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The internet was sent into chaotic fits this weekend after Mia Khalifa decided to weigh in on a viral Batman discourse, making a claim so wild it immediately became meme fodder.

The social media storm began when the former adult film star reposted a viral clip featuring rapper Vince Staples and DJ Hed dissecting Gotham City’s most notorious foes with unapologetic bluntness. In the video, Staples insists that Batman’s rogues gallery is basically a lineup of “dope fiends” in fancy costumes.

The Viral Batman Breakdown

The original conversation between Vince Staples and DJ Hed, which Khalifa shared on her X account, plays out like an episode of “Comedians in Cars Getting Conspiratorial.”

• DJ Hed: “Batman only fight Dope Feins?”






• Vince Staples: “Facts.”






• DJ Hed: “That’s not a fact.”






• Vince Staples: “Who did he fight with Dope Feins?”

From there, Staples starts rattling off Gotham’s top-tier troublemakers with a drug-rehab twist:

• The Riddler? “Dope.”






• Two-Face? “Dope fein for sure, he fell in the acid, bro. That’s called MDMA.”






• Ra’s al Ghul? “For sure. Because he was a white man who said his name was Raja Goul.”

The tone is unfiltered, absurd, and instantly memeable, exactly the kind of content Khalifa tends to amplify.

The Batman Fan Who Took It Personally

One Batman defender wasn’t laughing. When Khalifa reposted the clip, an X user quote-tweeted her with a stern warning:

“We are not going to do Batman like this, respect his craft.”

Instead of backtracking, Khalifa doubled down, but not without clarifying her stance.

Mia Khalifa’s Now-Viral Reply

Her response? Equal parts savage and strangely pragmatic:

“I’m not disrespecting Batman, I genuinely believe it’s harder to fight a crackhead than a supervillain.”

That single sentence ricocheted across timelines, igniting a wave of comments ranging from agreement (“facts, they’re unpredictable”) to outrage (“Batman trained with ninjas for this exact reason”).

The Clip That Lit the Fuse

Ironically, the Vince Staples clip wasn’t even the first Batman-themed content Khalifa engaged with that day. Before reposting it, she had already reacted to another viral post, a fan video of Batman facing a bizarre villain, captioned,

“Gotham really has the craziest villains man, this guy really thought he was Zeus and thinks Arkham asylum is Olympus 😭😭”

Khalifa’s decision to stack one absurd Batman clip on top of another set the perfect stage for the chaos that followed.

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The activist Chris Smalls is ready to go back to Gaza.

In a few posts on X yesterday, he expressed his disdain for the Israeli forces that occupy Palestine and said he is ready to go again after he was arrested just two weeks ago on a mission to challenge the blockade that prevents food and other necessities from entering the Gaza Strip. The experience seems to have only motivated the Amazon union organizer to continue the mission.

“Damn right I will go back on another flotilla again and again until we break the illegal siege that Israel upholds and Palestine is finally free!” He wrote on X.

Smalls made national headlines as an organizer in 2022 when he successfully founded the first Amazon labor union at a Staten Island Amazon warehouse. With a group of activists this year, he’s formed the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, whose mission is to sail to Gaza to bring in humanitarian aid. He was the only Black person sailing on their ship called “Handala” when they were reportedly detained in international waters by Israeli naval forces on July 26. The group reported that he was also singled out and beaten because of his race.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition reported that he was kicked and choked by seven uniformed officers upon arrival in Israeli custody. Smalls also said in an interview that one of the soldiers used his hair, which is in dreadlocks, and his chain necklaces to perform the choking while saying “racist remarks” to him. By July 31, Smalls was released from prison and returned to the US with the other organizers.

The posts from Smalls also reveal details of his arrest from his side. He wrote to his followers, “I did curse the IOF straight to their faces for all the bloodshed and it was worth every word.” He also speculated that the Israeli military did not release propaganda videos of his arrest because it would prove that the claims he was the aggressor were false.

“I would love to see the footage!… it would shock the world, ” He wrote in another post.

13

Broadway and Hollywood star Rachel Zegler has just added one more accolade to her already stellar CV, and it was gilded. The 24-year-old New Jersey native, who is presently leading the superlatives as Eva Perón in Jamie Lloyd’s new production of Evita at The London Palladium, has taken the Number 1 spot on this week’s Official Vinyl Chart with her rendition of the Andrew Lloyd Webber–Tim Rice classic Don’t Cry For Me Argentina.

