Using misleading Facebook pages and deceptive ads, ZestAds sold coronavirus masks at wildly inflated prices.
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“As a nurse or a doctor, at least you’re getting paid a decent amount of money to risk your life,” one hospital clerical worker earning $15 an hour told BuzzFeed News.
“I want to see them considering the beauty industry as a real industry worth saving,” said Mercedes Ortiz-Olivieri, who owns a salon in Washington DC.
The two parties are miles apart on what to do in the next wave of coronavirus relief. Republicans say they do not expect anything to pass for a long time.
Welcome to this week’s Wednesday Night Wars open discussion thread. This week it’s an AEW Dynamite featuring the long awaited clash of titans between Chris Jericho and Suge D, aka PINEAPPLE PETE, going up against an episode of NXT that includes a Tag Team Championship match and D-X making a “major announcement.” The announcement: suck it.
On tonight’s cards:
AEW Dynamite
- Match of the Century: Chris Jericho vs. Pineapple Pete
- Hikaru Shida vs. Penelope Ford vs. Kris Statlander vs. Dr. Britt Baker DMD
- Kenny Omega and Matt Hardy vs. Santana and Ortiz
- The Exalted One Mr. Brodie Lee vs. Christopher Daniels
- MJF’s return match
- appearances from Lance Archer, Jake Roberts, and Jon Moxley
NXT
- D-Generation arrive, presumably on a jeep they’re calling a tank, to make a “major announcement” about NXT
- Finn Bálor vs. Cameron Grimes
- NXT Tag Team Championship Match: Matt Riddle and Timothy Thatcher (c) vs. Imperium
- Rhea Ripley has something to say!
As always, +1 your favorite comments from tonight’s open thread and if we get enough comments, we’ll include 10 of the best in tomorrow’s Best and Worst of NXT and AEW reports. Make sure you flip the comments by selecting “newest” in the drop down menu under discussion, and enjoy the show!
Cate Blanchett doesn’t have a huge role in the Lord of the Rings trilogy; all told, we only get a handful of minutes with her elf-royal Galadriel. But it turns out we almost had if not more Galadriel then at least more Blanchett. The two-time Oscar-winner went on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, as caught by IndieWire, and as usual, her host was able to get some never-heard goods out of his guest. Among them: That she almost also played a dwarf.
Blanchett spoke about her too brief stint on the New Zealand set of Peter Jackson’s beloved J.R.R. Tolkien adaptation, which she enjoyed so much she didn’t want to leave. Indeed, she begged Jackson and his collaborator/wife Fran Walsh to give her a secret cameo, in which she would appear not only as a dwarf but a male dwarf.
“There’s not too many chicks in the Tolkien universe,” Blanchett told Maron. “I loved it so much and I did say to Peter and Fran, they were doing a banquet scene with a whole lot of dwarves. I always wanted to play the bearded lady, so I asked them, ‘Could I be your hairy wife woman when you pan across the banquet table of dwarves?’ Of course I couldn’t because the timing shifted. But it takes them forever. For me, Galadriel it was just three weeks.”
Blanchett’s Galadriel makes her biggest appearances in the first film, 2001’s The Fellowship of the Ring, and her appearances in The Two Towers and The Return of the King are comparatively brief. It’s a shame it didn’t work out, but at least she got to play a man on-screen a few years later, earning yet another Oscar nomination for playing ’60s electric Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There. So at least we got that.
(Via WTF Podcast & IndieWire)
Epic dropped some big news on Wednesday, as the company announced that it has a new edition of the Unreal Engine on the way and the potential is pretty spectacular. Unreal Engine 5 will release alongside the new console generation, giving the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X the potential to make games that look and play like nothing we’ve ever seen.
The point of the demo was to show what Unreal Engine 5 is capable of. They released a nine-minute video showing someone travel through what appears to be a long lost city in a desert world. The effects are spectacular, the lighting is perfect, and the cinematography is breathtaking.
The video is incredible and the potential of what Unreal Engine 5 can do should have video game fans everywhere excited. The problem is that this code is also probably not actually what games will look like when the new consoles finally release.
Demo code is infamous for being created for the demo alone. This showcase was meant to show what Unreal Engine 5 will be able to do at its peak, but it’s also being shown in a short cinematic format. Who knows how it will respond once you start letting players get involved and running off the beaten path laid before them or crashing into things they’re not supposed to crash into.
This does not mean that the developers are lying or trying to pull a fast one on the consumer. They wanted to show us the Unreal Engine 5 at its peak, and that’s what they did. It’s amazing that we got to see what it has the potential to be. I’m hopeful that one day we will see games that look exactly like this, but it’s important to take it all with a grain of salt. This is what video games can one day become, it does not mean that’s what they currently are.
For those in need of a quick crash course, an engine for video games is the base for a lot of games. While developers can take that engine and go in all kinds of artistic directions, having a base engine gives devs the ability to develop games quicker. Instead of starting from scratch, they already have something to build off of. This saves time, effort, and money. It already takes long enough to make a game, building your own engine from scratch will make it take even longer.
So what Epic does is they create an engine, the Unreal Engine 5, and sell it to development companies so they can build off of it and make their own games. What’s awesome about this is once it gets in the hand of developers they can really do whatever they want with it — games like Fortnite, Outer Worlds, Final Fantast VII: Remake, and Gears 5 used Unreal Engine 4.
No two games look the same despite all using the same engine. That’s why these new engines are always so exciting. It’s a chance for developers to make even more games and be even more creative. Even if none of these games ever look like the demo, you can be confident that we’re going to get some visually remarkable games in the future.
