Category: Worldwide

It doesn’t take much to cause everyone on the internet to go a little crazy, so it’s not completely surprising that an incorrect answer on a child’s math test is the latest event to get people fired up. The test in question asked kids to solve “5 x 3” using repeated addition. Under this method, the correct answer is “5 groups of 3,” not “3 groups of 5.” The question is typical of Common Core but has many questioning this type of standardized testing and how it affects learning.

After an image of the test was uploaded to Imgur, many took to voicing their opinions on both sides of the argument. One commenter took up the side of the student, saying, “As an instructor: fuck it. I am actually happy when I see people finding alternative ways to solve the problems.” Another said, “Actually the teacher is correct. 5*3 means 5 times the number 3, or 3+3+3+3+3. Understand, we are not in the room when it was TAUGHT.”

One thing we can all agree on is about “5+5+5” is that it equals another example of how much people on the internet love to argue.

Subtle, condescending sexist remarks such as “When are you going to have children?” and “You’d be so pretty, if you tried” are heard by women on a daily basis. Like water torture, what’s subtle and persistent can become debilitating over a lifetime.

Making things more difficult is the contradicting nature of many sexist clichés that women are subjected to starting in childhood, such as “Is that all you’re going to eat?” and “You eat a lot for a girl.” Then there are the big-time, nuclear bomb sexist remarks such as “Don’t be a slut” and “What were you wearing that night?” that are still shockingly common as well.

It’s hard for men to truly grasp this never-ending barrage of sexism because it’s not in their faces. That’s why The Huffington Post created the video “48 Things That Women Hear in a Lifetime* (*That Men Just Don’t),” in which women of all ages share the most common sexist comments they hear—but which men never do.

48 Things Women Hear In A Lifetime (That Men Just Don’t)

www.youtube.com

This article originally appeared on 05.05.16

A great opera voice is a learned art, not a natural-born gift like other styles of singing. It takes discipline, physical training, and to truly wow the audience, the performer must be a great actor and athlete as well. “Singing opera is to ordinary vocal activity what distance running, triple-jumping and pole-vaulting are to ordinary exercise,” said Sir Antonio Pappano, music director of the Royal Opera House wrote for the BBC. “Which means that singers and, almost as important, those who teach them are locked in the same kinds of relationship that obtain between elite athletes and charismatic coaches.”

So what goes on inside of the head and throat of an opera singer while they perform? German baritone Michael Volle performed “Song to the Evening Star” by German composer Richard Wagner while inside of an MRI scan to give people a never-before-seen look at how an opera singer produces such a haunting sound. It’s a pretty freaky-looking image, but shows the amazing control these performers must have to hit such powerful notes.

Gruseliges Video: MRT-Aufnahmen von Michael Volle bei „Lied an den Abendstern“

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The forests of Uganda are under severe threat. They are being lost at a rate of almost 2% a year and from 1990 to 2010, the country lost 31% of its forest cover – a reduction from 19,000 square miles to just 14,000.

Deforestation has been caused by a rapid population increase, climate change, agricultural expansion, logging, weak legal protections, and poor enforcement of the laws that are on the books.

However, Uganda is replanting some of its deforested areas thanks to the help of people who live 9,000 miles away.

In 2008, a program was launched in Wales to plant a new tree in the country every time a child is born or adopted. The program was named Size of Wales because the phrase is often used to describe large areas that have been deforested around the globe.

The was so successful that it hit its target goal of planting 7,700 square miles of new forest by 2013. In 2018, organizers decided they would keep the program going with a new goal. This time they would protect an area twice the size of Wales.

They chose Uganda because of its threatened forests, focusing specifically on an area known as Mbale in the eastern region of the country. Mbale is a large hilly area that is heavily deforested and suffers from irregular downpours that cause potentially fatal landslides.

via Government of Wales

Size of Wales works with the Mount Elgon Tree Growing Enterprise to distribute free tree seedlings to local villagers. The trees protect the villagers by helping to prevent soil erosion and their fruit provides a reliable source of food and extra income.

The program has supported 1600 families in 30 villages as well as five free-trade coffee plantations.

“For more than a decade Wales has developed and deepened its community-based links with sub-Sahara countries in Africa,” Jane Hutt, Wales’ Minister of Social justice, said in a statement. “This mutually-beneficial approach has long supported sustainable development and solidarity, of which we can be justifiably proud.”

Fantastic to see 15m trees planted in a heavily deforested area of eastern Uganda as part of our initiative to help… https://t.co/Fg8M1sATkq

— Mark Drakeford (@fmwales)
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The program which is funded by the long-standing Wales and Africa program has already planted 15 million trees. Now organizers have pledged to plant 3 million a year in Uganda to “support community resilience in the face of environmental challenges.”

“The Mbale Trees initiative is an example of what can be achieved when nations work together to combat climate change,” Julie James, Minister for Climate Change in Wales, said in a statement. “Our pledge to plant three million more every year for the next five years will deliver substantial benefits, not just for those within Mbale, but it will have a considerable global impact on climate change.”

