Olly Alexander in ‘It’s A Sin’ The UK’s Channel 4 released the trailer for the upcoming new drama series It’s A Sin set in the 80s, from Queer as Folk writer Russell T Davies. The five-part series will star Years & Years singer Olly Alexander along with Stephen Fry, Neil Patrick Harris, Keeley Hawes, and Tracy Ann Oberman. It’s A Sin explores the AIDS crisis in the 1980s by following the story of three friends who move to London as the HIV/AIDS epidemic unfolds. From Channel 4:
Ritchie, Roscoe and Colin are young lads, strangers at first, leaving home at 18 and heading off to London in 1981 with hope and ambition and joy… and walking straight into a plague that most of the world ignores.
Year by year, episode by episode, their lives change, as the mystery of a new virus starts as a rumor, then a threat, then a terror, and then something that binds them together in the fight.
It’s the story of their friends, lovers and families too, especially Jill, the girl who loves them and helps them, and galvanizes them in the battles to come. Together they will endure the horror of the epidemic, the pain of rejection and the prejudices that gay men faced throughout the decade.
Attorney General Bill Barr (image via Flickr/WhiteHouse – public domain) For a guy who couldn’t stand up enough for Donald Trump, Bill Barr had no problem clapping back at the Donald during his last press conference as Attorney General. In the wake of reports that the Trumpster is mulling over declaring martial law and seizing voting machines, calling for a special counsel to investigate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter; and deflecting blame from Russia for the recent cyber attacks on multiple federal agencies, Barr now publicly disagrees with Trump on: Voter fraud: “I see no basis now for seizing machines by the federal government. … If I thought a special counsel at this stage was the right tool and was inappropriate, I would name one. But I haven’t and I’m not going to.” The recent SolarWinds cyber hack: “From the information that I have, I agree with Secretary Pompeo’s assessment. It certainly appears to be the Russians, but I’m not going to discuss it beyond that.” Hunter Biden: “I think to the extent that there is an investigation, I think that it’s being handled responsibly and professionally, currently within the department. And to this point, I have not seen a reason to appoint a special counsel. And I have no plan to do so before I leave.”
Charlie Kirk can’t math (image via Instagram) Conservative pundit Charlie Kirk began trending on Twitter this morning after it was discovered that math poses special challenges for the young Mr. Kirk. Kirk, who runs the far-right student group Turning Point USA (which attracts a lot of support from white nationalists), apparently thought he could prove that Donald Trump’s baseless voter fraud allegations are true. Kirk tweeted the vote totals and number of counties won by Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and most recently, President-elect Joe Biden. Barack Obama: – 69,000,000 votes, 873 counties Donald Trump: 75,000,000, 2,497 counties Joe Biden: 81,000,000 votes, 477 counties He followed those stats with the statement “And we’re not allowed to question his ‘victory.'” As most people know, conservative/Republican presidential candidates tend to do well in rural areas (i.e. counties with not a lot of people) and Democratic candidates see much of their support in urban areas (big cities where there are a LOT of people in a relatively small area). I’m guessing Kirk was stumped by the fact that Donald Trump might have won many more counties than Joe Biden but didn’t win the election. For instance, here in my state of Nevada, Trump handily won Esmeralda county with a vote total of 400 votes to Biden’s 74. Yep, those were the total votes cast for those candidates. Meanwhile, Biden won Clark country with 521,852 votes over Trump’s 430,930 votes – a difference of over 90,000 votes. See how that works, Charlie? At the end of the race, if you get the most votes in a state, you win that state’s electoral college votes. County lines don’t factor in how votes are counted. Twitter had a field day about population density and the fact that land can’t vote.
The most populous county in Texas (Harris, which Biden won) has *27,495 times* the population of the least populous county in Texas (Loving, which Trump won).
That’s not a typo; it’s 4.65 million people versus … 169.
Counties are an arbitrary and meaningless unit. California, with a population of 40 million, has 58 counties…while Montana, with only one million residents, has 56 counties.
Loving County, Texas – 90.9% trump, 4% Biden (60 to 4 in actual votes) Los Angeles County, California – 71% Biden, 26.9% trump (3,028,885 to 1,145,530 actual votes)
Trump supporters get upset when you point out that 81 million is bigger than 74 million and 306 electoral votes is +36 more than you need to be declared the winner.
Twas the Sunday before Christmas… Checking in with the hunks of Instagram before the big holiday week starting with one of my favorite sexy Santa pics (above). Luke Evans chowed down on watermelon at the beach:
As the year 2020 is (finally) coming to a close, it seems everyone is doing year-end wrap-ups and lists. So, why not Grindr?
The popular gay dating app took a deep dive into some statistics regarding its worldwide audience of users.
In a series of posts titled ‘Grindr Unwrapped,’ inspired by Spotify’s annual Spotify Wrapped, the folks in the know took a look at sex and dating trends among the nearly 13 million gay, bi, trans and queer app users.
