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Much like his father (who Sen. Tammy Duckworth once sarcastically referred to as “Cadet Bone Spurs”), Donald Trump Jr. did not serve in the U.S. Armed Forces. This might perhaps account for him not realizing that there’s a massive list of existing mandated vaccines for troops before the issue of Covid-19 ever surfaced. Yet Kimberly Guilfoyle’s boyfriend is pretty darn worked up over the Pentagon’s new order (in the wake of the FDA’s full approval of Pfizer vaccine) that all troops take the Covid jab.

This means that (according to the Associated Press) approximately 800,000 service members (those who remain unvaccinated so far) must roll up their sleeves, and as Raw Story relays, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby revealed that those troops who don’t have a religious or medical exemption for vaccination can talk to a doctor “and have that physician, communicate to them, the risks that they’re taking by continuing to not want to take the vaccine.”

Well, Don Jr. is a big fan of the right-wing Daily Caller website, which labeled that chat-with-a-doctor procedure as “re-education,” a term that was no doubt meant to communicate an authoritarian vibe (as with its use in communist China), and Don Jr. retweeted the applicable story link, while declaring, “Wow. Re-education? Already? This is all happening faster than anyone could have imagined.”

Naturally, people were quick to let Don Jr. know that he must know nothing about the military, particularly how the sign-up process is basically signing over one’s self as property of the U.S. government, so yeah, if the military wants to vaccinate you, they’re gonna vaccinate you.

(Via Associated Press & Raw Story)

John Oliver may be best known as a comedian and television host, but he’s also a connoisseur of fine art, as fans of Last Week Tonight no doubt already know, as well as a bit of a philanthropist. Over the past year, in an effort to help museums fighting to stay afloat during the COVID pandemic, he graciously offered to loan out the collection of creative works he has amassed as part of the show’s oddball collection, as The Wrap reports. “For some reason, many agreed,” Oliver announced in a YouTube video (which you can watch above). “So over the next few months, our collection will be visiting exactly five museums.”

What can art fans expect to see? Oliver’s glad you asked. Among the masterworks on loan are what the host describes as a “magnificent picture of Wendy Williams eating a lamb chop. You’ll also find this sad tie, painted by Judith Kudlow as part of a series exploring the absence of her husband Larry [Kudlow]” (a.k.a. Donald Trump’s former economic advisor and a frequent Fox News pundit who is regularly putting his foot in his mouth and getting caught making racist remarks).

But what Oliver has rightly dubbed the collection’s pièce de resistance—“and where our collection began”—is a painting titled “Stay Up Late,” by Pennsylvania artist Brian Swords. While a less cultured person might describe the image as two rats f*cking, Oliver sees it as “a study of rat friendship which really has to be seen in person to be fully appreciated. Just look at the brushstrokes there. It’s like if Monet had a Furry period.”

The art tour will kick off in September at the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, “As I’m just going to assume Judy would have wanted,” Oliver says. Who needs the hassle of flying to Paris to see the Mona Lisa when you could gaze upon Wendy Williams eating a hunk of meat in Minnesota?

You can view the full schedule for the Last Week Tonight art tour at lwtgallery.com or the much more fun to type johnoliverhasyourraterotica.com.

(Via The Wrap)

A genre that has been missing from the video game world for years now is extreme sports — skateboarding, snowboarding, essentially anything that you would find at the X Games. It wasn’t that long ago that we were getting a yearly Tony Hawk game, SSX Tricky, and a variety of BMX games. However, as video games became more expensive, many of these fell to the wayside in favor of more dependable genres like shooters and traditional sports games. Thankfully, we may finally be seeing a resurgence in the genre: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 was fantastic, Skate is coming back, and the recent E3 gave a lot of love to snowboarding.

One game that is coming out soon will try to combine all of these genres into one big experience. Riders Republic, currently in development at Ubisoft, is going to be a game where players can bike, snowboard, ski, and fly to their heart’s content in a world that was designed for them. We recently got our hands on Riders Republic and played an early demo build of the game. After spending about four hours with the game, this is what we can say so far.

