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Once upon a time, Subway was considered the healthy fast food option. It even had a weight-shedding mascot (who later, uh, fell on hard times). It still mostly is, if only but only because the bar for health at quick-turnaround eateries remains so low. To say the chain has fallen on hard times would be too much; they remain the world’s largest sandwich purveyor. But since 2015 the total number of locations has been in decline. And a new investigative piece by The New York Times — which calls into question the veracity of what they sell as tuna — may not help.

The piece is a response to a class action lawsuit first reported in January, which claims Subway’s popular tuna sandwiches “are completely bereft of tuna as an ingredient.” The company’s brass has categorically denied the allegations, but the Times decided to send away samples from the chain to a lab, to see if they could get a read on the mystery meat. And — in a piece that, incidentally, doubles as a fascinating look at how canned tuna became a staple of American pantries — they got their answer. Sort of.

“No amplifiable tuna DNA was present in the sample and so we obtained no amplification products from the DNA,” the lab’s answer read. “Therefore, we cannot identify the species.”

Mind you, this doesn’t mean Subway’s tuna isn’t tuna. For one, the reporter explains that getting a pure sample of the meat, even after only requesting only tuna, wasn’t easy. The tuna that arrives in a Subway tuna sandwich has been mixed with, among other things, mayonnaise. Moreover, after tuna is cooked, as it is before being placed in a can, the meat becomes “denatured” — that, as the Times puts it, “the fish’s characteristic properties have likely been destroyed, making it difficult, if not impossible, to identify.”

There are other caveats:

The spokesman from the lab offered a bit of analysis. “There’s two conclusions,” he said. “One, it’s so heavily processed that whatever we could pull out, we couldn’t make an identification. Or we got some and there’s just nothing there that’s tuna.”

Furthermore, Inside Edition tried the same thing, and the lab they dealt with deemed the specimens to be indeed tuna. On top of that, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit softened their original claims in June, worried instead that it wasn’t “100% sustainably caught skipjack and yellowfin tuna.”

One other thing to consider: Among the people interviewed in the NYT piece is a former Subway “sandwich artist,” who had this fairly convincing piece of testimony in defense of the chain:

“I dealt with the tuna all the time,” Jen said. “The ingredients are right on the package and tuna is a relatively cheap meat. There would be no point to making replacement tuna to make it cheaper.”

And as an occasional consumer of Subway’s tuna, Jen said she’s confident it’s fish.

“I personally have a really weak stomach to fish, which is how we know the tuna is real,” she said. “Last time I ate it, I puked my guts out.”

The piece has made waves, though some of the reactions involve shock that people are trying to eat relatively healthy at a Subway.

There were also Soylent Green jokes.

And other jokey speculations.

Bottom line: It’s inconclusive whether the Subway tuna isn’t tuna, though surely eating whatever it is is healthier than their other offerings, such as the Chicken & Bacon Ranch Melt.

(Via NYT)

The Phoenix Suns entered Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals with a 1-0 series lead over the Los Angeles Clippers. Early in the third quarter, the Suns appeared to be in a favorable position to garner a second straight win, riding considerable contributions from both Cam Payne and Deandre Ayton to a lead. When the score was 69-62, Suns star Devin Booker and Clippers guard Patrick Beverley collided in a two-way headbutt, and blood quickly came to the surface.

https://twitter.com/gifdsports/status/1407532440420294659

Both Booker and Beverley went to the locker room after immediately leaving the floor while bloodied.

Booker, who produced his first career triple-double in a dominant Game 1 performance, exited with 11 points and five assists in his first 29 minutes. Beverley picked up four fouls in 17 minutes while applying his trademark ball pressure.

In this instance, no flagrant foul was assessed to Beverley, as the play was presumably viewed to be accidental. At the same time, Beverley often finds himself in compromising positions due to his all-out aggressiveness, and this particular moment yielded damage to both players. It will be interesting to see if there is any fallout for the rest of the game or series, though Beverley returned to the bench in relatively short order.

Cade Cunningham, the odds-on favorite to be the No. 1 pick in the 2021 NBA Draft, will only be visiting with one team: the Detroit Pistons. The Pistons, of course, have the No. 1 overall pick after winning the draft lottery on Tuesday. The news was reported by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski:

This makes all the sense in the world. The 6’7, 220-pound Cunningham is going to the No. 1 pick in the Draft. He’s going to be the kind of big wing creator that the Pistons need and can be the lead of a young core that includes Killian Hayes, Isaiah Stewart, and Saddiq Bey. There’s not really a case for the Pistons to take anyone else.

This also feels important because it suggests that Cunningham isn’t going to try and dictate himself away from the Pistons. If he wasn’t interested in playing there for whatever reason, the immediate leak wouldn’t have been “he’ll only take meeting there.” It would have been anything and everything that his camp would have tried to push as a reason for the Pistons to not take him so he can end up somewhere else.

