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Kids' YouTuber Ms. Rachel returns from social media break with wonderful thoughts on boundaries

She wants to reflect the 'love and kindness' we need to see in the world.

ms rachel, social media boundaries, children's youtube
@msrachelforlittles/TikTok

YouTuber Ms. Rachel talks about setting social media boundaries.

Rachel Griffin Accurso, known as Ms. Rachel to her 3.16 million YouTube subscribers, didn’t intend to become a sensation with young children and their parents. But when she realized there weren’t any developmentally appropriate shows for her son, she put her teaching degree to work and made one herself.

After just 4 years in production, her show, “Songs for Littles,” has over 1.8 billion views on YouTube.

Accurso is intentional with all of her videos, doing close-ups of her mouth when introducing new words and pausing to "hear" responses from her viewers after asking a question. She stresses that everything she teaches and models on the show is backed by research.

Given what Ms. Rachel does for the smallest among us, who could have a problem with her show? Some parents became angry that Ms. Rachel featured Jules Hoffman, who uses they/them pronouns, on her show. A TikTok user who describes herself as a “traditional mom” called out Ms. Rachel for being “political,” and the video received over 300,000 views.

@msrachelforlittles

Nothing can change that you are worthy of love #msrachel #songsforlittles #affirmations

"When Ms Rachel introduces they/them/their pronouns so you have to stop watching her,” the TikTok creator captioned her post.

The video resulted in a backlash against Ms. Rachel on social media from certain corners. But instead of letting it get to her, on February 27, she decided to take a break from social media to put things in perspective. That’s no easy task for someone who makes a living by producing online children’s content.

Ms. Rachel returned from her social media sabbatical on March 6 and shared some lessons she learned during her time away. But this time, she wasn’t wearing her trademark overalls, pink shirt and headband.

@msrachelforlittles

Love > fear #msrachel #msrachelsongforlittes #selfcare

"I was able to spend some time thinking about setting social media boundaries for myself, which is a good practice for a lot of people," Accurso says in the short clip.

"And with social media boundaries, you figure out ways to protect yourself and you recognize, 'Oh, when I do this, I don't feel so good and so I'm going to do less of this.'”

"And it's a good way to practice self-care, which is very important," she continued. "But I am here to serve children and their families every day and to share the love and kindness that we want to see reflected in the world. And thank you so much for all the love."

She ended the video by saying “thank you” three times and captioned the clip, “Love > fear."

Accurso’s comments are an excellent way for us to look at our lives on social media. Sometimes it’s great to take a break, think about what message we are trying to send to the world and set a clear intention for how we behave in public.

Ms. Rachel could have tried to turn the table on her critics, but instead, she looked at the situation and reaffirmed her goal to share kindness with the world. Her reaction feels a lot like how Mr. Rogers would have handled the situation. And you can never go wrong following in the footsteps of Mr. Rogers.

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She fell in love with endangered porpoises at age 7. Now, she's on a mission to save the ocean.

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When Rachel Heimke was seven, she realized what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. Little did she know a $40,000 BigFuture Scholarship would help her pursue her dreams.

Heimke and her parents were living an unconventional lifestyle, to say the least. The summer after she completed first grade, she and her parents boarded a sailboat and sailed from their hometown in Alaska down the Pacific Coast. The family would spend the next two years traveling on the water, passing Mexico and then sailing across the world to Australia before returning home. It was on the sailboat, watching whales and dolphins breach the water under their boat, that Heimke realized her life’s purpose.

“I was really obsessed with these little porpoises called Vaquitta, who only live in one tiny area of water off the coast of Mexico,” she recalled. “When I learned about them as a kid, there were only 22 left in the wild. Now, there are only ten.” Despite her interest, Heimke was never able to actually see any Vaquitta on her trip, both because of their inherent shyness and because they were so critically endangered due to detrimental fishing policies in the area. “That was my wakeup call,” she says. “I’ll probably never be able to see this porpoise, and I don’t want that to be true of other species.”

Now a young woman of 23, Heimke is realizing her childhood dream of ocean conservation by recently graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in ocean sciences and enrolling in a grad program in Canada to study science communication. Heimke is well on her way to achieving her childhood dream—but she acknowledges that none of this would have been possible without her ocean adventures as a child, the support of her parents, and significant financial support.

At 18, when Heimke was deciding where to study ocean sciences, she stumbled upon an opportunity from BigFuture, College Board's free college and career planning site. The opportunity was the BigFuture Scholarship, which provided students the chance to win a $40,000 scholarship by completing six action items on the website. Heimke was intrigued, since she didn’t need to provide an essay, her GPA, or any test scores to enter. Her eligibility was also not tied to citizenship status or family income, so she decided to give it a shot.

