Month: June 2022

Elizabeth Olsen went from indie queen to superstar when she nabbed the role of Wanda Maximof, aka Scarlet Witch, the telekinetic Avenger first teased in the second Captain America. She began as a villain, then became a goodie. But starting with WandaVision, she went back to the dark side, and continued her descent in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. That movie ended on an ambiguous note as to her fate. But at least as of now, Olsen herself has no clue when we’ll see her next step.

In an appearance on Good Morning America (as caught by The AV Club), Olsen revealed that she knows as much as anyone about what will happen with Scarlet Witch. There’s a WandaVision spin-off about Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness, and there’s been rumors of a Scarlet Witch spin-off. But Olsen? She’s heard nada.

“I would love to be a part of both of those,” she said, but added, “No one tells me anything, and I’m not even hiding a secret, because I’m bad at that. I know nothing about my future.”

All she could say was, “Keep spreading rumors and maybe they’ll hire me again.”

Olsen has confessed that being Marvel’s resident Scarlet Witch has eaten up time she could have given to smaller, more artistic fare (even as she defends Marvel movies against their critics). So maybe while she waits she can do some of those again. Or maybe she’s worried if she does, Kevin Feige will suddenly ring.

You can watch Olsen’s GMA appearance in the video above.

(Via The AV Club)

Drake’s new album Honestly, Nevermind has earned all types of reactions from his peers and fans. Questlove called the album a “gift” and added, “Only people not wit the program are people who don’t move their bodies. That ain’t sexy yo [shrugging emoji].” Vince Staples spoke about the uniqueness of the album and noted that he “did that in 2017.” Regardless of the reviews that the album has received, Honestly, Nevermind still topped the Billboard 200 to become Drake’s 11th No. 1 album and it also broke Apple Music’s dance album record for most first-day streams. Now, other artists are remixing tracks from the project.

The first pair of artists to do so is GoldLink and PinkPantheress who joined forces for their own take of “Massive,” one of the more popular records from Honestly, Nevermind. GoldLink leads the way with a timid entry that’s follow-up by a brief beat break. With additional production from Scottish producer Sam Gellaitry, GoldLink returns to the song filled with energy. Later on, PinkPantheress makes her with entry with her soft vocals for a solid contribution to the song.

You can listen to GoldLink and Pantheress’ remix of “Massive” above.

Honestly, Nevermind is out now via OVO Sound/Republic. You can stream it here.

Continuing his streak of hot, dance-ready club jams, Fred Again.. has dropped a new track called “Jungle.” As implied by the title, “Jungle” is a wild tune, rife with grimy dance breaks and infectious vocals by Elley Duhé.

Fred has been teasing “Jungle” for the past few weeks during slots at festivals, including Coachella. Following these teasers, Fred has received an overwhelming response from fans.

When an idea comes to Fred’s head, he often records it on his iPhone Voice Notes app, or he will write it down immediately in the form of poetry. As an artist, he wishes to create something that feels true to the moment he is experiencing in real-time. In a recent interview with MixMag, he revealed that even in the future, he will be proud of his work, as it authentically represented how he was feeling in that moment.

“I think I’ve committed to a certain mental path that, even if I look back in five years and think that I’d have done something differently, I’m at peace with the fact that it was honest to that time. Everything I’ve made is true by the very nature of what happened”.

Check out “Jungle” above.

Fred Again.. is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Anyone who’s worked in a restaurant will know how intense it can be, especially in the kitchen. It’s hot, the cooks are stressed, someone’s always yelling about something and dishes, well, sometimes they end up broken. In upscale restaurants the pressure is even higher, so when this chef began to explain how he turned his kitchen around to be more harmonious and less chaotic, I stopped to listen.

In this short two-minute video, Chef Eric Ripert, who was trained in France, explains the toxic and abusive training he received that molded the way he worked. When he was in charge of his current restaurant, he simply repeated the abusive pattern. He tells Entrepreneur that he had been yelled at, had dishes thrown to the floor and was even punched in the shoulder. While Ripert says he has never physically assaulted his staff, he did admit to being verbally abusive and throwing dishes. He also noted that not only was his staff miserable but he was as well, and something had to change.

Coming to the realization that misery indeed enjoyed company, he decided to turn things around. No more yelling and certainly no more throwing dishes in the kitchen that he ran. Ripert leaned into kindness and patience to reach a place of mutual respect with the other staff. The new system isn’t perfect because people are human, and in a high stress environment, tempers can flare. But Ripert has a solution for those human moments: apologies.

We could all learn a thing or two from this chef’s transformation and surely his kitchen staff is thankful for the shift in environment.

At Upworthy, we are always looking to share the best of humanity and there are few things that reveal someone’s good character quite like when they do good when no one is watching. A recent story from Chula Vista, California, celebrates a teenager who went out of his way to return a woman’s lost purse.

According to NBC News San Diego, Eliana Martin was shopping at Ralph’s supermarket when she accidentally left her purse in a shopping cart in the parking lot. After she left the store, she realized she had lost her purse and began frantically canceling her credit cards.

