The Phoenix Suns went all-in on putting their team together ahead of the 2023-24 NBA season. Unfortunately for them, things did not end the way they wanted, as Phoenix just could not stay healthy during the regular season and looked like they couldn’t quite get on the same page as they got swept in the first round by the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Now, the Suns head into an offseason where they don’t really have a ton of avenues to get better — their cap sheet is brutal, they gave up all of their draft capital to build this team, and it sure seems unlikely they’d be willing to move either of their stars who don’t have a full no-trade clause. As such, they have to look towards internal improvement, and in the eyes of general manager James Jones, this includes trying to be the first team to “maximize Kevin Durant.”
“A constant focus for us is to continue how to figure out and maximize Kevin Durant. No one has done it yet. I believe we’ll be the 1st team to do it.”
James Jones.
“When he’s playing at the highest level, he makes us a really, really good team and we’re damn near unbeatable.” pic.twitter.com/SOAL5iyp9k
“A constant focus for us is to continue how to figure out and maximize Kevin Durant. No one has done it yet. I believe we’ll be the first team to do it. Roster because we can maximize him, we can maximize our entire roster, we’re a better team.”
Jones went on to say that Durant had “a phenomenal season this year offensively,” and believed he had “some of the best stretches of his career this year” during his first full season in Phoenix. He did, however, express that the team’s issue was “the totality of figuring out when and where and how to do it together, we just could not get on the same page, we ran out of time.”
Since entering the NBA in 2007, Durant has won a pair of NBA championships, a pair of NBA Finals MVP awards, and was named the league MVP back in 2014. A member of the league’s 75th anniversary team, Durant, who turns 36 in September, has earned 10 All-NBA nods, six of which came on the first team, along with 14 All-Star Game appearances. He appeared in 75 games for Phoenix in the regular season, and averaged 27.1 points, 6.6 rebounds, and five assists in 37.2 minutes per game.
Imagine someone handing you a photo of a random street corner, neighborhood or field anywhere in the world and expecting you to know where it is. Occasionally, you might get lucky and see a sign or a landmark that gives a helpful clue, but chances are good that all you’d have to go from is some vegetation and maybe a building or two to guess from. We live in a huge world—seems impossible, right?
But that’s often all that GeoGuessr pros need to be able to tell you in seconds where on the globe the image came from, often within just a handful of miles.
When Swedish IT consultant Anton Wallén launched the GeoGuessr app in 2013, he surely didn’t expect it to launch an entire global esport phenomenon. It was just a fun game to be dropped somewhere on the globe and try to guess where you are. But thanks to the pandemic forcing people to travel virtually for a while, it took viral hold as a competitive game in 2021. Now there’s even a GeoGuessr World Cup championship, and it’s a wild ride to watch.
In fact, these players are so fast at pinpointing locations based on photos that would have most of us scratching our heads, saying, “Heck, that could be anywhere,” it’s almost hard to watch. Check out even just a minute or so of these highlights:
One of the most popular Geoguessr players on social media is Trevor Rainbolt, one of the hosts of the 2023 GeoGuessr World Cup. While he says he’s not as good as some of the other pros, his TikTok account has 2.7 million followers and he consistently demonstrates his ability to find anything on the planet based on an outdoor photo. Literally anything, anywhere.
Rainbolt explained to WIRED some of the tools and tricks of the Geoguessr trade, and it’s both incredibly impressive and surprisingly mundane. Obviously, when there are street signs visible that offers a huge clue, but players learn details about every element of different countries’ landscapes, from telephone poles to vegetation the way lines are painted on the street to what garbage bins look like in different cities. They even get so specific as the color and texture of soils.
Watch Rainbolt explain:
Geoguessr players educate themselves using Google Maps so thoroughly that they are able to piece together every tiny clue to make an educated guess about where an image comes from. But it’s the speed with which the pros make their guesses that’s so mesmerizing—the result of years of learning and practice, just like any other highly developed skill.
If this all seems a bit pointless (though one could argue there’s always a point to knowing where you are), there are actually some really heartwarming things that have come out of the “geonerd” world. For instance, a woman had a photo of her mom, but zero other information about her. Rainbolt was able to pinpoint the exact location the photo was taken, giving the woman a clue into her own past.
