When I was a kid growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, on school picture day you posed in front of a backdrop that resembled something you’d see in a Sears portrait studio. But these days a lot of school photographers pose children in front of green screens so their parents can choose a background later.The process is called “chroma keying” and it’s used for dropping digital effects into movies. The problem is that if you wear green in front of the screen, part of you will disappear when the new background is added.Sugar Grove Elementary in Indianapolis, Indiana ran into some serious problems earlier this month after it decided to have picture day on St. Patrick’s Day. The school had scheduled its spring photos twice but the dates were changed due to inclement weather.A few days after the photo shoot, parents got a real shock when the photo proofs arrived and their kids were partially invisable in the photos. They had floating, disembodied heads, and their clothing seemed to blend into the background of the shots.Amanda Snow, the mother of a kindergartner at the school, thought the proofs of her son were hilarious so she posted them in a local mothers’ group asking if anyone else had the same issue.“Honestly, I just couldn’t wait to see other parents’ pictures, and it ended up being a hilarious fiasco. Just because it’s so funny,” Snow said. After Snow’s post, the photos began pouring in.A girl became one with a flower bed. One young boy blended into the fence near a pasture. Another boy was cut in half by a dirt road. After the photos were sent to parents, the school's principal sent a message home saying, "Don't worry, the photography studio can fix this in post-production."Snow's son was understandably confused by the photos."It was kind of hard to explain to him what was happening because he's 6, but as soon as he saw all the different options, he was just laughing because it looks like he's a fence or looks like he's a field," Snow said. "So he thought it was really funny."The photos came with a warning from Inter-State Studio, the company that took the photos."The image is not the final product because it gets fixed in post-production," the company said. "We appreciate the opportunity to respond to this specific instance. Everyone has had such a good sense of humor about this!"The photos have been so memorable that Snow wants to keep the original proofs. "I might reach out to the company and see if I can get the unedited ones because honestly they've brought me so much joy and laughter over the last days,” Snow told WKYC.The botched photo shoot goes to show that sometimes doing things the old-fashioned way is the right way to go. Let’s hope that the next time the school has a photo shoot on St. Patrick's Day they remind families to send their kids with an extra set of clothes.This article originally appeared on 3.29.22

True acts of sportsmanship are always a delight to see. And a 2019 video shared by ESPN that captured a beautiful moment from a women's soccer match is no exception. In a WAFF Women's Club Championship match between Jordan's Shabab al Ordon Club and Arab Orthodox Club that took place last October, a Muslim player from the latter team had a minor collision with another player that partially removed her hijab. For women who cover their hair with the hijab, it is an expression of faith and symbol of modesty. For a hijabi woman to be seen in public without that covering is to feel inappropriately exposed. The players on the opposing team didn't wear hijab themselves, but they immediately recognized the potential embarrassment of the player. As soon as they saw her kneel down to replace her head covering, players from Shabab al Ordon Club started gathering around her, signaling their teammates to come and form a shield around her while she put everything back into place. It was a spontaneous act, clearly born of understanding, empathy, and respect. Even though those players did not practice the same custom, and even though it wasn't even their own teammate, they supported this woman's adherence to her faith tradition without hesitation and gave her the privacy she needed in the moment. Watch how quickly the players came to her rescue: - YouTube www.youtube.com Responses to the video have been largely positive. Some of the comments on the ESPN video include: "Perfect example of respecting someone's beliefs even if they aren't yours. Kudos to them…" "I don't understand why it is important. But the fact is, I don't need to understand it to respect it. That was an amazing show of respect." "The character and sportsmanship of these athletes is awe inspiring. Freedom of religion isn't just for Christianity, but for all religions. Kudos." "Wow...beautiful. That is a demonstration on how to appreciate and respect differences. These young girls are leading the way. Fantastic!" "If only the world were like this, where we all respected and appreciated one other's differences. I don't have to believe what you believe to respect you and your right to have that belief. Awesome moment." Some things are bigger than sports. What a wonderful example these women set for the world. Kudos, indeed. This article originally appeared on 3.9.22

