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Joseph Cook, 37, is a popular metal detectorist on social media where he shares videos of the many treasures he finds on Florida beaches. But what’s even more engaging than his finds is the incredible excitement he brings to the hobby. It’s like watching Steve Irwin, but with a Florida accent.

Not only is his attitude infectious but he also makes a point of doing good when he finds lost items. He wears a necklace around his neck with multiple rings that he’s found to remind him of his mission to return lost treasures.

Recently, he told SWNS that he dug up “the biggest diamond I ever found” on the beach. “When I first found it I thought it would just be a nickel, but then I dug it up and it was just this big old diamond and platinum ring,” he said.

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Even though the diamond ring appeared to be valuable, he had no intentions of keeping or selling the sparkler. He got right to work posting about it on social media and contacted 100 jewelry stores in the area asking if anyone came in asking for a lost ring.

He kept the ring in his scooter until he had it appraised by a local jeweler and found it was worth about $40,000. “Honestly, I had no clue it was even worth that much. I literally put it in my scooter, I thought maybe a grand, two grand or something,” Cook told Fox News Business. “It was in my scooter for a week until I took it to a jewelry store to get them to look at it.”

Two weeks after finding the ring, Cook received some calls from an unknown number and thought it might be the ring’s owner. The calls were from a husband who claimed it was his wife’s lost engagement ring. His jeweler told him that someone had found a similar ring to the one they had lost.

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The man sent Cook pictures to prove his claim was legitimate.

“They were pretty happy. The wife was on a FaceTime call, and she just said, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe it,’ and then she just started crying,” Cook told The New York Post. Three weeks later, he met up with the couple to return the ring.

Based on a quote from the alleged owner of the ring, it went through a lot before it was found by Cook.

“I am still in shock that my engagement ring spent several months in the ocean, churned up by a hurricane and found by YOU!” the ring’s alleged owner, Tiffany Howard, wrote on Instagram. “Even more shocking is your persistence in finding me to return it!”

“I really wasn’t disappointed that I had to return it,” Cook said. “Karma’s always good, every time I return an item, I find something better, so I’m happy I could give it back.”

Cook’s good deed was a tremendous act of generosity. He could have easily pocketed the ring, pawned it and made himself a nice chunk of change. But instead, he decided to use his treasure-hunting talents for good and he did all that he could to track down the ring’s owner.

When asked if he received a reward he said, “I got nothing.”

However, Cook’s belief in metal detecting karma paid off right after he returned the treasure to its rightful owners when he found another diamond ring on the beach. “Karma is real,” he wrote on Instagram.

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Odds are, seeing a swastika invokes only the most unsavory images of hatred, fascism and flagrant racism—both of Nazis and death camps from WWII, and, sadly, of white supremacy groups of today. There’s good reason that many note it as a physical manifestation of evil.

However, even if it isn’t widely talked about, it’s no secret that this symbol once had a far more sacred and benevolent meaning among the cultures that actually created it a millennia ago. And as the diaspora of minority faiths continues to diversify the West, these cultures are speaking out in an effort to reclaim the swastika’s original intent. It’s a conversation worth having.

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The word “swastika”—or “svastika,” more accurately—comes from Sanskrit, meaning “good fortune” or “wellbeing,” and has been a benevolent staple of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain religions since ancient times. In Hindu religions, it is associated with Lord Ganesh, the deity who removes all obstacles, and is prominently seen throughout India and Indonesia as families gather to celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights.

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It’s also not uncommon to see it marked on a Buddhist temple under the name “manji” or throughout China under the name “wan”—both having auspicious connotations. In Jain faith, a swastika represents the four types of birth that an embodied soul might attain until liberation: heavenly, human, animal, or hellish.

Though Asia has the most long-lasting relationship with the swastika, its influence has appeared throughout Eastern Europe, Rome, northern Africa, South, Central and early North America under different names. For example, Indigenous tribes like the Navajo, Hopi and Passamaquoddy call the symbol ‘whirling logs’, again denoting luck and protection.

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So positive was the swastika that up until the rise of Nazi Germany, the West wholeheartedly adopted the motif for advertising—it could be found on Coca-Cola memorabilia, beer cans, even on Boy and Girl scout badges. It was always a symbol for peace. That is, until it was stolen, reversed and appropriated to enact unspeakable cruelty.

