Category: News

This article originally appeared on 02.12.16

There’s no time like the Valentine’s Day season — a time when “traditional” love is celebrated — to ask, “What even IS traditional love?”

We’re taught that it goes something like this: Be a virgin, find a soulmate, get married, NEVER CHEAT, share resources, have kids, and dance at your 50th wedding anniversary.

It’s a lot of pressure. And, frankly, if it really worked that way, divorce rates would be at 0%.

Love, as we know it, doesn’t work the same way for everyone.

Chris Ryan, co-author of “Sex at Dawn” puts it like this: “You can choose to wear shoes that are too small, but you can’t choose to be comfortable in them.”

In other words, our outdated beliefs about the nature of sex and relationships could be hurting many of us.

“Sex at Dawn” was published in 2010, but people are still talking about it.

The book looks into prehistoric human sexuality — it studies the behavior of bonobos and other primates in order to get at the true origins of human love. Though readers loved it for offering a more positive vision of evolutionary psychology than ones proposed by Darwin, Hobbes, and Freud, the book isn’t without its critics.

Still, as a filter for anyone trying to make sense of modern love, “Sex at Dawn” has a lot to offer.

Some of the insights in “Sex at Dawn” might surprise you, some might comfort you, some may shock you. It’s an interesting journey into the prehistoric past, and it might sound more familiar than you’d expect.

So let’s enter the shame-free zone and discover seven things about love that everyone — single, married, and everything in-between — really needs to know.

1. Competition was never about who was the biggest, strongest, or richest.

Competition for mates didn’t happen in our everyday actions, according to “Sex at Dawn.” It all took place inside … not our heads, but our bodies! The competitive advantage for males, prehistorically, wasn’t decided in the ring of life, with men competing for wealth, status, and resources to woo a lady.

It was decided … INSIDE THE FEMALE BODY. From the book:

“Rather, paternity was determined in the inner world of the female reproductive tract where every woman is equipped with mechanism for choosing among potential fathers at a cellular level.”

So ovaries are the original matchmaker? And what they’re matching is the right biological match from prehistoric ladies casting a very wide sex net?

The book is right when it states that this theory “turns the standard narrative inside out and upside down.”

2. The friend zone isn’t real.

Though the book mostly offers observations, it does posit one solution to the problem many societies have with thinking of female sexuality as property. You know the kind — frustrated Internet commenters complaining about being put in the friend zone (as if they had some prior claim to sex with a woman but the zoning commission came and denied that access to them).

According to the authors, there’s a way out.

“If you’re unhappy at the amount of sexual opportunity in your life, don’t blame the women. Instead, make sure they have equal access to power, wealth, and status. Then watch what happens.”

3. It’s totally natural to miss or still have strong feelings for your exes.

Back in the prehistoric day, it’s believed that there wasn’t really any such thing as an ex, because there wasn’t really any such thing as a relationship.

In the olden days, a man wouldn’t have even known for sure if he was a child’s dad. He (and every other dude — and lady for that matter) would have more likely just assumed that they were each child’s parent and provided and cared for them accordingly.

“… we hypothesize that Socio-Erotic Exchanges [forms a] crucial, durable web of affection, affiliation, and mutual obligation. In evolutionary terms, it would be hard to overstate the importance of such networks.”

So if you find yourself getting that old feeling, just chalk it up to some prehistoric memories of communal village life, in which overlapping relationships were more like a ’70s rock band tour bus.

“For professional athletes, musicians, and their most enthusiastic female fans, as well as both male and female members of many foraging societies, overlapping, intersecting sexual relationships strengthen group cohesion and can offer a measure of security in an uncertain world.”

4. Ladies make the first move.

Just not in the way you probably think.

It’s all biology, baby. Meredith Small, an anthropologist cited in the book, suggests that during fertilization of a woman’s egg, the egg actually may be reaching out and enveloping the sperm.