Shortly after Martin left the parking lot, a recent high school graduate, Adrian Rodriquez, 17, found her purse in the cart. Rodriguez searched the purse to look for an identification card to find where she lived so he could return it to her. He then drove over to the address on the identification card, where Melina Marquez, Martin’s former roommate, currently lives.

Marquez wasn’t home so Rodriguez left the purse with a relative. Marquez later saw video of the drop-off on the family’s Ring doorbell camera.

“I looked into the Ring camera, and I was like, ‘Oh my God. He’s such a young kid.’ I was like, ‘We need to find him and just give him a little piece of gratitude.’” Marquez told NBC San Diego.

Even though Rodriguez didn’t expect anything for doing the right thing, Marquez believes that he should be rewarded for his actions. So she organized a GoFundMe campaign that has raised nearly $5,000 for the 17-year-old.

“We think he deserved a great compensation and since a lot of people wanted to help for his good actions here we are,” she wrote on the campaign’s website. For Marquez, Rodriguez’s good deed was about more than just returning a purse.

“He was raise [sic] by amazing parents and this needs to be told,” she added. “Gives me hope for our next generation and also never judge a book by its cover.”

u201cChula Vista Teen Praised for Returning Woman’s Lost Purse https://t.co/P59x5YET9Ou201d

— NBC 7 San Diego (@NBC 7 San Diego)
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While the story of Rodriguez returning the purse is heartwarming, it isn’t all that rare. A groundbreaking 2019 study conducted in Europe found that when people find a lost wallet, they are more likely to return it if it contains money. Further, the more money in the wallet, the more likely it’ll be returned.

Researchers believe that people are more likely to turn in wallets containing money because they believe that it’s wrong to steal. “The more money wallet contains, the more people say that it would feel like stealing if they do not return the wallet,” Alain Cohn, the study’s lead author from the University of Michigan, told NPR.

The most clever types of online videos are the “wait for it” variety. The videos that start out making you wonder what they’re all about and then whammo, it’s totally not what you thought.

A viral video shared on Twitter by Treacle_A starts out with a woman putting plastic wrap on her forehead but then there’s a considerable twist.

u201cThis video improved my whole day.u201d

— Law u00d8ntu00fc-Hu00f8rselv ud83euddf6 (@Law u00d8ntu00fc-Hu00f8rselv ud83euddf6)
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Didn’t see the dog part coming did you? That’s not the first time that the peanut butter trick has made the rounds. It’s believed that the first person to call attention to this clever, but potentially messy, way to trim a dog’s nails was shared by nurse Lindsey Shelton.

Shelton introduced the technique to dog lovers everywhere on TikTok in 2020 and the video received 2.6 million views. She told Chewy she came up with the idea when she realized that her dog Schmidt calmed down when he looked into her eyes.

“So, I thought if I could keep Schmidt’s attention on my face, he wouldn’t freak out,” she told Chewy. “And I knew the peanut butter would keep his attention, but I didn’t want the peanut butter to get in my hair, so I grabbed the Saran Wrap and thought, This just might work.”

One question remains, can dogs eat peanut butter? Yes, but be sure it’s pet-safe.

The marital bed is a symbol of the intimacy shared between people who’ve decided to be together ’til death they do part. When couples sleep together it’s an expression of their closeness and how they care for one another when they are most vulnerable.

However, for some couples, the marital bed can be a warzone. Throughout the night couples can endure snoring, sleep apnea, the ongoing battle for sheets or circadian rhythms that never seem to sync. If one person likes to fall asleep with the TV on while the other reads a book, it can be impossible to come to an agreement on a good-night routine.

Last week on TODAY, host Carson Daly reminded viewers that he and his wife Siri, a TODAY Food contributor, had a sleep divorce while she was pregnant with their fourth child.

“I was served my sleep-divorce papers a few years ago,” he explained on TODAY. “It’s the best thing that ever happened to us. We both, admittedly, slept better apart.”

“We’re both pretty good-sized humans and it just wasn’t really working when she was in her third trimester, and I also have sleep apnea, which is very sexy for the ladies out there, I’m sure,” Carson told People at the time. “She couldn’t get comfortable, so we were like a commercial you would see, kicking each other and just not sleeping.

“We woke up and we just shook hands like, ‘I love you, but it’s time to sleep divorce. It’ll be the best thing for all of us,’” he added.

The Dalys’ admission was brave, being that a lot of people associate a couple’s intimacy with their ability to share a bed together. It was probably also a relief to countless couples who feel like they’re the only ones struggling to sleep together.

Upworthy’s Heather Wake described the stress that co-sleeping put on her relationship in a revealing article earlier this year.

u201cCould a “sleep divorce” save your relationship?nn@DrOz joins us to share how the growing trend can actually help keep the love alive.u201d

— TODAY (@TODAY)
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A sleep divorce may be working for the Dalys, but is it right for everyone?

Wendy M. Troxel Ph.D., a behavioral and social scientist known for her work on sleep and health, believes that couples like the Dalys do right by putting their relationship first.

