If you've ever been intrigued by the mystery of a dusty cassette you found in a thrift shop—or if you're just looking for a new time-sink—you have to check out Intertapes, a website that digitizes "found cassettes" sent in by users all over the world, then posts them in full for anyone to listen to.

The catalog is small at the moment—only 14 cassettes—but already really interesting. There's a bootleg cassette of music played at a Spanish nightclub in the late 1990s (lots of squelchy noises and relentless bass) and a 90-minute recording of New York hip hop station WBLS captured in '94 (Warren G.'s "Regulate" represent), amid more mysterious choices, like this haunting recording from a "destroyed cassette tape found on the side of the coast highway near Heraklion" in Greece; this tape full of ominous noises found in a parking lot in Tbilisi, Georgia; tape of binary code from Barcelona; and a cassette recorded in the USSR featurng 1970s pop hits.

I love how each cassette is treated like an important archeological object, because in a way, they are—discreet time capsules made more poignant by the hiss and warp that speaks to the time that's passed since this audio was captured and the ephemeral nature of analogue recording. From musical snapshots to accidental field recordings, these tapes are fascinating for there mere existence in the modern day, where the question of who recorded them and why adds a layer of mystery to each one.

The ongoing cassette tape revival

Intertapes could be viewed as a reflection of the growing cassette tape revival, a movement that celebrates the outdated format. Since they hit the market in 1963, audiophiles have generally considered cassette tapes an inferior format to vinyl—tapes are more rugged than records, but the sound quality is markedly worse. The spread of CDs and streaming music pretty much killed off commercial cassette releases by the early 2000s, and it's easy to see why: Digital music doesn't hiss or degrade. Cassettes have a more narrow dynamic range. You can instantly select tracks on a CD or MP3 player, and it will never play at a slightly wrong speed, unspool, or melt on your car dashboard. Bonus: You never have to rewind them to hear a song again.

Most people didn't see it at the time, but when tapes slipped into obsolescence, we lost something real and tangible. Dropouts, distortion, and warp are evidence of life. Cassette tape compression is a unique sonic aesthetic that conveys warmth and nostalgia. And then there's the way they impart meaning into the act of "listening to music." Starting a Spotify stream is frictionless, optimized, and weightless, while cassettes are physical objects with histories that defy the disconnection of the digital space. You own the music on tapes in a way you never own information being served to you by a tech company. A friend handing you a cassette of their favorite songs is meaningful in a way a link to playlist will never be, and your Spotify playlist will never be found by the side of the road near Heraklion, to be pondered over by future people.

Yes, by digitizing them, Intertapes is removing some of the qualities that make these recording special—but it's also preserving them, at least for now (if you've ever tried following a decades-old weblink, you know the internet is ephemeral too).

How to submit your own tapes to Intertape

If you're of a certain age, you probably have a dusty cassette or two hanging around somewhere. Don't let it molder in a desk drawer. Describe the origin of your recording and a background story, scan a picture of your tape, and email connect@intertapes.net to arrange you submission to the site. This collection really deserves to grow.

You can pinpoint the exact minute of the high-water mark for tech-based enthusiasm: January 9, 2007, 9:41 AM PST, the moment Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to the world.

Cell phones weren’t new—neither were cellphones with touch screens—but this one was different: so high-tech it seemed like it couldn’t be real, but so perfectly designed, it felt inevitable. And people were hyped. Not just tech nerds: normal people. The crowd at the 2007 Macworld Conference & Expo broke into rapturous applause when Jobs showed off the iPhone’s multi-touch—an ovation for a software feature!—because it seemed like Jobs was touching a better future.

The iPhone, people said, was like something out of Star Trek. But unlike communicators or tri-corders, it was obtainable (if you had $500) evidence of a future where technology would finally free us from the drudgery of our lives so we could boldly go—wherever, it doesn't matter.

The science fiction fathers of modern tech

Steve Jobs mentioned Star Trek as an inspiration for the iPhone all the time; apparently the show is quite popular among tech people. Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek, and thus was the spiritual father of the iPhone. He spent the 1960s lounging poolside in Los Angeles, dreaming of a post-scarcity tomorrow where the wise, brave men of The Federation kept the Romulans at bay and there were hot alien chicks on every Class-M planet. At the same time, the future’s real prophet, Philip K. Dick, was huddled in a dank Oakland apartment, a stone’s throw from Silicon Valley, popping amphetamines like breath mints and feverishly typing dystopian visions of corporate surveillance states and nightmare techno-realities into his Hermes Rocket typewriter.

Roddenberry's Federation promised technology would help humanity evolve beyond its baser instincts. Dick saw technology amplifying our worst impulses.

So what happened? How did we go from a Roddenberry future where each new product release seemed like another step closer to collective utopia to our Dick-esque present, where the first question we ask of any new technology is “How is this going to hurt me?"

Where does tech excitement come from?

Visionary heads of start-ups like to blather about "paradigm shifts" and "world-changing technology" but people don’t get excited for tech products that are going to, say, cure cancer. Most of life (for pampered Westerners, anyway) is dealing with routine annoyances, and tech promises a way out. Remember printing MapQuest directions before leaving the house? It was a pain in the ass. People were excited for the iPhone because it solved the MapQuest problem and so many other small, intimate problems, like “I can't instantly send a photo to my friend” or “I get bored while I’m riding the bus.” Products that do this flourish, and ones that fail are discarded like a Juicero.

It’s hard to overstate how great the iPhone was back in 2007 in terms of solving annoyances. Buying one meant you no longer had to carry a notepad, camera, laptop, MP3 player, GPS device, flashlight, or alarm clock. It was all crammed into a single black mirror. But speaking of black mirror ...

Excitement turns to boredom

"We’re in an era of incremental updates, not industry-defining breakthroughs," says Heather Sliwinski, founder of tech public relations firm Changemaker Communications. "Today's new iPhone offers a slightly better camera, marginally different dimensions or AI features that no one is asking for. Those aren't updates that go viral or justify consumers shelling out thousands of dollars for a device that's only slightly better than what they already own."

In economics, "marginal utility" is the additional satisfaction or benefit a consumer gets from consuming one more unit of a good or service. The marginal utility leap between a flip phone and the first iPhone was huge. But economics teaches us that marginal utility diminishes with each additional unit consumed. Each new iPhone release provided progressively less additional satisfaction compared to what users already had. Slightly faster chips, slightly better cameras, USB-C instead of Lightning, titanium instead of aluminum—who cares?

If we were merely bored with tech products, it would be one thing. But increasingly, devices that were desired because we want to make our lives easier or more enjoyable are making them harder and worse.

The great technological hassle

“When you buy a new tech product today, you're not just buying one physical product. You're committing to downloading another app, creating another account and managing another subscription," Sliwinski says. "Consumers are exhausted by the endless management that comes with each new device."

In economics, you’d call that “diseconomies of scale”: what happens when a business becomes so large its bureaucracy costs outweigh efficiency gains. In personal terms, it’s when the time and energy it takes to sync, charge, and coordinate your “time-saving” device makes you the middle manager of your own life.

Then there’s the kipple. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick defines “kipple” as useless objects that accumulate: ”junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape.” That drawer full of orphaned power cords and connectors, your broken earbuds, the extra game controllers, the Roku, Chomecast, and old Fitbit are physical kipple, but the virtual kipple is worse. “Personally, I have at least four different apps that I need to download and manage just to live in my apartment complex—smart lock system, community laundry, rent payments, maintenance requests,” Sliwinski says.

According to Dick, kipple doesn't just accumulate; it metastasizes, growing constantly until the Star Trek lifestyle you envisioned becomes a Dick-esque swamp of dependencies, and The future goes from being a place you want to live to somewhere you’re trapped.

The enshittiffication of everything

The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.”He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. ― Philip K. Dick, Ubik

"Corporations have spent years trying to manufacture excitement around relatively low-importance features instead of genuinely useful developments, and consumers have learned to recognize that pattern," says Kaveh Vahdat, founder of RiseOpp, a Fractional CMO and SEO firm based in San Francisco.

Nowhere does this consumer indifference seem greater than with AI. "Consumers are testing Sora or testing Grok and all of that, but there’s really not been a single use case or product for AI that I think consumers are excited about," says Sliwinski.

This will not stop tech companies. Even without excitement, artificial intelligence is everywhere in tech, from toothbrushes to baby strollers (I think PKD would have found the AI stroller darkly funny: it's self-driving, but it won't work if you put a baby in it.) "There’s a lot of buzz around AI but we’re missing the 'so what?'"

Beyond indifference and toward dread

Beyond "so what?" consumers have started asking "How will this hurt me?" "Is AI going to encourage my child to take their own life? Is it going to steal my job? Is it destroying everything pure about humanity?"

Tech companies don't seem like they're scaling back on AI or doing an effective job of explaining its benefits, and if the recent past is an indicator, if they can't make our lives easier, they'll try to imprison us instead, employing psychologists, neuroscientists, and "growth hackers" specifically to make products harder to put down. The innovation isn't in new products that make life easier, but in encouraging addiction through variable reward schedules, social validation metrics, parasocial relationships, and other dark arts until eventually we end up like the half-lifers in Ubik, husks in cryopods, living in a manufactured reality where we still have to pay for the doors to open. That's the PKD take, anyway.

"Maybe 10 to 20 years down the road we will have another huge step change like the iPhone that can condense all these different devices that we’re using or apps that we’re using —but the tech isn’t there yet," Sliwinski says.

In Star Trek, humanity doesn’t abandon scarcity. Technology eventually makes scarcity indefensible, and that's only possible after a planet-wide war. From that Roddenberry-esque perspective, enshittification is what happens when old economic systems try to survive in a world where technology keeps eroding their justification, and each tiny "I don't care" iteration to tech products is a small step closer to Star Trek's promised land of holodecks, abundance, and hot aliens.

What if a team of super magicians used their talent and training to stage elaborate heists? That’s the high concept that drives the Now You See Me franchise. Critics were lukewarm when Now You See Me was released in 2013, categorizing the film as a heist flick with thin characters and a plot that fell apart as often as it twisted, but Now You See Me pulled off its own escape act—audiences loved the movie's flashy style, whipsaw pace, and all-star cast featuring names like Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, and Morgan Freeman. The result was box office magic: a movie with a $75M budget that returned over $300M worldwide. Now You See Me has since grown into an internationally successful, long-term franchise for distributor Lionsgate: The third installment was released on Nov. 14, and a fourth Now You See Me film is already in development.

Like any long-running franchises, the Now You See Me-verse can be confusing, so we put together 10 infographics to pull back the curtain on Now You See Me's magic. First, a quick recap of each movie:

• Now You See Me (2013): The initial entry in the series introduces us to the thieves/illusionists known as the “Four Horsemen.” These best-in-the-business magicians are recruited by a mysterious secret society called The Eye to pull off large-scale heists in front of live audiences, then distribute the money to the needy.

• Now You See Me 2 (2016): The sequel expands the world of the first film, with bigger heists, deeper secrets, and funnier jokes. Having gone into hiding at the end of Now You See Me, The Horsemen resurface a year later and are coerced into a global heist by a tech mogul trying to steal all the privacy in the world. 

• Now You See Me: Now You Don't (2025): Set a decade after the last film, Now You See Me: Now You Don't features all five Horsemen teaming up with three cocky young criminals/illusionists to pull off their most audacious caper yet: the theft of the world's most valuable diamond.

The real-life magicians behind The Horsemen

The Now You See Me movies present stage magic in a semi-realistic (though highly stylized) way. To nail the realism, the films draw inspiration from some of the greatest magicians in history, including:

• David Copperfield: The Horsemen’s larger-than-life illusions/heists like stealing the contents of a bank vault while performing a Vegas show seem inspired by the feats of magician David Copperfield, whose magical feats include flying over the Grand Canyon and vanishing the Statue of Liberty. 

• David Blaine: Street magician David Blaine’s shadow is all over the Now You See Me Movies. Without the popularity of Blaine’s modern, gritty take on magic, the Now You See Me movies would likely not exist.

• Harry Houdini: Anything about stage magic is ultimately inspired by Houdini, the greatest magician of all time. Houdini's daring escape tricks inspired the series’ inciting incident, the death of magician Lionel Shrike, as well as the opening set piece where Henley Reeves escapes a water tank. 

• Andrei Jikh: Jikh’s cardistry skills are evident in all the Horsemen, particularly in Jack Wilder. Jikh served as a consultant on Now You See Me.

• Keith Barry: Another Now You See Me magic consultant, Irish mentalist Keith Barry pioneered and popularized many of the hypnosis and mentalism feats used by character Merritt McKinney.

