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Keeping up with the Kardashians isn’t as easy as the title of the show would have you believe. Some recent developments in Kardashian Land include: Kendall Jenner not knowing how to cut a dang cucumber with a knife; Kim Kardashian confirming the BDE rumors about her boyfriend Pete Davidson; and Caitlyn Jenner not being invited to Kourtney Kardashian’s wedding to Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker. The family matriarch was also “shocked” to be “explicitly excluded” from Hulu’s The Kardashians.

You know, normal family stuff.

Jenner’s 96-year-old mom, Esther Jenner, recently spoke to The Sun about her daughter not appearing in The Kardashians. “I don’t know if [Caitlyn] even cares. It’s something we haven’t even discussed. I think that Kardashian show is the most senseless thing I have ever watched,” she said. “But my two granddaughters, Kendall and Kylie, created it and I love them dearly… They’re my blood. And my four step-grandchildren – Kim, Kourtney, Khloé, and Robert – feel like they’re mine, too.”

Esther also told The Sun that “we have a very, very dangerous Democratic party in power now,” and that she wants Caitlyn, who ran for governor of California as a Republican, to “get a concealed permit because I think [she] should carry a gun.” Hmm, probably should have stopped after “that Kardashian show is the most senseless thing I have ever watched.” It’s a statement that has bipartisan support.

(Via The Sun)

Skylar Grey has been part of some of the biggest songs of the past two decades: She sang and/or co-wrote Eminem and Rihanna’s “Love The Way You Lie,” Diddy’s “Coming Home,” Fort Minor’s “Where’d You Go” (as Holly Brook), and Zedd and Foxes’ “Clarity” (which Grey co-wrote but did not sing on). Now, though, she has no legal ownership over those songs: In a recent interview, Grey revealed she had to sell the rights to her catalogue due to a long and draining divorce.

Grey told Variety:

“Since 2017, I was going through a divorce and lawsuit that was just wrecking me emotionally and financially. This past year, 2021, we finally resolved it, settled. I had to sell my catalog in order to afford the settlement, which was very sad in a way, because those songs, like ‘Love The Way You Lie’ and ‘Coming Home,’ those are my babies. But at the same time, nobody can tell me I didn’t write those songs just ’cause I don’t own the rights to them anymore. I didn’t want to sell them, but it was my only way to put the past behind me.”

She added of the songs, “They’re still near and dear to my heart and yeah, I will always treasure them, but it’s different now. Every time one of those songs get used in a movie or whatever, I don’t see any of that money anymore. But unfortunately, the majority of what I got paid for my catalog went to taxes and my ex-husband [laughs]. It’s like your life’s work, and then suddenly it’s like, ‘OK, I’ve got to give the majority of this away.’ But that was my only option. Luckily, I had the option of doing something like that, otherwise I may not have gotten out of the case.”

Read the full interview here.

Not every game is a winner. While nobody wants to make a bad game, sometimes that ends up being the case and developers are forced to decide what to do. They can choose to release the game and hope to get something back for the time worked on it, rework the game internally and fix the problems plaguing it, or in some cases, shelve it altogether.

According to a report from Imran Khan of Fanbyte, that is the exact situation Nintendo is in right now with a reported sequel to the party game, 1-2-Switch. For those who might not remember, 1-2-Switch was a launch title for the Nintendo Switch meant to showcase the potential technology of their brand new console. While reviews on the game itself were mixed, most felt that it lacked content and was too expensive. As a result, it still sold really well, and reportedly, a sequel was in the works.

The problem is that when that sequel reached the hands of playtesters, it reportedly performed horribly. It is not a fun game and one group of localizers had a very choice way of describing just how not fun it is.

When playtesting groups received the game, the feedback to the development team was brutal. The target audiences Nintendo was hoping to hit — families with children — found the games boring; many didn’t even want to play through entire rounds. In the Bingo example, one player would use the joycon to mime digging out a number before reading it off the TV screen — a process that playtesters reported as tedious.

The main mode of the game, the Team Battle Mode, pit at least two teams of players against each other in various minigames. This mode prominently featured Horse, who would give color commentary during the games. During the localization process, sources started calling the game “Horseshit” as shorthand.

