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Donald Trump has always portrayed himself as a wealthy, smart businessman. He even used to play one on TV and in movies. But what if it’s all been an act? What if his fortune is tiny? It certainly seems that way. A recent New York Times report claimed he was cutting back on his beloved rallies so as to save cash. But at least he has some swanky properties, right? Not so fast, says someone who knows his business intimately.

Per Newsweek, Michael Cohen — the former president’s former attorney, who’s come out aggressively against him over the years — talked about his old client’s finances on his podcast Mea Culpa, especially in the wake of his recent numerous legal woes. That includes the $83.3 million he owes E. Jean Carroll, whom he has repeatedly been found liable of defaming. Last week Trump even posted a whopping $91.6 million bond as part of his appeal.

“I think we are going to see him lose everything, he’s already lost his mind and most of his money,” Cohen said. “Millions and millions in legal fees alone. I mean his properties are all leveraged and just moments after the predator in chief put up the bond to appeal the E. Jean Carroll defamation judgment.”

So does Trump even own Mar-a-Lago? What about his flagship Trump Tower on 5th Avenue on Manhattan? Or the many other buildings with his name plastered on them? Were they not purchased with capital but through a labyrinthine series of loans? Could the Republicans’ candidate for president actually have no cash? If so, nice work as always, GOP.

(Via Newsweek)

Gordon Ramsay is not exactly known for being nice.

Or patient.

Or nurturing.

On his competition show “Hell’s Kitchen,” he belittles cooks who can’t keep up. If people come to him with their problems, he berates them. If someone is struggling to get something right in the kitchen, he curses them out.

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His whole TV persona is based on being the world’s worst boss.

Ramsay went on Reddit and allowed users to ask him any question they wanted.

So when a fellow cook asked him a sincere, deeply personal question about what to do when you’ve hit a roadblock in your career, you could probably guess what was coming.

Indeed, I thought the guy was making a terrible mistake pouring his heart out to a chef as notoriously tough as Ramsay:

“My hopes and dreams are nowhere to be found as I scale and portion salmon after salmon, shelling pods after pods of broad beans.
…
Sometimes I look out the tiny window and I can see people walking around the streets, enjoying the sunlight, while I’m here, questioning my dedication to this art as I rotate stock in the cool room, getting frost bitten, but the fear of the chef stops me from stepping outside to warm up.
…
The closest thing to feeling any kind of joy I get is those rare moments when I walk through the dining room near the end of service to get some coffee for everyone, and there will be a few diners left, idly sampling those little petite fours that we’ve painstakingly ensured are all perfectly round, identical, and just plain delicious. Then, one of them will stop the conversation they’re having with their company, look up from their food and say, ‘Thank you, chef. This is delicious,’ and making the previous 14-hours of sweat and tears kind of worthwhile.

My question is, how did you deal with it? How the fuck did you deal with all the bullshit, Gordon?”

But the way Ramsay responded? Totally amazing. And completely unexpected.

Turns out, real-life Gordon Ramsay? He actually can be a really kind, big-hearted dude.

He’s sympathetic to the guy. Not just because he’s a good person. But because he’s been there.

Working in restaurants is a tough, tough business. As of 2012, the average salary for cooks was less than $23,000/year. And those who are just starting out often have to work unglamorous, tedious jobs that no one else wants to do. Ramsay didn’t have fancy culinary school training. He rose up through the ranks putting in long hours for low pay in kitchens all over the world. That’s why he gets it.

Which brings up another point.

Diet Dieting GIF by Bobbi DeCarlo – Find & Share on GIPHY

When we go out to eat, we, as a culture, tend to behave … how should I put this?

Let’s go with “not like perfect angels.”

Of course, no one likes getting the wrong order. Or waiting a really long time for a meal. Or eating something that doesn’t taste the way you expect it to.

