When it comes to Louisville’s Old Forester, there’s one bottle that rules them all — Old Forester Birthday Bourbon. I cannot overstate how much people lust after this bottle. I’ve been at auctions and seen single bottles go for five figures easily. The main reason is that this is unassailably amazing American whiskey that’s super rare and always interesting.
Read our review of the 2023, 2022, and 2021 vintages by clicking on the dates.
Well, that, and it’s released once per year with a very small bottle count making it into the masses. The whiskey is usually a blend of 12-year-old barrels that were all filled on the same day (hence the “Birthday” moniker). It also always comes in at a very sippable 96-proof.
Last year, the rarity was amped up even more by Old Forester moving to a lottery system to get your hands on one from the distillery. Yes, small allocations went out to elite bars and restaurants. But if you wanted to get your own bottle as a consumer, you had to win a distillery lottery and go to Kentucky to pick up your bottle. That’s commitment, folks.
That means for some, it’s just easier to pay a premium on the secondary retail market or at auction. Or taste it at a whiskey bar.
This bottle becomes available in September every year. That means that you’ll need to enter the lottery in mid/late August. Old Forester will announce the lottery in mid-summer, with the lottery usually running the last two weeks of August. It’s on you to track Old Forester’s socials and whiskey groups’ news and announcements to see exactly when the 2024 lottery will take place.
Last year, 500 folks we lucky enough to win the “sweepstakes” and get the honor of buying a bottle. It’s probably best to assume that this year’s winners will be around the same number. So you have about six months to keep track and get ready to enter. Good luck!
Also Read: The Top 5 UPROXX Bourbon Posts Of The Last Six Months
Over the last couple years Donald Trump has burned through quite a lot of lawyers. And no wonder: Apart from the sheer volume of his alleged crimes, he has no impulse control. On the rare occasions he shows up to court, he acts like a petulant child, making things worse for himself. At this point he’s scraping the bottom of the barrel, and he’s knows it, admitting that at this point anyone who would take him on must have several screws loose.
Per The Daily Beast, the former president is in the midst of trying to appeal the whopping $83.3 million a jury ordered him to pay E. Jean Carroll, who successfully sued him for defamation, again. In a post on his rinky-dink Twitter clone, Trump informed fans he was “in the process” of deciding which law firm he’ll go with. Of course, even he knows his options are limited.
“Any lawyer who takes a TRUMP CASE is either ‘CRAZY,’ or a TRUE AMERICAN PATRIOT,” Trump wrote, adding, “I will make my decision soon!”
It’s true, a lawyer who represents him must really love dealing with a client who enrages judges and juries alike, and who so far hasn’t had much luck with cases against him. They’d have to be a masochist — or whatever his definition of a “patriot” is, which increasingly seems to mean “adores Trump more than American democracy.”
Ignoring the “patriot” part, this is a rarity: a moment of honesty who usually only tells the truth when it’s done by accident.
It’s Barbie’s world and we’re all just living in it. The film that became a global phenomenon, making the most money of any film in the U.S. and worldwide for the year, has also made a strong showing during awards season. Among this year’s list of Grammy nominees, it dominates. The soundtrack, which is a major feature of the film’s merchandising, landed Record Of The Year and Song Of The Year nominations for Billie Eilish, Finneas, Mark Ronson, and Andrew Wyatt. That track, “What Was I Made For?” also garnered a Best Pop Solo Performance nom for Eilish. Dua Lipa’s “Dance The Night” also has a nomination for Song Of The Year.
It goes on from there. Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice’s reinvention of Aqua’s “Barbie World” got a Best Rap nomination — and the latter is up for Best New Artist. The soundtrack itself is nominated for Best Compilation Soundtrack For Visual Media while Ronson and Wyatt share a nomination for Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media (Includes Film And Television). And, perhaps most remarkably, in the category of Best Song Written For Visual Media four of the five nominees are from Barbie — the three songs listed above and “I’m Just Ken,” performed by Ryan Gosling and written by Ronson and Wyatt.
