Month: October 2022

This article originally appeared on 12.18.17

We know your relationship with your parents can affect a lot about who you are as you grow up. But is it possible that the good and bad of that relationship could actually show up in your saliva?

That’s the bizarre-but-important question a team of researchers recently asked, the results of which were published in Developmental Science.

---

Led by Elizabeth Shirtcliff, an associate professor from Iowa State University who studies early childhood adversity, the study gathered 300 8th-grade kids and used a simple survey to determine some basic facts about their parents. The kids were asked things like whether they were close with their parents and how often positive reinforcement was used in their household.

The team was looking for signs of what they called “positive parenting, attachment, and bonding.”

Six years later, the kids — now adults — were brought back in for a strange follow-up. The researchers collected a dozen different samples of their saliva.

It sounds a little gross, but they were looking for something important: the presence of a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol is crucial to our overall well-being. Lower levels of cortisol are correlated with fatigue, mood swings, and muscle loss, for example. Higher levels of cortisol correlate with healthy blood pressure levels and better immune system function (though extremely high levels are a health risk).

For this study, cortisol was particularly important because it plays a big role in how we process and react to stress. When we’re faced with extreme stress or danger, cortisol floods our bodies, resulting in the “fight or flight,” response.

The study’s authors observed that people who are generally more stressed over longer periods of time, however, often show lower cortisol levels — almost like they get accustomed to all that stress over time and have a lesser reaction to it. While this might sound like a good thing, as far as your health goes, it’s definitely not.

The results of the study were clear: The more signs the kids showed of a positive bond with their parents when they were young, the better their cortisol functioned in adulthood.

That’s a good thing, the researchers suggest, because it helps keep kids alert and sensitive to all of the stimuli and information swirling around them from day to day, rather than having a blunted response to stressors and life in general.

So having great parents who use positive parenting methods is a good thing. Yay!

But the study had an important twist when it came to looking at racial demographics.

When race differences were accounted for — about half the kids were black and half were white — the cortisol correlation didn’t hold up.

On average, the study found, white and black parents were equally likely to have a positive bond with their kids. But parenting styles aren’t the only thing that can affect stress levels and kids’ response to it.

Many of the white students in the study may have benefited from “low stress, resource-rich contexts which unfortunately may be less common for black youth,” the researchers explained.

It’s also worth noting that many groups — including black people of people Jewish descent — carry biological markers of trauma from previous generations (i.e., slavery, the Holocaust), which can also affect cortisol response.

In other words, growing up with various socioeconomic and other hardships does indeed have a lifelong impact, and now we’ve got the beakers full of saliva (so to speak) to prove it.

This is important work. It proves that, in many cases, being a great parent can actually physically manifest itself in kids growing up to be well-adjusted and adaptable.

Being a loving parent can actually have a biological impact on your kids years and years later. That’s amazing!

Perhaps most importantly, however, it shows a glaring need for kids — particularly those belonging to marginalized or disadvantaged groups — to get better support in the form of solid education, safe communities to grow up in, and more opportunities to learn and grow.

Having great parents isn’t always enough to overcome a world that seems to be stacked against you, but it certainly helps.

This article originally appeared on 01.10.18

Anyone who’s ever been on Tinder knows having a cute animal in the photo is usually a big hit.

But what if Tinder profile photos only featured that cute animal? And what if, instead of a millennial would-be hooker-upper, it was the adorable dog or cat itself looking for true love?

That’s an idea some animal shelters are toying with.

---

“We are always trying to come up with … creative new ways to get our shelter dogs out in front of potential adopters,” says Karen Hirsch, public relations director at LifeLine Animal Project in Georgia.

And experimenting with online dating for dogs and cats might just be working.

The harsh world of pet adoption is extremely competitive: About 6.5 million dogs and cats enter U.S. shelters every year, each seeking a good forever home. It’s too big a need for shelter operators to just sit back and hope they all get adopted.

That’s why you see adorable dogs on display outside the grocery store, partnerships with Uber that will bring puppies directly to you for playtime, and aww-inspiring social media campaigns like dogs in pajamas.

An estimated 50 million people worldwide use Tinder. So LifeLine and other shelters and rescues figure why not give it a shot?

