“Quarantine Kit” features interviews with our favorite actors, musicians, chefs, athletes, and artists about their personal methods for killing time, staying fit, and keeping social distance during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Common is living like seven lifetimes all at once. Dude is a Grammy-winning rapper, a legit movie star, and a serious philanthropist. So it’s no surprise that being locked down hasn’t stopped the multi-hyphenate from being productive. For him, that conversation always encompasses his own mental health and wellbeing.

“I’ve been trying to find the peace in all of this,” Common said to us over the phone last week. “The best thing to do for our fellow people is to stay home right now, but that doesn’t mean we just have to shelter and sit down. I am not zen every moment these days, but my overall energy is that elements of this can be positive. There is an opportunity to come out of this for us to be better than before — as individuals and collectively as humans.”

STAYING SKILLED: Basketball (buy online here)

I like all the great tools we have to stay connected, but I don’t want to spend my entire day staring at a screen or surfing the internet. When I feel like I’ve been too still for too long I’ll grab a basketball and go dribble out around the house. Being outside shooting some hoops just makes me feel normal, and it’s important to spend time in the real world however you can during these times.

GETTING ROMANTIC: Bumble (info here)

These days offer a time to be creative with our minds and our hearts, finding ways to connect. I want people to see that it is still possible to have a true connection with someone even while we are stuck in different places. You can still connect with new people and grow. Whether that’s in terms of a friendship or a romance.

There’s something special about that nervous excitement that you get when you’re going on a date with someone you’re excited about. That doesn’t have to go away during this time. Get on the app, and have a virtual date — something you get dressed up for. I went on one [for Bumble as part of a brand sponsorship], and I really enjoyed that process of picking out an outfit and even putting on some cologne.

I think for a woman, it’s also a safe way to start out getting to know someone new. And you can still feel someone’s energy through the screen and in how they hold themselves. The conversation can still flow. You can even find somewhere that you can both order food from and watch a movie at the same time. On my date, I watched Queen Sono on Netflix, which was a show that my date enjoyed, and we got to talk about it after. I’ll definitely be doing that again. And for some people — because of long distances and other challenges — doing a virtual date may become a new normal.

KEEPING TUNED IN: Questlove (check his Instagram here)

I’ve been loving the sets that he’s doing live online during this time. Not only does Quest play amazing music, but he also gives lessons and history on the music as he plays it. The man knows what he’s talking about. He’s a walking music library.

I know that he’s bringing a lot of joy to people right now, myself included.

BEING HEALTHY: Yoga Exercise Ball (buy online here)

My entire life I’ve believed in working out and having a clean diet. So now I feel like has been the time to share more of that journey, because I want to share the good energy that it has given me. I took a few days off when this first started but now I’ve been getting back into training regularly with what I have at home.

I just put in an order for a few more things, but I’ve been doing just fine with an exercise ball, resistance bands, and jump rope. I think you can accomplish a lot with bodyweight training alone. The other day I was doing crunches using a few books that I had kicking around for weights.

FEELING NOSTALGIC: Midnight Cowboy (rent online here)

During the beginning of all of this I wasn’t watching anything. I decided to take some time off. But once I had about a week without, I decided to start pulling out a few classic movies that I love. I have no problem seeing this movie multiple times, even though it may have some pain and some hurt in it. There are just amazing performances, particularly from Dustin Hoffman.

Not only do I enjoy watching it, but it just inspires me with how good certain acting performances can be. I love to see actors doing their thing and being great. There’s just something dope about this movie any night.

STAYING SPIRITUAL: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (buy online here)

There is something to be said for taking that time that you would usually use just to stay busy, or keep busy, and using it to grow your soul. I don’t think that’s wasted time. In that pursuit, I read a lot of books on spirituality. This is one of my favorites. I’ve also been reading Ask And It Is Given. Both books that tackle the idea of building a stronger relationship with God and being a better leader in our homes.

This pick is about not letting religion separate or confine us, but instead recognizing the power that we have as human beings. That’s what’s going to get us through this.

Mike Tyson is 53 years old and is 15 years removed from his most recent fight, but the former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world still possesses that terrifying speed and power that made him the most electrifying boxer of his generation.

The man that won his first 37 fights, finishing all but four with a knockout, is perhaps better known by the current generation for his cameo appearances in movies and eccentric behavior, but he decided to remind everyone he’s still one of the baddest men on the planet. Tyson posted a workout video on Monday of him absolutely ripping his trainers hand pads with punches, bobbing and weaving and snapping punches that still look like they’ll send most anyone to the canvas.

