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Jessica Beck is a writer, web designer and semi-professional kid wrangler from Portland, OR. She dislikes cilantro. It vexes her when people say “less" when they mean “fewer."
First Valentine's Day with your sweetheart? Picking the right gift can be a challenge. Do you want to go old school? Romantic? Silly? Cute?
Whether you've been together for a while or have just started your romance, there's a Valentine for you. We've found everything from candy to fondue to "romance in a box" (which is not at all like that Saturday Night Live skit, just FYI). Check out our ideas and make Valentine's Day extra special this year.
Commissions are earned for these sales.
Halle Berry's marriage to former Major League Baseball player David Justice may have ended nearly 30 years ago, but she still seems to be on Justice's mind.
And fans are not liking anything he has to say about it.
Justice recently appeared on the All The Smoke podcast, and among the topics Justice got into was his marriage to Berry from 1993 to 1997, and specifically why it ended.
The reason for the split? Berry wasn't "motherly" enough.
The conversation started off with Justice basically saying he married Berry out of pity.
"She asked me to marry her after knowing me for five months. I said OK, because I couldn't say no. Who's going to say no at that time?"
"I didn't want to make her feel bad and say no."
As the marriage progressed, it seems that Berry's life as a working woman in Hollywood was at odds with what Justice expected of a woman at that time in his life: Basically the kind of regressive sexist nonsense that is sadly once again all the rage these days.
He explained:
“I'm a Midwest guy. So, in my mind, I'm thinking a wife at that time should cook, clean, you know?”
“...I’m thinking, ‘OK, if we have kids, is this the woman I want to have kids with and build a family with?’”
"At that time, as a young guy — she don't cook, don't clean, don't really seem like, motherly, and then we start having issues.”
In fairness, we're all very different people in our 20s and 30s, and Justice conceded that if they had "known about therapy" at the time, the relationship may have been salvageable.
Regardless, the divorce that ensued was far from peaceful. It escalated in 1996 to an altercation outside Berry's home that resulted in her obtaining a restraining order against him. Justice denied any wrongdoing and said Berry was "throwing a tantrum."
Berry has also spoken about having been in an abusive relationship in her past, though she has declined to specify with whom. Justice has denied any abuse.
In any case, Justice's take on his marriage to Berry has not gone over well with people online.
After divorcing Justice, Berry went on to become the first—and to this day only—Black woman to win a Best Actress Oscar in 2002 for her work in Monster's Ball, and became the first Black woman to earn $20 million for a single film with 2020's Bruised, which she also directed.
And somehow amidst all that, she figured out how to be "motherly" to her two children, Nahla Ariela Aubry and Maceo-Robert Martinez. No word on whether she has time to cook and clean for current boyfriend Van Hunt, however.
Actor Sydney Sweeney recently faced backlash over her American Eagle ad campaign titled “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans.” The campaign plays on the words “jeans” and “genes,” which some critics claim alludes to eugenics—a theory widely discredited as scientifically inaccurate and ethically dangerous.
According to former presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway—who gave us the term "alternative facts"—the campaign has sparked "panic on the left."
You can hear what Conway said in the video below.
However, the New York Times reported that right-wing media amplified the supposed left-wing "panic" surrounding Sweeney, noting that "nearly three-quarters of posts that were critical of Ms. Sweeney or the ad had fewer than 500 views."
Additionally, many of President Donald Trump's supporters "amplified the critical posts in reposts and reshares, driving even more attention to posts that would normally reach only a few thousand users."
Conway's remark caught the attention of Democratic Arizona Representative Yassamin Ansari, the youngest woman in Congress, who replied:
"Nobody on the left is 'panicking' about a Sydney Sweeney ad. Can assure you of that. We’re a little busy trying to stop the authoritarian takeover of our country."
You can see what she wrote below.
Many concurred, mocking Conway's coverage in response.
The far-right has latched onto Sweeney not just because of her ad campaign but because she is registered as a Republican voter in Monroe County, Florida, where she is said to have purchased a mansion in 2024. ABC News, citing public voting records, found that a “Sydney B. Sweeney” in Summerland Key—who shares the actress’s birthday—is registered as a Republican in the state.
Sweeney has not publicly addressed her voter registration but nonetheless received support from Trump, who praised her and told reporters that if Sweeney "is a registered Republican, I think her ad is fantastic," adding that "you'd be surprised how many people are Republicans."
Actor Lisa Kudrow has gone viral after her performance in the Netflix mockumentary Death to 2020 as a truth-denying spokesperson for President Donald Trump went viral—prompting many to point out that her portrayal is still spot on.
The film, from the minds of Black Mirror creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones, centers on a group of fictional characters reflecting on major U.S. and U.K. events of 2020, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the U.S. presidential election.
Kudrow portrays Jeanetta Grace Susan, a composite character inspired by former Trump Senior Counselor Kellyanne Conway and former White House Press Secretaries Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kayleigh McEnany.
The viral moment in question shows Kudrow-as-Susan waving away Trump's first impeachment, which was initiated in part because he'd encouraged Ukrainian leadership to investigate then-candidate Joe Biden for “political dirt” he could wield against his opponent. Trump was ultimately acquitted by the GOP-controlled Senate in early 2020.
