Category: Worldwide

Vladimir Putin’s disastrous war is financially draining Russia, which isn’t even the worst of it, given the enormous loss of life (including many, many Russians) over in Ukraine. He’s apparently so upset about his manpower losses, which show that “boots on the ground” isn’t exactly working out. With Ukrainian cities completely out of reach in that regard, he resorted to launching missiles into Kyiv, where he killed multiple civilians, including a newborn, and knocked out utilities to the area. His increasing desperation has led to nuclear chatter, and we’ve also heard that his dwindling supply of allies is heading into “civil war” while it becomes obvious that this war is a huge mistake.

To that end, there’s some armchair psychology going on from Putin’s present foes. Ukrainian presidential advisor Oleksiy Arestovich believes that Putin’s recent strategic moves reflect his fear of clear-and-present danger on his end. In other words, Putin knows that if he loses this disastrous war, his life is on the line, via The Independent (and according to The Times):

“[Putin] is very afraid because there is no forgiveness in Russia for tsars who lose wars,” Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, told The Times.

“He is fighting for his life now. If he loses the war, at least in the minds of the Russians, it means the end. The end of him as a political figure. And possibly in the physical sense.”

From there, it’s no wonder that word is leaking out that Putin’s inner circle is privately bemoaning an impending loss, although we’ve heard (for much of this year) that they’re attempting to figure out who might succeed Putin after this war finally ends (and not well for Russia). In the meantime, Ukrainian citizens and Russian soldiers continue to suffer while it looks like this war will drag on into 2023.

(Via The Independent)

Following the death of his Migos bandmate, Takeoff, earlier this month, Offset has taken to Instagram to share another tribute to the late rapper.

In his post, Offset shared an image of his cousin, smiling while dressed in a blue suit, matching suspenders, and gold chains.

“Missing everything bout you specially that smile,” he said in the post’s caption.

This is the second tribute Offset has shared since Takeoff’s death. Earlier this month, after Takeoff’s funeral, Offset wrote on Instagram, saying, “The pain you have left me with is unbearable. My heart is shattered and I have so many things to say, but I can’t find the words. I’ve been going to sleep and waking up hoping that all of this is a dream, but it’s reality, and reality feels like a nightmare.”

Takeoff’s other Migos bandmate, Quavo, with whom Takeoff had just released a joint album called Only Built For Infinity Links, also shared a tribute to Takeoff on Instagram after his funeral. He recalled that he didn’t like calling Takeoff his nephew, despite the face that he was his sister’s son.

“…you are OUR angel watching me and watching us this whole time in living form,” Quavo said. making sure EVERYONE FELT UR LOVE AND HUGS while u here and u made our dreams come true.”

Things are not looking good for Ticketmaster right now. They company has been under intense scrutiny since they faced substantial issues with the launch of tickets for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour. A Justice Department investigation was apparently ongoing before all this happened, but now Congress is set to take a closer look at them, too: US Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Mike Lee (R-UT) (who are Chairwoman and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee On Competition Policy, Antitrust, And Consumer Rights) announced yesterday (November 22) that they will hold a Congressional hearing to “examine the lack of competition in the ticketing industry.”

In a statement shared on Klobuchar’s website yesterday, she said:

“Last week, the competition problem in ticketing markets was made painfully obvious when Ticketmaster’s website failed hundreds of thousands of fans hoping to purchase concert tickets. The high fees, site disruptions, and cancellations that customers experienced shows how Ticketmaster’s dominant market position means the company does not face any pressure to continually innovate and improve. That’s why we will hold a hearing on how consolidation in the live entertainment and ticketing industry harms customers and artists alike. When there is no competition to incentivize better services and fair prices, we all suffer the consequences.”

Lee also noted:

“American consumers deserve the benefit of competition in every market, from grocery chains to concert venues. I look forward to exercising our Subcommittee’s oversight authority to ensure that anticompetitive mergers and exclusionary conduct are not crippling an entertainment industry already struggling to recover from pandemic lockdowns.”

A date for the hearing or a list of witnesses have not yet been revealed.

Yesterday afternoon, Stormzy unveiled the complete list of artists he collaborated with for his upcoming album, This Is What I Mean. While their exact contributions to a specific track are still unknown, his record boasts new features from Sampha, India.Arie, Nao, and more.

