Author Archives: Carol Edwards

If you can wait until (possibly) post-Christmas, Amazon’s got you covered for last-minute gifts with a slew of its Echo devices at unprecedented prices. From smart speakers to glasses, there’s a present for everybody that will answer to “Hey, Alexa.” Here are the best deals on Echo devices as of Dec. 22:

• Echo (4th Gen) — $59.99 $99.99 (save 40%)

• Echo Link — $139.99 $199.99 (save 30%)

• Echo Frames (2nd Gen) — $154.99 $249.99 (save 38%)

• Echo Dot (4th Gen) Kids — $34.99 $59.99 (save 41%)

• Echo Show 5 (2nd Gen) — $44.99 $84.99 (save 47%) 

We’ve been spoiled for convenience with Amazon’s range of Echo products — “Alexa, make me a coffee” is no longer (necessarily) a rude, arguably sexist thing to say, but rather a way to start your coffee machine from two rooms away. The virtual assistant is available in a range of devices; get an Echo Dot speaker for your roommate that doubles as a subtle gift for yourself or buy your parents an Echo Show so they’ll be able to video call you with ease.

Here are some of the Echo products on sale for their lowest prices ever:

Echo (4th Gen)

The 2020 edition of Amazon’s OG speaker (still its newest iteration) has a 3.0″ woofer and dual front-firing 0.8″ tweeters. For the non-audiophiles to whom that sounds like a small version of Looney Tunes (Sylvester would be ~2″ in this scale), that just means that the compact little speaker has powerful sound that doesn’t miss out on acoustic detail, with support for lossless HD audio with compatible streaming services.

The Echo obviously has voice control for playing music, but Alexa also doubles as a butler to control your compatible lights, locks, and sensors (buy into the Amazon ecosystem with Ring smart lights and security cameras) with its built-in Zigbee smart home hub. You can set timers, reminders, and alarms, or call friends and family (as long as they have the Alexa app or an Echo device of their own). Call your own devices to instantly connect to a convo in another room or “announce to the whole house that dinner’s ready.”

Echo Link

If you prefer audio with higher fidelity and don’t mind splashing out for it, the Echo Link might be a better option. It’s designed as an upgrade to any stereo system, so if you already have an amp or some turntables you paid good money for, you can link it to your Echo devices for simultaneous playback, upping audio quality and offering options for surround sound or multi-room broadcasting. Combine digital with analog for the best of both worlds.

Echo Frames (2nd Gen)

Whether you’re legally impaired or genetically superior to the rest of us and have 20/20 vision, these glasses can come in handy. The Echo Frames were renewed in November 2020 for a second generation with new and improved Alexa that learns your voice in order to respond only to it, after which you can make calls, listen to podcasts or audiobooks, set reminders, receive notifications, get the news, or control your smart home. The audio glasses play sound directly into your ears with Auto Volume technology that minimizes sound to those around you (because nobody likes the asshole blasting music on the bus) and adjusts your own playback volume based on environmental noise.

Besides its fancier features, the Echo Frames are perfectly functional glasses that are lightweight and comfortable, and come in prescription-ready, blue-light-filtering, and polarized sunglass lens with UV400 protection. Their battery life might be shorter, with just over 2 hours of calling/Alexa interactions or 4 hours of audio playback, but as the most convenient, close way to always have a smart assistant with you (even more so than your phone), they’re not a bad bet.

Echo Dot (4th Gen) Kids

It can be difficult to know when to introduce your kids to technology and to figure out how much tech is too much, but the Echo Dot is designed for full parental supervision. It’s got the acoustic power of a regular Echo Dot for a full listening experience (although perhaps fidelity matters somewhat less to a kid listening to Let It Go for the fiftieth time in a row) and thumping bass to match (again, possibly less of a concern, as most Disney songs don’t exactly belong in the club). Parental controls include daily time limits, filters for explicit songs, and activity review. Kids have access to Alexa for any questions they may have — Alexa will help with their homework, remind them of daily routines, read stories, and call friends/family. The Kids’ Echo Dot even has an option to approve friends/family before allowing your little tykes to call, so that you won’t inadvertently end up with a phone bill for 2-hour international calls when they feel like ordering a pizza from Brunei and call every pizzeria in the country.

Bonus mention: the Echo Dot (3rd Gen) Charcoal with Mandalorian The Child stand.

It’s not at its lowest-ever price, but it is on sale and also probably the cutest thing you’ve ever seen, even if you can barely tell Star Wars apart from Star Trek. Seriously, just look at it.