But it’s important to remember that the people behind the food, like Ramsay’s anonymous letter-writer, might be working 14-hour days. Or might be a recent immigrant who speaks limited English, trying to support a family thousands of miles away. And possibly making very little money. And sure, they screw up sometimes. But we all screw up at our jobs sometimes.

Because they, like the rest of us, are human beings.

Which is why saying…

“Thank you, chef. This is delicious.”

Could mean everything to someone.

This article originally appeared on 04.22.15

When I was 7, my dad told me a riddle.

“A man and his son are driving in their car when they are hit by a tractor-trailer.

Photo via iStock.

(We were driving at the time, so of course this was the riddle he decided to tell.)

The father dies instantly.

The son is badly injured. Paramedics rush him to the hospital.

Photo via iStock.

As he is being wheeled into the operating room, the surgeon takes one look the boy and says:

‘I can’t operate on him. He’s my son.’

How is that possible?!”

Without missing a beat, I answered:

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“The doctor is his mom!”

My dad first heard the riddle when he was a child in the ’60s.

Back then, most women didn’t work outside of the home.

Few of those who did had college degrees, much less professional degrees.

Female doctors were few and far between.

Back then, it was a hard riddle. A very hard riddle.

By 1993, when I first heard it, the notion that women could be highly skilled, highly trained professionals wasn’t so absurd.

To me, it was normal.

I knew women who were lawyers. Bankers. Politicians. My own doctor was a woman.

To be sure, women still faced challenges and discrimination in the workplace. And even 20 years later, they still do.

But at its core, the riddle is about how a family can work. And that had changed. Long-overdue progress had rendered the big, sexist assumption that underpinned the whole thing moot.

A very hard riddle was suddenly not a riddle at all.

I never forgot it.

Now, I’m 30 — almost as old as my dad was he first told me that riddle.

I don’t have kids, but I mentor a child through a volunteer program.

Once a week, we get together and hang out for an hour. We play ping pong, do science experiments, and write songs. Neither of us like to go outside.

It’s a good match.

One day, we decided to try to stump each other with riddles.

He rattled off about five or six.

I could only remember one: The one about the man, his son, and the surgeon.

I thought it would be silly to tell it.

I was sure that, if it was easy in 1993, it would be even easier in 2014. Kind of ridiculous, even.

But a part of me was curious.

It had been 21 years — almost as long as it had been between when my dad first heard the riddle and when he shared it with me.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so easy.

Maybe I was missing something obvious, making my own flawed assumptions about how a family could work.

Maybe the world had changed in ways that would be second nature to a 13-year-old but not to me.

So I began:

“A man and his son are driving in their car, when they are hit by a tractor-trailer. The father dies instantly. The son is badly injured and is rushed to the hospital by paramedics. As he is being wheeled into the operating room, the surgeon takes one look at the boy and says:

‘I can’t operate on him. He’s my son.’

How is that possible?!”

Without missing a beat, he answered: “it’s his other dad”

Times change. Progress isn’t perfect. But no matter what shape a family takes, at the end of the day, #LoveWins.

This article was written by Eric March and originally appeared on 06.21.16

Most abusers don’t start their relationships by hitting their partners. That’s why early warning signs are vital to recognize.

I know two women who recently left abusive partners. Both men seemed sweet and likable—even gentle—each time I saw them. Both had some lovely qualities as people and even as partners. And both turned out to be controlling, increasingly abusive partners behind closed doors.

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The thing about domestic violence is that most people don’t enter into relationships with someone who abuses them from the get go. It’s often like the analogy of the frog in boiling water. If you place a frog into a pot of boiling water, it’ll jump right out. But if you put it in a cool pot and gradually increase the temperature, the frog won’t recognize that it’s being slowly cooked until it’s too late.

Abuse usually comes on gradually, with plenty of opportunity to manipulate and forgive and justify the water getting warmer. That’s why many stay in abusive relationships far longer than they should.

A domestic violence counselor suggests a simple test to help identify potential abusers early in a relationship.

