SAVE $40: The Apple Pencil (2nd generation) is on sale for $89 at Amazon as of August 25. That’s a savings of 31%.

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When it comes to must-have peripherals for your iPad, you have the Magic Keyboard and the Apple Pencil. Both can transform your tablet into a powerhouse of a mobile workstation, but the Apple Pencil may very well be the most transformative of the two. And now that school is back in session, there’s no better time than the present to invest in an accessory that can make taking notes, staying organized, and enjoying some downtime a lot easier.

The second-generation Apple Pencil is now on sale for $89 at Amazon. That’s $40 off its usual price of $129 and a savings of 31%. If you’ve been in the market to finally get one for a while, you’ll want to snap one up before this price cut expires.

The Apple Pencil is legitimately fun to use and grants you plenty of versatility in the way you interact with your iPad. You can use it as a stylus to navigate, or you can use it to write, draw, and paint. There’s no discernible input lag as it glides smoothly across the screen, and it feels great in the hand. Plus, it pairs automatically and connects magnetically to the side of your iPad so it’s harder to misplace and easier to charge.

If you’re back in class or have kids in school who need something a little more powerful than a touchscreen for homework or research, the Apple Pencil is a great addition to the iPad.

SAVE $80: As of August 25, the Bose headphones 700 are on sale at Amazon for $299, down from $379.

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A high-quality pair of headphones can enhance all of your listening experiences. Whether you want to have great sound as you work, study, or catch up with friends, it’s smart to get the best headphones you can find. If you’ve been wanting to snag a pair of Bose wireless headphones, there’s a deal today that just might put them in your grasp.

As of August 25, the Bose headphones 700 (silver) are on sale at Amazon for only $299. That’s $80 lower than the asking price of $379 and will save you 21%. You can also get these headphones in black at the same price.

These wireless headphones are made with tilted ear cups and a stainless steel headband for maximum comfort. They offer up to 11 active noise-canceling levels so you can focus or let some sound in as you take walks. Bose designed these headphones to offer deep bass and crisp treble for an immersive experience.

A 20-hour battery life ensures you can enjoy your music and audio or take calls all day (and night) long. Busy folks will also appreciate features such as one-touch listening to Spotify (with iOS devices only for now), and the ability to sync to Alexa or Google Assistant for hands-free multitasking.

Bose headphones offer professional sound quality, which makes this deal worth checking out while it’s available.

It’s Friday, and while you’re pondering the actual octopus’ garden discovered this week, there’s another Wordle puzzle to solve. We’re here for you, as we are every day, with some tips and tricks to help you figure out the solution.

If you just want to be told today’s answer, you can jump to the end of this article for August 25’s Wordle solution revealed. But if you’d rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

Where did Wordle come from?

Originally created by engineer Josh Wardle as a gift for his partner, Wordle rapidly spread to become an international phenomenon, with thousands of people around the globe playing every day. Alternate Wordle versions created by fans also sprang up, including battle royale Squabble, music identification game Heardle, and variations like Dordle and Quordle that make you guess multiple words at once. 

Wordle eventually became so popular that it was purchased by the New York Times, and TikTok creators even livestream themselves playing.

Not the day you’re after? Here’s the Wordle answer for Aug 24.

What’s the best Wordle starting word?

The best Wordle starting word is the one that brings you the most joy. But if you like being strategic in your approach, we have a few ideas to help you pick a word that might help you find the solution faster. One tip is to select a word that includes at least two different vowels, plus some common consonants like S, T, R, or N.

What happened to the Wordle archive?

The entire archive of past Wordle puzzles used to be available for anyone to enjoy whenever they felt like it. Unfortunately, it has since been taken down, with the website’s creator stating it was done at the request of the New York Times.

Is Wordle getting harder?

It might feel like Wordle is getting harder, but it actually isn’t any more difficult than when it first began. You can turn on Wordle‘s Hard Mode if you’re after more of a challenge, though.

Why are there two different Wordle answers some days?

Though usually Wordle will only accept one correct solution per day, occasionally it has rebelled against the norm and deem two different answers acceptable. This is due to changes the New York Times made to Wordle after it acquired the puzzle game.

The Times has since added its own updated word list, so this should happen even less frequently than before. To avoid any confusion, it’s a good idea to refresh your browser before getting stuck into a new puzzle.

Here’s a subtle hint for today’s Wordle answer:

They’re getting warmer and that ain’t a good thing.

Does today’s Wordle answer have a double letter?

Not today!

Today’s Wordle is a 5-letter word that starts with…

Today’s Wordle starts with the letter O.

What’s the answer to Wordle today?

Get your last guesses in now, because it’s your final chance to solve today’s Wordle before we reveal the solution.

Drumroll please!

The solution to Wordle #797 is…

OCEAN.

