Quote of the Day: “You can achieve optimal physical health if you’re devoted to shedding outworn self-images.” – Arnold Mindell
Photo by: Marvin Cors
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A mom transformed her entire kitchen for ($234) £200 after getting stuff for free off Facebook and learning DIY tips from YouTube.
37-year-old Nikki Coles started the project in lockdown and has been chipping away, job by job, in-between studying law and looking after her two children.
She has retiled the floor, re-covered the work tops, repainted the cupboards, painted the walls, and fitted new wall tiles.
The soon-to-be graduate, who is also a self-employed babysitter, completed all the work herself after watching countless DIY YouTube videos.
Not only did Niki not employ any help, she also completed her entire kitchen makeover for less than $300.
She got stuff for free off Facebook, shopped in furniture thrift stores, and bought from cheap retailers like Poundland—which is the British equivalent of a U.S. dollar store.
RELATED: This Cabin’s Flexible Design Can Open To Nature or Enclose into Cozy Space Again (Watch)
“The tiles themselves were actually a bargain find from Poundland,” Nikki, who is from Colchester in Essex, England said.
“The worktops are done in an oak finish which I purchased online and all the little pretty bits are just bits I brought in that reflect my style.
“It kind of started with a little bit of tweaking here and there, and then I really got the bug —I’ve managed to transform my whole home on a tight budget.
Nikki says she has just one more bathroom to redecorate before she has transformed her entire home.
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“My son was like ‘oh my God Mom you need to start a TikTok’ but I’m not to sure about that just yet!,” she said.
“It just goes to show what you can do even as a busy mom on a budget—and If I can inspire other mums in any way, shape or form then I’m happy.”
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Spending quality time with dad helps young children do better at school, according to new research.
The chance of a youngster reaching a good level of intellectual and emotional development by the age of five were reduced by 18 percent if their father felt he spent “nowhere near enough time” with his child.
But while the time fathers spent drawing, painting, playing games with or reading to his young one affected the child’s progress at school, no similar effect was found for mothers.
Just over 1 in 6 dads (18 percent) felt they did not spend enough quality time with their kid, but only one in 20 moms (five percent) felt the same way.
A further 41 percent of fathers felt they did not spend quite enough time with their child.
Researchers at the University of Leeds analyzed data from the Millennium Cohort Study of more than 4,000 children born in two parent households in 2000 and 2001, and survey data.
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The findings held up even when variables that could have explained the discrepancy—such as a child’s gender, ethnicity, household income, and their parents’ employment status— were all taken into account.
Moms were more likely than dads to say they spent enough time with their little one already, but their feelings about whether they spent enough time playing with them had little effect on the child’s progress.
Overall, the study found that 62 percent of girls reached a good level of achievement at school, and 47 percent of boys did so, while 39 percent of children from poorer households reached a good level of achievement, compared with 58 percent of children from more affluent households.
“We found that a higher proportion of children reached a good level of overall achievement in the early years foundation stage profile when fathers engaged regularly in childcare activities such as drawing and painting, playing games and reading with their children,” researcher Dr. Helen Norman said.
“Mothers are more likely to say that the time they spend with their children is enough or more than enough, which reflects the fact that mothers tend to be the ones spending the most time doing childcare so not having enough time with children is less likely to be an issue.
“This is reflected in our sample where only five per cent of mothers said they had ‘nowhere near enough time’ with their five-year old compared to 18 percent of fathers.
RELATED: Top Skills American Teens Want to Learn and Do After School
“Early parental childcare involvement is critical for supporting children’s development, but this is a conclusion drawn largely from research conducted with mothers or parents more generally.
“Fathers’ childcare involvement should have a positive effect on children’s development, yet there has been little empirical evidence to support this before our study.”
REMIND Others of the Importance of Bonding; Share This For Father’s Day…
When a young woman accidentally drove into the Atlantic Ocean, a teen followed her in and saved her.
18-year-old Mia Samolinski stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake when she was pulling her Subaru Outback out of a parking spot along the docks of Long Island’s Patchogue Bay.
