TL;DR: The IPL Laser Hair Removal Handset is just $47.99 at the Mashable Shop with code CYBER20 as of Dec. 27.
Laser hair removal can get expensive since you have to keep going to appointments for multiple sessions. And full-service wax treatments at salons are just too painful. Plus, those can add up as well. With your own at-home laser hair removal device, you can achieve the smooth, hair-free skin of your dreams at a price you can afford.
The IPL Laser Hair Removal Handset is usually $159, which is less than two laser hair removal treatments, but you can save even more for a limited time. Enter the code CYBER20 at checkout and you can snag this life-changing device for only $47.99.
This laser hair removal handset from Posh Skin Co. can save you hundreds, maybe even thousands, in the long-run. It uses intense pulse light, which the melanin in your hair absorbs and turns into heat to destroy the hair follicle. Each treatment results in the hairs growing back less frequently and finer in texture. While it’s designed for all skin types, including sensitive skin, it’s important to note that laser hair removal works best on those with darker, coarser hair.
Before your treatments, you shouldn’t wax or pluck the hairs, as it will limit the effectiveness of the device. Just shave the area as you normally would. Results will vary and each person is a bit different, but the typical treatment plan suggested is one treatment a week for 12 weeks. Then you can switch to once a month until you achieve the desired results. The handset is good for up to 1 million treatments.
It typically costs at least $100 per professional laser hair removal treatment — and three or more treatments are generally necessary to see results. This handset is only a fraction of that cost and can be used in the comfort of your own home. Use the code CYBER20 to get it on sale for $47.99 this week only.
TL;DR: The Complete CompTIA Certification Course Super Bundle is just $63.20 at the Mashable Shop with code CYBER20 as of Dec. 27.
If the only thing standing between you and a lucrative IT career are some certifications, check out this Complete CompTIA Certification Course Super Bundle. It’s packed with 15 expert-led courses and is designed to prep you for a dozen different certifications on your own time. Even better, it’s on sale for Cyber Week II — a.k.a., the week between Christmas and New Year’s.
With lifetime access, there’s no stress to complete these courses in a particular time frame. You can work your way through them as slowly or as quickly as you want. Each course is anywhere from 18 to 100 hours long, so pacing yourself might be the best way to go.
The courses are brought to you by iCollege, an e-learning marketplace under the parent company XpertSkills. It’s a CompTIA partner authorized for professional training in CompTIA certifications, so you can feel at ease knowing the information is accurate and applicable to the professional exams.
Each course is basically a comprehensive study guide for a specific exam. If you’re just starting out, you’ll want to kick things off with the IT Fundamentals+ course. This will get you to grips with hardware basics, troubleshooting, software installation, security, and networking — and it’s a must-have for anyone who is considering an IT career.
If you’re not sure of which IT path you want to follow, you’ll want to focus on the core prep courses: A+, Network+, and Security+. These should give you a broad understanding and prepare you for the industry standards. Want to focus on infrastructure? Go with Cloud+, Linux+, and Server+. If you’d rather lean in toward cybersecurity, opt for the CySA+, PenTest+, and CASP+ courses. It may seem daunting, but this comprehensive study guide will get you ready to ace the exams, which will get you one step closer to the job of your dreams.
An over $4,000 value, you can get this training bundle on sale for just $63.20 with code CYBER20 for a limited time.
Prices subject to change.
Credit: iCollege
Complete CompTIA Certification Course Super Bundle
Dress up your Instagram reels by adding voice effects to your videos.
Instagram Reels aren’t far removed from TikToks, and they give users many of the same video-making tools. You can film short videos and edit them with various effects like adding audio, controlling the speed, using a filter, overlaying text, and adding voice effects. We’re going to focus on voice effects, and show you how you can add voice effects to your Instagram Reels.
Whether you want to sound like you’re a giant, a robot, an announcer, a vocalist, or if you want to sound like you’ve just inhaled an ungodly amount of helium, here’s how you can access this feature.
1. Tap the “Reel” button at the bottom of your Instagram feed screen
The “Reel” button. Also, we hope you like this post of a cat in a little sweater enjoying a refreshing beverage. Credit: instagram
2. Tap the camera icon in the top right corner to create a Reel
Tap the camera icon in the top right corner Credit: instagram
3. Hold the record button to create a Reel, edit it using your initial editing options, and then tap “Preview”
4. You’ll have more editing tools at the top of the Preview screen. Tap the audio control tool that looks like a music note
Audio control tool Credit: instagram
5. Tap “Effects” in your audio controls, and pick whichever effect you want to add to your voice
Voice effects in your audio controls Credit: instagram
The voice effect you chose will be added to your Reel, and then you’ll sound like a robot, or a giant, or…you get the point. You won’t sound like you did before.
There are any number of reasons why it’s sometimes a good idea to roll with a write-now-send-later approach to emails.
Maybe you’ve got a big personal announcement coming up, but it’s happening at a very specific time when you won’t be around. Perhaps you really want to rave to a friend about everything you loved in Spider-Man: No Way Home while it’s fresh in your mind, except they’re not seeing it until tomorrow.
It’s equally helpful at work. Many of our employers have people spread out in different time zones across the country, if not the world. For email-heavy jobs especially, something you send during an Australian co-worker’s overnight may get buried; but if you schedule the send, you can ensure it pops up when they’re actually awake. Sometimes, too, it’s just momentum: You’re working hard, rolling through deadline after deadline, and you want to get a jump on future business.
