“New normal.” That’s the phrase ushered in by the novel coronavirus and the devastating scourge of death from COVID-19. “New normal” is the only way we as a collective can explain our current way of life: Social distancing, face mask wearing, working and teaching from home, constantly conferencing over Zoom and scheduling telehealth appointments instead of physically seeing a doctor unless absolutely necessary.

However, not all characteristics of “normal” life are easily converted to digital expression. Specifically, giving birth.

Right now as the United States grapples with more than 100,000 COVID-19 deaths, a resurgence of the virus in a dozen states, and massive demonstrations over the most recent murders of unarmed Black men and women, there is one crisis that is not getting the same attention, a crisis that has been allowed to linger and fester in this country for decades: The glaring disparity in the maternal death rate and infant mortality rate for Black mothers and their newborns.

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Pre-pandemic numbers show that Black women are three to four times more likely to die during childbirth than are white women, and Black infants are twice as likely to die at birth or immediately after than are white infants.

“The thought of losing a child that didn’t even get a chance to live life is truly terrifying,” says Rebecca Merriweather, who recently gave birth to a baby girl.

Merriweather wasn’t aware of the statistics surrounding Black maternal health and infant mortality when she learned she was pregnant, but already had concerns of her own: “Preeclampsia and possible complications during labor and how to avoid them.” Preeclampsia is a pregnancy complication characterized by high blood pressure and is 60% more common in Black women compared to white women.

“Oftentimes women take very good care of themselves,” said Certified Nurse Midwife Marsha E. Jackson CNM, MSN, FACNM. “They’re often knowledgeable, they’re eating right, they’re doing all the right things, and they start running into problems with their blood pressure creeping up and things like that and it stems back to our whole healthcare system and all of the hurts we as Black people have experienced for centuries.”

To help stave off some of those complications, Dr. Chandra Adams, M.D. has had to find new ways to keep up with her patients health while also providing them the best care.

“We’re doing telehealth visits, which works pretty well, but we had to work out getting blood pressure cuffs, encouraging people to buy them, that way if they aren’t coming to the office we can keep up with their vital signs,” Dr. Adams said.

In the midst of the pandemic some Black women have been taking their birth experience into their own hands, looking for alternatives to decrease their risks and exposure to the coronavirus and any complications that could impose on their pregnancy, labor, and delivery. Those alternatives include midwifery care.

“More Black women go to the hospital to have their babies, but I think with this pandemic we have had an increase in women seeking our services,” Jackson said. Jackson is the owner, co-founder, and director of BirthCare & Women’s Health, Ltd. based in Alexandria, Virginia, a midwifery practice that caters to clients who have births in their homes or in the BirthCare birth center.

Dr. Adams, The Owner of Full Circle Jax in Jacksonville, Florida runs a private practice with doctors and midwives on staff. While she believes in the midwifery and birth center model, she cautions that it is not for everyone.

“I’m not opposed to out of hospital birth, but I don’t think any decisions about birth should be made out of fear . . . You shouldn’t run from a hospital because of a perceived danger without understanding what the risks are of delivering outside of the hospital.”

Tecoya Harris, currently pregnant with her first child, admits to having mixed feelings about giving birth.

“I feel anxious about delivery due to the fact that I can’t anticipate how it will feel,” Harris said. “At the same time, my faith is high so I have to trust that God has brought me to this moment because I am ready. Having resources, a strong partner, and a doula also helps bring down some of those anxieties.”

Dr. Adams strongly advocates for her moms to have a doula, and also encourages pregnant women to use their voice to advocate for themselves.

“I’ve been hearing women saying [about health problems] ‘I’ve never brought it up again because I was afraid of what a doctor would say to me,’ and so they just stopped talking about their problem. Don’t stop talking about your problem! Go find somebody who’s going to listen to you, and treat you like someone who respects you, and will find out what’s wrong. That’s our job. That’s literally our job!”

While that may be the job, history shows the healthcare industry has a negative track record when it comes to listening and believing Black women when they say something is wrong.

“The system has done a terrible job of listening to Black women,” Dr. Adams said.

