Month: August 2022

Much of the attention on the New York Knicks has focused on the reported pursuit of Donovan Mitchell in recent days, with the poorly kept secret that New York is extremely interested in adding the Utah Jazz guard to the fold via trade. However, the Knicks also entered the waning weeks of the offseason with another piece of intriguing business to tend to in the form of a potential contract extension for former No. 3 overall pick R.J. Barrett.

On Monday evening, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Barrett and the Knicks are coming together on a nine-figure extension that will keep the former Duke standout in New York and, in the process, potentially impact the talks between the Knicks and Jazz about Mitchell.

Wojnarowski immediately noted the possible ramifications on a Mitchell deal, though it is noteworthy that talks would only be forced to change if Barrett was previously in the mix. As for the contract itself, it will be interesting to see what the full details are, but Barrett is reportedly set to earn at least $100 million over four years with the potential to reach a $30 million average annual value.

Barrett, who recently turned 22 years old, averaged 20 points and 5.8 rebounds per game in his third season, though he took a step back in his efficiency from his second campaign with the Knicks. He did improve defensively, however, and Barrett’s new pact could become a bargain if his play continues to improve as the NBA’s salary cap rises.

As for the Knicks and the ongoing pursuit of Mitchell, New York could center an offer around a stockpile of draft picks and young players. With that said, talks could be hitting a real snag based on Wojnarowski’s reporting of an imposed deadline on Monday that partially led to the agreement with Barrett.

Barrett’s new deal keeps him with the Knicks, and he joins Zion Williamson and Ja Morant as fellow top draft picks from the 2019 class that will reportedly secure massive rookie-scale extensions. The next steps will be interesting on all sides, but New York will certainly hope that Barrett continues an upward trajectory as a centerpiece of the franchise.

Yesterday, a 22-minute recording was shared that consisted of Britney Spears further breaking down the experience of her conservatorship. It has since been taken down, but the information she divulged remains public, such as her discussion about what gave her hope during such an awful experience.

“I started to get a spark back,” she said on the recording, discussing the making of her last album, 2016’s Glory. “I think producing and making music… I got the fire back in my eyes for some reason,” she said. She continued, “It was really tricky because I had to just play this role that everything was OK all the time and I had to go along with it because I knew they could hurt me.”

Sadly, that was temporary. Things fell apart when she began her rehearsing for her Las Vegas residency Domination in 2019, when she got sent to a facility. “I was supposed to say on my Instagram the reason why was because my dad is sick and I need treatment,” she said. “I didn’t want to ever go there, I remember my dad calling me on the phone and I was crying, and I was like, ‘Why are you guys doing this?’”

The typical kid’s experience in school is a lot different today than it was 30 to 40 years ago. It’s hard to say whether things are better or worse, but there’s been a sea change in how children are raised.

One negative development is that teachers tend to think parents are more likely to side with their kids over faculty in disputes than they were decades ago. On the positive side, corporal punishment is on the decrease, so students are much less likely to be physically punished for breaking the rules.

A Reddit user with the username u/theSandwichSister asked the ‘80s and ‘90s kids on the forum, “What’s something a school teacher did to you that would not fly today?” A lot of the responses were about the type of physical punishment and humiliation that used to happen in schools that would never happen these days.

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There were also a lot of posts about teachers who smoked around their students. Can you imagine a kindergarten teacher lighting up in front of their students these days? They’d be fired in a flash.

Overall, the responses show that schools are a lot more concerned with the mental and emotional health of their students these days, which is a wonderful improvement. Schools also seem to be much more friendly environments to students who are people of color, LGBTQ or have disabilities.

Here are 17 of the best responses to the question, “What’s something a school teacher did to you that would not fly today?”

1. 

​”Not a teacher, but school one. If you read enough books during the year in elementary school you got to have a sleepover in the library. Like we brought sleeping bags and slept on the floor. In the morning they had griddles out and we made pancakes. I know, total nerds, but it was my favorite elementary school memory.” — 7askingforafriend

2. 

“My elementary school principal would pull loose teeth. You could go to his office, have him pull your loose tooth and he would give you a lollipop.” — snowfuckerforreal

3. 

“I told my biology teacher that I wasn’t feeling too well, he said that I didn’t look sick, and as punishment made me stand in the corner until I fainted.” — AustrianReaper

4. 

