Ryan Mustard

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Photo by Tim Warner/Getty Images

Plus: Texas athletes may benefit big under NCAA’s potential new image, likeness rules

We probably won’t know much more about the 2020 college football season until June, according to a recent announcement from Texas school officials. In other words, our excitement for the Texas Longhorns will have to wait – at least for a few more weeks.

“[Monday], Governor Greg Abbott announced plans to gradually, and strategically, begin reopening the state of Texas. Starting Friday, certain businesses and organizations will be allowed to open, albeit with new capacity restrictions and social distancing protocols,” wrote soon-to depart University of Texas president Greg Fenves and Interim President Designate Jay Hartzell in a joint press release. “Our goal remains to reopen the Forty Acres in the fall, likely with some courses and activities held in person and others online as dictated by health and safety concerns. But to get there, we still have a great deal of planning to do, and we must first assess and address a range of risks and solutions.”

Let’s hope there’s good news on the horizon.

WHAT THE WISE MEN ARE SAYING ABOUT THE LONGHORNS

Burnt Orange Nation: Why Texas is still lagging in NFL Draft results

Burnt Orange Nation: The Longhorn Republic looks at Texas softball

Burnt Orange Nation: Why the Baltimore Ravens were so excited to select Texas WR Devin Duvernay

Austin American-Statesman: Following Michigan WR Tarik Black’s pledge, will Texas get a boost from another graduate transfer?

Dallas Morning News: NCAA’s stance on athlete compensation has taken a significant step forward – even if it had to be forced

Sports Illustrated: Duvernay enters NFL with a ‘chip on my shoulder’

Sports Illustrated: Herman strikes gold again in the transfer market

247Sports: Five reasons why Tarik Black is a big addition to Texas

ICYMI AT BURNT ORANGE NATION

Texas offers 2022 OT Jaylen Early

How Tarik Black fits on the Texas depth chart

The Longhorn Republic tries to temper its expectations about basketball

3-star WR Hal Presley names Texas in top 10 schools

Shaka Smart updates the status of injured Texas players

WHAT WE’RE READING

Banner Society: An analysis of Skip Bayless’s horse butt

Banner Society: Bad Idea Time: A College Football Playoff spot for the school that makes a COVID-19 vaccine

The Ringer: The Bengals cut Andy Dalton. Is he bound for the Patriots?

The Ringer: The 2020 NBA Draft class isn’t weak – it just isn’t heavy on stars

ESPN: Would a baseball card lie? Cracking the mystery of Don Mattingly’s birthday

USA Today: MLB and NBA’s first steps provide hope for college football season

247Sports: Which programs best develop elite talent? A five-year deep dive

NEWS ACROSS THE FORTY ACRES AND COLLEGE FOOTBALL LANDSCAPE

• The NCAA will soon decide changes to policies pertaining to players’ name and likeness rights. That’s a huge step in the right direction for athletes getting properly compensated, as the Dallas Morning News properly notes. But what does it mean for the Longhorns? Sports Illustrated has an idea. From SI: “Players could find new ways to monetize their social media followings ... . We could see podcasts from players in the future as well. Car lots can bring in players for autograph signings to generate customer traffic. It appears as if the new regulations won’t put a cap on compensation for athletes from third parties regarding name and image likeness, and for Texas players that’s a very good thing [because the] Austin metro area is the 11th largest in the country with upwards of 2.1 million people. It’s the biggest city in America without a professional sports franchise from one of the major four leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB or NHL). In addition the university’s athletic program generates more money than any other in the United States. It is also considered by most to be the flagship football program in the second-most-populated state in the country.” More below.

• Folks are excited about newly committed receiver Tarik Black.

• Longhorn Network will re-air the Longhorns and Utah Utes Alamo Bowl game on Friday.

“Eggs not included.”

Instagram.com/KaitlynBreann

Plus: A Mack Brown story about how he got his team to relax before the 2006 national title game against USC

Texas Longhorns outfielder Kaitlyn Washington was provided a second opportunity by the NCAA to enjoy her senior season on the Forty Acres and she’s taking advantage of it.

On social media yesterday, Washington, who clocked-in 17 starts during Texas’ 24-3 2020 season, announced she plans to return in spring 2021 for a re-do after the coronavirus outbreak cut their latest campaign short. “So thankful for the NCAA giving me the opportunity to play with my girls another year! See y’all Spring 2021,” she wrote on Twitter.

WHAT THE WISE MEN ARE SAYING ABOUT THE LONGHORNS

Austin American-Statesman: ‘The stars were aligning a little bit for us’: What’s on deck for Texas softball in 2021?

Sports Illustrated: SI Mock Draft: No Longhorns in the first three rounds

247Sports: Texas coaches create positive ‘buzz’ with Twitter coaches clinic

247Sports: The State of Recruiting: An interview with Jalen Milroe

NEWS FROM ELSEWHERE IN LONGHORN LAND AND THE BIG 12

• Apparently former Texas football coach Mack Brown used the Jerry Springer show to get the Longhorns loose and ready for the 2006 Rose Bowl game against the USC Trojans.

• Former Texas men’s basketball great Kevin Durant – a two-time NBA champion and NBA Finals MVP – is among the players set to compete in the upcoming 2K “Players Only” tournament, which will be streamed online over the course of 10 days, beginning today. From Sports Illustrated: “While fans enjoy the experience of watching NBA games live, this 2K event will give fans a unique opportunity to watch their favorite athletes from a different perspective. There are many advantages that will be featured in this online tournament. The fans will be able to watch the players (who will be mic’d up) trash talk each other live and also compete in a game which attracts millions. As the virus shut down almost every source of sports entertainment, this should give sports fans a huge breath of fresh air. The competition is going to feature a variety of players from Atlanta Hawks PG, Trae Young, to seasoned gamer and Phoenix Suns All-Star, Devin Booker. Kevin Durant, Hassan Whiteside, and Trae Young, will own the top three seeds. The seeding of the tournament is dictated on the player’s 2K ranking. The first round matchups will be played as follows.”

• 247Sports has the scoop on what may be in store for the upcoming college football season. From 247Sports: “College football could kick off in January or even February if the coronavirus pandemic persists — rather than be restricted to the fall and face a shortened season, games played without fans or cancelation, several athletic directors from three different Power Five conferences told Horns247.com. Those athletic directors said health and safety will continue to drive every decision made about on-campus activities in light of the pandemic. But if the pandemic shows signs of being controlled or contained, trying to preserve football season in its entirety will be a priority, they said, even if it means moving the start into the new year. Football accounts for 70 to 80 percent of most athletic departments’ revenue and helps fund the operating budgets of a school’s other sports (usually with the exception of men’s basketball and baseball, which tend to be revenue positive or neutral).”

• Never forget.

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NURVV today debuted the NURVV Run, a set of iPhone-connected insoles worn inside the shoes that are designed to analyze running habits and deliver the information to the accompanying NURVV iPhone app.

There are 32 sensors embedded in the insoles that capture data from the feet at 1,000 times per second per sensor, offering running metrics like cadence, step length, footstrike, pronation, and balance, for a complete picture of each user's running technique.


The data is set to the NURVV Run app for analysis, with the app delivering "actionable insights and personalized coaching" for improvements that can be made before, during, and after a run.

There's also an in-run coaching feature that's designed to help users run at a target pace, achieve a chosen time, or beat a personal record with in-run audio and haptic feedback.

A personalized Running Health score is meant to help users determine how sustainable their running is based on training load, pronation, cadence, and balance so runners can reduce injury risk and avoid training too hard.


According to NURVV, NURVV Run is able to fit in all running shoes and is rain, mud, and puddle proof. It features a five hour active battery life.

More information on NURVV Run can be found on the NURVV website, and pre-orders are set to go live today. NURVV Run is available in multiple sizes and is priced at $300.


This article, "CES 2020: iPhone-Connected NURVV Run Insoles Analyze Running Data" first appeared on MacRumors.com

Discuss this article in our forums

247Sports: Mike Roach

Texas suffers a casualty in their 2021 recruiting class in the form of Dallas Skyline wide receiver Quaydarius Davis.

Dallas Skyline four star wide receiver Quaydarius Davis announced via his Twitter account this evening that he is de-committing from the Longhorns and re-opening his recruitment.

Davis is the first de-commitment for Texas in the 2021 class after being one of the first players to jump on board early for the Longhorns.

Davis is a Top 100 talent nationally who will definitely have plenty of suitors now with his recruitment being back open, and it would probably behoove the Longhorn staff to stay on him his well with still plenty of time left before he signs on the dotted line.

Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

According to Ed Orgeron, Louisiana Tech suffered from the same issues as LSU did on Saturday.

The field at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium isn’t the only place where opponents have dealt with the heat in Austin, at least according to LSU Tigers head coach Ed Orgeron, who accused the Texas Longhorns of not providing air conditioning in the visitor’s locker room.

And it wasn’t the first time it’s happened this season, either.

“First of all, I called Louisiana Tech, and they told us about it,” Orgeron said on Monday, according to the Advocate. “So we did some things in the dressing room that were better. It wasn’t great, but it was better. At least we had air in there. They didn’t have air. We had some blowers in there. I don’t think that caused as much as going out there and having to play 93 plays on defense. I think that had a lot to do with it.”

Oregeron was referencing the numerous cramping issues experienced by the Tigers, which drew the ire of Longhorns fans and prompted Texas head coach Tom Herman to say that the stoppages of play had an impact on his offense.

On Monday, Texas athletics director Chris Del Conte responded to the accusations.

