IKEA Monkey

White House press secretary Sean Spicer was asked about the costs of President Trump's visits to Mar-a-Lago compared with proposed cuts to domestic programs in the administration's budget. Spicer said, "Presidents always travel," and that Trump will continue to traverse the country.

If you’ve scoffed in the past at stories of visitors to Arkansas’ Crater of Diamonds State Park who have walked away with valuable gems, maybe this will blow your jaded mind: A 14-year-old found a 7-carat diamond there last weekend just half an hour after he arrived. And as big as this diamond is, the park says the stone isn’t even in the top five of the largest diamonds found there.

While some parks forbid visitors from walking out with precious finds, Crater of Diamonds has a “finders, keepers” policy when it comes to diamonds and other minerals turned up at the park — though you can’t just take home buckets of unsifted dirt.

The teen — who was visiting with his family — was walking along near the East Drain in the southern part of the park, when he espied the shiny, dark brown diamond, the park says.

“It was just a few inches from a stream of water, with a bunch of other rocks that were about the same size,” he said.

His dad says the family had only been looking around for about 30 minutes, and due to the gem’s dark color, they weren’t sure if it was a diamond at all. Just to be sure, the family stopped by the Diamond Discovery Center to have their finds identified before leaving the park. The teen says he was shocked to learn that he had found one of the biggest diamonds in the park’s history — the seventh largest, specifically.

The park’s interpreter says conditions were ideal for the find.

“About an inch of rain fell on the plowed search area during the week,” explains Waymon Cox. “A heavy rain can uncover larger diamonds near the surface. Diamonds have a metallic-looking shine and are often easier to spot on top of the ground.”

The teen named his gem, “Superman’s Diamond,” well, because he happens to share a name with the comic book superhero. He says he’s planning to keep the diamond as a souvenir.

While it’s unclear how much the teen’s diamond could sell for if he decided to go that route, a fellow teenager sold a 3.85-carat yellow diamond she found at the park for $20,000 in 2014.

The largest diamond registered at the park was an 8.52-carat white diamond named the Esperanza that was discovered by a Colorado tourist in June 2015.

A thief grabbed a laptop containing Trump Tower floor plans and other "sensitive" information that could compromise national security from a Secret Service agent's vehicle on Thursday.

Fox News, the channel playing in a marble-and-gold bathroom while the president enjoys a six-hour bowel movement, has an interesting challenge ahead of them: how do they cover reports of the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia? How do they pretend like it doesn’t matter? Enter The Security Moms, who care very much…

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https://twitter.com/ConnorNewcomb_/status/843542312139603968

What is the best way to throw up a prayer as time is winding down? Some people think you take a step or two and launch the ball from your chest, which is probably the most common way to do this. Others believe the proper course of action is to heave it down the court like it’s a baseball, which is probably a little easier to do more accurately but it’s a bad idea if your arm isn’t strong enough.

Thanks to Maryland women’s basketball, we’ve learned of a third way to accomplish this: setting your feet and throwing it from over your head with two hands like you have a throw in on the soccer pitch. The Terrapins are playing West Virginia in the Women’s NCAA Tournament on Sunday, and they took a 38-24 lead into halftime. It looked like it was only going to be a 35-24 lead, but Destiny Slocum had other ideas.

Slocum got the inbounds pass after the Mountaineers scored. She didn’t have any time to do anything more common, and she was standing at the wing on the other end of the court. So she took the ball in both hands, put it behind her head, and fired away.
It was beautiful, as the ball went right through the hoop without any help from the backboard. After it went through, Slocum’s teammates celebrated with her like she hit a game winner. Here it is from the reverse angle.

Hopefully this makes it way to the NBA some day. It is the perfect mix of the accuracy of throwing a basketball like is a baseball with the power you generate from heaving the ball from your chest. Really, it’s kind of a surprise that we don’t see this more often.

