Kim was posted last month and has played the past six seasons with the KBO’s Kiwoom Heroes.
January 2025
Dodgers, Hyeseong Kim agree to 3-year deal with $12.5 million guaranteed
Kim was posted last month and has played the past six seasons with the KBO’s Kiwoom Heroes.
Report: Kings rookie Carter set to make NBA debut vs. Grizzlies
Kings rookie Devin Carter reportedly is expected to make his highly anticipated NBA debut when Sacramento hosts the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday night at Golden 1 Center.
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These Tiered Shelves Helped Me Finally Get Organized
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I own way too much stuff, but I’m always working on decluttering and streamlining what I have. Ironically, my quest to organize the items I do decide to keep often entails buying something new—and one recent purchase has been truly beneficial. It’s time to talk about how tiered storage has changed my organizing life.
How I use tiered storage to organize everything
I’ve previous written about how much I love acrylic organizers for storing stuff like makeup, since they keep all the tiny objects in order and easy to reach. I’ve ordered so many of them, my shopping apps have picked up on my proclivities, and a few weeks ago, one of them offered up something different: tiered, acrylic mini-shelving units.
The algorithm always knows what I want, even before I do, and it wasn’t wrong this time. I dutifully added to cart. When the little units came, I set about reorganizing my perfume shelf to test them out. I ended up loving the result—and buying more. Now, I can see everything in my cabinet without taking anything out, and reach in without knocking anything over.
Credit: Lindsey Ellefson
What I really like about tiered storage shelves—and why I believe you should add some of your own—is that they helps me follow the Organizational Triangle rules I’m always writing about. Specifically, the rules advise that all similar items must be stored together, and everything must have a place. Typically that means using containers to group items into categories.
That works fine in some cases, but for oft-used but varied things like makeup, perfume, and accessories, I like to be able to see what I have while I’m getting ready. Yanking open a storage container and rifling through it is less than ideal. Tiered storage not only allows me to keep everything out on a shelf and grouped together, but makes them easy to see and access.
Prior to picking these little stacked shelves up, I had a lot of perfumes lined up precariously on small boxes to create my own tiered effect. It wasn’t exactly a stable setup, and it resulted in me breaking a beloved, nowhere-near-empty bottle of Glossier You. (RIP.) These sturdier, use-specific shelves will prevent me from making that mistake again.
My favorite tiered storage ideas
I used my first round of tiered organizers to manage the delicate glass bottles of my perfume collection, but there are a lot of uses you can put these to. They’re great for organizing spices in a cabinet, displaying sentimental items or collections of knick-knacks, managing office supplies littering a desk, or even storing condiments in the fridge. Anything that you have an abundance of and don’t want to rifle through when you only need to grab one is a candidate for tiered storage. Because they make use of otherwise-wasted vertical space, these shelves provide better organization in a relatively small footprint, so feel free to get creative.
Another advantage of tiered shelving is that it’s generally not very expensive. Consider this three-tiered riser stand for $6.99:
You can get one with four tiers for $12.99. If you want something more stylish than clear acrylic, you have loads of options:
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Round, black, circular platforms arranged in a tiered circle with storage space for larger items in the middle ($16.90)
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A wooden, four-tiered stand that would look perfect in a kitchen ($16.99)
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A decorative, artistic stand with three tiered platforms ($14.99)
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A clear and black acrylic stand with circular levels to add some dimension (two for $22.99)
Whatever you choose, you’ll definitely appreciate being able to actually see (and use) al the stuff you’ve bought to put on them.
Meta’s Terrible AI Profiles Are Going Viral
Meta might not be the first company that comes to mind when you think of generative AI, but they are a big part of the current artificial intelligence race. The company has its own AI model, Llama, has added “Meta AI” to all of its big products—whether you like it or not (you don’t). Meta even wants you to try making your own AI bot. It’s safe to say the company is all-in on AI.
But even for a company so committed to AI, this latest story is simply bizarre. It turns out the company has been experimenting with AI-generated user accounts on its platforms since 2023. The Instagram versions of these pages are currently going viral, but they’re also available on Facebook. The accounts are verified, and each is equipped with a unique personality, but they’re completely fraudulent. Each is entirely made up, with posts of AI-generated images.
