Month: June 2023

Dreamville Records is a creative family, so the news that the label head J. Cole and signee Bas teamed up for a new single dropping soon isn’t a surprise. That said, Bas’ latest statement about their upcoming track has set the bar extremely high.

Taking to Twitter, the emcee posted, “I gave my bro DJ Moma an exclusive summer heater me and J. Cole cooked up this week. Pull up on my Everyday People fam in a city near you to hear it. The song not out nowhere don’t look.”

The duo has worked together in several different ways in the past. Bas made several appearances on the Creed III soundtrack, which was executive produced by Cole. The pair have also done a bunch of songs together, including 2021’a “The Jackie,” 2018’s “Tribe,” and 2016’s “Night.”

Bas’ lead single, “Diamonds,” from his forthcoming album, We Only Talk About Real Sh*t When We’re F*cked Up, was shared at the beginning of the year. This upcoming release might also appear on the album, based on previous statements.

According to the event series’ website, the next installment of Everyday People will go down on July 1 in Detroit, Michigan. Find more information here.

Is Donald Trump going to jail? Possibly. The former president was recently charged with the very crime he wrongly accused Hillary Clinton of doing. His favorite rally chant — “Lock her up!” — may even come back to bite him in the butt. But one Fox News host has either somehow seen into the future and learned he’s been acquitted, or he should find a better place to get his news.

As per Mediaite, Brian Kilmeade — whose attempts to sit in for the dearly departed Tucker Carlson have not gone well — took to Facebook with a curious headline: “CNN Hosts Go NUCLEAR As Trump Is Found Not Guilty And Refuse To Air His Speech”

Come again? Now, Kilmeade could have very well have gotten his words tangled up. Maybe he meant “Trump Pleaded Not Guilty.” After all, a judge has yet to set a trial for the case, which involves his mishandling of government documents, not the one involving alleged hush money payments. The case might not even go to trial.

Oddly, Kilmeade’s post includes a video to his show on Wednesday, in which he explains to viewers the obvious: that an arraignment is not the same as a verdict — a distinction his own headline contradicts.

As of this writing, two days later, the post remains in-tact.

(Via Mediaite)

In the past, the Grammys have received pushback for not keeping up with music’s growing genres. The coveted annual award ceremony has been looking to be more inclusive, announcing new categories, adjustments, and expanding eligibility requirements. But they made one decision that makes them technically less inclusive: Music generated solely by AI is excluded from being nominated. That prompted a joke from the one and only ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic.

Yankovic posted a headline from USA Today that read “Grammys exclude AI from winning awards: Only ‘human creators’ eligible.” The musician captioned it with some fun wordplay, writing, “Ugh. I keep telling them… I AM human!!!”

Fans chimed underneath the post with jokes of their own.

One person replied, “Hear me out, AI Yankovic, and you sing with Siri.”

“Well, considering you. Some people have wondered if you’re not an alien in disguise,” added another.

In an attempt to make the musician feel better, one person ensured that the ‘Al’ referred to in the story was him but rather someone else, writing, “Don’t worry. Clearly, they were discussing TV’s Al Molinaro from ‘Happy Days.’”

Ironically enough ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic has a total of five Grammy wins with a total of 16 nominations overall.

After five years, XXXTentacion fans are still grieving over his tragic death. Fortunately, the family has been to find some semblance of closure after his killer was formally sentenced to life in prison. To honor his legacy, XXXTentacion’s estate has finally authorized the release of his single “I’m Not Human,” featuring Lil Uzi Vert.

The song, produced by John Cunningham, is a stark reminder of one’s vulnerability. This raw honesty is highlighted in the second verse, in which the pair rap, “Lay you down when you go to sleep / And wipе your eyes evеry time you weep / Tell you that life is not that deep / Paintin’ pictures that I’m a freak, but I’m not a human / I’m tired of losin’, inflicting my bruises, humans are users / I’m not a human.”

Although “I’m Not Human” was previously released on SoundCloud in January to mark what would have been XXXTentacion’s 25th birthday, at the time it was not approved for release by the musician’s family. In a statement from the producer, Cunningham shared his excitement to finally drop the track on streaming platforms.