Other additions to Stormzy’s album include George Moore, Knox Brown, Ayanna, Oxlade, Dion “Chord Lord” Wardle, Scribz Riley, KZ, Tempoe, Ms Banks, Owen Cutts, Ayra Starr, Juls, Joel Peters, Calum Landau, Amaarae, Tendai, Storry, Teni,Grades, Debbie, Elmiene, Jacob Collier, Black Sherif, and P2J.

“My album family,” he captioned the reveal with a heart emoji.

“We’re all musicians, but we weren’t always doing music,” he shared in a previous statement. “Some days we played football or walked around taking pictures. And the bi-product [sic] to that was very beautiful music. Because when you marry that ethos with world-class musicians and the best producers, writers, and artists in the world, and we’re in one space, that’s a recipe for something that no one can really imagine. You can’t even calculate what that’s going to come up with. And it came up with a big chunk of this album.”

Check out the full tracklist below.

1. “Fire + Water”
2. “This Is What I Mean”
3. “FireBabe”
4. “Please”
5. “Need You”
6. “Hide & Seek”
7. “My Presidents Are Black”
8. “Sampha’s Plea”
9. “Holy Spirit”
10. “Bad Blood”
11. “I Got My Smile Back”
12. “Give It To The Water”

This Is What I Mean is out on 11/25 via Def Jam/Interscope. Pre-save it here.

There is something about heading home to spend time with your family that just invokes the urge to devour caffeine and sugar. Are you stressed about seeing your siblings for the first time in months? Do you feel overwhelmed by the prospect of buying presents? Are you cold and under-caffeinated? Is there a man super-gluing his hand to the coffee bar? It must be time for a hand-crafted beverage!

As always, there is a trendy new take on winter beverages this year that has been sweeping the nation….that nation being TikTok. The latest Starbucks concoction was created by an employee known as CozyBarista on TikTok who insisted that her followers have to try this holiday drink, which consists of a brown sugar shaken espresso drink topped with that coveted peppermint cold foam.

Obviously, any trend has its doubters: other baristas in the comments critiqued the way that the drink was made. Since there are approximately 400,000 Starbucks workers, it’s not surprising that there are other ways to make things, but that might alter just how good the drink is…though it will probably be enjoyable either way.

Speaking of making things, this drink could probably be created at home, which would save you about $9 and give you the opportunity to show off your barista skills to your family. Or you can just have someone make it for you instead. That’s the American Dream, anyway!

(Via Mashable)

By the time she starred in I, Tonya, Margot Robbie had already been in The Wolf of Wall Street (where she played the “hottest blonde ever”), The Legend of Tarzan, and Suicide Squad, not to mention hundreds of episodes of the Australian soap opera Neighbours and a memorable cameo in The Big Short. But she didn’t feel like a “good actor” until the ice skating biopic, which earned her the first of two Oscar nominations.

“I, Tonya was the first time I watched a movie and went, ‘OK, I’m a good actor,’” she told the audience at Tuesday’s “BAFTA: A Life in Pictures” tribute in London. Playing disgraced Olympian Tonya Harding gave Robbie the confidence to feel like she was “good enough” to “reach out to my idols,” including Quentin Tarantino. That turned out well: Robbie was cast as Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the director’s favorite film of his; she even unintentionally recreated a scene from the movie in real life.

Robbie also admitted to mimicking a scene from the film in which Tate watches her own movie in the cinema, going to the same theater where it was shot by herself where Tarantino’s feature was screening. “I just went there and watched it on a random Tuesday afternoon and sat in pretty much the same seat,” she said. “I had pretty much the same experience [as Tate in Once Upon a Time], even down to the fact that the person I bought the ticket off was like, ‘But you’re in the movie,’ and I was like, ‘I know.’”

Robbie even took a photo with the ticket seller, who had a good story to tell all his or her buddies later that night. Of course, even with the visual proof, no one believed them. “That’s Photoshop, mate,” the skeptical friends said. “You didn’t actually hang out with Margot Robbie.” I might be speaking from experience here…

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)

While a runoff election in Georgia is probably not at the top of your list of things to be thankful for this year, if you’re looking for a bright spot in the mayhem of the 2022 midterms, perhaps it’s this: Herschel Walker’s “erection.”

