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Stadium food isn’t always good, but it should, at minimum, satisfy the basic need of making you no longer hungry while at a sporting event. I’m not speaking of the gourmet culinary offerings that can now be found at most major stadiums and arenas or actual restaurants with remote locations in stadiums, but the basics at the normal concessions stands.

We’re talking hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken tenders, nachos, and pizza, all the classic stadium fare that make up the “less expensive” options (even if at this point that still likely means $10-15). If you can’t make adequate stadium basics, what hope should anyone have for the rest of the food at your stadium? That brings us to SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, the brand new home of the Rams and Chargers, which got roasted over the weekend for their weak effort at “pizza” that was selling for $15 to fans at the Rams-Chargers preseason game.

The issues at SoFi apparently go beyond just the pizza, as Arash Markazi presented the world’s saddest smorgasbord to the world on Twitter, showing off the aforementioned “pizza,” a hot dog that looked like it’s been on the rollers since at least mid-June, and the cheeseburger and veggie burger subs, which appear to just be a cost-cutting measure to only need to purchase hot dog buns.

The pizza is the standout here, as it appears to be a piece of focaccia brushed ever so delicately with tomato sauce and sprinkled with basil and three chunks of cold cheese. I really don’t think I need to dive too much more into what’s wrong with that, but it’s very bad.

I would like to talk about this hot dog, because, my heavens that thing has shriveled up like earthworm in the sun. The bun almost looks plastic and the dog itself needed to be removed from the heat hours ago. Then we get to the burger and veggie burger subs, which have cold Kraft singles covering the world’s driest rectangular burger patties, topped with some pickles (that look fine, but that’s because they come straight from a jar), resting on a hot dog bun that either has a very tiny amount of ketchup on it or someone grabbed it with a bloody thumb, unclear which is correct.

It’s preseason for everyone, but it might be time for the SoFi concessions folks to go back to the drawing board before the regular season because this is truly dire.

As his two children with wife Lisa Bonet enter their teen years, Jason Momoa has been proud to share his work with them, but not all of his work. In a new interview with the Australian radio show Fitzy and Wippa, Momoa revealed that his daughter, Lola, and son, Nakoa-Wolf, get to see “a lot of stuff that Papa is doing.” However, the Aquaman star holds a firm line on how far back they’re allowed to go in his career, and there’s one show that is particularly off-limits: Baywatch: Hawaii.

Momoa starred on the Baywatch spinoff in late ’90s, and he’s apparently not a fan of revisiting those days or acknowledging that they even exist. Via Entertainment Weekly:

“We don’t say the B-word at home! We hide all of that mate! Never happened mate!” joked Momoa when the host brought up the popular television series that Momoa starred on, playing lifeguard Jason Ioane from 1999 to 2001. “We don’t talk about those words, the B-word didn’t happen.”

Momoa also confirmed that Game of Thrones is obviously off limits for now while making it a point to note that the show is “fantastic.” It was an interesting admission given Momoa recently had a testy exchange with New York Times writer David Marchese at the beginning of August. Momoa took issue with Marchese asking about whether he regretted portraying the sexual violence in the show during his time as Khal Drogo. The actor caused the interview to end on an awkward note as he labeled the line of questioning as “icky.”

“There are producers, there are writers, there are directors, and you don’t get to come in and be like, ‘I’m not going do that because this isn’t kosher right now and not right in the political climate.’ That never happens,” Momoa said. “So it’s a question that feels icky. I just wanted you to know that.”

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

In October 2019, I sat at a table in Jakarta interviewing a young Afghan woman about the plight of refugee women in Indonesia. Her family had fled the Taliban when she was a child, and now she’s stuck in a life of limbo in Jakarta with little hope of change.

By practically every measure our lives are nothing alike, yet I felt connected to her immediately. She was brilliant and eloquent (in English, no less), with a keen passion for justice and equality.

But mostly she was just so fully and beautifully human. The only real difference between us was that I was born inside certain man-made borders and she inside different ones. Neither of us chose our life circumstances. The happenstance of my birth did not make me more deserving of the freedom and privileges that lay unjustly out of her reach.

When we hugged goodbye, I wished I could take her back to the U.S. with me. I lamented that the Trump administration had slashed our refugee admissions ceiling to historic lows and thought of the countless women like her, overflowing with potential that might never be realized because of where they were born and the rules out of their control.

