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Considering Georgia elected Marjorie Taylor Greene to Congress, the bar for elected officials from the Peach State is pretty low right now. So it was pretty impressive when Republican gubernatorial candidate Kandiss Taylor barreled into the political scene on with a wild campaign slogan that has Twitter tripping over itself with jokes.

In a tweet promoting her tour schedule on Thursday, Taylor showed off a picture of her campaign bus that’s adorned with the words “Jesus Guns Babies.” She also promised to paint the state “Taylor RED,” whatever that means.

To be clear, “Jesus Guns Babies” is the cornerstone of Taylor’s campaign and isn’t just an unfortunate placement of words on her tour bus. Taylor fully incorporates the phrase on her campaign website where the educator vows to clean up Georgia:

Dr. Taylor is married to Ryan Taylor, and together, they share three school aged children. She is passionate about the working class, mental health, less government overreach, education, small business growth, gun rights, our farmers, the economy, right to life, and election integrity. Put simply, Jesus, Guns, and Babies! When asked what made her decide to run, she responded, “I can’t complain about what is going on if I’m not willing to do something about it. The Governor’s budget is 60% education, and who better to clean things up than a public school educator who knows where and what to cut!”

After catching wind of the “Jesus Guns Babies” slogan, Twitter went to town on the awkwardly worded phrase that seemingly suggests Jesus shoots babies on top of being a jarring example of the current state of the Republican Party.

You can see some of the reactions below:

(Via Kandiss Taylor on Twitter)

It’s tempting to compare Succession and The Righteous Gemstones, as they’re both extremely good HBO shows about rich families with emotionally-stunted children who are trying to oust their influential fathers from power. Also, the Roys and Gemstones both own theme parks. But here’s the thing: Succession is a drama with comedic elements; The Righteous Gemstones is a comedy with dramatic elements. Big difference.

Edi Patterson, who plays season two MVP Judy, told Variety that she recognizes the “skin deep” similarities between Succession and The Righteous Gemstones, but “those are two very different looking bodies.” Judy/BJ and Shiv/Tom are also two very different couples, as Patterson’s co-star (and Comedy Bang Bang legend) Tim Baltz explained.

“With Judy and BJ, there is a love that runs incredibly deep,” he said. “That is not a marriage of convenience; they are two weirdos who happen to have complementing frequencies that you can’t quite explain. It’s unconditional. With Tom and Shiv, I never really felt that.” Patterson added, “That sh*t’s cosmic.” It’s kind of a cosmic gumbo, really.

Two other major differences between Succession and The Righteous Gemstones: BJ does not have a Greg (he can borrow Keef from Kelvin?) and Shiv, as far as we know, does not own a magnifying glass to solve mysteries with. Maybe in season four.

(Via Variety)

LPB Poody returns to UPROXX Sessions this week with a heartfelt performance of his I’m The One standout, “Eiffel Tower.” After performing the title track in his previous appearance, he switches things up this time, delivering a soulful rendition of the moody cut, which shows off his thoughtfulness and impresses as the Florida rapper details his rough life experiences.

Poody’s career has been flourishing since his 2021 track “Batman” picked up steam on TikTok, exposing him to a new audience far outside his Orlando stomping grounds and putting him in perfect position for a breakout year. I’m The One, released in December of 2021 capitalized on the attention, showcasing Poody’s growing talents and pairing him with a number of big-name stars including Lil Wayne, Moneybagg Yo, Yung Bleu, and his fellow Florida native Rick Ross.

Watch LPB Poody’s UPROXX Sessions performance of “Eiffel Tower” above.

UPROXX Sessions is Uproxx’s performance show featuring the hottest up-and-coming acts you should keep an eye on. Featuring creative direction from LA promotion collective, Ham On Everything, and taking place on our “bathroom” set designed and painted by Julian Gross, UPROXX Sessions is a showcase of some of our favorite performers, who just might soon be yours, too.

Yes, yes, I know. Wordle, Wordle, Wordle.

The world has been thoroughly Wordle-ized for the past couple of months. By now you’re either a dedicated daily player or are trying your best to ignore the yellow and green boxes that flood your social media feed each day. As a self-professed word nerd, I’m a fan. Word games are my jam, and Wordle is just challenging enough to be fun without being too taxing. It’s a light little exercise to get my brain moving over coffee in the morning and a fun little collective endeavor to share with my fellow humans.

But we couldn’t just remain satisfied with our sweet little Wordle game, right? Of course not. Why let a good thing be when we can drive ourselves batty with something else?

Friends, allow me to introduce you to Quordle. You’re either going to love me or hate me for this—I’m still not even sure how I feel about myself for being sucked into it. It’s awesome and terrible and I can’t stop playing.

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Quordle, you might guess from the name, means four Wordles. But you’re guessing at all of them at the same time with a single word. You get nine tries total to correctly guess all four words.

It’s both glorious and torturous. You’re welcome. And I’m sorry.

Let me show you what it looks like.

First of all, there are two modes of playing. There’s the Daily Quordle, which is the same four words for everyone, one game per day, just like Wordle.

But there’s also Practice Quordle, which basically just means you can play as many times as you want. Dangerous.

I’ll show you a practice one so I don’t spoil anything. Here’s what it looks like when you start a practice round:

As you can see, there are four “quadrants” where words get entered. The only thing that stinks is that you really can’t see all of the rows at once. There are more blank rows for the bottom two words that you have to scroll to see, but it really isn’t that big of a deal while you’re playing.

Whatever word you enter on each round gets put into all four quadrants. Then, just like in Wordle, the right letters in the wrong places turn yellow and the right letters in the right place turn green. Letters that aren’t used remain gray.

Here I am four guesses in (in two different images, since I had to scroll down to see the bottom two quadrants). As you can see, I guessed TONIC correctly for the top right word on the third guess and SLANT for the bottom left word on the fourth guess.

And as you can see, the keyboard shows which quadrants contain the letters you’ve guessed, either in the wrong place (yellow) or the right place (green).

The main goal is to get all four words in nine tries or less, but the lower any of the numbers, the better. I did quite well in this particular practice round, getting all four words in six total guesses.

(In fact, this practice round was a bit of redemption after only getting three of the four words in the Daily Quordle today. I had two possible choices for my ninth guess and picked the wrong one. Argh.)

Like Wordle, the Quordle interface is super simple; there are no ads or anything extraneous. Also like Wordle, Quordle was created by some guy (his name is Freddie Meyer) who had been playing Dordle (a two-word Wordle challenge) with some friends in January. Another guy in their group, David Mah, came up with Quordle and Mayer perfected it. Now it’s got a million players. (Meyer says on the website that he has no plans to monetize Quordle. Maybe he’ll end up selling it to The New York Times for seven figures like the Wordle guy did, and if he does? Hey, more power to him.)

This is what humans do, right? Create cool things? Improve and innovate on what came before? Make our brains hurt and drive one another nuts in the best way? Yay, humanity.

So, fellow word nerds, give Quordle a try and see what you think. Again, you’re welcome and I’m sorry.

When Justin Bieber’s Justice World Tour kicks off this week, it’ll mark the beginning of nearly 100 concerts for Bieber in 20 countries worldwide. It’s a dizzying thought, considering how complex his stage production is and that all of these shows are happening in arenas in front of tens of thousands of people. The Canadian pop star is taking advantage of the platform that the tour will provide for him, and has announced the “Justice In Action” initiative, which will raise awareness for social justice and environmental issues in multiple ways (as Billboard notes).

In a truly creative approach to getting Beliebers involved with Justice In Action at each show, the initiative gives them chances to win tickets and VIP experiences by participating in the movement. Bieber has partnered with Propeller and Live Free to help connect Beliebers with local and national social justice organizations. The effort pushes fans to interact with, donate, and follow organizations on social media like the REFORM Alliance, National Resources Defense Council, Fund For Guaranteed Income, and Last Prisoner Project. The more fans interact, or participate in on-site trainings, the more opportunities they’ll have to win perks.

Bieber’s camp issued a statement on the whole effort:

“Justin’s goal by the end of the Justice World Tour is to inspire millions of individual actions, help connect his fans to important causes, and provide participating groups with a new foundation of supporters, all while registering voters and raising awareness and funds for critical local and national justice efforts,”

While predicated on giveaways, this appears to be an effective approach to engage young people in taking action on social issues. And it’s an important trend for pop stars to use their massive platforms to educate fans about greater issues in the world.

While Troye Sivan’s professional focus has been mostly on music in recent years, he hasn’t left his acting career behind by any means. In fact, his latest movie, Three Months, premieres on February 23. Naturally, Sivan got involved with the soundtrack, for which he recruited Jay Som to collaborate on “Trouble,” which was shared today.

Sharing the track today, Sivan wrote, “Revisited my full 17 year old 2011 tumblr-core mindset to write this song for Three Months.” Jay Som also showed gratitude for Sivan, writing, “Feeling super grateful to be featured on this song called Trouble written by @troyesivan for the movie Three Months.”

Aesthetically, the tune lies somewhere between the breezy indie of Jay Som’s music and the more pop-leaning stylings of Sivan, making it a lovely melding of both artist’s strengths. Sivan opens the song, “Accidental lover, what’d you do with all my common sense? / You came in undercover when I didn’t even want a friend.”

That line plays off one of the movie’s themes, as the official summary of Three Months reads, “Coming-of-age film about Caleb, a South Florida teen. On the eve of his high school graduation, everything changes when he’s exposed to HIV. While he waits three months for his results, he finds love in the most unlikely of places.”

Listen to “Trouble” above. Also check out a trailer for Three Months below.

Drake’s jewelry collection grew yet again but this time he didn’t pay a cent. TMZ reports that the latest addition to the rapper’s collection — which was partly designed as a tribute to his son Adonis — was given to the rapper by celebrity jeweler Alex Moss as a gift rather than a purchase.

