Only three things are certain in life: Death, taxes, and a few days each month when you need to vacuum but just don’t have time. Whether you detest the chore or get a little bummed when you can’t have that satisfying dance with your Dyson, a robot vacuum is a universal lifesaver. Shop models on sale below.
Our top picks
Roborock E4 Robot Vacuum — $209.99 (save $90)
If you’re vacuum shopping on a budget, this basic Roborock packs serious sweeping skills for less than the cheapest Roomba. A suction level of 2000Pa beats the specs of similarly priced vacs and reliably combs carpets. Scheduled sweeps and spot cleanings can be set up through the app.
Credit: Roborock
Roborock E4 Robot Vacuum
Buying Options
$209.99 at Amazon
Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo N8 Pro+ Robot Vacuum and Mop with Self Empty — $579.99 (save $220)
Pro and plus feel like appropriate descriptors for a self-emptying vacuum and mop with 2,600Pa of suction. (That beats the Roomba s9+, which is almost double the price.) The Ozmo N8 Pro+ includes premium smart upgrades like laser-based mapping that can target specific rooms and sensors that dodge carpets while mopping. After nearly two hours of cleaning, the N8 Pro+ returns to its charging and self-emptying dock, which only requires emptying once a month.
Credit: Ecovacs
Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo N8 Pro+ Robot Vacuum and Mop with Self Empty
Multi-pet homes need a vacuum that’s ready to perform on carpets doused in fur. The Roomba s9+ is iRobot’s current most intelligent bot, unleashing 2,500Pa of suction onto heavy shedding zones and using its flat edge to snatch hair from corners. But more debris collected doesn’t mean more emptying on your part — the automatic dirt disposal bin is good for 60 days at a time.
Welcome to AirFryDay, where — you guessed it —every Friday Mashable covers the latest trends, dispenses advice, and reviews recipes for yourair fryer.
Here’s a sentence someone who works on the internet never expects to write: I should’ve read the comments first. But damn, it would’ve saved me a fair bit of time, a lot of cleaning, and an acrid smell overtaking my apartment if only I’d read the comments before testing a viral TikTok air fryer hack.
That’s because the comments pointed out something obvious about cooking popcorn in an air fryer. If you toss loose popcorn kernels in the basket of a heated air fryer, they will certainly pop. But they will pop and fly upward, sometimes careening into the heating element of an air fryer, which is typically placed right above the basket, totally exposed. Some kernels might even get lodged in the heating element, which would certainly not be good…
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First, here’s the viral TikTok in question, published by user ameerah_mh, which garnered about three quarters of a million views. It’s super basic: Put loose kernels in air fryer, blast at 200 degrees Celsius — that translates to 392 degrees Fahrenheit — and cook for five to six minutes. Here’s how their product looked.
How the popcorn hack was supposed to go. Credit: screenshots: tiktok / Ameerah_mh
While it might seem pointless — since, you know, microwave popcorn exists — I can actually see the utility in this recipe. Using loose kernels, you choose exactly how much popcorn you make, which is helpful if you don’t want a whole bag. The recipe also doesn’t use any oil or butter — no added fats at all — which makes it an especially low-calorie snack for folks who want that. If you make loose kernels on a stovetop pot, you absolutely must use at least some oil to prevent burning and most microwave popcorns have at least some butter or oil. I can see the promise in tossing kernels in an air fryer basket, walking away, then having neatly contained popcorn in the basket five minutes later.
So I set about testing the recipe for this week’s iteration of AirFryDay.
One issue: The air fryer in ameerah_mh’s TikTok had a mesh basket. Mine has a nonstick grate, set inside the basket. Popcorn kernels would likely fall through the grate, and thus not receive hot, circulated air from all sides. To correct this, I lined my grate with aluminum foil and poked holes through it, which would allow hot air to circulate underneath the kernels while also keeping them off the bottom of the basket.
From there I preheated the air fryer to about 400 degrees, set the timer to six minutes, dumped a handful of kernels into the foiled basket, and started the cooking process.
