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Joy

Students raise $225K for 80-year-old janitor forced to unretire after his rent skyrocketed

We need to get Mr. James "out of this school."

senior citizens, mr james, gofundme

Mr. James had to come out of retirement to pay his rent, and some students weren't having it.

Over the past few years, the outlandish increase in the cost of living for the average American has been hard on just about everyone. Prices on consumer goods have been through the roof as inflation reached its highest level in 40 years in June of 2022.

Rent has been going up for the average American as well. From 2017 to 2022, the average year-over-year increase was 5.77%, with the most significant increase of an average of 14% occurring from 2021 to 2022.

Almost every American feels the pain of the increased living expenses, but it has to be especially hard on those living on a fixed income. Fox 4 News reports that when an 80-year-old retired man affectionately known as “Mr. James” saw his rent go up by $400, he had to work again to make ends meet. Callisburg High School in Texas hired Mr. James as a janitor, and the sight of seeing a man that old lifting garbage cans and scrubbing lunch tables didn’t sit right with some of the students.


“It’s just so sad seeing an 80-year-old man having to do things an 80-year-old shouldn’t have to do,” Callisburg senior Banner Tidwell said, according to KXII.

A few of the school's students decided to do something about Mr. James' situation and started a GoFundMe campaign called “Getting Mr. James out of this school” to raise some money for him so he could resume his retirement. The teens started with a goal of $10,000 that was quickly surpassed after Greyson Thurman, a Callisburg student, promoted it with a TikTok video that went viral.

Just 8 days after the GoFundMe campaign started, it has already raised $225,000 for Mr. James. "He doesn't want any part of the spotlight. He's appreciative of what these students have done," the school's principal, Jason Hooper, told Fox 4 Dallas-Fort Worth.


@grey.thurman

Go fund me is in the bio! My classmates and I hate seeing Mr. James here, no one his age should have to be cleaning our messes up to continue to live. #fyp#school#gofundme#fy#mrjames

“It’s crazy to see something that we knew people would have wanted to help. But we didn’t know it would blow up,” senior Marti Yousko, one of the campaign’s organizers, told KXII, "When we told him, he was kind of like, 'dang, that's alright!'" Yousko continued.

“It's just amazing,” Hooper told KXII. ”You know of the need that was met because of three kind kids, but of all of our students who have pitched in to help that need.”

gofundme, mr james, senior citizens

The students who organized the campaign and Mr. James.

via GoFundMe

Incredibly, these students had the heart to realize Mr. James' struggles and stepped up and do something about the situation. This is one of those stories that is both heartwarming and sad. It’s beautiful that the kids, the community and people around the world are helping Mr. James, but it’s terrible that an 80-year-old man would have to resort to going back to work in the first place. Especially in a country with so much wealth.

Fox 4 News reached out to the Callisburg Independent School District to see if Mr. James is still working at the school, and he hasn’t said anything about leaving his job just yet.

"Nobody deserves to work their whole life. They deserve to enjoy everything," Thurman said.






Science

A juice company dumped orange peels in a national park. Here's what it looks like now.

12,000 tons of food waste and 21 years later, this forest looks totally different.


In 1997, ecologists Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs approached an orange juice company in Costa Rica with an off-the-wall idea.

In exchange for donating a portion of unspoiled, forested land to the Área de Conservación Guanacaste — a nature preserve in the country's northwest — the park would allow the company to dump its discarded orange peels and pulp, free of charge, in a heavily grazed, largely deforested area nearby.

One year later, one thousand trucks poured into the national park, offloading over 12,000 metric tons of sticky, mealy, orange compost onto the worn-out plot.

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Parents are debating over whether to give children "adult" or "baby" names.

The names we choose to give our children can significantly impact their lives. Multiple studies from across the globe have found that a person’s name can influence their employment, social and economic outcomes.

Unfortunately, humans make snap judgments about one another, and having an unusual name can lead people to make unflattering assumptions. “We’re hardwired to try to figure out in a heartbeat whether or not we want to trust somebody, whether we want to run from somebody,” Northwestern University researcher David Figlio said, according to Live Science.

However, an increasing number of parents are giving their children non-traditional names to help them stand out. “Parents are trying to be original, almost branding their kids in an era where names are viewed on the same level as Twitter handles or a website URL,” writer Sabrina Rogers-Anderson said.

