Month: May 2023

Rootin’ tootin,’ lipstick-lovin’ Lauren Boebert usually makes headlines on any given day. This week, however, this inevitability somehow isn’t about guns or an unfortunate tweet. Rather, Lauren filed for divorce from her husband of 20 years, Jayson Boebert, who she first met at Burger King when she was only 16 years old. They share four sons and will soon welcome their first grandchild.

Mesa County court documents made mention of the process server’s observations of Jayson, who was apparently blindsided by his wife’s filing. The server stated that Jayson was cleaning a gun and drinking “a large glass of beer” upon his arrival. He also allegedly grew furious at the server and let his dogs outside. The server also pointed out that Jayson “was extremely angry,” and this happened “[o]nce he learned that he was being served with Dissolution of Marriage papers.”

Given that Jayson has recently been reported as belligerent by neighbors — one of whom once claimed in a 911 call that he was being a “jackass” while “running over my mailbox right now” and was “probably drunk” — the idea that he blew up at a process server didn’t sound far-fetched. However, Jayson exchanged some texts with The Daily Beast and denied losing it. He also said any inkling of him being “upset” was because he didn’t know why he was being approached, which is inconsistent with the server’s claims. Jayson also began gushing over text:

“I did not know what I was being served for or if it was some crazy left wing person coming to my house again … I was not drinking and I was not cleaning any gun. The divorce is sad, I did not expect this, I love her with every bit of my heart, she has been my soul mate and she is the mother of my Children.”

Jayson continued with an “I just want her to be happy, So it’s what ever she wants.”

Lauren Boebert has previously referenced “anger management” in regard to Jayson, and she did so in writing. Her 2022 memoir, My American Life (with foreward by Ted Cruz), specifically referenced the incident where Jayson exposed his dong in a bowling alley. Via the Durango Herald, Lauren stated that Jayson “needed the alcohol and anger management classes” that were part of his plea deal.

In a Tuesday statement, Boebert insisted that this divorce was purely out of “irreconcilable differences”:

“It is with a heavy weight on my heart that I have filed for divorce from my husband. I am grateful for our years of marriage together and for our beautiful children, all of whom deserve privacy and love as we work through this process. I’ve always been faithful in my marriage, and I believe strongly in marriage, which makes this announcement that much more difficult. This is truly about irreconcilable differences. I do not intend to discuss this matter any further in public out of respect for our children and will continue to work hard to represent the people of Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District.”

She declined to speak with The Daily Beast, although Jayson clearly did some opening up.

(Via The Daily Beast & Durango Herald)

It’s become a cliché to say “movies are back,” because movies have been back since Top Gun: Maverick made over $1 billion, or Avatar: The Way of Water made over $2 billion, or the “Naatu Naatu” scene in RRR. But after watching the trailer for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, folks, let me tell you: movies are f*cking back.

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the seventh installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise — and first since Henry Cavill cocked his arm like a gun in 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout — once again stars Tom Cruise as IMF agent Ethan Hunt. His mission this time: drive a motorcycle off a cliff. And some other stuff, too, like how war is coming, but mostly the motorcycle thing, which Cruise called “far and away the most dangerous thing we’ve ever attempted.”

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

“In Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team embark on their most dangerous mission yet: To track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity before it falls into the wrong hands. With control of the future and the fate of the world at stake, and dark forces from Ethan’s past closing in, a deadly race around the globe begins. Confronted by a mysterious, all-powerful enemy, Ethan is forced to consider that nothing can matter more than his mission – not even the lives of those he cares about most.”

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, which also stars Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Henry Czerny, and Pom Klementieff, opens on July 12, followed by sequel Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two on June 28, 2024.

In an interview that his loudest, Twitter Blue-subscribing supporters have probably deemed “epic,” Elon Musk said that he doesn’t care if his bad-take tweets, like a recent one where he compared businessman George Soros to X-Men character Magneto, scare away potential Twitter advertisers.

“I’ll say what I want, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it,” he told CNBC’s David Faber on Tuesday. When Faber pressed on another tweet with “anti-Semitic overtones” about Soros (“He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity”), Musk huffily replied, “I’m a pro-Semite, if anything.” Sounds like someone just watched 21 Jump Street.

Musk has previously criticized Soros, whose family office, Soros Fund Management, recently cut its stake in Tesla. Soros, who is also Jewish, is a favorite target of right wing pundits and politicians and often the subject of anti-Semitic attacks. Soros and his family escaped the Nazis during World War II.

