Latest news with #Raygun
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
How Joni Ernst's ‘We're All Going to Die' Is New Dem War Cry
Save for Catilin Clark and her famous No. 22 jersey, the years between the two Trump terms were bleak for Iowa's premiere T-shirt producer. 'It was kind of lean, so our catchphrase around here was, 'Thank God for women's basketball,' because the whole Caitlin Clark women's basketball thing really like saw us through the Biden years,' Mike Draper, founder of Raygun, told the Daily Beast. But Draper knew he had a winner when a friend emailed his Des Moines headquarters a video clip of Iowa U.S. Senator Joni Ernst going mega MAGA during a May 30 town hall meeting in Parkersburg. 'They're like, 'Check this out,'' Draper recalled. 'And we were like, 'Holy s--t!' And they were like, 'Yeah, holy s--t!'' Ernst had been offering falsehoods such as those spread by Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to justify cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). A constituent had just called out, 'People are going to die!' Ernst's unforgettable response was being printed on t-shirts the very next morning. 'WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE' - US Sen Joni Ernst The $24.95 item flew off the shelves at Raygun's 10 stores. What was listed on the Raygun website as, 'We All Are Going To Die Joni Ernst Quote,' was hot in the way of a No. 22 jersey. Dems could now rally against Ernst just as the whole state had rallied for Clark. Ernst further proved herself a buckeye Marie Antoinette and T-shirt maker's bonanza the next day by posting a sarcastic non-apology video made inside a cemetery. 'I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that yes, we are all going to perish from this Earth,' she said in the video. 'So, I apologize. And I'm really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well.' She then took her decidedly unfunny joke to an unholy extreme. 'But for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my lord and savior, Jesus Christ.' Any serious consideration of Jesus would have to include His teachings regarding the poor and the vulnerable. As for the tooth fairy, Medicaid-eligible children in rural Iowa areas such as Storm Lake have to be driven hours to see a dentist who will accept reimbursement levels that have not increased in a quarter century. Buena Vista County Social worker Tracy Gotto told the Daily Beast that youngsters could not get much-needed heart surgery due to untreated dental infections. Ernst's 'apology' was bizarre enough to make for another great T-shirt: 'JONI ERNST IS GOING TO DIE. OFFENDED? WELL, SORRY, THE TOOTH FAIRY ISN'T REAL EITHER. BUT DON;T WORRY BECAUSE JONI BEEHIVES HER LORD AND SAVIOR WILL GIVE HER ETERNAL EVERLASTING LIFE.' Raygun also produced a simpler offering; a variation on the official welcome emblazoned on the state road sign with the slogan, 'Iowa…fields of opportunities.' The shirt reads, 'Iowa - we all are going to die. ' India May, the 33-year-old Town Hall attendee who made the declaration on Friday that started it all is a once- registered nurse, director to the Ionia Community Library and a Chickasaw County death investigator. She also runs the TikTok site, PDA Iowa, for the Iowa chapter of the Progressive Democrats of America. She tried to attend a town hall for Iowa's other senator, Chuck Grassley last month, but the site was filled beyond capacity. She managed to get into the Ernst event, which was held at a high school an hour's drive from home and began at 7:30 a.m. on a work day. She livestreamed it and brought the intense interest of someone with her particular combination of occupations. 'I'm a nurse and a librarian, and my job is to bring people the care and the resources that they need. And those resources are already dwindling as people are getting fired and the funding gets cut, and it's scary and upsetting, so I'm just trying to do everything within my power legally to stop people from getting hurt or worse,' May later told the Daily Beast. May is well aware that numerous studies have found a direct correlation between Medicaid coverage and mortality. A University of Chicago study found that by signing on Medicaid expansion via the Affordable Care Act, 41 states–including Iowa–saved approximately 27,400 lives between 2010 and 2022. Another study found that the refusal of 10 states to sign on cost 15,600 lives between 2014 and 2017. Ernst now wants the whole country to regress in that direction. 'I want my headstone to say, 'People will die,'' May told the Daily Beast on Wednesday. In recent days, May has considered running for the state legislature, if nothing else, to reduce by at least one the number of Republican seats that are uncontested in the next election. The Republicans have had a majority in the Iowa General Assembly (the House of Representatives and the Senate) since 2010. A current member of the Democratic minority in the legislature has been emboldened by Ernst's quote. Rep. J.D. Scholten told the Sioux City Journal that he now intends to oppose her when she is expected to seek reelection next year. As it happens, the State Capital is just a few minutes away from Raygun's flagship store. Draper is all but sure to still be selling 'WE ALL ARE GOING TO DIE' t-shirts when Ernst, Scholten and May may all be on the ballot in November of 2026. Thanks to Ernst and ultimately a returned President Trump, who won the state by 13 points, the lean Biden years are over in the Iowa t-shirt world. 'Now we're kind of back on the, I was going to say 'Trump Train,' but I guess I would just call it the 'Crazy Train,'' Draper said. 'We're back on the 'Crazy Train.'' And it seems even crazier on a personal level when he considers that Ivanka Trump was in his year at the University of Pennsylvania. Her father was at the graduation party in 2004. 'He's there with Melania, and I think Barron was like, this little kid,' Draper remembered. 'We're like, 'There goes the host of The Apprentice.' And if somebody were like, 'You know he's going to be president one day,' we would have been like, 'Donald Trump. Yeah, right.''
