Month: June 2020

Technically, summer is rolling, with weather from coast to coast feeling like it’s mid-July. We’ve already announced our cocktail of the season — the beer spritz — and you won’t be shocked to learn that light, easy, and refreshing won the day. That’s the warm weather drink trifecta, right there.

Truth be told, quarantine has us leaning way into the “easy” part of that equation. That’s why we’re nominating 2020 as the “Summer of Two-Ingredient Cocktails.” To call out a few favorites under that banner, we enlisted the help of some of our favorite bartenders. Check out their favorite thirst-quenching two-ingredient drinks using gin, whiskey, rum, and tequila.

The Ranch Water

Megan Radke, bartender at Canon in Seattle

My favorite 2-ingredient cocktail is “The Ranch Water”. It’s is just El Tesoro Blanco and Topo Chico Soda Water and has been my go to lately. I’m an agave girl and adding some bubbles is the perfect way to have something tasty that lasts awhile.

7 & 7

Hay Culham, beverage manager at Bonsai at Hilton Pensacola Beach in Pensacola, Florida

I have a handful of two-ingredient cocktails that are my go-tos. It depends on my mood and the environment I’m in. If I had to choose just one, it would have to be a 7 & 7. Simple, refreshing, and easy.

Scotch and Coconut Water

Anna Mains, brand ambassador at Monkey Shoulder

Scotch (I suggest Monkey Shoulder) and coconut water. Tropical flavors and scotch play really well together. I fell in love with this simple cocktail in Puerto Rico, it’s a staple there. It’s perfectly light, refreshing, and dangerously delicious.

Whiskey Sour

Sebastian Derbomez, brand advocacy manager at William Grant & Sons

Lemon and sugar! They are the two ingredients necessary to make a refreshing sour, you are then free to select your favorite spirit and alternate as you wish. Just add whiskey and you have yourself a simple whiskey sour (even though that technically make it ingredients).

Gin & Tonic

Vance Henderson, brand ambassador at Hendrick’s Gin

I have many two-ingredient favorites, but my hat currently rests next to a take on the gin & tonic called the “Whimsical Tonic” which uses 1 ½ parts Hendrick’s Midsummer Solstice and three parts elderflower tonic. Add in a cucumber slice and some petite edible flowers and we’re set for sipping time.

Martini

Jessie Smyth, bar director at Genever in Los Angeles

It would have to be some kind of martini using Gray Whale gin. Depending on the time of day, I’ll go from a reverse martini (two parts vermouth : one part gin) to a 50/50 (equal parts gin and vermouth) to a more classic ratio of 2 gin : 1 vermouth. I love the different flavors that get highlighted in both the gin and the vermouth as you tweak something so simple as the proportion of each. It’s really a fun experiment. Swapping out the dry vermouth for a blanc vermouth, or Lillet, or Salers, or maybe even sherry changes things too. There are endless flavor combinations that can amplify the nutty almond notes, the salty komb, or the fresh mint in a gin like Gray Whale.

Bourbon Lemonade

Samara Rivers, founder of the Black Bourbon Society

I love a highball (whiskey and soda) and a Bourbon Lemonade. It’s so easy and simply refreshing with a lot of ice. There are few things more refreshing than the combination of bourbon and lemonade on a hot, summer day.

Simple Paloma

Piero Procida, bartender at The London West Hollywood in Los Angeles

A Simple Paloma. You can leave out the Lime Juice and Simple Syrup and just do equal parts of tequila and grapefruit flavored soda like Jarritos or a Fresca and served on the rocks.

Whiskey Highball

Lenny Eckstein, co-founder and head distiller of Deerhammer Distillery in Buena Vista, Colorado

The highball is where it’s at for me. Soda water and whiskey (I’ll typically use my own Deerhammer American Single Malt) and a garnish of expressed Lemon peel and mixed into a tall ice-filled glass. This is my steady sub out for a beer in every situation, and I’ve actually become quite fond of garnishing or steeping with some fresh-picked whole leaf hops when they are in season.

