In addition to being visually stunning, the appeal of the Northern Lights also has to do with their unpredictability. Even with the most advanced technology, it can be difficult for forecasters to pinpoint precisely when and where the colorful displays in the sky will be seen until shortly before the show begins. On top of everything else, there's the weather, and the fact that a few too many clouds could turn what was supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle into spending hours in the bitter cold for no reason. While there's nothing you can do about the weather, if you happen to be in a ..read more

A home gym can be anything you want it to be—even a yoga mat in a corner of your bedroom counts. But if you’d like to build out a full-featured home gym, here are some tips (and my picks for equipment) to get you started. Because ultimately, while fancy equipment is nice, you want a home gym you’ll actually use. Start slowly rather than buying everything at once First, don’t think you have to buy everything at once. If you have a limited budget, just pick up the essentials, rather than trying to hunt down every component of your dream gym right now at rock-bottom prices. You can always ad ..read more

Every mattress has a useful lifespan, and if you’ve ever kept an old mattress around for too long, you know the consequences: an aching back, sleepless nights, and an overall grungy feeling. A fresh memory foam mattress is a life-changing experience, but it leaves you with a fresh problem, too: What to do with your old mattress? Just throwing away memory foam so it can sit in a landfill forever is a terrible idea—especially because that old foam still has a lot of use left in it even if it’s no longer up to the task of being a mattress. You can donate or recycle your old mattresses, of course ..read more

Every once and a while you find an app that does one very specific thing very well. Timestory is just such an app: It allows you to quickly visualize any timeline. This can be useful for viewing history in context, which makes it a great learning tool if you're, say, studying history. But Timestory is also useful for general planning. You can use it to visualize all the steps necessary for a longer term project, and even include multiple proposals on the same timeline. Timestory is made by a single developer, Aaron Trickey, and lovingly crafted for the Mac and iPad. The software is not exactly ..read more

Following a few days of rare solar activity, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) has issued a Severe (G4) Geomagnetic Storm Watch for this weekend. In addition to potential disruptions of the electric power grid, navigation, radio, and satellite operations, NOAA experts predicts that because of the storm, the Northern Lights may be visible in much of the United States, "as far south as Alabama and Northern California." Here's what to know about catching a glimpse of the Aurora Borealis this weekend, and the other potential impacts of a geomagnetic storm. What is a geomagnetic st ..read more

With all the decluttering methods out there, you have options for how you are going to go about battling all the junk in your home. But they do all have basic tenets and requirements in common. Whether you move through the space in bursts, store items you might want to hold onto but aren't sure about, or follow rules governing how you determine whether to toss or keep things, there are a few things you'll need: Here's what to pick up before you start. You need boxes for decluttering No matter what technique you're following, you need boxes. You need at least three, maybe four: One for things y ..read more

I often see pictures of crispy pork belly that show great slabs of meat topped with bubbly, crackling. It looks enticing, and intimidating: Preparing large cuts of meat for the first time can induce questioning and uncertainty, from “where can I buy pork belly that large?” to “If I mess up, I’ll waste all that meat.” As we celebrate yet another Air Fryday, I’d like to invite you to make crispy pork belly in a lower-stakes manner that any first-timer can pull off. Treat your tastebuds to the indulgence of air fryer pork belly bites.  The difference between pork belly and bacon Pork belly i ..read more

A lot of decluttering methods are intimidatingly objective, prompting you to make split-second decisions about what stays and what goes and not allowing yourself to get too sentimental about anything, but to focus on each item's usefulness in your life. Some methods, like KonMari, leave a little space for things that only bring you joy, but for the most part, you're just supposed to part with things that don't serve you. The problem is, it's hard to quantify how a sentimental or emotionally meaningful item serves you at all. Letting go of your kids' old art projects or mementos, for instance ..read more

Whatever happened to the erotic thriller? There’s something of a bell curve to the distribution of the sexy programmer, rising with the relaxing of the production code in the late 1960s, topping out in the ‘80s with prestige fare like Fatal Attraction, and tailing off by the mid-2000s, and the dominance of franchise culture. Today’s box office values big-budget, four-quadrant blockbusters, making marketing of films about adult sexuality nearly impossible. Streaming has opened a window for movies that resemble the erotic thrillers of yore, but the kind they used to make—feature lurid hooks and ..read more

I've been on a real self-improvement kick lately, which involves everything from reorganizing my entire apartment to getting a Masters degree. Enhancing my environment is nice and juicing up my brain is great, but I'm also a pretty vain and aesthetics-focused person, so I didn't stop there. Even though I'm in my 30s, I decided to finally start Accutane, the famously ass-kicking prescription oral retinoid that acts as a nuclear option for acne and other skin issues. There are two promises that come along with Accutane: It will almost certainly work and it will almost certainly dry out your whol ..read more