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Donald Trump skipping Fox News’ GOP debate wasn’t the only humiliation the conservative news network suffered Wednesday. Visitors to their website were in for a bit of a surprise: ads not for one of the many Republican candidates trying to unseat Donald Trump, but for Joe Biden. They weren’t just any Joe Biden ads. They were “Dark Brandon” ads — the very internet meme that drives Fox News hosts nuts.

As per People, the Biden campaign evidently shelled out money to have the ad run all day Wednesday, from midnight through 11:59pm. It features the “Dark Brandon” character: a drawing of Biden beaming a big smile, his eyes a crimson, burning red. “Get real, Jack. I’m bringing Roe back,” the text reads — a nod to the overturning of Roe v Wade by a right-leaning Supreme Court last summer. On top of giving visitors to the Fox News site easy access to Biden’s campaign page, it also reminds them about the GOP’s wildly unpopular stance on abortion access.

The ”Dark Brandon” meme evolved out of the “Let’s Go Brandon” bit created by conservatives in 2021. The term was code for “F*ck Joe Biden.” One classy guy even used it on Biden himself during a children’s Christmas event about Santa Claus. Eventually it was co-opted by Democrats to describe how Biden, who had a rough first year in office, had started getting stuff done. Any time he passes some remarkable piece of legislation or stands up to Republicans, the “Dark Brandon” jokes fly, much to the far right’s chagrin.

Fox News isn’t the only place getting “Dark Brandon” ads. Three other versions will appear on billboards in Milwaukee, addressing other issues. One of them reads, Get on board, folks. We’re lowering prescription drug costs.” Another: “Social Security cuts? Try me.” The last one: “Tax cuts for yacht owners? Good luck with that, champ.”

Meanwhile, the Fox News GOP debate was not exactly an inspiring affair, mostly featuring in-fighting, with multiple candidates sticking it to businessman Vivek Ramaswamy. The counter-programming bit, namely Trump’s Twitter chat with Tucker Carlson, wasn’t much more exciting, with the low energy former president at one point rambling about Biden’s popular beach photos.

(Via People)

Did Donald Trump skip the first GOP debate because he thought it’d be a waste of time or because he’s chicken? Both are plausible explanations. But at least he made other plans. The former president wound up offering the Fox News event some eff-you counter-programming, sitting down for a chat with one of the network’s former staffers on Twitter, in a video that dropped five minutes before the debate was scheduled to begin. It…wasn’t very exciting. But it did contain some choice ramblings, including one extended, bizarre bit about Joe Biden’s beach pics.

During a diss session on the former president, a very low energy Trump that, at 80, his presidential successor is “worse mentally than he is physically, and physically he’s not exactly a triathlete, or any kind of an athlete.”

Trump even laid into the way Biden walks, despite that infamous ramp moment from late in his presidency. “He can’t lift his feet out of the grass, it’s only two inches at the White House, right? It’s not a lot,” he said. “But you watch him and he looks like he’s walking on toothpicks.”

He then moved onto Biden’s beach trips. “And then you see him on the beach where he can’t lift a chair,” he told Tucker. “Those chairs are meant to be light, right?”

Biden has been photographed at the beach, including this summer, which just makes Trump mad. “They love pictures of him on the beach. I think he looks terrible on the beach,” he said. He then claimed that Biden “can’t walk through the sand.” He then admitted, perhaps by accident, that “sand is not that easy to walk through,” but that when Biden “walks through it, he can’t walk through the sand.”

Trump seemed almost jealous that Biden’s beach pictures tend to be popular. “There’s somebody in there that thinks he look fabulous at the beach. I think he looks horrible at the beach,” he said. He concluded that “the beach doesn’t represent what a president’s supposed to be doing.”

So someone doesn’t like the beach, huh?

Tucker and Trump talked about a lot, though not much of it was about policy. They talked Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theories. They talked about the Panama Canal at some length, for some reason. Tucker trashed his former Fox News colleague Chris Wallace.

Like Tucker’s Twitter show, it was a steep drop in excitement from his Fox News days, when he had fancy graphics and a producer and commercials. Those that tuned into the GOP debate instead at least got Chris Christie mopping the floor with Vivek Ramaswamy.

“Sometimes, you need to change perspectives in order to gain new insights!” is not exactly a sentence one might expect to hear from a corporate exec, but it is a philosophy that led Jens Ritter, CEO of German company Lufthansa Airlines, to taking on a shift as a flight attendant.

