Category: News

This article originally appeared on 02.13.18

You wear extra chunky sweaters. You’ve never met a mitten you didn’t like. You may even keep a lap blanket at work.

You’re one of those people who is always cold. And you are not alone.

@Cynderness @Girlinthe As someone who is nearly always cold, you have my sympathy. Being the wrong temperature is m… https://t.co/Sfy4nCkkqJ

— Dr Schopflin (@Dr Schopflin)
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Inside or outside, you just can’t seem to get warm. This characteristic of yours manifests itself in extra blankets, wild heating bills, and enough complaints that you start going hoarse.

But surely there’s a scientific reason as to why some people are always cold, right?

It can’t just be random chance that has doomed you to a life of perpetual shivers. I reached out to an expert to learn more.

Dr. Christopher Minson is a professor in the department of human physiology at the University of Oregon. One of his primary research interests is thermoregulation, that’s how the brain and body interact and adapt as we heat and cool. Plainly put, he is the perfect guy to answer a few questions from #TeamCold.

(This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.)

Upworthy (UP): So what is actually happening in the body when a person gets chilly?

Dr. Chris Minson (CM): In the simplest of terms, feeling either cold or warm means that the temperature “set point” of the body is being challenged by thermal inputs throughout the body, including in the brain, the blood, the spinal cord, our organs, our muscles, and our skin. Part of our brain collects all of those thermal inputs and essentially compares them to what body temperature it wants to hold. So if your skin temperature is lowered, even though the rest of your body is still at a comfortable set-point, you will feel cold — in some cases, cold enough to make behavioral changes like putting on a sweater.

UP: Is there a reason this seems to largely impact women?

CM: The people who feel “always cold” will typically have lower muscle mass relative to body surface area (typically, women and older people). Their actual body core temperature may not really be below normal, but they feel cold because their body is telling them to conserve heat.

There have also been limited reports that women have a higher density of blood vessels at the skin surface, which would make them more sensitive to cold. However, there hasn’t been enough good data collected on this theory to confirm or disprove it.

This also explains a frequent frustrations about women and men in relationships…

CM: A common complaint by women and men in relationships is that women’s feet are often very cold, especially in bed. That goes along with the lower body mass to surface area relationship in women. As their body works to conserve heat, it vasoconstricts blood vessels in the extremities (hands and feet) to keep the core warm. This reduced blood flow results in cold hands and feet in women more than men.

So there you have it: Your brain is simply an overworked project manager trying to keep you alive. But there are a few things you can do about it.

UP: If you are a person who is always cold, is there anything you can do to “retrain” your body, so to speak?

CM: One of the best things someone can do is to increase their fat-free mass (muscle). This will increase overall metabolic rate (although it’s not easy to do.)

Another thing a person could do is undergo cold-stresses, such as allowing themselves to be exposed to very cold temperatures for short periods of time. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s been suggested that this could decrease the sensation of feeling cold. An example is putting the shower on ‘cold’ for a short period of time in the shower. Not easy to do, and you would want to build up to a full minute each day, but in some people it can help them to decrease the feeling of being cold.

UP: There are a lot of jokes at the expense of people who are always cold, but at what point does it go from “I’m always cold, and it’s a quirky thing about me” to “I’m always cold and I should probably see my doctor”?

CM: There is the possibility that someone’s perpetual coldness could be caused by abnormally low thyroid hormone levels, and that can be verified with a blood test. That is by far the rarer condition, but taking hormone supplements if medically needed can help. If a person is quite lethargic, has low motivation, and is always cold, it might be worth having thyroid hormones evaluated.

So if you are a lap-blanket wearing member of #TeamCold, don’t fret.

You are strong. You are capable. And unless you have pain or some of the symptoms Minson mentioned, there is likely nothing wrong with you. Our bodies just require different things of us, and yours requires that you have to deal with an overly-air conditioned-society. My sincerest apologies. On behalf of #TeamHot, your next cocoa is on me.

This article originally appeared on 10.06.15

A previous episode of “The Daily Show” addressed two hot-button issues at the same time: abortion and gun control.

It was one of the earliest tests for new host Trevor Noah, and he pretty much knocked this one out of the park. The segment began with a discussion about the pro-life movement’s laser focus on making completely legal abortions really, really hard to get.

