Category: News

Just over a year into the coronavirus pandemic, we’re finally seeing a light at the end of our socially distanced tunnel. We still have a ways to go, but with millions of vaccines being doled out daily, we’re well on our way toward somewhat normal life again. Hallelujah.

As we head toward that light, it’s natural to look back over our shoulders at the past year to see what we’re leaving behind. There’s the “good riddance” stuff of course—the mass deaths, the missing loved ones, the closed-up businesses, the economic, social and political strife—which no one is going to miss.

But there’s personal stuff, too. As we reflect on how we coped, how we spent our time, what we did and didn’t do this past year, we’re thinking about what we’ll be bringing out of the tunnel with us.

And some of us are finding that comes with a decent dose of regret. Maybe a little guilt. Some disappointment as we go down the coulda-woulda-shoulda road.

When social distancing and stay-at-home orders were implemented, we were motivated. The reason we were doing it was bleak, but those of us not working on the front lines looked to the silver lining of having extra time. In some ways, that time felt like a gift. We were forced to slow down. We organized all the closets in our houses. We planted victory gardens. We picked up old hobbies or started new ones. We volunteered to sew masks. We played games and did puzzles with our families.

What we didn’t know was that motivation couldn’t last through an entire pandemic. And with lost motivation came the self-talk: “What’s wrong with me?” and “I should be doing XYZ,” and “I always wanted more time to [fill in the blank]. Now I have it and I’m not using it.”

We look back at how we used our time and make hindsight wishes. We wish we had read the stack of books we’d wanted to read instead of binge-watching so many Netflix shows. We wish we’d worked out like we said we were going to instead of lounging around in our pajamas. We wish we’d cooked the healthy, from-scratch meals we’d pinned to our recipe board instead of eating all the junk food. We wish we’d used that foreign language learning app instead of doomscrolling on social media.

Some of us are adding parental guilt to the mix for the copious amounts of screen time our children have had. Others of us feel guilty because we were able to work from home and our families stayed healthy, so what do we have to complain about really?

It’s easy to kick ourselves over any and all of these things. It’s easy in hindsight to think we should have been able to do more than we did simply because we had time.

That’s why It’s vital to remind ourselves that this past year was not a vacation. It’s not like we were just gifted extra hours in our day that we then squandered because we were lazy.

This year life was turned upside down and traumatic on a communal level, if not on a personal one. So many of us lost people, but even if we didn’t, we bore witness to the single largest mass death event of our lifetimes. We worried about the people around us as well as ourselves as we survived a global pandemic. That alone is huge. But that wasn’t even all of it.

We also dealt with the economic fallout of measures implemented to save lives and frustrating conspiracy theories about all of it. We also grappled with centuries of unaddressed oppression during a historic movement for racial justice. We also went through an incredibly turbulent election season that climaxed in a violent attack on our Capitol.

And we did all of that without our normal social supports, without our usual routines and rhythms, and without any precedent for how to cope with and manage all of this.

Seriously, we need to give ourselves an enormous amount of grace and let go of our hindsight regrets over some perceived lack of productivity or creativity or whateverivity. We’ve been in survival mode by necessity this past year.

As trauma psychologist Alaa Hijazi wrote earlier in the pandemic, when someone suggested that not using this time productively was some kind of moral failure:

“We are going through a collective trauma, that is bringing up profound grief, loss, panic over livelihoods, panic over loss of lives of loved ones. People’s nervous systems are barely coping with the sense of threat and vigilance for safety, or alternating with feeling numb and frozen and shutting down in response to it all.”

If you managed to thrive in some area or another, great. If you didn’t—if all you did was make it through and care for yourself and your loved ones—more power to you.

Surviving this past year is an accomplishment, and it’s enough. Anything above and beyond that is gravy.

Tuesday, April 6 marked an unfortunate anniversary: It was three months to the day since the failed MAGA coup of January 6. Three months is a long time, long enough for some to forget the horror of watching the chaos unfold on television and over social media, where many of the since-arrested perpetrators broadcasted their crimes. And it was long enough for their actions to get a bizarre and full-throated (albeit dishonest and suspiciously vague) defense from one of far right’s biggest mouthpieces.

That would be Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host who’s always game for saying whatever will enrage his base. He opened Tuesday night’s show by addressing the elephant in the room — then claiming the elephant wasn’t stomping over everything.

“For those of you are not good at dates or don’t have calendars,” Carlson said with deep and strange sarcasm, “this is the day that we pause to remember the white supremacist QAnon insurrection, that came so very close to toppling our government and ending this democracy forever.”

He then went on to defend the Trump supporters who pushed back against a greatly outnumbered security and police force, resulting in five deaths. He tried to bring age and class into it, claiming they were “older people from unfashionable zip codes.” (They were predominantly not at all “older” but ranging from young to early middle age.)

Carlson tried to make it seem like they’d merely did some sightseeing, saying, “They wandered freely through the Capitol, like it was their building or something.” He then tried to downplay their real intentions, conveniently eliding their weapons and that many were openly calling for kidnapping, even murder:

“They didn’t have guns, but a lot of them had extremely dangerous ideas. They talked about the Constitution, and something called their rights. Some of them made openly seditious claims. They insisted, for example, that the last election wasn’t entirely fair. The whole thing was terrifying, and then, as you’ve been told so very often, they committed unspeakable acts of violence.

He then suggested that one of the casualties — Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed during the chaos — was murdered by…it’s not clear who.

To this day, that woman is the one completely verified casualty of the insurrection, the only person whose death we can say definitively was caused by specific events on January 6th. We know how she died. The funny thing is, you almost never hear that woman’s name. Possibly that’s because she was not a Democratic member of congress or even a Joe Biden voter. She was a protester, her name was Ashli Babbitt. She was 35.

We still don’t know who shot Ashli Babbitt or why — no one will tell us.

But then, when you’re fighting insurrectionists, you don’t have to explain yourself. You just hyperventilate about QAnon and then you do whatever you want.

He then doubled down on his defense laced with conspiracy theorizing:

When a group of sad disenfranchised people who have been left out of the modern economy show up at your office, you don’t have to listen to their complaints. Not for a second. Why would you? You thought listening to people’s complaints was democracy? No, these people threaten democracy.

You could even shoot one of them if you want, and get away with it. Killing people without explaining yourself is an established part of counterinsurgency.

Was Tucker Carlson really siding with the violent insurrectionists who stalked the halls of the Capitol building, looking for progressive lawmakers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, hoping to string then-vice president Mike Pence up on a noose? Crazy as it may seem, it certainly appeared so!

Whatever he meant to say, it seemed dangerous.

But Carlson wasn’t done. He also defended the guy who brought zip ties into the Capitol, as if that’s just something you bring when you visit Washington D.C.

Anyway, it certainly didn’t take long for the far right to try and gaslight Americans into believing the failed MAGA coup was fine.

The Atlanta Hawks have some dudes who can really shoot the basketball. While the team has been pretty middle of the road in terms of three-point field goal percentage this season — 36.8 percent, good for 13th in the league entering Tuesday night — Atlanta has a number of players who are capable of getting scorching hot from downtown on the right night.

Unfortunately for the New Orleans Pelicans, Tuesday night was the right night for the entire Hawks team. That was especially the case during the third quarter of action, as Atlanta set an NBA record for the most threes made in a frame without a miss. The team went 11-for-11 from downtown in the third, which was a major reason why they were able to outscore the Pelicans by 17 in the quarter.

What might be most impressive is that this wasn’t a case of one dude shooting fireballs out of his hands. Bogdan Bogdanovic, Kevin Huerter, and Trae Young all hit a trio of triples, while Solomon Hill and Lou Williams each hit one. As a result, the team managed to erase a nasty bit of unfortunate franchise history by knocking off the previous record holders for the most threes made without a miss in a frame.

The Hawks entered Tuesday winners of three in a row and sitting in fourth place in the Eastern Conference with a 26-24 record. They almost certainly won’t upend the three teams atop the East — they’re 6.5 games back of the 3-seed — but with their shooting, they’ll be a dangerous matchup for each of the conference’s three-best teams when the playoffs roll around.

