As any Studio Ghibli fan will testify, an afternoon spent binging Hayao Miyazaki classics is guaranteed to leave a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. Now, this feeling is backed by science. A study published by JMIR Serious Games, a peer reviewed journal focused on how gaming is connected to education, health, and social change, looked into how the brain responds to both watching films produced by the Japanese animation studio and playing the open-world game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
The researchers gathered 518 postgraduate students and divided them into four groups. Some played Breath of the Wild and some watched Studio Ghibli films like My Neighbor Totoro and Kikis Delivery Service, while others did both and a control group did neither. Researchers then measured feelings of exploration, calm, skill mastery, purpose, and life happiness via a brief questionnaire.
The results matched what fans have intrinsically known for years.
Those who played Breath of the Wild reported higher levels of life happiness than those who didnt. Peacefully roaming the world of Hyrule, perhaps stopping by a pond or cooking a meal under the stars, creates a relaxing form of escapism for players away from lifes daily stresses, permitting a chance to recharge mentally.
For an added boost of happiness, however, the researchers found both playing the game and watching the Studio Ghibli films produced the best results.
This comes down to the Studio Ghibli films unique ability to induce nostalgia. Films such as My Neighbor Totoro and Kikis Delivery Service often focus on the small, everyday wonders of life, such as playing in the countryside or sharing mealtime with family, the research noted.
By shining a spotlight on ordinary moments and turning them into something magical, Miyazakis works tap into a universal longing for the innocence and wonder of childhood. This kind of warmth can evoke nostalgia for times when people felt safe and cared for.”
Previous research backs up the positive mental health effects of these leisure time activities. Studies have shown that casual gaming can be an effective way to unwind and relax, while open-world games in particular, have been shown to significantly enhance cognitive escapism, promote relaxation, and improve overall mental well-being.
Now your weekend plans are sorted. You’re welcome.
When treating a head injury, one of the questions doctors ask their patients is whether they know who is currently the president. Its part of a standard neurological exam for assessing alertness and cognitive function after a jolt to the brain.
In the absence of any preceding head trauma, though, it does not seem to bode well when hundreds of perplexed X denizens ask an elected official a similar questionespecially when such inquisitory swarms have become a well-established pattern online in 2025.
On Monday, U.S. Senator Jim Banks sent a fiery letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, urging him to investigate errors from the 2020 census. Banks shared the letter with his 174k followers on X, in a post excoriating the Biden administration for its approach to the census, which supposedly included illegal immigrants and handed Democrats extra seats.
Theres just one tiny problem with this statement, which I wont insult readers cognitive function by spelling out here. Thousands of X users made sure Banks was aware of it, however, by asking him who was president in 2020. One of those asking even made Xs AI chatbot Grok explain the answer in a caveman voice.
Genuinely wild how so many people fail the Who was President in 2020 test https://t.co/CGGwQPBsDd— Armand Domalewski (@ArmandDoma) October 6, 2025
"Who was president in 2020?" remains one of the great disputed questions of American politics. https://t.co/xeytBAMi84— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 7, 2025
Banks attempted to save face later on by clarifying that President Biden had prepared the 2020 Census Report in 2021, implying hed manipulated the good, clean census data Trump had gathered as president. (As evidence, he retweeted a post from the president of something called Election Watch, Inc., who has apparently blown the doors off this incredible conspiracy.)
Still, even assuming Banks excuse absolves him, what explains all the other pundits, politicians and officials within the Trump administration who seem confused about the year 2020? So many of them have made this same mistake that asking the obvious follow-up question is now a meme.
According to current Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, for instance, it was the Democratic Party who blew out the deficit in 2020, leading Bluesky users to seek a minor clarification.
Bessent: "This Democratic Party blew out the deficit in 2020." (Trump was president in 2020.)— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-07-06T13:26:22.164Z
Who is to blame for the more destructive excesses of 2020, in the immediate wake of George Floyds murder at the hands of police? As Congressman Mike Collins tells it, the Biden administration was obviously at fault.
Once again: "Who was president in 2020?" Is a question so many politicians, pundits and even mainstream media have a hard time answering correctly.— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes.bsky.social) 2025-07-15T02:56:08.769Z
Even President Trump himself couldnt seem to remember under whose leadership the recently resolved antitrust lawsuit against Google originated. (The Department of Justice filed its case in October 2020.) Of course, this lapse wasnt out of character for Trump, who suggested last year that the White House pressured Facebook to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop storya story that broke while Trump himself occupied the White House.
Some pundits have attempted to inject ambiguity into the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplices as that story gained fresh traction this year. Newsmax talking head Greg Kelly, for instance, implied back in August that the Biden DOJ had prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell, despite the fact that she was both charged and arrested in 2020. When Bill OReilly falsely claimed on NewsNation in July that Epstein had been convicted during the Biden administration, however, host Leland Vittert sheepishly corrected him in real time.
