Category: Trending

Social media has made it very easy to alter your appearance using filters. They may come in handy when you need to record a video but look a bit under the weather—just turn on a soft glow or a makeup filter, and boom, you’re camera-ready in less than two seconds. But there has been a lot of talk around the use of filters and teen girls’ self-esteem and unrealistic expectations seemingly placed on women.

One woman has taken it upon herself to strip away the filters to prove that, while she is beautiful, her face doesn’t actually look the way it does with the filter on. The most interesting thing about these filters is that they’re so good, you can’t tell they’re filters. Gone are the days of filters that made everyone look like a Glamour Shot from the 90s. These filters move with you and even have pores so no one can tell it isn’t actually your face.

Well, it is your face—kinda.

Mimi Webb starts off the 20-second clip using the infamous Bold Glamour filter. It’s the filter that has people questioning their perception of their own faces because the contrast is so jarring. But Webb doesn’t stop with one filter. She puts on another and makes sure she emphasizes her use of a ring light. After turning the ring light off and taking all the filters off as the video is ending, the woman removes her makeup, revealing an inflamed, irritated and blemished face.

People flocked to the comments to thank her for exposing the truth behind filters.

“You’re beautiful & this message is SO important thanks for the reminder,” one person wrote.

“You are beautiful. In real life, we all have imperfections. As a mature woman, I appreciate your honesty. Thank you,” another said.

“Thank you so much. You did not know how much this was needed,” a woman commented.

Social media can really do a number on people’s self esteem, especially when they’re comparing themselves to something that’s not real. Messages like the one Webb shared can help pull back the curtain on the reality of social media. Watch her video below.

@missmimiwebb

#greenscreenvideo

This article originally appeared on 6.9.23

When it comes to babysitting, you can hit the jackpot with someone who not only enjoys hanging out with your kiddos but also cleans out of boredom. The only babysitter I’ve had that experience with is my mom, but I do hear they do exist. While walking into a spotless house after a much-needed night out would be amazing, it’s not really part of a standard babysitting package.

Typically, whoever babysits for you is solely there to focus on the well-being of your children. They feed them snacks, play games with them, and follow their bedtime routine to the letter. Then they hang out on your couch reminding Netflix that they’re still watching and wait for you to return. Sure, they clean up dishes from dinner and whatever toys were pulled out during their time with your kids, but they don’t typically clean your house.

But in a private parenting group I belong to, a long debate was started when a mom asked a group of 260k of her closest friends if it would be appropriate for a parent to ask a babysitter to clean their home.

The anonymous mom explained that her college-aged daughter had recently started babysitting for a family, but on the second day, her duties suddenly changed. There was a list of chores waiting for the babysitter that included cleaning the family’s dishes and cleaning up messes that were there before the sitter arrived.

This revelation set off a firestorm of comments with many agreeing that anything outside of cleaning up after the children while they’re in your care is a separate job. But not everyone was on the same page and it was clear that this was a topic that was going to cause some intense debate. Since summer months are here, there’s no wonder this topic is coming up and views are split.

Scary Mommy recently published an article posing a similar question, only this was coming from a parent who wanted her babysitter to clean while her children slept. Elizabeth Narins explains that she and her husband are stretched thin and have an active toddler she jokingly calls a “toy tornado.”

“Given the amount of housework that clearly needs to be done, paying someone to sit on our toy-covered couch during naps or after bedtime just seems… inefficient,” Narins wrote before posing the question. “Is it completely out of line for me to ask her to declutter when my kids are in bed?”

Whether it’s the expert interviewed for the Scary Mommy article or the parents in the private group, there does seem to be one common theme among the discourse: Any additional chores should be clarified in the original job description, and if it wasn’t, then it should be directly brought up in a conversation with the babysitter.

Many parents in the comments believed that a housekeeper should be hired in addition to the babysitter, while others thought the babysitter should be offered more money for the additional work. But there were several people who thought it was just common courtesy for a babysitter to clean the house while the kids were asleep.

It may seem that you’re paying a babysitter to do nothing while your children sleep, but you’re paying them to be there in the event of an emergency. No matter which side of the debate you’re on, it seems proper communication about expectations will save everyone a headache in the future.

Do you think cleaning should be expected from a babysitter?

This article originally appeared on 6.8.23

Billie Eilish is bringing her Overheated climate change action event back to London this month, as she announced its return via a press release. Hosted at Flipper’s Roller Boogie Palace on August 30, it will be hosted from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Fans can expect a day that is “filled with discussion, community building and resources to help tackle the climate crisis, roller skating and delicious plant-based food” from Neat Burger, according to the release. Climate activists will be attending alongside Eilish herself.

