Month: June 2021

Game 6 of the series between the Atlanta Hawks and Philadelphia 76ers could not have been more tense. The Hawks found themselves up 3-2 in the series and had zero interest in needing to fly back to Philly to secure a berth in the Eastern Conference Finals. The Sixers, meanwhile, were in a win-or-go-home situation, and considering the myriad of questions that seem to always surround the franchise, losing as the 1-seed would have led to a potentially precarious offseason.

Basically, it was sensational television, to the point that we even had something completely insane happen that was not a fight between Joel Embiid and John Collins (although that happened, too). With 1:59 remaining, the Sixers tried to inbound the ball, but almost immediately, the lights went out at State Farm Arena.

It was very weird, but credit to the fans in attendance for making the best of it by busting out the flashlights on their various cell phones.

Things ended up getting sorted out pretty quickly and the two teams got back to trying to play a basketball game, but at the very least, nothing particularly bad seemed to have happen and we got a really cool visual out of the whole thing, which is fun.

The Eastern Conference Semifinal series between the Philadelphia 76ers and Atlanta Hawks has been spicy throughout, as the four-seed Hawks entered Friday night with a 3-2 series lead and both eyes on punching their ticket to the conference finals. But first, they had to win Game 6, and in the game’s waning moments, a fracas broke out involving Joel Embiid and John Collins.

Philly found itself up, 92-85, with just over four minutes left in the fourth quarter. Embiid was battling down low and attempted to bowl through Collins en route to a layup, but was called for an offensive foul as both dudes hit the deck hard with Embiid landing on Collins.

While on the ground, Collins shoved Embiid, who got up and went chest-to-chest with the opposing big man. It’s unclear if Embiid began forcing Collins backward or if Trae Young’s shoving in his back played a role, but the two had to be separated.

According to Malika Andrews of ESPN, one element of this was Bruno Fernando of the Hawks coming off the bench.

Ultimately, the foul against Embiid stood — Doc Rivers challenged it to no avail — and both Embiid or Collins were hit with technical fouls before play resumed.

Love her or hate her, sometimes Azealia Banks is the only woman for the job at hand. Sometimes she’s off on her own planet, trying to discredit Megan Thee Stallion’s shooting claims, or literally boiling her dead cat, but sometimes she’s right on the money. And today’s job at hand? Speaking truth to Candace Owens, the insistently right-wing, Conservative pundit — who also happens to be a Black woman — who tends to make claims like using “they/them” pronouns is “poor grammar,” or declaring the recognition of Juneteenth as a national holiday an extension of “segregation.”

Juneteenth was, rather famously, the day that African-Americans in Texas were liberated after they were purposely kept ignorant of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and remained in slavery for more than two years after the practice was outlawed. But Owens is, for some reason, against making it clear that Black Americans weren’t really free on the 4th of July back in 1776 and recognizing Juneteenth as a federal holiday, like the Senate just unanimously agreed to do. So, Banks broke down for her just what a day in the life for a Black woman in America would’ve been like back then.

“According to this logic, on July 4, 1776, you would still be enslaved,” Banks wrote as the caption on a screenshot post of Owens’ tweet. “Most likely on the verge of starvation due to all of America’s food supply having been prioritized for the war, while you hand sew American flags and struggle to wet nurse some depressed 24-year-old white widow’s sickly child until your nipples are chapped and dry. Whereafter, you will be whipped by her 80-year-old uncle for your own malnourishment and inability to produce milk, then sent to toil over a wood-burning stove — blistering your hands while [being] forced to make a peasantly meal of biscuits and gravy.

You will be watched closely by her irate, sunburned and whisky soaked 80 year old uncle to be sure you do not sneak a single biscuit or fingerful of roux to yourself. after you’ve watched everyone eat, you will be sent to do the cleaning up. Your last task will be brushing the stressed and balding white widows hair to prepare for her sleeping bonnet, a deep rest in her comfortable canopy bed. Next your final descent down the stairs and out the back door where you proudly sleep on a bed bug infested pile of hay in a 6×4 cabin you share with 4 other slaves. Happy Independence Day @realcandaceowens.”

What else is there to say?

