There’s no lack of outsized, growing problems for humanity.

So we certainly don’t need any news sites twisting the truth about the looming menace of colossal asteroids supposedly coming to threaten Earth. Yet, it’s happening again. “A ‘potentially hazardous’ asteroid more than twice the size of the Empire State Building will make close pass by Earth,” wrote CBS Tuesday morning. We’ll spare you the other misleading headlines.

What the headlines don’t say is that a well-documented asteroid will pass some 1.2 million miles from Earth on Tuesday. It won’t skim or buzz by Earth. It’s not nearly an imminent threat. It’s not something NASA will warn society about. And if the space agency was concerned enough to issue a warning, such an announcement would be unprecedented.

“We have never actually issued a warning,” NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer, Lindley Johnson, told Mashable last year.

Astronomers have followed the latest asteroid in question, asteroid 1994 PC1, for decades. Of the thousands of known asteroids the space agency follows, zero pose a threat for a long, long time.

“FACT: There is no known threat from any asteroid for at least the next 100 years,” NASA tweeted last week, in hopes of defeating sensationalism about asteroid 1994 PC1.

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What to actually be concerned about

The significant asteroid threats are from the ones astronomers haven’t yet found. For example, a sizable space rock (some 187 to 427 feet wide) surprised scientists in 2019. It came unsettlingly close, within about 45,000 miles of Earth.

Fortunately, your taxpayer dollars are hard at work sleuthing out these unknowns in our solar system. Astronomers have already detected over 27,000 near-Earth objects (space rocks in Earth’s solar system neighborhood closer than some 28 million miles away), and have discovered some 1,500 each year since 2015. 

Rocks larger than 460-feet wide — enough to cause at least major regional destruction — are particularly concerning. As of Jan. 13, 2022, nearly 10,000 of an estimated population of some 25,000 of these 460-foot-plus near-Earth objects have been found.

In the coming decades, finding the rest of these objects is critical. Then we can prepare for a potential impact.

“We need to be able to find these things early,” Cathy Plesko, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who researches asteroid impacts, told Mashable last year. “We’re getting there, but we’re not there yet.”

How would you know a serious asteroid was really a threat?

You can read all about that possible scenario in this Mashable story.

But here’s the short version: If NASA detects a potential impact — something larger than around 30 feet across (10 meters) with a greater than one percent chance of hitting Earth — the U.S. government will issue warnings.

And you wouldn’t just hear from NASA. National leaders, such as those in the White House, would communicate with the public.

“At that point, the White House takes the lead on new information being released,” NASA’s Johnson explained. “It becomes a national emergency event.” Crucially, this information will include what, exactly, is likely to happen. Will it probably explode in the sky, or will it collide with a region on Earth? Should you stay home? Will it likely land in the ocean?

What if scientists find an asteroid destined for Earth?

The good news is it’s quite unlikely a behemoth — a catastrophic object half-a-mile wide or larger — will come out of nowhere and destroy huge swathes of our humble blue planet. Astronomers have already located over 90 percent (and counting) of this giant class of space rock.

But if scientists locate a rock (say 200 feet wide or larger) that’s on an imminent course to harm Earth’s inhabitants in the future (say at least a few decades), we may have the ability to deflect such an object.

In November 2021, NASA launched its DART mission. It’s an unprecedented experiment to see how civilization could alter the path of a menacing asteroid, should one be on a collision course with our planet.

The DART spacecraft will hit the 525-foot-wide asteroid Dimorphos on around Oct. 1, 2022. Scientists will observe if we move the rock enough to change its trajectory.

Stay tuned. And avoid killer asteroid hype. One unknown day in the future, a real warning will come.

A zero-emission propulsion system powers this water shuttle that can be used to cut down congestion in cities, or carry freight.

Google Assistant has switched up its ambient white noise track, replacing the sound with a shorter, quieter clip. It’s caused an unexpected change in many users’ bedtime routines, and people aren’t happy.