After all, people using online dating apps are already looking for love and companionship — just maybe a slightly different kind.

Hirsch says they recently created profiles for 22 of their dogs and cats.

Animal profiles are also showing up on Bumble, which is home to another 20 million users or so.

Like sweet Duke here.

Each pet is assigned to a volunteer who creates the profile and handles the conversations after a match

“In a crowded shelter, pets often get overlooked, but on a dating app, the animal becomes an individual,” Hirsch says. “People learn about them and form a ‘virtual’ attachment.”

Plus the witty banter is oodles of fun.

For LifeLine, the experiment is still new. But Hirsch says people are responding to it incredibly well so far.

At the very least, Tinder and Bumble have proven to be great for word-of-mouth awareness-building on the importance of adopting shelter pets. The animals are getting dozens of matches. Hirsch says there have been more than a few online adoption inquiries, as well as people coming into the shelter to meet their “match” in person.

She also notes that one of the matches even became a regular volunteer at LifeLine.

This new animal dating idea has another upside for apps — and the people using them, too.

Dating experts are finding that people are getting burned out by online dating. Between “ghosting,” “cushioning,” “the slow fade,” and a bunch more of those annoying slang terms, humans out there are wondering if dating apps are even worth the effort.

For romantic love, who knows?

But now that you might just meet the dog or cat of your dreams, that’s not a bad reason to keep on swiping.

There are a lot of enraging issues these days. Elon Musk buying Twitter. Kanye West spewing anti-Semitism. The kooky GOP candidates who may inexplicably win big in the Midterm elections. But please reserve some ire for one unfortunate victim of cancel culture: the McRib. The McDonald’s sandwich, which has long only been available on special occasions, is coming back, but this time will be its “farewell tour.” And there’s one commentator who isn’t having it.

On an episode of The Daily Show last week, Roy Wood Jr. stopped his traffic report dead to rant about the dearly departing McRib. He was livid.

“What did the McRib do? Did it say something about Jewish people or something? I thought the McRib is an ally, the McRib has been an ally for years and years,” Wood joked. “We all know why McDonald’s canceled the Snack Wrap, we know what the Snack Wrap said, that made perfect sense.”

“What did the Snack Wrap say?” host Trevor Noah asked.

“I’m not going to repeat that on television,” Wood replied.

Wood got so worked up that he eventually issued a threat to McDonald’s brass. “If you dare, as an organization, to certify the cancellation of the McRib, I will not accept those results,” he charged. “I will get a group of people together, and we’re going to travel, and we’re going to march down to McDonald’s headquarters.”

He vowed to “storm the McDonald’s office” on “the first week of January,” at which point Noah butted in, saying that sounded too “familiar” to another major event that Republicans continue to downplay.

You can watch the segment in the video above. Wood’s rant begins around the 12:45 mark.

Jaboukie is back on his rap sh*t. Following his debut single, the queer empowering “BBC,” the comedian, actor, writer, and now rapper has dropped a grating new track called “Rockwhyler.”

On the song, Jaboukie spits scorching rap bars over a bass-heavy, rock-influenced beat.

“Rottweiler, Givenchy / Beat got bite / Beat got teeth / Think that ho want a ring / F*ck that ho, I beat my meat.

Upon the song’s release, Jaboukie explained why he named the song “Rockwhyler.”

“Growing up I had two rottweilers, Juno and Athena,” said Jaboukie in a statement. “When my family walked them, we’d always get stopped by awestruck strangers asking, ‘Is that a ‘rockwhyler’?’ The pronunciation ‘rock-why-ler’ feels like home to me.”

When producing the song’s instrumental, Jaboukie intended to subvert the hypermasculinity within the hip-hop, punk rock, and dancehall sounds that influenced his music.

“My songwriting and song production processes usually occur in tandem,” he said of the song’s creation. “the distortion effect I used on the bass created a delay that sounded like a snarling dog, so I built everything else around that.”

In the song’s accompanying video, viewers can see distorted, kaleidoscopic visions of Jaboukie around on a basketball court, boarding a train, and running through a trail.

Check out the video for “Rockwhyler” above.