Brace yourselves, folks, because this is almost too friggin' adorable to handle. A 911 call can be a scary thing, and an emergency call from a dad having chest pains and trouble breathing is no exception. But thankfully, an exchange between that dad's 5-year-old daughter and 911 dispatcher Jason Bonham turned out to be more humor than horror. If you missed hearing the recording that has repeatedly gone viral since 2010, you have to hear it now. It's perfectly timeless.When an Indiana dad used his cell phone to called 911 and couldn't talk, his daughter Savannah picked up the phone. Remaining remarkably calm, cool, and collected, the articulate 5-year-old expertly answered Bonham's questions—and added her own hilarious commentary as well.At Bonham's request, she made sure the front door was unlocked so the emergency crew could get in. She told him about their dog, Lou Lou, who was "small" and "barks a lot," but was "friendly." She consoled her dad—who may have been in the middle of a heart attack—with "Don't worry, Dad," and "Stay calm, Dad." She also kept the dispatcher up to speed on what was happening, repeatedly saying, "So far, so good."But the pièce de résistance was when Savannah told Bonham that she and her dad were in their "jammies" so she'd have to change. "I don't know what I'm gonna wear, but...he really needs oxygen, real fast." Five. Years. Old. This kid is seriously something else. Watch: Little girl calls 911 - Adorable - "He can't hardly breathe" youtu.be Bonham said he was surprised by how Savannah handled the call. "Most people when you talk to them, they're hysterical," he told Eyewitness News. "Every time I've listened to it it's amazing. She's just a little person."Thankfully, despite the scare, everything turned out fine for Savannah's dad. When the story went viral, her mom posted on Facebook, "We are so grateful & blessed that Savannah's 911 call is still being circulated. It makes the whole entire night worth while. The more awareness it brings & the more adults that teach children what to do the better!"Well done teaching that kiddo, mom and dad. She was truly amazing. This article originally appeared on 5.7.21

When your final child leaves the house for good, it's like a whole new world has opened up. The decades raising babies and children are full, rich, exciting and loud. Your house is filled with laughter and sibling bickering, school projects and kid collections, never-ending laundry and food purchased in bulk. Life is big during those years. It takes up space physically, mentally and emotionally. Then come the empty nest years, when you find yourself swimming in a house full of unused rooms and piles of memories. Suddenly you don't need all that space anymore, and you have to figure out what to do with those rooms and those piles and those memories. For one couple, the process of downsizing brought about a reflection on their family life, their relationship with their kids and their stuff. Jimmy Dunne shared that reflection on Facebook in a since deleted viral post that resonaed with many people who are at or near this stage in life. Dunne wrote:"My wife Catherine and I recently moved.I realized I had something I never knew I had.Thirty-four years ago, I carried my wife in my arms over the threshold in our home. Thirty-four years ago. From newlywed days, to witnessing our babies go from little girls to young adults. So many great memories in every inch of every room of our home.I didn’t think I was ready to ‘downsize.’ What an awful word. I liked walking through our girl’s bedrooms and still seeing their stuff on the walls and on the shelves. I liked our backyard. I liked imagining our kids coming down the steps every Christmas morning.We put it on the market, it sold in a couple days, and suddenly agreements thicker than my leg were instructing me to clear everything I ever had and knew – out.Every night I found myself saying goodbye to our backyard, to our garden of roses that Catherine would till and trim, to the sidewalk where the girls drove their Barbie cars and learned to ride their bikes, to our front lawn where we hosted tons of talent shows with all the kids on the block – and the red swing on the front porch.We found a condo in town and started lining up our ducks of what we were keeping, and what we were tossing. We vowed, if we’re going to do this, we weren’t putting anything in storage.I literally threw out half my stuff. Half. Half of the furniture. Half of my clothes, books. And the big one… way more than half the boxes in the attic.The attic was more than an attic. It held our stories. Every thing in every box, every framed picture was a story. After we gave away almost all of the living room furniture, we split the room in half and brought down everything of the girls from the attic and from their rooms. We invited the girls over, handed them a cocktail and said, “There’s good news and bad news. We’ve saved all this stuff; your outfits, drawings, dolls, skates -- for you. It’s now yours. The bad news, whatever’s not gone by Friday at 10 in the morning, it’s getting chucked in that giant green dumpster in front of the house.”The girls thought we were Mr. and Mrs. Satan. But they went through it, and that Friday, most of it went out the front door and right in the dumpster. I filled the entire dining room with boxes of all my old stuff. Grade school stories and pictures, report cards, birthday cards, trophies, you name it. Boxes of old plaques and diplomas and just stuff and stuff and stuff like that. How could I throw any of this out? I may as well have been throwing me in the dumpster! But this little jerk on my shoulder kept asking -- what are your kids going to do with all this a week after you're six feet under? They’re gonna chuck it all out! Here’s the crazy thing. The more I threw stuff in there, the easier it got. And I started to kind of like throwing it up and over in that thing. I started to feel lighter. Better. And we moved in a half-the-size condo – and the oddest thing happened. It became our home. A picture here and there on the wall, Catherine’s favorite pieces of furniture, all her knickknacks in the bathroom. We blinked, and it looked and felt just like us.And then I found that thing I never knew I had.Enough.I had enough.The wild thing was that having less – actually opened the door to so much more. More in my personal life. More in my career. More in everything.All I have to do is look in the eyes of my two girls -- and they take me back, every time, to the most beautiful, colorful, emotional scrapbook I could ever dream of having.All I have to do is hold my wife’s hand, and it hypnotizes me back to kissing her for the first time, falling in love with everything she did, seeing her in that hospital room holding our first baby for the first time. It sure seems there is so much more to see, and feel, and be – if I have the courage, if I have the will to shape a life that’s just…Enough."People shared Dunne's post more than 24,000 times and it's easy to see why. He's speaking a truth we probably all know deep down on some level. Things don't make a life. Things don't make relationships. They don't even make memories, though we tend to hold onto them as if they do. We may associate places and things with memories, but we don't need the places and things for our memories to live on. Kudos to Dunne and his wife for looking ahead to what their children would have to go through after they pass if they didn't go through it now themselves. And kudos to them for truly embracing the freedom that comes with having raised your children to adulthood. The empty nest years can be whatever you choose to make of them, and this couple has figured out a key to making the most of theirs. This article originally appeared on 11.30.21

