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Joji Is Bringing ‘Pandemonium’ (And Kenny Beats) Across North America With A 2023 Tour

Joji kept his strong run going last year with Smithereens, his third album and third to reach at least the top five on the Billboard 200 chart. The album also features “Glimpse Of Us,” his first top-10 single that’s currently approaching a billion plays on Spotify, with about 931 million at the moment. So, there’s a lot for Joji fans to be excited about, and now there’s something else: He’s going on tour this fall and he’s taking some special guests with him.

He made the announcement with a comedic video featuring elderly people at a speed dating event.

The run starts with a trio of Texas shows in late September/early October before wrapping up about a month later in Orlando. Lil Toe (Ammo) and Savage Realm will join Joji on all dates, while Kenny Beats will also be on board for all but the first two.

Check out the tour dates below and find information about getting tickets here.

09/29 — Houston, TX @ Toyota Center #
09/30 — Fort Worth, TX @ Dickies Arena #
10/03 — Austin, TX @ Moody Center #*
10/05 — Phoenix, AZ @ Footprint Center #*
10/06 — Los Angeles, CA @ Crypto.com Arena #*
10/07 — Las Vegas, NV @ Michelob Ultra Arena #*
10/09 — Oakland, CA @ Oakland Arena #*
10/11 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena #*
10/13 — Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena #*
10/14 — Portland, OR @ Moda Center #*
10/17 — Denver, CO @ Ball Arena #*
10/20 — Chicago, IL @ United Center #*
10/21 — Minneapolis, MN @ Target Center #*
10/24 — Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena #*
10/25 — Columbus, OH @ Schottenstein Center #*
10/27 — Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center #*
10/29 — Boston, MA @ TD Garden #*
10/31 — Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center #*
11/01 — Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena #*
11/04 — Charlotte, NC @ Spectrum Center #*
11/06 — Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena #*
11/08 — Orlando, FL @ Amway Center #*

# with Lil Toe (Ammo) and Savage Realm
* with Kenny Beats

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Trump Is Raging Over DeSantis Allegedly Bribing The Right-Wing Knockoff Version Of The Onion (The Babylon Bee) For Support

Republican frenemies Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump are fighting again, this time over a conservative satirical news site that serves (or tries to) as the conservative answer The Onion.

Trump, who some day might be running his presidential campaign from the inside of a jail cell, is reportedly fuming over his rival’s budding relationship with The Babylon Bee and its CEO, Seth Dillon. That’s right, a fake news site obsessed with boycotting Target that thinks headlines like “Bible Experts Determine Goliath Died of COVID” and “Female Scientists Still Unable To Make Sense Of Strange Lever That Makes Car Lights Blink” serve as comedy is now the shiny toy these tyrading grown toddlers are arguing over.

According to a Rolling Stone report, Trump, who began a relationship with The Babylon Bee after mistaking their stories as factual and retweeting them to his followers on social media, is pissed that Dillon is pals with DeSantis and DeSantis supporter, Elon Musk. The friendship between Trump and the Bee has further soured over a recent reveal that DeSantis’ team paid the site for its speechwriting services. In February, far-right Trump-lover Laura Loomer confronted Dillon via text over a payment made by the Friends of Ron DeSantis PAC to the Bee for $21,500. Dillon explained that the site helped DeSantis punch up his public speaking routine in order to “fight Democrats.”

“You could consider us speech writing consultants,” Dillon wrote. “We help him find funny angles on Democrats. We don’t attack Trump for him. That’s silly and false. They have never suggested that we write anything about Trump.”

Now, we understand why a human AI with a hyena cackle like DeSantis would need some assistance in the charm department. The guy has a proven track record for appearing downright awkward in public. But Trump was satisfied by Dillon’s explanation so, naturally, he took to his Truth Social account to air his grievances with one of the few “news” sites he actually reads:

“You don’t spend that much money on The Babylon Bee if you’re running for Governor, in fact, you don’t spend money on The Babylon Bee if you’re running for anything!”

The Bee is just the latest right-wing influencer the former bros are battling over. Plenty of one-time Trump supporters are now flocking to DeSantis as he seems less problematic — in their eyes, anyway — and less likely to be convicted of a felony before the 2024 Presidential Election takes place. There are also rumors he’s offered money, policy influence, and full-time jobs to MAGA mascots willing to switch teams. Those sticking with Trump think DeSantis doesn’t have what it takes to smack-talk on a national level.