The news was dramatically broken. Official Charts Company representatives knocked on the door of Zegler’s dressing room backstage to break the news. Her reaction was pure shock:  “I’m freaking out! This is so wild! This feels incorrect, but I trust you, you guys are the experts!”

From Stage Sensation to Chart-Topping Artist

Zegler, a Golden Globe winner for West Side Story already and soon to appear in Disney’s Snow White, admitted the achievement was not something she ever thought would come about. “This is so cool on the list of things that I never thought would happen in my life, charting in music. It’s really, really crazy, and obviously for this, [Evita], it’s so special.”

Her version of the song, available to stream, download, and on 7-inch vinyl single, sits at Number 1 on both the Official Vinyl Singles Chart and the Physical Singles Chart and is not only the week’s best-selling vinyl single but the UK’s best-selling single across all physical formats.

The vinyl release features an extra track, Don’t Cry For Me Argentina – Live from The Balcony, which captures the viral “theatrical moment of the summer” as Zegler sings the song from the outer balcony of the Palladium to fans massing in Argyll Street. The moment has been viewed millions of times worldwide, further building the show’s global buzz.

FaceTime with a Musical Theatre Legend

Zegler was not afraid to inform composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, FaceTiming with him in the back.

“This is the only time I know something that Andrew Lloyd Webber doesn’t!” she joked.

Learning that their song topped the charts a second time was greeted with an audible gasp upon announcement to Lloyd Webber. “TWO?” he exclaimed before going on with a smile, “Well… we want a third!”

A Song with a Storied Chart History

Originally a number one hit for Julie Covington in 1977, Don’t Cry For Me Argentina has had a number of revivals on the charts. Covington’s original took ten weeks inside the UK Top 10, The Shadows covered it to Number 5 on an instrumental in 1978, Madonna’s 1996 version, the record she made for the film adaptation, reached Number 3, and even the cast of Glee broke into the Top 75 with their version in 2011.

Zegler, clearly aware of the song’s rich legacy, teased Lloyd Webber about a possible remix. “What was it that Madonna did? She did the Miami Mix? We’ll do the Miami Mix!” she suggested. Without missing a beat, Lloyd Webber proposed, “The Oxford Circus Mix!” a playful nod to the Palladium’s West End location.

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The UEFA Europa League is receiving backlash from its players for its response to the death of Palestinian national soccer player Suleiman Al-Obaid.

The Palestine Football Association confirmed on August 6 that international player Al-Obeid was killed in Gaza by Israeli forces while waiting for humanitarian aid to come to the Gaza Strip. According to his family, he was killed by a tank shell. He was 41 years old.

UEFA posted its own tribute to Al-Obeid on X, but left out the cause of his death.

Kim Coles is sharing more of what she endured behind the scenes during her days starring on “Living Single.” 

On a recent episode of the podcast she co-hosts with fellow “Living Single” alum Erika Alexander, “ReLiving Single,” the 63-year-old actress revealed the way producers were pressuring her to lose weight behind the scenes. 

“I would get a call at the beginning of every season to my manager saying, ‘Kim Coles has to lose some weight. She has to lose some weight. She has to lose some weight,’” Coles said.

Producers even went as far as to threaten to write in fat jokes if she didn’t. 

“She wouldn’t be gaining all this weight, and her friends wouldn’t say anything,” Coles explained as the producers’ reasoning. “That was the threat — lose some weight or we’re going to have to start writing fat jokes.”

However, Coles, who played the eccentric fan-favorite Synclaire, noted that when she brought it up with Alexander, her co-star declared, “I won’t read those jokes.” Although Alexander, who played Maxine Shaw, an attorney who lived across the street, didn’t remember the specific instance, she did recall the ethos among the cast. 

“No one,” among them would have read jokes like that, she noted, adding that you have to have “willing collaborators” to inflict that kind of harm. 

In addition to Alexander and Coles, “Living Single,” which premiered on Fox in 1993 and ran for five seasons through 1998, starred Queen Latifah, John Henton, Kim Fields, and Terrence C. Carson as a group of friends living, working, and dating in New York City. Another aspect Alexander remembered was how the pressure took a toll on her castmate. 

“You know, the sad part is it got in your mind because I do remember that you went on a very concerted effort throughout the series to keep the image that they wanted,” she recalled. 

