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Ever since the Uvalde gun massacre, which left 19 students and two teachers dead, Republicans have blamed everything except the guns. Their targets have been very creative. Some have blamed doors. Don Jr. blamed teachers. Tucker Carlson blamed…COVID lockdowns? And then there’s Laura Ingraham. The Fox News host was dragged en masse after she pinned the blame on what she called “pot psychosis.” But on Wednesday’s The View, Whoopi Goldberg didn’t think it was funny.

After playing the clip, in which Ingraham came for the drug that turns people into giggling couch potatoes convinced the greatest musical genre is prog rock, the show’s hosts made some customary ““What is she on?” jokes. (That one came from Joy Behar.) Not Whoopi.

“Listen, I know you’re gonna think I’m crazy. But none of those things are the issue,” Goldberg said, calmly yet sternly. “The issue is that there is an assault weapon out there that people can put their hands on. They can put their hands on it easier than they can get a glass of beer in a bar. Kids can get an assault weapon. That’s the issue. It’s not if people are smoking too much weed. You know that, Laura!”

Goldberg continued:

“You can put it through a B.S. lens if you want to and keep pretending like you don’t know that we have an issue with assault weapons. And this will be the last I have to say on it. This weapon, you cannot hunt with it. You cannot go bird hunting with it. It is made to kill and destroy bodies. That’s what it does!”

Lots of people treat wacko Republican responses to serious issues with mockery, especially if they come from Marjorie Taylor Greene or the comparatively more respectable Ted Cruz. But Goldberg’s measured outburst is a reminder that these lawmakers continue to legislate in a manner that can put people’s lives in danger, as it has with the epidemic of mass shootings that has no end in sight. So laugh at someone like Ingraham when she unconvincingly blames psychotic behavior on the chilliest drug on the market. But don’t forget to get angry as Whoopi does in the video you can watch above.

Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers set some records after its release last month. For what it’s worth, that shouldn’t be surprising as his loyal fan base spent five years waiting on a new body of work from him. For example, Kendrick broke Apple Music’s record for the most first-day streams by an album that was released in 2022. Shortly after its release, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers also had the biggest debut on the Billboard 200 chart in 2022. A few weeks later, Kendrick had a rare occurrence with one of his songs on the Billboard chart, and it’s not one we might have expected from him.

XXL notes that Kendrick’s “We Cry Together,” which features contributions from actress Taylour Paige, fell down a total of 81 spots — from No. 16 to No. 97 — between the May 24 and May 31 updates of the Billboard Hot 100. This makes for one of the biggest single-week drops ever on the song chart. However, it’s not the biggest that we’ve seen from a song in the past couple of years.

Back in 2020, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas” went from topping the singles chart one week to completely falling off the Hot 100 the following week. Despite this, the track would go on to become the first song to be No. 1 in four separate years after it originally topped the charts in 2019 and did so again in 2021 and 2022.

On the bright side for Kendrick, his 2012 album Good Kid M.A.A.D. City recently became the only hip-hop studio album to spend 500 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart.

Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers set some records after its release last month. For what it’s worth, that shouldn’t be surprising as his loyal fan base spent five years waiting on a new body of work from him. For example, Kendrick broke Apple Music’s record for the most first-day streams by an album that was released in 2022. At the time of its release, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers had the biggest debut on the Billboard 200 chart in 2022. A few weeks later, Kendrick set a new record on the Billboard chart, but it’s not one we might have expected from him.

According to the publication, Kendrick’s “We Cry Together,” which features contributions from actress Taylour Paige, recorded the biggest single-week drop on the most recent edition of the Billboard 200 chart. The record dropped down a total of 81 spots — from No. 16 to No. 97 — between the May 24 and May 31 updates of the singles chart.

This big drop shouldn’t be surprising for a couple of reasons. First, B-side records on an album typically experience a big drop on the charts once the hype behind the album that they’re on dies out. Other songs from Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers have also experienced this. They include “Silent Hill” with Kodak Black which dropped from No. 7 to No. 49 in the past couple of weeks. Secondly, “We Cry Together” is a lengthy skit on Kendrick’s new album and it features the rapper in an extremely heated argument with his girlfriend, something that most listeners found uncomfortable to listen to. As a result, they most likely steered away from the record during future listens of Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers thus launching the song down the singles chart.

On the bright side, Kendrick’s Good Kid M.A.A.D. City recently became the only hip-hop studio album to spend 500 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart.