It’s never good when a game is performing so bad internally that members of the company are saying it would “harm their reputation” if it was released. Nintendo now has to decide how much of this game it wants to salvage and release, or if it will just shelve the sequel forever.

21-year-old San Antonio rapper Mike Dimes has come on strong this year with the release of his second album, In Dimes We Trust. He caught the attention of Earthgang, who tabbed him for their Biodeghettable Tour, which Dimes is currently on with the Atlanta duo. With standout tracks like “Home,” and “No Trends,” In Dimes We Trust is one of this year’s sleeper hits and the Dreamville connection is being cemented, with JID hopping on a new remix of “Home.”

JID delivers a lengthy and explosive second verse on the new remix version of “Home,” laying out how his hard-earned burn to the top is what a youngster like Dimes is looking at now too. He channels a Lil Wayne lyric as he spits, “G’s movin’ in silence, n****** deaf tone. Tone-deaf, my songs was being slept on. Fast forward I’m on, bumpin’ the headphones.”

Listen to Mike Dimes’ “Home” remix featuring JID above and check out Dimes’ remaining tour dates with Earthgang below.

06/07 – Fort Lauderdale, FL @ Revolution Live
06/09 – New Orleans, LA @ Fillmore New Orleans
06/10 – Houston, TX @ House of Blues Houston
06/11 – Austin, TX @ Emos Austin
06/12 – Dallas, TX @ House of Blues Dallas
06/13 – Oklahoma City, OK @ Tower Theatre
06/15 – Birmingham, AL @ Iron City Birmingham
06/17 – Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern

In the midst of Kanye West’s extended divorce from Kim Kardashian, fans were intrigued to note that one of the two women Kanye publicly dated during that time was a dead ringer for socialite turned mogul Kanye was splitting up with. Kanye’s new boo was a model named Chaney Jones, and for all intents, it appeared the two were dating seriously (whatever that meant for Kanye’s insistence that he wanted to save his marriage).

Well, it appears that this relationship is also now kaput. TMZ reports that “sources connected to the former duo” confirmed that they called it quits after a trip to Japan. Meanwhile, Kanye was recently seen at a showing of Top Gun: Maverick (seriously, it looks like everyone has seen that movie at this point) sitting with another woman. Prior to dating Jones, Kanye very publicly courted actress Julia Fox — in fact, the transition between the two was so abrupt that some fans were sure there was some overlap. Maybe Kanye just moves fast.

What this means for Ye’s state of mind is anyone’s guess. Is he finally moving on or actually avoiding doing so by cycling through companions so quickly? And who is this new woman taking in movies with the Donda 2 producer? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

Last month, Halsey (a Capitol Records artist) made it clear they had an issue with their record label, alleging they were being blocked from releasing a new single until they had a viral moment on TikTok. The TikTok video in which Halsey made those claims actually went viral itself, after which Halsey shared, “Talked to my label tonight after my tiktok tantrum. They said ‘wow the tiktok is going really strong!’ I was like ok cool so can I release my song now? They said ‘we’ll see!’ [upside-down smiling face emoji] tell me again how I’m making this up.”

Eventually, Capitol confirmed the single, “So Good,” would come out on June 9 and noted, “We are an artist-first company that encourages open dialogue. We have nothing but a desire to help each one of our artists succeed, and hope that we can continue to have these critical conversations.”

Now, Halsey has confirmed that a video for the song will follow on June 10 and offered a brief preview of it.

Meanwhile, Halsey is on tour at the moment and having a heck of a time: This past weekend, Halsey tweeted, “I’ve never had a tour like this. Every single show fills me up like my lungs are taking the biggest hit of pure oxygen deep deep in my chest. I feel like I am receiving every night instead of giving and giving away. Thank you for this blessing I hope it lasts..”

It’s been almost 60 years since Bill Russell became the first Black head coach in the NBA. In the years since, there have been 260 regular coaches that have come and gone, and only 1 in 3 have been Black. Most of them haven’t lasted more than three years in their first job—they also haven’t gotten a chance to have another head coaching position. But the times they are a-changin’. Currently, 15 of the 30 head coaches in the NBA are Black. And it’s about time.

