House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told MSNBC host and former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki that President Donald Trump and Republicans are “willing to starve children” rather than use emergency funds to rescue SNAP benefits amid the government shutdown.

The White House and Republicans have been insisting it would be unlawful to use contingency funds to continue SNAP benefits — commonly referred to as Food Stamps — after the program runs out of money. Federal Judge Indira Talwani is set to rule on whether to force the administration to do so.

On Thursday’s edition of MSNBC’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki, both Jeffries and Psaki pilloried Trump and the GOP over the issue:

PSAKI: Help people understand what the human impact is right now, what you’re anticipating.

JEFFRIES: Yeah, it’s extraordinary that Donald Trump and Republicans are threatening to cut off SNAP benefits to 42 million Americans, including 16 million children, 8 million seniors and over a million veterans. And every single one of those individuals represents a real-life impact, people who would otherwise struggle to put food on the table in the absence of these SNAP benefits.

And there’s absolutely no justification for Donald Trump and the Republicans to withhold SNAP.

They have more than $5 billion in an emergency fund that will allow these benefits to continue through the end of November. They can also find funds for other things, just as they’ve repeatedly done. But they can’t do it for SNAP.

So that’s extraordinary. It shows where their priorities are. And Mike Johnson actually said the quiet part out loud earlier today —

PSAKI: Uh-huh.

JEFFRIES: — when he indicated that we’re willing to starve, meaning Republicans. Republicans are willing to starve children and seniors and women and veterans and American families in order to put pressure on Democrats to continue Republican efforts to gut health care of everyday Americans. We’re not going to do it.

PSAKI: We just played that clip, and it’s exactly as you said. He’s basically saying we’re using it as a bargaining chip. We’re using people who will not have enough food next week, potentially as a bargaining chip.

One of the things that struck me is that hunger is never been a partisan issue. I mean, this — this program has never been shut down before since it was started in 1939. And now you have the Trump administration making a legal argument that they cannot use funding from other funds, which they can. There’s also $23 billion they could use that they use for WIC, right?

JEFFRIES: Right.

PSAKI: That they’re making legal argument, which feels to me almost kind of immoral. But how do you — how are you digesting that, the legal argument they’re making, given the human impact here?

JEFFRIES: Well, it’s incredible that they would suggest that there are legal obstacles to doing anything when the Trump administration has been completely and totally out of control. But when it comes to actually meeting the needs of the American people who might otherwise go hungry, the Trump administration, all of a sudden, believes that they don’t have the authority to do something that Congress has clearly given them the authority to do.

But these are extremists who are willing to actually starve their own folks. One of the five states that would be most impacted if SNAP benefits are cut off is Louisiana, the home state of both Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

But they could care less. After all, these are individuals who led the effort to pass the one big ugly bill that enacted the largest cut to Medicaid in American history, which is part of the reason why we have this health care crisis. But in that bill, they also cut $186 billion from SNAP, the largest cut to nutritional assistance in American history, which is one of the reasons why this hunger issue is not going away.

And we’re going to have to grapple with it as part of reversing these Republican policies that are doing great damage to everyday Americans.

PSAKI: We’re waiting for this judge’s ruling. And she seemed to indicate that she thinks their argument is absurd.

Watch above via MSNBC’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki.

The post Hakeem Jeffries Trashes Trump and GOP Over Food Stamps: ‘Willing to Starve Children!’ first appeared on Mediaite.

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Update 10/31/2025 at 2:00 PM:

Disney and YouTube have reached the Oct. 31 deadline without an end to negotiations in sight. As such, more than 20+ Disney owned channels have been pulled from YouTube TV. For more, read on here.

Nothing says Halloween quite like an ominous countdown. Right now, subscribers to YouTube TV, the company's live TV service, are waiting to learn if they'll still have access to Disney-operated channels, including ABC and ESPN, come Oct.31. It's the latest conflict in ongoing fee disputes between Google and its various content providers, but even if Disney takes its ball and goes home, you won't be left entirely without options.

When could Disney channels go dark on YouTube TV?

According to Variety, if Disney and Google are unable to reach a deal by the end of Thursday, all Disney networks will vanish from YouTube TV on Oct. 30 at midnight ET. These include Disney Channel, ESPN, ABC News, Disney Jr., FX, FXX, FRXM, NatGeo, Freefrom, and even local ABC stations.

It's not the first time YouTube has been through something like this. Last February, Paramount made a similar threat before eventually reaching an agreement that saw no pause in customer access to its channels. Since then, YouTube has had similar conflicts with Fox Corp., NBC Universal, and Univision, with only the Spanish-language network failing to reach a deal before its channels went dark.

It's all about licensing fees

What's happening here all comes down to licensing fees. To offer channels like the cable providers it's trying to replace, YouTube TV has to continually pay fees to content providers, and occasionally, those providers propose higher fees. That leaves YouTube in a bit of a lurch, as it tries to navigate between paying a fair price to its partners while also avoiding raising prices for its subscribers.

Disney told Variety that, "[t]his is the latest example of Google exploiting is position as the expense of their own customers," implying that Google was risking stripping away channels its customers had paid for by refusing to compensate Disney with "fair rates." Google in turn argues that giving into Disney's "costly economic terms" would force the company to "raise prices on YouTube TV," as well as leave the service in a rough spot when compared to Disney's own Live TV offering, Hulu + Live TV.

What happens if a deal isn't reached

Personally, I wouldn't take either company's statement too seriously, at least if the earlier Paramount and NBC Universal conflicts are anything to go by—there's a good chance a deal will be reached before YouTube TV subscribers are affected. But as with those earlier conflicts, YouTube is willing to make it up to its customers if they lose access to Disney content.

"If it [Disney content] remains unavailable for an extended period of time, we will offer subscribers a $20 credit," YouTube said. That would be enough to subscribe to a month of the Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN bundle with ads, although YouTube hasn't said if the credit will be recurring.

Currently, a YouTube TV Base Plan starts at $72.99/month for your first three months, then jumps up to $82.99/month after that, making it slightly less expensive than Hulu + Live TV in the long term ($64.99/month for the first three months, then $89.99/month after that). Whether prices will stay the same if Disney pulls its channels remains to be seen.

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell derided President Donald Trump’s claim that he has “the best numbers for any president in many years” — and submitted decades worth of receipts to test the proposition.

As Trump gaggled with reporters aboard Air Force One this week, he appeared to rule out a third term for himself, and lamented “I have my highest poll numbers that I’ve ever had. And, you know, based on what I read, I guess I’m not allowed to run. So we’ll see what happens. It’s a very interesting thing. I have the best numbers for any president in many years, any president. And I would say that if you read it, it’s pretty clear I’m not allowed to run.”

