The US secretary of state has called on countries to “pick a side” on Venezuela, urging them to back opposition leader Juan Guaido and calling for free and fair elections as soon as possible in a speech at the UN Security Council.
“Now, it is time for every other nation to pick a side. No more delays, no more games. Either you stand with the forces of freedom, or you’re in league with [Nicolas] Maduro and his mayhem,” Mike Pompeo told the 15-member UNSC on Saturday.
Pompeo was addressing the UNSC after Washington and its regional allies recognised Guaido as head of state and urged Venezuelan President Maduro to step down.
“We call on all members of the Security Council to support Venezuela’s democratic transition and interim President Guaido’s role in it,” he said.
Russia unsuccessfully tried to stop the meeting requested by the United States. Moscow opposes the US efforts and has accused Washington of plotting a coup attempt, placing Venezuela at the heart of a growing geopolitical duel.
“Venezuela does not represent a threat to peace and security,” Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, told the Security Council.
“If anything does represent a threat to peace, it is the shameless and aggressive action of the United States and their allies aimed at the ouster of the legitimately elected president of Venezuela,” he said.
Russia, China block US push for UN to back Guaido
Russia, China, South Africa and Equatorial Guinea blocked a US push for a UN Security Council statement expressing full support for Venezuela’s National Assembly as the country’s “only democratically elected institution”.
Maduro stripped the National Assembly, currently headed by Guaido, of legislative powers nearly a year and a half after the opposition gained control of the House in December 2015.
Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna said the majority of the Security Council backed the US in the geopolitical tussle.
“Russia is making very clear its opposition to what it sees as an intervention in a state’s sovereignty,” he said. “It is backed by China, but the procedural vote showed very clearly that the weight of opinion in the UN Security Council does lie behind the United States at this particular point.
“We heard from the US secretary of state, making very clear his position that the president of the National Assembly should be recognised as the leader of Venezuela and that Nicolas Maduro should step down. That is the US position.”
The session comes a day after Guaido vowed to remain on the streets until his country has a transitional government, while Maduro dug in and accused his opponents of orchestrating a coup.
In rival press conferences, Guaido urged his followers to stage another mass protest next week, while Maduro pushed his call for dialogue.
Each man appeared ready to defend his claim to the presidency no matter the cost, with Guaido telling supporters that if he is arrested they should “stay the course” and peacefully protest.
The UNSC meeting comes on a day the EU and several of its member nations, including France, Spain and Germany, called on Maduro to hold free and fair elections within eight days or else they will consider recognising Guaido as the legitimate leader of the beleaguered country.
Oakland is where nearly 30 years ago the California Democrat first introduced herself to a judge as “Kamala Harris, ‘for the people,’” a line she adopted as her presidential campaign slogan. | Al Drago/Getty Images
The senator’s choice of Oakland, California, to launch her presidential campaign is full of personal and political symbolism.
OAKLAND, Calif. — Elizabeth Warren released a New Year’s Eve video. Kirsten Gillibrand went on Stephen Colbert.
Kamala Harris is going big.
Story Continued Below
On Sunday, the Democratic senator will launch her presidential campaign here with a speech to thousands of supporters that she hopes will lay down a marker to Democratic voters — and be looked back upon as a milestone moment in her career and the 2020 campaign.
Taking a cue from Barack Obama, the Democratic senator wants to connect her personal biography with her broader reason for running. She chose Oakland as a way to tie her campaign to the place that informed her values — a diverse and progressive city once known for its militant activism that’s become a stronghold of the Trump rebellion.
Oakland is where Harris was born and spent her formative years living on the boundary between the city and Berkeley. In elementary school, she was part of a national experiment in desegregation through busing. It’s also where Harris got her professional start; and where she went to work as a prosecutor in an office that was once run by Earl Warren, who later as chief justice led a unanimous Supreme Court to help end school segregation with its decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
And Oakland is where nearly three decades ago — for the first time in her career — she introduced herself to a judge as “Kamala Harris, ‘for the people,’” a line she adopted as her presidential campaign slogan.
“Oakland is known for its toughness, pride, diversity and for being a city that represents the underdog,” Sean Clegg, a senior strategist for Harris’ campaign, told POLITICO. “She’s been in a lot of places, and she’s going to talk about other aspects of her record, but she’s going to start the campaign where it all started for her.”
