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Heroes

These New Yorkers have had it with plastic. So they're getting very creative.

What happens when you combine politics and activism with bodega owners and artists? An environmental movement to stop plastic bag use.

Vote With Your Tote was launched by a pro bono team of creatives and environmental experts in New York City.

Their goal is to combat the city's growing toxic waste problem by reducing the use of plastic bags. Each year, NYC residents use and discard approximately 10 billion single-use plastic grocery bags, a whopping $12.5 million disposal cost.


"Plastic bags are just a terrible form of waste ... it becomes litter on our streets and an eyesore," said Brad Lander, NYC council member and deputy leader for policy. "People across racial and economic lines care about their neighborhood, and reducing toxic waste is meaningful to them. People who live in public housing love and care about their neighborhood, and that's important for people to see."

All images courtesy of Vote With Your Tote.

The program is part of a bigger movement encouraging people to support a statewide Bring Your Own Bag law.

In New York, local residents and lawmakers, including the founder of PlasticBagLaws.org Jennie Romer, joined forces to persuade the city to adopt a law that would encourage customers to rely on reusable cloth bags instead of plastic. The law would implement a charge of 5 cents for every plastic bag at a grocery store — but it's not about the money. It's about the fee encouraging more eco-friendly practices.

"It really helps when there are conversations about what the bag fee is and what it really means to change behavior," Romer said. "Initially, a lot of people we talked to were like, 'no.' They didn't really didn't like the idea of a fee because no one likes the idea of paying money for something. So when they talked a lot about 'the why' and a lot of people really came around. And that was powerful."

The law passed in NYC but then was blocked by the state government in early 2017.

Given the success of these bag fee programs in other cities and states and multiple studies showing a state-level bag fee can create a 45%-95% decrease in plastic bag usage, this block was a frustrating step back for the movement.

In spite of the government's inaction, community members, politicians, and lawyers have persisted. Romer is still working to get laws passed and implemented, and she continues to focus on the often unheard voices among community members to push the movement forward.

"I've worked on this for six years, and a lot of what we see on the videos is that — we see a lot of interest groups that are in Park Slope and the Upper West Side," Romer said. "So I wanted to talk to adults and I wanted to talk with people that were in communities that are often overlooked in these kinds of conversations. We were trying to think of, 'Who is an unexpected ally?'"  

Vote With Your Tote was there to encourage reusable bag use and push for the plastic bag law to be passed.

The project leaders had two primary goals in mind: To get locals to shop with reusable bags and to get Gov. Andrew Cuomo to implement bag legislation to help make NYC a cleaner and more environmentally friendly place.

Romer began working with Papel and Caneta, a nonprofit collective with leading industry ad industry creatives. The collective partnered with five bodegas across different NYC boroughs, pairing each with a talented artist who could design creative tote bags unique to their business. This direct relationship turned the movement into something that was up-close and personal, a particular and important approach to getting locals involved.

"All the creatives [at Papel and Caneta] volunteer on projects, and we spent the weekend with people ... going around and just talking to owners and different neighborhoods," Romer said. "We were seeking out people that already had an inclination that this [project] sounded interesting."

To change state and federal policies, action has to start at home.

The local movement to implement plastic bag laws is especially important right now. Within the past year, local political engagement has increased, a welcome sign that Americans care about the nation starting at the neighborhood level. Romer noted that plastic bag laws are a tangible, simple way to use local political action to positively impact communities.

"A lot of people feel overwhelmed by everything that's happening at the federal level," Romer said in a press release. "Plastic bags laws represent a way to act locally to address something that people care about in their community: plastic bag overconsumption and litter. Making people aware of the issues caused by plastic bags and effective solutions — bags laws! — is a great first step toward making real change in communities, namely empowering New Yorkers to talk with their friends and call their politicians."

Vote With Your Tote will continue its grassroots movement by getting more people involved and making sure that Cuomo makes good on his promise to address NYC’s most pressing environmental laws. By centering local communities and bridging the gap between art and activism, Vote With Your Tote can totally make it happen.

To learn more about plastic bag laws in NYC and around the nation, visit their website.

A Korean mother and her son

A recently posted story on Reddit shows a mother confidently standing up for her family after being bullied by a teacher for her culture. Reddit user Flowergardens0 posted the story to the AITA forum, where people ask whether they are wrong in a specific situation.