Most people grow up going to schools where people are of a similar social status. Lower-income people tend to grow up with people in the same situation and affluent people usually grow up around people who are rich, as well. But things can change dramatically in college. People who are from completely different sides of the socioeconomic spectrum attend class together and sometimes wind up sharing the same dorm room. One student can be there on a scholarship and have a part-time job to make ends meet. The other may be on a massive allowance from their parents who pay full tuition without batting an eye. What exacerbates the issue is that many people go through college being dirt poor. If they have a job, it's often low-paying, they can't work many hours and they aren't old enough to have accumulated any wealth. So seeing someone one of your peers wasting other people's hard-earned money can be downright stupefying. It can also seem highly immoral for some to have so much and not appreciate it when others are struggling to get by. College is also a time when people begin to learn about income inequality and why it exists. Freelance journalist Jake Bittle started a fun conversation on Twitter where people shared stories of some of the insanely rich kids they knew in college. Many of the responses came from people who went to the University of Chicago. Bittle's story started with seeing a girl open her laptop to revel a ton of money in her bank account while they were taking a class on Marxism. The tweet inspired people to share stories of the insanely rich kids they met in college and how some of them were terribly wasteful with their money. (Jake has since deleted his original tweet.) My freshman year roommate got a letter of recommendation from HW Bush who was President at the time. The guy didn't know how to wash clothes so he kept buying new ones and throwing the old ones out. — Mark ? (@MarkCassidy23) June 12, 2020 one time in college I was telling a guy I didn't have money for shampoo and he bought Instagram followers as I was telling him this. a different time had to explain to a girl what hourly wage was (she didn't comprehend there was something other than salary) — Erin Taylor (@erinisaway) June 12, 2020 I remember the classmate who told me I should switch to her bank because I'd get free checking just by keeping a $10k balance. — MisterJayEm (@MisterJayEm) June 12, 2020 I can't tell you how many U of C students told me they couldn't understand why my parents didn't just buy me a condo, or why I didn't buy myself a new car; then there was the girl in my dorm who left $100,000 worth of clothes, many never worn, in her room at the end of the year. — Paul Christofersen (@truepaxman) June 12, 2020 There was one girl in Blackstone who used to make AMAZING, intricate dishes. One day I saw just how filthy her dorm kitchen was, and she said it was because at home her maid would clean up after her. Anyways I stopped eating her food and never explained why ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ — Sankofa (@akuankansaha) June 12, 2020 My first day at Amherst College my freshman roommate showed me his JP Morgan account on his MacBook and I remembered being mortified when I asked him if that was his account balance and he said that that was how much money he had made that day. — Sauce Moe Dee (@ShigeoSekito) June 12, 2020 One of my roommates whispered to me that our other roommate was on scholarship. I told her almost everyone she met was on some type of scholarship. Her dad just used to pay it in one go. Her parents used to call her and check on her because she "wasn't spending enough money." — AnitaWrites (@WritesAnita) June 12, 2020 My friend's dad lectured me on how much harder rich people work than poor people. I was working 50 hours a week at the time and his son had never had a job before. Guess who the rich family was — Jake Garza (@JakeGar43911060) June 12, 2020 Reminds me of the time in my intro to sociology lecture where I witnessed a girl in front of me casually order a pair of $400 Gucci sunglasses while my prof discussed wealth inequality — Alex Murra (@alex_murra) June 12, 2020 A friend of mine in the Air Force told me a story about a classmate of his who was the son of some minor Saudi prince. Every summer, once classes were out, the classmate would leave his $90,000 Land Rover (it was always a Land Rover) because he didn't want to ship it back home. — Joey Beachum (@JoeyBeachum) June 12, 2020 My freshman year roomate (a week after bragging that his family is the 2nd largest purchaser of De Beers in the world...) threw all 20 of his Ralph Lauren wool sweaters into the dryer — franklin ? ave ? shuttle (@sirptrash) June 12, 2020 In the dorms first week of school my suite mate asked me when the housekeepers come to clean and do laundry. She had no idea what a washing machine looked like. — Liz Ortiz (@LizOrtizAK) June 12, 2020 I knew someone who, instead of doing laundry, would just buy new clothes to wear. And her sister, after living in Chicago for a few months, didn't know what the CTA was. — kinanta | ꦏꦶꦤꦤ꧀ꦠ | كيننتا (@kinanta) June 12, 2020 Freshman year, I shared about how much my parents made and got told by another student that I must be mistaken, then they proceeded to argue that the “middle class" starts at $350,000 and surely my parents made at least that ... — Jen Rey (@Jenny_rey325) June 12, 2020 First day of law school, guy in class pulls out a Tiffany box and removes a gold fountain pen from a velvet bag to take notes. — Tracy M (@dandelionmama) June 12, 2020 when you're a kid you learn class difference because when you go on a field trip you got $10 and your friend brings a $50 for the gift shop — ??????? ????? (@maybenerea) June 12, 2020 This article originally appeared on 6.12.20