Anthony Zhongor, who turned out to be a 17-year-old classmate of Samolinski—though neither one of them were aware of that at the time—got out of his car and immediately dove in after her as a crowed coalesced behind him.
“She went pretty deep in there,” Zhongor recounted. “She was banging on the door, banging on the window, trying to break the window, of course, and that kind of got me nervous, scared for her, so I just took my clothes off and went into the water.”
It’s vital for any motorist to know that neither the door, nor the seatbelt in a car will open if their latching mechanisms are submerged in water. Fortunately for Mia, the latter wasn’t an issue—unfortunately, the former was.
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The door wouldn’t open from the outside either, but Zhongor noticed that the weight of his body tilted the nose of the car down, bringing the back of the car above water level, allowing Samolinski to escape through the back.
Together they swam to shore.
“She just came up to me and said, ‘Oh my God, thank you’ and was crying,” he said. “It doesn’t matter who it was, they were suffering. I couldn’t watch anybody suffer in front of me.”
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Zhongor, set to graduate this year, will be heading off to South Carolina for Marines boot camp with the good graces of the Samolinskis, who spoke to ABC-7 news about their gratitude for Zhongor’s bravery.
“He jumped out of his car and jumped in, and because of that, my daughter is alive and and not really harmed,” said Mia’s father Charles. “It’s a miracle.”
(WATCH the ABC7 video for this story below.)
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Houston, the fourth-most populated city in the country, has reduced its rate of homelessness over the last decade by 63%, far and away the best performing major city during that time.
It has achieved these fantastic and sustained results with a “housing first” approach that focuses on getting homeless people into one-bedroom apartments as fast as possible, and worrying about things like jobs, drug addiction, mental health issues, and more, later.
The logic, as elaborated by Michael Kimmelman writing for the New York Times, is that if someone’s already drowning, it doesn’t help to teach them how to swim first.
This method has critics, but it’s paying off. Local news reporting on the turnaround claim that the vast majority of homeless Houstonites housed this way have remained in their house for longer than 2 years. From 2007 to 2020, a national survey recorded a 31.6% drop in homelessness Statewide, largely driven by Houston’s successes, especially considering the rise in homelessness in Austin.
“The goal that I have set is to get us down, in a sense, to zero homelessness in the city by the end of next year,” Mayor Sylvester Turner, who has been the mayor since 2016, told KHou11. “The challenge right now is getting the units.”
Part of Turner’s team’s strategy is to unite homeless service and low-income housing providers into acting in concert with one another. This was no mean feat; well over 100 different organizations, big and small, private and public, joined in. This included landlords, homeowners associations, food banks, churches, the Houston Housing Authority, the Department for Health and Human Services, and more, all of which joined to form the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County.
Kimmelman followed the steps of Terri Harris, a homeless woman discovered living at an encampment under an overpass, as she went from drowning, as he put it, to “rising excitedly onto her tiptoes and turning the key,” of a small apartment which the Coalition immediately coordinated to fill with basic necessities.
RELATED: Tiny Home Village in Albuquerque Helps Homeless Transition With Social Services and Opportunities
Some criticize Houston’s supportive housing assistance, which follows placing the most vulnerable, chronically homeless people into their new apartments by providing taxpayer-funded monetary support for everything from rent to bus fare, but of the several cities former-President Barack Obama targeted for coordinated and thorough homeless reduction strategies, only Houston has made significant progress.
(WATCH the KHOU video for this story below.)
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Quote of the Day: “The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
Photo by: Robert Collins
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?
Introducing concepts of “proportionality” as part of efforts to “improve the criminal justice system,” Malaysia has abolished the mandatory sentencing of the death penalty for 11 different offenses.
Hailed as a victory for death penalty abolitionists, the ruling, rather than repealing the death penalty altogether, places sentencing decisions into the hands of the judge to arbitrate whether capital punishment is warranted.
