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Patton Oswalt shares a moving tribute on the day his late wife's new book is published.

Nearly two years after her tragic death, author Michelle McNamara's final book was published today.

To much of the world, McNamara is best-known as the late wife of Patton Oswalt. But she had her own outstanding career as a nonfiction writer long before they met.

At the time of her death, McNamara was working on an investigative book about the Golden State killer. That book, "I'll Be Gone In The Dark," was finally published on Tuesday. Oswalt, who wrote the book's afterword, was instrumental in helping guide it to completion. Though McNamara had finished much of it before passing away in her sleep, Oswalt leaned on friends and colleagues to bring it home. "It was her book and it’s an amazing book," he said. "I wanted to do right by her."


Oswalt posted a picture to his Twitter account of him laying the book at McNamara's grave, with the note: "You did it, baby. The book is excellent, the writing brilliant. You tried to bring kindness to chaos, which was your way."

The book quickly shot to the top spot in Amazon's memoir section.

Oswalt has gone through a very public grieving process over the death of his late wife. But today, he's celebrating her work

Ever since losing McNamara, Oswalt has been very public about the toll her shocking death has had on him and his young daughter. Rather than putting a happy face on the tragedy, he was open about his perfectly natural, drawn-out grieving process. Being a comedian, Oswalt worked several jokes about his imperfect recovery process into his latest Netflix special that blended comedy with the agonizing pain of loss.

Slowly but surely, Oswalt has found his way to happiness, marrying actress Meredith Salenger last year. He obviously hasn't forgotten Michelle though, using his public platform to celebrate her life and her work. Fans shared an outpouring of support across Twitter, just as they have through each stage of Oswalt's grieving process.

After bravely sharing his grief and slow recovery, Oswalt is now showing us how to remember.

By letting the world into his painful grieving process, Oswalt revealed a level of vulnerability and real human strength that we are rarely see from public figures.

As he carries on in the next stages of his life, Oswalt is now showing the world how to continue living while still honoring the memory and legacy of those we've loved and lost.

McNamara brought him years of great happiness and he's using his celebrity to share her talents with the public. "It was a total commitment. … He's just been a real champion," said HarperCollins editor Jennifer Barth.

Everyone faces death and loss — but it's up to us to choose how we respond. Great mentors like Oswalt help show the way.

We all face death in the loss of others and ultimately in ourselves. Yet even as arguably life's only true certainty, we still often struggle to process the inevitable. Being open about the painful cost of losing a loved one can be an invaluable resource to those who are going through a similar experience and to those who may face it down the road.  

Patton Oswalt and those who were close to McNamara are also showing us that there can be positive ways to celebrate those we have lost and to keep their memories alive for years to come.

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

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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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Photo via Canva, @WhattheADHD/Twitter

The 'bionic reading' font is designed to help keep you focused and read faster.

Reading is a fundamental tool of learning for most people, which is why it's one of the first things kids learn in school and why nations set literacy goals.

But even those of us who are able to read fluently might sometimes struggle with the act of reading itself. Perhaps we don't read as quickly as we wish we could or maybe our minds wander as our eyes move across the words. Sometimes we get to the end of a paragraph and realize we didn't retain anything we just read.

People with focus or attention issues can struggle with reading, despite having no actual reading disabilities. It can be extremely frustrating to want to read something and have no issues with understanding the material, yet be unable to keep your mind engaged with the text long enough to get "into" what you're reading.

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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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Only child asks her friends what it's like to grow up with siblings.

Ahhh, siblings. Sometimes they're your best friends and other times your living room turns into an MMA octagon over the remote control. If you grew up with brothers and sisters, it's hard to imagine what it would be like to be an only child. (That's not to say you didn't dream about it when your sister stole your favorite shirt for the 30th time.)

But not everyone has siblings, so it can be equally as hard for someone who grew up as an only child to picture what it would be like to have them. Only children also likely had moments where they dreamt of having a little brother or sister, not realizing the literal torment siblings can inflict on each other.

TikTok creator Lonnie IIV recently posted a video of himself with two other friends seemingly out to lunch, when the girl in the group asked what it was like to grow up with siblings. In less than a minute she realized she lucked out being an only child because her two guy friends gave her a crash course in sibling behavior.

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Photo: courtesy BioCarbon Engineering/WikiCommons

Technology is the single greatest contributor to climate change but it may also soon be used to offset the damage we've done to our planet since the Industrial Age began.

In September 2018, a project in Myanmar used drones to fire "seed missiles" into remote areas of the country where trees were not growing. Less than a year later, thousands of those seed missiles have sprouted into 20-inch mangrove saplings that could literally be a case study in how technology can be used to innovate our way out of the climate change crisis.

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Health

Artists got fed up with these 'anti-homeless spikes.' So they made them a bit more ... comfy.

"Our moral compass is skewed if we think things like this are acceptable."

Photo courtesy of CC BY-ND, Immo Klink and Marco Godoy

Spikes line the concrete to prevent sleeping.


These are called "anti-homeless spikes." They're about as friendly as they sound.

As you may have guessed, they're intended to deter people who are homeless from sitting or sleeping on that concrete step. And yeah, they're pretty awful.

The spikes are a prime example of how cities design spaces to keep homeless people away.

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