Category: Viral

The Connecticut Sun are the WNBA powerhouse everybody should’ve seen coming. Led by MVP frontrunner Jonquel Jones, All-Star wing DeWanna Bonner, and a fleet of impressive rotation players, the Sun have quickly emerged as the team to beat three weeks into the season. A convincing 74-67 win over the Las Vegas Aces on Tuesday should frighten the league.

Nine games into a 32-game regular season, Connecticut is 7-2 with a pair of wins over both the Aces and Phoenix Mercury. Each win has come by two or more possessions including three double-digit blowouts. The team’s only two losses both came in overtime to the Minnesota Lynx and reigning champion Seattle Storm.

Fans, media, and even the league’s general managers largely overlooked Connecticut. That’s probably because Alyssa Thomas, the Sun’s defensive anchor who led the franchise to a five-game semifinals series to the Aces last season, tore her Achilles overseas and won’t play in the WNBA in 2021. Bonner and Jones had also never shared the court prior to this season as Jones opted out of the 2020 bubble.

There was plenty of reason to be cautious picking Connecticut to win it all, but the Sun are showing why you should buy into them now. Bonner, Jones, and forward Brionna Jones make for one of the most intimidating interior units in the world. Their combination of quick foot speed, long arms, and towering height are a nightmare for opposing guards and bigs at the rim.

The fancy stats agree: According to Synergy Sports, the roll-man in pick-and-rolls has scored just 18 points on 43 tries against the Sun. Good freaking luck getting a clean look over 6’6 Jonquel Jones, or through the outreach of 6’4 Bonner. In 25 put-back attempts, opponents have also scored just 18 points. Connecticut leads the league in both categories while ranking second in defending the rim in non-post-up situations.

To stand a chance against Connecticut, you’re going to have to shoot a tremendous percentage from distance or run them in transition. Overall, Synergy pins Connecticut as the second-best team in halfcourt defense in the league. That’s translated to a defensive rating that’s more than five points per 100 possessions better than last year. Their 94.2 points per 100 possessions allowed leads the league, and would rank second-best of all teams in the last seven years.

All of those numbers are to say this: Connecticut is disciplined, quick, skilled, and has a gameplan to cut off a few elite options even if one player gets their numbers. Take Tuesday night for instance — while Liz Cambage poured in 28 points on 11-for-17 shooting mostly through post-ups, the rest of the Aces scored 39 points on 17-for-47 shooting. That’s just 36.2 percent.

It also helps that Jonquel Jones is inevitable, and it’s becoming clear no team can stop her. Jones was the league’s Most Improved Player in 2017, and in four short years, she might be the most hard-to-guard two-way player in the WNBA. The 6’6 center is averaging 20.6 points per game on 54.5 percent shooting — including making 21 of her 43 attempts from three — with 10.1 rebound, three assists, 1.7 steals, 1.2 blocks, and 2.9 turnovers per game.

She’s also doing very normal center things such as euro-stepping floaters through the lane and launching back into contested three-point shots. (Read: that’s not normal. Only unicorns make those types of shots.)

The question is no longer what Jones could be, because she already is. The WNBA has a limited supply of players tall enough to match her, and those that have the size rarely have the athletic gifts to follow her every move. In two games against reigning MVP A’ja Wilson’s Aces, Jones scored 42 points on 13-for-26 shooting. Against reigning Finals MVP Breanna Stewart’s Storm, she scored 28 points on 10-for-19 shooting.

In so many cases, a defense’s best option is to hope she misses. Jonquel Jones is the key to the Sun continuing their winning ways.

Jones’ play has had a positive impact on Bonner, too. In the Wubble, Bonner proved she was more than an historically great sixth woman, leading the Sun with 19.7 points per game and falling just one game short of the WNBA Finals. But her numbers are improving in 2021, which should come as no surprise now that Jones is luring away some of the defensive attention.

She’s had a rough time finishing around the basket, but Bonner has made 18 of her 42 three-pointers, raising her effective field goal percentage by nearly two percentage points. Last season, she made just 27 out of 107 tries. With Bonner conserving a bit of energy next to Jones (her usage rate is down 2.9 percent, and she’s taking 3.4 fewer field goal attempts per game), she’s having a stellar defensive season, too.

In 86 possessions guarding the shooter, she’s allowed just 52 points (17-for-70 shooting), according to Synergy Sports. Of all players who’ve defended 40 or more shooting possessions, only four players have allowed fewer points per possession.

