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For 107 hours, Portugal didn't need any fossil fuels. Here's how they did it.

Can you remember where you were from 6:45 a.m. May 7 to 5:45 p.m. May 11?

A lot happened during those 107 hours. The bison became our new national mammal. President Barack Obama announced that he would be the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima. Attorney General Loretta Lynch delivered a soul-stirring condemnation of North Carolina's discriminatory HB2 bill.

U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

Something pretty wild happened in Portugal during that time too. For those 107 hours, Portugal was a completely renewable country.

Photo from Miguel Riopa/AFP/Getty Images.

For just under five days, Portugal generated all of the electricity it needed from completely renewable sources. Fossil fuels still burned for other stuff — cars, for instance — but for those magical 107 hours, 100% of their electricity demand was covered by renewables.

The news comes from a report by the Portuguese Renewable Energy Association and Zero, a renewable energy association. In 2011, the country performed a similar feat but only for a few hours.

Part of what's really cool is that Portugal isn't tied to just one clean energy technology. It's trying a lot of different ones.

A wave power machine in near the Portuguese town of Povoa de Varzim. Photo from Joao Abreu Miranda/AFP/Getty Images.

As of 2015, about 22% of the country's electricity is coming from wind power alone, but Portugal also uses hydroelectric, wave, geothermal, and solar power as well as biofuels (which are the renewable cousins to fossil fuels).

What might be more impressive is how quickly Portugal's renewable energy sector has grown.

In 2013, Portugal got about 26% of its energy from renewables. By 2015, that had grown to more than 50%.

A solar power plant in Serpa, Portugal. Photo from Ceinturion/Wikimedia Commons.

How did they do it so fast? Portugal's government has invested in renewable energy like crazy. Portugal has been giving renewable energy producers guaranteed prices and payments as well as picking up a lot of the new infrastructure check.

Yes, this has left a considerable deficit for the government to deal with, but it says it has plans to eliminate it.

Portugal's not the only country with an impressive record in renewable energy lately. Take Denmark, for example.

Denmark's amazing at wind power. In fact, one particularly windy day last year generated 140% of the country's electricity needs.

Danish Queen Margrethe visits a offshore wind farm in 2013. Photo from Henning Bagger/AFP/Getty Images.

In fact, tons of countries are getting in on this. Germany recently generated so much renewable energy consumers were actually paid to use their electricity. In 2014, Latvia, Austria, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland also generated the majority of their electricity need from renewables.

Renewable energy is happening. Fast. And America can do this too.

The United States still gets the vast majority of its electricity from nonrenewable resources, particularly coal and natural gas, but with the right programs, it's estimated we could provide as much as 80% of our energy needs through renewables by 2050.

Portugal didn't use magic to make its record 107-hour run happen. That success was based on political will, investment, and readily available technologies — stuff we can, and should, start doing today.

Community

Facebook group brings people together IRL to make meaningful friendships

True

Making new friends as an adult is challenging. While people crave meaningful IRL connections, it can be hard to know where to find them. But thanks to one Facebook Group, meeting your new best friends is easier than ever.

Founded in 2018, NYC Brunch Squad brings together hundreds of people who come as strangers and leave as friends through its in-person events.

“Witnessing the transformative impact our community has on the lives of our members is truly remarkable. We provide the essential support and connections needed to thrive amid the city's chaos,” shares Liza Rubin, the group’s founder.

Despite its name, the group doesn’t just do brunch. They also have book clubs, seasonal parties, and picnics, among other activities.

NYC Brunch Squad curates up to 10 monthly events tailored to the specific interests of its members. Liza handles all the details, taking into account different budgets and event sizes – all people have to do is show up.

“We have members who met at our events and became friends and went on to embark on international journeys to celebrate birthdays together. We have had members get married with bridesmaids by their sides who were women they first connected with at our events. We’ve had members decide to live together and become roommates,” Liza says.

Members also bond over their passion for giving back to their community. The group has hosted many impact-driven events, including a “Picnic with Purpose” to create self-care packages for homeless shelters and recently participated in the #SquadSpreadsJoy challenge. Each day, the 100 members participating receive random acts of kindness to complete. They can also share their stories on the group page to earn extra points. The member with the most points at the end wins a free seat at the group's Friendsgiving event.

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friendship
Democracy

This Map Reveals The True Value Of $100 In Each State

Your purchasing power can swing by 30% from state to state.

Image by Tax Foundation.

Map represents the value of 100 dollars.

