Four years ago today, the Occupy Wall Street movement began in New York City’s financial district. Although the encampments that sprang up around the world in solidarity were eventually closed, an amazing effort was soon underway to help “the 99%”.
Since it organized one year later, this positive protest movement has, to date, paid off nearly $32 million in Americans’ personal debt.
Called the “Rolling Jubilee,” the nonprofit buys the debt the same way collection companies do, but instead of trying to collect the money, they simply forgive the debt.
The project can afford to do this because they buy a dollar’s worth of debt for about five cents on the “secondary debt market.”
Banks and credit card companies bundle together bad debt after people declare bankruptcy or default on payments. They’re willing to sell the debt so cheaply because they don’t expect to get the full amount back from the people they lent it to.
That philosophy has allowed Rolling Jubilee to pay off that multi-million dollar bill using just over $700,000 in donations over the last three years.
Because of the nature of the market, the project can’t specify whose debt it buys, but once Rolling Jubilee owns it they contact the debtors and let them know their bill is paid in full.
The lucky recipients get a letter in the mail declaring, “You no longer owe the balance of this particular debt. It is gone, a gift with no strings attached.”
If you remember that Kel loves orange soda, that the Spice Girls had their own line of lollipops, and that you can never have too many butterfly clips in your hair, you really should have been at 90sFest.
The event, which drew thousands to the 50 Kent Avenue performance space in Brooklyn, (mostly) defied the pending rain and featured a 90’s-themed musical lineup that included Lisa Loeb, Salt ‘n’ Pepa, Coolio, Blind Melon, Naughty by Nature, and Smash Mouth. It was was sponsored by The Splat, which is more good news for 90’s babies everywhere: the Nickelodeon throwback channel will run old favorites like Rugrats, All That, and Rocko’s Modern Life.
Smile Train, the event’s official charity partner, said the festival was a success because of how many people became aware of the work they do.
“From the artists, to the sitcoms to the style, the 90’s always makes us smile. It was a great way to raise awareness for our work and efforts to share smiles across the world,” said Smile Train CEO Susannah Schaefer.
The crowd took a break from playing a giant game of Jenga and scarfing down chow from food trucks to watch the charity’s video about their very first cleft surgery recipient, Wang Li, who is now mother to a healthy baby of her own.
For the past 16 years, Smile Train has been providing free cleft repair surgery to children in the developing world—one child every five minutes, every single day of the year. The operation helps them to eat, breathe, hear and speak properly again, restoring functions that are lost due to cleft lips and palates.
Only in the name of a good cause like this one can I tolerate MC Pauly Shore in a backwards cap and a hoards of millennials rushing the stage to scream-rap along with Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise.
Photo by Helaina Hovitz
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Mark Zuckerberg, a famous astronaut, and the White House are all rallying behind a brilliant teenager whose love of science accidentally landed him in jail.
When Ahmed Mohamed brought a clock to his Irving, Texas school yesterday to show his engineering teacher, administrators called police, thinking it looked suspicious.
Since the incident, the 14-year-old science-loving teenager has received personal invitations from President Obama and astronaut Chris Hadfield, as well as support from scientists and tech tycoons. Ahmed has also been invited to tour the headquarters of both Google and Facebook.
All charges were dropped and administrators lifted his suspension, but he says he is already in the process of transferring to a different school.
President Obama has invited Ahmed to astronomy night at the White House where he can hang out with scientists, astronauts, and other STEM students like himself.
Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.
Former International Space Station Commander Chris Hadfield invited him to a “science-based variety show” he is hosting in Canada.
Photo from Anil Dash, Twitter
Ahmed only wanted to show off his electronics project to impress an engineering teacher, but was soon led away in handcuffs. The photo, showing the teen in a NASA t-shirt, swirled around the Internet, turning him into a poster boy for science and technology education.
The arrest touched a nerve throughout the tech industry and #IStandWithAhmed was the top trending hashtag for most of the day on Twitter.
“Having the skill and ambition to build something cool should lead to applause, not arrest,” Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zukerberg wrote on his profile page.
Ahmed seems to be taking it in stride, smiling and joking during a news conference later that day where he said he hopes to one day attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
(WATCH the KFAA News video) — Photos: WFAA Video and @Anil Dash
A Dutch artist is turning smog into jewelry using the world’s largest portable air purifier.
Daan Roosegaarde first got the idea for the device while visiting smog-filled Beijing. Inspiration struck when he realized that air pollution is largely CO2, which is made up of tiny little particles of carbon–and if you put a lot of carbon under enough pressure, it turns into diamonds.
