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The Social Security Administration (SSA) will officially stop issuing paper checks. The transition, which aims to improve efficiency, security, and ensure beneficiaries receive their monthly benefits promptly, will come into effect starting September 30, 2025. Beneficiaries should receive electronic funds transfers (EFTs) quicker than the time it takes for a check to arrive in the mail. Electronic payments should also be more secure, with the SSA claiming a paper check is 16 times more likely to be stolen or lost. Meanwhile, the federal government will financially benefit from the change. It costs about 50 cents to mail a paper check, while the EFT should cost under 15 cents. How many people will be impacted by this change? The SSA claims that less than 1% of recipients still get paper checks. As paper checks are phased out for Social Security benefits, individuals can either enroll in direct deposit through their bank or get a Direct Express card. The latter works as a prepaid debit card with just the federal benefits added to it, meaning you don’t need a bank account to use it. A survey by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) last year found that about 5.6 million U.S. households were unbanked in 2023. Although the percentage of people without bank accounts is declining overall, certain populations are disproportionately impacted, according to the FDIC. Those include low-income households, Black and Hispanic households, and people who are disabled, have less formal education, or are in single-parent households. The plan to gradually eliminate paper checks actually dates back to 2010, according to the Department of Treasury. However, a lot of recipients may just be hearing about it after the SSA posted an alert on Monday. Comments on that page suggest many are unhappy with the change. What steps are being taken to assist the elderly and physically / visually handicapped paper check recipients?” one commenter stated. “What will SSA do if, on 30 September, there are hundreds of thousands of benefit recipients who have not set up electronic payments? Just not send them their payments? another commenter asked. The SSA claims it is proactively sending notices to beneficiaries who receive paper checks and explaining how to make the change. Their technicians should also be able to help with the transition.
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If a regular hot girl walk is no longer cutting it, why not add a weighted vest to the mix? While not exactly new, weighted vests are making a strong comeback, especially on TikTok and Instagram, where wellness and fitness creators are touting the benefits of adding a 12-pound vest to your daily strolls. Its my weighted vest era, menopause expert Dr. Mary Claire Haver posted to Instagram. Walk as much as you can in a weighted vest and you will be unrecognizable, one TikTok creator wrote. This is my clubbing, another creator posted. The strobe lights are the stars I see while walking 3 miles in 90 degrees with a 30lb weighted vest on. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Mary Claire Haver, MD, author The New Menopause (@drmaryclaire) From the $30 Zelus vest dominating your For You Page (often linked through influencers Amazon storefronts) to a sleek 20-pound version from Equinox priced at $375, the concept is simple: Adding weight to your walks, runs, or workouts may help boost endurance and stamina. Now fitness and wellness creators are also promoting it as a weight-loss hack, with some claiming theyve shed up to 30 pounds just by incorporating daily walks with the vest. @kymberlychase #fyp #fitness #fitnessmotivation #fitnesstips #fitnessjourney Take My Breath Away – EZI But what does the science say? In one frequently cited study, participants wore weighted vests equal to 11% of their body weight for eight hours per day over three weeks and lost an average of 3.5 pounds. Another study had participants wear vests for 10 hours per day and found no significant weight-loss benefitsthough many did report sore backs. Some influencers have said weighted vests are among the best-kept secrets for increasing bone density. However, most of the studies cited as evidence of weighted vests effectiveness dont actually involve walking, and the ones that do found no difference in the bone health of participants who wore vests compared with those who didnt. The Bone Health & Osteoporosis Foundation doesnt currently endorse weighted vests for bone health, calling the evidence at best “uncertain.” The bottom line: If your goal is to build strength or lose weight, dont ditch your regular resistance training. But if you want to throw on a weighted vest for your walk to the gym, more power to you.
