FAIL Blog ([syndicated profile] fail_feed) wrote2025-09-18 04:00 pm

‘This is definitely going in the wedding speech’: Normal first date turns unusual when girl's mom ca

Posted by Elna McHilderson

Everyone is always a little nervous before a first date. What if they don't like you? What if you don't like them? What if you do something embarrassing? What if they do something embarrassing and you have to act like it's not? It could be a total disaster! But, it's all worth it because it could also be the most beautiful love. So we go through with it and figure things out along the way! In this first date, the couple were having a pretty good time. Your usual dinner date… Until, the girl's mom called her frantically. Apparently, she was at the mall and her little brother had wandered off. She was crying and telling her daughter to come help her. Not wanting to end the date, she asked if he would give her a ride to the mall. He not only gave her a ride he also helped the family in their search AND found the little boy. He was just playing with some toys in a toy story, completely unbothered. If that isn't green flag material, I don't know what is! The couple ended up continuing their date, going on several others, and are now still together!

Deeplinks ([syndicated profile] eff_feed) wrote2025-09-18 11:10 pm

Shining a Spotlight on Digital Rights Heroes: EFF Awards 2025

Posted by Christian Romero

It's been a year full of challenges, but also important victories for digital freedoms. From EFF’s new lawsuit against OPM and DOGE, to launching Rayhunter (our new tool to detect cellular spying), to exposing the censorship of abortion-related content on social media, we’ve been busy! But we’re not the only ones leading the charge. 

On September 10 in San Francisco, we presented the annual EFF Awards to three courageous honorees who are pushing back against unlawful surveillance, championing data privacy, and advancing civil liberties online. This year’s awards went to Just Futures LawErie Meyer, and the Software Freedom Law Center, India. 

If you missed the celebration in person, you can still watch it live! The full event is posted on YouTube and the Internet Archive, and a transcript of the live captions is also available.  

WATCH NOW

SEE THE EFF AWARDS CEREMONY ON YOUTUBE

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn opened the evening by reflecting on our victories this past year and reiterated how vital EFF’s mission to protect privacy and free speech is today. She also announced her upcoming departure as Executive Director after a decade in the role (and over 25 years of involvement with EFF!). No need to be too sentimental—Cindy isn’t going far. As we like to say: you can check out at any time, but you never really leave the fight. 

Cindy then welcomed one of EFF’s founders, Mitch Kapor, who joked that he had been “brought out of cold storage” for the occasion. Mitch recalled EFF’s early days, when no one knew exactly how constitutional rights would interact with emerging technologies—but everyone understood the stakes. “We understood that the matter of digital rights were very important,” he reflected. And history has proven them right. 

Honoring Defenders of Digital Freedom

The first award of the night, the EFF Award for Defending Digital Freedoms, went to the Software Freedom Law Center, India (SFLC.IN). Presenting the award, EFF Civil Liberties Director David Greene emphasized the importance of international partners like SFLC.IN, whose local perspectives enrich and strengthen EFF’s own work. 

SFLC.IN is at the forefront of digital rights in India—challenging internet shutdowns, tracking violations of free expression with their Free Speech Tracker, and training lawyers across the country. Accepting the award, SFLC.IN founder Mishi Choudhary reminded us: “These freedoms are not abstract. They are fought for every day by people, by organizations, and by movements.” 

SFLC.IN founder Mishi Choudhary accepts the EFF Award for Defending Digital Freedoms

Next, EFF Staff Attorney Mario Trujillo introduced the winner of the EFF Award for Protecting Americans’ Data, Erie Meyer. Erie has served as CTO of the Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and was a founding member of the U.S. Digital Service. Today, she continues to fight for better government technology and safeguards for sensitive data. 

In her remarks, Erie underscored the urgency of protecting personal data at scale: “We need to protect people’s data the same way we protect this country from national security risks. What’s happening right now is like all the data breaches in history rolled into one. ‘Trust me, bro’ is not a way to handle 550 million Americans’ data.” 

Erie Meyer accepts the EFF Award for Protecting Americans’ Data

Finally, EFF General Counsel Jennifer Lynch introduced the EFF Award for Leading Immigration and Surveillance Litigation, presented to Just Futures Law. Co-founder and Executive Director Paromita Shah accepted on behalf of the organization, which works to challenge the ways surveillance disproportionately harms people of color in the U.S. 