Available on Google’s smart speakers and Android phones, Google Assistant is equipped with the ability to play a variety of ambient sounds, including rain, a fireplace, the ocean, and white noise. People typically use such sounds as soothing background noise when writing, sleeping, or otherwise avoiding being alone with their thoughts.

However, last week users discovered that Google Assistant’s white noise clip has been changed. Rather than the familiar hour-long track that many have grown accustomed to, asking Google Assistant to play white noise now surfaces a quieter 10-minute track. And while it does loop, some have found the break noticeable.

While it may seem like a minor problem in the grand scheme of things, the unexpected change has caused significant disruption for some — especially harried parents who used Google Assistant’s white noise to get their children to sleep. Unhappy users have taken to Reddit, Twitter, and the Google Nest Community forums to complain, sharing tales of bedtime meltdowns and requesting the sound they know and love be reinstated. 

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The official Made by Google Twitter account has stated that they “don’t have any details to share about why the white noise sound of the Google Home was changed,” but are aware of the complaints and are gathering more information from users. It has also asked users for the “exact command structure” they’re using when requesting white noise, indicating that this may not have been a deliberate change.

Mashable has reached out to Google for comment.

In the meantime, a Reddit user has uploaded a copy of Google Assistant’s original white noise track to Google Drive, helping out stressed parents searching for a soothing substitute sound.

After one of the most rip-roaring, obsession-worthy debut outings in modern TV memory, Yellowjackets Season 1 has come to a close.

On Sunday, Showtime aired “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi,” the epic survival horror series’ tenth and (for now) final episode. We went into the finale with a mountain of theories and questions, then somehow left with even more. Luckily, Yellowjackets Season 2 has already been greenlit so we can plan to talk mysterious antler queens, non-existent books clubs, and vicious pet birds again in the not-so-distant future.

But the promise of more Yellowjackets won’t necessarily make the wait for more Yellowjackets any easier. So we sat down with showrunner and executive producer Jonathan Lisco, known for Halt and Catch Fire and Animal Kingdom, to pick his brain (read: beg for clarity) about our favorite new show. There’s lots to read into, so we’re presenting basically everything he told us.

Game on, theorizers. And as always: Buzz, buzz.

The following interview has been edited only for length and clarity.

On joining the Yellowjackets team

Executive producer Karyn Kusama let me know about the project. Karyn and I go way back. She directed a Halt and Catch Fire for me, when I was running Halt and Catch Fire. Cut forward to a year and a half ago.

She said, “Jonathan, I’ve directed something that I think has got potential. But more importantly, I’m working with these two married series creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, who are your kind of people and you are going to love. You’ve got to meet them and read the script.” I said, “You know, Karyn, I’m in a deal and I’m probably not able to do it.” She says, “Just meet them and read the script.” So I read the script.

To quote the writer Jorge Luis Borges: “Art is algebra plus fire.” I read the pilot script that Ash and Bart wrote, and it was algebra in the sense that it was perfectly constructed and well put together. But it also had that ineffable quality, that right-brain thing that just is beyond logic that pulls you in by the lapels and doesn’t let you go.

From that point, I felt like, “This is a show I really have to work on.” So I met [Ash and Bart] and [Karyn] was absolutely right. Her instincts were good. We had an immediate love fest, which doesn’t mean we agree all the time, but these were the kinds of people that I could become fast friends with and trust and collaborate with. So I became their partner and we decided to go on this crazy journey together.

On working with Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson

I don’t want to speak for Ash and Bart, but they certainly had their reservations when they heard about me because this was their baby and they’d been working on it for three years with the other executive producers, Karyn and Drew Comins. It was like, “Who’s this guy who’s coming in, and why would we need this?”

But with great respect to Ash and Bart who are super talented and very capable, I know running a TV show is a whole thing unto itself. Writing is one thing. But I remember from when I ran my first TV show that you sort of go from being a writer to being the CEO of an airline, metaphorically speaking, because it is a huge entity. Since then, the three of us have formed this triumvirate. We call ourselves JAB: Jonathan, Ashley, and Bart.

