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Donald Trump may be running for president, but there’s a little problem with his past credentials. As you may recall, three years ago the former president lost re-election. He didn’t take it well. Indeed, he helped inspire his violent supporters to storm the Capitol building to overturn the election. Perhaps he forgot about that. Alas, one state’s officials did not.

Per CNN, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that Trump can’t be on the presidential ballot because he violated the 14th amendment’s “insurrection ban.” Over the summer a number of scholars, some of them conservative, had argued that Trump qualifies for that ban thanks to his actions leading up to and including the Jan. 6 riot.

This doesn’t mean Trump is officially stricken from Colorado’s ballot. The ruling has been placed on hold until January 4. The matter will likely be sent to the U.S. Supreme Court, which currently leans rightward, with three judges appointed by the big guy himself.

Trump nor his cronies, including arguably Colorado’s most famous resident, have yet to comment on the matter. Surely Ron DeSantis is thrilled.

The 14th amendment was ratified in 1868, soon after the Civil War. Section 3 bars “any person who has taken an oath to support and defend our Constitution and thereafter rebels against that sacred charter, either through overt insurrection or by giving aid or comfort to the Constitution’s enemies.”

Some have argued Trump fits this to a T. Others have claimed the language is too vague to disqualify a guy who coaxed his supporters to D.C. on Jan. 6 and told them to “fight like hell” before they stormed the Capitol building.

(Via CNN)

It’s been a while since we heard new music from either ASAP Rocky or Rihanna, as the power couple has been busy enjoying parenthood. During this week’s launch party for Rihanna’s latest Puma sneakers, the singer offered some insight into parenthood, including a self-deprecating dig at one of her own signature features that youngest son Riot didn’t inherit.

She was also asked about possible collaborations between her and her boyfriend Rocky, responding, “We did that already — twice.” Of course, she was talking about their two boys, not songs, but if you were wondering whether they’ve also recorded any songs together, we’ve got you covered there.

Their earliest collaboration was the 2011 “Cockiness” remix, which transformed the sixth single from her sixth studio album, Talk That Talk. Produced by “A Milli” producer Bangladesh, dubstep-influenced track received mixed reviews and peaked at No. 17 on Billboard‘s “Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles” chart.

Meanwhile, although Rihanna has yet to appear on any of Rocky’s songs, she has appeared in two of his music videos. In 2013, the video for “Fashion Killa” from Rocky’s debut studio album Long. Live. A$AP. featured Rihanna and followed the couple on a shopping date. Then, in 2022, Rocky kicked off marriage rumors about the couple when his video for “D.M.B.” not only starred Rihanna but also featured Rocky wearing a grill reading “Marry Me.”

In her red-carpet interview Rihanna expressed optimism about any future collaborations, saying, “Anything Rocky and me collaborate on is going to be fire,” because of their shared creative sensibility. Check out the interview below.

(SPOILERS for this Power Book III: Raising Kanan will be found below.)

Jukebox is one of the most complex characters in Power Book III: Raising Kanan. For starters, though she is a part of Raq and Kanan’s family (she’s Marvin’s daughter which makes her Raq’s niece and Kanan’s cousin), Jukebox isn’t a part of the drug game but the effects of it have been heavy on her. It hit close to home for her in season one when a bad batch of crack made its way to Nicole, Jukebox’s then-girlfriend, and killed her. Jukebox isn’t an angel though, as she’s had her fair share of wrongs in the world, but that doesn’t take away from her sweet personality, ambition, and gritty spirit.

In season two of Power Book III: Raising Kanan, things turned dark for Jukebox when her father attacked her after learning about her relationship with Nicole. Their relationship turned sour and it wasn’t until the end of the season and the early episodes of season three that we’ve seen it return to normal. Jukebox has also taken her singing dreams more seriously thanks to some help from Lou-Lou who’s helped her record some songs. Most recently, in episode three of Power Book III: Raising Kanan, Jukebox auditioned to be in a girls singing group and we’ve yet to see how that’s turned out. Now that you know about Jukebox, let’s take a moment to spotlight Hailey Kilgore, the actress who plays her.

Who Plays Jukebox On Power Book III: Raising Kanan?

Hailey Kilgore holds the amazing voice behind Jukebox. Kilgore’s acting career dates back to a 2015 theater role in Portland Center Stage’s production of Our Town. In 2018, Kilgore had her breakout moment when she played Ti Moune in the Broadway revival of the musical, Once On This Island. She was later nominated for a Tony Award in 2018 in the Best Actress in a Musical category for that role. A year later, she was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Musical Theater Album category thanks to Once On This Island.

