Month: June 2024

If you’re a Gen Xer or older, one surprising habit the younger generations developed is their love of subtitles or closed-captioning while watching TV. To older generations, closed-captioning was only for grandparents, the hearing impaired, or when watching the news in a restaurant or gym.

But these days, studies show that Millenials and Gen Z are big fans of captions and regularly turn them on when watching their favorite streaming platforms. A recent study found that more than half of Gen Z and Millenials prefer captions on when watching television.

It’s believed that their preference for subtitles stems from the ubiquity of captioning on social media sites such as TikTok or Instagram.

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This generational change perplexed TikTokker, teacher and Gen X mother, Kelly Gibson.

Always leaning! #genx #millennial #caption #learning

@gibsonishere

Always leaning! #genx #millennial #caption #learning

“I have three daughters, and they were here. Two of them are young millennials; the other one is an older Gen Z,” Gibson explained in a video with over 400,000 views. “All of them were like, ‘Why don’t you have the captions on?’”

The mother couldn’t believe that her young kids preferred to watch TV like her grandparents. It just did not compute.

“My Gen X butt was shocked to find out that these young people have decided it’s absolutely OK to watch movies with the captions going the whole time,” she said jokingly.

But like a good mother, Gibson asked her girls why they preferred to watch TV with captioning, and their reason was straightforward. With subtitles, it’s easier not to lose track of the dialog if people in the room start talking.

“They get more out of it,” Gibson explained. “If somebody talks to them in the middle of the show, they can still read and get what’s going on even if they can’t hear clearly. Why are young people so much smarter than us?”

At the end of the video, Gibson asked her followers whether they watch TV with subtitles on or off. “How many of you out there that are Millennials actually do this? And how many of you Gen Xers are so excited that this is potentially an option?” she asked.

Gibson received over 8,400 responses to her question, and people have a lot of different reasons for preferring to watch TV with captions.

“Millennial here. I have ADHD along with the occasional audio processing issues. I love captions. Also, sometimes I like crunchy movie snacks,” Jessileemorgan wrote. “We use the captions because I (GenX) hate the inability of the movie makers to keep sound consistent. Ex: explosions too loud conversation to quiet,” Lara Lytle added.

“My kids do this and since we can’t figure out how to turn it off when they leave, it’s become a staple. GenX here!” Kelly Piller wrote.

The interesting takeaway from the debate is that anti-caption people often believe that having writing on the screen distracts them from the movie. They’re too busy reading the bottom of the screen to feel the film’s emotional impact or enjoy the acting and cinematography. However, those who are pro-caption say that it makes the film easier to understand and helps them stay involved with the film when there are distractions.

So who’s right? The person holding the remote.

This article originally appeared on 1.11.24

In 2024, the idea of racially segregated schools sounds ridiculous, but it was the standard practice for most of American history. White Americans often refused to accept their children being educated alongside children of other races and ethnicities, and lawsuits over the matter ultimately rose all the way to the Supreme Court, culminating in the famous Brown vs. Board of Education ruling.

That landmark 1954 case marked the end of legal school segregation, as the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that segregating students by race was unconstitutional, a violation of the 14th amendment.

But another segregation case reached the California Supreme Court 70 years prior, and it revolved around an 8-year-old Chinese American student named Mamie Tape.

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According to History.com, Mamie’s parents, Joseph and Mary Tape, had each come to the U.S. as children and had fully integrated into American life and culture. They took English names, wore Westernized clothing and lived by standard American customs. They were married in a Christian ceremony and named their three children Mamie, Emily and Frank. Joseph operated a delivery service and was a successful, well-respected businessman among both Chinese and white communities in San Francisco.

However, despite their extreme assimilation, when they tried to enroll their 8-year-old daughter in the all-white Spring Valley Primary School in 1884, Principal Jennie Hurley flat out refused to admit her.

Unsurprisingly, the school-board had a policy against admitting Chinese children. The Chinese Exclusion Act, which placed a 10-year ban on Chinese workers immigrating to the U.S., had just been passed in 1882 and anti-Chinese prejudice was commonplace. But that did not deter the Tapes from their mission to get the best education for their child.

California had passed a law in 1880 that entitled all children in the state to partake in public education. However, school boards ignored the ruling and social custom kept the schools segregated. Chinese children attended the mission-run schools in Chinatown, while white children attended their local neighborhood schools.

