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5 reasons Simone Biles is arguably the greatest athlete of all time, in any sport

She has earned GOAT status for more than just her gymnastics medal record.

Simone Biles looking serious in competition

Simone Biles is the GOAT.

Simone Biles has done it yet again, clinching her 20th gold medal at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championship and leading the U.S. women's team to their historic 7th consecutive victory.

There is no question that Simone Biles is the greatest gymnast that has ever set foot on the mat. Her domination in the sport has been unparalleled, and she has earned every bit of praise she has received as a gymnast.

However, there's a solid argument to be made that she isn't just the GOAT of gymnastics, but truly the greatest athlete of all time. Yes, I know, it's a subjective title, comparing sports is like comparing apples and oranges and people will argue about who deserves that title the most. But hear me out before putting Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali or Jim Thorpe up against the 4-foot 8-inch wonder that is Simone Biles.


Here are 5 reasons she deserves the GOAT title:

simone biles smiling and waving from the podium

Simone Biles on the podium at the 2016 Olympics

Agência Brasil Fotografias

1. She has dominated her sport with the winningest record of all time

This is the easy argument, of course, and one that could be used for any athlete who holds the most gold medals and the most medals overall in their sport. Let's just see this as the foundation of the GOAT house that Simone built.

Biles has now won 26 world championship medals (20 gold, three silver and three bronze) and seven Olympic medals. That puts her at the top of women's gymnastics historical record and has her tied with Belarus' Vitaly Scherbo for most gymnastics medals, male or female, earned on the world stage.

Simone Biles upside down in the air

Simone Biles has five official moves named after her.

Agência Brasil Fotografias

2. She can do things no one else in her sport can do

There's winning championships, and then there's pushing your sport forward by inventing new moves or succeeding in feats no one has ever attempted, much less achieved, before.

Biles has done that, not once, not twice, not thrice, but a whopping five times. This single gymnast has five official moves named after her in the international rule book (one on balance beam, two on floor exercise and two on vault). She is pushing the boundaries of the sport like no one else ever has.

Every sport has had individuals who excel at a unique skill. Many of those individuals aren't also world champions. Most of them don't have multiple moves that bear their name because no one else has ever done them. Biles has done it all.

Simone Biles and other TeamUSA gymnasts celebrating

Simone Biles is is an effective team leader.

Agência Brasil Fotografias

3. She stands out as an individual competitor and as a team leader

Gymnastics is both an individual sport and a team sport, and Biles has proven her skills in both. As an individual competitor, obviously, Biles is No. 1. But she has also led the U.S. Women's Gymnastics team to victory time and time again.

Biles' teammates praised her leadership skills after she backed out of the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 (which we'll get to in a moment). Though she was no longer competing herself, she stood on the sidelines and became her teammates' best cheerleader. Her teammates and coaches said that meant the world, and Biles' unwavering encouragement and support for her fellow gymnasts helped propel them to their own medal-winning performances.

To be able to dominate at the highest level as an individual and be an effective team leader is the mark of an exceptional athlete. Biles does both and makes it look easy.

Simone Biles looking serious

Simone Biles is a serious competitor

Agência Brasil Fotografias

4. She faced a devastating setback in her sport and came back on top

It's not easy to maintain the status of being "the best" at a sport. Being the best and then having a major setback disrupt your career is even more difficult. Overcoming that setback and returning not only to a high level of competition but jumping back up to the very top is something only GOATs do.

Biles did it. After getting the dreaded "twisties" at the Tokyo Olympics, Biles did the right thing and dropped out of the competition. (The twisties cause a gymnast to lose their sense of place in the air, creating both a frustrating and incredibly dangerous situation.) She could have called it quits then and no one would have blamed her.

But she didn't. She came back. And unlike some other star athletes who have pushed past their prime and lost some of their competitive edge, Biles is slaying once again, winning world titles like she was born for it.

She balances it with wisdom, but her competitive spirit is unstoppable.

Simone Biles holding her hands up

Simone Biles is now 26. Most elite female gymnasts retire by her age.

