Once you've worked your way through the best stretches for your upper back (not to mention your shoulders and hamstrings), you may want something for your lower back as well. Here are some stretches that will make your lower back feel great, or that can be added into a full-body stretching routine.Before we get into my favorite stretches, I want to say a few words about what it means when you have a stiff back. Pain or stiffness in the lower back is really common, but it tends to respond well to almost any type of exercise. Stretching is good, but so is strengthening, and so is movement in general (like walking, yoga, or whatever you like to do to stay at least a little bit active). I have more here on how doctors and scientists currently understand back pain and how to manage itgive that a read if you're concerned about stiffness or discomfort in your back. And now, on to the stretches.Cat/cowLook, it's a classic for a reason. Its also dual-purpose, since I included this in my article on upper back stretches as well. When you do this stretch, focus on the area youre trying to stretch. In this case, its your lower back, so make sure youre rounding and extending your lower back by tilting your pelvis, not putting all the motion into your upper back and shoulders.To do a cat/cow:Get on your hands and knees on the floor, with hands under your shoulders and knees under your hips. You should feel stable here. Use a yoga mat or cushion under your knees if you have a hard floor.Cat: You want to look like one of those Halloween cats thats scared and has its back rounded toward the sky, like a rainbow. Contract your abs, like youre doing a crunch, and try to feel a stretch in your lower back (and maybe your upper back as well, but thats not our focus here). Its OK if you dont feel much of a stretch, just do your best to exaggerate this position.Cow: This is the opposite of the cat position. Keep your arms and legs stable underneath you (like upright pillars) and let your belly relax and sag toward the floor.Go back and forth between cat and cow several times. Take your time, spending a breath or two in each position.Side-to-side childs poseThis one gets your lower back moving in a side-to-side direction.Get into childs pose. Thats the one where youre on your knees, your butt is close to your heels, and youre reaching out in front of you with your face close to the floor. You can spread your knees apart if that helps you get into a more comfortable position. You may feel a stretch in your lower back just from getting into this position. Reach forward as far as you comfortably can.Walk your hands to the left side. Youll feel a stretch on your right side. Stay here for a breath or two.Walk your hands over to the right side, for the opposite stretch.You can go back and forth between these positions for as long as you need.Jefferson curlThis is both a weighted stretch and a strengthening exercise. It may look a little strange if youre remembering all that advice not to lift with your back, but this is a movement that is safe for most people as long as you dont load it too heavy. (Heavy is, of course, relative to your strength level. There are extremely strong people out there Jefferson curling barbells. But you dont have to do that, at least not today.)To do a Jefferson curl:Stand on a step or a stable bench or box to make sure you can bend over without your hands hitting the floor. If youre using a weight, hold it in your hands.Curl your torso toward the ground. Youll end up in a touching-your-toes position, but with a rounded back.Let the weight of your body (and/or the weight youre holding) pull you toward the ground.Slowly stand up by un-curling your torso. This is like the movement thats sometimes described in yoga classes as standing up vertebra by vertebra.Repeat a few times.As you get better at this, youll be able to get deeper into the stretch, which means hanging your hands a little lower. Youll also get stronger, meaning you can start adding weight or increasing the weight you use. People who have been doing Jefferson curls for a while may do them while standing on a plyo box and holding a kettlebell. But its fine to use a chair or a step in your house, and whatever weight (or no weight) you have handy.Cobra pose (sort of)Yoga purists may say Im describing this wrong, but nobody would know what I meant if I said prone back extension, so cobra is the word Im going with. Just dont worry about making it a perfect cobra pose, or for that matter trying to tell the difference between cobra and upward facing dog. The point is that youll be letting your back relax into a position that bends it in the opposite direction of the Jefferson curl described above.Lie on your stomach with tops of your feet on the floor and your hands by your sides as if you were going to do a pushup.Leave your legs and hips on the floor, but push upward with your arms to lift your shoulders off the floor. You can place your hands forward of your shoulders, if thats more comfortable than having them underneath you.Relax your back, letting your stomach sag toward the ground like you did in the cow pose.After settling into this stretch, return your upper body to the floor. You can either repeat this stretch right away, or alternate this with a childs pose (with or without the side-to-side movements).

Every mouse is a little differentsome accelerate faster than others, for exampleand that can get annoying (and even disorienting) if you use one mouse at home and another at work. The Mac's mouse panel in System Settings lets you adjust things like tracking speed, sure, but changing the setting for one mouse changes it for all of them, meaning you can't really get the two devices to meet in the middle.LinearMouse is a free app that lets you choose different settings for every mouse and touchpad you connect to. This can help you solve the acceleration problem I just mentioned and also lets you do things like use natural scrolling on one device and not others. It can also customize all the buttons on your mouse.To get started, you need to download the application and launch it. You will be asked to grant Accessibility permission, which is necessary in order for the application to function. After that you can start configuring your devices. By default, the application will configure whichever device you've used most recentlyyou can configure a specific device instead by clicking the name of your current device in the top toolbar and unchecking the "Auto switch to the active device" option. Do that and you can choose which of your currently connected devices you want to configure. Credit: Justin Pot The app allow you to configure scrolling, pointer movement, and all the buttons on your mouse. The scrolling section has a modifier keys section that I particularly like, which allows you to do things like hold the Command key while scrolling to zoom in. Credit: Justin Pot The buttons section, meanwhile, can re-map the back and forward buttons your mouse may have so that it emulates the swiping motion on a trackpad. You might find that this allows you to use the buttons in more applications. There's also the ability to customize any button on your device to a wide variety of actions, from Mission Control to media playback. You can even trigger a Terminal command, if you want to get fancy.There's one more level of customization here. You can choose settings for any mouse that are specific to a particular application. So if you want to map the buttons on your mouse to do certain things while you're using a particular application, or playing a particular game, you can do that. You can also have your mouse behave differently on different displays. You might, for example, want your mouse to move faster on your giant widescreen without speeding it up on the smaller ones you sometimes use. That's possible.Basically, this is an application you can tweak endlessly to get exactly the experience you want. It's also completely free. Check it out if you wish your mouse worked differently.

