Sam Sanders

Earlier this week, Drake secured the fourth solo Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 of his career with the song "In My Feelings," off his fifth studio album Scorpion. But while most of the raps are his, the song's skyrocket up the charts is due, in large part, to something Drake had nothing to do with.

A panel at the 2017 National Association of Black Journalists conference in New Orleans featuring White House aide Omarosa Manigault quickly went south after Manigault refused to answer questions about the administration in which she serves.

This amazing kid got to enjoy 19 awesome years on this Planet. What he left behind is wondtacular.

See why we have an absolutely ridiculous standard of beauty in just 37 seconds.

A boy makes anti-Muslim comments in front of an American soldier. The soldier's reply: priceless.

You know it well. The Upworthy headline. That model of building curiosity by keeping the true topic of a story hidden until you click.

With barely an Internet whimper, Pepe the Frog, the anthropomorphic cartoon character turned symbol of hate, was put down by his creator, Matt Furie, over the weekend, in a single-page comic strip. The final images were of Pepe dead in a casket, with three former roommates paying tribute by pouring some liquor on Pepe's face and drinking the rest.

The numbers, in several cases, are astounding. 350.org, a climate action group, saw donations almost triple in the month after Donald Trump's election. Since Trump's win, Planned Parenthood told NPR it's gained over 600,000 new donors and more than 36,000 new volunteers. And the American Civil Liberties Union has raised more than $80 million since Nov. 8.

There was a time when a whistleblower had to rely on the Postal Service, or a pay phone, or an underground parking garage to leak to the press.

This is a different time.

A renewed interest in leaks since Donald Trump's surprise election victory last fall, and a growth in the use of end-to-end encryption technology, have led news organizations across the country to highlight the multiple high-tech ways you can now send them anonymous tips.

For some time, the public has known that Donald Trump does a lot of his tweeting himself, from the account @realDonaldTrump, and from an Android smartphone. But many cybersecurity experts believed that would change once Trump took the oath of office, because White House-approved communication devices are much more secured — and stripped down — than the smartphones the rest of us use.

Oh, 2016.

The year it all went to hell. The year nothing made sense. The year we lost track of reality. The year Merriam-Webster made "surreal" its word of the year.

For many, 2016 hasn't just been awful and strange; it's become its own Debbie-Downer catchphrase. 2016 itself has become its own meme.

Since winning this year's presidential election, Donald Trump has given the American public no shortage of outbursts, public disputes and grandiose declarations on Twitter.

As America continues to absorb the results of a truly contentious and historic presidential election, one group of voters may be particularly upset: Bernie Sanders supporters. For months over the course of the campaign, many in Sanders' ranks said he was the only candidate with a sure shot at beating Trump, that he could reach working class voters better than Hillary Clinton could, and that he offered a true progressive agenda that Clinton could not.

But these supporters never got the chance to be proven right — or wrong. So now, some of them vent.

I've noticed two distinct ways social media have changed the way we talk to each other about politics. Clearly, they have changed a lot, maybe everything, but two fairly new phenomena stand out.

At just about every Hillary Clinton campaign event this year, and much of last, you could find lots of rainbows and posters with the letters "LGBT" on them in the crowd. The average Hillary Clinton event has a healthy amount of gay, lesbian and transgender Clinton supporters in attendance.

It was tense even before they started. Reporters tweeted that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump entered the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner from separate sides of the room, and didn't even shake hands (which at this point really isn't a surprise).

But there was hope that Thursday night's event could serve as a comedic salve for the nation following three decidedly nasty presidential debates. The fundraising event for Catholic charities — now in its 71st year — traditionally is a time for the candidates to offer jokes about themselves and their opponent.

In front of an exuberant crowd Thursday in Delaware, Ohio, Donald Trump again addressed whether he would accept the outcome of the November election.

"Ladies and gentleman I want to make a major announcement today," Trump said, continuing, "I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters, and to all of the people of the United States, that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election ..."

Kalena Boller remembers exactly where she was during Barack Obama's first presidential inauguration: at work. "I was the only Black person in the entire pre-production room."

While we've been slogging through what feels like the most contentious presidential election in decades, Canada seems to have been dancing on air, still caught up in the glow of a relatively new prime minister who has been compared to a Disney prince.

We on the other hand, are living through a point in the campaign where cable news might have to be censored for small children.

In professor Jerome Hunt's American politics class last month at the University of the District of Columbia, there were many questions: Could whoever wins the election serve a second term, given Donald Trump's and Hillary Clinton's low favorability numbers? What will the Republican Party look like years from now, after the Trump phenomenon has its full effect? What will happen to the Supreme Court?

One could see the return of Saturday Night Live this weekend as the perfect remedy after our summer of discontent. After birtherism, and deplorables, and tax returns and emails, and rumors of affairs and videos and body doubles, we could all use a laugh.

As such, expectations were high for the show Saturday night, after being away for months, and returning only a few days after the most-viewed presidential debate in modern history.

Thursday night in an appearance on MSNBC, Donald Trump surrogate Marco Gutierrez warned of impending taco overlords if immigration continues unchecked.

Gutierrez, who was born in Mexico and is co-founder of Latinos for Trump, said to MSNBC, "My culture is a very dominant culture. It is imposing and it's causing problems."

Then he said the line that started a hashtag: "If you don't do something about it, you're going to have taco trucks [on] every corner."

One glaring reality of Election 2016 is the lingering and extremely high unpopularity of the Republican and Democratic Party nominees. A recent Fox News poll found that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are disliked by more voters than they are liked. And it's been this way for a while.