Month: January 2021

Over the weekend a clip from VH1’s 2017 series Signed resurfaced on Twitter. In the episode, Rick Ross, The-Dream, and Lenny S. are judges for a number of contestants who are looking to land a record deal. In this particular clip, the trio is judging two acts named Brittany and Kaiya. In what seemed to be a sheer coincidence, both singers auditioned using an instrumental of Ross’ 2010 track “Aston Martin Music.” At the end of their respective performances, the judges favored Brittany’s rendition over Kaiya’s, but viewers of the clip thought otherwise and cited a huge difference in the quality of their auditions. As a result, the trio was hit with heavy criticism, including accusations of colorism. Less than a week after the clip reemerged, The-Dream took to Twitter to respond.

The singer shared a lengthy message that stretched over four tweets. “I’m completely surprised by even the smallest amount of people that would ever test my Blackness and my love for my people and my culture in everyshade esp. the darkest of u,” he said. “I’m not overly surprised. But as much as I’ve done to move women forward through songs and always… Being the one that make sure sh*t looks a certain way. I’m sure every director and every artist or person who have saw me work and been around me know exactly how I prefer things. Black ass f*ck all the time. With all I’ve done this is what y’all have for me. Makes you think diff.”

The-Dream then dove into his previous relationship issues, which landed in the public eye:

And for no particular reason, as a unapologetic figure as I’ve kept it beyond and taken falls for past exes even publicly to save themselves from things they have done against me and to harm my word and upbringing. I protected a lot of people and ate it. I could’ve been said it. That means I took all that for no reason. So basically I should’ve snitched right. I hurried the truth. I watch you all talk and still I took the higher space. I always do I always did. Now me I’m not black enough even though I walked out of labels left 5ms cause race sh*t.

Over four long years, Donald Trump never had a good relationship with any White House reporter (unless they’re from OANN). Quite the contrary. If he singled them out, it was to insult them, call them stupid, trash their outlet. Joe Biden hasn’t been on the job even a week and he’s already made friends with the “enemy” — which is to say he’s already got a jokey buddy comedy routine going with a staffer from Fox News.

That person is Peter Doocy, son of Fox & Friends mainstay Peter. On Monday, Biden lightly razzed the longtime Fox News journalist, saying he always asks me tough questions, and [they] always have an edge to them.” But he jokingly added, “I like him anyway.” The very next day Biden was at it with Doocy again.

In one of his first days in office, Biden fielded a phonecall from Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, whose administration been accused of tampering in the last two American elections. As Tuesday’s press conference was ending, Doocy shouted out a final question, asking what he and Biden had talked about. Biden quickly quipped, “You,” adding, “He sends his best.”

It’s clear Doocy is going to be a thorn in the Biden administration’s side. But it’s also clear that Biden knows how to deal with it: with a charming soft jab, a bit of light sarcasm, not the thin-skinned maelstrom Trump brought to everyone who asked him a question he didn’t like. And for a second day in a row, people loved the rapport they’ve developed.

Some accused Biden of dodging Doocy’s question. Thing is, a readout of his Putin conversation is already on the White House website, for all to see.

In a year when the U.S. saw the largest protest movement in history in support of Black lives, when people of color have experienced disproportionate outcomes from the coronavirus pandemic, and when Black voters showed up in droves to flip two Senate seats in Georgia, Joe Biden entered the White House with a mandate to address the issue of racial equity in a meaningful way.

Not that it took any of those things to make racial issues in America real. White supremacy has undergirded laws, policies, and practices throughout our nation’s history, and the ongoing impacts of that history are seen and felt widely by various racial and ethnic groups in America in various ways.

Today, President Biden spoke to these issues in straightforward language before signing four executive actions that aim to:

– promote fair housing policies to redress historical racial discrimination in federal housing and lending

– address criminal justice, starting by ending federal contracts with for-profit prisons

– strengthen nation-to-nation relationships with Native American tribes and Alaskan natives

– combat xenophobia against Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, which has skyrocketed during the pandemic

“In my campaign for president, I made it very clear that the moment had arrived as a nation, as we face deep racial inequities in America and systemic racism that has plagued our nation for far, far too long. I said that over the course of the past year that the blinders had been taken off the nation, the American people. What many Americans didn’t see or had simply refused to see couldn’t be ignored any longer.”

