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These 'book ninjas' give commuters free books to read while they ride.

Reading is an empowering way to spread joy and wonder. Combine that with the reach and traffic of public transit, and you’ve got a mobile library that can bring the printed word to thousands of people.

That’s exactly what Ali Berg and Michelle Kalus thought when they started Books on the Rail, a mobile lending library that has been sweeping through the Melbourne Metro in Australia.

Berg and Kalus are best friends and self-proclaimed bookaholics. They have styled themselves as "book ninjas" with this project in which they secretly stash books on public trains with stickers on them instructing passersby: "Take this book, read it, then return it for someone else to enjoy!"

Berg (left) and Kalus. Photo by Books on the Rail.

"When we launched in April of this year," Berg and Kalus said in an email, "we never could have anticipated how much support we’d receive from authors, publishers and commuters and we are so humbled."

They promote their book-sharing efforts and connect with their transitory community through social media.

People have taken to posting photos of books they’ve found, and there has even been a burgeoning online community of people who've found the books who now participate in a book club.

The initiative was inspired by Hollie Fraser, the founder of New York's Books on the Subway as well as London's Books on the Underground.

So far, they have received over 160 emails from people eager to become book ninjas too.

They've also heard from people interested in getting their schools or book clubs involved as well as from authors and publishers looking to get their books in circulation.

Books on the Rail recently introduced a library-slip type of program in which readers leave behind reviews on cards in the books for future readers to see.

Books on the Rail has already received books and support from many publishers and authors ranging from Pan Macmillan to Harper Collins and from Alain De Botton to Liane Moriarty.Now, they are looking to work with Melbourne Metro and other organizations to help grow their program, which is currently self-funded and operated.

The Melbourne Rail has about 415,000 daily riders every day. That's a lot of books for people to read and share.

With interest in Books on the Rail spreading far beyond Melbourne, the duo hopes to spread the program far and wide in Australia.

"We hope to create a movement where the community drives the initiative, rather than just us," wrote Berg and Kalus. "We’re already starting to see this happen on social media, which is very exciting! Hopefully in the future, every time you travel on public transport you’ll spot a Books on the Rail book!"

Cheers to these amazing women who are helping to spread amazing books and create an amazing community of avid readers in a city of millions. Amazing.

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

True

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.

Fox 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul|YouTube

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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Education

People are raving about how much easier it is to read with 'bionic reading' font

This viral tool could be a game-changer for some.

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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Family

Woman 'kidnaps' her baby to teach lazy husband a scary lesson

Did she go too far?

via Kroshka_Nastya/Freepik

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. They showed her instead.

"She got an entire childhood in less than a minute."

Lonnie IIV TikTok screenshots

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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Science

Drones fired ‘seed missiles’ into the dirt. A year later, the trees are already 20 inches tall.

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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