Remember when Pete Davidson was that doofy younger guy on Saturday Night Live who couldn’t seem to ever keep it together when things got funny? This sketch paints a picture of what he could be like as an old man in 2054.
It’s more dark and depressing than funny and unhinged. Just a portrait of a guy who’s been through it now trying to keep the magic going in front of crowds who only seem interested in having him “do Chad.” But that’s what is so great about it.
Davidson has absolutely been through it, more than once. Millions of SNL fans have watched him mature over the years from a troubled young person with loads of obvious talent into a brilliant performer who regularly lights up the stage with cutting musical parodies and scene-stealing Weekend Update appearances. “An Evening With Pete,” which is what the sketch is called, finds humor in the ring of truth it exposes.
Also, Paul Rudd gifts Pete a giant bag of weed. That happens, too.
It still wasn’t as weird as that time Adam Pally and Ben Schwartz hosted The Late Late Show after a New York City blizzard (remember those?) would’ve otherwise shut down production.
The decision-makers behind Saturday Night Live decided on Saturday to pare things back in light of spiking COVID-19 cases and the arrival of the omicron variant. At first, that meant no studio guests. Then musical guest Charli XCX’s planned performance got shut down.
When the show finally aired at 11:30 p.m. ET, the house band consisted of only one tenor sax and one piano, and the celebrity guest who swooped onto the stage from the back of the set was Tom Hanks instead of Paul Rudd, the night’s host.
Hanks was probably meant to participate in the night’s festivities anyway, since Rudd was set to join SNL‘s illustrious “five-timers” club as one of the few to achieve a hosting five-peat. But Hanks also previously stepped up to help SNL with the show’s first at-home episode of 2020, so there was a sort of poetic justice to him starting things off as COVID once again loomed large over the production.
As opening monologue bits go, the celeb-filled stage made the most of their opportunity. Hanks was soon joined by fellow five-timer Tina Fey — with both wearing luxurious smoking jackets bearing a shield-shaped “5” patch — and together they welcomed a smiling, “extremely disappointed” Rudd to join them. Moments later, Kenan Thompson, SNL‘s longest-tenured comic, stepped out to welcome Rudd and hand him a five-timers smoking jacket of his own.
It’s a weird, awkward, sincere, wholesome, and — thanks to the antics of Steve Martin and Martin Short, who appeared in a video call — ever-so-slightly spicy kickoff to an outside-the-norm SNL. A little piece of TV history being made before your very eyes.
For the first time you can see where to charge up while using the Waze app for driving directions.
The Google-owned navigation app added more features for electric car owners in the U.S. on Friday. Instead of just gas stations, you can now look up public charging stations along your route or nearby. This comes as more people buy EVs, carmakers add more electric options to lineups, and more charging stations are planned.
Charging stations make it on the map. Credit: Waze
Waze is becoming increasingly EV-friendly as part of a partnership with Volkswagen, the German carmaker that released its first electric SUV, the ID.4, at the beginning of the year.
You can also change your car icon to an EV, perhaps to better reflect what you’re driving or wish you were driving. The VW ID.4 is now listed as one of the driver icons available (or you can keep the default arrow icon). Although Santa’s sleigh is reindeer-powered, the ID.4 is the only electric option on the list.
Riding as an ID.4.
Credit: Waze
So many options.
Credit: Sasha Lekach / Mashable
Google Maps, and other apps like Apple Maps, let you look up EV chargers nearby or at a particular destination. Google Maps includes more information about the charging stations, like how many plugs are available or working. In certain Volvo and Polestar electric cars, Google Maps is built into the infotainment system and includes trip planning with charging stops along your way.
Verizon covertly signed up many of its phone plan users for branded programs that share browsing and location data with the cellular provider. But there’s a way out of it.
Earlier in December, some users discovered their privacy settings had been changed without their knowledge. It seemed to affect customers who were previously part of a rewards program, which had become the Customer Experience Plus program. That’s separate from the Customer Experience program, which an even greater number of users were automatically opted into.
Both, according to the Verizon website, track browsing history, location data, and usage patterns — to help the company “personalize our communications with you, give you more relevant product and service recommendations, and develop plans, services, and offers that are more appealing to you.”
In recent days, the telecommunications company finally started reaching out to users that were unwittingly part of the programs, as The Verge reported. The texts and emails shared more about the programs and how to unsubscribe from the automatic enrollment.
Verizon put out an informational page earlier this month, alerting customers that they would be notified about program options.
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Since it’s an opt-out situation, that puts the onus on you to make the necessary changes. Here’s how you can check to see if you’re enrolled in either program, and the steps you can take to turn off one or both.