Foil with holes and uncooked kernels, ready for the heat. Credit: mashable / tim marcin
About one minute in, a few kernels popped. From there, I listened closely because the best way to cook popcorn is to pull it when the popping slows to a crawl. The popping increased until about 3 minutes were left, when kernels really started clanging around. For lack of a better term, the popping sounded violent. Then the smoky smell started leaking out. Shit, I realized, it’s probably ricocheting off the heating element.
Is this the end for my air fryer? I wondered.
Eventually the popping slowed and I turned the heat off with more than a minute left on the timer.
When I pulled the popcorn out, I was pleasantly surprised, considering the burning smell. There was a decent bounty of well-popped, stark white popcorn. No oil, no muss, no fuss. Sure, there were a number of un-popped kernels, but such is life with popcorn.
Not a great pop ratio, but not terrible. Credit: mashable / tim marcin
I dumped the product into a bowl, enjoyed a few kernels, then salted the whole thing and crunched a big handful. Not bad! In a pinch, it was a healthy, easy snack.
Popcorn, up close. Credit: mashable / tim marcin
But then I inspected the heating element and yikes, it was not good. A fair number of pieces of popcorn had popped, shot into the heating element, and lodged themselves into the element itself. The popcorn was charred and still smoking. Frankly, it looked like a mess that was going to suck to clean.
Not great! Credit: Mashable / tim marcin
Never great when your air fryer starts smoking, even though it is turned off. Credit: mashable / tim marcin
Sheepishly, I went to the comments of the viral TikTok to see if other folks had run into this issue. To my dismay, people pretty much predicted this would happen. “What about the element,” wrote one commenter. “Don’t do it. I have exactly the same air fryer and the popcorn burns on the element,” wrote another. “If any gets in the fan that’s a problem,” wrote a third.
Well, don’t I feel silly. So, yes, while this popcorn air fryer hack technically does work — heat pops popcorn, duh — there is no way I’d recommended anyone try it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a heating element to clean.
Sometimes you look at a snarling extraterrestrial symbiote — with his razor-sharp smile and lasciviously long tongue — and you just feel seen. Remarkably, I saw a bit of myself, and all of us struggling to thrive in this murky pandemic moment, when I saw Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Surprisingly, this superhero action-romp is centered on an alien vigilante who reflects the mania, madness, and carnage of being human right now.
Don’t mistake me. This bonkers sequel to 2018’s Venom was never intended to be the superhero genre’s commentary on a world driven to the brink by a global pandemic. Production on Venom: Let There Be Carnage was wrapped weeks before COVID-19 brought film productions worldwide to a standstill. So the coronavirus was not a consideration beyond pushing the movie further and further down the release calendar. Venom and his frenemy Eddie Brock (both played by Tom Hardy) live in a timeline without COVID, but with another dangerous pathogen, who mercilessly attacks the public without warning. In this eerily coincidental setup, Venom becomes a shining and troubling reflection of who we are in this time of fear, disease, and desperation to find a new normal.
Laying low after leaving a trail of decapitated bodies from Veddie’s last adventure, Venom begins this sequel in a sort of lockdown. Like many who were bored in the house and in the house bored, Venom got a pet. As if he were a New England hipster, he picked up a couple of live chickens. Eddie expected them to be food for the alien’s insatiable hunger for brains. But Venom can’t bring himself to bite the heads off of the plucky pair because “Sonny and Cher are best friends.”
So, the pet chickens are a clucking part of the cramped apartment that Venom and Eddie share. But hey, it’s not all bad. They binged Making A Murderer (possibly while the rest of us were hate-watching Tiger King). Plus, Venom got into cooking, just like so many did with the rise of work from home (and takeout prices). Together, these roomies found a wonky rhythm in the close confines of Eddie’s apartment and his body, which they share. But after untold months, Venom is going stir-crazy and yearns to break free of Eddie and all his “don’t eat people” rules.
Remember how good it felt stepping back out into the world, even briefly? Maybe you went to your local bodega to get your favorite junk food. (For Venom, that’s chocolate.) Perhaps you went to a costume party, a concert, or a carnival? Venom does it all, and for the first time, he does it without hiding behind Eddie. “I’m coming out of the Eddie closet,” the towering titan proclaims to a bewildered crowd at the rowdy Carnival of the Damned.
