Month: August 2021

This article originally appeared on 02.15.16

Ever fallen into one of those Internet dating quizzes? You know, the ones that promise to categorize you? Like “what your astrological sign says about your relationship style.”

They can be fun, but we all know they’re mostly fluff.

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Those quizzes are the Internet version of this, basically. Image from Cuppysfriend/Wikimedia Commons.

What if I told you someone did find a way to “categorize” your love style but with actual real science?

Three relationship scientists asked about 400 couples to track how they felt about their relationship and how committed they felt to marrying their partner. They followed each of the couples for nine months. Not, like, literally followed them — that would be creepy. Instead, they just asked them a few questions and asked them to keep track of how committed they were feeling over time.

At the end of the nine months, the scientists collected all the couple’s responses and delved deep into the data. They found that couples did indeed tend to fall into one of four categories.

Prepare yourself for some soul searching because you might just be:

1. The Conflicted, but Passionate

Scarlett and Rhett from “Gone with the Wind.” Image from Insomnia Cured Here/Flickr.

This is the couple Facebook made the “It’s Complicated” relationship status for. Their levels of commitment tend to go up and down over time, especially after arguments. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. These folks use those conflicts to help them make decisions about the relationship, and in fact, they didn’t appear to be any more destined for a breakup than any of the other groups.

Also, as a bonus, they tend to follow those turbulent downs with passionate ups. “These couples operate in a tension between conflict that pushes them apart and passionate attraction that pulls them back together,” said study author Brian Ogolsky.

2. The Partner-Focused

Image from Yiannis Theologos Michellis/Flickr.

If your idea of a perfect date night is a long walk followed by eight hours of binge-watching “House of Cards” together, you might fall into this category.

Partner-focused couples tend to spend a lot of time together and share hobbies or leisure activities, and it’s that shared time that tends to propel them forward. They tended to be more careful and thoughtful about their relationship decisions — more likely to build from the inside out — and tended to be the most satisfied overall.

3. The Social Butterflies

Image from Esther Bubley, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection/Wikimedia Commons.

On the other hand, if your perfect evening with your partner involves grabbing all your friends and hitting the bars or breaking out Settlers of Catan for the hundredth time, this might be the category that best describes you. Social couples usually share a friend group and use that time spent with friends to inform and build their relationship as a couple.

“Having mutual friends makes people in these couples feel closer and more committed,” said Ogolsky. They also tended to be pretty stable and have higher levels of love based on feelings of friendship toward each other, which can be a good indicator for long-term happiness.

4. The Dramatic

Image from Sofi/Flickr.

Unfortunately, not every couple’s path is easy. Things may start out good, but tend not to stay that way for dramatic couples. This type of couple tends to make decisions based on negative experiences or stuff from outside the relationship.

“These couples have a lot of ups and downs, and their commitment swings wildly,” said Ogolsky. “You begin to see little things eroding, and you start to see the relationship in a negative light, and soon you give up,” said Ogolsky.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, dramatic couples tended to break up the most, twice as much as other couples.

So what’s best? Well, here’s where this article differs from a lot of those Internet quizzes. Because the answer is that there isn’t a “best” kind of relationship.

Image from Maryam Mgonja/Wikimedia Commons.

Different couples work and grow differently. These are different pathways and it’d be a mistake to assume there’s a “correct” way to love someone. Or even that you’re forever locked into a certain style of relationships. “These are not predefined, for-life patterns,” said Ogolsky.

And even in a single relationship, these patterns aren’t predictors of destiny — a dramatic couple may, in fact, outlast a social one, and a partner-driven couple may be as passionate as anyone you could ever meet.

And the researchers willingly admit in their paper that their study doesn’t cover all relationships. Many very happy couples have no desire to marry, for instance. And, it should be noted, that it wasn’t too long ago that the U.S. didn’t even allow all couples to get married!

Wait, you’re not going to tell me how to find the perfect, golden, eternally-happy relationship?! Why even study this then?

Because, in our hearts, humans are social creatures, Ogolsky explained. Love, friendship, passion, and commitment are part of the human experience. Understanding relationships can be as important to understanding ourselves as studying chemistry or biology. They can even affect your health!

