Goldfish crackers have officially been renamed "Chilean Sea Bass" crackers. Is this some kind of warped joke? A perverted Halloween snack scam? How very dare they! Do not fret—it’s just for a week.

The seven-day rebrand was chosen as an “adult-sounding” name, according to their website, but the contents of the package remain the same—baked Cheddar-containing fish-shaped bites. Goldfish are for kids. Chilean Sea Bass are for adults. They are one. (Sorry to get all The Substance on you.)

This name swap began on Wednesday and continues through Oct. 30. They’re not so easy to get your hands on, however. You won’t be able to find them in your local grocery store; if you're compelled to get them for the sophisticated name alone (and literally nothing else) you have to order them from the Goldfish Smiles website, priced at $7.38 for a two pack. Keep in mind, they might sell out on a daily basis. You'll have to sign on at 9a.m. Eastern Time to order while supplies last for the day. (Again, why though?)

As an adult who can choose from many crackers in the grocery store, I wish they went the extra mile and actually flavored them like Chilean sea bass. This is probably why I’m not in the marketing business. (That said, Calbee shrimp chips are freakin’ delicious, so why not take a risk?) If you too seek a flavor with a bit more pizzazz, the other popular flavors of Goldfish, like pizza, pretzel, Frank’s Red Hot, and parmesan might appeal to your refined adult palate. Those have the same old name, but at least they’re easier to find on the grocery store shelf.

NBC News NOW anchor and senior Washington correspondent Hallie Jackson asked Vice President Kamala Harris straight-up if she believes “the country is ready now for a woman and a woman of color to be president?”

While Harris hasn’t stressed her historic candidacy the way former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did, race and gender have been a strong current in this race. Trump has relentlessly attacked Harris over her race and gender, and polls have shown significant gender gaps between the two candidates.

Harris sat for a one-on-one interview with Jackson on Tuesday night’s edition of NBC Nightly News, during which Jackson asked the VP about not “leaning in” on her historic firsts — and if the country is ready for them:

JACKSON: Let me ask you about something that you said when you were running for president the last time around, back in 2019. At the time, you said that the elephant in the room was whether the country was ready for a woman and a woman of color to be president. So, let me ask you, as you sit here today, do you think the country is ready now for a woman and a woman of color to be president?

HARRIS: Absolutely, absolutely. And I am seeing that in terms of every walk of life of our country. You know I think part of what is important in this election is really not only turning the page, but closing the page and the chapter on an era that suggests that Americans are divided.

What I know from personal experience, from lived experience, and from my travels, even most recently, the vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us. And what the American people want in their president is a president for all Americans, which is the type and kind of president I pledge to be.

This is my life’s work. As you know, I started as a prosecutor, I never asked a victim of crime, a witness to crime, are you a Republican or Democrat. The only thing I ever asked them is, are you OK? And that’s what the American people want to know, regardless of their race, regardless of their gender, or their age. They want to know that they have a president who sees them and understands their needs and focuses on their needs, understanding we all deserve to have a president who is focused on solutions and not just fanning the flames of division and hate.

JACKSON: You’ve been reluctant to lean into, to talk about the historic nature of your candidacy on the campaign trail. Why is that?

HARRIS: Well, I’m clearly a woman, [laughs] I don’t need to point that out to anyone. The point that most people really care about is, can you do the job, and do you have a plan to actually focus on them?

JACKSON: I hear you on that.

HARRIS: That is, that is why I spend the majority of my time listening and then addressing the concerns, the challenges, the dreams, the ambitions, and aspirations of the American people. They deserve to have a president who’s focused on them, as opposed to a Donald Trump who’s constantly focused on himself.

I think that’s part of why people are exhausted with Donald Trump and his approach, because it’s all about himself and his personal grievances, and not about the American people, not about how are you going to help families, how are you going to help small businesses, how are you going to strengthen our economy?

These are the things I’m focused on. I’m focused on investing in the new industries, on which America should lead and be a global leader.

JACKSON: I ask because to implement the agenda that you want to implement, you have to win first. You have to win the White House.

HARRIS: Of course. Of course.

JACKSON: And right now, there is a big gender gap in this race. Fewer men support you right now than they did President Biden. Some of your allies have suggested there’s sexism at play. I wonder, do you think there is sexism at play here?

