Category: Worldwide

While there are countless things Tucker Carlson truly does not understand, NATO likely isn’t one of them. Yet, in his ongoing quest to endear himself to Vladimir Putin and the Russian propagandists who hold him in the highest regard, he’s back to pretending that he’s truly baffled by NATO’s continued existence.

On Monday night, Carlson had some comments on the current proposed expansions to NATO, which would include adding Finland and Sweden. But basically, he seems to not get why NATO is even a thing.

“OK, so NATO is the most successful military alliance in world history. Yes, it kept the Soviet Union from invading Western Europe. What is the point of NATO now? Can anyone explain? No. No one can explain. Instead of explaining, we hear demands that NATO explain as rapidly as possible—damn the consequences. And the benefits to the United States. What are the benefits exactly? Again, silence.”

It didn’t really help that Carlson was asking these questions out loud to no one but himself.

While Mitch McConnell has made it clear that he sees no problem with approving the new members, not everyone is as gung-ho about the plan. Carlson is clearly one of them. Meanwhile, Turkey is threatening to block the expansion. Putin, on the other hand, seems to be flip-flopping. On Monday, Al Jazeera reported that Putin said admitting both countries would pose “no direct threat for [Russia] … but the expansion of military infrastructure to these territories will certainly provoke our response.” Yet Fortune reports he also claimed, again on Monday, that “Russia has no problems with these states.”

On Monday, Finnish president Sauli Niinisto admitted that he called Putin directly to let him know of his country’s intention to join NATO, and was surprised by just how calmly Vlad took the news.

“Altogether the discussion was very good,” Niinisto said on Sunday, according to Fox News (of all places). “I say calm and cool, and he did not repeat those threats he had earlier, and his people had been telling that is that if Finland joins—that means some kind of contra steps, military contra steps, whatever that meant—but he didn’t repeat it now.”

Still, Carlson didn’t seem to want to take any chances in pissing off his Kremlin superfans, so he toed the line perfectly by pretending to really not understand or care about any of it. You can watch part of his commentary above.

Being a pilot is arguably one of the most demanding jobs in the world. People trust you with their lives and there is virtually zero margin for error. Yet professional pilots do it with seeming ease. If you have ever had the privilege of being in a cockpit while someone’s flying, you’ll know they make it appear like it’s a task anyone with any amount of video game knowledge can do. Of course, it’s not that simple. Flying a plane takes up to a year of hands-on training depending on the type of aircraft you’d like to fly and the training program you attend.

Learning to fly a plane is almost always a voluntary decision, except in this one truly noteworthy instance.

A passenger with exactly zero flying experience was aboard a small private jet when the pilot appeared to have a medical emergency. The pilot of the single engine Cessna 208 became incoherent during the flight and the passenger had to take over unexpectedly after entering the cockpit and contacting air traffic control. The exchange was recorded on LiveATC audio.

The unnamed passenger informs Fort Pierce, Florida air traffic control, “I’ve got a serious situation here, my pilot has gone incoherent,” he said on the radio. “I have no idea how to fly the airplane.” After being asked what his position was, the passenger responded, “I have no idea. I see the coast of Florida in front of me and I have no idea.”

Kudos to the passenger of N333LD who safely executed an emergency landing at PBI yesterday – well done! And to the CFI controller who talked him down – wow!

— LiveATC.net (@LiveATC.net)
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Talk about a scary situation. Not only is the passenger experiencing an emergency with another human being, who he must’ve been concerned about, but now he’s charged with flying and landing a plane. That’s no easy feat, especially when likely your only experience with being a pilot is when you played Top Gun on your Sega Genesis in the ’90s while your brother called you Goose.

It’s a safe bet that the video game wouldn’t have prepared him for his current predicament. Thankfully the concerned passenger had the wherewithal to figure out how to call for help from the people that are known for being cool under pressure.

Once air traffic control was aware of the dire situation, the controller immediately began trying to assist the passenger in keeping the wings level and making a safe descent. The controller continued guiding the passenger, saying “Maintain wings level and just try to follow the coast, either north or southbound. We’re trying to locate you.”

