Category: News

Before the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards kicked off on Sunday (August 28), Variety‘s Marc Malkin was on the red carpet for interviews. As he chatted with some of the most beloved stars at this year’s VMAs, he made it a point to ask about Britney Spears and her new comeback song with Elton John, “Hold Me Closer,” getting a mixed bag of answers.

When Malkin mentioned Spears to recent Uproxx cover star Chlöe, she lit up and said, “I’m so proud of her. I love Britney and I’m so happy to see that she can be herself on her own terms.” He then asked what song he’d like to duet on with Spears and she went with “Toxic.” Malkin tried to coax Chlöe into singing a bit of the song but she playfully declined.

He also asked Latto the duet question and she answered, “We gotta do something from scratch, we gotta do something from scratch.” She added, “Brit: call me, girl. It’s nothing. I do think, some new Britney… the world needs some new Britney.”

Answering the same question, J Balvin chose “Slave 4 U” and even sang a brief snippet of it.

Måneskin and TikTok star Chris Olsen also chatted about Spears, so check out those clips below.

Consumers of American pop culture are used to see Jimmy Fallon in a particular way: Behind the Tonight Show desk, wearing a suit, and overall well put together. He sports some facial hair here and there, but for the most part, he’s consistently clean-shaven. On Sunday (August 28), though, Fallon was at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards looking decidedly different than he usually does and onlookers felt some sort of way about it.

The Tonight Show host was on hand at the VMAs to present Harry Styles the Album Of The Year award for Harry’s House, looking not as buttoned-up as always. Rather, he sported a loose white shirt and a scruffy beard. That aroused some feelings and Fallon took notice. On Instagram yesterday (August 29), Fallon shared a photo of himself from the show and screenshot of a Cosmopolitan article titled “Jimmy Fallon’s Presence At The 2022 VMAs Is Causing Thirst And Confusion On Twitter,” with the subhed, “Maybe it’s the beard?.” Fallon captioned the post, “Out here causing ‘thirst’ and ‘confusion’. That was fun, @mtv!! #vmas #maybeitsthebeard.”

Cosmopolitan had it right with their framing, as a look at Twitter reveals VMAs viewers who were surprised at the effect Fallon’s look was having on them. Check out some reactions, including comparisons to Styles, below.

(SPOILERS for this week’s Power Book III: Raising Kanan will be found below.)

To be quite honest, things are not going according to plan in this season’s third episode of Power Book III: Raising Kanan. We began the season with the hope that Detective Howard had memory loss from the night Kanan shot him, but in episode two, we learn that he remembers things very clearly. Famous’ rap career is far from successful while Marvin is a football field or three away from being dad of the year. With everyone being a bit off their game, Raq’s frustration grows as she plans to expand the drug business into New Jersey.

In episode three of the second season of Power Book III: Raising Kanan the family ties are withering more than we’ve seen so far in the series. Kanan’s mistrust of Raq grows as she fails to inform him of Scrappy’s death, which has been framed as a suicide despite it being otherwise. Detective Howard informs Kanan that he is his father which only increases Kanan’s suspicions about Raq’s hidden agendas. Marvin is still at odds with Jukebox and Raq is growing more and more frustrated with Lou-Lou as he puts more and more time into his new record label. With all of that in mind, we can only wonder where things go from here.

Here are some of the biggest questions we had after the third episode of season two:

For Raq, The Sky Is The Limit. But Is It Really?

Raq took over the family business after Marvin, the previous leader, landed in jail. Raq successfully grew the business to a top level in Queens. Raq knocked off her enemies and competitors and established a monopoly in her territory. Raq is now expanding things to New Jersey due to her past success. There’s no denying everything that Raq has done, but with her eyes set on expansion and doing it big, attacks against her throne are going to come more often and at a bigger scale. She may be able to overcome many of them, but there will be a time when she doesn’t. We saw the latter with Unique, and it forced him to bow out peacefully. Raq thinks the sky is the limit, but we also know that every throne is for the taking. With her head above the clouds, she may miss what’s coming for her beneath them.