As for what you can learn from all this, the important takeaway is that what you use to make decisions — whether from conflict, from the inside, from the outside, or from friendship — can influence your level of commitment. It might be useful for couples to think not just about their choices but how they make their choices.

So … what’s your category?

This article originally appeared on 04.27.16

Trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault and violence.

A recent video by Just Not Sports took two prominent female sportswriters and had regular guys* read the awful abuse they receive online aloud.

Sportswriters Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro sat by as men read some of the most vile tweets they receive on a daily basis. See how long you can last watching it.

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*(Note: The men reading them did not write these comments; they’re just being helpful volunteers to prove a point.)

It starts out kind of jokey but eventually devolves into messages like this:

All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.

And this.

These types of messages come in response to one thing: The women were doing their jobs.

Those wishes that DiCaro would die by hockey stick and get raped? Those were the result of her simply reporting on the National Hockey League’s most disturbing ordeal: the Patrick Kane rape case, in which one of the league’s top players was accused of rape.

DiCaro wasn’t writing opinion pieces. She was simply reporting things like what the police said, statements from lawyers, and just general everyday work reporters do. In response, she received a deluge of death threats. Her male colleagues didn’t receive nearly the same amount of abuse.

It got to the point where she and her employer thought it best to stay home for a day or two for her own physical safety.

The men in the video seemed absolutely shocked that real live human beings would attack someone simply for doing their jobs.

Most found themselves speechless or, at very least, struggling to read the words being presented.

Think this is all just anecdotal? There’s evidence to the contrary.

The Guardian did a study to find out how bad this problem really is.

They did a study of over 70 million comments that have been posted on their site since 2006. They counted how many comments that violated their comment policy were blocked.

The stats were staggering.

From their comprehensive and disturbing article:

“Although the majority of our regular opinion writers are white men, we found that those who experienced the highest levels of abuse and dismissive trolling were not. The 10 regular writers who got the most abuse were eight women (four white and four non-white) and two black men. Two of the women and one of the men were gay. And of the eight women in the ‘top 10’, one was Muslim and one Jewish.

And the 10 regular writers who got the least abuse? All men.”

So what can people do about this kind of harassment once they know it exists?

1. To start? Share things that make people aware it’s happening. Listen to the Just Not Sports podcast where they talk about it.
2. If you know someone who talks like this to anyone on the internet, CALL THEM OUT. Publicly, privately — just let them know it’s not OK to talk to anyone like this.
3. Don’t stop talking about it. Every day, the harassment continues. Don’t let it linger without attention.

There are no easy answers. But the more people who know this behavior exists, the more people there will be to tell others it’s not OK to talk to anyone like that.

But how do you move on from gravity? For nine seasons Kyle Lowry has been the compelling center point of a Toronto team that has orbited, collapsed, and reformed around him. The team’s story and its style — the hard-edged, dogged, make-life-difficult default — were borrowed from Lowry like a well-loved book, pages worn soft and yellowed by the fingers passing over them, adopted like cadence, a particular lilt in a voice spreading, beloved, beyond its original speaker.

Less a history keeper than someone who delivered some worth recording, Lowry, reluctant at first alongside DeMar DeRozan, saw the shape that such a young franchise could take and rather than leverage it for personal legacy, took a longview. With DeRozan there, neither had to take the full weight — of pressure, expectation, promise — they could split and shift it, prime themselves for the eventual cast they’d share for franchise face.

How strange it must have been for someone as young as Lowry then, his baby fat hiding hard edges of physicality he’d later lean into to lead with, to be in a place like Toronto. Due north of Houston and Memphis, their heat-dazed and slow moving rhythms, crossing into a welcoming country but a cold, occasionally circumspect climate. All but assured it was a stopover, a seasonal reset, hardly expecting a soft spoken DeRozan to approach him in the locker room just weeks after Lowry’s arrival and ask, earnestly, did he want to try something, did he want to buy-in.

It was the power of pride initially, it had to be. The both of them were hardly bound to the other and only varying, light ties to the franchise. A game of chicken, then, of who would blink first, balk, admit that to try and make something out of the Raptors — the Raptors? — had been a good laugh, one they could come back to wherever it was their paths were going to split and send them. But by now you know that neither DeRozan or Lowry ever blink, so the dare never materialized and they only built on the truth of it.

