The second-to-last episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power confronts the aftermath of the Mount Doom eruption and takes us even deeper into the emotions of Durin, the tender-hearted Dwarf. If you need to catch up on last week’s episode, you can find it here.

Otherwise, spoilers lie ahead. You’ve been warned.

Let’s dig in! (But not too deep. There are… bad things down there.)

More like Khazad DOOM, amma right?

KHAZAD-DÛM — When we last left off, Elrond had gone to Durin with a bonkers story about how the Elves need exposure to mithril in order not to die (I know, I don’t love the backstory either) and Durin agreed to talk to his father, the king. Welp, in episode 7, negotiations don’t go well. Despite Elrond promising everything short of his silver sideburn clippers, King Durin still feels mining for mithril is too dangerous, even if it means all the Elves are going to shrivel up or whatever.

TOUGH NOOGIES, ELVES.

Back at home, Prince Durin is distracted about the decision. Disa is pissed too and actively takes it out on a small ax she’s blacksmithing. Forget meditation. I want a blacksmithing forge for the sole purpose of stress relief. Then Elrond turns up looking like he just stumbled onto a particularly nasty subreddit about the show. They exchange one of those looks that just says it all and Durin starts crying. Mercy, these two must have a special bond if there aren’t

With the holiday season rolling in, you may have thoughts of chunky sweaters, warm drinks and traveling to visit friends and family. Here are several gadgets that can make your trip much more comfortable, whether you’re traveling to distant locations or taking a well-deserved staycation. On Amazon, I’ve discovered some of the best travel-related finds for all budgets. All of these products have been examined and tested by me to ensure that they’re worthy of your money.

You gotta take some photos when you’re traveling. Comes with a super wide angle and macro lens that screw into the same holder. It’s ideal for single lens phones if you’re not ready to spend big bucks to upgrade just for more cameras. You can use it with Apple or Android phones with more than one camera, you just need to position it over the main wide camera.

And it comes with a clip-on LED light, lanyard and polishing cloth? Magic! I can’t believe this is only $40.

You’re receiving price alerts for Xenvo pro lens kit

What’s a vacation without music? This is a teensy tiny 6.2-ounce Bluetooth speaker that you absolutely need to find space for in your carry on because it’s small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. It’s only $18 and the sound is pretty impressive with rounded bass. Bonus points: It gets loud enough to fill a small room with music.

But it doesn’t stop there! It also acts as a remote shutter for your

black holes are awesome and powerful and can seem a bit scary thanks to their reputation for gravitational pulls so strong not even light can escape. So let’s give a big welcome to Gaia BH1, the new closest black hole to Earth.

Gaia BH1 is dormant, 10 times more massive than our sun and located about 1,600 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus (the serpent-bearer). The team behind the discovery says it’s three times closer to Earth than the previous winner, a black hole located in the Monoceros (unicorn) constellation. Gaia BH1 is close enough that the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab astronomy center considers it to be “in our cosmic backyard.”

“While there have been many claimed detections of systems like this, almost all these discoveries have subsequently been refuted,” said astrophysicist Kareem El Badry in a NOIRLab statement Friday. “This is the first unambiguous detection of a sun-like star in a wide orbit around a stellar-mass black hole in our galaxy.” Stellar-mass black holes are within five to 100 times the mass of our sun, as compared with supermassive black holes that live in the centers of galaxies.

El-Badry is the lead author of a paper on the black hole published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society journal this week. The lengthy co-author list points to how complex and challenging the study was. Finding this black hole was a science triumph with many layers.

The story starts with the European Space Agency’s Gaia space observatory, which

A Chinese rocket booster made an out-of-control reentry into Earth’s atmosphere over the water early Friday, the US military’s Space Command confirmed.

The booster is the first stage of a Long March 5B rocket that several days ago sent a large module to orbit to expand China’s Tiangong space station.

“The People’s Republic of China Long March 5B #CZ5B rocket reentered the atmosphere over the south-central Pacific Ocean at 4:01 am MDT/10:01 UTC on 11/4,” the US Space Command tweeted Friday.

The Long March 5B weighs over 20 metric tons, measures 10 stories tall and appears to lack the hardware to make a controlled reentry and steer itself toward a safe, planned splashdown.

Instead, the Chinese space program rolled the dice that what remained of the rocket, after much of it burned up in the atmosphere, would land somewhere on the majority of the planet’s surface that is either unpopulated or covered by ocean.

It seems the gamble worked out this time, but in the process the dramatic descent caused a 40-minute closure of a significant portion of Spanish airspace, causing delays to around 300 flights, according to the Reuters news agency. It also potentially littered debris over

This story is part of So Moneyan online community dedicated to financial empowerment and advice, led by CNET Editor at Large and So Money podcast hosted Farnoosh Torabi.

Social Security is one of the top-searched financial terms on the internet right now.

Interest in the topic spiked after recent news that current benefits would receive a significant cost-of-living increase to help keep up with high inflation. And as the midterm elections approach, we’re hearing again how some Republican politicians want to throw these federal benefits on the chopping block.

“This is an ideological battle that’s been going on for 85 years,” says William Arnone, CEO of the National Academy of Social Insurance, a nonpartisan organization that aims to educate the public on Social Security’s benefits.

Like many employed Americans, I’ve been dutifully paying Social Security tax since my first gig in high school (I was a hostess in a 1950s-themed diner). I speak for my generation when I say that if the government decides to strip us of our monthly paychecks in retirement — watch out, Uncle Sam. Prepare to find us marching in the streets protesting this thievery, walking canes in tow.

My audience is also perplexed about the fate of one of the few social insurance programs in this country. When I asked followers on Instagram to drop me their related questions, I immediately received dozens of queries. Their biggest concern is over Social Security’s future and what it means for retirement for this generation and