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Instagram has undergone several design changes over the course of this year, from briefly testing a full-screen version of the app to imitate their competitor TikTok, lowering recommended posts, and slowly removing the Shop section of the app. However, they have plans for even more updates in the works. Developer and self-proclaimed leaker Alessandro Paluzzi frequently shares behind-the-scenes details of what they’re planning next.

Since September alone, Paluzzi has posted that Instagram is testing a repost feature, which was later confirmed to TechCrunch, as well as the ability to search for reels, a “Roll Call” feature, and the ability to comment with gifs.

Arguably the most interesting recent reveal from Paluzzi is Instagram’s plans to allow users to add a song of their personal choice to their profile. Meta (the umbrella of what most know as Facebook and Instagram) spokesperson Christine Pai told CNET in an email statement that Paluzzi’s music update discovery “is an internal prototype, and not testing externally.” Still, it means it is something they are, at the very least, considering bringing to the app.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. And you were also likely a teen, or older, active on MySpace during its prime era. (I was not.) Following the teaser of getting your own song on social media again, many users who stumbled upon the news were incredibly enthusiastic about getting some of that e-nostalgia back. There’s also something comedic in borrowing inspiration from something you helped destroy, like Netflix dropping a Blockbuster show.

While Instagram has allowed users to share specific songs from Spotify and other streaming platforms on their IG stories, this one would appear directly on your profile. Out of all the choices of songs out there, how do you even narrow down your one true theme song? For me, it’s like choosing a favorite child from Taylor Swift’s complete discography — and that’s just wrong.

Continue scrolling for more MySpace-era nostalgia reactions about Instagram’s (potential) new music-focused feature.

Misery loves company, which might explain why Ryanair is currently trolling “tiny cretin of a man” James Corden. On Monday, famed New York City restaurateur Keith McNally announced via social media that he was 86’ing the outgoing The Late Late Show host from his perennial SoHo hotspot, Balthazar.

McNally shared a story to his Instagram in which he publicly demolished Corden for being a total a**shole to his waitstaff and management team on more than one occasion. The latest confrontation came earlier this month, when Corden reportedly pitched a fit after his wife’s egg-yolk omelette (WTF?!) ended up with some egg white in it (huh?!). According to McNally, Corden’s behavior toward the restaurant’s staff was “abusive” — so he banned him.

While other New York City restaurant owners have stepped forward to defend Corden and say that he is, in fact, a friendly and lovely man, there was really no need. As McNally and Corden appear to have cleared up the matter, with each man feeling badly about what had transpired and how the incident was shared with the public. (Though something tells us it was Corden who was the more contrite.) In the midst of all the hullabaloo surrounding the matter, low-cost European airline Ryanair decided to jump in on the fun and announce that they, too, were banning Corden from all Ryanair flights.

Something tells us that won’t be a huge problem for Corden. Based on a recently resurfaced story from 2017, the late-night host has a preference for flying business class — and not having to contend with crying babies (even his own). Low-cost Ryanair, meanwhile, is regularly ranked among the worst airlines in the world and was once crowned the very worst “short-haul airline.” In addition to offering zero in-flight entertainment options, the airline likes to nickel-and-dime its customers on everything. Which, if McNally’s stories are true, doesn’t seem like something Corden easily abides by.

Bye bye, Troy Bolton of High School Musical fame. Zac Efron has fully come into his own power as a performer and a presence. Not only have we heard that Alexander Skarsgård was inspired to go pantless by the Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile star, but Efron has moved on from Baywatch mode into an upcoming A24 project. In addition, Netflix is preparing to bring us more of his unwaveringly pure unscripted series (one of our favorite docuseries of 2020), in which Efron learns about science and explores nature and generally lives everyone’s best life.

On that note, the Down Under Season 2 has arrived, and the show is now apparently renamed as Down to Earth with Zac Efron: Down Under. Get ready for plenty of “sick” and “mind blown” exclamations coming your way, man. Above, Zac and Darin Olien preview their “deep dive” into Australian culture with an eye towards sustainability. They hang with kangaroos and koalas! That’s the dose of adorableness that we need, and hopefully, we’ll see more incredible moments like those from Season 1, which included Zac changing a woman’s life by removing debris from her Hurricane-devastated home in Puerto Rico. Those small gestures mean everything when it comes to healing our very broken world, and some “whoa!” sprinkled everywhere never hurts matters.

