The post English Men Beating The Sh*t Out of Disrespectful Foreigners appeared first on SALTY.

In a recent security partnership with Mozilla, Anthropic found 22 separate vulnerabilities in Firefox — fourteen of them classified as "high-severity."

Is rising country music star, Sam Stoane, the only Greek artist in the country music genre? On the latest episode of the Whiskey Riff Raff podcast (which was actually a double episode), California native Sam Stoane spoke on the pressure she sometimes feels to defend the state she was born and raised in, talked to us about how 2025 was quite possibly the biggest year of her life with a debut album, a wedding and a baby coming all at once, and discussed the legendary influences that shape her sound. While there’s a plethora of classic country names that Stoane says inspired her from a young age – like Loretta Lynn and Patsy Cline – she’s also been compared to modern artists, like Tyler Childers. In her mind, she welcomes the “female Tyler Childers” comparisons, but thinks another artist out there fits a bit better: “I would say, stylistically, if we’re putting (my music) next to anybody, it’s probably more of a female Colter Wall sound. I would say it’s in the family of folk and Americana, but it’s still country in the rootsy way.” A lot of that western sound that comes through in Stoane’s work is thanks to her time spent out west. She spent much of her life out in California before relocating to the Nashville, Tennessee area. Take a listen to her debut album, Tales of the Dark West, and you’ll hear those Golden State and western influences come through. She told us that she loves where she is from… and really misses one particular part about living in California: the food. Because Stoane feels like the dining options here in Tennessee aren’t as good, she often cooks for herself and her family. And because she is Greek, those dishes are often representative of her Greek culture: “I cook a lot. My family is Greek. I’m 100% Greek, so I’ll make food. I will say, I couldn’t eat Greek food anywhere because I was kind of a snob about it.” Sam Stoane even pointed out that a popular, Nashville-area Greek restaurant named after a Greek dish isn’t even spelled correctly. And when we got on that topic, we started to wonder… are there any other Greek country music artists out there? We figured that Stoane would be the one to ask, and she wasn’t entirely sure if she was the only Greek representative in the genre. The “Coyote Cries” singer likes to think she’s not: “No, (I don’t know any others) honestly. Not really… I want a bouzouki. It’s a Greek guitar. But I wouldn’t know where to start with that. But no, I don’t know any other ones. I’m sure they are out there. Surely… at least one.” @whiskeyriff @SAM STOANE #whiskeyriff #whiskeyriffraff ♬ original sound – Whiskey Riff She was right about there being at least one. Kostas Lazarides, a Greek-born American country songwriter, is actually in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. There’s also another Greek country artist by the name of Demetri Thomas… so Sam Stoane isn’t alone, but she is one of the few Greek country artists and songwriters out there. You can hear more from Sam Stoane by downloading the podcast on Apple Podcasts by searching “Whiskey Riff Raff” or by clicking here. We’re also available on Spotify and wherever else you can listen to podcasts. Cheers, y’all. Audio Video The post “I’m Sure They Are Out There”: Is Sam Stoane One Of The Only Greek Artists In The Country Music Genre? first appeared on Whiskey Riff.

