Month: March 2024

In the eyes of fans, Taylor Swift’s forthcoming studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, is simply the next creative endeavor for the entertainer. However, it could be a serendipitous nod to an equally famous distant relative.

Since the inception of her career back in 2006, the “You’re Losing Me” singer has taken great pride in her songwriting capabilities. Many supporters have even taken it a step further, likening it to poetry. Following a new report, her Grammy Award-winning lyrical skills might have been inherited. Continue below for more information.

Is Taylor Swift Related To Emily Dickinson?

Most Swifties are familiar with each member of the musician’s immediate family. But based on Today‘s broadcast on March 4, the general public was introduced to Swift’s distant relative as early as grade school. During the segment, anchor Carson Daly revealed that according to Ancestry, Swift is faithly related to late famous poet Emily Dickinson. In the company’s genealogical discovery, researchers found that Swift and Dickinson are sixth cousins, three times removed.

“Swift and Dickinson both descend from a 17th-century English immigrant (Swift’s 9th great-grandfather and Dickinson’s 6th great-grandfather who was an early settler of Windsor, Connecticut),” said a rep. “Taylor Swift’s ancestors remained in Connecticut for six generations until her part of the family eventually settled in northwestern Pennsylvania, where they married into the Swift family line.”

Watch the full snippet below.

Ironically, Swift has referred to Dickinson before. While accepting the Songwriter-Artist of the Decade Award from the Nashville Songwriters Association International in 2022, she joked about the writer in her speech. “If my lyrics sound like a letter written by Emily Dickinson’s great-grandmother while sewing a lace curtain, that’s me writing in the Quill genre,” she said.

It looks like another case of the universe doing its thing.

There are a lot of things that come with parenting that may be unexpected or may be a little different once you settle into the role. And while things are changing, it seems moms are still carrying the brunt of the mental load. Sometimes the mental and physical load of motherhood make you want to do something drastic like turn into something other than a human.

Brianna Frye has had enough of what it takes to be a woman in today’s society and the comedian, who is also a working mom, took to Instagram to ask for a do over in her next life. The exasperated mom has some suggestions for the big guy upstairs that seem quite reasonable as she pleads her case.

“When I tell you I am so freaking tired of being the woman, I really just feel like God could’ve made me a dinosaur or a frog or even a tree at this point. I’m fine with being a tree,” Frye says.

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“But like this woman stuff,” the comedian continues. “Y’all want me to bear children, take care of the children, get a house, take care of the house. Go grocery shopping, cook the food, buy clothes, wash the clothes and put them away” becoming more animated as she continues her list.

By the end of citing all the things that come with motherhood, Frye asks to just be a tree her next time around and women in the comments are putting in their reincarnation requests just in case someone’s taking requests.

“Preferably a palm tree. On an island, Lord,” one person prays.

“This is hilarious! Im with you girl! Why not a dinosaur,” another asks.

“That Part!!!!! Bird me please. Hummingbird. Catch me if u can,” a commenter writes.

“She’s not lying and left a bunch more things out. Wife’s and mothers are like offensive lineman in football. ‘Over worked and under appreciated,'” another person says.

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In December 2023, BTS’ V (real name Kim Tae-hyung) took a hiatus from music to begin his mandatory military service in South Korea. But before he bowed out from the limelight, the “Rainy Days” singer made a bold promise to his fans.

“Within 18 months, I’ve prepared a lot of things,” he wrote in a statement. “Please look forward to it. I’ll really miss you. I love you so much.”

V is set to make good on that vow by releasing a new single, “FRI(END)S.” The track, which is due out on March 15, marks his first drop since his debut solo EP, Layover, in September.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Big Hit revealed the promotional schedule for the upcoming song, which includes a short film (March 6), concept photos (March 8 & March 10), teaser audio clips (March 9 & March 11), and more.

According to Bit Hit, “FRI(END)S” is described as: “[A track] rooted in the Pop Soul R&B genre, delivers relatable and witty romance through lyrics.”

The statement also confirmed that the forthcoming record was written entirely in English. V isn’t expected to be cleared of military duties until June 2025, but the BTS Army won’t have to wait until then for a fresh serving of pop music goodness from the international superstar.

“FRI(END)S” is out on 3/15 via BigHit. Find more information here.

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From the moment you find out you’re expecting a baby it seems like every store you’ve ever shopped at also received the positive pregnancy results. Suddenly you’re getting emails and ads for every baby item imaginable. Your head is spinning with choices and no real idea on what you actually need, especially if this is your first baby.