Echo Show 5 (2nd Gen, 2021 release)

This is the perfect gift for your grandparents who can’t seem to figure out how to Facetime you at a normal distance from their face (anybody else regularly get a good look at their ear canals over the whole hour-long call? Just me? Ok). The Echo Show line is a multifunctional display screen that can rotate through your Facebook or Amazon Photos as a digital frame or video call your friends and family (as long as they have the Alexa app on their phone, or an Echo device with a screen). You can even access the camera when you’re away from home to check in on your house and make sure you haven’t left the lights on. If you find that you have, simply instruct Alexa to turn them off. Recommended placement of the Echo Show is on your nightstand for easy access to Alexa’s features —including gradual lighting of the room, news updates, weather predictions, or your favorite songs — in the morning. You can even stream Netflix and other services on the 5.5″ screen if you so choose.

Other Echo Shows on sale:

• Echo Show 8 (1st Gen, 2019 release), $59.99 $109.99 (save 45%)

Explore related content:

• The best smart speakers: See where the Amazon Echo Dot, others rank

• Smart speaker showdown: Google Home vs. Amazon Echo

• Amazon’s Echo Show 5 Kids (2nd gen) is a magical portal without portability

2021 saw movies and TV adapting everything from hefty fantasy novels to Twitter threads, with results ranging from stellar to “let’s not.”

What, exactly, separates an amazing adaptation from a rage-inducing one? Honestly, there’s no one “right” way to adapt something. There are, however, a few important lessons to keep in mind, and the best (and worst) adaptations of the year make great teachers. Here are the 5 lessons we learned about adaptation in 2021.

1. Lean into what makes your source material unique

“Zola” brings a piece of internet history to life.
Credit: Anna Kooris/A24

When you choose to adapt something, you’re acknowledging that there’s something special about the source material, something that makes it worth the time and effort (and money) spent putting it onscreen. This year, several films embraced what made their source material stand out, with great results.

Zola director Janicza Bravo incorporated social media into her film as a nod to its beginnings as a viral Twitter thread by Aziah “Zola” Wells King. You’ll hear the chirp of Twitter notifications interspersed through dialogue, and Zola (Taylour Paige) will often deliver lines straight from the original tweets right into the camera, as if we’re watching her thread in real time. While the heavily stylized approach can feel alienating at times, it still proves a fiendishly clever way to acknowledge Zola‘s internet notoriety.

Where Zola pays tribute to the internet, this year’s movie musical adaptations heavily honor their Broadway roots. In The Heights brings the magic of musicals to life with fantastic elements that enhance its musical numbers, like characters dancing on the side of a building or bolts of fabric unravelling from the sky. Similarly, tick, tick…Boom! and West Side Story stage their set pieces with appropriate theatricality and take advantage of how film can heighten the already heightened realities of musicals. (tick, tick…Boom! is also overflowing with musical Easter eggs for all the theater kids out there.) Contrast this with the less successful musical adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen, which skews so close to reality that the songs — which feel natural in a theater setting — feel out of place.

2. A good update can work wonders

A musical adaptation to remember.
Credit: Niko Tavernise / 2020 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Speaking of musicals, Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story is more than a straight-forward adaptation. It’s an update that works hard to surface the themes of the original and reconfigures some classic scenes. Mashable’s Kristy Puchko writes that “Spielberg and [Tony] Kushner understood that it’s not enough to bring back the book and the songs with a shiny new cast (even if it is one that’s actually cast with Latinx talent in the roles of Puerto Ricans!) This revival was an opportunity to reimagine a classic story in a way that honors what came before but also gives audiences a fresh insight.” West Side Story proves that if an adaptation can right the wrongs of its predecessor and bring something new to the table, it is most certainly worthy of being put to film.

3. Standalone novels continue to make great miniseries (movies, take note)

Barry Jenkins’ “The Underground Railroad” is a masterpiece.
Credit: Kyle Kaplan

Some of 2021’s best miniseries, like The Underground Railroad, The Pursuit of Love, and Station Eleven, are based on standalone novels. The miniseries is an almost perfect form for adaptation: It’s long enough to move through a lot of plot and provide a satisfying arc for its characters, but it’s also short enough that it doesn’t outstay its welcome. (Would The Handmaid’s Tale have been better as a miniseries? Yes.)

This is not to say that we should abandon book-to-movie adaptations and pivot to a miniseries-only approach. There were some truly amazing film adaptations of books this year, including The Power of the Dog and Dune. However, there were also some films that may have benefited from having more time to breathe, like the overlong House of Gucci. Based on the book by Sara Gay Forden, the years-long saga of the Gucci family sounds like the perfect story to tell in a longer, episodic format.

5. Deviating from the books can be a good thing…

We get more Aes Sedai, and “The Wheel of Time” is better for it.
Credit: Jan Thijs

2021 saw multiple adaptations of sci-fi and fantasy novels straying a bit from their sources, with compelling effects. The Wheel of Time, based on Robert Jordan’s extremely long series, rightfully cuts quite a bit of material and broadens its character perspectives so we aren’t mainly seeing things from Rand’s (Josha Stradowski) point of view. It also adds new storylines foregrounding the powerful all-female Aes Sedai order and brings to life other scenes that we only hear about in the books. The final product is close enough to the books that it will satisfy long-time fans, but it’s different enough that it will pleasantly surprise them as well.

