Entertainment
Halloween 2024 costumes embrace memes, DIY, and obscurity
All Hallow’s Eve is upon us, and who would have thought that this year’s biggest seasonal debate would be when exactly we should be celebrating Hallo-weekend?
While half of the country deals with the Halloween aftermath of last weekend and the other prepares for big plans at the end of this week, the holiday has already stoked a wide variety of clever and outlandish costumes, nods to one’s inner child, and viral TikTok trends. And though most of the chronically online costumes abided by today’s more careful social norms surrounding online posting, many continue to push the bounds what’s considered appropriate on the holiday.
Obscurity and memes dominate once again
Challengers trios and costumed salutes to brat summer conveyed one truth: Generic costumes remain out, with the most niche costumes commandeering attention away from even the most impressive celebrity ensembles. Modern Halloween is about being in on the joke, whether you like it or not.
The internet’s favorite reaction memes, like “sad ant” and “she’s so crazzzzzzy“, made iconic party appearances, and the internet’s favorite X posts, like “he wants that cookie so effing bad,” got transformed into iconic couple outfits.
The tongue-in-cheek “I hate gay Halloween” trend revived itself for another year, with an even greater flood of off-the-wall costumes than last season’s obscurities. Maybe you spotted one of the choir of French children playing tribute to music legend Serge Gainsbourg in a now viral video from 1988? Or a melancholy Oompa Loompa from the disastrous “Willy’s Chocolate Experience”? Perhaps you spotted a pair of horses, but not just any horses, the horses from Beyoncé’s duology album covers? Wait, maybe it was actually the carousel horse from Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield’s We Live in Time…
Everyone is in their DIY era
Whether it was an obscure meme only a select few would know or the year’s biggest Hollywood character, users online were going all out on their homemade outfits, esoteric props included.
Some of the most random entries: Figures on a crosswalk sign made with just blood, sweat, and a hefty amount of black poster board. The carefully crafted car passenger seat mentioned in the Chappell Roan song “Casual.” Multiple Dune sandworms made from sleeping bags, playtubes, and pipe cleaners capitalized on the franchise’s current popularity.
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Parents went all out for their children, as well, and documented the process, including lifesize Crocs sandas and alien abductions. Even dogs got in on the crafty action. Adults reinvigorated the spirit of their childhoods, too, from Spongebob and Webkinz characters to the Scooby Doo live action crew, iSpy Books, and Princess Diana Beanie Babies.
It suggests Spirit Halloween’s prepackaged outfits just aren’t serving the public’s needs anymore — In fact, the company may be pivoting to the Christmas market now.
The cultural appropriation conversation is more complicated
Still, Halloween season isn’t complete without some questionable costume choices. But where cultural appropriation was once a hotly debated faux-pas, its place in the cultural conversation has quelled. The nation’s political environment and celebrity obsession continue to complicate the matter.
On X, users quickly spread an image of a young couple dressed as Sean “Diddy” Combs and a bottle of Johnson’s baby oil — a reference to allegations of sexual abuse by the famous rapper, who is currently in prison, awaiting trial. The individual labelled “PDiddy” had painted his face dark brown, an egregious case of blackface. The baby oil theme was popular among others, as well.
When another user shared his costume from the previous Halloween season — a pun on the phrase “human trafficking” depicting him as a traffic light wearing a crown — a subset of users called out the post for making light of sex-based crimes.
Additionally, egregious instances of racism among Halloween posts enraged many online, reiterating to many that the holiday’s historic issues aren’t a thing of the past.
The environment is ripe for a renewed conversation about race and abuse as depicted in online media. Earlier this year, TikTok users went viral for resharing their old childhood costumes that were now deemed problematic, including Pocahantas and stereotypical “Indian” outfits. Years prior, users were ironically posting their “cancellable” costumes, most of which were clickbait posts to show off their favorite or funniest outfits.
While Indigenous “headdresses” are no longer the costume accessory of choice (despite the indie sleaze revival), some of the public’s popular Halloween choices still hark back to complicated, problematic eras in humanity’s history.
Earlier this month, TikTok user Chanci Culp, known as @allstyleschanceculp, stirred conversation about the ethics behind celebrity costumes, too.
“Oh God, I’m nervous,” she says to the camera in a now viral video, before explaining her hesitations about dressing up as a member of ’90s R&B group TLC. Culp asks her followers and Black women at large if dressing up as a famous Black celebrity would still be considered offensive. The video’s comment section was resoundingly, but not entirely, positive. In a follow up post generating more than 800,000 views, Culp explained her concerns further, pointing to her upbringing among overtly racist family members. “It’s not your burden to teach me what’s offensive and not offensive,” she tells the camera. “That’s my responsibility. I have to unlearn…” Halloween revelers, take note.
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Entertainment
Moon phase today: What the Moon will look like on March 1
It’s a new month, and while the Moon may appear totally full, we’re still a couple of days away from this yet. But in the meantime, there’s still lots to spot on its surface.
What is today’s Moon phase?
As of Sunday, March 1, the Moon phase is Waxing Gibbous. According to NASA’s Daily Moon Guide, 94% of the Moon will be lit up tonight.
With just your naked eye, tonight you’ll be able to see the Mares Imbrium and Crisium, as well as the Tycho Crater. If you have binoculars hanging about, dust them off and pull them out to catch a glimpse of the Mares Nectaris and Frigoris, and the Endymion Crater. And proud telescope owners will see all this and more, including the Apollo 15 and 17 landing spots, and the Schiller Crater.
When is the next Full Moon?
The next Full Moon will be on March 3. The last Full Moon was on Feb. 1.
What are Moon phases?
