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@lamebaby47 if you see me on a walk know that i’m doing performance art #fyp ♬ original sound – yeehaw

TikTok is a world full of wellness trends. It would be rare to peruse the popular hashtags without seeing at least one athletic challenge, “what I eat in a day” post or some other video showcasing someone’s commitment to health, often in an unattainable way. Just take a look at this article about TikTok’s “That Girl” trend from earlier this year, and you’ll get a quick idea of why some of these posts are just plain cringey.

Piras took this idea and used it to her advantage, finding a way to flip the script.

This faux regimen would include waking up at 7 a.m. every day (ironically) and going on a walk each morning (ironically). In the video, Piras explained her logic that approaching things with this kind of humor would actually make it fun for her. “Then eventually,” she told TikTok, “that’s just gonna be my routine.” And you know what? She might be onto something.

@lamebaby47 it’s giving pussy pop explosion gun sounds #fyp ♬ Vroom Vroom – Charli XCX

In his book “Atomic Habits,” human behavior expert James Clear states that for a habit to become permanent, you have to make it satisfying. What gets immediately rewarded gets repeated. And in due time, you can incentivize yourself to continue your habits with small positive reinforcement until your change of state itself becomes rewarding enough.

This can be especially true in health routines. Clear goes on to say that far more important than following the latest fitness trends, is finding something that feels enjoyable. Doing this, in combination with what he calls the other three laws of behavior change (which include making it easy, making it attractive and making it obvious), we are far more likely to slowly integrate new behaviors until they become our new identity.

In Piras’ case, making a routine satisfying meant making it “camp.” Pairing her videos with silly things like The Home Depot theme song, or captions like “cosplay as a divorced single mom walking in the park.” Not taking anything seriously.

And guess what? As James Clear would have probably predicted, it worked.

Fast forward to two weeks later, and Piras is still maintaining her routine. “It’s been two weeks and I’ve been on a walk every single day. I get up at 7:30 a.m. every single day and I am someone who sucks at having a routine,” she said in an updated post, reporting that “this is working for me. I think I fixed myself.”

Would you look at that … take away the pressure of perfection, inject some silliness and joy and as if by magic, an otherwise impossible task is suddenly doable. More than doable, it’s automatic. Piras explained in an interview with Mashable that doing things in irony is “fake it till you make it, but repackaged for Gen Z.”

Piras’ ingenious life hack started to catch on, as others realized they could find the gumption to go to classes, match their socks and sport high ponytails with fanny packs on their morning strolls, all in the name of satire. Ironically, Piras has become some of a wellness influencer.

@lamebaby47 got interviewed about my silly little tiktok lmao thank you so much @ecaviar ♬ WHY IS EVERYONE USING THIS – .

The next time you’re faced with the challenge of creating a new routine—be that sticking to an exercise regimen or some other necessary evil—try making it camp. It could be the only mindset tweak you need to actually make it happen.

As for Piras, her next goal is to incorporate weight training to get ripped. But you know, ironically of course.

Dolls are one of the most common toys kids play with around the world, but there are some kids who have never seen a doll that looks like them. Kids who have physical disabilities, birth defects or other unique features can’t go to the store and see what makes them special in a doll on the shelf.

Thanks to a mom in the United Kingdom, they can now have one made, though.

Clare Tawell first made a doll for her youngest daughter Matilda (Tilly) in 2017. Tilly was born deaf and has been wearing hearing aids since she was 6 weeks old. Tawell wanted to find her a doll that had hearing aids like her, but had no luck.

“There was nothing out there that represented my little girl,” Tawell writes on her website. “It was like she didn’t matter, she didn’t conform to what society considers ‘normal’ so why bother acknowledging her.”

She channeled her frustration into creativity and made a doll with hearing aids that looked just like Tilly’s. She was thrilled. Soon other families wanted similar dolls, and BrightEars was born.

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“Over time parents of children with other medical devices/conditions contacted me and asked if I could make a doll that represented their child,” Tawell writes. “Yet again the Mama Bear in me was awoken with rage that there were not any dolls for these children and so I created them with the same amount of love, care and attention that I gave to making my daughter’s own one.”

BrightEars dolls include cleft lips, strawberry marks, feeding tubes and ports, and more.

Imagine what it must be like for a child with a cleft lip to have a doll that looks like them.

Or for a child with a strawberry mark.

Tawell makes dolls with all kinds of medically necessary attachments, such as feeding tubes, insulin pumps, urinary catheters and more.

She makes lots of dolls with various kinds of hearing aids and cochlear implants.

And other higher tech medical devices as well.

You can see the full collection of dolls Tawell creates on the BrightEars website.

