Category Archives: Blog

The hyper-contagious Delta variant has officially launched the newest phase of pandemic life. This reality, with infections soaring and vaccinated people unexpectedly masking up again, was expertly illustrated on Twitter this week. A viral meme invited people to temporarily turn their shock into laughter by pairing two contrasting images: the future you’d imagined once America reopened and what actually happened when Delta began burning through the country.

Underpinning all of this, for many, is fury. They’re angry at the lost hope, the suddenly heightened risk, and the determined resistance displayed by millions of Americans who’ve refused the vaccine. The unvaccinated may feel frustrated by the Delta surge for different reasons. They may have been working through hesitancy related to a history of medical racism or trying to line up childcare in case they experienced severe side effects. Now they’ve run out of time.

As I wrote earlier this week, anger is a signal that something is wrong. It surfaces when we feel less safe, our boundaries have been violated, someone we love is in danger, or our values are at stake. Anger presents a difficult challenge for most. We must honor the message it’s sending without letting the emotion blindly drive our decisions and behavior. While the answer to Delta-related rage lies in pressuring — even compelling — the unvaccinated to take meaningful responsibility for our collective safety and well-being, anger that festers on its own becomes a painful distraction.

For guidance on how to tackle this stubborn, unpleasant emotion, I called Dan Harris, co-founder of the Ten Percent Happier meditation app and host of its eponymous podcast. (Full disclosure: I’m a paying subscriber of the app.) Harris has spent the past 18 months interviewing experts in human behavior, mindfulness, and meditation, helping podcast listeners process a litany of complex emotions connected to the pandemic. He’s also personally struggled with anger. Like most of us, he knows the satisfying rush of lashing out, and the regret and embarrassment that typically follows.

“I am very prone to anger,” says Harris. “When I act on it, it might feel good for a nanosecond, but if I’m really aware of what’s happening it feels toxic in my veins.”

Harris insists that he’s far from enlightenment. Instead, his approach to anger management is about making fewer mistakes and finding more happiness from moment to moment.

Harris offered a few strategies for learning how to recognize and release anger:

Develop self-awareness

Irritation has the uncanny tendency to sneak up on us. A leisurely drive can end in profanity when we’re cut off in traffic. A conversation with a loved one can turn hostile at the mere mention of politics. A slight that’s reminiscent of previously experienced discrimination can leave us seething.

Dealing with anger means learning to recognize its classic signs, including a surge of adrenaline and increased blood pressure and heart rate. Harris says the emotion shows up for him as irritated thoughts, a “buzzing” in his chest, “restless energy,” and the impulse to say something “sharp.” His meditation practice is what helps Harris observe anger come and go without being “owned” by it.

Harris also finds that basic mindfulness meditation, which involves sitting with and calmly observing thoughts for a period of time, provides helpful counter-programming to more contentious or stressful thought patterns.

Listen to what anger is telling you

Harris recommends examining what’s beneath anger. It may be fear, betrayal, injustice, or exhaustion. These experiences demand our attention and compassion. They can’t be wished away or ignored, and shouldn’t be. One tactic Harris uses is to listen to what’s prompting the anger in a specific, nonjudgmental, and friendly way.

“There’s a ferocity that comes from that, when applied correctly, that might really help you address the situation in the most effective way possible, with motivations to be of use rather than seeking vengeance or a pound of flesh,” says Harris.

This approach can yield actionable information and lead to important choices, like setting new boundaries with a friend who won’t mask or get vaccinated; advocating for safer return-to-work policies; or taking a break from heated conversations on social media. Such decisions won’t make rage magically dissolve, but they can restore a sense of agency, which is critical for coping with the unpredictability of the latest COVID-19 surge.

Practice self-compassion and loving-kindness

Though Harris is committed to meditation, he’s famously skeptical of what he describes as its “gooey” concepts, including self-compassion and loving-kindness. Yet he’s convinced by research showing that both techniques increase happiness, and he uses them to help “reprogram” his inner dialogue.

“The notion that love cancels fear has shown up in many religious traditions over time, and philosophical traditions.”

Self-compassion is the practice of treating yourself the way you would a friend. While there’s space to hold yourself accountable after a mistake born of anger, self-compassion recognizes that shaming and blaming won’t change what’s happened or lead to a better outcome in the future. The Ten Percent Happier website offers 10 self-compassion practices for COVID-19, co-authored by experts on the subject, Dr. Chris Germer, Ph.D., and Dr. Kristin Neff, Ph.D.

Loving-kindness is the practice of empathy, often expressed through specific phrases, toward yourself or others. Directing loving-kindness toward someone, particularly if they’ve triggered our anger, doesn’t dismiss or condone their actions. Rather, it’s a reminder of our shared humanity and meant to help lift from our shoulders fury’s heavy burden.

“The notion that love cancels fear has shown up in many religious traditions over time, and philosophical traditions,” says Harris. “And it appears from the studies that have been done around this kind of practice that it is a great way to counteract the fear and anger in your mind, and replace it with something friendlier, or the ennobling desire to be of assistance to other people who are in worse situations [than] you.”

Take care of yourself

Harris says he’s less able to manage anger when something is physically or emotionally out of balance. That’s why he sticks to a list of basic self-care strategies: mindfulness and meditation, restful sleep, exercise, moderately healthy eating, therapy, and spending time in nature. Conversations with dozens of human psychology experts over the last year have convinced him that the most important variable affecting our happiness is our relationships with others. For Harris, this insight means taking seriously the quality of his connections and being intentional in his relationships.

“What’s become clear in the course of this is…we are not wired to handle uncertainty,” says Harris. “And yet uncertainty is the non-negotiable law of the universe.”

Harris says that by taking care of his basic needs, he can relax as much as possible into a situation in which he has minimal control. That sense of ease can provide a valuable buffer against debilitating anger.

“[M]y real advice is I want you to be as happy moment to moment as possible,” says Harris. “I feel like you probably won’t be if you’re marinating in nonstop anger, if you’re on an IV drip of rage.”

