Category: News

When Black Lives Matter protests arose around the country following the murder of George Floyd last year, many people wondered if the U.S. had crossed a threshold. Though protests over police brutality and racial bias in our criminal justice system had been happening for decades, the movement had never been so widespread or supported by so many. George Floyd’s murder being caught on film on the heels of Ahmad Arbery’s killing, Breonna Taylor’s killing, in addition so many others, led to the largest civil rights movement since the 1960s.

The prior movement, which culminated with the passing of the Civil Rights Act, brought changes to our laws—a vital step toward liberty and justice for all. Despite considerable backlash at the time, that act cut the visible weed of government-sanctioned racism off at the surface and ultimately changed the social acceptance of legal racial discrimination.

Jim Crow laws that blatantly protected and defended racial oppression seem archaic and wrong to most Americans now—but it’s important to remember that that change of heart was hard-won by civil rights activists at the expense of their own safety, security, and in some cases, their lives. It’s also important to acknowledge that while the Civil Rights Act marked an important turning point in this country, it didn’t fix the problem at its root.

The roots of racism run deep, and digging up any root system is messy, back-breaking work. And that work is made even more difficult when a good percentage of the country says, “I don’t see it” simply because the visible part of the weed was cut down when the Civil Rights Act passed.

George Floyd’s murder brought the issue of police brutality against Black Americans into the light of day for all the world to see. And Derek Chauvin’s guilty verdicts offer a glimmer of hope that maybe—maybe—we finally have a chance at starting to dismantle part of that root system.

“This day in history is a turning point,” said Brandon Williams, the nephew of George Floyd, in remarks following the verdict. Many prominent voices, from civil rights leaders to politicians, used that same hopeful phrase.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s daughter, Bernice King, wrote on Twitter, “God knew just how much we could bear. This is a turning point. Let’s continue to correct everything that stands against love. That is true #justice.”

Former Ohio state senator Nina Turner wrote, “This needs to be a turning point for America. It does not end here—far from it, but it’s a damn good feeling to exhale and feel that some semblance of justice was served. My heart is with the Floyd family.”

Then she added, “If you ever doubt the power of movements, please remember today.”

Senator Rev. Raphael Warnock issued a statement that included the phrase as well. “As a voice for Georgians in the Senate, and as a Black man, I hope today’s verdict is the beginning of a turning point in our country where people who have seen this trauma over and over again will know it is possible to have equal protection under the law,” he wrote.

Ben Crump, the attorney for the Floyd family as well as other Black Americans killed by the police, and who has won over 200 cases involving police brutality, added to the chorus.

“Painfully earned justice has finally arrived for George Floyd’s family,” he wrote on Twitter. “This verdict is a turning point in history and sends a clear message on the need for accountability of law enforcement. Justice for Black America is justice for all of America!”

Vice President Kamala Harris offered a similar message as she spoke before President Biden about what the verdict means for the direction of our country.

“Because of smartphones, so many Americans have now seen the racial injustice that black Americans have known for generations, the racial injustice that we have fought for generations, that my parents protested in the 1960s, that millions of us— Americans of every race—protested last summer,” she said.

“Here’s the truth about racial injustice. It is not just a Black America problem or a people of color problem. It is a problem for every American. It is keeping us from fulfilling the promise of liberty and justice for all, and it is holding our nation back from realizing our full potential.”

President Biden spoke at length about the reality of racism in America, the need for accountability in policing, and the trauma that has been inflicted for far too long on communities of color. Speaking of George Floyd’s murder and the jury’s verdict, he said:

“Nothing can ever bring their brother or their father back, but this can be a giant step forward in the march toward justice in America. Let’s also be clear, that such a verdict is also much too rare. For so many people, it seems like it took a unique and extraordinary convergence of factors, a brave young woman with a smartphone camera, a crowd that was traumatized, traumatized witnesses, a murder that lasts almost 10 in broad daylight for ultimately the whole world to see, officers stay standing up and testifying against a fellow officer instead of just closing ranks, which should it be commended. A jury who heard the evidence, carried out their civic duty in the midst of an extraordinary moment, under extraordinary pressure. For so many, it feels like it took all of that for the judicial system to deliver a just, just basic accountability…

“No one should be above the law and today’s verdict sends that message, but it’s not enough. We can’t stop here. In order to deliver real change and reform we can, and we must do more to reduce the likelihood that tragedy like this will ever happen to occur again.”

Biden called for the passage of the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act, which would ban chokeholds and carotid holds at the federal level, ban no-knock warrants for federal drug cases, end qualified immunity, make it easier for police accused of misconduct to be prosecuted, prohibit discriminatory profiling, create a national police misconduct registry, improve police training, invest in community programs designed to promote equitable policies, and more.