Biden spoke of how George Floyd’s killing opened the eyes of the nation and the world and marked “a turning point in this country’s attitude toward racial justice.” He spoke of the impact of the pandemic on Black and Latino communities and the economic inequalities that plague the nation. He spoke of the white supremacists who invaded our Capitol.

“We have never fully lived up to the founding principles of this nation, to state the obvious, that all people are created equal and have the right to be treated equally throughout their lives,” he said. “And it’s time to act now, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because if we do, we’ll all be better off for it.”

“For too long we’ve allowed a narrow, cramped view of the promise of this nation to fester,” he went on. “You know, we’ve bought the view that America is a zero-sum game in many cases. If you succeed, I fail. If you get ahead, I fall behind. If you get the job I lose mine. Maybe worst of all, if I hold you down, I lift myself up. We’ve lost sight of what President Kennedy told us what he said, ‘A rising tide lifts all boats.’ When we lift each other up, we’re all lifted up. And the corollary is true as well. When anyone is held down, we’re all held back.”

President Biden gave some details about what the four executive actions signed today will mean, including giving Native tribes and nations access to the federal stockpile and FEMA, as well as taking a step toward stopping corporations from profiting off of incarceration that is “less humane and less safe, as the studies show.”

He also elucidated on further actions he wants to take, or see taken in the case of legislation in Congress, during his administration, starting with undoing some of Trump’s last actions as president:

“In the weeks ahead, I’ll be reaffirming the federal government’s commitment to diversity equity and inclusion and accessibility, building on the work we started and the Obama-Biden administration. That’s why I’m rescinding the previous administration’s harmful man on diversity and sensitivity training. And abolish the offensive counterfactual 1776 commission. Unity and healing must begin with understanding and truth. Not ignorance and lies.”

And including making it easier for all Americans to vote:

“Here’s another thing we need to do—we need to restore and expand the Voting Rights Act, named after our dear friend, John Lewis. And continue to fight back against laws many states are engaged in to suppress the right to vote, while expanding access to the ballot box for all eligible voters.:

Biden concluded with by repeating the call for racial equity to be incorporated throughout every part of the government:

“Here’s the deal, and I’ll close with this,” he said. “I ran for president because I believe we’re in a battle for the soul of this nation. And the simple truth is our soul will be troubled as long as systemic racism is allowed to persist. It’s not going to be overnight. We can’t eliminate everything. But it’s corrosive, it’s destructive, and it’s costly. It costs every American, not just who felt the sting of racial injustice. We are not just a nation morally deprived because of systemic racism. We’re also less prosperous, we’re less successful, less secure. So we must change, and I know it’s gonna take time. But I know we can do it. And I firmly believe the nation is ready to change. But government has to change as well. We need to make equity and justice part of what we do every day. Today, tomorrow, and every day.

I’m gonna sign these executive actions to continue to work to make real the promise of America for every American. Again, I’m not promising we can end it tomorrow. But I promise you we’re gonna continue to make progress to eliminate systemic racism in every branch of the White House, and the federal government is going to be part of that effort.”

People in racial justice advocacy spaces seemed to receive President Biden’s address and executive actions with cautious optimism. NAACP president Derrick Johnson told MSNBC, “This is a great initial start,” and “The fact he’s embedding this inside of Domestic Policy Council shows the urgency and the gravity of what’s taking place.”

Some pointed out that unless and until there are actual changes coming from the legislative branch, the actions taken by Biden today are tenuous, since they can be changed at the stroke of a pen with a new administration. However, these executive actions and the promises made by Biden do seem to indicate that he is serious about making racial justice a key policy driver during his tenure in the White House.

It’s definitely a start, and considering we’re only seven days in, a promising sign that more meaningful action is on the way.

Menstrual taboos are as old as time and found across cultures. They’ve been used to separate women from men physically — menstrual huts are still a thing — and socially, by creating the perception that a natural bodily function is a sign of weakness.

Even in today’s world women are deemed unfit for positions of power because some men actually believe they won’t be able to handle stressful situations while mensurating.

