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Ron DeSantis is expected to run against Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024. But he hasn’t officially announced his candidacy. So why is he, the “a**hole” governor of Florida, currently in Japan? Especially so soon after a devastating flood in the Sunshine State.

The official explanation is “to buff up his foreign policy credentials, which are in need of positive headlines,” according to the New York Times, but “an American governor [having] a meeting with the Japanese prime minister — so close to the Group of 7 summit being held next month in Hiroshima — is considered unusual.” Also unusual: the face that DeSantis — a very normal guy who reportedly eats pudding with his fingers — makes in this video.

When asked about falling behind Trump in the polls, DeSantis briefly turned into a bobblehead before answering, “I’m not a candidate, so we’ll see if and when that changes.” His wife’s face remains frozen the entire time.

“curious to know why desantis is in japan. trade? promoting florida tourism? secretly a weeb? honestly, would not be shocked if it came out that desantis had a secret twitter account with an anime pfp,” columist Jamelle Bouie joked about deSantis, while the No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen account tweeted, “This clip shows Ron DeSantis exhibiting very bizarre social behavior. Is he okay?”

That’s the face of a guy who picks a fight with Disney.

(Via the New York Times)

Jack White is very famously somebody who tends to prefer older technologies and reject newer ones; In 2019, for instance, he revealed he doesn’t own a cell phone. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich doesn’t quite understand that, though, since he and White text frequently.

Ulrich is the guest on a new episode of the Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast that premiered today (April 24). At the top of the show, Ulrich and O’Brien opened by talking about White, a mutual friend. A few minutes into the chat, O’Brien and Ulrich were playfully ribbing White, after which O’Brien said, “I’m going to get a text from Jack about this.”

Ulrich replied, “I’ll tell you what, and Jack, if you’re hearing this: You know I love you and nothing but love. But for a guy who supposedly doesn’t have a phone, he’s a pretty… he’s a pretty engaged texter. I’m not really quite sure how that works out, whether it’s his wife’s phone or whether he’s got a computer that he texts from, whatever.”

O’Brien then joked, “Also, he’s so pro-vinyl, vinyl, vinyl… every time I go to his house, all he does is play CDs. That’s all he does.”

Speaking of vinyl, White recently congratulated Metallica for buying their own vinyl pressing plant.

Check out the clip above and find the full episode here.

Twitter’s original verification system served a very straightforward function: to assure users that they were following an authentic account belonging to an individual or business. As we’ve seen from Elon Musk’s “pain”-filled Twitter, the blue checkmark now means one of two things: (1) a user ponied up $8 per month to have it; or (2) Elon foisted the mark upon them, and they really don’t want it.

Handfuls of celebrities have now pushed back after Elon “gifted” checkmarks to them. That includes Stephen King (and his reaction spawned horror jokes) and Lil Nas X, who has vowed vengeance against “Tesla man.”

Then there are the almost inevitable mistakes that will come from selling business verification at a $1000 price tag after meeting mystery standards. No one knows if the error in question actually sprang from someone paying the full fee (Elon is apparently gifting free badges to businesses who meet a follower threshold), but the error is arguably as egregious as when a verified but imposter Eli Lilly account made fake “free insulin” claims, thereby tanking the actual Eli Lilly’s stock price. That happened last fall and appeared to be a case of some prankster swapping out their handle and name after verification. And presumably, that’s what led to a new policy of temporary checkmark removal for all handle/name changes until approved.

That supposed safeguard, however, didn’t save Twitter from committing a seriously embarrassing mistake involving a fake Disney Junior U.K. parody account. This was a relatively long-standing account, according to Variety, meaning that someone must have flubbed the verification approval process, which even surprised the account’s f-bomb-dropping owner:

The owner of the @DisneyJuniorUK account appeared to be as surprised at their new verification status as the account’s 2,628 followers, tweeting: “No f*cking way. This isn’t actually real right. Someone f*cking pinch me or something” alongside a screenshot of the account’s profile page with the gold checkmark circled.

