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Festival season is effectively shut down this year, so organizers have been getting their ducks in a row for their 2021 returns. Events like Rolling Loud, Mad Cool, and Outside Lands have started announcing their lineups for next year. Sadly for UK residents, though, the country’s biggest event may not have a 2021 lineup to announce soon, as it may not return next year at all.

Glastonbury Festival founder Michael Eavis spoke about the future of the fest in a recent interview, and while he’s hopeful Glasto can come back in 2021, he seems pessimistic that will actually be the case.

He said, “500 people is OK, isn’t it? But my job, 250,000 altogether is too many people I suppose, isn’t it, really. I’m still hoping I’m going to be running next year and I’m going to be moving Heaven and Earth to make sure that we do. But that doesn’t mean it will necessarily happen. That is just wishful thinking, really.”

Eavis was asked if he worries about the fate of the fest beyond 2021, and he appears confident the event will return better than ever: “No, I do not worry at all, I am so confident that it will survive. The only certainty, I think, is the year after, 2022, to be perfectly candid, so we might have to wait for two years maybe. But I am still hoping and we are fighting and working at it all the time to make sure it happens next year. You can’t kill it off just like that. It will come back. It will come back, probably stronger, actually.”

Before joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe to play Captain Marvel, Brie Larson confessed that she “didn’t know what strength was. I was truly an introvert with asthma before this film, so I had a lot of work to do, and I just started to fall in love with it,” she told E! News. She’s truly an inspiration to us asthma-sufferers everywhere. One day, we’re wheezing while lifting a kettlebell; the next, we’re pushing a 5,000 pound Jeep.

Larson worked with trainer Jason Walsh to get in peak physical condition for Captain Marvel, and while her usual workout can’t be completed during quarantine (bear crawls are doable; rock climbing, less so), the Oscar-winning actress did share an at-home workout on her YouTube channel. “It’s been a while,” she says. “I want to take it easy on myself, be realistic about where I’m coming from, and enjoy it while my mind flips out.” There are squats, body saws, sumo stances, and best of all, no equipment:

“It’s unclear if anyone’s actually going to do this workout along with us or just enjoy watching me struggle. If you liked it, if you didn’t like it — keep your comments to yourself.”

Eh, seems too hard. Gonna get back to my Animal Crossing animal. For everyone else, you can watch Larson’s workout with Walsh (who also trains with the other Brie) below.

Over the weekend, Cardi B teased that she had an announcement coming on Monday. Sure enough, last night, she revealed that she would be linking up with Megan Thee Stallion for a new song, “Wap.” The track isn’t even out yet (it drops Friday, August 7), and it’s already breaking the internet, or at least Cardi’s portion of it.

Last night at 8:15 p.m., Cardi told her Twitter followers, “Ya better start going to my website now ! Link in bio !” The link was for a store page to order vinyl, picture disc, and other editions of the single, including a limited edition signed by Cardi. These releases will only be available for purchase until this Thursday, August 6. About a half hour after Cardi directed fans to her site, it started not being able to handle the influx of traffic, as she tweeted, “Deum ya crash the site ! But keep going to that b*tch!”

As of press time, it is still a challenge to access the site. Attempting to view the site leads to a Warner Music Group “Queue-it” page, which puts users in a virtual line to get on the site. The page informed me that my number in line was 20,374 and that 9,734 users were in line ahead of me. My estimated wait time was “more than an hour.”

Also yesterday, Cardi B revealed that she plans to link up with OnlyFans for a partnership, and she teased what she might get up to on the platform.

Cardi B is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Two years ago, I got off the phone after an interview and cried my eyes out. I’d just spent an hour talking to Tim Ballard, the founder of Operation Underground Railroad, an organization that helps fight child sex trafficking, and I just couldn’t take it.

Ballard told me about how the training to go undercover as a child predator nearly broke him. He told me an eerie story of a trafficker who could totally compartmentalize, showing Ballard photos of kids he had for sale, then switching gears to proudly show him a photo of his own daughter on her bicycle, just as any parent would. He told me about how lucrative child trafficking is—how a child can bring in three or four times as much as a female prostitute—and how Americans are the industry’s biggest consumers.