In an interview with Uproxx, director Andy Serkis has described this splashy scene or revelers, costumes, and dancing as “Venom’s coming-out party.” He even noted that screenwriters Tom Hardy and Kelly Marcel imagined the carnival setting of the scene as “an LGBTQIA kind of festival.”
This proved prophetic. In the isolation of the pandemic, a lot of people have had time for personal reflection. Some discovered their pride and came out about their sexual orientation and gender identity. Bedecked in glow sticks and cheered on by the crowd, Venom follows their lead, feeling the glory of telling his truth and having it accepted. It’s the dream!
Yet, this victorious scene feels a bit zany in context. The audience to Venom’s coming out cannot conceive of what they’re actually witnessing. They don’t realize there’s a man-eating monster before them; they think Venom is wearing a cool costume for the carnival. So, when he takes to the stage opposite rapper Little Simz (a mid-concert cameo), he might be considered part of the show or a cosplayer finding their true self through a mask (to paraphrase Oscar Wilde). Still, it’s thrilling and sweet to see this cheerful tough guy embraced by an ecstatic community. More than anything Venom wants to see people and be seen.
Venom was a dance break away from going full pandemic-era TikTok star!
He wants to be a hero, who thwarts crime and eats criminals! In this coming out moment, he’s really feeling himself. Little Simz is right there with a mic, seemingly poised to jam out to her hit song “Venom,” which is the theme for this movie and a recent TikTok trend. Sadly, the film fails to give us a ‘Ninja Rap’ moment (a la Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Part II: The Secret of the Ooze) that could have made this scene go from sweet to sublime. Venom was a dance break away from going full pandemic-era TikTok star! (But maybe there’s still time for that…)
As charismatic as Venom is, he is not simply a superhero. He’s an anti-hero, who makes messy and murderous decisions on impulse. This makes him a joltingly accurate depiction of these times. His hunger to engage in the human world is understandable, but it doesn’t change the simple fact that Venom a threat to the public’s health. A superhero who wears a facemask might now play as an allegory for protecting your community. Meanwhile, Venom doesn’t want to hide behind a mask, and he’s literally a deadly parasite. Through both Venom movies, he and his kind invade human bodies, often destroying them from the inside out. In Let There Be Carnage, Venom’s body-hopping is treated as a dark joke. But as one after another host collapses because of him, we’re reminded how selfish desire — no matter how relatable — can be lethal to others.
Like Venom, we want to go out into the world, party without a care, be seen and appreciated. But Venom barrels through San Francisco as if its residents aren’t his community but just an audience to his latest urge. This makes Venom not quite a hero, but nonetheless a fitting hero of our twisted times.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage is now playing in theaters.
The actor, her mother, Andie MacDowell, and series creator Molly Smith Metzler talk about adapting Stephanie Land’s memoir into a 10-part series that explores poverty, abuse, and generational trauma.
The actor, her mother, and series creator Molly Smith Metzler talk about adapting Stephanie Land’s memoir into a 10-part series that explores poverty, abuse, and generational trauma.
Another work week in the books, folks, we did it. And it’s October, to boot. Can’t stop that month, can you? It really just creeps up on you, doesn’t it?
To celebrate the end of this week, we did what we always do here: collect some of the best and funniest tweets of the week.
Why? Because you deserve a laugh, dear reader. So here they are, the 13 best tweets of the last seven days.
1. Someone PLEASE help her
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2. That’s good
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3. I could eat unlimited Tums but I guess I’m just built different
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4. LOL this doctor better be lying
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5. I have passed a plate before, thank you
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6. I am most angry at the two pleasant thoughts keeping to themselves
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7. If you tuck yourself in and do a little cartoon snore like “honkchoo honkchoo” then you are part of the problem
When someone in the U.S. is killed by a police officer, there’s no guarantee that their death will be recorded as such.
