Jon Batiste goes galaxy-building with ambitious new album 'World Music Radio'
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2023-08-17 00:27
Jessie 'Boss Lee': MLM seller dies after forgoing chemotherapy and trying 'natural' colon cancer treatment
After receiving her routine bloodwork results, Jessie Ward was told she had stage-four colon cancer back in March
2023-09-20 20:24
Britney Spears writes of abortion while dating Justin Timberlake in excerpts from upcoming memoir
Britney Spears wrote that she had an abortion while dating Justin Timberlake more than 20 years ago
2023-10-18 04:50
Who is Katherine Scafide? Angelina Jolie pens powerful op-ed about 'racial bias' against domestic violence survivors in health care
Angelina Joline emphasized that for victims of abuse, 'evidence of injury' is often critical to accessing health care
2023-07-06 15:48
'The View' host Sunny Hostin stuns fans as she poses in 'short shorts' at NYFW
Along with giving glimpses from her attending the NYFW, Sunny Hostin showed support to the renowned designer Sergio Hudson
2023-09-14 13:16
Vanessa Marcil pays tribute to ex-fiance Tyler Christopher, says he was 'way too young' to die
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2023-11-02 04:16
Andrew and Tristan Tate deny targeting Sneako in recent live stream: 'I didn’t mean it at you'
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2023-10-03 23:25
Who is Andrew Stanton? 'AGT' Season 18 sword swallower from 'BGT' semi finals started his career as masseur
From a former masseur to a captivating sword swallower who made waves on 'BGT' semi finals, Andrew Stanton is now set to audition on 'AGT' Season 18
2023-07-12 05:27
"Hell no:" Plane full of singing Taylor Swift fans sparks debate
Taylor Swift fans made the most of their delayed flight and decided to have a Swift-themed sing-a-long, but it's received a mixed response online. Swifties were travelling back home from Denver after watching The Eras Tour after the Anti-Hero singer performed her first night in the city in Colorado. Clearly wanting the concert to continue, most of the people on the flight began to sing Swift's hit 'Love Story,' in a viral clip posted by Hannah Hazlett (@han._.haz). Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter The video shows passengers in their element as they recorded the sing-a-long on their phones while others also turned on their flashlights and swayed along to the country pop song. For the video caption, Hazlett tagged Swift, Taylor Nation and Southwest Airlines. @han._.haz @Taylor Nation @Taylor Swift @Southwest Airlines Since sharing the clip, it has gone viral with over 1.2m views, 228,000 likes, and plenty of comments from fellow Swifties who loved the rendition. One person said: "I WANNA BE IN THAT PLANE." "This would make my flying anxiety disappear," another person wrote. Someone else added: "Taylor Swift really is THAT powerful." "A core memory for these people," a fourth person commented. The video also went viral on Twitter where others felt differently about the singing, with many expressing that they wouldn't be a fan of this if they were a passenger on this particular plane. Although there were some who defended the Swifties, and argued it was all just a bit of fun. Elsewhere, Taylor Swift becomes the first woman to have four albums chart in the top 10, TikToker goes viral with Taylor Swift 'dark energy' conspiracy and 26 of the best reactions to Taylor Swift fans getting presale tickets. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.
2023-07-17 23:18
A brief history of Elon Musk's obsession with the letter X
X most certainly marks the spot for the world’s most headline-grabbing billionaire. Elon Musk announced on Sunday that he would be giving Twitter a major makeover: changing its name to “X” and doing away with its famous bird logo. He tweeted (or should that be X-ed?): “Soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.” And, he said: “If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make go live worldwide tomorrow. To embody the imperfections in us all that make us unique.” Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter It’s all part of his overarching plan to transform X into an “everything app”, much like China’s WeChat, which handles everything from payments to messaging to micro-blogging. Posting a beaming photo of himself with his arms raised in a cross, Musk added: “Not sure what subtle clues gave it away, but I like the letter X.” So where does his love of the letter come from? And where else has he used it? Here, indy100 takes a look at the SpaceX founder’s somewhat unorthodoX obsession. X.com When it comes to letters of the alphabet, X is certainly the most associated with euphemism – anything branded X-rated is bound to raise an eyebrow or two. And this is quite possibly one of the reasons the proud provocateur liked it so much to begin with. According to Ashlee Vance, author of the 2015 biography ‘Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future’, his fascination with the letter began with one of his earliest ventures. Musk, one of the world's richest men, co-founded the online banking service X.com in 1999, but, Vance said, not everyone was enthusiastic about the name. "Everyone tried to talk him out of naming the company that back then because of the sexual innuendos, but he really liked it and stuck with it," he revealed. However, the critics were soon able to breathe a sigh of relief: X.com merged with competitor Confinity Inc., in 2000 and the name was changed to the family-friendly PayPal. And yet, Musk clearly wasn’t able to let go of his brainchild. So, in 2017, he bought the url "X.com" back off PayPal, tweeting that the domain "has great sentimental value,” as NPR notes. Now, if you type “X.com” into your web browser, you will be directed to the Twitter – soon to be X – homepage. SpaceX After making his first fortune with the sale of his tech company Zip2 for $307 million (around £240 million) in 1999, and PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion (around £1.32 billion), the universe was the limit for Musk. The same year he sold PayPal, he founded his space flight company Space Exploration Technologies Corp. However, the name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, so it was abbreviated to SpaceX. The Tesla ‘X’ While Musk opted for three alternative consonants in the name of his electric car company (which he started in 2003), he eventually couldn’t resist adding a touch of X. In 2015, the father-of-six unveiled Tesla’s third model: an e-car lovingly named… you guessed it. Tim Higgins, author of ‘Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century’, explained that Musk had cheeky intentions when choosing the names of his models. The idea was that, combined, they would spell out the word “sexy," Higgins said. However, another car company – Ford – threw a spanner in the works thanks to its ownership of the rights to the “E” model. Musk, therefore, had to settle on calling his second model “3” – a "kind of a backwards E," as Higgins pointed out – to semi-achieve his desired acronym. But yes, there are now S, 3, X and Y models of the cars. Baby names In 2020, Musk and his then-partner, Grimes, welcomed a baby boy, calling him X Æ A-12. However, the couple were forced to alter the spelling of the name to X AE A-XII, after being notified that it breached legal conventions. California law dictates that names on birth certificates must employ “the 26 alphabetical letters of the English language,” although apostrophes and dashes are allowed, NME reports. Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, explained via tweet that the X part of her son’s name refers to the “unknown variable” in algebra. Meanwhile, the Æ refers to the “elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence)," and the A-12 at the end is apparently a nod to the Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft — the couple’s “favourite” plane. Despite all of this, the pair – who are now separated – refer to their child simply as “Little X”, Boucher admitted in an interview with Bloomberg shortly after his birth. Two years later, the then-couple announced that they’d had a baby girl via surrogate, naming her Exa Dark Sideræl. However, earlier this year, Boucher confirmed that they’d changed her name to “Y” – yet again proving that single letters at the bottom of the alphabet really are Musk’s thing. xAI On 12 July this year, the 52-year-old announced the formation of a new company called xAI. It's goal is simple, according to its website: "To understand the true nature of the universe." The new startup, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, has hired a group of top AI researchers who formerly worked at OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Tesla. But we don't know much more about it than that. Musk was a co-founder and early funder of the artificial intelligence research laboratory OpenAI. However, he's grown increasingly critical of the company as it’s gained global prominence and commercial success with last year’s release of ChatGPT. In April, the billionaire criticised ChatGPT in an interview with Tucker Carlson, telling the then-Fox News host that the chatbot had a liberal bias and that he planned an alternative that would be a “maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe.” And... voilà xAI. What neXt? It’s time for the renaissance of X.com, but with a grand new purpose. Weeks before forking out the $44 billion (around £34 million) to buy Twitter in October, Musk tweeted that the eye-watering purchase was simply “an accelerant to creating X, the everything app". "He wants to create an app similar to how WeChat is used in China, where it's part of the fabric of day-to-day life,” the billionaire’s biographer Vance explained to NPR. “You use it to communicate, to consume news, to buy things, to pay your rent, to book appointments with your doctor and even to pay fines.” Hinting at the financial difficulties that have plagued Twitter both historically and since Musk’s acquisition, Vance pointed out: "The company clearly needs a new, bigger business if it's to make the type of money that would justify his investment and satisfy his ambition.” Indeed, the world-famous entrepreneur is doing everything he can to build the hype around his company’s new facelift. On Monday (24 July), he retweeted a message from his newly-appointed Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, which read: “It’s an exceptionally rare thing – in life or in business – that you get a second chance to make another big impression. Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square." She continued: “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.” So… why X? Musk suggested that he’d chosen “X” to replace Twitter because he wanted something that “embod[ies] the imperfections in us all that make us unique”. The letter has a number of different spiritual, cultural and mathematical meanings – any, or all, of which may have informed his lifelong fascination with the letter. As Boucher noted in her baby name explanation, X connotes the “unknown variable” in algebra. It is, of course, also the symbol for multiplication, and in linguistics, it’s what’s known a “phonetic chameleon” – meaning that it’s used to replicate a number of different sounds. It is also known as signifying the end of something – or death – think the X in a skull and crossbones emblem or the crosses drawn on the eyes of the dead in cartoons. It also signifies an error or cancellation, or that which is negative, and has long been recognised as an occult symbol for Satan. In other words, it has become the most “nihilistic” of letters, as psychologist Leon F Seltzer pointed out in a piece for Psychology Today. This all goes to suggest that Musk appreciates X’s malleability – how it can be birth and death, cancellation and multiplication, nothing and everything. X.com is dead. Long live X.com. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.
