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Happy Friday, {{first_name | friend}}. Before you scroll into this nice long weekend, let’s talk about the tiny glass rectangle you touch about a billion times a day. Ancient Romans had aqueducts. We have group texts, weather apps and whatever is living on our phone screens.
🦠 Guess how many more germs your phone screen carries than a toilet seat? A) The same, toilets are slightly worse, B) Three times, C) 10 times or D) Don’t say it, I eat lunch holding that thing? Take your guess, wash your hands and find the answer at the end.
📽️ A projector used to mean a complicated setup: This Aurzen Roku TV D1R skips all of that. It’s portable, 1080P, Roku built in and ready to go wherever you are. On sale now for $130, 35% off.*
Real talk: Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo have a bouncer, and he’s judging us. If you don’t click anything in these emails, he assumes you’re not into me and moves my newsletter to spam, right next to the extended car warranty guy. Don’t let me end up next to that guy. Click three links today. Any three. It takes 10 seconds and keeps me on the guest list. — Kim
TODAY’S DEEP DIVE
Working titles
Image: ChatGPT/Kim Komando
🤯 WOW! We lost Dolly Parton. The best tribute isn’t a post, it’s pressing play. She kidnaps her boss in 9 to 5, runs the office better without him and steals every scene. Six more greats follow, including Succession and the GameStop movie.
📖 Read time: 1.5 minutes
It’s a long holiday weekend, so I figure you might be looking for something not too laborious to watch. Last month, we said goodbye to Dolly Parton. The watch list starts with her, then six more about the job, the boss and the paycheck.
🍿 All in a day’s work
9 to 5: Dolly, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin kidnap their “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” of a boss and run the company better without him. Parton wrote the theme song on set, tapping her acrylic nails like a typewriter. Sing along for her. ▶Trailer
Succession: Four seasons of the billionaire Roy family knife-fighting over Dad’s media empire. The rich are not OK, and it’s delicious. ▶Trailer
The Office: The comfort-food rewatch, 200-plus episodes of Dunder Mifflin. That’s what she said. ▶Trailer
Air: Matt Damon and Ben Affleck on the day Nike bet the whole shoe budget on a rookie named Michael Jordan. Best sales pitch ever filmed. ▶Trailer
Dumb Money: The true GameStop story. A guy in a cat T-shirt rallies regular folks on Reddit, and together they briefly break Wall Street. ▶Trailer
The Founder: Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc, the milkshake-machine salesman who took McDonald’s away from the brothers who built it. You’ll never look at fries the same way. ▶Trailer
The Intern: Robert De Niro, a 70-year-old widower, outworks everyone at Anne Hathaway’s startup. Proof experience never goes out of style. ▶Trailer
FYI, Succession and Dumb Money earn their ratings. Language, mostly. OK, entirely.
🔎 Where’s it streaming?
Notice I didn’t say which service has what. On purpose. Streaming rights hop around monthly, and what’s true today is wrong by noon tomorrow.
Use the tool I use: JustWatch.com (free, no account needed). Type any title, and it shows every place it’s streaming, renting or selling, with prices. Two power moves:
Tap the “Free” filter. It surfaces what streams at zero cost on ad-supported services. Free beats another $7.99 trial you’ll forget to cancel.
Set up “My Services.” Check off the services you pay for, and it only shows those. No more renting a movie you already have. That’s your cash walking out the door.
Celebrate the American worker the right way this weekend. Watch other people have a worse Monday than you’ll ever have. And Dolly? Thanks for pouring yourself a cup of ambition. You were amazing. 💕
🎯 Send this to someone who has “9 to 5” stuck in their head this week.
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🍿 Movie night just went portable
4.6 ⭐ 1,100+ reviews
Want a big screen without buying a giant TV?
Aurzen’s portable projector throws a full HD picture onto any wall, sheet or fence in your yard. Roku TV is built in, so you can stream from the apps you already use without plugging in an extra stick. Perfect for movie nights, shows, live TV and game day. Football season is going to hit different.
Auto focus and auto keystone adjustment take the headache out of setup. Zoom lets you dial in the size without repositioning the whole unit. Dolby Audio helps it sound as good as it looks.
The Roku version is down to $130.* Prefer a different setup? There are Google TV and Linux options, though prices vary.
