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The holiday season is the perfect time to bundle up at home with your favorite snack (we vote a doughnut) and re-watch some Christmas movie classics. A Christmas Story, A Charlie Brown Christmas… Elf. Oh is Elf not a Christmas tradition for your family? Well maybe it should be, it might not hold the old-world quality of those other movies but it’s probably a fixture of your actual childhood.

In 2023, Buddy is as much a Christmas figure as Scrooge. Maybe more!

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of Elf, Krispy Kreme is unveiling three new doughnut flavors that pay homage to Jon Favreau’s Christmas classic. From now until an unspecified limited time (we’re going to assume the year’s end? Or like… Christmas?) Krispy Kreme fans can pick up the new flavors in a special Elf-themed dozen box alongside the returning Santa Belly Doughnut.

We picked up a dozen to rank and review every flavor. Since the Santa Belly Doughnut is sold alongside the new trio, we went ahead and decided to rank and review that doughnut as well. Let’s dive in!

4. Santa Belly Doughnut

Tasting Notes & Thoughts:

I’m not only ranking the Santa Belly Doughnut in last place because it isn’t inspired by the movie, but because, returning favorite or not, this was simply my least favorite doughnut.

The doughnut here is unglazed but topped with red icing and filled with Cookies & Kreme filling. The doughnut is soft, airy, and chewy, and the cream filling has a subtle chocolate flavor to it. The chocolate notes are a bit too subtle though — this mostly comes across as tasting like cream filling with some texture to it.

The Bottom Line:

I think the reason this has become a favorite amongst Krispy Kreme fans is because it’s cute, not because it tastes particularly good.

3. Christmas Lights Doughnut

Tasting Notes & Thoughts:

While I like the design of this doughnut, it doesn’t offer much of a spin on any existing flavors in the Krispy Kreme bakecase. It’s purely decorative.

The doughnut is glazed with a chocolate icing spread with some green icing drizzle and rainbow sprinkles. In the center of the doughnut is a chocolate-flavored Elf piece. Altogether, it’s a great chocolate-glazed doughnut with a fun design.

But if you’ve had any Krispy Kreme doughnuts with chocolate glaze, you’ve already had this flavor.

The Bottom Line:

A purely cosmetic spin on a Krispy Kreme classic. It is delicious though, so we’re not saying it isn’t worth a pickup.

2. Buddy Snow Globe Doughnut

Tasting Notes & Thoughts:

Now this is what I’m talking about! Here we have a glazed doughnut based dipped in sweet sugar cookie light blue icing with one-half sprinkles and one-half powdered sugar with a chocolate Elf piece on top.

The chocolate piece is forgettable, but the rest of this doughnut is delicious. The mix of sprinkles and powdered sugar offers two different experiences in one — the former being mostly texture but the latter a nice touch of extra sweetness.

The Bottom Line:

Worth picking up and almost as good as our number-one pick. Almost.

1. Buddy Makes Breakfast Doughnut

Tasting Notes & Thoughts:

This doughnut is a must-buy. On top of a glazed doughnut sits cake batter-flavored spaghetti-shaped butter creme, mini-M&Ms, and a maple drizzle. Each bite gives a medley of sweet flavors: a sugary glaze, the vanilla notes of the buttercream, a burst of chocolate, and a nice earthy slightly floral maple component that wraps all the flavors together.

It’s easily my current favorite doughnut in Krispy Kreme’s whole line.

The Bottom Line:

A must-have for Krispy Kreme fans and anyone who loves great doughnuts. This one is worth a trip to Krispy Kreme before year’s end.

Alvvays is gearing up to hit the road next year. The indie-pop darlings are currently on their 2023 tour of Australia and New Zealand, which has garnered much critical acclaim.

In 2024, Alvvays will hit several North American arenas and venues.

Presale for tickets begins Wednesday, December 6 at 10 am EST. Fans can purchase presale tickets through the band’s official website, using a passcode that will arrive via email through Alvvays’ mailing list. General on-sale will begin Friday, December 8 at 10 am EST.

