upworthy

barack obama

via Wikimedia Commons (public domain), Wikimedia Commons (public domain) and Wikimedia Commons (Staff Sgt. Marianique Santos)

Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Joe Biden and Barack Obama all having a laugh.

Like it or not, we’ve entered the age of artificial intelligence, and although that may be scary for some and there are ethical issues to consider, one guy in Florida thinks it’s a great way to make people laugh. Cam Harless, the host of The Mad Ones podcast, used AI to create portraits of every U.S. president looking “cool” with a mullet hairstyle, and the results are hilarious.

The mullet is a notorious hairdo known as the "business in the front, party in the back" look. It's believed that the term "mullet" was coined by the rap-punk-funk group Beastie Boys in 1994.

While cool is in the eye of the beholder, Harless seems to believe it means looking like a cross between Dog the Bounty Hunter and Kenny Powers from “Eastbound and Down.”

Harless made the photos using Midjourney, an app that creates images from textual descriptions. "I love making AI art," Harless told Newsweek. "Often I think of a prompt, create the image and choose the one that makes me laugh the most to present on Twitter and have people try and guess my prompt."

"The idea of Biden with a mullet made me laugh, so I tried to make one with him and Trump together and that led to the whole list of presidents,” he continued.

Harless made AI photos of all 46 presidents with mullets and shared them on X, and the response has been tremendous. His first photo of Joe Biden with a mullet has nearly 75,000 likes and counting.

Here’s our list of the 14 best presidents with mullets. Check out Harless' thread here if you want to see all 46.

Joe Biden with an incredible blonde mane and a tailored suit. This guy takes no malarkey.

Donald Trump looking like a guy who has 35 different pairs of stonewashed jeans in his closet at Mar-a-Lago.


Barack Obama looking like he played an informant on "Starsky and Hutch" in 1976.


George H.W. Bush looking like he plays bass in Elvis's backing band at the International Hotel in Vegas in '73.

Gerald Ford looking like the last guy on Earth that you want to owe money.

"C'mon down and get a great deal at Dick Nixon's Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram, right off the I-95 in Daytona Beach."



"Who you calling Teddy? That's Theodore Roosevelt to you."


Grover Cleveland is giving off some serious steampunk vibes here.

Pray you never key Chester A. Arthur's Trans Am. If you know what's best for you.

Honest Abe? More like Honest Babe. Am I right?

Franklin Pierce looking like your favorite New Romantic singer from 1982. Eat your heart out, Adam Ant.

"Daniel Day Lewis stole my look in 'Last of the Mohicans.'" — John Tyler

Many have tried the tri-level mullet but few pulled it off as beautifully as James Madison.

Washington's mullet was like a white, fluffy cloud of freedom.

Find more cool, mulletted U.S. presidents here.

This article originally appeared three years ago.

Barack Obama at his Chicago home.

Former president Barack Obama reminded everyone of his off-the-cuff sense of humor at a campaign rally for Democratic voters in Detroit on Saturday, October 29. Nearly six years after leaving the White House, the 61-year-old lamented that it was more challenging for him to be out on the campaign trail than it used to be.

“I have to admit that sometimes going out on the campaign trail feels a little harder than it used to,” the 44th president said to the crowd. “Not just because I’m older and grayer…”



A woman behind Obama responded by screaming that he’s still “finer than a mug,” using what sounds like a euphemism for a much stronger phrase. Although, she may have used the whole term. The funny thing is that after she made the bold proclamation, she had no interest in backing down. She stayed strong, nodding affirmatively and twirling her finger in the air as Obama laughed on the stage.

The moment was a refreshing flashback for many who cherish the years when the young, charismatic politician was in office.

Warning: Contains explicit language.

The audience and Obama thought the outburst was funny. “She said I was still fine,” Obama told the crowd with a grin. “I’m not gonna tell Michelle you said that, although Michelle does agree. She knows,” he said.

Obama’s appearance was part of a five-state tour to support Democrats in the midterm elections. The elections are an uphill battle for Democrats who face the headwinds of inflation, economic uncertainty and history. In modern elections, the president’s party has traditionally lost seats in Congress in the midterms.

via the Late Late Show and Department of Defense

As if the strange times we've been living through couldn't get any weirder, the Pentagon is set to release a report on UFO sightings later this month. The report is the result of a program designed to record and investigate sightings by the U.S. military.

The highly-anticipated report comes on the heels of three mysterious videos of "unexplained aerial phenomena" declassified by the Defense Department and released last year.

One video taken in 2004 and two subsequent in 2015, show objects flying at high speeds in Earth's atmosphere, accompanied by a conversation between astonished Navy pilots.


"There's a whole fleet of them … My gosh, they're all going against the wind, the wind is 120 knots to the west. Look at that thing dude!" a pilot exclaims in one of the videos.

Watch the Pentagon's three declassified UFO videos taken by U.S. Navy pilotswww.youtube.com

Defense officials and lawmakers have been pushing for the report's release and one of the most vocal is Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

"We cannot allow the stigma of UFOs to keep us from seriously investigating this. The forthcoming report is one step in that process, but it will not be the last," he said in a statement to the Tampa Bay Times.

Former President Barack Obama has recently weighed in on the upcoming report and he shared his experiences with UFOs while in the Oval Office.

(Well, he shared what he's allowed to share.)

