Category: News

Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg didn’t waste any spare words while reacting to the UN’s new climate report. More specifically, that would be the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issuing a number of warnings, including all-important ocean circulation that’s deteriorating, which poses an acute danger to the Gulf Stream. That last detail (that there’s something “off” lately with the Gulf Stream) comes as little news to anyone who lives in a state that’s usually tornado prone but has watched many of those storms largely shift toward eastern states. And this IPCC report is also why you’re seeing “code red for humanity” splashed across many news outlets on this Monday.

Many well-known voices (even those that seem unlikely to weigh in) like Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane have spoken of this report. On Twitter, MacFarlane tweeted about “damning evidence” about mankind’s disastrous effect on the climate. Well, the foremost climate activist on planet Earth (Greta Thunberg) has now added her voice to the chorus. On Twitter, she wrote, “The new IPCC report contains no real surprises. It confirms what we already know from thousands previous studies and reports – that we are in an emergency. It’s a solid (but cautious) summary of the current best available science.” She also warned that humanity must “be brave and take decisions based on the scientific evidence provided in these reports.” As Greta points out, “We can still avoid the worst consequences, but not if we continue like today, and not without treating the crisis like a crisis.”

Hopefully, the IPPC report could prompt true policy change, so that mankind can curtail its addiction to emitting greenhouse gases like there’s no tomorrow. Meanwhile, Greta has also appeared on the cover of Vogue Scandanavia‘s first issue, in which she poses with a horse and also dresses down the fashion industry for contributing to the current climate and ecological crises while using labels like “sustainable.” She labels such tactics as “greenwash.” Oh boy.

HBO’s new limited series, The White Lotus, might not be so limited after all. Ahead of the upcoming series finale, creator Mike White has confirmed that Season 2 talks have been happening, but if they do come to fruition, there would be some significant changes to the show’s satirical take on the wealthy.

While talking to TVLine, White revealed that if a season two happens (the situation is “unresolved” at the moment), he would almost definitely have to switch up most of the cast and the location. “It would have to be a different hotel, like, say, The White Lotus: San Tropez or something,” White said.

However, not all of the cast would be left behind if White pivots The White Lotus from a limited series to an anthology. While he doesn’t think it would be “credible” if the same vacationers were in the same place again, “but maybe it could be a Marvel universe type thing, where some of them would come back.”

Here’s the official synopsis for the limited series and/or its first season depending on how things shake out:

Among the employees at The White Lotus are the fastidious resort manager Armond, who, after a sudden trauma, begins a dramatic downward spiral – and the down-to-earth spa manager, Belinda who gets taken on an emotional roller coaster ride by a needy guest. The vacationers include the Mossbacher family – Nicole, a successful type-A exec, who can’t help but treat her family like disobedient employees; her husband, Mark, dealing with both an embarrassing health crisis and a terminal inferiority complex; their teenaged son, Quinn, a socially awkward gamer, experiencing the wonder of nature for the very first time; their daughter, Olivia, and her friend, Paula, sharp-tongued college sophomores who cast a sardonic eye on the lifestyles and belief systems of everyone around them.

The White Lotus airs new episodes on Sunday on HBO and HBO Max.

(Via TVLine)

Reservation Dogs: (Season 1 premiere) — Taika Waititi’s FX on Hulu followup to What We Do in the Shadows brings us a comedy series that’s co-written by Native American filmmaker Sterlin Harjo. Yes, the lead quartet in this show rocks suits that look strikingly similar to the characters of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, yet they’re four Indigenous teens who fight crime and also commit it. The show was shot in and near Okmulgee, Oklahoma (the home of the Muskogee Creek tribal headquarters) — where excitement is lacking. Not for long, though, and these teens hope to make it all the way to California. The cast and crew come from indigenous communities, from where Harjo and Waititi are aiming their storytelling styles as well.

