Several.com: One Buyers Guide.  Your Go-To Resource...

Several Footer col 1

Several Footer col 2

Several Footer col 3

Several Header

several.com

Several.com: One Buyers Guide. Your Go-To Resource

Stay up-to-date with the latest consumer updates & trends on our news page. Get expert insights & extensive coverage to become a more informed & savvy consumer.

Find the Latest Consumer News & Updates

<h2 id="stores-open-on-labor-day">Stores Open on Labor Day</h2>

Grocery shopping won't be a problem this year. Most major chains plan to run their normal hours:

<ul>
	<li>Walmart: Open regular hours nationwide</li>
	<li>Target: Open regular hours, though some locations trim closing time slightly</li>
	<li>Kroger: Operating as usual, including sister brands like Pick 'n Save, Harris Teeter, Fred Meyer, and Ralphs</li>
	<li>Aldi: Open, but hours vary by location</li>
	<li>Publix: Open regular hours</li>
	<li>Whole Foods: Open, with some local variation</li>
	<li>Trader Joe's: Operating on typical hours</li>
	<li>Home Depot: Open, and often running Labor Day tool and appliance sales</li>
</ul>

<h2 id="pharmacies---convenience-stores">Pharmacies & Convenience Stores</h2>

<ul>
	<li>CVS: Stores and pharmacies remain open, though hours vary by location</li>
	<li>Walgreens: Retail stores follow regular hours, but most pharmacy counters close for the day except at 24-hour locations</li>
</ul>

Most convenience store and gas station chains plan to stay open as usual for holiday travelers

<h2 id="stores-closed-on-labor-day">Stores Closed on Labor Day</h2>

A few retailers give employees the full day off:

<ul>
	<li>Costco: Every U.S. warehouse closes, along with attached pharmacies, tire centers and food courts</li>
	<li>Sam's Club: Stays open but typically closes earlier than usual, often around 6 PM local time</li>
</ul>

<h2 id="restaurants-open-on-labor-day">Restaurants Open on Labor Day</h2>

Eating out is easy this year. Chains expected to operate on or close to normal hours include:

<ul>
	<li>Denny's</li>
	<li>Domino's</li>
	<li>Dunkin'</li>
	<li>IHOP</li>
	<li>In-N-Out</li>
	<li>Jack in the Box</li>
	<li>Jersey Mike's</li>
	<li>KFC</li>
	<li>McDonald's</li>
	<li>Noodles & Company</li>
	<li>Olive Garden</li>
	<li>Panera Bread</li>
	<li>Pizza Hut</li>
	<li>Qdoba</li>
	<li>Red Lobster</li>
	<li>Ruth's Chris Steak House</li>
	<li>Sonic</li>
	<li>Starbucks</li>
	<li>Taco Bell</li>
	<li>Waffle House</li>
	<li>Wendy's</li>
</ul>

Since Labor Day tends to be a heavy dine-out day, calling ahead for a table is a smart move if you have a specific spot in mind.

<h2 id="what-s-closed--banks--mail----government-offices">What's Closed: Banks, Mail, & Government Offices</h2>

This is where the holiday actually shows up. Banks, government offices, and financial markets take the day off.

<ul>
	<li>Major banks, including Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank, Capital One, PNC, Truist, and U.S. Bank, will have branches closed</li>
	<li>The Federal Reserve is also closed, so wire transfers, direct deposits, and check processing may not clear until Tuesday, September 8</li>
	<li>The <a href="https://www.nyse.com/markets/hours-calendars" target="_blank">New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq</a> both close for the holiday, pausing trading until the next business day</li>
	<li>All U.S. Post Office locations are closed, with no regular residential or business mail delivery</li>
	<li><a href="https://www.fedex.com/en-us/service-guide/holiday-schedule.html" target="_blank">FedEx</a> will not deliver packages on Labor Day, aside from its Custom Critical service, and UPS typically follows a comparable holiday schedule</li>
	<li>Federal offices, courts, DMVs, and public libraries will be closed, along with most state and local administrative buildings</li>
</ul>

<h2 id="trash---recycling-pickup">Trash & Recycling Pickup</h2>

Whether your trash gets picked up depends entirely on where you live. Some cities shift the whole week's collection schedule back a day, while others aren't affected since pickup isn't typically scheduled for Mondays anyway. Your local sanitation department's website is the most reliable place to check.