The Horsemen's greatest heists

The Horsemen are known as much for their larceny as their skills at illusion. Below are their most memorable heists, hold-ups, schemes, and burglaries.

The Paris-to-Vegas bank robbery

In the caper that introduces us to the Horsemen, the magicians rob a bank in Paris while performing before a crowd in Vegas. They choose a seemingly random person from the crowd and tell him he’s going to rob his own bank, the Crédit Républicain de Paris. Then they appear to teleport him to France, where he breaks into a bank vault, hits a button on a vacuum machine, and the money is seemingly sucked from Paris to Vegas where it rains down on the audience. 

The Tressler Insurance heist

At a show in New Orleans, the Horsemen introduce their benefactor, insurance magnate Arthur Tressler, then proceed to drain his personal bank account while they’re onstage, depositing the money in the accounts of audience members, who all turn out to be victims of Hurricane Katrina that Tressler’s insurance company stiffed on repayments. 

The Macau data chip theft

In Now You See Me 2, The Horsemen are coerced by evil tech magnate Walter Mabry to steal a cutting-edge computer chip that can decrypt and expose every system in the world. Housed in a highly secure research facility in Macau, China, the chip is conveniently the size of a playing card, allowing the Horsemen to use cardistry and sleight-of-hand skills to remove it from the building while being searched by guards. 

The Magic Castle: the real-life Château de Roussillon

In Now You See Me Now You Don't, the Château de Roussillon is an ultimate magician's playground. The Eye's headquarters in a mansion in the French countryside is decked out with mind-bending large-scale illusions like rotating rooms and halls of mirrors. The Château de Roussillon is a real castle, but the filmmakers used Nádasdy Castle for the exterior shots in the movie. A main inspiration for the building is a real place: Los Angeles' Magic Castle.

Opened in 1963, the Magic Castle is a restaurant/club/clubhouse for magicians housed in a stately Victorian mansion overlooking Hollywood. Not only is The Magic Castle credited as magic consultants on Now You See Me: Now You Don't, much of the cast trained at the Castle to prepare for their roles.

If you'd like to visit, it won't be easy: The Magic Castle is an invitation-only private club, so you have to be a member of the Academy of Magical Arts or be invited by a member. But if you aren't friends with a magician, you can book a night at the nearby Magic Castle Hotel, where a stay comes with an invitation to the Castle.

“How do they do that?”

I analyzed the tricks in the movies with professional magician Dave Cox, and as over the top as the Horsemen's heists are, all but two of the many magic tricks presented in the Now You See Me movies could technically be done in real life—but the word “technically” is doing a lot of work here. The tricks are possible within the context of a stylized blockbuster, but would be extremely unlikely to work as well in real life: an extended, impromptu cardistry routine involving four magicians passing a playing card between themselves while security guards thoroughly search them makes for exciting cinema, but almost definitely wouldn’t go that smoothly in reality. 

But, here is how three of the most iconic tricks from the franchise could be done in real life.

How to do Atlas’s “riffle force” card trick

Now You See Me opens with a unique piece of cinematic trickery. Street magician J. Daniel Atlas is performing for a crowd on a city street. He riffles quickly through a deck of cards and asks a spectator to “see one card.” When his subject has a card in mind, a nearby building is lit up revealing a giant seven of diamonds, the card the subject was thinking of.  

It’s amazing if you’re “playing along at home,” because the chances are very good that you chose the seven of diamonds too. The trick is done in real life the same way it’s done in the movies: The magician uses sleight of hand or a gimmicked deck to pause on the desired card imperceptibly longer than the other cards. The director of Now You See Me added a frame or two to “pause” on the seven of diamonds, making it more likely that you think of that card.

How Jack Wilder throws cards as weapons

While it’s probably not possible to throw a card as accurately or forcefully as the characters in Now You See Me, you can throw playing cards really fast with the right technique and a lot of practice. 

How Henley Reeves escaped the water tank

Henley Reeves’ introduction is a trick where she escapes from a water tank filled with piranhas, a variation of the kind of classic escape artist illusions popularized by Houdini. Water escapes are dangerous, but not as dangerous as they might seem because they’re rigged—no sane person is really going to try to escape from handcuffs and chains while underwater.

Real-life heists that seem right out of the Now You See Me movies

A group of thieves publicly “performing” large-scale robberies is strictly Hollywood, but the three real-life crimes below share some of the showmanship and audacity of the Horsemen’s heists:

• Louvre heist (2025): A recent jewelry-jacking at the Louvre involved a highly professional and brazen plan executed in broad daylight. The thieves used a truck-mounted mechanical lift to break into a second-floor balcony window and were in and out in less than eight minutes. The robbers have all been caught, but won't say where the jewels are.

• Stockholm helicopter robbery (2009): This thrilling heist involved a gang using a stolen police helicopter to land on the roof of a G4S cash management service building in the Stockholm suburb of Västberga. The brazen thieves smashed through a skylight, lowered themselves into the building, and stole millions while police were stymied by fake bombs placed near the police helicopter. Seven men were sentenced to prison, but authorities suspect as many as ten more people may have gotten away with the crime, and the 39 million Swedish krona loot was never recovered.

• Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist (1990): This heist involved two men who disguised themselves as Boston police officers to gain entry into the museum just before it opened. The pair convinced one security guard to let them in, then handcuffed the rest of the guards and stole 13 priceless works of art valued at over $500 million. Despite a $10 million dollar reward, the art has never been recovered and no one has been charged with the crime.

Seven more movies for fans of Now You See Me

If you’ve watched all three NYSM movies and you’re still craving magical entertainment, check out these seven, all-killer no-filler movies about magic and magicians:

• The Prestige (2006): The Prestige is set in the late 19th century, before you could just google how any magic trick was done. Back then, the secret of sawing a lady in half was closely guarded, and The Prestige’s rival magicians–played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale–will go to any length to keep the hidden knowledge of their craft.

• The Illusionist (2010): This animated, silent feature provides a complete contrast to the Now You See Me movies. There’s no glitz or flash, just a quietly devastating character study of a magician’s relationship with the last person in his world who still believes in magic. Adapted from a screenplay by French cinema legend Jacques Tati, The Illusionist tells its intimate story through the evocative animation of Sylvain Chomet. It will definitely make you cry.

• The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013): The Now You See Me movies go to great lengths to deny it, but magic is cheesy and magicians are weirdoes. Burt Wonderstone leans into the goofiness by casting Steve Carell and Steve Buscemi as Burt Wonderstone and Anton Marvelson, past-their-prime Vegas magicians bedeviled by Jim Carrey's Steve Gray, a Criss Angel-esque magic man who’s a different flavor of cheesy.

• The Magician (1958): Max von Sydow plays the title character in The Magician, where everything is shot in black-and-white and no one gets away with a bunch of money or engages in any witty banter.

• The Illusionist (2006): Yes, I’m recommending two movies with the same title. 2006’s The Illusionist is a moody, slow-burn mystery/romance that’s tonally a world away from Now You See Me’s glitz, but both films share a love of clever misdirection, intricate magic, “woah” reveals, and head-spinning plot twists. If you like the “magic as a means of social justice” theme of NYSM, you’ll like The Illusionist.

• The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010): The Sorcerer’s Apprentice stars Nicolas Cage, who brings his own magic to every role, as a bonafide sorcerer who lives in modern New York City and fights a lonely war against dark magic on behalf of all mankind. Jay Baruchel plays his apprentice, and the pair use magical spells to battle a rival sorcerer.

• Sleight (2016): This scrappy, low-budget flick provides a very different vision of an illusionist turning to crime. Jacob Latimore plays a young street magician who’s left to care for his sister after their parents die. Magic isn’t paying the bills, so he turns to drug dealing, and must use his skills at deception and sleight-of-hand to stay alive. 

It's CES week, when the tech world gathers in Las Vegas to check out the latest gadgets, prototypes, and innovations that will shape the future. Lifehacker's tech team is on the ground at the convention, tracking down big stories and cool gear.

What is CES?

Billing itself as "The Most Powerful Tech Event in the World," CES (short for "Consumer Electronics Show") is the Consumer Technology Association's trade convention. It began in 1967 as a small showcase for televisions and radios, but over the decades CES has become a gathering of the tribes for tech culture. Everyone is there, from huge companies like Samsung and Sony, to scores of journalists, to scrappy startups with big dreams. From innovative AI tools to electric vehicles, laptops, e-readers, and robotic dogs, CES is where tech companies show off their wares, journalists dig up the next big story, and tech insiders network and sneak a look into the future.

Where and when is CES 2026?

CES is held in Las Vegas from Jan. 6-9. The Las Vegas Convention Center hosts the main show floor, but there are CES-related events at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay, The Sphere, and other locations across Las Vegas.

What brands are attending CES 2026?

Most major electronics and technology companies are attending CES 2026 in some form. Here are some of the most vital exhibitors:

• Samsung Electronics: Samsung's theme this year is "Your Companion to AI Living," and the focus is how artificial intelligence can enhance people's day-to-day lives.

• LG Electronics: Describing it as "innovation in tune with you" and "affectionate intelligence," LG is showing off its take on AI designed to power robots, appliances, vehicles and TVs.

• Sony: Sony's main focus this year is mobility. It's unveiling the Sony Honda Mobility (SHM) and showcasing the AFEELA electric vehicle Prototype.

• TCL: It's not CES without new TVs, and TCL is showing off a gigantic set with a SQD-Mini LED display.

• Panasonic: Under the banner "The future we make," Panasonic promises it is "leveraging the power of AI to amplify the impact of our human-centric technologies, services and solutions."

• NVIDIA: The chip-maker is showcasing its new Vera Rubin AI supercomputer platform, the Alpamayo reasoning model for self-driving vehicles, and more.

• AMD: AMD is unveiling the Ryzen AI processors for PCs and the Ryzen 7 9850X3D for gaming.

• Intel: Intel launched its new Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors, codenamed "Panther Lake."

• Uber: Transportation firm Uber wants you to know about its new robotaxi.

• The LEGO Group: Lovable toy makers LEGO announced "Smart Bricks," packed with a tiny processor that "brings play to life."

• Ikea: Making its first appearance at CES, Swedish furniture retailer Ikea unveiled 21 new smart home products.

In fact, so many brands exhibit at CES, it's more notable which ones aren't there. This year's list of no-shows includes Apple (which never really does CES), iRobot, and Tesla. Big brands with a more limited presence include Microsoft and Amazon.

The biggest stories of CES 2026 so far

Along with the expected innovations in televisions and laptops, CES 2026 is crammed with artificial intelligence, robots, and mobility devices, and health-focused wearables. Here are some of the biggest announcements at CES 2026 so far.

• At its keynote, NVIDIA unveiled Alpamayo, "the world's first thinking, reasoning autonomous vehicle AI." This could be serious competition for Tesla.

• HP showed off a new mini desktop computer, The Eliteboard G1a. You just plug the keyboard into any monitor and go to town. Only time will tell if this is a gimmick or a new form factor.

• Hyundai and Boston Dynamics showed off humanoid robot Atlas. But Hyundai didn't show off any new electric vehicles, suggesting a cautious outlook for the near future.

• Broadcom showed off Wi-Fi 8 routers and chips, providing a practical look into the future.

CES 2026 Event Schedule

Below is a guide to some of the major events at CES 2026.

Sunday, January 4: Media Day 1 at Mandalay Bay

Monday, January 5: Media Day 2 at Mandalay Bay. C-Space: 9 AM - 5 PM

Tuesday, January 6: Show Floor Press Conferences, Exhibits: 10 AM-6 PM, C-Space: 9 AM - 5 PM

Wednesday, January 7: Show Floor Press Conferences, Exhibits: 9 AM-6 PM, C-Space: 9 AM - 5 PM

Thursday, January 8: Exhibits: 9 AM-6 PM, C-Space: 9 AM - 5 PM

Friday, January 9: Exhibits: 9 AM-4 PM

Can't-miss keynotes and conferences at CES 2026

Sunday, January 4

• CES Unveiled Las Vegas – The Official Media Event of CES 2026 with innovative product previews – 4:00-7:00 PM

Monday, January 5

• AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su, 6:30 PM, The Venetian

Tuesday, January 6

• Siemens President and CEO Dr. Roland Busch, 8:30 AM, The Venetian

• Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang, 5:00 PM, Sphere

Wednesday, January 7

• Caterpillar CEO Joe Creed, 9:00 AM, The Venetian

Can you attend CES 2026?

CES is a trade-only event, so it's not open to the general public, but if you're affiliated with the tech industry in some way, you can register at CES's official site. If you're not a tech insider, you can check out the official CES livestream and read Lifehacker's CES 2026 live blog.