The Tapes wanted Mamie to attend her neighborhood school. So they fought the administration’s refusal to admit their daughter by filing a lawsuit on her behalf against Hurley and the San Francisco Board of Education. The Tapes’ lawyer, William Gibson, argued that not only did Hurley barring Mamie from the school violate California’s existing law, but it also violated the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution—the basic argument that would eventually ban segregation nationwide in the Brown v. Board verdict.

Tape vs. Hurley never went to the highest federal court, however, because both the Superior Court and the California Supreme Court agreed with Gibson’s interpretation of the Constitution. On January 9, 1885, Superior Court Judge McGuire wrote in the court’s decision, “To deny a child, born of Chinese parents in this State, entrance to the public schools would be a violation of the law of the State and the Constitution of the United States.”

Despite their success in court, that unfortunately wasn’t the end of the Tapes’ struggles to get Mamie into the Spring Valley school. The court’s ruling did not address the “separate but equal” doctrine, which was not yet legally binding (that would come with Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896) but was the prevailing justification for segregation. The “separate but equal” idea held that segregation was okay as long as it affected all races equally. For instance, white people and non-white people could have separate drinking fountains, as long as everyone had access to a drinking fountain.

What that meant in the Tapes’ case was that the San Francisco school board quickly and successfully pushed to pass a new state law authorizing the creation of separate public schools for “children of Chinese and Mongolian descent.” The new Chinese school wasn’t ready yet, so the Tape still tried to enroll Mamie into the white school, but Hurley still denied her, citing there being too many students already and claiming that Mamie didn’t have the required vaccinations.

Having already exhausted legal avenues, Mary Tape published a scathing letter in the Daily Alta California newspaper.

“Dear sirs,” she wrote. “Will you please to tell me! Is it a disgrace to be born a Chinese? Didn’t God make us all!!!” She railed against her daughter’s treatment, saying she was more American than many people reading it. No matter how Chinese people live and dress, they are hated simply for being Chinese, she pointed out. “There is not any right or justice for them,” she wrote.”

Indeed, Mamie and the Tapes didn’t see justice in their case, despite winning their legal case in court. But Tape vs. Hurley has gone down in history as a landmark case in the fight for ending segregation, one stepping stone toward true equality under the law.

Sometimes there is just no pleasing people. It seems like no matter what you do short of become a literal unicorn that hands out bags of money, some people will find a way to fault you. This sort of disgruntled behavior is generally experienced by people in the service industry, particularly retail. But it turns out medical staff are not above reproach when it comes to the hard to please customer.

Dr. Mark Lewis, a gastrointestinal oncologist went viral recently for a review of his services he shared on X went viral. The review is glowing…sort of. It simply reads “Dr Lewis saved my life,” complete with an exclamation point to drive home their excitement. But the amazing news was attached to a four star review.

One would think saving someone’s life would generate a five star review moment, but perhaps Dr. Lewis missed something while caring for the patient.

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Did the doctor remember to offer a complimentary deep tissue massage? Having your life saved is likely extremely stressful. Maybe it was the scratchy sheets and one ply toilet paper that knocked a star off of the doctor’s review. Since HIPAA exists and the doctor cannot confirm, deny or acknowledge the identity of the patient that left the review, chances are we will never know. This didn’t stop the doctor and others from hilariously speculating.

One commenter asked, “did you do jazz hands afterwards?” Somehow, jazz hands seems like a fitting celebratory move after saving someone’s life.

“Dr Lewis saved my life! However, no good coffee in the hospital. 4/5 stars,” one person jokes.

The doctor is taking the review in stride. He even suggested that since his hospital is across the street from a Costco, maybe the two can team up so the next time he saves someone’s life he has a small bargaining chip.

— (@)

Someone asks the important question, “saving a life is so overrated. Have you tried resurrection,” to which Dr. Lewis claims to know a guy that performs such miracles. The tweet has made its way to the front page of Reddit where it is having another moment of virility leaving more people wondering what the doctor had to do in order to secure the fifth star. These commenters might be on to something that Dr. Lewis should take note of.

“Make me immortal and I’ll toss another half-star your way. But all 5 stars? I’m gonna need you to create me my own universe where I’m an invincible god. I really don’t think wanting to rule an entire universe is too much to ask from my surgeon,” one person writes.

“For 5 star Review I would recommend a small amount of necromancy,” another says.

Dr. Ari Elman commiserated with Dr. Lewis by seeing his four stars and raising the two star review he received after curing someone of cancer.

