Life Hacks – Spoken Edition

The most recent season of Saturday Night Live was a doozy, garnering plenty of newfound attention for its topical, Trump-related material, and the show’s highest ratings in more than 20 years. To get a front-row seat to whatever the 2017-2018 season has in store, the lottery for live tickets is open from August 1 to 31. To enter, send an email to Snltickets@nbcuni.com telling them why you want to attend a live show. Only one email is allowed per household and attendees must be 16 or older.

Fair rides or “mobile rides,” the simple kind that travel from town to town, have a reputation for being a little sketchy. But are they really any more dangerous than the rides you’d find in a year-round amusement park? Last week, a ride called “Fire Ball” malfunctioned, killing one and injuring seven at the Ohio State Fair. Ride inspectors said nothing looked out of the ordinary during inspections, making the event a cause for concern.

Who prefers phone calls over emails? No one, that’s who. If making phone calls for work elicits a bit of anxiety, you’re not alone. TrackMaven CEO Allen Gannett also preferred texting and email over good old fashioned phone calls, but decided to emulate the traits of the more productive people and turn to the tried and true telephone instead of the impersonal email.

Despite its reputation for getting constantly hacked, cryptocurrency like Bitcoin remains a hot commodity. If you’ve got a Satoshi or two in your wallet, you probably want to stay up to date on its value to make sure you don’t lose your shirt if (let’s be real, when) it crashes. That’s where Bitcoin Tracker comes in. Bitcoin Tracker, a free Chrome extension from developer Rahul Devaskar, lets you check out Bitcoin’s value every time you open a new web page.

A stolen smartphone can ruin anyone’s day, though our smartphones’ built-in anti-theft software seems to be working, according to San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, who cited a 50% drop in phone-related robberies from 2013 to 2016 after the passage of the Smartphone Theft Prevention Act. The legislation requires manufacturers like Google and Apple to include theft-deterring software.

If you’ve flown at all in the last few years, you know the TSA wants you to pull out your laptop and place it in a separate bin for security screening. Well: now they want you to do the same with your tablets, e-readers, and even game consoles. The TSA announced the new procedures last week, but the changes will be rolling out to airports across the U.S. gradually over the coming months.

You’re all set to leave for your well-deserved summer vacation when you realize you haven’t prepped your home at all. Here’s a list of all the energy vampires you should disable (or adjust) before you head out. Turn Off: Air-conditioning: Your home doesn’t need to be a comfortable 75 degrees if you’re not going to be there.

In “The Assistant Economy,” Dissent Magazine analyzes the privileged and idiosyncratic career path of “personal assistants” who serve a single high-profile professional, often in a creative field, in a job that often provides no direct promotion opportunities (a movie director can’t train you to replace them) but plenty of indirect ones. A few practical tips: To get hired, get aggressive. These idiosyncratic jobs often aren’t advertised publicly.

There is not a secret Starbucks drink named the Frappajappajooza. That’s just Twitter user wellmanlaylah putting blue Gatorade in a cup. But in another sense, there is a Frappajappajooza, and it’s made of whatever you want, so long as you choose from existing Starbucks ingredients. Secret menus are as real as you make them.

Call it the new game of Truth. Players go around the table answering questions in their little blue booklets, but these questions aren’t geared to get them talking about that one time they went skinny dipping in Maui. Instead, the questions aim to launch difficult conversations, ones that may be painful, ones they may have been avoiding for far too long.

My best friend and life partner, Tucker Bordeaux III, recently turned fourteen. While he’s thankfully in relatively good health for a man approaching 100 in dog years, he’s developed some skin issues in his old age that require me to give him a bath every few days. Tucker, as you might imagine, was not pleased with this development.

It is easy to get caught up looking for red flags when you start dating someone, but keeping a few “green flags” in mind helps you decide just as much if someone is worth your time. When it comes to dating, no red flags is good, but not good enough. Basic human decency and common sense shouldn’t be your only factors. Here are some green flags to look for, too. They communicate well about their thoughts and feelings, and give you the chance to do the same.

When it comes to last-minute travel, HotelTonight can be a lifesaver. The app allows you to get same-day hotel rooms at a fraction of the cost you might pay had you booked the room earlier. This week it added another feature: the option to upgrade that last-minute booking to a suite. When you make a booking at a hotel that’s offering an upgrade you’ll see the option to bump up your room on the checkout screen.

If you want your resume to be more effective and less generic, make sure every word on it counts. Forbes recommends striking common phrases like saying you're "experienced in [something]"; instead, show where your experience lies. You can be "experienced" in something after you've done it once-or every day for the past 10 years. So drop this nebulous term and be specific.

Even if you regularly eschew meat-eating and take public transportation, all your efforts at reducing your carbon footprint can be easily outweighed by indulging inone of the other biggest individual contributions to climate change: Flying. Most advice on lowering your carbon footprint notes that flying is bad, and stops there. But the New York Times has some more specific guidelines on how to pick and choose your air travel. Instead of taking short flights, drive.