“One of the action items was just going on the BigFuture site and creating a list of colleges I was interested in,” said Heimke. Another item required her to apply for financial aid through FAFSA—something Heimke was planning to do anyway. Every completed action item gave students more chances to win the scholarship, so Heimke completed all six action items quickly.

Months later, Heimke’s parents ushered her over to a call over Zoom, where she met a BigFuture representative who had some surprising news: She was one of 25 students who had won the $40,000 BigFuture college scholarship. Each year she would receive $10,000 in scholarship funding, which would cover her entire tuition bill for all four years of schooling.

“That experience taught me that it’s really important to not give up on your goals and just go for opportunities,” said Heimke. “I never thought I would win anything, but I’ve learned it's worth applying anyway. Even a small scholarship of $1,000 can pay your rent for a month,” she said. “And If you write an essay that takes an hour and you win $5,000, that’s probably the most money per hour you’ll ever make in your life.”

The tuition money made it possible for her to attend college, and for her to apply to graduate school immediately afterward without any financial burdens.

“Now that I’m in graduate school and paying for rent and a phone bill and graduate school tuition, it’s truly a blessing to not have student loan debt on top of that,” Heimke said. Because of the BigFuture scholarship, Heimke doesn’t need to pay for her graduate program either—she’s able to fund her education with the money her parents saved by not having to pay for her undergraduate degree.

One of the biggest blessings, Heimke said, was not needing to delay graduate school to work or find extra funds. With climate change worsening, entering the workforce becomes increasingly important over time.

“I’m not sure exactly what I’ll do with my degrees, but I hope to have a lot of different jobs that ultimately will work toward saving our ocean,” she said.

As a child, witnessing marine life up close and personal was life-changing. Heimke’s goal is for future generations to have that experience, as she did.

To learn more and get started, visit bigfuture.org/scholarships.

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UPS driver has a blunt take on US economy after delivering this year's Christmas packages

It's the guys on the ground who notice things first.

via Elvert Barnes/Flickr

A UPS driver on a phone call.

Certain professions have an inside look at the economy because they’re on the ground floor and see things change firsthand. For example, the advertising business knows that a recession is coming six months ahead of time, and realtors often get a good idea of how the economy is changing before the shock hits everyone else.

Delivery drivers are another group of people who can get a good idea of how the average person is doing. They have more packages to deliver when the economy is doing well and fewer when things take a turn for the worse. That’s why a TikTok by UPS driver Donate McCauley (@dontaymccauley) has so many views. After delivering Christmas packages, he thinks things are going well for most people at the end of 2024.

“I thought everybody was broke. I thought we were trending towards a recession, and y’all been complaining all year about finances, and y'all say that until Christmas,” the UPS driver said in a video with over 100,000 views.

@dontaymccauley

credit card debt going crazy. #ups #peakseason #Texas #foryoupage

“I see y'all actually do got money. And y'all making us pay, for every house got, like, 3, 4 packages. I'm loaded up,” McCauley continued. “Every day I'm going out with 400 packages on this truck, and y'all killing us, man, give us a break. But I thought you ain't have no money, though?”

Is the U.S. economy good or bad in 2024?

The post received many comments; some said they are having difficulty getting by this year, while others say they are doing pretty well these days. It’s another example of the lukewarm way that people have viewed the U.S. economy since the COVID-19 pandemic subsided.

“Broke as in it costing me a whole helluva lot more to live than it should. I will always have money for Christmas one way or another,” Lisa Marie wrote. “We’re using After Pay. I did LOL,” Juanita added.

“I have been saying this ALL YEAR. Every restaurant, every tourist attraction, special event, and retail store is PACKED most of the time in my small ‘poor’ city,” SteelersGirl wrote. “I said this to my husband a few weeks ago. Everywhere I go, people are buying stuff. Car dealership was packed last week, too. The economy seems ok,” Wiat What wrote.

Another delivery driver chimed in, and she felt the same way as McCauley. “USPS here. I have been saying this for the last year,” ChicagoGirl wrote.



Are Americans spending more this holiday season?

The confused delivery driver who says that people are saying one thing but spending in another tracks a pre-election poll. A survey taken in September found that 62% of respondents said the economy was weak, while 38% said it was strong.

Regardless of how individuals feel about the economy, the numbers don’t lie. This was a strong holiday season for retailers. Visa says that spending is up this holiday season 4.8% over 2023. "This holiday shopping season, we’re seeing increasing consumer confidence as people sought out in-store experiences – and went online – to purchase gifts and celebrate the holidays with friends and family,” Wayne Best, chief economist at Visa, said in a statement. “This spending growth demonstrates the adaptability of both consumers and retailers and the overall strength of the economy.”

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These 27 non-political questions can predict whether you’re a Republican or Democrat

This quiz is fascinating.

Recent polls suggest that Republicans and Democrats have slightly different tastes that have nothing to do with politics.

