Month: September 2021

The last week has seen increased push-back against those who are still skeptical or outright hostile towards COVID vaccines. The FDA recently gave it their full approval. There’s new variants. Cases are spiking, and it’s almost only affecting the unvaccinated. Arguments against getting dosed are becoming increasingly flimsy. And on his Fox News show on Sunday, Chris Wallace pretty much thoroughly debunked an anti-vaxx governor on live television.

Nebraska governor Pete Ricketts was one of many members of the GOP who disapproved of President Joe Biden’s recent call to ramp up the fight against the pandemic. Among his priorities were demanding companies with over 100 employees to require vaccinations. Ricketts thinks it should be a personal choice. But Wallace decided to explain his state’s own laws to the man running it.

“In fact, to attend school in your state of Nebraska, children must be vaccinated against a number of diseases,” Wallace informed Ricketts. He then rattled off the diseases for which the nation has long had vaccine mandates, among them tetanus, polio, measles, and chicken pox. “Why are those mandates that parents and your state must comply with and do comply with routinely, why is it that they’re not so objectionable and such a violation of personal freedom but Biden’s vaccine mandates are?”

Ricketts’ comeback was that COVID vaccines don’t have a “long history” with the public. “There are still a lot of people out there that don’t know what to trust,” Ricketts argued. “This is really an outcome of what the CDC has done because they have flip-flopped on so many issues, whether it’s masks or if you have masks when you’ve been vaccinated and so forth. There’s just a lot of people out there that don’t know who to trust right now.”

But Wallace wouldn’t drop it. “So we’re in the middle of a pandemic, there is a new vaccine that Donald Trump was largely responsible for, it’s been approved — full approval — by the FDA,” Wallace explained. “Again, if the polio vaccine is OK for parents and they have to comply with it to send their kid to school, why not the vaccine for this disease?”

Ricketts tried to argue that COVID is “very different from polio.” He also claimed that children “are no more at risk for the coronavirus than they are the ordinary flu,” adding, “The risk for this is just such that this is something that we shouldn’t be mandating it.”

Ricketts didn’t budge, but he also never answered Wallace’s question. Maybe he couldn’t.

You can watch the exhcnage in the video above.

(Via Raw Story)

Ever since the infamous “tuck rule” play in the 2001 AFC Championship in which a strip sack of Tom Brady got overturned as an incompletion, NFL officials have almost always erred on the side of ruling just about any borderline throw/fumble situation as an incompletion.

That is two decades of precedent and, as such, when a call goes the other way it is rather stunning (and for fans of the offense, enraging). On Sunday, we got one of the strangest examples of this when what everyone on the field assumed was an incompletion from Justin Herbert as the Chargers were in the red sone was called a fumble for a touchback — and then upheld on review because of a lack of evidence to overturn it.

Montez Sweat certainly hits the ball right around the start of the throwing motion, but this might be the longest throw that’s ever been called a fumble, as the ball goes a solid 15 yards (towards the sideline) in the air, which led everyone to just watching as it bounced through the back of the end zone. Both teams returned to their respective huddles thinking nothing beyond that being an incompletion until the officials announced it had been ruled a fumble and would be reviewed, leaving plenty shocked when it stood as a fumble.

It probably is very close, but it’s also the kind of play that almost never gets called in that way because of how much velocity it still got thrown with (even if bobbling) and unsurprisingly Chargers fans were not happy their chance to at least tie the game got taken away by the strangest call of Week 1. For fans of the Football Team, maybe it was some cosmic payback for having literal crap dumped on them earlier in the game.

One of the first things you noticed about Michael K. Williams was that scar. It ran down the right side of his face, from his brow to his cheek, deep and impossible to cover with makeup. It was one of the most distinctive aspects of the late actor, who passed away last week, to the shock and horror of anyone who knew him or simply loved watching him perform. It was the result of a youthful fight, and he spoke about how he worried it would cost him roles. But it was that scar that helped get him the role that made him famous.

In a new op-ed in The New York Times, The Wire creator David Simon wrote about his experiences working with Williams. Simon and his writing partner, Ed Burns, were desperately searching for someone to play Omar Little, the flamboyant stick-up man who loves to rob drug dealers in Baltimore. It was Burns who remembered seeing him in an audition tape a year before he was cast.

“There’s this one guy on there with this amazing scar all the way down his face, and his presence is just extraordinary,” Burns told Simon.

Hoping to use Omar’s arc to lure a well-known actor with an established following, I checked his credits and frowned: Not much there. But when Ed would not relent, I watched the audition tape with care, and Mike was hired.

Simon also wrote about a time, a few years after The Wire ended, when he asked Williams to visit New Orleans and play Omar one last time for a charity event.