On Tuesday night, the wannabe senator whose campaign has been wall-to-wall bedlam with secret children (plural!) coming out of the woodwork, accusations of abortion checks in get well cards, impersonating a police officer during a debate, the most inane political speeches in American history, and basic language flubs that would make a kindergartner roll his eyes. But it turns out that all of that was just an appetizer to the turkey of a performance Walker gave on Tuesday night while being interviewed by Sean Hannity on Fox News.

Actually, “being interviewed” might be a bit of misnomer, as Walker — the actual candidate — was weirdly sandwiched between Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, who were clearly meant to command the nearly 12-minute interview and speak for Herschel in some sort of bizarro ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ act. It probably didn’t hurt Walker’s likability factor to be the meat in a Most Hated Republicans sandwich. When the actual candidate did finally get a chance to talk — with Cruz and Graham visibly hanging on his every word — he told (or at least attempted to tell) Hannity that this election is about more than just him:

Well, first of all, this election is more than Herschel Walker. This erection is about the people.

No, that’s not a typo. Yes, he said “erection.”

Even the closed captioning system picked up that Walker had uttered a different word, though — at least on Ted Cruz’s YouTube page — it went with “direction.” Which is most definitely NOT what Walker said.

You can listen to the whole thing yourself above (Walker is finally allowed to speak around the 10:40 mark) or go right to Walker’s erection below.

For one reason or another, 50 Cent has found himself in a number of legal situations over the years. That means legal fees, and when the rapper learned just how much he’s paid in legal fees since coming to fame with Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ in 2003, the number shocked him.

In a recent interview with Brian J. Roberts (at 47:29 into the video above), 50 explained, “I spent over $23 million legal fees since I’ve had success in 2003. Over $23 million in legal fees. So when you say you successful or that you rich in a different way, that money was just written off as expenses of business. You in it and I’m going, ‘What?’ When I’m looking at it myself, ‘That’s how much you really spent on that?’ I was like, ‘Wow!’”

He continued, “The only thing someone in America can do is sue someone. They’re gonna sue and there always gonna be pro-bono or say, ‘We’ll defend you in exchange for 30 percent of what we receive off of this, because we do see a case.’”

His latest courtroom activity is a case over penis enhancement claims that is set to go to trial in 2023. Of the case, he commented, “Yeah my d*ck is a BIG DEAL.”

Watch the full interview above.

It’s the tweet that launched a thousand eggplant emojis:

In Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, actor Tenoch Huerta plays sympathetic baddie Namor, and a certain part of his body may have been digitally manipulated to appear, let’s say, less prominent. Is there any truth to the viral tweet/rumor?

“The only thing that I can say is: the original was the photo in the right. Without [the bulge]! That’s original,” he told Rolling Stone with a laugh. “No, I mean, I’m not going to lie to people. Every man in the world, we have fragile masculinity, but not in that issue. I will say, the right one, the real one is the photo on the right.”

Huerta also discussed having to constantly walk around in a Speedo as Namor. “Concerned! I actually worry about it. No, it’s a big problem, man. I can’t cut off my amount of tacos from now on. But, yeah, it’s funny,” he said.

The actor then revealed what his trainer told him: “Okay, man, now you can rest, you can chill, and take your time. But not too much, because if you have to play Namor one more time, you need to go through the same process all over again. So it’s better you take care of yourself and don’t get crazy with tacos.” Getting paid millions to star in a Marvel movie sounds good — but going crazy with tacos sounds better. Not worth it, honestly.

(Via Rolling Stone)

Rihanna has been noticeably absent on the music front in recent years, which makes her upcoming performance at the 2023 Super Bowl Halftime Show even more significant than it inherently already is. Now, it looks like the process of putting that spectacle together is getting the documentary treatment

The Sun cites a “music insider” as saying:

“There is a massive appetite for everything to do with Rihanna, especially as this will be her major return to the stage for the first time in years. She will be recorded during rehearsals and meetings in the lead-up to the big night and give an insight into what her life is really like now she is returning to pop as a mum. Rihanna is a massive force to be reckoned with when it comes to music and so Apple has paid millions.

The Super Bowl is one of, if not the, biggest stages in the world, so her show was always going to be huge. Add on top of that it’s a live comeback and the pressure is immense. She is keen for the world to remember why she is one of the greatest performers of all time.”

As for where the film will be seen, Rihanna has reportedly signed “a huge deal with Apple” for it to appear on Apple TV+.