Category: Viral

The Philadelphia Eagles came into Sunday as the last remaining unbeaten in the NFL at 5-0, but while their record was unblemished, they have not looked quite as dominant as many expected coming off of a trip to the Super Bowl last year.

Even so, they were healthy favorites on the road against the New York Jets, but Jalen Hurts had some real struggles with a very good Jets defense and in the fourth quarter things were tense with a 14-12 Philly lead. After moving the ball out near midfield, the Eagles came out of the two-minute warning facing a 3rd-and-9 with the Jets out of timeouts. A first down would end the game, but even if forced to punt, they would’ve forced Zach Wilson to lead a likely long field goal drive with inside two minutes to go.

Instead, Jalen Hurts fired his third interception of the game and one of the worst of his career when he drifted back and tossed one right to Tony Adams, who broke on the ball and returned it deep into Eagles territory.

It was a truly awful decision by Hurts, who must have not seen Adams lurking to the inside of his intended target, and it set up the go-ahead touchdown from Breece Hall — with Philly wisely just letting him score to preserve their two timeouts and over 1:45 on the clock.

A two-point conversion made it 20-14 Jets, but they would need another stop against Hurts and the Philly offense. After flying to the football for a few excellent open field tackles and pass breakups, they forced a 4th and 9 with Hurts chucking one up into double coverage, likely hoping for a flag as much as anything, but the ball got nearly picked before falling to the turf with no laundry on the field.

With the win, the Jets got back to a .500 record and their defense looks every bit of being the real deal. Wilson and the offense are moving the ball a bit better, but continued their red zone struggles until the very end when Philly was happy to escort Hall into the end zone. It’s the second contender taken down by the Jets this season, as they also beat the Bills to open the year, and if they can get anything positive offensively, they’ll have a chance in most games.

For the Eagles it was not their first sloppy performance of the year, but the first one that caught up to them in the form of a loss and now they’ll be back to the drawing board trying to clean things up going forward. Down in Miami, that sound you hear is Mercury Morris and the 1972 Dolphins popping champagne as their record as the NFL’s lone perfect season is safe for one more year.

Usually in interviews Robert De Niro is a reserved, quiet guy. Get him talking about Donald Trump, and hoo boy. The legendary actor has been on the press trail talking up Killers of the Flower Moon, his 10th film with Martin Scorsese. This coincides with the third presidential campaign of a guy he’s called a “pig” and a “bullsh*t artist” whom he’s wanted to see hit with a “bag of sh*t.” He doesn’t much care for his “stupid” supporters either. While recently chatting with The Guardian, De Niro went a bit longer about his hatred of the GOP’s current prized stallion.

“I see the phenomenon of Trump, the phenomenon of people not standing up to him, people who ought to know better,” De Niro told the outlet. “They’re causing great concern in the country and a lot of anxiety. I feel like since he’s come on the scene – even after being president – it’s like when an abusive parent rules a household, only it’s not just one household it’s the whole country.”

Trump came up a lot during the interview, which concerns De Niro’s role as a charming businessman who may be behind a spate of murders involving the nouveau riche members of the Osage tribe in Oklahoma a century ago. During a press conference before the one-on-one, De Niro went so far as to compare the character he plays the 45th president: two entitled greed monsters who cloak their racism and disregard for anyone outside their blood line in a kindly faux-benevolence.

De Niro also doesn’t think Trump will magically become any kind of beacon for the nation if allowed back at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

“One of the main tasks of being a leader, the responsibility, is to lead,” he said. “Even when the masses are turning in a certain the direction, you have to show them the right way. And that comes down to personal integrity, what you know is right and what you know to be wrong, what you stand for.”

But Trump, De Niro says, doesn’t want to lead. He’s just “doing whatever he can to be the boss,” adding, “He just wants to be in charge. He has no moral center.”

When the interviewer points out that De Niro, usually so collected, gets so worked up when talking Trump, he responded this way:

“It upsets me so much that somebody like him could get so far in our political system … Many New Yorkers were on to what a fool he is, a joke. But when the country started buying it? I mean, he didn’t win by much. He didn’t win the popular vote. She won. But look what happened. What’s scary is it’s such a fragile thing, to swing like that. And the odd thing about Trump is that if he had any brains he could have become president again. But he doesn’t care. He did stupid things. He’s not somebody who should ever be allowed close to leadership in this country again.”

De Niro lamented all the attention Trump gets, though he gets it, saying, “it’s like watching a train wreck. You’re fascinated by it.” He then predicted Trump’s inglorious future. “What will eventually happen is he will die away. He’ll become not even an afterthought. It’s like the pandemic. We had it. Now people are forgetting. And it was only three years ago.”