For a few hours, I watched him inhabit that character one last time. When it was over, we stood outside the club, and I watched a weight descend as he slipped back into Michael from Flatbush, the gentle, self-effacing and utterly committed professional who never gave a camera the wrong moment, but who somehow never took enough comfort from that great skill, who was always, I came to understand, looking for it to mean more.

“Was that what you wanted?” he asked. “Did that go OK?”

Williams was 54 years old.

(Via NYT)

The Washington Football Team opened their 2021 season at home against the L.A. Chargers on Sunday as fans flocked to FedEx Field for, what they hoped, would be the start of a potentially promising season in the nation’s capital.

Subjecting yourself to NFC East football, in general, always runs the risk of making you feel ill, but a group of fans in Washington found themselves in an even worse situation when a pipe burst above their section, dumping sewage, per the man commentating this video, on the poor Football Team fans below.

It seems like sewage spewing onto fans isn’t a great omen for the 2021 Football Team season, but the optimist would say it can’t really get any worse than that. There are few things that seem like a worse experience than being at a sporting event and having sewer water suddenly pouring onto your seat (in the first half, no less), knowing you have two options: dry off with napkins and paper towels and then sit in the sun the rest of the day stinking or leave the game and know you flushed most of your money down the drain (no pun intended).

Hopefully the pipe was fixed quickly and the fans were given some kind of compensation for their unfortunate predicament. As for the football on the field, the Football Team at least kept the day from being more miserable as they were leading the Chargers early in the third quarter.

Sunday brought the first full day of NFL action of the 2021 season, and with the opening Sunday coming on 9/12, the NFL opened its broadcasts with a tribute for the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. It featured a monologue about the importance of remembering the day as well as what 9/12 brought, which was a sense of unity and togetherness rarely found in the U.S., followed by the national anthem sung by the daughter of a man who died that day at the World Trade Center.

It was the kind of somber tribute that there isn’t really anything you can do to make a particularly smooth transition into whatever is next, but it would typically go to a host who would try their best to bridge the gap between tribute and the excitement for football. Except in this case, the tribute rolled straight into…an Arby’s ad, which felt a bit odd, to say the least.

Plenty of folks around the internet were taken aback by the ad placement, with a mixture of people being both off-put and also finding it somewhat morbidly fitting that even in a moment of trying to pay tribute, the NFL couldn’t help but wedge in some commercials immediately after.

Maybe next time it’d be best to not place an ad break immediately following your tribute, setting Arby’s up to be some form of fast food Nick Castellanos.

The January 6 insurrection attempt in Washington DC may feel like it happened years ago, but that’s simply our warped sense of time in the age of Donald Trump and an extremely deadly and difficult pandemic. Trump, the twice impeached former president, is now calling boxing matches eight months later. Just to give you an idea of how far away all that seems.

But the fallout from his supporters’ attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 is still playing out. And one of the unfortunate stars of the MAGA riot, the so-called QAnon Shaman, is struggling to distance himself from the conspiracy-obsessed past that got him arrested after breaching the US Capitol in January.

As Law and Crime detailed, a judge handling legal matters for Jacob “QAnon Shaman” Chansley denied his petition for an early release for a third time, expressing skepticism that the “mascot” for the conspiracy theory actually had a change of heart.

Chansley’s counsel said in a statement that Chansley “repudiated” QAnon. Chansley has not personally indicated as such to this Court. Still, regardless of any potential repudiation, there is no doubt that he is a mascot for the QAnon movement. Hundreds of attendees joined Chansley’s September 3, 2021 plea-agreement hearing on the public access line, and at least once this Court’s proceedings were interrupted with shouts of “Freedom!”

Every case tied to the January 6 insurrection has weird twists and turns, but the QAnon Shaman’s has certainly been the most public. And since the judge here doesn’t sound too impressed by his attempt to distance himself from the spiral of conspiracy that got him to Washington in the first place, his sentencing on November 17 should certainly be interesting.

Twitch has taken legal action against some of its own users as the streaming platform tries to address targeted harassment of some users based on race, gender and sexual orientation.

According to Wired, the company filed suit against two users apparently using the platform for “hate raids,” which essentially spams a streamer’s chat with hateful messages that are amplified by bots. These attacks tend to target people of color and women along with other marginalized members of the community with hate speech. A week ago, a number of streamers took September 1 to boycott the platform in support of those who have been the target of hate raids, and it seems that has at least further pushed Twitch to explore all possible options against hate raiders.

On Thursday, after a month trying and failing to combat the tactic, Twitch resorted to the legal system, suing two alleged hate raiders for “targeting black and LGBTQIA+ streamers with racist, homophobic, sexist and other harassing content” in violation of its terms of service.

“We hope this Complaint will shed light on the identity of the individuals behind these attacks and the tools that they exploit, dissuade them from taking similar behaviors to other services, and help put an end to these vile attacks against members of our community,” a Twitch spokesperson said in a comment to WIRED.