What Will Be The Best Thing That Marvin Gets Out Of Anger Management Class?

Marvin wanted no parts of his anger management class five minutes into the first session. Unfortunately for him, his full attention and participation in the class are required from him thanks to his strict instructor Renée. While he was resistant to participate in the last episode, Marvin gives in this week and joins in on the class discussion which leads to him learning about his openly aggressive approach to the world and how to correct it. Two key moments result from this class. First, Marvin and Renée seem to have a more-than-friendly moment at the end of class and we’ll have to wait until the next episodes to see what comes out of that. Second, Marvin uses the tips he learned in class to solve an issue without aggression, which makes him appreciative of the lesson and how it helped him save time and energy. It took a couple of weeks, but Marvin sees the beauty of the anger management class. We’ll just have to see which beauty he focuses on more.

Can Lou-Lou Find A Balance Or Will Have To Pick A Side?

To put it simply and point blankly, Raq hates Lou-Lou’s record label business. Not because she dislikes music or thinks it’s not profitable, but because it distracts from his time and work with the drug business. Lou-Lou isn’t as active as he used to be, and if there’s anyone who’s noticed it, it’s Raq. While she’s mostly able to work around his increased absence thanks to help from Marvin, her patience is growing thin with Lou-Lou. It gets worse when Unique robs Raq’s stash house and Lou-Lou is nowhere to be found despite her repeated attempts to get in contact with him. Raq confronts Lou-Lou at his studio about the situation, forcing him to switch focus and help Raq recover the money. It certainly won’t be the last time that Lou-Lou has to switch focus from his record label. This leaves him with a new task of finding a balance between his two lives or simply picking a side, and with Raq and Crown looking to push him back to the streets, the choice may not be his.

Would Raq Know When Her Time Is Up?

During the intense standoff between Unique and Raq, who was backed by Lou-Lou and Marvin, I wondered how things would go if Raq was on the other side. When Unique realized that all was lost for him, he made one last move that would earlier something priceless: freedom. The streets of Queens may not be his anymore, but at least he gets to live with the guarantee that his family can too. Raq made that promise to him in the final scenes of episode three. While Unique eventually surrendered his weapon, I can’t help but think that Raq would’ve gone down swinging or shooting if the roles are reversed. It goes back to the first question above, but Unique’s awareness to know when his time was up saved his life. If Raq ever encounters a situation like this where she’s on the short end of the stick, it will be interesting to see how it’ll ends.

When Does All Of This Protection Backfire?

Kanan is caught in the middle of two people trying their best to protect him from the world’s dangers. Raq does her best to protect him as her only son, and one of the ways she thinks she is protecting him is by keeping the fact that Detective Howard is his true father away from him. After begging Raq to tell Kanan the truth, Detective Howard decides to do it himself, and he does so in episode three. This is after Kanan attempts to kill him per Raq’s orders. He even goes on to promise that he won’t tell anyone that Kanan was the one who shot him. Kanan already doesn’t trust Howard, mostly due to the fact that he’s a cop, but his mistrust of Raq is growing too for multiple reasons. Both Raq and Howard are trying to protect Kanan, but with different goals in mind, it could all backfire. We’ll just have to wait for the next episodes to learn how it plays out.

New episodes of STARZ’s ‘Power Book III: Raising Kanan’ are available to watch on Sundays at 12:00am EST.

Earlier this year, Grammy Award-winning producer Flying Lotus, whose real name is Steven Ellison, signed a multi-picture deal via his company Brainfeeder Films with French company Logical Pictures and XYZ Films to direct and produce a slew of upcoming movies. One of them is Ash, about which he said, “I’ve a strong desire to innovate in the sci-fi space and I really want to show the world something they’ve never seen before.”

More information about Ash has finally arrived today. The cast will include Tessa Thompson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, with Thompson taking on the role of a woman who wakes up on a distant planet and finds the crew of her space station murdered. She meets a man, played by Gordon-Levitt, and is unsure whether or not she should trust him and let him save her. While they investigate the murders, he wonders if she is innocent. Ellison is set to start shooting the film next year in New Zealand.

