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Arriving later in the year than their 2019 edition, Time shared their annual “100 Most Influential People” list on Tuesday night. The magazine unveiled this year’s iteration of the list through a broadcast on ABC. Of the many names to make the list, only a few are given the honor to grace the magazine’s cover for the issue and Megan Thee Stallion is one of them. Megan joins ten other names who appear on the eight different variations of the magazine’s issue. The other cover stars are The Weeknd, Dwayne Wade, Gabrielle Union, Dr. Anthony Fauci, founders of the Black Lives Matter movement Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, New York nurse Amy O’Sullivan, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.

For her cover issue, actor Taraji P. Henson wrote about Megan and praised the Houston rapper for musical talents and her overall “strength” as a woman, calling her “deep” and a “free-spirit.” “The industry might try to pigeonhole her in this rap game, but she’s got a plan that’s much bigger,” she said in the write-up. “And we got her. I just want her to keep winning.”

Other notable names from the music to land on the 2020 Time 100 Most Influential People issue include Selena Gomez, J Balvin, Halsey, Jojo Siwa, and Jennifer Hudson.

Read Henson’s full write-up on Megan below and check out the entire Time 100 list here.

I remember hearing Megan Thee Stallion on one of those famous DJ radio shows a few years ago. She rode the beat like I’d never heard anybody ride the beat in a long time—and I’m a hip-hop head. There was something about this woman. Once you discover her, you become a fan. I don’t like to put the stigma of the word strong on Black women because I think it dehumanizes us, but she has strength—strength through vulnerability. She’s lost much of her family—her mother, her father, her grandmother—yet she is the epitome of tenacity, of pulling herself up by her bootstraps. She was shot this summer, and still people tried to tear her down. But she’s out here still loving and being sweet. It’s invigorating to see her become a platinum-selling artist with the viral hit “Hot Girl Summer” and multiple No. 1 songs in the past year, “Savage” and “WAP.” But you would be a fool to think that’s all there is to her. She’s deep. She’s enrolled in college. She’s an entertainer. She’s a free spirit; I see that in her. The industry might try to pigeonhole her in this rap game, but she’s got a plan that’s much bigger. And we got her. I just want her to keep winning.

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The first-ever all-virtual Emmys may have gone way better than it should have, but ingenuity did not result in boffo ratings, sending the Jimmy Kimmel-hosted affair into an all-time ratings low. Still, there was one thing involved with it that got a ton of eyes: the trailer of Marvel’s show WandaVision, which bowed during the broadcast before dropping online and Hoovering up a shockingly high number of clicks.

As per Deadline, one estimate postulates that in the first 24 hours, after debuting Sunday night, the WandaVision ad was viewed 53 million times. The same source claims that broke a very specific record: drawing the most views for a streaming service ad spot in history (which is to say in the last ten years or so). If accurate, that’s on par with the splashy Super Bowl commercials for the likes of Avengers and Fast and Furious movies.

WandaVision is being sold as a genre-bending, ambitious brand of superhero content, reuniting lovers Wanda Maximof, aka Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany), who was killed by Thanos at the end of Avengers: Infinity War, and not in the way that he could come back like almost everyone else. The show is reportedly set after the events of Endgame, and it finds the two…trapped in what looks like a ‘50s sitcom? Before moving from black-and-white to color? The trailer is odd but intriguing and we’ll find out what on earth is going when it premieres in December on Disney+ — the first of a slew of Marvel shows heading there, among them The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, Hawkeye, She-Hulk, and more.

You can watch (or rewatch) the trailer below:

(Via Deadline)

Like the source from which it was spun-off, 9-1-1 Lone Star is one crazy show. It’s hard to top a program that requires a guide to round up its crazy episodes, and the bit about a flying bouncy house doesn’t grab the number one spot, but it did kick off with a flaming burrito, so: respect. But when it returns to Fox next year for its second season, it will be minus one of its main stars.

According to Deadline, Liv Tyler will not be joining co-lead Rob Lowe on the spin-off, which follows fire, police, and ambulance departments in Austin responding to calamities so big they’re Texas-sized. The reason for her departure? She lives in London, and traveling right now (to Los Angeles, not Austin, incidentally) is a little difficult, as you can imagine.

