Combo Chimbita is making some of the most incredibly inspired music in the world right now. The first three singles they’ve dropped this year have explored different traditionalist themes pertinent to their native Colombia. Led by singer Carolina Oliveros’s banshee howl, the explosive “Mujer Jaguar” saw the band yearning for new a new world for the people of their native soil. Signed to Anti- Records and now based in Brooklyn, the band has now released “Babalawo,” the fourth song and accompanying video in the storytelling singles series, and it might just be the most visceral expression yet.
The band initially debuted the song when playing along with famed free jazz outfit Sun Ra Arkestra and have now presented it in a video, centered on Puerto Rican interpretive dancer and queer icon, Edrimael Delgado Reyes, whom director Oscar Diaz calls “the father of the vogue and ballroom scene in Puerto Rico.” Reyes’ movements act as a vessel for a tale of Plato’s cave, where humans in an almost zombie-like state just tow the line of the status quo before finding enlightenment (too real these days). Guitarist Niño Leto expanded on the overall themes of the song in a statement:
“It has some hints of trap, a bit of rock, but also carries influences from Haitian music and sounds. Carolina’s lyrics are also important since they describe some of our first encounters with Regla de Ocha (often known as Santeria). These intimate moments of spiritual guidance are incredibly important to us as a band with decolonial aspirations.”
At a time when marginalized communities are truly getting an opportunity to tell their stories and be acknowledged, but are still facing adversity at every turn, Combo Chimbita is pushing incredible boundaries in keeping these stories at the forefront of their music. The follow-up to 2019’s can’t miss album, Ahomale, has yet to be announced, but songs and videos like “Babalawo” should keep the band’s upcoming output firmly on the radar.
Future turtle-stomping Italian plumber Chris Pratt has officially confirmed that he’s filming the long-waited Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, and he’s got the facial hair to prove it. In a new Twitter video that’s pulling double duty in the promotion department, Pratt shows off his “sick-ass” mutton chops while revealing that he’s currently on set for Day 1 of the final Guardians film in writer/director James Gunn trilogy.
But that wasn’t all Pratt was pushing. The Marvel star was also promoting his appearance on Rob Lowe and Alan Yang’s Parks and Recollection podcast, which is about, you guessed it, Parks and Recreation. On the just released episode, Pratt will dissect his time as lovable dumbass Andy Dwyer on the hit NBC sitcom, which helped launched his career to its current A-list movie star state.
Pratt wrapped up the video by making a joke about his American flag sweater and whether it was patriotic enough, which you can see below, via Team Coco:
As for when Pratt will have time to record the voice of Mario in the upcoming animated movie of the same name, that film isn’t scheduled to hit theaters until December 21, 2022. So despite being clearly tied up with Guardians for the foreseeable future, Pratt has a while to nail down his approach to the most recognizable video game character of all time. No pressure.
The US is once again in a space race with Russia and things aren’t looking too great for competitors Tom Cruise and Elon Musk. While just last year the pair announced their intention to create the first narrative movie filmed in space, it’s looking like the Tesla CEO and action star might be too late to achieve such greatness. After spending 12 days on the International Space Station, Russian director Klim Shipenko and actress Yulia Peresild have returned to Earth, with an entire film shot in space ready to edit and become the first-ever movie shot in space.
After launching into orbit from the Russia-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan earlier this month, the pair safely made their return to Earth on October 17, following just under two weeks of filming in space. While the movie’s plot (and surely lofty budget) have been kept tightly under wraps, The Guardian reports it “centers around a surgeon who is dispatched to the ISS to save a cosmonaut.” In addition to Pereslid, veteran cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov and two Russian cosmonauts who were already stationed aboard the ISS are set to appear in the film.
While the sheer cost of the project is surely enough to have kept so many filmmakers away from this endeavor, safety is also of huge concern. While Shipenko and Pereslid managed to stay safe, apparently the pair’s mission was not without “small hitches.” According to a NASA spokesperson, “when Russian flight controllers on Friday conducted a test on the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft the ship’s thruster fired unexpectedly and destabilized the ISS for 30 minutes.” While ultimately everything went well for the cosmonauts aboard the ISS and the film team, it just goes to show the very real risks associated with filming 250 miles above the surface of the Earth.