At the end, Tyson says “I’m back,” which I assume simply means he’s back in the gym and not, like, some grand plan to get back in the ring at some point. Whatever the case, the kind of hand speed he has at 53 is better than you see from most anyone in their prime, and is a reminder of the preternatural talent Tyson has that made him the most famous boxer in the world and the heavyweight champ in the late 80s.

Also, I hope this stops the foolishness on social media in which people ask questions like “could you go five rounds with Mike Tyson?” Because the answer to that is hell no.

Are people in general innately good or innately bad? Does humanity skew toward self-service and savagery or compassion and cooperation?

People have explored these questions in various ways over the centuries, and while we have plenty of examples of humans acting on both ends of the spectrum, there is still debate to be had about how we humans average out. Are we more likely to tilt toward helping or hurting?

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An article in The Guardian by Australian writer Rutger Bregman offers a rare insight into an accidental experiment that addresses this question. The article tells the largely-overlooked-but-amazingly-true story of six teenage boys from Tonga who were stranded alone on a deserted island in the South Pacific for more than a year. Rather than devolve into murderous animals, a la Lord of the Flies, the 13-to-16-year-olds pledged not to quarrel—and ultimately built a cooperative, supportive life together.

His full article is definitely worth reading, but Bregman shared the highlights along with some extra details and photos in a long Twitter thread over the weekend. It’s hard to get enough of this extraordinary story, so the thread is a welcome treat after reading the boys’ story.

The title of Bregman’s upcoming book, Humankind: A Hopeful History really sums up the takeaway from this story. Humans as a whole tend toward kindness. For sure human history is full of dark chapters and cruel atrocities, but it’s more full of hope and collective progress. We tend to focus on the wars and conquests and genocides when we talk about history, but the building of civilizations, the collaborations that have led to discovery and innovation, and the everyday acts of compassion and altruism that we see all around us are arguably our default nature.

Certain conditions or influences may pull certain people away from that default, but as this story shows, people can act with cooperation and mutual support even under the most difficult of circumstances. If you’re struggling to feel hopeful for humanity right now, keep this story in mind. We can always find examples of people acting selfishly, but that doesn’t mean it’s the norm.

The boys, ages 13 to 16, hated their boarding school in Tonga so they stole a boat and set out to sea. They took food and water, but no compass—a choice that makes their story of survival all the more fascinating. They got caught in a storm, ended up lost at sea for eight days, then washed ashore a rocky, uninhabited island.

The first thing the boys did when they realized they were stranded was they made a pact not to fight. For 15 months, they figured out how to find food, how to collect rainwater, how to stay healthy and fit—even how to set a broken bone when one of the boys broke a leg. After they managed to start a fire, they took turns tending it to ensure it never went out.

Search parties gave up looking for the boys, and funerals were held because they were presumed dead. The world moved on while the boys lived an impossibly difficult existence on an inhospitable island, never knowing if or when they’d ever get to leave.

But one day, an Australian sea captain just happened to have taken a detour from his route when a naked boy jumping from a cliff into the water caught his eye. Then he saw several others follow, screaming as they swam toward his boat. They were rescued after more than a year of living alone.

Bergman naturally contrasts these boys’ experiences—a life they built that was marked by cooperation, mutual support, and collective problem-solving—with the frequently-assigned lit class novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding. In that story, a group of boys get stranded on a desert island and basically devolve into murderous animals vying for power. The message from the novel was that, left untrained and unattended, the “darkness of man’s heart” would push children to savagery.

Over the weekend, an estimated thousands of people ran 2.23 miles to show their support for Ahmaud Arbery, a former high school football player and avid jogger. Arbery was shot and killed in February near Brunswick, Georgia after being pursued in a truck by a former policeman and his son who claimed he resembled someone responsible for break-ins in the neighborhood.

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Travis and Gregory McMichael were arrested on charges of murder and aggravated assault on Friday.

The incident is seen by many as another in a long list of instances of black people’s lives being threatened while engaging in normal, everyday activities that wouldn’t arise any suspicions if done by a white person.

Richard Desmick, a 34-year-old former pastor living in Vero Beach, Florida, showed his support for Arbery by running 2.23 miles and doing so in a way that exposes racial disparity in America.

“I just started crying when I just saw this poor young man running – as I have thousands of times in my life – get shot down,” Demsick told Business Insider. He said he thought “maybe I should run with a TV to show that being a suspicious character isn’t enough that someone should be shot down. Being a white person, that’s just not going to happen to me.”

