GoneTrending

Drake and 21 Savage’s rollout for their joint project Her Loss has been immaculate so far, as they lampoon all the standards of a traditional album promotion cycle. Instead of appearing on a magazine cover, they mocked up their own; rather than doing all the expected radio interviews, they faked a sitdown with Howard Stern; and while NPR Music seems open to the idea of them doing a Tiny Desk Concert, they were content to offer a cleverly-produced parody snippet, getting the initial rush of excitement, as well as follow-up round of appreciation for the well-executed troll.

With all that said, it can make it a little hard to know what parts of the rollout to believe. For instance, the album cover has been roasted by fans — but who’s to say it’s the real album cover? Likewise, they just shared what looks to be the official tracklist on social media, but considering they were joking about so many other aspects of a traditional rollout, it’s hard to tell whether it’s authentic or not. One thing is for sure, though; the project itself better turn out to be real — especially after being delayed a week — or all the good-humored indulgence could turn into sour grapes in a hurry.

Her Loss is (supposedly) out tonight at midnight via OVO and Slaughter Gang. Stay tuned.

This article originally appeared on 07.29.21

Software developer Angie Jones’ recent girls trip revealed that America still has a long way to go when it comes to race.

To most, that’s not surprising. But what’s unique is how the specific experience Jones and her friends went through revealed the pervasive way systemic racism still runs through our culture.

Jones is the Senior Director of Developer Relations at Applitools, holds 26 patented inventions in the United States of America and Japan, and is an IBM Master Inventor.

On July 27, she tweeted about a flight she took with nine other Black women and they all sat in first class. “People literally could not process how it was possible,” she wrote. “Staff tried to send us to regular lines. Passengers made snide remarks. One guy even yelled ‘are they a higher class of people than I am?!'”

this weekend I went on a girls trip. 10 Black women flying first class. People literally could not process how it was possible. nnStaff tried to send us to regular lines. Passengers made snide remarks. One guy even yelled “are they a higher class of people than I am?!”nnStay mad.

— Angie Jones (@Angie Jones)
1627433914

Jones and her friends were the targets of racism that ranged from the seemingly unconscious — people who assumed that Black people don’t sit in first class — to the blatant — those who were seriously bothered that Black people were being treated as having a higher status.

It’s interesting that she didn’t mention anyone saying “good for you” for succeeding in a world that often holds people of color back. Instead, she was greeted with incredulity and jealous rage.

There are a lot of white people who can’t stand the idea of a Black person being elevated above them. It’s disturbing that in 2021 there are still some who will admit it publicly.

Jones’ tweets inspired a lot of people to share their stories about the racism they’ve experienced while flying first class.

Jones’ tweets also angered some people to the point that they denied her story. To which she responded, “To those saying I’m lying, you’re a huge part of the problem,” she wrote. “You tell yourself a notable person is lying (for what reason, I cannot figure out) before you believe there are actual racists in…America.”

pic.twitter.com/EkhqeU58yg

— Mr. Skilling (@Mr. Skilling)
1627571128

One Twitter user came up with the perfect retort to the person who asked, “Are they a higher class of people than I am?!”

fuck I wish I would’ve thought to say this!!!

— Angie Jones (@Angie Jones)
1627436122

fuck I wish I would’ve thought to say this!!!

— Angie Jones (@Angie Jones)
1627436122

This article originally appeared on 07.11.17

Madalyn Parker wanted to take a couple days off work. She didn’t have the flu, nor did she have plans to be on a beach somewhere, sipping mojitos under a palm tree.

Parker, a web developer from Michigan, wanted a few days away from work to focus on her mental health.

Parker lives with depression. And, she says, staying on top of her mental health is absolutely crucial.

“The bottom line is that mental health is health,” she says over email. “My depression stops me from being productive at my job the same way a broken hand would slow me down since I wouldn’t be able to type very well.”

She sent an email to her colleagues, telling them the honest reason why she was taking the time off.

“Hopefully,” she wrote to them, “I’ll be back next week refreshed and back to 100%.”

Soon after the message was sent, the CEO of Parker’s company wrote back:

“Hey Madalyn,

I just wanted to personally thank you for sending emails like this. Every time you do, I use it as a reminder of the importance of using sick days for mental health — I can’t believe this is not standard practice at all organizations. You are an example to us all, and help cut through the stigma so we can all bring our whole selves to work.”

Moved by her CEO’s response, Parker posted the email exchange to Twitter.