Back in November, Alvvays received a Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Performance for “Belinda Says” from their 2022 album, Blue Rev. This milestone marks the band’s first-ever nomination.

You can see the list of Alvvays’ 2024 North American tour dates below.

04/18/2024 — Cleveland, OH @ Agora Theater
04/19/2024 — Cincinnati, OH @ Bogart’s
04/20/2024 — Columbus, OH @ Newport Music Hall
04/22/2024 — Milwaukee, WI @ Pabst Theater
04/24/2024 — Madison, WI @ The Sylvee
04/25/2024 — Kansas City, MO @ The Truman
05/01/2024 — Tampa, FL @ The Ritz Ybor
05/02/2024 — Orlando, FL @ The Plaza Live
05/03/2024 — Athens, GA @ Georgia Theatre
05/04/2024 — Charlotte, NC @ The Underground
05/06/2024 — Louisville, KY @ Mercury Ballroom
05/07/2024 — St. Louis, MO @ The Pageant
05/09/2024 — Fort Collins, CO @ Aggie Theatre
05/10-05/12/2024 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Block Party
05/11/2024 — Las Vegas, NV @ Brooklyn Bowl
05/13/2024 — Sacramento, CA @ Ace of Spades
05/16/2024 — Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren
05/17/2024 — Tucson, AZ @ Rialto Theatre

The trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI dropped Monday evening, a little earlier than had been anticipated. The reaction it engendered was huge, partly because of the release date: sometime in 2025. That left fans — who’ve already been hoping for a new once since 2013, when the wildly profitable V came out — losing their minds that they would have to wait even longer still.

Details about the sixquel are still trickling out, but there’s one big milestone: It’s the first in the series to feature a female protagonist. Her name is Lucia, and she’s one-half of a criminal couple who come to the franchise’s Miami-esque metropolis. We even hear her voice. But who belongs to that voice?

Alas, Rockstar Games has yet to reveal that one. That didn’t stop online rumor-mongers from claiming Lucia is voiced by Alexandra C. Echavarri Lecároz, who voiced Warehouse Boss and Lupe in Grand Theft Auto V. Not according to Lecároz herself.

Last week, Lecároz took to Instagram to gush about working on GTA V a decade back. “This was a career goal and i’m so grateful it has been realized,” she wrote. “I never thought I’d have the opportunity of being a part of such a cool game or being the voice of a hardcore chick.”

In the comments, though, she made an important note: “I am NOT in GTA VI.”

Luckily there’s plenty to time to learn who’s voicing Lucia — over a year.

There are no two human beings who are exactly alike. One of the funny quirks of evolution is that some of us can do things with our bodies we think are routine, but are impossible for others.

Some people can wiggle their ears, others can’t. Some can wiggle their nose like Samantha from “Bewitched” while others just look really silly when making an attempt.

Not everyone can lick their elbow but most wouldn’t attempt to do so in public.

A Twitter user named Massimo dropped some knowledge about a skill that not everyone has and even fewer discuss: ear rumbling.

Those of us who can do it know exactly what it is, while it’s a mystery to those who cannot.

A part of the human population can voluntarily control the tensor tympani, a muscle within the ear. Contracting this muscle produces vibration and sound. The sound is usually described as a rumbling sound http://bit.ly/2Clijefu00a0pic.twitter.com/ianKb60EK8

— Massimo (@Massimo)
1581957023

People who can ear rumble have the ability to control the tensor tympani, a muscle within the ear. Contracting the muscle creates a rushing, rumbling sound that, if flexed enough, can drown out a significant amount of noise.

This can be useful when someone is saying something that you don’t want to hear but don’t want to be rude and cover your ears. It can come in real handy if someone is about to spoil your favorite TV show or if you live with someone who can’t stop nagging.

Some people cannot voluntarily create the rumbling sound but hear it when they let out a large yawn.

There’s a Reddit sub-forum just for ear rumblers with over 60,000 people. Here’s how some of them get rumblin’.