Since his first hit single “Keep Your Head Up” in 2011, award-winning multi-platinum recording artist Andy Grammer has made a name for himself as the king of the feel-good anthem. From “Good to Be Alive (Hallelujah)” to “Honey, I’m Good” to “Back Home” and more, his positive, upbeat songs have blared on beaches and at backyard barbecues every summer.

So what does a singer who loves to perform in front of live audiences and is known for uplifting music do during an unexpectedly challenging year of global pandemic lockdown?

He goes inward.

Grammer told Upworthy that losing the ability to perform during the pandemic forced him to look at where his self-worth came from. “I thought I would have scored better, to be honest,” he says. “Like, ‘Oh, I get it from all the important, right places!’ And then it’s taken all away in one moment, and you’re like, ‘Oh, nope, I was getting a lot from that.’

“It’s kind of cool to break all the way down and then hopefully put myself back together in a way that’s a little more solid,” he says.

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And no worries—we’re still going to get at least one anthem out of him for the summer. His new single, “Lease on Life,” which will be released on June 28, is part of his new album that speaks to a lot of what we collectively experienced over the past year.

You can get a taste of the song here:

Grammer acknowledges that it was difficult to find positives in the pandemic, even for him. “Happy for happy’s sake is not super authentic,” he says. “The word ‘positive’ inherently is a little cheesy, I think. But if it is rebellious against negativity, it starts to gain some legs for me.”

He points out that most of the “feel-good” songs he’s famous for are actually grounded in a lot of pain, which is what makes them truly connect with a broad audience.

“If you hear a song like ‘Keep Your Head Up,’ it’s not just like, ‘Be happy!'” he says. “I wrote that song after my mom died. So like, I’m crushed, and in the face of that, choosing and finding a way to stay up. I think that’s the grounding piece to optimism that makes it something that people believe in and that is true and sincere.”

He says the key is always trying to write something that’s true. “Because if you get it to be true, then it has this extra resonance to it. The quick analogy I use is that Isaac Newton wrote out what gravity was. He wrote it out for the first time, and everyone else was like, ‘Gravity! I have gravity all the time! Oh my God, you super nailed it.’ And I think every great song has something of that in it.”

The other thing Grammer did during pandemic downtime was spend a lot of time with his two daughters, 4-year-old Louisiana and 1-year-old Izzy.

“Overall, that’s been the huge win,” he says. “It’s just been an intense, awesome amount of time for someone like me who does travel quite a bit, to have this whole year. I haven’t gotten on a plane once. And to just be, every single night, having the routine with these little girls, it’s really, really special.”

He and Louisiana are even working on their first collaborative musical project together. In partnership with Quaker Chewy and the American Camp Association, Grammer is crowdsourcing lyrics for a summer camp anthem that he and his preschooler are going to write together.

“It’s been really hard for kids throughout the pandemic to not be able to play with other kids,” Grammer says. “And so with summer coming and some things are opening up and kids can actually go to camp, we want to send as many kids as we possibly can to go to go play with each other.”

Summer camp song lyrics can be submitted at chewycamptrack.com before June 30, 2021. For every lyric sent in, Quaker Chewy will donate $1, up to $200,000, to the American Camp Association’s Send a Child to Camp Fund. Grammer will pick lyrics from those submitted, and the Chewy donations will be used to send up to 500 children to summer camp next year.

Grammer says having Louisiana help choose the lyrics will be a blast. “She sings a lot, and I think it’s going to be really fun,” he says. “It’s one of the first songs I’m really going to do with her. Really fun.”

After being in a “songwriting hibernation zone” during the pandemic, Grammer is excited to be back out. And we’re excited for his new album to come out to see what kind of awesome, life-affirming music he shares with us next.

Most parents don’t clear out their kids’ rooms the moment they move out of the house. A lot of them leave their kids’ former rooms somewhat intact in the event they don’t adapt well to college, that new job doesn’t work out or they have trouble with their new roommates.

For others, it’s because they don’t want to admit their children have grown up.

But at some point, parents will move on with their lives and get tired of looking at their kid’s old stuff. So they can’t wait to have them in their clutches so they can find out what they can throw out.

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Comedian Ceara O’Sullivan captures this moment that a lot of families go through perfectly in a video she posted on TikTok called, “My mom entering my childhood bedroom at 7 am whenever i visit home.”

O’Sullivan does such a great mom impersonation that it’s universal. A lot of the commenters say that Ceara’s mom is a lot like theirs, too.