Tequila & Soda

Hayden Miller, head bartender at Bodega Taqueria y Tequila in Miami

Tequila & soda. Agave spirits are already great but, drawing out the flavor in a tall drink can really help certain components stand out. A squeeze of lime or grapefruit can pull everything together into a subtly acidic trifecta.

Dark ‘N’ Stormy

Gravy Thomas, global advocacy and ambassador community manager at William Grant & Sons

Even with just two ingredients, the “Dark ‘N’ Stormy” has always been a favorite of mine. It’s so simple but it does the trick. There’s something that the ginger beer does to rum that makes your taste buds go wild.

A common criticism and talking point of those who favor our current American healthcare system over the type of single-payer system that countries like Canada have, is that while Canadians may spend less on healthcare out of pocket when compared to Americans, they’re often subjected to wait times so long that it leads them to seek care in the United States. This has always been a misleading argument. According to the AARP, while Canadians do experience longer wait times, that doesn’t mean they aren’t getting the care that they need. One of the ways Canada has managed to keep healthcare costs at bay is by limiting supply for elective surgeries, a system that could be overhauled if Canadian citizens wanted to pay. They don’t, and those who do get their elective surgeries done in America.

Beyond that, the differences between the current American healthcare system and single-payer are, generally speaking, nuanced and complex. And it turns out that the health insurance companies are well aware of that fact, even if they act like it’s all totally simple and straightforward. At least according to Wendell Potter, former Vice President of corporate communications for the health insurance company Cigna, who came clean in a Twitter thread about the type of health insurance propaganda he used to push at Cigna, and how it was designed to mislead the American public, and how that deception has come to affect the country’s failed response to the coronavirus.

“Amid America’s #COVID19 disaster, I must come clean about a lie I spread as a health insurance exec,” begins Potter, “Here’s the truth: Our industry PR & lobbying group, AHIP, supplied my colleagues & me with cherry-picked data and anecdotes to make people think Canadians wait endlessly for their care. It’s a lie & I”ll always regret the disservice I did to folks on both sides of the border. In Canada, no one gets turned away from doctors due to lack of funds, In America, exorbitant bills are a defining feature of the system.”

Potter also takes some time in his thread to dispel the popular talking point that the American health care system has better quality of care, writing:

“When it comes to #COVID19, there’s been ~ 21 deaths per 100,000 in Canada, versus 34 per 100,000 in the U.S. Remember, In Canada there are no co-pays, deductibles or co-insurance ever. Care is free at the point of service… you learn a lot about a healthcare system when a global crisis hits & different nations have different results. Canada’s single-payer system is saving lives. The U.S. profit-driven corporate model is failing.”

According to data collected by Johns Hopkins, while the U.S. has almost 2.5 million cases of COVID-19 across the country, Canada has just 104,087 cases. Visual representations of Canada’s efforts to flatten their COVID-19 curve show us that by all accounts, the American response to the coronavirus has been a significant failure. It should also be noted that Canada’s total population 37.59 is only a fraction of that of the U.S. which has a total population of 328.2 million (California alone has a population of 39.51 million), so even in a best-case COVID-19 scenario, the U.S. would still likely have a higher case count than Canada.

Obviously, a Twitter thread about how big medicine acts in the interests of profits isn’t going to dissect the issue in every which way, but Potter’s overarching point stands: COVID-19 has shown that our health care system — like much of America — is due for a massive refresh.

The NBA 2K League is rolling along with its season with players playing remote, which brings some unique challenges. While gaming offers a rather easy transition to remote play, there’s a big difference playing online from separate locations rather than being in the same room with your team.

Communication can be tricky, but there’s also the risk of connection issues. Last Tuesday, a game between Nets GC and Pistons GT was interrupted with 4:13 seconds to play in what was heading for a blowout win for the Pistons. An investigation by the 2K League determined that Nets small forward Marquis “Randomz” Gill was the reason for the interruption as he quit the game purposefully while it was still going on. Gill has been suspended for next Monday for the Nets’ series with Cavs Legion GC as a result.