Since Demsick posted the video on Saturday, it has already received over 279,000 likes.

“Alright, I figured it out. I’ve got my hat on backwards, I’m shirtless like I’m on some episode of ‘Cops,’ I’m running with a TV,” he said in a video posted to TikTok. “Someone’s going to stop me now, for sure. Cause, if not, what was the problem with Ahmaud?”

The video has received an overwhelmingly positive response on social media, with many praising Demsick for engaging in activism that proves a significant point about race in America: a white man can run through the streets looking like he just stole a TV and no one bats an eye.

A black man minding his own business and jogging has to worry about being murdered.

via TikTok

via TikTok

“People have been incredibly kind, undeservedly kind,” Demsick said about the response to his video. “There are people who are daily working trying to correct the injustice, I just made a video.”

Demisck’s passion for social justice stems from his life growing up in Detroit. He was raised in the suburbs and attended dance competitions where most of his friends were black. It was through his interaction with the black community that he learned of the struggles they face.

Demsick was also a pastor at what he calls a primarily upper-class conservative church in Florida. He later moved on to start an outreach program for individuals experiencing homelessness.

He made a follow-up video on Mother’s Day where he asked his mom if she’d be worried for him if he went running with a television in his hand.

“No, of course not,” she said.

“Huh, I wonder why that is,” he responded.

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Let me start by saying this is a bad idea. Even in the hypothetical world it exists in, it would still land anywhere from misguided to dangerous on the scale of outcomes. As far as ideas, it is really the last place thoughtful energy should be placed. Not my energy, for which this bad idea is more like spinning my wheels in the muck, but a waste of energy at a larger scale where it is being spent dreaming up viable scenarios in what has become a demonstrably untenable time for sheer fantasy.

The NBA season should be called. It should have been called already. Every day that passes where the league puts tentative first steps forward in announcing how teams will begin the slow work of practicing ends with several more steps back. The league says teams in markets where lockdown orders have eased may open their practice facilities to their players, but owners within some of those markets refuse. The league says teams may have a maximum of four players in each facility at a time, but teams deem the number too high and adjust for themselves. Every attempt at sequential progression brings with it another reminder that there is no typical, orderly way out of a pandemic.

But for the sake of launching one more ship on the sea of hypotheticals, here is an idea on how and where to restart the NBA season that doesn’t involve turning Las Vegas into a basketball Bio-Dome or rely on the false securities of Disney: What if the league just went to Canada?

Location is the first hurdle and an easy one to clear because all of Canada’s major cities are immediately off the table. Vancouver and Montreal are dealing with recovery from the country’s largest COVID-19 case loads. Toronto is, too. Toronto is also under provincial-wide laws that require gatherings, even in private, to include no more than five people. Throw in all of its useable game facilities being used to prep and provide 13,000 meals a day to the city’s frontline workers, and there’s nowhere for the NBA to go.

Looking to smaller cities with infrastructure in place and low infection rates, Winnipeg, in the Canadian prairies, and Halifax, on Canada’s east coast, are solid, purely imaginary candidates. The entire province of Manitoba, where Winnipeg is located, has recorded 283 infections to date, while Nova Scotia, the maritime province Halifax is the capital of, has just over 1,000. Both have pro sports teams and arenas that are either used currently for basketball or could be quickly converted. There is direct access to these arenas from nearby hotels, plus local sights and hospitality that would rival a ghost town Disney with a handful of mascots waving with forced cheer from six feet away or an emptied out Vegas where Criss Angel currently haunts the boulevard.

An outlier island of an option are Canada’s outlier islands. If the league wanted to take a twisted page out of Dana White’s book, a Canadian basketball island could be the answer. Prince Edward Island had only 27 COVID-19 cases, and Newfoundland 260, but there is definitely not enough room on PEI for 450 players and accompanying team staff. I don’t even mean that quaintly, there just may not be the square footage. Newfoundland’s spring weather would help in keeping most players shut inside when not competing, and St. Johns, the capital, has large arena facilities but is still small enough you could monitor by plain sight the travel of players.

Timing is the first wrench in this imaginary plan, because Canada requires a 14-day federally mandated quarantine for any person entering the country, regardless of origin. There are also travel restrictions into the country, all non-essential flights have been barred and Canadian airline companies have suspended trips to and from the United States. I’m waiving this one because each team would have its own charter, even if the gross excess that signals in a time of crisis would be a less than ideal message, but you know, sacrifices!

Fourteen days gives the league an actual numerical target to shoot toward rather than giving all of its teams different starting dates from which to shakily proceed and is peanuts compared to the continued — and necessary — lockdowns many states are facing, with no clear projections on when, if even why, those would be eased.