Her face flashed before my eyes as the news of the Taliban taking over Afghanistan after U.S. military withdrawal broke. Women and girls like her will surely bear the brunt of the fallout. We’re already seeing heartbreaking stories of women burning the diplomas and degrees they have earned, fearing a life of extremist oppression, watching their hopes and dreams destroyed overnight. There were already Afghan refugees scattered in camps and stopover countries throughout the world, waiting for a chance to build a life for themselves—and now there will be thousands more.

Young and educated Afghan women tell me they are burning their degree certificates and diplomas, so that they won’t… https://t.co/d6lW9RnAGN

— Amruta Byatnal (@amrutabyatnal)
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Women and girls have always paid a high price in men’s wars, but rarely is the price as visible as it is in Afghanistan. We know what Taliban rule means for women and girls there and we can’t in good conscience just walk away and do nothing to help them.

If you feel compelled to do something, here are a few options:

1) For help on the ground right now, consider donating to organizations that have a strong track record of helping Afghan women and girls.

– Women for Women International is a non-profit organization that provides aid and support to women in war-torn countries. Women for Women has long had a presence in Afghanistan and their Stronger Women, Stronger Nations program has proven to have a significant impact in the country. A donor has promised to match up to $500,000 for the emergency aid fund in response to the humanitarian crisis unfolding there. Learn more and donate here.

– Women for Afghan Women is a grassroots civil society organization that “works to help Afghan women and girls exercise their rights to pursue their individual potential to self-determination, and to representation in all areas of life—political, social, cultural, and economic.” With offices in Afghanistan and New York, they assist disenfranchised Afghan women both in Afghanistan and the U.S. Learn more and donate here.

2) For help in the long run, ask the U.S. government to increase the refugee ceiling back to historic norms at minimum.

While the Biden administration increased the number of refugees the U.S. would accept this year from 15,000 to 65,000, that’s still far lower than the numbers the U.S. has historically welcomed. (To be clear, the refugee resettlement program is separate from the asylum-seeking we see at the southern border.) Refugees are the most vetted group of people to enter the U.S., they are statistically more likely to start businesses than native-born residents and other immigrants, they overall have a positive impact on the economy, and logic would tell us that displaced people are likely to be grateful and loyal to a country that offers them safe haven and opportunity. Refugee resettlement is good for the U.S. in addition to being the right thing to do.

Sign the International Rescue Committee petition to raise the refugee ceiling here.

Let’s add our financial resources and civic voices to our thoughts and prayers for the women and girls of Afghanistan, as well as all of those facing oppression under the Taliban regime. While pundits play political football over who is to blame for the mess, let’s put our focus on helping those who are most impacted by it.

The Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan on Sunday as the U.S.-led coalition began withdrawing forces after 20 years of fighting. The war resulted in the deaths of at least 200,000 people on both sides of the conflict.

It’s estimated that the war could end up costing U.S. taxpayers up to $6.5 trillion by 2050.

The loss of Afghanistan is heartbreaking for those who served in the war and could be devastating for the women and girls of the country who may be forced to live under strict Sharia law.

Thousands of Afghan civilians have swarmed the Kabul airport in a last-ditch effort to flee the country. Reports from the airport say that seven people have died in the chaos.

At least seven people have reportedly been killed at Kabul airport as hundreds of people desperately tried to flee… https://t.co/QTMABzYhjJ

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish)
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As countless people at the airport are attempting to flee while they can, one man who could have left to safety has stayed behind to help. Sir Laurie Bristow, UK’s ambassador to Afghanistan, has remained at the airport in Kabul to personally sign visas to help UK and Afghan nationals flee to Britain.

A spokesperson for the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) told MailOnline: “We have reduced our diplomatic presence in response to the situation on the ground.”

“However our Ambassador remains in Kabul and UK Government staff continue to work to provide assistance to British nationals and to our Afghan staff,” the statement continued. “We are doing all we can to enable remaining British nationals, who want to leave Afghanistan, to do so.”

Genuinely moved by news that our ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Laurie Bristow, has stayed behind at Kabul airport… https://t.co/xMsVsLY6Ro

— Shane Greer (@shanegreer)
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Bristow was due to be airlifted out of the country over the weekend but instead decided to stay behind to help, risking his life in the process.

It’s believed that around 4,000 British nationals and eligible Afghans are in need of evacuation from the country.

“Sir Laurie Bristow, who’s the ambassador out there on the ground, has a very tough job and has a very great team with him I’m sure,” former UK Ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Nicholas Kay, told SkyNews.

