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“That’s a lie!”: Trump lawyer accuses Michael Cohen of false testimony about Stormy Daniels payment

After five hours of cross-examination, in which attorney Todd Blanche sought to paint Michael Cohen as a liar, an unhinged user of social media and a man bitter that he never got a job in the White House, Donald Trump's defense team on Thursday finally got around to addressing what the former president's onetime fixer said on the stand earlier this week.

Cohen, who in 2018 was sentenced to three years in prison for his own role in the hush money scheme, had testified that he received explicit approval from Trump to buy Stormy Daniels' silence ahead of the 2016 election. On Tuesday, prosecutors introduced phone logs showing that Cohen called Trump's personal body guard, Keith Schiller. Cohen testified that he often called Schiller in order to speak with Trump, saying he did so on Oct. 24, 2016, "to discuss the Stormy Daniels matter and the resolution of it."

But just before the court broke for lunch on Thursday, Trump's attorney challenged Cohen's account, suggesting that he actually called Schiller to complain about prank calls he was receiving from an apparent teenager.

"That was a lie!" Blanche said of Cohen's earlier testimony. "You did not talk to President Trump on that night. You talked to Keith Schiller about what we just went through," he said, suggesting the two had texted about the matter earlier in the day. (Cohen had also testified that he called Schiller, months earlier, to speak with Trump about another hush payment to Playboy model Karen McDougal; Blanche did not challenge that recollection.)

"I'm not certain that is accurate," Cohen responded to Blanche's accusation Thursday. "I believe I spoke to Mr. Trump about the Stormy Daniels matter."

Whatever the truth, Lisa Rubin, a legal analyst with NBC News, said the exchange could sow doubt in jurors' minds.

"If the jury is convinced that Cohen mixed up or purposefully misrepresented when he spoke to Trump, Blanche can potentially cast doubt over a broader swath of Cohen’s testimony about the substance of calls at other times," Rubin noted.

No one cares anymore about cancel culture, but it is a heckuva marketing tool for some comics

Thank you, Bill Burr, for sparing me from suffering through more than 90 minutes of Bill Maher’s desiccating “Club Random” podcast. I feared that time would be lost forever but you, sir, assisted me and others with reclaiming it by nipping the host’s pointless attempt to engage you in an empty, meaningless argument.

I’m referring to Maher’s stab at diving into the supposed horrors so-called cancel culture inflicts on poor wealthy comedians with huge platforms and followings. For an extra good time, Maher reminded us of his incurable habit of being on the wrong side of history on most issues by mentioning the mythical plight of a certain world-renowned masturbator as an entry point.

“Isn’t it time everyone just went, ‘OK, it wasn’t a cool thing to do, but it’s been long enough and welcome back to the work'?” Maher droned, becoming what feels like the 587th famous performer to mourn their inability to see Louis C.K. smirk at them on a network show.

But this isn’t about that nonsense, which Burr responded to by pointing out that C.K.’s collective acts of indecent exposure and nonconsensual onanism displays cost him $50 million — a few beats after mentioning that he’s self-producing and releasing his material, which has netted him many tens of millions of dollars since.

No, the part I’m celebrating is when Burr invoked the most reliably triggering term of all before dispelling it and distracting Maher to change the subject.

 “I remember whenever that cancel culture got to the point when it was, ‘I don’t like some of the topics in your stand-up act.’ That’s when it got weird,” he said, adding, “That’s all over.”

“What’s over? Cancel culture?” Maher says incredulously.

“Yeah. No one cares anymore,” Burr said. 

The host who exists in a gilded bubble was not having it. “Either one of us could get canceled in the next two minutes!” 

“No. For what?” Burr questioned. “Well, if you’re not doing anything . . . I don’t know. I feel like I’m going back two years of my life. I don’t even think about it anymore. Nice ashtray by the way.” With that Maher moved on to bemoaning the thoughtless acquisition of nice things. 

It’s worth remarking that Maher’s terrible take on C.K. and effort to kick off the millionth pointless cancel culture debate took up just over a minute of a too-long podcast episode. Maher also goaded Burr by disparaging the pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses and insulting his stated position of being “on the side of the kids” with his condescending, out-of-touch reply of, “Yeah, that’s easy to say. No one wants to see kids dead.” 

But it’s the one-two punch of mentioning comedy’s unmentionable performer and the cancel culture boogeyman that generated headlines and tossed lighter fluid and a flipped Zippo onto the social media discourse.

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“Club Random” announces its rudderless nature in its title, and whether that works for Maher depends on who’s dropping by. Burr’s regular guy contempt for Maher’s languid insistence that he knows more than everyone else makes other segments watchable.

I also suspect that far fewer of us would have been aware the episode even happened if Maher hadn’t dropped the term that reliably irritates cultural partisans into action.

Burr is mostly right. Cancel culture never was a threat to any famous comedian – especially men like Maher, who has expressed a slew of odious views on his HBO show without suffering any consequences. 

Its effect has been the opposite, making stars out of mid-level performers like Shane Gillis whose hiring and firing from “Saturday Night Live” when racist jokes he made on his podcast – which is much more popular than Maher's – were brought to light only expanded his fanbase. 

For someone like Ellen DeGeneres, whose daytime talk show ended after 19 years following allegations reported in BuzzFeed of sexual misconduct, racism and intimidation committed by her executive producers, cancellation mostly amounts to a time-out.

Regardless, when supposedly cancelled comics are landing Netflix specials, selling out stadiums, or winning a best comedy album Grammy following this supposed career death, that tells us that this dire menace to clown kind is about as real as the Chupacabra.

Maher has spent decades in the TV business, so he can’t honestly claim ignorance as to why his dear “banished” friend – who, like many other performers, is making plenty of money from his direct-to-consumer sales – hasn’t had his sitcom deal restored.

That is not to say it might never happen. Someday there could very well be an executive who decides his brand’s funk smells less like moral rot than money, whose network’s legal department deems the financial risk posed by hiring an admitted harasser, who committed a misdemeanor several times, is worthwhile.  

Cancel culture never was a threat to any famous comedian – especially men like Maher.

Whether Maher's ignorance is feigned or genuine is beside the point, because he knows just mentioning the name and those two little words is enough to get a rise out of the public. And this demonstrates the only real weight cancel culture has in the comedy world, in that it’s a proven marketing tool.

The fact that we’re even talking about Maher’s dusty podcast is more evidence. “Club Random” registers as the 129th most popular among Apple users and sits at No. 177 on Spotify, according to Chartable data. (Among comedy podcasts it ranks 25th on Apple and 46th on Spotify, so there’s that.) 

Burr’s appearance may boost those rankings, but the cancel culture canard is better at roping in views than a Times Square ticket hawker.

A slice of the same logic also removes the shock of Jerry Seinfeld blaming “the extreme left and P.C. crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people” for the supposed death of TV sitcoms, as he did in a recent issue of The New Yorker. 

One expects that of a grumpy old man who's made millions in the medium at a time when the competition amounted to six broadcast networks and a few dozen cable channels. 

Besides bathing in “Seinfeld” residuals, Seinfeld has added to his fortune and fame by producing entirely toothless popular content like “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” and his latest project “Unfrosted,” a fabulized history of the Pop-Tart’s invention.  None of which qualifies as un-P.C. or even edgy.

It’s streaming on Netflix, which nearly guarantees it would have been found and enjoyed by people if the comedian never blamed progressives for the supposed downfall of hilarity on TV. But positioning himself and therefore his product as standing against buzzkills in the culture war gives Seinfeld entry to the conservative echo chamber whose denizens might have ignored it otherwise. 

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Entertainment promotion is often a cynical business; knowing that should remove the shock of a determinedly mid comedian falling into the angry man camp that is increasingly seizing more attention and moving more units in the game than others.

That doesn’t negate the harm of famous, powerful weaponizing the cancel culture specter to generate, clicks or a comeback. Maher characterizes it as part of the #MeToo’s so-called punishments when in truth it predates the movement by many years. 

Remember when Gilbert Gottfried was fired from his Aflac deal for making tasteless jokes about the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan? That was 2011, when the great evil was called outrage culture, largely generated by jokes like that, along with rape and sexual violence. 

This dire menace to clown kind is about as real as the chupacabra.

Reducing someone’s hurtful (and yes, illegal) actions or the gatekeepers’ inaction to remedy workplace abuses to “not a cool thing” teaches the public that making amends and delivering restitution to those harmed is unimportant. Allowing the laughter to resume matters most. 

Indeed, the reason I called Burr’s observation mostly right is because we don’t hear from or about the people whose careers actually have been canceled, like the five women who came forward in 2017 to detail C.K.’s misconduct. One quit comedy altogether. Others like Rebecca Corry keep trying to move forward in a career they’d been building long before they crossed his path.

Corry, who has more than three decades of experience as a performer and stand-up, wrote a 2018 Vulture essay describing the difficulties she encountered before her name became habitually linked with his and spoke to Variety in 2022 after he won that Grammy.

“Why am I constantly being asked to speak on cancel culture, the joke that is the #metoo movement, and C.K. every time he’s in the news cycle? I don’t care what that guy does, and of course cancel culture is real. I’m living proof,” she told Variety. “The moment I was sexually harassed at my job, I was canceled. That’s how it works, kids.” 

“So,” she adds later, “let’s talk about what I’m doing and when my Netflix special is happening. There are people who have been doing stand-up for five minutes with comedy specials and others with multiple specials who suck. So when’s mine? I’m ready when you are, Ted (Sarandos, Netflix co-CEO).”

As far as I can tell, he hasn’t called.

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DeGeneres, though, is sharpening her material for her Netflix special, which will be taped this fall. Rolling Stone took in her recent set at West Hollywood’s Largo at the Coronet Theater and characterized her means of addressing her part in her show’s downfall as “processing,” including copping to being an immature boss who “didn’t know how to be a boss.” 

Throughout the investigation into DeGeneres’ show, it was clarified that the misconduct was perpetrated by others, not her; and that her main shortcoming was turning a blind eye to her managers’ toxic behavior. This was preceded by years’ worth of rumors that the real DeGeneres was anything but kind.

Rolling Stone reports that in her set she admits that the chapter, which counts as her second cancellation from show business, has taken “such a toll on my ego and my self-esteem.” Understandable.

What about the egos and self-esteem of the more than 47 former employees who detailed their painful experiences to BuzzFeed, some of whom left the business after working for “Ellen”?DeGeneres’ audience was thinking about them, too.

During a post-show conversation, one woman asked, “Do you think you’ll seek revenge for those who have wronged you?” This was met by what the reporter described as “a loud round of applause and cheers from every corner of the room.” 

There’s your evidence of what famous people crying over supposed cancel culture has yielded. Not justice or a new sense of fairness, but misdirected grievance aimed toward less powerful people ruining everyone else’s good time by exposing our favorite stars' misdeeds. 

That, and a lot of outrage clickbait.

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Plant-based meat alternatives are trying to exit the culture wars – an impossible task?

Increasingly, vegans, vegetarians and others looking for meat alternatives are seeing a new option on the menu: patties that look, taste and even appear to bleed like beef hamburgers, but are actually made of soy, pea protein and other ingredients.

Now, a leading plant-based meat company called Impossible Foods plans to rebrand, in order to reach a wider audience.

From now on, Impossible Foods says that all of its green cardboard packaging will be switched to red, in a bid to "appeal to the carnivorous cravings of meat eaters," according to a March 2024 news release.

Big-name, plant-based meat alternative brands like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are losing revenue at an alarming pace. Multiple brands, like the vegan chicken nugget brand Nowadays, are going out of business. And Impossible Foods' private share value has dropped 89% since 2021.

Some of the plant-based meat substitute industry's woes can be attributed to politics. Many consumers associate plant-based meat substitutes with veganism, animal rights activism and left-wing politics.

Impossible's CEO, Peter McGuinness, said in 2023 that his company has an elitist reputation and that the company's rebranding is a rejection of "wokeness." The so-called "wokeness" of Impossible and other plant-based meat substitutes shows the symbolic power that food can have in politics.

As communication scholars, we study and teach our students about the persuasive power of symbols. Even innocuous items like the food we eat are symbols that come with attached meanings and values.

Amid the highly polarized politics in the U.S., plant-based meat substitutes and their analog, "real" meat, have become weapons in a symbol-laden political battle between some conservatives and liberals, sometimes nicknamed the "Meat Culture War." In other words, while an Impossible burger might literally be a soy patty, it is also a symbolic threat to the right-wing ideological order, a symbolic stand-in for the left-wing "villain of the week."

 

Food, politics and culture

While costs vary, products made by the plant-based meat industry can cost two to three times more than animal-based meats.

People who are higher income, younger and live in the suburbs are most likely to have tried plant-based meat substitutes, Gallup polling shows. A rural Mississippi corner store probably won't sell Impossible sausages, but an urban California Whole Foods probably will.

In some cases, conservatives have attached even more meaning to plant-based meat substitutes. Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, for example, produced a documentary in 2022 featuring the Raw Egg Nationalist, a prominent far-right influencer, who said that Impossible, Beyond and other plant-based companies are part of a "soy globalist" conspiracy to criminalize meat consumption and weaken citizens through poisoned food. The Raw Egg Nationalist also wrote in 2022 that plant-based meat substitutes and eggs are "perverted" products pushed by elites to bring civilization to "the brink of madness."

Food's political symbolism is not new. Depicting East Asian men as "effeminate rice eaters" was used as a justification for European colonial rule in Asia in the 1800s and for later stoking anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. And during the Iraq War in the mid-2000s, some U.S. restaurants renamed french fries as "freedom fries" to protest France's refusal to join the war.

More recently, some people have derisively called men who consume soy-based proteins "soy boys." In response to calls for meat reduction, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst has proposed banning the trend of Meatless Mondays to combat "the Left's War on Meat."

Impossible's appeal to the political right likely won't be solved with a quick repackage. That's because their issue is related to a deep-seated conspiratorial ideology embraced by some people in far-right political circles.

Sure, some studies in consumer psychology suggest that brand color impacts consumer preferences. For plant-based meats in particular, consumers' perceptions of the product's eco-friendliness and tastiness is somewhat affected by packaging color – in this case, typically green. A color shift may "nudge" a wayward carnivore to take a taste of an Impossible brat, but that's a bandage, not a solution.

 

You are what you eat

The symbolic connection between consuming the "right" foods and U.S. political identity is strong.

During the 2012 election, political analyst Dave Wasserman argued that who controls the Senate would come down to Cracker Barrel diners, who tend to favor options like chicken and dumplings, country fried steak and meatloaf, versus Whole Foods shoppers.

He correctly noted that electoral districts that are also home to a Whole Foods were more likely to vote "blue," while districts with Cracker Barrels were more likely to vote "red." Ten years later, in the summer of 2022, social media went wild when Cracker Barrel offered an Impossible sausage patty on its menu.

Some people then posted on Cracker Barrel's Facebook page, lambasting the restaurant chain. As one person wrote, "We don't eat in an old country store for woke burgers."

Plant-based meat substitutes are often used by conservative commentators as a symbolic stand-in for "Big Government" and are seen as a threat to individual liberty.

At the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz declared his wish "to see PETA supporting the Republican Party now that the Democrats want to kill all the cows." At a 2020 rally in Des Moines, Iowa, then-President Donald Trump cast the anti-meat conspiracy in even more nefarious and illogical terms, saying that "they want to kill our cows! You know why, right? … That means you're next."

In 2021, a survey found that 44% of Republicans actively believe that there is a "movement in the U.S. to ban red meat."

 

A larger conspiracy

These fears overlap with the populist right-wing conspiracy theory of "The Great Reset," meaning the belief that wealthy "elites" are weakening citizens – particularly white men – to subject them to tyrannical control and subjugation.

A 2023 article in The American Conservative argued that Impossible was at the forefront of a "collective vegan madness that has seized our media and political classes … not to convince people but to compel them." In the online backlash to Cracker Barrel's new Impossible sausage item, some commentators similarly suggested that Cracker Barrel's "5G sausages" were controlled by Bill Gates.

Psychology and gender scholarship has found that "traditional" forms of masculinity associated with right-wing ideologies correlate with high meat consumption. Right-wing males consume red meats at higher volumes and with greater frequency than other demographics.