“In high school, we would sometimes play knee soccer which was in our wrestling room (wall to wall wrestling mats) and was really just handball but on our knees. The PE teacher (football coach) let us play rough since it was an all male class and we were on our knees and couldn’t do too much damage. During the game, two of the students were grappling for the ball and as these things go, one of them accidentally knocked the other a little too aggressively. The kid that got hit (an known asshole of the school) got pissed and stood up and kicked the other kid.

The PE teacher (225lb jacked military hair cut) stormed over and shoved the kid who flew about 10 feet before crashing to the ground. The kid gets up ready to fight whoever shoved him and the teacher had closed the gap and started screaming at him. Then the teacher lectured the entire class about sportsmanship and honor. The teacher never got in any trouble.” — hangingonwith2fingers

5. 

“In 5th grade, I was called to the office at my public school. I was a goody two-shoes so I had no idea why I was called, so I started tearing up thinking something bad must’ve happened to my family. Eventually, I was ushered into a room as my two best friends left. The principal and 2 other staff members then sat me down and showed me a piece of paper. It was a silly poem I wrote one of my friends about a good witch who granted wishes by mixing together some mundane ingredients. Apparently, their mother found the poem and complained to the school. Their response was to interview my friends about MY RELIGION.” — ktbunny

6. 

“6th grade teacher Ms. Sullivan would take 3 kids every Friday to McDonald’s for lunch. She was cool as hell. Smoked during the drive and everything.” — SigP365SAS

7. 

“My 3rd grade teacher had the whole class camp in her backyard after the last day of school. She took us to see the original TMNT movie in the theater, then we stayed up late telling ghost stories. One of my absolute fondest memories.” — Cambot1138

8. 

“Yeah, there are a lot of negative things in this thread, which makes sense, but there are some ‘cool teacher’ things that we lost too. I got a ride home from school once from a male teacher in middle school (I’m female) when it was pouring rain and my mom wouldn’t come get me, but I bet that’s not allowed these days.” — rabidstoat

9. 

“English teacher in high school used to cuss kids out for being noisy in class and if that didn’t work, he’d throw the blackboard eraser at us. I wasn’t on the receiving end of the eraser. That chalk would leave marks on kid’s backs for the rest of the day so everyone knew who pissed off Mr Charvet.” — Roscoe_Cracks_Corn

10. 

​“7th-grade science class, the teacher walked around with a beaker full of mercury and told us to stick a finger in it to feel how dense it was. Then he gave us each our own penny-size drop of mercury to play with at our desks, so we could see how it moved. I’m sure we were poisoned that day. Nowadays if a thermometer breaks they clear the school.” — weirdkid71

11. 

“Not something done to me per se, but my 3rd grade teacher had a little office with a door inside our classroom, and she would smoke cigarettes in there while we were at lunch/recess.” — HutSutRawlson

12. 

“Cheese Day in the Midwest. It was in first grade. For an entire day, all you ate was cheese. Cheese puffs, curls, sticks, slices, balls, and Doritos. Drank orange Hi-C as well. For 10+ years, smelling that fake cheese made me gag. After her wedding, and the birth of her son, my sister says Cheese Day the best day of her life. Wasn’t Wisconsin either.” — 2_Spicy_2_Impeach

13.

“They told us Pluto was a planet.” — Representative-Fig96

14. 

“Best math teacher ever made us say numerator/denominator in Schwarzenegger voices as we were learning fractions.” — kittensington

15. 

“High School, we were on campus, drove a van to the locker rooms because I was with The QB, Linebacker and a couple of linemen who needed to get crap from their lockers. We were drinking beer in the van, it was 1:30, the football coach sees us, stops the van, looks inside and sees the beer, and shook his head and told us to be careful and get off campus. I don’t think that would fly today.” — kentro2002

16. 

“A lot of people are posting bad stuff, so let me share a good one. In 9th grade, in 1984, I had a class analyzing lyrics in pop music. Students brought in records by Led Zep and John Cougar and we’d discuss what they meant. Seriously a life-changing class. It makes me sad that younger students in America are so caught up in the rat race that they never had experiences like that.” — Adventuresphere

17. 

“I had an awesome teacher who would send one of us to the shop (just a minute’s walk away) with enough money to get ice creams for everybody whenever it was hot and she didn’t feel like teaching.” — wanderingsteph

Kids are funny little humans, aren’t they?

Every kid has their own quirks, especially when it comes to things they get attached to. While most children have favorite toys, dolls, blankets and so on, some kids glom onto something unexpected—or even outright odd—as their go-to security object.

Case in point: “Creepy Chloe,” the terrifying Halloween doll.

