GoneTrending

There are a lot of things to be mad about in the year 2022. But for D.A.R.E., you know, the organization who made you talk to cops about smoking while you were still playing with crayons, the most outrageous thing to happen in pop culture is Euphoria.

The anti-drug movement known as D.A.R.E reached out to TMZ to express their concern with the way they portray drug abuse and risky behavior. The organization said:

“Rather than further each parent’s desire to keep their children safe from the potentially horrific consequences of drug abuse and other high-risk behavior, HBO’s television drama, Euphoria, chooses to misguidedly glorify and erroneously depict high school student drug use, addiction, anonymous sex, violence, and other destructive behaviors as common and widespread in today’s world.”

The show has been criticized in the past for their drug storylines, but they have also been applauded for their realistic portrayal of addiction and drug abuse.

D.A.R.E offers to work with the show in order to send a better message to teens. A rep said, “We would welcome the opportunity for our team, including members of our high school-aged Youth Advocacy Board, to meet with individuals at HBO who are involved with producing Euphoria to present our concerns directly.”

On the one hand, yes, the show portrays a lot of drug usage. On the other hand, it is an HBO show made for young adults who are out of high school therefore can make their own decisions, not teenagers who have bedtimes before the show even airs. If this was happening on, say, Stranger Things, then maybe they would have a solid point.

The last two-plus years of Zach Collins’ life have been filled with surgeries, rehab, and basketball games that are consumed from the bench while wearing street clothes. Collins, then a member of the Portland Trail Blazers, hasn’t played in a game since Aug. 15, 2020 due to injuries to his ankle and foot, and before that, Collins spent months on the sideline with a labrum injury that required surgery, too. Now with the San Antonio Spurs, Dime sat down with Collins to learn about his road back to basketball. You can read Part 1 right here.

I’m interested in that “watching the game from a different perspective” thing you mentioned. What were some of the big things that you learned from that perspective, as a basketball player, as someone who loves the game, and someone who wanted, at some point, to take the stuff that you learned there and apply it to your own game?

I thought it would just be important not to just sit there and think about what you’re going to have for dinner after the game, and being there to clock in. I thought it’d be important to challenge myself to be more vocal as a leader, to ask questions. When you’re playing and you come back to the bench, and your coaches are telling you to do stuff, you don’t really see it from their perspective. And it was fun to hear what they tell them and be able to ask them, “Well, why did you say this,” or, “Oh, now I see why they’re always preaching that.” That was cool, and hopefully, a lot of that stuff stays with me when I come back. I’d like to think that watching all this basketball has made me learn the game a little bit more. You can only learn so much from not playing, but I think I took advantage of it.

The team announces on June 29, 2021 that you had to undergo a third surgery. What led up to that? What led to you making that decision and what all went into that?

The June announcement, when I found that out, that was even bigger of a blow than the December announcement. Because after the December surgery, that rehab was a full, six-month rehab and… it was just a very long rehab. It was a very slow rehab. I wasn’t weight-bearing for a while, I was in a cast at one point. It was a very … I wouldn’t say grueling rehab, it was just very long and very methodical — as it should be, we were trying to be conservative with it.

Just to find out that, after all that time, it still didn’t work, it sucked. It was bad. It was definitely more of an emotional hit than the second announcement of another surgery. So, yeah, it was tough.

It was summertime, and it was a couple weeks after the season ended. We’re still in the gym, we’re still working, and my ankle’s actually feeling really good. I’m going through basketball workouts, and it’s feeling good. And that was another thing too — the ankle felt good, but then we look at the picture, and there’s another fracture there. It’s frustrating, then you’re going through the stages of, like, blaming people. I started blaming the trainers around me, I started blaming the doctor I was working with, I was questioning whether or not I’ll ever even play again, because this damn thing won’t heal. And I was questioning whether or not I did everything I was supposed to in the rehab. Did I not ask enough questions? Did I not get enough sleep? Did I not eat right? Did I not focus enough?

