Month: August 2023

Travis Scott’s latest album Utopia has received mixed reviews from rap fans. But it’s also drawn comparisons to Kanye West’s critically acclaimed 2013 album, Yeezus. Now Billboard has announced that Scott’s album has snagged the No. 1 spot on its Hot 200 album chart, beating out Post Malone’s Austin.

Utopia‘s chart placement marks Scott’s third time as a solo act reaching that milestone, following 2018 Astroworld and 2016’s Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight. In 2019, his Catcus Jack collaborative album, JackBoys, reached No. 1 as well.

According to Luminate, as of August 3 Utopia has tracked the equivalent of 496,000 units earned in the United States. The total calculation is comprised of 243,000 streaming equivalent album units (equaling 330.68 million on-demand official streams of the streaming set’s 19 total songs), 252,000 album sales, and 1,000 track-equivalent album units. To put that into perspective, the recorded streaming metrics for Utopia alone made up nearly half (49%) of Utopia’s first-week numbers, as album sales primarily generate the remaining percentage.

Scott was sure to tap some of the industry’s biggest names to make a guest appearance on Utopia, including Beyoncé, Bad Bunny, Drake, The Weeknd, Sampha, and 21 Savage. However, considering the five-year hiatus since his last album, the anticipation alone could have played a significant part in the album’s charting success.

Some current GOP presidential candidates try to thread the needle, pitching themselves as a Donald Trump alternative while not enraging his base. Chris Christie ain’t doing that. From the start, his campaign has been about one thing: absolutely thrashing his ex-pal. He’s called him out on all his many alleged crimes. He’s called him out for planning to skip the debates. He’s called him out for begging for money when he purportedly has plenty of it. And Christie isn’t running out of steam.

In a new segment on Christie by CBS’ Robert Costa (as caught by Mediaite), the former New Jersey governor — who’s not so hot either, don’t forget — can be seen telling a crowd what he really thinks about Trump.

“I oppose him for his incompetence,” he railed. “I oppose him for his broken promises before we ever get to any of the criminal indictments.”

When Costa asked Christie what he really thinks about Trump, he again spoke his mind.

“He’s a completely self-centered, self-possessed, self-consumed, angry old man, and he doesn’t care about anybody else other than him,” Christie replied. “And if he were ever to become president again, I’ll take him at his word. He said, ‘I am your retribution.’ Well, he’s not our retribution, Bob. He will be his own retribution.”

When asked why other GOP candidates don’t tear into Trump, he had another blunt answer.

“I think it’s one of two things,” he said. “They’re either unwilling to do it because they have aspirations, maybe a vice presidential bid or a Trump cabinet, and some of them are just unable to do it.”

Still, Christie denied that he’s a flip-flopper, at least when it comes to someone with whom he once worked.

“Trump abandoned me,” Christie said. “I’m no different today than I was when I supported him in 2016. He’s the one who kept classified documents against the law, lied to his lawyers, and lied to the government. I had nothing to do with any of that. He did.”

(Via Mediaite)

Undisputed is in the process of figuring out what it’s going to look like in the post-Shannon Sharpe era. After Sharpe’s decision to leave the show that has reportedly led to it going off the air for a few weeks, the folks over at FS1 have been working to figure out who will be Skip Bayless’ newest debate partners.

We learned earlier this week that Lil Wayne will join Bayless once a week in some capacity. And on Monday, we found out that former All-Pro cornerback and current Thursday Night Football analyst Richard Sherman is going to join the fray, according to Andrew Marchand of the New York Post. Per Marchand, the arrangement will put Sherman on the air with Bayless somewhere between 50 and 100 times a year, and most of his appearances will come during the football season.

This is, of course, not the first time that we’ll see Sherman and Bayless duke it out on television. Sherman famously once made a cameo on First Take when Bayless was with ESPN and wasn’t shy about how much he disliked Bayless, calling him an “ignorant, pompous, egotistical cretin” and said that “you have never accomplished anything.”