Americans tend to choose their political party based on a number of factors: family, gender, religion, race and ethnicity, and even region all have a hand in shaping a person's political ideology. Famously, George Washington warned the country against a two-party system in his Farewell Address on September 17, 1796. Our first president cited fears that "partisanship would lead to a 'spirit of revenge' in which party members would not govern for the good of the people, but for power."

Over 220 years later, Washington may have been right, but things aren't as dire as they seem. As reported by CBS News, a recent study by the Pew Research Group found that while a lot does divide us, there's much more that we have in common on average.

In short, a lot goes into where we fall on the political spectrum, but an interesting new quiz from ChartsMe has taken things to the next level. It claims to be 98% effective in determining people's political affiliations by asking questions that—get this—have nothing to do with politics.


Take the quiz here.

So, how does it work? (I recommend you take the quiz before we break down what's going on!)

The quiz uses Jonathan Haidt's Disgust Scale and takes you through a series of questions and scenarios to determine how disgusted certain situations make you. According to ChartsMe, a 2014 study published with the National Library of Medicine (NLM) found that people who were more prone to disgust are more conservative. This leads them to more closely align with the Republican Party. Further research conducted in 2022 bolstered this finding by investigating the "Conservative-Disgust Paradox" in reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some research disputes this though.

In 2019, the British Psychological Society cited a study that found that levels of disgust between conservatives and liberals are generally the same but highly "context-dependent." In other words, some liberals have higher disgust sensitivity than conservatives and vice versa depending on the topic, image, or idea.

woman looking disgusted

Does what disgusts you define you?

Photo by OSPAN ALI on Unsplash

Overall, it's human to feel disgust. Some scientists believe it's ancestral and that the adverse reactions to conditions we'd label “disgusting" were used to protect primitive ancestors from contamination and disease. According to National Geographic, Charles Darwin proposed that disgust served an evolutionary purpose in the late 1860s. It evolved, he noted, to "prevent our ancestors from eating spoiled food that might kill them." Helpful!

So, maybe being grossed out isn't inherently a conservative or liberal emotion, but the science tells us that what grosses us out and how deeply we're grossed out by it just might indicate our political leanings.

Do you agree with your ChartsMe results? Did they get it right? Either way, I think we can all agree this stuff is pretty neat.


This article originally appeared six years ago.

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Woman's rare antique turned away from 'Antique Roadshow' for beautiful heart-wrenching reason

"I just love you for bringing it in and thank you so much for making me so sad."

Photos by Murat Rahim Caglak and Antoni Shkraba via Canva

Woman's antique turned away from 'Antique Roadshow'

People come by things in all sorts of ways. Sometimes you find something while at a garage sale and sometimes it's because a family member passed away and it was left to them. After coming into possession of the item, the owner may be tempted to see how much it's worth so it can be documented for insurance purposes or sold.

On a recent episode of BBC One's Antique Roadshow, a woman brought an ivory bracelet to be appraised. Interestingly enough, the expert didn't meet this rare find with excitement, but appeared somber. The antique expert, Ronnie Archer-Morgan carefully explains the purpose of the bracelet in what appears to be a tense emotional exchange.

There would be no appraisal of this antique ivory bracelet adorned with beautiful script around the circumference. Archer-Morgan gives a brief disclaimer that he and the Antique Roadshow disapprove of the trade of ivory, though that was not his reason for refusing the ivory bangle.

"This ivory bangle here is not about trading in ivory, it’s about trading in human life, and it’s probably one of the most difficult things that I’ve ever had to talk about. But talk about it we must," Archer-Morgan says.

Turns out the woman had no idea what she had in her possession as she purchased it from an estate sale over 30 years before. One of the elderly residents she cared for passed away and the woman found the ivory bracelet among the things being sold. Finding the bangle particularly intriguing with the fancy inscription around it, she decided to purchase the unique piece of jewelry.

After explaining that his great-grandmother was once enslaved in Nova Scotia, Canada before being returned to Sierra Leone, Archer-Morgan concluded he could not price the item.

"I just don’t want to value it. I do not want to put a price on something that signifies such an awful business. But the value is in the lessons that this can tell people," he tells the woman.

In the end the woman leaves without knowing the monetary value of the item but with a wealth of knowledge she didn't have before visiting. Now she can continue to share the significance of the antique with others. Watch the full explanation below.

This article originally appeared in April.

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He found a newborn squirrel in his driveway and raised it. Their relationship is adorable.

Robert "Bobby" T. Squirrel's personality is "about halfway between a cat and a dog."

@robertsquirrel/TikTok

Bobby the squirrel lives outside now, but still comes in for a human visit pretty much every day.

