom food creation function working properly. Some have also said that they tried updating the app to fix it, but with no success. One user who deleted and re-installed the Fitbit app said that didn’t work either, while another said they “really rely on the calorie count feature,” which obviously won’t be accurate if you can’t log every meal you eat.
Google, Fitbit’s parent company, has not officially commented on the matter at the time of writing, and we’ll update this article if it responds to our request for one.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/fitbit-appears-to-be-experiencing-a-partial-outage-174249152.html?src=rss
Creator/writer/star Mae Martin’s Wayward is Netflix’s biggest show right now. It’s a sly mystery involving cult behavior and cycles of trauma at a school for troubled teens, given added relevance by its proximity to real-life stories of abuses at similar facilities.
Wayward does a few different things well: It’s a mystery box show, first of all—meaning that we’re presented with not just one but several intriguing puzzles right off the bat, with resolutions handed out frugally. It’s also a great example of the “small towns are weird” subgenre, one that likes to remind us that there are strange and ominous doings in even the quietest communities. The show shines a dramatic light on the troubled-teen industry, here represented by the Tall Pines Academy, run by Toni Collette’s smirking, sinister head teacher. Last, but hardly least, Netflix‘s biggest, buzziest showtells a story with a trans character at its center, created by and starring non-binary comedian Mae Martin. In 2025, that ain’t nothing. All that’s to say that there are a few different roads to go down it we’re looking for a show to watch next.
Wayward Pines (2015 – 2016)
These shows have a bit more in common than just their similar titles. Based on a trilogy of Blake Crouch novels, this one stars, initially, Matt Dillon as a Secret Service agent investigating the disappearances of two fellow agents in the Idaho town of Wayward Pines (not to be confused with the Tall Pines of Wayward). Things go awry pretty much immediately, and he wakes up from a car accident to find one of the agents (Carla Gugino), who’s also his ex, having settled down in the seemingly idyllic community—and she’s 12 years older than when he last saw her a few weeks ago. Even more dramatically, the local sheriff (Terrence Howard) enforces a strict “no one ever leaves” policy, on pain of having one’s neck slit. The mysteries pile up from there. Stream Wayward Pines on Hulu.
One of the first of Netflix’s original series, this supernatural thriller takes us to the title Pennsylvania town, where economic realities have shut down the town’s steel mill and left residents with few options other than the two remaining employers are the Godfrey Institute for Biomedical Technologies and the Hemlock Acres Hospital. Take your pick, but do so knowing that Olivia Godfrey (Famke Janssen), head of the Godfrey Institute, is rumored to be conducting all sorts of weird experiments. When two teenage girls are murdered, a 17-year-old Romani kid, rumored to be a werewolf, is the prime suspect. The fact is, he is a werewolf, but that doesn’t make him a murderer. Stream Hemlock Grove on Shudder and AMC+.
With all due respect to Wayward, I’m not sure there’s ever been a better, more iconic series about a freak small town full of dark secrets. In the initial run of Twin Peaks, teens and adults faced human tragedy accompanied by supernatural threats from outside of normal space and time. Kyle MacLachlan plays FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, who arrives in the title town to investigate the murder of teenager homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). His arrival in town precipitates a (very) long night of the soul as Cooper uncovers secrets and mysteries among the town’s delightfully, and often disturbingly, weird residents. Stream Twin Peaks on Mubi and Paramount+.
Purely in terms of plot, I’m not sure that Yellowjackets and Wayward have much in common. Tonally, though, they’re a good match, with secrets and mysteries abounding among characters with complicated pasts (the shows both also include some significant queer rep). This time-jumping survival drama is about a group of teenage girls becoming stranded in the wilderness in 1996 and doing terrible things to survive—the extent of which we only learn about via flashbacks from the present, where the events of those 19 months continue to have an impact. There are teases of the supernatural here, much of it ambiguous, but there’s plenty of horror in a past that we’re still seeing fleshed out. Yellowjackets rather cynically posits that there’s a huge difference between the version of the past we talk about and the one that really happened. Stream Yellowjackets on Paramount+; Netflix currently has the first two seasons.
Situated between flashbacks and flash-forwards, mystery/thriller The Wilds sees an airplane full of teenage girls crash on the way to an empowerment program in Hawaii. It quickly becomes clear that the accident was engineered, and that the whole thing is some sort of social experiment, forcing the survivors to compete against each other for survival. The show understands the ways in which young women in the real world are exploited and expected to compete against each other, which grounds the elaborate plot twists. Like Wayward, the show turns on the power of manipulative authority figures to manipulate young women. Stream The Wilds on Prime Video.
This Stephen King adaptation takes us to a rather different school for wayward children, as the titular institute is a place for locking away and manipulating teens with unique abilities; the indifferent staff put the kids through grueling, torturous experiments on the daily. Meanwhile, former cop Tim Jamieson (Ben Barnes) is hoping to put his dodgy past behind him in favor of the quiet life in a nearby town—until, of course, he finds himself drawn into the mystery of the sinister school in the next town over. The show’s been renewed for a second season. Stream The Institute on MGM+.