HARRIS: Let me just tell you something, you’ve come to my events, and you will see there are men and women at those events, whether it be small events or events with 10,000 people. So, the experience that I am having is one in which it is clear that regardless of someone’s gender, they want to know that their president has a plan to lower costs, that their president has a plan to secure America in the context of our position around the world.

They want a president of the United States who honors our military, who understands the importance of America’s leadership around international rules and norms, and that is regardless of gender.

JACKSON: So, is that a no?

HARRIS: And that’s how I will lead.

JACKSON: Do you not see sexism as a factor in this race at all?

HARRIS: I don’t think of it that way. My challenge is the challenge of making sure I can talk with and listen to as many voters as possible and earn their vote. And I will never assume that anyone in our country should elect a leader based on their gender or their race, instead that that leader needs to earn the vote based on substance and what they will do to address challenges, and to inspire people to know that their aspirations and their ambitions can and will be achieved through the opportunity to do that.

Watch above via NBC Nightly News.

Adobe tools like Photoshop and Illustrator are household names for creative professionals on Mac and PC (though Affinity is trying hard to steal those paying customers). But now, Adobe is gunning for the tablet drawing and painting market by making its Fresco digital painting app completely free.

While Photoshop and Illustrator are on iPad, Procreate has instead become the go-to for digital creators there. This touch-first app was designed for creating digital art and simulating real-world materials. You can switch between hundreds of brush or pencil styles with just a single flick of the Apple Pencil, and while there are other competing apps like Clip Studio Paint (also available on desktop), its $12.99 one-time fee makes it an attractive buy.

Released in 2019, the Fresco app, Adobe's drawing app for iPadOS, iOS, and Windows, attempted to even the playing field where Photoshop couldn't, but only provided access to basic features for free. A $10/year subscription provided you with access to over a 1,000 additional brushes, more online storage, additional shapes, access to Adobe's premium fonts collection, and most importantly, the ability to import custom brushes. Now, you get all of these for free on all supported platforms.

Even with this move, Adobe still has an uphill battle against other tablet apps that are already hugely popular in digital art communities and on social media. Procreate makes it quite easy to share, import, and customize brushes and templates online, giving it a lot of community support. Procreate is also very vocal about not using Generative AI in its products and keeping the app creator-friendly. With its influx of Generative AI tools elsewhere in the Creative Cloud, Adobe cannot make that promise, which could turn some away even if Fresco itself has yet to get any AI functionality.

What Fresco brings to the table is the Adobe ecosystem. It uses a very similar interface to other Adobe tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, making Adobe's users feel at home. You can even use Photoshop brushes with it. Files are saved to Creative Cloud storage and are backed up automatically, making sure you never lose any data. Procreate, on the other hand, stores files locally, which makes it easier to lose them. Procreate is also exclusive to the iPad and iPhones (through the stripped-down Procreate Pocket) while Fresco works with Windows, too.

It's unclear whether all of that is enough to help Adobe overtake years of hardline Procreate support, but given how popular Photoshop is among artists elsewhere, Fresco could now start to see some use as a lighter, free Photoshop alternative. At any rate, it's worth trying out, although there's no word on Android or MacOS versions.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow roasted Republican Senators Ted Cruz (TX) and Josh Hawley (MO) after newspaper in their respective states endorsed their opponents.

On Monday’s episode of The Rachel Maddow Show, the host pointed out the fact that Colin Allred — Cruz’s democratic opponent — received endorsements from the state’s five biggest newspapers. Cruz has recently made a habit of begging for donations on live TV as polls indicate his lead on Allred is shrinking.

“Imagine being a U.S. senator and having all your state’s biggest newspapers come out against you — basically all at once — while you’re running for re-election,” Maddow said. “That is the dream that Senator Ted Cruz has been living over the past few days. As of this weekend, all five of the biggest newspapers in Texas have endorsed Ted Cruz’s democratic opponent, Colin Allred. And we could call that the biggest embarrassment suffered by a senator at the hands of his home state newspapers in some time. But there’s stiff competition for that right now.”

Maddow then pivoted to Hawley, whom the St. Louis Post-Dispatch called “quite possibly the worst sitting senator in America right now” in its endorsement of his opponent Lucas Kunce. In the piece, the Post-Dispatch also quoted former Sen. John Danforth as saying his mentorship and support of Hawley in 2018 was “the worst mistake I ever made in my life.”