Killers of the Flower Moon hits theaters on October 20.

(Via The Guardian)

After dropping the first two on the road, the New York Liberty returned to Brooklyn needing a win to stay alive in the WNBA Finals, or else the Las Vegas Aces would be celebrating back-to-back championships in the Barclays Center on Sunday afternoon.

The Liberty would come out firing away from deep, with Jonquel Jones, Betnijah Laney, Sabrina Ionescu, and Breanna Stewart all connecting on multiple threes in the game.

The league’s MVP would get rolling in the first half, as Stewart shook off any frustrations from the first two games in Vegas to post a 20-point, 12-rebound double-double.

While the offense was impressive, it was the defense that really showed up for the Liberty after getting dominated by the Aces in the first two games. New York held the Aces to 73 points on 33.3 percent shooting from the field, as Jones and Stewart combined for five blocks inside to close off access to the rim.

Vegas would hang around largely due to to the performance of Kelsey Plum, who led all scorers with 29 on the afternoon, but got little in the way of offensive help, as A’ja Wilson had 16 points but on just 4-of-16 shooting and Chelsea Gray had 11 points on 4-of-12 shooting. For the Liberty, it was Jones who led the way with 27 points and eight rebounds, knocking down four threes including a big one late to push New York well in front.

The Liberty would cruise to an 87-73 win and pull to within a game of tying the series and sending it back to Vegas for a winner take all Game 5. Adding to the concern of the Aces was a late game injury to Chelsea Gray that caused her to hop to the back, putting no weight on her left leg and in serious pain once she got to the tunnel.

Gray has been sensational in this series and part of Las Vegas’ big advantage in the first two games was the backcourt trio of Gray, Plum, and Jackie Young. If the Gray injury is as serious as it looked and she can’t go for Game 4, Vegas will have to lean even more on Plum and Young to create opportunities for others, with Gray’s ability to see the floor something that will be very difficult to replace.

For the first time, Britney Spears’ life story will be told directly by her via her forthcoming memoir The Woman In Me. The book is slated to hit book retailers later this week, but on Sunday, October 15, the legendary singer took to social media to share the promotional trailer filled with excerpts from the literary work. And each piece is truly heartbreaking.

The clip opens with the line, “I actually envy the people who know how to make fame work for them.” Immediately after the sentence vanishes from the screen, the next one appeared, reading, “My demeanor was innocent — and it wasn’t an act. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Following that came the words: “It felt like I was living on the edge of a cliff,” “I don’t want it to be real; this just a dream,” and “If you stood up for me when I couldn’t stand up for myself: from the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

Before the clip ended, it closed with a note from Spears, reading, “No one knows what I really thought until now.”

During a live stream in July, Spears told viewers that she had an idea of what most people would think of her book. “After reading the book, most would probably say she should be the meanest woman alive after what she’s been through, and that’s just it,” she said. “I should be.”

She continued, “I’m sorry, but after all of it, although it’s thin as hell, I’ve learned to make peace with it, and in each given moment I’m in, even though things may be completely wrong, I surrender to silliness.”

Britney Spears’ memoir The Woman In Me will hit sleeves on October 24. Find more information here.

Some, like Pete Davidson and Colin Jost, buy a boat, partly because one of them (Davidson) was stoned. Others buy a football (that is, to Yanks, soccer) team. That’s what happened to Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds. At the height of the pandemic, the two — who had never met in real life but who had become great texting buddies — decided to go in together on a Welsh football club. Not only that they milked it for a TV show that inevitably gives off Ted Lasso vibes.

The result was FX Networks’ Welcome to Wrexham, a fly-on-the-wall documentary series that bowed in last fall. McElhenney and Reynolds’ maiden stint as owners of Wrexham A.F.C., which earned critical acclaim plus six Emmy nominations, was spread over 18 episodes. The show returned for a second season on September 12. But how many episodes will there be total?

The answer is 15.

Despite not meeting until they bought a freakin’ Welsh football club, McElhenney and Reynolds have proven an ideal dynamic duo. They’ve raised awareness for cancer prevention in creative ways. And they inspired Reynolds’ fake beef-mate to nearly go and buy a football team for himself, just to rub it in.

Welcome to Wrexman airs new episodes every Tuesday on FX. The current seasons runs through November 14.

Throughout her nearly twenty-year career, Lady Gaga has accomplished what most can only dream of. She has Grammy, Oscar, and Golden Globe awards to her name and she’s toured all over the world. The beloved performer has even had several highly publicized Las Vegas residencies.