The season promises to take Efron and Olien “from Sydney to the Greater Blue Mountains” while they tango with eco-warriors, explore local customs, and have a ton of fun (and good eats) in the process. Let’s go.

Down To Earth returns on November 11.

Back in 2019, as Lil Nas X rode the wave of his historic hit “Old Town Road,” I wrote that he was handling the song’s outsized success just as he should. Later that year, after getting the chance to actually talk to him about it in person, I opined that his precipitous rise was no accident. Last night, at the YouTube Theater in Inglewood, the latest stop on his Long Live Montero Tour, he more than justified my belief in him, putting on a show unlike any other I’ve seen.

For one thing, I’ve never been handed a legit Playbill in the lobby. Thumbing through its pages reveals that Nas has taken the time to acknowledge literally every single person who contributed to the show, from the dancers to the designers to the security. One page shows off the designs for the six costumes he’ll wear throughout the 90-minute show, which maintains the Broadway theme with a three-act structure and a loose narrative. Nas leans into the Renaissance aesthetic, with cotumes inspired by that era right down to his sparkly heels.

His costume changes are concealed by interludes presented by “The Wizard Of Naz,” a woman who is projected on the stage curtain between the acts, breaking down what each part represents in the story of Nas coming to terms with himself and his desires. In addition to advancing this narrative, the setlist also loosely re-tells the story of his rise to stardom — the first act is highlighted by early career hits such as “Old Town Road,” “Panini,” and “Rodeo,” while album cuts such as “That’s What I Want” and “Montero” buttress the second.

The finale, naturally, is “Industry Baby,” the song that proved Nas isn’t just a one-hit-wonder and solidified him as even more a provocateur and pioneer than we had ever originally imagined. (Yes, “Call Me By Your Name” exploded behind the music video hype, but “Industry Baby” has been a lasting, resonant megasmash, even helping to launch collaborator Jack Harlow into his own No. 1 hit).

While an offstage band blows out all the songs, one of the things Nas does to keep the familiar hits more interesting is incorporating elements of other artists’ hits. “Old Town Road” gets remixed with Genuwine’s “Pony,” Beyonce’s Renaissance favorite “Pure/Honey” gets smashed into “That’s What I Want,” and Prince’s manic guitar intro even makes an appearance. Meanwhile, like Megan Thee Stallion before him, Nas invites exuberant fans onstage to twerk it out to “Down Souf Hoes.”

What makes the level of presentation and confidence in his performance all the more impressive is not just that Long Live Montero is Lil Nas’ first tour. It’s also the scale of the show in relation to where he is in his career. Like many young breakout artists of the last few years, Nas lost what amounted to two years of development. Instead of starting out at, say, 1,500-cap venues and scaling up over successive tours, he’s been thrown into the deep end at 6,000-plus-cap venues like YouTube Theater.

The stakes are higher here; there’s more pressure, a slimmer margin of error, and further to fall with a misstep — which becomes more likely without significant tour experience under his belt. Sure, working with so many awards shows definitely contributed to the scale and complexity of the production, but Nas hasn’t really had to perform for a live audience night after night while zigzagging across the nation in a tour bus before. That he’s able to do so as coolly as he has is a testament to his dedication to the craft.

That’s what makes the difference between Lil Nas X and the artists that the industry has based on his blueprint. He wasn’t just a TikTok sensation that blew up by accident and took the brass ring when it was offered. He worked for it. He made “Old Town Road” go viral by sheer force of will, and when circumstances conspired to give him more attention than he was ready for, he worked his butt off again to deserve it. He’s been forced to grow up before our eyes, but he’s risen to that challenge magnificently.

That’s the story on display in his Long Live Montero set (which also explains its brevity; the kid only really has one album out). Many artists these days preach self-belief during their sets, but Lil Nas X doesn’t just tell us; he shows us what it looks like. He puts his life story and his career arc on display, then plays it to the tilt, adding a flair for drama that makes it truly entertaining. It’s not just a great show, it’s a perfect example of an artist doing everything he can to make sure it’s a show worth seeing and talking about because he knows what it took to get here.

Anderson .Paak is one of the busiest collaborators in music. The past year or so in particular offered a couple of career highlights on that front: His and Bruno Mars’ project Silk Sonic had a No. 1 single with “Leave The Door Open” and won a bunch of Grammys. On top of that, .Paak joined Dr. Dre, Eminem, and company to perform at the Super Bowl Halftime Show earlier this year. Now, he’s once again focused on collaborating.

