Category: Worldwide

Pokemon GO took the gaming world by storm in 2016, turning the real world into a virtual haven for pocket monsters and sending people into graveyards, parks and other landmarks to catch and battle. Five years later, the mobile game is still wildly popular, but as the world it’s based on changes some fascinating things have happened in its virtual landscape.

One of the more striking examples of this is apparently happening in Afghanistan, where US troops are leaving the country military bases there after two decades of occupation. And while there are far more significant ramifications of that occupation and departure, one odd side effect is many of the base’s Pokemon GO players have essentially abandoned Pokemon at gyms that became a big part of the gaming life there.

Stars and Stripes reported about the circumstances, which are fascinating in a number of ways. At bases like Bagram and at New Kabul Compound, many US soldiers passed the time by battling it out for control of gyms and finding Pokemon they couldn’t catch back on American soil.

Bagram once had a thriving Pokemon Go community of troops, contractors and civilians who played the game while exercising and after work.

“We weren’t expecting Pokemon Go to be thriving in Bagram, and yet it was,” recalled U.S. Army Spc. Corey Olsen, an electrical technician for attack helicopters who played the game with others from his shop in 2019.

The game uses GPS to see where players log in and populate those locations with new creatures to spawn, and once you get to a certain level in the game you can suggest new landmarks for Pokestops and gyms. But now, those gyms are essentially being abandoned, leaving behind some Pokemon with them.

Screenshots of Bagram after the troops left show low-level Pokemon, normally easily defeated, stuck guarding locations, perhaps indefinitely. A tiny Lotad has defended the former Warrior Chapel at Bagram for 10 days, while a lowly Aron has defended a memorial to a fallen servicemember for about two weeks.

Still, Sutter said he assumes someone from Afghanistan will take over his gym, someday, if they haven’t already.

“I’m sure somewhere in Afghanistan, some kid is bragging about how he took control of an American Pokemon gym,” he said.

It’s a very strange reminder of what’s left behind by occupying forces, and the many ways the real world is impacted by our digital lives. Hopefully someone new can take control of those gyms and release those Lotads and Arons back to their owners in due time.

[via Kotaku]

This weekend, the final four spots for the men’s basketball tournament at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (in 2021) were filled at the final qualifying tournaments. Serbia, Germany, Czech Republic, and Italy all secured spots in the 12-team field for group play, where each team is guaranteed three preliminary round games. The top two teams in each group, plus the two best third place finishers, will advance to the quarterfinals round of the tournament, where it becomes a single-elimination format.

The full groups can be found below, with Team USA headlining Group A.

Group A
USA
Czech Republic
France
Iran

Group B
Australia
Germany
Italy
Nigeria

Group C
Argentina
Japan
Slovenia
Spain

Games will begin on July 24 with Iran-Czech Republic as the lone game of the day, with USA Basketball beginning its play on July 25 against France. The USA will then play on July 28 (Iran) and July 31 (Czech Republic) to round out their group stage play. The complete schedule of games can be found below.

Saturday, July 24
Iran-Czech Republic (9:00 p.m. ET)

Sunday, July 25
Germany-Italy (12:40 a.m. ET)
Australia-Nigeria (4:20 a.m. ET)
USA-France (8:00 a.m. ET)

Monday, July 26
Argentina-Slovenia (12:40 a.m. ET)
Japan-Spain (8:00 a.m. ET)

Tuesday, July 27
Nigeria-Germany (9:00 p.m. ET)

Wednesday, July 28
USA-Iran (12:40 a.m. ET)
Italy-Australia (4:20 a.m. ET)
Czech Republic-France (8:00 a.m. ET)

Thursday, July 29
Slovenia-Japan (12:40 a.m. ET)
Spain-Argentina (8:00 a.m. ET)

Friday, July 30
Iran-France (9:00 p.m. ET)

Saturday, July 31
Italy-Nigeria (12:40 a.m. ET)
Australia-Germany (4:20 a.m. ET)
USA-Czech Republic (8:00 a.m. ET)

Sunday, August 1
Argentina-Japan (12:40 a.m. ET)
Spain-Slovenia (4:20 a.m. ET)

Monday, August 2
Quarterfinals (9:00 p.m. ET)

Tuesday, August 3
Quarterfinals (12:40 a.m. ET)
Quarterfinals (4:20 a.m. ET)
Quarterfinals (8:00 a.m. ET)

Thursday, August 5
Semifinals (12:15 a.m. ET)
Semifinals (7:00 a.m. ET)

Friday, August 6
Gold Medal Game (10:30 p.m. ET)

Saturday, August 7
Bronze Medal Game (7:00 a.m. ET)

R&B singer HER has been experiencing a huge breakout over the past year after a slow-burning rise that included the EPs HER and I Used To Know HER and a burgeoning collection of awards that has her well on the way to an EGOT. Now, not only is her debut album out now and racking up critical praise, but she can also now count among her collaborators such names as Barack and Michelle Obama thanks to her work with them on the Netflix animated series We The People.

