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A Dude Trying To Ban Abortions Is Asked A Question He Never Considered. It's So Obvious It Hurts.
This is reality. This is what people trying to restrict a woman's right to choose actually think and say.
12.23.13
Behind the Scenes Making Recycled Records with Mark Ronson
You’re walking down the sidewalk, earbuds in, listening to your favorite hip-hop beats. As your head bobs to the sounds, the sun warms your back. It’s a perfect day.
When the chorus hits, the empty Sprite bottle in your hand becomes a drumstick, passing traffic becomes a sea of concertgoers, and the concrete beneath your feet is suddenly a stage. Spinning on your heels, you close out the song with your face to the sky and hands in the air.
Spotting a bright blue bin, you chuck in your imaginary drumstick. The sound that echoes back is satisfyingly cool, a deep, reverberating clunk so loud you can hear it over the music.
That is the sound of recycling.
Imagine how harmonious it would sound to mix the tones of millions of bottles going through the recycling process—the melody of all of us doing our part?
The Coca-Cola Company recognizes its responsibility to help address the world’s plastic packaging crisis. Several of the company’s most popular brands were historically made in green plastic bottles—however, when green plastic is recycled, it is usually turned into single-use items that do not get recycled again. To take one more step toward greater sustainability, Sprite, Fresca and Seagram’s are now being packaged in clear plastic bottles, increasing the likelihood of them being recycled over and over again—a process known as “closed loop recycling.”
Surprisingly enough, closed loop recycling and music have a lot in common. Music producers typically use a technique called sound sampling: the process of taking an old sound, chopping it up, and flipping it into a completely new beat. Just like the process of recycling, old can be new in sound sampling. An old sound is used in a new track, which is morphed again into a newer track, and so on. Beats being made today will be recycled by another creative in the future. Que Uptown Funk!
To celebrate the shift from green to clear, The Coca-Cola Company partnered with iconic, genre-defining/defying producers Mark Ronson and Madlib to create the world’s first album composed of the sounds of the plastic recycling process itself. The Recycled Records EP uses real ambient sounds sampled from various points in the closed-loop recycling chain at four different recycling facilities scattered across the United States. From the percussion of a forklift beeping, to the tonal beat of a conveyor belt, to the hi-hat of air blown into a plastic bottle, the EP brings to life the magic of multiple reuses.
“It sounds very crazy to say it, but anything can become a sample…any sound can be manipulated. The sound of opening a barrel of plastic has its own funk and flow to it,” said Ronson.
Not only did The Coca-Cola Company find a way to literally turn the sounds of recycling into music, thanks to the Recycled Records Beat Machine, you can be part of that process, too. Using the site, music enthusiasts are able to remix the very same recycled sound library used by Ronson and Madlib into innovative compositions of their own through an interactive, one-of-a-kind digitized version of an 808 beat machine. Generally, the biggest obstacle for many aspiring artists is accessing the proper musical technology, which is yet another reason why Recycled Records is so dang cool—this beat machine is free and accessible to anyone with an internet connection.
Innovation and creativity are the way of the future; tap into yours today by creating a Recycled Record of your very own. Maybe someday, other people will be dancing down the street listening to YOUR beats!
Best. Host. Ever.
Pency Lucero taking in the Northern Lights
Seeing the northern lights is a common bucket list adventure for many people. After all, it ticks a lot of boxes—being a dazzling light show, rich historical experience and scientific phenomenon all rolled into one. Plus there’s the uncertainty of it all, never quite knowing if you’ll witness a vivid streak of otherworldly colors dance across the sky…or simply see an oddly colored cloud. It’s nature’s slot machine, if you will.
Traveler and content creator Pency Lucero was willing to take that gamble. After thorough research, she stumbled upon an Airbnb in Rörbäck, Sweden with an actual picture of the northern lights shining above the cabin in the listing. With that kind of photo evidence, she felt good about her odds.
However, as soon as she landed, snow began falling so hard that the entire sky was “barely visible,” she told Upworthy. Martin, the Airbnb host, was nonetheless determined to do everything he could to ensure his guests got to see the spectacle, even offering to wake Lucero up in the middle of the night if he saw anything.
Then one night, the knock came.
In a video Lucero posted to TikTok, which now has over 12 million views, we hear Martin ushering her out to take a peek. Then we see Lucero’s face light up just before seeing the sky do the same.
“I thought it was a prank,” the onscreen text reads in the clip. “And then I see it….”