There’s no sinister school here, but it’s otherwise a decent match if the tone you’re looking for is “sinister, twisty mystery in a seemingly quiet town.” Following his wife’s death, Yeong-ha (Kim Yoon-seok) just wants a quiet life in the secluded town where he lives, renting out the house next door as a vacation rental—though he’s not even all that enthusiastic about that. It’s all going fine until a young woman shows up with her son, the same woman abruptly leaving behind blood stains and, even more disturbingly, the kid. Stream The Frog.
Though the mystery/thriller vibes are on point here, we’re mostly here for the Toni Collette of it all, at least in terms of its relationship to Wayward. Bella Heathcote plays Andy Oliver, a young woman who’s moved back to her hometown to take care of her mom, Laura (Collette). Within the first 20 minutes of the show, a shooter attacks the diner where they’re both eating. When the man targets Andy, her mom dispatches the killer with relative ease—which, in Andy’s mind, raises some questions about mom’s backstory. The twisty series takes us around the bend a few times as to whether Collette’s character is a hero or a villain, but she’s clearly someone you don’t want to get on the wrong side of. Stream Pieces of Her on Netflix.
A bit more on the nose, perhaps, than Wayward, here we travel to The Town (we never get a name), from which no one can ever leave. The residents and visitors aren’t metaphorically trapped, but literally so, and are beset by creatures come from the woods and kill anyone found outside after dark. The Matthews family learn all about this firsthand when they roll into town in their RV and find themselves trapped alongside the local sheriff (Harold Perrineau)—just as it’s getting dark. The show’s monsters aren’t just mindlessly hungry, they’re cunning and sadistic, and more than capable of killing residents in impressively gory ways. It’s very much a supernatural spin on the “small towns ain’t what they seem” vibe. Stream From on MGM+.
A true crime docuseries that dives into one of the primary thematic drives of Wayward: what’s often referred to as the “troubled teen industry,” representing a broad array of residential centers for struggling teenagers. Though scandal and documented abuses abound, it’s nevertheless a multi-billion-dollar industry in the United States, offering behavioral correction and rehabilitation to parents and caregivers who feel that their kids have become problems. This series focuses on the rather horrific experiences of the “students” (inmates, more precisely) at the former Academy at Ivy Ridge in upstate New York. That facility has shut down, but others much like it carry on and, with the return of conversion therapy as a legal option, it’s the industry is likely to enter a new boom. Stream The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping on Netflix.
U.S. corporate profits have risen to record levels this year as companies eliminated nearly 1 million jobs. Chen Zhao of Alpine Macro calls the disconnect a “jobless boom.” Companies typically cut workers when profits decline. Amazon laid off 30,000 employees despite strong earnings. Zhao attributes the pattern to AI adoption boosting productivity across industries while reducing demand for workers. Labor demand has fallen to zero growth or mild contraction.
The Federal Reserve lowered interest rates in September and October after Jerome Powell noted concerns about layoff announcements from large employers. The Department of Labor suspended monthly employment reports when the government shutdown began October 1. ADP reported private employers added 42,000 workers in October. The unemployment rate stood at 4.3% in August. The rate has remained stable because the labor pool is contracting due to baby boomer retirements and reduced immigration under Trump administration policies. Art Papas of Bullhorn disputes the AI explanation and argues companies are recalibrating after pandemic overhiring.
The government of Denmark said on Friday that lawmakers from its political right, left and center have reached an agreement to ban social media for anyone under 15, as reported by The Associated Press. If enacted, the move would be one of the most ambitious attempts globally to keep children off social media. Momentum has been building in recent years around concerns that social media is harming its younger users.
The country’s Digitalization Ministry would set the minimum age at 15 for certain social media platforms but has not clarified which ones would be affected. The government also did not share specifics on how enforcement would work.
A statement from the Digitalization Ministry reads, in part, “Children and young people have their sleep disrupted, lose their peace and concentration, and experience increasing pressure from digital relationships where adults are not always present,” as reported by The Associated Press. Digitalization Minister Caroline Stage said Danish authorities are “finally drawing a line in the sand and setting a clear direction.”
In December, the world’s first country-wide social media ban for children will go into effect in Australia, banning children under 16 from major social media platforms. Platforms that want to operate in the country must employ age-verification technology and would face fines if they fail to enforce the nation’s age limits.
Some age-verification methods, particularly facial recognition and showing of ID, have faced heavy skepticism as they have been implemented around the world. In the UK and Italy anyone wanting to watch porn online must now upload a selfie or provide ID to verify they are above age limits. If the same methods are employed to verify teenagers’ ages, questions will undoubtedly arise about data safety and privacy involving minors’ data.
Texas recently came close to enacting a similar ban, though it ultimately didn’t pass. Utah passed laws in 2023 that require parental consent before teens can create social media accounts. Florida passed a social media ban for children that is currently held up in court.
This move will undoubtedly spark more conversation around the potential harms of social media on adolescents, as well as whether social media access will be perceived as personal parenting decisions that should remain free from government intervention.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/denmark-set-to-ban-social-media-for-users-under-15-years-of-age-171602408.html?src=rss