Harris, who is setting up campaign offices in Oakland and Baltimore, isn’t the first candidate to draw on symbolism for their launch. Obama waded into the 2008 contest with a speech in Springfield, Illinois, his adopted state. The address tightly summarized his career arc and his campaign’s rationale against the backdrop of a statehouse where Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous “House Divided” speech in 1858 condemning slavery.
Like Obama, Harris has paid especially close attention to the details of her rollout. After announcing on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Harris unveiled a logo paying homage to former Rep. Shirley Chisholm, whose 1972 presidential run was the first by a black woman from a major political party. Later that day, she held her first news conference on the campus of Howard University, her historically black alma mater. Her first trip this year to South Carolina came Friday – to address fellow members of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority — a group of politically plugged-in women that could pay dividends in the primary.
Oakland’s history of women’s activism and black activism will form her backdrop, noted James Taylor, author of “Black Nationalism in the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama.” “To launch her campaign here is tapping into all those microhistories that are abundant – from the general seamstress strikes of the 30s to the Black Power movement of the 60s,” Taylor said.
Harris’ choice of Frank Ogawa Plaza, outside City Hall, as the site of her kickoff will bring supporters to the same location chosen by Obama for his 2007 introduction to the Bay Area. For Harris, the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, the setting is another opportunity to connect with African Americans around the country.
“She is launching from the black community base of the Bay Area. It’s to say, “I have my credentials as an African American,” Taylor added. “‘I’m not claiming Washington, D.C. I’m claiming Oakland.’”
Yet equally important is the place Oakland is not: It’s not San Francisco, the city’s politically wired neighbor across the Bay where extreme wealth and poverty are in constant conflict, and whose famously liberal streak makes it a target for ridicule. And it’s not Los Angeles, the sprawling megalopolis to the south where apathy runs high and Hollywood dreams are more often dashed than realized.
Oakland, like Harris herself, is not easily categorized. High crime rates and rampant homelessness have for years vexed local officials here. The city’s civic pride took successive hits with the departure of the Oakland Raiders and the coming move of the Golden State Warriors to San Francisco. But in a deep-blue state that exports technology and entertainment, Oakland’s economic rise has come to represent a kind of American renaissance. Its progressivism gives Harris a sharp contrast with Donald Trump.
“In the Trump era, people are looking for models of opposition and symbols of opposition to this president and his policies, and Oakland has this long history of militant opposition and activity,’’ Liam O’Donoghue, a local historian who produces the regional podcast, “East Bay Yesterday,” said in an interview. “Some people would consider it to be America’s home of militant black activism because of the history of the Black Panthers,” which made the city its headquarters in the 1970s, and whose leaders, including Bobby Seale and Elaine Brown, ran for public office.
In more recent times, Oakland has taken a role as a leading, sometimes violent, location for widespread political organizing. After the first major demonstrations on Wall Street, the city was quick to embrace the Occupy movement, which led to thousands of people in the streets and scenes of police-protester confrontations that made national headlines for weeks. The Black Lives Matter movement, fueled by police-involved shootings like that of Oscar Grant, pushed Oakland’s activists to shut down freeways nearly every night for a month in 2015, sparking violent clashes that again put the city in the spotlight.
But Oakland in recent years has taken on a different mantle, that of a tourism and culinary star in major publications, which have compared its “boho” vibe to that of Brooklyn, New York. And the city has been featured in major movies like “Black Panther,” “Blindspotting,” and “Sorry to Bother You,” making Harris’ choice a resonant location for Millennials who may not recall the fiery Panther days. But with gentrification threatening longtime residents and shifting its demographics, O’Donoghue said, “It feels like pride in Oakland history is particularly strong right now,” because residents want to preserve the authenticity derived from its raucous past.
It’s the city’s penchant for activism that has some concerned about Harris’ choice of venue. Don Perata, a Democrat who represented Oakland for years in the State Senate, called the decision “risky,” and pointed to her background as a prosecutor, district attorney of San Francisco and state attorney general as giving fodder to “the far left to come in and make accusatory remarks’’ about her record in law enforcement.
Harris doesn’t appear too worried. At a Washington fundraiser a couple years ago where she was joined by Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Harris used her Oakland roots to illustrate her toughness. Addressing the room after Booker spoke, Harris said his presence reminded her of the first race she ever ran: for freshman class representative of the student council at Howard.
