Month: January 2024

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.

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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.

Eric 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.

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.

After 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.

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Kara 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.

“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.”

This article originally appeared on 03.23.23

When it comes to getting a job, we live in frustrating times. On one hand, unemployment is near historic lows, so one would think that it’s easier to get a job. However, according to a study on LinkedIn, there is now an average of 1 job open to every 2 applicants. Whereas a year ago there was a job for every person looking.

To make things even more frustrating, the time it takes to hire a new employee is the longest in history, 44 days. The big reason is that potential employees are now subject to a longer interview process where they may speak with multiple people before the final decision.

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So, if you’re looking for a job and feel frustrated, you are not alone.

A lot of people are finding opportunities through LinkedIn. Deep Sardar has a great blog on how to use the platform to find a new gig and he covers everything from taking a decent headshot to writing a killer “About” section.

But one thing Sardar doesn’t cover is how to deal with some of LinkedIn’s cringe-worthy aspects, from the constant bragging to the self-important diatribes disguised as “thought leadership” to the surprising amount of TMI you’ll see on the platform.

Good Work created a funny video where an “investigative reporter” talks to people about why LinkedIn is “so weird.” In the video, the reporter recounts some of the most uncomfortable LinkedIn posts you’ve ever seen and talks to experts about why every post sounds like “Tony Robbins notes app.”

If you’ve been on the job hunt and could use a good laugh, check this out.

Why is LinkedIn so weird?

The thing about Gen X being in our 40s and 50s now is that we were never supposed to get “old.” Like, we’re the cool, aloof grunge generation of young tech geniuses. Most of the giants that everyone uses every day—Google, Amazon, YouTube—came from Gen X. Our generation is both “Friends” and “The Office.” We are, like, relevant, dammit.

And also, our backs hurt, we need reading glasses, our kids are in college and how in the name of Jennifer Aniston‘s skincare regimen did we get here?

It’s weird to reach the stage when there’s no doubt that you aren’t young anymore. Not that Gen X is old—50 is the new 30, you know—but we’re definitely not young. And it seems like every day there’s something new that comes along to shove that fact right in our faces. When did hair start growing out of that spot? Why do I suddenly hate driving at night? Why is this restaurant so loud? Does that skin on my arm look…crepey?

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As they so often do, Penn and Kim Holderness from The Holderness Family have captured the Gen X existential crisis in a video that has us both nodding a long and laughing out loud. Salt-n-Pepa in the waiting room at the doctor’s office? Uh, no. That’s a line we are not ready to cross yet. Nirvana being played on the Classic Rock station? Nope, not prepared for that, either.

Watch:

Hoo boy, the denial is real, isn’t it? We grew up on “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, for goodness sake, and it’s starting to feel like we made a wrong choice a chapter or two back and suddenly landed our entire generation in a time warp. This isn’t real, is it? Thirty years ago was the 1970s. That’s just a Gen X fact. So what if we’ve lived long enough for our high school fashions to go out of style and then back into style and then back out of style again?

Seriously, though, we can either lament our age and stage in life or we can laugh about it, and people are grateful to the Holdernesses for assisting with the latter. Gen X fans are also thrilled to see their own experiences being validated, because at this point, we’ve all had that moment in the grocery store or the waiting room when one of our jams came on and we immediately went into a panic.

“They were playing The Cure in the grocery store and I almost started crying,” wrote one commenter. “I mean, how ‘alternative’ can you be if you’re being played in Krogers? You guys are great! Thanks for making us laugh.”

“I couldn’t believe it when I heard Bohemian Rhapsody being played in Walmart,” shared another. “That was edgy in my day.”

“I know!!! Bon Jovi at the grocery store!!! That was my clue in!!” added another.

“Long live Gen Xers! We have to be strong!! We can get through this together!! #NKOTBmeetsAARP” wrote on commenter.You can find more from the Holderness Family on their Facebook page, their podcast and their website, theholdernessfamily.com.

A seriously impressive piece of technology grabbed a lot of attention at this year’s CES trade show convention in Las Vegas, Genesis Systems’ WaterCube. It’s a home and office appliance that’s about the size of an A/C unit and can produce up to 100 gallons of water daily from thin air. That’s the amount of water used by a typical family of 4.

The amount of water it can produce depends on the humidity levels, but Genesis Systems says it can even create water in dry environments.

Much like solar panels provide energy independence, this does the same for water.