Watch:
@penslucero I’m on the verge of crying every time I watch this video I still cannot believe it. 📍 Rörbäck, Sweden
“I was mostly in awe of what this Earth is capable of,” Lucero recalled. “I never expected it to be THAT beautiful for the naked eye.” This is a hopeful sentiment against the widely accepted notion that the northern lights are often better looking in photos than they are in real life.
As Lucero asserted in a follow-up video, “Our video doesn’t do it justice at all…I would argue it’s even better for the naked eye.”
@penslucero Replying to @PatriotFamilyHomes ♬ Golden Hour: Piano Version - Andy Morris
Others were quick to back Lucero with anecdotes of their own experience.
“It’s definitely possible to see it like in the pics. I saw it this winter in Norway, there was bright green, purple and so much movement.”
“They’re so much better in person, the way they dance and move around is insane and beautiful.”
Of course, if you ask Martin, who everyone agreed was the best host ever, seeing guest reactions of pure wonder and joy is even “better than the lights themselves.” But still, he can’t deny that there’s a breathtaking magic to it all. He shared with Upworthy that “Sometimes it feels like it will pull you up in the sky like you are in the middle of it. I wish everyone would have the chance to witness it.”
A photo from Martin's Airbnb listing
When it comes to tips for actually seeing the northern lights, Martin admits it still mostly comes down to being in the right place at the right time. Luckily, his Airbnb listing can help with that.
Nature has a great way of reminding us that beyond the distractions and distresses of modern life, there is sublime beauty waiting for the chance to capture our hearts.
His response was so wholesome.
Baby Cora bears a striking resemblance to actor Woody Harrelson.
We can all get a little fascinated by doppelgängers and it's fun to find people who look alike. But what do you do when your baby girl looks uncannily like a famous middle-aged man?
Mom Dani Grier Mulvenna shared a photo of her infant daughter Cora side by side with a photo of Woody Harrelson on Twitter, with the caption "Ok but how does our daughter look like Woody Harrelson." The resemblance truly is remarkable, and the tweet quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of likes, shares and replies.
Naturally, the jokes about Harrelson being the baby's secret father came next, but then Harrelson himself got wind of it.
The actor shared a screenshot of Mulvenna's tweet on his Instagram page and included a delightful little poem he called "Ode to Cora."
\u201cOk but how does our daughter look like Woody Harreslon\u201d— Dani Grier Mulvenna (@Dani Grier Mulvenna) 1659529434
You're an adorable child
Flattered to be compared
You have a wonderful smile
I just wish I had your hair
How adorable and wholesome is that? Not only did he acknowledge his look-alike, but he even made a self-deprecating joke about his receding hairline.
People gushed in the comments and Mulvenna shared how tickled her daughter will be someday by the connection.
"You've made our day ❤️ can't wait to show her this when she's older, you have another fan for life xxx," she wrote.
Mulvenna also shared on Twitter that her daughter doesn't always look like Woody Harrelson, but when she does, she really does.
\u201cCora says, thank you all so much for the likes and retweets and also that she doesn't always look like Woody Harreslon, it's just that when she does...she really really does xxx\u201d— Dani Grier Mulvenna (@Dani Grier Mulvenna) 1659529434
What a cutie. What's hilarious is that sweet little Cora has no clue about any of this excitement and she won't for many more years. What a fun story her parents will be able to share with her.
Social media has created a world where people can connect in ways they never would have before. When these platforms are so often used for negative means, it's lovely to see something so sweet and pure come out of them.
This article originally appeared on 08.05.22
Arthur and Bernardo finally get to see each other face to face.
Surgeons prepared to separate 3-year-old conjoined twins in Brazil using virtual reality.
The things human beings have figured out how to do boggles the mind sometimes, especially in the realm of medicine.
It wasn't terribly long ago that people with a severe injury had to liquor up, bite a stick, have a body part sewn up or sawed off and hope for the best. (Sorry for the visual, but it's true.) The discoveries of antibiotics and anesthesia alone have completely revolutionized human existence, but we've gone well beyond that with what our best surgeons can accomplish.
Surgeries can range from fairly simple to incredibly complex, but few surgeries are more complicated than separating conjoined twins with combined major organs. That's why the recent surgical separation of conjoined twin boys with fused brains in Brazil is so incredible.