How’s that for making the first move?

She goes on to emphasize:

“Female biology … even at the level of egg and sperm interaction, doesn’t necessarily dictate a docile stance.”

5. Sexuality can be selfless.

Sex, in prehistory, was a way to bond your community together and provide a stable place for all the community’s kids to grow, according to “Sex at Dawn.”

I know. I’m a little scandalized by this as well. I’m a Methodist girl from Missouri; all this monogamish stuff is blowing my mind. But bear with me.

A story of elite World War II pilots stands out as an example of prehistory bumping into modernity.

In World War II, the book notes, elite pilots were facing the highest fatality rates in the military. They had wives and families; they had a community. But every time they went to fight, they risked abandoning and possibly hurting that community in their death.

How’d they respond? These elite fighter pilots started to ease up on the strictness of their marriages and began some of the first “key parties” on record. Rather than being scandalized, author Chris Ryan was moved.

“It was so moving to think about what motivated them to open their marriages with other couples. They were cultivating these webs of love, or at least real affection, because they knew that some of the men wouldn’t survive the war, and they wanted the widows to have as much support and love as possible. This confluence of selflessness and sexuality seemed to connect so directly to the hunter-gatherer groups, where men also have a high mortality rate from hunting accidents, falls, animal attacks, and so on. It was an unexpected yet very clear reflection of the distant past.”

6. The whole “women want resources and men want novelty” yarn is kind of contrived.

It’s more subtle than that. And also, rude! This myth implies that all women trade sex for stuff, and that’s not cool.

“As attentive readers may have noted, the standard narrative of heterosexual interaction boils down to prostitution: a woman exchanges her sexual services for access to resources.”

Monogamy and relationships are assumed a default in our world. But they’re not — they’re a convenience born out of humans switching from hunter-gatherer mode to agriculture mode. The authors explain:

“… upheavals in human societies resulting from the shift to settled living in agricultural communities brought radical changes to women’s ability to survive. Suddenly, women lived in a world where they had to barter their reproductive capacity for access to the resources and protection they needed to survive.”

Interesting. And totally outdated.

The good news is because this possessiveness isn’t an innate human thing, that means just as we were conditioned INTO objectifying and commodifying women, we can condition ourselves right on out of it.

7. Sex doesn’t have to be so serious.

As Ryan said in an interview with Dan Savage, “We hope [the book] encourages and empowers people to give themselves a break, to cut themselves and their partners some slack.”

“We need to chill out. Like music, sex can be sacred but it doesn’t always have to be. Sometimes we hear God in a Bach toccata, but sometimes we’re just dancing and having a good time listening to the Rolling Stones. Nothing sacred about it.”

If you try sometimes, you get what you need. GIF via The Rolling Stones.

This book is an interesting read, and it definitely provides a different lens on the way human sexuality came to be.

And during this existential Valentine’s Day season, new perspectives and no judgement are just what the world needs I think.

Taylor Swift is finally releasing her Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions on vinyl. The release will be among this year’s Record Store Day exclusives as a two-disc gray vinyl. It also has an updated cover.

The live session featured a complete run-through of songs from Swift’s 2020 album, Folklore, and was recorded at Aaron Dessner’s Long Pond studio. While the filmed performances were eventually released as a documentary on Disney+, physical copies of it had yet to see the light of day.

Last year, Swift served as the first global Record Store Day ambassador. “The places where we go to browse and explore and discover music new and old have always been sacred to me. Record stores are so important because they help to perpetuate and foster music-loving as a passion,” she shared at the time.

“They create settings for live events,” Swift added. “They employ people who adore music thoroughly and purely. Those people and shops have had a rough few years and we need to support these small businesses more now than ever to make sure they can stay alive, stay eccentric, and stay individual. It’s been a true joy for me to watch vinyl sales grow in the past few years and we, the artists, have the fans to thank for this pleasant surprise.”