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E-Commerce
The sun is liquifying Madrid. Again. June 2025 shattered temperature records, with Spain recording its hottest June since weather records began in 1961. The month averaged 74.5°F, with a peak temperature of 114.8°F in El Granado, Huelva, while the Spanish capital experienced temperatures as high as 102°F. Now another heat wave is coming that will easily beat 40C, which I believe is equivalent to lava in Fahrenheit.I shouldn’t have been surprised to discovered that, of course, there’s an app for that: One that makes summer urban wandering a bit less dangerous by telling you which streets have more shade in a city at any given time. Usually, reasonable people would stay at home, but Spaniards being Spaniards, the Call of the Terrace is too strong to resist. Our nature is weak even in the face of a deluge of deadly photons from our home star. We are like water buffalos herding towards the water knowing that death by crocodile awaits. It doesnt matter: Caasthe deliciously cold foamy tap beer served in very small glasses that you must drink before you dietapas, and messing around with friends in a shady terrace is all that counts.People walk in the shade as they attend a tour of the Royal Palace during a heatwave in Madrid, on July 2, 2025. [Photo: Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images]Thats why yesterday a friend shared a tweet that said Google Maps is taking too long to include the option of how to get there but por la sombra. Thats an idiom that literally means through the shade and figuratively means to be careful and protect yourself, which you really need to do here during the summer (more than a thousand deaths attributed to heat waves in the last two months, the government says). I thought the idea of a navigation app to show you routes through streets with the most shade was a clever idea. After all, Ive been playing that game with my son walking these past few weeks, back and forth to the summer camp bus, triangulating in our heads the optimal street walking sequence to avoid this ultraviolet tsunami.That’s when another friend chimed in with a solution: “I have become addicted to this website. Photography directors use to see if a location is in the sun or in the shade. It’s a Google Maps of shade.” He then pasted a link to something called Shademap.[Screenshot: Shademap]It was cool: A 3D map that could put you anywhere in the world to visually show the buildings’ shadows on the street at any time and any day, for free. For a bit of money you can also see the shade projected by terrain and actual trees captured with aerial LiDAR, the laser sensor that creates three-dimensional maps of the world. The Shademap interface has a search bar on the top to find a location, which you can adjust using the same mouse conventions of Google Maps. A bar on the bottom allows you to easily select the date and time, which you can animate just by scrubbing a timeline. Seeing the shadows change throughout the day is surprisingly fun. You should try it.Sunlight is everythingShademap exists because life and every significant decision related to the design of our environment comes down to the sun. Homeowners planning a house extension may need to know how their addition will affect their neighbor’s garden or their own. Real estate buyers want to understand whether that cool Manhattan duplex with a glass rooftop will become a radioactive death chamber by July. Landscape designers must predict which plants will thrive and which will wither on a certain spot based on seasonal sun exposure. Architects use it to position windows that maximize winter warmth while minimizing summer heat. Urban planners rely on shadow analysis to design parks and public infrastructure that people can enjoy.Solar power installers calculate optimal placement sites and angles in a house or a factory to maximize energy capture. The latter is especially important as the world moves away from fossil fuels: Knowing the solar energy potential for any location is what allows engineers to design massive solar farms. And theres the film and leisure aspect that I already mentioned. Shademap is the kind of tool that makes you realize how much of our world depends on understanding a single, predictable celestial body that we regular peeps largely ignore until it’s trying to kill us.[Screenshot: Shadowmap.org]In my quest to find a dedicated shaded terrace locator, I also found an alternative to Shademap called Shadowmap, a professional tool which a more polished interface that offers a lot more features than Shademap. Its divided in three tiers. You can use it for free, too, which provides basic functionality including sun path visualization, current-day time changes, and worldwide 3D buildings and terrain. [Screenshot: Shadowmap]Shadowmap Explorer ($2.50/month) adds full camera freedom and first-person view, making it ideal for photographers, film crews, and event planners, or dedicated hikers (the antithesis of the Spanish terrace buffalo). Shadowmap Home ($8.33/month) includes all Explorer features plus high-quality 3D buildings, satellite maps, enhanced rendering options, and global weather/UV forecastsdesigned for homeowners, gardeners, and property seekers who want to really look at how a new home will get illuminated throughout the year. For professionals, there’s Shadowmap Studio ($58/month annually), which includes everything plus the ability to upload custom 3D models of your own projects, interactive solar analytics, project sharing capabilities, and Google’s high-resolution satellite imagery. This tier is specifically designed for architects, urban planners, real estate professionals, and solar energy specialists who need advanced modeling capabilities.[Screenshot: Shadowmap]Which, OK, whatever, cool I guess. The question remains, “Where can I have a caa and eat half a dozen gildas without melting into the sidewalk?” Thats the tier Im missing, Shadowmap, Shademap, Google, and whomever in hell is reading this. Make it a phone app, too, so I can search directly for terraces in the shade near me RIGHT NOW!! It will kill it in Spainand the rest of the worldI tell you.(But only Spain gets the jamón ibérico and boquerones lubricated with vermouth.)
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