During the episode, the women revisit the episode “Crappy Birthday,” in which the two of them, plus Fields, who starred as Regine, take Latifah to Atlantic City for a spontaneous birthday trip. While in the car, there’s a complaint about heavy “luggage” in the back, to which Coles’ character responds, “You better not be looking at me.”

Alexander affirmed that it was a derogatory joke. 

“It is a fat joke,” she said. 

Coles noted that despite the pressure, “We didn’t do a lot of that on this show, and I’m grateful that we didn’t do a lot of that on this show because I gained weight every year. And we could have a whole conversation about that.”

Of the luggage joke, she added, “I’m surprised we let that one go.”

A significant reason the show didn’t include those types of jokes was that Queen Latifah championed against them early on. 

Alexander said, “Latifah made it really clear, like, ‘We’re not going to be doing that,’ and then they disappeared.”

Even still, Coles noted, “There is an expectation by these suits in an office somewhere of what they think sexy is. And so I had a really hard time as I was gaining weight and feeling as if everybody was staring.”

Ultimately, though, the actress said of the four female leads, “I think what was beautiful about us is there were four completely different body types. And we looked like women that everybody knew in our community.” 

19

Netflix’s blockbuster live-action adaptation of One Piece is officially getting a third season before Season 2 has even premiered. The streamer announced the early renewal during the annual One Piece Day celebration in Tokyo, delivering both fresh casting news and a significant behind-the-scenes shift in leadership.

The announcement confirmed that Ian Stokes, who served as co-executive producer on Season 1, will join Joe Tracz as co-showrunner for Season 3. Stokes’ promotion comes after a revolving door of showrunner changes in the series’ brief but turbulent history. Production for the third season is slated to begin later this year in Cape Town, South Africa.

Season 2 Sets Sail in 2026

While Netflix did not drop an exact release date, One Piece Season 2 is officially slated for 2026 under the title “One Piece: Into the Grand Line.” The streamer also revealed a set of first-look images, teasing the grand scale and treacherous beauty of the next chapter in Luffy’s pirate odyssey.

According to the official synopsis, Season 2 promises “fiercer adversaries and the most perilous quests yet” as the Straw Hat crew enters the mythical Grand Line, a stretch of ocean famed for bizarre islands, unpredictable seas, and notorious enemies. “As they journey through this unpredictable realm in search of the world’s greatest treasure, they’ll encounter bizarre islands and a host of formidable new enemies,” the description reads.

Returning cast members include:

• Iñaki Godoy as Monkey D. Luffy






• Mackenyu as Roronoa Zoro






• Emily Rudd as Nami






• Jacob Romero as Usopp






• Taz Skylar as Sanji

They will be joined by Vincent Regan, Ilia Isorelýs Paulino, Morgan Davies, Aidan Scott, Langley Kirkwood, Jeff Ward, Celeste Loots, Alexander Maniatis, McKinley Belcher III, Craig Fairbrass, Steven Ward, and Chioma Umeala.

Season 2 will also welcome a slate of high-profile newcomers: David Dastmalchian as Mr. 3, Katey Sagal as Dr. Kureha, Sendhil Ramamurthy as Nefertari Cobra, and Joe Manganiello as the infamous Mr. 0.

A Tumultuous Journey Behind the Camera

The live-action One Piece has navigated as much drama off-screen as its characters face on the high seas. The series was originally developed by Matt Owens and Steven Maeda, who co-showran Season 1. Ahead of Season 2, Maeda stepped away, with Joe Tracz stepping into the role of co-showrunner. Owens remained for Season 2 but later confirmed his departure after production wrapped.

Season 3 will now be helmed by Tracz and Stokes, marking the third major showrunner reshuffle since the series’ inception.

A Global Collaboration Anchored by Oda

The show is produced in partnership with One Piece’s original publisher Shueisha, Tomorrow Studios (an ITV Studios partner), and Netflix. Season 2’s creative team includes Owens and Tracz as writers, executive producers, and co-showrunners, alongside One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda in his role as executive producer.

Additional executive producers include Marty Adelstein and Becky Clements for Tomorrow Studios, Tetsu Fujimura, Chris Symes, Christoph Schrewe, and Maeda.

With Season 2’s massive expansion into the Grand Line and Season 3 already on the horizon, Netflix appears fully committed to making One Piece one of its flagship global franchises, even as the series continues to weather waves of creative change behind the scenes.

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