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Cecily Strong’s nine-year run on Saturday Night Live might have ended earlier this spring, but if it did she certainly went out with a bang. The sketch comedy vet put on a wine-soaked rendition of “My Way” as an unhinged Judge Jeanine that broke Colin Jost and made many wonder if that would be the last time she appeared on stage in Studio 8H.

Strong has said she’s unsure if she will return for a tenth season of the show, even if Lorne Michaels has made it clear he wants Strong and other longtime cast members on board until at least Season 50. In a lovely New York Times feature on Strong and her new memoir, This Will All Be Over Soon, the star made it clear she’s “still thinking” about her future after what was a difficult season amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“I’m still thinking,” she said. “Throughout the year there were times where I felt like a fifth-year senior and I’m just hanging around, dead weight. Then there would be moments that felt so good.”

She added, “There’s things I want to do, and I want to be open for these things. If I’m there, great — if I’m not there, great. I just want it to feel like the right thing.”

Michaels is quoted in the piece as saying “I don’t think she’s done yet,” but the feature also touched again on the potential sendoff that got everyone buzzing earlier in the year. There’s a pretty funny anecdote about the SNL crew testing out whether Strong could open her eyes in the wine-like liquid she gave her hypothetical swan song in. And we also learned what that concoction actually was.

She also pointed out that the tank she immersed herself in at its conclusion was actually filled with “watered-down grape juice, but it was very warm — I appreciated it.”

“The safety guy was like, don’t open your eyes under there because the juice will burn, and I was like, OK, thank you, I wasn’t planning on it,” she recalled. “And then he said, I splashed it in my eyes to test it out, and I was like, you didn’t have to do that.”

The full interview goes more into detail about her book and the difficult year that was. And while we didn’t get much new information about what her fall will hold, it’s clear Strong will have very fond memories about her last appearance in Season 47 whether it’s her swan song or not.

For years, fans have been begging for Aaliyah’s music to be released on streaming services. The late singer’s label, Blackground Records, finally announced that many of their artists’ music, including Aaliyah’s, will be made available to stream. While fans may be rejoicing about their ability to rock out to their favorite Aaliyah classics, not everyone can share the same excitement as several of the artists won’t see the profits.

Blackground Records announced on Thursday that they have officially inked a new deal with Empire, per a report from Billboard. The deal allows their artists’ music to hit streaming services for the first time ever. Aaliyah’s Estate, however, wasn’t happy with the decision. Hours before the news was announced, Aaliyah’s Estate issued a lengthy statement criticizing unnamed executives for coming forward to “leech off” the singer’s career. They called the deal an “unscrupulous endeavor to release Aaliyah’s music” without transparency or their approval.

R&B singer JoJo now finds herself in a similar position. The singer signed to Blackground Records when she was still a preteen. As explained in a recent Honda Backstage interview, JoJo says the label refused to release her music for years. Because of that, JoJo’s career fell off and she ended up taking matters into her own hands by suing Blackground Records and eventually re-recording her early albums.

JoJo reacted to the Blackground Records news shortly after it was announced. The singer took to social media to express her surprise about new deal. “Who would’ve thought…,” she tweeted.

Replying to a fans’ tweet, JoJo claimed she will not be awarded any profits from the streaming sales of her early albums. “never telling you what to do, but just so you know – a stream of the re-recorded 2018 version supports me and helps me continue to do what I love,” she wrote. “streaming the original unfortunately does not.”

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

Ted Cruz will never live down his ill-advised decision to flee to sunny Cancun while his Texas constituents froze during a power crisis. The much-maligned senator, however, shows himself to not take a hint when people keep coming for him. He’s keen to also self-own, like he’s done while lurking in the bushes at the U.S.-Mexico border and standing in a crumbled home while visiting Israel on Memorial Day. Yet Cruz also can’t resist a good, old-fashioned Twitter fight, as the noted The Princess Bride superfan did while sparring with Cary Elwes. Who’s Ted fighting with now? Dan Rather.