Tennis superstar Serena Williams and Olympic-gold medal winner Allyson Felix have both been vocal about their birth experiences, the complications they faced, and how they had to fight to be heard to get well. Yet their stories, though cautionary, still end with a positive outcome. The same cannot be said for Charles Johnson IV who lost his wife Kira in 2015 when she bled to death after the birth of their second child.

“They [were] under the care of a physician, and basically they just let her die,” Jackson said, recounting hearing Charles Johnson IV tell his family’s story during the 2020 virtual conference of the American College of Nurse Midwives.

Jackson and Dr. Adams believe some of the blame for the Black maternal health crisis lies with ever expanding physician practices.

“One of the biggest problems was when hospitals started to employ physicians,” Dr. Adams said. “Physicians, before, when we started we’d hang our shingle and open solo practices. You had the personal care because in the similar fashion of the mom-and-pop shop you were responsible for the level of customer service, and that is how you kept your ‘customers’ coming back.”

Now, many physicians are employed by hospitals or large doctor groups who are more focused on productivity. Dr. Adams said that has led to a decrease in time doctors have with their patients, which can lead to a decrease in care. Because of this, Dr. Adams and Marsha Jackson both say Black women need to educate themselves in every way.

“You have to do research in the beginning. You want to find out what kind of options are available,” Jackson said.

“But you’re not going to go to medical school,” Dr. Adams added. “There’s a certain amount that you can’t just get from Googling or reading on your own . . . but if you gather enough information about people you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

This advice applied before the pandemic hit. Now, the country’s response to COVID-19 has made it all the more important for pregnant Black women to do their research, assess their risks, and have the hard conversations with their doctors.

On her birth experience, Merriweather said, “The labor and delivery ward where I had my child was very meticulous in keeping the section of the hospital cut off from the rest to protect the lives of the mother and baby from the virus. Each doctor and nurse was only allowed to work in that division of the hospital and had to be tested before being allowed in while wearing masks.”

For Harris, hearing of positive birth experiences from friends and loved ones has helped to keep her spirits up, even in the face of the pandemic and Black maternal health crises.

“Although it is scary, seeing that other women have had healthy babies and deliveries give me hope,” Harris said. “Our bodies were made to do this and we are already amazing moms with every decision we make during pregnancy.”

Pandemic or no pandemic, Dr. Adams—who has been focused on the Black maternal health crisis for over a decade—says while this discussion isn’t new, people are finally being heard and there is responsibility for doctors and Black women.

“What is unfortunate in the healthcare system is that Black women are not listened to, we are not treated with respect, and we are not believed when we present valid complaints,” she said. “[But] what is actually physically killing us is hypertension and hemorrhage. We are not dying from people not being nice to us. We are disenfranchised and we’re not receiving the appropriate amount of preventative care, and sometimes responsive care, because of that.”

In early March, U.S. Representatives Lauren Underwood, Alma S. Adams, and Senator Kamala Harris introduced the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2020. The legislation is a package of nine individual bills aimed at “comprehensively addressing every dimension of the Black maternal health crisis.” However, the package has received little exposure due to COVID. Once again, Black women, mothers, and their children are left to fend for themselves at a time when Black people are twice as likely to die from COVID than their white peers.

With the future passability of the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act unknown, and the expected resurgence of COVID-19 in the fall (or until there is a vaccine) the onus remains on Black women to educate and advocate for themselves and their unborn children, and perhaps to seek a collaborative model of care where available.

“Cooperative care between midwives and physicians is essential,” Dr. Adams said. “You have to have a midlevel to understand what is normal. [Someone] who has been trained enough to see enough to know what is abnormal and to appropriately refer to someone to handle when something is abnormal.”

This post is republished from the author’s Facebook page. You can read the original post here. You can also find more of Shola’s work here.

Twice a day, I walk my dog Ace around my neighborhood with one, or both, of my girls. I know that doesn’t seem noteworthy, but here’s something that I must admit:

I would be scared to death to take these walks without my girls and my dog. In fact, in the four years living in my house, I have never taken a walk around my neighborhood alone and I probably never will.