This reality is no surprise to the activists, many of them Black, Latino, and Indigenous, who’ve said for years that their loved ones, friends, and neighbors are killed by police officers yet officials don’t accurately report their cause of death. Instead, the fatality might be attributed to causes like heart disease or sickle cell trait. Sometimes coroners or medical examiners are embedded in police departments and may be under pressure to list a cause other than police violence. In other cases, they fail to properly cite the cause of death because of poor standards or training.
A new study published in the Lancet illustrates the vast disparity between the federal government tally of police killings and what people see happening in their own communities. The researchers estimate that between 1980 and 2018, more than 55 percent of these incidents, or 17,100 deaths, were misclassified or unreported in official statistics. They also found that Black Americans disproportionately experienced fatal police violence. They were 3.5 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than white Americans.
The study was led by researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). The research team took figures from the National Vital Statistics System, which tracks every death certificate in the U.S., and compared them to estimates of police violence generated by the non-governmental open-source databases Fatal Encounters, Mapping Police Violence, and The Counted. Those projects have endeavored to track police killings in all 50 states through public records requests and media reports, and past research has demonstrated that such open-source databases can be highly accurate.
The study’s authors concluded that the U.S. must replace “militarised policing with evidenced-based support for communities,” prioritize the public’s safety, and “value Black lives.”
“We think the U.S. should really be investing in solutions to police violence that are led by Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous communities.”
“We think the U.S. should really be investing in solutions to police violence that are led by Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous communities,” Eve Wool, a co-lead author of the study and a research manager at IHME, said in an interview.
The study is one of a few recent efforts to quantify the undercounting of police killings. In 2017, Harvard researchers compared data from Fatal Encounters to National Vital Statistics System figures and similarly found that the government failed to record more than half of police killings in 2015. Misclassification rates were particularly high for Black people, those living in poor counties, victims killed by means other than a firearm, and youth ages 18 and younger.
Social epidemiologist Justin M. Feldman, lead author of the 2017 study and a Health and Human Rights Fellow at the Harvard FXB Center for Health & Human Rights, peer reviewed the Lancet study prior to its publication and told Mashable that it provides a persuasive estimate of undercounted deaths.
The research adds to his findings by projecting the disparity over the course of decades, as opposed to a single year, and by estimating deaths by race and ethnicity at the state level. During the time period studied, the five states with the highest underreporting rates were Oklahoma, Wyoming, Alabama, Louisiana, and Nebraska. States with the lowest rates were Maryland, Utah, New Mexico, Massachusetts, and Oregon.
Feldman described the decades-long estimate of uncounted deaths as a “best guess.” Since the open-source databases collectively reflect deaths that happened between 2000 and 2019, the researchers produced a historical estimate for fatalities going back as far as 1980 by using a statistical regression to compare those figures with government data.
Their finding — that 17,100 out of 30,800 deaths were unreported or misclassified — rests on the assumption that the rate of underreporting remained stable over time.
Feldman noted that it’s likely the study understated the extent of the problem given that coroners and medical examiners may have omitted or misclassified far more deaths decades ago compared to recent years, when there’s been increasingly more pressure from the public as well as health departments to accurately account for deaths caused by police violence.
SEE ALSO:
Police killings are a mental health crisis for Black people. They deserve real solutions.
The findings point to the need for policy solutions that improve accurate reporting of police killings and prevent those deaths in the first place, Feldman said.
“We still, in 2021, don’t have good government-run systems tracking police killings,” he said.
Feldman suggested that death certificates in the U.S. could include a checkbox where a coroner or medical examiner would indicate whether the person died during an encounter with the police or while in their custody. Checking the box wouldn’t mean police caused the death, but could trigger further review by government officials.
Feldman said that during the Obama administration, a Justice Department initiative used artificial intelligence to trawl the web for media reports related to deaths that happened in police custody and then surveyed local officials to learn more about what happened. The program appears to have languished during the Trump administration, but Feldman said it should be revived. He also noted that the federal agency can withhold a portion of government grants from police departments if they don’t report deaths in custody.
“We still, in 2021, don’t have good government-run systems tracking police killings.”
