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Sometimes life plays out just like a sitcom.

This is certainly the case for a California resident named Michael who goes byu/lazybear90 on Reddit. On May 26, Michael detailed an epic donation-to-charity fail to the r/TIFU subreddit, and it’s almost too far-fetched to believe, and definitely too funny not to share.

So the story goes: Michael had just moved into a new three-unit apartment building in San Francisco with his wife. Their neighbor, nicknamed “Joe” for the story, was a 70-something year old retired veteran and devout Hindu priest.

Wanting to support his new neighbor, Michael generously agreed to donate $150 to a community in Bangladesh through GoFundMe.

What a nice gesture. Except for one not-so-tiny issue. Michael donated $15,000 instead.

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“I get a text on my phone warning me of an unusually large transaction on my credit card. I’m confused and swipe to open the text message. It says I have made a payment of $15,041 to GoFundMe. Immediately I’m sweating. How could I have donated FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS?” he wrote on Reddit.

After retracing his steps, Michael realized he typed part of his credit card number into the donation box by mistake. “Just like that 150 became 15041. Yikes.”

Michael immediately contacted GoFundMe ,who assured him that there’s “no need to worry” since can process a refund in 3-7 business days.

Problem solved, right? Wrong.

Michale continued: “then I ask the agent if the charity will be able to see the donation on the GoFundMe page until it is refunded. ‘What do you mean?’ the agent asks me. ‘What do YOU mean what do I mean?’ was my response. ‘Will they be able to see the $15,041 donation?!’” The answer, woefully, was yes.

Michael planned on telling Joe what had happened the next morning, hopefully before too much info had spread. But it was already too late by then. He awoke to 40+ Facebook notifications, and was sent many messages by one name in particular with a Hindu name.

One of those messages revealed that the man was indeed from Bangladesh, and was surrounded by “dozens of impoverished and hungry people holding bags of food” who not only applauded Michael but thanked him BY NAME for the generous donation. Oy vey.

“At this point, I’ve leapt out of my bed and I’m pacing. Part of me wants to scream, part of me wants to crack up laughing. I start swiping through the man’s messages, and it is picture after picture after picture of poor Bangladeshis thanking me for my kind donation. Literally hundreds of photos of frail, elderly, disabled, and malnourished individuals holding signs with my name. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Michael.” Good grief, will the hits never stop coming?

Luckily, this is where the story really turns around.

After getting his refund, Michael ended up donating $1500 rather than $150 after seeing how the community responded, and was told that it would still go “very far for urgent food relief.” Then, folks who had seen Michael’s story on Reddit began donating to the same GoFundMe page.

THEN, the story was read out loud on the super popular Youtube channel Smosh Pit as part of its series “Reading Reddit Stories,” and things really took off. So many “heard about this on Smosh” donations began rolling that the fundraiser now has over $120,000.

In a follow up post, Michael thanked the Reddit community for turning his snafu into a bona fide miracle. Apparently the charity was running on fumes and looking to cancel some of its programs before sudden windfall. In his view, he not only helped a great cause, he got a funny story out of it. A total win-win in the end.

If you’d like to donate to the Bangladeshi community from this story, you can find the GoFundMe here. Just be sure to double check your donation amount!

There’s no better way to kick off summer than with an epic party — complete with live music, good vibes, and a cold drink in hand. As seen in the video above, Smirnoff did just that at Webster Hall in New York City to celebrate the debut of Smirnoff ICE’s fresh new look and the start of The Smirnoff ICE Relaunch Tour. Taking over one of NYC’s most iconic music venues, the event featured highly anticipated performances by hip-hop legends and new artists alike, to bring together modern flavors and classic tastes.

The Smirnoff Ice Relaunch Tour kick-off party didn’t stop at the fire music acts, either. Guests were also treated to a trip down memory lane with their favorite drinks, throwback experiences, Smirnoff swag, and endless fun. From the giant Smirnoff-infused ice sculpture to the spray-painted Y2K-inspired hats and arcade games, the modern yet nostalgic activations proved that “true classics never fade, they only get better.” This unforgettable celebration was just the beginning, though.