“The comment today about lack of air conditioning in our visiting locker room is the first we’ve heard of any issues in that area,” Del Conte said in a statement released by the school.

“We provide one of the best visitor setups available and are proud of the efforts we put forth in hosting our guests. Our facilities staff did not receive any complaints from either Louisiana Tech or LSU, and we’ve confirmed that our air conditioning in the visiting locker room is in good working order.”

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Scott Wachter-USA TODAY Sports

The pass protection held up especially well against the talented Tigers defense as the Longhorns upgrade at the guard positions.

AUSTIN, Texas — Six offensive line coaches in eight offenses between 2010 and 2018. No offensive linemen selected in the NFL Draft between 2008 and 2017.

Now, in the second season under position coach Herb Hand, the Texas Longhorns offensive line may be set to move firmly out of the wilderness after a solid debut under Hand last season and an excellent performance against the LSU Tigers defense on Saturday.

“I thought our offensive line was outstanding,” offensive coordinator Tim Beck said on Wednesday.

Not only is it a rare thing to hear a Longhorns coach say after facing a defense full of future NFL talent, it was the second positive that came to Beck’s mind from the game after how hard the entire offense played.

Across the board, the Horns are better than in year’s past, starting outside at the tackle positions. Asked whether sophomore Sam Cosmi at left tackle and junior Derek Kerstetter at right tackle are the best duo that Beck has had in his three years at Texas, Beck immediately responded in the affirmative.

The Texas offensive coordinator gave Hand a lot of credit for that development.

“I think that he’s done a great job with those guys,” Beck said. “Sam played left tackle a lot of his career. As far as Derek, I think two years ago, he was our starting right tackle. It’s not like he hasn’t played the position at the collegiate level.”

Cosmi spent the summer working on mirroring the pass sets that he’s now taking on the left side of the line after quickly solidifying his hold on the right tackle job early last season. Another offseason in Yancy McKnight’s strength and conditioning program helped Cosmi mitigate some of the mass issues that he suffered from last season as a redshirt freshman — Cosmi is still a year away in strength from looking like a protoypical NFL left tackle, but he’s getting close.

In the first two games, he’s been a key blocker on running back screen passes, showing the ability to acquire and finish defenders in the open field. Against LSU, Texas lead off the game with a play behind Cosmi’s block in space for a 19-yard gain. After the season opener, Cosmi said that he relishes the look on the faces of defensive backs when he’s bearing down on them.

“Our mindset is just get on our hats,” Cosmi said of those plays. “Especially for offensive linemen, we can’t cut any more going down field, so just 10 and 2 with the guy and be able to square up with him. But yeah, that play was very exciting to me. I enjoy when I see a corner with his eyes wide open and being able to drive him about 10 yards downfield.”

He’s not just good at executing those screen passes, they’re one of his favorite plays.

In pass protection, Cosmi is continuing his high level of play from last season, with LSU standout K’Lavon Chaisson a particular challenge last week, as Chaisson has enough talent to eventually become a top-10 draft pick. On Saturday, though, Cosmi got the better of the matchup in a statement performance — Chaisson’s lone sack came on a twist away from Cosmi in an obvious passing situation for Texas.

It’s still early in Cosmi’s career, but he is going to be eligible for the NFL Draft after this season and NFL evaluators already believe that he has more upside than Connor Williams and consider him a better prospect, according to a report.

Kerstetter held his own when matched up with Chaisson even though he wasn’t listed as the starter at right tackle until graduate transfer Parker Braun moved into the starting lineup against Louisiana Tech, pushing redshirt freshman Junior Angilau to right guard and junior Denzel Okafor out of the top five linemen.

Beck believes that it’s the guards inside who aren’t getting enough attention.

“I think a lot of people are missing our guards,” Beck said. “Those guys are good now. I mean, physical, they can move. They love contact, and they love just hitting people. Obviously, we’re super strong at the center with Shack [Zach Shackelford]. So, I really like that group.”

The success against LSU came despite the lack of in-game pass protection reps for graduate transfer Parker Braun and redshirt freshman Junior Angilau, the two starting guards — both players ran triple option offenses in high school and Braun stayed in that system under Paul Johnson at Georgia Tech.

Both more than held their own blocking the mammoth interior defenders for the Tigers, including Rashard Lawrence, who passed up a chance at the NFL to return to school.

“You never know what you can do until you start to do it, right?” Beck said. “I mean, it’s just assumed that because they don’t pass the ball, that they don’t know how to pass block. That’s not true. They’re really good athletes and can move — that allows and contributes to the fact that they are good pass blockers. Both of them are. And the want to, right? These guys want to get better, want to learn, and they’re good football players. I think all of that combined has helped.”

As simple as Beck tried to make it sound, Hand spoke before the season during the assistant availability about how Braun had the “wipe the slate clean” when he arrived in regards to pass protection. Hand specifically noted the contrast between Rice graduate transfer Calvin Anderson, who played in a scheme that had some similarities to what Texas runs, compared to the Georgia Tech offense that is wildly different.

“His demeanor, his practice habits, his mentality, all that is what you want — physical, great finisher, and he’s very enthusiastic to learn, so it’s all really going well,” Hand said.

So far, it’s gone well on the field, too.

The most notable development is that Texas struggled to get even average or mediocre play at the guard positions over the last several, with the lack of development from four-year starter Patrick Vahe particularly disappointing over the last several seasons. Vahe went undrafted and was cut by the Baltimore Ravens before the season.

In fact, Braun’s father, Mike, a longtime high school football coach, noticed the need for Texas at guard in the Sugar Bowl:

Next to him, Elijah Rodriguez was a steady and versatile presence in 2018, he was just a desperation take in the 2014 recruiting class with limited upside. Rodriguez got a rookie minicamp tryout with the New Orleans Saints, but didn’t get past that stage.

The potential is there for Texas to receive improved play this season from both guard positions despite the lack of experience for Braun with the Longhorns and Angilau in college football in general.

“We always knew we were a physical bunch and we did a decent job of coming off the ball and stuff like that,” senior center Zach Shackleford said on Tuesday. “There’s some stuff we have to clean up, protection-wise, and stuff like that, but I was proud of the way that we played and how hard we played.”

Now the key is to continue developing a rapport with the players on either side of him, not always an easy process for offensive linemen.

“It’s coming along nicely,” Shackelford said of his chemistry with the two guards. “I love both of those guys. I would do anything for them and I enjoy playing next to them. I told them that Saturday night, that I just enjoy their physicality and they’re very coachable, so they’re always willing to learn.”

There are several concerns with the offensive line, however. One is depth, as Hand put the number of players he trusts to put on the field at “sevenish” before the season, though he’s also the type of coach who likes to ride his starters for heavy snaps.

In fact, there were four Texas offensive linemen last season who played more than 1,000 snaps. This year, that type of extensive playing time for that many players might be difficult or impossible just because injuries are a natural part of football for the big uglies in the trenches. Last season, the Horns had the type of favorable injury luck that balanced out the horrifically unfavorable injury luck in 2017.

At some point, that’s going to balance out once again. The only question is when.

John Gutierrez-USA TODAY Sports

For defensive coordinator Todd Orlando, it’s all about his close his group is to making enough plays to win games.

The qualifier on the t-shirts worn by the Texas Longhorns secondary before Saturday’s game against the LSU Tigers in Austin was always important, that “original” in front of DBU.

It turned out to be necessary, too, as LSU quarterback Joe Burrow torched the group, which features plenty of youth and inexperience, to the tune of 471 yards and four touchdowns. When Burrow’s highlight reel plays for NFL scouts at the end of the season, the Texas defensive backs will make plenty of appearances.

Through two games, it’s clear that the group still has some growing up to do, especially at the cornerback position, where sophomore Kobe Boyce is holding tenuously onto his starting job despite his early struggles.

On the other side, sophomore Jalen Green has played better than Boyce, but received his own sometimes rude introduction to playing cornerback in a big-time college football game against the Tigers.

Expect Green to improve quickly, however.

“I think Jalen has a chance,” defensive coordinator Todd Orlando said on Wednesday. “He really does. He’s very, very close. I think it’s going to take just a handful of making some plays, and then all sudden he’s going to really start to believe, then you’re going to see something elite.”

Orlando plans on keeping Green and Boyce in starting roles this weekend when Texas travels to Houston to face Rice at NRG Stadium. So then the focus turns to the question of how concerned the Longhorns are about some of the frustrating early returns in pass defense.

“It’s very fixable,” head coach Tom Herman said on Monday. ‘We’ve got talented players that care. Part of it’s not — when you complete passes, it’s not always on the secondary. We had some linebackers that were out of position in underneath coverage as well.”

For sophomore Joseph Ossai, that means that despite his two interceptions on tipped passes and another that he returned for a touchdown against Louisiana Tech called back for penalty, there’s still room for growth for him as he adjusts to playing more frequently at Rover instead of just B-backer, where he played last season.

Expect him to improve quickly due to his combination of football intelligence, athleticism, and dedication.

Herman also praised the quarterback that he recruited out of high school when he was the offensive coordinator at Ohio State.

“And let’s not discount the fact that Joe Burrow had about as good of a game as I — he threw the ball in spots and in places with the amount of accuracy, it was something to see,” Herman said. “We gotta do better, though. We’re going to face really good receivers and really good quarterbacks in this league.

“We’re also not ready to sound all the alarms just set, knowing the caliber of what we just played and knowing that the improvements are not — like you said, they’re certainly fixable.”

Herman couldn’t recall how many missed tackles the Longhorns had against the Tigers, but wasn’t worried about that aspect of his defense moving forward, either.

