Category: News

As part of the rollout of Coldplay’s new era, they have introduced a new written language. Furthermore, it appears that’s not the only way the group is trying to get creative with their presentation: They want to use emojis as song titles, but it seems streaming services aren’t on board with that.

During a recent appearance on Radio X’s The Chris Moyles Show, the titular host asked the band’s Chris Martin and Jonny Buckland if he could get some information that nobody else knows, and Martin responded:

“I’ll give you something, Chris. We’re trying to figure this out right now: We’re trying to have the first album ever with some tracks that are just called emojis, but it’s proving tricky because of all the service providers. Some of them say, ‘We can’t do that.’ You literally have ten million songs in one box. Let us have a picture of an apple for a song or something like that. So that’s in negotiation.”

The help site for DistroKid, a platform that allows artists to put their music on streaming services, has a page about songs not being accepted on streaming services due to title formatting issues. The list of issues that prevent a song from being accepted includes things like “strange things in parenthesis” and “odd punctuation.” The page says nothing about emojis, but if the aforementioned title elements are prohibited, then it would stand to reason that emojis are also a no-go.

Perhaps this song title situation is the reason why Coldplay hasn’t yet officially announced a new album. In another recent interview, Martin did everything but confirm an album is on the way, saying, “We’re not supposed to say, but there won’t not be one.”

Check out the full Radio X interview above.

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

Emma Watson has only appeared in three movies over the past five years, Beauty and the Beast, The Circle, and Little Women, where she played one of Bob Odenkirk’s little women. But she hasn’t retired from acting, despite a Daily Mail report that claimed she had gone to “dormant.” It reads, “That appears to be movie-speak for she’s ‘given up acting.’ I can reveal the Harry Potter star, who has been famous since she was nine, has decided to step back from the limelight to spend time with rumored fiancé Leo Robinton.” Her manager denied the rumor, telling EW that while his client’s “social media accounts are dormant… her career isn’t,” and on Monday, Watson herself addressed the report.

“Dear Fans, rumours about whether I’m engaged or not, or whether my career is ‘dormant or not’ are ways to create clicks each time they are revealed to be true or untrue,” she tweeted. “If I have news – I promise I’ll share it with you. In the mean time please assume no news from me just means I’m quietly spending the pandemic the way most people are – failing to make sourdough bread (!), caring for my loved ones and doing my best not to spread a virus that is still affecting so many people.” She added:

I am sending so much love to you, hoping you’re ok and as well and happy as you can be in these strange times. And again, thank you to everyone working so hard to keep us safe and well.
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It’s the first time Watson has tweeted since August 2020. If only Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling used social media that infrequently…

In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump famously—and repeatedly—told voters how he surrounded himself with “the best people.” In the five years since, Americans have looked on as Trump and many of his closest colleagues have been investigated, arrested, and even jailed. Seth Meyers, for one, is not surprised.

Meyers dedicated Monday night’s “A Closer Look” segment to the MAGA crime family, with particular attention paid to Matt Gaetz, Joel Greenberg and Rudy Giuliani. He kicked the segment off by noting the number of Trump or Trump-adjacent associates who have stumbled into legal troubles in the last few years:

“Maybe it’s a coincidence, but the MAGA crowd seems to have a lot of criminals in it. I don’t want to make generalizations, but there are more criminals—or alleged criminals—in Trump’s inner circle than there are in a motorcycle gang or a Hollywood PTA meeting.”

That so many of Trump’s associates have been arrested, jailed, and/or convicted (with or without a pardon) speaks to the fact that they might not be very good at crime. Case in point: Greenberg, Gaetz’s longtime pal and so-called “wingman” who was in court on Monday and pleaded guilty to six federal charges, including sex trafficking of a minor. As part of Greenberg’s plea deal, he promised to fully cooperate with the prosecution. This, of course, is bad news for Gaetz, the Florida congressman who is already at the center of a handful of allegations and sex scandals—the latest being that he snorted coke with an escort at a wild party following a pro-Trump rally in 2019, where Nestor’s daddy pumped up the crowd with a speech.

Greenberg, of course, was the recipient of those late-night Venmo transactions from Gaetz back in 2018—the one where Gaetz sent Greenberg $900 and Greenberg then sent that exact same amount of money out to a trio of young women using “Tuition” and “School” as the explanations of the cash. “It would have been less suspicious to just use a bunch of eggplant emojis,” Meyers deadpanned.

But Gaetz wasn’t Meyers’s only target: In addition to pointing to Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, Meyers turned his attention to one of his favorite nincompoops, Rudy Giuliani. According to Meyers, who has never missed an opportunity to break out his Rudy impression, Trump has been ignoring Giuliani’s requests for help while he’s being investigated by the FBI for his shady Ukraine shenanigans. The former president is being pressured to “hang Giuliani out to dry in his hour of need.” Meyers had some thoughts on this:

“If anyone needs to be hung out to dry, it’s Rudy Giuliani. He always looks like he fell into the city aquarium and got squirted with squid ink. Second, I’d imagine every hour in Rudy’s life is an hour of need. The dude butt-dials reporters, got tricked by Borat, and doesn’t know the difference between up and down.” (That clip, at 5:43, is worth watching on repeating.)

