Life Hacks – Spoken Edition

How do you deal with a psychopath? What if you realize you married one? This week on The Upgrade we’re joined by Jen Waite, author of A Beautiful, Terrible Thing: A Memoir of Marriage and Betrayal, and Dr. Michael Stone, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and author of The Anatomy of Evil, to talk about psychopaths, sociopaths, and narcissists: how to recognize them, how to avoid them, and how to disentangle yourself from them.

Yes, it’s possible to wake yourself up in the morning without a strong cup of joe. If you can’t have coffee, or you’re looking to cut back on caffeine, these seven tips will help you jump out of bed alert and ready to take on the day. In this video from the AsapSCIENCE YouTube channel, you’ll learn the science behind how your body wakes up, and how to help it along without any coffee, energy drinks, or tea.

I really like using groups on Facebook. I’m in a ton of different writing groups where writers swap advice, as well as a few beer groups where people swap, well, beer. One thing that has become painfully obvious across both groups: a lot of people don’t fully understand how Facebook works. There are a lot of odd offenses that pop up, but the one that tends to bother me the most is when people respond to posts with just the word “Following.

Music is essential at a wedding, especially at the reception. But some songs are just way too cliche—or ear-ravaging—and people are tired of hearing them. These are those songs. This list from the data-driven folks at FiveThirtyEight is filled with the usual suspects, and compiled based on common do-not-play requests given to wedding DJs. Tacky tunes you’d expect to hear, like “YMCA,” “Macarena,” and “Cottoneye Joe.

The next time you’re asked to lead a meeting, teach a class, or give a speech, here’s one way to get everyone’s attention: look at individual people instead of letting your gaze settle on the entire group. As you give your speech or present your information, make eye contact with a single member of your audience. Choose a person who is already looking at you; this isn’t a Glare of Shame to try to get someone off their phone.

A good mentor can be a great thing to have, but a hard thing to find. Now LinkedIn is attempting to pair those looking for advice from a mentor with professionals willing to share it through a new mentoring feature. It started rolling out in a few select locations this week, with plans for it to go nationwide soon.

If you’re still using the office’s water cooler to judge your office’s morale, you might need an upgrade. Sometimes keeping track of how you feel can be as simple as pressing a button. That’s what SEO specialist and programmer Katja Budnikov accomplished after constructing an office happiness tracker during her company’s hackathon.

You can borrow all kinds of media at your local public library, from audiobooks, to albums, to films on physical discs. But some libraries, like the Los Angeles Public Library, offer streaming films through Kanopy, a video streaming service specializing in independent films, documentaries, and classic cinema. And now, Kanopy is expanding its offerings into the New York Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library systems, as well.

My wife is a great flirt. With me, with her friends, with an audience. She knows that flirtation isn’t just for people you’re just getting to know. Flirtation is just as important years into a relationship as it is at the start. Fatherly’s refresher course on flirting with your partner doesn’t have any big surprises; it’s just a good reminder to get back in the habit.

No, you’re not just imagining it: average seat sizes have shrunk over the past 20 years. According to FlyersRights.org, a nonprofit advocating for passengers’ rights, the average economy-class seat is 17 inches wide, compared to 18.5 inches in the early 2000s. The average space between a seat and the seat in front of it, also known as a seat’s pitch, has also decreased from 35 inches to 31 inches, with some airlines even decreasing legroom to 28 inches.

We know that our names may influence just about every avenue of our lives—where we live, the school courses we enroll in, the grades we achieve, the jobs we choose, the jobs we get called back for, how far we go in those jobs, who we love, and where we donate money. Now there’s evidence that our names may also affect the way we look. I’m talking about our actual, literal faces.

There’s a total solar eclipse happening on August 21, 2017, and for the first time in nearly a hundred years, the Moon’s unabashed Sun-blocking power will be visible from much of the continental U.S. (though certain locations will of course have a better vantage point than others). Warning: don’t look directly at it with your naked eyes—instead, use certified eclipse glasses or the pinhole method described here. In the U.S.

Even when you’re covering your tracks by opening a new incognito window, your web browsing history might not be as private as you think. Information about what you do online, down to every single URL, can likely be purchased on the web by anyone who wants it. And while in most cases people are making those purchases for marketing reasons, they could choose to use their newfound knowledge maliciously as well.

When you’re away from home all day, whether working or exploring, you need to be prepared for every possible contingency. Perhaps you pack an extra battery pack, or some portable entertainment. Maybe you’ve got a mess of cables, or a laptop if you want to get some real work done. Kainoki Kaede shared his bag, packed with cables, adapters, and everything else you could need to keep yourself tidy and charged up wherever you go.

Hot on the heels of last week’s study on the frightening prevalence of traumatic brain injury in football—and similar dangers that may lurk for players on the soccer field—comes new research on another playing field danger: head-first slides in baseball. The danger here isn’t for players’ brains, however, but mostly for the delicate bones and tendons of their hands, as the New York Times reported this week.