For those keeping score at home, that’s a total of 11 nominations for one soundtrack, besting the year’s most nominated artist, SZA, who has nine. And aside from the Barbie soundtrack and SZA, women lead the Grammy nominations this year — which is exactly the kind of domination that Barbie Land expects from women in the Real World. But does it mean that we’ve reached equality (or even established a matriarchy) in music and the problems of feminism are solved?
Obviously not — the Annenberg Institute’s annual report on gender inequalities in music notes that despite the prevalence of women nominated this year, down to it being a record-breaking year for women nominees in the big four categories (Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year, Album Of The Year, and Best New Artist), women are underrepresented in behind-the-scenes roles, including producing and songwriting. So let’s start there, with the men who produced and wrote much of the Barbie soundtrack.
Ronson stepped in to executive produce a soundtrack and score the film after being texted the question, “Barbie?” by music supervisor George Drakoulias, the AP reports, who previously worked with filmmakers Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach across several of their films, including Marriage Story and Frances Ha. It is Ronson’s first time scoring and creating an original soundtrack for a film, although he previously contributed to some of the most-awarded songs on the soundtrack for A Star Is Born in 2018, including “Shallow.”
What Ronson and Wyatt ended up doing with Gerwig and the film’s editor, Nick Houy, went far beyond commissioning original pop songs for the film that fit Barbie. Obviously, it was heavy on women artists who were asked to look at the world through Barbie’s eyes or narrate her experience. One standout moment that became a breakout single from the film is Dua Lipa’s “Dance The Night,” which plays during a party and choreographed dance scene only to record scratch to a halt when Barbie asks, “Do you ever think about dying?” The moment was so powerful that it was in early trailers for the film to set the tone. Ronson and Wyatt constructed the music, which Gerwig used as a placeholder and to choreograph the dancing, but they brought Dua in later to write lyrics. “Dua Lipa wrote specific lyrics to picture, similarly to Lizzo, which was extraordinary,” Gerwig told IndieWire. “I mean she’s just standing in a studio making up lyrics to Margot [looking at] the camera and [gesturing] at the camera.” Gerwig and Huoy decided the song was so good that they wanted to use it everywhere in the score, ultimately blending it in every time the Mattel executives were on screen. Lizzo’s song “Pink” was similarly constructed, with the singer ad-libbing lines to the scene over music by Ronson and Wyatt.
The group did something similar with Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?,” preparing a 30-minute cut of the movie, because there wasn’t a specific scene they wanted a song from Eilish for, and tasking her with writing a song that would explain what was on Barbie’s mind. Ronson and Wyatt took stems of the final product and created score that lilts in and out of the film’s score repeatedly. “By the time you get to it at the end, you’ve actually been hearing it the whole movie,” Gerwig said.
Eilish manages to hit on something else with her song that became a big topic of discourse around the film: the complexities of performing femininity. As Barbie experiences the realities of objectification and sexism in the Real World, Eilish’s lyrics explore themes of self-actualization. While Barbie explains to Ken that he has to stand on his own, Eilish examines transactional relationships and being “something you paid for.” And while Barbie struggles with depression after failure, so does Eilish. Talking to Apple Music, Eilish admits that after writing the initial song and listening back to it, she realized she was writing about her own life. “Every single lyric is exactly how I feel. It’s about my life,” she said.
Those songs are accompanied by a gaggle of other talented women artists, including Haim, Charli XCX, Nicki Minaj, Ice Spice, Karol G, PinkPanthress, Gayle, and Ava Max. Atlantic Records and Warner Brothers set the soundtrack up to be an international success, with artists from all over the globe included and singles released regionally. It reflects the Barbies in the movie who represent a range of ethnicities, body types, and (of course) hair colors.
The b-side (and film’s b-story) comes in the voice of Ken, whose biggest splash on the soundtrack is “I’m Just Ken,” written by Ronson and Wyatt and performed by Ryan Gosling. It’s an unhinged diatribe from a rejected guy with lines funny enough to stop him from being an incel (see “a life of blonde fragility” and “anywhere else I’d be a 10”) and brilliantly stupid enough to stop him from being sympathetic. It’s a fan favorite we may never forget or forgive for coining the term “Kenergy.”