Go to the My Verizon website or mobile app
Head to the privacy preferences page
Within there you should see “reset” buttons for Custom Experience and Custom Experience Plus
Toggle off both to opt-out
That $48 million fine Verizon incurred from the Federal Communications Commission in 2020 because, the agency said, the company failed to protect customer location data didn’t seem to have a lasting effect on its data and privacy practices.
If you’re able to spread some some good tidings this holiday season, Trans Santa makes it easy for you.
Trans Santa is a mutual aid social media campaign that connects anonymous gift givers with queer and trans youth who are unhoused, in foster care, or otherwise without crucial support they need to thrive. It’s a bit like Operation Santa, the USPS’s anonymous gift-giving program, but specifically for this vulnerable community.
Here’s how it works: Until Dec. 20, trans and non-binary young people (under the age of 24) can apply for the 2021 Christmas campaign. In addition to completing a form on the Trans Santa website, participants upload a (handwritten or digital) letter to Trans Santa and create an Amazon gift registry. According to the application, the campaign receives hundreds of submissions daily.
Letters are then posted on the Trans Santa Instagram page for donors to look through. To buy a gift, santas click the linkin.bio; each letter on that page is tied directly to a different person’s Amazon registry. Click through to see what gifts a particular person wants, and then purchase through Amazon.
The process is safe and anonymous — last names aren’t on the registry, and Amazon hides addresses from purchasers.
SEE ALSO:
Failed by the healthcare system, transgender people find help elsewhere
Actor Indya Moore co-founded Trans Santa in 2020, and the program itself is run by a group of trans people, according to an FAQ highlight on the Instagram page. In addition to buying gifts, santas can also donate to Trans Santa all year long.
If the letters on the Instagram feed aren’t enough to encourage you to donate, the account’s stories and highlights — which feature thank you messages — will. “I am overjoyed, humbled, and beyond grateful for what Trans Santa and everyone have done for me,” said a participant named Sam in the Trans Santa highlights from 2020. “My whole wishlist was gifted to me and it has left me feeling so dang loved.”
Who would’ve guessed that Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s many moons, sounds like a Brian Eno album?
A new research dump from the Juno orbiter has given all of us space nerds a blessed holiday treat: Sights and sounds from our solar system’s largest planet and its largest moon. The photos of the swirling gas giant’s “surface” are as gorgeous and painterly as Jupiter watchers have come to expect, but the real treat is that audio track.
Captured by Juno’s Waves instrument, which measures electric and radio waves in a planet’s (or moon’s, in this case) magnetosphere, the 50-second clip puts out some positively otherworldly sounds. Researchers believe there’s an easy explanation for the sudden jump to a significantly higher pitch at around the 30-second mark.
“This soundtrack is just wild enough to make you feel as if you were riding along as Juno sails past Ganymede for the first time in more than two decades,” said Scott Bolton, a lead researcher on the Juno project, in NASA’s reveal. “If you listen closely, you can hear the abrupt change to higher frequencies around the midpoint of the recording, which represents entry into a different region in Ganymede’s magnetosphere.”
Another lead researcher on the project, University of Iowa’s William Kurth, expressed his belief that the change in frequency is a result of Juno “passing from the nightside to the dayside of Ganymede.”
To be clear: This doesn’t mean you’d hear what’s in the recording NASA shared if you somehow found yourself standing on the surface of Ganymede. The magnetic and radio waves collected by Juno are merely data points; NASA’s team is responsible for shifting their frequency into a range that’s audible to most people without assistance.
The Waves recording was collected in June 2021 during the same Juno flyby that left us with this incredible new photo of Ganymede over the summer.
The Juno data drop also gave us a pair of new looks at Jupiter. This one, collected on Nov. 29, may as well be an artist’s rendition of the planet.
Credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS | Image processing: Kevin M. Gill CC BY
It’s not, though. The photo, captured by Juno’s “visible-light imager,” offers an up-close look at two of the planet’s swirling, raging storm systems.
Another shot from Jupiter compares one of the planet’s storms to an Earthly algae bloom that occurred in the Norwegian Sea, captured by satellite photography. The comparison was prompted by Lia Siegelman, an oceanographer who sees in space imagery like this an opportunity to glean a better understanding Earth’s oceans.
Credit: NASA OBPG OB.DAAC/GSFC/Aqua/MODIS. | Image processing: Gerald Eichstadt CC BY
“When I saw the richness of the turbulence around the Jovian cyclones, with all the filaments and smaller eddies, it reminded me of the turbulence you see in the ocean around eddies,” Siegelman said. “These are especially evident in high-resolution satellite images of vortices in Earth’s oceans that are revealed by plankton blooms that act as tracers of the flow.”