The World Is Great

When first launching into Riders Republic, the player will be given a quick hands-on experience with a few of the game’s different modes. This is not only to introduce the player to the controls, but it will also allow them to get a firsthand look at what kind of world they’re in. The world of Riders Republic is one where extreme sports are above all else — everything is a playground designed for bikers, snowboarders, etc. Races can happen anywhere, everything can be launched off of the air, and there are TV cameras everywhere to capture it. Basically, imagine if there was a reality TV show about extreme sports but anyone who wanted could go participate.

The world itself is wide open with many different terrains. There’s plenty to do and see, which is a big part of the fun. While waiting around for events to start, it was hard to pass up on the chance to just go bike off into a random pathway and see what was out there. Maybe you’ll even run into other players, or the ghosts of other players, all doing the exact same thing.

Multiplayer Has Potential

The multiplayer aspect of Riders Republic has a lot of potential. Players can go do missions or courses together as a group, compete against one another, race each other, or just explore the world. Despite being paired with five other randoms in a play session, it was easy to tell that playing with a group of friends is going to be the best way to enjoy Riders Republic. Of course, for anyone who wants to go about it solo, there is still plenty to do and the world will constantly feel lived in. Players are spread out all over the map, and when there isn’t enough for a server, the game will fill the world with “ghosts.” These ghosts aren’t just AI, they’re recreations of what actual players did in their own play-throughs. This way, when you’re exploring a snow slope, there will always be people around.

Anyone that wants to race or compete against real players will have plenty of options. Events are spread out all over the map. Go up to one, select it, and the player will be queued into the event. Competing in them is encouraged because it will increase your star rating, which means you’ll gain access to more gear and items, so there’s always an incentive to keep trying out new modes. These collectible items are also fun because it shows that the developers understand how silly this world is. When you have the ability to get a squirrel suit with a jetpack, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t also be allowed to have an ice cream bike.

The Tricks Are A Little Awkward

The build we played was not final, so everything we did can be improved upon or tweaked before launch. That said, some of the tricks felt a little awkward at times. There’s a very cool system where the player can turn on auto-land, which makes landing tricks easier, but players who can land perfectly without that will gain extra points. Sometimes, everything clicks and you’ll get off a sick frontflip onto a rail before completing the combo with a 180 perfect landing. Those moments feel great, but to create a system like this, movement has to be very precise and they may have corrected for that a little too much. A right turn can go 90 degrees almost instantly sometimes, which can be disorienting, and grinds feel like you’re floating above the railing instead of pushing on it.

A lot of what will separate Riders Republic from a fun game to play for a single weekend, only to never play it again, will be the movement. Extreme sports games are entirely reliant on feeling good when moving around. The snowboarding needs to feel just right, the bike has to be perfect, and the flying suit can’t feel slow. If the game isn’t absolutely perfect, then it will not capture people the way the Tony Hawk or SSX Tricky series ever did. However, if everything about this game feels good, then it has the potential to be something big.

Things have been up and down for Nirvana lately. The band’s signature hit, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” recently eclipsed a billion Spotify streams, a rare feat for a ’90s song. Now, though, the band is being sued by Spencer Elden, who appeared naked on the famous Nevermind album cover when he was a baby. Elden is suing the band and others involved over claims of child pornography and child sexual exploitation. The topic has become headline news, and Maggie Mabie, a lawyer representing Elden, had a contentious conversation about it with Chris Cuomo on Cuomo Prime Time.

During the chat (as Yahoo! notes), Mabie attested, “The focal point of the image is the minor’s genitalia. And here in that image along with all of the other dose factors as we pled in our complaint, it is a very over-sexualized image, and does constitute child pornography. More importantly, it was child exploitation in the way that they created it, and the way that they continue to distribute the image today.”

Cuomo didn’t agree with that point of view, however, responding, “I don’t ever remember anybody ever writing or anything being out there in society about this image as a sexualized or pornographic image. I always thought that it was a suggestion of how right out of the womb, people are just grabbing for money and doing anything they can. I thought it was more about capitalism than it was sexuality.”