As communication scholars, we're confident that what Impossible can't do is repackage in a way that will attract right-wing carnivores. The Meat Culture Wars won't end because of red wrappers or meaty descriptors. They'll only end when, collectively, other items become perceived as an identity threat and globalist conspiracy and people forget about fake meat.

S. Marek Muller, Assistant Professor: Communication Studies, Texas State University and David Rooney, Doctoral candidate, The University of Texas at Austin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

From truck to table: Soft serve takes a luxurious, fine dining turn

Soft serve is in. It never wasn't, per se, but it is really in now — especially in high-end restaurant dining rooms.

The dichotomous nature of high brow-low brow fare in food has become very en vogue in recent years, from hot dogs in fine dining to caviar paired with Pringles.

The newest entrant into this extravaganza is soft serve, often linked to summer memories, sticky finger and ice cream cones, and fine dining — which is sometimes dismissed as highfalutin, nose-in-the-air or stuffy. The melding of these two disparate concepts is now being seen across the country, with soft serve's ephemeral nature, sweet taste and familiar nostalgia offering a new, fresh juxtaposition at the end of a meal.

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For instance, at Ruse in St. Michael, MD, executive chef Michael Correll is serving Matcha green tea soft serve with Oreo crumbs and raspberry. At Joy, also in Maryland, executive pastry chef Genesis Flores has put ube soft serve on the menu, coupled with salted peanut caramel, lemon-ginger syrup, honeycomb toffee, bee pollen and wae pieces. Over at Nama Ko, dessert is a miso-honey black truffle soft serve with dark chocolate toffee crunch, drizzled with both chocolate and caramel sauces.

For those (unfortunately) unfamiliar with soft serve, though, let’s take a look at its origins.

While many have named various figures and peoples as the “inventor” of soft serve ice cream, it seems as though the title truly belongs to Carvel — a family favorite local ice cream shop that I’ve been frequently visiting for over twenty years, never once realizing its legendary lore in soft serve circles.

Rumor has it that soft serve was created in a feat of happenstance — as all the best things are.

"When the tire of Tom Carvel’s ice cream truck went flat in Hartsdale in the summer of 1934, the sun was no friend," writes Dan Robbins in Westchester Magazine, adding "Carvel rushed to a nearby pottery shop to borrow electricity and save his stock. But passersby loved the melting custard, which he would later call 'soft-serve.' The truck stayed in the lot for the rest of the season, and Carvel netted $3,500 that summer (more than $60,000 in today’s dollar)." And the rest is history! (the official website also includes a variation of this story)

Of course, the modern soft serve operation as we know it today — swirling and swirling endlessly from machines with drop-down bars, akin to the way frozen yogurt dispenses — is a slightly different animal altogether, but for all intents and purposes, Carvel is the rightful owner to the claim. (It should also be noted, though, that History writes that Dairy Queen also has a similar claim.)

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Also, it should be noted that this isn't a brand new fad. Back in 2017, Monica Burton at Eater published "Why is soft serve on so many restaurant menus?" Last summer, Amber Gibson wrote "Soft Serve, Once a childhood treat, is now on sit-down restaurant menus" in Hemisphere Magazine. Gibson writes, "Forget chocolate and vanilla swirls and rainbow sprinkles; this summer, nostalgia-inspiring soft serve is going from Mister Softee to Michelin stars," specifically noting such ingredients as miso, edible gold leaf, tahini, oat milk, hazelnuts, halva floss, pistachio, buffalo milk, doenjang, toasted soybean powder, and chamoy. 

There’s no shortage to the ingredients that could be incorporated into these fine dining soft serves — we’ve clearly moved far beyond the simple dichotomy vanilla and chocolate here.

Last June, Charlotte Druckman wrote in Town and Country that the 'credit' for gourmet soft serve flavors should actually go to Christina Tosi, Milk Bar icon, since her 2008 introduction of cereal milk-flavored soft serve. Tosi said that soft serve is "operationally a light lift" and "Emotionally and creatively a nostalgic delight with infinite flavor possibility.” Druckman mentions some other wonderfully inventive flavors throughout the country, including matcha, maple, banana foster, fig leaf, egg tart and Thai iced tea.

As Max Falkowitz writes in Serious Eats, "But the soft serve machine didn't reach its peak until the '50s and '60s, when new technologies allowed for better aeration and churning of liquid bases." Falkowitz also adds that the "low-butter fat base" is "kept continually cool, then rapidly mixed with air to form a light foam right at the point of service," which is in line with Tosi's point that there's an inherent 'freshness' to soft serve — it's ostensibly mixed, fresh, in the machine, right as you order it.

Falkowitz finishes by writing "the best soft serve isn't completely loaded with air, so it feels dense on the tongue and melts slowly on your cone."

Now, though, the idea of soft serve as a fun lil’ treat to enjoy on a hot day has expanded into fine dining restaurants galore. I'm a sucker for tahini, brown butter, labneh and miso in any context, so I'm quite optimistic about many of these terrific-sounding options. 

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Correll adds "We use soft serve in two of our desserts. We currently run a cheesecake soft serve with toasted milk crumble and strawberry preserve. Come summer we will run the watermelon sorbet with chocolate pearls and mint." He also notes that Ruse uses Taylor machines, "the same ones used in McDonald’s", adding "yes, they break down often, too."

He credits the nostalgia of summertime and boardwalks and how his soft serve is a "high end product, but in a fun and playful manner." He also mentions Sip & Guzzle in New York City as a forward-looking soft serve option, where they serve "hokkaido milk soft serve with Japanese strawberries which is as luxury as luxury gets with ice cream."

Correll says that the first flavors added to the Ruse menu were labneh soft serve with pomegranate molasses and sesame brittle, followed by a matcha green tea with raspberry sauce and toasted milk crumble. He remarks on the fact that the labneh specifically was a neutral base that "wouldn't be too sweet and [would] be able to be a canvas for the garnish." He adds that "people love nostalgic foods and soft serve is one that most people can relate with."

Flores told me that she wants soft serve to be "the protagonist — to take advantage of the texture that the soft serve provides me and play with other textures to create a sensory experience." Flores also notes that the inspiration for the purple sweet potato flavor is due to the "famous ceviche at our sister restaurant," and also references a new guava prickly pear flavor, which is a "nice dairy free option for our customers."

Chef Alex Levin, Director of Strategic Business and Pastry Programs at Schlow Restaurant Group, which represents Nama Ko, told me that "soft serve is the conduit for most decadent ice cream sundaes," also mentioning how savory flavors — like miso or salted caramel — can elevate an experience and highlight the "fun factor" in a dessert.

"Soft serve is a home run for that," he said. 

Speaking to the oft aforementioned nostalgia, chef Michael Connell of Ruse also said that "one of my favorite desserts growing up was the watermelon roll from Friendly’s, my favorite restaurant growing up. My mom always bought them whenever we had birthday parties." He then capitalized on this, reinventing those familiar flavors at Ruse with a watermelon sorbet with lime curd and crunchy chocolate pearls.

"It's something that a lot of people try and go 'this reminds me of something I've had before.' As soon [as] they hear the story, it always brings a smile to their face!"

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A rare risk of asteroid fastballs turns scientists into sluggers

On a fall evening in 2022, scientists at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory were busy with the final stages of a planetary defense mission. As Andy Rivkin, one of the team leaders, was getting ready to appear in NASA’s live broadcast of the experiment, a colleague posted a photo of a pair of asteroids: the half-mile-wide Didymos and, orbiting around it, a smaller one called Dimorphos, taken about 7 million miles from Earth.

“We were able to see Didymos and this little dot in the right spot where we expected Dimorphos to be,” Rivkin recalled.

After the interview, Rivkin joined a crowd of scientists and guests to watch the mission’s finale on several big screens: As part of an asteroid deflection mission called DART, a spacecraft was closing in on Dimorphos and photographing its rocky surface in increasing detail.

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Then, at 7:14 p.m., a roughly 1,300-pound spacecraft slammed head-on into the asteroid.

Within a few minutes, members of the mission team in Kenya and South Africa posted images from their telescopes, showing a bright plume of debris.

In the days that followed, researchers continued to observe the dust cloud and discovered it had morphed into a variety of shapes, including clumps, spirals, and two comet-like tails. They also calculated that the impact slowed Dimorphos’ orbit by about a tenth of an inch per second, proof-of-concept that a spacecraft — also called a kinetic impactor — could target and deflect an asteroid far from Earth.

https://youtu.be/N-OvnVdZP_8?si=zKN8wAsn9INnefeG

The final five-and-a-half minutes of images from the DART spacecraft as it approached and then intentionally collided with asteroid Dimorphos. The video is 10 times faster than reality, except for the last six images. Visual: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/YouTube

Ron Ballouz, a planetary scientist at the lab commented that what is often seen in the movies is a “sort of last-ditch-effort, what we like to call a final-stage of planetary defense.” But if hazardous objects can be detected years in advance, other techniques like a kinetic impactor can be used, he added.

If a deflection were necessary, scientists would need to change the speed of a hazardous object, such as an asteroid or comet, enough that it doesn’t end up at the same place and time as Earth as they orbit the sun. Rivkin said this translates into at least a seven-minute change in the arrival time: If a Dimorphos-sized object were predicted to collide with Earth 67 years from now, for instance, the slow-down that DART imparted would be just enough to add up to the seven minutes, he added.

With less lead time, researchers could use a combination of multiple deflections, larger spacecrafts, or boosts in speed, depending on the hazardous object. “DART was designed to validate a technique and specific situations would inevitably require adapting things,” said Rivkin.

Researchers use data from DART and smaller-scale experiments to predict the amount of deflection using computer simulations.

What is often seen in the movies is a “sort of last-ditch-effort, what we like to call a final-stage of planetary defense.”

Scientists are also focusing on the type of asteroid that Dimorphos appears to be: a “rubble pile,” as they call it, because objects of this kind are thought to be made of clumps of many rocks.

In fact, scientists think that most asteroids the size of Dimorphos and larger are rubble piles. As scientists continue to learn more about rubble piles, they will be able to make better predictions about deflecting asteroids or comets. And in 2026, a new mission will arrive at Didymos and Dimorphos to collect more data to fine-tune the computer models.

In the meantime, researchers are trying to learn as much as possible in the unwelcome case an asteroid or comet is discovered to be a threat to Earth and a more rapid response is necessary.

Scientists first suspected that many asteroids are rubble piles about 50 years ago. Their models showed that when larger asteroids smashed into one another, the collisions could throw off fragments that would then reassemble to form new objects.

It wasn’t until 2005, though, that scientists saw their first rubble pile: asteroid Itokawa, when a spacecraft visited it and photographed it. Then, in 2018, they saw another called Ryugu, and later that year, one more, asteroid Bennu. DART’s camera also showed Didymos and Dimorphos are likely of the same variety.

“It’s one thing to talk about rubble piles, but another to see what looks like a bunch of rocks dumped off a truck up close,” said William Bottke, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

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Scientists suspect that rubble piles have large amounts of empty space between their rocks. They believe these piles are bound together with very weak forces and mostly gravity, meaning they could break apart more easily than an asteroid that is a single boulder. This was evident with Dimorphos, as DART excavated over estimated ten thousand tons of material. The plume of debris, in turn, acted like a rocket thruster, providing an extra push in the opposite direction, slowing the asteroid. So, although the asteroid’s void spaces may have absorbed some of the DART impact, the blast of debris increased the amount of deflection, with estimates ranging between about two and five times as much as the push by the spacecraft alone.

Sabina Raducan, a planetary scientist at the University of Bern in Switzerland, cautioned, though, that care must be taken if kinetic impactors ever need to be used on smaller rubble piles.

Raducan and her team used a computer model to apply the results of the DART impact on a variety of rubble piles — the first time such research has been done. The results, which were published in The Planetary Science Journal, show that a DART-sized spacecraft impacting at the speed it did, about 3.7 miles per second, could break a rubble pile less than 80 meters in diameter into many pieces. Some of the boulders, in turn, could end up impacting Earth, potentially causing injuries and damage.

Raducan wrote in a follow-up email that despite the success of DART, a similar scenario may not always be optimal for all asteroids.

Instead, she added, the size or speed of a spacecraft may need to be adjusted for a successful deflection.

“It’s one thing to talk about rubble piles, but another to see what looks like a bunch of rocks dumped off a truck up close.”

The possible breakup of materials could also relate to comets. These objects are similar to asteroids, except they contain ices such as water or carbon dioxide. When comets pass close to the sun, these materials turn into gases, which can act like a rocket booster and push the comet faster. Hence, if researchers aim to knock a comet off of a crash course with Earth, they’d have to consider the possibility that ices could be exposed or buried, which could change its speed and possibly require further deflections.

Rivkin said that comet collisions with Earth are relatively rare compared to asteroids, but there are “definitely a lot of extra things to keep track of.”

Also complicating matters: Some objects that are classified as asteroids could also contain buried ices.

“Things get very murky, though,” said Bottke. “We have seen asteroids develop tails,” similar to those found in comets.

Scientists are eagerly waiting for late 2026, when a spacecraft called Hera, as part of a planetary defense mission led by the European Space Agency, in collaboration with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, is scheduled to arrive at the Didymos system. There, it will deploy two smaller satellites, and together they will begin to study the pair of asteroids up close. In particular, researchers are looking forward to finally being able to measure the mass of Dimorphos, which will allow them to better refine their estimate of how much of a push the spacecraft and the blast of debris imparted. Hera and satellites will also take measurements that will enable scientists to calculate the density and strength of Dimorphos which can be used in impact models.

The Hera mission will also allow scientists to see what DART did to Dimorphos. The preliminary measures suggest that the asteroid is so weak that the impact changed its shape rather than leaving behind a crater: “I really want to see the outcome,” said Raducan. “Is it a crater or not?”

The blast or tsunami from the impact of an asteroid like Bennu would be capable of causing fatalities and damage on regional or continental scales.

A new shape, in turn, may have altered Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos. Hera will allow scientists to check, which will help them better understand the response of kinetic impacts on asteroids that have one or more moons. Currently, about 16 percent of near-Earth asteroids larger than about 650 feet in diameter are estimated to be binaries, or systems of two. Earth is thought to have received a double hit 458 million years ago that left behind the Lockne and Målingen craters in Sweden.

Hera and its satellites will also collect measurements of the material properties of Didymos, which will also help advance scientists’ knowledge of rubble piles and deflections. Rivkin said that they only got a quick view of Didymos as DART sped past it.

In the meantime, researchers are busy analyzing samples of the surface of asteroid Bennu that a NASA spacecraft called OSIRIS-REx returned to Earth in the fall of 2023. The results will help researchers understand the asteroid’s material properties better. The approximately 1,600-foot-wide Bennu is the most potentially hazardous object known (as of May 14, 2024), with a 0.037 percent chance of impacting Earth on September 24, 2182.

Ballouz noted the blast or tsunami from such an impact would be capable of causing fatalities and damage on regional or continental scales. He added that should Bennu remain a hazard and if deflections are deemed necessary, it’d require multiple kinetic impacts due to its large size. The observations and measurements from when OSIRIS-REx observed Bennu up-close, which took place up to 2021, along with the results of the sample returns, would be invaluable for planning kinetic impactor missions to the asteroid, if necessary. Additional spacecraft missions to re-study the asteroid or even collect more samples could also be organized, to help inform impact models even more.

It’s never good news to hear of discoveries of potential threats to Earth, but knowing in advance of the possibility at least allows scientists to take action, unlike with some natural hazards that happen without warning.

“It’s important for people to be aware that impacts have affected Earth in the past and there is this possibility in the future,” said Ballouz. “There should also be a general awareness that there are people who are studying this aspect of how we interact with space.”

Theo Nicitopoulos is a freelance writer who covers Earth and space science.  His work has appeared in Scientific American, Wired, Discover, Astronomy magazine, among others.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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“Big gamble”: Experts say Jack Smith’s last resort may be to try to get Judge Cannon kicked off case

When has Donald Trump ever had kind words for a judge overseeing a case against him? It’s not a rhetorical question, but one with an answer: when that judge is someone he picked himself.

In Manhattan, where the former president’s hush money trial is underway, Trump has asserted that Judge Juan Merchan is “TOTALLY COMPROMISED, CONFLICTED, AND CORRUPT.” In Florida, where Trump’s classified documents case is totally stalled, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, his appointee, is “very smart and very strong and loves our country.”