“You’re going to miss tackles against elite athletes,” Herman said. “As long as we’re running to the football — you’re always going to get better at tackling, so yes, it is a concern, but nobody that has ever played defense has never missed a tackle. So you’re going to miss tackles, but are your other ten guys running with their hair on fire to get there to have your back? I did see that on Saturday night.”

Similarly, Orlando praised his defense’s effort, too, while pointing out how thin the margins are at times between making a play and getting there a little bit too late.

“I say what can we do to help some of these guys out? But then when you watch the film for the 20th time, and you say to yourself, man, this guy’s an arm’s length away from making this play, he’s really close to doing it,” Orlando said.

“There are a lot of positives.”

Orlando also understands that fans often get caught up in statistics, like early national rankings in passing yards allowed, but the Texas defensive coordinator reiterated that he views Saturday’s game from the perspective of how close the Longhorns are to having success.

“You really dissect the game itself, and there’s just a handful of critical plays that if we come up with, or we get our hand on one, or we get off the field on third down. Even look at 3rd and 17 — we’re just inches away from getting our offense another possession.”

Unfortunately, the hamstring injury suffered by sophomore BJ Foster will keep one of the team’s best blitzers and overall defenders out at least a couple of weeks, forcing junior Josh Thompson into the starting lineup and requiring a replacement at the Joker position as well.

“DeMarvion would be the likely candidate,” Herman said. “The good thing is that’s by far our deepest position on the team. With Chris Brown playing as well as he has, Josh Thompson has played a lot of football and DeMarvion. B.J. was playing a lot for a reason, but there is certainly some good options in that room.”

Texas can use senior safety Brandon Jones at the nickel, too. He’s listed as Thompson’s backup there and Orlando is impressed with his work at the position, so don’t be surprised if he ends up seeing substantial playing time there against Oklahoma State. The safeties just won’t get nearly as much run overall against Rice due to the heavy personnel packages preferred by the Owls.

Even Foster has areas where he can continue to improve when he returns — it’s easy to forget that he’s still a true sophomore early in his second season of college football since he’s already played so much and so well at times.

The same is true for fellow true sophomore Caden Sterns — as evidenced by the mistakes that Sterns made on 3rd and 17 against LSU, he has areas to clean up as well.

The bottom line is that Texas lost three senior cornerbacks from last season who had played in a ton of games for the Longhorns. Burrow was sensational, even though, as Orlando noted, the Texas defense got him to the ground about 15 times in the game, including some hard hits. And Burrow never flinched while running an offense that uses some NFL spacing concepts that the Horns don’t really see in the Big 12.

In other words, Texas will only face one other offense as good as LSU’s attack this season, is unlikely to face a quarterback who plays a game at such a high percentage of his overall capacity, and will likely improve simply through experience.

Until that significant improvement happens, though, the whole DBU thing really needs that qualifier.

Booker is focusing his campaign on racial and economic inequality.

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker was one of the first candidates to announce he was running for president in 2020. Booker, 49, is a well-known Democratic senator and a former mayor of Newark, New Jersey, who has long been a champion of progressive issues, including criminal justice reform, reducing racial and economic inequality, and legalizing marijuana.

But since he announced in February, Booker has struggled to break into the top ranks of Democratic candidates. He’s hovering around 2 to 3 percent in the polls but has been quietly building a grassroots campaign infrastructure in the early states.

He’s trying to court black voters by leaning into his core themes of solving racial and economic inequities. He was talking about these issues well before he launched his campaign for president, and they featured prominently in his announcement video.

“We are better when we help each other,” Booker said in the video. “I believe that we can build a country where no one is forgotten, no one is left behind; where parents can put food on the table; where there are good-paying jobs with good benefits in every neighborhood; where our criminal justice system keeps us safe, instead of shuffling more children into cages and coffins.”

Booker is hoping his candidacy will speak to an increasingly younger and more diverse Democratic base. He has also positioned himself squarely within the Senate’s progressive wing since he was elected in 2014.

The New Jersey senator is a familiar face in early primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire, where he made appearances on behalf of other candidates in 2018, earning praise from state party officials and operatives. New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley once called Booker “the best friend New Hampshire Democrats had in 2018.” He’s spending a ton of time in South Carolina, courting the state’s all-important black constituency.

This strategy of quietly making inroads in the early states could pay off closer to February, when Iowa and New Hampshire start to vote. Booker has plenty of time to increase his standing in the polls, but he’s going to want some more early enthusiasm to propel him there.

Cory Booker, briefly explained

Booker has been in the Senate for one term, but his profile within the Democratic Party has been high for quite some time.

Originally born in Washington, DC, Booker grew up in a wealthy New Jersey suburb about 20 miles from Newark, the city in which he started working as a community organizer and where he eventually became mayor. Booker’s father, Cary Booker, grew up poor in North Carolina. He and Booker’s mother, Carolyn, were the first African American executives at the computer company IBM, but the senator has noted they essentially had to pretend to be white to buy a home in the neighborhood he grew up in.

Becoming mayor of Newark in 2006, Booker helped revitalize part of the city’s downtown and promised to crack down on crime. He got some flak from residents who complained he had abandoned some of the city’s neighborhoods, and from teachers unions that didn’t like Booker championing school choice and charter schools.

Booker also got national media attention when during a 2010 blizzard, he essentially turned his mayoral Twitter account into a snowplowing hotline and even personally showed up to shovel a constituent’s driveway.

But more recently, Booker amped up his national profile during the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Booker turned combative while questioning Kavanaugh during the hearings when he released emails he described as confidential that pertained to Kavanaugh’s views on racial diversity. Booker did this even as he received threats from Republican leaders about expulsion from the Senate. The New Jersey senator responded, “Bring it,” before releasing the emails via his Twitter account.

A few hours later, staff for Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley clarified that the emails weren’t in fact confidential; they had been made public the morning before, giving the impression that Booker’s stand had been more show than substance.

Still, the Kavanaugh hearings, watched by many Americans, were highly emotional and politicized; by brashly defying Republicans on the committee, Booker was leaning into the position of the Democratic base.

What Cory Booker says about policy

Booker has signed on to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s Medicare-for-all plan, a progressive litmus test. He also is a high-profile backer of the Green New Deal, the bold plan to combat climate change proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA).

But Booker’s core issues are social and criminal justice reform policies meant to benefit communities of color. In 2017, he introduced a wide-ranging bill that not only would have decriminalized marijuana at the federal level but also would have encouraged states to legalize marijuana on an individual basis, while punishing states that had especially restrictive marijuana law laws.

Last year, he introduced a Senate bill that would establish a three-year pilot program to test a job guarantee in different areas of the US. The idea of a job guarantee program is gaining traction in the Democratic Party, but Booker’s bill so far is the only one in the Senate laying out steps to set one up.

Booker also released a “baby bonds” bill meant to reduce income inequality by giving low-income children “opportunity accounts.” In some cases, these accounts would leave recipients with a lump sum of up to $50,000. The idea is to give all children — not just those born to wealthier families — a chunk of change they could someday use to help pay for college tuition or to buy a house, further building upon their own wealth.

He has also introduced bills to put more money in working Americans’ pockets by making sure workers get a share of stock buybacks that normally go to company shareholders, and by stopping banks from charging overdraft fees on consumers’ debit card transactions and ATM withdrawals — a move to protect low-income people from getting hit with fees for being in debt.

Booker has made many of these bills central to his campaign, and has used them as the basis for his presidential policy proposals on everything from gun control to housing reform.

A tough issue for Booker in the Democratic primary could be education and charter schools. He was a proponent of school choice and charter schools as Newark mayor, praising current Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s school choice organization, the American Federation for Children. Booker voted against DeVos’s confirmation, but his position has still earned him sharp rebukes from teachers unions, which are influential within the Democratic Party.

Another difficult spot for Booker could be his past financial ties to Wall Street; in 2014, he got more money from donors with ties to Wall Street than any other member of Congress. As the Democratic base has objected to this money, so has Booker, who disavowed corporate PAC donations last year. Still, a wealthy supporter has already created a Super PAC to support his bid called Dream United and put in $10 million. A Booker spokesperson told the New York Times that the senator and his team aren’t involved in any way to “organize or endorse the creation of a super PAC.”

Booker’s allies are quick to point out that his legislative record takes square aim at big banks and that he has advocated for trying to return more money to American workers. He’s voted numerous times against efforts to weaken or roll back Dodd-Frank, the landmark financial regulation law, for example.

But with the public’s increasing demands that politicians stamp out the role of money in politics, Booker’s financial ties could be something his competitors in a Democratic primary seize on.

And even with all these policy rollouts over the years, Booker’s fellow senator, Elizabeth Warren, has taken on the mantle of being 2020’s policy candidate. Booker does, however, have plenty of his own policies as well, and he is sure to tout his record and policy ideas going into this summer’s first Democratic debates.

Apple this week announced that iOS 13 and iPadOS will introduce full support for Sony's DualShock 4 controller, which is the main game controller for the PlayStation 4. This announcement, along with confirmation of Xbox One S controller support, is great for iOS gamers, but even more enticing thanks to Sony's existing Remote Play app for iOS.


Released in March, the Remote Play app [Direct Link] lets you connect your iPhone or iPad to your PS4 to stream and play games while away from your living room (but still on a Wi-Fi network, because the app doesn't support cellular connectivity). At launch, the app worked well and provided a sample of what it would be like to play games like Overwatch and Assassin's Creed: Odyssey on your iPhone, but the touchscreen controls and lack of full support for certain buttons on existing MFi controllers left many games nearly unplayable.

