Tag: open
Trump covers Ice Spice’s “Boy is a Liar Pt. 2” in SNL’s cold open
![Saturday Night Live cast member James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump holding a microphone.](https://helios-i.mashable.com/imagery/videos/053ASeWfwsmsCLNxkXQJryX/hero-image.jpg)
SNL‘s cold open had former President Donald Trump’s hawking a covers album, That’s What I Call My Legal Defense Fund AKA Trump Bopz.
This week’s Saturday Night Live hosted by Quinta Brunson addressed Trump’s indictment. James Austin Johnson reprised his excellent Trump impression announcing, “Frankly, it’s time that I come clean, admit that I broke the law, and go quietly to prison. April Fools!” Then SNL played with Trump and the J6 Choir’s bizarre song “Justice For All” with Johnson’s Trump jumping into some promo for his album. What’s on the album? “Just 30 classic covers. All horrible.”
Kenan Thompson and Devon Walker join Johnson as Don King and Afroman, respectively, to perform truly awful renditions of “Island in the Stream” and “Because I Got High.”
The offbeat open closes with an appearance by Mikey Day as Donald Trump Jr. who Johnson’s Trump hilariously refers to as “my Kendall Roy.” The cursed duo breaks out into Ice Spice and PinkPantheress’s hit song “Boy is a liar Pt. 2.” And the boy is a liar!
An open letter to Elon Musk: Leave stan Twitter alone
![Photos of Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj, Elon Musk, Taylor Swift, and Jungkook of BTS.](https://helios-i.mashable.com/imagery/articles/07dNYnaBPkqtsPsnueVPwRt/hero-image.png)
Elon, babe, you’re down bad. You’ve let go of 73 percent of Twitter’s staff, let the site deteriorate on your watch, and you’re so desperate to make back $44 billion that you’ve turned one of Twitter’s most valuable assets — verification — into a sloppy free-for-all (well… an $8-for-all).
When evening falls and you curl up under the covers, brushing away the crumbling blunt you smoked to fall asleep the night before, does doubt creep into your mind? Do you ask yourself… what if I made a mistake? (You did.) Is the whole world laughing at me? (Yes). Can I salvage this? (Maybe!)
Coming back from this seems pretty straightforward (just undo every change you’ve made), but I have one piece of advice you may not have heard yet: Don’t mess with the stans.
Consistently engaged, always creative, and funny as hell, stan Twitter is one of the largest factions of users you haven’t seemed to piss off yet. Barbz, Arianators, Swifties, and the Beyhive are mighty enemies in almost any arena but on Twitter, they are some of your most valuable power users. And don’t forget the K-pop stans, who wield decisive power. BTS’s massive Army fandom have helped the group claim 17 of the top 30 most-liked tweets in history. Your tweets, Elon, account for… two.
Here are four reasons you should leave them alone:
1. They don’t want anything from you
The good folks over on stan Twitter just want a place to yell into the void and post fancams of Timothée Chalamet crying to a Phoebe Bridgers song. They are extremely self-sufficient and don’t want anything from your platform except for it to function. In fact, they barely care about you at all and, if you’re smart, you’ll figure out how to keep it that way.
2. They are crucial to the culture of the platform
Stan Twitter is an engagement machine, trending new hashtags, starting new beefs, and creating new content formats by the hour. Tweeting is a hobby, and they do it dozens of times a day. Their vocabulary — words like “fancam,” “lil meow meow,” and “naur” — has permeated online and offline spaces. They keep Twitter a relevant, relatable, and reliable cultural hub.
3. They make Twitter valuable
Engagement from stan Twitter makes the platform valuable to brands, publications, celebrities and marketing teams. As some of Twitter’s most vocal and devoted users, stans drive the economy of platform, making it a destination for advertisers. They lend Twitter its cache as a bustling, sometimes hectic, place to find and interact with consumers.
4. They’re never going to pay for Twitter
…So don’t try to make them. I am sure you’re tossing around the idea of making users pay to post videos or to tweet more than a dozen times a day and to that I say: Stop. Don’t. Chill. Because in the toss up between paying for a new album from their fave and paying for Twitter, stans are going to pick the album. Every. Single. Time. You think it’s hard to get regular folks to pay for Twitter? Try getting money from someone in a parasocial relationship with an emotional support K-pop boy. It’s not gonna happen.
