Category: Worldwide

In a new excerpt from Mark Esper’s book, A Sacred Oath, the former Secretary of Defense claims he had to talk Donald Trump out of attempting to court martial William McRaven, a Navy SEAL who led the raid on Osama bin Laden. McRaven’s crime? Criticizing Trump, of course. Along with U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal, who was also a vocal anti-Trump critic, McRaven was on Trump’s radar, and the former president was adamant about hitting them both with a court martial

However, both men were already retired, so their military service would have to be reactivated. According to Esper’s book, he had to talk Trump off of the ledge by explaining to him that reactivating two retired servicemen just to hit them with a court martial for being “disloyal” would be a bad look all around.

“Doing this ‘will backfire on you, Mr. President,’” Esper said. He later detailed the right-wing news sources that were getting Trump all hot and bothered. Via Mediaite:

Esper claims Trump’s outrage was further fueled and “spun up” by stories from right-wing outlets like Breitbart highlighting public criticisms of Trump from McRaven and McChrystal. Both men have been vocal about their disapproval of Trump, with McRaven even writing multiple op-eds blasting the former president’s aggressive relationship with the media, calling his attacks on the media “the greatest threat to democracy.”

According to Esper, Trump calmed down after General Mark Milley promised to call McRaven and McChrystal and ask them to go easy on the former president. However, it appears that call never happened.

“There was no call I remember,” McChrystal told Talking Points Memo, “And I would have remembered that.”

(Via Mediaite)

Ever since Clive McCay published his landmark 1935 study that showed mice with severely restricted diets lived 33% longer, many have wondered whether caloric restriction could extend the human life span, too.

It makes for an interesting philosophical question: Would you trade the joy of eating for a longer life?

There are a few reasons why some say this type of caloric restriction could work to extend human life spans. First, larger animals tend to live longer than smaller ones because they have slower metabolic rates. When we consume fewer calories, we have less to metabolize.

Second, it’s speculated that caloric restriction reduces free radical damage in the body, slowing the aging process.

When it comes to dietary restriction, itu2019s not just calories that count. A study @ScienceMagazine shows that timing feedings to match active period of circadian cycle extended life span of mice more than three times as much as caloric restriction alone.https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/951907u00a0u2026

— Buck Institute (@Buck Institute)
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A new study out of UT Southwestern on mice has found that caloric restriction increases longevity, which isn’t exactly front-page news. However, the intriguing part is that this study found that the time of day the mice were fed had a big effect on their life spans.

Researchers found that restricting the calories mice ate by 30 to 40% increased their longevity by 10%. But mice that were fed the restrictive diet only while active at night lived 35% longer than those that ate whatever they wanted whenever they chose.

If this type of diet were adapted for a human’s biological rhythms, we’d eat low-calorie diets during the daytime. So if you’re the type that prefers breakfast over dinner, a long life could be in the cards. But if you love a four-course dinner, it may be hard to make the adjustment.

Bottom line: If the diet is found to work the same way in humans as it does for mice, when we eat will become almost as important as what we eat. It could also lead to changing the times we wake up and go to sleep. Who wants to stop eating at 3 p.m. and then go to bed hungry at 11 p.m.?

“It’s pretty clear that the timing of eating is important to get the most bang for your buck with calorie restriction,” Dr. Joseph Takahashi, Ph.D, one of the lead researchers on the study, said in a news release.

“We have discovered a new facet to caloric restriction that dramatically extends life span in our lab animals,” said Dr. Takahashi, the Loyd B. Sands Distinguished Chair in Neuroscience. “If these findings hold true in people, we might want to rethink whether we really want that midnight snack.”

The study also makes the interesting case that low body weight isn’t necessarily tied to longevity.

“This shows that at low body weight, this popular yardstick of health (body weight) is not a predictor of life span,” said Dr. Carla Green, Distinguished Scholar in Neuroscience at UT Southwestern.

Obviously, this study was performed on mice and there’s a long way to go before we can be sure that this type of drastic dieting will expand human life or doesn’t come with any dangerous side effects. But it is compelling to imagine that by simply adjusting what and when we eat we could live up to 35% longer.

That would push the life span of the average American male from 75 to 103 and female from 81 to 109.

On her 2019 debut album, Beware Of The Dogs, Australia’s Stella Donnelly established herself as one of the brightest emerging forces in indie. Now the singer-songwriter has announced her sophomore release, Flood, and the lead single, “Lungs,” is a beautiful paean.