“For years, corporations and law enforcement—including ICE—have been testing the legal limits of their tools on communities of color,” Paromita said in her speech. Just Futures Law has fought back, suing the Department of Homeland Security to reveal its use of AI, and defending activists against surveillance technologies like Clearview AI. 

Just Futures Law Executive Director Paromita Shah accepted the EFF Award for Leading Immigration and Surveillance Litigation

Carrying the Work Forward

We’re honored to shine a spotlight on these award winners, who are doing truly fearless and essential work to protect online privacy and free expression. Their courage reminds us that the fight for civil liberties will be won when we work together—across borders, communities, and movements. 

Join the fight and donate today


A heartfelt thank you to all of the EFF members worldwide who make this work possible. Public support is what allows us to push for a better internet. If you’d like to join the fight, consider becoming an EFF member—you’ll receive special gear as our thanks, and you’ll help power
the digital freedom movement. 

And finally, special thanks to the sponsor of this year’s EFF Awards: Electric Capital.

 

 

Catch Up From the Event

Reminder that if you missed the event, you can watch the live recording on our YouTube and the Internet Archive. Plus, a special thank you to our photographers, Alex Schoenfeldt and Carolina Kroon. You can see some of our favorite group photos that were taken during the event, and photos of the awardees with their trophies. 

aethel: (buddy breathing [by zoetrope])
aethel ([personal profile] aethel) wrote2025-09-18 07:42 pm
Entry tags:

glad tidings

1. Soulmate Goose of Enforcement is now a filterable tag on AO3: AO3 News post. It's a soulmate subtrope where an angry goose herds you toward your soulmate, and there are at least 626 fanworks about it.

2. I met my 2025 Goodreads reading goal (75 books), and the app gave me some digital confetti. I think book #75 was A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by KJ Charles.

3. Other books: I tried an audiobook narrated by Eric Schweig (Pike from Big Eden and the unnamed Inuit hunter from the Due South pilot): Tainna by Norma Dunning. It's award-winning literary fiction about present-day Inuit living in southern Canada--massive warning for rape, definitely showcasing the grim effects of colonization, but with added magical realism. I also read the first(?) Witcher novel, which is very similar to the first season of the show, but without the overarching plot. I stopped reading A Gentleman's Position by KJ Charles because the two characters already know the other one is interested and picked up A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking instead. So far, so hungry.
FAIL Blog ([syndicated profile] fail_feed) wrote2025-09-18 03:00 pm

Barista demands coworker cover his shift last minute while he “deals with something important”, he r

Posted by Emma Saven

This employee values his credibility and time, something his coworker doesn't quite seem to understand. When this barista insists that his coworker cover a shift so he can "take care of something," the coworker calmly explains that, under normal circumstances, he'd be happy to help, but unfortunately, he has prior commitments for that specific day and time. His coworker flips his (coffee) lid, and moves onto name-calling real fast…Causing a lot of tension between these two men…Stay away from the hot coffee, things could get dangerous! 

However, this type of coworker entitlement is exactly what employees are trying to avoid, as their coworkers get too comfortable expecting favors…A happy agreement to swap shifts now and then is a great idea, although that does rely on one tiny factor: availability. Which is not always the case, so it's not really fair for this coworker to drag down his 'friend' for having plans during his own free time! 

Funny & True Stories | NotAlwaysRight.com ([syndicated profile] notalwaysright_feed) wrote2025-09-18 11:00 pm

Never Been To A Block Party

Posted by Not Always Right

Read Never Been To A Block Party

Customer: "Do you sell pre-shredded cheese?"
Me: "You mean shredded cheese?"
Customer: "No, pre shredded cheese."
Me: "So like… a block of cheese?"

Read Never Been To A Block Party

senmut: Autobot symbol (Transformers: Autobots)
Asp ([personal profile] senmut) wrote in [community profile] no_true_pair2025-09-18 06:16 pm

Best Day (Transformers [Bay Movies/Bumblebee], Optimus Prime & Charlie Watson)

Title: Best Day
Fandom: Transformers [Bay Movies/Bumblebee]
Pairing/Characters: Optimus Prime & Charlie Watson
Content Notes: None
Prompt: September Eighteen - 1 & 3 - best day ever

Follows this




"Are you well, Charlie Watson?" Optimus Prime asked in concern as the woman had tears in her eyes, watching Bumblebee leave with Sam.

