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Lil Durk is back with some heat. Tonight (February 23), the Chicago rapper has begun rolling out a new project, sharing his new single, “Old Days.”

On the new single, Durk looks back on his tumultuous journey, which has shaped him into who he is today.

“I miss the old days, the old ways, my history iconic / I was takin’ so many pills, I was so high, I really abused it,” he recalls on one of the song’s verses. Now, in a better place in terms of both his mental and physical health, he finds himself wanting peace, but fears the idea may now be a pipe dream. “I wish I could stop the war, I really wanna live in peace / I wish I could stop the war, but it’s too late for them to speak.”

2024 is gearing up to be a big year for Durk. Earlier this month, Durk won his first Grammy for Best Melodic Rap Performance for his J. Cole collaboration, “All My Life.” He also joined Cole and Drake for their It’s All A Blur — Big As The What? Tour. While celebrating these huge milestones, Durk has been teasing his next project, Love Songs 4 The Streets 3.

You can see the “Old Days” video above.

We are just weeks away from Justin Timberlake‘s new album, Everything I Thought It Was. And during the rollout, the pop hitmaker has been pulling out all the stops. Over the past few weeks, Timberlake has performed two free pop-up shows, performed as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, and shared new songs by way of live performances. Tonight (February 23), Timberlake has shared “Drown,” the latest taste of Everything I Thought It Was.

The new single shows a vulnerable side of Timberlake, as he details feelings of betrayal by a lover.

“You left me alone out in the dark with all of your demons / Got caught up in the tide of all the tears you cried / Yeah, you know I was blinded by my heart, sinking from the start / Should’ve never followed you this far, now I’m in the deep end / And you let me drown / You didn’t even try to save me,” he sings on the song’s chorus.

While the past few years have placed Timberlake in a controversial light, Timberlake seems to be telling his side of the story through music. Though it’s unclear who the song is about, Timberlake’s ability to tell a story through a pop ballad hasn’t dwindled.

You can listen to “Drown” above.

Everything I Thought It Was is out 3/15 via RCA. Find more information here.

Some students choose to live at home while they go to college to save money on living expenses, but that’s generally only an option for families who live in college towns or cities with large universities where a student can easily commute.

For University of British Columbia student Tim Chen, that “easy commute” is more than 400 miles each way.

Twice a week, Chen hops on a flight from his home city of Calgary, flies a little more than an hour to Vancouver to attend his classes, then flies back home the same night. And though it’s hard to believe, this routine actually saves him approximately $1,000 a month.

How does that math work? Well, each round trip flight costs around $150, so twice a week puts him at $1,200 a month for flights. Meanwhile, according to CTV, rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in Vancouver is around $2,100 (though according to reporting in the Vancouver Sun, the average 1-bedroom apartment has actually hit a whopping $3,000 a month). Chen had actually been living in Vancouver previously, but gave up his rental when he went on vacation. When he returned, the price on the place he’d been renting had gone up to $2,500.

“I thought, why don’t I just stay at Calgary and then just fly here, it’s like a one-hour flight, that’s like the same as taking a bus,” he told CTV.

Chen lives with his parents in Calgary and only pays a small amount for utilities, so despite the cost of flights, commuting by plane is ultimately far cheaper than living in Vancouver.

Plus, imagine how many frequent flier miles he’s racking up.

— (@)

Chen is not the first student to commute to college by commercial airplane. An engineering student who was accepted to a one-year master’s program at University of California, Berkeley, flew to school from Los Angeles, where he had an affordable place to live and where he planned to return when his program was finished. Once he crunched the numbers, he realized it would actually save him money to commute by plane to the Bay area and take the train from the airport to campus three times a week rather than live in Berkeley.

In all, that student spent $5592.66 over the 10 months it took him to complete his program, which was less than what he would have paid for just two months living in Berkeley.

We’re living in some strange economic times, where people are having to get creative about where and how they live. Some people have discovered that unconventional lifestyles, such as living on a cruise ship, in vacation rentals or at an all-inclusive resort can be less expensive—or just as expensive—as traditional rent or mortgage payments (plus relevant living expenses). And now that more people are able to work remotely—one of the few positives to come out of the pandemic—such alternatives are more doable than ever.