Right now, a good deal of her creative pursuits are focused on her acting career, including her co-starring role in the forthcoming film Joker 2, in which she’ll play Harley Quinn. However, thanks to her recent social media activity, fans believe she could be returning to Sin City to have a go at the newest performance venue. So, will Lady Gaga perform at The Sphere?

People online have been throwing names around as to which act will follow the U2: UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere residency. Gaga’s name wasn’t included until people noticed she began following the facilities’ official page on Instagram.

U2’s run in Vegas is expected to end in December. The next act to grace the billion-dollar doom hasn’t been announced. Could it be Gaga? Maybe. Has it been confirmed? No. But imagine the possibility of what kind of show Gaga would put on there. If promoters did secure Gaga, the residency would be the hottest ticket in town.

There are a lot of hard things about living with Crohn’s disease. Not being able to talk about it might be the worst one.

Imagine being constantly tired, but in a way that even 15 hours of sleep a day can’t cure. Imagine going to dinner, but every time you eat something as simple as a roll of warm bread, it feels like it might’ve had broken glass inside of it.

Then, it’s time to go to the bathroom. Again. Is that the fifth time this hour or the sixth? You’ve lost track. It’s a running joke now — your friends think it’s funny, but nobody really talks about what happens when you step away. Because, really, you look fine. Just tired.

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Crohn’s, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is “a condition of chronic inflammation potentially involving any location of the gastrointestinal tract.” But as defined by myself, someone with Crohn’s, it’s like having food poisoning all the time. The symptoms and presentation are different for every patient, but one thing is the same for all: It’s an invisible illness, and it sucks.

And let’s face it. Talkin’ about your poop is taboo.

A little privacy, please?

Well, unless you’re Krystal Miller.

Stumble over to her Facebook page, Bag Lady Mama, and nearly every post has a reference to doing the doo.

Krystal, who lives in Perth, Australia, has Crohn’s. She was first diagnosed at 15 years old, and by 22, most of her intestinal tract had been badly damaged by the disease. At that point, doctors decided to remove large portions of her large and small intestines.

For the last decade, she’s been living with a permanent ileostomy, a surgically made opening in the abdominal wall that connects the lower intestine to an ostomy bag.

Now, at 32, she’s sharing her daily experiences through Facebook.

Her posts show raw insight into her world. They’re unapologetically blunt, they’re full of curse words, and they’re gaining traction — quickly.

In an interview with Upworthy, Krystal said she expected to have a few hundred Likes on her page within a month or two of launching it, mostly from close friends who knew about her life with Crohn’s. But since it launched Jan. 25, it’s reached more than 13,000 Likes.

“I did expect it to reach Europe and America because I have international friends,” she said. “But I never expected for it to be as expansive as it has been. It’s crazy — I actually got recognized at my local shops the other day!”

Her photos show off her day-to-day life with her two children, Lukas, 4, and Arabella, five months, and her husband, Shannon. Each is filled with her unabashed love for her body.

Scars, bag, and the ostomy itself are all on display in the hopes that she can help remove some of the stigma around Crohn’s and what life with the disease is like.

It’s not a comfortable thing to live with physically or socially. It took years before Krystal was willing to open up about it.

“When I was first diagnosed, I was very uncomfortable. I would be in-tears uncomfortable if someone had to go to the toilet after me. … And when you’re young, it’s embarrassing and it’s pretty f*cking horrific. It’s been slow progress , but I just kind of got sick of caring. Like, who gives a f*ck, it is what it is, I can’t do anything about it.“

She would go to extreme lengths to cover up the symptoms of the disease, especially when using public restrooms. But she credits the surgery that removed her rectum with alleviating a lot of that embarrassment as well. Once her permanent ostomy was in place, many of her symptoms were alleviated, and her experiences with “number 2” became more matter-of-fact than anything else.

“It’s been slow progress , but I just kind of got sick of caring. Like, who gives a f*ck, it is what it is, I can’t do anything about it.”

From there, it became about reclaiming her sexiness and self-confidence, which started with revisiting how she looked at herself.

“When we look at other women, we don’t see the same flaws that we see in ourself. And I’ve had to retrain myself to see myself the way others might see me, to not notice the finer intricacies that I see on myself. Other people don’t see the sh*t that we see.”

But she hasn’t stopped there. She also posts fashion tips for other women with Crohn’s and shares advice on how to dress the way you want while still being comfortable with a bag.

Krystal does have one thing she wants to say to other people who have Crohn’s and other IBDs: It’s not always going to be easy, and that’s OK.

“We have earned that right to f*cking hate the world,” she said. “We are entitled to f*cking be angry and to be sad and to have bad days. If you need to feel sorry for yourself, then feel sorry for yourself. But then pick yourself up and keep going.”