Rob Andrews is a domestic violence counselor in Australia. He told ABC News that he advises people to use what he calls the “No Test” to identify potential red flags early on in a relationship.

“The No Test is basically to watch out for the way your partner responds the first time you change your mind or say no,” Andrews said.

“While expressing disappointment is OK, it’s not the same as annoyed. Annoyed is ‘how dare you,’ a sign of ownership or entitlement.”

Ownership, entitlement, control—these are red flags that often lead to increasingly abusive behavior. And though women can definitely be abusers, the reality is that women are much more likely to be the victims of domestic violence and male abusers tend to be more dangerous to their partners.

“A lot of the women who will present to services will see themselves as part of the problem,” Andrews said. “They’ll ask themselves why they’re always attracted to abusive men, blame themselves for not being assertive enough, blame themselves for pushing their partner’s buttons, causing their anger.”

“With the No Test, we’re not trying to give women knowledge that they didn’t already know,” he said, “but when they see it in black and white in front of them like that, they realize they of course have the right to say no, that they aren’t to blame.”

Andrews describes our patriarchal history as “the nut of the problem.”

Andrews said that some people erroneously tell women that they should just be more assertive with their partners, letting them know they won’t stand for controlling or abusive behavior, but that’s not always the best tack to take.

“Being assertive with a man who’s threatening to bash you is not a very good idea,” he said. “It almost comes from what I’d call ‘deficit thinking,’ that somehow these women need to be trained up so that the people won’t abuse them. The only person who can stop the abuse is the person who is doing the abusing.”

Andrews works with men who are struggling with their own behavior and want to change. He has them think about what kind of man they really want to be and work with them to align their behavior with that vision.

“I hear a lot of people saying how it’s so hard for men now, it’s all so confusing,” he said. “It’s very easy to be a man. Just be polite and respectful to people, it’s not that difficult really.”

“But in saying that,” he added, “we are to some extent dealing with 2,000 years of history of women being a second-class citizen. That’s the nut of the problem and we’ve got to keep chipping away at it.”

This article originally appeared on 02.11.19

There is one request that unites all women and girls no matter their political affiliation or socioeconomic status, and that’s telling them to smile when they’re just minding their business. Think of it like a fairly universal “don’t” when interacting with women, unless you’re a photographer hired to take their photo.

A mom on TikTok found herself reaping the consequences of telling her 9-year-old daughter to smile when she was rehearsing a performance for her school. To say her daughter was not amused would be an understatement. The mom, whose TikTok name is Anniesgotabun, shared a video before and after her daughter’s performance.

The caption of the video read “mistakes were made” complete with the facepalm emoji and the hastag #parentingfail. In the first part of the video you can clearly see her daughter going through the motions of the musical production looking unenthusiastic. The mom explains her error via text overlay explaining “my daughter had her final rehearsal for the school musical yesterday.”

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The video cuts to the mom with text that read, “Afterward, I regrettably said the one thing that no female *ever* wants to hear. ‘Try to smile more.’’’ The result was interesting to say the least and it certainly made the mom rethink her well-meaning advice. During the actual show, the little girl made sure her point was made by staring directly in her mother’s eyes the entire time … smiling.

You may be thinking, well then the advice worked and it did, if her plan was to have her daughter look like the Joker while staring deep into her soul the entire performance. Because that’s exactly what happened and the internet cannot unsee it and the parents of the other children on stage are probably wondering whose child that was.

Check out the funny video below and for the love of everything you cherish, please remember this mom’s mistake should you ever get the urge to tell a woman or girl to smile.

@anniesgotabun

Mistakes were made 🤦🏼‍♀️ #parentingfail

This article originally appeared on 12.24.22

TikTokker Brielle Asero, 21, a recent college graduate, went viral on TikTok in October for her emotional reaction to the first day at a 9-to-5 job. The video, which received 3.4 million views, captured the public’s attention because it was like a cultural Rorschach test.

