Category: News

It’s been nearly two weeks since the right-leaning Supreme Court eradicated Roe v. Wade (as well as other radical decisions), thus ending safe and legal abortion in much of the United States. It’s a calamity for women, and even Republicans are amazed at how little Democratic leaders have done to fix it. Indeed, so far a random guy who wrote a letter-to-the-editor has done more to make the case for restoring reproductive rights.

The Advocate ran a letter from a retired computer programmer named Tom Barton, who describes himself as “an old man who’s probably already had his last sex,” though, he adds, “that doesn’t mean I’ve turned against it.” He calls outlawing abortion a “bad idea,” and sex, well, pretty much the opposite:

In my mind, sex is the best it gets. It’s fun, good exercise and free! Most importantly, it’s life’s most spectacular form of intimacy. Think of music, think of poetry.

People are going to have sex. We humans love to make love. Of course, sometime procreation is what it’s all about, but that’s only “sometimes.”

Barton points out wanted pregnancies are a “wondrous miracle.” Unwanted pregnancies, not so much. “Raising a kid is a 21-year project that’s going to take up all of the parent(s)’ resources,” he says. “Even then, it might never be finished. Pushing people into parenthood is bad business.”

He also points out that when anti-abortion advocates describe abortions as “killing babies,” they’re really — unintentionally, or maybe intentionally — using the wrong terminology:

All my life I’ve known the difference between a fetus and a baby. Now I’m being told there is no difference. That’s a distortion of words, and an error. The foundation of a house is not a “beloved home.” A three-month-old fetus is not a baby.

“Sex is beautiful,” Barton concludes. “God did give it to us. We should not be asking every man and woman, every time they enjoy this gift, to be wagering on a lifelong obligation to raise a child.”

You can read the full letter at The Advocate.

After an appetizer in San Francisco over the holiday weekend, NBA Summer League continued on Tuesday with the scene shifting to Salt Lake City. For many, the main event of Summer League season doesn’t arrive until the entire league descends on Las Vegas but, for the diehards tuning into Tuesday’s matchup between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Utah Jazz, fireworks were evident. Most of the attention was rightly paid to No. 2 overall pick Chet Holmgren, who put on an individual show in leading Oklahoma City to a 98-77 victory.

Holmgren, who was making his professional debut, finished the first half with 18 points on 6-for-7 shooting and 4-for-5 from three-point range. For a player who is not necessarily known for his scoring prowess, it was a reminder of his all-court talent, and Holmgren also stuffed the stat sheet with two rebounds, two assists, three blocks, and a steal before halftime.

To open his evening, Holmgren got started with a breezy dunk.

That set the stage for the shooting exhibition that was to come. Holmgren showed off easy NBA three-point range, and also busted out a Dirk Nowitzki-like one-legged fadeaway that turned heads.

Holmgren’s defense also showed up in Salt Lake City and, in many ways, his versatility and dominance on that end remain his calling cards at this point. He rejected shots in bunches, including a prominent instance in which he turned a blocked shot into a fast break opportunity with the help of his own ball-handling chops.

On a night when he showcased virtually every tool in the box, Holmgren finished with 23 points, seven rebounds, four assists, a steal, and six (!) blocked shots in less than 24 minutes of action. Of course, it would be unwise to take too much from a single Summer League game from any prospect, but Holmgren did flash the unique defensive feel and acumen that was billed with him as a prospect, and his shooting range (and confidence) leaped off the screen.

Up next for Holmgren and the Thunder will be a tilt against the Memphis Grizzlies on Wednesday in Salt Lake City. It will be quite interesting to see what he has in store for the follow-up, but there will be plenty of attention paid to Holmgren after the performance he put together on Tuesday.

Guapdad 4000 may be in trouble. The Oakland-native rapper has been sent a cease and desist by Gap, who are accusing Guap of copying their logo for his merch. He reacted by taking the matter to Instagram to smile with the physical letter and ask what his fans thought with side-by-side pictures of his merch and Gap products.

