Month: April 2021

Peloton, the fitness company that once was mostly known for a bizarre ad that went viral, as well as Ryan Reynolds lampooning them with a gin ad, has thrived in the pandemic. Sales of its bikes and treadmills have exploded during a time when gyms have been closed or considered unsafe, with people hoping to replicate their spin classes and workouts from the comfort of home.

But one product the company makes — an interactive treadmill called the Peloton Tread+ — has drawn strong warnings from a federal agency, who’ve advised parents after dozens of children were injured by the device. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a strong statement against the Tread+, even sharing a horrifying video of children playing on an unattended machine before one gets sucked under its belt.

The video, which you can watch above, quickly went viral, along with a warning that parents should stop using the device or, at the very least, unplug it when not in use. According to The New York Post, the agency said the device poses “serious risks” if not used properly.

“CPSC staff believes the Peloton Tread+ poses serious risks to children for abrasions, fractures, and death,” the agency said.

“In light of multiple reports of children becoming entrapped, pinned, and pulled under the rear roller of the product, CPSC urges consumers with children at home to stop using the product immediately.”

Peloton customers who want to continue to machines should keep them in a locked room away from kids and pets — as well as unplug them when not in use and keep all other objects away from them, the agency said.

The CPSC said there were 39 documented cases where the treadmills caused injury, at least one case involving a child who died. The problem is the bike, which has a flatscreen on which you watch a guided running class, can start running with just a few presses on screen. The belt then can start moving, and if kids or pets are not careful the force of the belt can actually bring small things under it, causing injury.

Peloton issued a statement in response, calling the dire warning “inaccurate and misleading” and noting that it warns its customers to use the device safely.

“Peloton is disappointed that, despite its offers of collaboration, and despite the fact that the Tread+ complies with all applicable safety standards, CPSC was unwilling to engage in any meaningful discussions with Peloton before issuing its inaccurate and misleading press release,” the statement said.

It added that “there is no reason to stop using the Tread+ as long as all warnings and safety instructions are followed.”

Like all treadmills, there are risks associated with the devices being used incorrectly. The video is a horrifying reminder of that, and hopefully one people with children and pets take to heart. Peloton can give you a great workout if you want it, but it might be worth the few extra seconds to ensure no one gets hurt by it when you’re not around.

It’s been a busy year for Taylor Swift. Last summer, the singer released her eighth album, Folklore, which became one of the best-selling releases of 2020 and eventually took home a 2021 Grammy for Album Of The Year. Her run continued with the December release of Evermore, which also topped the charts. And earlier this month, Swift dropped her third album in less than 12 months with the re-recorded version of Fearless, her 2008 sophomore album, which, like, the other two, has topped the Billboard charts.

Fearless (Taylor’s Version) debuted atop the Billboard 200 with 291,000 units sold in the chart dated April 24. This number is comprised of 179,000 pure album sales and 109,00 streaming equivalent album units. It makes her the first woman with three No. 1 albums in less than a year. Prior to this, the fastest a female recording artist was able to net three chart-topping projects was 14 months, when Donna Summer did it with Live And More (November 11, 1978), Bad Girls (June 16, 1979), and On The Radio: Greatest Hits Volumes I & II (January 5, 1980).

Elsewhere, the new No. 1 ties Swift with Madonna for the second-most No. 1 albums over her career: nine, leaving her just two behind Barbra Streisand, who holds the most among women with 11. Swift also earned the biggest week of 2021 in terms of units sold, as well as the biggest week for a country album since Luke Bryan’s 2015 album Kill The Lights.

Further down the chart, DMX’s The Best Of DMX jumped from No. 73 to No. 2, following the rapper’s tragic death. Ariana Grande’s Positions also re-entered the top-10, thanks to the release of its vinyl LP and cassette, which helped boost the album from No. 17 to No. 6.