The three of us genuinely run the show together in the sense that we reach consensus on almost every decision. When I say that, I’m talking about the 67th iteration of the VFX shot, the hairstyles, the costumes, the music, the scripts. When we disagree, what’s great about it is, we’ll bring that disagreement back to the writer’s room and an even better idea will come.

When that better idea comes, to go back to the Borges analogy, it’s fire. Most people feel it immediately, and we say, “That’s the most compelling and riveting story. We’re doing that.” It comes from a lot of work, a lot of banging your head up against the wall, and a lot of walking down the wrong roads. That’s why you need to trust your collaborators. Because when you’re in a writer’s room, it’s got to be a best idea room.

On reading fan theories and seeing the show find its audience

It’s been very humbling. People always say, “Oh, if you create and run a show that takes off, won’t that be a great thing?” But the truth is that it’s also very stressful. As our very enthusiastic audience — and I say this with great respect to them — starts to allow the narrative to mushroom in their own consciousness and goes on flights of fancy with their own theories, it’s no longer just your show. Then, it’s everybody’s show.

But there’s no multiverse here; we’ve got to make decisions. So we can’t hit everyone’s theory palpably and perfectly each time. Ultimately, we have to hear all that, absorb it, respect it, love it genuinely, and then look at each other and say, “What are our instincts telling us?” We hope that the audience that’s being so gripped by the show will go on the ride with us as we knock ideas around and decide what the most compelling narrative is.

On Shauna and Jackie’s tragic friendship

Some people may disagree with the way in which we dispatch Jackie. Some people may say like, “Oh, I thought they were going to eat her!” or whatever. They may have their ideas for what they wanted to have happen. But we’re not just about the concrete plot. We’re about the emotional and psychological plot first.

So when we were looking at that storyline and everything that we built, we looked at the relationship between Shauna and Jackie — which was ultimately about repeated rupture and repair, one living in the other’s shadow, jealousy, and resentment, but also deep love for one another — we asked ourselves, “Wouldn’t it be the most satisfying if it’s not like she was murdered or they ate her, but rather a tragic accident occurs because of their mutual stubbornness?” They have this fight, which is truthful and organic. Then, just because neither one of them can utter a single word of apology because they’re both so fucking stubborn, Jackie freezes to death in the woods.

That’s one of those moments of revelation where we’re like, “That is the story” because there’s no other burden as deep and as traumatic for Shauna to carry into the 2021 storyline as that. If she had just gone out and given an olive branch to her best friend, she could have avoided her death. So to us that felt very rich and very real. We didn’t just want to go for the shock value of an event in the show, because we’re not just about incident sensationalism or shock value.

It’s been interesting to us that the audience initially started out saying that the show was very brutal. We don’t deny that it has its brutal moments, but we certainly weren’t attempting to make a merely savage show. We were attempting to make a very specific show about characters under great duress. We were trying to make a show about true freedom and its consequences in the woods, as the social conventions come down and this social hierarchy devolves. We weren’t trying to shock people. Yes, sometimes it’s shocking because in order to give you this reality of what they’re going through then we have to show you some of the truth of what they’re experiencing.

But with the Jackie of it all, we weren’t just trying to shock and surprise. These surprises in the show have to feel gripping, but also inevitable and like they emanate from the DNA of the relationships in the show. So we think that was a really moving storyline and we hope the audience agrees. That said, for those who don’t and for those who would’ve liked to see something a bit more bloody in that moment, our dearest apologies. But we’re always going to kick the tires on these storylines and do what we thinks serves the characters and the ultimate narrative the most.

On Taissa’s dark side and surprise election victory

You could back up from the 30,000 foot view and say, “Oh, they’re trying to make a comment about politicians, how bad politicians are, and how two-faced they are” because Taissa’s got this alter ego. That’s an easy thing to do. That’s not necessarily what we’re trying to do.