What is Tom Hanks’ most enduring character? Is it Forrest Gump? Woody from the Toy Story saga? The thieving Southern professor from the Coen brothers’ take on The Ladykillers? Or is it actually David S. Pumpkins, a one-joke (albeit a bizarre one-joke) bit from a 2016 episode of SNL? Hanks didn’t host this most recent episode of the show, but he did make a couple appearances — and since Halloween was near, one of them was that character.

The premise was the same as it was six years ago: A group of ordinary folks (including, this time, host Jack Harlow), wanting only to be scared silly, board a haunted elevator ride. They got some familiar faces: this time it’s Freddy Krueger, Pennywise, Annabelle, etc. They also get David S. Pumpkins, a mugging, ever-grinning gentleman in a Jack-O-Lantern-festooned jacket, dancing alongside two men in skeleton get-ups to an annoying techno song. It was so like Pumpkins’ maiden voyage that they even brought back alum Bobby Moynihan, as one of the dancing skeletons.

The one major change-up this time? The guide, played by Kenan Thompson, does a bit of explaining why the ride is so David S. Pumpkins-heavy: It’s because they blew most of their money on the rights to major characters, leaving little for others. So they double, triple down on David S. Pumpkins.

This isn’t the first time Hanks has exhumed the character. The following spring after his debut, Pumpkins made a brief cameo in a rap video parody.

You can watch the return of David S. Pumpkins in the video above.

What was the biggest news of last week? Was it the continued fall of Kanye West? Was it one of the hot mess midterm debates, such as the one between Dr. Oz and John Fetterman? What about Elon Musk finally buying Twitter (and instantly unleashing the racist hounds)? For their most recent Weekend Update, SNL covered it all, but started with the latter.

“This week, Elon Musk officially bought Twitter for $44 billion, beating out the next highest offer of zero dollars,” co-host Colin Jost cracked. “Musk sent an open letter to advertisers saying that he doesn’t want Twitter to become a ‘free-for-all hellscape,’ because that’s his plan for Mars.”

Michael Che then took on arguably the GOP’s most chaotic candidate. “Herschel Walker denied allegations from a second woman that he pushed her to have an abortion, saying, ‘I’m done with this foolishness’ — which is also what Walker says when he takes off the condom,” he joked.

Jost skewered another key race: the one in Pennsylvania between Oz and Fetterman. He joked about the latter’s underwhelming performance, where he tried to wrestle with his medical maladies. He also pointed out that Oz really had a pyrrhic victory, saying he did “slightly better than a recent stroke victim.”

Then there was Ye, whose pivot into a fount of anti-Semitic comments has led to him being dropped by untold companies, even losing a key wax figure. “Things are definitely getting way out of hand in this country,” Che said, “because when I heard a guy barged into a house with a hammer looking for Nancy Pelosi, my first thought was, ‘Oh no, was it Kanye?’”

You can watch the segment in the video above.

Lizzo might still be on the road for her Special tour, but that doesn’t mean she’s skipping out on Halloween festivities. This past weekend, the “About Damn Time” singer has been slaying the Halloween game with some incredible costumes.

On Friday (October 28), Lizzo dressed as singer, rapper, and influencer Chrisean Rock, wearing her hair in a long braid, and rocking a chain and hoop earrings. In a video shared to Instagram, Lizzo is seen lip-syncing to Rock’s song, “Vibes.”

Though some felt the costume was in poor taste, given the nature of Rock’s relationship with her boyfriend, rapper Blueface, Rock co-signed Lizzo’s costume, commenting “Awwwwwwww I love dis” on her post.

Yesterday, she recreated several iconic memes dressed as Marge Simpson. Covered in yellow makeup, wearing a large, blue wig and a tight green dress, Lizzo impeccably channeled the legendary TV mom and replicated a meme in which she is seen covering her face in embarrassment. Also in her posts are her reenacting a meme of Marge krump dancing, and a meme of a wide-eyed Marge with her husband, Homer, at a winery.

Check out her costumes above.

Lizzo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music group.

The midterm elections are not far off, and in the final weeks Republicans have been surging in the polls. Even three of the GOP’s kookiest candidates have gained ground: Herschel Walker, the former footballer who keeps getting busted with claims that he paid for abortions; Dr. Oz, a carpetbagger who killed a bunch of dogs; and Kari Lake, a local news anchor and anti-Trumper-turned-MAGA 2020 election denier. SNL’s most recent Cold Open skewered them, hoping to remind viewers that all three are rather silly.