The Beast Must Die: (AMC, 9:00pm) — Jared Harris and Cush Jumbo star in this revenge-thriller series (which originally aired on BritBox UK and achieved a viewing record) that has already been renewed for a second season. This week, Frances must face the consequences of her revenge while DI Strangeways is looking for the truth.

Roswell, New Mexico (CW, 8:00pm) — Maria attempts to figure out what her vision means while Liz gets real with Max, and Kyle has a disturbing encounter, and Michael is fueled by another motivation altogether.

The Republic Of Sarah (CW, 9:00pm) — This show follows the ending of tranquility of Greylock, N.H., after a stash of valuable coltan leads to new overlords, and a rebellious teacher (Sarah Cooper) steps in to halt the madness. Soon enough, there’s the prospect of Greylock becoming a sovereign nation. This week, Corrine asks for Sarah’s help while Sarah must also have a tough talk with Danny.

Late Night With Seth Meyers — Kristen Bell, Dax Shepard, and John Stamos

In case you missed these weekend picks:

The Suicide Squad (Warner Bros. film on HBO Max) — David Ayer’s 2016 Suicide Squad confined itself to a PG-13 rating, but no one expected James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad to stay with PG-13, and in fact, this R-rated (and quite good) extravaganza is releasing simultaneously on streaming and in theaters. Enjoy the “horribly beautiful” assortment of supervillains as they undertake their latest Task Force X mission, and the cast is an enormous, eclectic, and electric. Not only do we have the returning Margot Robbie (as Harley Quinn), Joel Kinnaman (as Rick Flag), Viola Davis (as Amanda Waller), and Jai Courtney (as Boomerang), but John Cena, Idris Elba, Pete Davidson, and more joined the cast. Also: Sylvester Stallone as King Shark. Sold!

Val (A24 movie on Amazon Prime) — Yep, a Val Kilmer documentary surfaced from the indie studio behind Uncut Gems, Midsommar, Ladybird, and The VVitch. That’s news in and of itself, but now, the atypical doc has arrived to celebrate the Top Gun and Batman actor. The mercurial man’s life and craft will take center stage, since he recorded hours of home-footage (like Soleil Moon Frye did, only with more aviator sunglasses) while filming his most iconic roles and being, you know, Val.

A devastating new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that the average global temperature will rise by at least 1.5°C, relative to the 1850-1900 average, by 2050. The world has already warmed 1.1°C so another increase by 0.4°C seems inevitable.

Keeping global temperatures from rising 1.5°C was a major target outlined in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Doing so would prevent a rise in sea levels, droughts, heatwaves, flash floods, and wildfires.

The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, called the report “code red for humanity.”

The IPCC believes that the temperature target of 1.5°C may be reached sometime between 2030 and 2035, up to a decade sooner than previously thought. Even if the entire planet came together to create the “lowest pathway” of future emissions, the 1.5°C-degree threshold would be exceeded.

The #IPCC released its latest #ClimateReport today, #ClimateChange 2021: the Physical Science Basis.

“The role of… https://t.co/0JS2CCCnOP

— IPCC (@IPCC_CH)
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However, if as a planet, we eventually reduce global emissions to net zero and took proactive steps to remove carbon from the air — such as planting trees — global temperatures could be brought back below the 1.5°C threshold.

Writers of the report stress that if “strong and sustained reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases” occur then the disastrous effects of climate change can be avoided.

The report comes before leaders in the U.S. and Europe are set to meet this November in Glasgow for the COP26 climate conference where they will discuss enacting stricter measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

It doesn’t tell us what to do. It is up to us to be brave and take decisions based on the scientific evidence provi… https://t.co/3LEJokfNk1

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg)
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“The new IPCC report contains no real surprises,” climate activist Greta Thunberg tweeted. “It confirms what we already know from thousands [of] previous studies and reports — that we are in an emergency. It’s a solid (but cautious) summary of the current best available science.

“It doesn’t tell us what to do,” she added. “It is up to us to be brave and take decisions based on the scientific evidence provided in these reports. We can still avoid the worst consequences, but not if we continue like today, and not without treating the crisis like a crisis.”

