Category: News

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.

“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.

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.

What’s this? Sir Elton John and Britney Spears have a new song that released August 26. Well, technically it’s not new. It’s more like a new version of an old song. Elton John’s classic, “Tiny Dancer,” has been remade as a pop style duet with the queen of pop herself, ending her six-year hiatus from music. The song is just the right vibe to end summer on a positive note. That’s not just my opinion either. The new version, called “Hold Me Closer,” has already topped the charts at number one in 35 countries.

As you likely remember, Spears had been under a conservatorship for 13 years. While in the conservatorship, she alleged abuse from her father and others around her, and eventually refused to perform or record any music. The pop star’s hiatus lasted six long years before coming to an unexpected end, which has Spears’ fans thrilled. While there have been hints and teases to her millions of followers, no one was prepared for the immaculate mashup that was just dropped.

The song marries the chorus of John’s 1972 hit “Tiny Dancer” to verses from “The One,” another song of John’s, but this time from 1992. Both Spears and John documented the momentous release on their social media platforms. With Spears tweeting, “Okie dokie … my first song in 6 years 🎶!!!! It’s pretty damn cool that I’m singing with one of the most classic men of our time … @eltonofficial 🚀 !!!! I’m kinda overwhelmed… it’s a big deal to me !!! I’m meditating more 🧘🏼♀️ and learning my space is valuable and precious !!!”

Spears goes on to say in the Twitter thread that she’s choosing happiness and learning to forgive herself and others. This comes after a public spat with her ex-husband, who shared videos of her allegedly scolding her children. The duet with John could be Spears testing the waters of a possible comeback and John is certainly happy to help.

John tweeted, “I’m thrilled with the response to #HoldMeCloser 🚀 I wanted to do a fun, happy summer track so was ecstatic when @britneyspears agreed to be a part of it! She truly is an icon, one of the all-time great pop stars & I love her dearly. I hope you all love it!” Later, he retweeted Spear’s reaction to finding out the song was #1 on the charts.

u201chttps://t.co/1vShOsFlDhu201d

— Britney Spears ud83cudf39ud83dude80 (@Britney Spears ud83cudf39ud83dude80)
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This is probably the most excited the public has seen Spears since the end of her conservatorship and quite honestly, I’m here for it. We have seen her star rise rapidly from a child star to a full-blown pop icon before it was nearly completely extinguished. Everyone loves a good comeback story, and we could be in the midst of witnessing Spears reclaim her crown.

Who knows what’s next for the mom of two but it’s safe to say she has legions of fans behind her and a new hit song dominating the charts. The world will be waiting and rooting for what could be the most fierce comeback yet.

In the lead-up to its premiere, there was much anxiety about the Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon. Could it ever live up to its predecessor? Will audiences glom onto characters as they did with Daenerys, Jon Snow, et al.? Will viewers even tune in? It’s too early to answer the first two questions, but there’s a definite answer for the third: Yes, and how. What’s more, it looks like the record-breaking, HBO Max-crashing premiere was no fluke.

As per Deadline, episode two of Dragon was even (slightly) stronger, wrangling in 10.2 million viewers across the streamer and linear platforms. That’s a 2% increase from the show’s maiden voyage. What’s more, that premiere’s numbers have only gotten higher in the subsequent week. It’s now eying 25 million viewers total, handily making it the most-watched original series in HBO history.

Oh, and another thing: Last week, Game of Thrones, the show that started it all, had become the second most watched show on HBO Max.

Even only two episodes into its 10-episode first season run, viewers are already obsessing over the political machinations of Daenerys Targaryen’s ancestors, and over a character called the “Crabfeeder,” who literally leaves his defeated foes to be eaten up by crabs. In any case, it seems people do not mind returning to Westeros.

(Via Deadline)

The Killers have been busy. They debuted their new song “Boy” at a festival set, then officially released it, and gave it a video. As of last week they’re on a big North American tour to celebrate songs from Pressure Machine and Imploding The Mirage, both of which were unveiled during the pandemic.

