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There’s A Happy Ending For The ‘Wheel Of Fortune’ Contestant Who Lost On An Infuriating Technicality

Wheel of Fortune fans (and rational people) are in an uproar over a ruling during Tuesday’s episode of the long-running game show.

To recap: contestant Charlene Rubush made it to the bonus round, where the category was “What Are You Doing?” After incorrectly guessing “CHOOSING THE RIGHT CARD,” Charlene had enough time for another answer, and her buzzer-beater response was accurate: “CHOOSING THE RIGHT WORD.” But because she paused seven seconds between “CHOOSING THE RIGHT” and “WORD,” she didn’t win the grand prize of an Audi. As host Pat Sajak explained, “This one’s tough because you said all the right words, including the word ‘word’ but as you know, it’s got to be more or less continuous. We’ll allow for a little pause but not four or five seconds. I’m sorry, you did a good job in getting it but we can’t give you the prize and it was the Audi.” An Audi Q3, to be precise.

The ruling drew the ire of many Wheel viewers, including Jeopardy! champ Alex Jacob, who tweeted, “Come on @WheelofFortune, the woman literally chose the right word. Give her the car.” Audi was paying attention.

“You’re a winner in our eyes, Charlene. Now, let’s get you a prize. Time to #GiveHerTheQ3,” the car company tweeted. “There’s no community like the Audi community. With your help, we tracked down Charlene! More to come as we help #GiveHerTheQ3.” Merry Christmas to Charlene, and Charlene only.

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Donald Trump Mounted A Surprisingly Passionate Defense Of The COVID Vaccine During An Interview With Candace Owens

Since its introduction at the start of the year, the COVID vaccine has been the subject of intense partisan debate, with Republicans being the most predominant source of misinformation about the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness in curbing the coronavirus pandemic. Which is why it’s particularly notable that Donald Trump is slowly emerging as a staunch defender of the vaccines that, technically, were sped into production under his administration.

During a new interview with The Daily Wire‘s Candace Owens, Trump not only swatted down the conservative conspiracy theory that people are dying because of the vaccine, but he did it after Owens teed him up with a chance to attack Joe Biden for having more people die of COVID under his administration. Via The Hill:

“Oh no, the vaccines work, but some people aren’t the ones. The ones who get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don’t take the vaccine. But it’s still their choice. And if you take the vaccine, you’re protected,” Trump told Owens.

“Look, the results of the vaccine are very good, and if you do get it, it’s a very minor form,” Trump continued. “People aren’t dying when they take the vaccine.”

As for what the heck is going on, Trump seems to be finally leaning into the fact that he can take a huge amount of credit for the vaccine development if he starts admitting that they are safe and effective. It’s also notable that Trump recently revealed that he was very happy to see the Biden administration credit him for Operation Warp Speed. If that was an attempt to get Trump to be more vocal about the jab, it’s freaking working. He’s already out here confirming that he got a booster shot, so stroke that orange maniac’s ego until he’s personally handing out the shots himself. We can do this.

(Via The Hill)

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Olivia Rodrigo Wrote Her First Songs At Five Years Old About ‘Getting Lost In The Grocery Store’

Olivia Rodrigo is only 18 years old, but even at her young age, she has already been writing songs for a long time. In fact, Rodrigo says her first original tunes arrived when she was just five.

In a recent Music Week feature, Rodrigo said of her musical origins, “I’ve been writing songs since I was five years old. Just gibberish, stuff about getting lost in the grocery store. My mom has a lot of them on VHS tapes.”

She added, “And I think the first proper song I ever wrote — the first one I finessed and that was a complete song — I was probably about 12 or 13. It was called ‘Naive Girl’ and I put it on my Instagram. It’s probably still out there somewhere, in the depths of the internet.”

While it might be tough to track down those VHS tapes featuring the grocery store song, you don’t actually have to dig too deep to find “Naive Girl.” While the original post is no longer on Rodrigo’s Instagram account, is has been saved and re-uploaded by third parties. Genius notes the track was originally shared on October 12, 2018 along with the caption, “hi I wrote dis! writing songs is a huge passion of mine and I thought it was about time to share it with y’all! the whole song is on IGTV if ur interested! I’m terribly nervous so please be tender haha.”

