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For nearly 4 months, people in Chile powered their homes for free. Here's what happened.

Chile is amazing at producing and implementing solar energy.

The coastal South American country recently breezed past its competition by becoming the first in Latin America to surpass a full gigawatt of installed solar energy, which can power around 750,000 homes.

The country also has plans to use 70% renewable energy by 2050, with solar at the forefront.


A solar plant in Pozo Almonte, Chile. Photo by Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images.

Which is good. Really good. As a matter of fact, it might be ... too good.

Chile's solar industry has expanded so quickly that for 113 days this year, solar energy in many parts of the country was free.

That's right.

Chile is generating so much solar energy, for 113 days they literally had to give it away for free.

Photo by Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images.

It's a huge win for consumers who, for nearly four months, got to rake in some free clean energy.

However, it's also a potential problem for business owners in Chile who are struggling with the fall of one industry and the blazing-fast rise of another.

If you go way back, the story all starts with copper. Yes, copper.

Chile is a huge exporter of copper, which contributes to the country's 6% annual economic growth. But lately, there's been a worldwide slowdown in the copper trade, and Chilean copper producers have been feeling the impact.

A copper mine in Calama, Chile. Photo by Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images.

Copper mining in Chile has ground to a near-halt, and copper mines everywhere are shutting down. As these mines shut down, the country as a whole requires less power than it did before. But all the solar farms are still producing, resulting in a solar surplus.

Energy companies can't just give away energy forever, though.

If they do, the companies will have to fold, and then Chileans won't have solar energy at all.

“Investors are losing money,” said Rafael Mateo, whose energy firm is investing $343 million in Chilean solar energy projects. "Growth was disordered. You can’t have so many developers in the same place.”

Even when they're not giving it away for free, from a business standpoint, Chile's solar energy is still problematically cheap.

The Atacama region, for example, clocked about $60 per megawatt-hour for most of March, according to Bloomberg. That's $10 less than the minimums set by the companies that won bids to sell their solar energy there.


Photo by Vladimir Rodas/AFP/Getty Images.

So while Chilean energy consumers are probably pretty happy about their tiny and/or nonexistent electric bills, energy companies aren't as thrilled .

Let's look at the bright side here, though. (That's where the sun is, after all.)

Realistically, Chile is demonstrating how successful a clean energy product can be if you truly commit to investing in it.

In fact, we've seen things like this happen before in other countries: Portugal managed to go 107 hours without using fossil fuels by investing serious cash-money into multiple clean energy projects, and Germany managed to bump up clean energy production so much that it had to pay its citizens to use it for seven hours.

Photo by Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images.

All over the world, people are investing in renewable energy and finding out just how wildly successful it can be.

We may still need to recalibrate the settings so energy companies can stay alive while consumers get fair energy prices. But we'll get there.

For now, let's keep building.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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You're obviously not going to confront them about it because that's all sorts of uncomfortable, so you think of a better, way less ballsy approach: leaving a passive aggressive note on their car's windshield.

Satisfied, you walk back to your car feeling proud of yourself for telling that liar off and even more satisfied as you walk the additional 100 steps to get to the store from your lame parking spot all the way at the back of the lot. But did you ever stop and wonder if you told off the wrong person?

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A student accidentally created a rechargeable battery that could last 400 years

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There's an old saying that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.

There's no better example of that than a 2016 discovery at the University of California, Irvine, by doctoral student Mya Le Thai. After playing around in the lab, she made a discovery that could lead to a rechargeable battery that could last up to 400 years. That means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

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8 nontraditional empathy cards that are unlike any you've ever seen. They're perfect!

Because sincerity and real talk are important during times of medical crisis.

True compassion.

When someone you know gets seriously ill, it's not always easy to come up with the right words to say or to find the right card to give.

Emily McDowell — a former ad agency creative director and the woman behind the Los Angeles-based greeting card and textile company Emily McDowell Studio — knew all too well what it was like to be on the receiving end of uncomfortable sentiments.

At the age of 24, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin's lymphoma. She went into remission after nine months of chemo and has remained cancer-free since, but she received her fair share of misplaced, but well-meaning, wishes before that.

On her webpage introducing the awesome cards you're about to see, she shared,

"The most difficult part of my illness wasn't losing my hair, or being erroneously called 'sir' by Starbucks baristas, or sickness from chemo. It was the loneliness and isolation I felt when many of my close friends and family members disappeared because they didn't know what to say or said the absolute wrong thing without realizing it."

Her experience inspired Empathy Cards — not quite "get well soon" and not quite "sympathy," they were created so "the recipients of these cards [can] feel seen, understood, and loved."

Scroll down to read these sincere, from-the-heart, and incredibly realistic sentiments.

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"Body positivity is about saying that you are more than a body and your self-worth is not reliant on your beauty."



Michelle Elman, a body positivity coach, helps people who are struggling to find confidence in their own skin.

After persevering through numerous medical conditions and surgeries in her own life, Elman realized a few years ago that body positivity wasn't just about size or weight. Things like scars, birthmarks, and anything else that makes us feel different of self-conscious have to be a part of the conversation, and she tries to make the movement accessible to everyone.

Sharing her own journey has been one of her most effective teaching tools.

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via wakaflockafloccar / TikTok

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Yet, here we are.

PPE masks were the last thing on Leah Holland of Georgetown, Kentucky's mind on March 4, 2020, when she got a tattoo inspired by the words of a close friend.

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