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A terminally ill dog's love of cheeseburgers is the uplifting story we all need right now.

Cody, a 10-year-old boxer-Labrador mix, loves cheeseburgers. And since his cancer diagnosis, his humans have been happy to indulge that craving.

Two months back, Cody got the bad news, with his vet giving him between just one and three months to live. His owner, Alec Karcher, shared his dog's story on Twitter, explaining how they were trying to make Cody's final days as happy as possible.

"My family and I were heartbroken by the news, but we decided we wanted to try and make the last part of his life the best we could," Karcher wrote. "Every day since we found out, we've gotten him a plain cheeseburger to eat with his many medications to make it easier and more enjoyable for him."

On July 15, as Karcher stopped at his local Burger King in Toledo, Ohio, an employee asked about the family's newfound love of plain cheeseburgers. Karcher responded by telling the employee Cody's story.

"She immediately asked us to wait a second after she gave us our food," he wrote. "A few minutes later, she returned after talking to her manager. She asked us for a name and said that the rest of the cheeseburgers for Cody would be free at their location."

This might seem like something small, but to Karcher and his family, the gesture meant the world.

"I can't explain how much that means to us, and my family and I are beyond appreciative," he wrote.

The official Burger King account got in on the action, replying to Karcher's original post, offering well wishes and a thanks for allowing that location to have an effect on their lives.

Burger King is right. The world does need more kindness and empathy. Small acts can add up in unexpected ways.

Maybe a small act of kindness is offering comfort to a heartbroken family or keeping a terminally ill dog's belly filled with his favorite food. It could also take any number of other forms, each as helpful as the one before it. The point here is that we all have the chance to make the world a better — or a worse — place for those around us. It's up to us how we choose to use our influence.

Cody is a good boy. Photo via Alec Karcher, used with permission.

May each burger be as delicious as the one before it, Cody. You are, of course, a very, very good dog.

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Joy

A guy may have met his 'dream girl' at a bar but she only gave him part of her phone number

Talk about playing hard to get.

via Tod Perry

An artist's recreation of Jackie's napkin note.

A woman named Jackie pulled a move straight out of a romantic comedy recently, and it has the internet rallying around her potential love interest. Jackie met a guy at a bar and liked him so much that she gave him her phone number. Well, 80% of her number, that is.

The world heard about it on January 17 when Twitter user Henpecked Hal and shared a picture of the napkin with her partial phone number written on it. "My 22-year-old cousin met his dream girl at a bar and it's going pretty well,” Hal wrote in the tweet.

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Science

Engineering students created a life-size 'Operation' game—with a fun twist on the fail buzzer

The game trades in tweezers for tongs and the anxiety-producing buzzer for an audio meme.

Courtesy of Washington State University

Students at Washington State University created a life-size Operation game.

Anyone who has ever played the game Operation likely feels a teensy bit of anxiety just thinking about it. The experience of painstakingly trying to extract the Charlie Horse with those tiny, wired tweezers with a steady hand, only to accidentally touch the metal side and get the lightning-like jolt of the buzzer is hard to shake. That's the stuff of core memories right there.

But what if you had a humongous game board the size of a real human, with life-size bones and organs to extract? What if instead of tweezers, you had large tongs as tools to perform your operation? What if instead of Pavlovian-style fail buzzers, the game produced a much less traumatic womp womp womp sound when you mess up?

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Top Splash

Flight attendant sits on the floor the entire flight to comfort distressed passenger

“He explained every sound and bump”

Courtesy of Molly Simonson Lee

Flight attendant sits on floor to comfort passenger

Not everyone enjoys flying. The level of non-enjoyment can range from mild discomfort to full blown Aerophobia, which is defined as an extreme fear of flying. While flying is the quickest way to get to far away destinations, for some people being that far off the ground is terrifying and they'd rather take their chances on the ground.

A passenger flying from Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in North Carolina to JFK International Airport in New York confronted that fear while flying with Delta. The woman, who is currently still unidentified expressed that she was nervous to fly according to Molly Simonson Lee, a passenger seated behind the woman who witnessed the encounter. Tight spaces don't make for much privacy, but in this case, the world is better for knowing this took place.

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Joy

Alabama farmer paid pharmacy bills for strangers and kept it a secret until his death

"He just wanted to bless people.”

Photo by Zoe Schaeffer on Unsplash

Alabama farmer paid strangers' pharmacy bills in secret

There are still good people in the world, and a farmer in Alabama left a legacy of kindness in his small town. Hody Childress lived in Geraldine, Alabama, which is about 40 miles outside of Huntsville and for the last 10 years of his life he made anonymous donations to the local pharmacy. No, the pharmacy isn't a charity, so donations aren't something they're accustomed to receiving.

But Childress was on a mission to help his struggling townspeople with access to medications that may be essential. Pharmacies likely run into many people during the week or month that can't afford the pricey cost of some of their prescriptions. I've personally seen pharmacists look up prices from other pharmacies to find the cheapest cost for the customer, or use a GoodRx card to help offset the cost.

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Joy

The reaction of these twins when one of them gets into Harvard is so wholesome

"I get so excited every time I get to talk about it because obviously Matthew worked so hard for this."

Vimeo

Reaction of these twins when one gets into Harvard is wholesome

You know how you are scrolling through your favorite social media app and you come across a video that just makes you do that big cheesy grin at your phone? Come on, you know that dorky grin I'm talking about. The one that makes your cheeks hurt and eyes swell up for a bit before you realize you're pushing your cart through the grocery store and people are looking at you weird. Yeah, that one - this video will do that to you.

You've been warned so you can't say you were unaware of the delight it would bring. Two teens, Matthew and Magdalena Myslenski, who just happen to be twins were doing the stressful ritual of opening up "the mail" to see if Matthew got accepted into his dream school. The mail is in quotes because teens don't receive paper acceptance letters anymore, they receive emails. Bonus points for no paper cuts.

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Education

Watch these teachers tell their students why they're an inspiration.

They're the reason these teachers come to work every day.

Photo from Pixabay

Teachers earn their own A's through this act of encouragement.

This article originally appeared on 10.06.16


Thinking back, I'm sure we can all recall having a tough day at school.

Maybe you got a bad grade on a test or weren't picked for a team you desperately wanted to be on. Or maybe there was a day (or days) where you just didn't feel like your presence at school mattered.

While you may no longer be in school, feeling unimportant can absolutely trickle back from time to time. I happened to be experiencing some of those feelings myself when I stumbled upon an amazing video by Jamie McSparin, a teacher at Oak Park High School in Kansas City, Missouri.
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