Month: July 2024

For all the questions and concerns about Team USA coming out of their last two pre-Olympic exhibition games, they offered an emphatic performance on Sunday in Lille as they absolutely dominated a tough Serbia squad. It wasn’t the best start for the Americans, as Nikola Jokic, Bogdan Bogdanovic, and the Serbian squad came out flying around on both ends of the floor to take an early advantage.

Team USA would get back on track quickly though, as their first sub of the game got Anthony Davis and Anthony Edwards onto the court, injecting a bit of needed pace into the game and they quickly moved back on level terms. Then, Kevin Durant, who missed all five of Team USA’s exhibition games, made his summer debut and caught fire. Durant hit all eight of his shot attempts in the first half, including five threes, as he scored 21 points in under nine minutes to give Team USA a nine-point lead going into halftime.

In the third quarter, Team USA started to really open things up behind a big push from LeBron James, as it was the veteran stars that put on a show in the opener, flexing their muscles on both ends in an absolute rout of Serbia.

Durant (23 points) and James (21 points) combined for 44 points on the evening, with LeBron adding nine assists and seven boards, controlling absolutely everything in his time on the floor. It was a remarkable performance from the two, with Durant doing almost all of his damage in that first half flurry, but that was more than enough as James took care of the second half.

The avalanche continued until the final whistle, as Team USA poured it on late to bump up their point differential on the way to a 110-84 win. The two top stars did get plenty of help, as Jrue Holiday scored 15 points, Devin Booker added 12, and Stephen Curry and Edwards each had 11 points, including one of the highlights of the game when Ant put a Serbian defender in a blender.

It was about as impressive a showing as anyone could’ve asked for from Team USA against a team like Serbia. Nikola Jokic had a solid first half with 14 points and five assists, but finished with just 20 points and eight assists, as he was kept mostly in check — in part due to his teammates struggles shooting the ball. Serbia hit just 9-of-37 attempts from three, with only Bogdan Bogdanovic (14 points), Ognjen Dobric (12 points), and Vasilije Micic (11 points) joining Jokic in double figures.

The Americans, meanwhile, rained in 18 threes (on 32 attempts), in a pretty stark contrast to their exhibition performances when they were not only not hitting a lot of threes, they weren’t attempting many. That changed in a big way as KD, Booker, Curry, and Holiday all hit 3 or more from deep against Serbia, and the full might of the Team USA roster was on display. Now they’ll shift their attention to South Sudan, who nearly beat them a week ago in London, and should have the Americans full attention for the second game of the group stage. That could spell trouble for South Sudan if Team USA is as locked in as they were after the first few minutes on Sunday.

The Netflix Effect strikes again. Showtime’s Your Honor starring Bryan Cranston aired for two relatively anonymous seasons (although season 1 did very well for the network) before wrapping up in 2023. That seemed like that would be it for the legal drama, but then Your Honor was added to Netflix in May, and suddenly all the Breaking Bad fans started tuning in.

According to The New York Times, Your Honor “racked up some of the biggest viewership figures of any television series in the United States since it began streaming on Netflix in late May.” We’re talking more than a billion minutes viewed week after week (I cannot comprehend “billions” as a measurement of time, but it sounds impressive). Like Suits before it, Your Honor is one of the shows of the summer — could a third season be in the works? (Probably no Los Angeles-based spin-off, however.)

Here’s everything we know about a potential third season of Your Honor.

Plot

If you log into Netflix and look up Your Honor, here’s the synopsis you’re greeted with: “In this dramatic crime series, a judge starts blurring the lines of justice after his son is involved in a fatal hit-and-run accident.”

Would you say the judge, played by Cranston, is breaking bad?

“I believe that a person’s character is determined by the decisions they make under pressure,” the actor told Tudum. “My role as Michael Desiato is a person who starts out as a protagonist and maintains his hope to remain one. Unlike Walter White, Michael doesn’t give in to the dark side. He’s just trying to make the best of a bad situation. I really think that anyone who likes a great mystery thriller is going to love Your Honor.”

Now that Your Honor has found its audience, are there hopes for a third season? “We love the show, and we’re hoping that it can continue, but it’s a little too soon to know or to tell,” CBS Studios President David Stapf told Deadline. “We would like there to be a season 3 but we’re ways away.”