She even creates Elf on the Shelf dolls with various unique features for the holidays.

Demand has gotten so high that Tawell has had to halt orders for a while, which she shares happens sometimes when media outlets pick up her story or photos of her creations go viral on social media. She doesn’t have a factory or employees—it’s just her at her dining room table, so a big influx of orders can quickly become overwhelming. Tawell can take custom requests for dolls to match a child’s exact birthmark, condition or device as closely as possible, with custom orders taking four to five weeks.

For a child who already experiences feeling different everywhere they go, having a doll that they can see themselves in is a lovely, meaningful gift.

Love to see people’s thoughtful, creative, life-changing projects doing what they were designed to do.

Just one hand gesture, a simple tucking of the thumb into the palm and covering it with fingers, was all it took to save a life. And now, the new SOS signal is making headlines with the aim of having it universally known and to save others.

This hand gesture was created by the Canadian Women’s Foundation to make reaching out for help easier for people at risk of abuse at home during the COVID-19 lockdown. The “Signal For Help” was a silent, yet effective communication tool on video calls. In the video demonstration below, you can see that while the two women talk about banana bread, the real conversation is hidden.

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One driver saw a teen using the hand gesture and recognized it from TikTok, where the videos had been going viral. The girl had in fact been abducted and reported missing from North Carolina and had been driven by her captor all the way to Kentucky. Though the girl and her kidnapper were reported to have been acquaintances, and she had gone with him willingly at first, it had quickly become apparent to her that something was off and she needed to get help fast.

Recognizing the covert plea, the driver immediately called the police to report suspicious behavior, then followed the car until deputies were able to stop and make an arrest. According to an article in The New York Times, authorities found that the man’s cellphone contained images that “portrayed a juvenile female in a sexual manner.” That man is now charged with first-degree unlawful imprisonment as well as possession of matter portraying sexual performance of a minor. And most importantly, that 16-year-old girl is back home and safe.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SIGNAL

Isolation can increase the risk of violence at home. Use this discrete gesture during a video call to show you need help:

1. Hold hand up with palm facing other person.
2. Tuck thumb into palm.
3. Fold fingers down over thumb. pic.twitter.com/gsIgSbXOmc

— Halton Police (@HaltonPolice) August 24, 2021

It’s unclear how long the girl had been calling for help before one person recognized the distress signal, but the need to make it more universally known is apparent. In an interview with CBS News, Darlene Thomas, who runs a support group for domestic violence survivors, likened the signal to flipping the light on for the neighbors, or using a certain code word in a text, saying TikTok is “just another platform” to share this important information.

After the Laurel County Sheriff’s Office posted a statement about the arrest on Facebook, one person commented “I mean maybe social media isn’t that bad after all! Thank god this girl was saved!!!” Others commented that this should be taught in schools.

Social media is normally a whirling barrage of animal videos, weird memes and overall things to distract us from everyday life. But let’s face it, it’s our main source of communication and connection. One idea or piece of information can spread worldwide in a millisecond. When we use that to our advantage, social media can add a little more value than a viral tweet. And in cases like this, social media can be a force for good that can actually save lives.

Let this new “Signal For Help” remind us all to stay aware and stay connected. Sometimes the smallest gesture can make the biggest difference.

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the ending of Squid Game, in case you have yet to watch it.

On Tuesday, the inevitable happened: Netflix finally confirmed a second season for Squid Game. The South Korean juggernaut has been so big it’s landed the streamer in legal trouble. But there’s a possibility it might not have happened, had creator Hwang Dong-hyuk gone with his other ending for the first season.

The show’s maiden nine episodes concluded with Seong Gi-hun, a.k.a. Player 456 (Lee Jung-jae), making an unexpected move: He decided not to get on the jet that would have taken him to his daughter, instead choosing to seek revenge on those who designed the deadly game, which ended the lives of 455 contestants. It was a controversial move, at least if you ask LeBron James. But in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Hwang said his other capper was a bit different.

“We actually wrestled between two different scenarios for the ending … There was one, the other alternate ending, where Gi-hun would get on the plane and leave. And then there was of course the one where he would turn back and walk towards the camera. We constantly asked ourselves, is it really right for Gi-hun to make the decision to leave and go see his family, to pursue his own happiness? Is that the right way for us to really propose the question or the message that we wanted to convey through the series?”

In the end, he felt the ending that allowed him to better peruse those questions was the one you wound up getting. “We came to the conclusion that the question that we wanted to propose cannot be done if he left on the plane,” Hwang said. “The question that we want to answer — why has the world come to what it is now? — can only be answered or can only be proposed if Gi-hun turned back and walked towards the camera. So that’s how we ended up with that ending in the finale.”

