Category: News

It seemed like every actor in the United Kingdom popped up somewhere in the Harry Potter film series. There were eight movies, and that meant they needed a lot of teachers — and, eventually, evil wizards — thus keeping the nation’s thespians employed. There were some notable exceptions. For instance, Alan Cumming — who can most recently be seen on Schmigadoon! — never made an appearance. But it’s not like they didn’t ask him.

In a new interview with The Telegraph (as caught by Entertainment Weekly), the Tony-winning actor was asked about the time he was asked to play Gilderoy Lockhart, the ill-fated Hogwarts professor, in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The role went to Kenneth Branagh, but only after he said no. But Cumming said his refusal was a bit more emphatic than that.

“I didn’t turn it down,” Cumming told the British newspaper. “I told them to f*ck off!”

The reason? It involved money, as well as duplicity on the studio’s part. “They wanted me and Rupert Everett to do a screen test, and they said they couldn’t pay me more than a certain sum, they just didn’t have any more money in the budget,” he recalled. “And I had the same agent as Rupert, who of course, they were going to pay more. Blatantly lying, stupidly lying, as well. Like, if you’re going to lie, be clever about it.

“I said, tell them to f*ck right off,” he added. “And thought, well Rupert’s going to get the part. They made him screen test, and I remember he brought his own wig. And then they f*cking gave it to Kenneth Branagh, came out of the shadows.”

But Cumming still got a hefty pay day: The same year Chamber of Secrets came out, he appeared as Nightcrawler in X2, the second X-Men movie. So it all worked out in the end.

(Via The Telegraph and EW)

Frank Ocean and Rihanna have at least one thing in common: Over the last five years they haven’t released new music. But he’s clearly itching to do something. Now he’s back with a new project — but it’s not new music. It’s called Homer, and it’s a luxury brand, selling mainly jewelry. The singer spoke about it in an interview with The Financial Times.

“My mother was into jewelry, but in a low-key Princess Diana kind of way,” he revealed. “My godfather was into guns, but he was also into cars, and he bought luxury-lifestyle magazines, which I became obsessed with. They became a form of play for me as a child. It was the furthest thing from my actual life at the time, and I began plotting ideas and a life in that universe. I’d look at yachts and want one. But I don’t have one because I get super-seasick.”

Frank also revealed that he picked the name Homer “mostly because it’s five letters and the dotcom was available.” He said the name is also based on the fact that “Homer is considered the father of history and history is meant to endure — the same as diamonds and gold — and I know Homer used papyrus, but I’ve always liked the idea of carving history into stone.”

Ocean also discussed Homer in a post to his Instagram Story. In it, he wrote:

Hand on my heart, this project has kept my mind moving and my imagination turning throughout it all. All of my work now is dedicated to my family. Everything. My hope is to make things that last, that are hard to destroy, set it in stone. I’m so fucking happy for everyone involved and I admire you and am proud of you … This is three years in the making and there is so, so much I’m excited to share with all you strangers.

The “independent American luxury brand,” which will soon open a storefront on NYC’s Lower East Side, shared its first collection of jewelry, which ranges from a $435 pendant to a $1.9M necklace. A catalog and in-store appointments can be requested on the brand’s website here.

You can view Frank Ocean’s Instagram Story post abvoe and read his full interview with Financial Times here.

Draymond Green played a key role in the United States winning a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics. While he came off the bench, Green’s defensive chops and ability to keep things moving on offense were invaluable as the Americans overcame their early struggles in the lead-up to the Games and, eventually, took down France to win their fourth-straight Olympic gold.

The win came after some doubts regarding this group’s ability to get the job done, and while a pair of loses in their exhibition tilts and one to the French at the start of group play fed into this, they managed to figure things out in time to remain peerless the rest of the way through. And for Green, who has never shied away from being a provocateur, this meant he got the chance to talk that talk in the aftermath.

Green took to Twitter a little bit the game and let the account Old Takes Exposed know he was going to start doing an impression.

Then, he started to rip through quote tweets of posts questioning the Americans.

A pair of tweets that he particularly seemed to enjoy were one calling out Kevin Durant and another that shared a quote from French wing Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot where he predicted his side would win a gold medal.

Green may have hinted that he planned on calling people out when he hopped onto Durant’s postgame IG Live and specifically dropped Kendrick Perkins’ name. Still, he very obviously had a blast here, and with a long plane ride back to the U.S. ahead of him, perhaps we’ll get a few more.

