Month: September 2021

BTS have already earned their spot as global superstars ruling the charts, and today another global ruling body recognized their importance. BTS was tapped to perform “Permission To Dance” at the 76th United Nations General Assembly as well as give remarks to fans worldwide and the world leaders gathered to discuss sustainability.

The Washington Post reports that almost a million fans tuned in to watch the K-pop group perform and speak at the UN, and though they’ve visited before, this is their first time attending in their role as “special presidential envoy for future generations and culture,” a formal diplomatic designation from South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in. For his part, the president is more than a fan of BTS, calling them “the artist that is most loved by the people around the world.” Honestly, he’s not wrong.

While they were on the world stage, the group took a moment to heartily endorse vaccines. “Yes, all seven of us, of course we’ve received vaccinations. The vaccine was a sort of ticket to meeting our fans waiting for us and to being able to stand here before you today,” J-Hope said. Check out their special performance video above and look out for more political appearances from the band in the future, they’re officially diplomats now, too.

As we see viral videos of people ranting about mask mandates being tyrannical government overreach, the Daily Show with Trevor Noah reminds us that people said the same thing about seatbelt mandates back in the day.

A video of news footage from 1986 shows several people complaining about how requiring seatbelts was a violation of their freedom and how they weren’t going to comply. It’s really something to see now. Watch:

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This clip from the Daily Show of people fighting against seat belt mandates in the 80s is absolutely surreal from s… https://t.co/4P0szXEXdV

— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher)
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There was intense resistance to seatbelt laws in the 1980s, which in hindsight seems quite silly. When used properly, seatbelts reduce motor vehicle fatalities by half, according to the CDC. People who are unbuckled are 30 times more likely to be ejected from a car during a crash. Most of us buckle up without even thinking about it now, which saves both lives and healthcare resources, but it took a mandate to get us here.

Now we see the same kinds of complaints with COVID-related mandates, despite COVID killing more than ten times as many people in one year as an average year of car accidents do. If the government could mandate seatbelt usage to save lives and healthcare resources, surely it can mandate masks in the midst of a global pandemic spread almost entirely by people’s mouth emisssions.

The purpose of our system of governance, according to the preamble to the Constitution, is to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Sounds awesome, but sometimes those things can seemingly conflict with one another. What if what needs to be done for the defense or welfare interferes with our blessings of liberty?

It’s a sticky question, for sure. But sometimes it’s not really as sticky as people make it.

In the midst of a pandemic that has taken the lives of 675,000+ Americans and sickened millions more in a mere 18 months, it’s clear that our general welfare is taking a huge hit. We know there are measures we can take to minimize viral spread and save lives, but asking nicely and leaving it up to people to do the right thing doesn’t seem to be working. So in order to promote the general welfare, the government is requiring people to do the right thing (i.e., wearing masks in public places).

It’s understandable that people don’t want the government telling them what to do, but it’s also understandable that a government of the people, by the people, for the people would try to protect the people. Right now, that means protecting the public from those who are contributing to the spread of a deadly virus and clogging up our healthcare systems by remaining unvaccinated and refusing to wear masks.

Freedom that leads directly to the death of our fellow Americans is not true freedom. Some people still don’t seem to understand that we are in a viral pandemic that’s killing thousands of Americans a day. If we don’t voluntarily do the right thing, we’re asking for the government to step in to protect the general welfare.

I wish we could fast forward forty years to see how silly the anti-maskers look to future generations. Just like seatbelt mandates didn’t lead to tyranny, neither will mask requirements during a viral pandemic.

This article originally appeared on 5.15.15

This article originally appeared on 02.14.15

On Feb. 10, 2015, same-sex marriage became legal in Alabama. Gay couples started going to the courthouse, and straight couples showed up as well. Straight couples like these folks.

But the folks at the courthouse wouldn’t give ANY of the couples licenses — gay or straight.

Because Alabama’s chief justice doesn’t think same-sex marriage should be legal, he told all the probate judges not to issue ANY licenses to any couples.

This seems like a really nice couple.

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It sounds like they might not have ever thought about what it feels like to be denied a constitutional right.

The interviewer basically asks how they feel as taxpayers not being able to conduct a regular state function like getting married.

I watched this GIF a few times because I think it’s so fascinating to see the exact moment someone comes to the realization that denying gay people the right to marry is unfair.

At this point, though, he still doesn’t “get it.”

He pauses to think, he looks away, and then the lightbulb goes off.

What it seems like he’s about to say is “It’s not fair. I mean, everyone [meaning straight people] should be able to get a license even if Alabama is fighting this fight with gay people.”