For many who practice these minority faiths in America, using a swastika in religious practice is met with protests demanding removal, or even defaced property after people assume they are seeing neo-Nazi propaganda. It’s understandable that those whose religions actually created the symbol would find these assumptions unfair, along with the notion that this well intentioned practice should be compromised due to it being associated with heinous acts in only a very recent chapter in the symbols enduring legacy. After all, wouldn’t that be another unjust casualty in a needless war?

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On the other hand, there’s no denying that for many, the swastika remains to be a painful symbol of trauma, with no hope of rehabilitation. As New York-based Steven Heller, a design historian and author whose grandfather perished during the Holocaust, said in his book, “Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption?”: “A rose by any other name is a rose. In the end it’s how a symbol affects you visually and emotionally. For many, it creates a visceral impact and that’s a fact.” And with the rise of white nationalists and Holocaust denial, it feels particularly important to remain sensitive and validate the history of those affected by Hitler’s horrors.

One potential solution might be using intentional semantics. Hitler only called the symbol a hakenkreuz, or “hooked cross,” and that was the word used in US newspapers up until the early 1930s—ten years after the symbol was introduced as a Nazi emblem. Differentiating Hitler’s red, white and black hakenkreuz from the colorful, sacred swastika’s of faith groups could help shift the language and understanding around it.

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Even more to the heart of the matter, perhaps this allowance for distinction—and therefore, nuance—invites a deeper understanding between both sides heavily affected by the symbol. For example, Greta Elbogen, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor who lost family members at Auschwitz, found great healing after learning abut the swastika’s original meaning. She told AP News that “hearing that the swastika is beautiful and sacred to so many people is a blessing. It’s time to let go of the past and look to the future.”

Obviously, there’s no easy fix here. Each perspective has a compelling reason to feel the way they do, and a lot of it comes from a valid desire to not see their history erased. The real obstacle is being able to have these types of conversations which honor both concerns without demonizing. As the perverted use of the swastika has shown us, extreme bias breeds hate, and hate is dangerous. The key to moving forward, it feels pretty safe to say, will be compassion.

Beabadoobee is having a big year, what with the release of her new album Beatopia and her taking it on the road on a massive tour alongside Lowertown. Though she’s still out doing shows, the musician just stopped by NPR’s office to do a Tiny Desk performance.

The stripped-down session is enchanting and shows off the natural beauty of Bea’s vocals. She sang “See You Soon,” “The Perfect Pair,” “Ripples,” and “Glue.” There’s even a gorgeous string section to make the songs even more sprawling and bright.

Upon releasing the song “See You Soon,” Bea said about the track, “I feel like the idea behind ‘See You Soon’ is that it’s meant to make you feel like you’re tripping on shrooms. Or, I feel like the chorus especially, I want it to sound like a breath of fresh air, like a realization of some sort. I wrote it during a time where I was away a lot and making a lot of mistakes and doing a lot of things to help me figure a lot of stuff out. And I feel like I found the importance of doing that really, it was really therapeutic because it made me appreciate everything around me so much more.”

Watch her Tiny Desk performance above.

Despite his recently reduced fortune, it looks like Kanye West will still be paying Kim Kardashian a king’s ransom in child support for their four children. According to TMZ, the former couple has settled their divorce at long last, hashing out the details of both their belongings and child-rearing. While the kids will remain with Kim, court documents show that they will have “equal access” to them, while Kanye will be paying $200,000 a month, in addition to half the costs for their education and security.

Meanwhile, neither party will pay the other spousal support and their assets will be divided according to their prenuptial agreement. They’ve also agreed to the third-party mediation of disputes, which TMZ posits heavily favors Kim, given Kanye’s erratic behavior. Over the course of their divorce proceedings, Kanye hired six different lawyers while avoiding depositions and meetings, apparently in an effort to either win Kim over or spite her for asking for a divorce in the first place. However, with another deposition looming and prefacing a potential court trial, it looks like Kanye opted to play along with at least one former partner.

Kanye has been a vocal antagonist of a number of parties since early this year including Kim, her former boyfriend Pete Davidson, Adidas, Gap, and Jewish people. All of this led to his losing his billionaire status as his lucrative business partnerships collapsed in the wake of his antisemitic commentary. Meanwhile, Kim petitioned a court to legally end their marriage early and won; the settlement was just to clear up their business dealings and child custody.