While the passenger was handling the pressure like a champ, there was a brief moment where he was unsure. “Have you guys located me yet?” the passenger asked. “I can’t even get my nav screen to turn on. It has all the information on it. You guys have any ideas on that?”’

Eventually the plane was located about 20 miles away from Boca Raton by air traffic control and it was guided to a safe landing at Palm Beach International Airport.

This will likely be a story this passenger tells well into old age and his grandchildren will scoff at the idea that it could be true. It’s also likely to be something that he hopes will never happen again, if he ever has the nerve to get on an airplane again.

If you find yourself lucky enough to be on Tom Cruise’s coveted holiday cake list, don’t even think about sending him a cake for his birthday.

Ahead of the release of Top Gun: Maverick, Deadline spoke to a group of directors who have worked with Cruise over the years, including Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow). He lived with Cruise while they were making 2017’s American Made. “After 40 or 50 straight days, we were coming up on July 4 weekend. It happens his birthday is July 3 and I’m thinking that since his birthday happened to fall on a holiday, maybe Tom will want to have a long weekend off to celebrate his birthday somewhere,” he said.

Liman asked Cruise if he was planning to go on vacation for his birthday. The actor replied, “No. I was thinking since we have the day off on July 3, we can use that time to have the eight-hour aviation meeting that we’ve been having trouble scheduling.”

“I am beyond tired and I’m like, ‘You want to have an eight-hour meeting on your birthday?’ He said, ‘Yes, that’s what I want for my birthday. I want to be making a movie. That’s the best birthday present.’ There was no blowing out candles, either. Cake? No, Tom doesn’t eat cake. You don’t get to look the way he looks, by eating birthday cake. You have to make a life choice there.”

Maybe he’ll make an exception for an astronaut ice cream cake while filming in space.

(Via Deadline)

On Friday, YSL rapper Lil Keed died suddenly at the age of just 24 years old. At the time, no cause of death was available but today, TMZ reports that the XXL Freshman‘s death was related to multiple organ failure, including his kidneys and liver. Keed reportedly complained of severe stomach pain before his death, checking into an LA hospital for tests. However, his organs began to fail, leading to his eventual death.

According to TMZ’s sources, Keed had been sober recently after struggling with alcohol and drugs over the years. His death came as an untimely shock in the wake of the arrests of many of his YSL associates, who were wrapped up in a racketeering indictment that called YSL a hybrid street gang. Keed’s brother, fellow Atlanta rapper Lil Gotit, summed up the mourning on social media. “Can’t believe I seened u die today bro,” he wrote. “I did all my cries I know what u want me to do and that’s go hard for Mama Daddy Our Brothers Naychur and Whiteboy.”

The Los Angeles County Coroner’s office is expected to do an autopsy later this week.

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

In what’s becoming a recurring theme for the popular podcast host, Joe Rogan caught himself reading a fake news story about Australia banning people from growing their own foods. However, Rogan didn’t make the catch until after he went on a rant against the Australian government and accusing it of concocting an elaborate plot to “smoke out” anti-vaxxers.

The embarrassing moment went down during the May 12 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience with guest Hotep Jesus, and what’s fascinating is that there were immediate red flags right from the jump. Specifically, Rogan admitting that he “read something briefly” before kicking off the segment. Had the podcast host done just a tad more research beforehand, this whole thing could’ve been avoided, but that’s not how Rogan rolls.

In the article that Rogan attempted to cite from memory, Australia was allegedly banning people from growing their own food because of “agricultural contamination” that could cause another pandemic. Rogan ranted against the “real pieces of sh*t” promoting the ban before stumbling into the fact that he’d just been duped after his producer Jamie Vernon researched the legislation while they were recording.

Via Mediaite:

“It’s gotta be a, a real thing,” Rogan exclaimed, pulling out his phone to search for himself. “It seems too good to not be.”

