Tucked away in the parks and alleyways of East London lies one of the city’s most vibrant collections of public art. What makes it all the more special is the mending of mental health maladies that transforms its volunteer artists. The sometimes sprawling, Roman-inspired masterpieces are the work of the Hackney Mosaic Project and its […] The post Stunning Mosaics Made by Londoners with PTSD Offer Pieces of Healing in Community Artwork appeared first on Good News Network.

Eight months into living in her second-floor apartment, a woman had developed a problem: Her downstairs neighbor’s TV was loud. Not party loud—just loud enough that she could hear specific dialogue through her floor. There were also regular sounds around 11 p.m. that seemed like furniture being dragged across the room. She hated the idea of being “that neighbor,” so she stayed quiet. But after one particularly bad Tuesday night before an early workday, when she genuinely couldn’t sleep, she decided to write a note. She kept it calm and respectful, explaining that she wasn’t sure whether he realized how much sound was traveling upstairs. She mentioned the TV volume and asked whether they could find a solution. She slipped it under his door and went back to her apartment, expecting either no response or a bad one. A man watches TV late at night. Photo credit: obayda PH via Unsplash For three days, nothing changed. Then, on Friday morning, she noticed a folded piece of paper under her own door. The neighbor had written back. He wasn’t defensive or angry. He apologized and explained that he was hard of hearing in one ear. He genuinely had no idea how loud the television had been through the floor. He’d ordered a soundbar that would allow him to use headphones at night. At the bottom of the note, he added that he appreciated her coming to him directly instead of reporting the issue to building management. “I stood in my hallway reading it twice,” she wrote in a Reddit post shared on February 21. My downstairs neighbor left a note under my door after i complained about noise and i genuinely did not expect what it said byu/Basus_Isloe inrevengestories The noise problem was resolved soon after. The dragging sounds stopped, and the television could no longer be heard upstairs. She ended her post: “Sometimes being the person who leaves the polite note actually just works and I forget that.” Disputes over noise are among the most common conflicts in shared living spaces. A September 2017 survey by OnePoll for Homes.com found that noise was the top reason Americans argued with their neighbors. The study also revealed that one in four Americans had an ongoing feud with a neighbor, while 36% had been involved in full-blown arguments over disputes. The woman’s approach worked because she did a few things right. She waited until she’d calmed down. She used written communication instead of a potentially heated face-to-face conversation. She was polite and assumed good intent rather than malice. And the neighbor responded in kind. He explained the situation, took responsibility, found a solution, and thanked her for handling it privately. Most neighbor noise stories don’t end this well. This one did because two people chose to be decent to each other. The post She slipped a note under her neighbor’s door about his loud TV. His reply made her cry. appeared first on Upworthy.

If you’ve ever loaded someone else’s dishwasher, you may know the wrath that comes with “loading the dishwasher wrong.” Maybe you put a bowl on the bottom when it should go on the top. Perhaps you put the forks and spoons “down” when they should be “up.” Maybe you didn’t rinse the dishes enough…or maybe you weren’t supposed to rinse them at all. People have strong feelings about dishwasher habits, and conflicting conventional wisdom doesn’t help. However, when it comes to the “to rinse or not to rinse” question, a former appliance repair tech says there is no question: Unless your dishwasher pre-dates this century, you should not rinse your dishes before loading them in the dishwasher. To be clear, “should not rinse” doesn’t mean “you can if you want, but you don’t really need to.” It means actually, literally do not rinse your dishes. Why? Because, believe it or