Month: May 2024

Last March, Romy Mars became a beloved nepo baby by posting a since-deleted TikTok about being grounded by her parents, Oscar winner Sofia Coppola and Phoenix lead singer Thomas Mars, due to an attempt to charter a helicopter on her dad’s credit card. As of Wednesday, May 22, the 17-year-old has a new claim to fame, as she officially joined the pop girlie ranks with “Stuck Up” and “From A Distance,” her debut songs released as a double A-side single.

Both bedroom pop songs were written by Mars and produced by Claud, a known Clairo collaborator.

The whimsical “Stuck Up” bottles the feelings of an idyllic summer romance, including references to pools and Fourth Of July fireworks, with an expiration date. “It was like a dream or a nightmare,” Mars sings in the lilting chorus. “But I couldn’t wake up / You said I’m too cold to feel fear / And now I’m stuck up.”

“From A Distance” picks up where “Stuck Up” left off — doused in delicious bitterness (Always gonna be somebody else you’re f*cking seeing / Always gonna be stuck in these eyes I keep believing”) and carried by the relatable cycle of wanting to hang on to someone she should let go.

Mars’ musical debut also marked her return to TikTok. Of course, Coppola was a proud mom on Instagram.

Listen to “Stuck Up” and “From A Distance” below.

Lightning In A Bottle Festival will provide a jolt to Memorial Day Weekend in Buena Vista Lake, California. Actually, the Do LaB’s-backed annual festival is getting a headstart om the holiday weekend, as it kicks off on Wednesday, May 22, and runs through Monday, May 27. The extensive lineup features James Blake, Labrinth, M.I.A., and Skrillex. The festival will be held across six stages: Woogie, Grand Artique, Junkyard, Stacks, Crossroads, and Lighthouse.

See some of the notable set times below, and find the full schedule here.

Friday, May 24

Fatboy Slim is set to take the stage from 10 p.m. to 12 a.m. PST time at Woogie, which will overlap with James Blake’s set (10:45 p.m.-12 a.m. PST) on the Lightning stage. Friday’s slate is set to run deep into the night — or into Saturday morning, depending on how you look at it — with Logie, DJ Karaba, and IAmNobodi among the artists scheduled to perform until 4 a.m.

Saturday, May 25

Saturday will begin at 11:30 a.m. with Cameron Angeli on the Junkyard stage, and the day’s headliner is undoubtedly Labrinth from 12:55 a.m. to 2 a.m. PST on the Lightning stage. Again, performers will stage sets until 4 a.m. PST, including Strawberry Disco Circus, Sacha Robotti, Osunlade, and Sinego.

Sunday, May 26

Nicoshi will open Sunday’s slate from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on the Junkyard stage. The Lightning stage will welcome M.I.A. (11 p.m. to 12 a.m. PST) and Skrillex (12:30 a.m. to 2 a.m.).

Just about everyone has had the depressing experience of sitting through a long queue to get concert tickets, only to find when they were ready to check out, the price was 30 to 40% higher because of service fees added by the ticketing company.

People often have the same experience when ordering food through an app, only to see a massive service fee applied right before they’re ready to place their order.

These service fees, known by many as “junk fees,” are popping up everywhere these days, from surprise resort fees charged when checking out of a hotel to a 4% surcharge on a dinner bill that the restaurant added so you can help pay for their employees’ healthcare.

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The good news for people in California is that a new bill will go into effect on July 1st that bans hidden or unexpected fees on everything from concert tickets to cruise packages. Senate Bill 478 (SB 478) makes it illegal for businesses to advertise or list a price for a good or service that does not include all required fees or charges other than certain government taxes and shipping costs.

California establishments have been relying on these junk fees for years. A new law passed this year will ban these fees, thank goodness.
https://t.co/sH6WcfFcRy https://t.co/2h78DlchMj

— Travis (@mcsuggafree) March 4, 2024

“Our price transparency law is about clear and honest communication with consumers so consumers can make the financial choices that are best for them and their families. This new guidance provides information for businesses across California to ensure that clear answers are available, particularly for small businesses,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. “The law is simple: the price you see is the price you pay. Laws work when everyone can comply. I am pleased that we can offer this guidance to help facilitate compliance with the law and make a more fair and level marketplace for businesses and consumers.”

A 2023 survey of Americans found that 2 out of 3 said they were paying more in surprise charges now than they had five years earlier.

