A local reporter at Hometown Life shared a unique and heartfelt story on March 16 about a mother struggling to find shoes that fit her 14-year-old son. The story resonated with parents everywhere; now, her son is getting the help he desperately needs. It's a wonderful example of people helping a family that thought they had nowhere to turn.When Eric Kilburn Jr. was born, his mother, Rebecca’s OBGYN, told her that he had the “biggest feet I’ve ever seen in my life. Do not go out and buy baby shoes because they’re not gonna fit,’” Rebecca told Today.com. Fourteen years later, it’s almost impossible to find shoes that fit the 6’10” freshman—he needs a size 23.Thank you to all who shared the original story and reached out with good wishes and tips! We have an update that shows the power of community! @UnderArmour @PUMA coming through with shoes! https://t.co/y4aLO5WwVP— Susan Bromley (@SusanBromley10) March 20, 2023 The teen's height doesn't stem from a gland issue; he comes from a family of tall people. Both his parents are over 6 feet tall.Why finding size-23 shoes is so hardEric plays football for Goodrich High School in Goodrich, Michigan, but doesn’t wear cleats, which led to a sprained ankle. He also suffers from ingrown toenails that are so severe he’s had two nails on his biggest toes permanently removed.Last year, the family was lucky enough to stumble upon five pairs of size 21 shoes at a Nike outlet store. It was discovered they were made especially for Tacko Fall, the NBA player with some of the most enormous feet in the game. To put things in perspective, Shaquille O’Neal wears a size 22.?| NEW: Michigan mom is struggling to find shoes that fit her 6 foot 10, 14-year-old son who has SIZE 23 FEET‼️? pic.twitter.com/x8Mu4JDcWR— Pubity (@pubity) March 18, 2023 However, Eric soon grew out of those as well. The family was left with one more option: have orthopedic shoes made for Eric at the cost of $1,500 with no guarantee he won’t quickly grow out of those as well.Brands step in to help a growing teenAfter his mother’s heartfelt plea to Hometown Life, the family got much-needed help from multiple companies, including Under Armour and PUMA, who are sending representatives to Michigan to measure his feet for custom shoes.CAT has reached out to make him a custom pair of boots. Eric hasn't had any boots to wear for the past five Michigan winters.A fundraiser that eased a family’s burdenKara Pattison started a GoFundMe campaign on behalf of the family to help them purchase custom shoes for “the rest of the time Eric has these feet.” It has raised nearly $20,000 for the family in just over a week. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Eric Kilburn (@erickilburnjr)“The success of this fundraiser is well beyond what was ever expected,” Pattison wrote on the site on March 18. “The Kilburns plan to open a bank account dedicated to Eric's future footwear and some specialized sports equipment. He can use this to get a helmet that fits for football along with pads. They will also look into a football and track jersey for him.”The sense of relief felt by Rebecca, Eric and the rest of the Kilburn family must be incredible. It has to be frustrating to be unable to provide your child with something as basic as footwear.“It’s been overwhelming,” Rebecca told Hometown Life. “I have been this puddle of emotions, all of them good…It’s the coolest thing to be able to say we did it! He has shoes! I am not usually a crier, but I have been in a constant state of happy tears…We are so grateful.”In the years since...In the months after his story went viral in March 2023, multiple brands followed through. Under Armour flew a product lead to Michigan to size Eric and began making him custom footwear so he could safely play sports again; other companies, including Reebok with an assist from Shaquille O’Neal, also stepped in to provide size-23 shoes.In 2024, Eric’s journey took an even bigger step: Guinness World Records recognized him for having the largest feet and hands of any living teenager (13.5-inch feet—about a men’s size 23—and 9.13-inch hands). With the spotlight, his family launched the Big Shoe Network to help others facing similar challenges finding gear that fits.This article originally appeared last year.

