Donald Trump made a powerful enemy in Greta Thunberg.
The war of words between the 74-year-old failed businessman and 18-year-old climate change activist began in 2019 when Trump sarcastically tweeted, “She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!” He was referencing a viral photo of Thunberg looking at Trump the way everyone should look at a politician who has done irrevocable damage to the environment.
But she got the last laugh — not that there’s anything funny about an “old man” refusing to do anything about global warming — by changing her Twitter bio to, “A very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future.” Thunberg trolled Trump again while he was sharing misinformation about the 2020 election on his now-suspended account (“So ridiculous. Donald must work on his Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Donald, Chill!”) and once more on his final day as president.
He seems like a very happy old man looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see! pic.twitter.com/G8gObLhsz9
“He seems like a very happy old man looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!” Thunberg tweeted. Trump must be fuming that he can’t reply on her. Despite her extremely good burn, Thunberg is otherwise looking ahead to Biden’s presidency. “This would be a great start and a crucial first step,” she wrote in reference to the new administration planning to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline.
“Biden intends to cancel Keystone XL pipeline” This would be a great start and a crucial first step. https://t.co/zcuKYpKTvm
It was earlier this month that rumors about Harry Styles and Olivia Wilde possibly dating started to fly. The situation sent the internet into a tizzy, including some Styles fans, who deemed it appropriate to start harassing Wilde on social media. Now it appears Wilde has taken action by making some changes to her Instagram account.
In her first post of 2021 (and therefore, her first post since the rumors surfaced), Wilde shared some behind-the-scenes photos from the production of Don’t Worry Darling (in which Styles stars). As BuzzFeed News notes, comments have been limited on the post, which was not the case on her account before: The new post has nine comments on it, compared to the 20,000 or so on her previous post.
Wilde hasn’t made any sort of statement for the reason behind the change, but even if it wasn’t explicitly to combat harassment from Styles fans, it should certainly help to cut back on it.
When the rumors about Styles and Wilde first surfaced, some fans condemned those who harassed Wilde, like one who wrote, “To those leaving hateful, hurtful and harmful comments on Olivia’s Instagram / Twitter please stop. There is no need to send those comments. Its 2021, please learn and grow and actually Treat People With Kindness. Thank you.”
Although West Coast rap godfather Snoop Dogg was highly critical of Donald Trump over the past four years, he had some words of praise for the former game show host turned politician as he left office. Sunday, The Daily Beast reported Snoop had quietly reached out to the administration through prison reform advocates to request a pardon for Death Row Records co-founder Michael “Harry O” Harris. Harris was serving a 40-year-plus sentence for drug trafficking and attempted murder. On Trump’s final day in the White House, he issued the pardon commuting Harris’s sentence and allowing the impresario to be released seven years early.
In a statement to The New York Post, Snoop commended the Trump administration for releasing Harris Tuesday, saying, “That’s great work for the president and his team on the way out. They did some great work while they was in there and they did some great work on their way out. Let them know that I love what they did.” Snoop also praised the work of activists Alice Johnson and Weldon Angelos, his contacts to the administration, who themselves had previously been pardoned by Trump.
Harry O wasn’t the only one Trump pardoned. The failed steak salesman also issued pardons to rappers Kodak Black and Lil Wayne.
Ever since 1989, it’s been tradition for an outgoing president to leave a note for the incoming president. “You have just begun a fantastic chapter in your life. Very few have had the honor of knowing the responsibility you now feel. Very few know the excitement of the moment and the challenges you will face,” George W. Bush wrote to Barack Obama, while in his letter to Bush, Bill Clinton wrote, “Today you embark on the greatest venture, with the greatest honor, that can come to an American citizen… The burdens you now shoulder are great but often exaggerated. The sheer joy of doing what you believe is right is inexpressible. My prayers are with you and your family. Godspeed.”
There has been nothing “traditional” about the last fours, so it was intentionally unclear whether Donald Trump would leave a note for Joe Biden, considering… y’know. But “Trump wrote @JoeBiden a note, sources tell me,” Bloomberg News White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs tweeted. “Trump never came to the Oval Office this morning, but the letter was left for the incoming president in the Oval via an aide. And: @VP Mike Pence left a note for @KamalaHarris on his desk in West Wing.”
It’s currently unclear what Trump’s note says, but people have ideas.
