Quote of the Day: “If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.” – Lao Tzu
Photo by: Luigi Manga
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
There’s something strange in the neighborhood, and it’s up for rent.
Sony and vacation rental company Vacasa are taking bids for the holiday rental of a fully-furnished, fully-functional, and fully-frightful Ghostbusters headquarters.
A group of friends can win a three-night stay at a recreation of the building set used in the famous 1984 movie in Portland, Oregon.
The private two-bedroom, three-story firehouse built in the early 1900s includes all the comforts of home with a full kitchen, multiple living quarters and endless Ghostbusters features, including a scientist-approved Ghost Containment System and a Dark Room where guests can develop and analyze photos of the Scourge of Carpathia.
The beds are freshly made, the ectoplasm has been expertly cleaned up, and the pantry is stocked—with StayPuft marshmallows and cheezy crackers (as long as Slimer doesn’t get to them first).
“We’re dedicated to the details, and this Ghostbusters Firehouse in Portland is no exception,” Allison Lowrie, CMO of Vasaca, told CNN. Among these details are perfect replicas of the flight suits worn by the Ghostbusters, to take all possible Instagramable experiences to the next level.
“It’s designed to be enjoyed by Ghostbusters superfans and travelers with a sense of ’80s nostalgia alike,” said Lowrie.
All of Egon’s essentials, including smoking Ghost Traps, a P.K.E. Meter, Proton Packs, Aura Video-Analyzer, and even an Ecto-Containment Unit are available throughout the firehouse so guests have everything they need to send ghosts back to their place of origin or the nearest convenient parallel dimension.
Visit the Vacasa.com listing on Oct. 21, 2022, at 10 a.m. PT for the chance to experience the Ghostbusters Firehouse in Portland for a nightly rate of $19.84 (plus local taxes + fees), in honor of the year the first movie was released.
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Four years after Congress passed bipartisan legislation requiring the FDA to allow over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids, President Biden issued an Executive kick-in-the-butt Order that gave them 120 days to act.
Now, this new category of OTC hearing aids, are enabling consumers with mild to moderate hearing impairment to purchase them directly from stores or online retailers without the need for a medical exam, prescription, or a fitting adjustment by an audiologist.
This has lowered the cost of hearings aids, furthering the Administration’s goal of expanding access to health care at lower prices for the American public. It is also designed to foster innovation and competition in the hearing aid technology marketplace.
The FDA estimated that the new rule could lower average costs by as much as $3,000 per pair.
You can now find a range of prices at retailers such as Walgreens, CVS, Hy-Vee, and Walmart. Best Buy will offer nearly 20 hearing devices online and at nearly 300 stores by the end of the month for as low as $200, reports The Hill.
Walgreens started selling them in stores and online for $799 a pair, while Walmart now carries them in 1,000 of their in-store vision centers—and at 474 Sam’s Club locations—for between $199 and $999 per pair.
RELATED: MIT Researchers Reverse Hearing Loss By Regenerating Inner Ear Hair Growth
Please note that the OTC category applies to only ‘air-conduction’ hearing aids intended for people 18 years of age and older with mild to moderate hearing impairment, and devices intended for severe hearing impairment or users younger than age 18 still require a prescription.
The Inflation Reduction Act, which Democrats passed this year, also tackles health costs. It allows Medicare to negotiate prices for high-cost prescription drugs for the first time ever.
The legislation lowers seniors’ drug prices, and caps those out-of-pocket expenses at $2,000 per year.
RELATED: Researchers Discover Proteins That Could Soon Restore Damaged Hearing and Irreversible Deafness
Starting this January, seniors and other Medicare beneficiaries will also begin to see the benefits of these cost-saving measures:
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A California bakery created ‘Pan Solo’—a 6ft replica of the Star Wars hero frozen in carbonite out of bread.
Sci-fi fanatic and expert baker Hannalee Pervan spent 100 hours on the life size sculpture.
The head chef and co-owner of One House Bakery in Benicia, California, grew up watching Star Wars with her mom Catherine, who also worked on the sculpture.