Top Gun: Maverick is currently making all the money, and depending on who you ask, that means good times at the movies are back or, if you’re a far-right radio host, that the Democrats are going to lose bigly in November. One of the stand-out moments has little to do with its next-level aerial photography. It’s the scene where Tom Cruise’s aging (but still kicking) super-pilot meets in person with nemesis-turned-texting buddy Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, played by Val Kilmer — a scene that, despite its semi-autobiographical bona fides, had to lean on some cutting-edge tech to pull off.

The scene nods to Kilmer’s real life ordeals: In 2014, the actor was diagnosed with throat cancer and underwent a tracheotomy. He’s been cancer-free for four years, but the fight cost him his voice. In the Top Gun sequel, Iceman is dying from some mystery illness that has also left him unable to speak. Instead he communicates via a computer, but at one point you briefly hear his voice. But it’s not exactly Kilmer you hear speaking.

As per Fortune, Kilmer teamed up with London-based tech startup Sonantic to create a digital version of his voice, using hours of archival footage featuring his speaking voice before his illness. The company then fed those sounds into the their algorithms, which they then used for a model.

As Fortune elaborates:

“After cleaning up old audio recordings of Kilmer, [Sonantic] used a ‘voice engine’ to teach the voice model how to speak like Kilmer. The engine had around 10 times less data than it would have been given in a typical project, Sonantic said, and it wasn’t enough. The company then decided to come up with new algorithms that could produce a higher-quality voice model using the available data.”

It’s not far from what techies did to Mark Hamill’s voice in the Book of Boba Fett episode featuring the younger (and less gravelly) Luke Skywalker. You can listen to a sample of the AI version of Kilmer’s voice below.

Now, before you think this is a priceless form of technology that can only do good, it’s best to consider its disturbing ramifications. A Radiolab episode from 2019 delved into the creation of AI-created voices, such as the one used for Kilmer.It pointed out that this tech, not unlike equally dangerous deepfakes, doesn’t only allow malefactors to create soundalikes that could be used for nefarious purposes. It also allows people to deny that audio of them, say, saying something damning is real. Imagine if Donald Trump would have been able to call the Access Hollywood tape “fake news”? Something to keep in mind when you’re listening to the ersatz Kilmer voice in Top Gun: Maverick.

(Via Fortune)

The weirdest story in baseball this season played out over the weekend when Tommy Pham and Joc Pederson got into it prior to a game between the Cincinnati Reds and the San Francisco Giants because of some long-simmering beef between the two in their fantasy football league. Pham approached Pederson before a game and slapped him, which led to Pham sitting out Friday’s game.

Pederson explained what happened — basically, it stems from a meme making fun of Pham’s old team, the Padres, that Pham did not enjoy. Seven months later, after Pham dropped out of the league, he slapped Pederson, and somehow, this story is still going on. Pham called out the league’s commissioner, Mike Trout, who he deemed is the worst commissioner in all of fantasy sports.

Now, as someone who was a really terrible commissioner for a fantasy sports league not all that long ago, I think I hold this distinction, but regardless, Pham believes the title goes to Trout. And on Wednesday, before the Los Angeles Angels’ game against the New York Yankees, Trout had the chance to respond and decided to crack a few jokes over the whole thing.

In fairness to Trout, the commissioner in his league is Rob Manfred, so I get why he would say that.

On Wednesday, after six weeks of testimony and two days of deliberation, Johnny Depp’s defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard came to an end. The jury decided in Depp’s favor, unanimously agreeing that he and his legal team had proven that Heard defamed him in a Washington Post op-ed. Both sides released statements. Depp said the jury “gave me my life back.” Heard, meanwhile, said she was “heartbroken” but “even more disappointed with what this verdict means for other women.

The trial was a fog of bizarre and disturbing accusations from both sides. Depp re-aired claims that Heard had left poop in his bed while Heard admitted she hit Depp while on Ambien. Chilling texts Depp had sent about wishing her dead surfaced and Heard claimed that his “smear campaign” had cost her work. She also spoke about receiving “hundreds” of death threats since the trial began.

But when the verdict was announced, the House Judiciary GOP’s oft-raucous Twitter account cheerfully took a side, tweeting a gif of Depp in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, standing on the nest of a ship, wind blowing his long locks, looking triumphant.

People were more than a little alarmed that a corner of government, one with a terrible track record with women’s rights, was siding with a powerful man who was just awarded millions from a woman who had alleged abuse.