From there — and the account has since been suspended — the account began to drop racial slurs and make jokes about “Disney hitmen,” too:

In a poll retweeted by the Disney Junior U.K. account, @7virtues_ wrote: “should i deactivate the disney junior uk account for a while so i dont get murked by the disney hitmen” with the options being “”Yeah.Ye;yah… ye.s,..,,y” and “NOT AT ALL N****” At the time of writing, almost 2,000 people had voted in the poll, with over 88% encouraging @7virtues_ to keep the Disney Junior U.K. account.

Yikes. As you can see below, the account owner was seen claiming that they snapped up the handle nearly two years ago (after, as Variety points out, Disney Jr U.K. shuttered its use of the handle). Among other rantings, the owner claimed that South Park was coming to Disney+ streaming and kept the charade going for several hours after verification until someone finally shut the monstrosity down. (It’s going great over there.)

(Via Variety)

If you asked me, “Which of the two HBO Sunday night shows in their final seasons is more likely to feature a cameo from a Best Picture and Best Director-winning filmmaker?” I would have guessed Succession. Only one person can fix Waystar Royco’s “sleepy robot in cage” movie, and it’s Martin Scorsese! But nope, it was Barry that got Guillermo del Toro to appear in the third episode of the brilliant final season.

The Shape of Water and Pinocchio director played Toro, the guy who hires the guys who NoHo Hank and Cristobal task to kill Barry. His “best guys” are Nestor and Chuy Flores, who also host the Los Amigos Gadget podcast. Each week, they rate and review a different gadget, “but none of the gadgets work,” Hank explains to Cristobal in front of an increasingly annoyed Toro.

Bill Hader told Deadline that del Toro “had two different takes on the character, and they were both really interesting. And he brought his wonderful wife Kim [Morgan] with him, and it was just really sweet.”

As for how the cameo came together, Hader explained that del Toro reached out to him. “I’d love to be in your show,” he said. So Hader wrote a part for him. del Toro was “a bit surprised” about the character being named Toro, but he was game — although he did tease Hader a little on set.

“He was like, ‘Are you really going to block it like this?’ [Laughs] I was like, ‘Yeah, I am.’ And he’s like, ‘Really? That’s it? Okay…’ No, he was really funny, and we’re all friends. I’m friends with him, and I’m friends with Alfonso Cuarón, and Alfonso was texting me, ‘Guillermo says you don’t know how to direct.’ [Laugh] They were just f*cking with me while I’m shooting with him. And I’m like, ‘Oh my god.’ Guillermo was like, ‘I never said that. No, no, no. He’s being an assh*le.’ But no, it was very fun. I was just really impressed with him.”

del Toro has an Oscar. Cuarón has an Oscar. They’re teasing Hader, because if his first movie looks as good as every episode of Barry, he’ll win one, too.

(Via Deadline)

In recent days, a lot of attention has been paid to AI-generated music, specifically a song that used copies of Drake and The Weeknd’s voices. The track got removed from streaming platforms, but not before Meek Mill listened to it a bunch of times. Grimes, ever one to embrace new technologies, has some thoughts about this and about the use of AI clones of her own voice.

Yesterday (April 23), Grimes took to Twitter to share a screenshot of an article about the Drake/Weeknd AI song. She wrote, “I’ll split 50% royalties on any successful AI generated song that uses my voice. Same deal as I would with any artist i collab with. Feel free to use my voice without penalty. I have no label and no legal bindings.” She added in another tweet, “I think it’s cool to be fused w a machine and I like the idea of open sourcing all art and killing copyright.”

That led to some good follow-up questions. One Twitter user asked, “would the title of such a song credit you as a featured artist, or how would you prefer it?” Grimes replied, “Sure – anything anyone wants. Im just curious what even happens and interested in being a Guinea pig.” Somebody else wondered, “Hey can you pls tell everyone that they need to upload to elf.tech [Grimes’ website] in order to get approval from Media Empire?” She responded, “I feel like we shouldn’t force approvals – but rather work out publishing with stuff that’s super popular. That seems most efficient? We cud use elf tech for it tho – but I think we’ll notice if a grimes song goes viral.”

Grimes also noted that she’s working on AI-ifying her voice herself, tweeting, “We’re making a program that should simulate my voice well but we could also upload stems and samples for ppl to train their own.” Somebody asked about how that endeavor is going and Grimes replied, “we were p far along last I checked. I sorta just spur of the moment decided to do this lol but we were making a sim of my voice for our own plans and they were almost done.”