It seems difficult to believe, but Southeast Asia, with its rich Buddhist heritage, is one of the leading regions in the world for the use of capital punishment in stable countries.
While the ruling doesn’t abolish the death penalty altogether, the Cabinet made its decision based on the recommendations of a committee of legal scholars and experts who offered a variety of substitute sentences for 11 offenses that carry a mandatory death penalty, including 1 offense under the Dangerous Drugs Act, and another 22 offenses that carry death penalty at the discretion of the court.
“This action is very significant to ensure that the amendments to the relevant Acts take into account the principles of ‘proportionality,'” Law Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said in a statement, adding that the decision was in line with the government’s priority to “protect and guarantee the rights of all parties, which reflected transparency in leadership (towards) improving the country’s dynamic criminal justice system.”
In another softening of authoritarian measures, Thailand recently became the first country in Southeast Asia to decriminalize the cultivation and sale of cannabis, including cannabis containing normal levels of THC.
RELATED: U.S. DEA is Finally Allowing Companies to Grow Their Own Cannabis for Scientific Research
So far, AP reports that there has been no effort to crackdown those growing or distributing the plant, either at home or at a café, provided that the growers register their harvesting with the law, and declare its use is for medical purposes.
The Health Ministry has announced a plan to distribute a million cannabis seedlings to ‘bud up’ a plant medicine industry in the country, and some of the statements are very encouraging to the average Thai user of cannabis.
“We should know how to use cannabis,” Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, the country’s biggest advocate, said recently. “If we have the right awareness, cannabis is like gold, something valuable, and should be promoted.”
MORE: U.S. DEA is Finally Allowing Companies to Grow Their Own Cannabis for Scientific Research
“From our perspective, a major positive outcome of the legal changes is that at least 4,000 people imprisoned for offenses relating to cannabis will be released,” Gloria Lai, Asia regional director of the International Drug Policy Consortium, told AP in an email interview.
Tourists and nationals alike are warned that even though cannabis is no longer considered a narcotic, and many of the old laws are no longer applicable, you can still pick up a three-month sentence and $800 from smoking it in public, as that is still considered nuisance activity.
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Like wine, beer can have health benefits when consumed in moderation. Non-alcoholic beers have become wildly popular recently, but are these drinks also healthful?
In a pilot study, researchers report that compared to their pre-trial microbiome, men who drank either one alcoholic or non-alcoholic lager daily had a more diverse set of gut microbes, which can reduce the risk for some diseases.
Trillions of microorganisms line human gastrointestinal tracts, directly impacting their host’s well-being.
Studies have shown that when more types of bacteria are present, people tend to have a lower chance of developing chronic diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes. And beer contains compounds, such as polyphenols, as well as microorganisms from its fermentation, that could impact the variety of microbes in the human gut.
A previously published “cross-over” study showed that when both men and women consumed non-alcoholic lager beer for 30 days, their gut microbiome diversity increased. Many of those same people were also in a second group that drank an alcoholic version of the beer, and it didn’t have the same effect.
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Few other clinical trials have tested this issue, so Ana Faria and colleagues wanted to see if they would find similar results with men in a different type of study—a parallel, randomized trial design—with two separate groups of participants.
In this double-blind study, 19 healthy men were randomly divided into two groups who drank 11 fluid ounces of either alcoholic or non-alcoholic lager with dinner for 4 weeks. The researchers found that the participants’ weight, body mass index and serum markers for heart health and metabolism didn’t change during the study.
But at the end of the 4-week period, both groups had greater bacterial diversity in their gut microbiome and higher levels of fecal alkaline phosphatase, indicating an improvement in intestinal health.
The researchers suggest that these results could differ from those of the prior study because of the different designs of the trials, and because the participants were living in different communities.
RELATED: Even in Your 80s, Adopting a Healthier Lifestyle Can Add Years to Your Life
But based on this pilot study, the researchers say that consuming one bottle of beer, regardless of its alcohol content, may be beneficial to the gut microbiome and intestinal health of men. However, they add that because the safest level of alcohol consumption is none, non-alcoholic beer may be the more healthful choice.