Britanny Beard, mom to 3-year-old Briar, shared how her daughter had chosen a doll with cracked skin and black eyes from the Spirit Halloween store in a post on Facebook.

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“This is what it looks like when you take your 3-year-old to the Spirit Halloween store and she absolutely insists on buying the creepiest baby doll you’ve ever set eyes on,” Beard wrote.

“She said, ‘But I’m its mommy and it needs me!’ Briar named the doll Chloe and I then immediately nicknamed her Creepy Chloe. I’m pretty sure Creepy Chloe is stealing my soul when I sleep,” she added.

Beard shared that their family went to the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World and Briar insisted on bringing Chloe—fully decked out in a Disney princess dress.

“Because creepy babies need Disney magic too I guess?” Beard wrote. Briar has a Haunted Mansion cast member dress, so Beard had her wear it to go with the Creepy Chloe “theme.”

Beard shared three delightful encounters they had at Disney that day due to Creepy Chloe.

One:

“While eating breakfast at the Grand Floridian cafe, they brought out the cast member pastry chef to meet Briar and Creepy Chloe because apparently she loves all things spooky. She said she adored that Briar loved the doll and at the end of the meal, she surprised Briar with an amazing spooky cupcake and a mini handmade chocolate Haunted Mansion poster. It was actually really sweet!”​

Two:

“Then we walked over to Magic Kingdom where Briar had a photoshoot with Creepy Chloe. The photographer was eating it up and kept coming up with posing ideas for Chloe. I’m sure it was quite an unexpected change from her usual never-ending line of glittery Bippity Boppity Boutique princesses!”

Three:

“Then we of course ventured over to the Haunted Mansion. There was a 50-minute wait to get on the ride but when they saw Briar, they immediately whisked her away into the secret ‘Servants Quarters’ where we got to see the keys to all rooms and the bells that ring to call the servants up. Then they popped us right out into the stretching room. The cast members were waiting for us when the doors opened to present us with official Haunted Mansion Caretaker certificates and to walk us right onto the ride. It was so magical!”

Disney really does know how to lean into a child’s imagination and create truly magical experiences. (Did anyone else not know there was a whole Haunted Mansion backstage thing kids could do? Honorary Caretaker? Amazing.)

Some kids love all things scary and spooky, and they deserve just as much make-believe magic as the kids who love fairy tales and princess stories. What a wonderful way to encourage a child in their own unique choices.

“So all in all,” Beard concluded, “I guess the moral of the story is when your 3-year-old throws a fit over absolutely needing a super creepy Halloween doll… buy the doll. Creepy Chloe might be stealing my soul while I sleep, but we are making the best of our time left over here! “

Beard’s post has been shared more than 8,000 times as people share their admiration and/or fear of Briar’s unusual doll. Her adoration of Chloe really should be celebrated. Creepy babies need love too, after all.

The rise of misinformation on social media has been a monumental stress test for the world’s critical thinking skills. Misinformation has had a huge influence on elections, public health and the treatment of immigrants and refugees across the world.

Social media platforms have tried to combat false claims over the past few years by employing fact-checkers, but they haven’t been terribly effective because those who are most susceptible to misinformation don’t trust fact-checkers.

“The word fact-checking itself has become politicized,” Cambridge University professor Jon Roozenbeek said, according to the Associated Press. Further, studies show that when people have incorrect beliefs challenged by facts, it makes them cling to their false assumptions even harder.

These platforms have also attempted to remove posts containing misinformation that violates their terms of service, but this form of content moderation is often seen as insufficient and is often applied inconsistently.

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How do we combat dangerous misinformation online if removing false claims or debunking them hasn’t been effective enough? A new study published in the journal Science Advances by a team of university researchers and Jigsaw, a division of Google, has found a relatively simple solution to the problem they call “pre-bunking.”

Pre-bunking is an easy way of inoculating people against misinformation by teaching them some basic critical thinking skills. The strategy is based on inoculation theory, a communication theory that suggests one can build resistance to persuasion by exposing people to arguments against their beliefs beforehand.

The researchers learned that pre-bunking was effective after conducting a study on nearly 30,000 participants on YouTube.

“Across seven high-powered preregistered studies including a field experiment on YouTube, with a total of nearly 30,000 participants, we find that watching short inoculation videos improves people’s ability to identify manipulation techniques commonly used in online misinformation, both in a laboratory setting and in a real-world environment where exposure to misinformation is common,” the recently published findings note.

The researchers uploaded videos into YouTube ad slots that discussed different types of manipulative communication used to spread false information such as ad hominem attacks, false dichotomies, scapegoating and incoherence.

