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People have raised over $100,000 to cover Brett Kavanaugh accuser’s security costs.

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford has put her reputation and her personal safety on the line to speak out against sexual assault.

The former classmate of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh says the judge sexually assaulted her at a party when the two were in high-school. Kavanaugh has denied the charge, leading up to what had seemed like an inevitable showdown between the two, as his nomination hangs in the balance.

Supporters of Kavanaugh say an accusation has threatened his career and reputation though most people have supported Ford’s right ot be heard - pointing out she has nothing to gain by speaking out against him.


In fact, she is risking everything - far more than one man’s ambitions to have a seat on the nation’s highest court.

That’s because Ford says she and her family have received numerous death threats, forcing them to leave their private home and take on a professional security detail.

Aside from the incalcuable emotional costs, private security details are expensive.

So, Georgetown Law Professor Heidi Li Feldman created a GoFundMe account to help pay for Ford’s security costs and in less than 24 hours, it has already raised more than $100,000 from more than 4,000 individual donors.

Feldman says she hopes the campaign will bolster other women to speak out.

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

“Let’s create a fund to cover her security expenses, to do just a bit to make it easier for women in her position to come forward despite great risks,” Feldman writes in a letter on the GoFundMe page. “If we raise more than Dr. Blasey needs,  extra funds will go to women’s organizations and/or into an account to cover similar costs incurred in comparable situations.”

Feldman’s campaign quickly went viral, far exceeding its original funding goal. She agreed to raise the goal one final time on Wednesday to $175,000 and promised in her update to donate any funds in excess of Ford’s security costs to women’s organizations and similar efforts.

Ford remains in the spotlight in part because of a disagreement over how the Senate should handle her accusation. Republican Senator have offered her the chance to testify but she has asked the FBI to investigate her claim first, something her lawyer says is necessary to ensure fairness.

Her action isn’t explicitly an indictment of Kavanaugh himself but rather a system that still makes it not only difficult, but oftentimes dangerous, for women to speak out after surviving incidents of sexual assault and harassment.

Still, the more Americans learn about Kavanaugh and the allegation against him, the less supportive of his nomination they become, which has only amplified the attacks on her personal character and the threats against her family:

Creating a safe space for women to come forward is essential to addressing the larger problems of sexual misconduct in our society.

Even if you believe in Brett Kavanaugh’s innocence, ensuring people have the right to have their voices, and their evidence, heard in the court of public opinion is better for democracy, better for decency and better for the rule of law, the very thing Kavanaugh has built his career on protecting.

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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Joy

Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

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A woman looking at her phone while sitting on the toilet.


One of the most popular health trends over the last few years has been staying as hydrated as possible, evidenced by the massive popularity of 40-oz Stanely Quencher cups. The theory among those who obsess over hydration is that, when you pee clear, you’ve removed all the waste in your body and are enjoying the incredible benefits of being 100% hydrated. Congratulations.

However, according to Dr. Sermed Mezher, an NHS doctor in the UK, peeing clear isn’t always a sign of being healthy.

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Joy

Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

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An English doctor named Edward Jenner took incredible risks to try to rid his world of smallpox. Because of his efforts and the efforts of scientists like him, the only thing between deadly diseases like the ones below and extinction are people who refuse to vaccinate their kids. Don't be that parent.

Unfortunately, because of the misinformation from the anti-vaccination movement, some of these diseases have trended up in a really bad way over the past several years.

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Innovation

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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