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Rio has a brilliant plan for what to do with its Olympic arenas after closing ceremonies.

From schools to public parks to swimming centers, Olympic venues will live on.

For 16 spectacular days in August 2016, Rio de Janeiro played host to the world's greatest athletes.

Although Rio was not without its many controversies in the lead-up to the games, things seem to have gone fairly smoothly for the Olympic host city during the event itself. Sure, the attendance hasn't been so great, and Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte may or may not (OK, almost certainly not) have been robbed at gunpoint.

In the end, it turned out OK. Lots of great stories emerged from the games, such as Olympic firsts for Fiji and Kosovo, a beautiful display of sportsmanship, the dominance of the U.S. women's gymnastics team, a woman who helped send an Olympic dad to Rio, the joy of victory, and so much more.


The opening ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. Photo by Pedro Ugarte/AFP/Getty Images.

But with the Olympics coming to an end, one big question remains: What will happen to all the facilities built for the games?

In 2009, when Rio de Janeiro beat out Chicago, Madrid, and Tokyo for hosting rights to the 2016 games, it estimated total costs directly related to the Olympics would be roughly $3 billion. As of the opening ceremonies, the actual cost exceeded that estimate by more than 50%, racking up $4.6 billion.

Overruns are common for Olympic host cities, but there's another problem: Most cities don't have an especially great track record of using stadiums and other Olympic-specific structures after the festivities have ended.

In 2004, Athens hosted the Olympics at a price of nearly $15 billion. During the games, things looked great. But after the games? Not so much.

The opening ceremony at the Athens Olympic Games in 2004. Photo by Jean-Philippe Ksiazek//AFP/Getty Images.

Years later, the once-beautiful Olympic grounds have been largely abandoned, and the country fell into a severe depression.

The neglected Athens Olympic grounds in 2012. Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images.

Similarly, Beijing, host of the 2008 Olympics, failed to find a post-games use for certain venues. The Beijing BMX track, baseball fields, and its rowing and kayaking centers have all gone largely ignored in the eight years after the Olympics.

Hoping to avoid a repeat of Athens, Olympics organizers have big plans for the Rio facilities after the flame goes out.

During the games, the 12,000-seat Arena of the Future played host to the world's top handball players. After the Paralympics are finished with it (the location will serve as the venue for goalball), it will be broken down and rebuilt as classrooms that will house up to 2,000 students.

The Future Arena in Rio de Janeiro. Photo by Lars Baron/Getty Images.

Similarly, the Aquatics Stadium will be disassembled and rebuilt as two separate public sports centers complete with their own Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The Olympic Aquatics Stadium. Photo by Buda Mendes/Getty Images.

“These are the Games of transformation that will transform the city and leave a legacy, such as mobility,” Municipal Olympic Company President Joaquim Monteiro said in a statement. "We're not preparing Rio for the Games, we are transforming the city of Rio.”

Wired reports that everything from the broadcast center's steel frame to the Olympic Tennis Center to the souvenir shop will be repurposed into various post-Olympic facilities to benefit Rio in years to come. Additionally, engineering firm Aecom plans to transform the Olympic grounds into public parks.

The Olympic park in July. Photo by Vanderlei Almeida/AFP/Getty Images.

Great news, right? Sounds like hosting the Olympics is a pretty solid investment in your own city, right?

Absolutely not.

It is pretty much universally understood that the Olympics are a bad investment. Building Olympic facilities usually means displacing low-income residents, and it tends to wreak havoc on a city's existing infrastructure. If your neighbor says, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if the Olympics were held here?" the correct answer is probably, "No, Brian, that would not be cool. In fact, it would be the opposite of cool."

But since the Olympics must happen somewhere, it's good to see Rio looking for smart long-term uses for these short-term facilities.

The delegations parade during the opening ceremony. Photo by Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images.

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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Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

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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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Going on a cruise can be an incredible getaway from the stresses of life on the mainland. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of danger when living on a ship 200-plus feet high, traveling up to 35 miles per hour and subject to the whims of the sea.

An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

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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.

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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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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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