Finneas seems to be on board with Grimes’ vision: He shared her original post and added, “So lit.”

Meek Mill is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The end of Coachella’s second weekend didn’t look how organizers originally planned. After Frank Ocean pulled out of his second performance after an ill-fated first weekend, Blink-182’s set was moved to Sunday (April 23) and Skrillex, Fred Again.., and Four Tet were brought in to follow them and close out the festival.

Ocean scrapping his second performance reportedly cost the festival millions of dollars, but Goldenvoice and the electronic trio made use of one particularly expensive asset.

Last week, Billboard reported the festival was “trying to make the best out of the millions of dollars spent on building a giant ice pad that was supposed to accommodate over 100 skaters during Ocean’s set last Sunday,” and that “the Goldenvoice team is working out how to incorporate it into another yet-to-be determined performance.” Another report from the publication indicated the trio would use the ice skating rink as a satellite stage of the main stage and perform in it.

Indeed, that is what happened: Skrillex, Fred Again.., and Four Tet made a stage (ice-free) out of the ice skating rink and people loved it.

This stage setup allowed fans to surround the performance area, which drew some SpongeBob Squarepants comparisons:

Check out some clips from the performance below.

The Boston Celtics moved one game away from the conference semifinals on Sunday with a 129-121 Game 4 win in Atlanta against the Hawks.

The Celtics ran out to an early lead, and while the Hawks would close the gap in the second half they could never wrestle the lead away from Boston. Atlanta managed to get the deficit down to five with 3:36 to play in the game, but that was as close as they got down the stretch, due in large part to their inability to get stops when they needed them the most. The dagger came in the form of a scramble drill three from Jayson Tatum, who hit a long three after recovering a loose ball that Marcus Smart dribbled the ball off of either his or Clint Capela’s foot and had it roll into the backcourt.

The broadcast never showed a definitive replay, but there was some wonder as to whether the ball actually went off Capela or Smart. If it were the latter, it should’ve been a backcourt violation to give Atlanta a chance to cut the gap to two possessions. Instead, it was ruled a deflection and Tatum’s wild three pushed Boston’s lead to 12 with two minutes to go, effectively ending the game.

It was one of the calls during the game the Hawks were not happy with, and after the game Hawks guard Dejounte Murray decided to confront official Gediminas Petraitis, bumping him and barking something in his ear.

Murray would continue to yell back towards the officials as his teammates directed him to the locker room, as frustrations boiled over a bit for the star guard after the loss. While the Hawks weren’t happy with some of the calls in the game, both teams were about even in free throw attempts (25 for Boston, 24 for Atlanta) and it didn’t feel like there was an egregiously unfair whistle for one side. Even if Murray felt there was, this is certainly not the way to go about expressing that frustration.

The league will almost assuredly hand Murray a fine for this, because making purposeful contact with an official is an absolute no-no for the NBA, and they’ll likely want to talk to Petraitis to find out what Murray said to him as well. The Hawks already face an uphill battle in Game 5 in Boston, but if Murray were to get something even more than a fine here — and we’ve seen one suspension already this playoffs in the form of Draymond Green — that would be a considerable loss for the Hawks facing a must-win game.

Last week on HBO’s Succession, our miserable little bunch of characters — Roy family members, Waystar Royco employees, and various hangers on — attempted to get over Logan Roy’s death. More than that, they all maneuvered to figure out who was in charge until sealing the planned sale, and although the underlined-and-crossed-out debate still rages for viewers and for Kendall Roy’s inner self, a consensus sort-of materialized.

Kendall’s in charge with backup from Roman and Shiv getting the shaft (after we learned about her pregnancy), and the audience awaited evidence of whether Kendall would step up as a Killer. He proclaimed his intent to “bleed the Swede,” but things didn’t go so well when the group interfaced with Lukas Matsson. In fact, the situation was downright awkward with Matsson referring to the Roy siblings as a “tribute band” and dude-faking everyone out.