According to NASA, the Moon takes about 29.5 days to orbit the Earth. Over the course of this period, it moves through eight recognisable phases, what we call the lunar cycle. While the same side of the Moon always faces us, the amount of its surface lit by the Sun changes as it continues along its path. The shifts in sunlight create the different appearances we see from Earth, ranging from a fully illuminated Moon to a thin sliver or near darkness. The eight phases are:
New Moon – The Moon is between Earth and the sun, so the side we see is dark (in other words, it’s invisible to the eye).
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Waxing Crescent – A small sliver of light appears on the right side (Northern Hemisphere).
First Quarter – Half of the Moon is lit on the right side. It looks like a half-Moon.
Waxing Gibbous – More than half is lit up, but it’s not quite full yet.
Full Moon – The whole face of the Moon is illuminated and fully visible.
Waning Gibbous – The Moon starts losing light on the right side. (Northern Hemisphere)
Third Quarter (or Last Quarter) – Another half-Moon, but now the left side is lit.
Waning Crescent – A thin sliver of light remains on the left side before going dark again.
Entertainment
Men are paying to have negative posts removed from Tea app
As reported by 404 Media, online service Tea App Green Flags will scrub negative posts from anonymous gossip app Tea and similar online forums where women post about negative experiences they’ve had with men they’ve dated.
According to 404 Media’s interview with Tea App Green Flags’ founder, simply identified as Jay, the company launched two years ago to tackle posts on the many Are We Dating the Same Guy Facebook groups. His focus has turned to Tea in the past year.
“We just want to take down posts about people who are being defamed,” Jay told 404 Media. “And when I say defamed, it means like, ‘this guy has a small penis,’ or ‘this guy smells.’ That doesn’t fit the mission statement of what the Tea app was for, which is to warn women against people who are harmful, who are abusive, who are cheaters.”
Tea App Green Flags’ site claims to have removed over 2,500 posts from the Tea App for over 759 clients. Most of the service’s clients are men, although Jay noted that occasionally the wives and girlfriends of men posted on the app will reach out.
Prospective Tea App Green Flags clients must provide their name, age, location, and photo to the service, as well links to specific posts targeting them. According to Tea App Green Flags’ FAQs, they can only remove posts with direct references to a client. On average, the site says, a Tea App “takedown campaign” will take 21 – 30 days. The lengths of other takedowns depend on the platform.
Price-wise, it costs $1.99 to report one Tea account and up to $79.99 to report 25 of them. The company also offers “24/7 Reputation Monitoring,” which costs $19.99 per month and alerts clients when they appear on Tea or Facebook.
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Jay would not share the details of the takedown process with 404 Media. Tea does have a free form for takedown requests on its website, and says that it will “only reply to takedown requests submitted via the takedown portal.”
Jay emphasized to 404 Media that Tea App Green Flags does not extend its services to people who have been accused of sexual assault multiple times on Tea, or who have been accused by one person using their real name and photo in a Facebook group.
“Sometimes we find along the process that there are pedophiles or people who actually did what they did, and they’re very bad,” Jay told 404 Media. “So we say, ‘we’re not doing this.’ We can’t take a rap for that. We’re ethical. We just want to take down people who are being defamed.”
Tea markets itself as presenting “dating safety tools that protect women.” In July 2025, it was the target of a large-scale cyberattack that exposed thousands of user images including drivers’ licenses, leaving users vulnerable to doxxing and harassment. These images were provided as verification for accounts, although the app itself is otherwise anonymous.
Jay claimed to 404 Media that Tea’s anonymity “causes a cesspool of defamation,” and that he would prefer if women shared their faces, even if they are speaking out against dangerous men who have done them harm.
While Tea is meant to be a women-only app, Tea App Green Flags is proof of men’s infiltration of these online dating spaces. (Tea itself was founded by a man: Sean Cook.)
“I have a Tea app account. I’m a dude,” Jay told 404 Media. “All my reps have Tea app accounts. They’re men.”
Mashable has reached out to Tea for further comment.
Entertainment
NYT Connections Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for February 28, 2026
Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is for people who love golf.
As we’ve shared in previous hints stories, this is a version of the popular New York Times word game that seeks to test the knowledge of sports fans.
Like the original Connections, the game is all about finding the “common threads between words.” And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier — so we’ve served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.
If you just want to be told today’s puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for the latest Connections solution. But if you’d rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.
What is Connections: Sports Edition?
The NYT‘s latest daily word game has launched in association with The Athletic, the New York Times property that provides the publication’s sports coverage. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.
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Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there’s only one correct answer.
If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake — players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.
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Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.
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Here’s a hint for today’s Connections: Sports Edition categories
Want a hint about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:
Here are today’s Connections: Sports Edition categories
Need a little extra help? Today’s connections fall into the following categories:
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Yellow: Golf Equipment
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Green: Materials in a Baseball
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Blue: SEC School Locations
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Purple: First Names of Chicago Bears
Looking for Wordle today? Here’s the answer to today’s Wordle.
Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today’s puzzle before we reveal the solutions.
Drumroll, please!
The solution to today’s Connections: Sports Edition #523 is…
What is the answer to Connections: Sports Edition today?
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Golf Equipment – CLUB, GLOVE, RANGEFINDER, TEE
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Materials in a Baseball – CORK, LEATHER, RUBBER, YARN
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SEC School Locations – ATHENS, AUBURN, LEXINGTON, OXFORD
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First Names of Chicago Bears – CAIRO, CALEB, LUTHER, ROME
Don’t feel down if you didn’t manage to guess it this time. There will be new sports Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we’ll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.
Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today’s Strands.
If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.
Not the day you’re after? Here’s the solution to today’s Connections.
Chicago Fire score twice in stoppage time, blank CF Montreal
Layne Riggs holds on to claim first NASCAR Trucks street race