Taylor Swift launched her career in 2006 with the debut single “Tim McGraw,” which of course references the titular country music legend. While McGraw and Swift have enjoyed a professional relationship over the years, McGraw admits that he wasn’t sure how to feel about the song initially.
In a new Apple Music interview, McGraw said, “I was a little apprehensive about it when I first heard it.” He continued, though:
“Then I thought, have I gotten to that age now to where they’re singing songs about me? Does that mean I’ve jumped the shark a bit? Is everything still cool? And then I realized that somebody had told me that she was in her seventh grade math class when she wrote the song, so it made me feel a little bit better about that because she was so young writing it. So I didn’t feel like I was that terribly old!”
He went on to express his admiration for her, saying, “I’m a big fan of Taylor’s. I think that she has just such a unique way of connecting with her audience and her songwriting ability and her intuition is just so incredible. And I just think she’s one of the greatest artists to come along in a long time.”
While refusing to attend the inauguration and, instead, slinking out of town rather than following a long-standing tradition of greeting his successor at the White House, Donald Trump recorded a final farewell message that was the target of Seth Meyer‘s white hot scrutiny on Tuesday. The Late Night host tore into Trump’s video message that continued the outgoing president’s commitment to living in an “unhinged fantasy world” that’s caused untold damage to the country including the growing death toll from the pandemic, which has now claimed over 400,000 lives. Firing with both barrels right out of the gate, Meyers didn’t even let Trump get away with uttering the words, “My fellow Americans.” Via The Hollywood Reporter:
“You don’t get to do that. You don’t want to do any of the hard parts of leaving gracefully and admitting you lost and attending your successor’s inauguration, but you want us to watch a 20 minute farewell speech which I am certain you’re reading for the first time like a tourist reading a menu in a foreign language.”
Meyers then tore apart Trump’s attempt to paint his four years in office as a success. Trump claimed he rebuilt America and renewed its spirits, and Meyers was having none of it. “Are you insane? You left the nation in ruins. What did you come here to do, wreck the economy, spread disease and take selfies with cans of beans where you smile like you just ate ice cream with a cavity?”
You can watch Meyers disassemble Trump’s farewell message above.
The thing I like about Lupin is that someone steals Marie Antoinette’s diamond necklace from The Louvre in the first episode. I suppose this is a spoiler in the most technical definition of the term, as it is a thing that happens in the show, but also, come on. The word “heist” is right there in the episode description and the promotional images for the show — including the one at the top of this page — feature a man in a custodial-type uniform staring at a diamond necklace with mischief in his eyes. I think we all knew that the necklace was getting stolen at some point. I’m just saying I appreciated that they got right to it. The spoiler would be me telling you how the necklace was stolen, or why, although I suspect you’ve already deduced that there was misdirection and misadventure involved. And men in tuxedos. And a creepy evil rich dude who deserves some amount of comeuppance.
And you’d be correct, for the record, about all of it. But that’s what makes Lupin so fun. The show doesn’t break the mold of the Gentleman Thief genre in any substantive way. In fact, it does the opposite. It leans all the way into the mold, winking at the audience throughout, with disguises and twists and, at one point, I swear to God, a drone navigating a building outfitted with the kind of crisscrossing-laser-based security system you see Catherine Zeta-Jones dipping under in Entrapment and the Night Fox dancing through in Ocean’ Twelve. This is all fine — great, even — because that mold rules. Always has, probably always will. We all know this. So does Lupin. There’s no need to get especially cute about it. Hence, the immediate diamond heist. There is business to attend to and business is good.
But you still have some questions, I imagine. Please, fire away.
Who or what exactly is Lupin?
Excellent place to start. There are two answers to this question.
Oh, God.
No, no, it’s fine. I promise. There’s Lupin, the show, and Lupin, a famous character from French novels. Let’s start with the former.
Lupin is a French Netflix series about a thief named Assane Diop, played by Omar Sy. Assane is a master of disguise and deception, the kind of guy who is always one step ahead even when it looks like he’s two steps behind. He’s the one who steals the necklace in the first episode — also not a spoiler, come on. What we find out as the series progresses, though, is that he’s doing it for Reasons. Good reasons, borderline understandable ones, involving revenge and justice and clearing the name of a loved one. He is very suave and he wears a lot of hats and he has a very cool office that is full of computer monitors and costumes. It looks like this.