The twins, Bernardo and Arthur Lima, are almost 4 years old and have never seen one another's face. They've spent their lives conjoined at the top of their heads, facing opposite directions. Born as craniopagus twins (joined at the cranium), their brains were also fused together, making their separation extremely complex. According to the BBC, they've been cared for at the Instituto Estadual do Cérebro Paulo Niemeyer (Paulo Niemeyer State Brain Institute) in Rio de Janeiro for the past two and a half years.
Surgeon Noor ul Owase Jeelani is the founder of medical charity Gemini Untwined, which funded the surgery. He helped lead the team of nearly 100 medical workers who worked for months to prepare for the boys' separation, which was one of the most complicated of its kind.
Jeelani told the BBC that it was the first time surgeons in separate countries practiced by operating in the same "virtual reality room" together, wearing VR headsets.
"It's just wonderful," he said. "It's really great to see the anatomy and do the surgery before you actually put the children at any risk. You can’t imagine how reassuring this is for the surgeons. To do it in virtual reality was just really man-on-Mars stuff."
Watch Jeelani explain how they prepared for the procedure:
Prior attempts to separate the twins had been unsuccessful, making the surgery even more challenging due to scar tissue. However, after multiple surgeries that took more than 33 hours collectively, the boys were successfully separated in June.
“It was without a doubt the most complex surgery of my career,” said neurosurgeon Gabriel Mufarrej of the Paulo Niemeyer State Brain Institute, according to EuroNews. “At the beginning, nobody thought they would survive. It is already historic that both of them could be saved."
Jeelani told the BBC that the boys' heart rates and blood pressure were "through the roof" for four days after the surgery—until they were reunited and touched hands.
According to Reuters, Bernardo and Arthur are the oldest twins with fused brains to be successfully separated. They will spend the next six months in rehabilitation.
Congratulations to the Lima family and to the global team that combined dedication, perseverance and the miracle of modern technology to create a brighter future for these young boys.
This article originally appeared on 08.04.22
Frances 'Effy' Jones, one of the first women to be trained to use a typewriter and to take up cycling as a hobby, recalls life as a young working woman in London.
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.
While cars were just around the corner from being the common mode of transportation toward the end of the 19th century, it's pretty wild to imagine what these women experienced. Frances "Effy" Jones explained how, at age 17, she was encouraged by her brother to check out this new machine in a storefront window. Turns out that machine was a typewriter and, after being trained on how to use it, Jones would sit in the store window typing while people outside gathered to watch. Before long, classes began popping up for women to learn how to use a typewriter, starting a new movement for women of that era.
The second woman, Berta Ruck, told the BBC that she would get into a bit of trouble at boarding school for drawing instead of completing school work. This talent took Ruck to art school in London where she rode buses around town, attempting to avoid mud getting on her long skirt. But the woman explained that it never worked and she would spend hours brushing the mud from her skirt before wearing it out again. I'm sure you're thinking, buses? They weren't the buses we would see nowadays. These were double-decker horse-pulled carriages.
I know, that's hard to imagine. That's why you should check out the video below:
This article originally appeared on 08.29.22
Kids shouldn't have to act like adults.
Parents who just can't stop fighting
Whitney Goodman, a licensed marriage and family therapist, shared a video about kids who grew up in homes where their parents were always fighting, which made many people feel seen. It also started a conversation about who deserves more empathy in the parent-child relationship: the parents or the children.
Goodman is known as the “radically honest” psychotherapist and the author of “Toxic Positivity: Keeping it Real in a World Obsessed with Being Happy.”
"If you grew up in this kind of house, you may have noticed that your family would split off into different alliances or teams to try to manage the material discord. Because the marriage wasn't a good or safe foundation for the family, everybody else had to kind of go and form these new teams,” Goodman explained in an Instagram post.
"Maybe you and your dad would team up and talk bad about your mom—and mom was crazy, and we need to fight against her. And maybe your other sibling was teamed up with your mom and would start acting like her and started to behave in similar ways, and everybody was, like, trying to find stability but also out to get one another at the same time," she continued.
Goodman believes that no matter how well a child deals with parents who are constantly in conflict, the outcome will never be optimal.
"You're all looking for safety and trying to find it in different ways, but you'll never be able to achieve the same type of stability you would have felt if your parents had that concrete stable relationship,” she added.
Many commenters could relate to the unstable feeling that Goodman described in her post and the stress of living in a divided family and playing on different teams.
"All of this, and it's so confusing when you're an only child and you end up 'bouncing' between teams," Amwahl added.