Don’t feel down if you didn’t manage to guess it this time. There will be a new Wordle for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we’ll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

He’s scowling. His iconic hairdo is well-coiffed. And he’s under arrest. Former President Donald Trump actually had his mugshot taken and, of course, it is already all over the internet. ‘

Tweet may have been deleted

Trump has been indicted four times now, but the mugshot came from the case in Georgia where he is accused of attempting to overturn the state’s results in the 2020 presidential election. Other officials involved with the other cases declined to put the Republican frontrunner through the typical rigamarole people face when arrested — e.g. have their mugshot taken.

Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat said in the lead-up to Trump turning himself that the president would be afforded no such special privileges this go round.

“Unless someone tells me differently, we are following our normal practices,” Labat said, via NPR. “And so it doesn’t matter your status. We’ll have mug shots ready for you.”

Still, when Trump turned himself in on Thursday it was unclear if the mugshot would actually happen. People of all political persuasions awaited it eagerly, so much so that it was trending on X (FKA Twitter). Now that it’s here, it feels like a safe bet it’ll grace merch for both haters and supporters of Trump.

On Wednesday night, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson interviewed former president Donald Trump on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Now, Trump and his supporters are claiming that Carlson’s video has received hundreds of millions of views on Elon Musk’s social media site. That’s not the case.

“The Tucker Carlson Interview with me was a BLOCKBUSTER. Could hit 200,000,000 Views, and more!” Donald Trump posted on his social networking platform, Truth Social, on Thursday morning.

Trump later claimed that, at 230 million views, the Carlson video was now: “The Biggest Video on Social Media, EVER, more than double the Super Bowl!” (For context, the 2023 Super Bowl was watched by more than 115 million viewers.)

On Carlson’s interview post on X, the views metric displayed 236 million views, as of the time of publishing, since it went live 21 hours ago.

However, the metric on X is not how many views Carlson’s video actually received.

Mashable can report that, as of the publication of this article on Thursday evening, Carlson’s Trump interview has received 14.8 million video views on X. 

On X, it’s not entirely clear to most users what the views metric refers to — many people believe, falsely, that the video of Carlson’s Trump interview received 220 million views more than it actually received.

Why the discrepancy?

The views metric currently shown on X, displayed simply as “views,” are tweet views. 

This number shows how many impressions a tweet receives. An impression is counted when a user actively goes to the tweet page or when a tweet appears in a user’s timeline after being retweeted by another user. Views are also counted when a tweet shows up on a user’s timeline via the recommendation algorithm. As such, a single user can be counted multiple times in the view count.

On the other hand, video views, which are no longer publicly displayed on X, count the number of times a piece of media content is played on the platform —although there are a few addendums to this metric. A video view on X is counted if the media plays for two or more seconds. And, if a user attempts to scroll past a video, but more than 50 percent of the player is still visible on the screen for that time frame, a video view is still counted. Autoplays are counted as well. 

To break down what this means for Tucker Carlson’s Trump interview: The video itself was actually played only 14.8 million times, for at least two seconds of the more than 46-minute interview — or just over six percent of the total 236 million times someone saw the post on X.

As Mashable previously reported, under Musk, Twitter began removing the public video view count in May. The move came months after Musk added a “views” count metric to users’ tweets. For a time, tweets displayed both metrics, which led to confusion about how many views a video actually received. Users often used the higher, albeit inaccurate, tweet view number to make their content seem more popular. Twitter then decided to quietly remove the smaller, albeit more accurate, number from public display. The company never announced the removal of the metric or gave an official reason as to why it was removed.

However, some older Android versions of the Twitter app continue to display the public video view metrics on X. Mashable has access to such a version of the app and was able to pull this data from it.

How does Trump’s interview stack up on X?

Tucker Carlson made headline news when he launched a new show on Musk’s platform shortly after his sudden departure from Fox News in April. However, the show, Tucker Carlson on X, was seeing a continuous decline in views episode after episode for months before bringing on some big guests over the summer.

For example, in July, Carlson brought on controversial right-wing influencer Andrew Tate for an episode. As of publication, that video has 17.9 million views on X. It has 107 million tweet views, or impressions. 

This means that, with less than half the impressions Carlson’s Trump interview has received so far, his Tate interview has garnered over 3 million more video views. Carlson’s show on X routinely showed impressions of around five to six times more than the actual video views per episode. However, for Carlson’s Trump interview, the ratio of impressions to actual video views is nearly 17:1 

Carlson’s big Trump interview was promoted as counter-programming to Wednesday night’s first Republican primary debate of the year, one that the GOP frontrunner Trump skipped. Musk himself shared the interview with his more than 153 million X followers.

According to media reporter Brian Stelter, the GOP debate itself averaged 12.8 million viewers on Fox News and its online streams during the two-hour broadcast. And, of course, cable ratings are counted differently than online video views. That number is how many viewers were watching within an average minute of content.

Trump’s supporters, using X’s public view count data, have touted the Carlson interview as a big success. However, the real video view data – the numbers that Musk and company actively now hide from public view – paint a very different picture.