Noah started with the movement’s push to defund Planned Parenthood on what turned out to be deceptive, altered, and debunked videos. And even he had to admit, pro-lifers are pretty great at what they do, given that they were able to get Congress to hold hearings based on … nothing, really.

Of course, not all people in the pro-life movement are against gun control, and not all people who are against gun control are pro-life, but there is a certain significant — and confusing — overlap on those two issues that is worth investigating.

So Noah turned his attention to the mass shooting in Oregon — the 294th of the year — and how we as a country are once again discussing gun control.

If pro-lifers are so concerned about the preservation of all lives, Noah wonders, then why don’t they support common-sense gun control measures?

There’s no need for doctored videos. Gun violence statistics exist (and they’re terrifying). Imagine if the pro-life movement rallied behind that?

Noah then brilliantly compared reactions from two “pro-life” presidential candidates on the Oregon shooting and on abortion.

First up was Jeb Bush on what happened in Oregon. He urged against reactionary gun legislation. “Stuff happens,” he said.

But compare that to his recent comments on abortion — which is, again, totally legal:

Now that’s a response fitting for a mass shooting.

Noah looked over to candidate Carly Fiorina for her thoughts on the Oregon shooting. Similar to Bush, Fiorina cautioned against taking any action on gun control until we know more about what happened.

Now compare that to her comments on abortion:

It’s not clear whether pro-lifers are waiting for an even 300 mass shootings in 2015 — which, at the pace we’re going, should be sometime in the next month or so — before taking action. But in the meantime, it’s really hard to see the “pro-life” rhetoric as anything more than hypocrisy.

In closing, Noah posed this to pro-lifers: If you actually care about lives, do something about guns.

Redirect the energy, lobbying, and rhetoric spent on fighting a more than 40-year-old Supreme Court decision toward sensible steps to curb gun violence.

“They just need to have a superhero’s dedication to life,” Noah says. “Because right now, they’re more like comic book collectors: Human life only matters until you take it out of the package, and then there’s nothing left.”

Watch the complete segment in the video below.

Trevor proposes that anti-abortion advocates like Carly Fiorina and Jeb Bush channel their pro-life rhetoric into another vital issue: gun control.Watch full…

This article originally appeared on 07.02.15

What if you needed a word for something that you can’t quite define? Where would you turn?

Have you ever tried to explain something but gave up because the person you’re talking to wouldn’t be able to relate? Or worse yet, there’s not an actual word for what you’re trying to explain?

Well, there’s a word for that feeling: exulansis.

Haven’t heard that term before? How about this one:

Anecdoche — a conversation in which everyone is talking, but nobody is listening.

No? How about this:

Opia — the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye.

Now, before you start doubting your own vocabulary skills, you won’t find those words in any of the major dictionaries. Instead, they come from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a collection of newly minted words for life’s hard-to-define feelings.

So, these words aren’t real? Well, it’s not quite that simple.

What makes something a “real” word?

It’s a word that’s found in the dictionary, you might say. That leads to an entirely separate question: Whose dictionary? Merriam-Webster? Oxford? Cambridge? Urban?

The truth is that language is ever-changing, and what one might say is a “fake” word today could very well be a “real” word tomorrow (or within a few years, at least).

In June 2015, the Oxford English Dictionary added a handful of new words to its rolls, including “Interweb,” “jeggings,” “hot mess,” “crowdfunding,” and “cisgender.” Will all of these words stick with us for the long haul? Almost certainly not. Still, in the mind of OED’s editors, those words are just as real as any others.

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, on the other hand, contains many useful terms that you won’t find in a traditional dictionary … yet.

You’ll find words like “Vellichor” (“The strange wistfulness of used bookshops”) and “Adronitis” (“Frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone”) buried within the dictionary’s six-year history.

While some terms come off as, well, obscure, others seem to fill meaningful voids left by the limitations of language for common emotions.

Its existence feels almost otherworldly, like spells from the mind of J.K. Rowling.

u201cHarry Potter Spells Listu201d

— Harry Potter World (@Harry Potter World)
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“I’ve been writing a dictionary of emotions for about five years, and still the most common question I get is, ‘Are these words real?'” Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows creator John Koenig told Upworthy over email.

