Everybody's Linking for the Weekend

Sorry for the lack of afternoon articles the past two days.  I ended up going to the movies on Thursday (Trainwreck-you'll get my thoughts soon), and then yesterday I had the wonderful experience of buying four new tires for my car.  There's nothing quite like spending $800 you had absolutely no intention of spending-going to the mechanic's is a bit like playing Russian Roulette with your checking account.  Anyway, though, we have a ton of links to get through today, and I might sneak in a rant sometime this weekend (MIGHT!) since I deprived you of one this weekend.  Either way, you'll get afternoon articles:

In Entertainment...

-Chris Columbus (aka the guy who directed the first two Harry Potter movies and not the guy you learned about in first grade) wants to direct more Harry Potter movies, the problem of course being that there are no more Harry Potter books left.  To him I say "back off!"  This is not just because the first two HP films are arguably the least creative and interesting, but also because I think it's time to let HP rest people.  Jo Rowling can write Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them's script and continue sharing random facts on her must-read Twitter and maybe someday create that Harry Potter encyclopedia we were promised a decade ago, but I think that's it.  The books are wonderful the way they are.  We don't need an L. Frank Baum situation where we keep going to the well before everyone's sick of it.  Leave them wanting more is a phrase in entertainment that almost no one listens to anymore (just look at the needless Terminator sequel you didn't see a few weeks ago for an example), but the reality is that if you want to keep your film as a "classic" and not just "the good one" you need to stop while you're ahead.  Chris Columbus can go back to making Home Alone 5 or something instead.

-Variety came up with the Top 12 Digital Stars of 2015, with Pewdiepie appropriately at Number One. This seems correct, of course, and I think that we could all probably agree that Pewds (with his 38 million-odd followers, choice pop culture appearances, and multi-million dollar salary) is correctly positioned at the top.  But the rest of the list has me raising eyebrows.  Not including Grace Helbig, Tyler Oakley, and Connor Franta in particular seems like a miss of the zeitgeist considering their books, TV shows, and general omnipresence on the Internet, particularly when you consider Mighty Car Mods doesn't even have 2 million subscribers.  Still, it's interesting to see such mainstream press coupling YouTube's entrance into the mainstream (Smosh had its movie come out yesterday and the trailer for Lily Singh's new documentary is also out).

-Selma director Ava DuVernay had a lot of fascinating things to say at the BlogHer keynote speech she gave this past week.  Click here for a full rundown, but I was particularly struck by some of her rationale for turning down the Black Panther movie-so frequently we hear about how women are not put in charge of major Hollywood franchises, and so it was fascinating to see a woman turn down the opportunity, and her justification why was one of my favorite principles from a director (creating a cohesive body of work).

In Politics...

Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi with Hillary Clinton

-The big scuttle of the week in the world of politics was once again surrounding Donald Trump, and this time it was his threats to run as a Third Party candidate.  538 wrote about how third-party candidates rarely do as well as they initially were going to do in the primaries (only George Wallace actually gained of major third party candidates in the past fifty years from his initial standing in the polls), but that even a smaller percentage of the vote could be dire for the Republicans if he were to run.  I've also heard that Trump likely couldn't run for president without financial help from the public-his access to liquid cash isn't enough for him to be able to make it past about $300 million worth of spending (a fortune, but not a big enough one for him to run until November 2016).  Like everyone, I'm curious to see how long this lasts, but if he manages to simmer a bit, I think his support may be somewhat real and not a Herman Cain-style aberration.

-James Hansen, the godfather of the Climate Change movement, has announced perhaps his most dire warnings about global warming yet, talking about how the 2-degree number that is so frequently referenced is too high.  Hansen, though, does talk about how the 2-degree number may be reached, but also undid.  I know I sort of flood you with climate change articles during these roundups, but it's an important topic and new science regarding it has been coming to the forefront all of the time, so this is certainly not the last one you'll see here.

-Roll Call does a fascinating look at the longstanding feud between the two top Democrats in the House: Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer.  The two, who were interns together in the 1960's in Sen. Brewster's office, have taken decidedly different paths with their careers to get to roughly the same spot and it's particularly interesting to see how Pelosi's throwing Hoyer under the bus with Jack Murtha as her in-mind replacement caused her so many problems in her race to become the first female Speaker.  I still to this day can't figure out if Hoyer will actually get one session as the Minority Leader in respect for his many years as Number 2 or if the entire slate gets cleaned out the second Pelosi retires.

Shameless Self-Promotion of the Week...

-I am super into the Lindsey Graham cell phone-destroying video.  One of those rare instances where politicians are actually funny and not just "politician-funny."

YouTube Video of the Week...

-Apparently it's just going to be a Pewdiepie week, as I'm putting in Pewds' surrealist and shade-throwing (yes, it's clearly meant for shade-throwing) "YouTube High School" series which features Toby Turner, Tyler Oakley, and Marcus Butler all getting royally-burned.  I subscribe to all three, but I have to agree with the criticisms that Pewds is throwing their way, and it's nice to see a little bit of constructive criticism on YouTube considering a lot of channels have gotten way too toothless recently.  If you missed the original, click here (Tanya Burr gets the worst brunt of that one):

Just One More...

-Buzz Aldrin used his celebrity for good this past week in honor of the 46th anniversary of the moon-landing, talking about getting a man on Mars as well as potentially starting colonies on the Moon and Mars.  I am all for this, and think it's about time we start to explore the final frontier, so bravo Buzz.