Rage-quitting happens all the time in online gaming, and trailing 71-39 late in a game certainly is the kind of situation you might expect to see someone quit. However, that’s when playing 2K online with some random person, not playing in the official NBA 2K League, and as such it’s unsurprising the league wouldn’t take kindly to that happening.

It’s the kind of thing that can only happen in this remote setting and the league suspending Gill for a night of games is clearly ensuring the rest of the league is aware of the punishment that can come their way if they did the same thing.

Keanu Reeves’ 50s have been some of his most accomplished and prolific, from finding yet another beloved franchise to star in to returning to multiple older ones to becoming a prolific inspirer of memes — all while still looking like he’s in his 30s. He’s even expanded his repertoire into the realm of video games. Last year it was revealed he’d have a starring role in Cyberpunk 2077, which would require not only voice work but also a motion-capture performance. And though the latter can only be seen but briefly in the new trailer, at least the cameo is amusingly profane.

As per IndieWire, the first extended look at Cyberpunk 2077 was unveiled during a 25-minute video on Thursday, which included a three-minute trailer as well as the announcement that the game will also receive an anime show due next year on Netflix. The game, from the developers of the popular Witcher series, is an RPG from the longtime Cyberpunk franchise, which began as a tabletop game in 1988. Players get to embody V, a mercenary whose look you can customize, and who prowls a futuristic dystopia, hunting for an implant that could grant him immortality.

The trailer shows off the expected first-person, Grand Theft Auto-style mayhem, albeit with a, well, cyberpunk sheen. Reeves himself is mostly heard, not seen, until the 11th hour, when he is very much both, delivering a decent red-band gag before the cut to black, all while looking not unlike Sylvester Stallone in Cobra.

This isn’t the first time Reeves has done cyberpunk, or even the first time he’s been involved in a game. Oddly, those were for the same title: the 1995 thriller Johnny Mnemonic, based on the novel by William Gibson, the father of cyberpunk. The movie didn’t do well initially, but it paved the way for The Matrix, and it was turned into a CD-ROM game, featuring 90 minutes of full-motion video. Second time’s the charm, it seems.

Cyberpunk 2077 will be out on November 19.

(Via IndieWire)

One of the hallmarks of progress, both societally and individually, is when we realize that something we thought was benign is actually not. When it comes to progress on racism, the cultural norms of language are frequently where those realizations occur.

For example, there are many common phrases we use that are racist, which many of us having no idea. And now The Conscious Kid on Instagram has shared how a collection of standard nursery rhymes most of us recited or sang as children that also come from racist origins. Some of them come from the blackface minstrelsy era, when white people dressed in blackface and sang songs portraying black people as uneducated caricatures. Others started as blatantly racist rhymes, then changed over time to be palatable to a more enlightened audience.

As we take these in, it’s good to be aware that nostalgia and familiarity will naturally create resistance to the notion that these rhymes are problematic, especially if we aren’t part of the racial group on the receiving end of the racism these rhymes stem from. Our minds will defend, justify, and qualify in order to keep fond memories from our childhood in tact.

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With that in mind, here are “childhood nursery rhymes you didn’t realize were racist,” sourced from Atlanta Black Star and NPR’s Code Switch.

Many of us learned Eeenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe with the phrase “catch a tiger by his toe” or maybe “catch a tigger,” but the original rhyme used the n-word. Gross.

The Conscious Kid/Instagram

“Ten Little Indians” is problematic on its face, but is actually worse when you see what the original lyrics were.

The Conscious Kid/Instagram

“Chinese, Japanese” was a common playground recitation when I was little, and though I recall learning that it was wrong, it didn’t seem nearly as horrifying as it does now. Who the hell originally came up with this, and how did it travel so far?

The Conscious Kid/Instagram

“Five Little Monkeys” might not seem like anything problematic—until you learn that “monkeys” used to be “darkies” or the n-word.

