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MyPillow Guy Mike Lindell Has Been Suspended From Twitter Following Months Of Voter Fraud Lies

For months, Mike Lindell — aka the MyPillow Guy, aka the founder of those pricey pillows you see advertised on television — has had former president Trump’s back. He’s parroted baseless conspiracy theories about voter fraud. He’s appeared to make up some of his own. He was so adamant about keeping him in power that he visited the White House during his final week, apparently trying to talk him into enacting martial law. Now he’s following Trump down another road: On Monday night Twitter suspended his account, too.

As of this writing, Twitter top brass have not put out any official explanation, nor is it clear if it’s a permanent suspension, much like Trump’s. It’s also not clear which tweet or tweets lead to the decision to boot him from their services.

It’s the latest plot twist in the story of Lindell, who’s long touted his story of overcoming drug addiction to start a wildly successful business empire. Over the last few months he’s put that empire in harms’ way, his voter fraud lies getting his product discontinued from Bed, Bath and Beyond and even daring the voter machine company Dominion to sue him. Now this.

In lighter news, he was very briefly romantically linked to 30 Rock’s Jane Krakowski over the weekend, though that, like his rants about the 2020 election, turned out to be false.

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‘Lovecraft Country’ Creator Misha Green Will Write And Direct The Next Installment Of ‘Tomb Raider’

You might not remember the Tomb Raider movie reboot, and it only came out about three years ago. It starred no less than Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander, and though it grossed a ton overseas, only a modest chunk of that was from the United States. But that wasn’t enough to kill the franchise. Indeed, Variety reports that the sequel is stepping up, tasking Misha Green — creator of last year’s acclaimed HBO show Lovecraft Country — to write and direct, with Vikander returning.

Lovecraft Country, which was produced by Jordan Peele, followed African-American characters as they travel through 1950’s Jim Crow South, happening upon mysteries and creatures inspired by legendary horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. It was hugely ambitious and ripe for these times. One can only imagine what Green has in store for a movie based on a video game about an archaeologist fighting ancient demons and such.

When the news broke, Green was almost without words:

So Green can add Tomb Raider to her pile. She first came of notice in 2016, when she co-created Underground, a WGN show about the Underground Railroad in Antebellum Georgia. She’s also hard at work on Netflix’s The Mother and she’s producing a remake of the blaxploitation classic Cleopatra Jones. Her Lara Croft will sure be something.

(Via Variety)

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Billie Eilish Says Her ‘Horrible Body Relationship’ Led Her To Take Diet Pills At Age 12

It’s no secret the diet industry thrives on women being insecure about their bodies. Even amid the economic losses during the pandemic, the US weight loss market was estimated to have raked in upwards of $71 billion in 2020. Girls are exposed to unrealistic images of women’s bodies starting at a very young age. Even celebrities aren’t immune to those effects. Last year, an image of Billie Eilish wearing a tank top was attacked by body shamers online — and that hit home for the 19-year-old.

Eilish recent opened up about her “horrible body relationship” in a cover story for Vanity Fair, in which she discussed the recent viral image, concluding that the “internet hates women.” She also revealed how she’s been personally affected by society’s unrealistic standards for women’s bodies:

“I think that the people around me were more worried about it than I was, because the reason I used to cut myself was because of my body. To be quite honest with you, I only started wearing baggy clothes because of my body. I was really, really glad though, mainly, that I’m in this place in my life, because if that had happened three years ago, when I was in the midst of my horrible body relationship—or dancing a ton, five years ago, I wasn’t really eating. I was, like, starving myself. I remember taking a pill that told me that it would make me lose weight and it only made me pee the bed—when I was 12. It’s just crazy. I can’t even believe, like I—wow. Yeah. I thought that I would be the only one dealing with my hatred for my body, but I guess the internet also hates my body. So that’s great.”

This wasn’t the first time Eilish has opened up about her reason for wearing baggy clothes in public. In 2019, She told Vogue Australia that she wears clothes “800 sizes bigger” because it “gives nobody the opportunity to judge what your body looks like.” “I don’t want to give anyone the excuse of judging, and not—and it’s not like everyone’s going to judge you, but they all do in their head, like even if they’re not trying to,” she said.

Read Eilish’s full cover story here.

