Category: News

The craft beer industry is facing yet another reckoning for sexual misconduct. Over the past week, Brienne Allan (@ratmagnet on Instagram) has been reposting (admittedly unverified or vetted) stories that women have sent her of sexual misconduct and assault that they’ve experienced at the hands of men in the craft beer industry around the world.

The thread started with Allan asking on her IG, “What sexist comments have you experienced?” Allan received so many replies, that there’s now an eight-part series of IG stories full of accusations of everything from customers dismissing women as brewers to verbal abuse to physical abuse to sexual assault against female co-workers, female industry professionals, and even female guests at brewery taprooms. It’s a harrowing wave of first-person accounts of an industry that has continually been unable to make real progress on sexism year after year.

The craft beer industry has been struggling to exorcise itself from rampant and blatant sexism for literal decades now — sexism that is almost always linked to the dismissal of women working in beer. Trillium, Founders, Rogue are just a few breweries that have faced down sexual and racial discrimination accusations over the past decade. Some have faced legal action and issued boilerplate apologies. But, as Allan’s posts make painfully clear, these issues remain.

There has been a shift over the past week, as male brewers who are specifically being called out are facing real-world repercussions. Breweries like BrewDog, Tired Hands, Modern Times Beer, Lord Hobo Brewing Company, Union Beer Distributors, and Hill Farmstead have all been called out by name. Vinepair reports that Søren Wagner, head brewer of Copenhagen’s Dry & Bitter Brewing Company, was put on leave due to allegations surfacing from Allan’s posts. Shaun Hill, brewmaster at Hill Farmstead, has issued a non-apology/”we’ll do better” letter to Vinepair in response to the current postings alleging several counts of sexual misconduct and bullying that have been corroborated by multiple women.

Modern Times Beer issued an apology via Vinepair for the misconduct actions carried out by some of its 300 employees and also promised to “do better.” Modern Times’ statement starts with, “First and foremost, we want to deeply apologize to anyone who has been harassed, discriminated against, prevented from succeeding, and otherwise hurt, either as our employee or by one of our employees. We can do better and be better, both as individuals and an organization.” At the very least, that feels like the San Diego brewery is acknowledging the problem and their part in it.

Perhaps the most important aspect of this week’s revelations is the empowerment it has given women to speak out en masse and highlight the continuous bullshit they face damn-near constantly as women in a white male-dominated industry.

Brewer Megan Murzyn (@isbeeracarb) has been posting about the sexism she’s faced in the industry for years. Her most recent post on Instagram compiles quotes she’s heard while brewing beer across the country and is a small glimpse into how deeply toxic this male-dominated industry can be on a day-to-day basis.

Claud may have been the first signee of Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory label, but they started their musical journey as a bedroom pop artist. Paying tribute to another musician who got their start as a bedroom pop artist, Claud gave a dreamy cover of a Toro Y Moi song.

Claud delivered the cover on a SiriusXMU segment, opting for Toro Y Moi’s hit track “Omaha.” Claud’s tender vocal delivery melts seamlessly over the track’s lush chords, sounding as though it was pulled straight from their recent album.

Ahead of their Toro Y Moi cover, Claud recently chatted with Uproxx about the stark contrast between recording their EPs at home and making their debut album Super Monster in a proper studio.

“When you’re making music in an apartment or even a garage or a living room it’s hard to imagine it in a space bigger than that. And then when you step into a space like Electric Lady that’s three times the size. Even that one studio, it was three times the size of my apartment. It’s like, wow, this is being played in a big room right now and has the potential, if I want it to, to be played in another big room.”

In other news, Claud is looking to get back on the road soon and finally begin performing shows in support of their Super Monster album. Not only were they just announced as a booked act for this fall’s Austin City Limits festival, but they’ll also be joining Bleachers on a handful of North American tour stops.

Listen to Claud cover Toro Y Moi’s “Omaha” above.

Super Monster is out now via Saddest Factory. Get it here.

Three Sisters soup is one of my absolute favorite dishes to make. It’s pretty easy to prep for lunch or dinner, creamy without any dairy, vegan, and carries a matrix of textures and flavors that give it real depth. It’s also a dish that every American should have in their repertoire — seeing as that it’s an American dish that pre-dates Columbus and colonization.