Of course, the “time is money”consideration is real, and the hassle of going to the airport twice a week in the morning and evening like Tim Chen does might not be worth it for some people. But with rent prices nearly 30% higher than they were before the pandemic, more people are in need of creative solutions to cost-of-living conundrums.

Even if that means living at home and hopping a flight to school several hundred miles awaay.

Being in the service industry can be hard. People have to spend long hours on their feet, deal with repetitive movements that can create pain and sometimes interact with not so nice customers. When you rely on tips for survival on top of everything else, it can feel like a bit of a gut punch when someone decides not to leave you one despite how good your service was.

One customer must’ve realized the disappointment that can occur after not receiving a tip when serving tables because he went out of his way to give one. In a post shared on Reddit, a customer revealed in a letter that he realized he took the wrong receipt after leaving. Instead of taking the blank one, he took the merchant’s copy which holds the tip amount and his signature.

The error was discovered when he was checking his bank account and saw the amount taken off of his card was not the amount he expected. That’s when he decided to check the receipt from that day and saw the error.

Instead of just brushing it off and moving on, the man wrote out a note explaining what happened with a sincere apology along with a $20 cash tip and delivered it to the restaurant.

The note read, “When I checked my bank statement Tuesday (1/2) I noticed that the pending withdrawal tied to my and my wife’s lunches did not appear to be correct. Relying on memory (never a good thing) I had in mind that the scheduled withdrawal should have been larger. I pulled my receipts and discovered that I had inadvertently retained the signed merchant’s copy of my VISA receipts when I left your restaurant Saturday (12/30) afternoon. As a result, while the food was fully paid, the tip which I had intended to leave for our server, Hope C, was not relayed back to VISA. I can only trust that Hope will forgive my blunder. Please find the enclosed her tip in cash. That was no way for either of us to end 2023. Here’s to a fresh start.”

Ted, the forgetful patron ended the note with an apology to the manager and the server. After the photo went viral on the social media platform, commenters told their own stories of people going out of their way to make things right.

One commenter writes, “Been about 30 years or so but my grandfather would take me on trips in the summer to visit relatives. We were driving to Florida and we stopped to get gas. We leave and drive 50 or 60 miles. My grandpa pulls over and says I never paid for the gas. We turned around and drove all the way back to pay for the gas.”

Another says, “I once forgot to pay for my dry cleaning when I picked it up. I went back the next day to give them the cash and they said ‘You came back!’ the second I walked in. I was very surprised that this wouldn’t be the default behavior of everyone.”

The Reddit thread shows that there are still good people in the world that will go out of their way to correct a mistake or make someone’s day.

Tony Trapani and his wife were married for 50 years despite the heartache of being unable to have children. “She wanted children,” Trapani told Fox 17. “She couldn’t have any. She tried and tried.” Even though they endured the pain of infertility, Tony’s love for his wife never wavered and he cherished every moment they spent together.

After his wife passed away when Tony was 81 years old, he undertook the heartbreaking task of sorting out all of her belongings. That’s when he stumbled upon a carefully concealed letter in a filing cabinet hidden for over half a century.

The letter was addressed to Tony and dated March 1959, but this was the first time he had seen it. His wife must have opened it, read it and hid it from him. The letter came from Shirley Childress, a woman Tony had once been close with before his marriage. She reached out, reminiscing about their past and revealing a secret that would change Tony’s world forever.

“Dear Tony, I bet you are surprised to hear from me after so many years. I was just thinking about you tonight like so many other nights. But I thought I would write you and find out how you are,” the letter reads. “Tony, please don’t be angry or surprised to hear this. I have a little boy. He is five-years- old now – grey eyes and beautiful black hair. What I am trying to say Tony is he is your son.”

“Please, Tony if you can find it in your heart to forgive me, please come and see him,” Shirley wrote in the letter. “Every day he asks me where is his daddy and believe me Tony I can’t even answer him anymore. If would be forever grateful to you if you would just see him. … I’ll close now hoping and praying you will answer. P.S. His name is Samuel Duane.”

Now, Tony faced the fact that he had a son that would be around 60 years old and he set out to find him. For over a year, Trapani’s sister tried to track down the mysterious Samuel Duane Childress, until she finally contacted his wife, Donna.