Sure, some of you may read that and think that I’m being melodramatic or that I’m “playing the race card” (I still have no clue what that means), but this is my reality.

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When I’m walking down the street holding my young daughter’s hand and walking my sweet fluffy dog, I’m just a loving dad and pet owner taking a break from the joylessness of crisis homeschooling.

But without them by my side, almost instantly, I morph into a threat in the eyes of some white folks. Instead of being a loving dad to two little girls, unfortunately, all that some people can see is a 6’2″ athletically-built black man in a cloth mask who is walking around in a place where he doesn’t belong (even though, I’m still the same guy who just wants to take a walk through his neighborhood). It’s equal parts exhausting and depressing to feel like I can’t walk around outside alone, for fear of being targeted.

If you’re surprised by this, don’t be. We live in a world where there is a sizable amount of people who actually believe that racism isn’t a thing, and that White Privilege is a made-up fantasy to be politically-correct. Yes, even despite George Floyd, Christian Cooper, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor (and countless other examples before them, and many to come afterward), some people still don’t seem to get it.

So, let me share some common sense points:

1) Having white privilege doesn’t mean that your life isn’t difficult, it simply means that your skin color isn’t one of the things contributing to your life difficulties. Case in point, if it never crossed your mind that you could have the cops called on you (or worse, possibly killed) for simply bird watching then know that is a privilege that many black/brown people (myself included) don’t currently enjoy.

2) Responding to “Black Lives Matter” by saying “All Lives Matter” is insensitive, tone-deaf and dumb. All lives can’t matter until black lives matter.

3) Racism is very real, and please don’t delude yourself into thinking it’s limited to the fringes of the hardcore MAGA crowd. As Amy Cooper proved, it’s just as prevalent in liberal America as it is anywhere else.

4) While racism is real, reverse-racism is not. Please don’t use that term, ever.

5) In order for racism to get better, white allies are absolutely critical. If you’re white and you’ve read this far, hopefully you care enough to be one of those allies. Please continue to speak up (despite some of your friends and family rolling their eyes at you), because your voices matter to PoC now more than ever. Special shoutouts to many of my friends for doing it so well.

6) And if you’re white, and you’re still choosing to stay silent about this, then I honestly don’t know what to say. If these atrocities won’t get you to speak up, then honestly, what will? Also, it’s worth asking, why would you choose to follow me? If you aren’t willing to take a stand against actions that could get me hurt or killed, it’s hard to believe that you ever cared about me (or my mission to create a kinder world) in the first place.

As for me, I’ll continue to walk these streets holding my 8 year-old daughter’s hand, in hopes that she’ll continue to keep her daddy safe from harm.

I know that sounds backward, but that’s the world that we’re living in these days.

#BlackLivesMatter

Shola Richards is an author and keynote speaker whose mission is to end workplace bullying, and change the world by changing how we treat each other.”

When I read about Amy Cooper, the woman in Central Park who called the police on a black birder because he’d asked her to leash her out-of-control dog, I was horrified.

But, as a sociolinguist who studies and writes about language and discrimination, I was also struck by the name given to Cooper in several headlines: “Central Park Karen.” On Twitter, the birder’s sister also referred to her as a “Karen.”

There was no confusion about what this meant: It was a label for a white woman who had used her privilege to threaten and try to intimidate a black man by calling the police.

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But this was just one way “Karen” has been deployed in recent months. There was the woman dubbed a Karen who, after being told that a waiter would bring ketchup to her table, ended up helping herself at the server’s station. And then there was the mom who was called a Karen for telling a woman wearing a bikini to cover up. Countless other variations have emerged.

At first glance, a generic name becoming infused with so much meaning seems patently absurd. Imagine if your friend groused that his boss was being “a real David,” or a sibling pointed out that mom was acting like “such a Christina.”

So how, exactly, does a name like Karen become such a powerful form of social commentary? And how does it come to mean so many different things at the same time?