It doesn’t take long to figure out that baby items are expensive and there are a lot of them, but which items can be left on the shelf and which ones should make its way to the registry? A group of parents answered the question, which overrated baby item they’d absolutely recommend spending the money on and some things may be a surprise.

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Parents in the Upworthy community were quick to jump in and help new parents not spend an exorbitant amount of money on unnecessary baby items. The list included things as simple as Boogie Wipes to actual furniture like a gliding rocking chair, and the reasoning is just practicality no matter the cost. Here are the top items mentioned:

1. My Brest Friend Original Nursing Pillow

“My Brest Friend. Works so much better than a Boppy pillow for nursing,” Amy Terwilliger says. The pillow is ergonomically designed to comfortably sit around your waist while you nurse or hold your baby. It also has a pocket to keep a bottle or pacifier and conveinently clips around you to stay in place while you adjust your position for comfort.

2. Rocker Recliner Chair

“We bought a lazyboy rocker recliner. I didn’t know how much I’d use it but my baby is 3 months old now and I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve spent in that chair. Best money we spent,” Amanda Legassie writes.

3. The famous Baby Brezza

Pretty sure you don’t even have to be a parent to have heard of the Baby Brezza. It’s just that fancy and that famous and at first glance seems like a colossal waste of money, but parents that buy it swear by it. Laurence Gareau shares, “For the moms who plan/have to go with formula, at 4 months old and more, a baby brezza. We call it the baby nespresso machine. Its quick, accurate and always the right temperature.”

4. A Baby Bjorn or any high quality baby carrier

“A baby carrier! Or two. I liked having a soft structured carrier for most times, and a stretchy wrap for summer weather and hanging around the house. Having a good, quality carrier can help caregivers avoid back pain, hold their fussy newborns comfortably, and still have the freedom to walk around and do things if they would like to! I even took my wrap to the hospital with me when I birthed #2 (and used it!),” Catherine Weber reveals. Many others shared the same sentiment on baby carriers.

5. A Pack n’ Play with bassinet and changing table

Quite a few people explained how needed a Pack n’ Play was when adding a new baby. It’s an all in one portable sleeping space for your baby that comes in handy when baby still sleeps in the room with you and when going on trips. “A good pack and play… one with the little upper spot for changing.. a really good one is a life saver!,” Jilliaine Hopper shares.

6. Bottle sterilizer and dryer

Sterilizing bottles can be a pain but it has to be done and now there’s no need to stand over a boiling pot of water with a timer. Brittney Salaiz says, “The bottle sanitizer/dryer. We used ours so much and having dry bottles ready quickly helped a lot.”

7. A baby swing that goes in multiple directions

“Baby swing….save me on so many nights when a baby was congested and needed to sleep upright. Also guaranteed nap and one of the few things that helped with one of my colicky babies. Get one that goes side to side or front to back,” Kimberly Lungerman Allende says.

8. High quality car seat

This was repeated several times by parents expressing the importance of spending the money on a high quality car seat that will keep your child safe in an accident. “Decent car seats. Splash on that 25kg Swedish plus tested seat and see how it pays you back,” Emma Mattingley writes.

9. Owlet Smart Sock

The Owlet Smart Sock was mentioned repeatedly but one parent gave a real life example of how it helped her. “The Owlet sock was irreplaceable for us- especially since my daughter had Covid, RSV, and croup before she was even 8 months old. It helped us monitor her oxygen and gave us so much peace of mind,” Rachel Roundy discloses.

Of course, every baby is different but these were some of the top suggested items listed. Hopefully these experienced parents suggestions help new parents feel a bit more successful in their early parenting journey.

Dad and parenting educator Jon Fogel, who goes by @wholeparent on social media, thinks he’s stumbled onto “one of the greatest parenting hack ever,” thanks to Mister Rogers.

In a clip posted to TikTok, Fogel explained how he had recently stumbled upon a study about the effect that “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” had on kids.”

“Kids who watched [the show] for whatever reason, seemed to be more patient, more calm, just more, like, emotionally attuned,” he said.

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The study, published on ChildResearch.net, went to to predict that Mister Rogers’ signature soothing teaching style and well known “tools for learning” like curiosity, listening, and caring about one another “will grow even more important as the digital age evolves.”

That certainly seemed to be the case for Fogel, who explained that, like many parents, his kids are normally “bouncing off the walls” when they wake up between 5-6am. However, when he tried the Mister Rogers approach, everything changed.