Smirnoff Ice has already made waves with events in New York, Dallas, and Los Angeles, but you can still catch the tour in Charlotte, Indianapolis, Lake of the Ozarks, and Atlanta. The tour showcases the brand’s “same sip, new swag” flavor alongside performances from some of music’s most coveted “OG” and emerging artists.

Get your tickets here.

Over the weekend, during Pink‘s concert at BST Hyde Park in London, the pop star had a bag of a fan’s mother’s ashes thrown at her onstager. “I don’t know how I feel about this,” the “Just Give Me A Reason” singer reacted.

At that same gig, Pink was also gifted a wheel of brie. In a viral clip, the musician sees an audience member holding out the cheese and accepts it into her hands. She looks grateful. After all, delicious dairy is much better than receiving a deceased person’s remains.

In February, Pink caught fire after she was perceived as shading Christina Aguilera in an interview. She had to address the situation on social media to clear up all the gossip. “Y’all are nuts,” she wrote. “Xtina had sh*t to do with who was on that song. If you don’t know by now- I’m not ‘shading’ someone by telling it over and over and over what actually happened. I’m zero percent interested in your f*cking drama. If you haven’t noticed- I’m a little busy selling. And by selling- I mean tickets and albums and bake sales and sh*t. Also- I kissed xtinas mouth. I don’t need to kiss her ass.”

Jennifer Lawrence had a very successful early career. By 20 she had her first Oscar nomination. By 22 she had her first Oscar and her first franchise. (Before all that, she was in the main cast of The Bill Engvall Show.) But before she landed The Hunger Games, she tried out for another franchise — and was “immediately” told where to go.

“I auditioned for ‘Twilight,’” Lawrence revealed on Spotify’s podcast The Rewatchables earlier this month (as caught by Variety). It didn’t go so hot. “They turned me down immediately. I didn’t even get a callback.”

Lawrence said if she had gotten Twilight, whose first film came out in 2008, her life would have been “totally different.” In fact, after seeing how the public hounded the actress who did get the role, Kristen Stewart — not to mention Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner — she came close to turning down Katniss Everdeen. She said she “almost didn’t do Hunger Games because Twilight had come out and that fandom had happened.”

She, of course, did do The Hunger Games, but it took some thinking.

“When I was trying to talk to people about making this decision after [Hunger Games] got offered to me, it was hard to explain to people… this level of fame,” Lawrence explained. “I assumed it was going to be the Twilight level of fame and that was never something I had in mind. I never wanted to be the most famous person on the planet. That’s a very different life than I pictured for me.”

The Hunger Games still catapulted Lawrence to superstardom, and she still had to “counteract the franchise-ness” of that decision. But it doesn’t sound like it ever got to Twilight levels. In fact, she said she imagines still have to deal with mega-fame had she done Twilight.

The one-two punch in 2012 of The Hunger Games and The Silver Linings Playbook, for which won an Academy Award, did make her huge, but she was famous for two very different things: a hugely popular franchise and a hugely popular drama-comedy. Now she can do whatever she wants, including making an old school raunch comedies and getting “violently” sick on her recent episode of Hot Ones.

(Via Variety)

Liz Cheney has always been an unlikely ally of the Democratic party. Before she turned on him over the Jan. 6 riot, the former Wyoming GOP representative — and, don’t forget, daughter of Dick freakin’ Cheney — voted with Donald Trump 92.9% of the time. She doesn’t hold many positions progressives would share. But she sacrificed her House seat to help make the public aware of the dangers of re-electing Trump (and gloating when his cronies crash and burn). She also has an enjoyably grim take on modern politics.

As per The Washington Post, Cheney spoke at the 92nd St Y in Manhattan on Monday night, where she threw in her two cents on the idea of Trump returning to the White House after losing in 2020.

“Look, I think that the country right now faces hugely challenging and fundamentally important issues,” Cheney told the crowd. “And what we’ve done in our politics is create a situation where we’re electing idiots.”