Netflix
Lupin, the literary character, is also a fancy French thief. He appeared in over a dozen real books by an author named Maurice LeManc. Lupin the character is not in Lupin the show. But Assane is borderline obsessed with the books, to the degree that at some point in his adolescence he decided to live his entire life like their main character, and so that’s where all this comes from and is headed. It’s a little confusing, especially if you were already familiar with the character, kind of like if Sherlock had been about a dude named Jeff who was just really freaking into Arthur Conan Doyle books. But you’ll figure it out.
Uh, I keep seeing the word “French” in here. How French are we talking?
Oh, very French. The whole series is in French and you have to decide pretty quickly if you want to listen to it dubbed into English or read the subtitles. (Or, like, learn French, although this option is somewhat more time-intensive.) Please do not let this dissuade you. The show is too fun and enjoyable to let a silly thing like a language barrier get in the way. Expand your horizons a bit. Try new things. Learn French cuss words by accident. What are we doing here if we’re not doing a little of that every day, you know?
Hmm. Fair.
Thank you.
So, if the heist happens right at the jump, how does the show fill the other… wait. How many episodes are in this show?
The first part of Season 1, which was released earlier this month, contains five episodes, each about 45 minutes long.
Oh, nice.
Exactly. Lupin is not a slog, not even a little.
So then what does it do for the other four episodes?
A lot. There are multiple timelines and multiple flashbacks to various points in Assane’s life that explain how he became a gentleman thief inspired by another gentleman thief. There’s a conspiracy that unfolds layer by layer and goes — again, not a spoiler because you know this already in your heart — all the way to the top. He has a wife who left him and a son he neglects because being a gentleman thief consumes his mind every second of every day. There are detectives trying to catch him and at least one of them knows much more than he’s letting on.
Does one of the detectives have a super-intricate conspiracy wall with lots of pictures and printouts and theories connected by pieces of string or wild streaks of marker, and does it cause his coworker to look at him like he’s crazy even though he is on the right track all along?
Oh, baby, you know it. Also, one of the detectives shows up in the flashbacks wearing an outfit that appears to be about 85 percent denim and leather and I gasped when I saw it. Here, look.
Netflix
Good heavens.
Again, very French.
So this all seems terrific, what with the heists and disguises and brilliant criminals attempting to right historical wrongs via jewel thievery. I guess my only other question is, like, what kind of general vibe does it have? It doesn’t get all dark and gritty in the middle, does it?
Nah. There are some darker elements (a murder here, an alleged suicide there, a sprinkling of menace), I guess, but none that drag the show in that direction. The vibe is… hmm. You know how Bosch is kind of like every “loose cannon detective who gets results” show but also the best possible version of those shows? That’s what Lupin is, but with fancy crimes, and therefore inherently more fun. So yes, things get a little dicey here and there, mostly in the flashbacks, but also, the man does his own elaborate makeup and knows the names of all his makeup brushes, and, again, he pilots a drone through a laser-laden room to get information about an adversary.
You keep mentioning this drone. I think it would help me to see wh-
Done.
Netflix
That was fast.
I had been waiting for you to ask. I was getting impatient.
Okay, fine. I’m in. I will watch the first five episodes of Lupin.
You know, now that I think about it, I probably should have just posted that drone GIF at the top of this page and saved us both a bunch of time.
Outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump went into the White House while directing his spokesman to tell blatant, huffy lies about his crowd size, but he can’t tweet out those same lies about his departure, four years later. Yep, Trump literally left the building early on January 20. He will not attend Joe Biden’s inauguration but, instead, left for his Florida Mar-a-Lago residence. First though, he descended Marine One at Joint Base Andrews (for a final military send-off), and this is where things come full circle. Apparently, Trump’s planned departure rally did not go as planned. The chain of events as narrated on CNN was kind-of amazing.
Things looked calm enough when Jake Tapper tweeted footage of Trump flying away and made uneventful comment while kicking off coverage.
And when Trump arrived at Joint Base Andrews, his followers weren’t really there for him. Wolf Blitzer flat-out called this a “pathetic, tiny little crowd.”
Wolf Blitzer just repeated “pathetic, tiny little crowd at Joint Base Andrews” on CNN Accurate.