On Wednesday night’s edition of MSNBC’s The Last Word, O’Donnell opened the show with a marathon commentary on the the third term issue, but paused to deride the claim about his poll numbers:

Today on Air Force One, while speaking to reporters lobbing the softest of softball questions as usual, Donald Trump was asked, “Sir, Speaker Johnson says that he told you that there’s no time to amend the Constitution to allow you to serve a third term. Is that an accurate representation of the conversation you have?” Donald Trump, “I don’t know. I don`t want to even talk about that because, you know, the sad thing is I — I have my highest numbers that I`ve ever had.”

Okay, let’s pause for a parenthetical on those highest numbers he’s ever had. The highest approval rating Donald Trump has ever had was 49 percent during his first term as president, according to Gallup. His approval rating is currently 41 percent. In other words, like his first term, Donald Trump is carrying an approval rating that would make it impossible for him to win reelection to the presidency.

Every Republican president in the history of polling has had higher poll numbers than Donald Trump has ever had. George W. Bush’s top approval polling was 90 percent. His father before him, George H.W. Bush, reached an 89 percent job approval. Ronald Reagan won 49 states in his reelection campaign as a Republican president.

And the Republican president who was never elected, President Gerry Ford, hit a high of 71 percent for his job approval rating. Richard Nixon, who left office in disgrace, won his second term by winning 49 states.

General Dwight Eisenhower, who won World War II in Europe, became President Eisenhower in 1953 and had approval ratings far above Donald Trump’s best day. There has never been a Republican president in the history of polling, which began in the 1930s, who did not hit much higher approval ratings than Donald Trump has ever had.

Donald Trump finished his rambling response to that reporter by saying, quote, you know, based on what I read, I guess I’m not allowed to run, so we’ll see what happens.

He doesn’t read anything, so he doesn’t mean the Constitution.

The next question to Donald Trump was, “Speaker Johnson says you’re trolling when you talk about a third term. Are you trolling or are you serious?” To which Donald Trump said, “I don’t think he said that. I don’t think he used that term.”

Oh, really?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: The Trump 2028 cap is one of the most popular that’s ever been produced and he has a good time with that, trolling the Democrats.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: Yeah, Donald, he said trolling.

Donald Trump`s next line was also a lie. Quote, “It’s a very interesting thing. I have the best numbers for any president in many years, any president.” Lie, of course.

Watch above via MSNBC’s The Last Word.

The post MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell Derides Trump’s ‘Best Numbers’ Claim With Gleeful Pile of Receipts first appeared on Mediaite.

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. admitted that the evidence was “not sufficient to say” Tylenol causes autism — just one day after Texas filed a lawsuit citing his previous comments to make that claim.

On Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue, the parent company and manufacturer of Tylenol, claiming that acetaminophen, the drug’s active ingredient, causes “a significantly increased risk of autism and other disorders,” like ADHD.

“For years, the scientific evidence has shown that acetaminophen can cause ASD and ADHD in children whose mothers ingested the drug while pregnant and that the more acetaminophen ingested, the greater the risk,” the complaint argued, citing numerous controversial and debunked claims by Kennedy and President Donald Trump about acetaminophen to claim a causal link between the drug and autism or ADHD.

As Mediaite reported, the complaint omits mention of studies that contradict these claims, notably a 2024 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that reviewed the health records of over 2.5 million children born in Sweden over a 25-year period and found “no significant associations” between prenatal acetaminophen use and children’s risk of autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability, and further “suggest[ed] that associations observed in other models may have been attributable to familial confounding.”

Paxton also contracted with a Chicago attorney, Ashley Keller, the lead counsel for a group of more than 600 plaintiffs who sued Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue in personal injury lawsuits claiming that prenatal use of Tylenol caused neurodevelopmental harms like ASD and ADHD to their children.

Those cases were all tossed out of court after a federal judge excluded all six of the plaintiffs’ proposed expert witnesses, finding that their proffered testimony was fundamentally “unreliable and inadmissible” due to “fatal” and “overarching methodological flaws,” “cherry-picking isolated findings,” “misrepresent[ing] study results and refused to acknowledge the role of genetics in the etiology of either ASD or ADHD,” and exhibiting a lack of “relevant expertise.”

Kennedy was asked about Tylenol on Wednesday, and offered this response, according to a report by USA Today:

“The causative association… between Tylenol given in pregnancy and the perinatal periods is not sufficient to say it definitely causes autism. But it is very suggestive,” Kennedy told reporters, citing animal, blood and observational studies.

“There should be a cautious approach to it,” he added.

As it has been previously noted many times before, Kennedy holds no science or medical degrees, has a long track record of promoting conspiracy theories and unfounded claims about vaccines and autism, including debunked research by Andrew Wakefield, who lost his medical license for fraud and “serious professional misconduct.”

Kenvue issued a statement responding to Kennedy’s latest comments. “We agree, as Secretary Kennedy said, that the best message to pregnant women is to consult their healthcare professional before taking acetaminophen, which is what our Tylenol label tells consumers to do,” the statement said. “We also agree that there is no definitive causative association between taking acetaminophen and autism.”

The post RFK Jr Says Evidence Is ‘Not Sufficient to Say’ Tylenol Causes Autism — One Day After Texas AG Claimed It Was in Lawsuit first appeared on Mediaite.

I run marathons. I post about running marathons. But you won't see my sweaty face mid-stride, my pace per mile, or the unglamorous truth of what 26.2 miles does to a body. No shots of my form breaking down at mile 20, no documentation of the new insecurities that crop up when you realize your running gait is asymmetrical or your breathing sounds like a dying dog. I share the accomplishment—the medal, the bib number, maybe a scenic shot from the course—but I carefully curate out the messy reality.

Is this humility? Self-protection? Or am I just bragging with plausible deniability, performing health while refusing to actually perform it? After all, isn't social media fundamentally a bragging platform, a highlight reel we all tacitly agree to maintain? But then why does hitting "post" feel like walking a tightrope between inspiration and judgment, between pride and shame? And why am I so acutely aware that in 2025, as thinness resurges as the aesthetic ideal and fatphobia floods our feeds with renewed vigor, any post about fitness exists in a minefield of interpretation? Social media may not be "the real world," but when it comes to our mental health and how we perceive our bodies, it's very much a real world—one with real consequences.

I put out a call on Instagram asking people about their relationship with posting workout data and fitness content. The response was overwhelming: well over a hundred replies, from fitness influencers building their brands, to private account holders who rarely post, and everyone in between. People were bursting to talk about this, which suggests we're all grappling with the same question: When does sharing our health journey become performing it—and what do we lose in translation?

