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The police asked a football player to apologize. His response? NAILED IT.

"A call for justice shouldn't warrant an apology."

Andrew Hawkins is a wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns (for anyone who has as little knowledge of sportsball as I do, that's a football team). Recently, Hawkins chose to draw attention to the unjust killing of black men in Ohio by the police. He walked out on the field before a game wearing a shirt that said, "Justice for Tamir Rice and John Crawford."


In response to Hawkins' t-shirt, the Cleveland Police Union demanded an apology, writing, "It's pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law. They should stick to what they know best on the field. The Cleveland Police protect and serve the Browns stadium, and the Browns organization owes us an apology."

In a pretty surprising move, however, the Browns responded with a statement of their own: "We have great respect for the Cleveland Police Department and the work that they do to protect and serve our city. We also respect our players' rights to project their support and bring awareness to issues that are important to them if done so in a responsible manner." Hawkins himself also gave a statement to the press about the incident — he's quoted in the graphic above, or you can watch his whole statement in the video below.

One part of the video worth noting is at 3:07, when Hawkins says "I'm not an activist in any way, shape, or form." At first I was kind of taken aback by that — he says it like "activist" is a dirty word. But he goes on to explain that as someone who lives in the public eye, he's always aware of the impact his opinions will have on his reputation. Because of that, he works very hard to keep his opinions to himself "99 times out of 100." This issue, however, was one that he felt was too important to keep to himself.

FACT CHECK TIME!

  • Tamir Rice was a 12-year-old black male shot in November 2014 in a park in Cleveland, Ohio. He was carrying a toy gun. He died the next day.
  • John Crawford was a 22-year-old black male who was shot to death while holding a toy gun in a Walmart in Ohio.
  • Quotes in this post were pulled from an article on ESPN as well as the embedded video.

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

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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via PamTina_/Twitter

Pam's little brother is so sweet.

Pam has a little brother, who recently learned that he is actually her half-brother.

Of course, half-siblings are still very much siblings, but Pam's brother doesn't quite grasp the concept yet and seems upset about having to part with 50% of his sister.

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