Latest news with #Shuffle
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Spotify update: how to turn off Smart Shuffle and take back control of your playlists
Spotify update: how to turn off Smart Shuffle and take back control of your playlists Spotify is a digital music streaming service that gives users access to millions of songs, podcasts, and audiobooks on demand (PA Archive) Do you hate Spotify Smart Shuffle? The good news is you can now disable it. Spotify introduced Smart Shuffle in 2023 to encourage people to enjoy more diverse and varied listening. It peppers your shuffled playlists with other songs Spotify's algorithms think will fit into the tone and 'vibe' of what you're listening to. Neat idea, but some people hate it. If you are one of these, here's how to disable it. In the Settings menu within the Spotify app, go to Playback and deselect the Enable All Play Modes slider. ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement This change will return your Spotify experience to the traditional model, allowing you to switch between standard linear playback and shuffle — without the risk of accidentally activating Smart Shuffle. It's a useful update for those who take the time to carefully curate their playlists, rather than letting them become a chaotic mix of tracks. It's also beneficial for users who rely on offline playlists while travelling in areas with little or no internet access. Smart Shuffle can interrupt playback in such situations, as the additional suggested tracks require a live internet connection. Are you unsure whether you're using regular Shuffle or Smart Shuffle? The latter is indicated by a star icon alongside the standard shuffle symbol. Tapping the shuffle button while playing a playlist will toggle between the two modes — unless you've already disabled Smart Shuffle, as we've suggested. ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement A quick look at Reddit shows many users are relieved to have the option to switch Smart Shuffle off. 'Inserting awful tracks into your playlist — why? The reason I created the playlist was to have only quality tracks that I like,' one Redditor posted shortly after the feature was launched. To be fair to Spotify, Smart Shuffle can be a useful way to discover new artists in genres you might not know as well as you think. Spotify reportedly gained five million new subscribers in the first quarter of 2025 — its fastest growth since 2020. According to the Financial Times, the company is planning to raise subscription prices in Europe and Latin America by around one euro a month later this year, possibly in June. However, it's not yet clear whether UK users will be affected. Spotify's Premium Individual plan costs £11.99 per month.
CBS News
23-03-2025
- Sport
- CBS News
Winners of the 45th Bank of America Shamrock Shuffle race in Chicago
The 45th annual Shamrock Shuffle kicked off the unofficial start to the outdoor running season Sunday morning. Thousands of runners hit the pavement at 8:30 a.m., starting in Grant Park and making their way around the Loop. Each year, the race brings out new and returning participants. Deena Kastor, the 2005 winner and record holder of the Shuffle, has participated in the race for the past 20 years. She says she loves coming to Chicago for its two big running events. "I'm a native Californian, but I love coming to Chicago twice a year for the shuffle and for the marathon itself," she said. "This is a sporting town. Chicago is all about sports, the best sports fans in the world, and this race represents the greater good of that." This year, one runner managed to hold on to their title for the second year in a row. Men and all 8K runners: Gable Sieperda comes out on top at 22:52. He finishes with an average pace of 04:36. Women: Last year's winner, Amy Davis Green, takes the title once again, shaving seconds off her previous record of 25:54. She finishes at 25:31 with an average pace of 05:08. Non-binary: Steven Bugarin with the time 28:27 with an average pace of 05:44. Men wheelchair: The 2023 winner, Angelo Perez, is back on top after finishing second last year. He finishes at 50:06 with an average pace of 10:05. Women wheelchair: Samantha Schroth with the time of 30:47. More results are available on the Shamrock Shuffle website .