The performance of health on social media

"Social media didn't create this—it just amplified what was already there in fitness culture," says Echo Wang, founder at Yoga Kawa. "It's become a place to gain clout and sell an image, so it's no surprise that wellness and gym culture thrive there. People have always wanted to look a certain way, which social media has just made public and constant."

What's shifted isn't necessarily the desire for fitness or even the vanity that sometimes drives it—it's the volume and velocity. Wang says that what’s really worrying "is how body image expectations keep getting more extreme. The duality of social media is that you have access to an infinite amount of knowledge and community, but at the same time, you are swimming in comparison and misinformation. The flood of conflicting advice keeps the industry spinning because everyone's searching for that quick fix or magic formula."

This sense of being pulled in contradictory directions was a major theme in my inbox. "I feel like I'm non-consensually being pulled in a million different directions regarding what I should be doing to benefit the most from working out," says Polina Jewel. "I'm thinking about reps, calorie deficits, and creatine, when the only way for me to feel better about exercising (read: being in my body) is turning inward and listening to what feels good, and using that information to better myself."

Even when you’re performing for no one but yourself, you internally negotiate the relationship between what you see in the mirror and what you feel in your body. Social media isn’t designed to cater to such a delicate, fraught balancing act. These platforms designed to share information have created such an overwhelming cacophony that the only escape is to tune it all out and listen to your own body. 

The true cost of "public accountability"

Ryan Nilsen sums up what many seemed to feel, saying that “public accountability helped me start a routine right off the bat for going to the gym, but never helped performance. I feel like I need to trick myself sometimes when developing a new routine."

Dr. Simon Faynboym, a psychiatrist at Neuro Wellness Spa, outlines both sides of the public accountability equation: "Posting your workouts can feel like you have your own cheer team; likes, leaderboards, and streaks make effort visible and give you quick hits of social reward. That public accountability can help people show up more consistently, especially if you thrive on competition, enjoy friendly challenges, or find it motivating to see progress over time."

But he quickly identifies the pitfall: "On the flip side, it's easy to chase vanity metrics like pace or the amount of steps at the expense of recovery and/or sleep. Constant benchmarking can create fitness performance anxiety, where the fear of looking slow, running less, cycling lower distance, or lifting less pushes people to overtrain or to curate only 'good' workouts."

One Instagram response about step tracking perfectly captured this sort of performance anxiety: "I've had a 10,000 step streak going since last year. I've been updating my friends online regularly, so I feel determined to push the streak to at least 365 days, but at some point within the past few months it became less about keeping myself fit and more about hitting the number even when I should probably rest." I’d be remiss not to mention that there’s nothing special about taking 10,000 steps each day in the first place. But the reasoning behind these goals gets lost in the pursuit of posting about achieving them. And when metrics inevitably don't align with expectations, people feel like failures.What started as a tool for accountability morphed into an obligation, potentially at the expense of the very health it was meant to promote.

Sara Lebow also voiced this contradiction behind the “public accountability” defense. She says, “most of what people are doing online is pseudoscience wellness, or a form of optimization that can only be described as an obsession with control, one that's bleeding into every part of our lives from work to dating. I want to work out and not track everything in this world. And yet, I weigh myself and then feel insecure, because that is what we do."

The illusion of effortlessness

If you’ve ever been served a “candid” photo of a fitness influencer, it probably hasn’t made you feel great about your own body. But isn’t it oh-so inspiring? #Bodygoals, right?

Matthew Singer, a yoga teacher, says most “fitspo” (fitness inspiration) “is as helpful for fitness as previous winning lottery numbers are for winning millions. Fitspo cannot take into account genetics, job and family circumstances, health history, or any of the other countless factors that influence health outcomes."

This gets at a fundamental problem: fitness inspiration content presents results without context, and bodies without the invisible scaffolding that created them. Similarly, actor Sean O'Connor says, “you have to remember that everything through the lens of a camera from a phone or otherwise is relatively propped up and fabricated, in the same way food commercials never use actual food.” The same mechanics apply to fitness influencers, O'Connor argues: "Even the selfie cam with no additional filters/digital trickery is a lens that doesn't exist in reality. Simply turning on a ring light illuminates your face in a way that would never happen organically out in the world."

But it's not just about angles and lighting. O'Connor describes the invisible infrastructure that makes aspirational bodies possible: "All these public figures have teams of people helping look effortless. They have nutritionists, private chefs, personal trainers, state of the art equipment at their homes and some even have a team of PR people helping them manage an eating disorder, scheduling out how to give them the bare minimum of nutrition to keep them relatively functional, not unlike a warden at a prison labor camp."

The class dimension is impossible to ignore: "These people don't have to work, commute, rush through lunch breaks, have to cook their own food or pack lunches so they won't be subject to the ever-declining quality of fast casual restaurant food. There is absolutely no reason to make yourself feel bad for comparing yourselves to wealthy public facing rich people with every resource imaginable at their disposal."

O'Connor reframes what fitness actually is: "Fitness is less about looking perfect and is more about taking small steps to achieve and maintain longevity to live a long and healthy life. Anyone trying to sell you a quick fix is lying. Fitness is a marathon. And it takes a ton of frustratingly small steps to see what you want to see in the mirror. Don't let the smoke and mirrors of social media dent the resolve of a slow and steady approach. Your body will thank you. (And so will your bank account because we live in a deeply stupid propaganda-riddled society where the healthcare system is run like a casino)."

Mason Boudrye, who describes himself as "someone known to post gratuitous thirst traps," offers perhaps the most layered perspective on the pressure to perform fitness online. "I think the first thing to consider is how many of the men literally flexing their physique online are enhanced using steroids/tren/testosterone etc.," he says. "Removing those from the equation, the next thing to consider is that for many creating this content is their job, so they're dedicating hours a day to achieving their aesthetic, which isn't remotely practical or realistic for most people."

Boudrye also describes the dark side to achieving the perfect thirst trap: "Body dysmorphia, disordered eating, and exercise bulimia,” that last one describing when “bulking” is actually binging and “cutting” is unhealthy restriction. “This is certainly true for me, and I know it's common, even if people don't admit that the obsessive tracking and strict adherence to diet qualifies as disordered eating."

But even with that self-awareness, Boudrye acknowledges the mental toll: "I have bad days where I am terrible to myself for failing to exercise, which sometimes transforms into resentment and indignation at the belief that people feel entitled to my body. This all might feel disingenuous considering my literal naked body is being liked and shared thousands of times as we speak. There's so many levels and elements to it." When you feel pressured to always perform a version of perfection—something unsustainable even to you—there’s naturally going to be shame on the days where you just can’t sustain it.