The Conscious Kid/Instagram

And then there’s the ice cream truck song. The familiar tune that’s synonymous with summer—also sung by kids as “Do Your Ears Hang Low”—was originally a song called “N****r Love a Watermelon Ha! Ha! Ha!” Yeah.

The Conscious Kid/Instagram

Same goes for “Shortnin’ Bread.” Yikes.

The Conscious Kid/Instagram

Many of us sang at least part of “Oh! Susanna” in school music classes, and it’s often considered a classic. But look at what the song was actually about and how horrible some of the lyrics were.

The Conscious Kid/Instagram

“Jimmy Crack Corn” is another familiar tune from childhood. I remember singing it in some capacity, and now I’m appalled that the term “Massa” ever came out of my mouth as form of entertainment.

The Conscious Kid/Instagram

Finally, “Camptown Races.” Really? Yep. Again, from the blackface minstrel era, a song that basically made fun of Black people.

The Conscious Kid/Instagram

Now’s a good time to ask ourselves what we should do with these rhymes now that we know their origins. Of course, there are bigger issues than nursery rhymes, but all of the seemingly low-significance incidences of racism add up to a crapton.

When we know better, we do better—at least in theory. Now that we know, let’s do something with this knowledge. Would it really be that hard to place these rhymes in the archives of history and not continue to actively use them? Are there really no alternatives that children can become familiar with instead?

April Judd, 19, from Quebec, Canada won first price in Greater Good’s Girls’ Voices at Home Class of 2020 Challenge with a virtual commencement speech on the theme “How the coronavirus affected my final semester.”

The contest was open to high school and college seniors and received 379 submissions from girls in 49 different countries.

In her submission, Judd bemoans the fact that she didn’t get to put on her final stage production or say goodbye to some friends she may never see again. She also discusses the challenge of moving in with her parents after being gone for two years.

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However, during the pandemic she had a powerful change in her mindset that’s inspired her to move forward in a bold way.

“I don’t want to go back to the way things were,” she says. “I want to have a heightened appreciation for all the things that make life full.”

April wants to be someone who finds beauty even the “less favorable hands that life deals us.” She ends the video with an empowering message for her fellow graduates, “We got this.”

April from Shawville, Quebec

www.youtube.com

A Facebook group of over 5,000 people with a loose grasp of science, government, and grammar has issued a bogus card to its members, supposedly exempting them from wearing a mask in public.

The card is issued by the Freedom to Breathe Agency (FTBA) a Facebook Group posing as a government agency that protects people’s right to go mask-free in public.

The card claims the holder has a disability that prevents them from wearing a mask, and that it’s illegal for any business to ask them to disclose their condition.

“I am exempt from any ordinance requiring face mask usage in public. Wearing a face mask poses a mental and/or physical risk to me. Under the Americans with Disability Act (ADA), I am not required to disclose my condition to you,” the card reads.

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“If found in violation of the ADA you could face steep penalties,” the card continues. “Organizations and businesses can be fined up to $75,000 for your first violation and $150,000 for any subsequent violations. Denying access to your business/organization will be also reported to FTBA for further actions.”

It’s pretty disturbing that anyone would pretend they have a disability to get away with putting people’s health and safety at risk by going mask-free during a pandemic.

The good news is that the card looks so bogus that it’s safe to assume no one would ever fall for the scam.

via Reddit

The card is littered with typographical errors.

The headline should read: “FACE MASK EXEMPTION CARD” not “EXEMPT.”

The word poses is spelled posses.

The ADA’s official title is the Americans with Disabilities Act not the Americans with Disability Act.

Organizations and businesses can be fined for “their” not “your” first violation.

Further, if it was an official government agency, the website would be at a .gov site not a .com.

The FTBA’s website was a monument to anti-science, paranoia, and bad grammar, but it’s been taken down. Here’s a screenshot that was taken before it went offline.

The fake exemption card caught the attention of the Department of Justice that said it is aware of the fake card and that “these postings were not issued by the Department and are not endorsed by the Department.”