People often tell him he should be hired by the CIA or FBI, and for sure that seems plausible. But what’s great about what he does is that he explains exactly how he does it. It just takes countless hours over years and years to get to know the planet as well as he and other Geoguessr pros know it.
Anyone can play—just download the GeoGuessr app or play online and give it a go. Fair warning, though. It’s not nearly as easy as these guys make it look.
Highly recommend following @georainbolt to watch more.
There is likely not a single person on this Earth that has not mispronounced something. Sometimes people mispronounce words they know how to say, but for some reason in that moment it fell out of their head and ran away. But most of the time people read a word that they’ve never heard spoken and pronounce it the way they think it sounds.
If you think about it, the English language has so many different rules that it can be hard for native speakers to figure out the sound of certain letters within a word. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that people mispronounce things all the time, but one woman shared a beautiful sentiment on mispronunciation through tears of laughter.
Monica Turner shared a video on her Instagram page, Monica’s Open House, of her reaction to a man who was announcing the Pepsi Co. recall of Schweppes Ginger Ale. The man in the video mispronounced the name of the ginger ale, calling it shu-wa-pee-pees.
This mispronunciation sent Turner into a giggling fit so intense that she started crying tears of laughter. While other people might have taken the video as her making fun of the young man, Turner was actually just tickled by his mispronunciation, not that he mispronounced the word in general. The woman contained her uncontrollable laughter long enough to explain something many people may need to hear.
“Ok, ok, hold on,” she says while collecting herself. “Don’t ever be embarrassed about mispronouncing a word because that means you read it, you didn’t hear it. If you heard it you would’ve pronounced it properly, but you read it so don’t ever be embarrassed. Ever, about mispronouncing a word, ok? Cause that gives you a leg up in my opinion.”
Commenters found the mispronunciation just as hilarious as she did but also loved her response.
“Shu wa pee pee? This could be the best mispronouncing of a word I’ve ever seen,” one person says.
“I love your explanation on mispronounced words. You read the word you have not heard the word. That is the best response to stop someone from feeling embarrassed,” another writes.
“I have never heard the way that you explained away a possible insecurity. And I just want to say if your a mom, then that’s incredible and your kids are so lucky. But for anyone else who watched this video I hope they took note of the fact that you said that he read that word instead of hearing it. There’s so many different ways to learn, and the fact that you took the time to say that and make that clarification I think it was beautiful and I’ve never heard that in regards to words before, and I pride myself on English and literacy. I will forever explain things this way, if I ever hear a word mispronounced again. Thank you for the laugh and the perspective,” someone shares.
There is nothing wrong with mispronouncing a word, everyone does it and this just may be the best reason to never be embarrassed about it.
Before 24-7 networks like CNN and Fox News became the go-to places for TV news junkies, the newscasters of the “big three” networks attracted 50 million people every night. Throughout most of the ‘80s, ‘90s and early ‘00s, viewers chose between three network news titans: Tom Brokaw on NBC, Peter Jennings on ABC and Dan Rather on CBS.
Tom Brokaw left “NBC Nightly News” in 2004, Jennings left “ABC World News Tonight” in 2005 and Rather was forced to leave “CBS Evening News” the same year after being involved in a controversial segment about then-President George W. Bush.
In 2004, Rather filed a report on “60 Minutes II” critical of Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. The documents central to the story were questioned as fakes and the blowback from the story led to Rather’s ouster.
Twenty years later, Rather still stands by the story. “You can argue that we never got to the original documents,” Rather said in an interview. “But nobody has ever proven that they were anything other than what they were purported to be.”
Rather worked for CBS News for 44 years in many roles, including bureau chief, war correspondent, foreign correspondent and White House correspondent. He was the network’s national evening news anchor from 1981 to 2005.
Now, 18 years after his controversial departure from CBS, Rather, 92, returned to the network in a segment aired on April 28 on “CBS Sunday Morning.” In it, he spoke with Lee Cowan, his former protegee, who remembered that Rather taught him that it’s not the question but the “follow-up” that matters.
Rather was on the show, in part, to promote his new Netflix documentary, “Rather,” which debuts on May 1.