It was tough. At the same time, I felt like I was letting, again, a lot of people down. I felt like I was letting friends and family around me who continue to believe in me and be positive for me so much, I felt like I was letting them down. So it all hit me at once. But the biggest thing was, I was just worried about this thing ever healing. And that was the biggest concern at the time.

You were talking a bit earlier about how you tried to have the sunshine and rainbows mentality, but it weighed on you. When you find out about this third surgery, this one that’s going to hold you out even longer, do you have to take time to convince yourself, again, “Sunshine and rainbows, I’m gonna persevere and push through this?” Or was it exponentially harder to double down on that?

It was hard, bro, because at the same time, I was a free agent that summer. So, you have to pitch to teams that you’re gonna have to sign somebody that you’re going to have to rehab and get healthy. And that was another thing I was worried about, regardless of me showing up and working hard, because at the end of the day, no matter what happens to me, I know I’m going to continue to show up and work and not run from the work. That’s never the hard part.

The contract thing was definitely a worry for me. And luckily, my agent, when I told him that stuff, he said, “Relax, you have nothing to worry about, blah, blah, blah.” But yeah, it was tough to flip that switch. We took some steps, we talked to more people this time, and we just were a little bit more aggressive in how we were going to handle it, who we were talking to, what questions we were asking, and making sure that we are going to turn into a positive. Again, once I flipped that switch of, yeah, it’s a shitty situation, but make the most of it, life could be worse, that was always my thing.

I was going to ask about what goes through your mind with the timing of it, because you were a free agent. But it sounds like … I don’t want to say you were easily convinced that it wasn’t going to be a huge concern or anything like that, but it does sound like the people around you were saying yes, again, this is a shitty situation, but even though you’re a free agent, you don’t have much to worry about it from that regard.

I think everybody was concerned. I think the only person that wasn’t concerned was my agent. He’s great, it’s Mark Bartelstein. I was definitely worried about it because I didn’t know how that worked, and I had heard stories about guys continuing to get hurt, especially as a free agent, and their contracts not being great. I was definitely worried about it, everybody else was worried about it, too, maybe not as much as me. Everybody around me was still positive — Zach, you’ll be fine, don’t worry about it, regardless of the deal, you’ll work your way back. They were all cool in that sense. But I think everybody kind of held their breath for a while, as far as what the deal was going to be, if I was going to sign with a team, or if anybody would even want to bet on me in that sense.

When it came down to it, I realized that I didn’t have to worry as much as I was. The body of work before that, I think, and being able to come from a place like Portland, I think teams appreciated that. It ended up being a really good situation, obviously, that came out of it, but at the time, I was definitely worried.

After spending all of his career with the Trail Blazers up until that point, Collins signed a three-year, $22 million contract with the San Antonio Spurs in free agency.

So if I may ask, the timing of the injury, and knowing that you would need a little bit of time, did any of this impact your decision to go to San Antonio? Or was it just, “That’s the best opportunity for me, all things considered”?

I think San Antonio was just the best opportunity for me. There were a couple options that we had talked about, but San Antonio just stood out amongst all of them. The money situation, it was good, I was pretty happy with it based on what had happened to me the past year or two.

But again, it’s San Antonio, it’s the Spurs, the culture that’s here, you don’t have to be a diehard basketball fan to know that San Antonio is known for winning. To be able to start my career in places like Portland, and then go to San Antonio, I couldn’t ask for much better than that. It was pretty easy for me at that point.

My final question before we start looking forward to getting back to playing: What’s it been like going through the rehab process in a new place? Have you had to change anything up being in San Antonio, or have the Spurs basically said, listen, Zach, you know your body, you know what you’ve been through, keep doing what you’ve been doing?

We tried to not come at it differently, but the Spurs definitely had a plan. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with the rehab, I show up and I learn from them, and they tell me what to do based on data and science and all that, and I follow through. I would definitely give my two cents here and there about, we did this before, we tried this, maybe we don’t do that this time because it went bad, or what is your opinion on this, this seemed to help me a lot last time, and this seemed to not help me. And they were very collaborative. All the time, they told me this is a team effort. We’re not just gonna come in here and tell you what to do every day. Give us your feedback, how you’re feeling.