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LeBron James Went Off For 21 4th Quarter Points To Beat The Cavaliers

The Cavaliers very well have their best non-LeBron James led team in decades this season, as the very fun young Cavs got off to an 8-8 start before a showdown with the Lakers and their former hometown hero in Cleveland. Early on, it appeared LeBron was going to be in the mood for dominance back home in Cleveland, as he had 17 first quarter points, punctuated by this preposterous stepback three-pointer at the buzzer.

James would go through a lull in the middle quarters, as the Cavaliers clawed their way back into the game, taking the lead on a few different occasions in the second half. However, in the fourth quarter, James put an end to Cleveland’s hopes of another upset win after taking two off of the Nets last week, with a sensational 21-point performance in the fourth quarter en route to a 115-108 Lakers win.

LeBron had seven three-pointers on the night, including some ridiculous ones to close out the game, firing from just about everywhere including a logo bomb from the top of the key and a filthy stepback over rookie Isaac Okoro.

The dagger came in the form of a spinning, fading long two from the baseline that punctuated a 46-point evening for the King.

James was 19-for-26 from the field, including 7-for-11 from three, to end the night with 46 points, eight rebounds, six assists, two steals, and two blocks. It was a virtuoso performance in a game where the Lakers desperately needed that kind of effort and energy against a very feisty Cavs team who have proven they can beat just about anyone. Andre Drummond led the way for Cleveland with 25 points and 17 rebounds as he dominated inside, a rarity for opponents against L.A., but the Cavs simply couldn’t find enough shotmaking late or find a way to cool off the red-hot LeBron as the Lakers moved to 14-4 on the season and Cleveland slipped to 8-9.

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Arca’s 9-Minute Single ‘Madre’ From HBO’s ‘Euphoria’ Is Equally Haunting And Moving

Arca is known for her harsh synths and distorted beats, which can be heard on her Grammy-nominated 2020 album Kick I. But with her new nine-minute single “Madre,” the producer forgoes her drum pad in favor of a more stripped-down effect.

The song appeared in the recent special episode of HBO’s Euphoria, which centered around the character Jules as she talks through her troubles with a therapist. Arca said she originally wrote the song years ago but felt collaborating with composer Oliver Coates took it to the next level.

“I wrote ‘Madre’ years ago, and I did ‘Madreviolo’ playing the cello myself, before working with Oliver. After recording ‘Madreviolo,’ I destroyed the cello I bought specifically for this. It had to be like a one-time thing for the version where I pitched up my vocal to castrati registers. But the original version with my unprocessed vocals, which felt a necessary version to share alongside Madreviolo, needed an arrangement that I could envision but couldn’t hear. When I shared the acapella version with Oliver there was an insane resonance and chemistry; where he took it felt like the place I dreamed of but couldn’t reach without him.”

Coates touched on how he reworked the single: “I worked on it for about 9 days, playing very softly against it over and over in improvised strokes until a harmony and rhythm started to present itself, like a ghost orchestra at the back of a cathedral, barely raising above a whisper but also enveloping in terms of space and density.”

Listen to Arca’s “Madre” with Oliver Coates above.

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People Are So Excited That Joe Biden Has Brought Dogs Back To The White House

Donald Trump hated dogs. Hated them. Calling people “dogs” was one of his favorite epithets. There are many upsides to having Joe Biden replace him as president, but don’t discount one of the more frivolous: He’s a well-documented lover of dogs who has two of their own. And after his own canines finally showed up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on Sunday, people — many of whom have turned to dogs to help them get through the last four years — freaked out.

Their names are Champ and Major, and they’re both German shepherds. Champ has been with the Bidens for over 10 years, which means this isn’t his first time at 1600. Major is a newer addition to the family. He was adopted in 2018, and he’s reportedly the first shelter dog to ever live in the White House.

Their slightly late arrival — five days into their one owner’s presidency — was intentional: The Bidens wanted things to get settled in their new home first before bringing them in. (They also had to do a ton of disinfecting from the previous tenants.)

Trump was the first president since Andrew Johnson — who was also impeached — to not have any pets. Meanwhile, Barack Obama had two dogs: Bo and Sunny, both Portuguese Water Dogs. George W. Bush had three dogs, a cat, and a cow. His dad had two dogs, one of them born during his tenure. Bill Clinton had a cat and a Labrador retriever. Ronald Reagan had six dogs, two cats, and a horse.

