Roommates, something had the timeline squinting a lil’ harder this morning. Early Friday, Ari Fletcher popped out on Instagram with a message that instantly got folks talking. Without offering too much context, she shared a post… and the energy is giving recovery mode.

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Ari Is Laid Up & In Recovery Mode

In a boomerang clip posted to her Story, Ari appeared to be laid up in bed, seemingly resting and taking it easy. The text read “Beauty is pain” followed by a heart-with-bandage emoji and a weary face. Additionally, her left leg was isolated and propped up on pillows, with a visible bandage placed between her knee and thigh. The TV could be seen playing in the background while she relaxed, suggesting she’s currently in chill-and-heal mode. While she didn’t spill specifics on what led to the bandage, the post definitely raised eyebrows. And, it sparked questions among fans about whether she recently underwent a procedure or is simply recovering from something minor.

So… What Exactly Did She Have Done?

As always, Ari kept it cute and cryptic — but the Roommates didn’t have to dig too hard. In a recent video, Ari Fletcher actually opened up about preparing for leg surgery on her thigh, revealing it’s something she’s been dealing with for quite some time. She shared that the “dent” has been there “forever” and admitted it’s one of her biggest insecurities. Ari even rolled up her pants in the clip to show exactly what she was talking about. She even further explained that she’s tried different things in the past to correct it.

According to her, this one-time procedure is meant to help fix the issue — especially since she’s said she doesn’t even like wearing shorts because of it. While the “dent” appears to resemble something like cellulite — which many would say doesn’t take away from her beauty at all. And procedure or not, let’s be real… Ari is STILL that girl.

@arithedonfanpage_1

Prayers up for Ari as she goes in for surgery this week for her leg, wishing her a speedy recovery in this video already talks about having surgery on her thigh is something she’s been dealing with for quite some time wishing her the best of luck#therealkylesister #arithedon #ari #arifletcher #surgery

♬ original sound – arithedonfanpage_1

Ari’s Fresh Ink & Diamond Are Doing ALL The Talking

While Ari’s leg has the internet talking, some folks are wondering — is that the only recent change she’s made? Just days earlier, Ari Fletcher had social media swooning after she shared a heartfelt post dedicated to her man, Moneybagg Yo. Taking to her Instagram Story, Ari posted a flick of her hand showing off fresh ink of his legal first name, “Demario,” tatted on her skin. And, let’s not forget the massive diamond sparkling heavy on that ring finger.

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By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 43 seconds ago

Since Starfleet Academy first began, haters have lobbed one accusation at it above all others: “it doesn’t feel like Star Trek.” Older critics often lament surface-level issues with the show, including its poor humor and its reliance on distractingly modern slang. But to these veteran fans, the real structural issue with this new spinoff is that it feels so glaringly different than the shows (like The Next Generation and Voyager) that came before.

Recently, though, Starfleet Academy has been addressing this problem by directly calling back to earlier Trek, including dedicating an entire episode to the mystery of what happened to Sisko after Deep Space Nine. Now, the most recent episode (“The Life Of The Stars”) calls back to two of Voyager’s best episodes while providing us with plenty of familiar franchise tropes. The result is an episode that decently channels classic Trek but fails to deliver on its full potential. 

Unpacking Trauma

 “Life of the Stars” is a follow-up to “Come, Let’s Away,” and it’s all about our Starfleet Academy cadets unpacking the trauma of that earlier episode. In that story, some of our heroes were ambushed by the Furies, fearsome foes who ultimately killed multiple members of the War College. Chancellor Ahke calls in Nus Braka for help, and Tarima weaponizes her telepathy, but both efforts go away: Braka destroys a Starfleet ship and ransacks a Starbase while Tarima blows her mind, landing herself in a coma that required treatment on her homeworld of Betazed.

Believe it or not, “unpacking trauma” is my lowkey favorite Star Trek episode genre. The stories are predictably good, like the TNG episode “Family,” helping Picard work through his time (as seen in “The Best of Both Worlds”) as the ruthless leader of the Borg. Over on DS9, “It’s Only A Paper Moon” explored how Nog dealt with the trauma of what happened in “The Siege of AR-558,” an episode in which he lost a leg.

Done well, this kind of story makes for great Star Trek, but this Starfleet Academy episode delivers mixed results. It has some great highs, including a killer, dramatic performance from Robert Picardo and the triumphant return of Sylvia Tilly. But “Life of the Stars” drops the ball by focusing so much on its ensemble that its central cadets (namely, SAM and Tarima) don’t get enough screentime or development. 