More information, along with a complete list of 2023 Record Store Day titles, is available here.

It looks like GloRilla is having to deal with trolls both on the internet and in real life. This Tuesday (February 14), the rapper was performing at a show in Denver, when a fan through a coat on stage. The coat then hit the “FNF” hitmaker in the face, and she was not happy.

In a video captured by fans, Glo is seen on stage, saying “Who the f*ck threw that?”

It appears the coat-thrower soon identified herself. Glo continued, saying, “Who threw it, you with these red braids? Look lil girl, don’t throw sh*t else at me. Don’t throw nun else at me, that hit me in my face.”

As one of hip-hop’s buzziest acts, Glo had lots of surprises in store for her Denver show, including jumping into the crowd and crowdsurfing. However, she opted not to do so, as a result of being hit in the face with a coat.

“She done f*cked it up,” Glo said of the coat-thrower.

Though, it doesn’t seem like being hit with a coat ruined Glo’s night on the Denver stop of her Anyways, Life’s Great tour. Shortly after the show, she shared a clip from the concert on Instagram, saying that the fans in Denver were “lit af.”

You can check out both clips above.

Frank Watkinson, 69, of Huntingdon, England, just outside of Cambridge, is an excellent example of the magic that can happen when people have the time to explore their gifts. After retiring, he followed his passion for music and has developed a loyal following on YouTube.

In the 12 years since he joined the platform, he’s gained nearly 500,000 subscribers and 21 million views. He calls himself the “Virtual Grandad” and loves to play sad songs because he believes they have the power to make people happy.

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“I just love emotional, sad songs. And in a way, they cheer people up,” he told Flood. “If you’re really feeling down and you put a sad song on, it doesn’t cheer you up, but it makes you feel better. I suppose you get the feeling, ‘Well, at least I’m not the only one. Someone’s feeling it worse than me.’”

Earlier this month, he posted an acoustic cover of “On Melancholy Hill” by virtual band Gorillaz, which was written and performed by the group’s creative force Damon Albarn. The original version features wonky, spacey keyboards and programmed drums. But after Watkinson slows it down and plays it acoustically, it sounds like it was a folk song all along.

Watkinson’s unique take on the song comes from his belief that if you’re not going to do something different with a cover, why do it at all? “I’ve always said that if I want to listen to ‘Hotel California’ by The Eagles and there’s a group covering it that sounds identical, then—even if they are good and they’ve got it right—I might as well just put The Eagles on,” he said.

Never underestimate the power of the internet…or a daughter’s love.

Just ask Lloyd Devereux Richards, who’s now a bestselling author thanks to his daughter Marguerite Richards’ TikTok going viral. Previously, he didn’t even know what TikTok was.

Lloyd began writing his serial killer thriller “Stone Maidens” back in 1998, based on real crimes that happened during his college years in the mid-70s. He would spend a little over a decade writing the book in the few precious hours he could carve out between his law career and being a dad to three children.

The book was finally published in 2012 after years of rejections from literary agents and editors. Unfortunately, this milestone was not met with many sales.

After seeing all her father’s hard work not pay off, Marguerite didn’t want his story to end on such an anticlimactic note.

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“It was such a great book, and I knew how important it was to him,” she told The Washington Post. “He never was like, ‘Ah, nobody cares.’ He just always stayed positive. I thought maybe it’s just because nobody knows about the book.”

So Marguerite made a TikTok account dedicated to promoting his book. The first video showed footage of Lloyd at his desk, unaware that he’s being filmed. In the clip, Marguerite wrote how her dad dedicated so much time to writing it even though “being a dad came first,” and how much she’d “love for him to get some sales.”

@stonemaidens It’s a beautifully written thriller on Amazon 🥹❤️ #stonemaidens #booktok #authorsoftiktok #thrillerbooks #books ♬ original sound – e

The Post reported that the video reached a million views overnight. Even better, ”Stone Maidens” had suddenly become one of the top-selling books in its category on Amazon. As of now, hard copies are sold out.