On “Lungs,” Donnelly’s voice soars once again, but the production is markedly different from the folksy guitars of her debut. Donnelly wrote much of Flood on the piano and it’s a focal point of “Lungs” — albeit one that pairs handsomely with a full drum beat and electric guitar arrangement that makes the long notes she holds burst with life.

Donnelly spent much of the past few years on the move throughout Australia, including spending a good chunk of time in the rainforests of Bellingen. “I had so many opportunities to write things in strange places,” she said in a statement. The result, is an album about self-discovery and human dynamics, for a promising talent in Donnelly that is now on the rise once again.

Watch the video for Lungs” above. Check out the album artwork and tracklist for Flood below, as well as a listing of all of Stella Donnelly’s 2022 tour dates.

1. “Lungs”
2. “How Was Your Day?”
3. “Restricted Account”
4. “Underwater”
5. “Medals”
6. “Move Me”
7. “Flood”
8. “This Week”
9. “Oh My My My”
10. “Morning Silence”
11. “Cold”

09/11 — San Diego, CA @ Casbah
09/12 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda
09/13 — San Francisco, CA @ Independent
09/15 — Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios
09/16 — Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret
09/17 — Seattle, WA @ Neumos
09/21 — Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line Music Cafe
09/22 — Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
09/23 — Detroit, MI @ Sanctuary
09/24 — Toronto, ON @ Longboat Hall
09/26 — Boston, MA @ Crystal Ballroom
09/28 — Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere
09/30 — Philadelphia, PA @ World Cafe Live
10/01 — Washington, DC @ Songbyrd
11/01 — Leeds, UK @ Wardrobe
11/02 — Glasgow @ Mono
11/03 — Manchester @ Band On The Wall
11/04 — Dublin, IE @ Whelan’s
11/06 — Liverpool, UK @ Zanzibar
11/08 —Nottingham, UK @ Metronome
11/09 — Bristol, UK @ Thekla
11/10 — London, UK @ Electric Brixton
11/12 — Cardiff, UK @ The Gate
11/13 — Birmingham, UK @ Hare and Hounds
11/14 — Brighton, UK @ Komedia
11/16 — Paris, FR @ FMR
11/17 — Cologne, DE @ Artheatre
11/18 — Brussels, BE @ Rotonde — Botanique
11/19 — Amsterdam, NL @ Bitterzoet
11/21 — Hamburg, DE @ Molotow Skybar
11/22 — Copenhagen, DK @ Hotel Cecil
11/24 — Berlin, DE @ Badehaus
11/25 — Munich, DE @ Strom w/ Julia Jacklin

Flood comes out on 08/26 via Secretly Canadian. Pre-order it here.

Back on August 15, 2021, Lyon lost to Angers, 3-0, in a match in France’s top soccer league, Ligue 1. It ended up being the final game of Brazilian defender Marcelo’s game for the club, as he did not suit up for them again, had his contract terminated in January, and eventually inked a deal with Bordeaux.

It was a bit weird, because the 34-year-old Marcelo had played a ton in recent years and had his contract renewed in March of 2022. While he played poorly in the game, the scuttlebutt at the time was that Marcelo laughed while club captain Leo Dubois tried to address the team after. As it turns out, there is a bit more to this, because according to Julien Laurens of ESPN, Marcelo would not stop farting and laughing in the locker room after the team lost.

Marcelo was caught laughing during captain Leo Dubois’ speech to rally the troops following the game, which didn’t go down well with manager Peter Bosz and sporting director Juninho.

However, according to ESPN sources, Marcelo was also disciplined by the club for repeatedly farting among his teammates in the dressing room and laughing in the presence of Juninho and Bosz.

We’re all adults here, and know that farting is a natural thing that happens. Having said that, this is essentially repeatedly farting and laughing at it during a very serious work meeting, so, I think we’d all lose our jobs if that happened.

While the Billboard Music Awards’ announcement of Travis Scott’s return as a performer came as a shock to some, for others it signaled the next phase in his ongoing comeback after the Astroworld Festival disaster. However, as Travis and Live Nation are still entangled in a deluge of lawsuits stemming from the many, many injuries and ten deaths at Astroworld, it appears Travis needed an outside advocate to fight for him to perform at this year’s BBMAs.

