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Detroit thrash rappers Insane Clown Posse are unhappy with The Atlantic for comparing their followers to Donald Trump’s in a recently-published editorial that not only compared Trumpists to ICP’s fanbase but also coined the term “Trumpalos,” combining the self-chosen name for ICP’s fans with Trump’s most hardcore supporters. Violent J, one half of Insane Clown Posse, spoke up in defense of the band and the Juggalos, texting Huffington Post his dissent to The Atlantic‘s opinion.

“I can’t believe TheAtlantic.com would hire a writer, presumably for his expertise in journalism who’s that off the mark, as well as an editor for his or her fact-checking abilities who obviously lives within a reality separate from our own when it comes to defining who Juggalos truly are and what they’re about,” he wrote. In a follow-up text, he expressed his disappointment in the characterization of the Juggalos as violent in The Atlantic, writing, “The truth is it fuckin’ hurts and [it’s] scary seeing professional adults acting like savage bullies,” and noting that ICP fans make “easy targets because they’re so misunderstood.”

He was also disappointed in “sad little bullshit like this makes me question the media in general and [lose] a little faith in just about [everything] I f*ckin read!”

The offending passage, penned by Graeme Wood and titled “What to Do With Trumpists,” called the Trump administration “the political equivalent of the Insane Clown Posse,” writing:

At noon tomorrow, our four-year experiment in being governed by the political equivalent of the Insane Clown Posse will finally end. It is ending in Juggalo style (some have called it “Trumpalo”), violently and pointlessly, with a handful of deaths, the smearing of various bodily fluids, and a riot on the way out. After any bacchanal of this magnitude, the sober dawn is almost as disorienting as the hysteria itself—and the most urgent task, after wiping the shit from the Capitol hallways, is to prevent a repeat performance.

The Juggalos’ reputation has been tainted over the years due to the FBI listing the group as a gang, with self-identified Juggalos involved in violent crimes. However, they’ve been characterized by journalists at their annual Gathering Of The Juggalos as “sometimes comically friendly.” The 2020 Gathering was canceled by the band due to the pandemic, in stark contrast to Trump’s rally tour.

Outgoing President Trump has left the building, and there’s a lot of hard work ahead for the Biden Administration. We’re all aware of the current mess, and there will be a lot of digging out to be done, but there’s apparently a fabricated controversy already brewing because some people are throwing shade on Joe Biden’s love of the Peloton bike. That’s his preferred mode of exercise (and it’s pandemic friendly to boot), as he recently revealed on his podcast as quoted by The Independent:

“I try to get out of bed by eight o’clock in the morning and I have a gym in my house upstairs. I have a treadmill and a Peloton bike and some weights. And I try to work out every morning for me. That sort of gets me going.”

This shouldn’t be controversial, right? Sure, the Peloton is pricier than, say, a Schwinn, but it hooks up to exercises classes and does all of the metrics and can easily save gym membership money over time. Also, it’s a heck of a lot safer than going to a spin class, which some people are still doing. Yes, there may be potential cybersecurity concerns, as pointed out by Popular Mechanics (because there’s a camera and mic attached to the bike), and no one wants POTUS to get hacked, but c’mon, we’re coming off a president who couldn’t bother to pick a non-obvious password for his Twitter account.

There’s something at work here that’s less of a good look. For some strange reason, Joe’s Peloton has been twisted into a faux-controversy that’s silly but, yeah, not wonderful. Witness this tweet from New York Times writer Sheryl Gay Stolberg, who tweeted a link to her article on the subject, describing the piece as “one about ‘Joe from Scranton’ and his fancy exercise bike.”

The implication in that tweet, and in the one line of the article (“But Peloton does not exactly comport with Mr. Biden’s ‘regular guy from Scranton’ political persona”) is that Biden’s working-class roots don’t jive with a “fancy” piece of exercise equipment. Stolberg references the admittedly not-good Peloton ad in a seemingly out-of-context way while possibly attempting to whip up some social-class scandal, and it’s just not flying on Twitter. People aren’t here for anyone suggesting (even in a lighthearted way) that someone from Scranton shouldn’t have a Peloton.

Yeah, this kinda feels like Obama’s “tan suit” controversy.

Meanwhile, The Verge reports that Michelle Obama may have done the “modified” Peloton thing in the White House, meaning that her bike didn’t have a camera or mic. The bike will be fine. Let Joe ride!

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!” 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.

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.

As for what a note from Trump looks like:

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.”

Meanwhile, Swift has been handing out co-signs of her own, as she recently shared some kinds words about Olivia Rodrigo.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I mean, I think it would have been enough for me.

Hmm. Lesson learned.

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.

Then the dam began to break. Dana Bash got an initial dig in, saying that Trump “just looks like a small man” as he crossed the White House lawn.

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.”

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.”

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.”

Here was Acosta this morning, ready and waiting. And watching.

Trump out.