Category: Worldwide

Despite getting the King’s blessing on a recent episode of The Shop, Steph Curry doesn’t seem to have any interest in teaming up with LeBron James any time soon. James was asked which basketball player he’d most like to suit up alongside, and after repeating that his son, Bronny James, is atop the list, the Los Angeles Lakers star picked out his fellow native of Akron, Ohio.

“I love everything about that guy,” LeBron said. “When he gets out of his car, you better guard him — right from the moment he pulls up to the arena, soon as he get out his car, you better guard his ass. You might wanna guard him when he gets out of the bed, swear to God. He’s serious.”

It’s very high praise for James, but after being made aware of the comments, Curry doesn’t seem to be in a rush to team up with him, based on comments he made on 95.7 The Game.

“Well, he got his wish,” Curry said. “He was the captain, he’s picked me the last two All-Star Games. So, I don’t know if that suffices, but I’m good right now.”

Curry did go on to say that it’s cool to hear James say this, but ultimately, “we all can live in that fantasy world, though.”

Welcome to SNX DLX, your weekly roundup of the best sneakers to hit the internet. This week, rather than getting a bunch of new designs we’re getting a handful of re-stocks of long-sought-after colorways, from Zebra-stripped Yeezys to the return of the Mocha Toe Question. While we’re always looking for the latest and greatest shoes, we’ll take a good colorway restock any day of the week — these are somebody’s all-time-favorite sneakers we’re talking about here!

As for the silhouettes themselves, we’ve got some of the usual suspects (Dunks and Jordans, what a surprise) as well as some newcomers like the Adidas’ Tour 360 silhouette (which we’ve never covered) and Virgil Abloh’s first posthumous Off-White Nike drop. Let’s dive into this week’s nine best sneaker drops.

Nike WMNS Dunk High FLS

Nike has been rolling out a lot of new women’s sized Dunk colorways this year but this week’s FLS colorway is one of the best. Featuring a white tumbled leather upper with light grey leather matte overlays, a swoosh-shaped lace jewel, and a metallic teal wraparound swoosh.

Nike says that the design is “influenced by the confluence of digital and physical worlds,” okay, sure Nike, whatever you say. Just looks like a regular high-top Dunk to us in a dope colorway. You don’t really need to do more than that.

The Women’s Dunk High FLS is out now for a retail price of $120. Pick up a pair via the Nike SNKRS app.

Yeezy QNTM Mono Carbon

Fans of Yeezy’s rock-formation-as-footwear silhouette, QNTM, are being treated to a brand new colorway of the sneaker. Like most QNTMs, the colorway keeps things low-key with a simple monochromatic gray upper with suede toe box paneling atop a milky white midsole.

It’s a fitting colorway for this particular silhouette, and while we like the recent changes the brand has been making to its general color palette, we’re happy to see the brand sticking to its minimalist aesthetic for this one.

The Yeezy QNTM Mono Carbon is set to drop on April 7th for a retail price of $260. Pick up a pair via the Adidas Confirmed App or Yeezy Supply.

Adidas Tour360 22 x Waffle House Limited-Edition Golf Shoes

Adidas collaborating with mid-western and southern breakfast chain restaurant Waffle House isn’t on our top list of collaborators for the three stripes brand, but these are actually pretty damn dope.

If you’re unaware of the golf world, Georgia is a pretty big fixture on the scene as it’s the location of The Masters — which begins this month and signals the start of the golf season. To celebrate the state that is home to the Masters, Adidas tapped a familiar Georgia icon to serve as the inspiration for a new Tour 360 ’22 colorway.

The sneaker features a batter-inspired colorway across a premium full-grain leather upper, a waffle-pattern three-stripe, and a translucent outsole with maple syrup-inspired graphics underneath a SPIKEMORE traction system. Rounding out the design is Waffle House branding at the heel in the chain’s familiar typography.

The Adidas Tour360 22 x Waffle House Limited-Edition Golf Shoes are set to drop on April 7th for a retail price of $210. Pick up a pair via the Adidas Confirmed App.

Nike WMNS Dunk High Vintage Black

What did we say about Nike and the dope women’s-sized Dunk drops? We’re getting a constant out-flow, you love to see it. This vintage-inspired pair is less flashy than the FLS, but it’s that classic black and white leather look.

Uninspired? Sure, but disliking a black and white Dunk High is akin to hating a white Stan Smith with a green heel tab, if you don’t like these things it’s safe to say you just have bad taste.