“And you know my opponent was tough because she was from New Jersey,” Harris said. “But I’ll tell you another thing,” she added, building suspense for a line that would bring down the house, “I was born in Oakland!”
Nokia’s finally ready to return to the smartphone race in the U.S.
The phone brand, once an independent global powerhouse, then sold to off to Microsoft, then revived under HMD Global in 2016, has announced it’ll sell two new Android phones on Verizon and Cricket Wireless, respectively.
While the new Nokias don’t stack up (not even close in terms of performance) to an iPhone XR, iPhone XS, or Galaxy S9, or OnePlus 6T, the phones are significant in that they’re the first of what could become a bedrock of devices to restore the mobile brand’s glory.
Examining the phones’ specs (via Engadget), it’s clear the new Nokias coming to Verizon and Cricket are disappointingly budget devices.
The Nokia 3.1 Plus for Cricket Wireless has a large 5.99-inch display, dual rear cameras with 13 and 5-megapixels per lens, 8-megapixel selfie camera, and 3,500 mAh battery. These are fine features, but then you look at the brains: a Qualcomm Snapdragon 439, 2GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage, and you probably won’t care anymore.
Ditto for the Nokia 2 V headed to Verizon. The phone’s got a 5.5-inch HD screen and a huge 4,000 mAh battery, but the ancient and much slower Snapdragon 425 chip and paltry 8GB of RAM are major turnoffs.
“Slow and steady wins the race in the mobile world.”
But then again, the budget specs shouldn’t surprise anyone since they also come with budget pricing. The Nokia 3.1 Plus only costs $160. Pricing for the Nokia 2 V is still to be determined.
These phones won’t dramatically shift the tide in favor of Nokia’s return to the U.S. mobile market — not right now — but they do lay the foundation for HMD Global’s commitment later. As with any phone maker, HMD Global needs to start somewhere before it can earn customer trust and build a brand. Just look at how long it took OnePlus to become a beloved phone maker and brand — slow and steady wins the race in the mobile world.
Once HMD Global has rebuilt Nokia’s reputation in the U.S., it could then start releasing its flagship phones that do compete directly with the best phones. The company’s certainly capable of doing so. Phones like the Nokia 8 Sirocco are beautiful and powerful. They just aren’t sold in the U.S. But maybe one day!
Mobile World Congress kicks off at the end of February and more than any previous year, it’s gonna be packed full of new phone announcements and mobile nostalgia. Bet on Nokia trying to rekindle its old flames.
The Washington Wizards have “shown exactly zero interest” in trading Bradley Beal despite receiving “plenty of calls” on the shooting guard, according to The Athletic’s Fred Katz on Friday.
The 25-year-old Beal is under contract through the 2020-21 campaign and is owed nearly $56 million over the next two seasons, per Spotrac.
The seventh-year guard is enjoying his finest season to date, averaging career highs in scoring (24.7 points per game), assists (5.0) and rebounding (5.1). He is shooting 46.7 percent from the floor, which is the second-highest mark of his career.
Beal has been asked to step up his game since All-Star point guard John Wall underwent season-ending heel surgery in late December. With Wall sidelined, Beal is averaging 27.9 points per game while leading Washington to an 8-5 record in 13 games.
Beal’s future in the nation’s capital came into question in November after the Wizards were involved in whatShams Charaniaof Stadium and The Athletic described as a “volatile practice.” In that practice, an “exasperated” Beal told team officials that he had “been dealing with this for seven years.”
ESPN’sAdrian Wojnarowskireported in the aftermath that no Wizards player was untouchable in trade talks, including both Beal and Wall.
Washington (21-27) has some work to do to avoid missing the playoffs for the first time since 2015-16, as it currently sits in ninth place in the Eastern Conference. However, according to Candace Buckner and Scott Allenof theWashington Post,Beal recently told Wizards owner Ted Leonsis he believes the team has “got enough” and will make the postseason.
Leonsis added that the Wizards will “never, ever tank,” per Buckner and Allen. In other words, trading Beal is not high on his priority list.
Katz notes that Washington could receive a nice package in return for Beal, given his play and reasonable contract. For now, though, the Wizards do not appear willing to entertain trade offers for their star.