Yep, a sitting senator is duking it out (from behind a keyboard) with a veteran news anchor. To be fair, Rather threw the first punch after Ted appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box to suggest that COVID mandates (mask, vaccine, etc.), or “papers,” of any sort are basically totalitarianism at its finest. Rather responded to the interview with a zinger: “Don’t you have to show your papers to get on a flight to Cancun, and check into a luxury hotel?”

Boom. Well, Ted never can resist pushing back, so he dragged out the time that Rather apologized for not properly verifying (in 2004) a set of documents about George W. Bush’s National Guard service. Cruz busted in and went further with that story while accuisng Rather of directly counterfeiting the papers by himself (which wasn’t what happened). “You were so partisan & dishonest that CBS fired you for fraud, which is really saying something,” Cruz declared. “So now you’re an angry Leftist who reflexively defends Dems & authoritarian mandates.”

Cruz calling anyone partisan is rich as heck. Also, he’s very sensitive for a guy who helped incite an insurrection and then hopped on a plane to abandon his constituents. And Twitter had no problem pointing this out.

A man who uses a wheelchair fell onto the tracks in a New York City subway station on Wednesday afternoon. A CBS New York writer was at the scene of the incident and says that people rushed to save the man after they heard him “whimpering.”

It’s unclear why the man fell onto the tracks.

A brave rescuer risked his life by jumping on the tracks to get the man to safety knowing that the train would come barreling in at any second. The footage is even more dramatic because you can hear the station’s PA system announce that the train is on its way.

But the frantic rescuers beat the clock and were able to pull the man to safety about 10 seconds before the train arrived at the platform.

The good Samaritans that helped the man have yet to be identified. The man who was rescued was taken to Bellevue hospital and is in stable condition.

A lot of people who saw the video on Twitter thought it was a great example of how when the going gets tough, New Yorkers are there for each other.

Six years ago, a high school student named Christopher Justice eloquently explained the multiple problems with flying the Confederate flag. A video clip of Justice’s truth bomb has made the viral rounds a few times since then, and here it is once again getting the attention it deserves.

Justice doesn’t just explain why the flag is seen as a symbol of racism. He also explains the history of when the flag originated and why flying a Confederate flag makes no sense for people who claim to be loyal Americans.

But that clip, as great as it is, is a small part of the whole story. Knowing how the discussion came about and seeing the full debate in context is even more impressive.

In 2015, a student at Shawnee Mission East High School outside of Kansas City came up with the idea to have student journalists document students engaging in open discussions about various topics. In support of this idea, history teacher David Muhammad helped arrange a debate about the use of the Confederate flag in American society in his classroom.

According to the Shawnee Mission Post, Muhammad had prepared a basic outline and some basic guiding questions for the discussion, but mainly let the students debate freely. And the result was one of the most interesting debates about the Confederate flag you’ll ever see—one that both reflects the perspectives in American society at large and serves as an example of how to hold a respectful conversation on a controversial topic.

The full discussion is definitely worth a watch. Justice had quite a few Confederacy defenders to contend with, and he skillfully responded to each point with facts and logic. Other students also chimed in, and the discussion is wildly familiar to anyone who has engaged in debate on this topic. For his part, Mr. Muhammad did an excellent job of guiding the students through the debate.

SME Confederate Flag Debate

www.youtube.com

“I had Chris in class, so I knew he was super intelligent and that he read a lot,” Muhammad told the Shawnee Mission Post in 2018. “But that really came out of left-field. He was never out there very much socially, so I didn’t expect for him to want to speak in front of a crowd like that.”

(In case you’re wondering, according to LinkedIn, Christopher Justice is now studying political science at Wichita State University after switching his major from sports management. David Muhammad is now Dean of Students at Pembroke Middle School and also serves as a Diversity Consultant.)

Thanks, SM East, for documenting and sharing such a great discussion.

Alex Jones would like to remind everyone that he’s the reason we have to stomach many of those right-wing conspiracy theories from Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

The Infowars host and Sandy Hook denier gave a minutes-long rant (via Media Matters) on his show yesterday, claiming credit for Carlson’s descent into anti-vax madness by revealing he was the one that got Carlson to “wake up.” Now, the Fox News host has always been a conservative-leaning blowhard, but lately, he’s been veering into “kooky uncle who gets his news from Facebook” territory, accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci of creating the Coronavirus, claiming the NSA was spying on him and blaming the FBI for the Jan. 6th insurrections. Apparently, we have Jones to thank for that.