And the rest of us, we’re are having a grand ole time sitting back and watching these two catty dudes duke it out.

(Via Rolling Stone)

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Meet The Hitmakers Behind Audible’s ‘Breakthrough’

Something new is coming to the podcast world: An audio-only singing competition series.
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Elliot Page Opened Up About Feeling ‘Disconnected’ From His Body Before Coming Out As Transgender

Elliot Page has been open about his struggle with gender dysphoria since coming out as transgender in 2020, and has since been using his voice to help others who might be going through the same isolating experiences.

The Umbrella Academy actor recently sat down with ABC for its upcoming Pride special and detailed how fame affected his upbringing as someone who felt like there was little support for transgender youth in the industry. “I think it especially became complicated as an actor. People would just say ‘You’re an actor, just put on the f*cking clothes,” he in a new clip.

Page began acting at the age of ten, and slowly began to feel a sense of discomfort while his body began to change. “When my body started to change and clothes sat on me differently…all of that was the beginning of really disconnecting from myself and feeling a degree of discomfort that was very erosive and damaging,” he explained. Paired with being in the spotlight, Page struggled with the lack of information about being transgender.

“I don’t think I, even at that point, had probably even heard the word ‘transgender,’” he said. “If it did come up, it would be briefly in health class with then the sound of laughter.” The actor added that he had been bullied while in school, which only led to more “shame and self-disgust.”

After being thrust into the spotlight at such a young age, the dysphoria only got worse. “I think with gender dysphoria, it’s being assigned a gender at birth based on your genitalia, and that being the reality of not who you are—and the incongruence and disconnect with that—just continues to chip away at you.”

Now, Page uses his voice to help uplift others by sharing his joy in his own via his inspiring confessional selfies and on the page (literally!!) in his upcoming book, Pageboy.

The Freedom to Exist airs June 6th on ABC. Check out the clip below.

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The 4 Matchups That Will Determine The 2023 NBA Finals

Well, an NBA Finals matchup between the Denver Nuggets and the Miami Heat is a fun one, no? There are plenty of similarities between the two teams, even if one steamrolled their way to the Finals from day one of the 2022-23 regular season and the other needed to pull off a big comeback against the Chicago Bulls in the Play-In Tournament to even qualify for the 8-seed.

Both teams can be very annoying about a perceived lack of respect but are extremely good about harnessing this as a form of motivation. Michael Malone surely seems like the most online coach in the league, and one ESPN graphic about what their internal projections suggested would happen in the Eastern Conference Finals turned into a rallying cry for Heat fans. Both are built around two of the best Draft finds of the last decade or so, as Jimmy Butler went 30th overall to the Chicago Bulls in 2011 and Nikola Jokic, perhaps the best Draft pick of all-time, went 41st overall in 2014. Their stars are amplified by their role players, who in turn amplify their stars, all of whom exist in a basketball ecosystem built by an elite head coach. As a result, they’re a pair of teams with clear, uncompromising visions of how they want to go about their business, which has both sides four wins away from lifting the Larry O’Brien trophy.

Things will start on Thursday night in Denver, where an ultra-rested Nuggets team will play host to the Heat a mere three days after they took down the Boston Celtics in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals. Here, we’ll look at the four matchups that should end up deciding how things are going to go down.

Erik Spoelstra vs. Michael Malone

Spoelstra is, quite possibly, the best basketball coach on the planet, someone who is willing to get creative and do whatever is necessary to throw an opponent off their game. If he needs to go zone, he’ll go zone. If he sees a weak link in the opposing team’s defense, it’s getting attacked. If Kyle Lowry is playing out of his mind and Jimmy Butler’s having an off night, he’ll trust Lowry to get them across the finish line. If he decides the best option is to have Gabe Vincent guard the opposing team’s center so Bam Adebayo can do other stuff on defense, sure, why not.

He’s also no stranger to the magnitude of playing in the NBA Finals, something that is brand new to Malone. For all of the incredible things that he has done in his eight years at the helm of the Nuggets, Malone has never led a team into the pressure cooker to end all pressure cookers — every mistake is a little more deadly, every run is a little harder to overcome.

What Malone has done, however, is put together a team and a system that has made the Nuggets the overwhelming favorites entering the Finals. Denver has won six games in a row, rolled through the postseason (they’ve lost three times on this run by a combined 18 points), and have been consistently excellent ever since Game 1 of the opening round against the Minnesota Timberwolves. Malone has pressed the right button at every turn, which is why they’re here right now.