TL;DR: Keep your AirTag protected with this Apple AirTag Keychain Holder, on sale for 50% off. As of Aug. 15, grab one for only $14.95.

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It’s 2021, which means you no longer have to be held accountable for where your stuff is at all times. Thanks to the invention of the Apple AirTag, you don’t have to wonder where your missing suitcase went, where your car keys are hiding, or where the dog leash disappeared to. 

But while AirTags are super convenient for keeping track of missing luggage at the airport or your car keys, they serve no purpose if you lose or break the actual tag. These little trackers will have a longer life span if you turn them into keychains and make them wearable. With this Apple AirTag Keychain Holder, you can safely hold on to your AirTags wherever you are and also protect them from scratches or dents in the process.

This silicone keychain holder will keep the elements away from your AirTag, including dust and even water. Turning your AirTags into keychains will easily make them useful to attach to car keys, backpacks, and so much more. This keyring easily attaches to bags, wallets, and even belt loops, and will give your AirTag a unique look, since it comes in a variety of colorways. When you want to swap out the AirTag or clean it or the keychain itself, you can easily pop it out to wipe it down. Since the keychain is ultra-lightweight, it will add almost no weight to your AirTag, so you won’t even notice something is around it; you’ll just have the complete convenience of having it on a key chain and peace of mind that it’s safe and secure.

These Apple AirTag Keychains (which come in your choice of black, pink, or blue) regularly retail for $29. You can slash 50% off for a limited time, though, and grab one for just $14.95.

If you ever find yourself with the need to combine several PDFs into one single file, you may be immediately frustrated: It’s not immediately obvious how to achieve what you’re trying to do.

Luckily, Adobe, the creator of the PDF, offers a super-simple and free online tool that will help you combine your files in a matter of minutes. Read on for an easy-to-follow walkthrough that will show you exactly what you need to do to successfully combine two or more PDFs.

Using Adobe Acrobat’s online tool to combine PDFs

Adobe’s free online tool to combine PDFs offers a clean and simple interface that’s easy to understand.

The first time you use the tool, you don’t need to sign in, and you can just select to download your merged file when you’ve completed the process.

If you want to use the tool again, you will need to sign in with your Google, Facebook, or Apple account, or by creating an account with your email address and a password.

When you do sign in, you get the additional option to share your file by either generating a link or emailing it to others.

Combining PDFs files online

To get started, you need to get your PDF files into the main “Combine Files/Merge PDFs” box you will see at the top of the page.

You can do this by dragging and dropping your PDF files into the box, or you can click the “Select Files” button to choose files you have saved on your computer.

Once you’ve uploaded your PDF files, it’s just a matter of clicking the “Merge/Combine” option toward the top right of your screen.

If you’re signed in, you’ll need to give the new file a name before the “Combine” button is clickable.

What you can do with your combined PDF file

After you’ve completed the combine process, you can download or share your new file.

From the completed merge screen, you’ll also see a menu on the right-hand side of the page.

This menu gives you further options to edit your file, including the ability to reorganize the pages, split the PDF, edit it, convert it into an alternative file format such as a JPEG or Word file, and to add a comment. Simply click on each option to make it happen.

It’s been a long couple of years, but our streaming subscriptions flourish more than ever. It’s entirely likely that you or someone you know has recently uttered the phrase “I’ve watched everything in my queue,” or “I’ve seen everything on Netflix.”

No, sweetie, you haven’t.

Whether you’ve burned through your queue or your recommendations, Netflix still contains untold treasures should you wish to unlock them (since there’s still no A-Z search function, just assume you’ve glimpsed a mere tip of the iceberg). We’ve got lists of thrillers, rom-coms, the best original movies, and more.

While we wouldn’t consider ourselves your close personal friends, the Mashable Entertainment team has banded together to share what we believe are the best Netflix original series, to watch or rewatch as you see fit.

Here are the 15 best Netflix originals series to date (in no particular order).

1. When They See Us

Based on the 1989 Central Park jogger case, Ava DuVernay’s limited series tragedy When They See Us delivers a scathing indictment of the United States’ legal system that will hang with you long after you’ve finished its four-episode arc. Asante Blackk, Caleel Harris, Ethan Herisse, Jharrel Jerome, and Marquis Rodriguez stun as young men trapped in an institution designed to work against them. If there is any series on this list you “must” watch, it’s this. –Alison Foreman, Entertainment Reporter

Where to watch: Netflix

2. Russian Doll

Russian Doll gets as close to a perfect Netflix binge watch as possible.

It’s short, with eight 30-minute episodes forming its first season. It’s bold, covering themes of mortality, trauma, and human connection against the backdrop of New York’s East Village. And it’s flat-out hilarious to boot. Natasha Lyonne co-created and starred as Nadia, a woman who becomes trapped in a time loop after dying on her 36th birthday. Nadia’s Groundhog Day–esque adventure becomes increasingly complex as the series progresses and she races against the loop to discover why she can’t stop dying — and what her loop has to do with Alan, an alleged stranger who’s experiencing the exact same cycle. -Alexis Nedd, Senior Entertainment Reporter

Where to watch: Netflix

3. The Get Down

The Get Down is one of Netflix’s most unique series offerings, remixing the real life roots of hip hop legends like DJ Cool Herc and Grandmaster Flash with the fictional, almost fairy-tale story of talented Bronx teens desperate to achieve their dreams. Like many of co-creator Baz Lurhmann’s projects, The Get Down is partially a musical, with original songs by Sia, Janelle Monáe, and Christina Aguilera blended in with ’70s hits like “Bad Girls,” “Ball of Confusion,” and in the series’ most triumphant moment, the iconic theme from Star Wars. Its flashy visuals don’t distract from the show’s huge heart, making the show as joyous and hard-hitting as the rap albums its style emulates. –A.N.