“Menstruation is an opening for attack: a mark of shame, a sign of weakness, an argument to keep women out of positions of power,’ Colin Schultz writes in Popular Science.

The big problem with menstrual taboos is the way that males are educated on the subject leaves them with a patchwork of ideas that don’t necessarily add up to the whole picture. First, there’s the information they get from growing up with women in the house.

Then, there are the cryptic descriptions of menstruation seen in advertising and the cold, scientific way the topic is taught in sex education.

“Boys’ early learning about menstruation is haphazard,” a 2011 study published in the Journal of Family Issues reads. “The mysterious nature of what happens to girls contributes to a gap in boys’ knowledge about female bodies and to some negative views about girls.”

Unfortunately, the gaps in the average man’s understanding of a complex female health issue can put women in a difficult position. Whether it’s denying them positions of power or a failure to understand their discomfort.

That’s why it’s so important for men to become better educated about menstruation.

A group of women on TikTok are helping the men in their lives better understand the subject by showing them how tampons work on the inside of their bodies by dousing them in water. They call it the Boyfriend Challenge. Some of the guys’ reactions are clearly over-the-top, but it’s also obvious that many of them have no idea how tampons function.

A video by the Demery family has gone viral attracting nearly eight million views. It’s fun to watch, but it also shows men how tampons function and what women go through during their monthly cycle.

Rachel’s man just uttered the phrase “vagina parachute.”

Paulina’s man was completely flummoxed by the inner workings of a tampon. “You’ve been carrying this like, inside of you?” he asks. “The whole day?”

This guy thinks it’s “like a butterfly.”

Amani’s boyfriend was so astounded by the revelation he let out a massive expletive then apologized for the agony she must go through.

Ryley just blew her BFF’s mind.

This guy was amazed by the absorbancy.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age classic, has been adapted for the screen a number of times. Sure, you remember the 1974 one with Robert Redford and Mira Farrow and Baz Luhrmann’s 3-D stab, with Leonardo DiCaprio, but what about the 2000 TV one with Mira Sorvino as Daisy and Paul Rudd as Nick? Still, it’s never been turned into a full-flung TV limited series before, and with good reason: It doesn’t even break the 200-page mark.

But that’s about to change. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Michael Hirst — known for various historical stuff, like the Cate Blanchett Elizabeth films, The Tudors, and Vikings — is turning Fitzgerald’s tome into a TV show. But there’s a twist: It won’t be a straight adaptation of the tale of a mysterious, party-throwing millionaire obsessed with a woman who loves money. Instead it will re-imagine it as a look into African-American culture during the same time:

Hirst’s Gatsby will explore New York’s Black community in the 1920s as well as the musical subculture. Columbia University’s William B. Ransford professor of English and comparative literature and African-American studies Farah Jasmine Griffin will also serve as a consultant on the series. She will work directly with Hazard and Hirst on the drama. Described as a reimagining, the series will dig deeper into the hidden lives of its characters through the modern lens of a fractured American dream while also capturing the full majesty of Fitzgerald’s timeless vision.

All in all it doesn’t sound too different from HBO’s acclaimed Lovecraft Country, which also used a piece of classic white art to tell the history of African-Americans in the 20th century. On the other hand, it may get “Ain’t We Got Fun” lodged in our heads all over again.

(Via THR)

“I’ll have a spicy chicken sandwich, side of waffle fries, and a large dose of AstraZeneca.”

It’s no secret that as a country we’re doing just about as well rolling out the COVID-19 vaccine as we did reacting to the virus itself. According to figures obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA Today reports that as of January 26th, only 6% of the US population has received at least one of two COVID-19 shots, with just 1% of people having received both doses (mostly essential workers). 47% of shots distributed still haven’t been used, which puts them at risk of expiration.

Considering there’s also talk of a more contagious variant of the virus in the United States, this is clearly bad news.

The Biden administration recently laid out plans to administer over 100 million shots over his first 100 days. If we hope to meet that goal we’re going to start thinking outside of the box and calling on the pros — exactly what Mount Pleasant South Carolina Mayor Will Haynie did last week when a technical glitch had traffic gridlocked at a vaccine-drive thru site.

