6/30/25 - Landline Mode, Coolcation, and Survivng Dino Attacks

Monday 6/30/25

Celebrate:

International Asteroid Day

National Meteor Day

International Sailor Moon Day

National Outfit of the Day Day

National Organization for Women Day

Please Take My Children to Work Day

Social Media Day

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Weekend Box Office

1. F1: The Movie $55.6M (the first commercial hit for Apple)

2. How to Train Your Dragon $19.4M

3. Elio $10.7M

4. M3GAN 2.0 $10.2M

5. 28 Years Later $9.7M

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Life was simpler before we had smartphones.  Here's a trick that gives you a little taste of what it was like . . .

Have you heard of a hack called "LANDLINE MODE"?  Google says searches for it are through the roof this month after a TikTok mom came up with it.

It's a custom setting that's supposed to make your phone feel more like a landline, or a cell phone from the late '90s.

Apps like Dumb Phone do it too, but the hack just uses your iPhone's built-in "Focus" feature.  You're essentially putting it in "Do Not Disturb," but your phone still rings.  Here's how to do it . . .

1.  Go to the "Focus" feature where you'd turn on "Do Not Disturb," and look for a plus button that lets you create a "New Focus."  Then choose "Custom" and give it a name.  The TikToker who did it called hers "Landline Mode."

2.  Set it so it turns off alerts for everything except phone calls.  Or, you can let text messages come through too if you want.

3.  Turn the volume all the way up, and leave it in a specific spot in your home.  So if it rings, you have to get up and go answer it, or let it go to voicemail.  That's where the "landline" part comes in.

Once it's set, you can toggle it on and off just like Do Not Disturb.  Android phones have similar options and should be able to do it to.  It's supposed to make you be able to focus like it's 1999.

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Take a "coolcation."  It means skipping the heat and traveling somewhere with cooler temps in the summer.  So places with mountains, lakes, and forests, for example.

According to Google Trends, searches for cooler travel destinations are way up.  People are supposedly swapping out Florida for Alaska, and ditching desert heat for places like Canada and Iceland.

It makes sense with extreme heat events becoming more common.  And it's not just about comfort . . . cooler spots often have fewer crowds this time of year, too.

So you might need to jump on the "coolcation" trend if a breezy 70-degree getaway sounds more relaxing than roasting at an overcrowded beach resort.

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Scarlett Johansson fights dinosaurs in "Jurassic World Rebirth".  But which of her past co-stars could survive a dino attack in real life?

For some reason, Jimmy Fallon posed that question to her on "The Tonight Show".  He actually made her choose between pairs of actors.  Here's how it went:

1.  Chris Hemsworth vs. Chris Evans:  Hemsworth, because he's Australian.  Quote, "they have a lot of scary venomous snakes."

2.  Bill Murray vs. Adam Driver:  Adam, because he was a Marine.

3.  Florence Pugh vs. Brie Larson:  Brie.  Quote, "I've watched [her] push a tire up a hill as part of her training.  I've watched Florence make a great bruschetta."

4.  Sophia Coppola vs. Wes Anderson:  Sophia.  Quote, "Maybe she’s had some interactions with big, honcho type of people.  She comes from that type of family."

5.  Michael Che vs. Scarlett's husband Colin Jost:  Colin, because he's from Staten Island.  Quote, "He's a tough guy."

"Jurassic World Rebirth" hits theaters Wednesday.

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Today's Useless Fact of the Day - The studio refused to greenlight "Groundhog Day" without the movie explaining why Phil becomes trapped in the same day.  Director Harold Ramis and a producer appeased the studio . . . but they deliberately placed the scenes too late in the shooting schedule to be filmed.

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