Category: News

It turns out people love rooting for the anti-hero. With her 10th studio album, Midnights, Taylor Swift has earned her 11th No. 1 album (counting her re-recordings) on the Billboard 200 chart. According to Billboard‘s data source, Luminate, the album pulled in 1.578 million equivalent album units in its week of release, making it the biggest first week for any album in seven years.

The last album to accomplish such a feat was Adele’s 25, which sold 3.482 million units in its first week of release in 2015.

Even before the end of the full week of release, Swift had broken several records with Midnights, less than 24 hours after Midnights’ release, the album broke the record for the most first-day streams on Spotify. The album also helped her break the record for most streamed artist within the course of 24 hours.

Shortly before the album’s release, Swift announced the Midnights Music Movies, a series of music videos accompanying the tracks on the album. So far, she has only released visuals for “Anti-Hero” and “Bejeweled,” however, plans to drop several more.

During an interview with Jimmy Fallon last week, she teased a potential Midnights tour, after not having toured in four years.

Midnights is out now via Republic. Stream it here.

The Chicago Bears have not had a great season and offensive struggles have been a big reason why they came into Sunday’s game in Dallas with a 3-4 record.

The focal point for many has been the play of second year quarterback Justin Fields, who has struggled with consistency throwing the football, and hasn’t been helped by a bad receiving corps and play-calling that hasn’t exactly played to his strengths. The good news was that on Sunday, Fields wasn’t the main problem for the Bears, as he had a pair of touchdowns (one rushing and one passing) and no interceptions in the third quarter.

The bad news for the Bears was their defense had no answers for Dak Prescott and the Cowboys, who rolled up 35 points on them by the mid-third quarter. It was there that the Chicago offense finally gave way, with a David Montgomery fumble on third and 17 deep in their own territory, that was compounded by a rookie mistake from Fields when he jumped clear over Micah Parsons who was laying on the ground after recovering the fumble rather than touching him down.

Fields literally has to try not to touch Parsons on this play, leaping completely over him after coming inches from Parsons on the ground, allowing the Cowboys star defender to pop up and jog to the end zone for the most improbable of touchdowns.

The biggest mistake of this play is, of course, the fumble by Montgomery, but it’s emblematic of the Bears struggles this season that they would compound that with another error on the part of Fields, who in his second year should be accustomed to the NFL’s down by contact rules compared to college. This play all but snuffed out any hopes of a comeback for Chicago, when they had at one point pulled to within five of the Cowboys in the third quarter.

What will happen to Twitter under Elon Musk? Will the Tesla honcho be a benevolent leader, keeping it free of Nazis and other dangerous folks? Or will he take his free speech absolutism to ridiculous lengths and drive all the nice people away? Judging from his first days in power, it’s not looking good. Soon as he took the reins, slurs and misinformation skyrocketed. Now Musk himself is adding fuel to an already raging fire

As caught by The Daily Beast, Musk responded to a tweet Hillary Clinton had written condemning the toxic rhetoric that may have caused the attempted murder of Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul. Since the attack, those on the right haven’t offered much in the way of self-reflection. Instead some have spread baseless conspiracy theories in an attempt to deflect blame. Musk got in on those shenanigans.

“There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye,” Musk tweeted Sunday morning. He also shared a link to a piece from online conservative site Santa Monica Observer, which alleges that Paul Pelosi was actually having a liaison with a male sex worker. The post has since been taken down.

This particular conspiracy has been — surprise surprise — popular among the far right, even if it requires painful attempts to explain away such factors as the broken window and 911 call. Meanwhile, this particular conservative rag has previously shared such tinfoil claims that Hillary Clinton sent a body double to debate Donald Trump in 2016 and that Kanye West has a big time government job.

Hours later, Musk deleted his tweet. But the damage had already been done, with it receiving thousands of shares. That such a scurrilous link had been shared by the new owner of a social media service notorious for the dissemination of misinformation is not exactly reassuring. But hey, it was fun while it lasted.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Lil Wayne brought the treats to New Orleans last night during his annual Lil Weezyana fest. During his set, he ran down some of the biggest hits from his catalog, including, “Mrs. Officer,” “B.M.F. (Blowin’ Money Fast),” “Mirror,” and “How To Love.” Late into his set, Wayne surprised the audience with a special guest.