Here’s an example of a video about false dichotomies.

Researchers found that after people watched the short videos, they were significantly better at distinguishing false information than they were before. The study was so successful that Jigsaw is looking to create a video about scapegoating and running it in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. These countries are all combating a significant amount of false information about Ukrainian refugees.

There’s an old saying, “If you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. Teach that man to fish and he’ll eat forever.” Pre-bunking does something very similar. We can either play a game of whack-a-mole where social media platforms have to suss out misinformation on a minute-by-minute basis or we can improve the general public’s ability to distinguish misinformation and avoid it themselves.

Further, teaching people to make their own correct decisions about misinformation will be a lot more effective than pulling down content and employing fact-checks. These tactics only drive vulnerable, incredulous people toward misinformation.

What’s this? Sir Elton John and Britney Spears have a new song that released August 26. Well, technically it’s not new. It’s more like a new version of an old song. Elton John’s classic, “Tiny Dancer,” has been remade as a pop style duet with the queen of pop herself, ending her six-year hiatus from music. The song is just the right vibe to end summer on a positive note. That’s not just my opinion either. The new version, called “Hold Me Closer,” has already topped the charts at number one in 35 countries.

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As you likely remember, Spears had been under a conservatorship for 13 years. While in the conservatorship, she alleged abuse from her father and others around her, and eventually refused to perform or record any music. The pop star’s hiatus lasted six long years before coming to an unexpected end, which has Spears’ fans thrilled. While there have been hints and teases to her millions of followers, no one was prepared for the immaculate mashup that was just dropped.

The song marries the chorus of John’s 1972 hit “Tiny Dancer” to verses from “The One,” another song of John’s, but this time from 1992. Both Spears and John documented the momentous release on their social media platforms. With Spears tweeting, “Okie dokie … my first song in 6 years 🎶!!!! It’s pretty damn cool that I’m singing with one of the most classic men of our time … @eltonofficial 🚀 !!!! I’m kinda overwhelmed… it’s a big deal to me !!! I’m meditating more 🧘🏼♀️ and learning my space is valuable and precious !!!”

Spears goes on to say in the Twitter thread that she’s choosing happiness and learning to forgive herself and others. This comes after a public spat with her ex-husband, who shared videos of her allegedly scolding her children. The duet with John could be Spears testing the waters of a possible comeback and John is certainly happy to help.

John tweeted, “I’m thrilled with the response to #HoldMeCloser 🚀 I wanted to do a fun, happy summer track so was ecstatic when @britneyspears agreed to be a part of it! She truly is an icon, one of the all-time great pop stars & I love her dearly. I hope you all love it!” Later, he retweeted Spear’s reaction to finding out the song was #1 on the charts.

u201chttps://t.co/1vShOsFlDhu201d

— Britney Spears ud83cudf39ud83dude80 (@Britney Spears ud83cudf39ud83dude80)
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This is probably the most excited the public has seen Spears since the end of her conservatorship and quite honestly, I’m here for it. We have seen her star rise rapidly from a child star to a full-blown pop icon before it was nearly completely extinguished. Everyone loves a good comeback story, and we could be in the midst of witnessing Spears reclaim her crown.

Who knows what’s next for the mom of two but it’s safe to say she has legions of fans behind her and a new hit song dominating the charts. The world will be waiting and rooting for what could be the most fierce comeback yet.

In the lead-up to its premiere, there was much anxiety about the Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon. Could it ever live up to its predecessor? Will audiences glom onto characters as they did with Daenerys, Jon Snow, et al.? Will viewers even tune in? It’s too early to answer the first two questions, but there’s a definite answer for the third: Yes, and how. What’s more, it looks like the record-breaking, HBO Max-crashing premiere was no fluke.

As per Deadline, episode two of Dragon was even (slightly) stronger, wrangling in 10.2 million viewers across the streamer and linear platforms. That’s a 2% increase from the show’s maiden voyage. What’s more, that premiere’s numbers have only gotten higher in the subsequent week. It’s now eying 25 million viewers total, handily making it the most-watched original series in HBO history.

Oh, and another thing: Last week, Game of Thrones, the show that started it all, had become the second most watched show on HBO Max.

Even only two episodes into its 10-episode first season run, viewers are already obsessing over the political machinations of Daenerys Targaryen’s ancestors, and over a character called the “Crabfeeder,” who literally leaves his defeated foes to be eaten up by crabs. In any case, it seems people do not mind returning to Westeros.

