Month: January 2024

The RICO trial against Young Thug and YSL resumed today, but there may be some changes going forward if the prosecution gets its way. According to Law&Crime Network producer Cathy Russon, the prosecution filed a motion asking Judge Ural Glanville to block video of witness testimonies for the rest of the trial. While audio would be allowed, witnesses’ full names would also be blocked from publication until after the testimonies. The matter of video will be settled during a hearing on Friday, February 2 at 3pm ET.

This appears to be a belated effort by the District Attorney’s office to protect its witnesses from possible retaliation or tampering efforts, something the prosecutors claimed they were worried about from very early on in the case. Witness tampering concerns were among the arguments against granting Thug and his co-defendants bond for the near-year they were incarcerated. Arguably, the strategy was at least partially effective in pulling plea deals out of many of the co-defendants, including from Gunna and Thug’s brother Unfoonk. Despite all of those deals being so-called “Alford pleas” in which they only pled guilty to being in a gang, they’ve face recriminations from fans and fellow rappers for the past year.

As long as the cameras ARE still rolling, you can still watch the YSL trial online as it continues.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Taylor Sheridan doesn’t seem too worried about that rumored Yellowstone scuttlebutt that’s constantly popping up in headlines. That is to say, the Paramount+ TV king hasn’t vocalized concern about finishing the second half of Season 5 (which will supposedly film in late 2024), and perhaps that’s because he has approximately 327 other TV shows currently in the works.

Among many other selections, there’s Land Man along with more Tulsa King, The Mayor Of Kingstown, and 1923 on the way. As if that wasn’t enough, Sheridan is preparing a return to the big screen, too. The Hell Or High Water and Sicario writer has stepped up as both writer and director of the upcoming Empire Of The Summer Moon. This project didn’t exactly come out of the blue for him, so let’s discuss what has been revealed thus far.

Plot

Sheridan actually shot the breeze about this book during his recent visit with Joe Rogan, and as Deadline recently reported, this has been a Sheridan passion project for quite some time. Long ago, the project seemed destined to be a Warner Bros. flick, but that appears to no longer be the case. Will Paramount somehow be involved? Stay tuned for more there, but Sheridan is producing under his Bosque Ranch Productions umbrella.

Empire Of The Summer Moon will be based upon S.C. Gwynne’s book, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History. This nonfiction work traces the life of pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker as well as that of her mixed-blood child, Quanah, who rose as the final and most celebrated Comanche chief. The book also spans four decades of history to detail clashes between white settlers in America and the Comanche tribe.

Comanches were extraordinarily successful fighters with children among their ranks during battle. The tribe managed to drive back the French from moving past Louisiana and did the same for colonial Spain by way of Mexico. Deadline has revealed more details about the action to come:

Part of the story involves Quanah’s mother, Cynthia Ann Parker, who was 9 when she was kidnapped by the Comanches and was a model for the young kidnapped girl in The Searchers. In the real story, Parker was married with a child when the rescue attempt was made, and she didn’t want to leave because she had no memory of life before she was taken.

Quanah and the Comanches drove back the Spanish and French, but the settlers coming from the Eastern states were more formidable. They created the Texas Rangers and fortified them with the six gun, for which the Comanches had no answer.

Cast

Sheridan has stayed mum on casting updates, although we should hear more updates on that note soon.

Release Date

Bosque Ranch Productions has not yet revealed a release date for the movie.

Trailer

We’re as eager to see a trailer as you are, so we will be awaiting further news. For now, here’s a clip from Sheridan’s recent visit with Joe Rogan. They discuss the Empire Of The Summer Moon book after the 4:00 mark.

Just six years into her professional career, A’ja Wilson has already become one of the most decorated stars the WNBA has ever seen. With a ROY award, two MVPs, two DPOYs, two championships, and a Finals MVP, Wilson has established herself as the dominant force in the WNBA today.

Coming off of back-to-back championships, the Las Vegas Aces face the challenge of trying to become the first WNBA squad to three-peat since the Houston Comets won the first four WNBA titles from 1997-2000. While Las Vegas still boasts a loaded roster, headlined by Wilson, and are the favorites for good reason, there’s plenty of teams looking to dethrone them and three-peating has, historically, been a difficult challenge in any sport. To do it, you have to have a talented roster willing to put team success above individual accolades, and the Aces so far have been able to do keep a mantra of “we before me.”