According to Fox 13, When Mayor Haynie was notified that traffic had backed up for an hour at a vaccination site at Seacoast Church, he reached out to local Chick-fil-A manager Jerry Walkowiak for additional help. Before Mayor Haynie arrived at the site, Walkowiak was already on-site putting his Chick-fil-A crowd managing skills to work, speeding up wait times by checking drivers’ paperwork in advance, and directing them to a spot to wait for vaccination.

Soon, Walkowiak’s skills had chopped the vaccination site’s wait time from an hour to just 15 minutes. In the rain, no less!

Haynie told Fox he plans to use Walkowiak and Chick-fil-A at future distribution sites — a relief for un-vaccinated South Carolinians but also a reminder that America’s health care infrastructure is in need of a serious overhaul.

Pamela Anderson is officially bailing on her social media presence. The former Baywatch actress announced on Tuesday that she will no longer post on the four major platforms citing concerns over tech companies controlling people’s brains. Anderson also cited a newfound appreciation for reading and nature, which factored into her decision to adopt the always wise “Never Tweet” policy. She hopes others will follow in her footsteps.

“Lets hope you find the strength and inspiration to follow your purpose and try not to be seduced by wasted time,” Anderson wrote on Instagram. “Thats what THEY want and can use to make money: Control over your brain-”

You can see Pamela Anderson’s farewell post below:

Anderson’s advice is surprisingly sound, and she does know a thing or two about being sucked into the divisiveness of social media. The former Playmate has been a fierce defender of the controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and she went on a profanity-laced rant when he was arrested in London after the Ecuador government ended Assange’s seven-year asylum in its embassy. “How could you Equador? (Because he exposed you)” Anderson tweeted. “How could you U.K.? Of course — you are America’s b*tch and you need a diversion from your idiotic Brexit bullsh*t.”

However, Anderson doesn’t need a Twitter account to get in trouble. Following the #MeToo allegations against Harvey Weinstein, she attacked his accusers during an interview with Megyn Kelly. “You know what you’re getting into if you’re going into a hotel room alone,” she told Kelly. After an ensuing media backlash, Anderson wrote on Instagram that she refuses to apologize for her remarks, so yup, this whole quitting social media thing is probably for the best. Smart thinking.

(Via Pamela Anderson on Instagram)

Of all the big-name rappers in New York, one of the last names remaining who hasn’t done a song with Jay-Z (who doesn’t also have beef with Jay-Z) is French Montana. That may soon be changing, per French himself in a new interview with DJ Semtex’s Hip Hop Raised Me podcast. As Montana explained that the two had never directly collaborated, he revealed that “We finally found the song,” and teased “hopefully that’ll go down,” noting they’ve “been going back and forth” working on it.

“I was playing this song for somebody in the studio,” he explained. “And the artist just grabbed me and started wrinkling my shirt, asking me, ‘What is this?’ Jay-Z happened to see that. Jay was like, ‘Yo, that record is crazy.’ He was like, ‘Let me get motivated to write 16 on this real quick.’” Now he’s just waiting for Jay to enter a creative mood and bless the beat. With French due for another album — his last full-length Montana came out in 2019, although the Coke Boys 5 mixtape arrived in November 2020 to tide fans’ over — could we potentially get the chance to hear what a Jay-Z/French Montana collaboration sounds like on his next one?

Hopefully, but really, the endgame here — at least for this hip-hop aficionado — is a Jay-Z album produced entirely by French’s go-to beatmaker Harry Fraud. I won’t hold my breath, but in the meantime, you can check out the snippet from French’s interview with DJ Semtex above and the full episode below.

GameStop has been the talk of the financial world the last two weeks, with its stock price soaring thanks to a bizarre battle between Reddit day traders and investment firms betting against them to fail. So far, those who have been fortunate enough to buy low on the stock have seen huge gains, and Reddit is filled with screenshots of people making big calls and paying off their student loans in the process.