“As complicated and conflicting as posthumous releases can be, I feel I’ll hold this one in a special place due to the fact that I was able to have some small part in connecting two of the most pure and loving people I know,” said Cunningham.

Listen to the full track above.

Lil Uzi Vert is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Riding the school bus is generally an uneventful experience outside of the occasional fight or someone sitting in you seat. In Milwaukee, students and the bus driver had a more exciting trip than any of them planned. As the bus driver, Imunek Williams, was nearing the school to drop off a bus full of children, the bus started filling with smoke.

Williams, who is eight months pregnant, told WISN, “I started to smell something funny at the stoplight, and I just thought it was normal smoke coming from another car, because I always smell smoke or weird smells.”

But the smoke only got thicker as they continued to drive. It was then that Williams knew that she had to make a decision quickly to save herself and the kids entrusted to her care. The bus was only a half mile away from the school when the mom-to-be attempted to radio in the condition of the bus to dispatch.

“I couldn’t barely get what I was trying to say out because of the smoke was hitting me in the face in my eyes so I was just like OK forget the radio. Just got the kids off the bus,” Williams told WTMJ.

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It was clear that she was in a race against time with how quickly the bus was overcome with smoke. Thankfully, Williams was able to get all 32 kids off the bus and lined up along the fence before it burst into flames.

“I was the last person off once I get off, I turned around and I just seen flames,” said Williams told WTMJ. “I wanted to make sure that I was safe, baby was safe and you know if it was my kid on the bus I would’ve wanted one of the bus drivers to act the same way that I did.”

None of the children suffered injuries and the soon-to-be new mom was treated for smoke inhalation and was able to return to work the following day. You can watch the incredible story below.

Childcare in America has been an issue since well before most of us were born, and it continues to be a struggle for parents. Daycare costs are rough—at one point in time, I paid $276 a week for one child to attend a daycare center, and that’s not even the highest price I was quoted. But not everyone can afford the cost of childcare, and when you have multiple children who all need adult supervision, the cost can become astronomical.

The cost of childcare can cause some parents to make the decision to stay home while the other works if the family can survive on one income. In other instances, parents may be working from home while also juggling full-time parenting responsibilities. For parents in the latter category, one mom’s new email signature is serving as a reminder that childcare is expensive and school is out for the summer.

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Some folks who saw my email signature commented on it, so I wanted to share. The US is the only developed nation w/o subsidized childcare. Adding it would increase our GDP over 1 trillion dollars. Not a handout — it’s a smart decision when facing a recession and labor shortages. pic.twitter.com/iZGLMg1PJW

— Meg St-Esprit (@MegStEsprit) May 31, 2023

Meg St-Esprit was in the process of looking up babysitters and summer camps and realizing how unaffordable it was to try to accommodate four children when a “snippy” email came through, according to Today.com.

“In the moment, I was like: ‘This is how it’s going to be — people are going to need to know that this is how it’s going to be for the next couple months,'” St-Esprit, told Today.com. “I’m still good at my job. I’m still a professional. I’m also a mom of four kids and this is reality in America.”

St-Esprit is a freelance journalist based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, so while her job may allow her to have some flexibility, people still expect prompt replies to correspondence. This mom decided that instead of adding additional stress to her plate, she would be brutally honest in her email signature. Honestly, the signature is pretty darn accurate. There are plenty of families in similar situations that probably wish they could change their email signature to something similar.

The signature reads, “Please note I may be slower to respond to email in the months of June, July and August due to the United States’ inability to provide affordable childcare for working mothers.”

St-Esprit shared a photo of her email signature to Twitter where she received a lot of support from other parents. She wrote about the benefits of universal subsidized childcare for the United States, saying, “The US is the only developed nation w/o subsidized childcare. Adding it would increase our GDP over 1 trillion dollars. Not a handout — it’s a smart decision when facing a recession and labor shortages.”

While states do offer childcare assistance for lower-income families, the threshold can unintentionally cause parents to make difficult decisions to keep their childcare subsidy. I recall a phone call made by a parent who attended my child’s daycare. The mom was explaining to her partner that she was given a promotion, but after speaking to the daycare director, if she took the raise, she would lose her subsidy and they would suddenly be responsible for paying nearly $900 a week. My eyes bulged at the thought, and as she collected her twins from my son’s classroom, she pondered accepting the position but asking to keep the same pay because the new cost of daycare would essentially be a pay cut.