Susan says:
"The whole impeachment thing was baseless. Okay, so the Democrats claim that Trump pressured Ukraine into digging up dirt on the Biden family and their only real 'evidence' of that is the transcript of him doing it."
When questioned, Susan denies, denies, denies:
"'What transcript? Check your tape, I said no such thing. There's no such place as Ukraine. I choose to believe there is not."
At another point, even when presented with Trump's own words, she claims:
"This is what the media does. You lie, fabricate, fantasize. The president never said that. I know this doesn't fit with your agenda but this never happened."
You can watch Kudrow's performance in the video below.
Many agreed—her portrayal is disturbingly accurate.
Kudrow has not commented on the clips of her performance that have gone viral, but there's no question—she's a treasure and we need some humor in these dark times.
To see more Kudrow's impression, Netflix put together a compilation of her best moments from Death to 2020.
You can watch below:
- YouTube youtu.be
White House reporter Molly Martinez responded after a White House livestream glitched and caused her eyes to look completely white for a split-second—prompting conspiracy theorists to go wild and claim she is a "lizard person" who is secretly controlling the government.
Martinez, a Washington-based journalist for local TV chain Gray Television, appeared on camera June 19 in the White House press room, smiling at a friend. A glitch in the original footage made her eyes look entirely white—something conspiracy theorists seized on as “evidence” she’s a lizard person.
The clip initially went viral about a month ago but gained renewed traction recently after large social media accounts like Concerned Citizen (which has millions of followers) shared it.
You can see the viral moment in the video below.
When the video first spread, Martinez was mistakenly identified as a congressional staffer who became a conspiracy target in 2023 after being caught on camera mouthing words during remarks by Stacey Plaskett, the delegate from the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Not wanting that staffer to keep getting doxxed, Martinez revealed her identity with a post reading:
“This is objectively the funniest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
You can see her post below.
In an interview with HuffPost, she said she believes conspiracy theories like this one come "from a place of fear":
“I empathize with people who turn to conspiracies, because I feel like that’s a way for people to find community in chaos and [the conspiracy theories] can really feel like a life raft, like it’s empowering. ‘We have this knowledge that no one else has, and everyone’s turning this blind eye.’"
"I think ultimately it comes from a place of fear. So I never want to punch down on somebody who I think genuinely is afraid, so I’m trying to sort of keep that in mind. It doesn’t make sense to me, but it obviously makes perfect sense to them.”
Martinez has been a good sport about the whole thing—and the commentary is hilarious.
The reptilian conspiracy theory has been around since at least the 1920s but was popularized by David Icke, a British conspiracy theorist, who claims a race of reptilians gained political power to manipulate world events and keep humans living in fear. Icke has claimed many world leaders are, in fact, reptilian beings.
Several years ago, a video of a Trump supporter accusing Queen Elizabeth II of being a "reptilian shape-shifter" went viral. The man said "You can see it in their eyes... the evil. Ship... ship-shaper... shift, yeah, shift-shapers. They change their shape and shift."
If that's not concerning enough, a 2013 survey found that 4% of Americans believe lizard people secretly control the world.
Yikes.
Conservative podcaster Ben Ferguson left hs fellow CNN panelists stunned after he made the bizarre claim that falling crime rates in 2024 were due to President Donald Trump's policies—even though Trump didn't begin his second term until January 2025.
Ferguson spoke after Trump—who presented fake crime statistics—announced his decision to federalize police in Washington, D.C., and deploy the National Guard in an effort to fight crime.
Trump's announcement is a significant escalation of his previous attacks on the nation's capital, which he has repeatedly referred to as "crime-infested." He claimed in his remarks to the press that D.C. is “one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the world,” a claim at odds with Justice Department data showing that the city’s crime rate hit a 30-year low last year.
Enter Ferguson, who in conversation with other panelists on CNN's NewsNight with Abby Phillip defended Trump's move, pointing to a spike in violent crime in 2023. Phillip acknowledged crime rates were higher at the time but pointed to last year's numbers, which showed crime was down significantly.
RELATED: MSNBC Fact-Checks Trump In Real Time As He Blatantly Lies About Crime Rates In DC
Ferguson replied:
"I agree, and a lot of it is the leadership of Trump."
After Phillip pointed out that this happened "before Trump" and asked him for "evidence" that this had anything to do with Trump, he replied:
"We have the president of the United States of America enabling law enforcement to do their job, we have ICE agents going out there ... we are seeing numbers come down because you have a president—"
Phillip cut him off, pointing out that it was in fact former President Joe Biden who was in office at the time, to which Ferguson stressed that Biden "was not tough on crime." The two of them also clashed when he disagreed with Phillip's remark that crime rates have "plummeted"—even though federal data shows crime rates decreased by 50% between 2023 and 2024.
To that, Phillip replied:
"I know you don't want to let facts get in the way of the political talking points, but I think if you were to take politics out of the situation there are a lot of complex reasons why crime rates go up and why they go down, and usually the president has not a single thing to do with it."
You can watch their exchange in the video below.
- YouTube youtu.be
Ferguson had earlier posted on social media that he'd be appearing on CNN, saying he would be "talking TRUMP CRIME CRACKDOWN IN DC AND ICE AGENTS BE ALLOWED TO DO THEIR JOB IN CA!"
However, he found that his blatant denial of the facts did not go over well.
Sorry, Ben. We know facts are inconvenient.