"100%. Teamed up with my dad only to realize as an adult that he’s the problem," lovisoctavia wrote.
"This happened to me growing up. Even to this day I have to remind my mom that I’m not interested in talking badly about dad," hawkmoonrising said in the comments.
The post also made some parents who may have gone through challenging times raising their kids ask for some sympathy as well. This begs the question, in these domestic situations, who deserves more compassion, the parent or the child?
Goodwin posted a follow-up video with her answer.
Goodman believes that when children grow up, their parents tend to view their past as if they went through the situation as the people they are now, not the helpless kid. This skews the power dynamic in the parents’ eyes and puts them on equal footing.
But in the end, the children had no choice in the situation.
“When we're having these conversations, this will always be true: The child was a child who was helpless, defenseless, and unable to care for themselves physically and emotionally,” Goodman said. “The adult had power and options. And when we keep that in mind, it makes the conversation a little bit more fair.”
“I know this is a small tragedy in the grand scheme of the world, but one that I feel acutely knowing that I expected many more years with my friend."
RIP Marty
Tons of people found themselves clicking on the trending hashtag #RIPMarty, expecting to hear tragic news about a celebrity of some sort.
Instead, they learned about Marty the cat, whose owner shared the most heartbreakingly beautiful goodbye letter following his passing. That letter quickly went viral online, leaving folks completely invested Marty's story, not to mention utterly devastated.
Will Menaker, who shared the letter on Twitter, began by sharing how he and Marty first met. Or more accurately, how Marty introduced himself by emerging from under a car and unapologetically following Menaker up to the steps of his apartment seeking pets. Eventually, as the weather began to get colder, Menaker experimented with bringing Marty inside.
“From that moment on I was in love. I wouldn’t say I ‘had’ a cat, but from then on I shared a house with a tuxedo cat I would name Marty,” Menaker wrote.
Other than being TNR’d (trapped, neutered, released), Marty’s past was a mystery. What Menaker did know of his feline companion was that he had “striking green eyes,” was “always friendly but aloof” and was “outgoing but possessed a Sphinx-like dignity that nothing could assail.”
Those are already lovely words, but you might want to grab tissues for this next part.
Yesterday, I had to say goodbye to a friend. pic.twitter.com/E3sbk5LTKb
— Will 🦥 Menaker (@willmenaker) March 29, 2023
“Yesterday, we had to say goodbye. After months of trying to treat a cancer that he had been suffering from, enough was enough. He stopped eating and drinking entirely and by then had wasted away to weighing almost nothing…I decided to make the only decision we could on his behalf. He went to sleep in our house and in my arms.”
Tapping into every pet parent’s grief, Menaker wrote, “I know this is a small tragedy in the grand scheme of the world, but one that I feel acutely knowing that I expected many more years with my friend. We are heartbroken but grateful for the years that we did have him in our lives.”
Despite the obvious anguish, Menaker’s letter ends on a hopeful note.
“I firmly believe cats are connected in some way to the other side. They have been around human civilization for roughly 9,000 years and are the only animal species that has domesticated human beings and not vice versa…Whatever happens after our deaths, I think cats are somehow involved, and I hope that when it comes time, Marty will guide me on my own journey to the Western Lands.
“Goodbye Marty, I’ll miss you terribly.”
Menaker’s moving words had people in tears over a cat they didn’t even know.
Sees "RIP Marty" trending.
— TheAlabastard🏒🏋🏼♀️🐈🤟🏻 (@ThatAlabastard) March 29, 2023
Clicks to see which Marty.
Reads about Marty the kitty.
Sobs
Marty was a good kitty. https://t.co/J5KCiAhvDI
Many commiserated with pictures of their own belated fur babies.
I'm so sorry for your loss. RIP, Marty. When you see Jewel, tell her I love her and I still miss her every day pic.twitter.com/fB1qsNEg8d
— Zoe 💖💜💙✡️ black lives matter (@zmcadler) March 29, 2023
Others still applauded Menaker for showing Marty such compassion and love.
Taking in an animal and loving them, caring for them, is one of the greatest acts of compassion in this world.
— Evangelicals Are Fascists 🏳️🌈 (@JasonIsCreating) March 29, 2023
RIP Marty, you lived a good life, and you were very clearly loved. https://t.co/AjNYMiS4rl
Goodbye, Marty. We might not know you, but we are touched by your story. Enjoy that great scratching post in the sky.