What makes the Barbie soundtrack an oddity is what also made it such an interesting success. It’s not a feminist point of view or the award nominations it has garnered for women artists. It’s the return of the original soundtrack. It would have been easy to load this movie up with Aqua’s “Barbie Girl,” drop a ‘70s disco track into the dance scene, and commission one original song to be the “heart” of the film. In fact, that’s what most movies do. It takes a guaranteed blockbuster — with a blockbuster budget — to even be able to afford to pay for this many new songs. And it required the distribution arm of an international company, perhaps subsidized by some Mattel money, to have the marketing dollars to get this many hit singles off a soundtrack, let alone fund the awards-season campaigns for them. But after seeing it happen with A Star Is Born and Ronson’s years of mastering the mixtape with his compilation releases — as well as his time producing albums by some of the most successful women in music — it’s an out-of-the-ballpark home run in Barbie.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
This development flies in the face of public opinion on the topic. A recent poll found that 88% of Americans wish they had been taught financial literacy in school. The same number said their state should require either a semester or year-long personal finance course for graduation.
A teacher in Charlotte, North Carolina, has taken that problem to heart and is giving her 3rd-grade class rigorous, hands-on lessons on the importance of personal finance.
Shelby Lattimore, a math and science teacher at Renaissance West STEAM Academy, gives her students jobs in the classroom and they pay differently depending on how hard the students work. “We have a teacher assistant, line leader, door holder, recess basket, lunch basket. We have a cleanup crew,” Lattimore said.
Hard Life Lessons in 3rd Grade, my students had to pay rent for the first time! Year Two of collecting classroom rent and it is still the best feeling ever! #rent #money #teacher
Every month, they must pay her “rent” for use of their desks and chairs, just like their parents have to do. And just like in the real world, rent just went up. It was $5 and now it’s $7.
The kids are allowed to use their money for rewards, so they have to consider whether to spend or save every month. “They get paid twice a week and then they have to pay rent once a month, just like me,” Lattimore told WCCBCharlotte.
“Parents from my class are thanking me because a lot of them do live check to check, and they were never taught to think of money, long term,” said Lattimore.
Lattimore believes that teaching financial literacy is especially important in her classroom and surrounding community.
“Charlotte is known for generational poverty,” Lattimore told NBC News. “A lot of my students of color, Hispanic, Black, whatever it may be, they see their parents, they see their guardian, they see their grandmothers, grandfathers, whatever, may be living check to check. They see the money management of not thinking long term necessarily and the consequences of it.”
“It gives you a life lesson on how money is,” a female student told WCNC.
The average adult only correctly answers 48% of the questions on the 2023 TIAA Institute-GFLEC Personal Finance Index, a test that measures financial knowledge. Those numbers were lower for Black (34%) and Hispanic people (38%) who took the test.
Students and parents love Mrs. Lattimore, but she’s also found a significant following on TikTok, where over 890,000 users follow her posts. The videos are simple. Lattimore sits at her desk and teaches lessons to her students.
A video where she explained the ins and outs of personal hygiene has received nearly 20 million views. “As a child growing up being neglected, you are going to be remembered as their favorite teacher,” Gigi wrote in the comments. “So glad you’re teaching them. Some kids don’t have this at home,” Brinley added.
Replying to @Ms.L Pt.2 I never thought I’d have to brush my teeth in front of my entire class but we are here…. #hygieneproducts #teeth #teacher
“It’s organic. You know, they see the relationship that that me and my kids have built together and I think that’s why the following is amazing,” Lattimore told WCCBCharlotte.
So when Elmo asked all the grownups on X to how they were doing, it triggered a deluge that spoke to people’s need to share their mental and emotional struggles as well as the safe place Sesame Street has been for generations.
It all began with a simple question: “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?”
Elmo surely did not expect thousands upon thousands of people to dump their emotional loads on him like they were in a therapy session, but that’s exactly what happened.