Biden said:

“The battle for soul of this nation has been a constant push and pull for more than 240 years, a tug of war between the American ideal that we’re all created equal, and the harsh reality that racism has long torn us apart. At our best, the American ideal wins out. So, we can’t leave this moment or look away thinking our work is done. We have to look at it. We have to look at it as we did for those nine minutes and 29 seconds. We have to listen.

‘I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.’ Those were George Floyd’s last words. We can’t let those words die with him. We have to keep hearing those words. We must not turn away. We can’t turn away. We have a chance to begin to change the trajectory in this country. That’s my hope and prayer that we live up to the legacy.”

Whether the George Floyd verdict will truly serve as a turning point for the U.S. remains to be seen, but it’s also not something that’s out of our control. This is a choice we have to make, individually and collectively. We the people have to decide that enough truly is enough, raise our voices in myriad ways calling for change that will lead us closer to true liberty and justice for all, and dedicate ourselves to the long, hard work of uprooting racism once and for all.

The only question is, will we?

In a rare moment for The View, Meghan McCain did not support her conservative brethren at Fox News or attempt to “both sides” a controversial issue. While the panel discussed the Derek Chauvin verdict, which found him guilty of the murder of George Floyd, the co-hosts tackled Greg Gutfeld’s groan-worthy remarks. In a move that audibly rankled the behind-the-scenes crew, Gutfeld said he was “glad” that Chauvin was found guilty because “I want a verdict that keeps this country from going up in flames.” He then doubled down by admitting his concerns are entirely selfish.

“I’m at least being honest,” Gutfeld said. “My neighborhood was looted. I don’t ever want to go through that again.”

McCain, however, did not appreciate Gutfeld’s “honesty.” She fired back at his remarks by pleading with “everyone on the right to stop politicizing this.” Via The Daily Beast:

“A man was murdered in cold blood and we all saw it on the internet. There’s no empathy. It makes me think these people have never experienced loss and grief of any kind. If you don’t have the humanity to not make this about you, and not make this about your neighborhood, then I don’t even know what to say. I wish that family peace, if it’s possible.”

Clearly, McCain was moved by an earlier interview on The View with members of George Floyd’s family, and she emphasized that “we should focus on their pain, their grief, and trauma.”

(Via The Daily Beast)

After releasing their album Ohms late last year, Deftones released their latest single from the record, “Ceremony,” in January. Now they’re back with a video for the song, from Australian writer/director Leigh Whannell. The video stars Cleopatra Coleman — who was a main cast member of The Last Man On Earth — and in it, she works her way through a series of mysterious rooms before encountering a creepy fortuneteller.

In an interview on BBC Radio 1‘s Rock Show With Daniel P. Carter from September 2020, Chino Moreno said of the song, “That was one of the first songs that we wrote, but a lot of the stuff kind of comes from jamming. So ‘Ceremony’ was one of those ones where someone was just playing something and then everybody just kind of picks up their instrument like ‘oh!’ [and] starts reacting to each other, and then it just starts to build. I feel like I really connected with the song. Lyrically, that song is pretty dark. I kind of tether with the true meaning of that song, ‘cause it’s really, really, really bad. It’s not good. That’s a hard one to talk about. But as far as the music and the whole vibe, the whole song to me, I think that it’s a special one on this record for sure.”

Watch the “Ceremony” video above and revisit our review with Moreno here.

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

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier recently revealed that Zemo’s villainous dancing days are over after we saw him tearing up the dance floor in Madripoor, and thank goodness that Marvel made good on the so-called “Zemo cut” so that we can always behold the marvel-ous spectacle… let’s see it again, shall we?

Art. Well, there was apparently another scene that had “a little dance,” and that moment got cut. This information arrives courtesy of Danny Ramirez, who portrays cop Joaquin Torres, on the show. According to Ramirez, there was a joke about South Korean boy band BTS, and it ended up on the cutting room floor, but not because the dance was bad or anything? Here’s what Ramirez told Collider:

“There’s not much that didn’t make the cut, but there’s a really funny moment in that last episode… I could see why they had to cut it based on, I think maybe licensing, who’s to say. But it’s this little ad-lib about how ‘I wish we were all more like the boy band BTS.’ Because I was like, I thought we could be more like RM. And so it was a fun little thing and there was a little dance that went with it. So yeah, that was a little bit of something where that would have been cool. But [the scene] was more about the dynamic between us and it still got to be a moment between me and Sam, which was the most important.”

That’s a bummer, although the matter certainly couldn’t be helped if the joke (and dance) got pulled. We will always have those Zemo moves.

