Month: September 2021

Excitement has already been building around Ariana Grande’s decision to join The Voice as a judge this season. The producers of the show seem eager to spotlight Ariana’s position too, featuring her in quirky ads for the next season, and Ari herself seems to be having a ball as well. But her appearance on the show also means we’ll (hopefully) be getting some special performances from her, too. That kicked off pretty quickly when the first episode of the show premiered with a duet between Kelly Clarkson and Ari — with a little help from John Legend, too — performing nothing less than Aretha Franklin’s classic, “Respect.”

Check out a clip of the performance here:

As the season progresses, it will be interesting to see how Ari performs as a mentor, but her first chair turn of the season seemed pretty in line with how she performs as a vocalist. The contestant in question was performing “A Team” by Ed Sheeran, and though John Legend and Kelly Clarkson turned their chairs early on, Ari turned when she heard him do the kind of vocal trill that she’s become infamous for. The contestant’s final choice won’t be shown until the next episode this coming Monday, so let Ari and Kelly’s cover tide you over for now.

This article originally appeared on 03.31.15

Kids can innovate, create, and imagine in ways that are fresh and inspiring — when we “allow” them to do so, anyway. Despite the tendency for parents to freak out because their kids are spending more and more time with technology in schools, and the tendency for schools themselves to set extremely restrictive limits on the usage of such technology, there’s a solid argument for letting them be free to imagine and then make it happen.

It’s not a stretch to say the kids in this video are on the cutting edge. Some of the results he talks about in the video at the bottom are quite impressive.

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If you can’t or don’t want to watch the clip, here’s the quick version:

Many people think the Internet and technology are scary places for kids. But did you know about …

Martha, who is from Scotland.

She took pictures of her school’s lunches every day.

It reached a point where Jamie Oliver took notice and tweeted his support.

The school told her to stop, but after all of the press, instead they did the right thing and made changes to the lunch program. Yay, Martha! And she raised $200,000 for the food insecure.

(Yes, that’s Mr. Bean in frame 4.)

There’s Josh, who is in middle school in Iowa.

He decided to narrate Pokemon walk-through videos.

He’s so good at that, he walked into college with a six-figure income from the ad revenue of those videos(!!).

There’s Tavi, who created an online magazine called “Rookie” with her friends.

It has a huge following and has reached far into teen culture.

John created an app at age 15.

He sold it to Yahoo at age 17 for $30 million. Can you imagine?

Lauren decided to send a Hello Kitty doll 93,000 feet into space, and record it.

And she did just that.

And there’s a group of teens on the Rosebud Sioux reservation in South Dakota.

An ABC News special portrayed their lives as pretty much based on drugs and crime. They made a video to show who they really were: kids with passion, humility, self-respect, love, creativity, and family.

All of these are kids are creating and innovating — but not in school. Rather, at home.

Schools are far too restrictive to allow kids to do things like these kids did, and that needs to change.

The final quote says it all for me. “Get out of their way and let them be amazing!”

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This article originally appeared on 04.10.15

As part of an experiment, a man asks for help translating a Facebook message he has received.

There’s a man in Lithuania who speaks only English. The message is in Lithuanian. He can’t read it, so he asks some locals to translate it for him.

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As he asks one person after another to translate the message for him, two things become obvious.

1. He’s received a message full of hate speech.

2. Translating it for him is breaking people’s hearts.

It’s nearly more than these people can bear.

There’s a sudden, powerful connection between the translators and the man they’re translating for. They want to protect him, telling him not to bother with the message.

They apologize for the message.

They look like they want to cry.

Words hurt.

Most of us would never think of saying such horrible things. This video shows people realizing in their gut what it must feel like when those words are pointed at them — it’s all right on their faces. And so is their compassion.

The Facebook message is horrible, but their empathy is beautiful. The video’s emotional power is what makes it unique, and so worth watching and passing around.

Here it is.

The video’s in English, subtitled in Lithuanian. Just watch the faces.

This article originally appeared on 11.06.15

In 2005, a Croatian architect designed a 230-foot-long organ that turns the rhythm of the waves into actual music.

Nope, not nonsensical bellows or chaotic tones. Real, actual, music.

Most of us have never seen, or heard, anything like it.

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Photo by linssimato/Flickr

Imagine walking along the picturesque Adriatic Sea, treading lightly on a set of white stone steps as a cool breeze rolls past.

Carved into the steps are narrow channels that connect to 35 organ pipes, each tuned to different meticulously arranged musical chords.

As the waves lap against the steps, they push air through the pipes and out whistle-holes in the surface above, making a harmonious and completely random musical arrangement.

But you don’t see what’s happening below the surface. You close your eyes and all you hear is a song like you’ve never heard before, one completely unique to the movement of the sea at that exact moment.

Take a listen: Here’s what it sounded like at one particular moment, on one particular day. On any other day, it might sound completely different.