Hannalee’s father Peter helped make what doubled as a tasty homage to the famous spaceborne rogue, and a Halloween project, by going out to get the supplies the two ladies needed.
They spent a month making the model from flour, water, and sugar, creating each feature and then baking them one by one.
“We start with a rough idea and then me and my mom just jump in and start making and baking things and seeing if they work,” said Hannalee. “Sometimes we get it in the first try and others we have to bake multiple times. We had many reference photos and we obsessed over the smallest details in them.”
RELATED: Using the Force: Yoda Levitates Cake at Int’l Baking Show (Watch)
First they made his basic body shape before they moved onto his face and hands.
The sculpture went on display outside the shop on the 9th of October after nearly three months of planning and 12-14 hour shifts
“My mom and I had been brain storming iconic images in the sci-fi universe,” said the 37-year-old. “We settled on Han Solo stuck in carbonite because it was one of our favorite moments in Star Wars. It was also a little scary for Halloween and we thought we could really make it look cool using the properties of the dead dough.”
“My mom instilled are true love of Sci-fi in me,” she added. “It’s kind of our thing we share together.”
The shop also currently features the “Pain-dough-lorian” a scale model of the Boba Fett-inspired bounty hunter protagonist of The Mandalorian on Disney+. The fierce and tasty space fighter is dressed in bread armor, sculpted according to Hannalee’s exceptional attention to cannon.
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Powerful space satellites that can identify individual whales from their markings have been used for the first time to track a Critically Endangered species.
Scientists are using the tech, which is powerful enough to map a 15 square centimeter area in a single pixel, to follow the North Atlantic right whale to keep them away from ships and find out where they go in the summer and autumn.
The latest satellites are able to capture finer images than Google Earth, meaning conservationists can identify species and even individuals.
By knowing where whales are off to, people could warn fisheries through which the whales pass, or ships to chart a new course in order to prevent collisions and net entanglements.
Writing in the journal Marine Mammal Science the researchers said until now people do not know where 50% of North Atlantic whales go in summer and autumn.
They successfully spotted “Ruffian”, a North Atlantic right whale hailing from the Gulf of St. Lawrence who has a large white scar across his back after being injured by fishing gear in 2008.
“The North Atlantic right whale is critically endangered, with about 336 individual whales accounted for,” said Matus Hodel, a Ph.D. student at University of Ottawa. “Knowing where the whales are at any given time enables fisheries to open or close to avoid the whales and enables ships to bypass them to prevent collisions.”
WATCH: Fin Whales Are Feeding In Huge Numbers in Antarctica for First Time in 45 Years – WATCH
“This is a new type of satellite imagery which has a spatial resolution of 15 cm, which means each pixel in the image represents 15 cm on the ground,” he added. “For context, this is much finer than Google Earth satellite images [and] in some cases, it also allows us to identify individual whales, in circumstances where a whale has sufficiently distinct markings.”
The research spanned from April 2021 to late summer 2022, during which the University of Ottawa team conducted aerial surveys to locate and photograph the whales.
It’s a part of the Canadian Space Agency’s wider smartWhales initiative to explore ways to detect the North Atlantic right whales using space tech.
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Quote of the Day: “Remember that hope is a powerful weapon even when all else is lost.” – Nelson Mandela
Photo by: Todd Cravens
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
An eagle-eyed pooch has become an expert at finding lost golf balls in London, so much so that he’s helping provide golf charities with the balls they need to teach kids around the world.
Charles Jefferson must have felt he hit a hole-in-one when one day his dog, a cavapoo named Marlo, emerged from the bushes with a pristine tour-grade ball on the puppy’s first visit to a local London golf course.
Jefferson, a top-level amateur golfer for four decades who used to work with the European Tour, realized that a retrieved mint condition Titleist Pro V1 retails for around £3.50, and that his Marlo might have a unique ability for finding lost balls.
He spent the next six years walking up and down courses with Marlo, watching and chatting, and getting out in the open air.