The better mobile games out there are, at best, gentle ways to separate you from your money. The freemium creep is inevitable with basically any title designed to play on a phone, riddled with clock-based challenges basically making you decide if your time or money is more valuable. Scratching the itch those games create means juggling all kinds of imaginary image-based currency, including the ultimate decision about whether you should turn your actual currency into the virtual kind to get you more… stuff.

It’s important to lay all that out before we talk about Netmarble’s latest NBA collaboration, NBA Ball Stars. The mobile game debuted earlier in the month, and after grinding through a season with the title I can safely say you need to decide where you stand with freemium games and your tolerance for the format before you commit to checking it out. If you’re the kind of person who is all about optimizing stats and really enjoys puzzle games, it might be the perfect time-waster. But it could also cost you a lot of money to dunk with a digital Shaq if you’re not careful.

The goal is to win games by tapping groups of colored balls to score baskets and get stops with players you collect and power up in a variety of ways. Get enough currency and you can randomly collect new players, or acquire “contract shards” of players to unlock or upgrade ones you already have. It’s all admittedly a bit too complicated to explain in text, but it’s fairly intuitive and a little red dot will alert you when you have new things to tap and unlock in the various menus. Including a list of things you can buy with real money to make all of this leveling up and collecting significantly easier.

Not to harp on this aspect of Ball Stars but, well, the game sort of harps on that aspect on its own. That doesn’t impact the gameplay itself, but the prep you do between games to level up players and decide how best to use your coins and items to create optimal ‘Big Man’ and ‘ISO’ lineups to win matchups. Once you get into a rhythm with the puzzles and numbers game they present, it’s actually a bit of a nice mental workout to make the most of your four moves per possession. There’s a lot to think about: how to best defend and manage the end game with the clock ticking down, and counteracting abilities the other team may use.

But it’s not basketball, even if the players you’re powering up generally look like real NBA stars thanks to Netmarble’s NBA license. And though there is a “versus” mode where you play to 11, you’re not going move for move against real live opponents, just squaring off against that team and an AI making the best moves it can with what it has. It’s not always a fair fight if you’re not pressing the issue with your leveling up, though: teams much higher powered than you start with a bigger advantage on the scoreboard, and they can unlock special abilities much faster due to multipliers that really make the game tough if you’re playing weaker players.

The game’s also a bit glitchy right now, with some puzzle animations freezing when it really starts to cook on your phone and some highlights not lining up with what actually happened. The first time a winning buzzer-beater fell nowhere near the net but counted anyway made me laugh out loud, until it happened against me, at least. But those are small moments in an otherwise fairly seamless experience. The real issue is NBA Ball Stars is barely a basketball game, and the most cynical read of the product is admitting there are loads of this kind of game in the market, just skinned in non-basketball ways.

Still: it’s pretty fun, and there was even a fist pump or two during some close games where I managed to pull out an improbable win thanks to some timely turnover and 3-point shooting abilities. But keeping up with everything the game requires to really develop players and create lineups that keep pace with the opponents you face in the regular season and other modes is fairly exhausting. If you’re not glued to your phone you’ll feel like you’re missing out, and if you’re glued to your phone you often won’t do more than tap a few things every couple of hours.

The hurry up and wait of the game, constantly making you pay attention to collect rewards but ultimately leaving you little to do, puts you up close and personal with the reality that everything would be just a bit easier if you were willing to pay some more money to grease the wheels. That’s a step I very rarely find myself willing to take with mobile games, which is why I don’t see a long future for the game on my phone. But if you’ve ever fantasized about building a puzzle-game dynasty with an unstoppable Klay Thompson on the Boston Celtics, Ball Stars is certainly the title for you.

Back in December E-40 and Too Short revealed that they would be joining forces with fellow West Coast rappers Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube to form a rap supergroup. The announcement came after E-40 and Too Short’s Verzuz battle. There was no official name for the group when the news was shared during an interview on The Breakfast Club, and since then, things were rather quiet in terms of music or news from the quartet. All of that changed at Triller’s Fight Club event on Saturday night, when the group, which now bears the title of Mt. Westmore, performed their first track as a group together.

