And you can now count Zack Snyder as someone on Kilmer’s side when it comes to what “heroes do,” so to speak. The director who helmed his extended version of Justice League earlier this year came out strongly in favor of depicting the intimate details of Batman’s sex life on Twitter on Thursday night by, well, depicting the intimate details of Batman’s sex life in an illustrated panel he posted to Twitter with the simple phrase “canon.”
If you’ve read this far you can probably handle the image below, but fair warning: it involves what looks like Batman and Catwoman doing sex stuff in the non-nudity division.
It’s certainly the most direct example of… all of this we’ve seen from someone officially in the DC Universe, though perhaps not particularly expecting to work in the sphere again. And from what we’ve seen on Harley Quinn, it’s likely far more graphic than what would have actually been depicted in the streaming show. But perhaps it’s no surprise to see Snyder to above and beyond here to get a rise out of people. He certainly got a reaction online on Thursday night.
Cuban revealed on Twitter on Wednesday night that he had a considerable wallet of a cryptocurrency called Titan, which earlier in the week saw a huge surge and had been worth as much as $64 USD. But all that came crashing down in a hurry this week, as the Iron Finance project essentially zeroed out to be worth nothing. As CoinDesk explained, Titan was supposed to be what’s called a “stablecoin,” which is a crypto token tied to another asset like a commodity or government currency in an effort to keep its cost stable. But that clearly failed this week.
Due to how the “tokenomics” of this particular DeFi project functions, when new IRON stablecoins are minted, the demand for TITAN increases, driving up its price. Conversely, when the price of TITAN falls dramatically, as was the case on Wednesday evening, the peg becomes unstable.
“TITAN’s price went to $65 and then pulled back to $60. This caused whales [large investors] to start selling,” Fred Schebesta, founder of Finder.com.au and an Iron Finance investor, told CoinDesk via Telegram. “That then led to a big de-pegging of [IRON].”
That crash was swift and caught a lot of people flat-footed. Including Cuban, who said on Twitter that he got “hit” when it started crumbling in value.
The crash comes with some speculating that Cuban may have played a part in its swift rise and fall in the first place. As Fortune detailed, Cuban had written about Titan on his blog just days ago and the coin had seen a swift rise in the aftermath of that before bottoming out to near zero.
His blog post was enthusiastic about the crypto coin and another, QuickSwap. The piece concluded with,“As long as I keep making a good return, I will keep my money invested.” It’s a big about-face for Cuban, who, in 2017, called cryptocurrency a “bubble”.
Many crypto investors follow the lead of crypto-friendly billionaires’ comments—and that could have contributed to the surge. At the start of June 13, the day of Cubans’ blog post, Titan was trading at $29. Three days later, it hit its peak.
Despite that, Cuban said the loss was small but he still wasn’t thrilled about it.
“As a percentage of my crypto portfolio it was small. But it was enough that I wasn’t happy about it,” Cuban told Bloomberg. “But in a larger context it is no different than the risks I take [in] angel investing. In any new industry, there are risks I take on with the goal of not just trying to make money but also to learn. Even though I got rugged on this, it’s really on me for being lazy.”
Hey everybody your money’s completely vaporized due to several glaring flaws in my program thanks for coming out
It’s yet another example of the wild ride the cryptocurrency market is and how dangerous it can be to invest too much in decentralized finance if you can’t afford to lose it in a hurry.
The secretive British music collective, Sault, have announced a new album — but it will only be available for a limited time. The project will be called NINE and it will only be available for listeners to hear for 99 days. The group revealed the setup on Instagram earlier today, elating fans who had been looking forward to new music after the 2020 release of two albums, Untitled (Black Is) and Untitled (Rise), earned them international acclaim.
Their first release of 2020, in particular, fared well in our Uproxx Critic’s Poll last year, and the reflection of the Black experience that the record covered, utilizing funk, R&B, house and other varied forms of electronic production was praised for its resonance during a year that dealt with America’s track record when it comes to racism and white supremacy. This 2021 release, then, is a further extension of the experimental and progressive spirit of the group, truncating the window with which listeners can engage with the work and demanding attention. In 2019 they released the albums Five and Seven, so this new project’s name is a logical progression, though the limited window is new.
