Category: Viral
Category Added in a WPeMatico Campaign
Amir Sahragard hoped for safety in Australia but ended up in a brutal offshore camp. He is still dealing with the trauma as he starts a new life.
Welcome to this week’s Wednesday Night Wars open discussion thread. This week it’s the go-home edition of AEW Dynamite for Saturday’s Double or Nothing pay-per-view going up against an episode of NXT featuring Rhea Ripley vs. Io Shirai, the winners of the Interim NXT Cruiserweight Title Tournament groups being named, and more.
On tonight’s cards:
AEW Dynamite
- AEW World Champion Jon Moxley vs. 10, Brodie Lee’s one shirtless henchman
- Matt Hardy vs. Sammy Guevara
- Orange Cassidy vs. Rey Fenix
- MJF vs. Marko Stunt
- Nyla Rose and Dr. Britt Baker DMD vs. Hikaru Shida and Kris Statlander
- a special confrontation between Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts and Arn Anderson
NXT
- Rhea Ripley vs. Io Shirai
- Interim NXT Cruiserweight Title Tournament Match: KUSHIDA vs. Drake Maverick
- Interim NXT Cruiserweight Title Tournament Match: El Hijo del Fantasma vs. Akira Tozawa
- Dexter Lumis vs. Roderick Strong
- Karrion Kross and Scarlett “kicking off the show” with a match
As always, +1 your favorite comments from tonight’s open thread and if we get enough comments, we’ll include 10 of the best in tomorrow’s Best and Worst of NXT and AEW reports. Make sure you flip the comments by selecting “newest” in the drop down menu under discussion, and enjoy the show!
Before contracting the coronavirus, Mike Schultz was a healthy 43-year-old—an avid exerciser with no underlying medical conditions. Eight weeks later, he’s lost 50 pounds and is now on a long journey of recovery.
Schultz, who lives and works as a nurse in California, has shared before and after photos on his Instagram and Facebook accounts, showing an alarming transformation in his body during the 57 days he was hospitalized with COVID-19.
As reported by Buzzfeed News, Schultz was on a trip to Boston in mid-March when he and his boyfriend started feeling ill. The couple had recently attended the a week long Winter Party Festival in Miami, an event attended by thousands. The festival had ended on March 10—the day before the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.
“We knew it was out there,” Schultz told BuzzFeed News. “There were no real restrictions in place, though. No lockdowns. We just thought, Well, we gotta wash our hands more and be wary of touching our face.”
By March 16, Schultz was sick enough to go to the hospital—but his 103 degree fever and fluid-filled lungs were just the beginning. Within four days, he was taken to New England Sinai Hospital, where he was intubated for four-and-a-half weeks.
“I didn’t think it was as serious as it was until after things started happening,” said Schultz. “I thought I was young enough for it not to affect me, and I know a lot of people think that. I wanted to show it can happen to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re young or old, have preexisting conditions or not. It can affect you.”
Schultz told Buzzfeed that the photo on the left was taken about a month before he fell ill. The photo on the right was taken in a recovery ward. He admitted standing up just to take the photo was exhausting.
After weeks of being away from his loved ones, Schultz has finally back home. Today, he and his boyfriend celebrated his birthday with some Boston Market grub. “Nice to get out of the house for a little bit,” he wrote on Instagram. “Able to do more and more every day.”
Schultz explained on Instagram that May 6 was the first day he had really walked since being hospitalized. He mentioned that he still has “months of recovery” ahead of him. He wants people to understand the seriousness of COVID-19, even for people who seem healthy enough to not be affected by it—and he’s not the first recovering COVID-19 patient to share this message.
“This disease is no joke people,” he wrote. “If you think you’re too young to get it, think again.”
Wishing Nurse Schultz the best of luck, strength and resilience as he makes his way back to health.
If the first stop on your vision-board post-lockdown travel itinerary involved jumping on a plane and flying to South America this summer — sorry, they don’t want you. Keep your plans local for another season (at least), as the country of Columbia has joined Argentina in extending their international coronavirus travel bans until August 31st. According to MSN, on Wednesday, May 20th, Columbian officials announced an official extension of the country’s air travel ban, keeping all commercial flights grounded domestically until the end of June and keeping all international flights from landing until August 31st.