The many shapes of meaning

First names tend to contain a range of social cues. An obvious one is gender. But they can convey other kinds of information too, including age, ethnicity, religion, social class and geography. The first name Karen peaked in popularity in 1965, which means that in 2020, most people named Karen are middle aged. Because roughly 80% of the U.S. population was white in the 1960s, it’s safe to assume that the proportion of people named Karen in 2020 is predominantly white.

So that’s kind of a rough foundation for what the first name Karen might signal to people. But what about the way it evolved to mean much more than simply a first name relatively common among middle-aged white women?

On the one hand, meaning can directly reference something in the world. A kitchen is, well, a kitchen. For this reason, we often assume that meanings are fixed and stable.

But meaning can also be more indirect, indicating characteristics like where a person is from, their age or their ethnicity. Whether you say “soda,” “pop” or “Coke” for a carbonated beverage can indicate where in the United States you likely grew up. In many African American communities, kitchen, in addition to being the place you cook, means “nape of the neck.”

These different definitions are often referred to as “indexical” because different contexts indicate, or index, different meanings. Meaning, it turns out isn’t nearly as stable or fixed as we like to think.

This is how the use and understandings of words change and shift over time. It’s also how they can become vehicles for social commentary.

Karen’s origin story

It’s largely a coincidence that Karen – rather than, say, other popular baby names from the 1960s like Linda or Cynthia – is the name that became the label. Instead, it’s the repeated use of the name on social media and on the street that reinforced its status.

By tracing the origins of Karen up until the Central Park incident, you can see how two separate threads of meaning converged to make Karen the label for an officious, entitled, white woman.

The first comes from African American communities, where certain generic first names have long been a shorthand for “a white woman to be wary of because she won’t hesitate to wield privilege at the expense of others.” Around 2018, people started posting pictures of white women calling the police on the mundane activities of black people. These individuals got labeled with hashtags like #bbqbecky, #permitpatti, #golfcartgail and #cornerstonecaroline.

The goal was to call out the inherent racism and white privilege of these women using a particular kind of alliterative flair. This was the same sort of behavior that Amy Cooper engaged in when she called the police claiming to be threatened.

The second thread emerges from stand-up comedy and Reddit. In 2005, Dane Cook performed a sketch comedy piece in which Karen is “that friend nobody likes.” In the sketch, she’s described as “always a douche.” This portrayal of a “Karen” is less about her racism and contains more gender-based critiques, which might be why some continue to call the Karen meme sexist.

Then, in late 2017, Karen appeared on Reddit as a parody of a Reddit user who had ranted about his ex-wife named Karen who received custody of their children and possession of the family home. That’s likely the point at which Karen became linked to pushy behaviors like “wanting to speak to the manager.” A link that may have occurred first through parody went on to serve as an actual label for self-important, bossy people.

A Karen by many other names

The Central Park incident created the perfect moment for these two strands to come together. There’s the intersection of entitled behavior, racism and demographics.

Interestingly, despite a lot of media analysis about what Karen “really” means, its use has been quite fluid. For example, we’ve seen people who deny the existence of racism, panic buy toilet paper or call for an end to social distancing all called “Karens.”

In fact, the meaning and use of Karen continues to shift. We can find male Karens and black Karens. Donald Trump has even been called a Karen.

And then there’s the way it’s being used to push for justice, with protesters of police violence holding signs like “Karens against police brutality” and “I’d like to speak to the manager of systemic racism.”

So is Karen fundamentally about white women using their racial privilege as a weapon? Is it about being an obnoxious rule follower? Or is it about being a no-fun, hysterical mom?

Karen can be and is all of those. That doesn’t weaken the critique; it simply gives it more facets and nuance.

This article originally appeared on The Conversation. You can read it here.

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It’s been months since any TV show or movie has been able to feature more than one actor together in the same shot (unless they’re married or quarantining together). And yet the world needs content, and doing what SNL, late night TV, and daytime talk shows have done — have everyone perched in front of their webcams — probably isn’t a long-term solution. But it turns out there is a solution for one aspect of entertainment: If you need to shoot a love scene, you can take a page from the Ryan Gosling movie Lars and the Real Girl and have one partner be a blow-up doll.