It’s super early in the season, even if we are nearly one-fourth of the way through most WNBA teams’ schedules. The Chicago Sky haven’t settled yet with Candace Parker and Allie Quigley each playing in just one game so far, the Mercury are without Diana Taurasi for a month, and the Washington Mystics haven’t had Elena Delle Donne on the court yet. The Aces will get another chance to play Connecticut in August, too.

Right now, though, the Storm, who beat the Sun in the second week of the season, look like their biggest challenger. Seattle’s lost just one game and sits atop the league by percentage points at 6-1. Even after losing two starters from last season in Natasha Howard and Alysha Clark, the Storm are rolling behind the big three of Sue Bird, Jewell Loyd, and Stewart. Plus, they got the best of Connecticut in their first matchup by three points in overtime.

Leave your calendar open. We’ll see those teams play again on June 13.

Lake Highlands High School valedictorian Paxton Smith made waves with her commencement speech this week, as she discarded her approved remarks and spoke about Texas’s anti-abortion “heartbeat bill” instead.

Smith told D Magazine that the speech she had prepared and submitted for approval was about media consumption and how it had shaped her view of the world. But she had also prepared a different speech, one that addressed something far more important to her.

When the time came to step up to the microphone, she took out a folded piece of paper tucked into her shirt and delivered the second speech instead. Clips of her remarks have since gone viral on social media.

Paxton Smith Speech at Lake Highlands Graduation

youtu.be

Here’s her speech in full:

“As we leave high school we need to make our voices heard. I was going to get up here and talk to you about TV and content and media because those are things that are very important to me. However, in light of recent events, it feels wrong to talk about anything but what is currently affecting me and millions of other women in this state.

Recently the heartbeat bill was passed in Texas. Starting in September, there will be a ban on abortions that take place after 6 weeks of pregnancy, regardless of whether the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest. 6 weeks. Most women don’t even realize they’re pregnant by then. And so, before they have the time to decide if they are emotionally, physically, and financially stable enough to carry out a full-term pregnancy, before they have the chance to decide if they can take on the responsibility of bringing another human into the world, the decision has been made for them by a stranger. A decision that will affect the rest of their lives.

I have dreams, hopes, and ambitions. Every girl here does. We have spent our whole lives working towards our futures, and without our consent or input, our control over our futures has been stripped away from us. I am terrified that if my contraceptives fail me, that if I’m raped, then my hopes and efforts and dreams for myself will no longer be relevant. I hope you can feel how gut-wrenching it is, how dehumanizing it is, to have the autonomy over your own body taken from you.

And I’m talking about this today, on a day as important as this, on a day honoring the students’ efforts in twelve years of schooling, on a day where we’re all brought together, on a day where you will be the most inclined to hear a voice like mine, a woman’s voice, to tell you that this is a problem. A problem that can’t wait. I refuse to give up this platform to promote complacency and peace, when there is a war on my body and a war on my rights. A war on the rights of your sisters, a war on the rights of your mothers, a war on the rights of your daughters.

We cannot stay silent.”

Smith told D Magazine that it “feels great” to have said what she wanted to say to her graduating class.

“It also feels a little weird,” she added. “Whenever I have opinions that can be considered political or controversial, I keep them to myself because I don’t like to gain attention for that kind of stuff. But I’m glad that I could do something, and I’m glad that it’s getting attention. It just feels weird for me personally, that I’m linked to the attention that the speech got.”

As of yesterday, Smith had not faced any direct consequences from school administrators, though a couple of them had told her that they could withhold her diploma. She will be headed to UT Austin in the fall and encourages everyone to register to vote and stay involved in local elections.

Brava, Ms. Smith. Thank you for using your voice and moment in the spotlight to speak up for the right all people should have to make personal medical decisions without government interference.

Harassing people is gross, no matter who they are. Harassing people who are flying rainbow flags expressing support for LGBTQIA+ people is particularly gross, considering the fact they are advocating for basic civil rights and human dignity. And evidently, harassing people who are flying Pride flags while boating is egregiously gross enough to piss off Poseidon and bring the heavy hammer of karma down upon your heads.

Or maybe it’s just a coincidence. Either way, this story shows that bigotry is no match for being the bigger person and that even if it ends up being a one-way street, caring about the well-being of our fellow humans is always the right thing to do.