In the interview, Rather told Cowan that the ultimate job of a journalist is to speak truth to power. “In the heart of every reporter worthy of their name, Lee, there’s a message that news, real news, is what somebody, somewhere, particularly somebody in power, doesn’t want you to know,” he said. “That’s news.”
He also admitted that being forced to leave CBS was the “lowest point” in his esteemed career.
“I gave CBS News everything I had. They had smarter, better, more talented people, but they didn’t have anybody who worked any harder than I did,” Rather said.
When asked why he wanted to be a reporter, Rather admitted that it is just a part of his being.
“I’ve never quite known the answer to that question,” Rather said. “All I know is it’s the only thing I ever wanted to be was a reporter and I get up every morning as soon as my feet hit the ground, I say, ‘Where’s the story?'”
Even though Rather was devastated after leaving CBS, he remained in the public eye. He has hosted an interview show for HDNet, written books and newspaper columns and hosted a radio show on Sirius XM. He has over 2.6 million followers on Twitter, where he’s introduced himself to a younger audience.
“You either get engaged and you get engaged in the new terms … or you’re out of the game,” he admits.
I’m curious: how many of my followers feel they are better off now than 4 years ago?
News reporters face an uncertain future given the decline of newspapers and social media’s dominance with younger audiences. But Rather is still impressed with the reporting he sees in today’s news.
“The people who are practicing journalism today are so much better than those of us who came up here another time,” he said. “They’re better educated. They’re more knowledgeable about the world,” Rather continued. “They want to do the right thing. They’re doing the best they can.”
Even though he’s dedicated his life to journalism, Rather believes his true legacy are those he loves. “In the end, whatever remains of one’s life — family, friends — those are going to be the things for which you’re remembered,” he said.
Although it would be reckless and irresponsible to speculate as to whether Bassett’s newly teased song, “The Golden Years,” is about Rodrigo, it is a wistful reflection on a love gone wrong.
“Four years gone by, in the blink of an eye,” Bassett sings while standing on a gusty Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles, California, in a video posted to Instagram on Wednesday, May 1. “We were young ’til we weren’t / It was fun ’til it hurt / Now, I’m terrified that I’ll never find love like yours.” Bassett captioned the video with the eyeballs emoji.
As of this writing, Bassett has not specified a release date for the song, but there is a pre-save link in his Instagram bio. His bio also reads, “[sunflower emoji] soon.”
The former High School Musical: The Musical: The Series actor last released “Just Love” last September. The compassionate ballad was accompanied by a self-directed video.
When you get deep into high-quality additive-free tequila, a funny thing happens — you can forget that people who are serious about tequila are a very small subsection of tequila drinkers, overall. That leads you to recommend bottles that go beyond what your pals are seeking and into the aficionado “hard to even find” realms. So what about folks who just want a solid, non-burning sip from their grocer?
That’s where most tequila drinkers reside, after all. In the middle of the price bell curve looking for the widely available stuff.
To help guide you to the best of the best, we’re ranking some of the most popular and easiest-to-find bottles of tequila on store shelves today. To populate this list, I’ve scanned through multiple grocery liquor aisles making a note of the most common bottles. Because this is a list aimed at more casual tequila drinkers, I decided to focus on expressions you can find for under $50.
Here is how the most popular-meets-affordable brands rank!
The first thing you need to know about Jose Cuervo is that it’s what is called a “mixto.” That means it’s not made from 100% blue agave, that’s part of the reason why it’s so cheap. If you’re mixing this up in a big batch frozen margarita maker and packing it with sugar and sweet mixers, you’re not going to really taste the harshness here. However, if you plan on taking shots with this one, or mixing it up in a traditional cocktail, it’s going to burn, and not in the good way those agave-forward bottles tend to.
Produced at NOM 1122, Casa Cuervo, the agave here goes through acid thermal hydrolysis cooking (which sounds delicious right?) and is extracted via a diffuser before being twice distilled.
Tasting Notes:
Nose: Harsh on the nose, I’m getting a heavy dose of kerosene, burnt plastic, and nail polish remover.
Palate: A lot of spice with white pepper. It has a cheap vodka-like burn to it.