Axios
26-03-2025
- Business
- Axios
Des Moines to launch Fleur Drive's final facelift
The Des Moines City Council agreed Monday to take bids on the final stretch of a yearslong project to reconstruct Fleur Drive. Why it matters: Fleur is the most heavily traveled route connecting downtown DSM to the airport. City officials say the improvements will boost safety, traffic flow and aesthetics. Catch up quick: The $23 million project includes replacing deteriorated pavement and adding sidewalks. The first phase began five years ago, and disruptions to its 30,000 daily commuters have become notorious, even becoming a Raygun T-shirt. Zoom in: The final phase includes resurfacing both the northbound and southbound lanes between George Flagg and West Martin Luther King Jr. parkways. Construction could begin this spring and be completed before the end of the year. The project will affect access to Gray's Lake Park.
The Guardian
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Ferocious, cheeky or ‘nightmare fuel'? Meet Rum'un, Tasmania's new AFL mascot
A 'cheeky' Tasmanian devil that poos out footballs, growls like Nosferatu and is covered in papier-mache-like recycled fur has been unveiled as the new mascot of the state's long-awaited AFL team. Rum'un, which translates to Tasmanian slang for 'an odd or eccentric person; a scallywag, or someone cheeky' in the Macquarie Dictionary, made his debut as the Tasmania Devils' latest recruit at an event on Tuesday evening. He sashayed down the catwalk at Hobart's Theatre Royal with a slow run-up before bending down and emitting a 'Rum'un' roar, echoed with delight by attendees. 'I've got a very sneaking suspicion that this move is going to catch on,' the host, Jack Riewoldt, told the crowd, as the Devil launched into side-stepping dance to the backing of drums. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email 'Bit of Raygun there from Rum'un, you beauty!' Riewoldt cheered. Rum'un was developed in partnership with the Tasmania-based Terrapin Puppet Theatre and input from schoolchildren across the island. His fur is made from recycled school polo shirts, track pants and disused backpacks. Lead maker Bryony Anderson said it was an 'unusual pairing' for Terrapin Puppet Theatre but the club was 'game to do it differently'. The nine-month long process started with a visit to a local wildlife sanctuary, discussing devil physiology, their threat to survival and what makes the animal unique. Anderson then visited 10 schools with green uniforms and received donations, which led to a week at a New Norfolk high school where students helped turn the items into strips of fur, which were sown on to the creature. It was a request from the students that Rum'un would do custom poos of the feathers or fur of opposing teams. 'The team will go out with all the stories of the schools built in [to the mascot],' Anderson said. 'We wanted it to be ferocious and punchy, not just big foam heads. We were told 'don't make it look like the Wiggles'.' Pointing to a article with the headline 'Australia horrified as Tasmanian team's mascot causes frenzy', Anderson said 'in Tasmania, there's quite a few people that'll be chuffed with that'. In coming weeks, Rum'un will embark on a tour across Tasmania, meeting communities across the island and representing the club before its planned AFL men's debut in 2028. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion The Tasmania Football Club chief executive, Brendon Gale, said the new recruit would 'be a great beacon of our club across the state'. 'The creation of Rum'un reflects our club – uniquely Tasmanian, handcrafted and created with grit and determination representing our whole island,' he said. 'Rum'un is also a little bit cheeky. These characteristics are all true to the Tasmania Football Club, a club that represents our whole state and who does things our way.' Social media users had a mixed reaction to Rum'un. 'It's a pinata,' one TikTok user commented on a video which showed the devil ingesting and excreting an AFL football. 'That mascot is actually nightmare fuel,' another said, 'kids are going to be terrified'. 'This is legitimately cool. All the people cringing at it aren't having fun, but I am!' another user commented, while one simply said: 'That's fucked. I love it.' The release of the name and look of the mascot comes a year after the Tasmania FC revealed its club name and colours. The club has attracted 207,000 founding members before its AFL launch. On Tuesday, the Devils refreshed their $10 membership offer which attracted significant support last year.