"Yeah, umm, I… can't begin to tell you how much all of this means, Optimus Prime." She looked up at the mech, remembering that recovered recording so long ago. In the metal, not flesh, he was even more impressive.

"I have given the others who aided us Cybertronian citizenship options. Would you care to have that, to protect you from your interesting government?"

She stared, then dabbed tears away and grinned.

"Right. Best day ever," she avowed.
case: (Default)
Case ([personal profile] case) wrote in [community profile] fandomsecrets2025-09-18 06:58 pm

[ SECRET POST #6831 ]


⌈ Secret Post #6831 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.


More! )


Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 06 secrets from Secret Submission Post #975.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-09-18 07:19 pm

[growth] pineapple is go!

A little while ago the toddler's household told me that you could turn the top of a pineapple into a whole entire pineapple plant (with the caveat that at least 60% of the time it goes mouldy). My first attempt at this had got as far as growing a whole entire root network but then suffered a Tragic Incident from which it never recovered; the second had been sat around with partially-browned but no-longer-becoming-more-browned and definitely-still-partially-green leaves for Quite Some Time. I had more or less hit the point of "... is this actually doing anything? at all?" and then upon my return from the most recent round of Adventures I rotated it in service of watering it, to discover...

a pineapple crown, growing a whole new set of leaves

... that it's growing a WHOLE NEW SET OF LEAVES. Look at it go! I am very excited!

(My understanding is that if I manage to keep it alive that long it'll take somewhere in the region of 3 years to fruit, and then in the fashion of all bromeliads will die having produced said single fruit. Happily this is about the rate at which we eat fresh pineapple...)

Funny & True Stories | NotAlwaysRight.com ([syndicated profile] notalwaysright_feed) wrote2025-09-18 10:00 pm

Born Again Australian

Posted by Not Always Right

Read Born Again Australian

Employee: "What's your Australian birth certificate number?"
Me: "I was born in England."
Employee: "I didn't ask where you were born, I asked for your Australian birth certificate number."
Me: "I have a British birth certificate."

Read Born Again Australian

Lifehacker ([syndicated profile] lifehacker_feed) wrote2025-09-18 09:00 pm

Garmin Took One of Whoop’s Best Features, and You Don’t Need a New Watch to Use It

Posted by Beth Skwarecki

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

It turns out the “lifestyle logging” feature introduced with Garmin’s Venu 4 watch announcement isn’t limited to that watch—it seems to be available to all Garmin users, which means the app has made a huge stride in catching up with competitors like Whoop. 

What is lifestyle logging? 

This feature lets you track different habits, behaviors, or factors that might impact your health metrics. For example, you can log when you have caffeine or alcohol at night, and see how this affects your sleep. (Garmin tends to refer to these as “behaviors,” even though some of them are more like environmental factors or states of being—illness, for example—but I'll allow it.) 

Whoop, the screenless tracker with the expensive (but arguably worth it) subscription, has long had this kind of feature, and it will give you detailed breakdowns of how your habits have affected your recovery. The Apple Watch app Bevel provides similar functionality as well, while the Oura ring has “tags” in its app, although they are more for labeling than analysis. 

Garmin’s version uses your logged behaviors to generate reports that show how the factors you logged affect: 

  • Your sleep score

  • Your overnight HRV

  • Your overnight stress

These seem to be the only outcomes, so you won’t see whether these behaviors affect, say, your running performance. And as with any feature of this type, the app can’t actually tell you if your behaviors are causing the positive or negative results you get. 

For example, Whoop told me that I sleep worse on nights I take melatonin, but that’s just a correlation: The melatonin probably isn’t making my sleep worse; it’s more likely that the connection is because I take melatonin on nights when I’m already up late or expect to have trouble sleeping. 

Which Garmin devices can use lifestyle logging? 

Logging your behaviors doesn’t require any specific device; I was able to activate it on an account that had no wearable devices paired at all. However, Garmin notes that to get meaningful reports, you’ll need a device that is capable of measuring HRV (which also contributes to your sleep score and overnight stress). Most of the popular Garmin wearables have HRV capabilities, including Venu, Vivoactive, and Forerunner watches, and the new Index sleep monitor

How to use Garmin’s lifestyle logging

The feature is kind of hidden, so I wouldn’t blame you for not knowing that it’s there. Make sure your Garmin Connect app is up to date, and then tap the three-dot menu in the bottom right corner. Go to training and planning, then health stats, and then lifestyle logging

The first time you do this, you’ll get a few information screens explaining the feature and asking you to acknowledge that it’s not medical advice.