In a post shared on LinkedIn, Ritter detailed his experience of working as additional cabin crew for a flight heading to Riyadh and Bahrain, taking care of passengers in business class.

Though Ritter’s previous career as a pilot gave him some insight into the challenges of working a flight, taking on the responsibilities of an attendant left him “astonished.”

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“I was amazed by how much there is to organize, especially if something doesn’t go as planned,” Ritter recalled, noting how on his flight the offered menu items weren’t actually the meals loaded onto the plane.

Beyond purely administrative tasks, Ritter acknowledged the difficult task of addressing individual wishes and dealing with different energies (something airline attendants don’t get credit for nearly enough).

And on that note, Ritter found it particularly taxing to “be present and attentive and charming” during an overnight flight “when the biological clock just tells you to sleep.” He confessed that it was an “entirely different” experience than what pilots endure.

Ritter concluded his post by thanking the cabin crew and said that his time spent on the ground (well, on the ground, in the air) would make “deciding things in the office different” moving forward.

At a time when stories of out-of-touch, greedy CEOs inundate the headlines, it’s refreshing to see those in managerial positions actively try to connect, empathize and support their workers, rather than exploit all resources for a bottom line. Not enough business heads recognize how crucial this kind of connection is—not just for the sake of virtue, but for the profit they so desperately want to maintain. But as Ritter’s action shows, it’s not all corporate greed out there.

We could probably all stand to benefit from taking a shift in the service industry. The stress of having to maintain everyone’s good time while simultaneously problem-solving, organizing and generally keeping things afloat is not for the faint of heart. And flight attendants in particular juggle it all on a daily basis—and some even manage to make it a show. It’s great that Ritter is advocating for flight attendants by stepping into their shoes.

All in all, a change in perspective can lead to wonderful things.

50 Cent is in the thick of his ambitious The Final Lap Tour, celebrating 20 years since his Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ debut, but he’s not going it alone. Busta Rhymes is accompanying the rapper on all dates — and the two recently graced the cover of Men’s Health with Method Man — while Jeremih is the special guest for the North American leg. However, a different guest made headlines at the first of two shows at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York on August 9: J. Cole joined 50 Cent on stage to perform “No Role Modelz.” He even dropped a hot take on his way out.

“Can I say this before I walk off stage? Make some noise for one of the greatest n****s to do this sh*t: 50 Cent, Curtis Jackson,” Cole told the crowd (as seen in a fan-captured video). “Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ is the best album of all time. I don’t give a f*ck what you talkin’ ’bout! It’s Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ at No. 1, and it’s Thriller at No. 2, and I love Michael Jackson.”

The Final Lap Tour began on July 21 at Maverik Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, and 50 Cent has since performed 21 North American shows. Next up is the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas on Thursday, August 24.

The North American leg is due to wrap on September 17 at Pine Knob Music Theatre in Detroit, Michigan. The European and UK leg kicks off on September 28 in Amsterdam and will continue throughout November before visiting Australia and New Zealand in December. See all of the remaining dates here.

Chris Christie’s 2023 presidential campaign has mostly revolved around attacking his old pal Donald Trump. Alas, Trump was MIA at the first GOP primary debate, perhaps partly because he was afraid of being yelled at by…Chris Christie. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t bring hell. At one point the former Jersey governor lost it on another candidate, who he clearly found instantly annoying.

That candidate was Vivek Ramaswamy, the Eminem-rapping businessman and apparent sometime 9/11 truther. It didn’t take long into the evening for Christie to lose his stuff about the guy.

“Hold on, I’ve had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT,” Christie raged while Ramaswamy laughed.

Lest some on the left suddenly cheer him, Christie then compared him, unfavorably, to a young Barack Obama — which Ramawamy had done during his intro. “The last person in one of these debates who stood in the middle of the stage and said, ‘What’s a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here?’ was Barack Obama, and I’m afraid we’re dealing with the same type of amateur.”

As the crowd cheered, Ramaswamy taunted Christie for giving him a big hug after he helped Jersey out after Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

Indeed, at the start of the show Ramaswamy described himself as a “skinny guy with a funny last name” — either a bald ripoff of Obama or an ill-advised homage.

Sometimes we see things happen that seem a little weird. Sometimes they go beyond weird and look suspicious, and then we are presented with the decision to do something about it or ignore it.

Mandi, a woman on TIkTok, found herself in a situation where she had to decide if she wanted to mind her own business or spill the beans when two and two started equaling four with her neighbors. In a video, she says she noticed her neighbor pulling a “side-by-side” into their backyard late at night. The situation seemed suspicious, so she checked her local Facebook page to see if anyone posted about something being stolen.