(Via Deadline)

The Killers have been busy. They debuted their new song “Boy” at a festival set, then officially released it, and gave it a video. As of last week they’re on a big North American tour to celebrate songs from Pressure Machine and Imploding The Mirage, both of which were unveiled during the pandemic.

Recently the band invited opener The Smiths’ Johnny Marr onstage with them to cover one of his old band’s songs. On Saturday night in Los Angeles, they welcomed someone else onstage: Lindsey Buckingham, who played his guitar part from their song “Caution.” Buckingham stuck around for a rendition of his old Fleetwood Mac hit “Go Your Own Way.” This took place at the Banc Of California Stadium and it was a special performance to witness.

The performance was especially exciting following the spike in popularity for Fleetwood Mac in 2020 after their hit “Dreams” was revived on TikTok and hit the charts again, bringing Rumours to No. 7 on the Billboard 200 charts, which put it in the top 10 for the first time since 1978. The band were nothing short of pleased to hear about this at the time, writing on Twitter, “What a week! Thank you all.”

Watch Buckingham join The Killers for “Go Your Own Way” above, and watch him join for “Caution” below.

Rob Schneider owes the career he has to Saturday Night Live. He was on the show from 1988 through 1994, first as a writer, eventually as a cast member, breaking through primarily with one character: photocopier-loving office drone The Richmeister. His stint wasn’t always pretty, and in the decades since leaving he’s been openly critical of the show’s semi-recent politics, including Alec Baldwin’s Trump impersonation. But on a recent podcast appearance with, of all people, Glenn Beck, he went even further in criticizing his old home.

“I hate to crap on my own show,” Schneider told the former Fox News bloviator while talking about comedy shows he thinks “indoctrinate people,” presumably with left wing (or at least anti-Trump) ideology. In fact, he pinpointed the exact moment SNL lost it, at least for him: When Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. Even more specifically, it was the maiden sketch of the first episode after Trump’s win.

It featured Kate McKinnon, he recalled, “dressed as Hillary Clinton, and she started playing ‘Hallelujah,’” referring to the Leonard Cohen song. “I literally prayed, ‘please have a joke at the end. Don’t do this. Please don’t go down there.’ And there was no joke at the end, and I went, ‘It’s over. It’s over. It’s not gonna come back.’”

Mind you, there were lots of jokes in the following sketches. Dave Chappelle hosted! But Schneider felt something was gone forever, and not only with SNL. He felt it infected almost all late night comedy shows. “You can take the comedic indoctrination process happening with each of the late night hosts and you can exchange them with each other,” Schneider said. “That’s how you know they’re not interesting anymore.”

In one sense, he’s not wrong. Late night talk show hosts regularly drag Trump and his many cronies. At the same time, what does Schneider expect? Trump was and is such a polarizing figure that it was hard to make light of what he was doing, and he’s been so damaging that it inspired entertainers with big platforms to do something, anything to make things better. And yet his antics are often so absurd — including on the day this piece has been written — that he remains a comedy goldmine. Trump has probably been dragged on SNL more than any other president in the show’s lifetime, combined.

In any case, if Schneider’s sick of ditto-headed comics using their pulpit as a lectern, maybe he should hope Trump winds up in the slammer.

You can watch Schneider’s comments in the video below.

(Via Digg)

There remains some mystery around what life was like in the 1800s, especially for teens. Most people alive today were not around in the Victorian era when the technologies now deemed old-fashioned were a novelty. In this rediscovered 1970s clip from the BBC, two elderly women reminisce about what it was like being teenagers during a time when the horse and buggy was still the fastest way to get around.

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While cars were just around the corner from being the common mode of transportation toward the end of the 19th century, it’s pretty wild to imagine what these women experienced. Frances “Effy” Jones explained how, at age 17, she was encouraged by her brother to check out this new machine in a storefront window. Turns out that machine was a typewriter and, after being trained on how to use it, Jones would sit in the store window typing while people outside gathered to watch. Before long, classes began popping up for women to learn how to use a typewriter, starting a new movement for women of that era.

The second woman, Berta Ruck, told the BBC that she would get into a bit of trouble at boarding school for drawing instead of completing school work. This talent took Ruck to art school in London where she rode buses around town, attempting to avoid mud getting on her long skirt. But the woman explained that it never worked and she would spend hours brushing the mud from her skirt before wearing it out again. I’m sure you’re thinking, buses? They weren’t the buses we would see nowadays. These were double-decker horse-pulled carriages.

I know, that’s hard to imagine. That’s why you should check out the video below: