Month: December 2020

It appears the NBA is nearing a full release of the first half of its 2020-21 schedule, and a new report shows two intriguing matchups on opening night, Dec. 22, on TNT.

Shams Charania of The Athletic reported that the Nets will host the Warriors that night while the Lakers and Clippers will face off at STAPLES Center.

The early game will mark another return for two-time Stephen Curry, who had only played a handful of games in the spring before the NBA shutdown, as well as the rest of the new-look Warriors, featuring newly acquired Kelly Oubre Jr. and No. 2 overall pick James Wiseman.

It will also feature the return of Kevin Durant for the first time since rupturing his Achilles’ tendon nearly 18 months ago in the 2019 NBA Finals. Of course, back then, Durant was playing for the Warriors, so the game will mark a clash between former championship teammates as well.

In the late game, the presumptive favorites in the Western Conference will go head-to-head in the arena they share, as NBA fans will get to see if the Clippers look fresher after hiring Ty Lue and turning over the back of the roster this offseason. On the other side, new Lakers additions like Marc Gasol and Montrezl Harrell will take the floor with their new team.

The release date for the 2020-21 schedule — either in its entirety or broken down by halves — is unclear. We do, however, know the opening night games, and on Tuesday, we learned the anticipated Christmas Day slate.

Roughly one in four women will have one. You probably know one of them, whether she’s told you about it or not. As of 2017, they’re at a record low rate in America, thanks in part to the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that birth control is covered by private insurance as out-of-pocket costs. Sixty-one percent of Americans say it should be legal in all cases, but a considerable subsection of them, especially in the South, don’t have reliable access to it. That’s right: we’re talking about abortion — and the musicians who are working to preserve access to it.

If you’ve seen some of your faves posting about the issue on Instagram (Kim Gordon and Karen O doing it caught my eye), you’ve probably been seeing the work of a New Mexico-based initiative called Noise For Now. They play matchmaker between musicians who want to support reproductive rights, including abortion and local funds. They aim to destigmatize the conversation around abortion. Hence, part of their plan is to ask artists to post about the organization and why access to healthcare for women is essential. Co-founder and President Amelia Bauer moved to the Southwest from New York after the 2016 election and, while trying to find a way to get involved with local reproductive rights organizations, ended up organizing a concert to benefit the National Organization For Women. It outraised all the big donor dinners and galas they had been putting on.

The idea to work as a connector between those with a large audience — your favorite musician — and small, local abortion funds hits at a targeted play to provide access to reproductive health care that includes abortion to women who are systematically cut off from it. Since 2011, Texas has lost 25 clinics. In the Midwest, 33 clinics have shut down. In the South, it’s 50. Even after the TRAP (targeted regulation of abortion providers) laws that closed them were largely overturned by the courts, most of those clinics have not reopened. There’s no doubt that in specific regions of America, the right to choose is under attack. Meanwhile, 59 new women’s health clinics opened in the Northeast. More and more, having access to reproductive care and abortion is a matter of how much money you have and where you live.

“When you have state legislators working against the will of the people, they create barriers to abortion for people without means,” Bauer explains. “Anyone with means can travel to another state to access abortion if they can’t reach it near their home. That means people who work multiple jobs, who can’t get time off, who can’t afford a plane or bus ticket, who can’t afford childcare are left out of access to safe abortion.” She notes that in the U.S., where most abortions are performed in clinics, the procedure is extremely safe, while in countries where it has been outlawed and criminalized, it becomes dangerous for women. That’s why Noise For Now focuses on working with funds that support and are run by Black, brown, indigenous, and undocumented people.

For Bauer, her work in New Mexico started with an eye on preserving the access that women in nearby states traveled to get — and in making that travel and all the things that go with it, from the time off work to childcare, possible. The current Supreme Court, which leans more conservative than it has in generations, has caused many to worry about stripping away the landmark Roe vs. Wade ruling. It is what guarantees women the right to have an abortion under the Fourteenth Amendment right to privacy, as explained in the majority opinion by Justice Harry Blackmun — a lifelong Republican. With the current slate of justices, Bauer predicts the worst, saying, “I don’t have a crystal ball, but I don’t think it’s very likely it will survive this court.”

Amanda Shires is all too aware of the restrictions placed on women’s access to reproductive rights. In Tennessee, 96% of the counties have no facilities that provide abortions. The issue is also bleak for women in neighboring Alabama, Kentucky, and Mississippi — the latter has only one clinic and three facilities in total where women can obtain an abortion.

“Part of the problem is if people are out protesting [clinics], they’re protesting contraceptive services, HIV testing, hormone therapy, treatment for erectile dysfunction, and all kinds of stuff they don’t even think about. And cancer screenings. And LGBTQA+ hormone therapy,” Shires points out. She later continues, saying, “What I try to do is say, to the best I can, is that I’m on your side, whatever side of this you choose, in hopes people don’t have to walk around feeling alone.”

