Category: News

While we’ve had our Joel, Ellie, and Tommy for quite some time now, we now know who will be playing another one of the The Last Of Us series’ most important roles: Joel’s daughter, Sarah. According to Deadline, Dumbo star Nico Parker is joining HBO’s The Last of Us as Sarah Miller, the daughter of Pedro Pascal’s character, Joel. Parker joins Game of Throne’s star Bella Ramsey and Agents of SHEILD‘s Gabriel Luna, who are set to appear as Ellie and Tommy, respectively.

For those unfamiliar with The Last of Us, the game follows the story of Joel and Ellie as they make their way across the country in hopes of finding a cure to the virus that caused society’s ruin. However, what begins as a simple job for Joel — to smuggle Ellie out of the city and bring her to a safer place — turns into a heartbreaking and violent journey where the unlikely duo are forced to find family and strength within one another. While the upcoming television series focuses solely on the first entry in the IP, a sequel to The Last of Us — The Last of Us Part II — was released last summer to record-breaking sales and critical acclaim.

For the upcoming series, The Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann is teaming up with Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin to produce, write, and bring Joel and Ellie to life. Russian film director Kantemir Balagov will be directing the pilot episode of The Last Of Us, and the whole project is a co-production between Sony Pictures Television and HBO. The series has yet to be given a release date.

After journalists caught wind that William Shatner has a new show on RT, the infamously state-funded propaganda network for the Kremlin, the Star Trek actor spent the bulk of Thursday raging on Twitter at any and all criticism of what he calls a simple “distribution deal.” While the Q&A show titled I Don’t Understand doesn’t air until later in July, journalists have attempted to explain to Shatner that his mere presence on RT will be used as a propaganda for Vladimir Putin.

Shatner was hearing none of it.

One of Shatner’s largest critics was independent Russian journalist Alexey Kovalev who wrote a thread on how RT works and why Shatner can’t feign ignorance because he’s just an actor getting paid for work.

According to The Daily Beast, RT is a well-known “propaganda machine” for the Kremlin:

The various news shows featured on the network are largely packed with Putin loyalists dedicating significant amounts of airtime denigrating the U.S—and any Putin rivals, for that matter.

The head of RT, Margaret Simonyan, has warned of an “inevitable war” with the U.S., is a staunch supporter of a “sovereign” state-controlled Russian internet, and once tweeted that she was “jealous” of Belarus over their abhorrent nabbing of a dissident journalist mid-flight.

However, efforts to educate Shatner on his new TV home fell on deaf ears:

(Via William Shatner on Twitter, The Daily Beast)

Just one month after the former president’s “blog” was shuttered because of poor readership and plenty of internet ridicule, Team Trump is making another attempt at a social media come back with, what may in fact be, the most unfortunately named app we’ve ever heard of.

According to a Politico report, Trump’s former shady spokesman Jason Miller recently launched an app called GETTR, which appears to function as a poor man’s Twitter for the ultra-conservative set. According to the site’s tagline, GETTR is the “marketplace of ideas” whose mission includes “fighting cancel culture, promoting common sense, defending free speech, and challenging social media monopolies.” (The jokes really just write themselves these days, huh?)

It’s doubtful this new platform will perform any better than Trump’s press release strategy — and we’re positive we’ll see even more weird, completely tone-deaf social media sites from Trump’s camp in the months to come, but for now, we’ll enjoy the best Twitter reactions to GETTR’s genesis. (You gotta laugh to keep from crying, right?)

https://twitter.com/timodc/status/1410648490909179910?s=21
https://twitter.com/petridishes/status/1410648117486272516?s=21
https://twitter.com/palmerreport/status/1410657429960994818?s=21
https://twitter.com/not_vikash/status/1410656418999332864?s=21
https://twitter.com/blackknight10k/status/1410662500853600256?s=21
https://twitter.com/covie_93/status/1410666753378619400?s=21
https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1410648721260429319?s=21
https://twitter.com/pappiness/status/1410671070093451273?s=21
https://twitter.com/jeremynewberger/status/1410673171511091201?s=21
https://twitter.com/joexhunt/status/1410666509752438786

UPDATE: Apparently, Trump is not officially affiliated with this site and he currently has no plans of joining. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Multi-talented 11-year-old UK musician Nandi Bushell first won over hearts last August when she challenged Dave Grohl to a drum battle. Grohl responded, spawning a several-week interaction that included multiple battles and even a song the two penned together. Ever since becoming a viral sensation, Bushell has been taking up other instruments and connecting with various musicians. This week, Bushell even got the chance to host a jam session with Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders.