Tyra Banks has chosen to reclaim the title that is rightfully hers: She will once again host America’s Next Top Model. When the competition series was revived by VH1, Banks remained executive producer, but stayed largely behind-the-scenes while singer and actress Rita Ora took over her on-camera job. (Confused as to who Ora is? There’s a podcast that can help.) But for the show’s 24th cycle, which starts production over the summer, Banks will be back, VH1 revealed Thursday. “I’m overwhelmed and humbled by the intensity of the ANTM fan base whose deep affection for the show led me to have a change of heart,” she said in a statement. “After giving it a lot of thought, I realized that remaining behind the camera wasn’t enough because ANTM is woven into my DNA.” So she‘s doing it for the fans (and probably some eager ...

Buoyed by a spike in ratings — largely thanks to the Trump administration’s highly lampoon-able blunders — Saturday Night Live is trying something different this year. The final four episodes of Season 42 will be broadcast simultaneously across all time zones, UPROXX reports, and the show has scheduled four boldface names to host: Jimmy Fallon on April 15, Chris Pine on May 6, Melissa McCarthy on May 13, and Dwayne Johnson closing out the season on May 20. Louis C.K. is set to host the next new installment, on April 8, as was announced during last week’s episode.

McCarthy is likely the biggest draw here; her take on White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has been a highlight of the post-election season. This will also be McCarthy’s fifth hosting gig, which means she can finally join the Five-Timers Club alongside Tina Fey, Tom Hanks, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, Justin Timberlake, and others.

SNL is currently enjoying its highest-rated season in 24 years, no small feat in the age of a gazillion choices across streaming, cable, and broadcast television. Normally, the show airs at 11:30 p.m. in each timezone, but this year they wanted the whole country to tune in together so that “everyone is in on the joke at the same time,” Robert Greenblatt, Chairman of NBC Entertainment, said in a statement. He added, “Kudos to Lorne Michaels, the producers and cast for making SNL one of the most relevant and anticipated shows in the zeitgeist.”

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina's former governor says he's had trouble finding a job, even part-time teaching positions, because of backlash from legislation he signed involving transgender rights.

The Bulls faced a big game Wednesday, such as this Bulls team can face an actual big game. But anyway, it was a chance to close in on the eighth playoff spot in the dogbreath Eastern Conference and it was at home.

The Grizzlies faced a big game Wednesday, too. It was a chance to close in on the...

In an era of peak television that’s expanded storytelling horizons beyond the formulaic, flooding the medium with characters that aren’t traditionally likable, Andy Daly’s Review stands out. There are plenty of flawed male protagonists on the small screen, after all, to the point that it’s gotten boring to watch them all behaving badly on their various cable shows. But Forrest MacNeil, the star of Review, does more than behave badly—he’s a monster. And though the Comedy Central series has had fun hinting at his deeper issues throughout its run, it seems ready to render its final judgment of him in its third and final season, which begins Thursday.

Review With Forrest MacNeil, the reality-show-within-a-show that drives this demented piece of extreme cringe comedy, sees Forrest (played by Daly) taking on various life experiences as suggested by the viewing public, and offering his opinion on them. Among the more whimsical activities (eating too many pancakes or obeying everything a Magic 8 Ball told him to do), Forrest has also divorced his wife, taken various drugs, spent months lost at sea, and killed a man, all in the maniacal pursuit of giving his “reviews” the authentic grist he believes they need. And though he leaves a trail of destruction in his wake, Forrest has otherwise remained an affable, boring, middle-American chump—a perfect villain, hiding in plain sight.

Review has always had a sense of Forrest’s sinister side, wringing big laughs (and surprisingly gripping drama) from the extreme lengths the host will go to for his job. But it’s also struggled to hold him fully accountable, since part of its core premise is that Forrest has his own TV show and can’t really change his ways until he’s rid of it. That’s why this last season—made with the knowledge that it’d be Forrest’s big finale—feels a little more electrifying. There’s a comeuppance on the way, and the dramatic tension comes from whether or not Forrest realizes he deserves it.

