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Let's talk about the good stuff that happened this week, not the bad stuff.

Yes, a lot of bad things happened this week. We all know that. But so did a lot of great things!

A Philadelphia dance center held a daddy-daughter ballet class. A brave 19-year-old used his iPhone flashlight to save a young girl from a deadly house fire. A man in California has been single-handedly reviving a rare and beautiful species of butterfly in his backyard.

And that's not nearly all.


Here's a look at some of the wonderful things that happened this week. It'll make you feel good about the world again.

1. Pollution has gotten out of control in India, so Dehli banned all disposable plastic.

Sorry, floating bag from "American Beauty," this was the right move for our planet and should have a major impact on our oceans.

2. American Girl just released its first boy doll.

Image courtesy of American Girl.

Parents have been clamoring for more diversity from American Girl for years, and so in addition to Everett, the company's newest line will also feature a Hawaiian doll and a new black doll.

Boys play with dolls, too! Heck, yeah.

3. No longer the whitest show on television: Rachel Lindsay will be the first black "Bacehlorette."

GIF via The Bachelor

About. Damn. Time.

4. A city in Iowa is saving the bees!

City officials in Cedar Rapids are working to create a 1,000-acre "bee paradise" full of grasses and wildflowers to help rejuvenate dying populations of the crucial little pollinators.

5. But if that doesn't work, maybe these bee-like pollinating robots will.

An industrial design student in Georgia, Anna Haldewang, came up with a prototype for a tiny drone that may be able to mimic the important role bees play in keeping crops and plant-life thriving.

Man, young people are smart these days.

Image courtesy of Savannah College of Art and Design.

6. A father said his son with autism would only eat Star Wars macaroni and cheese, so William Shatner rallied the internet to help.

Kids with autism sometimes have trouble adapting to change, so when Reed Botwright ran out of his son's favorite dinner, he put out a call for help.

Okay, this is a bit of a call for help. I'm putting this out to the interwebz and social netz for some assistance. As...

Posted by Reed Botwright on Sunday, February 12, 2017

Then, William Shatner, aka Captain Kirk, did this and started an incredible domino chain of giving.

7. People in Ireland raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to send a girl to the U.S. for a rare and expensive cancer treatment.

Shauntelle Tynan's video pleading for people to help her raise the money she'd need to visit Houston, Texas, went massively viral. Her story struck a nerve in Ireland, whose people came together to raise a staggering 713,511 euros, or nearly $800,000, to help pay for treatment.

Me right now. GIF via 30 Rock.

8. A bunch of Sikh temples in California opened their doors and hearts to dam evacuees.

When the Oroville Dam in Northern California failed this past week, over 100,000 people were forced to evacuate. Lots of people stepped up to help with housing and shelter, including several Sikh temples in the area.

#LoveTrumpsHate

9. A school bus driver in Tennessee built a new ramp for a girl on his route with special needs.

She already had a wheelchair ramp at her house, but it didn't quite reach the bus. So Thomas Mitchell rounded up some buddies and built her a new one, no questions asked.

10. A high school student in Ohio handmade valentines for everyone in the school.

The girl, who has remained anonymous, spent months handfolding over a thousand origami hearts that say "You are loved."

On Valentine's Day, she and some friends placed them on every locker in the school.

Here is a follow up to an earlier post today sharing a random act of kindness by students at THS.This actually turned...

Posted by Troy High School on Tuesday, February 14, 2017

There's bound to be great news next week, too. You just have to look a little harder for it these days. But I promise you, it's worth it!

Community

How to end hunger, according to the people who face it daily

Here’s what people facing food insecurity want you to know about solving the hunger problem in America

True

Even though America is the world’s wealthiest nation, about 1 in 6 of our neighbors turned to food banks and community programs in order to feed themselves and their families last year. Think about it: More than 9 million children faced hunger in 2021 (1 in 8 children).

In order to solve a problem, we must first understand it. Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization, released its second annual Elevating Voices: Insights Report and turned to the experts—people experiencing hunger—to find out how this issue can be solved once and for all.

Here are the four most important things people facing hunger want you to know.

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Pets

Family brings home the wrong dog from daycare until their cats saved the day

A quick trip to the vet confirmed the cats' and family's suspicions.

Family accidentally brings wrong dog home but their cats knew

It's not a secret that nearly all golden retrievers are identical. Honestly, magic has to be involved for owners to know which one belongs to them when more than one golden retriever is around. Seriously, how do they all seem have the same face? It's like someone fell asleep on the copy machine when they were being created.