Later this week, Florida representative Matt Gaetz is scheduled to speak at a strongly pro-Trump summit. He appears to be trying to pretend everything’s business-as-usual. But it’s not. Last week The New York Times revealed that he’s been under investigation for months by the Department of Justice over allegations involving sex trafficking of a minor. Then more seedy claims emerged.

Now there’s yet another fishy tidbit: The Times reports that, before Trump left office and well before this scandal blew up, Gaetz sought a blanket pre-emptive pardon from the 45th president before he left office. It wasn’t just for him; also included were unidentified congressional allies. The reason? As NYT puts it, to “thwart what he termed the ‘bloodlust’ of their political opponents.”

It’s unclear whether Gaetz knew of the DoJ investigation at the time of the alleged request, or whether he discussed it private with then-president Trump. Alas, it was all for naught: White House lawyers called the blanket pardons a nonstarter that could set a bad precedent. Trump spent his final days in office pardoning dozens of allies, among them his old cohort Steve Bannon. Gaetz, a die-hard Trumpist, was not among them.

Gaetz has denied the allegations against him, although attempts to clear his name have not gone well. Mere hours after the Times made the investigation public knowledge, Gaetz appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight and only succeeded in weirding out his normally sympathetic host. A spokesperson also denied NYT’s latest report.

“Entry-level political operatives have conflated a pardon call from Representative Gaetz — where he called for President Trump to pardon ‘everyone from himself, to his administration, to Joe Exotic’ — with these false and increasingly bizarre, partisan allegations against him,” read the spokesperson’s statement. “Those comments have been on the record for some time, and President Trump even retweeted the congressman, who tweeted them out himself.”

Wherever the truth lies, for now it appears Gaetz can’t pretend like everything’s normal. But despite the Trump speaking gig, it appears, for now, the man himself wants to keep more than a little distance.

(Via NYT)

The Los Angeles Lakers and Toronto Raptors matched up on Tuesday evening in Tampa, with the Lakers still short-handed and the Raptors attempting to build off the recent success of back-to-back wins. In the early going, the Lakers were in control to the tune of a 34-20 lead and, late in the first quarter, Dennis Schröder attempted to stop OG Anunoby in transition.

Schröder and Anunoby were tangled up from there, though, and Anunoby essentially pickedSchröder up and dropped him on the baseline. As you may imagine, a scuffle ensued.

In the end, both Anunoby and Montrezl Harrell were ejected for their roles in the back and forth. Harrell immediately joined the fray, going at it with Gary Trent Jr. within seconds of the initial play, and even with the separation that usually transpires in these instances, it wasn’t enough to keep him in the game.

Anunoby’s initial reaction was certainly the inciting incident and, as a result, the Raptors lost one of the league’s best perimeter defenders for the remainder of the game. It isn’t every day that an NBA player is picked up and dropped onto the hardwood as a result of a non-basketball scuffle, but that’s what happened here.

Who among us hasn’t awoken one day to learn we’ve potentially inspired the lunatic ramblings of a monstrous comic book villain? Such was Tuesday for Jordan Peterson, the controversial professor, psychologist, podcaster, and conservative firebrand, who discovered his beliefs seemed to have been parroted by no less than Captain America baddie Red Skull, in a new comic penned by acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Peterson has made a name for himself by attacking political correctness and identity politics, in media appearances and in self-help books like 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, plus its sequel Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life. In the former, he referred to chaos as “the eternal feminine,” and labeled women “choosy maters (unlike female chimps, their closest animal counterparts).” He is very popular among lonely men.

So imagine Peterson’s surprise when someone pointed out some of the things Red Skull, one of Cap’s most iconic adversaries, was saying in Coates’ latest issue. Cap talks about a young boy he knew “disappearing into the internet,” only to return with a “new theory of the world” — one he learned by watching Red Skull videos on YouTube.