If, hypothetically speaking, new Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino asked Musk to stop tweeting about delusional conspiracy theories, would he? Musk considered the question in one of the longest, most uncomfortable pauses I’ve ever seen in a TV interview before answering… with a quote from The Princess Bride. “You know, I’m reminded of,” he said, “there’s a scene in The Princess Bride — great movie — where he confronts the person who killed his father and he says, ‘Offer me money, offer me power, I don’t care.’”

At least he didn’t scream “I’m Pickle Rick, bitch” and run off screen?

(Via Mediaite)

Earlier this month, Ed Sheeran scored a major win when he was found not liable in a lawsuit that alleged plagiarism of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On,” on his “Thinking Out Loud.” Now, less than two weeks later, another similar lawsuit was just resolved in Sheeran’s favor.

Billboard reports that last September, US District Judge Louis Stanton ruled that Sheeran would need to face a jury in a lawsuit filed by Structured Asset Sales, which owns a partial stake in the Gaye song. Now, though, Stanton reversed that decision and ruled that the case is dismissed without Sheeran facing a trial.

He wrote, “It is an unassailable reality that the chord progression and harmonic rhythm in ‘Let’s Get It On’ are so commonplace, in isolation and in combination, that to protect their combination would give ‘Let’s Get It On’ an impermissible monopoly over a basic musical building block.”

Stanton also said, “Multiple songwriters have combined the two commonplace elements in the same manner for years. If their combination were protected and not freely available to songwriters, the goal of copyright law […] would be thwarted. […] To prevent manifest injustice, defendants’ motion for reconsideration is granted. The Clerk of the Court is directed to close the case.”

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

After some speculation in recent months, earlier in May, Taylor Swift officially announced that her next re-recorded album will be Speak Now (Taylor’s Version). The album notably includes some lyrics believed to be about Swift’s exes, including Taylor Lautner on “Back To December.” He’s not feeling worried… at least not for himself.

In an interview with Today.com, Lautner was asked about how he’s feeling when it comes to Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), and after a laugh, he said, “I think it’s a great album. Yeah, I feel safe. Praying for John.”

“John,” of course, refers to John Mayer, who is likely the titular ex in the Speak Now highlight “Dear John.”

As for how Lautner’s wife, also named Taylor Lautner, feels about this, she’s actually a big Speak Now fan, saying recently, “Speak Now is one of the best albums of all time. The lyrics are insane.”

Meanwhile, Mayer recently made an admission about his own “Paper Doll,” which is supposedly inspired by Swift. On stage, he said, “I wonder if people don’t like it because it sounds a little pissed off. I don’t really like ‘pissed off’ as a song. I think it was more… I think there is something about it that’s a little bitchy. I try not to give bitchiness in the song, and then it happens sometimes.”

Last year, Spoon shared Lucifer On The Sofa and embarked on a co-headlining tour with Interpol. Since then, they’ve announced more tours with The Black Keys and Weezer. Now they’re back with more news.

On Tuesday, May 16, the band announced an EP called Memory Dust and released the single “Sugar Babies.” The EP consists of two original songs as well as a cover of Bo Diddley’s “She’s Fine, She’s Mine.” The jaunty “Sugar Babies” works as a good singalong, with an infectious chorus: “They wanna know how much they changed / They wanna know how I feel about it / Do I think they look the same? / Or do I hear their voices talkin’ to them,” Britt Daniel sings.

Also in 2022, Spoon unleashed the Wild EP, which included a Jack Antonoff remix. “Jack and I got together years ago. I feel like we worked on two songs — this one and ‘Can I Sit Next To You,’ but nothing really happened with that,” Daniel explained. “I don’t know how exactly to describe his signature other than there’s something about the chord changes that are a little more epic than usual.”

Listen to “Sugar Babies” above.

Find the EP artwork and tracklist below.

1. “Sugar Babies”
2. “She’s Fine, She’s Mine”
3. “Silver Girl”

Memory Dust is out 6/13 on Matador Records. Find more information here.

Tim Robinson has a good thing going: Every two years he drops six more episodes of I Think You Should Leave, his absurdist — and frequently shouty — Netflix sketch show. You never know what you’re going to get. A guy could obsess over too-easily-detachable steering wheels on cars. A bruncher could bust out messed-up social media posts. A prankster could suddenly tumble into existential dread while in a ridiculous costume. A sketch about a guy in a hot dog suit could, in our creatively awful timeline, become a way-too-endurable internet meme. It’s brilliant stuff, so when is there going to be more?