The one thing that really helped me with San Antonio — and not that Portland didn’t do this — but coming into a team where, their objective is to rehab you and get you out there playing, I didn’t know if they would rush me at all, I didn’t know if they would give me a lot of pressure. But from day one, even before rehab started with them, I never felt any type of pressure. I never felt like they had a hidden agenda as far as when they wanted me back and they weren’t telling me. They, from day one, they said, we’re not in a rush. We want you to be great for the rest of your career, not great in the next four months. It was very, very genuine in that sense. So I was very happy with that.

Grimes‘ new era of music is well underway and on Wednesday, the singer unveiled another single ahead of her upcoming LP Book 1. The brand-new track “Shinigami Eyes” plays up her ethereal genre of music and its accompanying video is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a Grimes project, complete with elven ears, vibrant graphics, and futuristic editing.

Directed by BRTHR and written by Grimes herself, the “Shinigami Eyes” is filled with eye-catching visual effects. Sporting a lit-up, scaled costume, Grimes’ video is filled with heavily-edited dance scenes and at one point, she even stabs another actor with a lightsaber. In an Instagram Live session alongside the visual’s release, Grimes noted the entire shoot took place over the course of just 10 hours in a virtual LED production volume, XR Stage. The room allowed visuals to be projected on an LED screen behind the singer while they were shooting live, with a team editing the graphics on-the-spot.

Grimes also sat down for a conversation about her new “Shinigami Eyes” with Apple Music 1’s Zane Lowe, where she talked about her decision to make a double album. “I think I decided that the record needs to be a double album,” she noted. “I made a bunch of stuff and I just want to make a bunch more stuff. There’s just more kind of sonic, conceptual ideas that I think need to get done to make everything make more sense. And we kind of have two album covers and it seems like a waste to throw on one of them away.”

Watch Grimes’ “Shinigami Eyes” video above.

Navalney, which premiered Tuesday night at the Sundance Film Festival, is a must-watch just on its own narrative as a film. It’s tense, yet at times very funny. Alexei Navalny, after being poisoned with a nerve agent by, almost certainly, via a direct order from Putin, figures out who actually carried through the order and … well Navalny prank calls them. At least he tries this tactic after the first couple of calls he makes to his would-be murderers ends in hang-ups after simply introducing himself and asking why they wanted to murder him. (To be fair to his almost assassins, I would also probably just hang up.) But on the last call he strikes gold pretending to be an assistant to a government high up and asking why the plan to killed Navalny failed. And, this time, the man on the other end, hilariously, goes into horrifying detail why, he thinks, the plan to kill Navalny didn’t work. (It came down to, it seems, not enough deadly nerve agent was put on the crotch portion of Navalny’s underwear.)

Earlier, I said Navalny works as its own narrative as a movie. And what I mean by that is, even without the educational aspect of learning the story of Alexei Navalny, it works on its own. But that educational aspect is also very important and is why I watched this documentary in the first place. In that, I assume, I’m like most Americans. I know a little about this situation. Alexei Navalny hates Vladimir Putin and wants Putin ousted from power and Navalny represents a true opposition to Putin that is uniting a lot of Russians and, of course, Putin doesn’t like this and wants Navalny out of the picture. But Daniel Roher‘s film fills in the gaps and gets into the nitty-gritty of who Alexei Navalny is – Navalny himself gets annoyed at some of Roher’s questions about Navalny’s appearances at some nationalist rallies around a decade ago; waving them off by explaining he needs the help of every coalition to defeat Putin – and the details of what happened to him when he was poisoned and how he discovered who his killers were and why he decided to just call them up, which all are pretty crazy.