If the film manages to hit the big screen before Musk and Cruises’ (which seems pretty damn likely at this point), it will be another major space-related accomplishment for Russia after launching the first satellite and sending into orbit the first man, woman, and animal.
To say that the craft beer industry in the U.S. is booming is an extreme understatement. At last count, there were almost 9,000 breweries in the country. To put that in context, if you go back to the early ’90s there were less than 300. While it seems like a new brewpub, craft brewery, or beer bar opens every week in every major city in America these days, opening a new brewery in the mid-90s was a big deal.
Still being open decades later in an increasingly cutthroat industry? That’s a serious accomplishment.
Delaware’s Dogfish Head has managed exactly that since 1995. They’re currently celebrating their 26th year and to mark the occasion, founder and president Sam Calagione has co-written an eponymous book subtitled “26 Years of Off-Centered Adventures.” It’s a philosophy that the brewing legend takes very seriously.
“We were one of the smallest commercial breweries in America,” he says. “Brewing only twelve gallons of beer per batch to serve exclusively inside the walls of our restaurant in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. From day one, we’ve been committed to brewing the majority of our beers with high-quality culinary ingredients outside the Reinheistgebot [the Bavarian purity law that states you could only brew beer with water, hops, barley, and yeast].”
To this day, Calagione is well-known for the boundary-pushing, sometimes crazy-sounding ingredients in the beers brewed at Dogfish Head. But his brewery has grown exponentially — becoming one of the largest and most well-known craft breweries in the country, producing nearly 250,000 gallons of beer per week with distribution to all fifty states thanks to a partnership with Boston Brewing Co. [makers of Samuel Adams].
We talked to Calagione this week and he was kind enough to answer a few questions about his brewing story, some of the strangest beers he’s ever brewed, and what to expect from the brewery in the next twenty-six years.
Dogfish Head
Why did you want to start brewing at a time when it was far less popular than it is today?
I saw that small-scale commercial brewing was growing in a few geographic pockets in the US and that almost all first-generation brewers were focused on modern European beer styles. I thought there was a lot of white space I could explore between that and focusing on infusing beers with unexpected culinary ingredients as a way Dogfish Head could stand out in the competitive landscape.
What made you decide to write a book, what went into it?
The Dogfish Head Book: 26 Years of Off-Centered Adventures is actually one of many books I’ve had the pleasure of writing and/or contributing to. This particular book — which I was lucky enough to co-author alongside my wife and Dogfish Head co-founder, Mariah, and our longtime co-worker and Dogfish INNkeeper, Andrew — was meant to be a celebration of the brand’s 26-year history, as well as the many co-workers that have contributed to Dogfish Head’s collective story and successes.
We were inspired by The Beastie Boys Book, which provides a beautiful, visually stimulating look at the band’s historical journey. With that esthetic in mind, we spent countless hours not only carefully choosing the stories that would make it into The Dogfish Head Book, but also the images that would bring those stories to life.
What are some lessons beer fans can learn from this book?
The ideas that lead to specific beers and our unique brewing techniques, like how we converted a vintage vibrating football game into the continual-hopping device that allowed us to brew 60 Minute and 90 Minute IPAs. That invention of ours is now in a permanent collection at the Smithsonian, alongside things like the Wright Brothers’ plane and the Apollo rocket.
What did you consider the keys to your success over the years?
The biggest keys to success at Dogfish Head have been creating products and experiences that are consistent, of high quality, and offer strong points of differentiation within their competitive sets. I am a firm believer in the importance of these three success drivers, knowing that to be successful in business, you must satisfy all three standards.
Another huge key to success for Dogfish Head has been our co-workers. Through our off-centered, people-first, business-second culture, we’ve been able to cultivate an extremely talented, caring, and dedicated team of co-workers to help us grow and strengthen the brand. Without them, Dogfish Head would not be what it is today.
What’s your favorite beer you’ve ever brewed?
SeaQuench Ale. Beauty is the eye of the beer holder. Everyone’s palate is different, which is why we make such a wide array of beers. But the combo of flavors in SeaQuench from wheat and lime juice and sea salt hits all my pleasure buttons.
What’s the strangest beer you’ve ever made that you’re proud of?