Marguerite posted a follow-up video showing Lloyd finding out the good news, and it’s 100% heartwarming. Tears instantly stream down his face. He is left speechless over the wave of praise.

@stonemaidens you all are amazing! Life can be hard and then it can be wonderful suddenly (still crying) #stonemaidens ♬ original sound – lloyd

“I’m ready for a nap!” he quips while throwing on his glasses. An app he had no idea existed completely changed his life in the span of 24 hours. Life is extraordinary in that way.

Subsequent videos show the pair celebrating the unexpected win, which has left Lloyd feeling “overwhelmed” and “blessed.”

Truly, even with all its inherent flaws, the internet can be an amazing tool for connection. As one person commented, “The world has so many hidden gems. Social media allows us to find them.”

One person noted how TikTok specifically could be a really positive platform, writing that “moments like this are why I stay on the app. The love and generosity from people is astounding. There is definitely more good than evil.”

As for Lloyd’s ever-growing fanbase—he’s been working on a sequel for the past four-and-a-half years. Stay tuned. Something tells me publishing won’t be nearly as difficult this time around.

And for those who might be finding themselves up against a similar challenge with their own creative endeavors, Lloyd does have a tip. Unsurprisingly, it has to do with resilience.

“Write, rewrite and write it again. And never give up.”

People who don’t have dyslexia may find it challenging to understand what it’s like when those who have it look at a page of text. A common misconception is that people with dyslexia read things backward. But in reality, they see words that can appear inverted, cut in half, backward, mixed up, chaotic, or moving across the page.

Dyslexia is a learning disorder that makes it more difficult for people to read and spell. It is linked to genes that affect how the brain processes reading and language.

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A video by Dyslexia Improvements gives a great visualization of how words appear to someone with dyslexia. Concentrating on words that are moving all over the page and going three-dimensional has to be incredibly difficult.

“It just doesn’t stay still. It just sorta pulls away from the page a bit,” the narrator says. “It makes it a bit tiring to read. A bit tricky.”

The video also points out that not all people with dyslexia see the same thing. For some, the text appears to shatter across the page, like a broken glass pane. For others, words may disappear or swell and shake on the page.

The major takeaway for people who don’t have dyslexia is that it’s a very frustrating disorder to have in a world where we depend on the written word. This video is a great way to show people why it’s so important that people with dyslexia get the help they need.

“What an eye-opener! Very well presented. Every teacher and parent should view this! Thank you for sharing,” Deborah Palmer wrote in the comments.

Millions of people across the U.S. freaked out in unison during Super Bowl LVII when a commercial for streaming service Tubi duped everyone into thinking somebody was fiddling with the TV remote. The first few seconds of the ad made it appear as if game coverage was resuming, then suddenly, a smart TV home screen appeared with a cursor clicking on different things, ultimately landing on Tubi.

The brilliant ad clearly got people’s attention, as people flooded social media with stories of how everyone in their household asked who was sitting on the remote and disrupting the game. For most people, it was a hilarious prank that ended in shared laughter. But for some, it didn’t turn out to be funny at all.

In a now-deleted post shared on Reddit, an unnamed 23-year-old woman described how her 25-year-old boyfriend reacted to the commercial when he thought she was messing with the TV. It’s a story filled with domestic violence red flags, and people are sharing it as an example of what abusive relationships can look like in their early stages.

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“My boyfriend thought I was the one changing the channel and began screaming at me violently, calling me things that I don’t even want to write down,” the woman shared. “Even as I told him it was a commercial he ignored me and kept blowing up at me and punched a hole in our living room wall.”

Red flags: Screaming obscenities and damaging property.

