CHRISTMAS is typically a time for cheer and celebration, but with the festive season approaching, many of us are starting to think about buying a tree.

Tina Knowles Lawson is pleasantly surprised by her superstar daughter Beyonce Knowles' tribute in the updated version of Megan Thee Stallion's new single.

The Kylo Ren of the 'Star Wars' movie franchise is expected to portray the main character in 'The Yankee Comandante', a true-story film about the fall of Cuban Dictator Fulgencio Batista.

When expressing hopes to steer clear from the upcoming Amazon Prime film, director Patty Jenkins admits that 'Wonder Woman 1984' has left her feeling creatively depleted.

The 'Big Little Lies' actress, who portrayed Christina in the film franchise, makes the confession during an appearance on the Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard podcast.

Talking about the issue four-year-old Remington once had, the 'American Idol' alum admits before finding out the problem, she used to worry that the boy was hearing impaired.

Steve Beauchampé takes issue with government and corporate hypocrisy, tazered with a dose of racist malignancy within the private sector.

Stephen Pennell gives the lowdown on another night in Digbeth.

This week, we talk to hip-hop comedy duo Eric and Jeff Rosenthal, better known as ItsTheReal. The brothers began by making hilarious sketch comedy videos, moved on to podcasting, and now have just released an actual mixtape, Urbane Outfitters. Their on-point humor, which makes fun both of and with rappers, has remained constant throughout.

See http://theciphershow.com/episode/38/ for full show notes and comments.

Brothers Eric and Jeff Rosenthal have been merging comedy and hip-hop since 2007, when they began by making short sketch videos poking fun at (and, in short order, with) rappers. They took their comedic vision and love of hip-hop culture through a bunch of different projects: sketches, absurdist interviews with artists, podcasts, and even their own original music.

Most recently, the brothers have their own podcast, A Waste of Time With ItsTheReal. They also have a brand-new album called Teddy Bear Fresh, and an upcoming live show at the New York City nightclub SOBs on February 23rd.

See http://theciphershow.com/episode/189/ for full show notes and comments.

B-Real, a rapper, known from his two groups Cypress Hill and Prophets of Rage, and the man behind B-RealTV, joins Joey Diaz and Lee Syatt LIVE in studio.

A fairytale castle on the Welsh coast is a monument to Victorian escapism, reports Marsya Lennox

Campaign results in victory for local politicians.

GBR Loops has announced the release of Indian Electric Bass, a free virtual electric bass instrument for Native Instruments Kontakt. It is for those who create Indian modern romantic & sad songs. Indian Electric Bass gives you a completely natural feel of the electric bass. In Kontakt it is completely devoid of any kind of […]

The post GBR Loops offers free Indian Real Electric Bass for Kontakt appeared first on rekkerd.org.

Apollo Sound has released a new sample pack titled Real Rap Vocal, a compact vocal pack for any Trap, Hip-Hop or EDM producer. The pack includes 226 royalty free vocal samples and loops. As a modern producer you can’t produce any track without good vocal shouts, rappin’ vocal hooks or pre-drop pitched vocal phrase. So […]

The post Apollo Sound releases Real Rap Vocal pack for Trap, Hip Hop & EDM appeared first on rekkerd.org.

The elderly Viv notices our presence and invites us to sit in her kitchen, right there in front of her, where she can see us. Thus began the interactive video experience “The Visit“, born from the collaboration of the artist →

INTRO -- An Asheville Americana trio is starting to get some national attention with airplay of their second CD taking it into the Top 20 of some radio charts. The national attention comes courtesy of some humble origins that embarrassed teenagers across the country can probably identify with. George Olsen has more. Time in the car with parents can sometimes be irritating for the kids, sometimes beneficial, sometimes both. “I grew up listening to my mom singing harmony with Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt and Barbara Streisand full tilt, full volume every time I was in the car for many years. At the time I was “oh, mom, stop.” Eleanor Underhill, one half of the namesakes of the Asheville trio Underhill Rose. It took a while for the Joni Mitchells and Bonnie Raitts to sink in though. Eleanor says there was a lot of Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul in her youthful listening, but it seems the more acoustic oriented choices of her parents won out, as evidenced by Underhill Rose’s new CD

The company has also held discussions with Cupertino based tech giant Apple for what could be the iPhone maker’s second flagship store in the country to be located at Aerocity near IGI Airport, sources said.

Wise fashionistas merely store rather than discard, waiting for the tide to inevitably turn.

To help new mothers ease back into work, they can also avail of reduced work hours for two continuous weeks immediately after resuming work.

The announcement was made at the L'Oreal Professionnel Indian Hairdressing Awards, held in Bambolim on Wednesday.

L'Oreal India's operations team will donate hand sanitisers to public health institutions, police forces and NGOs, who are at the forefront of the fight against the virus, said a statement.

AN AWARD-WINNING documentary featuring former Rangers footballer David Robertson will return to TV screens on Tuesday.

Nancy Niemi, Director of Faculty Teaching Initiatives at Yale questions the conventional wisdom that college is a path to gender equality.