@elmo Elmo we are tired
— (@)
Not only did people respond that they were tired—a common refrain—but they also shared about the deaths of loved ones, their relationship struggles, jobs they’d been laid off from, their feelings of despair and depression. Clearly, some people needed a place to put their woes, and who better to receive them than a beloved childhood character who we know understands and accepts us unconditionally?
To Sesame Street’s credit, they handled the trauma dump as best a fictional world filled with fictional characters possibly could. After the initial post’s impact, Elmo posted, “Wow! Elmo is glad he asked! Elmo learned that it is important to ask a friend how they are doing. Elmo will check in again soon, friends! Elmo loves you.” Elmo added the hashtag #EmotionalWellBeing.
And then the other Sesame Street characters started chiming in.
— (@)
One by one, all perfectly in character, the Sesame Street crew showed up on their respective accounts to offer their support, all using the #EmotionalWellBeing hashtag.
“I’m here if you ever need a shoulder to lean on. I’ll make us both a warm cup of tea,” wrote Bert.
“If you need some cheering up, let me know! I love making others smile,” wrote Ernie.
“Me here to talk it out whenever you want. Me will also supply cookies,” wrote Cookie Monster.
“I, Grover, am here to be a good listener whenever you need it,” wrote Grover.
Even Oscar the Grouch weighed in with some honesty and support. “I’m not great at listening to other share their big feelings, but my worm Slimey is. You should talk with him if you ever need to chat.”
Yes, it’s silly. But it’s also not, because Sesame Street truly has been a lifeline for countless kids who found solace, support and celebration of themselves in those beloved characters, sometimes even more than they found at home.
But the wave of support and words of kindness and understanding didn’t stay confined to Sesame Street. All kinds of big accounts, from NASA and the United Nations to Xbox and Verizon—even the President of the United States himself—weighed in with gratitude for Elmo checking in and reminders that we’re all making our way through this life together.
@elmo Thanks for checking in @Elmo. Reminding you all that you are made of star stuff. u2728
— (@)
Does it get more wholesome than NASA reminding us we’re made of stardust?
I know how hard it is some days to sweep the clouds away and get to sunnier days.nnOur friend Elmo is right: We have to be there for each other, offer our help to a neighbor in need, and above all else, ask for help when we need it.nnEven though it’s hard, you’re never alone.
— (@)
The entire phenomenon was a testament to the enduring influence of Sesame Street, but also a good reminder to check in with people once in a while. You never know who might need to offload some emotional weight, and as cathartic as it might feel to drop it all on a beloved icon like Elmo, nothing compares to a real-life friend who offers a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on.
Thank you for the inspiration, Sesame Street creators. Still managing to nurture the children within us, all these years later.
The birth rate in the U.S. has steadily declined since the Great Recession. Between 2007 and 2023, it has decreased by nearly 23%. In 1950, the average American woman had 3 children. Now, she has only 1.6, which is drastically lower than the replacement rate of 2.1.
The dropping birthrate has many worried that it will upend government programs because there won’t be enough young people to work and pay taxes to support older people on Social Security and Medicare.
Faith Hill from The Atlantic recently illustrated another problem with the declining birthrate in the U.S. and Europe that no one talks about: the decline of cousins.
“If everyone hypothetically went from having five kids to having four kids, that would mean one less sibling for each child,” Hill wrote, quoting demographer Sha Jiang. “But it would yield a much bigger decrease in first cousins: Instead of a child having four aunts or uncles who each have five kids—20 cousins—they would have three aunts or uncles who each have four kids, for a total of 12.”
Further, only about 6% of adult cousins live in the same U.S. census tract. The rest are about 237 miles apart.
TikToker Miriam Tinney, who curates interesting stories she finds online, shared the news in a video that has over 3.7 million views.
What do you think? #family #cousins #relationships #siblings #theatlantic
Psychologists believe cousins play an essential role in families because even though they are relations, the emotional bonds with them may not be as tight. “Cousins, extended family, allow psychological distance that immediate family cannot,” relationship therapist Larry Shushansky told The Chicago Tribune. “Relationships with cousins afford a certain space, a certain independence, that allows us to have different kinds of experiences with them.”
