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Heroes

Mexico's president reacts to pressure from Leonardo DiCaprio to save a species.

On May 10, 2017, actor and activist Leonardo DiCaprio took to Twitter to save a marine species.

"The vaquita is the most endangered marine mammal in the world," he wrote of the species, which can only be found off Mexico's shores in the Gulf of California. "Join me [and the World Wildlife Fund] and take action."

It may seem like an average tweet, coming from one of the biggest environmental advocates in the world. But the tweet has had global ramifications.


Photo by National Geographic Channel, courtesy of the Everett Collection.

As DiCaprio noted in a Facebook post that same day, unsustainable fishing has caused a steep decline in the total number of vaquitas.

There may only be 30 left in the gulf right now — a 90% drop since 2011 — which also explains why there seem to be so few photos of the rare porpoise in the wild.

A rare photo of a vaquita. Photo by World Wildlife Fund.

One major reason for the falling numbers is China's hunger for the totoaba fish, which also only lives in the Gulf of California. Mexican fishermen use massive gill nets to catch the totoaba and ship the marine animals to China — an illegal practice in itself. But all too often, vaquitas get caught in these nets and are needlessly killed.

This doesn't just affect the vaquita either. Illegal fishing is harming many other marine species in the region, too — species that local communities rely on for food and business.

DiCaprio linked to a petition by the World Wildlife Fund calling on Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to act now to save the species in his Facebook post and tweet.

Among other demands, the letter urges the president to implement and enforce a permanent gill net fishing ban.

Photo by Alfredo Estrella/AFP/Getty Images.

To Nieto's credit, his government has taken some steps to save the vaquita.

In 2015, Mexico implemented a two-year gill net fishing ban. But it wasn't properly enforced, advocates argued, which helps to explain why vaquita numbers continued to dwindle. What's more, what little effect the ban did have on dissuading fisherman is now gone entirely because the ban expired in April 2017.

DiCaprio's posts did actually catch the attention of the Mexican president, who responded on Twitter.

In a series of tweets, Nieto explained how his government has upped efforts to save the vaquita in recent years, such as expanding its protection zone in the gulf and committing 300 marines and 15 boats to monitor the area.

Still, DiCaprio's call to act seemed to spark new urgency from the Mexican president, who made a very public commitment to ensure the vaquita won't be lost forever.

Not everyone has over 17 million Twitter followers like DiCaprio, but we all have a voice.

Use it to tweet your support for the Word Wildlife Fund's petition and put more pressure on Nieto and Mexico to save the vaquita.

A Korean mother and her son

A recently posted story on Reddit shows a mother confidently standing up for her family after being bullied by a teacher for her culture. Reddit user Flowergardens0 posted the story to the AITA forum, where people ask whether they are wrong in a specific situation.

Over 5,600 people commented on the story, and an overwhelming majority thought the mother was right. Here’s what went down:

“I (34F) have a (5M) son who attends preschool. A few hours after I picked him up from school today, I got a phone call from his teacher,” Flowergardens0 wrote. “She made absolutely no effort to sound kind when she, in an extremely rude and annoyed tone, told me to stop packing my son such ‘disgusting and inappropriate’ lunches."

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A new trend in treasure hunting called magnet fishing has blown up over the past two years, evidenced by an explosion of YouTube channels covering the hobby. Magnet fishing is a pretty simple activity. Hobbyists attach high-powered magnets to strong ropes, drop them into waterways and see what they attract.

The hobby has caught the attention of law enforcement and government agencies because urban waterways are a popular place for criminals to drop weapons and stolen items after committing a crime. In 2019, a magnet fisherman in Michigan pulled up an antique World War I mortar grenade and the bomb squad had to be called out to investigate.


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Pop Culture

Woman was mocked online for calling an $80 purse a 'luxury item.' Her response went viral.

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@zohtaco/TikTok

Zoe Gabriel, showing off her new purse from Charles & Keith

Insults of any kind are painful, but jabs towards someone’s financial status are their own breed.

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One parent captured exactly what it's like to be the default parent and shared it to TikTok, where the video has over 4 million views. Toniann Marchese went on a quick grocery run and *gasp* did not inform her children. Don't you fret, they're modern kids who know how to use modern means to get much-needed answers when mom is nowhere to be found. They went outside and rang the doorbell.

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@sarabethliebe/TikTok

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You might recall us singing the praises of Sara Beth, the exuberant young mom with major vocal chops dubbed the “Accidental American Idol.”

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Before Sara Beth even began to sing, the 25-year-old revealed that she had three children, which prompted Katy Perry to dramatically stand up from her seat and feign shock. When Sara Beth, all smiles, said, “If Katy lays on the table, I think I’m going to pass out,” Perry retorted, “Honey, you’ve been laying on the table too much.”

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It’s bizarre to think about seeing sound, but nowadays we can do just that. If you haven’t seen an acoustic camera before, that’s because they’re mainly used for industrial purposes, but they’ve been available commercially from gfai tech since 2001.

YouTuber Steve Mould, who has a science channel with over 2.1 million subscribers, took the complicated concept of the acoustic camera and made it easy to understand in his latest video, “Acoustic cameras can SEE sound.”

In the video, Mould explains how an acoustic camera is much like your smartphone's video recorder. But it also creates visual representations of sound emanating from where it’s generated within the video.

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