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The Lindsey Graham in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was a lot like the Lindsey Graham of early 2016: against Donald Trump. The night of the attack, the visibly frazzled South Carolina senator said he was “done” with the outgoing president. Graham flip-flopped, of course, but details keep emerging about his former attempts to throw Trump to the wolves (ditto his insurrectionist supporters). Now there’s even audio of him making a very poor prediction.

The recording comes from the authors of This Will Not Pass, the latest explosive Trump exposé, this one from New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns. Previously Martin and Burns produced audio directly contradicting Kevin McCarthy’s claim that he didn’t say bad things about Trump. (There was also a clip of him refusing to invoke the 25th amendment, but only because it would “take too long.”) The pair’s latest audio bombshell isn’t too damning. But it does show where one of the leading Republican’s head was at before he decided to run back into Trump’s arms.

“We’ll actually come out of this thing stronger. Moments like this reset. People will calm down. People will say, ‘I don’t want to be associated with that.’ This is a group within a group,” Graham told reporters not long after the Capitol attack. “What this does, there will be a rallying effect for a while, the country says, ‘we are better than this.’”

Graham even predicted Joe Biden would unite the country. “He’ll be maybe the person to have, right?” Graham said at the time. “I mean, how mad can you get at Joe Biden?”

He even theorized what Trump did wrong. “He’s misjudged the passion, he plays the TV game and he went too far here,” Graham said. “That rally didn’t help, talking about primarying Liz [Cheney]. He created a sense of revenge.”

In other words, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the GOP was privately very excited to be rid of Trump for good. Of course, Graham was wrong on two fronts. The country didn’t heal in the wake of Jan. 6; it somehow got worse. And Graham, who once finally remembered how dangerous Trump can be, has apparently realized he’s fine with “revenge.”

(Via Raw Story)

Have you seen this tiny, yet gorgeous creature washing up along shores and in TikTok feeds?

No, it’s not a Pokemon, as some people on the internet will try to convince you. But with its mystical appearance and hidden (yet dangerous) powers, it might as well be.

Blue Dragon, I choose you!
upload.wikimedia.org

This little guy is technically called a Glaucus atlanticus, which is already incredibly fun to say. But you can also call him a blue dragon.

Pretty cool right? But how does such a delicate looking creature earn such a powerful name?

According to One Earth, a blue dragon is—believe it or not—part of the nudibranch family, aka mollusks and slugs. Yes, we live in a world where slugs are also dragons. Dare to dream! It’s found on the surface of multiple oceans throughout the world, in both temperate and tropical waters. Which explains why they’ve been seen everywhere recently, even Texas.

See on Instagram

The way they float on the water is pretty cool too. What we see on the surface is actually the blue dragon’s brightly colored underbelly, which creates a little air bubble to keep it buoyant. Meanwhile, its backside is a grayish white. Both sides act as a camouflage, mimicking either the blue ocean waves or the light penetrating the sea’s surface, hiding the blue dragon from predators both above and below. There’s even a science-y term for this defense mechanism: countershading.

And here’s where things get gnarly…

Even though they’re teeny tiny (rarely larger than 3 centimeters long), blue dragons can produce a dangerous sting. Just one prick can result in nausea and vomiting, severe pain, allergic dermatitis and inflammatory hyperpigmentation. Ouch.

Needless to say, blue dragons are the very embodiment of “look don’t touch.”

Not that it stops Aussies on TikTok like Juliano Bayd. Bayd has no problem picking them up with his bare hands. Look below for anxiety.

@julianobayd failed rescuer mission 😭 #bluedragon #rescue #wildlife #wildliferescue #dangerous ♬ original sound – Country boyz

In Bayd’s defense, it seems that his main focus is rescuing blue dragons and helping them return to the ocean, sometimes hundreds at a time. And he’s always transparent about the risks involved.