Marchand brought word that the two sat down to hash things out recently, and while Sherman hasn’t put pen to paper on a contract, there’s an agreement in place for him to join the show. As for the man he’d play a part in replacing, there’s no word on what’s next for Sharpe, but Smith has made very clear he’d love it if he joined First Take.

Late Monday afternoon, Donald Trump did the unthinkable: He obeyed the law. The former president got in trouble on Friday after he dropped a threatening post on Truth Social, which appeared to target those prosecuting him over his third indictment. Judge Tanya Chutkan, who’s presiding over the case, gave the Trump team till Monday at 5pm to respond the alleged infraction. They tried to stall. Judge Chutkan wouldn’t let them. And lo and behold, their response came in just under the wire. Naturally it was filled with some whoppers.

The Trump team’s response runs some 29 pages, and it doesn’t get off to a great start. For one thing, it mischaracterizes the case — about his role in fomenting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot — as being about “First Amendment rights,” which is how Trump has been trying to frame it. That’s one page two. On page three comes a whataboutism whopper attacking Joe Biden and the new mug he’s selling.

The response accuses Democrats and the media of having “campaigned” on his third indictment and “proliferated its false allegations.” The Trump team then argued Joe Biden posted a “thinly veiled reference to his administration’s prosecution of President Trump.” They’re referring, of course, to Biden hawking a “Dark Brandon” mug, which has already enraged Fox News.

“Dark Brandon,” of course, is how Democrats, including Biden, have co-opted “Let’s Go Brandon,” the Republican taunt hatched in late 2021 which was supposed to be code for “F*ck Joe Biden.” That one was popular for a few months. One MAGA guy even said it to Biden personally during a Christmas phone call for kids. But its stock soon dropped and as Biden enjoyed one success after another, it evolved into a joke at Trumpworld’s expense.

As for the Trump team’s argument, it’s not exactly strong. It’s even hypocritical. In their filing, the Trump team argued that their client’s inciting tweet “does not contain or reference sensitive information of any kind.” A similar argument could be made about Biden’s mug ad, in which all he says is “I like my coffee dark” — a simple reference to “Dark Brandon,” with no direct mention of anything or anyone else, much less his potential 2024 rival.

But what does one expect from a legal team that keeps blurting out that their client actually committed the crimes of which they’re accused?

(Via Raw Story)

If you had never heard of Eurodance sensation DJ Crazy Times until you started seeing clips of him performing his upcoming song “Planet Of The Bass,” don’t worry… that’s because DJ Crazy Times technically doesn’t exist. Likewise, if the lyrics sound like nonsense, that’s because they are. The song, which has taken over social media — especially TikTok — over the past few weeks, is actually a satire of a typical, late-90s-era Eurodance club hit created by comedian Kyle Gordon.

Gordon, along with influencer Audrey Trullinger, dances in what are fittingly described as “Y2K club outfits” by NBC News in a collection of videos on TikTok that have millennials and zoomers alike in a frenzy for the full version. In the original video, which has over 7 million views as of press time, Gordon and Trullinger (as singer Ms. Biljana Electronica), mug at the camera and lip sync the ridiculous lyrics in New York’s Oculus Center as passersby glance askance at their antics. Check it out:

It’s fun in the same silly way as other viral TikTok hits of the summer have been; NBC specifically mentions Flyana Boss, who similarly promoted their single “You Wish” to “song of the summer” status with a string of outlandish public TikTok videos that had bystanders doing double takes. Gordon credits the popularity of “Planet Of The Bass” to timing, with the Barbie movie reviving the memory of Europop band Aqua via the group’s 1996 song “Barbie Girl,” which had been repurposed into the film’s soundtrack theme by Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice (via Saweetie and Jason Martin, apparently).

The clamor had Gordon announcing a full release next week in another video revealing that he’d flown to Croatia to film a new video for the song, which drops next week, August 15, moving it up from its previous date. Gordon himself seems nonplussed at the song’s success, cracking on Twitter (which X can pry from my cold, dead fingers), “Dear god I’ve created the new Milli Vanilli.” Indeed.

