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Joy

10 things that made us smile this week

10 things that made us smile this week

Upworthy's roundup of joyful finds from around the internet.

Happy weekend, everyone!

Spring is springing here in the Northern Hemisphere, and even though the same thing happens every year, it never gets old. No matter how long and dark and cold the winter gets (for those of us in the northern climes, anyway), the sun always comes out, the greenery always returns and the flowers always blossom.

It's refreshing and beautiful and life-giving, every time—and a metaphorical reminder that growth and renewal are possible. There are rainy days and muddy messes and old, dead stuff to clear out of the way, but it's all in the service of life reasserting itself.

It's the season for celebrating hope, friends. Let's do it.


This week's round-up of internet delights includes humans being excellent to each other, people sharing their amazing talents, animals being hilarious and sweet, and heartwarming examples of support and unconditional love. It's joy and hope in 10 small packages, which when you put them all together, will hopefully give you a little boost in your faith in humanity.

Enjoy:

Epic proof that dance = the great unifier.

I mean, this is literally nothing but pure human joy.

The crowd hushed for this blind basketball player to hear the hoop—then went wild when she made it.

Jules Hoogland is a junior at Zeeland East High School in Michigan, and she plays on the United Sports team, which organizes teams with and without disabilities to play together. Awesome example of meaningful inclusion. Read the full story here.

The musical talents of the Wilson family are just PHEW.

Like, DANG. Even the wee one! So impressive.

Skaters helped an elder ride a skateboard for the first time and she was so stoked. 

@kevperez_

Wholesome Content ❤️ *EXTENTED VERSION*…I filmed this in Washington D.C April 2017 #skateboarding #skate #wholesome

Gotta love a little intergenerational sharing.

Macaw enjoying a bath—and objecting to the human turning off the faucet.

"Did I say I was done?" indeed. Macaws are a species of parrot, and parrots are said to have the approximate intelligence of a human toddler, so this isn't surprising. Still delightful, though.

Bap that fish, kitten!

@catoriess

kitten plays ipad games #fypシ

Ah, what the wonders of the modern world can do.

Doggos playing some good old-fashioned keepy uppy.

This is genuinely impressive. Look at the air some of them get!

And then there's this doggo who just loves on everyone.

Totally in love. Golden retrievers aren't known as one of the friendliest dog breeds for nothing.

Anne Hathaway blows Kelly Clarkson away with her own song in a karaoke competition.

You'd think going up against Kelly Clarkson in a singing competition would be a huge mistake, but Anne Hathaway can hold her own. And Clarkson's reaction to missing her own song is hilarious. Read the full story and watch the full segment here.

The love of Ketanji Brown Jackson's family during her opening statement was so beautiful.

The tears her husband wiped away. The look of knowing admiration on their daughter's face. Her parents were in the crowd, too, their faces beaming with pride. A beautiful highlight in this historic moment. Read the full story here.

Hope that restored a little calm and joy to your heart at the end of a long week. Come back again next Friday for another roundup of smile-worthy finds from around the internet.

Community

How to end hunger, according to the people who face it daily

Here’s what people facing food insecurity want you to know about solving the hunger problem in America

True

Even though America is the world’s wealthiest nation, about 1 in 6 of our neighbors turned to food banks and community programs in order to feed themselves and their families last year. Think about it: More than 9 million children faced hunger in 2021 (1 in 8 children).

In order to solve a problem, we must first understand it. Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization, released its second annual Elevating Voices: Insights Report and turned to the experts—people experiencing hunger—to find out how this issue can be solved once and for all.

Here are the four most important things people facing hunger want you to know.

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Pets

Family brings home the wrong dog from daycare until their cats saved the day

A quick trip to the vet confirmed the cats' and family's suspicions.

Family accidentally brings wrong dog home but their cats knew

It's not a secret that nearly all golden retrievers are identical. Honestly, magic has to be involved for owners to know which one belongs to them when more than one golden retriever is around. Seriously, how do they all seem have the same face? It's like someone fell asleep on the copy machine when they were being created.

Outside of collars, harnesses and bandanas, immediately identifying the dog that belongs to you has to be a secret skill because at first glance, their personalities are also super similar. That's why it's not surprising when one family dropped off their sweet golden pooch at daycare and to be groomed, they didn't notice the daycare sent out the wrong dog.

See, not even their human parents can tell them apart because when the swapped dog got home, nothing seemed odd to the owners at first. She was freshly groomed so any small differences were quickly brushed off. But this accidental doppelgänger wasn't fooling her feline siblings.

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via Pexels

A teacher lists his class rules.

The world would be a much better place if humans weren’t so … human. We all fall short of perfection. Common sense is, sadly, not too common. And there’s one guy out there who always manages to screw things up when things start getting good.

Call it Murphy’s law. Call it the great “reason we can’t have nice things.” Call it entropy. It feels like a whole lot of pain could be avoided if we all had just a little bit more sense.

But what if there was one rule that we all agreed to follow to make everyone’s life better? What would this magical rule be?

A Reddit user who goes by the name P4insplatter came to this realization and asked the AskReddit subforum, “What simple rule would fix the world if everyone actually followed it?” They received dozens of simple rules that if everyone got behind would make the world drastically better.

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Sandra Maria/Youtube, Official Lives & Music Videos/Youtube

You can't not sing this song.

The music of Queen has a profound visceral effect on everyone. Few pieces of art can cause complete strangers to put aside their differences and come together in song, but by golly, “Bohemian Rhapsody” is one of them. It would be cheesy if it weren’t so absolutely beautiful.

This pertains even to non-English-speaking countries, it appears. Recently, thousands of Harry Styles concertgoers in Warsaw, Poland, began cheering as those iconic beginning piano notes penetrated the air.
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Movie critic Roger Ebert speaking his mind at the Sundance Film Festival.

It’s been ten years since the world lost Roger Ebert to cancer, and his voice is sorely missed. Ebert had a pure love of cinema, and even though he was a film critic in a sweater with a Pulitzer Prize, he wrote and spoke in a way accessible to every man.

He didn’t care if a film was a Hollywood blockbuster or art-house fare; what mattered was whether it deserved his highly-coveted “thumbs up.”

Ebert was an extremely gifted communicator whose interests went far beyond film. In his later years, he often mused about music, politics, and American cultural events with the same eloquence, thoughtfulness and wit.

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@over40slbmom/TikTok

Feeling nostalgic yet?

It seems like so many iterations of unfettered joy from our childhood haven’t made it to the modern age, and playgrounds are no exception.

Gone are the days of metal slides that scorched the derriere in the summertime, seesaws that doubled as human catapults and the notorious merry-go-rounds that separated the weak from the strong. Good old fashioned character building—safety be damned!

As it turns out, a few of these old relics are still standing. And footage of kids playing at one of these bygone parks is filling adults—particularly Gen Xers—with sweet nostalgia.
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A couple shares why they decided to leave the United States.

Although it is difficult to tell if there is a trend of Americans moving out of the country, rough estimates show that around 8 million currently live in other countries—double the 4.1 million living abroad in 1999.

The most popular countries for Americans to move to are Mexico, Canada and the United Kingdom, in that order.

A big reason why some are leaving the U.S. is that an increasing number of employers allow people to work abroad. Others are choosing to leave because of cost of living increases and “golden visa” programs. Golden visas offer the chance to get a foreign residency permit by purchasing a house or making a significant investment or donation.

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