<h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2>

Labor Day honors the American workforce and has been a federal holiday since 1894, when President Grover Cleveland signed it into law. This year it celebrates more than 155 million workers nationwide. With banks and government offices closed but stores and restaurants largely open, the biggest disruption most people will notice is simply not being able to get to the bank or the post office. Everything else, from groceries to a Labor Day cookout run, should go on pretty much as normal.

For more articles like this, visit our <a href="https://several.com/news/tag/lifestyle" target="_blank">Lifestyle News Page</a>!

Labor Day 2026: What's Open, Closed, & Store Hours

What's Open on Labor Day 2026? Full Stores & Banks Guide

According to a mid-year report from the <a href="https://www.riaa.com/news/riaa-reports-6-billion-in-mid-year-recorded-music-revenue-with-growth-across-every-major-category/" target="_blank">Recording Industry Association of America</a>, CD revenue hit $171.1 million in the first half of the year, up 58.6 percent from about $107.9 million over the same stretch in 2025. Units sold rose 45.7 percent, to 17.5 million discs, up from roughly 12 million, per figures first reported by <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/04/cd-sales-are-making-an-unexpected-comeback-amid-a-retro-tech-boom/" target="_blank">TechCrunch</a>.

What makes the jump stand out is how recently the format was still fading. CD revenue dropped 7.8 percent across all of 2025, down to $312.4 million from $338.9 million the year before, with units falling 11.6 percent, to 29.5 million. This time last year, CDs were still doing exactly what everyone expected them to do, which was quietly disappear. Then they didn't.

CDs are not the only type of physical media seeing sales rise. Vinyl revenue climbed 17.7 percent, with units up nearly 21 percent, to about 26.5 million, and the RIAA's "other physical" bucket, which lumps in cassettes, SACDs, and whatever else doesn't fit the main categories, jumped more than 73 percent. Physical media revenue overall was up 25.9 percent, to $731.5 million, for a corner of the business that spent the last fifteen years being treated as a rounding error.

Separately, the analytics firm Luminate clocked CD sales up 16 percent, to 16.3 million units, over the same period. Some of that is K-pop doing what K-pop does, BTS's tenth album, ARIRANG, moved serious numbers on disc, but Luminate found sales were still up nearly 7 percent with K-pop pulled out of the equation.

A good chunk of the growth is coming from listeners who never owned a CD player and aren't buying one now either. Donald Nde Jr., 22, told <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/01/06/gen-z-cds-buying-collection" target="_blank">Axios</a> he picked up his first CD as a tribute to MF Doom, less because he needed a way to play it and more because he wanted to own it. These are listeners who grew up entirely inside streaming, where an album can disappear from a library overnight because of some licensing dispute nobody warned them about. It makes sense that they'd want something a platform can't reach into and pull back.

It's a different engine than the one that drove vinyl's comeback, which mostly ran on people old enough to remember buying records the first time. Most people under 25 buying CDs right now skipped the format completely the first time it was relevant. If there's nostalgia in it, it's for an era they only caught the tail end of, or missed outright, pieced together from old music videos and whatever discs got handed down.

For the ones who never left, the appeal was never that complicated. Rob Sheffield, who kept his CD collection through the years everyone else was unloading theirs, has made the case that the format's real selling point is how little it asks of you. No algorithm queuing up the next track, no app making decisions on your behalf. You put the disc in, and it plays the album the way it was sequenced.

One footnote worth flagging: the RIAA switched its methodology in 2025, from estimated retail value to wholesale value, so revenue figures on either side of that line aren't apples to apples. Unit sales don't have that problem, and they tell the same story regardless, down through 2025, then a hard turn upward this year.

Streaming still accounts for the vast majority of how people listen to music, and none of this changes that. What it does change is the assumption that the CD's story was already finished. For now, at least, it isn't.

For more articles like this, visit our <a href="https://several.com/news/tag/lifestyle" target="_blank">Lifestyle News Page</a>!

CD Sales Rise 58% as Part of Physical Media Resurgence

CD Sales Are Up, Led by a New Generation of Buyers

The updated rules focus heavily on when graphic violence appears in a video. If it shows up within the first seven seconds, the video remains ineligible for ad revenue. Under <a href="https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9725604?hl=en" target="_blank">YouTube's September update</a>, graphic gaming content appearing between eight and 15 seconds can now earn ad revenue.

YouTube considers brutal killings and serious injuries that focus on blood, bodily fluids, or visible body parts to be graphic gaming violence. This includes scenes involving dismemberment or decapitation. If the graphic details are blurred or hidden, the video may also remain eligible for ads.