So there you have it. But don’t hold your breath for more Squid Game, as Hwang said it’s “too early” to tell when he’ll be able to make it. But if you still fiend for more of almost the same, Netflix did recently add three of Hwang’s films to their coffers.

(Via EW)

Two of the most exciting gaming events of the year are Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ) and Summer Games Done Quick (SGDQ). These charity events, hosted by the Speed Demos Archive, feature speedrunners from across the world gathering in one location to play through some games really fast for charity. It’s a great event that recently raised $2.9 million for Doctors Without Borders.

While the event is all about raising money for charity, it’s also meant to be a really fun time for the viewers. There’s plenty of people playing games as fast as possible, but it also has races and the occasional case of someone showing how much they can break a game. A personal favorite of mine is back in 2016, when someone put on a magic show by glitching Pokémon beyond recognition.

One thing that is impossible to do with any GDQ is watch the entire thing in one go. It goes on for days non-stop and the average person is going to need to do things like eat and sleep. Lucky for anyone with an eye on the upcoming AGDQ in January, the schedule has been released ahead of time. It’s too big to list in one go, so here are a handful of highlights from the first two days.

• Sunday January 9 – 4:39 p.m. ET. Deathloop Any%
• Sunday January 9 – 6:25 p.m. ET. Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance Tanker Blindfolded
• Monday January 10 – 4:36 p.m. ET Psychonauts 2 Any%
• Monday January 10 – 6:36 p.m. ET Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania Story Mode All Worlds Race

AGDQ will take place from Jan. 9 until a little past midnight on Jan. 16. See the entire schedule for AGDQ 2022 here.

Throughout his one-term presidency, Donald J. Trump always surrounded himself with sketchy characters, and they got sketchier as the four years wore on. But somehow we never heard about this guy: A new tell-all argues that one of the most powerful sycophants in Trump’s White House staff was Johnny McEntee, a 29-year-old former college quarterback, who rose the ranks after starting as the former president’s “body man” (i.e., the gig Tony Hale’s Gary had on Veep) and who was, as per another staffer, a “f*cking idiot.”

The book is Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, by ABC News Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl, and in an excerpt published by The Atlantic, he goes into detail about this mysteriously obscure associate. He outlines how this twentysomething former athlete, who cut his teeth carrying Trump’s bags on trips, eventually found himself, in Trump’s final stretch in office, overseeing the Presidential Personnel Office (PPO). He of course got the job despite having zero prior Beltway experience and despite having been previously fired from another position, under former Chief of Staff John Kelly, over having gambling income. (Later on, he was on the long list of people Trump might pardon in his final days, alongside Lil Wayne and Kodak Black.)

What’s more, once promoted to an astonishingly powerful position for a newbie, McEntee began filling the ranks with, as per Karl, “very young” and “comically inexperienced” Trump activists. Some were friends, others were “beautiful 21-year-old girls,” as well as “guys who would be absolutely no threat to Johnny in going after those girls.” One official called them “the Rockettes and the Dungeons & Dragons group,” partly because one of them was a former Rockette. But they weren’t anodyne. Karl compared them to “East German Stasi or even the Gestapo.”

But even as McEntee’s secret powers grew even stronger, not everyone was a fan. As per Karl:

The office was run by Johnny McEntee. Just 29 when he got the job, he’d come up as Trump’s body guy—the kid who carried the candidate’s bags. One of Trump’s most high-profile Cabinet secretaries described him to me as “a fucking idiot.” But in 2020, his power was undeniable. Trump knew he was the one person willing to do anything Trump wanted. As another senior official told me, “He became the deputy president.”

Oh, and of course, McEntee was a major player in the run-up to Jan. 6. Despite his complete lack of constitutional experience, McEntee drafted his own constitutional analysis, alongside “his own rogue legal advisers,” in an attempt to convince then-VP Mike Pence to overturn the election, even though he couldn’t. In a memo, which he sent to Pence over text (natch), McEntee asserted that Thomas Jefferson, when vice president, threw out votes so he could become president. Spoiler: He did not. (Meanwhile, Pence ignored McEntee and others, in part thanks to — that’s right — Dan Quayle.)

There’s more where that came from, and you can pore over it all over at The Atlantic and weep for what could have been had these meddling kids actually gotten away with it.

(Via The Atlantic)

While each of Mac Miller’s six albums hit the top five in the Billboard 200 chart, it’s only his debut full-length, Blue Slide Park, that topped the chart. Celebrating its 10th anniversary this week, the album is a testament to the late rapper’s carefree, authentic persona. It shows how even though he had inner demons that tragically ended his life, he was always just a kid from Pittsburgh looking to have fun.