He envisioned a “Smog Free Tower” that would operate using the same air purifying technology hospitals do. His large, portable tower would clean the air while simultaneously leaving behind tiny black carbon particles that could be recycled into jewelry.
After collecting $127,000 to build it through a Kickstarter fundraising page that offered rings and cufflinks as rewards for donations, Roosegaarde switched the machine on for the first time in Rotterdam on September 4.
As onlookers breathed in bubbles of the fresh, clean air wafting into the town square, the Smog Free Tower was cranking out the bits of carbon that would be compressed into tiny cubes.
Each of those cubes, less than one half-inch squared, is the equivalent of 1,000 cubic meters of air cleansed of smog by the white machine. The little black bundles, framed by stainless steel, were promised to anyone who donated €50 or more. Rings or cufflinks are going to anyone who donated €250 or more.
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No… it’s the asthmatic boy wonder!
A regular six-year-old kid with asthma has become the lead superhero in a new comic book written by doctors, and for kids.
Savion Johnson was immortalized as heroic thanks to his mother, Tresha, who was inspired to create the comic book after her son was first diagnosed with the lung disease.
Having lost her own mother to asthma, the preschool teacher and book lover began thinking of ways that she could educate not just her own son, but children everywhere, on how the condition will affect their lives, and how they can best cope with it.
Filled with typical adventurous illustration, each issue explores, in a child-friendly way, how asthma works, how other illnesses affect it, what happens during asthma attacks, and how kids can learn to power through it all like the heroes they are.
“I’m excited to share the comic book series with other families who are affected by asthma,” Tresha told the Good News Network. “It’s important to have this information presented to children in a way they will understand. Savion of course loves sharing with his friends that he is the star of his own comic book – he’s always sharing it with friends!”
The first issue of “Medikidz Explain Asthma” was released earlier this year in May, coinciding with Asthma Awareness Month thanks to the Allergy And Asthma Network.
More than 3.5 million comic books about a variety of health related topics have been published by doctors from Medikidz, a children’s medical education organization based in London.
The third installment of the comic book series is scheduled for release in the fall, and Tresha hopes that it’ll inspire more asthmatic kids to take their disease in stride just like Savion.
If stereotypes have taught us anything, it’s to expect that little old ladies are always the ones shaking their fists at young folks as they spray-paint graffiti around the neighborhood.
But in this Portugal city, the “Graffiti Grannies” have ditched their knitting circles and picked up paint cans in a hands-on workshop run by street artist Adrião Resende and architect Lara Seixo Rodrigues.
The group, called Lata65—or “Can 65” in English—is a street art collective that paints murals around the city of Lisbon, a town that prides itself on being the “global center of street art.”
It all started four years ago after Rodrigues noticed how fascinated the older residents of her home village were by the graffiti featured in a local art festival—more than even the young folks in attendance.
She and street artist Adrião Resende teamed up to conduct workshops for seniors interested in learning the art form. Together they have been painting the town red, pink, and purple, ever since.
Class begins with an art history lesson on topics ranging from illicit taggers to the high-end works from artists like Banksy. Then, the women, ranging in age from 59 to 90 years old, pull on rubber gloves and snap on face masks, shuffling—sometimes nervously—over to the “legal” walls that Lisbon’s Urban Art Gallery has scouted out for them to leave their mark.
The spunky seniors have a blast using colorful stencils and free-hand signature tags to transform bland sidewalks into works of art exploding with color.
“I didn’t really like street art that much before this; I always thought it was just kids making a mess of the walls,” Olinda Rodrigues, 66, told the Guardian. “It’s great fun. The more I paint, the more I want to paint.”
The biggest complaints about this Elder graffiti come not from onlookers, but within the group itself. They want more walls to paint and more strength to hold the can all day long.
(READ more at The Guardian) Photos: Lata65 on FB — Story tip from Joel Arellano
Covering 38 yards with a pass is nothing in the National Football League, but losing 38 yards on an epic series of fumbles in one play is downright hilarious to watch.
Especially when Nicholas Todor syncs up the action to “Yakety Sax” and posts it on Vimeo as part of his collection.
During Sunday’s game, Miami Dolphins players managed to fumble the football three times in one play, and a Washington Redskins player fumbled once more before Washington finally recovered the ball.
Ordering the “catch of the day” may help keep your waistline from expanding every time you eat a french fry.
According to a new study, adding more fish to your diet or taking fish oil supplements could counteract the effects of a greasy diet and help you shed some weight.
Swedish researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy in Gothenburg arrived at this conclusion after cooking up two different menus for mice in their labs.
Some of them ate lard-based meals, while the others dined on meals rich in fish oil. The two different diets allowed for different kinds of microbes to flourish inside each respective group of mice.
