Month: May 2021

Whether you grew up calling him Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, or Sean “Diddy” Combs, the entertainer variously known as all three is officially “Sean Love Combs” on his driver’s license, which he shared on Instagram earlier today (forgetting to blank out his address and other identifying details — although, it’s hard to imagine he’d be hard to find if one wanted to do so in the first place). Diddy previously “joked” about changing his name to “Brother Love,” then just to “Love” a few years ago, but as it turns out, he was dead serious — in a way.

Of course, the name change to a more positive moniker hasn’t cleared up very much of the confusion around his stage name; on DJ Khaled’s recently released 12th album Khaled Khaled, Combs is still credited as “Puff Daddy” on “This Is My Year” which also features A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, Big Sean, and Rick Ross. And while Puff Daddy closes the track with much of his signature big money talk, his trademark motivational mouthiness has drawn criticism elsewhere, as fans took issue with his open letter to General Motors chastising the auto manufacturer for exploiting Black artists — a practice he’s been accused of himself multiple times over the years.

You can see Diddy’s new license reading his updated name here.

A few weeks ago, something unexpected happened: Tig Notaro went viral, for an appearance in the Army of the Dead trailer that was declared by social media to be both “badass” and “sexy AF.” No one was as surprised by this as the comic herself, who confessed on The Tonight Show that she didn’t even know what “AF” meant. This latest Tig news isn’t quite as earth-shaking as that, but it’s still one for the history books (probably): Notaro is getting a new HBO comedy special — but with a twist.

What is that twist? That it will be fully-animated. According to HBO, that’s a history first, though they could be wrong and some stand-up special expert may crop up to point out, say, George Carlin did that in 1986 and everyone forgot. But for now, Notaro is making history, and good for her, not the least because almost all stand-up specials tend to look and feel alike. (Then again, the few attempts to change the basic format — like that one Chris Rock one where it keeps cutting between three different shows in three different places and three different outfits — essentially prove that tradition works here for a reason.)

An animated stand-up special, though, sounds like it could work. Besides, it sounds like a close cousin of shows like The Midnight Gospel, which animates podcast episodes, turning simple chats into psychedelic whatzits. Between this special, due on HBO and HBO Max this summer, and her possibly being the coolest part of Zack Snyder’s forthcoming zombie pic, Notaro could gives us something we never knew we always wanted.

(Via The AV Club)

In a new interview with Adweek, Travis Scott rejects terms like “branding” and “marketing,” which may strike some as sort of ironic. Over the course of the past year, his brand partnerships netted him over $30 million, landing him on Forbes magazine’s coveted 30 Under 30 list thanks to deals with McDonald’s, Nike, and Sony PlayStation. He also launched his Cactus spiked seltzer brand earlier this year, pulling down some truly impressive sales figures for a brand-new product. Still, despite all that, he insists his process is based on vibes, not a business strategy based on branding.

Receiving Adweek’s inaugural Creator Visionary of the Year designation, Travis downplayed his gift for selling himself, saying, “I don’t like words like ‘branding’ and ‘marketing.’ I just wasn’t ever really into it, you know? I guess I’m a naturalist in that sense… I’m just more about putting out very cool things that inspire me and I hope one day inspire other people. I’m trying to bring a utopian effect … hoping to inspire the next person to just get creative or even just live their life in an aesthetically pleasing, vibed-out way.”

However, he also pointed out how choosy he can be when picking partners to collaborate with. “I can’t do anything that I’m just not totally comfortable with,” he said. “I was never into being handed anything and just standing behind [a product]. Then we wouldn’t be creators. I’ve always set out to formulate something to bring to each partnership. I’ve just stood on that since day one and maintained it… I do think there is care in how you present things. It’s all about how you deliver things to people. My intentions aren’t to market a brand.”

You can read the full profile here.

A landmark new study has found that LGBTQ boys from Gen Z (1998 to 2010) are much more comfortable being open about their sexuality than previous generations.