(Via Collider)

I’ve become obsessed with the Oklahoma Fried Onion Smash Burger, made famous by burger expert and historian George Motz. It’s the burger I make the most at home. I’ve become so devoted to the simple yet perfect burger, in fact, that I’m seriously thinking about getting a proper stainless steel deli slicer — just so I can get my onions ridiculously paper-thin. I don’t need a deli slicer, mind you, and I really don’t have the counter space for one. But here I am, about to drop a few hundred bucks just so I can make a dang burger. I might have a problem.

As with anything, you have to practice and practice to make the perfect burger at home. It’s a process and tweaks are part of the fun. So as I continue along my own journey, deep in its Oklahoma Fried Onion phase, I figured I’d give a plant-based option a shot. I’ve never cooked burgers with loose plant-based “meat” before, so I had doubts as to whether the loose Beyond Beef would work in a smash burger format. Moreover, you hear a lot about plant burgers competing with real beef and I was eager to see if I could fool myself.

I was pleasantly surprised by how well this worked out. Obviously, veggie patties created to imitate beef are rapidly improving (while being somewhat controversial). This probably isn’t a vegan burger for vegans who don’t long for the taste of meat. But if you’re trying to balance beef-taste and plant-based, it’s a major win. Let’s get into the details.

Vegan Oklahoma Fried Onion Smash Burger

Ingredients:

• 6-oz. Beyond Meat Beyond Beef
• 2 slices Violife “Cheddar”
• 1/2 yellow onion
• 1 vegan burger bun
• Salt
• Neutral oil
• 4-6 pickled cucumber chips

I’m using Beyond Meat Beyond Beef because I can get that easily where I shop. I’m making four double cheeseburgers for dinner, hence all the meatballs in the image below. The ingredients list above is for one double cheeseburger.

The Beyond Beef will be a bit wet and sticky. I’d recommend wetting your hands with tap water before weighing and forming the balls, to keep the Beyond Beef from coating your hands too much. Even if you’re using food-safe gloves, I’d still get them wet first. This stuff is a little sticky and you don’t want to be constantly scraping it off of your palms.

As for the rest, it comes down to what’s available in your supermarket. I’m using a plant-based cheese I know works. The buns come from a local bakery that I like to order bread from. And the cucumber chips are pretty standard jarred ones you should be able to get anywhere.

Other than that, this burger doesn’t need any sauce or anything else. It’s five base ingredients — patty, cheese, bun, salt, and onion — that work magic when put together right. Though, I do like mine with a lot of pickles.

What You’ll Need:

• Cast iron skillet
• Heavy, thin metal spatula
• Mandolin
• Cutting board
• Kitchen knife
• Scale (optional)

Theoretically, you should be cooking these on a griddle. Most people don’t have that in their homes. So a good, heavy cast-iron skillet will do just fine. As for the heavy spatula, I mean something like this to get the job done. The one item you really need is a mandoline. As I ranted above, a deli slicer is preferred but expensive. A decent mandolin will set you back between $30 and $40. That’s well worth it, beyond just slicing onions super thin for this burger.

Lastly, a kitchen scale is useful, but you can eye-ball a three-ounce burger ball pretty easily. It’s usually a ball that just fits in the palm of your hand — about halfway between a golf ball and a baseball in size.

Method:

• Weigh out two three-ounce balls of Beyond Meat Beyond Beef and lightly form them into small meatballs (don’t overpack).
• Peel a whole onion. Set your mandolin to its thinnest setting and run the onion through, creating superfine onion rings.
• Use a bread knife to cut your buns in half, if needed.
• Heat a cast-iron skillet on high heat with maybe a teaspoon of oil.
• Once the pan is very hot (nearly smoking), add the meatballs.
• Hit each of them with a large pinch of salt and then top with a pile of onions.
• Using a heavy spatula, smash the burgers down into the pan while tapering the edges as thin as possible.
• Let cook until the onion starts to brown on the edges of the patty (about 2 minutes).
• Slide the spatula under the patty quickly and with a bit of force. Flip. Repeat with the other patty.
• Add one slice of “cheese” on top of each patty.
• Place the crown of the bun over one of the patties and place the heal on top of that to steam the bread as the cheese melts and the onion browns (about 2 minutes).
• Once the cheese is melty and the edges of the patty are crisp, use the spatula to stack the two patties onto the warm bun heal.
• Serve with pickled cucumber chips immediately.