About the multi-picture deal, Logical Pictures Group President Frédéric Fiore expressed his enthusiasm and appreciation for Ellison and his future in the film industry, saying in March, “FlyLo is a highly talented and respected musician with such a unique creative universe.”

John Oliver has spent the summer doing what we’re all doing: worrying. When he’s not meticulously tackling issues both grandiose and seemingly mundane, all while slipping in asides about everything from Dr. Oz’s flailing congressional campaign to Dakota Johnson’s (untrue) love of limes. But now it’s the end of summer, and so he did what everyone expected: He married a cabbage.

It all started with a segment on DALL-E, the AI meme service that allows users to type in oddly specific image requests and get back some shockingly accurate and creative responses. It’s created some shockingly out-there pictures. But perhaps stranger than the roast beef superhero DALL-E is this: People have requested more than 500 ones involving the Last Week Tonight host.

Indeed, there have been a series that form what Oliver dubs “The Cabbage Saga,” a veritable series with a clean narrative arc about him coming to love a cabbage — to the point that he wants to marry it. Alas, while other DALL-E images are weirdly accurate, even when the users’ request is pure bananas, the one for Oliver actually tying the knot with the green veggie was, shall we say, lacking.

So Oliver decided to stage a wedding himself, on air, for his HBO show. He even got Steve Buscemi to officiate. Schools have already started opening back up. The summer heat is cooling. If you’ve been wearing shorts since June or May, you may need to start wearing pants again. So go out with a bang by watching the guy who had a Connecticut sewage plant named after him marry food, which you can do in the video above.

Much of the attention on the New York Knicks has focused on the reported pursuit of Donovan Mitchell in recent days, with the poorly kept secret that New York is extremely interested in adding the Utah Jazz guard to the fold via trade. However, the Knicks also entered the waning weeks of the offseason with another piece of intriguing business to tend to in the form of a potential contract extension for former No. 3 overall pick R.J. Barrett.

On Monday evening, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Barrett and the Knicks are coming together on a nine-figure extension that will keep the former Duke standout in New York and, in the process, potentially impact the talks between the Knicks and Jazz about Mitchell.

Wojnarowski immediately noted the possible ramifications on a Mitchell deal, though it is noteworthy that talks would only be forced to change if Barrett was previously in the mix. As for the contract itself, it will be interesting to see what the full details are, but Barrett is reportedly set to earn at least $100 million over four years with the potential to reach a $30 million average annual value.

Barrett, who recently turned 22 years old, averaged 20 points and 5.8 rebounds per game in his third season, though he took a step back in his efficiency from his second campaign with the Knicks. He did improve defensively, however, and Barrett’s new pact could become a bargain if his play continues to improve as the NBA’s salary cap rises.

As for the Knicks and the ongoing pursuit of Mitchell, New York could center an offer around a stockpile of draft picks and young players. With that said, talks could be hitting a real snag based on Wojnarowski’s reporting of an imposed deadline on Monday that partially led to the agreement with Barrett.

Barrett’s new deal keeps him with the Knicks, and he joins Zion Williamson and Ja Morant as fellow top draft picks from the 2019 class that will reportedly secure massive rookie-scale extensions. The next steps will be interesting on all sides, but New York will certainly hope that Barrett continues an upward trajectory as a centerpiece of the franchise.

Yesterday, a 22-minute recording was shared that consisted of Britney Spears further breaking down the experience of her conservatorship. It has since been taken down, but the information she divulged remains public, such as her discussion about what gave her hope during such an awful experience.

“I started to get a spark back,” she said on the recording, discussing the making of her last album, 2016’s Glory. “I think producing and making music… I got the fire back in my eyes for some reason,” she said. She continued, “It was really tricky because I had to just play this role that everything was OK all the time and I had to go along with it because I knew they could hurt me.”

