July 2024

Kings GM Monte McNair shared where Sacramento’s offseason stands after landing NBA star DeMar DeRozan.

First-round pick scored 28 points but downplayed feats after loss to Warriors

If there was ever a time when we needed some glee and mirth, this is it. Of all the technology that I have installed in my home over the last few years, absolutely none has brought the pure joy, peace, and calm that Nanoleaf LED lights have. For Prime Day, smart lights from Nanoleaf are 20% off, so it’s a great time to check them out.

Sure, these are just LED lights in various shapes and configurations that you place around the house, but where they really shine is when they’re used to emulate and extend any sound or picture on your TV. At night, I turn off the overhead lights, fire up the Nanoleafs and write for hours, listening to music. The lights turn the walls of my bedroom turn it into an aurora borealis on command, ensuring a lovely atmosphere for reading or drifting off to sleep.

Start off by getting the 4D system, which is a camera for your TV and a set of lights that go on the back of your TV, bouncing light onto the wall behind it. If your TV is on, it creates a colorful aura based on whatever you’re watching. But this system can also serve as the base for your entire room: Add Nanoleaf Shapes to the walls around the room, and they’ll sync to the 4D to create an immersive environment where color and motion intelligently play across the different panels.

Extend the lights with Triangles, Lines, Hexagons and Tiles:

Hexagon 7 Pack – usually $199.99, now $159.99
Triangles 7 Pack – usually $199.99, now $159.99
Lines 9 Pack– usually $199.99, now $159.99
Canvas Tiles 9 Pack – usually $179.99, now $99.99

Nick McLain played at Beckman High with brothers Matt and Sean in 2018. Now all three will be in pro baseball this summer.

Here is the full list of Red Sox selections in the 2024 MLB Draft.

Here are the latest Yankees picks from the 2024 MLB Draft.

Groceries can be expensive, even if you’re not buying anything fancy. So when a redditor asked how to make $50 in grocery money last the week, the community came through with tons of cheap (and often healthy!) meal ideas.

Before we get into the grocery-shopping specifics, an important note: If you’re having trouble affording food, that’s what food banks and food pantries are for. Many people who qualify to use one don’t realize it. You don’t need to be unemployed or on SNAP benefits; you just have to meet the eligibility requirements for your local pantry, which are often quite accepting. If you don’t know how you’re going to make it through the week on the food budget you have, food pantries are for you.

Here are some grocery options that provide the most nutrition for the least money.

Rice (and beans)

Grains are an affordable staple, and rice is one of the cheapest to buy and easiest to prepare. Other grains, like wheat, are usually made into flour, bread, or pasta before they get to grocery store shelves. Rice comes in big ol’ sacks, and all you have to do is cook it, either with a rice cooker or just on the stovetop.

With rice you can make a variety of dirt-cheap dishes:

Rice and beans (with or without extra meat and veggies; top with salsa or hot sauce). Try our rice and red beans recipe here.
Fried rice (with eggs, veggies, or other add-ins).
Rice with stir-fried anything.
A rice bowl: Combine a scoop of cooked rice with an assortment of whatever leftovers or salad toppings you have in the fridge.
Add rice (or grains of your choice) to turn a salad into something that can actually keep you full for hours.

Beans, lentils, and other legumes deserve a spotlight of their own. They’re great mixed with rice, but they can also work with other grains or even replace grains entirely. Legumes are high in fiber and are relatively high in protein (for a vegetable, anyway). They also make a nutritionally complete protein when paired with rice or other grains.

Chicken thighs

Meats tend to be more expensive than grains and veggies, but they also pack a lot of protein and tend to be filling. Some of the redditors on the thread recommended avoiding meats; others swear by them.

If you do buy meat, chicken thighs are one of the most cost-efficient, especially if you enjoy eating the skin. Remember that even though chicken breast is thought of as more “healthy,” that’s because it’s lower in calories. When you’re trying to stretch your grocery budget, a food that’s cheap and high calorie is just a good use of money. Thighs are nutritious, anyway.

Other affordable meats include whole chickens (if you don’t mind cutting them up or roasting them whole), stew meat, and ground beef, especially the higher-fat options (remember, more fat can be a good thing if you’re struggling to afford enough calories).