Nalvany also gets annoyed when Roher keeps asking him for “final messages.” Basically, if you are dead or in jail, what do you want to say to your followers? Nalvany keeps scoffing at these questions. Which, sure, makes some sense. But Roher knows the score. And, filmed in the weeks leading up to Nalvany returning from Germany, where he recovered from the poison, back to Moscow, where he was certainly either going to be killed or arrested … yeah it was probably a good idea to ask Nalvany for some final words, no matter how annoying he thought they were.

But Nalvany‘s best attribute is being able to explain why. Again, I think a good number of Americans remember hearing in 2021 about Nalvany’s plan to return to Russia and, at least for me, not being able to wrap my head around it. Why would he do this? Most people in his position would want to get away. He and his family are safe in Germany, why on Earth would he want to go back to Russia to face certain doom? Nalvany, the film, does a great job of creating a sense of why. It’s not really an explanation, it doesn’t just tell us. But it shows us why. It shows us how so many people are inspired by this man and Nalvany knows he can’t help them from Germany. He knows he’s more important dead or in prison than living a safe life in Germany. It’s hard to convey an outlook like that in words and have it sound reasonable. But by the end of the film, it’s hard not to believe he did the right thing, even though it feels so hopeless, but then we see, with how many people are waiting for him at the airport, how his actions bring so many the feeling of hope. Yes, Nalvany is a must see film.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Former The View co-host Meghan McCain has revealed that her family recently caught COVID, and she’s fuming mad at Joe Biden for failing to live up to his campaign promise of “shutting down the virus” as well as dropping the ball on making at-home testing more available. In McCain’s latest column for the Daily Mail, where she now works after leaving the ABC talk show, she details her struggle with finding rapid tests despite living “15 minutes away from the White House.” McCain also swats down the media characterization of the latest variant as mild. The conservative firebrand claims she’s still experiencing a loss of taste and smell as well as “post-COVID depression.”

As for Biden, McCain blasts the current president for being way too slow to react to the ongoing pandemic. “I didn’t vote for the man (or Trump) but I had higher hopes for a better preparedness for the country and the fight to at least mitigate Covid more than a year into the Biden administration,” McCain writes:

Roughly 446,197 Americans have died of Covid-19 since Biden’s inauguration.

More Americans have died in 2021 of Covid-19 (while Biden has been president) than in 2020 (while Trump was president).

It was easy for the media to — rightfully — blame Trump for the bungling of the early Covid-19 response, but Biden and his feckless, moronic, isolated Titanic of an administration gets the blame now.

McCain, a lifelong Republican, fails to mention her party’s involvement for current conditions outside of admitting Trump’s failures. Conservatives are more likely to be anti-vaccine, anti-mask, and basically, anti-any COVID restrictions whatsoever. McCain also attacks Biden for believing in the “left’s propaganda that America’s greatest days are behind her” and claims that someone will show up and provide better leadership. As for who that person is, McCain never says, but if she’s hoping a Republican would’ve done better on testing, again, she’s ignoring the realities of her own party.

While Omicron cases surged across the country, Governor Ron DeSantis, who is shaping up to be the 2024 GOP candidate for president, let one million rapid tests expire in his state because he wants to erase the “testing psychology” that people should get tested. Conveniently, Meghan never addresses how that ideology would’ve eased her predicament of not being able to find COVID tests.

(Via Daily Mail)

Baby Keem just completed his tour for debut album The Melodic Blue to cap his breakout 2021, but he’s already preparing to hit the road again, just a few months later. This spring, he’s heading back out to perform 28 shows in nearly as many cities, starting out in Cincinnati, Ohio on March 7 and finishing up six weeks later with a pair of performances at Coachella Festival, with a quick stop in the Bay Area between.

Check out the dates below. Tickets go on sale here beginning January 28 at 10 am local time.

