As calls for racial justice escalated around the world this summer, one UK-based company that made statements regarding its role in systemic racism was Lloyd’s Of London, described as an insurance and reinsurance market formed by the Lloyd’s Act 1871. The market began as a shop where mariners and merchants would convene to secure insurance — including for slaves and slave ships. In June, Lloyd’s acknowledged these ties to the global slave trade and promised to make recompense. A month later, they received a list of demands from none other than T.I., whose plan was to hold the company accountable to its commitment to change.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCwa2Axh9jI
Firing off — and sharing on his social media — an open letter to Lloyd’s with a list of ways to make restoration for its past actions, T.I. told the company “on behalf of ‘The Descendants’ of African Slaves,” that “we demand equitable financial consideration for the ‘shameful role’ they played in the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade.” Now, a little under a month removed from sending his open letter, T.I.’s Chief of Staff has received a response, sharing it via email with Uproxx.
“We cannot unfortunately undo the past,” it reads. “But we would like to play an active role in trying to level the playing field for Black and Minority Ethnic people in today’s world. On 10 June we announced an initial action plan that focuses on education, research and significant funding for charities and other organisations that promote opportunity and inclusion for Black and Minority Ethnic colleagues. There is much more to do and we will work with our Cultural Advisory Group to determine our longer term plans.”
The letter promises to update Lloyd’s websites as plans develop and offers links to the market’s action plan and advisory group.
Tom Cruise appears to have made it is mission to run in as many flicks as possible, including the Mission: Impossible franchise as seen above. Each Cruise sprint may be different from the last, although they all carry the same ferocity, and if you were wondering whether he’s got a rule about his running, you’d be correct. This story ends up being more flattering to Cruise than what Thandie Newton had to say about M:I 2, but yeah, Tom still comes off as totally intense. No surprise there.
Annabelle Wallis, who starred alongside Cruise in 2017’s The Mummy, spoke with Hollywood Reporter about her new movie, The Silencing (co-starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). In the process, Wallis (of course) discussed how often she’s asked about The Mummy, and she revealed how exactly she got Cruise to break his on-screen running rule — he prefers to go it alone — and allow her to sprint alongside him. This sounds like a lot of work, but her mission went as planned:
“I got to run on-screen with him, but he told me no at first. He said, ‘Nobody runs on-screen [with me],’ and I said, ‘But I’m a really good runner. So, I would time my treadmill so that he’d walk in and see me run. And then he added all these running scenes. So, that was it. It was, like, better than an Oscar. I was so happy! I was so happy that I got to run on-screen with Tom Cruise.”
And Wallis did a fine job at the task. Look at her go.
You are not the degrading words you whisper in your own mind as you stare at every perceived flaw, naked in front of a poorly lit full-length mirror, craning your neck and twisting in order to judge yourself more harshly.
How much time, how much energy are you wasting gazing at supposed imperfections that no one else sees? You are a beautiful being, inside and out, and you are exactly as you are supposed to be in this moment. When you tell yourself otherwise, you crumble your own foundations into complete disrepair. The world is tough enough on you, sweet soul. It doesn’t need you on the front lines of your own destruction.
You are not incapable, or trapped, or stupid.
You may think this because of the stories you tell yourself, or they may be stories that others insidiously, or even unknowingly, slipped into your subconscious. Perhaps you’ve been pinned underneath these poisonous narratives for so long that you truly see no escape. This is not your burden to carry. You are the only person who can free you from your own pain, no matter how much anger and hurt you feel towards your past. It was not your fault. It should not have happened, but it did. Now it is up to you to decide whether you continue clutching the blades of knives that others placed in your innocent palms, bleeding resentfully all over yourself long after they’ve gone.
You are not unworthy of peace, fulfillment, and love.
In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Those of you who feel this most deeply make it your mission in life to give those around you all the affection and fulfillment that you’ve always wanted yourselves. Maybe you do this because you’re hoping to receive it in kind. Maybe you simply know how painful it is to feel so intrinsically unworthy and want others to escape that same hurt. Either way, you have a precious and deserving soul. Every being on this planet has the right to a satisfying, joyful existence, whatever that means to each of them uniquely. You are no different.