When Ron Milburn came across a tiny, hairless creature the size of his thumb in his driveway, he had no idea what it was. So he took it inside, wrapped it up to keep it warm and started Googling. After figuring out it was a newborn squirrel that had probably fallen out of its nest, he put it back outside in a shallow box and waited to see if the mom would return for it. She did come to check it out, but then left it again. (Later, Milburn would find out that the baby squirrel had a mouth deformity which most likely made it unable to suckle properly.)

Milburn didn't think the wee one would survive, but he decided to do his best. He took it back inside and began feeding it puppy formula with a syringe every three hours, around the clock. He said it was "like having a newborn baby in the house." It worked. The squirrel grew and grew and they began to bond.

Once Milburn knew the babe was going to make it and could identify it as a male, he named him Bobby. (Robert T. Squirrel, to be precise—the T is for "The").

Milburn shared the story of Bobby's rescue and their relationship with Newsner's We Love Animals channel, and I feel a duty to warn you that the video will almost-pretty-much-for-sure make you want a pet squirrel. Milburn shared the video on his TikTok channel dedicated to Bobby, where it has collected more than four million views.

Watch:

@robertsquirrel

From an interview on Newsner who has 30 million followers in 11 languages

But that's not where the story ends.

Bobby has a family now out in his little squirrel house. He and his squirrel wife, Barbara Ann, are the proud parents of four youngsters—Peepers, Jeepers, Creepers and Sneekers.

"Peepers seldom ventures from the treehouse, and Jeepers is a bit more adventurous. Creepers creeps out further, and Sneekers sneaks into other trees," Milburn shared on his website, bobbysquirrel.com.

Milburn's @robertsquirrel Tiktok channel has a trove of sweet videos like this one, in which Bobby came inside because he was scared of a thunderstorm.

@robertsquirrel

Scares #bobbysquirrel #storm #thunder #throwbackthursday #fyp #nature

He knew just where to go for safety and comfort. Too sweet.

Bobby is totally comfortable going back and forth from his outdoor home to his human's home—and his human's pockets.

@robertsquirrel

Pocket Squirrel #bobbysquirrel #squirrel #fyp #nature #funny #love

In fact, Milburn shares, Bobby comes to visit him inside almost every day.

Unfortunately, Milburn has run into some trouble with his HOA, which informed him that he needed to stop feeding the squirrels in his yard as they were considered a "nuisance."

But who could watch Bobby listening to his story being told in the video below and tell us he's a nuisance? Come on now.

@robertsquirrel

Happy time #bobbysquirrel #throwbackthursday #squirrel

Milburn has been asked if squirrels make good pets, and he has clarified that raising one as a newborn is very different than trying to domesticate a wild squirrel. Squirrels do have sharp teeth and long claws, he pointed out in a video with this face covered in Band-Aids. (He shared that he's been working on building a friendship with Barbara Ann, who grew up in the wild, and while it's slow-going, he feels he's making progress.)

Milburn has also created a children's book called "Bobby and Friends," which includes 10 short stories for children ages 2 to 11 and an accompanying coloring book.

People can't get enough of Bobby the squirrel, and who can blame them? He's the pet squirrel most of us wish we could have—one who has a full outdoor life as he should, but who also likes to come in for some cuddles with his people.


This article originally appeared last year.

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Cockatoo chases family around while laughing maniacally in a fun game it plays

Imagine the terror of unsuspecting guests.

Photo by Laya Clode on Unsplash

Cockatoo chases around family while laughing maniacally.

Animals have their own personalities no matter what kind of animal they are, but rescue animals can sometimes take a while to let their personality shine. When they do, their humans better be prepared for whatever might come. A rescue cockatoo named Molly was very subdued and a bit skittish when she was first brought into her human family. But her entire attitude changed once she met her new human brother, and now visitors might be in for a slightly terrifying surprise.

Molly has a habit of chasing her humans around the house laughing like an evil supervillain as they playfully run from room to room. She may not be in cahoots with fellow feathered friends to try to take over the world...yet…but her laugh is hilariously maniacal. The family is all on board for Molly's games, too. They not only play hide and seek with the bird but they quite literally take her everywhere they possibly can.

Molly rides in the car for coffee runs and even goes hiking through the woods with her humans. There seems to be few things the family doesn't do without their laughing bird. While Molly doesn't startle strangers with her sinister laugh, she does randomly scream loudly when she's in public, which is probably more startling.

But it's the time she spends with her favorite brother that warms hearts.

"Molly wasn't always such a fun, vibrant bird. When we got her she didn't trust us," Betty tells The Dodo. "But she was really in love with my older son from the minute she met him. He could pick her up, comfort her, she was not afraid of him at all."

The cockatoo even hunts for her brother when she knows he's in the house, going from room to room knocking on doors with her beak, saying, "Hello," and waiting for an answer. It's such an adorable bond they share and the maniacal laughter is something you have to hear for yourself.

This article originally appeared last year.

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