Between Mitcham Golf Club and Wimbledon Common Golf Club, Mr. Jefferson and Marlo filled dresser drawers with golf balls, but rather than a single instance of selling around 600 to a mate, he never had any interest with the “retrieval market” a cottage industry that’s cropped up around recovering golf balls.
As an advertising and branding agent, Jefferson leapt at the chance to turn Marlo’s abilities into a force for good after he heard of a donation drive to promote the prevention of litter from lost golf balls.
RELATED: Scottish Government Scores Hole in One for Wildlife, Blocking Golf Course on Protected Coastline
The DP World Tour was seeing if they could fill a 20-foot long shipping container with second-hand tour-grade balls, with the intention of then sending them to Kenya’s Junior Golf Foundation, the South African Disabled Golf Association, the European Disabled Golf Association, the UAE’s Chicks with Sticks, and India’s Golf Foundation.
CNN estimates that 300 million golf balls get lost every year, and the United Arab Emirate’s DP World Tour hoped to encourage shooters to recover at least a tiny fraction of these for charities.
As Jefferson’s agency was helping with the branding, all eyes in the department turned onto him. He promptly dumped 600 more of Marlo’s finds in the container to make an admirable dent in its 200,000 capacity.
WATCH the story instead…
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To mark National Hemorrhoid Day October 19, we’re reposting this original GNN article from June, 2016…
Why didn’t my doctor warn me about this?
For decades, I have accepted as inevitable my protruding hemorrhoids. The problem began in the 80s when I was working a stage spotlight and freelancing as a TV news camera operator—and it continued through three natural child births in the 90s.
Recently I learned there was a simple procedure for ‘banding’ these little suckers, which would tie them off for good.
Well, after four visits to the gastroenterology clinic, my doctor was sorry it hadn’t worked for me—and said the only option remaining was painful, invasive surgery. I told him I was rarely constipated, but I don’t think he believed me.
One thing he never asked about was my urination habits.
Wanting to avoid surgery, I was talking to my sister and she said her hemorrhoids had disappeared once she started using a little seven inch stool to raise her feet while she pooped.
Further research revealed that in Asian countries where they squat over a hole the populace is virtually hemorrhoid-free, while westerners who sit like ladies have incidences of 20% or more. It turns out, when you sit upright, your posture creates a kink in the colon which inhibits the natural flow of waste.
RELATED: Colorado Doctor Discovered Natural Way To Treat Common Vertigo
I figured I’d try it out and she told me about the “Squatty Potty” stool, which has helped a lot of constipated people and sells for between $25–$75. I ordered one, but it didn’t help me.
In the meantime, with a simple realization I cured myself of those devilish hemorrhoids: ‘It’s the pee, stupid!’ At least for me, anyway.
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Call me the type-A personality if you want, as I’m often in a rush. I own a small business—this Good News Network website–and I’m always working to eliminate a mile-long To-Do list. And even while relaxing and enjoying a movie at home, whenever I’d go to the toilet between scenes, I was terribly impatient to get back to watching Robert Downey, Jr… So, to make the urination process go faster, I’d bear down, pushing it out with added pressure, especially toward the end as the drip slowed down, eager to leave the bathroom.
When I finally realized I was using the same muscles as people with constipation, although to affect a different outcome, so to speak, I thought this might have something to do with my decades-old problem. Patience was never my strength, but now I had powerful motivation to sit still.
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For the next five days, whenever I’d go to the bathroom to pee, I’d relax, letting it come out naturally to the last, ever-so-leisurely drop. When I finally decided in the shower to check my progress, I reached down and there were no hemorrhoids – for the first time since I can remember.
After several months I knew I had achieved a permanent cure.
I might be an idiot for never realizing my part in creating the problem, but why didn’t my doctor ask about my urination habits? He is the expert, yet he didn’t ask that simple question.
Maybe I’m the only one who has been hurrying through their time in the bathroom, eager to get back to the exciting world outside. But, just in case anyone is like me – and suffers the consequences, which include occasional ruptures of blood when they burst – I thought I’d write this embarrassing article, in hopes that my coming out of the (water) closet might help others.