How does a blue dragon get the venom, you ask? By eating Portuguese men-of-war. You know, those crazy not-quite jellyfish sea animals that wash up on shore and deliver an infamously powerful sting, even when dead? The ones whose tentacles can grow up to 165 feet? Yes, those. The blue dragon eats the man-of-war (among other things), then stores the stinging cells in its appendages for later use. Let me repeat: This tiny floating slug, barely more than an inch, can and will eat an incredibly venomous life form (like it’s nothing!) then steal its venom like some kind of aquatic vampire.

And here’s a video of it doing just that:

Mother Nature never fails to offer us both the strange and beautiful. If you are lucky enough to see a blue dragon on your next beach trip, it’s best to admire it from afar. But do admire it. Because these otherworldly stinging slugs are quite stunning … in every sense of the word.

Imagine retiring early and spending the rest of your life on a cruise ship visiting exotic locations, meeting interesting people and eating delectable food. It sounds fantastic, but surely it’s a billionaire’s fantasy, right?

Not according to Angelyn Burk, 53, and her husband Richard. They’re living their best life hopping from ship to ship for around $44 a night each. The Burks have called cruise ships their home since May 2021 and have no plans to go back to their lives as landlubbers. Angelyn took her first cruise in 1992 and it changed her goals in life forever.

“Our original plan was to stay in different countries for a month at a time and eventually retire to cruise ships as we got older,” Angelyn told 7 News. But a few years back, Angelyn crunched the numbers and realized they could start much sooner than expected.

“We love to travel and we were searching for a way to continuously travel in our retirement that made financial sense,” she said. They looked into deals they could find through loyalty memberships and then factored in the potential sale price of their home and realized their dream was totally affordable.

The rough math makes sense. If it costs the couple $88 per night to live on a cruise ship, that’s $32,120 a year. Currently, the average price of a home in Seattle, Washington—where the couple lived—is $958,027 which would come with a mortgage that costs around $50,000 a year.

Plus, on a cruise ship, the couple doesn’t have to pay for groceries.

The Burks are able to live their dream because they’ve spent a lifetime being responsible. “We have been frugal all our lives to save and invest in order to achieve our goal,” she says. “We are not into materialistic things but experiences.”

Angelyn says that cruising takes the stress out of travel. “It is leisurely travel without the complications of booking hotels, restaurants, and transportation while staying within our budget,” she told 7 News. The couple travels lightly with just two suitcases between them and if they need anything, they just buy it on the ship or in the next port.

One thing the carefree couple should be concerned about on their never-ending cruise is COVID-19. The coronavirus is easily spread in close quarters and a cruise ship that recently docked in Seattle had 100 people on board who tested positive for the virus. The CDC recommends that people get vaccinated before going on a cruise and that immunocompromised people should consult with their physicians before traveling.

Since leaving their jobs and the mainland behind, the Burks have been on a 50-day cruise around the Adriatic Sea, taking in the sights of Europe as well as a 51-day cruise from Seattle to Sydney, Australia.

The Burks really love cruising to Italy, Canada, Iceland and the Bahamas but their favorite is Singapore.

Looking to give it all up and go on a permanent vacation just like the Burks? Angelyn has some advice for those wanting to get started.

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

When the Doctor Strange sequel landed last weekend, viewers nationwide could be heard flipping out over a bevy of Easter Eggy cameos. One sequence in particular had one treat after another. Our hero (Benedict Cumberbatch) winds up in an alternate dimension populated by not only Patrick Stewart’s Professor X, but also some alternate world versions of beloved superheroes. For example, John Krasinski stepped in as a (doomed) Reed Richards.

But had the film’s credited screenwriter had his druthers, the film would have featured a star markedly huger than the star of the eventually ending Jack Ryan. In an interview with Rolling Stone, scribe Michael Waldron said he wanted to a) include an alternate universe Iron Man, and b) he would be played by Tom Cruise.

The first was probably likely, though it might have been a bit too soon given Robert Downey Jr. only bid farewell to the role three years ago. As for getting Cruise, Waldron says he doesn’t think anyone bothered even reaching out to him, possibly because he was a little busy on one of the longest and most pandemic-delay-plagued shoots in Hollywood history: the next Mission: Impossible joint.

