In the year 2024 (and the better part of 2023) the best way to start a conversation is to bring Taylor Swift into the mix and just see how people respond. It’s been working for everyone!
On Netflix’s Roast of Tom Brady, Brady’s former “rumored girlfriend” Kim Kardsahian took the stage and was initially met with a wave of boos (the streamer edited out the “boos” when it was uploaded the next day) and for some reason, that is being tied to Swift and their longstanding feud.
Thankfully, comedian Nikki Glaser is trying to cut the beef. On an episode of Not Skinny But Not Fat, Glaser revealed that she ran into the person who started the booing, despcribing him as a “wild guy who’s a comedian” with a “reputation for just, like, starting s–t.” And that’s what he did.
Glaser continued, “Apparently, he started the boo as just, like, a joke. He just had too many drinks or something, and he’s not affiliated with Swifties or anything [and] just felt like saying a boo into the air, and apparently everyone was so riled up,” she said, thankfully getting the Swifties off the hook.
She added, “It just kinda caught wind, but it wasn’t Swiftie-meditated. I do have that on good information that it was not based on that. Because I was like, this doesn’t feel like a huge Swiftie crowd, but it didn’t feel like that was the vibe in the room,” she said of the crowd, which consisted mostly of comedians.
On the other hand, why would the Swifties be in attendance at Tom Brady’s roast anyway? They are too busy keeping tabs on a different football player.
Neo-soul revivalist Raveena has announced her third studio album, Where The Butterflies Go In The Rain, and teased its release date. “She’s a Gemini,” she hinted on X (RIP, Twitter.com). For those who aren’t up on their woo-woo spiritualism, that means the release date will fall sometime between today, May 21, and June 21. It’ll be Raveena’s first album distributed by EMPIRE, and her first since 2022’s Asha’s Awakening
The cover for my third album, “Where the Butterflies Go in the Rain” hint: she’s a Gemini pic.twitter.com/WD9Hcgnz7c
The first preview of the album’s sound came earlier this month, when Raveena shared the dreamy video for the lead single, “Pluto.” “It’s a song about loss, but woven into the most joyful soundbed,” she said of the single. “When making it, I was remembering the feeling of having my little Walkman and listening to the most euphoric pop songs, dancing around the yard or looking out the window on a long drive at ten years old. I want to bring back the sweetness that feels like it’s suspended in that time of the early 2000s and 90s.”
Inspirations for the track included Corinne Bailey Rae and Nelly Furtado, with the unique blend of soul, pop, folk, and even hip-hop influences stitched into the mellow backing track. The next thirty days are certainly going to be fascinating for fans of the singer-songwriter ahead of the release of her new album.
Indie music has grown to include so much. It’s not just music that is released on independent labels, but speaks to an aesthetic that deviates from the norm and follows its own weirdo heart. It can come in the form of rock music, pop, or folk. In a sense, it says as much about the people that are drawn to it as it does about the people that make it.
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This Is Lorelei – “Where’s Your Love Now”
As one-half of both Water From Your Eyes and My Idea, Nate Amos shrewdly leavens his experimental tendencies with pop-centric songwriting. This Is Lorelei, the New York artist’s solo project, finds Amos gravitating toward those poppier inclinations far more than in his other bands. “Where’s Your Love Now,” Amos’ latest single from the forthcoming Box For Buddy, Box For Star, is another masterclass in experimental pop. He has always shown that catchy songwriting and avant-garde artistry don’t have to be mutually exclusive, and “Where’s Your Love Now” is yet another compelling case for that statement.
Shellac – To All Trains
Steve Albini was one of indie rock’s greatest producers (though he would much prefer the term “engineers”). The Chicago linchpin engineered classic records by Nirvana, Cloud Nothings, Pixies, PJ Harvey, Joanna Newsom, and many, many more. One of his bands, the punk trio Shellac, has just released their first new album in a decade, and, while it wasn’t intended as a final statement, there is an undeniable ring of finality to it now. Over the course of 10 brief, hard-hitting songs, Albini, bassist Bob Weston, and drummer Todd Trainer rip through them with palpable urgency. Let those classic Albini drums ring out for decades to come.
