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When the Golden State Warriors traded Jordan Poole to the Washington Wizards in order to bring in Chris Paul, there were not many who saw that move coming and it raised plenty of eyebrows around the league. It wasn’t trading Poole that was the shocker, but just how little they seemingly moved him for, as they brought in Paul on an expiring and had to send a pick with Poole in order to facilitate the deal.

Poole was coming off a rough shooting year with the Warriors, shooting just 33.4 percent from three in the regular season before seeing that drop to 25.4 percent in the playoffs, and was not exactly a favorite in the locker room after he got punched by Draymond Green in a preseason practice. Still, he was a year removed from being a key figure in their run to a championship and seemed like the bridge between the longtime core and the future for the Warriors. However, the Warriors didn’t seem interested in seeing if he could find his rhythm again next year given his price tag, and shuttled him off to Washington to bring in a longtime rival in Chris Paul.

Charles Barkley recently spoke with Monte Poole of NBC Sports Bay Area about his initial reaction to the trade, and Barkley broke it down bluntly as only he can.

“Yeah, they hated Jordan Poole,” Barkley said of the trade. “They really hated Jordan Poole. That’s the number one thing I said to myself is they really hated Jordan Poole [laughs]. This is going to be a chance for him to reset. He had a tough year with peaks and valleys, so he needed a fresh start so I hope it works out for him.”

It’s hard to see it as anything different than that, even with Steph Curry and others saying the right things publicly about Poole. It certainly felt like they were picking Green over Poole (and it’s understandable why), and we’ve seen recently that folks around Poole aren’t exactly pleased with how Draymond’s talked about the punch and the aftermath. Hopefully Barkley is right and a fresh start in Washington can get Poole right, and it’s possible this deal will work out for all parties involved in the long run.

For those who haven’t yet caught the Barbie movie, here is a warning for spoilers. But for those who have, Ryan Gosling’s Ken is OBSESSED with Matchbox Twenty’s “Push” as a running joke in the movie. He eventually extends this love for the song to all of the Ken’s in Ken-dom, as they serenade the Barbies by the campfire in a truly hilarious scene.

Gosling’s rendition of the track is so popular that it has since been released on Spotify. In a recent interview with USA Today, the band’s lead singer, Rob Thomas, is sharing how he feels about the bit.

“I want to preface this by saying that I thought it was hilarious,” Thomas shared. Still, he also brought up a story about how the band became the joke in Bring It On and had thought it would be a similar story.

“When I got the call for Barbie, they told me, ‘Ken’s by the fireside, he’s playing the song and it’s his favorite band,’” he added. “So I did this thinking I’d be the butt of the joke, and I was fine with that. I’m pretty thick-skinned. But [Atlantic Records’] Julie Greenwald came to the Hollywood Bowl a month or two ago. She had just seen the movie and was like, ‘You come out of it loving Ken and loving ‘Push.” And I was like, ‘Aww. All right, really good!’”

Barbie‘s director, Greta Gerwig, has also revealed that she enjoyed the song over the years.

Listen to Gosling’s cover of “Push” above.

Emmy-winning actor Bryan Cranston unloaded on Disney CEO Bob Iger during a fiery speech at a SAG-AFTRA strike rally in Times Square. Iger has been under fire for his tone-deaf remarks shortly after the actors union voted to go on strike. SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher called out the Disney CEO by name as did one of the writers for The Bear. Now, the star of Breaking Bad is getting in on the act.

Not only did Cranston slam Iger for ignoring the plight of actors, but he also issued a stern warning on using AI to replace human performers.

Via Variety:

“I know, sir, that you look [at] things through a different lens. We don’t expect you to understand who we are. But we ask you to hear us, and beyond that to listen to us when we tell you we will not be having our jobs taken away and given to robots. We will not have you take away our right to work and earn a decent living. And lastly, and most importantly, we will not allow you to take away our dignity! We are union through and through, all the way to the end!”

Cranston also took aim at the broader studio system, which has refused to meet the actors’ demand for better pay and working conditions.

