Jacob Tremblay, the nine-year-old star of Room, is an inarguably cute kid, but this week after the Golden Globes, the Internet was treated to pictures of his father, who is cute in a different way. In the way that he is actually really hot. Movie star hot.
Hotness like this doesn't go unnoticed long, as the Internet will attest. But the question remains: does this man have a name, or is he destined to be the "Jessie's Girl" of celebrity parents forever?
Vine celebrity Nash Grier and actual Modern Family celebrity Ariel Winter got into a fight online, and it got nasty fast. (Dear Olds: Vine stars are a thing. Dear Youngs: Vine stars are still somehow a thing.) Vine allows you to make 6 second videos; usually goofy jokes, cute pictures of cats, or any of the inane things the Internet pumps out on every other platform. But some very special and very young men and women have huge followings for posting those inane things. For example, Mr. Nash Grier:
Grier has millions of followers and actually makes money from what he does. He also gets to go to awards shows and hobnob with "real" celebrities. Part of his fame may also come from the fact that he looks a bit like Miley Cyrus:
Anyway, on Jan. 8, Grier posted a call to fans to share their favorite old "Nash Vids," and Modern Family actress Ariel Winters gave a snarky reply on Twitter. It was not well received, probably because she called out older posts of Grier's that were reportedly homophobic and racist rants, perhaps because she questioned why anyone would like him at all:
Before skipping over this charge, is there any truth to it? Yes, and this isn't the first time he's gotten in trouble for it. In particular, he received a lot of attention for this (since-deleted) 2014 Vine ending with a smug smile on his face:
Other evidence of Grier's fondness for such words is not hard to find:
Still, Grier fans were not about to abide such an attack, and hopped on over to Winter's Instagram to criticize her in Internet speak:
On Monday, Jan 11, Winter posted a lengthy essay on why Grier has no excuse for any hateful opinions he had disseminated on Vine, especially not the excuse of youth. They're both the same age and obviously both grew up with access to the Internet, where anyone can Google, "Should I hate gay people?" and come up with the answer, "No":
Grier saw her post (which was also on Twitter) and responded. Kind of. It's unclear whether Grier wants to educate Winter on himself or why she should be OK with homophobia:
But she's all good:
Related story: Hey, creeps, ya did it: Modern Family's Ariel Winter got a breast reduction.
Last Sunday, a woman named Emily Saunders left an account on Lidl UK's Facebook page of a harrowing experience with a shopgirl who was definitely bringing her biases to work. That, or she'd like to be a stand up comedian who does a lot of terrible crowd work.
Saunders says the girl made multiple inappropriate comments about her obvious baby bump. That would be upsetting enough, but Saunders became pregnant through multiple IVF treatments. She wasn't just bored, as the girl implied.
She writes:
At 36 weeks pregnant I have just visited the new Lidl in Wellingborough for the first time. The checkout woman looked at my bump and asked if there was "nothing on tv that day", I didn't answer as I was a bit shocked she then asked again! I said no, thinking she would shut up but instead she said "you couldn't have read a book instead?"
Had I managed to get pregnant naturally then this comment inferring that my baby was not planned is insulting enough. However as someone who went through months of IVF treatment it is even more hurtful.
When I said I didn't want cash back she said "oh you won't be able to afford cash back once it's here anyway"
Her comments were loud enough for the people behind me in the queue to laugh along but I left the shop feeling insulted, embarrassed and hurt.
There's a comment from Lidl under Saunders's complaint:
But by now that shopgirl is probably already touring with her tight five.
Reading, watching, and hearing all the tributes to David Bowie across social media yesterday, it seemed that everyone who loved the man's music shared a connection with him so intense it felt like they knew him personally. A much younger musician, Lorde, loved his music as much as anyone—but the then 16-year-old rock star actually did get to meet him one night.
It reads:
When a hero dies, everyone wants a quote. I woke up this morning with a tender head from tears and that big red cup of Japanese whiskey, gulped last night just after the news came. People were already asking me what I thought. It feels kind of garish to talk about oneself at a time like this, when the thing that has happened is so distinctly world-sized. But everything I’ve read or seen since the news has been deeply intrinsic in tone, almost selfish, like therapy. That’s who he was to all of us. He was a piece of bright pleated silk we could stretch out or fold up small inside ourselves when we needed to.
Mr. Bowie, I guess right now we have to hang this thing up for a minute.The night I met him I played at an expensive Vogue benefit with a lot of fresh flowers, honouring Tilda. I was not quite seventeen, America was very new to me, and I was distinctly uneasy and distrustful toward everything happening in my life that was putting me in these flat-voiced, narrow-eyed, champagneish rooms. I played my three songs, thrashing and twitching in platform boots. Afterward, Anna clasped my hand and said “David wants to meet you,” and led me through people and round tables with candles and glasses and louder and louder talk, and he was there.