Boston’s Ime Udoka, Sacramento’s Mike Brown, Portland’s Chauncey Billups, Dallas’ Jason Kidd, Orlando’s Jamahl Mosley, Washington’s Wes Unseld Jr., New Orleans’ Willie Green and Los Angeles’ Darvin Ham are the eight newest full-time head coaches in the NBA. They join Detroit’s Dwane Casey, Phoenix’s Monty Williams, Cleveland’s J.B. Bickerstaff, Philadelphia’s Doc Rivers, the Los Angeles Clippers’ Tyronn Lue, Houston’s Stephen Silas and Atlanta’s Nate McMillan, who were all head coaches last year.

“It means a lot,” Brown, who will take over as head coach in Sacramento next season after finishing the current season as the assistant coach for Golden State, said.

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“When my son, and my oldest son’s about to have his first son, when they turn on the TV and they see people that look like them leading an NBA team on the sidelines, it can be inspiring. For me, carrying the torch and then passing it to the next generation is something that I think about often — not just for my family, but for others out there.”

The last time there were this many Black head coaches in the NBA was the 2012-13 season. There has been no explanation as to why it took almost 10 years to get back to that number, but there are some theories.

“This is not a sports issue,” Nate McMillan, the head coach for the Atlanta Hawks said back in February. “It’s a society issue that the opportunities sometimes certain people, they don’t get the opportunities because of the color of their skin.”

He also gave credit to Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban for making sure the organization has not only a Black head coach (Jason Kidd) but other Black people in the room. Aside from Kidd, there are three prominent Black people in the organization: Cynt Marshall (chief executive officer), Nico Harrison (general manager and president of basketball operations) and Michael Finley (assistant general manager and assistant vice-president of basketball operations). Marshall is the first Black female CEO in the history of the NBA.

“I think that’s just what Mark has done is really open his mind to interviewing people and giving them an opportunity where they have the skills to fit into those positions. They’ve done well and I think that’s great,” said McMillan.

According to the site Statista, 73.2% of the players in the NBA are Black, and that’s not including ones who identify as more than one race because it doesn’t do an interracial breakdown. In a league where almost three-quarters of the players are Black, it only makes sense that the head coaching staff be reflective of what you’re seeing on the court. Not just for optics, but for a general kind of understanding that may not exist otherwise.

While Steve Kerr is a great example of an white ally who “gets it,” there are certain experiences that he just won’t understand on anything other than a deep level of empathy. But a coach like McMillian or Ime Udoka, head coach of the Boston Celtics, will understand in a different way. When things happen in Black America, a Black coach is going to be able to do more than empathize—they will be able to sit in that space with their players.

“I don’t understand what took so long, to be honest,” Jaylen Brown, guard for the Celtics said in an AP article.

That’s the real question here. Why did it take so long for half of the league’s coaches to be Black? In February 2019, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Chief People and Inclusion Officer Oris Stuart and President of Social Responsibility and Player Programs Kathy Behrens met with Rick Carlisle, Indiana coach and president of the National Basketball Coaches Association. After that meeting, the NBA Coaches Equality Initiative was created to address the inequity.

“For many years qualified young coaches of color like Ime Udoka, Jamahl Mosley, Willie Green, Wes Unseld Jr., Darvin Ham and Stephen Silas, to name just a few, were not getting consistent opportunities to interview for NBA head coaching positions,” Carlisle said. “The last two years changed everything. The league office has tirelessly made franchises more aware of the qualifications and journeys of these talented young coaches. This increased awareness has led to qualified coaches of all backgrounds having greater opportunity to interview and the numbers speak for themselves.”

Commissioner Silver is aware of the inequity still facing the NBA. Many basketball organizations still don’t have Black people in the front office. Legendary basketball player Michael Jordan is the only Black principal owner of a sport’s franchise, the Charlotte Hornets. The Hornets currently have an open coaching spot, and hopefully it’ll go to another Black coach.

For Mike Brown, “the dream” is to get to a point where 50% of head coaches being Black isn’t something worth talking about. If the league keeps up its current hiring practices, maybe it could happen.