That Musk-signed open letter calling for a pause on AI development is getting blasted by the very researchers it cites
UK Probe Into Apple’s Mobile Browser Restrictions Shut Down After Apple Argues Regulators Waited Too Long to Open Investigation
The CMA in November launched an investigation into the cloud gaming and mobile browser restrictions put in place by both Apple and Google, suggesting that the two companies were holding back innovation and increasing costs for web developers, cloud gaming service providers, and browser vendors.
“Many UK businesses and web developers tell us they feel that they are being held back by restrictions set by Apple and Google,” said Sarah Cardell, interim chief executive of the CMA, at the time. The investigation was part of a larger examination of the “duopoly” of Apple and Google on mobile ecosystems that launched in 2021.
Apple in January filed an appeal with the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) pointing out the CMA had missed key timing requirements, and thus should not be able to continue the investigation. The CMA was supposed to end its inquiry within 18 months, and there were deadlines that needed to be adhered to, but Apple said that the proper timeline wasn’t followed.
The Appeal Tribunal agreed with Apple, and said that the CMA should have launched the market investigation at the same time that it published the duopoly report in June 2021. By not doing so, it “erred in law.”
If the CMA had continued with its investigation, it would have been be able to ask Apple for in-depth information on its browser and cloud gaming practices, and ultimately could have forced Apple to change the way that it operates.
The CMA says that it is disappointed in the ruling and is considering an appeal.
This article, “UK Probe Into Apple’s Mobile Browser Restrictions Shut Down After Apple Argues Regulators Waited Too Long to Open Investigation” first appeared on MacRumors.com
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Xscape’s LaTocha Scott BREAKS DOWN in Tears Over Group Drama, Reveals “Open Relationship” with Husband
As an anchoring member of R&B royalty Xscape, LaTocha Scott has been in the spotlight for three decades.
However, 2023 has seen the vocalist come under scrutiny like never before.
Indeed, LaTocha has found herself at the center of jaw-dropping drama on the hit Bravo series ‘SWV & Xscape: The Queens of R&B.’
The lion’s share of the chaos has been between the songbird and sister Tamika Scott –
The post Xscape’s LaTocha Scott BREAKS DOWN in Tears Over Group Drama, Reveals “Open Relationship” with Husband appeared first on ..::That Grape Juice.net::.. – Thirsty?.
Jay Cutler Believes Bodybuilding’s Men’s Open is Returning to Its Greatest Era
At this point in time, the Men’s Open division resembles a loaded gauntlet. Usually, a bodybuilding class will feature a champion, in this case, Hadi Choopan, and only another worthy contender or two. According to Jay Cutler, this reality couldn’t be further from the truth for those who currently reside in the Men’s Open. On Mar. 26. 2023,…
The post Jay Cutler Believes Bodybuilding’s Men’s Open is Returning to Its Greatest Era appeared first on Breaking Muscle.
Open letter calling for AI ‘pause’ shines light on fierce debate around risks vs. hype
Leading tech minds sign open letter asking for a six-month pause on advanced AI development
Open Source Espresso Machine Is One Delicious Rabbit Hole Inside Another
Sohl ended up creating a loose guide to making your own highly configurable machine out of common espresso machine parts and the Gaggiuino software. From his own machine, he salvaged a pump with a pressure sensor, a boiler with a temperature sensor, an overpressure valve, and brew head. Sohl made a chassis for his new machine out of extrusion rails and stiffening plates. The high-voltage boards and components were assembled breadboard style onto acrylic panels, held up by poster-tack adhesive. A 120-volt power connector was salvaged from a PC power supply, then mounted with a 3D-printed bracket. The low-voltage wires and parts were also tacked onto acrylic, individually crimped, and heat shrink-wrapped. And the control panel was 3D-printed, allowing for toggle switches and a touch-panel screen.
There’s more work to be done on Sohl’s unit; the exposed boiler and 120-volt wiring need to be hidden, and a drip tray would be nice. But it works. The first shot was fast and under-extracted, suggesting a finer grind and settings changes. Then again, that describes almost every first-time home espresso setup. Sohl writes that he hopes future versions of his project will make use of the Gaggiuino project’s own circuit board design and that he’ll have his 3D project files posted for sharing.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.