A passenger in Hiroshima, Japan, got into a taxi and ended up hearing a story that’s stayed with him ever since. The driver was chatty, and at some point during the ride, the passenger noticed a photo attached to the dashboard: a young woman in a graduation gown. “Is that your daughter?” he asked, according to his post on X. The driver confirmed that it was. She’d just graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering. He said he was proud of her, and that she was the reason he drove a taxi. Man driving as the sun sets. Photo credit: Canva The passenger didn’t understand what he meant, so the driver explained. “I used to be an engineer. Good job, good money. But very busy. Many nights I work late, weekends I work. I miss her childhood.” Then came the thing his daughter said that changed everything. “She said, ‘I remember mom reading to me. I remember grandma cooking. I don’t remember you.’ That hurt very much.” So he quit. He became a taxi driver because it allowed him to control his own hours. He could be home when she got back from school. He could cook meals for her. He could help with homework. His wife and family thought he was crazy for leaving a stable, high-paying job, but he understood what he was trading. Now they’re close. They call each other every week. When the passenger asked whether he regretted the choice, the driver’s answer was immediate. “Regret? No. Money comes and goes. Time only goes. I chose time. That was the right choice.” Got in a taxi in Hiroshima. The driver had a photo taped to his dashboard. Young woman in a graduation gown.We drove in silence for a bit. Then I asked "is that your daughter?"He said "yes. She graduated university last year. Mechanical engineering. Very smart."I said…— 6ɪx✦ (@ok6ixx) May 13, 2026 The struggle he described is common. Research from the Modern Family Index found that 79% of working parents feel like they have to choose between their jobs and their families. Eighty percent said the workforce is still outdated because it hasn’t adjusted to support the actual needs of modern working parents. The driver found his own solution. It cost him career advancement and a bigger paycheck, but his daughter remembers him now. The story, shared on X by @ok6ixx on May 13, received more than 46,000 views. One commenter pointed out the irony: “So how does she make time for her family doing the same engineering job?” It’s a fair question. She graduated into the same career her father left behind. Whether she’ll face the same choice he did is something only time will tell. The post Cabbie reveals how daughter’s confession led him to quit job as high-paid engineer appeared first on Upworthy.

Predicting the future has never been possible, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying. It’s also always fun to see how predictions about the future from the past actually pan out. Thankfully, the BBC Archive holds videos from the 1980s in which experts tried to predict what life would be like decades into the future—in other words, now. In 1989, the Tomorrow’s World series imagined what homes would be like in 2020. It’s fascinating to see what it predicted accurately and what never materialized. What they got right and wrong about today’s homes Futurist Christine MacNulty shared insights from her “Home of the Future” project, explaining what people in the future (us) would want from their homes. “They’ll want all the benefits of modern technology but without all this cluttered and complex gadgetry that we have today,” she said. “They’ll want homes that work for them. By 2020, all of this will be possible. We’ll have things under control without all of these knobs and buttons. And what’s more, the technology itself will be embedded in the very fabric of the house and its furnishings.” The video shows people walking through a set that represents a future home but looks hilariously retro-1990s to the modern eye. “So the idea is once all the clutter of technology has gone, you’ll be able to furnish your rooms in any style you like,” a woman said. Unfortunately, tech clutter is still a thing. Photo credit: Canva Looking at the number of cord organizers on the market, I’m not sure we’ve quite tackled technology clutter. But with the ubiquity of digital displays, they were right about the knobs-and-buttons part. As for technology being embedded in the fabric of the house? Well, yes and no. They basically predicted the “smart home,” but went a bit too far “You won’t actually be able to see the technology, but it will be there doing its job without getting in your way,” the video predicted. “That means the lights automatically switch off and on as you walk between rooms, and the home learns how bright you like them. A simple command gives you music, perhaps piped in from a sound library.” So far, so good. Between Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and other smart home gadgets, we’re basically there. But then the prediction veered a bit off course. “No more power points,” said a man. “Plugs become pads picking up power from anywhere on the wall. And even windows will take an active part in the home.” Power walls that can charge anything from anywhere? That would be nice, but alas, we’re still using old-timey outlets, albeit sometimes with smart features. And windows, while arguably better designed than they were in the 1980s, have not really become the futuristic window-video-display-screen combos they anticipated. In the 2020s, a window is usually just a window. Photo credit: Canva They predicted energy-efficient homes, but went a little overboard “By 2020, there will have been enormous pressure on us to cut down on our burning of fossil fuels to protect the environment,” said MacNulty. “This means that energy management in our homes will become of critical importance.” True, true. However, the materials displayed in the video that were predicted to reduce “heating bills to almost zero” do not seem to have panned out. On the other hand, they did get the smart-heating part pretty dead-on. “The heating system could learn your daily routine and only heat the rooms that you’ll be using,” the video explained. “The living room would be at just the right temperature as you come downstairs.” No, most of our homes don’t have smart heating because most of us don’t live in new homes or homes with newer HVAC systems. But the technology is readily available. Smart home technology was predicted back in the 1980s. Photo credit: Canva Ultimately, the segment concluded with basically where we are now: “The crucial point is that there’ll be no single home of the future. There’ll be millions of different ones. We choose the type of home we want to live in; the technology takes a back seat.” Some of us choose to live in old homes with zero smart features. Others build new homes with all the latest tech bells and whistles. But what the futurists of the 1980s may not have predicted was how hard it would be for so many people to actually afford a home, new, old, smart, or otherwise. Let’s hope that turns around before another three decades pass. The post In 1989, the BBC predicted what homes would be like in 2020. Here’s what they got right and wrong. appeared first on Upworthy.