“What has happened to the men of the world is truly one of the great tragedies of our time,” Skull rants. “Once, the American man was a conqueror. Now he is but a caretaker.” He goes on: “No more shall women be summoned to fight your battles. I offer steel for your spine and iron for your gut. I offer you the sword of manhood.”

Cap, at least, sees right through it. “[Skull] tells them what they’ve always longed to hear,” Cap says. “That they are secretly great. That the whole world’s against them. That if they’re truly men, they’ll fight back. And bingo. That’s their purpose. That’s what they live for and that’s what they’ll die for.”

Neither Marvel nor Coates — the former Atlantic correspondent and author of the beloved book Between the World and Me, who has long moonlighted as a comics writer — have yet publicly commented on whether or not Peterson served as the basis for the Marvel villain, last seen onscreen in a brief appearance in Avengers: Endgame and played by Hugo Weaving in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger. But Peterson seemed convinced, spending much of the day afterwards tweeting and re-tweeting about it.

Others pointed out that maybe it’s not great if you recognize your tenets and beliefs in a larger-than-life villain.

Many agreed that this is really funny.

Others praised Coates for (possibly!) trolling Peterson in such a fashion.

Others put actual Peterson quotes over top Red Skull images to see if they gibed.

But it turns out Coates isn’t the first comics writer to lampoon Jordan Peterson.

Others speculated whether or not Peterson’s own backstory sound similar to the one for another comic book baddie: DC’s Scarecrow.

And some imagined a future in which every comic book villain is a thinly veiled takedown of far right pundits.

Last month California Governor Gavin Newsom became the subject of a formal recall election, led by state Republican lawmakers. They weren’t unhappy with his handling of the pandemic; it’s his immigration and tax policies they dislike. He already has at least one potential successor: Three sources have told Axios that no less than Caitlyn Jenner, the legendary athlete-turned-reality TV star, is weighing a run for the state’s most powerful gig.

Jenner, who is an outspoken Republican who previously supported former president Donald Trump, refused to comment on the rumor, as did Caroline Wren, the longtime GOP fundraiser alleged to be advising her. If it turns out to be true, it would be Jenner’s third high-profile job. She first made her name in 1976, when she won the Olympic decathlon, putting her on the cover of magazines, even cereal boxes. She returned to the spotlight starting in 2007 with Keeping Up with the Kardashians, chronicling the family into which she married in 1991. She transitioned into a woman in 2015.

If Jenner does go through with it, she’ll be yet another celebrity pivoting towards politics. Matthew McConaughey is reportedly also considering a run for governor, looking to take over his homestate of Texas. People are also urging Dwayne Johnson to do something similar.

(Via Axios)

Carmelo Anthony has made sure over the past two seasons in Portland that he still has plenty to offer on the NBA court, but as happens to all players as they get older, he’s also keeping one eye on his post-basketball career. On Tuesday, he announced in an interview with Variety that he and his longtime business partner and strategist Asani Swann are launching Creative 7, a production and content company that already has some TV and film projects in the works, joining fellow NBA stars LeBron James and Kevin Durant in the production and content world.

“Storytelling brings people together, and it can serve as a vehicle for propelling larger societal conversations and understanding,” Anthony said to Variety. “We are interested in all types of stories that have the power to serve as catalysts for the change we wish to see in the world.”

Among the projects in the works are a limited series on the friendship between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X called “Blood Brothers” with A&E Studios, as well an unnamed project on the Jersey Four, a group of young basketball players who were racially profiled and shot at by police on the Jersey Turnpike in 1998. While one might assume his close friend in LeBron James would serve as his inspiration, its another mega-star that’s gone from the world of sports to TV and film that Anthony cited as his greatest inspiration.

“Honestly, the way that Dwayne Johnson has approached the business is unparalleled. He came at it with the approach that he was just going to do the work, build a legacy and let his resume speak for itself,” Anthony says of the former WWE wrestler, who is now the highest-paid actor in Hollywood with his own prolific production company. “He put in the hard work and the commitment to change the game, and has continued to chart a path that is all his own.”

Anthony and Swann hope to tell continue opening up paths for storytellers to tell important stories that haven’t necessarily been given opportunity in the past.

