Category: News

Six years ago, a high school student named Christopher Justice eloquently explained the multiple problems with flying the Confederate flag. A video clip of Justice’s truth bomb has made the viral rounds a few times since then, and here it is once again getting the attention it deserves.

Justice doesn’t just explain why the flag is seen as a symbol of racism. He also explains the history of when the flag originated and why flying a Confederate flag makes no sense for people who claim to be loyal Americans.

But that clip, as great as it is, is a small part of the whole story. Knowing how the discussion came about and seeing the full debate in context is even more impressive.

In 2015, a student at Shawnee Mission East High School outside of Kansas City came up with the idea to have student journalists document students engaging in open discussions about various topics. In support of this idea, history teacher David Muhammad helped arrange a debate about the use of the Confederate flag in American society in his classroom.

According to the Shawnee Mission Post, Muhammad had prepared a basic outline and some basic guiding questions for the discussion, but mainly let the students debate freely. And the result was one of the most interesting debates about the Confederate flag you’ll ever see—one that both reflects the perspectives in American society at large and serves as an example of how to hold a respectful conversation on a controversial topic.

The full discussion is definitely worth a watch. Justice had quite a few Confederacy defenders to contend with, and he skillfully responded to each point with facts and logic. Other students also chimed in, and the discussion is wildly familiar to anyone who has engaged in debate on this topic. For his part, Mr. Muhammad did an excellent job of guiding the students through the debate.

SME Confederate Flag Debate

www.youtube.com

“I had Chris in class, so I knew he was super intelligent and that he read a lot,” Muhammad told the Shawnee Mission Post in 2018. “But that really came out of left-field. He was never out there very much socially, so I didn’t expect for him to want to speak in front of a crowd like that.”

(In case you’re wondering, according to LinkedIn, Christopher Justice is now studying political science at Wichita State University after switching his major from sports management. David Muhammad is now Dean of Students at Pembroke Middle School and also serves as a Diversity Consultant.)

Thanks, SM East, for documenting and sharing such a great discussion.

Alex Jones would like to remind everyone that he’s the reason we have to stomach many of those right-wing conspiracy theories from Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

The Infowars host and Sandy Hook denier gave a minutes-long rant (via Media Matters) on his show yesterday, claiming credit for Carlson’s descent into anti-vax madness by revealing he was the one that got Carlson to “wake up.” Now, the Fox News host has always been a conservative-leaning blowhard, but lately, he’s been veering into “kooky uncle who gets his news from Facebook” territory, accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci of creating the Coronavirus, claiming the NSA was spying on him and blaming the FBI for the Jan. 6th insurrections. Apparently, we have Jones to thank for that.

“We need to see what Tucker Carlson is doing, duplicated,” Jones said, adamantly denying he wanted recognition for “red-pilling” Carlson before, well, demanding recognition for red-pilling Carlson. “If I could wake up Tucker Carlson — and Tucker has told me face-to-face, credited me with helping wake him up to a great extent. He’s a super-smart guy, once he shifted his awareness and became cynical then he sees even more than I do, you understand? And he’s more eloquent in many ways.”

Tucker Carlson being called “eloquent” is something that few thought they’d ever hear, but Jones seemed pretty sincere about his flattery of the Fox News host, before once again congratulating himself for “completing the mission” and converting “even more major thought leaders” like Carlson into his conspiracy cult. And look, he’s a nutjob, but he might not be wrong about the Carlson thing. CNN did an entire segment comparing Carlson’s on-air statements with Jones’ widely-publicized fringe beliefs and the two matched up on quite a few wild ideas.

Is it weird that Jones wants credit for crafting Carlson into Fox News’s “chief white power correspondent?” Sure, but not half as weird as when he claimed a CNN reporter got drunk on the blood of children, so …

(Via Media Matters)

Despite Stranger Things Season 4 getting pushed back because of the pandemic, anticipation for the ’80s mashup series still remains high, which raises the question of what Netflix is going to do when the show eventually reaches its “endgame.” Will it go the Game of Thrones route and start chasing spinoffs? According to a new interview with Executive Producer Shawn Levy, those talks are already happening.