I have this one beat. pic.twitter.com/YWToOo4Dtu

— Ari Elman, MD (@AriObanMD) April 2, 2024

Yikes, what do these doctors have to do to get a five star review around here? All humor aside, chances are the reviews have nothing to do with the particular doctor and more to do with their experience at the hospital. That doesn’t stop people from raising an eyebrow and wondering if a tap dancing routine should be included with the discharge news in order to bump the rating up a bit. The best news about this particular X thread is that you get to celebrate that two patients were saved, even if they might have withheld their stars for crappy hospital food.

By 1973, the Bee Gees’ career had hit a low. After a series of hits in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including “To Love Somebody,” “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” and “I Started a Joke,” the band was in a rut.

Their latest album, “Life in a Tin Can,” and single “Saw a New Morning” sold poorly, and the band’s popularity declined.

On April 6, 1973, the Gibb brothers (Barry, Robin and Maurice) appeared on “The Midnight Special,” a late-night TV show that aired on Saturday mornings at 1 a.m. after “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.” Given the lukewarm reception to their recent releases, the Bee Gees decided to change things up and play a medley of hits from their idols, The Beatles, who had broken up 3 years before.

The performance, which featured 5 of the Fab Four’s early hits, including “If I Fell,” “I Need You,” “I’ll Be Back,” “This Boy,” and “She Loves You,” was a stripped-down, acoustic performance that highlighted the Bee Gees’ trademark harmonies.

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“When you got brothers singing, it’s like an instrument that no one else can buy. You can’t go buy that sound in a shop. You can’t sing like The Bee Gees because when you got family members singing together, it’s unique,” Noel Galagher, who sang with his brother Liam in Oasis, said according to Far Out.

Beatles Medley – Bee Gees | The Midnight Special

A year later, the Bee Gees performed in small clubs, and it looked like their career had hit a dead end. Then, at the urging of their management, the band began to move in a new direction, incorporating soul, rhythm and blues, and a new, underground musical style called disco into their repertoire. Barry also adopted a falsetto singing style popularized by Black singers such as Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye.

This unlikely change for the folksy vocal group catapulted them into the stratosphere and they became the white-satin-clad kings of disco.

In the late ‘70s, the band had massive hits, including songs featured on the 40-million-selling “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack: “Stayin’ Alive,” How Deep is Your Love,” More Than a Woman,” Jive Talkin’,” and “Night Fever.”

In 1978, the band made a significant misstep, starring in a musical based on The Beatles’ music called “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” produced by Robert Stigwood, the man behind “Saturday Night Fever” and “Grease.” The film was a colossal bomb, although the soundtrack sold well.

Beatle George Harrison thought the Bee Gees film was about what happens when you become successful and greedy.

“I just feel sorry for Robert Stigwood, the Bee Gees, and Pete Frampton for doing it because they had established themselves in their own right as decent artists,” Harrison said. “And suddenly… it’s like the classic thing of greed. The more you make the more you want to make, until you become so greedy that ultimately you put a foot wrong.”

Even though the Bee Gees’ Beatle-themed musical was a flop, former Beatle John Lennon remained a fan of the group. He sang their praises after the public’s growing distaste of disco resulted in a significant backlash.

“Try to tell the kids in the seventies who were screaming to the Bee Gees that their music was just the Beatles redone,” he told Playboy magazine in 1980. “There is nothing wrong with the Bee Gees. They do a damn good job. There was nothing else going on then.”

The Bee Gees historic career ended when Marice passed away in 2003 at 53. Robin would follow in 2009 at 62. Barry is the final surviving member of the band.

Good news for politicians, celebrities, and everyone else who doesn’t know how to be private on social media: your Twitter “likes” have disappeared from the public eye! Now Ted Cruz can get back to his favorite hobby.

Elon Musk announced this week that the “Likes” tab on Twitter/X (whoever is calling it that) will be hidden so you can’t just go to your friend’s page and see what they’ve been looking at lately. Instead, you have to do that mature thing and just ask them what they like, apparently.

Users can still see their own likes, and who liked their Tweets, but you cannot just go to someone else’s profile anymore and see what they’ve been liking. You can assume they like Venom Horse, but you can’t really know anymore.

An engineer at X claims that “public likes are incentivizing the wrong behavior. For example, many people feel discouraged from liking content that might be “edgy” in fear of retaliation from trolls, or to protect their public image.” So people should not feel discouraged to like Venom Horse tweets without fear that Venom Horse himself will come after them. This also gives people a free pass to just like anything, which never ends well.

This is another nail in the coffin for Musk, who has been steadily making the site unusable since he purchased it in 2022 for $44 billion. Now it is worth a lot less than that.

