It’s not every day you get to propose to your high school sweetheart—which is why filmmaker Lee Loechler made sure his marriage proposal was extra special.
Hearts are melting across social media after Loechler proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Sthuthi David, by reanimating the ending of her favorite film: Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty.
It took six months of work to animate the scene and arrange for the movie screening to take place. Loechler started by contacting the Coolidge Corner Theater in their hometown of Brookline, Massachusetts and asking if they could host a fake film screening for the proposal—and the theater was more than happy to accept.
After that, Loechler made a Reddit post asking for 20 strangers to attend a free screening of Sleeping Beauty so that David’s closest friends and family could hide in the back of the theater and watch the proposal unfold without being recognized.
Since Loechler also knew that inviting his girlfriend to the screening would invite suspicion, he forwarded a fake email announcement about the movie screening to David through her mother. A few days later, David’s mother casually mentioned that she had bought tickets for the family to attend the screening—and to Loechler’s “delight”, David invited him to her own surprise proposal.
The movie then played itself out as it normally would—except when it got to the scene where the prince kisses Princess Aurora, David was visibly confused when the skin and hair colors of the animated characters started to change.
The on-screen prince then held up a ring and tossed it into the air so that Loechler could “catch it” from the front row of the audience and get down on one knee for what was potentially the most heartwarming fairytale ending in history.
Needless to say, David accepted Loechler’s proposal to live happily ever after. Not only that, their video of the proposal has racked up more than 6 million views since it was uploaded to YouTube back in December—and it’s not hard to see why.
(WATCH the tear-jerking video below)
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Quote of the Day: “What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.” – John Steinbeck
Photo: by Bert Kaufmann – CC license, cropped
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We can take shorter showers. We can try to recycle our plastic. We can make sure to turn the lights off in our homes at night. But the sense of urgency in the face of our climate crisis leaves some people discouraged because there isn’t more they can do.
For 13 years, however, Health in Harmony has been offering caring citizens of the world a way to reduce their impact on the environment—a chance to minimize, or even neutralize, their carbon footprint in ways that benefit so much more than just the CO2 equation.
The intrepid nonprofit is allowing people to buy personal carbon-offsets and using the money to benefit rural communities in Borneo and Madagascar. The brilliance behind their program is the way it addresses the locals in and around these tropical rainforests who are both impoverished, and living nearby some of the most important and vulnerable ecosystems on earth—ecosystems that if lost could place the goal of overcoming our impact on climate forever beyond our reach.
Tropical rainforests are the Fort Knox of carbon storage, as well as bastions of biodiversity. Many tracts, like Gunung Palung National Park on the island of Borneo have been hit hard by slash-and-burn agriculture and illegal logging, because struggling locals look for ways to make money and feed their families.
Based in Portland, Oregon, Health In Harmony offers people worldwide the opportunity to buy tropical tree seedlings that, when matured, will sequester a certain amount of carbon per year. But the impact here is profound.
According to an article in Fast Company, during its first ten years the program achieved 90% reduction in logging activities within households where the nonprofit was operating. This resulted in an astonishing regrowth of 52,000 acres of rainforest.
Photo courtesy of Health In Harmony
Kinari Webb, founder of Health In Harmony explained that 95 trees will offset the carbon emitted by an average American—while planting them ensures the survival of one of the most biodiverse places on earth.
With the group’s carbon-offset calculator, you can enter in key contributors in your own personal carbon footprint such as how much gasoline you use, or how many miles you’ve flown on airlines, and the calculator will come up with the cost of that carbon footprint as it relates to buying seedlings to be planted in Borneo and Madagascar.
According to Webb a monthly donation of $31.00 is likely enough to make you a carbon-neutral citizen.
And, to assuage your skepticism about reforestation efforts that don’t ensure saplings’ survival, Webb says that during the first 3 years, watering, weeding, fertilizing, and fire prevention are regularly provided for the trees. Over their first 10 sites they’ve seen a survival rate of 80%.
They diversify, using over 100 native tree species and indigenous fruit trees, while also compensating for failure by planting more than is needed to account for tree death during infancy and adolescence. These steps ensure that the full biodiversity compliment of the jungle can return even in the plantations. But, that is just the beginning.
Part of the money from your carbon offset purchases also provides healthcare, sustainable agriculture training, and economic empowerment for the villages near Gunung Palung National Park.