“Can you please make some noise for this foreigner?” said Wayne. “Let’s show him a good time in America.”

The aforementioned foreigner was Toronto native, Drake, who was signed to Wayne’s Young Money label back in 2007.

“New Orleans is one of the few cities that shaped my career,” said Drake.

Drake performed for a reported 18 minutes. He and Wayne performed “She Will” from the latter’s 2011 album, Tha Carter IV. He then performed “The Motto,” “In My Feelings,” “God’s Plan,” “Nonstop,” “Jimmy Cooks,” and “Knife Talk,” according to Nola.com.

Also during his set, Drake shared a story about a time in New Orleans, when he realized he had made it in the realm of music.

“The day I knew I made it,” he said,” was, I was outside the W hotel in New Orleans, and I walked over to the corner, and there was a guy that had a bootleg CD. It was an album I put out called So Far Gone, and I don’t know if you remember that. But he had bootleg of that sh*t, and that was the first time in my life that I knew I made it. I love New Orleans and everything that you’ve ever done.”

Check out a clip of the two performing “The Motto” above.

This article originally appeared on 12.18.17

We know your relationship with your parents can affect a lot about who you are as you grow up. But is it possible that the good and bad of that relationship could actually show up in your saliva?

That’s the bizarre-but-important question a team of researchers recently asked, the results of which were published in Developmental Science.

Led by Elizabeth Shirtcliff, an associate professor from Iowa State University who studies early childhood adversity, the study gathered 300 8th-grade kids and used a simple survey to determine some basic facts about their parents. The kids were asked things like whether they were close with their parents and how often positive reinforcement was used in their household.

The team was looking for signs of what they called “positive parenting, attachment, and bonding.”

Six years later, the kids — now adults — were brought back in for a strange follow-up. The researchers collected a dozen different samples of their saliva.

It sounds a little gross, but they were looking for something important: the presence of a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol is crucial to our overall well-being. Lower levels of cortisol are correlated with fatigue, mood swings, and muscle loss, for example. Higher levels of cortisol correlate with healthy blood pressure levels and better immune system function (though extremely high levels are a health risk).

For this study, cortisol was particularly important because it plays a big role in how we process and react to stress. When we’re faced with extreme stress or danger, cortisol floods our bodies, resulting in the “fight or flight,” response.

The study’s authors observed that people who are generally more stressed over longer periods of time, however, often show lower cortisol levels — almost like they get accustomed to all that stress over time and have a lesser reaction to it. While this might sound like a good thing, as far as your health goes, it’s definitely not.

The results of the study were clear: The more signs the kids showed of a positive bond with their parents when they were young, the better their cortisol functioned in adulthood.

That’s a good thing, the researchers suggest, because it helps keep kids alert and sensitive to all of the stimuli and information swirling around them from day to day, rather than having a blunted response to stressors and life in general.

So having great parents who use positive parenting methods is a good thing. Yay!

But the study had an important twist when it came to looking at racial demographics.

When race differences were accounted for — about half the kids were black and half were white — the cortisol correlation didn’t hold up.

On average, the study found, white and black parents were equally likely to have a positive bond with their kids. But parenting styles aren’t the only thing that can affect stress levels and kids’ response to it.

Many of the white students in the study may have benefited from “low stress, resource-rich contexts which unfortunately may be less common for black youth,” the researchers explained.

It’s also worth noting that many groups — including black people of people Jewish descent — carry biological markers of trauma from previous generations (i.e., slavery, the Holocaust), which can also affect cortisol response.

In other words, growing up with various socioeconomic and other hardships does indeed have a lifelong impact, and now we’ve got the beakers full of saliva (so to speak) to prove it.

This is important work. It proves that, in many cases, being a great parent can actually physically manifest itself in kids growing up to be well-adjusted and adaptable.

Being a loving parent can actually have a biological impact on your kids years and years later. That’s amazing!