You’ll then select the items you want to log. Garmin recommends choosing “only a few” items to log at a time, so you can learn more about those specific things rather than trying to wade through mountains of data. The app’s info screen wisely points out that if you log many different factors, “you may get conflicting data and have a difficult time determining what’s really impacting your health stats.”

A non-exhaustive list of what you can log

  • The lifestyle category includes alcohol, caffeine (morning or late), exercise (light, moderate, or vigorous), late meals, and intermittent fasting.

  • The self-care category includes cold showers, journaling, and sunlight.

  • The treatments category includes acupuncture and massage.

  • The sleep-related category includes CPAP machine use, eye masks, reading in bed, and having a pet in your bedroom.

  • The life status category includes allergy symptoms, caregiving, illness, and vacation.

You can also create custom items to log. You can give them a quantity if you like, or just set them up as a yes/no answer. You can also indicate if the item is daytime or bedtime related. Finally, after choosing the behaviors you’d like to log, the app will ask if you’d like related morning and/or evening reminders. 

To see results from any of your behaviors, you’ll need to accumulate five yeses and five nos for each. (As with Whoop’s version of this feature, it’s not useful to track a behavior that you always do or never do—there’s just not enough data to work from.) 

You can view your results from the Training and Planning menu, as above, and you can also add a card to the “at a glance” section of your Garmin Connect app home screen. The card will show whether you’ve logged your behaviors for the day, and tapping on it will show what you’ve logged today and in the past. The Venu 4 watch also has a widget for lifestyle logging on the watch itself. 

FAIL Blog ([syndicated profile] fail_feed) wrote2025-09-18 02:00 pm

UPDATE: Senior employee demands special treatment from management, sabotages coworker's day-off requ

Posted by Remy Millisky

When a coworker's time off starts to interfere with your work-life balance, there's not much else you can do but start job hunting. 

Have you ever been at one of those jobs where the bosses play favorites to an exhausting degree? This happens all the time… You start working at a company and realize that your boss and one specific coworker are besties. They get lunch together, they gossip all day long, and most importantly, that coworker gets whatever they want. They request 2 weeks off work at the last minute? Approved. They start leaving earlier and earlier every day, until eventually they're leaving at 3 PM? Sure, who cares? This can leave everyone else with a heavier workload, or it might limit when they can have their time off. How irritating! 

Of course, if you point out the favoritism to your boss, it won't reflect well on you — it'll make you look like a tattletale, or make you seem jealous. Plus, by doing that, you're insulting your boss's BFF, so you have to be very careful how you broach the subject. In many cases, though, the relationship between boss & bestie is too strong for one person to break through, so if it really bothers you, you'll just have to move on. 

This person shared that their coworker gets whatever she wants, and although it's a union job, it doesn't seem like a very good place to work. Let's hope this employee finds a company that values them — and their time — a lot more than they currently are. 

Next, read these secrets that people are keeping from their spouses for some pretty good reasons: "You're turning into your mother." 

usuallyhats: The Ninth Doctor, Rose and Jack (nine/rose/jack)
incorrigibly frivolous ([personal profile] usuallyhats) wrote in [community profile] doctor_who_sonic2025-09-18 10:39 pm

Thursday 18th September 2025

Do you have a Doctor Who community or a journal that we are not currently linking to? Leave a note in the comments and we'll add you to the watchlist ([personal profile] doctor_watch).

Editor's Note: If your item was not linked, it's because the header lacked the information that we like to give our readers. Please at least give the title, rating, and pairing or characters, and please include the header in the storypost itself, not just in the linking post. Spoiler warnings are also greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Off-Dreamwidth News
Blogtor Who's video of the day for yesterday was "Doctor Who: Moments Caught in 4K, 2025"
"The War Between the Land and the Sea" is available to pre-order on Blu-ray, DVD and Steelbook now

(News via [syndicated profile] doctorwhonews_feed and [syndicated profile] blogtorwho_feed among others.)