In that same brave, bold, and really only one option space, they both found their games. For DeRozan, a nervy pull-up from anywhere and footwork that outworks without breaking a sweat. Cocky without the ego. For Lowry it was a saccharine sweet smirk on two indefatigable legs, body as ready collateral. Cocky with a bit of an ego — at least then. It was through the work on court, never-ending, gradual, little glimpses of joy through some pretty dark storm clouds, that they both found each other, too. Ports from, and for, each other’s storms.

It was particularly cruel then how DeRozan was dealt, abruptly and secondary to the allegiance melting call of a disenfranchised Kawhi Leonard. DeRozan could at least put up the practiced wall of “it’s a business”, while Lowry was left to bear the vacancies of heart and roster, neither quite cooperating.

To Leonard, Lowry was at first reluctant. Here was everything his outsized basketball brain could want but the cost was too close, hardly clean. He resisted through the late fall and early winter, knowing enough of the climate by then that those sun starved and bone damp days would at least mirror his mood. But through that terrible shearing of Lowry’s trust came the emergence of a new, truer self. He must have known, for how much he still was reeling but how zeroed in his sight, seeing Leonard for what he was, what he opened up: Lowry’s widest road, his straightest shot, total and absolute potential. So, Lowry did what his new role — Captain, finally, singularly — demanded, and handed over the team he and DeRozan had forged and fostered to the superstar loner and he never looked back.

Ask Lowry what he wants for the Raptors, either in their brightest championship afterglow or murkiest Tampa days, and the answer will be the same — to see his guys shine. The young core (now not so young, but frozen in the Neverland of Lowry) of Fred VanVleet, OG Anunoby, Pascal Siakam, Chris Boucher, thriving, winning, improving, and being paid for it. It’s the measure of how far Lowry has come, that when asked about his future the scope of it shifts secondary to what he wants to the players he had a hand in raising the ceiling for. He wants their careers to eclipse his. He wants to see them move from the boundaries a nice neglected franchise imposed on him and DeRozan, if only because the attention span of the average NBA fan so rarely ventures cross-border. But watch Lowry, before the whistle of any game, and see him work like a magnet. Draw vets and rookies, temperamental stars and lunchpail role-players to him all the same. It’s hard to find more proof of Lowry’s league-wide respect than the whole of the league rolling their eyes at his stubborn body drawing charge after charge off them one minute and their arms, hands, eyes, looking for his once the buzzer has gone, pulled into his gravity.

How do you move on from that?

Like most of what Lowry has done in his maturation as a player, he’s made it look easy, bearing most of the weight onto himself. The core of the team, living so long in Lowry’s universe, understand intuitively the way its rules work, and that routine trickles down to the new faces from Toronto’s abrupt folding last season to the very freshest from this year’s Draft. Lowry has always been preparing for the eventuality of his role shifting, if not well back from the fore of the tea then lifted from it by forces greater — the will of a GM, a front office, with perception that only looks forward or else they’d be out of a job. The roster had been drilled when the conditions were right (a championship season and its fervent and audacity-propelled attempt the next to repeat), weird (the Bubble), and a complete wash (Tampa). The team that Lowry built should know by now Toronto basketball, inside and out.

So long as Lowry stayed then no real, new, next iteration of the Raptors could start. He’s intrinsic, too strong a force, running through team chemistry as much as rhythms on the floor. There was no looking past him. In his leaving, he has removed himself as the blind spot that blotted out, like so many constant bright stars do, what shape the team’s future will take. He also handed back a needed, but not necessary, jump-start into that future.

Lowry could have left without guilt, all promises kept on the power of the verbal contract he made in saying, “And if you start something? Man, you finish it.” Instead, he opted for a deal that utilized his gravity, pulled something back to lend momentum, push things forward.