Have you ever wondered how to be Instagram famous without needing to know how to take a perfectly-framed photo or write an inspiring caption?
It’s possible… if you’re Pete Souza’s pet tortoise Charlotte. Thanks to the former White House photographer under President Barack Obama, Charlotte — better known as @charlottethetortoise to her 20,000-plus Instagram followers — has not only become the internet’s latest viral animal sensation, but also a rallying soldier in the resistance against Donald Trump.
The Washingtonian has published a short chronicling of Charlotte’s rise to fame and unexpected modeling career in Souza’s photography, which often throws shade at Trump and his administration in the cleverest of ways by contrasting the embarrassingly chaotic White House with the dignified and more orderly administration under former President Obama.
With Souza running Charlotte’s Instagram account, she’s been able to resist Trump without having to take much action. No need to speak. No need to march. No need to do anything but be herself and let Souza snap her photo and caption it to hopefully inspire change from those who can.
If you’ve ever doubted the power of social media to make an animal a resistance icon, doubt no more because Charlotte’s slaying days have only just begun.
Below are just a couple of Instagram gems Souza’s posted:
And, oh yes she did throw shade at Brett Kavanaugh:
If a tortoise can fight the good fight against Trump, surely anyone who’s unhappy with his governance can contribute in some way. Anything, however small or larger.
Social media’s so powerful because its reach has the potential to cast a net on a massive audience. Why not use it for positive and progressive action instead of merely complaining about Russian manipulation of the platforms?
Mindy Kaling loves romcoms. This is clear if you’ve seen her show, or read her books, or watched her interviews, or followed her tweets.
No surprise, then, that the first movie she’s written follows the classic romcom formula, only applied to a passion for work rather than love.
Like so many beloved romcoms, Late Night takes place in a version of New York City that’s slightly better than the one that exists in our reality. In this universe, a woman has hosted her own late-night talk show since the 1990s. And in this universe, an aspiring comedy writer can get a job at that show simply by appearing at the right time and demonstrating the right amount of pluck.
As Katherine Newbury, Emma Thompson practically radiates brilliance and glamour. It’s easy to understand why Molly (played by Kaling) is so awed by her. But she’s also terrifying – basically a Miranda Priestly for comedy. Katherine is better than everyone and knows it, and she isn’t particularly shy about letting other people know it, too.
Earned though that superiority may be, it’s proven bad for ratings, and the threat of cancellation looms over Katherine’s head. Into that turbulent mix comes Molly, who has no experience but plenty of talent and moxie. Will she prove to be just the breath of fresh air that Katherine needs? Can Molly win over her skeptics with her spirit and determination? Will everyone live happily ever after?
The answers should be obvious if you’ve ever seen a movie before, but Late Night, which was not only written but directed by a woman (Nisha Ganatra), handles them with an eye toward the specifics of Molly and Katherine’s situation.
Molly is explicitly a diversity hire – she gets the job when Katherine decides to hire a woman to prove she doesn’t hate other women – and the film deals with both the opportunity that affords Molly (“The point is, you’re here,” Katherine tells her), and the resentment and doubt that it sows in her colleagues (“I wish I was a woman of color so I could get a job with zero qualifications,” grumbles one of several interchangeable white male writers).
Katherine, meanwhile, seems skittish from a career spent being the smartest woman in a room full of men. She’ll defend her decision to have “boring” women like Dianne Feinstein and Doris Kearns Goodwin on as guests, but roll her eyes at the tackiness of another woman starting a sentence with “as a woman.”
As Late Night goes on, however, most of the gender and racial dynamics at play are submerged into subtext, or fall by the wayside altogether. If you’re looking for a movie that wounds with its insight, that shines a new light on harsh realities, that exposes the horrors of a toxic industry, Late Night isn’t it.
More Legally Blonde than Support the Girls, Late Night is content to be a fluffy, formulaic crowdpleaser with a sweet and uplifting message, and only has so much interest in reckoning with the depressing, nigh-Sisyphean trials of being a woman, and especially a woman of color, in a white-male-dominated workplace.
For some, that’ll prove a disappointment. For me, that’s part of its charm. Like the romcoms it’s modeled after, Late Night offers an escape into a world with softer edges, brighter colors, and simpler solutions. Lord knows reality is tough enough already, and lest we forget, we’re reminded of it every day in the headlines. Sometimes, a simple treat like Late Night is exactly what I need.