Instagram, Facebook, Threads and Messenger are coming back online after widespread "technical issues" took down many of Meta's biggest apps for several hours Wednesday. "Were 99% of the way there - just doing some last checks," the company wrote in an update on X nearly four hours after first acknowledging the outages.The company didn't elaborate on the source of the issue, or when the problems might be resolved entirely. As of 4:30 PM PT Wednesday, Meta's status dashboard still showed some "major disruptions" to its business and transparency tools, though other services were marked as "resolved" or "recovering." Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads and Messenger seem to have largely recovered, though.Thanks for bearing with us! Were 99% of the way there - just doing some last checks. We apologize to those whove been affected by the outage. Meta (@Meta) December 11, 2024 Earlier in the day, there were over 90,000 reports of issues for Facebook.com alone on Downdetector, as users across X and Bluesky reported problems loading and using Metas apps. For a while even Metas company site was displaying the text This page isnt available right now. When Engadget first reached Meta for comment, the company pointed to a brief statement on X acknowledging that "a technical issue is impacting some users ability to access our apps."Meta last dealt with a major outage in March 2024 that prevented users from accessing its apps and services for two hours. That outage was attributed to a "technical issue" by Meta communications director Andy Stone, which is the same explanation Meta has offered so far today.Update, December 11, 2024, 4:50PM ET: Added more details on outage length and impact on Meta enterprise tools.Update, December11, 2024, 7:50 PM ET: Additional comments from Meta about the status of the outage were added.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-threads-whatsapp-and-more-down-as-part-of-meta-outage-184608535.html?src=rss

Make your holiday plans now, because Sony has announced which games will be joining the Playstation Plus Game Catalog starting in December. The biggest highlight for PlayStation Plus Premium and Extra subscribers is Forspoken, a parkour and magic-filled RPG released by Square Enix in 2023. We didnt think the PS5 game fully matched the eye-popping visuals of other games like Horizon Forbidden West when we reviewed it, but a holiday vacation seems like the perfect time to bop around and experiment with some spells.For a different take on open-world running and jumping, Sonic Frontiers is also joining the catalog. The game fuses high-speed platforming with a Breath of the Wild-inspired open world full of enemies and collectables. If you miss more of the traditional Sonic experience, there are bespoke challenge levels inspired by past Sonic games to run through too.Both those games should hopefully be rewarding time sinks, but the two additions that most caught my eye were A Space for the Unbound and Coffee Talk. Ive basically heard nothing but good things about A Space for the Unbound since it came out in 2023, primarily because of its unique setting in late 90s rural Indonesia. Its a slice-of-life adventure game, according to Sony, but with some supernatural elements for added drama. Coffee Talkhas been kicking around since 2020, and has some shared cultural DNA since its developer, Toge Productions, published Unbound and is based in Indonesia. Coffee Talk is a visual novel about running a coffee shop where you talk to patrons about their problems and make them drinks, a delightfully pleasant premise for a game.Toge ProductionsRounding out the new additions to the catalog are a grab bag of sequels, racing games, multiplayer puzzle games, and more than one title where you play as a rabbit: Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly, Rabbids: Party of Legends, WRC Generations, F.I.S.T.: Forged in Shadow, Jurassic World Evolution 2, PHOGS and Biped.If youre a PlayStation Plus Premium subscriber, and like me, youre looking to blow the dust off your PSVR 2, Sony is also throwing in Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxys Edge. Its a virtual reality experience that gives you a sampling platter of Star Wars things to do in immersive first-person, like training to be a Jedi, blasting enemies, and palling around with droids. It's much more cost effective to live Star Wars than going to Disneyland.Premium members will also get to stream a few new games in the Classics Catalog, with the shared theme of PlayStation mascot duos: Sly Cooper 2: Band of Thieves, Sly Cooper 3: Honor Among Thieves, and Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. Im more of a Ratchet & Clank fan myself, but this is a great opportunity to play the very first Jak and Daxter game.PS Plus Premium and Extra subscribers will be able to play these games starting December 17. If youre a Premium subscriber with a PlayStation Portal, youll be able to stream some of them directly to your handheld as part of Sonys cloud streaming beta test, too.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/playstation-plus-game-catalog-additions-for-december-include-forspoken-sonic-frontiers-and-vr-star-wars-232621272.html?src=rss

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How the Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn film was shot on an LED stage.Today on the befores & afters podcast, were chatting to Disguise VP of Virtual Production, Addy Ghani about the film Daddio. The Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn film is unique because it is essentially one long taxi ride that was effectively fully shot on an LED stage. In our chat, Addy goes through the shooting process, including the car process plates that were filmed, and how different tools and vendors made it possible to play those back on the LED volume. We also dive into the Disguise side of the process, plus a little history of Disguise itself.This episode of the befores & afters podcast is sponsored by SideFX. Looking for great customer case studies, presentations and demos? Head to the SideFX YouTube channel. There youll find tons of Houdini, Solaris and Karma content. This includes recordings of recent Houdini HIVE sessions from around the world.Check out the chat above, and some behind the scenes images below.The post The virtual production behind Daddio appeared first on befores & afters.

Including creature transformationsand a cow. (warning: gross)The post See WeFXs VFX breakdown reel for s3 of From appeared first on befores & afters.