While boating in Moses Lake, Washington last weekend, a group of boaters flying Pride flags found themselves confronted by three people in another boat. At first, they thought perhaps the boaters were coming up to express support for their rainbow flags, but it soon became apparent that wasn’t the case. As the boat circled around them, one of the passengers gave the Pride-flag flyers the middle finger, and the boaters allegedly shouted gay slurs as well.

Then the bigots’ boat caught fire and the people they were harassing ended up rescuing them after they jumped ship.

The story was told by Robbie on Twitter, who shared photos and video of the incident as well as issuing a statement to The Washington Post.

Robbie, a queer trans man who has withheld his name for fear of retaliation, told The Post that his family had spent the day swimming and tubing on the lake and stopped their boat around 7:00pm. A small vessel sped toward them, then circled around them at least six times, with the woman on the boat flipping them off and yelling something about “gays” and “flags.”

When the boat driver noticed that Robbie’s brother had started filming them, he tried to hide his face and drove away. Moments later, a loud bang came from the boat, and a plume of black smoke rose into the air.

“Holy crap!” said Robbie’s brother. “They blew up!” Then he drove toward the boaters who were swimming away from their burning boat and brought them aboard.

These people harassed my family because we were flying gay pride flags in Moses Lake Washington, by racing around u… https://t.co/0QLYqGNmdx

— 🏳️‍⚧️ℂ𝕠𝕤𝕞𝕚𝕔 ℝ𝕠𝕓𝕓𝕚𝕖⭐ (@retro_ushi_)
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Of course, having your boat catch on fire in the middle of a lake is a terrible thing to have happen. Some might say it’s as terrible as having people going out of their way to harass you in the middle of a lake. Karma works in interesting ways.

It would be lovely to be able to share that the harassers had a wake-up call and apologized for their horrible behavior, but alas, they did not.

Here’s part 2 everyone!!! https://t.co/papG8wGULL

— 🏳️‍⚧️ℂ𝕠𝕤𝕞𝕚𝕔 ℝ𝕠𝕓𝕓𝕚𝕖⭐ (@retro_ushi_)
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“The passengers were quite rude, shouting over us, ignoring my [inquiries] about their well-being when on the 911 call and smoking a Vape pen on our boat without even so much as asking if they could; several passengers of our boat have asthma,” Robbie told The Post.

Police came to put out the fire, and the bigoted boaters’ friends came to pick them up. When they left, they didn’t even say ‘Thank you” for the rescue.

But there was this little karmic detail to balance out the bad behavior.

@retro_ushi_ Rescuing them must have felt great!

Like, welcome to the queer boat, we at least know how to pilot this thing….

— Cascadian Bureau of Propaganda – PDX (@CascadianSocial)
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Some people have said they just wouldn’t have even helped them, while others have pointed out that boaters are required to help boaters in distress as long as it doesn’t put their own vessel or passengers in danger. (Which of course begs the question—was it safe for Robbie and family to bring blatantly anti-gay bigots onto their boat?) Regardless, Robbie wrote on Twitter that the boaters were truly hurt and they felt bad for them. Helping them was simply the right thing to do, no matter how they acted before or responded after.

@Tabernak No. My brother was like “FUCK THEM!” But they were legitimately hurt/burned so we felt bad for them. Then… https://t.co/rE5LDN7pwx

— 🏳️‍⚧️ℂ𝕠𝕤𝕞𝕚𝕔 ℝ𝕠𝕓𝕓𝕚𝕖⭐ (@retro_ushi_)
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Robbie shared another Tweet two days later showing that they were not going to let the haters get them down.

“Happy Pride Wrath Month!”

And we’re back at it again! We will not hide our #pride https://t.co/Fp9rbCNVmy

— 🏳️‍⚧️ℂ𝕠𝕤𝕞𝕚𝕔 ℝ𝕠𝕓𝕓𝕚𝕖⭐ (@retro_ushi_)
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After taking over early 2020 with his breakout Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial single “The Box” and contributing a verse to DaBaby’s Grammy-nominated, No. 1 hit single “Rockstar,” Compton rapper Roddy Ricch spent much of the past year lying low as he worked on the follow-up to his debut album. Aside from popping up in a few interviews to call the upcoming release a “masterpiece” and say it was coming “soon as f*ck” (a relative qualifier if ever there was one), there hasn’t been much information about the new project.

