Seven Smart Appliance 'Upgrades' That Aren't so Smart

Dec. 19th, 2025 06:00 pm
[syndicated profile] twocents_feed

Posted by Jeff Somers

https://lifehacker.com/home/these-smart-appliance-features-arent-so-smart?utm_medium=RSS

Whether you want them to or not, appliances are getting smarter. It’s increasingly challenging to find even basic models without some kind of “smart” feature or embedded artificial intelligence. If you don't believe me, just try to find a “dumb” television at your local Best Buy. You will be disappointed.

While it's true that many of the “smart” features offered by these nifty new appliances are quite useful. The ability to pre-heat your oven or adjust your thermostat by pressing a button on your phone is great, and getting alerts when the fridge door is left open or when you forget to move your laundry from the washer to the dryer is undeniably a boon.

But sometimes, the convenience these features offer is an illusion, as many supposedly smart features in modern appliances aren’t very smart at all—and they can actively make your life harder instead of easier. If you’re shopping for a new appliance, considering avoiding these not-so-smart features.

Dryer with moisture sensors that leave your clothes damp

Modern clothes dryers offer a lot of great capabilities. Some can even talk to your washer, pre-setting themselves for the laundry coming its way, and many can remind you to collect your laundry, sparing you wrinkled clothes, and to clean out the lint filter. But modern dryers often come with moisture sensors that shut off the dryer when it detects that your clothes are dry. In theory, sensor drying saves you money and time over a fixed time dry. But the sensors in these dryers are notorious for being inaccurate shutting the dryer down when your clothes are still a bit damp. And you still have to make a guess as to how much drying you need and set the sensor to the proper level. At best, this can mean running another drying cycle. At worst, your clothes will sit there getting mildewy until you remember to check the machine.

Dishwashers with "eco modes" that leave dishes dirty

New dishwashers often come with efficient or “eco” modes that use less water and less energy to clean your dishes. That’s a great idea—in theory. But these modes achieve those efficiencies the only way they can: By running at lower temperatures and literally using less water in their cleaning cycles. This can often leave your dishes visibly dirty after running a load, forcing you to cancel out the benefit by running them a second time. Worse, these modes don’t get hot enough to kill dangerous bacteria like E. coli, so even if your dishes come out looking clean, they may not be sanitary.

Smart fridges that misidentify your groceries

Smart fridges are often at the top of people’s complaints list for two main reasons: One, they are often abandoned by their manufacturers soon after they arrive on the market, with updates and support vanishing in as quickly as two years. That transforms your pricey smart fridge into a pricey dumb fridge. More frustratingly, smart fridges that supposedly use artificial intelligence to identify your groceries as you place them inside (in order to help you track your shopping needs and expiration dates) often get things wrong. For example, this woman complained that her smart fridge often mistook her husband’s head for an avocado, among other problems, which rendered the feature worse than useless.

Sensor-cooking microwaves that don't cook

While the modern microwave remains the steadfastly boxy, unsexy beast it’s always been, there have been attempts to make it smarter—and sometimes these attempts backfire on you. Some microwaves offer “sensor cooking,” the ability to sense the weight and moisture level of the food in order to adjust cooking time and power levels to cook your food perfectly. Except when it senses incorrectly and leaves you with a half-cooked mess, or if you’re trying to cook something that simply doesn't work well with sensor cooking, like dry foods that don’t produce enough steam for the sensor to detect.

Smart kitchen scales that are just making guesses

A smart kitchen scale might seem like a nifty idea; you weigh your food and use an app to get nutritional information, like the amount of calories in what you’re about to eat. That’s fine, but it really just adds an unnecessary step to your cooking routine, because most “smart” scales are just regular, standard kitchen scales and an app that Googles on your behalf. You’ll get the same general experience—and likely better accuracy—by weighing something and using your phone to search for nutritional information yourself.

Smart garage doors that are less secure

Smart garage doors are a great example of a piece of technology that isn’t improved much by being smart. And the core technology that makes the garage door smart—a WiFi connection to a cloud server—can also make it worse than useless. Aside from the fact that any disruption in the door’s connection can cause it to remain locked in the open position, leaving your home vulnerable, there’s also the fact that the manufacturer can make changes any time they like that could potentially alter the way your door functions or brick it entirely.

https://lifehacker.com/home/these-smart-appliance-features-arent-so-smart?utm_medium=RSS

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How to Use 'Progressive Overload' to Get Stronger

Dec. 19th, 2025 05:00 pm
[syndicated profile] twocents_feed

Posted by Beth Skwarecki

https://lifehacker.com/how-to-use-progressive-overload-to-get-stronger?utm_medium=RSS

As you get stronger, you become able to lift heavier and heavier weights. That's the idea at the heart of an often-misunderstood fitness concept: progressive overload. Unfortuantely, there are a lot of myths and misunderstandings about this principle, so here's how to use it to plan your own workouts or judge whether a program you're following will keep you on track.

What is progressive overload?

Progressive overload is the increase, over time, in the amount of work or stress you ask your body to handle. The term is used two different ways: as a principle of how the human body works, and as a description of how a workout program changes over time. If you want to know how to "do progressive overload," you're thinking of the second one—how to design a workout program.

The simplest way to implement this is to just do a little more each time you're in the gym. More weight, or more reps, or making the workout harder in some other way. You can still take some easier "deload" workouts (or weeks) from time to time, but over the long term you want to see a trend of the workouts getting harder. They won't necessarily feel harder, because you'll be getting stronger. It's more like the workouts are keeping up with you.

In other words, progressive overload is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. As you get stronger, your workouts need to get harder to keep up. But in a sense you are also becoming stronger because you're challenging yourself with harder workouts.

What does progressive overload look like in real life?

If you’re bummed out by the idea of working harder and harder forever, don’t panic. You’ll work harder in absolute terms—by lifting heavier weights, let’s say—but the challenge stays about the same in relative terms. Your workouts will fall into an effort level you might call “hard, but doable,” and you’ll notice progress because your numbers are going up. (A similar approach applies to endurance sports. As cyclist Greg Lemond reportedly said: “It never gets any easier, you just go faster.”)

When I started lifting weights many years ago, 65 pounds was a decently challenging bench press for me. I remember being proud of myself for being able to squeeze out a rep or two at 85 pounds. Now, if I’m going to do a bench workout, I don’t even bother loading those amounts onto the bar. My warmup sets start at 95 pounds, and a heavy single might be around 135. That 135 feels just as hard as 85 used to, but it’s undeniably more weight.

How did I make that progress? Well, I kept lifting the weights that felt heavy for me. Over time, the same weights that used to be challenging started to feel easy, and I needed to add more and more weight to the bar to get something that actually felt heavy. (I have a guide here to figuring out whether you’re lifting “heavy.”)

Most of the time, I either followed a program that told me how many pounds to lift, increasing that amount slowly over time, or one that told me what effort level to lift at (a concept called RPE), which allowed me to choose an appropriate weight each day. Following a program will usually net you better progress than just winging it, but as long as you’re using the overload principle and the progression principle, you will get stronger.