O’Sullivan made another video that captures a moment all young adult children go through with their mothers as well. In this video, mom makes her daughter follow her through the house while she picks up random items to give her.

I belong to a private Facebook group filled with parents of teenagers and college-aged students, and due to the sheer number of people, it’s not uncommon for differences of opinion to arise. Rarely, though, have I ever seen a debate as split as the one raised by a post about something seemingly benign: Handwritten thank-you notes.

A mom shared that she was requiring her graduating senior to write thank you cards—the old-fashioned variety, complete with handwritten note, envelope, and postage stamp—and that emailing, texting, or calling on the phone to say “thank you” were unacceptable alternatives. She said her son was writing the notes but didn’t like it, and she blamed computers and having to type assignments all the time for his resistance.

Some parents will read that paragraph, nod along, and agree 100% with this mom.

Others say the method doesn’t matter—it’s the message that counts.

Within hours, more than a thousand comments poured in and the responses were sharply divided between the “Yes, written thank you notes only!” and “Oof, that’s a really outdated notion.” (Not that the idea of gratitude is outdated, but the idea that appreciation must be written by hand and sent in the mail.)

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Some people chimed in to say that they don’t give gifts with any expectation of thanks, but naturally, it’s good to teach kids to express gratitude when someone gives a gift. The method, however, is up for debate.

There is something extra personal about seeing someone’s handwriting and holding a tangible note in your hand, especially in an age where we don’t get nearly as much mail as we used to. But is that just nostalgia from an era on its way out?

@nprscottsimon My late boss was a well-known architect who always sent hand-written thank you notes. It’s one of th… https://t.co/tw8hqQfj2j

— Belinda Presser (@presserb)
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As some people pointed out, kids today live in a different world, one where environmental consciousness comes as naturally as technological know-how. Isn’t it a waste of paper to send a note in an envelope when you can say the exact same thing in an email or a text? Do email or text actually feel less personal to young people who do much of their communication electronically?

“Here, I murdered this tree for you to show my gratitude”

~ thank you notes

— Kristen Mae (@AbandonPretense)
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And isn’t it just as personal to call someone on the phone and thank them with your voice as it is to send them a note with your handwriting? Some seem to think so.

Perhaps it’s just a matter of tradition and strict etiquette standards? This is the way I was taught things were done, therefore that’s is the way it is and it’s wrong to do it a different way?

Again, some seem to think so.

“I don’t have time.” “I forgot”

You don’t have time to show appreciation towards the people who spent hundreds if… https://t.co/WBZDqHxqYF

— Andre 3000 the Giant (@Shadynasty15)
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Don’t invite people to your weddings, baby showers, or graduations if you can’t thank them properly for showing up.… https://t.co/8rIRDhw1dK

— Andre 3000 the Giant (@Shadynasty15)
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Some parents rightly pointed out that times change, and what previous generations did is not automatically better or more thoughtful than the way young people today might prefer to do things. As long as kids grow up knowing that it’s appropriate to let someone know you received their gift and appreciate their generosity, what difference does it make how they do it?

For some people, it makes a lot of difference. The die-hard handwritten thank you note folks were quite adamant about their stance, to the point of withholding their kids’ gifts and checks until the thank you cards were postmarked and in the mailbox.

Kudos to those parents for teaching their kids to say thanks, but they’re also making a broad assumption that everyone prefers to receive a thank you card. Again, comments from others showed that’s not the case.

Many people said that they just end up looking at a thank you note for a few seconds before throwing it away anyway, and that they’d actually prefer to get a phone call. Some went so far as to say they hate getting thank you notes, saying it’s a waste of paper and money for postage and they prefer messages of gratitude that use fewer resources.

Scrolling through the responses, people’s opinions seemed pretty much split half and half between “Only handwritten thank you notes, always” and “Doesn’t matter how you say thanks as long as you say thanks.”

Who knew the basic thank you note was such a hot topic of debate?

One thing we can all agree on is that it’s polite to say thank you when someone gives you a gift. Regardless of the method by which you do so, acknowledging someone’s thoughtfulness and expressing gratitude is a valuable life skill. So always say thanks—but maybe try not to get too hung up on how it’s done.