You can read more about all of this straight from the NASA team that’s responsible for Juno.
If you’re going to disrespect President Joe Biden in front of Vice President Kamala Harris, prepare to face some consequences.
Host and entertainer Charlamagne Tha God learned that the hard way on Friday when an interview with Harris went off the rails after he asked a less-than-diplomatic question. “I want to know who’s the real president of this country, Joe Biden or Joe Manchin,” he asked, referring to the struggles the Democratic Party has had with getting Manchin, West Virginia’s Democratic Senator, on board with the president’s legislative priorities.
After a brief communications breakdown where it seemed as though Harris’s press team tried to end the interview because it ran long, Charlamagne asked his question again. The vice president immediately admonished him in response.
“Come on Charlamagne,” she said with all the energy of a pre-school teacher telling her students not to eat paste for the tenth time. As the host tried to defend his question, Harris continued.
“Come on. It’s Joe Biden.” Charlamagne tried again to get a word in, and Harris wasn’t having it. “No no no no no. No. No. No. It’s Joe Biden. And don’t start talking like a Republican about asking whether or not he’s president.”
Her response only grew more forceful as Charlamagne continued to push, asking if Manchin is “a problem” for the administration. Ignoring the follow-up, Harris held up her hand and continued her correction: “It’s Joe Biden. And I’m vice president and my name is Kamala Harris.” She continued from there to hail the Biden administration’s successes and policy positions, not even trying to mask the edge in her voice.
The response left Charlamagne impressed. “I just want you to know Madam Vice President: That Kamala Harris? That’s the one I like. That’s the one that was putting the pressure on people in Senate hearings. That’s the one I’d like to see more often out here in the streets.”
The fireworks start at around 18:40 in the video above, and it’s worth listening to Harris’s full response. Even if you know the current administration’s successes and policies inside and out, seeing Harris unload on a thoughtless question that was likely fueled in large part by a GOP talking point offers us all a sharp, important reminder of why she has the job that she does.
After a push by the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) and the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), Instagram just added the ability to disable embeds on your posts.
The NPPA said it worked with Instagram for over a year and a half to make this happen. Photographers and other creators now don’t have to worry about the internet grifting their material if they don’t want to. Here are the steps to disabling embeds on Instagram:
Disable Instagram embeds on Mobile:
1. Go to your Instagram profile
Tap the three lines in the top right corner, then pick Settings.
First step: Go to your profile on Instagram. Credit: Screenshot: Instagram
Choose Settings from this menu. Credit: Screenshot: Instagram
2. In Settings, choose Account, then Embeds
In Settings, tap Account. Credit: Screenshot: Instagram
Once in Account, choose Embeds Credit: Screenshot: Instagram
3. Toggle off “Allow people to embed your posts or profile on other websites”
Toggle off Embeds to assure others can’t paste your Instagram feed post onto their site. Credit: Screenshot: Instagram
There you have it — a way to prevent others from embedding the work you put on Instagram. In addition to mobile, you can also do this on the desktop version of the app.
Disable Instagram embeds on Desktop:
1. Go to your Instagram profile and click the Settings gear
How to get to your Instagram profile on desktop. Credit: Screenshot: Instagram
Click the Settings gear to go to your settings. Credit: Screenshot: Instagram
2. In Settings, click Privacy and Security
Click Privacy and Security once in Settings. Credit: Screenshot: Instagram
3. Scroll to Embeds and uncheck “Allow people to embed your posts or profile on other websites”
Uncheck allowing embeds on Instagram. Credit: Screenshot: Instagram
Why should you use this feature?
ASMP and NPAA fought for this feature because third-party websites bypassed copyright law just by embedding Instagram posts. The organizations referenced several court cases when talking to Facebook (which owns Instagram), including Sinclair v. Ziff Davis (full disclosure: Mashable is owned by Ziff Davis).
“NPPA believes this change is extremely important given all the lawsuits regarding embedding,” NPPA General Counsel Mickey H. Osterreicher said in a statement.
“We hope photographers will take advantage of this feature. We also expect that publications will cease trying to circumvent copyright protections by claiming they have a right to embed images and properly license images from the photographers who often risk their health and safety to make them.”
The addition of the new feature means that photographers and other creatives can display their work on Instagram knowing their rights as owners of that content will be a little more protected.
The eternal hunt to find something to watch on TV got a little easier for YouTube TV subscribers on Friday, though not for the best reason.