“They will be working absolutely flat out with very little sleep, very little food. I imagine as they are processing, particularly the applications from Afghans who worked for us or have been closely associated with us over the years, who are now in desperate fear for their lives and desperate to leave the country.”

Former UK Ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Nicholas Kay, says Sir Laurie Bristow and the team on the ground at Kabul… https://t.co/az5m1yfOIB

— Sky News (@SkyNews)
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Bristow’s sacrifice comes at a time when many fear they will be left behind.

“It’s a really deep part of regret for me,” Defence secretary Ben Wallace said. “Look, some people won’t get back. Some people won’t get back and we will have to do our best in third countries to process those people,” he added.

The ambassador’s sacrifice is even more commendable given the fact he was only posted to Kabul in June of this year. Previously, he was the UK ambassador to the Russian Federation and the COP26 Regional Ambassador to the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia.

With fall quickly approaching, the bourbon whiskey release schedule is starting to heat up. Included in these new drops is the second edition of Pursuit United, the blended bourbon from the hosts and founders of the Bourbon Pursuit podcast. It’s an expression I tried just today and one I have a whole lot of thoughts about.

Short and sweet version: this whiskey delivers. We’ll get into the details below, but it’s really a testament to the palates and know-how of Kenny Coleman and Ryan Cecil who co-founded Bourbon Pursuit six years ago and started working on this whiskey in 2018. What started off as the “official” podcast of Kentucky bourbon is now a straight-up spirits company, filling over 1,000 barrels of juice a year.

This bottle is going to be easier to find than the last edition as the Pursuit United team continues to expand. This release was four times bigger than the first rollout, comprising 40 barrels. From the sound of things, that’s the tip of the iceberg — a very good thing for all the aficionados out there.

Let’s dive into the bottle.

Cecil + Coleman Pursuit United

ABV: 54%

Average Price: $65

The Whiskey:

As mentioned above, this is a vatted from 40 total barrels from three different states. While the team at Pursuit United doesn’t release the Tennessee distillery name, we know the juices from Kentucky and New York are from Bardstown Bourbon Company and Finger Lakes Distilling, respectively. This final release of 2021 from Pursuit United put 9,342 bottles on the market in six states (Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Tennessee, Texas, and Kentucky) and is available online via Seelbachs.com.

Tasting Notes:

The nose opens with a rush of cedar next to Christmas spices steeped in sweet red wine. That sweetness tends to lean into fresh honey with a touch of caramel and maybe a little dark chocolate on the end. The taste holds onto the honeyed sweetness with burnt sugars, light cedar, chocolate tobacco leaves, and a hint of orange oils. That orange is what builds and powers the finish to its silken end, concluding with an orange-choco vibe and a very soft landing.

The Bottle:

The rounded bottle is an eye-catching shape. It’s sort of a cross between a stubby and port bottle. The label is underplayed and, thankfully, not cluttered with too much information. That said, it sort of looks like a United Airlines gift for frequent fliers and doesn’t hit the “bar centerpiece” levels of cool.

The Bottom Line:

This is a great workhorse whiskey. I dig sipping it on a rock or in a highball but it also works wonders in a cocktail. I think at this price point, that’s exactly the point. Buy it and enjoy it however you love enjoying your bourbon. It’s certainly not too pricey to mix into a refined highball.

Ranking:

90/100 — This is a solid bourbon that has no false notes. It’s clear, easy-drinking, and the perfect everyday dram. Is it the elixir of the whiskey gods? Well, no. But it’s not supposed to be. It’s great whiskey at a great price.

Sometimes, that’s plenty.

Although it’s been a while since Ludacris last dropped new music — he’s a busy man, after all, what with learning to cook, learning to fly airplanes(!), and starring in the Fast & Furious sequels over the past year or so — he’s found a clever backdoor back into the rap game, combining his love of the culinary arts with his tongue-twisting gift of gab for “Butter ATL,” a slippery new single partially inspired by his Atlanta contemporary Gunna.

Not only does Luda prove adept at adopting the legato flow of his hometown’s current crop of hip-hop stars, but he also gets a little side action as his mention of Jif peanut butter in one of his eye-popping punchlines ties nicely into Jif’s new ad campaign. In the commercial, Luda struggles with finding a new flow to catch the song’s hypnotic beat before getting caught with a mouthful of peanut butter on his next take. His newly muddled attack perks up Gunna in the background, who notes, “That flow crazy.” Luda challenges followers on TikTok to duplicate his feat, inviting them to spit their own verses with a mouthful of Jif.

