A breastfeeding mother’s experience at Vienna’s Schoenbrunn Zoo is touching people’s hearts—but not without a fair amount of controversy.

Gemma Copeland shared her story on Facebook, which was then picked up by the Facebook page Boobie Babies. Photos show the mom breastfeeding her baby next to the window of the zoo’s orangutan habitat, with a female orangutan sitting close to the glass, gazing at them.

“Today I got feeding support from the most unlikely of places, the most surreal moment of my life that had me in tears,” Copeland wrote.

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“I visited Schoenbrunn zoo in Vienna whilst on a mini-break with my partner and son. We nipped in to see the orangutans at the end of our day who were happily playing in the enclosure, so I went to the window for a closer look and sat down by the window so my lb could see the orangutan who was roughly 5/6ft away. She then got up, carried a piece of cloth to the window and sat down with me. She looked directly into my eyes then placed her hand up as if to touch my son. I was in awe of this beautiful creature already.“

“My son wanted feeding and as it was quiet I fed him whilst I sat there. The way the orangutan reacted took my breath away she kept looking at me, then my son then back again,” she continued. “She sat with me for approximately half an hour, kept stroking the glass and lay down next to me as if to support and protect me.

I had to share this because my mind was blown. We may be a species apart but breastfeeding connected us today in a once in a lifetime moment that will stay with me forever. I’m also incredibly lucky that my partner caught all of this on video 💕”

The Facebook page added a story about a gorilla being taught to breastfeed by women from La Leche League, an organization dedicated to supporting breastfeeders:

“Did you know that women from La Leche League once taught a mother gorilla to breastfeed? The Mamma gorilla had been born and raised in captivity and didn’t know what to do with her firstborn, and her baby sadly died. When she next became pregnant, breastfeeding women volunteered to sit beside the gorilla’s enclosure and breastfeed their babies, showing the gorilla what to do. When the gorilla gave birth, a volunteer came over and breastfed her baby, showing Mamma gorilla what to do, step by step. Mamma gorilla watched, and then copied, and went on to successfully feed her baby “

The story has been shared more than 37,000 times, with many commenters stating how beautiful and moving it was. Others, while appreciating the beauty of the animal encounter, expressed sadness at seeing such a creature in captivity. As with practically every post about animals in zoos, debate broke out over whether or not zoos are helpful or harmful to the animals they house.

And like most debates, people’s opinions fall along a broad spectrum. Some feel that zoos are the best way for people to learn about animals first-hand, which leads them to care more about protecting them in the wild. Some acknowledge that captivity isn’t ideal, but that many animals die individually or go extinct as species without the work they do. Some feel that it’s always wrong to keep an animal in captivity, no matter what. Even animal experts don’t agree on this front.

And not all zoos are created equal. Many zoos have moved more toward a rehabilitation and conservation model, and there’s no question that many animals who have been raised in captivity would not survive if they were suddenly released into the wild. There’s also the issue of whether trying to limit natural breeding in captivity falls under the ethical treatment of animals, as breeding is a natural animal instinct. And what about the animals that have gone extinct in the wild and can only be found in zoos? There are a million questions with a million unclear answers when it comes to zoos.

However there is one thing most can agree on. Whether or not you think zoos are helpful or harmful, necessary or not, they largely exist today because of human activity mucking with nature. The same nature that compels this creature to connect with a human mother, despite her unnatural surroundings. The same nature that humans are destroying to get palm oil for our cookies and soaps, leading orangutans to the brink of extinction. The same nature that we are all responsible for protecting.

Whether we find this story sweet or sad or something in between, the reality for orangutans in the wild is worth our attention. Visit www.theorangutanproject.org/ to learn more about how to help.

This article originally appeared on 02.21.20

It’s incredible to imagine that Vincent Van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime. “The Red Vineyard” sold in Brussels a few months before his death for just 400 Francs.

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Now, he’s celebrated as one of the greatest artists who ever lived.