Specifically, the panels will include Alice Aedy, Brother Spirit, Dominique Palmer, Liv Simpliciano, Samata Pattison, Tori Tsui, Eilish’s mother Maggie Baird, and more guests that are still TBA.

Tickets for Eilish’s Overheated event go on sale tomorrow, August 16 at 10 a.m. BST, with only a limited amount of 500 being made available. For fans who are unable to secure one for the London panels, they will still be able to watch it, as it will be livestreamed on Eilish’s official YouTube channel.

The pop star previously hosted the first annual event last summer at The O2, where she also played the Overheated documentary. The film featured others in the music industry, like Yungblud and Glastonbury’s Emily Eavis.

Shortly after the event, Eilish is also slated to perform at the Reading & Leeds festival.

For more information and tickets to Overheated, visit here.

Rap has lost one of its last true originals in Melvin “Magoo” Barcliff, who died earlier this week at the age of 50. Best known as the rhyme partner of superproducer Timbaland, Magoo occupied a unique position in the spectrum of the genre. He was much more than a sidekick, as he shared co-billing with his do-it-all bandmate, but never actually a solo artist. He was something like a combination of A Tribe Called Quest’s Phife Dawg and Outkast’s André 3000 – but at the same time, nothing like them (or anyone else, really) at all.

I was, like most rap fans in the late 1990s, introduced to Magoo through his contributions to Timbaland & Magoo’s 1997 debut album, Welcome to Our World – especially its groundbreaking singles, “Up Jumps da Boogie” and “Luv 2 Luv U” and their eye-popping music videos. Those videos dominated the music video countdown shows in a lot of ways – while they certainly usually landed high on those lists, they also stood out because there was nothing else like them.

This was the heyday of Blackground Entertainment, as it was called then under its distribution deal with Atlantic. This was when positive word-of-mouth from Aaliyah’s 1996 sophomore album One in a Million was enough to generate buzz for practically anything Timbaland touched as a producer. Ginuwine’s Ginuwine…the Bachelor and Missy Elliott’s Supa Dupa Fly were megahits of hip-hop and R&B, and then, before going solo himself, Timbaland made sure to put on his oldest friend, Magoo, who he’d met in high school along with fellow future Virginia Beach superstar Pharrell Williams.

Back then, Tim, Magoo, and Pharrell had formed A Tribe Called Quest-esque trio called Surrounded By Idiots and recorded a demo that somehow survives on YouTube to this day. Listening to it, you can hear the formation of the lyrical chemistry between Timbaland and Magoo, the off-kilter sense of humor that could disarm and charm even the most skeptical listener. What younger readers have to understand about Magoo’s style is how unique it was at the time, and how impressive it was that he and Tim decided to do their own thing on that debut.

The year before had seen the releases of something like a dozen of hip-hop’s most pivotal albums, including but not limited to Nas’ It Was Written, Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt, The Fugees’ The Score, Lil Kim’s Hardcore, De La Soul’s Stakes Is High, and Redman’s Muddy Waters. Hip-hop was grimy. It was soaked in funk and soul, in gritty gangster tales and dizzying displays of internal rhyme and witty wordplay. If, in the early ‘90s, it had been a goofy teen, all bright colors and bouncy dances and The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, by the late ‘90s, it was more of a pretentious art school student, hanging up a Boondocks Saints poster in its dorm room in an effort to be taken seriously.

And into that climate came Magoo, all nasal pitch and unadorned penmanship, whose most famed lyrical quote to this day is still a hilarious flip of The Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird.” Yes, Tim’s soundscapes set the projects he produced apart from what the rest of the world was doing in a huge way. But his futuristic funk was anchored by the old-school leanings of his rhyme partners, Magoo and Missy Elliott, who stripped down the hyper-verbal wording of their contemporaries and just… well, rhymed.

Magoo could catch you off guard with unexpected references, and skewed boasts like, “Offbeat and on beat, old school like Beat Street / I stink like Pop’s feet, make sweat with no heat.” His verses were always worth a listen because you never knew what he was going to say next. Over the course of their partnership, Tim and Magoo released three albums, never quite reaching the heights of their first after hip-hop finally started to catch up with them. But for a time, Magoo was one of rap’s most innovative and unique voices, paired with one of its most forward-looking producers. Magoo is an indelible part of hip-hop history, a one-of-one.

On the same day that Georgia indicted Donald Trump and 18 other conspirators on RICO charges for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, Mike Lindell landed in Missouri to kick off his latest summit centered on, you guessed it, securing election results.