(Hit the orange button to hear it.)

Pretty amazing, right?

The Sea Organ, or the Morske Orgulje, is an incredible feat of architecture designed to bring life back to one of the world’s oldest cities.

Photo by Lisa/Flickr

Zadar, a 3,000-year-old city on the coast of Croatia, was almost completely destroyed in World War II –– so many of its ancient landmarks lost forever. Years after a rebuilding that featured lots of plain, concrete structures, award-winning architect Nikola Bašić was brought in to bring some delight back to the coastline.

That’s when he came up with the idea.

Photo by J We/Flickr

No doubt he was inspired by the hydraulis — a nifty little instrument built by the ancient Greeks that used water to push air through tuned pipes — or even the Wave Organ in San Francisco — a set of curved tubes built in the 1980s that amplify the gurgles and howls of the Pacific Ocean.

But the intricate design of the Sea Organ is what sets it apart and makes it truly something to marvel at.

It’s become an all-too-familiar pattern: Far-right personality downplays, even brushes off the pandemic and trashes the vaccines. Far-right personality then tests positive. (Some of them even die.) So this shouldn’t be surprising: Laura Loomer, the far-right, anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist, who once said “bad fajitas” were worse than COVID, now has COVID.

As per The Daily Beast, Loomer recently revealed on the Trumpist social media network Gettr that she tested positive for the highly transmissible disease. Her symptoms include “fever, chills, a runny nose, sore throat, nausea and severe body aches,” and she compared it to “a bad case of the flu.” She also said she feels like she’s been “hit by a bus.”

Loomer added the she hadn’t taken a COVID vaccine and, even after her ordeal, said, “I don’t plan on ever taking it because it is unsafe and ineffective.” Instead she’s taking some of the questionable, even dangerous “miracle cures” floated by Trump and/or his followers, including Azithromyacin, Hydroxychloroquine, the OrthoMune dietary, even the Regeneron antibody treatment used by Trump after he caught it.

For Loomer, it’s a wish come true, sort of. “I hope I get COVID just so I can prove to people I’ve had bouts of food poisoning that are more serious and life threatening than a hyped up virus,” she wrote on Parler in December of last year “Have you ever eaten bad fajitas? That will kill you faster than COVID.”

Jump some ten months later and she’s changed her tune. “Just pray for me please,” Loomer wrote. “Can’t even begin to explain how brutal the body aches and nausea that come with COVID are. I am in so much pain.”

When news of Loomer’s condition broke, very few people on social media were surprised.

Some reminded people that this is a likely occurrence when you downplay COVID.

(Via The Daily Beast)

At the end of last year, Kid Cudi released his seventh album, Man On The Moon III: The Chosen. It was his first solo, full-length effort since 2016’s Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’ and first overall since 2018’s Kids See Ghost, which he made with Kanye West. The album was a strong continuation of the rapper’s trademark series, and nearly a year after its release, Cudi returns with a new video for one of its tracks, “Mr. Solo Dolo III.” It finds Cudi enjoying a blunt in various places, like a studio, a party, and in the pool.

Cudi recently joined Young Thug and Strick for their own video, for their collaboration “Moon Man,” which showed the trio chowing down on a massive stack of pancakes. Cudi also spoke about Lil Nas X and explained why he thinks he will break down hip-hop’s “homophobic cloud.”

“When I saw the tweet about Nas’ album Montero not featuring Black male artists, and he replied that ‘maybe a lot of them just don’t wanna work with me,’ that made me sad,” Cudi wrote about Lil Nas for Time magazine’s 100 most influential people list. “There’s a homophobic cloud over hip-hop, and he’s going to break that sh*t down. We have to stand with him. I’m going to do whatever I have to do to let him know—you have my support. When we do our song together, however trippy the video is, let’s get sexy with it.”

You can watch the video for “Mr. Solo Dolo III” above.

Surely it was only a matter of time before someone got around to rebooting The Lost Boys, the Brat Pack era’s take on the vampire movie, where Hollywood’s hottest young actors went to the dark side. (One attempt almost made it to production.) It was originally intended for even younger actors; it wound up starring twentysomethings, like Kiefer Sutherland and Jason Patric. But it seems the revival will take the original route.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, the new Lost Boys has found its leads, and they’re young-ish. Jaeden Martell, who played Bill Denbrough In It (he’s the one who grows up to be James McAvoy), and Noah Jupe, of A Quiet Place and Wonder, have been tapped to play the leads. Martell is 18, while Jupe is 16. By contrast, Sutherland and Patric were both in their 20s when they made the 1987 original, which was aimed at a much more mature (which is to say it was very rated R).

The original Lost Boys is very much a product of its time. Its aesthetics are very MTV, from the fast cutting to the way its young cast spend much of the film posing like models (with fangs). This version, however, will be helmed by The End of the F***ing World director John Entwistle, suggesting it will be a much more self-aware affair, aimed at a knowing, winking audience. Details are currently scant beyond it being set in the present day.