Today I went to my 4yo’s PreK Counts classroom for yoga with a special grownup. This is the only subsidized childcare my children have been able to access as middle earners and it’s been a GIFT. It also reduces educational costs long term because of the early education benefits. pic.twitter.com/hYUt5h129h

— Meg St-Esprit (@MegStEsprit) May 31, 2023

I have no idea what the outcome was in that situation because I was just a bystander, but the conversation stuck with me. It partly stuck out because I could’ve benefitted from a subsidy and partly because many middle-class families struggle with affording childcare but don’t qualify for any sort of program to assist.

In a different tweet, St-Esprit also mentions this in-between experience.

“Today I went to my 4yo’s PreK Counts classroom for yoga with a special grownup. This is the only subsidized childcare my children have been able to access as middle earners and it’s been a GIFT. It also reduces educational costs long term because of the early education benefits,” the freelance journalist wrote.

Surprisingly, through St-Esprit’s frustrated signature, she found solidarity in the email responses she’s received.

“I work with a lot of clients, so I thought maybe I should delete it,” St-Esprit told Today.com. “Then people started to reply to it, writing: ‘Side note: I love this.’ ‘Side note: Oh my gosh, this.'”

Obviously, there’s something a little wonky with America’s way of handling childcare. It’s especially noticeable in comparison with other industrialized countries that have found a way to not only offer extended paid parental leave but also provide subsidized childcare for working parents.

Technology is constantly changing and teens are usually ahead of the curve when it comes to the newest tech on the block. Many parents are asking their children how apps work or using their teens as in-home tech support for anything technology related, so it’s not a surprise when parents are two steps behind in warning their children about a problematic app or unsafe trend.

Think about being a teen in the late 90s and our not-so-smart greeting of “ASL” (Age, Sex, Location) for AOL chatrooms full of strangers that used to offer to pick us up for parties. Most of our parents didn’t know how to get past the Ask Jeeves screen, let alone navigate to an AOL chatroom to see who we were talking to. In many ways, teens today are doing the exact same thing but with a faster internet connection, more platforms and high-definition cameras. But now, we’re the parents trying to Ask Jeeves what Omegle is.

I’ll give you a hint: Jeeves doesn’t know, but this cyber security educator does, and she’s sending out massive smoke flares to get parents’ attention.

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Tiana Sharifi, a cyber security educator, replied to a question asked on her TikTok page. The commenter asked if Sharifi thought Omegle was inappropriate and was given an in-depth answer about the dangers of the app for children.

“I educate parents but I also educate kids and teens, and what I will tell you is that when I go into these presentations, from grade six and upwards, they’ve all heard about Omegle,” Sharifi says. “When I say, ‘Have you heard of Omegle?’ everybody’s hands go up. But when I ask parents in parent nights, you get maybe two or three hands go up. This is not a safe platform.”

Omegle is a video platform that essentially allows you to video chat with strangers for a few minutes at a time. Sharifi explains it as webcam chat roulette where the only safeguard is a box that you click saying you’re 18. No math required to try to guess the correct birth year, just a box to check. There are no moderators and you can’t choose the rooms you get dropped into, so kids can and do get paired with adults, and not always safe adults.

“If you want to do an experiment, you can go on Omegle yourself and you will see within five seconds of being on the platform, there will be a lot of inappropriate nakedness,” Sharifi reveals.

@tianasharifi

Replying to @eveybevy70 #parenting #parentingtips #onlinesafety #childsafety

But if you think kids being dropped into random rooms with anonymous strangers is the worst part, Sharifi drops a bomb that most parents aren’t ready to hear.

“The most alarming part is that the kids are being recorded without their knowledge,” the educator shares.

Since the platform is live-streamed, the kids believe the interaction is completely temporary, unaware that the adult could be filming them. If a child decides to engage with the naked individual in any way, including in a way that’s inappropriate, these screen-recorded interactions are then uploaded to inappropriate adult entertainment sites, according to Sharifi. But there’s no extortion or blackmail, so neither the kids nor parents ever find out their children are on these sites that are specifically frequented by people looking for sexual content involving minors.