That said, it’s not like Cruise is above fun cameos or smaller, scene-stealing roles, especially if he gets to look nothing like himself. Speaking of the latter, had he been courted — and then accepted — it would have been a Tropic Thunder reunion, sort of, not quite.

(Via Rolling Stone)

In addition to making her solo debut with the bouncy “Have Mercy,” Chloe Bailey’s 2021 year was filled with impressive covers of songs by a wide array of artists. She took on Adele’s “Easy On Me,” Silk Sonic’s “Leave The Door Open,” Cardi B’s “Be Careful, Rihanna’s “Love On The Brain,” Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good,” and Drake’s “Marvin’s Room.” Fresh off releasing her second single as a solo artist, that being the provocative “Treat Me,” Chloe has found time to treat her fans to another cover. This time she takes on Capella Grey’s 2021 summer hit “Gyalis.”

Chloe’s rendition of “Gyalis” is a bit more than a cover and she remixes the song a bit so that it can be sung from a female’s point of view. While the original song’s lyrics read, “Fake like she asleep / Swear she tried to stay the whole week / I’m like “Oh, nah, she gotta go”, uh / Ask me her name, I swear I don’t even f*ckin’ know,” Chloe gives her side in the matter on the cover.

“He’s tryna fake like he asleep / Thought I didn’t hear him come in, please,” Chloe sings. “I’m like, ‘Oh nah, he gotta go’ / See you again? Oh no, baby that’s not what I want.”

Capella Grey showed love towards Chloe’s cover of “Gyalis” by reposting the video on his own Instagram page.

You can listen to Chloe’s cover-slash-remix of “Gyalis” in the video above.

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

For the last couple months, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and cronies have been under fire for the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, legislation he signed into law in late March that forbids instructors mentioning LGBTQIA+ issues through third grade. It’s to protect children, DeSantis, who was once caught on video bullying kids, claims. The bill has its critics, including The Walt Disney Company, the largest employer in the Sunshine State, with whom DeSantis and other right-wingers have gone to war.

It has some other critics, too: Florida students, who have protested the bill with walk-outs. Their attempts to speak out against it have even caused the delay of one school’s yearbook.

As per CBS News, a high school in central Florida had to postpone distribution of the year’s yearbooks because they have to manually censor images of students at a protest of the bill in March, which finds some holding rainbow flags and signs reading “love is love.” Reprinting 600 yearbooks would be a costly move, with a pricetag of $45,000. Instead, said images will be manually covered up with stickers.

Why go to the trouble to erase what was for many a major event of the 2021-2022 school year? Because district officials don’t want people thinking they or the school supported the walkout. A spokesman for the county’s school board pointed out they aren’t hiding all LGBTQIA+ content; a page dedicated to the Gay Straight Alliance Club will remain unblemished, as will photos of students at a pride march.

One of the yearbook’s editors-in-chief, Skye Tiedemann, slammed the move. “This really shouldn’t be happening because all we did as journalists was document what was happening at our school on our campus,” she told the Orlando Sentinel. “To have that covered up isn’t right. … This is censorship.”

Florida representative Carlos G. Smith also torched the county’s decision, saying they were “literally COVERING UP school protests against #DontSayGay in their 2022 yearbook. This censorship is a direct result of the law these students were protesting. #WeWillNotBeErased in this so-called “free state”.

The latter is a reference to DeSantis, who at press conferences has referred to the state that punishes LGBTQIA+ teachers and attacks corporations that criticize them as the “free state of Florida.”

(Via CBS News)

I’d never seen a green sky before living in the Midwest. I also didn’t know the difference between a tornado watch and a tornado warning, and it took me a while to keep it straight. (A “watch” means the conditions are ripe for a tornado to form, a “warning” means one has been spotted.)

I learned that green sky spelled trouble, so when we saw ominous greenish clouds gathering one afternoon, we knew to turn on the TV. A tornado watch had been issued in our area, which then turned to a warning.

Then the tornado siren sounded outside. Time to take cover.