This article originally appeared on 04.04.16

From a young age, Deddeh Howard was enthralled by fashion and its role in culture. Unfortunately, she was never really able to see herself in it.

“Something that always bothered me when you see these amazing images [was] that very rarely you ever see a black woman on them,” Howard, who grew up in West Africa but now resides in Los Angeles, wrote at her blog, Secret of DD.

“Black girls are almost invisible,” she wrote.

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So Howard created “Black Mirror,” a photo series in which she re-creates famous photos with herself in place of models like Kendall Jenner, Gigi Hadid, Gisele Bundchen, and others.

Howard’s partner, Raffael Dickreuter, shot the series. As its title suggests, it holds a “black mirror” up to the fashion world. The project’s goal is both to make people notice the lack of diversity in the fashion world and to provide inspiration to other non-white models.

Of the models featured on the fall 2016 runways, 75% were white. There’s a major need for a diversity boost.

Sometimes, that lack of diversity can be downright embarrassing. Earlier this year, one fashion show featured models walking to Beyoncé’s “Formation,” a song Essence described as a “wholly and undeniable a tribute to Blackness — particularly Black girl power.” The problem: The show didn’t feature a single non-white model.

Diversity, representation, and visibility play key roles in shaping ambition and self-acceptance in the real world.

It’s important to be able to see yourself in the world, and it’s important to know that someone who looks like you can succeed.

“The next generation can only get inspired and reach for the stars themselves if they believe they can do it too,” Howard wrote on her blog. “For that reason diversity in ad campaigns is in my opinion much more important than you might think.”

This article originally appeared on 12.08.16

Studies show that having daughters makes men more sympathetic to women’s issues.

And while it would be nice if men did not need a genetic investment in a female person in order to gain this perspective, lately I’ve had sympathy for those newly woke dads.

My two sons have caused something similar to happen to me. I’ve begun to glimpse the world through the eyes of a young male. And among the things I’m finding here in boyland are the same obnoxious gender norms that rankled when I was a girl.

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Of course, one notices norms the most when they don’t fit. If my tween sons were happily boy-ing away at boy things, neither they nor I would notice that they were hemmed in.

But oh boy, are they not doing that.

In fact, if I showed you a list of my sons’ collective interests and you had to guess their gender, you’d waver a bit, but then choose girl.

Baking, reading, drawing, holidays, films, volleyball, cute mammals, video games, babies and toddlers, reading, travel, writing letters.

I imagine many of you are thinking at this point: That’s awesome that your boys are interested in those things!

There’s more. One loves comics and graphic novels but gravitates to stories with strong female protagonists, like Ms. Marvel and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.

Cool! I love it.

And sports. They are thoroughly bored by team sports. They don’t play them. They won’t watch them. They will up- or down-arrow through any number of sporting events on TV to get to a dance contest or to watch competitive baking.

So? Nothing wrong with that.

Those are the kinds of things all my progressive friends say.

But it’s often not the message my sons themselves hear from the other adults in their lives, their classmates, and the media.

For example, the first get-to-know-you question they are inevitably asked by well-meaning grown-ups is, “So, do you play sports?” When they say, “No, not really,” the adult usually continues brightly, “Oh, so what do you like to do, then?”

No one explicitly says it’s bad for a boy not to play sports. But when it’s always the first question asked, the implication is clear: playing sports is normal; therefore, not playing them is not.

The truth is that one of them does play a sport. He figure skates, as does my daughter. When people find out that she skates, they beam at her, as if she suddenly has possession of a few rays of Olympic glory. In the days before my son stopped telling people that he ice skates, most of them hesitated and then said, “Oh, so you are planning to play hockey?”

But it’s not just what people say. It’s all those pesky, unwritten rules. When he was in second grade, my younger son liked the Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew series. But he refused to check any out of the school library. He explained: “Girls can read boy books, but boys can’t read girl books. Girls can wear boy colors or girl colors, but boys can only wear boy colors. Why is that, Mom?”

I didn’t have an answer.

An obvious starting point — and the one that we have the most control over — is to change the way we speak to the boys in our lives.

As Andrew Reiner suggests in a spot-on essay, we should engage boys in analytical, emotion-focused conversations, just like we do with girls. In “How to Talk to Little Girls,” Lisa Bloom offers alternatives to the appearance-focused comments so often directed at young girls: asking a girl what she’s reading or about current events or what she would like to see changed in the world. I could copy-paste Bloom’s list and slap a different title on it: “How to Ask Boys About Something Besides Sports.”