“I am just going to act. I’m gonna pretend to be Mr. Rogers. I’m gonna speak like Mr. Rogers, like super slow-paced … I’m just going to be Mr. Rogers…and see what happens to my kids,” he said.

The results were nothing short of magical.

Instead of “tearing up the house,” the kiddos sat in a circle, “patiently playing Lego” and “attentively attuned” to Fogel’s every word as he calmly and slowly asked questions.

Just think if he had worn a cardigan while doing all this.

@wholeparent Am i the only one doing this? Is this just a cheat code? #parenting #parenting101 ♬ Won’t You Be My Neighbor? – Mister Rogers

Fogel’s hack quickly got a lot of views online, and many folks who watched the clip agreed this should be a new go-to parenting move.

“The impact of being calm and respectful toward tiny humans is amazing. They’re spongy mirrors. They absorb our energy and reflect it back at us,” one person wrote.

Another added, “Calm and slow, open and non-judgmental, you invite them to share their thoughts with you, they’re happy that you’re listening and paying attention to them.”

One viewer pointed out how Rogers has a special set of rules for talking to children, lovingly dubbed “Freddish” by his team of writers, which meticulously reconstructed language so that young children could understand what was being said to them in a positive way. Just one of the many reasons why the show was such a phenomenon in the children’s programming sector.

Others chimed in with praises of Rogers’ timeless appeal—for kids and adults alike.

“Mr Rogers is very ASMR…I’m 41 and still sing the theme song to my kids,” one parent shared.

Mister Rogers might be known for his educational work with children, but he’s taught many lessons to us “big kids” too, primarily when it comes to effective, compassionate communication. His legacy is a gift that keeps on giving.

Bryan James has become popular on social media for documenting his time working on Royal Caribbean International’s Odyssey of the Seas. He boarded the ship on December 8, 2023, and will continue his voyage through April 9, 2024.

The Odyssey of the Seas is one of the largest cruise ships in operation. It is 1,138 feet long and has a gross tonnage of 167,704 with 16 decks.

In a recent video, he revealed the biggest threat to passengers on a cruise ship. While most people, citing the Titanic disaster of 1912, would say it’s icebergs, according to James, it’s fires. He recently shared a video that shows just how seriously the Odyssey of the Seas takes the fire threat. The ship has massive doors installed in the ship that can prevent fire from moving through the ship.

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“All cruise ships have these things called fire doors and they do exactly what you think. They just help prevent the spreading of fire on a cruise ship. But if you are the biggest ship in the world, you need the biggest fire doors in the world. I’ve never seen these until this morning,” James explained in a YouTube short.

Look at these things; they are massive!” he continued, “They probably do a really good job at stopping fires.”

While fires are rare on cruise ships, in 2013, a blaze aboard one grabbed the public’s attention. A power generator on Carnival Cruise’s Triumph caught fire, which knocked out most of the ship’s power and left passengers with no lights, air conditioning, or working toilets. The ship drifted for 4 days at sea before it could be towed to Mobile, Alabama.

Fire is the BIGGEST threat to a cruise ship, not icebergs or sinking like with the Titanic

If you have a hard time staying focused on a task, you’re not alone. In a Crucial Learning poll of 1,600 people, two out of three responded that they have a hard time staying focused on one task or one person. And this difficulty focusing happens in both of the major areas of life, with 68% responding that they have a hard time focusing at work and 62% said they struggle to focus at home.

It’s not surprising that most people have attention deficit issues, considering what the vast majority of us are carrying around with us all day long. It’s no longer just other people who occasionally interrupt what we’re doing, but rather our daily barrage of message, emails, app notifications, news headlines, social media check-ins, advertisements and other distractions our phones or other handheld devices offer us.

However, according to productivity expert Chris Bailey, it’s not so much the distractions that are keeping us from focusing, but rather the overstimulation of our brains that cause us to seek out distractions in the first place.

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In a 2019 TEDx Talk, Bailey, author of “Hyperfocus” and “The Productivity Project,” shared that the key to focusing better isn’t to try to try harder to focus, but rather almost the opposite: Rediscover boredom and let your brain wander where it will, or what he refers to as “scatterfocus.”

The first step in combating the overstimulation of our brains is to consciously lower the level of stimulus. Bailey himself began trying this out with an experiment. He noticed that most of his day was spent going from screen to screen, from the moment he woke up in the morning to when he went to sleep at night. The biggest culprit was his phone, so he spent an entire month only using his phone for 30 minutes a day.