It only took three weekends, but Barbie crossed the billion-dollar mark in global ticket sales. And it happened during co-writer/director Greta Gerwig’s birthday weekend! It’s a cause for celebration — unless you’re a member of America’s conservative media, some of whom have been triggered by the comedy’s feminist bona fides. Among them is Ben Shapiro, who was dragged during its opening weekend when he dropped an epic takedown that only earned him widespread mockery. Now an old prediction he had has come back to bite him in the bum.

During his 43-minute anti-Barbie tirade — for some context, that’s only 71 minutes shorter than the film itself — Shapiro played soothsayer about its box office future. He knew its opening weekend would be ginormous, and boy, was it. But during its sophomore weekend, he foresaw that it was “just absolutely going to fall off a cliff,” speculating that “repeat business on this movie is going to be nonexistent.”

Spoiler: That didn’t happen. During its second weekend, Barbie went from $162 million domestically to $93 million — a mere 42% drop. Its third weekend was sweet, too, adding another $53 million, or a 43% drop from the previous one. It’s still the number one movie in America, fending off newcomers The Meg 2 and the latest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot.

Did people enjoy dunking on conservative media’s biggest dork being so spectacularly wrong about pop culture? Yes, they did.

For what it’s worth, Shapiro admitted he was wrong, if in the whiniest way possible, saying he “radically overestimated the taste of the American public.”

This isn’t the first time social media has roasted Shapiro for his pop culture tastes. Just ask him what he thinks about “WAP.”

(Via Mediaite)

It’s tough to quantify whether today’s parents are stricter or more permissive than previous generations, but the overall sentiment seems to be that parents are more lenient than they were a few decades back.

A poll by YouGov found that younger Americans are more likely than their elders to have been raised by “not very strict” or “not at all strict” parents. Thirty-nine percent of under-30s say that their parents weren’t very strict or not strict at all, compared to only 15% of over-65s.

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Nicola Kraus, author of “The Nanny Diaries,” believes that it’s a natural outgrowth of the fact that we know a lot more about children than we did in the past.

“We are deeply aware that our children are cognizant, conscious humans in a way previous generations weren’t aware. Children were treated like pets or-worse-release-valves for their parents’ stresses and fears, then expected to magically transform into healthy, functional adults,” she writes.

But this change in parenting has encouraged other trends that many think are creating a greater number of entitled young adults who can’t fend for themselves. These days we have helicopter parents, bulldozer parents and dependent parents whose overinvolvement in their children’s lives renders them incapable of becoming fully integrated adults.

Reddit user u/qquackie asked the online forum “What parenting ‘trend’ do you strongly disagree with?” and got an overwhelming number of responses from people who think that today’s parents are raising entitled children.

Many of the responders think that parents are being too sensitive with their children and they don’t provide firm boundaries. They also think it’s a big problem for kids to think they’re the center of the universe.

Here are 21 of the most popular responses to the parenting question.

1. Pretending that not parenting is parenting

“I won’t tell my child to stop kicking your leg repeatedly because i don’t want to crush his spirit!’ — StoicDonkey

2. ​Denying your kid any negative experiences or emotions

“They are a normal part of being a person, teach them to handle negative emotions now before you send them out into a world they are not prepared to handle.” — IAmRules

3. Fake “gentle parenting”

“You hear and see so many parents letting their children do whatever they want, no matter how destructive, rude or hurtful their behaviours are. Parents find themselves beholden to the whims of their childrens’ emotions in the name of gentle parenting, instead of true gentle parenting where (so I hear) boundaries are set alongside validating emotions.” — candianuk

4. Not setting clear boundaries

“You are the adult, not the kid. Children benefit sooo much more from clear rules and consequences.” — NorthWeight3580

5. The “bulldozer” parent

“The parent who removes all obstacles/challenges from a child’s life so they don’t learn about perseverance, problem solving, failure (sometimes you can try hard and still not get the reward) and learning from mistakes – unless the goal is to develop a highly anxious person – then, being a bulldozer parent is great.” — spinefexmouse

6. Stage-mom syndrome

“Abusing the talents of your child just to boost your self image in society.” — sweettooth_92

7. Nonstop supervision

“Hovering over them at every turn. Whatever happened to tossing them in a play area in another room and letting them create, explore, and get the occasional bumps?” — ansibley

8. Not believing the teacher

“‘My kid never lies to me.’ Seriously. Parents absolutely should be their kid’s biggest supporter. But support sometimes means holding the kid responsible when they don’t do the right thing.” — jdith123

9. “No talking back!”