This kind of cast reshuffling isn’t new to the 9-1-1-verse. Connie Britton left the maiden show after its first season. Her character wasn’t completely written off; instead the possibility for a return of some sort was left open. The same thing will happen to Tyler’s paramedic Michelle Blake, who actually received some kind of closure at the end of Lone Star’s first season, finally reuniting with the missing sister she had searched for over the ten episodes.

Not that Lowe’s firefighter captain will be left, uh, alone. The new co-lead will be Gina Torres, who will play a paramedic captain. It’s not yet clear when Lone Star’s second season will drop.

(Via Deadline)

Five years ago, Bryson Tiller made his big entrance into the R&B world with an impressive debut album, Trapsoul. It’s been heralded as a classic by fans of Tiller and modern-day R&B alike thanks to standouts like “Don’t” and “Exchange.” Nowadays, the Louisville native spends much of his time working on his forthcoming third album and fighting off his fans who’ve been running out of patience as they await its arrival. Days after sharing his latest single, “Always Forever,” Tiller returned to Twitter with exciting news.

Tiller announced on Twitter that a deluxe re-issue of his Trapsoul debut will be available this Friday, September 25 — just a couple of weeks shy of its fifth anniversary. “Before we get into my new album, I wanna celebrate with this special edition of my debut album, Trapsoul,” he said in the tweet. “Featuring a few songs that didn’t quite make the cut. Y’all asked for these on All Platforms and they’ll finally be yours this Friday. thank you!” The favorites he refers to are “Just Another Interlude,” “Self-Righteous,” and a “Rambo” remix with The Weeknd, which were released as unofficial singles around the release of Trapsoul.

The announcement comes at the backend of increased musical activity from Tiller, during which he’s delivered two singles, including “Inhale,” and confirmed he would release an album this fall.

Hope you enjoyed Kit Harington’s turn as a silent but strong macho man on Game of Thrones, because you’re probably not going to see him to do it again. In a new interview with The Telegraph (caught by IndieWire) said he had no interest in doing some Jon Snow clone in future movies and TV, saying that that time of male character was at this point in history finally passé.

“I feel that emotionally men have a problem, a blockage, and that blockage has come from the Second World War, passed down from grandfather to father to son,” Harington said. “We do not speak about how we feel because it shows weakness, because it is not masculine. Having portrayed a man who was silent, who was heroic, I feel going forward that is a role I don’t want to play any more. It is not a masculine role that the world needs to see much more of.”

Of course, we already knew Harington had no interest in returning to Jon Snow himself, but the reasons he gave for that were different. “Would I want to go back and do more? Not on your life,” Harington told the BBC. “If, like me, you go all the way back to the pilot of ‘Game of Thrones,’ that’s almost 10 years of your life. That’s really unusual in an actor’s career. It was a huge, emotional upheaval leaving that family.”

Does all this mean we’ll see a newer, more energetic Kit Harington, that he’ll reinvent himself as a song and dance man? Who knows, but we’ll see what side of him we see whenever the pandemic lets us see his star-studded Marvel movie The Eternals.

(Via The Telegrah and IndieWire)

I got married and started working in my early 20s, and for more than two decades I always had employer-provided health insurance. When the Affordable Care Act (ACA, aka “Obamacare”)was passed, I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought. I was glad it helped others, but I just assumed my husband or I would always be employed and wouldn’t need it.

Then, last summer, we found ourselves in an unexpected scenario. I was working as a freelance writer with regular contract work and my husband left his job to manage our short-term rentals and do part-time contracting work. We both had incomes, but for the first time, no employer-provided insurance. His previous employer offered COBRA coverage, of course, but it was crazy expensive. It made far more sense to go straight to the ACA Marketplace, since that’s what we’d have done once COBRA ran out anyway.

The process of getting our ACA healthcare plan set up was a nightmare, but I’m so very thankful for it.

Let me start by saying I live in a state that is friendly to the ACA and that adopted and implemented the Medicaid expansion. I am also a college-educated and a native English speaker with plenty of adult paperwork experience. But the process of getting set up on my state’s marketplace was the most confusing, frustrating experience I’ve ever had signing up for anything, ever.

