Wherever you are watching this World Cup Final. Make great memories. Nothing in the world is like this in terms of shared, collective, global experience. | | | | Sacha Baron Cohen is 'Billy Wayne Ruddick' and many more in his new show "Who Is America?"
(Showtime) | | | | |  | “Wherever you are watching this World Cup Final. Make great memories. Nothing in the world is like this in terms of shared, collective, global experience.”
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| | rantnrave:// Last night, SACHA BARON COHEN (he was remote but sent a very funny message), CAA's JIM TOTH and REESE WITHERSPOON were nice enough to host a screening of the first two episodes of SHOWTIME's new Sacha joint, WHO IS AMERICA? Words cannot describe how funny, spot-on, crazy and let's be real, sad it is. The man is a genius. His characters seem surreal but are totally based in reality. And while the behavior he exposes goes on every day in America, the humor is just so beyond anything I've ever experienced that it hits home even harder. 30-minute episodes suit him. What's happened to us? What did we miss? Who is America? Is this America? This is the show of the year. I don't want to give spoilers but your mouth will be wide open. You will be holding your head in your hands. You will be closing your eyes. Or covering one. You will slowly sink into your couch. Maybe fall out of your chair. Laughing so hard that you can't breathe. I needed this. Try to watch it with others. Watching them is half the fun because you can't watch yourself. And they're doing what you're doing. I laughed every second uncontrollably for an hour. And yet, this is our reality. Some of the funniest and most prolific people in show business were at the screening and they were falling out of their seats. Yes, the crowd was probably already in agreement. But this isn't a partisan hit job. This is a mirror into a side of America that is very, very real. It's not new, we just may have been in our own bubble. I have a real hard time hearing he duped or tricked people. His characters are one thing. The disguises? Not the point. The people featured on the show acted just as they are. They answered questions just as is. They did just what they did. They are responsible for what they say and do. This IS who they are. Ask yourself. Who are you? Ask yourself who is America? Don't deny that this is a part of it. Depending who you think you are, we are where you thought, we are where you want to be or you're sad and we've sunk pretty low and reverting. Sacha is one of the greatest social satirists of our time. These creations are comedy, yes. But they are also mirrors of society. Recently, DONALD GLOVER did some great, not so funny work. But made a similar statement. THIS IS AMERICA. So that's what I think. But one more thing. Sacha's performance is brilliant. If we cast aside, for a moment, the satire, the WTF, and the holy s***ness of it, it’s too easy to miss his accomplishment as an actor. That makes us (and those in the show) believe such absurdity is real. Watch the first episode right now... If you're in the "eat what you kill" business world, last season's BILLIONS had a hilarious and truthful episode regarding compensation in the hedge fund business. Creators BRIAN KOPPELMAN, DAVID LEVIEN and their talented team of writers did their homework. I've known a lot of the "whales" in the finance world. Many are the same. They cannot help themselves but try to stiff or negotiate down. Doesn't matter if you're worth more. It's about the game. The winning. And it's also about reassuring themselves that it's all about them. BOBBY AXELROD vs. TAYLOR MASON is not an atypical example of a meeting like this. But the season is over. I'm bringing it because we're on the verge of the TRUMP-PUTIN summit. And Trump has demanded he meet with Putin alone. Now, I'm pretty sure that the ORANGE MONSTER is a dim-witted operative or a too stupid not-to-be-duped "useful idiot." It's worrisome. Basically a handler meeting with his spy. Or it is something else? Maybe the real reason is that it's actually a comp meeting. To be fair to Trump, he executed flawlessly on all the things that Putin asked for. Will Putin (rumored to be the richest man in the world) reward his #1 employee? Trump deserves it bigly. Whatever Vlad decides Trump won't argue. He'll take what he's given as a dutiful servant... REDEF was born as a company at WEWORK. I love that place. They do a great job. The only issue really is the ratio of tenants to bathrooms. It's an issue, but still, great company. You sort of wished a cool company like this would maybe want to educate or inform their employees about the environmental effects of eating meat rather than what they did? My friend and one of my favorite writers, FELIX SALMON explores in his piece for SLATE: "All the Problems With WeWork’s Tyrannical New “No Meat” Policy"... Happy Birthday to KENNY GERSH, JEFF JARVIS, DANNY LIPSKIN, BRETT WOITUNSKI, BHAVESH PATEL, TONY BERNARD, and AMANDA KLEIN MILLER. Belated to PETER KAFKA, MITCH DAVIS, KEN KRASNER, MIMI JAMES, and BILL GANON. | | | - Jason Hirschhorn, curator |
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| | | The summer wind came blowin' in |
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 | Medium |
