TIME Sports

Spike Lee’s Mo’Ne Davis Ad Settles the Whole ‘Throwing Like a Girl’ Thing

An inspiring ad for the World Series puts an end to a long-standing stereotype once and for all

The World Series is upon us, but 13-year-old Little League superstar Mo’ne Davis is still the most talked-about player in baseball. Director Spike Lee teamed up with Chevrolet to create a commercial featuring the young pitcher, who made the cover of Sports Illustrated this year after becoming the first girl in history to throw a shutout during the Little League World Series.

In the ad, Davis reads an open letter to America: “I throw 70 miles per hour. That’s throwing like a girl,” she says.

TIME apps

Google’s New Email App Wants to Save You From Your Inbox

Opening an email could become a thing of the past, if 'Inbox' can get the right information up front

Google launched a new email app called “Inbox” Wednesday that strips essential information from your incoming messages, displaying it in a stream similar to a social media newsfeed.

Inbox Google

Rather than display messages by subject line, Inbox cuts straight to the body of your emails and attempts to prune out everything but the essential bits, such as flight times, event invitations and attached photos. A flight, for instance, will have your flight times clearly displayed up front without the airline’s preamble. The app can also draw pertinent information from the web, such as your flight’s status. The app also attempts to automatically populate to-do lists and calendar appointments, sparing you from copying the details, flipping to a new app and pasting the information into all of the related fields.

The question remains how well a machine can gauge “pertinent” information to a human user. Early hands-on demonstrations suggest an intuitive user experience. For now, only a select group of users will get to use Inbox by invitation only, who, in turn will be able to invite friends and collectively will decide whether this app will replace regular email for good.

TIME movies

Watch Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking in Exclusive The Theory of Everything Clip

The young Hawking was quite the charmer, as this new clip shows

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has accomplished so much professionally (his countless contributions to science) as well as personally (he was given two years to live following his motor neuron disease diagnosis) that director James Marsh could have easily made his upcoming film The Theory of Everything a straightforward biopic. But the movie is a love story at heart, and Jane Hawking, played by Felicity Jones, is as much a part of it as Hawking, played by Eddie Redmayne in a performance that’s already garnered plenty of early Oscar buzz.

Adapted from Jane Hawking’s memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen Hawking, Marsh’s film spends plenty of time exploring the couple’s early courtship after they met as students at the University of Cambridge. In this scene, premiering exclusively at TIME today, Hawking’s remarkable curiosity about how the world works starts to win over Jane during the university’s famous annual May Ball.

TIME technology

This App Can Scan and Solve Math Equations Instantly

Doing math homework just got way easier

A viral video about a new app looks like a dream come true for anyone who struggles with math.

Based on the promo clip, PhotoMath, dubbed a “smart camera calculator,” appears to use smartphone cameras to scan a photo of a math equation in a textbook and display the answer instantly — similar to apps that scan barcodes and takes users to a link in a web browser. It looks like the app can also show step-by-step instructions for solving the problem.

PhotoMath’s parent company MicroBLINK launched the app this week at TechCrunch Disrupt Europe in London, TechCrunch reports. It is available in the App Store on iTunes.

MORE: Really Hard Math Problems With Friends: A New Way to Prep for the SAT and ACT

TIME viral

Dawson’s Creek Is So Much More Fun to Watch When Reenacted by Dachshunds

It's great, but their cry faces could use some work

How do you make a sappy, melodramatic ’90s teen drama better? You add dogs, obviously.

And that is why we now have Dachshund’s Creek, which is just like Dawson’s Creek, but with wiener dogs instead of people. It’s “a story about love, life and growing up” and stars pooches named Gandalf, Winnie, Mocha and Aurora as the show’s central characters: Dawson, Joey, Pacey and Jen. It’s got the teen angst, sexual tension and melodrama you expect — but it’s so much cuter.

Man, this is so beautiful it makes us want to cry.

TIME Music

A Totally Serious Analysis of Taylor Swift’s Genre-Defying 8 Seconds of Static, ‘Track 3′

What does it all mean?