The answer: very soon. Netflix plans on dropping the next batch of I Think You Should Leave episodes on May 30. The streamer doesn’t do that thing that joints like Hulu or HBO Max (sorry: Max) do and parcel out episodes weekly. In about two weeks you’ll be able to plow through the next batch of Tim Robinon episodes, and it’ll probably take you less than three hours.

Like many, Uproxx has been obsessed with Robinson’s delightful show. We’ve even ranked the sketches from both seasons. You have plenty of time to revisit those episodes and those sketches, and it won’t even take you very long. But that’s a good thing: Quality is always preferable to quantity.

Imagine going about your day, a million things weighing on your mind, when suddenly you see a red circle drawn on the sidewalk. Next to it, a sign reads, “Dance Here.” Would you bust a move?

That’s certainly what this group of random Californians did.

A Youtube user by the name of Thoraya conducted a lighthearted social experiment where she placed a red circle on the ground with the words “Dance Here” written next to it. Anytime someone would walk across the circle, music would begin to play.

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The result is 10 beautiful minutes of strangers dancing their hearts out. Friends grooving together, old folks proving they still got it, kids twirling and stomping around. Disco moves, stanky legs, bike wheelies, chest bumps, moonwalks…just a celebration of humanity in its purest form.

Watch:

Just lovely, right? Others seemed to think so too. Here are a few of the comments from Youtube:

“If there was a 24hr live cam of this I would watch it all day. I don’t want it to stop. Pure ecstatic dance energy.”

“And…there come the tears :’) I don’t know why but I find these types of videos to be so moving. There’s just something so beautiful and touching about seeing people united by a random, lighthearted gesture like this.”

“That is amazing! Just pure joy and happiness, it’s so heartwarming, I love it!! These people are all so different, yet they all agreed to randomly dance on the street.”

“You and THIS are exactly what the world needs more of. Thank you for bringing this joy to everyone.”

“I hope we never lose art, whether it be dance, music, or just sharing this world of ours. It lets me know everything will be OK as long we share the joy and wonder it gives.”

Thoraya’s channel has all kinds of projects that inspire connection. Some are simple, asking strangers deeply personal questions like “Tell me about your first love” or “What’s the worst thing you’ve done to please someone else?” Others are more interactive, like the dance circle or having strangers meet and carry on a conversation without ever seeing each other. Each one is uniquely touching and healing.

Thank you, Thoraya, for bringing us all back to our joy and reminding us that we really do have more in common than we think.

One of the biggest problems with coffee production is that it generates an incredible amount of waste. Once coffee beans are separated from cherries, about 45% of the entire biomass is discarded.

So for every pound of roasted coffee we enjoy, an equivalent amount of coffee pulp is discarded into massive landfills across the globe. That means that approximately 10 million tons of coffee pulp is discarded into the environment every year.

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When disposed of improperly, the waste can cause serious damage soil and water sources.

However, a new study published in the British Ecological Society journal Ecological Solutions and Evidence has found that coffee pulp isn’t just a nuisance to be discarded. It can have an incredibly positive impact on regrowing deforested areas of the planet.

In 2018, researchers from ETH-Zurich and the University of Hawaii spread 30 dump trucks worth of coffee pulp over a roughly 100′ x 130′ area of degraded land in Costa Rica. The experiment took place on a former coffee farm that underwent rapid deforestation in the 1950s.

The coffee pulp was spread three-feet thick over the entire area.

Another plot of land near the coffee pulp dump was left alone to act as a control for the experiment.

“The results were dramatic.” Dr. Rebecca Cole, lead author of the study, said. “The area treated with a thick layer of coffee pulp turned into a small forest in only two years while the control plot remained dominated by non-native pasture grasses.”

In just two years, the area treated with coffee pulp had an 80% canopy cover, compared to just 20% of the control area. So, the coffee-pulp-treated area grew four times more rapidly. Like a jolt of caffeine, it reinvigorated biological activity in the area.

The canopy was also four times taller than that of the control.

The coffee-treated area also eliminated an invasive species of grass that took over the land and prevented forest succession. Its elimination allowed for other native species to take over and recolonize the area.