Whatever it is, having the ability to schedule emails is a gift for those of us who like to work and live life at our own pace. Thankfully, Google’s widely used makes this incredibly easy to do. I’m here to run you through it step by step.
1. Start a new email
Whether you’re writing in a browser or from a mobile device, the first thing you’ll want to do is open up Gmail and craft your email. Yeah, this is super obvious being that it’s what we’re here to talk about. But it’s important! Scheduling an email is the same as hitting send, so you’ll want to get your note written before you set up when it’s sent out.
Credit: Screenshot by Mashable
2. Select “Schedule send” and choose your time
Once your email is set it’s time to actually schedule that puppy. The process is slightly different when you’re sending from a browser versus sending from the mobile app, but the result is the same.
If you’re writing from Gmail.com, click the little downward-facing arrow that’s on the right side of the “Send” button. And if you’re in the app, tap or click the three dots in the top right corner of the email window. Both of these open up more email options; “Schedule send” is the one you’re looking for (it’ll be the only option that appears when you’re writing from a browser).
Credit: Screenshot by Mashable
Wherever you’re sending from, you’ll see a pop-up that gives you a few fixed options for choosing a time as well as one option that lets you customize a specific day and time. In most cases that last option is your best bet, but Gmail offers up sensible suggestions like “tomorrow afternoon” or, if you’re writing over the weekend “Monday morning.”
That’s all there is to it! Select the day and time you want to send your email out and Gmail takes care of the rest.
No disrespect to the clone and bounty hunter from the Star Wars universe, but when Disney announced The Book of Boba Fett at the end of The Mandalorian Season 2, it was not the most obvious or alluring choice of spinoff. Star Wars prequel actor Temuera Morrison will reprise the role.
Boba Fett first appeared in 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back as a foreboding and faceless bounty hunter with super cool armor. He lurks throughout the masterful sequel film and plays an integral role in the final sequence when Darth Vader decides to freeze Han Solo in carbonite. (“What if he doesn’t survive? He’s worth a lot to me.”) In the following film, Fett is unceremoniously eaten by a sarlacc. A cadre of fans maintained he survived, but we didn’t see it on film until The Mandalorian Season 2.
COOLEST. ARMOR. Credit: Disney / Lucasfilm
Boba Fett was “born” during the Star Wars prequel Republic Era, as a clone of Jango Fett. He was entrusted to the Mandalorian bounty hunter as payment after the senior Fett’s DNA became the template for the Clone Wars’ eponymous army. In the Clone Wars animated series, we witness Boba seeking vengeance for his father’s death in the movie, Attack of the Clones. He eventually becomes a fearsome bounty hunter with the signature suit, starship, and reputation that fans know so well. He’s well-acquainted with the galaxy’s underworld and its characters.
When we caught up with him in The Mandalorian, he was on the hunt for his armor, a beautiful reunion eventually facilitated by our own Din Djarin. Boba met Fennec Shand off-screen during the events of The Mandalorian Season 1; as we learn in Season 2, Boba saved her life after she was left for dead in the desert. The two of them helped Din rescue Grogu in the Season 2 finale, but notably did not cross paths with Luke Skywalker — probably for the best, because Boba and Luke have a fraught history.
From what we’ve seen so far, The Book of Boba Fett takes place on the familiar sands of Tatooine, with Boba sitting on Jabba the Hutt’s throne and Fennec at his side. The juxtaposition of Boba and Jabba as rulers is suggested to be central to this series. “Jabba ruled with fear,” Boba says in the trailer. “I intend to rule with respect.”
The trailer is serving up some serious Peaky Blinders meets Succession in space vibes, and nothing about that phrase doesn’t rule.
SEE ALSO:
‘Star Wars: Visions’ was forged with a willingness to break the rules
The story is being kept under wraps like all things Star Wars, but it seems fair to expect an adventure-of-the-week structure much like The Mandalorian‘s. Boba and Fennec know as many intergalactic lowlifes as Din, and probably more; now that they have power, people are going to pop by to call in favors, build alliances, and seek revenge.
Boba didn’t think twice about killing Bib Fortuna, Jabba’s former majordomo, for the throne, but we also saw him show some real empathy in helping Din and Grogu, which means that this is a man of nuance. It’s entirely likely Din himself might return to somehow set up The Mandalorian Season 3 and how the heck that show will go on without Grogu.
One thing we know we’ll get for sure, though: Cool armor.
The Book of Boba Fett premieres Dec. 29 on Disney+.
When I started losing my sense of smell about five years ago, I fixated on what that sensory shift meant for my relationship with food. Smell is a key component of our perception of flavor, so I had to figure out how to keep on enjoying eating, which has long been one of the key pleasures in my life, even as I lost my ability to appreciate complex notes and aromas. I had to cultivate my appreciation of things like heat and texture instead. I also had to learn how to cook without the guidance of scent — but with awareness of the fact that I can’t reliably smell smoke, burning, or gas anymore.
But after reckoning with my new culinary reality, as I learned more and more about the diverse and influential effects of smell on everyday life, my mind turned to sex. It is, after all, my job as a sometimes sex writer to think about life through an erotic lens. And I’d noticed that, around the same time my sense of smell started to fade, sex had begun to feel somehow flatter to me — like there was less feedback pulling me into and engrossing all of me within the moment. I wondered whether that was a coincidence, or yet another unexpected effect of my slow sensory decline.