The change could be especially useful for GTA 6 creators. The Grand Theft Auto series gives players plenty of freedom to cause chaos, which means gameplay videos can quickly include scenes that fall under YouTube's violence rules. GTA 6 is also likely to produce a huge number of walkthroughs, livestreams, reviews, and gameplay compilations after launch.

Livestreamers face a slightly different situation since they cannot simply edit out an unexpected violent moment as it happens. YouTube's advertiser-friendly rules apply to livestreams, but the platform generally allows violence that occurs naturally during unedited gameplay after the first seven seconds. That means a GTA 6 streamer would not automatically lose ad revenue because a mission or unexpected encounter turns bloody. Streams deliberately built around graphic violence, such as repeatedly gathering and killing non-player characters for shock value, can still lose monetization.

For creators uploading edited videos, the new rules make it easier to understand what could affect monetization. A violent gameplay moment no longer carries the same risk of demonetization simply because it appears somewhere in the video. Where it appears and how the violence is presented now matter more.

That does not mean every violent gaming video will qualify for ads. Content made mainly to showcase graphic violence can still lose monetization. A compilation centered on repeatedly killing non-player characters, for example, could still fall outside YouTube's advertiser-friendly guidelines.

YouTube also applies stricter rules to certain forms of violent content. Sexual violence, graphic torture, hate-motivated violence, violence involving minors, and graphic attacks on identifiable real people remain ineligible for ad revenue.

Gaming violence was not the only area addressed in the latest guidance. YouTube also clarified its rules around recreational drugs. Gaming and scripted content that depicts the use, sale, or promotion of recreational drugs can now qualify for ad revenue under its advertiser-friendly guidelines.

For more articles like this, check out our <a href="https://several.com/news/tag/tech" target="_blank">Tech News</a> page!

YouTube Eases Gaming Violence Ad Rules Before GTA 6 Release

YouTube Changes Ad Rules for Violent Gameplay Before GTA 6 Release

Dimoldenberg shared the news in a personal note on Instagram, leaning into the reflective tone that has long defined the series. "When I was 17, I thought that I might meet the love of my life on a date in a chicken shop," she wrote. "Since then, I've spent my entire twenties sat across from the most incredible people, people I'd always dreamt of meeting. All of them charmed me (some more than others), and I definitely charmed them." She described the show as "my very own romcom" and thanked the audience that stayed with her for more than a decade, adding that she never expected to end it but felt it was time "to move on from this adventure and onto a new one." No premiere date has been set for the farewell season, though a statement indicated it will feature "a last line-up of eclectic guests."

The numbers behind the show's run are hard to overstate. "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/@AmeliaDimoldenberg" target="_blank">Chicken Shop Date</a>" premiered on YouTube in March 2014 and has since produced 114 episodes, format that pairs a deadpan, faux-romantic interview with the distinctly unglamorous backdrop of a local fried chicken shop. Over that span, the series crossed a billion views on YouTube and helped grow Dimoldenberg's following across platforms to more than 4.4 million, a jump from roughly 830,000 in 2022 alone. The show picked up the Indie Series award at the Streamy Awards in 2022 and has hosted guests including Billie Eilish, Andrew Garfield, Cher, Paul McCartney, Central Cee, Daniel Kaluuya, Little Simz and Jack Harlow, among many others.

What began as a low-budget YouTube upload grew into a reference point for an entire genre of internet interview formats, one built on discomfort and specificity rather than the polished, promotional tone typical of late-night television. Dimoldenberg has said her on-camera persona is "an exaggeration" of herself, engineered to subvert the cheerful, eager interviewer archetype she found tiresome. That approach proved influential well beyond her own channel, as a wave of creators adopted similarly deadpan, hyper-specific interview setups in the years that followed, part of a broader shift in which online formats increasingly rival traditional talk shows for access to major stars.

Dimoldenberg's career has expanded considerably beyond the chicken shop in recent years. She has served as the Oscars' official Social Media Ambassador and Red Carpet Correspondent for three consecutive ceremonies, covering the 96th through 98th Academy Awards, and has appeared on programs including "Hot Ones," "Late Night with Seth Meyers" and "Saturday Night Live's" 50th anniversary red carpet special. Through Dimz Inc., which she founded in 2018, she has produced other original projects and launched Dimz Inc. Academy, an initiative aimed at widening access to creative media careers for young people. Looking ahead, she is reportedly developing a young adult drama for the BBC, which she has described as her version of "Skins," along with a romantic comedy film with Amazon MGM Studios' Orion Pictures.

For now, attention turns to the show's closing chapter. After more than a decade of turning fluorescent-lit fast food counters into press tour stables, Dimoldenberg is set to end "Chicken Shop Date" on her own terms, with the series' final guests and exact release timing still to be announced.