It’s so much more than metrics

Take it from me: Fitness is boring, incremental, unsexy work that happens outside the frame of social media entirely. The performance of fitness—the ring-lit selfie, the carefully pumped muscle, the optimized angle—bears almost no relationship to the actual practice of maintaining a healthy body over time. But that doesn't get likes.

Instead, another recurring theme was the observation that social media fitness culture has become almost entirely divorced from actual health. Especially when it comes to viral fitness content, the need for perfect aesthetics gets absurd. "The need to go viral causes these influencers to be absolutely out-of-pocket," says Andrew Barlow. "On the male side, I see extreme workouts including once a guy doing decline sit-ups while lifting a literal bench. From women influencers, it's hyper-sexualized, where their target demographic doesn't even seem to be women looking to be fit. Both of these are obviously issues in our culture in general, but exacerbated by the algorithm and chase of likes."

Echo Wang frames this disconnect in terms of what gets lost: "From a wellness point of view, that incessant chatter is what causes anxiety and burnout. The pressure to show that you are 'healthy' enough, 'fit' enough, or 'disciplined' enough is very tiring. When everything is about data, validation, and aesthetics, you lose the connection with your body." This goes for aesthetic-based apps like Instagram, but also ostensibly fitness-based ones too, like Strava with its leaderboards. Because when I post my runs on Strava, I keep all my data private—I'm too self-conscious to reveal what an utterly average runner I am, and I know plenty of runners who share my shame-based privacy. So, if you're anything less than perfect, why post at all?

Who is this performance really for?

Perhaps the most revealing question is: Who is the intended audience for fitness posts? The responses suggest even the posters themselves aren't always sure.

Claire Lower, former Lifehacker writer and powerlifting enthusiast, offers a perspective rooted in genuine love for her sport: "I like lifting, I look forward to it. I go to the gym whether I post or not. It has nothing to do with accountability—that's why I pay my trainer. Posting is a good way for me to document for myself and track my progress. But if you look at any video of a woman powerlifting, a man has something to say about her form; I don't want to reach a wider audience." Here, posting serves a documentary function—a digital training log—but Lower deliberately limits her audience to avoid unsolicited feedback and mansplaining that plague women in fitness spaces online. Good on her.

Chika takes a different approach, posting strategically with a specific political intent: "I post heavy lifts intentionally because it's really important to me that people see women lifting over 200 pounds, especially as there's this move to thinness. Granted, health/fitness is very low on the list of my online presence, and some of that is probably because I don't have the body of a traditional 'fitness girl', and so I fear if I posted regularly about working out, people would assume I'm on a 'fitness journey,' instead of just doing what I always do." Plus, I know firsthand that Chika is correct in saying that fitness content "is guaranteed to get a good response, so I often do it intentionally when I want to promote something else on my story."

For others, the audience becomes an unwelcome source of anxiety. Shenuque Tissera says, "I feel like there's some really great representations of fitness for the sake of health, but a lot of the content and performance of fitness online has made me feel bad. I definitely now feel a bit compelled to work out because of online health performance even though I started working out for my own needs and health concerns. And while I used to not judge myself over the regular fluctuations of my own body, I find myself doing way more negative talk about my body that gets heightened with social media."

Maya Almogy describes the comparison trap succinctly: "When I see other people post, all that functions as a reminder that I personally didn't run today. Even if I did run that day, and I saw a post that someone ran more? Now I get an overwhelming sense of inadequacy."

The fatphobia factor

The resurgence of thinness as the beauty ideal emerged as a particularly concerning theme. Jo Wild articulates the cognitive dissonance many feel: "I've recently seen a rebirth of fatphobia being seen as 'cool' that really disgusts me, and honestly makes me embarrassed to intentionally change my body in any way. I worry that the reason I want to be strong is that secretly I want to be skinny, and I don't want people to know that secretly I want to be skinny. At the same time, I don't fit into my favorite pants anymore, so maybe I only exercise in the hope that one day the button will close again. But I keep most of my gym time and dance classes off of socials, because I don't like to think I'm contributing to a 'health craze' that's really just fatphobia in a poor disguise."

This represents a new layer of anxiety, not just about whether you're fit enough, but about whether your pursuit of fitness makes you complicit in a larger cultural problem. It's performance anxiety about the performance of fitness itself.

Alex Phipps, a fitness instructor, gave me an interesting counterpoint about online fitness classes: "People who normally didn't work out or like working out really got into it way more than they did in person, and a lot of them told me that they felt that they couldn't work out any other way, because they were terrified of being perceived by other 'conventional' fitness people. But online, they felt free to try and actually push themselves. The idea of strength as opposed to thinness being the goal is what has always motivated me, and it's what I'd try to cultivate in my students."

This suggests that for some, the digital space actually provides more freedom from judgment than physical gyms—though this creates its own irony given how much anxiety others experience from posting workouts online.

Finding balance

Faynboym offers practical advice for navigating this landscape: "The best fix is to occasionally hide or de-emphasize numbers that trigger you, share selectively, set goals you control, think of long-term progress, and post about rest days and form wins as often as you feel. Ultimately, use the crowd for support and let the metrics follow your body's needs, not the other way around."

But one of my favorite assessments comes from Dorian Debose, who posts fitness progress as part of adult content: "I think the vast majority of people are happy to see you make an effort. They understand it's a process and they're accepting of your faults. I project my own insecurities out onto them. I think for me, that's like shadow boxing." In other words, much of the performance anxiety around posting fitness content isn't about what the audience actually thinks. It's about what we fear they think, which is often just a projection of our own harshest self-judgments.

The overwhelming message from these responses is that fitness culture on social media exists in a state of productive tension: It can inspire and support, but it can just as easily trigger comparison, anxiety, and a disconnection. 

The question isn't whether to post or not to post—it's whether we can find a way to engage with these platforms that keeps the focus on our actual bodies and health, rather than the performance of health for an audience that may be more imagined than real.

And maybe that starts with posting the sweaty face after all. Or not posting at all. Or posting only on days when it feels like record-keeping, rather than performance. The answer, frustrating or freeing as it may seem, is there is no answer to how you should post. Like with posting pictures of your kids, or your political opinions, or that perfectly curated gym selfie you snuck in the locker room: It’s your choice. There’s private physical experience, and there’s how we package that up for a wider audience. It’s an ongoing negotiation, and you need to be honest with yourself if you’re getting a raw deal.