Latin America as a whole has implemented some of the strictest travel bans in the world. According to Forbes, in addition to Colombia and Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Panama have all grounded commercial flights and have repeatedly extended their respective travel bans throughout the duration of the pandemic. Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru are set to reopen by the end of May followed soon after by Mexico, which plans on resuming international travel sometime in June or July and currently is still restricting non-essential travel at the U.S. border.
According to MSN, Columbia’s decision to further extend its air travel ban is hitting Avianca Holdings — the country’s largest air carrier — especially hard as the carrier’s entire passenger fleet is unable to fly due to the restrictions of the countries they often serve. This month, Avianca filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. court and had hoped to resume flying in June.
According to Forbes, Greece is aiming to welcome tourists as early as July, though whether they’ll accept travelers from the United States, the current epicenter of the coronavirus spread, remains to be seen. While far-flung travel is fun to dream about, it’s just not realistic right now.
Twenty-one African countries have come together in an attempt to stop the Sahara desert from encroaching further south. Their mission: plant a 4,750-mile-long wall of trees.
When completed, the Great Green Wall will extend from sea to sea and reclaim 247 million acres. It’ll stretch from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east, and will be three times the size of the Great Barrier Reef. The massive reforestation project will sequester 250 million tons of carbon.
The countries hope to have the wall completed by 2030.
The Sahara in northern Africa is the world’s largest desert (as large as the U.S.) and renowned for it’s extreme temperatures. A peer-reviewed study by the journal Climate found that between 1920 and 2013, the desert has expanded southward by 10%. The study says its expansion has been caused by man-made climate change as well as natural climate cycles such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.
If the situation is allowed to continue, the desert is likely to expand into the more fertile parts of Africa.
The southern border of the Sahara is an area called the Sahel, an arid transition zone that is a point of demarcation between the desert, and the more lush, fertile savanna to the south. As the Sahara expands, the Sahel retreats, resulting in a mass migration of people, and a major disruption of the region’s fertile grasslands.
The initiative began in 2007 and 15% of the trees have been planted.
Ethiopia: 36 million acres of degraded land restored, land tenure security improved
Senegal: 11.4 million trees planted, 6200 acres of degraded land restored
Nigeria: 12 million acres of degraded land restored and 20, 000 jobs created
Sudan: 5,000 acres of land restored
Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger: Approximately 120 communities have come together to plant a green belt over more than 6200 acres of degraded and dry lands. More than two million seeds and seedlings have been planted from fifty native species of trees.
The wall is made with drought-resistant trees that protect the soil from erosion, act as a barrier to the coarse Saharan winds and filter rainwater back into the ground. These newly green areas have created farming land for the indigenous people to plant vegetable gardens.
The Green Wall also safeguards the indigenous people against potential environmental problems. Patches of seedlings can become emergency food for cattle when the rains are late, fruit from the trees can be harvested or sold and trees can be cut for firewood.
The project has also resulted in thousands of jobs for area residents. This has helped to curb the large migration of people from the Sahel.
The Great Green Wall is another project that shows how doing something good for the environment can have a ripple effect that helps an entire region heal economically and culturally.
Over the past few months, we’ve been looking for comfort any place we can get it. We’ve done this by streaming all the movies, playing cards, and napping under cozy blankets whenever possible. We’ve also taken a lot of comfort in food. Everyone is baking bread these days. And you knew cheese was going to stay popular. Put them together, add heat, and you have the iconic and simple grilled cheese — perhaps the quarantine dish of 2020.
Tough to beat, right? And even better with a refreshing beer. Piero Procida, bartender at The London West Hollywood in Los Angeles has a few tips on pairing the two.
“I would stay away from any hoppy beers like IPAs and even wheat beers when it comes to grilled cheese,” he says. “It’s filling enough with the bread on the grilled cheese and having a heavy beer will just make you feel bloated. Also, overly aromatic and flavorful beers just kill the taste of a less flavorful grilled cheese. Don’t overwhelm the sandwich with an over-flavorful beer.”
Since we’re always looking for new pairings (and anything to take our minds off of the strange world we’re living in), we decided to ask some of our favorite bartenders tell us the beers they like to pair with a salty, gooey, grilled cheese sandwich.