When I went looking for information about the effects of smell loss on sex, though, I struggled to find any. Several smell researchers told me that neither they nor their colleagues had explored this topic in any depth. And sex educators and therapists told me that, while they know odors can act as a turn on or a turn off for many people, they’d never grappled with the effects of smell loss. Sex doesn’t even come up often in smell loss patient groups and forums, several advocates told me, largely because many people still seem to view it as a taboo topic.
But as I’ve found people with smell loss willing to speak candidly about their intimate lives, I’ve learned I’m hardly alone in drawing a connection between the olfaction issues and a sense of sexual disconnection or narrowing.
“I think there’s a pretty significant impact for most people,” said Duncan Boak of the smell disorder advocacy group Fifth Sense, who suddenly lost his entire sense of smell to a head injury nearly two decades ago. “There certainly has been for me.”
“It’s like seeing the world in monochrome and I worry I will never be able to share again properly in my social and sexual life.”
Boak added that a Fifth Sense survey once asked group members about their sex lives following smell loss, and quoted one response that stuck with him: “‘It’s like seeing the world in monochrome and I worry I will never be able to share again properly in my social and sexual life.'” Similarly, Chrissi Kelly of AbScent, a UK-based advocacy group for people with smell disorders, who first experienced smell loss in 2012, partially recovered the sense, and then temporarily lost it again twice to COVID-19 over the last two years, says that she’s “heard people say things like, ‘sex is like putting my arms around a cardboard box now.'”
“Even thinking about it now, I nearly come to tears,” Sandra, a woman who lost her sense of smell several years ago and later recovered most of it (and who asked to only use her first name so that she could retain her privacy while speaking openly about her sex life) told me.
The lack of concise and meaningful information about the effects of smell loss on sex, despite common experiences of sexual change among people with olfactory issues, frustrates me to no end. So, I decided to track down all of the scattershot and often provisional information about the interplay between scent and sexuality I could find, and try to make sense of it all.
The anemic state of smell science
Scientists, philosophers, and artists have long argued that smell can have a powerful impact on attraction and arousal. Intuitive suppositions about this interplay have given us a ton of folk wisdom about supposedly aphrodisiac scents, often employed in the form of perfumes. Rigorous, formal studies exploring the exact dynamics of this interplay date back to the mid-20th century.
But smell research in general is chronically neglected, especially compared to research into vision and hearing. Despite the fact that, according to likely lowball estimates, at least 12 percent of Americans experienced some degree of smell loss even before the coronavirus pandemic, with all its olfactory effects, hit. Alan Hirsch, a leading smell scientist at the Smell & Taste Research Foundation, suggests that this stems from a prevailing modern cultural belief that smell is somehow lesser than our other senses, or irrelevant to human experience. Notably, we often assume that humans have an underdeveloped sense of smell compared to other animals, and that this is because we rely more on sight and sound to navigate our environments. (In truth, we seem to have as much olfactory potential as most animals; we just don’t use smell enough to hone it.)
Some smell researchers believe that the coronavirus pandemic, and the wave of smell loss it’s caused across the world, will draw more attention to olfactory issues in the coming years, and with it more funding for rigorous research. After all, about half of all people in a recent survey with symptomatic COVID reported they’ve experienced smell loss for some length of time as well, and about a dozen smell scientists estimate at least 10 percent of them will likely have long-term smell loss. That’s a huge new population in need of help.
Smell science is so anemic that we only identified the receptors in our noses and the back of our throats that detect odor molecules and send signals to our brains to create the aromas we smell, in the ’90s. And we’re still trying to piece together exactly how that perception pathway works. We don’t know, for instance, exactly why a given mix of odor molecules in one concentration may smell delicious, but at another may smell foul. (Think cheese: Parmesan smells great in a small dose, but in large doses it smells like vomit.) Nor do we know why, for example, our brains read the scents of potatoes, cucumbers, and tomatoes together as the scent of a dead fish. We don’t even know how many distinct scents we can detect, or what counts as a normal sense of smell, much less how this complex sensory system interacts with the complexities of sex and attraction.
Most of us don’t pay much attention to the intersection of smell and sex in our personal lives either, the sex educator Lawrence Siegel argues, because modern culture tells us that bodily odors are disgusting, and sells us tons of products to cover them up. As most of us try to ignore smell in most aspects of our lives, Boak argues that the effects of smell on sex are often subconscious — which he thinks is part of why it’s so hard for people with smell loss to recognize and talk about how our conditions affect sex. “It is difficult to understand the impact of losing something when you were never aware of the significance of that thing,” he explained.
What’s more, until relatively recently most of the cultural and academic bandwidth available for discussions of sex and scent has been dedicated to the topic of pheromones. While we tend to use this word colloquially to refer to scents that evoke attraction, Avery Gilbert, an independent smell researcher (who’s currently studying the aroma of cannabis), explains that it actually refers to chemicals excreted from animals that trigger automatic reactions in their peers. “Think cockroach sex pheromone,” he says. “Put a dab on a Q-tip and every male roach in your kitchen will swarm to it and try to mate with it.” It’s like a spell that determines sexual agency.