In a new video posted to his Twitter account, the MyPillow CEO, who’s dropped millions on failed attempts to prove the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, urged his followers to “spread the word” about his “Election Summit” that will run from Wednesday to Thursday. Lindell has touted the event as a foolproof, bi-partisan plan to secure future elections that “has never been done before.”

“I don’t care if you’re a Democrat, Republican, or who you are, you’re gonna have so much hope,” Lindell told Steve Bannon back in June.

You can see Lindell’s arrival video below:

Of course, the timing of the “Election Summit” couldn’t be worse. Not only does it arrive directly on the heels of the Georgia indictment, but one of the alleged and charged co-conspirators, Rudy Giuliani, is listed as a speaker. While Lindell has attempted to paint the event as focusing on future elections as opposed to re-litigating the 2020 election, the guest list is a who’s who of loyal MAGA acolytes like Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn, and Laura Loomer.

Also, Lindell is openly promoting the event as an answer from God after praying over the lack of “consequences” for the 2020 election, so maybe don’t hold your breath on this being a bi-partisan love fest.

“During that prayer, God gave me a plan. It is brilliant and divinely inspired, and will immediately secure our election platforms,” Lindell wrote on the official Election Summit event page. “This plan is unique, has never been done before in world history, and has not even previously been talked about by anyone. It does not rely on legislation, judges, or legal actions, etc. This is such a perfect plan, the only way it fails is if we do not get the word out to the entire country, and why I am spreading the word across our nation. It is critical you get this information.”

(Via Mike Lindell on Twitter, LindellEvent.com)

Nearly three years have passed since Steve Doocy first went rogue over Trump on Fox And Friends and sent die-hard MAGA Brian Kilmeade into an aghast tailspin. Since then, they’ve been mostly divided on the subject of 44, and as Trump’s indictments have piled up, there’s been quite a contrast to watch between the two co-hosts while Ainsley Earhardt essentially stays out of it.

The last time we checked in on this dynamic, Trump had been indicted a second time, and Kilmeade’s spirit visibly deflated while Doocy schooled his co-hosts. Well, the Fox And Frenemies gang is back for more, and after the fourth indictment (involving RICO charges out the tookus), Kilmeade is not feeling great about his hero’s fate. He seriously looked like someone swiped his goldfish bowl and gave it a swirlie this morning.

This clip begins with Doocy quoting former U.S. Attorney and Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy, who declared, “The Georgia indictment is the most perilous threat to former President Trump.” New Trump attorney Alina Habba disagreed and claimed to have “inside information.” Doocy challenged her to produce at least something, to which she declined while (apparently unironically) citing “ethics.” And Kilmeade was having a moment:

His goldfish or his puppy? Maybe both.

He’s moving towards the end of the denial phase, yes? Or perhaps he has fast-forwarded into grief. The charges on this indictment are so severe that they could actually put Trump in jail for the rest of his life independent of the other indictments, so Kilmeade must be having a lot of feelings here. He’s still kicking a bit, though, while discussing (below) how Trump will need to surrender in Georgia by August 25 and pose for a mugshot.

That mugshot could end up framed in Hillary’s house for Christmas.

Trolls work hard to shut down stars online, but Keke Palmer works even harder to keep her peace of mind. On July 4, Palmer’s estranged boyfriend, Darius Jackson, fueled haters online when he blasted her for her clothing choice while attending Usher’s Las Vegas residency.

Quickly after, the multi-hyphenate entertainer declared she was “Stevie [Wonder] to the bullsh*t,” backlash she received from her wardrobe and her harmless dance with Usher onstage. Now, she is taking it up a notch. Palmer took to social media to reveal that she will be in Usher’s official video for his single “Boyfriend.”

In the record’s trailer, Palmer and Usher seemingly recreated their pre-stage moments as the pair dressed in the flyest pieces heading out for an epic evening. The track is sure to be a masterful clap-back not only to Jackson, with whom she shares a child.

Following weeks of online chatter, Usher finally addressed the moment with People on August 4. “I think everybody’s vision or a version of what they felt happened there just leads you back to just really having a good time in Las Vegas. And that’s what I hope came out of it. Rather, it was a conversation of what was going on with us having fun in front of the audience or a conversation about that song,” said Usher.

In the three weeks since the release of his fifth studio album, Austin, Post Malone has had some pretty memorable moments, including buying a one-of-one Magic: The Gathering card for a reported $2 million, giving a fan in Tampa his shirt, socks, and a guitar, and meeting Allen Iverson in real life after starting his career with the viral hit “White Iverson.” His latest memory-making moment, though, might be the one that impresses fans the most: He stopped by NPR world headquarters in Washington, DC for a Tiny Desk Concert, making him one of the biggest stars to perform one yet.