Ultimately, this is good. Cunningham in Detroit means there’s another relevant team in the NBA and the league needs as many relevant teams as possible. The Pistons are also an interesting fit for Cunningham. About a month from now, it’ll become reality.

While we await his sophomore album, Buddy is deep into a strong guest feature run. The Compton-bred act continues his streak by standing alongside Toronto rapper Jazz Cartier in a video for their track “Two Of Em.” The stylish duo kicks things off with a game of chess before moving off to detail their greedy ways. From money to women, Jazz and Buddy insist on receiving double the normal amount for their favorite things.

On Jazz’s end, the video arrives after a two-year break, which he used to recenter himself after a move from his hometown of Toronto to Los Angeles. The new single also comes ahead of his upcoming project, Fleur Print Vol. 2, which is set to arrive on July 23. The full-length effort will also feature “Nothing 2 Me” with Cousin Stizz, a song he released earlier this year.

As for Buddy, the Compton rapper is hard at work on his sophomore album and follow-up to his 2018 effort Harlon & Alondra. Since then, the rapper has been consistent with periodic releases, most of them coming in the form of guest features. He teamed with Lucky Daye for “Faces” and Tinashe on two separate occasions for “Glitch” and “Pasadena.” He also appeared with Guapdad 4000 on “PlayStation” as well as D Smoke and Jac Ross for “It’s OK To Be Black 2.0.”

You can watch the video for “Two Of Em” above.

Baseball is cracking down on pitchers using things to help them enhance their grip on the ball. It’s led to plenty of grumbling around the league — one pitcher, Tampa Bay Rays ace Tyler Glasnow, is convinced this led to him suffering a potentially season-ending injury — and on Tuesday night, we got a sense of how extremely annoyed Washington Nationals star Max Scherzer is with the whole thing.

Scherzer was on the mound against the Philadelphia Phillies. On several occasions, Phillies manager Joe Girardi called for the umpires to go check to see if Scherzer was using anything, and the pitcher wasn’t a big fan of the stoppage to take care of this.

Then, Girardi called for a third check, and Scherzer got so annoyed that he came awfully close to pulling his pants down while on the mound to get his point across.

Ultimately, though, Scherzer and the Nats got the last laugh, as the prodded Girardi to the point that he got ejected.

MLB did such an awful job of rolling this out — the crackdown on things that give pitchers more grip came midseason and was sweeping to the point that they aren’t allowed to use anything, with an automatic ejection and 10-day suspension for anyone caught using anything — that Girardi is taking advantage of this in an attempt to throw Scherzer off his game. Of course, that implies the tactic would work, and seeing as how Scherzer allowed one run in five innings before Girardi got tossed, that was not the case.

Earlier this week, the internet was shocked by an anecdote T-Pain shared during an interview for the upcoming Netflix film This Is Pop. In it, he detailed a depression-sparking conversation he had with Usher during a flight together to the 2013 BET Awards. “I was like, ‘What’s good?’” T-Pain recalled. “I thought he was about to tell me something real. He sounded real concerned. He was like, ‘Man, you kind of… you kind of f*cked up music.’” He added, “I didn’t understand. Usher was my friend. He was like, ‘Yeah man, you really f*cked up music for real singers.’”

The news T-Pain fans to rush to social media to give Usher a piece of their minds. Less than 24 hours after the clip from the upcoming This Is Pop film arrived on social media, T-Pain returned to Twitter to clarify his feelings towards Usher. “I still love and respect @Usher telling that story was in no way meant to disrespect that man,” he wrote. “Ppl talk sh*t about me 24/7 but when it comes from someone you truly respect it hits very different. I never said f*ck Ursh it was a drop in the ocean of sh*t I was already goin through.”

On Tuesday, what everyone, including Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, said would happen happened: the Senate GOP stalled the For the People Act. How did they do this? They used the filibuster, whose removal is opposed by Democratic senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. And though what happened has been seen as a foregone conclusion, after it did happen, people on social media were pissed.

The bill was intended to expand voting rights, which have been under attack for months by Republicans nationwide. Among its aims include banning partisan gerrymandering, forcing super PACs to disclose big donors, and reform the public campaign financing system. Democrats took control of all three houses of government, and this could have been their first ambitious piece of legislation.

But for now it’s stalled, perhaps indefinitely. As per The New York Times, there remains no clear path forward for the bill. A watered-down version introduced by Manchin, dubbed the John Lewis Voting Rights Act — named after the late Democratic representative and civil rights icon — appears to be gaining no traction with Republicans.

The only course of action that could work remains ending the filibuster, which critics argue has long been abused by Republicans to kill Democratic legislation. But again, Sinema and Manchin stand in the way, despite being slammed for their attempts at defending their actions.

