There are more kinds of playgrounds constructed than just this.
This article originally appeared on 08.10.15
Playgrounds can be a lot of fun.
Kids love them. Parents are into them because physical activity is good for kids. (And let's be honest: It's also because we know they'll sleep well later.)
Whoops.
But you know who else playgrounds are good for? Senior citizens!
Yep, that's right. Playground equipment isn't just for little ones.
A playground for seniors offers various means of play and exercise.
Image pulled from YouTube video.
Seniors enjoy doing more than sitting idly, reading a book, and gazing at the young whippersnappers swinging, sliding, and generally having a good time. They like to play, too!
In Spain, where the population is aging, senior-citizen playgrounds have been popping up for a while.
Not only do they provide a place for folks to enjoy physical activity, they also offer an opportunity for socializing.
"It is very social," says Paz Vidal, a physical therapist. "[We] want to break the myth of the old person coming to the park and just sitting while grandkids play. And then going home. Kids can also have fun here. The parks help create family cohesion. And it's intergenerational."
The playgrounds in Spain sure seem to be serving their purpose.
The playground fills up when seniors come to share time and healthy activities.
Image pulled from YouTube video.
"I am not someone to stay home. I get out a lot," said Franchesca, an 84-year-old in Spain who, in addition to enjoying being active, hasn't lost her sense of humor. "Because if you stay home, you spend all your time criticizing your kids, eh?"
And it's not just happening in Spain. It's starting to catch on in the U.S., too!
Folks playing at a senior playground in London. More of these in the U.S., please! Photo by Oli Scarff/Staff/Getty Images.
"Play is a great connector for adults and seniors and the children in their lives. In addition to the cognitive and physical benefits of play, it can also reduce stress in adults and is proven to help combat toxic stress in kids," Sarah Pinsky, director of client services for KaBOOM!, told Huffington Post.
I mean, just watch these folks enjoying themselves. Who wouldn't want to have fun like that at any age?
Researchers, in a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, found that our brains help us form all kinds of spontaneous judgments of people that we may not even be aware of, including whether we can trust them.
It's all thanks to the amygdala, the walnut-shaped area of the brain that helps us process strong emotions.
In the study, two groups of participants were analyzed. The first group was asked to rate how much they trusted certain people by looking at their faces while the researchers measured activity in the amygdala. Simple enough.
The second group was asked to lay inside an MRI machine while faces flashed on a screen in front of them. But here's the catch: The faces appeared and disappeared so quickly that the people in this group couldn't even really see them.
Here's what the study found.
Regardless of whether you get a long look at someone's face or only a glance, your amygdala lights up like crazy.
What's even cooler is that participants in the study pretty much agreed on which faces were trustworthy and which ones weren't.
There were certain traits that stood out as shady, like furrowed eyebrows and shallow cheekbones, in particular.
This only begins to scratch the surface of the super-awesome science behind first impressions.
Did you know that a person's voice can have a similar effect on perception, even in small doses?
After testing a group of 64 people, researchers in Scotland found that participants were consistently able to agree on which personality traits corresponded to which voices they heard — based solely on hearing them speak the word "hello."
The biggest remaining question is whether these snap judgments have a measurable impact on our behavior.
A study by Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal found something pretty interesting.
According to Lifehacker, the two compared "the ratings given to college professors by classes at the end of the semester with ratings that another group of students gave the same professors based only on three ten-second silent video clips shown prior to any actual lectures."
The two groups mostly agreed on how much they liked the professors, indicating that, just maybe, first impressions really do matter.
Watch the full episode of "DNews" to learn more about cool brain stuff and catch William Haynes' killer one-liners below:
"Just because you didn't do marriage well doesn't mean you can't do divorce fabulously."
That's something my mother-in-law said to me when her son and I were ending our young, impetuous, and ultimately-not-right-for-us marriage. It stuck with me through the years.
These sweet images from Brittany Peck's wedding have struck a chord with families across the Internet, and they seem to be getting that very same lesson about "doing divorce well" through to millions.
The photographer got a clue something unusual was about to happen.
Delia Blackburn, an Ohio photographer, was snapping pictures at the nuptials, as you do. She described to WKYC3 what happened when the father of the bride, Todd Bachman, approached her.