It’s never a bad time to love horror, but there’s certainly never been a better time for the genre. Not only are they box office no-brainers, but the dizzying number of choices for what you can watch on streaming screens will make you scream. Luckily, we’re here to help, with an equally impressive number of guides on which spooky, gory, and/or goopy flicks to watch on your service of choice.

If Shudder’s your main gal, we’ve got a guide for her. Netflix is dripping with nasty goodies, as are Hulu and Prime Video. What if you want to watch something kinda scary but not, like, too scary? Understood! And what if you’re in the mood for a creep show but feeling like a cheapskate? Hey, here’s some free horror.

And what if you’re in the mood for just an incredibly terrifying time? Well, “scary” is subjective, but I myself am a lifelong horror fanatic. I’ve been watching genre movies since I was a little monster myself, from gnarly exploitation and grindhouse films to black-and-white ethereal classics. After a great deal of thought, these are the 11 movies that still scare the absolute bejeezus out of me. Most likely, they will also inspire you to sleep with the lights on tonight. At the very least, you’ll have fun finding out!

11. Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971)

The title is a bit misleading; this one’s more of a slow burn than a roller coaster thrill ride, but its quiet and deliberate pace gets under your skin and stays there. The film follows Jessica and Duncan, a couple (played by Zohra Lampert and Barton Heyman) who have decided to move from New York City to an old house in the country after her release from a psychiatric institution. Accompanied by their friend Woody (Kevin O’Connor), they soon encounter unpleasant locals and a mysterious squatter (Mariclare Costello) who intends to seduce Jessica’s husband. (Woody’s right there!) Even worse, this flirtatious foe might be the vampiric spirit of a woman who drowned in the lake a century before. 

At the heart of this is Lampert’s brilliant performance as Jessica, who desperately wants to appear sane despite seeing and hearing some truly frightening things. Who could shake the image of a bedroom full of leering old men, or a woman at the bottom of a lake in a wedding dress? Are the dead coming for these outsiders? Is Jessica hallucinating? We’re never quite sure, thanks to ominous visuals and sound design, and the mystery lingers long after the credits. 

How to Watch: Let’s Scare Jessica to Death is available for rent or purchase on Prime Video, Apple TV, Microsoft, and Google Play.

10. The Changeling (1980)

The Changeling is a favorite of Guillermo del Toro and Martin Scorsese, and it’s easy to see why. The film utilizes eerie atmosphere, top-notch performances, and stealthy, lo-fi shocks. After all the jump-scare-filled haunted house flicks of recent years, it’s refreshing to be scared senseless by something as simple as a rolling wheelchair in an empty house. 

After his wife and daughter are killed in a horrific accident, New York composer John Russell (George C. Scott) rents a long-vacant Seattle mansion — but soon finds the house is as haunted as he is. He begins hearing strange noises and having visions, and then he finds a hidden room filled with cobwebs and children’s toys. As Russell uncovers the mystery of this uncanny abode, he finds himself up against a powerful politician, as well as more supernatural forces.

Peter Medak’s film proves that the most subtle scares are often the most effective. When you hear a boy’s voice on a tape recording of an earlier seance — one in which he had not been heard before — the hairs will stand up on the back of your neck.

How to Watch: The Changeling is streaming on Screambox and Peacock, and available for rent or purchase on Alamo on Demand, Prime Video, and Kino Now.

9. Night of the Living Dead (1968)

This is the film that launched a thousand shambling zombie movies. George Romero’s seminal work centers on a mysterious infection that brings the dead back to life to eat or infect the living, and a handful of strangers who are just trying to survive in an old farmhouse. At once a horror film, a meditation on societal breakdown, a chamber drama, and a tightly wrought thriller, this genre-defining film builds up an ever-present sense of dread that explodes in its last act, showing us things we never quite believed it would. More than a half-century later, it’s still shocking to see a little girl killing her mother with a trowel, or a vigilante mob indiscriminately shooting zombies and the living alike, or all those undead hands reaching through boarded-up windows. 

Romero changed the zombie game here, and not just because he featured a strong Black hero (Duane Jones’s brave Ben) in 1968. Later “infected” films often follow his template. A handful of them achieve the same level of shock; 2007’s Rec is pretty terrifying, to be fair. But there’s nothing quite like the growing feeling you get while watching Night of the Living Dead that, despite all filmic convention, these people might not get it together, rise to the occasion, or even survive the zombie apocalypse. And, let’s face it: Slow-moving zombies are the stuff of nightmares. 

How to watch: Night of the Living Dead is streaming now on Max, Starz, the Criterion Channel, and Peacock.

8. Possession (1981)

Some of the scariest horror stems from the breakdown in relationships between people. Such stories rarely get as intimate (or as gooey) as they do in Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession. Here, we witness a married couple (played by Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill) in West Berlin whose bond is crumbling because the wife is either having an affair, having a breakdown, or sleeping with a Lovecraftian terror from beyond that requires her to kill in order to sate its bloodlust. Or, most likely, all three. 