Now whenever a child is born or adopted in Wales, two trees are planted, one in their home country and another in Uganda. Every child that helped contribute to the tree planting is given a certificate made of recycled paper that shows they helped make this incredible environmental accomplishment.

Mbale Trees

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The Eye is a video series that hosts up-and-coming artists for in-studio performances in a gorgeously minimal environment, a set-up that truly lets the music shine. The latest performer to step behind the mic is Faouzia, who delivers stirring renditions of a couple of her premiere tunes, “Hero” and “Wake Me When It’s Over.”

The 21-year-old singer-songwriter was born in Morocco but moved to Canada when she was a baby. She showed tremendous promise as a teenager by winning a number of prestigious contests, like when she beat out 6,000 competitors to win Unsigned Only in 2017, becoming the first teen to emerge on top. She has managed to deliver on that potential and turn some influential heads, as she has collaborated with industry icons like John Legend, Kelly Clarkson, and David Guetta. Her talent has translated to commercial success as well: Her singles, some of which come from her 2020 EP Stripped, have charted in multiple countries.

As the title of Stripped suggests, the project features minimally arranged songs that put Faouzia’s voice front and center. Indeed, that’s what her The Eye performances deliver as well, as Faouzia’s vocal appeal is undeniable on her rendition of “Hero.” Here, the song is presented in a strikingly intimate arrangement, with Faouzia backed by just a piano as she confidently and passionately delivers her yearning lyrics. She brings a similar energy to “Wake Me When It’s Over,” which again proves that she has the powerhouse vocals to back up the emotional weight of her songs.

Faouzia’s piano-centric approach to her performances isn’t surprising, given that she started playing the instrument when she was 5 years old and went on to take 11 years of classical piano training, as she notes in an interview with The Eye. As for her vocals, she says that she taught herself how to sing, inspired by both pop artists and her Moroccan heritage: “I am self-taught and it was just by listening to amazing pop artists and being like, ‘How do they do that with their voice? I want to learn how to do that with my voice.’ And also listening to Arabic artists because I am from Morocco, so that was a huge part of my life, too. So having those two worlds meshing together and blending is what makes me who I am today.”

It’s unique perspectives like this that bring intrigue into the pop sphere, a space that Faouzia seems set to comfortably call home for years to come.

Watch Faouzia perform “Hero,” “Wake Me When It’s Over,” and “Paparazzi” for The Eye above.

Faouzia is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

If Rihanna is any proof, the pop-musician-to-makeup-guru pipeline is still going strong. After musicians like Halsey and Selena Gomez attempted to break into the beauty industry with their own lines of makeup, Ariana Grande is following in their footsteps. The Positions singer is looking to expand her influence with the cosmetic brand R.E.M. Beauty. And while she hasn’t revealed many details about the products, Grande just shared a video teaser pointing to an impending announcement.

The teaser is only a few seconds long and doesn’t give an idea of what the makeup will actually look like, but it does give some insight into Grande’s targeted aesthetic. The five-second clip shows an upside-down Grande sporting white go-go boots and holding her head in front of a vintage TV. All signs point to Grande pulling influences from the ’60s for her beauty line, including a sample of Walter Cronkite’s iconic sign-off when the Apollo 11 crew arrived back on Earth from the moon landing, “The lunar age has begun.”

So far, Grande hasn’t released very many details about R.E.M. Beauty, other than a vague Times Square billboard and an Instagram account that already has over a quarter-million followers without any posts. But the singer did recently release her brand of vegan, cruelty-free fragrance, God Is A Woman. The scent’s packaging described it as “a soft opening of juicy pear and ambrette” that evolves into “a wonderfully sensuous floral heart of Turkish rose petals, paired with divine orris.”

Watch Grande’s R.E.M. Beauty teaser above.

While COVID safety was the concern that kept artists off the road in 2020, Trippie Redd’s Trip At Knight tour faced an entirely different security scare last night. The Baltimore Sun newspaper reports that Trippie’s tour bus was shot by a passing car on the way to the Baltimore-Washington International Airport after his show at MECU Pavilion.

According to the Sun the bus was shot multiple times on the passenger side at around 2:45 am, wounding the driver, who was still able to pull the bus over at BWI. He was taken to a hospital for treatment. While officials wouldn’t say whether Trippie himself or any of the other performers were aboard, the report does confirm that crew members from venue were. None of the other passengers were injured and while police cordoned off the area and investigated, no arrests or charges have been announced as yet.

Trippie is currently touring to support his new album, Trip At Knight, which released August 20 via 10K Projects and contains features from Trippie’s fellow SoundCloud Rap contemporaries like Juice WRLD, Lil Uzi Vert, Playboi Carti, and Ski Mask The Slump God. It received additional attention, though, for the song “Betrayal” featuring Drake, on which the guest rapper apparently restarted his feud with Kanye West, to Trippie’s own surprise. The younger rapper admitted he had no idea Drake dissed Kanye on the song, but considering all the extra streams the moment probably brought him, he’s probably not all that perturbed by it.

