Year: 2022

In the aftermath of the George Floyd murder in 2020, people have begun to rethink the role that armed police officers have in society. Does every problem need to be addressed by someone with the power to administer lethal force?

The Aurora Police Department in Colorado launched a six-month program last year that led to the creation of two mental health crisis response teams. The first pairs an officer with a mental health professional. The other pairs a mental health professional and a paramedic to handle mental health crisis situations where there is no apparent danger.

“When someone calls in to report either themselves or an individual in crisis, or maybe they just see someone who might need some resources and help, dispatch will put that in a call, and my team is able to click on the call, review everything and see if it meets criteria,” Courtney Tassin, program manager for the Aurora Mobile Response Team, told 9News.

The Aurora Mobile Response Team’s van is stocked full of food, water and hygiene products to help the people they encounter on the streets.

Over the first three months, the team went on 116 calls.

The Aurora Mobile Response Team launched in September

Today Aurora and partners officially launched the Aurora Mobile Response Team. This pilot program is an alternative response program in handling behavioral health crises related to mental health, depression, homelessness, and more. Learn more at http://AuroraGov.org/MobileResponseu00a0.pic.twitter.com/hl88w6gUMb

— City of Aurora, CO (@City of Aurora, CO)
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One study found that up to 10% of 911 calls nationwide could involve mental health issues. So it makes complete sense for police departments to respond to these situations with counselors trained in helping people with mental health issues instead of the knee-jerk reaction to send somebody with a gun.

Further, it allows police to do the work they’re trained to do instead of forcing them to act as mental health counselors. It also frees up the police so they can correctly respond to situations that may turn violent.

“A lot of times it’s not appropriate for our officers to have to go to these calls, and you know, to possibly escalate the situation when it doesn’t need to be so,” Aurora Police Chief Vanessa Wilson told CBS News.

The unarmed response teams are also less intimidating to people already on the edge.

“We always focus on what’s least restrictive,” Tassin told CBS News. “How do we keep from further traumatizing this person who’s already in a very vulnerable state?”

The response team could reduce police shootings

The response team is a humane way to deal with people having mental health issues and it may also save lives. According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, people with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed during a police encounter than other civilians approached or stopped by law enforcement.

“By dismantling the mental illness treatment system, we have turned mental health crisis from a medical issue into a police matter,” said John Snook, executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center. “This is patently unfair, illogical, and is proving harmful both to the individual in desperate need of care and the officer who is forced to respond.”

The Aurora Police Department’s new program is a welcome challenge to the status quo that’s been in place in America for decades. For too long we’ve tacitly agreed that the state’s only response to civil disturbances should be sending a person with a gun. Now, thanks to the calls for justice that happened after the death of George Floyd, people are waking up to the idea that cops can’t and shouldn’t solve everything.

“We have calls for people that are in mental health crisis every day,” Sergeant Aaron Bunch said. “Police officers are trained to do a lot of things. What they don’t have are Master’s degrees in social work.”

Vladimir Putin’s imperialistic tactics in waging war on Ukraine are having devastating consequences. Millions of Ukrainians have been pushed from their homes with civilian casualties on the rise because homemade molotov cocktails can only go so far. Several thousand Russian soldiers have already died while carrying out Putin’s orders, and economic sanctions will take their toll as well. It’s heartbreaking to watch it all unfold.

There are, however, moments of levity to be found amid the darkness. Russian oligarchs are seeing their yachts seized, and the absence of luxuries will soon hit home for Putin himself. Via The Daily Beast, New York Times now reports that Putin (shown looking rather waxy in the above photo, taken in late 2017, when he was about 65) will have to scramble to find Botox to keep his youthful looks.

“U.S. drugmaker AbbVie (ABBV.N), which owns blockbuster wrinkle treatment Botox,” the NYT relayed. “[H]as temporarily suspended operations for all its aesthetics products in the country.” How soon will Putin realize the reality of this dire (for him) situation?

Perhaps he’s got a stockpile on hand. That wouldn’t be too shocking, but Putin still can’t be pleased, given his rumored reliance on injecting the ‘tox, undergoing plastic surgery, and possibly hitting steroids as part of his fountain-of-youth-chasing repertoire. Sadly, his delusions of grandeur on the world stage are wreaking brutal affects on humanity, but at least he might go without in one small area of his existence.

(Via New York Times)

Kanye West continues to make history, but perhaps not in a good way. Yesterday, Instagram account @ourgenerationmusic shared a photo of a page from a history textbook, featuring a photo of the “Eazy” rapper.