Spoelstra is going to have something weird up his sleeves in this series because that’s just what he does. As issues pop up, he’ll constantly tinker in an effort to find solutions and try to make Malone have to come up with a response. Maybe Denver is good enough that its Plan A is just too much for Miami to overcome, but Spoelstra is the best coach in the league at finding a thing that just works. Can he do that this time? And if he can, how does Malone respond?

Jimmy Butler vs. Denver’s army of guys who will try to guard Jimmy Butler

Even as Butler’s efficiency numbers fell off while the series against Boston went along — he hit 38.7 percent of his shots from the field over the final five games of the series — his gravity and ability to attack the defense was something that the Celtics needed to respect all series long. It certainly did not help that Butler was usually able to figure out whomever Boston threw at him, whether that was Jayson Tatum, or Marcus Smart, or Derrick White, or Grant Williams, etc.

Butler’s a tricky guy to guard, someone who has the ability to get by bigger guys and overpower smaller guys, all with a bag of tricks that can be tough to stop and the ability to grift his way to the free throw line if need be. He’ll get his most nights, but the ace Denver should have up its sleeve is a handful of players who can battle with him — Aaron Gordon is theoretically the perfect guy to throw at Butler, as he’s just as big but doesn’t have to sacrifice quickness, and he’s generally done a very good job of keeping himself out of foul trouble.

Does Malone essentially try to match Butler’s minutes with Gordon? Or does he trust other guys, namely Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Bruce Brown, both of whom would try to make up for their lack of size through sheer tenacity and defensive smarts? Does he hope that Jeff Green or Christian Braun can do a job against Butler in the event of an emergency? How hard of a time will Butler have getting switches he likes against Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr., or Nikola Jokic?

And if he is able to get to the rim, how exactly does Denver plan on slowing him down? The team had the third-worst defensive field goal percentage in the restricted area during the regular season, although they have been better in the playoffs. There is a case to be made that collapsing on Butler around the rim, should he get there, is asking for trouble, as Miami is coming off of a series where their shooters routinely demolished Boston any time they got decent looks and Butler is as good as it gets at absorbing contact and getting to the free throw line.

Having said all of this: There are few teams in the NBA capable of slowing down an elite wing like Butler better than the Nuggets. If Gordon can take on the assignment all on his own, then Denver’s gonna have a chance to end this series quickly.

Nikola Jokic vs. Bam Adebayo

According to NBA.com’s tracking stats, Adebayo unsurprisingly spent the most time as Jokic’s primary defender in the two regular season matchups against the Nuggets this year. In second place? That would be Orlando Robinson, a big man on a two-way deal who is not on the Heat’s playoff roster.

There is no more difficult defensive assignment in the sport than Jokic, and while we presume that at least one of Kevin Love or Cody Zeller will get tasked with being a big body when Adebayo needs to rest, a reasonably safe bet is that if Adebayo can’t slow Jokic down a little, no one on the Heat can. This, then, leads to a question: Might the best idea for Spoelstra be to take a page out of Darvin Ham’s playbook?

Ham didn’t always have Anthony Davis guard Jokic 1-on-1 during the Western Conference Finals — much was made after Game 1 about how Rui Hachimura was put on Jokic, which let Davis roam around and have his fingerprints all over the place. While he’d still guard Jokic, Davis frequently found himself on Gordon or Green, with Hachimura and LeBron James spending plenty of time on Jokic over the course of the series. It’s worth noting, of course, that the Western Conference Finals ended with the Nuggets sweeping the Los Angeles Lakers, with Denver posting an insane 122.3 offensive rating against the vaunted Laker defense.

Getting to use Adebayo as a roamer — someone who takes away passing lanes and frees himself up to disrupt the flow of an offense — would be a way to take advantage of his skill-set on defense, although there’s no real weak link to put him on, as the Nuggets’ starting lineup around Jokic is three elite shooters (Murray, Porter, Caldwell-Pope) and an elite cutter/offensive rebounder who also found a groove from three to end the Lakers series in Gordon. Jokic would eat one of Miami’s bench bigs alive, while Butler or Caleb Martin would almost certainly get overpowered. Adebayo manning him up might just be the best option, even if it’s very hard for there to be any good options when it comes to slowing down the league MVP.