A “green credit” system allows the residents who work to reduce illegal logging to receive discounts of up to 70% on medical services at the medical facilities of Health In Harmony’s partner on the group ASRI. They can even pay for medical care with things like tree seedlings, artisan goods, and manure.
ASRI also works with village chiefs to nominate a Forest Guardian. Respected members of their community, the Forest Guardians are trained by ASRI to work with illegal loggers to try and convince them to put down their chainsaws. They spread awareness of alternative ways of generating income while earning discounts on medical services for themselves and their neighbors.
Sustainable modern agriculture techniques are replacing slash and burn methods which have been destroying the rainforest while yielding fewer crops. In 2018, locals were producing more crops for their families and selling the remainder for additional income. In July 2018, Health In Harmony’s Kitchen Gardens, and Goats for Widows projects allowed women at home to generate their own income from farming small plots of land or keeping goats whose manure and milk helped wives who had lost their husbands to stay afloat financially.
Next Up: Madagascar and Her Lemurs
Beyond a second, even larger, Indonesia site called Bukit Baka Bukit Raya National Park, which is a critical sanctuary for orangutans, Health In Harmony has expanded its operations to another biodiversity mecca: Madagascar.
Madagascar’s forests are massively at risk from logging and agriculture, and with them almost 100 species of lemur, the charismatic primate found nowhere else on earth.
In the autumn of 2019, Health In Harmony began setting up reforestation, healthcare, agricultural training, and more in Manombo Special Reserve, a 14,300-acre protected area in southeast Madagascar, home to nine species of lemur—all of which are threatened with extinction.
Health In Harmony is proving that any concerned citizen can do far more than recycle to prevent climate change, and that the power of their dollar can help a lot more lifeforms than humans and trees.
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That banana peel from your lunch, turned into graphene, could help facilitate a massive reduction of the environmental impact of concrete and other building materials. While you’re at it, toss in those plastic empties.
A new process introduced by the Rice University lab of chemist James Tour can turn bulk quantities of just about any carbon source into valuable graphene flakes. The process is quick and cheap; Tour said the “flash graphene” technique can convert a ton of coal, food waste or plastic into graphene for a fraction of the cost used by other bulk graphene-producing methods.
“This is a big deal,” Tour said. “The world throws out 30% to 40% of all food, because it goes bad, and plastic waste is of worldwide concern. We’ve already proven that any solid carbon-based matter, including mixed plastic waste and rubber tires, can be turned into graphene.”
As reported in Nature, flash graphene is made in 10 milliseconds by heating carbon-containing materials to 3,000 Kelvin (about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit). The source material can be nearly anything with carbon content. Food waste, plastic waste, petroleum coke, coal, wood clippings and biochar are prime candidates, Tour said. “With the present commercial price of graphene being $67,000 to $200,000 per ton, the prospects for this process look superb,” he said.
Tour said a concentration of as little as 0.1% of flash graphene in the cement used to bind concrete could lessen its massive environmental impact by a third. Production of cement reportedly emits as much as 8% of human-made carbon dioxide every year.
“By strengthening concrete with graphene, we could use less concrete for building, and it would cost less to manufacture and less to transport,” he said. “Essentially, we’re trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane that waste food would have emitted in landfills. We are converting those carbons into graphene and adding that graphene to concrete, thereby lowering the amount of carbon dioxide generated in concrete manufacture. It’s a win-win environmental scenario using graphene.”
“Turning trash to treasure is key to the circular economy,” said co-corresponding author Rouzbeh Shahsavari, an adjunct assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice. “Here, graphene acts both as a 2D template and a reinforcing agent that controls cement hydration and subsequent strength development.”
In the past, Tour said, “graphene has been too expensive to use in these applications. The flash process will greatly lessen the price while it helps us better manage waste.”
“With our method, that carbon becomes fixed,” he said. “It will not enter the air again.”
The process aligns nicely with Rice’s recently announced Carbon Hub initiative to create a zero-emissions future that repurposes hydrocarbons from oil and gas to generate hydrogen gas and solid carbon with zero emission of carbon dioxide. The flash graphene process can convert that solid carbon into graphene for concrete, asphalt, buildings, cars, clothing and more, Tour said.