The ad arrives in midst of a rap resurgence for the Atlanta veteran, who has popped back up with feature verses on Conway The Machine’s “Scatter Brain” with JID and Justin Bieber’s “Peaches” remix and is set to perform at the Lovers & Friends festival in 2022.

Check out “Butter ATL” and Luda’s new Jif commercial above.

Every now and then, Disclosure goes ahead and just releases a song a day over the course of five days. They did it in 2019, and they did it again last year. Now, they’re going to do it this week, too, and they started today with “In My Arms.”

At the end of the week, all five tracks will be available as an EP titled Never Enough. The songs that will follow “In My Arms” are “Seduction,” “Another Level,” “It’s Happening,” and “Never Enough.”

The group’s Guy Lawrence says of the new batch of tracks:

“The spark that ignited the creation of this body of work came from a place of wanting to revitalise a very fractured & uncertain dance music scene & club culture that has changed so much all over the world for obvious reasons in the last 18 months. While piecing together initial ideas during the spring of 2021, hope began to glimmer on the horizon for producers & DJ’s that we may soon be able to gather together again, dancing & listening to music as one, participating in something larger than ourselves. So we asked each other… what would we want to hear in those moments? What does that first moment back in a club sound like? What does walking into Shangri-la, Glasto at 2am feel like again? What does a headline show at Reading look like after all the difficulties 2020 brought on our whole industry? With all these questions unanswered & with the possibility that any of these events may actually be allowed to take place, we set to work on creating something that might fit one of those magical moments some of us have been longing to participate in again.”

Check out “In My Arms” above.

Representative Liz Cheney is facing some heat after she called out both Donald Trump and President Joe Biden for contributing to the chaos happening in Afghanistan right now. Currently, the country is in crisis with the Taliban invading the capital city of Kabul after the collapse of the Afghan government and the evacuation of President Ashraf Ghani. Despite attempts by former government officials to negotiate a peaceful surrender, Taliban forces invaded Kabul and other major civilian hubs, causing panic amongst people trying to flee the country. It’s a fairly grim situation and one that happened faster than the Biden administration anticipated when it announced that the U.S. would be pulling all troops out of the country by the end of August.

And despite Biden’s decision earning him criticism from both sides of the political aisle, Cheney’s condemnation of how his administration handled the conflict in the Middle East feels, well, tone-deaf to many. That’s because it was Cheney’s own father, along with former President George Bush, who launched the initial invasion into Afghanistan following the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks. The goal then was to defeat the Taliban and apprehend al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but 20 years and billions of dollars later, the U.S. government only achieved one of those goals. Still, Cheney was happy to place the blame squarely on Trump and Biden’s shoulders in a series of tweets that called the removal of U.S. troops a “calamity.”

Naturally, the inability of a career politician to reflect on her family’s culpability in a decades-long war did not escape the notice of many.

Last week, Mike Lindell’s 72-hour “Cyber Symposium” boasted that it would provide definitive proof that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from Donald Trump. Claiming to have over a terabyte of raw data that would back up his relentless conspiracy theory, the MyPillow CEO hired cyber security expert Josh Merritt to parse through a hard drive, which would surely end in Lindell being vindicated. It did not.

In an interview with The Washington Times, Merritt revealed that Lindell’s data contained no proof that the election was hacked. It was an embarrassing moment for Lindell who had already been humiliated by Steve Bannon and fled the stage at his own event after a judge ordered that Dominion’s billion dollar lawsuit against Lindell could go forward. (Lindell is being sued for falsely accusing the software company of election fraud.)

As the Cyber Symposium came to a close, Lindell’s anger over Merritt not finding election fraud resulted in the MyPillow CEO flipping out on a CNN reporter while screaming “forget about the evidence!” It was a bad moment for Lindell’s case, which took an even worse and weirder turn on Monday.

While appearing on his FrankSpeech website, Lindell aired a recorded conversation from Merritt, which… basically suggested that Lindell had a hand in in fraud. While calling the recording a “confession” that would implicate Merritt, all it did was show that the cyber security expert wasn’t willing to go along with any of Lindell’s schemes. Via Raw Story:

Lindell later aired audio on his FrankSpeech website of a person who he said was Merritt.

“Technically what they did violates any NDA because they’re asking me to cover up and lie about fraud,” the person on the tape says. “And what happened was fraud.”