Miami vs. Three-Point Regression

Here is maybe my favorite stat from the Eastern Conference Finals: Boston took 212 threes classified as “Open” (the closest defender was 4-6 feet away) or “Wide Open” (6+ feet). Miami took 162. Despite this, Miami made 79 of those shots (48.8 percent). Boston made 71 (33.5 percent).

Being that hot from three just does not happen, and that’s before we get into stuff like “Tyler Herro is hurt” and “Miami was 27th in the league in three-point field goal percentage in the regular season.” It’s also a pretty necessary piece of the puzzle for a team that wants to pull off an upset, especially one that is going up against an offense as high-octane as Denver. As noted in the last section, the Nuggets’ offense has been unstoppable throughout the postseason, and barring some bad shooting luck and/or the Heat’s defense junking things up in a way they cannot figure out, that’s going to continue.

As such, Miami’s army of shooters are going to need to continue their team-wide heater. Vincent, Robinson, Martin, and maybe Love/Haywood Highsmith staying hot is crucial. Lowry and Max Strus finding their form after being just a little off against Boston is crucial. Butler knocking down threes on the rare occasions that he takes them is crucial. Perhaps Herro coming back from a broken hand — which could come in Game 3 of the Finals, per a report from Chris Haynes of Bleacher Report — could provide some scoring punch and fresh legs for a team that just came off of a 7-game war and now has to deal with the altitude in Denver against a Nuggets team that hasn’t played in more than a week.

Denver will present a different challenge than Boston, but for Miami, the objective remains the same: Stay hot from three and give yourselves a chance to pull off yet another upset.

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Jenna Ortega’s Mom Shaded Her Daughter’s Viral Smoking Photos With A Series Of Memes, Including Gollum

The minds of Gen Z were fuming with disappointment last week after photos of Jenna Ortega smoking a cigarette (so retro!) went viral. What seemed more surprising was the fact that Ortega is too cool for the Gen Z staple Elf Bar, the colorful e-cig that has made a name for itself on TikTok.

But fans were, understandably, a little taken aback. While cigarettes might not be the same type of status symbol that everyone thought they were in the ’60s (or when Mad Men was on), their side effects and long-term health complications are much more well-known at this point. Even though Ortega is a 20-year-old adult, some of her many fans were disappointed, and even her mom got involved.

Natalie Ortega took to Instagram to share a series of somewhat outdated but still relevant memes about the harms and horrors of smoking. One included comparing a cigarette smoker to Gollum, while another had various facts about lung cancer and other complications stemming from nicotine.

On the other hand, some fans were quick to reply that nicotine addiction is a real thing that can affect anyone, even young actresses going through a major life change. Either way, Ortega was clearly caught in a private moment while talking with a friend.

In the end, Natalie Ortega finished off her photoset with a quote about motherhood: “A mother is always a mother. She never stops worrying about her children, even when they are all grown up and have children of their own.” This is, of course, a conversation that should probably be held in the privacy of their own home, but sometimes Instagram is the only way you can get in touch with those you love in order to make it everyone else’s business. This should be what family group chats are for, though.

(Via Yahoo!)

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The Jonas Brothers Are Off To The Races

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The Case For And Case Against The ‘Barry’ Series Finale

Bill Hader is a talented man. That’s the first thing that needs to be mentioned in any discussion about Barry, the HBO series he created and starred in and directed in its final season for its entirety. The ambition and craftsmanship and creativity on display would be an impressive feat on their own, even if the show wasn’t all that good. It was good, though. It was so good, pretty much straight through, from its silly premise (a hitman falls in love with acting and tries to go straight with the help of a little community theater class) to its midnight-dark final season (we’ll talk about this in a second). It was inventive and funny and devastating and really just not like anything else on television, which is an achievement in itself with the volume of stuff out there. And it introduced us to some memorable characters, most notably — for me, at least — NoHo Hank, the friendly Chechen mobster played by Anthony Carrigan. Again, Barry was a good show.

When it ended, though, it left some of its fans divided. The entire final season was bleak as hell, with Barry and Hank and really just every character on the show dealing with the consequences of their actions from the first few seasons. Things got heavy. People died. Other people stared off into the cold and unforgiving abyss in a way that implied they would welcome death. There were time jumps and wigs and aliases. Stephen Root’s character came out of prison covered in tattoos and going by The Raven. There was still comedy in there, to be sure, and here is the GIF of Hank missing his target with a missile to prove it…

HAN
HBO

… but it was… yeah, heavy.

