Month: December 2021

It’s official: No one in NBA history has made more three-pointers than Wardell Stephen Curry II. On Tuesday night in Madison Square Garden, Curry and the Golden State Warriors took on the New York Knicks with the two-time league MVP needing a pair of triples to have 2,974 makes in his career, which would snap the record held by legendary marksman Ray Allen.

It took less than five minutes for him to get there. Curry hit one from logo range early on in the game, and with 7:33 left on the clock, a relocation triple that dang near scraped the scoreboard at MSG made him the all-time record holder. After a Kevon Looney foul and a Steve Kerr timeout, Curry got some time to bask in his achievement while the crowd gave him a standing ovation. This included running over to where Allen was seated courtside and giving him a lengthy hug.

Unsurprisingly, the first person to go over to Curry after he hit the triple was longtime teammate Draymond Green.

Allen and Green weren’t the only members of the NBA family who celebrated Curry’s achievement, as a number of current players — including his younger brother, Seth — took to Twitter to celebrate the greatest shooter to ever live.

The eyes of the NBA world were focused on Madison Square Garden on Tuesday evening, and not only because there was a nationally televised game on the schedule between the New York Knicks and the Golden State Warriors. After connecting on five three-pointers during a win over the Indiana Pacers on Monday night, Steph Curry entered the evening needing only one three-pointer to tie Ray Allen’s career record and two triples to surpass the Hall of Fame sharpshooter for the top spot on the all-time list.

Curry’s first made triple came early on in the game, when he brought the ball up the floor and pulled up from logo territory to tie Allen’s record.

To break the record, Curry got open and launched, hoisting a shot that went straight in the air did not touch the rim as it hit the floor. To celebrate, Kevon Looney intentionally committed a foul and the Warriors called a timeout while the festivities began at MSG.

Curry entered the evening with 2,972 career connections from three-point distance, including 140 in the first 26 games of the 2021-22 season. The 33-year-old already held the single-season record for three-pointers (402) during the 2015-16 season and, while Curry was already well-regarded as the best shooter in league history, this adds yet another feather in Curry’s cap. Given that he leads one of the best teams in the NBA this season and is in the midst of a season that will garner consideration for the title of “best player in the world,” things seem to be going pretty well for the two-time MVP.

If you watched Fox News the day of the Jan. 6 Capitol siege, you probably didn’t think it was that bad. That night, Sean Hannity falsely told his viewers that Black Lives Matter protesters and other progressive activists had infiltrated the pro-Trump crowds. Ever since, they’re all either downplayed it or spread baseless, bonkers conspiracy theories. But on Monday, the House committee investigating the fateful day made public frantic texts some of the network’s stars sent that day. And thanks to CNN, you can see how they directly contradict what they were telling Fox News watchers.

The video juxtaposes the texts of three network hosts with what they told viewers. There was Laura Ingraham, who sent a message to former chief of staff Mark Meadows, in which she was clearly flustered. “The president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” she wrote. “This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”

Jump to July and Ingraham seemed blasé about it. “It was not a terrorist attack,” she told her loyal fans. “It wasn’t 9/11, it wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened to America, it wasn’t an insurrection.”

There was Brian Kilmeade of Fox & Friends. “Please get him on TV,” he wrote on Jan. 6, claiming he was “destroying everything you have accomplished.”

But a mere four days later, Kilmeade had already changed his tune. “He was not saying go take the Capitol,” he said of Trump’s inciting speech before the Capitol building was breached by his violent supporters. “He was going to go protest at the Capitol. He wasn’t saying take the bike racks and throw them.”

And who texted Meadows the words, “Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol.” Why, that’s Sean Hannity, who on Jan. 11 was complaining about how “Trump supporters are getting blamed for what happened at the Capitol,” and claimed the “vast majority” of protesters “did so peacefully.”

Did their private communiqués gibe with their public exhortations? Not really. But CNN’s John King went further than that, calling it “hypocrisy” and calling them “not journalists”:

“Number one, everything they did violated journalism ethics, reaching out to Mark Meadows. But number two — they’re not journalists — number two, the hypocrisy. To pretend it didn’t happen. On that day it was urgent, on that day the president has to do something, on that day the president has to save his legacy [and] then by that night on TV, [the riot was] not a big deal. And to this day, [the riot was] not a big deal.”

To King, the Fox News hosts’ contradictory statements only stresses “why it is so critical to get to the full truth of that day.”

You can watch the video above.

(Via Raw Story)

Shaquille O’Neal is a gigantic human. It’s something that everyone knows, but you can’t fully comprehend until you actually stand next to him in real life. Still, all you need to do is read that he is 7’1 (although he’s been listed at as being a little taller at points in his career) and you can get a sense of how huge he is.