While The Wheel of Time cuts a lot of material, Foundation expands into brand-new territory. Isaac Asimov’s novels are collections of short stories and novellas spanning thousands of years, which makes them hard to adapt as a continuous story. The show ends up taking creative liberties in order to give Foundation more connective tissue than just “these stories all involve the Foundation.” These liberties include an entirely new storyline involving a dynasty of cloned Emperors, which resulted in one the year’s most compelling episodes, as well as the addition of characters from the Foundation prequels and more developed backstories for characters like Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell). Thanks to many of these changes, Foundation feels more cohesive, with a fleshed-out universe and defined characters.

5. …but too much deviation can wear thin

Leah Harvey is great in “Foundation,” which suffers from too many changes.
Credit: Apple TV+

The biggest problem with Foundation is that once it starts making changes, it can’t stop. The Terminus plot involving Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey) and Anacreon is as far removed from its source material as possible, even diving into Star Wars planet-destroying-ship territory at one point in a departure from the tone of Asimov’s diplomacy-focused Salvor-centered stories. As a result, that plotline is the most unsatisfying part of Foundation, despite Harvey and their co-stars’ strong performances and the show’s stunning visuals. Good acting and effects can only make up for so much when a story goes south.

The same goes for Netflix’s live-action adaptation of classic anime Cowboy Bebop, which Mashable’s Alison Foreman critiques for changing elements of Jet’s (Mustafa Shakir) backstory and altering villain Vicious (Alex Hassell) and love interest Julia (Elena Satine) beyond recognition. Foreman writes, “I found the audacity of claiming this series as a Cowboy Bebop successor kept me from enjoying what it was doing well. I couldn’t see beyond the anime inspiration it was mangling.” 

Projects like West Side Story and The Wheel of Time prove that adaptations can certainly make changes for the better, including updating outdated material, but go one step too far and you’re looking at something entirely unrecognizable. Whether an adaptation succeeds often depends on how well it balances the new and the familiar, and how well it understands its source material in the first place.

Erika Alexander was once told that science fiction isn’t for Black people.

This exchange took place in a meeting with a major Hollywood studio president, where Alexander — an actor known for the likes of Get Out and Wu-Tang: An American Saga — along with ex-husband and collaborator Tony Puryear, was pitching a science-fiction series starring Black actors. The response by the white studio executive startled and angered her.

“[He said] Black people didn’t like science fiction because they didn’t see themselves in the future,” Alexander tells Mashable.

The evidence against that theory is vast. Black voices have soared through the spaces of science fiction and futurism for decades — just look at afrofuturism as a prominent cultural movement in itself. Black sci-fi writers like Octavia E. Butler, N. K. Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor, Justina Ireland, and Troy L Wiggins to name a few have long penned evocative tales in the genre across novels and comics, championing sci-fi despite some experiencing racism in the industry, as Alexander did.

Representation and perception matter, and mainstream science fiction is rooted in Eurocentric tropes and myths. Sci-fi writing has a long way to go to address its tangible lack of diversity and inclusion. In 2016, a study found that less than two percent of published speculative and science fiction stories were written by Black authors.

But fantasy, magic, and speculative storytelling can be reclaimed and reenvisioned.

“The fact that he didn’t understand that science fiction or the idea of science fiction, or futurism, was something that was uniquely built into the DNA of African Americans because their past had been taken away from them, was absurd,” says Alexander. “They had no name. We have no name. We have the name of our oppressors and our kidnappers. We definitely have everything around us recreated in of the form of what could happen in future because the present was so painful.”

Alexander and Puryear were fueled not only by the bigotry they experienced, but by those Black writers who have paved the way in science fiction, moving to release their own passion project: the sci-fi graphic novel series, Concrete Park.

Credit: Dark Horse

Credit: Dark Horse

Launched in 2014, the comic series’ story is one of exile, struggle, and perseverance. Published by Dark Horse Comics, the superpower behind Sin City, Concrete Park follows a young outcast from Earth who finds himself on a far-off desert planet plagued by violence. Themes of darkness and light, good and evil, and the path to redemption are the backbone of the tale, which has accumulated awards and acclaim.

“We thought we should create a multiracial, non-homogenous, grassroots movement and satisfy the demand for change. That is Concrete Park,” says Alexander. She emphasizes the worlds of science fiction and its facets — comic books, cosplay — are spaces that Black people belong in.

Come 2021, Concrete Park has found new ground. Alexander looked towards the future once again, finding it to be in blockchain. The creators of the graphic novel partnered with Curio, an NFT platform focused on entertainment collaborations. Alexander and Puryear released “Concrete Park Bangers”, a collection of thousands of unique non-fungible tokens that represent the characters (or “Bangers”) from the comics. Ten percent of the profits from the drop will go towards Black Girls Code, a group devoted to teaching Black girls computer programming and coding in order to establish equal representation in the tech sector.