Finish: The burn is intense, which makes it a bit hard to latch on to any flavors on the finish. I’m tasting a touch of agave under all the alcohol harshness, enough to know that this is tequila and not something else.
The Bottom Line:
The sort of frat-house tequila that can make you swear off the stuff forever. If you’re entertaining a big crowd and making a huge batch mixed drink that
gets the job done, this tequila works, but for anything else, you have other options out there for a few dollars more.
I have a certain nostalgia in my heart for Hornitos Plata. It’s the first bottle of tequila that I was really into, the tequila that made me claim the spirit as my own. Having said that, I hadn’t had Hornitos Plata for years and when I tasted it again I was shocked at how far away it is from what I like about tequila.
This tequila is produced at NOM 1102, Tequila Sauza, and is made from agave that is cooked and extracted in an autoclave and diffuser. It is then fermented in stainless steel tanks, and twice distilled. At least it’s made from 100% blue Weber agave, which is a slight step up from what you’ll get from Cuervo silver.
Tasting Notes:
Nose: A lot of ethanol on the nose, very chemical and harsh. With a big whiff, I can smell the slightest hint of lime.
Palate: A surprising amount of agave on the palate here, with a dusty black pepper flavor mixed with some salt.
Finish: A harsh medicinal burn followed by a vegetal quality.
The Bottom Line:
For the money, you can probably find something that tastes more like agave. This is harsh, smoother than Cuervo, but still very. metallic and chemical.
As you might have noticed this list isn’t populated with too many reposado tequilas, so Cazadores is a good option if you want something a bit more mellow and smooth than what you’ll get out of a blanco. Cazadores is produced at NOM 1487, Bacardi Y Compañia, and is made from 100% blue Weber agave that is cooked and extracted via an autoclave and diffuser, fermented in stainless steel tanks to the sounds of classical music (a surprisingly prevalent trend in tequila for some reason) and twice distilled in a stainless pot with a copper coil.
Once distilled, the tequila is then rested for two months to a year in virgin American oak barrels to reach the reposado state.
Tasting Notes:
Nose: Heavy wafts of vanilla and caramel over nail polish remover.
Palate: That vanilla from the nose is the primary note on the palate joined by caramel candies, a slight hint of pepper and cinnamon, and a
noticeable minerality.
Finish: Smooth oak on the finish with a bit more of that caramel.
The Bottom Line:
Smooth and vanilla-heavy. If you don’t like your tequila to burn, this is the bottle for you.
10 years ago, Patron was widely considered the high-end brand. Thankfully, those days are over. While Patron is good, it’s far from the greatest bottle you can find in this price range.
Patrón’s Silver is made with blue agave cooked in stone brick ovens and tahona extracted, fermented in wood fermentation tanks, and carbon filtered at NOM 1492, Patrón Spirits. There was a time when most of the general public considered Patrón to be top-shelf tequila, I think that’s down to its sweetness and drinkability.
Tasting Notes:
Nose: All over the place, I can smell some roasted agave, but there is a noticeable sweetness here as well, and a strong almost kerosene-like quality to it.
Palate: Silky with a mix of tart pineapple and juicy orange juice, with some bitter lettuce-like flavors keeping the sweetness from being too out of control.
Finish: Black pepper with an artificial lime finish. Goes down incredibly smooth.
The Bottom Line:
Sweet and easily drinkable, perhaps too much so. It disappears in a cocktail.
There are a lot, and I mean a lot(emphasis necessary) of bottles of tequila that survive purely on a cool bottle design. Milagro, with its different colored bottles for different expressions, is one of the first and most affordable brands to put a lot of investment into bottle design. This stuff just looks cool, and when you compare it to similarly priced bottles, the design might just be enough to push you to buy this instead of something else.
I’m not mad at that, especially because Milagro, especially the reposado, is pretty damn solid.
Hailing from NOM 1559, Tequila Milagro, this brand stone cooks its agave before crushing it in a roller mill, ferments the juice in stainless steel tanks and twice distills through a stainless steel pot. The tequila is then aged in American white oak barrels for 2-4 months.
Tasting Notes:
Nose: Agave and oak dominate, rich confection-like notes pull you in and a hint of cinnamon lurks underneath the layers.