Communities & Challenges
[community profile] tardis_festivities announces that nominations are now closed and sign ups open on Sunday at 12pm UTC

Discussion and Miscellany
[personal profile] purplecat with Costume Bracket: Quarter Final, Post 4

If you were not linked, and would like to be, contact us in the comments with further information and your link.
Lifehacker ([syndicated profile] lifehacker_feed) wrote2025-09-18 08:30 pm

Change These Settings to Extend Your New iPhone Air's Battery Life

Posted by Michelle Ehrhardt

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source.


The iPhone Air is a brand-new type of phone for Apple, shrinking down the iPhone’s internals into the thinnest form factor yet, at just 0.22 inches thick. Despite all that, Apple is promising up to 27 hours of video playback, which is just three hours fewer than it’s estimating for the iPhone 17.

Honestly, I'm skeptical—and I’m not alone in that. Most of the phones I test don’t quite live up to their official battery life estimates, which are always done in ideal conditions and usually come with a number of caveats. It's possible the iPhone Air will have significant battery shortcoming compared to the other new iPhones, which I'll confirm when I've been able to test it. But despite not getting extended time with the phone, I have gotten to hold the iPhone Air, and I will admit that it feels downright magical in the hand, almost like a credit card that can make phone calls.

I won’t blame you if you’re willing to sacrifice some battery life or camera potential to snag one for yourself, but if you do, here are the settings you’ll want to turn on to eke out some extra battery life.

Low Power Mode

Low Power and Adaptive Power Mode iOS 26
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

The most obvious way to extend battery life on your phone is to turn on Low Power Mode. On an iPhone, doing so is as simple as swiping down from your Home Screen’s top right corner and tapping the battery icon in the control center (or you can go to Settings > Battery > Power Mode and toggle on Low Power Mode from there).

This will make the most battery life-extending changes for you, but will also come with the biggest hits to performance and usability. That means it’ll reduce your background activities, lower your refresh rate and brightness, and limit features like 5G and iCloud syncing. It’ll also cut some animations and start automatically locking your phone after 30 seconds of inactivity. Essentially, it’s probably not how you’ll want to use your phone most of the time, but it can help in a pinch.

Adaptive Power mode

Adaptive Power mode is kind of like a less aggressive Low Power Mode. You’ll find it in the same menu as Low Power Mode, under Settings > Battery > Power Mode, although you’ll need an iPhone 15 Pro or above and iOS 26 to access it.

When enabled, this will use Apple Intelligence to adjust your phone’s performance on the fly, rather than immediately battening down all hatches like Low Power Mode. Based on your usage patterns, it’ll attempt to predict when you’ll need more battery life than usual, and will make tweaks like stopping background apps from refreshing, lowering screen brightness by 3%, or just generally making “performance adjustments.” How it works is all very new and behind the Apple curtain for now, but the idea is that while you’re only meant to turn Low Power Mode on when you absolutely need it, you can set Adaptive Power mode and forget it. And it’s not one-or-the-other, either. You can still use Low Power Mode in addition to Adaptive Power Mode. In fact, if your phone is at less than 20% battery, Adaptive Power Mode will turn Low Power Mode on for you.

The catch? Adaptive Power Mode needs seven days to learn your charging habits, so you’ll need to enable it at least a week before you actually want to use it.

Turn down your brightness

Brightness controls iOS 26
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

Let’s say you don’t trust Apple’s various power modes to adjust your phone’s settings for you, or you only want to limit a few things. That’s totally an option. In that case, let’s start with brightness. Keeping your phone at max brightness all the time isn’t just eye-searing, but it’ll also drain your battery faster. That’s why you’ll probably want to turn it down to just what you need for the situation you’re in.

You’ve got a few options here. The easiest is to simply swipe down from your Home Screen’s top right corner, then adjust your brightness using the slider with the sun icon on it. If you prefer to adjust your brightness in the Settings app, you can head over to Settings > Display & Brightness and scroll down until you see the slider there. You’ll see a bunch of other options here, but they’re more about color temperature, and won’t actually help you adjust your brightness (although we will return to them later on in this guide).

But if you’re like me, manually controlling your brightness all the time will get a bit tiring. That’s why I prefer to turn on Auto-Brightness. Simply toggle it on under Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Auto-Brightness, and your phone will automatically lower the brightness when you’re in a dark environment or turn it up while you’re surrounded by sunlight. It gives you a bit less control, but it’s pretty convenient.