Sadly, that was temporary. Things fell apart when she began her rehearsing for her Las Vegas residency Domination in 2019, when she got sent to a facility. “I was supposed to say on my Instagram the reason why was because my dad is sick and I need treatment,” she said. “I didn’t want to ever go there, I remember my dad calling me on the phone and I was crying, and I was like, ‘Why are you guys doing this?’”

The typical kid’s experience in school is a lot different today than it was 30 to 40 years ago. It’s hard to say whether things are better or worse, but there’s been a sea change in how children are raised.

One negative development is that teachers tend to think parents are more likely to side with their kids over faculty in disputes than they were decades ago. On the positive side, corporal punishment is on the decrease, so students are much less likely to be physically punished for breaking the rules.

A Reddit user with the username u/theSandwichSister asked the ‘80s and ‘90s kids on the forum, “What’s something a school teacher did to you that would not fly today?” A lot of the responses were about the type of physical punishment and humiliation that used to happen in schools that would never happen these days.

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There were also a lot of posts about teachers who smoked around their students. Can you imagine a kindergarten teacher lighting up in front of their students these days? They’d be fired in a flash.

Overall, the responses show that schools are a lot more concerned with the mental and emotional health of their students these days, which is a wonderful improvement. Schools also seem to be much more friendly environments to students who are people of color, LGBTQ or have disabilities.

Here are 17 of the best responses to the question, “What’s something a school teacher did to you that would not fly today?”

1. 

​”Not a teacher, but school one. If you read enough books during the year in elementary school you got to have a sleepover in the library. Like we brought sleeping bags and slept on the floor. In the morning they had griddles out and we made pancakes. I know, total nerds, but it was my favorite elementary school memory.” — 7askingforafriend

2. 

“My elementary school principal would pull loose teeth. You could go to his office, have him pull your loose tooth and he would give you a lollipop.” — snowfuckerforreal

3. 

“I told my biology teacher that I wasn’t feeling too well, he said that I didn’t look sick, and as punishment made me stand in the corner until I fainted.” — AustrianReaper

4. 

“In high school, we would sometimes play knee soccer which was in our wrestling room (wall to wall wrestling mats) and was really just handball but on our knees. The PE teacher (football coach) let us play rough since it was an all male class and we were on our knees and couldn’t do too much damage. During the game, two of the students were grappling for the ball and as these things go, one of them accidentally knocked the other a little too aggressively. The kid that got hit (an known asshole of the school) got pissed and stood up and kicked the other kid.

The PE teacher (225lb jacked military hair cut) stormed over and shoved the kid who flew about 10 feet before crashing to the ground. The kid gets up ready to fight whoever shoved him and the teacher had closed the gap and started screaming at him. Then the teacher lectured the entire class about sportsmanship and honor. The teacher never got in any trouble.” — hangingonwith2fingers

5. 

“In 5th grade, I was called to the office at my public school. I was a goody two-shoes so I had no idea why I was called, so I started tearing up thinking something bad must’ve happened to my family. Eventually, I was ushered into a room as my two best friends left. The principal and 2 other staff members then sat me down and showed me a piece of paper. It was a silly poem I wrote one of my friends about a good witch who granted wishes by mixing together some mundane ingredients. Apparently, their mother found the poem and complained to the school. Their response was to interview my friends about MY RELIGION.” — ktbunny

6. 

“6th grade teacher Ms. Sullivan would take 3 kids every Friday to McDonald’s for lunch. She was cool as hell. Smoked during the drive and everything.” — SigP365SAS

7. 

“My 3rd grade teacher had the whole class camp in her backyard after the last day of school. She took us to see the original TMNT movie in the theater, then we stayed up late telling ghost stories. One of my absolute fondest memories.” — Cambot1138

8. 

“Yeah, there are a lot of negative things in this thread, which makes sense, but there are some ‘cool teacher’ things that we lost too. I got a ride home from school once from a male teacher in middle school (I’m female) when it was pouring rain and my mom wouldn’t come get me, but I bet that’s not allowed these days.” — rabidstoat

9. 