The tweet, published on June 30, 2017, has since gone viral, amassing 45,000 likes and 16,000 retweets.

“It’s nice to see some warm, fuzzy feelings pass around the internet for once,” Parker says of the response to her tweet. “I’ve been absolutely blown away by the magnitude though. I didn’t expect so much attention!”

Even more impressive than the tweet’s reach, however, were the heartfelt responses it got.

“Thanks for giving me hope that I can find a job as I am,” wrote one person, who opened up about living with panic attacks. “That is bloody incredible,” chimed in another. “What a fantastic CEO you have.”

Some users, however, questioned why there needs to be a difference between vacation time and sick days; after all, one asked, aren’t vacations intended to improve our mental well-being?

That ignores an important distinction, Parker said — both in how we perceive sick days and vacation days and in how that time away from work is actually being spent.

“I took an entire month off to do partial hospitalization last summer and that was sick leave,” she wrote back. “I still felt like I could use vacation time because I didn’t use it and it’s a separate concept.”

Many users were astounded that a CEO would be that understanding of an employee’s mental health needs.

They were even more surprised that the CEO thanked her for sharing her personal experience with caring for her mental health.

After all, there’s still a great amount of stigma associated with mental illness in the workplace, which keeps many of us from speaking up to our colleagues when we need help or need a break to focus on ourselves. We fear being seen as “weak” or less committed to our work. We might even fear losing our job.

Ben Congleton, the CEO of Parker’s company, Olark, even joined the conversation himself.

In a blog post on Medium, Congleton wrote about the need for more business leaders to prioritize paid sick leave, fight to curb the stigma surrounding mental illness in the workplace, and see their employees as people first.

“It’s 2017. We are in a knowledge economy. Our jobs require us to execute at peak mental performance,” Congleton wrote. “When an athlete is injured, they sit on the bench and recover. Let’s get rid of the idea that somehow the brain is different.”

This article originally appeared on 06.20.18

Studies show that having daughters makes men more sympathetic to women’s issues.

And while it would be nice if men did not need a genetic investment in a female person in order to gain this perspective, lately I’ve had sympathy for those newly woke dads.

My two sons have caused something similar to happen to me. I’ve begun to glimpse the world through the eyes of a young male. And among the things I’m finding here in boyland are the same obnoxious gender norms that rankled when I was a girl.

Of course, one notices norms the most when they don’t fit. If my tween sons were happily boy-ing away at boy things, neither they nor I would notice that they were hemmed in.

But oh boy, are they not doing that.

In fact, if I showed you a list of my sons’ collective interests and you had to guess their gender, you’d waver a bit, but then choose girl.

Baking, reading, drawing, holidays, films, volleyball, cute mammals, video games, babies and toddlers, reading, travel, writing letters.

I imagine many of you are thinking at this point: That’s awesome that your boys are interested in those things!

There’s more. One loves comics and graphic novels but gravitates to stories with strong female protagonists, like Ms. Marvel and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.

Cool! I love it.

And sports. They are thoroughly bored by team sports. They don’t play them. They won’t watch them. They will up- or down-arrow through any number of sporting events on TV to get to a dance contest or to watch competitive baking.

So? Nothing wrong with that.

Those are the kinds of things all my progressive friends say.

But it’s often not the message my sons themselves hear from the other adults in their lives, their classmates, and the media.

For example, the first get-to-know-you question they are inevitably asked by well-meaning grown-ups is, “So, do you play sports?” When they say, “No, not really,” the adult usually continues brightly, “Oh, so what do you like to do, then?”

No one explicitly says it’s bad for a boy not to play sports. But when it’s always the first question asked, the implication is clear: playing sports is normal; therefore, not playing them is not.

The truth is that one of them does play a sport. He figure skates, as does my daughter. When people find out that she skates, they beam at her, as if she suddenly has possession of a few rays of Olympic glory. In the days before my son stopped telling people that he ice skates, most of them hesitated and then said, “Oh, so you are planning to play hockey?”

But it’s not just what people say. It’s all those pesky, unwritten rules. When he was in second grade, my younger son liked the Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew series. But he refused to check any out of the school library. He explained: “Girls can read boy books, but boys can’t read girl books. Girls can wear boy colors or girl colors, but boys can only wear boy colors. Why is that, Mom?”

I didn’t have an answer.

An obvious starting point — and the one that we have the most control over — is to change the way we speak to the boys in our lives.