Cannon, indeed, has been everything Trump could ever want in a judge. The Republican candidate’s strategy in all his criminal cases has been to delay the proceedings and then delay them some more, hoping to run out the clock until some future MAGA attorney general can throw them out.

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In only one case – Cannon’s – has the judge been so transparently willing to play along, recently deciding to throw out the May 20 trial date she set, after being randomly assigned the case last June, and electing instead to hold what The New York Times described as an “unusual” set of hearings on a Trump defense team argument: that prosecutors must have worked with the White House before they charged the defendant and should thus have to hand over those communications as part of discovery.

The decision to scrap the trial date has dashed hopes that Trump’s alleged mishandling of national security secrets will go before jurors anytime soon, much less before the November election. But special counsel Jack Smith does have one option, which he already hinted at deploying in an April legal filing, back when Cannon wanted to instruct prospective jurors that maybe Trump had a legal right to take any classified documents he pleased: a “writ of mandamus.”

“If I were working on this, I would file a writ of mandamus ASAP,” defense lawyer Glenn Danas, a partner at the Clarkson Law Firm, told Slate.

In something more approximating plain English: Smith could ask Cannon’s de facto bosses at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, who have already thrown out her decisions before, to remove her from the case altogether. The argument for this is that Cannon has already shown herself to be biased and that this has manifested itself in rulings that clearly defy the law.

“It seems like she’s going out of her way to afford the defendants an extraordinary amount of time and her own judicial resources to get every single thing that they want done in a way that seems unusual,” Danas said.

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He’s not alone in thinking Cannon has taken a relatively simple case – we know Trump had classified documents, including information on battle plans and nuclear programs, and we know the FBI had to go and get them back – and made it seem more complicated than it is, justifying repeated delays.

But a writ of mandamus is a last resort, when a prosecutor believes and can demonstrate that their case has been effectively destroyed by a judge clearly violating the law. And the consensus last month, when Cannon pulled back from issuing legally flawed jury instructions, was that she had done just enough to prevent an appeals court from firing her.

As The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin noted, the bar for a writ of mandamus “is exceptionally high,” requiring that prosecutors show they have no alternative and a “clear and indisputable right to the requested relief,” which in her view “makes this a long shot.”

Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, agrees.

“Mandamus is a way to get appellate review in extreme cases where appeal is not possible but the trial judge's decision is clearly wrong,” Gillers commented. “Mandamus would be a big gamble here and almost certainly lose."

Indeed, that’s Danas’ view too. But his argument is that, by explicitly demanding a trial before November, and suggesting that he might file a writ if denied, the special counsel can pressure Cannon to move at a quicker pace. What, at this point, does he have to lose?

“Perhaps it’s better just to be forthright about it and say, ‘I’m a special prosecutor and I don’t necessarily have a political dog in the fight, but I think it’s important for the country’s functioning to get these things done in an average way,” Danas said, “if not on a fast track, then at least on a normal track.’”

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Jurors were “nodding” and “smiling” as Michael Cohen testified, which may be a bad sign for Trump

Michael Cohen, the star witness in Donald Trump's hush money case, appears to have made an impact on some members of the jury, according to CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen. Eisen, an attorney who has been attending trial proceedings, observed "six jurors who were nodding or smiling, or agreeing with Cohen at one point in his testimony."

Cohen's testimony, considered a key part of the prosecution's case, could persuade jurors that Trump was directly connected to the falsified business records used to cover up the money he paid for the silence of Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress he allegedly had sex with. And while he was expected to fall easy prey to cross-examination by Todd Blanche, a seasoned lawyer on Trump's defense team, Cohen appears to have exceed the low expectations.

Prosecutors "very skillfully played the expectation game throughout the trial," said Eisen, comparing the dynamics to that of a presidential debate. "They elicited criticism of Cohen from every witness. The jury is the ultimate audience for the expectation, and they surpassed the jury and the judge's expectations."

The testimony's effectiveness might have also been helped by a subpar performance from Blanche, who tried to pin Trump's former fixer as a man driven by financial profit and petty grudges but instead came across as meandering and off-topic. Cohen, who spent three years in a federal prison after he pleaded guilty to his involvement in the same hush money scheme at the heart of the Manhattan trial, simply acknowledged questions about whether or not he said or posted certain things about Trump with "that sounds like something I would say."

Several jurors reportedly found such exchanges amusing, which may be a bad omen for Trump.

"You could see the judge berating Blanche," said Eisen. "And then he ordered the questions struck from the record, and the jury did hear that."

Biden vs. Trump debate: A battle between appearance and reality

To beguile the time

Look like the time

– William Shakespeare

We are the living embodiment of Shakespeare’s Macbeth still wrestling with the old conundrum of appearance versus reality. Our difficulty understanding the difference between the two means President Joe Biden’s election problems are becoming acute. 

It is early still, but at the end of the day, there are many a pundit who believe Joe Biden is either the reincarnation of Hubert Humphrey, who didn’t distance himself from Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam policy quickly enough and lost both the youth vote and the 1968 election to the criminal Richard M. Nixon, or he is living a parallel life to former President Jimmy Carter, who lost to the equally venomous Ronald Reagan. Either way, if Donald Trump sweeps back into town and institutes his “Burn it all down strategy,” there is ample talk inside the Beltway from Democrats, attorneys, politicians, reporters and anyone else on Trump’s enemy list of fleeing town before the modern day Macbeth returns. “Now does he feel his title/ Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe/ upon a dwarfish thief.”

People are not getting Biden’s message. That’s his fault. 

Biden’s problems, much like Trump’s, are of his own making. Less than three months into the administration it was easy to discern that Biden simply wasn’t going to communicate with the press or anyone else in public except under his very specific and controlled terms. Three years ago I and a few others were writing about Biden’s unwillingness to step forward and talk to the electorate. Others scoffed at that observation, though many are singing Macbeth’s song of the witches now regarding that very real problem. The idea often espoused, either subtly or bluntly, at the time by most pundits was that we should all be grateful for whatever Biden did because, after all, he wasn’t Trump. The appearance we were preached was a return to normalcy. The reality is far different: Donald Trump has severely lowered the bar and the Democrats are having trouble crawling over it.

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Because Biden has severely limited his public interaction, Donald Trump’s narratives have taken over. They’ve cast Biden as the crook. They’ve cast Biden as a doddering fool who hasn’t accomplished anything as president. There are Trump supporters who firmly believe that Biden is both energetically and sleepily leading us to ruin and that “Sleepy Joe," “Genocide Joe” or “Communist Authoritarian Joe” will probably bow out of the race at the convention because of his evil dementia and Michelle Obama will step in and become the Democratic candidate for president. “Just another reason we need Trump,” the supporters say to this fictional narrative.

Meanwhile, Trump is on trial in Manhattan, and it appears no one who already supports him seems to care. House Speaker Mike Johnson is just one of Trump’s many surrogates who are still willing to bow before the modern Macbeth by showing up at Trump’s felony trial and telling the press that it appears to be a sham. The reality is Trump can’t run the risk of violating his gag order and now has brought his minions on stage to take up his cause. In addition, the trial is no sham – Trump is really on trial for alleged felonious acts revolving around the payoff of an adult film star. Should Trump be found guilty, the reality is Johnson will be among the first to distance himself from a convicted felon. He has his own interests to worry about. 

There are additional appearance vs. reality problems to consider this year. Months before either the Democrats or the MAGA party assembles to pick its prospective candidate, the presidential race is already center stage. You can laugh at it, hate it, or love it, but before the end of next month Trump and Biden will apparently show up in Atlanta at the CNN studios for their first debate — and we haven’t even had either party’s nominating convention yet. 

The appearance of the two (and maybe Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent candidate) on stage so early in the election season promises to heighten the folly of the ringside pundits who, incapable of cogent in-depth analysis, will again treat us to a labyrinth of comparisons to horse races, baseball games and professional wrestling matches. 

The latest doomsday predictions for Biden revolve around recent surveys by The New York Times, Siena College and The Philadelphia Inquirer that showed Trump ahead of Biden among registered voters in five of the six states that pundits also say are likely to determine the 2024 election: Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania. Wisconsin is the only battleground state where Biden is currently leading.

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The question is why does it appear so bleak for Biden when according to his staff and most Democrats he’s the working man’s dream candidate? He is, according to Roxanne Brown, vice president of the United Steelworkers Union, the “most pro-worker, pro-union president we’ve ever had.” That’s what she told us Tuesday from the Rose Garden in a quick ceremony honoring union labor with the president before he fled without taking any questions.

One need only take a quick glimpse of the Bided administration’s public interactions to understand why he appears to suffer in the polls:

  • Tuesday in the Rose Garden: He spoke but took no questions. 
  • Tuesday evening: He spoke publicly to supporters, giving a very tired and ubiquitous stump speech that was absent usable quotes on policy. Again, he took no questions.
  • Biden has never visited the White House briefing room during his tenure.
  • He’s held only two White House press conferences during his tenure — and one was during the height of COVID when few reporters were present. 
  • The travel pool had to recently seek clarity on why they were going to San Francisco when press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre held a gaggle onboard Air Force One.
  • There are numerous accounts of reporters being chased out of the upper press office by underlings trying to limit interaction between the administration and reporters.  
  • Democrats often complain that Biden doesn’t speak often enough about his own accomplishments.

On that last point, Biden has also been criticized for mentioning Donald Trump too much while on the campaign trail. As the Associated Press noted this week, Biden appears to be running for re-election on Trump’s record rather than his own.

“In a hotel ballroom in Seattle, at fancy homes in California and at stops in Illinois and Wisconsin over the past week, Biden has been betting that reminding voters about Trump’s presidency and highlighting his Republican opponent’s latest campaign statements will work to the Democrat’s advantage,” The AP reported.

While it appears that making the 2024 election a referendum on Trump — at least according to the president’s strategy — is sound reasoning, if not at least a scare tactic, the reality is not that clear. If you’re alive, cogent and capable of thought, you already know what Trump is about. He lets us know every day. One could argue that Trump doesn’t need Biden to act as his public relations agent and remind us of that reality.

What Biden does poorly is talk about things he’s done to make life better for the rest of us. The federal government fails in the simplest of ways of doing so. When I was a child, any highway improvement included large signs telling you, “Your Federal Highway Tax Dollars at work.” In the last month, after visiting 15 states where the $1 trillion infrastructure funding means updating and expanding our federal highways, in only one state did I see a sign reminding us of that: California.

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Biden’s administration passed an infrastructure bill when Trump’s could not. The Biden administration also brought us cheaper prescription medication, student loan debt forgiveness and, with the CHIPS Act, a re-emphasis on technology. It has also helped rebuild manufacturing. We avoided a recession coming out of COVID and the economy is strong. 

But the appearance is that inflation (prompted by price gouging and record corporate profits) is overwhelming us and Biden hasn’t done anything about it. He certainly hasn’t got a handle on how to answer a question about inflation.

That is Biden’s fault, and it is exacerbated by the fact that Trump is masterful at selling you the appearance that Biden is incompetent, decrepit and demented. Although Biden, the Democrats and the Republicans reached an agreement on legislation that would address illegal immigration, Trump’s minions pulled the plug on it so he could sell you the appearance that Biden is soft on the border. 

I’m not tooting Biden’s horn. His is a frustrating administration. The arrogance and ignorance of him and the people around him are very reminiscent of Jimmy Carter’s people. It isn’t enough to be a decent man in the election. The reality is that you have to sell the American voter an appearance. Ronald Reagan, the B-movie actor, knew that. People still cheer his cowboy appearance and not the reality of his “Trickle Down” economics that destroyed the middle class. People still believe he was a hero. Donald Trump, the ultimate con man, understands this even better than Reagan.

Biden can be as pious and as Christian as the Pope, and millions will fawn over Trump’s golden tennis shoes and his autographed bibles, believing the appearance that he is a Christian maverick who can solve our problems. Unless Biden gets hip to this, he’s doomed to be the next Jimmy Carter: An inherently decent man who did many good things but ultimately suffered defeat because he couldn’t grasp the concept of his appearance and hired inept clowns to represent his administration. 

People are not getting Biden’s message. That’s his fault. 

Politics today is a constant battle between appearance and reality. Donald Trump is a con artist grifter who can sell an appearance. Joe Biden is a politician who can’t sell reality. Foul is fair and fair is foul, said the witches in Macbeth. 

The reality is the first presidential debate scheduled next month could decide whether we settle for the fair or the foul this fall.

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“Trump derangement syndrome”: Hush-money trial suggests it was MAGA projection all along

"At that time I was knee-deep into the cult of Donald Trump, yes."

That was Michael Cohen's answer from a Manhattan witness stand on Tuesday when asked by Donald Trump's attorney if he was "obsessed" with his boss in the decade that he worked for the criminal defendant. The lawyer, Todd Blanche, was trying to discredit Cohen by painting him as something like a jilted lover, a man who once worshipped Trump but, ever since going to prison for crimes committed at Trump's behest, now holds an epic grudge. 

If the goal here is to make Trump critics seem "deranged," it's backfiring spectacularly. 

Much of what Cohen does with his time these days is indeed cringeworthy. Since being released from prison, Cohen has tried to rebrand himself as a #Resistance hero, unleashing a torresnt of anti-Trump content and trying to get on cable news as much as possible. But while his current behavior is not exactly classy, as his testimony in the campaign finance fraud trial shows, it pales in comparison to the heights of self-humiliation he performed daily while still in Trump's thrall.

Back then, as Cohen detailed, there was no demand too outrageous from Trump that Cohen wouldn't try to fill. Cohen has carefully detailed not just the astounding number of lies he told or corrupt actions he took for Trump — much of it to cover up Trump's extensive history of violence towards women — but also why he did it. Trump made him feel "on top of the world." He enjoyed being a "fixer," which seemed a lot more daring and romantic than being a boring old lawyer. It felt like a montage from the first half of a Martin Scorsese film, in which we see the gangsters reveling in both their wealth and their legal impunity. Before, of course, the inevitable crash and burn when the law finally catches up to them. If Cohen seems a little nuts now, it's a legible reaction to having spent years in an alternative reality created inside Trump's orbit. 

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What Blanche was trying was a variation of the "Trump derangement syndrome" defense. Anyone who has been poltiical on social media has likely been subject to it: Some member of the MAGA tribe accusing a Trump critic of "TDS," short for this alleged syndrome. The insult is as self-refuting as it is popular, coming invariably from a Trump acolyte spewing unhinged and badly spelled conspiracy theories. Even the most embarrassing member of #Resistance Twitter seems even-keeled next to any random person pulled from a MAGA rally. 

This contrast has been brought into full focus during Trump's trial. The two witnesses accused of being "deranged" by Trump — Cohen and Stormy Daniels — told stories that are coherent and fit with the documentary evidence. Even their anger, which has been a focal point for Trump's defense, makes perfect sense. They're two people whose mistake was trusting Trump. He sent one to prison and subjected the other to traumatizing sex she didn't want. It would be weirder if they didn't hate him. 

Meanwhile, the entourage that Trump has finally coaxed into coming out for him — almost exclusively Republican politicians who are hoping for a payoff in debasing themselves for Trump — all act exactly like the cult member Cohen described himself as once being. One gaggle of minions even wore matching outfits, as if begging for comparisons to a cult. 

Even more embarrassing are House Republicans claiming to have "bombshell" evidence that Cohen supposedly didn't even believe Daniels. 

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This behavior does little to discredit Cohen's story. Rather it is an alarming reminder of how Trump expects his followers to debase themselves to serve him. It's unlikely that anyone believes Trump's denials that he had sex with Daniels. As former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori explained at Politico, Trump's obvious dishonesty on this front gave the prosecutors "an unmissable opportunity for them to tank the credibility of Trump’s entire legal defense." Anyone who echoes Trump's denials sounds either terminally delusional or like a mortifying bootlicker. If the goal here is to make Trump critics seem "deranged," it's backfiring spectacularly. 

As Cohen testified, there's something deeply intoxicating about how Trump makes his marks feel like they're in on the con.

Cohen's description of his time serving Trump neatly illustrated how Trump manipulates his followers, which follows the beats of your most famous cult leaders: First, find people who feel lost or mired in their own mediocrity. Second, convince them they, too, can rise above their current station by hitching their wagon to the leader. Religious cults promise spiritual transcendence, whereas Trump mostly just promises he'll teach his minions to cheat the system as he has.