In 2016, .Paak and producer Knxwledge formed the duo NxWorries and dropped Yes Lawd!, their well-received debut album. A new chapter was added to the duo’s story last week, when it was revealed they were back “in the lab.” Now, new material has popped up faster than most fans probably expected: Today, NxWorries dropped a video for “Where I Go,” a new song featuring HER.

It’s an endlessly smooth tune and .Paak sings on the chorus, “She wanna know where I’ve been / And who I seen / She wanna know where I’m goin’ / And can we meet? / She say I’m so terrible / But this is me / I love her from head to toe / And in between.”

While is the first proper new NxWorries song since Yes Lawd!, .Paak did feature on Knxwledge’s 2020 song “Itkanbe[sonice].”

Watch the “Where I Go” video above.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

A reasonable case could be made that the Southeast Division is perhaps the least exciting in the NBA for the 2022-23 season. After all, only two teams are projected for playoff consideration, with one full-blown rebuild underway, and a pair of teams largely projected for middling status. Still, the Miami Heat, Atlanta Hawks, Washington Wizards, Charlotte Hornets, and Orlando Magic each present intriguing questions, and we’ll aim to highlight the single biggest prompt for each squad in advance of the regular season opener.

Atlanta Hawks: Who is De’Andre Hunter going to be?

Even before De’Andre Hunter signed a four-year extension just before the rookie-scale extension deadline on Monday, there was pressure on the former No. 4 overall pick. Hunter is not the best player, or even in the top three or four players, on Atlanta’s roster, but the Hawks have been highly invested in his future from the moment they traded a large haul to select him in the 2019 NBA Draft. Hunter showed all kinds of signs in his second season, but injuries limited him to only 23 games, and the former Virginia star took a step back in performance in 2021-22.

Hunter doesn’t have to be a star for the Hawks and, realistically, that isn’t a probable outcome at this juncture. What he does need to be is a solid, available, two-way role player for an Atlanta team that has sky-high aspirations. The Hawks can’t replace him, which is likely part of why an extension happened, and Hunter might be the single biggest X-factor between Atlanta returning to the Play-In or being in contention for a top-four seed.

Charlotte Hornets: What is the plan to replace Miles Bridges’ production?

Miles Bridges isn’t on an NBA roster, and he shouldn’t be. It is near impossible to talk about anything related to basketball and Bridges, but the reality is that Bridges averaged 20 points and seven rebounds for Charlotte last season, was the team’s most athletic and explosive player, and landed only behind LaMelo Ball in the team’s overall pecking order.

With the Hornets’ current roster and salary cap situation coupled with the way everything happened with Bridges, it wasn’t as if Charlotte could simply go sign a replacement. A healthy Gordon Hayward would go a long way, and players like Kelly Oubre and PJ Washington can function in partial roles, but the reality is that Charlotte has an uphill battle toward the playoffs. That isn’t where a team wants to be that clearly isn’t rebuilding, either.

Miami Heat: Who is playing power forward?

Miami made a trip to the Eastern Conference Finals and nearly made the NBA Finals. Miami also has Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, and Erik Spoelstra. With those realities in place, the Heat have a very high floor, but Miami lost a key piece in P.J. Tucker with no clear replacement.

In practice, Butler is slated to play power forward at times, and he is more than capable of doing so. Otherwise, Miami has Caleb Martin slotted at the 4, even though he is clearly a wing-sized player, and guys like Haywood Highsmith and rookie Nikola Jokic may log minutes. Tucker’s absence may actually help Miami’s offense if it leads to more of Max Strus and/or Duncan Robinson, but defense is where the Heat shine, and they have more questions there than they would probably like in October.

Orlando Magic: Which guard(s) will make the team’s inner circle?

With Paolo Banchero now on board and Franz Wagner poised for a breakout, the Magic have a tremendous future-facing setup in the frontcourt. Orlando already has a starting-caliber center in Wendell Carter Jr., and the Magic might eventually get something from Jon Isaac to further stabilize matters. Banchero and Wagner are both capable of perimeter-based creation, but the Magic also have a bevy of guards with a lot to prove.