“We are not in the same business model we were even 10 years ago,” Cranston said. “And yet, even though they admit that is the truth in today’s economy, they are fighting us tooth and nail to stick to the same economic system that is outmoded, outdated! They want us to step back in time. We cannot and we will not do that.”

(Via Variety)

Elon Musk didn’t waste a second pushing anti-vaxx conspiracy theories after news broke that Bronny James suffered a cardiac arrest during basketball practice. You would think Musk would have his hands full with his disastrous Twitter rebrand, but nope, the embattled CEO immediately jumped at the opportunity to blame the COVID vaccine for James’ medical emergency.

“We cannot ascribe everything to the vaccine, but, by the same token, we cannot ascribe nothing,” Musk said in response to a tweet reporting James’ condition. “Myocarditis is a known side-effect. The only question is whether it is rare or common.”

Thankfully, James, who is the son of basketball superstar Lebron James, is doing well. His family released a statement thanking the medical teams and athletic staff for their efforts.

“Yesterday while practicing Bronny James suffered a cardiac arrest. Medical staff was able to treat Bronny and take him to the hospital. He is now in stable condition and no longer in ICU,” the statement said via CNN. “We ask for respect and privacy for the James family and we will update media when there is more information. LeBron and Savannah wish to publicly send their deepest thanks and appreciation to the USC medical and athletic staff for their incredible work and dedication to the safety of their athletes.”

Nevertheless, Musk’s remarks are particularly ghoulish and dangerous given his tweets are systematically boosted by the Twitter algorithm. People wasted no time calling out Musk for pushing anti-vax conspiracy theories under the guise of “just asking questions.”

You can see some of the reactions below:

(Via Elon Musk on Twitter)

The Independence Day holiday has long since passed, but ASAP Rocky’s love for all things red, white, and blue hasn’t. In the video for his latest track, “Riot (Rowdy Pipe’n),” the Harlem native shows off his patriotism in the military advertisement the United States will ever need. Rocky, alongside his masked faux ASAP mob, are gearing up for the battlefield that is hip-hop as the musician prepares for the release of his forthcoming album, Don’t Be Dumb.

With the recording artist fashionably dressed in a mix of camouflage and armed with an actual military-grade tank as an airplane hovers above, Rocky is overly prepared for his album’s invasion. The track, produced by Pharrell Williams, initially sparked rumors that Rocky and his beau Rihanna, secretly tied the knot as he rapped, “My wife is erotic, I’m smokin’ exotic / My whip is exotic, my crib is a cottage / A whole lot of cheesе, see we gettin’ that cottage / A wholе lot of brains, I skipped out on college.”

Later in the track, he revealed that the couple had a secret song in the works, rapping, “Flossin’ hard, this ain’t dental floss (Uh, woo, woo, woo) / Flossy, glossy / Nah, b*tch, this ain’t lip gloss / Luxe balm up in my palm / New collab’ with my baby mom.”

ASAP Rocky’s musical invasion has just begun.

Watch the video for “Riot (Rowdy Pipe’n)” above.

Poor George R.R. Martin. I mean, he’s overall doing great, and HBO’s House Of The Dragon is only one of several current shows with his producing fingerprints all over them (see also AMC’s Dark Skies). HotD hasn’t been affected by either the WGA or SAG-AFTRA strikes because scripts were already locked when shooting began, and the principal actors (as Martin explained to Deadline) “are members of the British union, Equity, not SAG-AFTRA, and though Equity strongly supports their American cousins (they have a big rally planned to show that support), British law forbids them from staging a sympathy strike.”

So, that’s at least some positive news from the entertainment realm, which is largely shut down as writers and actors picket studios. However, this also brings to mind (as every GRRM discussion does) that long-promised tome, Winds Of Winter. The author has claimed, at various times to be largely, even 75% done, with the book, and at one point, he gave a specific date in which people could imprison him if he didn’t finish the long-awaited work. That day in March 2020 came and went, and in the meantime, GRRM has been picking up new producing work everywhere, it seems.

However, does the strike mean that maybe he might have to finish Winds Of Winter? With all that free time on his hands, he may have no choice. Here’s what GRRM told Deadline:

As far as Winds of Winter, Martin says he’s been working on it “almost every day. Writing, rewriting, editing [and] writing some more. Making steady progress. Not as fast as I would like… certainly not as fast as YOU would like… but progress nonetheless. It keeps me out of trouble.”