What is more interesting to us is Taissa is someone who is so driven, so type A and ambitious, that for the longest time she’s been trying to suppress — if not repressing unconsciously — this alter ego, this dark force within her. When we began the story, she wasn’t even aware that she was the lady in the tree, right? She wasn’t aware that she was who Sammy was seeing out his window or that this sleepwalking-channeled trauma was still plaguing her in 2021. Now, the question is: Did she really not know it?

Once we go through the arc of her season and reach that beautiful shot, where Taissa has that look of reckoning and understanding on her face as she is realizing that she has this altar in her house just as Simone discovers it, I think what we’re asking is, “Should we be really worried about her now?” Because now Taissa is seeing the advantages of having this dark alter ego, whereas before she was thinking it was merely a bad thing. But now moving into Season 2, is it something that she could selectively tap into to achieve certain things in her life?

That’s very terrorizing because she’s also going be a state senator. So what lies ahead for a person like that, who actually has the ability to tap into — almost on a habitual, selective basis — a true darkness? A darkness that some of us can’t even understand based on the trauma that she went through in the woods?

On Lottie and that bear

Lottie was always a potential super secret weapon. I say “potential super secret weapon” because when you’re making a TV show, of course you have great plans for how things are going to go. But you also have to open yourself up to the feedback loop of television. It’s like when you’re trying to create a great romance, but then realize that the two actors have no chemistry on screen. What do you do you, right? So we wanted to see how the ensemble gelled before we actually made the decision [to have Lottie play a major role].

But from the very beginning, we thought Lottie could be a seminal character because one of the themes of the show is to play with the question of “What is the supernatural?” You could be walking in the woods and feel an energy beyond yourself and be really scared that something’s going to come out of the brush. You picture some terrible monster, some unspeakably terrible thing that’s lurking in the darkness. But then, it turns out that it’s just dark.

Where does that energy come from? Is that produced by the ones and zeros in our neurotransmitters in our heads? Or is there an actual darkness that is plaguing these young women? The question of whether the supernatural emanates from forces external to them or from forces within them is something that we’re exploring in the show.

Now, take Lottie. Lottie is someone who we know was on meds for some kind of mental illness [when the plane crashed] and ostensibly has been suffering from mental illness for a long time. She’s now a person who’s run out of her meds and is under great duress in the woods. She’s also a quiet type who internalizes people’s emotional states. She’s very absorptive, very keenly observant. So as we started to watch the ensemble gel, we thought, “Lottie is the kind of person who could start to have an energy that affects the other people in an almost supernatural way.”

Is there an actual darkness that is plaguing these young women?

That’s what we tried to achieve when the bear came into frame. That scene is also based on science, right? If you approach a wild animal and you exude no fear — and when I say no fear, I don’t just mean your affect; I mean, you’re not giving off the pheromones and chemicals of fear — that animal might not attack you. Because the animal thinks, “I’m being met by an equal, or at least a force that I understand.” What we’d love in that moment is for you, the audience to think, “She’s got a gift. She’s somehow supernaturally channeling a darkness, and that’s why she was able to stab the submissive bear.” But in fact, maybe it’s just that she approached the bear in a way that the bear is rarely approached by a human being.

Therefore the bear got down on its haunches and she stabbed it. The idea of two different explanations for the same thing — these two pistons running simultaneously — is something which we’re going to continue to explore in the show.

On “Misty Fucking Quigley”

One of the main things we love about Misty is that there’s a wish fulfillment quality to her arc. Over the course of Season 1, Misty realizes, “Oh my god, I’ve been so brutalized through my adolescence that things are changing for me now that I’m out here. A lot of the skills that I have actually become indispensable. I’m actually being Seen with a capital S for the first time in my life.” I think what people are identifying in Misty is someone who has no boundaries because she’s a bit of a sociopath.