To answer that question, Koenig says (emphasis mine):

“One answer is an obvious ‘no,’ [they’re not real] because you couldn’t find them in a leather-bound dictionary — and because I create them myself by twisting together word roots from any one of a dozen different languages, from French, Japanese and Mayan to my personal favorite, Greek.

On the other hand, of course these words are real, because in reality there is no such thing. A word is not like a gold coin that you bite to tell whether it’s counterfeit, so you might be able to trade it for a mule. It becomes real when it’s spoken and understood. And by that standard, I’ve seen some of my words (particularly ‘sonder’) used earnestly in many different conversations online. Are they all wrong? Is ‘sonder’ any less meaningful because it hasn’t yet been enshrined on the page of a leather-bound book? After all, almost every word in the Oxford English Dictionary has a birthdate, a notation of its first recorded use, back when it was just a yawp of nonsense that only made sense to one person, then two. All words were born this way.”

Here’s “sonder” by the way:

When it comes to how we think about words, popularity is often a stand-in for legitimacy.

You might not find the verb “retweeted” in the dictionary on your bookshelf, but it’s an understood term. Koenig has thoughts on that, as well:

“So then, does realness require the blessing of popular use? How many millions of people does it take to change the word ‘literally’ to mean ‘figuratively’? Is a word still alive if only one person knows its meaning? Or is that too far?”

“Personally, I think words should exist for their own sake, regardless of how they are used,” Koenig says, pointing out that our language is particularly lacking when it comes to describing emotions.

“When I post a new definition or a new episode of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, I often have no idea if anyone else out there feels the emotion I’m trying to pin down. Because it’s a one-man show, it’s totally possible that it’s just me. So then this question about realness [of a word] becomes just another way of asking, ‘Am I the only person who feels this way?‘”

Koenig isn’t alone in his curiosity about the authenticity of words. English professor Anne Curzan gave a TED Talk on this exact topic.

During her talk, Curzan recounts someone asking her if “defriend” is a “real word.” She wound up in the same sort of existential rabbit hole:

“What makes a word real? My dinner companion and I both know what the verb ‘defriend’ means, so when does a new word like ‘defriend’ become real? Who has the authority to make those kinds of official decisions about words, anyway?”

Here’s Curzan giving her TED Talk “What makes a word ‘real’?” in March 2014.

She touched on the process of words making their way into the dictionary. This might seem like a stale topic, but it’s pretty fascinating.

To her, dictionary editors are similar to anthropologists — that’s a way most of us probably hadn’t thought about them before (if we thought about them at all).

“So how does a word get into a dictionary? It gets in because we use it and we keep using it, and dictionary editors are paying attention to us. If you’re thinking, ‘But that lets all of us decide what words mean,’ I would say, ‘Yes it does, and it always has.’

Dictionaries are a wonderful guide and resource, but there is no objective dictionary authority out there that is the final arbiter about what words mean. If a community of speakers is using a word and knows what it means, it’s real. That word might be slangy, that word might be informal, that word might be a word that you think is illogical or unnecessary, but that word that we’re using, that word is real.”

So, what makes a “real” word? That’s entirely up to you.

Donald Trump has been raked over the coals ever since he confirmed that he had dinner with Kanye West and prominent white supremacist incel Nick Fuentes. On top of justified criticisms from his opponents, even overwhelmingly MAGA sites like Breitbart have called out Trump for the dinner. Trump has maintained that he doesn’t know who Fuentes is and only allowed him to attend as a courtesy to Kanye, and that decision is now biting Trump even further in the butt.

In a series of posts on Telegram, Fuentes has reportedly turned on Trump just a few days after the now fateful dinner. According to Fuentes, the Republican Party needs a primary challenger who will outflank Trump on the right. Fuentes argued that Ron DeSantis isn’t up to the task because he’s too “moderate.” Via Newsweek:

When I say that Trump vs DeSantis is the wrong ‘dialectic’ (discussion with two more opposing opinions), I mean that they are both inferior to the campaign that Trump ran in 2016.

“DeSantis is a moderate and he would moderate Trump: lose-lose. We need Trump and a new candidate who will outflank him on his right.”