One Step Closer – All You Embrace
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania outfit One Step Closer tactfully infuses hardcore with melodic, emo sensibilities. Whereas their debut, 2021’s This Place You Know, was pure hardcore from front to back, All You Embrace finds the four-piece retaining that aggressive edge while leaning into their pop-punk and even power-pop proclivities. It’s a soaring achievement from one of the scene’s best bands.
Sasha Alex Sloan – Me Again
Naming an album Me Again is a shameless declaration of selfhood. Fitting in perfectly with the confessional pop zeitgeist of the still-unfolding 2020s, Sasha Alex Sloan’s third record leans into its autobiographical nature. Couched in the plush sonics that Sloan’s new home of Nashville is known for, Me Again is an extension of the indie-pop-meets-country stylings recently exhibited by Kacey Musgraves and Kelsea Ballerini.
Liana Flores – “Nightvisions”
Liana Flores’ soothing voice is as diaphanous as her finger-picked jazz guitar. It’s a striking yet hypnotizing complement to the seasonal shifts she sings of on Flower Of The Soul, her debut album out on June 28. The British-Brazilian songwriter merges bossa nova, jazz, and Brazilian folk on songs that use nature as a larger canvas for reckoning with internal conflict. “When over a new planet, the yellow dawn did rise / I woke alone and took a form I did not recognize,” she sings gently on “Nightvisions.”
Cassandra Jenkins – “Delphinium Blue”
New York indie musician Cassandra Jenkins recalls briefly working at a flower shop as “survival instinct kicking in,” she says in a press statement. With beautiful flowers surrounding her for most of her waking hours, she “began to dream in technicolor,” and “flowers became the language” of her subconscious. Thus, “Delphinium Blue,” Jenkins’ latest single, was born. When you listen to a song this breathtaking, you’ll soon begin dreaming in technicolor, too.
Porches – “Joker”
When Porches opened for indie-pop stalwarts Phoenix on their Alpha Zulu tour, the NYC-based Aaron Maine reconfigured his band to embrace rowdy ’90s alt-rock. He imbued his sumptuous synth-pop with a grungier bite; there wasn’t even a synth on stage with him, just a three-piece of guitar, bass, and drums. Maybe that’s why it’s not surprising that Shirt, Porches’ new album out September 13, is Maine’s heaviest endeavor thus far. Still, this is Porches, and his new single “Joker” is as pop-forward as his most well-known material. This time, however, guitars are more in focus, complementing his Auto-Tuned, unmistakable vocals with aplomb.
Strand Of Oaks – “Future Temple”
Next month, Tim Showalter (AKA Strand Of Oaks) will release Miracle Focus, the follow-up to 2021’s In Heaven. Showalter’s new preview of it, “Future Temple,” is a notably synth-heavy tune, just as previous singles “More You” and “Party At Monster Lake” were. With influences as far-ranging as Beastie Boys and Alice Coltrane, Strand Of Oaks’ latest seems like it will be an assortment of everything we love about Showalter’s work.
Wishy – “Love On The Outside”
Music history is famous for its creative duos: John and Paul; Mark and Tom; Morrissey and Johnny; Jack and Meg; and the list goes on. Wishy, an indie rock band from Indiana that’s part dream-pop, shoegaze, and power-pop, is also built on a core, but much less fraught, songwriting partnership. Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites, the songwriters in question, complement each other’s styles in perfect harmony. Triple Seven, their debut album out August 16, is the follow-up to their excellent EP, Paradise, from December, and it expands on the reciprocal dynamic so expertly laid out there. “Love On The Outside,” the album’s lead single, is a stellar display of not only Krauter and Pitchkites’ artistic duality, but a wondrous hybridization of the reference points they draw from. On “Love On The Outside,” Wishy continues a fortunate streak.
Alex G – I Saw The TV Glow (Original Motion Picture Score)
Jane Schoenbrun and Alex G are a match made in indie heaven. The Philly indie rocker’s score for Schoenbrun’s debut film, 2021’s We’re All Going To The World’s Fair, enhanced the movie’s otherworldly logic and foreboding aura. He achieves a similar feat with his instrumental OST for Schoenbrun’s new film, I Saw The TV Glow. From the shimmering synths of “Opening Theme From The Pink Opaque” to the ethereal drones of “High School Hallway,” Alex G augments the suburban ennui and latent dysphoria the director so potently captures onscreen.
