All products featured on Architectural Digest are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.Featured in this articleBest Overall Sateen SheetsBoll & Branch Signature Hemmed Sheet SetRead moreFor a Romantic DrapeEttitude CleanBamboo Sheet Set Read moreThe Affordable PickGood Sleep Bedding Egyptian Cotton Sateen SheetsRead moreShow more3 / 8A close cousin to percale and silk, the best sateen sheets offer a happy medium of refinement and softness, all in one durability, and an easy-to-clean fabric.Sateen is known for having a polished appearance because of its lustrous sheen and wrinkle-resistant material. This comes from a tight satin weave that leaves a shiny look without compromising a smooth hand feel. 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Transcript [MUSIC]      [BOOK PASSAGE]   PETER LEE: “In ‘The Little Black Bag,’ a classic science fiction story, a high-tech doctor’s kit of the future is accidentally transported back to the 1950s, into the shaky hands of a washed-up, alcoholic doctor. The ultimate medical tool, it redeems the doctor wielding it, allowing him to practice gratifyingly heroic medicine. … The tale ends badly for the doctor and his treacherous assistant, but it offered a picture of how advanced technology could transform medicine—powerful when it was written nearly 75 years ago and still so today. What would be the Al equivalent of that little black bag? At this moment when new capabilities are emerging, how do we imagine them into medicine?”   [END OF BOOK PASSAGE]     [THEME MUSIC]     This is The AI Revolution in Medicine, Revisited. I’m your host, Peter Lee.    Shortly after OpenAI’s GPT-4 was publicly released, Carey Goldberg, Dr. Zak Kohane, and I published The AI Revolution in Medicine to help educate the world of healthcare and medical research about the transformative impact this new generative AI technology could have. But because we wrote the book when GPT-4 was still a secret, we had to speculate. Now, two years later, what did we get right, and what did we get wrong?     In this series, we’ll talk to clinicians, patients, hospital administrators, and others to understand the reality of AI in the field and where we go from here.   [THEME MUSIC FADES] The book passage I read at the top is from “Chapter 10: The Big Black Bag.”  In imagining AI in medicine, Carey, Zak, and I included in our book two fictional accounts. In the first, a medical resident consults GPT-4 on her personal phone as the patient in front of her crashes. Within seconds, it offers an alternate response based on recent literature. In the second account, a 90-year-old woman with several chronic conditions is living independently and receiving near-constant medical support from an AI aide.    In our conversations with the guests we’ve spoken to so far, we’ve caught a glimpse of these predicted futures, seeing how clinicians and patients are actually using AI today and how developers are leveraging the technology in the healthcare products and services they’re creating. In fact, that first fictional account isn’t so fictional after all, as most of the doctors in the real world actually appear to be using AI at least occasionally—and sometimes much more than occasionally—to help in their daily clinical work. And as for the second fictional account, which is more of a science fiction account, it seems we are indeed on the verge of a new way of delivering and receiving healthcare, though the future is still very much open.  As we continue to examine the current state of AI in healthcare and its potential to transform the field, I’m pleased to welcome Bill Gates and Sébastien Bubeck.   Bill may be best known as the co-founder of Microsoft, having created the company with his childhood friend Paul Allen in 1975. He’s now the founder of Breakthrough Energy, which aims to advance clean energy innovation, and TerraPower, a company developing groundbreaking nuclear energy and science technologies. He also chairs the world’s largest philanthropic organization, the Gates Foundation, and focuses on solving a variety of health challenges around the globe and here at home.  Sébastien is a research lead at OpenAI. He was previously a distinguished scientist, vice president of AI, and a colleague of mine here at Microsoft, where his work included spearheading the development of the family of small language models known as Phi. While at Microsoft, he also coauthored the discussion-provoking 2023 paper “Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence,” which presented the results of early experiments with GPT-4 conducted by a small team from Microsoft Research.    [TRANSITION MUSIC]   Here’s my conversation with Bill Gates and Sébastien Bubeck.  LEE: Bill, welcome.  BILL GATES: Thank you.  LEE: Seb …  SÉBASTIEN BUBECK: Yeah. Hi, hi, Peter. Nice to be here.  LEE: You know, one of the things that I’ve been doing just to get the conversation warmed up is to talk about origin stories, and what I mean about origin stories is, you know, what was the first contact that you had with large language models or the concept of generative AI that convinced you or made you think that something really important was happening?  And so, Bill, I think I’ve heard the story about, you know, the time when the OpenAI folks—Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and others—showed you something, but could we hear from you what those early encounters were like and what was going through your mind?   GATES: Well, I’d been visiting OpenAI soon after it was created to see things like GPT-2 and to see the little arm they had that was trying to match human manipulation and, you know, looking at their games like Dota that they were trying to get as good as human play. And honestly, I didn’t think the language model stuff they were doing, even when they got to GPT-3, would show the ability to learn, you know, in the same sense that a human reads a biology book and is able to take that knowledge and access it not only to pass a test but also to create new medicines.  And so my challenge to them was that if their LLM could get a five on the advanced placement biology test, then I would say, OK, it took biologic knowledge and encoded it in an accessible way and that I didn’t expect them to do that very quickly but it would be profound.   And it was only about six months after I challenged them to do that, that an early version of GPT-4 they brought up to a dinner at my house, and in fact, it answered most of the questions that night very well. The one it got totally wrong, we were … because it was so good, we kept thinking, Oh, we must be wrong. It turned out it was a math weakness [LAUGHTER] that, you know, we later understood that that was an area of, weirdly, of incredible weakness of those early models. But, you know, that was when I realized, OK, the age of cheap intelligence was at its beginning.  LEE: Yeah. So I guess it seems like you had something similar to me in that my first encounters, I actually harbored some skepticism. Is it fair to say you were skeptical before that?  GATES: Well, the idea that we’ve figured out how to encode and access knowledge in this very deep sense without even understanding the nature of the encoding, …  LEE: Right.   GATES: … that is a bit weird.   LEE: Yeah.  GATES: We have an algorithm that creates the computation, but even say, OK, where is the president’s birthday stored in there? Where is this fact stored in there? The fact that even now when we’re playing around, getting a little bit more sense of it, it’s opaque to us what the semantic encoding is, it’s, kind of, amazing to me. I thought the invention of knowledge storage would be an explicit way of encoding knowledge, not an implicit statistical training.  LEE: Yeah, yeah. All right. So, Seb, you know, on this same topic, you know, I got—as we say at Microsoft—I got pulled into the tent. [LAUGHS]  BUBECK: Yes.   LEE: Because this was a very secret project. And then, um, I had the opportunity to select a small number of researchers in MSR [Microsoft Research] to join and start investigating this thing seriously. And the first person I pulled in was you.  BUBECK: Yeah.  LEE: And so what were your first encounters? Because I actually don’t remember what happened then.  BUBECK: Oh, I remember it very well. [LAUGHS] My first encounter with GPT-4 was in a meeting with the two of you, actually. But my kind of first contact, the first moment where I realized that something was happening with generative AI, was before that. And I agree with Bill that I also wasn’t too impressed by GPT-3.  I though that it was kind of, you know, very naturally mimicking the web, sort of parroting what was written there in a nice way. Still in a way which seemed very impressive. But it wasn’t really intelligent in any way. But shortly after GPT-3, there was a model before GPT-4 that really shocked me, and this was the first image generation model, DALL-E 1.  So that was in 2021. And I will forever remember the press release of OpenAI where they had this prompt of an avocado chair and then you had this image of the avocado chair. [LAUGHTER] And what really shocked me is that clearly the model kind of “understood” what is a chair, what is an avocado, and was able to merge those concepts.  So this was really, to me, the first moment where I saw some understanding in those models.   LEE: So this was, just to get the timing right, that was before I pulled you into the tent.  BUBECK: That was before. That was like a year before.  LEE: Right.   BUBECK: And now I will tell you how, you know, we went from that moment to the meeting with the two of you and GPT-4.  So once I saw this kind of understanding, I thought, OK, fine. It understands concept, but it’s still not able to reason. It cannot—as, you know, Bill was saying—it cannot learn from your document. It cannot reason.   So I set out to try to prove that. You know, this is what I was in the business of at the time, trying to prove things in mathematics. So I was trying to prove that basically autoregressive transformers could never reason. So I was trying to prove this. And after a year of work, I had something reasonable to show. And so I had the meeting with the two of you, and I had this example where I wanted to say, there is no way that an LLM is going to be able to do x.  And then as soon as I … I don’t know if you remember, Bill. But as soon as I said that, you said, oh, but wait a second. I had, you know, the OpenAI crew at my house recently, and they showed me a new model. Why don’t we ask this new model this question?   LEE: Yeah. BUBECK: And we did, and it solved it on the spot. And that really, honestly, just changed my life. Like, you know, I had been working for a year trying to say that this was impossible. And just right there, it was shown to be possible.   LEE: [LAUGHS] One of the very first things I got interested in—because I was really thinking a lot about healthcare—was healthcare and medicine.  And I don’t know if the two of you remember, but I ended up doing a lot of tests. I ran through, you know, step one and step two of the US Medical Licensing Exam. Did a whole bunch of other things. I wrote this big report. It was, you know, I can’t remember … a couple hundred pages.   And I needed to share this with someone. I didn’t … there weren’t too many people I could share it with. So I sent, I think, a copy to you, Bill. Sent a copy to you, Seb.   I hardly slept for about a week putting that report together. And, yeah, and I kept working on it. But I was far from alone. I think everyone who was in the tent, so to speak, in those early days was going through something pretty similar. All right. So I think … of course, a lot of what I put in the report also ended up being examples that made it into the book.  But the main purpose of this conversation isn’t to reminisce about [LAUGHS] or indulge in those reminiscences but to talk about what’s happening in healthcare and medicine. And, you know, as I said, we wrote this book. We did it very, very quickly. Seb, you helped. Bill, you know, you provided a review and some endorsements.  But, you know, honestly, we didn’t know what we were talking about because no one had access to this thing. And so we just made a bunch of guesses. So really, the whole thing I wanted to probe with the two of you is, now with two years of experience out in the world, what, you know, what do we think is happening today?  You know, is AI actually having an impact, positive or negative, on healthcare and medicine? And what do we now think is going to happen in the next two years, five years, or 10 years? And so I realize it’s a little bit too abstract to just ask it that way. So let me just try to narrow the discussion and guide us a little bit.   Um, the kind of administrative and clerical work, paperwork, around healthcare—and we made a lot of guesses about that—that appears to be going well, but, you know, Bill, I know we’ve discussed that sometimes that you think there ought to be a lot more going on. Do you have a viewpoint on how AI is actually finding its way into reducing paperwork?  GATES: Well, I’m stunned … I don’t think there should be a patient-doctor meeting where the AI is not sitting in and both transcribing, offering to help with the paperwork, and even making suggestions, although the doctor will be the one, you know, who makes the final decision about the diagnosis and whatever prescription gets done.   It’s so helpful. You know, when that patient goes home and their, you know, son who wants to understand what happened has some questions, that AI should be available to continue that conversation. And the way you can improve that experience and streamline things and, you know, involve the people who advise you. I don’t understand why that’s not more adopted, because there you still have the human in the loop making that final decision.  But even for, like, follow-up calls to make sure the patient did things, to understand if they have concerns and knowing when to escalate back to the doctor, the benefit is incredible. And, you know, that thing is ready for prime time. That paradigm is ready for prime time, in my view.  LEE: Yeah, there are some good products, but it seems like the number one use right now—and we kind of got this from some of the previous guests in previous episodes—is the use of AI just to respond to emails from patients. [LAUGHTER] Does that make sense to you?  BUBECK: Yeah. So maybe I want to second what Bill was saying but maybe take a step back first. You know, two years ago, like, the concept of clinical scribes, which is one of the things that we’re talking about right now, it would have sounded, in fact, it sounded two years ago, borderline dangerous. Because everybody was worried about hallucinations. What happened if you have this AI listening in and then it transcribes, you know, something wrong?  Now, two years later, I think it’s mostly working. And in fact, it is not yet, you know, fully adopted. You’re right. But it is in production. It is used, you know, in many, many places. So this rate of progress is astounding because it wasn’t obvious that we would be able to overcome those obstacles of hallucination. It’s not to say that hallucinations are fully solved. In the case of the closed system, they are.   Now, I think more generally what’s going on in the background is that there is something that we, that certainly I, underestimated, which is this management overhead. So I think the reason why this is not adopted everywhere is really a training and teaching aspect. People need to be taught, like, those systems, how to interact with them.  