Wilson spoke with DIME this week ahead of a busy February for her, as she gets ready for her book release and will be part of NBA All-Star Weekend, joining Jayson Tatum for a Ridgeline Unlocks fan contest prior to the Ruffles Celebrity Game in Indianapolis. We talked about how she stays hungry for more as her on-court ramp up period begins for the upcoming season, the conversations the Aces have to keep their main focus on winning titles, loving when her teammates get the shine they deserve for the hard work and sacrifices they make to allow Vegas to win championships, and more.

How’s the offseason going so far for you and just how are you doing now that we’re getting a few months out from from camp starting?

This is the time where I really start to dial into my craft and doing a lot of different things and ramping up, so it’s been fun getting back into the swing of things. My offseason has been great. I’ve been just kind of laying low, keeping to myself. Obviously my book is coming out next month, so we’re getting all ready for that. And I’m super excited about that. That’s probably my main thing that I’m excited about right now. But it’s been tons of fun and I can’t believe that training camp’s right around the corner.

What has it been like for you writing a book and getting to tell your story and do everything that that goes into that, because it is quite the process?

It’s been a lot of fun. It was a lot of meetings obviously throughout my season, just making sure that everything was going to be good, but I think now that I’m done with it, I’m very pleased about how much work we put in. And I definitely found a new way of just viewing things since doing that, particularly my audiobook. So it’s been a lot of fun. I have a village that has been so supportive of me, and just been super excited just to get things going. So February is going to be a big month.

You mentioned getting started on ramping up and something I always find interesting is somebody that’s at your position at the top of your sport, what do you focus on at this point in your individual work? Is it more about refining what you’re already doing? Are there things you still look to add to your game? And kind of how do you approach that balance as you get ready for another season?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is just never becoming satisfied. Like no matter how many rings or banners I may have put up, at the end of the day, I can still learn. I could still grow and just being a sponge to everything. And I surprise myself every day when I go to the gym that I’m still doing things and having fun while doing it. So yeah being in this position that I am…I’m just never satisfied. I want to be great. I want more. I’m greedy when it comes to that. So when it comes to just how can I bring more to my game? What’s the work that I could put in? It’s a no brainer. So yeah, I’m excited just to continue to grow.

There aren’t many people who have experienced what you have in terms of your journey, but one of the few would be your teammate, Candace Parker. What’s it been like being able to spend time with her on and off the court and just be able to bounce things off of somebody who is in the rare position of having been through a lot of the things that you have?

Yeah, it’s been incredible. If you would have told 13 year old A’ja that she would be teammates with Candace Parker, she would probably flip out and say there’s no way. So it was definitely just a lot of fun just getting to pick her brain. I feel like Candace has seen so much within our league with so much of the game that like she’s seen the highs, the lows, the good, the bad, the ugly. So just to have that in our locker room and just the veteran that she is, the legend, the GOAT, the Hall of Famer that she is — just the way she approaches the game is something that I admire a lot. And to see that every single day whether she was injured or healthy. She was very present in just making sure that I was good, and it was pretty cool just watching the game over again and seeing how excited and hyped she was on the bench for us. Because it took all of us, it really did. And so yeah, it’s been a lot of fun learning from her.

What are the conversations that have to happen on the team like yours where you have so much talent and there are sacrifices that everybody has to make? And how special is it to have a group that’s willing to do that and keep team success at front of mind?

I think it’s something that we’ve learned that it has to be we before me. And that’s something that we approached right at the front gate. Like when we have people that get traded or are just here on the team, like new to the team, that’s the first thing that we help them understand that this is we’ve sacrificed a lot to be where we are. People on the outside looking in see the end result and that’s obviously what they focus on. But they lose sight of how we got to that point. How many arguments and back and forths and disagreements we went through and sacrifices we went through to get to that point. So the biggest thing is understanding that you’re not there for yourself, you’re there for the whole team and the greater good of the team, and that’s been a lot of fun just pulling that out of people within our locker room but never losing ourselves.