WhoopsDon't ya just love live TV?— (@jacksimon.bsky.social) 2025-07-16T14:41:12.819Z
Mostly, though, much of the foggy memory that leads to so much questioning online over who was president in 2020 seems centered around COVID.
Rep. Buddy Carter claimed on CNN in August that the COVID vaccine eroded trust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), leading host Kate Bedingfield to ask The Question on air. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy deflected blame for recent airline problems by suggesting, on live TV, that someone dropped the ball by not addressing those problems during the COVID lockdown. And just last month, Human Health Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. attempted to score points against Democratic Senators by claiming that the U.S. did worse in COVID than any country in the world, apparently forgetting who was at the helm of our COVID response.
Who was president in 2020?— Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell.bsky.social) 2025-09-08T19:59:35.292Z
It has become unavoidably clear that the events of 2020 caused a seismic trauma for Americans, and that its aftershocks will be felt for decades. The chaos of a (hopefully!) once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, combined with a social movement that briefly made folks question the role of police and whether racism is embedded in the very fabric of U.S. society, appear to have severely rattled the countrys collective brains. As with any head injury, some confusion is inevitable.
Whether it is in fact confusion, or rather a product of deliberate misremembering, this pattern of forgetting who was in charge of the country during some of its darker hours encapsulates the state of vibes-based unreality that many currently choose to live in.
The hypothetical America where everything that went wrong in 2020 can be blamed on the Biden administration is the same one in which major U.S. cities can be considered war-ravaged simply because the President seems to think so.
Its the same reality in which the Trump White House can claim to have officially crushed Bidens inflation crisis, while grocery prices are demonstrably rising.
And its the same reality in which an administration stocked with inexperienced podcasters and Fox News b-squad counts as merit-based hiring in the wake of DEIs forcible expunging.
At least all of this is being captured for the record. If the people running this country dont seem to know who was president in 2020 today, imagine what they wont know about today tomorrow.
Trader Joes stores have a reputation for getting crowded at the best of times, but if youre planning to make a stop in the next few days, beware: the brand just dropped a Halloween version of its mini tote bags, and they already went viral twice for creating in-store traffic jams.
The bags, which come in combinations of black, orange, purple, and green, cost just $2.99 each and dropped in stores on October 8. Theyre a tiny version of Trader Joes classic reusable tote bags, measuring just 13 x 11 x 6 inchesabout the size of an iPad. This is the third time that Trader Joes has released a new version of the bags, which have proven to be a desirable fan favorite (to put it mildly).
When Trader Joes first debuted the mini tote in March 2024, social media exploded with videos of shoppers lining up to grab the product, with many shoppers piling their carts with every available colorway. The story was similar in April 2025, when Trader Joes announced a pastel line of the totes. If eBay sellers are to be believed, these bag designs have become full-on collectors items, with sets of the previous drops selling for over $100 on the site.
Despite the fact that the new Halloween bags just dropped this morning, all signs indicate that Trader Joes shoppers are in for another round of mini tote fervor. Already, several TikToks show crowds lining up for the bags. One Trader Joes employee shared an unboxing video of the bags, encouraging shoppers to get one of their own. Another customer has already decked out her new bags with color-coordinated Labubus. On eBay, sets of the Halloween bags are retailing for over $50.
Its 6:49 a.m. and Im on my way to Trader Joes, one TikToker shared. If I dont get these Halloween tote bags, Im gonna have a fit.
Why is everyone so obsessed with the Trader Joe’s mini tote?
Its possible that the mini tote craze is related to the increasing size of the reusable bag market, which is expanding in part due to plastic bag bans (eight states ban single-use plastic bags, and cities including New York and Washington, D.C. charge fees for their use). But the more likely reason for the trend is simpler: within our current stage of consumer capitalism, niche accessories are having a moment.
In August, Fast Company wrote about the rise of the meta-accessory, a kind of accessory mainly designed to compliment another accessory. That includes items like a lipgloss phone case; a Stanley water bottle backpack; an $1,000 bag charm; or a Labubu for a Labubu. All of these pieces serve minimal utilitarian purposes, and seem mainly geared toward convincing consumers that they need to make yet another little purchase.
At Trader Joes, the mini tote is like a tote bag for your regular tote bagand, clearly, shoppers cant get enough.
About 40% of farm workers in the U.S. are undocumented immigrants, and theyve become a focus of the Trump administrations aggressive immigration crackdown. Terrorized farm workers have been forced into hiding, and farms themselves have been left empty of their workers.
Experts have long warned that Trumps promise of mass deportations would threaten industries that rely on undocumented workerslike agricultureand that it could lead to mass disruptions in our food system.
Now the Trump administrations labor department seems to be admitting that itself.
In a document explaining the administrations new rule cutting farmworker wages, the Department of Labor writes that the labor shortage, in part due to increased [immigration] enforcement, presents a sufficient risk of supply shock-induced food shortages . . . There is ample data showing immediate dangers to the American food supply.”
