Author: GoneTrending

Still hot off the release of his third album, It’s Only Me, which has become his third consecutive chart-topping album, Lil Baby has dropped the video for “From Now On.”

“From Now On,” which features Future, quickly became a fan favorite upon the album’s release. On the track, Lil Baby and Future decide to carry themselves as trap stars, but also fashion icons.

“Switchin’ up my image, no more pictures with my styrofoam / Why the f*ck I keep buyin’ these houses if I’m never home,” asks Baby on the opening lines of the track.

Later on in the track, Future swoops in, rapping, “Codeine drinkin’, but I swear the money getting me higher / Just told the judge I’m on pills, my mansion got marble / Charge a M for a show, still send bail to you tomorrow.”

In the song’s accompanying video, Future and Baby are seen wearing colorful fashions, including lush coats, vibrant shirts and hats, and flashy jewels. While they have reached mogul and style icon status, the two make it known that they are still running the rap game.

Check out the video for “From Now On” above.

It’s Only Me is out now via Quality Control. Stream it here.

Lauren Jauregui dropped her new song, “Always Love,” today. The reflective and emotional track details her feelings, specifically towards her ex-boyfriend, rapper Ty Dolla $ign. The pair dated for two years but have since maintained a close bond, despite their relationship not working out. Jauregui wrote it shortly after their split while taking international trips and working with Dan Campbell and Malay to craft it.

“I was feeling the feelings of complexity that are getting out of a relationship that you still want to be in and wish could work, but just wasn’t working for you anymore,” Jauregui told PEOPLE. “I, still to this day, have a lot of love and respect for him and what we had together.”

The interview notes that the exes are so close that she even sent him the song before its official release. “We’re both artists, and we both express ourselves through our music really deeply,” she added. “But that was then. Now, it’s just art.”

While Jauregui had also kept the song in her pocket for a while, she encountered some problems releasing it. Only after leaving her record label, Columbia Records, to become an independent artist, she was able to officially let fans hear it.

Check out Lauren Jauregui’s “Always Love” above.

Ty Dolla Sign is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The San Antonio Spurs came into the 2022-23 season fully embracing their youth movement after dealing Dejounte Murray to Atlanta for a bevy of first round picks, and in turn they handed the reins to a young core of former first-round picks — with an eye on a likely high lottery finish.

While Keldon Johnson and Devin Vassell were the headliners of that young group entering the season, it also figured to be a big year for the 12th overall pick from the 2021 NBA Draft, Joshua Primo, as there were considerable minutes to be had in the backcourt. Primo appeared in the first four games of the season for the Spurs and struggled, averaging 7.0 points and 4.5 assists in just over 23 minutes per game on 34.6 percent shooting from the field, before sitting out Wednesday’s loss to the Wolves with what was listed as left glute soreness.

Then, on Friday night an hour before the Spurs played host to the Bulls, the team sent out a shocking release that they were waiving Primo, citing it as something they hope will “serve the best interest” of both Primo and the organization.

It was an unbelievable announcement, even considering Primo’s struggles amid an otherwise strong start for the Spurs, as the Spurs had picked up Primo’s third-year option on October 10, and one can’t help but wonder if something took place off the court that has yet to be made public that was the catalyst for this move. For now, the Spurs and Gregg Popovich aren’t saying anything more than the very vague release, and we’ll have to wait to learn what led to Primo’s release.

SZA dropped her long-awaited new song, “Shirt,” today. In the music video, fans suspect she is already gearing up for the next release after spotting some serious potential easter eggs. After appearing with actor Lakeith Stanfield in the video, there is a snippet of unreleased music as a teaser. (SZA previously teased “Shirt” in the “Good Days” video last year.) While fans don’t have the title of the next song, something is planned.

The teaser of the song plays around the 3:35 video mark. Playing as the credits roll, SZA sings, “I don’t care how much you knew me in the past tense” and “I’m still playing the victim / You still playing the pick me.” Playing for quite a while, the track seemingly appears to be finished. Only time will tell when fans are getting the full-length version.