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Yahoo
Brother of Viral Olympic Aussie Breakdancer 'Raygun' Arrested Over $100,000 Crypto Scheme
The brother of infamous Australian Olympic breakdancer Rachael Gunn, aka 'Raygun,' has been arrested on suspicion of orchestrating a $100,000 cryptocurrency scheme. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission announced the charges against Brendan Gunn on Wednesday, accusing the brother of the Olympic breaker of dealing 'with money or other property' that were 'reasonable to suspect' were the proceeds of a crime.'It is alleged that Mr. Gunn dealt with two bank cheques, which contained the proceeds of four investment amounts totaling $181,000 made by three victim investors who deposited funds for conversion to cryptocurrency,' the ASIC said in a statement. Gunn faces three years in prison and a fine of $37,800, according to authorities, who say that he was a director of Mormarkets Pty Ltd., 'a company which accepted deposits from Australians for conversion to cryptocurrency and other purported overseas investment opportunities.' Related: Who Is Raygun? Meet the Olympic Aussie Breakdancer Who Went Viral for Her Dance Moves Australian authorities allege that Gunn had 'sought to open a series of bank accounts on an ongoing basis to receive and transfer deposits, despite bank accounts being repeatedly closed due to concerns about scams and Mr. Gunn being informed of these concerns.' Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved sister Rachel made headlines around the globe for her outlandish performance at the Paris Olympics last summer, netting her 0 points in the first-ever break dancing competition. Competing as 'Raygun,' the Australian professor became the subject of a litany of internet jokes, disputes over the validity of her style of dancing, and even conspiracy theories surrounding her qualification in the event – despite being ranked No. 1 in the world. Related: Australian Breakdance Star Raygun Announces Retirement Over 'Upsetting' Olympic Backlash The spotlight and ultimate criticism of her performance forced Raygun to announce her retirement last November, a decision she said was made as a result of the 'upsetting' backlash she received online. 'I'm not going to dance anymore, no,' Raygun told Australian radio show 2DayFM, per CNN, adding, 'I still dance, and I still break. But, you know, that's like in my living room with my partner. It's been really upsetting. I just didn't have any control over how people saw me or who I was.' Read the original article on People
The Independent
19-02-2025
- The Independent
#JusticeForRaygun: Outrage erupts after baboon burned to death
Encounters between baboons and people are common in parts of South Africa. WhatsApp groups often share stories of baboons raiding a kitchen and stealing all the food. And stories appear in the media about the torture and killing of baboons. Recently the hashtag #JusticeForRaygun has been widely shared on social media. A young male baboon named Raygun was being tracked as he made his way through a suburb of Pretoria to the wilds. When he stopped at a school in a small town, a group of teenagers hunted him down, attacked him and burned him to death. Some children had reportedly fainted earlier in the day and he was blamed. This connection to superstition and the occult is nothing new. Why are baboons so often badly treated in South Africa? People are far more aggressive towards baboons than the other way round. Analysis suggests that the rage is not really just about baboons, but about society's anxiety more generally, with baboons acting as stand-ins for humans. People expand their settlements into areas where baboons once lived freely. They create secure spaces behind high walls, razor wire fences and security systems: they fear burglars, they fear those who invade suburban safety, and they want them removed. But they cannot get rid of the human intruders – so they take their frustration out on the baboons. For a long time baboons were legally labelled as 'vermin' (pests) and, while patchily protected today (it's illegal to hunt baboons without a permit in most areas), they're still killed illegally in suburbia or on farms. Of course, baboons are complex, adaptable beings whose cultures are closely evolved with ours: they live in social groups as we do and behave in recognisably similar ways. Baboons have evolved to live near humans and benefit from our environmental modifications. So they often enter human spaces. This feels 'unnatural' to people used to the shy, human-averse smaller wildlife surrounding urban settlement. Like us, baboons are inquisitive, socially complex and flexible, with enough dexterity to navigate sources of delicious food. They embrace our high-energy, low-effort foods, from orchards, fields, rubbish bins and dumps, picnics and kitchens – in a (very) few cases, wounding people and domestic animals. Some baboons lose their usual suspicion of humans and deploy scare tactics to acquire food. This