The finale of the whole thing took it to another level. I don’t ever recall the ending of a show causing such a wide range of reactions. Some people I know (mostly my TV critic friends, but also some casual viewers) insist it was a masterpiece. Other people I’ve talked to really did not like it at all, for a range of reasons but mainly because of the scene at the very end. It’s a little fascinating to me, just this split among the fanbase. And so, what I’m going to try to do here is present both sides of the debate and see if we can get to the bottom of it.

I also wanted another excuse to post that GIF of NoHo Hank during the missile. There are a few reasons I’m doing this. Away we go.

CASE FOR

HANK
HBO

Okay, there are a few things here. Three, I think. Let’s address them in no particular order…

THING ONE: The end of this show had to be bleak because none of the characters were particularly great people. Even the supporting characters. Gene Cousineau is a narcissist and a self-important loon who got himself into a lot of this by being manipulative from the first moments we met him. Hank is a criminal who profited from the pain of others. Sally is insecure and jealous and petty. And Barry is… Barry is a murderer. It’s possible to gloss over that because Hader himself is such a likable dude, but let’s just look at his own words from an interview he did before the season with Uproxx’s Jason Tabrys.

With all the characters, you want to make them human and have something that is just a human trait. You just want them to be recognizably human. And I think in doing that, you can feel some sympathy for him because you can understand maybe, “Oh, I’ve had those feelings. I can relate in some way.” But it was important for me, during season three, to go okay, his back is against the wall, and Cousineau knows about him. So it’s only a matter of time before he yells at Sally. He gets verbally pretty awful with her in a scene. And I remember a lot of people go saying, “Oh my god, Barry’s a bad guy.” and I’m going “Yes. He killed Chris in season one. He is not a good dude.” (Laughs)

Yes, this is correct. There kind of could not be a happy ending for most of these people. It just was never going to happen. These people were always going to die and/or face consequences.

THING TWO: It was kind of a masterpiece? At the very least, it was always surprising. Think about the guts it takes to kill off your main character — the guy whose name is the title of the show — with a substantial chunk of runtime left in your last episode, in a scene played so dry and anticlimactic that his last words between getting shot in the chest and getting his forehead blasted open by Henry Winkler were “Oh, wow.” Think about the shootout between Hank’s men and Fuches’ — I’m sorry, “The Raven’s” — prison gang, the one that ended quickly and left bodies strewn across the floor and my beloved Hank clutching the hand of his beloved Cristobal, who he had killed earlier in the season. It was such a stupid way to die but probably more true to how most shootouts go — one shot, then a lot of shots, then panic — and another case of this show mixing comedy and tragedy in a new way. Again, nothing else on television like it. Again, Bill Hader is a talented dude.

THING THREE: The scene at the end where John — the now teenage son of Sally and Barry — watches the movie about his dad, a movie that makes Barry into the hero and Cousineau into the mastermind/supervillain, was right in line with what the show has always been. Pretty much from Day One, the characters depicted in the show’s version of Hollywood have been more morally bankrupt than any of the underworld figures we met, many of whom were actually charming and nice. This was the natural conclusion of that device. Hollywood would take the story of a military “hero” and turn him into a sympathetic figure, regardless of whether it was the truth, because Hollywood is more cynical and naive than entire crews of mobsters.

It wasn’t satisfying in any way. It made me cringe a little in places. But that’s how art works sometimes. It can challenge you. It’s a little weird to say about a show that featured live-action Wile E. Coyote-style gags and important scenes in a Dave & Busters, but Barry really did end up being a work of art.

CASE AGAINST

BARRY
HBO

Three things again here, much more briefly…

THING ONE: It was actually unsatisfying in places to the degree that it was unnecessarily cruel to some of its characters, most notably Gene Cousineau, who was, again, a self-important creep but probably did not deserve to be framed for multiple murders and sent to prison until he dies after also losing the love of his life. And he definitely did not deserve to be portrayed as the evil menace who set everything in motion and manipulated Barry into doing all the things Barry did on his own, even if the movie did give him a cool British accent.