Turn down the amount of time until your phone auto-locks

Auto-Lock menu iOS 26
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

Back in Settings > Display & Brightness, you’ll see a toggle called Auto-Lock. This is what kicks you out of your phone and back to your lock screen after a certain amount of inactivity. Personally, I like to leave it at five minutes, so I can safely read long articles or check recipes while cooking without being kicked out for not tapping the screen enough. But that does drain my battery faster.

To eke out more battery life from your phone, try turning it down to the 30-second or one-minute mark. You might need to remind your phone that you’re there more often than you’d like, but it’ll keep you from needlessly draining your battery if you accidentally get up and leave your phone behind without locking it first.

And don’t worry: even with the auto-lock set to its strictest settings, it won’t lock the screen while you’re watching a video or playing a game.

Turn off the always-on display

Always On Display iOS 26
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

The iPhone’s always-on display, added with the iPhone 14 Pro, is one of my favorite things about Apple’s most recent iPhone models, since it makes it easy to check notifications or the time at a glance. But it will drain your battery, even if it’s set to a low, 1Hz refresh rate.

To turn it off, again head to Settings > Display & Brightness, then tap Always On Display and toggle off Always On Display at the bottom of the menu that pops up. If you want to compromise, you can simply toggle off Show Wallpaper at the top of the same menu. This will keep the always on display on, but everything except for the clock and your widgets will be black. That’ll save you some battery life needed to display color, which brings me to my next tip.

Turn on Dark Mode

Dark Mode iOS 26
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

Here’s my final tip for Settings > Display & Brightness. At the top of this page, you’ll be able to select whether you want your phone in Light Mode or Dark Mode. If you want to save battery life, choose Dark Mode. That’s because the iPhone uses an OLED screen, so each individual pixel is self-illuminating. If a pixel only needs to display black, it just won’t turn on, saving you battery life.

Dark Mode won’t work across all apps, but in ones that support it, it’ll swap your background to black, which should help your phone last longer over time.

Manage your data consumption

Cellular menu iOS 26
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

Connecting to a network to use data actually drains more power than wifi, because a cellular connection requires a stronger signal over long distances. That means, to save battery life on your iPhone, you’ll want to be a bit strict about data consumption.

You’ve got a few options here. The easiest is to simply turn off data altogether, by swiping down from the Home Screen and turning off the small green data icon next to the Bluetooth icon in the top left corner. This will turn off data altogether, but because it doesn’t discriminate between apps, it’s not ideal for everyday use.

To be a bit more specific with how your iPhone uses data, you’ll need to navigate to Settings > Cellular. Here, you’ve got a few controls at your fingertips.

The easiest choice to make here is disabling Wi-Fi Assist, which supplements your wifi with data connection when it’s running slow. Since our goal here is to reduce our reliance on data, having it on isn’t ideal.

You might also want to turn off iCloud Drive and iCloud Backup, which will use your cell network to transfer and backup files to iCloud when wifi isn’t available.

Above these toggles, you’ll also be able to see your most data hungry apps and restrict their access to your network. This can be helpful even if you’re not trying to increase battery life, as you can probably cut down on unnecessary data usage here as well.

Finally, let’s enable Wi-Fi Calling. This will allow your phone to make calls over the internet while you’re connected to wifi, saving you some cellular data. Head back to the main Settings menu, then scroll down to Apps > Phone. Here, scroll down to Calls and ensure Wi-Fi Calling is turned on. If you want to, you can even scroll up and uncheck Cellular Data under Allow Phone to Access, although this will keep you from making calls unless you’re connected to wifi.

Manage background app refresh

Background app refresh iOS 26
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

Just because you’ve navigated away from an app on your iPhone doesn’t mean it isn’t running anymore. Instead, plenty of apps will continue to refresh in the background, updating their content but also draining your battery. Luckily, you have a few choices here.

To see your options, head to Settings > General > Background App Refresh. You’ll see your phone’s general approach to refreshing apps in the background, as well as toggles for every app on your phone.

Click the Background App Refresh button in the menu and you can choose whether to turn it off, keep it on all the time, or only enable it when you’re on wifi. Off is the most battery efficient option, but if you’re not that strict, you can also choose Wi-Fi to at least keep the feature from using your data (which, again, drains more battery).