The Nike Dunk High Vintage Black is set to drop on April 7th for a retail price of $125. Pick up a pair via the Nike SNKRS app.

Reebok Question Mid Mocha Toe

This must be the week of re-stocks because we’re getting a bunch of great colorways from the past, including the Mocha Toe Reebok Question. Featuring a premium leather upper with nubuck overlays and a crystal gum outsole, the Mocha Toe updates the design by putting the colorway on the mid-rise version of the sneaker, rather than the low-profile of the OG.

I know the Mocha Toe has long been a favorite amongst Question fans but I have to say… it looks better to my eyes on the mid-top than the low.

The Reebok Question Mid Mocha Toe is set to drop on April 8th for a retail price of $160. Pick up a pair via the Reebok webstore.

Air Jordan 5 Jade Horizon

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One of my favorite buildings in all of Los Angeles is the Eastern Columbia building. it’s built in the Art Deco style and features a facade of oxidized copper… it’s dope. If for some reason that building was turned into a shoe, it would be Nike’s new Air Jordan 5 Jade, which manages to perfectly capture that oxidized copper look on one of Nike’s finest monuments.

So consider me sold! The Jordan Horizon applies an aged look to the TPU cage and features a black midsole with a cement white shark tooth and a beautiful jade leather upper.

The Air Jordan 5 Jade is set to drop on April 9th for a retail price of $200. Pick up a pair via the Nike SNKRS app.

Adidas Dill Samba

This week Adidas is finally re-stocking Jason Dill’s signature samba in its original black and white colorway. No that’s not a Superstar you’re looking at, those are Sambas and while the shoe isn’t generally associated with this simple and classic colorway, we have to wonder, maybe it should be?

It just looks so damn clean with its full-grain leather upper and its lightened translucent ice sole. It’s a winner and one of Adidas’ strongest signature skate sneakers to date, even if it originally dropped three years ago.

The Adidas Dill Samba is set to drop on April 9th for a retail price of $85. Pick up a pair via the Adidas webstore.

Adidas Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Zebra

It’s a little hard to be excited about another re-stock of the white and black Yeezy 350 colorway, Zebra, but we get that this is some Yeezy fan out there’s favorite shoe, so we can’t close out this week without mentioning the restock.

The white base with black stripes (or is it the other way around) over a Primeknit upper with a milky translucent outsole is a classic Yeezy Brand look. It seems like colorways like this have

The Adidas Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Zebra is set to drop on April 7th for a retail price of $220. Pick up a pair via the Adidas CONFIRMED app or Yeezy Supply.

Off-White Nike Blazer Low White and University Red/Black and Electro Green

It’s a bitter-sweet announcement, but this week brings Nike’s first Off-White release since Virgil Abloh’s untimely death, the Off-White Blazer Low. True to Abloh’s form, the Off-White Blazer Low transforms one of Nike’s most popular and vintage-leaning silhouettes into something hyper-modern.

The design features several changes to the traditional Blazer silhouette including an accented over lace, a swoosh tab, the same translucent punched windows from Off-White Jordan 6, and the most radical departure, a jutting TPU heel inspired by Nike’s Air Terra Humara.

It hardly looks like a Blazer anymore, and while this quite frankly pales in comparison to the actual Blazer silhouette, which is as untouchable as the Jordan 1, it’s truly sad that we don’t have Abloh to push the envelope in the daring and unique way that he was always apt to do.

The sneaker drops in two colorways, White and University Red, or Black and Electron Green.

The Off-White Nike Blazer Low White and University Red/ Black and Electro Green are set to drop on April 8th for a retail price of $140. Pick up a pair via the Nike SNKRS app.

Nearly 29 years ago to the day, Kurt Cobain committed suicide, rattling the music world and bringing his band Nirvana to an end. Cobain’s legacy has undoubtedly stood the test of time, as Nirvana continues to influence artists in many mediums and the band’s final album, Nevermind, has gone on to sell over 30 million copies. But the tragic way in which Cobain’s life ended, left an indelible mark on the effects of celebrity, drugs, and society. Now London’s Royal Opera House will be presenting a new opera, entitled Last Days, which depicts Cobain’s descent in a manner that is unique to the drama of an opera.