This study has been reported in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Source: American Chemical Society
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The story of returning art stolen by the Nazis is a never-ending one, and the latest chapter involves a 101-year-old woman who was recently reunited with a painting taken almost 80 years ago.
The woman treasured the beautiful work for around six months, but has decided to auction it in order to help her now-considerable flock of grandchildren, nieces, and nephews.
Charlotte Bischoff van Heemskerck was just a teenager when the SS came to her door; they were looking for her father. She had to let them in, she said, she was so scared.
Her father, Joan Hendrik Smidt van Gelder, was the director of the children’s hospital in the city of Arnhem, and he was hunted by the SS for refusing to collaborate with the invading Germans. Going into hiding, he took a painting off the family wall—Portrait of Steven Wolters by Dutch master Caspar Netscher, and stored it in Arnhem branch of the Bank of Amsterdam in 1940.
There he thought the painting dated to 1683 would be safe, but Nazis eventually broke in and looted the vaults. Then war proper broke out on the continent, and the painting was lost to history.
Detective work by the London-based Commission for Looted Art in Europe established it had made a temporary appearance at an art gallery in Düsseldorf in the mid 1950s. Its next surfacing was in Amsterdam in 1969, and in Germany once again in 1971, where it was bought by a private collector.
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Negotiators reached out to the last buyer, and secured its return to van Heemskerck, who declared, “I am amazed,” upon seeing it.
“I had five brothers and sisters,” van Heemskerck told The Guardian, “there are 20 offspring and they are very sweet, so I never had the feeling that it was mine. It’s from the family.”
Placed now at Sotheby’s auction house in London, it’s listed at $37,000 – $62,000 (£30,000 – £50,000), and will go up for auction on July 6th.
Bischoff van Heemskerck admitted to being a little bit emotional, as she inevitably connected the painting with wartime memories. She joined the Dutch resistance as a courier.
LOOK: A Chair Bought for $5 in a Junk Shop Sells at Auction for over $16,000
“You would have done too, I’m sure,” she told the reporter covering the story. “We were hoping that we would win the war and we did everything to help.”
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“If you have something, you have to share it with other people,” said Jaswiendre Singh, owner of a Phoenix gas station.
Imagine the times we’re living through that seeing $5.19 per gallon at the gas station is a bargain.
Nevertheless there’s at least one person bucking the trend of rising prices—a Sikh man in Phoenix who loses hundreds of dollars a day by selling gasoline at 50 cents cheaper than what he buys it for.
Back in March, Singh was peddling 10 cents under market price, but as inflation, lack of long-term investment in oil drilling, and the decision to close off trade with Russia have all risen the AAA national average of gas to a level before seen in the States, Singh, who praises God for his ability to help his neighbors, would not be deterred.
“God gave me help. It doesn’t matter. We are not here to make money right now. I’m very happy to help the other people,” he told AZ Family. Despite losing $500 per day, he and his wife are working longer hours in their store next to the pumps in order to make up the difference.
This isn’t the first difficult period during which he decided to lend a hand: Ut was actually in 2007 when Singh bought the gas station, which he did in order to lower prices during that recession.
He’s become a well-shared address on social media over the last week, with one commenter remarking, “some heroes wear turbans.”
Where to head for cheaper gas if you’re in the area? That’d be 1949 Osborn Rd and 20th Phoenix, AZ.
(WATCH the video for this story below.)
HELP Stories of Kindness Travel the Extra Mile—Share This Story…
Quote of the Day: “If the world is to be healed through human efforts, it will be by ordinary people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear.” – Joanna R. Macy
Photo by: Ben White
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 Italian firm has invented what seems to be the perfect tool for stopping plastic waste from reaching the ocean via a river.
They had to check a lot of boxes. The device had to allow for boats to pass without effort, while being able to run 24/7 with no impact on the riverine environment. The result is River Cleaning, a 100% scalable, low cost, low impact solution from a firm called Mold.
