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Despite the odds, one young writer is passionately chasing his literary dreams.

'I want to become a published author. And there’s nothing that’s going to stop me.'

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Taco Bell Live Más

Do you know what it’s like to have a dream that you’ll stop at nothing to achieve?

Justin Susan does.

When Justin first read a book that transported him to another world, he knew he wanted to re-create that magical feeling for others just like him.


"I want to become a published author. And there’s nothing that’s going to stop me."

‌All images via Taco Bell.‌

Since then, he's been working relentlessly to make his literary dreams a reality, one chapter at a time.

"When I feel like I'm going to stop, I think about if J.K. Rowling would've stopped," he says with a quiet confidence. "If John Green, Steven Spielberg — all these great people — if they would've stopped. It just keeps me going."

The odds, though, haven't often been in Justin's favor.

When Justin was in the eighth grade, he was reading and writing at a fifth-grade level.

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Despite multiple attempts throughout high school, not once was Justin accepted into a college preparatory program. Justin is from the White Mountain Apache reservation, and organizations like College Horizons have reported the high school graduation rate for Native Americans is about half. And of that half, only 5% immediately go on to four-year colleges.

But Justin knows what it will take and is determined.

He wakes up around 5:30 a.m. to get his mind going and his blood flowing — a habit of some of the world's most successful people. For him, something as simple as a morning walk can make all the difference when it comes to tackling the day ahead.

The most inspiring part, however, is what drives him every single day.

"I want to work hard for it. And not only for, you know, the fame or any of that. I’m doing it out there for the simple inspiration for another kid out there just like me, who may not have the right path in life. And hopefully, my characters, my words, can help them just get a little closer to that right direction. And that is the biggest reason why I do it."

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It's no wonder Justin stood out from the crowd and was eventually awarded the Live Más Scholarship from Taco Bell.

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"Hope ... it gave me hope that my dreams are possible."

Those were Justin's words when he first found out he had won.

You see, Taco Bell is celebrating our young innovators, creators, and dreamers — the next generation of students whose skills go beyond the usual athletics and academics. Despite the challenges of the path ahead, these young men and women aren't afraid to dream big and do what they love. They're going after what they want in life and are doing it with determination and truckloads of heart.

Watch Justin talk about his inspirational journey:

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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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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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A student accidentally created a rechargeable battery that could last 400 years

"This thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it’s still going." ⚡️⚡️

There's an old saying that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.

There's no better example of that than a 2016 discovery at the University of California, Irvine, by doctoral student Mya Le Thai. After playing around in the lab, she made a discovery that could lead to a rechargeable battery that could last up to 400 years. That means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

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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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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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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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