Sapporo
Peter Ruppert, beverage director at Short Stories in New York City
If I’m whipping up a grilled cheese, I always like to crack open a Sapporo from Sapporo City Japan. I’m currently the head bartender of a brand-new bar called Dr. Clark in Chinatown and in the process of putting it together, I got in the habit of pairing Sapporo with everything.
Deschutes Da Shootz
Piero Procida, bartender at The London West Hollywood in Los Angeles
You want something that can somewhat quench the thirst from the saltiness of a grilled cheese. Lager or pilsner will work best and that is as far as I would go. One beer that has become a favorite recently and that we carry on tap at our hotel is Deschutes Da Shootz lager, which is a very refreshing American Pilsner that is clean, lightly toasted with a hint of citrus, and is very refreshing.
An easy to drink beer like this will match up perfectly with an easy to eat grilled cheese.
Grimm Ales After Image
Jordan David Smith, spirits director and head bartender at HALL in New York City
The answer to this really depends on how you make your grilled cheese. Are you keeping it classic to the core with Kraft singles and Wonderbread? If so, you’d honestly be best served by a PBR, because you need something light, crisp, and relatively straightforward. If you’re kicking it up a notch to Cabot cheddar and that fourth iteration of sourdough you’ve baked, move up to a tropically hop-forward IPA or DIPA, like Grimm’s Afterimage for its bitter backbone and juicy fruit notes to balance that salt and tang of the cheese and the slight funk of the bread. And if you’re one of those psychos who uses soft-ripened bloomy rind cheeses like 80% of what they crank out at Jasper Hill (think Harbison), you’ll want a saison for that characteristic blend of prickly carbonation, fresh-cut grass, and slight pepperiness; and you can’t get more true-to-type than Saison Dupont, though Hill Farmstead’s Anna is sublime if you can find it.
Maine Beer Lunch
James Arensault, director of food & beverage at Harbor View Hotel on Martha’s Vineyard
For this, I’d go with a New England-style IPA. Lunch (Maine Beer Company) Small batched New England IPA, citrus notes and a full flavor, pairs well with hot melted cheese and always very refreshing.
Carib Lager
Everson Rawlings, mixologist at Scrub Island Resort Spa and Marina in the British Virgin Islands
The best beer for paring with grilled cheese is normally an ale but ales are not popular in the Virgin Islands, so I go with Carib Lager which represents the Caribbean. It’s a light, refreshing lager that pairs with the rich cheese and crispy bread.
Olde Mecklenburg Copper
Scott Daniel, bartender at The Ballantyne in Charlotte, North Carolina
We enjoy pairing Olde Mecklenburg Copper with a classic grilled cheese sandwich, and, in fact, our chefs have gone a step further and created a savory OMB Copper Gruyere cheese that we feature in dishes like our onion soup.
Revelry Poke The Bear
Brandon Carter, chef at FARM in Bluffton, South Carolina
I like Poke the Bear from Revelry for this. I feel like they would work well together because they’re both comforting and unpretentious. Simple, light beer with a classic, simple comfort food.
Little Creatures Pale Ale
Sebastien Derbomez, brand advocacy manager of William Grant & Sons
Little Creatures (specifically their pale ale) of course. Grilled cheese sandwich brings me back to the time I used to live in Australia, Little Creatures has a beautiful old waterfront warehouse in Perth and their beers are delicious.
Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout
Jon Joseph, bartender at JL Bar Ranch, Resort & Spa in Sonora, Texas
Cheese is very fatty and just like wine, we need some structure to hold up to the fat content. We would choose a bourbon barrel-aged beer like Kentucky Breakfast Stout. It has a creamy finish to pair with the cream of the cheese. It works because it doesn’t overpower the sandwich.
Metropolitan Magnetron
Hayden Miller, head bartender at Bodega Taqueria y Tequila in Miami
One of my favorite beer styles is schwarzbier, essentially a black lager. The robust flavors of a stout but without the heft of a high-ABV beer make it an attractive pairing for something like a grilled cheese. My favorite domestic schwarzbier is from Metropolitan Brewing in Chicago — Magnetron. That being said, if you strike out looking for a true schwarzbier, there’s nothing wrong with a Guinness to wash down a good, savory sandwich.