Outside of collars, harnesses and bandanas, immediately identifying the dog that belongs to you has to be a secret skill because at first glance, their personalities are also super similar. That's why it's not surprising when one family dropped off their sweet golden pooch at daycare and to be groomed, they didn't notice the daycare sent out the wrong dog.

See, not even their human parents can tell them apart because when the swapped dog got home, nothing seemed odd to the owners at first. She was freshly groomed so any small differences were quickly brushed off. But this accidental doppelgänger wasn't fooling her feline siblings.

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A guy passes out on his bed eating pizza.

A 29-year-old woman had a baby girl, and after a brief maternity leave, she had to return to work. She couldn't afford childcare, so her husband, 35, reluctantly agreed to watch the baby while she was at work.

“It’s important to know that he’s been unemployed since 2021,” the woman wrote on Reddit’s AITA subforum. “He receives benefits. It’s also important to know that he’s extremely lazy. He doesn’t cook, clean, or help out in any way. I was nervous about leaving her home with her father, but I had no choice.”

The mother had reason to be worried about leaving her baby home alone with her husband, but in the beginning, things seemed fine. “When I came back from work, she was clean and sleeping. The next few times I came home, he was either playing with her, feeding her, or out for a walk with her. I was happy,” she wrote.

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A boy doing the dishes.

A 41-year-old mom with 3 boys, 12-year-old twins, and a 10-year-old, pays them $10 daily to do their chores. However, their pay is deducted $10 if they miss a day. The boys have to do their tasks 5 days a week, although it doesn’t matter which days they choose to work.

“This system has worked swimmingly for us since it started, the boys have always complied with completing their chores,” the mom wrote on Reddit.

Her 12-year-old son was getting ready to play Fortnite with a friend and told him he’d be ready in 15 minutes once he finished his chores. When the boys started playing the game, he told the friend he was in charge of dusting and sweeping the stairs, to which the friend responded, “It’s a good thing my parents don’t make me do girl chores.”

After learning what the friend said, the mom told her son that chores are genderless.

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Photo by Omar Lopez on Unsplash

Women do better when they have female friends.

Madeleine Albright once said, "There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women." It turns out that might actually be a hell on Earth, because women just do better when they have other women to rely on, and there's research that backs it up.

A study published in the Harvard Business Review found that women who have a strong circle of friends are more likely to get executive positions with higher pay. "Women who were in the top quartile of centrality and had a female-dominated inner circle of 1-3 women landed leadership positions that were 2.5 times higher in authority and pay than those of their female peers lacking this combination," Brian Uzzi writes in the Harvard Business Review.

Part of the reason why women with strong women backing them up are more successful is because they can turn to their tribe for advice. Women have to face different challenges than men, such as unconscious bias, and being able to turn to other women who have had similar experiences can help you navigate a difficult situation. It's like having a road map for your goals.

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Derrick Downey Jr. has been dubbed the 'squirrel whisperer.'

Most of us who live in the U.S. are used to looking out a window or walking out our front door and seeing squirrels. The cute, fluffy-tailed rodents often appear perfectly pettable, but they generally scamper away when humans get too close.

That is not the case for TikTok creator Derrick Downey Jr., however, as he has not only befriended his neighborhood squirrels but goes all out to help them live their best squirrel lives.

Downey shared a video in May of 2022 in which he chats with a couple of squirrels on his porch while feeding them and offering them water. That video received over 26 million views and kicked off a whole series of videos showcasing the adorable antics of Richard, Maxine, Hector, Consuela, Norma (may she rest in peace), and Hood Rat Raymond. He's built Richard a house, rescued Maxine's babies, mourned Norma's transition (to wherever squirrels go when they die) and more.

People can't get enough, and who can blame them? Squirrels are the best (when they're not tearing up your patio furniture and stealing cotton for their nest, as Downey has experienced.)

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Voice recordings of people who were enslaved offer incredible first-person accounts of U.S. history

"The results of these digitally enhanced recordings are arresting, almost unbelievable. The idea of hearing the voices of actual slaves from the plantations of the Old South is as powerful—as startling, really—as if you could hear Abraham Lincoln or Robert E. Lee speak." - Ted Koppel

Library of Congress

When we think about the era of American slavery, many of us tend to think of it as the far distant past. While slavery doesn't exist as a formal institution today, there are people living who knew formerly enslaved black Americans first-hand. In the wide arc of history, the legal enslavement of people on U.S. soil is a recent occurrence—so recent, in fact, that we have voice recordings of interviews with people who lived it.

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