The suburban maximalists making viral Christmas displays

PLUS: What to do with gift cards, viral christmas light shows, and disaster movies. View this email in your browser  |  Manage newsletter subscriptions 12.25.20   MONEY So You Just Got a Bunch of Gift Cards You'll Never Use. What Do You Do With Them? BY MOLLY MCHUGH Reap the spoils of the season—the spoils being the trove of gift cards you've amassed, and reaping being exactly what to do with them.   GEAR Christmas Lights Probably Aren't What's Wrong With Your Wi-Fi BY TIM MOYNIHAN A perfect storm of old lights, ungrounded wires, and bad Wi-Fi to begin with can slow down your holiday surfing. Here's what yule do to fix it.   SCIENCE One Man's Quest to Make 20-Year-Old Rum in Just Six Days BY WAYNE CURTIS Obsessive distiller Brian Davis invented a contraption for aging booze—fast.   IT'S LIT The Suburban Maximalists Making Viral Christmas Displays BY GRAHAM HACIA These holiday kings don't bring frankincense and myrrh—they bring dubstep and mirth. GET WIRED Happy Holidays from WIRED. Plus get free stickers! Last chance to get one year of WIRED access for $10 $5. Tech news and analysis you won't find anywhere else. Subscribe now.   BACKCHANNEL The Lie Generator: Inside the Black Mirror World of Polygraph Job Screenings BY MARK HARRIS Want to become a police officer, firefighter, or paramedic? A WIRED investigation finds government jobs are one of the last holdouts in using—and misusing—otherwise debunked polygraph technology.   PODCASTS What Is a 'Role-Playing Game' Anyway? BY GEEK'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY Jon Petersen's latest book, The Elusive Shift, shows how games like Dungeons & Dragons came to be known, controversially, as RPGs.   LIGHTEN UP Why HDR Looks Too Dark on Your TV, and How to Fix It BY WHITSON GORDON Wait, isn't that fancy new TV supposed to deliver bright, beautiful images? If yours is a little dimmer than expected, we can help.   KAWAIICOLOGY The Power of Kawaii: How Cute, Squishy Things Influence Us BY KRISTIN WONG Adorable puppies and baby cheeks don't just make us feel good—they change our behavior in surprising ways.   YEAR IN REVIEW Can Disaster Movies Survive a Pandemic? BY KATE KNIBBS Two new disaster movies, Greenland and Songbird, came out this month. Whether they succeed or not may change the genre's fate.     This e-mail was sent to you by WIRED. To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add our e-mail address, wired@newsletters.wired.com, to your address book.   View our Privacy Policy Unsubscribe or Manage your newsletter subscriptions