Star Trek: Picard is boldly going where most Star Trek series have gone before: straight on ahead to its third season. At last night’s annual Star Trek Day celebration, Picard lead actor Patrick Stewart announced the series has officially been renewed for a third season over on Paramount+. While The Hollywood Reporter was quick to note Star Trek: Picard was technically renewed back in January 2020 as part of its two season order, Stewart’s announcement marks the first official confirmation that the network is going ahead with the series.

According to reports, CBS Studios and showrunner Terry Matalas are scheduled to begin production on Star Trek: Picard season 3 back-to-back with season 2 in a “bid to control costs and accommodate production schedules.” The studio also confirmed the writers room for season three has been “up and running for more than a year.”

As of right now, Alison Pill, Isa Briones, Evan Evagora, Michelle Hurd, Santiago Cabrera, Jeri Ryan, Orla Brady, John de Lancie, Annie Wersching, Brent Spiner, and the one and only Patrick Stewart are all confirmed to be returning to the series for both its second and third seasons. Alex Kurtzman is still attached as the show’s producer, with Alex Kurtzman and Matalas still on board as showrunners.

Star Trek: Picard is merely one of the many Star Trek original series being produced by Kurtzman as part of a nine-figure deal with CBS Studios. Also in the works right now are Star Trek: Discovery, the animated adult comedy Lower Decks, a Nickelodeon children’s series, Star Trek: Prodigy, and the upcoming Strange New Worlds. For all those simply sticking to Picard, the series is set to return for its second season February 2022.

Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase’s life in the NFL has gotten off to a bit of a tricky start. The No. 5 pick in the 2021 NFL Draft has shown that some rust developed from not playing college football last season, as the sure-fire hands that made him such a dangerous threat in LSU’s national championship-winning offense in 2019 haven’t quite caught up to this level of football yet.

Earlier this week, Chase sat down with the media following a Bengals practice and offered up an interesting reason for why he’s had a rough go of things so far: the ball.

“The ball is different because it is bigger,” Chase said. “It doesn’t have the white stripes on the side so you can’t see the ball coming from the tip point so you actually have to look for the strings on the ball at the top, which is hard to see because whole ball is brown and you have the six strings that are white. But for the most part, just have to get used to it and find out what I am comfortable with catching.”

Let’s head to the rule books to get to the bottom of this. Here is what the NFL’s official rules say:

The ball shall be made up of an inflated (12 1/2 to 13 1/2 pounds) urethane bladder enclosed in a pebble grained, leather case (natural tan color) without corrugations of any kind. It shall have the form of a prolate spheroid and the size and weight shall be: long axis, 11 to 11 1/4 inches; long circumference, 28 to 28 1/2 inches; short circumference, 21 to 21 1/4 inches; weight, 14 to 15 ounces.

For the NCAA, here is a screenshot of what their rulebook says about the size of the ball.

It sounds a bit silly on the surface, but Chase is correct about the adjustment. The good news is that the Bengals seem confident that he’ll make it, and Joe Burrow will eventually get to a point where he’s throwing deep balls to his favorite target from his days at LSU again.

Either Donald Trump has finally realized that running for president in 2024 would be a terrible idea, or he’s accidentally begun cultivating a career as some sort of half-witted raconteur. Just hours after announcing that he’ll be commemorating the 20th anniversary of 9/11 by providing color commentary for Saturday’s Evander Holyfield fight, the former president popped up on Fox News, where he had his ass kissed was interviewed by Greg Gutfeld.

As if Gutfeld’s squirm-inducing obsequiousness wasn’t enough to make you want to poke your ears and eyes out with a blunt instrument, Fox News wanted to make sure that no one misunderstood how Team Trump they really are… by adding a bizarre laugh track to the Q&A.

When Gutfeld launched into his line of hard-hitting questions, like what Trump—the man who suggested we all drink bleach to take care of the COVID problem—would tell the Fox News host’s unvaccinated wife about getting a jab. Trump’s response:

“Well first of all I’d say, why is she not doing it? Does she have some kind of religious thing?”

Huh?

When Gutfeld admitted that it was simply because his wife is skeptical of the opinion of medical experts, Trump—Freud incarnate—remembered something about Gutfeld’s spouse: “Well, she’s Russian? That’s the end of that.”

Cue the uproarious laughter.

Trump then went off on one of his babbling rants where he’s trying to talk about history and using words that he doesn’t understand (hey, two syllables can be tough). Fortunately, no one was listening, as it was impossible to hear over the computerized hysterics happening in the background. Honestly, if you muted the sound, it would be hard to know whether Gutfeld was laughing, having a stroke, or had accidentally just sharted.

The set got even more slap-happy when Trump started talking about the Taliban, which, let’s face it, is always a laugh-out-loud topic.

Somewhere in the Fox News studios, the echoes of Gutfeld’s maniacal laughter is still ringing. Then again, it’s just these sorts of hijinks one should expect from a man with an exclamation point in his show’s title!