Lifestyle

IKEA launches a new gaming collection that looks great everywhere

Launching in September

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Gaming furniture remains one of the gaudier things you can own. While the market has mercifully moved away from unnecessary frills and an obsession with RGB lighting, everyone can still see the vestiges of a gaming lifestyle. If you’re looking for something subtler, your options are sparse. IKEA is thankfully adding a splash of color for your gaming rig.

If you wanted neutral furniture that looks good in any home, IKEA is the place to go. It’s still hard to imagine that the Swedish furniture maker can do something about the gaming market, but then again, this isn’t their first rodeo. Building on its previous partnership with Republic of Gamers, the brand is back with a new line of furniture for gamers tired of sticking out like a sore thumb.

The new BRÄNNBOLL collection includes pieces of furniture that goes well anywhere. It includes a comfortable inflatable chair, a versatile gaming station, a subtle castor on wheels, and convertible chairs. You’ll also get a complementary set of throws, rugs, and mousepad for your new setup.

The collection will launch in September 2024.

Today’s gaming furniture market is still obsessed with dark brooding colors and a tiny-but-stark neon accent. You know the look. Thankfully, other brands, IKEA included, are coming up with new collections to add personality to the market.

Sure, there’s nothing wrong with showing off your personality. But it’s also cool to look good while doing it.

SEE ALSO: IKEA, ASUS ROG launching affordable gaming furniture, accessories

Entertainment

New Yorkers compete in Ted Lasso lookalike contest at Apple Fifth Avenue

Futbol is life!

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Apple Fifth Avenue or Nelson Road? New Yorkers gathered at the iconic flagship store as it transformed into a slice of AFC Richmond for a Ted Lasso lookalike contest celebrating the return of the hit Apple TV+ series.

Dozens of fans arrived in Ted’s signature look, complete with mustaches, visors, blue sweaters, and khakis. Inside the store, the AFC Richmond takeover continued with themed photo opportunities and hidden Easter eggs for longtime fans to discover.

The celebration continued across Midtown and Central Park, where brand ambassadors spread kindness with “Believe” signs, complimentary coffee and tea, a tunnel of cheering Teds for runners, and the Goldfish Zone, where visitors symbolically let go of worries by dropping paper fish into a fishbowl.

Photo by Apple

The takeover marked the return of Ted Lasso, which premiered its fourth season on Apple TV+ on Aug. 5, which arrives more than three years after Season 3 concluded in 2023.

Jason Sudeikis returns as the relentlessly optimistic coach, this time leading AFC Richmond’s newly formed women’s team while reuniting with familiar faces.

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Features

GadgetSnaps: Westminster Abbey

A thousand years of history, unfolded with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra

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Graphics by Vincenz Lee | GadgetMatch

Westminster Abbey isn’t just another stop on the London tourist trail.

It’s the stage for coronations, royal weddings, and burials that span nearly a thousand years, all still playing out under the same vaulted ceilings that have been standing since before most countries had names.

Once you get past the crowds and the audio guides, a quieter version of the abbey starts to show itself: worn stone steps, poets resting a few feet from kings, light that shifts across the nave like it’s in on the performance too.

While losing track of time in Poets’ Corner (yes, me, playing amateur historian for an afternoon), I unfolded the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra and decided the abbey deserved more than a quick tourist snap.


All photos captured using the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra.

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Features

The Death of BMI: Why the world’s most popular health metric is lying to you

Muscle mass, body fat percentage, and visceral fat tell you more about your health than BMI ever could, and your watch can finally measure them.

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Step on a scale at a doctor’s office and your health usually gets summed up in one number. Weight divided by height squared. That’s your BMI, and it’s been the default health metric for almost 200 years.

It was never built for that job. BMI was invented in the 1830s as a statistical shortcut for studying populations, not for telling an individual person anything meaningful about their body. It can’t tell the difference between a muscular athlete and someone who’s out of shape but happens to weigh the same. It ignores bone density, body water, and where fat actually sits in the body, which matters more than most people realize.

The metrics that actually matter are the ones BMI was never designed to catch: how much of your body is muscle, how much is fat, and where that fat is sitting.

The muscle question BMI can’t answer

Skeletal muscle is the body’s metabolic engine. It’s what keeps your resting metabolic rate up, what protects your joints, and what determines how well you move as you get older. Losing it quietly, without knowing, is one of the bigger blind spots in how people track their own health.

Fat isn’t one thing either. Subcutaneous fat, the kind just under the skin, carries far less risk than visceral fat, which wraps around internal organs and is directly linked to cardiovascular problems. A person can lose weight and still be carrying dangerous levels of visceral fat. BMI has no way of showing that.

This is also why short-term weight drops can be misleading. A lot of what shows up on the scale in the first week or two of any diet is water loss, not real change in body composition. The number moves, but it doesn’t mean much yet.

Why this is showing up in headlines right now?

Part of why this conversation is happening now, rather than five years ago, comes down to the rise of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound.

GLP-1, or glucagon-like peptide-1, is a natural gut hormone that signals fullness to the brain. These medications mimic it, slowing digestion and dulling appetite, which lets people eat significantly less and lose weight fast.

That speed is exactly what exposed the problem. Rapid weight loss burns fat and muscle together, not just fat. Lose 20 pounds on a GLP-1 drug, and both the scale and a BMI calculator will call it a clean win.

If a meaningful chunk of that was skeletal muscle, metabolic rate drops, joint support weakens, and the risk of physical frailty goes up, none of which shows up in that one number.

Dr. Hon Pak, Head of Digital Health Globally at Samsung Electronics, has pointed out that with GLP-1 therapies in the picture, raw weight lost can’t be the metric that defines success anymore. The focus has to shift to what kind of weight is being lost.

Kevin Duffy, CEO of iFit, has made a similar point: BMI stuck around because it’s easy to calculate from just height and weight, not because it’s the right thing to track. Muscle mass and body fat percentage matter far more, they’ve just historically been hard to measure outside a lab.

What your watch can measure now

Getting real numbers on muscle mass and visceral fat used to mean an expensive clinical scan. That’s the part that’s changed.

Samsung has built Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis sensors into the Galaxy Watch, sending a low-level microcurrent through the body to estimate skeletal muscle mass, body fat percentage, body water, and basal metabolic rate, all from your wrist.

For anyone losing weight, whether through a GLP-1 medication or a more traditional route, that gives real visibility into whether the weight coming off is fat or muscle.

It’s the kind of feedback that lets someone actually adjust, adding resistance training or upping protein intake, instead of finding out the hard way months later.

Samsung pairs this with Samsung Food, which uses AI to look at what’s actually in someone’s kitchen and suggest protein-forward meals that support muscle retention.

Karthik Poriya, Head of Product at Samsung Food, has noted that people tend to fixate on small day-to-day food decisions when what actually moves the needle is the trend over weeks and months. AI is what makes it possible to zoom out and see that trend instead of getting lost in it.

Combine body composition data with sleep tracking, activity monitoring, and a broader Energy Score, and the whole framework shifts. It’s no longer about getting lighter.

It’s about getting stronger, protecting muscle, and extending healthspan rather than chasing a number that was never built to measure any of that in the first place.

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