Anyway, we say all of that to say this: Shaq’s size made him one of the most unstoppable forces in the history of American sports and also has the occasional downsides. One of them was on display on Tuesday night’s edition of TNT’s NBA coverage, which started with Shaq wearing a wig and the rest of the crew wondering what was going on.

He tried to play it off as a joke, saying that a hawk swooped down and attacked him, which obviously no one believed, even when he showed them the two band-aids on top of his head. But ultimately, Shaq came clean and admitted that he didn’t see an exit sign, which led to him scraping the top of his head.

Fortunately Shaq didn’t need stitches or anything like that, and instead, he and the rest of the gang laughed at an injury that’s extremely relatable to anyone who has ever tried to enter a crawlspace and conked part of their head.

Last summer, Tory Lanez was accused of shooting Megan Thee Stallion. More than a year later, a preliminary hearing was held regarding the case, and it ended Lanez charged with one felony count each of assault with a semiautomatic firearm and carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle. While there’s no doubt that Megan was shot in the foot, Tory denies being the person who fired the gun. Despite this, an LAPD detective reporter testified during today’s hearing that Tory actually apologized to Megan for shooting her.

XXL reports that a source says an LAPD detective testified that “Tory called Megan’s friend Kelsey in a jailhouse call that was recorded to apologize for shooting Megan.” Another report, from the Los Angeles Times, revealed the detective’s name to be Ryan Stogner and confirmed that he said Tory made said call. Tory’s attorney, Shawn Holley, claimed that a shooting was not mentioned during the call.

Furthermore, James Queally, a reporter for The Los Angeles Times, mentioned another “interesting exchange,” which happened during the trial, over Twitter: “As an LAPD detective testified about an apologetic jail phone call Lanez made to one of Megan’s friends, the rapper had enough: ‘How about you tell me what I was apologizing for bro? That don’t make no sense,’ he yelled at the investigator.” Queally added, “Peterson’s attorney seemed to be hinting that another person in the car (a friend of Megan Thee Stallion) may have actually pulled the trigger.”

The next hearing for the shooting case has been set for January 13.

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Looking for an authentic holiday feel-good story?

Mark Abbott has now been dubbed “Mr. Christmas” after transforming his home into an absolutely mesmerizing winter wonderland.

We’re talking illuminated reindeer (all nine of them), a glowing blue tunnel of light leading up to the front door, a candy cane forest, a snow machine, some outdoor music and an eight-foot-long sleigh. If that’s not enough seasonal spectacle, I don’t know what is.

But how and why this dazzlingly decorated Christmas house came to be is the real heartwarming tale.

Fifteen years ago, Abbott was registered as homeless. He shared with The Big Issue that he had been juggling three jobs to make ends meet. Then he lost his home after an expensive bill racked up for work on his car. The one he used to get to all three of his jobs. Needlessly to say, it was a difficult time in his life.

Abbott had been couch surfing and sleeping in his car before getting help at St. Martins in Norwich, in the east of England.

St. Martins describes its mission as “enhancing understanding and compassion towards homeless people in our community through education and advocacy.” It provides residential care for those with mental health and substance abuse related issues, housing care for the elderly and a “direct access hostel,” where Abbott stayed at for the next nine months.

While there, he saved up enough money to get on a housing register. And now, according to The Big Issue, Abbott is a proud father of three and has turned his passion into a business running a children’s dance company.

Not to mention, Abbott spares no expense for gorgeous Christmas lights each year.

“I’ve always liked Christmas lights, they’re so pretty. And I’ve always liked the festive thing, even the cold weather,” he told The Big Issue, adding “I do really love it when I see kids’ faces. The biggest thing for me is that it’s bringing people together.”

He certainly succeeds in that department, as families flock from miles away to glance at the breathtaking scene.

This year, two onlookers suggested that Abbott should use his festive display for charity, and having never forgotten the support he received from St. Martins, he knew exactly who to raise money for. He told BBC News “With the pandemic you hear stories of families being made homeless. I’ve got three kids now and I couldn’t imagine being homeless with children.”

With around 17,500 lights and 4,000 feet of wires, Abbott is giving back to the institution that once helped him all those years ago. Which means running more than 50 sockets to power the lights. But that cost is being covered by a friend Abbott made while he was homeless. Gratitude and generosity really are the gifts that keep on giving.

If you’d like to donate to St. Martins, you can do so here.

Alternatively, there are many ways you can help make a difference for those experiencing homelessness this season. The Independent has a short-but-sweet list of ideas that you can find here.

If Abbott’s “Christmas comeback” is any indication, you never know how a little kindness can help turn around someone’s life in a major way.

Tom Holland and Zendaya are no strangers to shutting down public interference when it comes to their relationship. The “Spider-Man” co-stars have already addressed feeling “robbed of privacy” after photos were leaked of Holland kissing Zendaya, before their relationship had been made publicly official.