“What’s the opposite of a gun?”

That’s the question at the heart of a powerful—and perpetually timely—poem by Brendan Constantine, based on his own teaching experience. It begins with him describing how he led his students through a poetry exercise called The Opposites Game, in which the students were asked to come up with the antonym of each word in a line of a poem by the famously reclusive 19th-century poet, Emily Dickinson.

“My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun,” was the line, and students easily came up with the opposites for the first six words. But when they got to “gun,” the students paused.

For a moment, very much like the one between
lightning and its sound, the children just stare at me,
and then it comes, a flurry, a hail storm of answers –

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And then came the heated debate among the kids about the nature of a gun through an exploration of what it isn’t:

A flower.

A pillow.

A book.

A song.

A prayer.

A baby.

Or what’s that person who delivers babies? A midwife? Yes, a midwife.

Their discussion is beautiful and haunting, interweaving the profound innocence of children and the absurdity of the way we fight over guns in this country. The arguing. The shouting. The clubs forming.

Nothing’s decided, she says. We’re not done here.

Ha. Indeed.

Poetry has a way of getting to the heart of an issue in a way that rhetoric simply cannot. Constantine’s words go beyond the tired tropes trotted out by Americans on barstools, social media and the floor of Congress, laying out hard truths about American gun culture through the eyes of children.

“The Opposites Game” was made into a TED-Ed short film by Anna Samo and Lisa LaBracio, with Brendan Constantine reciting the poem aloud while it is illustrated in stop-motion. Watch:

Nothing’s decided…We’re not done here. That’s the truth of the matter, isn’t it?

We can’t even agree on what a gun is, much less what it isn’t. For some people a gun equals terror. For others, a gun equals freedom. Some see guns as weapons of war, some as tools for hunting, some as methods of intimidation, some as toys for target practice. Some look at a gun and see the faces of the kids killed in school shooting after school shooting. Some look at a gun and see safety and security.

Round and round we go, never deciding, never done. This poem was written years ago, with tens of thousands of gun violence deaths occurring in the U.S. since then, but feels like it could have been written this week.

And the enigmatic last line:

Your death will sit through many empty poems.

As one of the filmmakers said in an interview, “The whole poem is building up to this last sentence, and emotionally you understand exactly what it means, but you can’t put it into words.”

And that’s OK. We’ve heard more than enough words about guns in this country anyway.

Pets are wonderful, loving, innocent creatures that add so much pure joy into our lives.

They also have an unruly penchant for eating things they shouldn’t be eating, find heinously bad places to go potty and are weapons of mass destruction when it comes to shoes, fragile knickknacks and furniture. If you’ve had a pet, then you have at least one story involving one of these sins, if not all three.

No matter how egregious the act, it’s pretty hard to stay mad. After all, much of the time animal misbehavior is merely a natural reaction to stress or boredom. Plus, one look at their sweet little faces is all it takes for anger to be subdued. Most of the time.

A Reddit user recently asked pet owners, “What’s the worst thing your pet has ever done?” and boy, some critters really know to act out. Whether its fur babies or feathered friends or scaly companions, pets are capable of some truly horrific-slash-hilarious antics. We love them anyway, of course.

Below are 22 of the best responses from traumatized pet owners. And though their stories don’t necessarily paint the best picture of their beastly bestie, it’s certainly an amusing read, if not an all-too-relatable one.

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1.

“My dog dug up my neighbors cable line on Super Bowl Sunday when they had a big crowd coming over.” -@Living_Departure_265

2.

“My parrot has learnt to swear and will not stop. The weirdest thing is that I don’t even know how he learnt to swear. Maybe he overheard the neighbors or something.” -@Pizza-pen

3.

“As a kitten, she managed to get hold of, and tear to pieces, a dried flower my mother took from my grandmother’s funeral as a keepsake. Literally irreplaceable.” -@Catstrudle

4.

“My dog, then teething, chewed through and broke the beanbag chair he used to sleep on; which was filled with styrofoam pellets, each about 3mm dia. Tens of thousands of them. There is no effective way of picking them up due to their attraction to static and propensity to fly at the slightest change in the wind. The vacuum cleaner just pushed around more than it picked up. It took ~3 hours to clean up. We were finding pellets for years in random places.” -@Darthfloyd

5.