Jabari Parker watched from the bench again on Wednesday night. It wasn’t a new vantage point for Parker, who was pulled from the Bulls’ playing rotation in mid-December. But this time, it wasn’t due to a perceived lack of production. Rather, Parker experienced knee pain during warm-ups and was held out with what the Chicago Bulls described as a right patellar tendon strain.
At this point, his relationship with the franchise can best be described as beyond strained; his homecoming to the city where he won four straight state titles at Simeon Career Academy has been a massive disappointment to all involved.
“His resume from his prep days, and even at Duke, should’ve gotten him into a different status and tier,” a league executive who knows Parker told Bleacher Report. “But we’re five years and two major surgeries away from that. Things just haven’t clicked.”
Rebuilding is hard, and the Bulls are in the violent thrashes and throes of it. The turbulence has swept up Parker, who, at only 23, has endured a career’s worth of hardship already. Only six years removed from being touted on the cover of Sports Illustrated as “the best high school basketball player since LeBron James,” Parker has been in and out of the rotation in Chicago and appears headed for a near-certain divorce from his second team in as many years.
The No. 2 pick in 2014 out of Duke, Parker became an unrestricted free agent this past summer when the Bucks rescinded their qualifying offer, a move that Parker and his agent, Mark Bartelstein, appreciated. After tearing his left ACL in February 2017 for the second time in three seasons, the Bucks weren’t willing to commit to him long-term but were gracious in allowing him to continue his career in his hometown of Chicago. Parker signed a two-year, $40 million deal with the Bulls, who, it’s important to note, hold a team option for the second year.
Despite the high price tag, it was a sensible, short-term risk for the Bulls—a flier, if you will. If things didn’t work out, they wouldn’t owe Parker another dime, and he could move on to his third franchise in three seasons. But nobody in Chicago, least of all Parker, expected things to unravel this quickly.
The Bulls fired coach Fred Hoiberg in December after a 5-19 start, elevating assistant coach Jim Boylen to the first seat on the bench. Soon, Parker would be taking up nightly residence a few seats down.
Josh James @joshjames
Oh. And btw… Jabari Parker is on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Check it out!!
@RickMcCord @jabariparker22 http://t.co/uF4iRzEo
Citing Parker’s practice habits and lack of defensive commitment, Boylen pulled Parker from the rotation after only five games on the job. Parker was inactive for nine straight games and 12 out of 13 as the Bulls kept sinking further into the abyss. After Friday night’s 106-101 loss to the Clippers, the Bulls are 11-38 and heading back to the draft lottery.
“He’s a 23-year-old guy who’s younger than a lot of rookies in the league,” Bartelstein said. “He’s an immense, immense talent. When you watch him play the past couple of weeks, that talent level oozes out. You see it. It hasn’t gone the way we had hoped in Chicago, but the goal right now is to figure out how to make things a whole lot better. The talent level is undeniable. We’re just taking every day and trying to figure out what the best solution is.”
Indeed, Parker returned to the rotation on Jan. 12 and played well in five straight games off the bench before being held out of Wednesday night’s game with the knee issue. Multiple league sources confirmed Bartelstein is working with the Bulls to find a trade solution, so Parker’s increased role could be a thinly veiled effort to showcase him to potential suitors.
“If they’ve decided to play him more, that’s why,” a rival executive said. (Boylen, however, said Wednesday in a radio interview with 670 The Score in Chicago that Parker is playing more because he’s practicing better.)
Either way, two rival executives told B/R that the Bulls’ search for a trade partner could prove futile. Given how things have gone for Parker in Chicago, it’s clear to all potentially interested teams that the Bulls aren’t picking up Parker’s $20 million option for next season. If you could sit back and get a former No. 2 overall pick who’s not yet 25 for a whole lot cheaper as a free agent a few months from now, why would you give up an asset and take on his contract for the rest of the season?
“They’ll try to trade him for anything they can get,” one of the rival execs said. “It’s going to have to be an expiring contract, but how many teams have expiring contracts that can stack up to [$20 million]? Not many. I think they’ll just buy him out.”