Some who saw the video thought that Asero came off as entitled and exemplified the younger generation’s lack of work ethic. In contrast, others sympathized with the young woman who is just beginning to understand how hard it is to find work-life balance in modern-day America.

“I’m so upset,” she says in the video. “I get on the train at 7:30 a.m., and I don’t get home until 6:15 p.m. [at the] earliest. I don’t have time to do anything!” Asero said in a video.

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“I don’t have the time to do anything,” she continued. “I want to shower, eat my dinner, and go to sleep. I don’t have the time or energy to cook my dinner either. I don’t have energy to work out, like, that’s out of the window. I’m so upset, oh my god.”

@brielleybelly123

im also getting sick leave me alone im emotional ok i feel 12 and im scared of not having time to live

On December 16, Asero gave an update on her professional life, and sadly, things aren’t going too well. After just 2 months on the job, she was laid off. It had taken her 5 months to find the job and she had recently relocated to New York City to be near the office.

“I worked for a startup, and they didn’t have the workload or the bandwidth they needed to train me and to give me work to do,” she said. Being laid off during the holidays makes Asero’s situation even more difficult because most employers are closed for business in late December and early January.

Asero had some stern words for those who would blame her for losing her job.

“I know that I’m a hard worker, and my boss literally said that I’m one of the smartest people he’s ever had working under him, and he knows that I’m going to land on my feet, and he will give me a great referral to anybody, so don’t start,” she warned.

@brielleybelly123

can someone tell me im going to be okay !!!! feels like the world is ending i need a job immediatley i am feeling so lost rn like i moved for this…!?

“I have done everything I possibly could have, and it’s still not enough,” she said. To supplement her income while looking for her next big break, Asero says she will look for work as a server or nanny.

Even though Asero took a lot of criticism for crying after her first day at work, the comments on the new video were overwhelmingly positive and supportive. There were also a lot of people who shared how they had recently been laid off, too.

“Just want to note that there’s no shame in taking a service job while you’re still looking. You’re going to be okay, you got this,” Baby bel wrote. “It happened to me, seems like ur life is ending, but I promise it’s just getting started. You’ll laugh about it at some point,” Rachie added.

This article originally appeared on 12.22.23

Ten months after a man’s wife passed away, he finally got the courage to read a letter she left him, which contained a devastating admission. The 4-year-old son they had together may not be his.

“My ‘darling’ wife passed away 10 months ago,” the man wrote on Reddit’s Off My Chest forum. “She wrote a letter for me before she died, but I couldn’t bring myself to read it until now. She told me how sorry she was that she didn’t have the guts to tell me this to my face when she was alive.”

In the letter, the wife revealed that there was a “good chance” that the son he thought was his wasn’t his biological child. A few weeks before their wedding day, the wife got drunk at her bachelorette party and had a one-night stand with another man. Soon after that night, she became pregnant but was unsure who the father was.

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The man was torn whether or not to have the paternity test done. The child had only one parent in this world, and he would have to take care of him regardless. He also thought it was cowardly that his former wife would wait until she was no longer around to share the truth with him.

“So she thought she’d rather drop this bomb on my life when I could no longer confront her about it,” the man wrote. “Now that my son would only have one parent looking out for him, and she’d have no idea how I would even react. Maybe I should not have got the paternity test done. Maybe it might be better to live in ignorance. But I just had to know.”

The man took the paternity test and learned he wasn’t the child’s biological father.

“I’m devastated. This doesn’t change how I feel about my son,” he wrote. “He’s my whole world and he’s innocent. But boy, does it hurt. There’s so much going on in my head right now. I haven’t stopped crying. Thank god my son is at my parents’ place for the day. I’d hate for him to see me like this.”

Facing a pain nearly too much for him to bear, the only outlet he had at the moment was reaching out to Reddit to find some solace. “I just needed to let this all out. Don’t have it in me to tell anyone in my life about this right now,” he wrote.