Assuming every player passed the 14-day quarantine and remained healthy, logistics are the next logical jumble to untangle in this illogical exercise. The NBA has not clarified, when speaking hypothetically about a season restart, whether it would be the season restarting from the exact point it paused and involve all 30 teams continuing on as scheduled or if the approach would go on a path accelerating teams toward the playoffs. We have heard that “all options are on the table” but with respect, some of the options are impossible as they would be painful to watch. Picture a Warriors team who has not practiced for eight weeks returning to play the rest of its season in full. Even as a Warriors fan, why would you want that?

If the NBA opted for an accelerated option, giving each team four to six more regular season games, teams could be staggered in their arrival to Canada. Two teams pass quarantine while the second two compete in back to back games, trading off with incoming teams to wait either in the city or nearby. Some examples: The Celtics temporarily living in Brandon, Manitoba, a two-hour drive from Winnipeg and a city of barely 50,000; or the Lakers undergoing a luxurious spa day on Fogo Island, where Gwyneth Paltrow has previously stayed in the island’s boutique hotel’s Flat Earth Suite for $5,000 (Canadian, a bargain) a night and where Kyrie Irving will gleefully spend his Canadian quarantine.

Alternately, seed the top-three teams in each conference as they were when play was halted (they’ve already clinched in the East and the West seems self-evident) and have the remaining five teams seed as-is, with wildcard games to determine order where teams are tied for wins. If the 8 and 9 seeds are close, as it is in the West, do the same. Either of these options makes the fake logistical planning easier, and lightens the additional imaginary load players and team staff will put on local healthcare and hospitality.

In terms of safeguards against reinfection for players and putting strain on communities, there are many built in. For starters, the country is pretty spread out. With its densest cities already off the table, the introduction of half the NBA entering its smaller ones would present a welcome economic opportunity for many small businesses furloughed by the pandemic, and an opportunity for the NBA to enjoy some new and extremely organic market growth. Player movement would be limited much like it is for every Canadian — lockdown orders have eased but it’s not as if there are that many places to go.

Canada’s universal healthcare system tends to gets blue skied, especially when viewed remotely and in crisis. There are still gaps, but when the worst you can accuse it of is staying competent, it lends itself as another good reason to pursue this bad idea. The hope would have to be, as it would be anywhere the NBA imagined it could do this, that the need for re-testing would be minimal. Even hypothetically, it is terrible to pull resources like tests and medical supplies from those who need them more, but if the league could make some kind of charitable contribution to meaningful Canadian organizations offsetting the impacts of COVID-19, it would be a decent way to say thanks for using some of its tests.

Finally, there are the hypothetical optics to think about. If the NBA season were to start up again in the United States, it could potentially signal to millions that things had returned to “normal.” That Trump’s jackhammering rhetoric of America being on the other side of the pandemic was true, expediting the dangerous fallout of people returning to public life too soon. Shifting the remainder of the season and postseason to Canada signals that things are serious enough that foreign soil was the better option, but with the added familiarity the tether of its lone Canadian franchise could offer. Sort of like, “We always wanted to spend more time here but never got the chance!”

Again, this is generally a bad idea. In the scheme of what is important right now, as much as it may provide welcome respite for many, the idea of the NBA restarting isn’t. But if the NBA is determined to do this well guess what — Canada can be, and kind of already is, your basketball island.

RMR first came to mass attention this year when his hilarious, thematically odd “Rascal” video went viral thanks to the contrast between the style of the song and its accompanying visual. His next task was to prove that is more than just a gimmick-based meme, and he has been successful. “Dealer” helped establish him as a legitimate rapper who has the respect of his hip-hop peers, evidenced by the fact that Future and Lil Baby hopped on a remix of the song. Now the trio have teamed up on a visual for the track.

RMR has proven during his young career that he knows his way around a visual for a song, and nothing changes here. The video superimposes the rappers’ faces onto subtly animated pieces of art from throughout human history. The clip takes visual inspiration from Renaissance art, Egyptian deities, and other things from years passed to make this clip feel like an elevated piece of art.

More RMR is set to arrive at some point, as he previously declared his intention to release an EP titled Drug Dealing Is A Lost Art.