While promoting his latest directorial project, Free Guy starring Ryan Reynolds, Levy confirmed David Harbour’s comments that Stranger Things is starting to work towards a definitive ending, possibly in Season 5. When asked if spinoffs are being explored to keep the fan-favorite franchise going, Levy essentially called the move a no-brainer while highlighting that the series has become a “tent pole” for Netflix. Via Collider:

Obviously certain other shows played key roles in their evolution, but Stranger Things with 196 million viewers over the time that we’ve been on the air, that’s a lot of households. And it’s unique in that Netflix service. What’s been made clear is there is an interest and a real voracious appetite for any offshoot, any other iteration format or extension of the franchise, the characters, the mythology. And certainly those conversations are hardly evolved, but they’re also not non-existent.

While confirmation that spinoff talks are happening is clearly exciting news for Stranger Things fans, the more pressing question is when can they expect a Season 4 release date. While he couldn’t offer a concrete date, here’s what Levy told Variety last week.

“It’s coming soon enough,” he said. “And as for when exactly that will be announced — quite soon.”

(Via Collider)

If you’ve even glanced at books like Jason Schreier’s excellent Press Reset, you know there’s something wrong in the gaming industry.

Most of the people who make games at major studios work long hours, have little job security and struggle to find stability in an industry where crunching for months just to get a game out the door may only preclude the abrupt closing of a studio you’ve given years of your life to in order to put something on the market.

Big-budget games are often plagued with delays and bugs as publicly-traded companies push (or stick to) release dates to help stock prices in what’s a multi-billion dollar industry of nomadic programmers and developers moving from company to company. And the indie scene is fraught with uncertainty as well, which is likely why so many gamers have supported a bundle of games hoping to ease some of the struggles of the modern gaming industry.

A “Shorter Games With Worse Graphics” bundle on Itch.io has made waves this week, a collection of indie games from 25 different developers with the goal of bringing attention to game makers without a traditional publishing deal creating without many of the problems plaguing AAA development. It’s the second bundle of its kind, which was inspired by a viral tweet from Jordan Mallory, a podcast producer at Fanbyte who asked for “shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less.”

That tweet resonated with many people who love games but don’t like the way many of those major titles are created thanks to mandatory crunch and fraught development schedules that cause burnout among workers and lead to wild uncertainty in the industry. As explained by developer Damien Crawford, the goal of the project is to raise awareness of the concept itself, but also get these hard-working game makers paid.

The bundle has been an immediate success, seeing its funding goals reached a handful of times. They even got a bit playful with the funding goals because of the support they’ve seen.

It’s a deal certainly worth checking out, and even if the whole package isn’t for you there are bound to be gems worth buying on their own. And it’s a good reminder that while the industry will almost certainly continue to have labor issues, there are lots of people working very hard to make positive changes for workers and still make great games in the process.

The coronavirus pandemic is still ongoing, as the Delta variant of the virus has made even vaccinated people uneasy about their health and safety across the world. While millions hoped vaccines could help bring an end to the restrictions many have put on their lives over the last year-plus, things haven’t quite returned to normal just yet.

Which is why many mobile gaming fans are furious that one of their favorites games has rolled back some changes that helped make playing amid a pandemic easier. Pokemon GO, one of the most popular (and lucrative) mobile games on the planet, recently celebrated its fifth anniversary. The game has some die-hard fans, including one who got caught violating lockdown measures in Italy to play. But Niantic introduced some important changes to the game to help people play while largely staying at home.

There are three main things players need to do in the game each day: catch Pokemon, spin PokeStops and complete “research” tasks. Niantic made that easier last spring by allowing people to “spin” those PokeStops much further away from their real world locations and easing restrictions on a number of other things in the game. They also let players do more things like raid and battle remotely. The changes were great for people who were no longer commuting, traveling or, well, leaving their homes for long stretches. But what’s more, they were celebrated by players with disabilities and others who may have struggled to play in crowded places or navigate real-world obstacles to get to PokeStops and Gyms.

But last month, Niantic announced it would be rolling back many of those changes. As The Verge detailed, those changes were undone earlier in the week and have made it a bit more difficult to play.