Throughout the mid-20th century, research into pheromones in other animals generated curiosity about whether humans emit or respond to pheromones, sexual or otherwise. A few tantalizing studies, including a famous account of women’s menstrual cycles syncing up after months of living in close quarters, suggested that we do — and that this may play a role in our sexual decisions and experiences. However, more recent research has shown that this famous menstruation study, among others, was actually just the result of a statistical anomaly. And that the organ that most animals use to detect pheromones is only vestigial in humans. “Scientifically, the idea of human sex hormones is a dead letter,” Avery argues.
But that hasn’t stopped scientists from continuing to heap focus on the topic — and perfumeries to sell so-called pheromone-based scents, supposedly guaranteed to drive the object of your desires wild and draw them to you.
When cum smells like ‘burned things’
However, over the last couple of decades a handful of studies have yielded some tantalizing, if largely provisional, insights into smell’s role in sexual attraction: They’ve suggested, for example, that many women wear their partner’s clothes because of an infatuation with their unique odor signatures. That women smelling unknown men’s t-shirts appear to find the odor of guys with DNA closer to their own less attractive than that of men with more varied or distant DNA. And that men appear to be able to pick up on sexual arousal in women’s body odor.
In the 1990s, Hirsch also found that 17 percent of people with smell loss appear to experience some kind of sexual dysfunction. More recently, a series of studies by a small team of German smell researchers — one of the few groups interested in smell loss’s effects on sex — have found that men born without a sense of smell tend to have fewer sexual partners over the course of their lives than men who can smell; the same wasn’t true for women. That greater sensitivity to odors correlates with greater sexual pleasure, and for women more orgasms. And that about a fourth of people with smell loss have less sex drive, and are more depressed, than other folks.
Reading these findings through the lens of larger theories, a few scientists have cobbled together cohesive theories about smell’s role in human sexuality. Notably, the smell researcher Rachel Herz explains that many evolutionary psychologists believe women use smell as an indicator of a man’s health, and his immune system — whether he might possess genes that complement her own and thus convey benefits to a potential child. And that men care less about odor, and more about appearance, because they want to spread their genes to as many fertile women as possible, and looks are a better marker of female fertility. This doesn’t mean smell is irrelevant to men, or all-important to women. But it does offer a cohesive narrative of the role of smell in sex — and an explanation for the greater sensitivity to smell that women seem to exhibit in many studies.
However, it’s easy to poke holes in these big, sweeping theories when we think about, say, the culturally and historically contingent nature of what people find attractive, whether visually or olfactorily. And when we recognize that they don’t account for all of the information studies have yielded to date — such as the greater impact total smell loss seems to have on men’s ability to form relationships than on women’s.
Most of the researchers behind the handful of influential studies on the intersection of scents and sex also acknowledge that they’re pretty weak. They rely on small samples, often drawn from pools of university students, and fail to account for potential confounding variables, like how attractive someone finds the attendant who gives them a smell to assess, which may influence how attractive they rate the aroma itself. Hirsch isn’t aware of any studies that’ve tried to assess how people’s other senses modulated their sense of smell.
“Smell has an impact on sex — but we don’t really understand much about it.”
Nor do most studies on the effects of smell loss distinguish between varied types or experiences of that loss. Although today we tend to associate smell loss with COVID-19, it can be caused by anything from the common cold to brain damage to neurodegenerative disorders. Partial smell loss can dim some smells, eliminate your ability to detect others, increase your sensitivity to others still, make you smell things that aren’t there, or make once pleasant aromas suddenly smell foul. The exact shuffling of sensations differs from case to case. And partial smell loss is a drastically different experience than total loss — just as the experience of living with smell loss from birth is different from the experience of acquiring smell loss later, and developing smell loss gradually is a distinct experience from losing some or all of your smell all at once.
Sandra, for instance, notes that at one point after developing smell loss she developed parosmia, an altered sense of smell, which made sexual fluids “smell like burned things,” creating a disgust response. But once that faded, she shifted to just feeling a dulled sense of her husband’s smell, something she’s appreciated in the past. As her symptoms evolved, she felt less disgust and more distance.
On top of all of this, studies on the intersection of smell and sex rarely bother to figure out the causal mechanisms between olfactory issues and observed effects. For instance, it’s unclear whether some people with smell loss have fewer partners, less sexual desire, or find less joy in sex because (as some speculate) they’re missing a vital sensory tool for intimate bonding with others, or because they’re just incredibly anxious about whether or not they stink.
The only definitive thing we can say about about the interplay between smell and sex, Siegel argues, is that “smell has an impact on sex — but we don’t really understand much about it.”
Your idiosyncratic nose
In truth, there probably is no single narrative about how scents influence sex, and thus about the effects of smell loss on our intimate lives. While the science of scents and sex is an absolute mess, we know enough about the complexity of smell overall to understand that, as Hirsch puts it, “everyone’s olfactory ability is different — there’s a wide range of normal smell perception.”
For starters, our distinct genetic profiles probably start us all off with unique constellations of olfactory receptors. This is likely why people with certain genes think cilantro smells like soap, for instance. As we grow up, we all hone our raw physical potential to different degrees; as some of us attend more to smell than others, scents start to have a greater impact on our lives.
On top of this, our brains filter raw information about odor molecules through cultural memes and personal memories in order to interpret smells. As Herz explains it, lavender is not actually universally relaxing — but in the West we often hear that it is, so many of us embrace that notion, and thus our brains and bodies read the scent of lavender as relaxing. Likewise, Herz notes that the early sexuality researcher Havelock Ellis documented a case in which a woman claimed to orgasm spontaneously whenever she smelled leather. He argued that this was because her early masturbatory experiences involved a leather saddle, and thus her brain developed an intense, idiosyncrtic, connection between leather and sexual gratification.