That’s what The Bold and the Beautiful is doing. Forbes spoke to Bradley Bell, head writer and executive on the longtime CBS soap, which resumed shooting on June 15, and learned that while actors will be sharing the same sets, they’ll have to keep at least eight feet apart. Alas, social distancing and soap operas are, if you will, strange bedfellows.

“We were cutting all of the kisses, and the shows weren’t the same,” said head writer and executive Bradley Bell. And so they thought way outside the box and came back, and came back with an unusual solution to keep the passion alive even when the actors can’t come close to touching: each simulated sex scene will technically be solo acts.

“We have some life-like blow-up dolls that have been sitting around here for the past 15 years, that we’ve used for various other stories — like when people were presumed dead,” Bell said. “We’re dusting off the dolls and putting new wigs and make-up on them and they’ll be featured in love scenes.”

It’s not just love scenes that will require some movie (or TV) magic: Stand-ins will also be used on certain scenes, with actors recruiting their spouses to double for their onscreen paramours. Kisses, meanwhile, will be faked using editing, which…well, which sounds like it will be awkward to shoot and also to watch, though Bell is confident that won’t be so.

“They’ll look like they’re nose to nose, in the throes of passion,” Bell said. “But they’ll be shooting scenes all by themselves.”

The Bold and the Beautiful, which films in Los Angeles, halted production on March 13, a week before Governor Gavin Newsom issued stay-at-home orders statewide. By the end of the month, and for the first time since it premiered in 1987, the show was airing re-runs, having burned through fresh episodes.

The soap isn’t the only production that’s resumed filming, despite the fact that the pandemic still rages. The Avatar sequels resumed filming this week as well, and though they’re working in miraculously COVID-free New Zealand, perhaps James Cameron will take note and start investing in giant blue blow-up dolls.

(Via Forbes)

Over two-and-a-half years after Netflix fired Danny Masterson from The Ranch over the sexual assault allegations against him (following the legal cases stalling out in the court system), the actor has been formally charged with three counts of rape by force or fear by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office. As Variety reports, he faces up to 45 years behind bars if convicted, and he awaits arraignment on September 18.

KTLA reports some specifics on the cases that led to these charges:

Masterson allegedly raped a 23-year-old woman between January and December 2001, according to a criminal complained filed against him. He is also accused of raping a 28-year-old woman in April 2003. Sometime between October and December of that year, he allegedly raped a 23-year-old woman who he invited to his home.

Variety notes that the DA declined to pursue charges in two other cases, one of which faced a statute of limitations expiration and the other due to a lack of sufficient evidence.

The Huffington Post’s Yashar Ali tweeted a statement from Masterson’s attorney, Tom Mesereau:

“Mr. Masterson is innocent, and we’re confident that he will be exonerated when all the evidence finally comes to light and witnesses have the opportunity to testify.

“Obviously, Mr. Masterson and his wife are in complete shock considering that these nearly 20-year-old allegations are suddenly resulting in charges being filed, but they and their family are confored knowing that ultimately the truth will come out. The people who know Mr. Masterson know his character and now the allegations to be false.”

(Via Variety, KTLA & Huffington Post)

Finding the best single malt scotch is a lifelong endeavor. There are a lot of bottles out there from distilleries big and small, with a massive amount of variation between them. Remember, each region — Speyside, Lowland, Highland, Campbeltown, and Islay — is known for a specific flavor profile and a certain level of peatiness. A true aficionado can taste the regional variations and identify them with ease.

One of my all-time favorite Highland distilleries in Scotland is Oban. My love of this relatively tiny distillery in the small town of Oban on the Scottish coast has been cultivated over the course of a lifelong journey through whisky. Last year I finally got to go to Scotland and tour the Oban Distillery, which sealed my love for the stuff. The small operation has only two antique copper pot stills and the entire company is run by only seven people, many of whom live at the distillery in apartments above the offices.