In a 2022 interview with Cassius Life, Kilgore spoke about playing Jukebox and the changes viewers could expect between seasons one and two of Power Book III: Raising Kanan. “In season one, Jukebox chooses to be sad. She chooses to let life be hard,” she said. “And I think in season two, she’s ready to fight that a little bit more head-on. For sure.” That proved to be true. Ahead of season three, Kilgore spoke about the future of Jukebox and Marvin’s relationship during an interview with the Fresh Pair Of IIs podcast. “It’s hard for Juke to kind of move past all the awful things that have happened with Marvin,” she said. “But I think it’s gonna keep doing this [motions finger up and down], in good ways, in beautiful ways, but then also in some difficult ways for sure.”

New episodes of ‘Power Book III: Raising Kanan’ are available on the STARZ app on Fridays at 12:00 am ET/PT and on the STARZ TV channel at 8:00 pm ET/PT.

Kevin Costner finalized his contentious divorce with Christine Baumgartner in mid-September, and earlier this month, word surfaced that Costner was already getting back out there, so to speak. And by that, we’re not talking about him rekindling his working relationship with Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan. The former John Dutton has begun dating Jewel with TMZ previously reporting that the two are “flirty” and had been “trying to be discreet, but anybody who saw them could tell something was going on” when the pair attended the same November event on Richard Branson’s Necker Island.

People now catches up with a “source” who revealed that the pairing is “fresh” but not “new” while leaving things rather ambiguous otherwise:

“The relationship between Kevin and Jewel is fresh but not brand new. There is very big attraction on both sides.”

The source says Jewel is independent and not into dating for the sake of dating.

“Jewel likes Kevin’s type and Kevin likes to be in a relationship, so this is cool,” says the source. “He is having fun after his contentious divorce. He is glad that is over.”

The Daily Mail recently reported that Baumgarner isn’t shocked that Costner is moving on, and she’s relieved that he hasn’t chosen a “fame-seeking bimbo.” Well then.

Additionally, Jewel recently published photos from that Necker Island event, and yep, there’s Kevin Costner. Hopefully, he’s a little less stressed out these days without all the divorce and Yellowstone upheaval ongoing:

(Via People, TMZ & Daily Mail)

Imagine you’re getting ready to drop some bad news on someone. Say, breaking off a months-long relationship.

“I’m not sure how to say this,” you start. “This has been really great. Dating you has been a lot of fun. You’re really wonderful. And—” You roll out a string of platitudes and compliments, dreading and delaying the part that comes next, when you finally say “It’s over.”

You think you’re being nice. Protecting their feelings. You don’t want to be coldhearted, right?

Science, however, says there might be a better way.

A study from 2017 finds that, in most cases, a much smaller “buffer” before the bad news is actually preferable. According to the people who matter most.

Alan Manning, a professor of linguistics at Brigham Young University, and Nicole Amare, his research partner, were interested in what he calls the “information design” of giving bad news. Quite literally, how much stuff should you say or write before just getting on with it?

The procedure was simple: 145 volunteers were shown two similar but differently worded versions of the same message, side by side, and asked to choose which they found the least objectionable. (Stuff in the vein of, “Your car is being recalled” all the way to “Let’s break up” or “You’re fired.”)

Manning says, in most cases, there was a clear preference for the more concise message.

Participants also mostly responded that clarity and directness were more important than how considerate the message was.

The findings contradict a lot of the previous research, Manning says, which stressed buffers and positivity and silver linings. He says when you just talk to people, you get a different story: “When you ask people if they want the bad news straight-up, they almost always say yes.”

If bad-news recipients just want it straight, why do we tend to draw it out?

Manning says it’s because we’re looking out for ourselves. It’s easier and makes us feel better to beat around the bush a little bit.

Turns out, the whole thing is a practical exercise in empathy.

“One of the great challenges of growing up and being a fully functioning adult is being fully aware of other people’s needs around you and not just your own,” he says.

He hopes the study will help people become better deliverers of bad news, and, ultimately, take better care of each other. He urges us to think critically about how sensitive the message we’re delivering is and to respond appropriately. Don’t be callous, he says, and blurt out “I’m breaking up with you,” before even saying “Hi.” But a smaller buffer is almost always appreciated by the recipient.

It’s hard to break old habits. It’s even harder to be direct. But getting and giving bad news is part of our daily lives. It’ll be worth the effort to do it right.

This article originally appeared on 10.13.17

When blizzards line up to rip through the Northeast, schools close, flights are canceled, and people even board up their houses. Though missions and homeless shelters do what they can to provide safety to those who have no homes to go to, thousands of people still have to weather the cold outside.

At Carnegie Mellon University’s 2015 Impact-a-Thon, students were challenged to provide a temporary low-cost shelter for homeless people during the winter.

One team of students came up with the “Satellite Shelter,” an insulated sleeping bag that converts into a tented structure. The students used mylar, a reflective material frequently used in greenhouses and space blankets, and wool blankets to ensure the shelter would keep anyone in it safe from the cold.