not, your dishwasher actually works better if your dishes are dirtier when you load them. @renduh Dishwasher and dishwasher detergent manufacturers agree–rinsing your dishes before loading them in to the dishwasher is NOT recommended! If you feel like your dishes aren’t getting cleaned even when following this information, make sure you’re: 1. Preheating the water at your sink before running the dishwasher, 2. Loading the dishwasher correctly according to your manual (especially making sure you’re not blocking the spray arms or detergent dispenser!), 3. Using a good quality dishwasher detergent (yes, it can make a difference!), and 4. Keeping your dishwasher clean (refer to your manual, but this usually means cleaning the filter and running a dishwasher cleaner through at least once a month). If you’re doing all that and your dishes STILL aren’t getting cleaned, that’s when it’s time to call an appliance repair tech! dishwasher ApplianceRepair cleaning kitchen dishes ♬ original sound – Renae – Renae ‘But my dishwasher doesn’t clean the dishes unless they are fully rinsed!’ Cue the folks insisting that their dishwasher doesn’t clean dishes if they aren’t rinsed well. I know that argument because I myself used to make it. I thought our dishwasher just sucked. But after hearing this “don’t rinse” advice, my family started loading visibly dirty dishes into the dishwasher. I was skeptical, but the machine miraculously started working as intended. Renae, an “appliance care and use specialist,” explains why. The keyword you need to know is “turbidity,” meaning the cloudiness or haziness of water: “Every dishwasher and dishwasher detergent manufacturer will tell you the same thing: You’re supposed to scrape the excess food off of your dishes, but not rinse them,” she says. “That’s because your dishwasher has a turbidity sensor. The purpose of a turbidity sensor is to see how turbid the water is. It’s checking to see the dirtiness and cloudiness of it. It uses the information it collects from the turbidity sensor to determine how long to run the cycle for.” This is what you want your dishes to look like when you load them. (Photo credit: Canva) The magic of the dishwasher turbidity sensor When dishwashers start, the first thing most of them do is run a rinse cycle. Then the turbidity sensor checks that rinse water as it drains. If it’s super cloudy, the machine kicks into “Alright, let’s wash these bad boys!” mode. If the water is mostly clear, it’s more like, “Oh, these just need some light sanitizing.” In other words, you’re telling the dishwasher how hard to work with how dirty your dishes are. “Basically, what I’m saying is if you were to load your dishwasher with mostly clean dishes (because you rinsed them off), and just a couple of more heavily soiled dishes (like things that have baked-on food on them), the baked-on stuff might not come off. Because the turbidity sensor didn’t detect enough turbidity in the water to run the cycle for long enough.” If you think it’s only fancy new dishwashers that have this feature, think again. Dishwasher turbidity sensors have been around since the mid-1990s, and major brands have been including them in their dishwashers since the early 2000s. It’s more likely than not that your dishwasher works this way. What if your dishwasher still isn’t getting dishes clean? Of course, some dishwashers really do struggle, and Renae offers tips in that case as well: 1. Preheat the water by turning on the hot water at your sink tap before running the dishwasher. 2. Load the dishwasher correctly according to your manual, and make sure you’re not blocking the spray arms or detergent dispenser. 3. Use a good quality dishwasher detergent. 4. Keep your dishwasher clean, which usually means cleaning the filter and using a dishwasher cleaner monthly. (But refer to your manual for specifics.) “If you’re doing all that and your dishes STILL aren’t getting cleaned, that’s when it’s time to call an appliance repair tech!” she says. Most people’s dishwashers really do work better than we think. We just have to trust them to work like they’re supposed to. The post Woman demonstrates why you shouldn’t rinse dishes before putting them in the dishwasher appeared first on Upworthy.