In other words, no update yet, but at least the book is now a daily endeavor. And yes, I’m completely reading into all of this, and I am the person (kind-of horribly) suggesting that book progress could be a lone positive effect of the ongoing strike. Fingers crossed for some good news soon on every front, too, because GRRM believes the strikes will carry on for awhile.

(Via Deadline)

When asked to point to North on a map, we point toward the top. Odds are, when you think of the word, you even associate it with “up.” (Unless, of course, you’re a “Game of Thrones” fan, then you might picture a fictional medieval family with very cool dogs and very, very bad luck.)

But why is North always “up”? Has it always been this way? If not, what was “up” before North? Does any of this matter in a digital age where directions are oriented in an instant?

These questions and more are answered by Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones, two comedians with a passion for geography who host a YouTube series called “Map Men.”

Being Brits, the Map Men tend to cover English topics like explaining “Why East London doesn’t have any bridges” or “What went wrong with the Tube Map.” But their latest video goes into more universal territory, breaking down why nearly every map in the world has North on the top.

Though cartographers have experimented with drawing maps that have words written in multiple directions, they weren’t very user-friendly, and therefore never made it to the mainstream. So, generally speaking, all maps need a top and bottom. That we have agreed on.

However, earlier cultures would certainly disagree that North belongs on a map’s top. That spot, in their mind, belonged to East, since it produced light, daytime, and all things symbolizing happiness. North, incidentally, symbolized darkness and evil. So, with this 90-degree change of perception in mind, an ancient map would actually have North as East, West as South, South as East and North as West. Are you dizzy yet?

This was how most European maps would have looked well into the 15th century. Although no maps survived from this time period, there are plenty of linguistic clues to prove their existence, such as words in Sanskrit meaning both “South” and “to the right,” for instance.

Going back even further, the ancient Egyptians had South at the top of the map. Considering that so much of Egyptian culture is connected to the sun, one would think they would have the direction that brings the sun every morning on the top of their maps. But as Foreman explains, they oriented their map to the apparent source of the Nile River. The Egyptian might have been ceremonious, but they were also quite practical.

So, how did the North rise up?

Ironically it happened as Eurpoeans were heading West. During The Age of Exploration, explorers began incorporating the use of compasses, which are magnetized toward Earth’s poles, to improve their navigation. The Chinese inventors who created the compass originally decided that the needle pointed toward the South. However, Europeans had already been using the North Star in their navigation for years, and were inclined to keep doing so once they got their hands on the tool.

This innovation helped Europeans spread several Western ideologies, including a North-favoring map, throughout the entire globe. And here we are.

Nowadays, thanks to technology, most digital maps we interact with on a regular basis show whichever direction we are facing as “up,” also making this whole where-does-North-point story a moot one. Except there are still subtle, yet negative ways this might be influencing our world view, since humans naturally read things that are at the top as being superior to things at the bottom.

Going back to “Game of Thrones,” the Starks of the North = good guys. The Lannister of the South = bad guys. Just sayin’.

These are only the bullet points of what Foreman and Cooper-Jones covered, and it doesn’t begin to embody their incredible wit and hilarious delivery. Watch them do their thing below:

There was one correction that viewers wanted to make. At one point, Cooper-Jones jokes that even J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t fathom a different orientation while creating the fictional map of Middle Earth for his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, just to illustrate how deeply ingrained the idea is in our collective psyche.

However, one impressive LOTR fan noted that Tolkien DID, in fact, get creative with orientation, writing, “Dwarves put East up on their maps,” and “the Elvish words for ‘north’ and ‘south’ are related to the words for ‘right’ and ‘left’ respectively,” which “strongly implies that Elves and other peoples influenced by them usually drew maps with West upwards.” Proving yet again how in-depth Tolkien’s knowledge is.

It’s interesting to think about how closely linked geography and psychology are. Even something that appears to be a scientific fact, like “North is up,” is really more of a reflection of the times. It’s even more interesting to think about how concepts like these might change along with our own paradigms over time.