The near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce, results in significant disruptions to production costs and threatening the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S consumers, per the document.
Trumps One Big Beautiful Bill, which includes additional funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), means that threat will grow, it adds.
‘A win for corporate greed’
The Trump administration is using this risk to justify cuts to farmworker wagesand says more foreign workers are needed to alleviate the threat.
Because of this crisis, employers will need to rely even more on the H-2A visa program, which allows farms to bring on temporary foreign workers when theres a shortage of U.S. workers. (Under this visa, workers also lack basic labor protections and have reported issues with worker safety; they also do not have bargaining rights.)
And the Department of Labor does not believe American workers will make themselves readily available in sufficient numbers to replace the departing illegal aliens.
In theory, a worker shortage should lead to higher wages. But the visa program comes with high costs that have become burdensome, per the DOL, and so additional labor costs, it says, threatens the viability of farming operations.
The departments new rule says the program needs reform, and that guest farm worker wages need to be cut to avoid agriculture disruptions.
Under H2-A rules, the Department of Labor must advertise agricultural jobs, but it says this hasn’t led to more applications from domestic workers. The American Prospect, which reported on the DOL document, says that’s not entirely accurate.
“Workers who apply often do not receive jobs, and nobody is really checking to see if applications are coming in,” it writes. “The system isnt set up to prove that theres a labor shortage of U.S. workers, Daniel Costa, an attorney with the Economic Policy Institute who tracks the H-2A program, told the outlet.
The move could reduce wages for all farm workers, no matter their legal status. The United Farm Workers, which represents nearly 7,000 agricultural workers, condemns the wage cuts, which it says would mean a loss of $2.46 billion annually in farmworker wages.
Farm workers should be paid more, not less. This regulation is a win for corporate greed; a money grab for big agribusiness that transfers millions of dollars through wage cuts and housing deductions from workers to employers, Erica Lomeli Corcoran, UFW Foundation chief executive officer, said in a statement. The farm workers who feed us every day deserve so much more and we remain committed to ensuring that their labor and dignity is respected.
A political scientist who studies what helps people connect across differences. A novelist whose books about Native American communities in Oakland, California, sparked a passionate following. A photographer whose black and white images investigate poverty in America.
Hahrie Han, Tommy Orange, and Matt Black are among the 22 fellows selected this year by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and announced Wednesday. It’s a recognition often called the genius award, which comes with an $800,000 prize, paid over five years that fellows can spend however they choose.
The foundation selects fellows over the course of years, considering a vast range of recommendations, largely from their peers.
Each class doesnt have a theme and were not creating a cohort around a certain idea,” said Marlies Carruth, director of the MacArthur Fellows program. “But I think this year, we see empathy and deep engagement with community figures prominently in this class.”
Through different methodologies, many of the fellows boldly and unflinchingly reflect what they see and hear from deep engagement with their communities, she said.
Because fellows don’t apply or participate in any way in their selection, the award often comes as a shock and sometimes coincides with difficult moments. Nabarun Dasgupta, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, had just left a team meeting where he shared that a longtime collaborator in harm reduction work had died when he saw multiple missed calls from a Chicago number, which then called again. It was the MacArthur Foundation.
They were awarding him the fellowship in recognition of his work, which includes helping to start a testing program for street drugs to identify unregulated substances and helping to overcome a shortage of naloxone, which reverses an opioid overdose.
To make sense of the intense moment that mixed deep loss and recognition, Dasgupta wrote the following in a journal.
We are surrounded by death every day. Sometimes, you have to give yourself a pep talk to get out of bed. Other mornings, the universe yells in your ear and tells you to keep going because what were doing is working.
In an interview with The Associated Press, he added, I feel like this couldnt have been any clearer of a signal that the work has to go on.
Other fellows were contacted by the foundation through email, asking to speak with them about potential projects. Tonika Lewis Johnson, a Chicago-based artist, planned to take the call in the car. The foundation representatives tried to get her to pull over before breaking the news, but she declined.
They were definitely worried about my safety, she said laughing, and she did then stop driving.
Johnson’s projects are rooted in her neighborhood of Englewood, located on Chicago’s South Side. She has photographed the same addresses in north and south Chicago, beautified residents’ homes and made predatory housing practices visible. All together, her work reveals the very specific people and places impacted by racial segregation.
This award is validation and recognition that my neighborhood, this little Black neighborhood in Chicago that everyone gets told to, Dont go to because its dangerous, this award means there are geniuses here, Johnson said.
For Ángel F. Adames Corraliza, an atmospheric scientist at the University of WisconsinMadison, the award is also a recognition of the talent and grit coming from Puerto Rico, where he is from, despite the hardships his community has endured. His research has uncovered many new findings about what drives weather patterns in the tropics, which may eventually help improve forecasting in those regions.
Adames said usually one of his classes would be ending right when the foundation would publish the new class of fellows, so he was planning to end the lecture early to come back to his office. He said hes having trouble fathoming what it will be like.