President Donald Trump proclaimed on Tuesday that Toyota has pledged to invest $10 billion in the U.S., but the Japanese automaker is pumping the brakes.

Trump said at least twice on Tuesday that the automaker would be investing $10 billion to open new factories in several states after he met with “Mr. Toyota” in Japan.

“Yesterday I was with Mr. Toyota in Japan, and he just announced he is going to spend — they are going to spend $10 billion and they are going to build new car plants and they are going to build them in numerous states, about six or seven different states,” Trump said during a speech in South Korea.

But on Wednesday, Toyota said it never promised Trump anything of the sort, according to Reuters.

Hiroyuki Ueda, a Toyota executive, said no pledges were made about an investment of that caliber, but added that the automaker would continue to invest and create jobs in America.

Watch above via Fox Business.

The post Trump Claims Toyota Promised $10B Investment in US — But Automaker Says Not So Fast first appeared on Mediaite.

OLED is a fantastic display technology. Unlike an LCD, which uses a single backlight for all the pixels of the display, all of the pixels on an OLED display can be individually lit up or turned off entirely. That means dark areas of the screen are inky black, while brighter areas can be selectively illuminated. It just looks fantastic, and if I have the option, I always try to choose it.

OLED isn't new tech at this point, and yet, Apple has been slow to adopt it into its products, especially when compared to some of its competitors. The company's first device to feature OLED was the Apple Watch in 2015, then the iPhone X in 2017, whereas every Samsung Galaxy has featured an AMOLED display since the company introduced the line in 2010. The iPhone remained the only product line with OLED for quite some time, until it included them with the M4 iPad Pros.

Aside from these products, Apple tends to choose alternative display types for its devices. For certain products, like the iMac, MacBook Air, and most iPads, it still uses LCD. For more "premium" devices, like the MacBook Pro, it uses mini-LED, which offers a large number of backlight "zones." This gives these products more contrast than the single backlight of LCD, but not quite as much as OLED. I prefer watching shows and movies on my iPad with mini-LED than my LCD iMac, for example, but I'd always prefer my OLED TV.

Apple's OLED roadmap

As it turns out, Apple might give me some new OLED options in the future. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is working on bringing OLED to more of its devices. Gurman says that the company is currently testing the tech for the MacBook Air, iPad mini, and iPad Air, all of which now ship with LCD. In addition, the company is reportedly working on an OLED MacBook Pro, which might also ship with a touchscreen.

Before you get too excited for an OLED MacBook, Apple is likely starting the OLED rollout with the iPad—specifically, the iPad mini. Gurman's sources say the OLED mini will drop sometime next year, which would mark the first refresh for the device since 2024. While I'd love an OLED Mac, this might be the perfect excuse for me to pick up an iPad mini, which I've long thought of as the most fun of Apple's devices.

Gurman isn't sure when Apple will add OLED to the iPad Air, but it won't be with the next refresh. The next-gen iPad Air will likely launch this spring, and will ship with LCD. That's true for the M5 MacBook Air, as well. While Apple is testing OLED for the Air, the next model will be out this spring sporting the same display tech as the M4. An OLED MacBook Air might not hit stores until 2028.

If you'll buy any Mac that Apple sells with OLED, you're going to be buying a Pro. That OLED MacBook Pro might even come with a touchscreen, which would be a first for Apple's Mac line. That machine could be out as early as 2026, but Apple could also push them to 2027.

Adding OLED to products won't come cheap, though. Gurman suggests that Apple could raise the price of the iPad mini $100, which would drive the starting cost from $499 to $599. When those OLED MacBook Pros come out, they'll also likely be even more expensive than the current Pros, by at least a few hundred dollars. These machines start at $1,999 (14-inch) and $2,499 (16-inch) today, so their OLED, touchscreen counterparts could fetch a high price tag.

You probably shouldn't wait for these devices if you need to upgrade

If you're holding out on buying any new Apple tech until the company refreshes those devices with OLED, you're going to be waiting a while—at least, for anything other than the iPad mini. I'd recommend waiting for that particular device, but for the others, it might be a while indeed. If you really need an upgrade, Apple's current iPad Pros ship with OLED, and the mini-LED tech in its MacBook Pros is also excellent. But even the LCDs on its devices look quite good. If you can stomach seeing the backlight when dark elements are on-screen, an iPad Air or MacBook Air will suit you well.

Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered an “immediate, powerful” strike on Gaza on Tuesday after Hamas violated the American-brokered ceasefire agreement and shot at Israeli soldiers.

“At the conclusion of the security consultations, Prime Minister Netanyahu instructed the military echelon to carry out immediate, powerful strikes in the Gaza Strip,” Netanyahu’s office announced in a brief statement, according to CNN.

Netanyahu’s decision comes after Hamas has violated the peace deal multiple times in the few weeks since it was brokered by President Donald Trump. Two Israeli Defense Forces soldiers were killed by terrorists last week in Rafah, in southern Gaza.

Another violation happened earlier on Tuesday, when Hamas gunmen started firing at Israeli troops in Rafah, according to The Times of Israel.

The post Benjamin Netanyahu Orders ‘Immediate, Powerful’ Israeli Strike on Gaza first appeared on Mediaite.

When OpenAI was started in 2015, its founders (including both Sam Altman and Elon Musk) chose to make it a nonprofit. Its initial goal was to guarantee that artificial general intelligence (AGI), a type of AI that is theoretically better at humans at most tasks, would benefit everyone.

The company has gone through a number of changes in the years since. It hasn't been a true nonprofit since 2019, when it moved to a "capped-profit" structure, which limited profits to 100 times any investment. Musk even sued the company last year, claiming it had ditched its original mission in favor of profits. But now, OpenAI is looking more like a traditional for-profit company than ever. On Thursday, it announced the company will now operate under a new for-profit structure, called OpenAI Group PCB, a public benefit corporation. OpenAI's nonprofit arm, which is now called the OpenAI Foundation, holds a $130 billion stake in OpenAI Group PCB, and controls the for-profit company.

OpenAI says it is particularly focused on how this move will affect its goals of achieving AGI, and ensuring that AGI "benefits all of humanity." As OpenAI sees it, the better its for-profit businesses perform, the more funds the OpenAI Foundation will have to continue its philanthropic work.

To that point, OpenAI says the OpenAI Foundation is committing $25 billion to two key objectives. The first is to health and disease, as the OpenAI Foundation will aim to create open-sourced health datasets and offer funding for scientists. The second goal will be to bolster "AI resilience," which OpenAI sees as "maximizing AI's benefits and minimizing its risks."

According to OpenAI, the OpenAI Foundation and OpenAI Group both have the same mission, and that the terms of the new structure require the for-profit side to advance that mission.