And one example that I really like, a study that recently appeared where they tried to use ChatGPT for diagnosis and they were comparing doctors without and with ChatGPT (opens in new tab). And the amazing thing … so this was a set of cases where the accuracy of the doctors alone was around 75%. ChatGPT alone was 90%. So that’s already kind of mind blowing. But then the kicker is that doctors with ChatGPT was 80%.   Intelligence alone is not enough. It’s also how it’s presented, how you interact with it. And ChatGPT, it’s an amazing tool. Obviously, I absolutely love it. But it’s not … you don’t want a doctor to have to type in, you know, prompts and use it that way.  It should be, as Bill was saying, kind of running continuously in the background, sending you notifications. And you have to be really careful of the rate at which those notifications are being sent. Because if they are too frequent, then the doctor will learn to ignore them. So you have to … all of those things matter, in fact, at least as much as the level of intelligence of the machine.  LEE: One of the things I think about, Bill, in that scenario that you described, doctors do some thinking about the patient when they write the note. So, you know, I’m always a little uncertain whether it’s actually … you know, you wouldn’t necessarily want to fully automate this, I don’t think. Or at least there needs to be some prompt to the doctor to make sure that the doctor puts some thought into what happened in the encounter with the patient. Does that make sense to you at all?  GATES: At this stage, you know, I’d still put the onus on the doctor to write the conclusions and the summary and not delegate that.  The tradeoffs you make a little bit are somewhat dependent on the situation you’re in. If you’re in Africa, So, yes, the doctor’s still going to have to do a lot of work, but just the quality of letting the patient and the people around them interact and ask questions and have things explained, that alone is such a quality improvement. It’s mind blowing.   LEE: So since you mentioned, you know, Africa—and, of course, this touches on the mission and some of the priorities of the Gates Foundation and this idea of democratization of access to expert medical care—what’s the most interesting stuff going on right now? Are there people and organizations or technologies that are impressing you or that you’re tracking?  GATES: Yeah. So the Gates Foundation has given out a lot of grants to people in Africa doing education, agriculture but more healthcare examples than anything. And the way these things start off, they often start out either being patient-centric in a narrow situation, like, OK, I’m a pregnant woman; talk to me. Or, I have infectious disease symptoms; talk to me. Or they’re connected to a health worker where they’re helping that worker get their job done. And we have lots of pilots out, you know, in both of those cases.   The dream would be eventually to have the thing the patient consults be so broad that it’s like having a doctor available who understands the local things.   LEE: Right.   GATES: We’re not there yet. But over the next two or three years, you know, particularly given the worsening financial constraints against African health systems, where the withdrawal of money has been dramatic, you know, figuring out how to take this—what I sometimes call “free intelligence”—and build a quality health system around that, we will have to be more radical in low-income countries than any rich country is ever going to be.   LEE: Also, there’s maybe a different regulatory environment, so some of those things maybe are easier? Because right now, I think the world hasn’t figured out how to and whether to regulate, let’s say, an AI that might give a medical diagnosis or write a prescription for a medication.  BUBECK: Yeah. I think one issue with this, and it’s also slowing down the deployment of AI in healthcare more generally, is a lack of proper benchmark. Because, you know, you were mentioning the USMLE [United States Medical Licensing Examination], for example. That’s a great test to test human beings and their knowledge of healthcare and medicine. But it’s not a great test to give to an AI.  It’s not asking the right questions. So finding what are the right questions to test whether an AI system is ready to give diagnosis in a constrained setting, that’s a very, very important direction, which to my surprise, is not yet accelerating at the rate that I was hoping for.  LEE: OK, so that gives me an excuse to get more now into the core AI tech because something I’ve discussed with both of you is this issue of what are the right tests. And you both know the very first test I give to any new spin of an LLM is I present a patient, the results—a mythical patient—the results of my physical exam, my mythical physical exam. Maybe some results of some initial labs. And then I present or propose a differential diagnosis. And if you’re not in medicine, a differential diagnosis you can just think of as a prioritized list of the possible diagnoses that fit with all that data. And in that proposed differential, I always intentionally make two mistakes.  I make a textbook technical error in one of the possible elements of the differential diagnosis, and I have an error of omission. And, you know, I just want to know, does the LLM understand what I’m talking about? And all the good ones out there do now. But then I want to know, can it spot the errors? And then most importantly, is it willing to tell me I’m wrong, that I’ve made a mistake?   That last piece seems really hard for AI today. And so let me ask you first, Seb, because at the time of this taping, of course, there was a new spin of GPT-4o last week that became overly sycophantic. In other words, it was actually prone in that test of mine not only to not tell me I’m wrong, but it actually praised me for the creativity of my differential. [LAUGHTER] What’s up with that?  BUBECK: Yeah, I guess it’s a testament to the fact that training those models is still more of an art than a science. So it’s a difficult job. Just to be clear with the audience, we have rolled back that [LAUGHS] version of GPT-4o, so now we don’t have the sycophant version out there.  Yeah, no, it’s a really difficult question. It has to do … as you said, it’s very technical. It has to do with the post-training and how, like, where do you nudge the model? So, you know, there is this very classical by now technique called RLHF [reinforcement learning from human feedback], where you push the model in the direction of a certain reward model. So the reward model is just telling the model, you know, what behavior is good, what behavior is bad.  But this reward model is itself an LLM, and, you know, Bill was saying at the very beginning of the conversation that we don’t really understand how those LLMs deal with concepts like, you know, where is the capital of France located? Things like that. It is the same thing for this reward model. We don’t know why it says that it prefers one output to another, and whether this is correlated with some sycophancy is, you know, something that we discovered basically just now. That if you push too hard in optimization on this reward model, you will get a sycophant model.  So it’s kind of … what I’m trying to say is we became too good at what we were doing, and we ended up, in fact, in a trap of the reward model.  LEE: I mean, you do want … it’s a difficult balance because you do want models to follow your desires and …  BUBECK: It’s a very difficult, very difficult balance.  LEE: So this brings up then the following question for me, which is the extent to which we think we’ll need to have specially trained models for things. So let me start with you, Bill. Do you have a point of view on whether we will need to, you know, quote-unquote take AI models to med school? Have them specially trained? Like, if you were going to deploy something to give medical care in underserved parts of the world, do we need to do something special to create those models?  GATES: We certainly need to teach them the African languages and the unique dialects so that the multimedia interactions are very high quality. We certainly need to teach them the disease prevalence and unique disease patterns like, you know, neglected tropical diseases and malaria. So we need to gather a set of facts that somebody trying to go for a US customer base, you know, wouldn’t necessarily have that in there.  Those two things are actually very straightforward because the additional training time is small. I’d say for the next few years, we’ll also need to do reinforcement learning about the context of being a doctor and how important certain behaviors are. Humans learn over the course of their life to some degree that, I’m in a different context and the way I behave in terms of being willing to criticize or be nice, you know, how important is it? Who’s here? What’s my relationship to them?   Right now, these machines don’t have that broad social experience. And so if you know it’s going to be used for health things, a lot of reinforcement learning of the very best humans in that context would still be valuable. Eventually, the models will, having read all the literature of the world about good doctors, bad doctors, it’ll understand as soon as you say, “I want you to be a doctor diagnosing somebody.” All of the implicit reinforcement that fits that situation, you know, will be there. LEE: Yeah. GATES: And so I hope three years from now, we don’t have to do that reinforcement learning. But today, for any medical context, you would want a lot of data to reinforce tone, willingness to say things when, you know, there might be something significant at stake.  LEE: Yeah. So, you know, something Bill said, kind of, reminds me of another thing that I think we missed, which is, the context also … and the specialization also pertains to different, I guess, what we still call “modes,” although I don’t know if the idea of multimodal is the same as it was two years ago. But, you know, what do you make of all of the hubbub around—in fact, within Microsoft Research, this is a big deal, but I think we’re far from alone—you know, medical images and vision, video, proteins and molecules, cell, you know, cellular data and so on.  BUBECK: Yeah. OK. So there is a lot to say to everything … to the last, you know, couple of minutes. Maybe on the specialization aspect, you know, I think there is, hiding behind this, a really fundamental scientific question of whether eventually we have a singular AGI [artificial general intelligence] that kind of knows everything and you can just put, you know, explain your own context and it will just get it and understand everything.  That’s one vision. I have to say, I don’t particularly believe in this vision. In fact, we humans are not like that at all. I think, hopefully, we are general intelligences, yet we have to specialize a lot. And, you know, I did myself a lot of RL, reinforcement learning, on mathematics. Like, that’s what I did, you know, spent a lot of time doing that. And I didn’t improve on other aspects. You know, in fact, I probably degraded in other aspects. [LAUGHTER] So it’s … I think it’s an important example to have in mind.  LEE: I think I might disagree with you on that, though, because, like, doesn’t a model have to see both good science and bad science in order to be able to gain the ability to discern between the two?  BUBECK: Yeah, no, that absolutely. I think there is value in seeing the generality, in having a very broad base. But then you, kind of, specialize on verticals. And this is where also, you know, open-weights model, which we haven’t talked about yet, are really important because they allow you to provide this broad base to everyone. And then you can specialize on top of it.  LEE: So we have about three hours of stuff to talk about, but our time is actually running low. BUBECK: Yes, yes, yes.   LEE: So I think I want … there’s a more provocative question. It’s almost a silly question, but I need to ask it of the two of you, which is, is there a future, you know, where AI replaces doctors or replaces, you know, medical specialties that we have today? So what does the world look like, say, five years from now?  GATES: Well, it’s important to distinguish healthcare discovery activity from healthcare delivery activity. We focused mostly on delivery. I think it’s very much within the realm of possibility that the AI is not only accelerating healthcare discovery but substituting for a lot of the roles of, you know, I’m an organic chemist, or I run various types of assays. I can see those, which are, you know, testable-output-type jobs but with still very high value, I can see, you know, some replacement in those areas before the doctor.   The doctor, still understanding the human condition and long-term dialogues, you know, they’ve had a lifetime of reinforcement of that, particularly when you get into areas like mental health. So I wouldn’t say in five years, either people will choose to adopt it, but it will be profound that there’ll be this nearly free intelligence that can do follow-up, that can help you, you know, make sure you went through different possibilities.  And so I’d say, yes, we’ll have doctors, but I’d say healthcare will be massively transformed in its quality and in efficiency by AI in that time period.  LEE: Is there a comparison, useful comparison, say, between doctors and, say, programmers, computer programmers, or doctors and, I don’t know, lawyers?  GATES: Programming is another one that has, kind of, a mathematical correctness to it, you know, and so the objective function that you’re trying to reinforce to, as soon as you can understand the state machines, you can have something that’s “checkable”; that’s correct. So I think programming, you know, which is weird to say, that the machine will beat us at most programming tasks before we let it take over roles that have deep empathy, you know, physical presence and social understanding in them.  LEE: Yeah. By the way, you know, I fully expect in five years that AI will produce mathematical proofs that are checkable for validity, easily checkable, because they’ll be written in a proof-checking language like Lean or something but will be so complex that no human mathematician can understand them. I expect that to happen.   I can imagine in some fields, like cellular biology, we could have the same situation in the future because the molecular pathways, the chemistry, biochemistry of human cells or living cells is as complex as any mathematics, and so it seems possible that we may be in a state where in wet lab, we see, Oh yeah, this actually works, but no one can understand why.  BUBECK: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think I really agree with Bill’s distinction of the discovery and the delivery, and indeed, the discovery’s when you can check things, and at the end, there is an artifact that you can verify. You know, you can run the protocol in the wet lab and see [if you have] produced what you wanted. So I absolutely agree with that.   And in fact, you know, we don’t have to talk five years from now. I don’t know if you know, but just recently, there was a paper that was published on a scientific discovery using o3- mini (opens in new tab). So this is really amazing. And, you know, just very quickly, just so people know, it was about this statistical physics model, the frustrated Potts model, which has to do with coloring, and basically, the case of three colors, like, more than two colors was open for a long time, and o3 was able to reduce the case of three colors to two colors.   LEE: Yeah.  