Tony and Samuel met in January 2015 and he felt like a new dad. After meeting his father, Samuel said his mother told him she sent the letter, but Tony never responded. “Why my wife didn’t tell me,” said Trapani. “I don’t know. She wanted children. She couldn’t have any. She tried and tried.”

“I always asked my mom, I said, ‘Well what does he look like?” Samuel said. “She said, ‘Well, go look in the mirror.”

Tony Trapani, 81, meets his son for the first time after finding a hidden letter from 1959. https://t.co/iNSKVMjnjv

— (@)

The two met and caught up on a lifetime of memories with the understanding that they could never change the past. “Just to know him now is so important to me. It’s going to fill that void,” Samuel said. But just to be sure, Tony took a paternity test to ensure they were father and son.

The test came back negative, revealing that Tony was not the father. The news upset Tony and Samuel, but they still had a unique bond. They shared a relationship with Samuel’s mother and both have been on an incredibly wild ride after Tony found the mysterious letter.

“They’re keeping that bond,” Donna said. “That paper doesn’t mean anything to him. That bond has been made—and we’re going to move on from here.”

Cole Bennett continues to make good on his promise to drop a video for every song on the Lyrical Lemonade compilation album, All Is Yellow. Today (February 22), the prolific video director has shared the video for the album’s opening track, “Fly Away,” which features Sheck Wes, Ski Mask The Slump God, and JID.

In the song’s accompanying video, Ski Mask emerges from Lyrical Lemonade’s signature yellow curtain, sitting upon a yellow throne as he delivers his scorching verse.

The video then cuts to JID, who shines bright in a dark room, putting his lyrical ability and his star power on full display. The rappers are all seen in black suits and yellow ties throughout the visual.

In an interview with Paste, Bennett shared that for the All Is Yellow album, he wanted to tie the videos together using the yellow curtains and accessories.

“It’s gotten to the point where the audience’s eye has now been trained to see a black suit and a yellow tie, without any context beyond that, and know exactly what it means,” said Bennett. “And that’s super exciting to me, to be able to drive home a theme that far.”

You can see the video for “Fly Away” above.

The NBA regular season resumed on Thursday after a week-long hiatus built around All-Star Weekend. While the majority of the league’s personnel had several days off, Kevin Durant was busy for at least part of the break, representing the Phoenix Suns as a member of the Western Conference All-Star team in Indianapolis. Following what was hopefully at least a small respite for Durant and other All-Stars, the Suns took on the Dallas Mavericks in a highly intriguing road game in front of a national television audience on the first night of the second half.

Before tip-off actually happened, however, Durant was involved in a notable interaction with a pair of Mavericks fans in Dallas. In short, one of the fans called Durant a “b*tch,” and the 35-year-old former MVP did not take kindly to that.

As you can see in the pair of videos, Durant was at least relatively cordial with the fans and ultimately stopped security personnel from removing them from the premises. It was also remarkable to see the change in tone from the couple as soon as Durant turned around to acknowledge what was said in the first place.

In particular, the fan saying “I host a podcast about sports,” as if that was going to mean anything here, is ridiculous. Alas, Durant is more than willing to mix it up with fans during the game and, this time, he didn’t have to wait until the game was actually happening because a fan was completely out of line before the opening tip.

Selena Gomez has another bop on her hands. Today (February 22), she shared her steamy new single, “Love On.”

Over a groovy, bouncy beat, Gomez teases a lover, letting him know that while things are heating up, there’s more to come, as she is about to turn her love on. The song itself feels like a luxury, as she details the fantasies of all the places they can get wild.

“Why are we conversing over this steak tartare / When we could be somewhere other than here / Making out in the back of a car / Or in the back of a bar / Or we could make a memoir,” she sings on one of the song’s verses.

The song’s accompanying video matches the audio’s opulent energy, as Gomez is seen enjoying dinner at a hotel in Paris, surrounded by couples embracing and making out.

“Love On” is expected to appear on Gomez’s upcoming fourth studio album (which will be her third under Interscope). Additionally, Gomez is hard at work filming the fourth season of Only Murders In The Building, and recently signed on to a reboot of her breakthrough series, Wizards Of Waverly Place.

You can see the sexy video for “Love On” above.

