Author: kenzie Lauren

As major flooding inundated western Tennessee last week, one family was prepared — buoyed by techniques that have kept their house safe from river surges for decades. Tucker Humphrey and his brother Justin, both farmers in Bogota, Tennessee, used an excavator to build a levee that protected their family’s home as a catastrophic storm ripped through the middle of the country earlier this month. At least 29 people were killed across seven states and some communities — including Bogota — saw massive flooding. Aerial footage that showed the Humphrey home as the only untouched residence in a sea of brown floodwater went viral. “Just…

Mary Kate Cornett, a then-18-year-old student at the University of Mississippi, moved into emergency campus housing not long after sports talk show host Pat McAfee, whose ESPN show has 2.8 million subscribers on YouTube, spread a wholly unsubstantiated and vicious rumor on a February broadcast about an unnamed freshman on that campus he said “allegedly” had sex with her boyfriend’s father. When a phone number for the teenager, who vehemently denies the rumor, circulated online, she began receiving hateful messages, including messages instructing her to kill herself. In what NBC News confirmed was a “swatting” case, police showed up to Cornett’s mother’s house with their…

Reddit has expanded a partnership with Google to use the tech giant’s Gemini tool and tap artificial intelligence for Reddit Answers. Google is helping Reddit manage information from 100,000 online communities and more than 400 million weekly active users, making their online conversations more searchable for Reddit Answers, Google said on Wednesday.  It could mean faster and more accurate search in addition to summaries, follow-up questions and the ability to have an AI conversation about the content, not unlike what users of AI chatbot services such as ChatGPT would expect. Reddit unveiled Answers in late 2024, telling its users that it would be easier to search for content from Reddit –…

ChatGPT maker OpenAI is reportedly looking into a potential acquisition of an artificial intelligence startup co-founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The deal could exceed $500 million, according to The Information. The venture, called io Products, is developing a range of AI-powered technologies including a screenless phone concept and smart home devices, the publication said. io Products has denied that a phone is in development, however, and OpenAI didn’t respond to a request for comment. The closely guarded AI hardware initiative was first reported by The New York Times in September. Ive — who is renowned for designing the iPhone, iPad and…

SAG-AFTRA and advertisers have reached a tentative agreement for successor commercial contracts. “SAG-AFTRA and The Joint Policy Committee, LLC (JPC) have reached a tentative agreement on terms for successor Commercials and Audio Commercials Contracts, subject to approval by the SAG-AFTRA National Board, which will meet on April 26, and ratification by the membership. The specific details will not be released in advance of the board’s review,” the performers’ union wrote in a statement. The tentative agreement — which covers actors’ and other performers’ work on ads — came after the two parties extended the expiration date on their previous contracts multiple…

Rory McIlroy leads the Masters by two shots over Bryson DeChambeau, but that is not who he will be playing in the tournament’s final round. Sunday at Augusta National will be McIlroy versus McIlroy. “I’m just going to have to settle in and really try to keep myself in my own little bubble and keep my head down,” he said after shooting a third-round 66 to enter Sunday at 12-under-par. Saturday will be the first time McIlroy has held a 54-hole lead at a major since the 2014 PGA Championship at Valhalla — his last major championship victory. He’s playing…

President Trump, some of his cabinet members and his adviser Elon Musk sat ringside in Miami late Saturday night at the Ultimate Fighting Championship event — a spectacle of violence, throbbing music and cheering crowds that the president has long admired. It’s the second U.F.C. event that Mr. Trump has attended since he was elected for a second time in November, and the first of his presidency. Unlike World Wrestling Entertainment events, U.F.C. matches aren’t staged. Mr. Trump has been a fan of U.F.C. fights for years. He attended one in late 2019 in New York City during his first presidency. And…

AReal Pain, Jesse Eisenberg’s film about two cousins on a heritage tour of Holocaust-related sites in Poland, has been largely embraced by Polish audiences, who appreciated its understated humour and conspicuous good intentions. Within a month of its release, the film had grossed more than $1m at the Polish box office – no small feat for an indie production in Poland. “There was a collective sigh of relief,” says Vogue Poland film critic Anna Tatarska, “that here was a Hollywood Holocaust narrative that didn’t cast Poles as historical villains.” Poland’s fraught relationship with Holocaust narratives has made films touching on…

Even by the standards of watch boxes — typically oversized for the objects they hold — Chopard’s latest leather case, unveiled at watch fair Watches and Wonders, is strikingly large. But the grandeur is justified. Open it, and it reveals not one, but twelve L’Heure du Diamant watches, arranged like precious petals. Each piece features the same diamond-studded bezel, framing twelve different dials crafted from thin, round slices of hard-stones including apple-green jade, cobalt blue agate, cinnamon brown tiger’s eye, white mother-of-pearl, pink opal, onyx, carnelian, and more. The result is an elegant, unmistakably feminine collection with just the right…

Bella Thorne has accused fellow US actor Mickey Rourke of bruising her genitals with a metal grinder on the set of a movie that they filmed together during what she described as “one of the all time worst experiences” of her career. In a story on her Instagram account on Friday, Thorne alleged that the episode was part of a broader campaign to humiliate her while they collaborated on the 2020 thriller Girl. She wrote: “This fucking dude. GROSS” and relayed the account in writing over a copy of a BBC article reporting that Celebrity Big Brother’s producers had reprimanded him for aiming homophobic comments at…