Vernon explained that when he typed in “Outlaw growing food in Australia,” nothing came up.

“Not a single thing comes up, except for that, which is a false thing,” he added, referencing something on the tv screen off-camera.

“They want us completely dependent!” Jesus added.

“Yeah, I can’t find it either,” Rogan admitted. “Dammit. It better not be fake. It might be fake.”

After it became embarrassingly clear that Rogan fell for a fake article, Jesus attempted to salvage the situation. “Even if it’s fake, right? Like the fake is usually the warning,” Jesus said, which is an interesting (and alarming) way to gloss over getting fooled by your own confirmation bias instead of learning a valuable lesson from an obvious mistake.

(Via Mediaite)

If you aren’t following former The Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson on Twitter, you’re truly missing out on various and random pleasantries. He’s as delightful on social media as one would expect, and although he uses the platform to address professional matters (like how he won’t replace his replacement, James Corden), he also shares some periodic sunshine. That would include photos of his pets, Pippin and Seamus, in between other sharp-witted observations on life.

That’s led to a bittersweet place on Tuesday, May 17, which happens to be Craig Ferguson’s 60th birthday. It’s a day that he shared with Bob Saget (who recently passed away at age 65), but each year, Craig sent his friend a birthday roasting on Twitter.

This year, it’s obviously a very different mood. “Bob Saget and I would always text each other on our shared birthday,” Ferguson tweeted. “No text this year. Happy Birthday Bob wherever you are.”

Saget is missed by his fans and friends following his untimely death as the result of a head injury. Very soon, though, Netflix will stream a tribute special that will include many of Saget’s former co-stars. The premiere date is June 10, when one can watch and witness the impact that Saget had (and will continue to have) as his legacy lives on.

Ahead of his upcoming Vinyl Verse Tour with Wiz Khalifa, Logic will drop his seventh studio album, Vinyl Days next month. The album follows Logic’s January announcement of him coming out of his rap retirement.

Earlier this year, Logic teased the tracks “Breath Control,” along with Vinyl Days‘ title track. This month, he released “Therapy Music,” which features Russ. On “Therapy Music,” Logic raps, “I keep my ego in check, just me and this instrumental pumpin’ through this cassette deck / Money don’t represent my rank / Yeah, Logic rose from jack but even the Titanic sank / I seen cats with egos bigger than cruise ships lose it / Gain power and abuse it.”

Last month, he dropped a double single, comprised of the tracks “Tetris” and “Decades.” This came after a public dispute with Def Jam, who originally planned to release them as two standalone singles. “What the f*ck is going on, man? I told Def Jam that I wanted to release my sh*t as a two-pack,” Logic said in an Instagram video, “and I just found out that they’re releasing it as two singles at the same time. What kind of sh*t is that?… I care about my fans, man. I care about hip-hop. I care about music.”

Fortunately, it seems Logic got his way after all.

Check out the Vinyl Days artwork below.

Vinyl Days is out 6/17 via Def Jam. Pre-save it here.

Buckle up for the most amazing story of “catch and release” you’ve ever heard. Payton Moore, a resident of Sugar Land, Texas, set out to the Houston bayou and decided to catch himself a fish. And catch himself a fish he did. Moore filmed a video of himself catching an approximately 300-pound alligator gar, and let me tell you, it’s a sight to see.

Moore’s catch of the alligator gar was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, as there aren’t many left. It’s clear that Moore understands the monumental moment, and as much as it could have proven historical, he did the most humane thing he could have: He set the behemoth free.

When Peyton Moore went out on the bayou, it was with the intention of trying to catch an alligator gar. The video opens with him in a tussle with something at the end of his fishing wire. It’s clear that this is no ordinary fish. Moore has his work cut out for him if he thinks he’s going to be able to actually reel the thing in.

Initially thinking he hit some sort of snag, he quickly realizes that it is in fact, a gar. “This is a huge fish,” he says, pulling the fishing rod. “I thought we were stuck in a tree, but we’re not. We’re on something enormous.”