For the record, Holland is reported to be 5’ 8”. Zendaya, on the other hand, is 5’ 10”. And for some reason, that height difference causes quite a commotion for fans. So much so that both Holland and Zendaya ended up addressing the “issue” while promoting “Spider-Man: No Way Home” on SiriusXM last Friday (Dec 10).

Tom Holland and Zendaya on the “ridiculous”stereotypes about their height difference.

www.youtube.com

SiriusXM host Jessica Shaw mentioned that in the previous movie, “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” Peter Parker (Holland) and MJ (Zendaya) share an onscreen kiss. No efforts were made to cheat the fact that Zendaya had a couple of inches over her co-star.

“And then it became this thing,” Shaw reflected.

In jest, Holland quickly defended that Zendaya was “not that much taller” than him. One, two inches tops.

He then noted how utterly bewildered he was that people just couldn’t figure out how the kiss could possibly be done. “It must have been so difficult,” he says sarcastically.

Zendaya also added, “it’s a nice sweet moment between them … why not just let it be?”

Shaw pivoted the conversation, saying that the public reaction indicates something much more misogynistic and problematic: the expectation that men should always be taller than women in straight relationships. Anything else just isn’t normal.

“My mom is taller than my dad, my mom’s taller than everyone,” Zendaya rebuked, saying, ”this is normal too.”

“It’s a stupid assumption,” added Holland, as he shared that during Spider-Man screen tests, every girl tested was taller than him.

“I had wondered if that was a decision that Jon [Watts, the director] had made. There was no one tested that was shorter than me,” he told Shaw, adding, “maybe that was a decision Jon Watts made and something he was aware of and wanted to break the stereotype. I think it’s great.”

Holland, never short on fun quips, also gave the disclaimer “to be fair, I am quite short.”

Despite the polite pushback, Zendaya and Holland remain good sports. As seen in this clip from “The Graham Norton Show,” where they joke about how their height difference affected some of the movie’s stunts.

As Zendaya explains, “There’s a particular stunt where Spider-Man swings us on top of a bridge, and he places me there. … Because of our height difference … we were attached, so I would land before him. My feet obviously hit the ground before he does.”

Then there’s a hilarious demonstration where Zendaya catches a falling Tom Holland. Physics fundamentals are no match for movie magic.

“It’s so nice to be caught for a change!” Holland exclaims.

“Like … it’s not a weird thing for women to be tall,” chorused “No Way Home”’s Jacob Batalon, who also appeared at the SiriusXM interview, adding “it just sucks that it has to be a conversation. Like it can’t just be normal.”

Zendaya reflected coolly, “I honestly never thought of it as a thing because my parents were always that way, so I didn’t know that people cared.”

It most certainly does not have to be a thing. And, as Shaw pointed out, seeing a taller MJ alongside a shorter Peter Parker seems tiny, but it can make a huge impact. Dispelling societal myths on the big screen can help change the mainstream real-life narrative as well. That is, after all, the true power (and great responsibility) of pop culture.

Hopefully with this obsolete construct out of the way, we can all focus on what really matters: that “Spider-Man: No Way Home” will be in theaters in only a few days time.

To those who reluctant to get into it, cryptocurrency can seem like a wild, reckless, even dangerous endeavor. It makes for jokey currencies, tie-ins with popular TV characters, and, of course, it gets a lot of people scammed. A good example of the dodgier nature of the biz happened Tuesday, when CoinMarketCap, a utility that aggregates crypto market data, suffered a bit of a glitch. How big? Big enough to make its users think they were all suddenly billionaires or trillionaires for about an hour.

Late in the day, those monitoring their crypto accounts on the service saw that their prices, market capitalizations, and more had abruptly skyrocketed. That includes Bitcoin, whose own market cap soared to an explosive $14.7 quintillion.

But it was not to be. Around 5pm EST, CoinMarketCap operators acknowledged that the “Engineering team is aware of incorrect price information appearing on [CoinMarketCap]. We are currently investigating and will update this status when we have more information.”

The glitch was resolved and then the service’s Twitter team rubbed salt on the wound, writing, “How did it feel to be a trillionaire for a couple hours?”

The freak occurrence received extensive social media coverage, with people posting screencaps of their too-big-to-be-real crypto numbers, and joking about all the things they were going to buy with their totally real and now flush alternative currencies.

Anyway, surely nothing to worry about when questionable and under-regulated forms of currency briefly turns numerous people into the richest humans on the planet before reminding them that they again have nothing.