In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, she called the experience “life-changing,” saying she’d do “anything for the Obamas.” “It was more exciting more than anything,” she gushed. “it made me really want to kill it just because of them being attached and them being a part of it. It’s like, wow, I am a part of something that the Obamas [did]. It’s kind of life-changing.” She also spoke on the series’ theme of the importance of youth civic involvement.

“Sometimes you think, ‘I’m just a kid,’ or, ‘That’s a job for the adults,’ but the youth is really the beginning of the rest of our lives,” she noted. “I would like to believe my generation and younger, we’re going to set the tone for the future and it’s up to us to be informed. I always say you can’t understand today without understanding yesterday, and so I think kids are going to start being more proactive and not reactive and really take control of our future. And we’ll learn from those things that we learned in the past, and make a difference and make a change when they know that they can — that they have the power to. This project is going to empower people. I mean, it empowered me.”

You can check out We The People now on Netflix.

Tyler The Creator has shown that he can hold a grudge — albeit, a lighthearted, mostly harmless one — for a really long time. In the past, he’s trolled both random commenters on Twitter and the political Heads of State that have crossed him long after the initial slights, and upon learning that he’s currently got the No. 1 album in the country, he once again proved that he’s got a long memory and a love for having the last laugh.

This time around, he targeted a musical peer, DJ Khaled, referencing the Snapchat rant that fans attributed to Khaled’s bitterness over losing out on the No. 1 spot to Tyler’s Igor in 2019. While the impassioned speech in actuality never referred to Igor or Tyler and was in fact posted days before the Billboard results were posted, once fans resurfaced them in light of the Billboard chart placements, Khaled’s fate was sealed. It looked like he was tasting sour grapes and throwing shade at Tyler The Creator’s more experimental album, calling it “mysterious sh*t.”

Tyler laughed it off at the time, but continued to reference the moment at each new watermark Igor reached, tweeting “MYSTERIOUS MUSIC” when the album won Best Rap Album at the 2020 Grammy Awards. It seems he’s decided to make it something of a tradition now, tweeting the same yesterday as this week’s Billboard chart leaders were announced, with his new album Call Me If You Get Lost earning the No. 1 position.

Meanwhile, although fans are definitely trolling DJ Khaled right along with Tyler, the Miami producer has been celebrating his own string of successes, including having a limited-edition Funko Pop! modeled on him, and the chart success of his Lil Baby and Lil Durk-featuring Khaled Khaled single, “Every Chance I Get.”

1988 was the year the longstanding relationship between John Stamos and The Beach Boys began. That year, Stamos appeared in the group’s video for “Kokomo” and the band guest-starred on an episode of Full House. Since then, Stamos and the band have reunited on a somewhat regular basis over the years, and they did so again this holiday weekend, to perform “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” on CNN’s Fourth In America Special.

Meanwhile, The Beach Boys have been busy lately. In January, they announced that they’re considering a 60th anniversary tour, with Al Jardine saying of the idea, “I do believe we will. Well, not a tour. We’ll hit some very important […] 10 or 20 areas of the world. Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky and have a renaissance, and present some of this great material again. It’s difficult to say, but it makes sense. I know there’s something in the works. I just can’t tell you when or where.”

Later this month, they’re also releasing a new box set, Feel Flows, that looks back on the group in the late ’60s and early ’70s. As for Stamos, he currently stars in Big Shot, a Disney+ series in which he plays a basketball coach at a girls private high school.

Watch the full performance here.

Celebrating American independence is a different experience for everyone. But some displays of patriotism are more roast-worthy than others, and Mark Zuckerberg learned that the hard way this July 4 when a video he posted to Instagram went viral for all the wrong reasons.

On Sunday, Zuckerberg posted a video of himself holding an American flag while riding a foilboard, a surfboard-like device with a fin in the water that can lift the rest of the board off the surface if it’s being pulled fast enough. For more than a minute, Zuckerberg rides the device while waving the flag as John Denver’s ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ played.

The video isn’t quite Sweet Baby Rays awkward, but it’s long enough to go from mildly interesting to overwrought in a hurry. Then there’s that weird little hopping thing he’s doing on the foilboard, which is tough to make look particularly cool no matter how nice the sunset is in the background. And when the video was posted to Twitter, once it was confirmed to be real, the roasting got underway.

Several people took out the John Denver and added their own, more appropriate soundtracks to the film. Like the final monologue from American Psycho, for starters.

The Jaws one was particularly well-done.

Many people pointed out the various ways that Facebook has actually done real harm to America in recent years, such as being a breeding ground for misinformation that’s undermined elections, spread QAnon conspiracy theories and led to the January 6 insurrection attempt at the US Capitol. But, hey, at least this billionaire had a nice holiday I guess.