Megan was cleaning out her grandmother’s house in Los Angeles a few years ago when she found trash bags full of old comics. They belonged to her father, who’d worked as a paperboy in rural Maine during the Great Depression. As a teenager in the 1930s, he’d spent his earnings buying comics fresh off the rack. One stack he bought for $3 would eventually change his daughter’s life. She called Travis Landry from Retro Games Plus to take a look. The first bag was impressive. The second bag made Landry’s jaw drop. Inside was Detective Comics #27 from May 1939. The first appearance of Batman. It wasn’t in perfect condition. The comic was graded CGC 4.0, with a detached top staple, wear and tears on the front cover, and spine issues. But none of that mattered. Just having it was enough. “I would say conservatively, at an auction for this one comic, you’re going to be in the range of $200,000 to $300,000,” Landry told Megan. Her knees buckled. The collection, which Landry dubbed “The Paperboy Collection,” also included a prestigious run of Action Comics, Detective Comics #31 (which introduced the Batplane), and Platinum Age rarities. After the paperboy’s family moved from Maine to a dry desert town in California, the comics had been stored away. The stable climate preserved them in extraordinary original condition for nearly 90 years. The auction happened on April 22, 2025, at Rago Auctions in Lambertville, New Jersey. Detective Comics #27 sold for $683,000. The entire collection brought in $1,317,280. Megan split the money with her siblings and other family members. Detective Comics #27 is one of the holy grails of comic collecting. There are only four CGC 4.0 copies in existence, with just 20 graded higher. Higher-grade copies have sold for well over a million dollars. A CGC 7.0 copy sold for $1.83 million in February 2026. Before sending the comics off to be graded, Landry did something most collectors would consider insane: he actually read Detective Comics #27 and #31. “I know some collectors might think I’m crazy, but I did read them before sending them off to be graded,” he said. “I had to. They’re comics, and they’re meant to be read.” According to a MagnifyMoney survey of over 1,500 collectors, 83% believe their collections will pay off someday. Nearly six in ten Americans collect something, spending an average of $6,000 on their hobby. Most never see returns like this. The comments on Landry’s video were full of people sharing their own discovery stories. One person wrote about finding their dad’s baseball card collection from the 1950s in their grandparents’ attic: “A Hank Aaron rookie, lots of Mickey Mantles, a Roberto Clemente rookie, and much more. I couldn’t believe it.” Another said, “I actually gasped when he revealed the Detective Comics #27. What a treasure. And such a sweet lady. Her dad is taking care of her one last time.” The paperboy probably never imagined his $3 investment would turn into over half a million dollars. Still, he held onto those comics through the Depression, a cross-country move, and decades of storage. Eighty years later, they made his daughter a millionaire. The post Paperboy bought comics in the 1930s. His daughter found them and became a millionaire. appeared first on Upworthy.

Complaining can creep its way into conversation, and it happens very frequently. According to Will Bowen, author of A Complaint Free World, people complain an average of 15 to 30 times a day. Navigating a discussion with a complainer can be tricky. Most likely, you don’t know what to say as they express their gripes. Thankfully, communication expert and podcaster Jefferson Fisher has shared exactly what you should say to someone who is complaining to you. How to respond to complainers According to Fisher, there are three key steps to keep in mind when responding to someone complaining to you: Step #1: Make them keep going Rather than cut them off, Fisher explains why you should encourage the complainer to keep talking. “When someone is complaining to you, it’s typically a sign of a much bigger problem, meaning it’ll spread to other issues or even to other people,” he said. “So you want them to get it all out. That means that instead of criticizing the complainer, you’re going to create a path for them.” Step #2: Say, “Tell me more” Fisher says that using this phrase will stop you from becoming defensive when someone complains to you. “You keep doing that as often times as you need,” he said. “We’re getting them to empty their entire box of bad feelings. And what you’ll find is that what they originally came to complain about was just the tip of the iceberg.” Step #3: Empower them with solutions Once the complainer has aired their grievances, Fisher suggests saying one of the following phrases to help guide them toward a solution: “And what solution do you have so far?” “How do you propose to resolve this?” “What’s the answer?” “How do you typically handle this?” “How have you addressed this in the past?” According to Fisher, this helps teach people how to solve their own issues rather than rely on you for resolution. @justaskjefferson This is why complaining is so toxic. ♬ original sound – Jefferson Fisher Why complaining is toxic On his podcast, Fisher interviewed confidence expert Dr. Shadé Zahrai, who explained why complaining can be so toxic. “Complaining makes you more likely to be a negativity magnet,” she said. “People also don’t realize that when they complain, they are reliving a negative situation in vivid detail, which then activates the same parts of the brain which gears you towards negativity.” According to Zahrai, this is known as “The Victimizer” theory. “This is that inner voice that leads you to blame other people. To feel like life is so difficult for you and everyone else has it easier,” she explained. “And it’s the ‘Why me?’ voice.” Fisher piped in, “That’s an exhausting voice.” Zahrai concurred and added, “It’s an exhausting voice for you, [and] for the people around you. And then we don’t realize that it keeps us stuck.” The post Communication expert shares 3-step method to perfectly respond to complainers appeared first on Upworthy.