So with little hope for recourse, people took to Twitter to vent. Some focused on Manchin, who claimed he could find 10 Republicans to support the bill. He was off by 10.

Some pointed out that maybe something’s wrong with the country when the party that controls the House and Senate and the White House can’t stop a minority party from creating legislation to put them back in power.

Others the GOP, who keep blocking key pieces of legislation.

Others came for Sinema.

Others theorized, in an epic thread, that McConnell will probably wind up killing the filibuster when the GOP takes over, possibly in 2022.

Many said this was the final proof that the filibuster must be destroyed.

And while they’re at it, maybe end a few other weapons Republicans love to have in their arsenal.

(Via NYT)

The Lottery order for the 2021 NBA Draft is all set. While the festivities were slightly different than usual due to the circumstances forced upon us by the COVID-19 pandemic — i.e., a bunch of people did not go to a Hilton in New York City — the Lottery order was set on Tuesday evening, with the Detroit Pistons, represented at the Lottery by franchise legend Ben Wallace, coming out on top. While they are viewed as the winners of the Cade Cunningham sweepstakes, the Houston Rockets will be right behind them in second, while the Cleveland Cavaliers will once again get a high pick at No. 3.

While the bottom half of the lottery played out more or less as expected, some intrigue came about when the ping pong balls made it so the Cavaliers and Raptors jumped into the top-4, alongside the Rockets (which could have been forced to send their pick to the Thunder if it fell outside the top-4) and the Pistons. But ultimately, the ping pong balls were the kindest to the Pistons, which will add a franchise player to their young core that includes Killian Hayes, Saddiq Bey, Jerami Grant, and Isaiah Stewart.

Here is the full order at the top of the 2021 NBA Draft:

1. Detroit Pistons
2. Houston Rockets
3. Cleveland Cavaliers
4. Toronto Raptors
5. Orlando Magic
6. Oklahoma City Thunder
7. Golden State Warriors (via Minnesota Timberwolves)
8. Orlando Magic (via Chicago Bulls)
9. Sacramento Kings
10. New Orleans Pelicans
11. Charlotte Hornets
12. San Antonio Spurs
13. Indiana Pacers
14. Golden State Warriors

Lil Baby was one of the most popular artists in 2020, and his work over that period is still being fêted. The Atlanta rapper was recently crowned Songwriter Of The Year during the 2021 ASCAP Rhythm & Soul Award ceremony. The show highlighted “Baby” with DaBaby, “Emotionally Scarred,” “For the Night” with Pop Smoke and DaBaby, and “The Bigger Picture,” which peaked at No. 3 on the singles chart last year, as some of the songs that best showcased his writing talents.

The win comes months after some felt he was snubbed at this year’s Grammys awards. While he was nominated in the Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance categories for “The Bigger Picture,” many believed his 2020 album My Turn should have received a nomination as well. He failed to win in either of the aforementioned categories, but he did take home awards at other shows: My Turn won Hip-Hop Album of the Year at the 2021 iHeartRadio Music Awards and “The Bigger Picture” received an award at the BET Hip-Hop Awards.

According to Variety, the Atlanta rapper will also perform a new version of “The Bigger Picture” on Wednesday at 4 p.m. EST/1 p.m. PST on ASCAP’s official YouTube page.

In other news, Lil Baby and Lil Durk will hit the road starting this fall for their Back Outside tour. It begins September 1 in Mansfield, Massachusetts, and continues through October 15 in West Palm Beach, Florida.

One fun element of the Phoenix Suns’ postseason run is the way that they’ve added in-arena entertainment when games have taken place in their building. Arizona’s very own Jimmy Eat World had a halftime concert during the conference semifinals, while Tag Team came to Phoenix Suns Arena to remind everyone of their favorite March Madness commercial during Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals.

For Game 2 on Tuesday night, the team extended an invitation to another band from the state: Gin Blossoms. The group best known for heat rocks such as “Follow You Down” and “Hey Jealousy” announced the news earlier in the day, and even made it a point to pay tribute to legendary Suns player Charles Barkley.

Then, I don’t know if you’ve ever had plans before, but you usually have some time to kill before you go do whatever that thing is. So Gin Blossoms used the time to get into it with a fan of the Denver Nuggets, the team that the Suns took down to make it to the conference finals, by repeatedly getting off jokes about the franchise.

Because most Suns things seem to come back to this dude at this point, we even got a “SUNS IN 4” reference out of the band, although this had a slightly tweaked version of the hashtag.

I will be honest: I did not anticipate, at any point in my life, witnessing Gin Blossoms talking trash on the internet because the Phoenix Suns just swept the Denver Nuggets in the NBA playoffs. But to the victor go the spoils, so go off, Gin Blossoms.