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Gay teen breaks down high school barriers by asking football captain to homecoming.

In high school, the captain of the varsity football team usually has an alpha-male status at the school. In teen romance movies, he dates the head cheerleader and they’ve both voted homecoming king and queen.

But at Valley High School in Santa Ana, California, the varsity captain made an important point about male friendship by agreeing to be his gay friend’s date to homecoming.

During lunch hour on National Coming Out Day, Alexander Duarte, a gay student, staged an elaborate proposal.


With hundreds of friends looking on, Duarte stepped out of a door that read “Out of the Closet” and in front of a sigh that read: “I know I’m GAY, but can I take you STRAIGHT 2 HOMECOMING?” and asked his straight friend, quarterback Erick Pineda, to go to the Homecoming dance with him.

Pineda said, “Yes.”

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“It’s very important for me to be going to Homecoming with Alexander because I’m setting an example for not only my school, but also my community,” Pineda said. “I was definitely excited to be asked to homecoming because I knew how important this was for my friend and seeing the support from the staff and students was amazing.”

“I’m very grateful to be the captain of the football team. The team is very supportive and multiple teammates have approached me to congratulate me and have given me ‘RESPECT’ for my actions,” he added.

During freshman year, Pineda treated Duarte in a way he later apologized for, by going as Duarte’s date, he’s showing him the true meaning of friendship. “He [Pineda] also said that he loved me and that he will always be there for me if needed,” Duarte said.

Duarte asked Pineda to the prom to show people that it’s ok to “be themselves,” he told Yahoo. “Because one of the main things that hold people back aren’t others but ourselves.”

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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Satisfied, you walk back to your car feeling proud of yourself for telling that liar off and even more satisfied as you walk the additional 100 steps to get to the store from your lame parking spot all the way at the back of the lot. But did you ever stop and wonder if you told off the wrong person?

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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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8 nontraditional empathy cards that are unlike any you've ever seen. They're perfect!

Because sincerity and real talk are important during times of medical crisis.

True compassion.

When someone you know gets seriously ill, it's not always easy to come up with the right words to say or to find the right card to give.

Emily McDowell — a former ad agency creative director and the woman behind the Los Angeles-based greeting card and textile company Emily McDowell Studio — knew all too well what it was like to be on the receiving end of uncomfortable sentiments.

At the age of 24, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin's lymphoma. She went into remission after nine months of chemo and has remained cancer-free since, but she received her fair share of misplaced, but well-meaning, wishes before that.

On her webpage introducing the awesome cards you're about to see, she shared,

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Her experience inspired Empathy Cards — not quite "get well soon" and not quite "sympathy," they were created so "the recipients of these cards [can] feel seen, understood, and loved."

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After persevering through numerous medical conditions and surgeries in her own life, Elman realized a few years ago that body positivity wasn't just about size or weight. Things like scars, birthmarks, and anything else that makes us feel different of self-conscious have to be a part of the conversation, and she tries to make the movement accessible to everyone.

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via wakaflockafloccar / TikTok

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