Granted, even though she was talking about Trump, she didn’t name the other “idiots” that made her use the plural version of the term. She could have been intimating both sides of the aisle elect dolts. But she went on to suggest she’s not calling out both sides.

“And so, I don’t look at it through the lens of, is this what I should do or what I shouldn’t do,” she said. “I look at it through the lens of, how do we elect serious people? And I think electing serious people can’t be partisan.”

Saying that it’s “partisan” to elect serious people implies that Cheney thinks that right now, it’s not her longtime party that’s doing that.

Cheney then dug in deeper into her animosity towards the current GOP presidential primary frontrunner, who has other fish to fry beyond his third campaign.

“You know, because of the situation that we’re in,” Cheney said, “where we have a major-party candidate who’s trying to unravel our democracy — and I don’t say that lightly — we have to think about, all right, what kinds of alliances are necessary to defeat him, and those are the alliances we’ve got to build across party lines.” She added that she is “not going to do anything that would help Donald Trump.”

Cheney has floated the idea of running against Trump, though during the conversation she suggested she’d changed her mind. If she did, she might wind up being an even bigger Trump critic than his old pal Chris Christie.

(Via The Post)

After 6 seasons of plotting and weaseling, the 7th and final season of Billions promises to wrap things up with a big bow that’s been single-sourced from a rare silkworm and handsewn by 100-year-old master bow artisans. It’s been a remarkable run watching multiple games of cat and also-cat play out on the seedy playground of Wall Street, and now that the show has ballooned into a beautiful ensemble, it’s ready to pop.

Here’s the official teaser synopsis for the final season:

“In season seven, alliances are turned on their heads. Old wounds are weaponized. Loyalties are tested. Betrayal takes on epic proportions. Enemies become wary friends. And Bobby Axelrod returns, as the stakes grow from Wall Street to the world.”

Naturally, Paul Giamatti, Corey Stoll, and Maggie Siff are back to play alongside the previously exiled Axe (Damian Lewis). As much as Stoll has done yeoman’s work to fill the void, this story was always meant to end with Chuck and the crafty billionaire (whether facing off or teaming up).

The season lands on Paramount+ for subscribers with the Showtime package on August 11st before an official Showtime launch on August 13th. Plus, Showtime doesn’t want the party to end. They’ve enlisted creators Brian Koppelman and David Levien to build out the Billionsverse with multiple projects about ostensibly greedy people, so we can keep luxuriating in witty dialogue from tax-evaders eating sushi that costs more than our rent.

When Don Burckhardt donated blood at a Crews Subaru blood drive in Charleston, South Carolina, he had no idea his own life would be saved by it. The Red Cross worker told Burkhardt that his iron count was low and recommended he go to the doctor to get a full blood test done.

“Because of these blood drives that Crews Subaru is hosting, my cancer was caught at the very early stages,” says Burckhardt.

That blood drive was one of 48 that Crews Subaru has held in 36 months, impacting nearly 5,000 lives. And the Red Cross is just one of 71 different charities and organizations the retailer serves each year as part of the Subaru Love Promise, which is all about giving back to the community.

Watch Don Burckhardt share his story and witness the Subaru Love Promise in action as the folks at Crews Subaru host blood drives, provide meals, organize pet adoptions, grant Make-a-Wish wishes and more.

Loneliness is one of the most dangerous health problems in the United States, although it’s seldom discussed. Psychology Today says loneliness has the same mortality risks as obesity, smoking, alcoholism and physical inactivity.

A meta-analysis from Brigham Young University found that social isolation may increase the risk of premature death by up to 50%. The problem with loneliness is that people suffer in silence and it afflicts the ones we don’t see.

A TikTok user who goes by the name Megan Elizabeth recently shared a touching story on social media about how her grandfather was feeling lonely so he reached out to her. The story shows what can happen when one person is brave enough to confront their social isolation and the important role grandkids can play in their grandparents’ lives.

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It started when Megan’s grandpa texted her to ask if she’d like to come over for a sleepover. “I haven’t been feeling well and miss you. We can order food and watch a mystery show. Love, grandpa,” he wrote.