On their Instagram, Sault made it clear that while the album would only be available for ninety-nine days, it would also be available for purchase on vinyl. “Nine will only exist for ninety nine days. You can download from www.sault.global. Available on vinyl and all streaming platforms,” they wrote.
Another post from a few days prior revealed the album artwork. Before that, their last grid post on the platform was the album cover of Untitled (Rise).
Currently, the Sault website reads “107 days left of Nine,” and simple math indicates that means the record will be released in eight days, a week from tomorrow, on June 25. Keep an eye out for more updates. If you’re unfamiliar with their music, check out a playlist of Untitled (Black Is) tracks above.
After the release of the Framing Britney Spears documentary, the pop singer’sconservatorship battle with her father James Spears saw a rise in public scrutiny as many fans shifted their attention to it in hopes that she would be free from the court-appointed arrangement. The battle for that continues and while fans hope that she eventually wins the case, they also hope to see Brintey onstage again in the near future. During an Instagram Live session according to Billboard, the singer gave an answer to that question.
A fan joined the livestream and asked Brintey in the comment section, “Will you ever take the stage again?” In response, the singer said, “I have no idea” and added, “I’m having fun right now, I’m in a transition in my life and I’m enjoying myself.”
Her answer comes six months after her lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, revealed that the singer “will not perform again” in fear of her father James Spears, who holds the main role in Brintey’s conservatorship and has maintained it for the last 12 years.
Next week, on Wednesday, Britney will get the opportunity to speak to the court where she may speak about performing in the future as well as perhaps set the record straight on her thoughts about the conservatorship. She recently spoke out against it saying, “I was embarrassed by the light they put me in … I cried for two weeks.”
The Milwaukee Bucks faced a win or stay home situation in Game 6 on Thursday and came out swinging, as one would expect, after a second half collapse in Brooklyn on Tuesday put them on the verge of elimination.
As has been the case whenever Milwaukee looks good in this series (and, really, overall), Giannis Antetokounmpo got going downhill both in transition and even in the halfcourt, where the Bucks did a better job creating space for him to attack from off-ball positions off the catch. When Giannis does that, it also means he gets fouled, a lot, and when he gets fouled, we are all subjected to the world’s longest free throw routine.
Giannis’ slow free throws have been a story for much of the playoffs, as he’s been called for multiple 10-second violations at the stripe and fans have taken to counting down as he is at the line going through his interminable routine. It has also worn on the players on the other team, most notably in Game 6 when James Harden grew increasingly and visibly frustrated by how long it took Giannis to shoot his dang free throws — which produced some hilarious video.
The absolute disgust in the second video is so good. He can’t believe they let Giannis do a full practice motion before he gets the ball and then takes a deep breath, six dribbles, and finally launches. The most frustrating part for everyone is that it doesn’t seem to help Giannis at all to go through such a long routine, as he shot 68.5 percent from the line on the season (his third worst percentage of his career) and that has plummeted to 52.2 percent in the playoffs.
If there is a saving grace for Giannis it is that Ben Simmons exists to take the heat off of him as the worst free throw shooting star in the playoffs, but at least Simmons gets his misses out of the way in timely fashion, rather than making everyone just kinda stand around waiting for the inevitable split.
Can you believe it? We’re down to the final four. The final four chefs are exactly who I expected, basically from the second or third episode onward (well, the final three I expected, plus Jamie) but even without any huge shocks or twists, this has been a pretty damned good season of food TV.
This week the remaining Top Chefgang got together for the Oregon Trail challenge. The Oregon Trail has to be in the top five things the larger country recognizes Oregon for, so it must’ve taken a lot of restraint to save it for the twelfth episode. In the finale, I hope the chefs have to find DB Cooper.
THIS WEEK’S QUICKFIRE CHALLENGE:
Introduced by guest judge Vitaly Paley, a “Portland Pioneer” (get it? consider this tie-in explained!), the cheftestants were tasked with creating a modern dish using only the kinds of ingredients the Oregon Trail settlers would’ve had — flour, lard, coffee, molasses, dried fruits, meat, and herbs (the pioneers f*cking loved herbs). As judge Gregory Gourdet explained it, “I’m sure you all remember the Oregon Trail video game, dying of dysentery and all that…”
At this point, I wondered if Vitaly Paley realized what he was agreeing to when he signed up to be on this show. “Okay, so I’m going to show up for five minutes, and immediately after I’m introduced they’re going to talk about people dying of dysentery? Cool, cool. See if you can get a mention of my restaurant as close to the word ‘dysentery’ as possible, thanks.”