Karin D. Martin, an assistant professor at University of Washington’s Daniel J. Evans School of Public Policy & Governance who has studied policy solutions for police violence, said the latest research confirms what’s generally known about undercounted deaths and how Black Americans are disproportionately killed by officers. (Martin wasn’t involved in the research and has no affiliation with the IHME.)
Martin says that preventing police killings requires a deep understanding of how widespread firearm availability and possession in the U.S. creates a culture in which law enforcement may perceive any interaction with the public as potentially life-threatening, and may react violently as a result. It also means looking at issues like why communities are over- or under-policed, why the baseline suspicion of people in some communities is so high, and how rules set by police departments, like whether officers can shoot a suspect fleeing a non-violent crime or whether they can engage in high-speed chases, can contribute to police killings.
“I think it’s a very complex problem, and that it needs to account for both the environment that law enforcement officers are encountering, and for the history of policing in this country, and the racial issues that have plagued this country forever,” said Martin.
Viral food, in general, falls into a few, readily identifiable categories. There’s your run-of-the-mill kitchen hack — think air fried eggs. There’s your viral, stunty food that’s entrancingly weird, like the bell pepper sandwich craze. And then there’s, for lack of a better term, professional food. Stuff like Alison Roman’s chocolate chunk shortbreads that were known simply as The Cookies or the entire aspirational account of TikTok influencer @Sad_Papi, a remarkably chill fine dining chef.
Then there’s Emily Mariko, a wildly — and increasingly — popular food influencer on TikTok. There’s nothing all that difficult about her food — her most famous dish involves reheated rice, leftover salmon, and seaweed wrappers. She’s not pitching a diet. She’s not doing anything stunty or putting off bug-eyed, pick-me energy like men who’re budding influencers. Hell, she hardly even talks in most TikToks and went super viral for leftovers.
SEE ALSO: The best arifryers
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And yet, Emily Mariko is the food internet’s latest Thing. She’s racked up 2.5 million followers on TikTok, primarily posting aesthetic, if relatively uncomplicated, meals. The Bay Area creator added nearly 1 million followers in the last couple of days alone. She is the queen of soothing, approachable food. Stuff that makes you go, all at once:
Wow she did a great job making that
Why do I feel calm?
Fuck, that looks good, why am I so hungry
I should live like that
Here, watch her most popular TikTok, which soared past 30 million views. It’s leftover salmon, fork-pulled, topped with a heap of white rice then reheated — importantly — with an ice cube and parchment sheet that will steam the food back to life. Then everything was mixed up with kewpie mayo, soy sauce, and sriracha, topped with avocado and eaten with strips of seaweed and jarred kimchi.
Watch as Mariko takes a big bite, seaweed making a small crunch, and a self-satisfied smile settles ear to ear. I want my lunch to do that.
THE recipe. Credit: screenshots: tiktok / @emilymariko
This is not picture perfect food. But it’s weirdly, pardon my French here, fucking entrancing.
Everyone seems to feel this way. Scroll through your For You page (FYP) and be greeted by people either making Emily Mariko dishes or people wondering why they love Emily Mariko, or TikToks that are referencing her without even actually referencing her.
Here, watch this, and this, and this. Everyone is talking about her.
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Hell, TikTok itself is posting about her.
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Mashable reached out to Mariko through multiple avenues but she did not respond to a request for an interview.
Jump around Mariko’s account and you’re greeted by a mix of the nearly mundane but soothingly organized. Every thing has its place and every place has its thing. The homemade strawberry syrup is tastefully jarred, veggies are washed, prepped, and tucked into containers, carrots and cucumbers peeled ever-so-neatly.
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For people who like food — which is a lot of TikTok — Mariko’s account is a respite from confident men-chef who (literally) slap their meat, or people selling you diet culture, or yet another air fryer hack.
Yes, the salmon and rice leftover lunch thing from Mariko looks tasty, but it’s what she’s perhaps unknowingly selling that really looks good. Her account is a window into a tasteful apartment where lunch is prepared but not meal prepped in the sense that there’s boiled broccoli and steamed chicken. There’s real flavor — sriracha and soy and salmon and, gasp fitness meal preppers, lovely clumps of white rice — but you can still microwave it. It all looks good as hell but it is not perfect or especially difficult.