According to a person familiar with the dynamic between Parker’s camp and the Bulls, a buyout is not currently on the table. But that could change if the Bulls haven’t found a trade partner by the Feb. 7 deadline.
Parker’s, shall we say, suspect defensive effort has been well documented. That doesn’t make for a tidy fit with a coach who’s trying to retrofit a culture with a backbone of, um, defense. Parker’s ideas on this topic came across loud and clear in a radio interview he did with 670 The Score after the Bulls signed him, when he infamously stated, “They don’t pay players to play defense.”
Though healthy most of the season, Jabari Parker’s inconsistent defensive effort has not won him many minutes under new Bulls coach Jim Boylen.Jeff Haynes/Getty Images
Even those within the Bulls organization who have grown frustrated with Parker’s on-court habits have nothing negative to say about Parker the man. And those sympathetic to his plight concede that communication is an area where he could improve.
“He’s a good dude; he’s just different,” the league executive who knows Parker said. “He sort of keeps to himself, but he’s not a bad guy.”
In addition to his talent and resume, Parker also is known for being charitable and active in the community, and for his Mormon faith. For that reason, the Utah Jazz have been mentioned in front office circles as “an interesting fit for him,” one of the rival executives said.
Until Bartelstein and the Bulls find the solution they’re looking for, Parker remains hovering at an unforeseen altitude in the basketball stratosphere. How much longer will the sad decline of one of the NBA‘s most hyped prospects endure?
“Two ACLs for a guy like that; think about that, man,” another person in the league who knows Parker said. “On the cover of Sports Illustrated when he was 16 years old as ‘the next LeBron James.’ He’s Mr. Everything, goes to Duke, No. 2 pick, and he was playing really well, and then he gets hurt. And then he comes back from that injury, and if you remember, heading into the All-Star break that year, he was on the short list of reserves.
“And then, bam, second ACL.”
Going from being practically born into superstardom to having a minimal role on his hometown team has been understandably tough for Parker to swallow.
“His mentality is, he was never asked to be a role guy, and now all of a sudden, he’s asked to be a role guy,” the person said. “That’s never been his mentality; never been who he was. I just think he’s so funked up from a mental standpoint.
“Whatever his next move is, he’s got to step back from being Jabari Parker. Maybe that means coming off the bench. Maybe that means he doesn’t average 20 a game right away. Maybe it’s eight, and then 12, then 16. It can all come back to him, but it may take some time.
“This next situation will be a real telltale for him.”
Ken Berger covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @KBergNBA.
Per ESPN.com’s Adrian Wojnarowski, Stephen confirmed Friday he will join his brother in the NBA‘s annual shooting exhibition during All-Star Weekend in their hometown.
“Just being in Charlotte, there’s a nice storyline,” Stephen said. “[Seth] was leading the league in percentage for a while. In terms of family history, my dad playing 10 years in Charlotte, being one of the original Hornets to now having the All-Star Game in Charlotte.
Stephen will be returning to the Three-Point Contest after skipping the event the previous two years. Hetold reportersin 2017 he “wanted to capitalize off that rest” presented by the All-Star break to help Golden State prepare for the stretch run.
The two-time MVP will be making his sixth appearance in the contest. He previously won in 2015 and finished second to Warriors teammate Klay Thompson in 2016.
The Curry brothers have been among the NBA’s best three-point shooters this season. Seth ranks second in the league with a 48 percent success rate. Stephen is tied for sixth at 44.4 percent, but he’s made 68 more threes (191) than his brother has attempted (123).
Stephen and Seth were born and raised in Charlotte, and now both will let it fly from distance Feb. 16.
In Binged, Mashable breaks down why we binge-watch, how we binge-watch, and what it does to us. Because binge-watching is the new normal.
It’s 2 a.m.
Empty plates specked with crumbs surround you.
The house is pitch dark, save the blue-tinged luster from your laptop.
You edge your slightly trembling hand forward — and press play.
Binge-watching TV — a widely-practiced cultural phenomenon — is celebrated by Netflix. The media streaming giant knows that its 130 million global subscribers like to binge, and it annually announces the most binged series of the year. While the obsessive watching of shows, from Breaking Bad to The Haunting of Hill House to Making a Murderer, isn’t necessarily bad for you (unless it becomes a life-altering, addiction-like behavior), this on-demand, unchecked streaming feeds off our more primitive, evolutionary instincts.