“I just squeeze the muscle in my ears I guess,” — melvinthefish

“When I flex and hold whatever I’m manipulating to do that, I get my rumble,” — ttywzl

“I get a mild rumble just doing the usual flex, but i can make it a bit louder by bringing my top lip up to my nose,” — Willmono7

“The best way I can describe it is I ‘squint my ears,'” —SteeleIT

The muscle exists to mask-low frequency sounds so we can focus on those at a higher frequency. It also works to mute sounds we create ourselves such as eating potato chips or coughing. It’s a way that helps us from becoming annoyed with our own bodies.

Unfortunately, the muscle has a rather slow reaction time so it cannot prevent us from hearing loud sudden noises like a gunshot or a book slamming on the ground.

Massimo’s tweet caused quite a stir on the platform.

Been able to do that forever and wiggle my ears independently. Regrettably It doesn’t attract women and I can’t make money from it. Sad face.

— Simon the Smith 3.5% (@Simstersnose) February 17, 2020

To me it sounds like when there’s a big thunderstorm and the thunder is just lowly rolling around in the sky forever with only tiny flashes of lightning that don’t leave the clouds

— 🍀shmily🧚🏽☻ (@turtlelaughing) February 18, 2020

Quick! We need a Venn Diagram to show people who can do this, people who have internal monologues, people who have synaesthesia, and people with any other weird “I thought everyone did this” stuff.

— Marian Matta writes (among other things) (@MadWomansKnitti) February 18, 2020

Although scientists have known about ear rumbling since at least the 1800s, there doesn’t appear to have been too much research on the topic. We know that some can rumble and others cannot, but it’s unclear how it breaks down percentage-wise or if it’s more prevalent in certain groups.

The good news is that the word is starting to get out and people who’ve been rumbling all their lives suddenly don’t feel so alone.

This article originally appeared on 03.05.20

Afro-fusion singer Tyla has been dominating the airwaves. The South African artist’s breakthrough single “Water” is currently sitting at No. 10 at the Billboard Hot 100. Last weekend, Tyla revealed the title and cover art to her self-titled debut album, as well as three additional songs — “Truth Or Dare,” “Butterflies,” and “On And On.”

As the new songs have proven to be just as good as “Water,” thus building up the hype for her album.

When does Tyla’s debut album come out?

Tyla is out March 1, 2024 and will arrive via Fax and Epic Records. Tyla announced the news via Instagram.

“Everything that’s happening has surpassed anything I could have dreamt of,” she said in the post’s caption. “African music is going global and I’m so blessed to be one of the artists pushing the culture. I’ve been working on my sound for 2 years now and I’m so ready for the world to hear it.”

Tyla opened up about of her childhood in Africa in an interview with Complex. She expressed excitement over the idea of being a global superstar who came from a small city.

“I come from a very small place, a little city in South Africa all the way at the bottom of Africa, the tip,” Tyla said. “And literally, I was just a girl with a dream, a girl that didn’t really have much examples… like this wasn’t really possible at that age when I was coming up as an artist, it wasn’t something that was realistic and I made it a reality.”

Find more information about Tyla here.

There’s a lot that can go wrong — very, very wrong — with AI. One of the many threats, on top of hundreds of thousands of jobs that are now in danger over the next couple years, is disinformation. It’s easier than ever for bad actors to fool people with lies that look and/or sound legit. Heck, a controversial politician can now claim that footage of them doing or saying something bad is just AI. That, of course, is what Donald Trump has started doing. Luckily he’s doing a lousy job at it.

Per Forbes, Trump took to his failing Twitter clone to attack a new Lincoln Project ad that pastes together one embarrassing clip after another. It’s got a lot of the Greatest Hits: him staring into a Solar Eclipse, him using two hands to drink water, him slurring his words, him confusing Biden and Obama, etc. Here’s the ad:

And here’s how Trump tried to spin that on Truth Social: “The perverts and losers at the failed and once disbanded Lincoln Project, and others, are using A.I.(Artificial Intelligence) in their Fake television commercials in order to make me look as bad and pathetic as Crooked Joe Biden, not an easy thing to do.”