I am low-key expecting that a few people are just going to show up in my office, like right at 11:02 a.m. or something like that, he said.
Before getting news of the award, Adames said he was anticipating having to scale down his research in the coming years as government funding for climate and weather research has been significantly cut back or changed. He said he had been questioning what was next for his career.
The prize from MacArthur may allow him to pursue some new theoretical ideas that are harder to get funded, he said.
I think people do care and it does matter for the general public, regardless of what the political landscape is, which right now is fairly negative on this, he said about climate and weather science.
___
Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the APs collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of APs philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
Thalia Beaty, Associated Press
Forget magical virtual worlds. In its quest to broaden the audience for virtual reality, Meta is now embracing much more familiar surroundings: Owners of Metas Quest VR headsets will soon be able to create digital replicas of any room in their house, and then invite others to visit them in those spaces. Imagine, for instance, having a spontaneous family reunion in a metaverse version of your living room perhaps even with an avatar that looks just like you, and not a character that has escaped from a video game.There is something very magical about scanning a space that you know, bringing someone else who knows that space into it and feeling like you’re there together, says Vishal Shah, the vice president of Metas metaverse.That magic, in turn, could help Meta turn its vision of a 3D metaverse as a social-3D realm into a reality one that has cost the company close to $70 billion to date.When your headset is also a cameraMeta demonstrated the first version of such digital replicas with an app called Hyperscape at its Connect developer conference last year. In the most recent version of the app, people can explore high-resolution 3D captures of a handful of places, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsays home kitchen and Chance the Rappers recording studio.The scans look so detailed and real that you can feel your mouth water when inspecting the ham on Ramsays kitchen counter. Meta even felt the need to add a warning about not leaning on any of the furniture in these virtual rooms.Chance The Rapper’s recording studio [Animation: Meta]But Metas Hyperscape ambitions dont stop there: With an impending operating system update, Meta Quest 3 and Quest 3s owners will also gain the ability to scan their own rooms with their headsets built-in cameras. My first thought was that they probably took a very expensive camera rig to capture these data sets because they look really quite lifelike, says 3D capture tech expert Michael Rubloff. That all of the scenes were captured with just a Quest device [is] completely mind-blowing.Capturing a room with a Quest VR headset is a relatively simple process. First, the headset overlays everything in the room with a kind of mesh of geographic shapes to record its general dimensions and the rough outlines of furniture and other objects. In a second pass, it fills in those shapes with 3D data, a process that to the naked eye looks like generating a mosaic of lots of little photos. Finally, the headset prompts people to look up and around to capture additional height information for any given room.Gordon Ramsay’s home kitchen [Animation: Meta]The whole process of capturing an average room takes less than 20 minutes, according to Meta employees who worked on the project. Then, the raw capture data gets uploaded to Metas servers, where the 3D replica of the room gets rendered over a couple of hours. Once ready, each space will be streamed directly from the cloud — no time-consuming downloads required.Metas digital-room replicas are powered by a novel technology known as Gaussian splatting. In a nutshell, Gaussian splatting doesnt just capture the surfaces of objects like a regular photo camera would. Instead, it deconstructs every object into a collection of three-dimensional blobs, complete with information on how those blobs look from different angles, along with attributes like transparency. To date, most Gaussian splats have been captured with cell phones. However, turning the VR headset itself into a capture device has some distinct advantages. For one thing, Meta controls the hardware, which allows the company to optimize its code for a certain type of camera, instead of having to work with a myriad of different smart phones. Plus, people tend to wave their hands too quickly when trying to capture something. The head movement is not as fast as the phone, explains Meta research scientist Jan-Michael Frahm.Next step: adding avatarsAt launch, spaces replicated with Metas Hyperscape will be private, and only available to the person who captured them. The company is working towards letting people share their captures, and eventually turn them into locations for social get-togethers. Hyperscape captures already run on a game engine that Meta is using for its Horizon Worlds metaverse. Currently, Horizon Worlds is essentially a collection of games and spaces generated from computer graphics that people can explore together in VR. In the future, Horizon users will be able to import their own Hyperscape rooms into Horizon, and invite their friends to join them on a digital replica of their living room couch.I think there’s a real human connection opportunity here, where the environment is just as important in some cases as the people, Shah says.Its also an opportunity for Meta to expand VR beyond its current audience. The company has had more success than some critics give it credit for in establishing VR as a medium for video games and adjacent experiences, including gamified workouts. Meta had sold close to 20 million headset sales in early 2023, and some developers have been able to turn games for Metas Quest headset into real money makers. Ten apps on Metas Horizon store have generated more than $50 million in revenue, while the number of apps with more than $1 million has surpassed 300, according to data shared last month by Meta executives.Mademoiselle Collette French Bakery [Screenshot: Meta]But recently, Quest headset sales seem to have plateaued. Some developershave also complained about declining revenue amid an influx of younger users primarily interested in free titles like the hit VR game Gorilla Tag. Meta aims to counter those trends by broadening the appeal of VR among older users who may not be as interested in gaming. This includes a greater emphasis on traditional entertainment, including a partnership with James Cameron to produce 3D content for Quest headsets.That move mirrors efforts Apple has taken to promote its Vision Pro headset, which has faced its own set of obstacles. Priced far above Metas hardware, the Vision Pro has seen tepid sales, despite integrating with the companys computers for professional use cases. But that has done little to slow a broader industry interest in VR headsets and 3D technologies: Samsung and Google are expected to launch their own headset, code-named Project Moohan, later this month. Like the Vision Pro, it is geared towards immersive entertainment and work use cases.The company has also been working on more lifelike representations of users in VR through 3D-captured personas the company calls codec avatars. While still in development, Shah believes codec avatars could be the perfect complement for Hyperscape. You’re in an environment that looks photoreal. You are with people who look photoreal, he explains. For some people, that’s going to be the most magical thing in a headset.Even without those avatars, 3D capture could become an important time capsule for consumers. The same way photography has aided us with memory preservation, 3D also fulfills that promise for general consumers, argues Rubloff. It gives us the ability to really step back into a moment in time. [Weve been able to] capture the world in 2D for the last 200 years. [Now, were] able to do the same in 3D.