Previously, Cranston expressed interest in a third season, but only as a producer. “If it happens, fantastic, but it’d have to be some great reason to keep expanding in this world and to find out where the allegiances are. I’d be very interested in producing that,” he said in 2023. “I don’t know about being in it because [REDACTED SPOILER].”

Your Honor without Cranston is tough to imagine, but I thought the same thing about another show set in the Breaking Bad universe, and that worked out pretty good.

Cast

Outside of Bryan Cranston, the cast for Your Honor also includes Hunter Doohan, Hope Davis, Sofia Black-D’Elia, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Michael Stuhlbarg, Carmen Ejogo, Andrene Ward-Hammond, Benjamin Flores Jr., Keith Machekanyanga, Amy Landecker, and Chet Hanks, as well as guest stars “Character Actress” Margo Martindale, Maura Tierney, and Rosie Perez.

Release Date

Your Honor season 3 hasn’t even been officially announced, so needless to say (but I’ll still say it!), there’s no release date.

Trailer

If you want to check out what Your Honor is all about and you don’t have Netflix, the first episode of the series is on YouTube. The top comment: “Looks like Cranston needs to make room in his awards shelf.”

Records have already been set at the 2024 Paris Olympics. With the world’s greatest athletes are looking to bring home a metal for their home countries. Well, celebrities from those nations want to witness live.

Over the course of the games, Team USA have already amassed a huge cheering corner. So far, Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga are just two of the musicians spotted in the crowd. Despite her hiatus from all things not involved with the forthcoming musical film, Wicked, Ariana could help but watch Simone Biles’ beam routine alongside her Wicked co-star Cynthia Erivo, Lena Waithe, and her brother Frankie.

Although Lady Gaga was seen on screen, she confirmed her attendance over on Instagram. On the platform, she penned a message to Biles and about Team USA’s gymnasts.

“She nailed it. What an honor to be so close,” she wrote. “Unimaginable strength and talent will never forget today, I’m so grateful to be so close and witness these incredible women.”

Other musicians that have thrown their support behind with fun videos Team USA include Dolly Parton, Beyoncé, and Megan Thee Stallion.

NBC even incorporated a viral clip of Megan to have fun while promoting the globe event.

While others, like Charlie Puth and Kelly Clarkson, focused more so on Celine Dion’s tear-jerking performance during the opening ceremony.

There are still several days left, so expect many more celebrity cameos.

Last year, M. Night Shyamalan asked himself a very important question: “What if The Silence Of The Lambs happened at a Taylor Swift concert?” which, to most people, sounds like a one-off Tweet never to be fleshed out or revisited. But to the director, it became the premise for his upcoming thriller, Trap. Sometimes those 3 a.m. thoughts turn into something beautiful.

In Trap, Josh Hartnett plays a father bringing his daughter to an arena pop concert not dissimilar to The Eras Tour, only it turns out that the concert is just a trap to catch a serial killer. In reality, The Eras Tour was much harder to get tickets to, so let’s just get that out of the way right now. Nobody was just walking right into that concert.

The movie is actually inspired by Operation Flagship, a real-life sting operation in which a team of U.S. Marshals sent invitations to thousands of fugitives offering them a chance to win Super Bowl tickets, which many of them fell for. In the end, over 100 arrests were made to unsuspecting criminals who were hoping to see the big game. They didn’t.

“It was hilarious,” Shyamalan told Empire. “The cops were literally cheerleaders and mascots. These guys were dancing as they came in. And they were all caught. It was so twisted and funny.” Those are two of the best words to describe Shyamalan’s greatest hits, so we are in for a treat here. Here’s everything you need to know about Trap before it premieres next month.

Plot

Hartnett portrays Cooper, a dad who is making his daughter’s life by taking her to see pop star Lady Raven in concert. As the concert gets underway and Cooper notices an increased police presence, and he soon learns that the entire concert is a set-up to catch The Butcher, a loose serial killer. And that killer just so happens to be him. Whoops!

Keep in mind, this is a Shyamalan feature, so there might be more twists and turns beyond what we see in the trailer. At this time, there are also no press screenings for the movie, which could mean nothing, or that they are trying to keep the plot even more secretive. This is the first time Shyamalan has released a movie with Warner Bros. since 2006’s Lady in the Water.