The photo comes from Ye’s infamous 2018 meeting with President Trump, and is accompanied by his explanation as to why he felt empowered by wearing the MAGA hat: “But there’s times where, you know, there’s something about – you know, I love Hillary. I love everyone, right? But the campaign “I’m with her” just didn’t make me feel, as a guy, that didn’t get to see my dad all the time – like a guy that could play catch with his son.”

Following the quote are instructions, which say, “Read the quote above from Kanye West in the Oval Office. What does this suggest about factors that affect voting behaviour in the USA? How does this link to the presidential powers of persuasion?”

Ye is currently on a 24-hour Instagram suspension following a post aimed at The Daily Show host Trevor Noah. Prior to Ye’s post, Noah took to his show to talk about how his previous posts aimed at ex-wife Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson are forms of abusive behavior.

The connections between the modern NBA and hip-hop are growing all the time and with the latest announcement out of Young Thug’s YSL Records camp, they’ve become the most pronounced they’ve ever been. YSL Records fixture T-Shyne is set to release his new album, Confetti Nights, which is naturally executive-produced by YSL’s founder Young Thug on April 1… along with some help from none other than the Brooklyn Nets’ recently returned All-Star forward, Kevin Durant.

It’s not the first time that an NBA player applied their talents to musical curation. In 2021, Durant’s fellow NBA champ Kawhi Leonard executive produced the Culture Jam Vol. 1 compilation featuring A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, Gunna, Lil Uzi Vert, Polo G, Rod Wave, and YoungBoy Never Broke Again. Meanwhile, Damian Lillard, the All-Star guard for the Portland Trailblazers, has had a flourishing rap career as Dame D.O.L.L.A., dropping four studio albums that featured Lil Wayne, Raphael Saadiq, and Snoop Dogg.

In addition to producing albums, Durant has also been a movie producer, commissioning the Basketball County: Something In The Water documentary in 2020. Durant’s music connections came in handy there, too, as he recruited fellow Prince George’s County native IDK as music supervisor for the film.

Meanwhile, YSL Records is coming off a stellar 2021 that saw Young Thug’s Punk on the Billboard charts, followed this year by Gunna’s outstanding DS4EVER. With plenty of the roster yet to release — Lil Keed, Strick, and others are especially anticipated — 2022 figures to be another pivotal year for the Atlanta-based label.

Confetti Nights is due 4/1 via YSL and 300 Entertainment.

The NCAA Tournament is upon us. The first weekend of the tournament is always exciting, with plenty of folks dubbing it the best weekend in all of sports, but it’s also not the easiest event to follow. March Madness will frequently have multiple games going on at once with fans desperately trying to keep up. This can be fun, but if you’re at work and just want to have a game on in the background while you attempt to get something done, it can be tough.

Thankfully, there are more and more ways to watch the tournament popping up every March, and this year, Twitch is getting in on the fun. While Twitch is known for video games, it’s been embracing sports the last few years and even got to stream Thursday Night Football throughout much of the 2021 NFL season. Now, Twitch will offer college basketball fans two ways to enjoy the NCAA Tournament on its website: Let’s Go! College Hoops and SuperFan FaceOff.

Let’s Go! College Hoops will be an option for fans looking for a pre-game show, featuring hosts GrandPooBear, TheBlackHokage, Darryl Reynolds, and more, while SuperFan FaceOff is more of an NFL RedZone-type experience with streamers roshocker22, BridgetCase, uncledrewWNBA, and more. The shows will air on Twitch Sports beginning at 5:30 p.m. ET.

In her cover story for Vogue, supermodel Bella Hadid opened up about her cosmetic surgery, and how she regretted it nearly a decade later. “I wish I had kept the nose of my ancestors,” she admitted, after saying she got a nose job when she was 14. “I think I would have grown into it.”

The supermodel has been open about her body image struggles in the past, posting a lengthy Instagram caption about her “breakdowns” late last year. Hadid has since taken frequent social media breaks to help her handle it. “There were people online saying, ‘You live this amazing life,’” she said. “So then how can I complain? I always felt that I didn’t have the right to complain, which meant that I didn’t have the right to get help, which was my first problem.”

Hadid was famously featured on the Real Housewives franchise, where her mother Yolanda was a controversial parent to Gigi and Bella (Gigi’s boyfriend Zayn famously did not get along with her). Twitter users even pointed out how critical Yolanda is over her daughter’s bodies, and she was frequently telling them what they can and cannot eat on the show.