The study, published in the journal Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, found that 66% of gay or bisexual boys between the ages of 13 to 18 were “out” to their mothers or other female parental figures, and 49% were out to their fathers or male prenatal figure.

The study examined 1,194 boys aged 13-to-18 who identify as gay, bisexual, or as being attracted to people regardless of gender.

---

That’s a massive uptick since the 1990s when an estimated 40% of gay and bisexual male teens were out to their mothers and only 30% to their fathers.

“This study is encouraging in that it shows that many teens, including those under 18 years old, are comfortable with their sexuality,” said lead author David A. Moskowitz, PhD, assistant professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University’s Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing.

“At the same time, we must be cautious, as the data also point to some of the same barriers and discrimination that previous generations have faced. Work still needs to be done,” Moskovitz continued.

via Pexels

The study found that white teens were more likely to come out to their parents than Black teens and that religious affiliation also plays a big role in determining who comes out.

Participants who aren’t religious were more likely to come out to their parents than those who are.

“This gives us an understanding of the factors that move teenagers to share this type of information with the people closest to them,” said Moskowitz. “We can now compare these practices with how other generations deal with these issues and think about what it all means for future generations.”

One reason why Generation Z is more comfortable being out of the closet than older generations may be their exposure to a greater number of LGBTQ peers. A poll from last February found that Gen Z is the queerest generation, with 15% of teen respondents identifying as queer, trans, or nonbinary.

The study shows that LGBTQ teens are growing up in a more tolerant world but there is still a disparity between the comfort level male teens have with their mothers and fathers. Dr. Michael C. LaSala says that LGBTQ males have a harder time coming out to their dads due to societal expectations of masculinity.

“They realize if they are being chided in the outside world for not being real men that this will reflect poorly on their dads, who will be angry and disappointed once they come out,” LaSala said in Psychology Today.

LaSala believes that many fathers will need to overcome societal pressures in order to be more supportive of their LGBTQ sons.

“Certainly all fathers need to show that they love their sons and daughters, but fathers of gay sons need to find ways to surmount the barrier of homophobia and socially scripted queasiness about gay sex to show their sons that they are indeed lovable and deserve the love of a good man,” LaSala adds.

via Pexels

Overall, the study is great news for the LGBTQ community because those who are open about their sexuality suffer fewer psychological problems than those who are not.

Lesbians, gays, and bisexuals who were out and open about their sexuality are less likely to have anxiety, depression, and burnout. They also produce less cortisol, the hormone associated with stress.

Gay and bisexual men who are out of the closet are also are more physically fit and have lower rates of depression than straight men.

Moskowitz believes that the research can be used to help even more young men accept their sexuality. “An important next step would be to determine the coming out practices of females in this age group,” Moskowitz said. “This study provides a roadmap for such an effort. In the meantime, these findings should be helpful to those who work with teenagers identifying as sexual minorities.”

The act of rolling up to a weed spot with little more than ID in hand is a luxury that Cali-based potheads like myself take for granted. But unless you’re currently living in California or one of the 15 other fully weed legal states, it’s not a convenience that every American is free to experience. That said, the cannabis industry has been booming since long before the legalization push began — meaning that know-how and trade secrets aren’t intrinsically linked to what’s on a person’s resume.

So it goes with Felix Murry and Kingston Woods (who prefers the mononym “Kingston”), the brains behind independently owned Cannabis Cup-winning brand GasHouse. While their expertise is undeniable, much of it predates medical-based legalization in Georgia (and decriminalization in Atlanta). In other words, by the time GasHouse became a legitimate brand with a real name based on the West Coast, the duo had built their reputations throughout ATL and beyond.

“Me and Kingston met through a mutual friend,” Murry tells me over the phone. “I was with a friend of mine that lives in Georgia, we were smoking a joint one day and it was really, really good product. So I asked him where he got it and he told me he had gotten it from a friend of his who grew it locally. He introduced us and once I talked to Kingston I realized how knowledgeable he was in the field of cultivation… I had never really met anyone down south that was as advanced as he was.”