“They can be a source of balance … affording the closeness and common bond that exists in families, as well as the psychological distance that is one step removed from the dependency that causes anxiety and conflict within immediate [family members],” Shushansky continued.
This unique position in the family allows cousins to take on various roles. Your cousin can be a mentor, friend, acquaintance, partner in crime at family functions or someone who helps you understand your extended family.
A cousin may not be the family member who lends you a kidney, but they can be the person who helps you mend fences with a sibling or allows you to cut loose at a family gathering because neither of you fears the other’s judgment.
“Without cousins, who will my kids go smoke with on the cousin walk at Thanksgiving?” Rebeccaversonx commented on Tinny’s video. “I’m ethnic sooooooo cousins are basically another set of siblings,” Viv added.
“I don’t think they surveyed POC because cousins in non-white families are usually super close,” Britty added.
Given that cousins can have a significant role in our lives, Hill is right to lament the loss of the important, if not necessarily vital, relationship.
“A cousin-sparse future, then, could be a greater loss than people might recognize,” Hill wrote. “It might also make the relationship that much more important: With fewer of them around, cousins may need to depend on one another even more. Families are shrinking—but that doesn’t mean they need to come apart.”
With a lengthy list of credits in critically acclaimed films like “Taxi Driver” and “Silence of the Lambs,” not to mention being a highly successful director for decades, you can probably trust any movie recommendations Jodie Foster gives you.
Recently Foster was asked in Interview magazine to pick one movie she thought everyone should see at least once in their lifetime.
Pulling a pretty badass move, the legendary filmmaker gave not one, but two movies. And one of her recommendations might come as a surprise.
First up, Foster listed A24’s “Everything, Everywhere All At Once,” which probably isn’t that shocking. After all, it won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2023, and is kind of on the top of practically everyone’s list right now.
But “Everything, Everywhere” is actually her number two choice. Number one is…drumroll please…”Team America: World Police.”
Yes, the movie where the world is saved from a global terrorist group by an elite team of puppets. That’s the one.
And look, her reasoning is quite relatable.
“A sense of humor is my touchstone, and I have a very dumb sense of humor. Sometimes with actors, even in the most dramatic circumstances, I like to laugh with them. I like to laugh about really intense things,” she said.
Fair point, we all (hopefully) have a “dumb” movie or television show that gives us a good giggle. For Foster, it’s “Team America.” For me, it’s “Frasier” reruns. For you, it’s something else.
Since promoting “True Detective: Night Country,” which Foster stars in, we’ve caught a bit more of her sense of humor in interviews, like a recent article in The Guardian where she joked about Gen Zers being “irritating” to work with.
“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace. They’re like, ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or, like, in emails, I’ll tell them this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like, ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’” she quipped.
This cheekiness isn’t a side of Foster the public hasn’t seen much over the years. But then again, the actress has understandably valued her privacy—especially after overcoming the inherent challenges of childhood stardom, enduring stalkers and having to hide her sexuality for so many years. So the very fact that she is playfully defending the brilliance of “Team America” or teasing Gen Z for their laidback-ness, seems like she has maybe reached a new chapter in her life.
“True Detective: Night Country” is currently airing on HBO.
Last week, Amber Smith from Warwickshire, England, revealed something about herself that many of her Facebook friends didn’t know:
She suffers from crippling panic attacks.
Smith shared her story by posting two completely different pictures of herself and the powerful imagery has been shared over 7,500 times.
“Top Picture: What I showcase to the world via social media. Dressed up, make-up done, filters galore. The ‘normal’ side to me.”
“Bottom picture: Taken tonight shortly after suffering from a panic attack because of my anxiety. Also, the ‘normal’ side to me that most people don’t see.”
Full post:
God knows why I’m doing this, but people need some home truths..
Top picture: What I showcase to the world via social media. Dressed up, make up done, filters galore. The ‘normal’ side to me. Bottom picture: Taken tonight shortly after suffering from a panic attack because of my anxiety. Also the ‘normal” side to me that most people don’t see.