Recently the band invited opener The Smiths’ Johnny Marr onstage with them to cover one of his old band’s songs. On Saturday night in Los Angeles, they welcomed someone else onstage: Lindsey Buckingham, who played his guitar part from their song “Caution.” Buckingham stuck around for a rendition of his old Fleetwood Mac hit “Go Your Own Way.” This took place at the Banc Of California Stadium and it was a special performance to witness.

The performance was especially exciting following the spike in popularity for Fleetwood Mac in 2020 after their hit “Dreams” was revived on TikTok and hit the charts again, bringing Rumours to No. 7 on the Billboard 200 charts, which put it in the top 10 for the first time since 1978. The band were nothing short of pleased to hear about this at the time, writing on Twitter, “What a week! Thank you all.”

Watch Buckingham join The Killers for “Go Your Own Way” above, and watch him join for “Caution” below.

Rob Schneider owes the career he has to Saturday Night Live. He was on the show from 1988 through 1994, first as a writer, eventually as a cast member, breaking through primarily with one character: photocopier-loving office drone The Richmeister. His stint wasn’t always pretty, and in the decades since leaving he’s been openly critical of the show’s semi-recent politics, including Alec Baldwin’s Trump impersonation. But on a recent podcast appearance with, of all people, Glenn Beck, he went even further in criticizing his old home.

“I hate to crap on my own show,” Schneider told the former Fox News bloviator while talking about comedy shows he thinks “indoctrinate people,” presumably with left wing (or at least anti-Trump) ideology. In fact, he pinpointed the exact moment SNL lost it, at least for him: When Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. Even more specifically, it was the maiden sketch of the first episode after Trump’s win.

It featured Kate McKinnon, he recalled, “dressed as Hillary Clinton, and she started playing ‘Hallelujah,’” referring to the Leonard Cohen song. “I literally prayed, ‘please have a joke at the end. Don’t do this. Please don’t go down there.’ And there was no joke at the end, and I went, ‘It’s over. It’s over. It’s not gonna come back.’”

Mind you, there were lots of jokes in the following sketches. Dave Chappelle hosted! But Schneider felt something was gone forever, and not only with SNL. He felt it infected almost all late night comedy shows. “You can take the comedic indoctrination process happening with each of the late night hosts and you can exchange them with each other,” Schneider said. “That’s how you know they’re not interesting anymore.”

In one sense, he’s not wrong. Late night talk show hosts regularly drag Trump and his many cronies. At the same time, what does Schneider expect? Trump was and is such a polarizing figure that it was hard to make light of what he was doing, and he’s been so damaging that it inspired entertainers with big platforms to do something, anything to make things better. And yet his antics are often so absurd — including on the day this piece has been written — that he remains a comedy goldmine. Trump has probably been dragged on SNL more than any other president in the show’s lifetime, combined.

In any case, if Schneider’s sick of ditto-headed comics using their pulpit as a lectern, maybe he should hope Trump winds up in the slammer.

You can watch Schneider’s comments in the video below.

(Via Digg)

There remains some mystery around what life was like in the 1800s, especially for teens. Most people alive today were not around in the Victorian era when the technologies now deemed old-fashioned were a novelty. In this rediscovered 1970s clip from the BBC, two elderly women reminisce about what it was like being teenagers during a time when the horse and buggy was still the fastest way to get around.

While cars were just around the corner from being the common mode of transportation toward the end of the 19th century, it’s pretty wild to imagine what these women experienced. Frances “Effy” Jones explained how, at age 17, she was encouraged by her brother to check out this new machine in a storefront window. Turns out that machine was a typewriter and, after being trained on how to use it, Jones would sit in the store window typing while people outside gathered to watch. Before long, classes began popping up for women to learn how to use a typewriter, starting a new movement for women of that era.

The second woman, Berta Ruck, told the BBC that she would get into a bit of trouble at boarding school for drawing instead of completing school work. This talent took Ruck to art school in London where she rode buses around town, attempting to avoid mud getting on her long skirt. But the woman explained that it never worked and she would spend hours brushing the mud from her skirt before wearing it out again. I’m sure you’re thinking, buses? They weren’t the buses we would see nowadays. These were double-decker horse-pulled carriages.