“He eventually realized what actually happened and awkwardly apologized but I was so disgusted over his reaction to a 15 second commercial,” she continued. “I feel like if you can’t keep your anger in check and get that violent over something so small I don’t want to be around for it. We’d been together for over a year, living together for the past 2 months and I’ve known him to get angry at things sometimes but this really took me off guard and I can’t forget how unsafe I felt around him during this.”

Red flag: Feeling unsafe with your partner.

She shared that she left the next morning with some of her things and is staying at her parents’ house. “I left him a note telling him how I felt and that I didn’t think we were going to work out long term,” she wrote. “He’s been messaging and calling me repeatedly. My parents told me that I’m overreacting since he had a bit to drink and the Super Bowl gets everyone riled up but I don’t feel I am. I don’t think it’s normal to be that angry.”

Red flag: Parents excusing violent behavior and not supporting their daughter who feels unsafe.

People in the comments let the woman know that her instincts are spot on. It’s not normal to get that angry, especially over a football game.

“Jfc, that ad is not even 10 seconds long. It only took him that much to insult you and punch a wall, ultimately destroying your mutual trust? Yikes, that’s scary. You deserve much better than that, mad respect for standing your own ground,” wrote Reddit user itsOkami.

“’When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.’ – Maya Angelou. Believe him, he’s got an impressive collection of red flags,” wrote Marlievey.

This astute comment from ohsheetitscici received more than 7,000 upvotes:

“Definitely not an overreaction at all! My partner and I watched the same commercial, and we thought one of us was sitting on the remote. When we finally realized it was a commercial, we laughed at how dumb we were and moved on.

“The fact that something that small triggered that intense of a reaction out of your (hopefully) ex is a red flag the size of f**king Texas. You did the right thing, and you are right to protect yourself if you feel unsafe. This is coming from someone who was in an abusive relationship before I met my husband. Trust and believe when I say, the abuse didn’t happen overnight. He, in a f**ked up way, did you a favor flipping out like that. Cause you just got a preview of what was to come later down the line.”

Flowerino also hit the nail on the head:

“This is absolutely not overreacting. He was the one to overreact. Even if it hadn’t been a commercial he’d still not have any valid reason for becoming so angry and ruining a wall. And if he’s capable of destroying property over such a small thing as a commercial break, he is not safe to be around. Next time something he found inconvenient happens, it could’ve been you he’d hit.

“And your parents’ comment about his actions being justified because he had a little to drink is disgusting to me. Alcohol should never be used to justify violence in any shape or form.”

Others chimed in about how disturbing her parents’ reaction was.

“Like ‘Hey, Mom? He punched a hole in the drywall. He went from 0 to hole-in-the-wall in less than 15 seconds. Over something he thought I was doing. He wasn’t responding to the commercial, he was responding to me. I don’t care how many drinks he had; if it’s possible for him to become that enraged over thinking I was changing the channel during a commercial break then imagine if there’s ever a legitimate reason for him to be angry.'” – -janelleybeans-

“You ARE NOT overreacting! Your parents are UNDER REACTING! I don’t care how ‘exciting’ a GAME is, nor how much alcohol was consumed. That doesn’t excuse bad behavior. This would be a definite ‘dealbreaker’ for me.” – Pyewacket62

Hopefully, this woman’s story and the comments from people pointing out red flags will not only help her see that her instincts are right, but perhaps help others to recognize patterns of abusive behavior. As many people pointed out, domestic violence doesn’t usually escalate to extremes immediately, and there are signs and signals that indicate abusive dynamics in a relationship that everyone should be aware of.

Good for this woman for recognizing that screaming and punching a hole in the wall over a Super Bowl ad is one of them.

If you are in or think you might be in an abusive relationship, get help from the National Domestic Violence Hotline by visiting hotline.org, or calling 1.800.799.SAFE (7233), or texting “START” to 88788.

Kevin Durant‘s introductory press conference as a member of the Phoenix Suns took place on Thursday. In a bit of a unique twist compared to other introductory pressers we’ve seen, season ticket holders got the chance to be a part of the festivities, as they were allowed to sit in the stands at the Footprint Center and welcome KD to the desert.