There are many, many things that change in a household after children arrive. The number of toys and bright-colored items strewn about the house make it look like a clown moved in.Parents soon give up any chance of watching a TV show they enjoy until after the children go to bed.The refrigerator becomes jam-packed with juice boxes, go-gurts, and large frozen bags of chicken nuggets.There's also a strange disappearing act that happens."Mom, where's dad?" the child asks."He's in the bathroom," mom replies with a shrug.Funny, before children, dad used to be in and out of the bathroom in a few minutes. Now, he spends thirty minutes staring at his phone, watching YouTube, and setting his fantasy baseball lineup in his new palace of solace.While it's always good to get some alone time, it becomes a problem when dad leaves his spouse to handle the child-rearing and chores because he's taking his time on the throne.In a recent story covered by Upworthy, a mother on Reddit admitted she turns off the wi-fi in the house if her husband takes too long in the restroom. "Over the past couple months he has been spending more and more time in there," the mother wrote. "He always takes his phone. He is always watching YouTube. His average session is 25 minutes in there, often longer, rarely shorter.""Today I started a new rule. If he is in the bathroom for more than 10 minutes, I flip the wifi off," she wrote. "He has not spent more than 15 minutes in the bathroom at a stretch today, but is extremely upset."For those who find that tactic a bit drastic, Katamco has created the Toilet Timer, an hour-glass style timer that can be flipped over when dad enters the bathroom. "The Toilet Timer is for the poo-crastinator taking their sweet time," reads the product description. "This is a sand timer that runs for about five minutes. Help your loved one get back to the people they are trying to avoid."While the daddy poo-timer seems like a fun passive-aggressive gag gift, there's a real reason it exists. After having kids, the average dad's time spent on the pot goes up considerably.A poll of 1,000 British men found that dads spend seven hours a year hiding from their families in the bathroom. The poll found that 25% of men said if they couldn't escape to the bathroom they "don't know how they'd cope." A third said that a trip to the bathroom is the only time they get to themselves.Fourteen percent stow away items such as books, magazines, and food for the time they spend in their palace of solitude.Who the hell eats while sitting on the toilet?Domestic life can be stressful for both parents. Maybe if these dads need a breather from the trials of domesticity they should just ask their spouses? That seems to be a much more constructive way of handling the stress than hiding out in fear.This article originally appeared on 3.5.20

by Rhoda Wilson, Expose News: A report produced by Oxford University and Imperial College London for the UK Government reveals that all airports will be ordered to close, eating beef and lamb will be made illegal, and construction of new buildings will not be permitted to meet the legal commitment of zero emissions by 2050. […]

by Christina Maas, Reclaim The Net: America First Legal (AFL) has pulled back the curtain on yet another government meeting that makes “free speech” sound like some quaint idea from the past. AFL has released documents from a 2021 interagency get-together where the UK’s top experts on “disinformation” offered a master class in censorship, all under the […]

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