Based on Gus Van Sant’s 2005 film of the same name (which itself is loosely based on Cobain’s death), Last Days is set to begin as part of the Royal Opera House’s 2022-2023 season in October at the Linbury Theatre. The opera has been composed by composer-in-residence Oliver Leith, who tells The Guardian that he is a “massive” Nirvana fan. “I owe a lot of how I now make music to the sound of grunge from that time – I had never really thought about where my experimental mess and repetitions had come from,” he says, adding that the opera is ultimately about the “inevitable death of a celebrity. It could be any star now.”

A statement from the Royal Opera House captured by The Guardian adds that Last Days “…plunges into the torment that created a modern myth” And that the main character “…is haunted by objects, visitors and memories distracting him from his true purpose – self-destruction.”

Check out the Royal Opera House’s 2022-2023 season announcement here.

Today’s first-term Republican lawmakers tend to all have the same schtick: die-hard Trumpists who do little but annoy all their colleagues. The day after Matt Gaetz acted like a total jackass again, Marjorie Taylor Greene stole his thunder, breaking House protocol by doing to a Democrat colleague what she did to Joe Biden: She heckled him. But unlike Biden, the latest target of her idiocy didn’t stay quiet.

On Wednesday, Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin told fellow House members that former top Trump officials Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino, who’d been ignoring subpoenas from the Jan. 6 committee.

Greene, who helped lure Trump supporters to D.C. that day and later said she had no regrets about the events, did not like that one bit. So she did what she does best: She shouted nonsense, screaming about Ashli Babbit, the Trump follower tragically killed during the melee, and “Russia collusion.”

Raskin, though, didn’t ignore it.

“The gentlelady, I think, said something about the Russian hoax or Russian collusion. I accept the heckling,” Raskin said. “Because if she wants to continue to stand with Vladimir Putin and his brutal, bloody invasion of Ukraine, she is free to do so. And we understand there is a strong Trump-Putin axis in the gentlelady’s party. If she wants to continue to stand with Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, that is her prerogative. But please do it on your own time, forthwith.”

In the meantime, the House panel voted to hold both Scavino and Navarro in contempt of Congress, joining the likes of Mark Meadows and Steve Bannon, who did the same and may wind up serving time. As for Greene, when she’s not heckling colleagues, she’s demeaning women and calling LGBTQIA+ people, advocates, and allies “pro-child predator.”

(Via Salon)

In recent weeks, as the Toronto Raptors have climbed out of the play-in tournament in the East and firmly into a playoff spot, there has been ample conversation about how potential opponents may be effected by the vaccination requirements for visitors to Canada.

The Miami Heat and Milwaukee Bucks have confirmed their entire teams are vaccinated and eligible to play, but the Celtics and Sixers would not comment publicly and with both making late season visits to Toronto, people were pouring over the injury report to see who wasn’t making the trip. For Boston, they kept a number of players home, including Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Tatum said prior to the season he was vaccinated, while Brown has not been willing to comment publicly on his status but stated recently that he is ready for any opponent in the playoffs, which some have taken as an indication he’ll be able to play.

While the mystery around who Boston potentially may be missing for road games in a series against the Raptors continues, we seemed to learn who the Sixers won’t have on Wednesday when the injury report came out and Matisse Thybulle was simply listed as “ineligible to play.”

Thybulle missed time earlier this season in league protocols and there’s a bit of confusion regarding whether he’s vaccinated or not, but it’s hard to imagine why he’d be listed as ineligible to play the Raptors for any other reason. He played in their December game in Toronto, but at that time there was a waiver for professional athletes to enter the country who were unvaccinated that was taken away in January.

Unless the Sixers provide an update to the contrary, it certainly seems like Philly will be without their defensive ace for road games in a potential series against Toronto. Thybulle’s absence may not be as disastrous as Joel Embiid, James Harden, or Tyrese Maxey, but he is one of the league’s best perimeter defenders and without him, Philadelphia will struggle to replace what he brings on that end of the floor. How Doc Rivers handles rotations for Thursday night’s game in Toronto might offer a clue as to what would happen should they meet in the postseason — which they would in the first round if the standings remain the same.

One also can’t help but wonder if Thybulle’s vaccination status played a role in Philly keeping him at the trade deadline rather than including him in the James Harden trade, as there were a number of reports that Brooklyn had been trying to acquire the skilled defender but if he is indeed unvaccinated, he would’ve been ineligible for home games alongside Kyrie Irving.

There are two Republican governors who have been trying to one-up each other in cartoon villainy. One is Florida’s Ron DeSantis, who’s been steaming at critics of his newly signed so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, who’ve argued it marginalizes already marginalized people. The other is Texas’ Greg Abbott. He’s already threatened to target parents of trans kids, accusing them of child abuse. Now Abbot has a dastardly plan involving refugees.