"He said, 'I'm going to do something special, just be ready.'"
Before Bachman finished walking his daughter down the aisle, he turned around in the direction of his daughter's stepdad, who was also in attendance.
Then Brittany's stepdad details what happened next.
“And he came up to me and reached out and grabbed my hand and he said, 'Hey, you've worked for this as hard as I have.' He said, 'You deserve this as much as I do. You're gonna help us walk OUR daughter down the aisle.' At that point, I had no clue what was going on." — Todd Cendrosky, stepfather of Brittany Peck
Todd B. looks like a dad on a mission — to be the coolest guy ever.
“I got weak in the knees and everything — I couldn't have had anything better in my life. That was THE most important thing in my life." — Brittany's stepdad
Todd C. is like, "What is even happening right now?"
Todd Bachmann explains his last-minute decision like this:
“It hasn't always been peaches and cream, by any stretch of the imagination. ... There's no better way to thank somebody than to assist me walking my — walking OUR daughter — down the aisle."
And Brittany herself was pleased with the outcome.
The bride sent a video message from her honeymoon to WKYC, saying, "We've seen it all, been through it all, but at the end of the day we're all happy."
A comic shows the evolution or devolution from with makeup to without.
This article originally appeared on 05.28.15
Even though I don't wear very much makeup, every few days or so SOMEONE...
(friends, family, internet strangers)
...will weigh in on why I "don't need makeup."
Now, I realize this is meant as a compliment, but this comic offers a hilariously truthful (and slightly weird) explanation of the "too much makeup" conundrum.
Not everyone is able to turn into a badass lizard when someone asks about their face-painting hobbies. Don't you kinda wish you could? Just to drive this hilarious comic all the way home, here are four reasons why some women* wear makeup:
*Important side note: Anyone can wear makeup. Not just women. True story.
While some people may think putting on makeup is a chore, it can be really fun! For some, makeup is an outlet for creativity and self-expression. For others, it's just a way to feel good about themselves and/or enhance their favorite features.
That's why it feels kinda icky when someone says something along the lines of "You don't need so much makeup!" Now, it's arguable that no one "needs" makeup, but everyone deserves to feel good about the way they look.
For some people, feeling good about their appearance includes wearing makeup. And that's totally OK.
Image pulled from YouTube video linked to website.
Unique words defining emotions beyond the scope of a typical dictionary.
This article originally appeared on 07.02.15
What if you needed a word for something that you can't quite define? Where would you turn?
Have you ever tried to explain something but gave up because the person you're talking to wouldn't be able to relate? Or worse yet, there's not an actual word for what you're trying to explain?
Haven't heard that term before? How about this one:
Anecdoche — a conversation in which everyone is talking, but nobody is listening.
No? How about this:
Opia — the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye.
Now, before you start doubting your own vocabulary skills, you won't find those words in any of the major dictionaries. Instead, they come from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a collection of newly minted words for life's hard-to-define feelings.
So, these words aren't real? Well, it's not quite that simple.
It's a word that's found in the dictionary, you might say. That leads to an entirely separate question: Whose dictionary? Merriam-Webster? Oxford? Cambridge? Urban?
The truth is that language is ever-changing, and what one might say is a "fake" word today could very well be a "real" word tomorrow (or within a few years, at least).
In June 2015, the Oxford English Dictionary added a handful of new words to its rolls, including "Interweb," "jeggings," "hot mess," "crowdfunding," and "cisgender." Will all of these words stick with us for the long haul? Almost certainly not. Still, in the mind of OED's editors, those words are just as real as any others.
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, on the other hand, contains many useful terms that you won't find in a traditional dictionary ... yet.
You'll find words like "Vellichor" ("The strange wistfulness of used bookshops") and "Adronitis" ("Frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone") buried within the dictionary's six-year history.
While some terms come off as, well, obscure, others seem to fill meaningful voids left by the limitations of language for common emotions.
Its existence feels almost otherworldly, like spells from the mind of J.K. Rowling.
\u201cHarry Potter Spells List\u201d
— Harry Potter World (@Harry Potter World)
1589672580
"I've been writing a dictionary of emotions for about five years, and still the most common question I get is, 'Are these words real?'" Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows creator John Koenig told Upworthy over email.