With that done, if you’ve left the feature on, you can now scroll through your list of apps and select which apps you want to allow to refresh in the background. This could save you some battery life if you don’t want to turn the feature off altogether, but do want to disable it for certain hungry apps. Unfortunately, unlike with the Cellular Data menu, you won’t see how hungry your apps are here, so you’ll have to guess.

Just buy an external battery pack

iPhone Air with MagSafe battery pack attached
Credit: Apple

Finally, you could just give up and buy an external power pack. The iPhone Air will work with any external batteries that your other iPhones do, and despite being so thin, it will securely attach to compatible batteries via MagSafe. As much as I hate to suggest “just spend more money” as an option, Apple doesn’t share that concern. In fact, it’s even made a MagSafe battery designed specifically for the iPhone Air, which it says will give you “65 percent additional charge” while still maintaining a slim profile.

It costs $100, and whether that’s worth it to you will depend on your priorities. Personally, I’m not quite sure myself, since you’d presumably be buying the iPhone Air because it’s thin and light. If that’s the case, why slap an external battery on it? But I can also see why you’d want a MagSafe battery some of the time and a slim form factor at other times. Just be aware: This battery is a bit tall, so it won’t fit vertically on either the iPhone 17 or iPhone 17 Pro.

FAIL Blog ([syndicated profile] fail_feed) wrote2025-09-18 01:00 pm

'Excuse me, I'm not done!': Shopper gets even with impatient customer behind him, takes his sweet ti

Posted by Ben Weiss

Do people not know how to behave in grocery stores anymore? No one is necessarily expecting kind-hearted gestures as they sift through a display of vegetables. No one is even expecting friendliness. You don't have to talk to me if we pass one another as we push our carts down the aisle. That being said, you do have to respect people's personal space, at the very least.

This author's story of an elderly woman who couldn't help but rush the other shoppers at checkout serves as yet another example of the lack of decorum that exists in our public spaces today. Whatever happened to minding your own business and waiting your turn like a normal person? It's hard not to blame this shift in civility on our increasingly isolated lifestyles. After all, so many folks maintain the majority of their social relationships through their phones and electronic devices. Behaving in public with strangers seems to be a lost art nowadays.

At the same time, a crucial component of this elderly woman's behavior, which also has shown signs of growth among folks of all generations in our contemporary culture, is entitlement. This woman wanted to pay for her groceries now and had no desire to wait like everyone else. In fact, she seemed to feel that she had earned the right to cut in line and throw a tantrum. Who knows if it's because of her age? As a matter of fact, it might not have anything to do with age at all. Some people are just like this. They walk into rooms like they own the place, and they lack any consideration for other people. I wish I could say this author's story exists in a vacuum, but I have dealt with people like this on public transit, in doctors' waiting rooms, and yes, at my own local grocery store. 

Funny & True Stories | NotAlwaysRight.com ([syndicated profile] notalwaysright_feed) wrote2025-09-18 09:00 pm

Has No Upper Shelf Esteem

Posted by Not Always Right

Read Has No Upper Shelf Esteem

Customer: "Can you check the back?"
Me: *Gesturing around the massive warehouse-sized space.* "This is the back. Stores like this don’t really have a hidden back room." 
Customer: *Suspicious.* "So you don’t have extra stock? This is everything? No back? I don’t believe you."

Read Has No Upper Shelf Esteem

cupcake_goth: (Default)
cupcake_goth ([personal profile] cupcake_goth) wrote2025-09-18 01:18 pm

I wrote a goodbye note in lipstick on your arm

- I had a dream last night where I was in some sort of high-end, very posh mall, and spent ages looking at a mysterious cosmetics counter that had lipsticks that were exact matches for the OG Chanel Vamp and MAC Verushka. They had tubes of those discontinued lipsticks to swatch and match. I woke up as my dream self was about to spend $160 for two lipsticks. I'll admit I'd be tempted to do that in real life if the company did indeed have the OG tubes to swatch against.

- The US leg of the MCR tour ended last weeked. HOWever, as of yesterday, new ads related to MCR have been seen in New York, Detroit, Minneapolis, and San Diego. Some are just spray painted logos in parking lots outside of stadiums, but some have been bulletin boards and signs of either one or more of the band in the Black Parade uniform, or the Keposhka MCR logo. The fandom, no surprise, are losing our MINDS. Does this mean there's going to be another US leg of the tour? If there is, does it mean more weird storyline/lore that the band is potentially in some sort of stasis or time loop? (I won't give you the whole breakdown, but over the course of the tour Gerard has become more and more corpse-like; paler, wounds on his face, etc., and he's stabbed to death at the end of each Black Parade segment of the concert. There's more. There's a lot more.) Does this mean there's going to be a DVD or something? Should I start saving money for tickets and travel just in case? Who knows? Not the fandom, that's for sure.