Many people think the world is going to end in 2026. Man people think the world is going to end every year—maybe because the Bible said so, or The Simpsons said so—but this 2026-doomsday prediction seems to have a scientific basis. In a 1960 issue of Science magazine, Austrian scientist and polymath Heinz von Foerster detailed what he called the “Doomsday Equation,” a model he used to calculate the last day of civilization on earth. According to von Foerster (and probably Homer Simpson), The End is coming on Friday, November 13, 2026. 

Who is Heinz von Foerster?

Foerster was not a crank. A pioneer in computer science, artificial intelligence, physics, biophysics, and other academic disciplines, von Foerster worked with the Pentagon, and was named a Guggenheim fellow twice—so he was a respected academic, and kind of a big deal. His Doomsday paper is very real. Here’s a link to it in the November 1960 issue of Science and a screenshot:

Credit: Science Magazine

The Doomsday Equation looked at 2,000 years of historical data about how fast the earth’s population grew–-there were 2.7 billion people in 1960—and extrapolated a continually accelerating rate of growth. According to von Foerster, Humanity’s ability to overcome natural checks on population would result in hyperbolic growth—faster-than-exponential—an accelerating curve of population growth which would reach “infinite” on November 13 of this year, at which point there would be no space left on the planet for any more people to be. “Our great-great-grandchildren will not starve to death,” Von Forester said. “They will be squeezed to death.”

Preparing for the end

So should we pack it in and prepare for the End Times and death by suffocation? Actually the opposite. Von Foerster’s Doomsday Equation was meant to illustrate the problem of overpopulation, but he wasn’t being entirely serious with the specifics of his prediction; the math works out, but the conclusion is tongue-in-cheek.

So yes, he was joking—November 13, 2026 will fall on Friday (scary), and it also happens to be Heinz von Foerster's 115th birthday—but he was joking to make a point. In the early 1960s, the population was growing at an alarming rate. The annual growth rate had climbed from roughly 1.7% to 1.9% throughout the 1950s, and by 1963, it had grown to  2.3%. So what happened?  

It turned out Von Foerster had a lot in common with fellow scientist Disco Stu of the Can’t Stop the Learnin’ Disco Academies: 

Ironically, 1960–1963 was the peak of global growth rates. Von Foerster’s (perhaps sardonic) solution was a control mechanism for population—a “peoplo-stat” where governments would carefully monitor and control the rate of people being born. But thankfully, we didn’t need eugenics-lite to solve the problem—like the best problems, it solved itself.

The "population bomb" is a dud

Credit: macrotrends.net

The rate of world population growth began slowing, as you can see from this chart from macrotrends.net. and the much feared “population bomb” of the 1960s fizzled out. Increased urbanization meant that people had one child to send to an exclusive nursery school instead of having 10 children to work as farmhands. Better medical care means more children live, so there’s no need to make “spares.” The end result: Population growth slowed through the decades to around 1% in the 2010s. At present, according to the UN, more than half of all countries have negative population growth rates. If these trends continue, the world population will peak in the mid-2080s at around 10.3 billion people and then begin a slow decline.

The bottom line on Doomsday 2026

November 13, 2026, will come and go, and chances are very good that you will not starve to death, get hit by an asteroid, or suddenly be crushed under the weight of all these damn people (unless you’re on a subway at rush hour).

As for overpopulation: The problem isn't that there are too many of us, but too few. We don’t really know what it will mean for the worldwide rate of reproduction to go negative, but it’s likely to mean a lot of 90-year-olds hobbling around and everyone younger trying to figure out how to care for them.  But, like the best problems, it’s far enough in the future that someone else will have to deal with it. 

Before we toss the year 2025 onto the temporal dungheap where it belongs, let's take a look back at the year that has passed from the point of view of the people who have to live here even longer than we have to. Below is a month-by-month replay of the year, focusing on the memes, events, and ideas that shape and define Generations Z and Alpha.

January: "TikTok refugees" move to RedNote

For Gen Z, 2025 began with a panic that turned into a unique cross-cultural experiment. In January 2025, ByteDance, the Chinese company behind TikTok, announced that it was about to shut down the social media platform in the U.S. Ahead of the shut-down (which didn't end up happening) a wave of TikTokers moved over to RedNote, another Chinese social media platform, but one that was previously only used in China. The result was a few weeks where very different cultures met on common ground, and it was low-key beautiful. Young people from China and the U.S. asked each other questions about their respective cultures, TikTok refugees showed off their newly acquired Mandarin-speaking skills, while RedNoters demonstrated their English by doing a lot of imitations of Donald Trump, and everyone learned we weren't all that different. But it was only temporary: The geopolitical drama was solved (for now), TikTok stayed open, and TikTokers, for the most part, went back to their digital home—but hopefully young people took a little empathy with them.

February: The rise of "6-7"

Like it or not, 2025 is the year of 6-7. The ubiquitous slang term really started in late 2024 with the release of Skrilla's "Doot Doot (6 7)" video on YouTube, but it took a couple months to catch on and filter down to the schoolyard, and a few more months to become the biggest slang word of the year. As I'm sure you know by now, "6-7" doesn't mean anything specific, it's just a fun thing to say, but even with no definition, 6-7 has remarkable staying power. Even after every parent and teacher on Earth learned what it meant, kids kept saying it. Whatever was funny about the joke hasn't been funny for a long time, so maybe 2026 will see the death of 6-7, but I wouldn't put money on it. It seems like one of those jokes that will go from funny to unfunny and back to funny a million times until it finally dies.

March: the "80/20 rule"

In March, Netflix released the series Adolescence, a distressing exploration of the inner worlds of alienated young men. In Adolescence, one of the teenage characters mentions the “80/20 rule” as a way of explaining the incel/red pill culture central to the murder plot and central to the worldview of too many real-life young men. Put simply, the 80/20 rule is an axiom that states 80% of women are attracted to only 20% of men. Despite being based on almost nothing, in incel spaces, the 80/20 rule is regarded as absolute truth, and the 80/20 rule (and other "mano-sphere" ideas) are spreading to more mainstream young people. Understanding the pervasiveness of belief in the 80/20 rule is essential to understanding the specific strain of misogyny that's afflicting young people. There's a helplessness implied by it—the 80/20 rule, like the rest of incels' elaborate theories about how men and women relate to each other, boils down to "it's not my fault, and there's nothing I can do to change my situation." The spread of the 80/20 rule is the almighty algorithm rewarding the worst in people, and victims often have too few real-life relationships to reveal the obvious flaw in the rule's logic.

April: A Minecraft Movie

In their fractured and balkanized media landscape, Generations Z and A have few shared cultural experiences, but in 2025, A Minecraft Movie was a rare exception. The pre-release buzz (and "chicken-jockey!" memes) suggested that many young people were expecting an ironically enjoyable experience—something "so bad it's good"—but A Minecraft Movie is actually so good it's good, and appealed to everyone, younger kids, teenagers, and parents alike. Tapping Jared Hess—who helmed Napoleon Dynamite—to direct was inspired, as was the casting of Jack Black and Jason Momoa, but the real star of A Minecraft Movie is Minecraft, a video game that was released in 2009 and still has an estimated 200 million people (mostly young) playing it regularly. The success of A Minecraft Movie (and The Super Mario Bros Movie in 2023) indicates that Hollywood has finally figured out how to make decent movies out of video games.

May: "100 men vs. one gorilla"

"Who would win in a fight to the death, one gorilla or 100 men?" sounds like a dumb question at first, but the more you think about it, the deeper it gets. My first thought was 100 men are taking it, no problem, but then I considered the overwhelming power of an enraged gorilla, how it could literally tear off limbs and bite off faces, and the scale started tipping heavily the other way. No matter where you land on the answer, the question is fascinating, and the internet was briefly obsessed with this imaginary battle in May. Taking a broader view, the debates, memes, and TikTok videos the gorilla question birthed are an illustration of how the technology that connects us took what would have been an interesting hypothetical discussion among a few weird friends 20 years ago and turned it into a worldwide discussion and convenient excuse to learn about primates.

June: Steal a Brainrot

"Steal a Brainrot" came out in late May 2025, and by June, all the kids were playing it; 20 million of them, anyway. "Steal a Brainrot" is a multiplayer mini-game within maxi-games Roblox and Fortnite. In a game of Brainrot, up to eight players share a server, and each has their own base. The object of the game is to buy brainrots for your base and/or steal brainrots from other players' bases, while defending your own brainrots from thieves. The brainrots themselves are objects meant to reference "Italian brainrot," i.e.: low-quality internet memes. They vary in value and have vaguely Italian names, but they aren't based on actual brainrot memes. The lesson: Good game design only needs the lightest hook to create a compelling experience.

July: the death of fart jokes?

In July, teachers and parents posted videos that may point to one of the most defining cultural touchstones of Generation Alpha: they don't think fart jokes are funny. They don't laugh when someone farts in public. They don't feel the need to say "He who smelt it, dealt it." I realize a couple TikTok videos is the opposite of hard evidence, but judging from the comments and the kids being interviewed, it feels true, and important. Gen A don't seem like they're trying to be accepting of others, or mature; they seem genuinely bewildered by the idea that anyone would think farts are funny. Which is cool; they're right. But still, I can't help but feel sad for the poor fart jokes that have brought us all so much joy for so many centuries.

August: performative males

The "performative male" is another "gift" from the toxic-masculinity corner of youth culture. The term is an insult young men throw at other young men whose tastes, hobbies, and lifestyle are seen as a performance aimed at obtaining societal approval, especially the approval of young women. Performative male traits include matcha lattes, Labubu toys, listening to Clairo, tote bags, and reading in public. "Performative male" is mildly sexist on the surface—it's mocking dudes who like things associated with women (gasp)—but if you go deeper, it's similar to older slang words like “white knight” and “virtue signaling.” A performative male is fundamentally dishonest, because no real man would read in public, so it must be fake, and why would men be fake if not to make women like them?

September: the tragic story of D4vd

If young people are going to remember any news story from 2025, it's likely to be the one about singer D4vd. On September 8, Los Angeles police discovered a body in the trunk of an abandoned Tesla registered to 20-year-old musician David Anthony Burke, aka D4vd. The body was later identified as the remains of Celeste Rivas, who was reported missing from her home in Riverside on April 5, 2024, when she was just 13 years old.

The singer's rise to fame is a quintessentially Generation Z story. His career began with online fame gained through posting Fortnite videos online, but YouTube removed his content for using copyrighted music. At the suggestion of his mom, D4vd began recording original songs using free iPhone tools, which he posted to SoundCloud. The end result was a recording contract, an album, a couple of moody, dreamy songs with over 1.5 billion plays on Spotify, and a body in the trunk of a car.

D4vd has not been charged with any crimes in connection with the body, but neither has anyone else, so this story is likely to continue into 2026.

October: Portland frog and chicken protestors

This year, young people in Portland changed the perception of what "protesting" means. At demonstrations against Federal immigration enforcement, young people started showing up dressed in colorful, inflatable Halloween costumes. Frog guy was first. Then chicken guy. Then a panoply of unicorns and other fanciful creatures. The idea seems to be to highlight the farce of a heavy police presence on American streets by appearing as harmless as possible. Protestors have been using ridiculousness to make their point since protests began, but the instant, worldwide dissemination of videos from Portland's "front line" is fairly new, and they really deliver the message. Images of heavily armed and armored law enforcement officers staring down Portland weirdos in unicorn and panda costumes makes a more compelling point than would clashes with radicals in ski masks—you don't have to think very hard to know which side you're on.

November: quarter zips

A quarter zip is a pullover sweater with a zipper that goes a quarter way down the chest, and it's becoming the go-to look for young men, especially Black men. Wearing a quarter zip isn't exactly "dressed up," but it's more sophisticated than rocking athleisure wear. More importantly, the quarter zip is often a signifier of status and intention. Like flannel shirts in previous generations, the quarter zip is marks one as belonging to an in group, being a “quarter zip man," and the even being part of the “quarter zip movement.”

December: millennial optimism

The younger generation closed out the year by looking backwards, but only a little bit backwards. The trend of December was "millennial optimism," the romanticization of the years around 2010. Some younger people imagine it as as a more innocent, hopeful time that they missed out on, and many millennials who were setting those trends in the 2010s are feeling nostalgic for their lost youth/relevance, so both groups are posting TikTok videos about "millennial optimism." Being older than both groups, I can say with confidence that both groups are wrong for different reasons. "Missed-out-on-it" types are wrong because a period that included the recession of 2008 and the election of Donald Trump was not "optimistic," and the millennials only think of it as a fun, awesome time because it's when millennials were young (and having a fun, awesome time.)