“We wanted to make sure it was super-portable and durable so that it’s easy to carry,” said student Linh Thi Do, who worked on the project. “We have wheels on it so it’s easy to move from place to place.”

“Satellite Shelter” is a sleeping bag that expands into a tent for housing the homeless http://bit.ly/1t2FsZtu00a0pic.twitter.com/L7Jdqxy2RU

— Inhabitat (@Inhabitat)
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Solutions like this one are handy in an emergency. Perhaps, however, other cities should take note of the city of New Orleans’ success in providing long-term housing solutions for its homeless veterans. The only perfect solution to homelessness is giving people permanent homes to go to at night.

This article originally appeared on 01.26.15

Society, pay attention. This is important.

My wife, Zoe, is transgender. She came out to us — the kids and me — last summer and then slowly spread her beautiful feminine wings with extended family, friends, and neighbors.

A little coming out here, a little coming out there — you know how it is.

It’s been a slow, often challenging process of telling people something so personal and scary, but pretty much everyone has been amazing.

However, she dreaded coming out at the office.

She works at a large technology company, managing a team of software developers in a predominantly male office environment. She’s known many of her co-workers and employees for 15 or so years. They have called her “he” and “him” and “Mr.” for a very long time. How would they handle the change?

While we have laws in place in Ontario, Canada, to protect the rights of transgender employees, it does not shield them from awkwardness, quiet judgment, or loss of workplace friendships. Your workplace may not become outright hostile, but it can sometimes become a difficult place to go to every day because people only tolerate you rather than fully accept you.

But this transition needed to happen, and so Zoe carefully crafted a coming out email and sent it to everyone she works with.

The support was immediately apparent; she received about 75 incredibly kind responses from coworkers, both local and international.

She then took one week off, followed by a week where she worked solely from home. It was only last Monday when she finally went back to the office.

First day back at work! I asked if I could take a “first day of school” type picture with her lunchbox. She said no. Spoilsport.

Despite knowing how nice her colleagues are and having read so many positive responses to her email, she was understandably still nervous.

Hell, I was nervous. I made her promise to text me 80 billion times with updates and was more than prepared to go down there with my advocacy pants on if I needed to (I might be a tad overprotective).

And that’s when her office pals decided to show the rest of us how to do it right.

She got in and found that a couple of them had decorated her cubicle to surprise her:

Butterflies! Streamers! Rainbows! OMG!

And made sure her new name was prominently displayed in a few locations:

They got her a beautiful lily with a “Welcome, Zoe!” card:

And this tearjerker quote was waiting for her on her desk:

To top it all off, a 10 a.m. “meeting” she was scheduled to attend was actually a coming out party to welcome her back to work as her true self — complete with coffee and cupcakes and handshakes and hugs.

(I stole one, and it was delicious.)

NO, I’M NOT CRYING. YOU’RE CRYING.

I did go to my wife’s office that day. But instead of having my advocacy pants on, I had my hugging arms ready and some mascara in my purse in case I cried it off while thanking everyone.

I wish we lived in a world where it was no big deal to come out.

Sadly, that is not the case for many LGBTQ people. We live in a world of bathroom bills and “religious freedom” laws that directly target the members of our community. We live in a world where my family gets threats for daring to speak out for trans rights. We live in a world where we can’t travel to certain locations for fear of discrimination — or worse.

So when I see good stuff happening — especially when it takes place right on our doorstep — I’m going to share it far and wide. Let’s normalize this stuff. Let’s make celebrating diversity our everyday thing rather than hating or fearing it.

Chill out, haters. Take a load off with us.

It’s a lot of energy to judge people, you know. It’s way more fun to celebrate and support them for who they are.

Besides, we have cupcakes.

This article originally appeared on 04.08.16.

Time travel back to 1905.

Back in 1905, a book called “The Apples of New York” was published by the New York State Department of Agriculture. It featured hundreds of apple varieties of all shapes, colors, and sizes, including Thomas Jefferson’s personal favorite, the Esopus Spitzenburg.

That was 110 years ago, when commercial apple orchards were still pretty rare and when even in the biggest of those orchards, everything was done by hand.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But why is that apple book such a big deal? The book is significant because most of the apples listed in it have all but disappeared in the past century. DISAPPEARED. In fact, we used to have thousands of apple varieties, but most of those have largely vanished due to industrial agriculture. Now, many varieties are only found tucked away in agricultural research centers and preservationist orchards.

Fact: Today, the 15 most popular apple varieties account for 90% of all apple sales in the U.S. The most commonly sold apple? Red delicious.

2015 looks so different.

The fate of all those apple varieties is not uncommon. “In the last century, nearly 75% of our agricultural crops have disappeared. They’re simply gone. Today, farmers primarily grow 12 crops. And of these, we mainly eat potatoes, rice, corn, and wheat.”