Perhaps most importantly, however, it shows a glaring need for kids — particularly those belonging to marginalized or disadvantaged groups — to get better support in the form of solid education, safe communities to grow up in, and more opportunities to learn and grow.

Having great parents isn’t always enough to overcome a world that seems to be stacked against you, but it certainly helps.

This article originally appeared on 01.10.18

Anyone who’s ever been on Tinder knows having a cute animal in the photo is usually a big hit.

But what if Tinder profile photos only featured that cute animal? And what if, instead of a millennial would-be hooker-upper, it was the adorable dog or cat itself looking for true love?

That’s an idea some animal shelters are toying with.

“We are always trying to come up with … creative new ways to get our shelter dogs out in front of potential adopters,” says Karen Hirsch, public relations director at LifeLine Animal Project in Georgia.

And experimenting with online dating for dogs and cats might just be working.

The harsh world of pet adoption is extremely competitive: About 6.5 million dogs and cats enter U.S. shelters every year, each seeking a good forever home. It’s too big a need for shelter operators to just sit back and hope they all get adopted.

That’s why you see adorable dogs on display outside the grocery store, partnerships with Uber that will bring puppies directly to you for playtime, and aww-inspiring social media campaigns like dogs in pajamas.

An estimated 50 million people worldwide use Tinder. So LifeLine and other shelters and rescues figure why not give it a shot?

After all, people using online dating apps are already looking for love and companionship — just maybe a slightly different kind.

Hirsch says they recently created profiles for 22 of their dogs and cats.

Animal profiles are also showing up on Bumble, which is home to another 20 million users or so.

Like sweet Duke here.

Each pet is assigned to a volunteer who creates the profile and handles the conversations after a match

“In a crowded shelter, pets often get overlooked, but on a dating app, the animal becomes an individual,” Hirsch says. “People learn about them and form a ‘virtual’ attachment.”

Plus the witty banter is oodles of fun.

For LifeLine, the experiment is still new. But Hirsch says people are responding to it incredibly well so far.

At the very least, Tinder and Bumble have proven to be great for word-of-mouth awareness-building on the importance of adopting shelter pets. The animals are getting dozens of matches. Hirsch says there have been more than a few online adoption inquiries, as well as people coming into the shelter to meet their “match” in person.

She also notes that one of the matches even became a regular volunteer at LifeLine.

This new animal dating idea has another upside for apps — and the people using them, too.

Dating experts are finding that people are getting burned out by online dating. Between “ghosting,” “cushioning,” “the slow fade,” and a bunch more of those annoying slang terms, humans out there are wondering if dating apps are even worth the effort.

For romantic love, who knows?

But now that you might just meet the dog or cat of your dreams, that’s not a bad reason to keep on swiping.

There are a lot of enraging issues these days. Elon Musk buying Twitter. Kanye West spewing anti-Semitism. The kooky GOP candidates who may inexplicably win big in the Midterm elections. But please reserve some ire for one unfortunate victim of cancel culture: the McRib. The McDonald’s sandwich, which has long only been available on special occasions, is coming back, but this time will be its “farewell tour.” And there’s one commentator who isn’t having it.

On an episode of The Daily Show last week, Roy Wood Jr. stopped his traffic report dead to rant about the dearly departing McRib. He was livid.

“What did the McRib do? Did it say something about Jewish people or something? I thought the McRib is an ally, the McRib has been an ally for years and years,” Wood joked. “We all know why McDonald’s canceled the Snack Wrap, we know what the Snack Wrap said, that made perfect sense.”

“What did the Snack Wrap say?” host Trevor Noah asked.

“I’m not going to repeat that on television,” Wood replied.

Wood got so worked up that he eventually issued a threat to McDonald’s brass. “If you dare, as an organization, to certify the cancellation of the McRib, I will not accept those results,” he charged. “I will get a group of people together, and we’re going to travel, and we’re going to march down to McDonald’s headquarters.”

He vowed to “storm the McDonald’s office” on “the first week of January,” at which point Noah butted in, saying that sounded too “familiar” to another major event that Republicans continue to downplay.

You can watch the segment in the video above. Wood’s rant begins around the 12:45 mark.