As for other potential clues in “Shirt,” Stanfield’s getaway car has the license plate “NO CTRL” as a potential nod that her next record won’t be like her 2017 album, CTRL. It also has the date listed as December 2022.

Meanwhile, back in early 2021, SZA pointed out that she noticed the fans had dubbed her TikTok song as the name “Shirt” — and it clearly just stuck as a title. “I’m fine w that,” she shared on Twitter at the time.

‘Shirt’ is super easy to remember and now every time I work on it in the studio I reference it as ‘Shirt,’” she said in a recent interview with CBS This Morning. “Some people call it ‘Blood Stain,’ which is very graphic. Now this song, which I wasn’t even 100 percent sure of the placement on my album has centered itself on my album. Now we shot a video for it.”

Watch SZA’s music video for “Shirt” above to hear the currently-unreleased snippet of a new song.

On J. Cole’s 2018 album KOD, Cole heavily criticized the phenomenon of drug use in hip-hop at the time. A particular track called “1985,” he is thought to be rapping about Lil Pump.

“I wish you good luck / I’m hoping for your sake that you ain’t dumb as you look / But if it’s really true what people sayin’ / And you call yourself playin’ with my name / Then I really know you f*cked, trust /I’ll be around forever ’cause my skills is tip-top,” he raps toward the end of the song. He closes the song saying, “Just remember what I told you when your sh*t flop / In five years you gon’ be on Love And Hip-Hop.”

This past Thursday (October 27), Pump appeared on The Bootleg Kev Podcast, more than five years after the release of his breakthrough hit, “Gucci Gang.” During the podcast, Kev asked Pump if he feels Cole was accurate in his prediction when he said that Pump’s particular era of hip-hop would only be momentary.

“I don’t think he predicted sh*t,” Pump said “I’m still here.”

Pump previously responded to the alleged diss back in 2018, calling him a “lame ass.”

The two apparently squashed their rumored beef over the phone shortly after.

You can check out the Bootleg Kev interview above.

One of the hardest parts of parenting is discerning when to push and when to pull back, when to stand firm and when to back off, when to make kids do things and when to let them make their own decisions. You want your children to build the virtues of perseverance and resilience, but you also want to encourage independence and decision-making. Depending on the personalities of your kids, those lessons can be really tricky to balance.

Some things are non-negotiable, of course, such as household chores, pet care and seatbelts. But a sport or activity a child has chosen to do is a different story. It’s almost inevitable that a child will want to quit something at some point, which is sometimes the right thing to do and sometimes isn’t. How do we as parents determine—or help our kids determine—whether to have them stick with piano, karate, soccer, Scouts… or let them quit?

Former Olympic gymnast Nastia Liukin has shared her thoughts about quitting or wanting to quit when the going gets tough, which inspired some viral parental advice.

Perkins Music Studio shared a series of infographics from Big Life Journal outlining Liukin’s advice, which has been shared more than 11,000 times on Facebook. The beauty of it is in its logic and simplicity (in addition to the fact that it came from someone who understands persevering through difficulties).

The advice reads:

“Imagine your child comes back from a practice and says: ‘I hate karate! It’s too hard. I don’t want to do this anymore!’ Just tell them this: ‘Okay, you can quit. But not today.’ Then explain: ‘We all have bad days when we want to quit. When something feels hard, our brain and body resist because they want us to be comfortable. But if we quit on a bad day, we will never become great at something and we might regret this later.’

‘So here’s the deal. You can quit on a good day. When you have had a successful day and still want to quit, let’s talk.’

“This approach normalizes struggle (which builds resilience) and honors your child’s choice if they want to try something else.

“We all have these days when it’s just too hard. To build resilience, adopt this mantra: Never quit on a bad day.”