I’m so sick of the fact that it’s 2016 and there is still so much stigma around mental health. It disgusts me that so many people are so uneducated and judgmental over the topic. They say that 1 in 3 people will suffer with a mental illness at some point in their life. 1 in 3! Do you know how many people that equates to worldwide?! And yet I’ve been battling with anxiety and depression for years and years and there’s still people that make comments like ‘you’ll get over it’, ‘you don’t need tablets, just be happier’, ‘you’re too young to suffer with that’
F*** YOU. F*** all of you small minded people that think that because I physically look ‘fine’ that I’m not battling a monster inside my head every single day.
Someone actually said this to me one day ‘aren’t you too young to be suffering with anxiety and depression? What do you actually have to be depressed about at your age?” Wow, just wow.
I’m a strong person, I’ve been through my fair share of crap in life (the same as anyone else) and I will be okay. I have the best family and friends around me and I am thankful everyday that they have the patience to help and support me. To anyone who is going through the same, please do not suffer in silence. There is so much support around – Don’t be scared to ask for help.
This is why I can’t stress enough that it costs nothing to be nice to others. Don’t bully others, don’t put others down and the hardest one of them all (as we have all done it at some point) don’t judge another person. We’re all human regardless of age, race, religion, wealth, job. So build one another up instead of breaking each other down. Peace & love guys
Smith’s before-and-after photos perfectly symbolize how panic attacks feel, because they often come on without any warning. People suffering from attacks can experience shortness of breath, heart palpitations, trembling, hot and cold flashes or myriad other debilitating symptoms.
According to the National Institutes of Mental Health, over four million Americans suffer from panic attacks, and although they are emotionally debilitating, they can be overcome through cognitive/behavioral therapy. According to Thomas A. Richards, Ph. D, “Today, panic attacks and agoraphobia can be treated successfully with a motivated client and a knowledgeable therapist.”
I recently spent some time with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. He’s known not only for breaking down stereotypes about what kinds of people go into science, but he has actively stood up and spoken against those who would close its doors, especially to young women.
So when Neil was asked this question by a little girl during a public speech, he gave one of the best answers I’ve ever heard. It may drive some parents crazy, but it also might just help change the world.
Maybe you notice you’re less motivated than usual. Maybe you acknowledge that you’re no longer going the extra mile, and you’re not quite sure why. Maybe professionalism is a term you’ve long since forgotten.
For many of us, the struggle can be so, so real. That’s why Willie Muse wrote these all-too-relatable comics for College Humor, illustrated by Karina Farek.
These six funny comics perfectly illustrate what a typical first day at your job looks like versus the 101st day:
1. Who doesn’t look at at least one viral video a day?
2. You suddenly find the time to fit in a breakfast sandwich.
3. You go from wanting your boss’s approval to hating his or her guts.
4. All the details that were once so important become nuisances.
5. Your (lack of) motivation can take you from hero to zero — quick!
6. And you most certainly DO NOT want to end up like this.
Let’s be real: These comics are funny, but they also aren’t ideal.
In a perfect world, we’d all have jobs that still look and feel like Day 1 on Day 101. And one of the only ways to get there is to intentionally strive for a life that’s full of work-life balance. We really do have the power to not let things play out like this.
What can we do?
At a most basic level, we can make sure we’re getting enough sleep, eating well, and doing at least a little exercise. We also shouldn’t underestimate the benefits of detaching from computer screens and smartphones every once in a while. Plus, we can also minimize our stress levels by not multitasking and instead concentrating on one task at time.
The most overlooked advice for maintaining a healthy work-life balance is to actually take time off.
Disconnect from your daily work routine. Make a conscious effort to recharge.
Perhaps if we dedicate more time to enjoying life outside of work, there’s more of a chance that we’ll be on Day 1 for months, feeling grateful for our jobs rather than impatiently waiting for the clock to strike 5. Let’s get to it!
This article originally appeared on 10.25.16
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