For Shires, who performed at Noise For Now’s Voices For Choice event and the Pro Roe Tee Campaign for Planned Parenthood, talking about things is the most effective way to destigmatize them and affect change. “It sometimes feels hard to make a change on your own because you can’t. If you can align and affiliate and help and take action, then I don’t know about you, but it makes me feel like I can sleep a tiny bit better at night,” Shires says.

Shires released “The Problem” near the end of 2020. This song imagines a conversation between a couple discussing abortion, with proceeds benefitting the Yellowhammer Fund. This Alabama-based fund offers financial and logistic support to those in need of abortion in the state. Yellowhammer is also a fund that Noise For Now has supported. Its Executive Director Laurie Bertram Roberts points out that having these conversations in spaces where it’s typically verboten, namely among the conservative audiences of country music, is part of removing the stigma.

“We need to be talking about how we make sure we’re having these conversions in spaces we may not think are welcoming, but are maybe more welcoming than we think they are,” Roberts says and notes that some of the most significant legacies in country music have been all about women’s issues.

“Amanda’s song is one is a long legacy of country women artists giving social critique. It goes back to the first women in country music. It goes to Kitty Wells. It goes to Loretta Lynn and ‘The Pill.’ Even Tammy Wynette singing ‘D-I-V-O-R-C-E.’ All those things were controversial at the time, but it tells women’s stories. Even Martina McBride talking about ‘Independence Day.’ Those are women telling their stories in a way that made it accessible and acceptable to talk about those subjects.”

His hoop dreams may have been deferred, but J. Cole’s got something ready to go for the upcoming basketball season. The North Carolina rapper just introduced the upcoming “Ebony And Ivory” colorway of his Puma Sky Dreamer sneakers and announced their release date on Instagram. They drop this Friday, December 4 — just in time for the NBA’s Christmas Day season tipoff, and Cole’s mentor Jay-Z’s birthday.

Cole first introduced the basketball shoe 100 years ago at the beginning of 2020 with a nostalgic short film recounting his own basketball experiences. He followed up the reveal with a Player’s Tribune feature in which he revealed he nearly quit rapping to pursue an NBA tryout, then hinted that he might be working toward getting that tryout soon. The Detroit Pistons even reached out to encourage him to tryout (they must miss Tobias Harris a bunch).

Of course, then a global pandemic hit, forcing the temporary end of the NBA season until its reboot in the Orlando Disney “bubble,” where a number of players flexed in the shoe both on and off the court.

In the meantime, Cole was relatively quiet on the musical front this year, only releasing a handful of singles including “The Climb Back” and “Lion King On Ice,” which were well-received, and “Snow On Tha Bluff,” which wasn’t. However, he did give updates on his delayed album, which he says is “coming soon.” For now, fans will have to make do with his new sneaker while they wait for him to return to his day job.

There’s a weird thing that happens when we talk about people dying, no matter what the cause. The 2,977 souls who lost their lives in the 9/11 attack felt overwhelming. The dozens of children who are killed in school shootings are mourned across the country each time one happens. The four Americans who perished in Benghazi prompted months of investigations and emotional video montages at national political conventions.

But as the numbers of deaths we talk about get bigger, our sensitivity to them grows smaller. A singular story of loss often evokes more emotion than hearing that 10,000 or 100,000 people have died. Hearing a story of one individual feels personal and intimate, but if you try to listen to a thousand stories at once, it all blends together into white noise. It’s just how our minds work. We simply can’t hold that many individual stories—and the emotion that goes along with them—all at once.

But there are some ways we can help our brains out. An anonymous visual effects artist has created a visualization that can better help us see the massive number of Americans who have been lost to the coronavirus pandemic. The number alone is staggering, and seeing all of the individual lives at once is overwhelming.

In this video, each marble represents one American who has died of COVID-19, and each second represents six days. At the top, you can see the calendar fill in as time goes by. Unlike just seeing a grid of dots representing the visual, there’s something about the movement and accumulation of the marbles that makes it easier to see the scope of the lives impacted.

Just watch:

(If you’re curious, the artist has clarified that no, the flesh tones of the spheres are not representative of the racial makeup of those impacted by the pandemic.)

The artist, who you can find on Reddit wrote on Vimeo, “A single death is terrible but something I can comprehend as I have life experience to draw upon. When the number of deaths become 5, 10, 50, [it’s] a tragedy and still something I can connect with at a very personal level. However, as death tolls start to hit the 100s it becomes something else. It becomes an event. An awful event. It becomes harder to conceptualize and empathize with. I suspect the threshold for this is different for everyone and varies between cultures. The goal of this project was to help me visualize 230,000 as a number but it also helped reconcile that these are people with families, friends and social circles…“

The artist said they started working on this project on November 1 and finished November 15. During that time, an additional 15,000+ Americans died from COVID-19.