We didn’t have a basement, so my husband and I grabbed our 4-year-old and shut ourselves into our first-floor bathroom, the only room in our townhome without any windows. The wind began to howl, getting louder and louder until it didn’t sound like wind anymore. Imagine static blaring on a TV, only with more layers, both deeper and higher-pitched. The sliding glass door in our dining room rattled. Our daughter cried and I prayed. It lasted maybe five or ten minutes.

When the quiet returned and we emerged, we discovered the tornado hadn’t even come all that close to us. One had touched down a few miles away, in the middle of a field. No damage, no one hurt.

That experience was scary enough; I can’t imagine the terror of actually having a tornado on top of you, nor can I imagine being a storm chaser who actually runs towards those dark skies and raging winds.

Storm chasers provide a view of tornados that we wouldn’t otherwise get to see, but “extreme meteorologist” Reed Timmer’s hi-res drone capture of a tornado whipping through Andover, Kansas on April 30 offers a visual that even most storm chasers haven’t been able to provide. Tornado footage is usually somewhat grainy or fuzzy, even when the person with the camera is able to get close, but Timmer’s drone footage offers stunning detail.

No lives were lost in this tornado, which Timmer said was an EF3. (The Enhanced Fujita scale measures the intensity of tornados, and ranges from F0 (light damage—damaged billboards, some tree branches broken) to F5 (incredible damage—strong homes lifted off their foundations and disintegrated, trees uprooted and debarked). In this video, you can see roofs being lifted off of buildings like they’re made of cardboard. It’s incredible.

Watch:

Highest-res drone footage of the Andover, KS #tornado which has received a preliminary rating of EF3. Note how the tornado propagates via vortex dynamics and likely terrain. Incredibly, no lives were lost by this tornadopic.twitter.com/FJDBH8TAv6

— Reed Timmer (@Reed Timmer)
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Timmer then compiled his drone footage with additional footage taken from the ground and shared it on YouTube.

“Audio has been softened for the faint of heart,” Timmer shared. “Miraculously, no lives were lost from this tornado despite immense damage and nearly 1000 structures impacted.”

Seeing the tornado touching down from multiple perspectives is both terrifying and fascinating. Watching the funnel cloud form and meander in the sky before causing such immense destruction is strangely mesmerizing. What an odd phenomenon.

Seriously, storm chasers live on a whole other level than the rest of us. Watch:

Since the introduction of online gaming and social media, much has been made about the importance of real-life interaction. While the hand-wringing over young people losing valuable social skills isn’t entirely unwarranted, there can be a tendency for some to throw the baby out with the bathwater. While excessive gaming is associated with less sociability, there are social positives for many in the gaming world.

Real friendships can be—and frequently are—made through gaming. In fact, relationships forged through online gaming were a lifeline for many people during pandemic isolation periods. My 76-year-old mother plays World of Warcraft and has a group of friends she’s played with for years. They know about one another’s jobs and families and support each other in their real lives in addition to their gaming lives. I’ve seen how much these friendships play a role in her life and it’s very sweet.

A video of a surprise gaming friend meet-up perfectly exemplifies how real these relationships can be.

TikTok user @lunaanddiogi shared the video with captions that told the story.

“My boyfriend has had an online gaming friend for over 10 years he has never met,” she wrote. “At first I thought it was super weird. Then I got to know him over FaceTime.”

“He ended up being super cool so we planned a surprise weekend,” she continued. “He lives four hours away.”

As the captions appear, we see the boyfriend lying on the couch when there’s a knock at the door. “Someone’s here,” says the girlfriend. He sits up as she goes to the door and opens it.

“I heard you’re having a bad day,” said the gaming friend, as the boyfriend rose from the sofa in disbelief.

The joy. The hug. The tears. It’s just the best.

Watch:

@lunaanddiogi

Besties #gamingontiktok #gamingfriends #callofduty #90dayfiance #bestfriends #imjustthinkingwithmyd #fyp #euphoria @Parker Hann

People loved the men’s reactions to meeting in person and how happy they were to be together.

“Brings good tears to my eyes,” wrote one commenter.

“I can confirm this is so cool and I’ve done the same except I flew from UK to LA to meet my friend was a BLAST for an experience,” wrote another.

