(Washington, D.C., August 9, 2025) – U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins today announced $152 million in investments for 19 rural development projects in communities across the State of Iowa. These unprecedented, coordinated U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development (RD) project will help boost Iowa’s economy, develop rural infrastructure, and encourage private investment in America’s heartland.

All AI eyes might be on GPT-5 this week, OpenAI’s latest large language model. But looking past the hype (and the disappointment), there was another big OpenAI announcement this week: gpt-oss, a new AI model you can run locally on your own device. I got it working on my laptop and my iMac, though I’m not so sure I’d recommend you do the same.

What’s the big deal with gpt-oss?

gpt-oss is, like GPT-5, an AI model. However, unlike OpenAI’s latest and greatest LLM, gpt-oss is “open-weight.” That allows developers to customize and fine-tune the model to their specific use cases. It’s different from open source, however: OpenAI would have had to include both the underlying code for the model as well as the data the model is trained on. Instead, the company is simply giving developers access to the “weights,” or, in other words, the controls for how the model understands the relationships between data.

I am not a developer, so I can’t take advantage of that perk. What I can do with gpt-oss that I can’t do with GPT-5, however, is run the model locally on my Mac. The big advantage there, at least for a general user like myself, is that I can run an LLM without an internet connection. That makes this perhaps the most private way to use an OpenAI model, considering the company hoovers up all of the data I generate when I use ChatGPT.

The model comes in two forms: gpt-oss-20b and gpt-oss-120b. The latter is the more powerful LLM by far, and, as such, is designed to run on machines with at least 80GB of system memory. I don’t have any computers with nearly that amount of RAM, so no 120b for me. Luckily, gpt-oss-20b’s memory minimum is 16GB: That’s exactly how much memory my M1 iMac has, and two gigabytes less than my M3 Pro MacBook Pro.

Installing gpt-oss on a Mac

Installing gpt-oss is surprisingly simple on a Mac: You just need a program called Ollama, which allows you run to LLMs locally on your machine. Once you download Ollama to your Mac, open it. The app looks essentially like any other chatbot you may have used before, only you can pick from a number of different LLMs to download to your machine first. Click the model picker next to the send button, then find “gpt-oss:20b.” Choose it, then send any message you like to trigger a download. You’ll need a little more than 12GB for the download, in my experience.

Alternatively, you can use your Mac’s Terminal app to download the LLM by running the following command: ollama run gpt-oss:20b. Once the download is complete, you’re ready to go.

Running gpt-oss on my Macs

With gpt-oss-20b on both my Macs, I was ready to put them to the test. I quit almost all of my active programs to put as many resources as possible towards running the model. The only active apps were Ollama, of course, but also Activity Monitor, so I could keep tabs on how hard my Macs were running.

I started with a simple one: “what is 2+2?” After hitting return on both keywords, I saw chat bubbles processing the request, as if Ollama was typing. I could also see that the memory of both of my machines were being pushed to the max.

Ollama on my MacBook thought about the request for 5.9 seconds, writing “The user asks: ‘what is 2+2’. It’s a simple arithmetic question. The answer is 4. Should answer simply. No further elaboration needed, but might respond politely. No need for additional context.” It then answered the question. The entire process took about 12 seconds. My iMac, on the other hand, thought for nearly 60 seconds, writing: “The user asks: ‘what is 2+2’. It’s a simple arithmetic question. The answer is 4. Should answer simply. No further elaboration needed, but might respond politely. No need for additional context.” It took about 90 seconds in total after answering the question. That’s a long time to find out the answer to 2+2.

Next, I tried something I had seen GPT-5 struggling with: “how many bs in blueberry?” Once again, my MacBook started generating an answer much faster than my iMac, which isn’t unexpected. While still slow, it was coming up with text at a reasonable rate, while my iMac was struggling to get each word out. It took my MacBook roughly 90 seconds in total, while my iMac took roughly 4 minutes and 10 seconds. Both programs were able to correctly answer that there are, indeed, two bs in blueberry.

Finally, I asked both who the first king of England was. I am admittedly not familiar with this part of English history, so I assumed this would be a simple answer. But apparently it’s a complicated one, so it really got the model thinking. My MacBook Pro took two minutes to fully answer the question—it’s either Æthelstan or Alfred the Great, depending on who you ask—while my iMac took a whopping 10 minutes. To be fair, it took extra time to name kings of other kingdoms before England had unified under one flag. Points for added effort.

gpt-oss compared to ChatGPT

It’s evident from these three simple tests that my MacBook’s M3 Pro chip and additional 2GB of RAM crushed my iMac’s M1 chip with 16GB of RAM. But that shouldn’t give the MacBook Pro too much credit. Some of these answers are still painfully slow, especially when compared to the full ChatGPT experience. Here’s what happened when I plugged these same three queries into my ChatGPT app, which is now running GPT-5.

• When asked “what is 2+2,” ChatGPT answered almost instantly.

• When asked “how many bs in blueberry,” ChatGPT answered in around 10 seconds. (It seems OpenAI has fixed GPT-5’s issue here.)

• When asked “who was the first king of England,” ChatGPT answered in about 6 seconds.