Agência Brasil Fotografias

5. She is well past retirement age and still dominating in her sport

Biles is 26 years old, which isn't old by most measures, but she's a bit of a grandma in the world of gymnastics. The average age for elite female gymnasts to retire is 22. There are other competitive gymnasts who are older than Biles, but they aren't up there on the world championship podium with her. The main reason gymnasts retire so early is the wear and tear gymnastics puts on their bodies. Biles continually pushes her body to do what no one else can do, and she's still going strong.

Her ability is unparalleled but her longevity is equally impressive. Peak time varies by sport, of course, but for a gymnast to be this dominant for this long is an incredible accomplishment.

Simone Biles with her hair down looking directly at the camera

Simone Biles is a tiny woman with an enormous legacy.

Vogue Taiwan (cropped)/Wikimedia

Honorable mention: She's a woman in a GOAT field filled with men

Should being a female athlete make a difference? Well, the International Certification of Excellence in Fitness (ICEF) seems to think so, since they made a list of the 10 Greatest Athletes of All Time and there's not a single female on it.

As the ICEF's Top 10 list unwittingly demonstrates, male athletes are automatically thought of as better athletes than women, no matter the variables, which is silly. No one is putting Babe Ruth up against Muhammad Ali as having the same or even similar skills, so why are there no women at all on this list?

I'd put Simone Biles up against any of these 10 men for all-time athlete GOAT. Yes, even Michael Jordan, who holds the top spot. He holds records in his sport. He pushed the boundaries of basketball. He was an individual standout and a good team player. He overcame setbacks (more in his personal life than the sport itself, but still) and he came out of retirement twice to keep playing. Heck, he was even famous for defying gravity. Simone Biles has done all of that on a global level—and on a beam 4 inches wide.

No one can argue with a straight face that gymnastics is an easy sport—the years of intense training and discipline and the combination of strength, agility, flexibility, gracefulness and body control elite gymnastics requires are utterly bonkers. Arguably, gymnastics requires more athleticism than many other sports, so Simone Biles' total domination of the sport for this long at this level certainly qualifies her for GOAT status—not just among gymnasts, but among all athletes of all time.

via Edith Lemay/NatGeo

Mia, Leo, Colin, and Laurent Pelletier pose on top of their camper van in front of adouble rainbow while in Mongolia.

True

“Blink,” a new film by National Geographic Documentary Films shows how a family with four children, three of whom are going blind, embraces life in the face of an uncertain future. It’s a testament to the resilience of the Lemay-Pelletier family but also a reminder for all of us to seize the day because all our futures are uncertain.

Edith Lemay and Sébastien Pelletier are the parents of Mia, a 13-year-old girl, and three boys: Léo, 11, Colin, 9, and Laurent, 7. Over the last six years, they’ve learned that Mia and the two youngest boys have retinitis pigmentosa, a rare genetic disease in which the cells of the retina slowly die. As the disease progresses, the person develops “tunnel vision” that shrinks until very little vision remains.

The diagnosis devastated the parents. "The hardest part with the diagnosis was inaction. There's nothing they can do about it. There's no treatment,” Edith says in the film.


However, even though the parents couldn’t affect the progress of the disease, they could give their children’s senses an epic experience that would benefit them for a lifetime.

“We don’t know how fast it’s going to go, but we expect them to be completely blind by mid-life,” said the parents. Mia’s impairment advisor suggested they fill her visual memory with pictures from books. “I thought, I’m not going to show her an elephant in a book; I’m going to take her to see a real elephant,” Edith explains in the film. “And I’m going to fill her visual memory with the best, most beautiful images I can.”

The Pelletier family (from left): Mia, Sebastien, Colin, Edith Lemay, Laurent and Leo inKuujjuaq, Canada.via National Geographic/Katie Orlinsky

This realization led to an inspiring year-long journey across 24 countries, during which every family member experienced something on their bucket list. Mia swam with dolphins, Edith rode a hot-air balloon in Cappadocia, and Léo saw elephants on safari.