As Mark Griffiths, a psychologist who studies kinks (including one he dubbed eproctophilia, attraction to farts) once wrote: “Odors that are sexually arousing are likely to be very specific and, in some cases, strange or bizarre.”
This mashup of genetics, development, cultural norms, and personal proclivities mean that some people put a premium on scent in sex above all else, either as a source of initial arousal or as a key element of the sensory feedback that drives pleasuring during sex. For others, it’s just one subtle factor among many. And for others still it’s a non-factor, even if they have a fully intact sense of smell. Some folks who aren’t attuned to smells in a positive sense but are particular about odors they perceive as negative, like ass, may even benefit sexually from smell loss.
Even within the framework of one individual’s unique smell system and set of sense memories, Herz notes that context and priming can have a huge impact on how we interpret smells. Siegel adds that if you ask people to close their eyes and then wave an aromatic compound under their noses several times in a row without telling them what it is, or that it’s the same smell, each time they seem to pick up on something different within it, and react to it differently.
Jim Mansfield, a scientist who’s experienced smell loss, likewise tells me that he used to “love the smell of women” he was attracted to. But he was also fully aware that the same personal scent was “either stimulating or relaxing to me, depending on my mood and the circumstances.”
What can you do if you’ve lost your sense of smell?
“That subjective experience element is very difficult to overcome in research,” Siegel explains. And a lack of solid research findings leave sex educators, doctors who know about smell issues, and patient advocates alike with little hard and fast guidance for people who feel as if smell loss has negatively impacted their sex lives. “I just don’t know what to tell these people,” Kelly says.
Mansfield says that he, like many others, just focuses on trying to claw back their sense of smell. But as Hirsch points out, there aren’t actually a lot of established treatments out there to treat smell loss. Those that exist, like smell training, intently sniffing concentrated odors several times a day to encourage healing and/or retrain smell circuitry, may be worth trying — but there’s not a lot of robust data that supports their efficacy. And there are no treatment options for people with total smell loss due to the severance of the olfactory nerve, among a number of other disorders. Even people who claim they’ve regained their sense of smell, either through natural healing over time or a purported treatment, often acknowledge they don’t get their full, original sense back.
SEE ALSO:
How a Facebook group for people who can’t smell handled the COVID rush
Sandra says she just tried to push through the unpleasant odor distortions that came with her smell loss. Others told me that they similarly simply accepted a shift in their sexual lives, and just lived with it. Often, this means giving up on sex and pleasure to some degree. “My interest in sex has been dulled to almost non-existence,” says Deborah McClellan, who gradually lost her sense of smell starting around 2012. She characterizes this dulling as “the loss of a simple joy.”
But all of the experts I’ve spoken to agree that, even if smell loss takes a toll on someone’s sex life and they accept that they’re not going to get their sense of smell back, that doesn’t mean that they necessarily have to live with lessened sexual desire or enjoyment. They just have to shift their focus onto other aspects of sexual experiences, building up new arousing associations, memories, and feedback loops that get them worked up, draw them deep into a sexual moment.
Dia Klein, a comedian who was born without a sense of smell, stresses that she has a strong sex drive and a great sex life based entirely on non-olfactory sense memories and erotic associations. “The feel of my partner’s whiskers, the way he kisses my neck, the timbre of his voice,” she says, all get her going. “I’m an active service person, too, so him fixing the dishwasher is way more of a turn-on for me than what I imagine the smell of his shirt must be like.”
“When you don’t have a thing,” like a (complete) sense of smell, Klein stresses, either because you never had it to begin with or because you lost it somehow, “you or your body will come up with a way to compensate for it.” So long as you don’t fixate on what you’re lacking, that is.
Boak of Fifth Sense, the smell disorder advocacy group, echoes this sentiment. “Not being able to smell my girlfriend is still the thing I miss most” about not having a sense of smell, he says. “That sense of loss has not diminished over time.” But, he says, although he was not a tactile-focused person earlier in his life, he’s learned to cultivate an appreciation for touch. Now, he says, “a simple hand on the shoulder can carry so much meaning. It can even be electrifying.”
“You can work with your partner to explore intimacy in new ways.”
Rewriting our sense of attraction and arousal to make up for whatever we feel like we’ve lost to smell disorders — or any other sensory issue — is tricky. It takes time. Honestly, I’m still working on it myself, slowly trying to dissect what feels different about sex for me now, what senses I do and don’t draw upon in intimate moments, and what sensations I could try to lean into further.
But this need not be lonely or tedious work. “It can be a journey of exploration with another person,” Herz points out. “You can work with your partner to explore intimacy in new ways.”
Or, put another way, smell loss can be devastating on many levels, sexual and beyond. But past that devastation, there is an invitation: To learn more about how we’ve experienced sex, and to consider all of the new ways we could explore it in the future. If I think about it this way, my smell loss starts to feel almost liberating and exciting. Even if it still sucks absolute ass overall.
There’s never enough time in the year for all the games I want to play. Sound familiar?
Video game fans of all types can relate to the simple premise of there not being enough hours in the day to play everything. It’s why we have backlogs, even as most of us know we’ll never get through just 10 percent of what was missed.