You are not a bad or unredeemable human being.
There is good in you, probably much more than you admit to yourself. No matter what your history, no matter what you’ve done, said, or felt, you have value. It is never too late to change your path and shift directions, as long as you have the desire and the willingness to break down your former self in service to the new. Shut off that horrible, judgmental voice in your head that tells you change is impossible. There is nothing BUT change in life – it’s the only real certainty. If you feel lost, trapped, afraid to move into your own truth, know that you are not alone. Most humans carry the heaviness of suppressed emotions and fears all day, every day. It’s okay to ask for help. Don’t suffer in silence. It’s not worth it.
The. Stories. Are. Lies. You are worthy. You are beautiful. You are so incredibly lovable. There is not another person like you in the entire world. How shatteringly affirming is that concept? You are the only one, and you are perfect exactly as you are – your true self, your true essence.
Let go of the toxicity that only functions to push you down into despair. Most of the baggage you are carrying probably isn’t even yours. Someone else gave it to you. Give it back. Let it go. Put it down and walk on, light, free, trusting that you can find your way.
You, my dear, are not only lovable, you are pure fucking magic. Your very existence is a miracle. Walk into the light where you belong.
For the first time in history, an American scored a goal in the quarterfinals of the UEFA Champions League. And thanks to Tyler Adams’ 88th minute strike, RB Leipzig picked up a 2-1 win over Spanish giants Atletico Madrid, securing a spot in the tournament’s semifinals for the first time in club history.
Leipzig and Atleti squared off in Portugal on Thursday with the winner punching their ticket to take on Paris Saint-Germain next week. It was a cagey affair — something that is oftentimes the case when Atleti plays and was exacerbated by the fact that Leipzig’s star forward Timo Werner has left the club due to his move to Chelsea — and through the first half, neither side was able to break the deadlock.
That changed early on in the second half thanks to a lovely team goal finished by Dani Olmo. After 16 passes, Leipzig’s Marcel Sabitzer chipped a ball into the compact Atleti defense. Olmo found a bit of daylight, got his head to the ball, and beat Jan Oblak.
The Spanish side kept looking for ways to break down Leipzig’s defense. They eventually broke through when Lukas Klostermann recklessly challenged João Felix and conceded a penalty. Felix, the club’s world-record signing and one of the brightest young talents on the planet, coolly stepped up and slotted his penalty past Péter Gulácsi, who guessed right but couldn’t get a hand to the ball.
João Félix levels it!
The Portuguese star buries the penalty to bring Atletico Madrid even in Lisbon. pic.twitter.com/6GVg3PTeGM
— Champions League on CBS Sports (@UCLonCBSSports) August 13, 2020
A moment later, the man of the hour came on the pitch. Adams replaced Konrad Laimer in Leipzig’s midfield, giving his side fresh legs and a jolt of energy as the match entered its final chapter. His moment came in the 88th minute, when the former New York Red Bulls standout received a ball from his fullback, former NYCFC player Angeliño, and let one rip from the top of the box.
While it looked like the ball might have gone wide, it took a fortunate deflection off of Atleti’s Stefan Savic, and there was simply nothing that Oblak could do as the ball fell into the back of the net.
Atleti did everything it could in the game’s final minutes, but it could not find the equalizer. It was a gigantic moment for Adams — a 21-year-old New York native who joined Leipzig in 2019 and had never scored for the club before — and thanks to it, Leipzig is one match away from the Champions League final. All that stands in their way is French champions PSG, which came from behind with two late goals to knock off Atalanta on Thursday.
“In The Air Tonight” is a 1980 pop-song by English drummer, singer-songwriter and recording artist Phil Collins. Known for its reverb-tinged drum song and haunting vocals, the song has been a seminal pop-culture artifact since the early-1980s, appearing in movies, television and commercials.
Origin
Phil Collins released the music video for the song in 1981 as the debut single for his debut solo album Face Value (shown below). The song and album were officially released on February 6th, 1981.
Spread
An immediate hit, the song reached #19 on the Billboard’s Hot 100 in the United States. In 1984, the television series Miami Vice used the song in a near-four-minute sequence during the show’s first episode (shown below).