Joe Biden made Juneteenth a federal holiday earlier this week, something a member of the Donald Trump administration had apparently wanted to do as late as last year. But according to a new report about Trump’s troubled history of race relations, he thinks he’s done a lot for a group he apparently called “the Blacks” in private.

That quote and much more was part of a damning story in Politico from Michael C. Bender, who wrote a book about Trump that will come out later in the summer. The quotes included in the piece were based off the book, and if that’s any indication of what else is looming there it will be a wild ride.

The biggest moment that went viral on Twitter was Trump using the phrase “the Blacks” in a conversation about how much he apparently had done for Black people in America, even though he was struggling with people of color when it came to election polling.

Trump had staked nearly his entire campaign in 2016 around a law-and-order image, and now groaned that the criminal justice reform that Kushner had persuaded him to support made him look weak and—even worse—hadn’t earned him any goodwill among Black voters.

“I’ve done all this stuff for the Blacks—it’s always Jared telling me to do this,” Trump said to one confidante on Father’s Day. “And they all f—— hate me, and none of them are going to vote for me.”

The story details how Trump had very few people of color on his staff, including no one on his senior staff after Omarosa Manigault Newman was fired in 2017. And another staffer had actually been planning a proposal for Trump to make Juneteenth a federal holiday before he sparked an uproar by scheduling a rally on Juneteenth in the wake of a summer of racial justice protests.

His relationship with Juneteenth was a trouble spot as well, with Trump essentially claiming that he put the long-celebrated anniversary of the end of slavery in Texas on the map.

“Nobody had heard of it,” Trump told me.

He was surprised to find out that his administration had put out statements in each of his first three years in office commemorating Juneteenth.

“Oh really?” he said. “We put out a statement? The Trump White House put out a statement?”

Each statement, put out in his name, included a description of the holiday.

But such details were irrelevant to him. Instead, he insisted, “I did something good.”

“I made Juneteenth very famous,” he said.

The piece covers a wide range of missteps when it comes to Trump’s understanding of race relations, policing and the concerns of people of color in society. Senior officials quoted in the piece called his “understanding of slavery, Jim Crow or the Black experience in general post-Civil War as vague to nonexistent.” And while he apparently expressed sympathy for the police treatment of George Floyd in private, he failed to replicate those thoughts in public instead of his more hardline, pro-police stance with inflammatory tweets that only stirred up more outrage.

In a related story, Trump apparently said teaching critical race theory to children in schools was akin to “psychological abuse.” So it’s safe to say not much has changed about his view on things in his time away from office, either.

[via Politico]

Once the dust settles on this upcoming weekend, the Phoenix Suns are one of the four teams that will have a shot at playing for an NBA championship. Despite that, one of their stars is headed to the Olympics in Tokyo this summer, while a second player is being pursued by USA Basketball for a spot, too.

According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, Devin Booker has committed to wearing the red, white, and blue in Japan next month. While he’s on board, Marc Stein of the New York Times brings word that decision-makers in USA Basketball are doing what they can to convince Chris Paul to play.

As Stein noted, the inherent issue (at least from Team USA’s perspective) is the potential that the Suns make a run to the Finals — a potential Game 7 would take place is July 22, with the Olympics slated to begin on July 23 and men’s basketball tipping off on July 25. There would certainly be a plan in place in the event the Suns go on a run to the Finals, but it would make sense if Paul, who is 36 and hurt his shoulder earlier this postseason, would pass on the opportunity to rest.

Still, if the Americans only get Booker off of the Suns, that would be quite the addition to a loaded roster. Earlier in the day on Friday, it was reported that Washington Wizards star Bradley Beal will join the trio of players — Draymond Green, Damian Lillard, Jayson Tatum — who already committed to suiting up in Tokyo. The rest of the roster will surely come to light in coming days, but at the very least, the United States is going to score a whole lot of points with the dudes that have already committed to the team.

Last summer, my husband and I went to a grocery store in Sandpoint, Idaho to pick up some ice cream. As we started walking down the frozen foods aisle, my husband grabbed my arm to stop me. He gestured to the couple ahead of us, and I saw what he saw—a handgun sticking out of the back of the man’s pants.

Sandpoint is an idyllic, small mountain town on a pristine lake, where people come to stay for water sports in summer and skiing in the winter. It’s also not far from the Wal-mart where a two-year-old had pulled a handgun out of his mom’s purse and killed her with it several years ago.