Some tried to point out to Depp who was on his side.

Some joked about Republicans using a movie clip from Disney, who they’d recently made Enemy Number One.

Some speculated that the tweet might have come from House Judiciary ranking member Jim Jordan, an infamously bad tweeter.

And some called out this GOP account as particularly toxic.

The next generation of Pokémon is upon us. Soon we will be exploring a whole new region full of unique monsters for us to capture, train, befriend, and battle until we’re the best trainer in the world. We’ve done it eight times before this and everyone is fully ready to do it for a ninth.

On Wednesday, a new trailer showcasing Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet was released and it gave us a bunch of new information about the upcoming games. The biggest reveal was that these new games will be released on November 18, 2022. This is a big year for Pokémon fans that are getting two games in a single year thanks to the release of Pokémon Legends: Arceus back in January, but while Legends: Arceus was a spin off title this is a brand new entry into the mainline franchise.

As with any new mainline game that means new Pokémon to become friends with! We already knew about the starters from a previous trailer, but the new trailer gave us three new Pokémon to get excited about: Pawmi, Lechonk, and Smoliv.

Among these three, a quick fan favorite has been Lechonk. The adorable little pig Pokémon is not only adorable looking, but it has an eye catching name that while it will get a giggle out of some has an interesting possible origin behind it. Lechon is a popular pork dish in Spain which also happens to be the region of the world that Scarlet and Violet is inspired by. Add in the popular internet slang “chonk” to mean “fat” and we get a very cute fat pig.

A few more interesting tidbits from the trailer include four player multiplayer, which is exciting for anyone that wants to go on a co-op adventure together with friends, and Toby Fox the creator of Undertale announcing that he did some of the field music for the game. Fox might be best known for Undertale, but he’s done plenty of music composition for other games including Pokémon Sword Pokémon Shield..

There is always a lot to look forward to whenever a new mainline Pokémon game comes out and this year’s entry feels no different. November can’t come soon enough!

When he’s not forecasting trends on Saturday Night Live, or vacationing on Fire Island, Bowen Yang is posting incredibly niche memes on his Instagram account, which has the handle @FayeDunaway. As it turns out Faye Dunaway, the legendary Oscar winner, and one-time CSI guest star, knows about the handle and intends to fight it out with Yang on live television.

Yang stopped by Live With Kelly And Ryan to discuss his upcoming movie Fire Island, and he said that Dunaway is aware of his handle. “As of, like, two weeks ago, I’ve gotten word that she knows about me having the handle and she does actually want to come on SNL and confront me on live television.”

When asked about how she would approach the topic, Yangs had some ideas. “Maybe on Update, she gets brought out to talk about her social media handle being co-opted by this random Asian guy.” Maybe she can dunk on Colin Jost while she’s there.

Yang then explained that he had the handle sine before being cast on Saturday Night Live. I did not want this because I was like, truly, just some plebeian in Brooklyn,” Yang said. “[I thought], best-case scenario, her people reach out to me and give me like $20 and I give it to her. But, now…. there’s a blue check next to my name. People might think that I’m the real Faye Dunaway!” To be clear, the real Dunaway does not have an Instagram account. Yet!

Fellow Americans, it’s long past time to take a good, hard look in the mirror.

The fact that we just had yet another horrific school shooting, with 19 children and two teachers being massacred in their classrooms by a guy with military-style guns that he easily and legally obtained, is maddening. The fact that we’ve seen this same story play out in schools across the country over and over and over again is enraging. The fact that too many of our lawmakers refuse to take any legislative action whatsoever to try to curb the constant carnage, completely ignoring the vast amounts of data that show gun laws do work to reduce gun violence, is disgusting.

Sandy Hook should have been enough. Parkland should have been enough. Columbine should have been enough. Every single school shooting should have been the end of it. But here we are.

As the individual stories of the children killed at Robb Elementary School come to light, we can’t turn away. We must bear witness to what they experienced, to the terror they and their surviving classmates endured, to the anguish and heartbreak of their loved ones.

But as we do that, let’s not embrace “brave hero” narratives for these children the way we do with soldiers on the battlefield. Please. Let’s just not.

The Girl Scouts of Southwest Texas posted a tribute to Uvalde 4th grader Amerie Jo Garza on Twitter, sharing that the organization had posthumously bestowed upon the slain 10-year-old the Bronze Cross, one of the highest honors in the Girl Scouts, and it was like a punch right in the gut. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen anything so well-intentioned feel so dark.

