Category: News

Last month, Mark Zuckerberg responded to the avalanche of bad press Facebook, the company he co-founded, had received the only way he knew how: He rebranded. The company had come under fire for reportedly knowingly allowing abuse and misinformation to spread like wildfire across its service. The solution? Renaming the company Meta and promising to double down on its simulation of real life by creating an actual virtual world. The reviews have not been great, and one noted critic is Bill Maher.

The HBO host used part of Friday’s Real Time to tear into Zuckerberg and a move that’s not only his attempt to dodge accountability, but which could also make the real world an even worse place.

“Someone has to tell me why we keep allowing social media, and our very lives as social creatures, to be dictated by the most socially awkward person in history,” Maher cracked. He questioned the attractiveness of Meta’s proposition. “Why spend hours typing on Facebook arguing with your brother-in-law about Ivermectin, when your avatar can yell at his avatar in person?”

Maher said he’d dabbled in virtual reality before, but in the end thought weed was a better way to numb the pains of reality. “In the Metaverse, you can tour the pyramids or have a swordfight with a duck, all without having to leave the comfort of your parents’ basement,” he joked, adding that his own experiences with virtual reality were “like getting roofied by Walt Disney.”

He also wondered if people really wanted to have another excuse to not leave their homes. “We just went through a pandemic. The last thing I want is more virtual, and that’s what the metaverse sounds like it’s going to be — the pandemic year, except forever,” Maher told the crowd.

He continued:

“You have to ask yourself why does Mark Zuckerberg think living in a metaverse would be so much better? Because look at him: the dead eyes, the lack of recognizable human features, the painted-on hair — he’s already an avatar. I’m pretty sure that the person we think is Zuckerberg is a SIM, while the real one lives on a yacht staffed by a hundred beautiful women where he plays Pokémon GO all day. This is the worst kind of person to make the overlord of a new universe.”

Maher also argued that it’s not healthy for young men — who already aren’t having as much as sex as their counterparts 10 years ago — to have another excuse to avoid human contact:

“It’s not harmless. It never is when any society for any reason creates men who are cut off from women, and it’s not going well here with the incels,” Maher said. “It’s become a toxic subculture of angry, misogynistic, digital eunuchs, and the metaverse is only going to make it meta-worse, because it’s a vicious cycle. The more time you spend in the digital world, the more you suck at engaging in the real world, so the more your retreat into the virtual, which further atrophies your real social skills, including and most importantly getting laid.”

So your options are: go out into the real real world and score or sit in a chair with a headstrap and watch a concert sitting next to a giraffe. But at the very least we’re almost certainly getting a sequel to The Social Network.

You can watch Maher’s segment in the video above.

Last year, Damon Albarn oversaw his longtime project Gorillaz release their seventh album, Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez. This year, Albarn released his second solo album, The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows. To celebrate its release, Albarn stopped by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to perform “Darkness To Light,” one of the standout tracks from the album. He delivered a gloomy performance with a black and white video that featured a live band behind him.

Albarn previously spoke about the new album in an interview back in June. “I organized musicians, string players, three bass trombones, some percussion, and keyboards into an interesting arrangement,” he said. “I took some of these real-time, extreme elemental experiences [of Iceland] and then tried to develop more formal pop songs with that as my source. I wanted to see where that would take me. Sometimes it took me down to Uruguay and Montevideo. Other times I went to Iran, Iceland, or Devon. With travel being curtailed, it was kind of nice to be able to make a record that put me strangely in those places for a moment or two.”

You can watch Albarn perform “Darkness To Light” in the video above.

The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows is out now via Transgressive Records. Get it here.

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

For the past few months, Verzuz has been keeping their hip-hop battles in New York. There was an exciting matchup between The LOX and Dipset, Fat Joe and Ja Rule had a battle of their own, and most recently, Big Daddy Kane and KRS-One took things back to the genre’s golden era. Now Verzuz is ready to leave the Big Apple. The platform announced that their next event will be a matchup between two L.A. crews: Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and Three 6 Mafia.