In seven short years, GasHouse has gone from a fully underground grow operation in the suburbs of Atlanta to a six-time Cannabis Cup winning weed brand operating in multiple states. We linked with Murry and Kingston to talk good weed, what they think about celebrities entering the weed space, and the future of cannabis — from the questions you need to start asking your budtender to how the industry needs to change in response to the failed war on drugs.

I know you have both been in the industry — both in a mainstream respect and an underground one — for some time. But how did you get into the cultivation aspect of cannabis?

Kingston: We were doing it underground for a while, but maybe 2001 was when I was first introduced to the cultivation. I was living in the Florida area at the time. Long story short, a guy showed me a grow room and life has never been the same! I was so intrigued by cannabis, I had never seen it in that form before, I always only saw it right before smoking it, getting ready to break it down. But my first time ever seeing cannabis growing in a room, I never even thought that was possible. From that day I just started growing. I put together my first grow house and I just kept getting better at it as years got along, and into this thing, it has become now. Cannabis is mainstream now, but when I started you couldn’t even mention you grew cannabis.

Way before mainstream, we were doing it. So when it did finally become mainstream, it was easy for us. I wouldn’t say easy… but it was kind of like a plug-and-play — we had already so much experience. We had been doing it so long, it just wasn’t a brand before. There are people that own cannabis brands, but we’re coming from the culture of the underground scene. In the era when we didn’t have a name, we were already doing what we loved. We had to be secretive and undercover, you couldn’t tell the closest person to you about it, that’s the culture I came from, that’s how I was taught.

Obviously having experience moving product gave you some sort of business advantage, but what disadvantages did you encounter? I’m thinking regulatory roadblocks you had to get through now that didn’t exist before.

Kingston: Well we had to relearn everything on the fly. We ended up leaving Georgia and going out west to Oregon when it became regulatory. We never knew we would encounter things like that, we had to go down to the county and city to get certain licenses. Trying to hire lawyers… the frustrating part is that rules are still coming out, the lawyer might get the statute on Monday, but everyone got it on Monday, so the lawyers didn’t really know anything. They were learning as we were learning, but we needed licenses fast, you get charged money but you’re not getting any results. So we had to learn to read the laws ourselves and figure them out ourselves. We had to go to the county every day. People will help you along the way here and there, but that was the only way to do it.

Once a new statute drops everyone wants to get in, the lawyers are reading and learning, it’s just one of those things you have to be so passionate about you have to seek out the knowledge. Along the path of that we figured it out, though. We got our recreational growing licenses in Oregon without a lawyer’s help, just a team of people having a passion and wanting it badly.

I’ve read that helping young people of color through the industry is a passion project for the brand. How is GasHouse helping specifically and how do you hope to continue that?

Felix: One of the first things we did when we came to California was hire a young group of guys that we brought into the facility we were opening in Oakland. Some of them had experience from the underground market, some didn’t have experience at all. We started training them, teaching them how to cultivate, how to package cannabis, teaching them the regulatory laws of California, all of those guys are still involved in the industry. They went to other states, took the knowledge, and built on top of it. We always have groups we are mentoring in the Bay Area.

What is your opinion on celebrities gobbling up the cannabis space?

[Both start laughing.]

Kingston: It’s funny to us! We’ve been doing it so long. I remember doing this back in the day, the first time I felt fear, maybe it was in 2003. I remember walking out to my mailbox and getting my mail. I could smell it. I got the whiff of it, “Oh my god, it’s my house! I can smell it.”

This was the time when — if I would’ve gotten caught — I would’ve got 30 years in prison. And I knew that! But I had so much love for the plant, I didn’t feel like I was doing anything wrong. How could I get in trouble for growing a plant? So now, you put in all that sacrifice for that many years, you keep things going, you share that medicine with all these people way before a celebrity even thought about touching it.

Even to the point when we started in 2015 and talked about building our brand. Celebrities didn’t want to get involved publically.

