Month: June 2024

At 1:30 am on a Monday morning in February, an AMBER Alert went out in southern Louisiana about a missing 10-year-old girl from New Iberia. It was believed she had been kidnapped and driven away in a 2012 silver Nissan Altima.

A few hours later at 7 am, Dion Merrick and Brandon Antoine, sanitation workers for Pelican Waste, were on their daily route when they noticed a vehicle that fit the description in the alert.

The sanitation workers thought it was suspicious that a silver sedan was parked alone in a field in St. Martin Parish.

“Something told me, like just look, I said what is that car doing in that field like that? What the car doing? Guess what, that’s the dude with the little girl,” Merrick said in a Facebook Live video. “That’s God.”

The video has been seen over 1.5 million times since it was posted on Monday morning.

To prevent the possible kidnapper from escaping, they parked the large sanitation truck the wrong way on the highway to “Make sure they couldn’t get out,” Merrick said. Then, they called 911.

When police arrived they arrested Michael R. Sereal, the man whose car was mentioned in the AMBER Alert. The police were also able to safely recover the girl who appeared unharmed. She was later taken to the hospital to be evaluated by medical personnel.

The Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department’s online sex offender registry has a Michael Roy Sereal but authorities wouldn’t confirm it’s the same man.

The young girls’ family got in touch with the two men who saved her and have shown amazing gratitude. “I’m just so happy and blessed that I have actually seen the car and we actually responded like we were supposed to respond,” Merrick told KHOU.

Merrick hopes that his actions will inspire others to be proactive as well. “Don’t be scared if you see something. If you know something is wrong, report it,” Merrick said. “Call authorities because it could save someone’s life.”

The two men were applauded by the St. John Parish’s Sheriff, who offered to buy them lunch.

“I was just doing my job man. I was just doing my job and actually came across somebody who needed help,” Merrick said. “Got me tearing up.”

The AMBER Alert system was created in 1996 after nine-year-old Amber Hagerman was abducted and murdered while riding her bike in Texas. Since its inception, nearly seven in 10 AMBER alert cases have resulted in children being successfully reunited with their parents.

In 17% of the cases, the child’s recovery is a direct result of the alert.

As of December 2020, 1,029 children rescued specifically because of the system.

This article originally appeared on 02.09.21

Anyone who has dogs, children, or family members who refuse to use coasters will love this affordable and easy hack to fix scratches on a wooden table. Kait Schulhof, known as A Clean Bee, shows in a viral TikTok video that all you need are some walnuts and natural furniture polish to get your table looking scratch-free.

“Just scrub the walnut over any scratches, divots, or worn areas. As you scrub, oil is released from the walnut, which can eliminate the appearance of scratches in the wood,” Kait says in the video. To finish the job, she rubs the wood down with a simple homemade wood polish made from olive oil, distilled white vinegar and a citrus essential oil to give it a nice glossy shine.

​The hack is not only clever but also a big win for the environment, using simple, natural ingredients instead of harsh chemicals. “Every time I do this, I am just amazed by the results. It’s just one of those cleaning hacks that seriously works,” Kait says.

Did you know a walnut can repair scratches on wood surfaces? It’s like magic! 

@acleanbee

TikTok · Kait

Katie McDonald at Food52 is also a big fan of the walnut-and-polish hack. But she cautions that there may be better ideas for some types of wood. “This trick only works on finished wood and is most successful with lighter scratches,” she writes. “Deep grooves and darker woods will likely need the help of floor polish. Oh, and you want to hold off on using nuts if you have a precious antique; that’s better for a professional to look at.”

Some icons have truly left this world too early. It’s a tragedy when anyone doesn’t make it to see old age, but when it happens to a well-known public figure, it’s like a bit of their art and legacy dies with them. What might Freddie Mercury have created if he were granted the gift of long life? Bruce Lee? Princess Diana?

Their futures might be mere musings of our imagination, but thanks to a lot of creativity (and a little tech) we can now get a glimpse into what these celebrities might have looked like when they were older.

Alper Yesiltas, an Istanbul-based lawyer and photographer, created a photography series titled “As If Nothing Happened,” which features eerily realistic portraits of long gone celebrities in their golden years. To make the images as real looking as possible, Yesiltas incorporated various photo editing programs such as Adobe Lightroom and VSCO, as well as the AI photo-enhancing software Remini.