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Drake Gets A ‘Microrealistic’ Tattoo Honoring The Late Virgil Abloh

Drake has long been fond of honoring his friends and heroes with tattoos; in 2017, he adorned himself with portraits of Lil Wayne and Sade, he celebrated passing The Beatles’ Billboard milestones with an Abbey Road-themed addition in 2019, and who could ever forget that infamous Aaliyah body art he got done to signify his boyhood crush on the late singer? While fans questioned some of these considering his dubious connections to their subjects, his latest is one of his most personal, honoring the late designer Virgil Abloh.

Designed by Joaquin Ganga, who specializes in “microrealism,” the new forearm tattoo recreates a photo of Virgil at Paris Fashion Week in 2018, throwing a kite down the runway like a paper plane.

Drake’s tattoo is just the latest in a string of tributes to the designer, who passed away after a two-year battle with cancer in November this year. Before his passing, he was considered a pioneer in the world of fashion, holding the role of artistic director for Louis Vuitton since 2018 (he was the first Black person to do so). His own label, Off-White, was a favorite of hip-hop’s elite and saw him collaborating on controversial but popular designs with Nike. He was also an accomplished DJ and designed the cover for Pop Smoke’s posthumous debut album, Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon, although that assignment prompted much controversy as well.

Among the celebrities and musicians who honored Virgil after his death were his oldest collaborator and first major champion Kanye, Kid Cudi, Frank Ocean, Vic Mensa, LeBron James, and Tyler The Creator.

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This innocent question we ask boys is putting more pressure on them than we realize

This article originally appeared on 06.20.18

Studies show that having daughters makes men more sympathetic to women’s issues.

And while it would be nice if men did not need a genetic investment in a female person in order to gain this perspective, lately I’ve had sympathy for those newly woke dads.

My two sons have caused something similar to happen to me. I’ve begun to glimpse the world through the eyes of a young male. And among the things I’m finding here in boyland are the same obnoxious gender norms that rankled when I was a girl.


Of course, one notices norms the most when they don’t fit. If my tween sons were happily boy-ing away at boy things, neither they nor I would notice that they were hemmed in.

But oh boy, are they not doing that.

In fact, if I showed you a list of my sons’ collective interests and you had to guess their gender, you’d waver a bit, but then choose girl.

Baking, reading, drawing, holidays, films, volleyball, cute mammals, video games, babies and toddlers, reading, travel, writing letters.

I imagine many of you are thinking at this point: That’s awesome that your boys are interested in those things!

There’s more. One loves comics and graphic novels but gravitates to stories with strong female protagonists, like Ms. Marvel and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.

Cool! I love it.

And sports. They are thoroughly bored by team sports. They don’t play them. They won’t watch them. They will up- or down-arrow through any number of sporting events on TV to get to a dance contest or to watch competitive baking.

So? Nothing wrong with that.

Those are the kinds of things all my progressive friends say.

But it’s often not the message my sons themselves hear from the other adults in their lives, their classmates, and the media.

For example, the first get-to-know-you question they are inevitably asked by well-meaning grown-ups is, “So, do you play sports?” When they say, “No, not really,” the adult usually continues brightly, “Oh, so what do you like to do, then?”

No one explicitly says it’s bad for a boy not to play sports. But when it’s always the first question asked, the implication is clear: playing sports is normal; therefore, not playing them is not.

The truth is that one of them does play a sport. He figure skates, as does my daughter. When people find out that she skates, they beam at her, as if she suddenly has possession of a few rays of Olympic glory. In the days before my son stopped telling people that he ice skates, most of them hesitated and then said, “Oh, so you are planning to play hockey?”

But it’s not just what people say. It’s all those pesky, unwritten rules. When he was in second grade, my younger son liked the Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew series. But he refused to check any out of the school library. He explained: “Girls can read boy books, but boys can’t read girl books. Girls can wear boy colors or girl colors, but boys can only wear boy colors. Why is that, Mom?”

I didn’t have an answer.

An obvious starting point — and the one that we have the most control over — is to change the way we speak to the boys in our lives.

As Andrew Reiner suggests in a spot-on essay, we should engage boys in analytical, emotion-focused conversations, just like we do with girls. In “How to Talk to Little Girls,” Lisa Bloom offers alternatives to the appearance-focused comments so often directed at young girls: asking a girl what she’s reading or about current events or what she would like to see changed in the world. I could copy-paste Bloom’s list and slap a different title on it: “How to Ask Boys About Something Besides Sports.”