Freedom to Breathe Agency / Facebook

According to the group’s Facebook site “Wearing a mask is an unhealthy obstruction of oxygen flow that can lead to hypoxemia and hypoxia, can permanently damage the brain, lungs, heart and about any organ.”

However, that is not true.

According to Dr. Abrar Ahmad Chughtai, an epidemiologist and lecturer at the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of New South Wales Australia, hypoxia is unlikely to take place with cloth and surgical masks.

Some people with pre-existing respiratory illnesses (like asthma, COPD), may face breathing difficulty with use of certain types of tight fitted masks, called respirators. [There is] less chance of hypoxia as they may discontinue using masks in that case. Risk is very low with cloth and surgical masks as they are not tight around [the] face.

This information is not hard to find.

The members of the Freedom to Breathe Agency either aren’t smart enough to understand the basic science behind wearing a mask or don’t have the curiosity to find out the truth for themselves.

Wearing a mask not only prevents people from catching COVID-19 but from spreading the deadly disease as well. So the Freedom to Breathe Agency are willfully deciding to put the health of others in danger because they aren’t smart enough to know or they just don’t care.

They don’t care about science, they don’t care about the health of others, and they sure don’t care about grammar.

When Disneyland finally opens, Star Wars land might not be the only new attraction you’ll get to experience on your first trip back into the park. In a post published on the Disneyland Parks blog, the theme park announced that it will transform the current Splash Mountain attraction at their Disneyland Resort and Magic Kingdom theme parks in Southern California and Florida to align with the 2009 animated feature The Princess and the Frog. The original attraction was themed around Disney’s 1946 feature Song of the South, a film inspired by the Uncle Remus stories, a collection of folktales from the Southern Plantation Era published in the 1880s.

If you weren’t aware that Splash Mountain was themed after a movie rather than just some weird drug trip of a ride full of glowing plants and menacing critters, we don’t blame you, Disney has been pretty ashamed of the movie for some time now. It’s been shelved by the company since the 80s, and does not appear on the Disney+ streaming site. There’s been public support for a retheme for years, but the issue received renewed attention amid the social justice protests that have broken out across the country after the killing of George Floyd by the police.

“The retheme of Splash Mountain is of particular importance today,” begins the statement issued by Disney. “The new concept is inclusive — one that all of our guests can connect with and be inspired by, and it speaks to the diversity of the millions of people who visit our parks each year.”

The Princess and the Frog, set in New Orleans, Louisiana, famously features Disney’s first animated depiction of an African American princess, Princess Tiana of Maldonia, and the new attraction’s story will take off after the movie’s final kiss and will follow Tiana and her trumpet-playing Aligator companion Louis “on a musical adventure as they prepare for their first-ever mardi gras performance.”

In a statement by Anika Noni Rose, the actress who voices Princess Tiana, expressed her support for the theme:

“It is really exciting to know that Princess Tiana’s presence in both Disneyland and Magic Kingdom will finally be fully realized! As passionate as I am about what we created, I know the fans are going to be over the moon. The Imagineers are giving us the Princess and the Frog Mardi Gras celebration we’ve been waiting for, and I’m here for it.”

The new attraction will be designed by Disney Imagineer Charita Carter, and fans of the original Splash Mountain will be glad to know that the new attraction’s creative design will also be overseen by Disneyland Imagineer Tony Baxter, who crafted the original Splash Mountain experience in 1989 after being inspired by his childhood memories of watching Song of the South.

According to Disney’s blog, a launch date for the new Splash Mountain has yet to be announced, though Disneyland Park’s Imagineers have been working on a Splash Mountain refresh since last year when they developed a backstory for the attraction and settled on a concept sometime this past summer. Meaning: It might come sooner than later.

With #JungleCruise currently trending on Twitter, too, it seems this might begin an even deeper exploration of the tropes seen in Disney rides.

Chris Evans and Paul Rudd have a lot more in common than starring in their own Marvel movies. The two actors recently made the jump into streaming TV series with Apple TV’s Defending Jacob for Evans and Netflix’s Living with Yourself for Rudd. They’re also both pretty adept at giving entertaining interviews, so it made perfect sense for Variety to pair them up for its “Actors on Actors” issue.

