Year: 2024

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.”

Below, you can find reviews of Anora.

Wendy Ide for Screen Daily:

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.

David Rooney for The Hollywood Reporter:

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.

Peter Debruge for Variety:

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.

David Ehrlich for Indiewire:

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.

Mikey, your time is now.

Anora does not have a release date yet.

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?

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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:

Find out more at mindofahitchhiker.com

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.

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“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.

@denverskindoc Stitch w/ @sidneyraz say goodbye to the Sunday Scaries and fall asleep quickly with this doctor approved sleep hack! #sleephack #todayilearned #wishiknew #howtofallasleepfaster #cognitiveshuffling #cognitiveshuffle #sleephelp #doctor #medicine #sleep #sundayscaries #doctorhack #fallingasleep #anxiety ♬ original sound – Dr. Scott Walter | Derm

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. Multiple resources 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.

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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.

Most people don’t think much about fire departments until you need one. You know they exist and the purpose they serve but many people take their existence for granted. One fire department in Calhoun, Missouri was barely a department in 2021 when the new fire chief, Mark Hardin took over.

When you think of a department you think of multiple people, especially for something as important as a fire department. It takes a lot of training, muscle and skill to do the things firefighters do when they need to battle a blazing building, sometimes rescuing people inside. But the Calhoun fire department was a one man show.

It took Hardin and his passion for helping people to drum up more firefighters in the tiny town of 500. He took the town from just one firefighter to 28 and he trained them all. The biggest problem was that their equipment was from the 1980s and none of the firetrucks were in working order. Can’t put out a fire if you can’t get the trucks to run. That’s where 91-year-old Sam Sloan comes in.

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“I’m making a donation to the fire department. I’ve been planning to for several years,” Sloan tells KMBC 9. “It’s half a million dollars and a half a million dollars is a pretty good donation.”

Hardin and the rest of the fire department think it’s a fantastic donation for the rural department who are all volunteers struggling to keep the bank account above zero. The chief already has big plans for some of the money.

Watch the video:

“The first thing that we’re going to replace is our tanker pumper. Our tanker pumper has been patched together about 17 times in the last year I think I welded on that thing. Every one of our firefighters, from head to toe, we’re going to be fitted next Monday for new gear,” Hardin says.

Sloan doesn’t see the big deal in donating a half million dollars to the fire department because he knows “how to make a dollar,” he doesn’t know how to fix the equipment. Overall Sloan and Hardin think of the massive donation as simply helping their community and that’s all they care about.

Apple Music has been slowly rolling out its list of the 100 best albums over the past week, and it’s definitely reactions (which is, of course, the point). Not only are people debating the placements of the albums that have been revealed so far, but some conspicuous absences also have them predicting which albums are going to make it into the top 10, which has yet to be revealed.

Naturally, there’ve been plenty of classics, but more than a few controversial picks, with Travis Scott’s Astroworld and SZA’s SOS being called examples of recency bias on X (RIP, Twitter.com).

Among those artists whose albums haven’t been seen in the list so far are Kendrick Lamar, Nicki Minaj, Ariana Grande, Lauryn Hill, Mariah Carey, and even Michael Jackson. As one commenter put it on X, “we’ve reached the top 10 portion of this apple music 100 best albums list and they’ve yet to include a kendrick album or a michael jackson album. also no college dropout or miseducation of lauryn hill yet. they fill up the remaining spots right??”

Meanwhile, only one band has more than one entry and that’s Radiohead, with both “Kid A” and “OK Computer” making into the list.

You can check out the list for yourself here.

Of the two NBA Conference Finals series, the East is the one most anticipate to be a foregone conclusion. The Boston Celtics have been expected to cruise to the NBA Finals since before the playoffs began, but once teams like Milwaukee and Philadelphia were bounced, their odds only increased in the eyes of most.

The Indiana Pacers now stand as the last team remaining in the way of a Celtics Finals appearance, and few are picking them to pull off the upset. Indiana were impressive in beating the Bucks and Knicks to get here, but both teams were dealing with significant injury issues. As such, not everyone is willing to shake the feeling the Pacers lucked into this spot, with some like Draymond Green still believing they’re a regular season team.

There is one surefire way to turn folks into believers, and that is to push Boston in a way they haven’t been this postseason. The Celtics haven’t looked like an unbeatable juggernaut, dropping a game to each of the Heat and Cavs, but they do have a floor that is considerably higher than any other East team.

That is what makes Indiana’s margin for error almost non-existent in this series. To beat Boston, they’re going to have to find their A-game more than just four times, because inevitably there will be a game where their best runs up against the Celtics best, and Boston will likely win that battle. After an up-and-down series with the Knicks, the Pacers will have to find a more consistent level against Boston.

That starts with Tyrese Haliburton, who perhaps figured out his road woes in Game 7 in the Garden, and will have to carry that over for the Pacers to have a chance. He struggled with New York’s ball pressure early in the series, and will now have to deal with Jrue Holiday and Derrick White hounding him. He is going to have to remain aggressive and not allow Boston’s defensive guards to turn him into a non-scorer, because Boston’s team defense is too good for him to be pressured into passing to Andrew Nembhard and Aaron Nesmith and asking them to create, like he did late in Games 1 and 2 in New York.