In my personal opinion, dishes based around the Three Sisters should be available on every corner in this county at every dining level. The agricultural practice of growing winter squash, common beans, and corn (maize) together goes back at least six millennia in North America. But this tradition was stamped out by European monoculture techniques, which is proving to be more and more of an ecological disaster compared to long-held Indigenous agriculture practices. Colonization also led to the loss of an entire continent’s worth of cuisine, culinary regions, and all the restaurants (from fast food to fine dining) that would have eventually come with it.

Despite that adversity, Indigenous American foods are still here and ready to return to our tables. If you haven’t made any, let this dish be your first foray. It’s the perfect balance of spicy, sweet, and savory with a texture balance of crunchy, soft, and silken. Let’s get cooking!

Three Sisters Pumpkin Soup With Sumac Corn and Black Beans

Ingredients:

• 4 cups butternut squash
• 4 cups vegetable broth
• 1 yellow onion
• 2 fresh ears of sweetcorn
• 8-oz. can of black beans
• 1 tsp. wild sumac
• 1 tsp. allspice
• Fresh sage
• Chili oil
• Ancho chili flakes
• Salt
• Sunflower oil

Hey! Did you know Chicago is a Miami-Illinois word meaning “wild onion?” I would usually use those in this recipe. Unfortunately, my greengrocer was out of ramps (wild onion or wild garlic depending on where you are in the world) when I went shopping. So I substituted a standard yellow onion. Other than that, this recipe is fairly easy to source. You should be able to get these ingredients at any farmer’s market or decent grocery store. Or you might be growing them in your own backyard if you’re savvy like that.

Other than the yellow onion substitute (originating from Central and East Asia), these are all agricultural products you would have found being cultivated and traded across North America for thousands of years before Europeans showed up.

What You’ll Need:

• Large pot
• Medium saute pan
• Cutting board
• Kitchen knife
• Large spoon
• Ladle
• Bowls
• Spoons
• Immersion hand blender (or regular blender, food processor, etc.)

Method:

• Break the corn cobs in half and run the knife under the kernels to remove them from the cob. SAVE THE COBS.
• Roughly dice the onion.
• Roughly cube/dice the butternut squash (alternatively use frozen pumpkin).
• Drain the beans and thoroughly rinse.
• Thinly slice ten fresh sage leaves and prepare a few small leaves for garnish.
• Put the large pot on medium-high heat and add a thin layer of sunflower oil.
• Add the corn cobs, onion, and a pinch of salt.
• Add about a 1/2 cup of water and cook while softening the onion and drawing the starchy “corn milk” from the cobs.
• Add the squash and vegetable broth then season with allspice and a sprig of fresh sage.
• Bring to a low simmer and cook until the squash is completely falling apart (about 20 minutes).
• Remove the cobs and sage from the soup.
• Use an immersion hand blender to puree the soup into a creamy base.
• Remove from heat and place a lid on the pot.
• In a medium saute pan on medium heat, add a thin layer of sunflower oil to the pan.
• Add the corn kernels and toss with a pinch of salt and wild sumac.
• Once the corn kernels deepen in color, add in the beans and thinly sliced sage and toss again until well mixed.
• As soon as the corn starts to just brown, turn off the heat.
• Ladle the soup into a waiting bowl.
• Scoop about 1/2 cup of the corn/bean mix into the center of the bowl.
• Drizzle the chili oil around the corn/bean mix and sprinkle with plenty of Ancho chili flakes.
• Place a small sage leaf atop of the corn/bean mix and serve.

Bottom Line:

It’s sort of amazing how creamy and velvety the pumpkin soup base comes out when you boil out those corn cobs in the soup. The “corn milk” emulsifies with the broth and pumpkin to create this velvet texture that’s soul-nourishing. The addition of allspice brings a familiar spicy edge with a mild woodiness.

The real x-factor is the sumac-flavored corn and beans though. The corn is still crunchy while carrying a sweetness, tart, and savory edge. The beans add in a soft counterpoint. The sage helps deepen the savory herbal notes.

The chili oil and flakes tie it all together with a mild warm spice with an almost bitter yet dry and smoky Ancho chili vibe that becomes just the right accent to the silky soup. It’s hard not to go back for seconds with this gem.

All told, this took about 45 minutes from start to finish with maybe 15 minutes of actively cooking. Plus there were plenty of leftovers for lunches throughout the week. Those are wins all around.

As sports betting is becoming legalized in more and more states — and, thereby, becoming easier to do on the internet or via your phone — leagues are finding ways to embrace gambling. One way the NBA is doing this is through its NBA Bet initiative, and on Thursday, it was revealed that a half-hour long television show on the league’s television network that will “dedicated to betting-focused information and analysis” will play a role in this.