Furthermore, from the time the project was finished to the time this article was written—two weeks—another 22,000+ have died from the virus.

The scope of the tragedy of the pandemic truly is hard to fathom. When you think of the extended circles of people each of these marbles represent—the family and friends of the people who have died from this disease—it becomes even moreso.

And it didn’t have to be this way. In the early months of the outbreak, we were told that if we managed the pandemic, we might lose 100,000 to 200,000 Americans total. We’ve already blown past the top of that range, with our average daily death toll trending upwards. And with hospitals filling up and a limited supply of healthcare workers, we are likely to see those averages spike even further.

We can slow that spike with our own behaviors—staying at home as much as we can, wearing masks when we have to go out, keeping up social distancing and handwashing. But no matter what happens, each of the lives lost to this disease deserves to be recognized for the tragedy that it is. And they each deserve the acknowledgement that we could have and should have done more to keep it under control. We have examples in countries like New Zealand, Australia, Vietnam, Taiwan, and South Korea, who managed to successfully keep the virus at bay and prevent the deluge of deaths that we’ve seen here.

Let’s learn from this experience so the next time a pandemic hits—and there assuredly will be a next time—we’ll have a better grasp on what to do from the get go. And let’s make sure that hundreds of thousands of Americans dying in a matter of months never become just another statistic.

Margot Robbie plays Harley Quinn (in Birds of Prey, the upcoming The Suicide Squad, and another movie that never happened). Kaley Cuoco also plays Harley Quinn (in HBO Max’s Harley Quinn animated series). But just because they portray the same comic book character does not mean they’re feuding. It’s a fake rumor made up a ethically-shady celebrity tabloid, and one that The Flight Attendant star settled with a one-word response earlier this year. In fact, Cuoco and Robbie have never even met.

“When Harley became kind of a big deal and then when Birds of Prey came out, there were all these stories that me and Margot Robbie were feuding,” the actress told her 8 Simple Rules co-star David Spade in Interview magazine. “But I’ve never even met her. I love her. There was an article that came out that said we would not show up together at Comic-Con. We refused to be on the same stage together. Neither of us was even at Comic-Con, OK?” Cuoco called Robbie “so cute,” and agreed with Spade’s assessment that she seems “very fun, easy to deal with, and sort of treats showbiz like fun.”

Now, if anyone wants to start a tWiStEd rumor that Jared Leto and Jack Nicholson are feuding, I would believe it without any additional context.

(Via Interview)

Megan Thee Stallion has had an impressive year as she released several hits along with her long-awaited album Good News. While the year is coming to a close, Megan is still breaking records. Her song “Body” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Streaming Songs chart, making her the first woman to hold three No. 1s on the chart in a single year.

According to Billboard, Megan made a big impact on their Streaming Songs chart this year. The publication notes that Megan’s Good News track “Body” garnered 22.5 millions streams in just the first week after its debut. “Body” is the third single of the rapper’s to achieve the feat in 2020 following her Cardi B collaboration “WAP” and her Good News hit single “Savage.”

Streaming Songs wasn’t the only chart Megan had a major impact on in 2020. While her Good News album came in at second place just behind BTS on the Billboard albums chart, her “WAP” collaboration dominated several charts following its release. The song went No. 1 both on the Hot 100 and Global 200 chart, and was also one of YouTube’s top-trending videos of the year.

Good News is out now via 1501 Entertainment. Get it here.

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Mandalorian showrunner John Favreau stopped by the latest “Binging with Babish” episode to talk about the true breakout star of the bounty hunting show’s second season: Those Baby Yoda cookies. While talking with Chef Andrew Rea, Favreau revealed that, yes, the cookies are an homage to blue milk, Luke Skywalker’s drink of choice in Star Wars: A New Hope. He also broke down how the Baby Yoda treats were made for the episode, and the unintended consequence of making kids go crazy for macarons.

According to Favreau, the prop master for The Mandalorian wanted more specifics on what the cookies should like, which resulted in him baking macarons for Episode 12: The Siege. “But not a full macaron, not the sandwich, just like one half of the sandwich,” Favreau explained. The cookies also weren’t the tastiest in real life, but the kids watching at home don’t know that, and man, did they want those cookies, which don’t come cheap. Via Comic Book:

“It didn’t really have much flavor. It was kind of a blue raspberry a little bit, but again, because it’s on a film set, you’re not worried so much about the taste. It’s about the look. What I also found out now that everybody loves – especially, kids love to nerd out on the stuff in the show – that little kids might want to eat macarons, because it’s what Baby Yoda is eating. I later realized that macarons, when you buy them, could be several dollars each. So it’s an expensive thing.”