In order to introduce the challenge, Gregory had to agree to only wear neckties they would’ve had in pioneer times:
Bravo
After that, it was time for the gang to take the “Oregon Trail” down to the coast (double tie-in!) to the Tillamook Creamery, where, in a challenge introduced by Signore Molto Italiano a-guy Massimo Bottura, who showed up wearing a big medallion and a speedo waving a rolling pin (not really), the chefs would have to create a dish using cheddar cheese five ways. This to honor Bottura’s world-famous five-way Parmigiano food-bang.
A FIVE-WAY CHEDDAR ROYALE! Many cut-the-cheese puns ensued.
This was one of the more sadistic Top Chef challenges I can remember. With four chefs remaining, this challenge was the biggest curveball all season. If you asked me to use cheddar five ways I think I’d be like “Uhhh… so it’s uh, a cheeseburger, with… uh… a cheese patty, a cheese bun, and, uh… some cheese fries.”
“What’s the fifth way?”
(*hurriedly attempting to make a soda straw out of cheddar cheese*)
No big deal, right? In order to stay in this competition, all you have to do is make the best version of a dish that no one has ever attempted before. Don’t screw it up, idiots! And this for a group where two of the chefs are focused on Asian cuisine and don’t even really cook with cheese. Poor Chef Brittany, the alpine fondue queen. All she had to do was stay in the competition for nine more episodes and she would’ve been on easy street.
I’ll admit it: Jamie has grown on me the most of any competitor this season. My reaction was a bit like Padma’s when I first encountered her:
Bravo
I wondered if she’d been dropped on her head as a child or something. But this episode seemed to get to the root of Jamie’s personality, and what makes her such an inherently endearing human. It’s telling that she cried her eyes out when Maria got eliminated but when she got eliminated herself she sort of shrugged and chuckled about it. She seems to be someone who’s used to putting others before herself. I’m very curious to see what coolifying effect the chef-star-making machine that is national television will have on Jamie.
This was the expected outcome, but a little harsh for someone who had just won a quickfire challenge. Jamie’s winning pan-seared salmon in walnut pepper sauce bought her an extra 30 minutes to cook with, but maybe that was a bad thing. Maybe that extra 30 minutes meant Jamie had time to talk herself into pairing seabass with cheddar cheese and tahini. Woof, does that ever sound bad. She also put some bok choi on there, and call me crazy but I kind of hate bok choi. It’s not that it tastes bad, it’s fine, it’s just that using it means putting a big ol’ miniature celery stalk on a dish, that always takes up at least three times the physical space it adds in actual flavor.
Anyway, with so little margin for error, Jamie’s cheddar sesame seabass disaster sent her (*sound effect*)ing on down the dusty (Oregon) trail. Happy trails, Jamie. That banh xeo looked bomb xeo, you ask me.
Notable Critiques:
“The crispy cheese bits on top of the fish is absolutely delicious.” “You don’t need a protein, that was a big mistake.”
It hurts to drop Dawn down in the rankings, trust me. But after successive poor performances in the quickfire and in the elimination challenge — in which she forgot a gougère! unacceptable! — and two consecutive elimination challenges in which she left a component off at least one plate, I feel like I have to do it. Circumstances forced my hand. The Coco Chanel nickname is back, baby!
Still, the way Ed Lee describes Dawn’s food — “her food gives me a hug” — makes me think I’d like Dawn’s food (I would’ve also accepted “her food gives me a happy ending”). Even when Dawn screws up, her food still sounds like the thing I’d order if the chef’s dishes were on a menu. There are a few dysfunctional restaurants that I still go to despite the fact that they mess up at least one order at the table 50% of the time I go there, that I can’t quit because the food is just too good. (Sometimes you just want to be dommed by a tasty restaurant like some kind of culinary piss pig). Dawn seems to be approaching that status these past few episodes. Another way to look at it is that this competition is basically Dawn’s to lose. Because when she doesn’t forget a component, she’s damn near unbeatable.