The NBA announced that NBABet presented by BetMGM will make its debut on Friday evening at 6:30 p.m. EST and run through the first two rounds of the postseason. Once the second round kicks off, the league will add a new element to how it covers the intersection of gambling and basketball.

In the second round of the playoffs, NBA.com and the NBA App will feature a new NBABet section, which will include editorial content for fans from content partners such as Action Network, Bleacher Report, and Yahoo Sports, among others. The weekly show will also be available to NBA TV subscribers.

It’s unclear who will host the show, or if it will exist in some capacity once the conference semifinals reach their conclusion. But it’s evident that the NBA — which has dipped its toe into the wagering waters in recent years — is making it a point to position itself to benefit as gambling becomes more widespread.

Kentaro Miura, creator of the ground-breaking manga Berserk, has passed away at the age of 54. According to the editorial department of Young Animal magazine, the publication that currently prints Berserk, Miura passed away on May 6, 2021 due to acute aortic dissection. Dark Horse Comics, Miura’s publisher in the West, also released a statement.

“Miura-sensei was a master artist and storyteller and we had the great privilege of publishing several of his finest works, including his masterpiece, Berserk. He will be greatly missed.”

Of all of Miura’s works, he is most famously known for Berserk, a serialized comic first published back in 1989. While the series is known for its intense brutality, equally as important to note are its messages of hope and ceaseless resilience, which are conveyed across all 40 of its volumes. In addition to being noteworthy in-and-of itself, Berserk also helped popularize Japanese dark fantasy, and inspired countless works such as Black Clover, Dark Souls, Dragon’s Dogma, Final Fantasy, Demon Slayer, and Castlevania.

As of May 2021, Berserk has over 50 million copies in circulation, making it one of the best-selling manga series of all time. Due to this intense popularity, it has been adapted for animation multiple times. In 1997, a Berserk anime was produced, which was then followed by a film series in 2012 and another in 2016. In addition, multiple video games based on Berserk have also been released.

Unfortunately, Berserk, which is widely considered Miura’s magnum opus, was an ongoing series, and with news of his passing it is suspected the story will go unfinished. However, fans can perhaps rest a bit easier knowing Miura believed he would inevitably end the series on a hopeful note.

https://twitter.com/ianmacewan/status/1395268829895299078

Around this time in 2019, Logic pulled off something no rapper before him had ever done: He became the first rapper to ever land a novel (Supermarket) on top of a New York Times Best Sellers list. Now he’s adding to his bibliography with another new book, but this time, it’s a memoir.

The book is titled This Bright Future and it’s set for release on September 7. He wrote of the book on social media, “This is the story of everything I’ve gone through and it’s been a beautiful and difficult journey to relive. There’s honestly so much that I’ve never been able to express in my music and the interviews that followed. I’m so happy and proud to finally give my fans and the rest of the world my entire story. The way I never could with my music!”

The official site for the book offers a lengthier description:

“This Bright Future is a raw and unfiltered journey into the life and mind of Bobby Hall, who emerged from the wreckage of a horrifically abusive childhood to become an era-defining artist of our tumultuous age.

A self-described orphan with parents, Bobby Hall began life as Sir Robert Bryson Hall II, the only child of an alcoholic, mentally ill mother on welfare and an absent, crack-addicted father. After enduring seventeen years of abuse and neglect, Bobby ran away from home and — with nothing more than a discarded laptop and a ninth-grade education — he found his voice in the world of hip-hop and a new home in a place he never expected: the untamed and uncharted wilderness of the social media age.

In the message boards and livestreams of this brave new world, Bobby became Logic, transforming a childhood of violence, anger, and trauma into music that spread a resilient message of peace, love, and positivity. His songs would touch the lives of millions, taking him to dizzying heights of success, where the wounds of his childhood and the perils of Internet fame would nearly be his undoing.

A landmark achievement in an already remarkable career, This Bright Future looks back on Bobby’s extraordinary life with lacerating humor and fearless honesty. Heart-wrenching yet ultimately uplifting, this book completes the incredible true story and transformation of a human being who, against all odds, refused to be broken.”

Pre-order This Bright Future and learn more about the book here.

It’s only been a few weeks since Lana Del Rey released her long-awaited effort Chemtrails Over The Country Club and she’s already readying her next release, complete with some questionable cover art. After teasing a snippet of her next project, titled Blue Banisters, Del Rey has now surprise-released three tracks from the project.