But still, there was business to be done for the reporters in attendance. This included ESPN’s Nick Friedell, who got the mic and wanted to have Durant sum up his tenure with the Brooklyn Nets.

The problem is that Suns fans didn’t seem especially happy with the Nets getting brought up, which led to some pretty loud boos ringing out from throughout the stadium.

It’s important to mention that Friedell found this extremely funny, while Durant held the mic and laughed for a second while he was waiting for the fans to stop expressing their discontent.

“It was a lot of ups and downs,” Durant said when he finally got the chance to respond, “but I loved the grind. And everybody in Brooklyn loved the grind, too. So I built a family over there. They’re always gonna be a part of my journey.”

Thanks largely to the #MeToo movement, conversations about bodily autonomy and consent have become a regular part of our social discourse. We teach little ones about the concept of consent in kid-friendly terms. We make sure everyone understands that only an enthusiastic yes means yes for sex. We talk about how consent can be withdrawn at any time.

Sometimes these conversations involve grappling with the nuances of individual situations, which is why actor Penn Badgley’s request to stop doing sex scenes in his TV series “You” has created a wave of debates about the nature of acting, consent for sexual activity and how sex is portrayed in television and film in general.

For a little background, Badgley plays the handsome, obsessive serial killer Joe Goldberg in the series “You,” which just entered its fourth season. In real life, Badgley is known for telling fans to stop falling in love with the creepy character, and for thoughtfully using the show’s premise to talk about violence against women and gender equality. Now he’s making headlines for a story he shared on his podcast about asking to cut sex scenes from the new season.

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“I asked Sera Gamble, creator of the show, ‘can I just do no more intimacy scenes?’” Badgley told his “Podcrushed” co-hosts, Nava Kavelin and Sophie Ansari. He shared that one of his hesitations with taking the “You” role in the first place was his not wanting to always be cast as a romantic lead, considering everything that entails. (Badgley came to fame playing a lead romantic role on “Gossip Girl,” and while Joe Goldberg isn’t exactly a typical romantic lead, his character’s modus operandi is charming women into relationships, which in the first three seasons involved a good deal of sex.)

“Fidelity in every relationship, and especially my marriage, is important to me,” Badgley said, “And yeah, it just got to a point where I’m like, ‘I don’t want to do that.'” But, he added, “Do I have a career if I don’t? I mean, think about every male lead you’ve loved. Are they kissing someone? Are they doing a lot more than that?”

Badgley told Variety that his wife, Domino Kirke-Badgley, actually encouraged him to take the role of Joe. “And I wasn’t going to listen to anyone more than her,” he said. He also elaborated a bit on his discomfort with filming sex scenes, “having done quite a fair amount of them.”

“It’s not a place where I’ve blurred lines,” he said. “There’s almost nothing I could say with more consecration. That aspect of Hollywood has always been very disturbing to me—and that aspect of the job, that mercurial boundary—has always been something that I actually don’t want to play with at all.”

He shared that his preference would be no sex scenes at all: “It’s important to me in my real life to not have them.”

People were quick to share their thoughts on Badgley’s feelings about intimate scenes, from positive (Good for him for setting his own boundaries!) to negative (It’s called acting—it’s got nothing to do with marital fidelity!) The story also got people talking about the nature of filming sex scenes, the differences between sex and violence being simulated or shown, how much is too much and whether such scenes are even necessary or desirable.

But lost in all of those debates was what really matters most—how “You” show creator and producer Sera Gamble responded to his request.

As Badgley explained on his podcast, Gamble’s reaction to his wanting to nix sex scenes was immediately positive and supportive.

“I said to Sera, ‘my desire would be zero. To go from 100 to zero.'” Badgley shared. “But I signed this contract. I signed up for this show, I know what I did. You know, you can’t take this aspect out of the DNA of the concept [of the show], so ‘how much less can you make it?’ was my question to them.”