The global economy is holding up better than expected despite major shocks such as President Donald Trump’s tariffs, but the head of the International Monetary Fund says that resilience may not last.
Buckle up, Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in a speech at a think tank Wednesday. Uncertainty is the new normal and it is here to stay.
Her comments at the Milken Institute come on a day when gold prices hit $4,000 an ounce for the first time as investors seek safe haven from a weaker dollar and geopolitical uncertainty and before the IMF and World Bank hold their annual meetings next week in Washington. Trump’s trade penalties are expected to be in sharp focus when global finance leaders and central bankers gather.
The worldwide economy is forecast to grow by 3% this year, and Georgieva is citing a number of factors for why it may not slip below that: Countries have put in place decisive economic policies, the private sector has adapted, and the tariffs have proved less severe than originally feared.
But before anyone heaves a big sigh of relief, please hear this: Global resilience has not yet been fully tested. And there are worrying signs the test may come. Just look at the surging global demand for gold, she said.
On Trump’s tariffs, she says the full effect is still to unfold. In the U.S., margin compression could give way to more price pass-through, raising inflation with implications for monetary policy and growth.”
The Republican administration imposed import taxes on nearly all U.S. trading partners in April, including Canada, Mexico, Brazil, China and even the tiny African nation of Lesotho. Were the king of being screwed by tariffs, Trump said Tuesday in the Oval Office during a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
While the U.S. has announced some trade frameworks with nations such as the United Kingdom and Vietnam, the tariffs have created uncertainty worldwide.
Elsewhere, a flood of goods previously destined for the U.S. market could trigger a second round of tariff hikes, Georgieva said.
The Supreme Court next month will hear arguments about whether Trump has the authority to impose some of his tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
In her wide-ranging remarks, Georgieva pointed to youth discontent around the world as many young people foresee a future where they earn less than their parents.
The young are taking their disappointment to the streets from Lima to Rabat, from Paris to Nairobi, from Kathmandu to Jakarta, all are demanding better opportunities,” she said. “And here in the U.S., the chances of growing up to earn more than your parents keeps falling and here too, discontent has been evident and it has helped precipitate the policy revolution that is now unfolding, reshaping trade, immigration and many international frameworks.
She also called for greater internal trade in Asia, more business-friendly changes in Africa and more competitiveness in Europe.
For the United States, Georgieva urged the government to address the federal debt and to encourage household saving.
The national debt is the total amount of money that the federal government owes to its creditors. The federal debt has increased from $380 billion in 1925 to $37.64 trillion in 2025, according to Treasury Department data.
The Congressional Budget Office reported in July that Trumps new tax and spending law will add $3.4 trillion to that total through 2034.
The IMF is a 191-country lending organization that seeks to promote global growth and financial stability and to reduce poverty.
Fatima Hussein, Associated Press
Up until a week ago, I was really quite satisfied by my iPhone 17 Pro. Not the Liquid Glass, but its soft orange aluminum frame felt just new enough to give me a spark.
Then I opened the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold. Yes, its name is too long. Yes, it costs $700 more than my iPhone. Yes, it’s still heavier than I want it to be. And yet, I hate to admit it . . . the Fold justifies every analyst who has cried that Apples hesitance to adopt flexible screen technologies is starting to make it look dated.
An estimated 17 million folding smartphones sold last year, representing a scant 1.5% of the smartphone market, but about every analyst expects that figure to balloon in the next few years. I believe that trajectory could prove out, but I still see the market going either wayit will come down to if the technology can keep iterating toward a sweet spot that turns the tech into delectable design.
[Photo: Google]
Folding phones began as a gimmick deployed by a smartphone industry thats satisfied their customers too well. Theres simply not much reason to upgrade your phone, ever, unless youve broken it. But that doesnt mean theyll always be silly.