The bill is good news for consumers who want to make thoughtful decisions about how they spend their money, especially when inflation has made it a lot harder to stretch a dollar. However, the bill probably won’t make things any cheaper. Businesses most likely won’t stop charging these hidden fees; instead, they will be rolled into the listed price instead of popping up out of nowhere right before you hit the “pay now” button.

Not just hotels, airlines & Ticketmaster piling on junk fees.
Client had $112.61 Uber fare before tip today to LAX from hotel 20 miles away, reserved last night.

Look at breakdown: Over 1/2 cost ended up being fees.

Hope CA new “junk fee” law starting 7/1 applies to Uber too. pic.twitter.com/g5u9BZpQuU

— Janice Hough (@leftcoastbabe) May 22, 2024

State Senator Bill Dodd from Napa, the bill’s co-author, stated its goals: “A consumer shouldn’t discover hidden fees made up by a business when they pay their bill.”

As the old saying goes, “As goes California, so goes the nation,” and when companies are forced to alter their pricing and marketing in America’s most populous state, it’s bound to create changes for consumers across the country. The new law could be the first shot in a larger war against junk fees.

In 2023, President Biden called out Ticketmaster and others who charge “junk fees” in his State of the Union address, claiming he’ll get “rid of junk fees, those hidden fees at the end of your bill that are there without your knowledge.” In his 2022 State of the Union speech, Biden criticized the hotel industry for surprise fees at checkout. “We’ll ban surprise ‘resort fees’ that hotels tack on to your bill. These fees can cost you up to $90 a night at hotels that aren’t even resorts,” Biden said.

This Federal pressure led several companies, including Live Nation, SeatGeek, xBk, Airbnb, the Pablo Center at the Confluence, TickPick, DICE and the Newport Festivals Foundation, to make their pricing more transparent.

Before she was a hit-making rapper, Saweetie was a USC student paying her way with a secret job. While the Bay Area rapper has previously talked about working at a strip club to pay the bills, she previously played coy with the details. However, during a new interview with LA radio station Real 92.3, she finally revealed which local club she worked at before her rap career took off, and how she kept it a secret from her family.

While telling The Cruz Show about her experiences as a strip club waitress, Saweetie spilled the beans when the hosts wondered if she could name the club where she worked. She revealed that it was Dames ‘N’ Games in downtown LA, which she says she chose because she not only made way more than she did at another waitressing job (Buffalo Wild Wings), but also because “it’s not popular in the Black community, and I didn’t want nobody from my family or my friends of my family seeing me work a strip club.”

To that end, she even employed an alias while working there (which isn’t that unusual for the biz), “Carmen” — a name she chose because it “felt like a powerful, sexy name.” Now, though, Saweetie is good enough for the rapper, who has a new single, “Nani,” out, and is working toward the release of her debut album.

You can check out the full interview here.

The College Football Playoff is expanding from four to 12 teams this year, which means a four-round playoff featuring first round games and quarterfinal games that will be hosted by teams on campus. That means a lot of games and while ESPN owns the rights to broadcast those games, they don’t exactly want to be pushing playoff contests to networks that don’t have the same reach.

As such, they will be sublicensing games to TNT Sports as part of a five-year agreement that starts this year and runs through 2028.

TNT Sports will present two first-round College Football Playoff games during the 2024 and 2025 seasons. In addition to the first-round games, TNT Sports will add two quarterfinal games each year –beginning with the 2026 season through the 2028 season. TNT will be the primary network televising the sublicensed CFP games, among additional TNT Sports distribution platforms.

ESPN will present all other College Football Playoff games on its networks including the annual CFP National Championship Game. ESPN will also continue to manage the sponsorship program for the presentation of the CFP.

The release does not say how things will operate in terms of whether TNT is simply broadcasting the game with ESPN’s crew or if TNT Sports will have their own show and broadcasters, but I’m very much hoping for the latter and for Charles Barkley to be involved somehow. If we’re losing Inside the NBA soon because TNT is not part of the new NBA rights package, the least they can do is give us Chuck’s college football takes — Ernie Johnson would also be firmly dialed on the Playoff as a Georgia fan. Give me some Gone Fishin’ after playoff losses, with Chuck sending Ole Miss to Galveston after a first round defeat.