As Andrew Reiner suggests in a spot-on essay, we should engage boys in analytical, emotion-focused conversations, just like we do with girls. In “How to Talk to Little Girls,” Lisa Bloom offers alternatives to the appearance-focused comments so often directed at young girls: asking a girl what she’s reading or about current events or what she would like to see changed in the world. I could copy-paste Bloom’s list and slap a different title on it: “How to Ask Boys About Something Besides Sports.”

And with a few more built-in nudges, we might expand the narrow world of boyhood more quickly. Boy Scouts could offer badges for developing skills in child care, teamwork, and journaling. Girl-dominated activities like art, dance, gymnastics, and figure skating could be made more welcoming to boys, with increased outreach and retention efforts. My son could write his own essay about trying to fit in to the nearly all-girl world of figure skating, including the times he has had to change clothes in a toilet stall at skating events because there were no locker rooms available for boys.

I used to think that the concept of gender — of “girl things” and “boy things” — was what was holding us back.

Now I see it differently.

The interdependent yin and yang of gender is a fundamental part of who we are, individually and collectively. We need people who like to fix cars and people who like to fix dinner. We need people who are willing and able to fight if needed and people who are exquisitely tuned into a baby’s needs. But for millennia, we have forced these traits to align with biological sex, causing countless individuals to be dissatisfied and diminished. For the most part, we’ve recognized this with girls. But we have a long way to go when it comes to boys. As Gloria Steinem observed, “We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons … but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.”

I acknowledge that young boys feeling pressured to be sports fans is not our country’s biggest problem related to gender.

Transgender individuals still confront discrimination and violence. The #MeToo movement has revealed to anyone who didn’t already know it that girls and women can’t go about their everyday lives without bumping into male sexual aggression.

But if our culture shifts to wholeheartedly embrace the whole spectrum of unboyishness, it may play some small role in addressing these other issues, too. Male culture will be redefined, enriched, and expanded, diluting the toxic masculinity that is at the root of most of our gender-related problems.

Boys and girls alike will be able to decide if they would rather be made up of snips and snails, sugar and spice, or a customized mix. And my future grandsons, unlike my sons, won’t think twice about wearing pink or reading about a girl detective at school.

This story originally appeared on Motherwell and is reprinted here with permission.

Theo James is joining the small but mighty group of mid-2000s young adult sci-fi franchise alums who continue to thrive in their post-dystopian career. We had Dylan O’Brien go from Maze Runner alum to a Taylor Swift collaborator, and we watched Jennifer Lawrence make her move from The Hunger Games universe to a full-fledged movie star. Logan Lerman fits in there somewhere too. And now, finally, Theo James is making a name for himself.

You may or may not remember the Divergent series, the Hunger Games-inspired series that desperately tried to fill the Harry Potter-shaped gap in the YA movie sphere. You also may or may not remember that an unknown Theo James was the leading man in that short-lived series that never got its ending… but there is still time! Shailene Woodley, get over here!

James is currently starring in the latest season of The White Lotus which everyone is watching for the plot and not for the scantily clad men. Next up, the Divergent actor will lead his own Netflix series directed by Guy Ritchie.

The Gentlemen will be based on Ritchie’s 2019 film of the same name which starred Charlie Hunnam, Matthew McConaughey, Colin Ferrell, Hugh Grant, and other distinguished gentlemen with nice accents. The Netflix adaptation will follow Eddie, a man who inherited his father’s estate only to learn that it’s actually on top of a gigantic weed empire. This could go a few different ways, but all of them are entertaining!

Production is expected to begin in London this month.

(Via Deadline)

Offset has canceled a planned show in Boston, according to TMZ. The Atlanta rapper was scheduled to perform at MGM Music Hall for an event presented by gaming collective Faze Clan. The event will reportedly go on as planned but without Offset. Although no reason has been given, it seems likely that his cancelation was directly related to the recent death of Offset’s Migos groupmate (and relative) Takeoff. Another event is planned in their hometown Atlanta on November 10 but it remains to be seen whether he’ll perform there.

The news of Takeoff’s death came at a horrible time, as Migos had seemingly fallen out a few months before. Takeoff and third member of the trio Quavo had just released an album together, while Offset was working on a solo project of his own. In interviews, Takeoff and Quavo expressed hopes they’d be able to reconcile, but they also adamantly insisted that they’d continue moving as a duo for the foreseeable future while only hinting at whatever catalyst had caused their schism.

Offset has yet to issue a public statement, but he did acknowledge Takeoff’s death on social media by changing his Instagram profile photo to a picture of his fallen groupmate.