Del Rey returned Thursday to share the tender singles “Wildflower Wildfire,” “Blue Banister,” and “Text Book.” According to Pitchfork, “Wildflower Wildfire” was co-written and produced by notable Kanye West collaborator Mike Dean. Each of the new songs are aligned with Del Rey’s signature music style: slow-paced, sultry, and sparse when it comes to the instrumentation.

Along with gaining attention for the unannounced releases, fans were quick to critique the singer’s choice of artwork. Del Rey’s other albums lean on professionally taken imagery, but the graphic for each new single is a different edit of the same selfie Del Rey previously unveiled as the Blue Banisters cover art. The photo looks as though it was taken from inside her car and is highly stylized with saturated colors, odd textures, and curly fonts.

Blue Banisters is currently slated for an early July release. Along with previewing the sound through a handful of singles, Del Rey previously stated that the effort will “challenge” the idea that her “career was built on cultural appropriation and glamorizing domestic abuse.”

Listen to “Wildflower Wildfire,” “Blue Banister,” and “Text Book” above.

Blue Banisters is out 7/4 via Polydor.

Meghan McCain and Joy Behar are really going at it this week. During a contentious discussion about the recent CDC masking guidelines, which have stirred confusion and concern to the point where Dr. Anthony Fauci had to step in and clarify safety protocols, Behar unloaded on conservatives who are refusing to get the COVID vaccine for political reasons. Via Raw Story:

“It’s not that complicated, people. It’s not nuclear physics. All you have to do is get the damn vaccine. When you go inside, wear a mask, even if you have the vaccine,” Behar said. “There might be variants around. Get the damn vaccine. Get the booster when that time is coming. What is the complicated problem here with people? I don’t understand. Is this just to own the libs? Maybe they’re not seeing enough on television the way people suffer when they get the disease.”

Obviously, Behar’s remarks didn’t sit well with the conservative McCain, who blamed the CDC’s messaging for people not getting the vaccine. “This is coming from a place of fear. I don’t think it’s a place of politics,” McCain said. However, Behar wasn’t letting conservatives off the hook, and the situation escalated into a full-on shouting match at the 8:11 mark below:

After McCain called Behar’s claims about owning the libs “factually inaccurate,” Behar fired back that these people are getting their information from Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, which only further sent McCain over the edge as she interrupted Behar and yelled, “They are not! They are not!”

Not in the mood for any of this, Whoopi cut to commercial, as she does.

My day job is writing and editing music posts for Uproxx (and busting out a gaming post here and there). Sometimes, the job involves me going to concerts and music festivals to take photos… although not much over the past year, as you’d imagine. So, you could say that makes me a professional photographer. Now that New Pokémon Snap is out, I thought it could be fun and useful to look at the game from a photography perspective and see what sort of visuals we can squeeze out of the Nintendo Switch. So, let’s go over some tips about how to become the next Todd and produce the best Pokémon photos possible.

It’s important to note that this rundown won’t be about getting the highest score in-game, but how to take the most visually appealing photos, as those two goals don’t always go hand-in-hand. Typically, photos with the Pokémon large and in the center of the frame are most desirable for racking up points, but that doesn’t always produce the nicest image from a visual standpoint.

My first tip is to know what kind of photos you want to take. You only have so much control over your shot because in the game, you move on a predetermined path and the Pokémon can only perform so many actions. Despite that, you can still achieve a variety of shots.

Look to different types of real-world photography for inspiration — nature, portrait, pet, landscape, etc. — and find ways to apply the styles of those genres to Pokémon Snap. You could even look at the illustrations on your favorite Pokémon cards and see what those images do well. Many basic guidelines about real-world photography — the rule of thirds, using different perspectives, etc. — should be useful here, too, so going down a YouTube or Google wormhole about photography tips could serve you well.

My next piece of advice is to not worry too much about getting the perfect shot while out in the level. The reason for that is New Pokémon Snap‘s re-snap mode makes it super easy to refine your image after the fact and even re-frame it entirely. This is where the game has the advantage over real photography: If the zoom of a photo is off or your subject isn’t quite where you want it, you can use this mode to essentially freeze time, reposition yourself, and change your camera settings so they’re exactly how you’d like them. Now, timing should be the only thing stopping your from getting the perfect shot, as opposed to the dozens of other factors that impact real-life photographers.