- I've been tired ALL THE TIME lately. I'm sure some of it is the ambient stress level we're all dealing with plus the ongoing varying stress levels of work, but the rest may be my chronic health issues flaring up? My body trying to stage a coup and force me to rest? I don't like any of these answers.

- I'm finally getting back into a rhythm of witchy things. I'm pulling a tarot card most days, and I did some ritual work this week. It felt good. I need to do more, because it helps me approach things with more clarity and giving myself grace. And whooooo-boy, do I need both of those things.

So! How are you folks doing?

Funny & True Stories | NotAlwaysRight.com ([syndicated profile] notalwaysright_feed) wrote2025-09-18 08:00 pm

There’s No Daylight Saving Some People

Posted by Not Always Right

Read There’s No Daylight Saving Some People

Back before smartphones and digital watches that auto update, one of my coworkers strolled into work a full hour late, seemingly unaware of their lack of punctuality.
Manager: "Looks like someone forgot the clocks went back an hour last night."
Coworker: "What do you mean?"

Read There’s No Daylight Saving Some People

alisx: The head of a moth creature. It has dark fuzz and is grinning at you with glowing teeth teeth and eyes. (alis.mothface)
Alis ([personal profile] alisx) wrote2025-09-19 06:43 am
Entry tags:

AI poisons everything.

On algogen and trying to run a Mastodon instance with sign-up applications. This is something I’ve noticed more and more at f.ink too, and I’ve been fooled a couple of times. (Mastodon keeps a note of the text you used as your account application in the backend, incidentally, so yes as an admin I can see what spambots wrote that fooled me enough to manually approve them.)

It does suck because I 100% know I’ve rejected really real human beings who would’ve been great community members. But, like. I only have a very blunt instrument to be able to tell who is a who versus a what. And, well. This is where we’re at with it.

Leave a comment.+

mrkinch: Erik holding fieldglasses in "Russia" (bins)
mrkinch ([personal profile] mrkinch) wrote2025-09-18 11:23 am

9/18/2025 Lower Packrat Trail

I'd kind of planned to go sit on the bench at the top of Lower Packrat for a while, but the succumbed to the lure of possibilities at Jewel Lake (despite the chipping/occ chainsaw noise). I found nothing terribly exciting there, a Warbling Vireo and a Townsend's Warbler, but the Red-breasted Nuthatches were surprisingly numerous and loud, and when the sun came out the activity exploded. I heard a Swainson's Thrush and two Western Flycatchers on the way, and possibly a Wilson's Warbler, though just one chip so I did not report it. Surprise of the morning was two Northern House Wrens... ah, just twigged to why they were right there. Stacks of brush are perfect habitats for NHWR, I saw this a few years ago up in the eucalyptus grove along Nimitz Way, and the chipping operation has not gotten as far as the road across from the Lake. The wrens were buzzing loudly and even singing a bit. But those lovely piles won't be there long. The list: )

Rain has disappeared from the forecast, big surprise.
tinypinkmouse: (Default)
tinypinkmouse ([personal profile] tinypinkmouse) wrote in [community profile] sid_guardian2025-09-18 11:17 pm

Fic

I'm attempting to make this post on my phone, because I want to share the fic right now, but posting from phone isn't quite so easy it turns out. But very importantly I just finished posting my college AU fic (it's still set in drama canon universe though), and I'm really rather happy about it!

A World of Its Own (38986 words) by tinypinkmouse
Chapters: 11/11
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Zhao Yunlan, Shen Wei (Guardian), Wu Xiaojun
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Pre-Canon, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, things diverge before canon starts, there are universities for dixingren, and everyone knows about dixing, Getting Together, Blow Jobs, Slice of Life, Worldbuilding, Drunkenness
Summary:

It's a stupid idea, but applying to a Dixingren university means Zhao Yunlan can say goodbye to any plans Zhao Xinci had for his future. And that has to be worth it, right? He really doesn't want to follow in his father's footsteps.