Flash Joule heating for bulk graphene, developed in the Tour lab by Rice graduate student and lead author Duy Luong, improves upon techniques like exfoliation from graphite and chemical vapor deposition on a metal foil that require much more effort and cost to produce just a little graphene.
Photo by Jeff Fitlow / Rive University
Even better, the process produces “turbostratic” graphene, with misaligned layers that are easy to separate. “A-B stacked graphene from other processes, like exfoliation of graphite, is very hard to pull apart,” Tour said. “The layers adhere strongly together. But turbostratic graphene is much easier to work with because the adhesion between layers is much lower. They just come apart in solution or upon blending in composites.
“That’s important, because now we can get each of these single-atomic layers to interact with a host composite,” he said.
The lab noted that used coffee grounds transformed into pristine single-layer sheets of graphene.
Bulk composites of graphene with plastic, metals, plywood, concrete, and other building materials would be a major market for flash graphene, according to the researchers, who are already testing graphene-enhanced concrete and plastic.
The flash process happens in a custom-designed reactor that heats material quickly and emits all noncarbon elements as gas. “When this process is industrialized, elements like oxygen and nitrogen that exit the flash reactor can all be trapped as small molecules because they have value,” Tour said.
He said the flash process produces very little excess heat, channeling almost all of its energy into the target. “You can put your finger right on the container a few seconds afterwards,” Tour said. “And keep in mind this is almost three times hotter than the chemical vapor deposition furnaces we formerly used to make graphene, but in the flash process the heat is concentrated in the carbon material and none in a surrounding reactor.
“All the excess energy comes out as light, in a very bright flash, and because there aren’t any solvents, it’s a super clean process,” he said.
Luong did not expect to find graphene when he fired up the first small-scale device to find new phases of material, beginning with a sample of carbon black. “This started when I took a look at a Science paper talking about flash Joule heating to make phase-changing nanoparticles of metals,” he said. But Luong quickly realized the process produced nothing but high-quality graphene.
Atom-level simulations by Rice researcher and co-author Ksenia Bets confirmed that temperature is key to the material’s rapid formation. “We essentially speed up the slow geological process by which carbon evolves into its ground state, graphite,” she said. “Greatly accelerated by a heat spike, it is also stopped at the right instant, at the graphene stage.
“It is amazing how state-of-the-art computer simulations, notoriously slow for observing such kinetics, reveal the details of high temperature-modulated atomic movements and transformation,” Bets said.
Tour hopes to produce a kilogram (2.2 pounds) a day of flash graphene within two years, starting with a project recently funded by the Department of Energy to convert U.S.-sourced coal. “This could provide an outlet for coal in large scale by converting it inexpensively into a much-higher-value building material,” he said.
Firefighters and animal safety officers are being hailed for going above and beyond the call of duty to rescue a distraught 3-month-old Australian cattle dog.
Last week, Riverside County Animal Services responded to a call in Coachella, California about a young pup who had gotten her head stuck in the rim of a spare car tire.
At first, the rescuers attempted to slide the dog’s head out of the metal rim by lubricating her neck with oil, but her neck had already become too swollen from the wheel.
The rescuers then transported the distressed pup to the Veterinary Services Division of the Coachella Valley Animal Campus and calmed her down with a sedative.
For a long while, the firefighters took turns using a sawzall to cut a hole in the metal—until finally, they were able to pull the dog free.
“It was so worrying to me. I was trying to imagine how the heck she got put in that position and you just got to remember that puppies will be puppies. Just curiosity,” said David Hough, a Riverside County animal care technician, according to CNN. “There was probably food on the other side of it or something, she just crammed her head right through.”
Since publishing the video of the pup’s rescue to YouTube last week, it has been viewed more than 33,000 times.
(WATCH the video below)
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Swapping out single-use plastic straws for a reusable alternative is an easy way to reduce your environmental impact—but reusable straws are notoriously hard to clean.
That’s why innovators have developed the Penna Straw: a collapsible, self-cleaning reusable straw that could save hundreds—if not thousands—of disposable straws from ending up in a landfill every month.
The straw is comprised of four separate stainless steel segments that can magnetically snap together when it’s time for the user to enjoy a tasty beverage. When it’s time to be cleaned, the pieces can be broken down and placed inside of a convenient carrying case equipped with four separate brushes to clean the straw segments.
