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UK rapper Little Simz is finally coming (back) to America after financial issues derailed her last planned tour, forcing her to reschedule it. Simz had planned to tour North America last spring after releasing her critically acclaimed album Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, but as an independent artist, the tour would have left her in debt. “As much as this pains me to not see you at this time, I’m just not able to put myself through that mental stress,” she wrote at the time.

In the year since, the Mercury Prize winner put out another critically hailed project, No Thank You, and toured Europe, resulting in the On Stage Off Stage short film. Apparently, that’s put her in a better space, allowing her to announce a 10-date slate kicking off in Chicago on September 20 and hitting Atlanta, LA, and New York. Tickets go on sale beginning Thursday, April 13 at 10 am local time. Find more information here.

09/20 – Chicago, IL @ The Riviera Theatre
09/24 – Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade (Heaven)
09/27 – Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater
09/28 – Seattle, WA @ Showbox SoDo
09/29 – Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom
10/3 – Los Angeles, CA @ The NOVO
10/8 – Toronto, ON @ HISTORY
10/9 – Montreal, QC @ MTELUS
10/11 – Silver Spring, MD @ The Fillmore Silver Spring
10/13 – New York, NY @ Terminal 5

As the WNBA and women’s basketball in general grow in stature, the areas in which the league’s business operations need to make sizable leaps become increasingly apparent.

Travel is among the biggest, as teams still fly commercial from game to game, with players having to pay for any upgrades they want for increased leg room and space. Recently, Joe Tsai paid for the New York Liberty to have charter flights to games, and was subsequently fined $500,000, leading to quite the uproar from players and fans wondering why teams were being punished for wanting to spend to create better conditions for their players.

Most recently, the Sparks spent a night in the airport after a game in D.C. after a flight was cancelled and there were not open hotel rooms, leading to further outcry over the travel situations players are often put in. The WNBA heard that and will be taking on the cost as a league to charter flights for teams that play on back-to-backs during the regular season, and throughout the playoffs in 2023. That is a positive step, but one that might not be replicable for the future, as this year there are only five back-to-backs on the schedule. The 2024 season will be much more condensed due to the Paris Olympics, with WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert telling the Associated Press that “next year, we can’t do all of them,” with regards to back-to-backs.

Englebert hopes a new media deal can eventually cover the cost of chartering flights, but the current cost for the full season would be $25 million, per the AP, which the league can’t cover. What is maybe most frustrating is the cost per team to charter flights for a full season would be $2 million, which for most any professional sports franchise would be a drop in the buckets and explains why owners like Tsai and Mark Davis, who came to the WNBA having already owned men’s sports teams, have pushed to pay for the charter flights themselves.

To charter for the whole season the estimated cost per franchise would be approximately $2 million. Air travel expenses currently for each team is about $150,000, according to two people familiar with the costs. The people spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly address the issue.

Finding a way to meet that cost, plus paying players more as top stars in college make more now in NIL than they would in a rookie salary in the WNBA, has to be a top priority for the league in coming years if they are to continue this growth. A lot of the onus falls on owners being willing to spend more in the short-term, recognizing how that will benefit their long-term investment. Some see that already, but it’s clear the league as a whole is not ready to make that leap.

For now, we’ll get a half measure in the form of playoff charters and a handful for back-to-backs this season. It’s a start, but one the league has to be able to build on for 2024, because taking a step back in terms of travel conditions would only look worse.

I’m pretty sure if you’ve lived through the 90s, you know the soul-crushing disappointment of realizing you’ve lost your camera. You know, the disposable camera that you had to crank the little spinny wheel on so you could snap the next picture. That trip to Disney—gone. Your sister’s bat mitzvah—poof.

It was a frustrating reality for way too many of us, but with the invention of the digital camera, which came with a fancy wrist strap, we could count on our memories being safe. Unless you were going tubing on the river after your friend’s wedding and hoping to snap some cool shots of everyone relaxing. Oh, and unless your name is Coral Amayi.

Amayi was floating in the Animas River with some friends in 2010 when she fell off of her tube and into the water, where her camera decided to take up residence for 13 years. She had just taken snapshots at her friend’s wedding, so the memory card on her camera held a lot of important memories. Amayi was expectedly crushed.