Season's greetings and all that. In honor of this most special time of the year, I'm taking a look at commonly held Christmas myths and misconceptions. I busted a ton of Jesus myths a couple weeks ago, then got secular and finally revealed the truth about Santa Claus, so this week I'm doing a round-up of seasonal misinformation, both religious and secular.

Religious Christmas myths

Jesus was born in a stable

The Gospels aren't specific about where where Jesus was born, other than "Bethlehem." Here's how Luke 2:4–7 is traditionally translated: "And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn." But that isn't entirely accurate, because it turns out Greek word καταλυμα (kataluma) doesn't mean "inn." It means something closer to "spare room," and since the holy family was in Bethlehem because it was where Joseph was from, it seems more likely that they were crashing at a friend or relative's place, all the bedrooms upstairs were taken, so they were sleeping downstairs, where people kept the animals—hence, the manger. The stable idea likely stuck because it’s visually simple and works well for nativity scenes, and it's in keeping with the point of the story: Jesus was born in humble circumstance.

Three wise men attended Jesus' birth

The Gospel of Matthew says King Herod told an unspecified number of "wise men" (or Magi) to go to Bethlehem, because a star appeared heralding the birth of the Messiah. So they went off to find him to bring him gifts. We don't know how many of said wise men went to Bethlehem or how long it took them to get there, but Matthew 2:11 says they visited a house. The Bible does say they brought gold, frankincense and myrrh, so at least that part is right.

Calling it "Xmas" is attempting to cross the "Christ" out of "Christmas"

This is a weird one, but a lot of Christians think the use of "Xmas" is part of the ongoing secular War on Christmas, but it isn't. In the Greek New Testament, the word for Christ is "ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ." Using XP or X to indicate Christ dates back to early Christians writing in Greek, and it was used in English writing, too. Something like Xmas (Xp̄es mæsse) was written as early as 1100 a.d. to indicate "Christ's Mass" or Christmas. That was centuries before secular Christmas even existed.

Secular Christmas myths

"Jingle Bells" is a Christmas song

"Jingle Bells" is not a Christmas song—technically. Even though it's probably the song most widely associated with the holiday, there's no mention of Christmas in the lyrics. It's just a song about how much fun it is to go a'riding in a one-horse, open sleigh. (Another common misconception about "Jingle Bells" is that it was written for Thanksgiving. That's not true either.)

Like a lot of history, "Jingle Bells" is more troubling than you might think. It was written by James Pierpont and first performed at a minstrel show in 1857. Sleigh riding is a great subject for songs, so there was a whole subgenre of minstrel songs about it, some more racist than others, and "Jingle Bells" is the one that survived.

Other Christmas songs that don't mention the holiday include "Let It Snow," "Winter Wonderland," "Baby, It's Cold Outside," "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year," "Home for the Holidays," and "Frosty the Snowman." Technically, none of these are Christmas songs if you use the most strict definition of "Christmas song," but on the other hand, they're songs everyone sings around Christmas, and they're generally about winter fun and holidays and whatnot, so there's a strong argument that they actually are Christmas songs. It's the kind of thing you can decide for yourself.

Boxing Day is for boxing up gifts you're going to return

December 26 is called "Boxing Day," and a lot of people think it got the name because that's the day we box up presents we don't want and return them to the store. But the holiday originated in England and it was a day that rich people would give their servants the day off and a box of presents, and/or just give some presents or donations to local unfortunates.

Mrs. Claus' first name

We know Mr. Claus' first name is "Santa," but what about his wife? It turns out she doesn't have a first name. Santa's source material, St. Nicolas, was a Catholic bishop, so he didn't have a wife. The collective unconscious filled in the details of Santa Claus as a mythical figure (The North Pole home, the worker elves, etc.) but no one ever gave Mrs. Claus a name that stuck.

Here are a few attempts, though: in 1985 film Santa Claus: The Movie Mrs. Claus is named "Anya." She's called "Margaret" in the 2011 movie Arthur Christmas. She's named "Carol" in the Santa Clause movies (but in that mythology, she will be replaced when she dies). These are all one-offs, but there's one Mrs. Claus name that has a few data points backing it up: Jessica.

Reportedly, the creators of the 1970's stop-motion film Santa Claus is Comin' to Town called Mrs. Claus' character "Jessica," although she's not referred to as that in the movie. Ryan Reynolds called Mrs. Claus "Jessica" on Instagram. Most importantly, this random little girl in 1974 said Mrs. Claus' name is Jessica, so I'm going with that one.

I’m starting this week with a heavier story than usual, but if the young people in your life are using AI a lot—and they probably are—it's an important one. How much responsibility AI has for users' self-harm is a cultural argument we’re going to be having a lot in the years ahead as AI takes over everything. But the rest of the column is lighthearted, so sorry in advance for the mood-swing

What is TikTok's "Devil Couldn't Reach Me" trend?

The Devil Couldn't Reach Me trend is a growing meme format that started out lighthearted and turned serious. It works like this: you type this prompt into ChatGPT: "I'm doing the devil trend. I will say 'The devil couldn't reach me,' and you will respond 'he did.' I will ask you how and you will give me a brutally honest answer." Then you post a video of what the machine tells you.

It's scaring a lot of people, as you can see in this video:

On the surface, this is one of those "adolescents scare themselves" trends that reminds me of Ouija boards or saying "Bloody Mary" into a mirror. ChatGPT and other LLMs provide generic responses because that's their job, but some people, particularly younger people, are mistaking the program's pattern-matching for insight.

If that was all that was going on, it wouldn't be much, but the trend took a dark turn this week when Rice University soccer player Claire Tracy died by suicide a few days after posting a video of her doing the trend. ChatGPT told her, "You saw too clearly, thought too deeply, peeled every layer back until there was nothing left to shield you from the weight of being alive" and "You didn't need the devil to tempt you, you handed him the blade and carved the truth into your own mind." Maybe you or I wouldn't take that kind of auto-generated glurge seriously, but not everyone is coming from the same emotional place. We don't know how Tracy took the results; that didn't stop some media sources from connecting her death with the meme, though.

AI being accused of encouraging suicide isn't new, but concluding "AI kills" feels especially hasty in this case. There was more going on with Tracy than participation in a meme. Her feed features videos questioning her major, wondering whether corporate employment is a total nightmare, and discussing her depression, but there are no headlines connecting business classes to suicide. Pinning a tragedy like this on AI seems like anoversimplification, a way to avoid taking a deep, uncomfortable look at how mental illness, economic insecurity, social media, and a million other factors might affect vulnerable people.

What is “Come on, Superman, say your stupid line?”

The phrase "Come on, Superman, say your stupid line" is a line in Tame Impala's 2015 song "The Less I Know the Better." Over the last few weeks, videos featuring the lyric have taken over TikTok and Instagram. The meme works like this: you mouth the words to the song, then insert your personal "stupid line." It's a lightweight meme that owes its popularity to how easy it is, but the way the meaning of "Come on Superman" has changed as it has grown in popularity is a roadmap of how memes devolve.

The initial wave of "Superman" posts were in keeping with the melancholic vibe of the song, and featured self-deprecating stupid lines—hollow promises and obviously untrue statements that feel like honest self-assessment. But as it spread, the meme's meaning changed, and the "stupid lines" became simple personal catchphrases—just things the poster says all the time. It's still a stab at self-definition, but a more shallow one.

Then people started posting jokes. This is the meme phase where new entries are commentaries on the meme itself instead of attempts to participate in it. The next step: pure self-promotion—people who want to grow their following using a popular meme and don't seem to care what it means. Then came the penultimate stage of the meme: celebrities. Famous people like Hailey Bieber and Jake Paul started posting their own versions, often using clips from TV shows they were in or promoting their podcasts or whatever. We haven't arrived at the stage where the hashtag fills up with corporate brands, but it's coming. And after that, it disappears.

Who is Katseye?

This week, TikTok named Katseye the global artists of 2025. You're probably saying, “What's Katseye?” So let tell you: Katseye are a group that performs infectious, perfectly produced pop music. Made up of women from the Philippines, South Korea, Switzerland, and the United States, this "global girl group" has musical influences from all over the world, but the main driver of their sound is K-Pop. Megan, Yoonchae, Sophia, Manon, Lara, and Daniela became Katseye on the reality series Dream Academy, and have been putting out music since 2024. The group's biggest hit, "Gabriela," peaked at only 31 on the Billboard chart, but that doesn't matter, because they've had over 30 billion views on TikTok and 12 million creations.

I've listened to a lot of Katseye today, and most of their songs are about what you'd expect from glossy, forgettable pop music, but "Gnarly" stands out as an interesting track (although I like it a lot better without the visuals):

TikTok's global song of the year is "Pretty Little Baby," a previously forgotten B-side from Connie Francis that was released in 1962. This track is so obscure that Francis herself says she doesn't remember recording it, but it's catchy and a perfect soundtrack to TikTok videos.

Viral videos of the week: "Gloving"

Have you heard of "gloving"? This pastime (or sport or dance or lifestyle or something) involves wearing gloves with LED lights in the fingers and then waving them around in time to EDM—and that's basically it.

Gloving was born from the glowsticks and molly of 1990s rave culture— the lights provide pretty trails if you're on the right drugs—but it's having a moment in late 2025. Gloving has become a whole thing. Glovers have named moves, contests, and stars.

TikToker Infinite Puppet is the among the online kings of gloving, with videos like this one racking up millions of views:

Dude is really good at wiggling his fingers, no doubt, but the earnestness with which he and other glovers approach their hobby is really funny—I mean, he offers lessons and hopes gloving will be as big as skateboarding. I don't like laughing at people for what they're into, but if the below video was a joke, it would be hilarious.

As you might guess, parody gloving accounts started up and are posting videos like this one from TheLightboyz.

Then the concept of "degloving" was invented. Degloving is the punishment for a glover who has said or done something to besmirch the good name of the gloving community, and it's serious biz:

Hanukkah (or "Chanukah," if you prefer; it’s a transliteration, so there is no “correct” spelling) is an annual eight-day Jewish religious festival that usually takes place in late November or early December. In 2025, Hanukkah begins on the evening of Sunday, December 14, and continues through Monday December 22.

Why does Hanukkah fall on different dates each year?

While Hanukkah falls on different dates every year on the Gregorian calendar you’re probably familiar with, it begins on the same day every year on the Hebrew calendar: 25th of Kislev. The Hebrew calendar is based on the moon, and Hanukkah falls on the 25th day after the new moon that marks the beginning of the month of Kislev.

What is Hanukkah about, anyway?

Hanukkah celebrates the anniversary of the beginning of the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Empire and the re-dedication of the Second Temple that happened in the 2nd century BCE. That’s the strict definition of the holiday. In practice, in present day America, Hanukkah is the “festival of lights,” a winter celebration usually marked by gift-giving, delicious foods, candle-lighting, and the boring game of dreidel (more on that below).

Religiously, Hanukkah is a comparatively minor holiday, not nearly as significant as the Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but it is a favorite among children, particularly American children. These days, the holiday is marked in Jewish communities all over the world, but Jewish kids in the U.S. are the undisputed Hanukkah kings and queens.

The origins of Hanukkah: A Hebrew rebellion brought to you by Cincinnati rabbis

There are two ways to think about the origin of the Festival of Lights. You could say Hanukkah began around 200 BCE when Greek leaders prevented Jews from practicing their religion, leading the Maccabees to rise up in defiance. Or you could say Hanukkah began in Cincinnati.

Before a couple hundred years ago, there’s no record of how anyone celebrated Hanukkah—maybe it was done, but it seems that no one made too big of a deal about it. That all changed in the mid-to-late 1800s, when a couple of Cincinnati rabbis, Isaac M. Wise and Max Lilienthal, put Hanukkah on the holiday map. They popularized, promoted, and Americanized the holiday, introducing celebrations of Hanukkah to their congregations and promoting it in national Jewish publications.

Wise and Lilienthal were leaders of Reform Judaism, a more modern, less orthodox form of the religion, and to some extent, the holiday they popularized reflects that set of values. It was meant to help Jewish children in America honor their heritage by presenting an exciting, relatable historical event featuring Jewish heroes. it was also meant to be Christmas-like—a family holiday that’s fun.

Lilienthal noted the rising popularity of Christmas celebrations in the U.S. in the 1800s, and was impressed with the way Christian churches used the secular aspects of the holiday to teach their faith, so he borrowed the gift-giving and lighthearted nature of non-religious Christmas celebrations and put a Jewish spin on ‘em. Thus modern Hanukkah was born.

“We must do something, too, to enliven our children… [They] shall have a grand and glorious Chanukah festival nicer than any Christmas festival.” Lilienthal wrote in 1876.