When you see somebody like Jackie Young have such a big Finals and you see somebody that maybe doesn’t get the recognition all the time have breakout moments like that, how much does that mean to you? When you see somebody who could be the best player on another team who might be your third, fourth option get that kind of shine, how exciting is that for you to see that moment for them?

It’s super exciting because like like you said, I see the countless hours that Jackie put in. I see everybody that’s working hard in the gym. And so when the rest of the world sees it, it comes by no surprise to me because I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, I know. They can do that.’ But that’s the beautiful thing about it is showing people that there are different paths and journeys that you go through, but you can still make it to the top and you can still achieve your goals and be you. So anytime Jackie gets acknowledged or any of my teammates get acknowledged I’m like nothing but smiles, because I’m like I see the countless hours that they put in so it’s great to be recognized. It warms my heart for sure.

I got to ask, are you ready for that Indy cold in a month, here [for NBA All-Star]?

Man, you know I just bought a new pair of Ugg boots. Gotta make sure I’m at least gonna be cute and cold. But no, I’m super excited to kind of dial into NBA All-Star and obviously Ruffles allows me to do that. It crosses over and blends the leagues together and I love to be a part of something that is not my All-Star so I don’t have to worry about playing, I can just be me and Ruffles allows me to be me. So I’m super excited for this one.

Yeah, I know you’ll be you’ll be with Ruffles for the Celeb Game. What do you have going on there and how are y’all going to be able to get some fans interacted with the Celeb Game this year?

Yeah, so I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Celebrity Game, but they have the four-pointer line. But now it’s called the Ridgeline Unlocked. So now it brings a different feel to it. Because now you’re unlocking different things when people score. And I think it’s a win-win and it really gets fans that are in Indiana but also at home a chance to be interactive with the game that we love. But it’s going to be tons of fun, and Jason Tatum and I are doing something where we’re picking fans, they get to shoot their own four-pointer Ridgeline shot and we get to pick and if they win, they get a chance to come to Indiana and actually shoot on the court right before the Celebrity Game. So I’m super excited about that because I think that’s the crossover that we love is like when you actually can experience something. Like you do it, cool. Where does it go? And I think Ruffles does a great job of now being like no this is real. You’re here in the moment. Do that. So I’m excited to watch it.

Ben Gibbard’s bands The Postal Service and Death Cab For Cutie were the nostalgia kings of 2023 when they launched a tour celebrating the albums Give Up and Transatlanticism. They announced additional co-headlining dates for 2024, and now it turns out that will also include this year’s Just Like Heaven festival.

The Goldenvoice fest unveiled its 2024 lineup today (January 22), and it features Gibbard’s bands, along with Phoenix, The War On Drugs, Mike Snow, Passion Pit, Alvvays, Two Door Cinema Club, Phantogram, Metric, Tegan And Sara, Washed Out, Broken Social Scene, Sleigh Bells, Warpaint, CSS, Be Your Own Pet, The Go! Team, Them Jeans, Chris Cruse, and Gossip.

Festival tickets go on sale starting January 26 at 11 a.m. PT. Find more information on the festival website. The one-day fest goes down on May 18 at Brookside at The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.

Uproxx’s Carolyn Droke attended the 2023 edition of the fest and noted in her review, “For the majority of the crowd — people in their 30s and 40s — Just Like Heaven was an opportunity to re-live their youth. And thanks to the elder millennial demographic, Just Like Heaven was one of the more laid-back festivals I’ve attended. I even overheard a passerby note that it was the ‘least scary festival crowd’ they had ever been in. […] Though the Southern California sun was harsh for most of the day, plenty of trees and boba tea stands provided much-appreciated respite from the heat. It was an ideal environment to bask in the collective nostalgia of early to mid-aughts indie rock, reminisce on the genre’s heyday, and (hopefully) inspire a new generation of indie music lovers.”

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Last November, Megan Thee Stallion dropped “Cobra,” her first single since reportedly settling her years-long legal battle against her now-former label 1501 Certified Entertainment. Uproxx tapped it as one of “The Best Songs Of 2023,” due to how directly the song confronts her recent traumas (both personal and professional).