It took the bot longer to think through the blueberry question than it did to consider the complex history of the royal family of England.

I’m probably not going to use gpt-oss much

I’m not someone who uses ChatGPT all that much in my daily life, so maybe I’m not the best test subject for this experience. But even if I was an avid LLM user, gpt-oss runs too slow on my personal hardware for me to ever consider using it full-time.

Compared to my iMac, gpt-oss on my MacBook Pro feels fast. But compared to the ChatGPT app, gpt-oss crawls. There’s really only one area where gpt-oss shines above the full ChatGPT experience: privacy. I can’t help but appreciate that, even though it’s slow, none of my queries are being sent to OpenAI, or anyone for that matter. All the processing happens locally on my Mac, so I can rest assured anything I use the bot for remains private.

That in and of itself might be a good reason to turn to Ollama on my MacBook Pro any time I feel the inkling to use AI. I really don’t think I can bother with it on my iMac, except for perhaps reliving the experience of using the internet in the ’90s. But if your personal machine is quite powerful—say, a Mac with a Pro or Max chip and 32GB of RAM or more—this might be the best of both worlds. I’d love to see how gpt-oss-20b scales on that type of hardware. For now, I’ll have to deal with slow and private.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Lifehacker’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

On Thursday, OpenAI officially revealed GPT-5 to the world. The much-hyped presentation was sparse on many specific benchmarks comparing GPT-5 to its past models, but OpenAI’s staff was adamant: this model is the best, most knowledgeable, and most powerful one to date.

GPT-5 has its haters

Many of the users who have been test driving GPT-5 in the 24 hours since, however, disagree. A visit to r/ChatGPT is enough to see the scope of the situation: The front page is full of posts complaining about the current state of the model, including: “GPT-5 is the biggest [piece] of garbage even as a paid user,” “OpenAI just pulled the biggest bait-and-switch in AI history and I’m done,” and “ChatGPT-5 rollout is an unmitigated disaster.”

One of the most prominent complaints concerns OpenAI’s decision to deprecate previous models, something the company announced unceremoniously during the GPT-5 presentation. GPT-4o, o3, 4.5, and other models are no longer available to use. Going forward, users will only have access to GPT-5 and its subsequent models (e.g. GPT-5 mini). Many users are upset that OpenAI took away previous models overnight with zero warning, especially when they feel the replacement doesn’t offer the same experience. Some have even canceled their subscriptions as a result.

I know people use ChatGPT for therapy, and I’m aware that people have formed deep attachments to the technology, but I’ll admit, I was a bit shocked to read some of the emotional reactions to losing access to these models. In one post, a user detailed how they relied on individual models for different tasks: They’d use 4o for creative ideas, o3 for logic problems, o3-Pro for deep research, and 4.5 for tasks related to writing. Another user talked about how they used 4o to help with their anxiety and depression, as, in their view, the model felt “human.” They believe people are grieving the loss of 4o, which tracks, at least with some other 4o-specific posts. There are people out there who really like these models, and are distraught following their removal.

But beyond mourning, some users just think GPT-5 isn’t very good. If you ask the model how many times the letter “b” occurs in the word “blueberry,” it reportedly says “three”: once at the beginning, once in the word “blue,” and once in “berry.” This isn’t necessarily a new problem—LLMs have had trouble spelling “strawberry” as well—but its not a great look for OpenAI’s “best” model ever. One X user highlighted an example of GPT-5’s inability to solve a “simple linear equation,” versus Google’s Gemini 2.5’s ability to solve it without issue, while this user posted GPT-5’s generation of a map of the United States, with most of the states labeled with gibberish.

Some users teased OpenAI over its vague benchmarking data. Rhys on X sarcastically posted “these gpt-5 numbers are insane,” and attached a graph that charted each GPT version by number (GPT-1 lands at “1” on the Y axis, GPT-2 at “2,” and so on until you reach GPT-5 at “5.”

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There are also criticisms of auto-switching, one of GPT-5’s core features. Free and Plus ChatGPT users aren’t able to choose the specific model, but in OpenAI’s view, that’s a good thing. GPT-5 is supposed to be intelligent enough to pick the right model for you based on your query: simple questions use weaker models, while more complex requests use most powerful models. But if OpenAI is so sure that’s a good thing, why does it still offer the ability to manually switch models, so long as you pay $200 per month for a Pro plan?

Not everyone agrees that GPT-5 is bad, mind you. There are users who appear to be enjoying the model, appreciating the concise responses and fast performance. But the majority of discourse I’m seeing on social media and forums is neutral to negative. Even posts that at first seem positive end up criticizing the model:

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4o lives on, for now

Since starting this piece, OpenAI has responded to the backlash. CEO Sam Altman posted a series of updates on X that seem to backtrack a bit on the decisions users have criticized most severely: Rate limits will double for ChatGPT Plus users for now; GPT-5 should seem smarter starting today; it will be easy to see which model is answering a given query; and manually choosing the thinking model will be more simple. Altman also acknowledged the initial rollout is going slower than expected, which makes sense since I still don’t have access to the new model.

But the biggest announcement of the bunch should come as welcome news to many users: 4o is back, at least for Plus users. If you pay $20 a month for ChatGPT, you can keep using 4o for the time being. Altman says the company is watching usage, and will make a decision on how long it will offer legacy models for in the future.