The lard-based diet promoted growth of a bacteria called Bilophila, which has been linked to inflammation. Mice eating the fish oil diet saw higher levels of a different bacteria called Akkermansia muciniphila, which has been linked to improved metabolism and slowing weight gain.
Scientists then transplanted the microbes from the fish oil-fed mice to the lard-fed ones to see if there was any benefit. The transplanted microbes reduced inflammation in the lard-fed mice and helped prevent further weight gain.
The results suggest that microbes associated with fish oil may benefit humans by reducing weight gain from fatty foods.
Their research, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, provides yet another reason to focus on getting a regular intake of fish oil.
(READ more at Pulse Headlines) — Photo by Susanne Nilsson, CC
You’re never too young to appreciate a well-designed sports car.
A pair of five-year-olds in Russia recently made a mad dash for freedom after digging under their kindergarten fence from a sandbox with toy spades.
The boys had been planning their escape for a week, using the time that is usually spent for supervised playtime on the kindergarten grounds to scoop away the sand with their plastic shovels.
Finally, when the right moment presented itself, the youngsters took a mile-long stroll through Magnitogorsk in the Urals region to the nearest luxury car showroom.
It wasn’t until a young female driver noticed the whippersnappers admiring the sports cars that someone finally asked what on earth they were doing.
The boys politely informed the lady that they were looking to purchase a Jaguar and tactfully started their haggling with “we don’t have any money.”
The woman proceeded to escort the boys to the police station, where they were taken back to school to carry out what must have been a much less exciting rest of the day.
Though the boys weren’t noted as missing for 30 minutes, the parents did not submit any complaints against the kindergarten.
Eat your heart out, Steve McQueen.
(READ more at The Guardian) File Photo by Goombay, CC
After taking a look at teacher salaries across America, a hedge fund billionaire decided that something just wasn’t adding up.
Jim Simons, who made his fortune on Wall Street, actually began his career as a mathematician. Being partial to the field—and having deep pockets—drove him to begin personally allocating an extra $15,000 per year to 800 New York City math teachers.
Simons (pictured left) decided to use some of his $22 billion fortune to fund the Math for America foundation, a charity he now focuses on full-time after leaving his job at Renaissance Technologies, the company he founded six years ago.
Math for America plans to expand its reach to 1,000 teachers in 2016, giving pay raises to 10% of the city’s public school math teachers.
The National Center for Education Statistics reports the average teacher salary in the U.S. is just above $56,000 per year, and the starting salary for a NYC public school teacher is just above $45,000.
(READ more at Business Insider) — Photos: BurningQuestion, Gleuschk, CC
When little Keaton asked if he could be a pirate for Halloween, dad knew he had to find a way to make it happen.
It would be a bit of a challenge, since Ryan Weimer’s son needs a wheelchair to get around. But with a little creativity and a lot of heart, Ryan was able to build a costume that incorporated the chair itself as the actual ship with which Keaton the pirate could plunder treats.
The costume ended up being the talk of the town, and a photo of Captain Keaton made it to the front page of their local Portland, Oregon newspaper.
Following that October success in 2008, Weimer decided to create a nonprofit that would make every kid in a wheelchair the most envied in the neighborhood at Halloween. Magic Wheelchair volunteers have since been helping construct these costumes, making fantastic memories for kids whenever its trick-or-treat time.
Three out of five of Weimer’s children have been diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, so the kids have been around wheelchairs most of their lives. It’s been their father’s goal to give them that one special day out of the year when being wheelchair-bound is an asset, not a disability.
In 2015, Magic Wheelchairs took to Kickstarter asking for donations to fund five lucky kids’ Halloween costumes with a goal of raising $15,000. The innovative team surged past their goal, collecting over $25,000 dollars for that year’s batch of Halloween costumes.
Whales and dolphins are getting some long sought peace and quiet from the U.S. Navy.
The service has agreed to stop using certain types of sonar—or sound waves—believed to harm the marine mammals after signing a deal with several environmental groups that have been fighting the practice in court for ten years.
Conservationists have argued that the sonar waves disrupt the marine animals’ feeding patterns, and can even cause deafness. They also blame the practice for causing whales to beach themselves as they try to escape the sound.
The agreement will create safe havens for the mammals between California and Hawaii, locations where the Navy will not use mid-frequency sonar and refrain from conducting explosives training.
In addition, the Navy will no longer use sonar in habitat and feeding areas and reduce the number of training exercises that take place in the region.
The government’s National Marine Fisheries Service will also keep an eye on ocean mammals to determine if there are any negative effects that result from the exercises that are still being performed in the area.