Since, Hot Girl Meg has collaborated with Reneé Rapp on Mean Girls track “Not My Fault” and released a NSFW song from the Big Mouth soundtrack, but she just reminded everybody that she’s still firmly in “Act One” of her snake emoji-fueled era.

This morning, January 22, Megan Thee Stallion announced “Hiss.” The single is due out this Friday, January 26, and is available to pre-save here. The “Hiss” cover art (or, one of them) finds Meg appearing completely nonplussed about having a shudder-inducing white snake wrapped around her neck and head.

“Cobra” and “Hiss” are presumably leading up to a Megan Thee Stallion album soon — her first since Traumazine in August 2022 — which is on Uproxx’s list of “Most Anticipated Albums Of 2024.” Aaron Williams previewed what can be expected, as excerpted below.

“New Year, new Stallion. The Hot Girl Coach finds herself in a much better place to begin 2024; she’s put both her legal dispute with her label and the Tory Lanez shooting case in her rearview, and she’s newly independent, meaning she’s the one calling all the shots on her next album. She kicked off her new era with the confessional return to form, ‘Cobra,’ and predicted in September that her next album will contain ‘a lot of rawness, a lot of realness, a lot of sh*t talking,’ while a more recent live stream promised she wouldn’t hold back, answering anyone who has called her out over the past couple of years.”

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

After debuting on Netflix earlier this month, The Brothers Sun has been captivating viewers with its action comedy tale about a family of secret assassins starring Oscar-winner and certified badass Michelle Yeoh as the deadly matriarch.

Naturally, viewers want to know if they can expect another round of action from the Sun family. Fortunately, star Sam Long Li has some potentially good news on the Season 2 front.

“I think everybody on The Brothers Sun team absolutely thinks that there’s more to tell. And luckily, it’s not a limited series so there is potential for future seasons,” Li recently old Digital Spy. “The first season is a great introductory piece to all of our characters. I really think the fun can start now, because we get to really see how far these characters might go once they’ve had a taste of the other side.”

There you have it. Season 2 isn’t confirmed yet, but the creative team is prepared to get back in the action if Netflix renews the series.

Here’s the official synopsis:

When the head of a powerful Taiwanese triad is shot by a mysterious assassin, his eldest son, Charles (Justin Chien) heads to Los Angeles to protect his mother, Eileen (Michelle Yeoh), and his naive younger brother, Bruce (Sam Song Li) — who’s been completely sheltered from the truth of his family until now.

But as Taipei’s deadliest societies and a new rising faction go head-to-head for dominance — Charles and Bruce must figure out what brotherhood and family truly means before someone takes them out.

The Brothers Sun Season 1 is available for streaming on Netflix.

(Via Digital Spy)

A recently posted story on Reddit shows a mother confidently standing up for her family after being bullied by a teacher for her culture. Reddit user Flowergardens0 posted the story to the AITA forum, where people ask whether they are wrong in a specific situation.

Over 5,600 people commented on the story, and an overwhelming majority thought the mother was right. Here’s what went down:

“I (34F) have a (5M) son who attends preschool. A few hours after I picked him up from school today, I got a phone call from his teacher,” Flowergardens0 wrote. “She made absolutely no effort to sound kind when she, in an extremely rude and annoyed tone, told me to stop packing my son such ‘disgusting and inappropriate’ lunches.”

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“I felt absolutely appalled when she said this, as me and the teacher have, up until now, always maintained a very friendly relationship. She added that the lunches I’m packing my son are ‘very distracting for the other students and have an unpleasant odor.’ I told her that I understand her concerns, as the lunches I pack are definitely not the healthiest, but the lunches are according to my son’s preferences.”

The mother added that she usually sends her son to school with small celery sticks, blue cheese and goat cheese, kimchi, spam and spicy Sriracha-flavored Doritos.

“I ended the call by saying that I very much appreciated her worries, but that at the end of the day, I am not going to drastically change my son’s lunches all of a sudden, and that it’s not my fault if other students are ‘distracted’ by his meal,” the mother continued. “It is very important to me what my son enjoys, and I want him to like my lunches.”