We’re primed to binge.
“We’re pleasure seekers. We’re wired to seek pleasure,” Allison Johnsen, a clinical professional counselor at Northwestern Medicine, said in an interview.
Pleasure-seeking behavior — like indulging suspenseful works of fiction — can be an advantageous adaptation, so long as it’s not regularly abused (One 2017 study found it could lead to sleep-deprivation). It can help maintain emotional health, even if that means hours of binge-watching.
“We have to keep ourselves happy,” said Johnsen. And binge-watching is “accessible, it provides social conversation or social reference points, it’s a stress reliever, and it can be positive,” she said.
It’s understandable why the dramatic plots, relatable characters, and Hollywood-style production developed by the likes of Hulu, HBO, and Netflix gets binged. Episodes build upon episodes for years, plots twist, and as inherently social animals, we become immersed in the lives of characters. Take the conflicted Game of Thrones character Jamie Lannister — who’s still alive after seven seasons, 67 episodes, and one lost hand.
“It’s why sometimes people have trouble distinguishing between actors and their characters,” Catherine Salmon, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Redlands, said over email. “They feel as if they know them because they ‘know’ a character they played.”
In our more primitive, ancestral environments — thousands of years before the advent of electricity — we became deeply socialized and invested in characters surrounding us, Salmon added. The instinct to become immersed in people’s lives is a trait that’s embedded into our highly-evolved species. It’s a survival-oriented instinct.
The instinct to become immersed in people’s lives is a trait embedded in our species.
What’s more, humans have been deeply enamored with characters and storytelling for millennia.
“I imagine binge-watching is only a technologically enhanced version of a behavior that has been around, at least in rudimentary form, for at least 50,000 years,” Joseph Carroll, a literature professor at the University of Missouri–St. Louis and editor in chief of the academic journal Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, said over email.
Then some 3,000 years ago, epic storytelling arose with the Iliad andOdyssey (and later Beowulf). The stories likely left listeners entranced, said Carroll.
“The bards chanting such tales must have sung for many hours to halls full of warriors deep in their cups but still entranced by the singers’ words,” Carroll mused.
Oral storytelling evolved to increasingly widespread reading — which people still binge on today. It’s similar to how Hulu and Netflix watchers binge.
“Readers commenting on works offered on Amazon or Audible often remark that once they had started, they couldn’t stop, didn’t sleep, and had to force themselves even to eat,” noted Carroll. “There is no reason to suppose that a Japanese reader of the 11th century, delving into The Tale of Genji, would have been less eager to binge than a modern reader of Edward St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels.”
But when it comes to TV, the human fascination with literary, dramatic storytelling, might be all the more enhanced.
As social psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa contends in the research paper “Bowling with our imaginary friends,” the human brain did not evolve to understand the strong sensory experiences and characters on TV. Consequently, our subconscious psychological mechanisms “may respond as if the people they see on television were their friends,” Kanazawa wrote in the academic journal Evolution and Human Behavior.
After assessing data from the U.S. General Survey — a long-running opinion research center at The University of Chicago — Kanazawa suggested that both men and woman “feel as if they have more friends if they watch more television.” Critically, Kanazawa concludes that watching TV really isn’t that bad for one’s social well-being.
“…there is nothing shallow about the community we experience by watching TV, or so our brain thinks,” wrote Kanazawa. However, this isn’t necessarily a free pass to binge-watch so much you stop interacting with others or lose too much sleep.
When does binging become a problem?
Just because you spend the entire day or night binging doesn’t mean it’s a “bad” or unhealthy activity. Watch out, however, when binge-watching becomes “more akin to addictive behavior,” said Morgan Ellithorpe, an assistant professor in the department of advertising and public relations at Michigan State University who researches the effects of media on health and well-being. For instance, “it becomes a problem when you choose binge-watching over other important activities,” like sleeping, on a regular basis.
“We all binge-watch,” noted Allison Eden, an assistant communications professor at Michigan State University.
Maybe you sit down on Sunday and tear through nearly a whole season of Stranger Things, or six heady episodes of The Young Pope. “That’s okay, that’s functional,” said Eden, whose research focuses on understanding media use from a psychological perspective. “Most of us make it work just fine.”
Late-night binging isn’t bad, until it’s bad.