For more articles like this, visit our <a href="https://several.com/news/tag/lifestyle" target="_blank">Lifestyle News Page</a>!

Amelia Dimoldenberg Announces the End of "Chicken Shop Date"

g: Chicken Shop Date Is Ending, Amelia Dimoldenberg Announces

The platform is renaming its existing "AI creator" label to "AI-generated profile." Instagram says the new wording is more direct and should leave less room for confusion about what the tag actually means, that the person shown on a profile was generated or substantially built using AI, not a real human being behind the account.

The old label was purely optional and informational, and using it had no effect on how content got distributed. That's no longer the case. Accounts that feature an AI-generated person without disclosing it could now see their reach reduced, and in some cases lose eligibility to show up in recommendations altogether. Creators who do apply the label won't be punished for having an AI persona in the first place, and Instagram has been clear this isn't an attempt to push AI-driven accounts off the platform, just to make sure people know what they're looking at.

Instagram drew a fairly specific line on who actually needs to use it. The label is meant for accounts where the featured person doesn't exist in real life, meaning the profile is built around a fully AI-generated persona. If someone uses AI tools to touch up photos, clean up captions, generate a background, or make other creative tweaks, none of that requires the label. A real creator using AI-assisted editing tools is in the clear.

Anyone who already had the old AI creator label turned on will be prompted to review it, and can either confirm the AI-generated profile tag still applies or turn it off if it no longer fits. Creators with unlabeled accounts can switch the label on themselves through their profile settings.

Instagram has also acknowledged its own detection tools won't be perfect, so accounts that feel they've been mislabeled will have an appeals option through the Account Status dashboard. Once enabled, the label can show up in several places, including the profile page, search results, and alongside posts in Feed, Reels, and Stories, though it won't double up with the existing post-level "AI info" tag when that's already present on a piece of content.

Instagram framed the move as a direct response to user complaints. The company said people don't like discovering, often well after the fact, that a profile they assumed belonged to a real person was actually AI-generated the whole time. As synthetic influencers and virtual personalities have become a bigger part of the creator economy, that gap in transparency has turned into a real trust problem for the platform.

It also doesn't hurt that Instagram has had a rough stretch of headlines on this exact issue. <a href="https://americanbazaaronline.com/2026/09/01/instagram-to-label-ai-generated-profiles-487368/" target="_blank">Wired</a> reported earlier this year that a network of AI-generated male influencers was messaging users directly to funnel them toward a dating app. Separately, <a href="https://several.com/news/tag/tech" target="_blank">The New York Times</a> found a wave of AI-generated doctors and wellness figures dispensing advice while posing as real practitioners. Neither story pinned the blame solely on Instagram, but both fed into growing pressure on Meta to clean up how synthetic personas operate across its apps.

This policy builds on a test Instagram ran back in May, when it first introduced the AI creator label as a low-stakes, algorithm-neutral badge with no distribution consequences attached. That trial run apparently gave the company enough data and feedback to justify tying the label to actual reach penalties this time around.

For more articles like this, visit our <a href="https://several.com/news/tag/tech" target="_blank">Tech News Page</a>!

Instagram Cracks Down on Unlabeled AI Creator Profiles

Instagram's New AI-Generated Profile Label Rules Explained

<h2 id="what-the-research-actually-supports">What the Research Actually Supports</h2>

Unlike many supplements that become popular before researchers have much evidence to work with, creatine already has decades of research behind it. The <a href="https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/ExerciseAndAthleticPerformance-HealthProfessional/" target="_blank">National Institutes of Health's Office of Dietary Supplements</a> calls creatine one of the most thoroughly studied supplements for exercise and sports performance. Research supports its ability to improve strength, power, and performance during repeated high-intensity efforts, and creatine monohydrate remains the most widely studied form. Recent research also helps explain why interest is spreading beyond athletes. A 2026 <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15502783.2026.2668435" target="_blank">analysis of seven randomized trials involving 608 postmenopausal women</a> found small gains in lean mass and strength, with benefits clearest when at least 5 grams per day was combined with resistance training. However, it found no overall improvement in bone density.

Brain health is where the evidence becomes less clear. A <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3389/fnut.2024.1424972/full" target="_blank">2024 meta-analysis of 16 randomized trials</a> involving 492 people found benefits for memory and some measures of attention and processing speed, but no significant improvement in overall cognitive function or executive function. The evidence for memory was rated moderately certain, while evidence for several other cognitive outcomes was considered low certainty. That makes cognition a legitimate area of research, but not one where every claim circulating about creatine can be treated as settled science.