Mid-sentence, he seemed to switch what he was going to say.

He’s right. Denying gay couples the right to marriage, especially once it’s been declared legal in the state, wouldn’t be fair. That’s the point. And for some people, this is obvious. But for many people, maybe it isn’t. But now it is. That’s progress. That’s why empathy is such a powerful thing.

These lovebirds almost do a better job arguing this case than lawyers before the Supreme Court. Almost. I hope they have a wonderful, love-filled life with each other. And I hope they can get married soon.

Watch the video here:

This article originally appeared on 05.06.15

Emily McDowell Studio

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When someone you know gets seriously ill, it’s not always easy to come up with the right words to say or to find the right card to give.

Emily McDowell — a former ad agency creative director and the woman behind the Los Angeles-based greeting card and textile company Emily McDowell Studio — knew all too well what it was like to be on the receiving end of uncomfortable sentiments.

At the age of 24, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She went into remission after nine months of chemo and has remained cancer-free since, but she received her fair share of misplaced, but well-meaning, wishes before that.

On her webpage introducing the awesome cards you’re about to see, she shared,

“The most difficult part of my illness wasn’t losing my hair, or being erroneously called ‘sir’ by Starbucks baristas, or sickness from chemo. It was the loneliness and isolation I felt when many of my close friends and family members disappeared because they didn’t know what to say or said the absolute wrong thing without realizing it.“

Her experience inspired Empathy Cards — not quite “get well soon” and not quite “sympathy,” they were created so “the recipients of these cards [can] feel seen, understood, and loved.”

Scroll down to read these sincere, from-the-heart, and incredibly realistic sentiments.

Emily McDowell Studio

Emily McDowell Studio

Emily McDowell Studio

Emily McDowell Studio

Emily McDowell Studio

Emily McDowell Studio

Emily McDowell Studio

Pretty great, right? If you know someone who’s in the less-than-ideal position of dealing with a serious illness, you can purchase any of these eight cards to share with them.

Visit Emily McDowell Studio’s shop to select the card(s) you need. They’re $4.50 each.

(We’re not being paid to share these, nor were we asked to do so. We came across the cards and I loved them, so I reached out to Emily McDowell Studio and asked if I could share them with you. Unfortunately, a lot of us know someone who could use a card like one of these.)

This article originally appeared on 11.21.14

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FACT CHECK TIME! This infographic is based on data from 2012. Unfortunately, because of the misinformation from the anti-vaccination movement, some of these diseases are trending up in a really bad way. Measles is the starkest example. There were about 61 cases of measles in all of 2012, but in just the first seven months of 2014, there have been nearly 600.

Back in July, embattled country singer Morgan Wallen appeared on Good Morning America to talk about the now-infamous video of him uttering a racial slur. During that interview, Wallen pledged to donate a significant amount of money to Black-led groups — the same figure he reportedly earned from the spike in album sales that occurred after the video surfaced.

“Before this incident, my album was already doing well; it was already being well-received by critics and by fans,” he told GMA host Michael Strahan at the time. “Me and my team noticed that whenever this whole incident happened, that there was a spike in my sales. So we tried to calculate… how much it had spiked from this incident. We got to a number somewhere around $500,000, and we decided to donate that money to some organizations, BMAC [the Black Music Action Coalition] being the first one.”

Rolling Stone has released a new report, however, outlining the ways Wallen has apparently not kept his promise. BMAC even criticized Wallen in a statement, saying that they were “disappointed that Morgan has not used his platform to support any anti-racism endeavors.” While they reportedly did receive some money from Wallen, they said the $500,000 figure “seems exceptionally misleading.”

Meanwhile, the magazine reached out to more than 50 other Black-led or Black-founded charities, spanning from local to national. None of received any money from Wallen, though Rolling Stone added a caveat that donations could have been made anonymously.

Wallen was dropped by his label shortly after the incriminating footage of Wallen using the racial slur popped up back in February. When Strahan asked what made him think the word was ever appropriate for him to use, Wallen said after a pause, “I’m not sure. I think I was just ignorant about it. I don’t think I sat down and was like, ‘Hey, is this right or is this wrong?’”

One of the challenges of coaching in college football is what the hell to do when you are facing a team that is flat-out better than you. There are times this happens in the NFL, for sure, but the biggest point spreads there live in the 13-15 point range. In college football, you’ll find spreads in the 30s and 40s, sometimes even in conference play when the very best in the country face off with a bottom-feeder in the conference and the world knows what’s about to happen.