“The hardest part of the creative process for me is making the image feel ‘real’ to me,” Yesiltas wrote about his passion project. “The moment I like the most is when I think the image in front of me looks as if it was taken by a photographer.”

Yesiltas’ meticulousness paid off, because the results are uncanny.

Along with each photo, Yesiltas writes a bittersweet message “wishing” how things might have gone differently … as if nothing happened.

Freddie Mercury

See on Instagram

“I wish he hadn’t got that disease.”

There are plenty of amazing Freddie Mercury tributes and impersonators out there, but there will only ever be ONE Freddie Mercury.

Heath Ledger

See on Instagram

“I wish he hadn’t been affected by the exhaustion of his role.”

One of Ledger’s most notable roles is queer cowboy Ennis Del Mar in Ang Lee’s iconic 2005 romantic western drama “Brokeback Mountain.” In a time when queer storytelling was still taboo, Ledger’s honest and compassionate portrayal broke down a lot of barriers for future stories.

Though Ledger officially died due to an overdose, many believe it was his role of The Joker in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” that pushed him over the edge.

Janis Joplin

“I wish she hadn’t sought the inspiration she needed elsewhere.”

The powerful singer with electric stage presence is still one of the greatest female rock stars of all time. Scratch that—one of the greatest rock stars of all time, period.

Jimi Hendrix

“I wish he hadn’t sought the inspiration he needed elsewhere.”

Like Joplin and Ledger, Hendrix died due to an overdose—though many have speculated that it was instead the result of foul play.

Michael Jackson

See on Instagram

“I wish he hadn’t faced vitiligo.”

However questionable his personal life was, the King of Pop made some of the biggest contributions to music of all time. People continue to sing his songs, and likely will for a very, very long time.

Kurt Cobain

“I wish he had decided to stay.”

The insightful, poetic and troubled Cobain took his life at 27. His story is a cautionary tale that success does not necessarily help thwart struggles with mental health.

Bruce Lee

“I wish he hadn’t taken that painkiller that day.”

The actor and martial-arts expert died at 32, officially due to a harmful reaction to a painkiller. His philosophies around kung fu, however, are eternal.

John Lennon

See on Instagram

“I wish he hadn’t been in New York that day.”

Legendary artist and activist John Lennon was fatally wounded by a gunshot in December 1980. The last thing he talked about, revealed ex-wife Yoko Ono in an interview, was the desire to see his son before he went to sleep.

Elvis Presley

“I wish he decided to live a life where he paid more attention to the health of his heart.”

Had Presley not died of cardiac arrest, he would be 87 this year.

Tupac Shakur

See on Instagram

“I wish he hadn’t been involved in that event that would cause him to face the mafia.”

The cause of Tupac’s untimely death is also one of debate and speculation. According to some, he never died at all. What we can all agree on—he was one of hip-hop’s most iconic figures.

Princess Diana

See on Instagram

This one seems to be a new addition to the collection, so no wistful message. Although I’m sure the general sentiment is “I wish she were still here.”

AI-generated art is a controversial topic, to be sure. Some consider it a new, innovative medium. Others see it as devoid of any real creativity at all, as it’s produced by a machine, rather than a human. Many are concerned that, as is the case with many jobs that get machine automated, it will threaten the livelihood of actual illustrators.

Those concerns are certainly valid, but perhaps there’s a balance to be found here, as Yesiltas seems to have accomplished. Previously, another artist similarly created stunningly lifelike portraits of cartoon characters from “Encanto” and ”The Simpsons.” These works still required the human touch, and were carefully crafted over time rather than cracked out in mere seconds, as is the case with a lot of AI art.

At its best, AI art helps remind us, as Yesiltas puts it, that “anything imaginable can be shown in reality.” Which, at the end of the day, could be said for any art.

This article originally appeared on 9.23.22

Google and smart phones have been around so long that Gen Z doesn’t know a time before those things existed. They may have Googled what a card catalog was used for but plenty of them don’t know the pressure we all felt having to learn the dewy decimal system while walking around the library with a card with numbers scribbled on it.

