Life Hacks – Spoken Edition

Every organization has their sexual harassers, and their identities rarely stay truly secret. Somebody knows, somebody talks, but the people in a position to do something about it—bystanders, higher-ups—often figure it’s not their problem. This has to stop. Organizational psychologist Liane Davey writes at Quartz that “it’s become increasingly clear that staying passive only perpetuates the cycle of abuse.

When you visit somebody you care about on their deathbed, don’t be fooled by what you see. The person lying there may look totally incoherent, but they can probably hear everything going on in that room. There’s a lot going on when someone’s body is in the process of shutting down. They don’t want to eat or drink, they’re tired, they can’t speak, they can’t see, etc. But there’s one sense that tends to stick around longer than the others: hearing.

This weekend, Shaun King, a civil rights activist and writer for the New York Daily News, posted on his Facebook page that cheerleaders at Kennesaw State University had knelt during the national anthem and were subsequently harassed at their homes by local law enforcement.

There’s something so exquisite about a slowed-down, moody cover of an upbeat song you know by heart (see: Antony and the Johnsons covering Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love”). But it can be particularly transporting when a band gives the MTV Unplugged treatment to one of their own songs, as in a-ha’s recently released acoustic version of their 1980s synth-pop classic “Take on Me.

iOS: iOS 11’s new built-in document scanning feature is both a time-saver and a convenient way to capture information. It makes it easy to attach real-world documents to your digital musings without leaving one app for another. It won’t replace any dedicated document scanning apps, but it’s a great alternative to buying a document scanning app if all you want is a signature-ready document you can export anywhere.

Nintendo’s nostalgia-fueled Super NES Classic has been out for less than two weeks, but it’s already been hacked to add more games, custom backgrounds, and more. Normally, the SNES Classic has a set default of 21 games, including the previously unreleased Star Fox 2, with set menus and backgrounds.

For six glorious months a few years ago C-3PO was the voice of Waze on my phone. That December I drove from California to North Carolina, and having my favorite droid give me directions made the whole experience a lot more pleasant. I love it when you can change the voice of digital assistants you deal with daily. Sure, it’s not adding any functionality, but it can be fun to change things up every now and then.

Hulu’s cutting its subscription price, just in time for the fall television season, and right after Netflix’s own subscription price hike. The best part? Both new and returning Hulu subscribers can take advantage of the promotional discount. The promotional discount, $5.99 per month for a year, applies to Hulu’s cheapest paid subscription plan, commercials included, and is available to sign up for until January 9, 2018.

Mindfulness is having a moment. A trending moment, specifically: the hashtag #mindfulnessinamerica is currently trending on Twitter, thanks to the Mindfulness in America conference going on as these words are being typed. But even before Jewel and Anderson Cooper joined forces, meditation (and specifically mindfulness meditation) had become increasingly popular, thanks to apps such as Headspace and studies touting the lasting effects of mindfulness on the mind and body.

Apple’s recent 12.7 update to its iTunes app removed support for the iOS App Store and iOS app management. After an outcry from users, however, Apple has brought app support back in iTunes 12.6.3. Even if you’ve already upgraded to iTunes 12.7, you can still take advantage of the app-friendly nature of iTunes 12.6.3, but if you stick with it you’ll have to miss out on any future iTunes features.

Though we grumble about it, most native English speakers have just accepted that sometimes the language doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, contenting ourselves to memorize an elaborate series of tricks and sayings to help us keep things straight.

I travel a ton for work, but more often than not I’m not the one booking my airline tickets. That’s great, but what that means is that come the end of the year I’m almost always a few thousand miles away from status on almost every major airline. After it happening for the gagillionth time last year, I started to get very specific with the person booking my tickets, specifying airlines I would prefer to fly, and it’s paid off.

Two researchers at Stanford's Graduate School of Business pored through 30,000 conference calls made by CEOs and CFOs over a period of four years, studying each for word choice and delivery. The result: They figured out common tells for lying bosses. Or, more specifically, when executive officers are lying to shareholders. But context aside, it's not hard to imagine that much of the same rules apply.

I didn’t need a survey to tell me that AT&T Park in San Francisco has the best hot dogs in Major League Baseball. I would have likely made that declaration while sitting in some less-superior stadium eating a sub-par dog, but I wouldn’t have had facts (other than my own detailed personal research) to back up that claim. Except now I do.

Whether you’re frugal, environmentally conscious, or just love an efficiency challenge, there are lots of reasons to save your food scraps. Well, mostly to make stock out of. And to compost the rest. But some of your scraps are good for more than just boiling for soup—they can also be the starting place for a clever air freshener. We all know the power of something fragrant on the stove or in the oven, the fresh and homey aromas that, if we’re lucky, linger for a few hours.