Some of that will be incumbent on the Pacers getting creative to start sets with Haliburton off the ball and getting him the ball on the move so Holiday and White can’t get into his body as easily as when he brings the ball up the floor. Pascal Siakam, who has been very good for Indiana this postseason, will also have to raise his game to another level and share that creative burden. Beyond being the Pacers best wing shot creator, he also figures to draw Jayson Tatum as a defender at times and will be the Pacers best bet at making Tatum expend additional energy on the defensive end.

The rest of the Pacers will have to make shots, maybe not at the 67 percent clip they did in Game 7, but they’re going to have to win the three-point battle to have any chance to win this series. Myles Turner and Nembhard have given big lifts as shooters this postseason and that will need to continue, while Nesmith will need to find his shooting stroke as he’s struggled thus far.

On defense, the Pacers are going to face a very different challenge to their first two series, where they were tasked with dealing with point guard dynamos in Damian Lillard and Jalen Brunson. This series, they’ll face more pressure from the wing, as Tatum and Jaylen Brown lead the Celtics offense, with Holiday and White offering more of a support role from the backcourt. I’d expect Tatum and Brown to look to use guards as screeners in an effort to attack Indiana’s guards (particularly Haliburton). How the Pacers approach that challenge and how often they concede switches might be determinative in how this series goes for them defensively. Indiana is going to have to put full effort into the defensive end to avoid giving up those favorable matchups, but also has to be cognizant of who they’re leaving to send help.

I’d expect them to ask Al Horford and Jrue Holiday to prove they can consistently make shots, while trying to stay attached to Tatum, Brown, and White (who has been sensational this postseason). If they can turn this into a shooting variance series by the “others,” it gives them a chance. If Tatum and Brown can feel comfortable and get the looks they want, it’s a wrap, so you have to roll the dice on Holiday and Horford being shooters. That can also end in disaster, but there aren’t a lot of “good” options against this Boston offense.

The first two games in Boston are going to be particularly important for the Pacers, as the Celtics are expected to be without Kristaps Porzingis for both games. They are far more vulnerable on both ends without their star big man, and Indiana has to get at least one game in Boston to open this series — if not both. That’s an extremely difficult task, but then again, so is this series as a whole. On the other side, Boston will need to make an early statement in this series, as the Pacers are as confident as they’ve ever been coming off their Game 7 performance in New York. If they can pick off Game 1 in Boston, that belief will only grow in the Indiana locker room.

The Celtics are -900 favorites for a reason in this series, but the Pacers have the offensive firepower to make this interesting. The margin for error will be nearly nothing for Indiana, but the pathway is there to shock the basketball world.

Jack Antonoff and Bleachers kicked off their From The Studio To The Stage tour with a quick run of UK performances in March. Now, they’ve launched the North American leg, with two shows under their belt so far. If you’re planning on checking out an upcoming concert and you’re the kind of fan who likes to have an idea of what the setlist looks like ahead of time, we got you covered.

Per setlist.fm, the band played a pretty even mix of songs at their latest show, on May 20 at Red Rocks in Colorado. The set featured tracks mostly from the albums Bleachers (6 songs), Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night (5), Gone Now, and Strange Desire (4 each). This was

Check out the Red Rocks setlist below.

Bleachers’ From The Studio To The Stage Tour Setlist

1. “I Am Right On Time”
2. “Modern Girl”
3. “Jesus Is Dead”
4. “How Dare You Want More”
5. “Wake Me”
6. “Everybody Lost Somebody”
7. “Goodmorning” (acoustic)
8. “Dream Of Mickey Mantle / Me Before You”
9. “Chinatown”
10. “Don’t Go Dark”
11. “Self Respect”
12. “Wild Heart”
13. “Rollercoaster”
14. “Let’s Get Married”
15. “Margaret” (Lana Del Rey cover) (snippet, audience request)
16. “45” (acoustic)
17. “Ordinary Heaven”
18. “Tiny Moves”
19. “Stop Making This Hurt”
20. “I Wanna Get Better”
21. “Don’t Take The Money”

Country music is having a moment, and unsurprisingly, there are some new faces at the forefront of its breakthrough, — faces like Beyoncé’s, Shaboozey’s, and Tanner Adell’s. However, there’s one pioneer in the genre who doesn’t quite feel like he got the same love as they’re receiving now.

In a May 19 interview with BBC, Lil Nas X said that he was “happy” for the country music successes of artists like Beyoncé and Shaboozey, but that he feels a little left out. “I wish this would have happened for me,” he said. “I wasn’t even able to experience this.”

Nas appears to be referring to the reception of his breakout hit “Old Town Road,” which despite breaking records on the Billboard Hot 100 as the longest-running No. 1 ever, was never truly embraced by the country music establishment. The song was actually pulled from the country music chart initially for not sounding “country” enough, and received a chilly reception from country radio programmers. It did go on to win a CMA Award, but not without controversy.

And while Beyoncé may have had a rough road onto those country trails, it took far less fussing and fighting for her single “Texas Hold ‘Em” to enter country airplay after her label reviewed its metadata, and her album Cowboy Carter was widely well-received, landing at No. 1 in its first week despite the big change in sound for Beyoncé.