And with a few more built-in nudges, we might expand the narrow world of boyhood more quickly. Boy Scouts could offer badges for developing skills in child care, teamwork, and journaling. Girl-dominated activities like art, dance, gymnastics, and figure skating could be made more welcoming to boys, with increased outreach and retention efforts. My son could write his own essay about trying to fit in to the nearly all-girl world of figure skating, including the times he has had to change clothes in a toilet stall at skating events because there were no locker rooms available for boys.

I used to think that the concept of gender — of “girl things” and “boy things” — was what was holding us back.

Now I see it differently.

The interdependent yin and yang of gender is a fundamental part of who we are, individually and collectively. We need people who like to fix cars and people who like to fix dinner. We need people who are willing and able to fight if needed and people who are exquisitely tuned into a baby’s needs. But for millennia, we have forced these traits to align with biological sex, causing countless individuals to be dissatisfied and diminished. For the most part, we’ve recognized this with girls. But we have a long way to go when it comes to boys. As Gloria Steinem observed, “We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons … but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.”

I acknowledge that young boys feeling pressured to be sports fans is not our country’s biggest problem related to gender.

Transgender individuals still confront discrimination and violence. The #MeToo movement has revealed to anyone who didn’t already know it that girls and women can’t go about their everyday lives without bumping into male sexual aggression.

But if our culture shifts to wholeheartedly embrace the whole spectrum of unboyishness, it may play some small role in addressing these other issues, too. Male culture will be redefined, enriched, and expanded, diluting the toxic masculinity that is at the root of most of our gender-related problems.

Boys and girls alike will be able to decide if they would rather be made up of snips and snails, sugar and spice, or a customized mix. And my future grandsons, unlike my sons, won’t think twice about wearing pink or reading about a girl detective at school.

This story originally appeared on Motherwell and is reprinted here with permission.

This article originally appeared on 06.20.18

If you’ve ever stayed in a hotel, you know there’s an additional lock you can latch as an added layer of protection. But sometimes weird things happen that make us rethink the comfort and security many of us take for granted. TikTok user TayBeepBoop had a disturbing experience when a hotel front desk person attempted to enter her room while she was inside. Some readers may find the story to be unsettling but it’s a powerful reminder of exactly why situational awareness and caution are so important in today’s world.

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Tay, obviously frightened, uploaded clips from the event on her TikTok page, which has since garnered 6 million views. In the video, which is mostly the floor, door and bed, you can hear the man outside of her room knocking loudly asking to be let inside.

Tay asks the man repeatedly why he attempted to walk into her room using the hotel key to which the man explains there’s a problem with the woman’s car. There’s only one problem. Tay doesn’t own a car and is only in town on business where she did not rent a car to get around town, relying only on other modes of transportation. So, what the heck was the man doing at her door?

@taybeepboop

Replying to @dani klarić this was a really long and hard video to make, it was sort of traumatizing and I’m kind of freaked out about staying anywhere now and I dont leave my house much anymore tbh because I already was dealing with PTSD about my safety. I’m OKAY which is why im able to go through this footage now. I genuinely don’t want anything to do with this hotel, this is a PSA to stay safe and cautious. I don’t want people to go after this worker because I still don’t know what his intentions were and he could have just been trying to do his job

Tay was staying at the hotel alone and made sure to latch the additional lock on her hotel room door, which is the only thing that prevented this hotel staff member from getting into her room. Since the situation was so scary and went on for quite some time according to her video, she called friends on FaceTime to be a witness and help comfort her. Eventually the man leaves after repeated attempts to get the scared woman to open the door and Tay was able to get a male business partner to escort her safely to another hotel.

But the comments were filled with stories from women who have had similar experiences. Many people explained the danger of admitting you’re alone upon check-in, while other commenters sympathized with the woman not thinking to call the police right away. With people traveling more as COVID-19 restrictions subside, there could be a greater chance for things like this happening so it’s best to be prepared and err on the side of caution when traveling alone.

Women on the Road has several tips for hotel safety including making sure your door lock works, putting a chair under the handle of the door or buying a rubber door stop. The site also highlights the importance of locking your windows if they open and not opening the door for people you don’t know.

Another site geared towards safety is Solo Female Traveler and it recommends getting a floor higher in the hotel to make it more of a hassle for someone from outside to break in. It, too, reiterates the importance of locking the additional lock in the hotel room while you’re inside.

While it’s statistically unlikely you’ll be a victim of a hotel robbery or whatever was happening with Tay, her experience is a reminder to research hotels and practice caution when traveling. Always, always, lock the deadbolt or chain.

This article originally appeared on 09.13.22