In concert with the album’s anniversary, Rostrum Records released a new visualizer to the track “Frick Park Market,” an ode to Miller’s local corner store that seemed to have “anything you need” on the shelves. The visual features animations by Shokka, in a colorful and psychedelic display of the store, and the personalities in its orbit, that fits the song perfectly. In fact, on the Blue Slide Park commentary, Miller even alluded to the song’s kaleidoscopic nature:

“That was the first single, that was the first thing we let people hear and I think that it really helps to represent what I’m doing with this album: how it starts out just fun and some things you’re used to hearing from me and it goes into something a little more trippy and a little more different and kinda takes you on an adventure.”

In the end, revisiting the track and hearing Miller drop lines like “I’mma feed the world you can put it on my tab / Run until my legs go numb, I don’t plan on lookin’ back,” it’s a warm reminder of his style, his disposition, and how much he’ll be missed.

Watch the visualizer for “Frick Park Market” above.

Mac Miller is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Ausar is a promising up-and-comer from the musically rich city of Chicago, and now the rapper has been granted a tremendous opportunity to make good on his potential.

In a new video from the Next Success series (presented by Uproxx and Sprite), Ausar gets the chance to work with Quincy Banks, an established creative pro in Los Angeles. The name may not be familiar, but his work certainly is: He’s contributed key visual elements to projects by artists like Lizzo, The Rolling Stones, and Charli XCX, among plenty of others. Needless to say, having Banks on your side isn’t something that should be taken lightly.

In the clip, the two meet up for the first time and quickly get to talking about the project at hand: a new video for Ausar’s song “Homies,” breaking down the track and what they want to accomplish with the visual for it.

To learn more about the behind the scenes process between mentor and mentee check out the above video. And check out Ausar’s completed music video and a bit more on his journey by checking out our Next Success hub [hub link].

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

If there are two actors better suited to play a couple of military men than the frequently-buzz-cut and ever-shredded Channing Tatum and Tom Hardy, they’re two actors I’ve never heard of. In what seems like mere fate, the charming-and-chiseled pair has officially been cast in an upcoming Universal Pictures “fact-based drama about the Afghanistan evacuation” written by George Nolfi (Timeline, Ocean’s Twelve, The Bourne Ultimatum) and produced by the aforementioned trio of creatives. While the film has yet to receive a title or director, a bit more about the plot and Tatum and Hardy’s roles within the movie have been revealed.

According to Deadline, “the story is based on recently reported true stories, this one focusing on three former special forces team members who jump back into the fray alongside their Afghan counterparts, to rescue families and allies left behind amid the rapid fall of Afghanistan last August.” While it’s still unknown who the third special forces member will be, we can pretty safely assume Tatum and Hardy will be portraying two of the men returning to Afghanistan to aid with the evacuation.

In addition to Tatum and Hardy, Jules Daly and both Reid Carolin and Peter Kiernan of Free Association are on board to help produce the film. Nolfi will serve as its executive producer and senior vice president of production, Ryan Jones, will oversee the project on behalf of Universal. As of now, no other details have been announced.

If you were to say at this time last year, that in less than a year, we’d be able to hold large-scale music festivals that wouldn’t be a COVID-19 super-spreader event, you might’ve sounded like a crazy person. But by and large, as we’ve learned how change our behavior to help stop the spread of COVID-19, festivals like Lollapalooza and Outside Lands were executed remarkably. Requiring proof of vaccination and implementing a system to verify said proof was a major key, and tens of thousands of people have been able to revel in the grandeur of live music outdoors once again.

On Halloween weekend at Outside Lands festival, over 70,000 people a day came out to San Francisco’s sweeping Golden Gate Park, for what was nothing short of one of the best concert weekends of the year. Fans emanated gratitude for the experience just as much as artists did.

The live music industry was hit hard and for artists, it bore a big weight not just on their livelihoods, but on their creativity as well. Things got pretty dark there for a year and a half. And now with live music and music festivals back in action, there’s a welcome freshness from musicians on stage; thriving once again and needed for so many reasons. We caught up with five performers at Outside Lands 2021 — Albert Hammond Jr., Bartees Strange, Mxmtoon, ZHU, and Rexx Life Raj — to talk about what it means to be playing live shows for massive crowds again. Tap in.