When we think of people in Victorian times, it’s hard not to conjure up images of rigid poses and stoic, serious faces. After all, these were the images depicted in virtually every photograph from the time period. But thanks to one college student with a crush and a hidden camera, we do have a much more intimate glimpse into Victorian life. In 1893, Carl Størmer was 19 years old and studying mathematics at the Royal Frederick University (now the University of Oslo) when he did what so many men his age do: he fell smitten with a girl, and was too shy to approach her. Portrait of Carl Størmer Wikipedia A hidden camera with an unexpected purpose Wanting to capture a secret snapshot of his love interest, Størmer purchased a C.P. Stirn Concealed Vest Spy Camera: a device that looks something like a cartoonishly large pocketwatch, with a lens that can fit through a button hole, and a cable release that can be pulled through the pocket, allowing the user to take photos on the sly. While originally intended for general espionage and crime prevention, Størmer stumbled upon a different use for this spy camera. Not only did he successfully get a candid shot of his paramour, he got what we now refer to as “man on the street photos” of Victorian society. “I strolled down Carl Johan (street), found me a victim, greeted, got a gentle smile and pulled. Six images at a time and then I went home to switch the plate,” he told the Hallvard Journal in 1942. Victorian life, but not as we usually imagine it Størmer produced more than 500 photographs depicting Victorians as we’ve never seen them before. Regular, everyday people grinning, relaxed, tipping their hats, eyeing Størmer suspiciously—a far cry from the posed and formal portraits we see in history books. In fact, aside from the attire, these people look like they could easily be plopped into our own timeline. That liveliness captured is what makes this collection feel so magical, and really not something we can get with previous eras that never even dreamt of this kind of technology. From secret street photos to scientific breakthroughs Størmer would go on to apply his passion for photography into his scientific work, where he made several significant contributions…the most notable to us normies being that he found a way to successfully photograph the Northern Lights. At nearly 70, Størmer would debut his fascinating collection of street photographs in its entirety—previously he’d only shown a small portion—and many of these can still be viewed today in Norway’s Digitalt Museum. Recently, these photos were colorized and reanimated using AI software, making them feel like something out of a Gilded Age episode.  As for the girl, a relationship between her and Størmer never culminated, but he would get to tell her years later of the role she unwittingly played in his legacy. Photography was an entirely new world Størmer wasn’t the only man of his time period to blaze the photography trail, with Nikola Tesla experimenting with selfies and Eduard Spelterini trying his hand at aerial photography. One can only imagine the boundlessness felt as people explored this entirely new art form. And sure, photography continues to advance, but it’s certainly something we take for granted now. Who could have guessed that one lovestruck college student with a hidden camera would accidentally give us a version of Victorian life we rarely get to see? But in the process, he also gave us a valuable lesson: that no matter the era, people will always be people. The post In 1890, a college student hid a camera in his vest, giving us the first candid look at Victorian life appeared first on Upworthy.