The movie is supposed to feel like a concert, too, with original songs written by Saleka Shyamalan, the director’s daughter. The premise of a movie taking place entirely during a concert might seem bizarre, but Shyamalan is no stranger to trying new things. “I want the industry to move towards more original storytelling. I think audiences would really like it,” he told Empire. “Look, I know there’s safety in IP. But it’s really important that we come to the movies and see something we’ve never seen before. I’ll keep fighting for that.”

Cast

Aside from Hartnett, the cast includes Ariel Donoghue, Hayley Mills, Alison Pill, Marnie McPhail, and Kid Cudi. Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka makes her film debut as Lady Raven, the pop star in question. Saleka wrote 14 original songs to be featured in the film.

Release Date

The Trap concert experience hits theaters on August 2nd.

Trailer

If you’ve been to a movie at all in the last three months, you’ve probably seen this trailer. Here it is again, because it’s just that good:

Coming into Sunday’s opener against Serbia, there was a little bit of concern around Team USA. They’d looked a touch shaky in their tune-up games, albeit winning all five of them, and one of the major concerns was with their offense, as they had not really gotten into a great rhythm in the halfcourt through five games.

A contributing factor in their offense not firing on all cylinders was the absence of Kevin Durant, who sat out the entire showcase slate with a calf strain. While the other 11 players are some of the world’s best, none of them are Durant, who can get his shot off against anyone at any time in a way few ever have been able to. On Sunday, Durant was back active despite earlier concerns he could still sit out, and (after spending his morning trying to figure out how Robert Downey Jr. could return to the MCU as Dr. Doom), he made his 2024 Team USA debut late in the first quarter.

Durant hit his first shot, announcing he was fully back, and then hit his second, and third, and fourth, and…well, he just never missed in the first half. KD finished the half with a ridiculous 21 points on 8-of-8 shooting (5-of-5 from three) in under nine minutes of play, helping Team USA erase an early deficit to Nikola Jokic’s Serbian squad and take a lead into the half.

His last bucket was maybe his most ridiculous, as he beat the first half buzzer on a spinning, falling midrange bucket off the catch on an ATO from Steve Kerr.

It was a truly remarkable half of basketball from Durant, who hadn’t played an actual game in months, having missed all five of the USA’s exhibition games with his calf issue. Him playing this game was a bit in doubt, but after 20 minutes of action he left no doubt that he is still one of the most dominant scorers on the planet and when he’s rolling, there’s just nothing you can do to stop him.

Everyone seems to have a theory on the best time to purchase airfare to save the most money. Some say it’s right before take-off. Others will swear that prices are lowest six months before the flight. Well, now we have the truth. A scientific study was conducted by Expedia and the Airlines Reporting Commission that found the best times to buy flight tickets to get the best deal possible.

When we actually buy…

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DOMESTIC: 32 DAYS IN ADVANCE

INTERNATIONAL: 59 DAYS IN ADVANCE

When we should buy…

DOMESTIC: 57 DAYS IN ADVANCE

The ideal advance-purchase time for domestic flight to snag the lowest average airfare is 57 with prices climbing most rapidly in the 20 days leading up to the flight. On a flight that averages $496, it will cost $401 57 days before the flight and around $650 the day of departure.

INTERNATIONAL: 171 DAYS IN ADVANCE
For a ticket that averages $1,368, the lowest average of $1,004 happens around 171 days before take-off. On the day of, the price will be around $1875. Ticket prices begin to dramatically escalate 75 days leading up to departure.

(H/T Conde Nast Traveler)

This article originally appeared on 10.14.15

Trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault and violence.

A recent video by Just Not Sports took two prominent female sportswriters and had regular guys* read the awful abuse they receive online aloud.

Sportswriters Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro sat by as men read some of the most vile tweets they receive on a daily basis. See how long you can last watching it.

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*(Note: The men reading them did not write these comments; they’re just being helpful volunteers to prove a point.)

It starts out kind of jokey but eventually devolves into messages like this:

These types of messages come in response to one thing: The women were doing their jobs.

Those wishes that DiCaro would die by hockey stick and get raped? Those were the result of her simply reporting on the National Hockey League’s most disturbing ordeal: the Patrick Kane rape case, in which one of the league’s top players was accused of rape.

DiCaro wasn’t writing opinion pieces. She was simply reporting things like what the police said, statements from lawyers, and just general everyday work reporters do. In response, she received a deluge of death threats. Her male colleagues didn’t receive nearly the same amount of abuse.

It got to the point where she and her employer thought it best to stay home for a day or two for her own physical safety.