This article originally appeared on September 7, 2016

Jonna Roslund is a 26-year-old from Sweden who lives with depression.

Photo via Jonna Roslund, used with permission.

Living with a mental illness affects many areas of a person’s life, including one annoyance most of us can relate to: the dread of household chores.

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But for Roslund — and many people living with depression — the process of cleaning can be about so much more than simply tidying up.

“I suffer from severe depression and have a really hard time with cleaning and doing other kinds of household work,” she wrote in a post on Imgur.

“My room [has] been this messy for several months [because] I can’t push myself to take care of it,” she explained. “But this Friday I decided to finally do it!”

She posted two photos of her bedroom — one before cleaning up, and one afterward.

This was Roslund’s bedroom before she cleaned:

Photo via Jonna Roslund, used with permission.

And after she cleaned:

What a difference some elbow grease can make, huh? Photo via Jonna Roslund, used with permission.

“You can finally see that I have a floor!” she wrote. “Say hi to my teddy Nalle on the bed!”

“I know it’s not a big victory, but for me it means the world to just be able to have my door open if people come over. I feel so at peace right now … Me 1 — Depression 0!”

The comments on Roslund’s post are filled with words of encouragement, as other users expressed how relatable it is to see a messy room so perfectly symbolize their own form of mental illness:

“I too suffer from depression and I know how hard it is to function. You rock and you’re an inspiration!”

“I’ve been suffering from bouts of depression and dealing with an eating disorder and my place is in disarray. This is inspiring.”

“Good on ya! Cleaning is the first to go when my depression flares and cleaning is one of the things that can feel good in the depths.”

“Good job, [Roslund]. 1 step at a time, 1 small victory after another, is what will get you through this (: I wish you the best.”

Roslund’s experience with depression and struggling to stay on top of household chores isn’t all that unique.

Feeling as though you have little energy and motivation is a common characteristic for those living with depression. Everyday tasks — from the bigger things like staying productive at your job to the smaller (but still important) things like completing household chores — can feel impossibly difficult at times.

Photo via iStock.

That no-energy feeling is one that Roslund knows all too well.

“When you’re depressed, it’s a struggle to just get out of bed,” she explains over email. “It makes other things that other, healthy people do, so overwhelming. It’s like trying to run a marathon when you’ve been in a coma for years.”

That’s why Roslund’s post resonated so widely. It touches on an important point: Sometimes small victories aren’t so small after all.

Roslund wants the world to get better at how it addresses mental illness — and that starts with all of us.

“We need to be able to talk to each other about our feelings, even the bad ones,” she writes. “And we need to be better at listening when someone is trying to talk to you about it, even though it’s hard to hear.”

It’s a vital message to remember, especially since it’s National Suicide Prevention Week. Depression and the risk of suicide are closely related.

“Be patient with yourself or the person you know who is going through a hard time. And it’s important to remember that there is help out there!”

My mother died from ovarian cancer when I was a young child.

I’m in my late 30s now, and I’m still navigating this loss as I move through life. I’ve lived most of my life without my mother at this point, but I still miss her.

Here are three things I’ve learned since losing Mam:

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1. Grief is not linear and is not solely expressed through tears.

Someone you love has been taken away from you, and your heart has broken into pieces. It’s natural to grieve, but we all grieve differently. Grief shows up in anger, sorrow, guilt, fear, and sometimes peace. It is unpredictable and, at times, exhausting.

I cried when my mother died, and I cried at her funeral when my school choir sang “Be Not Afraid.” I didn’t cry much in the immediate years that followed — not directly as a result of Mam’s death, but probably indirectly related to it. I certainly felt fear and anger and other emotions related directly to my loss.

Then sadness hit me like a ton of bricks one day when I was in my early 20s. A compassionate friend asked me about Mam, and as I hadn’t spoken about her to anyone outside the family, I broke down. It was a good release. The years have brought many stages of grieving.

Mother’s Day is never easy. Shopping for my wedding dress without my mother brought up intense feelings of loss. And sometimes it just hits me hard, on a regular day, yanking me out of my pleasant thoughts. A mother in a dressing room with her daughter, and they’re trying on clothes together, admiring how the other looks. The mother telling the daughter how beautiful she is.

Or a friend of mine, meeting her mother for lunch and I can’t even imagine what that would be like! I can’t even fathom the amazing joy of having lunch right now with Mam! And then I get that heaviness in my chest and my stomach feels bad.

There’s no closure. My grieving stems from having loved so deeply. I have learned to tune into the emotions I’m feeling and to acknowledge the love, the pain, and the loss.