I’ve been lucky enough to sit at a few Oban tastings over the years. I’ve also ran my own tasting recently, with five signature bottles. Those are the bottles we’re going to talk about today. While these expressions are on the higher-end price-wise, they’re truly stand-out single malts that’ll wow even the most passive scotch lover.

The bottles themselves are well-designed yet simple. The juice inside is, in my opinion, whisky that’ll help you fall in love with Scotch single malts once and for all. Plus, they make great gifts and are all available for delivery right now.

OBAN BAY RESERVE — THE NIGHT’S WATCH GAME OF THRONES EDITION

ABV: 43%
Average Price: $80

The Whisky:

This expression is a reissue of Oban’s Bay Reserve, which is a no-age-statement whisky. The bottle was branded with the Night’s Watch oath to commemorate the final season of Game Of Thrones. Oban was chosen for this due to the huge rock wall behind the distillery that conjures visions of “The Wall” on the show.

Tasting Notes:

Mild notes of spice and wood with a bit of malt greets you. There’s a real sense of mild spice followed by bitter orange zest and hint of tart fruit. A drop of water reveals creamy texture and more of that spice, wood, orange zest, and cherry on the palate. There’s a whisper of smoke on the end with a hint of brine.

OBAN 14

ABV: 43%
Average Price: $85

The Whisky:

This is a great gateway scotch to have on hand. The juice is classically made and then matured in the Oban storehouses for 14 long years. The end result is a thoroughly accessible single malt that bridges being a great sipper with offering a superb cocktail base.

Tasting Notes:

Citrus, salt, and a billow of peat smoke open this one up in classic fashion. That citrus carries on as a foundation for mild spices, a note of honey, hints of pears, and plummy dried fruits mingle on the tongue. The oak spice and peaty smoke meet on the end with a slight malty sweetness as the sip fades.

OBAN DISTILLER’S EDITION

ABV: 43%
Average Price: $104

The Whisky:

This expression is a bit of a love letter to the town of Oban and the community that was built around the distillery in the center of the town. The whisky is the distiller’s creation — harnessing double-aged whiskies finished in Montilla Fino sherry casks. The end result is a fine scotch that celebrates the wonders of Oban.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a vinous edge alongside a clear sense of the briny sea, notes of orange zest, and a wisp of smoke. The sweet malts have a toffee feel as the apple and grape fruitiness counter the sea salt depths. The sip fades quickly as a note of vinous sherry, oak, and brine pull away like a receding wave.

OBAN LITTLE BAY

ABV: 43%
Average Price: $80

The Whisky:

Oban is Gaelic for “Little Bay.” So this is a bit like saying Little Bay Little Bay. The juice in the is expression is aged in both old American and old European oak before being transferred into finishing barrels for a little extra depth.

Tasting Notes:

Fruit dominates up front. Apple, malts, mild butterscotch, orange zest, and a clear hit of cloves dance across the palate. A drop of water moves the sip towards a note of fresh mint sprigs alongside the apple and clove, giving an almost spiced apple cake feel to the sip as it quickly fades away.

OBAN AGED 21 YEARS

ABV: 57.9%
Average Price: $495

The Whisky:

This is a monster bottle (at a very prohibitive price-point). This limited-release from 2018 is bottled from whisky mellowed for 21 years in a second-fill European oak barrel. It’s devilishly simple yet deeply provocative and well-worth the investment if you’re craving something truly special.

Tasting Notes:

Notes of salted cream mingle with a subtle sense of whisky malts and oak. The sip leans into touches of bitter cacao and toasted coconut with a hazelnut underpinning, creating a fatty feel with the cacao. Adding water brings about a counterpoint of fresh mint with the cacao and coconut like a luscious yet light salty-sweet dessert. The end is fascinatingly short, making you want to pour another dram immediately.

Check out our LIVE tasting of each bottle below with food and travel writer Megan Murphy and UPROXX Life Deputy Editor Zach Johnston!

He’s known by his first name because so few can pronounce his last. First, a trepidation, then a laziness, then a shorthand. Only LeBron has the same first-name basis with every sports fan. How Giannis has been made familiar, outside his performance, his crushingly natural athletic inclinations, is by an irony known to any successful newcomer.