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“Emily Mariko is living the adult life we should all be living,” tweeted one person. And that’s it. It’s not aesthetic like some Instagram vacation, but her account shows a life that’s put together if imperfect. It’s good food, done well, and well-planned and my distracted as hell brain loves seeing what I could be, if only…
I’m really digging down here, but even the way Mariko squeezes kewpie mayo — scrunching it in a clenched, awkward fist as if it’s a snake wriggling away — would never make the cut in a TikTok promising fine dining. That’s not what Mariko is giving you. The TikToks aren’t super fast, as lots of people (mostly men) do on TikTok. They’re paced like real life, as if we’re voyeuristically watching someone enjoy their lunch break. It’s a glance at the way we could live if we weren’t too tired or sad or busy or whatever.
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Take this relatively simple avocado toast in a recent TikTok. Mariko toasts bread, smashes avocado, tops with a scrambled egg and sriracha. But there are little touches — a schmear of cream cheese, avocado that’s well salted and folded into itself — that make it just surprising enough to be better than your average TikTok recipe. But it’s just basic enough — it remains avocado toast, and a simple egg, and her iced coffee is poured into a tumbler, with no effort at making it pretty— that it feels relatable.
It’s like a scene in a TV show, where the tension breaks and you see a character do something deliberate and slow — like silently cook eggs — placing you into their life for just a moment. I could see myself actually making this before logging in to look at a screen for eight hours.
I’m not sure Mariko will someday be a big Food Network star. It’s tough to imagine her doing the whole loud and boisterous thing. But her TikTok and other social accounts are increasingly focused on all of her life. Her clothes, her exercise, her cleaning routine.
That adds up. Because who wouldn’t like a soothing, deliberate life? One where everything is put away in its spot, where you eat good food but don’t spend all day making it. One where you’re just an ice cube and parchment sheet away from a big, relaxed, satisfied smile.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal doesn’t understand what a finsta is. Facebook should be delighted.
The senator from Connecticut displayed his ignorance of the slang term during a Thursday hearing designed to hold Facebook officials to account after the Wall Street Journal published a bombshell series of articles based on leaked internal company documents. Sen. Blumenthal’s misunderstanding of the word, which has since gone viral on Twitter, paints a picture of an out-of-touch elected official trying to regulate tech platforms — and in the process serves as a likely welcome distraction for Facebook officials.
After all, why should the public focus on the real harms documented by Facebook’s own internal researchers when we can instead all gawk at the old man misusing internet slang?
For the blissfully unaware, the term finsta is meant to designate a secondary Instagram account, often made under a fake name. The slang is used by the likes of teens, adults, and even former president Barack Obama, and has bled into the mainstream.
No one apparently told Sen. Blumenthal, however, as on Thursday he attempted to get Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, to end finstas as if they were an official service from the company.
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“Will you commit to ending Finsta?” asked the senator.
“Senator, again let me explain,” replied Davis. “We don’t actually, we don’t actually do finsta. What finsta refers to is young people setting up accounts where they want to have more privacy […].”
Sen. Blumenthal wasn’t convinced.
“Finsta is one of your products or services,” he pressed. “We’re not talking about Google or Apple, it’s Facebook, correct?”
“Finsta is slang for a type of account,” reiterated Davis. “It’s not a product.”
“OK, will you end that type of account?” followed up Sen. Blumenthal.
“We, I’m not sure I understand exactly what you’re asking,” replied Davis.
Indeed, it appears that neither Davis nor Sen. Blumenthal understood exactly what the senator was asking — a fact that many were quick to point out (and mock).
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And sure, when it comes to laughing at Sen. Blumenthal’s dumb question while understanding the scope of harm caused by Facebook, the public, media, and Facebook critics can walk and chew gum at the same time.
SEE ALSO: The 6 best VPNs to help keep you anonymous on the internet
But it must be a relief for Facebook when the gum becomes extra distracting.