There’s probably a good reason why Netflix decided it wouldn’t give Knives Out: A Glass Onion Mystery a nice, long, profitable run in movie theaters. (Unless there isn’t.) Instead, it got an under-advertised one-week engagement in only about 700 theaters. Even that proved successful, with the sequel opening in third place with the highest per-screen-average by far. It’s almost as though people genuinely want to see it, in theaters, in a crowd of strangers delighting to its many twists and turns. Well, Netflix has noted the enthusiasm and they’re springing into action: They’re considering maybe re-releasing it in theaters, after it’s dropped on streaming, which won’t happen for another month.

A new report by Variety on the film’s curious release strategy, which saw theater owners — recognizing, rightly, that Hollywood didn’t make enough product for what has traditionally been one of the biggest moviegoing weekends — begging Netflix to give the film a proper release. They met them less than halfway, agreeing to a comparatively smaller release for only seven days. The result: a $15 million haul, which could have been much, much larger. One expert speculates that with “a strong marketing campaign and a big, wide release, the sequel would have opened in the low $30 million domestically and made $300 million worldwide.”

What’s the end game here? As the report notes, Netflix is “in the business of growing its subscriber base, not selling movie tickets.” They also insist that people would rather watch movies at home. Instead, they see the brief theatrical releases they’ve granted to a number of their films — including three of this season’s big offerings, Blonde, Bardo, and White Noise — more as advertisements for their ultimate destination on Netflix.

Or, considering they were bleeding out subscribers earlier this year, maybe they’re hoping the word-of-mouth for Glass Onion will get people to re-subscribe lest they be left out.

But for now, if you didn’t catch the acclaimed Glass Onion in theaters over the last week, you’re gonna have to wait. Then again, if you want to see it in a crowd, the old-fashioned way, that might be an option.

(Via Variety)

Last year, SNL finally found their Donald Trump. (No offense, Alec Baldwin.) James Austin Johnson came to fame in part because he does arguably the most spot-on impersonation of the world’s most famous failed blogger. But he has more than one weapon in his arsenal. On a recent Tonight Show appearance, Johnson busted out his Trump and his Biden. But he also proved he’s as good doing them as he is doing maybe folk music’s most distinctive voice.

Host Jimmy Fallon recalled meeting Johnson for the first time, where Johnson teased that he was also very good at Bob Dylan. And indeed he is. Just as Dylan’s sound has changed over the decades, so has his voice. Johnson chose only four eras to impersonate, and because it’s the holidays, he did him doing “Jingle Bells,” because who wouldn’t want to hear Robert Zimmerman speak-singing or crooning Christmas carols.

Johnson started with the most famous era of Dylan: his nasal-voiced Greenwich village period. Then he moved onto the brief time where he tried to be a straight-up singer: the “Lay Lady Lay”/Nashville Skyline era. From there he moved onto the mid-‘70s “Rolling Thunder” tour — Johnson’s “favorite Dylan,” when he’s “unintelligible” and “just screaming.” He concludes with the late ‘90s, the time of Time out of Mind and his Victoria’s Secret commercial, when, Johnson says, he’s “singing like a Disney vulture” or “like he crawled out of a French crypt.”

It’s amazing stuff, proof that Johnson’s no one-trick pony. You can watch his Tonight Show appearance in the video above; the Dylan business begins around the 5:53 mark. And why not?

You can watch one of his earliest triumphs — “fireworks illegal in Pasadena” — below.

As the year comes to a close, music fans are looking back to see what songs, artists, and albums were their favorites via digital platforms like Apple Music Replay, Instafest, and Spotify Wrapped. Still, while those apps are great for seeing what each of us listened to personally, you might be curious about what we listened to collectively. Fortunately, those answers are also readily available thanks to Billboard, which collected lists of all the new albums and songs that reached No. 1 status on their respective charts (although they don’t come with a nifty, shareable graphic, sadly).

So, what were all the new songs that reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100?

Leading off the year was the Encanto soundtrack standout “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” which had families singing along from the moment the movie dropped on Disney Plus — even if some parents had to do so reluctantly. Next, Glass Animals’ “Heat Waves” — a sleeper hit from June 2020 — held the top spot for five weeks and broke the record for the longest charting song on the Hot 100 of all time at 91 weeks. Glass Animals were booted by British superstar Harry Styles, whose “As It Was” became an inescapable hit, spending a whopping 15 weeks at No. 1.