That viewers should care at all what Forrest thinks is a credit to Daly and his co-creators Jeffrey Blitz and Charlie Siskel, who have crafted a comedy character for the ages. He has the ego of The Office’s Michael Scott, and just as little actual intelligence, but he also lacks the necessary empathy that made Michael a viable character for many years on a network sitcom. Forrest is more of a strange sideshow that you can’t quite take your eyes off—a man driven by such inexplicable passion, and prone to impressively cruel feats of misanthropy, all in the name of science. There’s no way the character could have lasted for hundreds of episodes, but that Daly and company got more than 20 out of Comedy Central for such a dark series is quite an achievement.

Forrest never quite understands that he’s doing anything wrong, even as his ex-wife screams in his face about how he ruined her life, or his co-workers sigh and wince at his exacting demands. But as Review has gone on, it has taken great care to make sure everything Forrest breaks stays broken. When season three opens, his producer Grant (James Urbaniak) is in a wheelchair, paralyzed after Forrest believed he was at the heart of an imaginary conspiracy and attacked him (all in the name of a review). Forrest is himself on trial for murder, after shooting a man dead last year at a viewer’s behest.

Whatever fictional network airs this program obviously wants Forrest to change his ways, this time offering him unlimited vetoes on any audience suggestions (which are chosen at random by a computer). But Forrest immediately proclaims that he’ll ignore those vetoes, as they’re not in the spirit of his grand experiment. In Thursday’s premiere, one of the segments sees him swap places with his on-screen assistant A.J. Gibbs (Megan Stevenson), a constant voice of reason that he usually ignores.

It’s tantalizing to see Review then progress as a much more normal show about toying with fun life experiences. A.J. lacks Forrest’s insane drive, and thus refuses to put her health or the happiness of her family on the line in the name of a TV segment. Daly wants the viewer to know that the psychosis of Review is not in the show but in its particular host—that viewers have been complicit in one man’s descent into madness, not some reality TV program going awry. As with every season of Review, things quickly escalate, but this time there’s the sense that it’s heading in directions well beyond the point of no return.

Review has never been a show with broad appeal, but it’s not just a simple exercise in cringe humor, either. Daly’s tightly wound performance is so pitch-perfect, and the world around him so meticulously crafted, that the show works almost as well as a drama as it does as a comedy. Its final episodes are particularly loaded with gripping twists and turns. Forrest may be a truly horrible human being, but in his three years on television, he’s been one of the most fascinating characters to watch. It’ll be good to see him get a proper sendoff, just rewards and all.

On Sunday afternoon I was scheduled to fly back to New York City after a brief trip to Austin, TX. The flight was scheduled to depart at around 2:00PM, but was delayed some five hours because—based on the few details I could understand when bleated out of the gate’s loudspeaker—a flight carrying a replacement part…

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Woman’s Head Feared Lost Forever Inside Infinity Scarf

Boaty McBoatface—the infamous submarine that the internet voted to give a stupid-ass name—is setting off on its debut Antarctic expedition this week, Gizmodo reports.

Originally, Boaty McBoatface was supposed to be, well, a boat after the UK's Natural Environmental Research Council decided to put the name of a new research ship in the hands of a public vote. When the public opted to go with something brain-bleedingly dumb, the British government decided to change things up.

The boat was subsequently named after Sir David Attenborough—the satin-voiced narrator of Planet Earth, among other things. The name "Boaty McBoatface" was relegated to something less important, in this case, a small submarine, instead. It's that sub that is now making its maiden voyage into the wild beyond.

The autonomous submarine named McBoatface is one of three long-range subs developed by the National Oceanography Center. It will set off on a mission to help map deep sea currents in Antarctica. The information will hopefully give some insight into how climate change is dicking around with the natural flow of the ocean.

Seeing as how a former reality star runs America and the EPA is helmed by a dude who's one bad haircut away from being a Captain Planet villain, it's only appropriate that a stupidly named submarine is going to play a pivotal role in understanding climate change. This is our world now.

Follow River Donaghey on Twitter.