He captioned it: “HOW SIMILAR IS TOO SIMILAR? PRAY FOR ME. GOING LIVE LATER TO TALK ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED. UNTIL THEN COP AS MUCH ‘ILLEGAL’ MERCH WHILE IT’S STILL AVAILABLE on GUAPDAD4000.com.” In the video, he said: “This don’t even look like their hoodie, it’s a whole different hoodie! I’m not ceasing sh*t.” The comments mostly consist of laughing emojis and people calling it iconic.

A couple of months ago, Guap dropped “Cheap,” a track that reminisced on his days using fake IDs and cracked credit cards to go on shopping sprees. It followed the release of “Ruthless,” which was a collaboration with one of his favorite producers, James Delgado. It came after 2021’s 1176, a !llmind collaborative album that featured none other than P-Lo and Rick Ross.

Guapdad 4000 is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Ray J loves his sister Brandy. I mean, he really loves his sister Brandy. Last year, he got a large tattoo of Brandy’s name inked on his arm in the same font as the cover of her debut self-titled album. But that wasn’t enough, because Ray-J just got another tattoo of his sister on his body. This time it’s of her face and it’s on his right leg. But it’s not as straightforward as that may sound.

Ray J posted an Instagram Video (set to Brandy’s song “Best Friend”) to showcase the new ink, done by tattoo artist Mashkow, who has a very distinct style. It’s a portrait of Brandy, but with “Best Friend” written on her forehead, “4 Ever” on her cheeks (“4” on one and “Ever” on the other) and Mashkow’s signtaure over her right eyelid. It makes Brandy almost look like a Post Malone-style face-tatted caricature. But this is what Mashkow is known for and Ray J was pumped. “New Brandy tattoo by one of the greatest!! Mashkow,” he posted. Adding that, “I’m getting my whole leg tatted with – music- love – scriptures – the vocal bible – family -ghosts -positive words and themes – real gothic like — ‘The Holy Leg!! – Gonna take a minute!! But I got the best doing it!! Stay Tuned!! Full leg tatt — I had to start with my best friend!!”

It’s quite the homage to his sister. And perhaps now, it will finally register with people (ahem… Jack Harlow) that not only are Ray J and Brandy siblings, but they have been their whole lives.

Blackpink have been teasing their return for quite a bit this year, telling interviewers that they were preparing for their return and planning a tour. Today, YG Entertainment has finally announced the group’s return, which will happen this summer. New music will come in August; they’re currently in the final stages of recording an album.

“A lot of BLACKPINK-esque music has been prepared over a long period of time,” YG Entertainment said in a statement. “On top of new music and large-scale projects, BLACKPINK will also go on the largest world tour in the history of a K-pop girl group by the end of the year to expand their rapport with fans worldwide.”

The group’s last studio album was the eclectic 2020 LP The Album, whose video for “How You Like That” set the record for the biggest video premiere ever on the platform after 1.65 million people tuned in to the clip’s YouTube premiere. Shortly after, they broke another record: They became the most subscribed artist on YouTube, surpassing Justin Bieber with a total of 65.2 million subscribers, only five years and three months after they launched their official channel. Their long-awaited comeback is sure to be met with waves of excitement and enthusiasm.

In the aftermath of the horrifying mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois during a July 4 parade, the far right have done what they usually do in such situations: They tried to blame everything but the easy accessibility of assault-style rifles. The NRA actually posted about the glories of guns just before the incident, then made excuses after it happened. Marjorie Taylor Greene, meanwhile, fired off lots of fiction, prompting lots of bewildered pushback.

But the Georgia representative, who last week was simply making up words, wasn’t done. In a series of unhinged posts about the suspect, Robert Crimo, who has since been charged with seven counts of first-degree murder, she went so far as to post an obviously photoshopped image of him.

Greene was demanding more be known about Crimo, who was only apprehended Monday night. “Release his records, school record, arrest, drugs and prescription drugs, hospitalizations, psychiatric,” she wrote.

Fair enough. But then she started speculated wildly, thanks in part to an image that was clearly doctored. It showed him smiling wildly, holding a bible while sitting in some kind of cell. One need not be an expert to know it was a fake, and not a very good one. But wouldn’t you know, it snookered the person who once believed in “Jewish space lasers.”