"When it comes to aliens, there are some things I just can't tell you on air," he told Reggie Watts, bandleader of the Late Late Show. "The truth is that when I came into the office, I asked. I was like, 'Is there a lab somewhere where we're keeping the alien specimens and space ships?'"

"They did a little bit of research and the answer was no," he said.

"But what is true, and I'm actually being serious here... there's footage and records of objects in the skies that we don't know exactly what they are, we can't explain how they moved, their trajectory," Obama said. "They did not have an easily explainable pattern."

Reggie Watts to Barack Obama: What's w/ Dem Aliens?www.youtube.com

This week, Obama went deeper on the subject with Ezra Klein on his podcast. Klein asked how his politics would change if he found out that aliens exist.

"It's interesting. It wouldn't change my politics at all. Because my entire politics is premised on the fact that we are these tiny organisms on this little speck floating in the middle of space," he said.

Obama wouldn't be too surprised if there were life on other planets, given the vastness of the universe.

"When we were going through tough political times, and I'd try to cheer my staff up, I'd tell them a statistic that John Holdren, my science adviser, told me, which was that there are more stars in the known universe than there are grains of sand on the planet Earth," he said.

"Well, sometimes it cheered them up; sometimes they'd just roll their eyes and say, oh, there he goes again," he added.

Obama hopes that if alien life were discovered, it would remind Americans of their common humanity.

"We're just a bunch of humans with doubts and confusion," he said. "We do the best we can. And the best thing we can do is treat each other better because we're all we've got. And so I would hope that the knowledge that there were aliens out there would solidify people's sense that what we have in common is a little more important."

But he also fears the discovery could also lead to further discord.

"But no doubt there would be immediate arguments like, well, we need to spend a lot more money on weapons systems to defend ourselves," he said. "New religions would pop up. And who knows what kind of arguments we get into. We're good at manufacturing arguments for each other."

So, at his core, it appears Obama believes that human nature is so deeply ingrained that even if we learned of life on other planets, it wouldn't fundamentally change who we are.

Sorry aliens, humans are gonna human. Plan accordingly. But if you do land on Earth and ask to be taken to our leader, you're in good hands if the people send you to Obama.

Former first lady Michelle Obama announced this morning that she's expanding the work she started in the White House to help kids eat better and live healthy lives. On March 16, her new show, "Waffles + Mochi," will debut on Netflix on March 16.

Obama described the premise of the show on Facebook:

"I've got some big news for you! This is something I've been working on for a while now, and I'm so excited to finally be able to tell you all about it. Allow me to introduce two new friends of mine: Their names are Waffles and Mochi. And on March 16, we'll be launching a new children's show on Netflix called Waffles + Mochi. It's all about good food: discovering it, cooking it, and of course, eating it. These two will take us on adventures all around the world to explore new ingredients and try out new recipes. Kids will love it, but I know that adults will also get plenty of laughs—and some tips for the kitchen.


In many ways, this show is an extension of my work to support children's health as First Lady—and to be quite honest, I wish a program like this had been around when my girls were young. I also know that this is a difficult time for so many families, and I'm hopeful that this delightful show can bring a bit of light and laughter to homes around the world. That's why as part of the show's commitment to helping families during the pandemic, we're working with our partners at Partnership for a Healthier America to get fresh ingredients to families in need across the country so they can cook together at home.

So that's what #WafflesAndMochi is all about. I can't wait for you and your children to join us on our adventures on March 16. 💕

More details about the show were shared by Strong Black Lead on Twitter. Waffles and Mochi are aspiring young chefs who will travel to kitchens, restaurants, farms, and home around the globe to explore recipes and ingredients from different cultures.

"Whether they're picking potatoes in the Andes of Peru, sampling spices in Italy, or making Miso in Japan, these curious explorers uncover the wonder of food and discover every meal is a chance to make new friends," they wrote.

Obama made kids' health her primary focus as First Lady with her "Let's Move" campaign and her push to get fresh, healthy food into school lunches. And according to a study released last summer, her initiative made a difference. Researchers at the University of Washington assessed how the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act that Obama championed impacted the nutritional quality of school meals that kids actually ate (as opposed to just looking at the food served).

"The evidence suggests that the policy resulted in improved nutritional quality of lunches consumed by students who participate in the National School Lunch Program," said senior study author Jessica Jones-Smith, an associate professor of health services and epidemiology at the UW School of Public Health.

The act required that schools serve more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fat-free and/or low-fat milk, and less starchy vegetables and foods high in sodium and trans fat.


Since improved nutrition standards for school meals were put into action across the United States in 2012, children – especially those from low-income households – have been eating healthier school lunches with better overall nutritional quality, a new study published July 28 in JAMA found.

The researchers, from the University of Washington School of Public Health, did not find the same positive changes in dietary quality among children who did not take part in the National School Lunch Program.

This is the first nationally representative study to assess specifically how the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act – championed by former first lady Michelle Obama and signed into law by former President Barack Obama – impacted the overall nutritional quality of school meals eaten by students, rather than meals served.

"The evidence suggests that the policy resulted in improved nutritional quality of lunches consumed by students who participate in the National School Lunch Program," said senior study author Jessica Jones-Smith, an associate professor of health services and epidemiology at the UW School of Public Health.

Three cheers for Michelle Obama continuing to help kids develop healthy habits—this time with educational entertainment parents of young children will appreciate.