Twitch has tried a number of measures to curb abuse on the platform, but the case against the two streamers here seems to be a last resort after they evaded a number of attempts to ban them from the platform.

Thursday’s lawsuit, which was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, targets two users, identified only as “Cruzzcontrol” and “CreatineOverdose,” whom Twitch believes are based, respectively, in the Netherlands and Vienna, Austria. Twitch, in the suit, says it initially took “swift action” by suspending and then permanently banning their accounts. However, it reads, “They evaded Twitch’s bans by creating new, alternate Twitch accounts, and continually altering their self-described ‘hate raid code’ to avoid detection and suspension by Twitch.”

It will certainly be interesting to see what the legal system can do here, but it’s good that Twitch is taking real action to help protect users from abuse.

[via Wired]

NBA 2K22 is out and fans have been diving into the game’s many features. Of course, the three main staples of every 2K playthrough is Franchise, MyTeam, and the always popular MyPlayer. Ever since 2K11, the most popular mode in 2K has easily been MyPlayer. The ability to live out our dreams of being an NBA superstar has always been an appealing one, but over the last 10 years that mode has added plenty of add ons to keep us interested including online head to head matchups, ProAm’s, and The City.

Originally called The Neighborhood, The City is a hub world where basketball reigns supreme. Courts, hoops, and gyms are everywhere along with plenty of potential to build your brand as more than a basketball player. One of the ways to build up that brand? By releasing the hottest mixtape of 2022 of course.

A feature in NBA 2K22 is the ability to create your own rap from some pre-selected rhymes. Unfortunately, the rhymes themselves aren’t the best. One video currently making the rounds on Twitter is proof enough of that.

Maybe this is supposed to be realistic because most athletes that have attempted to rap have failed miserably at it. If that’s the case, then it’s a perfect recreation. It is of course hard to take this particular video seriously with the MyPlayer wearing a State Farm polo and khakis. Which, the reason he’s wearing that is that he met Jake from State Farm. Yes, you can meet Jake from State Farm and get “the drip.”

We can’t expect reality in The City, because it’s a world run by basketball brands, but when Jake from State Farm is calling his outfit “the drip” and players are rapping in it then something has gone terribly wrong in the simulation. This game is weird.

To say America is a divided country is an understatement these days. Even Republicans can’t seem to decide whether the party should jettison Donald Trump, and as the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage America there are decidedly different ways people across political spectrums want to approach fighting its impact on the population.

Jim Acosta has certainly noticed that division, and on Saturday he offered a monologue on the 20-year anniversary of 9/11 that offered reflection on that division. Acosta has spent recent weeks attacking Tucker Carlson’s rhetoric and the harmful alternate reality networks like Fox News offer viewers, and on Saturday he noted that in the two decades since the September 11 terrorist attacks the country has only shifted further apart.

“There was an expression after 9/11: “All gave some. Some gave all.” We don’t really do that anymore,” Acosta said. “Some of us don’t want to give anything at all.”

Acosta managed to weave a narrative of division about both politics and viewing habits, but also an unwillingness by many to do their part to help end a pandemic still killing thousands of people a week.

“We live in separate worlds now. We don’t agree on the same facts anymore,” he said. “We can’t even agree on wearing masks or getting vaccinated to end this pandemic.”

You can watch the full monologue here.

After an extremely fraught summer off that saw the show select and then jettison a new full-time host amid wave after wave of controversy, Jeopardy! returns on Monday with new episodes and the start of a new season.

The kickoff to Season 38, though, comes with a number of unanswered questions that span well beyond the categories on the board. But one thing fans can expect to see on Monday is the return of Matt Amodio. The impressive champion carried over after 18 wins and $574,801 in winnings and is on pace for some record-breaking numbers if he can keep on winning. But his run actually carried into a wild summer for the show that may make his attempt at show history very complicated.

Amodio returned to the program coinciding with the appointment of Mike Richards as the new Jeopardy! host. But Richards taped just a single day as the official replacement for the late Alex Trebek before controversy over several instances of inappropriate behavior and fan outrage made him resign in shame. He also later left the show as an executive producer as well. Those five episodes, if Amodio managed to win them all, would represent the entirety of Richards’ run on the show before taping was canceled as the show scrambled to find a replacement host.

It will certainly be interesting to see how the show handles the appearance of Richards, and how Amodio handles the abrupt shift in the show’s host if he kept on winning. So much of playing Jeopardy! is comfort and familiarity with the host and the pace of the show, including the cadence of the host giving answers to contestants. It’s unfortunate Amodio has gotten caught up in all this, quite frankly, but if he intends to make history he’ll have to outlast Richards and potentially other guest hosts, too.