“Is he in jail or rehab or a psychiatric center in this photo? That’s not his bedroom,” she wrote. “22 yrs old and 5’11 and 120 lbs is not normal or healthy. What drugs or psychiatric drugs or both does he use?”

Not long thereafter, she offered a not-quite mea culpa, saying the image she posted — and used to fuel conspiracy theories about his history with mental health facilities — was “supposedly” photoshopped. But rather than prove her claims fake, she wrote, “More reasons to release his records. What’s wrong with him?”

There has been one part of Crimo’s history that’s come to light: In 2019, he threatened to kill his family, prompting a relative to call the police, who then confiscated numerous weapons. Three years later he was still able to legally obtain five guns, including the high-powered rifle he used to kill seven people and wound 30.

(Via Newsweek)

Believe it or not, Tom Cruise hasn’t had a billion dollar grosser until Top Gun: Maverick. During his first stint as the biggest movie star in the world, from the mid-‘80s through the mid-aughts, movies almost never made that kind of money. Then he was seen as kind of a weirdo for about 15 years, after his couch-jumping, Scientology-spouting antics made him a PR nightmare. But he’s worked his way back into the public’s good graces, and the reward is not only his biggest-ever hit, but also one absurd payday.

In a new piece for Puck, entertainment reporter Matthew Belloni breaks down the deal Cruise and his legal team worked out for the belated sequel he spent so long not wanting to make. His contract worked in two parts. First up, he was paid $12.5 million upfront. Then he scored 10 percent of the first dollar gross, “with escalators that increase his percentage at certain milestones,” Belloni says.

Right now the film’s worldwide gross is around $1.1 billion. It’s still in the box office Top 5 in North America. In fact, it’s behind last week’s big winner, the Minions sequel. Cruise doesn’t start getting backend until Paramount hits about $125 million in revenue, and they usually take about half of the box office gross domestically and a bit less internationally. If the film gets to $1.3 billion, which seems likely, Paramount’s revenue would be about $600 million, and 10 percent of that is, to be safe, about $55 million.

And that’s just from theatrical. He also gets cuts from home video, pay TV, streaming, etc. It’s not clear what his cut from those would be, but Belloni estimates that, end of the day, Cruise will get around $80 million to $90 million. He may even wind up with nine figures, just for one movie. And should there be a sequel, his contract would almost certainly be even better.

Anyway, good news for someone who’s already the most limber 60-something in the business.

(Via Puck)

Clairo‘s music can be pretty heartbreaking, especially when it comes to “Bags,” a vulnerable breakup ballad from her 2019 album Immunity. But the star has managed to render the song even more painful by inviting none other than Phoebe Bridgers to sing it with her on stage tonight in Milan, Italy at the Carroponte.

Crazed fans, of course, were able to capture the moment with videos on Twitter and frenzied captions. The footage is mostly screaming and the crowd singing along, but still, it was obviously a beautiful moment.

When the news broke that Roe V. Wade was about to be overturned, Bridgers was one of many musicians to use her platform to speak up about it. “As a white, upper-middle-class woman from California, even if it were to be overturned, I will always have access,” she wrote. “I have a friend who went to medical school — every time I need a doctor, I say, ‘Do you have someone that you recommend?’ So I would just go, ‘Hey, where do I go for the thing? Wink-wink.’ The people with access will always have access. What pisses me off is that we’re not talking about me. It’s so easy: I played in Texas the same week, and then I went home and was like, ‘Oh my God.’ Made the appointment. It was 12 hours of my life.”

On the 4th of July, a gunman opened fire at a parade in quaint Highland Park, Illinois, killing at least six people, injuring dozens and traumatizing (once again) an entire nation.

My family member who was at the parade was able to flee to safety, but the trauma of what she experienced will linger. For the toddler with the blood-soaked sock, carried to safety by a stranger after being pulled from under his father’s bullet-torn body, life will never be the same.

There’s a phrase I keep seeing in debates over gun violence, one that I can’t seem to shake from my mind. After the Uvalde school shooting, I shared my thoughts on why arming teachers is a bad idea, and a gentleman responded with this brief comment:

“Way to create more soft targets.”