But the idea that you would just do anything you could to make things better and be seen and be valued as an adolescent is something that I think everyone can identify with. It was so gratifying to me that when she rips the wires out of the tracker at the end of that episode 2, you’re like, “What are you doing? This is the only chance you have for rescue!” Then at the same time, you kind of get it because for the first time in Misty’s life, the other girls are actually seeing her for who she is and valuing her. By the end, I would just ask you this question — and I’m not trying to be cagey here — but it’s very interesting to us as writers that she shows up as one of the acolytes as Lottie is placing the bear heart on the altar at end of episode 10.

Because a lot of our viewers will say like, “What’s Misty doing there?” Misty hasn’t really been talking about the darkness, but Van has been. Van has been sort of infected by this idea that there’s a supernatural quality of what’s happening here, but Misty hasn’t been. So I think one interesting thing to play with in Season 2 will be whether Misty is truly becoming an acolyte of said darkness, or whether she’s seeing which way the wind is blowing and deciding strategically that it makes more sense to be here with Lottie today, as opposed to with the other girls in the cabin. So I think that’ll be an interesting thing that’s kind of plastic for us to play with heading into Season 2.

On Natalie and her lavender-wearing abductors

One of the hallmarks of the show is to ask the question of whether or not trauma defines us, and whether we can ever escape the shackles of the trauma that we experience in our younger years, right?

So the idea that after everything you’ve seen in the woods so far comes back to haunt the Yellowjackets in 2021 with these weird lavender-wearing people who come in with that symbol around their neck and then they take Natalie…It doesn’t take a genius to suggest that whatever started in the woods, whatever dark forces are going to be dramatized in the course of Season 2, never really died there. They are still alive and with some of the survivors in 2021. Maybe they’ve just been on a slow simmer, but now as we move forward in subsequent seasons, it’s really going to explode and become more vivid.

For too many Americans, Martin Luther King Jr. Day starts and ends on social media. It’s a disturbing fact that Bernice King, the civil rights leader’s youngest daughter, knows too well. 

“Tomorrow, there will be people tweeting about my father and #MLKDay who are complicit in, complacent about, and/or a part of cultivating some form of injustice,” King warned her Twitter followers on the eve of the national holiday.

As King predicted, #MLKDay began trending first thing Monday. But the real story was on the streets of Washington, D.C. where hundreds of activists marched to protect the voting rights of Black and brown Americans. The event, which doubled as the annual D.C. Peace Walk, marked a peak moment of visibility for the ongoing Deliver for Voting Rights campaign.

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“We’re working to restore the very voting rights protections my father and countless other civil rights leaders bled to secure,” said King’s eldest son Martin Luther King III, who marched with his wife Arndrea Waters King and 13-year-old daughter Yolanda Renee King (via NBC News). “We will not accept empty promises in pursuit of my father’s dream for a more equal and just America.”

Demonstrators marched over D.C.’s Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge to symbolize the importance of the federal government committing to voting rights in the same way it committed to a bipartisan infrastructure package last November. The campaign calls on President Biden and Congress to end the filibuster (a legislative delaying tactic rooted in Jim Crow era governance); as well as pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Democrats hope to pass the latter later this week.

Legislators’ reluctance to take up the cause, as well as a Supreme Court ruling from last year that significantly undermined the Black and brown right to vote, continues to alarm contemporary civil rights leaders. Suffice to say: Half-baked promises to do better, let alone the kind offered once a year on social media, are no longer cutting it. 

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Virtue signaling online, Bernice King continued in her Sunday Twitter thread, “That’s to be expected, and not just regarding voting legislation. There will be people who are complicit in bombing children tweeting. There will be people who are complacent about poverty tweeting. There will be people who cultivate the Prison Industrial Complex tweeting. And so on.” 

King urged supporters of her father and family to not get “caught up” in the disingenuous churn and instead push for sustainable change. 

“Please take some time to study what my father taught about the Triple Evils of Racism, Militarism, and Poverty (Extreme Materialism). And what he taught about the Beloved Community and Nonviolence,” King continued. “Please be a part of a worldwide coalition for justice.”