Most of the problems stemmed from proving our income, which was confusing to report and hard to show accurately. I lost track of how many letters I got saying they needed more or different information. When I’d call the help number, the person on the other end always told me something different. It took nearly two months of back and forth, with dozens upon dozens of letters, phone calls, and website chats, to finally get my family set up with a healthcare plan.

During the two months, we weren’t covered under any insurance, I was terrified of something happening. We are a very health-conscious family and we take good care of ourselves, but what if one of us broke a bone? What if one of us had a freak medical event or needed an emergency surgery? What if we got into a car accident and had to be hospitalized? The list of possible scenarios, minor to major, constantly ran through my mind.

During the time we weren’t covered, I was keenly aware of three things: 1) All it would take was one big accident or diagnosis to wipe us out financially, 2) People in other developed nations never feel this fear, and 3) Prior to the ACA, far more Americans felt this fear all the time.

Once we were finally able to work out the necessary paperwork, it was fine. Our income at the time meant our premiums were low, and our coverage was comparable to what we had with my husband’s employer. I ended up getting hired on full-time with benefits a few months later, so our experience with Obamacare was relatively short-lived. But I can’t imagine the financial stress of trying to afford health insurance or worrying about paying for healthcare out of pocket without insurance—fears that millions of Americans lived with pre-ACA.

And we didn’t even have any pre-existing conditions that would have kept us from being able to get insurance prior to the ACA. Adding that factor in drives home how important that legislation truly is.

At the same time, as thankful as I am that we had an affordable healthcare option, I couldn’t help thinking about friends I have who live in other countries who never have to worry about any of this stuff. No complicated paperwork or bureaucracy to deal with. No waiting for bills to arrive in the mail after a doctor’s appointment to see what you owe beyond your co-pay. No calling the insurance company to figure out why something that seems like it should have been covered wasn’t covered.

The amount of of time, energy, agony, and stress Americans have to put into managing healthcare is absurd when compared to other highly developed nations, and even most less developed ones. We’re so accustomed to this garbage, I don’t think most people recognize that it doesn’t have to be like this.

The ACA was a step in the right direction and a necessary lifeboat for those who previously couldn’t get or couldn’t afford to get health insurance. But it’s not universal healthcare, which is quite frankly the bare minimum of what a society should expect from its government. The fact that the idea has somehow been spun into something radical or impossible when basically every other developed country has figured out how to do it, we spend more on healthcare than anyone else per capita already, and our health outcomes trail so badly behind other developed nations is completely baffling.

My experience with the ACA drove home to me why it’s a vital piece of legislation to protect, but also highlighted the desperate need for universal healthcare. It’s far past time for us to take that next step.

The Chicago Bulls have overhauled just about their entire basketball operations department this offseason, finally getting rid of Gar Forman and John Paxson at the top of their front office, replacing them with Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley, who then fired coach Jim Boylen.

On Tuesday, the Bulls announced the hiring of former Thunder coach Billy Donovan, who was a Coach of the Year candidate this past season for what he did with an OKC team few expected to be a playoff team after trading Russell Westbrook and Paul George. Donovan and the Thunder both agreed to part ways after the season, with OKC appearing to go towards a full rebuild, but it was a mild surprise that Donovan would look to Chicago, who are likewise trying to build a playoff contender, as his next stop.

His top player with the Bulls will be Zach LaVine, who rather famously had some issues with Boylen’s coaching style, and the Chicago guard learned of the Donovan hire like everyone else on Tuesday. LaVine was streaming Call of Duty on Facebook Gaming when the news dropped and offered his initial reactions during the stream, calling him a “really good coach.”

LaVine seems fairly excited about his new coach, as he’ll get to play for someone who’s made the playoffs all five years he’s coached in the NBA and had tremendous success at the college level with the University of Florida. Making it six playoff appearances in a row will take quite a jump from the Bulls, but the good news is LaVine seems more than on board with the hire and that always makes things easier for a new coach when the star of the team is a fan.

Back in early March, SXSW was forced to cancel the 2020 edition of their festival as a result of the growing spread of the coronavirus. The festival joined names like Coachella, III Points, Lovers And Friends on a long list of festivals that were forced to do likewise. But the SXSW organizers are adapting to a future that may not be much safer in 2021, announcing an online edition of their annual showcase for next year. Entitled SXSW Online, the festival will occur from March 16-20 and it will include movie screenings, keynote speeches, conferences, and more. Starting October 6, 2020, SXSW will start accepting entires for the Film Festival and SXSW EDU, the latter of which will occur online from March 9 to March 11.