There’s a parent out there who must be pretty proud of their son for standing up for himself and refusing to go along with the crowd that was playing pranks on the neighbors. Instead, he took their game of ding-dong ditch and tried to turn it into something positive.

A video of the boy, first shared to TikTok by a Minnesota mom named Ashley, has received over 5 million views. It shows a young boy looking sincerely into a doorbell camera before brushing a bug off the lens and sharing some positive affirmations with the stranger who lives in the house.

“You matter, alright? There’s always going to be someone who cares about you. You’re a good person. No matter what people say about you, you matter,” the boy says before one of the kids he’s with rings the doorbell and runs off.

@ashleyfayeann

Random acts of kindness ❤️

“Ignore them. They’re losers,” the kid says about the boys roaming the neighborhood. “They’re ding-dong ditching you. I’m just trying to say something nice…You matter, man. Or girl. Whoever you are, you matter to someone. Just keep that in mind. Don’t forget that.”

The young child is wise beyond his years, and his refusal to go along with the crowd shows that he has a bright future ahead of him.

“We need more kind kids in this world,” Zoe commented on the video.

“Someone gotta let him know that he matters too,” Rozei wrote.

The video must have been touching for the person who received it, but the way the boy delivers the message almost feels universal, like he’s speaking to all of us. You matter.

Travis Scott is gearing up for his new album, Utopia, and fans are extremely excited. Over the past few years, he has been teasing the project. In 2020, he had posted “See you in Utopia,” but it took a while for it to come out — likely due to the Astroworld controversy.

Here is more of what to expect from Utopia.

Release Date

During his recent set at Rolling Loud Miami, he teased that it would potentially be dropping this Friday, July 28. Scott has also confirmed this in a Twitter post today, with more information hinted to be revealed later today, when he regains service.

Tracklist

The tracklist for Travis Scott’s Utopia is still TBD. However, he has treated the Houston Astros to an early preview of the record as of a few weeks ago.

Singles

Scott recently dropped the first single, “K-Pop,” which was a collaboration with Bad Bunny and The Weeknd. He had previously previewed it during a showcase in mid-May.

Tour

He has also teased a potential tour tied to the album. During the music video for “K-Pop,” an Easter egg was spotted that reads “Utopia stadium tour rehearsal.”

Artwork

View the Utopia album artwork on Travis Scott’s website here. It is currently available for pre-order.

Before Joe Biden, the oldest president in the White House was Ronald Regan at 77 years, 349 days. Biden was older than that before his first term even started. If he wins re-election in 2024 against fellow senior citizen Donald Trump, he’ll be 86 years old by the end of his second term.

The president’s aides are working hard at convincing the American public that it’s perfectly normal for someone who was born the same year that duct tape was invented to have the most stressful job in the world.

NBC News reports that in “a preview of what voters will see more of if Biden wins re-election and serves into his mid-80s, the White House seems to be making concessions to his age. An iconic image of the modern presidency is the chief executive walking up the stairs to a majestic Air Force One, then turning at the doorway and waving. More and more, Biden is forgoing the long staircase for the shorter stairway that takes him up through the plane’s belly.”

Biden’s use of the shorter staircase, which, of course, reduces the risk of a televised fall that goes viral, has more than doubled since Biden’s tumble at the commencement ceremony, according to an analysis by NBC News. In the weeks prior to tripping onstage, Biden used the shorter set of stairs to get on and off the presidential aircraft 37 percent of the time. In the past seven weeks he’s used them 84 percent of the time, or 31 out of the 37 times he’s gotten on and off the plane.

Biden has also started skipping “nighttime socializing,” and the font on his teleprompter for speeches has gotten larger. A former White House official told NBC News that “Biden’s political operation has strategized about the best ways to deflect that line of attack,” referring to Trump posting a video mocking the president for falling off his bike, including “the idea of throwing a big 80th birthday bash last November to show he was openly embracing the milestone rather than shying away from it.” Instead, Biden ate ice cream with his family.

Not going out at night and eating ice cream instead of partying? Biden has never been more relatable.

(Via NBC News)