Mabie went on to compare Elden to victims of child pornography, saying, “Spencer wants this image redacted. He is saying that he doesn’t want his genitalia out there for the world to consume any longer, and if we have this image redacted, that will be a monumental signal for all victims of child pornography that their voices are being heard and their privacy is being respected.”

Again, Cuomo pushed back against Mabie, citing the fact that Elden has regularly honored and re-created the album art over the years: “You think that this man is really a good face for the pain of child pornography? Somebody who’s made money out of it, has a tattoo on his chest about it, has celebrated it at different times in his life and had all this time to reach out about it in the context that you’re offering now, and never did? You really think that this is something that would be comforting to real victims?”

Watch the interview above, starting at 42:43 into the video.

Kayleigh McEnany once claimed that she “never lied” as Donald Trump’s press secretary. That, in and of itself, was a lie. She’s now on Fox News (an ideal fit) and continues to gaslight America.

“We are eight months into a Biden presidency,” she said earlier this week on Fox News. “Wrap your head around that. We still have three years and four months left. Look, when President Trump was president, you didn’t see crisis after crisis. You just didn’t see it.” I guess “deadly pandemic that was badly mishandled” doesn’t count as a crisis.

On Wednesday’s Late Night, host Seth Meyers gave a “Closer Look” at McEnany’s curious claim. “She’s right about one thing. You didn’t see crisis after crisis if you were watching Fox,” he said. “More than 400,000 Americans died from COVID under Trump. Also, he got it, and his rallies and White House parties were superspreaders. Trump personally helped spread more disease to more people than a community swimming pool filled with water from the East River.” He then listed some of Trump’s non-crises:

“To say Trump didn’t cycle through crises after crisis is to ignore that much of his inner circle got indicted, his Cabinet had like half a dozen corruption scandals, he praised Nazis, kidnapped migrant children, fired or tried to fire the people investigating him, got caught paying hush money to a porn star, incited a violent insurrection to overthrow an election, helped Saudi Arabia cover up a murder, single-handedly caused the longest government shutdown in American history, and told the Boy Scouts a story about yachts and New York parties.”

But other than that, all good. You can watch the Late Night clip above.

If there’s one film series that doesn’t need any more heartbreaking news, it has to be Black Panther. However, it seems the cast just can’t catch a break. According to a Variety report, Letitia Wright — the Black Panther star famous for her performance as T’Challa’s brilliant and self-assured sister Shuri — has been hospitalized following a stunt rig accident on the set of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Fortunately, a spokesperson from Marvel was quick to confirm the injuries Wright sustained were minor, and released the following update on the actress’ status:

Letitia Wright sustained minor injuries today while filming a stunt for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. She is currently receiving care in a local hospital and is expected to be released soon.

According to the report, Wright’s injuries were incurred while the actress was shooting an overnight scene away from their primary set in Atlanta and up in Boston. The report also stated that the accident should not impact the movie’s shooting schedule or the film’s release, which is still slated for July 8, 2022.

News of the accident comes just shy of the one-year anniversary of Black Widow star Chadwick Boseman’s passing late last August, making the initial report all the more distressing. However, it seems Wright will be just fine and production should pick up again soon. As of right now, Marvel has not announced if Wright has been released from the hospital.

The Weeknd is almost ready to share his sixth album with the world. The singer has been teasing the currently untitled project for the better part of four months and it was just recently that he confirmed a new body of work was on the way thanks to its presumed lead single, “Take My Breath.” In addition to the new album, The Weeknd also has a new HBO series on the way, which is tentatively titled The Idol. At the moment, he’s still working out the last few details of both projects and in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he shared an update on both the album and the upcoming TV series.

“Yeah, I’m finishing the new album right now,” he said about his upcoming musical body of work. “It should be done by the end of this month and we’re just kind of figuring out when to put it out. It’s been really cool because I’m working on this album this summer simultaneously with the writer’s room for the new TV show.” He added, “So, I’ve been kind of going back and forth from finishing the album and pending up the show that we’re going to start shooting soon. It’s been quite a summer.”