Albert Hammond Jr. – The Headliner

The Strokes took a solid victory lap around the festival circuit this year, playing III Points Fest in Miami, Atlanta’s Shaky Knees, and even making a headlining stop at The Forum in Los Angeles before the band’s Friday night closing set at Outside Lands. Albert Hammond Jr. has been behind some of the most iconic riffs of the past 20 years and he most recently put out his fourth solo album, Francis Trouble in 2018. But in San Francisco, he was here to put it down with The Strokes, all while relishing in the launch of his sneaky delightful wine seltzer, Jetway.

“Just gathering with people is very important to being a human being. But even besides me, where my career is playing live music and recording, I can see it in people that they want to be around other people. People want to f*ck, man! [laughs] I’m kidding obviously, but I mean that in how people want to interact… It’s a very human thing. And If we’re just home, things start to fall apart.”

Bartees Strange – A Big Realization

Washington D.C.-based indie rocker Bartees Strange’s career is on the up. His 2020 album Live Forever proved to be a critically-acclaimed breakout hit and its surging artists like him who relish in the number of people at a music festival who are witnessing him and his music for the first time. He delivered one of the most inspired and positively-charged performances of the weekend on the Sutro Stage, and being back out on stage and playing to big festival crowds helped him re-focus on why he makes music to begin with.

“For the last 15 years, I’ve just been playing music and playing shows. And then all of a sudden it just went away. But I kept writing… but then I kinda forgot why? I was like ‘No one is ever gonna hear this?!’ And then I had to remember that I was always writing for myself anyways. And I found a lot of peace in that. And now that I’ve come back out and I’m playing to bigger crowds, it’s exciting to watch everybody react to the music, and I feel really good about being happy with myself. It’s a beautiful thing to come to realize, at a point where I don’t think I would’ve ever had that realization if things wouldn’t have stopped. So it’s been really amazing to be in front of people and to be perceived, and I feel very solid, which is nice.”

Mxmtoon – From The Bedroom To The Big Stage… Finally

Mxmtoon not only built her music from her bedroom, but she also built a massive fanbase. The Oakland native has close to a billion Spotify streams across all of her quaint folk-pop songs and is a TikTok sensation with more than 2 million followers. She launched a pop culture-friendly history podcast called 365 days with Mxmtoon, where she’s had guests on like Carly Rae Jepsen, Jon Batiste, and Julien Baker. And this past September, she put out the True Colors EP in conjunction with the Life Is Strange adventure game series. Suffice it to say, the 21-year-old had a lot of material to share on stage and she said that being back at a festival in her backyard means “everything” to her.

“I started making music by myself in my room and I think to have an opportunity to bring the pieces of work that I’ve been making for the last three years really, to a live stage and just play it to an audience that’s so close to my heart in the Bay Area? It’s so cool and something I’ve been waiting to do for years at this point. And I can’t really believe that it’s actually happening, it feels really surreal. I can only hope to keep having experiences like this and hopefully for people to see that there is a light at the tunnel through all of this and that live shows are back and hopefully here to stay.”

Rexx Life Raj – The Hometown Rapper Back Where He Belongs

Few people made an entrance at Outside Lands quite like the gregarious and gigantic Rexx Life Raj. On Halloween afternoon, he came out mounting a literal T-Rex, clad in a Jurassic Park-style safari vest that his whole team on stage was also wearing. It was not only a testament to his larger-than-life persona, but also to the team mentality that Bay Area hip-hop is founded on. In true Bay Area fashion, the man knows how to relax, and after his set, sipped an Aperol Spritz (at the branded “Aperol Piazza,” of course) and reflected on not just being back on stage, but doing so to a hometown crowd.

“It literally feels insane, but insane in a good way. I knew I missed it, but I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I was on stage and was like, ‘This is where I’m supposed to be.’ And just being around this many people? I haven’t been around this many people in a year and a half, two years even. it just feels good to be at home here and see friends and family, and just to be able to perform is really tight.”

ZHU – The Electronic Music Heavyweight

Living in the shadows has always been a part of ZHU’s persona. The electronic producer and multi-instrumentalist initially came up as a mystical figure in EDM with an unknown identity. He’s since stepped out from behind the curtain to become one of the most crucial voices for Asian-Americans in electronic music, and released the excellent Dreamland 2021 this year. A San Francisco native, he headlined the Twin Peaks Stage on Saturday night following his fellow SF-er 24KGoldn’s performance. The pair would perform their hit “I Admit It” together at the festival and for someone who plays electronic festivals all over the world, a return to the normalcy of being back on the road and on stage was beginning to set in.

“I think that it was a transitional period for all of us. For me, it really didn’t hit until even last week when I was in Miami playing to 10,000+ kids and for the first time, I had the realization that we’re really back. It’s not a minimal capacity. People were ready and it’s great for the culture.”