For his first eighteen years he was stateless. His parents left Lagos for Athens and Giannis was born three years later. Greek nationality law follows jus sanguinis, right of blood, citizenship determined via nationality or ethnicity of one or both parents. His parents were Nigerian, but without returning to Nigera couldn’t confer their status onto their son. On his own, the path was close to impossible. Until 2015, there were no citizenship provisions in place for second or even third-generation migrants, and the legislation that came that year was bound up in prerequisites of education, a pathway not always available to a country’s most precarious. His blood would never change, but basketball could be its accelerant.

He entered the 2013 NBA Draft as Greek because it would raise fewer flags for entering the United States than as Nigerian. The American Dream was his, like it could be for so many, if they only placed in it the full weight of their trust, the leverage of their labor.

When Giannis Antetokounmpo returns to Greece now, the people in his old neighborhood who used to sneer at his selling CDs, sunglasses, who didn’t want Africans as neighbors, open their arms wide to welcome him home. His portrait is painted gigantic across the court he used to play on. And he’s Giannis, good natured, watchful as they come, so he agrees. They have no trouble with his last name, not anymore. They always knew how it fit between their teeth, it was the boy it was attached to they couldn’t stomach.

Ever since he declared himself eligible for the Draft, this theme of inversion has exploded. There is not one team, one GM who doesn’t eye their current roster and indulge in the secret exercise of playing favorites, then offering those favorites up when imaginarily pressed. It is hardly an exercise because, when they ask themselves who they would be willing to lose to gain him, there is not one name that slips suddenly out of reach. And once initiation into that fantasy starts, one toe dipped in forbidden waters where the ripples find everything, there is no way to see their teams as they were, without a 6’11 shadow cast across their best laid plans.

The ease of Antetokounmpo is just that — amicable and fluid, not inclined to throw his weight around beyond the direction that he’s moving in, but still with a ferocity that comes to bear on court as if it were a pointed, deliberate act of revenge. When he moves against someone it is with the propulsion needed to go through them, but not in a way where he’s calculated and added extra energy, more as if they were never there in the first place. His basketball is erasure.

His face changes. Not the cocky mask of James Harden or Russell Westbrook’s flippant ease, Giannis betrays a slight, near imperceptible flicker and then he’s gone, shifted inside himself. Aside from his physical strength, the most frightening thing about him on court is that when he locks eyes with the competition, they find zero recognition there. Off the court, he is the farthest thing from cruel, but out there under the lights, the speed and precision that he can shear personality from player, ability from the threat it poses to him, with the most glancing of reads, is undoing. You might get a bounce on the spot as his body ricochets up from the force of him landing post-block, post-dunk, post-backing a guy all the way to the basket, crowd keening as he makes two fists and cuts a quick bodybuilder pose, face snarling. But by the time that steam valve release of a celebration is done, soul freshly abdicated from the body of the other guy, he’s back gliding silent down the court, a flicker of shadow beside you out in deep water that you never want to see.

Fearlessness is a prerequisite for basketball, but it comes from practice. To better in a league of the very best, anything that looks like reluctance has to be counter conditioned. Nerves become speed, a bad shot is a good second chance. Stacked on top of one another, season after season, these deficits turn into experience and players hone their courage. That’s not so for Antetokounmpo. His fearlessness comes hauled out of a deep well inside, drawn from the same stratum as the fundamentals of his character. It isn’t a decision to be courageous on court for him as much as it is the absence of fear to begin with. The symmetry of his euro step coming downhill onto a defender, the careening blocks he’s already airborne for just as the unsuspecting guy he’s gaining on is going up for their layup, these actions are so deeply intuitive to him. You watch and understand his thought process has never hinged on when or if. Instead, it’s based on picking the best moment around the flinch of possible failure, it has only ever been I will.