The teacher replied with an email saying the mom’s response was “unacceptable” and that his lunches were “just too inappropriate to be sent to school any longer.”

“I haven’t responded yet and don’t want to. I want to maintain a healthy relationship with my son’s teachers. I am confused as to what to do,” the mom ended her story.

It’s clear that the teacher is way out of line in this situation because the child is eating food that is entirely normal in Korean culture. It may have a strong odor to those who aren’t used to it, but that’s just an opportunity for the teacher to explain to the children how people from different parts of the world eat different types of food. It’s not that hard.

The only reason the teacher should have any choice over what the child eats is if it is egregiously unhealthy and may cause them harm.

The most popular commenter on the forum suggested that the mother bring the issue to the principal’s attention.

“Report her to the principal,” Thatshygal717 wrote. “Her comments regarding your son’s food are ‘disgusting’ and ‘have an unpleasant tone’ aka cough cough racist tone. She’s too inappropriate to be teaching at the school any longer.”

Another commenter, muffiewriters, assured the mother that she was doing nothing wrong. “Your son’s food is perfectly normal,” they wrote. “For a 5-year-old. Your family’s food is normal. The teacher is TA for not recognizing that.”

The mother hasn’t shared what she did next, but she’s handled the situation perfectly so far. She told the teacher that it’s not her fault if other kids are distracted by her food and that she will not change her son’s diet to please other people.

The beauty of America is that we are a country of many different cultures mixed like a beautiful bowl of salad. It’s great that so many people supported the mother and reminded her that her family has every right in the world to eat the food they love, and if it bothers anyone, they can keep it to themselves.

P.S. That teacher has no idea what she’s talking about. Korean food is delicious.

This article was originally published on 3.20.23.

Lately, whenever veteran directors fire off a hot take, it’s often aimed directly at Marvel. Oliver Stone decided to switch things up by stomping all over both Barbie and Ryan Gosling. (Did Stone also sprinkle in some hate for Marvel? Of course.)

Stone’s rant happened at the top of an interview when he was jokingly asked if he would direct Barbie 2. The conspiracy theory-loving filmmaker immediately launched into a rebuke of Hollywood.

Via London-based publication City AM:

“Ridiculous,” Stone growls. “Ryan Gosling is wasting his time if he’s doing that sh*t for money. He should be doing more serious films. He shouldn’t be a part of this infantilization of Hollywood. Now it’s all fantasy, fantasy, fantasy, including all the war pictures: fantasy, fantasy. Even the Fast and Furious movies, which I used to enjoy, have become like Marvel movies. I mean, how many crashes can you see?”

From there, Stone launched into another salty rant about the size of airplanes after he tried to watch John Wick: Chapter 4 on his most recent flight. You’re never gonna believe this: He hated it.

“Oh yeah, so on the plane I watched John Wick, which is three hours and some. And I fell asleep about 778 times during it,” Stone said. “I kept waking up and having to face him killing more people. It’s like the world has degenerated into non-logic.”

However, there is one topic Stone didn’t want to rant about: Vladimir Putin. When offered an opportunity to address Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine, Stone refused to criticize the Russian president.

“I don’t want to get into that, because it’s not important and it would take over the other issues,” the suddenly reticent Stone said.

(Via City AM)

As of this writing, six performers have been confirmed for the 2024 Grammys: Billie Eilish, Burna Boy, Dua Lipa, Luke Combs, Olivia Rodrigo, and Travis Scott. Eilish and Rodrigo are each nominated for six Grammys — three behind this year’s most-nominated artist, SZA). Lipa is expected to drop one of Uproxx’s “Most Anticipated Albums Of 2024” at some point, so what better launching pad than the Grammys stage? Meanwhile, Trevor Noah will return to host “Music’s Biggest Night” for the fourth consecutive year.

There are plenty of reasons to want to watch the 2024 Grammys, and here’s how.

How To Watch The Grammys 2024

The 2024 Grammys are scheduled to take place on Sunday, February 4, at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, California. The broadcast will air live on CBS from 8 p.m. EST to 11:30 p.m (5 p.m. PST to 8:30 p.m. PST).