Wynwood Laces IPA
Nicole Quist, beverage director at Bartaco in Aventura, Florida
I’ve got to go with a Wynwood Brewing pick here. We got the first canning of Laces IPA for our opening and the bold flavors here really stand up to cheesy goodness. I like it with our duck quesadilla (kind of like a grilled cheese).
The release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons on the Nintendo Switch coincided with sweeping stay-at-home orders across the United States, and the result has been people putting some serious time and energy into their island homes.
Sometimes this has meant collecting preposterous amounts of turnips to sell on the stalk exchange, while others have gotten very creative with how customizable the virtual island world is. The Detroit Lions used Animal Crossing to unveil their 2020 schedule, while SNL turned the adorable game into something much more sinister.
Others have taken an unbelievable amount of effort to recreate moments from pop culture in the game, with the most recent examples being YouTubers pascal and dclemente recreating Brooklyn Nine-Nine‘s infamous cold open in which Jake Peralta has a lineup sing “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys to identify a murderer. The results are truly incredible.
I don’t even want to know how much time it took to make these happen, but I’m very glad that they exist because they are some spectacular works of art. The use of reactions is a really nice touch and both put some serious effort into bringing the scenes to life — the first one with a character that looks a good bit like Andy Samberg is some real detail oriented stuff.
(h/t Kotaku)
Even before the planet was besieged by a highly contagious virus, many have joked, despairingly, about how perhaps we’ve been living in the worst timeline. Others have wondered if we’re stuck in a malfunctioning simulation à la The Matrix. As it happens, when Patton Oswalt went on The Joe Rogan Experience Tuesday to promote his new stand-up special, and, as caught by The Hollywood Reporter, the two wound up talking about the second possibility, with Oswalt wondering if maybe one of the first film’s most villainous characters might have had the right idea.
Rogan was the one who brought it up, saying the grim state of affairs right now has him wondering if we are being controlled by some artificial intelligence, which has been making things so cartoonishly awful in order to bring humans “deeper into the hive.” Oswalt took that idea and ran with it:
“What if the AI knows that eventually it does have to unplug us and let us see that we’re in the protein pods? ‘That’s going to freak them out, so let’s make this fake reality so fucking insane and awful. We’ll have Trump be president. We’ll have this virus.’”
In the original 1999 film, Keanu Reeves’ lowly computer programmer and hacker Neo discovers the reality he knows is a lie, and that the truth is that all of humanity is enslaved to computer overlords who keep them in pods, feeding them a collective dream that resembles our own (alleged!) real world. At one point, one of Neo’s new colleagues, Joe Pantoliano’s Cypher, turns turncoat, selling out our heroes to the dastardly machines so that he can be plugged back into the Matrix and obliviously live a fake but nice life where he can eat steak instead of slop. He’s a bad guy, yes, and his plan luckily didn’t work. But, Oswalt wondered, is he that wrong?
“There’s a very strong case to be made for Cypher’s character, like, ‘No. Plug me the fuck back into this,’” Oswalt said. “‘I’m nude with atrophied muscles, hairless in a jagged wasteland of radioactive slag, or I can be in this world where I have a nice job, where I eat a steak and marry someone … ‘Can I just live in this — I am fine with it. Morpheus, who the fuck are you helping?! Why are you dragging us out?! The machines aren’t trying to kill us.’”
Oswalt went even further, wondering if humanity was part of the problem to begin with. “’And by the way, you guys fucked up the earth. We’re doing the best we can for you guys. We could have just let you all die in the wasteland, but instead, we found a way so that you can live.’” He continued:
“People always miss that line where [Agent] Smith (Hugo Weaving) says, ‘You know, when we first did the Matrix, it was just flat-out paradise, and you guys couldn’t handle that and you rejected it.’ … Probably the first version of the Matrix, everybody could fly and orgasms lasted three months and you could just eat all the chocolate you wanted. And people were like, ‘No! I want a goddamn cubical job!’ And the machines went, ‘OK. I guess they want cubicles. Give ’em that. We tried to be nice.’”
Alas, we’re still all stuck in this reality, with a pandemic that won’t be going away any time soon, and which has, in fact, put production for the fourth Matrix on pause. We won’t have another Matrix any time soon, but at least we have franchise co-creator Lilly Wachowski winning the internet on Sunday.
(Via THR)