The Southwestern border is currently seeing a large number of migrants approaching the border seeking asylum. The increase is due in part to a rolling back of a Trump era order ostensibly meant to keep pandemic numbers down. Instead of finding a civil way to deal with the numbers, Abbott instead proposed a more flamboyant not-quite-solution.

“To help local officials whose communities are being overwhelmed by hordes of illegal immigrants who are being dropped off by the Biden administration, Texas is providing charter buses to send these illegal immigrants who have been dropped off by the Biden administration to Washington D.C.,” Abbott told reporters during a press conference.

Abbott vowed to drop them right off at the United States Capitol building, “where the Biden administration will be able to more immediately address the needs of the people that they are allowing to come across our border.”

The response was livid, as Abbott must have intended it to be. Some pointed out Abbott was being greatly misleading about who is crossing over the border (and might not be legal anyway).

Some wondered who would be footing the bill for all those bus tickets.

Others wondered if Abbott had lost any last trace of of humanity.

Other pointed out that forcing people to cross state lines sounds pretty devious.

Some found another reason to be ashamed of what’s happening now in the Lone Star State.

And some wondered if Texas doesn’t have other issues to take care of first, like fixing that grid.

(Via The Texas Tribune)

Sometimes art imitates life. And other times, life imitates an art heist movie.

More than a century ago in the late 1830s, the innovative and disruptive scientist Charles Darwin had just returned from the Galapagos Islands. In his small, leather-bound notepad, he began to draw a vision that played on his mind: a tree with many branches.

The sketch was simple, crude even, but it helped inspire Darwin’s most elegant and groundbreaking theories on natural selection and evolution. His “Tree of Life” sketch put forth the notion that we are all connected, not just metaphorically. Without it, we might never have had his famous book “On the Origin of Species,” considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology.

Darwin’s sketch of the Tree of Life.

www.flickr.com

The notebook holds one of science’s most important moments in history. And yet many thought it was gone forever. Until now.

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BBC News reported that two of Darwin’s notebooks (one containing the original “Tree of Life” sketch) had first been noted as missing from their rightful home at Cambridge University back in January 2000.

Only two months prior, the University had received an “internal request” to remove them from the library so they could be photographed.

Could this photo request have been a ruse? Merely an elaborate scheme for the thief to get their hands on the parcels? Where’s Sherlock when you need him?!

Twenty years of book scouring later (Cambridge University’s library contains more than 10 million books) and finally Dr. Jessica Gardner, the university’s librarian, called Interpol to report the books as stolen.

At this point, they could be anywhere.

Maybe it was coincidence, or maybe the burglar had a change of heart, but only 15 months after issuing a worldwide appeal, the library received a bright pink bag from an anonymous sender.

In the pink bag was a blue box. In the blue box was a plain brown envelope. In the envelope … the two notebooks, perfectly protected by plastic wrap. You can’t make this stuff up.

Another five days followed. The library would have to get permission from the police to open the plastic wrap. And then they’d have to spend time painstakingly examining the contents for authenticity; things like multiple types of ink, a bit of copper coming off the hinges and the right type of paper.

Not only were the notebooks genuine, they were “in remarkably good condition,” Dr. Gardner told the BBC. “Every page that should be there is there.”

As far as who sent the package, well … that remains the biggest mystery of all. The sender left no traces of their identity, and to the package only attached a short, cryptic typed note which read:

“Librarian. Happy Easter. X.”

It’s rare to have such a fascinating whodunit in our modern time. But boy does this check all the boxes.

Though the university may never figure out exactly what happened to Darwin’s notebooks, having them back is enough for Dr. Gardner.

“I was heartbroken to learn of their loss and my joy at their return is immense,” she told the BBC.

It’s certainly made for one thrilling tale, all with a happy ending.

Dogs are like toddlers, they’re always getting into things and can be quite sassy when they’re feeling ornery. Anyone who’s spent time with dogs will know they can get up to all kinds of shenanigans. But in their defense, it’s not always their fault. A fluffy chow named Duke found himself in a predicament and he did nothing other than be his sweet happy self. Duke’s owner, who graciously runs the furry animal’s TikTok account, posted a video explaining what she found when he made his way into the house after a jaunt in the yard.

