Helpful products that want to help with your tiniest inconveniences.

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Former Anthropologie employees allege racial profiling at their stores, being followed around when they shopped at other locations, and earning less than their white colleagues.

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Raymond = 19 years old?

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Activists are calling to defund the police, but New York City is doubling down on aggressively policing fireworks.

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Who says you have to live in a world without new episodes of Seinfeld? Now, you can make your own stop motion adventures with Jerry, George, Kramer, Elaine, and… Newman with LEGO’s Seinfeld 30th Anniversary Set. You could also just watch Curb Your Enthusiasm or Seinfeld itself if you’re missing the show, but since we’re spending more of our summer indoors than ever before, and we can’t just keep making focaccia, it’s time to get to work and start building some sets! (If anyone needs a killer Costanza sound-a-like, call me!)

The Seinfeld collection was originally submitted by Brent Waller in 2019 on the LEGO Ideas platform and voted upon by devote LEGOheads who managed to corral 10,000 votes to turn it into a real thing. Now, according to Brick Fanatics (which is yes, a website for hardcore LEGOheads), an expert LEGO designer will adapt the fan design into an official set, which will likely be released sometime in 2021.

The proposed characters include Jerry Seinfeld, George Costanza, Cosmo Kramer, Elaine Benes, and for whatever reason, Newman. The portly postal employee is an okay edition, but we would’ve dug a Frank and Estelle Costanza set, or even a Puddy or Peterman!

To see more LEGO Ideas collections and fan proposals, head to LEGO’s official site or check out the Seinfeld product idea page to see what a full cast set might like look. LEGO Ideas has resulted in a Friends collection that is already in stores, so you can finally start planning that crossover episode.

Earlier today, Revolt TV was embroiled in a lighthearted beef with Eminem over a line from a Conway single, but now, Diddy’s media venture is seemingly getting backlash from most of Twitter for recently hosting controversial media figure Russell Simmons on its Drink Champs podcast during a discussion about the Black Lives Matter movement. Jay-Z’s Tidal, which hosted the discussion, also came under fire.

The discussion, which also included academic Marc Lamont Hill and rappers Bun B, Mysonne, and Talib Kweli, drew negative attention on Twitter after Tidal’s official account posted a promotional tweet with a preview of the panel responding to host N.O.R.E.’s question about police officers “beating the case” against them for the recent death of George Floyd. Author Sil Lai Abrams, who accused Russell Simmons in 2018 of raping her in 1994, questioned the mogul’s presence on the panel, writing, “What in the entire hell are Jay-Z and Tidal doing by giving Russell Simmons a platform to discuss #BlackLivesMatter?”

Abrams followed up with a tweet accusing “powerful Black men in music” of using their power to protect Simmons and “whitewash his legacy.” “Jay Z and Puff won’t stand up for Russell via public statements but they are still rape apologists,” she continued. ” By quietly giving him an unchallenged voice on their media platforms they make a huge statement: Black survivors of sexual violence are an irrelevant casualty of hip-hop.”

Tidal’s account deleted the tweet, but as of this post, the episode remains live on the streaming service itself. Since the tweet went up, a number of Twitter users have expressed concerns about having Simmons on Drink Champs, as well as questioning why the other guests apparently didn’t comment.

Hill himself posted a thread explaining his reaction, saying he “froze” in the moment and wasn’t advised Simmons would appear. According to Hill, “About 2.5 hours into the show, Russell Simmons appeared. I had NO IDEA he was scheduled. I would NEVER have appeared if I had known.” Hill also insists that when the first half of the discussion originally went live, it did not include Simmons and he assumed Simmons’ segment had been cut. He maintains that he “fully believes the women who have come forward about Russell’s sexual violence. I am sorry that I shared space with someone who has caused such harm without accountability. Although I had NO IDEA he’d be on, I am nonetheless deeply sorry that I was a part of it.”

Simmons was accused of sexual assault by multiple women in 2018, stepping down from the management of his businesses, and denying the charges against him repeatedly. The accusations have since become the subject of a documentary series detailing the accusations and subsequent investigations against him — a documentary producer Oprah says he pressured her to kill.

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Major League Baseball and its players have been in the midst of a labor struggle in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Amid the many twists and turns, conflicting reports have popped up over whether or not we’d get any sort of baseball season, with even MLB commissioner Rob Manfred changing his tune on the certainty with which he believed any games would be played.

But on Tuesday afternoon, a light appeared at the end of the tunnel. According to a report by Jim Bowden of CBS Sports, the MLB Players’ Association informed MLB that its players will play a 60-game schedule, with reporting for spring training occurring on July 1.

Soon after, Jeff Passan of ESPN and Joel Sherman of the New York Post confirmed the number of games and the reporting date, with all three reporters indicating that the final hurdle that needs to be cleared are the various rules pertaining to health and safety.