After all, weve rolled up scrolls and folded maps and letters for centuries. Its just a natural way to convert a large 2D object into a more portable one. But theyve definitely felt a bit futile, given that their thickness and weight offset any value of space savings. (Do you really want to unfold a brick into a thinner brick?)
In the meantime, heres a no-nonsense take on what its really like to use the current state of the art in folding phoneswith thoughts from Googles own development team on how it’s approaching the challenge, and possibilities, ahead.
[Photo: Google]
The challenge of building a folding phone without making a two-phone sandwich
Herein lies the challenge the industry has been learning the hard way: Screens aren’t paper. They aren’t built to fold. And it’s required incredible ingenuity to change that.
Ive been trying foldable phones since Motorola rerelased the Razr in 2019, kicking off the era of folding smartphones with a rebooted retro play. At the time, Motorola brought me into its labs to demonstrate how it had achieved the impossible. It wasn’t just another slab of electronics, but a complex mechanical device that shifted plates around to allow a ribbon of OLED screen to fold open and closed without breaking.
Motorola, alongside Samsung and Google in particular, have worked hard to expand this market while shrinking their own bulk. The companies have simplified their screens from ornate mechanical contraptions to a thin sheet of flexible glass that belies the complexity beneath (impact coatings, OLED, and hinge mechanics that prevents the screen from breaking when opened and shut).
They’ve all made incredible progress. The Pixel 10 Fold is 2mm thicker than an iPhone 17 Pro when folded. But actually 0.2mm thinner than an iPhone Air unfolded. What you may notice more is the weight, which is about 2 oz. heavier than a pro smartphone.
[Photo: Google]
You dont really see the fold, and you dont care when you do
The Pixel 10 Pro Fold unfolds to reveal a roughly 6″x6″ screen that opens like a book. So the big question is: When you open the Fold, do you see the fold in the screen? Sometimes yes, sometimes not at all.
Head on at night in a dark room, its completely imperceptible. Bright white webpages are surprisingly adept at burning through any glare that might reveal geometric imperfection. The seam is most prominent if you see someone else using the Fold from the side. Most of the time, its subtle enough to forget about.
Obviously its a goal for Google to get rid of the screen fold. Stuff that we don’t want the user to think about, to ever notice toit needs to disappear, says Claude Zellweger, senior director of design at Google who oversees phone hardware. But he also admits it is a somewhat impossible task for the engineering team.
To get closer to the impossible, Google has rebuilt its hinge to be smaller, eliminating the micro gears to have it run on tiny sliding cams (classic mechanical device that turns rotation into straight movementkind of like a jack in the box). It helps hide the crease, but it also improves the all around proportions of the phone.
Its all in srvice of Googles somewhat ironic, ultimate goal of the product.
We want it to feel like your regular phone, says Zellweger.
The outside screen doesnt make sense to mebut it does to Google
For those moments you dont want to unfold the Fold, theres also a more typical touchscreen on the outside. It’s mean to feel like a regular touchscreen smartphone, but it still doesnt really work that way. Its a bit too thick, a bit too heavy.
Google insists its needed, especially to account for more typical smartphone behavior. In its own research, Google found most people are only spending a bit of time on their phones for most interactions, meaning unfolding it every time seemed like too much effort.
[Photo: Google]
A lot of interactions on your phone are short and fleeting. The text message that youve got to send to your partner quickly, the Spotify song that you need to change, the alarm that you need to set, [these tasks are done] within a minute or two, says George Hwang, product manager at Google leading the Folds engineering. “And if you look at that data, those are probably like, frequency wise, about 60 to 70% of everything you do. So it’s really, really high.
I get his point. Yet the Fold isnt quite normal, so using it as a typical phone isnt quite normal. The big outer screen actually ruins the occasion of using the product. I like that unfolding the phone feels intentional. Its a certain barrier to checking your screen and getting sucked into apps. That could be a feature not a bug!
[Screenshot: courtesy of the author]
The keyboard needs to be adjustable because foldables should be ergonomic
Tiny qualm, but here it is: The Pixel Fold features a split virtual keyboard for typing. Its quite comfortable and you can type pretty darn fast on the thing. But buttons like enter are still placed way too far into the corners . . . making them a real jam of the thumb to hit.
Look, Google and everyone elsemy thumbs are like Jordans knees. Theyve played a lot of games at this point in their career. For such a large device, users should be able to tweak the ergonomics of the keyboard to their exact preference for optimum comfort, because the screen has room. Seriously, why arent keyboards perfectly configured to our hand sizes in an era when my face and fingerprint unlock the phone?
At the very least, give me a few more options of the default.
Google is getting closer to a proper fidget
Since Motorola debuted the first modern folding phone, these designs have gotten thinner, lighter, and open and close without feeling like youre gonna break em any moment.