Of course, every clip of Trump in the ad is very well-known. If they’re AI, every clip of Trump is AI. Anyone who’s paid attention to the news during the Trump era knows each one all too well.

But who will Trump supporters believe? Their own eyes or Donald Trump? He has a long history of feeding them lies, and they have a long history of eating it up. So now they probably do think the long-famous clip of him mangling the word “anonymous” was made with AI, despite the tech not even being good enough (yet) to make believable fake people. Surely this isn’t the last time Trump will falsely claim that real images of him, say, looking like crap at a golf tournament was made with artificial intelligence.

(Via Forbes)

There was never just one moment in my family when we “found out” that my dad was an addict.

I think I always knew, but I never saw him actually drinking. Usually, he downed a fifth of vodka before he came home from work or hid tiny bottles in the garage and bathroom cabinets.

My name is Ashley, and I am the child of an addict. As a kid, I cried when our family dinner reservation shrunk from four to three after a man with glassy eyes stumbled through the door. I didn’t guzzle the vodka, but I felt the heartbreak of missed birthdays. I feel like I should weigh 500 pounds from all the “I’m sorry” chocolate donuts. I had to grow up quicker, but it made me into the person I am today.

I spent many years shouting into journals about why this was happening to me. But this is the thing that no one will tell you about loving someone who has an addiction: it will force you to see the world through different eyes.

Here are some things I’ve learned:

1. When your family’s yelling about burnt toast, they’re probably also yelling about something else.

My family yelled about everything — and nothing — to avoid the messy stuff. We all handled my dad’s addiction differently. My brother devoured sports. My mom took bubble baths. I slammed doors and slammed boyfriends for not understanding my family’s secrets.

Regardless of the preferred coping mechanism, everyone feels pain differently.

2. Your “knight in shining armor” can’t fix this.

Boyfriends became my great escape when I was young. But when I expected them to rescue me from the pain I grew up with, it never worked out. No matter how strapping they looked galloping in on those white horses, they couldn’t save me or fix anything.

In the end, I realized that I had to find healing on my own before I could build a strong relationship.

3. “Don’t tell anyone” is a normal phase.

When my dad punched holes in the wall, my mom covered them up with artwork. I wanted to rip the artwork down to expose all the holes, especially as a bratty teenager. But eventually I realized that it wasn’t my choice. My parents had bills to pay and jobs to keep. I’ve learned it’s common to cover up for dysfunction in your family, especially when it feels like the world expects perfection.

4. Friends probably won’t get it, but you’ll need them anyway.

Bulldozed by broken promises, I remember collapsing on a friend’s couch from the crippling pain of unmet expectations. I hyperventilated. Things felt uncontrollable and hopeless. My friend rubbed my back and just listened.

These are the kinds of friends I will keep forever, the ones who crawled down into the dark places with me and didn’t make me get back up until I was ready.

5. You can’t fix addiction, but you can help.

When I was a teenager, I called a family meeting. I started by playing a Switchfoot song: “This is your life. Are you who you want to be?”

Let’s skip to the punchline: It didn’t work.

It wasn’t just me. Nothing anyone did worked. My dad had to lose a lot — mostly himself — before he hit that place they call “rock bottom.” And, in all honesty, I hate that label because “rock bottom” isn’t just a one-and-done kind of place.

What can you do while you wait for someone to actually want to get help? Sometimes, you just wait. And you hope. And you pray. And you love. And you mostly just wait.

6. Recovery is awkward.

When a counselor gave me scripted lines to follow if my dad relapsed, I wanted to shred those “1-2-3 easy steps” into a million pieces.

For me, there was nothing easy about my dad’s recovery. My whole family had to learn steps to a new dance when my dad went into recovery. The healing dance felt like shuffling and awkwardly stepping on toes. It was uncomfortable; new words, like trust and respect, take time to sink in. And that awkwardness is also OK.