The event will take place on December 2 live from Los Angeles. Verzuz promised additional information about the battle is en route, but that didn’t stop people from getting excited about it. On Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s end, viewers can expect to hear classics like “The Crossroads,” “Thuggish Ruggish Bone,” and “1st Od Tha Month” from their 1990s albums Creepin On Ah Come Up and E. 1999 Eternal. As for Three 6 Mafia, their hits include “Stay Fly,” “Sippin Some Syrup,” and “Poppin’ My Collar” from their Most Known Unknown and When The Smoke Clears albums, which arrived during the 2000s.

The announcement comes after Verzuz took a step into the gaming world thanks to a “Bigs Vs. Lils”Call Of Duty: Vanguard tournament. Big Sean and Big Boi faced off against Lil Tecca and Lil Jon in a multi-round tournament hosted by T-Pain with a performance from Migos.

Just a year after Big Sean released his fifth album Detroit 2, which is executive produced by Hit-Boy, the duo reconnected once more. The pair dropped their EP What You Expect at the end of last month, and they’ve been promoting it heavily. Their run continues with a new video for “Chaos,” which finds them in the midst of chaos as people run hectically around them and in and out of buildings. The chaos continues throughout the video as fights break out and a number of items get destroyed.

What You Expect, which features Bryson Tiller, 42 Dugg, Babyface Ray, and Lil Durk, is Sean’s first project on his newly-launched label FF To Def Entertainment. He recently tweeted about the new imprint and his departure from Ye’s GOOD Music. “By the way this the first project where I’m on my own label as well,” he wrote. “No more lil dawg sh*t!!!! I bossed up!” After a fan asked if he was still signed to GOOD Music, he replied, “That’s a forever brotherhood, but business-wise, I had to start getting a bigger cut! I worked my way out that deal.”

Ye later threw that relationship into the wind by saying the worst thing he ever did was sign Sean to GOOD Music.

You can watch the video for “Chaos” above.

What You Expect is out now via FF To Def Entertainment/Def Jam. Get it here.

42 Dugg is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

It’s been two years since Martin Scorsese dared say he wasn’t that into comic book movies, and the legendary director is still catching flack. But he’s far from the only aging filmmaker who feels that way. Ridley Scott, 83 and still one of the busiest men in showbiz, is about to see the release of his second movie in as many months. And he used that opportunity to do a quick drive-by on the most popular genre in the movies.

Scott spoke with Deadline about House of Gucci, which is set to open on Nov. 24, just over a month after his last 2 ½ hour period piece, The Last Duel. Neither are comic book movies. In fact, Scott has never, ever made a comic book movie, and he’s been cranking them out since the mid-‘70s. Scott was asked why he’s never done a superhero film, and he did not hold back.

“Their scripts are not any f*cking good,” Scott replied. “They’re superhero movies. So, why don’t the superhero movies have better stories? Sorry. I got off the rail, but I mean, c’mon. They’re mostly saved by special effects, and that’s becoming boring for everyone who works with special effects, if you’ve got the money.”

Scott did argue that he has made “three great scripted superhero movies”: Alien, “f*cking Gladiator,” and Blade Runner.

It’s a pretty salty interview, with lots of random cussing and DGAF trashing. At one point he’s told that he’s not exactly a “stickler for accents,” especially given the over-the-top Italian accents in Gucci. He brags about not having Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer, Ben Affleck et al. do French accents in the France-set Duel.

“That would’ve been a disaster, and yet, it’s all French,” he said. “Who cares? Like, shut the fuck up, then you’ll enjoy the movie.”

(Via Deadline)

The Los Angeles Lakers took a 49-44 lead into halftime on Friday night against the Minnesota Timberwolves. Then, after the two teams emerged from the locker rooms at Staples Center, the Timberwolves absolutely blitzed the Lakers en route to a 107-83 win. The third quarter, in particular, was shocking on both ends of the floor for L.A., as Minnesota outscored them in the frame, 40-12.

While the Lakers have dealt with injuries and a largely brand new roster this season, their 7-6 record to start the season hasn’t quite been good enough for a team with championship aspirations. And after the “embarrassing” game, Anthony Davis took his team to task for their effort in third quarters throughout the season up to this point.