The commenters send him hundreds of messages of support to get him through the shock of first learning the truth about his family.

The most popular message was straightforward and honest. “All your feelings are valid, a lot of people will react with some kind of toxic positivity to things like these. Your feelings are valid. Each and everyone,” femunndsmarka wrote.

Another commenter added that someday, his son will appreciate how he stepped up and did what was right in a very trying circumstance. “He is going to find out the truth one day. Imagine how much more he will love you knowing you didn’t leave him, even though he wasn’t yours,” ImNotGoodatThis6969.

Another commenter provided valuable insight from the son’s perspective.

“As an adopted child, I just want to thank you on behalf of your son. I deeply believe it changes nothing, family is not about blood, its about who you love, want to have by your side, and care for the most. Sending hugs, strength and gratitude,” Mariuuq wrote.

The father at the heart of this story is understandably devastated because his life was upended almost overnight. But the hope in the story is that his trials also taught him a powerful truth—his love for his son goes much deeper than blood.

This article originally appeared on 9.28.23

These days the phrase “canary in the coal mine” is used to refer to any early warning sign of trouble or danger, but it’s based in the real history of canaries being used in coal mining. Miners would carry the songbirds into the mine with them as a makeshift carbon monoxide alarm, as the bird’s small body would be impacted by the odorless gas first, giving miners time to evacuate before it built to deadly levels.

Many if not most of us probably assume the canaries used for this purpose gave up their lives to save the coal miners. As it turns out, that was not always the case.

In fact, the man who created the canary in the coal mine system went out of his way to make sure the birds could do their job safely.

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After a deadly explosion in a Welsh mine in 1896, Scottish physiologist and leading expert of respiration John Haldane was asked to investigate to find the cause. He concluded that a buildup of carbon monoxide was to blame and suggested using birds or mice—animals that would be impacted by the gas far quicker than humans—to serve as sentinel species inside the mine. Because they are more sensitive to the toxins, they’d get sick (or die) before the gas reached levels that would harm or kill humans.

Canaries were determined to be ideal for this purpose because they use an immense amount of oxygen in addition to being small and portable. Their breathing habits allow toxins in the air to circulate through their bodies more quickly, giving a very early warning for carbon monoxide gas.

But rather than carry the canary into the mine in a normal birdcage as a potential sacrifice for the greater good, Haldane created a specialized cage that would allow them to live.

The “canary resuscitator” cage held the bird in a clear enclosure with a circular door that was kept open to allow air to enter through a grill that the bird from escaping. As soon as the bird showed signs of gas poisoning—swaying on its perch or collapsing—the door would be closed and a valve connected to a small oxygen tank on top of the cage would be opened. The bird would then get fresh air and the effects of the toxic gas would be reversed.

Lewis Pollard, who served as an assistant curator at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, U.K., shared that the canary resuscitator was his favorite out of the museums more than 20,000 objects in 2018. “While I don’t advocate the use of animals in testing dangerous conditions, I am pleased that Haldane spared a thought for the canaries themselves and worked to make their job as non-lethal as possible,” he wrote. “My impression from hearing about canaries in coal mines was that they were expected to die to warn people, so when I came across this object it was a huge relief.”

There were “less thoughtful” cages used as well, Pollard added, but Haldane wasn’t the only person wanting to prevent the birds’ demise.

“I’ve even read that many miners cared deeply for their canary companions, and some disliked the advent of electronic sensors in the mid-1980s because it meant they would lose this companionship,” wrote Pollard.

Clearly, it’s better not to use animals to check for poisons when there are other options, but when the canary in the coal mine was the most viable way to prevent tragic mining accidents, it’s nice to know it was done as ethically as possible.

There’s a strange thing happening in the U.S. economy these days. Unemployment has been at its lowest in decades, and layoffs remain modest. However, people who are looking for work are having a hard time getting hired and it’s frustrating to send resume after resume and never hear anything back. What gives?