I’m curious how users respond going forward: Will those who canceled resubscribe to keep using 4o? Then again, why bother, if OpenAI is planning on taking away that model again sometime in the future? One thing’s for sure: This likely isn’t how OpenAI expected GPT-5’s rollout to go.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Lifehacker’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

(Washington, D.C., August 8, 2025) – U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, M.D., M.P.H., and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins this week announced plans to support American citrus growers and cut bureaucratic barriers by proposing an update to the standard of identity (SOI) for pasteurized orange juice. This America First action will end a 60-year-old rule that hurts domestic farmers and forces reliance on foreign imports. The FDA expects this change is unlikely to affect the taste of pasteurized orange juice.

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Though relatively new on the Hollywood scene (its first original film was released in 2019), Apple TV+’s slate of original films has included not just charming indies, but award-winning prestige pictures. CODA was Oscar’s best picture just a couple of years ago (the first film from a streaming service to claim the honor), and the streamer’s movies earned it 13 nominations for 2023, even if it got nothing for 2024. (We all have off years.) It’s not all prestige, though! Apple also has some delightfully disposable films, such as the globe-trotting new Guy Ritchie movie.

Given the complexities of film financing today, you might be excused for believing that many of these movies were typical theatrical releases—but, strictly speaking, these are all Apple TV+ originals. Sometimes they’re only available through the app, but other times they have small (or significant) theatrical releases built in to their distribution model, if only to ensure they’re eligible for major awards like the Oscars.

Echo Valley (2025)

Julianne Moore is joined by Sydney Sweeney in this twisty thriller that also includes Domhnall Gleeson, Kyle MacLachlan, and Fiona Shaw. Moore plays horse trainer Kate Garrett, living on a farm in southern Pennsylvania dealing with a recently deceased wife and also a deeply troubled daughter, Claire (Sweeney) who mostly only shows up when she sees money. This time around, she’s brought a sketchy boyfriend and a drug dealer to whom she owes money. Without giving too much away: Someone winds up dead, but not the person we’re expecting, and it quickly starts to look like Claire isn’t quite the timid, damaged soul she appears to be. Moore is fab, as usual. You can stream Echo Valley here.

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Fountain of Youth (2025)

A glossy and fun (if middling) entry in the Guy Ritchie oeuvre, Fountain of Youth plays as a diverting Indiana Jones pastiche, with some more overt fantastic elements in the style of National Treasure or its closest analogue, The Librarian series. John Krasinski stars as Luke Purdue, a roguish disgraced archaeologist not above stealing art treasures that he and his team (including Domhnall Gleeson’s wealthy backer Owen Carver) believe contain clues as to the location of the title’s mythical fountain—which is, perhaps, not a myth. Luke’s sister Charlotte (Natalie Portman) gave up the action-archaeology lifestyle in favor of a job as a curator at the British museum, but is soon convinced to jump into the adventure. It’s full of the kind of spry globe-trotting action that’s thoroughly diverting, even if you’re unlikely to give it much thought when it’s over. You can stream Fountain of Youth here.

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Fancy Dance (2023)

Lily Gladstone follows up her Oscar-nominated performance in Killers of the Flower Moon with an equally impressive turn from Seneca-Cayuga filmmaker Erica Tremblay, making her feature directorial debut. Gladstone plays Jax, a queer Cayuga woman living on an Oklahoma reservation with her niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson). Jax’s sister (and Roki’s mother) disappeared weeks ago, but neither tribal police nor the FBI are willing to take it seriously, given the family’s troubled history. Child protective services tries to place Roki into the custody of her estranged white grandfather and his second wife, an arrangement that neither of the young women is comfortable with. The two set out on a dangerous journey to the tribal powwow in Oklahoma City—the FBI that wouldn’t take their concerns seriously before are suddenly very interested in finding the two, who are also forced to evade local law enforcement and even ICE. It’s not an entirely joyful narrative, but there is a powerful message about the power of community and family in the face of even the most oppressive external forces. You can stream Fancy Dance here.

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Deaf President Now! (2025)

A key moment in the disability rights movement, and an absolute thunderstroke for the Deaf community, the Deaf President Now! movement at Gallaudet University in 1988 isn’t always discussed or well-understood outside of Deaf circles. And so, like the movement it chronicles, this documentary’s time has definitely come. Gallaudet was founded in 1864 to serve Deaf students, but for the first 124 years of its existence the school had been overseen by hearing presidents, chosen by a board of trustees made up almost exclusively of hearing people. When that board chose yet another hearing leader—the well-meaning and largely qualified Elisabeth Zinser—students decided they’d had enough. While it’s easy to look at the moment as a triumph given the outcome, the rather brilliantly done doc follows the events moment by moment, focusing on four very different students and an extremely turbulent week during which the campus was locked down in the face of opposition from the board and its chair, who never seemed to understand why Deaf people would want a Deaf president. You can stream Deaf President Now! here.