Increasing the weirdness quota, the story somehow also involves Cold War spies and mysterious doppelgängers. Possession is truly over the top from the start, reaching heights of hysteria that ultimately traumatized its stars. Adjani said in a 2002 interview (as quoted in Alison Taylor’s book Possession), “Possession was an unfeasible film, and what I did in that film was just as unfeasible… Despite all the awards, all the honors that have gone to me, never again a trauma like that, a nightmare!” For his part, Neill said (via IndieWire), “I call it the most extreme film I’ve ever made, in every possible respect, and he asked of us things I wouldn’t and couldn’t go to now. And I think I only just escaped that film with my sanity barely intact.”

Possession is also deeply upsetting for the viewer: an operatic and terrifying depiction of marital collapse and psychosis. In the end, no amount of couples counseling will help these people. The film leaves us feeling like we’ve been through a war and a breakup. So, it’s probably not a good pick for your next date night!

How to Watch: Possession is now streaming on Shudder and Metrograph at Home.

7. Ringu (1998)

You will be scared out of your wits by Ringu‘s infamous climax, if only because you’ll finally be seeing for yourself the deadly footage that serves as the film’s inciting event. But first, notice how ingeniously the film is constructed, building up to that terrifying ending. The first scene recounts an urban legend: Anyone who watches a mysterious videotape dies seven days later. A subsequent mysterious death sets journalist Reiko (Nanako Matsushima) on an investigation, in which every new detail she learns makes the situation stranger and worse somehow. The creepy video leads her to the legend (told through haunting flashbacks) of a malevolent child named Sadako (Rie Ino’o), who could scare people to death with her mind. Might she be doing her killing direct-to-video? Why is Reiko seeing a haunting man with a towel over his head popping into the real world? And what will she do now that her young son (Rikiya Ôtaka) has been urged by a ghost to watch the damned video too?

Ringu draws on Japanese traditions about onryō, vengeful spirits, as well a lurking fear also explored in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome and Prano Bailey-Bond’s Censor: What if there really was a video that could cause you serious harm by watching it? The low-budget aspects of the Japanese original (which was funded by director Hideo Nakato out of pocket) increase the sense of dread and the uncanny. And, finally, that climax, which involved reversing footage of Kabuki actress Rie Ino’o walking backward to show her crawling out of the screen, should keep you from turning on your screen for a week. 

How to Watch: Ringu is now streaming on Shudder and Screambox, and available for rent or purchase on Apple TV, and Alamo on Demand.

6. Session 9 (2011)

It helps a great deal that this film was shot in the abandoned Victorian–era Danvers State Hospital, a location that apparently terrified the cast and crew and looks like a place where nothing good ever happened. 

Gordon (Ken Loach regular Peter Mullan) is a cash-strapped contractor who works in asbestos removal, and he’s committed himself and his crew (David Caruso, Stephen Gevedon, Brandon Sexton III, Josh Lucas) to clean up an abandoned institution in one impossible week. Not only are they under the gun, but they’ve all been pretty stressed out lately — both in general and with each other. Mike (co-writer Gevedon) discovers a box of therapy session recordings that he gets the other guys to listen to; the patient seems to have had dissociative identity disorder and at least one somewhat homicidal alter. And the more they listen to these eerie, scratchy tapes, the more they themselves unravel.

Each of these working-class men has deep issues and scars, and someone (living or dead) seems to have gotten hold of a lobotomy pick with which to work through their problems on the others. The final outcome of this pressure-cooker setup is unsettling, gruesome, and deeply chilling. 

Who would have expected a low-budget, largely overlooked movie starring CSI and meme star David Caruso, from the director (Brad Anderson) of Next Stop Wonderland, to be so scary? 

How to Watch: Session 9 is available for rent or purchase on Prime Video, Google Play, and Apple TV.

5. The Descent (2005)

Whether it’s called the “submarine disease” or “cabin fever,” you know or can imagine the feeling — the irascible, uncontrollable panic felt when forced to spend time in cramped and isolated places. At the least, Neil Marshall’s film The Descent is a solid argument against ever going spelunking with your friends. 

Six female friends decide to do just that, as a way of renewing their friendship after Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) loses her husband and daughter in a car accident. Unfortunately, their guide Juno (Natalie Mendoza) leads them into an unexplored cave system. The entrance collapses, and things just go downhill from there. On top of their own mounting resentments, they come across ravenous, blind, cave-dwelling “crawlers.” Designed after the vampire Count Orlok (Max Schreck) in 1922’s Nosferatu, these crawlers have white, hairless bodies and very sharp teeth; they can crawl up walls, and they’re very, very hungry. 

Like all good horror films, The Descent sympathizes with its protagonists while being completely heartless in the punishment it puts them through. The original ending is even more brutal than the American-ized “happy” ending. But, whichever version you pick, if you’re not claustrophobic beforehand, you likely will be afterward. 

How to Watch: The Descent is now streaming on Max, and is available for rent or purchase on Redbox, Prime Video, and Apple TV.