Bushell invited Helders to play some covers of Arctic Monkeys’ music in her Ipswich, England home. Helders obliged, and Bushell spent the afternoon showcasing her skills. Together they performed a cover of “I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor,” “Brianstorm,” which saw Bushell and Helders side-by-side on the drum kit, and a rendition of “R U Mine?” with Bushell on electric guitar.

Sharing their version of “R U Mine?” to social media, Bushell described how much of a blast she had making music with Helders. “Matt Helders came to my house for a cup of Tea and a Jam with me,” she wrote. “We had the best time! We jammed loads of songs together and had a lot of fun improvising drum beats.”

Watch Helders and Bushell cover “R U Mine?” above.

After collaborating with artists like Ariana Grande and The Weeknd, Doja Cat seemingly has joint tracks down to a science. The songs she wrote with other artists were important in boosting her music. She even earned her first-ever No. 1 single for her Nicki Minaj “Say So” collaboration. But Doja Cat says collaborations can also hinder her artistry at a certain point, which is why her fans shouldn’t expect to hear her on many in the future.

Following up on her Planet Her album, Doja Cat sat down with Ebro Darden for Apple Music. During their conversation, Doja Cat explained that, going forward, she only wants to focus on career moves that give her energy.

“Sometimes I do stuff that maybe I don’t feel as excited about. I try not to do that, I do that maybe five, six percent of the time in my career,” she said. “But right now, I’m trying to do what I want to do for the most part. I want to really develop myself and not regret anything. I think I have to think more about what I’m doing now.”

Doja Cat continued that part of her artistic development includes focusing on her solo music and shying away from collaborations in the future:

“I like to say this a lot, but, Michael Jackson and Prince [were] not doing a lot of collabs all the time. They almost have no collabs. You look at that, and you’re like, they were doing fantastic without anybody. I like to, not compare myself — I definitely sound like I’m doing that but I’m not trying to — but that’s my bar. I want to focus on what is best for me. At this time and in this age, everybody is collabing. What happens is that things sound like mashups, like fan mashups. They’ll put Nick’s verse with Meg on ‘Kiss Me More’ or they’ll put my verse on ‘WAP’ or something. I don’t want it to feel like that anymore. I want it to feel very special, and very carefully done. So, I’m trying not to do as many collabs in the future. I think it’s important.”

Listen to Doja Cat’s full interview with Ebro Darden on Apple Music above.

Planet Her is out now via RCA. Get it here.

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

The Donald Trump presidency was an in-your-face era of American politics that was the first to move at the speed of social media. Every day the news cycle seemed to churn multiple times. There were the scandals, palace intrigue, reckless tweets, lurid affairs, impeachments, legal battles, arrests, comings and goings of cabinet members, and the daily destruction of presidential norms.

Trump’s time in the White House had everyone’s head on such a swivel that it was nearly impossible to grasp its historical meaning in real-time.

---

But now, the waters are calmer in Washington and we are getting the first bird’s eye view of what the era meant to historians.

Spoiler alert: it isn’t positive.

Since 2000, C-SPAN has asked a group of historians, professors, and experts in the field to rate each president on a scale of 1 to 10 on 10 categories: Public Persuasion, Crisis Leadership, Economic Management, Moral Authority, International Relations, Administrative Skills, Relations with Congress, Vision/Setting an Agenda, Pursued Equal Justice for All, and Performance Within the Context of the Times.

The responses resulted in a definitive ranking of the presidents from 1 to 44. Currently, Joe Biden is the 46th president and Grover Cleveland was elected twice, so 44 people have held the office.

Trump’s debut on the list is a less-than-impressive #41. The only three presidents who fared worse are Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, and James Buchanan and they aren’t the best historical company.

Pierce failed to stop a bloody guerrilla war in Kansas between pro- and anti-slavery groups. Andrew Johnson was the first president to be impeached and James Buchanan’s inaction led to the Civil War.

Trump was impeached twice, is accused of inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and was criticized for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Among all presidents, Trump was ranked last in Moral Authority. He fared better in Public Persuasion where he was ranked 32nd and Economic Management, where he was 34th.