The Washington Commanders may be up for sale. In a statement released on Wednesday, Dan and Tanya Snyder announced that they had retained BofA Securities in an effort to figure out “potential transactions,” and according to a Commanders spokesperson, every option that the team could pursue is on the table. Perhaps unsurprisingly, several hours after this was announced, it was revealed that the team’s finances are under investigation by the federal government.

Also unsurprising: The fact that some big names might be lining up to purchase the team. A report from TMZ indicated that Jay-Z and Jeff Bezos, both of whom have worked with the NFL, are interested in making a bid and may even want to join forces as part of an ownership group — TMZ reports that “a partnership between the men is on the table.”

As TMZ noted, back in 2019, Jay-Z’s Roc Nation and the NFL entered a partnership that both pursued social justice efforts and gave Hov the opportunity to help select the performers during the Super Bowl halftime show. He has some experience as the owner of a team in one of the major American sports, as he previously served as a part-owner of the Brooklyn Nets and was an influential figure in the team’s move from New Jersey.

Bezos, meanwhile, owns Prime Video, which became the exclusive broadcaster of Thursday Night Football during the 2022 season. He additionally purchased The Washington Post back in 2013.

Back in the ’80s and some of the ’90s, influential radio DJ Deirdre O’Donoghue worked at KCRW and hosted SNAP (an abbreviation of “Saturday Night Avant Pop”). It was a late-night show that notably featured performances from a bunch of favorite indie acts of the era. Now, many of those recordings are being made available once again for the first time in decades.

This is coming straight from KCRW’s archives, which can be found here. Performances include visits from R.E.M. from 1991, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds from 1989, Tom Waits from 1987, Sarah McLachlan from 1989, The Meat Puppets from 1986, and multiple The Dream Syndicate performances. In total, there are 55 live performances from between 1984 and 1991, all of which have been restored from the original master reels. Those and others will be available starting on November 14 (although KCRW members can listen starting November 4), while others still are set to be made available further down the road.

Waits and wife Kathleen Brennan offered a statement about the endeavor, writing, “In a town filled with sounds borne of the marriage of music and commerce, Deirdre was a voice and venue for the undiscovered or marginalized and a refuge for artists who felt estranged from the prevailing currents. She opened so many ears and hearts, including ours, with her earthy and irreverent voice and wide ranging enthusiasm for all music. So great someone thought to do this.”

This follows the 2021 release of Bent By Nature, a 10-episode podcast series about O’Donoghue. The official synopsis of the show and of the new archives reads, “She was the most influential American DJ you’ve never heard of. Deirdre O’Donoghue was a vital force in the musical underground of the 1980s. Countless artists crammed into her studio to perform live on her late-night show, SNAP! on KCRW. And after 40 years, those legendary sessions will be heard again. Join Michael Stipe, Henry Rollins, Julian Cope, and more for a sound-packed series from the producers of Lost Notes and Unfictional transporting you to the heyday of ’80s independent music and the DJ who shaped it.”

With the calendar turning to November, we’re finally ready to admit that it’s officially warming beer season. This means the time is right for barrel-aged beers and imperial stouts and porters. A healthy diet of these higher alcohol content, bold, robust beers is sure to keep you feeling toasty and cozy until the spring thaw. And while we could write for days about all the various high-ABV warming beers available, today we’re going to stick to imperial stouts.

Which brings us to the obvious question: what exactly is an imperial stout? Technically, the term “imperial stout” refers to a stout that is more loaded with over-the-top roasted malts, chocolate, coffee, and other rich, robust flavors while also being higher in alcohol as compared to traditional stouts.

You’ve likely seen the term “imperial” added before other beers like porters and even IPAs. While its genesis is a little cloudy, it’s believed by many that the term comes from beers that were brewed for the Imperial Court of Catherine the Great in the 18th century. That’s why you sometimes see imperial stouts referred to as “Russian” imperial stouts.

Now that we know a little bit more about imperial stouts, it’s time to actually drink some. But I’ll do more than just drink them. Today I’m going to blindly nose, taste, and then rank eight imperial stouts. Keep reading to see how it all turned out. Maybe your favorite imperial stout won it all.

Here’s the lineup:

• Southern Tier Warlock
• North Coast Old Rasputin
• Bell’s Expedition Stout
• Alesmith Speedway Stout
• Great Divide Yeti
• Fremont Dark Star
• Samuel Smith’s Imperial Stout
• Sierra Nevada Narwhal

Part 1: The Taste

Taste 1

Tasting Notes:

A nose of dried fruit, dark chocolate, pie crust, and fall spices greets you before your first sip. It’s welcoming, but the palate is a little too pumpkin-centric for my liking. There are also roasted malts, more chocolate, ginger, allspice, and other spices. It’s just a bit too heavy-handed on the spice and pumpkin.