The men in the video seemed absolutely shocked that real live human beings would attack someone simply for doing their jobs.

Most found themselves speechless or, at very least, struggling to read the words being presented.

Think this is all just anecdotal? There’s evidence to the contrary.

The Guardian did a study to find out how bad this problem really is.

They did a study of over 70 million comments that have been posted on their site since 2006. They counted how many comments that violated their comment policy were blocked.

The stats were staggering.

From their comprehensive and disturbing article:

“Although the majority of our regular opinion writers are white men, we found that those who experienced the highest levels of abuse and dismissive trolling were not. The 10 regular writers who got the most abuse were eight women (four white and four non-white) and two black men. Two of the women and one of the men were gay. And of the eight women in the ‘top 10’, one was Muslim and one Jewish.

And the 10 regular writers who got the least abuse? All men.”

So what can people do about this kind of harassment once they know it exists?

1. To start? Share things that make people aware it’s happening. Listen to the Just Not Sports podcast where they talk about it.
2. If you know someone who talks like this to anyone on the internet, CALL THEM OUT. Publicly, privately — just let them know it’s not OK to talk to anyone like this.
3. Don’t stop talking about it. Every day, the harassment continues. Don’t let it linger without attention.

There are no easy answers. But the more people who know this behavior exists, the more people there will be to tell others it’s not OK to talk to anyone like that.

Watch the whole video below:

.This article originally appeared on 04.27.16

Ever fallen into one of those Internet dating quizzes? You know, the ones that promise to categorize you? Like “what your astrological sign says about your relationship style.”

They can be fun, but we all know they’re mostly fluff.

What if I told you someone did find a way to “categorize” your love style but with actual real science?

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Three relationship scientists asked about 400 couples to track how they felt about their relationship and how committed they felt to marrying their partner. They followed each of the couples for nine months. Not, like, literally followed them — that would be creepy. Instead, they just asked them a few questions and asked them to keep track of how committed they were feeling over time.

At the end of the nine months, the scientists collected all the couple’s responses and delved deep into the data. They found that couples did indeed tend to fall into one of four categories.

Prepare yourself for some soul searching because you might just be:

1. The Conflicted, but Passionate

This is the couple Facebook made the “It’s Complicated” relationship status for. Their levels of commitment tend to go up and down over time, especially after arguments. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. These folks use those conflicts to help them make decisions about the relationship, and in fact, they didn’t appear to be any more destined for a breakup than any of the other groups.

Also, as a bonus, they tend to follow those turbulent downs with passionate ups. “These couples operate in a tension between conflict that pushes them apart and passionate attraction that pulls them back together,” said study author Brian Ogolsky.

2. The Partner-Focused

If your idea of a perfect date night is a long walk followed by eight hours of binge-watching “House of Cards” together, you might fall into this category.

Partner-focused couples tend to spend a lot of time together and share hobbies or leisure activities, and it’s that shared time that tends to propel them forward. They tended to be more careful and thoughtful about their relationship decisions — more likely to build from the inside out — and tended to be the most satisfied overall.

3. The Social Butterflies

On the other hand, if your perfect evening with your partner involves grabbing all your friends and hitting the bars or breaking out Settlers of Catan for the hundredth time, this might be the category that best describes you. Social couples usually share a friend group and use that time spent with friends to inform and build their relationship as a couple.

“Having mutual friends makes people in these couples feel closer and more committed,” said Ogolsky. They also tended to be pretty stable and have higher levels of love based on feelings of friendship toward each other, which can be a good indicator for long-term happiness.

4. The Dramatic

Unfortunately, not every couple’s path is easy. Things may start out good, but tend not to stay that way for dramatic couples. This type of couple tends to make decisions based on negative experiences or stuff from outside the relationship.

“These couples have a lot of ups and downs, and their commitment swings wildly,” said Ogolsky. “You begin to see little things eroding, and you start to see the relationship in a negative light, and soon you give up,” said Ogolsky.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, dramatic couples tended to break up the most, twice as much as other couples.

So what’s best? Well, here’s where this article differs from a lot of those Internet quizzes. Because the answer is that there isn’t a “best” kind of relationship.

Different couples work and grow differently. These are different pathways and it’d be a mistake to assume there’s a “correct” way to love someone. Or even that you’re forever locked into a certain style of relationships. “These are not predefined, for-life patterns,” said Ogolsky.