Felix: They were scared to death!

Kingston: Didn’t want to get in, or be a solid investor, nothing! So to see everyone in the last 12 months come out of the woodwork, we laugh at it.

Felix: It’s not that easy building a brand in cannabis. Just because you put your face on it doesn’t mean people are going to buy it. It’s a lot deeper than that to build a following in cannabis. Laughing, singing, even playing sports, it always takes someone to be involved in a business to make that thing successful.

I’ll give you an example — The Gary Payton strain. If Gary Payton’s strain wasn’t pushed by people that had been involved in the cannabis business for 20 plus years, it wouldn’t have been successful. It would’ve flopped like every new strain. Because of the people that were involved in introducing that strain to the world and the respect and authority that they’ve had — that’s what made that strain a success. We can go down a list of celebrities, most have failed. They just use their celebrity as the only thing to get people to try the product. But if it’s not good, it’s not good.

Kingston: I think it worked when cannabis was illegal, Snoop Dogg, Wiz Khalifa, even Bob Marley, those were the faces of cannabis back then. The cultivators like me, we could never be the face. We were hunted!

Felix: If anything, the strains were the faces!

Kingston: Right. But only celebrities could promote it back then. They could smoke it on stage, or in a music video. Back then you didn’t know where it came from you thought it came from Mexico or the mountains of somewhere back in those days.

But think about it. Snoop Dogg isn’t big in cannabis. Wiz Khalifa isn’t big in cannabis. We have a change going on, people are starting to understand cannabis in a different way because the cultivators are saying different things like “We should smoke clean cannabis, what about the pesticides, who grew it, what brand is it coming from, what facility? Has It been tested?”

Sometimes you have things in cannabis that shouldn’t be used. We’re talking about genetics and pesticides, that’s a different way of thinking that’s never been done before. Growers weren’t about to come out and say anything back in the day.

Felix: There was a time in cannabis when it was all about money and growing stuff so people would use things that were bad to ingest just to have a bountiful crop, but me and Kingston were not with that. That’s using cheat codes, we want people to be safe when using our products and associate our brand with something clean. When I see Coca-Cola, I don’t think about it I just grab it. I know it’s going to be good. I know it’s going to taste the same. I want GasHouse to be the same thing. You see GasHouse, you grab it, you’re getting something reputable and clean. What you see is what you get.

What questions aren’t people asking when they buy weed? There has to be something more to it than looking for the highest THC?

Kingston: That’s the number one question! Everybody just thinks about the THC, if it’s high and I’m totally against that. Understand it takes more than just high, you’ve got cannabinoids and terpenes, all of these things add up to give you the experience. You can have 50% THC, what you’re going to smoke is not enjoyable, you’re just going to fall on the couch and go to sleep.

But you’ve got different terpenes that change moods. Think about lavender, people burn lavender or rub it on their skin, because it gives you a calming effect. You have 100 or something cannabinoids. The ones we know about are Delta 9, THC, CBD… everybody knows those but there are over 100 and they all give you a different feeling, and they need to have a balance. Those terpenes are going to make it enjoyable to inhale, that cannabinoid is going to make you sleepy, that Delta 9 is going to give you the psychoactive effect. It’s all about balance.

Most of the customers just know THC and maybe the budtender even only knows THC. That’s all we ever knew was high high high. These narratives are beginning to change and that’s happening industry-wide.

Is it hard to develop new strains to compete against old classics like Grand Daddy Purp, Skywalker, etc?

Felix: When it comes to our customer base, I guess we have a feel for their palate. Just like a winemaker knows the grapes to use for his particular following, the flavors that they may like. Or a bourbon maker knows the palate he’s making for. When we have a strain, we try to take two strains that have characteristics we like, then we think about who our customer is, what kind of terpenes they are looking for.

Take Jack Herer, for example. As great as it is, that’s not something our customer base would be into. So you have to know your customer.