Taste 2

Tasting Notes:

This beer has a light nose of dark chocolate, raisins, and freshly brewed coffee. While it doesn’t have a ton of aromas, it’s very inviting. The palate continues this trend with more dried fruits, roasted malts, coffee, chocolate, and lightly bitter hops. It’s easy to drink, but lighter in flavor than I’d prefer.

Taste 3

Tasting Notes:

Complex notes of freshly brewed espresso, dark chocolate, roasted malts, caramel, and toasted coconut greet you before your first sip. This continues into the palate. Sipping it reveals more coffee beans, buttery caramel, milk chocolate, almond cookies, and lightly floral hops. Overall, it’s a very well balanced beer.

Taste 4

Tasting Notes:

Licorice, roasted malts, coffee, dark chocolate, and oats can be found on the nose. It definitely draws you in. The flavor lives up to the hype started by the nose. It’s filled with dark chocolate, coffee beans, dried fruits, roasted malts, oatmeal, and light caramel. The finishing is warming, robust, slightly bitter, and leaves you craving more.

Taste 5

Tasting Notes:

Aromas of molasses candy, caramel, roasted malts, coffee, and dark chocolate are prevalent on the nose. The palate begins with caramel candy and sweet chocolate, but gradually moves into bitter coffee and roasted malts and eventually slightly floral, grassy hops.

Taste 6

Tasting Notes:

This beer draws you in with aromas of freshly-brewed coffee, chocolate, roasted malts, and light, grassy hops. The palate is slightly less memorable than the nose. There are more notes of coffee, bitter, dark chocolate, and roasty malts. But that’s about it. Decent, but not overly exciting.

Taste 7

Tasting Notes:

Nosing this beer is like taking a dive into a world filled with aromas like freshly brewed coffee, dark chocolate, dried fruits, bready malts, and roasted malts. Drinking it brings forth notes of sweet caramel, cocoa powder, coffee beans, oats, molasses candy, and slightly smoky roasted malts. The finish is a creamy mix of bitterness and sweetness.

Taste 8

Tasting Notes:

There isn’t much going on with this beer’s nose. Faint chocolate and maybe some dried fruits, but really not much else. There’s more going on with the palate. There are notes of roasted malts, more bitter chocolate, raisins, and coffee. All in all, it’s a little generic and unexciting though.

Part 2: The Rankings

8) Bell’s Expedition Stout (Taste 8)

ABV: 10.5%

Average Price: $18 for a six-pack

The Beer:

This popular 10.5% ABV Russian imperial stout is known for its mix of rich, sweet malts, dark chocolate, and dried fruit flavors. Like many higher alcohol content stouts, it’s crafted to be cellared in order to open up even more bold, memorable flavors.

Bottom Line:

I’m not here to tell you that Bell’s Expedition Stout is a bad beer. It’s not. It’s just not all that exciting either.

7) Southern Tier Warlock (Taste 1)

ABV: 10%

Average Price: $14.99 for a four-pack

The Beer:

Not only is Southern Tier Warlock an imperial stout, but it’s also a pumpkin stout. Brewed with ale yeast, four different malts, CTZ hops, as well as pumpkin and spices, it’s known for its bold flavor profile of pumpkin, coffee, and chocolate.

Bottom Line:

If you enjoy both imperial stouts and pumpkin beers, this is the beer for you. Otherwise, stay far away from the pumpkin-spiced stout. It’s just a little too much.

6) Sierra Nevada Narwhal (Taste 6)

ABV: 10.5%

Average Price: $12.99 for a six-pack

The Beer:

This seasonal imperial stout is available from September to December. It’s brewed with a glut of malts, including Caramelized malts, Chocolate, Carafa III, Estate Pale, Honey, Roasted Barley, Smoked, and Two-row Pale. The recipe also consists of ale yeast and Cascade and Ekuanot hops. The result is a highly complex, flavorful stout.

Bottom Line:

If you’re looking for a fairly basic, straightforward imperial stout with coffee, chocolate, and malts, this is a great choice. If you’re looking for a little more than that, let the search continue.