As a mom of three, I’ve been through the kid-wanting-to-quit dilemma too many times to count. Sometimes it’s clear that an activity just isn’t a good fit for a kid and the choice is simple. Sometimes others are relying on a kid not quitting, such as in a lot of team sports, so it’s wise to at least push through to the end of a season or at least through a predetermined date. Oftentimes, it really is just a rough day or a rough patch they’re going through, and in that case the “only quit on a good day” advice is so helpful.

If a kid isn’t having any good days, only bad ones, that’s hard. Some things just aren’t right from the get-go, and if a kid is consistently hating what they’re doing, pushing them to continue seems a bit cruel. However, it could be that the kid is having trouble getting adjusted to something new and just needs time. It can also be tricky to determine how much of the issue is incompatibility with the activity versus incompatibility with the people involved (or leading) the activity.

From my own experience, if a kid wants to quit, those feelings are real in the moment whether quitting is really the right thing or not. We’ve always been understanding and sympathetic, but usually had our kids stick it out for a bit to see if things got better. If it didn’t get better, then they could move on to something else. There’s no shame in stopping something that isn’t right for you, whether you’re young or old, in a sport or in a job. In fact, that’s just as important a life lesson as learning to persevere through difficulties.

But I do wish I’d had this advice to never quit on a bad day/only quit on a good day when my kids were younger. That would have made discussing and making these decisions a whole lot simpler for all of us.

Four-day work weeks have become increasingly more mainstream in corporate business settings. With productivity levels remaining the same—at times, even increasing—and with employees less subject to burnout, the appeal is palpable.

However, many restaurant workers do not have 9-to-5 schedules. “They’re literally working 70 hours a week, week in and week out,” reflected Chick-fil-A operator Justin Lindsey in an interview with QSR Magazine. His store in Miami had achieved top sales, but usually at the expense of the staff, who would even joke about going home to collapse after a shift.

In an effort to “do better,” Lindsey came up with an unconventional solution: a three-day work week.

Rather than cutting hours, Chick-fil-A employees would have a week’s worth of hours condensed into a set of three 13- to 14-hour shifts (keeping in mind that Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays). While Chick-fil-A is not without its questionable business practices, the fast-food restaurant chain’s experimental approach to work schedules that might make an overall positive impact. This could potentially help workers arrange consistent childcare, work on other projects and have more time to simply do what needs to be done in their life outside of a job.

Though those might seem like extremely long shifts, they are actually not all that different from a normal day. “It’s rare, especially for a leader, even in a five-day week, to work less than 10 hours a day,” Lindsey told QSR. “So if you gave [employees] the option, I think a lot of them would say, ‘oh yeah, I can suck it up a few more hours if you really only let me work three days.’”

This Chick-fil-A is implementing a “3 Day Work Week” where employees work three, 12 hour shifts.

They make $17/hr, while remaining full time and rotate weekends. pic.twitter.com/BAx4Tx10Ke

— 𝓔𝓵 𝓟𝓪𝓽𝓻ó𝓷 (@ZBankEnt) October 29, 2021

Aware that the long-term logistics might not be feasible—the aforementioned long hours, plus challenges in time-off requests—Lindsey was candid with his team from the get-go that this was “uncharted territory,” and that things would be figured out as they go.

So far, the transparency and people-first attitude has paid off. Not only has the Miami store achieved top-earning status and received a flood of 400 applicants, there’s been a 100% retention rate at the management level. But for Lindsey, it was never really about that. “Truly, from the bottom of my heart, I’m doing this because I think it’s the right thing to do,” he said.

Even more so than reducing work days, it’s giving people the power of choice that has made a positive difference. Workplace burnout is caused in part by the feeling of having little-to-no control while trying to balance adhering to a company’s bottom line and spending time with family and loved ones, maintaining physical and emotional wellness, or working on fulfilling projects. The result is emotional exhaustion, which unsurprisingly doesn’t lead to much productivity.