This alarming report isn’t just a call for the world’s governments to step up and take dramatic action but another that we’re all responsible for the planet, too. We have reached a make-or-break moment for mother Earth so it’s important for everyone to come together to do what we can to help stop climate change.

The best way that an individual can combat the crisis is by cutting down on gas consumption and switching to an electric car. Another way to dramatically reduce your carbon footprint is by using energy created by solar or wind. Putting solar panels on your residence can greatly reduce your carbon footprint while saving you money as well.

There are also small changes we can make that have a big impact. You can cut down on your petrochemical use by buying fewer single-use plastics and bottled water. The beef industry is one of the largest producers of greenhouse gases, so by reducing your red meat intake consumption you can make a real difference.

You can even fight for the planet by changing how you dress. Synthetic clothing materials are derived from petrochemicals that are harmful to the environment and cotton requires a massive amount of water to produce.

By buying used clothing you can also help in the fight against climate change.

Today’s UN report is the “strongest statement the IPCC has ever made,” Ko Barrett, the panel’s vice-chair and senior advisor on climate to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told reporters.

Over the past few decades, there have been a series of wake-up calls about the dangers of climate change and, so far, they haven’t inspired the policy necessary to combat the crisis. Hopefully, today’s report will not only spur our leaders to dramatic action but empower everyone to take responsibility for their contributions to the crisis as well.

When MLB The Show 21 announced that it was going to have a park creation feature there was a lot of excitement about what fans would be able to do with that. One idea that jumped into everyone’s mind though was the idea of making the famous Field of Dreams from the movie of the same name.

Well hopefully nobody spent too much time making that park, because the developers decided that they were just going to make it themselves. With the White Sox and Yankees set to play a game on August 12 at Dyersville ballpark, the location where the movie was filmed, players of MLB The Show 21 will get to have the same experience. A free update on Tuesday, August 10, will make the Field of Dreams a playable ballpark in the game. A PlayStation Blog from San Diego Studio explained more:

As the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox step onto the diamond this week in the cornfields of Iowa, you too can step onto the field with this update and live out your dreams. The team at San Diego Studio worked closely with the field architects and MLB to accurately replicate this one-of-a-kind field. We didn’t stop with just adding this iconic stadium to MLB The Show 21, but we have an entire week of live content dedicated to Field of Dreams.

…

Recreating the Field of Dreams was no small task for us, and because of that we needed to be very fluid in our build process. We started listing all the elements in the stadium that would be unique and representative of this famed site, like the corn for example. We were able to start designing the light structure locations, seating area, and general surroundings. One of the more technically important things in-stadium is the field dimensions. This render was a good start, but far from the essential information we needed to create a true representation that this stadium demands.

This is really cool and an easy win for The Show. Fans of baseball have a special place in their heart for Field of Dreams and an MLB game being played there is going to be a lifelong memory for them. So why not give those same fans an opportunity to have their own moments next to that magical cornfield?

While South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone may have hit a roadblock in their attempt to buy Casa Bonita, the real-life Colorado Mexican restaurant that appeared in a famous episode of their Comedy Central show, they appear to have more South Park-adjacent plans for the $900 million deal they snagged from ViacomCBS to make more seasons of (and more than a dozen films based on) their longrunning show.

Stone spoke to Bloomberg about the new deal over the weekend and detailed how things will change for them creatively now that they have this infusion of cash. He also spoke about other things they’re going to do with all that money, which starts with a new video game they’re making themselves and also includes a few other Park-related ventures.

We’re a media company. We use the proceeds from this to invest.

These are multi-year projects we invested a bunch of money in. We have a ‘South Park’ 3D video game, release date unknown. We’re doing deep fakes. We have a studio with a dozen people who are deep fake artists. We’re working on a little more of this deep fake movie we’re trying to piece together.