Now, with iOS 13 and DualShock 4 support, your iPhone or iPad will essentially be a portable PS4. You'll encounter all of the usual PS4-related controls, including full support for the console's dashboard, store, and user profiles. You can even allow it access to your iOS microphone to talk to your friends in a party or through game chat.

We used a DualShock 4 to play Kingdom Hearts 3 on the iOS 13 developer beta
There are some downsides to the Remote Play app, including the fact that some games are not compatible with it and won't let you stream or control the game from your iOS device. But, for the games that do support Remote Play, users will have a chance to play full console titles right from their iPhone.

DualShock 4 and Xbox One S controller support also have the ability to enhance other gaming apps, like the recently released Steam Link app for iOS. Valve's app lets you stream your Steam games to iPhone or iPad, as long as your mobile device and PC are on the same Wi-Fi network. Once connected, you can use your iOS device to play Steam games, many of which already support DualShock 4 and Xbox controllers.


Microsoft is working on a mobile streaming app of its own, which could come to iOS devices as well. But, as of now, Xbox One gamers have to look into third-party options for streaming to an iPhone or iPad, like the $11.99 OneCast app [Direct Link]. Similar to Sony Remote Play, OneCast streams Xbox One games to iOS devices that are connected to a Wi-Fi network.

Besides iOS 13 and iPadOS, tvOS 13 is gaining support for the DualShock 4 and Xbox One S controller as well. Apple's support for these controllers will be timed alongside the release of Apple Arcade, an all-new subscription service for iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS that will present users with high-quality games that they can play on-demand while subscribing to the platform.


This article, "iOS 13 Will Turn Your iPhone into a Mobile PS4 Thanks to DualShock 4 Support and the Remote Play App" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Every Tim Burton movie is channeling specific visual influences — plus his own alienated childhood.

Tim Burton is one of modern filmmaking’s best-known directors — largely because his films all look like Tim Burton films. It’s hard to find a recent director whose distinct visual aesthetic has become so universally, immediately recognizable. Even in his new live-action Disney film Dumbo, which is something of a departure from Burton’s previous work — it’s a remake that doubles as a careful critique of its predecessor — it can still easily be called “Burton-esque,” like all of his movies.

But what does it mean to be “Burton-esque?” Is there a way to catalog the visual ingredients of a Burton film? And how did Burton develop such a distinct visual style that continues to resonate so strongly with audiences?

The answers to these queries are more concrete than you might expect. Burton got his start in the industry working as an animator for Walt Disney Studios, where he began to develop his staple brand of quirkiness. Before that, he grew up absorbing a range of pop art styles and cinematic influences that later led to his becoming something of an alienated gothic hero — which still makes itself felt in his work today.

Burton grew up identifying with moody iconoclasts — and developing an art style to match

Born in 1958 in Burbank, California, Burton grew up with an inverse relationship to his surroundings. Where Burbank was sunny and benign, Burton was moody, interested in the dark and the macabre. When other kids played ball and rode bicycles, he hung out in cemeteries and wax museums. He developed a love for Hammer horror films and B-movie sci-fi. He seemed to channel these sensibilities into his art, displaying a penchant for exaggerated caricatures and illustrations influenced by a range of pop art from advertising to children’s illustrators to comics.

By age 15, he was winning local advertising art contests, shooting creepy 8mm films around his neighborhood, and creating an illustrated children’s book of his own — which Disney, incidentally, rejected for publication, albeit with an encouraging note. Disney told Burton that “the art is very good. The characters are charming and imaginative, and have sufficient variety to sustain interest.” It would be the start of a long and sometimes contentious relationship with the Mouse.

After high school, Burton attended the prestigious California Institute of the Arts, which opened in 1961, partly out of the last great vision of Walt Disney himself. Disney died in 1966, but his brother and nephew were both on the school’s founding board of trustees. Disney had imagined an arts school designed specifically to educate new generations of animators, but it wasn’t until 1975 that the school began admitting students into a program to teach character animation.

A year later, in 1976, Burton joined the new animator program, becoming one of a now-legendary era of CalArts animators who would collectively go on to profoundly impact the next four decades of animation. These included famed Disney animator Glen Keane, The Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick, Brave director Brenda Chapman, and Lion King director Rob Minkoff. He described them to Vanity Fair in 2014 as “a collection of outcasts,” a group of artists who were united by general nerdiness and a shared excitement about taking artistic risks and experimenting. (Incidentally, another figure who’d play a significant role in Burton’s career, Paul Reubens a.k.a Pee-wee Herman, was also on the campus studying theater at the same time.)

The Vanity Fair CalArts profile reports a steady blur of wild parties, dark senses of humor, and perpetual impromptu performance art — all of which Burton essentially blended into his personal brand. “One year [for Halloween] I did a bunch of makeup, and when I woke up, my face was stuck to the floor,” he recalled. “So it was sickening, really, but it’s one of my few fond memories.” This seems to be a representative picture of the era at CalArts’ character animation department, and of Burton himself.

Burton’s early career at Disney was difficult — but it set the tone for everything after

At CalArts, Burton animated several short films and developed his signature style as an illustrator of characters with amusingly exaggerated features. One of his student works, a partly silent animated short called Stalk of the Celery Monster, once again earned him attention from Walt Disney Studios, which brought him on as an animation apprentice after his graduation from CalArts in 1980, drawing mainly concept art and models for features.

At CalArts, Burton’s general air of weirdness was essentially encouraged by the prevailing spirit of the era. But at Disney, where he worked for four years, Burton’s iconoclastic style frequently made him an outlier, and he was largely relegated to producing concept art for films like 1981’s The Fox and the Hound and 1983’s The Black Cauldron. The work went unused. “I couldn’t even fake the Disney [art] style,” he wrote later in the book Burton on Burton.

Speaking about that era of Disney to Vanity Fair, Brad Bird (director of The Incredibles) described it as a generational clash. “As Disney’s top-tier guys retired, the people running things became the businesspeople and the middle-level animation artists who had been there awhile,” Bird said. “They just wanted to sit back and coast on the Disney reputation while we younger guys were on fire, full of the ideas that the old-master Disney guys inspired in us. Now we were the ones thinking outside the box.” In the same article, Glen Keane recalled Burton hiding in a coat closet for hours.

But Burton didn’t just mope around. While at Disney, he solidified his own unique art style, with its weirdly elongated shapes and people, and a touch of the maudlin, the gothic, and the slightly off-kilter. He developed the concepts for a number of films that Disney initially rejected — including The Nightmare Before Christmas. He did, however, manage to produce a few works for Disney that showcased what would later become hallmarks of his instantly recognizable art style. The most notable is probably a short film called Vincent — based on Burton’s own childhood, including his idealization of the actor Vincent Price, known for his appearances in horror films.

Vincent (1982) combines Burton’s burgeoning visual aesthetic with his lifelong love of the macabre and interest in stop-motion animation. Narrated by Price himself, the film displays much of Burton’s trademark weirdness — like misunderstood goth kids in suburbia, and an obsession with dark subjects that manifests in unconventional ways. It’s also atypically dark for an animated Disney film of the era and was never individually released. (It later showed up as a package with some versions of The Nightmare Before Christmas.)

Following Vincent, Burton’s independent artistic forays met with less success. Disney produced his next short film, Frankenweenie, about a boy who tries to bring his small dog back from the dead, in 1984 — but then immediately fired him.

“When he made the film in 1984, I don’t think Disney knew what to do with him,” said producer Don Hahn, who’d worked with Burton back in his Disney days, in a 2012 interview with Yahoo UK. “It’s like, ah, here’s this really interesting guy who’s making these really rangy black-and-white movies. Let’s let him go.” Burton revived Frankenweenie as a feature-length film in 2012, which Hanh produced.

Of course, in all fairness to Disney, it could also be because this was Burton’s idea of a fun day at the office:

After leaving, Burton quickly caught an amazing break: His old classmate Paul Reubens, now better known as his alter ego Pee-Wee Herman, had seen Vincent and asked Burton to direct a big-screen adaptation of his character. Burton, who had directed one live-action piece while at Disney, 1983’s Hansel and Gretel, was game for any project that would let him continue to express his particular style, and agreed. 1985’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure grossed $40 million on a budget of less than $7 million, and launched Burton’s prolific career as a film director.

He would go on to bring the world a litany of iconic films for the next several decades, most notably Beetlejuice (1988); Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992); Edward Scissorhands (1990); The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) — which he produced and created but left to his fellow CalArts alum Henry Selick to direct; Mars Attacks! (1996); Sleepy Hollow (1999); Big Fish (2003); Corpse Bride (2005); Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007); and Alice in Wonderland (2010). And though most of these films are live action, they all continue to develop and expand the artistic style he expressed early on.

By the time Disney released Burton’s full-length feature version of Frankenweenie in 2012, Burton’s name had become an undeniable brand of its own. And that brand was still closely associated with Disney, which had by then happily embraced him as a producer and director on several of its films. Describing his on-again, off-again relationship with Disney to the Independent upon Frankenweenie’s 2012 release, Burton simply said, “I’ve been hired and fired by Disney three different times. I’m used to it.”

But far from being defined by his rocky relationship with Disney, Burton is regarded as a singular visionary, defined entirely by his unique style. To properly define the Burton style, we can point to a couple of specific important visual and artistic influences that made his art and his overall production style what it is today.