But you know what he didn’t mention in our hour-long conversation? Pizza, hot dogs, Hollywood elites, or any of the other child sex trafficking conspiracy theories raging around the internet. Not one of them. Not once.

You know who else doesn’t mention any of those things? The organizations that have spent years and years battling child sex trafficking while most of us blissfully went along in our daily lives, largely oblivious to it.

No matter our political, religious, or ideological leanings, the unfathomable hideousness of child sex trafficking is something all of us should be able to agree on. But that doesn’t make conspiracy theories about pizza parlors and Satanic pedophile rings palatable, or even remotely acceptable.

Did people learn nothing from the man who believed the Pizzagate conspiracy and fired his AR-15 inside of Comet Ping Pong in Washington D.C. because he believed a baseless pedophile ring conspiracy theory involving the pizza parlor?

There are still people who think that Pizzagate thing is real. (For those who have been blissfully spared from that lunacy, you can read about it here.) But that’t not even the kookiest thing I’ve seen lately. There’s a veritable laundry list of child sex trafficking posts going around, including:

– Oprah, Tom Hanks, Ellen Degeneres and other “Hollywood elites” have actually been arrested, and the pandemic is all a distraction to cover up the crackdown on these celebrities. (Fact check here. Oh and another one here.)

– Model and wife of John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, is a pedophile because she’s tweeted a whole bunch about pizza and because she had a sardonic sense of humor about the sexualization of little kids on the show Toddlers & Tiaras back in 2013. (Fact check here and here.)

– Wayfair—yes, the home goods products store—has coded listings for missing children being sold at exorbitant prices in a child sex trafficking scheme. (No, they don’t. Fact check here.)

– Having children wear masks will make it easier for kids to be trafficked because no one can see the expression on the kids’ faces or identify them. (As if child traffickers weren’t already successfully trafficking kids without masks. Fact check here.)

– There’s a concerted effort to make “age fluidity” a thing, and to make pedophilia an accepted sexual orientation. (There is one very small group called NAMBLA, which has been trying to abolish consent laws since the 1970s,, but claims that there’s some kind of “movement” to normalize pedophilia as a legitimate sexual orientation is actually an effort to harm the LBGTQ+ community. Fact check here.)

– Obama and Clinton are satanic leaders of a global child-sex-trafficking cabal—which includes most Democrats and Hollywood, apparently—who feast on children’s adrenal glands in order to increase their power. (Fact check here, although if you seriously need a fact check for this you are already too far gone, my friend. On a related note, this article about the parallels between QAnon and “alternate reality games” is suuuuper fascinating and explains a lot.)

– Obama spent $65,000 on a “hot dog” party, which is code or little boys and pedophilia. (You know what? I’m not even going to fact check this, because come on.)

And that’s not even all of them.

Of course, there are some legitimate questions to be asked about how much involvement certain celebrities and politicians, including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, had with known pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Having watched a beloved figure like Bill Cosby fall from grace over sexual misconduct, we know what’s possible. But none of those Epstein connections are a secret. It’s all being reported on in the real news and has been since Epstein started being investigated. (There’s also a lot of misinformation about who was involved with Epstein, and to what degree, and in what capacity, and none of these conspiracy theories are helping us get to the truth of the matter.)

The main problem is this: When you conflate the actual issue of child sex trafficking—which is absolutely real and serious and deserves our attention—with totally off-the-wall, debunked conspiracy theories, it causes people to put their energies in the wrong places.

The Polaris Project, a national organization that fights human trafficking, had to release a statement asking people to stop calling about Wayfair because it was overwhelming the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

“While Polaris treats all calls to the Trafficking Hotline seriously, the extreme volume of these contacts has made it more difficult for the Trafficking Hotline to provide support and attention to others who are in need of help,” the group said in a July 20 press release. “We strongly encourage everyone to learn more about what human trafficking really looks like in most situations, and about how you can help fight trafficking in your own community.”