Image: Shutterstock / TheVisualsYouNeed
“Intrinsically, on its own account, I see nothing particularly disturbing about spending hours or days reading a long novel, or spending a whole weekend taking in The Wire or The Americans,” added Carroll.
Signs that your binge-watching is getting out of control include experiencing withdrawal, building a tolerance, and letting it conflict with your job — and your sleep. There’s a relationship between the problematic binge-watching of streamed media (like Netflix) and worse sleep quality, noted both Eden and Ellithorpe. Interestingly, researchers have not found the same relationship with traditional TV, which typically releases episodes weekly, so you can’t watch an entire series in one sitting.
Perhaps it’s because streaming doesn’t give you an option to escape. When folks tuned into The Twilight Zone in the late 1950s, there were commercial breaks and dramatic changes of genres between shows.
“There were more opportunities for people to turn off the TV and make better choices,” said Eden.
“We all binge-watch.”
Now, it’s all too easy to binge. We like it. It’s fun. “I have my shows,” noted Johnsen. But it doesn’t interfere with her life.
“Everything in moderation — it’s boring but true,” she said.
“Moderate binging” might sound like an oxymoron. But it’s part of our 21st-century existence. The growing streaming media giants have proven profitable and award-winning. The shows will keep coming. And we’ll be watching, sometimes excessively and obsessively, into the night.
“You’re totally normal,” said Eden. But, she suggests, “Maybe watch the series on the weekends. Maybe don’t watch it every night till 2 in the morning.”
This is One Good Thing, a weekly column where we tell you about one of the few nice things that happened this week.
Since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was sworn into Congress earlier this year she’s ruffled some feather by raising her voice and showing no mercy towards politicians on Twitter. In doing so, she’s also captured the hearts of people across the country.
While the 29-year-old was being welcomed to Congress on Jan. 3, right wing critics online and members of the GOP criticized her for a Breakfast Club-inspired dance video she made in college. In response, she created another video of herself lip-syncing to Edwin Starr’s song, “War,” and dancing into her brand new office.
In a touching display of support, several visitors walking by Ocasio-Cortez’s office have stopped to write the congresswoman positive messages of thanks and encouragement.
In less than a month, she’s received around 30 sticky notes written by people from California, Arizona, Georgia, West Virginia, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, Louisiana, and more.
Here are just a few of the sweet affirmations:
“Keep dancing you rock! …also ‘war… what is it good for?’”
“America needs more of you! Keep killing it girl!”
“From the deserts of Arizona to the halls of Congress your passion is appreciated!”
“WV folks love you! You rock!”
“Sending you strength from GA! Thank you.”
“Continue to be an inspiration to us ALL and do BIG and Exceptional things!!! Be blessed.” — The great state of Maryland
Climate change is real! Thanks for fighting for me. — POTUS 2036″
“I’m wearing my hoops today! 4U”
“Thank you for supporting women! Your friends from North Carolina”
“I love how you roll! Keep on rolling from NOLA”
On Jan.16, after attempting to track down Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to discuss re-opening the government, Ocasio-Cortez first tweeted a photograph of her newly decorated name plaque.
Though there were only eight notes at the time, she called them a “loving surprise” and vowed to “keep them up as long as they stick!”
A week later the same sign was covered in dozens of colorful squares of paper — so many that several had to be placed onto the surrounding wall.
Though Post-it Notes are a simple and common way for people to publicly express themselves, especially politically, journalist Matt Laslo tweeted an updated photo of the visual encouragement, explaining that he’s “worked in the Capitol for 12 years and never seen a post-it display of well wishes on any lawmaker’s name plaque” before.
we’re feeling the love out here. Thank you everyone for your supportive gestures – it makes a huge difference, and the positivity helps our whole team stay courageous. https://t.co/UNa4CO8bfy
“We’re feeling the love out here. Thank you everyone for your supportive gestures,” she tweeted in response to Laslo’s photo.
Ocasio-Cortez has a particularly special relationship with the people she represents, to say the very least. And it’s not something she takes for granted.
“It makes a huge difference, and the positivity helps our whole team stay courageous,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote.
we’re feeling the love out here. Thank you everyone for your supportive gestures – it makes a huge difference, and the positivity helps our whole team stay courageous. 
Daily Trends Hunter 