Jack Harlow’s “First Class,” Future’s “Wait For U,” and Drake’s “Jimmy Cooks” all took turns at the top spot before being swept away in the splash from Lizzo’s “About Damn Time,” which held on for two weeks. That was just long enough to get pushed aside by Beyonce’s comeback single “Break My Soul,” which ceded the peak to Nicki Minaj’s “Super Freaky Girl.” Steve Lacy’s surprise hit “Bad Habit” took over for three weeks in October before being replaced by Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ gender-bending “Unholy.”

But for the last few weeks, there’s been one reigning queen: Taylor Swift, who has dominated all November with the ubiquitous TikTok fave “Anti-Hero.” Now, Mariah Carey, who has already returned to the Hot 100 with her reliable holiday mainstay “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” stands a pretty decent chance of taking the top spot after doing so every December for an impressive three years running. Will she make it four? If she doesn’t, blame Taylor Swift. She’s the problem.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

It’s common knowledge that Amy Poehler is good at both hosting shows and making things, mostly because she hosted a show called Making It. We also know that Maya Rudolph has a show called Baking It, where a bunch of grandmothers judge contestants baked goods, and her former host Andy Samberg is busy doing something else. So the only logical next step here would be for Poehler to move from Making It to Baking It and fire Andy Samberg so that she and Rudolph can finally host together for the first time. This all makes sense if you don’t think about it too much!

The two Saturday Night Live alums will reunite for season two of Baking It, and in true Maya and Amy fashion, the duo has prepared a song to hype up the season, which will feature a new set of contestants facing off against each other in various food-related challenges for a ton of money. Also, unlike most boring baking shows with rude professional judges, again, the judges on Baking It consists of just a bunch of very critical grandmothers. Please listen to their cute little song below:

Season two will also include a Christmas special that will air on December 12th at 8 pm and feature all of your favorite holiday NBC-adjacent celebrities like Fred Armisen and Kristen Bell. Surely Andy Sandberg feels left out now! Maybe he can pitch a new show called Raking It about various lawn care tips, or Banking It where he robs banks. There is still time to workshop it.

Baking It will stream weekly on Peacock beginning on Dec. 12.

(Via People)

This story originally appeared on 03.02.17

Did you know that in addition to being a beloved author of children’s books, Dr. Seuss wrote more than 400 political cartoons during World War II?

Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, gifted the world with stories like “The Cat in the Hat,” “The Lorax,” “Green Eggs and Ham,” and dozens of other childhood classics until his death in 1991.

In recent years, however, it’s some of his lesser known works from the 1940s that have gained attention.

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As World War II was slowly moving toward a reality, Seuss began penning cartoons for PM, a liberal publication, frequently pushing back against the “America First” mentality of U.S. isolationists opposed to U.S. involvement in the war.

So when candidate Donald Trump adopted “Make America Great Again” as his campaign slogan, echoing cries of “America First” — the rallying call for an anti-Semitic and Nazi-appeasing segment of the wartime U.S. population — some of Seuss’ cartoons began to find new relevance more than 70 years after first being published.

Like this one, which depicts a mother reading a book titled “Adolf the Wolf” to children while wearing an “America First” shirt, explaining that because the wolf’s victims were foreign children, it didn’t really matter that the wolf ate them — a clear parallel to the conflicting approaches to our modern refugee crisis.

“And the Wolf chewed up the children and spit out their bones … but those were Foreign Children and it really didn’t matter.”

“A. Hitler taxidermist”

“We Clams Can’t Be Too Careful.”

“The old Family bath tub is plenty safe for me!”

Suess’s other comics took aim at overarching issues like anti-Semitism, racial inequality, and political obstructionism — all issues still relevant today.

To be sure, the comics were far from perfect and reflected some ugly stereotypes of their own. For instance, many of his cartoons amplified some pretty awful impressions of Japanese citizens and Japanese-Americans. And while it’s easy to chalk that up as being simply an element of the time, that type of anti-Japanese sentiment helped fuel the racism and paranoia that eventually led to Japanese internment.

“Only God can make a tree to furnish sport for you and me!”

“Stop all U.S. progress.”