I want to get deeper into organic and natural gardening. What’s the GasHouse philosophy on growing?

Kingston: I’ve been talking about organics for years and then I stopped because people didn’t care enough. We have a whole green movement going on on the planet, we have vegans and people who don’t want to eat meat anymore because of sustainability reasons and greenhouse gases and these sorts of things but nobody seems to care where the cannabis comes from. They don’t question what’s in there, cannabis is sometimes 90 percent synthetics feeding! You have vegans and healthy people smoking any kind of bud — it makes no sense to me at all. When I started saying this years ago, I got a lot of pushback. A lot of growers and farmers didn’t like me saying that, and exposing that, that you’re not supposed to grow ingestible plants with certain things.

You also hear a lot of “Organics is trash, it’s not good, it’s garbage product,” which makes no logical sense to me at all. I’ve grown good organics, organic cannabis can be great, it can be expensive also and that’s what it’s all about. They don’t want to grow it because it takes more time, more money, more passion as a grower to cultivate it. I also feel like it’s going to be a thing of the future once people realize and testing starts becoming more strenuous and strict. Pesticides aren’t good!

Obviously, the industry is going through some rapid changes right now — what does the weed industry need to do better going forward?

Felix: I would like to see it more inclusive in other states. California had a good idea. They made a good step in the right direction as far as making an industry where everyone can get potentially paid. What I have seen other states do is let private corporations come through and create monopolies and the local citizens aren’t benefiting off of it at all. I would like to see some of the guidelines become not as strenuous as they are in other states.

It’s hard for a regular person to come up with a million dollars or even $200 for an application fee, whether they get it or not and I think that was put in place to keep certain people out. That’s the part that I think should be worked on because that’s trying to put a divide between regular people and this plant and that’s taking a big corporate direction. I don’t know if you can stop that because it’s billions maybe trillions of dollars in play but I wish you could change that.

Kingston: Some places and good people are trying. The city of Oakland tried with their social equity program, they had to iron out some kinks though because what you realize is you give people a social equity chance but they don’t have business or finance skills to run that social equity license. They don’t have business know-how or finances to move forward to make the business successful.

Florida didn’t even give people a chance. Georgia same way. That negatively affects the people most impacted by drugs. So many people in South Florida have been going to jail for cannabis since God knows when and they knew nothing about this licensing thing for medical marijuana, the state just snuck it in, did it, and it was over. Every city impacted by the drug war and the prison population should automatically have a social equity program for minorities. That needs to happen.

Right now, from a consumer, grower, and customer perspective, what is the best state for cannabis?

Felix: Oklahoma. I would say as of right now, it’s still not heavily regulated so that is the reason so many growers and brands are expanding into Oklahoma because the taxes and fees are a lot cheaper. I think it’s 17% in California, the state has put us in a situation where you have to give all of your money to taxes. Oklahoma took a different approach and it makes it very attractive for people to go there.

But it’ll probably end up like Oregon, so many people will go to Oklahoma soon, it’s a very attractive place to build a war chest, and build big bucks in cash to make other plays in Detroit, New York, and whatever else opens up.

What can people expect from GasHouse this year?

Felix: We are currently in expansion, opening up in Michigan, Maryland, Arizona, we are rapidly expanding the brand in other states and working really hard on our hemp and CBD products, that’s been our baby for the last couple of years. We are in most states with that, but we are really drilling down on that this year. Hemp, CBD… Wellness, people are really excited about that so we are carving out our space.

Kingston: We started out the brand at the right time so we have that brand recognition to win cannabis cups and certain things and people talk about us, word of mouth, we continue to come with the quality because we take the high road. We believe in quality first, it’s not about the money, it’s about continuing to build market value in our brand.

In both a truly weird flex and the most stunning admission of political corruption from a sitting U.S. Senator we’ve seen in quite some time, Republican Ted Cruz penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, basically copping to the fact that he’s received bribes from corporations in exchange for political favors.