The rollout for Normani’s long-awaited solo debut album has begun at last, with the singer sharing “Dopamine (First Dose)” a trailer/short film previewing Dopamine ahead of its impending release. Incorporating archival video from a space shuttle launch, clips from Normani’s “1:59” video with Gunna, and behind-the-scenes footage from the album cover photo shoot, the trailer aims to increase both hype for the album and the heart rates of viewers with its racy glimpses of Normani’s future videos.

Normani has been teasing Dopamine‘s release for what seems like years; you can go all the way back to 2022 to see fans complaining about the wait for her solo debut. For reference, she told Ciara at the end of 2021 that the album was “almost done,” yet only announced a release date last month.

But perhaps she can be forgiven for taking her time and insisting on complete creative control. In a recent interview early this month, she compared her time in the girl group Fifth Harmony to a prison sentence, with negative fan attention singling her out as the “token Black girl” in the group. “I was fearing for my life,” she said of the response from fans, which included death threats.

But in just a few more weeks, Normani will get the opportunity to shine on her own terms; Dopamine is out 6/14 via RCA. You can find more information here.

Proving that science and religion can, in fact, overlap, University of British Columbia researcher Evan Thompson has confirmed the Buddhist teaching of the not-self, or “anatta,” is more than just a theory.

“Buddhists argue that nothing is constant, everything changes through time, you have a constantly changing stream of consciousness,” he tells Quartz. “And from a neuroscience perspective, the brain and body is constantly in flux. There’s nothing that corresponds to the sense that there’s an unchanging self.”

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This reality that nothing stays the same should be liberating, because if people believe it, they’ll no longer define themselves by their thoughts or be limited by a fixed idea of who they are. Their possibilities will be endless.

Buddhist Monks have known for thousands of years what science is just now learning: the mind can be changed by training it. Neuroplasticity, as it’s called, endows people with the ability to grow and evolve, triumphing over bad habits and becoming more like the individuals they want to be.

Discover & share this Big GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

Still, exactly how consciousness relates to the brain eludes both Buddhism and neuroscience. Buddhists suppose there’s an iteration of consciousness that doesn’t require a physical body; neuroscientists disagree.

“In neuroscience, you’ll often come across people who say the self is an illusion created by the brain,” Thompson says. “My view is that the brain and the body work together in the context of our physical environment to create a sense of self. And it’s misguided to say that just because it’s a construction, it’s an illusion.”

This article originally appeared on 09.23.17

Categories are great for some things: biology, herbs, and spices, for example.

Image via

But bodies? Well, putting bodies into categories just gets weird. There are around 300 million people in America, but only 12 or so standard sizes for clothing: extra-extra-small through 5x.

That’s why designer Mallorie Dunn is onto something with her belief — people have different bodies and sizing isn’t catching up.

Dunn has found that the majority of clothing sizes stop at an extra-large, yet the majority of women in America are over that. “And that just doesn’t make sense,” she says.

All images via Smart Glamor, used with permission.

Human spice rack, only, a LOT more variations of flava. 😉

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That’s why she started a project around her clothing label, Smart Glamour, to document the bodies of models according to their sizes — and to show how one size can look very different on different bodies.

In pursuit of creating a fashion environment that’s kinder to all bodies, Dunn has dedicated herself to educating consumers about sizing.

First, she found 60 people of 12 different sizes and took their pictures.

Then, she put five women at a time in the same size of skirt and shirt to show how diversely beautiful human bodies are and to prove that everyone looks different in clothes no matter what size they have on.

She hoped to show people that 12 sizes don’t even come close to capturing the beauty of the human form.

All these models are wearing the same size … but do they look the same?

“No matter what size you are that’s not what dictates your worth or your beauty.”

“I had a convo with a friend of mine who was like ‘Yeah, if I went from a medium to a large, I’d be fine with it, but if I went from a large to an extra-large, that wouldn’t be OK’ and I was like, ‘Why???’ And she had no rational reason behind that,” Dunn said, describing a conversation we’ve all either had, started, or heard. “We’ve been taught forever that the bigger something sounds, the worse that it is.”

Dunn’s project also shows just how arbitrary and narrow-minded clothing sizes are.

Sizes really are just numbers.

Unlike the images we are presented both in clothing ads and in entertainment and media, human beings aren’t, as Dunn remarked, “robots who come out on a conveyor belt … we’re all shaped differently.”

The pressure to look one way is obnoxious. And kinda dangerous.

“We’ve been taught forever that the bigger something sounds, the worse that it is.”