Powerful stuff. The “girl goin’ nowhere” herself, Ashley McBryde, has hardly lived up to her self-proclaimed nickname over the past few years. After breaking out with Eric Church back in 2017 with her performance of “Bible and A .44,” the Arkansas native has become one of the premier female artists in the genre, scoring a Grammy win for Best Country Duo/Group Performance (“Never Wanted to Be That Girl”) along with multiple ACM and CMA Award wins. Despite all the success, along with being one of the most well-respected artists in the genre as of late, it hasn’t come easy for the Arkansas native. Over the years, she’s been incredibly transparent with her struggle with alcohol addiction and her decision to get sober. In addition to some moving songs about sobriety, “The Devil I Know” and “Blackout Betty,” she’s been incredibly transparent about her relationship with alcohol over the years. In an interview with Kelleigh Bannen on Today’s Country Radio back in 2023, McBryde noted that she was over a year sober at the time because she didn’t want to speak on the topic and then go and “screw it up.” Since being sober, McBryde realized that her drinking was becoming very “detrimental” to her well-being, and her drinking kept her from fully feeling the emotions in her heart and mind. “Turns out it was just really detrimental. And then when you’re finding out the reasons that you’re going so overboard all the time was because of your inability to feel something that your brain was like, I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I’m like, well, that’s weak. I’m not going to accept that. I’d rather just hurt. This morning, I was at the boxing gym working out with my coach. We were doing something that was hard, and he said, ‘Are you okay? Do you need a break?’ And I said, ‘I know how to hurt.’ I do now. I mean, I knew how to hurt before and add extra to it for no reason.” Though she has always been open about her sobriety journey, McBryde had never truly opened up about all the details surrounding her final decision to get sober. With that being said, however, she recently revealed all the details in a recent interview with Bobby Bones on Bobbycast… and it was powerful, to say the least. During the interview, she’d reveal that she ended up checking into rehab in 2022, which led to her current sobriety. Bluntly, she’d note how she didn’t think she had to go, given her success in the industry, something that she wholeheartedly rejects today. “I kept being like, ‘I can’t do this. I don’t know where I am.’ [to] ‘Oh my God, I have to do this. I mean, I’m gonna do it. They got me here. I’m gonna do it. But I kept being like, ‘No way am I doing this for 30 days. That’s insane. I don’t live under a bridge. I didn’t hurt anybody.  Now I can hear my other self going, ‘Oh kid, sit down and shut up and put your seatbelt on.” On the topic of why she stayed in rehab after being so hesitant, McBryde didn’t hold any punches, saying how she would have killed herself if she continued the path she was on before making the decision: “I was gonna die. That’s the reason I had to go there, intervention style.” She’d then go on to explain the harrowing moment that made her realize she had a problem. As she recalls, she woke up one night at another female artist’s house, not knowing what had happened the night before. Trying to get some water, she was met with the said artist along with her entire team. “I woke up at another artist’s house, another female artist… I woke up in a bed that was not mine, in pajamas that aren’t mine. And I was like, ‘That must’ve been a doozy, I’m thirsty.’ I don’t know where I am, and I don’t know where water is. So I’ll just go find water.  And when I went to find water, I found a living room, and in that living room was my team… I looked at them and that artist [who] was also on the couch, and I said, ‘Okay, I don’t know where my boots are, but I need my boots.'” Tearfully, she’d then recall that her team sat down, intervention style, and asked her to quit. During the conversation, which eventually led to her checking in to seek help, they’d let McBryde know that the reason she ended up in the unnamed artist’s house was that she thought she was going to die from alcohol poisoning that night. “They said, ‘We need you to stop.’ And I said, ‘I need me to stop, too.’ And that’s when I found out that she took me to her house that night after we’d been out to make sure I didn’t die. But I didn’t.” McBryde would then reflect on the aftermath of her decision. Noting how much her hair/makeup stylist, Dayna Anne Slaughenhoupt, and her stylist, Blakely Collier, did for her, she’d admit that there’s nothing she can do to make up for the grace and support they showed her during that incredibly vulnerable moment in her life. “When I think about Dana and Blakely having to go shopping to find me clothes and having to go through my stuff, and to decide whether to tell my family, I cannot fathom or make up for how much I put them through.” Touching on why she decided to stay in more detail, she’d once again bluntly admit just how bad her relationship with alcohol was, saying it was “they’ll have to make a movie about it” bad. “That’s another reason to stay [in rehab]. I didn’t die, and I have the chance right now. [It’s like], ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m hurting me, whatever, and I’m hurting them. And if this goes any further, this is really, really ugly. This is like, ‘they’ll have to make a movie about it’ bad. So I just buckled down and decided, ‘Well, I’m here, and technically I can leave, but we’re far enough out in the sticks that I wouldn’t know what direction to go.” I’ll admit, many articles in this industry are fairly easy to cover. It’s pretty easy to write about a song or album release, a brand new tour or a new record set by whichever artist is currently trending. This one, however, was a difficult one. It’s not often you see an artist such as McBryde be this transparent about her personal struggles, let alone reveal so many details about something as vulnerable as going to rehab. If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction, I cannot recommend listening to her entire interview on the subject. Simply put, it’s powerful. You can watch McBryde’s entire episode of Bobbycast on Netflix, which is available to stream now. “The Devil I Know” Redemption Residency Dates March 19 & 20 – Just Me and My Shadow April 17 & 18 – Mixtape from the Mixed Up YearsThe post “I Was Gonna Die”: Ashley McBryde Tearfully Recalls The Day She Decided To Go To Rehab first appeared on Whiskey Riff.

