Category: Worldwide

Nobody gets too excited about buying neutral cooking oil, even chefs. But extra virgin olive oil is different. It’s not just a liquid to fry food in, it’s a true ingredient — a flexible and reliable product that levels up your kitchen game and also a sauce of sorts, perfect for dipping bread or drizzling on salads.

You might prefer a grassy-tasting California-made product or a more peppery Mediterranean one — either way, this elixir inspires true passion. Just ask the million-or-so people who read my last ode to the ingredient.

Whether you have the cash to splurge or just need the best bottle your money can buy (without carving into your cookie budget), we’ve got you covered. These 10 EVOOs (priced from most affordable to most expensive) each offer a bouquet of flavors and aromas, from grassy and earthy to botanic, rich, or even buttery.

Let’s dive in!

$10 RANGE — Monini GranFrutatto Selezione Italiana

Price: $11.99

About The Brand/Blend

Monini is an Italian-based olive oil brand that dates back to 1920. The brand’s GranFrutatto Selezione Italian blend consists of oils exclusive sourced from Italian groves selected by Zefferino Monini, the founder’s grandson, and like the more expensive brands, claims it has a higher polyphenol count than typical blends.

Tasting Notes:

Very robust, almost loud in flavor. It hits you with a mix of floral and grassy notes with a blunt and slightly bitter aftertaste.

Why We Love The Price:

It’s not the best finishing oil, it’s not going to turn your bread mouthwatering or elevate your salad, but as a kitchen workhorse, it always pulls through. It’s a cut above other brands in this price range and is made with olives from a single source, providing a more focused, less “muddy” flavor.

$15 RANGE — Ellora Farms Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Price: $13.95 (8.45 ounces)

About The Brand/Blend:

An award-winning EVOO (Gold at the World Olive Oil Competition, silver at the London International Olive Oil Competition, and Athena International) Ellora farms is a single estate olive oil harvested and bottled at the Kolymvari Olive Estates on the island of Crete in Greece.

The oil is cold extracted from cold-pressed Koroneiki olives that are completely climate controlled since harvest and extracted the same day as being picked.

Tasting Notes:

Herbaceous and fruity with a pleasing bitter finish and a lingering peppery bite. Probably the best value in the whole EVOO ecosystem.

Why We Love The Price:

Comes very close to delivering what brands double the price provide you. Complex and full of shifting flavors. Sure, you’re only getting about a single cup of oil for $13.95, making cooking with this oil a total waste of money. But over a salad or a dip for a good loaf, you’re not going to find more flavor for the price.

$15 RANGE — California Olive Ranch Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Price: $14.99

About The Brand/Blend:

Everyone has seen this brand, it sits alongside Bertolli at just about every supermarket nationwide so if you’ve never tried this stuff, you’ve at least thought about it. We’ve been paying a lot of attention to EVOOs sourced from the Mediterranean on this list but don’t sleep on California. While it doesn’t have the same history, California EVOO is some of the best on the market, and California Olive Ranch is a great representation of the quality oil that comes from the region.

California Olive Ranch is made using cold-pressed olives grown in California, producing a beautiful and appetizing emerald-colored oil.

Tasting Notes:

Light body with flavors of green olive, grass, and artichoke that tiptoe across your taste buds. One of the few oils on this list with a delicate, even floral finish.

Why We Love The Price:

It’s cheap and is good for damn near everything, from cooking to as a dressing. There is a reason you see this topping a lot of EVOO lists and rankings, for the price point and flavor it’s hard to find a more versatile oil. Use it for everything. Cooking, marinades, across a salad, and as a bread dip.

$18 RANGE — Oleavanti Qadisha Grove Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Price: $17.50

About The Brand/Blend:

Oleavanti makes small-batch virgin olive oils made from Lebanese olives grown and harvested in valleys that have been home to olive trees for over a millennium. The brand’s limited edition Ehden Grove EVOO took first place in our blind olive oil tasting from last year, and this time around we’re giving a shout-out to the brand’s Qadisha Grove blend.

Tasting Notes:

Made from 100% Souri Olives from Zgharta, the Qadisha Grove olive oil is noticeably nutty and fruity, it truly stands apart from every other oil on this list. The body has heavily herbaceous notes with whispers of peach and plum and a sumptuous buttery finish.