“If this also counts… Parents who punish their kids for speaking up or otherwise explaining something, saying that they’re ‘talking back.’ I honestly don’t get why most parents refuse to admit they’re not always right sometimes. Besides, what if their kid one day comes up to them and says another adult is touching them inappropriately?” — EntryRepresentative5

10. Helicopter parenting

“Kids need freedom to explore the world, get dirty, engage in free play. I am not advocating putting the child outside on a Saturday morning and telling them to come home when the street lights come on, but an age acceptable level of freedom.” — Cat_Astrophe_X

11. Pushing them too hard

“Pushing them too hard in sports, academics, etc. Like pushing til they need therapy or get injured, no free time, no downtime. FFS, they only get to be young & without excessive responsibilities once.” — Oh-Oh-Ophelia

12. Tablets in public

“Loud cartoons and games on tablets in public places.” — StarrCreationsLLC

13. Potty training too late

“Oh man, I’m a nanny and work in daycare. I can talk so much about this. One is late potty training. Waiting to potty train a child is more and more common. Which I generally agree with. Wait until they’re 2.5-3 and knock it out. Some take longer, some are probably ready earlier. Better than rushing it and causing issues. What this has turned into. Not potty training. I nanny a 4 year old that is still in pull ups. She is more than capable of using the potty. Our 4 year old classroom just installed a diaper genie because so many 4 year olds are starting preschool in diapers. My best friend who is a Kindergarten teacher had 2 kids start kindergarten in diapers. Luckily they’re potty trained now.” — cleaning-meaning

14. Kids on social media

“Creating social media channels for your children where they proceed to upload videos and photos of their kids. Perfect place for pedophiles.” — AJSK18

15. Too much structure

​”I guess the overall trend of prioritizing academics/extracurriculars and college admissions over everything else. Give your kids some chores and let them hang out with their friends outside of structured sports and musical activities!” — hausfrau224

16. Tablet addiction

“Constantly giving your kid(s) a tablet or cellphone to keep them busy because you can’t be bothered to actually be a parent or pay attention to them.” — ZRuneDemonX

17. Letting the kid make all the choices

“I believe kids should have reasonable choices, like what their snack is and the character that’s on their bedspread, but you can’t let your 3 year old decide when you’re allowed to leave your house. The world doesn’t work that way.” — cihojuda

18. Silence

“Saying ‘what goes on in this house, stays in this house.’ I know hundreds of victims of abuse, go through years of pain because of this phrase.” — Dixie_Maclant

19. Birthdays

“The social media trend that keeps upping the expectations for birthday parties and any celebration connected to a kid. When I was a kid, birthdays consisted of a handmade invitation made by me, a cake from the grocery store, food that my Mom cooked and then inviting some friends and family over for games. Today’s expectation is that every monthversary and half-birthday consist of a huge arch of balloons that will end up in the trash, a customized three-tier fondant cake, gift wrapping that color-coordinates with the themed party favors and of course, a very intentional outfit for the numerous photo ops that will take up most of the day. Anything for the ‘gram, right? Don’t even get me started on gender reveal announcements.” — littlebunsenburner

20. Parent, not friend

“Trying to be your kid’s ‘friend,’ not a parent. A parent is there to provide guidance and responsible behavior to model. Yes, sometimes making their actions have consequences and setting boundaries can be difficult and they’ll not be too happy with you. That’s part of the job. Ultimately I think that will result in a healthier relationship than being the “cool” permissive parent. I’ve seen results of that style of (not) parenting with very sad outcomes.” — DataPlenty

21. You’re not special

“Perpetuating the myth that one’s children are somehow special. With about 97% certainty, they are not. Teaching them that they are just sets them up for crushing disappointment down the road. It’s far better to raise kids to believe they are ordinary people with a few gifts, but also some flaws and weaknesses.” — AssistantToTheSensei

This article originally appeared on 2.20.23

Fear of flying—aerophobia, in technical terms—is an extremely common phobia, affecting around 25 million adults in the U.S. alone. Some people grit their teeth and white-knuckle their way through their fear, while others find themselves unable to get on an airplane at all because of it.