Either way, the allure is in the hope of finding some secret pathway towards being superior to other people, all without having to actually put in the work of being good at your chosen vocation. Zooming out to the ordinary MAGA voter, we see Trump working the same manipulative magic over people. Trump makes them feel they can stick it to those smarty-pants liberals who they imagine are laughing at them, and all without having to put in the work of learning stuff and knowing things. 

As Cohen testified, there's something deeply intoxicating about how Trump makes his marks feel like they're in on the con. He convinces not just the people around him, but millions of voters that, by sticking with him, they, too, can enjoy the impunity he has long enjoyed. As often happens to victims of con artists, they refuse to admit they're being taken for a ride. Instead, they lash out at the skeptics, insisting that people outside the in-group are those with a problem. Critics of the Church of Scientology are labeled "suppressive persons," for instance. Followers are told that people on the outside are dangerous and delusional, and members should shun them rather than give any credence to their concerns. 

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For MAGA, the term "Trump derangement syndrome" works like "suppressive person" does for Scientology. The Trump follower cannot defend their leader on the merits, since he is the worst in every possible way. So instead, they engage in a blunt form of psychological projection, accusing people who dislike Trump of being "obsessed" and "deranged." They speak as if he's just some random dude his critics have a fixation on, instead of admitting it's legitimate to be worried that a dangerous demagogue is perilously close to being the most powerful person in the world. Or that the people with an unhealthy obsession are those who cling to Trump like a barnacle, making daily excuses for his misogyny, his fascism, his babbling incoherence, and his staggering number of criminal indictments. 

Cohen's self-description as a recovering cult member resonates, right down to his continued erratic behavior. One reason it's hard for people to leave cults is that the underlying issues that led them to join in the first place haven't been resolved. Indeed, under constant brutalization at the hands of the leader, their self-esteem often degrades further. Another reason is that the cult becomes the defining force in the lives of followers, so much so that it's hard for them to imagine what life would be like without it. It's not uncommon for people who leave cults to feel lost. They often fall into other cults or engage in irrational and self-destructive behavior. This is more evidence that cults themselves are dangerous, and it's not "deranged" to take their impact on followers seriously. 

There's no way to know what a jury will make of all this, especially as Cohen isn't done testifying as of this writing. But, from a political perspective, the whole situation has illuminated the veneer of desperate self-delusion behind every "TDS" accusation made towards those who are sensible enough to loathe Trump. Insofar as Cohen has been "deranged" by his association with Trump, it happened when he was in thrall to the man, committing crimes and telling lies on Trump's behalf. Everything since has been fallout from that initial poor decision to ever link his fate to Trump. It's a lesson other MAGA people should learn, but are too proud to accept. 

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Trump the crime boss summons his mob to court

Looking reminiscent of John Gotti’s underboss, Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, turning state’s evidence against “The Dapper Don” and taking down  boss of the Gambino crime family in New York City in 1992 is Donald Trump’s “fixer,” Michael Cohen, flipping on another so-called Teflon Don.

Hopefully, Cohen will be as successful in taking down the most powerful criminal to ever occupy the White House as Gravano was in taking down Gotti, the most powerful mafioso in U.S. history.    

All of this gangster-like exhibitionism foreshadows what things will look like should the first authoritarian armed with an oligarchy of power and a crew of minions retake the Oval Office in 2025.

Putting aside the differences in Gotti and Trump’s criminality, such as the former’s convictions for five murders, conspiracy to commit murder, illegal gambling, and loansharking or the latter’s indictments for espionage, a failed insurrection or coup d’état, and conspiracies to interfere in presidential elections, the two men have much more in common than the former president and President Richard Nixon ever did. I am referring to the fact that both Gotti back in his day and Trump today share in common the crimes of racketeering, obstruction of justice, tax evasion, and extortion. For comparative purposes, unlike Nixon who could honestly claim that he wasn’t a crook, neither Gotti nor Trump can claim they were not crooks.

At the same time, neither Gotti nor Nixon were ever as powerful as Trump. It is not even close. Trump wins by a landslide. And neither Gotti nor Nixon ever posed any threat to American democracy and the rule of law.

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Nothing showcases this threat any more than when Trump’s crime family, including House Speaker Mike Johnson,R-LA, and other Republican congresspeople as well as GOP state attorneys generals, showed up both inside the Manhattan courtroom and outside the courthouse during Cohen’s testimony.

Inside the courtroom, Johnson and the other GOP hacks sat directly behind defendant Trump. The whole time they were staring down the former loyalist turned stoolpigeon as he testified. They were also sending “evil eyes” to the jurors as they were transfixed watching and listening to the back-and-forth between Cohen and the lawyers for the prosecution and the defense. 

Outside the courthouse, these high-ranking Republican officials and House Speaker Johnson were blasting the proceedings as a sham and attacking Judge Merchant’s daughter in violation of Trump’s gag order. Not only were they ignoring their own election interference and coverup of January 6, but they were also in addition to the Manhattan trial, casting aspersions on Trump’s three other criminal indictments. As Speaker Johnson stated, “These are politically motivated trials and they are a disgrace. It is election interference.” 

None of this would ever be something that the liar-in-chief could ever say in a court of law because the rule of thumb is that guilty people like Trump never take the stand in their own defense.

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Moreover, Trump’s surrogates or sycophants alike have gone much further than any organized gang of mobsters would ever dare to go to intimidate witnesses and jurors or to interfere with the administration of justice on behalf of their racketeering boss. Primarily, because they would be locked up for doing so just as Trump would be locked up for contempt of court regarding his numerous violations of gag orders if he were any other crime boss.

Not only were Trump’s defenders demonstrating their loyalty and allegiance to the boss, some of them were also using the stage outside the courthouse to audition to become the presumed 2024 presidential nominee’s vice-presidential running mate. In any case, they were all looking, sounding, and appearing very gangster-like.

Although the meaning and the consequences of these actions are deadly serious, their televised performance was truly a public spectacle to laugh at as they were all making complete fools of themselves.

At the same time, their public display both inside and outside of the Manhattan courthouse announced and demonstrated for all the world that Trump and his political knaves have been running a protection racket against accountability, the rule of law, and the administration of justice for the past four years.

And most recently, with a little help from the Trumpian majority on the Supreme Court and a corrupt federal judge in Florida, they have been very successful at obstructing justice and protecting Boss Trump. 

Overall, these political performances and previous actions by Trump’s minions represent a full court press on our legal system and balance of powers. While attempting to obstruct and weaponize justice in every way possible from their seats, especially in the House, they are also doing their best to delegitimize the criminalization of Boss Trump. In doing so, they have been mirroring both the behavior of Trump while he was POTUS and of his corruptible Attorney General Bill Barr.

All of this gangster-like exhibitionism foreshadows what things will look like should the first authoritarian armed with an oligarchy of power and a crew of minions retake the Oval Office in 2025.

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There’s a simple solution to the doctor shortage

"Our next available appointment is in February of next year."

Sadly, this is a common refrain in doctors' offices today. How many times have you tried to schedule a follow-up or a yearly physical, only to be given an absurd timeline? Meanwhile, many patients who move to a new geographic area can't find a doctor at all.

That's because we're in the midst of a nationwide physician shortage. The average wait time for a doctor's appointment in cities is 26 days. Rural residents have it worse. Their communities make up nearly two-thirds of all areas in the country with shortages of primary care providers.

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Yet getting treated doesn't need to be this difficult. We may have a limited number of doctors, but there's another source of high-quality, professional care. Our hospitals and healthcare providers need to rely more on physician assistants — who at the moment, are often barred from working at the level for which they're trained. That needs to change.

Physician assistants are licensed medical professionals who handle some routine duties that would otherwise require doctors' time. Their ranks are increasing: in the past decade, the number of board-certified physician assistants grew by more than 75%.

Our hospitals and healthcare providers need to rely more on physician assistants — who at the moment, are often barred from working at the level for which they're trained.

As an emergency room doctor for more than 20 years, I witnessed their rising presence. I experienced, firsthand, how incredibly useful and even crucial physician assistants can be; they handled duties like suturing and treating minor injuries, freeing me up to focus on more complex cases.

In primary care practices, physician assistants order and interpret lab tests, prescribe medicine, and diagnose illnesses. In specialized settings, depending on their training and level of experience, they carry out countless responsibilities, from closing incision sites following surgery to performing biopsies and providing palliative care to the terminally ill.

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This essential work takes some responsibility off doctors' plates and allows more patients to be treated sooner. But in many states, physician assistants aren't allowed to practice to the full extent of their training — at the "top of their license" in industry speak. That means that even a physician assistant who had performed a procedure thousands of times would be prohibited from doing so.

Unfortunately, these limits exist in large part because doctors insist on them. Groups representing physicians are fighting legal changes that would expand the duties physician assistants may perform — known as their "scope of practice."

This could result in tragedy in medically underserved areas of the country like Mississippi, where bills to expand scope of practice were defeated last year. The Magnolia state has one of the worst physician-to-patient ratios in the country, with fewer than 200 doctors per 100,000 people. The number of certified physician assistants in the state increased by nearly half between 2018 and 2022.

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Some states with similarly drastic physician shortages have taken steps to lighten the load for physicians and increase the number of patients treated. Last year, Arkansas passed legislation that enrolls physician assistants in Medicaid as "rendering providers," allowing primary care practices that serve Medicaid patients to hire physician assistants more easily.

Doctors who oppose expanding the scope of practice for other healthcare professionals say they're worried about patient safety. But physician assistants have completed two- or three-year master's degrees that include medical coursework and clinical rotations. They may have thousands of hours of experience. Moreover, a sick patient who can't see a doctor for weeks or months would surely be safer if they could see a nurse practitioner or physician assistant right away.

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The real reason some doctors oppose scope expansions seems to be financially motivated. Because of insurance company rules, practices typically see less reimbursement for work done by physician assistants. Medicare compensates work performed by nurse practitioners and physician assistants at only 85% of the amount a doctor receives. Yet doctors worried about diminishing financial returns are perceiving a scarcity that doesn't exist: there's no shortage of patients.

Neither observation nor research supports the notion that expanding scope of practice for physician assistants will hurt patients. I witnessed the transition to allowing nurse practitioners to work at the top of their license. It was a boon for patients, healthcare facilities, and overworked doctors alike. And a study performed by Health Services Research found that primary care patients who see nurse practitioners have similar health outcomes compared to patients who see physicians.

For sure, it's tough to see a doctor. But physician assistants are helping patients every day. Let’s ensure they are able to continue doing so.

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Former far-right GOPer: Billionaires using school board races to sow distrust in public education

When Courtney Gore ran for a seat on her local school board in 2021, she warned about a movement to indoctrinate children with “leftist” ideology. After 2 1/2 years on the board, Gore said she believes a much different scheme is unfolding: an effort by wealthy conservative donors to undermine public education in Texas and install a voucher system in which public money flows to private and religious schools.

Gore points to West Texas billionaires Tim Dunn and brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, who have contributed to various political action committees that have poured millions into legislative candidates who have promoted vouchers. The men also fund or serve on the boards of a host of public policy and advocacy organizations that have led the fight for vouchers in Texas.

In recent years, the largesse from Dunn and the Wilks brothers has reached local communities across Texas, including Granbury, near Fort Worth, where fights over library books, curriculum and vouchers have dominated the community conversation.

Gore said that she believes school board candidates are being recruited, at times without their full knowledge, in an effort “to cause as much disruption and chaos as possible” and weaken community faith in local school districts.

In 2021, two local men — former state representative Mike Lang and political consultant Nate Criswell — asked Gore to run for school board. At the time, the three were co-hosts of a web-based talk show that targeted local officials they believed were insufficiently conservative and were straying from GOP platform positions. They took frequent aim at the Granbury school district, which they alleged was allowing explicit sexual content into school libraries and teaching divisive ideas about race.

Gore broke from the group shortly after taking office in January 2022, when she concluded that the materials she had warned about on the campaign trail were not present in Granbury schools. She claims the men and other leaders of the far-right faction in Hood County, home to Granbury, dismissed her findings. They continued to pummel the district over books and curriculum, supported school board candidates who sought to remove a growing number of titles from library shelves, and worked to derail three bond elections that would have funded new and renovated buildings for the overcrowded district.

That’s when Gore said she began to piece together connections that hadn’t been previously apparent to her.

Lang, a Republican who represented Hood County in the state Legislature for four years, received more than $600,000 in campaign contributions — more than half his total — from direct donations from or PACs funded by the Wilks brothers and Dunn. On the campaign trail, Lang supported providing public money for private schools and, in 2017, voted against a House measure that prohibited funding for school vouchers. He did not respond to requests for comment.

In addition, in January 2022, Criswell’s political consulting company received $3,000 from Defend Texas Liberty, one of the PACs funded by the Wilks family and Dunn. The PAC donated another $3,000 to Criswell this year when he unsuccessfully ran for Hood County commissioner.

Criswell declined to answer specific questions but said he has closed his consulting firm, Criswell Strategies, and has “stepped away from the local political scene, aside from occasionally sharing posts on social media.”

According to her campaign finance reports, Gore did not receive any money from the men. But another school board candidate, her then-ally Melanie Graft, received a $100 in-kind contribution from Defend Texas Liberty for advertising expenses. Graft did not respond to written questions or requests for comment.

“I was knee-deep in it,” Gore said about the local connections to the billionaires. “I guess I was just too naive. I should have known better.”

Neither Dunn nor a representative of the Wilks family responded to questions. Dunn recently penned an opinion piece in the Midland Reporter-Telegram arguing that he was not the leader of the statewide push for vouchers and has never made public statements on the topic.

Nearly two decades ago, however, Dunn argued in favor of a voucher-like program, saying that the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank on whose board he has served for more than 20 years, supported such an idea “as long-time advocates of eliminating the government monopoly in public education.” In March, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who is among the state’s fiercest advocates for directing public education funds to private schools, credited the organization’s longtime advocacy with bringing the state to the “threshold” of a voucher-like program.

Dunn is also the founder of Midland Classical Academy, a private school that offers its approximately 600 K-12 students a “Classical Education from a Biblical Worldview,” according to its website. The school believes in interpreting the Bible in its literal sense, which it takes to mean that marriage can only be between a man and a woman and that there are only two genders.

Zachary Maxwell, Lang’s former chief of staff who later worked for Empower Texans, a pro-voucher public policy organization whose associated PAC was largely funded by Dunn and the Wilks brothers, would not speak about his time there, citing a nondisclosure agreement he signed when he left the organization.

Maxwell, however, said he has become disenchanted by Dunn and the Wilks family’s efforts to exert control over the state’s politics. He said Hood County hard-liners, some of whom have close ties to PACs funded by Dunn and the Wilks brothers, were trying to use Gore and Graft to drive a wedge between rural residents and their school district in an effort to build support for vouchers. The women’s presence on the school board enhanced the legitimacy of the group’s claims about pornography in libraries and Marxist indoctrination, Maxwell said.

“It’s all about destroying the trust with the citizens to the point where they would tolerate something like doing away with public schools,” he said in an interview.

Over the past two years, Abbott has teamed up with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, embarking on a tour of Texas towns to promote vouchers. Following the narrow defeat of voucher legislation in November in the Texas House of Representatives, the Republican governor campaigned to unseat lawmakers in his party who opposed such legislation. He successfully ousted five of them.

One of the Republicans who lost in the primary was Glenn Rogers, whose rural district sits just north of Hood County and whom Abbott endorsed in 2020. This time around, Abbott gave $200,000 in campaign support to Rogers’ pro-voucher opponent. Dunn and the WiIlks brothers donated another $100,000.

Rogers, who represented Hood County until 2021, when lawmakers changed the boundaries of his district, said he believes privatizing public education is at the core of Dunn and the Wilks brothers’ political efforts in Hood County and across the state.

“Whether it’s at the school board level or it’s what’s happening in the Texas Legislature right now, that’s their end goal,” he said.

“Bathing in blood” portrait of King Charles III draws mixed reactions

King Charles III, 75, was captured in the first royal portrait since his ascent to the throne, drawing a wide variety of reactions. 

Jonathan Yeo, a British artist who previously painted official portraits for Prime Minister Tony Blair and Sir David Attenborough, painted the monarch in a red Welsh guard uniform with a butterfly on his shoulder, atop a vibrant red background.

The painting, which will hang in London’s Draper’s Hall, took more than two years to complete and got a glance from the king and queen ahead of its Buckingham Palace debut.