The updates on the projects come after The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights,” the highlight single from his 2020 album After Hours, became the longest-charting single of all time after it spent its 88th week on the Billboard 200 earlier this month.

R. Kelly’s trial for criminal conspiracy and sex trafficking charges began last week. But there’s another issue that’s plaguing the troubled singer. According to Billboard, he’s on a mission to sell off his song catalog. He’s willing to “sell low” and hand off the catalog for anyone who’s willing to purchase it. The issue is that no one so far has stepped forward to buy it.

Earlier this month, R. Kelly’s lawyer Devereaux Cannick revealed that the singer is extremely short on cash, saying that his funds are “depleted.” Billboard estimates his catalog generates somewhere around $1.7 million per year, and while that might be a livable amount to some, a small portion of that amount actually falls into Kelly’s hands. Tack on his ongoing legal battles and the recent ones he’s lost, including a case that resulted in a woman winning $4 million after she sued him for sexually abusing her when she was 16, it’s clear to see why Kelly is in need of some cash.

However, it doesn’t seem like the price of his catalog won’t stop dropping anytime soon. The singer still has federal cases in New York and Illinois as well as state trials in Illinois and Minnesota, all of which could cause further damage to the catalog’s price.

Lil Nas X has kept fans waiting quite some time for his debut album, which earlier this year he revealed would be titled Montero. The wait has been far from uneventful. Its lead single, “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” caused uproar, while the singles “Sun Goes Down” and “Industry Baby,” with Jack Harlow, has kept things exciting. At long last, Lil Nas X has revealed a release date, and it’s not too far from now.

Montero will be released next month, on September 17. The announcement was made through an album trailer the singer released on Wednesday night. The video is an extension of the one for “Industry Baby,” and it begins with a news anchor — played by Lil Nas himself — calling for information on the singer’s whereabouts after he broke out of prison while comically referring to himself as a “power bottom ‘rapper” and “talentless homosexual.” Next, it transitions to portray Lil Nas driving down a narrow road in the middle of nowhere.

You can watch the trailer for Montero in the video above.

Montero is out 9/17 via Columbia Records. Pre-order it here.

Jack Harlow is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Pokémon Go is a neat little game, as the app where players can walk around the real world and find Pokémon spread throughout it blew up when it first came out back in 2016. While the mass hysteria has fallen off since then, there’s still a very dedicated community that continues to play the game religiously. In fact, over the previous year, it’s been a game that many people have still found ways to play despite the pandemic, thanks to a mix of features the developers at Niantic added to make it more accessible for social distancing.

When vaccines began being distributed, Niantic felt it was time to remove some of the features they had added to the game. However, this announcement was met by widespread backlash from fans. It had turned out that a handful of the features added, including the ability to access PokéStops and Gyms from a further distance, were seen as major quality of life updates. Not only did the changes allow players the ability to access these stops and gyms from a safer distance, many of them felt it gave disabled players the opportunity to experience the game from their homes. Also, there were plenty of players that felt the pandemic was nowhere close to over.

When Niantic went forward with the changes anyway the backlash against them swelled further, and some players began threatening a boycott of the game. At first, it seemed like they weren’t going to go back on their changes, but on Wednesday the Pokémon Go Twitter account acknowledged that they will be going back to the previous distance of 80 meters to access stops and gyms instead of 40.

While it isn’t great that it took fan backlash to get the game back to a point where people can play the game safely, it’s good that they did go back to the “new” distance. As someone that used to play a decent amount of Pokémon Go, there were definitely stops and gyms that were in places that an abled person like me couldn’t reach without crossing the road at my local park. Not a big deal for me, but for someone that wanted to stick to the sidewalk due to a disability, or maybe they just didn’t feel they could safely cross the road, it must have been fantastic to know they could reach that stop when it increased to 80 meters.

Increasing the distance hurts no one and actually makes the game more fun. Decreasing it makes the game harder to play for some and doesn’t actually make the game better. The solution for Niantic was obvious and they went back to it when fans told them that’s what they wanted.