While looking surprisingly well-groomed for just coming out of a quarantine, the two actors discussed their streaming shows before Evans got down to brass tacks and demanded to know the secret to Rudd’s ageless looks and how he manages to be awesome in so many pop culture staples:

Evans: Why don’t you age? Are you drinking baby blood?

Rudd: I most certainly age.

Evans: Oh, you know what? It’s not a question so much as it’s just an attaboy. In terms of Hollywood, you are a part of Marvel, you’re a part of “Friends” and you’re in the [Judd] Apatow crew. Those are three real clubby, cliquey, benchmark-y things. I can’t think of anybody else that has such a kind of wide-spread affiliation with so many different genres and groups. Basically, what does it feel like to be awesome?

Unfortunately, Rudd dodged the question and left Evans hanging without learning the secret to the Ant-Man star’s immortal looks and natural coolness. But the two did get to reminiscing about how they met for the very first time on the set of Captain America: Civil War. Not only that, but Evans revealed that Rudd was gracious to dance in a Grease sing-along video that Evans was making even though the two had just met that day. However, the footage never saw the light of day, so maybe everything Paul Rudd touches doesn’t turn to cinematic gold.

Nah, his part is probably great.

(Via Variety)

Liverpool’s 4-0 win over Crystal Palace on Wednesday evening meant that perhaps the most important Premier League match in the club’s history would not take place with the Reds on the pitch. If Thursday’s tilt between Chelsea and Manchester City ended with anything other than a City win, then for the first time in Premier League history, Liverpool would be champions.

After 90 scintillating minutes of football, the decades-long wait on Merseyside ended up coming to its conclusion thanks to a 2-1 Chelsea victory.

The story of the match was how a pair of Manchester City blunders led to Chelsea’s goals. While City appeared in control of the game at the start of things, Chelsea broke the scoreless affair thanks to Christian Pulisic. Benjamin Mendy and Ilkay Gundogan had a miscommunication upon which the American was able to pounce. Showing off the pace, dribbling, and skill that made him one of the most expensive signings in club history, Pulisic took on both Mendy and Gundogan en route to a silky finish from the top of the box.

City, however, have been proud Premier League champions for nearly 900 days, thanks in large part to the brilliance of Kevin de Bruyne. The Belgian, who very well might be the best midfielder in the world, has saved his squad on plenty of occasions, and looked primed to do it once more when he buried a gorgeous free kick in the second half.

From there, the match decided to descend into complete and utter chaos. Pulisic looked primed to pick up his second of the match, as he absolutely blew past Fernandinho and beat Ederson. His finish, however, was not powerful enough, and Kyle Walker was able to narrowly clear the ball off the line.

Minutes later, it appeared a goal line clearance happened once again, as Ederson and Fernandinho teamed up to thwart Chelsea once again. The issue, though, was that Fernandinho used his hand, leading to a red card and a penalty. Willian stepped up to the spot, Ederson went the wrong way, and Liverpool came mere minutes away from earning the title.

With 10 men on the pitch and needing two goals to keep their slight title hopes alive, City weren’t able to turn the fight they showed for the final few minutes into anything. The whistle blew in London, and several hundred miles away, the (hopefully socially distant) celebration in Liverpool began.

Liverpool had seemed preordained to win the title from early on this year, as the Reds played with a ruthlessness that no club in the world was able to match on a nightly basis. While the Prem’s COVID-19 delay meant that that coronation would have to wait a little longer than Jurgen Klopp and co. would have liked, waiting a few more months is nothing when it’s been 30 years since their last time earning the distinction of being the kings of England.

While crowning a champion is done and dusted, there are still several more matches to play in this campaign. By nature of being the champions, Liverpool have earned a guard of honour from their opponents ahead of their next Premier League match. Because the footballing gods have quite the sense of humor about them, the Reds will next take the pitch on Thursday, July 2, when they travel to the Ethiad Stadium to square off against Manchester City.