Lindell then declared that he hired Merritt to investigate, and then he attempted to discredit Merritt by saying that he’d “preplanned” to discredit all of Lindell’s data. He also accused Merritt of what he called “criminal” acts.

In another odd move, Lindell kept playing the tape where Merritt also reveals that the MyPillow CEO lied about being attacked at his hotel and getting hacked on the first day. Merritt called both a “cover story,” and yet Lindell thought this would make himself look… good? It was all very strange, and yet entirely in character for the die-hard Trump supporter.

(Via Raw Story)

WNBA star A’ja Wilson never dreamed of playing professional ball.

In fact, having a parent who put in 10 seasons in overseas leagues meant that a young Wilson was pointedly disinterested in stepping onto the court. She wanted to craft her own legacy, one that didn’t start (or stop) at the free-throw line. But in high school, Wilson began to realize that if she could perform well enough during a game, her shortcomings in the classroom might go unnoticed.

“Basketball started to make a lot more sense to me than school ever did,” Wilson wrote for The Players Tribune. “By the time I was a senior, I had been able to accomplish so much in basketball that no one was thinking about whether or not I was having trouble reading.”

Off the court, Wilson was battling dyslexia — a learning disability that can affect reading comprehension. She dreaded moments in class when she’d be called upon to read entire passages from a book. She spent hours cramming for tests only to struggle to make sense of the questions facing her on the page. Even ordering off a fast-food menu could trip her up.

Her teachers thought she was lazy. Worse, Wilson started to think she might be too stupid to ever excel at school.

“It’s funny — how do you prove to somebody that you’re trying?” Wilson said in the same Players Tribune article. “In most things, the more work you put in the better your end results, but that just wasn’t happening with my reading. No matter how many hours I spent in front of a book, sometimes I’d just end up taking away nothing.”

When she was finally diagnosed, there was relief, and then shame. For an elite athlete who wanted to be seen as independent and capable, the idea of admitting to any kind of weakness felt foreign … diminishing, in a way. But once again, basketball gave her an answer.

As a forward who had led her high school team to a national championship, and a McDonald’s All-American player, Wilson was bound to be a hot prospect for college recruitment. She chose to plant roots close to home, committing to play for Dawn Staley and the South Carolina Gamecocks. This time, Wilson was open about her dyslexia, informing her teachers ahead of time so that she could make adjustments during their classes to learn at her own speed.

But Staley, who found ways to push Wilson as a player — benching her for most of her freshman year until she felt she was ready to step up to the paint — had a trick for encouraging Wilson’s progress off the court too. She started tasking Wilson with reading a passage from scripture in the locker room before each game.

Wilson would leave the University of South Carolina as the No. 1 WNBA draft pick, bringing her on-court reputation to the Las Vegas Aces, but her time at USC also taught her the value of being transparent when it came to her personal struggles. In 2018, while still in school, Wilson detailed her journey with dyslexia in that Players Tribune essay. The response to sharing her story was so overwhelming, she decided to launch a nonprofit, The A’ja Wilson Foundation, to empower children with dyslexia to reach their full potential.

“I knew as soon as I became a professional athlete, I wanted to change the game in a way that could benefit myself but also [other] people,” Wilson said at the time in an interview with Pop Sugar.

Her foundation provides resources and grant money to help students find alternative learning paths that work with their dyslexia, a disability that 20 percent of children reportedly struggle with. She’s raising money for after-school programs to give kids the one-on-one time with educators and mentors that she found so beneficial when she was first diagnosed. And, she’s changing the game at a systemic level, working to give teachers the resources needed so that they can spot students who may have a learning impairment early on to get them the help they need.

In July of last year, Wilson’s foundation was recognized by the league for its work in the community — both in Las Vegas where she plays professionally and in South Carolina where her roots hold firm. She received the WNBA Cares Community Assist Award for her work with local high school girls basketball teams, organizations like Opportunity Village which works with adults who have disabilities, and the camps, workshops, and after-school programs her own nonprofit hosted in South Carolina.

More recently, Wilson’s performance at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, earned her a gold medal — another accolade to add to her overcrowded shelf of accomplishments. But for a player so invested in building a legacy away from the paint, it’s easy to guess which award might mean more.

“Having people recognize you on the court is great,” Wilson told WNBA.com when accepting the Cares award. “Having someone recognize you in the community if you take time to go out and talk to them, it’s a huge deal. Growing up, I had plenty of role models, but I never got a chance to touch someone like that. To be that person to step in for young kids today, the future of our game, but also our world and be there as a role model for them is huge.”