Lil Uzi Vert’s a man of many talents. Not only is he a groundbreaking, hitmaking rapper whose stylistic outbursts have made him a fashion icon, but he’s also shown a penchant for fancy footwork on songs like “Futshal Shuffle.” However, even with that display of dexterity in his oeuvre, fans were still surprised to discover he also has a talent for breakdancing, courtesy of girlfriend JT’s Instagram Story.

The outspoken City Girls member caught him getting down at a party while Bell Biv Devoe’s “Poison” blasted in the background and an assembled crowd of onlookers shouted encouragement — none louder than JT herself. He uprocks for a bit — Yep, that’s where the name up top comes from — then busts out some full-on windmills, looking for all the world like he could have been a member of the Get Fresh Crew.

Once the video appeared on Twitter, fans couldn’t get enough, reposting the video with such commentary as “Lil Uzi Vert do be just vibing doe” and reposting scenes from the 2004 Wayans comedy White Chicks.

The viral moment was decidedly a bunch more wholesome than his other viral moment of the week when he allegedly flashed a gun during an altercation with fellow artist Saint JHN.

Lil Uzi Vert is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Friday saw the premiere of Iggy Azalea’s new “I Am The Strip Club” video, and the visual quickly generated controversy over Azalea’s look in some part of the video. She faced accusations of “blackfishing,” which Urban Dictionary says “involves artificial tanning (spray tanning and tanning booths) and using makeup to manipulate facial features in order to appear to have some type of Black African ancestry.” Following the video’s release, Azalea took time to address criticisms on social media.

On Twitter shortly after the video was shared, she wrote, “Imagine being so upset about a black wig, somehow the same foundation color and tan I’ve had for years now (with no issue) Is now such a problem you have to pull up an image of me from 7 years ago when I didn’t like to tan. the desperation.” She added in another tweet, “I’m the same color as the other white dancer in the room and not anywhere close to the color of the black dancers. People will say ANYthing to try and cancel me and it’s actually kinda funny to watch people so worked up over a black wig and Smokey eye.” She then wrote, “I’m the same color as I always am, just in a dimly lit room with red lights. It’s the same makeup from every other part of the video just with a Smokey eye and different wig.”

Azalea went on to reiterate her points and call the blackfishing accusations “ridiculous and baseless,” writing, “I can’t care about something that ridiculous and baseless. I’m wearing a shade 6 in armarni foundation, it’s the same shade I’ve worn for the last 3 years. It’s the same shade in every music video since sally Walker. Suddenly I wear a black wig in a club scene & its an issue.”

A couple days after that, on the 4th Of July, she followed up, “To everyone showing me love: Thankyou for dedicating your day to me & helping me promote, I love you! To everyone showing me hate: Thankyou for dedicating your day to me & helping me promote, I love you!”

Check out Azalea’s tweets on the subject below.

Yesterday was the 4th Of July, and people across the country celebrated. Some had cookouts, some enjoyed fireworks, and then some surf on a hydrofoil while waving an American flag, film a video of that set to John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” and post the video online. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg indulged in that last example, and Denver fans aren’t overly pleased about it.

Both Zuckerberg and Denver are trending topics on Twitter today, as fans of Denver and fans of anything that isn’t Zuckerberg took to the internet to share their thoughts about the clip.

Some speculated that Denver would not have cared for Facebook or Zuckerberg. One person wrote, “Just a reminder that John Denver was an anti-war environmentalist who campaigned for Jimmy Carter and against world hunger. He’d likely hate this turd and this stupid video.” Another noted, “RIP John Denver you would have hated Facebook.”

Others are hoping that Denver’s estate will speak out against Zuckerberg’s use of the song. The official Twitter account for Denver has yet to respond to the video.

Check out some other reactions to the post below. Last year, Whitney and Waxahatchee teamed up for an excellent cover of “Take My Home, Country Roads,” so revisit that here.

For years now, Mark Hoppus has had one of the most distinct hairstyles in all of music, with his bangs stretched out towards the sky. At least for now, though, Hoppus is taking a break from his signature locks following his cancer diagnosis: Over the weekend, the Blink-182 leader shared a photo of himself with a newly shaved head and wrote, “The Cancer Haver wishes you all a very happy Fourth of July weekend.”

A couple weeks ago, Hoppus revealed he had been undergoing chemotherapy for a few months. During a recent Twitch stream, he offered a look at how his life has been lately, saying, “On good days, I go do stuff. I went on a walk outside today and it was the first time I’d left my house in like… 5 days, pretty much. But this round of chemo, I wasn’t totally stuck on the couch, miserable. I’ve actually watched movies and walked around and cleaned the house and hung out with my dogs. I didn’t just feel like a poisoned electrified zombie leaning up against an electric fence like I did the past couple of rounds. […] I can’t go anywhere right now. I wanted to go to the Dodgers last night — I can’t. I want to go hang out with friends and go to a restaurant — I can’t. My white blood cell count is way too low for me to go out so I am stuck trying to get better. That’s alright, I’ll take it.”

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