Bella has admitted to struggling with an eating disorder when she was a teen: “I can barely look in the mirror to this day because of that period in my life.” She was also often compared to her older sister, fellow model Gigi.

I was the uglier sister. I was the brunette. I wasn’t as cool as Gigi, not as outgoing. That’s really what people said about me. And unfortunately, when you get told things so many times, you do just believe it. I always ask myself, how did a girl with incredible insecurities, anxiety, depression, body-image issues, eating issues, who hates to be touched, who has intense social anxiety — what was I doing getting into this business? But over the years I became a good actress.

Now, Hadid says she is putting her mental health first. “Now everything that I do in my personal life is literally to make sure that my mental state stays above water. Fashion can make you or break you. And if it makes you, you have to make a conscious effort every day for it not to break you. There’s always a bit of grief in love.”

Everyone loves a fun little murder mystery. They’re a blast, especially when they’re filled with big stars and twists and a handful of goofball hijinks. Who did it? Was it that guy? Or was it the other guy? Or the lady in the fur coat? She seems like she has secrets. Let’s keep an eye on her. Better yet, let’s have a quirky detective – professional and slick or amateur and bumbling, or professional and bumbling or amateur and slick – look into her. Let’s get real weird with it, too. Have everyone on the set crank it all the way up to 10 in any way they see fit: outfits, costumes, motives and/or weapons, all of it. Fun little murder mysteries rarely miss. They’re so much better than actual murder. I think we can all agree on that. I hope we can all agree on that. Please do not murder anyone. Definitely do not murder me. I do not think I would like that very much. But I do love a fun little murder mystery. Please, if you are someone who is in charge of these things or has influence over some who is, just go ahead and make a lot more of them.

We’ve been on such a good run of fun little murder mysteries, too. We went through a dark period for a minute there. Murder mysteries were bleak, man. There was True Detective and Mare of Easttown and another True Detective or two and it was all quite grim and full of detectives who did not seem to bathe often enough and had trouble solving crimes because of their demons. They were good, mostly, and a surprising amount of fun in the moment with all the theories and memes and second life they created online, but yeah, a pretty bleak affair. These things move in waves, though. There’s a kind of snap-back that happens after a while where things shift back the other way. That’s what we have here lately. Murder mysteries got fun again. Do you want some examples? I have some examples.

Knives Out was one good fun little murder mystery. You remember Knives Out. Daniel Craig doing his southern accent, Ana de Armas trying to clear her name, Chris Evans in the most comfortable sweaters you’ve ever seen. That movie was great, like a real-life game of Clue but with a slew of funny and talented people — Don Johnson! Jamie Lee Curtis! Edi Patterson! — all being petty and nasty to each other for a few hours before we found out who did it. (So… kind of like the movie Clue.) That’s a classic formula. Daniel Craig looked like he was in heaven, too, free for a bit from playing a humorless James Bond (make James Bond fun and silly again, too, please, but that’s another rant), just chewing up all the scenery he could find in the best way possible. They’re making another one soon, with his character coming back to investigate a new murder in the Greek islands. I hope he says this exact line of dialogue again.

You know what else was a fun little murder mystery? Only Murders in the Building. This shouldn’t have been a surprise, I guess. All Steve Martin and Martin Short have done for about four or five decades now is make neat stuff that people have enjoyed. We should have looked at this one and said, “Hmm, yeah, I bet a show with these two riffing on the murder podcast genre will be pretty good,” but still, there it was, a hoot from beginning to end. It’s cool that Hulu threw some money at them and told them to go nuts a little bit. It’s cool that they looped in Selena Gomez and let her breathe a bunch of life into the whole affair, in a way that made it all feel fresh and new. It’s cool that Nathan Lane got to show up and be devious as hell and it’s cool that Jane Lynch popped up like halfway through as a character named, I swear to God, Sazz Pataki, who was, I swear to God again, Steve Martin’s character’s old stunt double.

Sazz Pataki. Sorry, I just wanted to type that again. Say it out loud right now, wherever you are, even if there are people around. It’s a good piece of business.

Hey, speaking of good pieces of business, did you watch The Afterparty on Apple TV yet? Man, I hope you did. I ate that sucker up. It started with a simple premise — “What if a pop star played by Dave Franco got murdered on the night of a high school reunion and the suspects were a collection of your favorite comedic actors and actresses from other shows you like?” — and took it to dizzying heights. Each episode was styled like a different genre of storytelling, action movies and rom-coms and animation and all of it. Tiffany Haddish played the detective. Sam Richardson and Ben Schwartz were in there, which was good because they should be in everything. This happened, which I kind of just want to present without context. And I will.