“When I got to shore, the small cord that attached the camera to the lanyard and floatation device had broken,” Amayi told Today.com. “I walked back to my boyfriend’s house and was uncontrollably crying.”

It really stings to lose memories that are important to you and the bottom of the river is a place lost items are nearly guaranteed to never reemerge. Except, Amayi did get her photos back. It took 13 years, but through random happenstance, a fisherman found the old digital camera. And the best part is, the memory card was still intact and readable.

Spencer Greiner found the missing camera in the river on March 14, and after investigating the memory card, he decided to post the photos on Facebook in hopes of finding the owner.

“I was walking along and saw it sticking out of the sand,” Greiner told Denver’s KDVR. “It was in rough shape, so I really didn’t have any hopes of getting anything off of it, I was just planning to throw it away, and then curiosity got the best of me, and I had to see what was on it.”

“I was like ‘yeah, this is probably not going to work at all,’” Greiner explained to KDVR. “But I plugged it into the computer, and it read immediately and I was like ‘oh cool, let’s see what sort of treasures we’re going to find on this memory card.’”

After posting the pictures in a Durango Facebook group, Greiner actually got a fairly quick response to his list of questions that accompanied the photos. The groom from the 2010 wedding identified himself, and his wife then got in touch with the owner of the camera.

Thanks to Greiner’s detective skills and determination, Amayi was reunited with the long-lost photos of a 22-year-old version of herself. With the condition the camera was in when it was found, it’s a miracle anything at all was recovered.

You can see Greiner open up the silt-filled camera below:

We live in a world where there is more art to consume than ever. There’s no shortage of musical mashups, digital paintings, song covers, cosplay videos, and so on and on and on and on. While having visual and audio exposure to various forms of art is lovely, when we only experience art through an online platform, we sometimes sacrifice that powerful feeling of immersion, of being able to come face to face with a creation and truly be moved by an artist’s message. There’s a subtle, yet undeniable change that happens both internally and externally when you step into something with the intention to inspire. Honestly, it’s the closest thing to real world alchemy that we’ve got.

Agnes Denes might not be a name that regularly comes up on your feed, but she’s made an entire career out of creating art that provides this kind of visceral, profound effect.

Since the late 1960s, Denes has been a pioneer for environmental activism through art, exploring our relationship to the Earth through epically large-scale creations that mimic natural splendors of nature. And what really makes her work unique, even among other similar artists, is that it’s more than a call to action—there’s actual restoration built into the process.

The most brilliant example of this is her grandest work of all, ”Tree Mountain,” which is both artwork and the first ever human-made virgin forest. Yep, she designed a giant, living, breathing thing. Denes doesn’t just praise Mother Nature in her creations…she channels her.

The work’s full title, “Tree Mountain—A Living Time Capsule—11,000 Trees, 11,000 People, 400 Years,” gives a glimpse into the huge scope and scale of the project. Built at the site of an abandoned mine in Ylöjärvi, Finland, “Tree Mountain” measures 1,378 feet long, 886 feet wide, and 125 feet tall, and is made up of thousands of trees planted in a formation reminiscent of the golden ratio.

Though Denes first came up with the concept in 1984, it wouldn’t become an official project until 1992. But once it was backed by the United Nations and the Finnish government, volunteers from around the world came together to help. Anyone who planted a tree received a certificate that not only named them as the owner of the tree they planted but bestowed ownership of the tree to that person’s descendants up to 400 years in the future.

Even granting ownership of the trees is part of the project’s message. As Denes has stated, “Anything you put into the world you become responsible for…my hope is they keep [Tree Mountain] going, for the centuries.”

Truly, at the core of all of Denes’ work is a commitment to a better future for the planet.

“The trees must outlive the present era and, by surviving, carry our concepts into an unknown time in the future. If civilization as we know it ends or changes, there will be a reminder in the form of a strange forest for our descendants to ponder. They may reflect on an undertaking that did not serve personal needs but the common good and the highest ideals of humanity and its environment while benefiting future generations.”