(Via THR)

Bishop Gorman in Las Vegas is a perennial powerhouse in the world of high school football, producing top college and NFL talent year after year. So, when they faced Hamilton High School from Chandler, Arizona on Friday night, they were expected to win even against a good program from Arizona, and with 70 seconds to play, it certainly looked like that’d be the case.

With 1:10 on the clock, Hamilton lined up for a field goal on 4th and 4 down 24-7, with the result of the game an apparent formality. However, what took place from there is one of the wildest comebacks in football history, at any level, as Hamilton erased a 17-point deficit to win in regulation over the next 62 seconds, starting with a field goal and following that up with two successful onside kicks, two touchdowns, and one gutsy two-point conversion to get the win.

Their onside kick formation is one that every team at every level of football should be studying, because while the dribbler up the middle isn’t new, you don’t often see the pack formation (which, so long as there are four players on each side of the kicker is legal) which clearly gave Bishop Gorman issues, as they formed a wall round the ball to escort it to 10 yards downfield before pouncing on it. On top of that, they were absolutely slinging it, and it was clear Bishop Gorman was a bit checked out and understandably so, thinking that game was in the bag. Credit to Hamilton for fighting to the end in an unforgettable comeback for the ages.

A few days ago, Jermaine Dupri called out Diddy in a tweet and challenged him to a Verzuz battle. Diddy shut down the request. “Beloved you my n**** but your arms too short to box with God!!!” he said in response to the challenge. However, Dupri seemed set on not going down without a fight, which he made clear during an Instagram Live on Friday. Dupri, who was on the livestream with Fat Joe and Snoop Dogg, called out Diddy once again. Eventually Diddy joined the livestream, which led to the producers playfully trading shots.

“Ayo, short arms. You need to chill out short arms. You hear me?” Diddy said to Dupri shortly after he hopped on the livetsream. “Ayo, I love you. First of all, I want the world to know that this is one of my best friends. You know, one of my best inspirations.” Diddy then addressed his doubters in the audience. “You amnesia-having motherf*ckers. I done gave y’all life for motherf*cking 20 years of music,” he proclaimed. “I’ma tell you, JD, anything I touch. Anything I breathed on, executive produced, anything I thought up, anything I fucking did, whatever. You hear me? Don’t play with me.”

“Are you listening, JD? … What you gon’ do when [Biggie’s] ‘One More Chance’ drops?” Diddy asked Dupri. “I’m the greatest. What the f*ck y’all talking about? I have the most No. 1s as an artist … I don’t even hear no one play none of your shit. Ayo, when we go back in the club, I don’t hear no one play none of your sh*t. Ain’t nobody rocking no Kriss Kross sh*t, or no Bow Wow. I want Dre! Where is Dre? Where is Dre?”

Next, Diddy challenged Dupri to a mini “five for five” Verzuz battle. While Dupri initially declined, Diddy kicked things off by playing “Victory,” “Who Shot Ya,” “Hypnotize,” “Come and Talk to Me,” “Whoa,” “All About the Benjamins,” and “FWMGAB.” He also played the remixes for “Flava In Ya Ear” and “O Let’s Do It.” Diddy even played some records Dupri’s produced, those being “Jump,” the “Welcome to Atlanta” remix, and “Money Ain’t a Thang,” because he refused to participate.

Finally, Dupri gave in and played Usher’s “Confessions” while asking Diddy if he had an “R&B record better than this.” Diddy responded by playing Mary J. Blige’s “I’m Goin Down.” However, after the livestream, Dupri questioned Diddy’s right to play Blige’s song as he was not listed as a songwriter or producer.

Time was that Donald Trump at least appeared to be one of the most successful people in the world. Then he became president. Now his financial future is in jeopardy. Along with the numerous legal cases plaguing him (including one from Capitol police officers over the lead-up to Jan. 6), he now has this: Trump Tower, the behemoth that juts out of Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, is in trouble, too.

As per Bloomberg, a $100 million loan awarded to the jewel in Trump’s real estate crown has been placed on a “watch list” by Wells Fargo, the “master server” of the loan. The reason is “lower than average occupancy.” Since last year, occupancy has dropped from 85.9% at the end of last year to 78.9%, while property revenue fell from
$33.7 million in 2020 and $7.5 million in the first quarter of the year.

Trump Tower’s Fifth Avenue location has, like many office buildings in Manhattan, been devastated by the pandemic, which has led to a surge in at-home working and a possible radical overhaul of office culture. A number of high-end retailers have either left the building or fallen behind on rents. Indeed, one of its better tenants is the Make American Great Political Action Committee, the PAC for Trump’s future political aspirations. They have been making rent, albeit reportedly by using donations from the former president’s supporters. Surely they have no problem forking over their hard-earned cash to help him pay the bills.

(Via Bloomberg)