These are just three recent good examples. There have been more out there, too. Adam Sandler literally made a movie titled Murder Mystery for Netflix a few years ago and that wasn’t bad, either. It’s all been really cool for me, a dude who loves fun stuff and has seen every episode of Columbo at least once. But I think it’s cool in general, too, for reasons beyond “because Brian likes it.” People have loved watching whodunnits forever. And reading them. Agatha Christie wrote like 600 murder mysteries many decades ago and people still read them on the beach every summer. They’re captivating when done right, especially in a week-to-week television format, where the communal viewing experience adds to the intrigue, with everyone playing detective on their own between episodes, posting all their weirdo ideas about the proceedings. But movies work, too. There’s something nice about introducing a problem and providing a solution to that problem in about two hours. It’s all great. I love it. Everyone loves it. There are probably enough shows and movies about scammers right now anyway. Let’s kill some people again. I mean, uh, fictionally. Only fictionally. I cannot stress strongly enough how bad actual murder is. The worst.

In summation:

• Please make more fun little murder mysteries
• Please do not murder me, or anyone else
• Maybe cast Jake Johnson from New Girl and Patti Harrison from I Think You Should Leave as the detectives and/or murderers in one of these, just to see if it works as well as I think it will

Thank you.

At the end of February, the official Spider-Man Twitter account dropped an image that Marvel fans needed to see come to life regarding Spider-Man: No Way Home. Namely, Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland recreating the Spider-Man pointing meme. The photo went over huge with fans who declared it the greatest thing on the internet.

After hiding his involvement in No Way Home, Garfield has been an open book about the highly secretive production, and while stopping by Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday night, he revealed that recreating the meme was a top priority. In fact, all three Spider-Men barely had time to get on their tights before they were thrust in front of a camera for the hilarious photo.

“Me and Tobey landed on set. They put us in the costumes, and they said, ‘We’re gonna do the meme really quickly…’ That was before we had shot anything,” Garfield said. “We were all kind of like thrown onto a set and told to point at each other, and I think we got one good shot, because the rest of the time we were just laughing and trying not to stare at each other’s crotches.”

While it’s fascinating to hear how obsessed Marvel was with bringing the Spider-Man pointing meme to life, unfortunately, Garfield didn’t reveal the answer to the greatest Spidey mystery of them all: Who wore a fake butt in their Spidey suit for No Way Home? Tom Holland can’t just drop that kind of information and leave people hanging.

Carl’s Jr. is going HAM on bacon. While the rest of the players in the fast food world are busy tripping all over themselves trying to top Popeyes in the chicken sandwich game, Carl’s Jr. decided to pivot and go with the old classic move of just putting bacon on everything and calling it a day, giving us the new Bacon Beast menu. It’s a timeworn move but also… never a bad call.

The Bacon Beast menu consists of three new bacon-loaded products including the Bacon Beast Burger, the Bacon Beast Burrito, and the Bacon Beast Biscuit. The Carl’s Jr. marketing team is surely nerding out over the amount of alliteration they got away with during this campaign. Good on them.

So is the new menu beastly or just bad? We found out by eating the whole Bacon Beast menu to see whether it was full of bangers or just a redundant cash grab of artery-clogging garbage. Let’s eat, beginning with the worst of the trio, the….

Bacon Beast Burrito

Price: $3.99

Fast food has a burrito problem, a problem that is completely of its own making. America loves burritos, it’s pretty hard to not love burritos, so you’d think putting a burrito on your menu, like the chicken sandwich and cheeseburger, is an easy money maker. The problem is there isn’t a single fast food chain out there that seems to be even trying to make a delicious burrito. I know this because most of them don’t warm their tortillas before rolling them up, and that’s the case here with the Bacon Beast Breakfast Burrito.

Before I can get to the build we have to talk about this tortilla. I don’t know for a fact that Carl’s Jr. doesn’t throw their tortilla on the flattop girl, but the tortilla of this burrito is very gummy, chalky, and flavorless, and that’s a dead giveaway that some frozen-then-clumsily-thawed package was merely opened and slapped on the assembly line. Always heat your tortillas people, it makes them more pliable, it awakens the flavors, and it helps the contents inside to melt.