“The Guy Who Makes a Mock of Democracy.”

“Relax, Sam, I assure you the express turns off right here!”

If the world of Dr. Seuss can teach us anything, it’s that history is our best defense against modern tyranny.

Well, that, and the fact that Americans will always love goofy hats:

“We Always Were Suckers for Ridiculous Hats.”

See more of Seuss’ wartime comics at the University of California San Diego Library’s website.

This article originally appeared on 03.09.16. It has been lightly edited.

For many gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender people, one of the most personal (and sometimes scary) experiences they’ll go through is the “coming out” process.

Coming out means telling others of your status as an LGBTQ person. As society is becoming more accepting of people’s sexual orientation and gender identity, coming out is getting easier all the time. Even so, for many, it’s still a carefully calculated process that involves planning who, how, and when to tell people in their lives.

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In 2016, writer and director Lilly Wachowski — known as co-creator of “The Matrix” series of films, “Jupiter Ascending,” and “Sense8” — came out publicly as transgender.

It’s so great that Lilly came to that realization about herself and started living more authentically. In 2012, her sister Lana also came out as trans. What’s not cool about this is the fact that Lilly was forced to out herself, in a letter she chose to share with The Windy City Times, after a reporter from The Daily Mail threatened to do it without her permission.

If someone trusts you with news that they’re trans, there are a few key do’s and don’ts you should follow — and telling a journalist definitely falls under “don’t.”

As a transgender person, one of the most common questions I get from strangers is: “My friend or family member recently told me that they’re transgender. How can I support them?”

Below are five tips I give people who are thoughtful enough to ask.

1. Let them know they have your support.

If you’re asking this question (or taking the time to look up an article on the subject), you’re already on the right path. It’s important to make sure your friend knows you’re in their corner, as they’re probably afraid of how others in their lives will react. A simple “If you need anything, I’m here for you” can go a long way.

2. Respect their identity, name, and pronouns.

Ask questions like “What are your pronouns?” and “How would you like me to refer to you in private and when we’re around people who may not know you’re transitioning?”

If somebody is just starting to come out to others, odds are that there are still some people who don’t know and might still use old names and pronouns. Asking how you should react in those situations will help you avoid outing your friend to others who don’t yet know.

3. Educate yourself — don’t rely on your friend to educate you.

There are so many great resources on how to understand trans issues. While your friend may be happy to answer those initial personal questions about things like names and pronouns, they might become overwhelmed if you start treating them as a walking encyclopedia of all things trans.

I recommend PFLAG’s amazing resource “Our Trans Loved Ones: Questions and Answers for Parents, Families, and Friends of People who are Transgender and Gender Expansive.” The 102-page guide is a comprehensive piece of “Trans 101” literature that’s bound to answer some of your questions (complete with some more thorough do’s and don’ts).

4. Don’t gossip about them or “out” them to others.

The only people you should be discussing your friend’s gender with are people they’ve given you explicit permission to do so with. Going behind their back and outing them to someone they may not yet be ready to tell is not only a huge betrayal of their trust, but it could even put them in physical danger.

On top of that, when someone is hearing this news from a secondhand source (that is, you), some of the important details may get lost in translation, which get further garbled if this person tells someone else — it eventually turns into a game of telephone, and no one wants that.

A vigil for slain transgender woman Islan Nettles at Jackie Robinson Park in Harlem in 2013. Nettles was severely beaten after being approached on the street by a group of men and later died of her injuries.

5. Understand that this is not about you and your feelings.

It’s OK to feel confused, and it’s OK to not immediately “get it.” Those feelings are completely valid, but demanding to know why your friend didn’t tell you sooner (they were probably wrestling with this themselves for quite some time) or saying you feel betrayed will only hurt them during an extremely vulnerable time in their life.

Nothing you did “made” your friend trans, and it’s probably less that they were hiding something from you and more that they were hiding this reality from themselves.

Whether someone is a Hollywood director or a friend from high school, we should all have the right to come out at our own pace and in our own way.

Maybe years from now the aspect that makes this seem like such juicy gossip will fade and trans people won’t have to worry about being forcibly outed. Maybe years from now trans people won’t need to fear that coming out will be met with job loss, homelessness, or physical harm. Until then, it’s important that those of us who care for our trans friends and family members do what we can do show we’re there for them.