Of course, health and safety is incredible important during a global pandemic, so this is a pretty big hurdle to have to clear, particularly considering what happened with the Phillies and Blue Jays recently. A number of the details here are still up in the air, too, whether it’s financial stuff like how much money players will make or where games will take place. All of those should fall into place soon enough, though, and while this situation has proven that you should not count your chickens before they’ve hatched, it appears Major League Baseball is on track to have some sort of season that begins relatively soon.

While chatting with Pose star MJ Rodriguez for Variety‘s Actors on Actors series, Zendaya revealed what it was like to reimagine a new Mary Jane for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how filming the hit Spider-Man movies is very different than acting on HBO’s Euphoria.

When asked by Rodriguez what it was like being cast as “MJ”, a character who’s been traditionally been shown as a redhead with green eyes, Zendaya said she actually fun with the role and that she liked how it still honored Mary Jane’s comic book origins while still moving her in a unique direction for the MCU.

“‘Spider-Man’ was one of the first movies that I did outside of Disney Channel. And yeah, I didn’t have much to do in the first movie, but I was so just excited to be doing the movie at all. And I was lucky because they already kind of wanted to recreate the character and turn her into a new version of what I think maybe the original Mary Jane character represented, and just do it in our own way in this Marvel Cinematic Universe. I kind of came into it and there was already on the page a smart, quick, sharp young girl who comes off a bit quirky or offbeat. I have a lot of fun doing it. I like being able to do comedy and things that aren’t so heavy.”

The actress is of course referring to Euphoria, which is obviously more darker fare than the Spider-Man movies. But the HBO series also has its advantages, like not having to guard billion-dollar franchise secrets.

“It’s very different from ‘Euphoria,’ where it’s close and you have more time,” Zendaya said. “Whereas on something like ‘Spider-Man,’ it’s such a huge thing. And there’s so many secrets, and half of the script you can’t even read because there’s too many spoilers for, at the time, ‘Endgame’ and all these other things.”

As for when Euphoria will return, the second season was set to film in the middle of March, which obviously didn’t happen. But according to Zendaya, the scripts are written and production will resume eventually, so it joins the long list of TV series that are coming back, just not anytime soon.

(Via Variety)

Target has announced that it will raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour beginning July 5. The decision makes good on a promise it made three years ago to raise its starting rate to $15 an hour by 2020.

The move will impact over 275,000 employees in its distribution centers and retail stores.

Target’s decision comes after many of America’s larger retailers gave their employees temporary raises for working through the COVID-19 pandemic. However, many of those stores, including Starbucks, Kroger, and Amazon have done away with their pandemic raises over the past few weeks.

On March 25, Target moved its starting wage temporarily to $15 an hour after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Now, it’s made the decision permanent.

In addition to the raise in its starting wage, Target will give a $200 “recognition bonus” to workers on its front lines as well as additional perks including on-demand fitness classes, back up child and family care, free doctor visits, and thermometers.

“Everything we aspire to do and be as a company builds on the central role our team members play in our strategy, their dedication to our purpose and the connection they create with our guests and communities,” CEO Brian Cornell said in a statement.

Target’s decision comes at a time when the Federal minimum wage is woefully behind at just $7.25 an hour and hasn’t been raised since 2009. Currently, 29 states and the District of Columbia have minimum wages above $7.25. Washington D.C.’s is $14 per hour while California and Washington have the highest state minimum wages at $13 per hour.

The $15 minimum wage is a special figure in the fight against poverty in America. In 2012, two hundred fast-food workers walked off the job to demand $15/hr and union rights in New York City, launching the Fight for $15 movement.

Independent, and sometimes Democratic, Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been one of the biggest advocates for a $15 minimum wage, having made it a prominent part of his platform for years.

“Just a few short years ago, we were told that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour was ‘radical.’ But a grassroots movement of millions of workers throughout this country refused to take ‘no’ for an answer,” Sanders said.

“It is not a radical idea to say a job should lift you out of poverty, not keep you in it,” he continued. “The current $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage is a starvation wage. It must be increased to a living wage of $15 an hour.”

via Stephen Melkisethian / Flickr

Sanders’ call for an increase in the wage brought this one-time radical position to the forefront of Democratic politics when in 2019, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed the Raise the Wage act that would make $15 the new federal minimum wage for all American workers by 2025.

The act still has yet to pass the Republican-controlled White House and Senate, which seems highly unlikely. But, should fortunes change in November, a $15 minimum wage in five years doesn’t seem too far-fetched.

While state and federal legislatures drag their heels when it comes to raising the minimum wage, we can all support the movement by shopping at places that support their employees and the economy at-large by paying fair wages.

So next time you go shopping and have the choice between Walmart — which pays a starting wage of $11 to $12 — or Target, the choice should be pretty clear.