Some of these games I started and never finished — a totally OK thing to do! — and some of them just sound rad for one reason or another. All of them deserve to vie for some of your precious time. So as you look ahead to a quiet few weeks of rest, recovery, and socially distanced celebrations, consider picking up one of these treasured hidden gems of 2021.
1. Inscryption
I have a mental block with deck-building games like Magic: The Gathering or Hearthstone. I’ve tried and tried, but they just aren’t my thing. So I was all ready to write off Inscryption, until the buzz got to be too loud to ignore.
That’s a good thing, because Inscryption is a revelation. It’s not so much a deck-builder as it is a puzzle game that’s built a little like an escape room. Yeah, you’re gathering cards. But it’s more that the central puzzle speaks in the language of deck-builders.
Even though Inscryption tailed off for me significantly in its second act — which does lean in harder on the Magic-style gameplay — the meta mindf*ck of a story has been beckoning for me to return ever since. Read as little as you can about this one; it’s too easy to spoil. Just fire it up and start playing.
Play it on: Windows
2. Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield
There’s an infinite supply of “endless runner” games, a genre popularized by the likes of Canabalt and Temple Run. So it takes something special to really stand out. Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield mixes style, aesthetics, and concept in a way that positively nails it.
Created by indie developer Neil Jones, Twitter’s Aerial_Knight, Never Yield stars a young Black man named Wally who has a prosthetic leg and a seemingly superhuman talent for physical movement and parkour. Wally is constantly on the run from people who want to harm him, and evading those pursuers requires a smooth and stylish mix of sprinting, sliding, leaping, and generally over-the-top acrobatics.
More than anything else it’s Never Yield‘s sense of style that makes it stand out. Art design that feels like street art in motion pair well with a funky jazz soundtrack that keeps your head bobbing as Wally puts his skills to work on staying steps ahead in a world that’s always trying to knock him down.
Play it on: PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, Windows
3. Chicory: A Colorful Tale
Chicory has been on my list of games to check out since the summer. It was heartily endorsed by Mashable’s own Elvie Mae Parian, an associate animator who has since struck out to pursue a different kind of creative endeavor. Elvie’s thoughts on Chicory immediately sold me when we first talked about it, and they’re worth sharing again here:
“Chicory: A Colorful Tale is a puzzle adventure game that comes from the just as colorful minds behind Wandersong. On one hand, although it looks like a simple, coloring game on the surface, it’s really a much deeper game about the artistic struggle! You play a dog that has to wield a giant, magical paintbrush to restore color to the world, all while solving puzzles and making many friends along the way. It’s such a joyous, lighthearted game that also doesn’t shy away from certain issues it explores through its quirky characters. It just goes to show that we all need a little more color while still going through these bleak times.”
Play it on: Windows, PlayStation
4. Overboard!
On my list of 2021 gaming regrets, Overboard! is at the top of the list. I simply didn’t play it. But knowing that Inkle Studios made it is enough.
The studio behind Heaven’s Vault and mobile fave 80 Days surprised many in 2021 with this twist on a cruise ship murder mystery that casts you as the villain. It’s not a long game, with a typical playthrough clocking in at around an hour by most accounts. But it’s built to be replayed.
It turns out that committing the perfect murder is hard work. The more you revisit the ship, the more details you pick up about this virtual world and the people who inhabit it. Knowledge is power, and in this case power is ultimately defined by your escape from doing a crime. Sounds like another delightful time from Inkle.
Play it on: Windows, Switch, iOS, Android
5. Mundaun
Credit: Hidden Fields
Here’s another one that skated right the heck past me. This first-person horror game from the Swiss studio Hidden Fields is notable right up front for its striking “hand-penciled” black-and-white art design. It pops immediately in every screenshot and trailer.
As friends keep screaming at me, however, there’s a stellar play experience tucked behind those visuals where you explore and solve puzzles as you work to uncover secrets in a valley that’s tucked away in the Alps. I don’t know much more than that, but the visually arresting presentation and deep cottagecore vibes do enough to make Mundaun stand out.
Play it on: PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, Windows
6. Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye
Outer Wilds, the outer space time-loop puzzle from 2019 got in a couple years ahead of what’s been a buzzy 2021 for time loops (looking at you Deathloop and Returnal), but that’s just one piece of what makes it great. In a world filled with puzzle-based video games that just want to hold your hand and help you win, Outer Wilds is content to beguile you with unsolvable mysteries.
Echoes of the Eye expands on the excellence of its 2019 predecessor with a return to the basic rules of play established in the original… but also not really. It’s a sequel that’s technically an add-on, and just getting yourself started on the new stuff is a puzzle unto itself.
As with Outer Wilds itself, the less you know going in, the better. Just fire up Outer Wilds again and see what you can find. An epic journey awaits.
Play it on: PlayStation, Xbox, Windows
7. Chivalry II
Chivalry II isn’t my typical go-to, as an entirely online competitive multiplayer game. But the hack-and-slash PvP is an unhinged delight of ultraviolent swordplay and and incoherent screaming — which is so integral to the experience that it gets its very own button.
There’s really not much to Chivalry II. Once you finish the brief, straightforward controls tutorial, all that’s left to do is hop into matchmaking and test your knightly prowess in a live setting. For most people, “knightly prowess” is synonymous with sprinting up to an enemy and wildly swinging whatever bladed or blunt instrument you’re wielding until you or your opponent have been dismembered.