We won a medal at the Great America Beer Fest for Choc Lobster. It was a dark beer brewed with cocoa nibs and lobsters caught off the jut of land that is Dogfish Head in Maine.
What was one beer that seemed like it would work in theory, but just didn’t once it was brewed?
Escar-Gose. It was a Gose brewed with snails and the snail’s arch-enemy: salt. Great name and idea but tasted pretty terrible.
Dogfish Head
What advice do you have for someone thinking of opening a brewery?
My advice to any business owner or entrepreneur is to focus on the three key success drivers: quality, consistency, and being well-differentiated. Products or experiences that are consistent, of high quality, and stand out from others in their competitive sets are much more likely to succeed than those meeting just one, or even two of those criteria. If your product satisfies those three key success drivers, I’d say go for it and don’t let others tell you that you can’t!
What are some things our readers would want to know about the book and Dogfish Head?
Dogfish Head is not just a brewery, but an off-centered destination. At Dogfish Head, we do so much more than just brew beer. We distill spirits, cook some downright delicious grub, host guests at our harbor-front hotel, and more. In addition to brewing off-centered ales, our brand is about creating experiences for all off-centered people to partake in and enjoy, and we encourage readers everywhere to come and check out our various East Coast locations for themselves!
There is no such thing as an aspiration that is too off-centered or out-of-reach. With The Dogfish Head Book, we hope to inspire readers to follow their own creative journeys, no matter how off-centered or out-of-reach they may seem. Yes, you may fail, but you will learn from those failures and they will prepare you for the challenges ahead.
Did Donald Trump’s recent confusing message (which could be interpreted as him telling Republicans not to vote in 2022) do some (further) damage to the GOP? QAnon cheerleader Marjorie Taylor Greene is very worried. That vibe arrives after Greene was (bizarrely) called a “communist” by far-right attorney Lin Wood, which is quite strange, considering that Greene throws that word around all the time while harassing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez through the halls of Congress over the Green New Deal.
However, all the fun and games appears to be on hold for Greene, who’s very upset and threw down a tweet storm while declaring that she conducted a poll, and a significant percentage of GOP voters apparently will resist voting… out of protest? That remains unclear. In her lengthy rant, Greene wrote, “I recently conducted a poll on Georgia’s elections and if my constituents felt their votes would count during a teletown hall.” Naturally, this is not a scientific poll that she’s referring to, but Green continued. “Sadly, 4% said they won’t even vote due to voter fraud. This is WRONG. Legal votes by Rs are just as important as stopping illegal ones.”
There’s 3 steps to victory in 2022.
#1 Audit the 2020 election and prosecute voter fraud.
#2 Stop mass mail-in voting which leads to fraud.
#3 VOTE! Don’t sit at home and hand over the victory to Democrats. Flood the polls!
Clearly, Greene’s in a panic and continued to rant about “Democrat deception” and how her state was saved from Stacey Abrams becoming governor and how Republicans must “FLOOD THE POLLS.” One particular line, however, is of interest: “Stop listening to grifters telling you not to vote.”
For example in GA’s 2018 election, Brian Kemp beat Stacey Abrams by 54,723 votes.
4% of Kemp’s total is 79,136 votes.
If 4% of Republicans stayed home, Stacey Abrams would be governor.
Combine that with mass absentee ballot harvesting and Rs never win again in Georgia.
Again, a whole lot of people think that Trump sounded like he was telling people not to vote, and he’s arguably a sophisticated grifter, so uh, you be the judge.
Towards the start of the year, Jpegmafia dropped a new project, EP2!, and now he has another on the way. This time, though, he’s going with a beefier full-length project, called LP!. That’s set to drop this Friday, October 22, which is also the rapper’s birthday.
What’s noteworthy about the project is that it comes in two distinct editions: LP! (Online) and LP! (Offline). The song order between the two versions varies, and on top of that, the Offline edition actually features two more songs.
Adele may have moved to Los Angeles a few years ago, but she still get nostalgic over classic British food. The singer put her taste buds to the test in a recent “Ultimate British Taste Test” segment for British Vogue. Although she enjoyed the dishes, the singer admitted that her favorite meal would actually just be fast food from McDonald’s.