We turned around and left the ice cream aisle, choosing to wait until the openly armed shopper left. And we were irritated. Seeing a man with a gun in a grocery aisle feels like living in a war zone—meanwhile, Sandpoint’s violent crime rate is half the national average.

Twitter user “Cacky” shared a similar encounter in an Oklahoma Trader Joe’s, with a photo of a man with a handgun in a holster on his hip at the salad display.

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“I have no idea if this guy is stable or mentally ill,” she wrote. “Is he bothered by the heat and have a short fuse today? What if someone makes him mad and he has poor impulse control? I’m not willing to risk my life for groceries, so I just left Trader Joe’s.”

I have no idea if this guy is stable or mentally ill. Is he bothered by the heat and have a short fuse today? What… https://t.co/Si9SFrO3Vn

— Cacky (@cackiness)
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I had the same thoughts in the ice cream aisle in Idaho. Not only do we not know this person’s mental state, but with a gun so openly broadcast, what’s to stop another unstable shopper from grabbing the gun from them? I’m sure these guys think they’d be quick to stop someone from doing so, but there are dozens of scenarios where that confrontation ends very badly for them, as well as for the innocent bystanders who just want to buy some freaking lettuce.

State laws vary when it comes to open or concealed carry, but this isn’t an issue of legality. It’s an issue of morality, responsibility, and sensibility. “Because I can” or “Because it’s my right” is not a good enough reason to do something—not when you live in a community with other human beings. You might have a right to carry a gun in a grocery store, but that doesn’t mean that it is the right thing to do.

Your fellow citizens matter. And I would guess that most people feel less safe, not more, when they see someone with a gun sticking out of their pants at the grocery store. You might argue that you carry for your protection or even the protection of those around you, but the “good guy with a gun” idea has been outed as a myth over and over again. That myth and the fairly consistent mass shootings in the U.S. are why most of us see a random person with a gun as a threat, not protection.

I would say, “We aren’t living in the Wild West,” but even in the West of the 1880s, guns being carried where lots of people gathered was known to be an issue. That’s why Wyatt Earp prohibited people from carrying guns in Tombstone, making visitors turn in their guns when they came into town. Other Old West towns had similar laws, so it’s not like grocery shopping with a gun is some longstanding, untouchable American tradition.

All I see when I see someone wearing a gun while running errands is fear and paranoia, which is a bad combination when mixed with a deadly weapon. Imagine if someone had a machete sticking out the back of their pants everywhere they went. How insane would that look? How is a loaded handgun any different, other than being able to kill more people more quickly and efficiently with it?

This element of American culture causes people in other developed nations to look at us in utter bafflement. Heck, it baffles me, and I grew up here. We have a gun problem in the U.S. That fact is indisputable. And it’s not just because criminals have guns. States with higher gun ownership rates have higher gun death rates. States with stricter gun laws have lower gun death rates. Ideology aside, the math favors fewer guns and stricter laws, not the free-for-all gun culture gripping a decent portion of the country.

Additionally, how can we truly say we’re a great nation if people feel like they can’t leave the house unarmed? I can’t wrap my brain around the mindset. What kind of warped version of “freedom” is that?

I’ve lived in rural, urban, and suburban areas, in all different regions of the country, and not once in my 46 years of life have I ever felt the need to carry a gun. Pepper spray? Sure, just in case. Self-defense knowledge? Absolutely. A loaded handgun? No. A loaded handgun sticking out of my pants so everyone knows I have it? Crimony, no.

And now we have states like Texas making it legal for people to carry guns without even having to have a license or permit. That means no background checks. No gun safety education. No training to assure that a person knows how to handle a firearm or screening to make sure that they aren’t a homicidal maniac. It’s pure madness.

People say that the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution are what make America great, and that’s true for the most part. But I would argue that the way some Americans choose to exercise their second amendment right does just the opposite. Imagine someone touting their first amendment right while standing on a street corner yelling, “I think every person I see might be out to kill me, and I don’t care about the safety or comfort of other people! Yay, America!” Seems pretty kooky, right? I see no difference between that and a person packing heat to pick up some Ben & Jerry’s.