There’s so much weight — no pun intended — on being the “right” size.

“You put an ‘extra’ on top of a ‘large,’ and suddenly it’s the end of the world,” Dunn said of her experience in fashion sizing. “… And it really doesn’t mean anything, it really only means that there’s an extra inch of fabric.”

One extra inch of fabric.

3 in 4 girls report feeling depressed, guilty, or shameful after just three minutes of leafing through a fashion mag.

But I’d like to imagine a world where everyone can try on clothes and leave the emotional burden of worrying about fit to the clothes.

Instead, let’s focus on what looks good on our bodies. Let the clothes handle the emotional roller coaster of not fitting, and you just live your life in the body you’ve been given.

Dunn, who has worked for fashion houses for her whole career, puts it bluntly: “Clothes are not made for all bodies. … We shouldn’t then think when something doesn’t fit us that it’s somehow our fault.”

Dunn’s models also have a group on Facebook where they support each other, compliment each other, and generally lift each other up. Model Stephanie describes it this way: “We see the beauty in one another and help each other to recognize our own beauty at the same time.” Fashion leading to body optimism and confidence? Yes, please.

And Dunn herself drives a hard line when it comes to feeling good in the skin you’ve been given. Her philosophy is this: No matter what size you are, that’s not what dictates your worth or your beauty.

Self-worth not based on appearances. That’s a category we can all aspire to “fit” into!

This article originally appeared on 07.27.16

I was promoted a few weeks ago, which was great. I got a lot of nice notes from friends, family, customers, partners, and random strangers, which was exciting.

But it wasn’t long until a note came in saying, “Everyone knows you got the position because you’re a girl.” In spite of having a great week at a great company with great people whom I love, that still stung, because it’s not the first time I’ve heard it.

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Every woman who works in tech — heck, likely every woman on Earth — hears “because you’re a girl” dozens, if not thousands, of times in her life.

It starts young, of course:

Why can’t I join that team? Because you’re a girl.

Why can’t I study physics? Because you’re a girl.

Then, the comments age with you.

Why can’t I manage that project? Because you’re a girl.

Why can’t I join that group? Because you’re a girl.

And after you’ve reached any level of attainment in a profession you love, the comments are used to minimize your success.

Why did you get that award? Because you’re a girl.

Why were you chosen to participate in that class? Because you’re a girl.

Like so many women before me, I have shaken off the comment.

I’ve gotten angry. I’ve gotten sad. I’ve doubted myself and my abilities. I’ve ignored it entirely. I’ve challenged it. I’ve recruited support from men and women I respect. Yet every time it stays there in the back of my mind, screaming for attention after every failure or setback.

But today is the day I’ve decided to change that.

I did, in fact, get the job because I’m a girl.

A girl who was called “bossy” growing up.

A girl who wasn’t afraid to play with the boys.

A girl who didn’t hesitate to raise her hand if she knew the answer.

A girl who stood up for other kids.

A girl who was always the first one to volleyball practice and the last to leave.

A girl who was told she was too assertive and aggressive to advance in her career.

A girl who went to MIT anyway.

A girl who asked her company to do more on diversity and inclusion and won’t stop pushing until it’s truly remarkable.

A girl who has made big mistakes, both personal and professional.

A girl who swings for the fences even when no one is watching.

A girl who puts in hours when other people are asleep

A girl who tells young girls how smart and strong they are.

A girl who hates to lose.

And a girl who won’t stand silently while people still use “because you’re a girl” as any limitation for girls who want to grow, challenge the status quo, and be something, anything, greater than society tells them they could or should.

So yeah. I guess you could say I got my job because I’m a girl, but not for any of the reasons you might think.

This story first appeared on the author’s Medium and is reprinted here with permission.

This article originally appeared on 04.14.17

Double H Canine Academy in Louisville, Kentucky is a place where dog owners can take their rambunctious pets and have them turned into respectable members of the family.

However, as you can tell in this hilarious video, not all dogs are meant to follow orders.

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Ladies and gentleman, meet Ryker.

Double H Canine Training Academy… Epic Service Dog Training Failure

Ryker giving it his all before flunking our of Service Dog Training School

As you can see below, Ryker is living his life to the fullest. While he may never be the world’s greatest service dog, he continues to provide an invaluable testament to being true to one’s self.

RYKER “The Purpose Driven Dog”🐕……..

This article originally appeared on 02.26.20