It’s all very weird, but also not all that new—the profiles were created more than a year ago, and appear to have largely been abandoned. And now that the profiles are getting a lot of online backlash, Meta is actively deleting their content.
Meta’s AI users are an off-putting bunch
It’s not hard to see why the internet has embraced hating these fake people. Take “Liv” (username “himamaliv”), who purports to be a “proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller.” Liv is, of course, not real, nor is the life she posts about on her Instagram. But that doesn’t stop Liv: The creator has posts about raising strong girls, ice skating with her family, and “soaking up all the sun and fun” with “the kiddos.” Each post sports a corresponding image—the beach post shows children playing in the sand, while the ice skating post shows skaters on an ice rink—but all of these images are AI generated.
To Meta’s credit, each picture sports a Meta AI watermark to denote the image isn’t actually real, but it doesn’t make these posts any less creepy. Why is an AI-generated “mother” posting an AI-generated image of her “kids” playing at the “beach?” Who benefitted from the AI-generated coat drive she is proud to have spearheaded?
Credit: Jake Peterson
In her second oldest post, from Sept. 26, 2023, she says “My backyard is my happy place…I’ve thrown so many birthday parties, cookouts, and girls nights in this space that I’ve lost count. Forever grateful for the life I live,” complete with an AI-generated image of a picnic spread. The thing is, Liv has not thrown birthday parties, cookouts, or girls nights in this space. This space doesn’t exist. The life Liv is so grateful to live doesn’t exist.
Liv is following 18 accounts at the time of writing. Thirteen of them appear to be similar AI-generated pages. For example, there’s Becca (dogloverbecca), who posts AI-generated dog content; Brian (hellograndpabiran), who advertises himself as “everybody’s grandpa;” and Alvin the Alien (greetingsalvin), who is, um, an alien.
But not all the posts are AI-generated. Some of them have videos posted to their accounts as well, and while AI-generated video can certainly be convincing these days, I don’t think these videos are AI generated—at least, not all of them. Carter, the AI dating coach, had a cooking video from January 2024 that appeared very much to be real, but it seems Meta nuked all the content. Still, who posted them? To what end?
These accounts are not new, but are newly going viral
The oddest thing is, these posts and pages are not new. Liv’s latest post, for example, is from March 8, 2024, as are most of the posts from these AI bots. (Carter appears to have posted as recently as June.) For the most part, their profiles are abandoned, although verification badges are still affixed to each. That said, as I’m writing this, Meta appears to be deleting the content on each of the Instagram pages. The Facebook counterparts appear to still be live, but I imagine they’ll be gone soon, too.
Credit: Jake Peterson
The pages are actually tied to AI chatbots Meta developed back in 2023, when it was really kicking its AI programs into gear. The headlines then focused mostly a roster of celebrity AI chatbots, which let you chat with “Tom Brady,” “Kendall Jenner,” and “Paris Hilton.” But among these list of non-celebrity chatbots Meta rolled out were names like Liv, Brian, and Alvin the Alien. You can still chat with them if you like: visit Liv’s profile, and you can start up a conversation. But just like with any other AI chatbot, you probably won’t get very far.
It’s not totally clear why these accounts are going viral now, a year and a half after Meta initially rolled them out. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s because they really are that bad. The accounts are weird, and there are so many layers to their weirdness: The personalities Meta developed are off-putting (and borderline offensive); the posts themselves are creepy (who wants to see AI photos of fake people’s kids, complete with a story about their day at the beach?); and the fact that they’re verified defeats the purpose of verification altogether.
In short, the accounts might be from 2023, but they reflect a raging resentment of AI slop in 2025. As Jason Koebler of 404media writes on Bluesky:
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How to Use a Rice Cooker (for Rice and so Much More)
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I have two rice cookers. Ol’ trusty, that I’ve used since college (and that was not recently), and a modern digital one from Toshiba. Judge me all you want, but I use them both and the old one is still kickin’. Whether your machine is $200 with 30 settings, or $15 with a single toggle switch, rice cookers all have the same bones. The best part is that they’re so easy to use, even the least confident cook can feel good about their rice. Here’s how to use a rice cooker for rice—and the many other non-rice foods you can cook in one.