“We need to see what Tucker Carlson is doing, duplicated,” Jones said, adamantly denying he wanted recognition for “red-pilling” Carlson before, well, demanding recognition for red-pilling Carlson. “If I could wake up Tucker Carlson — and Tucker has told me face-to-face, credited me with helping wake him up to a great extent. He’s a super-smart guy, once he shifted his awareness and became cynical then he sees even more than I do, you understand? And he’s more eloquent in many ways.”

Tucker Carlson being called “eloquent” is something that few thought they’d ever hear, but Jones seemed pretty sincere about his flattery of the Fox News host, before once again congratulating himself for “completing the mission” and converting “even more major thought leaders” like Carlson into his conspiracy cult. And look, he’s a nutjob, but he might not be wrong about the Carlson thing. CNN did an entire segment comparing Carlson’s on-air statements with Jones’ widely-publicized fringe beliefs and the two matched up on quite a few wild ideas.

Is it weird that Jones wants credit for crafting Carlson into Fox News’s “chief white power correspondent?” Sure, but not half as weird as when he claimed a CNN reporter got drunk on the blood of children, so …

(Via Media Matters)

Despite Stranger Things Season 4 getting pushed back because of the pandemic, anticipation for the ’80s mashup series still remains high, which raises the question of what Netflix is going to do when the show eventually reaches its “endgame.” Will it go the Game of Thrones route and start chasing spinoffs? According to a new interview with Executive Producer Shawn Levy, those talks are already happening.

While promoting his latest directorial project, Free Guy starring Ryan Reynolds, Levy confirmed David Harbour’s comments that Stranger Things is starting to work towards a definitive ending, possibly in Season 5. When asked if spinoffs are being explored to keep the fan-favorite franchise going, Levy essentially called the move a no-brainer while highlighting that the series has become a “tent pole” for Netflix. Via Collider:

Obviously certain other shows played key roles in their evolution, but Stranger Things with 196 million viewers over the time that we’ve been on the air, that’s a lot of households. And it’s unique in that Netflix service. What’s been made clear is there is an interest and a real voracious appetite for any offshoot, any other iteration format or extension of the franchise, the characters, the mythology. And certainly those conversations are hardly evolved, but they’re also not non-existent.

While confirmation that spinoff talks are happening is clearly exciting news for Stranger Things fans, the more pressing question is when can they expect a Season 4 release date. While he couldn’t offer a concrete date, here’s what Levy told Variety last week.

“It’s coming soon enough,” he said. “And as for when exactly that will be announced — quite soon.”

(Via Collider)

If you’ve even glanced at books like Jason Schreier’s excellent Press Reset, you know there’s something wrong in the gaming industry.

Most of the people who make games at major studios work long hours, have little job security and struggle to find stability in an industry where crunching for months just to get a game out the door may only preclude the abrupt closing of a studio you’ve given years of your life to in order to put something on the market.

Big-budget games are often plagued with delays and bugs as publicly-traded companies push (or stick to) release dates to help stock prices in what’s a multi-billion dollar industry of nomadic programmers and developers moving from company to company. And the indie scene is fraught with uncertainty as well, which is likely why so many gamers have supported a bundle of games hoping to ease some of the struggles of the modern gaming industry.

A “Shorter Games With Worse Graphics” bundle on Itch.io has made waves this week, a collection of indie games from 25 different developers with the goal of bringing attention to game makers without a traditional publishing deal creating without many of the problems plaguing AAA development. It’s the second bundle of its kind, which was inspired by a viral tweet from Jordan Mallory, a podcast producer at Fanbyte who asked for “shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less.”

That tweet resonated with many people who love games but don’t like the way many of those major titles are created thanks to mandatory crunch and fraught development schedules that cause burnout among workers and lead to wild uncertainty in the industry. As explained by developer Damien Crawford, the goal of the project is to raise awareness of the concept itself, but also get these hard-working game makers paid.