But if you choose Furiosa: A Mad Max Story, you might be wondering if you need to watch the other four Mad Max films in the series.
Furiosa is a prequel that tells the heroine’s origin story, so you don’t need to watch the other Mad Max installments beforehand in order to understand it. However, you might appreciate the world-building a bit more (and understand some references) if you check out Mad Max: Fury Road beforehand. The movie is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
Fury Road was released in 2015 as a long-awaited follow-up to 1985’s Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. The movie starred Tom Hardy as Max and Charlize Theron as the (grown) Imperator Furiosa.
The prequel will tell Furiosa’s harrowing origin story in which she is taken from her family and must learn how to survive on her own in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. Here is the official synopsis:
As the world fell, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus. Sweeping through the Wasteland they come across the Citadel presided over by The Immortan Joe. While the two Tyrants war for dominance, Furiosa must survive many trials as she puts together the means to find her way home.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Story hits theaters on May 24th.
In recent days, Apple Music has been gradually revealing its list of the top 100 albums of all time. As of this post, the list has been unveiled up to No. 11 (Fleetwood Mac’sRumours, by the way). As for what else is in the rankings so far, here’s what to know about where you can learn more.
How To See Apple Music’s Top 100 Albums Of All Time List
Apple Music has been sharing newly revealed list entries on their social media pages, so to get updates in your feed, check out Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). There’s also a dedicated webpage that has the full list, so find that at 100best.music.apple.com.
As tends to happen in these situations (by design, presumably), the list has sparked some debates online. For example, some have noticed that the list does not currently include any works by artists like Kendrick Lamar, Nicki Minaj, Ariana Grande, Lauryn Hill, Mariah Carey, and Michael Jackson, and they’re wondering which of those artists will end up having a presence in the upcoming top 10.
We’re now just a few days from the release of Frog In Boiling Water, DIIV’s latest album. Before the project drops, the group has come through with one more advance single: “Raining On Your Pillow.”
The band says of the song:
“‘Raining On Your Pillow’ is a song which brings to mind the shameful past (and present) of American imperialism. Lost in a terrifying landscape, a lone soldier ruminates on the existence of a landscape of his own far removed from conflict. Does it matter if this place is real or not? Is a false sense of hope enough to give our lives meaning in the midst of despair? A looping guitar figure plays underneath a driving rhythm in a cloud of murky atmosphere of analog synths and tape loops. Menacing, doomed, and strangely hopeful.”
DIIV previously said of the album as a whole, “We understand the metaphor to be one about a slow, sick, and overwhelmingly banal collapse of society under end-stage capitalism, the brutal realities we’ve maybe come to accept as normal. That’s the boiling water and we are the frogs. The album is more or less a collection of snapshots from various angles of our modern condition which we think highlights what this collapse looks like and, more particularly, what it feels like.”
Watch the “Raining On Your Pillow” video above.
Frog In Boiling Water is out 5/24 via Fantasy Records. Find more information here.
Fans of FX’s Better Things have known for years that Mikey Madison was destined to become a star. Well, her movie star moment has arrived.
The actress, who also appeared in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and 2022’s Scream, is receiving rave reviews for her performance in Neon’s Anora, the latest film from Red Rocket and The Florida Project director Sean Baker. Madison plays a Brooklyn-based sex worker who “gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as the parents set out for New York to get the marriage annulled,” according to the official film synopsis.
Anora received a 10-minute ovation following its Cannes Film Festival premiere, with Madison’s performance seeming to “spark the most reaction from the afternoon crowd,” Deadline reported.
The reactions on social media confirm that suspicion. “Mikey Madison is phenomenal in ANORA. Equal parts heartbreaking and hilarious, she delivers a confident, razor sharp turn that slowly transforms into a complex, deeply layered performance, perfectly balancing her character’s turmoil with expert comedic timing. A star is born,” @thisisnotahmad wrote on X. @filmwithyas added, “A complete powerhouse display from Mikey Madison.”
anora: mikey madison should’ve become the biggest star on the planet like five years ago but she REALLY needs to be the biggest star on the planet right fucking now #cannes2024
Mikey Madison is a revelation as Anora, a feisty exotic dancer and sometime escort who, after a whirlwind week of partying, finds herself married to Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of a Russian oligarch.
