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Joy

Woman having a terrible day asks the universe for help. It responded with baby goats.

Here's why they were precisely what she needed.

via Canva/Photos

A woman having a bad day and a baby goat.

Some days, you feel like you shouldn’t even get out of bed. They happen to everyone, but no matter how bad things get, we can’t let them ruin the rest of the day. Eliza Lieberman, a therapist from North Carolina, was having a challenging day recently, and her openness to letting everything go paved the way for a magical experience.

“I cannot believe what just happened. I was having a pretty shi**y day, and I just, like, needed a win,” she said in a TikTok video with over 300,000 views. “And I'm driving to my workout class, this guy pulls up next to me, and I have this bumper sticker,” she says before cutting to a photo of her car with a "I STOP FOR GOATS" bumper sticker. Katherine cared for goats on a farm as a teenager, so she has a special place in her heart for them.

“So this guy pulls up next to me, and he's like, ‘I saw your bumper sticker. And I actually have baby goats in the back of my truck right now. And I'm taking them to my office to let my co-workers meet them if you wanna come see them,” she recalled.

@elizalieberman

the universe is looking out for me fr !!!! I got his contact info so I can go play with them :,) 💘🫂🐐💕 #goats #goat #goatsoftiktok #kismet #storytime #fate

At this point, Lieberman had a conundrum: Should she follow a random stranger who promises her he has baby goats or turn down the offer? His offer sounded a lot like the adult version of a predator asking a child to come with him to find a lost puppy. However, Lieberman felt she had nothing to lose and followed his truck to his office.

“Goats randomly became a big part of my personality,” she told People. “I asked if I could follow him, and he said yes. My partner stayed on the phone the whole time, joking, ‘Don’t get kidnapped!’ But honestly, baby goats seemed like a pretty extreme kidnapping tactic.”

baby goats, goats, farm animals, hay goats eating, tiny goatsTwo baby goats eating. via Jonathan Mast/Unsplash

When they arrived at the man’s office, his co-workers were waiting to meet the baby goats. “And I watch him open his trunk and baby goats come out,” she says in the video. “I feel like this is the kind of story that no one would believe if I didn't have evidence.”

"The universe is looking out for me!" she captioned her video.

Folks in the comments agreed that the promise of seeing baby goats seemed more than a little bit sketchy, but they supported Lieberman’s decision to follow her bliss. “A man telling me he has baby goats in the back of his truck is how I’d be kidnapped,” one viewer wrote. “I mean, parents always warned us about strangers with candy, not goats, so fair game,” Another added.

baby goats, goats, farm animals, hay goats eating, tiny goatsTwo goats relaxing.via Neil Daftary/Unsplash

The story is a great reminder that a day that starts as terrible, no-good, and horrible could turn on a dime into something extraordinary. For Lieberman, the story is a wonderful reminder to keep yourself open to joy because it could happen at any minute.

“There were so many reasons why I could’ve said no or stayed cautious, but letting go of control and being open to unplanned events led to one of the best things that’s happened to me,” she told People. “It’s proof that good things can come when you least expect them.”

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A 9-year-old just perfectly broke down what living with autism is like for him.

George Yionoulis is pretty much your typical 9-year-old.

The fourth-grader from Raleigh, North Carolina, loves "Harry Potter," making art, and eating tacos.

Oh, and he loooooooves dancing. The kid has some serious moves.

While it's pretty easy to understand why George loves tacos (who doesn't?), there are some things George does that aren't quite as easy for people to understand. That's because when was 2 years old, his parents discovered has an autism spectrum disorder.

George's autism makes it harder for his classmates at Douglas Elementary School to relate to him. So he used a class project to help them understand him a little better.

George wrote, narrated, edited, and produced a video called "My Autism" and even created an original score to accompany the six-minute clip.

"Hi, everybody. My name is George," George begins his voiceover as text reading "GEORGE ... and AUTISM" flashes across the screen before cutting to footage of George dancing.

"Let me tell you a little about myself," he continues. "I have fun dancing, I have fun making music, I love to draw and make art, and ... wait for it ... I have this thing called autism."

In the video, George shares some of his unique quirks — things he knows his classmates have noticed about him but maybe haven't had the courage to ask about.

Like the fact that he has trouble making eye contact with people when they speak to him, though he says he's gotten better about it. "I might not have been looking, but that didn't mean I wasn't listening," he explains.

"Speaking of listening," he continues. "I can hear and see a lot of things and sounds all at the same time, which sometimes makes it hard to focus on any one sound or thought. That's why it might take a little more time to answer you when you ask a question."