Urban Legend
On September 12th, 2000, the fact-checking website Snopes declared an urban legend, which purported Collins wrote the song after “witnessing an incident in which a man refused to come to the aid of a drowning swimmer,” false.
They explain:
The story has to do with Phil Collins supposedly watching his close friend drown from a nearby cliff, while he stood helpless, too far away to rescue. In addition, supposedly there was a man who could have rescued the friend but just stood idly by. Then, Phil writes a song about the experience and gives the man a front-row ticket to the show where he premieres the song. While Phil sings the song to him, the spotlight is on the man in the front row.
On the rumor, Collins told the BBC:
I don’t know what this song is about. When I was writing this I was going through a divorce. And the only thing I can say about it is that it’s obviously in anger. It’s the angry side, or the bitter side of a separation. So what makes it even more comical is when I hear these stories which started many years ago, particularly in America, of someone come up to me and say, ‘Did you really see someone drowning?’ I said, ‘No, wrong’. And then every time I go back to America the story gets Chinese whispers, it gets more and more elaborate. It’s so frustrating, ‘cos this is one song out of all the songs probably that I’ve ever written that I really don’t know what it’s about, you know.
Cadbury Gorilla
On August 31st, 2007, the British advertising company Fallon London released the advertising campaign “Gorilla” for Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate. The video features 90 seconds of a gorilla performing “In Air Tonight.” The ad aired during the finale of the reality television series Big Brother 8.
On September 21st, 2007, YouTuber DanJW83 posted an extended version of the advertisement on YouTube. The post received more than 5.1 million views in less than 13 years (shown below).
Drum Remixes
“In the Air Tonight” inspired a series of video remixes in which people feature people, animals or objects performing the song’s famous drum fill (examples below).
TwinsthenewTrend Reaction Video
On July 27th, 2020, YouTubers TwinsthenewTrend published the video “FIRST TIME HEARING Phil Collins – In the Air Tonight REACTION.” Within three weeks, the video amassed more than 5.2 million views (shown below). The video went viral, earning more than 22,000 points (96% upvoted) on the /r/MadeMeSmilesubreddit. Several media outlets also covered the video, including CNN, the New Yorker, HuffPost and more.
On August 6th, Twitter user @tprstly uploaded a clip of the video to Twitter. The tweet received more than 18 million views, 264,000 likes and 64,000 retweets in less than two weeks (shown below).
As a result of the video’s viral success, “In the Air Tonight” returned to the top music charts, reaching #2 on iTunes charts.
THURSDAY, Aug. 13, 2020 (HealthDay News) — Yoga may help people soothe frayed nerves during the coronavirus pandemic, but the ancient practice may also help those with more serious, chronic forms of anxiety, new research suggests.
The study compared yoga, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and stress management for treating people with generalized anxiety disorder. While cognitive behavioral therapy remains the preferred first-line treatment for anxiety, yoga — specifically Kundalini yoga — outperformed stress management education during the initial 12 weeks of the study.
When the researchers followed up six months later, CBT was the most effective treatment of the three. The effects from yoga and stress education had leveled off after six months.
“Generalized anxiety disorder is a chronic, impairing condition that’s undertreated. Many people don’t seek or can’t access care, so while there are effective treatments available, we need more options for people to overcome barriers to care,” said study author Dr. Naomi Simon. She’s a professor in the department of psychiatry at NYU Langone Health, in New York City.
“For people who may not be able to access the gold standard — cognitive behavioral therapy — yoga is another option. It carries little risk; it’s accessible; and it has at least a short-term effect on anxiety,” she added.
Cognitive behavioral therapy is a form of psychological therapy. It’s designed to help people identify and change negative ways of thinking, according to the American Psychological Association.
The study used a type of yoga known as Kundalini. Simon said this type of yoga involves three components: exercise (posing); a concentration on breathing; and a mindfulness or meditative component. She said other types of yoga that rely on these components would likely be similarly helpful.
The stress management treatment was a class that provided education about health and wellness topics, Simon noted.
The study included more than 225 volunteers with generalized anxiety disorder. Their average age was 33 and about 30% were male.