Legendary Japanese writer-director Akira Kurosawa may not be a familiar name to many in the United States, but his movies have inspired some of the most important American films ever made. Kurosawa’s 1954 epic The Seven Samurai was later remade as an American Western, The Magnificent Seven (1960). Kurosawa’s Samurai classic Yojimbo (1961) would serve as the basis for Clint Eastwood’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964), and The Hidden Fortress (1958) was a huge inspiration for George Lucas’s Star Wars (1977) (later renamed Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope). Although Star Wars isn’t an outright remake of The Hidden Fortress, it bears a lot of similarities. The Hidden Fortress tells the story of two greedy, bumbling peasants, Tahei and Matashichi, who get swept up in a general Rokurota’s campaign to rescue a headstrong princess and bring her back home across enemy lines. At the end of the film, Rokurota has a sword duel with a former student, Tadokoro, and spares his life. “The one thing that really struck me about Hidden Fortress and intrigued me was the fact that the story was told from the two lowest characters,” Lucas recalled. “I decided that that would be a nice way to tell the Star Wars story, which is to take the two lowliest characters, as Kurosawa did, and tell the story from their point of view, which in the Star Wars case is the two droids. That was the strongest influence, actually.” Lucas also admits that in early drafts of Star Wars, there were more parallels with Princess Leia having a closer relationship with the old general, Obi-Wan Kenobi. “The fact that there was a princess trying to get through enemy lines and everything, I think was more of a coincidence than anything else because in my film the princess is more a stand-and-fight kind of princess,” Lucas continues. “In the beginning, in some of the first drafts, I had a little bit more of her and a Jedi, an older Jedi, trying to escape, and that sort of thing, but then it evolved.” Here are six of the biggest similarities between The Hidden Fortress and Star Wars: Princess Leia / Princess Yuki Both princesses had to be rescued from their respective groups of evil-doers who killed their people, whether it’s the Galactic Empire or the Yamana clan. They also share similar personalities; rather than being damsels in distress, they are both smart, confident, and capable leaders of their rebellions. Obi-Wan Kenobi / Rokurota Makabe Both films feature old, brave generals who must conceal their true identities and have a climactic duel with an old foe. The difference is that Kenobi, the student of Darth Vader, is killed by the Sith Lord. Rokurota faces his former student, Hyoe Tadokoro, and comes away victorious. In The Hidden Fortress, Rokurota is played by Toshiro Mifune, who was the lead in many of Kurosawa’s biggest pictures, including The Seven Samurai, Rashomon (1950), Yojimbo, and Throne of Blood (1957). Lucas approached Mifune to play Kenobi, and when he turned him down, he offered him the role of Darth Vader. “I heard from my father that he was offered the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi, but he was concerned about how the film would look and that it would cheapen the image of samurai, on which George Lucas had based a lot of the character and fighting style,” Mika Mifune told The Guardian in 2015. “At the time, sci-fi movies still looked quite cheap as the effects were not advanced, and he had a lot of samurai pride,” Mika said. “So then, there was talk about him taking the Darth Vader role as his face would be covered, but in the end, he turned that down too.” Droids / Matashichi and Tahei The beginning of Star Wars is told from the perspective of droids R2-D2 and C-3PO, who jettison the rebel Blockade Runner in time to avoid capture by the Empire. They are separated by an argument and reunite when they encounter Luke Skywalker and Kenobi, eventually joining them to help save the princess. In The Hidden Fortress, the movie begins with Tahei and Matashichi, who, after a fight and a separation, reunite and unwittingly become involved in Rokurota’s mission to smuggle Yuki through enemy territory. Cinematic style One of the most noticeable editing techniques the films share is the use of wipes to transition between scenes, whether it’s a slow fade across the screen or the clockwise-motion wipe. These types of transitions were common in earlier, low-budget serial films. Similar crests The crests of the Yamana clan, the Galactic Empire, and the First Order look surprisingly similar. https://www.tumblr.com/nernlenernlenernle/145013672143/the-crest-of-the-yamana-clan-as-seen-in-the-hidden Star Wars is a wonderful tribute to Kurosawa’s films, and Lucas’s obvious passion for his films helped raise awareness of the director’s work. Lucas even helped raise money and got an executive producer credit on his 1980 film Kagemusha. However, Kurosawa was far from the only inspiration for Star Wars. One can also point to other works, including Frank Herbert’s Dune novels and Joseph Campbell’s The Hero of a Thousand Faces. Luke Skywalker’s character arc in Star Wars traces back thousands of years to the hero’s journey, a specific plot device used in works such as The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey. “There’s a book written and a theory among writers that there are only 32 plots and that it’s all the same 32 plots retold,” Lucas says. “In a way, I’m not sure that’s exactly true, but once you get into writing stories or reading stories or studying the whole issue of stories, you find out that most stories are repeated over and over again.” The post ‘The Hidden Fortress’: Why we’d never have ‘Star Wars’ without this 1958 Japanese classic appeared first on Upworthy.

A great horned owl found covered in concrete has flown to freedom after six months of care at a Utah sanctuary. A good Samaritan found him in a concrete mixer in October and called the Best Friends Animal Society headquarters 80 miles away in Kanab. After removing the concrete, the team at the nonprofit’s wildlife […] The post Owl Found in Concrete Gets Feather Transplant So it Can Fly Silently Again into the Wild (Watch) appeared first on Good News Network.