Anchored to the bed at the bottom of the river, River Cleaning is a series of buoys that spin on axels powered by the natural flow of the river. Floating in a diagonal line, their gentle spinning funnels incoming trash towards a collection point at the shore.
Passing boats need only go straight through them at a low speed, after which their anchor lines will pull them back into place.
They can be fitted to collect different kinds of waste, such as tiny particles, larger items like plastic bottles, and even oil, and efficacy studies have shown River Cleaning can collect 85% of all waste passing by them.
RELATED: This ‘Floating Continent’ Could Collect and Recycle Plastic from the Ocean in Future
Most people know of the scope of plastic pollution in the ocean, but it’s not as common to know that much of this waste comes from rivers—80%, at least. Most of that 80% comes from just 100 of the world’s largest waterways.
MORE: 100 Nations Take Action To Save Oceans from Illegal Fishing and Plastic Pollution
Running through megacities like Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, or Shanghai, the rivers funnel waste into global ocean currents that lead trash to clump together in areas of the high seas.
An entirely self-powered solution with no environmental impact, River Cleaning became the first product of its kind to achieve the Friend of the Sea sustainability certification after demonstrating that the system preserves the aquatic environment while respecting the well-being of native species.
(WATCH the video for this story below.)
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What would you do if in the middle of the night, a stranger asked you to legally declare your financial support for an immigrant family that you would never meet—and hadn’t even arrived in your country yet?
That was essentially the proposition that Barnet Yudin, a Russian-American Jew, faced one night in 1938 when a stranger, who was going door-to-door, appealed to the man asking if he could help a Jewish family from Germany flee to North America.
While Yudin hadn’t gone on to be the doctor he dreamed of being, he and his family lived comfortably in Belleville, New Jersey—and his job as a paint salesmen brought in a healthy $120 a month.
Nevertheless he was not just being asked for a donation, but rather to sign an affidavit of support for an entire family, saying he would financially keep them afloat if required, until they could find their footing in a new country.
It required him to reveal banking information, his net worth, monthly income, and more, all in order to help the Penzias family secure immigration visas, likely sparing them from Nazi concentration camps.
All this he did, and was given the promise that the family would never contact him.
Because of Yudin’s act of kindness, the Penzias family made it to the shores of North America. The older of the two sons, Arno, would go on to become the physicist that discovered the Cosmic Microwave Background—one of the strongest pieces of evidence supporting the Big Bang Theory of the universe, for which he collected the Nobel Prize.
Arno is now retired in Northern California at 89 years of age. Recently, National Geographic reported that his son David came across some family papers containing an envelope. Inside was a copy of that affidavit from Yudin, and all the personal bank documents he provided to certify it.
Shocked at the kindness this stranger had shown to his father and grandfather, David did some sleuthing and eventually came across the name of someone he was fairly certain was Yudin’s relative, a New Jersey resident named Robert.
The call was a strange one, but soon, more of Yudin’s descendants were involved in piecing together the remarkable story of the family patriarch.
At David’s request, the two families got together at Yudin’s grandson’s home for bagels, lox, and whitefish. Together they exchanged documents and memories, centered round a picture of Arno Penzias surrounded by his 5 children and 10 grandchildren.
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“None of these people would exist today without Barnet Yudin,” David said, emphasizing the difference that Yudin’s choice made.
Joe Yudin, a great-grandson, told Nat Geo that his grandfather didn’t say, “Is this kid going to win the Nobel someday, or play shortstop for the Yankees? He did what he did because it was right and didn’t mention it to anybody. He definitely had this big picture of what humanity should be like.”
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A British girl who released a book has officially become the Guinness World Record holder for world’s youngest published author—at just five years old.
Bella J. Dark received the official confirmation this week from Guinness after selling over 2,000 copies.
The young girl from Weymouth, Dorset, stunned her family last year when she told them she was going to write a book.
Her mother and father—a chef and plasterer—thought it was just “one of those things” children say.