BUBECK: Which is just, like, astounding. And this is not … this is now. This is happening right now. So this is something that I personally didn’t expect it would happen so quickly, and it’s due to those reasoning models.   Now, on the delivery side, I would add something more to it for the reason why doctors and, in fact, lawyers and coders will remain for a long time, and it’s because we still don’t understand how those models generalize. Like, at the end of the day, we are not able to tell you when they are confronted with a really new, novel situation, whether they will work or not.  Nobody is able to give you that guarantee. And I think until we understand this generalization better, we’re not going to be willing to just let the system in the wild without human supervision.  LEE: But don’t human doctors, human specialists … so, for example, a cardiologist sees a patient in a certain way that a nephrologist …  BUBECK: Yeah. LEE: … or an endocrinologist might not. BUBECK: That’s right. But another cardiologist will understand and, kind of, expect a certain level of generalization from their peer. And this, we just don’t have it with AI models. Now, of course, you’re exactly right. That generalization is also hard for humans. Like, if you have a human trained for one task and you put them into another task, then you don’t … you often don’t know. LEE: OK. You know, the podcast is focused on what’s happened over the last two years. But now, I’d like one provocative prediction about what you think the world of AI and medicine is going to be at some point in the future. You pick your timeframe. I don’t care if it’s two years or 20 years from now, but, you know, what do you think will be different about AI in medicine in that future than today?  BUBECK: Yeah, I think the deployment is going to accelerate soon. Like, we’re really not missing very much. There is this enormous capability overhang. Like, even if progress completely stopped, with current systems, we can do a lot more than what we’re doing right now. So I think this will … this has to be realized, you know, sooner rather than later.  And I think it’s probably dependent on these benchmarks and proper evaluation and tying this with regulation. So these are things that take time in human society and for good reason. But now we already are at two years; you know, give it another two years and it should be really …   LEE: Will AI prescribe your medicines? Write your prescriptions?  BUBECK: I think yes. I think yes.  LEE: OK. Bill?  GATES: Well, I think the next two years, we’ll have massive pilots, and so the amount of use of the AI, still in a copilot-type mode, you know, we should get millions of patient visits, you know, both in general medicine and in the mental health side, as well. And I think that’s going to build up both the data and the confidence to give the AI some additional autonomy. You know, are you going to let it talk to you at night when you’re panicked about your mental health with some ability to escalate? And, you know, I’ve gone so far as to tell politicians with national health systems that if they deploy AI appropriately, that the quality of care, the overload of the doctors, the improvement in the economics will be enough that their voters will be stunned because they just don’t expect this, and, you know, they could be reelected [LAUGHTER] just on this one thing of fixing what is a very overloaded and economically challenged health system in these rich countries.  You know, my personal role is going to be to make sure that in the poorer countries, there isn’t some lag; in fact, in many cases, that we’ll be more aggressive because, you know, we’re comparing to having no access to doctors at all. And, you know, so I think whether it’s India or Africa, there’ll be lessons that are globally valuable because we need medical intelligence. And, you know, thank god AI is going to provide a lot of that.  LEE: Well, on that optimistic note, I think that’s a good way to end. Bill, Seb, really appreciate all of this.   I think the most fundamental prediction we made in the book is that AI would actually find its way into the practice of medicine, and I think that that at least has come true, maybe in different ways than we expected, but it’s come true, and I think it’ll only accelerate from here. So thanks again, both of you.  [TRANSITION MUSIC]  GATES: Yeah. Thanks, you guys.  BUBECK: Thank you, Peter. Thanks, Bill.  LEE: I just always feel such a sense of privilege to have a chance to interact and actually work with people like Bill and Sébastien.    With Bill, I’m always amazed at how practically minded he is. He’s really thinking about the nuts and bolts of what AI might be able to do for people, and his thoughts about underserved parts of the world, the idea that we might actually be able to empower people with access to expert medical knowledge, I think is both inspiring and amazing.   And then, Seb, Sébastien Bubeck, he’s just absolutely a brilliant mind. He has a really firm grip on the deep mathematics of artificial intelligence and brings that to bear in his research and development work. And where that mathematics takes him isn’t just into the nuts and bolts of algorithms but into philosophical questions about the nature of intelligence.   One of the things that Sébastien brought up was the state of evaluation of AI systems. And indeed, he was fairly critical in our conversation. But of course, the world of AI research and development is just moving so fast, and indeed, since we recorded our conversation, OpenAI, in fact, released a new evaluation metric that is directly relevant to medical applications, and that is something called HealthBench. And Microsoft Research also released a new evaluation approach or process called ADeLe.   HealthBench and ADeLe are examples of new approaches to evaluating AI models that are less about testing their knowledge and ability to pass multiple-choice exams and instead are evaluation approaches designed to assess how well AI models are able to complete tasks that actually arise every day in typical healthcare or biomedical research settings. These are examples of really important good work that speak to how well AI models work in the real world of healthcare and biomedical research and how well they can collaborate with human beings in those settings.  You know, I asked Bill and Seb to make some predictions about the future. You know, my own answer, I expect that we’re going to be able to use AI to change how we diagnose patients, change how we decide treatment options.   If you’re a doctor or a nurse and you encounter a patient, you’ll ask questions, do a physical exam, you know, call out for labs just like you do today, but then you’ll be able to engage with AI based on all of that data and just ask, you know, based on all the other people who have gone through the same experience, who have similar data, how were they diagnosed? How were they treated? What were their outcomes? And what does that mean for the patient I have right now? Some people call it the “patients like me” paradigm. And I think that’s going to become real because of AI within our lifetimes. That idea of really grounding the delivery in healthcare and medical practice through data and intelligence, I actually now don’t see any barriers to that future becoming real.  [THEME MUSIC]  I’d like to extend another big thank you to Bill and Sébastien for their time. And to our listeners, as always, it’s a pleasure to have you along for the ride. I hope you’ll join us for our remaining conversations, as well as a second coauthor roundtable with Carey and Zak.   Until next time.   [MUSIC FADES]

/May 30, 2025/4:28 p.m. ETTrump Attacks Harvard With Social Media Screening for All VisasThis pilot program will soon be expanded across the country.Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesThe Trump administration has begun carrying out its expanded vetting for student visa applicants, surveilling their social media accounts to make sure they aren’t posting anything in support of Palestine, which the administration considers antisemitic. This vetting will start with Harvard visa applicants but is expected to be adopted nationwide.Secretary of Stato Marco Rubio sent a cable to all U.S. embassies and consulates on Thursday ordering them to “conduct a complete screening of the online presence of any nonimmigrant visa applicant seeking to travel to Harvard University for any purpose.” That would apply not just to students but also to faculty, staff, and researchers visiting the university.The Trump administration is taking particular interest in people who have their social media accounts on “private,” an obvious, ominous crossing of boundaries.The State Department has ordered officers to examine “whether the lack of any online presence, or having social media accounts restricted to ‘private’ or with limited visibility, may be reflective of evasiveness and call into question the applicant’s credibility.”This is yet another instance of Harvard serving as a test subject for the administration’s larger crackdown on free speech and international students at American universities. Trump has already revoked billions of dollars in research funding from the Massachusetts school, and even banned it from admitting any international students at all, although the latter policy was temporarily revoked by a judge. Most Recent Post/May 30, 2025/3:53 p.m. ETStephen Miller Grilled on Musk’s Drug Use as Wife Lands New GigTrump’s chief adviser seems desperate to avoid questions on Elon Musk. Does that have anything to do with his wife’s new job? Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesStephen Miller had a dismissive response Friday to new reports of Elon Musk’s drug use during Trump’s campaign last year. CNN’s Pamela Brown asked the far-right Trump adviser if there was “any drug testing or requests for him to drug test when he was in the White House given the fact that he was also a contractor with the government.”  A chuckling Miller ignored the question and said, “Fortunately for you and all of the friends at CNN, you’ll have the opportunity to ask Elon all the questions you want today yourself,” before he then segued into the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda. “The drugs I’m concerned about are the drugs that are coming across the border from the criminal cartels that are killing hundreds of thousands of Americans,” Miller said. Perhaps Miller laughed instead of answering because his wife, Katie Miller, has left her job as adviser and spokesperson for the Department of Government Efficiency to work full-time for Musk and his companies. Miller has probably had enough of Musk, as he has also been subtweeting the tech oligarch, trying to refute Musk’s criticisms that the Republican budget bill would raise the deficit. “The Big Beautiful Bill is NOT an annual budget bill and does not fund the departments of government. It does not finance our agencies or federal programs,” Miller said, in a long X post earlier this week. Is there bad blood between Miller and Musk that has now spiraled because Miller’s wife is working for the tech oligarch and fellow fascism enthusiast? Most Recent Post/May 30, 2025/3:19 p.m. ETOld Man Trump Repeatedly Fumbles in Weird Speech Praising Elon MuskDonald Trump couldn’t keep some of his words straight as he marked the supposed end of Elon Musk’s tenure at the White House.Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesHours after reports emerged Friday that Elon Musk had been under the influence of heavy drugs during his time advising the president, Musk and Donald Trump stumbled and fumbled their way through a White House press conference recognizing the end of the tech billionaire’s special government employee status.The wildly unusual joint conference featured Musk’s black eye, a giant gold key that Trump said he only gives to “very special people,” cringe-worthy regurgitations by Musk of Trump’s take on his Pulitzer Board defamation suit, and claims that Musk’s unpopular and controversial time in the White House was not quite over.But as Trump continued to praise Musk and his time atop the Department of Government Efficiency, the president’s verbal gaffes became more apparent. He claimed that DOGE had uncovered $42 million in wasteful spending, referring to expenditures related to Uganda, which Trump pronounced as “oo-ganda.” The 78-year-old also mentioned he would have Musk’s DOGE cuts “cauterized by Congress,” though he quickly corrected himself by saying they would be “affirmed by Congress,” instead. Trump’s on-camera slippage has gotten worse in recent weeks: Earlier this month, Trump dozed off while in a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. That is despite the fact that the president received a clean bill of health in a medical report released in April that described Trump as being in “excellent health,” including neurological functioning.Musk, meanwhile, refused to acknowledge emerging reports of his alleged drug use. But the news of White House drug use under Trump’s helm is nothing new: In fact, if the reports prove true, it would be little more than a return to form. Last year, a report by the Department of Defense inspector general indicated that the West Wing operated more like a pill mill than the nation’s highest office. Common pills included modafinil, Adderall, fentanyl, morphine, and ketamine, according to the Pentagon report. But other, unlisted drugs—like Xanax—were equally easy to come by from the White House Medical Unit, according to anonymous sources that spoke to Rolling Stone.While other presidents were known to take a mix of drug cocktails to fight off back pain (like JFK) or bad moods (like Nixon), no previous administrations matched the level of debauchery of Trump’s, whose in-office pharmacists unquestioningly handed out highly addictive substances to staffers who needed pick-me-ups or energy boosts—no doctor’s exam, referral, or prescription required.“It was kind of like the Wild West. Things were pretty loose. Whatever someone needs, we were going to fill this,” another source told Rolling Stone in March 2024.Meanwhile, pharmacists described an atmosphere of fear within the West Wing, claiming they would be “fired” if they spoke out or would receive negative work assignments if they didn’t hand pills over to staffers.Read more about the press conference:Trump and Elon Musk Have Ominous Warning About Future of DOGEMost Recent Post/May 30, 2025/3:00 p.m. ETElon Musk Gives Strange Excuse for Massive Black EyeMusk showed up a press conference with Donald Trump sporting a noticeable shiner.Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesElon Musk sported what looked like a black eye during his DOGE goodbye press conference with President Trump on Friday. When asked about it, he blamed the bruise on his 5-year-old son punching him in the face. “Mr. Musk … is your eye OK? What happened to your eye; I noticed there’s a bruise there?” one reporter finally asked near the end of the press conference.“Well, I wasn’t anywhere near France,” Musk said, in a weak attempt at a joke regarding footage of French President Emmanuel Macron’s wife slapping him in the face.