Workout routines that use progressive overload

Here are some examples of workout routines that use progressive overload:

Double progression. Let's say you're aiming for three sets of eight to 12 reps of dumbbell shoulder press. You choose a weight that you can handle for 3 sets of 8 reps. The next time you do shoulder press, try to add at least one rep. If you can't, that's fine—just do your three sets of eight. One day maybe you'll get 10 reps on the first set, then only eight on the next two. Another time maybe you get 12, 10, and eight. After a few weeks you manage three full sets of 12. That means it's time to increase the weight! The next time you do the exercise, you'll use a heavier set of dumbbells and start again at three sets of eight. It's called "double" progression because first you increase the reps, and then you increase the weight.

Linear progression. This is a common progression for barbell exercises for beginners. You do the same number of reps every time (say, five sets of five reps) but add a small amount of weight every workout. Often the program will have instructions for what to do if you can't complete the five sets of five reps at the new weight. These workouts aren't usually realistic for experienced lifters, since you can't keep increasing the weight forever, but they're great for people who are learning an exercise for the first time or returning to the gym after a break.

Set progression. This may be used along with double progression, or may be its own thing. You start with just a few sets of an exercise per workout, say two or three, and then add a set each week. Once you're doing, say, five sets, you'll start over with heavier weight. If you're using it with double progression, you'll increase sets, and then reps, and then weight.

Density progression. This is commonly used in timed sets, like Crossfit WODs ("workout of the day") or for accessory lifts. Set a timer for several minutes and do as many reps as possible in the given time, resting as needed. The next time you do the workout, try to do more reps in the same amount of time. Once you can do the lifts with little to no rest, you'll either add weight or find another way to make the exercises harder (for example, doing dips instead of pushups).

As you can see, weight isn't the only variable that progresses. You can increase reps, or sets, or increase the amount of work you do in a given time by decreasing rest. You can increase the difficulty by choosing a harder exercise (like progressing from dips to pushups). As long as things get harder over time, you're doing progressive overload.

How to use progressive overload even if you can't add more weight

Adding weight is part of most progressive overload schemes, but you don’t have to add weight to the bar literally every time you lift. There’s a wide range of weights and rep ranges that can be effective for building strength and muscle. For example, if I did a bench workout today, I might do sets of 10 at 100 pounds, or sets of five at 120, or some heavy singles at 140, or any combination of these. If I’m really tired or stressed, I might decide to do the sets of 10 at just 90 pounds. If I’m feeling great, I might be able to do them at 105. This is what I mean by a wide range: All of these are hard enough work to spur my muscles to adapt and get stronger. (There are reasons you might choose one of these workouts over the others, but we don’t need to get into those details at the moment.)

What wouldn’t be progressive overload? Well, if I did sets of 10 with just the bar, that wouldn’t help me get stronger. If I had a mini barbell set, and it maxed out at 85 pounds, my strength would stagnate once I got to the point where 85 pounds isn’t a challenging weight anymore.

Even as your strength improves, you don’t have to do more every single workout, as long as you’re getting stronger in the long term, and your workouts are still in the range that is challenging to you.

So let’s say you’re doing bicep curls with a 10-pound dumbbell. You can do eight or 10 reps with it. Perfect. But the only way to add weight, at your gym, might be to pick up a 15-pound dumbbell. If that weight is too heavy for you, that’s okay. Keep working with the 10-pounder, and in time you’ll be ready for the 15.

You can progress on more than one metric

While you’re probably itching to lift heavier weights, weight on the bar is not the only way to progress. Sometimes you can’t add weight because of equipment issues, or just because your strength is improving slowly. (Even if your beginner gains were meteoric, everybody’s progress slows down at some point.)

But if you’re smart, you probably don’t want to only get better at one specific thing. A lot of beginners start off doing squat, bench, and deadlift in sets of five reps, and trying to add weight each workout. But you’ll be a more well-rounded lifter if you also know how to lift heavy singles and sets of 10 or 15. Depending on your goals you might consider front squats in addition to back squats, and reverse hypers or kettlebell swings in addition to deadlifts. There are ways to improve at all of these things, and it’s normal for a lifter to be simultaneously increasing their reps in accessory lifts, increasing their weight on the bar for heavy singles, and increasing the amount of time they spend on conditioning workouts.

How to spot workouts that don't use progressive overload

Not every workout or routine will have progressive overload built in. For example, if you have a favorite workout that you do every day, but you never make it any harder (say, it's always three sets of ten pushups), you won't make progress over time. That's OK if you enjoy the workout for another reason, like if you're just trying to get the mental health benefits of a little exercise boost in the morning. But if you want to get better at pushups, you need to find a way to do more of them over time, or make them harder in some way (like elevating your feet, or doing them with a backpack on).

Workouts with progressive overload tend to be personalized to you. If the workout tells you exactly what to do, down to the exact weight of dumbbell to pick up, it's not giving you room to choose the weight that matches your current strength level. The 12-3-30 treadmill workout, for example, is the same for everyone every time. If it's one-size-fits-all, there's no way to progress.

That said, some workouts have a sneaky progression built in. If you jog for 30 minutes each day, chances are you'll get a little faster over time even if you don't realize it, and then you're doing more work within the same amount of time. Or if you do "three sets of 10" of an exercise, but each day you pick up whatever dumbbells feel appropriate for that level, you'll probably end up using heavier ones over time. Just make sure you don't get stuck doing the exact same thing month in and month out.

The limits of progressive overload

One last thing, now that we’ve discussed what progressive overload looks like. It’s important to remember that progression happens in the long term. Some competitive lifters might not test their one-rep max outside of competition, which means they’ll only find out once or twice a year how much their deadlift has gone up. That doesn’t mean they haven’t progressed in the meantime. If they’re doing an effective program, consistently challenging themselves, they’re still working.

Plateaus are a fact of life when you’re a lifter. Sometimes it takes a while to get stronger. Sometimes you need to work on your technique to be able to express your newfound strength. Sometimes factors like stress or weight loss or changes in your training can make you weaker in the short term, but if you keep training in a way that challenges you, you’ll set new PRs soon enough.

https://lifehacker.com/how-to-use-progressive-overload-to-get-stronger?utm_medium=RSS

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Seven Smart Appliance 'Upgrades' That Aren't so Smart

Dec. 19th, 2025 06:00 pm
[syndicated profile] lh_wayfarer_feed

Posted by Jeff Somers

https://lifehacker.com/home/these-smart-appliance-features-arent-so-smart?utm_medium=RSS

Whether you want them to or not, appliances are getting smarter. It’s increasingly challenging to find even basic models without some kind of “smart” feature or embedded artificial intelligence. If you don't believe me, just try to find a “dumb” television at your local Best Buy. You will be disappointed.

While it's true that many of the “smart” features offered by these nifty new appliances are quite useful. The ability to pre-heat your oven or adjust your thermostat by pressing a button on your phone is great, and getting alerts when the fridge door is left open or when you forget to move your laundry from the washer to the dryer is undeniably a boon.

But sometimes, the convenience these features offer is an illusion, as many supposedly smart features in modern appliances aren’t very smart at all—and they can actively make your life harder instead of easier. If you’re shopping for a new appliance, considering avoiding these not-so-smart features.