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Justin Baldoni Loses 'Highly Personal & Intimate Information' Court Battle With Blake Lively; Risk Of Disclosure Is Great,' Judge Warns Both Sides
Trying to plug leaks, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds have succeeded in what can be shown to whom in their legal conflict with Justin Baldoni, at least for now. 'The parties have levelled accusations of theft of trade secrets and the disclosure of confidential sensitive information against one another,' a pragmatic Judge Lewis J Liman noted today with some degree of understatement almost a year before the trial between the It Ends With Us stars starts on May 29, 2026. More from Deadline SXSW 2025: Amy Wang's 'Slanted' & Benjamin Flaherty's 'Shuffle' Win Narrative & Documentary Feature Awards SXSW 2025: All Of Deadline's Movie Reviews Sophia Bush Explains Why She Agreed To 'One Tree Hill' Revival After It Was "A Hard No" & Praises "Amazing Female Leadership Team" 'The Court's model protective order is not sufficient for the needs of these cases,' the federal Judge added, issuing most of the Attorney's Eyes Only protection that A-listers Lively and Reynolds sought for the discovery process. Unless you've been stuck in space with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams the past four months, you'd know this has been a very high profile and media matter since Lively filed her sexual harassment and retaliation compliant against Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios and other with California's Civil Rights department on December 20. At a long March 6 hearing over what the scope of any protective order should be and who should be allowed to look at discovery evidence, Judge Liman called the gist of this whole thing 'a feud between PR firms.' Certainly, in what is now a multi-lawsuit battlefield with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in potential damages, reputations and careers, Team Blake and Team Baldoni have both weaponized the court of public opinion as much as the courts themselves to varying degrees. Now, that's to be expected in a case that features PR heavyweights such as Leslie Sloane (Team Blake + a defendant) and Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel (Team Baldoni + also defendants) in the mix, along with the New York Times. In her CRD complaint, New Year's Eve suit against Baldoni and his inner circle, and a subsequent amended complaint, Lively has insisted that an astroturfing smear campaign was activated against her last summer by Nathan and Abel as a measure to blunt any accusations of misconduct the Gossip Girl vet could make public against Jane the Virgin alum leading up to the hit film's August 2024 release. Late last year, as text message between flacks indicate, Abel in a now deleted posting admitted a preemptive attack was considered and planned. However, the former Joneswork staff also admitted that such an attack as never launched because 'the internet was doing the work for us' against Lively To that, with lawyers like Baldoni lead attorney Bryan Freedman becoming as much a player in the story as the IEWU co-stars, a week after a long NYC hearing on the scope of protective order that could be in place, Judge Liman summed up the reality of the situation on Thursday. He wrote: 'These cases involve both business competitors and allegations of sexual harm. Discovery will necessarily include confidential and sensitive business and personal information. The risk of disclosure is great. Both the Moving Parties and the Wayfarer Parties have accused opposing parties of providing private, sensitive, or confidential information to the media for their own business and personal advantage in ways that cannot easily be traced. Several individuals and corporations on each side are in the business of public relations or media and have easy access to the press.' Leaving little ambiguity of what the rules of engagement will be going forward, Judge Liman laid out that 'the following categories of information may be designated 'Attorneys' Eyes Only': a. Trade secrets; confidential business plans, marketing plans, and strategies for clients other than the parties in this litigation; confidential business projects or leads on projects for clients other than the parties in this litigation; confidential creative projects or ideas other than those involved in this litigation; b. Security measures taken by parties or third parties; c. Medical information of parties or third parties; d. Highly personal and intimate information about third parties, and highly personal and intimate information about parties other than information directly relevant to the truth or falsity of any allegation in the complaints in this case. The Judge concluded: 'The protections conferred by this Order cover not only Confidential and Attorneys' Eyes Only Information but also any information copied or extracted therefrom, as well as all copies, excerpts, summaries, or compilations thereof.' Not that Lively and the Deadpool star got everything they and their lawyers were looking for in the AEO. 'The Court has narrowed the provision to stated that information may be marked AEO only if its disclosure is 'highly likely to cause a significant business, commercial, financial, or privacy injury,' Judge Liman noted Thursday. In that context and terms that may be subjective in certain lights, as Sloane and her Vision PR filed more paperwork to get themselves dismissed from the case, both Team Blake and Team Baldoni are claiming a win — as they often do in this tit for tat. 