Featuring members of bands like Free Cake For Every Creature, Remember Sports, and Friendship, 2nd Grade is the latest exciting export to come out of Philadelphia. Led by Peter Gill, the new album from the band, Hit To Hit, is centered around one’s identity — specifically the ways that a person can be an amalgam of many different unique personalities. It’s a heavy topic to handle, but the music is significantly lighter. Hit To Heat features 24 tracks that span the spectrum from peppy power pop to more reserved and introspective.
To celebrate the new album, Gill sat down to talk Joni Mitchell, Jackie Brown, and the virtue of monochrome fashion in the latest Indie Mixtape 20 Q&A.
What are four words you would use to describe your music?
Smart power pop mess.
It’s 2050 and the world hasn’t ended and people are still listening to your music. How would you like it to be remembered?
Cult classic band from the ‘20s that wrote great pop songs and inspired a new wave of teenage power poppers. Criminally overlooked, remembered for their brief cameo in Austin Powers 4!
What’s your favorite city in the world to perform?
Portland, Maine.
Who’s the person who has most inspired your work, and why?
Alex Chilton of Big Star, Panther Burns, Box Tops etc. He truly had the voice, and he never stopped looking for new ways to use it. Also he was a connoisseur of high & low musical forms, which I admire.
Where did you eat the best meal of your life?
Peking duck at Quanjude in Beijing when I was a student there.
What album do you know every word to?
What was the best concert you’ve ever attended?
I’ve seen Jonathan Richman a few times and it’s always been transcendent.
What is the best outfit for performing and why?
Monochrome. It’s dramatic and establishes a mood, yet requires very little effort to put together.
Who’s your favorite person to follow on Twitter and/or Instagram?
@phillypublicpools on Instagram. Idyllic shots of swimming pools all over Philly, they only post during the summer.
What’s your most frequently played song in the van on tour?
“Stop Ou Encore” by Plastic Bertrand. We first heard it on AM radio in Montreal and it quickly became a staple. It’s developed into a tour game where one person will say “stop… ou… encore” and everyone else responds with the high-pitched “encore” like in the song. A great way to kill eight or ten hours in the van.
What’s the last thing you Googled?
What to do with lots of turnips
What album makes for the perfect gift?
Love Is Overtaking Me by Arthur Russell.
Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever crashed while on tour?
Genuinely haunted mansion in New Orleans.
What’s the story behind your first or favorite tattoo?
I have no tattoos, but one time I saw one of a cartoon shark wearing swim trunks and holding a surfboard, and next to that it said “SPRING BREAK ‘94” in big aqua letters. The person who had it was probably around 23, I can’t stop thinking about it.
What artists keep you from flipping the channel on the radio?
If I’m listening to the radio, it’s WPRB (Princeton college radio) or WRTI (Philly classical & jazz public radio) and in either case there’s no way I’m touching that dial!
What’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?
That’s a toughie, there’s a lot of good people doing nice things out there. But I will say — folks who give random touring bands a place to crash are angels from heaven.
What’s one piece of advice you’d go back in time to give to your 18-year-old self?
Stop playing video games and spend that time learning how to do something useful!
What’s the last show you went to?
I think the last show I went to that I wasn’t playing was Alex G, Tomberlin, and Corey Flood in Philly.
What movie can you not resist watching when it’s on TV?
What would you cook if Kanye were coming to your house for dinner?
Penne alla vodka and caesar salad.
Hit To Hit is out May 29 on Double Double Whammy. Pre-order it here. While we have you, don’t forget to sign up for the Indie Mixtape newsletter below for music recommendations delivered directly to your inbox every week.
In a market that is becoming increasingly reliant on delivered food, there is an all-out war brewing between consumers, businesses, and lawmakers and the food delivery services that we love to hate (but can’t seem to help ourselves from using). Earlier in the month, states started to issue commission caps against delivery apps in an effort to protect restaurant profits and struggling businesses. Now it looks as if some delivery apps are considering consolidating power — as the Wall Street Journal reports that Uber Eats is looking to purchase GrubHub, a move that would see Uber own a majority of the market and has some analysts worried will create a domino effect, causing DoorDash and Postmates to merge. A series of mergers could virtually eliminate competition in the delivery food app space, which is a bad thing for the hungry consumer as a lack of competition means a lack of choices, which inevitably leads to higher prices.
The latest power grab has lawmakers, city officials, and antitrust experts worried, as both companies have a history of being less than charitable to their employees and the businesses they rely on to operate. According to Ars Technica, Uber has a history of denying their drivers a fair living wage, and Grubhub has a history of “exploiting local restaurants through deception tactics and extortionate fees,” in the words of David Cicilline, a congressman who sits on the chair of the House Antitrust Subcommittee and characterized Uber’s move as “a new low in pandemic profiteering.”
According to Forbes, analysts at the investment firm Wedbush Securities estimate that a merger between Uber Eats and Grubhub would see Uber controlling 55% of the total meal delivery market, and, according to data collected by analytics firm Second Measure, would result in a market share growth of 80% in certain markets, like New York City.
“Should Uber buy Grubhub, a big ripple effect will happen,” warns managing director at Wedbush, Daniel Ives, “It would potentially be a catalyst to DoorDash and Postmates to have to get married as well.”
Consolidating food delivery apps will give companies more leverage to further exert their influence and power over independent restaurants, especially when it comes to fees — already a source of contention between cities and apps. In cities where commission caps have been proposed or capped, Uber has retaliated by either ending service, like in San Francisco where the company suspended all deliveries to the low-income Treasure Island area in response to a 15% cap, or by passing on the charges to the consumer, like in Jersey City where the company began to add a $3 surcharge after a 10 percent commission cap.
As other cities entertain the idea of implementing commission caps to further protect businesses, the idea of merging will only become more enticing to the delivery apps — who seem to want to avoid both regulation and competition at all costs.