You’re welcome.
SHARE the Free ‘Cure’ on Social Media–Especially if You’re a Pee-Pusher—And Tell us About it in the Comments…
275 exotic parrots are now on their way to a new wildlife sanctuary after their heroic caretaker pulled all of them up into his stilted house like Noah’s Ark to ride out Hurricane Ian.
There’s no question in Will Peratino’s mind that if he had not done so, the waves which crested his 5-foot high fencing around Malama Manu Sanctuary on Pine Island would have drowned all of them.
After the devastation, a full-scale volunteer effort transported all 275 parrots by boat through flooded canals to solid ground where they will be taken to another wildlife sanctuary.
The efforts were led by Project Dynamo, a volunteer rescue operation from Tampa that heard about Peratino’s plight. They put together a team and four boats to put all the parrots into cat-sized pet carriers and bring them off the ravaged Pine Island.
One of the volunteers came from the new sanctuary, who said they are likely to take the birds in for 6 months to a year.
“It’s been a long week,” Peratino said once all his birds were safely on their way. “This represents us being able to accomplish what we wanted to do which was to save all these birds. We heard other people just abandoned their pets, and there’s now way we could do that.”
There is a lot of work ahead for this parrot-loving man, to build a new home for the flock, which includes breeding pairs meant to safeguard populations of endangered animals from becoming extinct.
It’s as close to a modern reproduction of the story of Noah as one can find.
You can help build another ark. A GoFundMe page to fund the rebuilding of the sanctuary has raised $34,000 of its $200,000 goal.
WATCH some of the rescue below from AP
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A company has shrunk the wind turbine from being as tall as the Statue of Liberty to a 10-foot bladeless box that provides more power than 15 solar panels.
They are designed for small-scale, commercial use, as they’re noise free, and incapable of killing birds. Because they sit on the edge of roofs, they pair well with solar panels. If a building also has batteries to store the energy, it could be near to total self-sufficiency.
The relentless march of innovation in renewable energy continues at breakneck speed. Perhaps more so than solar, wind power is plagued criticism of the danger it presents to wildlife, and high maintenance requirements.
Called Aeromine, their boxy turbines generate energy in 50% greater amounts then a solar panel, and 16-times as much when the wind is right.
It takes works off the fact that when wind strikes a flat building wall, it accelerates as it rushes up and over the obstacle. Catching these wind gusts through a small opening, it channels the force towards an internal propeller located at the bottom of the unit.
RELATED: Sustainable Wind Turbine Towers Being Made of Eco-Friendly Wood
“I like to think of this as kind of disruptive and complimentary to the solar business,” Aeromine cofounder and CEO David Asarnow told Fast Company. “Our production can be stronger. At the same time, when you pair the two, you really have a path for on-site energy independence.”
Asarnow explains that 20 or 40 could line the walls of a building while leaving most of the roof free for solar panels.
Aeromine will first look to sell its product to warehouses and other large flat-roofed commercial buildings where it will have the maximum impact. In a current pilot, one of the units is being tested on the roof of a BASF factory near Detroit.
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Quote of the Day: “I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.” – Henry David Thoreau
Photo by: aliunix
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
A new study found that 24-month-old children who spent less than 60 minutes looking at screens each day and those who engaged in more physical activity had better executive function.
The toddlers’ program was designed according to the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for physical activity, and their executive function was measured against a second group who did not meet these guidelines.
The study’s aim was to see the difference in the toddlers’ abilities to remember, plan, pay attention, shift between tasks, and regulate their own thoughts and behavior, a suite of skills known as executive function.
“Executive function underlies your ability to engage in goal-directed behaviors,” said University of Illinois professor Naiman Khan, who led the study.
“It includes abilities such as inhibitory control, which allows you to regulate your thoughts, emotions and behavior; working memory, by which you are able to hold information in mind long enough to accomplish a task; and cognitive flexibility, the adeptness with which you switch your attention between tasks or competing demands.”