Jalen Suggs has the highest level of investment as a recent top-five pick, and he is already showing tremendous defensive potential. Suggs also struggled mightily on offense and has battled injury concerns. Orlando also has a sizable contract invested in Markelle Fultz, who is a solid player that still faces shooting issues, and Cole Anthony is a proven bucket getter that might be best-suited as a third guard type off the bench. Everything with the Magic should be viewed through a long-term lens, but it would be helpful if Orlando already had at least part of its long-term guard room set by the end of the 2022-23 season.

Washington Wizards: So, what’s the plan here?

Same story, different season for the Wizards. Bradley Beal recently became the tenth player in NBA history to have a true no-trade clause, and he signed for all the money in the world. Washington does have a legitimate No. 2 in Kristaps Porzingis, who performed well after joining them last season, but the the Wizards are still in purgatory.

On one hand, the Wizards have a bunch of quality role players. Kyle Kuzma is a very solid player. Delon Wright and Monte Morris are both professional guards who will make a team run. Will Barton will get a bucket. Daniel Gafford is a nice rim-runner and rim protector. The question is what this all means. At present, Washington appears geared entirely toward a potential Play-In run, with a series of recent first round draft picks that were not exactly focused on ceiling. The Wizards aren’t setting up salary cap room, nor are they tanking with an eye toward Victor Wembanyama or Scoot Henderson. They are just in the middle somewhere, and that probably shouldn’t be an organizational plan for a franchise that hasn’t won 50 games since 1979.

The January 6 Committee cold open drew some big praise from fans of Saturday Night Live, but don’t count Donald Trump among them. The one-time host of the sketch comedy show has become a huge hater of the NBC mainstay in recent years, and after another episode that took aim at his role in a coup attempt last year and the ensuing fallout, Trump decided it’s time to declare the show “over” once and for all.

The show still spends plenty of time on Trump, spending much of Weekend Update on Trump and a lengthy response to the actual January 6 Committee hearing last week. And the cold open featured James Austin Johnson showing off his Trump impersonation while on a golden toilet, swigging Diet Coke and asking whether Mike Pence is “dead yet?” as the insurrection attempt aired on live TV. It wasn’t flattering, of course. And apparently he’s had enough of all that attention.

Posting into his own personal online shout box, Truth Social, Trump said the show is not “funny or smart” and said it should probably be canceled. As Newsweek notes, this falls in line with what he typically says about things he does not like:

“I once hosted Saturday Night Live, and the ratings were HUUUGE! Now, however, the ratings are lower than ever before, and the show will probably be put to rest,’” Trump said.

“It is just not, at these levels, sustainable—A bad show that’s not funny or smart. L.M. [producer Lorne Michaels] is angry and exhausted, the show even more so. It was once good, never great, but now, like the Late Night Losers who have lost their audience but have no idea why, it is over for SNL—A great thing for America!”

Declaring something “over” happens a lot these days online, so it’s funny to see Trump become just another poster on a mostly obscure social media network made only for him. But speculation about how long SNL will continue isn’t really new these days. There aren’t many people who assume the show should be “put to rest” because they’re the subject of entire sketches, though. That’s really only Trump in that category these days.

[via Newsweek]

Meghan Markle‘s podcast, Archetypes, came out of the gate strong when it debuted on Spotify in August. It immediately beat Joe Rogan by rocketing to the top of the Spotify charts, which is no easy task given the vast size and reach of Rogan’s audience. It doesn’t hurt that she’s manage to land heavy hitters like Mariah Carey and Serena Williams, but there’s one guest who made Markle the most nervous: Paris Hilton.

Before you rush to judgment, that’s the exact problem that Markle ran into while hosting Hilton. “I told her at the beginning that I was the most nervous about her interview,” Markle told Variety. “I was embarrassed to admit it, but I’ve had a judgment about her that’s based on everything I’ve seen, and I don’t like to come from a place of judgment. But I also didn’t grow up pretty.”

From there, Markle offered what’s probably the most thoughtful and insightful analysis of Hilton ever recorded:

So much of what I ended up thinking about, when I thought about Paris, was envy and judgment — two of the most dangerous things. But then you hear about her trauma and her life and her buying into this persona. Ultimately, I told her, “I’m really sorry that I judged you.” I wanted her to be safe and comfortable. I told her I wasn’t looking for a “gotcha” moment. I want a “got you” moment, where we get you.

