Toyin deserved to be here. She deserves to celebrate with loved ones. She deserved to flourish and grow. She deserved to grow as an activist and heal in peace from her trauma. Her story deserved to be told.
Her life mattered
Isaiah Rashad performs his long-awaited unreleased track 'PRAYERS UP' for his Tiny Desk Concert 🤯🔥
"Thank y'all for praying for me. Every message and reach out, I've received it and I appreciate it. So, I want y'all to know I'm praying for y'all too."
no one ever wants to hang out anymore like ik everyone is tired cuz of work and school but like why can't we just sit and watch tv and make occasional commentary or smth. bring back the casual hang not everything has to be A Thing
Vince Staples shows love to Mac Miller and encourages fans to support the 10th-anniversary release of ‘The Divine Feminine:
“10 years ago Mac Miller released The Divine Feminine album that he worked very hard on and it’s being released by his estate on October 2nd”
“Make sure you pick up album on October 2nd, buy a vinyl, buy a CD support his family. Support the fallen artist who gave his life to this craft we call music it’s a beautiful thing”
🎥: 5 On Fridays on Apple Music
https://t.co/TlMa3864l7 thank you everyone. it is a wrap on destiny for me. i will never forget what this game has given to me. and i will never forget what you've all given me. for now, a 2 week break. see you soon.
RIP Mike Brown. RIP Eric Garner. RIP Alton Sterling. RIP Sandra Bland. RIP Breonna Taylor. RIP George Floyd. RIP to all those murdered by agents of the state. RIP to those whose murders in this new age of technology inspired THE WORLD to demand systemic change. NEVER FORGET.
canadians (specifically from ontario) will be like hey my province is on fucking fire and indigenous communities are quite literally being wiped out and americans will still find a way to make it about themselves
This is an important email I sent today to all employees at XBOX:
Team,
We are beginning the most significant restructure in XBOX history. After careful consideration, I've made the difficult decision to reduce our team by approximately 3,200 throughout FY27. This will include approximately 1,600 role eliminations today, and in addition, four studios will leave XBOX to new management. I recognize that a year-long restructuring creates additional challenges. Unfortunately, it is not possible to make all the necessary changes in a single day, and I wanted to be direct about the scale.
I know this is painful. These changes will directly affect people who have poured their creativity into building XBOX. Many joined us through acquisitions, while others were recruited here, or sought us out because they loved this industry and loved XBOX. Today's decisions do not reflect their talent or dedication.
Our business today is not healthy. We are operating at margins that are 3–10x lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses. We entered Gen 9 with a smaller install base and a higher cost structure. To grow, we bet on Game Pass, multi-platform, and a broader portfolio of content. While those businesses have created meaningful value, they did not grow at the pace we expected. As that happened, our core business weakened, and we added more teams, more investment, and more time, hoping for a better outcome. And now the industry is facing the most severe hardware crisis in its history. We must reset XBOX.
First, we will reset our content portfolio.
Since 2018, we have aggressively expanded our studio portfolio while the number of games created each month across the industry now outpaces the last ten years combined. We now find ourselves competing not only with the largest publishers, but also with smaller independent studios. It is neither possible nor desirable to own every great independent studio. We have also learned that we are not the best home for every type of studio; in a typical year, we lost 64 cents for every dollar we invested. As we reset XBOX, we will help independent creators succeed by providing open development tools and audiences to realize their vision.
Compulsion Games and Double Fine Productions will return to management and transition to independent studios with their IP, catalog, and runway for their next games. Ninja Theory and Undead Labs have entered terms to join new ownership with funding to complete and grow Senua and State of Decay 3. In France, Arkane’s management is beginning required consultation with its Works Council to review potential strategic options.
We are also making reductions across other units, and in some cases, shifting investment to focus on higher priority projects. These changes vary in size across Activision, Bethesda/ZeniMax, Blizzard, King, Mojang, and XBOX Game Studios. None of our first party publicly announced games or projects are being cancelled as part of these reductions.
In addition, Mojang and King will now report directly to me. These two studios have increasingly become platforms and are our largest by monthly active players. They bring critical geographic, demographic, and differentiation to XBOX.
Second, we will reset our platform.
We know that great technology gets better when it gets simpler, not bigger. Today, in some parts of the company, work passes through as many as 14 layers of management. Our platform teams are 40% larger than they were at the start of this generation, even as our player base and playtime have declined. That complexity has slowed decisions, blurred accountability, and made it harder to deliver for players. As we reset XBOX, we will simplify.
We will reduce management layers to no more than 5, and where possible, 3. We will deliver success through a flatter organization that is built around makers (individual contributors focused on building), player-coaches (leaders who remain deeply involved in the work while developing their teams), and directly responsible individuals (DRIs) who own key decisions and outcomes. And we will streamline how we work across our tools, with a cleaner code base, shared services, and 50% reduced vendor spend.
Third, we are resetting how we operate.
As XBOX grew our headcount, we became more fragmented. Teams, studios, and functions often operate independently, and it became harder to work towards a shared goal, make the right tradeoffs, and get things done.
For the first time, we are establishing a Chief Operating Officer with end-to-end P&L responsibility across content, hardware, platform, and services. Helen Chiang has been promoted to this role and will report directly to me. Over nearly two decades at XBOX, Helen has helped build some of our most important businesses, from XBOX Live to leading Mojang and the Minecraft franchise. She will bring our businesses together under one operating model, making sure we make clear investment decisions, learn from our successes and failures, and hold ourselves accountable for results.
Thank you, Dave McCarthy, who is retiring after 17 years with XBOX. Dave has played a defining role in building the platform that millions of players rely on every day and has been a trusted partner through many of the biggest moments in XBOX's history. We wish him all the best.
These changes are about a bigger future for XBOX, not a smaller one. The next decade of gaming will be larger, more global, and more creative than anything we've seen before. This year, we'll invest as much in XBOX as we ever have, but we'll invest with greater focus, greater discipline, and greater clarity, all in service of making XBOX where the world plays and creates.
I want XBOX to be one of the few companies that entertains more than a billion people each day and gives everyone the opportunity to create and connect. I know we can achieve this goal. XBOX has many of the most beloved franchises in entertainment history, talented studios around the world, and we will return to growth in 2027.
History is full of companies that mistake longevity for inevitability. We will not be one of them.
Asha
“Nobody is coming to save you” but your day literally gets better after you consume art made by other people. You hang w friends & you’re no longer suicidal, even if just for a few minutes. They’re lying to you about the significance of community. People are saving you EVERYDAY!
Isaiah Rashad breaks down the meaning behind naming his album “It’s Been Awful” with Ebro:
"It's just life, it's reflection with a lot of things. The state of the Government, the state of the world, the state of national parks, the state of women's rights, the state of the rights taking away from special needs kids in the south a lot of it is awful"