Palate: Unfortunately that sweetness doesn’t completely translate to the flavor, you get the roasted agave flavor and an overpowering bit of oak, but there is an ethanol-like body that weighs the whole thing down.
Finish: It ends with a burn and a small vanilla lift with a hint of zesty citrus.
The Bottom Line:
Pleasant on the nose, a bit harsh on the palate, but with a nice finish that juggles sweet vanilla tones and some bright zestiness.
The Rock’s tequila! Celebrity tequilas in general get a lot of criticism in the tequila space, and there are some good reasons for that. One of those reasons though is usually the price point but I want to push back on that. Yes, celebrity tequilas tend to be a bit pricier than the other mass-market bottles, a bottle of Teremana Reposado is more than double the cost of Jose Cuervo. But, Teremana, and the other celebrity tequilas, are made better and usually follow a more traditional production process.
So that more expensive price is justified. Can you find other bottles that offer the same slow-cooked production method for cheaper? Absolutely, but not as easily. So don’t be quick to write these bottles off as celebrity vanity projects.
You might be surprised to learn that the Rock’s Teremana, is pretty damn good. The tequila is produced at NOM 1613, Destileria Teremana De Agave, where it is the only brand in production. What other bottle on this list can claim the same? The agave used in Teremana is cooked low and slow in stone/brick ovens for three days, roller mill extracted, proofed down with well water, and fermented in open-air stainless steel tanks before being twice distilled in copper pots.
The tequila is then aged for six months in used bourbon barrels.
Tasting Notes:
Nose: Pleasing butterscotch notes and roasted agave.
Palate: Floral honey with some sweet vanilla and browned butter.
Finish: A mix of orange zest, oak, and juicy melon.
The Bottom Line
Better than you expect, don’t sleep on it just because it has Dwayne Johnson’s name on it.
One of the best-selling and most visible tequila brands on the market right now, Casamigos is everywhere. It’s at restaurants, sporting events, your local bar — the people have spoken, they love Casamigos. George Clooney is one of the few celebrities who launched a tequila brand (now sold to Diageo) and doesn’t get a lot of criticism, probably because Casamigos is a pretty good bottle. It’s not a bar cart staple for me, but it has a people-pleasing flavor that is easy to like.
It’s produced at NOM 1609, part of Diageo, where the agave is cooked in stone brick ovens, roller mill extracted and fermented, and rested in stainless steel tanks. This tequila is made with deep well water which gives it a lot of minerality.
Tasting Notes:
Nose: Black pepper, green grass and agave dominate the nose. There is a subtle harshness to the scent that makes my eyes water a bit, especially after the sweetness of the last pour.
Palate: Very nice on the palate, I’m tasting strong asparagus notes mixed with a zesty orange rind flavor, a bit of vanilla sweetness, and more black pepper.
Finish: I like the finish here, it’s harsh and spicy, but in the best way. It continues to burn on the tongue once you’re done with it. A cool sensation.
The Bottom Line:
Addictive, spikey, and agave-forward, while also having a lot of people-pleasing vanilla notes.
There isn’t a celebrity tequila brand that gets more flack than Kendall Jenner’s 818. I think what’s behind that is that the public is a bit exhausted with the Kardashian/Jenner family, and, well, sexism. I’ll spare you going to deep on this (if you’d like to read my full thoughts, do so here), but I will say that out of all the celebrity tequilas, 818 is by far the best.
Produced at NOM 1607, Grupo Solave, the agave here is cooked in stone brick ovens, tahona extracted, and fermented in stainless steel tanks.
Tasting Notes:
Nose: Strong dessert vibes on the nose, I’m getting a lot of vanilla and roasted agave from this one. There is an apparent mellowness here, almost like an aged expression.
Palate: Sweet and super smooth. I’m tasting some fruity berry notes and a hint of cream. One of the least harsh unaged expressions I’ve ever tasted.
Finish: The vegetal notes come out at the aftertaste. It still goes down smooth and has a dessert-like quality to it, but the aftertaste brings forth vegetal flavors. A hint of green bell pepper and green grass.