We have a horror movie. A musical. I think we’re really for the first time going to bring Tegridy Weed into real life.

First appearing in the fourth episode of the show’s 22nd season in 2018, Tegridy Farms was part of a joke about the rise in vaping among teenagers and the legal use of marijuana in Colorado. The name, based on the word “integrity,” was Randy Marsh’s idea of an ethical hemp manufacturer that also became a weed company thanks to the help of Towelie, a pothead bath towel that can talk. (It’s fun to explain this to someone who has never seen the show. You should try it.) So while a Deep Fake movie sounds, well, horrifying, and potentially something that could further distance society from whatever’s left of its sense of reality, a Tegridy in real life actually sounds kind of helpful if the duo is serious about creating a not-for-profit weed company interested in social justice initiatives aiming to undo the damage done by America’s decades-long War on Drugs.

We’ll have to wait and see if any of this is serious — keep in mind the duo had talked about buying Casa Bonita in the press without actually asking to buy it in real life — but it doesn’t sound like all that money will just sit in a bank account and collect interest if they have their way.

[via The Wrap]

The plot for the 2007 post-apocalyptic “zombie” film I Am Legend is pretty straightforward. In the movie, Will Smith plays a pathologist named Robert Neville who attempts to create a cure for cancer by re-engineering the highly contagious measles virus. Instead, the experiment goes horribly wrong and large swaths of the Earth’s population are turned into sunlight-allergic mutant cannibals who almost wipe out all of humanity until Neville successfully finds a cure in the film’s climactic ending.

For the record, I Am Legend is clearly a work of fiction. We’re talking about a basically impossible scientific feat, just going off of the premise of curing cancer with measles. Add zombies into the mix, and we’re completely in the realm of science fiction here. More importantly, at absolutely no point in I Am Legend is a “vaccine” the cause of the zombie apocalypse, and yet, that is one of the reasons why people on social media are advising others against getting the COVID shot. It’s tempting to say something like “You cannot make this stuff up,” except for the part where some people apparently can. And, for some reason, did.

In a New York Times report on an optical business that’s struggling to encourage its employees to get vaccinated, one of the workers reportedly cited a social media post on the “vaccine” in I Am Legend as a reason to abstain from the shot:

One employee said she was concerned because she thought a vaccine had caused the characters in the film “I Am Legend” to turn into zombies. People opposed to vaccines have circulated that claim about the movie’s plot widely on social media. But the plague that turned people into zombies in the movie was caused by a genetically reprogrammed virus, not by a vaccine.

As of this writing, 166.7 million Americans have been fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. Not one of them has turned into a mutant zombie that’s allergic to the sun or tried to eat Will Smith. Get the jab.

(Via New York Times)

In recent months, Britney Spears has used her Instagram account to be more clear with fans about how she’s feeling in light of her conservatorship legal battle. Now, though, it looks like Spears will be taking advantage of that avenue of communication less often.

Sharing a video of a fan holding up a #FreeBritney flag displayed outside their home this afternoon, Spears wrote, “Geez look at that flag !!!! I was like ‘My flag up over the American Flag !?!?’ … Yes … I’m tooting my own horn .. is that bad ????? I know in my previous post I said you guys know my situation but LET ME CLARIFY … you only know half of it !!!! And for a lot of you who say I should be cautious with what I post … I mean if you REALLY THINK ABOUT IT … with what I’ve been through I believe I been WAAAY TOO CAUTIOUS !!!! One day I will live on the edge !!!! One day.”

Shortly after that, she posted a video of chef Jack Cohen making avocado toast and declared her intentions to shy away from social media from now on: “In a system where I’ve felt completely hopeless for so long, at least I do have a platform to share !!!! As Selena Gomez says it best – The world can be a nasty place … I know it … you know it … kill them with kindness !!! Unfortunately the news has been pretty nasty saying horrible and mean lies about me so I’m gonna post a little less from now on !!!! Pssss this was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life and it’s inspired me to take on a new passion in the cooking field !!!! God bless you beautiful people … TA TA !!!!”