To be held in Lowry’s orbit for so long was its own rare gift in a league that ratchets up its velocity every season. The Toronto he inherited to start was an outpost, a blip on the radar. The Toronto Lowry’s leaving has become the kind of place where a certain kind of player, one with tenacity, a compulsion toward work and an outlier’s tendencies is drawn to and can thrive in. A system where athletes are known to develop, improve, and don’t need to wait for the light of the superstar eclipsing them to dim before they can get started. Where the gravity can feel like two feet firmly planted, a soft place to land, the flow of a perfect pass, or, occasionally, a flipping rush that will feel like a very determined grown man going through the legs of another, just to see if it works. A malleable, hopeful universe that happens to glint like a toothy grin, but was formed to be shaped by those who mean to push it forward.

Over 385,000 people attended Lollapalooza this past weekend, according to a Chicago police official. The city’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has faced criticism for allowing such a huge event to happen, especially since a combination of the new Delta variant of COVID-19 and loosening restrictions have caused problems: COVID-19 hospitalizations in Missouri, for example, have nearly doubled over the past month, CBS News reports.

With all that in mind, many were shocked to see such large crowds at Lollapalooza 2021, including Demi Lovato. The singer shared some thoughts on the situation on Instagram: Posting a photo of a packed crowd, Lovato wrote in an Instagram Story, “C’MON Y’ALL!!! good morning from lollapalooza. yes this pic is real. THERE IS STILL A PANDEMIC HAPPENING!!!”

Meanwhile, Lovato recently spoke about the forces that prevented them from coming out as non-binary sooner, saying, “After years of living my life for other people, trying to make myself smaller for the patriarchy, they run the industry, they are at the center of everything. When I realized that, I thought, ‘What are the ways that the patriarchy has been holding me back?’ And for me, it was putting me in a box telling [me], ‘You are a female, this is what you’re supposed to like, this is what you’re supposed to do, don’t dream bigger and don’t speak louder.’”

Tyler The Creator‘s Call Me If You Get Lost made waves as Tyler’s unofficial entry to DJ Drama’s Gangsta Grillz canon and now, he taking the album on the road, along with a few friends. The Call Me If You Get Lost Tour kicks off in February 2022 in San Diego, California, then continues through 33 more cities, concluding in Seattle, Washington in April.

Coming along with Tyler are friends and collaborators Kali Uchis, Vince Staples, and Teezo Touchdown, the latter of whom appeared on the album on “Runitup” after Tyler tweeted about him last summer. Kali Uchis has collaborated with Tyler on the songs “Perfect,” “After The Storm,” and “See You Again,” while Vince Staples got his early start on songs with members of Tyler’s Odd Future collective and appears in Tyler’s recent Converse ad, representing one of the groups of people known for rocking the iconic Chuck Taylors.

Tyler also recently performed at Lollapalooza, while Vince Staples recently released his self-titled album, and Kali Uchis recently announced her sophomore album “Sin Miedo (Del Amor Y Otros).”

Check out the tour’s dates below.

2/10 — San Diego, CA @ Pechanga Arena
2/11 — Phoenix, AZ @ Footprint Center
2/12 — Las Vegas, NV @ Michelob Ultra Arena
2/14 — El Paso, TX @ Don Haskins Center
2/16 — Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center
2/18 — St. Louis, MO @ Chaifetz Arena
2/19 — Kansas City, MO @ Cable Dahmer Arena
2/20 — Minneapolis, MN @ Target Center
2/22 — Chicago, IL @ United Center
2/24 — Milwaukee, WI @ Fiserv Forum
2/27 — Columbus, OH @ Schottenstein Center
2/28 — Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena
3/3 — Worcester, MA @ DCU Center
3/4 — Norfolk, VA @ Chartway Arena
3/6 — Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
3/7 — Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena
3/9 — Montreal, QC @ Place Bell
3/11 — Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena
3/12 — Pittsburgh, PA @ Petersen Events Center
3/13 — New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
3/16 — Charlotte, NC @ Bojangles Coliseum
3/18 — Orlando, FL @ Amway Center
3/19 — Tampa, FL @ Yuengling Center
3/20 — Miami, FL @ FTX Arena
3/23 — Charleston, SC @ North Charleston Coliseum
3/25 — Duluth, GA @ Gas South Arena
3/27 — Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
3/29 — Denver, CO @ Ball Arena
3/31 — Los Angeles, CA @ Staples Center
4/1 — Oakland, CA @ Oakland Arena
4/2 — Sacramento, CA @ Golden 1 Center
4/4 — Portland, OR @ Moda Center
4/7 — Vancouver, BC @ Pacific Coliseum
4/8 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena

If you’ve been looking for a subtle way to incorporate your love of Marvel’s stealthiest Avenger into your stream setup, you’re going to love AndaSeat’s newest addition to their current Marvel gaming chair line-up. As of today, the Black Widow Premium Gaming Chair is available to preorder from AndaSeat’s official website. At a price point of $450 and with availability in both black and arctic white leather, the Black Widow chair seems to be a good option for those shopping around for a high-quality addition to their PC setup regardless of if they’re into a classic, dark look or are trying out a more sleek and modern style. The Black Widow chair joins alongside the leading gaming chair brand’s Captain America, Spider-Man, Ant-Man, and Iron Man chairs, and is the newest addition to AndaSeat’s official Marvel line.

Much like many of the other race-car-seat-crafter-turned-gaming-chair-designer’s other items, AndaSeat’s Black Widow gaming chair features the company’s AD+ Reclining Back Z Support multi-functional tilt mechanism for heavy-duty usage and an adjustable tilt that ranges from 90 to 160 degrees. The entire chair is built around a 22mm steel frame and is outfitted with “hard-wearing foam and scratch and stain resistant AD+ Plus PVC leather as used in racing car seats with no smell and no harmful substances.” Lastly, it’s worth noting that each of the chairs is equipped with SGS certificated Class 4 hydraulic piston and explosion-proof gas spring of international standards. According to AndaSeat, this makes their gaming chairs “more resistant, more stable and the best in its class in terms of consistency, stability and safety” while also letting them “further enhance stability, ensuring smooth movement in all directions without damaging floor surfaces.”

To celebrate the launch, AndaSeat has provided a 50 percent discount coupon (“MARVEL”) for the first ten customers who order Marvel gaming chairs on its US, UK, and Australian websites. In addition, AndaSeat is also holding a competition on their Black Widow page, in which customers can vote for which Black Widow gaming chair version is their favorite and potentially win a Marvel gaming chair or exclusive discounts. For those interested, the Black Widow gaming chairs are available to preorder now, and should be shipping by no later than October 31.

Since his breakout moment, Lil Baby has not held back with his collaborations. The rapper has songs with Travis Scott, Megan Thee Stallion, and even made an entire joint album with Gunna. But for his next collaboration, Lil Baby is setting his sights on someone a bit more elusive: André 3000.

Lil Baby recently sat down for a cover interview with Billboard where he talked about his rise to fame, his responsibility as a role model, and what he has in store next. The rapper sparingly divulged details about his third studio album, saying he has reached out to André 3000’s team in hopes of securing a feature from the Outkast rapper.

“I’m in a whole different head space than I was at with My Turn — I’m going to be at a different level every time I drop because I’m at different levels in life,” he said about his upcoming effort.

That wasn’t the only bit of information Lil Baby let loose about his next LP. Apparently, the rapper is vying for André 3000, who he labeled “a cold motherf*cker,” to lend a verse on a track. “I talked to somebody who be talking to him, and he’s on it right now,” he said of the potential collaboration. “We’re in third-party communications.”

Other than occasionally being spotted with his flute in public, André 3000 has been laying low lately. The rapper did end up making a rare appearance on Goodie Mob’s Survival Kit track “No Cigar.” But other than that, a song with Lil Baby would mark André 3000’s first new music in quite some time.

Read Billboard‘s Lil Baby cover story here.

Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Sh*t happens, but usually not when there’s $18 million on the line. Unfortunately, that’s the predicament NBC has found itself in with Ultimate Slip ‘N Slide, an all-new competitive series based on the classic Wham-O backyard waterslide that has gotten off to a pretty crappy start. Now the network has decided to pull the plug entirely on the series, which was set to premiere on Sunday, August 8.