And with a few more built-in nudges, we might expand the narrow world of boyhood more quickly. Boy Scouts could offer badges for developing skills in child care, teamwork, and journaling. Girl-dominated activities like art, dance, gymnastics, and figure skating could be made more welcoming to boys, with increased outreach and retention efforts. My son could write his own essay about trying to fit in to the nearly all-girl world of figure skating, including the times he has had to change clothes in a toilet stall at skating events because there were no locker rooms available for boys.

I used to think that the concept of gender — of “girl things” and “boy things” — was what was holding us back.

Now I see it differently.

The interdependent yin and yang of gender is a fundamental part of who we are, individually and collectively. We need people who like to fix cars and people who like to fix dinner. We need people who are willing and able to fight if needed and people who are exquisitely tuned into a baby’s needs. But for millennia, we have forced these traits to align with biological sex, causing countless individuals to be dissatisfied and diminished. For the most part, we’ve recognized this with girls. But we have a long way to go when it comes to boys. As Gloria Steinem observed, “We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons … but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.”

I acknowledge that young boys feeling pressured to be sports fans is not our country’s biggest problem related to gender.

Transgender individuals still confront discrimination and violence. The #MeToo movement has revealed to anyone who didn’t already know it that girls and women can’t go about their everyday lives without bumping into male sexual aggression.

But if our culture shifts to wholeheartedly embrace the whole spectrum of unboyishness, it may play some small role in addressing these other issues, too. Male culture will be redefined, enriched, and expanded, diluting the toxic masculinity that is at the root of most of our gender-related problems.

Boys and girls alike will be able to decide if they would rather be made up of snips and snails, sugar and spice, or a customized mix. And my future grandsons, unlike my sons, won’t think twice about wearing pink or reading about a girl detective at school.

This story originally appeared on Motherwell and is reprinted here with permission.

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J. Cole’s ‘The Off-Season’ Becomes His First Platinum Album — With Features, Of Course

For years, J. Cole fans’ favorite refrain to defend their hero was the “platinum with no features” trope — so much so, that even J. Cole himself got sick of it. Well, now they’ve got a new platinum album to crow about without adding that caveat. Cole’s new album, The Off-Season, hasn’t yet been officially certified by the Recording Industry Association of America, but according to the ChartData Twitter which tracks sales data readily available online, the album has crossed the one million units sold milestone to become eligible for certification.

The Off-Season becomes Cole’s sixth consecutive album to sell platinum, not including the Dreamville compilation Revenge Of The Dreamers III, on which Cole also holds top billing. The Off-Season included features from 21 Savage, 6lack, Bas, Cam’Ron, Diddy, James Fauntleroy, Lil Baby, and Morray, debuting at No.1 on the Billboard 200, and launching five of its songs into the Hot 100 top five: My Life” (No. 2), “Amari” (No. 5), “Pride is the Devil” (No. 7), “95 South” (No. 8) and “Interlude” (No. 8). Cole’s manager Ibrahim Hamad celebrated the achievement on Twitter as well, reminding fans just how long-running this streak has been.

2021 has been a massive year for Cole, who is also nominated for several Grammys, including Best Rap Song for “My Life” and Best Rap Album. He recently completed his Off-Season Tour and capped off his year with a headlining performance at Rolling Loud California.

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Eric Clapton ‘Does Not Intend’ To Actually Collect The Money From His Bootleg CD Case

A few days ago, it was reported that Eric Clapton got a €3,400 (about $3,844) win in a court case against a woman who was attempting to sell a bootleg CD of one of his concerts for €9.95 (about $11.25) on eBay. Now, more details about the situation have come to light, including the fact that Clapton apparently doesn’t intend to actually collect the money awarded to him in the case.

As The Guardian reports, Clapton’s management released a statement yesterday through the Where’s Eric! fan club website, which offers some context by starting:

“Germany is one of several countries where sales of unauthorized and usually poor-quality illegal bootleg CDs are rife, which harms both the industry and purchasers of inferior product. Over a period of more than 10 years the German lawyers appointed by Eric Clapton, and a significant number of other well-known artists and record companies, have successfully pursued thousands of bootleg cases under routine copyright procedures.