Through its Bright Futures initiative, the AAP recommends that children spend less than 60 minutes looking at screens each day, engage in daily physical activity, consume five or more servings of fruits and vegetables and minimize or eliminate the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, which isn’t half-different from what the guidelines ought to be for adults by the way.
Previous studies have linked adherence to guidelines for physical activity levels, screen time and diet quality with executive function in school-aged or adolescent children.
“We wanted to test the hypothesis that healthy weight status and adherence to the AAP guidelines for diet and physical activity would extend to greater executive function in 24-month-old children,” said Arden McMath, a graduate student of Khan’s and co-author of the paper.
“We focused on an earlier period in child development to see whether and how early in life these relationships begin,” she said.
The families of the 356 toddlers in the new research are participants in the STRONG KIDS 2 cohort study at the Univ. of Illinois, a long-term look at the interdependent factors that predict dietary habits and weight trajectories of children who are followed from birth to 5-years-old.
The study uses parental surveys and data on the children collected at eight time points over the five years, including when the children are 24-months-old.
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“The surveys asked parents to report on several aspects of their child’s daily habits, including how much time they looked at screens, how physically active they were, whether they had at least five servings of fruits and vegetables and whether they refrained from drinking sugar-sweetened beverages,” McMath said.
The parents also responded to a standard survey designed to measure executive function in toddlers. These questions asked them to evaluate their child’s ability to plan and organize their thoughts, regulate their emotional responses, inhibit impulses, remember information and shift attention between tasks.
The team then used a structural equation modeling technique to make their assessments of the data.
“We found that toddlers who engaged in less than 60 minutes of screen time per day had significantly greater ability to actively control their own cognition than those who spent more time staring at phones, tablets, televisions and computers,” McMath said. “They had greater inhibitory control, working memory and overall executive function.”
MORE HEALTHY KIDS: New Study Shows Garden Areas Improved the Immune Systems of Daycare Children in Only a Month
Toddlers who got daily physical activity also did significantly better on tests of working memory than those who didn’t, the researchers found.
“The influence of engaging in healthy behaviors on cognitive abilities appears to be evident in early childhood, particularly for behaviors surrounding physical activity and sedentary time,” Khan said.
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Picture it: you and your spouse are on your honeymoon in Europe, you see a burning building, you decide to be heroes and run inside through the smoke and you end up in a room with panicking nurses, 20 sleeping infants, and no one speaks English.
Incredibly, that was the situation Rhode Island honeymooners David Squillante and Doran Smith found themselves in last month in Barcelona.
The newlywed 38-year-olds were on their way to tour a park when they saw a group of women standing around panicking next to a doorway, out of which was wafting thick smoke.
“I saw a flame coming out of the doorway, next to the door that these women had come out of,” Smith said. “So, I said ‘Oh my God there’s a fire.'”
Who knows what possessed the non-Spanish speaking honeymooners to run inside the burning building, as there was nothing on the exterior that hinted at the precious cargo within; they could have just been running into a normal apartment building.
READ ALSO: Europe Realizes its Shepherds and Ranchers Are Key in Preventing Wildfires
They went in all the same, and though neither Squillante nor Smith understood what was probably being explained to them, they found themselves communicating in a “universal language” before long.
They entered a room that had not caught fire and realized they were in a nursery of all places.
“Instinct took over,” Squillante said. “I found myself looking at 15, 20 babies sleeping, and immediately just kind of lined everyone up and we started grabbing them, putting them into the crib. It was like probably like ten minutes, but it seemed like an instant, but it turned out to be OK.”
MORE RESCUE STORIES: A Hero Just Passing By Saves Young Mom and Son From Dying in Wyoming House Fire
After everyone was out safely, the pair continued their honeymoon. According to an NBC affiliate they went right on to take the park tour they had planned.
People Magazine reports that Squillante is now exploring the possibilities to be a volunteer firefighter in their home town of Bristol.
WATCH the local news video below…
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A kind-hearted 11-year-old boy used his own birthday money to launch a foodbank service which he runs from his garden shed.