Teens aren’t aware of the recordings and their parents aren’t aware of the sites, so Sharifi bringing this to light on a public platform that teens and parents both frequent could make a positive impact.

Childrearing is always a touchy topic, and with the rise of newer parenting techniques like gentle parenting and free-range parenting, people get passionate about their techniques. To be fair, parenting is a very personal journey and every parent out there will parent differently than the next. In fact, even within the same household, each child is parented differently when they have the same exact parents.

This is because as parents we are constantly learning what works and what doesn’t. We’re also learning that each child has a different personality and needs a different approach. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to parenting, but there are some evidence-based practices that have been proven to work well as a guide for your personal style.

When I first started having children a little over 20 years ago, my family had a lot of opinions about my parenting style because there was no “punishment” for unwanted behaviors. It seemed like a foreign concept back then, and it still feels foreign now to some people. But the truth is, my children have never experienced punishment at my hand.

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When my children were younger, I had grown accustomed to defending the way I parented them, and while it was a source of frustration, it didn’t change the way I approached the task. I had an advantage that not every parent has when raising children–I was in college for my bachelor’s degree in child development and family relations when I was raising my first child, and I graduated when my second was six months old. I essentially had an inside scoop on how kids’ brains worked and the best approach to interact with them.

This is the reason I steered away from punishment and focused instead on natural and logical consequences. I view punishment as something unrelated to the behavior. Sometimes the punishment can be a child being grounded because they failed a test, or time-out for swearing. Obviously, there are more severe punishments as well, like corporal punishment or the newer trend of public humiliation via social media. (For instance, recently a mom posted a video to TikTok showing her running over her young child’s television because he was misbehaving in school.)

Natural consequences always happen on their own without much parental intervention, while logical consequences are typically enforced by the parent. Natural consequences are usually predictable, and as long as your kid is in no immediate danger, then it’s usually safe to let them play out.

Here’s an example: When my daughter was 4 or 5 years old, she was playing outside with some friends and had taken her shoes off in front of our backyard swing set and left them there. This was a Saturday and she had P.E. on Tuesday. I gave her multiple reminders to pick up her shoes along with the warning that her shoes would be gross if she left them outside.

She continued to live her best life going to dance, school and having playdates all while she ignored my advice to pick up her shoes. When P.E. day rolled around, she happily ran outside to grab her tennis shoes and promptly screamed and ran back into the house. Her shoes were filled with slugs and spider webs, so she was unable to wear them to school and had to go in jelly shoes. This was a natural consequence for the action and not a punishment.

But what is a logical consequence? I’ve got an example of that too, and yes, these are all real things that have taken place, though this one isn’t nearly as dramatic. My youngest is supposed to be in bed by 8 PM and lights out by 8:30 every evening, but he likes to get really silly before bedtime and wants to find ways to play more before going to bed. We inform him that all of the extra play is taking away from his television time in his room because no matter what, the television goes off at 8:30. If he wastes his “TV time,” it’s upsetting, but it’s not a punishment.

I have found that allowing for natural and logical consequences has given my children the ability to think critically for themselves in difficult situations. One of my four kids is now an adult and two of them are teens, and they information seek through me or Google when making certain decisions for themselves. I’ve never shielded them from safe natural and logical consequences even when they were painful to watch, like failing a grade or gossiping behind a good friend’s back.

Have I made mistakes as a parent? Absolutely. I’m not perfect and neither are my children, but from an early age, they saw me as someone to help guide them as they made their own choices. This aided them in achieving confidence in their decision-making abilities.

Every parenting style isn’t for every parent or every child. This is what has worked for me, but people should do what works best for their families to raise well-rounded and kind future adults.

No matter how long you’ve skied or snowboarded or how much of an expert you are, there’s one nemesis on the mountain that poses an underappreciated threat—the tree well.