Such a fear is understandable, really. Hurtling through the sky at 500 miles per hour, tens of thousands of feet above the Earth’s surface, isn’t exactly the way humans were designed to get from place to place. (We may have evolved with the brain power and ingenuity to make it happen, but that doesn’t mean we automatically go along for the ride without our sense of self-preservation kicking in.)

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One of the triggers for people with aerophobia is turbulence—the occasional shaking and pitching of an aircraft when it hits certain conditions in the atmosphere. Even people who are comfortable flying can find turbulence disconcerting sometimes, especially when it creates a sudden dropping sensation. Turbulence is normal, but it doesn’t feel normal when you’re sitting in a chair 30,000 feet from solid ground. It feels chaotic and out of control.

Anna Paul, a popular TikTok star from Australia, has shared a helpful visual for people freaked out by turbulence in a video that has more than 19 million views.

Paul explains that a pilot shared the analogy of a plane flying through the air being like an object suspended in jello. There’s pressure on all sides, so even if the jello is shaken—and the object shaken along with it—the pressure suspends the object.

In other words, a plane is not going to suddenly drop down out of the sky due to turbulence, in the same way that an object won’t drop out of the middle of a bowl of jello.

Watch:

@anna..paull

Fear of flying tip ✈️❤️

The jello analogy is also used by aerophobia experts. Therapist Les Posen specializes in flying phobias, and he shows his clients a model airplane suspended in raspberry jello to illustrate the fact that turbulence won’t cause a plane to drop out of the sky. He even goes a step farther by having clients smell the jello, and then advises them to eat some raspberry candy or juice on the plane to remind themselves of the analogy, using their senses to calm their nerves.

At the end of her video, Paul said there’s never been a plane crash from turbulence, but that’s not quite true. In 1966, a flight (BOAC 911) coming out of Tokyo broke apart in midair due to unexpected severe turbulence. However, that was a very long time ago. Monitoring of meteorological conditions has greatly advanced since then, as have the designs of modern aircraft and the skill of pilots, so experts will tell you that turbulence is not something to worry about.

If imagining air pressure as jello doesn’t really work for you, it may be helpful to have a visual of what turbulence actually is. For that, Captain Stuart Walker, who has been flying for 30 years, explains the four main types of turbulence, what causes them and what pilots do to avoid them or reduce their impact. He also explains what passengers can do to minimize their chances of feeling turbulence on a flight, such as sitting over the wings or toward the front of the plane and flying earlier in the day when temperatures are not as likely to cause air disturbances.

Whether you prefer hospital-food-based analogies or no-nonsense, scientific explanations, the bottom line is that turbulence feels far scarier than it actually is. A shaking plane is not going to drop from the sky, modern aircraft can withstand a great deal of movement midair and pilots are highly trained to handle turbulence.

And remember: Commercial airline travel really is the safest way to get to where you’re going, statistically speaking. So next time you fly, kick back, relax and imagine you’re suspended in jello, knowing you’re in capable hands when the turbulence starts.

This article originally appeared on 06.23.22

There is one request that unites all women and girls no matter their political affiliation or socioeconomic status, and that’s telling them to smile when they’re just minding their business. Think of it like a fairly universal “don’t” when interacting with women, unless you’re a photographer hired to take their photo.

A mom on TikTok found herself reaping the consequences of telling her 9-year-old daughter to smile when she was rehearsing a performance for her school. To say her daughter was not amused would be an understatement. The mom, whose TikTok name is Anniesgotabun, shared a video before and after her daughter’s performance.

The caption of the video read “mistakes were made” complete with the facepalm emoji and the hastag #parentingfail. In the first part of the video you can clearly see her daughter going through the motions of the musical production looking unenthusiastic. The mom explains her error via text overlay explaining “my daughter had her final rehearsal for the school musical yesterday.”