Getting older is weird. You're trucking along, enjoying your middle-aged life, finally feeling like a real adult, when you look in the mirror one day and gasp. "Where did those wrinkles come from?" "Is that skin on my arm…crepey?!?" "Why am I aching like that?"Somewhere in your mid-40s, you start noticing obvious signs of aging that seem to arrive overnight. You assumed it was a gradual process that you just hadn't noticed, but it sure as heck felt like it happened really fast.New research indicates that may very well be the case. A 2024 study from researchers at Stanford tracked thousands of different molecules in people age 25 to 75 and found that people tend to make two big leaps in aging—one around age 44 and another around age 60. These findings indicate that aging can actually happen in bursts. Simpsons Gif y.yarn.co “We’re not just changing gradually over time. There are some really dramatic changes,” said senior study author Michael Snyder, Ph.D., a geneticist and director of the Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine at Stanford University. “It turns out the mid-40s is a time of dramatic change, as is the early 60s. And that’s true no matter what class of molecules you look at.” The researchers assumed the mid-40s changes would be attributed to menopausal or perimenopausal changes in women influencing the overall numbers, but when they separated the results by sex they saw similar changes in men in their 40s. @suddenly_susan_ The accuracy ? #40s #genxtiktok #womenover40 #relatable "“This suggests that while menopause or perimenopause may contribute to the changes observed in women in their mid-40s, there are likely other, more significant factors influencing these changes in both men and women. Identifying and studying these factors should be a priority for future research,” said study author Xiaotao Shen, PhD, a former Stanford Medicine postdoctoral scholar who now teaches at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Aging happens in bursts, scientists find.Canva PhotosThe study included 108 participants who submitted blood and other samples every few months for several years. The scientists tracked age-related changes in 135,000 different molecules—nearly 250 billion distinct data points—to see how aging occurs.The study may shed light on the reasons for jumps in certain diseases and maladies at certain ages. For the 40-somethings, scientists found significant changes in molecules related to alcohol, caffeine, and lipid metabolism, cardiovascular disease, and skin and muscle. For those in their 60s, changes related to carbohydrate and caffeine metabolism, immune regulation, kidney function, cardiovascular disease, and skin and muscle were found. Research shows the body goes through specific changes in our 40s and 60s.Canva PhotosThe study authors did note that lifestyle might play a role in some of these changes. For instance, alcohol metabolism may be influenced by people drinking more heavily in their 40s, which tends to be a period of higher stress for many people. However, the researchers added that these bursts of aging in the mid-40s and early 60s indicate that people may want to pay closer attention to their health around those ages and make lifestyle changes that support greater overall health, such as increasing exercise or limiting alcohol.The research team plans to study the drivers of these aging bursts to find out why they happen at these ages, but whatever the reasons, it's nice to know that the seemingly sudden onset of age-related woes isn't just in our imaginations.It's understandable that we worry about aging, as physical signs of aging remind us of our own mortality. We also have all kinds of social messaging that tells us youth is ideal and beautiful and old is bad and ugly, so of course we give aging the side-eye. But none of us can avoid aging altogether, so the more positive and healthy we are in our approach to aging, the better off we'll be, no matter when and to what degree aging hits us.This story originally appeared last year. It has been updated.

Blues icon. The post The one guitarist Keith Richards and Jeff Beck think changed the world: “It was mind-boggling” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

The battle of the bands. The post The Beatles vs Led Zeppelin: Which band has sold more records? first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

More than 50 years later,

A quote widely shared on social media and independent sites over the years states that Rudolf Steiner “predicted” more than 100 years ago that a vaccine would be given to children as […] The post Rudolf Steiner: “The soul will be made non-existent with the aid of a vaccine” first appeared on The Expose.

The gatekeepers of the left rarely share the struggles of the downtrodden workers they purport to represent, they only use the working class and the poor as tools to gain power and destroy their ideological enemies.

by Matt Margolis, PJ Media: I wonder if I’m the only goof who bookmarked Dictionary.com because it was the very first entry in Google under “dictionary.” This was 20 years ago, and a three-year-old baboon knew more about computers and the internet than I did then. My computer knowledge now exceeds that of a four-year-old baboon, but […]

from Townhall: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates agrees with Townhall. Wow, who thought we’d ever be able to say that? In a new memo, Bill Gates appears to have done a 180 on climate change and abandoned his climate alarmism. The man who wrote “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster” just four years ago now says climate […]

from Mark Dice: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/