As the cost of living in large cities continues to rise, more and more people are realizing that the value of a dollar in the United States is a very relative concept. For decades, cost of living indices have sought to address and benchmark the inconsistencies in what money will buy, but they are often so specific as to prevent a holistic picture or the ability to "browse" the data based on geographic location.

The Tax Foundation addressed many of these shortcomings using the most recent (2015) Bureau of Economic Analysis data to provide a familiar map of the United States overlaid with the relative value of what $100 is "worth" in each state. Granted, going state-by-state still introduces a fair amount of "smoothing" into the process — $100 will go farther in Los Angeles than in Fresno, for instance — but it does provide insight into where the value lies.

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money
Family

Woman bakes cheeky curse word pies for her grandma and it becomes a quirky holiday tradition

2023's pie is an homage to her favorite word to use while stuck in traffic.

Canva

You never know where a holiday tradition will come from.

Tried-and-true holiday traditions certainly have their merit, but there’s something quite special, magical even, about discovering personal rituals that commemorate one’s unique life. In my household, for instance, nothing quite rings in the Christmas spirit like sipping my partner’s delicious coquito and putting up a cardboard gingerbread house for my cats.

The beauty of creating customized holiday traditions is that they can be as festive, sentimental, or as silly as you want them to be. And you never know how one small moment can become the catalyst for a tradition that sparks joy year after year.

For Jess Lydon, that tradition is baking expletive-laden pies for Thanksgiving. (This is your profanity warning—the images below contain swear words.)

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humor
Family

Grandma got a secret DNA test after noticing her granddaughter didn't look like her siblings

People think she was right to do it, too.

via Christian Buehner/Unsplash and Warren Umoh/Unsplash

The grandmother was suspicious.

A grandmother always felt her middle granddaughter Lindsay, 15, looked slightly different from the rest of the family because she had blonde, curly hair, while the rest of her siblings’ hair was dark “I thought genetics was being weird and I love her,” she wrote on Reddit’s AITA forum.

But things became serious after Linday’s parents “banned” her from taking things a step further and getting a DNA test. If the family was sure their daughter was theirs, why would they forbid her from seeking clarity in the situation? After the parents laid down the law, the situation started to seem a little suspicious.

“I told my son and [daughter-in-law] that there was something fishy around her birth she needed to know. They denied it and told me to leave it alone,” the grandma wrote.

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dna tests
Pop Culture

Pianist uses every part of the instrument in this joyous performance of Toto's 'Africa'

"Not sure I can comprehend what just happened! Unbelievable."

via Peter Benace/YouTube

Peter Bence's piano cover of "Africa" by Toto

Peter Bence’s performance of “Africa” by Toto has over 17 million views on YouTube because of his creative reimagining of the song and, well, just about everyone loves “Africa.”

Bence is a Hungarian composer and producer who has become a viral sensation for his Michael Jackson, Queen, Sia, and Beatles covers. He has over 1.1 million followers on YouTube and has toured the globe, playing in more than 40 countries across four continents.

His performance of “Africa'' is unique because it opens with him creating a rhythm track and looping it by strategically tapping the piano and rubbing its strings to create the sound of shakers and congo drums.

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music
Joy

Family posts a very chill note to neighbors explaining why their dog is on the roof

“We appreciate your concern but please do not knock on our door.."

via Reddit

Meet Huckleberry the dog.

If you were taking a stroll through a quiet neighborhood and happened to catch a glance of this majestic sight, you might bat an eye. You might do a double take. If you were (somewhat understandably) concerned about this surprising roof-dog's welfare, you might even approach the homeowners to tell them, "Uh, I'm not sure if you know...but there's a...dog...on your ROOF."

Well, the family inside is aware that there's often a dog on their roof. It's their pet Golden, Huckleberry, and he just sorta likes it up there.

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dogs
Family

12 hilariously relatable comics about life as a new mom.

Embarrassing stains on your T-shirt, sniffing someone's bum to check if they have pooped, the first time having sex post-giving birth — as a new mom, your life turns upside-down.

All illustrations by Ingebritt ter Veld. Reprinted here with permission.

Some good not so good moments with babies.



Embarrassing stains on your T-shirt, sniffing someone's bum to check if they have pooped, the first time having sex post-giving birth — as a new mom, your life turns upside-down.

Illustrator Ingebritt ter Veld and Corinne de Vries, who works for Hippe-Birth Cards, a webshop for birth announcements, had babies shortly after one another.

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