The distance you’ll need to be from real-world locations is effectively halved as part of the new update, going from a maximum of 80 meters (around 262 feet) to interact with a Pokéstop, to the game’s original 40 meters (around 131 feet), according to Dot Esports. There were multiple reasons for Niantic to double the distance originally, from reducing crowding during a pandemic, to just making it a bit easier to collect items without theoretically having to leave your house. The change didn’t reinvent the game but players viewed increasing the interaction distance as a valuable accessibility improvement that’s now gone.

The complaints from gamers are summed up in two categories: the pandemic isn’t over, and the changes that were rolled back don’t do much to actually change the game in any meaningful way from a competitive standpoint. Which is why many were confused by the decision to roll things back.

That frustration has turned into a boycott for some, which was executed on Thursday by gamers that made #PokemonNoDay trend on Twitter during the day.

It’s a difficult thing to manage for Niantic, which has long stressed movement and exploration with Pokemon GO. But those that are upset about the changes certainly have reasons to make their voices heard here, especially from an accessibility standpoint. Whether Niantic can strike the right balance between the two perspectives will be interesting to see, but it’s clear that some of the game’s most loyal fans wanted to make it clear they’re not happy this week.

Since her breakout record Lost & Found in 2019, Jorja Smith has been quietly figuring out her next move. On this spring’s new EP, Be Right Back, she’s still expanding her sound and riding the line between pop, R&B, and hip-hop. That’s the blueprint for our new era of pop stars, but Smith also had the jumpstart of a co-sign from Drake on his 2017 project More Life to get her going, which never hurts. On today’s new video for “All Of This,” a song with the Ghanaian DJ and record producer GuiltyBeatz that’s inspired by Amapiano, a South African style of house music.

Leaning into the Afrobeat genre is a great next move for Smith, and the new single is a bit of a departure from her more straightforward EP. Jorja talked about meeting Guilty in Jamaica and how the song came about in a press release. “I met [Guilty] when I went over to Port Antonio in Jamaica for a writing camp in 2019,” she said. “He’s so wonderful to work with and when we initially started the song, it was more a fall to the floor type beat. He’s shared Amapiano playlists with me before and then during the first lockdown in 2020, he sent me a version of the song like it is now. We then finished writing the song remotely, exchanging messages over WhatsApp with his girlfriend Abby who is also a writer. It’s all about someone who doesn’t deserve you and thinking wow, you really had all of my once, ew.”

Check out the new track above.

The Toronto Raptors entered this offseason with two significant free agents who have been cornerstones of the franchise’s ascent to a championship in 2019. The first, Kyle Lowry, was expected to leave. He had given the franchise his all and, as the team transitioned to a future-facing outlook, he needed to compete now and made his way to Miami via a sign-and-trade. The second, Masai Ujiri, was much more secretive about his future, with fans hoping the president of the team would return but unsure because he was a highly coveted front office executive by most teams — the Knicks and Wizards had each famously tried to poach him in recent years.

However, on Thursday, word broke from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski that Ujiri was coming back to Toronto, with the Raptors releasing a video featuring Ujiri saying “we will win in Toronto,” that didn’t explicitly say anything about a new contract but was, effectively, the official announcement.

Ujiri has been with the Raptors since 2013 and is among the most well respected executives in the NBA and is a beloved figure among Raptors fans for his work in constructing the 2019 title team. The fears he would leave for a new challenge persisted for the last two years with his contract ending this year, but ultimately it seems what he’s built in Toronto and the challenge of trying to do it again was too strong for him to look to move on.

As the NFL gets set for the 2021 season, a big conversation has been around what players are and are not getting the COVID-19 vaccine because of the league’s strict policies regarding COVID-related absences for those who choose not to get vaccinated. Unlike last year, games will not be rescheduled for outbreaks on teams and players won’t get game checks for forfeited games (on either side) if it’s due to unvaccinated players.

That has led to a small group of players voicing their displeasure with the policies, but for the most part, the league has seen vaccination rates soar, as they announced they reached 90 percent of players being vaccinated league-wide, with 27 of the 32 teams over 85 percent (per CBS). With the vast majority vaccinated in order to protect themselves and their teammates as case counts rise around the country once again due to new variants, it has cast a light on those who have chosen not to get the vaccine, particularly those at marquee positions.

