Some people wake up and check the weather, others check their horoscope, but the latest thing to do is to check if Noodle has bones or not.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, Noodle is Jonathan Graziano’s 13-year-old pug. Every morning he posts a video on his TikTok account @jongraz where he plays the game “no bones” with Noodle. The game is simple, and involves chicking if Noodle has bones or not that morning. If Noodle can hold himself up, it’s a bones day. If he can’t, it’s a no bones day.

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Today? A bones day.

Bones days and no bones days have taken on a meaning of their own based on Graziano’s corresponding commentary. Noodle acts as an indicator of what the day will bring. He’s like a combination of a horoscope and the Punxsutawney Phil and his shadow.

Noodle suddenly has a lot of power.

A bones day is a day to treat yourself and get shit done. They are motivated and energetic days that you take by storm. No bones days, on the other hand, are for taking it easy and relaxing.

In today’s video, Graziano tells his followers “It’s a bones day on Monday! This is so exciting. You know what to do, you’ve got to treat yourself today. The Japanese fried chicken you were going to order for lunch? Get the curry to dip with it. All those festive gourds? Buy them! That raise you deserve, but haven’t asked for yet? You totally deserve it! Ask for it.”

Granziano’s TikTok boasts almost 2 million followers and over 17 million likes. The tag #noodletok has almost 90 million views. The bones day phenomenon has spurred a ton of content from other creators.

In a TikTok posted by @morgandrinkscoffee she demonstrates “how it feels going to work when it’s a bones day.” In another TikTok by @mlmclands, she writes “my biggest mistake today was that I didn’t check the bones forecast this morning.” Both videos have over 300,000 likes.

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It’s absurd that we are letting this geriatric pug determine what kind of day we are going to have, but the videos are fun and engaging, and maybe what we all need right now. Graziano’s commentary in each video is warm, energetic, and well, inspiring. It’s nice to have someone tell you how to spend your day.

No matter what kind of day it is, bone or no bones, Graziano spins it into something positive and urges us to go and live our best lives.

Olivia Colman fans are in for a hell of a mystery with Netflix’s The Lost Daughter, based on author Elena Ferrante’s book of the same name

Helmed by first-time writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal, who also produces, this seaside drama follows Leda (Colman), a woman on vacation whose mysterious past bubbles to the surface when she meets Nina (Dakota Johnson) and her young daughter on the beach. What begins as a friendly interaction between travelers soon blooms into an unsettling obsession — a theme the trailer’s nail-biting soundtrack and dream-like cinematography underscores.

Peter Sarsgaard, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Paul Mescal, Dagmara Domińczyk, Jessie Buckley, and more support in what’s sure to be an edge-of-your-seat thriller. Heck, it already has great reviews.

The Lost Daughter is in some theaters Dec. 17; streaming on Netflix Dec. 31.

$6,099.

That’s the price of Apple’s latest 16″ MacBook Pro with the new M1 Max chip — if you max out all of the hardware specifications, too.

That’s quite a different price than the already hefty $2,499 starting price Apple advertised at its Apple Event on Monday.

What do you get with this more than six thousand dollar computer?

First let’s talk about the basics. At Monday’s Apple Event, Tim Cook and company unveiled its latest in the line of its in-house processing chip, the M1. The new chips, the M1 Pro and M1 Max, are faster, more powerful and energy efficient than ever before. And, now, they come in 14″ and 16″ models of the MacBook Pro for the first time. (The M1 was previously only available in 13″ MacBook Pros. The other models were still stuck with Intel chips.)

During the announcement, it took forever for Apple to get to the pricing on these new devices. Here at Mashable we braced for the eventual impact of the new cost of the new MacBook Pros. The starting prices did hit at somewhat expected price points: $1,999 for the 14″ Pro and $2,499 for the 16″.

But, of course, I knew the real fun with the pricing was to be had when the online Apple Store reopened and you upgrade the hardware well-beyond the stock options.

The 16″ $6,099 laptop comes with the most powerful of its new M1 chips, which Apple unveiled at the event: the M1 Max.

The base 16″ MacBook Pro with the M1 Max chip, 32GB of memory, and a 1TB SSD is $3,499. If you want that M1 Max chip, that’s the lowest price.

The M1 Max is only available with 32GB or 64GB of memory. That’s a lot and no regular, everyday computer user needs that much power. So even though the M1 Pro is called the “Pro,” the “Max” is really the professional level chip here.

But, we’re maxing out here, remember? Once 64GB is thrown in for an extra $400, we move to storage. The minimum you can go with a 16″ MacBook Pro with an M1 Max chip is 1TB. The maximum? A monstrous 8TB.