Fortunately, Chef Rea whipped up an more affordable alternative, the Sky Blue Vanilla Wafer. More importantly, Favreau made it a point to say that they are an “approved other alternative recipes” so the kids “are still eating what Baby Yoda’s eating.” Although, that’s not exactly the most ringing endorsement when you remember that the little guy was eating Frog Lady eggs and spiders just a few episodes back.

Watch the full segment with Favreau above, or jump straight to the 8:20 mark for the Sky Blue Vanilla Wafer recipe.

(Via Binging with Babish & Comic Book)

Today marks the beginning of social media profiles the world over being filled with Spotify-generated infographics about what music people listened to the most over the past year. As it does every year, Spotify has unveiled its Wrapped feature, which has prompted music fans to compare the platform to two of its major competitors, Apple Music and Tidal. Consequently, all three are trending topics on Twitter today.

Some Apple Music users have felt left out by not having a Spotify Wrapped recap of their own, with multiple users posting the meme of Squidward watching SpongeBob and Patrick have fun outside without him. As other users have noted, though, Apple Music actually has a similar year-end feature.

People have also been comparing the three platforms more broadly, with some praising Apple and Tidal’s playlist curation, artist payment rates, and other features in comparison to Spotify. Inversely, comedian Tommy Campbell shared his thoughts from a creator’s perspective, writing, “Spotify is waaaay better than Apple Music and iTunes is dead. As an artist your work actually gets discovered on Spotify and shared across playlists. Spotify Artists app is fantastic. For all Apple’s ‘we love music’ talk their platform sucks.”

The Hamilton musical was also a trending topic this morning, as many users pointed out that the soundtrack was among their most-played albums. Indeed, it was a big year for Hamilton, as this summer, the soundtrack became the highest-charting Broadway cast album in over 50 years.

Check out some more tweets about Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal below.

LeBron James is keeping busy in the lead-up to the 2020-21 NBA season. While the Los Angeles Lakers will begin their title defense a little later this month, James has his eyes set on something going on in early January, as he explained on the latest edition of the Road Trippin’ podcast.

James started a new voting rights group earlier this year called More Than A Vote, which works to assist disenfranchised individuals in getting involved in the democratic process. Following its work in the 2020 general election, James said that the group’s next priority is the upcoming Georgia runoff elections for a pair of United States Senate seats that could tip the balance of power in the chamber.

“We’re never about a one-off,” James said. “We’re trying to figure out ways, right now, that we can continue to implement change in the communities, not only in my home community of Akron, Ohio, but communities all over America, and hopefully, create change in the world, as well. So we’re looking for opportunities — there’s a huge Senate race in that’s going on in Georgia coming up in January, so we’re tackling that.”

The races James mentioned pit incumbent Senator Kelly Loeffler, a Republican, against Democratic nominee Rev. Raphael Warnock in a special election for a seat that Loeffler received via gubernatorial appointment in early 2020; and a pair of candidates — Republican David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff — going head-to-head. The Senate currently as 50 Republican members, 46 Democratic members, and a pair of Independents who caucus with the Democrats, so if either Loeffler or Perdue win, the GOP controls the chamber for at least the next two years, barring anything unforeseen. Should Ossoff and Warnock both win, though, it is split, and the deciding vote on any deadlocked legislation would go to Kamala Harris, the Democratic Vice President-elect of the United States.

James does understand that there are a number of other people who are working to assist disenfranchised voters in Georgia in the lead-up to the Jan. 5 runoff election, heaping praise on former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who James affectionately referred to as “a monster” and “unbelievable,” and other activists in both the state and the city of Atlanta for the work that they have done. He also made it a point to let them know that they have his full support.

“We’re gonna get behind that,” James said, “and hopefully continue to make change.”

Elliot Page, the Oscar-nominated Juno star and most powerful sibling on Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy, came out as transgender and non-binary to an outpouring of love on Tuesday. The chorus included Elliot’s wife, Emma Portner, who was “so proud” of the announcement, and such sentiments echoed across social media. Both The Umbrella Academy and Netflix Twitter accounts joined the party with the latter confirming that Elliot will definitely return to play Vanya Hargreeves in Season 3 of the wildly popular apocalyptic-superhero series.

In addition, Netflix relayed to Variety that they’re in the process of updating credits for Page’s past projects. The update has already been made for landing page-credits for The Umbrella Academy, along with the credits for other Page-starring films on the service, including, Tallulah, Tales of the City, and Something In The Water.

During Tuesday’s announcement, Page stated, “I want to share with you that I am trans, my pronouns are he/they and my name is Elliot. I feel lucky to be writing this. To be here. To have arrived at this place in my life. I feel overwhelming gratitude for the incredible people who have supported me along this journey. I can’t begin to express how remarkable it feels to finally love who I am enough to pursue my authentic self. I’ve been endlessly inspired by so many in the trans community.”