Burton’s art and cinema are hugely influenced by Expressionism

Burton’s own aesthetic reflects German Expressionism more than any other style. Expressionism began as a modern art movement and quickly expanded to influence art across Europe in the 1920s. Drawing upon what was then the still-new field of psychotherapy, Expressionist film became a cinematic medium in which the overall scenic and production design produced a feeling of dreamlike unreality and psychological tension for the viewer.

The traits of Expressionism have become incorporated so successfully into certain modes of storytelling within art, cinema, and animation that the casual viewer might not realize these features all have a distinct origin point. Among the most distinctive features are sharply exaggerated backdrops and landscapes with high color contrasts — typically relying heavily on the use of shadows and silhouettes to heighten a feeling of tension or dread. Sets with jagged edges and alternately rounded, tilted, or visually disjointed and discombobulated spaces, are another key element.

IMDB

YouTube

Tim Burton, Hansel and Gretel, 1983 / YouTube

A general sense of visual distortion, the use of dialed-up color contrasts, looming architectural shapes, and an overall sense of heightened reality, are all further key parts of the aesthetic that form basic components of a “Burtonesque” look. Expressionism has influenced so many subsequent art and film styles — everything from film noir to Surrealist art, from art deco architecture to midcentury horror — that its impact on Burton’s own style hardly makes him unique. However, from here on out, his influences may seem even more surreal.

YouTube

20th Century Fox via IMDB

The Day of the Dead made a huge impression on Burton

In Latin America, the annual celebration of the Day of the Dead is traditionally accompanied by a host of colorful depictions of skulls and skeletons. Among these are reanimated skulls and skeletons known as calaveras, and calacas, skulls and skull masks worn during ceremonies. Burton’s work is full of references to calacas and calaveras.

Library of Congress

You’re probably thinking of Jack Skellington in Nightmare Before Christmas as the most obvious example of this influence, but Emily, the titular bride of Corpse Bride, is also a walking calavera. Both films wear their love for Dios de Los Muertes on their bony sleeves.

But perhaps no style is more overt in the work of and more closely associated with Tim Burton than that of the gothic.

Tim Burton films are obviously gothic — but with a twist

The concept of the “gothic” originated first as a pejorative, derived from the Goths and Visigoths who sacked Ancient Rome, to refer to a distinct style of medieval architecture as barbarous and uncivilized. It was meant as an insult, yet it grew to be associated with unsettling, disconcerting feelings of awe and dread that could be evoked by such elaborately beautiful architecture and art. And so when Horace Walpole published his scandalous novel, The Castle of Otranto, in 1764, he called it “a gothic story” because it was set in a massive, haunted castle whose dark hallways and unknown mysteries were meant to horrify.

Walpole essentially expanded the tone of gothic architecture and gothic art into what we now know as gothic literature — a genre full of distinctive, familiar horror tropes: huge dark buildings looming up out of the mist; tortured heroes and antiheroes meeting their doom over a tragic lost love or an unearthed secret from their past; and a sense of delight in the sinister, the grotesque, the weird, the bloody, and the terrifying.

Eric Pouhier

Warner Bros. via IMDB

Between his love for Vincent Price, Edgar Allen Poe, skeletons, and cemeteries, Burton soaked up plenty of gothic inspiration as a child. But remember — he also grew up in peaceful, quintessentially suburban Burbank, where he was constantly fascinated with thoughts of ominous and dark things lurking beneath the surface.

As a mature artist, Tim Burton’s work married his love of the surreal to stories that stripped away the banality of everyday, politely civilized life. Vincent and Frankenweenie are about normal boys feeding their love for the grotesque within quiet normal households. The Nightmare Before Christmas is about the unholy juxtaposition of Halloween and Christmas. Sweeney Todd sees a serial killer opening up a respectable barber shop; though based on an existing musical, its themes fit perfectly into the Burton portfolio. And in Edward Scissorhands, Edward’s nightmare house is next to, well, this:

Paramount Pictures via IMDB

Paramount Pictures via IMDB

This juxtaposition is probably best exemplified in Burton’s Beetlejuice, which is an entire movie about the sinister surprise that may be lurking in your otherwise idyllic suburban neighborhood.

Burton’s distorted, slightly dystopian suburbia often takes on a gleefully manic, almost circus-like form that’s descended from gothic’s bloodier cousin, Grand Guignol. We see its influence in films like Beetlejuice, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Sweeney Todd. Whether or not things get bloody, they’re always tinged with an awareness that things could get bloody. And that’s the heart of the gothic in a Burton work.

Burton also cites a number of mid-century sci-fi and horror films as influences over his work

Paramount Pictures via IMDB

In 2009, the Museum of Modern Art produced a wildly successful exhibition of Tim Burton’s art and sculpture, showcasing material from throughout his life and career as an artist and filmmaker. In conjunction with the exhibit, Burton curated a list of films that had had key influences over his life’s work. The film series, called “Tim Burton and the Lurid Beauty of Monsters,” included a wide-ranging list, from the works of B-movie scion Roger Corman to horror films by James Whale, Tobe Hooper, and many others.

From this list, you get a clear sense of the zany, colorful, slightly surreal and over-the-top influences that resonated with Burton as a kid. It’s not easy to locate the full list of films online, so we’re presenting it here for your further Burton study and edification.

• The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)
• The Omega Man (1971)
• Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
• Mad Monster Party (1967)
• Frankenstein (1931)
• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
• Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)
• Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)
• Dracula (1931)
• The Raven (1935)
• Bride of the Monster (1955)
• Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
• The Mummy’s Hand (1940)
• The Creature From the Back Lagoon (1954)
• The Mummy’s Tomb (1942)
• When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)
• Revenge of the Creature (1955)
• The Towering Inferno (1974)
• Nosferatu (1922)
• The Swarm (1978)
• Earthquake (1974)
• The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
• Scream Blacula Scream (1973)
• The Brain that Wouldn’t Die (1962)
• Tex Avery Cartoons: Swing Shift Cinderella (1945); Red Hot Riding Hood (1943); Little Rural Riding Hood (1949); The Cat that Hated People (1948)

The Burton-esque style is derived from a wealth of art, cinematic, and literary genres. But if Burton’s work was just copied from his influences, it wouldn’t resonate with viewers. What Burton brings to all these ideas is his own joyous idiosyncrasy — his ability to meld the ominous and the frightful with a sense of whimsy, and then turn that unholy duet into part of the act and the art of being a tortured outsider.

These traits make his films feel personal and relatable to so many of us, whether we come from the same superficially sunny suburbia or not. Burton may have spent his childhood in a world that didn’t suit him, but he’s channeled that into a visual style that unites him with us all.

Sleep fitness company Eight Sleep today announced "The Pod," a smart bed that lets users control the temperature of their side of the bed through their iPhone. Not only that, but The Pod will dynamically warm or cool you (55 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit) as you sleep based on settings you enter in the app.


The Pod does not support HomeKit and Eight Sleep has no plans to do so as of now. When we asked about HomeKit integration, the company pointed out that The Pod does support IFTTT, which opens up many smart home connection possibilities. The Pod also integrates with Alexa devices, Google Home, Philips Hue, Wemo products, and more. With these integrations, you can say things like "Alexa, cool down my bed" to prepare for nighttime.

This "smart temperature mode" is powered by machine learning and biofeedback, and is accompanied by a thermo alarm that leverages temperature to wake you up more naturally, without disturbing a sleep partner and without the need of a noisy alarm. This mode gradually cools your side of the bed in the minutes prior to the wake-up time you set on your iPhone.


In addition, The Pod includes biometric tracking to monitor time slept, time to fall asleep, time of wake up, respiratory rate, heart rate, heart rate variability, temperature in bed, sleep breaks, light sleep, deep sleep, and REM sleep. All of this is fed into Eight Sleep's AI engine to calculate your "sleep fitness score" and rate your sleep each night.

You can then take this score to adjust your next night of sleep as needed, change settings in The Pod, and even compare scores with friends.


Sleep monitoring has become a popular market over the past few years, and even Apple has shown interest in the technology by acquiring sleep tracking company Beddit in May 2017. Beddit is a slim sensor strip that you place over your existing mattress to monitor sleep stats like sleep time and efficiency, heart rate, respiration, temperature, movement, snoring, room temperature, and room humidity.

You can reserve Eight Sleep's Pod for $95 beginning today, and the remaining balance will be due at the time of shipping in April 2019. The Pod is available in Full ($1,995), Queen ($2,195), King ($2,495), and Cali King ($2,495), and each mattress will have a 100 night trial period with free returns.


This article, "iPhone-Connected Mattress 'The Pod' Dynamically Adjusts Temperature as You Sleep" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Apple Music has surpassed Spotify's paid subscriber count in the United States, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke with The Wall Street Journal. The shift reportedly happened earlier in 2019; Apple had more than 28 million U.S. subscribers in February compared to Spotify's 26 million paid U.S. subscribers.


Similar news broke last summer from an industry source, but now months later the WSJ is corroborating the report. According to the paper, Apple Music has been adding subscribers "more rapidly" than Spotify, with a monthly growth rate of 2.6 to 3 percent, compared to 1.5 to 2 percent for Spotify.

Apple Music is starting to see growth in areas outside the United States as well:

Apple Music is growing faster globally—at a rate of about 2.4% to 2.8%, compared with Spotify’s 2% to 2.3%—and the gap is starting to close in other markets outside the U.S., according to the people familiar with the numbers.

The numbers reported today refer only to paying subscribers and exclude any user on the Apple Music three-month free trial or the Spotify ad-supported subscription tier. If the figures did include the free tiers, Spotify does have many more users overall in the United States.