Fuentes also railed against Trump and diehard MAGA acolyte Marjorie Taylor Greene for trying to “lure the base back into supporting people like Kevin McCarthy, Ronna McDaniel, and Rick Grenell” who will fail “Christian Americans.”

“I didn’t leave the MAGA movement,” Fuentes said. “The MAGA movement left me.”

Fuentes’ rant arrives after a video posted by Kanye where he slammed Trump over their dinner conversation. Trump reportedly yelled at Kanye that he’d lose if he also tried to run for president in 2024, which the rapper did not appreciate.

“I mean has that ever worked for anyone in history?” Kanye said in the deleted video. “I’m like, ‘whoa hold on, hold on, hold on. You’re talking to Ye.’”

(Via Newsweek)

The White Lotus Misery Index is a weekly accounting of who and/or what is having the worst time in paradise in season two of the HBO series. The rankings are based on a number of factors, none of which can or will be quantified in any way. We are doing art here, not science.

UNRANKED: Mia (look who got to play the piano, after all); Bert (he’s concussed, he can’t be held accountable for the things he says and/or does); Daphne (“You should get a trainer”); Jack the Rowdy English Boy and “Uncle” Quentin (more on these two later); Giuseppe the Piano Man (ALIVE!); Tommoso the Boat Captain (I love him very much); Salvatore the New Front Desk Man (I would pay up to $45 for a version of this season where Salvatore narrates the action and gives his little opinions about what is happening and why, just to hear that adorable gravelly voice for hours at a time)

10. (tie) Cameron (Last week: Unranked)

Three notes about Cameron that I think merit discussion:

• It remains my position that Cameron is the one who ends up in that body bag they teased in the opening of the season, in part because he’s a mostly unlikable doof no one would cry for and in part because I could see the thing where he owes Lucia money leading to my sweet little woodland creature Albie trying to confront him about it and accidentally bonking him over the cliff and into those ominously crashing waves the show keeps cutting to between scenes
• It’s weird that Cam and Daphne kind of have the same relationship that Bert and his wife had, just with a handsome trainer for her instead of, like, tears alone at night
• The thing where he was touching Harper’s leg was weird and played right into Ethan accusing him of various levels of mimetic desire in a way that was so straightforward it might as well have reached out of the screen and grabbed you by the cheeks

I do not like him and I hope he gets ruined by sweet misguided boys or the stock market or, like, anything.

10. (tie) Isabella at the Front Desk

She’s getting sexually harassed by a boss who doesn’t know how to flirt and she no longer has Rocco to commiserate with because he’s been replaced by the most Italian man I’ve ever seen. It’s not going great. She’s going to need a new job soon. I think she’d be a great travel agent.

10. (tie) Albie (Last week: 4)

This freaking kid has his brain so poisoned by genetics and books and dicey father figures that he has no idea how to behave in any situation. Like, of course he would hook up with a beautiful Italian girl without realizing she’s an escort and of course he would immediately worry about her being exploited and of course he would think the whole thing is kind of like Pretty Woman now where they’re going to fall in love and he’s going to save her or whatever. There’s a non-zero chance that the next episode opens with him trying to lay his jacket over a puddle in the street so she doesn’t step in it and then just getting walloped by a bus. He’s a sweet boy.

9. Lucia (Last week: 6)

Lucia is:

• Hooking up with the son of the guy she was originally hired to hook up with, the former of whom had no clue she was an escort and the latter of whom would really like very much if she stopped sleeping with his son and sneaking into his father’s room
• Getting stiffed on a payment by Cameron, who is kind of suspicious with money in a way that implies things are not what they seem
• Getting accosted on the street by earring-clad pimps who feed directly into what Albie thinks the situation is

Could be better, could be worse. That gelato did look pretty good.

8. Portia (Last week: Unranked)

The problems Portia has are more of the impending doom type than anything right in front of her face. Specifically, the thing where her rowdy British boy toy is also screwing his uncle (“uncle”) in the same scenic villa where he plans to screw her later, and Tanya saw them mid-thrust and will presumably have to tell her about it at some point, which will be a thing.