Where to watch: Netflix

4. American Vandal

“Who did the dicks?” may not sound like a compelling premise for a true-crime drama, and technically, it isn’t: American Vandal is a comedy about a completely fictional case of a high school parking lot defaced with spray-painted penises. But the parody nails the genre so well, and with such a resolutely straight face, that it’s almost possible to forget none of it is real, and very possible to get as deeply invested as if it were. 

As Peter (Tyler Alvarez) and Sam (Griffin Gluck) look for the culprit behind the penis drawings in the first season (or, in Season 2, the laxative-laced lemonade), what started as a puerile spoof about the eternal hilarity of dick jokes eventually reveals itself to be a surprisingly empathetic exploration of adolescence…that still finds plenty of time to snicker about poop or penises, because come on. That shit’s hilarious. –Angie Han, Deputy Entertainment Editor

Where to watch: Netflix

5. Sense8

Created by the Wachowski sisters and J. Michael Straczynski, Sense8 is, well, exactly as trippy as you’d expect a sci-fi drama created by those three to be. The series follows eight strangers who discover in quick succession that they’re linked by a single mind and soul, and that that makes them a target for certain mysterious forces. Thrills ensue, in the form of cool superpowers, deadly chases, sinister conspiracies, and intricately choreographed fight scenes, all shot and edited together with dazzling precision.

But what makes Sense8 feel truly special is its emphasis on emotional connection. It’s a show that feels almost radical in its earnestness — in its plea for empathy, in its faith in humanity, in its celebration for love. It wears its tender, beating heart on its sleeve, and invites you to touch it, and then asks you if, perhaps, you wouldn’t like to open up your own heart to it, too. -A.H.

Where to watch: Netflix

6. Dear White People

Dear White People knows that its title provokes, but the masterful comedy from Justin Simien is more insightful than incendiary. The only challenge it poses at the interpellated audience (and at nonblack viewers in general) is to see these characters as striving, learning, aching three-dimensional people like anyone else. Welcome them into your home as they welcome us to the irresistible insularity of Winchester University, where every late night, hook up, and student caucus meeting is a dramatic event unto itself.

Here, at the predominantly Black dorm of Armstrong-Parker, where Sam (Logan Browning), Coco (Antoinette Robertson), Joelle (Ashley Blaine Featherson), Troy (Brandon Bell), Reggie (Marque Richardson), and Lionel (DeRon Horton) navigate their tremulous college years through race, relationships, and legacy. Simien and his writers don’t sleep on satire or social commentary, but Dear White People never feels informational. It is a crash course in modern racial dynamics wrapped in some of the sharpest comedy you can find. You’ll quickly be drawn into the Winchester bubble and unable to shake it off when you leave. -Proma Khosla, Entertainment Reporter

Where to watch: Netflix

7. Tuca and Bertie

BoJack Horseman producer Lisa Hanawalt’s animated comedy Tuca & Bertie portrays the realities of millennial adulthood and the unbreakable bonds that form women’s friendships. Also almost everyone is birds. Tuca (Tiffany Haddish) is a fun-loving toucan whose reaction to responsibility is abject terror, while her best friend Bertie (Ali Wong) is a neurotic, ambitious songbird. Their lives in Bird Town are relatable in some ways, like how Bertie experiences sexism at work, but Tuca & Bertie’s imaginative world also allows for creative liberties, like the existence of sentient pubic lice that party on people’s crotches. Tuca & Bertie also does more with the medium of animation than almost any other animated series streaming on Netflix, using paper cutouts and sequences with puppets to highlight important parts of its story. –A.N.

Where to watch: Netflix

8. Astronomy Club

There is no acceptable reason for how or why the ingenious Astronomy Club has gone this long flying low on Netflix radar, but you can do your part to rectify that immediately. UCB alums Shawtane Bowen, Jonathan Braylock, Ray Cordova, Caroline Martin, Jerah Milligan, Monique Moses, Keisha Zollar, and James III (“We’re Black, and we’re all stars, and like most stars, nobody knows our names.”) deliver sketch after brilliant sketch, and that’s when they’re not leaning in to reality-show drama about heightened versions of themselves. –P.K.

Where to watch: Netflix

9. GLOW

It’s the Gooorgeous Ladies of Wrestling! Created by Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, GLOW is one of those shows that makes you smile just thinking of it. A masterful blend of rage-fueled ‘80s feminism and timeless comedic beats, this half-hour dramedy delivers everything you could want in great TV each and every episode throughout its three seasons. Alison Brie and Betty Gilpin lead an unparalleled ensemble in a journey we’ll never be ready to see end. Here’s lookin’ at you, Season 4. -A.F.

Where to watch: Netflix

10. Unorthodox

Unorthodox is a gripping miniseries about a young Esty Shapiro (Shira Haas), a young, recently married woman who escapes her ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn to find her mother in Berlin and start a new life. It is one of the most engrossing series I’ve ever seen, engulfing viewers in a community that many may be cursorily aware of but have no in-depth knowledge about. As Esty arrives in Berlin, confused yet free, trying to find her place and a place to stay, the family she left behind is frantic. Her husband is distraught and begins searching for Esty while she gets her first tastes of independence outside her insular Satmar community. As the story unfolds, more details of Esty’s past are revealed and the possibility of a future at a musical conservatory hangs precariously in front of her. Esty’s search for something more in life and her family’s search for her intertwine into an intense crescendo of family, community, and independence.

Part of what makes Unorthodox extraordinary is its roots in reality. It’s inspired by a memoir by Deborah Feldman, a woman who fled the Satmar community. Many of the actors grew up speaking Yiddish. It pulls on knowledge from people who have been in or around these communities to help with sets, speech, attire, and moments as authentic as possible. Parts of the show feel like stepping into a period piece, but it’s the reality of modern ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jewish communities. – Kellen Beck, Entertainment Reporter

Where to watch: Netflix

11. Never Have I Ever

Months after Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher’s comedy about 15-year-old Devi (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and her sublimely teenage woes, I’m still not sure what its naysayers expected. The show was never going to compromise on or depart from its creators’ signature sense of humor as it was first minted on The Mindy Project. It was never going to be the story of every Indian American teenager or every immigrant family, nor was it going to resolve Devi’s many flaws and misjudgments over the course of a single 10-episode season.

