Hasta La Gadget!

Every kid grows up dreaming of being on Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People list, going to the annual gala and having Amy Schumer purposefully fall right in front of you on the red carpet, right? 

The magazine’s list of pioneers, artists, leaders, titans, icons (and Donald Trump) was announced on Thursday, pulling people from all spheres of influence, including some Hollywood types that made an impact this year. 

Honorees in the entertainment industry range from everybody to Riz Ahmed and Sarah Paulson, to Ed Sheeran and James Corden, to Viola Davis and Emma Stone.

Providing a unique insight into their genius are writers like Meryl Streep, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Brie Larson and Taylor Swift, who are each paired with an honoree to sing their praises. 

Check out highlights from the list below, as well as the covers featuring this year’s entertainers. 

Meryl Streep on Viola Davis: “Viola has carved a place for herself on the Mount Rushmore of the 21st century — new faces emerging from a neglected mountain. And when she tells the story of how she got from where she was to where she is, it is as if she is on a pilgrimage, following her own footsteps and honoring that journey. Her gifts as an artist are unassailable, undeniable, deep and rich and true. But her importance in the culture — her ability to identify it, her willingness to speak about it and take on responsibility for it — is what marks her for greatness.” 

Brie Larson on Emma Stone: “What I really admire about Emma the person — as well as Emma the actor — is that she is never afraid to show us the most difficult thing you can show the world: yourself. What that entails is not always pretty. But with Emma, it is real, and it is beautiful.”

Taylor Swift on Ed Sheeran: “A few years ago, in a rare moment of admitting feeling defeated, Ed said to me, ‘I’m never going to win a Grammy.’ Yes, you are, I said. You’re going to sweep the whole thing one of these years… A few weeks later… [he] said, ‘You have to hear this.’ It was a song he’d just finished called ‘Thinking Out Loud,’ which would go on to win Song of the Year at the 2016 Grammy Awards.”

Lin-Manuel Miranda on Riz Ahmed: “Look, Riz Ahmed has been quietly pursuing every passion and opportunity for many years as an actor (”The Road to Guantánamo,” “Four Lions,” “Nightcrawler”), rapper (“Post 9/11 Blues,” “Englistan”) and activist (raising funds for Syrian refugee children, advocating representation at the House of Commons). To know him is to be inspired, engaged and ready to create alongside him. The year 2016 was when all the seeds he planted bore glorious fruit, and here’s the best part: he’s just getting started.”

Naomi Campbell on RuPaul: “As soon as I saw him, I wanted to know where he was going, because that was where I wanted to be. Ru was different. Not just because he had perfect, precise clothes and makeup, or because he was the only man I knew who could look that good in a wig and heels. There were no rough edges to be found. But as I got to know him better, I got to experience firsthand his wit and his intelligence — he’s like an encyclopedia. And his beauty is far beyond skin-deep.”

Lena Dunham on Constance Wu: “On the road with her for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, I was not only able to access a glint of Constance’s humor (the girl is very wicked) but also witness her giving nature, her monstrously big heart, her passion for change and the careful way she lets everyone around her share the challenges of their own identity. This year — when she spoke out against Hollywood’s knack for dismissing sexual misconduct in our great men — she chose honesty and fight over the neutrality so many think they need to maintain in order to further their careers. It was a hallelujah moment.”

Harry Belafonte on John Legend: “John uses his platform to push for meaningful social change, and the depth of his commitment is to be admired. He has visited prisons to raise awareness about mass incarceration — the new slavery — and he spoke out about the importance of Black Lives Matter at Sankofa’s Many Rivers to Cross festival, which I helped organize. I hope John continues to grow as an artist and an activist.”

Elton John on James Corden:  “James is one of the most hardworking and talented people you will ever meet. But that alone doesn’t explain his extraordinary success. Anyone — friends and fans alike — can tell you that James doesn’t take himself, or others, too seriously. And that’s why he’s able to make us laugh, cry and sing — sometimes all at once.”

Cate Blanchett on Sarah Paulson: “When someone is as unique and unboxable as Sarah Paulson, it takes time for creative spaces to open up that are large and porous enough to hold the depth and complexity of her talent. In remaining true to her distinct voice, she has been at the forefront of a generation of women who are changing the landscape of the film and television industry … When I first met her, on the set of “Carol,” I was floored by her buoyancy, her irreverence, her left-field sense of humor and her devotion to her craft. You enter a scene with Sarah and it’s game on. She brings with her, in work as in life, the sense that anything is possible. Anything.”

To see the full 100 Most Influential People List, head over to Time.

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Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, finally made it to the White House thanks to an invitation from President Donald Trump.