Per the BBC, Queen Camilla told Yeo, "Yes, you've got him," upon seeing the piece.

But others were quick to draw comparisons to some quite non-royal imagery, flooding the royal family’s Instagram comments with reactions, before commenting was disabled.

Some noted that the eight-and-a-half-foot-tall portrait “looks like he’s bathing in blood,” while one person stepped forward to ask if he was “supposed to be a Tampax.”

On X, comparisons ranged anywhere from "hell" to "rhubarb pie filling," but few were kind.

Critics and journalists weighed in, too, including the Times of London’s chief art critic Laura Freeman, who asked, “Has a portrait of a blue-blooded British monarch ever been so very pink?”

Royal historian Kate Williams told CNN that the painting had been described as a “portrait for a horror film,” adding that it only added to growing image challenges for the crown.

“We see the king surrounded by this red, which really evokes this terrible history of oppression which we see in the British Empire, in slavery,” Williams said, citing criticisms of the portrait.

The unveiling comes as the royal family seeks to rebuild from a number of PR crises, notably their handling of Kate Middleton’s public absence earlier this year.

New York Times reporters rally against top editor’s “dismissive” comments

The New York Times, which has faced mounting criticism from journalists and politicians for its coverage of Joe Biden, the war in Gaza and other editorial decisions, is now facing an internal battle.

Semafor reports that a draft letter is circulating amongst New York Times reporters, in response to comments from editorial higher-ups that young journalists viewed as “dismissive” of their concerns. In the letter, a senior editor is called out for allegedly discouraging reporters from raising concerns about the paper’s voice and failing to protect “the empathy of our journalism."

In a May 2 interview with Semafor, Executive Editor Joe Kahn defended his proclivity to view young reporters as unwilling to “commit themselves to the idea of independent journalism.”

“The newsroom is not a safe space. It’s a space where you’re being exposed to lots of journalism, some of which you are not going to like,” Kahn told Semafor.

The comments were seemingly in reference to the hotly-debated Times editorial guidelines to avoid words like “genocide” and “occupied territory” in reporting surrounding Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza, and a letter from Times reporters to the editorial board on its coverage of transgender people.

“Young adults who are coming up through the education system are less accustomed to this sort of open debate, this sort of robust exchange of views around issues they feel strongly about may have been the case in the past,” Kahn told the Wall Street Journal in a separate interview.

Also discussed in the Semafor interview was the Times’ increasingly negative coverage of the Biden administration and campaign, and discussions of the candidate’s age, which Biden officials say is unfair.

“The role of the news media in that environment is not to skew your coverage towards one candidate or the other, but just to provide very good, hard-hitting, well-rounded coverage of both candidates, and informing voters,” Kahn said. 

But critics have grown increasingly skeptical that the Times is covering Biden impartially. Per Politico, a struggle between the president’s team and the newspaper, who Biden staffers said felt “entitled” to access, reached a boiling point when a Times reporter improperly attributed a quote from an administration official, and the paper refused to correct course.

Since then, a power struggle between the re-election hopeful and the nation’s most influential paper has ensued, with the Times being moved down from the highest tier of White House press access.

RFK Jr. complains that debate exclusion “undermines democracy”

Independent Presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took to X to complain about his exclusion from a set of debates between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, which the candidates agreed to on Wednesday.

“Presidents Trump and Biden are colluding to lock America into a head-to-head match-up that 70% say they do not want,” he wrote on X. “They are trying to exclude me from their debate because they are afraid I would win. Keeping viable candidates off the debate stage undermines democracy.”

CNN, the host of the debates, hasn’t ruled out Kennedy’s participation, but its rules specify that a candidate must be on the ballot in enough states to win the electoral college by June 20. Kennedy, who had a part of his brain eaten by a worm per a report last week, blamed Biden and Trump — not CNN — for the snub, calling the pair “the two most unpopular candidates in living memory.”

Though the Democratic and Republican nominees turned away from the traditional Commission on Presidential Debates for the June event, it's worth noting that its qualifications, that a candidate needs to earn 15% of the national popular vote in five major polls, would still likely disqualify Kennedy, who has reached 15% in only around three national polls this year, per Five Thirty Eight data.

The June 27 debate, and a later yet to be scheduled match-up, will feature mechanisms to ensure that neither candidate can break rules like speaking over their time, and notably no live audience. 

Kennedy, who dropped his Democratic primary bid against incumbent Biden before any contests began, has received sharp criticism from the Trump campaign — and the candidate himself — in recent weeks, after a slate of polls showed him siphoning similar chunks of support from each major party’s candidate.

Bob Menendez “on the take”: Senator’s corruption trial underway

The trial of New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez — charged with 16 felony counts, including accepting bribes from foreign governments in the form of gold bars, a new car and cash — commenced Wednesday.

The one-time chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Menendez allegedly worked on behalf of the Egyptian and Qatari governments, exchanging government secrets for a new Mercedes-Benz for his wife and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gold bars, which federal investigators found stitched into jackets and stuffed in safe deposit boxes. The Democratic senator is also accused of accepting bribes from businessmen, including Fred Daibes and Wael Hana, two codefendants in his case, in exchange for personal favors.

Federal Prosecutor Lara Pomerantz laid out the state’s case against Menendez in opening arguments, telling the jury that Hana, who has ties to the Egyptian government, proposed that Nadine Menendez, then-girlfriend of the senator, could help him with issues with his halal food import business, beginning a long-running saga of corruption.

The senator’s wife acted as a middleman between her husband and those who sought to influence him, federal prosecutors say.

“This was not politics as usual. This was politics for profit. This was a United States senator on the take,” Pomerantz said, per the New York Times.

Working with the government is Jose Uribe, another New Jersey businessman and former codefendant, who took a deal to share his testimony. Uribe purchased Nadine a Mercedes in exchange for her husband pushing for an insurance fraud investigation to end.

For Menendez, attorney Avi Weitzman delivered the defense’s opening statements, arguing that the “lifelong public servant” was engaging in routine diplomacy — and that the cash found in his home was the result of habits from his poor immigrant parents.

Weitzman also built a case that Nadine fooled her husband, keeping her personal financial woes a secret from him, arguing that the pair led separate lives.

Menendez, still mulling a run for re-election as an independent, avoided traceable communications with those he allegedly took bribes from, not going much further than a Google search for “how much one kilo of gold [is] worth” after a trip to Egypt. But prosecutors intend to use messages between Nadine and others to build the case that there was a direct exchange of favors for money.

“The text messages will tell you what happened," Pomerantz reportedly told jurors. "As you read those messages you’ll see the scheme unfold.”

Bumble’s anti-celibacy marketing campaign and its backlash, explained

Bumble differentiates itself from most dating apps by having women make the first move. The woman-owned business prides itself on empowering women to initiate the first conversation with a match. This would potentially cut down on the numerous unsolicited messages from unwanted suitors.

In an attempt to rebrand the app and engage its users as Gen Z moves away from dating apps to pursue real-life romantic connections, Bumble launched a marketing campaign to introduce a new feature. With new CEO Lidiane Jones at the helm of the app, it recruited the likes of actor Barry Keoghan to lure in the internet obsessed-"Saltburn" crowd. The app has even done away with its initial model that "women make the first move" which opens doors for men to start conversations too. Jones told CNN that the new "opening moves" feature allows Bumble to evolve while staying true to the app's original messaging.

This new feature's rollout has been controversial. The new marketing campaign launched two weeks ago used billboards and other ads that targeted and shamed celibacy, resulting in a strong, negative response from users and women online.

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One of the first ads, according to The Cut, was a commercial that showed a woman attempting to "swear off dating" and become a nun. But she abandons her post over a shirtless gardener and the Bumble app. Following the commercial, a string of billboards began popping up globally that used anti-celibacy rhetoric, telling its audience, "You know full well a vow of celibacy is not the answer." Another billboard said, “Thou shalt not give up on dating and become a nun.”

The ads seem to be addressing a growing cultural dating trend where people, mostly young women, are engaging in voluntary celibacy, citing disillusionment with online dating and hookup culture. In return, they have decided to halt dating entirely. Meanwhile, as people reject dating or are unwilling to pay for dating apps, the industry has suffered. The New York Times reported Match Group and Bumble have lost $40 billion in market value since 2021.

Some of the backlash pointed out that equating the use of Bumble to ending celibacy made it feel similar to the hookup culture seen in other apps, once again countering the women's empowerment message. Others pointed out that far more people were celibate for reasons that had nothing to do with not finding the right partner. Additionally, online users said that the ads emphasized the very reasons why their celibacy was important to them. Sharing this sentiment was "Uncut Gems" actress Julia Fox, who commented on a TikTok criticizing Bumble, stating she has “2.5 years of celibacy and never been better tbh.”

Following the immediate backlash, Bumble issued a statement on Monday. Posted to the app's rebranded Instagram, it acknowledged the misstep. "We made a mistake. Our ads referencing celibacy were an attempt to lean into a community frustrated by modern dating, and instead of bringing joy and humor, we unintentionally did the opposite," the statement read.

In the statement, Bumble said it has heard from users and critics. "Some of the perspectives we heard were: from those who shared that celibacy is the only answer when reproductive rights are continuously restricted; from others for whom celibacy is a choice, one that we respect; and from the asexual community, for whom celibacy can have a particular meaning and importance, which should not be diminished. We are also aware that for many, celibacy may be brought on by harm or trauma."

"For years, Bumble has passionately stood up for women and marginalized communities, and their right to fully exercise personal choice. We didn't live up to these values with this campaign and we apologize for the harm it caused," it said.

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In response, Bumble says it is "removing these ads from our global marketing campaign. Bumble will be making a donation to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, among other organizations, as a part of our ongoing efforts to support the work being done around the world to support women, marginalized communities, and those impacted by abuse."

However, people in the comments were not swayed by the apology. One user said, "Why doesn’t your next campaign focus on men changing their bad behavior instead of telling women to lower their standards and boundaries? I’d suggest some females on your marketing team."

Another stated, "Show receipt of donation please." 

One other person said, "You didn’t lean into a community, you leaned into the feelings of men. You had no regard for women. You made it a woman’s problem to fix the lack of sex men are having. How about addressing why women are not interested in having a relationship with men? Maybe tell the men to fix themselves instead of the women to give in. Do better."

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Can electric woks produce great stir-fry?

"This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter here."

The first thing you notice walking up to a dai pai dong, one of Hong Kong's signature open-air street food stalls, is the smoke. Aromatic plumes billow out from aluminum-covered vent hoods as chefs with decades of experience produce steaming plates of crackled shrimp, juicy mussels, and crisped-up rice by tossing the ingredients in a giant, flame-cradled wok.

As a foodie and avid stir-fry consumer, I love everything involved in wok cooking — the artistry, the bursts of orange under the deep, round-bottomed pan, the incomparable taste. But as a climate reporter, I see just one problem: It typically relies on gas stoves, which release planet-warming methane even when turned off.

Climate experts say that we need to phase out fossil fuel use to address the climate crisis, especially in buildings, which account for 35 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Gas stoves also produce harmful air pollutants like carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and benzene, a known carcinogen. 

So when I heard that an all-electric food hall on Microsoft's campus in Redmond, Washington, featured a pair of custom-made induction woks, I was eager to try out a climate-friendly stir-fry. Unlike gas stoves, induction ranges use electromagnetic currents to heat food, eliminating both the carbon emissions and harmful air pollutants produced by gas. Yet minutes into my lunch with a friend who works at Microsoft, my excitement dissolved. My tofu noodles arrived limp and drowning in vegetable oil. 

As I poked at my soggy introduction to induction wok fare, I couldn't help but think back to a plate of noodles I had eaten at a dai pai dong in Hong Kong just a few weeks before. The two noodle dishes could not have been more different. One was prepared with state-of-the-art climate tech — yet produced lukewarm results. The other was freshly tossed in a kerosene-fueled wok, yielding glossy, chewy noodles bursting with soy sauce, blackened slivers of onion, and, most importantly, that elusive, umami-filled char called wok hei. 

There were many differences between the stir-fry noodles I bought from a dai pai dong in Hong Kong (left), and the plate I of noodles I got from Microsoft's all-electric food hall in Redmond, Washington (right). Akielly Hu  

Wok hei, loosely translated from Cantonese as the "breath of the wok," represents the pinnacle of the stir-fry cooking technique most commonly associated with southern China. (While many cuisines rely on the wok, not all strive for that signature aroma.) From street food stalls to high-end restaurants, diners from all over the world seek the intangible flavor that renowned chef and wok whisperer Grace Young described as "a special life force or essence from the wok."

For all its coveted glory, wok hei — and the question of what exactly produces it — remains somewhat mysterious. The term itself is fairly abstract: while wok refers to the cooking vessel, hei can simultaneously mean "air," "breath," "energy," and "spirit," leaving room for a variety of interpretations. Many chefs say that fire, and therefore a gas stove, is essential for achieving the aroma, putting it at odds with climate-driven legal trends: Since 2019, more than a hundred local governments across the United States have introduced policies to ban the use of natural gas in buildings, including gas stoves. Others argue that with high enough temperatures and a few adjustments, chefs can switch to induction and still produce foods with wok hei.

In the face of this gastronomic debate, many chefs are asking what an all-electric future will mean for cherished culinary traditions like wok cooking.

When the city of Berkeley, California, enacted its local gas ban in 2019, the California Restaurant Association sued, arguing that gas is essential for certain specialty techniques, including "the use of intense heat from a flame under a wok." It wasn't the only attempt to derail gas bans. An investigation by the Sacramento Bee, for example, revealed that the gas utility SoCalGas actively recruited Chinese American restaurant owners to advocate against electrification policies in Southern California. 

It would be naive to say gas utility companies were driven by a love of great stir-fry when they turned their lobbying efforts toward wok-based cooking. But the culinary debate around whether wok hei can be achieved over an induction stove has certainly added fuel to the electrification debate.

For chefs, the most important consideration when it comes to switching off gas is whether induction can support their livelihoods. In cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, some restaurant owners serving Chinese, Thai, and other Asian cuisines using woks have expressed concerns that local gas bans could jeopardize signature tastes and textures. 

Whether individual chefs think that induction can achieve wok hei depends largely on how they define it. Wok cooking expert and food writer J. Kenji López-Alt, for example, defines wok hei as a quintessential smoky flavor. He told Grist that it's impossible to achieve wok hei without gas or fire — and the reason comes down to the food science. 

A number of different elements go into that signature smoky aroma, according to López-Alt. One is the flavor imparted from hot, well-seasoned carbon steel or cast iron, two of the most common materials used to make woks. Another component is the caramelization that happens when sauce hits a searing hot pan. If you "watch a Chinese chef cooking, when they add soy sauce to a stir-fry, they swirl it around the outside of the pan where it immediately sizzles and gets intense heat, and that changes the flavor and gives it a bit of smokiness," he said.

But the main flavor component flavor of wok hei, López-Alt says, comes from the igniting of aerosolized oil with fire. As chefs toss food up into the flames of a gas stove, tiny droplets of fat suspended in the air catch on fire, dripping back down into the wok to impart a subtle smokiness. "You can't get that without an actual fire," he said.

Martin Yan, restaurateur and longtime host of the PBS cooking show Yan Can Cook, has a different take on wok hei, which he defines as an ephemeral, fragrant aroma that lasts a mere 15 to 20 seconds after a dish is prepared. He told Grist that achieving that aroma depends not on fire, but on applying intense, high heat. When fresh ingredients hit the wok's surface, they undergo a Maillard reaction, in which proteins and sugars break down and develop new, complex flavors. "The wok hei is not created by the gas," he said. "It's created by the frying pan and that chemical reaction." 

In theory, Yan said, the heat could come from any source: electricity, gas, even wood or charcoal. "You could use nuclear fusion, as long as you can create that intense heat."

Induction stoves, which can instantly heat to temperatures of up to 643 degrees Fahrenheit, are capable of the intensity Yan describes as necessary for wok hei. Yet some chefs like López-Alt say that the shape of the wok presents another obstacle to using induction. Woks feature a deep, high-walled bowl, which allows flames to curl around the vessel and create varied temperature zones — ideal for moving sauces and ingredients around to optimize flavors and control heat. But induction stoves are typically flat and only activate when directly in contact with the pan's surface. Lifting the wok to toss ingredients, therefore, would result in an instant loss of heating.