“We sucked,” Davis said about their effort in the frame, per Dave McMenamin of ESPN. “No defense. Can’t score. That’s not just this third quarter, it’s every third quarter we’ve played this season. We come out slow, lackadaisical offensively and defensively. We got to get it together. Why? I can’t tell you. But we got to do a better job.”

Davis went on to say that the Lakers, even beyond this one loss, are nowhere near the level they need to be right now.

“We got to decide who we want to be. A championship team? That’s not us right now,” Davis said. “We’re not winning a championship the way we’re playing. We got to be better, and we got to care more for our wins at home. Wins in general. That was embarrassing.”

The Lakers will try to get back in the win column on Sunday afternoon when they play host to the San Antonio Spurs.

Last week, Joe Biden finally saw an ambitious piece of legislation passed. The House and Senate both voted (narrowly, of course) for the president’s infrastructure bill, which only saw support from 19 GOP senators and 13 GOP representatives. Those few who voted against party lines were not left so merry: They were angrily singled out by one of the most unhinged members of the House, Marjorie Taylor Greene. And she’s not calling off her dogs any time soon.

In a series of tweets on Saturday, the Georgia lawmaker (who rarely makes any actual laws herself) doubled down on driving harassing phonecalls, including death threats, to those who didn’t vote the way she’d have liked. Greene linked to a Salon piece about how her plan “worked,” leaving her colleagues with abusive feedback, then added her own veiled threats.

“My office, my staff, and I receive nasty calls, death threats & wishes all the time, but the difference is they are from the deranged left, not Republican,” she tweeted. While she admitted that “all death threats should be investigated,” she remained unmoved by the abuse she’d directed towards her coworkers, even though she, too, has experienced her own such animosity.

“However, the calls will continue and primaries will ensue. Republicans in the House and the Senate need to learn a lesson,” Green wrote. “Stop helping Democrats destroy our economy, take away our freedoms, enslave us in crippling debt, and corrupt our society with immoral policies.”

Greene also called out the 31 pro-Infrastructure Bill GOP lawmakers once more, and claimed that Democrats are wielding “authoritarian power over the Great People of America.”

Rarely does a day go by without Greene saying or doing something over-the-top. She recently told a newly indicted Steve Bannon that she’s actually not that into politics, talked about “patriot hunting” with Tucker Carlson, and has continued to surrender a truly jaw-dropping amount of her congressional salary to mask fines.

(Via Raw Story)

After a relatively mild summer, COVID-19 cases are spiking once more, with health officials warning of a potential “fifth wave” as winter sends people back indoors. Should that happen, things will be a bit different than in the past: The majority of hospitalizations and deaths will likely happen mostly in cases with low vaccination rates. The GOP has not made it easy to change their minds and save their lives; Ted Cruz has even come after Big Bird. (Meanwhile, Breitbart published a surreal conspiracy theory blaming it all on…people who want people to get vaxxed.) But Stephen Colbert tried to find a way: baseball talk.

On Friday’s The Late Show, Colbert said he was tired of using “wave” metaphors to describe seesawing COVID cases. So why not try invoking the national sport instead?

“If we do get a fifth wave, it won’t affect the entire country equally, because the places hardest hit tend to have low vaccination rates,” Colbert told the crowd. “At this point, staying unvaccinated is like wearing a Yankees hat to a Red Sox game: You’re probably gonna end up in the hospital and it’s your own damn fault.”

Colbert also played a clip of California Governor Gavin Newsom warning of a fifth wave arriving with the cold weather. “Winter is coming,” he said, with a nod to Game of Thrones. Colbert also took umbrage with that.

“Makes sense to quote Game of Thrones, because the pandemic is already way too long and it’s not going to end well,” he cracked, reminding people of the show’s controversial capper.

You can watch Colbert’s opening monologue in the video above. The pandemic business begins around the 2:30 mark.

Absences are scattered across the Philadelphia 76ers’ rotation. All-Star point guard Ben Simmons has yet to suit up for a single contest. Due to health and safety protocols, Tobias Harris (six games), Matisse Thybulle (four games), and Joel Embiid (three games, plus an earlier one for rest) have all missed extended time. Nursing an ankle injury, Shake Milton didn’t debut until game five. Danny Green sat out three games to work through a hamstring issue. Even Seth Curry, Furkan Korkmaz, and Andre Drummond have each been sidelined for a night.