What does this mean for OpenAI?

The way OpenAI puts it, this move is the best of both worlds for the company. It asserts that it will continue to operate with the same values and goals as it did prior to this restructuring, while at the same time having more freedom to raise capital to fund those efforts.

That second point is certainly true. CEO Sam Altman has been working for nearly two years to restructure the company into something that can more easily compete financially with other for-profit companies in the AI space, like Amazon, Google, and Meta. Other strictly-AI companies, like Anthropic and xAI, also have this type of structure.

Already, the move has solidified funds for OpenAI: The Japanese-baed SoftBank had previously pledged to a $40 billion investment, with $10 billion in April and another $30 billion in December. However, that investment was contingent on the company's restructuring plans. Had OpenAI not restructured, SoftBank would've dropped its investment to $20 billion. By bolstering its for-profit core, OpenAI earned itself that extra $20 billion.

OpenAI has also agreed to extend an agreement with Microsoft that allows the latter to use and sell OpenAI products. The original agreement ran through 2030, and allowed OpenAI to cancel the deal if the company achieved AGI. But now, the deal runs through 2032, even if OpenAI achieves AGI, so long as the tech has the "appropriate safety guardrails." An independent expert panel will make the call on whether OpenAI has achieved AGI. Rights to OpenAI's research will still be capped when OpenAI achieves AGI, or by 2030, whichever comes first.

It's no secret that AI is big business, so this move could realistically continue OpenAI's many financial successes. It may also heat up the race to achieve AGI, as it now allows Microsoft to pursue that benchmark with OpenAI's technologies as well. But against this news is a lingering, and concerning, question: Are we in an AI bubble? And will that bubble burst? OpenAI currently has $1 trillion in AI deals, though only pulls in $13 billion in actual revenue. Perhaps its restructuring will allow it to develop more lucrative revenue streams, but even still, AI is generating a lot of investment without the tangible returns you'd necessarily expect.

CNN’s Dana Bash was stunned by House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) reasoning behind not calling Republican lawmakers back to Washington, D.C. during the government shutdown.

During a press conference Monday, Johnson said GOP representatives told him “they are having some of the most meaningful interactions at a time of great crisis with their constituents they’ve ever had. And that’s really, really important. So, I don’t want to pull them away from that work right now when their insight and their counsel and their assistance…that is most essentially needed back home.”

“I have so many questions!” Bash exclaimed after playing the clip. “I mean, they’re literally called representatives. They are elected by people not to stay in their districts — although they do, of course, meaningful work in their districts and their staff do as well — but they’re elected to be representing their districts here in Washington.”

Reporter Manu Raju, who asked Johnson at the press conference why he didn’t recall the lawmakers, called it a “very strategic decision” by Johnson “to try to pressure Senate Democrats to pass the House’s bill.”

“But the House has been out of session for more than five weeks, and they could do any number of things unrelated to the government shutdown,” Raju said.

“Well, they could be preparing the spending bills as they’re supposed to be — 12 or 13 — as it’s supposed to happen,” Bash interjected.

Raju continued, “Absolutely. And they could also — committees could be — any, all the committees could be having hearings. They can have votes on bills. They can actually bring those bills to the floor that are not related to government funding, passing an agenda that kind of drives their messaging forward. And they’ve chosen not to do it!”

Bash mentioned that they could be swearing in Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ), “a Democrat who was just elected a month ago.”

“And that’s another question about why he’s not doing it, but also, bringing those members back would take Johnson off message on this,” she said.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

The post Dana Bash Stunned by Mike Johnson’s Reason for Not Calling Lawmakers Back to DC first appeared on Mediaite.

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Walmart joins Best Buy in announcing its Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale early. This year, Walmart seems to take a page out of Best Buy's strategy and split the sale into smaller ones. Here's everything we know so far about Walmart's Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale for 2025.

What is Walmart doing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

Walmart will hold three sales, all called "Walmart Deals Events," from November to December, according to their press release. The sales will be a combination of online and in-store for members and non-members.

When are Walmart Deals Events in 2025?

The events will take place on three different dates:

Walmart Black Friday Deals Event 1: November 14–16

• Available online and in stores for the entire event

• Walmart+ members get five hours early access online beginning Nov. 13 at 7 p.m. ET

Walmart Black Friday Deals Event 2: November 25–30

• Online only: November 25–27

• Online and in stores: November 28–30

• Walmart+ members get five hours early access online beginning Nov. 24 at 7 p.m. ET

Cyber Monday: December 1

• Online only

• Walmart+ members get five hours early access online beginning Nov. 30 at 7 p.m. ET

What deals can I expect for Walmart Deals Events?

Walmart says that you can expect up to 60% off top brands and thousands of deals under $20. The sale will include toys, electronics, home products, fashion, and beauty from brands like Delonghi, Apple, LEGO, Dyson, La Roche Posay, Levi’s, and Barbie. Here is a list Walmart dropped on their press release:

• 98” TCL QLED 4K Google TV – Was $1,798.00, Event Price $998.00

• Barbie Malibu Travel Playset – Was $21.88, Event Price $12.00

• Calvin Klein Obsession 3 Perfume – Was $97.00, Event Price $31.50

• Cate & Chloe Lauren 18k White Gold Plated 22mm Hoop Earrings with Swarovski Crystals – Was $130.00, Event Price $15.99

• Cozy Haven Faux Fur Throw Blanket – Special Buy, Event Price $13.00

• Cricut Explore 3 Bundle – Was $410.00, Event Price $197.99

• Dreo 1500W Portable Space Heater – Was $99.99, Event Price $38.99

• Dyson V12 Detect Slim Cordless Vacuum Cleaner – Was $729.00, Event Price $399.99

• Ford 24V Ride-on – Was $599.99, Event Price $299.99

• Goodyear Reliant All-Season Tire (entire line) – Event offer $30 off per tire

• Govee 65” LED Lights – Was $99.00, Event Price $69.99

• Keurig Iced Essentials – Was $79.00, Event Price $44.97

• KONG Classic Stuffable Dog Chew Toy, Medium – Was $13.99, Event Price $11.96

• L’ange Hair Styler – Was $119.00, Event Price $48.30

• LEGO Speed Champions 2-pack – Was $44.98, Event Price $25.00

• Melissa & Doug Chunky Puzzles – Was $13.99, Event Price $7.00

• Men’s & Women’s Levi’s Signature Denim – Was $24.98, Event Price $15.00

• My Texas House Glitter Trees (set of 3) – Was $159.66, Event Price $78.00

• Philips Norelco 7200 Electric Razor – Was $99.96, Event Price $79.96

• Reebok Women’s Sport 2-piece set – Was $40.00; Event Price $25.00

• Scoop Women’s Knee-High Kitten Heel Boots – Was $52.00, Event Price $30.00

• Sportspower Bounce Pro 14' Round Trampoline with Safety Enclosure – Was $229.00, Event Price $149.00

What other retailers are doing Black Friday sales?

