The wackiest headlines from the week as they would appear in a “Classifieds” section...

FOR SALE—ROBOT HEAD: Dyson announced its air-purifying headphones will cost $949. They include a bar that covers your mouth, guaranteeing you look absolutely deranged on your next flight.

FREELANCERS LOOKING FOR PROJECTS: 39% of workers in the US freelanced this year, up from 36% last year, per Upwork. That’s roughly 60 million Americans stressing over quarterly taxes.

REALLY OLD PANTS OFF THE MARKET: A pair of Gold Rush-era miner jeans (oldest known pair in existence) sold at auction for $114,000. They were recovered from an 1857 shipwreck off the coast of North Carolina.

CASTING CALL FOR COUGARS: TLC announced MILF Manor, a reality show that will pair eight women ages 40–60 with younger hunks on the beaches of Mexico. Jack Donaghy would be proud.

ISO STRANDED TRAVELERS: Turn your canceled flight into a feel-good story. After their flight was nixed, 13 strangers rented a minivan to drive eight hours from Orlando, FL, to Knoxville, TN, and documented the whole thing on TikTok.

SEEKING BAD BUNNY COVER BAND: After hundreds of ticket-holding fans were shut out of a Bad Bunny concert in Mexico City last weekend (thanks again, Ticketmaster), Mexico’s president asked the reggaeton star to hold another concert for free.

AI WILL DO YOUR DIRTY WORK: Stop spending valuable time talking to customer service. DoNotPay is launching an AI chatbot to get you a refund on your Comcast bill and cancel unwanted subscriptions.

ISO STOCK TIPS: Preferably on video. More than half of investors under 35 get their investment information from YouTube, according to FINRA.—MM, NF

Here are some illuminating scientific discoveries from the week to help you live better and maybe even not get tricked into buying something.

A penny saved. What’s the difference between $2.99 and $3.00? Basic math says one cent, but you probably perceive the difference to be about 22 cents, a new paper by a University of Chicago business school professor estimated. The research explores left digit bias—the phenomenon where consumers’ perceptions are overly influenced by the leftmost number in the price—and it brought receipts, analyzing retail scanner data on 3,500 products sold by 25 US chains. And while it might seem like every price you see ends in .99, the paper argues that retailers are leaving money on the table by underestimating this bias when setting prices.

Here’s what Covid vaccines have to do with auto insurance. A new study of 11 million adults in Canada revealed that people who weren’t vaccinated against Covid were 72% more likely to get into car accidents where at least one person had to go to the hospital. That doesn’t mean your jab protects against car accidents, of course, but it does suggest that folks who reject public health recommendations might also reject road rules. The difference was striking enough that the researchers said doctors should discuss road safety with unvaccinated patients, and that car insurance companies might want to factor it into their rates.

A mysterious coyote attack was demystified. The only known deadly attack by coyotes on an adult human took place in a Canadian park in 2009, and now scientists may finally understand why it occured. Wildlife researchers determined that because the weather had driven out many of the smaller animals coyotes rely on for food, they had turned to hunting moose, an unusually large animal for coyotes to eat. Because they got used to going after larger animals, the coyotes likely mistook the unfortunate hiker for potential prey, the researchers found.—AR

In an early Christmas gift to Youtube Shorts and Instagram Reels, this week the US Senate unanimously passed a bill that would ban TikTok on the government-owned devices of federal employees. Though the legislation faces an uncertain future in the House, several states have already enacted similar bans. And a bipartisan group of legislators wants to go further, proposing a full-on nationwide TikTok prohibition.

Lawmakers have nothing against lip-syncing challenges and 20-second plant care tutorials, but they see the short-form video app as a national security threat and point to a parade of red flags (no Communist Party pun intended) concerning privacy and security that arise from TikTok being owned by a Chinese company: Beijing-based ByteDance.

But TikTok is hoping to salvage the American Dream of virality for its 135 million US-based users. The company has been negotiating with the Biden administration for months, hoping to reach a deal to keep the company running in the US with changes to its data governance policies.

So how exactly could your twelve-year-old cousin’s favorite thing to do before bed be a threat to anything other than his emotional development?