Bottom Line:

This really hit the spot. No, it wasn’t the same flavor as an all-beef smash burger. It was very close though. I’d say the flavor was definitely in the savory grain arena, while still feeling like a really solid plant-based burger. I think if I did this again, I’d add some (anchovy-free) Worcestershire sauce into the patty mix to amp up the beefiness while still keeping it vegan, or some mushroom powder. MSG and fish sauce are added to the famous Impossible Burgers at Umami Burger, but then you’re not vegan anymore.

The onion being smashed into the burger really helped the patty stay well-formed both in the cooking process and during the eating. It also helped form a nice crust around the edges of the burger. There was a nice textural element on the bare patty that didn’t have onions smashed into it as well. It browned well, creating a true Maillard effect — with that caramelization amping up the flavor. After making a mistake on a recent breakfast sandwich, I was patient this time and gave the plant-based cheese plenty of time to melt, which helped really bring the gooey, cheeseburger vibe to the proceedings.

In the end, this was a really solid burger. The onions were crispy. The burger was smashed, held its form, and flavorful. The bun was steamed nicely. The pickles were a great counterpoint to it all. It’s not beef, but it would fool plenty of folks and it was most certainly delicious.

One of my favorite pop culture what-ifs in recent memory is: what if Greta Gerwig’s How I Met Your Mother spinoff, How I Met Your Dad, had been picked up by CBS? Would there be no Lady Bird and Little Women, two excellent and Academy Award-nominated films, and what about her Barbie movie with Margot Robbie? I guess we’ll never know — unless Hilary Duff gets nominated for directing a semi-autobiographical film.

The Younger and Lizzie McGuire actress is set to star in Hulu’s How I Met Your Father, a sequel series to How I Met Your Mother. Variety reports that the show will follow Sophie, played by Duff, as she tells “her son the story of how she met his father: a story that catapults us back to the year 2021 where Sophie and her close-knit group of friends are in the midst of figuring out who they are, what they want out of life, and how to fall in love in the age of dating apps and limitless options.” How I Met Your Father will be overseen by This Is Us co-showrunners Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger, while How I Met Your Mother creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas are onboard as executive producers.

“I’ve been incredibly lucky in my career to play some wonderful characters and I’m looking forward to taking on the role of Sophie,” Duff said. “As a huge fan of How I Met Your Mother, I’m honored and even a little nervous that Carter and Craig would trust me with the sequel of their baby. Isaac and Elizabeth are brilliant, and I can’t wait to work alongside them and all of their genius… I realize these are big shoes to fill and I’m excited to slip my 6 ½’s in there!”

It’s unclear whether any of the How I Met Your Mother actors will appear in the spinoff, but I guarantee Neil Patrick Harris’ Barney Stinson shows up at some point, likely on the receiving of a slap from Sophie. Also, this should be the show’s theme song:

Does it have anything to do with the plot? Not really. But whatever, it’s a good song.

(Via Variety)

It appears Bartees Strange is working his way through the Taylor Swift Folklore and Evermore extended universe when it comes to covers. Before he released his album Live Forever last year, he preceded it with an EP of The National covers. Now, he has offered a rendition of a Bon Iver classic, “Skinny Love.”

Bartees performed the track during a live session for SiriusXMU. He didn’t stray far from the intimate acoustic aesthetic of the original song (from Bon Iver’s 2007 album For Emma, Forever Ago), but his voice can successfully navigate the range of Justin Vernon’s falsetto, so his performance of the song was totally fine.

Bartees took a minute to give flowers to Aaron Dessner during his recent Tiny Desk concert. Calling Dessner the “indie-rock Michael Jordan,” he said, “The dude inspires all of us. The work he did this year — the Taylor [Swift] records, Big Red Machine stuff, the National stuff… as a producer and a person that makes stuff, it’s just so wildly inspiring to see someone work like that.”

In an interview from last year, Bartees also told Uproxx, “I see bands The National and I’m like, ‘These dudes, they’ve got families and relationships and great friendships and they tour the world and they make whatever they want. I want that.’ It took me years to be able to say it without feeling foolish, but I aspire to that. I feel like I’m entitled to that.”

Watch Bartees Strange cover Bon Iver’s “Skinny Love” above.

A grand jury in Minnesota found Derek Chauvin guilty of all three charges related to the murder of George Floyd. While it is hardly justice due to the fact that Floyd lost his life, it is an exceedingly rare example of a police officer being held accountable for their actions in the United States of America.

In the aftermath, there were celebrations in some cities, but there were no riots, something that apparently surprised some people. Fox News personality Tucker Carlson used his show on Tuesday night to more or less throw a fit in response, baselessly theorizing that jury members were intimidated into handing down a guilty verdict and melting down when a former law enforcement official said that Chauvin did, indeed, use excessive force.