Dryer with moisture sensors that leave your clothes damp

Modern clothes dryers offer a lot of great capabilities. Some can even talk to your washer, pre-setting themselves for the laundry coming its way, and many can remind you to collect your laundry, sparing you wrinkled clothes, and to clean out the lint filter. But modern dryers often come with moisture sensors that shut off the dryer when it detects that your clothes are dry. In theory, sensor drying saves you money and time over a fixed time dry. But the sensors in these dryers are notorious for being inaccurate shutting the dryer down when your clothes are still a bit damp. And you still have to make a guess as to how much drying you need and set the sensor to the proper level. At best, this can mean running another drying cycle. At worst, your clothes will sit there getting mildewy until you remember to check the machine.

Dishwashers with "eco modes" that leave dishes dirty

New dishwashers often come with efficient or “eco” modes that use less water and less energy to clean your dishes. That’s a great idea—in theory. But these modes achieve those efficiencies the only way they can: By running at lower temperatures and literally using less water in their cleaning cycles. This can often leave your dishes visibly dirty after running a load, forcing you to cancel out the benefit by running them a second time. Worse, these modes don’t get hot enough to kill dangerous bacteria like E. coli, so even if your dishes come out looking clean, they may not be sanitary.

Smart fridges that misidentify your groceries

Smart fridges are often at the top of people’s complaints list for two main reasons: One, they are often abandoned by their manufacturers soon after they arrive on the market, with updates and support vanishing in as quickly as two years. That transforms your pricey smart fridge into a pricey dumb fridge. More frustratingly, smart fridges that supposedly use artificial intelligence to identify your groceries as you place them inside (in order to help you track your shopping needs and expiration dates) often get things wrong. For example, this woman complained that her smart fridge often mistook her husband’s head for an avocado, among other problems, which rendered the feature worse than useless.

Sensor-cooking microwaves that don't cook

While the modern microwave remains the steadfastly boxy, unsexy beast it’s always been, there have been attempts to make it smarter—and sometimes these attempts backfire on you. Some microwaves offer “sensor cooking,” the ability to sense the weight and moisture level of the food in order to adjust cooking time and power levels to cook your food perfectly. Except when it senses incorrectly and leaves you with a half-cooked mess, or if you’re trying to cook something that simply doesn't work well with sensor cooking, like dry foods that don’t produce enough steam for the sensor to detect.

Smart kitchen scales that are just making guesses

A smart kitchen scale might seem like a nifty idea; you weigh your food and use an app to get nutritional information, like the amount of calories in what you’re about to eat. That’s fine, but it really just adds an unnecessary step to your cooking routine, because most “smart” scales are just regular, standard kitchen scales and an app that Googles on your behalf. You’ll get the same general experience—and likely better accuracy—by weighing something and using your phone to search for nutritional information yourself.

Smart garage doors that are less secure

Smart garage doors are a great example of a piece of technology that isn’t improved much by being smart. And the core technology that makes the garage door smart—a WiFi connection to a cloud server—can also make it worse than useless. Aside from the fact that any disruption in the door’s connection can cause it to remain locked in the open position, leaving your home vulnerable, there’s also the fact that the manufacturer can make changes any time they like that could potentially alter the way your door functions or brick it entirely.

https://lifehacker.com/home/these-smart-appliance-features-arent-so-smart?utm_medium=RSS

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How to Use 'Progressive Overload' to Get Stronger

Dec. 19th, 2025 05:00 pm
[syndicated profile] lh_wayfarer_feed

Posted by Beth Skwarecki

https://lifehacker.com/how-to-use-progressive-overload-to-get-stronger?utm_medium=RSS

As you get stronger, you become able to lift heavier and heavier weights. That's the idea at the heart of an often-misunderstood fitness concept: progressive overload. Unfortuantely, there are a lot of myths and misunderstandings about this principle, so here's how to use it to plan your own workouts or judge whether a program you're following will keep you on track.

What is progressive overload?

Progressive overload is the increase, over time, in the amount of work or stress you ask your body to handle. The term is used two different ways: as a principle of how the human body works, and as a description of how a workout program changes over time. If you want to know how to "do progressive overload," you're thinking of the second one—how to design a workout program.

The simplest way to implement this is to just do a little more each time you're in the gym. More weight, or more reps, or making the workout harder in some other way. You can still take some easier "deload" workouts (or weeks) from time to time, but over the long term you want to see a trend of the workouts getting harder. They won't necessarily feel harder, because you'll be getting stronger. It's more like the workouts are keeping up with you.

In other words, progressive overload is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. As you get stronger, your workouts need to get harder to keep up. But in a sense you are also becoming stronger because you're challenging yourself with harder workouts.

What does progressive overload look like in real life?

If you’re bummed out by the idea of working harder and harder forever, don’t panic. You’ll work harder in absolute terms—by lifting heavier weights, let’s say—but the challenge stays about the same in relative terms. Your workouts will fall into an effort level you might call “hard, but doable,” and you’ll notice progress because your numbers are going up. (A similar approach applies to endurance sports. As cyclist Greg Lemond reportedly said: “It never gets any easier, you just go faster.”)

When I started lifting weights many years ago, 65 pounds was a decently challenging bench press for me. I remember being proud of myself for being able to squeeze out a rep or two at 85 pounds. Now, if I’m going to do a bench workout, I don’t even bother loading those amounts onto the bar. My warmup sets start at 95 pounds, and a heavy single might be around 135. That 135 feels just as hard as 85 used to, but it’s undeniably more weight.

How did I make that progress? Well, I kept lifting the weights that felt heavy for me. Over time, the same weights that used to be challenging started to feel easy, and I needed to add more and more weight to the bar to get something that actually felt heavy. (I have a guide here to figuring out whether you’re lifting “heavy.”)

Most of the time, I either followed a program that told me how many pounds to lift, increasing that amount slowly over time, or one that told me what effort level to lift at (a concept called RPE), which allowed me to choose an appropriate weight each day. Following a program will usually net you better progress than just winging it, but as long as you’re using the overload principle and the progression principle, you will get stronger.

Workout routines that use progressive overload

Here are some examples of workout routines that use progressive overload:

Double progression. Let's say you're aiming for three sets of eight to 12 reps of dumbbell shoulder press. You choose a weight that you can handle for 3 sets of 8 reps. The next time you do shoulder press, try to add at least one rep. If you can't, that's fine—just do your three sets of eight. One day maybe you'll get 10 reps on the first set, then only eight on the next two. Another time maybe you get 12, 10, and eight. After a few weeks you manage three full sets of 12. That means it's time to increase the weight! The next time you do the exercise, you'll use a heavier set of dumbbells and start again at three sets of eight. It's called "double" progression because first you increase the reps, and then you increase the weight.

Linear progression. This is a common progression for barbell exercises for beginners. You do the same number of reps every time (say, five sets of five reps) but add a small amount of weight every workout. Often the program will have instructions for what to do if you can't complete the five sets of five reps at the new weight. These workouts aren't usually realistic for experienced lifters, since you can't keep increasing the weight forever, but they're great for people who are learning an exercise for the first time or returning to the gym after a break.

Set progression. This may be used along with double progression, or may be its own thing. You start with just a few sets of an exercise per workout, say two or three, and then add a set each week. Once you're doing, say, five sets, you'll start over with heavier weight. If you're using it with double progression, you'll increase sets, and then reps, and then weight.