Megan was happy to go see him, so grandpa made a series of requests to make the sleepover a hit.

“Could you pick up applesauce? The cinnamon kind,” he asked. “And if you go somewhere with mash potatoes, I would like that because I have no teeth and can only eat soft things. Ha!”

He also wanted some strawberry ice cream for dessert. “Thank you. You are my favorite granddaughter,” he ended the conversation. Megan later noted that she’s his only granddaughter.

See on Instagram

Megan came by with a big bag of food and some ice cream and the two hung out and watched his favorite black-and-white “mystery movies.” When it was time for bed, grandpa hadn’t forgotten how to put her to sleep. He got her a glass of water to put by the bed in case she got thirsty and left a flashlight on the nightstand just in case his 29-year-old granddaughter got scared.

The next morning, at 5:30 am, he watched her leave for work.

See on Instagram

Grandfather and granddaughter grew up close to one another. Megan lived with her grandparents when she was young while her parents saved up money for a house. When they bought one, it was right across the street.

“I am so lucky to have grown up with my grandpa and my grandma (rest in peace),” she wrote on Instagram. “I feel so happy. I am thankful for my grandpa and he will never understand how much love he truly has shown me. And more importantly, the love he showed my grandma while she was alive. I believe in love and loyalty because of this man. He is my hero,” she added.

See on Instagram

Megan’s time with her grandfather made her realize a valuable lesson about her life.

“I think one of the most important realizations I have had recently is that it’s important to live in the moment but it is important to live in the now with intent,” she wrote on Instagram, “so that when you are 92, you look back and smile at all the people you loved, the memories you made and the life you chose to live.”

This article originally appeared on 04.27.22

The pandemic has caused many people to reevaluate their surroundings. When you’re stuck at home more often than you’d like, you start to pay a lot more attention to what goes on in your own backyard.

This type of introspection inspired wildlife photographer Carla Rhodes to get a closer look at the furry friends that live near her home in the Catskill mountains of New York.

What she found was magical.

“The winter of 2020-2021 was particularly brutal to humankind. After months of enduring the Covid-19 pandemic, we were now collectively slogging through winter. As a result of being stuck at home, I focused on my immediate surroundings like never before,” Rhodes said in a statement.

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Rhodes positioned a DSLR camera trap beneath her bird feeder to get an up-close glimpse of the wildlife that came to sample her delicious seeds. The results are an incredible series of photos of birds and other woodland creatures from a vantage point most people never see. Rhodes calls her project, “Beneath the Bird Feeder.”

The birdfeeder photos also gave a new glimpse into the behavior of several species of birds and rodents that call the Catskills home.

“As I got deeper into the project, intriguing observations emerged,” Rhodes says. “I noticed distinct repeat visitors such as a Dark-Eyed Junco with an overgrown beak, a deer mouse with a notched ear, and an irruption of Red-Breasted Nuthatches. Dark-Eyed Juncos always showed up at the crack of dawn and Northern Cardinals would always be the last visitor of the day as dusk turned into evening.”

Here are 15 of the most captivating photos that Rhodes captured from beneath her bird feeder.

1. Dark-eyed junco

“Often overlooked and considered drab ground-feeding birds, Dark-Eyed Juncos hold a special place in my heart due to their funny and curious behaviors. Every day they were first to arrive beneath the bird feeder,” Rhodes says. “Dark-Eyed Juncos were one of the most frequent and curious subjects beneath the bird feeder.”

2. Dark-eyed junco

3. Dark-eyed junco

4. Tufted titmouse

According to All About Birds, the tufted titmouse is “common in eastern deciduous forests and a frequent visitor to feeders.”

5. Mourning dove

​”Observing Mourning Doves was a daily pleasure, especially when they gathered to form a clean-up crew beneath the bird feeder. Mourning doves are monogamous and possibly mate for life,” Rhodes writes.

6. Mourning dove 

7.  Mourning doves

8. Blue jay

“Blue Jays are known for their intelligence and complex social systems with tight family bonds,” All About Birds says. “Their fondness for acorns is credited with helping spread oak trees after the last glacial period.”