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Lulu Is a Rhinoceros (2025)

An adaptation of the children’s book by the father-daughter writing duo Jason and Allison Flom, Lulu stars Auliʻi Cravalho (Moana) in the title role. Whenever Lulu looks in the mirror, she sees a rhinoceros, and feels like a rhinoceros—but everyone else sees a bulldog. With a bit of help from her bestie Hip Hop the bunny (Utkarsh Ambudkar) and Flom Flom the tickbird (Dulé Hill), she begins a journey of self-acceptance, and of learning not to always rely on validation from others. Leland provides the cute and catchy songs for this 47-minute movie for preschoolers and their families. You can stream Lulu here.

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The Gorge (2025)

Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Sigourney Weaver star in this sci-fi/action/romance that became Apple TV’s most-streamed movie launch ever upon its February release. Teller and Taylor-Joy play snipers tasked by a mysterious woman (Weaver) with guarding two sides of the title’s gorge: He’s a former U.S. Marine with symptoms of PTSD, she’s a Lithuanian covert operative with a dying father. The two are to stand watch for a year in complete isolation to ensure that nothing comes out of the gorge. Things get complicated when the bored snipers start sending each other messages, increasing their communication until they start to question just what it is that they’re meant to be guarding. You can stream The Gorge here.

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Bono: Stories of Surrender (2025)

Filmmaker Andrew Dominik (Killing Them Softly, Blonde) documents Bono’s 2023 one-man show at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. That show included selections from his memoir, alongside performance of newly arranged U2 songs to complement the text. As a means of telling the performer’s life story, this is far more dramatic, and cinematic, than a typical documentary—Bono has the same flair when reading as when singing, and director Dominik’s rather gorgeous cinematography is easy on the eyes. There’s also a fully immersive version if you’re an Apple Vision Pro user. You can stream Stories of Surrender here.

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Fly Me to the Moon (2024)

The sort of goofy rom-com that they don’t make anymore (or so it’s said), Fly Me to the Moon rides on the strong chemistry between leads Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, as well as a premise so outrageous that it just about works. Tatum is Cole Davis, a (fictional) NASA launch director during the Apollo 11 era. He finds himself saddled with Johansson’s Kelly Jones, a slightly unscrupulous marketer publicly charged with helping to sell the public on the importance of a Moon landing. But she has a secret mission as well: She’s charged with preparing a fake landing video to air if the real one fails. These two lock horns as the actual launch approaches, with Kelly coming to question her methods in the face of true-believer Cole. Director Greg Berlanti, best known for about a million DC Comics TV shows, follows up 2018’s Love, Simon. You can stream Fly Me to the Moon here.

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Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

Though it didn’t take home Oscar gold (let’s put Lily Gladstone in more movies, please), Martin Scorsese’s latest has more than proven that the octogenarian filmmaker hasn’t lost a step. A story of creeping dread and existential terror in the American west, it chronicles the injustices that follow the discovery of oil on Osage tribal land in the 1920s. A good thing quickly goes bad when white political leaders plot a string of murders to keep the wealth staying where they think it belongs. The film might have gone deeper in presenting the true story from its natural Indigenous perspective, but the finished product still represents an important and harrowing story well told. You can stream Killers of the Flower Moon here.

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The Bloody Hundredth (2024)

A tie-in to Apple’s Masters of the Air miniseries, this documentary from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, with Hanks narrating, is refreshingly unflashy. The narration, though, is buoyed by current and archive interviews with historians and survivors, as well as by an impressive array of contemporaneous footage. The documentary is perfectly effective if you haven’t watched Masters of the Air (it’s a history doc, not a making-of), but it’s fascinating seeing the real places and people portrayed in the miniseries. You can stream The Bloody Hundredth here.

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The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

Joel Coen’s sole (thus far) solo directing project represents a bold choice: a beautiful, strikingly minimalist adaptation of the Scottish play—lean and mean in its production and its impact. Only a director of Coen’s confidence would mount a production like this without feeling the need to reinvent the wheel, letting Shakespeare dialogue and the performances of Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand do the heavy lifting. During the 2021/22 awards season, it received far more nominations than wins, but still stands as one of the best cinematic takes on Macbeth since Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood. You can stream The Tragedy of Macbeth here.

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Blitz (2024)

British director Steve McQueen (Hunger, 12 Years a Slave, Widows) takes on the Blitz in this historical drama that’s rousingly old-fashioned while also being revisionist in its willingness to upend our notions of the fighting spirit of British civilians during World War II. Saoirse Ronan plays Rita, single mom to a biracial son—her Grenadian partner was hounded by racists until he was forced to leave the country. She’s a factory worker and a singer, struggling to survive in London’s East End, where the poor are offered less protection than those in better-off parts of the city, and a single mother with a biracial child is treated a bit less well than that. It’s not an entirely downbeat movie, and it’s full of uplifting moments, but it’s also not afraid to suggest that the Blitz of 1940 wasn’t all “Keep Calm and Carry On.” You can stream Blitz here.