Density progression. This is commonly used in timed sets, like Crossfit WODs ("workout of the day") or for accessory lifts. Set a timer for several minutes and do as many reps as possible in the given time, resting as needed. The next time you do the workout, try to do more reps in the same amount of time. Once you can do the lifts with little to no rest, you'll either add weight or find another way to make the exercises harder (for example, doing dips instead of pushups).

As you can see, weight isn't the only variable that progresses. You can increase reps, or sets, or increase the amount of work you do in a given time by decreasing rest. You can increase the difficulty by choosing a harder exercise (like progressing from dips to pushups). As long as things get harder over time, you're doing progressive overload.

How to use progressive overload even if you can't add more weight

Adding weight is part of most progressive overload schemes, but you don’t have to add weight to the bar literally every time you lift. There’s a wide range of weights and rep ranges that can be effective for building strength and muscle. For example, if I did a bench workout today, I might do sets of 10 at 100 pounds, or sets of five at 120, or some heavy singles at 140, or any combination of these. If I’m really tired or stressed, I might decide to do the sets of 10 at just 90 pounds. If I’m feeling great, I might be able to do them at 105. This is what I mean by a wide range: All of these are hard enough work to spur my muscles to adapt and get stronger. (There are reasons you might choose one of these workouts over the others, but we don’t need to get into those details at the moment.)

What wouldn’t be progressive overload? Well, if I did sets of 10 with just the bar, that wouldn’t help me get stronger. If I had a mini barbell set, and it maxed out at 85 pounds, my strength would stagnate once I got to the point where 85 pounds isn’t a challenging weight anymore.

Even as your strength improves, you don’t have to do more every single workout, as long as you’re getting stronger in the long term, and your workouts are still in the range that is challenging to you.

So let’s say you’re doing bicep curls with a 10-pound dumbbell. You can do eight or 10 reps with it. Perfect. But the only way to add weight, at your gym, might be to pick up a 15-pound dumbbell. If that weight is too heavy for you, that’s okay. Keep working with the 10-pounder, and in time you’ll be ready for the 15.

You can progress on more than one metric

While you’re probably itching to lift heavier weights, weight on the bar is not the only way to progress. Sometimes you can’t add weight because of equipment issues, or just because your strength is improving slowly. (Even if your beginner gains were meteoric, everybody’s progress slows down at some point.)

But if you’re smart, you probably don’t want to only get better at one specific thing. A lot of beginners start off doing squat, bench, and deadlift in sets of five reps, and trying to add weight each workout. But you’ll be a more well-rounded lifter if you also know how to lift heavy singles and sets of 10 or 15. Depending on your goals you might consider front squats in addition to back squats, and reverse hypers or kettlebell swings in addition to deadlifts. There are ways to improve at all of these things, and it’s normal for a lifter to be simultaneously increasing their reps in accessory lifts, increasing their weight on the bar for heavy singles, and increasing the amount of time they spend on conditioning workouts.

How to spot workouts that don't use progressive overload

Not every workout or routine will have progressive overload built in. For example, if you have a favorite workout that you do every day, but you never make it any harder (say, it's always three sets of ten pushups), you won't make progress over time. That's OK if you enjoy the workout for another reason, like if you're just trying to get the mental health benefits of a little exercise boost in the morning. But if you want to get better at pushups, you need to find a way to do more of them over time, or make them harder in some way (like elevating your feet, or doing them with a backpack on).

Workouts with progressive overload tend to be personalized to you. If the workout tells you exactly what to do, down to the exact weight of dumbbell to pick up, it's not giving you room to choose the weight that matches your current strength level. The 12-3-30 treadmill workout, for example, is the same for everyone every time. If it's one-size-fits-all, there's no way to progress.

That said, some workouts have a sneaky progression built in. If you jog for 30 minutes each day, chances are you'll get a little faster over time even if you don't realize it, and then you're doing more work within the same amount of time. Or if you do "three sets of 10" of an exercise, but each day you pick up whatever dumbbells feel appropriate for that level, you'll probably end up using heavier ones over time. Just make sure you don't get stuck doing the exact same thing month in and month out.

The limits of progressive overload

One last thing, now that we’ve discussed what progressive overload looks like. It’s important to remember that progression happens in the long term. Some competitive lifters might not test their one-rep max outside of competition, which means they’ll only find out once or twice a year how much their deadlift has gone up. That doesn’t mean they haven’t progressed in the meantime. If they’re doing an effective program, consistently challenging themselves, they’re still working.

Plateaus are a fact of life when you’re a lifter. Sometimes it takes a while to get stronger. Sometimes you need to work on your technique to be able to express your newfound strength. Sometimes factors like stress or weight loss or changes in your training can make you weaker in the short term, but if you keep training in a way that challenges you, you’ll set new PRs soon enough.

https://lifehacker.com/how-to-use-progressive-overload-to-get-stronger?utm_medium=RSS

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Sydney Sweeney Dampens the Otherwise Deliciously Campy 'The Housemaid'

Dec. 19th, 2025 12:45 pm
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Posted by Dustin Rowles

https://www.pajiba.com/film_reviews/review-the-housmaid-starring-sydney-sweeney-and-amanda-seyfried.php

With The Housemaid, director Paul Feig takes the campy delights of A Simple Favor and cranks them up about 12 notches, and it mostly works. Amanda Seyfried is fully game, delivering exactly the kind of gloriously over-the-top performance the movie...

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https://www.pajiba.com/film_reviews/review-the-housmaid-starring-sydney-sweeney-and-amanda-seyfried.php

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Things that are round

Dec. 19th, 2025 10:31 am
offcntr: (live 1)
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A random selection.



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Teen worker forces popular pizza place to shut down for days after they refuse boss's demands to mak

Dec. 19th, 2025 10:00 am
[syndicated profile] fail_feed

Posted by Bar Mor Hazut

https://cheezburger.com/43669509/teen-worker-forces-popular-pizza-place-to-shut-down-for-days-after-they-refuse-bosss-demands-to-make

A teen who desperately needs money would pretty much do anything for a job, and many employers know that. They have no problem taking advantage of a teenager's hunger for a summer job, and they would find any way within the law to get as much work as possible out of their youngest employees.

Many teens find themselves working for various fast food chains, which should be an easy enough job. Until the day one comes, when the young workers realize just how much work their employer plans to bestow upon them. And by that point, it's usually too late to look for another summer job.

When the teen in the story below applied to work at a popular pizza place, they didn't expect their boss to demand they work every weekend. Weekends are highly important to many teens, and spending them making pizza dough at a fast-food kitchen was not what the teen imagined. When it became clear that the boss was using the teen's need for a job against him, the teen decided to look for another way to make money. 

After they found one, they decided to quit their job at the pizza place in a way they'll never forget…

https://cheezburger.com/43669509/teen-worker-forces-popular-pizza-place-to-shut-down-for-days-after-they-refuse-bosss-demands-to-make

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FIC: Steady (Avengers, Steve/Tony, M)

Dec. 19th, 2025 01:18 pm
sineala: (Avengers: Welcome back Cap)
[personal profile] sineala
Steady (35953 words) by Sineala
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Avengers (Comics)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Characters: Steve Rogers, Tony Stark
Additional Tags: Romance, Love Confessions, Marriage Proposal, Depression, Alcoholics Anonymous, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Drug Addiction, Past Drug Use, Post-Marvel Comic Event: Secret Empire (2017), Post-Marvel Comic Event: A.X.E.: Judgement Day (2022)
Series: Part 2 of When Trouble Came
Summary: After the events of "When Trouble Came," Steve takes Tony home with him, back to his childhood apartment where he now lives, so they can spend the night together. Conversation ensues, and it becomes very clear that they're going to be together for a lot longer than just the night.

This is the epilogue to When Trouble Came that I promised I had. I thought that this was going to be a nice little timestamp from Steve's POV, and then I realized it was 35,000 words. Whoops.
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Let it blow, I guess.

Dec. 19th, 2025 10:56 am
mistressofmuses: A smiling white dandelion seedhead says "blow me," after which the seeds are scattered. (blow me)
[personal profile] mistressofmuses
Another major wind event today.

Power was shut off to my office around 5am, with no definite ETA on when it will be back on. (I went in to work yesterday and it was still out from the planned Wednesday outage, but came back on around 10:45, so we had a chance to at least get some things caught up, and I proactively tried to print out as much of the schedule as I could for today through Sunday... but of course, we won't be aware of anything that changes.)

We're still conducting lessons as normal during the day today, but cancelling everything for after dark. Still have to have someone there, so I'm going in for a half day: 12-4:30ish. There is some wind, but it's not horrible... yet. The warnings are for gusts up to 105mph, which is pretty hideously bad.

My manager told me to bring something to keep me busy, and a blanket because it's real cold with no heat, ha.

So, blanket and a book it is, I suppose.

Tomorrow is going to be nightmarish. We most likely won't have power back yet, but our winter break class series is starting, so we do have 30ish kids scheduled to be there for class. Which... oof. My manager was planning to try some battery-powered lights of hers in the classroom to see if we can get enough light in there, and some instructors from other centers were considering the same, and maybe going to try to get us some better batteries and lights on the company dime. Either way, sucks to not have any of the usual class material (which is all electronic, of course.)

Tomorrow is also supposed to be our biannual center meeting after work, so we might be eating pizza in the dark while we give our center updates and reminders, too.

(Crossing my fingers we do get power back at least sometime tomorrow, rather than it lingering through the weekend...)

Again, I'm really glad that they're proactively shutting the power down to prevent disaster. The Marshall Fire was devastating, and was a winter fire at least partially started by downed power lines. Of course, they're getting an absolute deluge of rage from people who are pissed about the power being out. And it does suck! I'm super lucky that our power at home has stayed on except for a few little blips. It is making my job basically undoable. But... I also remember getting the alert that entire towns were being evacuated for the Marshall Fire, and thinking it had to be a typo. Surely not the entire towns of Superior and Longmont! Surely that's supposed to be just certain areas! (It was entire towns. I had coworkers who lost homes. I had coworkers who didn't lose their homes, but their neighbors did. Horrible.)

-

Unrelated, but I still have so much to do before Christmas. I don't know how I wind up with so much to do, because it's not an all-out holiday for me... but I've still got to wrap all my gifts, and then do all the baking I plan to.

I at least got all the baking supplies I should need. I also finally dropped cards in the mail yesterday, so I'm terribly sorry if they arrive late. ;_;

I am also EXCRUCIATINGLY behind on everything here: at least a week behind on reading and replying. I will do my best to at least start chipping away at that!
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Fannish Fifty #46: More Joy Day: Annual Fandom Holiday

Dec. 19th, 2025 09:57 am
elayna: (Xmas Sheppard knows what he wants for Xm)
[personal profile] elayna
Mostly copied from [personal profile] ride_4ever's DW... I need to remember this is coming and think if I can do something especially joyful on that day. More joy sounds like a good goal.

The 19th Annual Fandom Holiday of More Joy Day will be Thursday, January 8th, 2026.

What is More Joy Day? In short it's this: in 2008, in the interest of spreading more joy, [personal profile] sdwolfpup proposed that on a designated day in early January we each engage in one or more acts, either online or in physical space (or both!), which bring joy to another person, and which might even inspire that person to spread joy further, exponentially onward.

For more details, and to see where to post on Dreamwidth your More Joy Day action(s), click here for sdwolfpup's post.

And here's a Fanlore entry about More Joy Day.

SPREAD JOY!
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free fruit, romantic castles, incomputable

Dec. 19th, 2025 10:57 am
tozka: woman typing onto a very old computer (computer black and white)
[personal profile] tozka

Hello, happy Friday! (Had to double-check that, I thought it was Saturday.) Here's some links for you!

Community

  • Found two websites that map out fruit trees/free wild food you can presumably get if you're in the right area: Endless Orchard and Falling Fruit
  • Meshtastic is a thing that lets you use LoRa radios as long-range off-grid communication platform

Music

  • Intertapes is a collection of found cassette tapes and the recordings on them!

Books

Recently (okay not that recent) added to Project Gutenberg and that I found interesting in some way:

Also the Johnny.Decimal workbook has been released into the Creative Commons.

AI Sucks

and: On Incomputable Language: An Essay on AI from Eruditorum Press. I liked this quote:

There is a tedious point that advocates of AI art will periodically articulate to the effect of AI rendering art accessible to more people—ones lacking in time or ability to otherwise produce it. The response to this is generally that the time and labor involved is fundamental to art. But even more fundamental is the thought involved. At the end of the day what defines art is the existence of intention behind it—the fact that some consciousness experienced thoughts that it subsequently tried to communicate. Without that there’s simply lines on paper, splotches of color, and noise. At the risk of tautology, meaning exists because people mean things. Nobody else is going to do that work for us. If we don’t do it, really, what’s the fucking point?

More?

New Link Library is here and there's even an RSS feed you can use to track updates!

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The Fantastic Journey: Not Fun [Amnesty 48, using Challenge 45: Carnival]

Dec. 19th, 2025 05:59 pm
badly_knitted: (Rose)
[personal profile] badly_knitted posting in [community profile] drabble_zone

Title: Not Fun
Fandom: The Fantastic Journey
Author: [personal profile] badly_knitted
Characters: Varian, Jonathan, Apollonius.
Rating: PG
Written For: Challenge 480: Amnesty 48, using Challenge 45: Carnival.
Setting: Funhouse.
Summary: Varian had never seen a carnival before…
Disclaimer: I don’t own The Fantastic Journey, or the characters. They belong to their creators.
A/N: Triple drabble.





Not Fun



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WICKED: FOR GOOD Star Ariana Grande in Paolo Sebastian on LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS

Dec. 19th, 2025 05:40 pm
[syndicated profile] tomlorenzo_feed

Posted by Lorenzo Marquez

https://tomandlorenzo.com/2025/12/wicked-for-good-star-ariana-grande-in-paolo-sebastian-on-late-night-with-seth-meyers/

https://tomandlorenzo.com/?p=481555

Two things of note before we get to the dress: first, as we noted in our last podcast, we broke twenty years of blogging record in our volume of content for December, a month we always considered one of the slowest of the year. Part of that comes down to the state of the movie and television industries post-strike and in the throes of crashing box office and studio consolidation. The stars have to work harder and longer to promote their work now, with endless junket appearances, photo calls, screenings, Q&As and talk show visits. Just look at the fifth season tour for Emily in Paris, which was as grandiose as a summer blockbuster movie tour or holiday Oscar-bait one. It feels like the people most positioned to make bank right now, aside from the CEOs of course, are the publicists and stylists who are seemingly working around the clock to push product. The second thing to note, and maybe it’s just us, but it feels like the conversation around Wicked: For Good just died. It’s a huge hit, of course, but it feels like after a ton of lead-up and a big opening week, no one had anything else to say about it. Anyway, to tie these two thoughts together (maybe), here’s Ariana, serving you the full Glinda.

And what we want to say is, this is tired. Pretty, but done to death. It would be one thing if she only promoted one film in these ballerina ball gowns, but she’s been working this exact same look for years now. Obviously it worked; there’s no real denying that. And we get that Oscar nominations are looming, but honestly, we think an actress in her position is better off ditching the cosplay and showing up in something fresh and young and maybe even a little trendy just to show she’s ready for more work. We also think it’s outrageously over the top to be wearing a custom gown to Late Night with Seth Meyers. Law Roach never knows when to pull back on the throttle.

Style Credits:
Custom Paolo Sebastian Ballerina Pink Ballgown Featuring a Soft Asymmetrical Neckline and Layered Tulle
Styled by Law Roach

 

[Photo Credit: Lloyd Bishop/NBC, Courtesy of Paolo Sebastian – Video Credit: /YouTube]

The post WICKED: FOR GOOD Star Ariana Grande in Paolo Sebastian on LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS appeared first on Tom + Lorenzo.

https://tomandlorenzo.com/2025/12/wicked-for-good-star-ariana-grande-in-paolo-sebastian-on-late-night-with-seth-meyers/

https://tomandlorenzo.com/?p=481555

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These Bone Conduction Headphones Are My Tech 'Upgrade of the Year'

Dec. 19th, 2025 04:30 pm
[syndicated profile] twocents_feed

Posted by Daniel Oropeza

https://lifehacker.com/tech/my-upgrade-of-the-year-bone-conduction-headphones?utm_medium=RSS

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

Bone conduction headphones (BCHs) have been around for a while, but I didn't really start using them until this year, and they've honestly changed everything for me. They have helped keep my mind occupied—usually with an audiobook—while I tackle mundane tasks while leaving me able to communicate with my wife without constantly taking my earbuds out. As I result, I've listened to more books than ever this year, but beyomnd that accomplishment, I love that I'm able to remain aware of my surroundings while listening to my music, podcast, shows, calls, or, yes, my audiobook. That's why BCHs are my tech upgrade of 2025.

Why I love the Shokz OpenRun Pro 2

Earlier this year, I reviewed the Shokz OpenRun Pro 2, and I'm glad I did. I'd tested other BCHs previously, but the OpenRun Pro 2 were on a different level entirely. They employ a hybrid of BCH technology and open-air sound that projects low frequencies to your ears. This means they sound almost like regular headphones, while keeping the benefits of BCH. (they don't cover your ears, so you're more tuned in to the world around you).

Shokz OpenRun Pro 2
SHOKZ New OpenRun Pro 2 - Open-Ear, Bone Conduction Sport Headphones - Sweat Resistant, Workout Headphones with 30ft Bluetooth - Secure, Wireless, Comfortable Fit - Deep Bass and Smart Mic App
$139.95 at Amazon
$179.95 Save $40.00

No more losing an earbud

I used to use regular earbuds while taking work calls or doing household chores, and I would often find myself only using one earbud so I wouldn't be totally tuned out to my surroundings. Yes, most earbuds now have a transparency mode of some sort, but I'd usually find it easier to just take one out rather than remembering how to toggle it on or off. The downside here is that I'd typically leave whichever earbud I'd removed lying somewhere around the house, or lose it outright. Moreover, if I was listening to something in stereo, I'd be missing out on half of the experience. That all changed when I started using the OpenRun Pro 2 as my go-to headphones.

Comfortable and functional

Unlike earbuds or over-ear headphone, which can be fatiguing after extended use, the OpenRun Pro 2 are so comfortable, I sometimes forget I'm wearing them. Their microphones are great, so I can use them to take calls or virtual meetings without issue. Because of their hybrid audio model, I don't experience the sensation of vibration that tickled my ears when I tried other BCH models. I love that I can have a full conversation with my wife while washing the dishes or cooking and not have to worry about pausing my media or fumbling with my earbuds. And the best part is that they're waterproof, so I can go from a runs and straight to the shower without missing a beat—or, more often, a chapter of my current book (you'd be surprised how many minutes of extra listening you can rack up over the course of a year of showers, not to mention washing dishes, walking the dog, and other everyday tasks). With the help of these headphones, I look forward to beating my audiobook record again in 2026.

https://lifehacker.com/tech/my-upgrade-of-the-year-bone-conduction-headphones?utm_medium=RSS

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These Bone Conduction Headphones Are My Tech 'Upgrade of the Year'

Dec. 19th, 2025 04:30 pm
[syndicated profile] lh_wayfarer_feed

Posted by Daniel Oropeza

https://lifehacker.com/tech/my-upgrade-of-the-year-bone-conduction-headphones?utm_medium=RSS

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

Bone conduction headphones (BCHs) have been around for a while, but I didn't really start using them until this year, and they've honestly changed everything for me. They have helped keep my mind occupied—usually with an audiobook—while I tackle mundane tasks while leaving me able to communicate with my wife without constantly taking my earbuds out. As I result, I've listened to more books than ever this year, but beyomnd that accomplishment, I love that I'm able to remain aware of my surroundings while listening to my music, podcast, shows, calls, or, yes, my audiobook. That's why BCHs are my tech upgrade of 2025.

Why I love the Shokz OpenRun Pro 2

Earlier this year, I reviewed the Shokz OpenRun Pro 2, and I'm glad I did. I'd tested other BCHs previously, but the OpenRun Pro 2 were on a different level entirely. They employ a hybrid of BCH technology and open-air sound that projects low frequencies to your ears. This means they sound almost like regular headphones, while keeping the benefits of BCH. (they don't cover your ears, so you're more tuned in to the world around you).

Shokz OpenRun Pro 2
SHOKZ New OpenRun Pro 2 - Open-Ear, Bone Conduction Sport Headphones - Sweat Resistant, Workout Headphones with 30ft Bluetooth - Secure, Wireless, Comfortable Fit - Deep Bass and Smart Mic App
$139.95 at Amazon
$179.95 Save $40.00

No more losing an earbud

I used to use regular earbuds while taking work calls or doing household chores, and I would often find myself only using one earbud so I wouldn't be totally tuned out to my surroundings. Yes, most earbuds now have a transparency mode of some sort, but I'd usually find it easier to just take one out rather than remembering how to toggle it on or off. The downside here is that I'd typically leave whichever earbud I'd removed lying somewhere around the house, or lose it outright. Moreover, if I was listening to something in stereo, I'd be missing out on half of the experience. That all changed when I started using the OpenRun Pro 2 as my go-to headphones.

Comfortable and functional

Unlike earbuds or over-ear headphone, which can be fatiguing after extended use, the OpenRun Pro 2 are so comfortable, I sometimes forget I'm wearing them. Their microphones are great, so I can use them to take calls or virtual meetings without issue. Because of their hybrid audio model, I don't experience the sensation of vibration that tickled my ears when I tried other BCH models. I love that I can have a full conversation with my wife while washing the dishes or cooking and not have to worry about pausing my media or fumbling with my earbuds. And the best part is that they're waterproof, so I can go from a runs and straight to the shower without missing a beat—or, more often, a chapter of my current book (you'd be surprised how many minutes of extra listening you can rack up over the course of a year of showers, not to mention washing dishes, walking the dog, and other everyday tasks). With the help of these headphones, I look forward to beating my audiobook record again in 2026.

https://lifehacker.com/tech/my-upgrade-of-the-year-bone-conduction-headphones?utm_medium=RSS

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Pluribus 1.08

Dec. 19th, 2025 06:21 pm
selenak: (Breaking Bad by Wicked Signs)
[personal profile] selenak
In which someone becomes Sheherazade, but is it Zosia or is it Carol?

( Spoilers go on the charm offensive )
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Fendi’s EMILY IN PARIS Capsule Collection

Dec. 19th, 2025 04:50 pm
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Benoit Blanc Cinematic Universe: Wake Up Dead Man (2025), aka Knives Out 3

Dec. 19th, 2025 11:17 am
lannamichaels: "I have a vague ambition in that direction" (a vague ambition)
[personal profile] lannamichaels


Summary: Benoit Blanc investigates a locked room murder mystery taking place in a Catholic church on Good Friday, the victim is a Catholic priest named Wicks that no one really liked. And then Wicks rises from the dead, and more people die. An extremely convoluted movie, which I enjoyed.

Spoilers and the rest behind cut.

( Read more... )

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Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Splat

Dec. 19th, 2025 11:20 am
[syndicated profile] smbc_comics_feed

Posted by Zach Weinersmith

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/splat



Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
They quietly cruise into a carwash and try to put his body in the trash.


Today's News:

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/splat

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James Cameron Casts Doubt on More ‘Avatar’ Movies After ‘Fire & Ash'

Dec. 19th, 2025 12:00 pm
[syndicated profile] newpajiba_feed

Posted by Andrew Sanford

https://www.pajiba.com/news/james-cameron-casts-doubt-on-more-avatar-movies-after-fire-ash.php

When 20th Century FOX committed to making four Avatar sequels, I was as confused as anyone. I had certainly enjoyed the first film and was well aware of how much it made at the box office, but doing that many...

Read more...

https://www.pajiba.com/news/james-cameron-casts-doubt-on-more-avatar-movies-after-fire-ash.php

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What Do We Know So Far About Tom Cruise's Comedy, 'Digger'?

Dec. 19th, 2025 11:15 am
[syndicated profile] newpajiba_feed

Posted by Dustin Rowles

https://www.pajiba.com/film_reviews/everything-we-know-about-tom-cruises-digger.php

Not much, as it turns out. Yesterday, Warner Bros. released a teaser for Digger, a comedy starring Tom Cruise directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who is making his first English-language film since 2015's The Revenant. Here's the teaser, which basically...

Read more...

https://www.pajiba.com/film_reviews/everything-we-know-about-tom-cruises-digger.php

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Guest gets suddenly uninvited from friend's potluck moments before event starts: 'I... turned around

Dec. 19th, 2025 08:00 am
[syndicated profile] fail_feed

Posted by Remy Millisky

https://cheezburger.com/43673093/guest-gets-suddenly-uninvited-from-friends-potluck-moments-before-event-starts-i-turned-around-and

Imagine if you went through all the effort of making a delicious dish for your friend's potluck, only to be hastily excluded mere minutes beforehand! 

Potluck events make things easier for the hosts, and require significantly more effort per attendee. For most parties, showing up with a beverage or a bag of chips is totally cool. But for a potluck, you kind of need to put in the effort because all the other guests are also committing themselves to making a dish. That means finding a good recipe, writing down all the ingredients, buying all that at the grocery store, then baking it all on the day of. Not to mention that someone has to hold this dish on the way over to the party as you drive very carefully so you don't spill it all over the car. It's kind of a hassle! But we do it because having a loving community of friends requires effort, and plus if you're lucky, you'll get to chow down on other food that is even better than what you brought. 

Right, so imagine you do all that, prepping a meal for your besties — you've cooked, cleaned, packed the meal, dressed in your party clothes, and now you're ready to go… only to be told there's not room for you anymore? This person found themselves stunned when their friend suddenly changed the location of the party at the very last minute, but also refused to tell them where the new party was. Instead, the "friend" told them there suddenly wasn't enough room for them. It's all very ridiculous, and I wonder what changed between the invite and the rejection. Check out the whole story below, including the photo of the dish this person made, which looks absolutely delicious. Their so-called friends missed out! 

https://cheezburger.com/43673093/guest-gets-suddenly-uninvited-from-friends-potluck-moments-before-event-starts-i-turned-around-and

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Michelle Obama Promotes Her New Book “The Look” in Chanel

Dec. 19th, 2025 04:01 pm
[syndicated profile] tomlorenzo_feed

Posted by Lorenzo Marquez

https://tomandlorenzo.com/2025/12/michelle-obama-promotes-her-new-book-the-look-in-chanel/

https://tomandlorenzo.com/?p=481552

And now, a final slay before Christmas. Michelle Obama’s stylist Meredith Koop posted these model-portfolio quality shots of the former FLOTUS WERQing the chit out of Chanel:

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Mere/Mer (@meredithkoop)

 

That is a strut for the ages. We don’t even like the outfit all that much (although the color looks spectacular on her), but she’s making it sing like a supermodel would.

Style Credits:
– Chanel Red Tweed Dress with Fringe Detailing from the Spring 2026 Collection
– Chanel Shoes
Styled by Meredith Koop | Hair by Yene Damtew | Makeup by Carl Ray

 

[Photo Credit: Courtesy of Miles Diggs, @diggzy/Instagram, chanel.com]

The post Michelle Obama Promotes Her New Book “The Look” in Chanel appeared first on Tom + Lorenzo.

https://tomandlorenzo.com/2025/12/michelle-obama-promotes-her-new-book-the-look-in-chanel/

https://tomandlorenzo.com/?p=481552

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Since I just had to dig this up:

Dec. 19th, 2025 08:40 am
muccamukk: Han Solo, Leia Organa, C-3PO, Chewbacca watch from the bushes. (SW: We're Watching You!)
[personal profile] muccamukk
Archive of Our Own: Protect Your Contact Information From Scammers.

In the last year, AO3 has seen a rise in "art commission" spambot comments. The bots leaving these comments pretend to be artists who want to make comics or illustrations for a fan's fic. After convincing their targets to contact them off AO3, they scam their targets into paying for that art. Fans have reported that after sending payment, they either received AI-generated art or nothing at all.
If you receive a scam comment from a guest, you can press the "Spam" button on the comment. This helps train our automated spam-checker to better detect this type of behavior.

If you encounter a scammer that has a registered account, or if you encounter a guest posting scam comments on someone else's work, please report them to the Policy & Abuse committee. To do so:

  1. Select the "Thread" button on the scammer's comment. This will take you to the specific comment page.

  2. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Policy Questions & Abuse Reports.

  3. In the "Brief summary of Terms of Service violation" field, enter "Spambot".

  4. In the "Description of the content you are reporting" field, enter "This is a spambot, their username is USERNAME."

Reporting in this fashion helps us auto-sort your report so that it can be handled as soon as a Policy & Abuse volunteer is available. To help us address reports about these types of bots as fast as possible, please only submit one report per account, and don't include multiple accounts in the same report.

If you encounter a scam commenter on someone else's work, you can let the work creator know the commenter is likely a bot and link them to this news post.

(Thanks to JT for reminding me where the post was.)
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10 Hacks Every Apple Watch User Should Know

Dec. 19th, 2025 03:30 pm
[syndicated profile] twocents_feed

Posted by Khamosh Pathak

https://lifehacker.com/tech/hacks-every-apple-watch-users-should-know?utm_medium=RSS

The Apple Watch is both a companion to the iPhone, as well as a very capable device in its own right. Out of the box, it offers notification mirroring, so you feel every alert on your iPhone on your wrist, as well as workout tracking, so you can keep up with your fitness goals. But this wearable can be so much more than that. In fact, it doesn't take much to make your Apple Watch more personal and efficient. If you own one, here are ten hacks you need to know about:

Disable every notification you can

Disabling notifications for Apple Watch.
Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Get your notifications under control. By default, Apple likes to forward every single alert from iPhone to your watch. That’s just a recipe for distraction. You should turn off most of these alerts, and only keep the most important notifications. An important message from Slack or a text from a close friend is worth the distraction; a promotion from Uber is not. Open the Watch app on your iPhone, go to Notifications, scroll down and disable most of the apps that mirror alerts from the iPhone.

While you’re at it, it might help to keep your Watch in Silent mode at all times. Open the Control Center by pressing the Side button and tap the Bell icon to quiet your watch for good.

Master the Apple Watch's wrist gestures

Apple Watch double-tap gesture.
Credit: Khamosh Pathak

The Apple Watch's recent wrist gestures have turned out to be a sleeper hit for me. What I thought would be a gimmick is something I use multiple times a day now. If you have an Apple Watch Series 9, Ultra 2, SE 3, or higher, you get access to two gestures: Double Tap and Wrist Flick. First, if you tap your index finger and your thumb twice in the air, you’ll perform the major action current on-screen. This could include answering a call, stopping a timer, or stopping a workout. I use this all the time now, even when I don’t have my hands full. Second, you can flick your wrist up to go back a screen on your watch. This is a simple way to get back from menus, or to go back to the watch face, without actually tapping the screen.

Automatically unlock your Mac with your Apple Watch

Unlocking Mac with Apple Watch.
Credit: Khamosh Pathak

This is a feature I've been using for years, but since it's buried quite deep in settings, many users don't know about it. Once set up, you can unlock your Mac automatically as long as you’re wearing your Apple Watch. It doesn’t even have to be on the same wifi network, so this works when you’re out and about.

To set this up, go to System Settings on your Mac, then choose Touch ID & Password. In the Apple Watch section, simply turn on the sync feature for your Apple Watch. Once you authenticate with your Mac password, you’ll be good to go. The next time you lift the lid on your Mac, macOS will automatically sign you in.

Start using widgets

Widgets on Apple Watch
Credit: Khamosh Pathak

I used to love customizing my watch face with all the various complications for timers, shortcuts, and, weather, just to name a few. But I was never really satisfied with how cluttered things looked when it was all set up. That changed once I embraced the Photos watch face, and moved all the contextual information and shortcuts to widgets. Keeping all those functions and data points in a collapsable stack of widgets, rather than all on screen at once, looks so much better.

To try this out for yourself, scroll using the Crown or swipe up on the watch face to access your widgets. Go to the bottom and tap the Edit button to start customizing your widget stack. You can add three app shortcuts to the top widget. I usually save this for workouts, battery, and the quick timer. Then, I have dedicated widgets for my Activity Rings, Weather, Shortcuts, Sleep, and more. You can pin widgets in the order that you want, and watchOS will also automatically suggest relevant widgets depending on your usage. Dive in deeper with our detailed guide on customizing widgets.

Create your watch face stack, and cycle through them

Apple Watch Photos watch face.
Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Once you move your app interactions to widgets, your watch faces suddenly open up. Take some time to create and customize two to three watch faces that you can switch between as you wish. It's easy to do at any time: just swipe in from the left or the right edge to change the watch face.

Creating and customizing watch faces is actually easier on the Watch app on the iPhone. In fact, it’s the only place where you can set up my favorite watch face: the Photos watch face. This watch face cycles between the photos of my wife, nature, and urban landscapes, showing me a fresh selection each day. I love this watch face quite a lot. You can also create a watch face for fitness tracking and fitness modes, and a simple watch face for regular use. (My favorites here are Typograph and Meridian watch faces.)

Adjust your Activity Rings as needed

Editing Activity Rings goals.
Credit: Khamosh Pathak

For almost a decade, you couldn’t edit your Activity Rings. If you got sick, or just wanted to take an easy day, you’d lose your fitness streak. This, of course, isn’t the healthiest approach to fitness—for that, you should check out the Gentler Streak app. However, since last year's watchOS 11, you’ve had the option to pause or change your Activity Rings. You can do this from the Fitness app on iPhone, which is slightly easier than using the Apple Watch itself. From the Fitness app, tap Activity Rings, then scroll down, where you'll see Change Goals and Pause Rings. Choose the relevant option to get started. I have detailed instructions in my guide as well.

Control your Apple TV from your wrist

Remote app for Apple Watch
Credit: Khamosh Pathak

If you use an Apple TV, you know how easy it is to lose the remote. You might be familiar with the Apple TV’s remote control feature on the iPhone, but that same feature exists on the Apple Watch as well. You’ll have to find the Remote app from the app list, then choose your Apple TV. It should appear as long as it's on the same network as your watch, and nearby. From here, you can use swipe gestures and buttons to control playback on your TV.

Blare your alarms, even in silent mode

Break through silent mode on Apple Watch.
Credit: Khamosh Pathak

On the Apple Watch, silent mode and alarm sound levels are married to each other, unlike on the iPhone. But recently, Apple added a feature where you can break-through silent mode for a particular alarm—it's just not enabled by default for all alarms. To set it up, open an alarm from the Alarms app, go to the Edit Alarm menu, scroll down, and enable Break Through Silent Mode.

Customize Focuses with Apple Watch in mind

Edit Apple Watch watch face for a Focus mode on iPhone
Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Focuses on the iPhone are supremely powerful, and underrated. And things get a lot more interesting when you add Apple Watch to the mix. Each Focus can have its own watch face associated with it, so you can have a different watch face for your work Focus, another one for your personal Focus, and a fitness watch face for your workout Focus. Go to Settings > Focus to customize or create any Focus.

Track your sleep

Sleep Score from Apple Watch
Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Your Apple Watch comes with a built-in sleep tracker. To use it, you can either go to the Sleep app on Apple Watch, and create a sleep schedule, or simply switch to the Sleep Focus. When you’re in sleep mode, your watch automatically goes dark and silent, so you won't be bothered by any notifications.

With watchOS 26, your Apple Watch now also gives you a sleep score, which offers more insights into your sleeping habits. I’ve been using the Sleep mode this past year with my Apple Watch Series 10, and I’ve gotten a lot out of the sleep tracking feature already.

https://lifehacker.com/tech/hacks-every-apple-watch-users-should-know?utm_medium=RSS

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