(Via The Block)

Over the weekend, Rand Paul did a good, some would even say socialist thing: He begged President Joe Biden to send federal aid to Kentucky, the state that’s been the hardest hit by a recent spate of tornadoes — and, incidentally, also the state he represents in Congress. It was a kind and humane move on his part. And it was also very unlike him. The Republican senator has a long history of voting against similar aid packages to other states that have been impacted by natural disasters. And when people pointed that out, Paul got real mad.

The senator went on Fox News, which recently became even more of a Republican safe space following the sudden departure of Chris Wallace. Host Sandra Smith brought up his voting record as well, but in a much friendlier way, framing it as a personal attack. And it nicely teed up Paul to strike back, mostly with name-calling, questionable shaming, and spin.

“It’s sad. We haven’t buried our dead yet and networks like CNN were, frankly, they’re fundamentally dishonest people saying things that are untrue,” Paul told Fox News. “When I was first elected in 2010, within months, I was advocating for disaster relief for Kentucky. I’ve never had a problem with the program. I’ve never really opposed disaster relief for any part of the country.”

That, however, was untrue. Paul opposed relief packages in the wakes of Hurricane Sandy in 2013, Hurricanes Maria and Harvey in 2017, and he was against a broader disaster relief effort in 2019. So Paul tried to spin his votes, basically by not mentioning that he voted against them:

“But I have said, when it goes over budget, when we spend everything that’s within our budget, that it should be paid for by taking money from places in the budget from places that are less essential. I think that’s a very reasonable fiscally conservative. But, you know, you watch CNN and you have people who basically all they care about is attack, attack, attack.

Paul kept calling CNN dishonest, saying, “All they’re going to do is basically lie to people. But it’s also why nobody wants to watch them anymore. They used to be a trusted source of news and now, my goodness, it’s just a factory of lies and partisanship and I don’t know how anybody can watch it anymore.”

Speaking of lies, Paul was briefly banned on YouTube earlier this year after spreading misinformation about masks.

(Via Mediaite)

After historic tornadoes tore through towns throughout Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee and Illinois Friday night, people were stunned to see the aftermath in the light of day Saturday morning. The devastation is hard to fathom. Scenes of not just buildings but entire city blocks leveled are hard to take in, but Mayfield, KY, where an entire town was ravaged, has become the viral face of the destruction.

The New York Times shared a video showing the apocalyptic aftermath in Mayfield, home to nearly 10,000 people. It looks like a war zone, or worse. An entire community laid flat.

Some of the worst destruction from the Kentucky tornado was centered in Mayfield, a town of nearly 10,000 people. At least 110 people were huddled inside a candle factory in the area when a tornado ripped through. https://nyti.ms/3GrWmaSu00a0pic.twitter.com/Mh3i3oEzZa

— The New York Times (@The New York Times)
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As messages of support started pouring in and emergency management began the daunting task of figuring out next steps, one man who lived a half-hour away decided to take a boots-on-the-ground approach and help the people of Mayfield in a way that he could.

Jim Finch packed up his grill, loaded up the back of his pickup truck with food and drove to Mayfield to, in his words, “feed the people.”

ABC journalist Victor Ordoñez shared a video on Twitter of Finch in the middle of the destruction, standing in front of his grill in disposable gloves, explaining why he was there.

“I know they don’t have any electricity, so that means they don’t have any restaurants, no running water so I just figured I would do what I could do, show up with some food and some water,” he said.

This man drove half an hour with a grill and a truckload of food and parked right in the middle of #Mayfield, Kentucky.pic.twitter.com/xrVbrMdJ9S

— Victor Ordou00f1ez (@Victor Ordou00f1ez)
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“Jim wore a smile the whole morning,” Ordoñez wrote in another tweet. Finch laughed and shook his head when Ordoñez asked if he had a restaurant. “No sir,” he said. “It just needed to be done.”

Finch brought hamburgers, chicken, sausage, eggs, “just real simple stuff you can have and not worry about making a mess, grab and go type of food,” he said.

Jim wore a smile the whole morning, we laugh when I asked if he had a restaurant. He shook his head, “it just needed to be done,” he said. pic.twitter.com/tpZ1LMvdOA

— Victor Ordoñez (@TheOrdonezTimes) December 13, 2021

Humans helping fellow humans in a time of crisis is something we never tire of seeing. People are praising Finch as a hero—a selfless person who saw a need and decided to fill it. In times of extreme crisis, basic needs like food and shelter become more immediate and vital than ever, and for the people who are reeling from their world literally being torn apart, the simple, thoughtful kindness of being handed a warm meal from a stranger is surely appreciated.

Thank you, Jim Finch, for being an example to us all.

If you’re looking for ways to help or places to donate to help western Kentuckians recover from the tornado damage, see this post from the Lexington Herald Leader.

Addendum: that message was for the children. Once you are an adult, if at all possible try to BE the helper the children are looking for.

— Nerdy Lawyer (@Nerdy Lawyer)
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