They’ve never experienced the frustration of having an out of date Encyclopedia collection from the thrift store that was missing books “D” and “X-Z” when you had a research assignment due. Oh, sweet tech savvy – we not me generation, doesn’t understand that riding shot gun on a road trip meant you were suddenly a pirate with an Atlas map bigger than the dashboard.

Even as someone that was alive when having a rotary phone was the norm, I sometimes forget what life was like before all of the technological luxuries. It’s not surprising that Gen Z is confused on how we survived back then without knowledge at our fingertips, so when one of them asked, Gen X, Xennials and elder Millennials entered the chat.

Sarah Adelman posted a video to TikTok with the caption, “pls help I was born in 1997.” In the video she says she has a genuine question for older people and that’s when she asks, “what did you do before you could look something up?”

Adelman gives the example of something that isn’t in the dictionary or Encyclopedia. She wants to know what someone would do if there was a celebrity whose name you couldn’t remember or other trivial things like that.

“Would you go to the library? Like gen..and like okay, without Google Maps, like I know that there was MapQuest but before that like genuinely what would you do? Would you just accept not knowing,” the Gen Zer asks before saying she doesn’t think she would be able to survive without knowing.

Unfortunately for Adelman, the older generations informed her that this is exactly what we did back in the 1900s. We simply wondered about things that popped into our heads. In fact, since we knew there was no way of knowing the name of the actor that played on “Matlock” for one episode, we didn’t bother attempting to look it up. You’d either see them again in a rerun or it would come to you randomly while trying to locate a payphone.

“The name of an actor would come up to you 3 weeks later while you were eating a bowl of cereal,” one person writes.

“You would just be forever annoyed by it, keep it bookmarked in the back of your mind, then realize one day that dude’s name is Ray Liotta or something,” another commenter says.

“Ummm. I love how you reference Mapquest. We used maps. Just maps. Good ole paper maps,” someone writes.

“We just lived in blissful ignorance and then in the middle of a conversation about pretzels a week later we would just yell out the answer,” one person reveals.

To no one’s surprise Adelman did not like these answers. She replied to someone explaining that we simply wondered with, “I could never.” The official Google account even chimed in saying, “however it worked, sounds bad.”

Ehh, it wasn’t so bad. We didn’t know any different, but in a way Adelman had that good old fashioned pre-Google experience when she posed this question. You can watch the perplexed girl’s video below:

@sarah_adelman

Pls help i was born in 1997 #90s #genz #90skids #iphone #rant #question #funny

This article originally appeared on 9.7.23

It is pretty wild to consider that Millennials are now entering their 40s and no longer hold the mantle of the young and up-and-coming generation. According to Pew Research, Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996, so these days they range between the ages of 29 and 42.

These are the years when people begin to settle down, start families and experience the first uncomfortable signs of aging.

The Holderness Family is headed by a Gen X couple, Kim and Penn Holderness, who are best known for their viral comedy songs. Their latest video is about welcoming Millennials to their next phase in life, one that’s less about spending all night in the club and more about embracing a quieter, more practical life.

In this case, “the club” isn’t a loud place to get a Long Island iced tea but a state of mind where you’re more likely to appreciate a good walk for your mental health.

Holderness Family Music has over 797,000 subscribers on YouTube and over 230 million views since they started their page in 2011. They “create original music, song parodies, and skits to poke fun of ourselves, the world we live in, and (hopefully) make you laugh.”

The “Welcome to the Club, Millennials” video is a bit of a departure from the usual intergenerational bickering we’re accustomed to seeing on social media. Instead, Gen Xers open their doors to the Millennials entering the next phase in their lives. “Well, Gen X is here to say ‘don’t be bummed, come on in, welcome to the club,’” Penn raps.

According to the song, if you’re a Millennial and have done any of the following, you’re officially in “the club,” whether you know it or not:

​Hung a calendar on your fridge

Have strong opinions on who’s the best “Jeopardy!” host

Play Wordle

Wore reader glasses

Drink seltzers

Had Gen Z call your clothes “vintage”

Gone Christmas shopping in October

Had a three-day hangover

Gone to a movie theater because it serves food

Took a mental health walks

Bought a chair for your back

Grooved to supermarket music

Own plastic houseplants

Taken supplements

Saved money for a Disney vacation

Have zero f**cks to give

Still love Blink-182

Millennials who are a little leery of aging should be happy to learn that they may be in the happiest times of their lives. According to developmental psychologists, the period of life between ages 30 to 45 is known as “established adulthood” and is a time of life when people are happiest.