As he came into the house, the dog’s human noticed something dark brown on his fur, but she couldn’t get a good look. Once she did, however, she was shocked at her discovery. In the video, the owner calls Duke over to the camera so she can get a better picture for their followers showing what he had gotten himself into. The woman zooms in and we can see a brown thing stuck to the dog’s fur, but once the curious owner takes a towel and gives a small tug and a wiggle, it’s revealed that Duke had in fact made friends with a baby possum.

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The possum isn’t the possums we are used to seeing in America, this is a possum that is native to Australia. It’s a bit bigger than what you’d expect a baby possum to be, but it’s also surprisingly adorable. Duke, on the other hand, looks confused as to why his mom just removed his newly adopted baby from his chest as she shows him the critter saying, “That’s what was attached to you.” With a “Hi, little fella!” she lifted the possum onto a fence and set it free to find its biological family, or at least other possums that can teach it the difference between mommy possums and furry canines.

@dukeofhawthorn

A chow and his baby possum friend hanging out #dogsofttiktok #chowchow #possum

In the comment section, Duke’s owner answered some questions posed by curious viewers. In reply to one comment, the dog mom said “Duke was so upset we didn’t get to keep it.” She also went on to clarify that the dog did not attempt to bite the possum as he’s used to being gentle due to him sharing his mom with cats. Duke’s human also cleared up the confusion for people that thought the animal looked like a sugar glider, stating, “It was 100% a possum. We do not have sugar gliders where I live. It didn’t have winged arms or the characteristic stripe.”

When seeing the little creature, it’s easy to see how some American viewers may have confused the possum with a sugar glider, but given the owner’s accent and the name of the TikTok account, Duke of Hawthorn, it’s presumed the duo lives in Australia. Dogs will keep you on your toes, but showing up with a possum attached to their coat is something I can’t imagine most would expect. I’m sure Duke’s owner will share this story for years to come.

Come this Friday, Camila Cabello’s long-awaited album Familia will be out into the world. Among the tracks featured will be her collaboration with Ed Sheeran, “Bam Bam,” which pretty directly references her November breakup from pop singer Shawn Mendes. “Yeah, love came around and it knocked me down. But I’m back on my feet,” she sings, among myriad other references to the widely-publicized breakup. Now in a new interview with ET, Cabello opened up about how “Bam Bam” sees her “living the lesson” she learned from falling in and out of love.

“…reminding myself, as my mom has told me many times, ‘That’s life,’” she tells ET. “You’re on the ground crying on the bathroom floor and then you’ll have feelings for another person again, and you’ll be crying on the bathroom floor again. And that is the cycle of change. Things just change, you never know what’s around the corner.”

Cabello elaborated on how working on “Bam Bam” with Sheeran was “cathartic,” and how she nearly pinched herself when the “Shape Of You” singer agreed to the collaboration. “When I sent the song and he said, ‘I love, let’s definitely do this,’ I just felt like, ‘This is too good to be true, he’s going to change his mind,’ she said. “He didn’t and he has been so exciting about it throughout.”

Familia is out 4/8 via Epic. Pre-order it here.

Some of the artists mentioned are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Basketball is pretty good. In spite of this, every year around the NCAA Tournament, people who primarily like college basketball and people who primarily like the NBA yell at each other about which version of the same game is better, which never changes anyone’s minds and then, at the end of it all, people usually just end up watching whatever basketball is on TV.

This year, JJ Redick saw a take that bugged him about how college players play defense harder than NBA players, and if they just tried harder on that end, games would end up in the 70s and 80s. Redick, on a crossover podcast between The Old Man & The Three and The ETCs with Kevin Durant, said the tweet came from a “knucklehead” before diving into why it was wrong.

“First of all, it’s just math, first of all, the shot clock’s longer, so there’s gonna be more possessions in an NBA game and there’s eight more minutes of basketball, so f*ckhead, that’s not possible,” Redick said. “Secondly, what he doesn’t understand is, you watch college basketball, man, I’m like, ‘these guys have not evolved their philosophy since the 1980s or 1990s,’ it’s ridiculous. Same sets, same sets that I used to run, that I used to watch growing up, that Kansas used to run. I’m like, bro, do you know why it’s so hard to play defense in the NBA? It’s not cause we can’t, and it’s not cause we don’t try, it’s cause there’s f*cking space, and the players are so good.”

Durant, who knows a thing or two about scoring in a basketball game, agreed with Redick, asking, “do you think somebody’s just gonna guard up and hold a team to 70 points that has a f*ckin’ 30-point scorer on it?” You can watch the whole podcast here.