Enter: Sean “Puff Daddy/P. Diddy/Brother Love” Combs. In a video posted to Instagram, the veteran hitmaker made it clear that he deserves the credit (or the blame, depending on where you stand) for Travis Scott’s impending redemption. It seems Diddy gave the show’s producers an ultimatum:” For the Billboard Music Awards this Sunday I made a request, I made a demand,” he said. “I said ‘My brother Travis Scott has to perform. I’m executive producing, he has to perform,’ and NBC said ‘yes.’”

Diddy continued to boast in a separate interview with REVOLT Black News (which, you may recall, he owns). “I am uncanceling the canceled,” he declared. “There will be no canceling on my watch. Love is about forgiveness… so that was why it was important for me to have Travis Scott perform. It’s going to be a great night.”

While forgiveness is an admirable goal, there are some who don’t feel it’s Diddy’s or anyone else’s place to offer that. Those people include Bernon and Tericia Blount, the grandparents of Ezra Blount, the youngest Astroworld victim at nine years old. The Blounts previously condemned one of Travis’ efforts to make amends, calling it a PR stunt, and nearly 3,000 victims have lawsuits against the rapper and Astroworld’s promotion company, Live Nation. Those suits have been combined into a single case, which has yet to be tried.

Pussy Riot members frequently find themselves in trouble with the law, which makes sense given that protesting is a core component of what the Russian punk group is about. For group member Maria Alyokhina, this has meant Vladimir Putin’s Russian government has kept a close eye on her. In spite of that, she managed to escape Russia recently by posing as a food courier, an experience she spoke about in a new New York Times interview.

A passage from the article describes Alyokhina’s journey:

“She remained determined to fight Mr. Putin’s system of repression, even after being jailed six more times since last summer, each stint for 15 days, always on trumped-up charges aimed at stifling her political activism.

But in April, as Mr. Putin cracked down harder to snuff out any criticism of his war in Ukraine, the authorities announced that her effective house arrest would be converted to 21 days in a penal colony. She decided it was time to leave Russia — at least temporarily — and disguised herself as a food courier to evade the Moscow police who had been staking out the friend’s apartment where she was staying. She left her cellphone behind as a decoy and to avoid being tracked.

A friend drove her to the border with Belarus, and it took her a week to cross into Lithuania.”

She told the publication, “I was happy that I made it, because it was an unpredictable and big [kiss-off to the Russian authorities]. I still don’t understand completely what I’ve done.” She also noted, “I don’t think Russia has a right to exist anymore. Even before, there were questions about how it is united, by what values it is united, and where it is going. But now I don’t think that is a question anymore.”

The feature includes more fascinating details on Alyokhina and Pussy Riot, so check it out here.

“Poor [fill-in-the-blank name]” could apply to a lot of the characters on Better Call Saul. Most of them, honestly. Poor Nacho, for… you know. Poor Howard, for Saul and Kim’s constant attempts to ruin his career (he’s a bozo, but not a bad guy). Poor Spooge, for being named Spooge. But in last night’s episode, “Black and Blue,” the “poor [fill-in-the-blank name]” award goes to poor Viola.

The paralegal, played by Gilmore Girls favorite Keiko Agena, thought she was having a friendly lunch with Kim, who abruptly quit her job at Schweikart & Cokely last season, leaving Viola to pick up the pieces. But nope, the meet-up was actually an excuse for Kim to get information on a judge as part of her and Saul’s scheme against Howard.

Slippin’ Jimmy would be proud, but it’s still a “dastardly” thing to do.

“I think there is some genuine affinity tied into the scene, but that’s what makes it so dastardly,” episode writer Melissa Bernstein told the Hollywood Reporter. “If she didn’t care for Viola, then it would just be very clear cut, but this is a very dark side of Kim. We’ve seen her navigate some unsavory personalities and glean information when it’s advantageous to her and Jimmy, but to do that to a character that we all like as an audience, somebody who is professing how much she admires Kim, is very, very low.”

Bernstein called the disarming way Kim spoke to Viola “pretty shameful. That’s becoming more and more clear as these guys get deeper into the scam. Innocent people are going to get hurt or be taken advantage of.”

Just stay away from Little Bear, deal?

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)

We have come a long way from the 2000s. Britney Spears is finally free. Lindsay Lohan is mounting a comeback via Netflix. And Paris Hilton? She’s meeting with U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley to help push some much-needed reforms for residential care facilities. No, we’re being serious.