But Never Have I Ever does so much else. It puts Devi in full peril of her sexuality, grief, and a wee smidge of sociopathy. It has the best ensemble cast of any Kaling production (no disrespect to the rotating secondary characters of The Mindy Project, but perhaps a healthy dose of shade) and scenes that will leave you laughing, crying, or crawling out of your skin as you remember the blissful highs and nightmarish lows of adolescence. –P.K.

Where to watch: Netflix

12. Santa Clarita Diet

Come for the irresistibly gory premise, stay for the surprisingly sweet center. Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant play a suburban California couple whose lives are upended when Sheila (Barrymore) turns into a zombie. The transformation gives her a new zest for life, but she’s also racking up a high body count, attracting the suspicion of neighbors and authorities, and finding herself changing in ever more disturbing ways.

Through it all, though, Joel remains resolutely on Sheila’s side, committed to making it work no matter how weird or dangerous the journey gets — or tense and terrified it makes him (Olyphant’s nervous chuckles alone are worth the price of admission). Dig past the blood and entrails and chewed-off fingers, and you’ll find in Santa Clarita Diet a tender portrait of the challenges and joys of long-term romance. –A.H.

Where to watch: Netflix

13. The Crown

Pile under some blankets and get ready to be soothed by watching one seriously fucked up but deeply captivating family.

The Emmy-winning series made a star out of Claire Foy, who portrayed a young Queen Elizabeth in Seasons 1 and 2. While Season 3 — now starring Olivia Colman — didn’t always reach the same highs, it remained a stirring portrait of a woman and a marriage that are both world famous and yet still shrouded in mystery. The series is at its best when it explores the quiet moments that must have followed the big public headlines about news events you know. Foy and Colman both so easily make a meal out of just a head turn, a raised eyebrow, or a single tear. Luxe production values ensure that Buckingham Palace is awe-inspiring, but the biggest applause must be held for the meaty monologues about God, family, and country. -Erin Strecker, Entertainment Editor

Where to watch: Netflix

14. Sex Education

It’s rare that depictions of high school sexual exploits do anything but make you cringe. And yet, in the world Sex Education, these scenes are the bedrock of a blissfully understanding, caring, and ever-evolving world that presents the best of the best in acceptance. Ncuti Gatwa, Emma Mackey, and Asa Butterfield lead as three friends sorting their way through Moordale Secondary School, its student body, and the trials of the heart that lie within. -A.F.

Where to watch: Netflix

15. Stranger Things

Stranger Things is a great sci-fi series. With roots in horror and coming-of-age arcs, there is so much about these three seasons that is so satisfying. Each season builds itself on an expanding flow of tension and release, of mystery and explosive action, interwoven with growing personal relationships and government conspiracies that make each step forward in the story that much more engaging.

The series begins in Hawkins, Indiana in the 1980s, and something strange is going on. A sort of interdimensional rift has been opened beneath the rural town and a young girl, Eleven, who is tapped into that that Upside Down dimension, escapes her capture and teams up with a group of kids to put a stop to the terror that has entered the world. As the seasons go on, the threats morph but that element of horror and unabashed ‘80s stays strong, giving Stranger Things a really strong and (mostly) consistent sense of style and narrative. –K.B.

Where to watch: Netflix

This list was updated in August 2021 to reflect the latest on Netflix.

With video calls taking hold as a major part of our lives during a way-too-long pandemic, Facebook is doing a little bit more to protect those made on its Messenger platform. But only a little bit.

Facebook announced Friday that end-to-end encryption is coming to voice and video calls made in the Messenger app, effective immediately. For those not plugged into digital privacy discourse, encryption is a type of protection that ensures a message can only be seen by its sender and its recipient. There’s just one caveat: You have to choose to activate encryption, meaning your calls will theoretically be vulnerable to data hijinks unless you opt in to this new feature.

That’s the same approach Facebook takes with Messenger text chats, labeling them “Secret Conversations” within the app and making it weirdly convoluted to activate at all. By not enabling encryption by default, a good number of Messenger chats out there are probably less protected than they could be, and that will likely be the case with voice and video calls, too.

Beyond that, encrypted conversations are also getting some more nuanced disappearing message options. Messenger has allowed users to set messages to disappear for a while now, but instead of being locked into increments like one hour and 24 hours, users will be able to choose to make messages disappear anywhere between five seconds and 24 hours.

Facebook announced that it would test the same thing for group calls in the near future, too. Also in the “coming soon” column is encryption on one-on-one DM conversations in the Instagram app. That’ll start rolling out in a “limited test” capacity for adults in “certain countries” and, yes, it’s also opt-in. Both parties need to follow each other to turn it on, which is the same as Messenger’s policy.

This is a good and necessary upgrade for Messenger calls, even if you have to do a little digging to turn it on. Facebook says there are more than 150 million of these calls happening every day, so any added protection for that data can’t hurt. It’s just a shame that many users may never even know they can take advantage of it.

The new hotness in social media these days is losing hours to endlessly scrolling feeds of short videos, thanks to TikTok. Even Reddit is getting in on that trend.

Reddit, best known as an online bulletin board that’s as close to old-timey internet forums as you’ll find these days, added a new video feed button directly to the right of its search bar in the iOS mobile app. This is still in the process of gradually rolling out to all iOS users, per TechCrunch, but should be available to most of them by now. I downloaded the Reddit app for the first time to verify this and, lo and behold, it was right there:

Tapping that button will take you to a very TikTok-esque rolling feed of videos uploaded directly to the site. In other words, if someone posts a link to a YouTube video in a subreddit you follow, it probably won’t show up here, but if someone directly uploads a video, either their own or ripped from elsewhere, it might. I saw straight up TikToks with that app’s signature watermark and everything while browsing Reddit’s video feed. You can do all the typical Reddit interactions (upvote, downvote, comment, etc.) while watching these videos, as well as keep scrolling to see more from your favorite subreddits or ones that Reddit deems to be similar to them.