How do rice cookers work?
Inside the rice cooker there is a circular heating plate and a smaller central, spring-loaded plate.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
(Please forgive the appearance of my elder rice cooker in the photos; let’s just call it “seasoned,” shall we?)
A rice cooker uses heat and water to cook rice. If you’ve ever cooked rice in a pot on a stove before, you know heat and water aren’t hard to come by. It’s the final stage of not burning the rice that’s tricky. That’s where the rice cooker wins. Unlike your pot on the stove, a rice cooker has a sensor that ensures your grains are cooked to fluffy perfection, and then stops cooking.
Rice cookers have simple mechanics on the inside: a thin metal bowl to hold the rice, a heating plate inside with a spring mechanism underneath, and a thermostat. When you fill the metal bowl with water and rice and load it into the machine, the heating plate conducts easily through the thin metal of the bowl. The temperature only goes up to boiling (212°F) while cooking, because that’s the peak temperature of water before it evaporates.
The steamy air slowly escapes through a hole in the lid or another vent in your rice cooker. This slow ventilation allows condensation to drip back into the rice, extending the boiling time and giving the rice ample time to absorb enough water.
At the end of the cooking time, all of the water has been soaked up or escaped as steam. There is no longer a pool of water in the bowl so the temperature starts to rise above 212°F. This change in temperature triggers the thermostat in the appliance to switch from “cook” over to the “warm” setting, and the spring pushes the bowl up away from the heating plate. The rice is cooked through, with nary a grain burnt.
How to use a rice cooker
1. Measure and rinse your rice
There are many types of rice out there, but I grew up on Jasmine rice, and we always rinsed it. Rinsing it gets rid of excess starch, and this makes sure the finished rice doesn’t end up gloppy. To do this, you can put your measurement of rice in a mesh sieve and run water through it, moving it around with your fingertips.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
Alternatively, I usually dump the rice into the metal cooking pot and then cover it with water. You can see in the picture that the water becomes nearly opaque with starch. Simply swish it around a bit with your fingers and pour off the cloudy water. I do this twice. Note that the water you add for cooking might cloud up a little, and that’s just fine it doesn’t have to run clear.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
2. Add the cooking water
Add the water that you’ll cook the rice in. A 1:2 ratio of rice to water is well-loved. This can change depending on the type of rice you’re using, and how you prefer the final texture to be. If you want drier grains, use a quarter-cup or so less water. If you like wetter rice, use a bit more. If you want super soft rice to break up into congee then you’ll need even more water. Many packages of rice come with suggestions so you can check the directions if you’re unsure.
3. Load up the cooker
Put the metal bowl into the rice cooker and close the lid. Now comes the cooking part where you can press a button and walk away.
Multi-setting models
Cooking with a rice cooker should be a pleasant, simple experience. Even if you have an appliance with a digital screen and multiple settings, there should be a button for “rice.” Some models will have buttons for specific types of rice, like brown rice, sushi rice, or jasmine rice. If you know the type of rice you have, go ahead and select the button. That might be enough, or if there is a “start” button, press it now.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
If you don’t know what kind of rice you have, that’s totally fine. Just click “rice” or “white rice.” The amount of water you added is actually more important than the clever little button options they give you. Sure, brown rice and white rice need different timings, but remember what I said about the thermostat? A good machine will be able to adjust the timing based on how much water is left in the tank.
Single-setting models
If you have a rice cooker like I do, you don’t have a lot of options. Simply load the bowl with rice and water, cover it with the lid and press the lever to “cook.” The machine will automatically switch to the warm setting when it’s done.
With just one switch, it doesn’t get more “no frills” than this, but boy can it cook.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
Highly rated rice cookers:
Use your rice cooker for a whole lot more
Definitely use this handy gadget for perfect rice, but you might as well find it a permanent spot on the counter because it can do so much more. Use it for one-pot meals, hands-off hot oatmeal, perfectly peelable hard-boiled eggs, use chicken broth instead of water for seasoned rice, or try mac and cheese that makes itself. I could write a whole entire post on all the things you could make in a rice cooker, but we have that already so just read all about it right here. Have fun exploring, and may your rice cooker steam multiple happy decades of food for you.
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