In the playoffs last year, when the Bucks were hobbled by the Raptors for four games straight and fell out of the Eastern Conference Finals, it was not tempering this innate lack of fear with discretion, watchfulness, and the necessary regrouping beat a shrewdly placed pause can gift that gave him and Milwaukee trouble. To win in the every night scrap that is a playoff series, Antetokounmpo has to counter condition his deepest natural impulse, he has to learn a little fear — if only for its useful side effects. Watching him this season, as winter eased up its grip everywhere but Milwaukee, he was gaining on it. His reads were sharper, he showed up to help in the throng of the paint where he could lend his smothering length and physicality to dig out a swamped offense. If he was hounded and shut down early, he would flip the ball away, faking and shaking his defenders only to pop up where his guys needed him and swat the ball in at the end of an alley-oop. He was watchful and it was getting terrifying.

A lot is made of the personal milestones in players’ lives, some of it relevant, or else just lining up with a much-needed narrative. Antetokounmpo becoming a father this season did seem to shift the scope of his work. Four days before All-Star weekend, the bacchanalian pause that propels the last quarter of the season, he held the tiniest person imaginable with his two giant hands and let the full weight of his son settle. Antetokounmpo is already the farthest thing from a mercurial superstar. The icy, imperturbable mantle he slips into during games is easily shed by the scorer’s table when he steps off court. He’s friendly with media, responsive to fans, demonstrative with his teammates, and accessible to coaches. His affability isn’t naiveté, he’s never seemed surprised to be where he is, and after the storied road he’s taken, generational in its journey, how could he be? Before he set foot in the lifestyle of a professional athlete he had been honing an approachability necessary to seem less like the other in a world where his skin was seen first, personality and skills last, if ever.

Players who come up through the linear path of high school-college-declare for the draft have understood that remaining open on request is a part of getting there. That Antetokounmpo’s instruction was initially in survival hasn’t altered the tenderness of him, what seems a wide and smiling approach to life, competition, and now beginning a family. There is suddenly a lot more on the line and that’s including the entirety of what was there before. He has raised his own stakes and multiplied his joy, the two fundamental things that have driven him in tandem throughout his career.

A large focus of the 2019-2020 season, initially, was on getting through it in order to see if the greatest force in the league would make it to 2021 free agency. His decision this offseason, signing a supermax extension in Milwaukee or not, will determine the fury with which teams gear up for a run at the MVP a year later. There are at least three teams who have factored his choice into what the future of their franchises look like — Milwaukee, Miami, and Toronto — and a handful of others whose intentions seem more sincere than the Knicks’ anarchic strategy of declaring for everybody, all of the time. More might take serious looks at their rosters after this season spent in strange oblivion and once the staggered start of the next one gets underway to see if they have something worth risking it all for. And even the teams that are realistic enough to know they don’t have a shot, or have already secured the players they wanted or needed in recent summers and are smartly walking away, will still cast covetous glances back on what Antetokounmpo will decide to do because he is one of the rare few who shapes the landscape of the league for seasons to come with nothing more than a fresh signature.

Jus sanguinis, right of blood, applied in the microcosm of the league and there is nothing that his name does not inherit him. Whether he goes by first or last or lets the stillness cleaved in the trail of his footfalls on court speak for him, he is his own lineage and we are all just waiting for history.

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Over the past 24 hours, Chris D’Elia has been accused of sexual harassment by several women when they were underage, many of whom included screenshots of their communications. The comedian has since denied the claims of sexual misconduct, telling TMZ that he’s “never knowingly pursued any underage women at any point.”

“I know I have said and done things that might have offended people during my career, but I have never knowingly pursued any underage women at any point,” D’Elia said. “That being said, I really am truly sorry. I was a dumb guy who ABSOLUTELY let myself get caught up in my lifestyle. That’s MY fault. I own it. I’ve been reflecting on this for some time now and I promise I will continue to do better.”

The allegations began piling up this week after one alleged victim claimed that the Netflix series You actor once asked her for nude pictures, knowing that she was underaged. She included snapshots of the emails allegedly from D’Elia. Other alleged victims who accused D’Elia of grooming also shared snapshots of conversations they claimed were with the comic in which he sexually harassed them.

This is currently D’Elia’s pinned tweet:

As TMZ notes, no police reports have been filed yet.

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)