If you want an 8TB internal solid-state drive, that’s going to cost you an additional $2,200 over the base 1TB SSD.

These computers are not upgradable once you purchase one. You can’t open these up and add more internal storage or upgrade the RAM. However, realistically, you don’t need that much internal storage. You can always carry a small, portable SSD drive if you need more space.

So, if you just add the 64GB memory upgrade and keep the internal 1TB drive, we’re looking at $3,899. (And we are sticking with the 16″ model because the creative professionals these computers are built for need the extra screen space.)

Yes, it’s still a lot of money, but not as much as the absolute maximum priced $6,099 16″ MacBook Pro.

Either way, it’s a lot of money. Better hope you’re approved for that Apple Card.

In the new trailer for the upcoming move The Batman starring Robert Pattinson, there are explosions, balls of fire, gritty voiceovers about retribution, and…latte art?

Yep, one of the most talked-about moments involves a cup of coffee. Specifically, an artisanal flat white with a foam pour that depicts Batman villain Riddler’s (Paul Dano) calling card: A question mark.

“I think the latte art really stole the show,” Rohan Cooke, a long-time Melbourne barista who runs the TikTok account for his coffee roastery, gear, and media company, Golden Brown Coffee, said.

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The opening scene of the trailer shows (probably) Paul Dano, who plays Riddler, sitting at the counter of a grimy late night diner. The cops bust in, and he puts up no fight as he’s taken into custody. The camera then pans to the coffee mug sitting in front of him, showing the message in the coffee, the question mark.

If latte art could ever be menacing, this is it.

But, of course, the internet has questions. How did Riddler get this latte art? Did he specifically ask the server for it? Or is Riddler himself the artist working at the diner, which would make the man at the counter taken into custody a faker? How did he happen to have a perfectly formed, non-faded question mark latte art in front of him at the exactly moment he was hauled away by the cops?

“I like to think that the Riddler received his latte with just a circle of milk foam on top of his latte and then drew the question mark himself, perhaps with a spoon or utensil,” barista Morgan Eckroth, a latte art pro who has 5.4 million followers on their TikTok, @morgandrinkscoffee, said. “Or even with his finger, perhaps!”

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Yes, yes, the answer to most of these questions is Because The Movies. But we all know that’s not good enough.

Mashable spoke with TikTok baristas Eckroth and Cooke for their takes on the mystery of the question mark latte art.

1) How is the question mark latte possible?

Eckroth: “The latte art that was shown in the trailer is probably not possible through a “free pour”. Since the question mark is of a darker color and placed within a circle of milk foam, it would have had to be hand-drawn on top of the milk foam after adding it to the latte. It’d take a good amount of knowledge and steady hands to make something as crisp and precise as what was shown.”

Cooke: “The one in the video looks fantastic. Whoever did that had a lot of skill. But for any other barista, you need to steam the milk, pour it into the center to create that big white circle, and then with another shot of espresso, you can spoon around the creamer to make that question mark on the top.

“The funny thing with this latte art, is that normally latte art would be a brown background with a white drawing. But obviously the director really wanted the question mark to stand out, so they’ve inversed the colors to really make it pop.”

Spooky!

2) How do you think this latte appeared before the Riddler just at the right moment before his arrest? Good timing on the barista’s part!

Cooke: “He must have been working in cahoots with the barista behind the bar for that coffee to arrive just at the right time.

“The other theory is that the Riddler was a barista in a past life. I can tell you as a barista, making hundreds of coffees a day, you can go a little loopy. So maybe there’s a new origin story.”

3) How long does latte art last before it starts to lose its shape? 

Eckroth: “Latte art will generally begin to lose its shape after a few minutes. I’d say that it’s a pretty safe bet to say that your latte art will begin to look very blob-like after five minutes, when the milk and air have really started to separate.”

Cooke: “Latte art isn’t necessarily going to lose its shape. But between 2-5 minutes, it’s going to start to bubble, it’s going to start to dissipate. So we can safely say by the latte art sitting on the counter, that that was fresh. That milk looks silky, and looks all one texture. So you know that that was definitely put down in the last 30 seconds or one minute.”

Hmmm, Eckroth’s finger drawing method is sounding more and more convincing… Unless the barista was in on it!

4) Did you find it odd that this latte art appeared in what seemed like a dingy diner?

Cooke: “That was my first thought, I’m thinking, do they have an espresso machine? Do they have the equipment to be pulling this? You’d think he was behind the counter at a Stumptown or Blue Bottle.”

5) As a master latte artist, how did it feel to see latte art appear in a trailer for a huge new movie?

Eckroth: “It was quite exciting! It’s always fun to see an everyday part of my job appear in such a major way in pop culture. While not a traditional latte art pour, I think the shot of the question mark in milk foam was very clever.”