Four years after leaving office, Barack Obama has seen his ranking increase from #12 to #10. Obama’s improved ratings for Relations with Congress and Context of Times both propelled him upward.

Another recent president, George W. Bush has seen his ranking rise as well. Bush now ranks at #29, up from #33 in 2017, and #36 in 2009.

The presidential rankings have remained steady at the top. Since 2009, the top four presidents have been Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt.

Here’s the full top 20:

1. Abraham Lincoln

2. George Washington

3. Franklin D. Roosevelt

4. Theodore Roosevelt

5. Dwight D. Eisenhower

6. Harry S. Truman

7. Thomas Jefferson

8. John F. Kennedy

9. Ronald Reagan

10. Barack Obama

11. Lyndon B. Johnson

12. James Monroe

13. Woodrow Wilson

14. William McKinley

15. John Adams

16. James Madison

17. John Quincy Adams

18. James K. Polk

19. William J. Clinton

20. Ulysses S. Grant

The bottom 5:

40. William Henry Harrison

41. Donald J. Trump

42. Franklin Pierce

43. Andrew Johnson

44. James Buchanan

See the full rankings at C-SPAN.

Kevin Gates dropped his first official mixtape when he was in his early ’20s, but the rapper has been writing music long before that. He’s spoke about his childhood in various interviews in the past, but Gates recently revealed on Mike Tyson‘s podcast that he was sexually abused when he was young and began writing lyrics as an “escape” from his tumultuous childhood.

Gates began his conversation on Tyson’s Hotboxin’ podcast by addressing how growing up in a racist environment still affects him to this day. “It’s going to be a different type of interview because I’m going to tell the absolute truth,” he began. “It’s a real racist place, being in Louisiana, just being down south, period. And I’m still kind of breaking that stereotype in my mind. It’s a barrier.”

When asked about the path that led him to music, Gates revealed that he suffered sexual abuse as a child. Because he was coping with trauma, Gates turned to rapping as a creative outlet:

“It was an escape for me. I’m going to say something — I’ve never said this in no interview, no podcast or anything like that — I grew up real, real violent, aggressive. Not because I wanted to be, but I was molested when I was a child. So I had this fear of being vulnerable. I took every kind of martial art you can take. I even boxed, I did everything and I wanted to be the toughest person on earth. But writing and making music was always an escape for me. I never had the nuts to come out and say that. This is my first time saying that today.”

After opening up about his abusive childhood, Tyson responded with empathy. According to Complex, Tyson opened up about his own experience with childhood sexual abuse in 2014. “I know that route, too,” Tyson told Gates. “Why do you think I became the meanest motherfucker on the planet? Somebody did something to me. I didn’t want it to happen again, so I became this guy.”

Elsewhere in the 50-minute conversation, Gates spoke about his devotion to his Muslim faith and his relationship to his children. He also mentioned that he now lives on a blueberry farm and takes care of camels on the property, which he says is akin to having a pet dog.

Watch Gates’ full interview on Tyson’s Hotboxin’ podcast above.

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

When the clock hit midnight on July 1, NCAA athletes were suddenly allowed to make money off of their name, image, and likeness, with the NCAA providing rather basic guidelines for schools in states that don’t have their own law regarding NIL compensation. With the knowledge that this was coming, at 12:01 a.m., plenty of athletes already had posts ready to go on social media as a new (and long overdue) world for college athletics had been entered.

There were the deals you expected from local pizza joints and car dealerships and all of the places you already expected to be working with teams and players to “help them out” but could now do so without going under the table. However, there were also some creative partnerships that weren’t expected, none getting Twitter more excited than Iowa basketball star Jordan Bohannon doing a signing at a fireworks store, Iowa Boomin’, on July 1 and doing a raffle for some game-worn sneakers.

This is indicative of how many places are ready to dive into sponsorship agreements with college players, because in places like Iowa and other states and cities without major professional sports, the big draw is going to be the college athletes. Bohannon’s fireworks deal is the early frontrunner for strangest partnership, but an honorable mention needs to go to Ohio State offensive lineman Dawand Jones whose GoPuff delivery partnership started off with a tweet about…candles?