In February 2018, the WSJ predicted that Apple Music would soon overtake Spotify in the U.S., but thanks to Spotify's numerous bundle offerings with Hulu and Showtime, Spotify remained in the lead for a while longer. Apple Music does offer discounts for families and students, but has yet to partner with another streaming video company to offer a bundle like Spotify.

Apple has become increasingly focused on its services business in recent years, given their high profitability thanks to monthly and/or yearly subscription costs. Apple Music debuted in 2015 at $9.99/month, but the company also offers iCloud storage at various price levels, and just launched Apple News+ at $9.99/month. Later in 2019, users will have a chance to sign up for Apple Arcade and Apple TV+, both of which have not yet been given price points.


This article, "WSJ: Apple Music Has Overtaken Spotify in U.S. Paid Subscribers" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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In this video, Luke Palmer makes a surprisingly compelling case that Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer is actually a sequel to the beloved 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. (Spoilers for both films to follow.) The main idea is that Charlie Bucket inherits the Wonka fortune and grows up to be Wilford, who builds the train to save humanity.

They’re both two movies about groups of people that work their way through a large fantastic structure. One-by-one, a person from the group is removed in each room until one person makes it to the very end, who then found out that the entire thing was a test because a wealthy industrialist needed to find a new successor.

I love this, but I wouldn’t go so far as saying it’s a sequel. A reboot maybe or an homage. (via @mulegirl)

Tags: Bong Joon-ho   Luke Palmer   movies   Snowpiercer   video   Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

The Big 12 has ruled that the ubiquitous Horns down gesture that characterizes hoopleheads the world over will constitute a taunting penalty if offered by Sooner players in the Big 12 title game on Saturday.

Oklahoma Sooner fans are howling in protest, pointing to the fact that Texas fans frequently yell “OU sucks!” but unfortunately for them, truth is an absolute defense against slander.

Of course, Oklahoma fans are absolutely welcome to continue to engage in the Horns down gesture, reminding everyone that an inability to get it up is both an apt metaphor for what it is to be an Sooner, as well as a devastatingly accurate self-diagnosis.

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There’s enough cuteness, cheer, and homage for even Seussian purists.

For me, Christmas cheer is tightly tied to the 1966 animated version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The hand-drawn animated wonder stars the voice of Boris Karloff, who famously also portrayed Frankenstein’s monster; his narration of the tale of Dr. Seuss’s iconic green and tiny-hearted character brings the 1957 children’s book to life with cleverness, merriness, and slightly dark humor. I love it, and so does my grandfather, who tries to pretend he feels a kinship with the Grinch, even though he’s a total softie. Every Christmas when I was a kid, we’d figure out when it was playing on TV and watch it together.

I say all this because I have zero feelings about the 2000 live-action version starring Jim Carrey, but my affection for the 1966 version made me seriously side-eye the idea of another animated adaptation, now the third film to take on Dr. Seuss’s classic holiday tale, with Benedict Cumberbatch ably voicing the title role and Pharrell Williams narrating the story. It seemed, frankly, like the least necessary remake imaginable.

But like the Grinch himself, watching the newest version — titled simply The Grinch — I felt my heart grow at least a few sizes, that day. My sour attitude was transformed into one of childlike wonder. I chuckled, I laughed outright, and I felt rather festive by the end, even though I saw it in early November. This movie’s heart, and its story, is definitely in the right place.

Universal Pictures

The Grinch updates the older story without losing its heart

No remake can escape the shadow of its predecessors, and The Grinch doesn’t try. This one isn’t quite as musical as the others, though the Whos down in Whoville do sing “Welcome Christmas” a couple of times. And it retains some of the most familiar tunes anyhow, with strains of “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” showing up at times, including in a rapped version by Tyler, the Creator that plays as we’re introduced to the sourpuss himself and recurs throughout. (By the end, it seems possible that this song was always meant to be a rap.)

Dr. Seuss’s original book doesn’t provide enough material to really fill a feature-length film and so, as with the 2000 version, this one adds original rhymes. Some of them fill in the backstory of the Grinch himself: He was an orphan and spent some lonely Christmases in the orphanage while the Whos carried on with their merrymaking, thereby accounting for his, well, general Grinch-iness about the holiday.

Now the Grinch, green and scruffy, lives with his dog Max in an isolated home carved into the side of a snowy cliff high above Whoville, a town that really loves Christmas. (By the film’s own admission, they take it very seriously, but only celebrate for three weeks a year, which by my reckoning puts them far ahead of movie studios that release Christmas movies weeks before Thanksgiving. But in Hollywood, unlike in Whoville, profit is king.)

The Grinch and Max have a kind of Wallace and Gromit dynamic going, wherein Max is both pet and assistant to his master. Each year the Grinch stockpiles enough provisions to get him from Thanksgiving to New Year’s without having to venture into the festive Whoville, but this year, his emotional eating has thwarted his plan, and he has to go anyhow.

Universal Pictures

While in town, he encounters Cindy Lou Who (Cameron Seely), the pigtailed elder daughter of single mom Donna Lou Who (Rashida Jones), who wrangles Cindy and her twin infant brothers with patience and aplomb. Cindy is on a mission to ensure that her letter to Santa arrives at the North Pole by Christmas, and her cheerful determination only serves to infuriate the Grinch more.

On the way home, he runs into Whoville’s resident optimist Bricklebaum (the glorious Kenan Thompson, the best part of the film), whose love for everyone and everything extends to the Grinch himself, though the Grinch finds his Christmas decorating abhorrent. (Bricklebaum is especially fond of those inflatable figures that pepper the lawns of suburban America; one look at his house’s decorations in their totality and you know his electric bill must be unmanageable.)

From there, the story runs along largely familiar contours, with the Grinch plotting to thwart the Whos’ Christmas by stealing it, dressing up as Santa, luring a lumbering reindeer named Fred into his service, and riding a sleigh into town on Christmas Eve to gather up the trees, decorations, and gifts, then dump it all over a cliff.

The Grinch weaves nostalgia and good humor in a winning, family-friendly package

While it doesn’t contain any surprises, this update fills in the familiar story of the Grinch with some heartwarming characters, slapstick, and chuckle-worthy jokes. Illumination Entertainment — the company that brought you the Minions and The Secret Life of Pets — has proper respect for Dr. Seuss purists, creating a splendiferous world full of visual gags and very cute creatures of the roly-poly Illumination sort while also peppering the town with creations that are recognizably Seussian. (The little boy seated behind me at my screening kept saying, “Mom, she is so cute!” every time Cindy Lou Who appeared onscreen.)

And the story of the Grinch has not lost any of its charm. It’s the tale of a town whose residents love celebrating their favorite holiday but haven’t lost sight of why: They love being together, and in this incarnation, they’re especially bent on making sure that nobody is left alone on Christmas Day. They seem to have a sense of how much of people’s animus toward others stems from feeling like they’re on the outside, and their solution is simple: Come over and eat some roast beast. Such a tale seems at once timely and transcendent.

Universal Pictures

For me, nothing will ever replace the experience of curling up with my grandfather, hearing him rumblingly sing “Your brain is full of spiders, you have garlic in your soul, Mr. Grinch — I wouldn’t touch you with a thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole!” But The Grinch made me imagine laughing at the antics of the Grinch, Max, Fred the Reindeer, and little Cindy Lou Who with my own nieces and nephew, curled up on the couch with a mug of hot cocoa after a sumptuous feast of roast beast, and giggling at the fun we can all have together. Groundbreaking, The Grinch is not. But with a story this good, all you have to do is tell it well.

Cheers to all Whos, far and near.

The Grinch opens in theaters on November 9.

The “Young Prophet” is now sending out public service announcements.

The Breckyn Hager Experience™️ now features a new persona apparently known as the “Young Prophet.” In a public service announcement released on Tuesday, the Young Prophet had a message for Texas Longhorns fans regarding the game against the Baylor Bears on Saturday:

“Welcome to an empty DKR,” Hager says. “As a captain of this team, it breaks my heart. But as Young Prophet, it terrifies me because I need every single one of these seats to be filled up. I need this place to be rockin’. I need third down to be lights out. Whatever you’ve got planned for this Saturday, you can make time for us, you can be part of greatness. Because this team needs you, now more than ever. Don’t get caught up in the hype — we’ve got to create the hype, but we won’t ever believe it, and that starts with beating Baylor.”

A limited number of tickets are still available for Saturday’s game, which kicks off at 2:30 p.m. Central.

The trailer for Adam McKay’s upcoming movie about Dick Cheney and the Bush administration just came out this morning. The movie promises an “untold story” and the casting is kind of amazing: Christian Bale as Cheney, Steve Carell plays Donald Rumsfeld, Amy Adams plays Lynne Cheney, and Sam Rockwell is pretty spot on as George W. Bush.

VICE explores the epic story about how a bureaucratic Washington insider quietly became the most powerful man in the world as Vice-President to George W. Bush, reshaping the country and the globe in ways that we still feel today.

I loved McKay’s The Big Short, so despite never wanting to think about any of those horrible men ever again, I am looking forward to watching this.

Tags: Adam McKay   Christian Bale   Dick Cheney   George W. Bush   movies   politics   trailers   Vice   video

Texas entered the season as one of four Big 12 teams ranked within the Top 25, but a loss to Maryland has the Longhorns leaning towards the bottom of the conference totem pole.

Welcome to your Wednesday edition of Morning Coffee.

Yes, we know, the Longhorns lost to Maryland on Saturday, which isn’t ideal for a program that’s now 7-7 under Tom Herman. There is some good more positive news elsewhere, though.