Jon Kung, a Detroit-based chef and TikTok personality who advocates for induction cooking, says that induction stoves designed specifically for woks can help with this issue. Like Yan, he defines wok hei as a "mix of char and caramelization" as a result of the Maillard reaction, requiring high heat rather than flames.

Kung owns two portable induction wok burners that feature a curved heating bowl in which the wok sits, allowing for better temperature control up the sides of the pan. While this setup may not totally replicate the temperature gradient present in a traditional fire-heated wok, Kung said the conditions are sufficient for producing high-quality stir-fry, a task he points out is difficult even for those with gas stoves at home.

"It's incorrect to assume that the only things you need to achieve wok hei are a wok and a gas burner," he said in a 2023 video. "The ones in Chinese restaurants have a power output of 150,000 BTUs. That's way more than the 30,000 that comes out of your Viking range. The fact of the matter is, these induction wok burners do a better job at mimicking the focus of energy into the bottom of a wok that you get from a genuine Chinese wok burner."

While Kung's induction models plug into a typical outlet and are designed for home use, similarly shaped and far more powerful commercial induction wok ranges exist on the market — including at Microsoft's all-electric food court. But the stove itself wasn't the reason for the company's substandard stir-fry. The noodles I ate there appeared to have been batch-cooked, an efficient way to feed hungry tech workers but a less-than-optimal method for achieving wok hei, which depends on the freshness of the ingredients. And since I wasn't present at the time of cooking, I also can't evaluate the temperature used for cooking.

As of now, I can safely say that my induction-versus-flame-fueled wok hei taste test remains inconclusive. And sadly, I don't have many nearby options to gather more data. Although Yan reported that some hotels in China like the Hilton and Marriott already exclusively use induction woks, commercial induction kitchens are rare in the United States.

According to a 2022 survey by the National Restaurant Association, 76 percent of restaurants in the U.S. still use gas. That proportion goes up to 87 percent for full-service restaurants, or sit-down eateries that provide table service. Meanwhile, less than five percent of U.S. households currently use an induction stove — though wok expert Grace Young has said she's often asked which wok to buy for induction and glass-topped ranges.

A big reason for the lack of commercial induction uptake is the cost. Yan noted that induction wok burners for restaurants remain prohibitively expensive in the U.S., especially since the technology is still maturing. Upgrading a gas kitchen to accommodate all-electric appliances to begin with can require up to tens of thousands of dollars, an exorbitant price for businesses operating on thin profit margins. Commercial induction ranges also typically cost three to four times as much as gas-powered ones. 

Kung told Grist that he is not aware of any restaurants in the U.S. achieving wok hei with induction — although he believes that with a few tweaks in technique, it's "absolutely" possible. The problem, beyond the cost of induction ranges, is that chefs might also simply prefer the tactile experience of cooking with fire, or generally feel resistance to adopting new techniques. But Kung maintains that if governments want to take the climate crisis seriously, they need to pass policies to incentivize and help businesses switch to electric. 

"Chefs are problem-solvers by nature," Kung said, and will likely innovate and relearn how to achieve wok hei on induction at a commercial level.

Although López-Alt says achieving wok hei is not possible without a flame, he isn't against induction stoves in general. He initially felt wary of switching when he first came across the debate over gas stoves a few years ago. Yet he eventually concluded that, for most Western cooking and home cooking, the technology can be just as good as gas if not better — not just for climate and health reasons, but also in terms of efficiency of cooking. 

"It's a topic that gets a lot of knee-jerk, immediate reactions," he said. But "for most things it actually makes sense to get rid of gas."

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/induction-wok-hei-stir-fry-electric-stove/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

AI won’t fix animal agriculture

Today's factory farms are monuments to humanity's unprecedented technological sophistication and our seemingly limitless capacity for cruelty.

Over the past half century, industrial farms have selectively bred animals to grow much faster and larger than their natural patterns, leading to health issues such as chronic pain. Meanwhile, these creatures are kept in harsh, crowded conditions and slaughtered inhumanely. The close confinement and unsanitary conditions on factory farms can breed zoonotic diseases and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

What's more, scientists tell us that eliminating animal products from our plates is one of the best things we can do as individuals to mitigate climate change and other environmental threats.

Amid this moral, environmental, and public health catastrophe, meat industry technologists are proposing precision livestock farming, or PLF, as a solution. PLF is the use of digital tools to continuously monitor livestock parameters, offering precise information about farmed animals in real-time.

PLF is a small but rapidly growing field. Although these tools have been around since the early 2000s, 65 percent of all literature on the matter was published in the past five years alone. Improvements in sensor technology and the computing power to interpret the sensors' output are responsible for this. Artificial intelligence, or AI, in particular has given rise to many new PLF applications. Still, the reality of AI on farms, for now at least, is more mundane than what some may imagine: fewer robots, more surveillance cameras and buzzing sensors.

We are a group of university students, advocates, and scientists affiliated with the nonprofit Allied Scholars for Animal Protection. With calls to drastically reduce or eliminate meat, dairy, and egg consumption from many scientists and animal advocacy groups such as ours, the livestock industry is scrambling for ways to improve its public image.

The meat industry often uses exaggeration and greenwashing to assuage public concern. For example, "regenerative" or lower-carbon agricultural practices have received much hype, despite the fact that the most sustainable way to produce meat is to not produce it at all. PLF, touted for its supposed benefits to animal welfare, human health, and the environment, may be the meat industry's next marketing ploy.

Conveniently for the industry, PLF tools achieve all of these changes by increasing production efficiency. For example, precision nutrition technologies purport to give animals optimized, individualized diets, thus reducing food waste.

Meanwhile, physical afflictions can be ameliorated via automated systems that adjust indoor conditions in response to signs of animal distress. Sickness can hurt farm output by slowing animals' growth, so disease detection systems could improve efficiency by obviating the need for costly clinical testing.

   

PLF, touted for its supposed benefits to animal welfare, human health, and the environment, may be the meat industry's next marketing ploy.

 

It's important to note, though, that illness and misery do not seem to have been much of an impediment to production in the past. Respiratory illness is commonplace among farmed pigs, and bodily mutilations without pain relief are standard practice. It would be hard for factory farms to do worse on animal welfare than currently, but it is unlikely that incremental technological improvements will yield anything that could reasonably be described as humane.

We would be remiss not to mention emotion-monitoring systems, intended to capture animals' affective states and enable adjustments to improve welfare conditions. Once commercial options become available, they would likely be marketed as husbandry practices that maximize animal "happiness."

Advertisements that such tools herald a revolution in farm animal welfare miss the obvious point that no farm animal will ever be happy living their life in a tiny crate.

It seems more likely that industry insiders, who for decades have used bogus certifications labeling their products as "humane" to distract the public from their abuses, will use PLF as yet another means to delude the public about where their food comes from. There is no universal standard for assessing animal welfare, so the meat industry enjoys ample room for exaggeration.

   

Even the worst-performing plant-based diet has a lower impact on land and climate than the best diet that includes animal products.

 

It is plainly inaccurate to frame PLF as a net positive for farmed animals. PLF methods will only be implemented when they benefit the animal slaughter industry by increasing efficiency and bolstering production. In perpetuating the exploitation of animals, PLF fundamentally opposes their best interests.

Putting ethics aside, there are many reasons why the end of large-scale animal farming is crucial for the future of our planet. For example, global adoption of a plant-based diet could reduce agricultural land use by about 75 percent.

Instead of reforming animal agriculture, the world should move away from a food system based on animal products. Even the worst-performing plant-based diet has a lower impact on land and climate than the best diet that includes animal products. This shouldn't be too surprising, given that animal agriculture currently accounts for 80 percent of global farmland but only produces 17 percent of calories.

As consumers, it's easy to feel overwhelmed by the scale of global problems and our limited ability to make a difference. When it comes to what's on our plates, though, the benefits of opting for plant-based diets are clear: better public health, a more livable climate, and better lives for our fellow creatures. Incremental tweaks to animal agriculture through PLF are misleading to consumers and do not get us to the world we need.

Shann Chongwattananukul, Benny Smith, and Dr. Faraz Harsini work with Allied Scholars for Animal Protection, a U.S.-based nonprofit founded by Dr. Harsini that focuses on animal advocacy and educates university students on sustainable food systems. Dr. Harsini is a biomedical and food system senior scientist who studies alternative protein technology.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Judge Merchan “visibly annoyed” by Trump’s courthouse entourage of Republican politicians

Donald Trump is no longer attending his hush money trial alone, now enjoying a growing crew of GOP hanger-ons who are helping him circumvent his gag order by acting as "surrogates" outside the courthouse. As Alternet notes, Trump's entourage may be pleasing to the former president, but it's now annoying Judge Juan Merchan.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins reported that Merchan was "visibly annoyed" by Trump's support group, which he appeared to view as disruptive to the proceedings. "This judge does not give away much," she told Wolf Blitzer. "He has a very even tone. He greets Donald Trump with a 'Good morning, Mr. Trump' every single day that he walks inside the courtroom… but there was this moment where it was five or six people from Trump's team, and they get into the second row of the entire courtroom to sit in the pews, to listen to what's happening. And the judge stared straight at them as they were walking in."

The group of elected politicians, aides, and party officials have greeted Trump each morning, sat behind him during the trial proceedings, and given press conferences in which they have condemned the whole affair as political persecution. They have also attacked witnesses, the judge and his family.

Many of the trial attendees, including Ohio senator J.D. Vance, former presidential candidate Vivek Ramswamy, Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, are believed to be auditioning to be Trump's running mate. Others, like Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville and Florida Sen. Rick Scott seem content to demonstrate their fealty. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has relied on Trump's backing to remain in power, joined the group on Tuesday, calling the trial a "sham" and "disgrace."

So far, their presence has been useful to Trump. While the former president seethes under a gag order that blocks him from threatening jurors, witnesses, prosecutors, and court staff, his loyal retainers have expressed his thoughts for him. Tuberville made his intentions clear in an interview with Newsmax, a right-wing network. "Hopefully we'll have more and more senators and congressmen go up every day and represent him," Tuberville said. "And be able to go out and overcome this gag order. That's one of the reasons we went, to be able to speak our piece for President Trump."

It’s been a bad month for Starbucks. Ex-CEO Howard Schultz agrees

It’s not been a great month for Starbucks. On May 1, the international coffee chain’s shares fell 15% to their lowest in two years as the industry experiences what current CEO Laxman Laxman Narasimhan calls "a highly challenged environment." Starbucks also reported its first quarterly sales decline since 2020, as well as lower-than-expected earnings and same-store sales growth. 

Amid the early days of the pandemic, economic experts predicted that it would be a tough road to sustained profitability for coffee chains as many purchases were baked into customers' commutes; this became especially true once the number of people primarily working from home tripled from roughly 9 million to over 27 million. 

However, Starbucks is facing several additional complicating factors that seem to be reflected in this quarter’s numbers: boycotts, new competitors and, perhaps the most influential, a public comment from ex-CEO Howard Schultz indicating he wasn’t confident in the chain’s current strategy and leadership. 

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As the Washington Post reported in early March, Starbucks became embroiled in boycott calls on TikTok after it sued Workers United, a union of Starbucks employees, for trademark infringement “over a since-deleted social media post from the union’s account that retweeted an image of a bulldozer breaking through the barrier between Israel and Gaza. The post added the comment, ‘Solidarity with Palestine!’”

The company described the post as “reckless and reprehensible.” In response, the union countersued, which only intensified calls for boycotts, which some analysts have correlated, at least partially, to the dip in Starbucks’ sales. Another contributing factor is the fact that there are simply more coffee chains cutting into Starbucks’ market share.

One of note is the Oregon-based Dutch Bros, which reported 10% same-store sales growth and positive traffic trends last quarter. In their assessment of the two coffee chains, National Restaurant News’ Joanna Fantozzi said that “beyond hard numbers, the two companies have recently taken very different operational strategies.” 

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“Whereas Starbucks has been constantly churning out new menu items with complex SKUs — including last year’s Oleato, which received very mixed reviews; this year’s lavender matcha latte; the spring lineup of “swicy” drinks; and most recently, the release of summer beverages with boba-like pearls — Dutch Bros’ menu innovation strategy has been more measured,” she wrote.

Fantozzi continued: “In comparison, Starbucks’ LTO release schedule is more frequent and feels more frantic. Some of the flavors and ingredients Starbucks is adding also seem to be more niche and add more complexity to operations, like olive oil, lavender, and proprietary chili powder mix in the ‘swicy’ lemonade Refreshers.” 

Starbucks’ recent, aggressive introduction of new products, which will continue this summer with the release of the company’s first blue beverage and of boba pearls, is one of the many things former CEO Howard Schultz subtly criticized in a recent LinkedIn post addressing the company’s disappointing second quarter numbers. 

"I have emphasized that the company’s fix needs to begin at home."

“Over the past five days, I have been asked by people inside and outside the company for my thoughts on what should be done,” Schultz wrote. “I have emphasized that the company’s fix needs to begin at home: U.S. operations are the primary reason for the company’s fall from grace. The stores require a maniacal focus on the customer experience, through the eyes of a merchant. The answer does not lie in data, but in the stores.” 

Schultz — who served as the chairman and chief executive officer of Starbucks from 1986 to 2000, from 2008 to 2017, and then interim CEO from 2022 to 2023 —clarified that he has had no formal role within the company since April 2023 and no longer serves on the board of directors, but said his love of “all those who wear ‘the cloth of the company’” knows no bounds. 

“Senior leaders — including board members — need to spend more time with those who wear the green apron,” Schultz wrote. “One of their first actions should be to reinvent the mobile ordering and payment platform, which Starbucks pioneered, to once again make it the uplifting experience it was designed to be. The go-to-market strategy needs to be overhauled and elevated with coffee-forward innovation that inspires partners, and creates differentiation in the marketplace, reinforcing the company’s premium position. Through it all, focus on being experiential, not transactional.” 

It’s worth noting Starbucks’ current CEO Laxman Narasimhan, who assumed the role last spring, has been working a half-day shift once a month in one of the company’s stores to better understand its culture, but that didn’t seem to play into Schultz’ assessment of the company. 

“There are no quick fixes,” Schultz wrote in his LinkedIn post. “But the path forward should be what has guided the company over decades of financial success: Inspire your people, exceed the expectations of your customers, and let culture and servant leadership lead the way.” 

Both mainstream and industry publications, from the Wall Street Journal (with the story “Howard Schultz Is Back-Seat Driving Starbucks. That's a Problem for His Successor”) to PR Daily, have commented on the impact of Schultz’ post. 

“The overall situation is awkward for current CEO Laxman Narasimhan, who Schultz helped to recruit,” PR Daily’s editor-in-chief Allison Carter wrote. “But overall, it’s Schultz who comes off the worst here, publicly backseat driving under the guise of thought leadership. If he wants to communicate with Starbucks leadership, he certainly has the means to do so. But public criticism of a former employer rarely reflects well.” 

In the two weeks since Starbucks’ quarterly numbers were released, which were punctuated by Schultz’s post, financial experts and analysts have been debating the severity of Starbucks’ current financial issues. As Reuter’s reported, Deutsche Bank downgraded its rating on Starbucks to "hold" from "buy,” while at least 12 brokerages cut target price on the stock.

"The inability to stop the traffic leakage from the early signs of pull-back in November to date and the worsening macro and competitive dynamics in China may suggest prolonged challenges and no evidence of light at the end of the tunnel," Danilo Gargiulo, senior analyst at Bernstein, told the publication.

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“Consent was an enormous part”: How “The Contestant” director earned a reality TV victim’s trust

Clair Titley never set out to have "The Contestant" explore the origins of reality television. Though some critics have opined in favor of the importance of such a lens where the recently released Hulu documentary is concerned, she didn't endeavor to provide a thorough examination of the ethics of reality media. Instead, she wanted to give one man "the space to just really unravel all those thoughts."

"The Contestant" chronicles the 15 months that 22-year-old Tomoaki Hamatsu, better known as Nasubi, spent naked in isolation in 1998 as a willing participant on a popular Japanese reality show, "Susunu! Denpa Shonen.” Nasubi's ordeal, which saw him submit to magazine sweepstakes to obtain food, was broadcast to millions, unbeknownst to him until his challenge ended. 

"He would be paranoid that people were filming him."