The Bottom Line:
Yes, it’s sweet, it’s supremely smooth, and it’s easy to drink. All things a tequila snob would argue aren’t characteristic of this agave-forward spirit. But the subtle and shifting flavors make this a true joy to drink.
Well under $30, Espolòn is present at every market and liquor store I’ve ever been to, and there is a good reason for that. It’s cheap, and more than any other bottle on this list in this price range, it punches way above its weight. If you’re looking for an affordable bottle of tequila that tastes bright and agave-forward and is very drinkable and pleasing on the palate, you’re not going to find a better bottle than this.
The tequila is produced at NOM 1440, Campari Mexico, where it is one of three brands. The agave is cooked in an autoclave and roller mill extracted, fermented in stainless steel tanks, and twice distilled in a stainless pot with a copper coil.
Tasting Notes:
Nose: A strong ethanol scent dominates with some zesty citrus notes lurking underneath the alcohol. Not the best nose.
Palate: Juicy pineapple with earthy black pepper qualities hover over a base of roasted agave. There is a slight vegetal quality here, but it leans more on tropical sweetness.
Finish: Buttery and vegetal, the finish here is surprisingly pleasant for its price point.
The Bottom Line:
The nose matches what you’d find in this price point, but the flavor is bright, zesty, juicy, and tropical, with a lot of agave character.
Don Julio has a reputation as being a top-tier tequila brand, and while there are a lot of bottles in this price range that I would grab before this, most of those bottles are a bit harder to find. So when your options are limited, Don Julio’s blanco is a no-brainer choice and of the most popular brands, easily the best.
Don Julio’s blanco is made from 100% blue agave cooked in stone brick ovens, roller mill extracted, and fermented in stainless steel tanks at NOM 1449.
Tasting Notes:
Nose: A medley of roasted agave and vanilla bean on the nose, it almost has a slight baking spice quality to it. Very inviting, like fresh cookies out of the oven.
Palate: A warm chocolate quality begins our journey, it starts sweet and then quickly turns into a spicy burn with green tea and green pepper flavors dancing on the tongue.
Finish: Peppery celery and zesty citrus dominate the finish. Highly vegetal and almost juicy.
The Bottom Line:
If you’re looking for a truly great bottle and the options at your local market are limited, there is a high chance Don Julio Blanco will be there and a definite chance it’ll be the best bottle in attendance.
This week, Cher stopped by the Jennifer Hudson Show for an extensive interview, and Hudson took the opportunity to ask about Cher turning down Elvis Presley way back when, which led to Cher opening up about her present-day approach to dating.
“I’m really shy when I’m not working and kind of shy around men,” she said. “And the reason I go out with young men is because men my age or older — well, now they’re all dead, but before, they were always terrified to approach me. Younger men were the only ones [who would].”
Cher will turn 78 later this month.
Elsewhere in her conversation with Hudson, Cher discussed her evolving her fashion through the years, becoming friends with Meryl Streep while filming Silkwood in the eighties, struggling to reinvent herself, and more.
Remember when we were kids and we’d get asked the question: What do you want to be when you grow up?
So often the responses would be fairly glamorous jobs—doctors, marine biologists, firefighters, performers, etc.—all based on simplistic ideas of what the job might be like versus what the job actually entails.
Recently, user stiengineer asked the Reddit community, “What’s a misconception about your profession that you’re tired of hearing?” And the responses—from graphic designers to vegetable farmers and everywhere in between—just go to show that unless you’ve actually worked in an occupation, you’re probably making a few assumptions about it. (Spoiler: no job is without its fair amount of work.)
Check out what some professionals wrote about their often misunderstood jobs that prove the grass isn’t always greener in the workplace.
1. “I’m a librarian, and people think we just read books all day. In reality, we manage databases, assist with research, and conduct community programs.”
Another librarian added:
“The cardigans are 100% fact, though. The back room and the stacks are two wildly different temperatures all the time.”
2. “I drove a taxi. We don’t meet a lot of famous people. Not all passengers are unhinged lunatics.”
3. “As an electrician, the misconception that it’s not a skilled profession is frustrating. It requires rigorous training and adherence to safety standards.”