We could go on, but we’ll conclude by pointing out that John F. Kennedy had 11 dogs, a cat, a canary, a parrot, some ducks, three ponies, two hamsters, a rabbit, and a horse. Also: Richard Nixon had four dogs.

Upon news of Champ and Major’s arrival, social media — where animals are often used as self-care — lit up.

Some people dug up old dog content from former presidents.

Anyway, pets are great and you can tell a lot about a person by how much they love them.

(Via CNN)

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Philip Rivers Is Apparently A Ridiculously Good Free Throw Shooter

Less than one week ago, Philip Rivers decided to retire from the NFL after an impressive 17-year career. As soon as he indicated his future plans, the debate kicked into high gear on whether Rivers should be elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame but, regardless of where they argument lands, Rivers was (very) good at playing quarterback and he also contributed entertainment on and off the field.

One more example arrived this week when Colts head coach Frank Reich shared a tremendous story with NBC Sports, and it involves Rivers and a sport other than football. In short, it appears that the 39-year-old recent retiree is a stunningly good free throw shooter.

“One more story from San Diego. One day—I don’t know how the subject came up—a bunch of us were talking free-throw shooting,” Reich wrote. “Philip said, I’m over 90 percent. We’re all like, No way. So we made a wager: shoot 100 free throws, and he had to make at least 80. He went out there on the hoop we had at camp, and he made 97. We were blown away. But that wasn’t enough. He figured, I’ll show you. Those guys went out there 10 straight days to shoot free throws, 100 a day. And he made, like, 946 out of 1,000. He didn’t even have to do that—he already won the bet. But that’s Philip.”

Obviously, there could be some embellishment here, if only because it is quite difficult for anyone to make 97 out of 100 free throws. In fact, even professional basketball players would have trouble reaching that particular standard, and that doesn’t even get into the wild nature of making “946 out of 1,000” at the charity stripe.

On the other hand, the best athletes in the world are often freakish with the things they can accomplish. Rivers clearly has tremendous athletic coordination in order to throw a football accurately and, given his height at about 6’5, it stands to reason that he had a basketball in his hands somewhere along the way. In the end, it might be a little bit tough to believe, but Reich managed to ignite the internet in speculation, which is fitting for the way Rivers’ football career will be litigated in the coming days.

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Netflix’s ‘The White Tiger’ Is A Visually Witty Exploration Of Class That Evokes Memories Of ‘Parasite’

Despite being a dizzyingly diverse nation of more than 1.3 billion people, movies set in India, probably thanks to the Bollywood formula and Slumdog Millionaire, still carry with them an oddly specific set of expectations. It’s hard not to expect exuberant expression, vivid colors, music, and a vague kind of plucky optimism driving it all. In White Tiger, director Ramin Bahrani (adapting a 2008 bestseller by Aravind Adiga) plays on those expectations to deliver something else entirely: an exploration of class, caste, culture, and capitalism that isn’t particularly sunny and definitely doesn’t have any dancing.

It’s hard not to invite Parasite comparisons when your movie is about a poor striver who schemes his way into a job driving for a rich guy, and White Tiger is the rare film that isn’t rendered unnecessary by the analogy. White Tiger uses as its framing device a letter from Balram, played by Adarsh Gourav, to Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, who has come to India to meet young entrepreneurs. As the action takes place via flashback, Balram relates the story, in the style of Portnoy’s Complaint/About Schmidt/Life Of Pi, of how he, a poor kid from the sticks, eventually came to be one of India’s foremost entrepreneurs. Like Jamal in Slumdog Millionaire, Balram learned many important lessons from growing up poor, but as he explains it, in real life, one doesn’t go from servant to master just by getting on a game show.

India is a complex place, a place essentially defined by its complexity, but luckily Balram has packed plenty of analogies to help us understand — er, to help Wen Jiabao understand. He says over and over that despite 1,000 castes, India has basically two worlds: the light and the dark; two classes — master and servant; two castes: those with fat bellies and those with thin bellies; all of which exist inside the chicken coop of Indian society. It’s like a chicken coop, Balram explains, because Indians are the only people who, chicken-like, simply watch docilely while their compatriots are beheaded and chopped apart for supper, awaiting their own inevitable fate without complaint or attempt to escape.

Balram, obviously, comes from the dark world, the servant class, a caste known for making sweets. He’s a child prodigy whose headmaster promises will one day get a scholarship to a prestigious institution in Delhi. But, subverting expectations right out of the gate, this isn’t to be a story about the lucky ones, the exceptions to the rule, those scholarship kids who go onto prosper by following the rules.