WEB WATERCOOLER
🗺️ Lake effect: Turns out the fastest route to No. 1 was refusing to take a detour. MapQuest is back from the dead because two maps renamed a lake. After Google and Apple Maps adopted Lake America, MapQuest kept Lake Ontario, and people rewarded the old-school holdout with downloads. The app jumped from #128 to #1 in under a week, racking up about 632,000 downloads, 50x last year’s pace. Perfect timing for MapQuest to declare they’re an AI model and file for IPO.
Heart data blackout: Imagine getting a new implant and learning that the heart part works, but the part that tells your doctor what’s happening doesn’t. A cyberattack on Boston Scientific means cardiac implants placed after Aug. 25 can’t beam back information to the patient’s doctor. If you or a loved one got one recently, call the cardiologist’s office and ask how they want readings sent. No timeline for a fix yet.
🛑 Stop wasting money on expensive, ineffective creams. They only treat the surface. The real reason your skin wrinkles, your hair thins and your nails break is that your body stopped making enough collagen. I fix it from the inside with NativePath. I put a scoop in my tea every morning to restore what time takes away. Get NativePath for a fraction of the retail price plus free shipping and a gift.**
Mars gets bars: Now you’ve got no excuse not to call your uncle who lives on Mars. NASA handed Blue Origin a contract worth up to $700 million to build a Mars orbiter that relays science data, pictures and mission chatter home by the end of 2028. One snag: New Glenn, Blue Origin’s massive reusable rocket, lost its only active launchpad in an explosion. It should reach Mars by 2030, so don’t hold your breath. Cool plan, tight installation window as they planet.
🥶 Peak stupidity: I felt cold just reading this. A small group asked Google Gemini to plan a Mount Shasta climb, then followed its eight-hour estimate and advice to skip fats because they take too long to digest. They left at 3 a.m. without enough food, water or warm clothing. The summit took 16 hours, the phone with the navigation app died during the descent, and rescuers found them the next morning. With no helicopter available, everyone endured a nine-hour walk of shame out. Thanks, Gemini.
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🏷️ The $17 organizing hack
4.4 ⭐ 24,000+ reviews
You know that drawer where batteries, cords, tape, keys and random screws go to disappear? Time to bring in backup.
The Nelko P21 label maker connects to your phone and prints clean, professional labels in seconds. The app comes loaded with templates and font options. No wrestling with a machine that feels like it belongs in 1987. Design it in the app, print it, done.
The tape is thermal, so you never run out of ink. Ever. The built-in cutter keeps labels neat, and the compact size makes it easy to stash in a junk drawer (the irony) when you’re done.
For $17 on sale, it’s one of the cheaper ways to make your house feel more under control.* Label the bins. Label the snack drawer if you must. I support you.
🎤 PODCAST: DIGITAL LIFE HACK
Spot fake Labor Day deals
That holiday “sale” price might not be real. I got the fix, which shows a product’s price history before you buy it. Plus, we chat about scammers using AI to sell giant, fake flowers. And how a fake AI monkey sparked a real police search. Bananas!
🎧 Or search “Komando” wherever you get your podcasts. I’m everywhere.
DEVICE ADVICE
⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Don’t want tonight’s viewing haunting your YouTube recommendations for a month? On mobile, tap your profile picture > Accounts > Turn on Incognito. A black bar across the top means you’re invisible: Nothing you watch touches your history or your feed. To come back, tap You in the bottom right. (Your Judge Judy marathon stays between us. Case dismissed.)
Chrome has a junk drawer, and it’s actually useful: You can pin Print, Delete browsing data, Create QR code and more right next to the address bar. Go to the three dots > Settings > Appearance > Customize your toolbar and pick your favorites. If you hit the same menu three times a day, that’s three clicks you’ll never make again. (I’m a sucker for fewer clicks.)
🤔 Is that Amazon message real? “Your Prime account is suspended.” “Your package couldn’t be delivered.” Scammers run on fake urgency. Before you tap anything, ask Alexa for Shopping if it’s legit, on the official website or in the Amazon app on iPhone and Android. Old-school option that still works: Forward it to verify@amazon.com and let Amazon tell you. Thirty seconds beats a drained card.