Yesterday House Foreign Affairs Chairman Brian Mast exposed how the Biden administration spent taxpayer money on something called “queering the maps”. He asked a somewhat newly-confirmed state department official, Sarah Rogers, about . . .

Venezuela and the United States announced Thursday that they are restoring diplomatic and consular ties. The move signals a further thaw with the government of Acting President Delcy Rodriguez, who took power in the country after Washington’s ouster of the former President Nicolás Maduro.  The announcement came as Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum ended a two-day visit to Venezuela, where he said Caracas had pledged security guarantees for foreign mining investors and predicted oil and gas output would exceed 2026 targets. The State Department said renewed relations would “facilitate our joint efforts to promote stability, support economic recovery, and advance political reconciliation in Venezuela,” while Venezuela’s foreign ministry described the move as “positive and mutually beneficial.” The restoration of diplomatic ties will facilitate communication and commercial ties between the two countries, a helpful step for the Trump administration as it seeks to consolidate its influence in Venezuela and restore the country’s oil industry under American supervision. The post U.S. and Venezuela to Restore Diplomatic Ties appeared first on The American Conservative.

UK Special Coverage Shabana Mahmood Takes On the Rubber Boats Will Labour’s latest effort to tackle the immigration crisis run aground, as all the others have? UK Special Coverage In a widely reported London speech Thursday, the UK’s Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced the most sweeping changes to British immigration policy in a decade, putting her on what the Guardian described as “a collision course with Labour MPs.” For the past 20 years or so it has been almost impossible to discuss immigration rationally in the UK. The debate has been confined by hate speech guardrails, academic sophistry, and official obfuscation. Ask whether asylum seekers and foreign nationals are more likely to commit sexual offences than the indigenous population and you’ll be accused of racism rather than given a considered response. (They are, by the way.) There’s no such thing as an “illegal immigrant,” we’re told. They are only arriving unlawfully on flotillas of small rubber boats across the English Channel because Britain doesn’t allow them “safe and legal routes”. It is as if the mercenary migrant-traffickers endangering their lives are white knights compensating for Britain’s denial of human rights. Refugee charities seem to believe exactly that. Politicians like the Green Party deputy leader, Zack Polanski, have actually been fetching up on the beaches of France and helping migrants onto those unsafe and unseaworthy small boats. The fact that Mahmood condemned this behavior in her speech perhaps reflects a significant change in the debate on immigration and asylum in the UK. But the liberal spell is far from broken. Mahmood tried to dispute the globalist ideology, almost universal in the UK media and on university campuses, which holds that, as she put it, “nation states are social constructs and that patriotism is a dirty word”. She rejected the dogma that attempting to restrict immigration, legal and illegal, is essentially racist. “If the left does not secure our borders,” she told the left-leaning IPPR think tank, “then the hard right will be given the chance to try.” Well, she’s not wrong about that. The anti-immigration Reform UK, which wants the detention and deportation of all illegal immigrants and the reduction of net migration to zero, has been leading the UK opinion polls all year. If Labour does not succeed in persuading British voters that it is serious about controlling immigration, then Nigel Farage could very well be in Number 10 after the next election. Mahmood has taken guidance from socialist Denmark. It has ignored the human-rights lawyers and started deporting unlawful immigrants en masse. It has also been bulldozing migrant ghettos to break up the “parallel communities” that sprang up during its open-borders days. The liberal Danes have even been seizing money and valuables from migrants crossing the border to pay for their keep. Labour isn’t going to do anything quite so draconian. But its leaders have finally woken up to the fact that immigration is the number one issue for most working-class and middle-class