People found plenty of humor in her harsh words.

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When any service first launches, there are always weird issues, glitches, and mistakes. When Disney+ bowed back in November, one complaint was more forcefully made than others: The first several seasons of The Simpsons were not available in their original aspect ratio. Disney+ top brass were quick to say the problem would be fixed, but they weren’t slow to actually fix it. Now, as per Variety, they’ve released a date when the switch will take place: May 28, i.e., next week.

The casual plebeian may not think aspect ratios are too wonky to care about; after how many households still have motion smoothing turned on? But complaints about The Simpsons being shown in the wrong shape were about more than mere purity. For its first 19 seasons, and part of 20 — up until 2009 —were designed for old-timey square-shaped televisions. The versions on Disney+ cropped them to fit modern widescreen sets. And by doing so, the censors wound up messing up or even completely eliminating untold visual jokes.

So huzzah! In a week as of this writing, you’ll be able to actually see the “Old Man Yells at Cloud” headline in the Season 13 episode “The Old Man and the Key.” Meanwhile, the long-running show just concluded its 31st season, with no end in sight.

(Via Variety)

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After nearly a full day of being called a “Karen” online by commenters who took issue with her open letter to the music industry, Lana Del Rey responded, claiming her statement had “nothing to do with race” despite mostly naming Black and Latina women (and Ariana Grande).

In a comment on her original post, wherein she erroneously compared the critical and commercial reaction to her music to that of her peers’ material, she defied the characterization of her letter as “racist,” writing, “This is sad to make it about a WOC (women of color) issue when I’m talking about my favorite singers. I could have literally said anyone but I picked my favorite f*cking people.”

She pointedly noted her issue with a climate of political correctness, without saying as many words, griping, “This is the problem with society today, not everything is about whatever you want it to be. It’s exactly the point of my post — there are certain women that culture doesn’t want to have a voice. It may not have to do with race — I don’t know what it has to do with. I don’t care anymore but don’t ever ever ever bro call me racist that is bullsh*t.”

Lana left a “final note” as well, punctuating her comments with one more that attempted to clarify her meaning: “When I said people who look like me — I meant the people who don’t look strong or necessarily smart or like they’re in control, etc. It’s about advocating for a more delicate personality, not white women — thanks for the Karen comments tho. V helpful.”

Unfortunately for Lana, in her attempt to defend herself, she may have proved the critics correct. I don’t think anyone disputed or misconstrued her point. The problem is that her point was made at the expense of mostly women of color — particularly Black ones — and against a mountain of evidence to the contrary. As she says, she could have named any number of wilting, “delicate” personalities and they have still experienced just as much — if not more — criticism of her. But by naming those women specifically, she compared their struggles to hers, erasing those struggles, minimizing their experiences, and reducing their music to a narrow range of emotions and topics while inflating her own.

And not for nothing, at its most literal reading, her lament that “Doja Cat, Ariana, Camila, Cardi B, Kehlani and Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé have had number ones with songs about being sexy, wearing no clothes, f*cking, cheating, etc.” is flat-out wrong no matter how you dice it. Removing Kehlani from the equation, as she’s never had a No. 1 on the Billboard albums or Hot 100 charts, even the songs that have gone No. 1 from the others aren’t about being sexy or sex. The most recent entry, “Stuck With U,” is about the doldrums of an established relationship, while its immediate predecessor “Say So” is about missing out on a mutual attraction because the guy is too shy to approach. Beyonce’s last solo No. 1 was specifically about demanding no less than a ring to prove fidelity, and “Bodak Yellow” made more of Cardi retiring her clear heels to the Starlets rafters than “being sexy.” That doesn’t lend itself too well to her point that she loves their music.

Lana’s complaints stem from her perceived poor treatment at the hands of the music journalism establishment, without acknowledging that all of her peers have endured the same — many while suffering through circumstances Lana herself would never be forced to experience. For instance, she wouldn’t be subjected to the double standards of colorism. We know she doesn’t mean she deserves better for being white. But by failing to recognize her privilege and holding onto years-old imagined slights — especially just months after releasing a universally-acclaimed project — she truly is acting like a archetypical, entitled white lady and earning every “Karen” tweet that comes her way.