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Come From Away (2021)

A full cinematic adaptation of this musical about the events that unfolded at a rural airport on 9/11 was in the works before the pandemic put a stop to them. Thus, a special stage production was mounted using members of the original cast, filmed before an audience of 9/11 survivors and frontline workers. While it’s impossible to know what that other version might have been like, this one is probably better. The musical, which opened on Broadway in 2017, takes place in the Newfoundland town of Gander following the 2001 attacks. Gander had once been a major refueling hub, but that changed over time, leaving the town with an enormous airport and relatively little traffic—until airplanes were diverted there in the wake of the terrorist attacks. The stranded plane passengers briefly more than doubled the town’s population, and Gander leaders and residents pulled out all the stops to care for the unexpected guests. Based on a true story, the show has a smart sense of humor and, while it’s not cynical, it never succumbs to schmaltz either. You can stream Come From Away here.

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Wolfs (2024)

Jon Watts steps away from Marvel’s Spider-Man movies to direct this action comedy led by George Clooney and Brad Pitt; it’s still a little hard to process that we’re in a world where two A-list stars would get paired with a director whose grosses are in the multiple billions, and yet we’re direct-to-streaming (technically, this did get a one-week pro forma theatrical release). Regardless, the finished product is quite fun: Amy Ryan plays Margaret, a Manhattan District Attorney who meets a young man in a bar who ends up dead(-ish) in her hotel room. She contacts a fixer (Clooney) to help clean up the mess and keep her out of trouble. Meanwhile, the hotel’s owner (voiced by Frances McDormand) witnesses much of what went on, and has brought in a person of her own (Pitt) to protect her hotel from blowback. The two very solitary fixers are forced to work together, and, naturally, things get increasingly complicated: The dead young man isn’t entirely dead, as it happens, but was involved in shenanigans that include drugs and the Albanian mafia. You can stream Wolfs here.

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Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues (2022)

Sacha Jenkins does an awful lot right in this biographical documentary about the American jazz legend, starting by offering new and archival interviews with musicians who’ve been influenced by Satchmo and his art: Wynton Marsalis, Miles Davis, Amiri Baraka, Ossie Davis, etc. But what he really gets right is in allowing Armstrong to tell his own story—the legend kept shelves worth of diaries on reel-to-reel tape, and it’s quickly clear that there’s no one better suited to tell his story, his instantly recognizable voice offering frank insights that no one else could. It’s a love letter to the jazz giant—one that, smartly, doesn’t try to smooth out the rough edges. You can stream Black & Blues here.

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Cha Cha Real Smooth (2022)

You might have missed Cooper Raiff’s 2020 indie Shithouse, a movie that earned great reviews on a $15,000 budget but couldn’t overcome its unfortunate title. His follow-up, Cha Cha Real Smooth, got a bit more attention. Andrew is a bar/bat mitzvah party planner who falls for Domino, a mom 10 years his senior (Dakota Johnson). It’s occasionally cloying, but Raiff’s complex script and range of characters make for a charming movie from a filmmaker to keep an eye on. You can stream Cha Cha Real Smooth here.

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Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (2023)

The easy route would have been a tearjerking portrait of an inspirational figure—a one-time Hollywood golden boy bravely facing life with a debilitating illness. There’s a bit of that in this documentary, but whenever that mood does overtake the film, it feels earned. Director Davis Guggenheim documents Fox’s life with a thematic narrative through-line (an actor who could never be still in body or mind now struggles to do just that), even as it refuses to shy away from the knocks and bruises that attend any life with Parkinson’s, nor from Fox’s own complicated personality. The film works best when dealing with the overlaps, and disconnects, between Fox as a person and Fox as a public face of Parkinson’s. You can stream Still here.

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CODA (2021)

While I’m not sure it was the most worthy Best Picture Oscar winner, that doesn’t detract from CODA as a charming and altogether likable film about Ruby (Emilia Jones), a young musician who is the only hearing member of her family. She struggles with the demands of the family’s fishing business even as she discovers a passion for singing and a new boyfriend. The premise involves a worn and silly trope about Deaf people not understanding music, but it also depicts its characters as capable, complicated community leaders with actual sex lives. Emilia Jones is great in the lead, as are Marlee Matlin and Oscar-winner Troy Katsur as her parents. You can stream CODA here.

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Finch (2021)

In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a dying engineer named Finch (Tom Hanks) works to build a robotic companion—not to serve as his companion, but to take care of his dog when he dies. Which is 1000% relatable, and more or less the extent of the plot. As end-time movies go, this one is surprisingly charming and family-friendly—Tom Hanks is a genial companion at the end of the world, and you won’t be surprised that a story of a man having adventures just to make sure that his dog has a friend is definitely going to make you cry. You can stream Finch here.

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Napoleon (2023)

Sandwiched between 2021’s superior The Last Duel and Gladiator 2, Ridley Scott’s 2023 somewhat-accurate biopic about the one-time emperor of France proves his is the only name in town when it comes to historical epics. The shorter, theatrical version of this one is a slightly muddled affair, turning on a sly, subtly comedic lead performance from Joaquin Phoenix while also building to a number of massive, more traditional set pieces (Scott smartly doesn’t ask us to be overly enamored of the man himself). When it works, it offers up the old-fashioned thrills of a gorgeously designed period drama, with the types of grand battle sequences that we don’t get in a world where every movie fight involves superheroes and spaceships. The director’s cut (my preferred version), also on Apple TV+, is, surprisingly, sharper and funnier—but it adds nearly an hour to an already-long movie, so manage your time accordingly. You can stream the theatrical cut here, and the longer director’s cut here.