The most confusing part of this week’s episode was when they created some drama out of Dawn’s water baths — which she was using to sous vide some ribeyes in whey — being too hot. Come again? Isn’t that the entire point of sous vide? That you can set the temperature exactly at the level you want? How does a digitally operated water circulator with a thermostat on top end up too hot? I need an explanation on this one.
I did enjoy how pissed Dale Talde got about Dawn forgetting another component though. Chefs are such a fun combination of OCD obsessives and frazzled artists (occasionally trapped inside the same person, not that I would know anything about that).
Notable Critiques:
“How do you miss another ingredient on a plate AGAIN!?” “This needed to taste as good as a Philly cheesesteak and it fell short of that.” “Her food gives me a hug.”
2. (+1) Shota Nakajima
NBC Universal
AKA: Beavis. Big Gulps.
It was a very tough decision whether to put Shota at number one or number two this week (not a decision with high stakes, sure, but a tough one nonetheless). It’s hard to overstate how big a win it was for the Japanese chef to win a challenge cooking cheddar cheese five ways. How many cheddar cheese dishes have you had a Japanese restaurant? And yet Shota took it and made a five-cheese Japanese dish with it. He also received, for his tofu cheddar manjū, aged cheddar dashi with cheddar tuile, one of the highest compliments I’ve heard anyone get this season: “Give this challenge to 100 different chefs and you’ll never get this dish.”
Still, Shota did land at the bottom of the quickfire for dry salmon, and it’s hard to forget that grey chicken from a few weeks back. On any given week, Shota definitely can win. Will he? He’s got some momentum going into the final few episodes, which is all the more impressive given that he’s very small.
Notable Critiques:
“Wow.” “It’s delicious.” “I’ve never had anything like it.”
1. (+1) Gabe Erales
NBC Universal
AKA: Good Gabe. Canelo. Fozzy. The Foz. The Masa Father. Jamón. Steady Eddie. Susan Lucci.
This episode was perfectly representative of Gabe this season: narrowly losing his last chance at a quickfire win, while also taking a close second in the elimination challenge. Gabe says he’s trying to become the first Mexican-American Top Chef winner and also revealed his background in engineering, in which he has his master’s degree.
He put it to use in the elimination challenge, using some kind of chemical treatment to stiffen the pectins and keep his apple from disintegrating when he roasted it in cheddar oil. That sounds pretty cool, but I tend to think fancy molecular stuff mostly tends to hurt you in Top Chef finales. When’s the last time the “sciencey” guy won it all on this show? No one likes intellectual food.
Not that Gabe falls into that trap very often. Mostly he sticks to tasty-sounding stuff like “masa-breaded cheese curds.” That sounds so good I want to shove it in my ass like anal beads.
The top three of this competition is basically a pick ’em at this point. You have Dawn, who seems to be the best of the three when she’s on her game, but who is also the most mistake-prone. Shota seems to have the most unique skill set, and Gabe is the most consistently solid, but has a tendency to get edged out by whoever is having a good day that day.
Basically it depends on who shows up that day. WHO’S IT GONNA BE?? I suppose, as they say, time will tell, America is a land of contrasts, etc. The only things certain in this world are death, taxes, and that someone is going to be declared Top Chef.
Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.
Miley Cyrus has delivered a number of live performances in 2021, despite being more than a year removed from her most recent project, 2019’s Plastic Hearts. The singer brought her talents to the Saturday Night Live stage to perform solo tracks and a remix with The Kid Laroi. Miley also found herself covering songs by Queen, Blondie, and Stevie Nicks during a performance for the NCAA’s Men’s Final Four. Now, the pop singer is preparing to celebrate Pride Month with an exclusive concert alongside a number of acts.
On June 25, Miley and Peacock will join forces for the Miley Cyrus Presents Stand By You concert. It will be an hour-long event filmed at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium and one that finds Miley performing fan favorites like “The Climb” and “Party in the U.S.A.,” while gracing the audience with her own takes of classic records that include “Believe,” “True Colors,” “We Belong,” and “Dancing Queen.” She will also lead a Madonna medley that features some of the legendary singer’s records like “Music,” “Express Yourself,” and “Like A Prayer.”