For instance, pointing out that the guys on Grindr “ran the gamut of positions,” the number crunchers note that the countries with the highest percentage of self-proclaimed tops were Morocco, India, Nigeria, Chile, and Israel.
(graphics via Grindr Blog)
Flipping that script, it seems the highest percentage of bottoms can be found in Vietnam, Sweden, Thailand, Peru, and South Africa.
And yes, vers guys do exist especially if you happen to be in Venezuela, Guatemala, Argentina, Mexico, and Australia.
The cities with the most guys getting their Grindr on (per capita) are Washington, D.C., Paris, Bogota, Santiago, and Houston.
Overall, as folks look to getting back in the swing of traveling, it might be useful to know that the countries with the most Grindr users are the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, India, and the U.K.
All in all, there were 7.85 billion taps sent out into the interwebs from our phones with 584 million getting marked as ‘favorites.’
It turns out that Sunday evenings are when folks are most likely to fire up the app, and the eggplant emoji (no surprise) was the top profile emoji.
Grindr does offer a caveat to this list by noting that not all app users include all of these categories of info in their profiles. Plus, keep in mind Grindr itself is its own subset of the gay/bi/trans community.
So, if you find yourself in Morocco or India and the number of top guys don’t seem to add up in your travels, don’t blame Grindr.
Click over to the Grindr blog for more stats from the informal report like top profile songs and where users like to play host the most.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) didn’t tiptoe around his thoughts on how Donald Trump is handling his final days in the White House. Asked about Trump’s response to recent cyber-attacks on government and major corporations this week – attributed to Russia – the 2012 Republican presidential candidate told CNN’s Jake Tapper Trump has “a blind spot when it comes to Russia and so you can expect that that’s the response he would have.” Romney also said that “it’s sad in a lot of respects” how the Donald is “casting about” railing about his reelection loss when he could be taking a victory lap with the rollout of the coronavirus vaccines.
President Trump has “a blind spot when it comes to Russia and so you can expect that, that’s the response that he would have,” GOP Sen. Mitt Romney says on Pres. Trump downplaying the suspected Russian cyberattack.
"It's really sad in a lot of respects, and embarrassing" — Mitt Romney on Trump's ongoing, increasingly desperate attempts to overturn the election pic.twitter.com/oyNK1kM9nP
Lin Wood (image: public domain/White House) With a crack legal team like this, it really is hard to believe Donald Trump’s lawyers have lost dozens and dozens and dozens of times in their attempts to rewrite the presidential election. #SarcasmIntended Attorney L. Lin Wood, who continues to keep the legal community in a stitch with his typos and misstatements, filed a pro se lawsuit in Georgia federal court on Friday with what we all hope is a typo. Prior to his signature on the last page of the filing is the following verification section: “Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §1746, I declare and verify under plenty of perjury that the facts contained in the foregoing Verified Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief are true and correct.” Bolding is mine. The language is Wood’s.
Donald Trump speaks at the White House (photo: public domain) According to a report by the New York Times, high-level Trump advisers are becoming concerned that Donald Trump has begun giving serious consideration to acting on wild conspiracy theories regarding his failed reelection bid. At a White House meeting on Friday, Trump reportedly discussed making Sidney Powell a special counsel investigating voter fraud, according to two people briefed on the discussion. You’ll recall Powell worked on behalf of Trump’s campaign team pushing a series of conspiracy theories about a Venezuelan plot to rig voting machines in the United States and more. Senior advisers, including Rudy Giuliani and White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, were not keen on the ideas being presented. Powell found herself being pushed out of Trump’s legal team recently after she floated wild claims about Dominion Voting Systems machines, which were used in some states, somehow being connected to a Venezuelan plot to control the election. Also in the mix is former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s wild talk of Trump invoking martial law and ordering the military to “rerun” the election. And then there’s Giuliani’s scheme to have the Department of Homeland Security seize possession of voting machines as part of a push to overturn the results of the election. But Giuliani was informed Homeland Security does not have the authority to do such a thing. Read more at the NY Times. Axios reporter Jonathan Swan says that after years of covering the Trump administration, he “can’t recall hearing more intense concern from senior officials who are actually Trump people.”
I’ve been covering Donald Trump for a while. I can’t recall hearing more intense concern from senior officials who are actually Trump people. The Sidney Powell / Michael Flynn ideas are finding an enthusiastic audience at the top. https://t.co/NxjC0sUrzI
I have to admit up front that I normally despise people doing the middle finger ‘f*ck you’ thing. It usually feels so base and so classless. But, for weeks now, my fatigue and loathing for the year 2020 have been growing exponentially. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed a single year being so incredibly full of bad news. And I know I’m not alone. Check out these folks who indulge themselves in a bit of well-earned mental health self-care by expressing their thoughts on how 2020 has impacted them – from school closings to toilet paper hoarders, to lost loved ones, to the long list of ‘Karens’ we’ve endured during the pandemic and more. Note – adult language here #duh