“I was just horsing around with [my son] little X and said, ‘Go ’head and punch me in the face,’ and he did. Turns out even a 5-year-old punching you in the face actually does—”“That was X that did it? X could do it!” Trump chimed in. “If you knew X …”“I didn’t really feel much at the time; I guess it bruises up. But I was just messing around with the kids.”Musk chose an impeccable time to show up to a press conference with a black eye. Earlier in the day, The New York Times reported on Musk’s rampant drug use on and off the campaign trail, as the world’s richest man frequently mixed ketamine and psychedelics and kept a small box of pills, mostly containing Adderall. The shiner only adds to speculation around his personal habits.More on that Times report:Elon Musk Was on Crazy Combo of Drugs During Trump CampaignMost Recent Post/May 30, 2025/2:51 p.m. ETTrump and Elon Musk Have Ominous Warning About Future of DOGEElon Musk’s time as a government employee has come to an end, but his time with Donald Trump has not.Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesDespite the fanfare over Elon Musk’s supposed departure from the Department of Government Efficiency, Donald Trump says that the billionaire bureaucrat isn’t really going anywhere.“Many of the DOGE people are staying behind, so they’re not leaving. And Elon’s not really leaving. He’s gonna be back and forth, I think. I have a feeling. It’s his baby, and he’s gonna be doing a lot of things,” Trump said during a press conference in the Oval Office Friday.The press conference was held to mark the end of Musk’s time as a so-called “special government employee,” a title that allowed him to bypass certain ethics requirements during his 134-day stint in Trump’s administration. The president made sure to give Musk a gaudy golden key—what it actually unlocks went totally unaddressed—to make sure he could get back into the White House. “This is not the end of DOGE, but really the beginning,” Musk said, promising that DOGE’s “influence” would “only grow stronger” over time.Earlier Friday, the billionaire bureaucrat shared a post on X asserting that the legacy of DOGE was more psychological than anything else. Surely, it will take longer than four months to forget the image of Musk running around with a chainsaw. Read more about Musk:Elon Musk Was on Crazy Combo of Drugs During Trump CampaignMost Recent Post/May 30, 2025/1:21 p.m. ETDem Governor Vetoes Ban on Surprise Ambulance Bills in Shocking MoveThe bill had unanimous support in both chambers of the state legislature.Michael Ciaglo/Getty ImagesColorado’s Democratic Governor Jared Polis has vetoed a bill that would ban surprise billing by ambulance companies, over the unanimous objections of both chambers of the state legislature. Why would Polis veto a bill that’s popular with everyone, even Colorado Republicans? The governor wrote in his veto statement that drafting errors in the bill made it “unimplementable” and estimated that it would make insurance premiums go up by as much as $0.73 to $2.15 per person. “I am committed to working with proponents and sponsors to protect Coloradans from surprise bills, but I encourage all parties to work towards a more reasonable reimbursement rate that mitigates premium impacts and nets a better deal for Colorado families,” Polis wrote. In Colorado, if legislators in both chambers repass the bill with a two-thirds majority, they can override the governor’s veto, especially considering that the bill passed with the support of every single legislator. But the legislature adjourned on May 7, meaning that the bill has to be passed again when the legislature reconvenes in January.  For some reason, ending surprise ambulance billing nationally is not the slam-dunk issue it should be. Congress ended most surprise medical bills in 2020 but exempted ground ambulances from the bill. Was Polis’s veto due to badly drafted language and a (seemingly modest) price hike in insurance premiums, as he said, or was it for a different, more nefarious reason? We might not know unless and until the bill is reintroduced next year. More on surprise ambulance bills:Congress Doesn’t Care About Your Surprise Ambulance Bill Most Recent Post/May 30, 2025/12:21 p.m. ETTrump’s Pardons Since Jan 6 Spree Show an Infuriatingly Corrupt TrendSince his January 6 pardon spree, Donald Trump has tended to grant clemency a little closer to home.Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty ImagesA good chunk of the white-collar criminals pardoned by Donald Trump after his massive “Day One” pardoning spree either have a political or financial tie to him.The president has issued 60 pardons since he offered political forgiveness to some 1,600 individuals charged in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. But out of those subsequent 60 unrelated to the attack, 12 people—or roughly one in five—were already in Trump’s orbit, according to ABC News.They included several politicos, including former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted on several counts of corruption, including for an attempt to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat after he left the position for the White House; former Republican Representative Michael Grimm, who pleaded guilty to tax fraud; former Nevada gubernatorial candidate Michele Fiore, who allegedly stole public funds intended to commemorate a slain police officer; and former Tennessee state Senator Brian Kelsey, who pleaded guilty to campaign finance fraud in 2022.Trump also pardoned major financiers of his presidential campaigns. Trevor Milton, the founder of the Nikola electric vehicle company, donated nearly $2 million toward Trump’s 2024 campaign. Imaad Zuberi, who has donated to both parties, issued “at least $800,000 to committees associated with Trump and the Republican Party,” ABC reported.Others helped Trump advance his retribution campaign against his political enemies, or helped advance his own image in the broader Republican Party. Devon Archer and Jason Galanis, both former business partners of Hunter Biden, accused the younger Biden of leveraging his father’s name and influence in order to conduct business overseas. Archer had defrauded a Native American tribal entity, while Galanis was serving time for multiple offenses. Trump also forgave Todd and Julie Chrisley—reality TV stars known for their show Chrisley Knows Best who were sentenced to a combined 19 years on fraud and tax evasion charges—after their daughter Savannah Chrisley spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention.Speaking to press Friday after her parents’ release, Savannah Chrisley said that the “biggest misconception right now is I either paid for a pardon or slept for a pardon—,” but she couldn’t finish her sentence before Todd interjected: “That’s something I would have done,” he said.Read who else Trump is thinking of pardoning:Trump Considering Pardons for Men Who Tried to Kill Gretchen WhitmerMost Recent Post/May 30, 2025/12:04 p.m. ETTrump Knew He Was Deporting Innocent People to El Salvador All AlongMany of the people deported to El Salvador have no criminal record, and Donald Trump knew it.Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesDonald Trump’s administration was well aware that many of the 238 Venezuelan immigrants it shipped off to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador had no criminal records at all, according to a Friday report from ProPublica.  While Trump officials claimed that the deportees were brutal gang members and “the worst of the worst,” only 32 of the deportees had actually been convicted of crimes, and most of them were minor offenses such as traffic violations, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security reviewed by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune, and a team of journalists from Venezuelan media outlets. One of the men, 23-year-old Maikol Gabriel López Lizano, faced a misdemeanor charge after he was arrested in 2023 for riding his bike and drinking a can of beer.Little more than half of the deportees, 130 of the 238, were charged only with violating U.S. immigration laws. Twenty of them had criminal records from other countries. The U.S. government data showed that 67 individuals had pending charges, with only six being for violent crimes. In several cases, the government data about the pending charges differed from what ProPublica was able to find. In some cases, the men had actually been convicted, and in one, the charges had been dropped. But in many cases, these individuals were remanded to a foreign prison before their criminal cases were ever resolved. The Trump administration has touted allegations of gang affiliation as a justification for denying the deportees their due process rights. But none of the men’s names appeared on a list of roughly 1,400 alleged Tren de Aragua members kept by the Venezuelan government, ProPublica reported. Trump’s border czar Tom Homan tried desperately in March to downplay reporting that many of these individuals did not have criminal records. “A lot of gang members don’t have criminal histories, just like a lot of terrorists in this world, they’re not in any terrorist databases, right?” Homan said on ABC News. But the methods the government relies on to classify individuals as gang members—such as identification of gang-affiliated tattoos—have been disproven by experts. Not only were many of the men who were deported not proven gang members, they weren’t even criminals, and by denying them the right to due process, they were remanded to a foreign prison notorious for human rights abuses without ever getting to prove it. Trump has continued to pressure the Supreme Court to allow him to sidestep due process as part of his massive deportation campaign, claiming that the judiciary has no right to intrude on matters of “foreign policy.” But immigrants residing on U.S. soil—who are clearly not the bloodthirsty criminals the administration insists they are—are still subject to protections under U.S. law. Read more about the deportations:Trump Asks Supreme Court to Help Him Deport People Wherever He WantsMost Recent Post/May 30, 2025/11:41 a.m. ETJoni Ernst Stoops to Shocking Low When Told Medicaid Cuts Will KillSenator Joni Ernst had a disgusting answer when confronted by a constituent at her town hall about Trump’s budget bill.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesRepublican Senator Joni Ernst had a particularly unhinged response to questions from her constituents at a town hall in Parkersburg, Iowa, on Friday.Ernst was asked about the GOP’s budget bill kicking people off of Medicaid, and her condescending answer quickly became callous and flippant as the Iowa politician smirked at the audience.“When you are arguing about illegals that are receiving Medicaid, 1.4 million, they’re not eligible, so they will be coming off, so—” Ernst began, before an audience member shouted, “People are going to die!”“People are not—well, we all are going to die,” Ernst responded, as the audience drowned her in loud protests.What was Ernst thinking with that answer? Almost every Republican town hall this year has gone badly for the politician holding it, thanks to President Trump upending the federal government, and Ernst surely knew that choosing death over Medicaid wouldn’t go over well with the crowd. Earlier this week in Nebraska, Representative Mike Flood was heckled after he admitted that he didn’t read the budget bill.Ersnt’s town hall wasn’t even the first one in Iowa to go badly for a Republican. On Wednesday, Representative Ashley Hinson was met with jeers and boos, with audience members in Decorah, Iowa calling her a fraud and a liar. But at least Hinson had the good sense not to seemingly embrace death over a vital, lifesaving government program. More on Trump’s bill:Here Are the Worst Things in Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill Most Recent Post/May 30, 2025/11:35 a.m. ETKetanji Brown Jackson Blasts “Botched” Supreme Court Ruling on TPSSupreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a scathing disssent, called out the rest of the court for allowing Trump’s harmful executive order to stand.Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesSupreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson thinks the Supreme Court “botched” a decision to allow the Trump administration to revoke the Temporary Protected Status protections of about 500,000 Haitian, Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan immigrants.Jackson and fellow liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor were the only two dissenters.“The Court has plainly botched this assessment today. It requires next to nothing from the Government with respect to irreparable harm,” Jackson wrote in the dissent. “And it undervalues the devastating consequences of allowing the Government to precipitously upend the lives of and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending.”TPS is a long-standing program that allowed those 500,000 immigrants to stay in the U.S. after they fled violence and risk in their home countries. After the Supreme Court’s ruling, all of them are at high risk of sudden deportation. “It is apparent that the government seeks a stay to enable it to inflict maximum predecision damage,” Jackson wrote.Read the full dissent here.View More Posts

Kai Cenat became Twitch’s top showman long ago, but the secret to his ongoing success is continuously finding new ways to take his streaming stunts to the next level. Last year it was turning a 1,700-death-filled Elden Ring marathon into the gaming event of the season. In 2025 it was a riff on reality TV and Hogwarts called Streamer University that crammed a bunch of streamers into a dorm and let the algorithm-fueled drama unfold. Suggested ReadingGameStop Doubles Down On Crypto With Massive Bitcoin Purchase As Stores Close Share SubtitlesOffEnglishSuggested ReadingGameStop Doubles Down On Crypto With Massive Bitcoin Purchase As Stores Close Share SubtitlesOffEnglishGameStop Doubles Down On Crypto With Massive Bitcoin Purchase As Stores CloseThe multi-day event got underway on May 22 with 120 rising streamers handpicked for an all-expenses-paid stay at the University of Akron to participate in Cenat’s Saw-like social experiment of watching his peers and protégés vie for attention, clout, and maybe learn something about getting famous monetizing that fame in the modern creator economy along the way. There were fights, expulsions, late-night parties, and actual classes. It was heavily manufactured and also brought in tens of millions of views. Streamer University Best Moments!A great report by Vulture interviewed some of the participants and offers an incisive recap of the entire spectacle. One “student” named Winston Groves recalled getting hazed with a hot dog in a condom left around his doorknob and said the cafeteria food tasted like it was gruel out of Minecraft. One of the floors was called the “demon floor” because of the stink. “The whole floor smelled like wild fumes, mysterious funk,” Groves told Vulture. Nobody slept. Everyone was constantly filming. There were apparently a lot of hot dogs and baby oil, seemingly the modern-day prank comedy equivalents of whoopee cushions and cream pies. “They had this prank where they made fake poop with fart spray and it had literally stank up our room to the point where my roommate’s eyes were tearing up,” said attendee Kieya Jennings, “There was water everywhere, baby oil, baby powder, noodles,” recalled Mari Franklin.There are over 10 hours of streams on Cenat’s Twitch channel from the weekend-long saga, and many, many more from the channels of the individuals in attendance. Comments on a video for the final day’s awards ceremony were filled with nothing but love for the streaming world’s current master of ceremonies. Streamer University’s valedictorian was Tylil James, a rising star with a big following that’s still only a fraction of Cenat’s. “Kai put on so many different type of creators and let them just create and do whatever they was great at,” reads the top comment. .

