Melissa Kirsch
Lifehacker
New York, NY, United States
Contact Melissa
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Past articles by Melissa:
How to Lift or Cancel a Credit Freeze
You’ve heard the advice a hundred times: Freeze your credit. In a time when it seems like a different company gets breached by hackers every other day, it’s one of the easiest ways to keep your finances safe. → Read More
Lifehacker Is Hiring Writers and a Managing Editor
Are you full of strong opinions on the right way to do things that you’re dying to share with the world? Do you geek out over everything from how best to pack a suitcase to the finer points of cell phone etiquette? Do you give incredible advice, if you do say so yourself? Are you also a smart, curious, witty, detail-oriented writer or editor who wants to help people improve their lives? → Read More
What's New on Netflix the Week of February 10, 2020
You know when Netflix refers to something as “a three-week event” it’s got to be big. How big? I’ll be tuning in to former Mr. Jessica Simpson Nick Lachey and his wife Vanessa’s “social experiment” Love Is Blind (Thursday, just in time for Valentine’s Day, lovers!!!) to find out. The premise of the show is engineered to produce lasting relationships: couples fall in love and get engaged without… → Read More
What's New on Netflix the Week of January 27, 2020
The final eight episodes of BoJack Horseman arrive on Friday, so plan to have people over to watch because it’s the kind of show that’s better with a crowd and it’s been a long week; you can’t be bothered to go to someone else’s house when you’re this exhausted. Tell them to make you dinner. → Read More
What to Watch on Netflix the Week of January 21, 2020
Can we just chill this week and watch The Queen (Friday) and skip Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak (Wed.)? I’d much prefer to watch Helen Mirren and her corgis bustle around England than endure a docuseries about “the heroes on the front lines of the battle against influenza” but I feel like it’s my civic duty as the person who harangues my colleagues into getting flu shots every year to be… → Read More
What to Watch on Netflix This Weekend
Netflix must figure we’re all out watching Oscar contenders in the theater; why else would they leave us with so few decent streamables with which to fill our long weekend? Don’t worry—we’ve got you covered. Here are Lifehacker’s choices for what to stream on Netflix each day of your minibreak. → Read More
What to Watch on Netflix the Week of January 6, 2020
It’s a lukewarm broth of offerings on Netflix this week, a wintry mix of possibly amusing Netflix Originals that have cult potential but are—let’s face it—more likely to just pass the time than change your life. → Read More
What's New on Netflix the Week of December 30, 2019
2019 is dead and gone, and with it, we bid a bitter farewell to the dregs of Netflix’s streaming coffers, the meager end-of-year scraps they’ve been tossing our way these past weeks. 2020 starts with a bumper crop of modern classics that it’s hard not to be at least a little bit pleased by: we’ve got a slew of James Bond flicks (Tuesday), then Wednesday, January 1, Netflix blesses us with such… → Read More
What's Coming and Going From Netflix the Week of November 25, 2019
You turkeys probably think Netflix has you covered with a bunch of fun new content to hoover up while you’re squirreled away in your room, avoiding your cousin’s incoherent impeachment rant. And you wouldn’t be totally wrong to assume as much! Assume away, make an ass out of u and me, your cousin is doing just fine on his own! Let’s watch some teevee. → Read More
The Best Way to Clean Your AirPods
In a recent issue of the Recomendo newsletter, Mark Frauenfelder suggested a three-tool kit for cleaning earwax out of the mesh screen of your AirPods. My AirPods were in dire need of a deep clean, and the cleaning method we once recommended on Lifehacker is just gross, so I ran out and bought the wax-loosening tiny brushes, wax-catching poster putty and work-checking magnifying light… → Read More
What's Coming and Going From Netflix the Week of September 23, 2019
Ryan Murphy’s The Politician is the Netflix Original you’re either dying to see or would rather die than see, and your wishes/fears come true when it premieres on Friday. Ben Platt plays a kid running for student body president in a high school with enough palace intrigue to rival the court of Louis XIV. I have sat out the Murphy Madness since early Glee and Nip/Tuck, so I’m not sure I’m the… → Read More
What's Coming and Going From Netflix in October 2019
Welcome to October on Netflix, featuring a lot of splashy originals with massive stars that some executive somewhere is gnashing their teeth to powder over, hoping against hope their multimillion-dollar, big-name gambles will become hits. → Read More
What's Coming and Going From Netflix the Week of September 16, 2019
You loved it as a web series. Will you love it as a feature film? Between Two Ferns: The Movie arrives on Friday and while I remain skeptical, the trailer makes it look rather funny. Celebrities like David Letterman, Jon Hamm, Brie Larson and Chrissy Teigen join Zach Galifianakis for some deadpan faux talkshowing; Will Ferrell is there, doing his reliably amusing Will Ferrell thing, and… → Read More
What's Coming and Going From Netflix the Week of September 9, 2019
I’m all in on The I-Land (Thursday), a Netflix Original that apparently seeks to answer the question, “What if you went to the Fyre Festival and never left?” Kate Bosworth (or is that “Bo-worth”) stars as one of 10 people who’ve been marooned on an island and must endure the Road of Trials, achieve self-actualization, or suffer ... something terrible, I’m guessing death. It looks like Lost meets… → Read More
What's Coming and Going From Netflix the Week of September 3, 2019
Netflix! Do not screw this one up! The Spy (Friday) is a limited series starring Sacha Baron Cohen (yes, you read that right) as a Mossad agent who goes undercover in Syria in the 1960s. Does SBC have the chops to play it straight as a legendary spy in a series from Gideon Raff, the guy who wrote the series on which Homeland is based? Will this be another N.O. disappointment that shatters our… → Read More
What's Coming and Going From Netflix the Week of August 26, 2019
You and I are not the kind of people who get all “summer’s over, back to the grind” as soon as Labor Day rolls around; there are still three weeks left of sun and fun and we are prepared to maintain an easy-breezy state of mind until the first frost. Lo and behold, our friends at Netflix similarly do not see back-to-school time as a reason to get down to business—witness this week’s unremarkable… → Read More
What's Coming and Going From Netflix the Week of August 19, 2019
Indoor cats: bad news. We’re on the leeward side of August, which means severe Netflix drought until the oasis of Labor Day. I certainly won’t recommend Gangs of New York (Tuesday), but if you would, feel free to do so in the comments. I will be alternately bingeing Halt and Catch Fire (all four seasons available on Netflix) and riding my bike aimlessly around Brooklyn. See you next week. → Read More
What's Coming and Going From Netflix the Week of August 12, 2019
Mindhunter has my name written all over it: critically-acclaimed, bingeable, Netflix Original series about serial killers? A solid summertime diversion if ever there was one! Except I couldn’t get into it! I think my problem with Mindhunter is my problem with biopics: I can’t shake the fact that actors are portraying real people, and I spend my time wishing I were watching a documentary on the… → Read More
What's Coming and Going From Netflix the Week of August 5, 2019
I am counting down the seconds until I can watch The Family, a documentary about the secretive D.C. ministry whose influence penetrates the highest reaches of government. The group puts on the National Prayer Breakfast each year, but otherwise operates in the shadows, and if there is one thing I love it’s an underground organization secretly running the world that’s so pervasive they have to… → Read More
Lifehacker Is Hiring a Parenting Editor
Do you have strong opinions on everything from the best method for corralling wayward Legos to how to swaddle a newborn? Do you have revolutionary ideas for getting a picky eater to take a bite? Is your rad road-trip playlist guaranteed to keep the whole family entertained with precisely zero renditions of “Baby Shark?” Then we’d like to meet you. → Read More