If the tortilla wasn’t bad enough, we have the insides which… also aren’t great. Carl’s Jr’s bacon is incredibly thin, so while this burrito should have a crunchy mouthfeel it’s mostly mushy thanks to the tortilla, layers of egg, and double dose of cheese. It’s loaded with hash rounds to provide some much-needed crunch, but they’re only crispy on the outside, and once they start combining with all the other ingredients that crunch is hardly noticeable.

Also American cheese in a burrito? I mean, I know this is a breakfast burrito but at the very least, use cheddar.

Bacon Beast Biscuit

Price: $3.79

Everything gets better with the Bacon Beast Biscuit. The biscuit, despite being smaller than a burrito, is loaded up with six strips of bacon, a folded egg, and two slices of American cheese (American is acceptable on a biscuit). It has none of the mushy mouthfeel problems that the Bacon Beast Burrito has, instead offering a satisfying crunch against a flakey, crumbly, and buttery biscuit.

It provides the sensation of eating an entire breakfast platter in a single bite and is one of Carl’s Jr’s best breakfast offerings to date.

Bacon Beast Cheeseburger

Price: $5.39

Here we are at the star of the show, the Bacon Beast Cheeseburger. The cheeseburger consists of a single, double, or triple 3.5 oz serving of meat topped with American cheese (the one food American cheese is made for), tomato, pickles, lettuce, mayo, and special sauce served on a sesame seed bun. If you’re scratching your head because that sounds like a pretty standard bacon cheeseburger, you’re right!

Until the Bacon Beast, Carl’s Jr’s only official bacon burger was the Western Bacon cheeseburger, which featured a layer of fried onion rings as well as BBQ sauce in-place of special sauce. It’s delicious, decadent, and sweet-yet-salty, but it’s a bit extra if you want a simple bacon cheeseburger. The Bacon Beast gives you a direct and simple bacon burger fix. I mentioned before that Carl’s Jr’s bacon was thin, and that’s still a major criticism here, but the thin bacon at least tastes good, and that’s all that really matters.

The burger mixes Carl’s Jr’s savory charbroiled flavors with the smokiness of Applewood bacon, providing a cheeseburger that is both crunchy and savory, and full of charred-smokey flavors. If you like the taste of campfire, you’re going to love Carl’s Jr’s first proper bacon cheeseburger.

The Bottom Line:

Skip the burrito, grab the biscuit for breakfast and the burger for lunch. Carl’s Jr’s Bacon Beast Cheeseburger isn’t a game-changing bacon cheeseburger that you absolutely need to order next time you’re picking up lunch, but if you find yourself at Carl’s Jr it’s definitely worth trying, especially if the Western Bacon Cheeseburger has always been a bit too much for you.

If you’re pulling up at breakfast, definitely do order the Bacon Beast Biscuit. It’s the perfect small one-handed drive-thru treat that’ll give you the energy you need to get the day going.

Find your nearest Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s here.

“What happened to equal justice?” That’s what Tucker Carlson wants to know. When news broke that Empire actor Jussie Smollett—who in December was found guilty of falsely reporting a hate crime after staging an attack on himself—was being released from jail less than a week after beginning to serve a 150-day sentence, Carlson was on the air. So of course he had to comment.

As The Daily Beast reports, the Fox News host had his very own, and very Carlson-esque, brand of reasoning for why Smollett is already back at home while those patriotic Americans who stormed the Capitol on January 6th and left several people dead in their wake are still “rotting” away in jail. “You saw this one coming,” Carlson told his viewers:

“Convicted hate crime hoaxster Jussie Smollett was just sentenced to jail, and now he’s been released from jail. Or is about to be. He was just a few days into his 150-day sentence, but this evening an appeals court ruled that Jussie Smollett can go home while he works to get his conviction overturned. Because he’s not a Trump voter. He’s not one of those January 6th guys rotting in solitary for more than a year. He’s Jussie Smollett, he’s a famous actor.”

For the record: Political leanings had nothing to do with the actor’s release. As he’s currently appealing his conviction, a process that his lawyers argued will take well over the 150 days to which he has been sentenced, they pointed out that it would not be fair to have him serve that time—or possibly more—while they’re working to have the ruling reversed. Which makes perfect legal sense, whether you’re an actor or an insurrectionist. But Carlson, of course, doesn’t see it that way—he chalks it up to Smollett being “a Hillary man” (which, as far as we can tell, is what Fox News fans simply call people who probably don’t watch Fox News).

(Via The Daily Beast)