But one company that has taken a big hit is no stranger to betting on failures in the video game world. As amateur day traders strike it big on GameStop, large firms shorting the stock are losing trillions in the process. And according to the Wall Street Journal, a hedge fund that bet big against GameStop has essentially needed rescuing because it lost so much money on the short so quickly. On Monday, Melvin Capital Management got a $2.75 billion investment from two other companies, Citadel and Point72, after Melvin took huge losses on several short bets that have gone for huge losses. The one noted in the story, of course, was GameStop.

The influx of cash is expected to help stabilize Melvin, which in 2021 has lost 30% through Friday, said people familiar with the firm. Melvin started the year with $12.5 billion and had been one of the best performing hedge funds on Wall Street in recent years. The losses stem from Melvin’s array of short bets against companies and have stunned clients and other traders. Among other short positions, Melvin bet against the surging stock of videogame retailer GameStop Corp.

Interestingly, that same hedge fund made millions off of the disastrous launch of Cyberpunk 2077. According to Financial News London, Melvin Capital made $25 million shorting CD Projekt Red stock as the price plummeted in the wake of the game’s buggy launch and bad publicity.

New York-based Melvin Capital Management held a short position representing about 0.6% of shares of Warsaw-based developer CD Projekt Red as of 22 September. Melvin was founded by Gabe Plotkin, a former protégé of hedge fund titan Steve Cohen.

The game launched on 10 December, when CD Projekt Red’s share price sat at 390 Polish zloty (£79.30).

By 15 December, after waves of negative reviews and playthroughs, the firm’s share price had reached a low of 238.50 zloty — translating to a windfall for Melvin of about $24.7m (£18.3m), according to data from short-selling research firm Breakout Point.

It’s a good reminder that video games are very much a business, and among the variety of factors that doomed Cyberpunk 2077, the demands company executives put on those making the game to satisfy stockholders certainly played a large part. While games are very much an art form, it’s very much a high-stakes business behind making those games, and there’s just as much money to be made when something fails as when it succeeds if you know how to play it. This is what has made the GameStock story so interesting: the people who usually know the market and profit off failures keep getting it wrong in a big way thanks to a bunch of people online simply banding together and acting in unison.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk tweeted about GameStop on Tuesday, causing another surge in price and a lot of excitement online.

Several years ago, you wouldn’t have known what QAnon was unless you spent a lot of time reading through comments on Twitter or frequented internet chat rooms. Now, with prominent Q adherents making headlines for storming the U.S. Capitol and elements of the QAnon worldview spilling into mainstream politics, the conspiracy theory/doomsday cult has become a household topic of conversation.

Many of us have watched helplessly as friends and family members fall down the rabbit hole, spewing strange ideas about Democrats and celebrities being pedophiles who torture children while Donald Trump leads a behind-the-scenes roundup of these evil Deep State actors. Perfectly intelligent people can be susceptible to conspiracy theories, no matter how insane, which makes it all the more frustrating.

A person who was a true believer in QAnon mythology (which you can read more about here) recently participated in an “Ask Me Anything” thread on Reddit, and what they shared about their experiences was eye-opening. The writer’s Reddit handle is “diceblue,” but for simplicity’s sake we’ll call them “DB.”

DB explained that they weren’t new to conspiracy theories when QAnon came on the scene. “I had been DEEP into conspiracy for about 8 years,” they wrote. “Had very recently been down the ufo paranormal rabbit hole so when Q really took off midterm for trump I ‘did my research’ and fell right into it.”

DB says they were a true believer until a couple of years ago when they had an experience that snapped them out of it:

“It was a couple of posts made by Q on the chans that seemed highly suspicious because of how ignorant they were of technology. Q posts often had weird syntax as a kind of code

• • Kind Of [writing like this] as if there was [a secret] in using brackets To Tell The Truth.

One morning Q claimed to have shut down 7 FBI super computers (named after the seven dwarves no less) via satellite hacking and all the rabid fans ate it up, claiming that “their internet was running a little bit faster)

FBI Super Computer ::SLEEPY::[[OFFLINE]]

alarm bells went off in my head because, come on, that’s not how any of this works. Using elementary school syntax form To SpeLl a [[Secret Code ]] felt fishy, and claiming your email in rural Montana loaded faster because seven super computers got shut down by remote hacking was a bridge too far for me. I realized that most of the Q believers I had seen were Boomers with no idea how technology works or people my age with no idea how computers operate. That day, I Googled Q Anon Debunked and got out.”