During his four years as president, Donald J. Trump rarely appeared to sleep. That didn’t mean he was working. Far as one could tell, he spent most of his many waking hours either rage-tweeting or binge-watching Fox News for hours and hours on end. His successor, meanwhile, seems to be getting enough rest to accomplish as much as he has in his two-and-a-half months on the job. But one person thinks — without, admittedly, knowing anything — that mysterious forces are really doing the bulk of his work.

Trump took a break from clumsily hiding Coke bottles during photo opps with unemployed former employees to call into Newsmax, the far right network still beholden to him, for one of his rambling, self-contradicting epic chats. Host Heather Childers teed him up for a variety of Biden disses. In between getting him to diss his foreign policy and the like, Childers asked the former president if his replacement is “capable” of a position requiring long and intense hours, day in, day out, which is definitely how Trump spent his tenure.

“Well it does take that kind of drive, and it takes tremendous strength and enthusiasm and everything you can imagine,” Trump told Childers. “It’s 50 hours a day and you understand what I mean by that.” He then accused Biden of perhaps not spending his time watching lots of TV and yelling at reporters in front of helicopters.

“It’s a lot of work, and I think other people are making most of the decisions, but I may be wrong about that, I don’t know,” Trump charged, in his typical willy-nilly way. “I don’t really know him very well, but to be honest with you, somebody’s making decisions.”

Trump later doubled down on that accusation, saying, point blank, “Other people are making the decisions.”

It was classic Trump, making bold, baseless claims then backing off them, then making them again, creating confusion out of nothing, all while exaggerating about his own unlikely accomplishments. Luckily he can no longer do his over his favorite social media site, forcing hosts at Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN to pass it all along.

(Via Mediaite)

One of the strangest weddings in human history happened on May 31 in China’s Jiangsu province. A woman was marrying off her son when she realized something unbelievably familiar about his wife-to-be.

She had a birthmark that was identical to the one that her daughter had. Unfortunately, she lost her daughter as a baby and never found her again.

So, the woman asked one of the most uncomfortable questions ever to the bride’s parents: “Did you, by any chance, adopt your daughter?”

The parents were totally shocked because the adoption had been a family secret. But they told the groom’s mother that her instincts were correct, the daughter was adopted. The mother of the groom immediately broke into tears, claiming that she was the mother and had been searching for her lost daughter for over twenty years.

This caused the bride to break down because she had been searching for her mother, too.

via Nat Tung / Flickr

As you can see, this opened up a real can of worms. Should the couple be allowed to marry if they are brother and sister? Surely it wouldn’t be legal and it’d also be seriously creepy.

Alas, the wedding was allowed to go on because the son was adopted. After searching for years for her daughter to no avail, the mother adopted a boy.

The bride later said that meeting her real mother was “happier than the wedding day itself.”

So, is there anything to this story besides an incredible coincidence? Well, there is a psychological phenomenon known as Genetic Sexual Attraction in which people who are reunited with their long-lost siblings or parents often experience obsessive emotions about their newfound relatives.

Sometimes these feelings can turn sexual.

“This isn’t fiction; in the age of the sperm donor, it’s a growing reality: 50% of reunions between siblings, or parents and offspring, separated at birth result in obsessive emotions,” a report in The Guardian said.

In this case, the bride and groom aren’t genetically related. But, the fact that the bride was genetically similar to the groom’s mother could have played a part in his attraction to her.

“We are drawn to what is familiar,” psychotherapist Robi Ludwig told USA Today. “When there is a genetic link, that can increase, especially if you are not raised together.”

via PixaBay

The story could also be further confirmation of the old theory that men always wind up marrying their mothers.

A 2019 study published in The Daily Mirror found that “almost two-thirds of men are in a relationship with someone remarkably similar to their mother.” It found that 64% of heterosexual men are attracted to women with the same personality traits as their mothers.

All in all, it had to be an emotional day for all involved. Just imagine being the mother, she got to have the privilege of seeing both her children being married at the same time. The bride and groom also have the unique experience of having their mother and mother-in-law as the same person.