All in all, the mattress is a great choice for those who like a plush sleep experience. “I would highly recommend it, especially if you’re interested in switching to an eco-friendly bed—it’s an amazing alternative to a regular mattress!” Gore says. “I noticed that I tossed and turned less throughout the night while snoozing on this mattress because my body locked into position once I dozed off.”For Firmer-Leaning SleepersMy Green Mattress Natural Escape MattressUpsidesSupportive designShips in a box for streamlined deliveryDownsidesWhite-glove delivery is not an optionSpecsOrganic certifications: GOTS and GOLS certified organic, GreenGuard Gold certifiedMattress type: InnerspringHeight: 11 inchesFirmness: Medium-firmWarranty: Free shipping and returns, 20-year warranty, 120-night sleep trial periodWhen contributor Kristi Kellogg was asked if she would recommend this bed to a friend, her answer was simple: “Ab-so-lutely.” This straightforward response comes after an incredibly streamlined delivery and setup process. “The mattress showed up in a box that was as tall as me, and I was able to push it into my garage without event,” she says.The mattress itself consists of layers of organic latex and wool, plus cotton quilting, which unfurl out of the packaging into a supportive sleep surface. The medium-firm mattress is also just as comfortable as typical firm mattresses, according to Kellogg. “I feel super supported, and haven’t experienced any back pain sleeping on it,” she says. If you prefer a more pillowy experience, she also notes that My Green Mattress sells plush mattress toppers that give you an extra two inches of softness and pressure point relief.Best for a Range of SleepersAvocado Green MattressUpsidesIt has the most organic certifications in this listBoasts over 15,000 five-star reviewsHas a classic firm feelDownsidesThe medium and plush firmness levels cost extraSpecsOrganic certifications: GreenGuard Gold certified, Oeko-Tex Standard 100 certified, FSC Pure Talalay latex certified, GOTS certified organic wool and cotton, climate neutral certifiedMattress type: Latex hybridHeight: 11 inchesFirmness: Firm, medium, plush optionsWarranty: 25-year warranty, one-year sleep trialAvocado is one of the most popular mattress brands out there, and with over 15,000 five-star reviews for its flagship “Green” model, it was only a matter of time before we put it to the test ourselves. Designed for back and stomach sleepers, contributor Katy Olson has it in her space and loves that it’s “firm, but not overly firm.” While she has the standard firmness level, you can also choose between medium feel for a pillow top layer or plush for a pressure-relieving support layer. Plus, she says the high-quality materials have even helped relieve some of her nightly sneezing from allergies. It consists of GOLS-certified organic Dunlop latex, GOTS-certified organic wool and cotton, plus nearly 1,379 individually wrapped support coils. This combination is designed to target seven ergonomic zones that prop your body up while you snooze.For Side SleepersHappsy Organic MattressUpsidesGreat for people who need more supportIncludes four support and soft layersDownsidesLight alfalfa smell upon mattress unboxing, according to our testerOnly two firmness options offered, and may be too firm for certain types of sleepersSpecsOrganic certifications: GOTS certifiedMattress type: HybridHeight: 10 inchesFirmness: Medium-firm and plush-firm optionsWarranty: Free shipping and returns, 20-year warranty, 120-night sleep trialJust like the other bed-in-a-box experience noted above, Kellogg was “shocked and delighted by how easy it was to remove the rolled up, compressed mattress and then watch as it unrolled and sprung to life.” Kellogg says it’s an “undeniably firm” bed that “still has ample cushioning to keep it comfortable” for any sleeping position—especially side sleepers who could use some soft support.She loves her Happsy bed for its use of eco-friendly materials like organic cotton and wool backed by a 100% GOTS organic certification. “Additionally, they are free of the glue and adhesives that are typically found in between a mattress’ comfort layers and coil systems.”More AD-Approved Organic MattressesBirch Natural MattressUpsidesStrong edge supportSoft yet supportive designDownsidesIt has a limited lifetime warrantySpecsOrganic certifications: Fair Trade, GreenGuard Gold, GOLS certifiedMattress type: HybridHeight: 11 inchesFirmness: Medium-firmWarranty: Limited lifetime warranty, 100-night sleep trialEven stripped of its bedding, this mattress makes a great first impression on design alone. “The details in the color and materials made it stand out right out of the box,” says senior digital design editor Zoë Sessums. “It’s firm, but doesn’t feel stiff, and soft without making you sink—to me, it’s Goldilocks perfection.” For context, on a firmness scale of one to 10 on the site, it ranks at about a seven. It’s also designed with cradling comfort in mind. The mattress cover is made with organic cotton, which has a soft and stretchy design as well as a breathable feel. For those who like to sit on the side of the bed, this mattress also has two reinforced side edges for extra edge support.Parachute Eco MattressUpsidesAmple giveStylish constructionDownsidesShort sleep trialSpecsOrganic certifications: While the site doesn’t note specific certifications, the brand claimsthat the bed is made from 100% certified organic cotton, tempered steel, and pure New Zealand woolMattress type: HybridHeight: 12 inchesFirmness: Medium-firmWarranty: 90-day sleep trial, 10-year warranty, and free white-glove delivery and returnsFrom duvet covers to sheet sets, Parachute Home is one of the best places to buy bedding for more reasons than one—starting with its mattress. Like the airy linens the brand is known for, this mattress is breathable from its internal steel pocketed coils—which contains five times as many as a standard bed. It also boasts additional layers of pure New Zealand wool and cotton. Contributor Kristen Flanagan has the bed in her space and considers it just right for her sleep preferences: Not too firm, but not too soft, good motion isolation, and very intentionally made.Although it has a firm design, the actual feel of the mattress took Flanagan by surprise. “There is plenty of give, but you don’t sink into it or leave an imprint. My back feels very supported. The hand-tufting makes the top soft but not too mushy,” she says, adding that its balanced support converted her into a medium-firm mattress person.Coyuchi Natural REM MattressUpsidesGreat for use with or without a box springDownsidesLow-lying heightSpecsOrganic certifications: GOTS certified organic cotton and wool and GOLS certified organic latexMattress type: HybridHeight: 11 inchesFirmness: Medium-firmWarranty: 365-night sleep trial, lifetime warranty, free shipping and returnsSenior commerce editor Nashia Baker sings this hybrid mattress’ praises for its combination of contouring comfort and support. While we’re used to resting on Coyuchi’s soft bed sheets, this mattress is great for its plush hand feel. And despite being the retailer’s first-ever mattress, the bed excels at accommodating all sleep positions, Baker says. As a self-proclaimed combination sleeper, she understands the woes of side, back, and stomach sleepers alike, but praises the blend of materials (like organic wool, latex, cotton, and coils) for keeping her cozy and propped up during sleep. “This bed has just enough give to feel comforting and support from the coils to maintain its shape, which I have a strong feeling will last for many years to come,” she affirms.Brentwood Home Oceano Luxury Hybrid MattressUpsidesIncludes cushy planted-based foamStrong cooling technologyHandcrafted in the U.S.DownsidesLess ideal for those looking for back supportSpecsOrganic certifications: GOTS certified organic wool and cotton, CertiPUR-US certified cooling gel memory foam with BioFoam, natural silk fibersMattress type: Memory foamHeight: 14 inchesFirmness: Medium-softWarranty: 25-year warranty, one-year sleep trialIf you like soft mattresses made of memory foam, this Brentwood bed is a great pick. Contributor Nick Mafi loves this bed for its cradling comfort and the brand ’s manufacturing practices. “Brentwood Home has been around since 1987 and I love that they handcraft their mattresses in their own GOLS-certified factory just outside of Los Angeles,” he says. “By making their products in the US, Brentwood Home can ensure that their environmental, labor, and social responsibility standards are being met.”Mafi notes that its cooling technology is top-notch, as the blend of foam and thousands of individually pocketed coils provide ample airflow to keep him from sweating. Just keep in mind that it’s a true medium-soft mattress, so it’s most ideal for those who are looking for a plush feel like stomach sleepers. “This mattress wouldn’t be a good fit for someone who needs a huge amount of back support,” Mafi says. “It is on the softer side, so I sink in a little (which I personally find super luxurious!).”How We TestedNot to be redundant if you’re a regular AD Shopping reader, but our editors are serious about their beauty rest. We’ve put on Sleep Week for the last five years to prove it—highlighting our team’s favorite sleep must-haves for catching Z’s. Since a mattress is the core of any bedroom, we routinely test beds throughout the year by sussing out the industry’s best and sleeping on them like any reader would in their home. Our editors and contributors slept on the organic mattresses in this list for at least a month (our standard testing period) to give you their thorough reviews on how it affected their sleep.Comfort: From soft beds to mattresses designed for side sleepers, our editors pay close attention to how well they sleep on all of their beds—and this organic mattress story is no different. Our team of writers and contributors noted key callouts like firmness levels, edge support, and motion transfer to assess how easily they were able to fall and stay asleep.Materials: We prioritized beds on this list with certified organic latex, wool, and cotton. For hybrid models, we looked for steel pocketed coils as part of the build. In addition, we looked at the care labels and certifications to ensure there weren’t harmful chemicals or substances like flame retardants or fiberglass included.Temperature Regulation: Another important factor is breathability on the beds. Whether you’re a hot sleeper or just want a bed to keep you cool when summer comes around, most of the beds are naturally temperature-regulating from materials like organic latex. That aside, many hybrid mattresses are already well-ventilated due to the coils at their base that improve airflow.Sleep Trial Period: To get a real feel for the bed before fully committing, most mattress brands offer a sleep trial starting around 100 days with some even reaching up to a year.

Warning: contains finale spoilers for Dept. Q See it? Blink and you won’t have, but it was there for a good half second: a smile on the face of DCI Carl Morck. It’s a rare enough occurrence across nine episodes of this Netflix crime drama to make it worthy of note. Matthew Goode’s irascible detective frowned, scowled and spitted out sarcasm through his new department’s search for missing prosecutor Merritt Lingard, until the show’s very last moment, when he smiled. He’d earned it. Three months earlier, Morck’s cold case unit had rescued Lingard and used dirt dug up during the investigation to blackmail the Lord Advocate (the most senior law officer in Scotland) into a funding hike, a new work car, and fast-tracked DI status for Syrian copper and calmly proficient muscle Akram Salim. And now, Morck’s partner Hardy, formerly thought to have permanently lost the use of his legs after they were both shot in the line of duty, was walking again. It was a happy ending, or at least as happy as things get in a dank Edinburgh basement filled with unsolved case files detailing terrible crimes. With major Dept. Q finale spoilers, let’s dig into the revelations about Merritt’s kidnappers, what we learned about the Leith Park shooting, and more. Who Kidnapped Merritt Lingard and Why? Merritt’s kidnappers were Lyle and Ailsa Jennings, respectively the younger brother and mother of Harry Jennings, Merritt’s boyfriend as a teenager. She was being held on their property on her childhood island home of Mhòr, in a pressurised hyperbaric chamber inside a condemned building that was formerly part of Ailsa’s husband’s oceanography business Shorebird Ocean Systems – the logo for which was the cormorant symbol identified by Merritt’s brother William as on the hat of her stalker and kidnapper. Ailsa was a twisted and abusive mother to Harry and Lyle, as well as a murderer who killed her husband by burning the house down by flicking lighted matches at him while he slept. As a result, Lyle grew up to be a violent psychopath whose teenage crimes were covered up by the family and by the island’s police officer John Cunningham. John knew that Lyle was responsible for Merritt’s disappearance, but didn’t know she was still alive, having believed Lyle when he lied that Merritt had died by falling off the ferry from the mainland, just like Lyle’s brother Harry had done years earlier. Lyle and Ailsa blamed Merritt for Harry’s death because he jumped from the ferry while being pursued by John, who was chasing him because he was suspected of having severely beaten Merritt’s brother William into a coma during an interrupted robbery of the Lingard home. The robbery plan had been seeded by Merritt to steal her mother’s jewellery from her alcoholic father in order to sell for money to run away from home. In fact, Lyle was the one who had attacked William, being unhinged and thinking that he was protecting his brother. Harry and Ailsa covered up Lyle’s guilt and before his death, Harry took the blame. Lyle Jennings, Godhaven, and Sam Haig Lyle, who had a history of stalking, breaking-and-entering, and animal murder, spent time in youth psychiatric facility Godhaven, where he stalked another patient named Sam Haig. The pair fought, and Sam injured Lyle’s eye so severely that it was left permanently discoloured. Years later as an adult who had become an investigative journalist with no online presence, Sam sought Lyle out to apologise for the injury and invite him to come climbing at his favourite spot. Lyle used the information he had on Sam to assume his identity and stalk Merritt Lingard, who didn’t recognise him as an adult. He pretended to be investigating corruption at Merritt’s workplace, and targeted her, eventually starting a sexual relationship still pretending to be Sam. When Merritt told Lyle-as-Sam that she was leaving to go to Mhòr on the 10am ferry the next day, Lyle used that information to kidnap her during the crossing. Merritt’s brother William, who had been unable to speak since his teenage coma, had spotted Lyle on the ferry and because of Lyle’s distinctive hat, recognised him as the man who’d been stalking their house. He tried to communicate this to Merritt by throwing his own hat, and then struck her when he became afraid. It was when Merritt went to retrieve William’s hat that she was taken. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Two days after Lyle kidnapped Merritt, he returned to the mainland to tie up loose ends and kill the real Sam Haig. He lured Sam to a remote spot, beat him to death, staged his corpse to look as though he had been climbing, and threw it off a cliff. Eventually, Morck and co. worked out that somebody else was pretending to be Sam Haig when they had evidence that Merritt had been with “Sam” at a hotel at the same time that the real Sam was having an affair with his friend’s wife at a different hotel. What Happened to Lyle and Ailsa Jennings? Merritt’s kidnappers both died – Ailsa by her own hand as she shot herself in her car before being taken into custody by the police, and Lyle by Akram’s hand, or rather, his trigger finger. After Lyle shot buckshot into Morck’s shoulder, Akram threw a knife at him, disarmed and shot him. Previously, Lyle had brutally killed Constable John Cunningham with a hammer when he learned that Merritt was still alive. Mark Bonnar’s character Stephen Burns had disallowed the appearance of a key witness in the Graham Finch murder trial after Burns’ daughter was run off the road by one of Finch’s goons as an intimidation tactic. Prisoner Kirsty Atkins was willing to testify that she had previously met Finch’s now-dead wife at a shelter for survivors of domestic violence, and that Finch routinely hit her. Because Burns wouldn’t allow her testimony, Finch was acquitted of his wife’s murder despite clearly having been guilty of it. Perhaps he also passed on the information about Kirsty Atkins to Finch’s lawyer, which led to Kirsty being viciously attacked and partially blinded in prison on Finch’s orders to keep her quiet. Who Is the Leith Park Shooter? We still don’t know who shot PC Anderson dead, and attempted to shoot Morck and Hardy dead at the Leith Park flat. If we can take the contents of Morck’s dream as gospel, then the shooting was done on the orders of Leith Park criminal kingpin Eugene Errington, whom we’ve yet to meet. According to Morck’s dream, in which he shot Errington’s muscle Charlie Bell in the head, Errington has a baby with Caroline Kerr – the witness who was intimidated into withdrawing her statement about the shooting. We also know, or at least have a pretty good idea, that PC Anderson was a corrupt officer working for Errington, and that he may even have been the one to stab the victim – thought to have been a police informant – in the head. Anderson was a top recruit pretending to be a klutz, Morck realised, in order to cover up the fact that his fingerprints were all over the victim’s flat. He also lied about being at the flat for a routine welfare check after being alerted by the victim’s daughter – that was a quick-thinking ruse to explain his presence when Morck and Hardy showed up there unexpectedly. The last we saw of the Leith Park case, Moira looked to be taking it away from its lead investigator and possibly closing it, unsolved, which may point to her also having been compromised by Errington. As Hardy was one of the shooting’s victims, surely that can’t be the case file that she gave to Hardy to investigate without Morck in the season’s closing moments? Dept. Q is streaming now on Netflix.