But . . . it still feels strange to open a folding phone for the first time. It has a sort of even resistance curve that feels less like snapping open a flip phone or even opening a hard cover book than it does bending a thick coat hanger into a new shape. You actually have to open and close it a bit for the mechanisms to feel properly loosened. Its weird!
Of course this is a small qualm in the face of some really unbelievable engineering work, but the experience of opening and closing most folding phones just doesn’t feel good enough for these products to appear solidified. It doesn’t offer a sense of innate satisfaction or completion to the action. The hardware works, but for some reason it also feels a little dead.
The Fold is getting better in this regard. It offers a light, almost “tap” sound when you open it, and a more satisfying compact-case clap when it closes. It feels good. I still want it to feel fidgety-amazing.
[Gmail left. Google Drive files right. Screenshot: courtesy of the author]
Big apps hit different in a thin frame
I didnt unlock some amazing multitasking experience with the Pixelthough you can technically load two apps and, in some cases, drag and drop files between them.
Gmail feels approachable for sure, but it falls short of its potential. It formats information into either a big email or a few thin columns . . . essentially giving you the experience of holding a few phone side-by-side. It’s a sensible solution, but one that falls short of rethinking information architecture and display entirely to celebrate the possibilities of a larger screen.
[Gmail. Screenshot: courtesy of the author]
But media-forward apps are a real a delight.
[Screenshot: courtesy of the author]
Instagram goes from feeling like youre perusing large postage stamps on your regular phone, to looking at CD jewel cases on a Pixel Fold. The same is true for TikToks and YouTube clips. Yes, this sort of scale can exist on a laptop, or a tablet, of course. But the thin bezel of Googles latest phone makes it feels almost like youre holding this media in your hands.
[Screenshot: courtesy of the author]
It’s a unique sensationGoogle Earth suddenly feels magical again. The act of holding the phone with two hands rather than one creates a preciousness to the experiencelike reading a book, or using your full attention to accept a gift. It demands intention by default. Im reminded how Zellweger was inspired by the sensation of a Moleskin when Google released its first Fold in 2023. When held open, the Fold really does feel like a precious, digital take on a notebook.
[Screenshot: courtesy of the author]
This is so close to feeling great . . . but what else could it be?
There is an ideal folding phone in all of our hearts. The Fold still isnt quite there. Its an engineering marvel with some very thoughtful touches of design, do not get me wrong. Its neat as hell. It still feels a generation or two (or three?) removed from whatever sweet spot of iteration takes an idea from novel to captivating, or even essential.
Even if folding phones are the next big paradigm in smartphones, I’m not sure it means that those smartphones need to be as large as the Pixel Foldand this 6-inch-ish crossover vehicle form the industry has landed on.
But technically speaking, can we make these phones that much smaller or thinner? Because looking at smartphones over the past decade, in many cases, weve actually seen them grow thicker. The iPhone Air, for all of its ingenuity, is still thicker than an iPhone 4. The industry seems cautious to make anyone give up any bit of the growing Swiss army knife of features in a modern phone.
There is still headroom, and we’re excited about future products and things like that. On general, we’re going [pursue thinness] aggressively, but within measure, so that we don’t compromise durability and battery life, says Zellweger.
Hwang adds that its easy to forget all the features we take for granted in modern smartphones, like haptics, speakers, and of course, cameras. All-in-all, these features add up to keep our phones thick. There are subtle trade-offs when you do when you keep on pushing in [thinness] that I think most users wouldn’t know until they actually hold the device and use it side-by-side, says Hwang, referring to these compromises as paper cuts.
I hope to see the entire smartphone industry push the boundaries in other ways. I want small phones like the iPhone Mini back. I want small, folding phones like the Razr back (and indeed, Motorola has been snagging some market share by offering a lower cost, smaller folding smartphone). I want curvy wearables portended by the Nike+ Fuelband back. I want to see what we can do with flexible screens outside of this smartphone-to-small-tablet size everyone seems to be investing their energies in.
I agree with you, says Zellweger when I present him with most of this rant. Fundamentally, I think the extremes [in screen size] are interesting. And I think in a world where we are moving towards more sort of agentic based interactions, our need for for large displays may change.
Realistically, we think it’s going to change in the next five years, adds Hwang. And so we’re really in an interesting time to think through this stuff and be involved in it.
Indeed. Right now, there is a unique opportunity to not just make a bunch of mostly same phones, but to push the extremes of size, shape, ad ergonomics. In a sea of the regular, its so easy to stand out.
Carbon offsets have existed for decades, and the size of the voluntary carbon market has ballooned to about $2 billion. Many countries and countless companies, including giants like Amazon and FedEx, use carbon offsets to reduce their emissions as they work toward reaching net zero.
And yet, these offsets havent significantly curbed global greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, global emissions are still increasing. As a climate solution, carbon offsets have failedand according to a new scientific review looking at 25 years of carbon offset research, theyve failed because theyre riddled with intractable, deep-seated problems that incremental changes wont be able to solve.