— Ethan Bearman, democracy, anti-white supremacy (@EthanBearman) January 20, 2021
White House Correspondent Jim Acosta was on the scene at Joint Base Andrews, where the farewell Trump rally went as follows: “There’s no crowd at all here. This might be the smallest Trump rally ever.”
CNN’s Jim Acosta at Joint Base Andrews, site of Trump farewell rally & departure via Air Force One: ‘There’s no crowd at all here. This might be the smallest Trump rally ever.’
Acosta wasn’t done yet. He declared that the scene “feels more like a deposed autocrat going into exile.” And he quoted a Trump aide who stated, “Trump is like spoiled food in the refrigerator now. It’s just time to throw him out.”
Jim Acosta at Trump’s Dear Leader send-off rally. “It feels more like a deposed autocrat going into exile.” pic.twitter.com/aq0gibMhBs
Here was Acosta this morning, ready and waiting. And watching.
I like the super creepy idea of Trump looking out his window and a lone Jim Acosta is standing on the White House lawn, watching. Waiting. https://t.co/twumJ8C6gb
— This is the voicemail for Rebekah Weatherspoon (@RdotSpoon) January 20, 2021
In Stephen Colbert’s first monologue after Donald Trump was elected president, he said, “We have four very interesting years in front of us.” Four years later, “I might have undersold that just a smidge,” The Late Show host joked in his final monologue of the Trump administration. Speaking from his home as the country’s lackluster response to the pandemic has made in-studio tapings impossible, Colbert recalled some of Trump’s most memorable moments as president.
“Some of the highlights of his lowlights include starting his presidency by decrying ‘American carnage,’ his Muslim travel ban, ‘very fine people on both sides,’ bonding with Putin in Helsinki, bonding with Kim Jong-un in Singapore, bonding with the My Pillow guy everywhere else, wanting to trade Puerto Rico for Greenland, talking about nuking hurricanes or changing their path with a Sharpie, calling the 26 women who accused him of sexual assault ‘liars,’ wishing an accused sex trafficker well, caging asylum seeking children that he tore from their parents, getting impeached for trying to blackmail Ukraine to interfere in our election, completely shanking a pandemic, teargassing peaceful protesters, holding a Bible dumb, undermining faith in our democracy, inciting an angry mob to murder his own vice president, and ruining ‘Y.M.C.A,’” an exhausted Colbert said. “We didn’t even try hard for that list. We were just like, it’s only an hour show.”
But despite all that misery, Colbert found one good thing that’s happened over the last four years. “Throughout all of the craziness and threats to everything we hold sacred, there was one hero who kept our country together. And that’s you. The American people,” he said. “For all of his dangerous assaults on democracy, democracy kicked his ass all the way back to Florida. And in this case, I for one will never be sick of winning.”
Since the start of the pandemic, all most artists have wanted to do is perform live in front of an in-person audience again. That sort of thing isn’t happening in the US right now, but it is down in New Zealand: 20,000 people recently attended a concert in the country with no social distancing measures in place. On January 3, Earthgang was the only American act to perform at New Zealand festival Bay Dreams, and now they’ve spoken about how that experience felt.
In an interview with Billboard, Earthgang’s Olu (aka Johnny Venus) said, “It was ecstatic. It had literally been months since we’d been in front of thousands of people. Then we actually got a chance to do it again, be in front of the people and really vibe with them, and that energy’s insane. It was amazing, it was magical. It was a reminder of how magical it can be.”
They were asked about what the pre-concert quarantine process was like (which took place during Christmas), and WowGr8 (aka Doctur Dot) described it as strict, saying:
“Yeah, that was an interesting quarantine. […] They had us like all in separate hotel rooms. And it was like military outside. We got the COVID test about three, four times [a week] maybe. Like every two days, they would do another test. It was a very serious process. After a while, it got a little maddening to be just staying in one building. You can’t even go outside and have a little peep of land for a little while.”
When questioned about how many safety measures festivalgoers had to take, WowGr8 responded, “Zero! There’s zero COVID measures. The government took all the measures when they made us quarantine inside, and they took all the measures earlier in 2020, when they actually shut down the country. When we got outside, the only people who had masks on were Uber drivers and people who worked at hotels, and that was only in some of the cities. Everybody else did not have a mask on unless they just wanted to, but no, you did not have to have a mask on. You did not have to socially distance. Of course, hygiene is always a focus, so they had hand sanitizer stations and things like that available. But other than that, nothing.”
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