Though Nasubi did not retain any editorial control in the production of the documentary, he collaborated heavily with Titley, lending his testimony and thoughts to its creation. After all, "The Contestant" is about Nasubi's experience, tracing not only his time apart from the rest of the world, but also — and perhaps more importantly — what came after. In part, Nasubi's home in Fukushima – which had a power plant that experienced a nuclear meltdown after being hit by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011 – helped spur him into helping others and finding his way.

After months of being subjected to cruel manipulation by "Denpa Shonen" producer Toshio Tsuchiya (who is also featured as an interviewee in "The Contestant"), Nasubi was left mentally and emotionally debilitated. And while Titley wanted to embolden Nasubi to share his story, she knew it would take steadily cultivated trust for him to say yes to her vision. "There were so many questions that I felt were kind of obvious or natural that people just hadn't asked him. But consent was an enormous part of the process," she said.

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"I don't want to say it's like therapy, but it was like somebody who'd never really opened all those boxes before," Titley added. "And then suddenly he could."

Check out the full interview with Titley, in which she discusses building a bond with Nasubi, managing the presence of a Western perspective in the documentary, and encouraging viewers to reflect on their own relationship with the media they consume.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Obviously, this is revisiting an era from the late '90s and the early aughts, as this sort of nascent moment in reality television, so to speak. How did the conversations to turn Nasubi's ordeal into a documentary start and how familiar were you with his story beforehand?

I came across his story by accident. I was researching something else. You know when you get distracted and you start working on something you shouldn't be? It went down one of those rabbit holes. And I wanted to tell the story about Nasubi. The stuff that I found online had been very, I found quite almost on the verge of being a bit derogatory about kind of either Japanese culture or about him in some ways as well and his ordeal. And a bit perfunctory in the way that's gone: "Oh, and then that was the end of it. And he didn't even become an A-list celebrity." That was kind of the end of the story. And I really wanted to do something about him.

So I approached him and said, "I want to make a film and I want to make it about you and your story." And we kind of had this open dialogue that kind of went back and forth. And we talked about the things that were important to us about making the film. You know, one of the things that was really important to him is he really felt that Fukushima was a very important part of his life. And he really wanted Fukushima to play a role. And I was in total agreement. So Fukushima was always going to be a big part of the film in some way, have a role. 

The ContestantTomoaki "Nasubi" Hamatsu in "The Contestant" (Disney)In prior depictions of his story, I'm assuming Fukushima was not really a part of it at all, because most of what it was sort of focused on, which you touch on in the documentary, was this sort of ascension into the ranks of entertainer, as a comedian. The focus was much more on his career prospects, so to speak, rather than how it affected him mentally and emotionally.

But it was also quite a car crash TV as well. I think that's the thing. I think also, say for maybe the "This American Life" podcast, and a lot of the YouTube-type things that have been done and print, or online kind of reviews of it had been sort of like, "Look at those crazy Japanese — isn't this a crazy story?" And then that was kind of the end of it, and not really dug any deeper, particularly about his story.

So I really wanted this to be a film about Nasubi and about his journey. Of course, it is a film about reality TV as well. But that wasn't the intention. The intention wasn't to be kind of like, "Here's the beginning of reality TV. This is a potted history." That was never the intention. It was very much about his experience of that kind of period in history.

"The Contestant" uses Nasubi's testimony to delve deeply into his story and the mental and emotional toll that "A Life in Prizes" had on him. I'm wondering, how were you able to get him to come on board for the project without making him feel as though he may be exploited all over again?

No, completely. What's interesting, actually, kind of relates back to the other question as well. When we did start talking to him, it felt a little bit like, "Oh, I'm pretty certain actually, that it was the first time that he'd really got to unpack his story."

There were so many questions that I felt were obvious or natural that people just hadn't asked him. But consent was an enormous part of the process. I made sure that all the way through we talked about it. I double-checked with him that everything was OK. He was involved. He never had editorial control and he was aware of that. And that was something that's important. But he was involved in the process. It was it felt like a collaboration, and we made sure we didn't do anything that he wasn't uncomfortable with.

And it was baby steps in a weird way. It took a very long time. And that's frustrating in so many ways to make this film. But in other ways, it maybe helped the film a lot and served it quite well. Because the film's finished now, and we're good friends — we've built this kind of relationship over time. There's that level of trust. I'm fairly certain that because of what Nasubi's been through — when he first came over to the U.K. and we met for the first time, and shot a tester tape — I think he was still worried that he was going to get to the airport, and there was going to be nobody to pick him up or that it was all going to be a big prank.

I think he mentioned something along those lines, that there's still that part of him that's ever so slightly worried that it's a bit of a game show. But no, I think there's a level of trust there now.

I don't know if you've seen "Jury Duty"?

No, but I've heard about it, yeah.

The guy who was the subject of that show expressed a similar sentiment once all was said and done. Because if you know the premise of the show, everyone who was in it was part of the show. And when he learned that, they went through this whole, phony jury trial, he was really, not only disoriented, but I think there are reports out there that said he spent a significant portion of time in the weeks and months that followed being paranoid in effect that he was being videotaped or just recorded or just who was he interacting with? Was it an actor? Was it a real person? So that's really interesting to hear.

That's exactly what happened to Nasubi as well. And we don't put enough of that in the footage — I mean, we're constrained by everything else. But that's exactly what happened to him, that he would be paranoid that people were filming him, he just struggled to communicate with people on that kind of level, because he wasn't sure. And everything, everything he did from then on, he was just sort of paranoid about. So I think he did retreat back to Fukushima in a way.

The ContestantTomoaki "Nasubi" Hamatsu in "The Contestant" (Disney)I remember that part of the documentary where he says, you know, I even had trouble making eye contact with people the same way. And just his communication skills, he felt had just regressed so significantly, which was heartbreaking. You were talking about that trust you kind of cultivated with him. Was there anything specific that you did on set to maintain that level of trust?

So, the way in which we filmed it was actually remote, because it was in the middle of COVID. I think it was just that communication. So I think the ongoing thing was that we would ask him, we would ask him sort of even visual ideas, you know? We were kind of going, "We're doing the diaries, and we're not sure how to illustrate them in this way. Have you got any suggestions?" Or, "We're looking for a voiceover artist to do this. Have you got any suggestions of somebody who you think might be good?" So I suppose we asked as a creative input in that kind of a way.

He'd come over to the U.K. for a couple of weeks when I'd been pitching the idea for some time, and it was the usual sort of story where you can't quite get the funds and I needed to do a test of tape, I felt. And he said, "Let's make this film." Once he's committed to something, as you probably know, he's quite committed, which is handy for me. So he came over to the U.K. and we had this sort of two-week holiday where we spent some time down on the Isle of Wight as well. The interpreter lived around the corner. And we just had all this time to hang out. We're playing table tennis in the evenings and long car journeys and ferry journeys and walks along the beach and hanging out with my family and the interpreter's family and a couple of other Japanese people we knew nearby who were intrigued to come along and help. And so it was this slightly random, chaotic kind of holiday that we had. But I think that broke down all those barriers. 

I think, usually you would assume that in creating a documentary like this that is sort of probing someone's past trauma, there would be, at certain points, some hesitance or maybe they want to back out. But with him, it's interesting that, as you just said, because of his personality — and even the way he approached the challenge — he was really all in.

I think this is also the first time that he'd had this opportunity to tell his story. And he knew when he trusted us and he knew that this was an opportunity to tell his story, he felt, "Right, this is it. I'm not holding back." And we did two days of interviews with him. And I remember we were getting halfway through the second day, and he was saying, "We're going to have to book in another three days because I've got so much to say!"

And we were like, "Well, I'm not sure we can do that." [Laughs] But he had so much more to share. I don't want to say it's like therapy, but it was like somebody who'd never really opened all those boxes before. And then suddenly he could, and we gave him the space to just really unravel all those thoughts.

That's a good segue into my next question, because the other really prominent component or participant of "The Contestant" is Toshio Tsuchiya, who's obviously the producer of "Denpa Shonen" and was the mastermind, so to speak, behind "A Life in Prizes." And it's interesting because I think the way that he at least speaks in the documentary is very open. Was he readily willing to participate in the documentary?

Yeah, he was. We approached him via Nasubi. It was actually Nasubi who asked him. I can't speak for Tsuchiya, so this is totally my opinion, but I feel that he was taking part in the documentary for Nasubi. I mean, he's made it clear that's what he was doing: he was taking part for him, not for me. This is no favor to me that he was doing.

The ContestantTomoaki "Nasubi" Hamatsu in "The Contestant" (Disney)I think one of his final quotes in "The Contestant" is, "I would consider laying my life on the line for this person," which was very profound. Were you surprised by how unabashed and honest he was and how he spoke throughout? Not only about Nasubi, but also the extent to which he was extremely open about his feelings and motivations in producing the show?

I'd done preliminary interviews with him, very basic ones, so I knew all of those things. I think I wasn't extremely surprised that he was so open, but I was very grateful that he was, because I just knew that at any point he could sort of say, "I'm not answering that. I'm not going there."

But he didn't. And I am really grateful to him because he didn't hold back. And we didn't hold back on what we asked him. He's a TV producer, he's a documentary filmmaker himself, as well as reality TV. He's not silly — he knows what we're going to ask him. He knows the worst that we could ask him. So he wasn't going in naive by any means. And so I'm quite grateful to him for his sort of bravery and courage and his openness in all of that. He also knows how Western media is going to portray him or how he will be seen in Western media. So he was aware of that as well. And he still did it, and he didn't do it in a cagey way — as you said, he was open and forthcoming.

Do you think "The Contestant" would have been a different documentary if Tsuchiya had not participated? And what do you think it would be missing?

When we were developing it, there was always that chance that we might not get him involved. I think it would have been a good film, but it maybe wouldn't have been a great film. It would have been different. And I just think it's so interesting, you know, his side of things and his reasonings . . . it would have been possible. It just wouldn't have been the same film, I think.

Japan has been described as a country that embodies collectivist tendencies. How much do you feel that those tendencies may have played into the way Nasubi's plight was handled by the viewership or the audience, and by Tsuchiya and the crew of "Denpa Shonen"?

Oh, that's a really in-depth question. I suppose there are so many different levels of that. With the crew, I don't know, there's that level of superiority and that kind of work mentality of doing what your boss tells you to and so forth. But I only spoke to Kagawa and Tsuchiya. I don't think we managed to speak to, off the top of my head, many other crew members.

I guess I'm thinking specifically about how, Tsuchiya in the documentary often talks about his obsession with capturing something incredible as almost justification for why he subjected Nasubi to everything that he did, which from my interpretation was something incredible to show Japanese viewership and audience or to the world. And I wonder if you feel that that was the case — that there was an underlying motivation to produce something for the masses on behalf of the masses and this sort of collectivist mentality.

I don't know whether he was doing it for the sake of the masses and everything. I don't know. I know that he very much believed in capturing this essence of truth. I think he thinks of himself as an artist in that way, that he's capturing this level of truth in that way. Whether he feels that he must show that to the masses, for this collective responsibility, I'm not sure about that. I was interpreting it more in terms of the audience, about the kind of the collective, what's the word? Complicity. Do you know what I mean? I'm also being really cautious that I'm a white Western woman commenting on Japanese culture.

You worked alongside Japanese producer, Megumi Inman, for "The Contestant." As a U.K. filmmaker, how else did you mitigate the presence of a Western voice in making a documentary that is based in Japan and focuses on Japanese people?

I just listened. I tried really hard to listen and listen where I could, whether it happened to be with Megumi or whether it happened to be with other people that I —not just professional Japanese people or people involved — but people I met who might have known his story. People who were in Japan in the late '90s, and early '90s. I quizzed them all the time from the moment that we started making this all the way along and about interpretations. So I grew up abroad in South Asia, and I'm aware of how easy it is to stereotype other cultures in that way. I've been the outsider and I've seen it from the other ways of people kind of stereotyping cultures that maybe I know from a slightly different perspective, and so I was cautious of that.

So yeah, I think just by listening and making sure that I fed back. And I'm sure I haven't got it 100% right, and it's quite hard because the desire from, Western storytellers is quite high to make sure that you see things in black and white, good and evil. Whereas Japanese narratives just aren't that way, and that's not how they see the world.

The other person that I spoke a lot about it with was Juliet Hindell, and we're both on the same wavelength — she's a British journalist who lives in the U.S. now, but was out there, very much embedded in the story.  I was really nervous about using her, and I told her as much, about involving her in the story because I really didn't want to have a Western narrator at any point. It's hard because, you know that the outside influences are, "Well, if you do this, then it would just wrap all this up quite nice and neatly and tell everybody what to think." But I didn't want to tell everybody what to think. I wanted their voices to come through, and I worried with Juliet in there that she might be seen as a commentator. So the fact that she's embedded in the film and she's very much an important part of the story made it all right, made it OK really for her to have that role. And also we could have her context and know that it wasn't colored as a kind of a Western historian might kind of come out with this perspective.

Even though we're not watching Nasubi live as viewers were in the late '90s, I feel like "The Contestant" really begets such a strong sense of complicit voyeurism, as you were saying before. How much, if at all, did you want viewers to feel a sense of complicity in this story, which you kind of touched on already?

"I wanted people to feel uncomfortable."

One of the things that we did was we, the archive that we had, we didn't have the dailies, the rushes; we just had what went out on air covered in all that graphics and all the audio. It's an onslaught, and one of the things that we wanted to do was strip it all back, which we did with visual effects, so that could see him naked in the room. But the other thing was that we wanted to recreate it in English, so you got a real sense of what it was like as a Japanese person watching it.

But it was really difficult putting the laughter track back on, and it was really hard to do, actually. There were certain places where like, "Oh, do we have to have it here?" Because it just felt cruel and mean. But at the same time, I wanted people to feel uncomfortable, I wanted people to laugh.

I'm curious if the reality landscape of Japanese TV has changed since then. Were the ethical issues from "A Life in Prizes" ever addressed for this? Are there contracts and more transparency these days in that industry? Notably, Nassabi never signed a contract, which his manager,  I believe, said was not because he was gullible, but because he was naive.

Yeah, there's two things. One's kind of like, looking back at it, Japan is not as litigious as the U.K., or particularly the U.S. back then or even now. And also we're kind of looking back at it with 20 years of history of reality TV. If you or I said yes to a reality TV show, we know that we're going to be manipulated, whereas nobody back then had any idea. It's totally understandable that somebody would walk into a show and just not expect that.

But, and I'm not really the person to kind of comment on this —the state of reality TV anywhere, really, let alone Japan — but it was interesting when we met Tsuchiya for the first time. We met him in London at a Comic-Con, and we were chatting away, and we said, "People are going to be really critical of you. Are you prepared? Because people think that 'Denpa Shonen' and 'Life In Prizes' was incredibly cruel." And he pointed out, "Well, maybe. But actually, we would never do anything as cruel as 'Love Island.'" I mean, he had a point — there were two suicides at the time, you know, linked to "Love Island." And so I thought that was just an interesting take.

The ContestantTomoaki "Nasubi" Hamatsu in "The Contestant" (Disney)It is interesting to think about, how even when you watch something like "The Kardashians," and there's a really juicy segment, you have to think that, "OK, there was probably something done to maybe provoke that scenario or, or create a situation that would be interesting for viewers to watch."

But in Nasubi's case, you can tell had no sense of understanding about what he was really getting into. And I think that really culminated with the look on his face when those walls of the fake waiting room were removed. He's absolutely stunned. And for me, that was the most heartbreaking scene in the show, in the documentary, because of just how confused and shocked he was, he just had no understanding of what was going on.

He says, "My house fell down," doesn't he?

That was the line that got me.

Yeah. It's so, so tragic. That gets me every time. And then weirdly, the party poppers in his face — I can't watch that. I just find that really hard, actually.

The ethical issues I think raised by "The Contestant" feel especially relevant today, as we're saying in reality television and social media documentaries and more. We obviously live in a world where we're able to share personal experiences and information about our lives very easily, as well as, obtain that information about other people if we want to. Do you see "A Life in Prizes" as having portended that? It came very shortly before things as big as "The Truman Show" and "Big Brother," for example.