But that episode is not framed as a defense of Paris; it’s the humanization of her. And that’s true for everybody. I don’t care what situation you’re in — if a 16-year-old boy or girl, or a woman in the workplace, feels objectified or dehumanized because their character is misrepresented, I hope everyone listening with an open mind could come away thinking, “Could I just actually consider for a second that there’s a person there?”

Again, that’s a stunning assessment of Paris Hilton that you don’t see everyday. While Markle credits her California upbringing for helping her do the “internal work” to imagine someone else’s perspective, like Hilton, she’s also been routinely hounded by the paparazzi and the tabloids in recent years.

When you’ve gone from Deal or No Deal to literal British royalty, you get a real close look at how public narratives can form beyond your control.

(Via Variety)

Beginning this month, Prime Video will stream live musical performances following Thursday Night Football. 2 Chainz is set to host Amazon Music Live, and will also interview the performing artists.

“Every Thursday night, I’m bringing the biggest and the brightest stars in music to the Amazon Music Live stage in Los Angeles,” said 2 Chainz in a statement. “We have the people that are influencing the culture and have carved their own unique path in music, like Lil Baby, Megan Thee Stallion, and Kane Brown. Amazon Music Live is the only place to be for the official Thursday turn-up.”

Amazon Music Live will premiere on October 27, with Lil Baby performing songs from his latest album, It’s Only Me. Megan Thee Stallion will take the stage on November 3, which will coincide with her hometown team, the Houston Texans, playing against the Philadelphia Eagles. Country superstar Kane Brown will perform on November 10.

“Whether you’re a sports fan waiting for the first football game of the week, or a music fan staying up late to hear the latest drop from your favorite artist, Thursday is the biggest night for entertainment,” said Kirdis Postelle, global head of artist marketing of Amazon Music, in a statement. “With Amazon Music Live, we’ve created a new, can’t-miss series for fans to experience the most exciting new music together. For artists, this show represents a massive new stage to share their music with fans after Thursday Night Football—the biggest game of the week, airing live on Prime Video.”

Additional performers for Amazon Music Live will be announced at a later date.

Check out a trailer for the series above.

Some of the artists mentioned are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

It’s long been a common belief that fish have the memory capacity of only a few seconds. People often make fun of people with bad short-term memory by saying they have the “memory of a goldfish.”

This belief about fish spread even further after being highlighted in Disney’s “Finding Nemo” films where Dory, played by Ellen DeGeneres, has a memory that lasts only about 10 seconds. However, a new study from Oxford University may have just proved that we got Dory all wrong.

To find out if goldfish have memories, the team at the University of Oxford trained nine goldfish to swim 2.3 feet and back to get a reward. Yes, goldfish are even smart enough to be trained. All these years they’ve been swimming in circles in small bowls when we could have been teaching them to do some fun behaviors.

The researchers marked off the tank in vertical stripes every ¾ inch.

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Once the fish swam the 2.3 feet, they were given a physical cue from a researcher to turn around and swim back to where they started. If they did so, they’d receive a tasty bloodworm.

After the fish got that pattern down, the researchers changed the starting point and didn’t give any cues to turn back. Eight out of the nine fish swam the same exact distance before turning around. It seems that the fish used external cues to mark the distance and then turned around at the appropriate point. This type of measurement is known by scientists as “optic flow.”

This proves that fish actually do have decent memories.

The one thing that tripped the fish up was when the vertical stripes were moved closer together, they didn’t swim as far before turning back.

The fish also didn’t appear to use time as a way of marking distance.

“We did not find a significant effect of time on the distance travelled and the coefficient of variation in time travelled was two to three times higher than the coefficient of variation in distance estimate for most fish,” the researchers wrote. “Video analysis revealed high variation in time spent to perform the experiment within a day or a session without any apparent pattern, further supporting this hypothesis.”

This study definitely changes the way people will look at the film “Finding Dory” and how they relate to their goldfish. Remember that time you forgot to feed him? He remembers.

“Forgetful people say they have a mind like a goldfish, but that’s not fair,” Dr. Adelaide Sibeaux, who led the study at the University of Oxford, told Daily Mail. “Goldfish are clearly not stupid at all, as they have a good memory for distance based on the flow of objects passing by as they swim, like stripes on their tanks.”

“Even when I left for a week for Christmas, and came back to restart the study, they knew how to do it,” she continued.

So next time someone tells you they have the memory of a goldfish, let them know that it’s actually a compliment.