Even though people in this age group are stuck in the “career and care crunch,” where they are likely to juggle a job while caring for children or older relatives, this developmental stage is also very fulfilling.

“Yes, people were feeling overwhelmed and talked about having too much to do in too little time,” Clare Mehta, Professor of Psychology at Emmanuel College, wrote in The Conversation. “But they also talked about feeling profoundly satisfied. All of these things that were bringing them stress were also bringing them joy.”

This article originally appeared on 5.01.23

The internet is the place you can find people debating over just about any topic imaginable. Typically the debates slow down or go away when an expert comes out and says, “well actually.” But there’s one argument that refuses to simply go by the wayside and it rears its head every time someone dares to share a cooking video online that involves meat.

It seems inevitable that no matter what the layman chef does, its the wrong answer. The person washes their meat with some sort of vinegar concoction and people tell them they’re spreading germs. The person doesn’t wash their meat and people comment that they’re gross and should totally wash their chicken or whatever before cooking it.

These comments almost always turn into long comment threads over if people should or shouldn’t wash their meat before cooking it. This debate can get pretty heated but what is the right answer?

According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), “washing or rinsing meat or poultry increases the risk for cross-contamination in the kitchen, which can cause foodborne illness.”

They go on to explain that washing or rinsing meat products before cooking them can cause bacteria to be splashed on surfaces in the kitchen. Instead, the USDA says cooking the food to the correct temperature is the best way to kill germs and bacteria that can be found on or in the meat.

It is also never advised to use actual cleaning products on your chicken, steak, veal or any other meat, though some have admitted to doing just that. But this type of cleaning meat seems to be the outlier as most people who wash their meat products use food safe items like water, vinegar or some sort of citrus.

One chef describes how his mom used to wash her’s below:

@brandongonezshow

Are you team #wash your #meat or do you trust the experts who say, technically, it’s not necessary? 🤔 Link in bio for the full video!

Commenters were of course split when it came to his admission to not washing meat before cooking.

“Not eating his food,” one person writes.

“I’m sorry but you can clearly taste the difference between washed and unwashed meat,” another says.

“Restaurants don’t wash the meat,” someone points out.

Other videos show elaborate washing of poultry, with one person scrubbing the chicken with cut limes. One man made a video of him washing his chicken after being called out for not doing it previously, so naturally there were comments telling him that he should never wash chicken. It seems he is in a no win situation just like everyone else who dares to cook something on the internet.

See his chicken washing set up below:

@cheftimclowers

Replying to @denomarleyg6 now I am doing this for you. I am washing my chicken. Its a lretty simple process. A little lemon juice, vinegar, and water. Rinse off all what is called the slim and then drain it and pat it dry. #chicken #bbq #smokedmeat #howto #clean

“Please don’t wash/rinse poultry! It will spread bacteria to the surfaces surrounding the sink and increase the chances of cross contamination,” someone pleads.

“Completely unnecessary but people just LOVE to criticize!! Your videos are awesome keep up the good work,” another says.

“Mannnnnn thank you for washing that chicken,” a commenter praises.

There’s no winning in this debate but if we’re going with the experts, Mayo Clinic’s clinical dietician Anya Hill says, “Some people think they are supposed to wash their meats and chicken before cooking. I recommend not washing them because that puts you at risk for spreading the bacteria around your kitchen and around yourself.”

So if there’s any confusion on if you should or shouldn’t wash your meat before cooking it, it’s completely unnecessary unless of course it fell on the floor. In that case, it’s probably a good idea to give it a rinse, especially in this economy.

Optical illusions are wild. The way our brains perceive what our eyes see can be way off base, even when we’re sure about what we’re seeing.

Plenty of famous optical illusions have been created purposefully, from the Ames window that appears to be moving back and forth when it’s actually rotating 360 degrees to the spiral image that makes Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” look like it’s moving.

But sometimes optical illusions happen by accident. Those ones are even more fun because we know they aren’t a result of someone trying to trick our brains. Our brains do the tricking all by themselves.