Soft targets. That phrase gets me every time.

As far as I know, there are only two places in the world where children in school or people gathering for enjoyment are referred to as “soft targets”—active war zones and the United States of America.

Never in a million years would I think to use the words “soft targets” to refer to schoolchildren—or parade-goers, or people enjoying a live concert, or grocery shoppers or people in a bible study. I wouldn’t even use the term “unarmed civilians” unless I were in the military and actively involved in a military operation.

They’re not targets, they’re people. People just living life.

That’s what freedom is supposed to be, isn’t it? The ability to just live life?

Instead, we are being held hostage by a militarized monster of our own making, one that says the answer to America’s gun violence is more guns. (The irony, of course, being the fact that we already have more guns than people.) We see it in the weird worshipping of weapons, the Christmas cards with the whole family carrying, the bizarre fetish with one interpretation of one constitutional amendment to the exclusion of all others. It’s in the language being used not only in reference to guns, but in reference to people just going about their daily lives—that is, “soft targets.”

u201cThis poem is a punch in the gut.u201d

— Nikita Gill (@Nikita Gill)
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The truth is we should be “soft targets.” No, really. That’s what freedom is. We should be able to go to school and the store and our houses of worship without fear of being shot. We should be able to peaceably assemble per our First Amendment right without being scattered and shattered by gunfire.

We shouldn’t feel the need to arm ourselves simply to go about our daily lives. Feeling compelled to carry a gun at all times isn’t freedom. Living like we’re living right now, with mass shootings on the regular, isn’t freedom. And adding more guns won’t make us more free. It won’t. It hasn’t.

If the Highland Park parade shooting proved anything, it’s that even an event with a police presence in an idyllic, upscale, objectively “safe” suburb isn’t safe from mass gun violence. There were good guys with guns there. There were good guys with guns in Uvalde, too. There were good guys with guns in Buffalo. So many good guys with guns. And yet, here we are.

It’s time to look in the mirror and recognize how ridiculous we’ve become. Other civilized nations don’t refer to children as “soft targets.” They just don’t. While we’re debating whether the U.S. is a gun violence outlier because of doors or video games or mental illness, which the rest of the world has as well, our peers in other developed countries live their daily lives with freedom that we do not have—the freedom to gather without worrying that a whack job with a weapon of war is going to open fire, the freedom to go to school without rehearsing for a mass shooting event, the freedom to not ever think about carrying a gun to defend themselves against other guns.

Gun violence can happen anywhere, yes. But it happens far, far more often here than in other developed nations. There’s a reason for that. Perhaps when we finally accept that our culture’s dysfunctional relationship with guns is the problem, the idea of referring to people simply living their lives as “soft targets” will be as disturbing here as it is everywhere else.

There were multiple mass shootings in America on July 4, including an attempted one in Philadelphia that sent crowds racing to safety. But the deadliest occurred in Highland Park, a suburb north of Chicago. Seven people were killed and 30 injured, with the shooter escaping the scene. Robert Crimo, 21, was later apprehended and has now been charged with seven counts of first-degree murder. But new details suggest his actions could have been thwarted had there been stricter gun laws.

As per The Guardian, police first encountered Crimo back in April of 2019, after a suicide attempt. In September of that same year, one of his relatives called police after Crimo threatened to “kill everyone” in his family home. As a result, a police taskforce confiscated several weapons: 16 knives, a dagger, and a sword.

And yet four years later, Crimo was still able to legally obtain five guns, including the high-powered rifle he used to snipe at crowds at an Independence Day parade from atop a building. (Highland Park outlaws assault-style weapons within city limits, but officials don’t always enforce such rules.)

Police report that Crimo had been planning the massacre for weeks, even posting dozens of violent videos. One featured him reading, “Everything has led up to this. Nothing can stop me, even myself.”

The Highland Park mass shooting has so far followed the usual trajectory of such tragedies. Survivors and local leaders call on something, anything to be done, while far right second amendment absolutists tweet nonsense, knowing it won’t.

(Via The Guardian)