The NCAA has made it clear that unless college campuses are open to the entire student body in the fall, there are no plans to risk the health of student-athletes for the sake of sports. 

Rachel Bitecofer, a political scientist at the Niskanen Center, in Washington, D.C., thinks that most pollsters and forecasters rely on outdated ideas about how candidates succeed. She argues that the outcome has far less to do with the candidates’ ideology than we think it does. Her perspective has been controversial, but in July, 2018, months before the midterm elections, her model predicted the Democratic victory in the House with an accuracy unmatched by conventional forecasters. And it suggests that Democrats should stop worrying about losing, and focus on firing up their voters.

Want to learn more about Unreal Engine, but don't have time for a lengthy, in-depth course? In this weekly series, instructor George Maestri shares expert techniques tailored for artists and developers looking to build their Unreal Engine skills in their spare moments. Each week, George shares tips on everything from geometry to materials to lighting to interactivity. Discover how to create an architectural water effect, use vertex painting to interactively paint multiple materials, import specific terrain into Unreal, and much more. Tune in every Monday for a new tip.

Note: Because this is an ongoing series, viewers will not receive a certificate of completion.

Welcome to the Real Recording School Weekly series. Every week, Larry Crane leads a class of like-minded audio enthusiasts, engineers, and producers through a new recording or mixing challenge. Learn how to recognize and fix persistent sound issues like clicky bass, snare drum ring, boomy guitars, and hi-hat bleed, so that the music is all that listeners hear. The course features software and plugins, such as iZotope and Pro Tools, but almost all the techniques can be recreated in your favorite DAW. All you need to follow along is a pair of headphones and a passion for sound.

Note: Because this is an ongoing series, viewers will not receive a certificate of completion.

There are many differences in Christian church doctrines. Some are more important than others. If there is anything that is most essential to understand, it would be what God's Ten Commandments say. The Sabbath is one of the Commandments.

"fascinating, and I'm going to assume it's not hoax. But it doesn't so much raise my impression of the inherent decency of humanity as get me wondering what sort of values etc they were propagating at that exclusive school in Tonga."

This is actually pretty well-studied -- I have a friend who did a Ph.D. in the total collapse of local civil authority and what happens next -- and Lord of the Flies is flat wrong. Humans in an emergency situation lean on each other and help each other. If they fall into despair and think survival isn't possible, they might destroy themselves -- but they don't (usually) take others with them. But generally they pool resources, create organization, find ways to help the group, and find ways to care for the helpless and infirm. People get really frustrated when they're NOT able to assist the group, and even people who have very limited physical abilities try to find ways to help, maybe keeping an eye on the little children, or teaching kids to read.

"Because by the time I read Lord of the Flies in Grade Nine or thereabouts, I'd experienced enough suburban schoolyard/playground savagery and whatnot to not really find its extrapolations all that unbelievable."

So part of the problem with children and schoolyard savagery is that we keep them in a HUGELY artificial structure and limit their ability to participate in society and contribute to it. We MAKE them savages by refusing to allow them to contribute to the group. One of the things we know about children who find themselves without adults and with a need to organize and survive (which might be like these boys, in an actual hardcore survival situation, or they might have plenty of food and water and heat and just need to wait for the blizzard to end and grown-ups to fetch them from where they got snowed in) is that they are amazing at it. Given a chance to be competent and responsible, they usually do really really well! And children have a HUGE innate sense of fairness (it's a developmental phase), so kids under 14 or so basically IMMEDIATELY sit down as a group and hash out how they're going to make decisions and hold people accountable. Generally, they decide on a democracy -- it's not "fair" unless everyone has a say -- and that everyone will have to take turns at gross jobs, and create some kind of punishment for those who don't do their work, which is usually either an extra turn at gross jobs or having to sleep in the worst spot (where they otherwise take turns). They tend to be very conscious of what they know about safety (problems come in with what they DON'T know, like not using a grill indoors for heat b/c you can die from the smoke), and cautiously warn each other to be careful cooking and with sharp objects, and take care to learn from each other's knowledge. If one kid knows how to build a fire, the others will defer to his expertise and will have him teach them and follow his instructions carefully.

Kids do CRY a lot more than adults do, and they get their feelings hurt a lot, but kids are also very conscious of and used to the fact that you can't just avoid people or cut them out of your life (kids don't have that power), so they tend to do a really good job reconciling in-group disputes. They might not all LIKE each other, but they find a way to work together and just complain about each other.