Isaac Winfield fills bags of groceries which have been donated and hands them out
to the needy around his hometown.
Since starting the foodbank in 2020, the service has grown so much that Isaac’s family bought a shed to store the hundreds of donated items.
Well-wishers can now donate food or ask for supplies by contacting the schoolboy via his Friend’s of Isaac Food Bank Facebook page.
“We’d always donated to food banks, and during the pandemic he would take food parcels into school which would be given to people in need,” said his very proud mom Claire, who added that recently Isaac had moved to a specialist school which didn’t have a similar program, leaving him depressed that he couldn’t continue to help people.
“Being the resilient little lad he is, he said ‘it’s alright, we’ll give them food at my house,’” said Claire. “I was laughing, but he had just broken his arm so I let him do it to cheer him up. I doubled what money we gave them normally for food parcels and he went off to Aldi.”
His parents give him a lift in the van at weekends which has been customized with Isaac’s instantly recognizable rainbow logo, but sometimes it’s Isaac who takes the bags of groceries to people on foot.
Those in need are also able to go to Isaac’s foodbank shed in his home town of Redditch, Worcester, which is open 24-hours-a-day, and help themselves.
SIMILAR: Teen Finds Woman’s Purse and is Rewarded With $17,000 After He Delivers it to Her Door
“With a little bit of help he put all the food he bought in a little greenhouse with some lights and started offering it from there,” Claire remembers. “Someone spotted it and put it on one of those Facebook community sites and it went mad. The greenhouse lasted four weeks before I had to go and get a shed because we ran out of room.”
Now Isaac is planning to expand the service and has a local charity sponsoring him to open a foodbank in the town. He has attracted the help of big sponsors like Morrison’s and a local charity called Building Bridges to keep his foodbank operational.
YouTuber Mark McCann donated the aforementioned van, fully-taxed and insured, to help get the foodbank mobile.
“We have the big shed on the driveway and operations will continue from the house. Luckily we have a big driveway.”
Isaac was born with a rare chromosome disease, and the food bank has helped “massively” with his confidence, as he can’t read or write.
RELATED: High School Teens Swoop in to Support 6th Grade Stranger When No One Would Sign His Yearbook
“For his 11th birthday he just wanted foodbank donations and [the shed] was absolutely rammed,” said Claire. “He just wanted to get as many donations in as possible to help as many people as he can.”
Isaac has now been nominated for a local business award and hopes to open his second foodbank in the town next month.
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It became known recently that a Japanese anime icon risked all his fame and fortune to try and save a pair of drowning snorkelers.
Kazuki Takahashi, creator of the manga, anime, and trading card game Yu-Gi-Oh! was found to have died on July 4th from drowning during a rescue attempt off Okinawa Island, which did save an 11-year-old girl, her mom, and a 39-year-old U.S. soldier.
Tributes flooded social media for the “hero” Takahashi, alongside sworn statements from witnesses and fellow rescuer U.S. Army Major Robert Bourgeau of Missoula, Montana.
“This guy had a huge impact on the world,” said Bourgeau, 49. “He’s a hero, he died trying to save someone else.”
At around 2 PM, Bourgeau was getting read to teach a scuba-diving lesson at a popular swimming area called Mermaid’s Grotto, in Yomitan, when he was alerted to the girl and the soldier, who had been carried out in a rip current.
Bourgeau also recalled heavy 6-foot surf crashing on their heads, creating a whirlpool effect from which they couldn’t escape. Bourgeau and one of his students made their way towards them along a strip of shallow water, before the Major jumped in to rescue the girl, becoming completely exhausted in the process. He also encountered the girl’s mother, who had evidently tried to help and become trapped in the process.
It was at this point that witnesses saw Takahashi also enter the water, swimming out to the same spot to try and help, completely unbeknownst to Bourgeau.
Bourgeau managed to get the girl to safety, but returning to rescue his comrade proved too much. Turning back, he managed to direct the struggling soldier to safer waters.
“I didn’t think I was going to make it,” the 49-year-old said.