In this incredible clip from “Dr. Who” we get to see what his reaction may have been if he saw his art today.

www.youtube.com

Boston-born Coi Leray is trending upwards thanks to the success of her hit “No More Parties,” a feature from the one and only Nicki Minaj, and her ability to consistently go viral on platforms like TikTok with tracks like “TWINNEM.” Most recently, the rapper dropped “Fly Sh*t,” after several videos of her rapping the intro and dancing to the single circled the internet.
UPROXX’s, How I Blew Up narrated by Cherise Johnson, gives the internet star a chance to tell the story of her rise to fame in her own words — from dropping out of high school to using music to express her emotions instead of responding to gossip on social media. After her single “Huddy” dropped on SoundCloud in 2018, Coi started to make her mark on the internet, but it was her pandemic-made single “No More Parties” and the song’s remix with Lil Durk that propelled Coi to a new level of stardom. “No More Parties,” was inspired by Coi’s own experience with depression and grappling with being an artist, her newfound fame, and vitality

In just a few months, “No More Parties” went platinum, and just over a year later has seen hundreds of thousands of TikToks made to the sound. Coi was also featured on the XXL 2021 Freshman Class, became an UPROXX cover star, and has also taken the fashion scene by storm.

Watch Coi Leray break down how she blew up above.

At a recent performance, Lil Nas X had an interesting request for his fans. While on his Long Live Montero Tour, he pleaded with fans to stop using poppers during his concerts, tweeting on September 28, “stop doing poppers at my concert! u do not need ur asshole relaxed to see me perform industry baby!”

Fans immediately responded to the tweet with some cheeky comments of their own.

“But then I cannot sh*t my pants!!?” one person asked, while another wrote, “What if you see me in the crowd, call me on stage and declare your love for me like a classic Wattpad fanfic? Gotta be ready!!”

In response to an article about his request, Nas came through with a hilarious clarification today (October 4), tweeting, “aht aht- i said stop doing poppers. cuz ya asshole don’t need to be open while i sing my depression album cuts. if yall wanna do weed, molly, shrooms, paint, gasoline ect. knock yourselves tf out.”

This isn’t the first time the “Old Town Road” singer has gotten candid with fans during a show. While performing in Atlanta, he had to pause his concert due to a bathroom emergency: A video began circulating online where Lil Nas X could be heard telling concertgoers over the venue speakers that he was backstage “taking a mean sh*t.”

The star confirmed the story and retweeted the viral video, explaining he was 100-percent serious about the mid-gig bathroom emergency. He wrote, “Lmao, people really thought I was joking. I was literally back there dropping demons into that toilet.”

Velma Dinkley is currently getting people talking about HBO Max’s Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo movie that arrived on October 4. There’s plenty of fodder for discussion too, given that everyone’s favorite brain of the gang has finally been canonized as gay after James Gunn confirmed that he wrote the character (in his Scooby-Doo movies of the aughts) as “explicitly gay,” but “the studio just kept watering it down” before introducing her boyfriend in the second movie. The current HBO Max project, however, stands separate from the new TV series that will eventually arrive.

The second, more Velma-focused project hails from executive producer Mindy Kaling, who will also voice the lead character in the adult animated series. Simply titled, Velma, the lead character also takes a different approach to the character than we’ve seen in the past. Kaling has warned that the show will cause some people to “freak out” because the lead character is South Asian. And back in May of this year, Kaling insisted, “I don’t care!”

As of now, however, no firm release date has been set for this series, but fingers are crossed for late 2022. In addition, the show will be featured at the upcoming New York Comic-Con event where Warner Bros. Discovery will show off some fresh goods. While we wait for more news, though, there’s always plenty of Velma in Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo, which is currently streaming on HBO Max.

Over the summer, there were a lot of various controversies surrounding Don’t Worry Darling (we don’t have to get into that again) but all of them seemed to allude to the fact that Florence Pugh is a force of nature who ought not to be messed with! Despite the drama and average reviews, Pugh’s performance has been praised both on and off screen after what is likely to go down as one of the most disastrous press cycles in modern times. And she remained classy the whole time. That’s history, right there!

For Paris Fashion Week, Pugh made even more history and turned heads when she stepped out wearing a sheer embellished two-piece ensemble by Valentino. This isn’t the first time Pugh has freed the nipple, and it won’t be the last!

Back in July, the Dune actress also took to her Instagram to defend her fashion choices from “vulgar” trolls who were upset the first time this type of thing happened: “I wore that dress because I know. If being loudly abusive towards women publicly in 2022 is so easy for you, then the answer is that it is you who doesn’t know,” Pugh said in July after the backlash. “Grow up. Respect people. Respect bodies. Respect all women. Respect humans. Life will get a whole lot easier, I promise. And all because of two cute little nipples…”

Despite being making headlines all year, Pugh has been busy filming the upcoming Dune installment, which will hopefully have a less intense but equally chaotic press tour this time next year!