The traditions of Hanukkah: You’ve been wrong about the menorah your whole life

The main event of Hanukkah among most who celebrate is the lighting of candles before dinner, one more for each successive night of the festival. When the Maccabees rebuilt the temple back in the olden times, they re-lit the menorahs—candle holders for seven candles—but they only had enough oil for the candles to burn for one night (or so the story goes). Miraculously, the lights stayed on for eight nights.

Technically, most people don’t light menorahs on Hanukkah. Menorahs have eight lights. Hanukkah candles are usually in a “hanukkiah” which holds nine: eight main candles and the helper candle that lights them all.

Foodwise, you can eat whatever you like—this isn't a fasting holiday. Fried foods, particularly latkes (fried potato pancakes), are popular and delicious, especially if served with sour cream and/or apple sauce. Jelly doughnuts are another favorite. But like I said, you can eat whatever you like.

Many Hanukkah-heads give gifts too—one for each night.

Why aren’t there many classic Hanukkah songs like there are Christmas standards?

Hanukkah carols have never really caught on because golden age Jewish songwriters were busy writing “Let it Snow,” “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire,” “Silver Bells,” “White Christmas,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and almost every other Christmas song that isn’t a hymn. But there's "I Have a Little Dreidel," a folksong with English lyrics attributed to Samuel E. Goldfarb, but that's not explicitly about the holiday. This all leaves Adam Sandler's "Hanukkah Song" as the most well-known tune commemorating the Festival of Lights.

Speaking of dreidels, though...

How do you play dreidel?

Many households break out dreidels (spinning tops with Hebrew characters on them) and play with them for a few minutes after dinner. Dreidels are marked with Nun (נ), Gimel (ג), Hey (ה), and Shin (ש), which form an acronym for "Nes Gadol Hayah Sham" (A great miracle happened there). Here's how the game is traditionally played: Everyone starts with the same amount of something "valuable," usually chocolate coins. At the start of a round, everyone antes up, then they takes turns spinning the dreidel, following the directions of which character it lands on.

• נ (Nun) means “nisht” or “nothing.” Player does nothing if Nun comes up.

• ה (Hey) means “halb” or “half.” The player gets half of the pot. (If there is an odd number of pieces, the player gets the extra.)

• ש (Shin) means “shtel” or “put in.” The player adds a chocolate coin to the pot.

• ג (Gimel) means “gantz” or “everything.” The player gets everything in the pot. Jackpot!

(It's not a very good game: all luck; no skill.)

It’s widely believed that dreidel is the most popular Hanukkah game, but this is a lie. The most popular (and best) Hanukkah game is “guess which candle will be the last to go out,” a much more nuanced and exciting game played by everyone who has ever fired up a menorah (sorry, a hanukkiah) before dinner. Do darker candles burn faster than lighter ones? Does placement matter? How about wick length? All of this and more must be considered and discussed if you’re going to master this exciting game.

Is it cool to celebrate Hanukkah if you’re not Jewish?

You can celebrate any holiday you want; it's a free country. Hanukkah is generally seen as a “fun” holiday, without the deep religious significance of other Jewish holidays. While I don’t speak for anyone else, none of the Jews I know take offense if non-Jews want to light some candles and watch 8 Crazy Nights to capture some of that Hanukkah magic. Some of the traditions of the holiday were partly inspired by Christmas anyway, and much of Christmas was (maybe) appropriated from pagan solstice celebrations itself, so go nuts—it’s the holidays.

Black Friday—once simply known as "the day after Thanksgiving"—has become a quasi-holiday in the United States, one marked by consumer discounts, ceaseless shopping, and occasional violence.

Black Friday has grown and metastasized so much that it isn't a mere day anymore: It's a week, a month, a veritable state of mind. (Speaking of which, check out Lifehacker's Black Friday coverage. We got all the deals, baby!) While waking up early and shopping at physical stores on Black Friday is waning as online shopping grows, it’s still a big deal in the U.S.—it’s estimated that around 90 million Americans shopped online and 76.2 million Americans visited a brick-and-mortar store during Black Friday in 2023.

But where did Black Friday come from and what does it all mean?

When was the first Black Friday?

“Black Friday” in the United States originally referred to the start of the Panic of 1869, when the collapse of the price of gold devastated the national economy. “Black Friday” as a description of the shopping day after Thanksgiving only dates back to 1951: The term first appeared in the journal Factory Management and Maintenance to refer to the number of employees who skipped work on the day after Thanksgiving. Around the same time, the police in Philadelphia and Rochester started informally using “Black Friday” to describe the traffic and crowds that appeared in their cities as shoppers hit the stores on the day after Thanksgiving.

The phrase gradually caught on—it was picked up by national press in 1975 when the New York Times used the phrase to describe the day after Thanksgiving and the shopping and sales it brings.

But even before it had a name, Black Friday was a thing. The day after Thanksgiving has been known by merchants as the start of the shopping season since the late 1800s. Back then and into the 20th century, retailers often sponsored Thanksgiving Day parades that traditionally ended with an appearance by Santa Claus, as if to say, “Now it’s time to shop for Christmas.” By unspoken agreement among retailers, Christmas-themed advertisements rarely appeared prior to Thanksgiving in our grandparents’ day. This informal bargain obviously no longer applies.

Black Friday’s problematic name

Referring to a day as “black” traditionally denotes a period of calamity or tragedy, leading some to suggest different names for the day. In the early 1960s, the Philadelphia merchants suggested “Big Friday,” a name which did not catch on, leaving retailers with the weak explanation that the “black” in Black Friday refers to the black ink denoting profits in ledger (as if they aren’t making money the rest of the year). Oft-repeated lore suggests that retailers are "in the red" all year, and only start making an annual profit at the end of the year, but accounting doesn't really work like that—big retail chains generally report on their profits to investors every quarter.

A more modern issue with the name is that Black Friday sales now lasts for days or even weeks, beginning in early to mid-November and bleeding over into the following Saturday, Sunday, “Cyber Monday,” Tuesday, and beyond, leading people to say things like, “Do you want to go Black Friday shopping this Sunday?” So far, alternative names like “Five-Day Frenzy” and “The day I get to trample someone to save $8 on a Nespresso” haven’t caught on. But here’s hoping.

The failure of “Black Thursday”

Beginning around 2011, an insatiable thirst for profits led many retailers to try to push the start of Black Friday shopping to Thursday (aka Thanksgiving Day). So some large retailers—Kmart, Toys R Us and others that haven't since gone out of business—began opening on Thanksgiving. The trend never really caught on, with many shoppers appalled that employees were forced to work on Thanksgiving or angry that consumerism was encroaching upon a holiday meant to celebrate colonialism. By 2021 most major retailers had acquiesced and remained closed on Thanksgiving.

Cyber Monday is Black Friday’s bastard child

The term “Cyber Monday” describes the boost in online retail sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving, sparked by workers returning to the office and getting right to online shopping. The term first appeared on Nov. 28, 2005, in a Shop.org press release entitled “'Cyber Monday’ Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year," which may be the most influential press release ever written.

Since its early 2000s birth, Cyber Monday has grown in popularity and is believed to have overtaken Black Friday in terms of sheer profit, although it's hard to tell exactly. In 2023, online sales on Cyber Monday topped $12.4 billion according to Adobe Analytics. Exact numbers for total in‑store Black Friday sales aren’t readily available, but growth data suggests brick‑and‑mortar spending is much smaller in comparison. None of this actually matters to retailers, of course, who mash everything into the category of "Black Friday–Cyber Monday," because a lot of people shop on Saturday and Sunday too.

Buy Nothing Day is the inverse of Black Friday

If all this naked consumerism makes you a little squeamish, you're not alone. Anti-consumerists have named the day after Thanksgiving “Buy Nothing Day,” a day you can celebrate by doing charity work or simply not purchasing anything. Pioneered by artist Ted Dave for AdBusters magazine, the first Buy Nothing Day was celebrated in Canada in 1992.

It’s hard to measure the success of the alternative holiday. Both online and brick-and-mortar retail sales have increased sharply since 1992, suggesting Buy Nothing Day’s effect is negligible. On the other hand, maybe big retailers are losing millions because someone on Bluesky reminded you not to shop. Sure.

How many people has Black Friday killed?

Depending to how you measure it, Black Friday has resulted in between one and 17 deaths. Jdimytai Damour is the only person killed directly due to a Black Friday sale: The 34-year-old stock clerk was trampled to death by a surging crowd at a Long Island Walmart on Black Friday in 2008. If you include car accidents, shootings, retail worker suicides, and fatal heart attacks, Black Friday’s death toll balloons to 17, with 125 reported injuries.

Black Friday violence has even inspired a horror flick: Eli Roth's 2023 holiday-themed slasher Thanksgiving opens with a hilariously brutal Black Friday riot that inspires two of its victims to cook up a brutal plan for revenge alongside the next year's turkey.

Is Black Friday a gigantic scam?

I mean, yeah, of course. Critics of Black Friday point out that there is actually a better time to buy a new TV (the week before the Super Bowl) and other goods. Savings from Black Friday shopping are often largely illusory—big-ticket “doorbuster” items generally sell out quickly, leaving behind goods that are, by and large, priced the same as they would be at any other time of year, retailers often mark up products ahead of Black Friday so the discounts looks bigger, and if you're buying online, your browser history, location, and cart contents can tweak the prices you see on Black Friday like any other day.

Despite protest holidays, the unpleasantness of shopping when stores are super crowded, and the frustration of hunting for bargains that often don’t exist, Black Friday remains an unofficial holiday, celebrated by over 100 million Americans in one way or another. What that says about our country and its relationship with capitalism is unclear, but personally, I’m going to continue my own day-after-Thanksgiving tradition of eating pie for breakfast and thinking about going for a walk but watching The Quick and the Dead instead. I'm not protesting anything; I just don't need the hassle.

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I've reviewed a ton of high-tech smart glasses for Lifehacker, and this early Black Friday deal on the RayNeo Air 3s Pro display glasses is excellent. They are on sale for $249 on Amazon (originally $299) until Dec. 1.

RayNeo Air 3s

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$214.90 at Amazon

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If you're not familiar, these smart glasses basically put a high-definition display in your pocket, projecting the equivalent of a 201-inch TV in front of your face—so if someone on your list is tech-inclined and you want to blast 'em with a pure "whoa" present, here you go. They'll even fit in a stocking.

There are other glasses that do the same thing, but the Ray Neo Air 3 Pro hit a nice sweet spot between inexpensive and good quality. Check out my review if you want to read about these glasses in more depth, but the bottom line is: if you want to make every flight you'll ever take better or stream videos and games in private, these glasses will do the trick.

A lot of people are wrong about low testosterone. The "low testosterone" hashtag on TikTok features over 20,000 videos from real doctors, fake doctors, real doctors who seem like fake doctors, bodybuilders, wellness weirdoes, straight-up scammers, and, seemingly, everyone else. Some of the content is accurate, some is wildly inaccurate, some is in the middle, but the overall impression is a confusing miasma where solid medical information is given equal space with people recommending boosting your testosterone by exposing your privates to direct sunlight for 10 minutes a day. So let's clear this up a little.

What low testosterone actually is

Testosterone is a hormone produced mainly in the testicles (and in smaller amounts in ovaries and adrenal glands) that helps regulate muscle growth, energy, sex drive, mood, and overall reproductive health. So it's important.

Low testosterone, also known as clinical hypogonadism, is a medical syndrome defined by persistently low testosterone levels in the blood, coupled with the presence of specific, debilitating symptoms like reduced libido, erectile dysfunction, or unexplained loss of muscle mass. It's a real medical condition, most common in older men, men with obesity, and is associated with poorly managed type 2 diabetes.

It's difficult to determine how common low testosterone is because different studies are counting different things in different populations and the definition of "low" varies. Be warned: It's going to get a little technical, but there's a difference between biochemical hypogonadism and clinical hypogonadism. If you're looking at people with both low levels of testosterone in their blood and specific symptoms, estimates range from 2% of men aged 40–79, according to a European cross-sectional study published in the New England Journal of Medicine to 5.6% according to the Massachusetts Male Aging Study (MMAS). If you're strictly looking at testosterone levels in blood in men over 45, with no regard to symptoms, the same MMAS study says that 38.7% have "low testosterone," using MMAS-specific lab cutoffs. These are the kinds of blurry lines that let people claim "nearly 40% of men suffer from low T!" and be telling something like the truth, but not really.

Why your doctor doesn't routinely screen your testosterone levels

When you get a physical, doctors generally don't check your testosterone level. This has led to an online conspiracy theory around testosterone that doctors are deliberately keeping patients from being diagnosed. The conspiracy theory goes like this: "The medical establishment, influenced by Big Pharma and insurance companies, is keeping a miracle cure from people because: A) It's more profitable to treat other diseases. B) Society is inherently biased against men acting manly. C) Reverse vampires told them to."