He understandably spends the next few minutes tussling with this “enormous” fish without knowing just how big it is. At that point, it was still too far out for him to see, so he was trying to navigate it through the water by instinct.

“It felt like somebody’s car had just started up and was rolling out of the driveway,” Moore told the Houston Chronicle.

For much of the video, the fish is far enough below the water that you can’t even see it. When Moore points or talks about the fish’s location, you just have to assume he knows what he talks about. Eventually, he does begin to bring it closer to the shore, but the war is not yet won. Remember, it’s a big fish, wrangling it isn’t going to be easy.

“They’re big, they’re strong, they’re heavy, and they give you everything they got, right away,” Moore explained.

Knowing this, he figured there was only one solution: He was going to have to tire the big fish out if he wanted any chance of catching it. There were some blocks in the water, including a downed tree, so Moore had to be careful, especially because at the time, he didn’t know how big the fish was.

After letting it swim in small circles to tire itself out, Moore was finally able to get a rope around the fish and pull it out of the water. You can see by the look on his face that this is not the alligator gar he was expecting. He measures it and announces that it’s 8 feet, 2 inches long. Based on its girth, Moore estimates that it’s around 300 pounds.

In 2011, Kenny Williams from Mississippi managed to catch a 327-pound alligator gar that measured 8 feet, 5.25 inches, with a 47.95-inch girth, according to Outdoor Life. Moore opted not to wait to have this gar measured, setting it free instead. After releasing the massive fish, Moore is overcome by emotions at what he just witnessed.

“It’s an incredible animal to witness…they’re rare. There was a time where fish like that roamed these waters literally at the same time as you had apex predators like Tyrannosaurus rex roaming on land,” Moore added.

Watch:

I Caught The BIGGEST FISH You’ve Ever Seen! (300lb MONSTER!)

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

Dana Margolin of Porridge Radio is sitting in a car to avoid getting a ticket, summing up these weeks leading up to her band’s album release as “crazy times.” It’s late April when we talk over Zoom, and she’s preparing to move to a new house and leave her home base of England for a short press trip in New York. “There’s a lot happening,” she says, “but anyway, enough about that.”

Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky is the third album by the UK indie-rock group, following their lowkey 2016 debut Rice, Pasta And Other Fillers and their breakthrough 2020 masterwork Every Bad. The latter watched the quartet putting their all into colossal, evocative songs rich with raw feeling and powerful instrumentals. It put the band on a pedestal, earning them a nomination for a Mercury Prize as well as raving reviews including one from Pitchfork declaring the record Best New Music. They were about to embark on a tour in the states opening up for Car Seat Headrest when the pandemic shut everything down. Their success, then, was only tangible online. The attention startled Margolin, forcing her to grapple with the changes that come with a rising status in the music industry. This inevitably ended up as a theme in some of the new songs, such as “Back To The Radio” and “End Of Last Year.”

“I didn’t start a band on purpose,” she reflects. “I started a band by accident.” Since she was a kid, she would make up songs and poems as a way of having fun. It wasn’t until she was 20 that she began taking it more seriously, and she’s still figuring out exactly what it means to take on the role of a bandleader. “Like, who the f*ck am I to have to stand in front of people on stage and command their attention?” she speculates. “I know how to do it and I know that I love it but also it’s incredibly difficult.”

I saw Porridge Radio at Village Underground in London in November of last year. It was my first show outside of the United States, and I was running on no sleep after being wide awake on my overnight flight. Yet Margolin energized me and the entire crowd of the sold-out gig. The venue was capacious with a slanted ceiling, reminding me of a church; the songs filled up all of the space, and Margolin’s presence was like that of a priest, her words confident and cathartic like holy proclamations. Her lyrics are known for frequent repetition (In Every Bad opener “Born Confused,” she sings the line “Thank you for making me happy” 41 times), which contributes to the momentum of the recorded songs but also to the intensity of live performances. It invites everyone — even those who may have never heard the song before — to join in, similar to a chant or a choir.