The carrying case is then filled with water through a small hole; all the user has to do is place their finger over the hole, give the case a few shakes, and then dump out the water through the very same hole.
If that isn’t enough, the case is also equipped with a UV light system that can reportedly sterilize 99% of the remaining bacteria.
California-based tech company Elretron has been developing the straw for the last year prior to its launch on Kickstarter this week. Since the crowdfunding campaign was published, however, it has already surged past its original goal and raised more than $17,000 for manufacturing.
The first of the Penna Straws are expected to be delivered in April 2020—and the developers hope to deliver thousands more during the year to come.
(WATCH the explanatory video below)
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It has been 13 years since Annmarie Small came to America from Jamaica in hopes of achieving a better life for her and her son.
After Small emigrated to Tallahassee, Florida in 2007, she began working as an elementary school teacher at Cornerstone Learning Academy.
Not only did the school provide her with a steady job, it also introduced her to a loving community of supportive teachers and students, many of whom greeted her at the airport when her plane first landed from Jamaica.
So when it was finally time for her to earn her US citizenship last week, she was surrounded by dozens of her current and former students cheering her on.
“I use the term ‘bag of emotions’ because that’s exactly what it was,” 42-year-old Small told WFTS about the heartwarming event. “When everything was quiet after the ceremony and I went home, I cried, and it was tears of joy.
“I’m so happy the process is over now because it’s been a long process,” she added. “And there were tears of joy because I’ve had the support of Cornerstone since day one.”
(WATCH the video below)
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Quote of the Day: “Banish the word ‘struggle’ from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do must be done . . . in celebration.” – Hopi Elders
Photo: by Eddi van W. – CC license
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Despite enduring a string of heartbreaking losses in the same year, this former airman has transformed his life for the better—and he did it by quitting his job, selling all of his possessions, and traveling the world with his pet ferret.
25-year-old Charlie Hammerton was determined to change his life after he was left grieving the deaths of his best friend, mother, and adopted mom all in the same year.
His mom Jan died in March 2017 aged 53 after suffering from motor neurone disease; then his best friend Will Moss passed away aged 22 just a few months later from a suspected drug overdose. At the end of the year, his adopted mum Samantha passed away from a heart attack.
“It was horrible for me, but I didn’t want to get into a rut because of it all,” says Hammerton. “I did think about killing myself a couple of times because I didn’t know where to turn.
Living in Arnold, Nottinghamshire at the time, he decided to turn his back on a promising career and put almost all of his money into a globe-trotting adventure with his “best pal”: Bandit the rescue ferret.
“I was living in a nice flat, had a good job and had three cars. I had a lot of savings behind me and I was lucky enough to be very secure,” he added. “But it was all just ‘stuff’ to me and didn’t really mean anything. So I decided to get rid of the lot and set off with Bandit.”
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Hammerton then quit his job and sold almost all his possessions—including his three cars. Collectively, he managed to drum up £15,000 ($19,500) for his dream trip, £5,000 of which he spent on a campervan.
Starting out in February 2018, Hammerton and Bandit ventured through Holland, Germany, Sweden, Norway, France, Spain, and Italy.
The inseparable pair traveled for a total of 8 months to more than 25 towns and cities in 11 countries, all of which Hammerton documented on their public Facebook page.
His hilarious holiday album is full of snaps of Bandit posing in front of iconic landmarks—from the Eiffel Tower in Paris to the Colosseum in Rome.
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“Traveling was the most amazing experience of my life and it was completely liberating,” said Hammerton. “We followed the sun across the world and camped under the stars in amazing places.
“It was beautiful and I spent it with my best friend,” he added. “I have less money now but I am much wealthier as a person.”
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Hammerton rescued Bandit from an animal sanctuary in 2015—and the pair have been inseparable ever since. The little ferret even stayed with him at his military digs in Coningsby whilst Charlie was working for the Royal Air Force (RAF).
“He has seen me at my best and my worst and has always been with me,” says Hammerton. “Bandit has been with me through thick and thin.”
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In addition to their cross-continental road tripping adventures, they have also raised awareness for different charities. The pair have walked across Hadrian’s Wall in aid of the motor neurone disease charity MND, and also skateboarded 40 miles across London in aid of a drug awareness charity.
In November 2018, Hammerton released a book about his travels called “Before Our Adventures”, which is now available on Amazon.