voters. They want their country back. Many ordinary Brits resent what has happened to their communities, which have changed out of all recognition since the 1990s. They resent even more that they can’t even talk about it. Mahmood has got the message. But she has also received a barrage of criticism from left-wingers in her own party today for her proposal to make refugees have their residency reviewed every 30 months. She is also restricting student visas, which were widely abused as a pretext to bring in entire families. The Home Secretary had already extended the period before which refugees can apply for settled status from five years to 10. And they get citizenship only if they prove they have contributed to the community, can support themselves and are fluent in English. More radically, she is also attempting to alter Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which the UK is a signatory, and which often prevents even asylum seekers who commit crimes from being deported. The most controversial element is perhaps the offer of up to £40,000 to families of illegal immigrants to return to their home country. That’s not going to go down well with British families who can’t afford holidays because of the cost-of-living crisis. It all sounds hardline, and has been condemned by 100 Labour MPs as “Reform lite.”  It is perhaps only Mahmood, a Muslim herself and a second-generation immigrant, who could have made this speech today. It may sound benign from an American point of view—no ICE-style seizures here. But in Britain, few politicians dare say that mass immigration is undermining social cohesion, as Mahmood has. But even supporters of a tougher regime suspect that her measures, which are only “trials,” will be rapidly dropped if and when support for Reform peaks, or when they meet hostility from liberal judges. We’ve been here before, says the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch. The Labour left will always stymie attempts to control immigration. Successive Labour governments have accepted the Treasury view that Britain needs mass immigration to compensate for the aging population and the fertility crisis. Even the Tory leader Boris Johnson agreed with this economic argument and was responsible for increasing net migration to nearly one million in 2023. That is now widely referred to as the “Boriswave.” Even Keir Starmer last year called this “a failed experiment in open borders.”   But when he later said that Britain risked becoming an “island of strangers,” he was slapped down by his party. The Prime Minister subsequently claimed that it was just a phrase written by advisers that he didn’t actually agree with—even though he said it in a speech. The small-boat crossings are only a small element in the mass migration of recent years. But they have become totemic of the inability or unwillingness of the UK elites to control Britain’s borders. Legions of human-rights lawyers and sympathetic judges mobilize against the deportation of illegal immigrants even when they have committed serious crimes. The deportation of one Albanian criminal was famously halted because his child “could not get chicken nuggets” in the homeland. A tribunal judge agreed that it would be “unduly harsh” for his 10-year-old son, who had psychological difficulties, to live in Albania because of his difficulties with certain foods and clothing. That is a measure of what Mahmood is up against. She has not proposed repeal of the European Convention on Human Rights, which is the root of much of the problem because it gives every refugee—and there are currently around 80 million of them across the world’s conflict zones—the absolute right to come and stay in the UK. Nor has she cut Britain’s generous benefits, which are the main “pull factor” for migrants. Mahmood is a member of the conservative “Blue Labour” group, but party activists and many Labour MPs are moving rapidly to the left right now. They worry that the Greens are stealing the Muslim vote that they think is theirs by right. So Mahmood has her work cut out. She is standing, Canute-like, before an unstoppable tide. Even as she spoke, hundreds of migrants were reportedly gathering on French beaches and heading for the ever-awaiting rubber boats. The post Shabana Mahmood Takes On the Rubber Boats appeared first on The American Conservative.

We’ve celebrated International Women’s Day since 1911. From how it started to this year’s theme, here’s what you need to know about the event, which is held annually on March 8.