According to Meyers, if Giuliani is truly surprised that Trump isn’t standing by and up for him, that’s on Rudy. “What did Rudy think was going to happen? His client is famous for not paying his bills and turning on everyone around him.”

Giuliani is reportedly asking Trump to issue a “strongly worded” statement that confirms Rudy’s interactions with Ukrainian officials were all on the up and up and on behalf of the then-president—which Trump is reluctant to do. “Rudy’s like a hitman who thinks it will help his case if the guy who hired him talks to the cops,” Meyers said.

You can watch the full segment above.

Nick Jonas had a bit of a scare over the weekend: TMZ reported that on Saturday night (May 15), Jonas was hurt while filming a new show and his injuries were severe enough that he was taken to a nearby hospital via ambulance. The publication also noted that by Sunday night, Jonas was back home and ready to appear on Monday’s episode of The Voice. Sure enough, he was on the show last night and he addressed his injury, revealing that he cracked a rib in a bike accident.

Host Carson Daly asked Jonas how he was feeling and Jonas responded, “I’m feeling OK. I’ve been better, but I’m doing all right. Cracked rib from a spill on a bike and a few other bumps and bruises. I just want to go ahead and say that in case I’m not as physically enthusiastic as I usually am.”

He then addressed Blake Shelton, adding, “Blake, please don’t make me laugh too much, because it kind of hurts to laugh.” Shelton quipped, “You’re just trying to get sympathy votes on this show, that’s all you’re doing.”

While Jonas was on last night’s The Voice episode, that won’t be the case for that much longer: After the current season, he will be replaced by Ariana Grande.

On Friday afternoon, BuzzFeed published a story in which the outlet detailed how their reporters had uncovered Joe Biden’s “secret” Venmo account—and few people were as shocked by this tech-savvy turn of events than Jimmy Kimmel. On Monday night, the Jimmy Kimmel Live host devoted several minutes of his opening monologue to the story, which detailed how Biden, who maintained a small list of less than 10 “friends” on Venmo, used the app to send money to his grandchildren.

While Kimmel found the whole thing funny, mostly because, at age 78, the folksy president is hardly the typical Venmo user. For the most part, the app is looked at as a way for Millennials to split the cost of a pizza or pay for their portion of the rent. But given the sordid reasons politicians like Matt Gaetz have used Venmo, Kimmel admitted that “it’s weird to hear about a politician using Venmo to pay teenagers for something other than sex.”

Kimmel commented on how easy it was for BuzzFeed to apparently track down Biden’s now-deleted account, which reportedly took less than 10 minutes to do. And jokingly shared some of the services rendered Biden used the app to pay for:

Kimmel wasn’t done yet though:

“If somebody said to you, ‘What are the odds Joe Biden has Venmo?,’ you’d be like, ‘Well, there’s no way,’ right? This is like finding out the Pope wears VR goggles.”

You can watch the full monologue above (the Biden bit starts around the 3:06 mark).

The Los Angeles Lakers are getting ready to try and make a massive run through the play-in and playoffs to defend their 2020 championship, starting with a showdown with the Warriors on Wednesday night for the 7-seed and a series with the Suns.

L.A. is finally getting healthy at the right time, with LeBron James insistent his ankle tweak on Sunday night was nothing, Anthony Davis playing some of his best basketball of the season, and Dennis Schröder back from health and safety protocols. When the Lakers take the court on Wednesday night, they hope they’ll be back to normal and back to the form they showed early in the year when at full strength, but one player will be making a bit of a change.

While Schröder is back on the court, you won’t see him in a large chunk of his sneaker collection. The Lakers point guard had been among the many players who are fans of Nike’s Kyrie line, but as he said recently as he was going through his shoe collection, after his on-court kerfuffle with Irving back in April, he won’t be wearing them going forward and plans on giving away all of his Kyries.

It’s not a huge change for this season, as Schröder has been wearing a lot of Kobes during his time in L.A., but for someone with 30-plus pairs of Kyries it’s certainly a sizable chunk of his rotation. Dennis is far from the first player to stop wearing someone’s sneakers, but usually guys will do that in games they’re playing against the player whose signature they typically wear. In this case, Schröder is making this change wholesale, so if you wear a size 12 and have a way to get in touch with him, there’s some sneakers available.

Maybe you remember Parler. It was the least offensive of the far right, “free speech” social media services that stood in opposition to the mainstream likes of Twitter — which is to say it was pretty awfully offensive. It seemed to die after the failed MAGA insurrection of January 6, many of whose participants used it to help coordinate their attack. Some four months later it was back on places like Google and Apple that had once banned it — but only Apple is asking them to shape up.

As per Vox, Apple allowed the app version of Parler back into the fold, but with a major caveat: Its “anything goes” approach had to end. Users operating on it on iOS could no longer spread hate speech or incite violence. Posts will be monitored by an AI program, and it will label offending posts as “hate,” making them unavailable over their service. It’s something! Though perhaps nothing would be better.