Please take a moment at some point this week and picture that conversation, by the way. Picture Tanya trying to explain what she saw and picture Portia’s face when she hears… uh, all of it. Picture Tanya trying to explain anything to anyone, actually. Picture her trying to give someone directions to the house she lives in. That could be a whole episode of this show, to be honest. Just Tanya trying to get home from the airport in a limo with a broken GPS. My point here is that she is not the ideal messenger for the “your handsome new boyfriend was having sex with the person who may or may not be his uncle and I walked in on them but they didn’t see me” chat. I kind of can’t wait to see it.

7. Valentina the Manager (Last week: 10)

Wellllllllllllll she’s a hopeless mess in her pursuit of Isabella and she might have just kind of traded a job for a sexual encounter with a young singer/prostitute, which is problematic from both a legal and ethical standpoint to the degree that she should probably be fired from her supervisory position and could very easily end up getting the entire White Lotus resort chain sued. It would be funny if that’s what the next season is about. Just a string of witnesses giving depositions about everything that’s taken place in this season of the show. I would really enjoy the part where the lawyers — played by… oh, let’s say Judy Greer and Henry Winkler — hear someone explain how a young prostitute kind of poisoned the piano player and then took his job by offering sexual favors to the manager. That’s one of those things that does not look too great on paper. Valentina is not doing great.

6. Tanya (Last week: Unranked)

Bullet points once again:

• What do we think is going on with Quentin here?
• My initial reaction is that he’s trying to scam Tanya out of some money and that he’s enlisted Jack to woo/distract Portia and it’s all part of an opera/underpants ruse that he hopes will continue to fund his lavish lifestyle, but I always think everything is a ruse and/or grift so let’s go ahead and take my opinion on this with a few grains of salt
• Did anyone else notice that his story about falling in love with a cowboy in Wyoming was suspiciously close to the plot of Brokeback Mountain, like in a way that people inclined to suspect grifts and/or ruses (ahem, hello) might raise an eyebrow about it all?
• Jennifer Coolidge is the best
• I would watch an entire movie about her snooping through beautiful Italian villas, possibly while investigating a murder

I could easily make a GIF of every little face/wave/thing she does and I would be so happy about it but I have things to do and “I was making GIFs of Jennifer Coolidge” is not a widely accepted reason for, like, paying your credit card bill a week late. Yet. I’m working on it.

5. Having too much wine in the afternoon (Last week: Unranked)

It is so much fun in the moment. A little light day drinking. A few glasses of wine in the warm Italian sun. You feel so classy and sophisticated and nice. Especially when it’s wine from a fancy vineyard. It barely counts as drinking, you think, as you “taste” another glass of red. And white. And another red. You know, to compare. It’s fun. You’re having fun.

But then the tasting or brunch or whatever ends and you go to your hotel room and sit around and the buzz starts wearing off and you need to make the “Do I try to nap or just keep drinking?” decision, which there’s not really a correct answer to, because a nap never really fully resets you and pouring more gas on the fire just means you’re now like aggressively drunk at 7 pm and being a little too honest at dinner about — to choose an example at random — your husband’s pornography habits.

It’s not an ideal situation.

4. Dominic (Last week: 8)

Dominic has a handful of problems, some bigger than others. He has a warped view of society and of love thanks in part to the way his father behaved with/to his mother while he was growing up. His son has kind of fallen in love with one of the Italian prostitutes he hired and had a jacuzzi threesome with as recently as a few days earlier and he is caught in this gross web where he wants to protect his son from his own mistakes but he also desperately wants to keep his own involvement with escorts (plural) secret and he’s also kind of a little jealous of his son for getting attention from a woman who had very little interest in him beyond his wallet. His phone calls to his wife are going straight to voicemail. He’s really just frowning a lot, all day, which is not something you want to be doing on vacation, as a general principle.

A few of these will solve themselves by leaving Sicily and going home. Most of them aren’t going anywhere any time soon without many visits to a very good therapist. And I suppose we can’t rule out the other things not actually solving themselves. Albie might straight up invite Lucia to come back to America with them in an attempt to be some sort of valiant prince. That would make for a fun Thanksgiving dinner.