On the third track of Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky, Margolin sings the line “I don’t want to be loved” 57 times. It’s one of the many moments that feel heavy with a deep feeling of shame. When I ask if making music serves as a sort of atonement, she rejects the idea. “I think of it as a place to get something out or to reveal a part of myself that I would otherwise be too ashamed to reveal,” she explains. “It’s a space where I can try to be understood and try to let go of something and try to have people hear just what I’m experiencing.”

Along with repetition, questions are a motif in her lyrics. Trying to count how many there are on the new album would be a masochistic task, but some notable ones include: “It’s not easy, is it for you?” on the conflicted “Jealousy,” “When do I surrender?” on the closing title track, and “Do you remember when we all fell apart?” on the otherwordly second single “The Rip.” The questions vary; they ricochet from being directed at herself and at others, and some are easier to answer while others are impossible. She chalks this up as her “just trying to figure some shit out,” she says. “It’s very confusing, just having to exist and understand things.”

“Once you ask the question, you kind of know whether or not it was a stupid question,” she says. “But in the process of asking it and saying it, you can hear yourself and you can figure out if you agree with yourself. You write it down and you look at it and you think, ‘Is that true? Or is it not true? Was that a helpful question to ask?’ I think just the very act of asking a question gives you space to answer it for yourself and to process it. That is a really important part of life—asking things and saying things out loud and trying to see if you agree with yourself.”

As words are said over and over, the meaning changes, almost expanding and contracting over the course of the song. Eventually, the syllables are just sounds, as if emitted from an instrument. This makes sense in the context of Margolin’s fascination with endlessness and seeing herself and her struggles as small in the grand scheme of the universe; the more she repeats her complicated questions and declarations, the less real they seem. “I am really interested in the idea that things go on forever,” she contemplates, “and they repeat in infinite loops. I like my life and my relationships are everything, and nothing really. There’s something really beautiful and quite freeing in that idea.”

The stakes are high in Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky — but there are also no stakes at all. The sprawling, fragile finale is buoyed by simple chords and Margolin’s soft vocals as she lulls the last lines: “No, I don’t want the end / But I don’t want the beginning / All the way down to hell / And all the way up to heaven.” Her words soar like doves; it’s an incantation of liberation.

Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky is out Friday on Secretly Canadian. Get it here.

In the midst of being pilloried for pushing the Great Replacement Theory that sparked the mass shooting in Buffalo over the weekend, Tucker Carlson managed to spark a new controversy on Monday night by insulting Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw for his support of the $40 billion aid package for Ukraine. Carlson, who’s been routinely criticized for pushing pro-Russia talking points, has been a vocal opponent of sending aid to the Ukraine. The Fox News host has said any Republicans supporting it should face primary challengers, but he took things even further when it came to Crenshaw.

During a segment with Tulsi Gabbard, Carlson insulted Crenshaw for saying that anyone who opposes the aid package is pro-Russia, which we already know is a sensitive subject for Tucker. Via Mediaite:

“There is no imminent threat, or even long-term threat of Russia invading Finland or Sweden,” Gabbard argued. “Russia can barely hold on to a very small sliver of Ukraine right now.”

Carlson then ripped Crenshaw as an iteration of late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) with an eyepatch.

“You know, the more I think about it, it takes a lot of gall for eyepatch McCain to attack moms who are worried about baby formula as pro-Russia,” he said.

Carlson’s insult was an interesting development considering Gabbard, who’s also a veteran, let it fly by without comment. More notably, Carlson was among the many conservative voices demanding Pete Davidson‘s head after he joked on Saturday Night Live that the Texas congressman looked like “a hitman in a porno movie.” Davidson was forced to apologize to Crenshaw, and the two later appeared together on SNL to bury the hatchet. It was a huge ordeal at the time, so naturally, people can’t help but notice the hypocrisy of Carlson doing the exact same thing with little pushback from the right.

You can check out some of the reactions on social media below:

(Via Mediaite)