'Today, the Court rejected the Wayfarer Parties' objections and entered the protections needed to ensure the free flow of discovery material without any risk of witness intimidation or harm to any individual's security,' a spokesperson for Lively told Deadline after Judge Liman's order hit the federal docket. 'With this order in place, Ms. Lively will move forward in the discovery process to obtain even more of the evidence that will prove her claims in Court.' 'We are fully in agreement with the Court's decision to provide a narrow scope of protections to categories such as private mental health records and personal security measures that have never been of interest to us as opposed to Ms. Lively's exceedingly over broad demand for documents for a 2.5 year period of time which the court rightly quashed,' attorney Freedman asserted for Team Baldoni. 'We remain focused on the necessary communications that will directly contradict Ms. Lively's unfounded accusations. We will oppose any efforts by Ms. Lively and her team to hamper our clients' ability to defend against her attacks by incorrectly categorizing important information as 'trade secrets,' especially considering there were no issues in providing these communications willingly to The New York Times. The Gray Lady, who published the article 'We Can Bury Anyone: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine,' about Lively's allegations on December 21, are, like Leslie Sloane, attempting to extricate themselves from the legal clash. Judge Liman was yet to rule or even schedule hearings on both the NYT and Sloane's efforts. Outside of the main event of Livley vs Baldoni, there is also self-described 'hired gun' and alleged Nathan pal Jed Wallace's $7 million suit against Lively. Then there is the Quinn Emanuel represented Stephanie Jones and her Jonesworks firm. In a separate case, filed just before Christmas, Jones is has taken Baldoni, Wayfarer, execs, crisis PR boss Nathan and Abel to court for defamation and breach of contract. Abel was an employee of Jonesworks and Baldoni was a client until last year when both bolted and Abel formed her own PR firm RWA Communications. Best of Deadline 'The White Lotus' Season 3 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Arrive On Max? How Jon Gries' Return To 'The White Lotus' Could Shape Season 3 Everything We Know About 'Nobody Wants This' Season 2 So Far
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
SXSW Doc ‘Shuffle' Reveals How Rehab Facilties Prey on Addicts for the Sake of Profit
Benjamin Flaherty spent three years shooting 'Shuffle,' a documentary that follows three addicts who are trying to stay alive in rehab facilities that are scamming insurance companies. Flaherty reveals that patients are being bought and sold for their insurance policies and ushered into a cycle of care designed to keep them sick. With the help of an FBI informant, an insurance analyst, and the former executive director of a Philadelphia-based treatment facility, the director uncovers collusion at the highest levels of government. Flaherty, who uses his personal journey of recovery from addiction as a way into the 82-minute doc, unravels a web of public policy and private interest preying on a desperate population for the sake of profit. More from Variety 'Ash' Review: New Planet, Same Old Threats in Flying Lotus' Hollow-Core, Flashy-Looking 'Alien' Remix 'Capturing Water' Spotlights South Africa's Grassroots Fight to Preserve Precious Resource Before It Runs Out Most Americans Have Negative View of Elon Musk: Poll 'I was only a few months sober when I heard a story about people being lured into sober homes for their insurance policies,' he says. 'I was living in a sober home at the time, and I couldn't get my head around the fact that the same type of care that was saving my life was killing other people. So, I went to see for myself.' Flaherty produced the doc with Carra Greenberg, Harris Fishman and Scott Paskoff. Variety spoke with Flaherty about 'Shuffle' ahead of the film's SXSW screening on Wednesday. Was there any concern about your sobriety when taking on this project, especially because you were living in a sober home at the time? Flaherty: Probably not as much as there should have been. Watching other people get better was a beautiful part of my own experience in treatment and a huge inspiration behind this film. I wasn't prepared for how hard it would be to watch people stay sick. I went to a meeting every day during production, no matter where I was. I had to stay grounded, and that's the only way I know how: go sit in a room with other people who struggle with the same things as me and talk about it. Was it challenging to find people who were trying to recover from addiction who were willing to participate in this doc? The majority of people caught up in the 'Shuffle' end up dead or in jail, so yes, it was challenging to find people to speak on the subject for very practical reasons. People in treatment facilities are largely cut off from contact with the outside world. In some instances, I felt people were too willing, too eager to tell their story. There was a hunger for attention and fame in some instances that felt disingenuous. Honesty was the litmus test. I was interested in speaking with anyone willing to be honest with me. Many people were interviewed, and a few of those were followed for some period of time. The inclusion of the three main characters came down to narrative decisions and what collection of stories would best represent the issues. Did you have any concerns about putting people who are actively suffering from addiction on camera? Absolutely. These are people who are being actively exploited; how do we tell this story without further exploiting them? We let them have the agency in telling their story. We let them speak for themselves rather than have others speak about them. There was no crew involved in filming, ever. It was always one-on-one. 