Sometimes it really helps to have specific words to describe difficult experiences. Labels have their limitations, of course, but they can help prevent someone from feeling further isolated by a negative circumstance. After all, if there’s a specific phrase, analogy, etc. for what you’re going through or have gone through, then it can’t be all that uncommon. And if there are words to describe it, then there might be words to help navigate through it as well.

This is why hypnotherapist Judy Lee is sharing a term that she learned in grad school, one that changed her life and one she thinks can help others—particularly those who grew up in an abusive or unstable environment.

As Lee explains in a now-viral TikTok video, siblings who grew up in the same unsafe household often have starkly different reactions. One tends to be more resilient, while the other is more sensitive. This sensitivity manifests not only emotionally, but with certain sounds, foods (i.e allergies), certain fabrics…you get it.

“There always seems to be that sibling that does really well and the sibling that doesn’t do very well in an abusive environment,” Lee says in the video.

These are “dandelion children” and “orchid children,” respectively.

The terms, coined by pediatrician Thomas Boyce and psychologist Bruce J. Ellis, are fairly straightforward. As the names suggest, dandelion children are able to survive and even thrive under whatever circumstances befall them. Orchid children, on the other hand, wilt and wither without a good deal of nurturing, much like the orchid flower itself.

“At first glance, it seems that one is much more preferable than the other,” Lee says, referring to the dandelion child’s apparent benefits.

@theorchidchild why some siblings raised in the same traumatic environment can react differently #orchidchild #traumatok #wellnessjourney #emotionalintelligence #hypnotherapy #dandelionchild #developmentalpsychology #ancestralhealing ♬ Lift Me Up – From Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – Music From and Inspired By – Rihanna

But as she explained, there is also evidence suggesting that if “an orchid child is removed from that abusive environment and grows up and is then replaced into a nurturing and nourishing environment, they can actually surpass their dandelion counterparts.”

Really, Lee’s point isn’t to suggest that one type is better than the other. It’s moreso to encourage folks who might classify themselves as orchids to “find a beautiful community to be a part of.”

She should know—she’s a thriving orchid child herself.

As Lee revealed in an interview with Buzzfeed, she had harbored resentment against her dandelion sister, who seemingly came out of their shared traumatic childhood unscathed. Highly successful, even. Lee, on the other hand, battled with both mental and chronic physical illness.

However, learning about these terms helped Lee understand her and her sister’s unique paths and strengths. It even gave her the name of her healing practice, The Orchid Child.

Since sharing her TikTok, Lee has been flooded with comments from people who felt like the terms validated their own experiences.

“My sister is an orchid and I am a dandelion. She suffered at my parent’s house. She is in a safe and happy marriage now, watching her thrive is amazing,” one person wrote.

“Cries in Orchid,” wrote another.” But also thank you for the glimmer at the end. It’s up to me who I’m around now.”

As Lee also pointed out to Buzzfeed, in reality, most children fall somewhere on the spectrum between orchid and dandelion. In fact, there’s a third term, “tulip child,” to describe a kid who falls somewhere in between the extremes. All in all these terms help to provide some nuanced context, rather than give a hard-and-fast diagnosis.

Here’s to all the dandelions, orchids and tulips out there. No matter how your upbringing caused you to grow, you’re all valuable parts of the bouquet.

If you’d like even more content from The Orchid Child, you can follow her on TikTok here.

When rescuers pulled a 2-month-old baby from the rubble of Turkey’s devastating earthquake in February 2023, onlookers cheered and cried. The infant had survived being buried for 128 hours—nearly five days—and was found in remarkably good health. With her parents presumed to be among the 50,000 people killed by the earthquake and with no knowledge of her family, she was taken into the care of medical authorities. They gave her the name Gizem, which means “Mystery” in Turkish.

However, one big mystery has been solved, and it’s one that brings this story to a happier ending. The baby’s mother has been found alive, and the two have been reunited after 54 days of separation.

Reuters reports that the baby’s real name is Vetin, and her mother, Yasemin Begdas, is being treated in a hospital in the city of Adana. Vetin had initially been taken to a hospital in Adana, but after she was found to be in good health, she was flown by presidential plane to be cared for by the country’s family ministry in Ankara.