It is not the intention to target individuals selling isolated CDs from their own collection, but rather the active bootleggers manufacturing unauthorised copies for sale. In the case of an individual selling unauthorised items from a personal collection, if following receipt of a ‘cease and desist’ letter the offending items are withdrawn, any costs would be minimal, or might be waived.”

The statement then claims the defendant was uncooperative with Clapton’s management when they contacted her, writing, “This case could have been disposed of quickly at minimal cost, but unfortunately in response to the German lawyers’ first standard letter, the individual’s reply included the line (translation): ‘feel free to file a lawsuit if you insist on the demands.’ This triggered the next step in the standard legal procedures, and the Court then made the initial injunction order. If the individual had complied with the initial letter the costs would have been minimal. Had she explained at the outset the full facts in a simple phone call or letter to the lawyers, any claim might, have been waived, and costs avoided.”

The statement concludes by noting, “However, when the full facts of this particular case came to light and it was clear the individual is not the type of person Eric Clapton, or his record company, wish to target, Eric Clapton decided not to take any further action and does not intend to collect the costs awarded to him by the Court. Also, he hopes the individual will not herself incur any further costs.”

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Peter Dinklage Thinks ‘Game Of Thrones’ Fans Were Mad About The Finale Because They Wanted The ‘Pretty White People’ To Live Happily Ever After

Unlike George R.R. Martin, who wanted Game of Thrones to run for at least 10 seasons, Peter Dinklage was ready for the show to be over.

“It was the right time. No less, no more. You don’t want to wear out your welcome, although I’m not sure that show could have,” the Emmy-winning actor told the New York Times when asked about Thrones ending after eight seasons. “But I think the reason there was some backlash about the ending is because they were angry at us for breaking up with them. We were going off the air and they didn’t know what to do with their Sunday nights anymore. They wanted more, so they backlashed about that.”

There may have been other reasons, too.

“They wanted the pretty white people to ride off into the sunset together. By the way, it’s fiction. There’s dragons in it. Move on. [Laughs] No, but the show subverts what you think, and that’s what I love about it. Yeah, it was called Game of Thrones, but at the end, the whole dialogue when people would approach me on the street was, ‘Who’s going to be on the throne?’ I don’t know why that was their takeaway because the show really was more than that.”

I fall into the camp of Game of Thrones viewers who did not like the final episode (or the final season, for that matter), but I still love the show, not only for the character development, witty dialogue, and scenic locations. But because, as Dinklage puts it, “there’s dragons in it.” Every show would be better with dragons in it. Monica, Rachel, Phoebe, Chandler, Joey, Ross, and a dragon. See? Friends is good now.

Dinklage can soon be seen in Cyrano, the trailer for which you can watch here.

(Via the New York Times)

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Four More Winners of Upworthy’s Kindness Fund

Saving the descendants of Eleanor Roosevelt’s monkeys. A “So You Think You Can Dance” finalist teaching kids in the foster care system to dance. Spreading Christmas cheer to kids in Peru. Creating a lit bookfest in the most diverse city in the U.S.

At first glance, these initiatives might seem at odds with each other, but if you look closer you’ll see that they all embody simple acts of kindness for those most in need in their communities—human or otherwise.

Plus, each project has received a $500 financial boost thanks to the Upworthy Kindness Fund—a collaboration between Upworthy and GoFundMe that celebrates and amplifies everyday acts of kindness.

Through the end of 2021, you too can tell Upworthy how your GoFundMe is making a difference in your community for a chance to receive $500 for your project and a shout-out on Upworthy.

So far, more than 120 people have received a financial boost from the Kindness Fund. Meet the latest batch of winners:

1. Fostering Dreams

Throughout Melanie Buttarazzi’s dance career, she has been a finalist on “So You Think You Can Dance” and has worked with Jennifer Lopez, Pharrell, Pitbull and Ne-Yo. For her, dancing is strength and offers freedom. These are some of the core tenets of Melanie’s nonprofit Fostering Dreams Project. The organization partners with school districts to bring a comprehensive curriculum designed to enrich the lives of foster youth both academically and socially.

Since 2018, the Fostering Dreams Project has used dance, movement therapy and meditative practices to improve the grades, self-esteem and behavior of more than 1,000 students in 25 schools. But now, with COVID-19, many school budgets have been reduced.