9. Northern cardinal

“Northern Cardinals were always the last to show up beneath the bird feeder, shortly after dusk every evening,” Rhodes writes.

10. Black-capped chickadee

“Little flocks of Black-capped Chickadees enliven the winter woods with their active behavior and their cheery-sounding chick-a-dee callnotes as they fly from tree to tree, often accompanied by an assortment of nuthatches, creepers, kinglets, and other birds,” the Audubon field guide to North American birds says.

11. Black-capped chickadee

12. Eastern gray squirrel

Eastern gray squirrels are important members of forest ecosystems as they play a vital role in dispersing seeds.

 13. American red squirrel

The American red squirrel is known for its distinct bushy and dark red tail with hints of a white outline.

14. American red squirrel

15. Northern short-tailed shrew

If you see a northern short-tailed shrew, be careful. It’s venomous and paralyzes its victims with poisonous saliva. In humans, a bite can cause swelling and intense pain.

This article originally appeared on 01.03.22

Teenagers are an interesting bunch. They are still very much children and at times behave that way but they also want to be treated like adults. It’s a paradox of behaviors that can sometimes result in parents getting lectured by their teen, which is exactly what happened to one couple when they couldn’t pick up their son.

Iyonna Bland uploaded a video to TikTok showing her son Caleb starting to lecture his parents about not being there to pick him up from football practice. The parents are generally early to pick him up but on this day, Bland was stuck in meetings all day and her husband was also working unable to collect the teen from practice. Obviously, the teen was not left to fend for himself. Bland ordered an Uber for her son when they realized neither would be off in time to pick him up.

But Caleb was not impressed with their choices and decided to let them know exactly how he was feeling.

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“I wasn’t even supposed to talk to you today. I was supposed to have an attitude but I had to fake it, “Caleb says. “First of all, y’all already know I don’t like no rain, so I’m sitting outside after football practice, after hours. Y’all were supposed to been there 15 minutes early.”

The teen’s mom can be heard laughing but he is still not amused, and looks like a parent scolding a child. Gosh darn it, mom take him seriously, he means business. Caleb goes on to explain that he’s had football practice all week and one of his parents has been there early each day so he was expecting the same service. He’s unmoved by the fact that his parents have to work to pay for the equipment and practice he’s attending.

“Tell me why I call this man and he [his dad] treating me like he’s Hollywood or something? Like he’s rich. Mama he ain’t even answer the phone, I called him twice. He ain’t even answer the phone,” Caleb complains.

The way this teen tells a story is hilarious and its hard to keep a straight face even when he’s being serious because of how naturally comedic he is. It gets even harder not to laugh when he describes his first experience using Uber.

“Then I get some random text from a random number,” he says. “Talking about some ‘Brenda’s on the way,’ I was like, ‘my grandma Brenda?”

@iyonnabland

I was in meetings all day for work so I couldn’t leave before yall go saying we neglecting our child he did get home safe #fypシ #foryou #foryourpage #fyp #blacktiktok #kidsoftiktok #boymomlife #parenting #funny #teens #uber

When he received the text saying Brenda was 10 minutes away, that’s when he realized it was in fact not his grandmother that lives states away in Chicago. It was the Uber driver that his mom sent to pick him up but when Bland called to tell him Brenda was on her way to pick him up, he was immediately uninterested.

“So then you called me talking about ‘Brenda about to come get you,’ I’m like ‘who is Brenda?’ cause I’m not getting in the car,” Caleb tells his mom.

Listening to him tell the story will leave you in stitches. Poor kid thought his parents forgot about him and Brenda was a kidnapper. That’s one interesting first time Uber experience. But don’t think dad got out of this lecture, Caleb expressed his thoughts in a follow up below.

@iyonnabland

Replying to @😜Sillylicious😝 #fypシ #foryou #foryourpage #fyp #blacktiktok #kidsoftiktok #boymomlife #parenting #funny #teens #momandson #momsoftiktok