Why We Love The Price:

It’s a real shame that the more flavorful and interesting EVOOs tend to sell in small batches, but if this were in a traditional 500ml bottle, it would probably cost nearly $50, making this big flavor oil easier to fit within your budget. Don’t cook with it though, the flavor is distinct enough here that you’re not going to want to lose any of it to heat.

Instead, use this one with your favorite balsamic vinegar as a fine bread dip, the flavors are an interesting bouquet of notes you won’t find in a lot of other more typical blends.

$20 RANGE — Oleamea Organic Premium Everyday Extra Virgil Olive Oil

Price: $18.99

About The Brand/Blend:

Oleamea’s Premium Everyday oil is made using a single blend of Memecik olives that are cold-pressed just four hours after being hand-harvested in Turkey. Memecik olives are known for their green and grassy flavors and pungent aroma.

Tasting Notes:

Delicate, but not so light that it leaves you wanting. Green olive and almond notes dominate the flavor ending with a subtle buttery finish.

Why We Love The Price:

It’s on the more expensive side for a workhorse but there are few dishes this oil won’t serve greatly. If you have the means, use this oil on everything from stir fry to salads, to seared meats and toast.

$25 RANGE (Bulk Bottle) — Trader Joe’s President’s Reserve Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Price: $25

About The Brand/Blend:

Trader Joe’s sells a handful of different Extra Virgin Olive Oils and frankly, they’re not all good, but the President’s Reserve, made from 100% Italian olives and cold-pressed, is far and above the best. Excelling as both a finishing and cooking oil, Trader Joe’s doesn’t boast the richest flavor and most distinct flavor, but it gets the job done and tastes leagues better than brands like Bertolli or Carapelli.

Tasting Notes:

Noticeably fruity with notes of green apple and fresh-cut grass on the nose and a rich peppery finish.

Why We Love The Price:

It’s a great finishing and cooking oil and given that the bottle only comes as a quart so you’re going to get a lot of mileage out of it. It never feels like $25 wasted.

$25 RANGE — Cut 1886 Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Price: $25

About The Brand/Blend:

Another California EVOO, Cut 1886 is a slight step above California Olive Ranch in both price and flavor. It just tastes a bit more robust and interesting. The oil is made from cold-pressed olives harvested from the sun-drenched Bel Lavern olive orchards in Santa Barbara. The oil is produced in small numbered batches displayed right on the bottle.

Tasting Notes:

Much grassier and more vegetal than California Olive Ranch, with a robust flavor that passes through notes of pear and cucumber through to more earthy notes like toasted almond and peppercorn.

Why We Love The Price:

It does what the $50 dollar brands do for literally half the price, so you won’t feel guilty about cooking with it. I love it on pasta, it brings a robust mouthwatering quality to anything that it’s drizzled on. It has a louder flavor than most brands.

$30 RANGE — Calivirgin Premium Unfiltered Olive Oil

Price: $29

About The Brand/Blend

Single source cold-pressed olive oil made from estate-grown Arbequina and Koroneiki olives grown and produced in Lodi California. The oil is housed in a white bottle, which protects it from degrading flavors due to sunlight. You’d think every olive oil would be housed in sun-proof bottles, but for whatever reason, it’s not common practice.

As far as high-quality olive oils go, it isn’t prohibitively expensive for what you get in flavor.

Tasting Notes:

Very aromatic, with heavy notes of ripe green olives. Fresh grassy notes greet the palate and settle into a lush fruity body with the lightest peppery finish. That peppery bite is barely there, so if you want an emphasis on the more vegetal qualities of EVOO, this is your blend.

Why We Love The Price:

Because this is California EVOO, we don’t have to deal with any added dollars from it being an imported product, which really makes it tastes like it’s punch way above its weight. It’s so good that this is going to be your go-to dipping oil. I’m sure it’ll pair well with anything that calls for a good finishing oil, but the way this tastes on a good loaf of sourdough is magical enough that you’ll consider making a whole meal out of solely dipping bread.