“Our first mission is to sustainably solve global water scarcity,” said David Stuckenberg, who founded Genesis with his wife, Shannon, told Techxplore. “Once you have this plugged into your house…you can turn yourself off (from) the city water.”

“One of the challenges that we’re facing, in terms of making humanity sustainable, is the stuff we need for life,” he said, according to Techxplore. “Next to air, water is the most important thing.”

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The WC-100 WaterCube stands more than 3 feet tall, weighs close to 600 pounds and will cost around $20,000 to pre-order. So, even though you may not have a water bill anymore, you will have a pretty expensive monthly payment plan on a WaterCube for a few years.

But once it’s paid off, your water is free as long as you own the appliance.

Genesis Systems believes that the WaterCube creates “an infinite water source” that is “democratizing the water supply.”

Donald Trump’s third presidential campaign may be going inexplicably gangbusters. His brain? Not doing quite as hot. For months the former president has been making one surreal gaffe after another, be it forgetting who currently has his old job, mixing up the names of people he hates or saying weird things about magnets. Trump has tried to explain his screw-ups, albeit not very convincingly. Not even Fox News can come up with a good answer for stuff like forgetting there’s already been a World War II.

Per Raw Story, Mollie Hemingway, a contributor to the conservative news network was asked by host Howard Kurtz to explain Trump’s repeated brain farts. She tried to spin one: him sleepily slurring his way through the word “institute.” That one, at least, was “clearly a typo on the teleprompter or a misread of the teleprompter.”

But was it? Hemingway didn’t even try with some of Trump’s other farty pronouncements, like pronouncing “solving” as “salving” or not being able to say the word “smallest.” Instead she moved onto some of Joe Biden’s gaffes, saying, “I don’t even know what to say because it’s so hard for me to understand him.”

But Leslie Marshall, a lefty Fox News regular, wasn’t having it.

“Unlike Mollie, I’m not gonna make excuses for, you know, Joe Biden and say that one slur is, you know, a typo and the other is not, you know, sorry, no,” she said. “Everybody makes mistakes, Howie, like you said, you know, I certainly do it.”

So far many Republican voters have been fine with Trump’s mental hiccups, even with him straight-up vowing to be a dictator. But some on the left, like SNL’s Colin Jost, have started to worry about both Trump and Biden and whether having the two frontrunners duke it out again isn’t actually “elder abuse.”

You can watch the segment in the video below.

(Via Raw Story)

The Baltimore Ravens found themselves in serious danger in the second quarter of the AFC Championship Game when Lamar Jackson got stripsacked deep in his own end while already trailing 14-7 to the Kansas City Chiefs.

However, for the first time all game the Ravens defense was able to get a stop, stuffing an Isiah Pacheco rush attempt on 4th and inches, breathing a bit of life into their hopes of getting back into the game. On the ensuing drive, the Ravens weren’t able to do much against the pressure of Kansas City’s defense, but Jackson produced one of the most incredible individual efforts of this postseason to get them a first down — which allowed them to flip the field a bit.

On a second down play, Jackson tried to hit Justice Hill out on the sideline but had the ball batted straight up in the air at the line of scrimmage. While this normally ends in a disaster for the offense, Jackson somehow broke on the ball and caught his own pass in traffic, then bolted up field for a 14-yard gain and a first down.

This alternate angle shows exactly how close it was to another disastrous turnover for Baltimore, and how incredible a play it was from Jackson to get himself to the ball and snag it on the run to get a first down.

Baltimore’s lone touchdown of the game came on another broken play orchestrated by Lamar’s elusiveness, as he eluded a sack and then hit Zay Flowers downfield, and it seems like more heroics from Jackson are going to be necessary if the Ravens are going to claw their way back into the game and win.

As they did with Rihanna in 2023, fans frantically played detective to determine if Halle Bailey was expecting her first child. For months, the “Angel” singer managed to avoid discussing future plans with her boyfriend DDG. That all changed on January 6, when the first-time parents confirmed the birth of their son, Halo.

Now that the news is out, Bailey has begun sharing content she recorded while pregnant. But some aren’t particularly fond of the light-hearted material, given how secretive Bailey had been. Some have even called her out for gaslighting and lying to her followers when they asked if she was with child. Well, Bailey has had enough. On January 28, Bailey took to X (formerly Twitter) to slam folks for pushing the narrative.