The ring, consisting of 14 karat gold and 15.7 carats of diamonds, features a rendering of the OVO owl logo with the number “11” set behind it. October 11, of course, is Adonis’ birthday (just 13 days before his dad’s), highlighting the four-year-old’s importance to his famous pops. The overall value of the piece is reportedly $77,000 — a small price to pay for the publicity that seeing Drake wear such a piece would bring to the jeweler.

Of course, Drake’s been doing just fine showing public displays of affection for his son on his own. For Adonis’ most recent October 11, Drake threw a racing-themed birthday party and posted photos online; he’s also shared videos of his son learning the game of basketball (something else Drake takes pride in sharing with him), playing around on Christmas Eve, and giving him an impromptu French lesson, which the toddler used to troll his famous dad. Drake’s certainly come a long way from “hiding a child” as he was once taunted by Pusha T.

“You Oughta Know” was a major moment for a young Alanis Morissette (yes, the one from The Great North): As the lead single from 1995’s Jagged Little Pill, it was the world’s first look at Morissette’s new rock-leaning direction. Now, the single has been taken on by another rising artist on the verge of big things: GAYLE has covered the song in a Cover Nation-exclusive performance.

Aside from a virtual rhythm section and other digital instrumental accompaniment, GAYLE tackles the song on her own with an electric guitar, busting out a rendition that packs all the angst and energy of her own rocking hit, “ABCDEFU.” She really shows off her vocal range here, too, hitting some satisfying notes and turning in a real clean performance.

Even if you’re not quite familiar with Gayle yet, you’ve almost certainly heard her work, as “ABCDEFU” has absolutely taken over TikTok and other online spaces in recent months. While most fans are hearing the song on the internet, the live performances she’s given of the breakout hit (including one on The Tonight Show in January) have shown off how capable of a performer she is outside of a studio environment. Shortly after that performance, she dropped off her similarly spirited follow-up single, “Ur Just Horny.”

Watch GAYLE cover “You Oughta Know” above.

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

As the Winter Olympics wind down, Saturday Night Live has announced its next batch of hosts and musical guests for when the show returns later this month. Kicking things off is former SNL alum and stand-up comedian John Mulaney followed by Oscar Isaac and Zoë Kravitz, who will both be riding high off of Marvel and DC Comics projects, respectively.

Here’s the official rundown:

2/25 – John Mulaney w/ LCD Soundystem
2/5 – Oscar Isaac w/ Charli XCX
2/12 – Zoë Kravitz w/ Rosalía

After recently welcoming a new baby with Olivia Munn, Mulaney will kick off his new comedy tour, “From Scratch,” in March. As for Isaac, the actor’s new Disney+ series, Moon Knight, will start streaming later that same month. Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige promises it will be one of the most brutal properties in the MCU and that it pushes the boundaries of what the studio has been able to do under the Disney+ banner.

Meanwhile, Kravitz is just two weeks away from making her debut as Catwoman in The Batman when the highly anticipated DC Comics film smashes into theaters on March 4. Back in December, the actress revealed that she studied the fighting style of cats and lions to prep for her turn as Selina Kyle.

“We did some really interesting floor work that incorporated different kinds of martial arts and capoeira and a kind of feline, dance-like movement,” Kravtiz told Empire.

(Via Saturday Night Live on Twitter)

HBO Max just released a first look at their take on The Staircase, a true-crime conundrum that has baffled viewers for over a decade thanks in large part to an incredible docuseries that originally aired on the Sundance Channel before hitting Netflix a few years ago. With a star-studded cast that includes Collin Firth and Toni Collette, the dramatic retelling of the infamous murder case will air later this year. If you are unfamiliar with the story, here is a quick breakdown.

Michael Peterson was a novelist in the ’90s, publishing a handful of novels based on his experience in the Vietnam war. Peterson claimed to have earned multiple medals of honor in the Vietnam war, which turned out to be not entirely true, so already, there is a bit of shadiness surrounding this guy.

In 2001, Peterson called 911 after allegedly finding his wife Kathleen dead at the bottom of the stairs in their home. The investigation brought about many twists and turns, mostly due to mishandling of the case and the crime scene itself by authorities. Eventually, Peterson was tried for murder amid rumors of an unhappy marriage and a bad temper.

Coincidentally, Peterson had a friend, Elizabeth Ratliff, who was also found dead at the foot of a staircase nearly 15 years earlier. He was also the last person to see her alive, but was never found guilty of any wrongdoing. Prosecutors believed this is how he got the “idea” to stage his wife’s death.

Fast forward to 2003, Peterson was found guilty of the first-degree murder of his wife Kathleen, and sentenced to life in prison. But, in 2017, Peterson filed an Alford plea, which lessened his charge. Peterson has since written about his wife’s death, while insisting he is innocent.

Now, Peterson lives a quiet life in North Carolina, where he reportedly lives in a one-level apartment without stairs.

The circumstances surrounding Kathleen’s death are mysterious and upsetting, with new theories occasionally popping up, including what’s come to be known as “the owl theory“.