Regardless of if you grew up with Yu-Gi-Oh or not, if you only played the card game or only read the manga, if you watched the anime in English or in Japanese, we were all brought together by one man's passion. He'll always be alive in our hearts. That's the lesson he taught us. pic.twitter.com/mnp0CE1BN7
— Kazuki Takahashi (高橋 和希) Art (@TakahashiArtYGO) July 7, 2022
Takahashi’s body was later found on a beach in Nago City, the currents evidently had been too much for the 60-year-old as well.
Takahashi started his career in Manga, or Japanese comic books the 1980s, before creating the story of a kind, spikey haired teenage boy named Yugi Mutou, who finds a pyramid-shaped puzzle box in his grandfather’s antique shop that contained the soul of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who also happened to be grandmaster of a magical card game.
This later developed into an actual card game, and one of the most popular anime series in history.
“We will always remember him with every single card we play, trade or collect,” wrote one fan on twitter “R.I.P King of Games.”
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Quote of the Day: “Poetry is what helps me remember that even in my fragments, I am whole.” – Jennifer Huang
Photo by: Michael Krahn
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Two female Cinereous Vultures flew into the wild skies of Bulgaria—the culmination of a 7-year project that successfully completed its mission on September 3rd, “World Vulture Day”
At the end there were only two of them left in the conservation aviary in the Vrachanski Nature Park in the western part of the Balkan Mountains in Bulgaria.
Finally, these last two females were released as part of the EU-financed LIFE-Project which sought to repopulate the black vultures after the Bulgarian population had died out over sixty years ago.
Since 2018 around 70 young black vultures have been released in various regions of the Balkan Mountains. “After all the reintroductions of recent years, the release of these last two female vultures was still something special,” said Hristo Peshev from the Bulgarian partner organization the Fund for Wild Flora and Fauna and one of the biologists involved in the project.
“It will be exciting to see how the vultures acclimatize to their new environment. I am confident that they will be successful, like the majority of the other vultures released into the wild,” Peshev told the nonprofit Euronatur.
Despite isolated setbacks, the reintroduction project has been “very successful”, with several pairs of the reintroduced birds already raising offspring, both this year and last year—earlier than experts had expected.
Cinereous vultures (Aegypius monachus) are amongst the giants of the European bird world. With a length of a good meter or more (3-feet), and a wingspan nearly as long, these (and the bearded vulture) are Europe’s largest birds of prey – and some of the rarest.
Today on the continent there are only about 1,000 pairs of the majestic bird, most of them in Spain. Its reintroduction in the Bulgarian Balkan Mountains will boost the southeastern European population.
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Truly, in the last few years, a foundation for the permanent return of the carrion eaters, also known as black vultures, has been laid.
EuroNatur and its local partners will be taking measures to protect the vultures in the long term, with feeding stations maintained and cooperation from farmers in the region continuing.
FLY This Good News to Bird-Watching Friends on Social Media…
A New Zealander taught both his parents how to play the drums and the bass so he would have people to jam with—and now they have an album out.
Ryan Stokes couldn’t have his friends over to jam during lockdown so he decided to teach his parents how to play instruments.
Inspired by The White Stripes, a two-piece rock band, the 20-year-old guitarist initially taught his 55-year-old mom to play the drums. Two months later, his 60-year-old father picked up an electric bass for the first time.
The family appropriately named their band ‘Mommas Boy’, with Ryan crushing songs as the frontman vocalist, while Andrea Stokes keeps time on drums and Lyndon plucks the bass—all with with a lot of competence.
The trio has been practicing three to four times-a-week and they now have an album out called ‘Who Would Have Thought’, released in April on the band’s Spotify account.
“They were pestered to start the band by their very eager son,” joked Ryan, who was born in Hamilton, Scotland. “I had nothing to do during lockdown and wanted to play music.
“Mum loved the White Stripes—especially Meg White and was very excited to learn to drum like her.”