And even in a single relationship, these patterns aren’t predictors of destiny — a dramatic couple may, in fact, outlast a social one, and a partner-driven couple may be as passionate as anyone you could ever meet.

And the researchers willingly admit in their paper that their study doesn’t cover all relationships. Many very happy couples have no desire to marry, for instance. And, it should be noted, that it wasn’t too long ago that the U.S. didn’t even allow all couples to get married!

Wait, you’re not going to tell me how to find the perfect, golden, eternally-happy relationship?! Why even study this then?

Because, in our hearts, humans are social creatures, Ogolsky explained. Love, friendship, passion, and commitment are part of the human experience. Understanding relationships can be as important to understanding ourselves as studying chemistry or biology. They can even affect your health!

As for what you can learn from all this, the important takeaway is that what you use to make decisions — whether from conflict, from the inside, from the outside, or from friendship — can influence your level of commitment. It might be useful for couples to think not just about their choices but how they make their choices.

So … what’s your category?

This article originally appeared on 02.15.16

Optical illusions are universally beloved for how they trick our brains and blow our minds. There’s a reason we enjoy magic shows and Escher paintings and are mesmerized by fake oases in the desert. We love seeing things that bend our perceptions of reality, and the science behind the magic always proves fascinating as well.

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The Ames window is a pretty well-known optical illusion, but it’s always cool to see. When spun, the angled window appears to oscillate back and forth instead of spin all the way around. But this video adds a twist that makes the effect even more mindbending—our brains simply can’t process objective reality mixed with an optical illusion.

The YouTube channel Curiosity Show explains the science of the illusion and gives a DIY demonstration for making your own Ames window. But wait until the pen gets taped to the window and spun. This is some real-life magic right here. Mind. Blown.

This article originally appeared on 02.21.20

The first thing you need to know about Charlie the golden retriever is that he loves Mr. Quackers.

Mr. Quackers is Charlie’s stuffed yellow duck. Charlie carries him around everywhere, he loves him so.

@charliethegolden18

I always so happ to see my lil bro 😋 #dogsoftiktok #petsoftiktok #dogs #goldenretriever

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Anyone who’s had a dog with a favorite stuffy knows that it’s a bit like a child with a favorite stuffy. As long as the stuffy is there, all is well. If stuffy goes missing, all hell breaks loose. Nobody take the stuffy away. Nobody lose the stuffy. Nobody mess with the stuffy.

Where they go, their stuffy goes.

Where Charlie goes, Mr. Quackers goes.

That’s just the way it is.

@charliethegolden18 Happens every..single..time 😂🙈 #dogsoftiktok #petsoftiktok #dogs #goldenretriever ♬ Quirky – Oleg Kirilkov

The attachment is real. Watch what happens when Charlie’s buddy Buddy tries to mess with Mr. Quackers.

@charliethegolden18

Ain’t nobody touching my Mr. Quackers 😋 #dogsoftiktok #petsoftiktok #dogs #goldenretriever

“There, see it!” Oh, Charlie. His love for Mr. Quackers is unrivaled, which is why his owner decided to pull an incredible pet prank and dress up as Mr. Quackers himself.

@charliethegolden18

When your husband finds a costume that looks identical to your dogs favorite duck toy 😂 #dogsoftiktok #petsoftiktok #dogs #goldenretriever

The things we do for our dogs, indeed.

And when Charlie got to meet the life-sized Mr. Quackers? So. Much. Joy.

@charliethegolden18

Dressed up as our dogs favorite duck toy. Full video on FB & YouTube. Link in bio. #dogsoftiktok #petsoftiktok #dogs #goldenretriever

Charlie practically wagged his tail right off his body. And he never let go of the original Mr. Quackers the whole time—at least on TikTok.

The extended video on YouTube shows Charlie dropping Mr. Quackers and trying to get a hold of Huge Mr. Quackers by the neck. Not in an aggressive way—more like in a “Hey, lemme carry you around like I do Mr. Quackers!” kind of way.

And then the slow discovery that Huge Mr. Quackers smells an awful lot like his hooman … just too precious.

Animals can bring such joy to our lives, especially when we take the time to play with them. Thanks, Charlie’s parents, for sharing this moment of adorable delight with us all.

Follow more of Charlie and Mr. Quackers’ adventures on TikTok and YouTube.

This article originally appeared on 03.30.22