Good deal on Titanium quasi-spork

Over the past decade or so, Lauren McLaughin (previously) has written a handful of outstanding YA novels, each dealing with difficult issues of gender, personal autonomy and the casual cruelty of teens, starting with Cycler (and its sequel, Re-Cycler) (a teenaged girl who turned into a boy for four days every month); Scored (a class-conscious surveillance dystopia); The Free (a desperate novel about a teen car-thief in juvie) and now, her best book yet: Send Pics, a gripping thriller about sextortion, high school, revenge and justice. READ THE REST

Wendy Liu grew up deeply enmeshed in technology, writing code for free/open source projects and devouring books by tech luminaries extolling the virtues of running tech startups; after turning down a job offer from Google, Liu helped found an ad-tech company and moved from Montreal to New York City to take her startup to an incubator. As she worked herself into exhaustion to build her product, she had a conversion experience, realizing that she was devoting her life to using tech to extract wealth and agency from others, rather than empowering them. This kicked off a journey that Liu documents in her new book, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism, a memoir manifesto that's not just charming -- it's inspiring. READ THE REST

Matt Ruff is one of science fiction and fantasy's most consistently brilliant and innovative authors, whose recent work includes The Mirage (an incredible alternate history in which the Global War on Terror is kicked off when Christian crusaders from the blighted, tribal USA fly a plane into the United States of Arabia's Twin Towers in Dubai, giving the hawkish CIA chief Osama bin Laden the chance to launch the all-out war he's been champing for), and Lovecraft Country (an anti-racist reimagining of Cthulhu set in Jim Crow America where the real horror is white supremacy -- now being adapted for TV by Jordan Peele). In his new novel, 88 Names, Ruff adds to the canon of MMORPG heist novels (Charlie Stross's Rule 34, Neal Stephenson's Reamde, and my For the Win, to name three) with a unique take that he dubbed "Snow Crash meets The King and I." READ THE REST

Stress is par for the course these days. If you've found meditation helps to quiet those interior voices of doubt, fear and confusion, then you have every reason to continue that practice. But as soothing as meditation can be, it can also serve another purpose: to focus your attention, sharpen your performance and forge you… READ THE REST

When the history of Earth is ultimately told by aliens or time travelers or whoever stumbles across what's left of our planet a millennia from now, these beings will need to understand what a hair tie is and why it was created…because it's guaranteed they find them everywhere during their study. Today, hair ties are… READ THE REST

Ask most Apple Watch users about their biggest beef with the most popular wearable in tech today and many will likely answer with the same beef had by many users of wirelessly charged devices. It just isn't so simple making sure your wireless charger is lined up properly with your device to get a steady,… READ THE REST