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Pop Culture

Ryan Gosling is singing about 'blonde fragility' in the new Barbie song, 'Just Ken'

He didn't stop singing after "La La Land."

ryan gosling, margot robbie, barbie

Ryan Gosling is more than "Just Ken" in the new "Barbie" movie.

Ryan Gosling surprised fans and critics with his turn as a song-and-dance-man in 2016’s Academy Award-winning “La La Land” opposite Emma Stone. Many doubted whether he could actually sing and dance, but he’s dabbled in music in the past and even belted out a tune or two on “The Mickey Mouse Club” as a kid.

Now, Gosling again shows his musical side with a song in the soon-to-be-released “Barbie” movie where he plays Ken to Margot Robbie’s Barbie. But, according to the song, Ken isn’t too pleased about playing second fiddle to the princess of pink.


In “Just Ken,” Gosling sings, “I just don’t know who I am without you” to Barbie. “You’re Ken,” Margot Robbie’s Barbie responds.

“But it’s Barbie and Ken,” he fires back. “There is no ‘Just Ken.’”

“Doesn’t seem to matter what I do / I’m always No. 2,” he sings as Barbie dances away, oblivious to his pain. “Is it my destiny to live and die a life of blonde fragility? / I’m just Ken,” he continues.

But eventually, Ken finds his strength and realizes that he’s more than just a piece of arm candy. “I’m just Ken, and I’m enough / And I’m great at doing stuff / So, hey, check me out / And I’m just Ken / Baby, I’m just Ken,” he sings.

Recently, Jack Black's hit song “Peaches” from the “Super Mario Bros. Movie” has received over 47 million views on YouTube and was his first entry into the charts as a solo artist. Who knows, Gosling’s “Just Ken” may also be a hit with fans. The video should get plenty of views. Come for the fun song, and stay to see Ryan Gosling with his shirt off.

Eaglebrook School, Deerfield, Massachusetts.

The typical kid’s experience in school is a lot different today than it was 30 to 40 years ago. It’s hard to say whether things are better or worse, but there’s been a sea change in how children are raised.

One negative development is that teachers tend to think parents are more likely to side with their kids over faculty in disputes than they were decades ago. On the positive side, corporal punishment is on the decrease, so students are much less likely to be physically punished for breaking the rules.

A Reddit user with the username u/theSandwichSister asked the ‘80s and ‘90s kids on the forum, “What’s something a school teacher did to you that would not fly today?” A lot of the responses were about the type of physical punishment and humiliation that used to happen in schools that would never happen these days.

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Ever get annoyed by super bright lights in your rearview mirror?

One of the most common complaints drivers have these days is that car headlights are too bright. According to a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Transportation, a whopping 88% of drivers have noticed headlight glare, and about 31% of them described it as "disturbing."

The study also revealed that one out of every 100 drivers claimed that glare actually caused them to have a crash or a near miss.

How did the headlights get so bright? Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, headlights were made with halogen bulbs with a softer, warm yellow light. These days they’re made with LEDs that last longer but are much whiter and brighter.

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Finally, someone explains why we all need subtitles

It seems everyone needs subtitles nowadays in order to "hear" the television. This is something that has become more common over the past decade and it's caused people to question if their hearing is going bad or if perhaps actors have gotten lazy with enunciation.

So if you've been wondering if it's just you who needs subtitles in order to watch the latest marathon-worthy show, worry no more. Vox video producer Edward Vega interviewed dialogue editor Austin Olivia Kendrick to get to the bottom of why we can't seem to make out what the actors are saying anymore. It turns out it's technology's fault, and to get to how we got here, Vega and Kendrick took us back in time.

They first explained that way back when movies were first moving from silent film to spoken dialogue, actors had to enunciate and project loudly while speaking directly into a large microphone. If they spoke and moved like actors do today, it would sound almost as if someone were giving a drive-by soliloquy while circling the block. You'd only hear every other sentence or two.

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@caroline_in_the_city/TikTok

Wow. What a difference.

Caroline Ross is a professional photographer who specializes in fashion and editorial photography—you know, the kind of fancy images that grace magazine covers and billboards and the like. So it’s safe to assume she knows her way around Photoshop.

Over on her TikTok channel, Ross helps others gain social media literacy by showing exactly how Photoshop is used to create the highly stylized images we’re so used to seeing in advertisements…so much that we might forget it’s not real.

Recently, Ross also highlighted the double standards that exist when it comes to older female celebrities versus their male counterparts by applying the same amount of Photoshop to cover shoots of actors in their fifties that would be used on actresses of the same age.

When you see the side-by-side comparison—and how ridiculous it looks—it’s hard to deny how hardwired our brains are to accept, even admire aging in men, and at the same time expect women to remain untouched by time…lest they become an unsavory hag, that is.

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Science

Pennsylvania home is the entrance to a cave that’s been closed for 70 years

You can only access the cave from the basement of the home and it’s open for business.

This Pennsylvania home is the entrance to a cave.

Have you ever seen something in a movie or online and thought, "That's totally fake," only to find out it's absolutely a real thing? That's sort of how this house in Pennsylvania comes across. It just seems too fantastical to be real, and yet somehow it actually exists.

The home sits between Greencastle and Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, and houses a pretty unique public secret. There's a cave in the basement. Not a man cave or a basement that makes you feel like you're in a cave, but an actual cave that you can't get to unless you go through the house.

Turns out the cave was discovered in the 1830s on the land of John Coffey, according to Uncovering PA, but the story of how it was found is unclear. People would climb down into the cave to explore occasionally until the land was leased about 100 years later and a small structure was built over the cave opening.

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Louisiana SPCA has 'Paw & Order' special to encourage adoption

Shelters are consistently full of animals, especially since people have gone back to work out of the home. There has been a steady influx of dogs that gets compounded by puppy season so shelters have to get creative with their marketing. Convincing families to add a permanent fixture to their lives can be a bit tricky. So shelter staff has done things like photo shoots, have kids write about the dogs and make up elaborate back stories on the animals temporment.

But this TikTok video from Louisiana SPCA has to be one of the most creative pet adoption attempts out there. The shelter created a "Paw & Order" special which shows each dog and their alleged crime that they're "in for." It's almost impossible to not want to go pick up one of the dogs after you see what kind of shenanigans they have been involved in.

The first puppy Mickey is apparently responsible for crimes in the local area. Not one crime, but all of the crimes. He's adorable so it's ok, right?

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