Colin realized his dream of sleeping on a moving train while Sébastien saw the historic site of Angkor Wat.

“We were focusing on sights,” explains Pelletier. “We were also focusing a lot on fauna and flora. We’ve seen incredible animals in Africa but also elsewhere. So we were really trying to make them see things that they wouldn’t have seen at home and have the most incredible experiences.”

Cameras followed the family for 76 days as they traveled to far-flung locales, including Namibia, Mongolia, Egypt, Laos, Nepal and Turkey. Along the way, the family made friends with local people and wildlife. In a heartbreaking scene, the boys wept as the family had to leave behind a dog named Bella he befriended in the mountains of Nepal.

But the film isn't just about the wonders of nature and family camaraderie. The family's trip becomes a “nightmare” when they are trapped in a cable car suspended hundreds of feet above the Ecuadorian forest for over 10 hours.

annapurna range, blink, nat geoLeo, Laurent, Edith, Colin, Mia, and Sebastien look out at the mountains in the Annapurna range.via MRC/Jean-Sébastien Francoeur

As expected, NatGeo’s cinematographers beautifully capture the family's journey, and in the case of “Blink,” this majestic vision is of even greater importance. In some of the film's quietest moments, we see the children taking in the world's wonders, from the vast White Desert in Egypt to a fearless butterfly in Nepal, with the full knowledge that their sight will fail one day.

Along the way, the family took as many pictures as possible to reinforce the memories they made on their adventure. “Maybe they’ll be able to look at the photographs and the pictures and they will bring back those stories, those memories, of the family together,” Edith says.

But the film is about more than travel adventures and the pain of grief; ultimately, it’s about family.

“By balancing [the parents’ grief] with a more innocent and joyous tale of childlike wonder and discovery, we felt we could go beyond a mere catalog of locations and capture something universal,” the directors Edmund Stenson and Daniel Roher, said in a statement. “Keeping our camera at kid-height and intimately close to the family, we aimed to immerse the audience in the observational realities of their daily life, as well as the subtle relationships between each of them. This is a film built on looks, gestures and tiny details—the very fabric of our relationships with one another.”

Ultimately, “Blink” is a great film to see with your loved ones because it’s a beautiful reminder to appreciate the wonders of our world, the gift of our senses and the beauty of family.

The film will open in over 150 theaters in the U.S. and Canada beginning Oct. 4 and will debut on National Geographic Channel and stream on Disney+ and Hulu later this year. Visit the “Blink” website for more information.

A dad got a sweet note from a fellow father after camping with his kids.

One of the hardest parts of being a parent is never being sure whether you're doing a good job or totally bombing it. If you're conscientious enough to even wonder if you're a good parent, you probably are, but parenting entails a million little choices and interactions, and there's always a lingering voice in your head saying, "What if you're really screwing this whole thing up?"

Reassurance and encouragement are always appreciated by parents, but not always received, which is why a note from one camping dad to another has people celebrating the kindness of anonymous strangers.

"You are killing it as a dad."

Someone on Yosemite Reddit thread shared a photo of a handwritten note with the caption, "To the man who left this thoughtful note on my windshield at Lower Pines Campground this weekend, I extend my heartfelt gratitude; your acknowledgment of my efforts to be a good father means a great deal to me."



The note reads:

"Bro,

I camped in the spot behind you last night. Let me just say, you are killing it as a dad. First off, I watched your wife guide you in as you backed up your trailer and nailed it on the first try without any yelling. Then your kids unloaded from the truck and were mild-mannered and well behaved. You told stories around the campfire and I had the pleasure of listening to the sounds of giggles and laughter.

From one dad to another, you are killing it. Keep it up.

P.S. Whatever you cooked for dinner smelled delicious!"

How often do we share these thoughts with strangers, even if we have them? And who wouldn't love to get a surprise bit of praise with specific examples of things we did right?

Everyone needs to hear a compliment once in a while.