Cooke: “If you had asked me beforehand, do you think latte art is going to appear in the new Batman trailer, I’d never think that that was going to be the case.”

6) What would you do if a customer (the Riddler??) asked for a question mark in their latte?

Eckroth: “I’d absolutely oblige to the best of my ability! I’ve actually had customers request designs before and while they’re not always possible, it’s a fun challenge to do something out of the ordinary.”

Cooke: “To be honest, I’ve been asked to draw a lot worse things. So probably wouldn’t think twice about it. However, if the police raided my cafe, I probably think the question mark was a little suspicious. Careful for anyone who gets a question mark in their coffee. If you do, it’s probably time to get out of there.”

Apple wants to be the privacy Big Tech company. But it won’t say no to some extra cash as a result.

Earlier in 2021, Apple instituted a new App Store policy that limited apps’ ability to track user behavior without getting express permission first, which has made targeted advertising more difficult.

The result may very well be less snooping on our iPhone habits by companies like Facebook and Google. However, a new report from Financial Times shows there was an unexpected (for us, at least) upside for Apple, too. Speaking with multiple analytics firms and advertisers, FT found that Apple’s own App Store advertising business skyrocketed after initiating the policy change.

Apple sells advertising space in the App Store. For example, if you search for a specific iPhone game, you will see sponsored results for other games, or other related apps, at the top of the results. This is a form of targeted advertising, according to the FT.

One analytics firm noted in the report that, in the last six months, Apple went from capturing 17 percent of all sponsored app store downloads, to now having 58 percent. Its revenue from this business is expected to double, and advertisers said they were spending more advertising with Apple, as opposed to Google. The advertisers said they could get more granular, real-time data, with retargeting capabilities through Apple ads — something advertisers like Facebook can no longer offer.

If this is all too much business and ad talk, the simple takeaway here is: Apple’s move to safeguard user privacy is also enriching Apple itself. Why? Less outside advertising appearing in your App Store feeds means more room for Apple-hosted ads.

Mashable reached out to Apple but did not hear back before the time of publication. Apple told the FT that the new advertising policy was about protecting users, not “advantaging” Apple.

Apple’s privacy updates were a welcome change for users. But that doesn’t make the FT’s report any less eyebrow-raising, especially as Apple continues to be investigated for monopolistic business practices. Even if making things more difficult for its competition while creating some new business for itself wasn’t Apple’s (public) intention, we’re sure the company is not mad at the result.

In a devastating turn of events, Y: The Last Man showrunner Eliza Clark confirmed on Sunday that FX decided against moving ahead with a Season 2.

It’s a surprising move for a series that is still three episodes away from finishing its first season, and one which has also received relatively high praise from critics and audiences alike. In sharing the news, Clark made it clear that she’ll do what she can to ensure the story doesn’t end here.

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“Y: The Last Man is about gender, about how oppressive systems inform identity. We had a gender diverse team of brilliant artists, led by women at almost every corner of our production,” Clark wrote. “It is the most collaborative, creatively fulfilling, and beautiful thing I have ever been a part of. We don’t want it to end.”

She goes on to praise FX as “an amazing partner” despite the parting-of-ways. But, she adds, the focus now is on ensuring the story, which is adapted from an excellent though now somewhat outdated comic book series by Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerrera, continues.

“[W]e know that someone else is going to be very lucky to have this team and this story. I have never experienced the remarkable solidarity of this many talented people. We are committed to finding Y its next home.” She concludes with a hashtag: #YLivesOn.

The long-in-the-making TV adaptation of Y: The Last Man has taken on many forms and creative configurations over the years. It’s a tricky story to adapt for today’s audience, with the comic’s original premise of “all men on Earth are wiped out by a plague that targets people with a Y chromosome” not really resonating with a 2021 audience whose understanding of sex and gender has deepened in the almost 20 years since the first issue published.

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The FX on Hulu take conceived by Clark and her team moves the setting to our modern world. It intentionally strays from the source as it expands on certain characters and adds new ones in a way that allows the story to engage more directly with the gender politics of this current moment, but not in a way that betrays the spirit of the original.

In my own review, I called the show a “lovingly unfaithful” adaptation that asks and attempts to answer many of the questions the comic either didn’t address or only lightly touched upon. You should definitely read this excellent deep dive into the show’s handling of the “tricky trans politics” from Vox’s Emily VanDerWerff.

There’s a long history of cancelled TV shows being picked up by networks and (more often) streaming services. Y, with its mix of a compelling story, its direct engagement with ongoing conversations, and its deep IRL history as a comic book series and long-in-the-making adaptation, seems on the surface like the perfect candidate for such a revival.