If you’re an avid Waze user, there’s a reasonable chance that you tend to pop between Waze and an audio app while you’re driving. Well, if that audio app happens to be Spotify, you’re in luck, because Waze is integrating Spotify controls directly into the app and vice versa.

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This is Olly, a rescue dog, and Olly is very eager to compete in the agility competition at Crufts, the U.K.’s biggest dog show. But eagerness does not always translate to competence.

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High School Teaches Parenting Skills By Having Students Post Nonstop Photos Of Egg To Social Media

LOVELAND, CO—In an assignment meant to simulate the responsibilities of parenthood, pairs of juniors at Larimer County High School were each given an egg Monday and instructed to post nonstop photos of it to social media, sources reported. “For one week, students will be asked to deluge their various accounts with as many egg photos as possible, incorporating both candid and staged shots as well as emoji-filled captions about how happy the egg makes them,” said health teacher Beth Riddle, adding that top grades would be awarded to pairs who posted at least once per hour and made ample use of hashtags like #ParentLife and #NumberOneEggDad. “The goal is to instill in these kids the idea that being a parent is no walk in the park—you can’t just take one picture and repost it to different accounts. I expect to see the egg in a variety of fun outfits, the egg playing with other eggs, and the egg sitting next to pastel-colored blocks indicating how many days old it is. There are no shortcuts in parenting and none in this assignment.” Riddle added that students could earn extra credit if their egg became a viral hit and booked an appearance on Ellen.

Have your kneecaps been Vitamin D deprived lately? Do you like the look of jeans with torn knees but also crave the knee sweat of plastic pants? Then we’ve got the fashion statement for you: High-waisted — literally “Mom jeans” — with clear plastic panels that make it look like your knees are on sale in a toy store.

The MOTO Clear Panel Mom Jeans are available for $95 on TopShop’s U.S. site as well as on Nordstrom.com, making them a very real product that is apparently not a joke.

Again, these are intentionally designed to evoke the image of your mother, as they “come in authentic mid blue rigid-look denim,” and are cut “with a high-waist and a tapered leg. As for the plastic knee covers, TopShop simply calls it a “cool clear knee panel detail.”

While a quick search on Twitter brings up a whole lot of outrage, here are some of the best reactions we’ve read so far:

In the latest court battle, Dr. Luke has filed a motion to subpoena a Kesha fan for what the producer’s legal team claims is defamation.

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“I don’t like scary stuff,” you tell people—as if it’s an allergy of some kind. You won’t go to haunted houses, you wouldn’t dream of playing the new Resident Evil, and your fingers are perpetually crossed in the hope your moviegoing friends won’t pick a horror flick. Well, what if I told you scaring yourself is…

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FX has shared a couple more teaser trailers for Fargo’s third season — now revealing the second of Ewan McGregor’s drastically different brother characters. The first teaser showed Mary Elizabeth Winstead and McGregor looking like this:

Yes, that exceedingly un-McGregor McGregor was Ray Stussy, a parole officer who apparently sometimes orders pie at a diner w/ Mary Elizabeth Winstead. (Winstead plays Nikki Swango, and is in a relationship with Stussy, her parole officer). Perceptive viewers may have also caught a glimpse of Carrie Coon in the first teaser, as department police chief Gloria Burgle.

Now, we now have a look at McGregor’s “Minnesota Parking Lot king” character, Emmit Stussy. This Stussy we see, in the teaser, licking stamps and smiling a sinister smile. Also engaged in something deeply banal — but filmed with vague eeriness — is Coon’s character, in another new teaser. She cannot get a supermarket’s automatic door to open for her. She says “what the heck.” It is apparently teaser trailer-worthy. (A former teaser showed her having difficulty with a walkie talkie while driving.)

Watch:

The season premieres April 19.

The Anza-Borrego Desert is the most vibrant it's been in years.

sushinfood:

ima-fuckingt4ble:

tycooper8:

I’m pretty sure watching this video is healthy for you

I love this he must be so bored in there and that guy made his day

i love people who show monkeys magic