7. I still can’t talk about addiction in the past tense.

Nothing about an addict’s life happens linearly. I learned that early on. My dad cycled through 12-step programs again and again, to the point where I just wanted to hurl whenever anyone tried to talk about it. And then we finally reached a point where it felt like recovery stuck.

But even now, I’ll never say, “My dad used to deal with addiction.” My whole family continues to wrestle with the highs and lows of life with an addict every single day.

8. Happy hours and wedding receptions aren’t easy to attend.

My family will also probably never clink glasses of red wine or stock the fridge full of beer. I’m convinced happy hours and wedding receptions will get easier, but they might not. People get offended when my dad orders a Diet Coke instead of their fine whisky.

Plus, there’s the paranoia factor. Surrounded by flowing liquor, I hate watching my dad crawl out of his skin, tempted to look “normal” and tackle small talk with people we barely know. I’ve learned that this fear will probably last for a while, and it’s because I care.

9. If you close your eyes, the world doesn’t just “get prettier.”

With constant fear of the unknown, sometimes our world is not a pretty place. I remember watching the breaking news on 9/11 and feeling the terror of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers as if I was there.

My dad numbed the anxiety of these dark days with vodka, but this didn’t paint a prettier world for him when he woke up the next day. I’ve dealt with the fear of the unknown with the help of boys, booze, and bad dancing on pool tables. Life hurts for everyone, and I think we all have to decide how we’re going to handle the darkness.

10. Rip off the sign on your back that reads: “KICK ME. MY LIFE SUCKS.”

Sometimes I look in the mirror and I see only my broken journey. In some twisted way, I’m comforted by the dysfunction because it’s kept me company for so long. It’s easy to let the shadow of my family’s past follow me around and choose to drown in the darkness.

But every day, I’m learning to turn on the light. I have to write the next chapter in my recovery story, but I can’t climb that mountain with all this crap weighing me down.

11. It’s OK to forgive, too.

Some people have given me sucky advice about how I should write an anthem on daddy bashing, or how to hit the delete button on the things that shaped my story.

Instead, my dad and I are both learning to celebrate the little things, like the day that he could change my flat tire. On that day, I didn’t have to wonder if he was too drunk to come help me.

I can’t forget all the dark nights of my childhood.

But I’ve learned that for my own well-being, I can’t harbor bitterness until I explode.

Instead, I can love my dad, day by day, and learn to trust in the New Dad — the one with clearer eyes and a full heart. The one who rescues me when I call.

This article was written by Ashley Tieperman and originally appeared on 04.27.16

Douglas Scott grew up on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula in the dying shadow of the timber industry that had supported the region for decades.

“Nearly every home had a bright orange or yellow sign reading ‘This home supported by timber dollars,'” Scott wrote on Outdoor Society.

While the region has also been recognized for its succulent seafood, temperate climate, and stunning natural formations, nothing shaped the community — or the physical landscape — quite like logging did.

The tension in the air between the loggers and the environmentalists throughout the 1980s was thicker than the trees being cut down.

“I heard from old timers in the Harbor about how environmentalists were ruining the region, and I was told by environmentalists that loggers were killing everything in sight,” Scott recalled.

But to understand the full impact of deforestation on the region, it helps to take the bird’s eye view.

Here’s a satellite image of the Olympic Peninsula from 1984. The white region in the center are the mountaintops in Olympic National Park; you’ll also notice the grey and brown areas along the western and northern coasts of the peninsula.

“When I moved away from the area in 1997, there wasn’t much of a logging or mill economy in dozens of towns around the region,” Scott said.

By that time, tourism had begun to take the place of timber as the region’s major industry — which was probably helped along by the fact that the trees were slowly but surely starting to recover, enhancing the already stunning vistas that drew visitors.

Here’s how the Olympic Peninsula looked by the time that Scott and his family left the area; you’ll notice the western and northern coasts are just a little bit greener than they were 13 years prior…

Those great green arbors continued their gradual recovery into the 2000s…

And they’re still going today.