I've never met a hero of mine and liked it. It just sucks, the pressure is too huge, you can't enjoy it. David was different. I'll never forget the caressing of our hands as we spoke, or the light in his eyes. That night something changed in me - i felt a calmness grow, a sureness. I think in those brief moments, he heralded me into my next new life, an old rock and roll alien angel in a perfect grey suit. I realized everything I’d ever done, or would do from then on, would be done like maybe he was watching. I realized I was proud of my spiky strangeness because he had been proud of his. And I know I'm never going to stop learning dances, brand new dances.
It's not going to change, how we feel about him. For the rest of our lives, we'll always be crashing in that same car.
Thankyou, David Bowie.
If anyone's touch could transform a person instantly, it sure feels like it would be Ziggy Stardust's.
Watching this furry little newborn otter take a nap on its mama's soft belly will be the cutest, snuggliest thing you see all day. The wild otters are chillaxing in the Great Tide Pool at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. According to the aquarium's website (which has amazing live-feed cams of otters, jellyfish, penguins, and sharks, by the way) the pool is a protected basin wild animals can visit as they please. It's the safe spot where Mama Otter gave birth just one day before this video was taken in December. Hit mute before playing, because there's an annoying guy talking/ruining everyone's lives with his jibber-jabber.
Bonus: check out Mama Otter grooming her baby fluff-ball.
Love is alive—Jerry Hall and Rupert Murdoch have found each other. The model famous for her relationship with Mick Jagger is going to marry the billionaire CEO of News Corporation.
The incredibly random couple have been together since the end of the summer and never publicly acknowledged their relationship until their engagement announcement in The Times, which Murdoch's News Corporation owns.
In an e-mail to The New York Times, spokesman Steven Rubenstein wrote, “They have loved these past months together, are thrilled to be getting married and excited about their future."
The couple's first major public appearance occurred at the 2016 Golden Globes, when everyone realized they're a thing.
Both 84-year-old Murdoch and 59-year-old Hall have had some practice at marriage. The News Corp CEO has been married three times and has six kids, which is also the number of British people News Corp's defunct News of the World did not hack. Murdoch's last marriage dissolved in 2013.
Interestingly, this will technically be Hall's first official marriage. When Jagger and Hall underwent a divorce in 1999, their 1990 Hindu marriage ceremony was deemed invalid. The couple's four children include models Georgia May and Elizabeth.
This engagement finally confirms that Hall did not find true love on her 2005 VH1 show, Kept, which hopefully no one watched because that show was no good, even by VH1 standards.
A Kansas waiter is going viral with an image of a generous tip that turned out not to be money, but a deliberately unfunny prank. Garret Wayman is a 17-year-old server in Wichita, who is so enthusiastic about food that his Twitter handle is @BeanBurrito. He was thrilled recently when he though he had gotten a $20 tip.
"I'm 17-years-old, $7,000 in debt because I had to buy myself a car, juggling full-time school, and working seven days a week," Wayman told Tech Insider. A $20 tip would have been a huge deal for him. But instead of finding Andrew Jackson, Wayman unfolded the bill to find a religious pamphlet telling him "there is something you can have more valuable than money!" and to "seek faith thru Jesus Christ."
While the customer promoted serving God, he failed to respect his server. He didn't leave a real tip and just bolted. Wayman added,"I wanted to tell him that I only make $3 an hour and bust my a-- at my job to make way less than I deserve, but he was gone by the time I had the chance to."
Wayman didn't turn the other cheek, and instead tweeted a picture of the prank. That picture has now been retweeted over 5,000 times.
Here's the original tweet:
The pamphlet included such "tips" as:
Nothing in this world will really satisfy, that is because there is a void in your life that can only be filled with God, who created you... Come on, try Jesus, and see what happens! God's promise is your guarantee.
People on Twitter are sharing the image, and calling out the customer for being "Un-Christian" and rude. Jesus gives tips, and so should kind customers.
As Wayman said, "To get my hopes up like that ... is just flat out mean."
It's pretty crazy that in just 1983, a representative for MTV, Mark Goodman, openly admitted that MTV avoided airing black artists' music videos because they wanted to appeal to white audiences. In this interview with David Bowie, he's pretty clear about how programming is designed to bring in white kids in Poughkeepsie, and that's it. Bowie is relentless in his line of questioning in a way few artists would be willing to be today, at least in person. On Twitter, anything goes:
In the interview, Bowie says:
There seem to be a lot of black artists making very good videos that I’m surprised aren’t being used on MTV.