Freedom that feels like fear isn’t true freedom, and wearing a gun in a grocery store feels like nothing but fear to me. If you have to carry a gun everywhere you go, you’re not free, no matter how much you talk about your constitutional rights.

Chrissy Teigen was once known as the “Mayor of Twitter” for her savage, hilarious, and refreshingly honest takes on the social media platform.

However, the tool that brought her so much love and adulation has nearly led to her undoing.

Last month, model and singer Courtney Stodden (who uses gender-neutral pronouns) revealed Teigen had repeatedly told them to kill themself via direct message. In addition to saying things like, “I can’t wait for you to die,” Stodden claims the model also told her to “Go. To. Sleep. Forever.”

Teigen also said they should “take a dirt nap” in a public-facing tweet.

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The “Lip Sync Battle” star also said some cruel things to Lindsay Lohan after she admitted to cutting herself, remarking that she probably “adds a few more slits to her wrists when she sees Emma Stone.”

“Project Runway” star Michael Costello and Teen Mom star Farah Abraham have also accused Teigen of bullying.

After the bullying scandal broke, Macy’s canceled her Cravings by Chrissy cookware line. The backlash was so strong that many, including Teigen, thought she had been canceled.

She apologized to Stodden on Twitter in May.

is nothing compared to how I made Courtney feel. I have worked so hard to give you guys joy and be beloved and the… https://t.co/NrFGiI13M6

— chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen)
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And I am so sorry I let you guys down. I will forever work on being better than I was 10 years ago, 1 year ago, 6 months ago.

— chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen)
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On Monday, Teigen gave a lengthy and impassioned response to the scandal on Medium. It seems like she’s genuinely upset about her behavior and deserving of the public’s forgiveness.

There are three important aspects of her apology that make it so effective. She shows genuine remorse, proves that she’s learned something from the ordeal, and hopes to use the situation to become a better role model to her children.

“I know I’ve been quiet, and lord knows you don’t want to hear about me, but I want you to know I’ve been sitting in a hole of deserved global punishment, the ultimate ‘sit here and think about what you’ve done.’ Not a day, not a single moment has passed where I haven’t felt the crushing weight of regret for the things I’ve said in the past,” she wrote.

“There is simply no excuse for my past horrible tweets,” she continued. “My targets didn’t deserve them. No one does. Many of them needed empathy, kindness, understanding and support, not my meanness masquerading as a kind of casual, edgy humor.”

“I was a troll, full stop,” she admitted. “And I am so sorry.”

She then dove deep into her frame of mind around the time that she was bullying people.

“In reality, I was insecure, immature and in a world where I thought I needed to impress strangers to be accepted. If there was a pop culture pile-on, I took to Twitter to try to gain attention and show off what I at the time believed was a crude, clever, harmless quip. I thought it made me cool and relatable if I poked fun at celebrities,” she wrote.

She admits that she felt she could troll fellow celebrities because she didn’t see them as human.

“I wasn’t just attacking some random avatar, but hurting young women — some who were still girls — who had feelings,” she wrote. “How could I not stop and think of that? Why did I think there was some invisible psycho-celebrity formula that prevents anyone with more followers from experiencing pain? How did I not realize my words were cruel? What gave me the right to say these things?”

Here’s the important part. Teigen has changed over the last ten years and that matters. We live in a world where people are often cast aside for things they’ve done years ago and nobody affords them the opportunity to change.

We all deserve a little grace in our lives and the opportunity to do better. People shouldn’t be defined by their worst moments.

“The truth is, I’m no longer the person who wrote those horrible things,” she wrote. “I grew up, got therapy, got married, had kids, got more therapy, experienced loss and pain, got more therapy and experienced more life. AND GOT MORE THERAPY.”

She also hopes the scandal will help her become a better role model for her two children.

“My goal is to be so good that my kids will think this was all a fairy tale,” Teigen joked. “Not the fake good. The good that has the best intentions, the good who wakes up wanting to make her friends, family, her team and fans as happy as possible. The good who will still f-ck up in front of the world but rarely, and never not growing only more good from it.”

Teigen ends the open letter with a small wish that should be granted.

“I won’t ask for your forgiveness, only your patience and tolerance. I ask that you allow me, as I promise to allow you, to own past mistakes and be given the opportunity to seek self-improvement and change,” she wrote.