“Here’s what the science actually tells us about the costs and benefits of sleeping together or apart. When sleep is measured objectively, people actually sleep worse with a partner. In fact, if you sleep with someone who snores, you can blame them for up to 50 percent of your sleep disruptions,” she wrote for TED Ideas.

Troxel points out that even when people suffer from sleep deprivation due to their partner, they still say they prefer sleeping with them versus spending the night alone. She ascribed this opinion to people taking on societal expectations instead of looking at their relationship objectively. “This suggests that our social brain is prioritizing our need for closeness and security at night—even when it comes at a cost to our sleep,” she wrote for TED Ideas.

The Dalys’ admission and Troxel’s research suggest that, in the end, the most important thing is for both partners to get a good night’s sleep, whether that means sleeping in separate beds or in separate rooms. “Just as sleeping together doesn’t guarantee a successful relationship—if only it were that easy!—sleeping apart doesn’t doom you to an unsuccessful one,” Troxel writes.

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What was even happening in the ’90s? I’m not sure we know. Somehow everything was beige but people wore all the colors of the rainbow at the same time. Everything seemed to be in some sort of geometrical shape or pattern. Overlapping triangles, random trapezoids. It was madness I tell you, madness. But nothing encompasses the chaos of the ’90s like this unearthed and unintentionally hilarious advertisement for a headset to connect to your phone.

The idea seems to be to stop consumers from holding their phones between their shoulder and head. For some reason avoiding a crick in your neck was very important. How long were those phone calls? Boy would people from the ’90s be shocked if they were dropped into 2022 where people avoid phone calls at all costs. The ad isn’t completely useless in our current place in the space-time continuum. It’s certainly good for a much-needed raised eyebrow chuckle. You can always count on 1993 being weird, no matter how far in the future we go.

The last two weeks have been a bloodbath for the Democrats. The right-leaning Supreme Court, a third of whom were appointed by Donald Trump, have been dramatically reshaping America, blowing up the line separating church and state, loosening already too loose gun laws, and destroying Roe v. Wade after half a century. And they’re almost certainly not done. What has the party that controls all three houses of government done? Not much! And people, who are already hopping mad at the Supremes, are getting really sick of the lack of pushback.

That wishy-washiness was on full display in an interview Vice President Kamala Harris did with CNN. Reporter Dana Bash asked her, straight-up, “What do you say to Democratic voters who argue ‘Wait a minute, we worked really hard to elect a Democratic president and vice president, a Democratic-led House, a Democratic-led Senate. Do it now’?”

Harris’ response spoke volumes. “Do what now?” she shot back. “What now? I mean, we need, we, listen, what we did, we extended the Child Tax Credit.”

Dash butted in to clarify, saying, “I’m sorry, when I say ‘Do it now,’ yeah, act legislatively to make abortion rights legal.”

But Harris punted the responsibility elsewhere. “We feel the same way. Do it now,” she said. “Congress needs to do it now in terms of permanently putting in place a clear indication that it is the law of the land that women have the ability and the right to make decisions about their reproductive care and the government does not have the right to make those decisions for a woman.”

Right now, Republicans are moving in lockstep when it comes to taking away rights, from women, from LGBTQIA+ people, from people in impoverished communities. They could easily take back the House and the Senate in November. Democratic voters have been demanding those they voted in power to do something. Sadly, Harris’ low-key, buck-passing response did not exactly inspire confidence.

In related news, even Republicans are shocked at how little Democrats have done to fight the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Indeed, some of these conservatives have some pretty good ideas about how to give them a what-fer.

But at least one elected Democratic lawmaker has some ideas.

This morning, Kim Kardashian got up off her ass and worked called her lawyer.

The reality TV star and founder of many vowel-averse brands including SKIMS, KKW Beauty, and KKW fragrance is reportedly getting sued for copyright infringement. SKKN by Kim, the latest addition to Kim K’s collection of brands (is she the General Grievous of the fashion and beauty space?), shares an eerily similar name to a Black-owned Brooklyn esthetician studio. According to Page Six Style, founder Cyndie Lunsford operated under the SKKN+ since 2018. Sound familiar? Kardashian received a cease and desist letter last year, 11 months before the brand came out.

“I have painstakingly built my successful small business with my own sweat equity, hard work, and research,” Lunsford said last year per Page Six. “It’s clear that I established my brand first.

In a statement obtained by Page Six Style, Kardashian’s attorney Michael Rhodes called the lawsuit a “shakedown effort.”

“We applaud Ms. Lunsford for being a small business owner and following her dreams,” Rhodes added. “But that doesn’t give her the right to wrongfully claim that we’ve done something wrong. In its letter, Beauty Concepts claimed to own rights to a logo made up of SKKN+, and had just filed for trademark protection for that logo. The business was a one-person shop offering facials from a single Brooklyn location. The salon had no signage and was by appointment only. To our knowledge, Beauty Concepts sold no products under the SKKN+ name,” he said.

Rhodes added that the lawsuit is “less about the law of trademarks and more about trying to leverage a settlement by threatening to harm Ms. Kardashian’s name and reputation.”

SKKN by Kim launched on June 21.