4. “Vegetable farmer. We get so many applicants wanting to ‘connect to the soil,’ yet have never touched a shovel before. So many people don’t seem to understand that farming is manual labor with long hours and hardship every day. And It’s all just to limp by. We aren’t making much money.”
5. “I run an animal rescue and I get a lot of people who think they’re just gonna cuddle animals. A shocking number of people are very upset there’s poop and manual labor involved.”
6. “Fire Sprinkler Designer here: Fire Sprinkler water IS NOT clean and clear like the movies depict…That water more than likely has been in those pipes for decades and is filled with corrosion and cutting oil. As soon as a sprinkler goes off, you are getting doused with black tar water…”
“Oh so that’s why I’ve seen so many people complain that their furniture got ruined by fire sprinklers going off! It’s quite obvious now that you pointed it out, but I always thought it was weird so many things could get so badly damaged ‘just by getting wet.’”
Yep, we all learned something today.
7. “As a software developer, I’m tired of hearing that we’re all just nerdy guys who code in dark rooms all day. It’s actually highly collaborative.”
8. “I’m a graphic designer, and no, I can’t just whip up a complex project in an hour. Good design takes time and thought.”
This prompted a few graphic designers to chime in.
One wrote:
“Most of the time I’m trying to protect the client from making really bad decisions because they feel they could ‘do it themselves if they could just draw a little better.’”
While another added:
“I had a client one time who didn’t like a color we chose. I asked her what color she would prefer and her answer was ‘I saw this real pretty purple one time. I want something like that.’ When asked what shade of purple it was or what the item was so we could get an idea, she scoffed and said ‘you’re the artist, you should know.’”
9. “Lawyer here. Just because you fail to understand a nuance doesn’t mean it’s a ‘loophole.’”
“The one that gets me is the idea that we’re unethical tricksters just trying to run up our fees. First, there are some slimy lawyers out there, but I think as a whole we’re probably more ethical than the general population. Our entire career depends on having a license that can be taken away for minor ethical lapses.”
10. “I’m a long time caregiver to mother who lives with dementia. For some reason, people don’t consider it ‘work.’ That includes doctors. I’m on call 24/7. I can’t leave for long periods of time. My own health went to shit. Geriatric care costs are astronomical. Yet, all people hear is ‘you’re not working.’”
11. “People think being a chef is glamorous thanks to cooking shows, but the reality is long hours in a high-stress environment.”
South Asian women across the country are finding social support in a thriving Facebook group devoted to them.
The Little Brown Diary has over 40,000 members, primarily between the ages of 20 and 40, and 100 subgroups devoted to niche topics. Some of these include mental health, entrepreneurship, career advice, and more.
Members of the group can discuss their experiences as South Asians, inner conflicts they face, and even bond over their favorite hobbies. The Facebook group has become a safe place for many of its members to find support in the most transformative periods of their lives. These include:
Supporting women in domestic violence and sexual assault circumstances
Sharing mental health and suicide resources
Connecting members to support each other through grief and loss
Helping members find the strength to get a divorce or defend their decision to be childfree
Helping them navigate career changes
Helping to find friends in a new city
Finding a community of other neurodivergent people in their shoes
“I joined the online community because I was looking for that sense of belonging and connection with others who shared similar experiences and backgrounds,” expressed Sandhya Simhan, one of the group admins.
“At the time, I was pregnant and eager to find other desi moms who could offer support, advice, and friendship during this significant life transition,” she says.
Another group admin, Henna Wadhwa, who works in Diversity and Inclusion in Washington, D.C., even uses the group to inspire new areas of research, including a study on ethnic-racial identity at work.
“I was surprised and excited for a group that brought together South Asian/brown women. I wanted to meet other women with similar research interests and who wanted to conduct academic research on South Asian American women,” Wadhwa says.
While social media isn’t always the best place to spend our time, studies show that the sense of community people get from joining online groups can be valuable to our mental health.
“The presence of LBD has allowed so many South Asian women to truly feel safe in their identity. The community we have built encourages each person to authentically and freely be themselves. It is a powerful sight to witness these South Asian women be vulnerable, break barriers, and support each other in their journeys,” says Wadhwa.