“I used to have this ball python. I wake up one morning and take him out of his cage because he’s looking restless. I throw him on my bed and lay back down. He’d often crawl on me and curl up for warmth. On this particular occasion he came sniffing around my face right as I yawned. When I did, a small tear came out of my eye, which he licked. A second later he latched onto my eyebrow like it was some furry little rodent. I sat right up, holding the four foot snake straight off my face. He let go after a few seconds and we didn’t talk for the rest of the day. Left two bloody holes right on my eyebrow. Jerk.” -@Stevel-Knievel

6.

“Baxter once pooped in the refrigerator and ate an entire wheel of cheese. I wasn’t even mad, it was amazing.” -@ryclarky

7.

“My boxer knocked over a statue of the Virgin Mary. Her head broke off, and my dog was running around with the head.” – @Motherinlawdouche

8.

“As I lay down for a much needed nap the other day, I heard a crash in the living room go out to check what fresh hell…my Calico had climbed a desk and knocked over a small shelf containing a case of small silver thumbtacks alllllllll over my living room. I made it about 5 steps in before I realized I was surrounded by tacks.” -@slumvillain

9.

“I filled a cup to the brim with fruit punch and walked away to put the bottle back into the fridge. When I turned back around I saw my blind cat standing on the dining room table feeling the cup with his paw…he winds up and swats it off the table. Got fruit punch everywhere.” -@colethefatcat

10.

“Back in 2014, my parents owned this vase that had been passed down 4 generations to the youngest in the family. It sat on top of the cabinets, like higher than the refrigerator. Our family went on a 4 day vacation to Disney World and had our neighbor feed our 2 cats. On the 2nd day of our vacation, my father gets a text saying that our vase shattered on the floor and both our cats were next to where it once sat. We believe our cats were able to jump up there with the help up [by] climbing on our air fryer we left on the counter.” -@mittiens

11.

“We bought our first house and the first time we left our dog alone he ate through the trim surrounding all the doors, the drywall behind it, and almost through the exterior. Needless to say I wasn’t pleased.” -@Fuzzy-Ad5756

12.

“I’m a caffeine addict and I admit it. I start out every day with an energy drink and pop Diet Mountain Dew all day. In college I was very, very broke and at one point was down to about 14 ounces left in a 2 liter of Mtn Dew poured into a cup. My cat came to check out what I had, sniffed at it and I guess the popping bubbles tickled her nose and she sneezed directly onto the surface of it.”-@LatterTowel9403

13.

“Got a new dog and wanted them to be happy and acclimated to a new home. Gave them a pig ear to chew on (already a fairly disgusting treat) and they happily take it. A short time later, where did the dog go? On my bed, chomping away on the pig ear, with a large pile of drool and pig ear bits, now quite possibly a permanent part of my sheets. Not the way I wanted to start off a relationship with a new dog. Silver lining, my sheets smelled like bacon for a while even after washing them!” -@ItsGotHeart

14.

“My beta killed 3 fish in a week.” -@Tox1cShark7

15.

“My dog was still a puppy and has never seen a baby bird. One night I was taking her for a walk and there was a baby bird on the ground. It was chirping and it really caught her attention (probably cause it sounded like her squeaky toys). I started reaching for the bird so I could try and put it back in its nest but my dog jumped towards the bird. I just heard a loud squeak and silence. My dog’s expression changed when she realized what she had done. The rest of the night she was not herself, I’m sure she felt really bad.” -@justanotherperson218

16.

“He (dog) broke my mother’s nose with his big head by jumping around too excitedly.” -@mortokes

17.

“A few nights ago, in the middle of the night, my monster cat brought in a live pigeon through the cat door and released it in the living room. Feathers EVERYWHERE.” -@effieokay

18.

“I have a roomba. I set it to clean at 7:30 AM every morning… because I am always out the door for work by then, and my dog has just been walked. One morning, apparently, the 7 AM walk was not enough, and my dog shit on the floor. Then, like a good little robot, my roomba took off. I came home to poo circles all over my carpet and a dead roomba.