ESPN’s latest Big 12 Power Rankings released on Tuesday and surprise, surprise — the Texas Longhorns are near the bottom of the pack. After falling to Maryland for the second time in as many seasons the Longhorns sit at seventh in the 10-team ranking, ahead of only 0-1 Texas Tech, 1-0 Baylor, and 0-1 Kansas.

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The Texas women’s volleyball team will make its home debut on Thursday when the Longhorns welcome Texas State as part of the American Campus Classic.

The Longhorns will enter the match ranked No. 6 nationally, which marks a four-spot drop from last week’s placement at No. 2 overall. After opening the season with wins over Oregon an Florida as part of the Vert Challenge, the Longhorns dropped a four-set match to Wisconsin on Saturday, 1-3.

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After scoring her first career goal in the 62nd minute of the Longhorns 2-1 win over Long Beach State last Thursday, Texas soccer’s Mackenzie McFarland has been named as the Big 12 Freshman of the Week.

McFarland’s honor marks the second time in as many weeks that a Longhorn has been recognized with a weekly Big 12 award, as junior forward Cyera Hintzen and junior goalkeeper Nicole Curry were named as the Big 12 Offensive and Defensive Players of the week, respectively, for the week of Aug. 28.

Now 4-0-1, the Longhorns will be back on the field on Friday to welcome Texas State. The match will get underway at 6 p.m. CT and will be televised on Longhorn Network.

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Lake Travis quarterback Hudson Card became the first — and still only — member of the Longhorns 2020 class in May, an despite the early pledge, the local product is firm to Texas. In an interview with 247Sports’ Mike Roach, Card said, “I’m 100 percent committed, no doubt. I’m staying with Texas.”

Card’s junior campaign got underway last Friday. In a 35-14 win over Arlington Martin, Card completed 20-of-28 attempts for 246 yards and three touchdowns. He’s aiming to attend the Longhorns Week 3 meeting with USC.

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Calvin Anderson had high expectations when he committed to Texas over options such as Michigan, but the Rice grad transfer has seen his own high expectations exceeded in short order. On Tuesday, the Longhorns starting left tackle met with the media, in which he said, “It’s better than what I thought it would be. And I thought it would be pretty great.”

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Obligatory reminder: The SMO is usually an emotional overreaction based on the game events the day before. It does not deal in logic or reason.

It’s game week.

This is Christmas for college football nerds — if Christmas lasted about 15 weeks in the fall and was responsible for a rapid decline in work productivity while also severely damaging romantic relationships.

Nothing is more important these next three months than college football. And college football’s richest and most important team — The University of Texas — is back and ready to roll with hype increasing to levels we haven’t seen in quite a long time.

Sitting in its perpetual preseason ranking, No. 23, Texas hasn’t proven anything yet.

Others see the preseason ranking and scoff. ‘We know how it goes,’ they think. Texas starts at No. 23 and jumps to No. 18 after winning one game before falling out of the rankings after a humiliating home loss that kick-starts an opposing quarterback’s Heisman campaign.

Outside these massive burnt orange walls, the Longhorns are routinely mocked and ridiculed.

Seasons of lowlights provide plenty of fodder for the college football plebes — as they watch their high priest miss a game-tying PAT to lose a home game against unranked California or accidentally defer and kickoff both halves before losing to UCLA by a field goal.

We all know what the last five years have been like. We’ve seen the brutality of Steve Patterson — whose idea for fan experience started and ended with ‘jet packs’ and ‘concession price increases.’ I imagine when Patterson first saw the massive jumbo-tron above the south end zone, he calculated just how many ads he could fit on it at one time.

Former coach Charlie Strong certainly had his moments — from the recruiting coup of 2016 to the amazing atmosphere of Texas-Notre Dame in Austin later that fall. But for every positive moment there was an equally significant negative one. The Kansas game. The UCLA game. The fact that his team spent three years refusing to practice special teams.

Those days are behind us. The future is now. Texas football is relevant again. Texas football is good again. Texas football is ..

.. back folks.

Game predictions

Maryland - WIN

Tulsa - WIN

USC - WIN

TCU - WIN

Kansas State - WIN

Oklahoma - WIN

Baylor - WIN

Oklahoma State - WIN

West Virginia - WIN

Texas Tech - WIN

Iowa State - NEVER PICK AGAINST MATT CAMPBELL SO I’M LEAVING THIS ONE BLANK

Kansas - WIN

Oklahoma - WIN

Clemson - WIN

Auburn - WIN

Anybody who predicts a loss is a coward. This is Texas — college football’s gold standard. There is no game where Texas players walk onto a field and are significantly outmatched. This isn’t South Carolina. The players at Texas can compete with anybody at any time.

Game week is always euphoric for Texas fans — filled with so much optimism understanding completely that these Longhorns can routinely find new ways to absolutely destroy you at almost any time.

I don’t know how Texas plans to emotionally wreck me this year. All I know is — looking at this schedule — every game is winnable. Texas hasn’t played a down yet — and maybe our moods will change when they do — but for now it’s all encouraging.

See y’all in Maryland.

After going over 100 yards in each of his first two preseason games with the Raiders, the one-time H-back

Few players on the Texas Longhorns last season were as divisive as running back Chris Warren III, the 6’2, 250-pound physical specimen who flashed at times during his first two seasons, but struggled as a junior.

Some fans saw a player with a unique combination of size and physicality and believed that the offensive coaching staff misused a player with the talent to become the feature running back the team needed after D’Onta Foreman departed early for the NFL.

The coaches saw a running back who struggled to create extra yardage behind a struggling offensive line and eventually moved him to H-back due to a lack of available bodies at the position.

After another successful preseason game with the Oakland Raiders, the undrafted rookie who unexpectedly declared for the NFL Draft after announcing his decision to transfer was once again a hot topic of conversation in the burnt orange nation.

On Saturday, for the second time in two preseason games, Warren went over 100 yards, carrying the ball 18 times for 110 yards and his first NFL touchdown.

The strong performance reignited the debate surrounding Warren from last season, with a certain father of two former players using it as yet another opportunity to trash the current coaching staff.

So what’s the truth about Warren? Is he now showing his true talent after chronic misuse last season?

As usual, the reality falls somewhere in the middle.

Based on his performances over the first two preseason games, it’s clear that Warren has improved in two key areas — he’s keeping his feet moving better on contact to fight for extra yardage and running with better pad level.

Last season, Warren struggled in the former area at times, in part because he had to deal with contact before he could reach top speed, but also because he failed to use his strength to pick up yards after contact. Simply put, there seemed to be a lack of will at times.

On three of his six touchdown runs in 2017, teammates helped push or drag him into the end zone.

No single play was more emblematic of his struggles than a play that went for no yardage against Iowa State. When the Longhorns wide receiver missed a block on Cyclones cornerback Brian Peavy, the 5’9, 190-pounder stood Warren up on the edge and then drove him back five yards. So despite the fact that Warren had roughly 60 pounds on the defender, his lack of momentum and tall frame made him a relatively easy target.

While there are indications of improvement for Warren, he’s also benefitting from the blocking of the Raiders offensive line — on many of his successful runs, he’s picking up the available yardage by running through big holes and then finishing runs better than he did in college.

Against the Lions in Warren’s first preseason game, Detroit struggled mightily containing Warren, consistently losing the edge and allowing him to use his speed to bounce outside for big gains. Warren flashed that ability at Texas, so the difference is largely one of execution by opposing defenses.

Following those two performances, Warren appears on track to make the Oakland roster if he continues to make the most of his opportunities, but he does still have areas for improvement that likely impacted his playing time at Texas last season.

“He’s a good back, isn’t he?” head coach Jon Gruden said of Warren. “I mean, he’s run for almost 200 yards in two weeks. And I know he’s not playing against the regulars but he’s not playing with the regulars either. He’s a big powerful back that’s taking care of the ball.

“He’s got to get better without the football — that’s what it’s all about with him. We know he can run, we know he’s powerful and fast and elusive, but he’s got to get a lot better without the football to be an NFL back.”

Specifically, Warren admitted that he’s still working on making the right reads on fake or delayed blitzes before leaving the backfield.

Whatever happened mentally with Warren at Texas last season, he ended up letting his academics slip to the extent that he wasn’t academically eligible to transfer, which influenced his decision to turn pro. Since there were never any indications that Warren struggled in the classroom prior to his final semester with the Longhorns, it’s reasonable to wonder whether his on-field struggles cascaded in other ways beyond the classroom.

What is without question is the fact that Warren only averaged 2.4 yards per carry after the first two games of the season. He only carried the ball four times over his last five games in burnt orange and white.

And so while it was hard to understand why Kyle Porter was playing ahead of the freshmen running backs who showed more promise, it wasn’t that hard to understand why Warren wasn’t playing. Even by the low standards of last season’s putrid running game, he simply wasn’t producing.

Some of it was probably offensive fit. Some of it was probably effort.

Now that Warren is in the NFL and receiving big holes to run through, he’s taking advantage of his opportunities by largely doing what he did at Texas, all while doing one of the things he didn’t do last season — running as if his future depends on the quality of his effort finishing runs on every carry.

Nicole He has built a voice-controlled game called Enhance in which you speak commands to zoom & enhance images to look for secret codes, just like a detective on a CSI TV show. I bet if you try this in your open plan office, your coworkers will look at you like you’re nuts for a sec but will soon gather around, shouting their own commands at the computer. After all, everyone wants to enhance:

Tags: Nicole He   video   video games

Anki has revealed its fourth consumer product in the form of a home robot that it's calling "Vector," launching on Kickstarter today. Although the company has debuted a Kickstarter to give backers early access to the robot on October 9, it's promising that Vector will launch wide just a few days later, in stores on October 12, 2018.