The Doctor Gets Serious

Perhaps the most interesting thing about “Life of the Stars” is that it permanently intertwines the lives of the Doctor and SAM. She’s the holographic girl who is suddenly on the fritz, and the Doctor travels with her back to her homeworld for repairs. There, he discovers that her glitch is emotional in nature (she’s stuck in a trauma loop, in case you thought the episode was being too subtle), and he volunteers to parent SAM, raising her for the equivalent of 17 years on her homeworld. But that’s only two weeks back at the academy, which is a callback to “Blink of an Eye,” the Voyager episode where three years on a planet is only about three minutes back on the ship.

In “Blink of an Eye,” the Doctor adopted a son, and he later lamented that, thanks to the time dilation effects, his kid is long since dead. In “Real Life,” the Doctor used the holodeck to simulate having a family, and he makes the program so realistic that he loses his holographic daughter to a freak sports accident. “Life of the Stars” basically mashes these plots together: after revealing that he hesitated to bond with SAM because she reminded him of his dead daughter, the Doctor agrees to raise her as a father; 17 years will pass on SAM’s planet while only two weeks pass at Starfleet Academy.

This plot is mostly an excuse to let Robert Picard do some serious acting, and this comedic actor does an amazing job with the dramatic material. Plus, the episode finally answers why the Doctor has had a bug up his holographic butt about SAM all season. However, this focus on the Doctor comes at a cost: SAM is either shut down or mind-controlled for most of the episode, which feels that much weirder considering how much new lore this episode is giving her.

The Girls Are Back In Town

“Life of the Stars” features the long-awaited return of Sylvia Tilly, a fan-favorite Discovery character that most of us originally assumed would be a regular on Starfleet Academy. She is here to help our cadets (no point in guessing) unpack their trauma, and at the chancellor’s suggestion, she is doing so in the craziest possible way: by making them take a theater class. They end up studying “Our Town,” and with all the subtlety of Quark’s sweater, the play becomes a metaphor for returning student Tarima to process her feelings about being transferred out of the War College and into Starfleet Academy after the injuries she sustained in “Come, Let’s Away.”

The results on both ladies’ returns were mixed: while it is always great to see Sylvia Tilly, she barely feels like herself, and she isn’t afraid to get mildly combative with students. She cheerfully tells the class that she doesn’t care if they all fail, and she practically gets into a verbal sparring match with Tarima. Granted, these are both acts of tough love, and her methods get results, but the woman taking these actions rarely feels like the adorkable Tilly we all fell in love with back on Discovery.

As for Tarima, she is a victim of performer’s success: actor Zoë Steiner does an excellent job playing a recently traumatized cadet, but thanks to the script, that means she spends most of her time in a dull stupor punctuated only by bouts of anger and drunkenness. Is this realistic for someone who narrowly survived an attack that killed multiple colleagues? Sure. But it’s not very engaging to watch, and unlike Patrick Stewart in “Family” or Robert Picardo in this very episode, Tarima never gets a satisfyingly cathartic release of her inner pain, and we have to settle for her having a light bulb moment while reciting an ancient play.

The Final Verdict? Good, Not Great

If it sounds like I’m nitpicking, that’s because I am: “Life of the Stars” is a mostly solid episode, and it’s notably better than the early episodes of Starfleet Academy. The show continues to improve, and as usual, spending less time on forced comedy has made the episode stronger. It also features the return of Sylvia Tilly, deep lore for the Doctor, and even updates on Caleb and Tarima, the couple who have quickly become the hottest Star Trek pairing since Riker and Troi.

But we really just get Tilly in name only here, and the Doctor’s cool new lore comes at the expense of sidelining SAM. The Caleb and Tarima stuff remains very cute, but Tarima mostly spends the episode in a boring daze before snapping out of it due to a sleepy inspirational speech. It all adds up to an episode that’s good, not great, and one that showcases both the potential of Starfleet Academy and how much the show fails to reach that potential.

Once again, Starfleet Academy is getting better, slowly clawing its way back from its negative reputation at a snail’s pace (and not even a warp snail). One episode at a time, it’s channeling more classic Star Trek than ever before. The question is, will any Trekkies still be watching by the time this show crawls past the finish line? 

Singer-Songwriter Neil Sedaka
Dead at 86

Published
February 27, 2026
1:48 PM PST

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Published
February 27, 2026
1:10 PM PST

Kenya Moore is shutting down a report claiming she defaulted on rent payments to her hair spa’s landlord. She teased a YouTube livestream in which she appears to plan to delve into the issue further. For now, she says the landlord failed to pay $80,000 in tenant improvement allowance, and they’re in a legal dispute. Initial reports said Moore is who owes more than that.