The bundle has been an immediate success, seeing its funding goals reached a handful of times. They even got a bit playful with the funding goals because of the support they’ve seen.

It’s a deal certainly worth checking out, and even if the whole package isn’t for you there are bound to be gems worth buying on their own. And it’s a good reminder that while the industry will almost certainly continue to have labor issues, there are lots of people working very hard to make positive changes for workers and still make great games in the process.

The coronavirus pandemic is still ongoing, as the Delta variant of the virus has made even vaccinated people uneasy about their health and safety across the world. While millions hoped vaccines could help bring an end to the restrictions many have put on their lives over the last year-plus, things haven’t quite returned to normal just yet.

Which is why many mobile gaming fans are furious that one of their favorites games has rolled back some changes that helped make playing amid a pandemic easier. Pokemon GO, one of the most popular (and lucrative) mobile games on the planet, recently celebrated its fifth anniversary. The game has some die-hard fans, including one who got caught violating lockdown measures in Italy to play. But Niantic introduced some important changes to the game to help people play while largely staying at home.

There are three main things players need to do in the game each day: catch Pokemon, spin PokeStops and complete “research” tasks. Niantic made that easier last spring by allowing people to “spin” those PokeStops much further away from their real world locations and easing restrictions on a number of other things in the game. They also let players do more things like raid and battle remotely. The changes were great for people who were no longer commuting, traveling or, well, leaving their homes for long stretches. But what’s more, they were celebrated by players with disabilities and others who may have struggled to play in crowded places or navigate real-world obstacles to get to PokeStops and Gyms.

But last month, Niantic announced it would be rolling back many of those changes. As The Verge detailed, those changes were undone earlier in the week and have made it a bit more difficult to play.

The distance you’ll need to be from real-world locations is effectively halved as part of the new update, going from a maximum of 80 meters (around 262 feet) to interact with a Pokéstop, to the game’s original 40 meters (around 131 feet), according to Dot Esports. There were multiple reasons for Niantic to double the distance originally, from reducing crowding during a pandemic, to just making it a bit easier to collect items without theoretically having to leave your house. The change didn’t reinvent the game but players viewed increasing the interaction distance as a valuable accessibility improvement that’s now gone.

The complaints from gamers are summed up in two categories: the pandemic isn’t over, and the changes that were rolled back don’t do much to actually change the game in any meaningful way from a competitive standpoint. Which is why many were confused by the decision to roll things back.

That frustration has turned into a boycott for some, which was executed on Thursday by gamers that made #PokemonNoDay trend on Twitter during the day.

It’s a difficult thing to manage for Niantic, which has long stressed movement and exploration with Pokemon GO. But those that are upset about the changes certainly have reasons to make their voices heard here, especially from an accessibility standpoint. Whether Niantic can strike the right balance between the two perspectives will be interesting to see, but it’s clear that some of the game’s most loyal fans wanted to make it clear they’re not happy this week.

Since her breakout record Lost & Found in 2019, Jorja Smith has been quietly figuring out her next move. On this spring’s new EP, Be Right Back, she’s still expanding her sound and riding the line between pop, R&B, and hip-hop. That’s the blueprint for our new era of pop stars, but Smith also had the jumpstart of a co-sign from Drake on his 2017 project More Life to get her going, which never hurts. On today’s new video for “All Of This,” a song with the Ghanaian DJ and record producer GuiltyBeatz that’s inspired by Amapiano, a South African style of house music.

Leaning into the Afrobeat genre is a great next move for Smith, and the new single is a bit of a departure from her more straightforward EP. Jorja talked about meeting Guilty in Jamaica and how the song came about in a press release. “I met [Guilty] when I went over to Port Antonio in Jamaica for a writing camp in 2019,” she said. “He’s so wonderful to work with and when we initially started the song, it was more a fall to the floor type beat. He’s shared Amapiano playlists with me before and then during the first lockdown in 2020, he sent me a version of the song like it is now. We then finished writing the song remotely, exchanging messages over WhatsApp with his girlfriend Abby who is also a writer. It’s all about someone who doesn’t deserve you and thinking wow, you really had all of my once, ew.”

Check out the new track above.