That changed today with Roddy’s return to social media. Posting a brand new photo to his recently-cleared Instagram, Roddy finally offered the first indication that his sophomore album may well be on the way. Scrolling through a couple of slides, you’ll see what is presumably the single cover for a new song titled “Late At Night,” while the caption reads “6/4 freaky friday.” While there still isn’t much other information about the upcoming release, it’s certainly nice to know that the Compton native has new music on the way. To hear some of his guest features over the past few months, check out 42 Dugg’s “4 Da Gang” video, DJ Khaled’s “Body In Motion” video, and Birdman’s “Stunnaman,” on which the Cash Money CEO also reunites with Lil Wayne.

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

The Once Upon a Time in Hollywood book is as real as a donut.

Quentin Tarantino is turning his fantastic 2019 revisionist film into a novel that will “chart the lives of two protagonists – TV actor Rick Dalton and his stunt double Cliff Booth – both forward and backward in time.” It’s not available until the end of the month, but in an interview with the Pure Cinema Podcast, the director discussed what people can expect.

“I think if you’re a fan of the movie, I think you will get a kick out of reading the book, and exploring the characters further and deeper, and learning secrets that you didn’t know, and were not in the movie,” Tarantino said. “It’s not just me taking the screenplay and then breaking it down in a novelistic form. I retold the story as a novel… It was a complete rethinking of the entire story and not just a rethinking as far as throwing some scenes that were left out of the editing room.”

The book will also explore Cliff Booth’s (potentially murderous) past.

“In the movie, Cliff is a real enigma, you’re kind of like, what’s this guy’s deal? And one of the things in the book is, there’s these isolated chapters that tell you, like, this whole chapter will be about Cliff’s past. It goes back in time to tell you about Cliff at this point in time. And then you go further on with the normal run of the story and there’s another chapter that goes back in time and tells you about Cliff’s past. And every isolated chapter that’s just about Cliff’s past is like a weird little pulp novel unto itself starring Cliff.”

Hopefully the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood book will answer my number one question after watching the movie: did Cliff Booth ever fight Jack Nicholson? There’s a 85 percent chance it happened (my money’s on Jack).

(Via EW)

Netflix just dropped the first official trailer for We the People, an animated music video series created by Chris Nee and produced through a joint collaboration between Kenya Barris and Barack and Michelle Obama. Featuring a powerhouse set list of musical stars like H.E.R. and Janelle Monáe, the 10 episodes series will feature a collection of music videos that will hopefully inspire viewers to rethink their civic engagement. A “Civics Remix,” as the trailer calls it.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Combining music and animation to educate a new generation of young Americans about the power of the people, We the People is a series of 10 animated music videos that covers a range of basic U.S. civics lessons in not-so-basic ways. Set to original songs performed by artists such as H.E.R., Janelle Monáe, Brandi Carlile, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Adam Lambert, Cordae, Bebe Rexha, KYLE, Andra Day, and poet Amanda Gorman, with a groundbreaking mix of animated styles — each episode of We the People is an exuberant call to action for everyone to rethink civics as a living, breathing thing and to reframe their understanding of what government and citizenship mean in a modern world.

We the People starts streaming July 4 on Netflix

(Via Netflix)

Crime Scene Kitchen (FOX, 9:00pm) — Joel McHale’s the host of this bizarro cooking-focused reality-competition show, which sees chef teams attempt to figure out what was baked after a dessert disappears, leaving only ingredients in the aftermath. Seriously, give this show a whirl because it is oddly meditative to watch the clues come together. Also, McHale is one of the best famous-types at the art of the interview, and I’ll stand by that claim no matter what.

Kung Fu (CW, 8:00pm) — Althea’s getting ready for her bachelorette party (what a strange twist on this revival story) while a family secret’s exposure leads to plenty of fallout for Nancy and the Shens.

Carnival (Netflix film) — A digital influencer is devastated when her boyfriend not only cheats, but video evidence of the betrayal goes viral. In the aftermath, she uses her connections to snag an all-inclusive trip for her best-friends group to take a Salvador trip to Carnival.

Nancy Drew (CW, 9:00pm) — Following Nick receiving upsetting news, Nancy gathers Carson and Ryan to help out the Drew Crew.

Jimmy Kimmel Live — Rachel Weisz, Rob Riggle, Willie Jones

In case you missed these picks from last Wednesday:

High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America (Netflix series) — Food writer Stephen Satterfield takes a powerful voyage to discover the resourcefulness and straight-up artistry of the African American people. Satterfield draws upon knowledge from chefs, historians, and activists to do so, and the results are mouthwatering.

Ghost Lab (Netflix film) — Two medical doctor BFFs witness a “ghost” while conducting a research experiment about life after death. This leads them down a rabbit hole of attempting to find a scientific explanation for what they’re seeing, and this obsession could have far-reaching implications for their friendship and beyond.