2023-07-24 19:27
Prankster Mizzy references misogynist influencer Andrew Tate's 'Matrix' conspiracy theory in new song
Along with the mention of Andrew Tate, Mizzy's new song contains references to his mental health detention and the bans he faced on social media
2023-08-14 14:26
Jake Paul and KSI's intense feud explained
His brother might be his business partner, but Jake Paul has never been a fan of KSI and it looks like things aren’t changing any time soon. There’s been a long-running feud between the pair for years now, but where did it all start? Essentially, the pair’s resentment of each other stems from the early days of YouTube boxing, when KSI and Jake’s brother Logan Paul emerged as the two biggest figures on the scene. KSI first took on Logan in 2018 which resulted in a draw. Then, he fought Logan again in 2019 and won by split decision. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter During that time, the pair were 'frenemies' of sorts and built up anticipation by clashing regularly in a war of words. Since then, they’ve largely buried the hatchet to launch their hugely successful Prime energy drink together. But for Jake, it’s not been so easy to move on and let bygones be bygones – and he still wants to avenge his brother’s loss. Speaking about his feud with KSI on the BS podcast, Jake said: "Logan grabbed me and he was drunk in this sprinter van and I could tell how badly he was emotionally hurting from the loss to KSI. "I was seeing him and he was like drinking from the bottle, whilst I was sitting there sober. He was talking with his friends about the loss and I saw how badly it hurt him. In that same sprinter van ride, he grabbed me by the neck and said 'you have to beat KSI for our family'.” Another point of contention surrounds one of KSI’s previous fights. When considering how KSI will get on against Tommy Fury in their fight in October, Logan told Donagh Corby: “I think Tommy knocks him out in like less than five rounds.” He added: “I mean [KSI] is doing these gimmick WWE fights up until now. Tommy is his first real test, but who knows, he might throw an elbow on Tommy, too.” The comment about the elbow is a reference to KSI’s bout with Joe Fournier which was classified as a “no contest” after the fight after the winning knockout from KSI was ruled to be an illegal elbow strike. In fact, KSI and Logan themselves have been talking up the chances of a fight taking place between them for years now. They’ve been taking potshots at each other on social media. Before the fight between KSI and Fury was signed, he previously took a shot at him and Jake by writing: "What you waiting for @tommytntfury? Sign the damn contract and let me show you the difference between me and that fraud who only wins against retired MMA pensioners." The “MMA pensioners” comment was a reference to his win over former UFC Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva, who was 47 when he fought Paul in 2022. Not one to back down easily, Jake replied: "This clown…tried to fight [Dillon Danis] who has never boxed and put a rehydration clause on him. Fought a 40 year old who hadn’t fought for 3 years and put a rehydration clause on him before elbowing him. Now trying to squeeze Tommy. I elevated Tommy, my son is now worth a lot more than the $1.5M offers you making. Tommy, February we run it back." Hitting out again, KSI responded by claiming Jake’s popularity had fallen dramatically. "We ain’t offering 1.5 million It’s crazy how much your hype has died since you lost. No one cares anymore,” he wrote. KSI has also made it clearly that he just doesn’t like Jake as a person at all, too. As he explained to Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour in May this year, KSI said: “I don’t know, we’ve kind of just hated each other for so many years. I think there are several reasons, but because I don’t really dwell on it until it’s time, so I don’t really know. “I think it’s ego. It’s one of the ones where he thinks he’s better than me, I think he’s trash… We just don’t see eye to eye. I just think he’s a d***head. I just don’t think he’s a good person. I know he’s got friends, I know he’s got a lot of people that like him, but there’s a lot of people that hate him, and I’m one of them. I just don’t like him. I just don’t like everything about him. And I feel like he also tries to s*** on everything that I have done, or that I have worked hard for. When I look at him I go, ‘Compared to what you’ve done, to me, you are not on my level, but I’m still going to show you.’ Someone who is devoting all their time into boxing, I can still come from all my music tours, all my YouTube videos, all my Sidemen videos, whatever, my Prime, etc., I can come into your realm and still knock you out.” Will we ever get to see a fight between the pair? The way they've been talking about each other over the years, we'd never rule it out. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.
2023-08-01 23:27
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