Do you remember that reality show that was meant to be "Kid Survivor" and they hoped it would turn into Lord of the Flies, and it was a SPECTACULAR FLOP? The producers had set up better and worse "houses" in the "abandoned town" set and expected the kids to race for a free-for-all to get the best stuff, and instead they arrived, explored, and then all sat down and made a group decision about how to divide it all up. A couple kids tried to be selfish and stubborn, but got shamed into compliance by the rest of the group, and one of their first concerns was that the littlest kids be buddied up with older kids because it would be too hard for them otherwise "and they might get scared." They agreed on a decision-making procedure the first night and basically stuck to it through the show. When one kid was a jerk, they would all go sit around the campfire and talk and talk and talk until the jerk agreed to stop being a jerk. The producers would create survivor-like challenges where the "winner" would get extra food or some special thing, and every single time they kids would either a) refuse, as a group, to compete, because it wouldn't be "fair" or b) agree to compete because it would be fun or because they wanted/needed the reward, but the winner would share his winning equally with the group AND ALWAYS DID.

Margaret Mead said that in her opinion, the first sign of civilization was a 15,000-year-old human grave with a healed thigh bone. Which means that the nomadic group rescued that person, immobilized his femur, and then cared for him for MONTHS while he recovered and could not contribute to the group. Wild animals die if they break a bone. Humans became civilized, she felt, when the group cared for the individual and allowed them to heal from such grievous injuries. Turns out that's still how we roll.

So like, nobody else finds the timing of this story kinda culturally suspicious? We had years of warnings of Africanized bees, and now we've got deadly Asian hornets, at a moment when anti-China rhetoric has reached a fevered pitch? Literally two of these bugs have been spotted in the US, and the guy who is the focal point of the NYT story isn't sure these were even involved, but now the Paper of Record and the entire American internet is talking about Asian Murder Hornets? Gaaaaaaaah I'm just going back inside for a while.

There are many differences in Christian church doctrines. Some are more important than others. If there is anything that is most essential to understand, it would be what God's Ten Commandments say. The Sabbath is one of the Commandments.

Have you ever taken the test? The Bible counsels, “Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith.” (2 Corinthians 13:5). Pastor Doug Batchelor offers ten brief but vital checkpoints to help you self-evaluate if you have been genuinely converted. No matter how long you’ve been a Christian, get ready for eye-opening results!

Today, we hear how people around the Bay Area are experiencing their fifth week of quarantine in our continuing Quarantine Diaries series. Then, a reality show star and social media critic has tips for keeping in touch during the shelter in place.

What happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months

The "obscure blog" he refers to is probably this article by Jay Griffiths.

Fewer college students than you might think make it from Freshman orientation all the way to graduation. In this episode of KUT’s podcast “Higher Ed,” Southwestern University President Dr. Ed Burger and KUT’s Jennifer Stayton discuss why students drop out, and what colleges and universities can do to help them stay in. David Kirp’s book...

Most of us have the best of intentions when we graduate from high school or college to make our way in the world and lead meaningful and productive lives. But the minutiae of everyday life can eat into our plans to exist outside our comfort zone. In this episode of KUT’s podcast “Higher Ed,” Southwestern...

Who does not appreciate making high grades in a certain subject or getting glowing performance reviews at work?  In this episode of KUT’s podcast “Higher Ed,” Southwestern University President Dr. Ed Burger and KUT’s Jennifer Stayton explore the lure of the “success trap” and how to avoid it. What exactly is the “success trap?” It...

Do we know that our Christianity is authentic? We get preoccupied with the actions and forget about our attitude. Part 1 of 2

Do we know that our Christianity is authentic? We get preoccupied with the actions and forget about our attitude. Part 2 of 2

There are many differences in Christian church doctrines. If there is anything that is most essential to understand, it would be what God's Ten Commandments say. The Sabbath is one of the Commandments.

Do we know that our Christianity is authentic? We get preoccupied with the actions and forget about our attitude. Part 1 of 2

Do we know that our Christianity is authentic? We get preoccupied with the actions and forget about our attitude. Part 2 of 2

There are many differences in Christian church doctrines. If there is anything that is most essential to understand, it would be what God's Ten Commandments say. The Sabbath is one of the Commandments.

Alex Bleeker and Martin Courtney of Real Estate in depth look the quiet beauty of “Look At What The Light Did Now” by Little Wings (aka Kyle Field) and how their love and respect for the song and the artist who wrote it have inspired them both.

If it is so hard to maintain a healthy environment at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, then how can businesses across the country establish a safe space for their workers?

WASHINGTON — In his eagerness to reopen the country, President Donald Trump faces the challenge of convincing Americans that it would be safe to go back to the workplace. But the past few days have demonstrated that even his own workplace may not be safe from the coronavirus. Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary tested […]

Dear readers: You’re adjusting to new realities introduced by the novel coronavirus, and Weekend Plus is, too. Starting today and in the coming weeks, you’ll find fewer restaurant and entertainment listings in this section and more emphasis on things you can enjoy at home, including: • Recipes and takeout food • Family activities • Recommended […]

Chuck Jaffe: As they shelter at home, Americans have been building their knowledge on seemingly every subject. That doesn't make them financial experts.

Bored with your surroundings? Justin and Hailey Bieber are showing off their lives in their Toronto home in a new series, while Hulu this week is premiering a documentary looking back at an early 1990s isolation tale — Biosphere 2. Even if you already know the answers, a re-airing of last year’s epic “Jeopardy!” Greatest […]