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Report Says Kenya Moore Owes Landlord $87,000

Kenya Moore’s business expenses came under public judgment last week after TMZ reported that she owed $87,976 to her landlord. For context, Kenya Moore Hair Spa has been in business in Atlanta since 2024. Last October, the landlord, Northland Chamblee LLC sued Kenya Moore for the unpaid rent, claiming she spotted paying in December 2024. Kenya Moore Hair Spa denied the allegations and said the landlord failed to make improvements.

Citing court documents, a Georgia judge gave Kenya two payment dates to repay the money. She allegedly was supposed to pay $43,988 by the end of February and the same amount, plus $0.467. The judge also reportedly ordered the spa owner to pay $5,500 in monthly rent if she planned to keep her business at the property. A few weeks after the judge’s ruling, the landlord accused Moore of missing the deadline for the first payment and is seeking possession of the property, per TMZ.

Moore Says She Doesn’t Owe Rent

Though a few days later, Kenya Moore is strongly denying that she owes her landlord money. It appears her Instagram post on Friday is the first time she’s speaking out directly, rather than via a statement from her business. She plans to go live on Sunday to presumably tell it all. For now, she’s standing on previous word. Moore said money is owed to her, not the other way around! And apparently, she’s trying to handle it in court. Kenya shared that she dropped six figures to build out her hair salon and the landlord failed to reimburse her.

“The reports about me being behind on rent are false. As I have stated before, my company is in an active lawsuit against my salon landlord for failing to pay nearly $80,000 in tenant improvement allowance OWED TO ME. I invested over $300,000 of my own money to build out my salon in a commercial space from a white box. When the landlord failed to reimburse contractual expenses, I withheld rent in an effort to reach a fair settlement, and subsequently filed a countersuit for the amount they failed to reimburse.”

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There is no bad blood between Megyn Kelly and Candace Owens — even though they have different thoughts about Erika Kirk (née Frantzve).

“Candace knows I disagree with her on this,” Kelly, 55, said in a resurfaced clip from a past episode of SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Show. “Petty internet people want to turn that into a catfight between Candace and yours truly, which will fail.”

Kelly added, “She and I have, actually, only gotten closer over the past couple of months as people try to make me attack her, so f*** off.”

Kelly has publicly supported Erika, 37, following the September 2025 death of her husband, Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University. He was 31 years old.

Owens, meanwhile, has not been offering the same support, despite her lengthy history with Charlie. Both Owens and Charlie came up in politics at the same time. In 2017, Charlie hired Owens as the communications director of his Turning Point USA organization, a role she held until 2019.

“For two years straight, Charlie and I flew around the world together on very little sleep. We were always exhausted. I’m not kidding. We took hundreds of flights together. We slept in the crappiest hotel rooms,” Owens said of her friendship with Charlie following his death. “When you’re in that capacity with someone for two years straight just traveling nonstop, you really get to know them. You really see them in every condition. You start bickering like an old married couple.”

In the months after Charlie’s death, Owens started sharing conspiracy theories about his apparent murder on social media. Erika issued a plea for her to “stop” in a December 2025 interview.

“That’s all I have to say,” Erika said. “Stop.”

The two women later met face-to-face, which Kelly helped facilitate.

“I thought that was a great idea and I fully support it and I have been in touch with both of them repeatedly,” she said during a December 2025 episode of The Megyn Kelly Show. “I really fully believe God’s role for me here is to possibly play a role in getting this whole thing to a better place.”

Erika noted that it was “a very productive conversation” between her and Owens. However, Owens came for Erika the following month by releasing what appeared to be audio of a conversation she had with Turning Point USA staff two weeks after Charlie’s death. (Erika was named the Turning Point USA CEO following his murder.)

“It’s the laughter that is off-putting. Again, we are not even two weeks after watching your husband be assassinated,” Owens said, referring to the “tone” of Erika’s voice in the audio. “We’re talking about numbers and metrics that have been hit.”

Owens claimed Erika moved “pretty quickly to the acceptance phase” after her husband was killed. “The video is real and authenticated,” a spokesperson for Owens told Us at the time.

Owens has continued her feud with Erika by releasing two episodes of a YouTube series titled The Bride of Charlie.

“I will tell you my personal opinion and experience with her,” Owens alleged in the episode released on Wednesday, February 25. “What alarms me about Erika isn’t so much the fact that she lies, which we will prove to you over and over again, but it’s also the fact that I don’t know that she’s aware that she’s lying.”