“Last week in Missouri, for example, Republican Senator Josh Hawley not only saw the St. Louis Post-Dispatch endorse his challenger — Democratic candidate Lucas Kunce — but Senator Hawley managed to flunk that endorsement with distinction,” Maddow continued. “The Post-Dispatch wrote, ‘For reasons above and beyond any partisan considerations. Josh Hawley is quite possibly the worst sitting senator in America right now.’ That’s the biggest paper in Josh Hawley’s home state.”

Watch above via MSNBC.

I’m convinced that the luckiest people in America are those who have a decent health insurance plan paid for by their employer—but just one, so there’s nothing to choose. For the rest of us, each November's open enrollment period starts anew the painful process of choosing the least worst plan offered by your employer. But the worst pain is reserved for those of us who have to navigate purchasing from the national Healthcare.gov site, or a state exchange.

I’ve been getting my health insurance that way for almost 10 years, and although I’ve gotten better at navigating the process, the process itself has not gotten any better. Since a shocking amount of each paycheck is going to go toward whatever I select, it’s important I make a smart decision that will save me the most money on healthcare over the year, while not sacrificing the coverage I need.

Here’s everything I’ve learned to help make that decision easier—and it can help you figure out how to navigate it too.

The health insurance terms you should know before shopping the exchange

To get off on the right foot, it’s helpful to know some basics about the terms you’re going to see mentioned over and over in healthcare documents:

• Health insurance is a plan you agree to buy into yearly, in which you (and in some cases your employer and the government) will make a monthly payment, called a premium. The point of these plans is to try and keep healthcare you might need over the year from bankrupting you, and is most useful in an emergency, though it also may cover some preventative care at low or no additional cost to you (see below).

• You can only choose these plans during open enrollment, a period of time at the end of the year with hard deadlines for when you have to make a purchase decision. Changing insurance outside of open enrollment typically requires a significant life change like a marriage, divorce, birth of a child, employment change, moving, or loss of your previous coverage.

• Nearly all plans are required by law to pay for the basic health care you receive over the year, too, like preventative care visits (like your yearly checkup when you’re not sick, versus a visit for an illness).

• How much the insurance company will pay the provider (a term that covers doctors, nurses, hospitals and labs, basically any place or person who provides health care) is called a benefit. Each time you get healthcare and use your insurance, your insurance will provide an explanation of benefits (EOB) that looks like but is not a bill, explaining how much they will cover and how much you may be responsible for. 

• Insurance companies think of your care as divided into tons of different categories, starting with your primary care provider (PCP) will be primarily responsible for coordinating your health care, who you see for your yearly preventative care visit, and might be required to be seen before you can go see a specialist (this permission to see a specialist is called a referral), which is any provider who has a specialized practice, like a cardiologist, obstetrician, or rheumatologist.

• Mental health care is considered separate from specialists or your PCP. Any test you get, like x-rays or bloodwork, are considered labs, and any medications are considered prescriptions. Every healthcare plan has a set of rules for how much they’ll cover for each of these categories that must be spelled out before you sign up, so as you’re poring over the website that offers you your various plan choices, you can see them ahead of time.

Given that, you’d think it would be easy to make apples to apples comparisons of which plan is best for you, right? Unfortunately, there are some additional factors that complicate the math. 

What’s the difference between a copay and a deductible?

Health insurance is great at throwing a lot of different terms and conditions at you for what it will pay for, and under which conditions. All plans start with a deductible, which is an amount of money the insurance company expects you to pay out of pocket before they’ll kick in anything. That said, the law requires nearly all plans to cover routine preventive care without using your deductible.

After you meet your deductible, which is usually thousands of dollars, insurance should start to help cover costs. At that point, what you contribute will be covered by the term coinsurance, which is usually expressed as a percentage. Your insurance may cover 80%, leaving you responsible for 20% of costs at that point, as determined by the terms of the coinsurance under your insurance plan.