Earlier in the week, the Tom Hanks passion project Greyhound made the headline-grabbing jump from a Father’s Day theatrical release to premiering on Apple TV+ at a later date. While movies shifting to a streaming release is starting to become the norm in these pandemic days, Greyhound‘s acquisition is the first major step by Apple into taking theatrical films off the hands of a movie studio (in this case, Sony).

Normally, this is a Netflix strategy but according to CNBC, Apple has been showing up to talks with money to spend. It was enough to convince Hanks — who “himself had to approve before Sony and Apple made the deal” — to agree to forego the theater, for the first time, with a movie that he personally wrote and developed. Here’s why such an unprecedented move occurred:

So why did Sony decide to sell this film instead of simply delaying its release, as many studios have done with other films featuring big stars? People close to the matter say that when coronavirus shutdowns forced the cancellation of its scheduled release on Father’s Day weekend, June 19, Sony became concerned that the film wouldn’t be able to find a slot among the superhero films and franchises that had been delayed from the summer. A source close to the situation tells me that the studio shopped the film to Netflix and Apple, but Apple was willing to pay more.

Interestingly, the conditions that led to Greyhound‘s sale to Apple may have played a role in HBO Max’s surprise decision to “Release the Snyder Cut.” With numerous productions delayed by the pandemic, streaming services are looking a possible content gap in the days ahead, and they’re not afraid to spend their way through it. Whether that’s snatching up films that are collecting dust after having their released dates scuttled, or giving Zack Snyder $20 million to re-edit an old movie, these services are ready to pony up to keep audiences watching.

(Via CNBC)

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Christopher Nolan fans have been eagerly anticipating the next trailer for his mind-bending thriller Tenet, but it’s a safe bet that none of them anticipated it would make its debut in Fortnite.

In a very surprising announcement on the hit video game’s Twitter page, Fortnite dropped the bombshell that the eagerly anticipated trailer will debut inside the new Party Royale mode starting at 8 PM EST and repeating every hour. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the online shooter, Party Royale is a recently added feature that essentially allows players a safe area to just hang out and goof around with friends. The area has already been used to host concerts from Deadmau5 and Steve Aoki, and now the giant theater screen will be used to debut a trailer for a major motion picture for the very first time. As for how Nolan feels about his prestige film being promoted in a video game… that will surely be a hot discussion for cinema buffs.

You can see the official Fortnite announcement below:

Compounding the unusual venue for the new Tenet trailer is the fact that the movie’s release date is in flux right now. It’s currently set for a July 21 release date, but with Los Angeles still under lockdown for the next three months and most theater chains being shuttered across the country, there are significant doubts that Nolan’s latest will debut this summer. According to Deadline, there are tentative plans to shift Tenet to Wonder Woman 84‘s August release date, but most industry insiders view that as an extremely optimistic outcome. If theaters do manage to open that soon, they would only be able to seat half of their capacity, at best, and that’s if moviegoers are willing to risk potential exposure to the still ongoing pandemic.

In short, the chances of bringing in the much-needed box-office haul for a big-budget Nolan film look pretty unlikely for not just this summer, but the rest of 2020. This trailer debuting in Fortnite, though… that is definitely happening. It’s a strange year.

(Via Fortnite)

In a staff meeting that was live-streamed from his personal Facebook page, Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would continue to allow many of its employees to work from home permanently, even as the country begins opening up. According to The New York Times, Facebook’s 45,000 employees have been working at home since March and the temporary change has caused the company to reevaluate the idea that employees actually need to work in a shared office in a company that is almost wholly digitally-based. Zuckerberg indicated that within a decade, he expects as many as half of the company’s employees will work from home.

To implement the change, Facebook will start by allowing current employees to apply for permission to work from home, a decision that will be determined by positive work performance, and allow new hires who are senior engineers to work remotely.

The concept of working from home is really catching on in Silicon Valley, it seems (lower costs probably being the reason). The New York Times reports that a week prior to Zuckerberg’s announcement, Jack Dorsey, who leads both Twitter and Square, gave the go-ahead for employees to work from home indefinitely, and Google is allowing their employees to continue working from home until the end of this year.