3. Rocco (Last week: Unranked)

ROCCO DOES NOT WANT TO WORK AT THE BEACH CLUB

HE JUST WANTS TO SIT AT THE DESK WITH ISABELLA

LEAVE HIM ALONE

LEAVE ROCCO ALONE

2. Harper (Last week: 1)

The condom she found the day before and left on the kitchen sink was finally discovered, which led to a lot of hemming and hawing by Ethan, who is really not wired in a way to handle any of this in a reasonable fashion. She’s drinking too much wine and dropping little conversational bombs about threesomes and party drugs. She’s getting groped under the table at dinner by her husband’s sleazy friend. The wife of the sleazy friend is straight up telling her that she knows her husband is a cheating sleaze and copes with it by screwing her trainer and accepting the series of guilt gifts that come with the situation. She’s staring off into the empty middle distance more than one should at any point but especially on an expensive vacation. There’s a very real chance she gets arrested in Sicily for whipping a full wine glass at someone’s head before this all ends.

Harper is not having fun right now. She’s not going to have a lot of fun when the trip is over, either. Lotta open wounds here. At least she had some wine.

1. Ethan (Last week: 2)

I do not think I would enjoy being on the receiving end of any of the looks Aubrey Plaza shot him during this episode. No thank you.

Myke Towers gets into a dance music groove in Daddy Yankee in his new single “Ulala.” Towers joined forces with the reggaeton pioneer for his beachside music video that was released on Friday (November 25).

Since breaking out in 2019, Myke Towers has become a Latin rap force. The Puerto Rican rapper knows how to work his piercing flow around genre, including reggaeton and Latin trap music. This past year, Towers has shown that he is an all-around Latin pop star with forays into electronic music in his hits “Luces De Neon” and “Experimento.” He also teamed up with Jhayco for alluring track “Ande Con Quien Ande.”

Towers continues to embrace elements of dance music in “Ulala.” The sexy love song was produced by Latin electronic duo Play-N-Skillz. They seamlessly blended reggaeton music with glowing house music beats. Towers switches between rapping and singing as he serenades a love interest. Daddy Yankee drops in towards the end and turns up the heat with his fiery guest verse.

“‘ULALA’ was a unique experience because it is the first song that is my release and in which Daddy Yankee collaborates and also my first time working with Play-N-Skillz,” Towers said in a statement. “The intention was to create a global song and no one was better than the great Daddy Yankee to achieve it.”

Towers parties with Daddy Yankee in Miami in the “Ulala” video that was directed by Mike Ho. The song will be a part of Towers’ upcoming album Michael. Earlier this year, he featured on Daddy Yankee’s final LP Legendaddy with their collaboration “Pasatiempo.”

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

When it comes to song charts, the one that gets the most press is the long-running Billboard Hot 100. While that’s certainly a prestigious honor, it’s actually not the most exclusive notable song chart in today’s music industry. In 2022, there have been 14 different No. 1 songs on the Hot 100. When it comes to tracks that have been No. 1 on Spotify’s weekly most-played chart, though, only 10 songs have pulled it off in 2022 so far.

They are:

• Justin Bieber and The Kid Laroi — “Stay” (first achieved on August 5, 2021; 12 total weeks on top)
• Gayle — “ABCDEFU” (December 16, 2021; 3 weeks)
• Glass Animals — “Heat Waves” (January 27, 2022; 10 weeks)
• Harry Styles — “As It Was” (April 7, 2022; 11 weeks)
• Kate Bush — “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” (June 9, 2022; 3 weeks)
• Joji — “Glimpse Of Us” (June 23, 2022; 1 weeks)
• Bizarrap and Quevedo — “Quevedo: Bzrp Music Sessions, 2022; Vol. 52” (July 15, 2022; 9 weeks)
• Blackpink — “Shut Down” (September 22, 2022; 1 weeks)
• Sam Smith — “Unholy” Feat. Kim Petras (September 29, 2022; 5 weeks)
• Taylor Swift — “Anti-Hero” (October 27, 2022; 3 weeks)

Of those, the songs by Bieber/Laroi, Glass Animals, Styles, Bush, Smith/Petras, and Swift also topped the Hot 100 chart. As for the others, “ABCDEFU” peaked at No. 3, “Glimpse Of Us” at No. 8, “Quevedo: Bzrp Music Sessions, 2022; Vol. 52” at No. 79, and “Shut Down” at No. 25.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Dallas Mavericks are not where they hoped to be as we are nearly a quarter of the way through the season, as they’ve gotten off to a 9-10 start, including an active 4-game losing streak.

