A lot of Hollywood people really love Tom Cruise. He’s been deemed the Savior of Cinema by everyone from Steven Spielberg to Glen Powell, after all. But a lot of regular people still really don’t like him, like anyone aware of his connections to Scientology, newly single folks who really vibe with Nicole Kidman’s joyous post-Cruise-divorce photos, and whoever started the rumor that they weren’t allowed to make direct eye contact with him on set. Still, none of these excuses are good enough for Hannah Waddingham.

“I have to say, I have a real problem with anybody that goes at [Tom Cruise] now,” the Ted Lasso actor, who stars alongside Cruise in the upcoming Mission: Impossible 8, said of her colleague on the Christmas episode of ITV’s James Martin’s Saturday Morning (via Variety). “Having met him and having spent five days intensely… He is without doubt one of the loveliest and encouraging, positive and inspiring human beings I have ever met. Isn’t he gorgeous? I have no time for anyone saying anything about him.”

While the details of Waddingham’s MI:8 role have yet to be revealed, the actor said she spent those five intense days with Cruise filming a scene on the USS George H.W. Bush fighter carrier. Based on Cruise’s past antics, this writer is assuming that the word “intense” is actually a slight understatement for some stunt that could actually be described as “extremely dangerous” or “will probably kill you.” If that is indeed the case, it’s a good thing Waddingham felt so safe with her partner.

Either way, we won’t see the boat scene or “another kind of main scene” that the two have yet to film until May 23, 2025, almost a year after the film’s originally intended release date due to delays as a result of the writer and actor strikes. Despite the long wait, Mission Impossible fans have something else to celebrate. Unlike Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One, which was booted early from Imax screens in favor of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, Mission: Impossible 8 will enjoy a three-week exclusive Imax run. If that plan gets truncated in any way, Tom Cruise may just have to earn himself a few more haters to get it back on track.

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania lawmakers’ base salary recently rose to more than $106,000, prompting a fresh round of criticism about the annual automatic pay bump. Here’s what you need to know about state lawmakers’ salaries, the history of the increase, and why changes are unlikely:

Why do Pennsylvania lawmakers get an annual raise? The state constitution says that legislators “shall receive such salary and mileage for regular and special sessions as shall be fixed by law.” Since 1995, state law has given all 253 legislators — plus the governor, lieutenant governor, cabinet heads, the row officers, and all judges — an annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) based on the rate of inflation in the greater Philadelphia region. ... [more at link]

Why do critics oppose automatic pay bumps? While political scientists and some good-government advocates agree that lawmakers deserve compensation for their duties, the yearly pay bumps still elicit anger from longtime Capitol watchers. Some of that anger is rooted in history. Tim Potts, an education activist and former Democratic legislative staffer, was on a flight to London in July 2005 when he learned the General Assembly had suspended its rules to hold a series of late-night votes on a bill increasing members’ pay, as well as the pay of judges, by between 16% and 34%. ... [more at link]

How does Pennsylvania lawmakers’ pay compare to legislators from other states? Compensation for lawmakers varies widely across the U.S., according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. New Mexico does not provide a salary; rather it reimburses lawmakers for mileage and provides per diems. Other states provide per-day or per-week pay. Annual salaries are common, but in 2022 their amounts ran the gamut from $100 (New Hampshire) to more than $119,000 (California). Pennsylvania had the third-highest legislator salary in 2022, behind California and New York. State law also allows legislators who serve in the commonwealth’s full-time General Assembly to hold outside employment.

What began in 2022 as a one-paragraph public records request has morphed into a full-blown court fight over who owns digital copies of Pennsylvania's historical records. Are they the property of the commonwealth? Or are the documents — which include birth and death certificates, veterans' burial cards, and slave records — fully controlled by a private company?

That question has pitted a New York City-based professional genealogist against the Pennsylvania agency in charge of a vast array of historical documents and artifacts, as well as Ancestry.com, an online genealogy company used by millions of people to search for family and other records.

The genealogist is Alec Ferretti, a director at Reclaim The Records, a nonprofit that pushes governments to make genealogical information more broadly available. The state agency is the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC), which in 2008 contracted with Ancestry to digitize a sweeping list of historical documents and make them available on the company’s website. Those records also include naturalization documents, prison records, and Civil War border claims and muster rolls, according to the contract.

Those digitized records, according to PHMC’s website, are free to Pennsylvania residents who create a user profile with Ancestry. Ferretti, however, isn’t a Pennsylvania resident.

IF YOU SPENT your Christmas holidays binge-watching the Home Alone franchise on Disney+, you were probably stunned to see the familiar off-white dome of former President Donald Trump wandering through New York City’s Plaza Hotel lobby at the beginning of Home Alone 2. (It’s the scene where Kevin asks him for directions, and Trump does a double-take before giving them to him.)

In a new interview with Business Insider, Home Alone 2 director Chris Columbus has finally explained that baffling cameo. Basically, he says, Trump, who then owned the Plaza Hotel, refused to let the crew film there unless they gave him a small role in the film.

According to Columbus, when the crew approached the Plaza Hotel for permission to shoot its iconic lobby, Trump had an unusual stipulation. In addition to demanding a standard fee, he also reportedly said, “The only way you can use the Plaza is if I’m in the movie.”

“So we agreed to put him in the movie, and when we screened it for the first time the oddest thing happened: People cheered when Trump showed up on-screen,” Columbus told BI. “So I said to my editor, ‘Leave him in the movie. It’s a moment for the audience.’ But he did bully his way into the movie.”

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone! whatever you do (or don’t) celebrate, I hope your day plays out exactly as you want it to.

Ms. Spouse and I will be spending a quiet day together, which is just the way we like it.

if you can’t be with friends and family, or if you are with your family and they’re driving you fucking crazy, we’ll be your family. today, comments are open to everyone, not just the paid subscribers.

and remember, no matter what you’re doing, you’re having a better Christmas than Donald Trump.

Late Night viewers may not have initially understood Conan O’Brien’s brand of humor, but there was an important demographic who did: college kids.

In Vanity Fair‘s oral history of Late Night with Conan O’ Brien for the show’s 30th anniversary, its cast and crew detailed how the college demographic ended up inadvertently saving the series from cancellation.

Months after the show premiered in September 1993, producer Jeff Ross received a call from NBC execs saying the show was in “imminent danger of being canceled.” Greg Kinnear was rumored to take over for O’Brien, as the gamble of hiring an unknown name to host Late Night had seemingly not paid off. However, exec Rick Ludwin convinced NBC to give the show another chance to find its audience.

... In the summer of 1994, things took a turn for the better. The audiences attending tapings were enthusiastic, understanding the show’s off-kilter segments. “I didn’t know what was happening. And then it dawned on me. Colleges let out. So college students started to come,” said O’Brien. Ross added, “People showed up knowing bits. It made us feel like we were onto something. I don’t think the network noticed it, but we noticed it.”

is The New York Times in the tank for Little Donny Fuckface? do they want him to win? it’s a legit question, because their reporting of the news sure makes it appear that they do.

the other day, the Times decided to check out this whole “Trump sure is sounding a fuck of lot like Hitler these days” thing, and — spoiler alert — they did it in the most tepid way possible. because of course they did. they’re The New York Times.

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look how the Times frames it: Donald Trump has always had a thing about “good genes.” that’s so adorable — he’s just another madcap eccentric with wacky ideas, right? much in the same way that Jeffrey Dahmer was into alternative food sources, and Genghis Khan took an avid interest in tourism.

HARRISBURG — Gov. Josh Shapiro plans to continue accepting perks like tickets to sporting events from a nonprofit that receives state money despite concerns he may be violating his own gift ban.

The nonprofit in question is Team Pennsylvania, a public-private partnership that says it works to improve the commonwealth’s “competitiveness and economic prosperity.” This year it paid for tickets and lodgings for Shapiro, a Democrat, to attend the Super Bowl in Arizona, and funded his tickets to a Philadelphia Phillies playoff game and a Penn State football game.

In the latter instances, the administration defended the trips as a chance to “attend the game with business leaders to discuss economic development and job creation” and to celebrate “the work [of] one of the Commonwealth’s most important universities,” respectively. The administration did not proactively disclose who paid for the tickets; Spotlight PA requested that information from a spokesperson.

One expert told Spotlight PA earlier this year that taking tickets from Team PA could conflict with Shapiro’s gift ban, which bars executive branch employees from accepting goods or services, like tickets, from any “person or entity” that “has financial relations with the Commonwealth.”

barely a week passes these days where we don’t learn something new about just how fucking huge of a sore loser Little Donny Fuckface is. oh lordy, there are more tapes!

Then-President Donald Trump personally pressured two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers not to sign the certification of the 2020 presidential election, according to recordings reviewed by The Detroit News and revealed publicly for the first time.

On a Nov. 17, 2020, phone call, which also involved Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Trump told Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, the two GOP Wayne County canvassers, they’d look “terrible” if they signed the documents after they first voted in opposition and then later in the same meeting voted to approve certification of the county’s election results, according to the recordings.

this fucking guy is the gift that keeps on giving. I’ll bet Jack Smith punched the air with delight when he heard about this. it’s just another nail in the coffin from the sore-loser jackass who can’t stop churning out coffin nails.

Philadelphia homeowners in Black and Latino neighborhoods collectively would have $57 billion more in property wealth if their homes appreciated at the same rate as homes in majority-white neighborhoods, according to an analysis of seven decades of property value data published by the nonprofit Economy League of Greater Philadelphia.

Home ownership is how most families in the United States build wealth, especially wealth that is passed down through generations. And a large share of Philadelphians are homeowners. But from 1950 to 2022, property values in neighborhoods where most residents were white grew a lot faster than property values in neighborhoods where most residents were not.

“To say that race hasn’t had a massive impact on housing prices is just to ignore reality,” said Jeff Hornstein, executive director of the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia and coauthor of the report released this month.

If homes in majority-Black neighborhoods appreciated at the same rate as homes in majority-white ones, adjusting for inflation, homeowners in Black neighborhoods would have a total of $24 billion more in housing wealth, according to the analysis, which the Economy League said is the first of its kind in Philadelphia.