So many people found the note to be a breath of fresh air and a good reminder to compliment people when we feel the urge:

"That would make any daddy's eyes water."

"It’s always nice, as a guy, to get a compliment."

"I complimented a guy's glasses at work (I'm also a guy, and btw they were really cool glasses, I wasn't just being nice) and now he keeps trying to tell me where he got his glasses and how I should get some. But I'm just having to be polite because I already have glasses and I'm not in the market. I finally had to tell him I'm not going to buy them lmao I just like them on him.

Made me feel like that's the first compliment he's had in years because he can't stop talking about it. Also I mainly liked the glasses because I think he's cute but he really thinks it's just the glasses haha jokes on him that cute bastard."

"I was in the store with my wife and one of our 'adopted nephews' yesterday (we’re close friends with his parents and we’ve known him and his brother since they were newborns and 2yo, respectively). A woman came up to me at checkout while my wife was running out to the car and said 'I’m not sure what your family relationship is here, but I just have to tell you how nice and refreshing it is to hear all the laughter and joy from the 3 of you. You both seem like such a good influence on him and it warms my heart.' It’s such a small thing but as a dude, I can’t remember the last time someone gave me a compliment in public and it made my freaking day."

"10/10 letter. The and not yelling part gave me a good chuckle lol."

"We need so much more of men getting such heartfelt and sincere compliments. Thanks for sharing. ❤️"

"I’ve never considered leaving a note, but when I see a harmonious family with good parenting, it’s healing for me. My childhood was awful."

"Such an awesome compliment! Even though I don't have children myself, I like to remind my friends too that they're doing great & it brings them happy tears."

"This made me cry. I love that you are getting your 'flowers.' My dad sucked, I’m so glad you are one of the good ones."

"This made me cry too. It’s so hard to be a human. Let alone a parent. Getting a good job sticker every now and then really means a lot these days."

"I'm a big bearded guy and I would cry if I got this note. More people like this, please."

The best part of this story is that no one knows who the dad who wrote the note is, not even the dad who shared it. It wasn't written for clout or notoriety, it wasn't to get attention or make himself look good. No name or signature, just an anonymous act of kindness to uplift a stranger whether he needed it or not.

We all need to hear or read kind things said about us, and sometimes it means even more coming from an anonymous stranger who has nothing to gain by sharing. A good reminder to share it when you feel it—you never know how many people you may move and inspire.

@thedailytay/TikTok

“I don’t even know my plan! Do you know your plan?!”

Gentle parenting has been the anxious millennial antidote to the trauma caused by their boomer parent’s not-so-gentle approach to raising kids. This new wave of parents have become determined to not let history repeat itself, to usher in a kinder, more emotionally secure, more confident generation of humans.

And while that intention is certainly admirable, perhaps we millennials, with all our self-deprecating humor, can also laugh at ourselves a bit with just how gentle we strive to be.

A fun, tongue-in-cheek and instantly viral video created by 37-year-old mom of two Taylor Wolfe can help with that.


The clip, which racked up 5.8 million views in less than 24 hours, shows Taylor trying to teach her boomer mother Sandy Wolfe all the ins-and-outs of gentle parenting so that she may use these more compassionate tactics on her grandkids.

Let’s just say, many found her failed attempt completely relatable, not to mention hilarious.

Sandy’s well intentioned “Be careful!” to her granddaughter gets met with Taylor saying, “We don’t say ‘Be careful!’ anymore. Instead say, ‘What’s your plan here?’”

“I don’t even know my plan! Do you know your plan?!” Sandy retorts.

Cut to: Sandy says “Stop. Don’t hit your sister.” Suddenly Taylor pops up from behind a corner to instruct: “Don’t say, ‘Stop,’ say, ‘Gentle.’”

“‘Gentle’…what?” asks a confused Sandy.

“‘Gentle hands,’” quips Taylor, adding. “‘Gentle’ everything.”


Sandy can’t even catch a break when she says “I’m so proud of you.” because, as Taylor explains, “you’re not supposed to tell kids you’re proud of them anymore. That’s putting the focus on you.”