3/7 – Cincinnati, OH @ Bogart’s
3/8 – Detroit, MI @ Saint Andrew’s Hall
3/10 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE
3/11 – Columbus, OH @ Newport Music Hall
3/13 – New York, NY @ Terminal 5
3/14 – Providence, RI @ Fete Music Hall
3/15 – Baltimore, MD @ Baltimore Soundstage
3/17 – Norfolk, VA @ The NorVa
3/18 – Charlotte, NC @ The Underground
3/20 – Atlanta, GA @ Tabernacle Atlanta
3/22 – Orlando, FL @ The Beacham
3/23 – St. Petersburg, FL @ Jannus Live
3/24 – Ft. Lauderdale, FL @ Revolution Live
3/26 – New Orleans, LA @ BUKU Music + Art Project
3/27 – Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl Nashville
3/29 – St. Louis, MO @ The Pageant
3/30 – Chicago, IL @ Concord Music Hall
4/1 – Milwaukee, WI @ The Rave
4/2 – Minneapolis, MN @ The Fillmore Minneapolis
4/5 – Denver, CO @ Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom
4/6 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Depot
4/8 – Tempe, AZ @ Marquee Theatre
4/9 – Las Vegas, NV @ Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas
4/12– Seattle, WA @ The Showbox
4/13 – Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater
4/15 – Indio, CA @ Coachella
4/18 – San Francisco, CA @ The Warfield
4/22 – Indio, CA @ Coachella

Elon Musk may have a B.A. in Physics, but few people would likely want him rooting around inside their brain. Yet here we are. The polarizing entrepreneur, who is already trying to make driverless cars and space tourism a thing, is also apparently now ready to realize his dream of normalizing brain implants that would allow people to control a computer with just their thoughts.

As the Daily Beast reports, Musk’s company, Neuralink, is one step closer to conducting human trials—and scientists are understandably very, very worried about the implications.

“I don’t think there is sufficient public discourse on what the big picture implications of this kind of technology becoming available [are],” Dr. Karola Kreitmair, assistant professor of medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Daily Beast. “I worry that there’s this uncomfortable marriage between a company that is for-profit… and these medical interventions that hopefully are there to help people.”

Experts in the science and medical fields first caught wind of Neuralink’s ramp-up to human trials when it was announced that Neuralink was on the lookout for a Clinical Trial Director. The basic description of the job reads as follows:

“As the Clinical Trial Director, you’ll work closely with some of the most innovative doctors and top engineers, as well as working with Neuralink’s first Clinical Trial participants! You will lead and help build the team responsible for enabling Neuralink’s clinical research activities and developing the regulatory interactions that come with a fast-paced and ever-evolving environment. You are mission-driven and are able to meet tight deadlines with accuracy and efficiency.”

A “working knowledge of medical and scientific terminology” is one of the key qualifications they’re looking for (gee, ya think?).

For many scientists, the concern is a bioethical one.

“These are very niche products,” Dr. L. Syd Johnson, an associate professor in the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at SUNY Upstate Medical University, told the Daily Beast. While she noted that these tools could be helpful to some paralyzed individuals, Dr. Johnson also said that “the market is small [and] the devices are expensive.”

“If the ultimate goal is to use the acquired brain data for other devices, or use these devices for other things—say, to drive cars, to drive Teslas—then there might be a much, much bigger market,” Syd warned. “But then all those human research subjects—people with genuine needs—are being exploited and used in risky research for someone else’s commercial gain.”

Neuralink did not respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment on the story.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Anyone who has experienced or attended a birth knows how magical it can be to witness a brand new human make its entrance into the outside world. Each birth is unique, each baby born an individual with untold potential.

But some births are extra unusual. In the vast majority of births, the protective amniotic sac that holds the baby and the amniotic fluid it “breathes” in the womb breaks at some point in the labor and delivery process. En caul births, in which a baby is born inside an intact amniotic sac, only occur in about 1 in 80,000 births. It’s more common in cesarean births than vaginal births, but still very rare overall.

An en caul birth, sometimes called a “mermaid birth” or “veiled birth,” is seen as a sign of good luck for the baby and parents in some cultures. From a scientific observation point of view, en caul births can give us close-up look at what a baby’s life is like in utero.

---

Due to the rarity of such births (and the understandable desire for patient privacy), it’s not often that the public gets to see what it looks like. But a viral video showing a baby who was just born en caul offers a beautiful view of what it looks like. Seeing the baby curled up inside the sac and subsequently being “birthed” from it is simply mesmerizing.