The new robot looks visually similar to Anki's previous "Cozmo" robot, which teaches kids how to code through games and a compatible iOS app. Vector differs significantly in functionality, however, with the company explaining that Vector is a major step forward in robotics and is meant to be an always-on companion robot that follows you around your house to help in your daily routine.

Once you complete a one-time setup with the connected iOS or Android app, Anki says that all further interactions with Vector are done with eye contact and talking to the robot. Vector is fully autonomous, cloud-connected, and always-on, and has a personality, facial expressions, and animations ("around a thousand") created from a team of animators coming from major studios like Pixar.


Anki says that Vector is closer to the fantasy of at-home robot helpers than any company has yet to come:

When people imagine what their daily lives will be like with robots, many take inspiration from sci-fi novels, television shows, and films with high-spirited characters like R2-D2 from “Star Wars,” and Rosie in “The Jetsons.” Instead, the closest the world has come in the quest for affable, useful home robots are puck-like vacuum cleaners and lifeless cylindrical talking speakers. That’s about to change.

Anki CEO Boris Sofman: "For the first time, people will be living with a robot that is able to bring both a warm and joyful experience, as well as a new and characterful form of utility. This builds a bridge not just to a new category of home robots, but our own future product lines that will continue to expand on the level of capabilities that are possible."

Vector is outfitted with an HD camera with a 120-degree ultra-wide field of view to see your house and his users, and can even learn the name of everyone he sees. With four microphones to hear and detect commands (by saying "Hey Vector"), you can ask Vector about the weather, geography, nutrition, astronomy, sports, stocks, flights, time zones, unit conversion, currency conversion, and math equations.


The robot also supports setting timers and taking photos, and knows when to greet you at the door when you arrive home thanks to the onboard HD camera and microphones. The company says these features help Vector become a "more productive" member of the household, allowing users to set up additional timers from their other smart devices. The robot can also play a few games using an included "Cube" accessory, knows how to play Blackjack, and dances when he hears music.

When Vector is running low on battery, the robot will locate and travel back to the included charging cradle. Vector also has four cliff sensors with infrared emitters, ensuring that any trips the robot goes on won't end in spills over counter edges in your house.


Anki says that Vector was "designed with security and privacy in mind," with features installed that strengthen the device's security and minimize data collection. According to the company, it "does not store voice or audio in the cloud." Down the line, Anki also promises consistent over-the-air updates that will introduce new features, animations, and commands for Vector.

Currently, the Vector Kickstarter goal is $500,000 in 30 days, and early access backers can get the robot for $199.99 for an estimated arrival on October 9. The retail launch will then happen on October 12, when Vector will be priced at $249.99 and ship with one base charger and one interactive Cube.


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It’s the photo memed around the world.

One viral photo from the G7 summit seemed to perfectly sum up the state of affairs: It’s President Donald Trump versus the world.

The image, which featured a series of world leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron towering over Trump as he appeared to cross his arms defiantly, prompted a New Yorker-esque caption contest across the internet, kicked off by none other than Merkel herself.

“Day two of the G-7 summit in Canada: spontaneous meeting between two working sessions,” she wrote, after posting the image on Instagram. Others quickly offered up their takes, including former Belgium prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, who didn’t hold back.

The now-iconic image from German government photographer Jesco Denzel offers a spot-on illustration of the current moment, as Trump finds himself increasingly at odds with a number of US allies.

Many world leaders were already on tenterhooks going into the G7 summit, a historically consensus-driven gathering, due to concerns about Trump’s polarizing trade policies, not to mention his insistence that Russia should be readmitted to the G7.

While the participating countries actually seemed to work out some of these differences during the gathering, Trump went on to rattle everyone once more when he abruptly retracted US support from the agreement that was reached. As a result of all this, Trump is going into a pivotal North Korea summit pretty much isolated on Tuesday — much like he is at the table in this photo.

In light of Trump’s divisive behavior, publications around the world had plenty of thoughts on the image as well. People’s Daily, China’s largest newspaper, split-screened the image alongside one of a meeting that President Xi Jinping held that same day.

German publication Die Welt deemed the photo “the moment that broke the West,” while the magazine for Süddeutsche Zeitung suggested that the photo resembled the scene of a parent reprimanding an impertinent child.

While others around the world criticized Trump for alienating America’s allies, and saw this image as a fitting depiction of that — National Security Adviser John Bolton suggested that the picture simply captured an instance of the US finally standing up for itself.

“The President made it clear today. No more,” he wrote.

He suggested he wants to “empower” the European far right — but diplomats aren’t supposed to get involved in domestic politics like that.

Prior to becoming Trump’s ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell was a Republican operative with a history of making bombastic — one might even say “undiplomatic” — statements. Over the weekend, this habit got Ambassador Grenell in trouble when he gave an unguarded interview to Breitbart in which he seemed to imply that he would actively work to topple the current centrist German government.

“I absolutely want to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders,” Grenell told Breitbart’s Chris Tomlinson. “I think there is a groundswell of conservative policies that are taking hold because of the failed policies of the left.”

The key word there is “empower.” It suggests that Grenell views his job not merely as representing America’s policies to the German government but also working to actually strengthen German — and other European — factions that he and the Trump administration approve of.

In the interview, Grenell singled out Sebastian Kurz, the young Austrian chancellor who has opposed refugee resettlement and banned Muslim women from wearing burqas in public, as an example of the kind of politician he likes and wants to encourage. On Monday, Germany’s Der Spiegel reported that Grenell had invited Kurz to lunch.

Given that German Chancellor Angela Merkel is widely seen as part of the moderate political establishment, and is the most significant champion for keeping the European Union’s borders open, a number of analysts saw this as a suggestion he wanted to “empower” her far-right opponents in the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) Party.

“He says he will personally intervene in internal politics of Europe to empower anti-establishment conservatives,” tweeted Tom Wright, the director of the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe. “The American ambassador in Germany has just implied that he would like to unseat the current German government,” wrote Anne Applebaum, a professor at the London School of Economics and Washington Post columnist.

This was a very bad time for Grenell to be saying such things. Around the same time Grenell’s Breitbart interview went public, Alexander Gauland, one of the AfD’s leaders, gave comments at a party meeting that amounted to minimizing the Holocaust. “We have a glorious history and it, dear friends, lasted longer than those blasted 12 years,” Gauland said over the weekend. “Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in more than 1,000 years of successful German history.”

Grenell, in a tweet, disavowed the Gauland comments — saying he condemned them “completely” — and said he had no plans to support any European political candidates.

“The idea that I’d endorse candidates/parties is ridiculous,” Grenell tweeted. “I stand by my comments that we are experiencing an awakening from the silent majority — those who reject the elites & their bubble. Led by Trump.”

It’s hard to square this walkback with Grenell’s original comments. He not only said that wants to “empower” conservatives, which implies picking favorites, but he literally singled out a political figure for his endorsement, Austria’s Kurz.

Moreover, there are plenty of ways to “empower” European right-wingers without formally endorsing their candidates. President Trump has done that himself: During last year’s French election, he never formally endorsed far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen — but said enough complimentary things about her to make clear where his sympathies lay.

Wright, the Brookings scholar, said he welcomed the qualification to Grenell’s original statement. But he also said that “it’s not enough.”

“The outlet [Breitbart], the word ‘empower,’ and his general diagnosis all strongly suggest he meant he wants to actively help conservative populists,” Wright told me.

This mess was eminently predictable

The German government is demanding that Grenell clarify his comments in a Thursday meeting at the foreign ministry. We’ll see if he manages to allay their concerns. But this points to a broader problem with Grenell — and, in some ways, the Trump administration as a whole.

Prior to being tapped as ambassador to Germany, Grenell was famous for a habit of writing inflammatory, sometimes even cruel, tweets. He had repeatedly insulted women based on their physical appearance, as the Advocate has documented:

Grenell once tweeted that Rachel Maddow “needs to take a breath and put on a necklace.” He said she looked like Justin Bieber in another tweet. Other women he insulted included Calista Gingrich, who he accused of having hair that she “snaps on.” He insulted two women and former secretaries of State with one tweet: “Hillary [Clinton] is starting to look like Madeleine Albright.”

This isn’t exactly the kind of language you expect from a diplomat, especially an ambassador to a country with a female leader. The fear, expressed by Senate Democrats during his confirmation hearings, was that Grenell wouldn’t be capable of stopping himself from saying insulting things.

Within hours of being confirmed, Grenell proved them right, tweeting comments about Iran sanctions that were interpreted in Berlin as a threat to punish German corporations doing business with Iran:

US ambassadors typically aren’t expected to threaten the country they’re assigned to, especially when it’s one of the United States’ closest and most important allies. Combine that tweet with the weekend’s Breitbart fiasco and it’s clear that the fears that Grenell would prove an undiplomatic diplomat have been vindicated.

In a normal administration, Grenell’s behavior in the past month would be grounds for firing. But in Grenell’s defense, he’s not the only person in the Trump administration who says and tweets insulting things — about both women and American allies. It’s hard to imagine Grenell being punished for acting just like the president.

Therein lies the bigger problem: The president sets the tone for the way his representatives to other countries act; what’s acceptable in an ambassador is determined by the people in charge of them. So long as Trump is president, American diplomacy will continue to be remade in his image.