The Ultimate British Taste Test video begins with Adele describing how she likes to make her tea, dispelling rumors from her “Hello” video that shows her pouring boiling water in a cup before putting a tea bag in, which to many Brits was an offense worthy of her being canceled. Armed with a blindfold, Adele then tries to guess several classic British dishes solely based off their taste. Some of the dishes were easier for her to guess, like pickled eggs, pork pie, and a full English breakfast. But Adele missed the mark when it came to guessing dishes like spotted dick (a baked pudding made from dried fruit).
During the game, Adele also revealed what food she loves so much that she would chose it to be her last-ever meal: McDonald’s. “My ideal meal, my death row meal, my last meal would be a chicken nugget with a Big Mac and then fries,” she said. “That’s my three-course. I eat it at least once a week.”
Watch Adele do a blindfolded taste test with British Vogue above.
The recent news report of a woman on a Philadelphia train being raped while onlookers did nothing to stop it was shocking and horrible, without question. It also got people discussing the infamous “bystander effect,” which has led people to believe—somewhat erroneously, as it turns out—that people aren’t likely to intervene when they see someone being attacked in public. Stories like this uninterrupted train assault combined with a belief that bystanders rarely step in can easily lead people to feel like everything and everyone is horrible.
But according to the most recent research on the subject, the Philadelphia incident appears to be the exception, not the rule. A 2019 multinational study found that at least one bystander (but usually more) will actually intervene in 9 out of 10 public conflicts.
The idea that people in groups aren’t likely to intervene stems largely from research on the 1964 story of Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old woman who was stabbed to death outside her apartment in New York, while dozens of onlookers in surrounding apartment buildings allegedly did nothing. However, further research has called the number of witnesses into question, and it appears that several did, in fact, call the police. Someone reportedly shouted out their window and scared the attacker away for a few minutes, and someone did rush to Genovese’s aid after the second attack.
The bystander effect is real in the sense that people are less likely to intervene if there are other people around than if they are the lone bystander. But that doesn’t mean that more people equals less intervention. The 2019 study by psychologist Richard Philpot and his four co-authors found the opposite, in fact—the more people who witnessed a conflict, the greater the likelihood that someone would step in. The study, which included observations of video footage from real-life public conflicts in the Netherlands, South Africa and the United Kingdom, found that one or more witnesses made a prosocial intervention in 90.7% of public conflicts, with an average of 3.8 witnesses intervening each time.
“We record similar likelihoods of intervention across the 3 national contexts, which differ greatly in levels of perceived public safety,” wrote the authors. “Taken together these findings allay the widespread fear that bystanders rarely intervene to help. We argue that it is time for psychology to change the narrative away from an absence of help and toward a new understanding of what makes intervention successful or unsuccessful.”
We all like to think we’d intervene if we saw someone being harmed in public, but it’s easier to imagine acts of heroism than to actually do them. When witnessing a conflict or attack as a group, people often think someone else is more suited to stepping in or assume that someone else will do it. In some circumstances, someone might determine that intervening is too risky, especially if weapons are involved. Add in the real-time nature of an unexpected event where a person might be shocked or confused about what’s happening, and it’s not surprising that many people end up not intervening.
The Philadelphia train rape story is horrific, and the police in the case are right—someone (or several someones) on that train should have done something to stop it. But that case is not the norm. It’s far more likely that someone will help you if you are being harmed and people are witnessing it.
Everything and everyone is not horrible, truly. There are exceptions to every rule, of course, but we shouldn’t let the heinousness of a single story or two lead us to believe the worst about humanity. Most of the time, someone will do the right thing. Most of the time, in a public conflict or attack, someone will intervene. And perhaps with better education about how to successfully stop someone from being harmed, we could make the odds even greater than 9 out of 10.
It’s hard to imagine what it was like working during the Industrial Revolution. People commonly labored 12 to 14 hour days, six days a week, in unhealthy conditions, and children weren’t spared from the misery.
In the late 1800s, there was a movement in the United States to shorten the average workday and a popular slogan suggested that the correct way to spend a day was “8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for what you will.”
The fight for shorter workdays would be a long, bloody battle until finally, in 1940, Congress officially set the American workweek at 40 hours.