Among those is Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins, who recently missed four days of camp as a close contact to backup quarterback Kellen Mond, putting into perspective the precarious position he is putting his team in by not being vaccinated and thus being subject to much stricter policies regarding close contact to cases. Cousins has remained insistent he won’t get the vaccine and is apparently willing to go so far as to stay in a plexiglass box inside the Vikings facility rather than getting the free and incredibly effective vaccine.

While the vaccine doesn’t guarantee you won’t get the virus (as is the case with every vaccine), it has been proven safe and wildly effective in helping the body’s immune system fight off the virus and avoid serious cases, as well as limiting the danger of spreading the virus. Trying to take such drastic measures as building himself plexiglass areas in the facility to keep from having close contact with his teammates seems like an awful aggressive and unnecessary strategy when, as noted, the vaccine would be far more effective and require much less effort on everyone’s part — for example, the Vikings have had to change up what room is for quarterbacks in order to have more space.

Cousins has also parroted a favorite line of those who refuse to get the vaccine, which is to say they are “doing their research” into it, but when pressed as to whether that research included talking to the NFL’s head doctor who has been made available to all players who have questions or concerns about the vaccine, Cousins confirmed he had not.

That would seem to indicate the research is, at minimum, incomplete on Cousins’ part, and his steadfast refusal to get the vaccine has to have Vikings fans wary of a season in which they could very well see their starting quarterback miss games as a close contact because he would rather try to prevent getting the disease via plexiglass instead of the vaccine.

After the release of her debut album, Jaguar last year, Victoria Monét has been laying low. As one of the go-to songwriters for pop stars like Ariana Grande, and a frequent collaborator with her on songs like “Monopoly,” the R&B star is just starting to get her career underway as a solo artist. After Jaguar came out last summer, she was focusing on becoming a mother. In an interview today she told Apple Music that being a mom has changed her perspective because “I have a little angel in my arms daily to remind me of the importance of life.”

Speaking of the importance of life, today, she’s back on the scene with a brand new song called “Coastin’,” that features production from The Stereotypes and channels all the best parts about summer. Talking further with Apple, Monét said she made the sunny new song during winter, and was channeling what she wanted to feel. “It was definitely a lot of fun and I actually made it in the winter time, so it was an interesting, nice way to escape into an, cause we were also still pretty quarantined and social distanced. So I was able to kind of jump into a summertime that I wish existed and just, I was really inspired by some old classics, one being “Tell Me” by Groove Theory. I just wanted that energy.”

Check out the funky new song above, and look more new music and the follow-up to Jaguar coming soon.

For months, Britney Spears has been fighting to have her father removed as her conservator. The singer’s previous push to have her father, Jamie Spears, withdrawn from the role was denied. But now that the singer is finally allowed to choose her own lawyer, she is reportedly looking to take the case to court ASAP.

According to a report from TMZ, Britney’s new lawyer, Mathew Rosengart, filed court documents asking the judge to move the date for her next hearing from September 29 to August. It is then that the judge will officially rule whether or not Jamie should be removed as Spears’ conservator.

The court documents filed by Rosengart, per TMZ’s report, quotes Britney’s personal conservator, Jodi Montgomery. Montgomery claims continuing to have Jamie as her conservator causes unnecessary emotional distress. “Mr. Spears’s removal as conservator is critical to [Britney’s] emotional health and well-being and in the best interests of the conservatee,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery also reportedly added that Spears’ medical team is in agreement. “I have had numerous, ongoing conversations with the medical team and we all agree that it would be best for Ms. Spears’ well-being and mental health that her father stop acting as conservator,” she said.

Rosengart’s court documents allegedly go on to claim Jamie’s actions are negatively affecting Spears’ finances, stating there “has been an evident dissipation of assets of Ms. Spears Estate, and that dissipation is ongoing.” He added: “Every day that passes is another day of avoidable harm and prejudice to Ms. Spears and the Estate.”

The legal documents also reportedly included a recent quote from Spears’ mother, Lynne, speaking to Jamie’s inability to act in Spears’ best interest. “It is clear to me that James P. Spears is incapable of putting my daughter’s interests ahead of his own on both a professional and a personal level,” she said. Lynne’s original quote included claims about how Jamie asserts “microscopic control” over their daughter, have been known to prescribe inappropriate medicine, and even continually threaten her.