Searching for a sound they hadn’t heard before, Canadian fans of Taylor Swift accidentally sent her 1989 song “Track 3″ — eight seconds of white noise that went on sale after an iTunes glitch — to the top of the online store’s charts. Many listeners were frustrated to learn that they had spent $1.29 on what seems like absolutely nothing. But lest they forget, Taylor Swift is an artist, not some manufactured pop product. Her more difficult works, like this one, require several listens before their thematic complexity and genre-defying soundscapes can be fully appreciated.

“Track 3″ is perhaps her most ambitious track yet. Drawing inspiration from Trent Reznor and that new television she still hasn’t quite figured out how to work since she moved to New York, “Track 3″ demonstrates Swift’s willingness to shed her squeaky-clean pop image and move her sound to a darker, industrial and more experimental direction. In other words, “Track 3″ is a sign that 1989 will be the Yeezus of her career, and her “Bound 2″ moment isn’t far away.

Speculating about the subject of Taylor Swift lyrics is popular among both fans and the media, but it’s clear from the way the static begins around a second in — representing the calm before the storm, obviously — that “Track 3″ is also about a tumultuous relationship. Swift cuts the static at the six-second mark to suggest that she has emerged from the storm unscathed, but don’t be fooled by the pop star’s clever lyrical ploy here — we know from the following track, “Out of the Woods,” that Taylor Swift’s relationship status and geographical relationship to said woods are both murky. In fact, the static on “Track 3″ may symbolize that Taylor is stuck in the woods right now and is desperately trying to walkie-talkie her way into safe shelter. Does anybody know where Taylor Swift is right now? Is she in danger? Does she need any help?

According to Taylor Swift’s Instagram account, the real “Track 3″ includes the lyrics, “I heard that you’ve been out and about with some other girl.” Those words don’t contradict the interpretation that this “Track 3″ is about Taylor Swift trying to cut through the static and seek closure about an ambiguous breakup — perhaps from an ex who has blocked her calls and moved on with “some other girl” while Swift keeps leaving cryptic polaroids all over his apartment. Given the empowering nature of “Shake It Off,” though, the opposite is far more likely: Taylor is hung up and tired of waiting on a dude who’s now using new lady friends to make her jealous or get her attention. Sorry, she cannot hear you, bro, she’s kinda busy.

TIME Television

Bill Murray Loved Working at Little Caesars

Back in the day, he worked alongside celebrity chef Kerry Simon

Actor Bill Murray came from humble beginnings — and so did his friend, celebrity chef Kerry Simon. They both worked at a Little Caesars pizza shop in Illinois, Murray said during a visit to Jimmy Kimmel Live on Tuesday. It was the best job he ever had, Murray admitted, although it’s hard to see how anything could top Ghostbusters.

TIME marketing

Watch These Little Princesses Drop F-Bombs for Feminism

Because there are worse words than curse words

Think the F-word is a dirty word? These little girls can think of a few that are worse — like “pay inequality” or “rape and violence.”

But there’s a reason for their potty-mouthed exclamations — these young girls, dressed up in princess costumes, are cursing to protest inequalities that are even more shocking than curse words. The video was made by FCKH8.com, a for-profit company that produces clothing that advocates for social change. And while FCKH8 is famous for equality-themed T-shirts like “Some Chicks Marry Chicks” and “Straight Against Hate,” this particular video is meant to promote its feminist line, with T-shirts that say things like “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” and “Girls Just Want to Have Fun – damental rights.”

You can watch the whole video here.

 

TIME celebrity

Here Are Bill Murray’s Thoughts on Tinder

He doesn't need it to get a date

Bill Murray dropped by Jimmy Kimmel Live on Tuesday to talk about his new movie St. Vincent — but ended up talking about Tinder instead.

Kimmel brought up the mobile dating app, kind of out of nowhere, asking Murray if he’d ever consider using it (or if he’d even heard of it.) Murray indeed knows about Tinder, but he has no interest in participation. “I feel like I’ve lived that life and I can live that life any moment,” he says with confidence. He then goes on to prove just how skilled he is at hitting on people without the help of an app, and things get a little weird.

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