So what gives? Why the huge shift? In part, the shift has a lot to do with seed regulation. Back in the day, farmers would save seeds from year to year and share them with friends and neighbors. But nowadays, most seed production is controlled by big companies — and those companies patent their seeds, prohibiting things like seed saving or sharing.

So what do we do now?

Not all hope is lost (yay!). It may be an uphill battle, but there are lots of small farmers working to preserve the freedom to freely share and use seeds. People store thousands of seeds from all around the world in buildings called seed banks, and trade with other farmers at seed swaps.

“They’re preserving culture and biodiversity, one seed, one plant, and one person at a time.” How ’bout them apples? (No, really, I bet those antique apples they’re swappin’ are ridiculously tasty.)

To check out the full story from The Lexicon of Sustainability, watch the video below:

This article originally appeared on August 14, 2016

If there were an award for “Most Entertaining Personality On and Offscreen,” Jack Black surely would have won it many times over. The man can turn any moment into pure spun comedic gold of epic proportions. Whether he’s playing iconic video game characters or doing an improvised interpretive dance at home, the man knows how to bring a smile to people’s faces.

Case and point: the “Jumanji” star’s endlessly enthusiastic acceptance speech for his first ever Emmy award.

The actor and musician won the coveted Children and Family Emmy Award for his voice performance in “Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight,” a spin-off series in the ultra popular animated franchise.

Fittingly, Black was every bit as animated while accepting the award.

Immediately upon entering the stage, Black struck a classic “Kung Fu Panda” pose while singing the series theme song.

After admitting “I’m really nervous and stoked to be here,” he then offered heartfelt thanks to several co-creators of the film and series co-creators, saying that his character Po has “been the role of a lifetime.”

It’s then that Black realized he forgot someone on his thank-you list. Someone very important. His wife.

“Oh my god I’m glad I looked at it,” he exclaimed after checking his phone. “The main person, my wife Tanya Haden. Hell yeah — dude, If I didn’t look I would have been that guy!”

“The true dragon warrior, Tanya Haden. I love you baby, this is for you,” he concluded as held his Emmy up high. Phew, no dog house for him.

It’s crazy to think that Black has been playing his “Kung Fu Panda” role for two decades. He first brought the character to life in 2008 (I had only been out of highschool for a year, holy cow).

Since then, he’s voiced Po in two more “Kung Fu Panda” films, along with the televisions series, “The Paws of Destiny,” “The Dragon Knight” and the short films: “Secrets of the Furious Five,” “Secrets of the Masters,” “Secrets of the Scroll” and “Kung Fu Panda Holiday.”

Black will also be the voice of Po for the upcoming “Kung Fu Panda 4.” Hiyah!

What isn’t surprising is that Black could win yet another award for his voice performance. This time, it’ll be a possible Golden Globe for best original song: “Peaches” in “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.”

If he wins it, that acceptance speech is sure to be every bit as delightful. and surely he’ll remember to thank his wife next time.

It’s the holidays and this year, as every year for the past several years, has been a weird one. We could all use some nice stories. So here’s one from Sydney Sweeney, who revealed that, after years of success, she was able to get back a key part of her family history after losing it due to hardship.

Per Entertainment Weekly, the actress and Anyone But You star paid a visit to The Kelly Clarkson Show, where the two bonded over holiday traditions, like bingeing Harry Potter movies with the fam. Speaking of, Sweeney was able to use her success to do something last year to help them out.

“My great-grandma had this beautiful house,” Sweeney told Clarkson. “It was a two bedroom, cute little house that they lived in. My grandma was born in it. My mom was born in it, and then as the kids got older, they built on the property another home.”

Sadly, Sweeney said, “when my great-grandpa passed away and my great-grandma got old, they just couldn’t afford to keep it anymore.”

Luckily Sweeney has been doing pretty well for herself the last handful of years. Things took a turn in 2018 when she nabbed a main role on Netflix’s teen comedy Everything Sucks. Then came The Handmaid’s Tale, Sharp Objects, Euphoria, the first season of The White Lotus. Heck, she’s even been in a Rolling Stones video. It was time to do her family a solid.

“Last year I called up the owners and was like, I wanna buy my great-grandma’s house back,” Sweeney revealed. “And it’s really cool too. My granny still lives in the house next door, so, I’m neighbors with my granny now.”

Clarkson exclaimed, “You’re like a Hallmark movie.”

In an interview last month with Women’s Health, Sweeney opened up about her wilderness years, when she wasn’t getting any work.

“We filed for bankruptcy, and they lost their house back home on the lake,” she remembered. “We couldn’t afford life in L.A. It was hard because they were supporting my dream, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I didn’t want to fail them. No matter how long it took, I was going to be in a TV show or a movie, and I wasn’t going to stop until something happened.”

But at least there was a happy ending. Happy holidays!

(Via EW)