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The Pigeon Tunnel (2023)

The great Errol Morris (Gates of Heaven, The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War) turns his camera on writer David Cornwell, better known as John le Carré, one-time spy and preeminent writer of espionage novels. The title comes from a memory from the author’s youth: visiting his father who was part of a pigeon-shooting concession—the pigeons were bred in captivity and then forced through a tunnel so that they’d be right in line for rich men to shoot them, at what seemed like their moment of freedom. The metaphor of an escape that’s actually a trap became a potent one in the author’s life and work, and Morris drives into that lifelong theme with his typical depth and style. You can stream The Pigeon Tunnel here.

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Wolfwalkers (2020)

Robyn Goodfellowe is apprenticed to her father as a hunter, the two of them traveling to Ireland to wipe out the last of the land’s wolves. Going off on her own, she encounters a free-spirited girl who needs Robyn’s help to find her mother; the girl’s tribe is rumored to have the ability to change into wolves, and Robyn’s alliance with her new friends threatens her relationship with her father. This stunningly hand-drawn animated film received a well-deserved Oscar nomination, and follows a thematic trilogy that began with the same filmmakers’ The Secret of Kells (2009) and Song of the Sea (2014). They’re all independent of one another story-wise, but if you love this one, you’ll undoubtedly enjoy all three. You can stream Wolfwalkers here.

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Hala (2019)

Most audiences seemed to overlook Apple’s first original narrative movie when it was released back in 2019, and that’s too bad. Written and directed by Minhal Baig, a native of Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood, the movie has a distinctive sense of place, particularly for anyone who grew up in the Chicago area. But its primary strength is as a smart, sensitive coming-of-age story. Geraldine Viswanathan plays the title’s Hala Masood, a teenager from a strict Muslim family who falls for a non-Muslim boy at school, setting up a conflict that also brings a few family secrets out into the open. You can stream Hala here.

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Swan Song (2021)

Writer/director Benjamin Cleary presents a poignant existential dilemma in this low-key science fiction drama starring Mahershala Ali as Cameron Turner, a husband and father suffering from a terminal illness. To spare his wife (Naomie Harris) and children from the trauma and pain of his impending death, he’s considering a new procedure offered by Dr. Scott (Glenn Close): He’ll continue to hide his illness from his family, and be replaced by a clone with all of his memories. He’ll spend his last months alone, but knowing his family won’t have to confront his loss. In the best sci-fi tradition, the film explores the questions of identity, meaning, and loss that such hypothetical technology raises—without feeling like an overlong episode of Black Mirror. You can stream Swan Song here.

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The Velveteen Rabbit (2023)

It’s only around 40 minutes, so this blend of live action and animation is more of a short than a feature, but its length and refusal to belabor its own point are strengths, not weaknesses. Seven-year-old William (Phoenix Laroche) moves with his family to a new home, where he struggles to settle in and make friends. A Christmas gift of the titular rabbit sets William’s imagination free, and the boy’s love gives the rabbit a life of its own alongside the other toys in the playroom. When William gets sick, the Velveteen Rabbit has a tough choice to make and, if you know the story, this is approximately when the tears start welling up in your eyes. The animated segments use a variety of gorgeous animation styles, which really sells the complexity and variety of William’s imagination. You can stream The Velveteen Rabbit here.

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Every day, we have the opportunity to learn new things. A few days ago, I learned more about primal movement, an exercise style I’ve seen around in my years of gym-going and YouTube browsing, but never interrogated further. Like cycling and Pilates, you can take in-person classes in this technique, but you can also just log into the video-sharing behemoth and find some free, guided workouts.

What is primal movement?

Primal movement feels more like play than punishment, which is a helpful way to reframe things if you struggle to enjoy exercise. Essentially, it’s a bodyweight exercise that emphasizes movements like crawling, squatting, lunging, rolling, and balancing, which can make you feel a bit like a toddler or a little monkey—hence the word “primal.”

That word may throw you off and can evoke thoughts of paleo bros, Liver King, and the like. While it’s true there’s some overlap in the communities, this is an exercise concept with its roots in functional fitness. It’s an effective, fun workout that doesn’t have to be a signifier of any broader or ickier ideology. Feel free to ignore those connotations as you roll around on the floor. It’s a nice break from the way we move (or don’t move) now when we’re hunched over our computers and cell phones in an office chair and nothing more.

You might look silly while you’re rolling and hopping around, but no sillier than you look using the chest fly machine at the gym or the magic circle in mat Pilates. Well, maybe a little sillier, but it doesn’t matter because this sort of exercise improves mobility and flexibility, builds strength and coordination, and helps with things like balance, joint health, and spatial awareness. You can reclaim everything you’ve sacrificed to the office chair, basically, by owning your naturally human movements.