4. The Exorcist (1973)

You don’t have to have been raised Catholic to be absolutely terrified by The Exorcist. The film centers on a household plagued by the Babylonian demon Pazuzu, who has possessed a young girl named Regan (an iconic Linda Blair). When Regan begins acting odd, her mom — a successful film actress played by Ellen Burstyn — takes her to all kinds of doctors, where she’s subjected to a battery of harrowing medical tests. At her wit’s end, atheist Chris (Burstyn) enlists the help of Catholic priests in a last-ditch attempt to help her daughter.

While based in a specific rite, the film is light on theology and heavy on dread and indelible images that disturb us on a level below conscious thought. Why do those early scenes of the elderly priest Lankester Merrin (Max von Sydow) on an archaeological dig in Iraq feel so much like a nightmare? Why is that dream image in which the priest Damien Karras (Jason Miller) sees his elderly mother rising up from the subway so terrifying? 

By the time we’re shown an innocent girl turned demonic and bruised, via Dick Smith’s brilliant makeup effects, our nerves are so rattled by all the ways the film has manipulated us that we fully expect to be subjected to something relentless. Which the film delivers. William Friedkin was a highly intuitive filmmaker who understood that, deep down, we’re all terrified of some unnamed evil coming for us. 

How to Watch: The Exorcist is now available for rent or purchase on Prime Video, Redbox, Apple TV, and Google Play.

3. Hereditary (2018)

It might be best to go into Hereditary cold, like I did, in order not to know the most shocking twists awaiting in Ari Aster’s brilliant debut. But even if you know what’s coming, it’s still deeply frightening. Because, if you follow the film’s logic, they never really had a chance. That’s what’s so scary: The family at its heart was cursed from the start by the grandmother whose funeral they attend in the opening scenes. 

The film draws on modern fears that certain mental illnesses could be inherited, as well as more classical tragedies in which characters struggle to escape their fates. In this case, even the innocent children (Alex Wolff and Milly Shapiro) cannot break free of the curse placed on the family by granny and the creepy cult to which she mortgaged their souls, through their mother Annie (Toni Collette). 

Hereditary‘s scares are both cerebral and visceral, including spontaneous combustion, self-mutilation, and people covered in insects. Few horror films make such optimal use of the entire frame, here a sort of Where’s Waldo? for spotting naked cultists and possessed parents. A scene in which a character can be spotted levitating menacingly in a very dark corner of the room brought audible gasps from the audience when I saw the film. But this terror is alway rooted in strong characters. Toni Collette’s performance, in particular, veering from agonized grief to terrifying rage, often in the same scene, should have gotten her an Oscar nod, at the very least.

How to Watch: Hereditary is now streaming on Max and Kanopy, and is available to rent or purchase on Apple TV and Prime Video.

2. Halloween (1978)

The genius of Halloween lies in its simplicity. It’s basically an extended chase scene in which a killer in a white rubber mask (famously, a spray-painted William Shatner mask) who has escaped from an institution slowly closes in on good-natured babysitter Laurie Strode (Academy Award-winner Jamie Lee Curtis in her screen debut).

Why does he do it? Because he’s evil. The film keeps it chillingly basic. But John Carpenter and Debra Hill get every detail right, from the fluid Panaglide camerawork to Hill’s pitch-perfect teen girl dialogue to the one direction — “Don’t act” — given to Nick Castle as The Shape, Michael Myers. And the final touch: Carpenter admitted he showed the film to a studio executive before music was added. She “wasn’t scared at all,” so he quickly wrote one of the most iconic scores in horror history. 

When I was in second grade, an older kid told me this was the movie that would scare the snot out of me, and decades later, I can admit he was not wrong. 

How to Watch: Halloween is now streaming on Shudder, and is available to rent or purchase on Prime Video and Apple TV.

1. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Horror movies can be seen as fairy tales for adults. Viewed this way, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a fable in which a group of children, lost in the Dark Forest, intrude upon the home of a beastly family that nearly gobbles them all up. 

Forget the witch’s house made of candy. Here, the furniture is made of bones, and characters are hung on meathooks, attacked with a chainsaw, and forced to feed their blood to a very elderly grandpa. Most terrifying of all is Leatherface, the hulking man-child who loves to get gussied up in human-skin masks and dance wildly in the sunlight with his running chainsaw. Live, laugh, massacre.

While macabre and darkly funny, this depiction of rural Texas cannibalism is absolutely nerve-shredding to watch on a big screen. Poor Sally (Marilyn Burns) is trapped in a farmhouse with a family of lunatic ex-slaughterhouse workers who want to have her for dinner. Director Tobe Hooper’s later horror stories were a bit overshadowed by his first, which is a shame because Poltergeist and Salem’s Lot are also scary as hell. But it’s hard to top a masterpiece that’s still terrifying nearly 50 years later. And no one has.

How to Watch: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is now streaming on Peacock and Shudder, and is available for rent or purchase on Prime Video and Alamo on Demand.