But they are “extremely proud” of Bella after she turned her dream into a reality with her book titled The Lost Cat.
An email from Guinness World Records said: “We are thrilled to inform you that your application for Youngest person to publish a book (female) has been successful and Bella is now the Guinness World Records Title Holder.
“You are now eligible for one complimentary Guinness World Records certificate. Congratulations, you are officially amazing!”
“I just want to say thank you to everyone who has bought my book so far!” said a delighted Bella.
Her story features a feline named Snowy who goes on adventures and soon learns an important lesson.
Ginger Fyre Press produced the book, which has been available to purchase on Amazon and other retailers—in paperback or Kindle.
Mum Chelsie Syme said, “We are just so proud of Bella and honestly can’t believe how amazing this is.
“She has always thrived off positivity from people (and) just loves reading and drawing.
It all started when she went to her mother one day and said she was going to write a book.
“I thought it would just be some scribble and you would say ‘wow’ like you do as a parent.”
They then went to a book fair and someone said they wanted to publish it.
It is about a cat that goes out and gets lost and realizes she shouldn’t go out without her mom—so Chelsie loved the safety message.
She illustrated it with her own drawings, except one contributed by her older sister Lacey-May.
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Bella-Jay already has eyes on further books, with planning already underway for a follow-up, Snowy’s Birthday Party.
She earned her new world record, besting Abhijita Gupta—who was hailed as the world’s youngest published author last year at age seven.
Bella-Jay’s book is available in the UK on Ginger Frye Press.
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An off-duty firefighter rescued a toddler from a burning building, after using a spare breathing apparatus he had in his car.
33-year-old Stefon Douglas was driving home from work on Sunday last week when he spotted people evacuating a house fire in Brooklyn, New York.
Jumping into action, Stefon remembered he had a breathing apparatus he had used to present to students earlier that week.
Wearing shorts, a t-shirt and a pair of Crocs, then bravely made his way into the burning property when he heard a whimper coming from inside.
After a short search he found a three-year-old girl trapped in the bathroom by the flames and thick smoke.
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Hero Stefon was able to carry the little girl to safety, before going back inside to save her 31-year-old mom.
“Thankfully I had the breathing apparatus in my truck as there’s no way I would have performed the duties I did without that,” the firefighter, of Engine Company 276, said.
“I was able to knock down pockets of fire using the garden hose and that’s when I heard the girl whimpering inside.
“I felt the little girl, grabbed her, picked her up and walked straight back out the same way I came.”
“There are definitely some times I sit back and think, why me, why was I picked for this?,” Douglas said.
“I really knew nothing about the job until I got here but now I love it. It was the best decision of my life.”
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Quote of the Day: “Adopt parts of life that will make you happy, even if they don’t make you special.” – Arthur C. Brooks (author of the new book, From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life)
Photo by: Logan Weaver | @LGNWVR
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?
When it comes to finding a good deal, 53% of people said they’re proud to be labeled a bargain-hunter.
In a recent survey of 2,000 U.S. adults, more than half said they consider being called “cheap” a compliment at times (54%).
The poll found the average respondent would travel an hour to a store if they knew an item they wanted was a good deal.
The survey–conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Ollie’s for their America’s Biggest Cheapskate contest–delved into how far the average person will go to save a bit of cash and how getting a great deal makes them feel.
In order for it to be considered a “good deal,” a quarter of respondents said they would need at least 50% off, but most respondents are just as happy with a deal under that amount (76%).
Twenty-five percent of respondents even admitted they’re less likely to purchase an item if it’s full price, with three in four saying they wait up to a month for an item to go on sale before purchasing it at full price.
And seven in 10 are confident that they can find a deal on any item.
MORE: A Chair Bought for $5 in a Junk Shop Sells at Auction for over $16,000
Fifty percent said they’re likely to share their bargain-hunting secrets with others although a similar percentage would prefer to keep it to themselves (51%).
Results also showed that nearly two in three people said it’s important for them to find a good deal when shopping (62%). A fifth of respondents said that the discount store is one of their favorite places to score a deal.
