Kirk Hammett is catching more heat after his Taylor Swift shirt drama, this time over his take on modern music.
Speaking to The Irish Times, the Metallica guitarist said he hopes the next generation of players raises the bar, because "right now, songwriting and pop music is crap." He tied the criticism to how technology and perfectionism have stripped the soul out of the learning process.
I worked at Epic Games for two years. This is real, and the strategy behind it is smarter than most people realize.
Tim Sweeney has spent nearly two decades buying North Carolina forest land. 50,000+ acres across 15 counties. He’s now one of the largest private landowners in the state. The purchases started in 2008, right after the real estate collapse wiped out developers who had been planning golf resorts and luxury communities on biodiverse wilderness.
Sweeney paid $15 million for Box Creek Wilderness, a 7,000-acre stretch in the Blue Ridge foothills containing 130+ rare and threatened species. Developers had owned 5,000 of those acres before the crash. He bought them for conservation prices when nobody else was bidding.
He runs the acquisitions through an LLC called “130 of Chatham.” He buys the land, holds it for years, then either donates it to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, sells it at a discount to state parks, or hands it to land trusts. In 2021, he donated 7,500 acres in the Roan Highlands to the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy. Largest private land donation in North Carolina history.
The part people miss: he told the News & Observer that since 2021, land got too expensive to keep buying. So he shifted focus to converting his existing 50,000 acres into permanent conservation status. He’s locking the land into legal structures that make development impossible regardless of who owns it in the future.
A billionaire worth roughly $6 billion is spending tens of millions acquiring wilderness specifically during economic downturns, then giving it away or placing it under permanent legal protection. The land will outlast him, Epic Games, and Fortnite.
That’s the part that separates Sweeney from billionaires who write checks to get their name on a building. The building depreciates. The forest compounds.
Usher just dropped his pick for the next Super Bowl Halftime Show, and it’s not what fans expected.
While speaking to TMZ during New York Fashion Week, the R&B icon said he wants Metallica to take the stage at Super Bowl LX in California.
If this happens, it would be the PERFECT opportunity to honor Ozzy and have Zakk Wylde come out on stage and play some of those iconic riffs. 🙏❤️
The game kicks off February 8, 2026, at Levi’s Stadium — and Usher’s shoutout just added fuel to the Metallica rumors.
Jill Sobule, the singer-songwriter whose 1995 single, “I Kissed a Girl,” is considered the first openly gay song to break the Billboard Top 20, has died at the age of 66
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Jill Sobule, the acclaimed singer-songwriter and LGBTQ+ trailblazer best known for 90s hits 'I Kissed A Girl' and 'Supermodel', has died in a Minneapolis house fire. She was 66. https://t.co/qIqS5gCyEe
@Kasparov63 Wrong side, wrong choice by @POTUS and @JDVance here. NATO (even though Ukraine has not been granted a wholly justified and deserved membership) exists for the very reason of preventing Russian aggression. It’s a commitment we should be keeping. This is tragic.
Russia illegally and unjustifiably invaded Ukraine.
For three years now, Ukrainians have fought with courage and resilience. Their fight for democracy, freedom, and sovereignty is a fight that matters to us all.
Canada will continue to stand with Ukraine and Ukrainians in achieving a just and lasting peace.