All plans also have a number called the out-of-pocket maximum, which can sometimes be the same as your deductible, but is usually higher. This is the most that you will pay out-of-pocket in a calendar year. After you hit this number, insurance generally covers all your heath care costs, and coinsurance isn’t required anymore. Out-of-pocket maximums are routinely quite high, and are only meant to ensure you aren’t bankrupted, not to make sure health care is actually affordable. If you go to the emergency room, you need surgery, or are hospitalized or a lot of health care over a year, you’re likely to hit your out of pocket maximum.

Some insurance plans offer what’s called a copay. For specific services like gynecological care, medications, therapy visits, or doctor's visits, your insurance may cover some costs before your deductible is met, and all you’ll pay is a small amount, the copay. Not all plans offer this, so it’s important to look at the table of benefits and see if yours does. Plans that offer copays may have higher deductibles, but if you are unlikely to meet it, a copay might make sense.  

All these costs—which are on top of your premiums—can be pretty intimidating, particularly if you don’t think you’re likely to hit your deductible in a year. And all of these aspects of how you’ll pay for your care: premiums, copays, coinsurance, deductibles and out of pocket maximums, make it difficult to determine precisely how much money you’ll pay for your healthcare under each plan, and to compare one plan to another. 

HMO vs PPO vs EPO vs HSA

As you dig through plans, you’ll see that plans often include the terms HMO, PPO, EPO, and HSA. These refer to the kind of network of providers you’ll have access to, and that can be important for a few reasons. First, you may have providers you already have relationships with and don’t want to change, like a therapist, family physician, or a gynecologist, so you’ll want to ensure your provider is part of that network. Second, your health insurance only covers providers and services covered by the plan except in cases of emergency, so if you travel a lot or have special circumstances, you want to ensure you can access the providers you need, or you’ll get stuck with a bill you may need to pay out-of-pocket. 

• A preferred provider organization (PPO) is supposed to offer the most flexibility, meaning it should offer the most options for who you can choose to see for your health care, and allow you to make appointments with specialists without a referral from your primary care physician.

• A health maintenance organization (HMO) is supposed to be less expensive, by managing your care more. Most HMO’s require you to see your primary care provider before going to see any specialist, and the network of providers is often smaller.

• There’s now another variant, an exclusive provider organization (EPO), which is something between a HMO and PPO. You don’t need referrals and you get access to a larger network of providers, but you’ll have a higher deductible to offset that access. 

• Finally, there are health savings accounts (HSA), which is a savings account where you have money put aside from your paycheck that you’ll specifically use for your health care costs. Once money is in the HSA it can’t be used for anything else, but the money is carried over year to year, you don’t lose it. The reason people use HSA’s is that the money is put aside pre-tax, and you don’t pay taxes on it, and all the while, because it is a savings account, it accrues interest. Plans that offer an HSA usually have higher deductibles, but lower premiums.

How to make sure the kind of care you need is covered by a plan

A hard lesson many people face is learning that some plans include more restrictions and exclusions than others. Health care plans offered by religious institutions may not provide for gender affirming care or some types of health care for people who can get pregnant, for example. 

There are also healthcare networks that are so restrictive you can’t walk into your grocery store and get a vaccination, but can only get them at vaccination centers offered by the network. The same goes for prescriptions, which you may only be able to obtain from a specific pharmacy or by mail. This may not seem like a big deal, but less flexibility translates to fewer options. 

While almost everyone has a complaint or two about their health insurance, one way to get some basic advice on these types of particulars is to ask your local community (health insurance is highly regional), or even ask in a reddit forum for your city or region. 

If you’re digging through the health care plans offered by your employer, you should have a benefits coordinator in human resources who can answer questions, and your coworkers might be able to give feedback on how flexible plans have been for them.  

How to choose between healthcare plans (and figure out how much you’ll actually pay)

Though most marketplaces, whether through the state, your work or national exchange, make it difficult to compare the most important metric: what you’d actually end up paying out of pocket between premiums, copays, coinsurance, and deductibles. You can do this yourself, but you'll need to do some math to figure it out.  

Make a spreadsheet with last year’s healthcare expenses, with a row for each category: 

• Monthly premium x 12 months

• Your total number of primary care visits for the year 

• Your total number of specialist visits for the year 

• The total cost of your labs

• The total cost of your prescriptions

• The total number of your mental health visits for the year 

You can add rows for additional categories not covered here, such as hospital visits or procedures. Make a new column for each plan you’re considering. Now calculate what your out-of-pocket expenses would be for that plan. There’ll be a big difference, for example, if a plan doesn’t cover mental health care visits until you hit your deductible, versus a plan that offers a fixed copay. For instance, if you see a therapist twice a month, that’s 24 visits a year. That could cost you $6000 out of pocket if your plan doesn’t offer copays before your deductible has been met, or $600 if they do. The same is true for prescriptions and labs.