Credit: Curio / Concrete Park.

The first drop in the Concrete Park collection, in April of this year, sold out within minutes of its release. “I keep saying the power of the pixel is fascinating,” Alexander laughs. The collection of works in the Curio drop were drawn by Puryear, in his distinctive, provocative, vibrant style. The characters are the “heart and soul” of their series, representing the values of sacrifice and transformation that Concrete Park holds close.

“It’s revolutionary. But ultimately, it comes down for us to art and life and storytelling,” she says. “And [with NFTs], you get to be a person who has a piece of it and say I was there and here’s my piece of it. And it means something and it has value.”

But even within the NFT market, there are issues of diversity and inclusion.

Curio COO Rikin Mantri tells Mashable that collaborating with creators like Alexander and Puryear, ones that carve space for diverse voices, aligns with the company’s own ethos. “In the blockchain community, there’s a lot of underrepresentation,” he says. “[That’s why] we want to look at creators and artists who are pushing the edge.”

In the blockchain space, stories of discrimination and inequality have indeed emerged in the past few years. The New York Times unveiled the case of Black workers leaving cryptocurrency startups like Coinbase, explaining that they’d been tokenized, bullied, and faced lack of support within the tech institution. Meanwhile, CryptoPunk NFTs have been flagged for price imbalances within the collection depending on race and gender — CryptoPunks that skew white and male, Bloomberg reports, are selling for far more than their counterparts.

Aside from the environmental concerns and brand bandwagon-jumping apparent in the NFT space, there are some benefits — especially for creators. Though Mantri found that the NFT space began with a sort of “bro culture,” the market could further expand by diversifying its artist base, for one. NFTs has been a golden ticket of sorts to the art world, bringing back contemporary art sales, sprouting entire museums, and revitalising the industry worldwide. When Mantri first heard of NFTs, back in 2017, he said he couldn’t sleep at night. “I was just like, this is gonna change the world,” he says.

In such a booming, lucrative space, inclusivity for marginalized creators must be forged. When asked how this representation can be facilitated, Mantri turns to the example of the Concrete Park collection, and how it evolved from comic book to collectible. “We think to ourselves: let’s create a new environment and use this technology,” he says. “What does it enable, in terms of storytelling? What can we do that’s new and different?”

As for Concrete Park, the creators appear to just be getting started. A television show is in the works, and plenty more NFT drops are on their way, too — the last drop in December was a one-off collaboration with Queen Latifah.

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The future is bright.

OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely has stepped down from his position as CEO, naming spokesperson Amrapali “Ami” Gan as his successor effective immediately. The choice seems fairly unusual.

“Ami has a deep passion for OnlyFans’ business and I’m passing the baton to a friend and colleague who has the vision and drive to help the organization reach its tremendous potential,” Stokely said in a press release on Tuesday. “OnlyFans is still a new company and Ami brings a fresh energy and reflects who we are as a business.”

Still, despite Stokley’s confidence in Gan’s leadership, appointing her as OnlyFan’s new CEO is a strange decision on the face of it. Having joined OnlyFans just last year, Gan worked as its Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, and held a string of marketing and communications jobs before then. It will be interesting to see how she plans to grow the platform, and in what direction she plans to steer the company.

“I look forward to continuing to work closely with our creator community to help them maximize control over, and monetize, their content,” said Gan. “By blending state of the art technology with creative capital, we are committed to being the safest social media platform in the world.”

OnlyFans states that Stokley’s decision to step down was due to a desire to “pursue new endeavors,” though the company declined to comment further when contacted by Mashable. Even so, Stokley won’t just vanish into the night. The company’s first CEO will be staying on as an advisor through the transition of leadership, hopefully ensuring a smooth transfer of power.

Founded in 2016, OnlyFans rose to notoriety as a popular platform for sex workers, enabling them to charge for exclusive content such as explicit photos. The platform saw a boom in users during the COVID-19 pandemic as many people sought to make up lost income, and OnlyFans gained celebrity users such as Bella Thorne and Cardi B.

Yet despite building its success on the back of sex workers, OnlyFans attempted to ban sexually explicit content earlier this year, claiming that the platform’s raunchy reputation was scaring off investors. The company quickly reversed the decision just days later following significant backlash from users — most notably sex workers who feared the ban would jeopardize their ability to earn a living. However, the threatened ban has significantly shaken some sex workers’ faith in OnlyFans, leaving Gan with the unenviable role of regaining that trust.

Holiday cards are a delightful seasonal indulgence. As a highly curated snapshot of your life, they’re a more traditional status update in an increasingly digital world. But one company that sells holiday cards has done something intriguingly modern with those lovingly decorated dispatches. 