According to Al-Jazeera, Family and Social Services Minister Derya Yanik helped reunite the mother and baby after a DNA proved their relationship.

“One of the most priceless tasks in the world is reuniting a mother with her child,” said Yanik. “Being a part of that happiness meant a lot to us as well.”

Yanik shared a video of baby Vetin being transported and reunited with her mother on Twitter:

u201c54 gu00fcnlu00fck hasret sona erdi.ud83dude0annEnkaz altu0131ndan 128 saat sonra kurtulan, hemu015firelerimizin Gizem Bebek ismini koyduu011fu Vetin Begdau015f 54 gu00fcn sonra annesine kavuu015ftu.nnVetin artu0131k bizim de bebeu011fimiz. nnBakanlu0131k olarak desteu011fimiz her zaman yanu0131nda olacak.u201d

— Derya Yanu0131k (@Derya Yanu0131k)
1680508794

“Vetin is now our baby, too,” the translated tweet reads. “As the Ministry, our support will always be with you.”

Sadly, Vetin’s father and two brothers were killed in the earthquake, making the mother-baby pair the only surviving members of their immediate family. Theirs is a tragic and miraculous story of loss and survival, but now at least they are where a mother and baby should be—together—as they recover from their life-changing experiences.

The first thing you notice after walking through the warp pipe is how colorful everything is. It’s overwhelming — the red of the Piranha Plants, the yellow of the Question Blocks, the green of the adorable animatronic Yoshi, the ominous silver of Bowser’s Castle — but you’re not overwhelmed. You feel joy.

You feel joy all throughout Universal Studios’ Super Nintendo World, whether you’re eating the Fire Flower Spaghetti & Meatballs while surrounded by digital Toads at the Toadstool Cafe, or buying a Chef Toad toy (I really like Toad, now in Chef form) at the 1-UP Factory, or walking the incredible queue of Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge. The ride itself could use some fine-tuning, but whatever, I still found smiling while driving on (and off) Rainbow Road.

I found myself smiling throughout The Super Mario Bros. Movie, too. It’s not Best Animated Feature-worthy or anything, and as far as video game adaptations in 2023 go, I’ll stick with The Last of Us. But it was nice to see all my friends (Peach, Shyguy, Toad) visualized on the big screen. It’s good to see them on bath products, LEGOs, and bottles of Truff hot sauces, too. I realize this makes me sound like a corporate shill. I’m not, but if Nintendo wants to pay me in gold coins, my email address is easier to find than a Cheep-Cheep in World 2-2. My fondness for the #brand comes from my love for the characters that dates back decades, but this is no case of unnecessary nostalgia.

The movie and the theme park land, and the happiness that they bring, only exist because of the video games. And Nintendo has kept the quality of the series remarkably high. At least one Mario masterpiece has been released every decade since Jumpman was introduced in 1981’s Donkey Kong. The 1980s: Super Mario Bros. (among others). The 1990s: Super Mario Bros. 3 (in the United States), Super Mario World, and Super Mario 64. The 2000s: Super Mario Galaxy. The 2010s: Super Mario Odyssey. And that leaves out the Mario Kart and Mario Party series, the arguably superior Super Mario Galaxy sequel, and even the Mario + Rabbids games are better than they have any right being. It’s not quite “all bangers, all the time,” but it’s close. That consistency has kept Mario relevant through the generations.

It also helps that you don’t have to make excuses for your love of Mario. Being a fan of Harry Potter, for instance, in the 2020s seems… complicated. No one is getting a Wario tattoo removed from their body (unless it was after a drunken night; in the stone-cold-sober morning, you regret not getting Pauline on your lower back). A case could even be made that no modern media franchise has brought more joy, more consistently, with less controversy, than Mario. I will not be the one to make this case, because I don’t want toxic Star Wars fans yelling at me. But you’re welcome to do so in your free time. Unless you’d rather play Super Mario 3D World instead. I wouldn’t blame you.