To this point, the lone constant is Tyrese Maxey, who is looking the part of a future star. Unlike some players who earn that distinction, Maxey’s play makes it seem like the future might already be here. Through 13 games, the 21-year-old speedster is averaging 17.1 points, 4.7 assists (1.5 turnovers), and 3.8 rebounds on 59.3 percent true shooting.

He’s converted 54.7 percent of his twos, 38.5 percent of his threes, and 87.2 percent of his free throws. After posting a true shooting percentage 4.1 points below league average as a rookie, his current mark stands 4.4 points north of league average, all while seeing more minutes against starters on a team often missing its best player(s). That’s a mighty fine leap.

Over his past five games, he’s averaging 22 points, 5.4 assists (0.8 turnovers), five rebounds, 1.4 steals, and one block on 61.4 percent true shooting (.518/.435/.933 split), including back-to-back 30-burgers. Philadelphia’s plethora of close games amid a compromised rotation has tasked Maxey with a gargantuan minutes load. He’s logged at least 37 minutes in six consecutive outings and 39+ in the last five, though none of it seems to bother him.

Against the Toronto Raptors on Thursday, he keyed a fourth-quarter comeback (albeit, unsuccessful) with 15 points, two assists, one steal, and one block in the final frame, blazing up and down the floor for delightful sequences.

Dating back to his pre-draft days, Maxey was always a drive-first, shoot-second scorer. As an NBA sophomore, he’s refined both aspects to emerge as one of the best scorers on his team and from the 2020 class. The dude’s a sprinter masquerading as a hooper. He zips past defenders in a jiffy, varies his speed to compound its effectiveness, and can convert around the basket from an array of angles.

Per Cleaning The Glass, his rim frequency (38 percent, 84th percentile) and finishing (67 percent, 84th percentile) both place him clear of the 80th percentile among point guards. He’s elite in both volume and efficiency. Last season, he had the former (88th percentile), but was missing the latter (58 percent, 41st percentile).

What’s more is he’s continuing an in-season trend from 2020-21 by relying less on his silky floater. Per Synergy, his “runner” frequency is down from 22.2 percent to 16.4 percent, but after ranking in the 79th percentile in efficiency as a rookie, he finds himself in the 82nd percentile to open 2021-22. It’s still a weapon, just not the headlining one that leads him to settle occasionally.

A year to add counters and further learn how to succeed as a downhill-inclined, 6’2 guard has made him a devastating slasher to provide the Sixers with much-needed dribble-drive equity. He knows how to adjust his finishes based on defensive interference and alters his release points when warranted. The manipulation of pace and screens, diversity of deliveries, and driving technique are marvels. Take note of how low he gets here:

Maxey’s role has changed from being predominantly a bench spark plug a year ago. He is tasked with organizing the offense in Simmons’ absence, even if Embiid and Harris are the centerpieces when they play. Keenly identifying pockets of space, Maxey is increasingly discretionary as a scorer and balancing all the responsibilities associated with being the starting point guard for a playoff team.

With Embiid, Harris, and Curry the focal points most often, Maxey is not always afforded on-ball rep after on-ball rep to cook downhill. Even separate from them, he’s also just not yet equipped to be a primary initiator, which slides him into an off-ball role for periods. This is where many of his recent strides are manifesting. Last season, and early this season, he was burdened by hesitancy and prone to many record-scratches when the ball swung his way. He’d bypass open catch-and-shoot threes and tepidly aim to venture inside the arc.

Now, he’s either launching from deep or decisively attacking to get to a pull-up, floater, or rim foray. In his 33-point outing against Toronto, such maturation was readily apparent. He knows what he wants to do but isn’t predetermined, and the finishing guile is even more practical against a scrambling defense.

This growth also helps explain why his long midrange frequency has trickled down from 16 percent as a rookie to nine percent this year, per Cleaning The Glass. There are fewer instances where he dribbles himself into the binary options of a pass or an uninspiring long two.

Serving as a secondary fiddle alongside Embiid, those occurrences are paramount. Many of these plays are not ones he would’ve made as a rookie or even earlier in the season. For instance, the two semi-contested threes that he drains in the compilation below are almost assuredly record-scratch sequences from a younger version of Maxey. Instead, each tacks on three points for the Sixers and are examples of his development into a dynamic off-ball scorer.