It’s the unintended comedy that makes Chivalry II a king, though. From an auto-revive feature that lets you punch yourself back to life to an entire button devote to bellowing out a “battle cry,” each match feels like an over-the-top parody of every single medieval fight scene that’s ever been committed to film.
Play it on: PlayStation, Xbox, Windows
8. Minecraft
Wait, what?
Minecraft may be one of the most well-known games on the planet, but those who don’t play as regularly as I do may not realize what’s been going on in Mojang and Microsoft’s blocky world-builder. I’m talking about the 2021 launch of the “Caves & Cliffs” update, a two-part release that completely altered the shape and character of every Minecraft domain you explore.
The first part of the free add-on introduced some exciting stuff on its own: New resources, new plants and animals, new stuff to craft. But the second part, which dropped in early December, is quite literally a game-changer.
Part 2 of Caves & Cliffs completely rewrites the way Minecraft worlds generate. In addition to raising the world’s “ceiling” and lowering its “floor” — basically, how high you can build and how deep you can dig — the update also delivers significantly more naturalistic random world generation and environmental diversity. Mountains now look like fantastical versions of the craggy, towering peaks we see in the real world. Caverns evolve from the little passageways they used to be into sprawling, winding networks of maze-like corridors and yawning, stalactite-topped chambers.
Coupled with new rules that change the way threats like creepers and zombies spawn, Caves & Cliffs immediately makes Minecraft feel bigger and more expansive. It may never get a proper sequel, and that’s because of updates like this. Minecraft has been around for more than a decade now, but in Caves & Cliffs it feels like a game reborn.
Play it on: PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, Windows, iOS, Android
9. The Forgotten City
To all my friends who keep yelling at me to play The Forgotten City: I hear you.
This fantastical mystery-adventure comes to us from rather unusual beginnings. Modern Storyteller, the Australian developer that made it, originally conceived The Forgotten City as a mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. That mod has been around since 2015, but this standalone release from 2021 — which tweaks the plot to move us out of Elder Scrolls-land — put the inventive creation on many more radars.
This is a story game. The kind of thing where you walk around, gather information, and piece things together as you go. The central puzzle of the time loop is something you’re trying to understand, along with the history of this place. But the real allure of The Forgotten City, and the reward it offers (as it’s been explained to me), is an opportunity to live inside this deeply developed virtual world and uncover its many stories.
Play it on: PlayStation, Xbox, Switch (cloud gaming only, high-speed internet required), Windows
10. Fantasian
It was easy to miss this Apple Arcade launch if you don’t subscribe to the iPhone maker’s subscription games service. And that’s too bad, because Fantasian is something special.
Hatched from the mind of Hironobu Sakaguchi, an original creator of the Final Fantasy series, this April 2021 release plays a lot like that classic series of role-playing games with its turn-based combat and simple-yet-approachable gameplay. It’s the presentation that makes it a standout.
Fantasian‘s virtual environments look like elaborate and intricately detailed dioramas, and in fact they are. All of the game’s locations were first built in miniature in the real world; they were then 3D-scanned into the game. That’s why it looks like you’re walking around in a photograph. Couple that with music from Nobuo Uematsu, another notable name from Final Fantasy’s real world history, and you’re left with a first class Apple Arcade RPG that more than justifies the service’s $5 monthly subscription.
There is nothing quite as thrilling as logging into your Netflix account on a new device.
Airbnb has a smart TV? Log me the heck in. Friend doesn’t have an account and I need to yell about Bridgerton? PASS THE REMOTE, BABY. Add it to the iPad, the phone, the game systems… but while taking the joy of Netflix everywhere is a blessing for which we are grateful, there comes a time when everyone must log out to protect their account. That can be a little confusing.
Here’s how to do it no matter which device your using.
Browser
This one is the easiest, but at this point it’s probably where you use Netflix the least. Just click on your profile icon in the top right corner, then select “Sign Out of Netflix” from the dropdown.
In-browser Netflix is also the only place you’ll find the essential time-saving option of signing out of all your Netflix-connected devices at once. A crucial security feature that kicks everyone using an account back to the sign-in prompt with one click. Just click “Account” in that same drop-down menu as above and you’ll see a “Sign out of all devices” link listed under the Settings section on the next page.
Credit: Screenshot by Mashable
Tablets and mobile devices
Signing in and out of Netflix on mobile is easy. Credit: screen shot / mashable
These are straightforward too! Similarly, they involve clicking on the profile icon and selecting Sign Out from a dropdown menu. On a tablet, this same menu appears under the three lines of the “More” menu.
Smart TVs, app devices, and gaming systems
HELP me sign out of this stranger’s TV Credit: Mashable / Proma Khosla
Since these are some of the hardest devices to log into Netflix on, it follows that they’re the most challenging to sign out of. Here’s what you need to know for that immensely stressful moment when you cannot find the sign out option and are about to hand the keys of your account to an Airbnb host who didn’t even have salt and pepper: Get help.
Netflix has hidden the sign out option under “Get Help” on most devices because only under extreme stress would someone ever want to disconnect their Netflix account from a TV, right? Simply scroll down to “Get Help” on any profile and then “Sign Out of Netflix.” If you click on your profile thumb repeatedly out of frustration, you are not alone.
It’s a little less dramatic on the Apple TV side, where recent models allow you to sign out under “Settings.” Just scroll down the left side menu on any profile and click through. Makes sense!