The only thing scarier than Vecna? A cranky neighbor.

Dave and Audrey Appel, a couple living in Plainfield, Illinois, built an impressive Halloween display in their front yard, with the centerpiece being a mannequin of Max from Stranger Things seemingly floating in the air. A TikTok of their work went viral with over 14 million views, but the spooky season production vanished after a neighbor “took issue with crowds coming to look at the display,” according to CBS News (via the Herald-News). “Thus, the Appel family decided to take down the levitating Max and the rest of the decorations after the display was open for just two nights.”

Dwayne English, spokesperson for the Joliet Police Department, said officers did respond to a complaint about increased traffic due to the display about 9 p.m. Sunday. “Officers spoke to the owners of the display who indicated that they would take it down if problems persisted,” English said in a written statement. “No further enforcement action was taken or needed.”

There’s hope that Max will rise again, though. “Yesterday, we were planning our tear down. Today we woke up to a flood of overwhelming support telling us to wait,” the couple, who go by HorrorProps, wrote on Instagram. “We are not going to let one crazy neighbor ruin the fun for the amazing families and Stranger Things fans who have visited.” They did, however, ask people to stop visiting the house until the dust settles.

Unless Kate Bush wants to drop by. She’s welcome anytime.

(Via Herald-News)

For a good while now, Coldplay has been touring in support of their latest album, Music Of The Spheres. At least for a bit, though, proceedings will have to be put on pause as singer Chris Martin deals with illness.

In an announcement shared earlier today (October 4), the band writes, “With deep regret, we’ve been forced to postpone our upcoming shows in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo until early 2023. Due to a serious lung infection, Chris has been put under strict doctor’s orders to rest for the next three weeks. We’re working as fast as possible to lock in the new dates and will follow up with more information in the next few days.”

After offering information about tickets for the Brazil shows, the note continues, “We’re optimistic that Chris will return to good health after the prescribed medical break and look forward to resuming the tour as soon as possible. To everyone affected, please accept our sincere apologies, and thank you as always for your love and support.”

Coldplay’s recent shows have been eventful: The band has covered viral hits like “Jiggle Jiggle” and “Running Up That Hill,” and Martin even designed a fan’s tattoo mid-song.

Find the announcement post below.

Coldplay is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

I spent most of Amsterdam half-invested, wondering what, exactly, David O. Russell was going for in this tonal ten-car pileup. In the first half, he layers bizarre choice onto bizarre choice — Christian Bale doing Wile E. Coyote by way of Wes Anderson. John David Washington, as his sidekick, barely acting. Then, just before the credits roll, Amsterdam suddenly snaps into focus, almost as if this had been the plan all along.

In retrospect it doesn’t seem like it was; more like O. Russell had been noodling around trying to find the melody, and finally did. Amsterdam goes from wacky farce to preachy allegory before finally coming to rest as a sneakily profound riff on finding personal edification, just when it matters. David O. Russell seems like he’s working through it. In the end, aren’t we all?

Amsterdam begins with a title card that reads “some of this actually happened” — one of those cutesy, post-modern artistic responsibility waivers that are somehow still in fashion. Can we be done with these? All stories are a mix of fact and fiction, either be specific about which parts are true and which parts are made up or shut up about it. Stop trying to pre-excuse yourself for story beats that don’t work.

ANYWAY, Christian Bale plays Burt, a kooky doctor with a glass eye and a complicated back brace who works helping WWI veterans like himself to become whole again. John David Washington plays Harold, ostensibly Burt’s lawyer, but, as we soon learn in a flashback, really Burt’s war buddy that he served with in an integrated unit commanded by Ed Begley Jr. After the war, Harold and Burt spent a few years in a bohemian throuple with a louche trust fund hipster named Valerie, played by Margot Robbie in full bombshell mode, which no one can really do like she can. For a time, they all lived together in an artist’s loft in Amsterdam, screwing and drinking and doing art, Weimar-style.

But that was 10 years ago, and eventually reality set in. Now Burt and Harold have been reunited by the death of their commanding officer. His daughter, played by Taylor Swift, hires them to look into the circumstances surrounding it, and just when they start getting the hint that foul play might’ve been involved, they get framed for a crime, and end up in a race against time to clear their names by unraveling a conspiracy that seems to go all the way to the top!