5) Samuel Smith’s Imperial Stout (Taste 2)

ABV: 7%

Average Price: $10.99 for a four-pack

The Beer:

There are few imperial stouts as traditional as Samuel Smith’s Imperial Stout. Surprisingly low in alcohol for the style, this 7% ABV beer is brewed with simple ingredients like water, roasted malt, malted barley, cane sugar, yeast, and hops. That’s it. Simple, elegant, and rich.

Bottom Line:

Samuel Smith’s manages to have a ton of aroma and flavor even with its 7% ABV. It could just use a little kick of extra aroma and flavor to really put it over the top.

4) Great Divide Yeti (Taste 5)

ABV: 9.5%

Average Price: $13.99 for a six-pack

The Beer:

Great Divide’s most well known beer is likely its 9.5% imperial stout called Yeti. It’s well known for its balanced flavor profile of bold, roasted malts, chocolate, floral, and lightly bitter hops. It’s a truly unique imperial stout.

Bottom Line:

This is a truly complex beer. The mix of sweetness, dark chocolate and coffee, and lightly bitter hops makes this one of the most memorable imperial stouts on the market.

3) Alesmith Speedway Stout (Taste 3)

ABV: 12%

Average Price: $14.99 for a four-pack of 16-ounce cans

The Beer:

Alesmith’s flagship beer is its iconic 12% ABV imperial stout. This award winner is known for its bold flavor profile of dried fruits, roasted malts, and robust coffee from locally sourced, real roasted coffee.

Bottom Line:

There’s a reason Alesmith Speedway Stout is so popular. It’s loaded with chocolate, roasted malts, and real coffee beans. It’s a can’t miss imperial stout.

2) Fremont Dark Star (Taste 4)

ABV: 8%

Average Price: $12.50 for a six-pack

The Beer:

This robust, rich, award-winning imperial stout is adorned with a massive dragon. It lets you in on the fact that you’re about to crack open a behemoth of a beer featuring roasted barley, 2-row Pale, C-60, Carafa 2, and Chocolate malts as well as flaked oats and Magnum and Willamette hops.

Bottom Line:

This offering from Fremont is available year-round, but really hits the spot during the colder months. Coffee, chocolate, roasted malts, and light hops, this beer has it all.

1) North Coast Old Rasputin (Taste 7)

ABV: 9%

Average Price: $9.99 for a six-pack

The Beer:

Grigori Rasputin was a mystic and an extremely divisive character in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Russia. North Coast named this Russian imperial stout for this odd historical character. It’s 9% ABV, pitch black in color, and known for its rich, robust, roasted malt, dark chocolate-centered flavor profile.

Bottom Line:

When it comes to well balanced, complex Imperial stouts, it’s difficult to beat North Coast’s Old Rasputin. It’s a perfect mix of roasty bitterness and sweetness.

Part 3: Final Thoughts

After partaking in this blind taste test, I discovered one important thing about my palate when it comes to imperial stouts: while I love the indulgent flavors of sweet chocolate and caramel, I need a little mix of coffee and roasted malt bitterness as well, and a light hint of floral hops for me to truly enjoy the beer. It’s all about how the various flavors combine to make one well balanced flavor experience.

Norway is officially on Putin’s sh*t list. On Wednesday, according to The Daily Beast, Russia made it clear that it views Norway’s friendliness with NATO countries and steps to strengthen its military forces as an explicit threat. And that there could be repercussions.

Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, issued a statement in which she declared that, “Oslo is now among the most active supporters of NATO’s involvement in the Arctic. We consider such developments near Russian borders as Oslo’s deliberate pursuit of a destructive course toward escalation of tensions in the Euro-Arctic region and the final destruction of Russian-Norwegian relations.” She also warned the Scandinavian country that any additional “unfriendly actions will be followed by a timely and adequate response.”

On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that Norway, which shares 120 miles of its border with Russia, had raised its military alert level following suspicious drone activity. As Shannon Vavra wrote for The Daily Beast:

Norway has arrested several Russians, including one son of an associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s, and accused them of illegally flying drones in Norwegian airspace or taking photos in restricted areas as concerns abound about potential Russian attacks on critical infrastructure. Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre warned Russia to cut it out, according to Norwegian broadcaster NRK.

“Today, we have no reason to believe that Russia will want to involve Norway or any other country directly in the war,” Støre said in response to the drone activity. “But the war in Ukraine makes it necessary for all NATO countries to be more vigilant.” Støre also stated that Russia’s war with Ukraine and tenuous relationship with several other European nations is “the most serious security policy situation we have experienced in several decades.”

(Via The Daily Beast)