At the moment, only Best Buy has officially announced its Black Friday sale, but you can expect Target and Amazon to have competing sales as well.

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

Republican lawmakers are call over the prospect of not having a plan in place to lower health care costs, as Democrats continue to dig in their heels over the issue at the heart of the government shutdown.

At issue are the Affordable Care Act tax credits set to disappear under President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill that Democrats are refusing to back in a continuing resolution to fund the government.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) told CNN that he had a recent phone call with President Trump who made it clear “he doesn’t want to hurt people.”

“His concern is, is there something better we can do?” Van Drew said, adding that he told the president, “I don’t think we’re going to get it done in a matter of weeks.”

Van Drew said he agreed with those in his party pushing to have a plan in place to help working-class voters afford health care.

“It’s morally bankrupt not to do it and it is politically stupid,” Van Drew said.

MAGA Republican Sen. Josh Hawley (MO) is also sounding the alarm about how unaffordable health care has become for average Americans and that his party needs to do something about it.

“If we don’t do anything their premiums are gonna almost double. They’re too high right now. We’re talking about working people,” Hawley said. “So it’s just, we’ve got to do something. This is totally unaffordable.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told CNN, “I go to bed at night thinking about health care. Of course, I’m always thinking about what we can do to find a solution. I say that but it’s more pointed forward, because we need [Sen. Chuck] Schumer to open the government.”

ACA open enrollment begins November 1, which is considered a “critical deadline” for there to be some congressional agreement on what to do about the situation.

Read Raju’s article on CNN.com here.

The post ‘We’ve Got to Do Something!’ GOP Lawmakers Call Out Party’s ‘Morally Bankrupt’ Inaction On Health Care Costs first appeared on Mediaite.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper dropped a pile of video receipts featuring President Donald Trump claiming prices are “way down” — then broke the bad news that repeating it doesn’t make it so.

On Friday’s edition of CNN’s The Lead, Tapper followed his supercut of Trump’s claims with a fact-check on grocery prices and a reminder of Trump’s repeated campaign promises to bring prices down:

TAPPER: Let’s turn now to a repeated claim from President Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: As you know, groceries are down. It’s all down.

Our groceries are down.

Because our groceries are down.

Grocery prices are way down.

And prices are way down. Groceries are down. Everything is down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So frequently repeated. Those clips are just from the past two weeks alone.

But what are the facts? Newly released inflation data shows that grocery prices are actually up again last month and have been on the rise since President Trump took office in January. The average price of groceries rose 0.3 percent from August to September. On average, grocery prices are about 1.4 percent higher than in January when President Trump took office, and they’re 2.7 percent higher than they were at this point last year.

And we can break it down even further because every category of groceries has seen price increases over the last year, most shockingly coffee, which is up 18.9 percent, as well as beef and veal up 14.7 percent.

Now, economists say it’s normal for grocery prices to rise over time, but we need to point out that two of President Trump’s signature policies, his tariffs on imported goods, such as coffee, and his crackdown on illegal immigration, which impacts many workers, especially in the agricultural industry, are certainly contributing to the spike, according to economists.

Watch above via CNN’s The Lead.

The post CNN’s Jake Tapper Drops Barrage Of Receipts On Trump Over Rising Grocery Prices first appeared on Mediaite.

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) said that if you oppose “woke” policies like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs that means you are undoubtedly “anti-Black,” before trashing President Donald Trump’s administration, saying it was looking to “reverse” American racial relations to a “pre-1960s world.”

The prominent Democrat made those provocative claims on the All the Smoke podcast, hosted by ex-NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, on Saturday.

“All this anti-woke stuff is just anti-Black, period, full stop,” Newsom told the pair early in the episode. “All the CRT, ESG, DEI stuff, that’s all it is. It’s this great purge.”

Beyond DEI, Newsom was referring to Critical Race Theory and Environmental, Social, and Governance Programs — two issues the president has used executive orders to counteract since returning to the White House in January. Trump also issued several EOs to dismantle DEI within the federal government earlier this year.

The Trump Administration, according to one of those EOs, said it was terminating “to the maximum extent allowed by law, all DEI, DEIA, and ‘environmental justice’ offices and positions,” earlier this year, as well as positions like “Chief Diversity Officer” within the federal government.

Newsom said the Trump Administration is looking to move American back decades in terms of how it treats minorities. He pointed to the Supreme Court potentially changing a key section to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as one example Republicans are looking to undo 60 years of racial progress.

“They’re literally putting America in reverse, quite literally, to a pre-1960s world,” Newsom said.

He added it is an “unf**king believable moment” where Republicans are “re-writing history” and “censoring historical facts.”

Later in the episode, the ex-hoopers and Newsom talked about Trump using ICE and Border Patrol agents to deport illegal immigrants. Newsom blasted the president for it, saying he was causing “terror” on the streets of California, as well as other places like Chicago.

While Barnes and Jackson were willing to have Newsom on, it looks like the governor is still waiting for an invite from Joe Rogan. Newsom dared Rogan to invite him onto his top-rated podcast earlier this month, after Rogan called Newsom a “bulls**t artist.”

Watch above via All the Smoke.

The post Gavin Newsom Rips Key Trump Vibe: Being ‘Anti-Woke’ Is ‘Just Anti-Black’ first appeared on Mediaite.

Former first son Hunter Biden tore into Fox News as “state-run media” for President Donald Trump, but also named at least one Fox host he feels good about in a recent sit-down.

Hunter Biden sat down for a rare three-hour-plus interview on Substack this week on a wide variety of topics that included extensive commentary about CNN and some of the network’s personalities.

Elsewhere in the interview, Biden unloaded on Fox News and the way the network has “backfilled” the Trump administration — but did have a kind word for Jessica Tarlov:

TOMMY CHRISTOPHER: We talked a little bit about CNN. What about Fox News?

I’m gonna tell you my attitude about Fox News is I don’t pay, maybe not enough attention to them, but I just–.

Because I think that they’re like not helpable. But a lot of people on my side do and you know, what’s your feeling? What’s your assessment of Fox News? Are there people there that you think are worth? People who aren’t?

HUNTER BIDEN: I don’t watch it, I stop watching even the cuts on social media unless it’s Jessica Tarlov fighting– is that her name? The one–

TOMMY CHRISTOPHER: Burnt her reputation–

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, exactly.