The case against TikTok

FBI Director Chris Wray warned that the Chinese government could weaponize the powerful recommendation algorithm for “influence operations.” Wray also claims China can collect user data for espionage.

This isn’t just TikTok-phobia:

• Leaked audio from the company’s internal meetings obtained by BuzzFeed suggests that engineers in China have accessed US users’ data.
• Forbes learned of a Beijing-based ByteDance team’s plan to surveil the location of at least two Americans using TikTok data.
• Chinese law mandates that businesses share intelligence with the government upon request.

All this has lawmakers like Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) saying that Americans aren’t safe on TikTok unless ByteDance sells it to a company not based in China. US users themselves, too, appear worried. A recent YouGov poll found that 41% of Americans think TikTok is a national security threat (35% said they’re not sure).

But some experts think these concerns are overblown

If you’re worried that a CCP cadre might cringe at unpublished footage of you munching corn off a rotating drill, or steal your personal info, remember that TikTok isn’t the first app to hoover up user data.

Information researcher Clifford Lampe told Forbes he thinks TikTok “collects as much data as any social media platform.” And researchers from the University of Toronto concluded last year that the app doesn’t appear to collect “contact lists, user files, or geolocation coordinates” without user permission.

China also doesn’t need TikTok to get a hold of personal data: Hacking or buying it off a shady data broker (as it has done on multiple occasions) are options, too. Besides, much of it can already be found in public sources.

As for TikTok itself, it claims US user data can’t be accessed from China without the oversight of a US team and assures it would never share data with authorities in Beijing.—SK

Meal prep: Go on an epic quest to make the perfect latke this Hanukkah. And if the eight nights get too crazy, here’s a potential hangover cure.

Wellness: TikTok is currently obsessed with the “12-3-30” treadmill workout.

Book club: Friends star Matthew Perry’s memoir, released last month, will have your jaw on the floor.

Smart purchase: No one needs this perfect tea spoon, and thus it is the perfect gift.

Playlist: Meet Riopy, the French pianist that’s about to send your productivity through the roof. Related: The Spotify playlist “Française Indie” is also a lovely work vibe.

Life hack: Tips for how to keep your packages safe from porch thieves that go beyond screaming “Swiper, no swiping!!” (That would probably work too, though?)

Tech tip: Level up your WhatsApp group chat clout with these sticker packs.

Personal finance tips: Money Scoop is the thrice-weekly newsletter that makes you smarter about your money. Learn how to better invest, budget, spend, manage your taxes, and much more, all for free. Subscribe here.

It’s a big world out there. In this section, we’ll teleport you to an interesting location—and hopefully give you travel ideas in the process.

We all know that traveling to Europe has gotten cheaper this year, but some of these deals are getting a little ridiculous: Certain areas are paying you to move there.

Facing a declining population and a glut of abandoned homes, the picturesque town of Presicce in Puglia, Italy, is offering people about $30,000 to become a resident. There’s just one condition: You have to buy a property in Presicce that was built before 1991 and refurbish it.

Presicce is just one of several emptying small towns across Italy that are desperate for company. The southern village of Santo Stefano di Sessanio has offered people up to $52,500 to become one of their own. And Sicilian towns have been auctioning off homes for as little as one dollar (though that was before this season of The White Lotus aired).—NF

Last Sunday we asked readers: If you were put in charge of the World Cup in 2026, what’s one change you’d implement in order to make it more exciting to watch for people who don’t care about soccer?

Here were our favorite responses:

1. “Two perpendicular fields with four teams and goals playing each other and Mario Kart-style power-ups are spread around the field for players to pick up.”—Drew from Knoxville, TN
2. “Every 15 minutes, one random player on each team gets substituted for a fan.”—Sascha from Graz, Austria
3. “Nothing changes, except cleats are now clown shoes.”—Colin from Louisiana
4. “Every time the ball goes out of bounds it is swapped for a different spherical object (beach balls, tennis balls, bowling balls).”—Daniel from NYC

This week’s question

There isn’t one. Since the next two Sundays are Christmas and New Year’s, we won’t be sending newsletters on those dates. Stay tuned for a new Crowd Work question in 2023.