The volunteers were randomly placed into one of the three treatment groups: Kundalini yoga; CBT; or stress education.
After 12 weeks of treatment, the researchers found that yoga and CBT bested stress education. But yoga wasn’t quite as effective at easing anxiety as CBT. At a six-month follow-up, CBT was clearly more effective than the other treatments. By this point, yoga and stress education showed similar levels of effectiveness in treating anxiety.
I was tempted to open this one up with a pithy, timely Shakespeare quote. You know the one from Romeo And Juliet: “What’s in a name?” But truthfully, it felt a little too on-the-nose — and for lack of a better term, cute — for a discussion that frankly, we should be done having by now. With rap Twitter in a tizzy over so many aspects of the 2020 XXL Freshman Class list, it’s a bit exhausting that one of the biggest names in hip-hop today is one that stands out so glaringly in the context of a year of long-overdue racial reckonings.
Yet, here we are. The tide of public opinion on Atlanta rapper Mulatto stands at a tipping point, incidentally just as the artist herself is at the most critical point of her career. She’s on the cusp of releasing her major-label debut after a half-decade of independent grind and a near-immaculate rollout. That process saw her collaborate with one of her hometown’s most iconic heroes on a remake of one of his most iconic songs. She’s also garnering unprecedented attention as one of the 12 artists selected by XXL for its annually anticipated list of artists expected to break out. Plus, she’s in the most talked about video of the year, courtesy of freak rap pioneer Cardi B.
But instead of celebrating a triumphant introduction to the world outside of rap’s ever-insurgent online underground, she’s just as likely to be fielding apt complaints about her chosen alias. Born Alyssa Michelle Stephens, “Mulatto” isn’t even her first pass at a suitable stage name. Originally appearing in 2016 on Lifetime reality series The Rap Game as Miss Mulatto, she cut down her rap name to make it more marketable, because the “Miss” was obviously the part that so desperately needed fixing.
Before I get accused of needlessly dissing or “hating on” an emerging talent, let me be clear. I absolutely love Alyssa Stephens, the rapper, and I have since she was on Jermaine Dupri’s teenie-bopper-centric competition show. She has a real gift for clever turns of phrase (as illustrated by the title of her recently-released single “Muwop”) and her swag is just about unmatched by most of the onslaught of new rappers that have appeared on the scene since 2016. But I can’t fully support her because of how truly problematic her name is — and how easily the controversy could have been foreseen and avoided.
For those who need it, here’s a really quick history lesson. The term “mulatto” is a reference to a person of mixed Black and white parentage. It’s extremely f*cking offensive because the term was originally used for livestock, specifically the hybrid offspring of a horse and a donkey. It’s a really rude way of calling someone “mixed” deriving from an era when Black people were literally treated as livestock and a white parent would not even acknowledge their mixed child, instead discarding them to the harsh life of a slave. Their own kids.
Mulatto’s rap name is obviously a reference to her mixed ancestry (her father is Black, her mother is white) and there’s nothing wrong with being proud of where you come from. But to dub yourself a term that categorizes you as less-than-human is kind of a big fail. Mulatto’s name also evokes ghosts of the colorism problem. When it’s combined with her typical, pretty girl boast-rapping, it prompts a discomfort that stems from 200 years of systemic inequality filtered through the lens of light skin privilege. After all, those owners may not have exactly freed their lighter-skinned children from slavery, but they historically privileged them with jobs working inside the house and sometimes even education, which they denied their darker field hands.
It’s not like there aren’t plenty of highly successful rappers with mixed heritage who’ve had to grapple with questions of identity and colorism; just look at Drake, Doja Cat, J. Cole, or Saweetie, who are all tremendous stars who’ve dealt with hiccups in their presentation along the way. But how you talk about these things is important, too. Logic’s constant harping on his “AfricAryan” background (dear God, just look at that abominable portmanteau) earned him so much scorn from the rap establishment, he quit rap this year to go play video games for a living.
That’s not what we want to happen to Big Latto (an alternative that has been proposed by fans, riffing on the title of a 2019 EP). She’s at the outset of what could very well be a strong career thanks to a cameo in Cardi B’s “WAP” video, a wealth of genuine talent, and a business savvy that led her to turn down the recording contract offered by JD for winning the first season of The Rap Game in lieu of building a following organically. But that savvy should have alerted her to the potential pitfalls her nom de plume could lay in her path to stardom.