People may think the main danger of skiing through trees is the risk of running into one. But falling into a tree well is a less obvious, but still potentially deadly risk due to the possibility of snow immersion suffocation (SIS). Essentially, the area around the base of a tree creates snow conditions that are quite different than those out in the open. Air pockets in the snow combined with water vapor rising from the tree base turns the snow into a quicksand-like texture that is nearly impossible to escape from—the more you struggle, the deeper in you fall. Skiers and snowboarders die every year from SIS due to falling into tree wells and not being found in time.

That could easily have been snowboarder Ian Steger’s fate in March 2023 if not for the eagle eye and quick thinking of backcountry skier Francis Zuber.

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Zuber had just begun a backcountry ski run with a buddy on Mount Baker in Washington State when a flash of red caught the corner of his eye. Zuber’s GoPro footage shows him stopping and turning to see a colorful snowboard upside-down next to a tree.

“I knew there was somebody attached to it, and obviously they were still alive,” Zuber told Vancouver’s City News. “I shout out to the guy…he can’t hear me, he’s five and a half to six feet into the snow at that point.” Zuber knew he had to work fast.

As the video shows him struggling to make his way back toward the tree through the deep snow, we can hear him muttering expletives to himself and calling out to the snowboarder. At first, we can’t see how Steger is positioned, but as Zuber gets closer and starts digging, it becomes clear that the snowboarder is completely upside-down, with his face buried deep in the snow.

Watch the harrowing GoPro footage Zuber shared on YouTube:

[Warning: This video contains strong language.]

Zuber told the CBC that they estimated Steger had been buried between five and seven minutes, “probably at either a third or just the halfway point of his possible survival time in there,” when he found him. Zuber said Steger hadn’t been snowboarding alone—he was with a group of three other riders who were carrying safety equipment including shovels, beacons and two-way radios—but as we could see in Zuber’s GoPro, getting back up a mountain when you realize someone in your group isn’t behind you anymore is no small or quick task.

Steger and Zuber have since become friends since the March 3 rescue and have even gone skiing together on Mount Baker.

Steger told the CBC he just wants to “enjoy being alive.” Indeed, after a close-call experience like that, every moment you have would feel like a gift.

This article originally appeared on 4.6.23

Many of us have sent a thank you to that one special teacher who really made an impact during our school days. Those standout heroes who taught us how to shine, grow beyond our limitations, and see the beauty of our potential.

However, Minnesota high school senior Minna Yang has gone above and beyond, sending literally hundreds of notes of appreciation to every single one of her teachers. Yes. Every. Single. One.

Yang began this sweet gesture as a shy elementary student and never stopped. Not only did she add new teachers to the list, she continued writing to teachers from her previous years, so the list would grow exponentially. By her senior year, she had 74 teachers and staffers in total who would receive a note.

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“It became a mission for her to leave a wake of positivity,” Sarah Wolfe, one of Yang’s teachers, told NBC News.

To respond in kind, Yang’s teachers banded together on their own mission. The day before her high school graduation, a small crowd of her former educators gathered to celebrate Yang’s generosity and offer their own words of appreciation.

“I take your note out every time I feel like I can’t do it, and you help me do it,” one teacher said.

Teaching, as we well know, isn’t an easy job. And in some ways—especially monetarily—it’s a thankless one. Not getting paid enough while taking on more and more responsibilities has caused many teachers to quit the job they love, after all.

But still, people continue to take it on as a vocation because of an inner drive to help and nurture young people and help them become the best version of themselves. I imagine getting a note does indeed help them remember why they chose the career in the first place. They deserve so much more, yes, but, as we can see from the exchange below, knowing they made a difference in their students’ lives is priceless.

Watch:

Yang’s teachers weren’t the only ones moved by her generosity. Several folks commended her attitude in the comments section.

“What’s amazingly beautiful is that every teacher seems to have saved the notes she sent them. What a caring human being, one that touched a lot of adults in her life. That is priceless and doesn’t happen often.”

“She is an upstanding human being who recognizes and respects her teachers who molded her as a person and helped her grow. She is an inspiration to many and will no doubt succeed in life because of her character and the fact that she values the relationships with those who helped her along her journey.”

“We need more people like her in the world, especially in this day and age. God bless you Minna in all you do.“

Yang might be the student here. But she’s giving a great lesson on kindness that we can all learn from.