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Missy Elliott sang backup for her 'funky white sister' on Ellen and it was pure magic.

It is a truth universally acknowledged (don't @ me) that the one thing the world is waiting on is Missy Elliott's new album.

Do you also wake up every morning thinking, "Is this it? Is this finally the day that Missy drops the five to six albums of unreleased material she's got laying around and we call off work to chill in the "Supa Dupa Fly" suits we forced our mothers to make us in eighth grade?"

If so: I have some mixed news.


The bad: Missy Elliott has not released a new album yet (though there's a single and it's good!)

The good: She took a break from putting her thing down, flipping it, and reversing to sign surprise backup for her "funky white sister" on Ellen.

Who the hell is Missy Elliott's "funky white sister?" you ask. Yo, I'm about to tell you.

In August, a Rhode Island woman named Mary Halsey (who you will never convince me isn't just Sharon Gless doing research for a character role) went viral after she sang Elliott's iconic "Work It" with a shofar at a public function where it's possible children were present.  And Missy Elliott loved it.

Please enjoy:

Of course, Halsey and her shofar ended up on Ellen, where they* got the surprise of a lifetime.

Halsey, who'd refused all other interviews before the talk show magnate bade her to LA, showed up in the same outfit, holding that same shofar, but without her ice cream-eating, cooler-foraging backup dancer (which is a crime).

And when Ellen said "Sing for me!" Halsey did what she does best. She "Worked It" (sorry) while Kristen Bell freaked out backstage like she could sense that a sloth was near (for some reason).

Photo via The Ellen Show.

But there were no sloths!

There was only Missy Elliott. And she roared onto that stage to make all of Halsey's dreams come true.

YOU READY?

You watch that video and tell me music doesn't bring people together.

You can't!

“When she first said, ‘Missy’s funky white sister,’ I was like, ‘Who is this?’” Elliott said when the two sat down to talk to Ellen right after their blockbuster performance.

“So when I listened, I’m like, ‘She knows all the words, but the sound effects!’ She makes the elephant noise, all of that."

And now the two have been bonded together for life thanks to their performance and a bedazzled jacket that Ellen has gifted Halsey.

Photo via The Ellen Show.

Congratulations to all of us for living in this amazing time! Now, where's my album, Missy Elliott??

*I say "they" because even inanimate objects cannot help but be moved by Missy Elliott's music. That shofar has now been turned into a live boy and is wandering the streets of Rhode Island looking for its fortune. Best wishes!

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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A nasty note gets a strong response.

We've all seen it while cruising for spots in a busy parking lot: A person parks their whip in a disabled spot, then they walk out of their car and look totally fine. It's enough to make you want to vomit out of anger, especially because you've been driving around for what feels like a million years trying to find a parking spot.

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

"This thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it’s still going." ⚡️⚡️

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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Health

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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Health

This woman's powerful 'before and after' photos crush myths about body positivity

"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

It's amazing to consider just how quickly the world has changed over the past 11 months. If you were to have told someone in February 2020 that the entire country would be on some form of lockdown, nearly everyone would be wearing a mask, and half a million people were going to die due to a virus, no one would have believed you.

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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