“Paramount+ with SHOWTIME subscribers will have access to stream live via the live feed of their local CBS affiliate on the service, as well as on demand in the United States,” according to the official Grammys website. “Paramount+ Essential subscribers will not have the option to stream live, but will have access to on-demand the day after the special airs in the US only.”

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The last time we spoke to Glen Powell, he was right on the cusp of breaking through, and he knew it. Think about if you played “the cool guy” in Top Gun: Maverick. You knew what you brought to that role. You knew how just darn good that movie was; the sky’s the limit … but then Top Gun: Maverick gets delayed for two years because of the pandemic. For two long years, Powell would just have to remain “the charismatic fellow from Everybody Wants Some!”

As you know, eventually Top Gun: Maverick did come out and became a sensation. It made the most money of any movie in 2022 (Avatar: The Way of Water was technically the biggest film of the year, but made most of its money in 2023) and went on to get an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. And who got to be the Han Solo of Top Gun: Maverick? That’s right, Hangman comes back at the last minute to save the day. And Glen Powell, almost overnight, was no longer, “the charismatic fellow from Everybody Wants Some!.”

As a quick aside, speaking of Han Solo, I’ve kind of become fascinated with Harrison Ford’s movies between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. We all know his movies between Empire and Return of the Jedi – ahem, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Blade Runner – but his post-Star Wars films don’t have much of a footprint. I watched The Frisco Kid and Hanover Street. Fun fact: in The Frisco Kid there is no character called The Frisco Kid. It’s … fine, and kind of fun watching Ford and Gene Wilder do some comedy together. Hanover Street is actually pretty good and I’d recommend it. (I happen to like a lot of Peter Hyams movies.) You get a pretty good sense of where Ford is going as a leading man. But as we know that doesn’t really happen until Raiders. My point is, Powell doesn’t have to wait until after Top Gun 3 to get his first true great movie as a leading man.

With Hit Man (which makes its Sundance premiere today), it certainly helps that Powell re-teams with his Everybody Wants Some! director Richard Linklater. And Powell gets the best of both worlds here: he gets to play against type as a meek nerd. And also gets to play, again, the coolest guy in the world. So he gets to show off his acting chops while also giving Hangman fans what they want: their cool pal Glen.

In this sort of true (but not real) story, Powell plays Gary Johnson, a divorced New Orleans professor who lives alone with his two cats and seems like a nice enough guy. He has a side hustle working as an audio tech for the local police department during undercover stings. One of those stings is against a man who is looking to hire a hitman (the movie tells us over and over there are no such thing as hitmen, no matter how much people want to believe they are real), and once the real cop who is supposed to do the job becomes unavailable, Gary takes his place and is … surprisingly great at the job.

It’s here Gary becomes a ruthless, cold-blooded killer, at least as far as the sting targets assume. And, frankly, pretty cool. And Gary gets really into his disguises as he busts person after person who is willing to pay money to have someone they know killed. Though, using a persona he calls Ron, he feels bad for a woman named Maddy (Adria Arjona) and talks her out of going forward with the hit, to the chagrin of his bosses at the police department. He then falls in love with Maddy and Maddy falls in love with Gary. Well, there are two problems here: the ethics of dating a suspect and that Maddy is in love with Ron, not Gary.

As the story goes on, Hit Man gets purposely more preposterous. To the point I couldn’t help but wonder, wait, I thought this was based on a true story? There’s no way anything close to this happened! Well, I’m correct, as during the end credits we learn some stuff was “made up.”

With Top Gun: Maverick, Hangman was, well, let’s be honest here, pretty fucking awesome, but he’s still a supporting character. It’s here that Powell has to carry Hit Man on his back. And he plays so many characters in this movie posing as the numerous hitmen, if he doesn’t work, obviously the film doesn’t work. Powell proves with Hit Man he’s not just your cool new best friend anymore, he’s pretty great at playing the dope, too. And it’s great to see Powell building out his resume in projects that aren’t superhero movies, which, we’ve seen, have a tendency to not make the actor playing the superhero that famous beyond that particular superhero. And in a world where there really aren’t that many movie stars anymore … well, I think we all just found one.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.