It’s not like she’s the first or only rap star to give herself a problematic pen name to start out with. Rich Brian, the Indonesian born performer who helped launch LA-based, all-Asian label 88rising to fame, started out his career as Rich Chigga — a play on a racial slur referring to Asian people who “act Black” (I shouldn’t even need to explain this one for you). The ever-controversial Noname cut her own pseudonym down from Noname Gypsy, citing ignorance of “gypsy’s” origin as a pejorative for the nomadic Romani people. Some Roma believe the name connotes criminality — a stereotype exploited by Nazis during World War II as justification for a systematic genocide of anywhere from 220,000 and 1,500,000 people.
Both the aforementioned rappers were smart enough to change their names after taking flak for them at first and both are ostensibly fine in terms of public regard (Noname’s various run-ins with other artists’ fanbases notwithstanding). It would probably behoove Mulatto to take her own fans’ advice and make a name change before the quiet rumble of dissent becomes an all-out cacophony of complaints. Big Latto deserves to be the star her unofficial nickname implies. If the thing that winds up holding her back is the way she chooses to introduce herself to potential fans and business partners, she’ll have no one to blame but herself.
HGTV’s Flip or Flop female host works alongside her ex-husband, Tarek El Moussa. Viewers and fans will remember that the two split up while still working on the show together — things got pretty messy at a couple of points, but we suppose that’s to be expected in any high-profile divorce — and the two continued to co-parent their two kids as they went off on their separate ways.
Christina got together with Ant Anstead, also a TV presenter (the entertainment world is small, dear readers, and about to get smaller), who worked on the Discovery Channel show Wheeler Dealers. They got married in 2018 in a surprise boat wedding because they “didn’t want all the fuss,” and about a year later, Christina delivered Ant’s baby, Hudson London, last fall in 2019.
Her ex, Tarek, meanwhile, is engaged to Selling Sunset‘s Heather Rae Young, who many will remember as the realtor who didn’t know how to spell “cahoots” in Season 3. So, while the entertainment world is quite small, the real estate world within the entertainment world seems to be even smaller.
THURSDAY, Aug. 13, 2020 (HealthDay News) — New York City residents have seen their fair share of health crises over the past century, but a new study finds that this year’s COVID-19 pandemic may have been more deadly than even the killer flu outbreak of 1918.
Crunching the numbers from New York City during the worst two months of the 1918 flu epidemic (October-November of that year) and the two months encompassing the height of this year’s COVID-19 outbreak (March 11- May 11), researchers said the latter may have been the more lethal.
After accounting for historical changes in public hygiene and medical care, “the relative increase [in NYC deaths] during early COVID-19 period was substantially greater than during the peak of the 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic,” said a team of researchers reporting Aug. 13 in the journal JAMA Network Open.
The research was led by Dr. Jeremy Faust, from the department of emergency medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He and his colleagues pored over statistics on New York deaths gathered between 1914 and 1918 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and compared them to numbers compiled by the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for 2020, as well as U.S. Census Bureau data for the city for 2017-2020.
Faust’s group found that during the two “peak” pandemic months of 1918, about 31,600 New Yorkers perished from any cause, out of a total population of 5.5 million. In 2020, during the peak two months of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the rate was smaller — about 33,500 deaths in a population of almost 8.3 million.
But those numbers don’t tell the full story, Faust’s team noted. That’s because New Yorkers’ “baseline” odds for death in 1918 from any cause were more than double what they are today.
So when the researchers factored out “improvements in hygiene and modern achievements in medicine, public health and safety” occurring over the past century, COVID-19 actually hit New Yorkers harder compared to the 1918 pandemic, based on death rates.
Continued
In fact, because of modern lifesaving technologies and drugs, “it is unknown how many deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 infection have been prevented,” the study authors said.
They believe their findings hold a lesson for Americans wondering if lockdowns and mask orders were lifted too soon, as the country experiences the highest numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the world.