“The book is all about how you can take anything bad and turn it into something really good,” said Hammerton. “Everyone has the right and the ability to do that. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut, but there’s no need to.
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“I went through a really rough time and developed serious depression. I felt suicidal and just didn’t know what to do with myself,” he continued. “A chain of bad things had happened to me and I had good reason to feel really miserable about my life.
“But I decided that was not what I wanted to be. I didn’t want this to define me. I channeled the negative energy and turned it into something positive.”
Charlie now works in schools across the country teaching youngsters about how to build confidence, self-esteem, and outdoor living skills such as camping and bushcraft.
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A study testing thousands of medicines in hundreds of cancer cell lines in the lab uncovers new tricks for many old drugs
Drugs for diabetes, inflammation, alcoholism—and even for treating arthritis in dogs—can also kill cancer cells in the lab, according to a study by scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
The researchers systematically analyzed thousands of already developed drug compounds and found nearly 50 that have previously unrecognized anti-cancer activity. The surprising findings, which also revealed novel drug mechanisms and targets, suggest a possible way to accelerate the development of new cancer drugs or repurpose existing drugs to treat cancer.
“We thought we’d be lucky if we found even a single compound with anti-cancer properties, but we were surprised to find so many,” said Todd Golub, chief scientific officer and director of the Cancer Program at the Broad, and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.
The new work appears in the journal Nature Cancer. It is the largest study yet to employ the Broad’s Drug Repurposing Hub, a collection that currently comprises more than 6,000 existing drugs and compounds that are either FDA-approved or have been proven safe in clinical trials (at the time of the study, the Hub contained 4,518 drugs).
The study also marks the first time researchers screened the entire collection of mostly non-cancer drugs for their anti-cancer capabilities.
Historically, scientists have stumbled upon new uses for a few existing medicines, such as the discovery of aspirin’s cardiovascular benefits. “We created the repurposing hub to enable researchers to make these kinds of serendipitous discoveries in a more deliberate way,” said study first author Steven Corsello, an oncologist at Dana-Farber and founder of the Drug Repurposing Hub.
The researchers tested all the compounds in the Drug Repurposing Hub on 578 human cancer cell lines from the Broad’s Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia (CCLE). Using a molecular barcoding method known as PRISM, which was developed in the Golub lab, the researchers tagged each cell line with a DNA barcode, allowing them to pool several cell lines together in each dish and more quickly conduct a larger experiment. The team then exposed each pool of barcoded cells to a single compound from the repurposing library, and measured the survival rate of the cancer cells.
They found nearly 50 non-cancer drugs—including those initially developed to lower cholesterol or reduce inflammation—that killed some cancer cells while leaving others alone.
Some of the compounds killed cancer cells in unexpected ways. “Most existing cancer drugs work by blocking proteins, but we’re finding that compounds can act through other mechanisms,” said Corsello. Some of the four-dozen drugs he and his colleagues identified appear to act not by inhibiting a protein but by activating a protein or stabilizing a protein-protein interaction. For example, the team found that nearly a dozen non-oncology drugs killed cancer cells that express a protein called PDE3A by stabilizing the interaction between PDE3A and another protein called SLFN12—a previously unknown mechanism for some of these drugs.
These unexpected drug mechanisms were easier to find using the study’s cell-based approach, which measures cell survival, than through traditional non-cell-based high-throughput screening methods, Corsello said.
Most of the non-oncology drugs that killed cancer cells in the study did so by interacting with a previously unrecognized molecular target. For example, the anti-inflammatory drug tepoxalin, originally developed for use in people but approved for treating osteoarthritis in dogs, killed cancer cells by hitting an unknown target in cells that overexpress the protein MDR1, which commonly drives resistance to chemotherapy drugs.
Photo by Susanna Hamilton / Broad Communications
The researchers were also able to predict whether certain drugs could kill each cell line by looking at the cell line’s genomic features, such as mutations and methylation levels, which were included in the CCLE database. This suggests that these features could one day be used as biomarkers to identify patients who will most likely benefit from certain drugs. For example, the alcohol dependence drug disulfiram (Antabuse) killed cell lines carrying mutations that cause depletion of metallothionein proteins. Compounds containing vanadium, originally developed to treat diabetes, killed cancer cells that expressed the sulfate transporter SLC26A2.