Before the group took the stage, Ice Cube kicked things off by performing “It Was a Good Day” and “You Can Do It” before handing the mic off to Snoop Dogg for a solo set that included “Gin & Juice,” “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” and his newest track “CEO.” After this, a quartet appeared onstage as E-40 and Too Short joined in to complete the Mt. Westmore collective where they performed “Big Suberwoofer,” the first track from their soon-to-be released album.

During the interview on The Breakfast Club, Too Short revealed the group’s motivation were only for the culture and not money. “We just some OGs; everybody got studios, and facilities and rap beats,” he said. “It’s something I feel we’re doing this for hip-hop. You could be doing it for the bag. Nobody don’t need the bag!”

You can watch Mt. Westmore perform “Big Subwoofer” above.

The Brooklyn Nets entered Sunday’s game in Miami looking to pick up a win to keep pace in the win column with the Sixers, and remain a half game back of the 1-seed in the East. However, their task in beating a Heat team that was without Jimmy Butler got more difficult early in the first quarter when Kevin Durant checked out of the game walking gingerly and holding his left thigh.

Not long after the team announced Durant had a “left thigh contusion” that would keep him out for the remainder of the game, leaving the Nets with Kyrie Irving as the lone healthy member of their Big Three for the remainder of the afternoon.

Hopefully it is nothing more than a contusion and won’t cause a prolonged absence for Durant, who had missed two months due to a hamstring strain before returning earlier this month. KD had played four games since his hamstring injury prior to Sunday, looking like his normal self, albeit in more limited minutes. For now, the Nets will finish their game against Miami without Durant and Harden, on the shelf for his own hamstring issue, and will keep a close watch on how Durant is feeling as they head to New Orleans on Tuesday.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League was the talk of the superhero world just a few short weeks ago, and by now many people may have actually been able to finish watching the four-hour epic. With that in mind, we now know even more details about just how vast the vision Snyder had for the DC movie.

As CBR.com disclosed, Snyder spoke at JusticeCon2021 and gave even more detail about his vision for what the DC Universe had in store if he were still given the keys. We already knew there were a lot of details in Justice League that were to set the future for sequels, and he revealed that some superheroes, like Green Lantern, who didn’t appear in the film did get cast for future roles.

Speaking at Justice Con 2021, Snyder revealed that John Stewart, also known as Green Lantern, was the superhero originally intended to appear at the end of the film, but was replaced by Martian Manhunter. He explained that he would have been played by actor Wayne T. Carr.

Snyder and Carr went so far as to film a scene in the director’s driveway, though Snyder warned him that the scene may not be featured in the film. “I said, ‘Look, there’s a chance that this doesn’t make it in the movie,” Snyder warned. “I’m not 100% sure he thought it was real, legit.” There was even a suit made for him. “We had made him a CG suit and because it was COVID and we couldn’t really do a real suit… The mandate was to make it look as physical as possible.”

Stewart, the first Black superhero in the DC Universe, was the part about a hypothetical Green Lantern we already knew. Snyder revealed that much in a lengthy interview with Vanity Fair in March where he detailed how his Green Lantern cameo was replaced by an appearance from Martian Manhunter in the movie’s closing moments.

“We shot a version of this scene with Green Lantern, but the studio really fought me and said, ‘We really don’t want you to do Green Lantern,’” Snyder said. “So I made a deal with them, and they let me do this [instead].”

Okay, but which Green Lantern did Snyder want to use? “It would be John Stewart,” Snyder said. John Stewart (with an H) is the character who took over the mantle of Green Lantern in the 1970s, becoming DC’s historic first Black superhero. Reynolds’s Green Lantern was another character, known as Hal Jordan.