2. There are no replacements.

Nobody can replace your mother. We love our mothers in our own individual ways. Our mothers care for us when we’re sick, guide us in life the best ways they can, listen to us, and love us unconditionally.

For a mother, her child is always her first priority. And we sense this. We feel it. We know it, even if she doesn’t say it.

Carmel and Mam. Image courtesy of Carmel Breathnach.

My mother was beyond happy when I was born a healthy baby girl. I was told that she called me her little angel. She carried me in her womb for nine months.

By the time I was born, we had that unbreakable bond, and she knew me from that first second of my existence. There’s never going to be a replacement for that person who loved me probably more than she loved herself. The joy in her eyes when she saw me, the warmth of her arms wrapped around me, the pain in her eyes when she had to say goodbye are all ways that I remember the deep love she had for me.

Mam prepared lunches for me every day to take to school, named muffins after me because they were my favorite, and surprised me with the best doll she could find when I was a few years old. She repaired my soft toys when they tore, taught me to have manners and sit up straight, wiped my eyes when I cried and my nose when I was sick.

Today I look for certain qualities in people. I look for a warmth, a radiance, a compassion and kindness that Mam had. I look for humor, a voice of sense, and strength of character. These are traits that my mother had. I find some of them in others.

But it’s never the same. There’ll never be another Mam. She’s irreplaceable on so many levels.

3. There are other people who will love you and other people for you to love.

Family members and friends will love you. They might not know exactly what your needs are or how to address them, but it’s worth reaching out to them. People struggle with different things.

Perhaps family members cannot love you or be there for you, and we may have to look around, let go, and reach further than we might want to in order to find the people who really love us, but there is someone out there to love you, and there’s someone in need of your love.

I was blessed with the kindest, most devoted father who gave my brother and me all the love and care we needed. My dad is a gem in my life. He calls me to hear my news and to share his. He worries when I’m not feeling good and is overjoyed when I’m happiest. He listens to my concerns and trusts me to make the right decisions.

My dad has helped me so much in dealing with my loss, through caring for me and loving me unconditionally. I have the most wonderful fiancé who loves me to no end. And I’ve friends in my life who I know truly care about me.

I’ve been blessed with a lovely family, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t reach out to others. I’ve reconnected with old friends after years of distance. I’ve discovered things I have in common with others and opened up to new friendships.

Having people to love is truly healing. I was a kindergarten teacher for 10 years. I loved the children in my care, and they showed me so much love in return. By spreading love, we invite more love into our lives. Try volunteering or working in a school or a hospital. There are people everywhere in need of love.

Our world is so big and yet so small now in this age of technology. We can reach out to others across continents.

Our mothers were the first to show us the true meaning of love. In honor of our mothers, let’s spread that love wherever we can.

This article originally appeared on 04.26.16

Happy birthday to my baby girl! Sad I lost my virginity. But thankful I have a daughter.

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds)
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This article originally appeared on 11.30.16

Norine Dworkin-McDaniel’s son came home from school one day talking about Newton’s first law of motion.

He had just learned it at school, her son explained as they sat around the dinner table one night. It was the idea that “an object at rest will remain at rest until acted on by an external force.”

“It struck me that it sounded an awful lot like him and his video games,” she joked.

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A writer by trade and always quick to turn a phrase, Norine grabbed a pen and scribbled some words:

“Newton’s First Law of Parenting: A child at rest will remain at rest … until you need your iPad back.”

And just like that, she started creating “The Science of Parenthood,” a series that names and identifies hilarious, universal parenting struggles. She put in a quick call to her friend Jessica Ziegler, a visual and graphics expert, and together the two set out to bring the project to life.

Here are some of their discoveries:

1. Newton’s first law of parenting

2. The sleep geometry theorem

3. The baby fluids effusion rule

4. The carnival arc

5. The Archimedes bath-time principle

6. Schrödinger’s backpack

7. The naptime disruption theorem

8. Calculation disintegration

9. Chuck e-conomics

10. Plate tectonics

11. Silicaphobia

12. Delusions of launder

13. The Costco contradiction

Norine and Jessica’s work struck a nerve with parents everywhere.

Norine said almost every parent who sees the cartoons has a similar reaction: a quiet moment of recognition, followed by a huge laugh as they recognize their own families in the illustrations.

But is there more to it than just getting a few chuckles? You bet, Norine and Jessica said.