“English teacher in high school used to cuss kids out for being noisy in class and if that didn’t work, he’d throw the blackboard eraser at us. I wasn’t on the receiving end of the eraser. That chalk would leave marks on kid’s backs for the rest of the day so everyone knew who pissed off Mr Charvet.” — Roscoe_Cracks_Corn

10. 

​“7th-grade science class, the teacher walked around with a beaker full of mercury and told us to stick a finger in it to feel how dense it was. Then he gave us each our own penny-size drop of mercury to play with at our desks, so we could see how it moved. I’m sure we were poisoned that day. Nowadays if a thermometer breaks they clear the school.” — weirdkid71

11. 

“Not something done to me per se, but my 3rd grade teacher had a little office with a door inside our classroom, and she would smoke cigarettes in there while we were at lunch/recess.” — HutSutRawlson

12. 

“Cheese Day in the Midwest. It was in first grade. For an entire day, all you ate was cheese. Cheese puffs, curls, sticks, slices, balls, and Doritos. Drank orange Hi-C as well. For 10+ years, smelling that fake cheese made me gag. After her wedding, and the birth of her son, my sister says Cheese Day the best day of her life. Wasn’t Wisconsin either.” — 2_Spicy_2_Impeach

13.

“They told us Pluto was a planet.” — Representative-Fig96

14. 

“Best math teacher ever made us say numerator/denominator in Schwarzenegger voices as we were learning fractions.” — kittensington

15. 

“High School, we were on campus, drove a van to the locker rooms because I was with The QB, Linebacker and a couple of linemen who needed to get crap from their lockers. We were drinking beer in the van, it was 1:30, the football coach sees us, stops the van, looks inside and sees the beer, and shook his head and told us to be careful and get off campus. I don’t think that would fly today.” — kentro2002

16. 

“A lot of people are posting bad stuff, so let me share a good one. In 9th grade, in 1984, I had a class analyzing lyrics in pop music. Students brought in records by Led Zep and John Cougar and we’d discuss what they meant. Seriously a life-changing class. It makes me sad that younger students in America are so caught up in the rat race that they never had experiences like that.” — Adventuresphere

17. 

“I had an awesome teacher who would send one of us to the shop (just a minute’s walk away) with enough money to get ice creams for everybody whenever it was hot and she didn’t feel like teaching.” — wanderingsteph

Kids are funny little humans, aren’t they?

Every kid has their own quirks, especially when it comes to things they get attached to. While most children have favorite toys, dolls, blankets and so on, some kids glom onto something unexpected—or even outright odd—as their go-to security object.

Case in point: “Creepy Chloe,” the terrifying Halloween doll.

Britanny Beard, mom to 3-year-old Briar, shared how her daughter had chosen a doll with cracked skin and black eyes from the Spirit Halloween store in a post on Facebook.

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“This is what it looks like when you take your 3-year-old to the Spirit Halloween store and she absolutely insists on buying the creepiest baby doll you’ve ever set eyes on,” Beard wrote.

“She said, ‘But I’m its mommy and it needs me!’ Briar named the doll Chloe and I then immediately nicknamed her Creepy Chloe. I’m pretty sure Creepy Chloe is stealing my soul when I sleep,” she added.

Beard shared that their family went to the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World and Briar insisted on bringing Chloe—fully decked out in a Disney princess dress.

“Because creepy babies need Disney magic too I guess?” Beard wrote. Briar has a Haunted Mansion cast member dress, so Beard had her wear it to go with the Creepy Chloe “theme.”

Beard shared three delightful encounters they had at Disney that day due to Creepy Chloe.

One:

“While eating breakfast at the Grand Floridian cafe, they brought out the cast member pastry chef to meet Briar and Creepy Chloe because apparently she loves all things spooky. She said she adored that Briar loved the doll and at the end of the meal, she surprised Briar with an amazing spooky cupcake and a mini handmade chocolate Haunted Mansion poster. It was actually really sweet!”​

Two:

“Then we walked over to Magic Kingdom where Briar had a photoshoot with Creepy Chloe. The photographer was eating it up and kept coming up with posing ideas for Chloe. I’m sure it was quite an unexpected change from her usual never-ending line of glittery Bippity Boppity Boutique princesses!”