The online festival will be curated by SXSW’s programming staff and the festival will give priority to artists and presenters who were originally scheduled for the 2020 festival. SXSW CEO and co-founder Roland Swenson called the online festival a “challenge” in a press release saying, “The challenge of building a new future is one that we’re excited to tackle.”

This has been such a year of change and we, like the entire world, are reshaping our perspective on how we connect. We’re pleased to introduce SXSW Online as part of our program for 2021, and regardless of platform, we will continue to bring together the brightest minds from creative industries worldwide.

The announcement comes after SXSW received a class action lawsuit over its refunding policy after cancelling the 2020 festival. Rather than issue refunds to ticketholders, the festival revealed that they would instead only allow tickets for the 2020 festival to be exchanged for future events. A month after the policy was made public, the class action lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the Western District Of Texas Austin Division. The complaint reads in part, “SXSW has, in effect, shifted the burden of the COVID-19 pandemic onto festivalgoers, […] individuals who in these desperate times may sorely need the money they paid to SXSW for a festival that never occurred.”

The full announcement form SXSW can be read here.

There are many ways that a soccer player can opt to take a penalty. Upon stepping up to the spot, they have to figure out where to put the ball, how hard to kick it, and what their run-up needs to be, all while hoping the opposing goalkeeper does not figure out their plan and that the pressure of a moment in which the overwhelming expectation is they will succeed doesn’t rattle them.

One of the most aesthetically pleasing methods taken by players is to run up to the ball and kick it so hard that the opposing goalkeeper has zero hope to stop it. This method was employed by Ollie Hogg of Aylesbury United, a semi-professional English side participating in the FA Cup. In a first round qualifying match against Moneyfields on Thursday, Hogg stepped up to the penalty spot and put his foot right through the ball. The issue was that this happened.

Now, in fairness, per Bayliss, this happened just minutes after Hogg employed this same technique and executed it perfectly. I mean, there’s no stopping that thing as it rockets into the top of the goal.

Still, I cannot get over the one that gets sent into orbit. That thing has a launch angle on it that would make your average Major League hitting coach proud. It manages to go out and over the stadium, and the sound the onlookers make is nothing short of stunning — if you listened previously on mute, please go back and listen again at the sheer awe of the crowd.

As for how this game ended, things ended up going to penalties after the two sides drew, 2-2. While Hogg made his attempt from the spot, Moneyfields came out on top, 4-3.

Billy Donovan and the Oklahoma City Thunder mutually agreed to part ways in what seemed to be a rare, honest use of that phrase, as Donovan and Sam Presti met over some beers to discuss their tenure together and agree to move on separately.

Donovan, who never reached the level of success the Thunder hoped for during his tenure, did a spectacular job this past season with a team few expected to be as good as they ended up being, as OKC earned the 5-seed in the Western Conference before losing in seven games to the Rockets in the first round. Still, entering what appears to be a full blown rebuild, Donovan chose to part ways and seek a new opportunity.

That new home will reportedly be in Chicago, where he will join the Bulls as their new head coach under a new front office regime, as was reported on Tuesday by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (and confirmed by Darnell Mayberry).

Shortly after, the Bulls confirmed the hire.

Donovan went 243-157 in 400 games as the Thunder head coach, making the playoffs in all five of his seasons, although the last four saw first round exits. Still, he’s proven himself to be a quality coach in the NBA and for a Bulls team looking to make the leap into playoff contention, Donovan makes some sense to help get them there. What remains to be seen is whether he can take a team from perennial playoff contender to a title contender, but the Bulls are still a long way from that point and would be happy to cross that bridge when they get there.

For now, the Bulls are a team built around some young talent, led by Zach LaVine, but with a number of young pieces including Lauri Markkanen, Wendell Carter Jr., Coby White, and Otto Porter Jr. The task for Donovan will be extracting the most out of that young talent and partnering with Arturas Karnisovas and the new Bulls front office to build a roster capable of making that jump into the playoff tier in the East.