“The Bronze Cross is awarded for saving or attempting to save life at the risk of the Girl Scout’s own life,” the tweet thread read. “On May 24, Amerie did all she could to save the lives of her classmates and teachers. It was our honor as Amerie’s council to present the Bronze Cross to her family, and Girl Scouts will continue to pay tribute at her funeral services today with a Presentation of Colors.”

u201cLast week, Girl Scouts of the USA posthumously bestowed upon Amerie Jo Garza, 10, of Uvalde, Texas, one of the highest honors in Girl Scouting: the Bronze Cross. The Bronze Cross is awarded for saving or attempting to save life at the risk of the Girl Scoutu2019s own life. 1/3u201d

— Girl Scouts of Southwest Texas (@Girl Scouts of Southwest Texas)
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“We will carry her story with us always and ensure her brave actions will endure for generations,” they wrote.

I’m sorry, what fresh hell dystopian reality did I just fall into? As a parent, I cannot even begin to fathom how I would process being handed a Girl Scout honor for my daughter for her bravery during a school shooting. Only in America, right?

u201cWe will carry her story with us always and ensure her brave actions will endure for generations. nnLearn more about ways to help our sisters in Uvalde at https://t.co/o9Xnd6M0Jb. 3/3u201d

— Girl Scouts of Southwest Texas (@Girl Scouts of Southwest Texas)
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To be clear, I’m not faulting the Girl Scouts for doing something to honor Amerie Jo Garza. She was a Girl Scout. To say nothing and do nothing would be wrong. But this also feels wrong. Everything about this situation feels wrong, because it is wrong.

The Girls Scouts shouldn’t have felt the need to posthumously awarded Amerie a Bronze Cross, because they shouldn’t have had to figure out what to do in light of her death, because she shouldn’t have had to try to save her classmates before being shot to death in her classroom, because the 18-year-old who murdered her should never have been able to obtain two AR-15 rifles and 1,657 rounds of ammunition. It simply shouldn’t have happened. Period.

The Uvalde gunman had more ammunition than soldiers carry into war. Let that sit for a second. There is zero—absolutely zero—reason for any civilian to have access to that much killing power.

And the result of our insistence on repeatedly doing nothing about this reality is that we talk about 4th graders—who should be doing fractions, not hiding from gunfire in their classrooms—with the same heroic language we use for soldiers who make the ultimate sacrifice. It’s unbelievably disturbing.

u201c@CorrosiveRabbit @BrynnTannehill @girlscoutsswtx It says u2018For Valoru2019. JFC, what have we become as a nation when the GIRL SCOUTS are giving out medals more commonly associated with bravery on the battlefield. Posthumously, no less! Stop the world, please. I think Iu2019d like to get off of this oneu201d

— Girl Scouts of Southwest Texas (@Girl Scouts of Southwest Texas)
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This is it, America. This is the bottom. And it’s not like we just got here. We’ve been dragging ourselves along the bottom for decades now. Are we going to stay there, or are we going to finally snap out of our delusion that our country’s gun culture equals safety and freedom? Because all signs point to that being a complete and total myth.

When our kids and teachers can’t go to school without worrying about being gunned down at their desks, it’s clear that we are not free. When little Amerie Jo Garza’s parents are handed a Bronze Cross for their 10-year-old’s brave actions in a school massacre—when there were armed and trained officials at the scene—it’s clear that we are not made safer by guns.

Enough is enough, and enough came and went a long time ago. Our lawmakers need to borrow a backbone and pass the gun legislation most Americans agree on before our kids start earning scout badges for successfully surviving a mass shooting.

Normani seems to have a knack for timing her new music drops with racy photo shoots on her Instagram feed. Back in March, the “Wild Side” singer posed completely naked on a couch while explaining the inspiration behind her single “Fair,” which came out four days later. “This song really captures me in one of my most vulnerable moments,” she commented back then.

Now just two days after indicating that her next single is called “Candy Paint,” Normani donned a golden bikini in idyllic Palmilla, Los Cabos, Mexico for a series of photos on Instagram. Pretty smart marketing? Sure. But we’ll give her a pass, because Normani’s post was in celebration of her 26th birthday. “Just feeling sooooo grateful today,” she commented. “Thank you lord for twenty six years around the sun. it’s y’all favorite bad bitch birthdaaaaaaaaay.” The shoot moved from a swank pad, to a boat, to a beachside hut.