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California’s deserts are gearing up for one of their rarest, most gorgeous tricks. After months of steady rain, the desert is approaching the part of spring that turns empty stretches of highway into parking lots. The superbloom.  California State Parks says this spring is expected to deliver a moderate-to-strong wildflower season across several desert parks. The agency pointed to widespread fall and winter rainfall as the driver behind the coming bloom. “The desert landscape is beginning to burst with color,” the department said in a recent release , adding that additional parks should follow in the weeks ahead. Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is already getting attention, particularly along Henderson Canyon Road, where primroses and early yellow blooms have started appearing. Borrego Palm Canyon and Coyote Canyon are also responding to recent storms, though the window never stays open for long. Farther north, Red Rock Canyon State Park is starting to fill in. Primroses, lacy ph...

The week opens with emotional volume turned up and filters turned down. Venus squaring Uranus rattles routines around love, money, and comfort, while Saturn’s move into Aries redraws lines around responsibility and self-direction. A run of Moon aspects keeps reactions quick and opinions loud. What grabs your attention or tests your patience isn’t random. Those moments highlight where habits feel outdated. Pay attention to what keeps pulling focus, stargazer, because that’s where the story is already shifting. By the time Valentine’s Day arrives, the astrology has opinions. Romance favors honesty, boundaries, and timing over spectacle. Some connections heat up through candor, others expose mismatched expectations, and a few conversations refuse to stay surface-level. Whether the day is partnered, single, or complicated, the sky supports intention over performance. Say what you mean. Spend where it counts. End the week choosing what feels real, not rehearsed. How will your sign fare th...

Valentine’s Day still shows up on the calendar every February, but for a growing number of people, it no longer means obligatory showmanship. According to a new survey, one in five Americans in relationships plan to sit the holiday out entirely. No dinner reservations. No gifts. Just a normal ass day. That choice shows a broader change in how people approach romance under economic pressure. CouponFollow’s survey , which polled more than 1,000 partnered Americans, found that people plan to spend an average of $87 on their partner while expecting only $63 in return. That difference points to a familiar imbalance for anyone who has felt responsible for making a holiday feel successful. Men, in particular, still shoulder most of the spending, planning to spend 23 percent more than women on average, and are far more likely to cover the entire cost of the day. Sadly, money has become impossible to separate from meaning. Eighty-three percent of respondents said they’d prefer their partner s...

Shark panic sells. It sells beach-town merch, clicky local news alerts, and entire weeks of TV programming built around the idea that the ocean is basically a murder waiting to happen.  We keep returning to it because it scratches two very human itches at once, fear and fascination. We buy shark-tooth necklaces, binge-watch hours of Shark Week , and pretend we wouldn’t immediately cry in a snorkel mask if something brushed our ankle. We love a monster we can view from the safety of a screen. A lot of this modern obsession traces back to one blockbuster summer in 1975. Jaws didn’t invent shark fear, but it certainly packaged it , scored it, and handed it to us in a format our brains can’t resist, a predator with personality. The two-note theme still lives in people’s heads, and it kicks in the second they imagine a dark shadow in the water. Even Steven Spielberg has acknowledged the cultural wreckage. In a 2022 interview , he said, “I truly, and to this day, regret the decimatio...

Tonight’s WWE SmackDown continues the fallout of the Royal Rumble last weekend. Women’s Royal Rumble winner Liv Morgan gets on the mic, with WWE Women’s Champion Jade Cargill and Jordynne Grace interrupting her. Not only that, Cody Rhodes cuts a fired up promo about losing his opportunity in the Rumble thanks to Drew McIntyre. Keep reading to find out what we loved and hated from this week’s WWE SmackDown … Loved: Carmelo Hayes vs. The Miz Miz wants a title shot, but Ilja Dragunov already called his shot. Carmelo Hayes makes it easy: Miz gets a non-title match tonight on SmackDown . I can’t say enough great things about Hayes’ reign as U.S. Champion. He took the ball and ran and he hasn’t stopped running. The weekly challenges are a great way to keep eyes on him so as not to get lost in the shuffle with all the other WWE Champions. And as much as people hate on Miz, he made a damn good opponent for Hayes. . @mikethemiz is pulling out all the stops! pic.twitter.com/DyHrENre4...

As the Olympics kick off, we are reminded that this series of sometimes silly events means the world to the participating athletes, their close friends and family, and the nations they represent. As such, some participants will go to great lengths to gain a competitive edge. Some bend the rules as far as they can, sometimes fully breaking them, and maybe even injecting their penises with acid in the name of victory. In January, German tabloid Bild reported allegations that ski jumpers were injecting their penises with hyaluronic acid to gain a competitive edge. Hyaluronic acid is a substance that’s naturally found in our eyes, joints, and skin, but can also be supplemented as a serum as part of a daily beauty regimen. It’s not explicitly designed to be injected into a penis, but hey, there’s a first time for everything. The claims came up just before the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics and were eventually addressed by officials from the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA. So, is it ac...