Three:

“Then we of course ventured over to the Haunted Mansion. There was a 50-minute wait to get on the ride but when they saw Briar, they immediately whisked her away into the secret ‘Servants Quarters’ where we got to see the keys to all rooms and the bells that ring to call the servants up. Then they popped us right out into the stretching room. The cast members were waiting for us when the doors opened to present us with official Haunted Mansion Caretaker certificates and to walk us right onto the ride. It was so magical!”

Disney really does know how to lean into a child’s imagination and create truly magical experiences. (Did anyone else not know there was a whole Haunted Mansion backstage thing kids could do? Honorary Caretaker? Amazing.)

Some kids love all things scary and spooky, and they deserve just as much make-believe magic as the kids who love fairy tales and princess stories. What a wonderful way to encourage a child in their own unique choices.

“So all in all,” Beard concluded, “I guess the moral of the story is when your 3-year-old throws a fit over absolutely needing a super creepy Halloween doll… buy the doll. Creepy Chloe might be stealing my soul while I sleep, but we are making the best of our time left over here! “

Beard’s post has been shared more than 8,000 times as people share their admiration and/or fear of Briar’s unusual doll. Her adoration of Chloe really should be celebrated. Creepy babies need love too, after all.

The rise of misinformation on social media has been a monumental stress test for the world’s critical thinking skills. Misinformation has had a huge influence on elections, public health and the treatment of immigrants and refugees across the world.

Social media platforms have tried to combat false claims over the past few years by employing fact-checkers, but they haven’t been terribly effective because those who are most susceptible to misinformation don’t trust fact-checkers.

“The word fact-checking itself has become politicized,” Cambridge University professor Jon Roozenbeek said, according to the Associated Press. Further, studies show that when people have incorrect beliefs challenged by facts, it makes them cling to their false assumptions even harder.

These platforms have also attempted to remove posts containing misinformation that violates their terms of service, but this form of content moderation is often seen as insufficient and is often applied inconsistently.

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How do we combat dangerous misinformation online if removing false claims or debunking them hasn’t been effective enough? A new study published in the journal Science Advances by a team of university researchers and Jigsaw, a division of Google, has found a relatively simple solution to the problem they call “pre-bunking.”

Pre-bunking is an easy way of inoculating people against misinformation by teaching them some basic critical thinking skills. The strategy is based on inoculation theory, a communication theory that suggests one can build resistance to persuasion by exposing people to arguments against their beliefs beforehand.

The researchers learned that pre-bunking was effective after conducting a study on nearly 30,000 participants on YouTube.

“Across seven high-powered preregistered studies including a field experiment on YouTube, with a total of nearly 30,000 participants, we find that watching short inoculation videos improves people’s ability to identify manipulation techniques commonly used in online misinformation, both in a laboratory setting and in a real-world environment where exposure to misinformation is common,” the recently published findings note.

The researchers uploaded videos into YouTube ad slots that discussed different types of manipulative communication used to spread false information such as ad hominem attacks, false dichotomies, scapegoating and incoherence.

Here’s an example of a video about false dichotomies.

Researchers found that after people watched the short videos, they were significantly better at distinguishing false information than they were before. The study was so successful that Jigsaw is looking to create a video about scapegoating and running it in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. These countries are all combating a significant amount of false information about Ukrainian refugees.

There’s an old saying, “If you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. Teach that man to fish and he’ll eat forever.” Pre-bunking does something very similar. We can either play a game of whack-a-mole where social media platforms have to suss out misinformation on a minute-by-minute basis or we can improve the general public’s ability to distinguish misinformation and avoid it themselves.

Further, teaching people to make their own correct decisions about misinformation will be a lot more effective than pulling down content and employing fact-checks. These tactics only drive vulnerable, incredulous people toward misinformation.