Cruz’s confession was anything but accidental. In fact, the Congressman from Texas seemed pretty eager to reveal his close working relationship with companies like Coca-Cola, Boeing, and Major League Baseball. Cruz wrote the op-ed to, as he described it, take a stand against “woke” CEOs who opposed Georgia’s latest round of voter legislation. While defending Republican support of harsher voting laws in the state, Cruz threatened companies that have publicly opposed measures to curb voting rights and announced they’d be pulling events and cutting back on their financial support of the state. But it’s the way he tried to leverage his political power that’s raised eyebrows within the ethics community — and on Twitter.

Cruz strongly suggested that in the past, Republican lawmakers have “look[ed] the other way” when big companies owed billions in back taxes, caved to lobbyists, and granted billions in corporate welfare in exchange for campaign funding — something Cruz promised he’d stop participating in later in the piece. But, as it turns out, people who actually value their morals took issue with Cruz’s bizarre self-own, people like Walter Shaub, the former head of the Government Office of Ethics who worked under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Shaub tweeted out his response to the article calling it “the most openly corrupt thing a Senator has said.”

And if having the guy who used to be in charge of determining what’s ethical and what’s not labeling you a political mercenary willing to sell your soul to the highest bidder isn’t compelling enough, seeing how Twitter reacted to the senator’s essay might give him some pause.

Enjoying watching Cruz repeatedly hit the self-destruct button on his political career is starting to feel a lot like taking candy from a baby. It’s just too easy to be any fun.

Running Wild With Bear Grylls (Nat Geo, 9:00pm) — Legendary nice-guy-who-plays-every-bad-dude Danny Trejo joins Bear to do the daredevil-in-nature thing. Despite being a record-breaker for his countless movie deaths, Danny will prevail here, but it won’t be easy. He endures scorching temperatures while traversing cliffs and climbing huge boulders within the Arches National Park in Utah. The dude’s done prison time, so how does this adventure measure up? You gotta tune in to find out.

9-1-1 (Fox, 8:00pm) — A hit-and-run puts a familiar face into the hospital, and Athena’s digging into the case of a missing woman with Buck’s assistance.

9-1-1: Lone Star (Fox, 9:00pm) — Owen’s on the hunt for a serial arsonist while being forced into downtime mode following his surgery, and the relationship between T.K. and Carlos is moving to another level.

Pray, Obey, Kill (HBO, 9:00 & 10:00pm) — Here’s the conclusion of the documentary series from investigative journalists Anton Berg and Martin Johnson, who retraced what happened on a frigid night when a small Swedish village saw a woman murdered and a neighbor shot before a nanny confessed to the acts of violence while citing a strange motivation. This week, anonymous texts drop bread crumbs from former cult members about the local abuse they suffered.

Debris (NBC, 10:00pm) — Bryan and Finola are still working to figure out what went wrong and what threatens the very fabric of reality.

Breeders (FX, 10:00pm) — Martin Freeman’s starring turn in this comedy enters the sophomore season with new parenting challenges. This week, one of Paul’s old friendships could present a cost to Ava, and it’s not helping his relationship with Ally.

Jimmy Kimmel Live — Sean Hayes, Casey Wilson, Jason Aldean

The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon — Aidy Bryant, Girl In Red

Late Night With Seth Meyers — Michael Che, Richard Kind, Mario Duplantier

The Late Late Show With James Corden — Tiffany Haddish, Dominic Fike

In case you missed these streaming picks:

The Handmaid’s Tale: Season 4 (Hulu series) — Elisabeth Moss has so much going on these days, but she’s going back again to fight for freedom against the totalitarian government of Gilead. This season, she’ll lead the rebellion while fighting for justice and revenge, but perhaps the biggest threat she’ll face is staying true to herself and the relationships that she values most. Moss and the show keep on racking up Emmys, and she’s back with more with Joseph Fiennes, Yvonne Strahovski, Alexis Bledel, O-T Fagbenle, Bradley Whitford, and Max Minghella. Expect the show to get nomadic this season, leaving the Boston area and officially abandoning home base, which must have presented quite the challenge while filming during a pandemic (as if the show wasn’t socially relevant enough already).