Find Spears’ posts below.

Fox News host Dan Bongino was so hurt over some of the “unbelievable” comments criticizing his latest interview with Donald Trump that the TV personality is now turning on his own network to appeal to his fans.

Bongino interviewed Trump on his show over the weekend and the former president (of course) used some of his time to spew some ridiculous, and categorically false, statements about the 2020 Presidential Election. The gist: he claimed the whole thing, especially his loss to President Joe Biden was “fake.” Now, the segment aired in full on Fox News, but the clip was edited to remove Trump’s latest conspiracy theory before it was posted to the network’s official YouTube account, mainly because YouTube has rules now that prohibit public figures from presenting fiction as fact in order to undermine our democracy. Naturally, plenty of Trump supporters who tuned into the show took offense to the wild ramblings of their toupeed tyrant being edited and they directed most of their anger Bongino’s way.

“I feel betrayed by a lot of people,” Bongino said while addressing the backlash on his Monday radio program. “I’ve been called everything this weekend. Sellout, traitor. Pay-triot, with a P-A-Y, which is unbelievable. I mistakenly thought … people who decided to throw me under the bus immediately, I thought they’d wait to hear me out. Apparently not.”

Oh, the irony. Also, “sellout” and “traitor” seem like pretty mild insults when it comes to the gladiator-like bloodbath we normally see in comments sections, but maybe Bongino is just really sensitive about this stuff. Either way, he was quick to point the finger at Fox News — the people that write his checks — when the MAGA crowd came calling for someone’s head.

“It was edited. The reason I was given was to comply with YouTube rules. We have no intention of doing that on my show,” he said. “I don’t control the Fox News YouTube account. However, I do work with them and it’s my show.”

Bongino then went a step further, promising he’d find a solution to the censure problem when it comes to Fox News’ YouTube channel.

“It’s not acceptable at all. I want to make that clear,” he said. “This is not acceptable. Meaning I won’t accept it. And I promise you a definitive resolution that I’m working on now. What it is, we’ll have to find out. But I promise you a definitive resolution.”

Just off the top of our head: maybe don’t invite an irrational, cognitively challenged retiree from Florida on-air to share weird revisionist fantasies that nurse his own wounded ego while stoking discontent and mistrust in people gullible enough to believe his misinformation campaign?

Prior to starting production on his upcoming film Free Guy, director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things, Night at the Museum series) nearly worked on a very different kind of video game: the action-adventure title Uncharted. However, Levy ultimately left the jungle-shoot-out-filled franchise after his working title Free Guy gained some traction and none other than Ryan Reynolds joined the project. While Levy explained his departure was due to scheduling conflicts and his prior commitment to Free Guy, in a recent interview with Gizmodo Levy further expanded upon his departure.

In the interview, Levy explained why the idea of working on Free Guy was so alluring and the timing not working out for the Uncharted series actually proved to be a good thing for the director. In addition, he also weighed in on just why making a good video game movie is such a challenge, and we gotta’ say, it makes a whole lot of sense:

“What I know from experience — from having walked a bit of road with Nathan Drake and that Uncharted title — is you can tell a story on screen, but you have to be faithful to the game expectations and gamer expectations of the original franchise. That will always put guardrails on your storytelling. Look, I can’t wait to see Uncharted also, but for me as a director, to have absolute freedom, absolute creative freedom where I’m beholden to nothing except the ideas that were exciting to Ryan and me, that was really fun.”

It’s no secret video game movies, while aplenty, are a bit notorious for not always being the best. While we’ve had our speculation on why — and how the next wave of them could change all that — it’s interesting to hear the perspective of a director who nearly worked on one of the most anticipated ones. While like Levy we’re excited for the upcoming Uncharted film — and of course Free Guy, which hits theaters August 13 — maybe this is the reminder that with less expectations and “guardrails” for video game-based movies, we might just get ones we enjoy even more.