“The genomic features gave us some initial hypotheses about how the drugs could be acting, which we can then take back to study in the lab,” said Corsello. “Our understanding of how these drugs kill cancer cells gives us a starting point for developing new therapies.”
The researchers hope to study the repurposing library compounds in more cancer cell lines and to grow the hub to include even more compounds that have been tested in humans. The team will also continue to analyze the trove of data from this study, which have been shared openly with the scientific community, to better understand what’s driving the compounds’ selective activity.
“This is a great initial dataset, but certainly there will be a great benefit to expanding this approach in the future,” said Corsello.
Upon looking at the security footage, she saw a FedEx driver walking a package up to her door. When he caught sight of all the snow on her front stoop, however, he put down the package, grabbed a shovel, and began clearing away the snow.
“Although we see many acts of kindness in the Upper Peninsula, it was still surprising to see that he went the extra step,” LaFreniere told CNN. “I shared it with my coworkers immediately because I couldn’t believe it. It made my day.”
The delivery driver, Melvin J. Marlett, has reportedly been working for FedEx for 23 years. Although LaFreniere is usually never home to greet him during his deliveries, her fiancé says he has shared many delightful conversations with the driver.
LaFreniere later reached out to Marlett and asked for his permission to post the video in hopes that it would hearten others on social media—and her wish has now come true since her Facebook video of the incident has already been viewed more than 57,000 times.
Despite how Marlett humbly insists that he was simply doing his job, he says he is also happy his good deed is having such a positive effect on the internet.
“I would hope it’s something that anybody would have done,” Marlett told the news outlet. “If you take care of your customers, they take care of you.”
(WATCH the video below)
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Book lovers can be heartened to hear that the dazzling special effects of Hollywood’s blockbusters are still no match for the comfort of the public library.
According to a recently published Gallup poll—the first of its kind conducted in almost two decades—Americans visited the library far more than any other cultural institution in 2019.
On average, visits to the library far exceeded any other recreational activity with US adults reporting 10.5 trips per year.
In contrast to this number, Americans only reported paying 5 annual trips to the movie theater, 5 trips to sporting events, 4 trips to musical or theatrical performances, and 2.5 trips to museums.
The survey goes on to say that while these numbers are relatively similar to data collected in 2001, Americans have reported going to slightly more museums (0.7 visits), national parks (1.3), and theatrical or musical performances (1.1). However, there has been a 1.3 decrease in average movie theater visits.
Unsurprisingly, the data says that low-income adults visit public libraries slightly more than higher-income families, most likely because of how most library services are free; although survey reporters did report that women reported visiting the library nearly twice as frequently as men do, 13.4 to 7.5 visits.
That all being said, the survey reporters say that the poll is cause for celebration amidst a technologically-saturated era.
“Despite the proliferation of digital-based activities over the past two decades—including digital books, podcasts, streaming entertainment services and advanced gaming—libraries have endured as a place Americans visit nearly monthly on average,” remarked poll author Justin McCarthy. “Whether because they offer services like free Wi-Fi, movie rentals, or activities for children, libraries are most utilized by young adults, women, and residents of low-income households.”
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A Canadian oil worker is being hailed for using his leftover coffee to rescue three kittens he found trapped to a sheet of ice last week.
Kendall Diwisch had been performing some routine checks on the oil wells in Dayton Valley, Edmonton when he saw what looked like a piece of trash left on a sheet of snow.
Upon closer inspection, however, he was shocked to discover that it was a trio of terrified kittens whose tails were frozen to the ground.
Diwisch quickly fetched his cup of coffee from his pickup truck and used the hot liquid to sufficiently melt the ice around the kittens’ tails. After the coffee had done its job, Diwisch was able to pull the felines free and take them home.
Diwisch then posted photos and video of his ingenious rescue mission to Facebook in hopes of finding a forever family for the kittens.
“Took them home, fed and watered them; they look to be healthy and friendly,” he wrote. “If any friends are looking to have a new addition in their family, let us know as they will need homes. All three look to be males, and we also gave them dewormer.”
Since publishing his post to social media, Diwisch’s rescue video has been viewed more than half a million times. Not only that, he found a family to adopt all three of the cats.
“All three little rascals went to their new home today where they get to be together instead of separating them,” wrote Diwisch. “All three are eating and drinking and very energetic. Thanks for everyone’s consideration and offering to take them; very appreciated.”