Carbon offsets have long been criticized for their issues, including concerns over greenwashing or double-counting. Multiple studies have found that individual offset projects overestimate their climate benefits. Offsets also dont always last; trees used as carbon offsets have burned in wildfires, releasing all the carbon theyve long stored.
Proponents of carbon offsets say such criticisms focus on a few bad apples.
But the problem is, it isnt really a few bad apples. Its pretty much all the apples, says Joseph Romm, a senior research fellow at the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, and the lead author on the review of offset research.
25 years of evidenceand issues
Romm and his fellow researchers looked at carbon offset studies spanning more than two decades, and used more than 200 references, including documents from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Carbon offsets are essentially a way for rich polluterseither countries or companiesto finance projects that reduce emissions somewhere else. Then, they claim that projects emissions reduction for themselves, while continuing to pollute the atmosphere.
Offsets need to be verified, and also additionala term meaning that the project wouldnt have happened anyway (it only exists, and benefits the climate, because of the offset program). But the idea of additionality is flawed, Romm says.
Take renewable energy projects, which have long been the base of carbon offset projects, and are still the most common offsets today. We pay someone to do a renewable energy project, and then we say that that has reduced emissions. [But] the thing is, renewables are now the cheapest [energy to build], Romm says. As the cheapest option, renewable projects likely would be built anyway, so the offset project didnt really change anything.
Since the carbon market is voluntary, theres no regulations or oversight. That creates a race to the bottom, Romm says, where buyers pay low prices for offset projects. Its left the world with the impression that theres a vast sea of cheap offsets in poor countries, he says. Its just not the reality. Its why theres been a reckoning in terms of companies realizing its going to take more effort to reduce their emissions.
Other issues include impermanence (like offset projects burning in wildfires); leakage (when the pollution or logging is simply moved elsewhere, outside of the offsets boundary); and double counting (when more than one party claims the same carbon credit).
Carbon offsets are a distraction
Essentially, the voluntary carbon market is full of junk offsets that dont really have a climate benefit.
The appeal of offsets is obvious: Without having to change their own behavior or pay a lot of money, countries and companies can claim another entitys emissions reductions. But the reality isnt that easy, and offsets are a distraction from the fact that we need to stop burning so many fossil fuels in the first place.
At the end of the day, this comes down to: Everyone needs to get their own emissions as low as possible, Romm says. Theres no offloading this problem on someone else.
Actual carbon capture projects, which sequester carbon from the atmosphere, could work as offsets, but those are currently expensive and operate at a small scale. It takes a lot less money and energy to not burn fossil fuels in the first place, than to burn them and then recapture the emissions.
Such criticism of offsets isnt new. Romms review cites 25 years worth of them. This paper also builds on Romm’s publication from 2023, titled Carbon offsets are unscalable, unjust, and unfixableand a threat to the Paris Agreement.
Romm hopes that by putting all this research in one place, and by having a comprehensive look back at the way carbon offsets have failed over the past two decades, it helps people understand the reality.
Leaders of companies or countries always think they can be the one to solve the intractable issues within carbon offsets, Romm says. They say their technology is better, or that they really care about making it work. The review paper counters that notion.
We wanted to have somewhere someone could go and simply see the compendium of studies and see that people have been warning about this for over two decades, he says. Everything they warned about is true. No one’s ever solved these problems.
Amazon is rolling out kiosks that let patients get their prescriptions while they are still at the doctors office.
Starting in December 2025, the tech behemoth will be stepping up its efforts to become a bigger presence in the pharmaceutical market by launching in-office pharmaceutical kiosks stocked with medicine.
The kiosks will initially be launched at certain One Medical locations (which Amazon acquired in 2023 for $3.9 billion), including in Downtown Los Angeles, West Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Long Beach, and West Hollywood.
The company claims that the kiosks will help combat pharmacy deserts across the U.S., and help patients who dont or cant fill their prescriptions for chronic health conditions.
Doubling the dose
This is the latest move into pharmaceuticals by Amazon, which on top of One Medical also acquired medical startup PillPack for $750 million in 2019.
Amazon does not disclose the official number of prescriptions it fills yearly, its pharmaceutical and healthcare financials, or specific revenues for Amazon Pharmacy. In an earnings call in July, CEO Andy Jassy said Amazon Pharmacy grew 50% year-over-year “on an already significant size base.”
Amazons pharmaceutical kiosk expansion comes as other longtime pharmacies are facing their own troubles and sizing down.
Walgreens Boots Allianceowner of Walgreens Pharmacyannounced mass closures last year and was taken private in August of this year, while Rite Aid has closed all of its locations after filing for bankruptcy. Meanwhile, CVSthe sectors leader with a 33% market shareplans on closing 270 stores in 2025.
Good news for those who want to get their prescriptions via One Medical: Patients do not need to be a member or pay a fee if they are not enrolled in Amazon Prime.
As for prescription choices, kiosks will be stocked with medication based on prescribing patterns of consumers living in that specific location.