As a character, played by Mikey Madison with a sweetness that humanizes even the most transactional situations and a defensiveness that makes her dangerous when threatened, Anora, who goes by Ani, stands alongside the defiantly resilient protagonists of Baker’s last handful of films, from Starlet and Tangerine through The Florida Project and Red Rocket.
With a wispy, little-girl voice like Dakota Johnson’s and the cat-fight intensity of Tura Satana (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!), 2022 Scream actor Madison surprises as Ani. Working where she does, her character has every reason to be cynical, and yet, Ani still believes in true love, even if Ivan hardly seems deserving of her faith. Beneath her sparkling hair tinsel and butterfly nails, she’s smart and resourceful, representing in this one unforgettable character the ambitions and obstacles of centuries of sex workers.
Anchored by a Brooklyn accent big enough to hear from Queens, and protected behind the chainmail of a “fuck you, pay me” attitude brash enough to print on a t-shirt and sell to tourists, Madison’s performance fills in the broad strokes of its signifiers with a pointillistic degree of lived-in detail.
In the U.S., it’s normal in women’s restrooms to see signs that say “Do not flush feminine products,” so if you’re traveling internationally and you see a sign that says not to flush paper down the toilet, you might assume it means the same thing.
It doesn’t. If you’re traveling abroad and you see a “no paper in the toilet” sign, it usually means all paper—including the toilet paper you use to wipe with.
My first time experiencing this reality was in Indonesia. The friend I was visiting lived in a large luxury home, modern in every way—except you had to toss your toilet paper into a bin instead of flushing it. Even rustic campsite pit toilets in the U.S. allow you to put toilet paper in them, so it went against every instinct I had not to toss the TP in the toilet after using it and put it in the little bin next to the toilet instead.
Then I encountered the same thing in Thailand, then in Greece, then in Patagonia in South America. These were all places with American-style flushing toilets, so it was unexpected that TP flushing was a no-no. If this is the norm in such vastly different regions, how common is “no TP flushing” around the world?
Surprisingly common for the 21st century, actually. As many advancements as we’ve made in engineering and technology, there are still lots of established plumbing systems underground that don’t handle anything other than onesies and twosies very well.
For people from always-flush-the-TP countries, the inability to flush toilet paper can come as a shock, especially when the toilets seem no different than the ones at home. It’s confusing that the toilet paper will physically flush down at the source, it just shouldn’t be flushed because of what can happen on down the line.
In Greece, for example, the plumbing pipes are only two inches in diameter, compared to four inches in the U.S., which means paper clogs the pipes much more easily. Our Airbnb host in Athens told us if we smell a terrible sewage smell and hear a big motor running somewhere in the neighborhood, it’s because people had flushed toilet paper and the sewage system had to be pumped. Brazil apparently has plumbing similar to Greece, and there are plenty of other countries in the same boat.
So where are all of these countries? Well, hard to say exactly, as the most recent map I’ve seen (from mindofahitchiker.com above) is from 2017 based on information from 2012, and things may have changed in some of those countries by now. On this map, the green countries are safe to flush, the orange are “it depends” and the red are generally no-flushers.
Most places where you can’t flush paper have signs saying so, but sometimes they’re in another language and sometimes there just aren’t signs because the assumption is that you know. Thankfully, mindofahitchhiker.com also offers a handy “Flush or not to flush?” flowchart to help you figure it out:
Surprisingly, putting TP in a bin isn’t as disgusting as I imagined it would be, nor is it stinky like I assumed it would be. In Indonesia and Thailand, nearly all toilets had a “bum gun”—a handheld water sprayer attached to a hose that hung on the side of the toilet—which helped everything feel a bit cleaner on that front. (I loved it so much I bought one to install at home after my trip.) But even without the hoses, the TP bins have plastic liners and usually fliptop lids you open with your foot, so it doesn’t really feel as unsanitary as it sounds. And those bins appeared to be emptied frequently almost everywhere I was, so it wasn’t any grosser of an experience than using a public restroom in the U.S. (There’s also a generally expected level of courtesy, it seems, to make sure your used TP is folded or wadded in such a way as to not gross out other people.)