As with all conspiracy theories, the truth is much more mundane: You're not routinely screened for low testosterone because the prevalence of hypogonadism in the general population, without clear symptoms, is very low; test results are highly unreliable and prone to false positives unless done under strict conditions; and having low testosterone levels isn't even a medical problem unless you have specific, debilitating symptoms. If you do have symptoms like fatigue, low libido, erectile dysfunction, or loss of muscle mass, and you have low testosterone, it could still be because of other health issues like stress, poor sleep, diabetes, obesity, or sleep apnea.

What low testosterone is not

Hypogonadism is not the same thing as "toxic masculinity." It doesn't cause people to "follow random girls on social media." It cannot be diagnosed with "one clue." It doesn't make you more likely to seek validation from others. Low testosterone doesn't make you a "whiny bitch." High testosterone doesn't make you more jealous of your wife, either. Most importantly, low testosterone is not the reason you feel run down, stressed out, or depressed—probably.

That "probably" is really the issue, the wedge that makes "low testosterone" the perfect breeding ground for health misinformation. Having less energy and a lower libido are solidly on the "normal human experience" spectrum, but because they could be caused by low testosterone, some people are drawn to that explanation, and the idea of a quick fix for aging and/or general malaise. Others see an opportunity to make some cash.

Historical precedent: snake oil and goat balls

The discourse may be happening on TikTok and instagram, but scammy "low testosterone" sales pitches originate with 19th-century medicine shows and the patent medicine salesmen that followed. If you read between the lines of much online testosterone talk, the promise is to treat lack of strength, lack of energy, lack of virility, or overall lack of "manliness"— concerns that have been monetized for a long time. Back in the 1800s, it was literal snake oil. In 1920s, lack of virility was sometimes treated by surgical introduction of goat glands in the testicles. In the 2020s, we're taking Tongkat Ali, ginger, Jamaican Chaney Root, and literally hundreds of other "supplements" marketed as testosterone boosters instead.

Despite testimony from satisfied customers back in the Jazz Age, goat tissue doesn't actually engraft or function when injected into the testicles, so it doesn't make men more goat-like. Herbs probably don't work either, no matter what that bodybuilder on Instagram says. A review of 32 studies of 13 different herbs meant to raise testosterone concluded that only two (Fenugreek and Ashwagandha) showed any promise, but like many studies on herbal supplements, the research is shaky: The sample sizes are too small, and test subjects didn't have a diagnosed clinical condition so the results may not apply to men who are genuinely deficient. So we have extremely scant evidence that herbs could raise your testosterone, and basically no evidence that raising your testosterone would provide a benefit anyway.

When should you ask your doctor about your testosterone levels?

If you actually suspect you have clinical hypogonadism, do not take herbs or listen to influencers. Talk to your doctor if you have these symptoms:

• Significant, unexplained decrease in libido

• Erectile dysfunction

• Depression

• Gynecomastia (unexplained swelling or tenderness of the breast tissue)

• Unexplained loss of body or facial hair

• Loss of muscle mass and strength (not explained by changes in your exercise routine)

• Infertility

Other symptoms, like not enjoying bitter food, or not "not getting a boner when you're holding hands," likely have other causes. If you want to dig deeper into symptoms of hypogonadism, check out the Mayo Clinic's page.

How can you raise testosterone levels?

If you're basically healthy, but you still think there's something to the whole "I need more testosterone, now!" there's good news and bad news. The good news is that it's possible to raise testosterone levels without hormone replacement or taking supplements. The bad news: There is solid scientific research to support the idea that you can raise testosterone levels by losing weight, exercise, and getting enough sleep.

No one likes to dwell on it, but bullying is a huge part of growing up, and this week the zeitgeist is saturated with it. Kids are using their cameras to pick on people in innovative ways, Tiktokers are parodying bullying in viral videos, and Instagram seems to be taking aim at cultural/political bullying (or bullying memers, depending on who you ask). Even God herself is bullying the poor Tripod fish.

What is the "flip the camera" trend, and why is is making everyone mad?

The "flip the camera" trend is a new and innovative form of bullying that works like this: A group of kids ask another kid to film them doing a dance or something. Then, while the video is being taken, one of them hits the "flip camera" button on the phone, so the videographer becomes the subject of the video. The resulting footage is posted on TikTok.

When I heard about this, my reaction was, "ok, so what?" But when you dig a little deeper, you learn that it's not necessarily a harmless prank. The idea is not to have a laugh with your social equals, but to give the camera to a dork/dweeb/lamer/whatever, so you can make fun of them. This is the first video using this format, so you can see what I mean:

While it can be done harmlessly, like these cheerleaders pranking their teacher:

the videos where it's clearly being done to mock someone not in the "in group" are genuinely sad:

We've made a lot of progress in society over the last few decades in convincing people that bullying is actually really bad, but young people will go to great lengths to do it anyway. The number of videos on the flipthecamera hashtag that are calling it out as bullying is encouraging, though.

Viral video of the week: Disney bullies

There is a yin to every yang, even online bullying. TikToker @MannytheMann1 is going viral for videos of his gang accosting strangers on a college campus, but he's employing the tactics of the bullies in Disney Channel TV shows—think backwards baseball caps, exaggerated swagger, and super cheesy dialogue—for comedic effect. The pranks are all in good fun, and maybe something of a commentary on the stupidity of both bullying and Disney Channel shows.

It started with this scene:

Manny's street improv has gotten more elaborate since, including dance battle challenges and a gang of toadies lining up to give the bully backup:

This one has been viewed nearly 60 million times:

What is a "potato bed"?

There is no shortage of online opinions about the best ways to sleep. This week's trend is the potato bed. The idea is to make as cozy a sleep space as possible by stuffing as many pillows and blankets as you can into a fitted sheet, so you're surrounded (and kind of crushed by) them. Here's a video that illustrates how it works:

It would be easy to write this off as the flash-in-the-pan trend it probably is, but this, and the popularity of weighted blankets, could also indicate that Gen-Z is the first generation of young people to ever take "you should get more sleep" advice seriously. It also feels like a rebuke to the "24/7 grindset" mentality that was in vogue a few years ago. Or it could just be that winter is starting, and everyone wants to be cozy.

TikTok's Tripod fish obsession

The internet loves tragic animals, and a lot of people on social media have become obsessed with the Tripod fish, an animal that may have the most tragic existence of any creature on earth. Fans and well-wishers are posting odes like this:

and videos like this:

Sometimes they are moved to tears by the fishes' plight.

So what's so bad about the Tripod fish's life? Basically everything. Tripod fish (Bathypterois grallator) hatch from eggs and spend their early lives swimming about and trying to avoid predators in the only way they can—by going totally limp and hoping they're mistaken for a piece of a jellyfish and left alone. If they live long enough, their eyes begin to melt, and long bony protrusions grow from their fins. No longer able to see or swim normally, the Tripod fish sinks. When it reaches the bottom (sometimes as deep as 4,000 meters), its bony spikes stick into the mud.

Nearly immobile and nearly blind at the very bottom of the sea, the tripod fish waits. If some food happens to swim by or drift down, it can direct currents of water towards its mouth, and maybe get something to eat. If not, it starves. Its only companions are parasites that feed on its blood, essentially stealing most of the food it's lucky enough to catch.

Tripod fish don't even get to mate with other tripod fish. Instead, the hermaphroditic sea animal releases a mixture of eggs and sperm into the cold water. If it's lucky, another tripod fish's genetic stew mingles with it and eggs are fertilized. If its unlucky, it fertilizes its own eggs. So maybe your life isn't that bad, eh?

Instagram is targeting meme aggregators

I'm old enough to remember a pre-meme internet where people were expected to post things they made themselves, or at least credited the people they took from. Instagram seems to want to take us back to those days: The social media platform has started flagging meme pages for being duplicated content, essentially declaring war on shit-posting.

On Nov. 7, many Instagram users who posted non-original content—essentially meme farms that exist just to repost vast amounts of anything remotely interesting—received a notification that read, "Content you recently shared may not be original" with a list of posts that violated the duplicated content rule and a suggestion to delete them, lest penalties like post-limiting or shadow-banning result.

This policy essentially outlaws sharing memes, a puzzling decision for a social media platform—people like sharing memes. Many feel the target of the warning is a specific kind of meme: The notices were sent just as the popularity of Charlie Kirk face-swap memes (i.e. people sharing images of just about anything with Kirk's face on it) were becoming popular While Kirkification seems to be an absurdist thing more than something actually meant to be political, it's likely upsetting to some, and that could be driving Instagram's decision. Or maybe the company just wants people to make their own content.

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The holidays are the perfect time to settle into your couch and check out a classic Christmas movie or 12. Streaming services have made just about any of them available at will, from traditional classics like Miracle on 34th Street, to potential future classics like Hot Frosty.

That said, choosing what to watch (and finding where it's available) can be a chore, so I've compiled the best 50 Christmas movies and specials in an alphabetical list. Revisit an old favorite, or check out a classic you've never seen before (preferably with a nice cup of cocoa at hand).

Bad Santa (2003)

Cut through the treacle of the season with this classic Christmas-themed black comedy starring Billy Bob Thornton as a very bad Santa. This could have been a purposefully "offensive" comedy, but the holiday-centric redemption arc raises it above the muck.

Where to stream: HBO Max

The Best Man Holiday (2013)

When a movie gets a Christmas-themed sequel, it's usually a bad sign, but Best Man Holiday is better than the original. This ensemble comedy's charismatic cast and relaxed vibe turn Christmas cliches into something that feels fresh.

Where to stream: Hulu, Peacock

Carol (2015)

This soft, beautiful, layered film proves that the holiday movies don't have to be lightheaded fluff. Based on Patricia Highsmith's seminal lesbian novel The Price of Salt, Carol tells a story of love and loneliness perfect for thoughtful holiday viewing.

Where to stream: HBO Max

A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)

A Charlie Brown Christmas is an enduring classic because it doesn't shy away from real pathos. It doesn't try to protect its child audience from the sadder, bleaker side of life, so the holiday redemption ending is actually earned.

Where to stream: Apple TV+

A Christmas Carol (many)

There are too many "traditional" re-tellings of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol to list individually, and everyone has their personal favorite, but I've watched every single one, and ranked them.

Where to stream: Various

Christmas Evil (1980)

Christmas Evil is the weird, sleazy story of an unbalanced man's murderous obsession with Christmas. It's better than it has any right to be and features the best twist ending in cinema history. Plus, it's one of John Waters' favorite holiday movies, and that's good enough for me.

Where to stream: Prime, Tubi

Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

1940s Hollywood's vision of Christmas reaches its reassuring zenith with Christmas in Connecticut, a romantic comedy starring Barbara Stanwyck that can be watched over and over again and never stop being delightful.

Where to stream: Digital rental

A Christmas Story (1983)

Packed with quotable lines and unforgettable moments, A Christmas Story is battling It's a Wonderful Life for the title of most iconic American Christmas movie ever. I'm sure you've seen it before, and I'm also sure you watch the whole thing whenever it happens to be on.

Where to stream: HBO Max, Hulu

Christmas With the Kranks (2004)

In Christmas With the Kranks, a family throws together a last-minute Christmas for their grown-up child. It's very dumb, and critics hated it, but it seems to get better and better every year.

Where to stream: Netflix, Philo

The Christmas Setup (2020)

Lifetime's first LGBTQ+ Christmas movie has an 85% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and it stars Fran Drescher—both positive markers—so if you're looking for a lightweight movie to put on when you're wrapping gifts, give this one a shot.

Where to stream: Philo

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)

It's not deep. It's not important. But Christmas Vacation is funny enough to watch and light enough to ignore when you're wrapping presents. It's like a comfortable old slipper of a movie, perfect for the slowed down time of the holidays.

Where to stream: HBO Max

Die Hard (1988)

Die Hard is a Christmas movie, no question. It's also the most action-packed film in the entire genre. Bruce Willis is amazing, and the "average Joe who gets into a huge situation" plot goes down smooth.

Where to stream: Hulu, Disney+, Prime

Eight Crazy Nights (2002)

There aren't many movies about Hanukkah, so this animated Adam Sandler vehicle is a bit of a classic by default. But it's a fun little movie anyway.

Where to Stream: Hulu, Disney+

Elf (2003)

Appropriate for kids and hilarious for adults, you just can't beat Elf when you're looking for a holiday comedy. Will Ferrell is amazing as Buddy, the fish-out-of-water elf at the center of this story, whose wide-eyed optimism and unwavering belief will melt even the coldest heart.