Her foray into detective work was short-lived because she quickly found a post from someone saying their ATV was stolen and they provided pictures. There was a small problem, though. The neighbors had covered the ATV they just pulled into their yard.

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Mandi was trying to keep a low profile until the side-by-side was recovered so as to not tip the neighbors off that she knew they had stolen property.

“I’ve been watching Facebook for like stolen things and look what I found,” Mandi says in the video, pointing to the picture of the missing ATV. “Someone stole a side-by-side very close to my house.”

Instead of keeping the information to herself, she messaged the owner on Facebook and let her know the side-by-side was in her neighbor’s backyard. In her next video update, she says that the police were in her backyard and things were intense.

@divinemandi

#greenscreen

Eventually, there was a standoff of sorts and they had to call in more officers to surround the house to arrest the man. Turned out he was wanted for other things as well, but at some point, it seemed unclear if Mandi should have tattled on her neighbor. While she’s not the one who called the police, it was her recognizing the suspicious activity that led to the arrest of her neighbor.

It can be difficult to know when you are doing the right thing in these situations. People in the comments expressed worry for her safety and were overwhelmingly positive about her helping to get her neighbor’s property back. Would you have stayed out of it, or done the same thing as this amateur detective?

Catch the intense resolution below:

@divinemandi

Update #3 please dont get me unalived but fkkkmk i needed to share 😂

Representation is something you don’t even think about if you’ve always had it, which can make the need for representation feel unnecessary to some. But kids look for themselves in their television shows, dolls and neighborhood, and seeing people who look like them or have other similarities is vital to their confidence and imagination.

Seeing themselves represented helps kids feel connected to the world around them, so many parents attempt to do whatever they can in order to provide their children with the representation they need. Mom Wendy Wuu took it upon herself to make sure her 5-year-old son saw a part of himself in his favorite doll, Woody, from “Toy Story.”

In a video uploaded to social media, you can see the mom molding something clear and malleable into Woody’s ear. Turns out this creative mom was using fingernail acrylic to mold the shape of the doll’s inner ear…well as much of an inner ear as a doll can have.

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Shortly after molding the inner ear, she double-checked her son’s hearing aids, then proceeded to mold the part that goes around the ear. The process is quite fascinating. She painted the hearing aids to match Woody’s outfit, complete with cow print and blue paint.

“I wanted my child to feel included,” says Wuu told USA Today. “We never see other children or people with hearing aids or cochlear implants in our community.”

The viral video has racked on over 10 million views on The Columbus Dispatch’s Facebook page, with commenters praising the mom’s determination and skill.

“What an amazing momma,” one person writes.

“This is the sweetest thing. Moms will do literally anything for their babies. I want to hug her,” another commenter says.

Watch Wuu create Woody’s hearing aids below:

Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston have starred in three movies together, “Just Go with It” (2011), “Murder Mystery” (2019) and “Murder Mystery 2” (2023), and their chemistry is undeniable. They probably work so well together on screen because they’ve been friends in real life since they were in their 20s.

Aniston revealed their closeness in an anecdote she shared in WSJ Magazine. “Aniston, who does not have children and has spoken openly about her struggles with fertility treatment, says Sandler and his wife [Jackie Sandler] send her flowers every Mother’s Day,” the profile’s author, Ellen Gamerman, writes.

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It’s a touching move for the Sandlers to reach out to Aniston on a day that must be hard for her. Last year, she opened up about her struggles to conceive through in vitro fertilization (IVF) with Allure.

IVF can be a very challenging process for a woman to go through. It involves invasive procedures and hormonal fluctuations and can be a real emotional rollercoaster. On top of that, Aniston was the subject of baby bump tabloid speculation for years and was often criticized for being “selfish” and choosing her career over motherhood.

— (@)

“I was trying to get pregnant. It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road,” Aniston said about a time in her life a few years ago. “I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese tea, you name it. I was throwing everything at it. I would’ve given anything if someone had said to me, ‘Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favor.’ You just don’t think it. So here I am today. The ship has sailed.”

Upworthy has covered a few stories about people who decided to live permanently on cruise ships because it’s cheaper than living on land or in a nursing home. These stories have connected with millions because they say a lot about the modern cost of living but are also aspirational.

Christine Kesteloo has become popular on TikTok with over 680,000 followers because she shares what living on a cruise ship is really like. Kesteloo is the wife of the ship’s Staff Chief Engineer, so she gets to live on the boat for free. She only has to pay for alcohol and soda, which she gets for half off.