Stephen A. Smith saw this and issued up a response on Wednesday’s edition of First Take. Smith, who has been on Fox News in the past and has mentioned that there are personalities and shows he enjoys, called out Carlson specifically for being wildly off base.

“Tucker Carlson is an entirely different matter altogether,” Smith said after mentioning the things he likes on the network. “I’m not going to engage in name-calling or anything like that, that would be inappropriate and unnecessary and unfair to him. But what I will say, when you literally intimate that the jury found Derek Chauvin guilty because they were afraid, ok, essentially of riots taking place and things of that nature, you just wonder sometimes if this is the kind of thing that leads to the divisiveness that we’re talking about.”

Smith went on to say that he believed that Carlson said Chauvin acted out of line in the past, and then dove into the ways that this sort of rhetoric fans the flames.

“These are the kind of things that make people shake, and make people shiver,” Smith said. “Because you realize that in the face of such obvious, flagrant evidence, conspicuous evidence, there’s still gonna be somebody that opens the subject to debate, when there are certain things that are simply not debatable. We saw what Derek Chauvin did! Saw it! The world saw it! There were protests all over the world because of what happened to George Floyd! And yet he goes on national television last night and says that. That’s a problem. I’m not gonna disrespect him, I’m just saying that’s a damn problem.”

It stands to reason that Carlson — who exists in a world where, despite his wealth and status, the worst thing anyone can be is mean to him specifically — will have a response about this sometime this week.

Today, British rapper Little Simz announced that she will soon return with a full-length follow-up to her critically-hailed 2019 album Grey Area. The new album, due on September 3 via Age 101, is titled Sometimes I Might Be Introvert and preceded by lead single “Introvert,” for which Simz also dropped a video today. The song features a boisterous orchestra backing Simz’s poetic lyrics while the video evokes scenes of the past year of social justice struggle, juxtaposed with classical art depicting generations of conflict and cathartic, interpretive dance choreography.

Despite being two years removed from Grey Area, which was praised as one of 2019’s best albums, including in Uproxx’s “Best Hip-Hop Albums Of 2019,” Simz hasn’t been far from the spotlight. In 2020, she released the surprise EP, Drop 6, which she’d recorded throughout the quarantine. She also appeared in a regular role on the reboot of Top Boy, while recent debates about female rappers on Twitter have consistently surfaced her name among the genre’s most innovative and interesting female representatives.

Watch Little Simz’s “Introvert” video above.

Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is due 9/3. You can pre-save it here. Check out the tracklist and cover below.

1. “Introvert”
2. “Woman” feat. Cleo Sol
3. “Two Worlds Apart”
4. “I Love You, I Hate You”
5. “Little Q Pt 1 (Interlude)”
6. “Little Q Pt 2”
7. “Gems (Interlude)”
8. “Speed”
9. “Standing Ovation”
10. “I See You”
11. “The Rapper That Came to Tea (Interlude)”
12. “Rollin Stone”
13. “Protect My Energy”
14. “Never Make Promises (Interlude)”
15. “Point and Kill” feat. Obongjayar
16. “Fear No Man”
17. “The Garden (Interlude)”
18. “How Did You Get Here”
19. “Miss Understood”

Following her breakout success as Daenerys Targaryen in the HBO series Game of Thrones, Emilia Clarke is adding a new line to her impressive resume: comic book writer. After a night out with friends, the Khaleesi actress couldn’t get over a madcap idea she came up with as joke, so she teamed up with writer Marguerite Bennett to put the “f*cking cool” idea into writing. The result is a three issue mini-series for Image Comics called M.O.M.: Mother of Madness.

While the title sounds like a clever reference Clarke’s days as the Mother of Dragons, the book is anything but. Set in the present-day, M.O.M. will focus on Maya, a struggling, working mother who discovers she suddenly has freakish powers that seem to arrive at, uh, certain times of the month. Via Entertainment Weekly:

Clarke is deliberately vague about those powers — “There’s many, many things that she can do that are pretty cool,” she cryptically teases — but not about their source. “She can do a lot of stuff at certain moments in her month,” Clarke says with a laugh. “She can do all of these wicked things, but they all come from the fact that she is a woman who has a menstrual cycle. I thought it would be cool to have all the things that women don’t like about themselves, flip that, and make those the things that make her superhuman.”

Interestingly, M.O.M. isn’t Clarke’s only venture into the world of superheroes. She’s reportedly in talks to join Marvel’s Secret Invasion alongside Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury, who has to stop a hidden invasion of shape-shifting aliens with the help of one of their own: Ben Mendelsohn’s fan-favorite character, Talos, from Captain Marvel.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)