Minted, a San Francisco-based company that prints holiday cards using crowdsourced art from creators, has analyzed millions of its customers’ orders in aggregate over the years. Minted doesn’t sell its data to third parties, including marketers, nor does it publicly share customers’ personal information, but its terms of service acknowledge that it may perform data analysis to improve its products and services, and there is no way for customers to opt out. The content, however, is anonymized before Minted uses a form of analysis known as structured query language to scan the text that appears on cards. That leads to insights like which type of family pet gets more mentions. Surprisingly, cats were the victors in 2021. The company also reviews sales numbers and conducts focus groups to learn more about choices like color combination, how photos are staged, and what people wear.

This year, Minted mined the aggregate text of 300,000 cards, produced by customers between October and December 2021. The massive sample yielded fascinating insights about the national American mood at a time when it’s easy to assume the worst thanks to pandemic confusion and polarization. Minted founder and co-CEO Mariam Naficy told me that by early December, prior to widespread Omicron outbreaks, the dominant mood for holiday cards felt lighter than last year.

Before digging into what Minted found, it’s worth pausing to consider how nearly every online experience — even your cherished holiday card — ultimately produces valuable corporate data. People know this intuitively. At some point, we thought about how Google shares aspects of our Gmail data with advertisers, or how Facebook’s algorithms know our browsing history, and decided it was worth trading away some privacy for the convenience of using the technology. Yet it’s also strange to think that the intimate note on the back of a holiday card, written for friends and family, could be digested by software looking for keywords like “peace” and “hope,” or, more specific to the pandemic era, “vaccinated” and “reunion.”

Naficy says that Minted analyzes cards because it yields data that helps the company identify emerging trends before they go mainstream as well as predict what customers will crave months before it reaches their consciousness. In general, Minted’s use of data analysis helped it anticipate the llama craze well before it showed up in the mass marketplace. When the company’s design competitions received artwork with the goofy-looking animal for which customers voted highly, Minted saw the trend coming.

What Minted found this year is indeed telling, if not unsurprising. Between October and December, largely before Omicron emerged, customers used the word “finally” 73 percent more than they did in 2020. Messages that referenced Netflix, masking, and social distancing decreased significantly. People couldn’t quite embrace typing “normal,” but at least they tried — mentions increased by 12 percent. Also on the upswing were mentions of “flight,” “plane,” “hotel,” and “airbnb,” as well as “reunion” and “reunited.” Minted read these verbal trends as evidence that people are less interested in acknowledging the COVID-19 lockdown on their cards compared to last year, even as the virus itself persists. In 2021, Minted found its customers gravitating back toward the traditional, complete with staged poses and matching outfits. It seems one holiday season of pandemic jokes and Zoom collages was all that most people could bear. 

Naficy says that it’s critical to understand the vocabulary people choose for their holiday cards. Customer preferences influence Minted’s decisions about what words to place prominently (imagine how “hope” and “peace” are featured on seasonal cards). “If you’re not keeping up with the way [customers] want to say things, or the way they want to greet each other, you could end up at best dated and at worst disrespectful,” says Naficy. 

An unpredictable pandemic also means that trends can shift rapidly. As Naficy and I spoke, a week before Christmas Eve and in the midst of a discouraging Omicron outbreak in New York City, Naficy noted the platform might need to feature more somber designs: “There are definitely waves of national moods that sweep through, and people really care about having text that captures their mood.” 

As for Naficy’s own holiday card, she chose a single family picture, published on foil-pressed recycled paper. The back featured a QR code for readers to scan and visit her personal holiday website with photos and videos. When asked to single out a word that Minted might consider trendy among customers, it came to Naficy quickly: grateful.

SAVE $60: The Chefman TurboFry XL Air Fryer is on sale for just $89.99 at Best Buy — that’s 45% in savings. It lets you enjoy all of the fried foods you love, with little to no oil. But, it’s a DOTD, so act fast.

Forget to get an air fryer on sale during Black Friday? And now you keep seeing TikTok air fryer recipe videos all over your FYP?

Well FOMO no more: The Chefman TurboFry XL Air Fryer is on sale at Best Buy. It’s typically $149.99, but for Dec. 21 it’s just $89.99.

With the Chefman air fryer you can fry like a pro from the comfort of your kitchen. Even with its family-sized capacity, this air fryer does not take up too much counter space. The fryers basket is easy to remove and dishwasher safe.

The timer automatically shuts off once your food is done and the LED shake reminder feature helps evenly cook your meals.It comes with presets like fries, chicken, or fish with just the touch of a button.

As for drawbacks to be wary of, the instructions say to make sure the food in the basket does not go above the embossed MAX line, but many found it difficult to find the line to begin with. And the touch screen can be a little glitchy. But we think the sheer capacity of this XL air fryer more than makes up for these shortcomings.

There are a lot of air fryers on the market but if you’re looking for a big model with a small price tag, check out the Chefman TurboFry XL Air Fryer at Best Buy for just $89.99.