“This is everything honestly,” wrote another. “Don’t let anyone tell you that your online friends aren’t real friends.”

At least one commenter shared that they met their husband through gaming. (My mom shared that marriages have happened in her gaming community as well.)

Online friendships might be new in the course of human history, but like pen pals before, people can form real connections with one another long-distance through the internet. Meeting people via the internet has to be done safely, of course, but human relationships don’t have to be limited by time and place. The bottom line is, when you find your people, geography is just a minor detail.

If you’re not familiar with Chef José Andrés or his World Central Kitchen (WCK), you’re about to find out why the Spanish chef has become a beloved example of the best of humanity.

Chef Andrés founded WCK in 2010, a nonprofit organization that runs toward disaster and organizes people on the ground to make sure that those impacted by disaster are fed. Since then, he and his crew have shown up in the aftermath of tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disasters, as well as places where communities have an immediate need for other reasons, such as viral pandemics and wars.

The idea for WCK came from Andrés and his wife Patricia, who decided that when people are hungry, you send in cooks. Not tomorrow, but today.

“Food relief is not just a meal that keeps hunger away,” Andrés shares on the WCK website. “It’s a plate of hope. It tells you in your darkest hour that someone, somewhere, cares about you. This is the real meaning of comfort food. It’s why we make the effort to cook in a crisis.”

It’s practically impossible not to fall in love with Chef Andrés when you hear about his dedication to helping people. The passion and sincerity with which he talks about changing the world is infectious.

Andrés joined director Ron Howard on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” to talk about Howard’s documentary film about the work of WCK. It’s called “We Feed People” and will premiere on Disney+ on May 27. Watch the trailer to get a glimpse of what Andrés has brought to the world.

Seriously, in love, right? The man just oozes selflessness and service. And it is genuinely infectious—evidenced by Ron Howard’s story of how his film crew kept getting caught up in being part of the operations by putting their cameras down to feed people, making it hard to get the film footage they needed to tell the story about the operations.

Colbert asked Andrés how people can help in their own way or collectively.

“Every one of you, you can become your own organization,” he said. “You don’t need to try to feed the world. You can do little things, such as helping an elderly couple in the supermarket, make sure that they can put their shopping in the back of their car. Maybe picking up a piece of paper to keep your cities clean.”

He gave examples of how musicians in Ukraine are playing on street corners, “bringing hope to people just by playing a song.”

He said that everyone has a talent that they can use to help others.

“We can all be part of not only feeding America and feeding the world, but believing in longer tables, not higher walls,” he said. “We can change the world if we really believe in it.”

Absolutely beautiful. Thank you, Chef Andrés, for reminding us what is possible and for serving as such a prime example of the difference one person can make.

At the end of 2020, DaniLeigh and DaBaby made their relationship official with intimate Instagram posts that they shared on their respective accounts. Almost a year later, any sign of that relationship continuing crashed and burned as the two artists engaged in a public and heated argument on Instagram Live. Things only got worse afterward, as just a few months later, videos on social media captured DaBaby and DaniLeigh’s brother engaged in a fight at a Los Angeles bowling alley. After staying silent about anything DaBaby-related for the past few months, DaniLeigh decided to speak out about their past relationship in a new interview.

In a sit-down with Angie Martinez, DaniLeigh discussed the “on and off” relationship she had with DaBaby. “It was toxic,” she said. “We had our really good times. We were in love. He had his little mess-ups and stuff, so we’d break up for a month and then get back together… We broke up a lot.”

The interview arrives after DaniLeigh released “Dead To Me,” a song that speaks about the “toxic energy” she experienced in a past relationship, presumably with DaBaby. In the song, she says, “You f*cking all these h*es/Thinking I wouldn’t know/You played me like a fool, lil baby/Got a b*tch thinking I’m crazy.”

His relationship with DaniLeigh is not the only controversial thing that DaBaby has been involved in as of late. He recently avoided charges for shooting a man who invaded his North Carolina home, but that came after he was charged with felony battery for punching a man during a music video shoot.

You can watch DaniLeigh’s interview in the video above.