But I look, I think that Fox is nothing more than state-run media right now. And I don’t– and again, I really mean it. That’s not an exaggeration.

That’s not a, you know, hyperbolic way of me expressing something that isn’t. It is state-run media.

I mean look at the number of people that went from Fox, the Murdoch Empire, whether it was The New York Post or Fox, and are serving in the administration in the way that they’ve been backfilled from Fox News, whether it’s producers or actual on-air people.

And the ways in which we know from the text messages that leak through the Dominion case and through the other one.

TOMMY CHRISTOPHER: Smartmatic.

HUNTER BIDEN: –is the way in which they have a direct feed into the administration, into not just Trump himself, but to the decision makers on that. And the way they feed the ecosystem.

The ecosystem that can begin with the podcast world and then it goes to Fox and then it gets laundered through The New York Times and then loops back around again, all being directed from the White House.

So I don’t think that it’s crazy for me to say, Is that you know when you see text messages of coordination and Sean Hannity who’s kind of the Wolf Blitzer of Fox News it’s kind the quarterback of the other team is, you know, is campaigning for Donald Trump!

I mean what what what are we asking ourselves? You know I don’t know.

Biden had more to say about Fox News — which you can see via the Tommy Christopher Substack interview series, or on Mediaite later this week.

The post Hunter Biden Trashes Fox News as Trump’s ‘State-Run Media’ first appeared on Mediaite.

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Pretty much every fitness tracker and smartwatch has an optical heart rate sensor, but they're not always perfectly accurate. Not only can you get better accuracy by wearing a chest strap heart rate monitor, you can even use a chest strap without a fitness watch—just connect it to your phone. Chest straps don't break the bank, either; my favorite is around 30 bucks.

CooSpo H808S Chest Strap Heart Rate Monitor

$29.87 at Amazon

$36.99 Save $7.12

Shop Now

Shop Now

$29.87 at Amazon

$36.99 Save $7.12

Why chest straps are more accurate than watches

Chest straps come in two varieties: electrical and optical. When I say a chest strap is more accurate than a watch, I'm talking about the electrical kind. These use electrodes that contact your skin, and sometimes you may need to wait until you've worked up a bit of a sweat before they get a good connection (although I haven't found that to be an issue in my workouts).

That makes them far more accurate than optical sensors, which are the type you'll see on the back of a smartwatch. Optical sensors are also on armbands like the Polar Verity Sense, and on some chest straps. Most chest straps are the electrical type, including the Polar H10, the Wahoo TRACKR, and the Coospo I mentioned above. You can tell an electrical sensor because it has metal connectors or contact points instead of a green light.

The optical sensors in watches use a green light, and they pick up your heart rate by detecting the light that bounces off your blood vessels as the blood pulses through. Relying on light means that they don't always work as well through tattoos and may struggle with accuracy on darker skin tones. They can also be confused by outside light, which is why they aren't as accurate if your watch is worn loosely or is too large to get a good fit. Runners sometimes experience "cadence lock," where the cadence of their footsteps (170 steps per minute, let's say) causes the watch to think your heart is beating at exactly that rhythm. If your app reports a heart rate that is the same as your cadence, there's a good chance it wasn't measuring your heart rate at all.

You can sidestep all of those issues by wearing a chest strap. As I've found in my device reviews, even the most accurate watches won't always record your heart rate perfectly 100% of the time. If you care a lot about your heart rate in training, just get the chest strap.

Why the Coospo is my favorite

I've been wearing a cheap Coospo heart rate monitor for years. I didn't borrow it for a review, I just bought one because I wanted a cheap and easy way to track my heart rate without a watch. (I was doing a lot of kettlebell workouts, and the kettlebell rests gently on your wrist during overhead exercises, where a watch would be in the way.

I've kept using it since then. It's been happily paired with an iPhone, a Peloton, an Apple Watch, a series of Garmins, and probably a bunch of others I've forgotten about. When I write the "accuracy" section in my fitness watch comparisons and reviews, I use the Coospo (either paired to my phone or to a third watch) to get a gold-standard heart rate graph to see how the tested devices stack up.

The Coospo heart rate monitor I have is a slightly older version of the one linked above (since I've had it so long). It uses Bluetooth and also supports ANT+, and it gets its power from a coin cell battery that I have to change out roughly once a year. It doesn't have any on-device storage space, which I don't need, because it beams the data directly to the connected watch or phone. It's comfortable and easy to adjust. The device pops off so I can wash the strap. And even though there are more expensive straps out there (like the $100 Polar H10, which I've heard is great), I cannot think of a single chest strap feature I could possibly care about that I don't already have.

How to use a chest strap without a watch

On my iPhone, I found the simplest way was to download the Polar Beat app (free on iOS and Android), which pairs with my strap over Bluetooth. If you’re going for a run or a bike ride while carrying your phone, it can also use your phone’s GPS to track your pace and record where you went on a map.

I tend to use mine for indoor cycling, though, and for kettlebell workouts (which I log as “other indoor”). Using a strap without a watch is especially handy with kettlebells, since the bell otherwise knocks into the watch in certain positions. But if you have a fitness watch and you like using it, most models will allow you to pair the watch with a chest strap directly. That way you can get the most accurate readings, and be able to check the numbers from your wrist.

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo was harshly criticized for agreeing with a radio host Thursday that Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani would have cheered for the 9/11 attacks.

It all started when Cuomo appeared on Sid & Friends in the Morning, hosted by Sid Rosenberg, on Thursday. While talking about the New York City mayoral debate the previous night, Cuomo suddenly brought up the September 11 attacks. His argument was that New York deals with countless crises and other serious events, and that Mamdani would not be able to handle it all.

“Can you imagine Mamdani in the seat [on 9/11]?” Cuomo said.

In response, Rosenberg insisted that Mamdani would be “cheering” for the terror attack. Cuomo chuckled before adding, “That’s another problem.”

Hours later, responded on X/Twitter by proclaiming the comments were “just disgusting.”

Countless other notable political figures took to social media to condemn the exchange between Cuomo and Rosenberg.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), who notably disagrees with Mamdani on the subject of Israel and Gaza, called the comments “beyond disgusting and disgraceful.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) called the men in the audio clip “sick and hateful.”

New York State Sen. Gustavo Rivera called the former governor a “pathetic, racist clown.”

Many others shared similar sentiments.

—

The post ‘Truly Despicable’: Andrew Cuomo Slammed for Agreeing With Radio Host That Mamdani Would ‘Cheer’ for 9/11 first appeared on Mediaite.