You can learn more about the Deliver for Voting Rights campaign and Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy through The King Center for Nonviolent Social Change.

There’s no love lost between Justice League cast members and Joss Whedon. The director who took over the project from Zack Snyder has been accused of racism, threats, and generally being a pain to work with from the likes of Ray Fisher, Gal Gadot, and Ben Affleck. That’s not all. Charisma Carpenter and Michelle Trachtenberg also came forward about his alleged bad behavior on the sets of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel. Now, Whedon has broken his silence in a revealing interview. 

New York Magazine‘s profile piece goes into a broad spectrum of allegations against Whedon, ranging from cheating on his former wife to bullying a female screenwriter to the point of crying on the job. He refutes some allegations and makes excuses for others. Was there a rule on the Buffy set that Whedon would not be allowed alone in a room with the 16-year-old Trachtenberg? Not that he recalls. Was he hostile to Carpenter? He admits, “I yelled, and sometimes you had to yell. This was a very young cast, and it was easy for everything to turn into a cocktail party.” 

He’s less vague when it comes to Justice League. 

Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot had previously recounted how Whedon had threatened her career when they got into disagreements about his reshoots of Snyder’s original project.

Whedon told New York Magazine, “I don’t threaten people. Who does that?” He went on to suggest that maybe his meaning was lost in translation, saying of the Israeli actress, “English is not her first language, and I tend to be annoyingly flowery in my speech.” 

Reached for comment, Gadot responded, “I understood perfectly.” 

As for Fisher, the actor cast as Cyborg has accused Whedon of anti-Black racism in the writer/director’s approach to the superhero character. On Twitter, Fisher has also described Whedon’s behavior toward the cast and crew as “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable.”

Whedon says none of Fisher’s claims were “either true or merited discussing.” Asked why Fisher might wage such an arduous and public campaign regarding these allegations, Whedon said, “We’re talking about a malevolent force. We’re talking about a bad actor in both senses.” 

On Twitter, Fisher responded to Whedon’s interview with a tweet that reads:

Looks like Joss Whedon got to direct an endgame after all…

Rather than address all of the lies and buffoonery today—I will be celebrating the legacy of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Tomorrow the work continues.

#MLKDay

A>E

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Betty White, the legendary Golden Girls actor and comedian, passed away on New Year’s Eve at the age of 99. Today, Jan. 17, would have marked her 100th birthday.

Marking the date, fans took to social media to pay tribute to White, sharing messages and images and taking part in the #BettyWhiteChallenge to raise money for animals in honour of her advocacy work. Cincinnati Zoo named a penguin in honour of her Golden Girls character, and Monterey Bay Aquarium named a giving program after her.

Google, meanwhile, had its own tribute — an Easter egg for anyone typing the actor’s name into the search bar.

Typing “Betty White” into Google prompts animated rose petals to fall from the top of the screen, before the message “Thank you for being a friend” appears at the bottom.

“Thank You For Being A Friend,” recorded by Andrew Gold, is the theme song for The Golden Girls.

White played Rose Nylund, one of four characters sharing a house in Miami, for seven years from 1985 to 1992. The role won her an Emmy for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series.

Fans and friends have been remembering White in an outpouring of online grief and stories.

The prospect of a four-day working week sounds like the stuff of fantasy. But, a new pilot of a four-day working week is launching in the UK for six months with no loss of pay for participating employees.

Taking place from June to December 2022, the trial is being run by researchers at Cambridge University, Boston College, and Oxford University, not-for-profit organisation 4 Day Week Global, UK think tank Autonomy, and the 4 Day Week UK Campaign. 30 UK-based businesses are expected to participate and companies can apply to take part in the pilot should they wish to.

Joe O’Connor, pilot programme manager for 4 Day Week Global, said more and more businesses are moving to “productivity focused strategies” in an aim to reduce employees’ hours without cutting their pay. “The four-day week challenges the current model of work and helps companies move away from simply measuring how long people are “at work,” to a sharper focus on the output being produced. 2022 will be the year that heralds in this bold new future of work,” he continued.