The impressive results that Lindsey and his Chick-fil-A team have accomplished, along with that of other companies exploring shorter work weeks, offer a bit of uplifting news against headlines of “quiet-quitting/firing” and “The Great Resignation,” and hopefully pave the way forward to a healthier relationship with work on a global level. For an industry that is particularly notorious for providing low wages, poor working conditions and little respect to even the most loyal of employees, it’s nice to see that some restaurant managers are attempting to move in a more compassionate direction.

Good things happen when employees are treated as human beings, plain and simple.

Disney is known for making big statements with small films, and one of the newest shorts from Disney Animation Studios says a whole lot in just 2 1/2 minutes.

The latest episode in Disney’s Short Circuit Experimental Films series, “Reflect,” takes on the topic of body image and body positivity through the eyes of a plus-size ballerina named Bianca. The journey she takes in the film is familiar to many, and different people may see themselves in each stage of it. (Spoiler alerts incoming.)

The short opens with Bianca dancing alone in a ballet studio, joyfully practicing her moves with her head held high and her face beaming. But as soon as the other students and the instructor enter the room, Bianca wilts, becoming self-conscious and unsure of herself. She approaches the mirror with the other girls, but she keeps her head down and avoids looking at her reflection.

Bianca doesn’t say a word throughout the entire film. In fact, the only words spoken in the entire short are the ballet instructor naming the dance moves for the girls to practice and her saying to Bianca, “Tight tummy, long neck,” as she walks by her.

When Bianca finally looks at her reflection, she places her hand on her stomach and suddenly everything goes dark. The mirror, now black before her, starts to crack and break into shards, then morph into a multilegged creature hovering ominously over her. She tries to escape by turning away and covering her eyes.

When she opens her eyes, all she can see is darkness and her own reflection in hundreds of mirrors that surround her. Those, too, start to crack and break apart. Everywhere she turns, she sees more and more of her own reflection in the broken pieces of glass.

Finally, she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She points her toe and the music shifts. As she starts to dance, twirling in a beautiful pirouette, the mirror shards in front of her light up and then shatter into nothingness. She continues to dance with greater and greater confidence, realizing she has control of the mirrors and can shatter them at will.

Once that realization dawns on her, she leaps through the broken shards and lands back in the ballet studio with the other students. Practicing a plié at the barre, she smiles at her own reflection, no longer afraid to look in the mirror.

The beauty in the message of this film is that Bianca finds body positivity in using her body for what she loves. In the end, it’s not what her body looks like, but what it can do that shapes how she feels about it.

u201c16 year old me needed this Disney short before I quit ballet because I didnu2019t want to be the fat girl in class anymore. Iu2019m glad little ones will have this. 10/10 for Reflect!u201d

— Meg Potter (@Meg Potter)
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Director Hillary Bradfield, who also worked on Disney’s “Encanto” and “Frozen II,” shared commentary at the beginning of the episode.

“I feel like I’m a very body-positive person in principle,” she said. “But when it’s on a personal level, it’s a lot harder to be body positive…When people watch the short, I hope they can feel more positively about themselves and how they look and feel OK about the tough parts of the journey.”

People’s reactions to the film have been largely positive, with some people sharing their own struggles with societal reactions to the size of their bodies.

u201cREFLECT on Disney+ (Series: Short Circuit). Do recommend for anyone that struggles with the image they see in the mirror. So, everyone. But this is especially for those of us that society shuns for having a body that doesnu2019t match the alleged u201cperfectu201d image. #bodypositivityu201d

— Katie. (@Katie.)
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Others have shared that, while having a plus-size lead character is needed representation, they wished it could be in a story that’s not focused on her body.

But body image is something many people struggle with, even if they don’t live in a larger body, so the appeal of the story is more universal than it may first appear. It’s also inspiring, no matter who you are, to see a character go through a transformative experience and come out triumphant on the other side.

As Bradfield said, “Maybe sometimes you go to the dark place to get to the good place, and that just makes the good place that much more beautiful.”