You Can Now Visit the Small House Where Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë Were Born The newly renovated Brontë Birthplace in Bradford, England, was the three sisters’ home until 1820, when the family moved to a nearby parsonage The Brontë children were born near this fireplace, pictured mid-renovation. Matt Gibbons / Brontë Birthplace In the early 19th century, three sisters were born in a small house in northern England: Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Each one would grow up to become a pivotal figure in English literature, with Charlotte writing Jane Eyre (1847), Emily writing Wuthering Heights (1847) and Anne writing The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). Now, that house in Bradford, England, where they were born has been restored and reopened to the public as a museum—and soon-to-be hotel. On May 15, Queen Camilla visited the village of Thornton to open the Brontë Birthplace in an official ceremony. After a year and a half of fundraising and renovations, the house is now a functioning educational center. Come July, its bedrooms will also be open to overnight guests, according to the Guardian’s David Barnett. The Brontë Birthplace pictured in 2008 Tim Green via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY 2.0 “This house is no longer just a place of literary history,” says Katharine Barnett, chair of the Brontë Birthplace, in a statement from the museum. “It is a living, breathing space filled with creativity, education and community pride.” The novelists’ parents were Patrick and Maria Brontë, an Irish clergyman and a Cornish gentlewoman who married in 1812. They had two daughters, Maria and Elizabeth, before moving to the Thornton house in 1815. Charlotte was born in 1816, Emily in 1818 and Anne in 1820. A brother, Branwell, was also born in 1817. When Anne was just three months old, Patrick was appointed the reverend of a nearby church, and the family moved to the Haworth parsonage. The two eldest children died soon after, but the younger four children survived. As they grew older, they also thrived as playmates, inventing “invented imaginary worlds together and [writing] about them in tiny books,” per the Brontë Parsonage Museum. Queen Camilla and Christa Ackroyd touring the Brontë Birthplace on May 15, 2025 Matt Gibbons / Brontë Birthplace By the mid-19th century, the three sisters were publishing novels under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights would become two of the most renowned books ever written in English. After the family left the sisters’ birthplace, the building was repurposed several times. It has served as a butcher’s shop and a cafe, which shuttered during the pandemic, according to the Guardian. With the building up for grabs, a group of advocates—including journalist Christa Ackroyd and Brontë relative Nigel West—raised the £650,000 (more than $700,000) needed to purchase and renovate it. Every four years, the United Kingdom chooses a “City of Culture,” and this year’s selection is Bradford. Camilla opened the Brontë Birthplace as part of her honorary visit to the chosen city. A crowd gathered to welcome her. As Tom Golesworthy, a resident of Leeds who attended the opening ceremony, tells the Telegraph & Argus’ Brad Deas, “It makes you proud to be British.”The Haworth parsonage already attracts nearly one million visitors each year, per the Guardian. The Brontë Birthplace team hopes that those visitors will now add the Thornton house, which is only six miles away, to their itineraries. When the Brontës lived in the home, all six children likely slept in the house’s largest upstairs bedroom, while their parents slept next door, reports the Guardian. Both rooms, as well as a third that was added to the house later, will be available for overnight stays. “This will be the only place in the world where you can sleep in the same room that the Brontës slept in,” West tells the Guardian. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Λntonio Member Jun 25, 2024 1,102 That is title says it all. I already preordered the Switch 2 because I think it will be a good choice to take advantage of short sessions. I am already aware I wont be able to sit in front of the PC or the TV for the foreseeable future thats also why I bought the Switch 2. Any other advice from parents, also recent ones?  Slackerchan Member Oct 25, 2017 1,755 Austin, TX I have friends who went through similar gaming crises. Portables like a Switch or Steam Deck are the way to go, something you can hold while cradling the kid. Focus on shorter games or ones that can be played in spurts without significant session commitment requirements (deck builders, etc.).   Var Avenger Oct 25, 2017 1,701 I got more gaming done during the first year of my son's life than I did the year before. portables are the way to go and anything offline because you are going to need to take frequent breaks and be able to stop immediately at any time. Toddler stage is when my gaming really ground to a halt. You need to have eyes on them pretty much all the time because they are mobile and extremely curious with zero sense of self preservation.  thetrin Member Oct 26, 2017 10,740 Grand Junction, CO My friends who have kids have told me "seize every small moment you have, focus on gamea you can play in short spurts". Seems like pretty good advice.   Taco_Human Member Jan 6, 2018 4,925 MA you are already dead (time to go portable)   Audiblee Member Mar 14, 2025 1,659 Handhelds were a godsend when my girl was born.   Mephissto Member Mar 8, 2024 1,218 Mobile consoles when they are small and sleep a lot Early bedtime later for the kiddo Less sleeping for you These are methods at least :D Still get a good amount of hours into gaming.  OhhEldenRing Member Aug 14, 2024 2,884 Seriously don't even think about games. Just enjoy the next few months getting to know him because he's going to be watching you all the time. My son is 5 months and his sister three years old. I'm making up the time now for all the Elden Ring sessions I spent when she was several months old. Play with your kiddo and get an hour in after everyone goes to bed.   Veelk Member Oct 25, 2017 15,530 Offer your son up for adoption   topplehat Member Oct 27, 2017 1,083 Austin, TX Portables and anything that can quickly be paused and resumed. When you have time to game do it (don't get distracted by your phone). Can also get some gaming in while the little one is doing a contact nap. Honestly sometimes you may just not want to play because you're tired - that's fine too! I have a two month old and I don't really play my desktop PC anymore (sometimes I stream from it). Mostly Steam Deck, Switch, and PS5.  Bishop89 What Are Ya' Selling? Member Oct 25, 2017 42,785 Melbourne, Australia Λntonio said: I am already aware I wont be able to sit in front of the PC or the TV Click to expand... Click to shrink... Says who?   TheRuralJuror Member Oct 25, 2017 6,972 Handhelds are always nice when they're young, anything you can put to sleep quickly if needed. Personally, my son never stopped me from playing games nor giving him a ton of love and attention. Lol, was smooching him on his big head last night (he's 17 now, can't believe it still). Before you know it, he'll be your gaming partner in crime.   CJohn Member Oct 30, 2017 1,436 I play after everyone goes to bed. Portal and Switch have also helped.   Steve McQueen Member Nov 1, 2017 2,192 Netherlands Go portable. That's what I did in 2000 when my daughter was born. Playing games in short sessions will do.  DeanMuffin Member Oct 22, 2020 11 The change in how much you play after a child can be different for everyone because i don't know how your current gaming habits are but in my case it hasn't changed much and I still get to game. My son is almost two now and I play a few evenings a week when he's in bed, prior to my son being born I wouldn't play earlier than that anyway as I still had to make dinner and do chores around the apartment. So it hasn't changed too much, apart from some nights your too tired to bother of course. Up until 6 months was a totally different story though, I actually found myself gaming way more. He was a terrible sleeper unless laying on my chest so I'd find myself on the sofa with him asleep on me at ridiculous hours and just passing the time playing games. I completed both Spiderman 2 and Sea of Stars (both 100%) during that period. So yeah, as long as you love games enough you'll make it work! Just make sure to keep strong communication with your partner when it comes to what helps you get by the tough times, for example, making some time to game.  Izanagi89 "This guy are sick" and Corrupted by Vengeance Member Oct 27, 2017 18,856 You play more games when they're babies. Even with my first born who was colic I remember pumping 130+ hours into DQ11 that first month lol Just enjoy it. You'll find your rhythm with baby, work, life and games.   LowParry Member Oct 26, 2017 6,178 The first like 6 months you'll be so focused on your family, gaming is kind of an after thought. That doesn't mean you'll have down time but most times you'll probably be exhausted and will want to nap instead. Gaming doesn't just go away when you have kids. It'll slowly come back.   superNESjoe Developer at Limited Run Games Verified Oct 26, 2017 1,183 I've got a 7 and 9 year old. The first few years was a lot of 3DS and Switch. Handhelds and forfeiting sleep are how you squeeze games in.   Red Hunter Member May 28, 2024 1,527 I'd argue you have it easier than anyone with the Switch 2 lol   Universal Acclaim Member Oct 5, 2024 2,338 Λntonio said: I am already aware I wont be able to sit in front of the PC or the TV for the foreseeable future Click to expand... Click to shrink... Never know until you try   Red UFO Member Oct 25, 2017 1,467 You don't need to give up games, but you do need to accept that the amount of games, and the way you play them, will be forever changed.   Geeker Member May 11, 2019 746 You will come to absolutely hate any time wasting bullshit in any game   kxs Member Jul 25, 2022 1,198 Don't over think it. It's just video games. My tip - play games that you can pause at anytime! I know some folks swear on portable devices. But even after becoming a father I prefer a home console or PC set up rather than portable device. Steam Deck, Switch, Portal etc isn't for everyone. Also stick to just one or two games at a time. Don't juggle a bunch of stuff.  CommodoreKong Member Oct 25, 2017 8,577 Get a PC handheld like a Steam Deck or ROG Ally X.   Zekes Member Oct 25, 2017 7,961 The first few months at least you might be doing a lot of couch sitting which leads to lots of gaming time, don't sweat it   Nesther Member Oct 27, 2017 2,318 Switzerland Idunno but I bought and finished Dragon's Dogma 2 after my kid was born. He slept on my chest or in the living room crib and wasn't bothered by my playing. Just play non-online games and you won't have to give up gaming.   Rocketz Prophet of Truth Member Oct 25, 2017 8,610 Metro Detroit You'll still plenty of time when they are first born. As they get older times will change. Most of my time now is after everyone is in bed.   Vanguard Member Jan 15, 2025 610 Babies take a lot of naps. You can do a lot of gaming.   BasilZero Member Oct 25, 2017 39,994 Omni Name your child - Switch 3 so it wont be giving up games.   Neoxon Spotlighting Black Excellence - Diversity Analyst Member Oct 25, 2017 93,540 Houston, TX Just grab a Switch 2 or a Steam Deck, & it sounds like you did the former.   Last edited: 53 minutes ago Nekyrrev Member Oct 28, 2017 1,191 My advice is: stop playing 80h games and sleep less. Enjoy. Real talk tho, it is possible to keep playing even with kids. Gaming time will become more special. You have to make the most of nap time during the the day and sleep time in the evening.  Ombala Member Oct 30, 2017 2,502 Spend all the time you can with your son as he grows up, you will regret it later if you don't.   Noctis Winters Member Sep 23, 2018 1,852 Like most people have pointed out - handhelds can come in clutch. But don't forget about mobile games, especially ones that can be played one handed and dipped in and out of fairly easily. I can't suggest much in the way of mobile games but I did play a lot of Infinity Nikki and it was super casual to pick up and put down, on both mobile and console w/ cross progression. Plenty on mobile basically designed to be approached this way so there's bound to be something to your liking on the platform. Something like a PS Portal or a laptop to stream / remote play your console / other games library could be handy too. Especially if+when the main TV starts getting taken over.  Spenny Member Oct 25, 2017 5,907 east depends on the temperament of the baby. i had my infant brother who was a good sleeper. i'd make the room dark, put him on my chest, and rock until he fell asleep. then i'd play gears multiplayer with my friends   Zekes Member Oct 25, 2017 7,961 Nesther said: Idunno but I bought and finished Dragon's Dogma 2 after my kid was born. He slept on my chest or in the living room crib and wasn't bothered by my playing. Just play non-online games and you won't have to give up gaming. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Yup, when my son was born I played through all of Elden Ring while he napped on me for a couple hours at a time. I just used headphones   KanjoBazooie ▲ Legend ▲ Avenger Oct 26, 2017 32,740 Chicago It's really not that bad. I still get to game. It's less time for sure but that's not really a bad thing. Spending time with my kid and seeing them grow and experience new things has been infinitely more valuable than playing a game then coming to Era to talk about it. My little one picked up on games because of me and now likes playing them with me. Although we limit his screen time I still enjoy every second with him. Now we have another on the way. Just enjoy it OP, babies are different; when ours fall asleep he rarely ever woke up in the middle of the night so we just got to do whatever lol. Here's to hoping the universe's RNG blesses you. Also Switch is godtier for gaming while on mommy or daddy duty. It's also the first game console we introduced our son to.  Grakchawwaa Member Mar 10, 2022 660 I just had a baby two months ago and gaming time is going to depend on how you handle their awful sleeping patterns the first few months. I have one hour or so a night when the wife takes him upstairs that I can game or watch a show but to be honest I'm usually exhausted and kinda just go to sleep. I bought a used steam deck and that has been nice. You'll find the time when you can but just be ready to pop up and tend to the baby so any game will have to be built around pausing often.  Vgorilla3774 Member Sep 21, 2020 716 Rocketz said: You'll still plenty of time when they are first born. As they get older times will change. Most of my time now is after everyone is in bed. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Pretty much this. Peak "I have no time at all" years (at least IMO) are from like 2-5/6. Before that they spend a lot of time sleeping and/or being immobile. Once they start walking and talking, then you're on duty through bedtime until they start to gain some independence. Then you'll eventually hit a point where you want them to have less independence, lol  Babba Member Nov 2, 2017 41 Portables and shorter games. Games where ypu can make progress in short sessions. Forget about the 100hr long games, unless you want to spend half year to a whole year playing it.   ElephantShell 10,000,000 Member Oct 25, 2017 12,042 Steam Deck was huge for me. One of my best friends just had a kid and it's been huge for him too. Switch 2 will probably serve the same purpose so no need to go out and buy a Steam Deck. But the convenience of being able to pull out a handled is no nice. That plus changing the types of games you're playing. Anything multiplayer probably isn't going to happen since you need to be able to put the game down at a moments notice. Try to get into some nice, slow paced games you can pick up and put down. Roguelikes work well since you can just bang out a couple runs when you have time. JRPGs as well because of the pace and the ability to just pause or put the system into sleep mode and pick it back up later. This is for the newborn stage when they don't really have routines. Once their sleep/nap/bedtime actually starts to settle into a pattern it's not that hard to get back into gaming on a TV or at a desk, and playing whatever you want.  Skies Member Oct 25, 2017 3,448 First year newborn sleep. A LOT. As long as you play around their sleep schedule, you should have plenty of opportunities to play on PC and/or console. It gets more difficult when they get older, but even then you have nap time and after they go to sleep to get some time in. You really only need a portable if you are trying to play when they are awake. I have played Switch from time to time with them awake, but only games they are interested in and can either watch me play and/or try it out themselves. Otherwise I would rather have my attention/time spent with them, and just play whatever I am currently playing at night when they go to bed. Sometimes I even wake up early to get some time in. Edit: the biggest sacrifice is playing with friends online. It's almost impossible to set up a good time and even then plans can change at the drop of a hat. I've pretty much given up setting sessions up with others I know, and if I want to play online it's mostly with randoms.  geehepea Member Aug 5, 2024 359 My kid was born at the end of last year, still find time to game as a way to relax almost every day. Steam deck is preferred as I can stop at any time easily but still found time to play Clair obscur on the Xbox and doom dark ages on pc. You'll find time to yourself, just a lot less than you used to  Jubilant Duck Member Oct 21, 2022 9,251 Fathers are only allowed to play one of three games, which they keep installed on the family computer: SimCity Microsoft Flight Simulator Doom, the 1993 original, which they didn't buy but instead were given an illegally copied floppy by a coworker. Your gaming life outside of these three titles is over until your child grows old enough to want a gameboy at which point you can pinch it to fuel a Tetris addiction. You chose this life.  OrakioRob Member Oct 25, 2017 3,828 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Getting a Switch 2 surely was a great start. I'm not really into portables, but when my son was born I not only learned to love portable gaming, but also some genres I never really cared about. For instance, PINBALL! Sessions are short, you can play in tate mode (vertical) on Switch and all you need is the touch screen. I went from "pinball looks very boring" to absolutely loving pinball. So, that's my advice: try genres you're not interested in. You might be surprised by how much the changes in your house might affect your gaming tastes.  WillyGubbins Member Oct 27, 2017 1,650 Glasgow I played through most of one of the Souls games with my daughter asleep on my lap. When she was a baby she'd nap for a couple of hours so I took the chance whenever I could to play. Headphones help a lot, found that out the hard way.   kimbo99 Member Feb 21, 2021 5,132 OhhEldenRing said: Seriously don't even think about games. Just enjoy the next few months getting to know him because he's going to be watching you all the time. My son is 5 months and his sister three years old. I'm making up the time now for all the Elden Ring sessions I spent when she was several months old. Play with your kiddo and get an hour in after everyone goes to bed. Click to expand... Click to shrink... The only right answer. Enjoy the time when they are like this before it's "bye guys, I'm going off to college". With that being said if you must game, go handheld.  jon bones Member Oct 25, 2017 27,659 NYC 1 small baby probably has a positive impact on your gaming time - they sleep a lot for a while later you'll need to enjoy mobile & handheld gaming more, and bump that time up against sleep, other hobbies, etc if you want to be an attentive partner & dad  Garrison Member Oct 27, 2017 3,370 It's over homie.   ¡Hip Hop! Member Nov 9, 2017 1,861 You're already thinking ahead with the Switch 2 pre-order. They sleep a lot for a while, that will help. But if you plan to be a good dad, forget about gaming during the first few months. I was more exhausted than I've ever been, although my son was born at the height of lockdowns and we had no help.   ArchStanton Member Oct 29, 2017 1,378 Mephissto said: Mobile consoles when they are small and sleep a lot Early bedtime later for the kiddo Less sleeping for you These are methods at least :D Still get a good amount of hours into gaming. Click to expand... Click to shrink... This is good advice, OP. When my kiddo was born, I played Steam Deck while I was on overnight duty while my wife rested. Once they reach an age where they can nap and sleep (nighttime) on a more routine schedule, you'll have openings to play games on consoles or PCs. Your time (and your life!) won't be the same, but embrace it. Some advice from parents who are a little further ahead of me -- so I've yet to live this part -- but I'm told that you've only got about 10-12 years where your kiddo thinks you're the best before they start being pulled away by their friends and their own interests, so I would highly consider sacrificing gaming time whenever possible. And since your sleep will be impacted, especially at the newborn stage, I would DEFINITELY put your sleep needs way above any gaming itch you may have. Congratulations, OP! Parenthood is tough, but rewarding in ways that words cannot articulate. 

We may earn a commission from links on this page.HBO was, for at least a couple of generations, the home of movies on cable—no one else could compete. For a while, it seemed like HBO Max Max HBO Max could well be the ultimate streaming destination for movie lovers, but the jury is still out.Even still, HBO Max maintains a collaboration with TCM, giving it a broad range of classic American and foreign films. It's also the primary streaming home for Studio Ghibli and A24, so even though the streamer hasn't been making as many original films as it did a few years ago, it still has a solid assortment of movies you won't find anywhere else.Here are 30 of the best of HBO Max's recent and/or exclusive offerings.Mickey 17 (2025) The latest from Bong Joon Ho (Parasite, Snowpiercer), Mickey 17 didn't do terribly well at the box office, but that's not entirely the movie's fault. It's a broad but clever and timely satire starring Robert Pattinson as Mickey Barnes, a well-meaning dimwit who signs on with a spaceship crew on its way to colonize the ice world Niflheim. Because of his general lack of skills, he's deemed an Expendable—his memories and DNA are kept on file so that when he, inevitably, dies (often in horrific ways), he'll be reprinted and restored to live and work and die again. Things get complicated when a new Mickey is accidentally printed before the old one has died—a huge taboo among religious types who can handle one body/one soul, but panic at the implications of two identical people walking around. It's also confusing, and eventually intriguing, for Mickey's girlfriend, Nasha (Naomi Ackie). Soon, both Mickey's are on the run from pretty much everyone, including the new colony's MAGA-esque leader (Mark Ruffalo). You can stream Mickey 17 here. Pee-Wee As Himself (2025) Paul Reubens participated in dozens of hours worth of interviews for this two-part documentary, directed by filmmaker Matt Worth, but from the opening moments, the erstwhile Pee-Wee Herman makes clear that he is struggling with the notion of giving up control of his life story to someone else. That's a through line in the film and, as we learn, in the performer's life, as he spent decades struggling with his public profile while maintaining intense privacy in his personal life. Reubens' posthumous coming out as gay is the headline story, but the whole thing provides a fascinating look at an artist who it seems we barely knew. You can stream Pee-Wee As Himself here. The Brutalist (2024) Brady Corbet's epic period drama, which earned 10 Oscar nominations and won Adrian Brody his second Academy Award for Best Actor, follows László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor who emigrates to the United States following the war. His course as a refugee follows highs and devastating lows—he's barely able to find work at first, despite his past as an accomplished Bauhaus-trained architect in Europe. A wealthy benefactor (Guy Pearce) seems like a godsend when he offers László a high-profile project, but discovers the limitations of his talent in the face of American-style antisemitism and boorishness. You can stream The Brutalist here. Babygirl (2024) Nicole Kidman stars in this modern erotic thriller as CEO Romy Mathis, who begins a dangerous (i.e. naughty) affair with her much younger intern (Harris Dickinson). After an opening scene involving some deeply unfulfilling lovemaking with her husband (we'll have to suspend disbelief on the topic of Antonio Banderas as a schlubby, sexually disappointing husband), Romy runs into Samuel (Dickinson), who saves her from a runaway dog before taking her on as his mentor at work. She teaches him about process automation while he teaches her about BDSM, but his sexy, dorky charm soon gives way to something darker. For all the online chatter (Nicole Kidman on all fours lapping up milk!), the captivating performances, and the chilly direction from Halina Reijn, elevate it above more pruient erotic thrillers. You can stream Babygirl here. Bloody Trophy (2025) Bloody Trophy, HBO Max Credit: Bloody Trophy, HBO Max This documentary, centered on the illegal rhinoceros horn trade, gets extra points for going beyond poaching in southern Africa to discuss the global networks involved, and by focusing on the activists and veterinarians working to protect and preserve the endangered species. The broader story is as awful as it is fascinating: webs of smuggling that start with pretend hunts, allowing for quasi-legal exporting of horns to Europe countries (Poland and the Czech Republic being particular points of interest), and often coordinated by Vietnamese mafia organizations. You can stream Bloody Trophy here. Adult Best Friends (2024) Katie Corwin and Delaney Buffett co-write and star as a pair of lifelong friends, now in their 30s, who find their lives going in very different directions. Delaney (Buffett, who also directs) who has no interest in settling down or committing to one guy, while Katie (Corwin) is afraid to tell her hard-partying bestie that she's getting married. Katie plans a BFF weekend to break the news, only to see that the trip back to their childhood home town fall prey to a string of wild and wacky complications. You can stream Adult Best Friends here.2073 (2024) Inspired by Chris Marker's 1962 featurette La Jetée, which itself inspired the feature 12 Monkeys, docudrama 2073 considers the state of our world in the present through the framing device of a woman (Samantha Morton) gazing back from the titular year and meditating on the road that led to an apocalypse of sorts. Her reverie considers, via real-life, current, news footage, the rise of modern popular authoritarianism in the modes of Orbán, Trump, Putin, Modi, and Xi, and their alignment with tech bros in such a way as to accelerate a coming climate catastrophe. It's not terribly subtle, but neither is the daily news. You can stream 2073 here. Flow (2024) A gorgeous, wordless animated film that follows a cat through a post-apocalyptic world following a devastating flood. The Latvian import, about finding friends and searching for home in uncertain times, won a well-deserved Best Animated Picture Oscar. It's also, allegedly, very popular with pets—though my dog slept right through it. You can stream Flow here. Heretic (2024) Two young Mormon missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) show up at the home of a charming, reclusive man (a deeply creepy Hugh Grant) who invites them in because, he says, he wants to explore different faiths. Which turns out to be true—except that he has ideas that go well beyond anything his two guests have in their pamphlets. It soon becomes clear that they're not going to be able to leave without participating in Mr. Reed's games, and this clever, cheeky thriller doesn't always go where you think it's going. You can stream Heretic here. Queer (2024) Director Luca Guadagnino followed up his vaguely bisexual tennis movie Challengers with this less subtle (it's in the title) William S. Burroughs adaptation. Daniel Craig plays William Lee (a fictionalized version of Burroughs himself), a drug-addicted American expat living in Mexico City during the 1950s. He soon becomes infatuated with Drew Starkey's Eugene Allerton, and the two take a gorgeous journey through Mexico, through ayahuasca, and through their own sexualities. You can stream Queer here. The Parenting (2025) Rohan (Nik Dodani) and Josh (Brandon Flynn) invite both their sets of parents to a remote country rental so that everyone can meet, which sounds like plenty of horror for this horror-comedy. But wait! There's more: A demon conjured from the wifi router enters the body of Rohan's dad (Brian Cox), an event further complicated by the arrival of the house's owner (Parker Posey). It's wildly uneven, but there's a lot of fun to be had. The supporting cast includes Edie Falco, Lisa Kudrow, and Dean Norris. You can stream The Parenting here.Juror #2 (2024) Clint Eastwood's latest (last?) is a high-concept legal drama that boasts a few impressive performances highlighted by his straightforward directorial style. Nicholas Hoult stars as Justin Kemp, a journalist and recovering alcoholic assigned to jury duty in Savannah, Georgia. The case involves the death of a woman a year earlier, presumably killed by the defendant, her boyfriend at the time. But as the case progresses,Kemp slowly comes to realize that he knows more about the death than anyone else in the courtroom, and has to find a way to work to acquit the defendant without implicating himself. You can stream Juror #2 here.Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024) While Godzilla Minus One proved that Japanese filmmakers remain adept at wringing genuine drama out of tales of the city-destroying kaiju, the American branch of the franchise is offering up deft counter-programming. That is to say, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is every bit as ridiculous as its title suggests, with Godzilla and Kong teaming up to battle a tribe of Kong's distant relatives—they live in the other dimensional Hollow Earth and have harnessed the power of an ice Titan, you see. It's nothing more, nor less, than a good time with giant monsters. You can stream Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire here.We Live in Time (2024) Director John Crowley had a massive critical success with 2015's Brooklyn, but 2019's The Goldfinch was a disappointment in almost every regard. Nonlinear romantic drama We Live in Time, then, feels like a bit of a return to form, with Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield displaying impressive chemistry as the couple at the film's center. The two meet when she hits him with her car on the night he's finalizing his divorce, and the movie jumps about in their relationship from the early days, to a difficult pregnancy, to a cancer diagnosis, without ever feeling excessively gimmicky. You can stream We Live in Time here.Trap (2024) Cooper (Josh Hartnett) is a pretty cool dad in M. Night Shyamalan’s latest, taking his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to see a very cool Billie Eilish-ish pop star in concert. But we soon learn that Cooper is also a notorious serial killer (this is not the patented Shyamalan twist, in case you were worried about spoilers). The FBI knows that "The Butcher" will be at the concert, even if they don't know exactly who it is, and the whole thing is a, yes, trap that Cooper must escape. Of such premises are fun thrillers made, and Hartnett has fun with the central role, his performance growing increasingly tic-y and unhinged even as Cooper tries to make sure his daughter gets to enjoy the show. You can stream Trap here.Caddo Lake (2024) While we're on the subject of M. Night Shyamalan, he produced this trippy thriller that spends a big chunk of its runtime looking like a working-class drama before going full whackadoo in ways best not spoiled. Eliza Scanlen stars as Ellie, who lives near the title lake with her family, and where it appears that her 8-year-old stepsister has vanished. Dylan O'Brien plays Paris, who works dredging the lake while dealing with survivor's guilt and the trauma of his mother's slightly mysterious death. Their stories (and backstories) merge when they discover that one doesn't always leave the lake the same as they went in. You can stream Caddo Lake here.Dune: Part Two (2024) Denis Villeneuve stuck the landing on his adaptation of the latter part of Frank Herbert's epic novel, so much so that Dune zealots are already looking ahead to a third film, adapting the second book in the series. The chilly (metaphorically) and cerebral sequel was a critical as well as a box office success—surprising on both counts, especially considering that the beloved book was once seen as more or less unadaptable (with the deeply weird David Lynch version serving as Exhibit A in support of that assertion). If you're playing catch-up, HBO Max also has the first Dune, and the rather excellent spin-off series (Dune: Prophecy). You can stream Dune: Part Two here.Problemista (2024) Julio Torres (creator of Los Espookys and Fantasmas, also available on HBO Max) wrote, produced, directed, and stars in this surreal comedy about a toy designer from El Salvador working in the United States under a visa that's about to expire. What to do but take a desperation job with quirky, volatile artist Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton)? The extremely offbeat and humane comedy has been earning raves since it debuted at South by Southwest last year. RZA, Greta Lee, and Isabella Rossellini also star. You can stream Problemista here.MaXXXine (2024) The final (for now, anyway) film in Ti West's X trilogy once again stars Mia Goth as fame-obsessed Maxine Minx. Moving on from adult films, Maxine gets a lead role in a horror movie, only to find herself watched by a leather-clad assailant. This film-industry take-down includes Michelle Monaghan, Kevin Bacon, and Giancarlo Esposito in its solid cast. You can stream MaXXXine here.The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024) An anime-infused take on Tolkien's world, The War of the Rohirrim boats the return of co-writer Philippa Boyens, who helped to write each of the six previous LOTR movies. In this animated installment, we're taken back 200 years before Peter Jackson's films, to when the king of Rohan (Brian Cox) accidentally kills the leader of the neighboring Dunlendings during marriage negotiations, kicking off a full-scale war. Miranda Otto reprises her role of Éowyn, who narrates. You can stream War of the Rohirrim here.A Different Man (2024) Though it was all but shut out at the Oscars (getting only a nomination for Best Makeup and Hairstyling), A Different Man made several of 2024's top ten lists, and earned Sebastian Stan a Golden Globe (he got an Oscar nomination for an entirely different movie, so the erstwhile Winter Soldier had a pretty good year). Here he plays Edward, an actor with neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that manifests in his body as a disfiguring facial condition. An experimental procedure cures him, and Edward assumes a new identity—which does nothing to tame his deep-rooted insecurities, especially when he learns of a new play that's been written about is life. It's a surprisingly funny look into a damaged psyche. You can stream A Different Man here. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (2024) Alternating between Christopher Reeve's life before and after the horse riding accident that paralyzed him, this heartfelt and heart wrenching documentary follows the Superman actor as he becomes an activist for disability rights. Archival footage of Christopher and wife Dana blends with new interviews with their children, as well as with actors and politicians who knew and worked with them both. You can stream Super/Man here.Sing Sing (2024) A fictional story based on the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, this Best Picture nominee follows Diving G (Colman Domingo), an inmate who emerges as a star performer in the group. The movie celebrates the redemptive power of art and play with a tremendous central performance from Domingo, who was also Oscar-nominated. You can stream Sing Sing here. Am I OK? (2024) Real-life married couple Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne directed this comedy based, loosely, on Allyne's own life. Dakota Johnson plays Lucy, a directionless 32-year-old woman in Los Angeles who finds that her unsatisfying romantic life might have something to do with her being other than straight. She navigates her journey of self-discovery and coming out with the help of her best friend Jane (House of the Dragon's Sonoya Mizuno). You can stream Am I OK? here.Love Lies Bleeding (2024) In a world of movies that are very carefully calibrated to be as inoffensive as possible, it's nice to see something as muscular, frenetic, and uncompromising as Love Lies Bleeding. Kristen Stewart plays small-town gym manager Lou; she's the daughter of the local crime boss (Ed Harris), with a sister (Jena Malone) suffering from the abuse of her no-good husband (Dave Franco). It's all quietly tolerated until bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian) stops off in town. She's 'roided up and ready for action, falling hard for Lou before the two of them get caught up in an act of violence that sends everything spiraling toward a truly wild final act. You can stream Love Lies Bleeding here.Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play. (2024) A provocative title for a provocative documentary film, Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play. sees playwright Jeremy O. Harris exploring the creative process behind the title work, a play that earned a record number of Tony nominations, won none, and that is equally loved and hated (it's about interracial couples having sex therapy at an antebellum-era plantation house). The narrative here is entirely non-linear, and the rules of a traditional making-of are out the window, with Harris instead taking a nearly train-of-thought approach to examining the process of creating the play, and in understanding reactions to it. You can stream Slave Play here.Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Parts One, Two, and Three (2024) While the live-action DC slate went out with a whimper (at least until next year's Superman reboot), the animated series of films has been chugging along more quietly, but also with more success. This trilogy adapts the altogether biggest story in DC history, as heroes from across the multiverse are brought together to prevent an antimatter wave that's wiping out entire universes. Darren Criss, Stana Katic, Jensen Ackles, and Matt Bomer are among the voice cast. You can stream Crisis on Infinite Earths, starting with Part One, here.The Front Room (2024) Adapted from a short story by Susan Hill (The Woman in Black), The Front Room gets a fair bit of mileage out of its in-law-from-hell premise. Brandy plays Belinda, a pregnant anthropology professor forced to quit her job by hostile working conditions. Her deeply weird mother-in-law Solange (a scene-stealing Kathryn Hunter) makes Brandy and husband Norman an offer that could solve the resulting financial problems: if they'll take care of her in her dying days, she'll leave them everything. Of course, the psychic religious fanatic has no interest in making any of that easy. It's more silly than scary, but perfectly entertaining if that's the kind of mood you're in. You can stream The Front Room here. Quad Gods (2024) We spend a lot of time fearing new technology, often with good reason, but Quad Gods offers a brighter view: for people with quadriplegia, for whom spots like football are out of the question, esports offer a means of competing and socializing among not only other people with physical restrictions, but in the broader world of what's become a major industry. While exploring the contrast between day-to-day life for the Quad Gods team and their online gaming talents, the documentary is an impressively upbeat look at the ways in which technology can put us all on a similar playing field. You can stream Quad Gods here.Elevation (2024) There's not much new in this Anthony Mackie-lad post-apocalyptic thriller, but Elevation is nonetheless a well-executed action movie that never feels dumb. Just a few years before the film opens, predatory Reapers rose from deep underground and wiped out 95% of humanity. Now, single dad Will (Mackie) is forced to leave his sanctuary to travel to Boulder, Colorado, the closest place he can get air filters to help with his son's lung disease. On the way, he's joined, reluctantly, by scientist Nina (Morena Baccarin), whose lab may contain a way to kill the Reapers. You can stream Elevation here.

Johan Helberg is a retired museum director living out his days on the idyllic shores of Trondheim Fjord in Central Norway.That relaxation was interrupted early Thursday morning, when he awoke to discover the bow of a 9,990-ton cargo ship had rammed through his backyard garden.The vessel, registered as the NCL Salten out of Cyprus — a common legal tactic for shipping companies — was passing through the Trondheim when its helmsman allegedly fell asleep on the job, according to The New York Times.Helberg slept soundly as the 135-meter ship ran aground, missing the cabin he calls home by mere meters. He didn't even realize what had happened until a neighbor woke him up."I was sleeping soundly, deeply," Helberg told local press, "and then I heard a dinging sound, which I wondered might be my doorbell. I thought, who in the world rings the doorbell at 5:45 in the morning? I looked out the window, and he said: 'Haven’t you seen the ship?'""It's completely surreal," the retiree reflected.Luckily, the ship was at a crawl when it ran aground. No one was hurt on land, and the ship's crew — a complement of 16 Russian and Ukrainian sailors, along with one Norwegian captain — were no worse for the wear."There [was] some commotion, but a slow rumble and not a bang," Halberg told Norsk rikskringkasting AS (NRK), a Norwegian state media company.The Salten is what's known as a Baltic "feeder," a short-range cargo vessel meant to navigate narrow waterways that larger ships can't.Of course, even feeders tend to stick to the deeper portions of the fjord, according to Helberg. "We don't usually see ships right outside our living room window, so this is especially strange," he said.The ship's second mate, a Ukrainian man, has been charged with negligence, according to NRK. The ship's captain is also being questioned as a criminal suspect.The Salten remains grounded at the time of writing, and maritime authorities say they're working with geological engineers to assess the prospects of freeing it from the muddy shore. An evacuation notice was issued to three residents nearby, as the ships crash triggered landslides.As the grounding happened at high tide, refloating the Salten will be easier said than done. A tugboat pull has already failed to make a dent, and authorities are reportedly considering whether to offload the cargo for the beginning of a long-term operation."It's stood on the land quite emphatically, it went ashore at high tide, and it's not close to being lifted off. There will be no higher tide," Helberg told NRK of the situation. "So here it will stay."Still, the retiree was in high spirits, all things considered."No irreparable damage has been done, so I can enjoy the absurdity of the situation," he said. "It's not often you see a ship stuck on the shore where you've been swimming your whole life."More on Maritime Disasters: After Elon Musk Promised Cybertrucks Could Function as Boats, One Fell Into a Harbor for a Perfect TestShare This Article