(WATCH the news coverage below)
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Quote of the Day: “Don’t be content in your life just to do no wrong, be prepared every day to try and do some good.” – Sir Nicholas Winton (rescued 669 children from Nazis)
Photo: by Agência Brasília / Rogério Capela, CC license
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According to a new survey, four in five Americans are genuinely excited about Valentine’s Day—perhaps even more so than Christmas.
A poll of 2,000 Americans found that this Hallmark holiday tops the charts for Americans, with 81% saying they get excited about February 14, while just 68% say they get excited about the December holiday season—which might be because it has just concluded.
More than half of participants say they look at Valentine’s Day as a way to show appreciation towards everyone they love. These days, that includes love of all kinds—with partners, friends, kids, and pets.
The study, conducted by OnePoll in conjunction with Zulily, examined Valentine’s Day habits and behaviors and showed that contrary to popular belief, this date night isn’t all about romance.
59% plan on commemorating the love-filled holiday with their nearest and dearest friends. 51% plan on celebrating with their kids, and 28% will hang with their fur baby.
What about buying gifts? 64% of respondents plan on picking out gifts for the people (and pets) they love, while 57 percent plan on cooking a special dinner, instead.
Surprisingly, a third of surveyed Americans (33%) say they have even taken the day off from work to celebrate.
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“For Valentine’s Day, it’s all about showing your loved ones you listen to them,” said Claire Magruder, Zulily’s Trend and Fashion Expert. “For example, if your partner hates to vacuum, delight them with a robot vacuum. If your bestie loves to entertain, then a new table accessory may be the perfect gift.
“I also love a handwritten note on a homemade card—it’s straight from the heart.”
TOP 5 WAYS TO CELEBRATE VALENTINE’S DAY
1. Buy gifts for people I love 64%
2. Go out to dinner 57%
3. Cook a special dinner 57%
4. Treat myself to some “me-time” 45%
5. Send a card 40%
No matter how Americans celebrate Valentine’s Day, 69% will say “I love you” more on February 14, than any other day of the year.
Quote of the Day: “If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.” – Loren Eiseley
Photo: by Angelo Brathot, Public Domain image
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Without an internal combustion engine—and all the other components such as radiators needed for one to safely function—all-electric vehicle manufacturers are beginning to realize there isn’t anything stopping them from making a truly unique automobile.
That’s why Canoo, an LA-based company making electric SUVs has just opened up its waiting list for a lounge-like electric SUV that looks like it’s straight out of Blade Runner.
Talking to Electrek, Canoo CEO Ulli Kranz explains the logic behind a car which truly seeks to transform the way people think about what a car is.
“Most electric cars today look like combustion-engine vehicles,” explains Kranz.
“They are SUVs or large sedans with huge batteries and very expensive. What’s missing is affordability. Therefore we put all our focus on an affordable electric vehicle while keeping in mind the ride-hailing and car-sharing that young generations have embraced.”
Photos by Canoo
The Canoo speaks loudly to the modern green urban-dweller. Many of them consider automobiles to be a primary driver of climate change, too expensive, or just plain inconvenient when ride sharing options like Uber and Lyft are so widespread. So this pod-like vehicle created a unique proposition that young people can embrace.
Canoo’s innovative subscription strategy is designed to reduce the EV’s cost by bundling the flat monthly payment to include maintenance, registration, and insurance, while charging on a month-to-month basis with no contract.
Since no one knows how much it will cost per month, the value remains unclear. But the waiting list to get yourself a Canoo in 2021 opened last week and is obligation-free.
The interior of the Canoo, which has 300 horse-power and a range of 250 miles, can be described as having furniture more than seats. The lounge-like luxury of the Canoo is meant to resemble a Zen garden, instead of a limousine. Access to the vehicle’s functions is reached through the Canoo app, and can be used with the driver’s own smartphone or tablet.
Photo by Canoo
Canoo, which was launched in 2017, has also gamified the waitlist: by taking part in their pre-launch contest, perspective Canoo owners can get their name higher on the list and earn cool Canoo swag by completing surveys and referring others to join the wait list.
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Not many kids have made it through childhood without ever snapping two LEGO bricks together, but now they get a second chance: the most popular and profitable toy company is building a bridge to reach frazzled, stressed-out adults.