Yasuke (Netflix series) — Netflix will up its anime game with this dazzling series from Japanese animation studio MAPPA, and the project arrives with quite a pedigree. LaKeith Stanfield voices a character who’s based upon the real-life first African samurai, who struggles to shed his past life of violence while striving to keep a peaceful existence. However, he must reluctantly pick up his sword again when a war-torn, feudal Japanese village becomes ground central for warring daimyo. The score’s courtesy of Flying Lotus, and creator/director/producer LeSean Thomas will build upon his proven track record (The Boondocks, Cannon Busters, and Black Dynamite) of interweaving anime and Black culture with a big boost from head writer Nick Jones Jr.

Despite her self-proclaimed “hardcore conservative” beliefs, Meghan McCain has been a vocal supporter of not just the COVID-19 vaccine, but vaccines in general. The View co-host has a documented history of criticizing “anti-vaxxers” like Democratic primary candidate Marianne Williamson. However, the internal struggle between McCain’s pro-vaccine stance and her love of Republican talking points spilled out into the open on Monday as she offered up a strange, scattered criticism of the COVID-19 vaccine efforts.

While repeatedly stating that she herself is vaccinated and that she encourages everyone to get vaccinated, McCain blamed the Biden administration for stoking vaccine hesitancy. “The messaging toward evangelicals and Republicans is ‘You dumb hillbillies, stay the hell away from me.’ And I don’t think there’s any way that’s gonna convince anyone of anything if that’s the messaging coming out of the White House,” McCain said.

Despite the fact that there’s no official messaging coming from the White House where “dumb hillbillies” are told not to get COVID shots, McCain continued her attack on the vaccine process by questioning their efficacy, which is dangerous waters, especially for someone who claims to be opposed to anti-vaxxer beliefs. Via The Wrap:

“A lot of this feels like it’s more about control than science. If the vaccine is 94 percent effective, which we are told by science and the CDC and all smart people who come on this show it is — if the vaccine works, why do we still have to wear masks outdoors? Why do we have to wear masks inside? And that’s also part of the messaging problem,” McCain argued.

McCain finished her rant by calling the current messaging “psychotic” and claiming that she’s come up with a campaign that will get Republicans on board, but nobody will listen to her. McCain neglected to share what that campaign would be.

(Via The View)

This past weekend, Netflix’s highly-anticipated new anime, Yasuke, hit the streaming service and we here at Uproxx love it. The series follows the rise of the first Black samurai, Yasuke, during one of Japan’s most tumultuous periods of time, and while the show features an abundance of science fiction and supernatural elements, at its core is a very real story about a very real man. While the legend of Yasuke has been contested, forgotten, and rewritten, there is no denying the power of both him and his story, which is so grand it gives the Netflix series a run for its money. Here are five facts about the man who inspired not only the show, but countless people across the globe.

1. Yasuke was born in Africa before going to Japan as an Italian missionary’s bodyguard.

While there is some debate over Yasuke’s life prior to his arrival in Japan, it is believed he was born in either Mozambique, Ethiopia, or Sudan sometime in the 1550s. It is presumed that as a boy, Yasuke was kidnapped and enslaved by Portuguese traders, where he was trained to fight — as his quick rise to fame in Japan seem indictive of some combat experience. Others, however, say his enslavement wasn’t likely due to that very reason. Regardless, Yasuke entered the service of Alessandro Valignano, an Italian Jesuit missionary, and accompanied him on his mission to Japan in 1579.

2. Yasuke arrived in Japan during the Sengoku period, also known as the “warring states era.”

From 1467 to 1615, Japan was in a period of constant social upheaval and civil unrest, as many of the countries various daimyo — or feudal lords — waged war against one another for land, resources, and support from the Japanese emperor’s military, the shogunate. When Yasuke arrived in Japan in 1579, tensions were once again increasing. However, Yasuke was fortunate enough to meet the first of the three men who would come to be known as the “three great unifiers of Japan”: Oda Nobunaga.