Look at the price per pound on everything in the meat section, and choose accordingly. Don’t know what to do with a new-to-you cut of meat? Serve it with rice, of course.

Potatoes

Don’t pass up the produce section. Besides cheap staples like onions and carrots, and marked-down produce that’s about to go bad (a steal if you can get it at the right time), there’s a hidden gem: potatoes.

Potatoes are cheap, and have some of the best nutrition per dollar according to some calculations. Especially if you eat the skins, you’ll get some vitamins and fiber while having a good cheap source of starch. Cooled leftover potatoes also contain resistant starch, which may help you to feel more full.

Canned and frozen veggies

Veggies don’t have to be fresh to be healthy. Often, the stuff that’s in the canned aisle or the freezer section is the cheapest, because the farms and companies that make it don’t have to account for veggies bruising or going bad between the farm and the store.

These veggies are perfectly nutritious, too—they often have more vitamins than their fresh counterparts. Grab whatever is cheapest, and season it with whatever you have around (butter and garlic salt are great). And throw some veggies into whatever else you happen to be making—maybe your rice and beans.

I’ve been writing about different productivity methods for Lifehacker for about a year now, and I continue to be shocked by the sheer variety (and quantity) of them that are out there. And while many fit right into my workflow, others led me to think, “Wow, that one wouldn’t work for me at all.”

It’s easy to learn about a technique, see its value, and decide to implement it, but if it’s not altogether aligned with your needs and your preferences, it’s probably not going to work as well for you as advertised. Rather than picking a productivity method that sounds good, you’re better off selecting one that is better suited to you, and how you work. Here’s what to look for.

The best productivity method if you’re a visual thinker…

If you need to visualize something to really understand it—like if you prefer to see graphs instead of reading about statistics or numbers—there are some solid productivity techniques out there for you. The best is probably the “pickle jar” technique, which asks you to imagine your daily capacity as a jar that can hold a finite amount of rocks, pebbles, and sand.

The rocks are your big tasks, pebbles are important tasks that aren’t immediately necessary, and sand is the little maintenance work you do to keep your day moving along. You load in your rocks first, then your pebbles, and finally the sand, to make sure you have enough time for it all. You can draw out a little diagram to help you prioritize your to-do list this way.

The best productivity method if you need motivation to get started…

With some productivity methods, you’re meant to just figure out what you need to do, then get cracking on it. That doesn’t work for everyone. It certainly doesn’t work for me—I need to get a burst of motivation or a spark of energy to keep grinding on a to-do list. The best option for people like me, in my opinion, is eating the frog. It’s a weird saying, but it boils down to tackling your most demanding, dreaded, or important task before you do anything else. In my experience, this works the best for me, because once I have the most pressing thing out of the way, I’m so relieved and proud of myself that anything else I have to do seems easy in comparison. If I can do the terrible thing, I can do anything.

On the other hand, the opposite approach can have a similar result, so try the 10-minute rule if eating the frog feels daunting but you still need a little motivational push. With this method, you blow through all those little tasks that take 10 minutes or less to do, like answering emails or folding the laundry, so you can concentrate on the bigger stuff. As minor as they are, the little things can feel overwhelming, and they’re easy to put off. If you get them all done with so they’re not weighing on you, you’ll feel better and more prepared to do everything else.

The best productivity method if you don’t feel connected to your work…

The tasks of daily life can be menial and if you’re not the kind of person who just buckles down and does what needs to be done, that can be a good reason to put it all off. If you can’t justify spending an afternoon cleaning up or a morning responding to emails, you might be motivated by purpose, so try the Results Planning Method (RPM), which comes from famed motivational speaker Tony Robbins, who outlined it in his Time of Your Life program and designed it to be motivational, fast, and efficient.

Not only does does the acronym stand for Rapid Planning Method, but it can also serve as a guide to what your day should look like: Results-oriented, purpose-driven, and built around a “massive action plan.” You have to consistently ask yourself what you want, what your purpose is, and what you need to do to achieve it. So maybe you won’t clean up just because it’s that time of the week to do it, but you’ll be more motivated to do it if you think of a broader purpose, like having the house in shape so you can have friends over for dinner. Doing something for the sake of it just doesn’t motivate everyone and that’s fine.