On Wednesday, the NBA announced that Charlotte Hornets guard LaMelo Ball took home the hardware as the 2020-21 Rookie of the Year. Ball was a lopsided winner, topping Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards, and only four players received votes of any kind for the award. Just 24 hours later, the NBA released the voting results for its All-Rookie teams and, given the laser-focused nature of the ROY voting, there was real uncertainty after the top first-year players.
In the end, Ball and Edwards were unanimous selections for the first team, while Sacramento Kings guard Tyrese Haliburton fell one vote short of that honor. From there, Detroit Pistons forward Saddiq Bey and Houston Rockets forward Jae’Sean Tate made the cut for the first team.
Charlotte Hornets guard LaMelo Ball and Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards were unanimously selected to the 2020-21 NBA All-Rookie First Team.
The most notable margin came between Tate, as the final member of the first team, and New York Knicks guard Immanuel Quickley. Just six voting points separated the two players and each were left off of two of the 99 ballots submitted.
Following the second team selections of Quickley, Memphis Grizzlies guard Desmond Bane, Detroit Pistons center Isaiah Stewart, Cleveland Cavaliers wing Isaac Okoro, and Chicago Bulls forward Patrick Williams, the NBA also released information on others that received recognition. That includes four players who received at least one vote for the first team, including No. 2 overall pick James Wiseman.
NBA
With a (relatively) full offseason to work on their craft in something approaching a normal environment, it will be interesting to see how this crop of young players grows in their second season. At the very least, there is real star power with Ball and Edwards, and the league appears to be in an exciting place with its youthful talent.
The Blue Jays second season away from Toronto continues in Buffalo this summer, after a few months down south at their training camp facility in Dunedin, Florida. And perhaps it’s fitting that they ran the bases like a minor league baseball club in a game at their AAA affiliate’s park against the New York Yankees.
Thursday night’s series against a team with a significant fan base in Buffalo drew huge cheers from the away team’s fans after the Jays turned a Vlad Guerrero Jr. plate appearance with two men on into a spectacularly silly triple play.
With one of MLB’s home run leaders at the plate and Bo Bichette and Marcus Semien on base with no one out, Guerrero hit a soft grounder to the third base side that Yankees pitcher Michael King fielded himself. He threw to first for the out, and then everyone on the Blue Jays carried on the Weird Baseball tradition of forgetting how baseball works.
The view from behind home plate truly sells how bad of a baserunning job this was all around, starting with the aimless lingering between second and third from Bichette after Semien returned to third on the groundout. That started a rundown for Bichette, which caused Semien to race for home in an effort to either, presumably, prevent that out or possibly score.
Semien was tagged out in a rundown of his own near third in plenty of time, however, and Bichette somehow didn’t take advantage of that play to reach either second or third base, both of which were now free. And so he was tagged out at third to cap one of the weirdest triple plays you’ll ever see.
And as it turns out, it stands as the first triple play of its kind in MLB history.
Blue Jays hit into the first 1-3-2-5-6 Triple Play in MLB history
Sports fans in Buffalo getting a chance to see Major League Baseball is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But Thursday’s game seems to given us an even more rare a play thanks to some extremely minor league action from the .500 ball club.
David Bowie continues to be one of the most influential and significant figures in modern music, even after his tragic and unexpected death in 2016. But perhaps his impact on the visual art world still remains to be seen. According to a report by NPR, a long-lost painting by the legendary musician is now up for auction with the highest bid coming in at a whopping $40,000, and there’s still a week left in the auction.
The original price was closer to $4, when an anonymous seller apparently bought the painting at a donation center in Canada, only noting the infamous signature on the back after buying it. Quite a return on investment for that sharp-eyed collector! Dubbed “DHead XLVI,” the abstract piece is part of a series of paintings that Bowie made in the ’90s between 1995 and 1997. According to the Canadian auction house, Cowley Abbott, the series of 47 paintings was titled Dead Heads (D Heads) and each work was titled non sequentially with Roman numerals. “His paintings possess the stylistic influences of the German expressionists, Francis Bacon and the London School of painters,” the arthouse noted. Check out the painting below, and if you’re in the range, place a bid on the piece here.
Cowley Abbott
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