If simply Googling “QAnon Debunked” were enough to get QAnoners to deprogram themselves, why don’t more of them do it? That’s the tricky part. DB explains several elements to Q belief that keeps people in it. A big part of what primed DB to accept conspiracy thinking was a fundamentalist Christian upbringing.

“Theories about evil evolution, science denial and The End of The world rapture return of Christ stuff is all pretty crazy too,” wrote DB, who moved to a more progressive version of Christianity after leaving QAnon behind. “There’s a strong link between the two.”

There’s also some “perverse comfort” in conspiracy theories like QAnon, DB wrote, “because of the false sense of order and purpose it brings to the world. Either the world is a boardgame chess match between Good and Evil forces working behind the scenes, and you might be a pawn but at least you are on The Right Side or you admit that the world is a mess, nobody is in charge, there is no grand battle of good and evil behind the scenes and your life has less purpose and order than you hoped.”

They also said overconfidence and arrogance play a big role in people staying in the QAnon world, as well as the belief that you are the one engaging in critical thinking while everyone else is a mindless sheep.

“At this point the problem isn’t Q, it’s gullible people who lack critical thinking skills and gain a massive ego boost in thinking they have secret in that the sheeple don’t know,” DB wrote.

“Worth noting, conspiracy thinking hooks the brain because it feels like critical thinking. Even though it isn’t.”

That piece right there really is key.

As another user explained, the “do your own research” concept works to reinforce conspiracy theories while making people think they’re coming to conclusions on their own, thanks to the way search engines and social media algorithms work:

“The idea behind the ‘research’ is that you are more likely to believe a source if YOU stumble upon it yourself vs if I tell you -go watch this video.

So if I tell you Hillary is a lizard person, watch this video … It’s easy to watch and dismiss me as a crazy that saw a dumb video. BUT … if I tell you Hillary is a lizard person, but don’t take my word for it – google it yourself…. and you come across hundreds of videos and articles about Hillary being a lizard person – that makes it all the more believable. Especially since there’s so many articles saying Hillary is NOT a lizard person. If it wasn’t true, why would people be making videos and articles ‘debunking’ it?

And the debunk articles are appearing higher in searches than the articles saying she is. Why is that? Is big tech in on it to ….and you see where this is going.

So their ‘research’ is just a way of manipulating people.”

DB shared that it was hard to admit that they’d been played by a baseless conspiracy theory. “It’s NOT easy realizing you’ve been conned, been a rube, been taken in,” they wrote. “It was massively humbling to realize I’d been a sucker.”

However, they are also surprised to see how much “crazier” QAnon has gotten, as when they left a couple of years ago they were “certain it would all be over soon.” They weren’t a “storm the Capitol” kind of believer, but rather a “snicker quietly to myself in my bedroom because those sheeple don’t know the truth” type.

DB explained that they keep themselves away from the edge of the rabbit hole now by embracing doubt and different ideas and have added “some fucking worldview humility” to their life.

“The problem with fundamentalist religions, cults, and conspiracy theories is they all demonize doubt and are all so absolutely certain that they have the total truth of reality figured out. I hold my beliefs much more humbly now, I acknowledge that I could be wrong,” they wrote.

“I read more widely and expose myself to the ideas of others, so that I don’t end up in an echo chamber.”

As for how to help others get out? DB said that arguing with a QAnon adherent, especially online, is a waste of time—and their simple explanation for why makes perfect sense:

“I don’t think they can be reasoned out of beliefs they were not reasoned into.”

There’s no way to rationalize with irrational beliefs, unfortunately. DB suggests if you have loved ones who’ve fallen down the rabbit hole that you maybe try asking them questions using Street Epistemology techniques (which you can read about here), avoid confronting and trying to reason with them (because it’s simply not effective), and continue loving them (while setting boundaries about what you’re willing to listen to) so they have a stable place to land if and when they are able to extricate themselves.

You can read the entire Reddit thread of Q and A here.

As frustrating as it is to see people we know fall for kooky conspiracy theories, seeing that it’s possible for someone to get out offers a ray of hope that they aren’t necessarily gone for good.