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2 Girl Scouts spent years telling the world about palm oil. Here's what they want you to know.

Grab a Krispy Kreme and check this out.

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Unilever and the United Nations

What makes the world go 'round?

You were going to say love, right? Or maybe money? Oil! But not the stuff from underground...

We're talking palm oil.


Yep, palm oil is a major world commodity. It makes our donuts delish, our cookies crunchy, our ice cream mouthwatering, our makeup smooth, our lipstick luscious, our shampoo foamy, etc., etc.

Lots of rural Indonesians benefit from the palm oil economy, which provides income and has led to good things we all want like schools, roads, and hospitals.

In 2007, two 11-year-old Girl Scouts, Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen discovered that Girl Scout cookies contain palm oil. They were horrified.

Why?

Well, since we ALL enjoy the fruits of the oil palm, here's what they want us to know:

  • Palm oil is used in about half of all our packaged food and body care products.
  • Production of palm oil has skyrocketed since the 1980s (although people have been using this oil for centuries).
  • There's a downside, and it's big. PristineIndonesian rainforest has disappeared at really alarming rates. In fact, a 2007 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report said that most of the country's forest might be destroyed by 2022. (The palm oil industry will only grow larger — plantations are starting up in Africa.)

  • As the forest goes, so goes the home of indigenous peoples who rely on the forest for their living, as well as a remarkable diversity of plants and wild animals, including rhinos, elephants, tigers, and orangutans. There are also reports of human rights abuses when companies have cleared land for plantations without proper consultation with the indigenous people who live there. And you can bet they didn't ask the orangutans either.

I bet David Attenborough would have a few things to say about that.

Really dismayed by what they learned about the human and wildlife costs of palm oil, Madison and Rhiannon decided to take action.

The girls launched a number of campaigns, including teaming up with the Rainforest Action Network. After several years, they've succeeded in persuading the bakers of Girl Scout cookies to change their source of palm oil to more sustainable producers.

Krispy Kreme and Dunkin' Donuts have followed suit.

Way to go, Madison and Rhiannon!

Whoa! Before you celebrate with another bite of that cookie: There are a lot of questions about what "sustainable" palm oil really means.

It's most def a work in progress. We have to keep up the pressure on companies to be responsible producers because they aren't exactly leading the way without some noise-making and voting with dollars from our part.

Want to learn more? These guys explain all about palm oil (with some orangutan assistance).

Teacher starts period in front of class, turns into a lesson

Teachers are almost always teaching even when it's not in their lesson plan.

Those that were born to be teachers find teachable moments everywhere and one woman found herself in one of those moments. Though this one was likely just a bit more personal than she probably would've liked.

Emily Elizabeth posted a TikTok video about how she found herself in a predicament in front of her classroom full of 10 and 11-year-old kids. The teacher explained that she was noticing a lot of commotion and whispering among the little girls in her class while she was wearing white pants. After reminding the girls to stay on task, the whispering continued, prompting Emily to be more direct.

That's when one of the girls asked to speak with her privately dropping the bomb that no one that gets periods wants to hear in public.

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Mario Mirante criticizes a mom he saw at the park.

TikTokker Mario Mirante is going viral for his video that brings up two significant issues: smartphone addiction and whether people without children have the right to criticize parents.

It all started when Mirante saw a young boy playing alone in the park.

“The kid is just playing quietly, not being annoying. I don’t hear a peep from him; he's just doing his thing on the playground,” Mirante said in a video that has nearly 6000,000 views. “The mom the entire time is on her phone, staring right down at her screen. Doesn’t look up one time.”

The boy climbed up to the top of the slide and called down to his mother, who didn’t even look up from her phone. “I hear, ‘Hey mom, watch. Watch, Mom,’” Mirante recalled. “And at the top of her lungs, shrieking like a Velociraptor, this mother screams, ‘One second!”

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Woman who was pressured to quit her job to raise stepdaughter's baby makes a bold decision

This sparked an important conversation about family responsibility.

via Pixabay

A middle-aged woman holding a baby.

A story that recently went viral on Reddit’s AITA forum asks an important question: What is a parent’s role in taking care of their grandchildren? The story is even further complicated because the woman at the center of the controversy is a stepparent.

The woman, 38, met her husband Sam, 47, ten years ago, when his daughter, Leah, 25, was 15. Five years ago, the couple got married after Leah had moved out to go to college.

Leah’s mom passed away when she was 10.

Last year, Leah became pregnant, and she wanted to keep the baby, but her boyfriend didn’t. After the disagreement, the boyfriend broke up with her. This forced Leah to move back home because she couldn’t afford to be a single parent and live alone on a teacher’s salary.

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Watch this 104-yr-old woman break the world tandem skydiving record

Dorothy Hoffner tried skydiving for the first time on her 100th birthday and loved it.

Dorothy Hoffner is pure #agingoals.

If you're looking for some aging inspiration, look no further, because Dorothy Hoffner is about to blow your mind.

At 104, Hoffner just became the oldest person to parachute out of an airplane in a tandem skydive. That's right, skydive. At 104 years old—or to be exact, 104 years and 289 days old—beating the previous world record set by a 103-year-old in Sweden in May of 2022.

But it's actually even more impressive than that. It's not like Hoffner is someone who's been skydiving since she was young and just happened to keep on doing it as she got older. She actually didn't go on her first skydiving adventure until her 100th birthday.

On Oct 1, 2023, she joined the team at Skydive Chicago in Ottawa, Illinois, for the world-breaking tandem skydive. Though she uses a walker to get around, she manages the physical toll of plummeting through the air at 10,000+ feet before parachuting to a skidding stop strapped to a certified U.S. Parachute Association (USPA) tandem instructor with impressive ease.

“Let’s go, let’s go, Geronimo!” Hoffner said after she boarded the plane, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Watch her do what many of us would be too terrified to attempt:

The way she rolls right out of that plane cool as a cucumber! Hoffner told the Tribune that on her first skydive, at age 100, she had to be pushed out of the plane. But this time, knowing what she was in for, she took charge with calm confidence.

“Skydiving is a wonderful experience, and it’s nothing to be afraid of," Hoffner shares. "Just do it!”

That's some seriously sage advice from someone who knows firsthand that age really is just a number. Learn more about skydiving with Skydive Chicago here.

Education

Unearthed BBC interview features two Victorian-era women discussing being teens in the 1800s

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Two Victorian women discuss being teens in the 1800s.

There remains some mystery around what life was like in the 1800s, especially for teens. Most people alive today were not around in the Victorian era when the technologies now deemed old-fashioned were a novelty. In this rediscovered 1970s clip from the BBC, two elderly women reminisce about what it was like being teenagers during a time when the horse and buggy was still the fastest way to get around.

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Can we bring back some 50s fridge features, please?

There are very few things that would make people nostalgic for the 1950s. Sure, they had cool cars and pearl necklaces were a staple, but that time frame had its fair share of problems, even if "Grease" made it look dreamy. Whether you believe your life would've been way more interesting if you were Danny Zuko or not, most would agree their technology was...lacking.

All eras are "advanced" for their time, but imagine being dropped off in the 50s as someone from the year 2023. A recent post by Historic Vids on Twitter of a 1956 commercial advertising a refrigerator, however, has some people thinking that when it came to fridges, maybe they were living in the year 2056. I don't typically swoon over appliances, yet this one has me wondering where I can purchase a refrigerator like this.

Of course, there's no fancy touch screen that tells you the weather and asks how you'd like your ice cubed. It's got more important features that are actually practical.

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