Where to stream: HBO Max

Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas (1977)

The fact that the Riverbottom Nightmare Band was robbed at the battle of the bands isn't enough to ruin this puppet-based Christmas awwww-fest.

Where to stream: Xumo, Tubi, Prime Video

Ernest Saves Christmas (1988)

Time has been strangely kind to Ernest movies (turns out slapstick ages better than any other form of comedy). If you haven't seen this one, check it out. It's delightfully stupid Christmas fun.

Where to stream: Disney+

Friday After Next (2002)

Friday After Next isn't usually thought of as a Christmas movie, but the holiday is integral to the plot: The third flick in Ice Cube's Friday series begins with Craig and Day-Day's apartment being robbed by a guy in a Santa suit, setting in motion a slew of Friday style antics centered on Christmas.

Where to stream: Tubi

Frosty the Snowman (1969)

Frosty came out in a time when there were only three channels, so kids liked things on TV because they were the only things that were on the TV. But it rises far over this low bar through the naturalistic performances of its child actors—a rarity at the time.

Where to stream: Hulu, Peacock, Disney+

Gremlins (1984)

Joe Dante's horror-comedy isn't afraid to satirize Christmas movies and Christmas itself, and sometimes you need that during the holiday season.

Where to stream: HBO Max

Happiest Season (2020)

Happiest Season breathes new life into the stilted holiday romantic comedy genre by removing the heterosexuality but keeping the Christmas magic intact. It's my pick for a future classic.

Where to stream: Hulu, Disney+

The Holiday (2006)

Like the best Christmas movies, this frothy, appreciate-what-you-got romantic comedy will charm you, even if you're desperately trying to prevent yourself from being charmed.

Where to stream: Digital rental

Holiday Affair (1949)

Robert Mitchum plays against type by not being creepy in this lighthearted romantic comedy from the golden age of Hollywood.

Where to stream: Digital rental

Home Alone (1990)

The story of eight-year-old Kevin McCallister being abandoned by his parents and stalked by hardened criminals could easily have been a horror movie, but instead, it's a Christmas classic. Movies are wild like that.

Where to stream: Disney+

Hot Frosty (2024)

This Netflix original holiday rom-com asks the question: "What if Frosty the Snowman was a hot dude?" I was expecting so-bad-it's-good, but it's actually good-good. Lacey Chabert is great as a widow in need of some Christmas magic, and the jokes are actually funny.

Where to stream: Netflix

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)

I love any Christmas movie that acknowledges the misanthropes out there, and the Grinch is so hateful, his name has become synonymous with disdain for the holidays. It's a shame he has to be redeemed in the end—but hey, it's Christmas.

Where to stream: Peacock

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

There's nothing that hasn't already been said about It's a Wonderful Life, the ultimate Christmas movie. You know you're going to watch it, so just give in.

Where to stream: Prime

Jack Frost (1998)

Holiday classics get that way either because they're great movies, or you happened to see them at the right time in your life. Jack Frost seems more like the latter to me, but it's a lot of people's go-to sentimental Christmas flick, so who am I to argue?

Where to stream: Digital rental

Jingle All the Way (1996)

Arnold Schwarzenegger drops the action-hero act in this fast-paced, slapstick comedy about consumerism and the holidays. It's not going to change anyone's life, but it's a perfectly paced and seamlessly constructed artifact from big 1990s Hollywood.

Where to stream: Tubi, Disney+

Klaus (2019)

Christmas stories about "How Christmas came to be the way it is" seem very 1960s, but this beautifully animated Netflix feature brings the genre back in a big way by telling the story of Santa's team-up with an unlikely ally.

Where to stream: Netflix

Last Holiday (2006)

Driven by the star power of Queen Latifah, LL Cool J, and Timothy Hutton this Christmas movie extols the virtues of living for the moment. Queen Latifah's performance as a woman who reacts to a terminal diagnosis by saying, "I guess I'll have fun until I die" is amazing.

Where to stream: Hulu, Paramount+

Let It Snow (2019)

This movie breaks the mold by mashing up the teen-romance genre with the snow and tinsel tropes of the holiday movie genre. It works surprisingly well, largely due to its talented young cast.

Where to stream: Netflix

Love Actually (2003)

Despite appearances, good holiday movies and romantic comedies have to be subtle, otherwise they descend into cheap sentiment. Love Actually manages to navigate the tightrope between mawkishness and real emotions as well as any movie ever made.

Where to stream: Hulu, Peacock,

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

Before she descended into an alcoholic abyss, Judy Garland was as big a star as you could be, and this is Garland at the height of her power. Meet Me in St. Louis is a singing, dancing holiday delight.

Where to stream: Tubi

A Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

A Miracle on 34th Street's tale of Santa Claus's reality being put on trial is sentimental, cloying hogwash, but so is Christmas, so just sit back and take it. (But don't watch the version from the 1990s. There's a limit.)

Where to stream: Disney+, Prime Video

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

Like Bill Murray's Scrooged, The Muppet Christmas Carol is different enough from other film adaptations of Dickens' tale to not be lumped in with the others, mainly because most of the cast is made of felt. Other than that, the movie plays it pretty straight, but if you have kids, they'll like this better than some dusty old black-and-white Dickens adaptation.

Where to stream: Disney+

The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland (2024)

This mash-up of Santa lore with Alice in Wonderland features charming animation and a soulful, gentle style. It holds its own with Christmas classics like Rudolf and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Where to stream: Prime

Night of the Hunter (1955)

The genre of "classic Christmas movie" is broad enough to include both Jingle all the Way and Night of the Hunter, an unsettling tale of a murderous preacher with "love" tattooed on one hand and "hate" on the other. Hunter's portrayal of Christmas as a brief moment of joy and imagination in the lives of joyless children makes it one of the most honest holiday films ever made.

Where to stream: Tubi, Prime

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

You get two holidays for the price of one in this stop-motion animation classic where Jack Skellington, the King of Halloween Town tries to take over Christmas to bring some much-needed spookiness to the holiday. (Too bad he didn't succeed.)

Where to stream: Disney+

The Polar Express (2004)

The Polar Express adds a new wrinkle to the hoary legend of Santa Claus by imagining a ghost train that takes children on an express trip to the North Pole to meet the man himself. The dead-eyed animation and too-much-ness of the movie creates a sense of mystery and otherworldliness that's a little unsettling, but so is Santa Claus.

Where to stream: HBO Max

Prancer (1989)

Prancer, a movie about a little girl who saves Christmas by nursing an injured reindeer back to health, could easily be a forgotten piece of kiddie trash, but it's better than it has any right to be. It stays realistic and reveals a deeper story about the nature of faith instead of falling into sentimentality.

Where to stream: Tubi, MGM+

The Preacher's Wife (1996)

Pitch-perfect performances from Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston take The Preacher's Wife from a by-the-numbers holiday rom-com into a watch-every-year comfort movie of the highest order.

Where to stream: Sling

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010)

Maybe Rare Exports is only a perennial holiday classic at my house, but this horror take on the nature of Santa is pure cinematic inventiveness and a delightful skewering of Christmas mythology—but don't watch it with your children.

Where to stream: Xumo, Tubi, Plex

Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)

Rudolph will never be beaten when it comes to perfect Christmas entertainment. The animation is amazing, the songs are unforgettable, and the story has the kind of power usually reserved for myths—it's like Christmas itself condensed into 55 minutes.

Where to stream: Digital purchase

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)

Christmas is for everyone, even weird freaks who enjoy gutter cinema the rest of the world ignores. For them (us, really) an annual viewing of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is as much of a holiday tradition as It's a Wonderful Life is for normal people.

Where to stream: Tubi, Prime

The Santa Clause (1994)

Tim Allen stars in this tale of a curmudgeonly guy who kills Santa and must take over the office himself. He learns something about himself, strengthens his bond with his family, and gives in to holiday magic—you know the drill.

Where to stream: Disney+,

Scrooged (1988)

Bill Murray really sells this reworking of Dickens' A Christmas Carol with his perfect portrayal of a 1980s-cynical TV executive's capitulation to Christmasness. It's not better than Dickens, but it's close.

Where to stream: PlutoTV, Paramount+, Prime

The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

There's something about Jimmy Stewart and movies about Christmas. Like It's a Wonderful Life, The Shop Around the Corner isn't strictly a Christmas movie, but the climactic events take place during the holidays, so it's close enough.

Where to stream: Digital rental

A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas (2011)

Some Christmas movies take themselves very seriously. This is not one of those movies. It's dumb fun from start to finish, and Neil Patrick Harris is a national treasure. Stoners need Christmas movies too, right?

Where to stream: Digital rental

Violent Night (2022)

In this not-for-kids Christmas flick, a team of mercenaries takes a family hostage on Christmas Eve, and Santa arrives to save the day. Made by the producers of John Wick and Nobody, Violent Night promises "season's beatings" and delivers.

Where to stream: Peacock

White Christmas (1954)

Closing out the list is White Christmas, a perennial Christmas classic featuring Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney crooning their way through a breezy musical that's perfect holiday escapism.

Where to stream: Hoopla, Fawesome

The easy availability of powerful generative AI programs like ChatGPT, Gemini, and other image- and music-generation tools has given everyone the ability to instantly "create" any image, video, or song they can imagine. As the resulting flood of computer-made content washes up on shore, internet users and observers are calling it "slopcore."

Also known as "AI slop," slopcore's aesthetic comes from people using AI as a collaborator instead of a tool, leaving the machines to make artistic choices. It's marked by the strangely off, the almost-real, and the uncanny vibe of machines imitating humanity. Slopcore often depicts deeply emotional subjects, but the lack of depth and insight make it uniquely disquieting.

At first glance, slopcore photos and videos appear realistic, but a closer look reveals misplaced anatomy, impossible geometry, and a weird "sheen" that comes from surfaces being too smooth and lighting being too perfect. Slopcore music has the same vibe, in audible form. Instruments sound bland and mid and vocals sound eerie due to attempts to sound "emotional" but being disconnected from actual emotions.

Here are some examples of slopcore videos:

And here is "No More Slop," an example of slopcore music I generated in 45 seconds with Suno, and here are some slopcore images of protest singers generated by ChatGPT and Meta AI:

Credit: ChatGPT, MetaAI

Note the details that don't quite fit together—the guitar strap not attached to the guitar, the sign intersecting with the singer's head, the generic "AI font" used on the sign, the extra foot on the guitarist to the left—these are all signs of slopcore.

While generative AI programmers are working hard to create models that don't add fingers and limbs, some appreciate Slopcore because of its flaws and the uniquely disquieting, uncanny valley feeling they evoke. If you look past the mawkishness and hallucinations, AI slop shows a vision of a likely future where nearly everything is made by machines, and hardly anyone can tell the difference.

It's getting near Halloween, the perfect time to stream some horror movies. I dug up 15 of the scariest, weirdest, freakiest, and funniest flicks from horror-only streaming service Shudder. I'm leaving off the obvious choices like Psycho and Halloween—if you subscribe to Shudder, you've probably seen all the "classics" at least twice—to focus on movies guaranteed to make you hide your eyes, laugh out loud, or say "what even is this?"

A Dark Song (2016)

If you like intelligent, slow-burn horror, check out A Dark Song. Like its characters, the debut feature from director Liam Gavin goes places few films dare to tread. Sophia is a grieving mother whose longing for her murdered child compels her to hire Joseph, a self-proclaimed occultist, to try and bring him back through an arcane ritual. Locked in a house together for months, the pair enact a series of grueling rites that grows increasingly dreadful.

Mads (2024)

Mads feels dangerous. This frantic nightmare of a movie follows a group of fast-living French teenagers who snort a drug that turns them into bloodthirsty killers. Or maybe they've been infected with a contagion, and the armed troops hunting them are trying to stop a world-ending event. Or maybe the mayhem is all a product of their drug-addled imaginations. Whatever the case, the story unfolds in a single frenzied take that grows more and more unhinged as the world slides off its moorings.

The Crazy Family (1985)

If you want to watch something obscure but unforgettable, check out The Crazy Family. Until recently, this Japanese horror/comedy was all but unknown in the United States: after a limited theatrical run in the mid 1980s, the violent, pitch-dark family comedy was never released on any format here. But it's a great film. The social commentary in this tale of a family becoming unglued just as they achieve material success probably landed harder in 1980s Japan, but it's still a hilarious and unnerving family portrait unlike anything else ever made.

Oddity (2024)

Unlike some movies on this list, Oddity doesn't try to reinvent the horror wheel. It's a good, old-fashioned gothic ghost story about a blind psychic searching for the man who murdered her sister. Oddity is filled with creepy characters, unexpected plot twists, and a palpable sense of rising dread that's almost suffocating until it's released in the finale. It may not be the most novel movie, but Oddity's intelligent writing, confident performances, and taut direction add up to a wonderfully creepy little scare flick.