You may know Remi Cruz from her 10 years of vlogging as MissRemiAshten, or her “Cooking with Remi” series, or her podcast Pretty Basic which she co-hosts with bestie and fellow vlogger Alisha Marie. But in March, Cruz reached a new echelon of fame when Lana Del Rey referred to her as one of “the vloggers who got [her] through Covid” in an acceptance speech at the Billboard Women in Music Awards.

Del Rey had run into Cruz, Marie, and their friend Oli Abbas before the show and immediately started gushing about how much she loved their content. “I was like Lana knows what YouTube is?” Cruz tells Mashable over Zoom from her Los Angeles home. “The biggest thing for me is that she knows what Vlogmas is. Hearing the word ‘Vlogmas’ come out of Lana Del Rey’s mouth is something I never had on my bingo card, ever.”

Now, Cruz says, they’ll never get over it. “I will message [Marie and Abbas] and be like, ‘Don’t forget that that happened!’ We’ll be driving and listening to Lana and just be like, ‘Oh my god!,'” she laughs. “It’s crazy… On the way home [after meeting her] Oli was like, ‘I can die happily. Like if I die right now, I’d be OK.’ And I know he truly meant it.”

In this interview, we turn the tables on Cruz to get to know her favorite creators, K-pop idols, and icons.

1. Juicystar07, “a lot can happen in a few years…”

Mashable: When I saw this Juicystar07 video I thought, “Oh my god, Remi and I watched the same OG YouTubers.”

Cruz: She was the OG, she got me obsessed with YouTube. When I was in middle school, or very early high school, I was obsessed with her room tours, everything she did. I tried to scrunch my hair like hers — I had Asian, straight hair so I didn’t understand why it wouldn’t stay, but I would try every morning, every night. I followed all her tutorials. I’d decorate my room, moving my furniture to look like hers.

I watched her relentlessly for years and years and then she took a break. But she’s the one YouTuber that all of the friends I’ve met through doing lifestyle content are inspired by. Alisha, my best friend, and I always talk about her. Alisha’s the one that sent me the video with an all-caps, “OH MY GOD!” And so I had to watch immediately.

I’m interested to see where [Juicystar07] is gonna go from here because she is so OG YouTube and [in this video] she was very much like, “I know YouTube’s not really as poppin’ as it once was, maybe now I’ll do short-form.” I would love to see Juicystar on TikTok. 

In the video, she talks about falling out of love with content creation. I hear that from a lot of creators. But you’ve been hitting it so hard for years and seem to find some way through it, which is impressive.

Thank you so much! When I do [feel burnt out] I take it as a challenge to pivot and try different content which is why I really got into cooking. My main channel felt almost too broad; lifestyle is so broad that I could be doing a hair tutorial one day and then a room tour the next and while that’s fun, I didn’t feel like I had a niche to come back to and hone in on. So that was why I started “Cooking with Remi.”

I don’t get burnt out with vlogging specifically because it’s my everyday life, and I don’t really plan or filter anything. It just feels natural to me to grab the camera. It feels more unnatural to not grab a camera.

2. Maangchi, “Sweet and Sour Pork (Tangsuyuk: 탕수육)”

Maangchi is an iconic queen.

Iconic! Another OG. I have learned so many techniques and recipes from her. My parents are both of Korean descent, and my mom made a lot of Korean food staples.

Where I live now, I’m kind of far from any good Korean restaurant. So when I moved I was like “OK, I need to make it myself.” I watch Maangchi if I crave a certain dish, like this sweet and sour fried pork. We always ate it going out, so I’ve been learning how to make it myself. It’s one of my all-time comfort foods. She makes it with a technique that I never had even thought of before. I feel like she’s very innovative but traditional at the same time.

Which technique?

When she soaks the potato starch in water! I never even heard of doing that before, but I just trust her. She says to do it and I do it. It turns out great.

What are your other current cooking inspirations?

I love the OG Food Network people, like Rachael Ray and Ina Garten, who is a huge, huge one for me. And there’s just such a huge wave of TikTok creators who are doing very candid, in-the-moment cooking like “This is what I’m making for lunch.” I love Snack Queen. Emily Mariko is an icon also. I get a lot of inspiration from TikTok.

3. Disneyland Vlogs, “disneyland day with the girls (+ schultzzie vid behind the scenes)”

I’m from Anaheim so growing up, in middle school and high school, when my mom didn’t want to watch me she would just drop me off [at Disneyland]. That was like my babysitter [laughs].

I don’t want to say I’m a Disney adult because they scare me. But I love Disney and have that nostalgia of growing up there. I don’t like rides. I don’t like roller coasters. I don’t like going fast. I don’t like spinning. I just go for the food.

This vlogger, I’m just obsessed with her. She’s the one YouTuber that I will never miss a video [from]. I think she’s so cute. I like to say that she’s like me in a mom form, even though she’s younger than me [laughs]. It reminds me a lot of my life: She loves gardening [and] going to Target. I was like, this is the same life!