Hena and Neesha
According to an article in Psychology Today, a study on college students looked at whether social media could serve as a source of social support in times of stress. Turns out, these students were more likely to turn to their social media network rather than parents or mental health professionals for connection. The anonymity of virtual communities was also seen as appealing to those experiencing depression.
“The social support received in the online group promotes a sense of well-being and was associated with positive relationships and personal growth,” the article states.
This is why finding a community of like-minded individuals online can have such a positive impact in your life.
“There are almost half a million women in our target audience (millennial South Asians in North America) and about 10% of them are part of LBD. It’s been a game-changer for our community. LBD is all about embracing your true self and living your most authentic life. It’s amazing to see how the members support, relate, learn, and lift each other,” says Wadhwa and Simhan.
I never thought it was possible for me to forget my child in the car—until the day I did.
I was a super conscientious mom, reading all the parenting books, cautious about health and safety, 100% committed to my children’s well-being. I held my babies close, figuratively and literally, wearing them in slings and wraps much of the time and taking them everywhere. They were like physical extensions of me–how could I possibly forget them?
Here’s how. My oldest was nearly 4 years old when I had my second child. One day, when the baby was a few weeks old, our family was out running errands. Everyone was hungry, but I needed to grab something from Michaels craft store, so I dropped my husband and 4-year-old at home first to start dinner. The baby was sleeping in her car seat and I decided to take her with me in case she woke up and needed to breastfeed.
Somewhere between our driveway and Michaels, I completely blanked that I had a baby in the car.
I hadn’t been in a car with a child for several years without any sound—my oldest was always talking or singing or something. It was never quiet in the car unless I was alone, so my sleep-deprived brain interpreted the silence of my sleeping baby in the car as me being alone.
I got to the Michaels’ parking lot, got out of the car, locked the door and went inside. I grabbed a shopping cart and headed to the back of the store to pick up whatever I needed. When I flipped down the plastic seat on the cart where you put a kid, it triggered the awareness that I didn’t have a child with me and everything stopped. Even 19 years later, I can perfectly picture the moment it dawned on me what I’d done when the world went into slow-motion as I ran through the store and out to my car.
There she was, blissfully snoozing away in her car seat, totally unaware of my panic. It was a cool evening and she was only in there for 5 minutes, tops, but it was an eye-opening and humbling moment. If a brain blip like that could happen to me, it could happen to anyone.
That’s the idea behind a new heatstroke prevention PSA from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Ad Council called “Never Happens.” The message is powerful, as there are so many things we swear we would never do as parents that we end up doing. Some of those things are conscious choices as we realize parenting is far more complex than we thought, but some are a result of being fallible humans with imperfect human brains. The key is recognizing that fact so you don’t fall into the trap of “I would never.”
Watch:
Pediatric vehicular heatstroke is the leading cause of non-crash, vehicle-related fatalities for children 14 and younger. No parent thinks they could possibly forget their child in a car, but that’s how more than half of car heatstroke deaths in children occur. According to the NHTSA, heatstroke statistics can be split into three main scenarios:
– 52.7% of hot car deaths happened because a child was forgotten in a hot car
– 25.8% of deaths happened because a child gained access to an unlocked car and became trapped
– 20.1% of deaths happened because a child was left behind in a vehicle, and the parent/caregiver did not realize how quickly internal car temperatures can rise.
A child’s body temperature rises three to five times faster than an adult’s, so we can’t use ourselves as a gauge of how long is too long to be in an enclosed car.
“The inside of a vehicle is never a safe place for a child to play or be left alone, because hot cars can be deadly for children in a matter of minutes,” Sophie Shulman, NHTSA’s Deputy Administrator, tells Upworthy. “No one wants to think they could forget their child, but the facts show it can happen to anyone. Our ‘Stop. Look. Lock.’ campaign educates and empowers parents and caregivers to make simple changes to prevent unimaginable tragedies.”
Some of those simple changes might include putting your purse or wallet in the back seat, keeping an item like a teddy bear in the backseat and placing it in the front seat whenever you have a child in the car with you. Both of those simple visual cues could be life-saving. And always lock your vehicle after getting everyone out of it so a child can’t get in.
Never think it could never happen. Then, take proactive steps to ensure that it never does.
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