THING TWO: Killing off characters like Barry and Hank in anticlimactic and sudden flourishes of gunplay might have rubbed some people the wrong way, like the show made a point to present these people as multidimensional figures and then wiped them out with a snap. And even the character who got a “happy” ending, Sally, is now raising a kid who watched her rip off a wig and reveal an alternate life and hit the deck with her during a gunfight between rival gangs. These people are going to be messed up forever. Which, again, actions have consequences, but the ending stripped away any of the lightness that had balanced the dark throughout the show. I don’t know if I agree with this last part, personally, but I do appreciate that the point has merit.

THING THREE: They never gave us an update on Mitch the Beignet Guy. This last one is admittedly a minor quibble, but still. I miss Mitch.

MY OWN UNSATISFYING CONCLUSION TO ALL OF THIS

BARRY
HBO

Barry was an incredible show, a roller coaster of emotions and tone, a goofy endeavor that ripped me apart in places, closer in style and arc to a show like Better Call Saul than it was any half-hour comedy. I liked it a lot — all of it, even the finale, for all its despair and pessimism and brutality — but I do not think I want to rewatch it ever again.

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Is ‘Ted Lasso’ Over? Even The Show’s Stars Don’t Seem To Know

Was “So Long, Farewell” the final episode of Ted Lasso? It seems like it (the title is a modest giveaway). The episode had all the hallmarks of a series finale, as did the David Lynch-referencing tweet from the Twitter account “run” by Coach Lasso. But [Ted Lasso voice] like the lady told that Ryan Gosling fella in one of my all-time favorite romantic comedies, it’s not that simple.

When asked by Entertainment Weekly if Ted Lasso was over, actress Hannah Waddingham, the Emmy winner who plays AFC Richmond owner Rebecca Welton, replied, “You tell me, my friend! I don’t know. None of us know. I don’t even know if Jason (Sudeikis) knows. If he does, he is a sly dog.” Is her contract finished? “I mean, I’ve been doing plenty of other stuff,” she said, cagily. “Would I be open to a conversation about it? Always. You know, once a Greyhound, always a Greyhound.” Waddingham continued:

“Jason has been quite clear, as has [co-creator Brendan Hunt], that this is the end of the story that they had planned. So, I think it’s better to just take it as that, otherwise those scenes that we have done, particularly in the season finale, wouldn’t have been honored. You have to honor it as though it was the end, otherwise you’re not getting yourself in to the right place emotionally.”

Here’s an idea: end Ted Lasso, but give Brett Goldstein, in character as Roy Kent, a spinoff series. Preferably co-starring the Muppets. You think the ratings for Ted Lasso were good, Apple TV+? Wait until Roy Kent says “you f*cking twat” to Scooter. Biggest show on streaming.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

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Increasingly Paranoid Putin Is Now Refusing To Travel Because He’s So Terrified Of Being Assassinated

Allegedly world-famous-poison-happy or at least poison-approver Vladimir Putin is apparently descending deep into his own paranoia on that subject and more. We’ve previously heard that the Russian president forces people to test his food, and that he has a personal pooper scooper who travels with him because he’s paranoid about either health-issue discovery or DNA harvesting. As well, an ex-Russian intelligence officer revealed that Putin is too “pathologically afraid to touch the internet or use a cell phone.” Now that drone attacks are hitting close to home, however, Putin has apparently devolved into a new stage of fright.

As The Daily Beast now relays from a source of independent Russian publication Verstka, Putin has apparently decided that he will no longer travel abroad, not only due to those drones but also because of the International Criminal Court warrant for his arrest. He’s the most deeply fearful of being assassinated, which does check out, given that so many Russian oligarchs keep mysteriously dying, and of course, eyebrows have constantly raised in Putin’s direction about those deaths. This fear has apparently become more concrete because Putin decided not to travel to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s latest inauguration ceremony, “sending State Duma chairman Vyacheslav Volodin instead.” Here’s more from The Daily Beast:

The feeling “behind the scenes of the Kremlin,” the source said, was that Putin was worried about traveling anywhere: “He has no sense of security.”

While the Kremlin played down this week’s drone attack on the Russian capital, The Moscow Times reported Wednesday that Putin was most likely in his Novo-Ogaryovo residence when air defenses shot down a drone that was heading for it just a few miles away.

A source close to the Kremlin told the news outlet that the Russian leader was awakened early by his security team in the middle of the attack.

All Putin wants to do is enjoy his little war and hide out in his pickle-filled compounds, and the world simply won’t allow this to happen. Additionally, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has already publicized his planned punishment for Putin, should Ukraine win the conflict. By the day, it’s looking more and more like that could happen.

(Via The Daily Beast)