Surprisingly, more people value finding a good deal on low-ticket items (74%) than high-ticket ones (69%). Perhaps this is because finding deals on high-ticket items takes an average of 23 minutes more than finding one for low-ticket items.
“In today’s economy and with the skyrocketing prices on consumer goods, it’s more important than ever that shoppers find ways to save money on a variety of items – both big and small,” said John Swygert, president and chief executive officer at Ollie’s.
“Shopping discount stores that offer bargain prices on brand name merchandise is a great way consumers can find good deals and save big.”
In fact, 67% of respondents agree that they find themselves searching for deals more often now than ever before due to the current U.S. inflation rate.
Two-thirds of Americans agree that getting a good deal makes them feel better about spending money (67%).
This is helpful for the 41% who “always” or “often” find themselves purchasing something they don’t need because it was a great deal. Most of these respondents said those purchases aren’t in vain, with 70% sharing that they turned out to be useful.
Seventy percent of respondents agree that finding a good deal is worth the time it takes because it helps save money in the long run and two in three said it helps boost their mood.
Furthermore, 39% of respondents believe getting a good deal is as good as eating their favorite food, and 37% believe it’s as good as going on vacation.
“We’ve never met anyone who doesn’t love a bargain,” Swygert said. “We are proud to say that we have been providing bargains to the communities we serve for the last 40 years and have helped shoppers get incredible deals over this time. To celebrate our milestone 40th anniversary, we are searching for America’s Biggest Cheapskate! You can enter now through July 3rd.”
Check out the page to apply.
BEST STORES TO GET DISCOUNTS
Grocery store – 26%
Electronics store – 25%
Clothing store – 24%
Department store – 21%
Discount store – 20%
SHARE This Story With All Your Bargain-Hunting Mates….
After being threatened with eviction, a retiree was able to buy the house she had rented for two decades after a quarter-million dollars was raised by the community on her behalf.
Known for having a heart of gold and a pair of green thumbs, Linda Taylor was a beloved neighbor in her Minneapolis community.
After arriving in the area 19 years ago as a volunteer to help the homeless and needy, she began renting a small house on 10th avenue and East 36th street in the Powderhorn Park district. There, the 70-year-old retiree became a “bright star” of the neighborhood.
It seemed though that bright star would be severely darkened, perhaps permanently, when her landlord decided to sell the property, and gave her until the end of January to evict.
Word gets around tight communities, and after she told one neighbor, the greater part of Powderhorn rallied around her, striking a deal with the landlord that if he would give “Miss Linda” until the end of June, they would raise the money to buy the house.
There was no one-size-fits-all approach to the fundraising efforts. Inflation is at a 40 year high driven by previous monetary inflation reaching broader sectors of the economy, while gas just crossed a national average of $5.00 a gallon, yet even in such difficult times, folks were able to open heart, mind, and wallet, to make the project a reality.
It involved an art show, bake sale, pro-bono work by a real-estate agent, countless small donations, and other community-fund drives to come up with the dough—which they did, a full month ahead of the June 30th deadline.
“Yesterday I went and did the closing for the house,” Taylor said. “It makes me feel so good, everything that I have given, it’s coming back to me and I want to continue to give. I love this neighborhood.”
(WATCH the ABC 5/KSTP video for this story below.)
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People suffering with the cost of living crisis are being offered help—a map which shows them where they can find and pick free wild food.
The Community Food Support Map shows people where food can be foraged, from vegan bacon alternatives to flower heads that can be used to make puddings.
Based in Rame, Cornwall, the social enterprise Family Foraging Kitchen created the map as a valuable resource source for all and a way to offset the rising cost of living.
“Despite delivering our free courses and food boxes, I felt we needed to do more to help,” company founder, Vix Hill-Ryder, said.
“The cost of living at the moment is so expensive that we no longer can afford to go into a supermarket and do a weekly shop.
“It just doesn’t stretch that far. Stretching that is the way forward—and I can show you how to do that simply just with a local hedgerow”.