I know, that’s hard to imagine. That’s why you should check out the video below:

It’s happening: Arctic Monkeys, after much teasing, are finally back with a new song. Called “There’d Better Be A Mirrorball,” it’s a scintillating, seductive ballad, very much in the realm of their last album, 2018’s hypnotizing Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.

The grainy, lo-fi music video adds a layer of nostalgia to the already sentimental song, and all of the clips of frontman/heartthrob Alex Turner only heighten the sense of sensuality as he paints cinematic scenes with dreamy lines like, “Do you want to walk me to the car? / I’m sure to have a heavy heart.”

“There’d Better Be A Mirrorball” is the opener on their next album, The Car, which was announced just a few days ago and arrives in October. They recently debuted the following track, “I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am,” during a performance at Switzerland’s Zurich Openair festival. When speaking about the making of the album, they told Big Issue, “There’s a bunch of Led Zeppelin and Stones records where they were in this house in the country, and then they went and sorted it all out and overdubbed it elsewhere. We went there in the summer, took all the equipment, got the raw material and then took it on elsewhere.”

Watch the video for “There’d Better Be A Mirrorball” above.

The Car is out 10/21 via Domino. Pre-order it here.

John Fetterman has spent so much of his Senate campaign trolling his opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, and it’s not hard to see why: Dr. Oz is bad at social media and the sitting lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania is not. (His game is so strong, Hannity has even threatened to sue him.) But Fetterman has more to offer his state’s voters: He has lots of stances and promises that could make his constituents lives easier and better. And of them is not a popular take among those in the GOP.

“It’s long past time that we finally decriminalize marijuana,” Fetterman said on Monday in a statement. “The president needs to use his executive authority to begin descheduling marijuana, I would love to see him do this prior to his visit to Pittsburgh. This is just common sense and Pennslyvanians overwhelmingly support decriminalizing marijuana.”

Fetterman doubled down on his Twitter account — and, of course, took time to slam Oz. “I don’t want to hear any bulls*it coming out of Dr. Oz’s campaign trying to conflate decriminalizing marijuana with seriously harmful crime,” he tweeted. “Are we supposed to believe that neither he nor any members of his staff have ever used marijuana???”

He also defended his stance on crime, about which Oz has claimed he’s soft. “As mayor of Braddock, I made it my mission to combat serious crime,” he wrote. “I know firsthand what real crime looks like. Marjiuana does not fit the bill. It’s time to end the hypocrisy on this issue once and for all.”

While he was still a TV quack, Oz used to sing the glories of marijuana, calling it “one of the most underused tools in America,” and advising that the country “completely change our policy on marijuana.” That all changed when he moved to Pennsylvania in an attempt to run for its vacating Senate seat. Since then, he’s slammed Fetterman for his position on marijuana and for hanging a pot leaf flag outside his office.

Later in the day, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about Fetterman’s comments but said that Biden still only “supports leaving decisions regarding legalization for recreational use up to the states.”

In the meantime, at least Fetterman would never stoop so low as to make light of his recent stroke, as Oz did.

(Via Yahoo! News)

Tons of beloved acts are coming back this year. Aside from the large number of emo reunions that have been happening, Le Tigre gave their first performance in 17 years at This Ain’t No Picnic in California on Saturday, August 27. The festival took place at Pasadena’s Brookside At The Rose Bowl and included artists like LCD Soundsystem, The Strokes, Phoebe Bridgers, and more.

Le Tigre’s set was as invigorating as one would expect from the punk band. It included all of their classic tracks, such as “Phanta” and “TKO.” But of course they closed with their timeless hit “Deceptacon,” which has not lost any of its momentum since being released in 1999 on their album Hot Topic.

In a recent interview with Spin, the band discussed their decision to reunite for this performance. “We were asked to reunite for this festival in 2020, and we felt that it was really important for us to reunite prior to the 2020 election,” JD Samson told the magazine. “We felt the relevance of our music would really stir up something important within our community. And obviously that was canceled because of COVID. We just continued to want to present the material again.”

Watch the first half of their set above and the second half below.