A lot has changed in the past 80 years and most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed how and where people work. Over the past 18 months, many have gone from laboring in offices to working from home. And many who worked in the service industry are rethinking their professions altogether.
TikTokker AutisticCommProf posted a video about why she thinks the “8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for what you will” slogan shouldn’t apply in 2021. The crux of her argument is that a big chunk of our “8 hours for what you will” time is actually spent on work-related activities.
Her video was in response to a viral tweet from Jarrel, a mental health advocate, who believes that the nine-to-five workday forces us to be in constant work mode.
“As we can see, nine to five literally gives(s) you no time to collect yourself before have to go to bed and go back to work the next day,” she says in the video, reiterating Jarrel’s point.
AutisticCommProf makes a great point about lunch breaks, saying that eight hours on the clock is actually nine because “employers don’t want to pay you for lunch.” So many of us are really on a “nine to six or an eight to five” job schedule.
AutisticCommProf also takes time to factor in commute times, which are just under an hour a day for the average American. She also considers the time that it takes for someone to get ready in the morning, which is even more of a burden on women.
“So now we’re looking at 11 hours that are devoted to your workday,” she says. That means that the old adage should be updated for 2021 to read “11 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 5 hours for what you will.”
The solution? She believes that commutes and getting ready should be factored into one’s work hours and that the average workday should be “three to four hours a day,” but says that’s an “entirely separate video.”
The turn-of-the-century labor movement fought hard to promote our common humanity by eventually giving us the eight-hour workday. But now it looks like we’ve arrived at a new era where technology, productivity and a renewed focus on work-life balance have many questioning whether eight hours a day, five days a week is really in our best interests.
As the 2021-22 NBA regular season approaches and training camp winds down across the league, we’ll be taking a look at the player on each team that holds the key to unlocking their potential. For the Oklahoma City Thunder, the focus turns to Aleksej Pokusevski.
The Thunder are unquestionably led by a budding star in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, with the rest of the roster largely consisting of question marks. That distinction certainly applies to Pokusevski, who was drafted with the No. 17 pick in the 2020 NBA Draft. The seven-foot forward was tabbed as one of the higher upside prospects in the 2020 class, with length and tools that cannot be taught. However, Pokusevski was one of the NBA’s worst players statistically as a rookie, leading to uncertainty for his sophomore campaign and beyond.
On one hand, Pokusevski scored at least 19 points on six separate occasions, flashing some of his considerable potential. On the other, he shot just 34.1 percent from the floor and 28.0 percent from three-point distance, posting an unsightly 41.2 percent effective field goal shooting mark. That kind of inefficiency is clearly untenable but, for the 19-year-old Pokusevski, there is still reason to believe in the upside.
For one, Pokusevski posted a 3.4 percent block rate and his length and defensive feel have been intriguing dating back to his pre-draft tape. He must add bulk in order to be effective, but Pokusevski does have the kind of reach and athleticism that could be devastating defensively if harnessed properly.
The other end of the floor is more of a mystery box, with Pokusevski able to handle the ball and deliver passes in a way that most players his height simply aren’t capable of doing. He struggled with ball security (18.8 percent turnover rate), though, and there isn’t a “go-to” move for Pokusevski on the offensive side of the floor right now. In addition, his jump shot simply hasn’t translated, and it is difficult to see him succeeding at the highest levels without more consistency from outside the painted area.
Oklahoma City added another highly intriguing, yet unproven, piece in drafting Josh Giddey with the No. 6 pick in 2021. Beyond that, the Thunder have a bevy of relatively interesting young players, ranging from Lu Dort and Darius Bazley to Theo Maledon, Ty Jerome, Jeremiah Robinson-Earl and Tre Mann. There is enough room to provide all of them with some level of playing time but, as the season wears on, Pokusevski must prove that he is worthy of further investment, potentially at the expense of fellow prospects in his age range.
In the grand scheme, the 2021-22 season projects to be yet another developmental campaign for the Thunder, with few wins and a lot of lopsided results. That isn’t necessarily the best working environment, but the situation is perhaps best-suited for Pokusevski’s development, as Oklahoma City can afford to provide him with a longer leash than one might expect, hoping his raw tools develop to the point of usefulness.
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