When asked about the ever-present popularity of Mario, Shigeru Miyamoto, the character’s creator, told NPR, “You know, before, when I was asked this question, I thought that it’s perhaps because the game sold well. And a lot of people have this experience of playing this game and playing it over and over, that it becomes commonplace for them.” He feels different now, however. “Mario is kind of like your avatar or the person that represents you in this world. And that experience is, you know, because it’s been around for so long, an experience that can be shared multi-generations, you know? A father and their children can share that experience,” he explained. Mario, as a franchise, as a character, as a spokesperson for Italian plumbers, transcends nostalgia. The things you appreciate about Mario as a child are different from what you value as an adult, but what matters is the appreciation itself.

When I was a kid, Jumanji was one of my favorite movies. I’m sure if I re-watched it now, I would still enjoy it, but it wouldn’t be the same. I would find the flaws. I saw Jumanji at the right time, which is the same reason why people think The Sandlot is a classic (I’m sorry but it’s fine). Compare that to Mario, which has no “right time.” Any time is the right time for Mario.

The Minnesota Timberwolves beat the New Orleans Pelicans on Sunday afternoon to secure the 8-seed in the West and give themselves two cracks at a playoff spot via the play-in tournament.

Their first chance will come in Los Angeles on Tuesday night when they face the Lakers for the 7-seed, but they will make that trip without one of their stars. Rudy Gobert will not be with the team in L.A. as the organization has suspended Gobert one game after he got into an altercation on the bench with Kyle Anderson and threw a punch at Anderson’s chest.

The altercation continued in the locker room, with Anderson reportedly telling Gobert “I’ll knock your ass out,” and tensions appeared to be running very high in Minnesota. After that — and the loss of Jaden McDaniels to a fractured hand after he punched a wall — the Wolves still managed to come back from a double-digit deficit to win the game on the backs of tremendous performances from Karl-Anthony Towns and Anthony Edwards. They’ll be banking heavily on those two performing well once again on Tuesday night in L.A. if they are to have any chance of taking down the suddenly red-hot Lakers. Losing Gobert for the game is not insignificant, but they’ve proven they can win without him and if they manage to do so again to make the playoffs, you can be sure the chatter about Gobert’s impact in big games will not get any quieter.

An otherwise perfectly good weekend was ruined when Entertainment Tonight exclusively reported that Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn broke up after six-plus years together.

Neither Swift nor Alwyn have publicly addressed whether there’s validity to their updated relationship status, but People published a new report on Monday, April 10, with more insight into what could have gone wrong.

The reported breakup happened “a few weeks ago,” and an unnamed source described as close to Alwyn and Swift told the publication their split was “largely caused” by “differences in their personalities” because they “weren’t the right fit for one another.”

“They’ve had rough patches before and always worked things out, so friends thought they would take some time apart but eventually come back together,” the source said, additionally noting, “They had plenty in common and fell in love in a safe bubble while she was retreating from the world during Reputation. Then the pandemic hit, and they were locked down together and able to continue growing their relationship in this insulated way. But he didn’t really ‘know’ her yet outside of that bubble.”

Lil Uzi Vert is almost as well known for their outrageous style and tattoos as they are for their infectious hit records like “Futsal Shuffle” and “Just Wanna Rock.” For a while, Uzi walked around with a massive pink diamond in the middle of their forehead, although it kept getting yanked out, prompting Uzi to let the spot heal up.

Still, that blank canvas wasn’t going unused; Uzi debuted a new forehead piercing in a video posted by a fan on social media. However, you might not immediately notice it thanks to Uzi’s other new piercing, which also gets prominently displayed in the video. This one just might push the boundaries of good taste — sorry, I’m not sorry. The tattoo is on Uzi’s tongue, and you want me NOT to write a pun about it? This might not be the site for you, buddy.

As you can see, the new tat fits pretty neatly into Uzi’s well-established motif of provocative/borderline sacrilegious imagery and fascination with occult iconography. The inverted cross, also referred to as the “Cross of Saint Peter” or “Petrine Cross,” was originally a traditionally Catholic symbol associated with the martyrdom of Peter the Apostle. However, it was later coopted occult leaders and became more commonly recognized as a satanic symbol — which Uzi has no problem displaying.

He might not beat the Satanist allegations anytime soon thanks to this new tat, but with his Pink Tape being finalized, fans will likely be too busy with new music to do much witch-hunting.

Lil Uzi Vert is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.