3. When Oda Nobunaga first met Yasuke, Nobunaga believed he was a god.

Due to Yasuke’s massive stature, resemblance to the dark-skinned Buddha, and resemblance to the guardian demon of prosperity, or “Daikokuten,” Oda Nobunaga believed Yasuke to be divine. After reportedly trying to rub the pigment off Yasuke, ending rumors it might have been ink, Nobunaga threw a feast in his honor and bestowed upon him many gifts. In addition, Nobunaga wasn’t the only one bewildered and impressed by Yasuke. According to historian Lawrence Winkler, his arrival in Kyoto caused “such a sensation that people climbed over one another to get a glimpse of him with some being crushed to death.”

4. Yasuke become the first foreign-born, and Black, samurai — and did so quickly.

Once settled in Japan, Yasuke was recruited by Nobunaga and rose through his ranks quickly. According to Floyd Webb, a filmmaker working on a documentary about the larger-than-life figure, Yasuke not only had incredible command of the Japanese language, but “understood the cultural language of Japan and loved to dance and perform Utenzi — a historic form of Swahili narrative poetry celebrating heroic deeds.” Within a year, he was riding alongside Nobunaga in battle, and was given his own home, servants, and a stipend. Yasuke was also given a katana — a symbol of the Japanese samurai class — and was allegedly taken on as Nobunaga’s weapon bearer, one of the most highly regarded, and trusted, positions in all of Japan.

5. Yasuke’s life was spared during the fall of Oda Nobunaga.

During the summer of 1582, Oda’s samurai general, Mitsuhide Akechi, attacked Oda’s residence in Kyoto, beginning the Battle of Honno-ji Temple. Unfortunately, this battle would mark the end of Nobunaga’s life and his mission of unifying Japan. Rather than lose his honor, Nobunaga took his own life, and performed the ritual “seppuku.” According to historian Thomas Lockley, author of African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan, Yasuke was then taken prisoner by Akechi’s troops, but was ultimately spared because he was not Japanese. He then became a “ronin,” or samurai without a master. After the events of 1582, there are no records of the first Black samurai, whose history was all but lost for centuries. However, this intrigue allows the Yasuke showrunners complete freedom to interpret and speculate about Yasuke and his legacy.

May 22 will mark the finale of Saturday Night Live‘s 46th season and in the final two weeks, the show’s musical guests will be two of 2021’s most successful, chart-topping young stars. May 15, “Driver’s License” singer Olivia Rodrigo will perform in an episode hosted by The Prom‘s Keegan-Michael Key, while the season finale will feature Ana Taylor-Joy of The Queen’s Gambit and “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” rabble-rouser Lil Nas X.

Incidentally, each of the young music stars’ No. 1 hits have been the subjects of sketches on previous episodes of SNL. In February, guest host Regé-Jean Page and cast regulars Alex Moffat, Beck Bennett, Bowen Yang, Kenan Thompson, Mikey Day, and Pete Davidson participated in a tongue-in-cheek analysis of “Driver’s License” from the ironic perspective of the all-male denizens of a pool hall unexpectedly relating to the song’s teenage emotions. Rodrigo called the sketch “the best birthday present ever” in a tweet expressing her approval.

Meanwhile, the conservative establishment-trolling video for “Montero” was lightly lampooned in an early-April sketch that saw Chris Redd stand in as Lil Nas to address the kerfuffle over the video and its tie-in “Satan shoes” from MSCHF. The sketch saw Redd-as-Nas perform a lap dance on “God” to balance out the bad vibes from his similar moves on the devil in the “Montero” video, minus the neck-snapping at the end. Nas’ reply was equally cheeky, as he joked “SNL going to hell.”

In addition, Nas responded to SNL’s announcement, revealing that he’d be performing a new song in addition to “Montero.”