South Carolina is, currently, one of those bottom-feeders. The Gamecocks are hoping to improve under new head coach Shane Beamer, but improvement in college football starts with recruiting and Beamer won’t have a team full of his own kids until at least Year 3. That means this year is about establishing habits and trying to lay a foundation of a culture, but it’s an uphill battle in the SEC each week, particularly when you run across a national title contender as they did on Saturday in Athens where they paid a visit to the Georgia Bulldogs.

Georgia won 40-13, cruising to a win despite some uneven offensive play that included a few turnovers, thanks in large part to their absolutely suffocating defense that gave up six points in the first three quarters and, in total, just 310 yards of offense for the Gamecocks. After the game, Beamer was asked what makes Georgia so difficult to deal with and he had a pretty funny (and 100 percent accurate) response.

“Uh, they’ve got like 100 5-star football players on their defense,” Beamer said. “They have a defensive lineman that ways 340 pounds and runs better than everyone on this call. They’ve got 5-star defensive backs. They’re big, they’re physical, they’re fast. I mean, other than that, they’re really freakin’ good. That’s why they’re the top defense in the country. They’re hard to run the football on, so there wasn’t some magical scheme they came out with tonight. They got 5-star recruits everywhere and they play really physical. Damn!”

That 340-pound defensive lineman is Jordan Davis, who is one of the best players in the country at any position and, as Beamer said, is a giant human who runs like this.

That’s terrifying! Sometimes, it’s just as simple as you don’t have the horses to run with your opponent, and that’s a tough, humbling place to be as a football team. Beamer wasn’t trying to be disrespectful here (he apparently later apologized to the reporter on the call), but this was a frustrating game and a simple question deserved a pretty simple answer. The task for Beamer is to figure out not how to out-recruit Georgia, cause that’s not going to happen, but how to get guys in that are, one, better and, two, fits for what they want to do so they can hopefully be more competitive with teams like the Dawgs and, possibly, pull off an upset.

That day was certainly not Saturday, and Beamer summed up why pretty well.

The Many Saints of Newark takes place decades before the events of The Sopranos. But Edie Falco, who played Carmela Soprano on the Emmy-winning HBO series, shot something for the film — that ended up being cut. Falco’s scene was originally going to kick off Saints, but “it wound up not being in the final movie but it was a great excuse to see her again,” director Alan Taylor told NME. “She’s so ridiculously talented and she’s also one of these people who – and it seems to frequently be women – that manage to be perfect actors and also the sanest people you’ve ever met in your life.”

Taylor (who also directed episodes of Game of Thrones and Mad Men) said there was “some confusion as to how best launch the movie,” so they “tried a few things and that was one of them. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll see that we begin it in a very different way now but that wasn’t always the idea.” I haven’t seen The Many Saints of Newark, but rumor has it that it’s two hours of Meadow trying to parallel park her dang car. It’s the most stressful time at the theater (or HBO Max) since Uncut Gems.

It’s worth noting that Taylor says that Falco “dressed up as Carmela,” not that she actually played Carmela. Maybe she was wearing Carmela’s iconic clothes but in her mind, she was Nurse Jackie? I can understand why that would get cut. It’s confusing.

The Many Saints of Newark hits theaters and HBO Max on October 1.

(Via NME)

Donald Trump continues to issue press releases in relative obscurity about basically anything that comes to his mind these days, but those around his orbit continue to find trouble as a bevy of investigations into his organization and activities swirl. The latest appears to have embroiled a bodyguard after a cache of evidence was found in a basement.

While Trump has avoided any charges, a high-level executive at his company faced indictment for tax fraud earlier this year. And in court on Monday, chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg’s attorney said more charges may be coming after evidence was uncovered while investigating a related potential defendant.

As the Daily Beast reported on Monday, an investigation into a “co-conspirator” in the case drew increased scrutiny of others in the organization.

“We have strong reason to believe there could be other indictments coming,” Weisselberg’s lawyer, Bryan C. Skarlatos, said in Manhattan criminal court on Monday.

The speculation is that it’s Matthew Calamari, a former Trump bodyguard who somehow rose to become the organization’s chief operating officer, is the large man about to be in hot water.

It’s unclear who that co-conspirator might be, but according to two sources close to the investigation, prosecutors have been more closely scrutinizing Matthew Calamari, a Trump bodyguard who rose through the ranks to become the company’s chief operating officer. Others have theorized that it might be Jeff McConney, the company comptroller who has long served as Weisselberg’s deputy—and who has already testified before the grand jury.

As is often the case with these situations, it may never be Trump himself who gets pulled into this mess. But the cast of characters involved in what appear to be some extremely iffy shenanigans here are pretty long. And they sure do have, uh, some interesting names.

[via The Daily Beast]