Ruby, a mother on TikTok, took a hard stance on parents giving their children names that sound childish in a post that’s received over 11 million views. Ruby says she named her kids as “adults, not babies” hoping they would never “outgrow” their names.

@rubyyvillarreal

#stitch with @nikkiruble love having nicknames as they are younger and it doesnt mean they will perfer it over their name as they get older. Just gives them options 🤷🏻‍♀️ #nicknames #babynames #babytok #adultnames #pregnancytiktok #toddlersoftiktok #momtok #momlife #babynames #babyname

“The whole concept when I was trying to look for a name and choose a name for her is I did not want her to outgrow her name,” she said in the viral video. “I wanted the name to fit her as a baby, as a toddler, as a child, and into adulthood. So, it's like I really am happy with what I ended up with naming her and it just fits her so well.”

She captioned the video, “love having nicknames as they are younger and it doesn’t mean they will prefer it over their name as they get older. Just gives them options.”

People in the comments responded with modern names they think that kids will outgrow.

"My name is Koazy and I’m here for a job interview," Stalker joked. "Hello sir, I am Bluey Mason Garrison! I was called in for a job interview last Tuesday," Pastel Purr added.

"I can’t imagine knowing [a] 30-year-old named Emma or Posie," Mikey wrote.

However, a lot of people commented that names that seem like they’ll be outgrown will sound fine in the future when those names are popular with the new generation. “Kids grow up with their generation having their own names on trend. They will be normal adult names when they are grown,” Kerry wrote.

“Names grow with the generation,” Lauren added. “The name Dennis sounded like a baby name once too. Names grow up just like generations.”

@rubyyvillarreal

Replying to @19eighty_5 my kids name and the process 😬 #babynames #nicknames #babytok #adultnames #momsoftiktok #momlife #momtok #pregnancytiktok #toddlersoftiktok #babyname #babyfever

In a follow-up video, Ruby shared the names she gave her children. Her girl is named Karla Esmerelda and her boy is called Deluca.

“I just really liked how simple, how bold, and strong that the name by itself just really kind of is. Doing some research names with the letter K tend to be like very bold and powerful names, so I really wanted it with a K and not with a C,” she said.

She named her son Deluca, after a doctor on “Grey’s Anatomy.” She said she chose the name because there was nothing to connect it to, and it sounded “nice.”


This article originally appeared on 4.26.23

All GIFs and images via Exposure Labs.


Photographer James Balog and his crew were hanging out near a glacier when their camera captured something extraordinary.

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via @5kids5catssomedogstoo/TikTok

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Lynalice Bandy, who goes by @5kids5catssomedogstoo on TikTok, posted a video that showed her home looking like a disaster after she worked six 10-hour days straight while her husband did nothing to help.

Her time-lapse video shows every room in the house completely trashed, with toys, food and laundry scattered everywhere. "Shampoo on the carpets in the girls' room, nail polish all over Nugget covers, hair, and carpet. Scissors were used to cut hair, the down comforter, the mattress cover, and two Nugget covers," wrote the mom.

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Humor

Woman sends her mom pictures of random babies in an effort to get her to an eye doctor

The series went on for a full week before the new grandma got suspicious.

Woman pranks mom with pictures of random babies

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When Emily Haswell had her first child a little over a year ago, she noticed that her mom seemed to need glasses but refused to see the eye doctor. Instead of nagging her mother who visits weekly to see her grand baby, Haswell decided she would pull a prank designed to force her mom to admit she needed glasses. The new mom decided to share the results of her prank on her social media pages.

Haswell admitted to her followers that her mother not only visited once a week to see the baby but would ask for daily pictures of her new grandchild. But instead of sending pictures of her daughter, Sadie every time, Haswell started sending pictures of random babies she found on the internet to see how long it would take for her mom to notice.

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Grizzly Bane attempts yoga with a Bernese Mountain Dog.

Anyone who has a dog knows that they will never leave you alone when you are exercising. When you pull out the workout mat, the dog knows you’re about to get active and absolutely has to be involved. They see you stooped down to their level and assume you've stooped to their level and it's time to wrestle.

A TikTokker named Grizzly Bane, 27, showed how much dogs love to play with us while we’re trying to exercise in a clip where she has to fight a Bernese Mountain Dog off her yoga mat. Her efforts are unsuccessful, but the video is adorable. The video also gives her a great excuse next time she doesn’t feel like like working out: “My dog wouldn’t let me!”

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