Having friends is a key component of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It’s the fastest way to get every fruit in the game, for example, and also increases your chances of finding furniture, good stock prices on turnips and other goods. Much of the game’s fun is in visiting other islands, checking out what they have and maybe helping a friend acquire some fun stuff they’d like, too.

Or you can, you know, just buy it from shady players online. Enter Nookazon, which is an online retail location where players can facilitate transactions for items, furniture and even villagers if the price is right. Nookazon is pretty simple: it’s a list of items other players are willing to sell, at what price and how to get in contact with them to negotiate the swap. There are Discord IDs, Twitter handles and Switch friend codes listed as ways to get in touch, set a time to visit an island and make an item-for-bells swap happen.

As long as everyone is on the up-and-up, it’s a great way to get some things you might be struggling to acquire in your own version of the game. There’s even a “looking for” section so you can know what folks are seeking and make offer them a price they simply can’t refuse. Fittingly, the “make an offer” option where a price would be has Tom Nook, he of the benevolent no-interest loans for house expansions, next to it.

The site even has a category for villagers, as some players covet certain animal villagers more than others and want to add them to their own island. It’s helpful to have Amiibos to make that happen for yourself, but with the prices of those real-world items skyrocketing recently this is another way to get it done, presumably with currency you obtain by fishing and catching bugs.

It’s all part of the weird and wonderful digital economy that the game and its wild success has created, and goes to show you that truly everything has a price these days. Even pixelated hardwood.

[via Polygon]

Tonight, in the With Spandex WWE Raw After WrestleMania (but not like usually) open discussion thread:

Becky Lynch faced one of her most trying challenges yet in Shayna Baszler, but The Man is still Raw Women’s Champion.

Lynch, whose win over The Queen of Spades at WrestleMania pushed her title reign over the year mark, will appear live tonight on Raw. Who will be the next Superstar to step to The Man? Or are Baszler’s sights still locked on Lynch’s title? (via WWE.com)

Need a diversion? Perhaps one from a group of independent contractors who are also somehow essential, amid a global pandemic that’s already started affecting them? Check out “what’s next for Becky Lynch” on tonight’s Raw, as well as, “what’s next for Drew McIntyre, which hopefully isn’t just, I don’t know, The Great Khali coming out 20 minutes after Big Show’s secret WrestleMania main event to challenge for the WWE Championship.

As always, +1 your favorite comments from tonight’s open thread and give them a thumbs up and we’ll include 10 of the best in tomorrow’s Best and Worst of Raw column. Make sure to flip your comments to “newest” in the drop down menu under “discussion,” and enjoy the show!

It’s a weird time we’re living through, when a trip the grocery store is about our only opportunity to go someplace different than hour house, and every grocery trip feels a bit like entering the arena of The Hunger Games.

Our grocery store workers are certainly underpaid heroes of the coronavirus era. Every day, they go to work to make sure we all have food to eat, putting their own health at risk to do so. And unfortunately, the stress and strain of pandemic panic and economic uncertainty have led some people to treat these heroes with far less respect than they deserve.

A grocery store manager (unnamed in this post, but perhaps originally Jason Baldwin) shared a 20-point list of things we need to know when we’re venturing out to the grocery store right now. The post, republished by Roy Allen Stagg, has been shared more than 580,000 times because it contains blunt truths we all need to hear.

It reads:

I manage a grocery store.

Here’s some things everyone should know:

1. I don’t have toilet paper
2. I don’t have sanitizer
3. I run out of milk, eggs and meat daily
4. I promise if it’s out on the shelf … it’s not in a hidden corner of our back room

Those are the predictable ones, now for the real stuff:

5. I have been doing this for 25 years I did not forget how to order product
6. I did not cause the warehouse to be out of product
7. I schedule as much help as I have, including many TMs working TONS of overtime to help YOU
8. I am sorry there are lines at the check-out lanes

Now for the really important stuff:

9. My team puts themselves in harm’s way every day so you can buy groceries
10. My team works tirelessly to get product on the floor for you to buy
11. My team is exhausted
12. My team is scared of getting sick
13. My team is human and do not possess an antivirus… they are in just as much danger as you are. (Arguably more) But they show up to work everyday just so you can buy groceries
14. My team is tired
15. My team is very underappreciated
16. My team is exposed to more people who are potentially infected in one hour than most of you will in a week (medical community excluded, thank you for all that you do!)
17. My team is abused all day by customers who have no idea how ignorant they are
18. My team disinfects every surface possible, everyday, just so you can come in grab a wipe from the dispenser, wipe the handle and throw the used wipe in the cart or on the ground and leave it there… so my team can throw it in the trash for you later
19. My team wonders if you wash your re-usable bags, that you force us to touch, that are clearly dirty and have more germs on them than our shopping carts do
20. My team more than earns their breaks, lunches and days off. And if that means you wait longer I am sorry.

The last thing I will say is this:

“The next time you are in a grocery store, please pause and think about what you are saying and how you are treating the people you encounter. They are the reason you are able to buy toilet paper, sanitizer, milk, eggs and meat.”

“If the store you go to is out of an item.. maybe find the neighbor or friend that bought enough for a year … there are hundreds of them… and ask them to spare 1 or 2. They caused the problem to begin with…”

“And lastly, please THANK the people who helped you. They don’t have to come to work!”

We owe our grocery store workers a huge debt of gratitude and an enormous amount of respect. If this pandemic is teaching us anything, it’s that we rely far more on people in these positions than we’ve probably ever thought about, so we should absolutely be treating them with dignity—at the very least. If you think you’re stressed, imagine how these workers feel. If you feel frustrated, imagine how these workers feel. If you’re afraid you might get sick, imagine how these workers feel.

Care and compassion go a long way. Let’s give our grocery store workers an extra measure of love and kindness, as our ability to keep living our lives at home literally depends on them.

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Emerging rap superstar Chika has been making a name for herself with her emphatic, inspiring performances of songs from her Industry Games debut EP. Her latest, for Songkick’s exclusive Songkick Live series, adds the intriguing wrinkle of being entirely acoustic, with Chika performing center stage, accompanied only by a pair of backup singers, a guitarist, and a box percussionist.

First up is the title track from the EP, on which Chika details her come-up from dropping celebrity-favorite freestyles to performing live on late-night TV to the frustrations and triumphs of her first record deal. Next, the swaggering yet pensive “Balencies,” which weighs the spoils of stardom against its costs. Finally, she performs “Crown,” the bold closer from the EP. “I know chasin’ the impossible take some courage,” she admits, “And I can promise at the end of your journey / When it’s all said and done / Won’t nothin’ feel much better then hearin’ ‘My n****, you won.’”

Watch Chika’s soulful, acoustic performances of the three Industry Games standouts above.

Industry Games is out now via Warner Records. Get it here.

Chika is a Warner Music artist. Songkick is a Warner Music Group property. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music.

While continuing to promote his new Amazon series Tales from the Loop, Matt Reeves is giving fans another peak under the hood of what’s happening with The Batman. Production stalled on the Robert Pattinson-starring film after barely two months of filming, thanks to the global pandemic, and rumors have started to swirl that Reeves is re-writing his take on Gotham’s caped crusader. But in an interview with Deadline, the director makes it very clear that he will not be changing the story that took him over two years to write.

Reeves did, however, reveal that while he’s not “officially editing” the small amount of footage that has been shot, which he estimates is about a quarter of the movie, he is sifting through the dailies for clues on how to rethink The Batman‘s tone.

“It happens any time you shoot anything. The unexpected — happy accidents and things you didn’t quite expect: That is the lightning in a bottle for something that is alive. I would say that the changes really have to do with ‘Oh, seeing the tone of this’ with these scenes we haven’t done which connect to that part of the storyline. It feels like there might be an opportunity to explore some of that unexpected tone that we found. With these movies, you never have enough prep time, because they’re so complex and so enormous in so many ways. It also gives me a moment to think about the larger sequences that have yet to come up and how I want to realize those,” adds Reeves.

Those “larger sequences” are, of course, the big action set pieces that are part and parcel of making a Batman film, which can only improve now that Reeves and Warner Bros. have more time to plan. As for whether or not the film will resume shooting in the UK, Reeves is cautiously optimistic despite the current pandemic. “It’s way too early to say,” he tells Deadline. “I can’t imagine we wouldn’t finish in London. The situation is fluid.”

(Via Deadline)

Abandon All Artichokes, like many things in this modern existence, is a game of cognitive dissonance. The artichokes are cute and fun and come with a variety of facial expressions you’ll probably enjoy. You also want them to get the hell away from you and essentially spend the entire game throwing them in the garbage.

Designed by Emma Larkins, the latest Gamewright deckbuilder is another entry into its adorably-designed but surprisingly strategic series of card games like Sushi Go! and Go Nuts For Donuts. Featuring cute vegetable illustrations by Bonnie Pang, the game starts you with only artichokes — 5 in your hand and 10 in all — and the goal is to get rid of all of them. Each round you pick up a different vegetable from the communal Garden Row and each card gives you different abilities, with the general goal being to get rid of (Compost) artichokes or simply get more cards.

A Potato, for example, lets you compost an artichoke if you draw one from the top of your draw deck. An Onion composts an artichoke from your hand, but you then have to put the Onion on another person’s discard pile, essentially making it a one-time use card. Each vegetable has a unique circumstance for play and also impacts your draw total, artichoke total and the ability for other players to find that vegetable in the Garden for themselves.

Other cards let you recycle and reuse other vegetables (Corn, Pepper) in different ways to keep cards moving from your draw and discard piles into your hand. The main goal is to get rid of artichokes, yes, but you actually win when you draw a hand of five cards with zero artichokes in it. So there are actually a few different ways to make that happen, including stuffing your draw pile with non-artichoke cards.

The game starts slow, as players take a single card from the Garden, play that card and then their turn is essentially over. But it quickly ramps up, using every card available and trying to figure out how best to get rid of cards and collect more useful vegetables as the game evolves. As play continues some vegetables become more useful than others while some valuable early-game cards become unimportant filler. The Broccoli, for example, lets you compost an artichoke if you have three or more in your hand. But later in the game that card is largely useless, as you may not have three artichokes total if you’re playing right.

Abandon All Artichokes offers a lot of strategy options that turn a cute and quick game into something you might think about far after you’re done playing. It’s also a hilarious to catch yourself wondering if you should have picked up a carrot instead of peas and it not be in the context of a trip to the supermarket. As fast as it’s played (20 minutes listed on the box) it doesn’t feel like it ends abruptly, either, as you’ll often feel a turn or two away from winning even if someone steals victory out from under you.

What I really liked about the game in particular is that it works well with two players, and even with the small group there are multiple strategies you can use to win. Keeping as few cards in your deck as possible works just as well as stacking it with cards quickly to lower your chances of pulling artichokes. There’s still a bit of variation based on what other players are doing, and just enough luck to keep things interesting right down to the last draw. In games with three or four players there are more possibilities to use others’ decks to your advantage, stealing cards and sticking early-game cards with little use on another player in exchange for more useful ones as the game continues.

If you want to get extremely invested in strategy, you can keep tabs of what cards people are picking up, where they are in their decks and help inform what decisions you make with your own cards. Playing an Onion card and giving it to the person you think is least likely to win, or perhaps taking a card from an opponent’s draw pile you think might have a Carrot coming, could be the difference in a game and steal victory from another player. It could also, conversely, completely backfire on you and hand someone the victory.

If all of that sounds like too much thought about a vegetable-themed card game, you can also just worry about your own cards and have some fun. The game is extremely fast, with rounds moving quickly once everyone knows the rules. It’s also fairly easy to pick up, so even a bad or unlucky round is fast forgotten and. In pre-pandemic play I had a lone friend dismiss the game after a single round, but for everyone else it clicked fairly immediately and they wanted to play again right away. For those that may not be sold initially, a second playthrough is usually even quicker, meaning they won’t have to endure Artichokes for very long. Everyone else willing to dig deeper into the Garden row, however, will find a lot of strategy beneath the very cute surface.

Christian McCaffrey has emerged as one of the NFL’s best running backs and the Carolina Panthers biggest offensive weapon in recent years, and he’s now being rewarded in kind.

It was announced on Monday that McCaffrey had agreed to a 4-year, $64 million extension with the Panthers that will make him the league’s highest paid running back, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter and confirmed by NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport — along with a statement from McCaffrey himself.

McCaffrey has rushed for nearly 2,500 yards over the last two seasons, while also being an elite receiving threat out of the backfield. Last year he rushed for 1,387 yards while catching 116 passes for 1,005 yards and 19 combined touchdowns. His pass catching ability makes him a more dynamic threat than many backs, but it’s still a massive contract to hand out to a player that plays a position that has, largely, become a non-critical position.

The caveat that he can be a 1,000 yard receiver as well as a 1,000 yard rusher will surely be brought up by many when discussing this new deal, but given how many big, long-term deals for running backs have aged poorly in recent years, there will surely be questions asked of this decision. On McCaffrey’s side, it’s a brilliant job to leverage his last two seasons of production into some long-term security at a position that is rarely afforded that. Hopefully he can make good on this deal, and it certainly sets a new price point for other top tier backs, such as Derrick Henry, who are looking for a long-term deal of their own.

Karl-Anthony Towns announced three weeks ago that his mother, Jacqueline Towns, was in a medically induced coma after contracting COVID-19 in a tearful message to fans to take social distancing seriously and do everything possible to slow the spread of the deadly virus. Sadly, on Monday, the Timberwolves organization announced that Jacqueline Towns had passed due to complications from the novel coronavirus.

“The Timberwolves organization is incredibly saddened to hear of the passing of Jacqueline Towns due to complications from COVID-19. In the four-plus years we were fortunate to know Jackie, she became part of our family. Her passion for life and for her family was palpable. As Karl’s number one fan, Jackie provided constant and positive energy for him and was beloved by our entire organization and staff at Target Center as she supported her son and the Timberwolves. The League, teams, and players have come together in their support of Jackie and Karl and we are grateful for our NBA family. We would like to thank all the doctors, nurses and medical personnel who cared for Jackie during her illness and all of Karl’s fans who sent their support this past month. Our deepest condolences go out to Karl and his family during this difficult time.”

It is a somber reminder of the seriousness of the situation and why the league, like so many other businesses, has come to a halt amid the pandemic. As the news spread, players from around the NBA offered their condolences, thoughts, and prayers to the Towns family as they deal with the pain of this tragedy.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused a spike in unemployment claims, with around 16.8 million people filing in the last three weeks alone, or about 10% of the population, as per Business Insider. (That percentage peaked at 25% during the Great Depression, but there were also considerably fewer people alive then compared to now.) Among those hit are movie theater employees, who’ve been furloughed since their places of business were shuttered nationwide. Numerous charities and causes have been launched since the outbreak descended upon America, with the employed donating to those suddenly in need.

Now, as per The Hollywood Reporter, Lionsgate is launched a screening series intended to raise donations to laid-off movie theater employees. The Canadian-American movie company will be hosting a series of free livestreams of some of their most popular titles on their YouTube page. Jamie Lee Curtis will serve as emcee, and the titles include an ’80s classic (Dirty Dancing), two big franchise titles (The Hunger Games and John Wick) and one almost-Best Picture-winner (La La Land).

While the screenings will, again, be free, they will strongly encourage donations to the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation, described by THR as “an organization dedicated to helping workers throughout the motion picture industry.”

The screenings will happen on Friday nights, and the schedule is as follows:

April 17 – The Hunger Games
April 24 – Dirty Dancing
May 1 – La La Land
May 8 – John Wick (age registration required)

(Via THR)