Indeed it does. Watch “Reflect” on Disney+ (Episode 6 in Season 2 of Short Circuit Experimental Films).

Normally, as temperatures cool during winter, thousands—and before 1990, millions—of amber-colored wings can be seen fluttering across the sky as the insects travel thousands of miles across North America to California and Mexico. Along the way, they’ll lay their eggs in milkweed plants, which is the only thing that monarch caterpillars will eat (yes, even babies of the animal kingdom are picky eaters). The relationship between milkweeds and monarchs is so integral that another name for a monarch is the “milkweed butterfly.”

However, milkweed has been rapidly disappearing since the 1990s, namely due to the use of herbicides. This, coupled with climate change leading to overwintering—meaning that the butterflies delay reproduction to survive winter—results in the abysmal amount of sightings in 2020. Yet still, this year saw a 35% increase.

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The reason behind such a big population boom almost seems like divine intervention. So many things had to line up that, in an interview with PBS, Louie Yang, insect ecologist at University of California, Davis, attributed the surge to a “series of fortunate events.” One of those events was that temperatures and rainfall levels were at just the rights levels at the right time, leading to more milkweed blooms just as surviving monarchs reemerged from overwintering.

Some experts even speculate that the miracle might have been born out of catastrophe. Pacific Grove park docent and retired entomologist Paul Meredith suggested to PBS that 2019’s wildfires prepared the ground for an “extraordinary wildflower season,” thus giving a boost to migrating adult monarchs this season.

While the reason behind the recent butterfly increase has yet to be thoroughly researched, there are definitive ways to help. As KSBW reports, this includes planting native milkweeds about 5-10 miles from an overwintering site, planting native nectar plants (which adult monarchs eat) and refraining from pesticide use. In addition, it’s crucial to support legislation that protects habitats for monarch butterflies and other pollinators.

Monarchs aren’t the only butterflies to make a resurgence thanks to conservation efforts. In the U.K., 750 large blue butterflies were discovered in August 2020 after being declared extinct in Britain in 1979. Again, it took recovering a natural habitat and food source—these British butterflies appropriately required thyme and marjoram, rather than milkweed. They also prefer tea to coffee, so I’m told.

This bit of good news is certainly worth sharing, and hopefully with awareness we can all help these gorgeous creatures spread their wings.

Taylor Swift’s “Mastermind,” the tenth song on her new (and also, tenth) studio album, Midnights, has been making serious waves on TikTok. Lyrically, Swift details how she meticulously planned parts of a relationship, presumably to land her current partner, Joe Alwyn.

From “ending up in the same room at the same time” and noting that “none of it was accidental,” she reveals at the song’s end that he wound up knowing the entire time about everything and who she was.

Following the song’s release, listeners are coming forward on social media to share the personal lengths they went to “Mastermind” their relationships. Quite a few worked out in their favor.

“as a result of new taylor swift song ‘mastermind’ girls have been posting their boyfriend acquisition stories on tiktok,” one viral tweet reads. The post includes a handful of screenshotted TikTok stories.

“I found this band on Spotify that I loved so much that I listened to their songs 50 times a day for a month, and then I thought ‘Hey the singers voice sounds raspy and hot’ and I looked him up and he was my dream man,” one video’s caption reads. “I shamelessly played one of his songs on the background of my stories and tagged them and he messaged me about it… I told him I didn’t really know anything about his music and we’ve been dating for two years.”

Other stories include girls requesting information for programs they weren’t in just to land a tour guide hottie, watching/reading things to have conversations with their crushes, and even lending a man a book to land a second date. Still, as most things go, it has sparked a debate online. Is it manipulative to “Mastermind” someone or not?

As one TikTok user pointed out, many of the couples presented in the viral stories are now in long-term relationships and seemingly happy. Only time will tell if it lasts after this trend. For now, others are simply lightening the mood with cat videos.

Continue scrolling for some additional viral TikTok tales set to Taylor Swift’s “Mastermind.”