The video delivery algorithm is obviously based on which subreddits you’re a member of, as mine gave me videos that were at least in the orbit of the various video game, sports, and cat-related ones I subscribe to. By “in the orbit,” I mean I follow r/Cats and it showed me a video from r/Dogs. Close, but no cigar. Similarly, I was served a Minecraft video despite only following r/Rainbow6, a video game that is decidedly not Minecraft. It may take time before Reddit’s algorithm can match TikTok’s.

The feature doesn’t seem to be available in Reddit’s Android app yet, or at least it wasn’t on the particular Android phone I have. A Reddit spokesperson told Mashable that Reddit is “still in the experimental phase for this feature” without offering any other specifics.

This is obviously a small development in the grand scheme of things, as it’s entirely possible to keep browsing Reddit’s iOS app in the same way as before without ever engaging with the video feed button. Reddit isn’t usually associated with trend-chasing as much as other popular social networks, but other recent experiments like voice chatting point to that possibly changing. At least there’s such a wide variety of content on Reddit that you might find things you wouldn’t find on TikTok.

Those who enjoy Reddit’s relative old-school purity compared to sites like Facebook and Twitter might understandably be bummed about this news, but if the goal is to keep people staring at the app as much as possible, it could work. Just remember to eat and use the bathroom every now and then.

Remember like a decade ago, when it was trendy to use the term FOMO? It was everywhere; everyone had it. Well, I think we could use a heavy dose of fear of missing out for the vaccine-hesitant in 2021.

While it might be a corny acronym now, FOMO remains a strong tool — and one I wish the U.S. took advantage of more to get shots in arms.

Consider the Canadian government, which announced Friday it intends to make vaccination against COVID required for all commercial air travelers, as well as travelers on trains between provinces, and all cruise ship passengers. France, another nation with high vaccine availability, will also mandate vaccination for cross-country plane, train, or bus rides.

Neither the U.S. government nor U.S. airlines, meanwhile, have mandated vaccines for air travelers and I wish they’d do at least that. There are hurdles to doing this — to name a couple: blowback from certain customers and FDA technicalities — but it is doable down the line.

The rash of viral videos of anti-makers getting kicked off planes is one reason to move towards a vaccine requirement to fly. So many flight attendants spend their days begging folks to wear masks, risking assault from unruly anti-mask passengers. Take this out of their hands. The staunch anti-mask, anti-vax Venn diagram is pretty much a circle, so mandating vaccines would save lots of hardworking airline employees a lot of trouble. Fewer anti-maskers would hold up flights if they couldn’t get on the plane in the first place without a vaccine. Granted, all air travelers, even the vaccinated ones, might have to still wear masks for the foreseeable future. As public health experts have said, it’s not either or. We have to use all the tools at our disposal to combat COVID.

The highly transmissible Delta variant is also a powerful argument for requiring passenger vaccination and mask wearing. The days of empty middle seats have largely come to an end. As airlines pack planes again, there is a risk someone near you can transmit COVID with a sneeze or a cough, even if they are fully vaccinated. Being vaccinated continues to protect against death and the need for hospitalization, but rare breakthrough cases have shown some vaccinated people can pass the disease onto others or suffer flu-like symptoms themselves.

Tweet may have been deleted

Tweet may have been deleted

Some airlines, like United Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, and Frontier Airlines, are already requiring employees to be vaccinated as air travel in the U.S. creeps toward pre-pandemic levels. With travel, restaurants, and venues inching toward normal capacity, FOMO is a powerful tool and making life — making fun, making vacations — inconvenient for the unvaccinated may well be more effective than repeatedly preaching (correctly) that vaccines save lives. If you’re required to be vaccinated to go indoors, to go on flights, to go to work, and to attend college (perhaps eventually school too as the vaccine becomes available to more children), the ability to skip a shot becomes more and more difficult.

The idea that the jab protects you from severe COVID outcomes is somewhat abstract. It requires folks to imagine themselves and loved ones suffering. Many people cannot, or will not, do that. Missing a trip with friends, however, is immediate. It is concrete. Simply put, it sucks and creates FOMO. Yes, it’s like withholding dessert from a child who won’t eat their peas. But that strategy is a classic with kids for a simple reason: It works. I’d imagine lots of folks who “did their own research” — e.g. read dumb Facebook posts — would forget that “research” the second they might have to skip a bachelor party in Nashville because the airline required a vaccine.

Now for some important caveats. The U.S. is in a unique position where airlines, or the government, could reasonably mandate vaccines for air travel eventually, especially once the vaccines move beyond emergency authorization and get full FDA approval (that’s what some airline execs say is partially holding them back). There are also billions of people globally who would love the opportunity to get vaccinated but don’t have access. So many nations have precious little supply as the U.S. begs people to get the vax. Many international travelers likely couldn’t be held to the same standard as U.S. travelers because they simply haven’t had the chance to get vaccinated. (FYI: If you want to help the global vaccine effort, Mashable has you covered.)

Full FDA approval is expected to come as soon as September, which would then make it more palatable for airlines (or the government) to mandate vaccines for travel. That means the U.S. could work on a similar timeline as Canada, which plans to put the mandate into effect in the fall per its own country’s regulations.

That timeline also leaves room for the vaccine push to continue. Following fears stoked by the Delta variant, more Americans have been inspired to get the COVID jab. Vaccination rates in the U.S. have jumped recently after weeks of lagging numbers. But public health officials are still working on outreach in communities with low vaccination rates. There are folks not getting vaccinated because they fell down a rabbit hole of misinformation. But unvaccinated people are also more likely to have lower incomes or be wary of medical racism. They may not have childcare or the ability to take off work to get a shot or deal with the temporary side effects. We have to reach and support those folks.