The map shows people where they can find wild food in an area of Cornwall.
It described where you can discover “the best dulce”—a type of seaweed also known as sea lettuce flake—that makes a sustainable vegan bacon alternative.
With the cost of living crisis affecting the nation’s diets, households have experienced a reduction in both the frequency of meals they consume and their nutritional value.
In April alone we saw over two million residents skipped at least one meal because they could not afford or could not access food.
“It seemed people were not only struggling here on Rame but still largely unaware of how many wonderful services we have on the peninsula all working to address the same issue,” Vix added.
“We can show you where and how to put wild, seasonal, fresh produce on your plate but other organizations have walk in pantries of stable cupboard ingredients on offer.
“Some rescue food from large supermarkets which would otherwise have gone to landfill, available on a pay as you feel donation basis.
“Not to mention ‘gleaning’—a term some people may have never even have heard of! We wanted something that linked all local services together.
“A resource that we could put into a person’s hands, guiding them to the right thing for them and to show just how much help is available.”
Others are concerned that the map may lead to hedgerows being stripped by commercial foragers.
This is a phenomenon that has become more common in recent times, such as beds of wild garlic being stripped at Lostwithiel in Cornwall.
But one Lostwithiel resident said the destruction was “devastating” and “really upsetting to see.” They said, “Creating a map, putting it online? I’m very hesitant about it. It feels like it’s something that could very easily just get completely out of hand.
However, Vix does not seem to think that the map will encourage anybody to over pick an area.
“It’s to give people an idea of the kind of places they can go where things are in abundance,” she explains.
“But when it comes to local families and families going out to feed themselves and their children for free, I think that is the last true freedom that we have left as human beings.
“And people are not going to over pick an area if it’s on their back doorstep because it’s a valuable resource which they want to have for life.”
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New methods for joining together lumber is opening the door to a variety of construction projects long since closed off to wood—most recently wind turbines.
A 330-foot (100-meter) prototype wooden wind turbine is being made in the land of wooden innovation, Sweden, to reduce the substantial carbon footprint of manufacturing a wind turbine from steel.
But how can a structure so battered with wind and gravity be made of a material that can be broken by a human with a machete? The answer is laminated veneer lumber (LVL), a wood construction product that is made by bonding three millimeter sheets of peeled spruce under intense heat and pressure to create flexible timber material stronger than steel, but lighter and less carbon-intensive.
Made by Stora Enso, one of the world’s oldest timber companies, LVL was used in 2020 to build a 130-foot (30-meter) prototype wind turbine tower. Hefty curved slabs of LVL are made and shipped to the build site where they are then glued together to form the tall cylinder onto which the spinning blades will be mounted.
Wood can reduce the CO2 emissions in creating a tower by 90% while also storing carbon dioxide that has been taken up by trees during their growth. Wood selected for transformation into LVL is taken from mature trees that have already absorbed the largest reasonably achievable amount of CO2 they’re able to.
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The wood used for advanced constructions such as wind turbine towers can be reused in new wood-based products which provides further long-term climate benefits by continuing to jail the carbon within their fibers.
Modivon is a Swedish firm that builds towers, and they see three major benefits compared with steel for building turbines.
“Wood has a higher specific strength which enables a lighter construction. High steel towers need extra enforcement to carry their own weight—which wooden towers don’t need. And finally, modular steel towers demand a vast number of bolts that need regular inspections while our modular wooden towers are joined together with glue,” Modivon write.
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The towers would look about the same as a steel turbine, and not like a giant tree trunk due to an applied waterproof paint layer. At the moment, capturing carbon, done when the trees are turned into LVL, is more important than reducing emissions, since any reduction in emissions today won’t be felt in the global carbon cycle for far longer than any current predictions on warming or temperature changes. It’s only through actively taking emissions out of the cycle that are already there that humanity can change Earth’s climate.
Still, as long as humanity is building wind turbines to reduce emissions from energy use, we might as well reduce them from manufacturing too.
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