• Follow Gothamist on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and like us on Facebook. You can also get the top stories mailed to you—sign up here.
  • At least eight people died and dozens injured at a Travis Scott concert at the defunct Houston amusement park Astroworld. Officials are still investigating, but witnesses said there were crowd surges amongst the 50,000 people in attendance.
  • A fuel tanker collided with a truck in Freetown, Sierra Leone and the ensuing inferno killed 98 people.
  • The Fifth Circuit court has temporarily blocked President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for all large companies with more than 100 employees, and the government has until Monday to respond.
  • ‘“We are all leaving,” his petition threatened, “and hope you find employees that want to work for $9.25 an hour”’: the Washington Post has an excellent look at how the employees of a Pennsylvania McDonald’s quit en masse.
  • A frequently-quoted food industry nonprofit is secretly funded by anti-vaxxers, the Daily Beast found.
  • “We used a bag of 15 dead rats—covered in 1,000 maggots—to test this garbage guard”: check out this Wirecutter review that really goes the extra mile.
  • Ashton Kutcher was so immersed in playing Steve Jobs and following his fruitarian diet that he was hospitalized with pancreatitis after surviving off grapes.
  • At last! A new most popular name for baby girls has emerged after more than a decade of Sophia dominance.
  • And finally, enjoy the gentle bond between this sloth and human: