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Heroes

Upworthy fans have already helped save dozens of dogs displaced by the Texas storm

After battling the snow, Rex gets a third chance to find the perfect home

Upworthy fans have already helped save dozens of dogs displaced by the Texas storm

Meet Rex -- a sweet, beautiful, collie mix. Originally adopted from a Tyler, Texas animal shelter at just 12-weeks-old, Rex's family could no longer keep him and returned him to the shelter when he was only four.

Last week in the wake of the horrible storms in Texas, generators gave out and shelters lost power. The pipes burst and water was cut off. The lack of water, power, and other resources created a dire situation with many pets at risk of euthanasia in shelters across Texas.


Rex was at such a shelter in Tyler that didn't have a plan to keep their pets safe through the terrible winter storm. The horrible reality is they were intending on euthanizing these animals before they froze to death or went any longer without water, as they had little to no resources they felt they had no other choice.

As overnight temperatures remained below freezing, the staff and volunteers at Austin Pets Alive! continued working around the clock to ensure there wasn't a moment when the animals were unsafe. They needed immediate help to keep up their heroic efforts.

At GOOD/Upworthy, we issued a quick call to arms to aid their life-saving efforts. In a few hours, you helped raise over $17,000.

Thanks to the efforts of everyone who donated, volunteered, and worked tirelessly with Austin Pets Alive! they were able to save Rex and 30+ others just like him by coordinating a lifesaving rescue transport with their friends at Wright-Way Rescue in the Chicago area.

Rex wasn't so sure about getting out of the van after the 14-hour drive, but these amazing people were patient and helped him get ready to hop back into the snow.

Now, a Texas dog named Rex who spent most of his young life in a rural shelter is in a warm foster home outside of Chicago. Soon enough, he'll learn that snow can be fun, and life can be happy, and love is all around him.

We're so grateful that our readers came together to help Austin Pets Alive! save Rex and his friends, and that they're going to be safe now at Wright-Way Rescue. This shelter is not slowing down anytime soon and continues to coordinate a widespread effort to reach more rural shelters throughout Texas that might need help.

Austin Pets Alive! is urgently working with shelter partners, with the goal of transporting 1,000+ animals to safe shelters throughout the United States in the next two weeks. The biggest need at this time is for organizations that can safely transport pets. Austin has become the safest city in the country for shelter pets, but the rest of Texas isn't yet there, which is why these transports are so crucial. To help make these transports happen, please give to Austin Pets Alive! here.

You can also learn more and give to Wright-Way Rescue, which focuses on saving pets throughout rural America. As their mission states, it is in these extremely remote locations that help and hope for homeless pets is still at a minimum.

Together, we can work to save all the dogs. And if you live in the midwest you can apply to adopt Rex (and then send us lots of photos!).

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Guy who sounds remarkably like Michael Jackson gets 27 million views on first TikTok video

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Brandon Conway sounds remarkably like Michael Jackson when he sings.

When Michael Jackson died 13 years ago, the pop music world lost a legend. However markedly mysterious and controversial his personal life was, his contributions to music will go down in history as some of the most influential of all time.

Part of what made him such a beloved singer was the uniqueness of his voice. From the time he was a young child singing lead for The Jackson 5, his high-pitched vocals stood out. Hearing him sing live was impressive, his pitch-perfect performances always entertaining.

No one could ever really be compared to MJ, or so we thought. Out of the blue, a guy showed up on TikTok recently with a casual performance that sounds so much like the King of Pop it's blowing people away.

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Little girl sings Selena's ‘Como La Flor’ and wows the late singer's widower

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Viral video of high schoolers in 1989 triggers a deluge of Gen X memories

With a hair band power ballad to boot.

@asliceofhistory/Twitter

1989 video brings back strong memories for Gen Xers who came of age in the '80s.

It was the year we saw violence in Tiananmen Square and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. The year we got Meg Ryan in "When Harry Met Sally" and Michael Keaton in Tim Burton's "Batman." The year "Seinfeld" and "The Simpsons" debuted on TV, with no clue as to how successful they would become. The year that gave us New Kids on the Block and Paula Abdul while Madonna and Janet Jackson were enjoying their heyday.

The jeans were pegged, the shoulders were padded and the hair was feathered and huge. It was 1989—the peak of Gen X youth coming of age.

A viral video of a group of high school students sitting at their desks in 1989—undoubtedly filmed by some geeky kid in the AV club who probably went on to found an internet startup—has gone viral across social media, tapping straight into Gen X's memory banks. For those of us who were in high school at the time, it's like hopping into a time machine.

The show "Stranger Things" has given young folks of today a pretty good glimpse of that era, but if you want to see exactly what the late '80s looked like for real, here it is:

Oh so many mullets. And the Skid Row soundtrack is just the icing on this nostalgia cake. (Hair band power ballads were ubiquitous, kids.)

I swear I went to high school with every person in this video. Like, I couldn't have scripted a more perfect representation of my classmates (which is funny considering that this video came from Paramus High School in New Jersey and I went to high school on the opposite side of the country).

Comments have poured in on Reddit from both Gen Xers who lived through this era and those who have questions.

First, the confirmations:

"Can confirm. I was a freshman that year, and not only did everyone look exactly like this (Metallica shirt included), I also looked like this. 😱😅"

"I graduated in ‘89, and while I didn’t go to this school, I know every person in this room."

"It's like I can virtually smell the AquaNet and WhiteRain hairspray from here...."

"I remember every time you went to the bathroom you were hit with a wall of hairspray and when the wind blew you looked like you had wings."

Then the observations about how differently we responded to cameras back then.

"Also look how uncomfortable our generation was in front of the camera! I mean I still am! To see kids now immediately pose as soon as a phone is pointed at them is insanity to me 🤣"

"Born in 84 and growing up in the late 80’s and 90’s, it’s hard to explain to younger people that video cameras weren’t everywhere and you didn’t count on seeing yourself in what was being filmed. You just smiled and went on with your life."

Which, of course, led to some inevitable "ah the good old days" laments:

"Life was better before the Internet. There, I said it."

"Not a single cell phone to be seen. Oh the freedom."

"It's so nice to be reminded what life was like before cell phones absorbed and isolated social gatherings."

But perhaps the most common response was how old those teens looked.

"Why do they all look like they're in their 30's?"

"Everyone in this video is simultaneously 17 and 49 years old."

"Now we know why they always use 30 y/o actors in high school movies."

As some people pointed out, there is an explanation for why they look old to us. It has more to do with how we interpret the fashion than how old they actually look.

Ah, what a fun little trip down memory lane for those of us who lived it. (Let's just all agree to never bring back those hairstyles, though, k?)

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