While you’re searching for primal movement exercise classes and videos, you’ll definitely run across Animal Flow. These aren’t technically interchangeable phrases, though they’ve come to be. Animal Flow is a branded movement system that seeks to replicate animal-like movements—primal movement is a broader fitness concept based on human movement. A lot of the moves look similar and the results are also similar, but there are a few key differences. First off, Animal Flow costs money. You can join the program, take classes, attend workshops, and more, but it’ll cost you. That doesn’t mean you won’t find “animal flow” videos on YouTube and that they won’t be basically the same as “primal movement” ones. Just keep in mind that animal flow and Animal Flow are actually different.

Finding primal movement on YouTube

I recommend spending some time just watching primal movement workouts on YouTube before you actually try it. You’ll need a lot of space, first of all, for the rolling and lunging and whatnot, and you’ll want to know what the instructors are talking about before you attempt it. It’s supposed to be natural and human, but it’s not like we move like this every day in real life, so it could take you some time to tap into it.

Expect deep squat holds, bear crawls, crab walks, lizard crawls, and spinal rolls. The good news is almost none of these routines involve equipment, so you can do this whenever and wherever you are.

Smoov Moves

My favorite videos so far come from a channel called Smoov Moves, where a man named Grant takes you and 100,000 subscribers through primal movement moves designed for beginners, from arm swings to sliding hinges.

His audio quality isn’t the best, but he more than makes up for it with the video quality. Each move is bookmarked along the playback bar at the bottom of the video, so you can jump ahead to ones you like. There’s a countdown timer in the top of the screen, too, so you know how long you have left with each exercise. He’s friendly, calm, and encouraging, even as he leaps around in a way sort of reminiscent of a bear. The channel provides playlists that are broken down by skill level, too, so you won’t feel overwhelmed when you start out.

GMB Fitness

GMB Fitness was founded by a physical therapist, which I appreciate. It’s key to have some insight from someone with so much expertise in the body and its movements—and nearly 300,000 subscribers agree. There are a load of videos about mobility and stretching on the channel and not all of them are primal, but the one I linked above is, so start there. Otherwise, search “GMB fitness animal” and “GMB fitness primal” for more.

Often led by trainer Ryan Hurst, these videos are straightforward and insightful. You don’t get any on-screen graphics to clue you in on things like exercise names, but you do get clear audio and video, which helps you follow along.

Animal Flow

I know I said Animal Flow—like capital-letters Animal Flow—costs money, but like any smart business, it also wants to give you a taste of their offerings. Creator Mike Fitch hosts some classes on YouTube, where 84,000 subscribers can follow along. You do get beginner-level stuff, but it’s taught by a true pro and the video quality is excellent.

Fitch does a good job demonstrating the moves before asking you to replicate them and you actually get a few different camera angles so you can really see what’s going on.

This week, Instagram rolled out its new “map” feature, which lets users share their last active location with followers. About five minutes later, all hell broke loose. Many on the internet quickly criticized the feature for its lack of concern for user safety, while others posted warnings that they seemingly had the feature turned on automatically. “Why did a fan DM me warning me that they could see my precise location as [I] was asleep at the house” is not the kind of buzz you want if you’re Instagram.

The good news is this feature very likely isn’t not set to turn on automatically. The bad news is you’ve probably already shared your location to the map without realizing it—just not in the way you’re thinking.

Instagram says it is not turning on your live location automatically

Despite posts claiming the contrary, Instagram is adamant the feature is entirely opt-in: If you don’t give Instagram permission to share your location with your followers, it supposedly won’t. In addition, even if the feature is on, it’s not sharing to all of your followers. In the worst case, the feature can share with all your friends, which means followers who you also follow back. If you’re a creator, you won’t be sharing your location to fans, unless you also follow those fans as well.

Now, that’s not to say the company has gone about this the right way. There are likely two reasons why people are thinking Instagram is sharing their live location without their permission. One, it’s probably too easy to enable the feature. Some users might see the feature, open it out of curiosity, and without totally realizing it, blast their location to some or all of their followers with just a couple of taps. I’m looking at the setting right now, and while it’s “clear,” it’s giving me anxiety that I’m only a tap or two away from beaming my location to all my friends.

Two, users might be conflating a different function of the Instagram map with live location. In addition to sharing your every move with your followers, your location-tagged posts and reels can appear in the map as well. Even if you choose not to share your location, if you tag the coordinates of restaurant in last night’s dinner post, that post will appear on the map for your followers to see. That makes it look like your location is live, when it’s not. That’s the theory Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, shared on Threads as to why some users who didn’t opt-in feel their location is still being shared to the map.

With all due respect Mr. Mosseri, it makes total sense that people didn’t realize their geotagged posts would share to the map, when the feature didn’t even exist when they tagged those posts.

A PR nightmare

I have to wonder if Instagram really didn’t see this backlash coming. Maybe the company looked at other platforms, like Snapchat’s Snap Map, or Apple’s Find My, and figured, “Hey, why not us?” But from my seat, Meta’s reputation for user privacy is deservedly zero. It only stands to reason that any Meta executives with a shred of self-awareness would anticipate some criticism here.

I can buy that the company might not have thought through the difference between live location sharing and geotagging—that users would see a post on the map based on a geotag and think, “Wait, I’m sharing my location? I didn’t agree to that!” But come on, Meta: You’re rolling out a feature that puts people’s locations on a map, the same week a jury rules you secretly stole Flo users’ menstrual data in order to deliver them targeted ads. Your reputation here is terrible, and this feature is confusing. Sure, these users shared the location where their photos were taken, but now that data is being plotted on a map, without clear explanation as to why.