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The gym isn’t for everybody. It’s expensive, crowded, and sometimes smelly. Even worse, you have to travel to get there — making it ten times harder just to convince yourself to go.

But, if you’re lucky enough to have the space, you have another option that doesn’t involve commuting vast distances only to exert yourself in front of strangers: Just bring the gym home to you.

Yeah, it can cost you a pretty penny, but when you take into account how much gym membership fees add up over the years, buying your own workout equipment and decking out a home gym pays for itself in the long run. (This is all assuming you’ll use it frequently — that part will depend completely on you. Sorry, you can’t quite buy motivation.) Plus, not having to travel back home after an intense workout is just a beautiful thing. You can literally plop down onto the couch after you’re done. Maybe take a shower first, though.

The tough part is making the choice. What fitness gear are you going to bring home first? A treadmill? An elliptical? A bench press? We don’t recommend buying all of them at once unless you have the cash to burn. You’ll have to be honest with yourself about which workouts you find yourself doing the most, and go from there. If you’re a runner, you want the treadmill. If you’re a cyclist, it’s Peloton for sure. Full-time yogi? You’re going to need a good mat for that.

What home gym equipment should you buy on Black Friday?

Major workout machines like smart home gyms, stationary bikes, and rowing machines are expected to be popular items this Black Friday, which should spark some pretty killer deals. Last year, we saw a $500 off Mirror deal, over $300 off Echelon smart cycles, and a Tempo studio free gift bundle. This year, we’ve spotted a sweet $750 off Mirror deal, plus up to $600 off select treadmills at both Best Buy and Amazon.

If you’re looking for a Peloton bike discount, you’re (surprisingly) in luck this year. Last year, the company opted not to do a Black Friday or Cyber Monday promotion in order to keep up with increased demand, and considering this year’s supply chain issues, we didn’t think we’d see we see a significant price drop on any Peloton bikes. This year, the cult-favorite cycling brand surprised us with major deals on the Peloton Bike, Peloton Bike Plus, and the Tread. Head to our best Black Friday fitness deals post for the full rundown of the Peloton sales.

If the Peloton brand isn’t the be-all-end-all of your home gym goals, we are expecting to see tons of deals on Peloton alternatives for Black Friday. Both Best Buy and Amazon have already offered deals on select Schwinn, Bowflex, and Echelon bikes. If this year is anything like last year, we also plan to spot a big Mirror discount, discounted NordicTrack bikes and treadmills, and more.

Are home gym machines worth it?

If you have the space and the cash, sure. But the only machine we say you need is some sort of cardio machine, like a treadmill or elliptical. Weight machines and other equipment of the like are mostly just for convenience, and while that’s great in its own right, you can still get the same results by using free weights with good form. Don’t go crowding up your home gym for no reason — make sure there’s actual material value in it for you.

Elliptical or treadmill?

Either one will be a good purchase, and you’ll be able to get in great cardio workouts by using them, but there are a few key differences between the two that you’ll want to know before making your final decision.

Ellipticals are going to be best for those who want to incorporate an upper-body workout into their cardio session, as well as keep their joints in great shape (ellipticals involve less impact compared to treadmills, where your feet slam on the belt continuously).

While treadmills are high-impact and are harder on your joints, they offer more control, opportunities to build leg strength, and it’s a faster way to burn calories. You can’t go wrong with either if you’re looking to improve your cardiac health — just buy the one that’s more in tune with your body and preferences.

How should you set up your equipment?

This, of course, will depend on what your dedicated home gym space looks like, but you’ll want to try not to just clump all of your equipment together in a corner. Working out is already tough enough, but working out while also feeling claustrophobic? Way worse. Section off areas with some space in between them for resting, stretching, and rehydrating — one area for cardio, one for weights, and another for miscellaneous equipment should do you fine. If you’ve got a lot of space, use it to its fullest — home gyms can have good feng shui, too.

Why is home gym equipment so expensive?

Your eyes might roll into the back of your head when you see some of these prices, but unfortunately, they are pretty standard for quality gym equipment. If you want something that will rival your local gym, you’re going to need to make it an investment. But don’t worry, as long as you use the equipment you buy consistently (and not just for gym selfies), they’ll eventually pay for themselves with all the money you’re saving by breaking up with your gym membership.

There are also low-budget options for workout equipment, but even those will cost you some serious cash, so we say go for quality first. Many brands offer payment plans for their equipment, too, so be sure to look into those if you’re not in the place to pay everything upfront.

So, what’s the best home gym equipment?

Now, what you’ve all been waiting for: We picked out the best of the best in-home gym equipment for every type of athlete — from weightlifters to former crew team members and just about everyone in between. So if you’re tired of sweating it out at your local gym, just stay home instead.

Below are our top picks for the best home gym equipment for 2021.