To answer that question, Koenig says (emphasis mine):
"One answer is an obvious 'no,' [they're not real] because you couldn't find them in a leather-bound dictionary — and because I create them myself by twisting together word roots from any one of a dozen different languages, from French, Japanese and Mayan to my personal favorite, Greek.
On the other hand, of course these words are real, because in reality there is no such thing. A word is not like a gold coin that you bite to tell whether it's counterfeit, so you might be able to trade it for a mule. It becomes real when it's spoken and understood. And by that standard, I've seen some of my words (particularly 'sonder') used earnestly in many different conversations online. Are they all wrong? Is 'sonder' any less meaningful because it hasn't yet been enshrined on the page of a leather-bound book? After all, almost every word in the Oxford English Dictionary has a birthdate, a notation of its first recorded use, back when it was just a yawp of nonsense that only made sense to one person, then two. All words were born this way."
Here's "sonder" by the way:
When it comes to how we think about words, popularity is often a stand-in for legitimacy.
You might not find the verb "retweeted" in the dictionary on your bookshelf, but it's an understood term. Koenig has thoughts on that, as well:
"So then, does realness require the blessing of popular use? How many millions of people does it take to change the word 'literally' to mean 'figuratively'? Is a word still alive if only one person knows its meaning? Or is that too far?"
"Personally, I think words should exist for their own sake, regardless of how they are used," Koenig says, pointing out that our language is particularly lacking when it comes to describing emotions.
"When I post a new definition or a new episode of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, I often have no idea if anyone else out there feels the emotion I'm trying to pin down. Because it's a one-man show, it's totally possible that it's just me. So then this question about realness [of a word] becomes just another way of asking, 'Am I the only person who feels this way?'"
During her talk, Curzan recounts someone asking her if "defriend" is a "real word." She wound up in the same sort of existential rabbit hole:
"What makes a word real? My dinner companion and I both know what the verb 'defriend' means, so when does a new word like 'defriend' become real? Who has the authority to make those kinds of official decisions about words, anyway?"
Here's Curzan giving her TED Talk "What makes a word 'real'?" in March 2014.
She touched on the process of words making their way into the dictionary. This might seem like a stale topic, but it's pretty fascinating.
To her, dictionary editors are similar to anthropologists — that's a way most of us probably hadn't thought about them before (if we thought about them at all).
"So how does a word get into a dictionary? It gets in because we use it and we keep using it, and dictionary editors are paying attention to us. If you're thinking, 'But that lets all of us decide what words mean,' I would say, 'Yes it does, and it always has.'
Dictionaries are a wonderful guide and resource, but there is no objective dictionary authority out there that is the final arbiter about what words mean. If a community of speakers is using a word and knows what it means, it's real. That word might be slangy, that word might be informal, that word might be a word that you think is illogical or unnecessary, but that word that we're using, that word is real."
So, what makes a "real" word? That's entirely up to you.
Men struggle to comprehend the pressures women feel. The same is true of women!
Gah! We'll never get along.
This conversation between comedian Neal Brennan and Amy Poehler is a pretty good example of how hard it can be to figure life out sometimes.
Neal, the genius who co-created "Chappelle's Show," sat down with Amy for his show "The Approval Matrix." The topic? WHAT are men supposed to be now? Cool? Adorkable? Both? Neither?
It's maddening, dealing with constantly opposing messages about how to be and how to act.
And Amy, in all her hospitable magical greatness, is straight-up like, "Yeah, bro, welcome to the party! We've been here a looong time."
"This feeling that you're having right now — which it's like, 'I have to be all things,' — it's a feeling that women have everyday in their whole lives. So you're just starting to experience it now. ... I'm glad you're finally experiencing it as a white male."
Yass, queen! A magical combo of speaking your truth and inviting your friends to the party. That sounds like Amy.
"If you can speak about what you care about to a person you disagree with, without denigrating them or insulting them, then you may actually be heard."
Patrick Stewart often talks about his childhood and the torment his father put him and his mother through. However, how he answered this vulnerable and brave fan's question is one of the most eloquent, passionate responses about domestic violence I've ever seen. WARNING: At 2:40, he's going to break your heart a little.
Dictionary of (@ObscureSorrows) / Twitter