Jaboukie is back on his rap sh*t. Following his debut single, the queer empowering “BBC,” the comedian, actor, writer, and now rapper has dropped a grating new track called “Rockwhyler.”

On the song, Jaboukie spits scorching rap bars over a bass-heavy, rock-influenced beat.

“Rottweiler, Givenchy / Beat got bite / Beat got teeth / Think that ho want a ring / F*ck that ho, I beat my meat.

Upon the song’s release, Jaboukie explained why he named the song “Rockwhyler.”

“Growing up I had two rottweilers, Juno and Athena,” said Jaboukie in a statement. “When my family walked them, we’d always get stopped by awestruck strangers asking, ‘Is that a ‘rockwhyler’?’ The pronunciation ‘rock-why-ler’ feels like home to me.”

When producing the song’s instrumental, Jaboukie intended to subvert the hypermasculinity within the hip-hop, punk rock, and dancehall sounds that influenced his music.

“My songwriting and song production processes usually occur in tandem,” he said of the song’s creation. “the distortion effect I used on the bass created a delay that sounded like a snarling dog, so I built everything else around that.”

In the song’s accompanying video, viewers can see distorted, kaleidoscopic visions of Jaboukie around on a basketball court, boarding a train, and running through a trail.

Check out the video for “Rockwhyler” above.

What is Tom Hanks’ most enduring character? Is it Forrest Gump? Woody from the Toy Story saga? The thieving Southern professor from the Coen brothers’ take on The Ladykillers? Or is it actually David S. Pumpkins, a one-joke (albeit a bizarre one-joke) bit from a 2016 episode of SNL? Hanks didn’t host this most recent episode of the show, but he did make a couple appearances — and since Halloween was near, one of them was that character.

The premise was the same as it was six years ago: A group of ordinary folks (including, this time, host Jack Harlow), wanting only to be scared silly, board a haunted elevator ride. They got some familiar faces: this time it’s Freddy Krueger, Pennywise, Annabelle, etc. They also get David S. Pumpkins, a mugging, ever-grinning gentleman in a Jack-O-Lantern-festooned jacket, dancing alongside two men in skeleton get-ups to an annoying techno song. It was so like Pumpkins’ maiden voyage that they even brought back alum Bobby Moynihan, as one of the dancing skeletons.

The one major change-up this time? The guide, played by Kenan Thompson, does a bit of explaining why the ride is so David S. Pumpkins-heavy: It’s because they blew most of their money on the rights to major characters, leaving little for others. So they double, triple down on David S. Pumpkins.

This isn’t the first time Hanks has exhumed the character. The following spring after his debut, Pumpkins made a brief cameo in a rap video parody.

You can watch the return of David S. Pumpkins in the video above.

What was the biggest news of last week? Was it the continued fall of Kanye West? Was it one of the hot mess midterm debates, such as the one between Dr. Oz and John Fetterman? What about Elon Musk finally buying Twitter (and instantly unleashing the racist hounds)? For their most recent Weekend Update, SNL covered it all, but started with the latter.

“This week, Elon Musk officially bought Twitter for $44 billion, beating out the next highest offer of zero dollars,” co-host Colin Jost cracked. “Musk sent an open letter to advertisers saying that he doesn’t want Twitter to become a ‘free-for-all hellscape,’ because that’s his plan for Mars.”

Michael Che then took on arguably the GOP’s most chaotic candidate. “Herschel Walker denied allegations from a second woman that he pushed her to have an abortion, saying, ‘I’m done with this foolishness’ — which is also what Walker says when he takes off the condom,” he joked.

Jost skewered another key race: the one in Pennsylvania between Oz and Fetterman. He joked about the latter’s underwhelming performance, where he tried to wrestle with his medical maladies. He also pointed out that Oz really had a pyrrhic victory, saying he did “slightly better than a recent stroke victim.”

Then there was Ye, whose pivot into a fount of anti-Semitic comments has led to him being dropped by untold companies, even losing a key wax figure. “Things are definitely getting way out of hand in this country,” Che said, “because when I heard a guy barged into a house with a hammer looking for Nancy Pelosi, my first thought was, ‘Oh no, was it Kanye?’”

You can watch the segment in the video above.