What it often looks like is family member trafficking a child, such as Melody Cholish’s story she recently shared with us. Sometimes it looks different, and you can find all kinds of stories and information about child trafficking from the many organizations that have worked for years on this issue, including Save the Children, Operation Underground Railroad, the Polaris Project, Love 146, and Stop the Traffik. (Please use those sites for “doing research” instead of Twitter or QAnon or YouTube or memes that come through your feed.)

The other problem is that the issue of child sex trafficking is suddenly being used to deflect from every other important issue, because “Oh yeah? What about CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING???” is a fairly effective deflection. I mean, who doesn’t think that child sex trafficking is the absolute worst of the worst things humans do? Black Lives Matter? What about CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING? Horrible pandemic situation due to inept leadership? What about CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING?

I mean, we can care about more than one thing at a time. The question is, why did all these conspiracy theorists not care this much about child sex trafficking until they thought it was “evil liberal elites” doing it? Why was no one calling child sex trafficking a “pandemic” until we were in the middle of an uncontrolled literal pandemic? Why were there no widespread protests against child sex trafficking until there were widespread protests for Black Lives Matter?

As I mentioned, Tim Ballard didn’t say a single thing about Hollywood elites or pizza parlor basements or adrenal-sucking rituals or anything of the sort in our hour-long conversation about child sex trafficking. And he’s an expert on this topic. He’s also a conservative Trump supporter. He’s not peddling any of these conspiracies, and neither are any of the legitimate organizations that are working to end child trafficking. Not one.

Either every major organization working to end child sex trafficking is a part of The Big Evil Global Elite Pedo Ring Plot or people who spend too much time on social media are being taken by baseless, politically-driven nonsense that’s probably being pumped out of some guy’s basement. My money is on the latter.

Stick with the organizations that have been doing this work for decades. Get your information from them. Stop sharing crazy internet conspiracies simply because you want people to know you care about children, or because it justifies your hatred of people you see as your enemies. We can—and must—unite to fight child sex trafficking without resorting to insane, debunked rumors that muddy the waters and distract from the real problem.

The Lakers and Jazz both entered Monday night’s game coming off of losses, as L.A. got smothered by the red-hot Raptors and Utah looked flat in a loss to the Thunder, and were looking to get back on track. With a win, the Lakers could cement the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference and turn their attention, fully, to playoff preparation, while Utah had slipped to fifth in the West and needed a win to move back to fourth a half game ahead of Houston.

Like so many games in the bubble, Monday night’s tilt was a highly competitive and entertaining one, but a late third quarter run from the Lakers proved to be the difference as they took what had been a back-and-forth affair and closed on a 19-5 run to open up a 10-point lead entering the final period. As has been the case in both of their wins, it was the play of Anthony Davis that shined brightest for the Lakers, with the star big man erupting for 42 points, 12 rebounds, four assists, three steals, and a block in a 116-108 win.

Davis showed his full array of talents, hitting 13 of his 28 shots, including 4-of-8 from three-point range, and was 12-of-15 from the free throw line. While his teammates, including James, continue to work their way back into offensive form, Davis has shown his dominance against the Clippers and Jazz — with a notable struggle against Toronto, who have looked spectacular defensively in the bubble.

The pick-and-roll game with LeBron remains a lethal go-to for the Lakers when they need to create some flow and a bucket, but Davis had it going in isolation inside and out and as a ball-handler, making plays off the bounce.

LeBron James has seemed more than happy to cede the spotlight to Davis to begin the restarted season, acting more as a facilitator and, when needed, getting key buckets late — as we saw against the Clippers in the opener. Monday was his best game of the restart, with 22 points, nine assists, and eight boards on 9-of-16 shooting, as he continues to take on a lead ball-handling role for a shorthanded backcourt still trying to figure out roles and rotations.

For the Jazz, the loss threatens the chance of falling to sixth in the West, as they’re now just a half-game ahead of the Thunder and a half game behind the Rockets for fourth. That race will be fascinating to watch over the next few days, as the teams shuffle positioning and seeding, with the first round matchups either being with each other or the 3-seed in Denver.

Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley have stepped their games up in the bubble, combining for 57 points on Monday, while Rudy Gobert is his steady, efficient self, but with Bojan Bogdanovic out, they have failed to find a consistent fourth contributor. No other member of the Jazz finished with more than seven points against L.A. and as a team they shot just 27.9 percent from three-point range, as their role players have simply not stepped up in any sort of consistent manner.

Next up for Utah is a Memphis team desperate for a win after an 0-3 start that’s seen their hold on the 8-seed slipping away, while the Lakers take on a Thunder team that’s been giving the opposition fits in the bubble, but is coming off a loss to Denver.

After allowing 53 points in a disappointing loss to the Indiana Pacers’ T.J. Warren to begin their NBA bubble journey, the Philadelphia 76ers appeared to be in good shape against the San Antonio Spurs on Monday evening. Brett Brown’s team held a 14-point lead in the fourth quarter and, given Philadelphia’s talent advantage against a San Antonio team playing without LaMarcus Aldridge, the 76ers were rightfully seen as massive favorites to secure a win. However, Philadelphia collapsed down the stretch, and the Spurs actually held a two-point lead in the final minute of regulation.

Enter Shake Milton, who buried a badly needed three-pointer to give Philadelphia a one-point lead with six seconds remaining.

Eventually, the Sixers would prevail by a final score of 132-130, continuing the trend of high-scoring affairs in the NBA’s bubble. As for Milton, the former SMU guard finished with 16 points in 26 minutes, including the single biggest shot of the night.

Elsewhere, it was a quiet night for Ben Simmons, who scored only eight points and grabbed two rebounds in 25 minutes. Fortunately, Tobias Harris (25 points, six rebounds) and Joel Embiid (27 points, nine rebounds) carried the load for the Sixers.

On one hand, it is certainly troubling that Philadelphia’s uber-talented defense allowed the short-handed Spurs to score 130 points, including 43 points on 71 percent shooting in the closing frame. Still, the Sixers managed to pick up their first win in Orlando and, if nothing else, they avoided the inevitable negativity that would have arrived if the result turned sour.

The Coen brothers are among America’s most acclaimed filmmakers, but to the general public they’re best known for one of their lighter movies: The Big Lebowski, their shaggy dog stoner amateur detective movie, which imagines what a Raymond Chandler mystery would be like if the hero was a White Russian-loving pothead. One of the reasons it’s endured is because of the lead turn by Jeff Bridges. But based on a recent interview (as caught by IndieWire) it took some doing to get Bridges in that chill mindset.

Joel and Ethan Coen made a rare podcast appearance on Team Deakins, and no wonder: The show is hosted by their frequent cinematographer, the legendary Roger Deakins, who’s won Oscars for Blade Runner 2049 and 1917. Deakins has lensed 12 of their movies, starting with Barton Fink and including Fargo, No Country for Old Men, True Grit, and, of course, Lebowski. They wound up discussing, among other things, one of their big on-set no-nos, and how they broke it for Bridges after he seemed “miserable.”

The rule? Allowing actors to look at playback footage of things they just shot. Deakins agreed with them that doing “slows it down,” dragging shooting to a halt so an actor can study what they just did, and maybe try again when they don’t have to. But while they ban playback from their sets, Bridges was the exception.

“We started the first two weeks and there was no playback capacity on the set,” Joel recalled:

“Jeff Bridges was very upset with that because he wanted to look at playback. I was very weary about it. We had never worked with Jeff before and I didn’t want to do it because I was afraid Jeff was going to come over after every take and look at playback. Finally, he was so miserable at the end of the second week that we ended up getting playback. The interesting thing to me was that Jeff, who grew up making movies and is a screen actor, he used it very well. Every now and then he would come over and look at the playback and he was great. He would say, ‘Ok I get what the problem is’ and he was useful. He is an exception.”

The Coens also responded to one of the big assumptions about their extremely precise films: that the brothers are perfectionists. Not so, said Joel:

“We just are not perfectionists. It is true I’ve never understood the Stanley Kubrick thing of doing 90 takes of an insert of someone opening a door knob…From the outset, we have a strong idea about what we need editorially and what we don’t need. You have to have instinct for ‘how much am I going to shoot so that at the end of the day I will have what I need to make this scene work?’ You have to have instinct for when you can move on.”