The popular Massimo account on X shared a photo that appears to be a person and two dogs in the snow. The more you look at it, the more you see just that—two dogs and someone who is presumably their owner.

But there are not two dogs in this picture:

This is how optical illusions mess with your mind. nnFirst you see two dogs and their owner, and then…

— (@)

There are three dogs in this picture. Can you see the third?

Full confession time: I didn’t see it at first. Not even when someone explained that the “human” is actually a dog. My brain couldn’t see anything but a person with two legs, dressed all in black, with a furry hat and some kind of furry stole or jacket. My brain definitely did not see a black poodle, which is what the person actually is.

Are you looking at the photo and trying to see it, totally frustrated?

The big hint is that the poodle is looking toward the camera. The “hat” on the “person” is the poodle’s poofy tail, and the “scarf/stole” is the poodle’s head.

Once you see it, it fairly clear, but for many of us, our brains did not process it until it was explicitly drawn out.

@Rainmaker1973 That one took me AGES to see. nOwner is is a 3rd dog closer to the camera. The black fur hides the contours.

— (@)

As one person explained, the black fur hides the contours and shadows, so all our brains take in is the outline, which looks very much like a person facing away from us.

People’s reactions to the optical illusion were hilarious.

One person wrote, “10 years later: I still see two dogs and a man.”

10 years later:
I still see two dogs and a man

— Farhad (@farhadge) January 8, 2024

Another person wrote, “I agree with ChatGPT :)” and shared a screenshot of the infamous AI chatbot describing the photo as having a person in the foreground. Even when asked, “Could the ‘person’ be another dog?” ChatGPT said it’s possible, but not likely. Ha.

@Rainmaker1973 I agree with ChatGPT 🙂

— (@)

One reason we love optical illusions is that they remind us just how very human we are. Unlike a machine that takes in and spits out data, our brains perceive and interpret what our senses bring in—a quality that has helped us through our evolution. But the way our brains piece things together isn’t perfect. Even ChatGPT’s response is merely a reflection of our human imperfections at perception being mirrored back at us.

Sure is fun to play with how our brains work, though.

This article originally appeared on 1.8.24

The phrase “dog is a man’s best friend” takes on a whole new meaning in a hero dog story coming out of the Pacific Northwest.

On the afternoon of June 2, 2024, Brandon Garrett was driving on a forest service road in Baker County, Oregon, when he lost control of his truck on a curve and tumbled down the steep embankment into a ravine. The 62-year-old was traveling with his four dogs to a camp nearly four miles from the scene of the accident.

One of those dogs, Blue, ran away from the crash site and headed to the familiar campsite where Garrett was scheduled to meet a friend that afternoon. When Garrett was late and then Blue showed up alone, with glass in his snout, the friend Garrett was supposed to meet knew something wasn’t right.

Garrett’s friends and family searched for him through the night and finally spotted his truck in the ravine in the morning. The steep, unstable terrain, however, made it impossible for them to reach the truck without rappelling gear.

Garrett’s brother, Tyree Garrett, told the New York Times that he could see Garrett’s injured dogs near the truck. He called out his brother’s name but got no response. “It stopped my heart,” he said. “I just, God darn, thought for sure my brother was gone.”

Tyree drove to where he could get a cell signal and called for help. First responders from the Baker County Sheriff’s Office, Baker County Search and Rescue, Pine Valley Rural Fire District and Halfway Ambulance all responded to the scene. Sheriff Travis Ash located the truck and one of Garrett’s dogs in the ravine, but as he searched for a way down the embankment to access the creek, he heard a man’s voice yelling for help.

Garrett had crawled about 100 yards from the vehicle, where he spent the night in the cold and pouring rain. Sheriff Ash made his way down the steep, brushy slope to where Garrett lay and began to administer first aid. Meanwhile, Pine Valley Rural Fire volunteers and U.S. Forest Service employees used chainsaws to clear a path for the rescue team.

Getting Garrett to safety and the medical care he needed was no easy feat due to the treacherous landscape and where he was located. Using the cleared path, the team was able to get a rescue basket to Garrett, and the Baker County Search and Rescue Ropes Team set up a highline rope system to transport him across the ravine after he was secured in it.