It feels like it did. I don't think it did it, you know, intentionally, obviously, but it is interesting. It's interesting — we didn't go into it in the film, but, you know, the idea of product placement as well. I don't think it was even something they were thinking of, but all of these kinds of things — it's like he's an early-day influencer, but without him actually knowing that he is. That's the weird thing about it all. And it is weird to think that, now we choose to do all those things that he was doing, whereas back then, A) he had no idea and B) I think it's easy to forget that it was really difficult to be famous back then. The whole idea of your 15 minutes of fame — you had to do something pretty insane. To get to be on TV was a big deal, whereas now, if you were to post something up — well, maybe not me, but — post something up and you could make that happen.

What do you want viewers to glean from "The Contestant," insofar as it relates to digital and media ethics in contemporary times, if anything at all?

I think I'd like people to reflect on their own relationship with it, whether that's with reality TV or whether that's with social media, and to think about their own relationship with it. For the first time, I think in a while, it feels like you could just be a couple of years age difference from somebody and your whole experience of media, social media, all of these things are so wildly different because technology has moved so, so fast. It's so different. It used to be that if we were in this decade together, we had similar kinds of experiences or the same things. But now you could just be a couple of years older than somebody or whatever, and your whole different perspective — because you were a certain age when Facebook came out or a certain age when Instagram or whatever it is —  it's so different. And I find that's quite interesting. Reflecting on your own, on people's own relationship, whatever that might be.

"The Contestant" is streaming now on Hulu.

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“We’ve been doing that to survive”: “Black Twitter” filmmaker on Black culture repurposing spaces

Why did you first join Twitter? For TV writer and director Prentice Penny, he joined Twitter as a Los Angeles Lakers fan, looking for team updates like trades, injuries and potential draft picks. It was years before he would become showrunner of the Peabody Award-winning HBO series "Insecure," starring Issa Rae. It was the glory days of Black Twitter — a home on the social media platform for fun and connection with a bigger community who could relate to Penny's Black experience as a fan and an artist.

When I talked to Penny ahead of his latest project, the Hulu documentary series "Black Twitter," I asked him what was special to him about Twitter. Why was it easier to connect with strangers on Twitter than real-life friends on Facebook? “On Twitter you get to see if somebody is funny, if somebody is snarky, if somebody is really smart.” Penny said. “You get to see people's kind of the way they think.” Penny continued, “And I think that becomes much more of an interesting person to want to meet than just seeing a picture and not knowing what's happening here.” 

“Black Twitter" is based on Jason Parham’s Wired article “A People’s History of Black Twitter." In the series, Penny chronicles Black Twitter's rise by talking to some of the biggest users on the platform, viral hashtags that launched careers like #BlackGirlMagic and #OscarsSoWhite, and the role Twitter played in making TV shows with Black female leads like "Scandal" and "Insecure" into cult classics. And then, the downfall of Twitter and how the world was shocked when Elon Musk took over the app and changed the name to X, which both Penny and I still refuse to use.

Even though Penny got his start as a TV writer on shows like "Girlfriends," "Scrubs" and "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" before the app blew up, he acknowledges the role Twitter played in securing his spot and taking his work to the next level. I also owe a great deal of my success to Twitter as my early Salon articles spread, getting into the hands of people who would have never come across my work. Now, many of us rarely log on to the app, if we log on at all.

One of the open questions I had for Penny revolves around creating a new space for Black creatives to launch their ideas, find community and offer support. Will a platform that already exists replace it, or do we have to unite as a collective and figure it out? Watch my "Salon Talks" episode with Prentice Penny here on YouTube, or read a Q&A of our conversation below to hear more about what he learned about Twitter culture while working on the project and his ideas on what will be the next safe space for Black creatives.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

When I first heard there was a Black Twitter documentary coming out, I slipped right back into nostalgia because it was a moment in time. I couldn't stop laughing. And I just thought about the amount of information I learned and how I grew as a person. How did this project come about for you?

It started with Jason Parham, the journalist, who wrote the piece for Wired Magazine. And he wrote the piece because he felt like so many things on the internet are impermanent, right? Here today, going tomorrow. Talk about like Friendster and Vine and sort of MySpace all these things. And he felt it was the right amount of time to give Black Twitter its flowers and document all the things that had happened culturally on the platform, not just for our culture, but for American culture. And once the article came out, they brought it to me to see if I'd be interested in directing it as a docuseries.

For me, using it was like I had tapped into another universe like I’m clearly not the smartest person in the room and I'm here to learn. I think of Ferrari Shepherd who's killing it in the art game right now, Bassey World, Feminista Jones, Encyclopedia Brown.

That's what I think is so dope about Twitter specifically that I think made the communities pop off is to your point where Facebook was really about reconnecting with friends you went to high school with or family members. Twitter was like, "Meet these strangers," which I think Black culture is always having to do with, just get out of our comfort zone to meet people. And I think the natural way we have to move in the world just kind of moved digitally as well. I think that's how those communities kind of got built.

How did you find Black Twitter?

Well, I'm from LA, so I was a Laker fan. So I kind of came on '08, '09 when Kobe was trying to get the championships without Shaq. So I was just trying to see what's going on with the Lakers. What are we hearing? Who are we going to get? And that was really them being on there, following other players, following other analysts. And then who are they retweeting, who are they posting? That's kind of funny. That's interesting.

I think what's so magical and special just about the docuseries is this world that developed inside of another world. It's almost like the people who made Twitter didn't know what to do with it. Black Twitter grew and it created a language that was adapted by everyone.

We talk about this in the doc that Facebook was very clear of what it was trying to be. Twitter, all the different guys that created it, Jack [Dorsey] and Biz [Stone] and those guys kind of didn't ever agree on what this platform is. Is it a blogging space? Is it a news space? Is it information sharing? Is it a podcasting space? And because it was so pliable, as Black people do and Black culture does, we can repurpose. 

We've been doing that to survive in this country forever. So we're good at taking things that weren't meant for certain things and redoing them into things that work for us. The pliability of the platform fed into our natural creativity in terms of how we repurpose things.

I'm glad you said repurpose because it's like you wear your older brother's shoes that are two sizes too big, and then Balenciaga sees it as something brand new. Let's make a 10X sneaker that no one can fit, not even Shaq.

Well, I think about guys too, back in the day in hip-hop, like Dapper Dan, right?

Absolutely.

Who now is getting his flowers. Obviously he's doing these collabs with Gucci. But back then it was like he was just doing that because he's taking Gucci or Louis [Vuitton] and redoing them in so many ways. And like you said, now it's like, "Oh, we need to be partnering up with that."

Shout out to Dap. You have some excellent people in the series, the great April Reign, creator of the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite. You have journalist Wesley Lowery. Can you talk about some of the subjects you chose for the film?

Some started from the article. As I read his article, it was broken down into three parts. And so as a storyteller, to me that was a three-act structure. It kind of became a coming-of-age story. Because as a narrative, I'm always like, "But what's the story?" If you can just Google it, that's not a story. That's just information. 

There's sort of this youth of Black Twitter. If you think about coming-of-age stories, we talked about Star Wars a lot as a reference point of Luke in the beginning doesn't know anything about the rebellion or The Force. He doesn't know anything about being a Jedi. And then obviously Obi-Wan dies, and it takes our hero into a darker world and a much more challenging environment. For us, that was similar. 

Black Twitter's having its fun. We're talking about “Scandal,” we're live-tweeting, and then Trayvon happened and so it takes the story into a different direction. And so for us, it was who are the people that can speak to Black Twitter becoming a coming-of-age story? So all of that started to shape, okay, are we talking about Trayvon? Are we talking about #OscarsSoWhite? Are we talking about Verzuz? Are we talking about how we dealt with the pandemic? And so everything had to sort of fit the coming-of-age story in the topics.

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What surprised you while having those conversations with all of those different people about that particular era?

I think the things that really surprised me were really the more so the people that we talked to that were working at Twitter. Of just knowing how they didn't really know. I understand how mainstream culture doesn't really understand Black culture and understands how kind of what Black Twitter would be. But I guess you thought of the people at Twitter understood clearly what's happening on this platform. And to kind of learn they didn't really know what's happening on Black Twitter or why is “Scandal” getting all these sort of huge numbers? Why are they trending so much? 

And so for them, they really had to go in there and educate the platform on what's happening over here. And so I think I was really surprised at how much Twitter itself didn't know what was happening on Twitter itself.

Yeah, that's amazing. Was there anyone you wanted in the film, but you couldn't get a hold of?

The one person that we wanted in the film that we just couldn't time-wise out was Kerry Washington. And I think obviously we talk about the way “Scandal” sort of grew, not just in numbers out of that show, but really how live-tweeting was kind of birthed out of that show.

I was always wanting to know what did it feel like to be kind of the first person where the Black Twitter culture is supporting you, showing up for you? And having that be impacting the way that the show's ratings go, which impact how long the show gets to be on the air. So being the first person where that was sort of a thing was someone I was like, oh, I'd like to know what it was from her perspective as opposed to just the culture's perspective.

For you, working in television and being on the production side, were you thinking about the impact social media could have on the stories you were trying to tell? There were some really big “Insecure” conversations on Twitter.

Oh, 100%.

It was Team Lawrence. It was Team Issa. 

Yeah. It's so funny. I remember obviously working on the show from the beginning, and we weren't anything. Nobody knew what we were. And then to watch, I remember Season 2. I remember going to Twitter during the premiere at some point, and I remember seeing all of the Top 10 things that were trending, we were like seven, seven of those topics, like Team Lawrence, Team Daniel, Issa. And I was like, this is wild that we're dominating the conversation right now more than “Game of Thrones.” That’s what was wild.

Because the audience is there. And every once in a while the big production companies need to know that if you buy these shows, the community is there.

We'll show up.

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One thing about using Twitter is you wanted to meet your Twitter people. Do you feel that way?

I agree with you. I think there's something. Because Twitter, you have to be speaking. I mean, you're typing, but you're speaking so different than Instagram, which is a picture, which could kind of be anything. But I think in Twitter you get to see: Is somebody funny? Is somebody snarky? Is somebody really smart? You get to see people's kind of the way they think. And I think that becomes a much more of an interesting person to want to meet than just seeing a picture and not knowing what's happening here.

Something you covered that is very important for a lot of us, is the amount of talent that emerged from Black Twitter. And I was just thinking, do you ever think there will be another vehicle for producing Pulitzer Prize winners, Emmy Award winners, executives from an app? Or have we moved on from that moment? Because so many people just got so many great opportunities.

Of course. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know. I think it's one of those things where we've been talking, Jason and I, about is, it going to happen somewhere else? Is it? And I don't think so. I think that the way Black Twitter happened was such a convergence of Obama era. This platform is so pliable. There was a lot of things in the world we needed to say. Where I think it served its function on Twitter. I love seeing Black Twitter's energy in the real world.

What that shakes, I don't even know what the next way that it happens will even be social media. Because again, we weren't seeking it out to happen on Twitter. It just sort of happened because all these things kind of met. So to me, it's like almost trying to predict another big cultural moment. I don't think just another app is the way it's going to happen.

Black Twitter feels like it started to decline for a lot of us even before Elon Musk took over, not just because of the bots, but because of just some of the craziness. For a moment, we had this golden era of beautiful article recommendations, beautiful television and film commentary and recommendations. We were actually holding different cultures accountable as a collective online. But then it kind of turned into this place of where everyone wanted to over-police everything. And I think a lot of people started staying away. It turned into something different than that golden era. Was it kind of over for you or begin to decline after the takeover, or was this already something happening?

I mean, I think any time millions of people get on an app that you can certainly over-police and also under-police and under-protect. And I think there was a lot of things happening in terms of the way Black women were being targeted. The way it sort of felt unsafe for Black women at that time too. And so I think there were ways in which a lot of people started to pull back. And I think in general also understanding maybe we're spending too much time on social media. You know what I mean? 

"Black Twitter's having is fun. We're talking about 'Scandal,' we're live-tweeting, and then Trayvon happened and so it takes the story into a different direction."

Sure.

And making sure our mental health was okay. So I think a lot of things were converging again on like do we need to be on apps as much? Do we need to be on social media as much? And I think we were starting to see a lot of people pull back just in general. And I think all of those factors also led to people being like, this doesn't feel like the same fun and nostalgic space that it felt like in the beginning. I think all those things led to it, but I think you feel a huge different shift when Elon took over the platform.

Being a documentarian versus a narrative storyteller for TV audiences watch these projects in different ways. They also carry different responsibilities for you. How do you see yourself as an artist in both categories?

In the narrative space, you're saying whatever comes out of your imagination and that is the most important thing. This is my first time doing anything in the doc space. And I think the difference to me is it's not about everything that's in. Your creativity is the most important thing. It's like what's the story to the truth of the piece you're talking about? And are you honoring that in truth? 

Less almost putting myself on it and moreso letting the subject matter dictate to me what the story should be. As opposed to me saying, "Oh, the story should be about, for example, Issa doing this or Issa doing that." This story is telling me this is where the story needs to go versus me imparting my opinion on where the story should go.

What are your thoughts on the next thing? We have the Black-owned Spill app, for example. And we have Threads. But are we going to be able to create this space on a different platform? Or is it something that just happened?

I think you'll see different platforms just because I think different people want different things. So I think Spill would be one. I think obviously Bluesky and Mastodon. I think these places have grown and continue to grow. But I think as Jason talked about, he was like, people have left – I can't call it X – people have left Twitter. But by and large, Black people are still on the platform actually. I think that's what Black Twitter got to be. We got to be like, we're doing our thing here, but we also like being in the mainstream conversation too. 

I don't think Black culture ever wants to be told, you have to only talk about this, or you have to only play over here. I think we want to play in all of it. So I don't know if, again, just another app can fully capture that moment. Or capture like, oh, we're all going to go here now. Because again, we're not a monolith either. So I'd be curious to see where all this stuff shakes out. It's interesting because I have teenagers, and they're not on any of those things. They're all like TikTok kids, so even where that's going to be, right?

I did feel a moment of the old Twitter coming back and seeing people who I haven't seen in years on the app with the Kendrick and Drake beef. I was about to say J. Cole, but he –

He bowed out.

He took the mental health route.

Yeah, I think you do see Black Twitter showing up even when the Alabama brawl happened.

They showed up.

So that's why they're like, "Oh, we're still there. We're just not there in the way that it was there in that moment." Because obviously there's moments in which the fun of “Scandal” and those kind of shows, but then there are ways that we had to show up obviously during the civil unrest stuff that was happening at such a huge moment and so frequently. There was this level of, oh, we got to stay on guard. I think you definitely see it show up in Black cultural moments.

We’re missing “Insecure.” So we want to know what else are you coming with? We're sending you back to work.

We have some stuff coming out. This summer, I'm doing a pilot for Onyx.

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Blushing hens: Study finds French chickens get red in the face when scandalized

Whether happy or sad, when hens get flustered they see red — and so do their farmers. Literally. In a recent study into animal emotional intelligence, researchers found that not only do chickens express their frustrations through facial blushing and feather-fluffing, but also their fondness for their handlers and their excitement for a little treat. And for each emotional state, their combs and jowls either grow red with excitement or wane pleasantly pink with calm.  

"When presented with appetizing feed such as mealworms, the hens did get a bit red but their entire face became scarlet red during negative experiences such as capture. In contrast when they were at rest, their skin appeared much lighter in color," said the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment in a recent release. 

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As detailed in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science, researchers decamped to a lush grove in French wine country with six young Sussex hens for a spell of chicken photography. Across three (deeply enviable) weeks in the verdant Loire Valley, the researchers shot more than 18,000 photos of the fowls in a range of emotional states, building a rich portfolio of chicken expression.

Hen face reddeningAssessing the reddening of a hen: lighter red when at rest (on the left), scarlet red during negative experiences such as capture. (INRAE – Bertin and Arnould)

The researchers then built a special chicken computer program to analyze the redness levels of the photos. Finally, the researchers used the cluckers' data to determine how a new group of 13 hens would react, ultimately finding that the original hen crew — having grown accustomed to these scientists and their odd rituals — remained calmer as the new ladies took a while to settle into a country life. 

"This research has opened up several new prospects, beginning with the description of all possible means of expression for chickens, particularly movement of the head feathers in addition to skin color changes during positive situations such as play or in negative ones such as frustration," like seeing a helping of delicious chicken feed that's just out of pecking range, the institute said. 

Researchers now aim to use the data to understand how this chicken reddening may act as a social signal among the birds. And whether, in particular, it might be how the ladies determine their pecking order. 

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