You can listen to the full, nearly 90-minute episode over here.

(Via IndieWire)

Most women, at one point or another, have felt some wariness or fear over a strange man in public. Sometimes it’s overt, sometimes it’s subtle, but when your instincts tell you something isn’t right and you’re potentially in danger, you listen.

It’s an unfortunate reality, but reality nonetheless.

A Twitter thread starting with some advice on helping women out is highlighting how real this is for many of us. User @mxrixm_nk wrote: “If a girl suddenly acts as if she knows you in public and acts like you’re friends, go along w[ith] it. She could be in danger.”

Other women chimed in with their own personal stories of either being the girl approaching a stranger or being the stranger approached by a girl to fend off a situation with a creepy dude.

One wrote, “A girl did this FOR me one time when I was sitting alone at a bar because she could tell I was in a very uncomfortable situation and I’ll never forget her. It was bold of her to do that for a stranger but she literally saved me from some creep ass guy.”

Another added, “I had a waitress do this for me once when an ex was yelling at me. She didn’t leave me out of her sight and when he went to the bathroom she asked if I was ok and if I had roommates or if I was going to be alone with him after. An actual angel.”

Another shared how a woman joined her and her husband as if they were old friends until her friends arrived.

“A woman walked up to my husband and I saying ‘I haven’t seen you guys in so long!!’ then hugged us. We were ???, but went w/ it. She then pointed out a group of guys that followed her in, and the one that wouldn’t leave her alone. He kept getting drinks right near us. Which was odd because we were in the corner out of the way. She hung out w/ us until her other friends got there. Once we realized what had actually happened we were a little shocked.”

User “AmberLUVV” shared a story of being in a Dominican Republic port on a cruise when two girls pretended to belong to her family.

“When I went on a cruise with the fam, we ported in DR for a day. My dad and I decided to go the local shopping market. We had took a break on a bench cuz it was HOT! But all of sudden two girls walk up to us and addressed my dad as their own, and proceeded to say that they had And scared! We played it out for a minute longer until they told us what happened! Some men in a van were following them promising to take them to the beach and wouldn’t leave them alone! They pointed out one of the guys and I had seen him turn away when they addressed my dad!”

“Raeloe” shared how a girl approached her at a nightclub to get away from a creepy guy when she’d been separated from her friends.

“I had this happen in a nightclub once. My hubby and I were working PAX and this club let’s [sic] the enforcers in for free with their badges, I’ve never been before so he said c’mon let’s go. Bout 2 hours in this girl comes up and dances with me and asks if it’s okay to stay awhile. She lost her friends and this dude was creeping on her. I told her to take all the time she needs to find her friends. She came back with them later and gave me a big hug for making her feel safe. Would do it again without hesitation.”

Another person shared how they’d been the one who needed help.

“Been the person who needed this. Creepy dude wouldn’t leave me tf alone, so I walked over to a group of girls and acted very excited to see them again. They immediately caught on and we started talking about whatever. For over an hour. Bcuz he wouldn’t leave. They ended up giving me a ride around town bcuz the creeper was following. Made some friends and we made him run a red light, which had a cop chasing him. They got me home and we hung out regularly after that.”

And another explained how grateful she was to a woman on the bus who let her act like they were best friends.

One person even shared a video showing exactly what such a scenario looks like in real life.

Some people responded with various “what if” scenarios, like what if a woman is really trying to lure them into a dangerous situation, or what if they want them to accompany them somewhere that might not be safe? But those questions seemed to miss the point that no one was suggesting anyone go anywhere private with anyone, and also seemed to miss how often women actually do find themselves in situations where they need to turn to a stranger for help.

As one woman wrote, “All the people fighting this saying it’ll be a setup are underestimating how often women actually do this to get away from creepy men. I’ve had to do this at a bar and I’ve also gone up to a women I saw distressed and pretended to be her friend and she played along. It happens.

I’ve yelled back. I’ve thrown drinks in guys faces. I’ve pushed them away from myself and others. I’ve reached out for help and asked other guys or security to step in. Sometimes the path of least resistance for a good night is to blend in real quick.”