But the news of who would play Stewart seems to be new. Another indication this was, indeed, the case? Earlier in April, Carr posted an image from the Snyder Cut with a #restorethesnyderverse hashtag, which would certainly indicate he would like employment in a future Snyder film as Green Lantern.

We’ll see if Snyder ever gets to fulfill his oversized image of the DC universe, and if that ever includes a Green Lantern that isn’t Ryan Reynolds. But now we know what would have happened in a different, more Snyder-filled timeline.

[via CBR]

In the wake of Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election, conservative news has seen a shift away from Fox News and to smaller, more fringe networks like Newsmax and OAN. While all three were willing to parrot some degrees of Trump’s false claims that widespread voter fraud cost him the election, some conservatives fled Fox News for calling states for Joe Biden on election night and not fully embracing Trump’s rhetoric as the reality of his defeat set in.

Stories about viewers fleeing to OAN in particular surfaced in the months that followed, as the network went full election truther and repeated Trump’s claims over and over again. Even after the Capitol riots, the network has embraced Trump and his perspective long after he’s left office. But according to a New York Times story, even employees at the right-wing news network are far from true believers in the pro-Trump rhetoric they regularly air.

As the story lays out, OAN has gone even further than other Fox News competitors like Newsmax in insisting on the falsehoods Trump has spouted about coronavirus, the election and a variety of other issues. In some ways it’s like Joe Biden never became president: it didn’t broadcast his inauguration, for starters. And as recently as April, for example, they’ve referred to the former president as “President Trump” and not given Biden, the actual president, the same title.

OAN has also promoted the debunked theory that the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 were left-wing agitators. Toward the end of a March 4 news segment that described the attack as the work of “antifa” and “anti-Trump extremists” — and referred to the president as “Beijing Biden” — Mr. Sharp said, “History will show it was the Democrats, and not the Republicans, who called for this violence.” Investigations have found no evidence that people who identify with antifa, a loose collective of antifascist activists, were involved in the Capitol riot.

But despite the number of pro-Trump examples cited in the piece, off the record the story is much different. And at least one person cited evidence of OAN fans at the deadly Capitol riots on January 6 as an indication that the network is causing real harm with its misinformation. Marty Golingan, a producer who’s worked at OAN since 2016, was one of the few people willing to say on the record that people working there don’t believe the stories they tell.

He added that he and others at OAN disagreed with much of the channel’s coverage. “The majority of people did not believe the voter fraud claims being run on the air,” Mr. Golingan said in an interview, referring to his colleagues.

He recalled seeing a photo of someone in the Capitol mob holding a flag emblazoned with the OAN logo. “I was like, OK, that’s not good,” Mr. Golingan said. “That’s what happens when people listen to us.”

OAN’s leadership has defended its broadcasts, of course, but as the disclaimers it needs to put on its wild programming continue to pile up, it’s clear the network and its viewers continue to slip further from reality, and even the people telling the stories know that they’re just that.

Lil Nas X’s most recent single, “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” has brought the singer plenty of attention. Between the track’s unorthodox music video and the sale of his “Satan Shoes,” the customized Nike Air Max 97s that were made in collaboration with MSCHF, the conversation around the song was nonstop for a week after it arrived.

All this proved to be beneficial as “Montero” would go on to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard singles chart. A couple of weeks removed from this achievement, the singer stopped by Capital Radio for an interview with Roman Kemp where he shared what he hopes can happen next with the song.

According to NME, Lil Nas was asked who his dream collaborators for a potential remix would be during the interview and he replied, “Rihanna and Bad Bunny.” Kemp suggests that this remix “may already be in the pipeline” due the singer’s response, but that’s not the case yet. “I wish!” Lil Nas said. “What if I ask for it? I don’t want to jinx it.”