Uproxx crowned Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard And Soft among the “Best Albums Of 2024 So Far,” largely due to Eilish’s self-awareness. Eilish displayed acute self-awareness when speaking with Lana Del Rey for Interview Magazine, especially related to her role in relationships.

First, Eilish admitted, “I literally hate who I am so much when I’m in love.” That led to a broader sentiment, as excerpted below:

“I really don’t like being — I was going to say out of control, but there’s ways that I do like being out of control. I have a power issue and a control issue, and I also don’t like being vulnerable in a romantic way. It makes me feel uncomfortable, and I don’t know how many times I’ve really been in love. I think there’s different versions of love, and I think that you can be in love and it might not be deep. I’m not going to get too in detail, because I’m going to be rude, but I’ve never been dumped, and also, I’ve never been broken up with. I’ve only done the breaking up.

“And I think when people hear that, they’re like, ‘Oh, all you do is break hearts.’ Sure, but that doesn’t mean that people are totally innocent. It means that I was like, ‘Oh, let me get the f*ck out of here.” Or it means things just weren’t right.”

After Del Rey relating to Eilish’s thought about dumpees’ culpability, Eilish added, “Now some of y’all about to be real mad at me, but I do believe that breaking up with someone versus being broken up with — obviously being broken up with hurts like hell, especially when you don’t see it coming and you wanted a future and it’s taken out of your hands. But honestly, the pain of knowing that you have to end something with somebody that you genuinely love is so horrible. […] And you don’t get to even have the, like, ‘I got dumped, so f*ck you guys. I get to go crazy and have a reaction and be mad at you. And I get to make you into an enemy, because you broke up with me.’ You can’t do that. You can’t become a victim.”

Elsewhere in the conversation, Eilish discussed a “frustrating” aspect of her overwhelming fame is “feeling the need to explain myself all the time.” While society is more accepting in several ways, as she said, she still gets “a lot of anxiety” from the thought that, at any moment, there could be a rumor circulating globally that’s either untrue or out of context, and “my want and need to explain myself, I have found to be extremely damaging to my life and my sense of self.” The nine-time Grammy winner and two-time Oscar winner has realized at just 22 years old that “it’s only gotten worse” when she tries to explain herself publicly because it leads to premature declarations about who she is without leaving her room to evolve.

Read Eilish’s full conversation with Del Rey here.

Dopamine, the solo debut from former Fifth Harmony member Normani, is due to release soon, after months — years, really — of buildup. The New Orleans native has had a long, winding road to get to this point, and now that it’s here, fans can’t wait for the opportunity to stream her first complete body of work as a solo artist. But, when will the album, which has 13 tracks featuring Cardi B, Gunna, and James Blake, be available to stream on DSPs like Apple Music and Spotify?

With a due date of June 14, Dopamine should be streaming at midnight, Eastern time (9 PM Pacific). There’s no reason to believe that the album will be pushed back, and after a rollout that has included an airtight rollout with a short film, singles like “1:59” and “Candy Paint,” and striking art direction that no doubt took months to pull off, you can bet Normani won’t fumble at the one-yard line.

In a recent interview, Normani reflected on her time in the now-defunct girl group Fifth Harmony, likening it to a jail sentence. “We just continued to do shows, and I was fearing for my life,” she said, recalling a period after an interview when crazed fans of her bandmate Camila Cabello sent her death threats over a misperceived interview quote. “But they continued to put me out there on the stage. It was pretty much like, ‘The show goes on’.” Now that she’s on her own, though, she’s free to say what she wants — and make the music that makes her happy.

Dopamine is out on 6/14 via RCA.

Jake Gyllenhaal is a busy guy these days. While he was roughing up dudes in the Prime Video (Amazon) Road House reboot, he also overlapped with days of tossing on a suit and filming for Apple TV+’s newest legal thriller, Presumed Innocent.

In the series, Gyllenhaal portrays a prosecutor in trouble after his affair partner/co-worker is murdered. His DNA is all over her bedroom, and he had been repeatedly calling her and following her footsteps online. It does not look good for Jake’s character, Rusty Sabich, in this adaptation of Scott Turow’s book of the same name.

How Many Episodes Are In ‘Presumed Innocent’ Season 1?

In this first TV venture for Gyllenhaal, expect him to do a ton of squirming over the course of eight episodes. Not only will Rusty be on the hook as a murder suspect, but he did so as a married father, and his wife was not aware of her husband’s affair until she became informed in arguably the messiest circumstances possible. From the show’s synopsis:

Based on The New York Times bestselling novel of the same name by Scott Turow, the gripping series takes viewers on a journey through the horrific murder that upends the Chicago Prosecuting Attorney’s office when one of its own is suspected of a crime. The series explores obsession, sex, politics, and the power and limits of love, as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.