Kid Cudi has teamed up with Virgil Abloh for a special merch drop that celebrates the release of Mr. Solo Dolo’s first single since 2016, “Leader of the Delinquents,” and features a sketch of Cudi drawn by Abloh himself across a single 7″ vinyl, a 12″ picture disk, a cassette tape, or a limited edition t-shirt. Or you know, all four if you’re a big Cudi fan. Dubbed the “Pulling Strings” t-shirt by the pair, Abloh’s sketch features Kid Cudi operating the strings of a marionette version of himself grabbing his crotch and flipping the bird, a reference to a pose Cudi struck while dodging an invasive TMZ interview back in 2012, according to Hypebeast.

Why or how Abloh thought to choose an 8-year-old incident to immortalize on Cudi’s first comeback single since 2016’s Passion, Pain, and Demon Slayin’ we’ll never know, but hey, that’s what makes him Virgil! On the back of the t-shirt, the single’s track is written in a stylized font that removes the vertical lines from every “E,” which kind of satisfies Abloh’s own 3% design philosophy.

While four years is a long time to take away from music, Kid Cudi hasn’t exactly been chilling all this time. 2018 saw Cudi appear as one half of the release of the underrated Kids See Ghosts album with Kanye West, and he’s spent a considerable amount time popping up on the big and small screen. Still, it’s nice to hear him shine on a solo project once again.

Head over to Kid Cudi’s site to shop the Pulling Strings t-shirt and other Leader of the Delinquents merch now.

A pod of dolphins in Queensland, Australia have been bringing gifts from the depths of the sea, presumably to encourage their human friends to return to the shore.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the pod interacted with humans every day at Barnacles Cafe & Dolphin Feeding at Tin Can Bay, north of the Sunshine Coast. The cafe and nature center has a feeding program where people interact with the wild pod every morning.

But the humans are nowhere to be found since the pandemic shut down the cafe.

“The pod has been bringing us regular gifts, showing us how much they’re missing the public interaction and attention,” the safe posted on Facebook. “They are definitely missing you all.”

via via Barnacles Cafe & Dolphin Feeding at Tin Can Bay / Facebook

via Barnacles Cafe & Dolphin Feeding at Tin Can Bay / Facebook

The dolphins aren’t just presenting any old shell. The “gifts” are all colorful, ornate items from the ocean floor, sea sponges, barnacle-encrusted bottles and pieces of coral.

A Barnacles volunteer told a reporter from ABC that the dolphins have brought gist before but not nearly as often as they are during lockdown.

“Nothing surprises me with dolphins and their behavior anymore,” Barry McGovern, an expert in dolphin behavior, told ABC. “They do everything — they use tools, they have culture, they have something similar to names in signature whistles,” he continued.

Although he isn’t completely sure the dolphins are bringing up treasures because they miss people. “In all likelihood, they probably don’t miss humans per se,” he said. “They probably miss a free meal and the routine.”

via via Barnacles Cafe & Dolphin Feeding at Tin Can Bay / Facebook

“They often play with bits of weed and coral and all sorts of things and just leave it on their rostrum (nose),” he said. “They’re used to getting fed now, so they’re used to humans coming in.”

There are nine dolphins in the humpback pod that visits Barnacles, Patch, Ella, Squirt, Harmony, Aussie, Valentine, Chompy, White Fin and Mystique, the alpha male. They usually stop by the shoreline near the cafe at around 8 a.m. for a bite of fish and then swim out to see the sea for the day.

This isn’t the first time Australian dolphins have engaged in a bit of inter-species gift-giving either. A 2012 report from the journal Anthrozoös found that dolphins sometimes hand over over gifts to wading humans in Tangalooma.

The researchers called it “an established but infrequent part of the culture of the provisioned dolphins.” The dolphins were observed handing over dead eels, tuna, squid and an octopus on two frozen occasions.

The dolphins frequently received food from beachgoers, so the gifts could be seen as a form of reciprocity for the food. Researchers also speculate that the dolphins may be sharing their bounty with humans because they are concerned about their ability to hunt.

Regardless of the dolphins’ reasoning, the biggest gift may be that they consider us similar to themselves, which is truly beautiful.