“This case study suggests that agricultural by-products can be used to speed up forest recovery on degraded tropical lands. In situations where processing these by-products incurs a cost to agricultural industries, using them for restoration to meet global reforestation objectives can represent a ‘win-win’ scenario,” Dr. Cole said.

If the results are repeatable it’s a win-win for coffee drinkers and the environment.

Researchers believe that coffee treatments can be a cost-effective way to reforest degraded land. They may also work to reverse the effects of climate change by supporting the growth of forests across the globe.

The 2016 Paris Agreement made reforestation an important part of the fight against climate change. The agreement incentivizes developing countries to reduce deforestation and forest degradation, promote forest conservation and sustainable management, and enhance forest carbon stocks in developing countries.

“We hope our study is a jumping off point for other researchers and industries to take a look at how they might make their production more efficient by creating links to the global restoration movement,” Dr. Cole said.

This article originally appeared on 03.29.21

One the more mysterious aspects of being human is our sense of intuition. This “sixth sense” isn’t something we can see or measure, but many people have experienced it in some form or fashion. Maybe it comes as a strong feeling that something isn’t right, or that we or someone else should or shouldn’t do something. It can be hard to read—not every feeling we get is truly our intuition—but there are plenty of examples of people trusting their instincts and being glad they did.

One such story has gone viral on TikTok. Jessica Higgs, a mom who works as an Instacart grocery delivery person, shared a story in an emotional video that illustrates the importance of listening to that inner voice when it prompts you to make sure someone is OK.

“I just want to start this off by saying if you see something, say something,” Higgs said.

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She explained how she had done an Instacart order the previous day for a daughter who was ordering for her older dad who couldn’t shop for himself. She said she was going the extra mile like she always does for her customers, and that the daughter told her to just drop the groceries on the porch and he’d get them. That’s what Higgs would usually do.

“I get there and something was telling me no, you gotta help this man out,” she said. “He came out, and I was like OK let me help you, and I got the groceries. You’re not supposed to go into someone’s house, but I used my judgment and I brought the groceries inside and put them down wherever he wanted me to put them down. You’re not supposed to, but I did. And you’re supposed to just take a picture and leave, and I could not just leave.”

@jessicahiggs3

@Instacart #28DaysOfEucerin #fyp

Higgs noticed that the man looked really sick and she was really concerned. A voice in her head said, “You gotta say something. You gotta say something, Jess.” Rather than mark the order as complete, she messaged the man’s daughter and told her that it was really unprofessional to say something like this, but she felt like her dad wasn’t doing well. “There’s a propane tank in there,” she told the woman. “I was in there maybe five feet and I got dizzy. There’s got to be a leak. He might not be doing good because of this leak.”

The woman said she would send her son over to check it out and Higgs left. The woman changed her tip from $14 to $100, which Higgs appreciated, but the message she sent her the next morning was a much greater reward for her going the extra mile.

“Thank you so much, once my son went to check on my dad it turned out it was definitely leaking,” she wrote. “You definitely saved my dad and my younger son’s life!!!”

Through tears, Higgs said, “I’m just an Instacart worker, but if you see something, say something. I did and I’m so happy I did.”

Higgs’ TikTok has been viewed more than 15 million times and has been shared widely on social media. It has also attracted the attention of big companies.

Royal Caribbean Cruises shared a TikTok video of its own praising Higgs for her heroic act and offering her and her family a seven-day cruise anywhere in the world. “Cause even heroes need a vacation,” the company wrote.

@royalcaribbean

Stitch with @jessicahiggs3 – cause even heroes need a vacation. Thanks @captaincruiseguy

Old Navy connected with her and arranged a shopping spree where she got to model several new outfits. People Magazine commented, “You’re literally a HERO! Good job trusting your instincts. 💕” Even TikTok itself wrote, “You are amazing ❤️thank you for sharing this with all of us.”

Lots of commenters also pointed out that she’s not “just an Instacart worker.” Her work is important, she’s providing a needed service and any job done in a spirit of helping others should not be minimized. If she hadn’t been there doing her job well, that man may not be here. Never underestimate the difference each of us can make by the simple act of looking out for one another, friend and stranger alike.

Higgs’ heartfelt story touched millions, and she’s being rightly rewarded for listening to her heart and going out of her way to help someone. Gotta love seeing good things come to people doing good. Well done, Jessica Higgs.

This article originally appeared on 02.08.22