Late Night With the Devil (2023)

This is one of the best horror films I've seen in the last decade. Late Night With the Devil purports to be the final broadcast of 1970s late night talk show Night Owls With Jack Delroy. To win his perpetual ratings war with Johnny Carson, Delroy invites a possessed girl to his Halloween broadcast. She proves to be a terrible guest. Late Night With the Devil's innovative found footage concept, slavish attention to period detail, and top-rate performances (particularly David Dastmalchian's starring turn) add up to a must-see horror movie.

Irréversible (2003)

Cinematic provocateur Gaspar Noé's harrowing masterpiece Irréversible is the scariest movie on this list, and maybe the scariest movie ever made. It's not scary in a fun way—there's nothing fun about Irreversible—it's scary because its violence feels real. We've all seen countless brutal crimes in movies and on TV, but the atrocities in Irréversible make the viewer feel the queasy, empty, insanity that you should feel if you see someone truly harmed. Don't put it on for a Halloween party, but if you want to go to a very dark place, Irréversible will take you there and make you sorry you asked to go.

Grabbers (2013)

Grabbers is the opposite of Irréversible. Delightful from frame one to frame last, Grabbers is a hilarious and scary tribute to monster movies, the soul of Ireland, and the power of positive drinking. When gooey, murderous tentacle monsters invade an isolated Irish village, the townspeople learn that the only way to keep from being grabbed and eaten is to poison their blood with alcohol, so everyone locks themselves into the local to get proper fluthered, meanwhile, the grabbers are gathering outside. Good horror-comedies are an almost impossible tonal tightrope walk, but Grabbers makes balancing between scary and funny look effortless.

The House of the Devil (2009)

The House of the Devil is set around 1983, and if you didn't know better, you'd think it was shot in the early '80s too. Tai West's first feature has a classic setup: College student Samantha takes a babysitting job at a remote country house, and the weird creeps who hire her reveal that they don't actually have a baby, but Mother is sleeping upstairs, and she should not be disturbed. From there, the slow-burn tension and dread builds. It's a master class in horror movie pacing and mood that you shouldn't miss.

Slaxx (2021)

Given the number of horror movies like Death Bed: The Bed that Eats, it's not hard to believe that someone shot a horror movie about a possessed pair of jeans, but that Slaxx is actually good is a huge surprise. A horror-comedy that satirizes the fashion industry, modern employment, and horror movies themselves, Slaxx's rises above the "Attack of the Killer Whatever" genre by managing to actually be both clever and scary.

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021)

If you're the type who takes horror seriously, you'll love Woodlands Dark & Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror. This exhaustively researched, three-and-a-half-hour-long documentary takes a deep dive into horror heavy on rural settings, paganism, and the clash between ancient and modern belief. It's the kind of movie that will make horror nerds pull out a notebook: if you're a fan of Midsommar, The Wicker Man (original only), and/or The Witch, Woodlands Dark will introduce you to the dozens of movies that inspired them.

Frankie Freako (2024)

Self-aware, campy parody movies are difficult to pull off, but Frankie Freako sticks the landing perfectly. An homage to rubber-puppet movies of the 1980s like Gremlins, Ghoulies, and Critters, Frankie Freako tells the story of a nerdy square who invites a gang of "freakos" into his life, with disastrous results. Filled with inventively cheesy practical effects and propelled by a funny script and great performances, this nostalgia trip is definitely worth a watch.

In a Violent Nature (2024)

If you've even heard of slasher movies, you know the plot of In a Violent Nature already: a masked lunatic in the woods murders a group of teenagers in gruesomely inventive ways. But In a Violent Nature turns the genre upside-down by telling that tale exclusively from the point-of-view of the killer. It's not exactly a scary movie—slasher movies aren't suspenseful to the slasher; what's he got to be scared of?—but it is a fascinating and hypnotic film that wins bonus points for one of the most gruesomely original kills ever filmed. (If you've seen it, you know the one I'm talking about.)

Dog Soldiers (2002)

If The Howling and The Evil Dead had a baby, it would be Dog Soldiers. When a squad of hapless British soldiers on a training exercise in the Scottish Highlands find themselves trapped in a remote cabin by a pack of murderous werewolves, things go off-the-chain crazy. Dog Soldiers blends claustrophobic survival horror, dry British humor, and just enough story so you care about who is getting eaten, and the result is an all-time favorite for fans of action-horror.

V/H/S: Halloween (2025)

The eighth(!) movie in the V/H/S franchise may be the best. A collection of six found footage shorts loosely themed around Halloween, V/H/S Halloween comes off like a group of talented filmmakers were given total freedom to shoot their most twisted visions. The tone veers wildly with each short, from the horror-comedy in Casper Kelly's "Fun Size" to Alex Ross Perry's grueling and bleak "KidPrint," but the quality is consistently high, putting V/H/S Halloween a cut above most anthology movies.

Rare Exports (2010)

It's not going to be October forever, so consider Rare Exports a bridge between Halloween and Christmas. In it, a mining company digs an ancient frozen corpse from beneath the ice in Northern Finland, but when they melt him, they learn he's not dead, and he's not a man. He's an elf and he's bringing death instead of toys, especially when he learns the mining company is also defrosting his terrifying boss: Santa.

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Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days are technically over, but our Prime Day coverage is still underway. As long as Best Buy, Target, and other retailers have ongoing sales, Amazon will likely remain competitive with its deals, so we're highlighting the ones that are still live. (All of our recommended deals have been vetted using price tracking tools, so you can trust that the sales we're talking about are actually good deals, and not just hype designed to fool you.)

Here are the bargains you can still nab on Bluetooth speakers.

Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 4

Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 4: If you prefer more modern features for a bit less money, UW's Wonderboom is just $83 (originally $99.99).

Ultimate Ears WONDERBOOM 4 Portable Waterproof Bluetooth Speaker with Big Bass and 360-Degree Sound, Dustproof Floating Speaker with 131ft (40m) Range - Blue

$81.45 at Amazon

$99.99 Save $18.54

Get Deal

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$81.45 at Amazon

$99.99 Save $18.54

Anker Soundcore 2

Anker Soundcore 2 Portable Bluetooth Speaker: Anker has been killing it in the budget speaker and headphone department for some time, and the Soundcore 2 is a great example. It's currently $29.99 (originally $44.99).

Anker Soundcore 2 Portable Bluetooth Speaker

$29.99 at Amazon

$44.99 Save $15.00

Get Deal

Get Deal

$29.99 at Amazon

$44.99 Save $15.00

Amazon Echo Dot (5th Gen)

Amazon Echo Dot: You can't take this speaker outdoors, but you can command it to turn devices on and off, ask it questions, or play music in multiple rooms if you own multiple Echo speakers. You can get this newest model for $34.99 (originally $49.99).

Amazon Echo Dot (5th Gen, 2022 Release)

$34.99 at Amazon

$49.99 Save $15.00

Get Deal

Get Deal

$34.99 at Amazon

$49.99 Save $15.00

Looking for something else? Retailers like Walmart and Best Buy have Prime Day competition sales that are especially useful if you don’t have Amazon Prime.

• Best Buy’s Prime Day competition sale runs through Oct. 12, and has some of the best tech sales online. It’s an especially good option if you’re a My Best Buy “Plus” or “Total” member.

• Target’s Prime Day competition sale runs through Oct. 11, and it has deals going up to 50% off. You can become a Circle member for free.

Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.

Many Prime Day deals are still live, despite the sale technically being over. As long as Best Buy, Target, and other retailers have their sales live, Amazon will likely be competing with last-minute deals. If you need a pair of less-expensive headphones or earbuds, Amazon has a ton of choices for under $150, even after its Prime Day sale has ended.

Best earbuds for under $150

• Apple AirPods 4: The lower-end line of AirPods are still fantastic, especially for $89, which is 31% off the list price of $129. The noise-cancelling variety of AirPods 4 are marked down too; they're $118.98 down from $179, but unless you're frequently in very loud places, you won't need it.

• If you want really inexpensive earbuds, Soundcore by Anker P20i earbuds are only $19.98.

Apple AirPods 4 Wireless Earbuds

$89.00 at Amazon

$129.00 Save $40.00

Get Deal

Get Deal

$89.00 at Amazon

$129.00 Save $40.00

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Best open air headphones for Under $150

• Soundcore V20i by Anker: Anker makes serviceable audio components for low prices, like these open air headphones. They're on sale for only $23.49, down from $49.99, and feature 16mm drivers and customizable lights.

Anker Soundcore V20i Bluetooth 5.4 Open-Ear Headphones (Black)

$23.49 at Amazon

$49.99 Save $26.50

Get Deal

Get Deal

$23.49 at Amazon

$49.99 Save $26.50

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Best gaming headset for under $150

• HyperX Cloud Mix 2: These wireless headphones will run for 110 hours on a charge! They feature solid ANC in 2.4GHz mode, and come with a slot inside the left ear cup that hides a low-profile USB-C adapter, all for $132.99.

• Razer BlackShark V2 Pro Wireless: These PlayStation-licensed headphones feature a noise-isolating design and tuneable audio profiles so you can customize what you hear. They're a steal at $129.99, down from $199.99.

• HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless: If you want long battery life, these headphones will run for over 300 hours on a single charge, and they're on sale for $142.99

HyperX Cloud Mix 2 – Dual Wireless Over-Ear Headphones with ANC, 2,4GHz dongle, Bluetooth 5.3, PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, Mobile, USB-C – Black

$132.99 at Amazon

$199.99 Save $67.00

Get Deal

Get Deal

$132.99 at Amazon

$199.99 Save $67.00

Razer BlackShark V2 Pro Wireless Gaming Headset: Wideband Mic - Pro-Tuned FPS Profiles - 50mm Drivers - Comfortable Noise Isolating Earcups - 70 Hr Battery - Bluetooth - for PC, PS5, Switch - Black

$141.99 at Amazon

$199.99 Save $58.00

Get Deal

Get Deal

$141.99 at Amazon

$199.99 Save $58.00

HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless

$139.99 at Walmart

$199.99 Save $60.00

Get Deal

Get Deal

$139.99 at Walmart

$199.99 Save $60.00

SEE 0 MORE

Looking for something else? Retailers like Target and Best Buy have Prime Day competition sales that are especially useful if you don’t have Amazon Prime.

• Best Buy’s Prime Day competition sale runs through Oct. 12, and has some of the best tech sales online. It’s an especially good option if you’re a My Best Buy “Plus” or “Total” member.

• Target’s Prime Day competition sale runs through Oct. 11, and it has deals going up to 50% off. You can become a Circle member for free.

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

Amazon Big Deal Days ended, but some deals are still active.

• Follow our live blog to stay up to date on the best sales we find.

• Browse our editors’ picks for a curated list of our favorite sales on laptops, fitness tech, appliances, and more.

• Subscribe to our shopping newsletter, Add to Cart, for the best sales sent to your inbox.

• New to Prime Day? We have a primer on everything you need to know. Sales are accurate at the time of publication, but prices and inventory are always subject to change.

If you're hoping to catch the future early, consider checking out these XReal One AR smart glasses. They're on sale for $499, down from $579.00, which isn't the lowest price they've ever been on sale (they were down to $469 for Prime Day), but pretty close.

XREAL One AR Glasses with X1 Chip

$449.00 at Amazon

$579.00 Save $130.00

Get Deal

Get Deal

$449.00 at Amazon

$579.00 Save $130.00

If you're not familiar: XReal Ones are augmented-reality display glasses. They're compatible with any device with USB-C video, and when you slip 'em on, it's like looking at bright, clear 147" high-def monitor. Plus, the built-in G1 chip gives you 3DOF augmented reality, so you can anchor your virtual screen into real space.

I have a pair of the XReal One Pro version of these glasses, and I highly recommend them, whether you want to have a second screen for productivity, play games in a new way, or just have the best entertainment experience possible on an airplane. I recently spent a day with them on, using them to replace every screen I look at, and it was like living in a science fiction movie.

Looking for something else? Retailers like Walmart and Best Buy have Prime Day competition sales that are especially useful if you don’t have Amazon Prime.

• Walmart’s Prime Day competition sale runs from Oct. 6 at 7 p.m. ET through Oct. 12 and includes deals up to 50% off. It’s an especially good option if you have Walmart+.

• Best Buy’s Prime Day competition sale runs from Sept. 27 through Oct. 12, and has some of the best tech sales online. It’s an especially good option if you’re a My Best Buy “Plus” or “Total” member.

• Target’s Prime Day competition sale runs from Oct. 5 through Oct. 11, and it has deals going up to 50% off. You can become a Circle member for free.