He also has trouble with metaphors and figures of speech, which is common for kids with autism, and advises his classmates to be as literal and clear with him as possible.

"If you say 'take a seat,' you might find one less chair in your classroom," he jokes.

George also opens up about some of the challenges he faces and hopes the video will help his friends understand why he sometimes gets angry, cries, or yells."

I sometimes get frustrated when I get interrupted or when something doesn't go as planned," he admits. "Or when something unexpected happens. Or when I make a mistake."

In a courageous peek behind the curtain, George even includes video of himself — at a much younger age — throwing a tantrum at a book reading as well as audio of himself stumbling with his words while recording the narration for the video and becoming audibly frustrated. "But I messed up!" he cries.

"(Some of those) are just kid things to get frustrated about, and I'm a kid just like you," he says. "All us kids are different in our own ways, right?"

At the end, George asks his classmates to come talk to him, ask him questions, or invite him to play — even if it seems like he might not want to.

"I like having fun, just like you. So if you ever see me playing by myself, it doesn't necessarily mean I don't want to play with you, too," he tells them. "I always want to play with you."

His heartwarming honesty and larger-than-life on-screen personality are so compelling, it's no wonder the video has gone viral. Shortly after the video went up on YouTube and Facebook, it racked up tens of thousands of views and hundreds of comments.

Initially, it was only meant for George's 21 elementary school classmates.

"The feedback we're getting is, 'I showed this to my 6-year-old who has autism, I showed this to my 12-year-old who has autism,' and they're going, 'Me too, and we could be friends!'" his mother, Lisa Jolley told Raleigh-Durham's WTVD/ABC11.

In a world where people with autism aren't often given the chance to speak for themselves, it's both really cool and really significant that George has taken control of his own life story and experience and is sharing them in his own words. At only 9 years old, he's already making huge strides in helping the world better understand a condition that affects about 1 in 68 kids in the United States.

Watch the full video below, and you'll probably learn something new yourself.

At the very least, you're bound to fall in love with this charming and courageous kid.

George's journey with autism at 9 years old. This is the video he shared with his fourth grade class to help them understand why he behaves the way he does...

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Family

Family creates an NFL-style draft to assign Thanksgiving cooking and cleaning duties

Is this family too organized or do you want to be adopted by them?

via Crcederberg/TikTok

Colleen Rast Cederberg's Thanksgiving Draft.

When Thanksgiving is done right, families evenly divide the labor so that everything gets done and nobody works too hard. Someone takes charge of roasting the turkey, others contribute with sides, somebody is on dishes, and there’s always one family member happy to mix up some cocktails.

While most families shouldn't have to resort to aggressive tactics to ensure this balance, Colleen Rast Cederberg, 31, has created a unique solution to keep the labor duties in her family. She made a “Thanksgiving Draft.”

"My sisters were spending all day cooking, and my brothers were spending all evening cleaning and I was just kind of hearing from both sides that there was kind of an imbalance," Rast Cederberg, the middle child of 5 siblings, told Fox News Digital.

Rast Cederberg explained how the draft works in a TikTok video that has been seen 650,000 times.

"This is how I do Thanksgiving so that my siblings and I don't kill each other," Rast Cederberg opens her video. "We give every dish a point value from one to three. The cranberry dish is a one and the turkey is a three."

Thanksgiving Draft 2023 

@crcederberg

Thanksgiving Draft 2023 #thanksgiving @gregrast0

In the weeks leading up to the holiday, the family jumps on a video call to choose their particular dishes, just like NFL general managers do during their annual draft. They also decide who’s on cleaning and dish duty.

"We all draft what dishes we want to make,” she says in the video. “We also do this thing called ‘flex kitchen,’ which means you basically hang out in the kitchen for an hour and our job is to keep the kitchen clean – so unload the dishwasher if it's ready, helping out the people cooking, whatever it takes to keep the kitchen moving."

While some family members think it’s a little too rigid to outline of “rules and responsibilities on Thanksgiving," Rast Cederberg says everyone happily participates in the system.

The Thanksgiving Draft has received a lot of love in the TikTok comments section from people who love organization. “My type A personality is obsessed with this. Dear lord, I wish my family was like this lol,” Nicole A Gaskins wrote. “I have never desired hanging out with people as much as I do right now. Omg the organization, the spreadsheets. It's all so beautiful,” Buzzsaw408 added.