Navy spokesman Lieutenant Commander Matt Knight said the agreement will not affect readiness and the military “will continue to be good environmental stewards” under the deal.
(READ more at BBC News) — Photo: Center for Whale Research, Released
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Over the weekend, two officers went above and beyond their duty in response to a routine welfare call, and made one elderly woman and her family very grateful.
Upon arriving at the local 92-year-old’s apartment, they noticed that all of the food in her fridge had gone bad, and that she had run out of drinking water, after the power had gone out.
Deciding to help, Officer Christen Miller from the Gainesville, Georgia Police Department went shopping and purchased the woman a bunch of new groceries using her own money. Corporal Jessica Van stayed with the woman while Miller went out.
The photos received over 20,000 likes on Facebook, with commenters offering to pay money themselves to help keep the senior’s lights on.
After going on a cleaning binge, the former Beatle and his wife, Barbara Bach, have decided to put 800 pieces of music history up for auction to raise money for charity.
“We’re fed up with having the stuff in storage when it could be put to some good use and also give a lot of people joy,” Starr told the Associated Press.
That “stuff” is a rock fan’s treasure-trove including John Lennon’s “Beatle-Backer” — a Rickenbacker guitar that Lennon gave to Starr.
Other pieces include one of the first four pressings of the White Album — there was one for each Beatle — and a three-piece Ludwig drum kit Ringo used in 200 performances from 1963-64.
While sifting through 50 years of memorabilia, Starr also found a box of old photographs he shot while on tour with his former bandmates. He’s collected the never-before published images into a book, “Photograph” (on Amazon) which debuts September 21.
“We have corresponded with the owners and expressed our interest to go into negotiation with them,” he said.
Naguib Sawiris heads Orascom, a transportation, construction and communication company (World Economic Forum, CC)
Earlier this month, Sawiris suggested the idea of buying an island where he could pay refugees to build their own homes, schools and basic services and then provide them with jobs after they settled the island.
He estimated that he could afford to house as many as 200,000 refugees, and offered the possibility that they might create their very own country instead of simply returning home when their countries stabilized.
There are more than 1,200 Greek islands – fewer than 300 of them are populated. Sawiris has not identified the islands’ current owners, but says it will cost about $100 million to get the project started.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has shown interest in cooperating on his plan.
Lily Fardell may not have had any children of her own, but many children who don’t have a home will be living a better life thanks to the sale of hers.
Lily’s legacy of generosity in her New South Wales community has continued following her death in 2015, as the sale of her mansion, known as Pacific House, funds charity efforts to help local homeless children.
The house, which sold at auction for a whopping $2.35 million dollars, was full of sculptures, furniture, and antiques that were expected to bring the total amount of her donation to St. Vincent de Paul in Newcastle to nearly $4 million after auction.
Known for her kindness and spunk, Lily often hosted Christmas and tea parties on her veranda with friends, caroling, and wine.
Those friends were eager to attend the auction for the Catholic charity because they wanted to take home reminders of their friend as a way of supporting her generous last wish.
“She couldn’t have children of her own,” her nephew Michael told The Sydney Morning Herald. “But she loved children and left almost everything she had to a charity which supported them.”
He was still a teen when he decided to quit his job, pack up his favorite musical instrument, and travel the world. Nothing unusual for a young vagabond, except Dotan Negrin wasn’t strapping a guitar to his back — he was lugging around an upright piano.
He wasn’t just hauling it to a local street corner, he has pushed the 500 pound piano onto Florida beaches, he’s played it inside a redwood tree in California, and on a mountaintop in the rainforests of Guatemala.
He’s played in hundreds of locations in 21 countries, attracting crowds and tips at the Brooklyn Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, and on the rim of the Grand Canyon.
If you’re looking to sip something that contains 10 times the antioxidants of green tea — and 14 times more than wild blueberries — ‘matcha’ may just be your cup of tea.
The consumption of matcha has been linked to better heart health, lower cholesterol, and the prevention of cancer and type 2 diabetes.
The powder is made from young green tea leaves that are left in the shade for two to four weeks before harvesting. This increases the amount of chlorophyll— which transforms sunlight into energy—generating a higher concentration of antioxidants.
After they’re harvested, the young leaves are steamed, dried, and ground into a fine powder. Instead of straining water through the leaves, the powder is dissolved into the final brew, so people actually consume the whole leaf when they drink it.
Matcha also packs a punch comparable to a cup of coffee, providing up to six hours of energy, minus the crash.
It’s also so potent that you really only need one cup a day.
In historical times, matcha was only available to Japanese royalty, monks, and to samurai warriors who would drink it to gain extra energy for their battles.