After the fire that was “Montero” cooled down for a bit, Lil Nas X joined Dominic Fike to star in a music video for Brockhampton’s “Count On Me.” Days later, he released some meme-worthy satan-themed merchandise for the single that includes a shirt that reads “I [heart] Jesus and that one part in the ‘Montero’ music video by Lil Nas X when he gets nasty with the devil because it was a cool form of self-expression and art.” Another said, “I WATCHED THE “Montero” VIDEO BY LIL NAS X AND ALL I GOT WITH THIS LOUSY SHIRT AND NOW I’M ALSO GAY AND LOVE SATAN.”

Each year, Europe’s best soccer clubs face off in the UEFA Champions League to determine who is the best team on the continent, but it’s possible that competition will no longer draw some of the richest clubs. Instead, a report from Tariq Panja of the New York Times states that 12 of the biggest clubs in Europe have agreed in principle to launch a closed super league.

The clubs that the Times reports have agreed to breakaway are six from England (Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, and Tottenham), three from Spain (Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid), and three from Italy (Juventus, Inter Milan, and AC Milan). The plan was put in place by Juventus president Andrea Agnelli and has garnered enough support to be on the precipice of becoming a reality. Still, they’ve failed to land some other top clubs like PSG and Bayern Munich, which have rebuffed offers to join.

Further illustrating how real the threat of the richest clubs breaking away is, the top leagues and football associations put out statements condemning the super league and noting that they’ll do everything in their power to stop such a “cynical project” from taking shape.

The biggest threat they can make is to ban players on those clubs from participating in international competitions, such as the European Championship and, with FIFA on board, the World Cup. It is a fascinating power battle between the richest clubs and the leagues, and the repercussions for all parties involved — and the rest of the clubs in European soccer — could be massive.

The plan is for the Super League to play its matches during the week and allow for its clubs to continue playing in their domestic leagues, banking on those leagues not following through on threats to remove them from their respective leagues. They are looking to land 16 permanent members, starting with those 12 clubs, and then add four clubs each year based on qualifiers, breaking the league into two groups, with the top four teams from each group qualifying for knockout stages. While the domestic leagues, UEFA, and FIFA can threaten to ban teams and players from competing in their competitions if they choose to go into this super league, the reality is, at least for the domestic leagues and national FAs, the ramifications of following through on those threats could be disastrous financially for all involved.

The loss of revenue and demands for refunds from those that hold broadcast rights should, say, the Premier League try to ban the six clubs that have apparently agreed to join would be massive. National FAs that ban players from international competitions would almost certainly lose their best players and have a much harder time fielding the best possible teams to compete with, say, a Germany which wouldn’t face that conundrum provided Bayern Munich continues to rebuff overtures to join the super league.

In all, the idea is fascinating and could create a massive shakeup in European soccer not seen for generations, and one that would be massively controversial among fans. The bottom line, though, is the clubs agreeing to join are being promised 350 million Euros out of the gate, and given the losses seen during the pandemic, they’re looking to capitalize on whatever financial windfalls can be found wherever they can.

Concerts are slowly beginning to make their return across the United States as several states in the southern part of the country have allowed venues to host performances for artists. An example of this came Saturday night in Phoenix, Arizona where Lil Durk held his Smurkchella concert. The night was set to be a fun and enjoyable event as the rapper would perform some of his biggest hits with a few guest acts including Coi Leray and Pooh Sheisty, but things unfortunately came to an early end after gunshots were reported at the concert.

According to Phoenix’s ABC 15, officers were called to the city’s Celebrity Theatre after a woman was injured in the shooting. The report says she was at the front of the stage when a bullet grazed her leg. Police added that once the shots rang out, the attendees frantically attempted to flee the scene, which resulted in another person being injured in the process. Several fans were able to capture the concert’s atmosphere when the shooting started. Video of Lil Durk and his crew scrambling to get off stage and nearly getting into a fight with someone could also be seen.

The incident comes after Durk teamed up with Pooh Shiesty to perform “Back In Blood” on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. He also joined Megan Thee Stallion in a video for their “Movie” collaboration.

You can watch footage of the incident above.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.