“It took about a week to adjust downward into a new, lower level of stimulation,” he shared, “but once I did, I noticed that three curious things began to happen. First, my attention span grew. It was like I could focus on things, not effortlessly, but with much more ease than I could before this experiment started. In addition to this, though, as I was going about the world and especially when my mind wandered a bit, I had more ideas that my mind arrived at, and on top of this, I had more plans and thoughts about the future. Getting rid of one simple device led to these three effects.”

The experiment was so successful that he decided to try to lower his level of stimulation even further. He asked his followers to share the most boring things they could think of for him to do, and he would choose one a day to do for an hour. After a month of doing things like reading the iTunes terms and conditions and watching a clock tick for an hour, he noticed the same kinds of effects as he did with his phone experiment. He was able to focus even more effortlessly, not because he had fewer distractions, but because he was less stimulated and therefore didn’t seek the distractions in the first place.

Bailey makes a strong case for creating more empty space and less stimulation in our lives so that our brains are better able to focus.

Watch him explain:

“Erection” is a tricky word. There’s a lot of other words — words that have very different meanings — that sound almost like it. Back in 2022, footballer-turned-laughable failed MAGA candidate Herschel Walker found that out the hard way (so to speak), when he went on Fox News and declared, “This erection is for the people.” Now a similar embarrassment has befallen Jake Tapper.

Per Mediaite, the CNN host was interviewing Nikki Haley about the Supreme Court deciding Donald Trump can’t be stricken from Colorado ballots. Haley, the last GOP Trump rival standing, said she was “happy” with the ruling, saying, “Look, I’m trying to defeat Donald Trump fair and square. I don’t need them taking him off the ballot to do it.”

Tapper replied by pointing out that “their official explanation was not they didn’t like Donald Trump. They said he participated in an erection…”

Unlike Walker, Tapper caught himself, saying the word he meant to say: “insurrection.” He then tried to explain his gaffe, saying, “I got up at five this morning to do Kasie Hunt’s show and I’m exhausted.”

Throughout the incident Haley’s generic smile never changed, though she did chuckle when Tapper tried to explain his slip-up.

As it happens, Trump himself has been making all manner of gaffes. On the campaign trail, he’s done things like say Barack Obama’s still president, forget that World War II already happened, and confuse Haley with Nancy Pelosi, another woman he hates whose first name begins with “N.” But it’s Joe Biden’s brain we should be worried about.

(Via Mediaite)

House of the Dragon is not one of the shows that got derailed by last year’s twin strikes. They film outside the U.S., partly away from jurisdiction (though that also meant they couldn’t change the scripts while shooting). What’s more, they wrapped photography before SAG-AFTRA joined the WGA on picket liens. That means that its second season isn’t on the far horizon. In fact, it’s actually due awfully soon.

Per Variety, round two of House of the Dragon is set to begin dropping on HBO in June. When in June? That’s not yet known.

What is known is that Season 2 won’t have as many episodes as Season 1. House of the Dragon kicked off with 10 episodes, introducing us to some of Daenerys Targaryen’s predictably messy ancestors. When we return for more, there will only be eight.

The Game of Thrones prequel began about 300 years prior to the events of the show that began it all, and it ended with the death of Lucerys Targaryen, which did not sit well with Emma D’Arcy’s Rhaenyra. Will Season 2 feature her launching into some grisly revenge? Will there be even more dragons? You’ll be able to find out when House of the Dragon returns in about three months.

(Via Variety)

Nicki Minaj came out swinging to kick off her highly anticipated Pink Friday 2 World Tour.

Unfortunately, so did a few of her devoted super fans, the Barbs. As the “Beep Beep” rapper took to the Oakland Arena stage on March 1, clips of her opening performance quickly flooded social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter). But there was one video that stole all the spotlight, and it didn’t involve Minaj at all. A now-viral visual shared on the platform showed several concertgoers involved in a vicious brawl.

In the clip, two attendees are seen punching another ticketholder. The blows exchange as security watches from afar before eventually intervening to separate the parties. With tensions still high, the last frame of the video shows the individuals yelling while being held back before it ends.

https://twitter.com/janiyahboi/status/1763855361612911077

It is unclear what initiated the incident as none of the individuals have been publicly identified. Minaj also hasn’t addressed the viral video. However, she did take a moment to pen a touching note to her fans for their continued support days later. “Dear Barbz, I love you,” she wrote. “I really do. Always have. Always will.”

Minaj has several dozen shows left on her Pink Friday 2 World Tour. The next performance is slated for March 8 in Las Vegas, Nevada. View the full tour schedule (here), working setlist (here), and tour merch (here).