TL;DR–My dog teamed up with a robot to create an abstract art piece made out of feces.” -@SleepsontheGround

19.

“Whilst walking my friend’s dalmation, Stripey, one summer’s day in a park filled with happy picnickers and laughing children, she spotted a birthday party. A river separated the party from us and, underestimating her love of food, I kept her off the [leash]. I’m not sure how she even saw the birthday cake wrapped in tinfoil but she leaped into the river before I could stop her. She tore apart the tinfoil like a savage and devoured the cake before quickly moving on to the BBQ where she managed to eat every sausage, burger and chicken leg she could see whilst the birthday boy watched in terror. I stood awkwardly on the other side of the water, shouting her name and apologizing profusely but she only listened when she’d decided her meal was over after which she swam calmly back over the water and pranced into the distance whilst the entire family stared me down. I am sorry, birthday boy, I hope your day wasn’t too badly ruined.” -@Tanyabee

20.

“One time I was running to the basement to grab an ingredient I had forgotten to add to dinner. Like an idiot, I kept the burner and hot pan going because I figured that running to the fridge in the basement would only take a minute. Instead, I tripped over my dog before reaching the first step and tumbled down into the basement. I stared up to see my dog looking down and smiling as I scrambled frantically to run back upstairs before my stupid dinner set the entire house on fire.” – [deleted]

21.

“Maybe not ‘worst’ for me, but definitely for my mom. She pissed off the cat… kicking her out of the bedroom before bed because she hates animals sleeping on her bed or next to her…Apparently in the morning, she was running late for work. Rushed to put on her shoes and found vomit in one of them. Out of all her shoes, and of all the times in the day, the cat had decided to revenge-puke in the ones she wears to work almost every day.” -@badguywindow

22.

“My 55lb dog ate an entire tray of pot brownies.” -@karmavorous

Imagine getting a free sofa from someone, taking off the sofa cushion covers to wash them and finding a huge amount of cash hidden inside.

Most of us would freak out. Then we’d try to figure out what to do. Is it wrong to keep money that came in a piece of furniture? Does it depend on the amount? I mean, a few quarters that fell out of someone’s pocket is one thing, but tens of thousands of dollars is entirely another.

A woman in Colton, California, was faced with that exact scenario recently when she brought home a free, used sofa from Craigslist. Vicky Umodu had just moved into a new house and was looking for items to furnish it when saw a listing on Craiglist from a family who was clearing out the property of a relative who had recently passed away, KABC-TV reported. They were giving the furniture away for free.

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“So, I clicked on it, and the first thing I came up with was this family that wanted to give a sofa, and everything in their bedroom set,” Umodu told KABC. “I said maybe it’s a gimmick, so I called them.”

She found out it was a legitimate ad and snagged a beige flowered sofa and two matching chairs. But when she got home and started examining the furniture, she felt something strange in one of the cushions. She thought perhaps it was a heating pad, but when she opened up the cushion she found a bunch of envelopes. And in those envelopes, she found cash—a whopping $36,000 worth.

“I was just telling my son, come, come, come!” she said. “I was screaming, this is money! I need to call the guy.”

So she called. The family told her that they had found some other cash hidden around their relative’s home, but only a hundred or two hundred dollars here and there. They didn’t know why the man would have stashed $36,000 in his couch, but they were grateful to Umodu for alerting them and returning the money.

So grateful, in fact, that they gave Umodu $2,200 of the money—the amount she needs to buy herself a new refrigerator.

Umodu was delighted, but she said she hadn’t expected any reward. “I was not expecting a dime from him,” she told KABC.

She was never tempted to keep the money for herself, either.

“God has been kind to me and my children, they’re all alive and well, I have three beautiful grandchildren, so what can I ever ask from God?” she said.

Clearly, the family had not intended to give away $36,000 of their family member’s money. And it’s unlikely that the relative who died had intended for his money to go to a random stranger (though who knows, stranger things have happened). Umodu did the right thing by letting the family know the envelopes of cash were in the furniture and returning the money. And now she’s got a sofa, two chairs, money for a new fridge and the peace of mind that comes with being an honest person.