Make $200 feed four people for a week: Before you hit the store, hand a chatbot your budget and let it do the planning. Try: “I have $200 for groceries for seven days for a family of four. Make me a simple meal plan and shopping list. Reuse ingredients across meals, so nothing gets wasted.” Less food in the trash, and no more mystery science project in the crisper drawer. 😬 More tricks like this in my free Splash of AI newsletter every Thursday.
📹 Need a video call in the next 60 seconds? Head to Jitsi, make a room, share the link, start talking. Free, no account for anyone and you still get screen sharing, chat and encryption. Perfect for the “can we hop on for five minutes?” text that usually turns into 10 minutes of “can you hear me now?” Bookmark it here.
KIM’S DAILY DEALS
As an Amazon Associate, some links pay us a commission at no extra cost to you. Keeps this newsletter free. Thank you.
😌 Feel good head to toe
Upgrade your routine without the fancy price tag.
🌬️ Salon at home: Ionic hair dryer (34% off, $33)
4.4 ⭐ 22,400+ reviews
Rushing in the morning? The powerful motor fights frizz and stays surprisingly quiet. This review caught my eye: “My hair is all the way down my back, and it dried my whole head in three minutes.” — Brooke M.
Image: slopehill
🦟 Don’t scratch that: Plug an insect bite healer (17% off, $25) into your phone and press it against the itchy spot. Heat calms it in seconds.
Sniffy at night? These extra-strength strips (19% off, $17) open your nose and peel off clean when you wake up. You get 44 in the box.
🧦 Circulation boosters: Compression socks (44% off, $15) keep your legs from feeling like cement on long flights. Nurses swear by them.
📦 Care packages, delivered: Find dozens more personal-care picks waiting for you on my storefront. →
Prices and deals were accurate at the time of publication.
WHAT THE TECH?
Image: @rehan_shei via X
🍉 One in a melon
Remember when getting one of those Matrix-style shots required 40 cameras, a CGI team and the GDP of a small island?
Meet Atlas, a new AI model that can turn footage from a few regular cameras into a 3D world, then lets you move around the scene and generate completely new camera angles.
One demo used a few phones on tripods to capture some guys dropping a watermelon, and the result looks genuinely insane.
This stuff could make sports replays ridiculous. Imagine freezing a touchdown and flying around the receiver like you’re controlling the broadcast.
Seeing is believing, check it out. What do you call a dog that herds watermelons? A melon collie. (Ba-dum-tss!)
LOGGING OUT …
🎓 What you learned today: Dolly leads the Labor Day watch list, Gemini isn’t a mountain guide, MapQuest’s comeback, Blue Origin will help Mars phone home, and see some wild new camera angles. Data breaches are so common they feel like background noise, but leaked doesn’t mean stolen. Tomorrow, I’ll show you how credit freezes and alerts help you stay ahead of the damage.
🚽 The answer: C) About 10 times. Yikes. Researchers found phones carrying roughly 10 times more bacteria than most toilet seats. Why? We wash our hands. We clean our bathrooms.
But our phones? They spend all day collecting fingerprints, face oil, pocket lint and whatever mystery goo is hanging out at the bottom of your bag. Cute. That mystery acne breakout on the side of your face where you take calls? Looks like we’ve got suspect #1.
Screen-safe wipe, once a day. Your face touches that thing. My father’s sister is obsessed with killing germs. We call her Auntie Bacterial. (With that groan I heard, my job here is complete.)
🌿 Thank you for being here. I hope you picked up one thing that was “Wow!” I try to have a Wow day everyday! — Kim
Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily
🏆 THE KIM CHALLENGE: Forward this to ONE person who needs to hear it today. Pick the person who popped into your head while reading. You know who it is.
Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, Aurzen, Nelko, slopehill, @rehan_shei via X
Companies and products denoted by an asterisk (*) within this publication are paid sponsors or advertisements. As an Amazon Associate, the publisher earns from qualifying purchases. Statements regarding products denoted by a double asterisk (**) have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration; such products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This newsletter is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, medical, or professional advice of any kind. Readers should consult with a qualified professional before making any decisions based on this content. The publisher disclaims all liability for any loss, damage, or injury resulting from the use of or reliance on the information contained herein.