There’s some evidence already that vax mandates have been effective. This CNBC article quotes peoples who got vaccinated because they wanted to travel to places with restrictions. Sixty percent of people got vaccinated because they wanted “to visit family or friends but not being able to without a vaccine,” according to a Time/Harris poll of about 1000 adults taken in March. Fifty-two percent said they were influenced by “wanting to travel but not being able to without a vaccine.” Travel is clearly a major way to motivate people to get vaxxed. Imagine if you had to do it to fly anywhere in the U.S.? No flying off to Disney. No jetting to the Super Bowl. No soaring through the sky to your family for Christmas.

Moreover, a strong majority of Americans want a mandate for air travel. A new Harris poll of about 2,000 Americans from last week found 64 percent of respondents wanted a vaccine passport to be required to fly.

Jetting around the country is not a right. It’s a privilege. If you’re signing up to fly in a tin can, sharing a confined space with dozens of other people, then asking you to get jabbed isn’t a bridge too far. What’s more, I’d like to see more, for lack of a better word, non-essential places require vaccination. If the NFL, concert venues, college football conferences, chain restaurants, and major gym brands required vaccination, hell, we’d see skyrocketing vax rates.

For now, I’m hoping we can start with air travel. It might be corny to say these days, but FOMO works. Let’s put it to use.

Don’t trust anything on the internet — until Mashable tries it first. Welcome to the Hype Test, where we review viral trends and tell you what’s really worth millions of likes.

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At first, a lot of folks started reading the aliens-with-a-breeding-kink porn book currently going viral on TikTok as a joke.

Then, after several sex scenes with a hot, seven-foot-tall horned blue alien simp endowed with a massive schlong and tongue ribbed for her pleasure, well, we weren’t laughing at Ice Planet Barbarians anymore. At some point between devouring the first book in a single day, then immediately moving on to the next installment of the 22-book erotica series, that ironic laughter turned into a primal moan.

Now, before the pearl-clutching begins, let’s be honest: You’re at least a little bit curious. After all, you clicked on this article, didn’t you?

While initially released in 2015, Ruby Dixon’s self-published adult sci-fi romance didn’t get the glow up of a lifetime until May of 2021. It came from an unexpected source. BookTok, a corner of the social media app that’s home to the bookish, shot the niche extraterrestrial thirst trap straight to the top of various Kindle bestsellers lists with memes and videos of fans forcing friends and significant others to read it. Since the book is free with Kindle Unlimited, there wasn’t much to lose. Even if it didn’t turn out to be your thing, at least you’d get more of the in-jokes about Ice Planet Barbarians that were flooding #BookTok.

It isn’t the first time #BookTok, with its 16.6 billion views (and counting), proved itself a force to be reckoned with in the publishing world. Since the pandemic hit, this dedicated subgroup has given multiple genre romance books, like A Court of Thorns and Roses, unprecedented boosts in sales years after their releases. For a more in-depth analysis on the overall phenomenon, be sure to check out Slate’s awesome ICYMI podcast episode, which alerted me to it.

Admittedly, even I, a proud kinkster who’s specifically written about why it’s OK to be horny for the Shape of Water fish monster, was ready to disregard this particular thirsty internet trend as “just not my thing.” I, who owed my middle school sexual awakening to smutty Harry Potter fanfiction and the 18+ Anita Blake Vampire Hunter book series (in which the protagonist is cursed with a disease that requires her to have sex every few hours) thought Ice Planet Barbarians was a step too far for me.

But for your sake, dear reader — or so I told myself — I needed to test whether #IcePlanetBarbarians was really worth the hype of 44.3 million TikTok views. So I called every local bookstore in my LA neighborhood, blushing furiously as I asked each hipster if they stocked Ice Planet Barbarians, before quickly assuring them it was “for work” and “a TikTok thing” when they’d answer with a distressingly confused, “No.” As one TikTok from a Barnes & Noble in California made clear, even the big chain stores have been hesitant to stock this book, despite “everyone and their mother” asking for it.

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As unconventional (perhaps even repulsive) as the idea of fucking an alien sounds at first blush, I’ve gotta say that the erotic fantasy Dixon sets up is far more satisfying, giving, loving, and consent-conscious than most of the sex I’ve had with IRL human men. That’s as much a testament to Dixon as it is an indictment on Earth’s cis heterosexual males, though.

The first Ice Planet Barbarians book follows Georgie, a 22-year-old Floridian who gets abducted in her sleep along with a dozen other girls only to be treated as less than cattle by a crew of intergalactic sex traffickers (or smugglers — it’s not clear what they’re being sold for). But when something goes wrong and the cargo spaceship they’re caged in suddenly crash lands on an icy planet with two suns, the women are faced with a whole new set of terrifying unknowns.

Unlike the cargo ship, though, the ice planet isn’t all bad.

He’s basically the definition of submissive and breedable, a lovable extraterrestrial Stage Five Clinger.

Sure, the lack of food, shelter, and clothes, along with ceaseless blizzards and nightmare-fuel creatures trying to eat them isn’t great. But when Georgie braves the woods in search of help only to immediately get captured in a hunter’s trap, things seem to go from bad to worse to then extremely horny real fast. One of those aforementioned sexy, tall, blue-horned aliens releases her and, far from wanting to eat her alive, appears only interested in eating her out and protecting her from danger at all costs.

As we learn later, it’s because this virile alien himbo named Vektal wants nothing more than to please, protect, and mate with her for life in interspecies couple bliss. He’s basically the definition of submissive and breedable, a lovable extraterrestrial Stage Five Clinger eager to do whatever the hell Georgie needs to be safe and happy, no questions asked. Oh and did I mention his Sakh alien species have schlongs that come equipped with a nob for clitoral stimulation, essentially rendering their anatomy the rabbit vibrator of humanoid cocks?

I dunno, call me crazy, but that all sounds like a much better conclusion to an ordeal than most of my Tinder dates.

Listen, I know every social convention — from kink-shame to literary snobbery to the misogynistic disregard for everything women enjoy — tells you that you should feel guilty, ashamed, or weird for liking a book like this. But reading Ice Planet Barbarians was one of the most unadulteratedly delightful, sweet, funny, and arousing gifts I’ve given myself in recent months.