Watch:

See on Instagram

The video was shared by Dr. Ignacio Perez Tomasone, an OB-GYN in Argentina, on his Instagram account. Dr. Perez Tomasone shares birth videos on his Instagram regularly, but they don’t usually garner more than 3 million views or get comments from people all over the world like this one did.

People referred to the video as “beautiful,” “magnificent,” “incredible” and “miraculous.” The video has also been shared widely on Facebook, with thousands of comments gushing over how amazing it is to see.

Every human being who has ever lived on Earth had to be born into this world, and yet every birth is still a fascinating wonder. The opportunity to see a rare and extra special birth like this one is a gift to us all. Thank you, Dr. Perez Tomasone, for sharing it.

(By the way, If you’re curious about the music played with the video, it’s the song “Devuélvete” by indie Mexican artist Carla Morrison.)

There comes a time in every artist’s life where they feel creatively burnt out. After his wildly successful 2019 album Hollywood’s Bleeding and a string of successful performances, Post Malone was feeling his creative juices depleting — especially when the pandemic hit. In fact, he thought he had completely lost his inspiration for making music until his upcoming LP Twelve Carat Toothache changed his mind.

Malone recently sat down with Billboard for a lengthy cover interview unveiling details about his upcoming album, which his manager recently noted had been delayed. During their conversation, the musician revealed he thought he lost his inspiration to write new music before launching into his new era.

Reflecting on his success, Malone said he had felt anxious about starting a new era of music. “You think about everything at the same time, and it’s f*cking overload,” he said. “There’s a lot riding on the music. There’s a lot riding on just being able to keep making songs. And that’s hard to do because you’re like, ‘F*ck — I already talked about everything.’ And you kind of run out of ideas, and that’s scary sh*t.”

He continued that he used to love playing guitar and creating beats, but he lost that inspirational spark before his collaborator Louis Bell visited his home studio: “I used to love playing the guitar — I hardly play the guitar anymore. I used to love making beats. There was a switch that flipped, and it felt like I was making Stoney. I lost that, and the hardest part is getting it back. It ebbs and flows. It’s figuring out: ‘Just because I’m not inspired to do it at the moment doesn’t mean I’m giving up.”

The Billboard feature mentions Twelve Carat Toothache is relatively brief compared to his previous releases, clocking in around 45 minutes. His aim is to avoid “filler” songs and give an honest portrayal of the “the ups and downs and the disarray and the bipolar aspect of being an artist in the mainstream.”

Check out Malone’s full interview with Billboard here.

Chillwave pioneer Toro Y Moi is gearing up to release his seventh studio album, Mahal, and along with the announcement of its release date, April 29, the musician released a pair of singles to give fans a glimpse of the album’s sound. “Postman” is accompanied by a colorful, surreal video of Toro and friends driving around San Francisco in a Filipino Jeepney (which are sort of like city buses converted from old Army Jeeps) and covering themselves with stamps.

Meanwhile, the B-side, “Magazine,” features Bay Area musician Salami Rose Joe Louis and comes with a psychedelic video harkening back to the mod era of the 60s — and its late-90s revival. Both songs are as funky as we’ve come to expect from Chaz Bear, with “Postman” featuring a stripped-down backbeat and a groovy bassline and “Magazine” tapping into the breakbeat-sampling garage rock bands from which the video borrows its aesthetic.

Mahal, which means “love” in Tagalog, the official language of the Philippines (Toro is half-Filipino on his mother’s side), will be Toro Y Moi’s first full-length album since 2019’s Outer Peace, although he did put out an EP in 2020 called C’mon Les’ Go as Les Sins with AceMo. In 2021, he changed labels, moving from Carpark, where he’d released all his previous albums, to Dead Oceans.

Watch the “Postman” and “Magazine” videos above.

Mahal is due 4/29 via Dead Oceans. You can pre-save it here.