Over 5,600 people commented on the story, and an overwhelming majority thought the mother was right. Here’s what went down:

“I (34F) have a (5M) son who attends preschool. A few hours after I picked him up from school today, I got a phone call from his teacher,” Flowergardens0 wrote. “She made absolutely no effort to sound kind when she, in an extremely rude and annoyed tone, told me to stop packing my son such ‘disgusting and inappropriate’ lunches."

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YouTube creator Steve Mould shows us what echo looks like through an acoustic camera.

It’s bizarre to think about seeing sound, but nowadays we can do just that. If you haven’t seen an acoustic camera before, that’s because they’re mainly used for industrial purposes, but they’ve been available commercially from gfai tech since 2001.

YouTuber Steve Mould, who has a science channel with over 2.1 million subscribers, took the complicated concept of the acoustic camera and made it easy to understand in his latest video, “Acoustic cameras can SEE sound.”

In the video, Mould explains how an acoustic camera is much like your smartphone's video recorder. But it also creates visual representations of sound emanating from where it’s generated within the video.

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Pop Culture

Woman was mocked online for calling an $80 purse a 'luxury item.' Her response went viral.

"I'm so grateful that my dad was able to get me one. He worked so hard for that money.”

@zohtaco/TikTok

Zoe Gabriel, showing off her new purse from Charles & Keith

Insults of any kind are painful, but jabs towards someone’s financial status are their own breed.

In January 2023, Singapore-based Zoe Gabriel was on the receiving end of this particular flavor of mockery when she posted a TikTok about a purse from local retail brand Charles & Keith—a gift bought for her by her father.

In her excitement, the 17-year-old called the bag, which costs around $80, a “luxury” item as she unwrapped it. Her excitement was sadly cut short by some of the negative comments she received.

One comment seemed to stand out above the rest and prompted Gabriel to post an emotional response video.

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Family

Dad gives his young daughter a 'spa day' while mom and sister are out and people are gushing

"This healed a part of me. Thank you for doing this with your daughter."

Mason Smith pampered his baby girl during her "spa day."

Raising kids is no small feat. Just the basic logistics of caring for a human being from their helpless newborn stage to the full-fledged adult stage is a lot, much less doing the countless other things that will actually help that human thrive.

Parents who go above and beyond to create a nurturing environment and build strong core memories with their kids are inspiring examples for us all, and one dad's spa day with his daughter has people positively gushing.

Mason Smith (@thedadsocial) shared a video of a special spa day he gave his young daughter when her mom and older sister were having their own pampered outing. "Mom and sister went to the salon so I couldn't have her feeling left out," he wrote.

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Jennifer Reardon shares her question that gets her the job everytime.

Job interviews are one of the most stressful situations people go through. A recent poll of over 2,000 people found that job interviews are the fifth most stressful experience a person can have, right after health and financial problems, family issues and running late.

That’s why it is vital to be prepared to handle any questions you have to field during the interview. You’ll be less nervous and make a better candidate. However, many people never think to have a question prepared for their potential employer at the end of the interview when they ask, “Do you have any questions for us?”

Communications director and consultant Jennifer Reardon, who goes by the name @notjenneeree on TikTok, says that she has the perfect question to ask at that pivotal moment at the end of the interview. And she claims that she got the job every time she’s asked the question.

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Photo by Egor Vikhrev on Unsplash

Let's talk about what makes people read articles.

The adage, "If it bleeds, it leads," refers to the media's tendency to headline stories involving death or violence, but it can also be used to point to people's negativity bias. Simply put, people tend to pay more attention to negative news stories than positive ones.

A new study seems to reinforce this idea. And much to our surprise, it's centered on headlines used in Upworthy stories.

Using a public archive of Upworthy headlines and traffic data from 2012 to 2015, two separate teams of researchers analyzed whether people's click tendencies changed with negative or positive words in headlines. In those olden days of Upworthy, a handful of headlines for a single story were tested on the website to see which one would receive the most clicks. The research teams analyzed those results and found that negative words in headlines led to more people clicking on a story (2.3% more), and positive words in headlines led to fewer clicks (1.0% fewer). They also found a preference for headlines that express sadness over those that express joy, fear or anger.

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