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In todays world, communication is largely done through one of two methods: smartphones or social media. Young children, however, rarely have access to eitherand experts say they shouldnt have any access at all until age 13 or later. That leaves many parents as the gatekeepers of their childrens social lives, long past the days of mommy-and-me classes and playdates. But an old-school solution is giving kids more independence: the landline. Once considered obsolete (AT&T even tried to stop servicing them in California last year), the home phone is making a comeback. Seattle-based Tin Can is hoping to lead the revival with a redesigned corded phone that lets kids call their friends and arrange get-togetherswithout involving parents and without the distractions or dangers of a smartphone, such as texting, cameras, or internet access. The idea for Tin Can came when founder Chet Kittleson was talking with other parents of elementary school-aged children at a park. “Every single person around the circle was like, I totally forgot that the landline was how I operated as a kid. We remember it as a utility for an adult and forget that the kids are a massive beneficiary of it,” he told Seattle’s Child. Tin Can founders Graeme Davies, Chet Kittleson, Max Blumen [Photo: Tin Can] Tin Can phones, which retail for $75, are modeled after a familiar 1980s design. Since few households maintain a dedicated phone line, they run on VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and plug into a router or in-home ethernet port. (A Wi-Fi-enabled version is in the works.) Because theyre corded, kids cant wander too far, and parents can control when the phone is available through the Tin Can app. Instead of traditional phone numbers, each Tin Can has a unique five-digit code that kids use to call one another. There are no monthly fees. A forthcoming upgrade will allow calls to standard phone numbers (and emergency services) for $10 per month. [Photo: Tin Can] Kittleson isnt the only parent rediscovering landlines. In March, Oregon mom Britteny Mast shared on Instagram that she had installed a “home phone” for her kids. The post has received more than 137,000 likes, with dozens of parents saying they had done the same. Mast and her husband realized their children were so used to FaceTime that they didnt know how to carry a regular phone conversation. They also wanted them to be able to call family members without borrowing a parents smartphone. “My husband and I decided to just default to what we did growing up, and get a home phone. So far the kids think its awesome, and they love calling Grammy all on their own,” she wrote. Of course, landlines come with risks. More than half of all calls to them are from scammers, who often target seniors, the demographic most likely to still have a home phone. Parents today, just like those in the 1980s, need to teach kids not to answer unfamiliar numbers. What some parents are most surprised about, though, isn’t that their younger kids love the landline. Their older kids might as well. Landlines scratch the same retro itch as cassette tapes. For Gen Z, theyre a screen-free alternative that encourages conversation without emojis and builds deeper bonds. Plus, the cord is still fun to twirl. That said, the smartphone is in no danger of being overwhelmed. The most recent study from the National Center for Health Statistics found that in the second half of 2024, 78.7% of adults lived in households that did not have a landline. (Homeowners were more than twice as likely to have one.) At the end of 2014, that number was just 44.2%.
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Herman Miller is reviving an iconic Eames design that hasnt been in production for more than 30 years. The new Eames Molded Plastic Dining Chair looks identical to its archival predecessor, but it’s different in one key way: Its made of 99% recycled plastic. The original Eames Molded Plastic Dining Chair was an evolution of several design techniques pioneered by renowned design duo Ray and Charles Eames. It first went into production in 1970 and was discontinued in 1993. Now, the Herman Miller brand has collaborated with the Eames Officethe family-run foundation dedicated to preserving the married couple’s workto bring the chair into the 21st century. The sustainable twist swaps the original’s virgin plastic for a post-industrial recycled plastic. The chair is currently available online starting at $645, though customers can customize