“And she didn’t even bat an eye. She was really glad that I was that honest. She was sort of, I want to say, like, almost empowered. She had a really positive response. She appreciated my directness and she appreciated that I was also being reasonable and practical. And they came back with a phenomenal reduction.”

Badgley’s feelings about filming sex scenes really shouldn’t be up for debate—it’s his body, his comfort level, his choice. And if someone decides that simulating sex at work isn’t something they are comfortable with, they should be able to say so, no matter what their personal reasons are for it. The real story here is how an actor felt safe enough to approach his employer and voice his discomfort over filming sex scenes, and how she listened and immediately responded with respect and accommodation. That’s exactly what should happen, but all too often has not.

Rather than devolving into hot takes on sex and sex scenes in general, which everyone has different feelings about, let’s take this positive exchange between employee and employer for the consent-era example that it is and celebrate it.

By now you’ve no doubt seen at least a handful of viral videos of Tesla cars equipped with the company’s Full Self-Driving Capability (FSD) acting absolutely nuts on the road. Whether that’s people falling asleep at the wheel, stopping abruptly in traffic and causing an accident, driving the wrong way down a parking lot, or straight up killing people, it’s becoming increasingly clear that full self-driving cars are not our reality… yet. To his credit, Tesla CEO Elon Musk himself knows this, despite using terms like “Autopilot,” “Enhanced Autopilot,” and “Full Self-Driving Capability” the Tesla website states “Autopilot, Enhanced Autopilot, and Full Self-Driving Capability are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment… the currently enabled features do not make the vehicle autonomous.”

Which is all to say, “yeah, of course these cars can drive themselves, just don’t expect them to drive themselves.” Cool. The Autopilot feature comes standard with every Tesla with the Advanced Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability programs serving as more expensive add-ons. Unfortunately, the latter program, which is currently known as FSD Beta, has been hit with an official recall by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The recall is calling for 362,758 vehicles equipped with FSD BETA to be updated with an over-the-air software update to address issues that can cause the vehicles to “act unsafe around intersections, such such as traveling straight through an intersection while in a turn-only lane, entering a stop sign-controlled intersection without coming to a complete stop, or proceeding into an intersection during a steady yellow traffic signal without due caution.”

The NHTSA also notes that the system may “respond insufficiently to changes in posted speed limits or not adequately account for the driver’s adjustment of the vehicle’s speed to exceed posted speed limits.” Luckily for Tesla owners, this can all be fixed with a software update which will be completely free of charge.

The affected vehicles include the Tesla Model 3 (2017-2023), Tesla Model S (2016-2023), Tesla Model X (2016-2023), and the Tesla Model Y (2020-2023). Owner notification letters are set to be mailed out by April 15, 2023.

There is some debate on whether this massive headache for Tesla owners should be referred to as a recall. Elon Musk doesn’t seem to think so. In a Twitter exchange with Sam Korus, who we’d like to note is the director of Research Autonomous Technology & Robotics, Korus wrote that there should be new terminology to differentiate between recalls and software updates”

To which Musk agreed, writing, “the word ‘recall’ for an over-the-air software update is anachronistic and just flat wrong.”

The NHTSA defines a recall as when “a vehicle, equipment, car seat, or tire creates an unreasonable safety risk or fails to meet minimum safety standards.” So we’d say that fits the bill. Still, maybe “recall” isn’t the perfect term for something that can be fixed via a software update, but neither is “Full Self-Driving Capability” for a car that can’t drive itself fully, so…

The important thing is getting these cars updated ASAP! According to NPR, news of the recall resulted in a 2% drop in Tesla shares which is nothing compared to the 71% the stock has rallied in a year to date. Bottom line: This will hardly result in a considerable revenue loss for Tesla shareholders and will cost Tesla owners nothing.