Palin visited the people’s house on Wednesday and brought rockers Ted Nugent and Robert Ritchie, more commonly known as Kid Rock, with her.

Palin posted photos of them hanging out with the president in the Oval Office:

CNN’s Jake Tapper posted more photos of the group, which included Ritchie’s new fiancée, Audrey Berry, and Nugent’s wife, Shemane.

Nugent posted a photo to his Facebook showing him shaking hands with Trump behind the Resolute desk. He noted that he visited “big ol greazyass Washington DC” on the anniversary of the start of the Revolutionary War.

Palin, Nugent and Ritchie all endorsed Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

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Thursday is April 20, better known to many as 4/20, or “Weed Day.” People around the world are celebrating the unofficial marijuana holiday by gathering for rallies, smoke-outs, policy discussions and thousands of other weed-centric events.

It’s a day of blissful hypocrisy for millions of cannabis users in the U.S., who by and large are still expected to be somewhat covert about their fondness for the plant. The federal government maintains that marijuana is a dangerous illegal drug, with no accepted medicinal value and a high potential for abuse. Despite repeated calls for the reclassification of cannabis, it remains on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s list of Schedule I substances ― which also includes heroin, mescaline, LSD and a broad category of synthetic stimulants often referred to as “bath salts.”

The government’s message is clear: Marijuana and the psychoactive compound within it ― tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC ― poses a severe hazard to your health. To get a better sense of just how dangerous these substances are, The Huffington Post set out to compile a list of every person who has ever died solely as the result of a marijuana overdose.

Here’s what we found:

There are no recorded instances of anyone dying from a fatal dose of marijuana alone.

Nothing has changed since the last time HuffPost highlighted this fact in 2013. And because the list was once again relatively easy to compile, we had time to find this GIF of a dog with the munchies. He did not overdose on marijuana ― though dogs can, so keep that in mind. He is also a good boy.

Fatally overdosing on marijuana in its most commonly ingested forms is seemingly impossible. In 1988, a DEA judge argued in favor of rescheduling marijuana in part because of its low harm profile. In his ruling, he wrote that a user would have to ingest somewhere between 20,000 to 40,000 times the amount of THC contained in a single joint to approach lethal toxicity.

“A smoker would theoretically have to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within about fifteen minutes to induce a lethal response,” wrote Judge Francis Young.

A more recent study suggests a lethal dose of marijuana may actually be even higher. To be at risk of fatal poisoning, a user would have to orally ingest more than half a gram of pure THC per kilogram of body mass, according to a 2014 analysis of the compound. At 88kg, the average American man would have to down more than an ounce and half of 100 percent THC extract. That’s almost certainly not possible, but if it were, it might involve taking this “Dragon Ball” to the face.

“That’s far more than most people will consume throughout their entire lifetime,” said Jahan Marcu, chief science officer at Americans for Safe Access, an organization that advocates for cannabis as medicine.

The lack of death by marijuana poisoning doesn’t mean people haven’t been trying. Humans have been getting high since prehistoric times and for millennia, cannabis ― both in its flower and concentrated hasish forms ― has been one of our favorite intoxicants. People aren’t particularly prudent in their efforts to chemically alter their consciousness, so if it were possible to use a fatal dose of marijuana, it seems like someone would have done it. In fact, if some poor soul had managed to blaze up the close to a ton of herb necessary to achieve this morbid feat, you can be damn sure it would be the stuff of legend.

“People have tried to ingest as many plant cannabinoids as possible and there is no fatal overdose that has ever been documented in human beings,” Marcu said.

Opponents of marijuana might argue that just because it hasn’t happened before doesn’t mean it can’t happen in the future. They often point to growing concentrations of THC in modern pot plants as a cause for concern about increased harm. This ignores some important historical context, said Marcu.

“When you put those potency values on the scale of products that have been available and distributed and traded over millennia, they’re actually probably less potent than what someone would have gotten from a Moroccan hash trader a thousand years ago,” he said.

Although the era of “Reefer Madness” is not completely over ― just listen to some of the officials in the Trump administration ― it has proven increasingly difficult for the federal government to keep people scared about the supposed dangers of marijuana.

With tens of millions of Americans regularly reporting having used weed in the past year, it is the most commonly used illicit substance in the United States. Eight states and Washington, D.C., have now approved marijuana for recreational use, though sales remain banned in the nation’s capitol. A total of 29 states have legalized marijuana for medical purposes.

And the relative harms of marijuana have begun to look less troubling as the nation’s attention has shifted to the ravages of highly addictive and often deadly opioids like heroin and fentanyl.

In 2006, a study in American Scientist compared the relative toxicity of marijuana to other commonly used substances, including some legal ones. It found that just 10 times the effective dose of alcohol and five times the effective dose of heroin could be enough to cause death in humans. Marijuana ranked among the least toxic drugs.