Once he was safely across, Garrett was transported by ambulance to a Life Flight helicopter and then airlifted to a regional hospital.

“This was an incredibly technical rescue performed by Baker County Search and Rescue utilizing a highline rope system. BCSO was also grateful for Pine Valley Rural Fire Protection District, Halfway Ambulance, Life Flight and the U.S. Forest Service employees that provided assistance during the rescue,” Baker County Sheriff’s Office tells Upworthy. “This was truly a team effort!”

The sheriff’s office also reports that Garrett has been released from the hospital and is recovering at home. According to the New York Times, Garrett had injured his ankle and his body was badly battered and bruised. All of the dogs survived the crash, one with a broken hip and an injured femur and another with leg broken in two spots.

But thanks to good boy Blue’s memory and his making sure someone knew they needed help, everyone appears to be on the mend.

Find more images of the rescue on the Baker County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page.

It looks like J. Cole is done lying low in the aftermath of his aborted battle with Kendrick Lamar. After dropping the Kendrick-dissing track “7 Minute Drill,” having regrets about the song’s lukewarm reception, removing the song from streaming services, and seemingly going on vacation to let the dust settle, he returned in earnest with a new video for his Might Delete Later track, “Trae The Truth In Ibiza.”

The “Trae The Truth In Ibiza” video follows the lo-fi approach of the rest of the album’s rollout, incorporating camcorder footage of the two rappers on tour together in the titular Spanish isle. In much of the footage, we see a baby-faced J. Cole from early in his career as the dreadlocked, nearly 40-year-old version reflects on how far he’s come in the pursuit of his rap dreams.

Although J. Cole appeared reluctant to publicly promote himself in the aftermath of the Kendrick kerfuffle, a few of the artists for whom he’d previously recorded verses did drop their new songs featuring him. Future and Metro Boomin had previously secured a Cole feature on their second joint album called “Red Leather,” which dropped just as he was pondering withdrawing “7 Minute Drill” and just before that song debuted at No.6 on the Billboard Hot 100. Then, New York rising star Cash Cobain dropped “Grippy” with an experimental J. Cole verse that some fans weren’t feeling in light of the preceding month. Finally, Tems featured Cole on her debut album Born In The World on the song “Free Fall.” So, Cole hasn’t been completely invisible lately, but this is the first thing he’s released of his own accord — perhaps this means he’s ready to emerge and finally start working in earnest on releasing his long-waited album, The Fall Off.

Watch J. Cole’s “Trae The Truth In Ibiza” video above.

Might Delete Later is out now via Cole World Inc./Interscope Records.

Mare Of Easttown rolled out as a slow burn of a crime drama with fascinatingly grumpy characters that led to ratings success for HBO and the most heavily-streamed finale ever for then-HBO Max. Who doesn’t love a canned-cheese guzzling dogged detective who is too busy to care about her hair?

The show was intended to be a limited series, but as viewers know, that isn’t a term that’s set in stone (see the similarly-toned Big Little Lies), and now, there’s an update, three years after Winslet’s The Regime didn’t make waves, so some Mare Sheehan magic would be welcome. According to Variety, here’s where that issue stands:

Speaking to Variety for our new cover story on Kate Winslet, HBO’s head of drama Francesca Orsi said that after the 2021 Emmys, “we did run to have discussions about a Season 2. But it did feel too soon.” Now, though, “while there’s nothing in the works, we are having early discussions about whether it might be time to start thinking of building something. We might be willing to figure out with Mare, years later, picking her up — not on the heels of where she ended, but there have been years for the character that have passed. Who is she now?”

Previously, Kate Winslet didn’t sound too eager to dive back into the show’s dark material, which she called “frighteningly hard” to endure while filming. Still, the Titanic, Avatar 2, and Jude star made sure to declare how fond she was of the Mare character while speaking with Happy Sad Confused podcast, but the murderous subject matter did make Winslet “realize, ‘Oh my god, if I go to work now, it really hurts,’ and I have to look after myself. I have a family. I can’t just do that.”

Yet maybe it would be easier for Winslet to slip Mare’s boots on again than holding her breath for an ungodly amount of time for James Cameron. Fingers crossed that Winslet comes around and decides to let her hair be messy on TV again.

(Via Variety)