Everyone, even your 6’8, 300-plus pound linemen loves their home smelling fresh. While football and men’s basketball players will certainly be able to cash in, the athletes that stand to gain the most from the NIL change are those in non-revenue sports who often are able to build massive social media followings in more niche sports and will now be able to cash in on those while they’re in school and at the peak of their popularity — particularly if there aren’t a lot of pathways towards being a professional in those sports.

One example of that came from the world of college wrestling, which has a rabid fanbase, particularly in the midwest and plains states, as national champion A.J. Ferrari (yes, his name is incredible), already has merch for fans to buy in a deal with a wrestling apparel brand.

Another came from women’s hoops where the Cavinder twins, Haley and Hanna of Fresno State, who have over a million followers on social media, worked two deals including one with Boost Mobile that had them on a Times Square billboard on Thursday.

It’s an incredible new world and it’s awesome to see athletes taking advantage of this new ability to make money off their own personal brands already, and it’s just the beginning of what should be a very lucrative market for athletes across all sports.

Parts of the Northwest are literally melting right now after temperatures spiked to record highs this month so, yeah, climate change is probably a legit thing. But, if you’re an Exxon lobbyist, or a Senator receiving campaign funds from that company, chances are you already knew that.

In fact, in a secretly-recorded chat between an undercover operative from Greenpeace and Keith McCoy, a senior director of federal relations for Exxon Mobil (aka, a lobbyist), one fact became pretty damn clear: these guys know what they’re doing and they’re happy to brag about it to really anyone who will listen. The conversation, which happened over Zoom and was aired on BBC’s Channel 4, featured McCoy detailing how his company gave kickbacks to certain politicians in exchange for legislative initiatives being pushed on the House and Senate floor.

“I liken it to fishing,” McCoy says in the video. “You have bait. You throw that bait out just to kind of reel them [Congress members] in because they’re a captive audience. They know they need you and I need them.”

McCoy then went on to name a few key Senators his office works with, a list that includes famously conservative Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia (aka the man who’s virtually singlehandedly killing the Biden agenda in Congress). According to McCoy, Manchin is a “kingmaker” and he has weekly calls with the Senator’s office every week. It’s that last bit of news that sounds especially troubling to Manchin’s fellow colleagues on Capitol Hill, specifically, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. AOC is in full support of The Green New Deal proposed by key members of the Democratic Party, a bill that would seek to drastically reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions the U.S. produces each year. Naturally, she was not happy to learn that Manchin and a bunch of other Republican climate-deniers are having regular get-togethers with oil company lobbyists like McCoy.

“Imagine being a public official and having a standing weekly check-in call with ANY corporate lobbyist, let alone Exxon,” she wrote in a tweet that listed out all of the officials in Exxon’s back pocket.

For its part, the company has denied any wrongdoing, apologized for McCoy’s statements, and reaffirmed its commitment to curbing carbon emissions but Exxon’s track record when it comes to eco-conservation isn’t that great so its a good thing politicians like AOC are willing to hold everyone’s feet to the fire right now.

Ahead of the upcoming Olympic games in Tokyo, both the USA Basketball Men’s and Women’s teams will play a few exhibition games to get ready for the tournament. Those games, per a press release, will air on NBCSN.

The broadcast schedule for the men’s side — which might not have a handful of players due to the Phoenix Suns and, potentially, Milwaukee Bucks competing in the NBA Finals — is as follows (all times EST):

July 10: USA vs. Nigeria, NBCSN, 8 p.m.
July 12: USA vs. Australia, NBCSN, 8 p.m.
July 13: USA vs. Argentina, NBCSN, 6 p.m.
July 16: USA vs. Australia, NBCSN, 6 p.m.
July 18: USA vs. Spain, NBCSN, 9 p.m.

The women’s team will take the floor for a pair of warm-ups:

July 16: USA vs. Australia, NBCSN, 2:30 p.m.
July 18: USA vs. Nigeria, Olympic Channel, 5:30 p.m.

“USA Basketball is thrilled to partner with NBC Sports in showcasing its talented men’s and women’s teams ahead of the Tokyo Olympics,” USA Basketball CEO Jim Tooley said in a statement. “These exhibitions will help prepare our teams for the elite competition that will exist at the Olympic Games and fans of USA Basketball and basketball in general will have the opportunity to not only witness some of America’s best athletes play, but they will also have the opportunity to see many of the best players from around the world compete in these games.”