In 2013, the NFL settled a lawsuit with former players for nearly $1 billion to pay former players who have dealt with brain injuries and the long-term effects of head trauma from playing football. It was a landmark settlement and one many hoped would help former players who have had their lives irrevocably impacted by brain injuries from football, but in the years since, many Black players have been turned away due to the practice of “race-norming.”

Race-norming assumes that Black people start with a lower cognitive function than others, and when used to determine whether they have dementia or other issues of a decline in cognitive function, the lower starting baseline causes more Black people to be denied a diagnosis — and in this case, a settlement claim. The NFL announced a new panel to create replacement norms that will be used to reassess all previous claims that were denied to determine who should qualify using a non-racist practice, via the Associated Press.

According to the NFL, a panel of neuropsychologists formed recently to propose a new testing regime to the court includes two female and three Black doctors.

“The replacement norms will be applied prospectively and retrospectively for those players who otherwise would have qualified for an award but for the application of race-based norms,” the NFL said in a statement issued Wednesday by spokesman Brian McCarthy.

It is a positive step, but one that should’ve never needed to have been taken. The NFL’s decision comes after a civil rights lawsuit was filed by two former players against the practice that was thrown out by the judge overseeing the settlement, but drew ample attention and a massive petition against the league.

John Oliver can’t resist shaking things up, and on Sunday night, he decided that the cereal world could use some controversy. So, he ranted about the boring nature of cereal brands and dared Cheerios to drop an F-bomb on Twitter in exchange for the Last Week Tonight host donating $25,000 to their choice of charity. Well, he sweetened the pot by offering $50,000 if the brand got profane with a “random, non-famous user,” and with that, the ball was duly placed in Cheerios’ court.

In response, Cheerios attempted to be entirely wholesome by donating $50,000 to No Kid Hungry and then offering to double the donation if Last Week Tonight account tweeted out a Cheerios motto: “Families make good go round.”

As one might imagine, the challenge has been duly accepted, and Oliver found a way to bypass the wholesome vibe by adding some (serious) deviance to the mix. Yes, “Families make good go round” did appear in Last Week Tonight‘s response tweets, but so did the Manson family and the Menendez brothers. For good measure, Oliver tweeted a reference to the Sackler family, which is currently under fire for (allegedly) profiting from the opioid crisis before claiming that a “smear campaign” is afoot.

Oh, but there’s more. Last Week Tonight also decided to do what Cheerios wouldn’t do: tell a random, non-famous account to f*ck off. Challenge complete?

Which stage of grief includes laughing uncontrollably at a twice-impeached former president, who thought “blogging” meant trash-dumping incoherent press releases on a web page that he’s shut down because no one cared to read them? Because that’s where we’re at when it comes to the short life of “From The Desk of Donald J. Trump.”

The “communications platform” was launched a month ago as a response to Trump’s social media exile. The TV personality was banned from sites like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook after he used his accounts to incite violence and spread misinformation that led to the Jan. 6th insurrection on Capitol Hill. Trump, still desperate to share his disjointed stream of consciousness with his followers, launched the blogging site a few weeks ago as a feed to house various press releases responding to world events. But surprisingly — or not so surprisingly if you heard the news on Twitter — CNN reported earlier today that Trump had shut down the site, shifting the press releases to a different section of outdated-looking “Save America” platform.

Now, plenty of people had jokes as to why Trump may have decided to close up shop, digitally speaking, but according to sources close to the ex-president who spoke with The Washington Post today, the deciding factor was fairly straightforward: the site was performing so poorly, it started to bruise the man’s already fragile ego.

The Post is reporting that Trump told aides to shut down the site after it was heavily mocked on social media. According to the article, Trump’s blog posts were shared just 1,500 times on its final day before his team terminated it — an embarrassingly small number compared to the millions of shares and likes his Twitter feed used to get. Sources who spoke to The Post said Trump’s team was worried his blog would also compete with the social media platform he still plans to launch sometime in the future, although with that dismal turnout, we can’t imagine why anyone would see the site as a traffic threat. Still, we’ll mourn the good times Trump’s version of LiveJournal gave us, like when he whined about not getting credit for the COVID-19 vaccine, and when he called the horse that won the Kentucky Derby a “junky.”

R.I.P. “From The Desk Of Donald J. Trump.” You truly were(n’t) ahead of your time.