Instagram says that locations only update when you open the app, and that your location will disappear after 24 hours of inactivity. In addition, you can set up to three “hidden places,” which automatically hide your location when you visit them. But I’m not sure that’s going to matter to most people, who now think the feature is a privacy disaster.

How to turn off the Instagram map

To be clear, if you have not explicitly opted in to this feature, it’s very likely not enabled. But here’s how to check: The Instagram map is available in your DMs, toward the top of the page. When you tap on it, you’re invited to share your location with your followers. Instagram gives you a few options off the bat: “Friends” (followers you follow back); “Close Friends” (those on your Close Friends list); “Only these friends” (lets you choose specific friends you want to share with); or “No one.” If you want to make sure you’re not sharing your live location, make sure to select “No one.” (If you don’t see the map, the feature may not have rolled out to you yet.)

If you want to go a step further, you can disable location permissions for Instagram entirely. This won’t block the app from determining where you might be at any given time, as it can use your IP address for that purpose. (Cool, right?) But it will ensure you can’t accidentally share your location to the map, and it’ll block geotagging on posts. On iOS, you can find that option in Settings > Apps > Instagram > Location, where you should choose “Never.” On Android, go to Settings > Location > App location permissions, choose Instagram, then hit “Don’t allow.”

Oh, did you forget about the Tea app since I brought you my last dispatch a few days ago? Lucky you, but I’m about to burst your bubble: The drama surrounding the security breach of the woman-only app, which operates like Yelp and allows women to anonymously rate and review real men, is ongoing.

If you check the Apple App Store right now, you’ll see that a men’s version of the app, TeaOnHer, is occupying the second-highest spot on the Lifestyle charts, just under the original Tea itself. It seems we, as a society, have learned nothing from the backlash against Tea, but we’ve also learned nothing from the data breaches the women who signed up for it experienced. You guessed it: TeaOnHer can be breached, too.

An into to TeaOnHer and its possible breach

First, what is TeaOnHer? It’s simply a men’s version of Tea—made by a different company—the app that allows women to rate and review men, upload men’s photos, and brand them “red flag men” or “green flag men,” all without the men being able to access the platform, let alone respond. TOH is similar, but with some key feature differences (more on that below).

Two weeks ago, Tea shot to the top of the Apple App Store charts when it experienced a moment of viral fame after operating quietly for two years. That was followed swiftly by backlash, which included a coordinated data breach that resulted in a leak of thousands of verification photos of female users, primarily government IDs. A second breach, potentially involving even more sensitive information in the form of private DMs, came a few days later. Then, at the end of July, the Tea was truly served, by which I mean it now faces a class action lawsuit over the whole ordeal.

None of that stopped Tea’s momentum; like I said, it’s still topping the app charts. It also didn’t deter competitors from entering the market, which is how we ended up with TeaOnHer, which went as far as to steal Tea’s tagline, to say nothing of its entire premise. Where Tea says it’s “helping women date safe,” TeaOnHer says it’s “helping men date safe.” Men can anonymously rate and review women on there—but, according to TechCrunch, that’s not the only Tea experience TeaOnHer is trying to let its users replicate. The men who downloaded TOH are also able to have their data breached.

I tried to reach out to the seller listed in the App Store, Newville Media Corporation, for a comment and will update if I hear back, but the gist of the TechCrunch report is that there is “at least one security flaw that allows anyone access to data belonging to TeaOnHer app users, including their usernames and associated email addresses, as well as driver’s licenses and selfies that users uploaded to TeaOnHer.” The identification images are publicly accessible web addresses, no less, so anyone who wants to see them simply needs to find the link.

Tea on TeaOnHer

One notable difference between Tea and TOH is that TeaOnHer advertises its use as a “safety” tool, but it’s not as comprehensive as Tea. Yes, Tea allows women to say whatever they want about men whether it’s true or not, but it also has features that help users run background checks, cross-reference sex offender lists, reverse-image search, search records by phone number, and find criminal and court records. The idea is not just to identify catfish, fraudsters, and two-timers, but real-deal abusers, to the extent possible. TeaOnHer, meanwhile, advertises that its “community helps you identify concerning behaviors patterns, safety red flags, and positive dating experiences from verified sources.” Basically, it borrows Tea’s anonymous gossip feature, but not the sturdier safety resources.

It has just a two-star rating on the App Store after 184 ratings, which I assumed would be from a bunch of reviews denouncing the basic “Yelp for people” premise, but my assumption was wrong. Users are actually annoyed about the app’s functionality, saying they can’t create accounts or stay logged in. Multiple people report a time-out issue that has precluded them from access despite uploading their verification images. I didn’t see any reviews decrying how unsavory people-rating apps are, nor any mentioning the reports of insecure data storage.

So, it seems no one has learned that providing a platform for people to make anonymous accusations against individuals who have no access to any type of due process is dangerous and no one has learned that uploading a verification image to such a platform is also dangerous. We continue to go around and around. Perhaps next week there will be a new development in this saga, but for now, enjoy your weekend.