The totals at the bottom of the spreadsheet will show you what you’d pay out of pocket over the year for each plan and give you a realistic way to compare. Although your health care needs vary year to year, comparing to last year’s costs will give you a real way to compare plans to one another, and be, perhaps, the most accurate predictor of your real costs for next year.

The world of gaming monitors is competitive, but there are only a few brands that dominate the market for high-end monitors. LG is one of them, and their 2024 39" UltraGear OLED Gaming Monitor is a powerful gaming monitors that will turn some heads. Currently, you can get a new 39" UltraGear OLED Gaming Monitor for $719.99 (originally $1,499.99) from Woot, the lowest price it has ever been according to price-checking tools. Woot only ships to the 48 contiguous states in the U.S. If you have Amazon Prime, you get free shipping; otherwise, it’ll be $6 to ship. 

UltraGear OLED Gaming Monitor

LG 39GS95QE Ultragear OLED Curved Gaming Monitor 39-Inch WQHD 800R 240Hz 0.03ms Display HDR.

$719.99 at Woot

$1,499.99 Save $780.00

Get Deal

Get Deal

$719.99 at Woot

$1,499.99 Save $780.00

It's a good time to be shopping for a new gaming monitor, with the 49-inch Samsung Odyssey OLED G9 gaming monitor also on sale for $1,079.99 (originally $1,799.99). The LG is smaller, but it is just as powerful and over $350 cheaper. The curvature is 800R, which is a decent curve for a 39-inch, giving you that immersive feeling. As an OLED, you'd be getting the best colors, blacks, and pictures in the market, although you'd be giving up on screen brightness. LG was prepared for this and included an Anti-Glare with Low Reflection Display, which makes it less likely to see light reflections.

As far as specs, it has the standard for high-end gaming monitors: 240Hz refresh rate, a very good contrast ratio to make the color pop out (1.5M:1 contrast ratio), and NVIDIA G-SYNC and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro for smoother and fluid gaming. It has some cool features like picture-in-picture (PIP) and picture-by-picture (PBP) which lets you split the monitor into two to multitask (you can essentially hook up an Xbox in one screen and a PlayStation in the other). With a 96 ppi, text is not going to look amazing—but this monitor isn't for reading Google Docs anyway.

If you're an Apple user who likes to sign up and pay for services through the App Store, you'll need to scratch Hulu and Disney+ off your list: Disney is no longer allowing new and returning subscribers to its streaming platforms to register through its iOS apps.

According to customer support pages for both Disney+ and Hulu, payment through the App Store is no longer available for users who do not already have an active Apple-billed subscription. Instead, new subscribers and those who are restarting their accounts will have to sign up on DisneyPlus.com and Hulu.com. You'll be redirected to each respective website from the iOS apps.

This change does not currently affect existing Apple-billed subscribers, who can still manage their accounts via Apple Subscription settings, though it could in the future, as other companies have followed similar paths. Netflix ended new subscriptions via iOS in 2018 and cut off Apple billing for many existing users, including those in the U.S. and Canada, earlier this year. Spotify and Amazon have also limited App Store payments.

Why Disney is ending in-app subscriptions

The move by Disney to cut off Apple-billed subscriptions is likely the same as Netflix and Spotify, which stems from avoiding the up to 30% commission Apple has taken for in-app purchases. Apple has been the subject of numerous legal challenges related to its App Store policies, including an antitrust complaint by Spotify in 2019 and a class action suit comprised of U.S. customers who have made in-app purchases, which accuses the company of inflating prices. The former led to a nearly $2 billion fine from European Union regulators and changes to App Store fee structures for EU developers; the latter is scheduled to go to trial in February 2026. The U.S. Department of Justice has also filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple this year.

If you aren't sure whether you are billed through Apple for your Disney+ or Hulu subscription, check your billing party and payment information in your account settings.

Note that Disney also recently raised subscription prices across the board for its streaming services—those increases took effect earlier this month.