When I tell people I teach yoga, at least half of them tell me, “Oh I’m way too inflexible to do yoga” or, “I can’t balance to save my life.”
Which, I get… I really do. When I first went to a yoga class and saw someone standing on their head, I panicked. At the time, I couldn’t even touch my toes, or imagine putting the top of my head on the floor.
But it also pains me to hear, because yoga is such an effective way of increasing flexibility and balance. And if you don’t do something about those tight muscles and wobbly ankles now, it’s not going to get better. In fact, it will only get worse.
So, here are the 8 best ways to get over the idea that yoga isn’t for you–and start a fun, productive and lasting relationship with your own body.
1. Embrace Yourself As a Beginner
Having no idea what you’re doing is actually a beautiful thing. It relieves you of expectations. It makes you stay curious. It gives you the opportunity to try something new. How often does that happen in your life? Long-time yoga practitioners have to struggle to keep their minds open to new learning. You’ve got a blank slate–at least when it comes to yoga. Enjoy it.
If the thought of being the person who’s pointing to the left when everyone else is pointing to the right is keeping you from going to a class, practice at home. There are yoga DVDs on Amazon, YouTube videos and online streaming services that will allow you to be in your own space and go at your own pace. At some point, you’ll want to take class with a teacher who will help you tailor the practice to your particular body. But if you aren’t quite ready to go to the class, bring the class to you.
3) Avoid Comparison
In every class, there will be someone—or maybe a whole posse of people—who will be able to do more than you. They will look glamorous and serene while you are red-faced and ready to bolt. Resist the urge to hate them—or yourself—and it will automatically deepen your practice.
Comparison make you focus on how you are separate, and yoga is about understanding how we are all connected. The more you can honor where you are today, the faster your current state will change.
4. Take a Beginner’s Class
It takes a special teacher to be able to truly serve beginners. Seek out the ones who have that skill by looking for the words “Level 1,” “beginner” or “basic” in the class description.
These classes will give you a firm foundation in the basic poses and make it much easier to keep up when you start going to more advanced classes.
5. Embrace Props
Photos courtesy of Acacia TV
Blocks, straps, blankets, bolsters—or if you’re at home, couch cushions, belts and books—are your best friend! These props help you tailor a pose to fit your body, instead of contort (and potentially injure) your body to fit a pose.
Sit up on a folded blanket (or two, or three) in a forward bend, and see how much more likely you are to be able to touch your toes.
6. Talk to the Teacher
A good teacher wants to know about his or her students.
Introduce yourself a couple minutes before class starts and explain that you’re a beginner. He or she will be able to tell you how to modify poses during class to suit your level.
7. Gently Check Your Ego at the Door
I know it’s not fun to feel like a remedial student. But if you can resist the urge to go straight for the most advanced version of a pose, you’ll be able to build on your successes instead of potentially crashing and burning.
Tree pose is still tree pose, whether your foot is on your ankle, calf, or thigh. Once you’ve mastered the basic version, you can move on to the next level.
8. Listen to Your Body
Ultimately, your body will tell you everything you need to know about how yoga is working for you. Reach only as far as feels doable to you. “No pain no gain” does not apply on the yoga mat.
There’s always a next time to give you a chance to build on the stretching you have achieved today.
A United States appeals court ruled that federal regulators should not have approved the use of an insecticide, which is linked to a decline in bee populations, and determined that the EPA used “flawed and limited data”.
The ruling means farmers have to immediately stop using sulfoxaflor, marketed under the brand names Transform and Closer, unless and until the Environmental Protection Agency obtains more evidence regarding its effects on honeybees. Only then will the EPA be allowed to decide if it can re-approve the chemical for use on crops.
“It’s a complete victory for the beekeepers we represent,” said Greg Loarie, an attorney representing several commercial beekeeping groups told Reuters. “The EPA has not been very vigilant.”
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, and determined the EPA didn’t collect enough “substantial evidence” to prove sulfoxaflor was safe before approving its use.
Bee populations have been declining in recent years, and though some blame an attack of mites or viruses, beekeepers point to evidence that certain pesticides–neonicotinoids–that attack the central nervous system of insects are a huge contributor. Sulfoxaflor falls into that category.
While Europe has already banned their use, California and Ontario have strong restrictions on neonicotinoids and garden stores at Lowe’s had been phasing out its use.
The EPA had originally proposed several limits on sulfoxaflor’s use, but later backed off and approved it for unconditional use on crops. The court found that the EPA amended its policy even though the maker, Dow AgroSciences, failed to provided additional studies the EPA had requested.
Jim Simons, who made his fortune on 
7. Gently Check Your Ego at the Door
