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80,000 refugees in the desert just got their own solar power plant.

For the nearly 80,000 refugees living at the Zaatari camp in Jordan, electricity was a precious commodity.

Workers set up a permanent energy grid in 2016, but because of its prohibitively high cost, electricity had to be carefully rationed. Residents could only use electricity for six to eight hours a day after sunset. Want to wash a load of laundryor use the refrigerator during the afternoon? Not an option.

But a new solar power plant is going to help change that.

Photo by Khalil Mazraawi/AFP/Getty Images.


The plant covers an area the size of 33 soccer fields, making it the largest solar plant ever built in a refugee camp. It was powered up Nov. 13, and the plant is set to generate enough electricity to increase the ration to a more robust 12-14 hours a day.

Photo by Khalil Mazraawi/AFP/Getty Images.

Residents are understandably happy about this.

Photo by Khalil Mazraawi/AFP/Getty Images.

Ilham, a 41-year-old mother of three from southern Syria, told the U.N. Refugee Agency: "Now I will be able to do the laundry during the day, rather than at night when it doesn’t dry and we get sick from wearing wet clothes."

"It’s also safer for my children," she added. "It means they can stay indoors and do their homework or watch some TV, rather than playing outside on the streets until after dark." Her son also added the extra light at night will help him study more.

The Zaatari camp is home to about 80,000 refugees fleeing from the Syrian war. The camp is so large it could technically count as the fourth largest city in Jordan, and more than half of the refugees are children.

Photo by Khalil Mazraawi/AFP/Getty Images.

The construction of the plant was funded by the German government at a cost of about $17.5 million. Running it will save the United Nations about $5.5 million a year, money which can then be reinvested back into humanitarian efforts. The plant will also help reduce carbon emissions from the camp.

This is not the first time solar power has been deployed to help during a humanitarian crisis. In May, the Azraq camp became the first refugee camp in the world to run on solar power, and in October, Tesla brought a solar array to Puerto Rico to help restore power to a children's hospital after Hurricane Maria.

The refugee crisis is still ongoing, but efforts like these can improve the lives of those who have to live through them, and hopefully provide a model for future endeavors.

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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Representative Image from Canva

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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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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A beautiful cruise ship crossing the seas.

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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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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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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