The third and final tip is perhaps the most important for producing a high-quality final product: Enhance the image outside of the game. Post-processing is a significant part of real-world photography as well. Take your image into a program like Photoshop or Lightroom and tinker with the brightness, sharpness, saturation, shadows, and so on. If you have a specific look in mind, it can be helpful to open an existing photo that looks similar to what you’re going for and try to match its style while editing.

I notice that oftentimes, the outlines of Pokémon and other objects have a lot of pixelation and ugly jagged edges, especially when the Pokémon or object isn’t up close to you. So, feel free to experiment with blur and drawing over problem areas to help correct them. For example, here’s a side-by-side of an image I made using those two techniques, with the before on the left and the after on the right. Notice how the blur has taken care of pixelation both surrounding Magikarp and on its body, and how I’ve drawn new outlines for Magikarp (using the color grabber tool so the new lines blend in) that look a lot smoother.

If Photoshop seems intimidating (or you don’t feel like paying Adobe a monthly fee to use it), you can still get significant image improvement using basic tools. The built-in Preview app on Mac computers, for example, has an Adjust Color window that lets you alter things like exposure, contrast, and sharpness, and just those simple tweaks can work wonders. The Adobe Lightroom mobile app is also useful and is actually pretty robust (and it’s free). Whatever editing option you go with will at least be better than the in-game filters.

This is a great start, but perhaps you’ve noticed your image is still pretty low-resolution, at least in terms of photography: Switch screenshots max out at 720p (1280 by 720 pixels). For reference, compare that to my Samsung Galaxy S20 phone, which takes photos that are 9248 by 6936 pixels.

Fortunately, there are ways to increase the size of the image and get it looking pretty good. When doing this, I usually start with a website like Bigjpg or Waifu2x. Those sites and others like them use AI technology to increase the size of an image and produce a result that looks sharper and less noisy than just increasing the size in a regular image editor. Once you’ve enlarged the image, it’s a good idea to take it into an image editor again and make further adjustments. It’s at this point when I tend to focus on things like saturation and brightness.

After all that, here is my final before-and-after:

On the left is the unaltered Switch screenshot and on the right is my edited and enlarged image. On the right, most notably, Magikarp looks smoother and the colors are more vibrant. For this specific image, after taking the aforementioned editing steps, I brought it back into Photoshop (or in my case, Affinity Photo), increased the saturation, increased the brightness and contrast, used Selective Color to make the trees in the background look less washed out, and finally, intensified the shadows and highlights to give the image more depth.

When all is said and done, you should be left with an image that is larger than what’s in your Switch’s screenshot gallery and considerably better-looking. While I hope my tips are useful, they’re also not the only way to go about this. For example, Reddit user joshmassie87 seems to go deeper into color correction with their Pokémon Snap edits than I do, which has yielded some dramatic and stunning results.

All the images in this post were produced using the methods described above, so if you like what you see (or if you don’t and want to prove that you’re better than me), fire up your Switch and get shooting… and then enhancing and editing.

Much has been made about the friendship between Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift since Rodrigo broke into the music mainstream with “Drivers License” earlier this year. That conversation was whipped into a frenzy today, when the production and songwriting credits for Rodrigo’s album Sour (which is set for release tomorrow, May 21) were unveiled.

Swift is credited (along with Jack Antonoff) on the song “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back,” which had fans thinking that Rodrigo, Swift, and Antonoff either worked on a song together or that Rodrigo sampled one of the tracks the latter two wrote together. However, neither of those speculations are accurate: Uproxx has confirmed that while Swift and Antonoff have writing credits on the song, they did not collaborate on the track with Rodrigo. Additionally, the song is an interpolation of “New Year’s Day” (which Swift and Antonoff co-wrote) and does not contain any samples of it.

That’s not the only track on the album where Swift’s influence made an impact: Rodrigo previously told Rolling Stone that the bridge of “Deja Vu” was inspired by that of Swift’s “Cruel Summer.”

While Swift isn’t on Rodrigo’s new album, Rodrigo is hoping to get on an upcoming Swift project, as she recently said she’d love to be involved with a new rerecording of Speak Now: “My favorite Taylor Swift album is Speak Now. I would love to be on a Speak Now song. I’m just so excited to listen to them, though. I love listening to the vault recordings and stuff like that. I’m gonna own my masters, but I’ll listen to songs I’m not putting out and be like, ‘Maybe I’ll do a vault thing when I’m Taylor’s Swift’s age.’”

Sour is out 5/21 via Geffen Records. Pre-order it here.