Business Insider says that despite a strong economy, employers are cautious about hiring more employees until they’re sure inflation is under control and that the Federal Reserve will eventually lower interest rates.

“It feels like the job market is in a bit of a holding pattern,” Daniel Zhao, a lead economist at Glassdoor, recently told Business Insider.

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YouTuber Levi Flemming had fun with the frustrations many people experience while job hunting these days in a new video called “The Typical Job Search Experience. Painful.” In the video, Levi has to go through the daunting task of filling out applications on countless websites and then when he finally gets an interview, he has to go through the gauntlet of middle management interviews, only to be rejected.

The typical job search experience. Painful.

Like many job seekers, Levi began his journey on LinkedIn. “We need to make a LinkedIn profile, by the way. It’s like Facebook but more professional,” he says in the video with nearly 2,000 views. Soon, he was off to the races and mindlessly filled out job applications on Indeed, Workday, Monster, Glassdoor—the list goes on and on.

Why does the auto-populate never work on these sites?

“Got to create my 800th Workday account and I need to upload my resume,” he continued. “Drag and drop successfully uploaded, and the auto-populate didn’t do anything, so now we have to … manually enter the dates do you have at least 5 years of experience.”

And there are all the strange questions:

Do you have experience with C++?

Have you ever been terminated from a job before?

Have you ever stolen from your employer?

Have you ever committed terrorist acts against the United States?

Finally, Levi lands an interview that quickly turns into what feels like a speaking tour of the entire company.

“Hey, look these guys are actually going to give me an interview. Go through the first interview with the hiring manager,” Levi said. “Second interview with the boss’s boss. Third interview with the senior boss. Have to do this take-home written assessment that takes me 4 days to do—got myself a fourth interview with the junior director. A fifth interview with the senior director and now we’re waiting just waiting, waiting, waiting. Yey look, they finally emailed me back…”

And it’s a rejection letter—time to start all over again.

The video resonated with a lot of folks in the comments.

“Man! This is spot on. So much of my personal data floating around in company website job portals!” Jackbits6377 wrote. “Looking for work right now and the amount of tests I had to do for a f’ing customer support position was ridiculous. I just closed the application, lol,” NowayConway added.

“Painful to watch, yet so damn true…” Pastilance wrote.

Dogs of every breed are able to show such excitement over the littlest thing, but Golden Retrievers are just a bit extra. Be it with their favorite toys, snacks, or in this case, their dog beds.

One proud goldie named Winston is winning hearts online, thanks to his adorable reaction to a dog bed upgrade. Which is honestly understandable…the bed is more of a mini couch. Who wouldn’t be excited?

Winston’s mom, Ashley Jance, not only manages to capture the wholesome moment, but provide the perfect narration.

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“This is my old bed… and THIS is my new bed!” Jance says as, indeed, we see Winson jump on one bed then bounds to the other, as though he were a kid on Christmas showing off his new toys.

And just like a kid, Winston doesn’t love the idea of sharing, as indicated by the playful growls when Dad tries to sit on his new plush throne.

“He’s like, ‘get up!’” Jance says through giggles.

Down in the comments, viewers seemed to catch Winston’s enthusiasm.

“I love this for you Winston!” one person exclaimed.

Another added, “that is the cutest thing I’ve seen in a long time.”

@wackowinston

im very proud and excited

♬ original sound – Winston The Golden

Of course, not all dogs might take to dog beds as happily as Winston did. A survey by the American Pet Products Association found that 62% of small dogs, 41% of medium-sized dogs and 32% of large dogs sleep with their owners.

But even for pups who don’t take to their own bed immediately, there are certain steps that can be taken to make the bed feel a bit more appealing. Mostly it takes establishing routine and safety along with some patience as a pet owner.

Or..maybe pet owners could just show their furry friends this video of Winston…because boy is his energy contagious.

By the way, if you’re interested in getting a dog bed just like Winston’s, they’re available on Amazon.