Everyone except for Shiv, that is. “F*ck him and his dude bluff,” she declared, right off off the bat. Later, Kendall and Roman’s meetings with Matsson left the deal in a precarious place (and potentially off the table), but Shiv’s conversation with Matsson may have been what led to the late-breaking offer. However, this conversation also included quite a confession from Matsson. He’s been attempting to romance his head of comms, but undoubtedly, he’s been skeeving her out because he sends her his blood. Wait, what?

This could partially be a True Blood callback, sure, but it’s also downright unsettling. Shiv, however, handled the subject calmly and even advised him to cut that sh*t out because it’s bad PR (“Deniability is difficult, given she has so much… of your blood”). It’s kind-of a killer response. And let’s just say that people loved this — the Swede is bleeding himself — even while they recoiled.

There’s something there between Shiv and Matsson, possibly something even vaguely resembling respect, as evidenced by that phone call from Matsson at the end. Shiv also let Kendall and Roman think that they did this deal on their own, but the audience knows better. Hmm.

Usher is among the most revered R&B singers of the past few decades. But, even with his career spanning thirty years, there are still a few things the “Glu” singer has unmarked on his professional bucket list. The musician’s Las Vegas residency is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to showcasing his beloved discography.

During an interview with Access Hollywood, Usher threw his hat in the ring to be the next Super Bowl Halftime Show. When asked if he’d be open to it, Usher replied, “I’d be a fool to say no.”

“I’ve had the opportunity to grace the stage before in support [performing] ‘OMG’ with Will.I.Am, but that was one moment,” said Usher.

Despite a viral tweet claiming the singer didn’t have enough pop tracks to take the Super Bowl stage, Usher dismissed the remarks, saying, “I think I have a catalog that obviously speaks for itself.”

Remaining humble, the entertainer said, “So, to be able to celebrate on that day — it’s obviously about football, but everybody really anticipates the performance. You know? Seeing Michael Jackson perform. Recently, seeing Snoop [Dogg] and [Dr.] Dre and all of them perform. Seeing so many incredible performances like Prince — it has always been kind of a bucket list thing.”

Usher closed by joking, “How do I make it happen?”

Watch the full interview above.

The Memphis Grizzlies dropped Game 3 in Los Angeles to fall behind the Lakers 2-1 in their first round series, making Game 4 on Monday a critical game to avoid finding themselves on the brink of elimination.

While they managed to make the final score somewhat respectable at 111-101, the game was over almost immediately, as the Lakers jumped out to the biggest first quarter lead in NBA Playoffs history at 35-9. Game 3 starting as it did following Dillon Brooks’ comments about LeBron James in which he called James “old” and said he didn’t “respect no one” until they scored 40 on him, thrust Brooks further into the spotlight and in the second quarter he got ejected for hitting LeBron James in the nuts.

It was the second such ejection of the playoffs, as James Harden got tossed from Game 3 in Brooklyn for doing the same thing as an offensive player. Brooks turned down interview requests after the game, but spoke on Sunday after practice and blamed the media and fans for painting him as the villain, believing the perception of him as the reason he got tossed.

The league has stated quite clearly this postseason that a player’s reputation for making dirty plays and picking up flagrants and technicals plays into how they handle punishment, as that was the leading reason for Draymond Green’s suspension from Game 3 after he stomped on Domantas Sabonis in Game 2. So, from that standpoint, Brooks may be right that his perception as a player was factored into the ejection, but he has built that reputation for crossing the line on the court all on his own.

There’s no one else to blame for past instances of hitting opponents below the belt, which has gotten him called out as a dirty player by his peers. Beyond that, there’s no one forcing him to make inflammatory comments — although, I will say, we as the media do enjoy and appreciate it because it makes for terrific content. It’s odd for him to now be upset about the villain label that he and the Grizzlies have previously seemed to embrace.

There’s even an entire profile on Brooks by ESPN from March that starts with this line in the second paragraph: “Dillon Brooks, a man who has earned and embraced the nickname ‘Dillon the Villain,’ is staring into his locker…”

None of this is new to the last few days, but what is new is that the Grizzlies just got blitzed in the first quarter after Brooks’ comments about James and then Brooks got tossed — which some would say was better for Memphis than it was L.A. For Brooks, a 2-1 deficit in the first round isn’t the time for internal reflection and as such we get his I Think You Should Leave moment here where he’s looking for the guy who did this.