Most people have at least one horror story about online dating. It’s a rite of passage that single people love to hate.

But the horror stories look a little different for members of the LGBTQ community. On top of the classic awkward Hinge date anecdotes and screenshots of a corny bio seeping with secondhand embarrassment, gay singles deal with all sorts of alienating interactions. Baseless questioning of sexual history, harassment, and fetishization — some of it coming from cis straight people who shouldn’t have popped up in your feed in the first place — don’t exactly give one butterflies.

Still, dating apps have become crucial means of introduction for gay folks looking to settle down. A 2019 Stanford study and 2020 Pew Research survey found that meeting online has become the most popular way for U.S. couples to connect — especially for gay couples, of which 28 percent met their current partner online (versus 11 percent of straight couples).

But the Pew survey also dredged up those ugly experiences with harassment. This could be where options that bar heterosexual users, like HER and Grindr, come in. Their perfectly-tailored environments are so well-known in the gay community that they’re essentially in a league of their own.

Is Grindr the only option for gay dating apps?

Though Grindr and HER are big players, they’re not in the queer dating app market alone. Apps like Zoe, Taimi, and Scruff exist. But their plateauing popularity can be attributed to similar complaints: too many scam profiles and too few legitimate users (ones within a reasonable distance to plan a date, anyway). Chappy was a promising app for gay men that shut down just as it was gaining serious traction.

And at the end of the day, “everyone” apps are simply where masses of queer users are. Keeping Tinder on the back burner isn’t just a straight people thing, especially for those who live in less-populated areas where Grindr and HER have slim pickings. Plus, some mainstream apps do deserve credit for the steps they’ve taken to create a more inclusive atmosphere. Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge now offer lots of sexual orientation and gender identity options. OkCupid gets kudos for making that change years ago, as well as making social justice a core part of compatibility scoring — which kind of self-curates the type of people on the app.

If you’re part of the LGBTQ community and hate leaving your home, you’re not alone. Here are the best dating apps and sites that’ll maximize your opportunities while minimizing your human contact. Bless.

There’s just no Christmas like an Ocean Avenue Christmas.

Whether you’re celebrating with a binge of all your favorite holiday TV specials or just sneaking in a few festive episodes here and there, Bob’s Burgers shouldn’t be overlooked when making your Christmas queue selections. From a daring hunt for a stolen tree to an intimate portrait of a woman who is truly terrible at knitting, Bob’s Christmas episodes cover all sorts of Yuletide moods.

To kick off your merry Bob’s marathon, here is every Bob’s Burgers Christmas episode — including Season 12’s “Gene’s Christmas Break” — ranked by holiday spirit. (In this instance, consider “holiday spirit” synonymous with “over-the-top Belcher holiday nonsense.”)

10. Season 12, episode 10: “Gene’s Christmas Break”

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Bob’s Burgers’ 2021 holiday offering sees Gene heartbroken after an ill-advised sleepover with his favorite vinyl record “Percy McTinsel-Bud’s Tinsel Machine ” leads to it breaking. Similar to last year’s “Diarrhea of a Poopy Kid” — in which Gene has a stomach bug and can’t enjoy Thanksgiving dinner — this uplifting tale follows the Belchers’ efforts to cheer him up. Meanwhile, Teddy, Mort, and Mike join Linda and Bob in a super sweet Secret Santa. It’s the weakest Belcher celebration to date, but has plenty of warm and fuzzy moments worth snuggling into if you watch everything else on this list first.

How to watch: Hulu

9. Season 9, episode 10: “Better Off Sled”

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In this relatively low-key affair, Linda and Bob spend the Christmas season scrambling to knit scarves for the kids as part of a nice gesture turned needlessly stressful. Meanwhile, Gene, Tina, and Louise (with the help of Darryl, Rudy, and Rudy’s cousin Mandy) face off with Logan in a snowball fight for control of the best sledding hill in town. There isn’t a whole lot of spectacle to this episode, but it offers a solid lesson in never giving up. Oh, and making sure you’re friends with the softball team. Always be friends with the softball team.

How to watch: Hulu

8. Season 10, episode 10: “Have Yourself a Maily Linda Christmas”

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When Linda takes a part-time job sorting mail at the post office, a misplaced package gets her tangled in a last-minute quest (read: felony) to deliver a Christmas present. Back at the Belcher house, Bob does his best to avoid getting in the middle of a dispute involving Aunt Gayle, Linda’s parents, and an ottoman. Similar to Season 3’s “Lindapendent Woman” and Season 5’s “Eat, Spray, Linda,” this Linda-centric episode is great for lovers of her tremendous can-do spirit.

How to watch: Hulu

7. Season 4, episode 8: “Christmas in the Car”

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After Linda’s overeagerness sticks the Belchers with a dried-out out tree on Christmas Eve (note to self: the day after Halloween is too early for tree selection), the entire family heads out in search of a new one. What follows is a surprisingly tense adventure, featuring an 18 wheeler shaped like a candy cane and a road-side stop to get a warm apple treat. Plus, there’s a fun kicker involving Teddy, Santa, and a refrigerator that’s more delightful every time you watch it.