She has polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and I have PCOS. So when she was going through fertility struggles, I felt like I would resonate with that one day. I’ve been seeing this specialist and she was saying, “I see 20 people a day and every single woman will be completely different on the spectrum of PCOS.” There’s still so much research to be done.

When I chatted with the guys from Watcher, we also struggled with the label “Disney adult.”

I have some Disney adult friends, and I have friends that are so against them. We get into some heated conversations at dinner. I feel like I’m very neutral. I’m like, “Let people have what makes them happy.” I’m not one to judge, but I do think sometimes it can just be a little intense.

Honestly, I feel like I fall into Disney adult things sometimes. I’ll wear a pair of ears always. I’ll usually get a sweatshirt if I get cold, but I only wear it at the park, not outside. I guess I am a Disney adult to a degree.

4. Strictly Dumpling, “NEW #1 Best LOBSTER BRUNCH BUFFET in Las Vegas! Review of M Resort STEAKHOUSE Bruch Buffet”

I love his energy, and it perplexes me how he can eat so much and be so fit. His metabolism is crazy. Every time I watch him I’m like, “How? How?” I’ve been watching him on and off for quite a few years and then more recently, I’ve been binging. I don’t miss a video.

I love Mikey because, for instance, when we went to Japan we looked up every restaurant that he went to and went to a majority of them. I think he has quality recommendations, and I just like watching his face. He seems so happy. It’s not over the top. It’s just perfect, where you know he’s not lying. 

My boyfriend always wants to watch some action movie and I want to watch a romcom, and this [channel] is the one thing we can both agree on. So we’ll sit there and watch that or the Try Guys’ “Keith tries everything.”

What’s one Mikey recommendation you remember?

Anytime I go anywhere I look up where he ate. He gave me my best New York bagel recommendation: Brooklyn Bagel and Coffee Company. I went recently and bought 48 bagels and brought them home for my family. I brought a second bag to bring them back and went to CVS and bought gallon bags and sat in my hotel room bagging them up [laughs]. The bagel suitcase weighed more than my suitcase of shoes, makeup, and clothing. But it was so good. I gave them to my mom and my aunt and my friends when I got home. My bags still smells like everything bagel seasoning.

5. First We Feast, “TWICE Break Down Their Favorite Snacks | Snacked”

I’m a hardcore Once [fan of Twice]. I actually just went to MetLife to see their concert. That’s why I got the bagels! I was there for the concert. I’ve only been a Once for maybe a year or so, so I missed their last tour. I made sure I got to New York for the last show [this year]. It was incredible. I didn’t realize that MetLife is outside, and it was like 90 degrees with 85 percent humidity. My body was drenched. And I was like, “If I’m miserable, I can’t imagine how hot and tired the girls are.”

I’ve been into K-Pop for as long as I’ve been into YouTube, but I always like go through waves where I’m obsessed and then I fall out of love. I have to really get into it to become obsessed with them. I need to be on their bios knowing who’s the leader and what their signs are. It’s an investment.

I think I’m in it for the long haul now. I began with Wonder Girls, and then I was obsessed with Girls’ Generation. I was like really into Sistar when they were around. When they disbanded, I cried really hard. I love Le Sserafim and (G)I-DLE. I love NewJeans. I’m really into XG now.

XG’s synchronization is mind-blowing! I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Who’s your Twice bias?

Jeongyeon. I switch all the time, but I always go back to her because I just love her so much. She seems so sweet. I feel so connected to her. The reason I watched this video recently is because I’m doing a video on my channel where I’m eating like Twice for a week. I’m going to Korea in September. I want to see one of them on the street. I know I won’t, but I want to.

Elon Musk’s company SpaceX discriminated against refugees and asylees between 2018 and 2022, according to a complaint filed Wednesday by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The complaint alleges that SpaceX, which designs, manufactures, and launches rockets and spacecraft, wrongly discouraged and rejected applicants who were refugees and asylees.

While the complaint doesn’t speculate whether SpaceX’s policy was an unintentional or willful misinterpretation of federal law, it states that the company falsely told prospective applicants it could only hire U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, sometimes referred to as green card holders.

SpaceX explained that “export control laws” imposed such a requirement, then rejected refugee and asylee applicants as a result. But the company’s claim was untrue, according to the complaint.

The DOJ has asked that the administrative law judge overseeing the case order SpaceX to, among other actions, cease and desist its “illegal” hiring practices, pay a civil penalty for each individual discriminated against, hire victims of its discriminatory practices, and provide back play plus interest to applicants who were qualified for a role but were rejected because of their citizenship status.

A press release issued by the DOJ urges potential victims to contact the federal agency for more information.

“Asylees and refugees have overcome many obstacles in their lives, and unlawful employment discrimination based on their citizenship status should not be one of them,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in the release.

“Through this lawsuit we will hold SpaceX accountable for its illegal employment practices and seek relief that allows asylees and refugees to fairly compete for job opportunities and contribute their talents to SpaceX’s workforce.”