<h2 id="how-a-gym-staple-found-a-much-bigger-audience">How a Gym Staple Found a Much Bigger Audience</h2>

<img alt="" loading="lazy" src="https://dwy9ix7d387oz.cloudfront.net/attachments/2026/8/1077a40d-6f43-4127-93a6-78534ef432c0.jpg" />

The bigger shift, then, is not that creatine suddenly started working, but that its potential uses have expanded far beyond the gym. Research into aging, menopause, and cognition has helped drive that change, while wellness coverage and social media can make early findings sound far more conclusive than they are. &ldquo;May improve certain cognitive measures&rdquo; becomes &ldquo;boosts brain health,&rdquo; while a small trial showing gains in lean tissue without structured exercise becomes &ldquo;builds muscle without working out.&rdquo; The research behind these claims may be legitimate, but much of the scientific nuance can disappear by the time it reaches consumers.

Teenagers offer another example of how quickly that cultural shift is happening. <a href="https://src.isr.umich.edu/news-events/news/steroid-use-falls-but-creatine-use-climbs-rapidly/" target="_blank">University of Michigan researchers reported in 2026</a> that adolescent creatine use had risen sharply, with increases of 168% among girls and 90% among boys, though boys still made up the largest share of users. Researchers pointed to the growth of fitness influencers and online gym culture as possible factors. That does not establish that creatine is unsafe for teenagers, but teen-specific safety research remains much thinner than the adult evidence. The supplement's popularity, in other words, may be reaching new groups faster than researchers can answer questions specific to those groups.

<h2 id="where-the-evidence-starts-to-thin-out">Where the Evidence Starts to Thin Out</h2>

There is some irony in creatine's new reputation. It spent years being viewed by some consumers as a questionable bodybuilding shortcut despite substantial evidence supporting its use in healthy adults. Safety research has also continued to be reassuring. A 2026 analysis covering 684 randomized trials and more than 12,800 participants across creatine and placebo groups found reported side effects were infrequent, generally mild, and showed no consistent pattern of increasing with higher doses or longer supplementation.

Now, the risk is less about unfairly dismissing creatine and more about expecting too much from it. There is strong evidence behind its established exercise uses and encouraging research into muscle and strength as people age. Cognitive benefits and other newer applications remain less settled, and evidence from one population cannot automatically be applied to another. Creatine has good reason to leave its old gym-only reputation behind, but "well studied" does not mean "proven for everything." The supplement may deserve its mainstream moment, but the idea that nearly everyone needs it is a much bigger claim than the science currently supports.

For more articles like this, visit our <a href="https://several.com/news/tag/lifestyle" target="_blank">Lifestyle News Page</a>!

Does Creatine's Science Live Up to Its Growing Hype?

Why Is Everyone Suddenly Taking Creatine?

Could Zeekr Become the Next Global EV Brand?

Apple Replaces iPhone Upgrade Program With Klarna-Powered Leasing Option

Class I Bacon Recall: 12,000 Lbs Skipped US Inspection

Marvel Confirms 'Black Panther 3,' With New Hero, Set for 2028

Your Claude Conversations Might Show Up in Google Search Results

Netflix's Assassin’s Creed Set Revealed In Leaked Video

Volkswagen Reveals Tukan Pickup & Teases Most Powerful Amarok Yet

Stellantis Recalls 955,000 Vehicles Over Rearview Camera Issue

Ferrari's First Electric Car Sells for Record $40 Million at Auction

Toyota Camry Recall Hits More Than 508,000 U.S. Vehicles

BMW’s Spider-Man Dashboard Ads Spark Backlash

Ram Recalls 1.27 Million Trucks Over Seat Belt Defect

China Auto Bill Clears Senate Panel, Mercedes-Benz at Risk

Stripe & Advent International in Renewed Talks to Buy PayPal

Samsung in Talks to Invest in AI Startup Mistral at €20B Value

Pizza Hut's $2.7 Billion Sale Ends an Era

Fox to Buy Roku for $22 Billion in TV-Streaming Merger Deal

iHeartMedia, SiriusXM in Early Merger Talks as Radio Slows

Daisy Chain Fields & the Music Industry’s 30-Year Problem

Is Your Sugar-Free Gum Bad for Your Heart? What a New Study on Xylitol Really Shows

Labor Day 2026: What's Open, Closed, & Store Hours

Popular Today

Latest News

Trending

In Case You Missed It