For PlayStation, select “O” on your controller, then the gear icon. You’ll have the option to sign out there.
We’ve waited three years for more Atlanta, and we can wait a little longer. Donald Glover’s twisted, imaginative FX “comedy” returns for a third season, with Alfred (Bryan Tyree Henry) and Earn (Glover) in France set to solve racism, among other things.
The trailer leans into Atlanta‘s vignette-style storytelling, with less of a promised season arc than a series of standout moments, uncomfortable rumination, and outstanding performances. Paper Boi is probably not going to solve racism, but he and his friends are undoubtedly embarking on the experience of a lifetime.
Earlier this year, Kourtney Kardashian shared a photo of her and her fiancé Travis Barker to Instagram that made their relationship look like a whirlwind of euphoria. Their backs, illuminated by the camera’s flash, are seen facing the lens. They hold hands and gaze up at the “It’s A Small World” ride that towers before them. The building’s many shapes and pinnacles appear fuzzy as they bask in the glow of blue and yellow light. The busy facade infuses the moment with a sense of whimsy, and the purple sky visible in the distance creates a warm backdrop for the evening.
The photo looked like a subpar shot from an early 2000s disposable camera, yet Kardashian chose to share it with her 155 million Instagram followers. It wasn’t the first blurry photo she’s posted, and since then, she’s made similar hazy shots a regular attraction on her feed. She posts blurred views from car windows, blurry shots of her and Travis kissing and laughing, blurry photos of night swims and her kids jumping on the bed, and she’s even Instagrammed a blurry photo of herself from a professional Vogue shoot.
It’s unclear who exactly popularized sharing blurry photos with followers, but in 2021, other celebrities, including Beyoncé, Dua Lipa, Harry Styles, Hilary Duff, Ariana Grande, and Olivia Rodrigo have all followed the trend.
The pandemic is changing the way people use social media, and while Instagram is still a place for occasional glamorous, filtered photos, now more than ever people are finding joy in intentionally posting flawed content. Somewhere in between learning to wash our hands while singing “Happy Birthday” twice and our newfound Omicron anxiety we said, “fuck it,” and decided to collectively embrace chaotic social media posts. In 2021, Instagram users openly find comfort in trauma memes, casually assemble random photo dumps, and teens are even saying to hell with finstas and showing their true selves on main.
Instagram’s latest unconventional trend, posting blurry photos, is further proof that people are abandoning their polished pre-pandemic posting standards to share imperfect content that more accurately reflects reality. Blurry photos were once thought of as worthless mistakes — seen as nothing more than unfocused swirls of color that failed to clearly capture a moment in proper detail — but today they’re considered evidence that wild, carefree fun was had.
Seeing blurry photos on social media is nothing new. Non-tech savvy people who struggle to take good photos have been posting them for years, and they were ubiquitous in the early days of Instagram when phone cameras were far less advanced.
But nowadays, people are purposely posting blurry photos to infuse their personal feeds with a certain essence. Rather than serving “poor quality photo” vibes, intentionally posted blurry photos serve “I’m having too much fun and living life so fast that a camera can’t even capture me” vibes. Blurry photos are aspirational in a sense, and a reminder to let loose in front of the camera sometimes and embrace life’s candid moments. Whether blurry photos are intentional or accidental, the decision to post them on social media has become deliberate, so I’ve started calling them “plurry photos” (planned + blurry) or “plurries” for short.
Intentionally posted blurry photos serve “I’m having too much fun and living life so fast that a camera can’t even capture me” vibes.
So why have blurry photos risen in popularity this year? I suppose part of their appeal aligns with the recent pop punk revival. Angst is in the air, and blurry photos offer Instagram users a way to rebel against immaculate, staged content that so often dominates the platform. Had you told me years ago that a Kardashian would be dating Travis Barker and littering her professionally curated Instagram grid with badass blurry photos I would have needed some real convincing, but in 2021, blurry shots of Kravis on social media aren’t even surprising, they just make sense. Perhaps fellow blurry photo fan Channing Tatum explained their appeal best when captioning his own captivating, mysterious blurry shot in August. He simply wrote, “Life is a blur.” That it is, sir. That it is.
Aside from fitting the pandemic mood, blurry photos have likely become more widespread as a result of the iPhone camera’s Night Mode feature, which was introduced in 2019. All of the blurry photos I accidentally snap (and the majority of blurry photos I see posted online) are taken at night or in a dark setting. Why? The iPhone’s Night Mode, which automatically enables whenever an iPhone 11 camera (or newer device) detects low light, is extremely motion-sensitive. Night Mode is designed to increase exposure time on photos, which helps brighten the final image, but successfully capturing a photo in the dark requires you to keep the iPhone’s camera and subject incredibly still while shooting. If you don’t, motion (which presents itself as blur) is often visible in the resulting photo. While people can tweak the blur on their Portrait Mode photos and more than a few photo editing apps with blur effects are available for download, a lack of camera stabilization in Night Mode is likely behind some of the most organic, accidental blurry photos. (The iPhone can also produce blurry photos if the subject is too close to the camera lens.)
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Like many internet trends, the spike in plurry photos may eventually die down, but now that blurry aesthetics are no longer seen as inferior and undistinguished, I imagine they’ll become regular visuals on our timelines.
I, for one, welcome them, because as Marie Kondo would say, I love mess.