it to their liking for an added fee. Rows of Eames EC-127 chairs after production, March 1973. [Photo: 2025 Eames Office, LLC. All rights reserved.] As Herman Miller has worked with the Eames Office to revive archival designsfrom lamps to tables and coat racksit has been doing so with a focus on sustainable materials. Already, the Herman Miller team has made a 100% recycled plastic version of the Eames Molded Plastic Chair and an iteration of the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman made with plant-based leather. The sustainable Eames reissues, family members say, mark both a continuation of Charles and Rays own core design philosophy of material experimentation. Charles and Eames Office staff member, Don Albinson, posing with Dining Chairs Metal (DCMs) outside the office building in Venice, California. [Photo: 2025 Eames Office, LLC. All rights reserved.] The Eames spirit of experimentation Charles and Ray were, first and foremost, masters of innovation. The couple viewed furniture design as primarily about solving a problem rather than achieving a certain aesthetic. To that end, they experimented constantly with how new materials could make furniture better. In 1945, Charles and Ray were the first designers to figure out how to mold plywood on two planes without it splintering. With this technique, they created the Dining Chair Metal (DCM), a sleek molded plywood chair with a distinct seat and backrest. Just a few years later, the pair began experimenting with new materials for a competition held by New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, called the International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture Design, toying with how to make their designs cheaper and easier to manufacture. The Eames House kitchen in its earliest years, featuring four DCMs that rest in the same place today. c. 1950-51. [Photo: 2025 Eames Office, LLC. All rights reserved.] At first, they tested prototype chairs made from stamped metal. Then, they moved on to fiberglass, which Eames Demetrios, director of the Eames Office and grandson of Charles and Ray, says his grandfather sourced himself from a local autobody shop. Finally, they realized that plastic could make an even more uniform, simple, and inexpensive chair. With their first-ever plastic chair prototype, the duo won second place at the MoMA competition. As they continued to experiment, the duo updated the original molded plywood DCM with a plastic construction in the late 1960sresulting in the first Molded Plastic Dining Chair. They were always trying to make things better, Demetrios says. The really radical idea was to take advantage of the plastic material, which they themselves had pioneered, to bring down the [DCM] price and also make it simpler to make. The new reissue is a continuation of that experimental ethos, he says. [Photo: Kelly Marshall / Herman Miller] Updating a classic, sustainably Like the process of creating a plastic version of the DCM was in the 60s, reviving the Molded Plastic Dining Chair in 2025 was a process of trial and error. Jennifer Nield, SVP of lifestyle product at Herman Miller’s parent company MillerKnoll, says the team knew from the beginning that they wanted to use recycled post-industrial plastic as their core material. Post-industrial plastic is a broad category describing plastic discarded by manufacturers before it actually reaches the consumer, which includes everything from defective consumer packaged goods to automotive scraps. That made finding the right mix of plastic for the job the team’s main challenge. To start, the team tried a 90% recycled resin made from two polymers. But after conducting several trials, which Nield says included dropping a ton of weight on this thing, pulling it, and pushing it in every way you can imagine, they found inconsistencies in the surface quality and durability of the chairs. [Photo: Kelly Marshall / Herman Miller] We kind of went back to the drawing board, Nield says. Ultimately, they settled on using a single polymerrecycled propylene. “[That] allowed us to meet our consistency requirements and then also deliver on those durability and safety standards. It also had a higher recycled content, so we were able to bring it up from 90% to 99% [recycled material]. Demetrios says projects like this one feel like the embodiment of the directive that he was given by Charles and Ray to continue their legacy of material experimentation. The last thing Charles and Ray wanted is to say, Well, we’re dead. No more Eames chairs.”