'Shuffle' is a film we created with our characters, not about them. In the film you state that 'Money can't solve the problem. Money is the problem.' But all addiction centers rely on money – no? Yes. And it's a problem because of how the money moves, not the money itself. The financial incentive doesn't encourage recovery. It encourages continued treatment, that's where the profit is. Recovery, in this system of care, represents a loss of profit, a loss of business. That's a fundamental conflict of interest. I think there's a massive illusion that money solves problems like this, and it can, but only if used wisely. Otherwise, it's like pouring gas on a fire. All that said, is it possible to find good treatment in a for-profit system? Yes, I did. So have millions of others. It starts with knowing what to look for. The majority of 'Shuffle' centers around Florida addiction facilities. Is the addiction treatment system totally broken in just Florida or other states as well? I don't believe the treatment system is broken. Is it easily manipulated? Yes, but I believe the treatment system is doing exactly what it was designed to do: create profit. The addiction treatment policy in the U.S. is an economic solution to a public health crisis, a solution designed to create financial incentives and a marketplace of services. It's done that exceedingly well. There are more treatment centers in the U.S. than McDonald's. But under these policies, recovery is only a secondary concern, only a 'reasonably expected outcome.' Untreated addiction costs the federal government over a trillion dollars a year across three industries: healthcare, law enforcement, and the court/prison system. Simply by treating addiction, and by 'treating' I mean providing services within a programmed setting, the government saves billions. At the same time, those services being provided create an enormous financial opportunity in the private sector. So the government saves money while private companies make money, and all this is happening regardless of whether anyone gets sober because the financial incentives are not tied to any positive outcomes. Are Trump's new budget cuts helping or hurting addiction treatment? Slashing services and funding is only going to hurt people, especially doing so blindly. 90% of people who need treatment in this country are still without access to it. What are your hopes for this doc when it comes to distribution? Addiction is about as American as apple pie at this point, yet we don't talk about it enough. There's so much shame and stigma around it. So I'd love for as many people as possible to see the film. Let's get it out there. Let's start a conversation. We'd love to do a small theatrical release in conjunction with distribution on a streaming service. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Oscars 2026: First Blind Predictions Including Timothée Chalamet, Emma Stone, 'Wicked: For Good' and More What's Coming to Disney+ in March 2025
CairoScene
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- CairoScene
Shuffle
This edition of our bi-weekly playlist, formerly known as Shreet Cocktail, features Yasmine Hamdan, Tul8te and Saint Levant. Feb 12, 2025 This edition of our bi-weekly playlist 'Shuffle', formerly known as Shreet Cocktail, is packed with new releases from some of the biggest artists from across the region, like Yasmine Hamdan, Tul8te and Saint Levant. On the playlist, we have Lebanese indie icon Yasmine Hamdan with 'Hon', the first song of her upcoming new album. Written in collaboration with Palestinian poet Anas Aaili, the track captures a sense of displacement and fracture which Hamdan experienced in the aftermath of the devastating news of the Beirut port explosion in 2020. Next up, we have Egyptian pop sensation Tul8te collaborating with the legendary Hamed El Shaari on 'Qesm El Shakawy', a fresh effort on Libyan reggae with bedouin folklore undertones. The list also features a wicked house groover by Tunisian DJ and producer Birki, Lebanese trailblazer Wassim Bou Malham channelling an Arabian Nights-inspired sound with Gharam Electric's 'Love in Hijaz', along with fresh releases from Mohammed 'Number One' Ramadan, Sudanese-Egyptian alt-pop shapeshifter Nxdia, Seif Mrdeny and more. Tracklist: Yasmine Hamdan - HON Amro Zidan - TAHT EL SAYTARA Tul8te - Qesm El Shakawy Whatsmahmood - Furjaan Al Bahrain Rita L'Oujdia - FRÍO Oliver Azzi - AA BALAK Nxdia - Boy Clothes Lil Alex x Rahal - Atoh Kareem Rahma & Tiny Gun - New Year New York Zahed Sultan - INTI Mazyn - YAMA Mohamed Ramadan & Franglish - Position Remix Saint Levant - Wazira Seif Mrdeny, Riff - El Donia Yaa' Gharam Electric - Love In Hijaz Ramii - Btaaref Briki - Rock da House Mahib Sleat, DJUDJU - UZI