behaviour precipitates human–baboon conflict even before the added factor of the occult baboon. The occult baboon? The baboon may also be seen as part of the occult arts or as linked to the tokoloshe (a supernatural baboonesque man-beast in South African folklore who acts both independently and as a kind of witch's familiar). Indeed, some South Africans refuse to even name the baboon or utter the words used to describe it in various languages, like imfene, tshwene and mfenhe. Some adults rather use the euphemism selo sa thabeng (mountain thing). We need to ask why it's mainly the baboon, out of all animals, that's come to play this role in the popular imagination. Why does it play this role? The answer is both psychological and historical. Baboons were important in the cosmology of indigenous hunter-gatherer groups. They're evident in mythic stories, including those of shapeshifting between human and baboon. Oral history and rock art suggest there wasn't an inevitable hostility between baboons and humans. In fact, some groups, such as the AmaTola or VhaLaudzi, chose baboons as totem animals. Baboons were associated with root medicines called so-/oa by the /Xam San, and U-mabophe by the Nguni people. These medicines made a person invincible to weapons while clouding the enemy's judgement – so you could defeat them in daylight and raid their cattle by night. They cured headaches and stomach ills, but were also a powerful 'charm' against evil. The baboon, because it also self-medicated with plant roots, was understood as a symbol of protection. What went wrong? The rupture in the shared deep history of the baboon–human relationship came with the shift from hunter-gatherer lifeways to sedentary crop farming (starting about 1,000 years ago). Baboons raiding crops suddenly posed a real threat to human food security. But they also came to be a threat to psychological security. To this day they've remained linked with an unnatural 'wrongness' in society inherent to witchcraft. The occult or witchcraft (a flawed term that doesn't capture local nuances) is the darker side of traditional healing and remains part of the cosmologies of most South Africans. This might take the form of consulting with diviners for ritual help in order to cause harm or to accumulate wealth and power illegitimately. Historically, baboons became understood to work as witches' familiars (as tokoloshes or as themselves) or, occasionally, to be actual witches. Stories can be traced that tell of witches riding baboons backwards, approaching homes in reverse, at night, disrupting all that is normal, a creature out of place. But being in the wrong place at the wrong time is entirely normal for baboons: young males like Raygun tend to leave their troops to seek mates in other troops (which ensures genetic diversity). Today, these young males end up perceived as 'out of place' because they follow historical routes that are now human spaces. This is probably the greatest challenge that a male baboon will face in his life: navigating a new world alone over great distances in unfamiliar landscapes – with increased testosterone and cortisol. He's primed to be a being terrifyingly 'out of place'. In some high conflict areas, the majority of baboon deaths on the urban edge are human-induced (hit by cars, electrocutions, poisoned or shot or killed by dogs). As baboon numbers drop it becomes rarer to see a dispersing baboon, more 'unnatural' and more difficult for the baboons themselves. Add to this a psychological factor: baboons provoke sympathy, indeed empathy, by coming into focus as almost-us. Then, with the final click of the intellectual lens, they are in complete focus and are revealed as not us at all. This is integral to the 'uncanny'. They are us and not us. Historically, the uncanny creature has been used as a proxy or scapegoat to account for something unsettling or unlucky. The uncanny might also be that which unconsciously reminds us of ourselves – the dark side of ourselves, the 'animal side', our own repressed impulses. So we project these onto the uncanny thing, blaming them for inexplicable troubles that befall us. What should happen to prevent another Raygun? Hope lies not in furious outbursts on social media but in law-enforcement supported by education. Animal protection societies already do a heroic job, with very limited resources. They focus on criminal prosecutions as well as animal rescues. A R20,000 (US$1,000) reward has been offered for information leading to a successful conviction of Raygun's killers. In simple individual cases of animal cruelty, law enforcement is both vital and sufficient. But in dealing with community cosmology and supernatural belief, education initiatives may be as useful. This shouldn't be left to animal protection groups. Educators, traditional and church leaders, community leaders and the media all need to promote knowledge about animal behaviour and sentience to encourage connection to the animal world. If you remove the fear, you can remove the violence.