And when Goodman responds with this bullsh*t excuse:
We have to try and do what we think not only New York and Los Angeles will appreciate, but also Poughkeepsie or the Midwest. Pick some town in the Midwest which would be scared to death by … a string of other black faces, or black music...We have to play music we think an entire country is going to like, and certainly we’re a rock-and-roll station.
Bowie then tells him to stop shifting blame, "Don’t say, ‘Well, it’s not me, it’s them.’ Is it not possible it should be a conviction of the station and of the radio stations to be fair … to make the media more integrated?”
Not a lot of white artist's were in a rush to criticize a system that favored them, so it's remarkable to see Bowie using his influence to challenge MTV. To be fair to Goodman, he later reflected on the interview saying he agreed with Bowie, but couldn't talk sh*t about the network that employed him. Goodman said:
So when Bowie started in with me, I tried to explain the rock format idea. And Bowie was not having it.
I was fumpfering around for something to say, and the interview felt like an eternity. The fact was, J.J. [Jackson] and I had been talking about this. He pointed out to me that he was initially down with the rock format, but once MTV started to play Spandau Ballet and ABC — basically, white R&B acts — he felt there was no reason not to play black R&B acts.
Cultural appropriation in music and the prioritization of white musicians is still an issue that creates Internet firestorms today, though MTV has gotten a lot better at PR. Look at Iggy Azalea vs. Azaelia Banks. Thirty years ago, MTV would have admitted out loud that they give Iggy screen time because she's white. Things have changed in that respect, at least.
Lydia Doza is a software engineering student at the Oregon Institute of Technology who ignored a call from an unknown number she received while in class. After she did not answer the call, she received an interesting text message.
It turns out the call was from The White House, with an invitation to be a guest of The First Lady during President Obama's State of the Union Address. Doza described her skepticism upon receiving the surprising text message:
And then I received a text message saying it was someone from the White House and they left me a return phone number. And I almost didn’t call back because I thought it was a scam of some sort.
Thankfully, Doza returned the call after receiving the text, and now she'll join 22 others as a guest of First Lady Michelle Obama. Doza was selected because of her work helping Native American youth get interested in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields (STEM). She is an ambassador for the Center for Native American Youth, and her heritage includes three Alaskan tribes: Tsimshian, Haida and Inupiat.
Doza is also a member of the Gen-I Network, which is an initiative started by President Barack Obama to connect and empower indigenous youth. She was drawn to study software engineering because of an interest in robotics during high school. She competed in several robotics competitions, and continues to help find and connect female students with an interest in robotics and STEM fields.
She's so dedicated to her studies that she was concerned about missing class:
I'm sure my professors will understand if I'm a little late on my assignments this week.
Her professors will most certainly understand her absence. And if they don't, she can probably build a legion of robots that will menace them to comply with anything she wishes.
Update: The men in the video reached out to Someecards after seeing this article to add that their viral moment has led them to start a charity drive, Curing Cancer with a Kiss. See their full message at the bottom of the article.
Hockey isn't just an excuse for men to hit each other—it is also sometimes an excuse for men to kiss each other. That's what happened this week when, at an LA Kings vs. Toronto Maple Leafs game in Los Angeles, a gay couple showed up on the game's Kiss Cam—to the utter delight of the crowd. It's the first time a gay kiss has ever been featured in an NHL Kiss Cam segment, believe it or not.
The kissers really go for it, too. LA Kings indeed. On top of all that, they said in an email to Someecards that they're using this opportunity to raise money to fight cancer:
Thanks for your article on our NHL Kiss Cam moment! We're trying to use our 10 seconds of fame to do some real good in the world and were wondering if you could possibly update the post to help us. We fundraise for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society via its Team in Training program (we do triathlons). Someone who saw the Outsports story sent us a $1,000 donation with the message "My partner of 18 years was just diagnosed with CLL. Let's cure this by kissing." So we've called our campaign Curing Cancer With a Kiss, and the URL that redirects to our fundraising page is www.curingcancerwithakiss.com. If there's any way you'd consider updating the article to include a mention of what we're doing, we'd really, really appreciate it. We don't want our kiss to just be for bragging rights."
The votes are in, and the Native American getting choked stays! Yesterday, residents of Whitesboro, New York, voted 157 to 55 to keep their village seal. Their website swears it depicts the village's founder, Hugh White, engaged in one of the "friendly wrestling match[es] that helped foster good relations between White and the Indians." That the seal looks a lot like a white guy strangling a Native American isn't lost on Whitesboro Mayor Patrick O'Connor, but he says that the historical facts have to be taken into consideration, and that the seal isn't offensive to him.
The town's flag went viral back in June, after it was uncovered by a redditor. Someone started a petition to get the town to change it, and O'Connor presented the town with several alternative options last night, including one seal that depicted the white man and the Oneida man shaking hands. But at the end of the night, the town (incidentally, 99.5% white) was overwhelmingly pro-throttle.