All the Disney-owned networks — including various flavors of Disney Channel, FX, National Geographic, ESPN, and local ABC stations — are no longer available for streaming via YouTube TV as of Dec. 17. In a corresponding move, Google reduced the subscription price for YouTube TV by $15, from $64.99 to $49.99.
“We’ve held good faith negotiations with Disney for several months. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we were unable to reach an equitable agreement before our existing one expired,” reads a YouTube TV statement released on Friday.
“As of December 17, 2021, end of day Eastern Time, all Disney-owned channels, including ESPN and your local ABC station, are unavailable on YouTube TV. Members will not be able to watch live or local content from Disney and will also lose access to any previous Library recordings from these channels, including 4K content that is available as part of the 4K Plus add-on.”
The $15 price reduction affects existing subscribers as well as new ones. The savings will be applied in the form of a bill credit, according to an FAQ shared alongside the statement. Prices will increase again if (when?) a deal is struck and the missing channels are restored.
“Should we come to an agreement with Disney, we will adjust the price accordingly and will notify members via email beforehand,” the FAQ reads.
Disney issued a statement of its own on the news, which a spokesperson from the company shared in an email to Mashable.
“We’ve been in ongoing negotiations with Google’s YouTube TV and unfortunately, they have declined to reach a fair deal with us based on market terms and conditions. As a result, their subscribers have lost access to our unrivaled portfolio of networks including live sports and news plus kids, family and general entertainment programming from ABC, the ESPN networks, the Disney channels, Freeform, the FX networks and the National Geographic channels. We stand ready to reach an equitable agreement with Google as quickly as possible in order to minimize the inconvenience to YouTube TV viewers by restoring our networks. We hope Google will join us in that effort.”
The change shouldn’t come as a total surprise for YouTube TV subscribers. The streaming service issued a warning about the risk of service interruptions on Monday, Dec. 13, noting at the time both the date such interruptions would likely occur in the event no deal was reached and the price changes that would follow in such a circumstance.
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YouTube TV subscribers still have the option of adding The Disney Bundle to their account, which ropes together Disney+ Hulu on-demand with ads, and ESPN+ under one $13.99 monthly subscription. That doesn’t restore the live TV component, however; it simply gives subscribers access to three standalone catalog streaming services for one fixed price.
There’s no indication at this point of if or when the missing channels could be restored. Streaming disruptions like this aren’t exactly uncommon, though they’ve historically gotten worked out in the end. That doesn’t mean it’ll happen again here for sure, but you can always place your trust in large companies working hard to make more money. Theoretically, that means negotiators on both sides have some motivation to ensure that a deal is made.
UPDATE: Dec. 18, 2021, 1:27 p.m. EST Updated with Disney’s statement.
The people who compete in a real-life adaptation of the wizarding world sport quidditch will be changing the name they use for it in light of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s continued transphobia.
The news dropped via a joint statement from leagues Major League Quidditch (MLQ) and U.S. Quidditch (USQ) on Wednesday. One major reason behind the switch is to distance players from the writings of Rowling, who in recent years has stirred up controversy for her transphobic comments on social media. The latest instance of Rowling’s transphobic backlash came just days before the announcement.
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In their statement, MLQ and USQ note that quidditch has a reputation for being a progressive sport in terms of gender equality and inclusion. This is evidenced by its “gender maximum rule,” which disallows a team from having more than four players of a single gender on the field at the same time.
“Both organizations feel it is imperative to live up to this reputation in all aspects of their operations, and believe this move is a step in that direction,” the leagues write in the statement.
It’s not just Rowling that led the leagues to make this decision, however. The name “quidditch” is trademarked by Warner Bros, and thus has limited the sport. The leaders in each league feel that by swapping the name, the sport will be allowed to grow in ways it previously couldn’t have, such as with sponsorship or broadcast deals.
“I believe quidditch is at a turning point,” said USQ executive director Mary Kimball in the statement. “We can continue the status quo and stay relatively small, or we can make big moves and really propel this sport forward into its next phase.”
As explained by MLQ and USQ, quidditch was first adapted by Middlebury College students Xander Manshel and Alex Benepe back in 2005.
Benepe said he’s thrilled by this decision. “Big changes like this don’t come without risk, but I’ve been a strong advocate for making this move for a long time,” he said via the statement. “The sport needs its own space without limits on its growth potential and changing the name is crucial to achieving that.”
The new name hasn’t been set, but MLQ and USQ will send out a series of surveys over the next couple months to aid the decision. Current players, volunteers, and stakeholders can complete the first name-change survey here.