Presumed Innocent will stream two episodes on June 12 and run weekly until July 24.

Bonnaroo, one of the country’s tentpole music festivals, is back, as it launches today (June 13) and runs through to June 16. There’s good news if you don’t happen to find yourself in Manchester, Tennessee this weekend: Select performances will be livestreamed.

How To Livestream The Bonnaroo 2024 Festival

The festival stream will be available to Hulu subscribers starting today through to June 16. More information is available on Hulu’s Bonnaroo page, where you can also sign up for a free trial if you’re not currently a subscriber.

Artists whose performances will be streamed include Post Malone, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Chappell Roan, Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit, Thundercat, Khruangbin, Faye Webster, Reneé Rapp, and plenty more.

Check out the full day-by-day livestream schedule below. All times are CT and the channels for the performances are noted in parentheses.

Bonnaroo 2024 Livestream Schedule For Thursday, June 13

7:05 p.m. — Matt Maltese (1)
7:55 p.m. — Durand Bernarr (1)
9:00 p.m. — Pretty Lights (Set 1) (1)
10:40 p.m. — Pretty Lights (Set 2) (1)
12:30 a.m. — BigXthaPlug (1)
1:30 a.m. — GWAR (1)

Bonnaroo 2024 Livestream Schedule For Friday, June 14

7:05 p.m. — David Kushner (1)
7:05 p.m. — Gary Clark Jr. (2)
7:55 p.m. — Dominic Fike (1)
8:15 p.m. — Faye Webster (2)
8:55 p.m. — Key Glock (1)
9:20 p.m. — Grouplove (2)
9:55 p.m. — TV Girl (1)
10:30 p.m. — Lizzy McAlpine (2)
11:00 p.m. — Post Malone (1)
11:35 p.m. — Interpol (2)
12:45 a.m. — T-Pain (1)
1:00 a.m. — Thundercat (2)

Bonnaroo 2024 Livestream Schedule For Saturday, June 15

7:05 p.m. — Jon Batiste (1)
7:05 p.m. — The Teskey Brothers (2)
7:45 p.m. — Reneé Rapp (1)
8:50 p.m. — Gregory Alan Isakov (1)
9:15 p.m. — Brittany Howard (2)
10:00 p.m. — Cigarettes After Sex (1)
10:20 p.m. — Teezo Touchdown (2)
11:10 p.m. — Cage The Elephant (1)
11:30 p.m. — Sean Paul (2)
12:30 a.m. — Melanie Martinez (1)
12:35 a.m. — Parcels (2)
1:00 a.m. — Idles (2)

Bonnaroo 2024 Livestream Schedule For Sunday, June 16

4:05 p.m. — Chappell Roan (1)
4:05 p.m. — Milky Chance (2)
5:05 p.m. — Charles Wesley Godwin (2)
6:10 p.m. — BadBadNotGood (2)
6:15 p.m. — Ashnikko (1)
7:15 p.m. — Yves Tumor (2)
7:25 p.m. — Goth Babe (1)
8:20 p.m. — Taking Back Sunday (2)
8:30 p.m. — Khruangbin (1)
9:45 p.m. — Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit (2)
9:50 p.m. — Joey Badass (1)
11:00 p.m. — Red Hot Chili Peppers (1)

Music fans have waited a long time for Normani’s solo debut album (seriously, a LONG time), but the wait is nearly over. Dopamine, the former Fifth Harmony member’s first-ever solo album, is due to hit DSPs in just a few hours, after a rollout that has included the single “Candy Paint” and plenty of reflection on her time in the now-defunct girl band. So, when can you stream Dopamine on DSPs like Apple Music and Spotify?

With a due date of June 14, Dopamine should be available to stream as soon as clocks strike 12 midnight, Eastern time (9 PM Pacific), putting an end to nearly a decade of waiting for a full collection of solo music from the New Orleans native. With a 13-song tracklist including guest features from Cardi B, Gunna, and James Blake, Normani gave a hint of the behind-the-scenes struggles to make Dopamine a reality on Instagram.

“This moment symbolizes so much more than any photo could ever capture,” she wrote. “There has been so much resistance and many adversities throughout this process for me. Thank you to my fans for always keeping me encouraged and for being my reason to continue to endure and push through. This chapter is dedicated to you. ily guys more than you know.”

Dopamine is out on 6/14 via RCA.