How to watch: Hulu

6. Season 11, episode 10: “Yachty or Nice”

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In this 2020 episode, the Belchers get a gig catering the Glencrest Yacht Club’s holiday boat parade — but Bob grows suspicious when he can’t figure out who recommended them for the job. A surprisingly heartwarming chapter in the never-ending saga that is Bob and Jimmy Pesto’s bizarre frenemy-ship, “Yachty or Nice” offers a cheerful glimpse into a productive holiday season for the family of restauranteurs, which spectacularly also includes Linda yet again trying to meet the mayor.

How to watch: Hulu

5. Season 5, episode 6: “Father of the Bob”

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“Father of the Bob,” fittingly set almost entirely at Bob’s dad’s restaurant, could have been an underwhelming affair. But leave it to the Belchers to make this relatively simple story of a seasonal squabble between father and son into a full-on production that includes both line dancing and Gene covered in baked beans. This is a great one if you’re in the mood for forgiveness, or box steps.

How to watch: Hulu

4 Season 6, episode 5: “Nice-Capades”

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In Season 6’s “Nice-Capades,” Louise makes a terrible mistake by angering a mall Santa — who, she learns, works with a network of other mall Santas to report naughty kids to the real Santa. To make up for the “misunderstanding” and secure their gifts ahead of Christmas, the kids, with the help of Calvin and Felix Fischoeder, plan an elaborate musical to perform at the mall. Ridiculous, with some weirdly sexy ice-skating, the result is an instant Belcher classic.

How to watch: Hulu

3. Season 3, episode 9: “God Rest Ye Merry Gentle-Mannequins”

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Few things delight this entertainment reporter more than the early seasons of Bob’s Burgers. They’re just so weird. In this first ever Bob’s Christmas, Season 3’s “God Rest Ye Merry Gentle-Mannequins,” Bob inherits a storage unit — and a dude named Chet living inside of it. So, Chet moves in with the Belcher until Christmas, and chaos ensues. It’s one of the stranger plot lines on this list, but ends with a nice excuse to meet good ol’ Sal at the Spanks A Lot sex shop.

How to watch: Hulu

2. Season 7, episode 7: “The Last Gingerbread House on the Left”

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Similar to Season 3’s “An Indecent Thanksgiving Proposal,” Bob spends this Christmas episode tangled in a Fischoeder plot involving gingerbread houses, firearms, and a bedpan. Linda, Teddy, and the kids, meanwhile, set out Christmas caroling — even at the scariest house in the neighborhood. It’s a super fun episode with an adorable ending worth watching twice.

How to watch: Hulu

1. Season 8, episodes 6 and 7: “The Bleakening”

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In this two-part Bob’s Burgers Christmas extravaganza, Ocean Avenue folklore of a terrible creature known as The Bleaken combines with a hunt for Linda’s missing Christmas tree to spectacular effect. “The Bleakening” has multiple musical numbers, spectacular animated sequences, a Game of Thrones reference, and a guest appearance by Todrick Hall. You’ll love it. Merry Christmas!

How to watch: Hulu

For other festivities, check out our rankings of Bob’s Halloween and Thanksgiving episodes.

Save $80.91: Start your New Year’s fitness goals on the right foot with a compact seated elliptical. You can get the Cubii JR2 under-desk elliptical for a new low price of $208.08 after a 28% discount, but this deal only lasts until the end of Dec. 21.

Every fitness journey biggest with the smallest step. Buying expensive fitness equipment is intimidating, which is why it’s perfectly fine to start simple. And a compact elliptical you can use while watching Netflix is a great way to get a head start on New Year’s resolutions.

As part of their daily deals for Dec. 21, Amazon has the Cubii JR2 under-desk seated elliptical for just $208.08. That’s $80.92 off the original price and marks the lowest price we’ve ever seen on this model.

The Cubii JR2 measures about 23 inches and weighs around 19 pounds. So as one of the lighter Cubii models that also features a carrying handle, the JR2 will work best if you want to move it between your desk and your couch. You get eight levels of resistance to help burn calories or if you’re looking to improve mobility.

Its built-in LCD display offers an easy way to track calories burned, active minutes, your distance, and your strides per minute. The Cubii JR2 is built as an approachable exercise machine that is a useful tool regardless of your age or abilities, whether you’re rehabbing an injury at home or need a better way to burn a few extra calories on a busy schedule.

Take a small but significant step towards a more active lifestyle with a Cubii JR2 seated elliptical for just $208.08 from Amazon.

Explore related content:

• 9 of the best ellipticals for your home gym

• The best workout equipment for building a home gym

• The best workout apps for exercising at home