| Anyone who has watched even a fraction of Hollywood's sci-fi offerings is primed for a mind-boggling future of interstellar travel, superpowers, and brain uploads. And yet, when it comes to sex, science fiction almost always circles back to two dreary, retrograde options. | | |
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 | Grub Street |
| Mark Bittman and Dr. David L. Katz patiently answer pretty much every question we could think of about healthy food. | | |
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 | Lefsetz Letter |
| Defiant. Knowledgeable. Unrehearsed. Intense. THAT'S A ROCK STAR! I don't care which side of the aisle you're on, whether you're a Trumpster or not, one thing is clear, you weren't gonna mess with Peter Strzok. For far too long the government has been demonized. Taxes. Unions too. | | |
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 | The Outline |
| The branch of UFO investigation they don’t want you to know about. | | |
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 | Variety |
| One of the most memorable scenes in the Farrelly Brothers' classic romantic comedy "There's Something About Mary" finds hapless high school student Ted (Ben Stiller) accidentally getting his penis stuck in his fly in the bathroom of the house of his beautiful prom date Mary ( Cameron Diaz). | | |
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 | Columbia Journalism Review |
| Dan Rather is as much an emblem of American journalism as any reporter still alive. He covered the Vietnam War in the '60s during the heyday of the foreign correspondent; stood up to Nixon at the height of Watergate; sat at the anchor desk of CBS Evening News at a time when the network news [...] | | |
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 | Adventures in Consumer Technology |
| Thoughts on Setapp - subscription-based collection for Mac apps | | |
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 | The Atlantic |
| The sport's top tier is organized around the goal of producing a tiny group of elite players, at the expense of kids'-and parents'-well-being. In the late 1970s, when he was 10, Rob Nissen played for the only soccer team available to kids in his middle-class, New Jersey town. | | |
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 | Yahoo |
| Live Aid alumni reflect on the surreal star sightings, the nerves, the backstage shenanigans, the onstage mishaps, the misplaced money, and more. | | |
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 | Wired |
| In some ways, special counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers for their hacking and attack on the 2016 presidential election is Mueller's least surprising move yet-but it might also be his single most significant. | | |
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 | Hollywood Reporter |
| Everyone from Maureen Dowd to Kevin Huvane recounts stories behind the beloved insiders' watering hole, where Tom Ford's distaste for "fat girls" spawned the town's most famous maitre d', and Bill Murray iced Lance Armstrong ("it was karmic"). | | |
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 | Noisey |
| We caught up with the reporter behind the oral history of the Atlanta group's cult classic. | | |
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 | Vice |
| "I’m just trying to get eyes on me. It’s a big attention game online... the end goal for me is just be on as many screens as I can." | | |
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 | Toronto Star |
| WASHINGTON-U.S. President Donald Trump's words are getting more dishonest over time, the Star has found in the first detailed statistical analysis of his inaccurate statements in office. The analysis relies on some subjective judgments, which we'll explain in detail below. But it provides the most comprehensive picture yet available of what historians say is an unprecedented avalanche of serial lying. | | |
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 | Slate |
| “The reasonable Russian perspective is that the United States has just kind of dictated terms to us for 25 years.” | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| The late singer’s estate is currently exploring licensing, future releases and even a hotel - all while trying to consider what Prince would have wanted. | | |
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 | The Cut |
| Surgical castration has a long and ugly history - from ancient Athenian man-slaves and 18-century Italian castrati to 19th-century America, when a man named Dr. Harry Sharp castrated nearly 200 inmates, aiming to reduce the likelihood that they would offend again. | | |
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| Medium |
| How late-stage capitalism, climate change, and space travel will transform our diets. | | |
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 | CNET |
| Here’s how social networks are waging war against trolls and bots using AI weapons. | | |
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 | Anil Dash |
| At this point, there's nothing novel about noticing that social media is often toxic and stressful. But even aside from those concerns, our social networks are not things we generally think of as requiring maintenance or upkeep, even though we routinely do regular updates on all the other aspects of our digital lives. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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