And The Oscar Goes To The Oscar Bait
This year's Oscars will probably be remembered for having no host (which was fine!) and having one of the worst Best Pictures (which was not!).
Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody led the night with four awards, followed by three each for Black Panther, Roma, and Green Book. The last of those took home Best Picture (despite a number of controversies), rankling people at home and at least one newly minted Oscar-winner:
“I thought I was courtside at [Madison Square] Garden,” Spike Lee told reporters. “The ref made a bad call.” Earlier, Lee won his first-ever Oscar — Best Adapted Screenplay for BlacKkKlansman.
Some highlights:
Mahershala Ali is the first black man to win two Best Supporting Actor Oscars. He took home the award last night for Green Book after winning for Moonlight in 2016.
Ruth Carter won Best Costume Design for Black Panther, becoming the first black person to earn the award.
Lady Gaga is officially an Oscar winner now that “Shallow” from A Star Is Born won Best Original Song at the Academy Awards Sunday night.
Speaking of Gaga, she and Bradley Cooper shared a tender moment during their Oscars performance and people loved it.
Period. End of Sentence, an Indian film about the taboo surrounding periods, won for Best Documentary Short and everyone was ecstatic.
YouTube Has Demonetized Anti-Vax channels
YouTube is now preventing channels that promote anti-vax content from running advertising, saying explicitly that such videos fall under its policy prohibiting the monetization of videos with “dangerous and harmful” content.
Last week, BuzzFeed News found that while YouTube usually returns a top search result for queries like “are vaccines safe” from an authorized source such as a children’s hospital, its Up Next algorithm frequently suggested follow up recommendations for anti-vaccination videos.
Snapshots
US schools have put a patchwork of defenses into place against a singular threat: guns. Officials aren't waiting for gun control, and have begun hardening classrooms and outfitting students and teachers with their own weapons — including small bats and buckets of rocks.
R. Kelly allegedly met one of his underage sex abuse victims at his 2008 trial. A court heard new details of the aggravated criminal sexual assault charges against R. Kelly during a bond hearing Saturday, where bond was set at $1 million.
Most tech industry workers think Trump has a point about the media creating fake news. BuzzFeed News and Lucid surveyed them on their attitudes toward the media, and the results show deep skepticism toward the press and concerns about the role of identity politics in coverage.
A dad was found dead with a dog leash around his neck, and his son has been charged with murder. The 16-year-old allegedly told first responders "he wasn't going to be upset about his father dying" because "his father verbally abused him and his mom for a number of years."
The gender reveal has become A Thing. And Jill Filipovic argues that the Instagram-friendly explosions of pink and blue aren't just annoying – they further ingrain what we've spent centuries trying to root out.