But those isolated moments don’t tell the whole story of the region’s recovery. It’s even more remarkable when you can see it in action…

We don’t always notice the world changing right before our eyes, but the decades-long view of the Olympic Peninsula shows the true power of nature.

It’s not just the trees, either; according to Scott, the replenished forests have also had a positive impact on the local salmon population and other treasured natural resources.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use the natural world, of course. We still need wood, for example, but now we know there are sustainable ways to use it without recklessly damaging to the planet.

The Earth was built to take care of itself. We just need to let Mother Nature do her thing.

This article originally appeared on 12.22.16

Last year the placid exterior of Good Morning America was shattered by a shockingly trashy story: Two of its anchors were engaged in an interoffice romance. After separating from their spouses that August, Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes, who lorded over the early afternoon news show GMA3, began openly dating (after making cryptic social media posts). ABC brass did not like that and quickly yanked them off the air, eventually letting them go entirely. Robach and Holmes are still together, but what of their poor exes? Well, seems like they got a happy ending, too.

Per Page Six, multiple sources say that Marilee Fiebig and Andrew Shue, former spouses of Holmes and Robach, respectively, have found love. The two reportedly bonded after being very publicly dumped by their famous partners, which, it should be noted, is the plot of Wong Kar-wai’s beloved film In the Mood for Love. Now they’ve been an item for the last six months.

“It turned into something else, and they’re connected over their values,” one source told Page Six. “It’s bigger than the affair now.”

“They’re not heartbroken and sad,” another source said. “Everyone has moved on.”

So that’s nice! In the meantime, their exes, which is to say Robach and Holmes, have moved on as well, with a new podcast on iHeartRadio, called Amy & T.J. In the first episode they discussed the scandal that cost them their spouses and their swanky ABC jobs, where they made an interesting distinction over their canning.

“[We] lost the jobs we love because we love each other,” Holmes said. “To be clear, we were outed as being in a relationship, but everyone else thought we were being outed as adulterers — being outed as cheating on our spouses — and it wasn’t the case.”

Insiders, though, claim it was the affair, not that they were in love, that got them booted from their on-air gigs.

Anyway, Mazel Tov to all four of them, looks like.

(Via Page Six)

Clearly, former Fox News host Chris Wallace hasn’t kept up with John Oliver’s lustily expressed obsession over “f*ckable redwood” Adam Driver. Although Oliver was exaggerating for effect, and Driver even got in on the fun while “confronting” Oliver’s pleas to have his legs snapped by the Kylo Ren actor, plenty of Driver fans agree that there is something about Adam Driver.

Wallace, for whatever reason, decided to quiz Driver about how he feels about not “look[ing] like a typical movie star.” It didn’t go any smoother from there while Driver, who is promoting his role as Enzo in Ferrari, appeared on the Max series Who’s Talking To Chris Wallace?

To answer the question of that show’s title, Adam Driver’s fans are now talking to Wallace after he persisted in asking whether it “would be easier” for Driver if he was more of a Robert Redford-type figure in this awkward clip.

In response to Wallace’s remarks, Driver pointed out that he has been working constantly as an actor and “with people I always dreamed that I wanted to work with.” As well, “I look how I look. I can’t change that.” Then came Driver’s response about “breaking mirrors wherever I go… having a misshapen outsized body that I can’t fit through doorways or most clothes or fit into most cars… apart from that, it’s good.”

It seems like Driver was giving a ridiculous response to a ridiculous question, and he added, “The New Yorker has also called me a horseface so I take it with a grain of salt.”

It was pretty darn uncomfortable overall, and as also noted by both Decider and PEOPLE, Driver enthusiasts spoke up to call Wallace’s remarks “rude,” “tacky,” “gross,” and “unprofessional.”

One Twitter user wrote, “I cannot get over that video of Chris Wallace calling Adam Driver ugly. Do straight men never listen to straight women talk about their taste in men?” And that was only the beginning.

(Via Decider & People)