It isn’t just the wildly titillating fantastical sex scenes, either. This is, in the parlance of fanfiction, the Porn With Some Plot category of smut. Dixon’s plots are actually pretty compelling sci-fi on their own, with the added layers of romance and humor (and porn) expanding the scope of a genre that too often gatekeeps more feminine interests and sensibilities.

I found myself laughing as much as lusting. The POV eventually splits, switching between the two lovers’ perspectives and creating a hilarious juxtaposition between this average, everyday Florida girl and her self-serious extraterrestrial barbarian perpetually swooning over how many babies he wants to make with her because she’s a precious gift sent from the gods.

Honestly, as illicitly kinky as the premise sounds, their relationship is rather wholesome and uplifting. If a girl from Florida and a literal alien barbarian can find enough common ground to make each other cum multiple times, then maybe two humans from the same country with differing political ideologies can learn to find some common ground too (LOL who am I kidding? That’s an even less believable fantasy).

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On the whole, Ice Planet Barbarians is a testament to just how true the concept of “don’t knock it till you’ve tried it” really is when it comes to sexual desire. I for one had never previously considered how, in a consensual sexual situation with an alien, both parties would have to patiently explore and discover one another’s foreign anatomies and, er, “mating” customs.

There’s something incredibly sweet about a 20-something human woman teaching a hulking hunter alien what a kiss is. Georgie and Vektal take time just touching one other non-sexually, too, learning through the other’s responses what parts of the body and types of sensations bring them the most pleasure (it’s kinda like what mindful sex encourages you to do). It’s a lot nicer than the typical response one gets from the average real-life human male, who often treats the vagina like some sort of foreign alien anatomy he doesn’t even wanna bother learning how to please.

As odd or otherworldly as Ice Planet Barbarians seems on the surface, what the fantasy is really exploring is actually a very normal female desire: Sex with a committed partner who’s very emotionally attuned to your needs and more concerned with your pleasure than their own. That sexual dynamic shouldn’t feel so foreign or fantastical, but unfortunately too many of us earthlings with vaginas, it does.

Vektal isn’t just sexy because he’s super tall, strong, protective, and biologically obsessed with Georgie’s pussy. He’s also a male who wasn’t raised in a culture that treats vaginas like they’re disgusting abominations.

The fantastical erotica that mainstream culture deems “normal” versus “weird” is pretty bafflingly arbitrary.

There’s even one TikTok that semi-ironically posits a take on Ice Planet Barbarians as subversive feminist literature because the alien men “exist only for the sexual pleasure of women.” I’m not sure if a gender-binary role-reversal of women treating men like dehumanized sexual objects really counts as “feminist” (and it isn’t what happens in the book, in my opinion). But it’s still a valid sentiment, which is that we rarely get to imagine many scenarios where our pleasure comes first. Certainly, this is not a series at all interested in being part of any highfalutin literary category. As Dixon’s literary agent told CNN, “This is literally a sci-fi book written for the female gaze. So what if it’s not highbrow literature? Women can rage against the patriarchy in their real lives, and then read about a fun fantasy world and be smart and complex enough to know the difference.”

Ice Planet Barbarians‘ approach to the breeding kink does get off on creating a fantasy world in which the female anatomy is highly valued as a beautiful, life-giving miracle. And that’s just a really nice change of pace from how IRL patriarchy devalues, disregards, and stigmatizes female genitalia and pregnancy.

In the end, the fact that we’re so scandalized by Ice Planet Barbarians says a lot more about our culture than it does about the author or readers who enjoy it. The fantastical erotica that mainstream culture deems “normal” versus “weird” is pretty bafflingly arbitrary when you think about it.

Explain to me why, for example, it’s more acceptable in pop culture to get off to the fantasy of a 150-year-old vampire — who watches his underage love interest sleep (at first without her consent) — in a relationship where the main source of sexual tension is his uncontrollable urge to slit her throat and drink her blood until she’s lifeless. I’m not trying to shame Twilight fans, who are also part of another wholesome TikTok subcommunity. But it’s more than a little hypocritical to treat fantasizing about sex with a consent-conscious humanoid alien equipped with a dual stimulation cock as “weirder” than fantasizing about sex with a sparkly homicidal vampire virgin who leaves his partner covered in bruises post-coitus.

But what I really love about Ice Planet Barbarians and the beautifully bizarre TikTok community that’s sprung up around it is just how unconcerned everyone is with justifying their pleasure to the skeptical and judgmental.

The series doesn’t need to have High Brow Literary Feminist Morals, because there is also inherent value to a thing that brings this much harmless fun and joy to a lot of women (though there are plenty of fans who aren’t women, too). It’s a book that at times almost seems to intentionally avoid seeking the approval of literary snobs or the typical (often male) sci-fi genre fans, or even the bookstore owners who begrudgingly stock it while quietly turning their noses up at anyone who buys it.

BookTok is a community that feels no guilt for its pleasures. But Ice Planet Barbarians remains the kind of title you need to give yourself permission to pick up. I, for one, will be holding my head high the next time I return to Barnes & Noble and ask for the second book with the sexy blue alien on the cover.

Twitter may never figure out how to handle account verification.

The micro-blogging platform announced Friday that it would once again pump the brakes on taking applications for account verification, the process by which accounts belonging to famous or otherwise noteworthy people can get a blue checkmark badge on their profile. Existing applications will still be reviewed, but anyone who wanted to ask Twitter for verification but hadn’t done so yet will have to wait an indefinite amount of time before applications are accepted again.

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While Twitter’s official statement didn’t list specific reasons for doing this beyond a vague call to improve the process, it’s not tough to figure out if you’ve been following along lately. Over the past month, Twitter was found to have verified both a fake account claiming to belong to novelist Cormac McCarthy and a number of obviously fraudulent bot accounts. These incidents called into question Twitter’s application process that had just been relaunched in May of this year. (Even during the years-long verification pause though, some folks, like CEO Jack Dorsey’s mom and ’80s band Whitesnake, still got a blue check.)