You’ll have likely heard a lot of chatter about four-day work weeks. In 2021, Iceland published results from its years-long trial of a shorter work week. From 2015 to 2019, the country ran the world’s largest trial of a shorter working week and — yep, you guessed it — the results showed that participants ended up happier, healthier, and more productive. In 2019, Microsoft Japan trialled a four-day week and found it boosted productivity by nearly 40 percent. The dream of the four-day week is now becoming a reality for many companies around the world. Panasonic recently introduced an optional four-day work week for employees.

Canon’s UK arm is one of six businesses already signed up in the scheme. Ken Sutherland, the president of Canon Medical Research Europe, said, “We recognise that working patterns and the focus we all give to our work-life balance has changed substantially during the pandemic. As a responsive employer we are always looking at how we can adapt our working practices to ensure that employees find their time with us is meaningful, fulfilling and productive. For this reason, we’re keen to pilot a four-day week to see if it can work for us.”

In September, it was reported that Scotland would be trialling a four-day work week, drawing on similar trials in Iceland and New Zealand.

Figures show a strong level of support for the shorter working week. Researchers for financial firm Jefferies asked young Americans aged 22 to 35 if they would support a four-day week, with 80 percent of respondents saying yes.

The prospect of three-day weekends all year round sounds pretty enticing. Fingers crossed the UK-wide trial goes well.

Love or hate it, Valentine’s Day is the ideal time to put right the gift-giving wrongs of Christmas. Hey, we’ve all faltered over the festive season.

Were you sure your husband would love that faux-vintage, Bluetooth-compatible turntable, only to find out later that what he really wanted was a Lego set? Did you misinterpret his months of hint-dropping about a football shirt, only to find he was actually after a copy of FIFA 22?

Besides being an opportunity to fulfil leftover festive wishes, Valentine’s Day is also a great time to make your partner feel both loved and understood. After all, nailing the perfect gift means not only showing that you’ve been listening, but that you’re really reading between the lines. The best gifts are often items the recipient wouldn’t necessarily buy for themselves, or even better — things they didn’t know they wanted in the first place.

Obviously, it’s harder to shop for someone who’s always buying exactly what they want, the moment the urge strikes. Is there anything worse than eagerly rushing to buy him the latest trainers, then seeing your husband happily walk in with the same pair on the very next day?

Luckily, we’ve come up with a list of gift ideas that even the most compulsive shoppers might not have considered. Some are luxe versions of everyday items, while others are pure recreation. We’ve also included stuff at a range of price points, because you don’t need to break the bank to get your husband the perfect Valentine’s Day gift. And hey, if some of these things benefit you too, what’s the harm in that? Relationships are all about sharing, after all.

These are the best Valentine’s Day gifts for your husband in 2022.

Speedrunning is one hell of an artform, but one gamer just took their skills to a new level.

On Sunday, during this year’s Awesome Games Done Quick, the gaming speedrunning event that raises money for charity, speedrunner Mr. Game completed the notoriously difficult Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice in just two hours while blindfolded.

The event itself raised over $3.4 million for Prevent Cancer, a U.S. nonprofit dedicated to cancer prevention and early detection, with Mr. Game’s run alone raising £133,463 ($182,600), per NME.

Before the run, Mr. Game demonstrates the legitimacy of the blindfold on camera. Then, over the next two hours and 35 seconds, he uses audio cues and his long hours of meticulous training to complete the game.

The run starts at 1:41 in the video above, and here’s one highlight, a mini boss fight with the Blazing Bull:

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There’s a whole bunch of impressive speedruns from the event on Games Done Quick’s YouTube channel, if you want more where that came from.

Want more?

• How ‘Sonic 2’ speedrunners turned ‘gotta go fast’ into an art form

• A ‘Super Mario Bros.’ speedrunning history captures the fight for human perfection

• After 15 years, this ‘GoldenEye 007’ speedrunning record has been broken