It’s also more than their rival is doing. Though the app remains banned in the Google Play Store, Android users can still bypass it and download the unfiltered version to their phones. Unencumbered by AI police, they can let rip with racial slurs and whatever else might get them flagged on Apple’s “Parler Lite.”

Mind you, even the Apple version of Parler can be dangerous. As Vox points out, there’s “the risk that people use the Apple version of Parler to attract followers, and then organize violence on the non-Apple versions of Parler.” The truce, though, is not necessarily long-lived: They’re still being monitored by the tech giant over the long run, and things could always — and easily — get out of hand.

Parler all but disappeared from the internet on January 9, when Apple, Google, as well as Amazon, who hosted its services, cut ties with them, in response to the events of January 6. It returned in mid-February, having found an alternative to Amazon but still without an Apple- or Google-okayed app.

One other thing: In addition to getting back on Apple, Parler also announced a new CEO. His name is George Farmer, and he’s the former chairman of Turning Point UK, the British wing of the conservative organization that targets students. His wife? Rightwing firebrand Candace Owens. When that news broke, some found it even worse than the return of Parler.

Meanwhile, others noted things had returned to normal over at Parler.

(Via Vox)

Baseball is a sport that often feels safe, as it’s not a contact sport in the way football and hockey (or even basketball) are, and the slower pace of play can lull you into a sense that there isn’t danger. However, with how hard guys throw and how fast the ball comes off of the bat, the moments where those things get away from someone are unsettling reminders of just how dangerous it is just simply hitting and pitching.

Earlier this season, Bryce Harper got a scare when he took a fastball to the face, but was able to get a hand up and pull his head back in time to avoid a direct hit. On Monday Mets outfielder Kevin Pillar wasn’t as fortunate when a 94 mph fastball from Braves pitcher Jacob Webb got away from him, riding up and in to Pillar’s face where it hit him square in the nose in a terrifying scene in Atlanta.

[WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO]

That Pillar was able to get up and walk off the field as quickly as he did seems like a minor miracle, but he was bleeding profusely from the bridge of the nose where he got hit. You could see Webb’s immediate reaction was to snap around and crouch to the ground in horror, clearly feeling awful for what just happened and hoping that Pillar would be OK. Freddie Freeman and everyone else on the infield had the same reaction, as the sound it made when it hit Pillar was awful. Webb was very shaken up in the dugout afterwards, being spoken to by his pitching coach and manager.

Hopefully Pillar will be alright long-term, but he will surely miss some time and the work to get back both physically and mentally from that kind of moment is going to be a process. We’ll provide further updates when made available on his injury and status.

Ever since it was revealed he was being investigated by federal authorities for his alleged role in a sex trafficking ring, Matt Gaetz has tried to pretend everything’s normal. When the Republican congressman has acknowledged he’s in trouble, it’s mostly been to paint himself as a victim, even using his plight to beg for donations. That’s only inspired some to troll him with even more gusto, as happened on Monday, when someone flew a banner reminded him that he’s in deep doo-doo.

According to Newsweek, after Joel Greenberg, his former confidant and “wingman,” plead guilty to six felony charges that may involve Gaetz, a banner could be seen over the Florida courthouse where it took place. Its message was simple: “TICK TOCK MATT GAETZ.”

Among the charges to which Greenberg plead guilty are sex trafficking of a child, as well as production of a false document, aggravated identity theft, wire fraud, stalking and conspiracy to commit an offense against the U.S. The first charge involves a 17-year-old girl who was allegedly paid for sex and travel.

Gaetz is not mentioned in the 86-page plea agreement, which found the feds dropping 27 of the 33 charges made against Greenberg in exchange for “substantial assistance” with the investigation. Greenberg admits he was in what he called “sugar daddy” relationships with young women, in which he introduced them to adult men who paid them for sex. Gaetz, who has been under investigation since the last months of the Trump administration, has denied involvement.

(Via Newsweek)

The 2020-21 season was a roller coaster for the Sacramento Kings. The highs were high, with various winning streaks and upset victories. However, each winning stretch was met with an equal or more lopsided losing skid, with the Kings losing nine consecutive games on two separate occasions. Much of that unevenness can be traced to the league’s worst defense but, after months of speculation that a coaching change could be in the offing, word broke from James Ham of NBC Sports Bay Area that head coach Luke Walton will reportedly stick around for at least one more season.

Shortly after Ham’s report emerged, Sam Amick and Jason Jones confirmed the news.

Walton is under contract, so it may seem odd that this kind of reporting would be needed. After all, the Kings didn’t fall terribly short of their preseason expectations in the standings, finishing at 31-41 despite injury issues. With that said, Walton’s name has been associated with the “hot seat” for so long that it will come as a surprise, at least to some, to see him projected to return.

Defensive aptitude is often linked, at least to some degree, to coaching and the Kings allowed 116.5 points per 100 possessions for the season. That isn’t entirely Walton’s fault, of course, but it would also be accurate to say that Sacramento underachieved defensively when compared to their talent level.

It seems that after months of speculation, Walton has seemingly managed to wiggle off the hot seat… for now.