The 70s and 80s were definitely David Bowie decades, as were the 2000s and 2010s, but even the 90s—that gel-spiked morass of huge pants and Gap ads—were a time influenced by the Thin White Duke, as evidenced by this surprisingly good Smash Mouth cover of "Under Pressure." You may be saying to yourself right now "Hey, I thought that was a Queen song." You're right—it was created by both of them. Yes, that's right, "Under Pressure" was co-written by Bowie and Queen. How cool is that? Almost as cool as being covered by 90s ska-pop-rock icons Smash Mouth, so we've really come full circle. How is that full circle? Um..."All Star," Blackstar...it's all quite obvious, really. Anyway, the song is pretty good.
Donald Pugh is a wanted man in Ohio, but that doesn't mean he has no time to care about his public appearance. According to WCVB, Pugh is in trouble for failing to appear in court on a DUI charge, and he may also have been involved in some arson and vandalism.
Because of Pugh's past run-ins, the Lima Police Department had some photos of Pugh on file, which they shared on Facebook in an attempt to bring him to justice.
In an interview with local radio show Two Tons of Fun, Pugh explained, "I was smiling when the detective, when the officers booked me in. They were like, 'Why are you smiling?' I'm like, 'Cause I'm gonna walk out of jail in a minute. I'm so happy.'"
The department's second photo of Pugh is less joyous.
Unpleased with his pictures, Pugh sent the police a new one.
"We thank him for being helpful," the Lima police wrote on Facebook, "but now we would appreciate it if he would come speak to us at the LPD about his charges.
Despite posting the new "mugshot" on January 6th, officers still have not made contact in person with Pugh.
A note posted in the bathroom of a pizza restaurant in Charlotte, North Carolina, has been receiving considerable attention on Facebook. Pure Pizza has a unisex bathroom, and the restaurant posted a note pledging support for any type of person or group of people that may need to use the bathroom. This is pretty much the polar opposite of other bathroom stories making the news, as those stories generally revolve around things like the struggle of transgender teens to use a bathroom of their choice.
But the owner of Pure Pizza wants customers to know that the bathroom is open to everyone.
We have a UniSex bathroom because sometimes gender specific toilets put others into uncomfortable situations.
And since we have a lot of our friends coming to see us, we wanted to provide a place for our friends who are:
- Single Dads with daughters
- Single Moms with sons
- Parents with disabled children
- Those in the LGBTQ community
- Adults with aging parents who may be mentally/physically disabled
Thank you for helping us to provide a safe environment for everyone.
That is a very inclusive note, and it seems like every possible scenario is covered. And if somehow a scenario is missing, it sounds like Pure Pizza will gladly accommodate it. Basically, they're the opposite of that pizza place that refused to cater gay weddings, and then got tricked into catering a gay wedding.
If anyone happens to use Internet Explorer 8, 9, or 10, you're probably already pretty confused by this whole "Internet" thing. That's why it's kind of fitting that Microsoft used the term "end of support" (as of press time, their post is—fittingly—down) when they announced that "only the most current version of Internet Explorer" will hereby receive security updates and technical support on the majority of operating systems.
They're finally pulling the older IE browsers off life support.
IE is already on its 11th version, not to mention the fact that most savvy people prefer other browsers like Chrome or Safari. But if you're still Internet exploring, best of luck—please do not fall off the edge of what you likely believe is a very flat Earth.
And please enjoy the rest of our epitaphs for IE, here.
If you've listened to David Bowie's final album Blackstar (or, as it's properly written, "★"), you know that Bowie tries on one last persona in the vein of the Thin White Duke or Ziggy Stardust: a mysterious, cult-like figure called "Blackstar," from which the album takes its name. This morning, music journalist Michael Azerrad found an unlikely possible source for this name: cancerous lesions. It's another piece of evidence that Bowie intended his most recent album as a good-bye.
According to About Health, "radial scars"—also known as black stars—are "a star-shaped breast mass that may be completely benign, or it may be precancerous or contain a mixture of tissue, including hyperplasia, atypia, or cancer." Of course, Bowie reportedly had liver cancer, not breast cancer, so make of this what you will.
The phrase "black star" also has other ominous meanings and associations, Twitter pointed out:
Elvis and Bowie famously share a birthday. Plus:
According to Wikipedia, it's also a nickname for Saturn, what you'd assume is Bowie's home planet. So who knows.
Kids say the darndest things, and they think some really ridiculous things, too. An AskReddit post recently asked people to share embarrassing childhood beliefs, and redditors stepped up to deliver the absurd things they thought as kids, including the very incorrect location of the birth canal, where raccoons come from, and exactly how long periods last.