The former reality TV star was snapped with Grassley on Capitol Hill where the two apparently discussed ways to stop child abuse in these types of establishments. It’s a cause that Hilton has been advocating for after she shared her own experience with abuse at one of these homes. Hilton previously testified before the Utah legislature, detailing horrific physical and verbal abuse both she and her fellow teens suffered through during their stay at a youth-treatment home called Provo Canyon School. During the year Hilton spent there, she claimed to have been drugged against her will, kidnapped, strip-searched, and locked in her room for long periods of time as part of a “rehabilitation plan” meant to discipline troubled teenagers. Now it seems she’s lobbying Congress to put stricter laws in place that prohibit the kind of abuse she experienced, which sounds like an incredibly important initiative.

We wish her all the best. Truly.

But look, it’s 2022 and we deserve some nice things so we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out Twitter’s hilarious reaction to the news that the woman who coined the phrase, “That’s hot,” is now helping make laws for the land.

(Via Mediaite)

Last night, Young Thug was arrested — along with 27 others, including Gunna — and charged with criminal conspiracy under the RICO (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act. An 88-page indictment accused Thug’s label, YSL Records of being a gang, charging them with — among other things — armed robbery and murder. The indictment cites as evidence lyrics to songs such as “Ski” and “Slatty” from the group’s 2021 compilation album Slime Language 2, describing Thug’s appearance in these and other music videos as an “overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.”

Today, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis responded to reporters’ questions about the indictment during a press conference. Among the questions were issues of prisoner safety, with some members of the so-called conspiracy charged with targeting rival rapper YFN Lucci in jail, and potential sentences, which could see some members serve life in prison. However, one reporter’s question proved confusing not just for Willis but also for fans watching online. The off-screen reporter mentions a name being excluded from the indictment documents that struck rap fans as out of place: Jack Harlow.

“The indictment’s got Young Thug, and a bunch of other rappers,” he asked. “But there’s one name I was expecting to see, and I didn’t, and that’s Jack Harlow. Can you speak to that?” Willis, presumably unfamiliar with Harlow’s work — there’s a lot of that going around, to be fair — responded with a pat answer about making sure the case focused only on viable targets, but unfortunately for the reporter, the damage was already done as Twitter lit up with bemused and critical responses to his faulty information.

It appears that, perhaps in a rush to research potential questions for this afternoon’s conference, the reporter checked Twitter (to be fair, due diligence in this era) for background on the suspects. However, wading into those waters without the proper context and experience can be a bewildering experience for anyone and in this case, it looks like he mistook several joking references to Jack Harlow as proof of his YSL membership.

Although Jack and Thugger are both on labels distributed by Atlantic Records, a subsidiary of Warner Music Group, Jack is actually a signee of DJ Drama and Don Cannon’s Generation Now imprint, also the home of Lil Uzi Vert and rising rapper Killumantii. Meanwhile, YSL is home to artists such as Lil Keed, Strick, and T-Shyne, as well as in-house producers Taurus, Turbo, and Wheezy. And while your average rap journalist could probably reel off these names from the top of their noggins, crime and city reporters would do well to double-check their sources as the case unfolds.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Despite ending in 2019, Game Of Thrones continues to cause uproar amongst fans and haters alike, though this time the series is in some legal trouble.

According to Variety, a stunt performer from the final season of the hit show is suing Fire & Blood Productions (owned by HBO) after an injury she sustained on set. Casey Michaels sustained a “serious fracture dislocation to her left ankle” while shooting scenes for The Battle Of Winterfell.

The documents, which were filed in January 2021, claim that the 28 stunt performers, who were dressed as a Wight (basically a zombie) were directed to walk off a roof “as if unaware of the drop, in keeping with the zombie-like nature of the Wights.”At the bottom of the drop were cardboard boxes and mats, which were not strong enough for all of the performers.

According to the claim: “the cardboard boxes are not durable and become damaged as each stunt performer lands on the box rig and also as each stunt performer climbs off of the box rig after landing.” Michaels was the last performer to step off the roof, landing feet first while wearing an armor of protective gear. Michaels has had several surgeries on her foot since the incident, requiring a plate and screws to be inserted and undergoing intensive therapy.

Fire & Blood productions, however, claims that the rig was “durable” and says Michaels did not “walk off the roof” as instructed. They added that the injury was “caused either by the Claimant’s failure to execute the pleaded stunt properly and/or with the skill and care of a reasonably competent stunt performer or by pure accident.” If the parties don’t settle, the case is expected to be heard before a judge next year.