LEGO has endured wave upon wave of high tech gadgetry vying for kids’ attention, from video games to mobile phones and the internet, but now the Danish company is structuring a whole line of sets with instruction manuals for adults who need to give their minds a rest from the daily grind.
LEGO sets like the Ghostbusters Headquarters, the Volkswagen T1 Camper Van, and a vintage Batmobile, are all being produced to target Generation X nostalgia.
Architecture sets like the Eiffel Tower, the Disney Castle, Buckingham Palace, or Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater or Guggenheim, allow more mature LEGO enthusiasts, affectionately called adult fans of LEGO or ‘AFOL’, to enter an almost Zen-like state snapping the bricks together in their offices or basements.
“It’s fun to zone out and follow someone else’s instructions,” Elisabeth Briggs, a math teacher at Olympic College near Seattle told the Washington Post. “It wasn’t until I got older — and had a job and more money — that I saw value in that”.
LEGO sees many benefits to their new marketing strategy, especially when business culture in America is embracing the idea of mindfulness moments—taking a time-out during the day to recharge. Based loosely on Zen and Buddhism, the practice of mindfulness has been clinically proven to help reduce symptoms of stress and anxiety with its laser focus on the present moment, while shutting out concerns about the past and the future.
Of course, with the company’s release of an $800 Star Wars Millennium Falcon kit, it’s not hard to see the added benefit of speaking directly to the only group of people who can actually afford an $800 LEGO set.
Bricks of Joy
According to the Washington Post, LEGO hired Abbie Headon, a 44-year-old English author who hadn’t picked up one of the iconic bricks in 20 years, to write a book on how adults who are concerned about their mental wellbeing can use LEGO strategically to reduce stress in their lives.
While she missed a golden opportunity to call the book Zen and the Art of LEGO she does help adults approach what they know to be a children’s toy, in different ways. There are mindfulness exercises such as buildings something with your eyes closed, or maybe a scene from your childhood that fills you with joy, and others to help you decompress like selecting a small, random amount of bricks and pieces and trying to see how high you can build a tower.
Photo by alliecat1881, CC license
“The fun isn’t just, I’m going to build this and it’s going to be perfect,” Headon told the Post. “That’s one of the great things about LEGO.”
The author says she likes to have something in her hand while thinking, too. And a few LEGO pieces always make the perfect fit—whether she’s stressed out that day, or not.
(Photo of VW camper van by Michael Coghlan, CC license)
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One of our favorite good news celebrities, whose kind deeds have been featured nine times by GNN in the last decade and a half, has opened his heart—and wallet—yet again.
A New Jersey rock star renown for his arena anthems “Living on a Prayer”, and “Wanted Dead or Alive”, Bon Jovi’s most joyful noise is heard in the restaurants he has opened to serve the hungry and the homeless. Anyone visiting his JBJ Soul Kitchen is always welcome to dine on fresh, lovingly-prepared food, even when they have no money—by pledging volunteer hours in return.
This week, the 57-year-old rock star—along with his wife Dorothea Hurley—opened his third Soul Kitchen restaurant in New Jersey. On the campus of Rutgers University, it serves a new demographic of hungry low-income customer, the college student. At the Grand Opening, Jon dismissed the idea that it should be a rite of passage for students studying hard to eat nothing but instant noodles.
Bon Jovi said the goal behind the Rutgers location is “to play a role in alleviating food insecurity among college students and giving them the support they need to achieve their dreams.”
The menu features locally-sourced ingredients and offers several methods of payment—pay what you can, pay what you want, volunteer, or pay it forward, a structure intended to create a sense of community, respect and dignity, as well as charity among local communities.
Additional locations include JBJ Soul Kitchens in Toms River, New Jersey and Red Bank, NJ. According to the website, more than 105,000 meals have been served so far, with 46% of diners paying through volunteering their time, and the remaining 54% with donations.
At his latest grand opening, Bon Jovi said he doesn’t plan on stopping his food service expansion any time soon.
Visit his website, JBJsoulkitchen.org where you can buy his line of seasonings, find directions and store hours, or donate and volunteer. Or, follow his JBJ Soul Kitchen Instagram.
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Quote of the Day: “Give a man health and a course to steer, and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.” – George Bernard Shaw
Photo: by r reeve, CC license (cropped)
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