Then a classic comedy of errors ensues as Taylor advises Sandy to say “you should be so proud” and Sandy replies “I AM so proud!”

Viewers could help but laugh at their own perhaps overzealous attempts to bring gentle parenting into their life.

“I tried to gentle parent this morning but it turned into ‘OMG GET YOUR FORKING SHOES ON,”” one person wrote, while another added, “I always started with the Mary Poppins approach but sometimes you need to elevate to Judge Judy.”

Others felt like this perfectly depicted how gentle parenting sometimes misses the mark.

“I’m feeling anxious after observing gentle parenting,” one person wrote.

Another simply said, “I stand with grandma.”

This isn’t the first time Taylor and Sandy have given us a good chuckle comparing their different parenting styles. Here’s another funny video from August of 2023 where Taylor is flabbergasted to hear how her mother managed without Google:

Listen, gentle parenting is great for providing parents more mindful, less reactive responses to their kids, which can do wonders for everybody. But there’s also something to be said for not getting so wound up in the minutia of every parent-child interaction, thinking anything and everything could be threatening to a child’s development. As with anything, balance—and a sense of humor—is always key.

Follow along on more of Taylor’s fun and relatable content on TikTok.

via James Breakwell / Twitter

Raising kids is tough, but there's a lot of laughs along the way.

Comedy writer James Breakwell has four daughters under the age of eight and shares their hilarious conversations on Twitter. And, from Breakwell's tweets, it looks like his five year old has a future in comedy.

Here's a sampling of some Breakwell's funniest kid-inspired tweets.



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His 5-year-old isn't the only (often unintentionally) hilarious child in the house; the 7-year-old and 3-year-old turn up from time to time. There's also a 2-year-old, but she hasn't been the subject of many tweets yet.


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This article originally appeared on 7.27.21

Family

Stay-at-home-mom shares the incredibly frustrating thing that took 8 years to realize

“I think that that’s a thing that nobody really talks about."

via EclecticHomeSchooling/TikTok (used with permission)

Syd explains one of the most frustrating parts of being a stay-at-home-mom.

There are many ways for people with careers to feel validated. You can get a raise, a promotion, a great review from your manager, or a professional award. You can also be someone respected in your profession and a mentor to younger people entering your field.

These forms of validation help someone feel valuable and accomplished and are all tangible in some way. You can say, "I’m now the vice president of manufacturing," "I won the Excellence in Sales Award," or "I have a larger number on my paycheck."

Syd, a stay-at-home mom named @eclectivhomeschooling on TikTok, recently shared that, unfortunately, moms who work in the home have a hard time finding that same feeling of validation. “Something that I think that a lot of people don’t realize about being a stay-at-home mom, whether you are a homeschool mom or your kids are young and you’re staying home with them during those years, is that there’s no measurement of success. There’s no metric,” she begins her video.


“There’s no one saying ‘congratulations, you have been promoted; you are the top of the top of this skill.’ None of that,” she continued. There is no award for an outstanding stay-at-home mom, and there is no manager to give her a review or promotion.

She says that being a good mother to her kids “feels good” and “makes us happy” but argues that it isn’t something you can “hold” or “write down.”

@eclectichomeschooling

It’s everyone’s favorite time of the month! Where I post insane, 3-5 minute, PMS ramblings about motherhood! Okay love you, bye! 😎

“We’re going on eight years of not being able to measure [success],” she continued. “I think that that’s a thing that nobody really talks about or that we don’t really get to talk about with each other. Your partner goes to work: they get promoted, they get raises, they complete their work for the day and they ... get to be like, ‘OK, I succeeded.’ But my [work] is just constant, all of the time, and there’s no metric for it.”

The dishes that Syd cleans will be dirty the next day. The laundry she folds on Monday will be worn on Tuesday and rewashed on Friday.

Although Syd has yet to find a solution to this problem, she sees other ways to get the validation she craves. “It’s hard, especially because a lot of us don’t prioritize hobbies for ourselves. That’s a great place for us to find success or a feeling of accomplishment,” she said.



Syd’s video struck a chord with many stay-at-home mothers feeling the same way.

A commenter named Leigh noted that the need for external validation comes from the corporate culture in which Americans are raised. “On my best days, it is interesting to notice how tied we are to corporate-style success. On my worst, it is inescapably crushing,” she wrote in the most popular comment.

“It's the neverending loops that are never complete. We never get the satisfaction of a ‘job well done’ because nothing is ever really done,” Hazel added. “Once I started focusing on my own happiness, it got better.”

According to Love, the lack of praise for a job well done also means that it’s easy to be criticized. “When you’re doing everything right, there’s no praise, etc., but if you do anything wrong or are not perfect, then the issue gets thrown in your face in every way. So you end up feeling like a failure,” she wrote.



Syd told Upworthy that her followers have tried to help her recontextualize her feelings of worth. “Since the video, I’ve had a lot of conversations with moms about how we measure worth by being very wrapped up in productivity through a capitalist lens. It can be tough to divest from that, but it is also so important. Like, what’s a safe and secure childhood worth? Nothing technically, but also the entire world. We do that!” she told Upworthy.

She adds that a few of her followers suggested she should take up martial arts as a hobby. “I’m still pondering that one,” she told Upworthy.

Ultimately, Syd’s realization could have caused her to feel down about herself or resign to a never-ending feeling of being unfulfilled. However, she’s seen it as an opportunity to reevaluate her sense of self-worth and possibly as a reason to branch off into new and exciting hobbies outside her family.

When did everyone stop wearing hats?

If you see old newsreel footage of men in the office or on commuter trains from the advent of the motion picture camera to the early ‘60s, nearly everyone is wearing a hat. Hats were just as common for women in that era. For a woman to go out without a hat in the first half of the 20th century was akin to going out without clothes.

The funny thing is that everyone’s headgear is so similar in the old-timey footage that it makes previous generations look like big-time conformists. Then, in the early ‘60s, everything changed, and men and women started to go out in public with their hair exposed. Why did such a big aspect of fashion seem to change overnight?

Warmbru Curiosity investigated the question recently in a popular YouTube video. Warmbru’s channel is a lighthearted look at some of the more unusual people and events from our history and how they have influenced the world in which we live.


Why did people stop wearing hats?

Warmbru says fashion changed dramatically after World War II, when people in developed countries began to care less about expressing their social status. “This was especially true among the younger generation the rise of youth culture in the 1950s and 1960s emphasized rebellion against traditional norms, including formal dress codes,” the YouTuber says.

- YouTubeyoutu.be

Another big reason for the change in fashion was technology. Cars became the preferred mode of transportation for many after World War II and indoor environments became more hospitable. “People spent far less time exposed to the elements as people increasingly moved to urban areas and started using cars,” Warmbru says. “The practicality of wearing hats diminishes. Hats can be cumbersome in cars and on public transport, improvements in heating and air conditioning reduce the need for hats to provide warmth.”

Warmbru adds that President John F. Kennedy, elected in 1960, rarely wore a hat and his decision to go bareheaded became associated with modernity. Further, in 1963, the mop-topped Beatles proudly flaunted their hatless heads as they shook them while singing, “Wooooo.” Hat-wearing among women began to decline around the same time as the restrictive and complex headgear clashed with the burgeoning women’s liberation movement.



The decline in hat purchases meant that manufacturers closed and the headgear became harder to come by. This reduced availability further contributed to the decline in hat-wearing. As fewer people wore hats, there became a greater demand for high-quality hair products and services. “Why spend a fortune at the hairdressers or the barbers just to cover the end result with a hat?” Warmbru asks.

Ultimately, there were many reasons why people stopped wearing hats. It appears that it was a combination of technology, influential people such as Kennedy and The Beatles, and the overwhelming mood of change that swept most of the Western world in the 1960s. But if one thing is true about fashion, it goes in cycles. So, it seems that hats may be ready for their big comeback.