“I never lied or even said anything about it, honey,” she wrote. “Making a joke about my nose was the farthest I went. I’ll never understand why you are mad i protected my own peace, wouldn’t you do the same? And I’m gonna share my pics now if I want to because my son is here safely. If you don’t wanna see it, just keep scrolling, baby LOL. God bless you! ”

Bailey previously revealed that she stirred clear from social media to maintain her sanity while pregnant. Her sister, Uproxx cover star Chlöe, echoed this decision and encouraged her to enjoy the pregnancy offline to avoid people’s opinions online.

With filming for Wicked wrapped, Ariana Grande is moving full steam ahead with her music ventures. So far, she’s treated fans to the first taste of her forthcoming album, Eternal Sunshine. Shortly after the lead single “Yes, And?” released, it quickly shot up to the top of the music charts.

Gratefully for the unwavering support from her fans, Grande took to her official Instagram page to tease part of the upcoming album’s tracklist. In the graphic captured by Pop Crave, Grande seemed to confirm Eternal Sunshine will feature 13 tracks. Grande also shared the name of two unreleased songs: “Intro (End Of The World)” and the titular “Eternal Sunshine.”

In a separate post, Grande penned a note to celebrate “Yes, And?” reaching No. 1 on the music charts. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart to my fans,” she wrote. “The most incredible angels in the world, for the love you have shown this song and me. It is overwhelming and so sincerely moving to see how many of you this song has resonated with, and it is such a gift to feel so seen and held by you! Thank you for your positivity, for your support, and for everything. You have no idea how much you mean to me. This is absolutely because of and entirely for you. Thank you.”

Eternal Sunshine is due out on 3/8 via Republic. Find more information here.

Pop quiz: Which American president is the biggest whiner? The answer is almost certainly Donald Trump. (Who knows, maybe Rutherford B. Hayes was secretly an even bigger self-pitying dork.) The former president has been out on the campaign trail for months, and apart from vowing to be a dictator, he hasn’t said much about policy. What he likes to yammer about his himself and how persecuted he is (for allegedly committing lots of crimes). How bad are things for him? So bad, he claims, that the president who oversaw a freaking civil war has nothing on him.

Per Mediaite, Trump was in Las Vegas Saturday, where he gushed about how strong he is when it comes to adversity.

“People say, ‘How do you do it, sir? How do you do it?’” Trump crowed. “I get two questions. If you had it to do again, would you do it? Because, you know, in history, they say the president that was treated the worst was Abraham Lincoln. But he had the Civil War, you know. So he had a little Civil War going, Abraham Lincoln.”

A ”little Civil War” is certainly a way to describe that, although he has a recent history of saying surreal things about an event that almost cut the nation in half. He thought the whole affair could have been “negotiated.” Also perhaps he forgot that Lincoln was treated so badly that he was shot in the head.

But we digress. Trump then kept comparing his woes to previous American presidents.

“And Jackson was treated very badly, and a couple of others were treated. Andrew Jackson, he was treated very badly and a few others, and I haven’t seen the new list,” he explained. “But if I’m not number one over Abraham Lincoln, I will be very disappointed because I don’t believe any presidents ever been. And they do that because their policies can’t work. This is the only way.”

There’s a chance this guy, who thinks Abraham Lincoln had it easy compared to him, could get his old job back. If he does, surely it will be a super-sized version of the nightmare he wrought for four years, when some of his staffers were reportedly high on illegally distributed drugs.

(Via Mediaite)

Adele’s stint in Las Vegas has nearly come to an end. Even if you haven’t attended the “Easy On Me” singer’s Weekends With Adele residency, from the clips circulating online, you’ve laughed, cried, and jammed out from the comfort of your couch. On Saturday, January 27, she hinted that she isn’t done just yet.

During her latest residency show, Adele revealed her future performance plans. While chatting with the sold-out crowd, she confirmed that she’ll hit the road for a tour following the release of her next full-length studio album. “I just don’t think I’m gonna write an album for quite some time,” she said. “But next time I do, I’ll come to wherever it is you live.”

The news came as a surprise to fans due to Adele’s past remarks about touring. In December, during a performance, Adele opened up about her fear of touring. “I love making music,” she said. “But there is something about performing live that actually terrifies me and fills me with dread. That is why I am not a big touring artist. I did it last time to prove I could do it. But this experience of being in a room this size, I think I might be a live artist for the rest of my life.”

Given Adele’s desire to expand her family with her husband, Rich Paul, it could be a long time before another tour begins.