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According to Sun Tzu, in order to know your enemy, you must become your enemy. Some politicians might be taking that advice a little too literally, though. Zohran Mamdanis notably deft use of social media helped lead his well-run mayoral primary campaign to victory in Juneand it may have inspired some recent pivots from other politicos. Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo is now taking a kitchen-sink approach to replicating his mayoral opponents social media magic, while California Governor Gavin Newsom has taken to mimicking Donald Trump in an ongoing performance art piece on one of his X accounts. Neither seems to have a broader strategy beyond capturing attention. Memes and mimicking online Fresh off of copying Mamdanis distinct video style upon reentering the mayoral race as an Independent, Cuomo is now trying to flex his own social media fluency, with memes and a reply-heavy X account. In between the rash of posts attacking his opponent, Cuomo has been interacting with many of his followers and posting the occasional clunky meme from The Office. Fund the police pic.twitter.com/Q6xKhjV3T8— Andrew Cuomo (@andrewcuomo) August 19, 2025 Apparently, this is just the beginning. Jason Levin, whose bio claims he builds software for meme marketing and memetic warfare, took credit for Cuomos memefication on Monday. In a thread posted to X, he recounted how his first meme for Cuomo hit 5.1 million views on the platform, with a triumphant tone more befitting someone who has just received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. We are entering a golden age of memefied politics, he wrote in one entry in the thread, urging his followers to take up arms (read: memes), and help save NYC. Meanwhile, Governor Newsom also seems to believe we have entered a golden age of memefied politics. Since the beginning of August, he has been taking a punchier approach on X, with the occasional clunky meme from The Office. The effort peaked last week, though, when Newsom began an elaborate trolling campaign against Trump, in which his tweets favor the presidents all-caps, nickname-forward, syntactically challenged, self-worshipful style. DONALD IS FINISHED HE IS NO LONGER HOT. FIRST THE HANDS (SO TINY) AND NOW ME GAVIN C. NEWSOM HAVE TAKEN AWAY HIS STEP. MANY ARE SAYING HE CANT EVEN DO THE BIG STAIRS ON AIR FORCE ONE ANYMORE USES THE LITTLE BABY STAIRS NOW. SAD! TOMORROW HES GOT HIS MEETING WITH— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) August 15, 2025 In an effort to show hes willing to stand up to Trumpor, lets be real, more likely in an effort to lay further groundwork for his inevitable 2028 presidential bidNewsom is acting on social media as though he were a Good Terminator sent back in time to stop the Bad one. Whether these efforts have had any meaningful impact on Trump is debatable, but what is beyond dispute is that this social media strategy has earned Newsom loads of attention. Cuomo trolls desperately for votes The attention a politician generates with memes or trolling, however, is not necessarily relevant if they don’t match it with something more interesting to say. Social media fluency, after all, is not political fairy dust. In 2025, we’re well past the point where a politician using memes, in and of itself, suggests youthful savviness. Michael Bloomberg went all in on the best memes money can buy in the 2020 election, and failed to move the needle one iota. A decade into Trumps political era, everyone has already been to this circus and seen these clowns. What they want instead are leaders. Throughout his campaign, Mamdani used social media to highlight key issues around the central theme of affordability, reveal his personality, and showcase transparency. His various accounts built off the organizing prowess of his ground game to make his progressive ideas more widely palatable and to give them moral heft. His posts were generally earnest and informative, and slyly packaged in smart experiments like his daylong walk across the entirety of Manhattan. Now that he has won the primary, his social media has an earned sense of triumphalismas in a recent video filmed backstage at a Wu-Tang concert at Madison Square Gardenalong with a whole lot of smoke for his opponent, Cuomo. If Mamdani has gotten a major boost from his social media usageand he undoubtedly hasits because it seems like a natural extension of the candidate himself. All that Cuomo is doing with his flailing efforts at being epic on social media (something Elon Musk has proved is no pathway to popularity) is rveal his desperation for capturing attention. That thirstiness leaves room in his tent for Trump supporters, like his new meme contributor, along with Trump himself, whose support Cuomo is actively, openly courting (despite him being less popular among conservative voters than both Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa and Mamdani). Postingshockinglyis not politics As for Newsom, the best that can be said of his new social media trolling persona is that its drawing attention to the hypocrisy of Trumps supporters in the media. Those anchors on Fox News who find Newsoms schtick childish and unbecoming of a leader, for instance, should indeed have to answer for why they dont attribute those traits to the guy Newsom is imitating. But the problem is that all this trolling is just empty calories. Newsoms Bizarro Trump act is an attention-getting spectacle. Its a one-note comedy routine, not a form of leadership. He could keep this up every day for the next three years and it would never make more of a material impact than his recent pledge to redraw the district maps in California, in order to match a gerrymandering effort underway in Texas. (Its worth noting that this issue is what initially kicked off Newsoms ongoing Trump impersonation.) If there isnt more evidence of substance behind the style soon, all that remains will be tiny hands jibes, and beating the TACO thing to death. Whatever shape this performance does ultimately take, though, Newsoms new bit is unlikely to stick with potential voters longer than his aggressive crackdown on homeless encampments, his vanity podcast with right-wing provocateurs, or his scapegoating of trans people. Given the full context of what people know about Newsom, his impersonation of a Trump-like narcissistic megalomaniac threatens to hit observers as something more than an impersonation. Getting attention, after all, is far less important than what one does with it.
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