None of this is to say that using marijuana recreationally is as safe or as healthy as it would be to abstain completely. Although the science on even the most basic physiological effects of marijuana use remains incomplete and highly politicized, in rare cases it has been associated with disturbing adverse reactions. Studies have found that THC can exacerbate certain preexisting mental health conditions in some people, especially among younger users. Cannabis use has also been cited, albeit controversially, as a contributing factor in a handful of deaths of people with underlying cardiovascular conditions.

But scientists say the nature of these links is often inconclusive, inconsistent and highly dependent on the condition of the person using marijuana.

“There have been some associations seen with heavy cannabis use and development of possible psychotic behaviors, for example, but we don’t know if it’s a causal pattern,” said Sunil Kumar Aggarwal, a clinical instructor at the University of Washington’s school of medicine. “If it is, I can’t prove it.”

In states that have legalized cannabis, emergency rooms have reported an uptick in instances of cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, a mysterious illness that causes severe abdominal pain and vomiting. But these symptoms are not life-threatening and can be treated by stopping marijuana use, Aggarwal said.

Although a heavy dose of weed may not kill you, it’s certainly been known to make people feel uncomfortably high, leading to dysphoria, agitation, anxiety or panic. Those effects can seem like they last an eternity, but they’re reversible and tend to get better over a window of a few hours.

Sometimes, using marijuana in extreme excess can lead to poisoning or nonfatal overdose. But even then, the long-term damage pales in comparison to many other drugs.

“If you take too much tylenol, you can put a hole in your stomach. If you take too much ibuprofen, you can cause liver failure,” Aggarwal said. “We don’t see those kind of liver or kidney end organ damages with cannabinoids, especially natural-form extracts and that kind of thing.”

It’s also important to remember that the conversation around marijuana use extends far beyond those who use it recreationally while celebrating on 4/20. Many people already rely on cannabis as a medicine. Even if the federal government won’t openly acknowledge its therapeutic effects, marijuana-based prescription pharmaceuticals like Marinol and cannabidiol treatments for epilepsy are proof that the plant’s benefits and harms are not as clear-cut as the DEA makes them out to be.

“These marijuana-derived products and purified forms of cannabis that have THC in them have been around for decades, and they’ve been prescribed to treat neurological disorders, not to cause them,” Marcu said. “If it was so bad for our nervous system and our brain, why is the first person we give it to someone who has multiple sclerosis, or HIV-AIDS, or neuropathy, or cancer, or a child with a disease?”

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Welcome to Miami … er … Agrabah, Will Smith.

The wonderful world of Disney has been flipped, turned upside down with the news that Smith could play Genie in the live-action “Aladdin.” According to The Hollywood Reporter, the actor is in “early talks” for the part in the Guy Ritchie–directed film.

In the 1992 animated version, Genie was famously played by Robin Williams, who brought a lot of his own personality to the character.

We understand some of you may have trepidation. After all, the actors have very different styles. (There’s only one Robin Williams.) And Smith already dropped out of another Disney project, the live-action “Dumbo” remake. Why does this role fit?

Remember that this movie is said to be an “ambitious and nontraditional take on ‘Aladdin.’” With that in mind, and Smith’s experience, the casting makes perfect sense.

If you’re attempting an ambitious remake, you probably need someone who knows what they’re doing. Smith was already the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” When Aladdin asks to be a prince, he’s got it covered. Done deal.

Plus, in “Fresh Prince,” James Avery’s Uncle Phil character was like Smith’s own wish-granter, giving him all kinds of opportunities. Now Smith can be the Uncle Phil for Aladdin.

(And that’s how Aladdin became the Fresh Prince of Agrabah.)

According to the internet, and a well-timed frame from Smith’s bungee jumping video, it looks like he may have already started …

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Disney’s 2000 made-for-TV film “Life-Size” was a super fun confection that had all of us wishing our Barbie dolls would come to life and sing with us.

Seventeen years later, it’s getting a sequel. 

Aptly titled “Life-Size 2,” the film will feature Tyra Banks reprising her iconic role as Eve. The storyline follows Eve helping a young woman “learn to live and love again,” according to the press release.

If you’re wondering, “did Christmas come early this year?”, you’re on the right wavelength because the film is also being described as a “fun, edgy, modern Christmas movie.” So many adjectives! What a party!

No word yet on whether or not Lindsay Lohan will reprise her role as Eve’s comrade/owner (yikes), Casey, but fans on social media seem to be just as excited as we are.

”Life-Size 2” will premiere on Freeform in December 2018, but if you can’t wait until then, please enjoy this classic scene from the first film:

Eve IS great.

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