Instead, Balram’s father gets tuberculosis and dies, his family can’t afford his tuition, and Balram is forever cursed with only three years of formal education. The way we learn of Balram’s father’s illness is illustrative of how Bahrani (99 Homes, Chop Shop) plays on and subverts expectations. If you see a movie character cough blood into a handkerchief it’s pretty much a guarantee that he or she will die before the end. Bahrani’s twist is to shoot a close up of phlegmy blood spat onto an unpaved street, in the midst of a smash-cut-to-funeral montage. (Btw, is there any movie device more enjoyable than smash-cut-to-funeral? Yeah yeah, you get it, he’s dead, moving on…)

Cursed to a life serving at his grandmother’s tea shop (another possible Slumdog allusion, if you remember Jamal’s “chaiwalla” days), living in poverty and having his life dictated to him by his older relatives, Balram is determined to break out of the chicken coop. He knows the best way to climb the servant ladder is to serve the highest master, so he borrows money from his family for driving lessons (delivered memorably by a Sikh who tells him that warrior castes make the best drivers because driving is warfare and teaches Balram to yell “sister fucker!” out the window) and schemes his way into a job driving for the local lords — a family of coal magnates living high on the hog who accept only bribes and deference from people like Balram.

He ends up driving for Ashok (Rajkummar Rao), the youngest son of family patriarch (“The Stork,” played by Mahesh Manjrekar) and ostensibly the most progressive of the family — who has married an outspoken American, Pinky Madam, played by Priyanka Chopra Jonas (she also produced). Just as in Parasite, their masks of surface-level tolerance and politeness frequently fall away (“she’s nice because she’s rich, hell if I had all this money I’d be nice too!”), and just as in other great class-parable stories like Parasite and Y Tu Mamá Tambien, prejudices are usually manifested in the most visceral distinctions, like bad breath and stained teeth and body odor and an itchy crotch. It’s plausible deniability, that the reason the aristocrats dislike you isn’t your low birth but your bad manners.

All the while, Balram, in an understated but unforgettable performance by Gourav, offers ironic commentary on everything from globalization (“I think the days of the white man are over, the yellow man and the brown man are the leaders of tomorrow”) to democracy to being a good servant (“a good servant must know his masters from end to end, from lips to anus”).

White Tiger subverts expectations right up until the very end, self-consciously commenting on what it doesn’t do as much as what it does. In that way White Tiger allows other stories to define it maybe more than it should.

It doesn’t quite stick the landing as well as Parasite, which manages to exist on a level of surreal and hyperreal that makes its exploration of class not just smart and enjoyable but singular and transcendent. Yet White Tiger may also surpass Parasite for subtle wit. If Bahrani hasn’t quite mastered the perfect parable, he does have an almost Napoleon Dynamite-esque flair for visual irony. And anyway, its sheer number of memorable, visually compelling scenes and clever turns of phrase make White Tiger‘s journey more important than its destination.

‘White Tiger’ hits Netflix January 22. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

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Bad Bunny Will Perform His Booker T-Inspired Song At WWE’s Royal Rumble

If Bad Bunny‘s El Última Tour Del Mundo track “Booker T” is any indication, the musician is a huge wrestling fan. That’s why he’s beyond excited to announce that’s been officially booked to perform the song at WWE’s Royal Rumble 2021 this Sunday.

Speaking about the opportunity to perform at the event, Bad Bunny said it’s a “dream come true” opportunity for him. “Performing at the Royal Rumble is a childhood dream come true,” he said in a statement to Billboard. “I have been a lifelong fan of WWE and I am excited to take the stage and entertain fans around the world.”

Echoing the singer’s statement WWE Music Group senior vice president and general manager Neil Lawi expressed his excitement on behalf of company. “Bad Bunny is at the top of the music industry, and a pop culture icon with strong ties to WWE and our fans around the world,” Lawi said. “We are thrilled to provide a global platform for his first-ever live performance of ‘Booker T’ as we kick off the road to WrestleMania.”

After news of the performance was announced, WrestleMania and Bad Bunny fans alike expressed their anticipation.

Bad Bunny himself also joined in on the excitement.

See fans react to Bad Bunny’s upcoming Royal Rumble performance above.