“I live on a cruise ship for half the year with my husband, and it’s often as glamorous as it sounds,” she told Insider. “After all, I don’t cook, clean, make my bed, do laundry or pay for food.“

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Kesteloo’s life seems pretty stress-free. After all, she’s basically on a permanent vacation. However, even though she lives on a cruise ship as a “wife on board,” there are a few things she either can’t or shouldn’t do.

She shared these four things in a TikTok video with nearly 10 million views.

@dutchworld_americangirl

I go through four things I can, and cannot do it while living on the cruise ship with my husband #weliveonacruiseship #4things #alaskacruise #cruiseship #cruiseshiplife #cruise #alaska #caribbeancruise #cruiselife #livingstsea #getreadywithme

1. No gambling

Kesteloo says she cannot sit at a slot machine and “play my heart out until I win.” She believes it would “look a little weird if I, as the wife of the staff chief engineer, won a big jackpot.”

2. Can’t leave the ship with the guests

When the ship arrives at a destination, she can’t get off with the guests. She must wait about an hour and exit the vessel with the crew. When returning to the ship, she also has to be on time. “No, they will not wait for us,”
she says. And the same goes for her husband, if they “miss the ship, someone else will take over the role.”

3. Sit in a crowded pool

Although Kesteloo has access to the pool, gym, and all the ship’s amenities, she’s cautious not to interfere with the guests’ good time. She’ll exit the pool if it’s busy because “it’s just the right thing to do.”

4. Must have international traveler insurance

She must have insurance in case of a misfortune on the ship. But as a citizen of the Netherlands, they already have coverage and just have to pay a few extra dollars a month.

Some of the most popular commenters on the video were from women regretting that they married men who aren’t chief engineers on cruise ships or those who want to know where to find a single one.

“OK, can you explain how to marry a cruise ship engineer?” one female commentator wrote.

“How. in. the. H E double hockey sticks do I become the wife of a cruise ship engineer???? I don’t have to work AND cruise for free!” Cute_n_catchy added.

“Does he have any single friends with same job??? Asking for me.” Hannah LaCaze asked.

Earlier this summer, L’Rain participated in the Re:Set Concert Series with Idles, LCD Soundsystem, and Jamie xx. Around the same time, L’Rain released “New Year’s UnResolution,” the first material from Taja Cheek’s musical project since 2021.

“New Year’s UnResolution” was just an appetizer, as Cheek announced on Wednesday, August 23, that her third L’Rain album, I Killed Your Dog, will arrive on October 13. The news was accompanied by the single “Pet Rock” and its Studio Jojo-directed video.

“The song is based around an old story I’d been told about a woman who was riding the train but looked strange, and the reader eventually figures out that she’s dead, with glasses on, being propped up by the people that seem to have harmed her,” Cheek said in a statement. “As a lifelong collector of tchotchkes, the music video is based on a concept I came up with featuring miniatures.”

A press release describes I Killed Your Dog as “a crystallization of L’Rain’s tactile approach to songwriting” as well as “an implicit interrogation of the electric dreams and failures of early synthesizers, toying openly with rock music tropes, the lineage of folk as Black music in America, and Cheek’s own background playing in experimental guitar bands.”

Watch the “Pet Rock” video above, or check out the I Killed Your Dog artwork and tracklist as well as L’Rain’s upcoming North American tour dates below.

1. “Sincerity Commercial”
2. “Our Funeral”
3. “Pet Rock”
4. “I Hate My Best Friends”
5. “I Killed Your Dog”
6. “All The Days You Remember”
7. “5 to 8 Hours a Day (WWwaG)”
8. “Sometimes”
9. “r(EMOTE)”
10. “Uncertainty Principle”
11. “Oh Wow, A Bird!”
12. “Knead Bee”
13. “Monsoon Of Regret”
14. “Clumsy”
15. “What’s That Song?”
16. “New Year’s UnResolution”

10/20 — New York, NY @ Pioneer Works
10/25 — Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s
10/26 — Washington, DC @ Songbyrd
11/29 — Los Angeles, CA @ El Rey *
12/01 — Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon
12/02 — San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill
12/05 — Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall
12/06 — Seattle, WA @ Madame Lou’s
12/07 — Vancouver, BC @ Fox Cabaret

*w/ Cate Le Bon and Mega Bog

I Killed Your Dog is out 10/13 via Mexican Summer. Find more information here.