Opening up with an acoustic version of “Sunflower” with Americana flourishes, Post strummed his guitar alongside a grand piano a string quartet and a blended bunch of backup singers who really complemented the stripped-down versions of Post’s hits. He followed up his intro with a stirring rendition of “I Fall Apart” and a “go Cowboys,” which he joked might have been out of place in Commanders territory. Then, it was time for “Circles,” his 2019 megahit, again with the assistance of strings. Finally, after joking around about getting lost on the chords of that song, he played “Enough Is Enough” from the new album (“or attempt to,” as he put it). The concert is a perfect display of all the elements that make Post Malone such a star, including his humble charm and willingness to poke fun at himself.

Watch Post Malone’s NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert above.

Joint practices are a great opportunity for NFL teams to get some practice reps at something much closer to game speed, which is why teams do them. They are also a great opportunity for players to get into fights, as the juices get flowing in the hot summer sun and chippiness is almost a guarantee when two teams face each other over and over on the practice field.

On Tuesday, the Baltimore Ravens and Washington Commanders met for joint practice and it didn’t take long for some frustrations to boil over, with the unsurprising combatants being on the outside between receivers and defensive backs, where trash talk is most prevalent. The first dustup of the day saw Commanders DB Emmanuel Forbes and Ravens WR Tylan Wallace exchange punches after a completion on the outside to Wallace, with Forbes wrapping up and trying to strip the ball. From there, the two threw multiple punches at each other — which is always funny when guys are wearing helmets.

NBC4 Sports captured a different angle of that skirmish that saw the two teams come together after the punches were thrown, as well as one happening on another field between the Ravens defense and the Commanders offense, as Washington’s top receiver Terry McLaurin took umbrage to some shoving that was happening.

Later, Ravens star tight end Mark Andrews sparked another kerfuffle when he slammed Washington DB Danny Johnson to the ground after a fumble (and after the whistle).

Coaches love joint practices because it’s the closest thing you can get to game reps, because you aren’t going up against a teammate who you might more naturally pedal off against. However, because you don’t pedal off against another team, you end up with lots more dustups and sometimes full on fights, and occasionally practices have to end early because of it.

Sometimes a person opens their mouth to sing and their voice blows you away, partly because it sounds nothing like you’d expect and partly because it’s just that amazing.

Cue the vocal stylings of Lacey Schaffer-Thomas, a special ed paraprofessional in Fort Smith, Arkansas, whose back-to-school convocation performance with her fellow educators has gone viral.

In a Facebook and Instagram reel shared by motivational speaker Jon Gordon, we see a stage set up on a school gym floor with a group of teachers performing together as a band.

“So this happened before I spoke!” he wrote. “It was the coolest convocation I’ve ever seen.”

A rock band made of teachers is interesting enough, but when the band plays Stevie Wonder‘s hit “Superstition” and the lead vocalist sound like Janis Joplin reincarnated—”like a legend,” as Gordon wrote—you have an incredibly impressive combo.

Check out how the students were welcomed back:

See on Instagram

People have been blown away by this woman’s voice, as evidenced by the comments on Facebook:

“I wasn’t expecting that voice to come out of that tiny, beautiful lady!” wrote one commenter. “Loved every minute of this! Ah-mazing, powerful performance! Why is this woman not a well-known, famous name by now?”

“She’s not singing, She’s SANG’IN! My Lord Ms. Thomas! You were feeling it and you made us feel it too!” shared another.

“She betta SANG!!!!!! I love this idea!!! The kids get to see talent and feel welcomed,” wrote another.

“Wow! That poor guy trying to sing with her,” sympathized one commenter. “There’s no place in there for ya bud! She can handle that on her own! All these little jewels around the world that nobody knows about until somebody puts em on social media.”

Schaffer-Thomas’ family and friends showed up in the comments, too, with understandable pride:

“My beautiful talented Wife. Lacey is a paraprofessional working with special needs kids. She sings to her students every day and is the most amazing, positive human I know. I am so blessed,” wrote her husband.

“That’s my momma Lacey Schaffer-Thomas ,” wrote her daughter. “She’s actually a paraprofessional for an elementary special education class. She’s incredible and I’m so proud of her! She’s been singing her whole life! The entire band did a phenomenal job!!! “

The singer herself even chimed in when Gordon asked if he could tag her in the video. “Yes please! I don’t know if my heart can take it though. ,” she responded. “I’m just overwhelmed with gratitude at all the kind responses this has generated. Thank you so much.”

The praise is well-earned, ma’am. Keep on wowing everyone with that gorgeous, edgy voice.