As The Wrap tells it, back on June 2, seven weeks into production on the series and with less than a week to go to complete it, a giardia outbreak that affected a full 65 percent of the show’s staff led to many of them being subjected to “awful explosive diarrhea.” (The word “awful” seems superfluous there, no?) While all of the set’s water features came back negative for the parasite, it turns out that the dirt surrounding the set wasn’t so lucky.

According to The Wrap:

“NBC and the studio began scouting for a new, safe new location where the giant Slip ‘n Slide could be moved so production on the end of Season 1 — and potential future seasons — could take place. During that time, Universal Television Alternative Studio was also working on two possible models for finishing the season in the edit bay without the ability to shoot the final episodes, but those options were ultimately passed on in favor of delaying the show.”

Network executives confirmed that they are committed to completing filming on the series, but only once they can find a safe place to do that. So at the moment, there is no confirmed date to resume filming or information on when the show might air.

If we might suggest an alternative idea: Change the title to Ultimate Sh*t ‘N Slide and just go with the footage they’ve got?

It’s also worth mentioning that the “toy” upon which the series is based has a rather infamous history of its own—one that has seen the item recalled and discontinued a handful of times, and that has broken the necks of many and even killed people over the years. So there’s that.

(Via The Wrap)

As previously established, Vanessa Bayer is great. She’s great on SNL, she’s great on I Think You Should Leave (my only complaint about season two is that she wasn’t in it), she’s great in Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, and I’m sure her semi-autobiographical Showtime series, I Love This for You, will be great, too. Also great: Bayer’s impressions.

Her Rachel from Friends is an all-timer, but Jennifer Aniston initially wasn’t a fan.

When asked by InStyle about her favorite impression of her Friends character, the actress replied, “Vanessa Bayer on Saturday Night Live. I remember someone saying, “Did you see the impression of you on SNL?” My first response was, ‘What? No, I’m not impression [-worthy].’ They played it for me and [gasps], ‘That is so not the way I sound.’ Then I was like, ‘Uh, oh. Oh, I see.’ Everyone said it was a compliment, but I had to really get my brain around that and tuck my little tail between my legs, thinking I’m being made fun of. That’s always the gut instinct: They’re making fun of me.”

Bayer wasn’t making fun of Aniston: she called herself a “superfan” of Friends and said that “getting to do Rachel with her was a dream come true. Now I think it’s time for Aniston to return the favor and get Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow to recreate the Instagram sketch from I Think You Should Leave. “Slurping down fish p*ss with these wet chodes Monica and Phoebe. Total tuna cans.” It practically writes itself.

Andre Drummond’s 2020-21 season did not go according to plan. After 25 games in Cleveland, the big man was asked not to play while the Cavs tried to find him a new home via trade, and when that didn’t happen, he ended up in Los Angeles via the buyout market. Drummond was promised a starting role in L.A., much to the dismay of Marc Gasol and Montrezl Harrell already on the roster, and while he posted Drummond-like numbers (11.9 points and 10.2 rebounds per game), the Lakers never quite coalesced in the way they hoped, and in the playoffs he got shuffled out of the starting lineup to his own frustration.

Figuring out what Drummond’s market would be as a free agent, both in teams that would pursue him and what type of contract he would be offered, was something few even attempted to do. Drummond’s ability to fill up the stat sheet is unquestioned, but he struggles on defense when asked to play in space and needs to be in the right situation to succeed.

It appears the market for Drummond never formed as he’d hoped, and he will instead look to find a more consistent backup role on a contender after the debacle in L.A. a year ago. Funny enough, he ends up swapping places with the man who replaced him yesterday on the Lakers, as he is headed to the Philadelphia 76ers on a 1-year minimum deal, taking the spot Dwight Howard vacated in his return to L.A.

It’s an especially interesting signing considering the history between Drummond and Embiid, who used to love trolling Drummond in their matchups when Drummond was in Detroit, once calling him a “bum.”

That is now his backup, and if nothing else it’s going to be fascinating to see how those two coexist. From a team-building perspective, the signing makes some sense given how the backup big man market has taken shape, with few high quality options still available and, as noted previously, Drummond is a very good rebounder and scores well around the basket. Still, it was a pretty surprising signing and we’ll await Embiid’s reaction, but for a minimum deal, it’s a pretty low-risk maneuver.