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The video cuts to the mom with text that read, “Afterward, I regrettably said the one thing that no female *ever* wants to hear. ‘Try to smile more.’’’ The result was interesting to say the least and it certainly made the mom rethink her well-meaning advice. During the actual show, the little girl made sure her point was made by staring directly in her mother’s eyes the entire time … smiling.

You may be thinking, well then the advice worked and it did, if her plan was to have her daughter look like the Joker while staring deep into her soul the entire performance. Because that’s exactly what happened and the internet cannot unsee it and the parents of the other children on stage are probably wondering whose child that was.

Check out the funny video below and for the love of everything you cherish, please remember this mom’s mistake should you ever get the urge to tell a woman or girl to smile.

@anniesgotabun

Mistakes were made 🤦🏼‍♀️ #parentingfail

This article originally appeared on 12.24.22

There are a few big reasons why 70% of divorces in the United States among heterosexual couples are filed by women. Women have more economic opportunities than in decades past and are better positioned to care for themselves and their children without a husband’s income.

Another big reason is that even though the world has become much more egalitarian than in the past, women still bear the brunt of most of the emotional labor in the home. Gilza Fort-Martinez, a Florida, US-based licensed couples’ therapist, told the BBC that men are socialized to have lower emotional intelligence than women, leaving their wives to do most of the emotional labor.

Secondly, studies show that women still do most of the domestic work in the home, so many are pulling double duty for their households.

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A TikTokker with two children (@thesoontobeexwife) shared why she decided to leave her husband of two decades and her story recounts a common theme: She did all the work and her husband did little but complain.

The video, entitled “Why women leave,” has received over 2 million views.

@thesoontobeexwife

Visit TikTok to discover videos!

“So for the men out there who watch this, which frankly I kind of hope there aren’t any, you have an idea maybe what not to do,” she starts the video. “Yesterday, I go to work all day, go pick up one kid from school, go grocery shopping, go pick up the other kid from school, come home. Kids need a snack–make the snack. Kids want to play outside – we play outside.”

Her husband then comes home after attending a volunteer program, which she didn’t want him to join, and the self-centeredness begins. “So he gets home, he eats the entire carton of blueberries I just purchased for the children’s lunch and asks me what’s for dinner. I tell him I don’t know because the kids had a late snack and they’re not hungry yet,” she says in the video.

She then explains how the last time he cooked, which was a rare event, he nearly punched a hole in the wall because he forgot an ingredient. Their previous home had multiple holes in the walls. Dr. Gail Saltz, a psychiatrist and host of the Power of Different podcast, says that when punch walls it’s a sign that they haven’t “learned to deal with anger in a reasonable way.”

“Anyway, finally one kid is hungry,” the TikTokker continues. “So I offered to make pancakes because they’re quick and easy and it’s late. He sees the pancake batter and sees that there’s wheat flour in it and starts complaining. Says he won’t eat them. Now I am a grown adult making pancakes for my children who I am trying to feed nutritionally balanced meals. So yes, there’s wheat flour in the pancake mix.”

Then her husband says he’s not doing the dishes because he didn’t eat any pancakes. “Friends, the only thing this man does around this house is dishes occasionally. If I cook, he usually does the dishes. I cook most nights. But here’s the thing. That’s all he does. I do everything else. Everything. Everything.”

She then listed all of the household duties she handles.

“I cook, I clean the bathrooms, I make the lunches, I make the breakfasts, I mow the lawn, I do kids’ bedtime. I literally do everything and he does dishes once a day, maybe,” she says.

@thesoontobeexwife

Visit TikTok to discover videos!

The video received over 8700 comments and most of them were words of support for the TikTokker who would go on to file for divorce from her husband.

“The amount of women I’ve heard say that their male partners are only teaching how to be completely independent of them, theirs going to be so many lonely men out there,” Gwen wrote. “I was married to someone just like this for over 35 years. You will be so happy when you get away from him,” BeckyButters wrote.

“The way you will no longer be walking on eggshells in your own home is an amazing feeling. You got this!” Barf Simpson added.

This article originally appeared on 5.21.23