Another way you can feel connected to your tasks is by putting some extra thought into them. The Ivy Lee method calls on you to write down six tasks you have to do the next day. You should do this at the end of every work day (or at the end of the night, if the tasks are home-related). By writing them down, you get them out of your mind and know you’ll get to them the next day, so you can relax in the knowledge that you already have half a plan ready to go when you wake up.

The best productivity method if you need a detailed plan…

When you’re eating the frog or jotting down a few to-dos, you just kind of wing it, designating your “big task” and going for it. But sometimes, it’s nice to have a really detailed schedule in place. Here, I recommend the 3-3-3 method, but first, you’ll need to whip out the old Eisenhower matrix. The matrix forces you to rate your to-dos by urgency and importance.

Once you have everything categorized, you can move over to 3-3-3, which asks you to spend the first three hours of your day engaging in deep work on your most important project, then do three other urgent tasks that don’t require as much time, and finish up with three maintenance tasks. It’s a combination of eating the frog and visualizing the pickle jar, but it incorporates pretty strict scheduling to keep you on task.

Prime Day kicks off this week, but Early Prime Day deals are plentiful, including bargains on headphones, Fire Stick devices, smart speakers, and more. Amazon’s Echo Show smart devices are also seeing some good discounts and bundle deals right now—here are a few of the best I’ve found.

3rd Gen, 2023 release, 8″ HD Alexa smart display with spatial audio

Echo Show 8 (3rd Gen, 2023 release | Glacier White) bundle with Blink Video Doorbell (Black)

White Echo Show + Black Video Doorbell

Echo Show 8 with Sengled Smart Color Bulb

Echo Show 8 + Sengled Smart Color Bulb

3rd Gen, 2023 release, smart display with 2x the bass and clearer sound

Blink Outdoor 4 one-camera system with Amazon Echo Show 5

Blink Outdoor 4 + Amazon Echo Show 5

The Echo Show 8 is $84.99, but the bundles are better

The third generation Echo Show 8 came out in late 2023 with an “outstanding” review from PCMag, and it is currently at its lowest price since its release, according to price tracking tools. The smart device has a powerful stereo sound, a high-resolution, auto-framing camera that follows you around, and a faster performance compared to its predecessor. The hands-off Alexa features make them ideal bedside or kitchen companions. You can get the Echo Show 8 for $84.99 (originally $149.99), but first, consider some of the bundles.

If you’re looking for a security video doorbell, you can get the Blink Video Doorbell with the Echo Show 8 bundle for $94.99 (originally $209.98). If you don’t want to spend $10 more, then you might as well consider the Echo Show 8 with the Sengled Smart Color Bulb bundle for $86.98 (originally $169.98).

The Echo Show 5 is $49.99, but consider this bundle instead

The Echo Show 5 has a five-inch screen compared to the Echo Show 8’s eight-inch screen. This third-generation device also came out in 2023 with an “excellent” review from PCMag. It is at its second-lowest price ever at $49.99 (originally $89.99), according to price-checking tools. The speaker, screen, and camera also take a hit compared to the Echo Show 8, but that is also reflected in the price difference.

If you’re in need of a security camera and are interested in the Echo Show 5, the Echo Show 5 with Blink Outdoor 4 bundle for $59.99 (originally $189.99) is a great deal. Since these Echo Show devices and Blink cameras are both Amazon products, you can sync them together and check the live feed on your camera right from your Echo Show by just saying the magic words to Alexa.

With the Olympic break approaching, how should managers adjust their lineups?

Are Kings complete? McNair details offseason options after DeRozan

Bulls rookie Matas Buzelis throws down poster dunk

My Favorite Nanoleaf Smart LED Lights Are 20% Off for Prime Day

MLB draft Day 2: Three McLain brothers in pro baseball after Nick is selected in third round

Red Sox 2024 draft tracker: Full list of Boston’s picks

Latest Yankees picks from the 2024 MLB Draft: Rounds 3-10

How to Buy the Most Groceries for $50, According to Reddit