Watch the video for the “Dealer” remix above.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Eminem and Lil Wayne have a lot more in common than rap fans might be aware. The “Drop The World” and “No Love” collaborators have always shared a mutual respect for each other despite being pit against each other by rap fans throughout the 2000s, but during the most recent episode of Wayne’s Beats 1 Radio show, Young Money Radio, the duo revealed just how much they mirror each other. It’s pretty common knowledge that both keep to themselves and only listen to a very select range of classic and emerging rap music outside of their own, but given how prolific each is, even they have trouble keeping up with their own music.

While detailing his songwriting process, Wayne revealed that he has to Google his own lyrics to make sure he’s not repeating himself. No sooner had he shared that information than Eminem confirmed that a quick lyrics search is part of his own songwriting ritual. “I literally have to Google my lyrics to make sure I didn’t say certain stuff,” Wayne admits, drawing an awed “Oh my God” from Em. “Yo, I swear to God, I do that too!” he commiserated. “That’s how long we’ve been doing this sh*t,” chuckled the younger rapper. “Soon as you go to my Safari, it’s gonna be ‘Lil Wayne lyrics.’”

While it’s likely these two aren’t the only ones who have to spot check for repetition — Questlove once bragged on his Roots partner-in-rhyme Black Thought for never repeating himself, and Black Thought’s been out almost a decade longer than both Wayne and Em — it’s fun to see them pull back the curtain and show that even they are sometimes overwhelmed by the sheer volume of material they’ve put out over the course of their careers.

Listen to the latest episode of Young Money Radio here.

Over the weekend, Mark Hamill shared an image of himself as Luke Skywalker on Instagram. “May The 9th Be A Bittersweet Episode- Knowing It Was The Last Time I Would Ever Play Luke,” he wrote, adding the hashtag “#ByeByeSkywalker.” Not much ambiguity there. But just in case: the Star Wars actor confirmed in an interview that after playing Darth Vader’s son (spoiler!) Luke from 1977’s A New Hope to 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, he’s officially retired from bullseye-ing womp rats.

“I had a beginning, middle, and end. Those films gave me far more than I ever expected when we started out so it’s never even occurred to me. My farewell was in Episode IX and it was bittersweet,” Hamill told Entertainment Weekly. “I love all those people and I certainly have affection for George and the character he created. I’m full of gratitude for what it has given me and my career, but I don’t want to be greedy. There are still so many more stories to tell and so many great actors to tell them, they don’t need me.”

Disney hasn’t announced the plot of the next Star Wars film — we don’t even know who the director is; maybe Rian Johnson, maybe Taika Waiti, maybe someone TBA — but whenever it comes out, you (probably) won’t hear the name “Skywalker” or (maker-willing) “Palpatine.” Give the people what they want: no Luke Skywalker, but yes Watto!

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

While UFC and NASCAR are making their returns this month and the PGA Tour has its plans in place for a June restart, the major team sports are having a much more difficult and complicated time working out the details of a return. The NBPA had a call with Adam Silver recently in which he prepared them for various possibilities, including no fans in stadiums stretching until a vaccine is in place and offering little in the way of certainty about finishing this season.

Major League Baseball is having similar conversations, but has the added issue of figuring out compensation for players as owners push for a revenue split dictating how much players make this season — something not in the MLB CBA. According to the Associated Press, MLB owners have agreed on a proposal that they will pitch to the MLBPA on Tuesday that would bring baseball back in July, with a spring training period taking place in June, and teams would play divisional opponents and interleague matchups with their regional counterparts in an 82-game season.

Major League Baseball owners gave the go-ahead Monday to making a proposal to the players’ union that could lead to the coronavirus-delayed season starting around the Fourth of July weekend in ballparks without fans, a plan that envisioned expanding the designated hitter to the National League for 2020.

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Each team would play about 82 regular-season games: against opponents in its own division plus interleague matchups limited to AL East vs. NL East, AL Central vs. NL Central and AL West vs. NL West. Postseason play would be expanded from 10 clubs to 14 by doubling wild cards in each league to four.

The AP reports owners are pushing for a 50-50 revenue split, something the union has pushed back on and would prefer to go with the current agreement that will have players receive the percentage of their salaries based on the percentage of the 162-game season that gets played. There are also concerns from players about testing and protocols for positive tests, something the owners plan reportedly addresses but details are not currently known.

The proposal also includes adding designated hitters to the National League, as well as expanding rosters to 30 and adding a “practice squad” of sorts to mitigate the loss of minor league players as the minor league season is not part of this plan.

It will be fascinating to see what the players are willing to agree to and what the details on where games will be played — at home ballparks or at spring training sites in Arizona and Florida — and surely other leagues like the NBA and NHL will be keeping an eye on how this baseball proposal is received by the players as they work out their own plans.