Heidi Gardner played PBS Newshour’s Judy Woodruff, forced to speak to the aforementioned three. She started with Kenan Thompson’s Walker, asking him how on earth he’s suddenly doing well in the home stretch.

“And that’s where I don’t know,” he replied, replicating Walker’s fractured train of thought. “The whole world is a mystery, ain’t it? For per example, a thermos: It keeps the hot things hot, but also the cold things cold. My questions is: How do we decide? So we’re going to be looking into that very much.”

When asked why many Georgians seem to be fine with a candidate who’s been accused of paying for two women’s abortions and holding a gun to his ex-wife’s head, he replied, simply, “Gas.” That should explain it, but he went further. “I’m fun! Look, if you want to get on the jumbotron at the Falcons game, you don’t throw on a cardigan and start making sense! You take your shirt off and shake your belly around! That’s what I’m doing, and people love me no matter what.”

He concluded, “Like the great Trump Donald said, I could pay for an abortion in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes! And that’s a promise from me, Herschel Wikipotamus.”

Mikey Day’s Oz was next. “Let’s remember: I was a long shot, Judy,” he said, “but I always told myself, you can win this election if you’re honest, if you’re fair, and if your opponent has a debilitating medical emergency. So, we’re very lucky.”

Then there was Cecily Strong’s Lake, who sent up perhaps her most perplexing habit: doing Zoom interviews in what looks like an iPhone Portrait Mode — or as Strong put it, “constantly in soft focus, and lit like a ’90s Cinemax softcore.”

Strong’s Lake declared, “I’m a fighter. In my life, I’ve sent back over 2,000 salads, and I’m not afraid to do the same thing with democracy.” When asked about her stance on making sure everyone gets the chance to vote, she replied, “Judy, I’ll make it easy: If the people of Arizona elect me, I’ll make sure they never have to vote ever again.”

You can watch the sketch in the video above.

In his first Saturday Night Live episode as a performer and host, Jack Harlow was a scene stealer on last night’s SNL. In a hilarious skit parodying elevated eateries, Harlow is joined by Bowen Yang as the two work as bartenders in an upscale restaurant.

The two arrive at a table of four, where one of the guests asks for tableside guacamole, however, they are unable to serve the guac, as the restaurant is “out of avocado, cilantro, and red onions,” as Yang notes.

Harlow then assures the guest that he and Yang “are horned up” to serve up tableside cocktails.

The first cocktail is a “screwdriver with flair.”

Yang and Harlow then dance to Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ “Unholy” as they mix drinks. They, unfortunately, spill the mixes onto the table, but Yang and Harlow quickly brush this off, before offering a non-drinking guest at the table a “voj-eye-to.”

“What’s a voj-eye-to?” asks the character, played by Heidi Gardner.

Harlow then explains that a voj-eye-to is a virgin mojito, which he pronounces, “moj-eye-to.” The two, once again, dance to “Unholy.”

Later in the sketch, one of the characters, played by Cecily Strong, mentions how happy she is to hear the song.

Harlow then shouts out the restaurant’s DJ, who Yang explains is “a busboy with an aux cord.”

Check out the full skit above.

Jack Harlow is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

In his second performance of the night, Jack Harlow took to the Saturday Night Live stage for a performance of “State Fair” from his album, Come Home, The Kids Miss You.

Wearing a flowing green sweater and matching pants, Harlow shouts out his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, recalling fond memories of his childhood.

“I wanna go back to Kentucky and shut down the state fair / Visit my old teachers and tell ’em to take care / I might take a whip instead of payin’ the plane fare / I still remember the way there,” he raps on the free-flowing song.

“State Fair” is one of the more personal tracks on Come Home, The Kids Miss You. In a piece for Harper’s Bazaar, Harlow wrote that he wants to use his platform to uplift is home state.

“I would like people to think of me as real and one of one,” Harlow said. “And I’d like for people to know me as someone who gave back and lifted the community he’s from up. I’d like for Kentucky to be different after I leave earth and for people to have a better life because of it.”

Check out the performance of “State Fair” above.

Jack Harlow is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.