Like Grand Budapest Hotel before it, which was based on the writings of Stefan Zweig (an inter-war writer whose work is some of the most inspiring and heartbreaking stuff you’ll ever read), Amsterdam takes the real-life high romantic drama of the inter-war period (in which unprecedented artistic and sexual freedom eventually collided with totalitarianism on an unprecedented scale) and turns it into something like an arch dinner theater mystery. Every new character seems to be played by an actor more famous than the last, and the general tone is of hyper-real farce. It isn’t entirely believable, but we’re supposed to be okay with that because the actors seem to know it isn’t quite believable and so they’re letting us in on some inside joke. People find this kind of thing insufferably smug and they’re mostly right.

Bale goes silly, while John David Washington’s acting is only perceptible to electron microscopes, with most of the other performances landing somewhere in between (Ed Begley Jr. is also deadpan to the point of affectlessness, and it’s hard to figure to what end). The real standout, oddly, is Alessandro Nivola, who mostly underwhelmed as Dicky Moltisanti in The Many Saints Of Newark, here stealing the show as a dumb cop. Give this guy more comedic roles, please. (Likewise his partner, the never-not-great Matthias Schoenaerts)

Eventually, all these many characters, from Burt’s ruthless socialite wife, played by Andrea Riseborough, and a hero general, played by Robert De Niro, triangulate in a fascist plot afoot in the United States. Amsterdam goes from archly smug to allegorical and preachy, all set to resolve in that most tried-and-true of movie contrivances, The Big Speech That Makes A Difference.

Only, just when you think David O. Russell is going to lean on events of historical import to justify the not-quite-realness of the A-List dress-up party that came before it, O. Russell seems to acknowledge the Big Speeches That Make A Difference don’t really happen in real life. You come to realize that he isn’t making an earnest plea for how and why we should fight fascism; merely trying to work out for himself what actually matters in a world whose stronger currents are largely out of your control.

What he seems to come up with is something like, “some people are assholes, don’t be one. Hang out with your friends, love who you love, and make the art that makes you happy.”

It’s a little schmaltzy, sure, but only in the most innocent, unguarded, universal way. All of a sudden, everything from the title (“Amsterdam,” which is to Amsterdam what Tara is to Gone With The Wind) to the signature line, Harold saying of Burt that “he followed the wrong God home” not only makes sense, but hits like an emotional sledgehammer. And this smug, star-studded, treacly tonal train wreck suddenly feels like a grand slam (I’m mixing metaphors here because it feels like it suits the messy material).

In his typically fumbling, dissembling kind of way, David O. Russell does justice to the world that writers like Christopher Isherwood and Stefan Zweig memorialized in a way that Wes Anderson couldn’t, and plausibly connects it to his home country. Amsterdam is something deep disguised as something shallow.

‘Amsterdam’ premieres exclusively in theaters October 7th. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. More reviews here.

In a stunning reversal, Elon Musk has reportedly agreed to acquire Twitter at the original purchase price. After rushing into the deal earlier in the year, the Tesla CEO spent the entire summer attempting to back out of the deal. The two parties were due in court later this month, but that won’t be necessary. Musk is moving forward with the purchase, and he could be the owner of Twitter in a matter of days, putting an end to all litigation.

Via CNBC:

Elon Musk has reversed course and is again proposing to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share, according to sources familiar with the matter. A deal could happen as soon as Friday, the sources added.

Twitter shares jumped as much as 15% on Tuesday after Bloomberg first reported on the Tesla CEO’s plans to go forth with his deal to acquire the company. The stock was halted after the report.

As for why Musk suddenly reversed course, there are several theories on that front. The most likely reason is that he knew he would lose in Delaware Chancery Court thanks to his initial error of rushing into the deal. However, that doesn’t negate the need for funding to complete the purchase, and that’s where the conspiracy theories are flying.

A day before Musk announced that he would make good on his offer to purchase the social media platform, he was roundly embarrassed on Twitter for proposing a peace deal with Russia and Ukraine that earned him a blunt “f*ck off” from a Ukrainian ambassador. Musk’s terms were a little too favorable towards Russia, which has people speculating that the country may be helping to finance his Twitter takeover. Of course, others are arguing that Musk is simply stupid rich and totally willing to burn through his fortune to crush his opponents for mocking him. Or that he wants those comments out of the news cycle. Whatever the reason, this is apparently happening for real now.

You can see some of the reactions below:

(Via CNBC)