A quick glance at Maxey’s slash line and his surge beyond the arc pops out. After shooting 30.1 percent from deep in year one, he’s up to 38.5 percent in year two. He’s more willing to fire spot-up threes, of which he’s knocked down 38.1 percent (8-for-21). His off-the-bounce flashes have, to this narrow point, become consistent, connecting on seven of his 18 (39.1 percent) pull-up attempts from three.

Although his .247 three-point rate is barely higher than last season (.240), he’s certainly more comfortable this year. It’s just that he’s found other ways to generate efficient shots inside the arc. There are fewer instances where any sort of an aversion to triples looks or actually is detrimental.

When defenders duck under screens, he’s ready to let that sucker fly and he also holsters a fluid step-back for self-creation. Given the menacing nature of his interior chops, the jumper emerging as an auxiliary tool when he leverages his driving prowess is important for his chances of becoming a legitimately elite guard scorer. Through 13 games, he’s taking the steps necessary to accomplish that.

Maxey hasn’t merely replaced Simmons as the team’s nominal starting point guard. On many nights, he assumes the opponent’s primary perimeter option. He’s already battled James Harden, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Trae Young, and Damian Lillard, among others. While he’s sometimes lost navigating through all the off-ball chaos defensively and must stay down against shot fakes more commonly, he’s laying the foundation for high-level guard defense and is already tenable for his position.

He helped severely limit Young in Philadelphia’s victory two weeks ago, coaxed various challenging shots from Lillard, and has incorporated some of Thybulle’s rearview contest artistry into his toolkit. His lateral mobility and core strength enable him to thwart drives, and he’s flashed instinctive off-ball playmaking.

Despite the difficulty of on-ball assignments being elevated from last season, he’s performing better on that end and already showing heightened discipline against fakes, even if he must sustain that improvement.

Consistent off-ball defense and tact against savvy fakes are atop the forward-thinking defensive checklist. Better handling hedges and traps out of ball-screens, along with replicable passing reads beyond skips to the corner, confront him offensively. His 3:1 assist-to-turnover ratio seems tidy, but speaks more to his conservative tendencies than delicate, daring facilitation.

There have been many occasions recently in which he’s failed to feed an open Drummond on the roll because he’s flustered or deterred by multiple bodies. A balance between timidity and foolishness exists, and he hovers too close to the former right now. This experience is good for him. He can identify those errors of omission and adapt accordingly. He’s already a vastly better player now than early October, just as was the case throughout last season.

The Sixers have thrust much onto Maxey’s plate in year two. He’s one of their foremost creators, routinely initiates possessions, and locks horns with explosive offensive talents nightly. By and large, he’s handling it superbly and resembles an obvious top-10 player from his class. At age 21, he’s a good player, which is why the possibilities ahead are so promising and alluring.

On Friday, a few weeks after he refused to cooperate with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee, Steve Bannon was federally indicted. The news came as a bit of a surprise, perhaps to Bannon himself, too. The committee, which is investigating the events leading up to the Capitol siege, has subpoenaed a number of other close Trump associates, some of whom may wind up in big legal trouble if they make like Bannon. But that hasn’t stopped other allies from trying to downplay that fateful day and claim, erroneously, that it’s fine to break the law.

One of them was Matt Gaetz, the embattled Florida congressman who already has problems of his own. Gaetz, too, is in trouble, being the subject of a federal investigation into his ties to a sex trafficking ring. Publicly he’s tried to ignore it; privately he’s lawyered the heck up. But perhaps he saw a kinship with someone who’s also in deep doo-doo.

“Steve Bannon did nothing wrong,” Gaetz tweeted on Friday. The statement was patently false: Bannon ignored a subpoena, and being held in contempt of Congress was the least that could befall him.

But rather than unpack his argument, a lot of people simply made jokes about Venmo, reminding people that earlier this year he was busted for using the popular app to wire money to Joel Greenberg, who is connected with said sex trafficking ring and who is playing ball with the feds.

And thus, Venmo went viral, all thanks to Gaetz’s big mouth.