It’s been an incredible month for SZA. At this year’s Grammys, the “Snooze” hitmaker took home three awards, delivered a killer performance of two of her SOS fan favorites, and launched an environmentally conscious partnership with Mastercard. As part of the launch, she premiered a new commercial, which contained a preview of a new song, “Saturn,” from her upcoming SOS reissue, LANA.

Today (February 22), SZA finally released “Saturn” on streaming platforms.

On “Saturn,” SZA finds herself questioning the meaning of life, and wondering if the condition of the world around her is currently as good as it’s going to get.

“Sick of this head of mine / Intrusive thoughts, they paralyze / Thе fun is not as advertised / Therе’s got to be more, been here before,” SZA sings on the song’s hook.

According to a press release which accompanied the initial launch of SZA’s Mastercard campaign, “Saturn” will appear on LANA, however, she has not shared an official release date for the project. The audio bundle for “Saturn” comes with the standard version of the song, a live version which was featured in the Mastercard campaign, an instrumental, a sped-up version, and an acapella version.

You can listen to “Saturn” above and stream the audio bundle here.

We’ve long known that baleen whales sing underwater and that males sing in tropical waters to attract females for mating. What we haven’t known is how they’re able to do it.

When humans make sound underwater, we expel air over through our vocal chords and the air we release rises to the surface as bubbles. But baleen whales don’t have vocal chords, and they don’t create bubbles when they vocalize. Toothed whales, such as sperm whales, beaked whales, dolphins and porpoises, have an organ in their nasal passages that allows them to vocalize, but baleen whales such as humpback, gray and blue whales don’t.

Whales are notoriously difficult to study because of their size and the environment they require, which is why the mechanism behind whale song has remained a mystery for so long. It’s not like scientists can just pluck a whale out of the ocean and stick it in an x-ray machine while it’s singing to see what’s happening inside its body to create the sound. Scientists had theories, but no one really knew how baleen whales sing.

Now, thanks to researchers at the University of Denmark, that mystery has been solved.

To figure it out, a research team blew air through larynxes that had been removed from three juvenile whales that had died after being stranded—one humpback, one minke and one sei whale. They discovered that the design of these “voice boxes” and the mechanism they use to create sound is unique among mammals.

The study, published in the journal Nature, describes a u-shaped structure with a cushion of fat and muscle that allows air to be recycled and prevents water from being inhaled. When air is pushed through it, part of the fatty cushion vibrates and creates the low frequency sound we call whale song.

“We’ve never seen this in any other animal,” lead author Coen Elemans told AFP. “This is a completely novel adaptation, and we think this allowed these large whales to make sound in the water while basically holding their breath.”

The low frequency of their singing also sheds light on how human shipping activity can impact these whales’ ability to communicate. Whale singing tops out at a frequency of 300 hertz, and whales have to be near the ocean’s surface to sing. Since boat sounds range from 30 to 300 hertz and are at the surface of the water, our activity can interfere with whales’ communication and reproductive behaviors in ways whales aren’t able to adapt to.

“They cannot simply choose to, for example, sing higher to avoid the noise we make in the ocean,” Elemans explained to BBC News, adding additional context for why it matters. “[These are some] of the most enigmatic animals that ever lived on the planet. They are amongst the biggest animals, they’re smart and they’re highly social.”

Whale populations have seen a positive turnaround since most countries put an end to commercial whaling, but now the threat is less direct. Since whales live in a mostly acoustic world under the waves, the noise created by boats and shipping vessels can affect their behavior. Since whales can’t “outsing” our boat noises, we need to alter our own behavior prevent negatively impacting theirs.

In February 2024, the U.S. Coast Guard launched a “cetacean desk” that alerts regional ferries and commercial vessels in Washington State’s Salish Sea to whale sightings in an attempt to prevent collisions and reduce noise when whales are known to be present. The alert system utilizes apps where mariners and civilians can report whale sightings, which are then passed on to captains.

Whale vocalizations are incredibly diverse and wide-ranging, and there’s a lot we still don’t know about how they communicate. We know that they vocalize to find one another in the murky depths and that males sing to attract females, but more research is needed to learn about the intricacies of their vocal repertoire.

But at least now scientists have a better picture of the “how,” which is one step closer to better understanding these massive, magnificent creatures.