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People who downplay the threat of this pandemic are as deadly as the disease itself

If there’s one thing that everyone can agree on, it’s that being in a pandemic sucks.

However, we seem to be on different pages as to what sucks most about it. Many of us are struggling with being separated from our friends and loved ones for so long. Some of us have lost friends and family to the virus, while others are dealing with ongoing health effects of their own illness. Millions are struggling with job loss and financial stress due to businesses being closed. Parents are drowning, dealing with their kids’ online schooling and lack of in-person social interactions on top of their own work logistics. Most of us hate wearing masks (even if we do so diligently), and the vast majority of us are just tired of having to think about and deal with everything the pandemic entails.

Much has been made of the mental health impact of the pandemic, which is a good thing. We need to have more open conversations about mental health in general, and with everything so upside down, it’s more important now than ever. However, it feels like pandemic mental health conversations have been dominated by people who want to justify anti-lockdown arguments. “We can’t let the cure be worse than the disease,” people say. Kids’ mental health is cited as a reason to open schools, the mental health challenges of financial despair as a reason to keep businesses open, and the mental health impact of social isolation as a reason to ditch social distancing measures.

It’s not that those mental health challenges aren’t real. They most definitely are. But when we focus exclusively on the mental health impact of lockdowns, we miss the fact that there are also significant mental health struggles on the other side of those arguments.


For one, what about the mental and emotional distress of watching people you love die of a preventable disease? If lockdowns are hard on mental health, what do we think allowing the virus to spread unchecked (even more than we already have) and kill even more people would do? People talk about lockdowns causing economic distress as if the alternative would eliminate mental health struggles. I don’t see how a drastically increased death toll would be better.

The top five life stressors, according to University Hospitals, are:

  • Death of a loved one
  • Divorce
  • Moving
  • Major illness or injury
  • Job loss

Only one of those stressors comes with lockdowns (unless you count divorce from being cooped up with your spouse, but relationship troubles are even being reported from countries without lockdowns). Two of them at least, death of a loved one and major illness, would be experienced far more without public health measures.

The pandemic was always going to be a choice between a rock and a hard place. There was never a way to avoid suffering here—we were either going to have mass death or mass economic strife (or both, as we’ve found out the hard way by really screwing up the response). And both of those options come with a mental health toll.

Arguably, however, the economic struggles are preferable to the deaths in every way. The government can choose to help citizens financially, thereby easing the mental health burden of a job loss until the economy rebounds. The government can’t undo the death of a loved one, and that impact is permanent.

Then, what about the mental health impact of losing our faith in our fellow citizens?

We’ve spent the past year going through the largest mass death event of our lifetime, and half of us have spent that year trying to convince the other half that it’s actually happening. Not even trying to convince them of the best way to handle it, but simply that it’s real. The constant battling of denial and misinformation is exhausting and demoralizing. Handling the pandemic would be hard enough if we were all on the same page. But seeing and hearing people treat 400,000+ dead Americans as either not real or not a big deal is enough to make you lose your mind.

And then there’s the emotional toll of realizing that a number of your fellow countrymen see elderly/disabled/overweight/Black Hispanic people as expendable, that an unreal number of Americans would rather see hundreds of thousands of us die than wear a mask, and that a disturbing percentage are far more likely to listen to conspiracy theorists than the world’s most respected scientists. The ignorance and paranoia are hard to take. The inhumanity of it all is devastating.

So now people who already struggled with their mental health also have to process a loss of faith in humanity. That kind of existential stress is hard to quantify, but it’s real. Some of us have tried to teach our children that most people are good and kind, that selfishness and self-interest are the exceptions and not the rules. Now we’re stuck with this daily deluge of evidence that a startling number of people simply aren’t willing to sacrifice at all for the greater good, and trying to explain why that is to our kids.

As a result, we feel less safe and secure. We feel frustrated and angry. We feel sad and weary because it didn’t have to be like this. We struggle to find hope that we’ll be able to turn this thing around. Watching our fellow Americans insist that basic public health measures are tyranny, that their individual liberty is more important than collective freedom and well-being no matter what the cost, and that objective reality isn’t real—and then seeing all of this result in far more sickness and death than there needs to be—has an emotional impact every single day.

So yes, let’s keep talking about mental health in the pandemic, but let’s not pretend that people are only struggling due to lockdowns and social distancing. The inhumanity we’ve seen from far too many is taking its toll as well.