$50 RANGE — Pasolivo Tuscan Olive Oil

Price: $47.95

About The Brand/Blend:

A gold-medal winning EVOO (it better be with that price), Pasolivo’s Tuscan Olive Oil is a bit misleading. While “Tuscan” is right in the name, the olives used to produce this oil are actually grown on Pasolivo’s ranch in California, it gets its regional name because the olives themselves are a Tuscan olive varietal.

So consider this Tuscan olive oil with a big asterisk, and that might actually matter… if this wasn’t so damn good.

Tasting Notes:

Grassy, extremely so with a warm and robust character and a floral finish with a lingering earthy after taste. There is a pronounced naturalness to this oil that brings out the deeper flavors of vegetables and seared meat, making everything it is used on taste just a bit more elevated.

Why We Love The Price:

It feels like you’re tasting something truly fantastic for the price. It’s pricey, but it packs a lot of flavors and doubles down on those grassy vegetal and floral notes. Really fragrant, it tastes way too nice to cook with, but I do it anyway.

$80 RANGE — Kosterina Original Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Price: $79

About The Brand/Blend

Harvested from Southern Greece and cold-pressed in small batches from early harvest Koroneiki olives, Kosterina boasts that their EVOO contains a higher polyphenol content than your ‘average extra virgin olive oil.’ Polyphenols are anti-inflammatory antioxidants and hardcore EVOO heads are obsessed with polyphenols, so if that’s you, this is probably your olive oil!

Do more antioxidants affect the flavor? Yes, actually.

Tasting Notes:

Very bold in flavor and herbaceous, with a rich earthy almost nutty body (I’m getting almonds and walnuts) with a floral pungent finish. Each time you taste it, it offers something new to discover. An absolute bouquet of flavors that is at times mouthwateringly sumptuous and fresh and vegetal.

Why We Love The Price:

We don’t. Kosterina is probably the most expensive olive oil on this list (though a more affordable 350ml bottle is available) but it is in a noticeably different class than most EVOOs you’ve likely tried in the past unless you’re an EVOO aficionado. Enough so that you absolutely will taste the difference. I keep this on the top shelf of my pantry and only bring it out when I’m trying to impress, either dinner guests or myself.

I’ve never had this on anything other than a nice fresh spring mix or on some sourdough with balsamic, to be honest. But the way this stuff pairs with arugula is a downright religious experience. Given the price, I kind of think it’s better as a gift than as a personal kitchen staple and as much as I love it, I can’t see myself actually buying another bottle. I will gladly accept it as a gift though!

Britney Spears has been making it a habit lately of posting provocative naked (albeit censored with emojis) photos of herself on her Instagram feed. Why not? It’s her body, she’s expressing herself, and clearly feeling empowered in doing so. Last night, Spears posted a new round of a dozen nude photos on Instagram. “Photo dump of the last time I was in Mexico BEFORE there was a baby inside me … why the heck do I look 10 years younger on vacation ???,” she commented on the first of three posts, which had heart emojis over her private parts.

Trouble is, people on the internet have been critical of her posts, citing her responsibilities as a mother, and that perhaps showing some skin on social media makes her a questionable mother. Or worse, commenters are claiming that these photos are proof that she needs to be back in the arresting conservatorship that she was just freed from. Look folks, this is just poppycock and classic internet entitlement. Heck, Hilary Duff’s Women’s Health naked cover dropped today, and she’s not dealing with the backlash that Spears is, proving once again, that people just won’t leave Britney alone.

On the flipside of this, fans have are defending Britney’s freedom of expression by comparing her to Kim Kardashian, and the contrasting responses that Kardashian — a mother of four herself — gets when she poses nude on social media. “So Kim Kardashian can do this, but Britney Spears can’t?” read one tweet laying out two very similar photos of each.

“Kim Kardashian have 4 kids and she posts naked/sexy photos and everyone loves her and applauds her, but Britney posts something like that and needs help or the conservatorship ??? .WHY IS THIS HAPPENING IN 2022 ????” one user posted.

A reply to the tweet from @BSpearspromo read “Because once people get it in their head that they know what your mental illness is, you’re never a person to them. Britney deserves so much better.”

And this is the pitfall of celebrity, that people think they have a good grip on someone else’s life.

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)