Twitter had already briefly suspended its new verification process a week after launch due to a high volume of requests. That’s not to mention one of many reasons it had to be relaunched in the first place: Back in 2017, Twitter’s previous verification mechanism bestowed a badge upon a notable white supremacist.

So yeah, needless to say, it’s been a bumpy road for a feature that’s merely intended to stem the tide of fake accounts for famous people. Twitter’s more open than ever before about how it chooses who gets verified, but now it needs to work on managing the deluge and blocking fakers. There may not be a perfect solution, but there has to be one that doesn’t easily let people impersonate someone as famous as Cormac McCarthy.

Looking for some stress to go with your stress?

We’re basically living in the end times (ask anyone on Twitter), so there’s no better time to test the limits of your entertainment consumption. For the adventurous among us, that means cranking the tension up to its maximum with the best of the best in heart-wrenching thrillers. (No, not the best horror movies — that’s a different list). From psychological scares to dystopian hellscapes, any movie on this list will have you truly on the edge of your seat. Just don’t marathon them (or do, we’re not your boss).

Here are the top 10 best thrillers on Netflix streaming now.

1. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie

Dear Breaking Bad fans, if you haven’t watched the series’ victory lap yet, what are you doing? Coming right after the events of the finale, El Camino has Jesse (Aaron Paul) setting out on the run from both the law and his troubled history. While this epilogue might be unnecessary, it remains a riveting entry into the Breaking Bad universe.

How to watch: El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie is streaming on Netflix.

2. Shutter Island

Martin Scorsese adapts Dennis Lehane’s novel in this mind-bending 2010 film. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Teddy Daniels, a U.S. Marshal visiting the titular island which houses patients in need of special psychiatric care. As Teddy and partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) investigate a missing patient, they grow suspicious of a larger, more sinister truth on the island. Scorsese sets it all against the ominous aesthetics of a thunderstorm, creating constant tension for the entire runtime while building to a killer reveal.

How to watch: Shutter Island is streaming on Netflix.

3. Nightcrawler

In this neo-noir thriller, Jake Gyllenhaal plays Lou, a man who begins recording Los Angeles’ late-night violence and selling his videos to a local news station. But how far is he willing to go for a gripping story? Nightcrawler’s narrative is eerie and sleek, carried almost entirely by Gyllenhaal’s effortless charisma.

4. Bird Box

Bird Box stars Sandra Bullock as a struggling survivor in a post-apocalyptic world dominated by mysterious entities that cause death upon being seen. Even though the audience, like the survivors, never actually sees the monsters that whittle away at the fantastic cast (Trevonte Rhodes, Sarah Paulson, and John Malkovich, oh my!), their presence looms large over the film’s horror-tinged thrills and twists.

How to watch: Bird Box is streaming on Netflix.

5. Cam

In this haunting Netflix original, Madeline Brewer portrays Alice, an ambitious webcam model working hard to nurture her flourishing career. But when a mysterious doppelgänger takes her place online and begins broadcasting without her, Alice begins to fear for her safety. Immensely intense and fabulously feminist, Cam is the perfect film when you want something closer to a horror movie.

How to watch: Cam is streaming on Netflix.

6. Velvet Buzzsaw

From Nightcrawler writer-director Dan Gilroy comes Velvet Buzzsaw, a hugely underrated comedic thriller with just a smidge of horror at its center. Jake Gyllenhaal stars alongside Rene Russo, Toni Collette, John Malkovich, and more in a satirical exploration of the cutthroat Los Angeles art scene that’s laugh-out-loud funny but still tense, and full of fun visuals. Come for the promise of Gyllenhaal playing an art critic convinced museum installations are coming to life; stay for Billy Magnussen playing a gallery worker who gets attacked by a barrel of oil-on-canvas monkeys. Yeah, it’s a fun one.

How to watch: Velvet Buzzsaw is streaming on Netflix.

7. Uncut Gems

Adam Sandler put his comedy skills on the back burner to play New York City jeweler Howard Ratner in 2019’s Uncut Gems. Stuck with debts he can’t afford to pay, Howard sets out to recover a rare black opal that will make up for the price tag on his nasty gambling addiction. This journey is both anxiety-inducing and interesting, revealing a surprising, more serious side of Sandler along the way.

How to watch: Uncut Gems is streaming on Netflix.

8. I Care A Lot

J. Blakeson’s film about a legal guardian (Rosamund Pike) who targets the elderly for profit isn’t a flawless movie — but it is a helluva ride. Marla (Pike) finds the perfect mark to send to a care home while dissolving her assets, but she didn’t bargain for her new charge’s crime boss son (Peter Dinklage). Pike delivers a performance as sharp as Marla’s lethal bob, while Dinklage clearly enjoys a role equal parts dangerous and amusing. Everything escalates as the two square off, with Marc Canham’s score dialing the stakes up to 100. If you love the journey regardless of the destination, you need this on your list.

How to watch: I Care A Lot is streaming on Netflix.

9. Good Time

From the geniuses behind Uncut Gems, Good Time is a panic-inducing nightmare movie that refuses to let up for any moment of its 101-minute runtime. Robert Pattinson stars as Connie, a criminal willing to do anything to get his vulnerable brother (co-director Benny Safdie) bailed out of a New York City jail. Heart-breaking and jaw-dropping, this character study will devastate you.

How to watch: Good Time is streaming on Netflix.

10. Andhadhun

Loosely based on the French short “L’Accordeur,” Andhadhun is a serpentine adventure starring Ayushmann Khurrana as a blind pianist, Aakash. What begins as a romance between Aakash and Sophie (Radhika Apte) takes endless twists before an admittedly deflated ending — but it’s well worth the ride. Andhadhun will keep you on the edge of your seat with each turn of the plot, never leading where expected.

How to watch: Andhadhun is streaming on Netflix.

This article was updated with recent picks on July 31, 2021.