And others pointed out that women don’t generally approach men for help unless they feel like they really need to—usually because they end up in situations where men don’t respond to the word “no.”

Finally, someone suggested a tip for using your phone to ask a girl if she’s in danger while pretending to show her a picture, so you both can be clear on what’s really happening.

But the bottom line is, if a girl or woman walks up to you and pretends to know you, more often than not it’s because she’s trying to get away from someone. Play along and accompany her until she’s safe. Guaranteed she’ll be eternally grateful.

Whether we’re talking about Disney World or any one of the 50 states, when it comes to reopening during a global pandemic, nobody really knows what the hell they’re doing. Will Florida’s reopening of Disney World amidst a statewide surge in new cases prove disastrous, or have the mask orders and social distancing precautions made a difference? They certainly have in New York City, where daily deaths are down to single-digit numbers and hospitalizations are at an all-time low.

If there’s one constant in the COVID-world, it’s that definitive answers are hard to come by.

This uncertainty explains, in part, why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is currently weighing public opinion as to what the cruise ship industry looks like when it eventually reopens. Rather than blindly issuing their own guidelines, they’re reaching out to those who would potentially get sick or spend months drifting at sea if ships were locked down. Last week, the CDC extended its “no-sail” order for US cruise ships until September 30th and began formally asking for public input to help the organization craft future preventative measures relating to cruise ship travel.

Participants will have until September 21st to submit their comments through a virtual portal or via the embattled USPS. The 28 question survey is open to all members of the public or any organization so long as their submissions address one of the 28 questions — meaning that leaders and those with a vested financial interest in the cruise ship industry will surely let their voices be heard, in addition to potential cruisers.

Speaking to USA Today, Caitlin Shockey, a spokesperson for the CDC explained that the 28 question survey was “developed by the CDC subject matter experts to inform future public health guidance and preventative measures relating to travel on cruise ships,” and features a diverse set of questions such as “What mental health services should cruise ship operators provide to crew and passengers during quarantine or isolation?” and “What precautions should the cruise line industry take to safely disembark passengers and crew without transmitting COVID-19 into local seaport communities?” as well as questions relating to virus transmission prevention, testing frequency, passenger and crew well being, and boarding and disembarking precautions.

All answers submitted will eventually become part of the public record and are subject to public disclosure. The US-based cruise ship industry is currently scheduled to resume operation in October — however, the CDC’s “no-sail” order can be issued at any time. At this point, the public appetite for cruises remains high, though a recent 40-person outbreak in Norway seems to have left cruise lines wary of rushing to restart.

If nothing below suits your sensibilities, check out our guide to What You Should Watch On Streaming Right Now.

I May Destroy You (HBO, 9:00 p.m.) — It’s truly impossible to say enough good things about this HBO drama from Michaela Coel so we’ll just say this: Even if we weren’t lacking in terms of new shows to binge each week, we’d still have this at the top of our must-watch list. After a season’s worth of navigating the murky waters of sexual assault and its aftermath, Arabella’s finally being held accountable for some of her more questionable behavior post-trauma. A Halloween party turns bad when Kwame opens up to the girls about his recent sexual experiments and receives a less-than-supportive reaction from his best friend.

Immigration Nation (Netflix) — This timely, six-part docuseries arrives on Netflix to give audiences an inside look at the struggle faced by some of the country’s most vulnerable communities. Back in 2017, filmmakers Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz were granted access by Leaders of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to shoot footage for the doc, but apparently, they’ve been fighting with the government ever since to actually release what they captured on camera. The show follows the legal saga of a handful of detained immigrants as they fight for citizenship.

The Umbrella Academy: Season 2 (Netflix) — Netflix’s group of superpowered oddballs is back and ready to save the world again, or destroy it. It could go either way with these weirdos. Technically this premiered last week, but so much crazy sh*t goes down this season that you’ll probably need a second viewing to catch it all.

Get Even (Netflix) — A movie about a group of British school girls fed up with the callous cliquey behavior of their peers and determined to get revenge? Sign us up.