After a quick lesson on the drum kit in the garage, Ryan says “Sure enough she had a strong beat within an hour and was ready to play within three hours.” (See the video at the bottom…)
Both of the middle-aged newbies adapted to the rockstar life very quickly, appearing in videos on TikTok hours after picking up instruments for the first time.
The group quickly won the hearts of the internet, accumulating 72,000 followers on TikTok since their formation— with 700,000 views.
Ryan, a student, and his parents, who both work in local government, are shocked by how popular Mommas Boy has become, and have been loving the support they get online.
“Mum is known as the ‘mumma drummer’ around her work and dad is constantly blown away by the response online, after initially thinking social media was a very negative environment,” Ryan told SWNS news.
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The band, with no record label yet, uses Ryan’s bedroom as a studio—and by using music editing software, they put together their album in just a month.
Since their big break online, the band also has also played live shows—with lots of jittery nerves leading up to their first gig.
“Mum constantly said that she was not good enough to play a live show and Dad was not optimistic, but after we completed our first show, they were overjoyed and could not wait for the next one.”
An incidental benefit now is that the family gets to spend more time together, and derive even more out of the music they all love.
“We always bonded over our shared love of music. Now we can bond over our shared love of making music,” quipped Ryan.
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“Our musical taste is the exact same, I was brought up listening to Dad’s live concert DVD’s and vinyl. I believe there is footage of me being brought home from the hospital after just being born and you can hear The Rolling Stones in the background.”
So far, according to Ryan, the band members haven’t had any disagreements over their music, but Andrea is turning out to be quite the rockstar.
“She seems to have the biggest fan base out of all of us on TikTok. Also, I feel like if we ever toured, she would be the one to drive a car into a swimming pool!”
WATCH the impressive trio play a selection of their tunes…
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The world’s first car-powered bed-and-breakfast has opened to the public—with all power supplied by electric vehicles for a true off-grid experience.
Situated outside of London in Essex, England, the secluded accommodation offers a quiet escape for two to the countryside—and the luxury stay is free for whichever winners are picked at random.
Guests will enjoy a local menu and mixology-curated drinks using innovative and sustainable ingredients sourced within Essex—all served in an outdoor bar and dining area near a fireplace amid a forest.
The new concept, Hotel Hyundai, was launched by the car brand alongside broadcaster Grace Dent to introduce their new electric vehicle. The whole experience will be powered through the Hyundai IONIQ 5’s V2L feature, which harnesses the car’s electricity to power other appliances through an adaptor.
The three-week pop-up hotel giveaway comes in the wake of new poll showing 44 percent would like to go on more short staycations, rather than traveling long distances.
With the public citing sustainability, supporting local businesses, and stress-free travel, UK travelers will find it all in this pop-up vacation destination.
Grace Dent, curator of the hotel concept, says, “We’re looking for unique, memorable stays now, more than ever, and this is a delicious blend of innovation, luxury, and comfort that gets you thinking.
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Another perk is an outdoor cinema that will give guests the opportunity to kick-back, relax and unwind.
53 percent of respondents to the OnePoll survey would also like to invest their vacation cash in local UK economies rather than abroad—and half agreed nothing beats a holiday in the great British countryside.
Hotel Hyundai is open for 14 nights from October 19 to November 5 to members of the public who’ve won a stay. Sign up by October 19 and choose three preferable dates.
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The stay includes one night in the deluxe woodland cabin, surrounded by 200 acres of walking trails around a working farm with ancient forests and a babbling brook.
Your 3-course menu for dinner will be personally prepared, with your food preferences collected in advance, along with a full breakfast.
They’re giving away 14 one-night complimentary stays—but you need to fill out the entry form by October 19 at the vacation website, Kip Hideaways, which offers ‘small places with soul’. See all the details, and sign up, on their website.
“This hotel concept has been possible thanks to IONIQ 5 and the supply of power, where an adapter from the car provides a socket which domestic appliances can be plugged into,” said Ashley Andrew, from Hyundai Motor UK.
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“The whole experience demonstrates the practicality of this pioneering technology, and we hope the concept inspires more people to go off grid.”
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Photo by: Gus Moretta
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