Melanie’s GoFundMe for Fostering Dreams will allow kids in foster care to continue to have a healthy way to release the stress, anxiety and depression that many battle every day.

Image courtesy of Fostering Dreams Project

2. Christmas for Kids in Peru

Biancha Medina believes in “una Navidad para todos,” which translates to “a Christmas for everyone.” But in many parts of the world, including Peru, kids don’t get to experience the joys of the Christmas season.

With the help of Upworthy’s Kindness Fund, Biancha’s fundraiser will bring gifts and supplies to kids and their families living in extreme poverty in Peru’s agricultural Incahuasi district.

In partnership with Lions Club International, Biancha aims to spread Christmas joy and address the basic needs of more than 400 children in many more villages throughout Peru.

Image courtesy of Biancha Medina

3. Let’s Build a Monkey Sanctuary!

Seventy years ago, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt imported tiny vervet monkeys from Africa for biomedical research in Florida. Nearly a dozen of them escaped, and in the ensuing decades they procreated—as monkeys do—and settled around Dania Beach.

But the monkeys remain wild and, as such, face risks due to human interaction. Deborah Williams, organizer of the Dania Beach Vervet Project, writes on its GoFundMe page, “We’ve lost many monkeys over the years to painful electrocutions, car collisions, and wounds due to possible snaring.”

And because they’re not a native species to Florida, the monkeys are not entitled to proper veterinary care. The best solution is to build a 3.5-acre sanctuary that would reduce human interaction in an urban environment and allow the monkeys to live peacefully and injury-free.

Image courtesy of the Dania Beach Vervet Project

4. BIPOC Bookfest

Journalists and writers of color have come together to form the BIPOC Bookfest in Houston, Texas, with a mission to ensure that people’s reading experiences are, as they put it, “a little more diverse, and a lot more lit.”

The two-day festival in what is one of the country’s most diverse cities will celebrate books by Black, Indigenous, Latino/a/x, Asian American, Pacific Islander and other marginalized groups’ authors. A vital aim of the festival will be to combat low literacy rates in Harris County.

The festival is currently raising funds to pay for venue rental, artist fees, book giveaways and other logistics—all crucial in making the event come alive in Spring 2022.

Image courtesy of BIPOC Book Fest

Do you have a GoFundMe or an idea for one that helps your community or the planet in some way?

Through the end of 2021, we want to hear about projects that make a difference—and should your project qualify, we’d be proud to support your efforts with a $500 grant to your fundraiser!

For questions and more information, please check out our FAQs and the Kindness Toolkit for resources on how to start your own kindness fundraiser.

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Even Michael Bublé Gets Sick Of Christmas Music

Michael Bublé had some major success in the late 2000s with popular singles like “Everything” and “Haven’t Met You Yet,” but it’s his Christmas music that has come to define his career. Billboard noted earlier this month that his iconic 2011 album Christmas has sold over 16 million copies worldwide. So, it’s probably pretty easy for Bublé to get into the holiday spirit when November and December roll around, but even he gets tired of Christmas music.

He recently told the Irish Daily Star, “Christmas music reminds me of rich food: When you haven’t had it in a while, you are so excited for it and you eat as much as you can. By the 26th of December, you don’t ever want to hear it again. But there are worse things than a season where people are kind.”

The Canadian singer also noted that even at 46 years old, he still has a childlike love of the holiday, saying, “I love Christmas so much and my parents made it so great for us that I still have that sense of wonderment. It’s not that I see it through the eyes of kids, I genuinely have that wonderment. Like, my tree was up November 1st.”

Meanwhile, other sources have indicated that too much of a good thing is indeed possible when it comes to Christmas music. A 2011 survey from Consumer Reports showed that 23 percent of respondents dreaded hearing holiday music. A 2019 study also found that when it comes to “incessant repetition” of seasonal tunes, “the brain can become oversaturated and end up triggering a negative response, leading you to feel the opposite of the Christmas cheer and even worsening some stress you may be feeling related to the season, such as worries over spending money on gifts.”

As for Bublé, he celebrated the tenth anniversary of Christmas earlier this month with a Lorne Michaels-produced holiday special, Christmas In The City. He also dropped a deluxe edition of Christmas last month.

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