A “prudent” return to such measures could “prevent the exhaustion of essential supplies of lifesaving resources in the coming weeks and beyond,” Faust and his colleagues believe.
Dr. Robert Glatter witnessed the ravages of the pandemic firsthand in his role as an emergency physician at Manhattan’s Lenox Hill Hospital. Responding to the new study, he said, “What’s clear is that excess deaths related to COVID-19 in 2020 or the Spanish flu in 1918 significantly added to the overall number of deaths during both pandemics.”
Glatter concurred with the study authors that “in order to reduce ongoing deaths and morbidity, we need to consider reinstituting or extending shutdowns in areas that continue to experience high cases, increasing hospitalizations and escalating deaths.”
Dr. Eric Cioe-Pena, who directs global health for Northwell Health in Great Neck, N.Y., agreed. Reading over the new study, he called it “a reminder of just how bad this [COVID] pandemic is and how swiftly this virus can kill.”
Disney Dog Filter Challenge is a photo or video challenge on TikTok and Facebook where participants use the “Cartoon” Snapchat filter on their dog or pet to make them look as if they were a Disney Character. The trend was popularized on TikTok in August 2020.
Origin
On August 8th, 2020, Facebook user Danielle Sugden posted the Dogspotting Society Facebook group saying, “For those that don’t know… Snapchat has a new filter and it basically Disneyfies your dog. YOU ARE WELCOME. Plz post your Disney dawgs here.” The post has since been deleted but was screenshot by Facebook user AlltheBess (shown below). The original post gained over 15,400 reacts in a day.
Spread
On July 11th, 2020, TikToker ahnestsarah uploaded a popular video of their dog using the filter and the Disney Pictures Intro (shown below, left). The video garnered over 221,500 likes in two days. That same day, TikTokers desijackson4 and ayeshaaaawan uploaded two other popular examples that accumulated over 344,000 likes and 570,200 likes respectively in two days (shown below, right). LadBible and StayHipp published articles on the trend.
A Christian mom is being dubbed “school board Karen” after calling coronavirus safety measures, such as wearing face masks and practicing social distancing, “pagan rituals of Satanic worshippers” during a school board meeting in Wisconsin.
The woman, who has children within the Elmbrook School District, has been identified as Heidi Anderson. Anderson’s comments against required safety measures should in-person learning resume were made on Tuesday in front of the school board. The meeting was filmed and posted to social media, where it—specifically the portion that featured Anderson’s comments—went viral.
“Six-foot distance and wearing masks are pagan rituals of satanic worshippers,” Anderson says in the video. “My kids are Christian; they are not subject to wearing masks.”
The school board was holding a meeting and subsequent vote on whether to resume in-person school. Members were deciding between in-person learning five days a week, virtual learning five days a week, or a hybrid of the two, according to WTMJ. Schools in Wisconsin, much like those in the rest of the country, shuttered in March to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
“You are relying on the advice of doctors who are under control of large medical organizations, which benefit financially from the continuation of this emergency,” Anderson says. “My family has for generations fought for freedom all the way back to the Civil War. I have relatives who have fought and died, and paid the ultimate price to ensure that their children and grandchildren and generations to come could live in a free, representative republic that guarantees life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
“These draconian measures for a disease that has very low morbidity, which is much less likely to happen to our kids than them getting in a car accident and dying, or their grandparents falling in a nursing home, is a draconian socialist tactic and overreach,” she continues.
Children can catch, spread, and even die from the coronavirus. They, according to some studies, are thought to spread COVID-19 just as easily as adults, and in-person learning poses a risk not just for students but for teachers, custodial workers, and cafeteria workers, among other staff. More than 2,000 students and staff members have already been quarantined across five states where schools have recently reopened, according to CNN. At least 230 others have tested positive for the coronavirus.
The Wall Street Journal called face masks “one of the most powerful weapons to fight the new coronavirus.” Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Journal of the American Medical Association that if everybody wore a mask for four to eight weeks, the pandemic could be “under control.” Social distancing has also proven to be effective in helping slow the disease’s spread.
While the Elmbrook school board voted 4-3 to resume in-person school five days a week, it is mandating face masks and giving students the option of virtual learning.