“Even, at the worst possible moments, you’re standing there, your child has just vomited all over you, or you’ve opened up the diaper and your kid is sitting waist deep in liquid ****. Even at that moment, it’s not really that bad,” Norine said. “You will be able to laugh at this at some point.”

“It gets better. You’re not alone in this parenting thing.”

If we’re being honest, we all make assumptions about other people, right?

We look at their skin, their clothes, and their car, and we make guesses about them that we don’t even realize we’re making. Everyone does it.

You ask a pregnant female coworker if she’ll keep working after the baby is born — but you wouldn’t think to ask that question of a guy who was about to become a dad.

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You ask that nice girl behind the counter at the bagel shop whether she’ll ever go to college so she can get a better job — only to learn that she’s an underemployed Ph.D.

You ask a hipster-looking guy on the subway whether he’s into artisanal pickles — but he just happens to be a bad dresser who has no idea what you’re talking about.

The fact is, though, that people of color deal with other people’s assumptions constantly.

Research shows that other people’s expectations can have a profound effect on us. They can determine our success or failure. And black women deal with this nonsense more than others. In a recent study, nearly half of the female black and Latina scientists polled reported being mistaken for janitors or administrative staff.

Let’s agree to fix this.

116 years ago, the Pasterze glacier in the Austria’s Eastern Alps was postcard perfect:

Snowy peaks. Windswept valleys. Ruddy-cheeked mountain children in lederhosen playing “Edelweiss” on the flugelhorn.

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But a lot has changed since 1900.

Much of it has changed for the better! We’ve eradicated smallpox, Hitler is dead, and the song “Billie Jean” exists now.

On the downside, the Earth has gotten a lot hotter.  A lot hotter.

The 15 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998. July 2016 was the planet’s hottest month — ever.

Unsurprisingly, man-made climate change has wreaked havoc on the planet’s glaciers — including the Pasterze, which is Austria’s largest.

Just how much havoc are we talking about? Well…

A series of stunning photos, published in August, show just how far the glacier has receded since its heyday.

First measured in 1851, the glacier lost half of its mass between that year and 2008.

A marker placed in 1985 shows where the edge of the glacier reached just 31 years ago. You can still see the ice sheet, but just barely, way off in the distance. In between is … a big, muddy lake.

The view from the glacial foot marker from 1995 — 10 years later — isn’t much more encouraging.

Even in just one year, 2015, the glacier lost an astounding amount of mass — 177 feet, by some estimates.

Ice continues to melt daily, and while the dripping makes for a good photo, it’s unfortunate news for planet Earth. Glacial melting is one of the three primary causes of sea-level rise.

According to a European Environment Agency report, the average temperature in the Alps has increased 2 degrees Celsius in the last 100 years — double the global average.

It’s not unreasonable to assume that that’s why this mountain hut has been abandoned by the flugelhorn-playing children who once probably lived in it.

Is there anything we can do to stop climate change besides look at scary glacier photos?

Climate change is, unfortunately, still a robust debate in the United States as many of our elected officials refuse to acknowledge that we humans are the ones doing the changing. As of last year, that list included a whopping 49 senators. Calling them to gently persuade them otherwise would be helpful. Not voting for them if they don’t change their minds would be even more so.

There is some tentative good news — the Paris Agreement signed in December 2015 commits 197 countries, including the U.S., to take steps to limit future global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius. While it may be too late for the Pasterze glacier, if we really commit as a world, we might be able to stop ourselves from sinking whole countries and turning Miami into a swimming pool and stuff like that.

And who knows, with a little luck, and a little more not poisoning the sky, we just might recapture a little of that Alpine magic one day.

An injury Aron Baynes suffered while suiting up for Australia during the Tokyo Olympics could end up costing him the entire 2021-22 NBA season. Baynes got hurt during the Boomers’ group play matchup against Italy and ended up not taking the floor again in the tournament, although the team was optimistic he’d be able to “recover in the coming weeks.”

Baynes, however, did not join his countrymen when they accepted their bronze medals during their win over Slovenia in the third-place game, and according to Shams Charania of The Athletic, that’s because his injury is worse than previously thought. The now-former member of the Toronto Raptors is apparently in the hospital due to nerve damage in his neck, and now, next season is in jeopardy.

“I am really disappointed that I can’t continue in the Olympics,” Baynes said in a statement after he got hurt. “I along with the rest of the team have been working so hard in our quest for an historic Olympic medal and I am gutted that I can’t complete the journey with the boys, but I have every confidence that they will get the job done.”

The news comes a few days after the Raptors waived Baynes, who is now an unrestricted free agent.