To this point, the Mavs have few bright spots beyond Luka Doncic, who is carrying an immense creative load on offense with Jalen Brunson now in New York. Christian Wood has been very good offensively off the bench, averaging 17.1 points and 7.6 rebounds per game on strong efficiency, but Jason Kidd has not yet given him a larger role because of defensive issues — which haven’t particularly been alleviated by the Mavs other options at center. All of this has created frustration in Dallas, and a big part of the problem is there isn’t a clear or easy fix.

The roster is, for the most part, what it is, and without a significant trade there aren’t a lot of options to improve things. Still, the Mavs are trying to find some pieces that can help, and after Facu Campazzo has failed to crack Kidd’s rotation, they will turn to a former All-Star in hopes of finding some offensive creation from the guard position. Marc Stein reported on Monday that the Mavs are “in advanced talks” with Kemba Walker, and will waive Campazzo to create the roster spot for Walker once he completes a physical.

That physical will be particularly important considering Walker has played just 80 games the last two seasons due to a knee injury that derailed what was another All-Star campaign in 2019-20 in Boston. Walker has lacked the same explosiveness since then, but even if he’s not the dynamic player he once was, adding another competent ball-handler and facilitator would make sense for the Mavs provided he’s gained a little bit of that strength and burst back in his time off.

In a recent interview with Dazed, Doja Cat revealed that her new album will have “its own moment on Earth.”

Since the release of her third album, 2021’s Planet Her, Doja Cat has been riding a wave of success — from performing at Coachella for the first time and winning a Grammy to earning multi-platinum records and securing a spot in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 for nearly six months.

But all that success can come at a cost, the rapper reveals. Being under the harsh eye of critics can have its drawbacks, but Doja finds strength in her quirky but enigmatic style.

“I would take pictures in my room all day, do crazy make-up, put paint on my face, and flaunt it on the internet,” she told Dazed. “I loved getting those reactions; it was just my favorite thing, looking like a freak. I really enjoyed that.”

Despite the internet being thrown into a frenzy over her self-admitted “impulsive decision” when she decided to go bald earlier this year, the rapper shared that she has never felt more beautiful in her entire life.

“I felt beautiful when I had long hair. I definitely felt like a hot girl then, but I always do,” she said. “There’s something so exhilarating about change; [it] showed me a different side of myself. I feel so new, fresh, and sexy.”

When it comes to music, the rapper said she worked on some songs “a year and a half ago” and is ready to share them with the public soon. She also shared that before she drops the album, she has plans to drop some “fun” singles, but they won’t be connected to her upcoming project.

Doja continues to leaves fan guessing with the album’s direction. This past May, the rapper told Elle that her next album would “predominatley rap.” Following that, in September, she told CR Fashion Book, she said it would have a “90s German rave kind of vibe,” before saying it was all “lies” on Twitter shortly thereafter.

Stormzy’s new album This Is What I Mean is out now, and its title track gets a rousing video shot during the album’s release event. Opening with phone camera footage of an impromptu praise session, the video sees Stormzy rapping directly into the camera as collaborators Amaarae, Black Sherif, Jacob Collier, Ms. Banks, and Storry make cameo appearances throughout.

In the leadup to the album’s release, Stormzy shared an open letter with fans thanking them for their support and imploring them to “listen to this album with an open heart.” He also explained his approach to making the project, which he recorded during a writer’s camp on a secluded island in England. “I am not a calculated mastermind with the ability to gauge what kind of music to make and when I’ll make it,” he wrote. “I literally just feel and then let it out.”

The songs he’s let out so far include the tender ballad “Firebabe,” the Afrobeats-infused “Hide And Seek,” and the confident “Mel Made Me Do It.” The album also features guest appearances from India.Arie, Nao, and Sampha.

Watch Stormzy’s “This Is What I Mean” video above.

This Is What I Mean is out now via 0207 Def Jam. Get it here.