In internal documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal, a whole host of people have been pushing back against Facebook for hate speech for some time now — and that list includes pop star and Only Murders in the Building comedy breakout Selena Gomez.

It all started in 2016 when Gomez visited the company’s Menlo Park headquarters to celebrate becoming the most-followed account on Instagram. When a particularly hateful response to her post on the photo opp stuck with Gomez, a spokesperson told the Journal, she reached out to Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg during the pivotal 2020 election year, urging them to take action in DMs that she later shared widely.

Now, thanks to the WSJ‘s reporting, we know Gomez also emailed the Facebook executives privately to voice her issues. Sandberg responded, saying that Facebook’s AI detected 91 percent of the 1.5 million posts it removed for violating its rules on hate speech. That was not enough for Gomez, who responded firmly.

“You refuse to even mention, let alone address, the problem Facebook has with white supremacists and bigots,” Gomez wrote in an Oct. 10, 2020 email to Sandberg and other executives. She included screenshots of Facebook groups that she says promoted violent ideologies, according to the Journal, and said there were plenty of groups “full of hate and lies that might lead to people being hurt or, even worse, killed.”

Gomez apparently took her concerns to email after her private DM to Zuckerberg and Sandberg went unanswered, and her attempt to publicly shame their lack of a response went nowhere. She told them in her previously shared DM that there was a “serious problem” at Facebook, with the platform “being used to spread hate, misinformation, racism, and bigotry.”

“I am calling on you both to HELP STOP THIS,” she said in her note, which later surfaced for public viewing in one of her Instagram Stories. Her subsequent email outreach is what’s new here, and it comes from the Journal‘s ongoing bombshell Facebook Files reports.

The documents revealing Gomez’s attempt to reach Facebook leadership were released as part of a story by the Journal that depicts how Facebook uses AI to detect hate speech — even though its AI kind of sucks. According to the Journal, the platform cut the human reviewers’ focus on hate-speech and became more dependent on AI two years ago. But the company’s AI has trouble consistently identifying the differences between videos like first-person shootings, car crashes, and cockfighting.

This comes at a particularly difficult time for the tech giant, due, in no small part, to the Facebook Files reporting. Whistleblower Frances Haugen, who leaked the documents to the Journal, also attended a Congressional hearing and plans to brief the Facebook Oversight Board. Shortly after Haugen revealed on an episode of 60 Minutes that she was the source of the leaked documents, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp shut down for nearly six hours.

From Get Out to Us, Jordan Peele has taken on directing his share of horror films about racism. Up next? A biopic about Prince that turns into a horror film about racism.

That is, if you’re watching Saturday Night Live. During a sketch on the latest SNL, Kenan Thompson, Rami Malek, and surprise guest Daniel Craig each audition to earn the starring role in Peele’s (Chris Redd) pretend film.

At first, the competition is only between Thompson and Malek — playing themselves — as they’re asked to have a “Prince-off.” Redd has them each act out things like Prince stepping on a Lego brick or getting hit with a football. Thompson earns the role because Malek is not Black, but when Craig enters the room it flips. Craig is dressed as a prince, not the Prince, and he still takes the role from Thompson. This is because, after all, Craig is (was) James Bond.

This isn’t Craig’s first time on SNL — he hosted the show in 2020, and his appearance turned into a legendary meme. His latest, and final, film as James Bond, No Time to Die, is in theaters now.

Saturday Night Live‘s latest Weekend Update segments were highlighted by some actually-strong one-liners about COVID-bearing bats and, unexpectedly, trickle-down economics. But Chris Redd’s appearance cast a shadow over all of it.

It’s not just his rant wanting to know who the hell drive blimps, though that part is hilarious. It’s also not his incisively funny take on angry people overreacting to a bisexual Superman. The bit that really lands is when Redd is forced to face an off-the-cuff comment he made on a Feb. 2020 Weekend Update, where he declared — in a very poorly aged attempt at humor — “Black people can’t get the coronavirus!”

To his credit, Redd is a great sport about the whole thing. He’s also a gifted comedic talent who doesn’t always get his due. So watch, and be entertained.

There’s nothing like a good Saturday Night Live earworm, especially when it’s Pete Davidson (and his uncanny lookalike Rami Malek) doing the singing.

This absolute winner of a musical comedy sketch finds Davidson and Malek crooning a heartfelt country number about loss, desperation, and a homicidal game show popularized by Netflix. Yup, it’s time for the inevitable marriage of classic country music tropes and… Squid Game?

It works. It works so well! You’ll be humming this tune in your head long after the sketch is over. And probably firing up the old Netflix app to find out just how much of the over-the-top bloodletting seen here is a reflection of the actual series. (All of it. This is Squid Game.)