SpaceX had not publicly responded to the complaint at the time of this article’s publication.

The government’s complaint alleges that SpaceX and some of its employees, including founder and CEO Elon Musk, falsely claimed in public that applicants had to be a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident.

After SpaceX failed to respond to the government’s investigation, which it launched in 2020, the DOJ subpoenaed the company to obtain previously requested documents.

Investigators found that, in addition to false public statements, SpaceX’s internal hiring practices were also discriminatory.

Between September 2018 and May 2022, the company used a database that allowed recruiters to see applicants’ self-identified citizenship or immigration status, according to the complaint. During that time period, the complaint alleges, SpaceX officials repeatedly rejected multiple candidates using a code indicating that they weren’t authorized to work at the company when, in fact, they were.

Gaming’s biggest surprise hit of 2023 will come to Xbox consoles this year, after all.

In a series of tweets on Thursday, Larian Studios head Swen Vincke confirmed that the much-heralded Baldur’s Gate 3 will indeed hit Xbox Series X and S later in 2023. PC gamers got access to the Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG first in early August, and the PlayStation 5 version of Baldur’s Gate 3 is set to launch on Sept. 2. Whether the game would arrive at all for Xbox players had been the subject of much contemplation for months, but now we know it’s actually happening.

Tweet may have been deleted

There are a couple of concerns to note here. One is that no definitive release date was given. Presumably Larian won’t launch on Xbox at the same time as its quickly-arriving Playstation 5 release date, given how close Thursday’s announcement is cutting it.

Much more pressing is the lack of local, split-screen co-op play on Xbox Series S. Per a July tweet from another Larian employee, getting local co-op to work on the less powerful of the two Xbox consoles proved to be such a big headache that it held up the Xbox release entirely. That’s not a problem anymore, per Vincke, but it does mean the cheaper Xbox won’t get that feature at all.

Tweet may have been deleted

That’s a bit of a bummer for people who opted for the $350 Series S as their gateway into the next generation of gaming. So far, some Xbox games have been downgraded visually for the Series S, but major gameplay features typically don’t get cut to make a game run on the cheaper console. It may be a first for Baldur’s Gate 3, but here’s hoping it won’t happen very often going forward.

Looking for a new streaming solution? Select Amazon Fire TV streaming devices are on sale now. Here are the best Amazon Fire TV streaming device deals as of August 24, just in time for the return of fall TV.

• BEST FIRE TV STICK: The Fire TV Stick 4K Max packs WiFi 6 and 40% more streaming power into a small package — $26.99 $54.99 (save 51%)

• BEST BUDGET FIRE TV STICK: The Fire TV Stick is a budget pick that can handle all your streaming needs and more — $24.99 $39.99 (save 38%)

• BEST FIRE TV SPLURGE: The Fire TV Cube is the most powerful Fire TV device Amazon has to offer, with WiFi 6 support and an octa-core processor — $119.99 $139.99 (save 30%)

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Looking for a new streaming device? You’ve got several choices, like Roku, Google’s Chromecast, or Amazon’s Fire TV lineup. Their streaming sticks and other devices are great options for just about any user. They’re super easy to set up and they also go on sale pretty often — like right now!

As of August 24, there are several Fire TV streaming devices on sale for up to 51% off. You can snag the latest and greatest addition to the line, the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, for just $26.99. You could also opt for the Fire TV Stick or the Fire TV Cube.

Whether you’re gearing up for a movie marathon or just want an easier time streaming your favorite shows, now’s a great time to bring home a Fire TV Stick and start your next binge-watching sesh.

Best Fire TV Stick

Why we like it

The Fire TV Stick 4K Max comes packing 40% more streaming power and WiFi 6, which makes it the best of the Fire TV offerings. While it’s usually a bit more cost-prohibitive than the other models in the line (but barely more than a regular Fire Stick today), it’s well worth the extra cash with improved navigation, support for 4K Ultra HD, Dolby Vision, HDR, HDR10+, and Dolby Atmos audio. Plus, it can connect to your Echo smart home devices.

Best budget Fire TV Stick

Why we like it

The Fire TV Stick is a great base streaming option for just about anyone. Amazon says the latest model is 50% more powerful than its previous generation and it offers full HD streaming, so whether you’re watching Love is Blind or The Super Mario Bros. Movie everything looks crisp and colorful. However, if a couple of bucks doesn’t matter too much to you, it’s best to grab the Fire TV Stick 4K Max (above) over this model while they’re both on sale.

Best Fire TV splurge

Why we like it

The Fire TV Cube is the fastest Fire TV device you’ll find. It boasts an octa-core processor that Amazon claims is two times as powerful as the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, with 4K HD and Dolby Vision, HDR, and Dolby Atmos support. It also supports WiFi 6. Not only can you control streaming services with it, but it comes with a built-in mic and speakers so it can be used as a media hub as well. It’s by far the priciest of the Fire TV options, but well worth it if you want the best of the best.