It may not be ideal and it may fly in the face of our normal habits, but I’m sure we’d all agree that plumbing working properly is important. So if you’re traveling to country you’ve never been to before, do a little research, follow the toilet signs, and when in doubt, toss instead of flush. The locals will thank you.
If you’re having trouble catching those elusive zzz’s, you are not alone. Roughly 1 in 3 adults worldwide have insomnia, which we know can lead to a whole slew of things that negatively impact our health. Which is probably why social media is full of various hacks the promise a better night’s sleep.
Recently Denver-based board-certified dermatologist Dr. Scott Walter made a video touting the efficacy and benefits of “cognitive shuffling,” which he said was an “absolute game changer” for his own sleep schedule.
In the clip, Dr. Walter described cognitive shuffling as “a way to rearrange or reorganize your thoughts similar to shuffling a deck of cards — basically, distracting your mind from conscious thought patterns that may keep you awake.”
The “simple mental exercise” can be done in a number of ways.
“One is just thinking of random words or objects that have nothing to do with each other,” Walter said. “For example, cow, leaf, sandwich, butter, liver, things like that — just random words that make no sense.” Apparently there’s even an app out there called MySleepButton that will feed you random words to form a picture in your mind.
Alternatively, if you “don’t like random,” you could also pick a letter of the alphabet, and start counting your heartbeat. After every eight beats, you’ll think of a word that begins with that letter.
Walter went on to explain that cognitive shuffling is so effective because in addition to distracting your brain, it ““mimics what are called microdreams, which occur during the transition to sleep, [letting] your brain know, hey, it’s safe to fall asleep.”
Pasha Marlowe, MFT, who also improved her sleep routine with cognitive shuffling, posted her own TikTok claiming that it “interrupts the processes of memory, scheduling and problem solving.
She also explained a slightly different process, saying you could take a word and think of as many words as you can that also begin with the same letters in your chosen word. Her example was the word “PUMPKIN,” and beings listing out “prince, pie, peanut butter, product,” and so on. Then she might go onto the letter “U” and start naming things that start with that letter…you get the idea. Multipleresources recommend following this particular strategy.
Luc Beaudoin, cognitive scientists and creator of MySleepButton, told The Guardian that the hack is superior to the traditional insomnia-busting tactics like counting sleep because the former are so “boring” that virtually any other thought, including worries, will be perceived by the brain as “more compelling.”
But with cognitive shuffling, there’s enough gameplay and “nonsense” involved to distract our hypervigilant cortex from perceiving potential threats just long enough for us to drift off.
Cognitive shuffling isn’t without its limitations. The MySleepButton site says that this method is not effective under the follow conditions:
You are too tired to conjure up words, but not drowsy enough to fall asleep. (For example, when you wake up in the middle of the night.)
You don’t like to think deliberately when you are trying to fall asleep.
You find it difficult to come up with words that start with a given letter, despite practice.
You find spelling tedious.
For these instances, the site says you can lay back while MySleepButton does the work for you. Or, you could try a few other proven hacks, found here and here.
At Upworthy, we’ve frequently covered stories of unlikely friendships that have developed between humans and members of the animal kingdom, such as the crow that befriended a family and the man with the emotional support alligator.
However, unfortunately, this attempted friendship between humans and a seagull is for the birds. It all started when a seagull known as Steven began visiting YouTuber BrasherN and his wife, who laid out food for him daily.
The couple decided to take things up a notch and make a classy dinner table for Steven, but his reaction was more like a rock star trashing a hotel room than a grateful guest at their table. “I thought it would be funny to set up a table for him. Steven turned out to be an unhinged maniac and destroys everything,” BrasherN wrote.
Steven’s inappropriate behavior is contrasted by the classy music that BrasherN plays during the video “Minuet” by Luigi Baccherini.
Steven Seagull comes to dinner
The video begins with Steven perched at a table adorned with a fine cloth. He begins to snap at his dish of peanuts, scattering them about in the most inconsiderate way. After picking the nuts up off the lawn, he goes into a rage, trashing the cardboard table and floral decor. He then makes his way for the camera as if to demand that the couple bring him more food.
“Steven just came, ate the food and wasn’t content without wrecking the table,” JesusDiazllam.1126 wrote in the comments.
Finally, Steven flew off without paying the check or leaving any gratuity.
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hint: she’s a Gemini 