One big question in the comments inspired a quick follow-up video from Rast Cederberg. “I wanna know the root fight that happened where this was the solution?” Optimistic asked.

"I had older siblings that were doing all the cooking and younger siblings that were doing all of the cleaning and this was my solution to kind of smooth everything between the two factions because everyone should do a little bit of both,” Rast Cederberg said in a subsequent TikTok post.

Once you thought that Rast Cederberg’s draft was taking Thanksgiving organization as far as it can go, she dropped this nugget: An AI-generated schedule for cooking the holiday meal. She fed ChatGPT all of the recipes she is going to make on Thanksgiving, and it created a detailed cooking schedule for the entire meal.

More Thanksgiving planning hacks this one complements of @bjc6109 

@crcederberg

More Thanksgiving planning hacks this one complements of @bjc6109 #thanksgiving #chatgpt #planning #holiday

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Democracy

New congressman drops truth bomb about fellow politicians on his 100th day in office

"Most of the really angry voices in Congress are totally faking it."

Rep. Jeff Jackson/Twitter

Rep. Jeff Jackson, D-N.C., shared a video about what he's learned in his first few months in Congress.

Politics has never been free of outrage and fearmongering, but only in recent decades have those base methods of drumming up support been shoved in our faces 24/7. Unfortunately, politicians know that fueling rage and fear gets them attention, which in turn gets them valuable media coverage, and some are shameless about capitalizing on it.

It's how random members of Congress from tiny rural districts gain massive national name recognition while hundreds of non-inflammatory, non-extremist, non-outrage-baity lawmakers quietly go about the business of governance with few Americans able to pick them out of a lineup.

Outrage-fueled notoriety is what prompted Rep. Jeff Jackson, Democrat of North Carolina—most likely a legislator you've never heard of—to make a video on his 100th day in Congress, where he shared something he's learned about his fellow elected leaders.


"I'm still brand new to Congress—I've only been there 100 days—and I don't know if I'm not supposed to say this out loud, but it's true and important. And if you don't know this, you need to," he said. "It's really clear from working there for just a few months that most of the really angry voices in Congress are totally faking it. These people who have built their brands around being perpetually outraged? It's an act."

Perhaps this is not groundbreaking news for a lot of us, but it's refreshing to hear from someone on the inside, especially since Jackson explains how he knows their outrage is an act—and why.

"I've been in committee meetings that are open to the press and committee meetings that are closed," he said. "The same people who act like maniacs during the open meetings are suddenly calm and rational during the closed ones. Why? Because there aren't any cameras in the closed meetings, so their incentives are different."

Jackson goes on to explain how members of Congress are surrounded by negative incentives, with media outlets that feed off of negative emotion giving them air time because it keeps people angry.

"If they can keep you angry, they'll hold your attention," he said. "And they both want your attention."

Watch:

Jackson doesn't name any particular members of Congress or even point to any particular political party in his video. In reality, politicians on both sides of the aisle are guilty of playing these kinds of games and always have been.

The problem, of course, is that the governance of a nation isn't a game. But politics is, especially hyper-partisanized politics, and that game has only become more competitive and more winner-takes-all in the age of modern media.

When George Washington tried to warn the American people of the "rankness" of partisanship and where its "continual mischief" and "constant danger of excess" could lead us, he was spot on in his predictions. But what he couldn't have predicted was the role that television and social media would play in elevating that mischief and excess.

As problematic as the political arena has been in the past, it's nothing compared to how fear and outrage have been wielded as weapons in the technological age. We have 24-hour cable channels funneling hate and fear-based prejudice into our psyches, and social media algorithms that fuel negative attention grabs. Demonizing the "other side" of the political spectrum to the point of describing one's fellow Americans as "the enemy" is outright bonkers—but it'll practically guarantee you an interview on prime-time television, and therefore a seat at powerful tables.

We—all of us—need to not only recognize manufactured outrage and fearmongering, but we need to learn to truly ignore it. Ignoring it won't necessarily make it go away, but for people who seek power above all else, all attention is good attention. When we give attention seekers what they want, we only feed the beast. Even when we give them attention to complain about them, we're still giving them oxygen.

Instead, let's try something different, like focusing our energies on the people who are actually doing the hard work of governance and genuinely serving their constituencies in a spirit of public service. As Jackson said, "If you don't have to yell to be heard, the whole conversation changes." Perhaps we can stop listening to the yellers and start engaging with the talkers who understand how to discuss and negotiate intelligently, in ways that make sense. These are, after all, the people who actually get things done behind closed doors.

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