The school assignment was intended to spark debate and discussion — but isn't that part of the problem?
A school assignment asked for 3 "good" reasons for slavery.
It's not uncommon for parents to puzzle over their kids' homework.
Sometimes, it's just been too long since they've done long division for them to be of any help. Or teaching methods have just changed too dramatically since they were in school.
And other times, kids bring home something truly inexplicable."Give 3 'good' reasons for slavery and 3 bad reasons," the prompt began.
You read that right. Good reasons ... FOR SLAVERY.
Lest anyone think there's no way a school would actually give an assignment like this, Brown-Berry posted photo proof to Facebook.
In the section reserved for "good reasons," (again, for slavery), Jerome wrote, "I feel there is no good reason for slavery thats why I did not write."
Yep. That about covers it.
His response was pretty much perfect.
We're a country founded on freedom of speech and debating ideas, which often leads us into situations where "both sides" are represented. But it can only go so far.
There's no meaningful dialogue to be had about the perceived merits of stripping human beings of their basic living rights. No one is required to make an effort to "understand the other side," when the other side is bigoted and hateful.
In a follow-up post, Brown-Berry writes that the school has since apologized for the assignment and committed to offering better diversity and sensitivity training for its teachers.
But what's done is done, and the incident illuminates the remarkable racial inequalities that still exist in our country. After all, Brown-Berry told the Chicago Tribune, "You wouldn't ask someone to list three good reasons for rape or three good reasons for the Holocaust."
At the very end of the assignment, Jerome brought it home with a bang: "I am proud to be black because we are strong and brave ... "
Good for Jerome for shutting down the thoughtless assignment with strength and amazing eloquence.
This article originally appeared on 01.12.18
He told Insider it only costs him about $30,000 a year.
A ship crusing beautiful blue waters
Living permanently on a cruise ship seems like a dream of the uber-wealthy. You spend your days lounging on the deck by the pool or touring an exotic location. Nights are spent dancing in the nightclub or enjoying live entertainment.
You no longer have to worry about traffic, cooking or laundry. Your life has become all-inclusive as long as you’re on board.
At Upworthy, we’ve shared the stories of a handful of people who’ve been able to spend their lives on a permanent cruise because they’ve figured out how to do so affordably. Or, at least, at about the same cost of living on land.
Insider recently featured the fantastic story of Ryan Gutridge, who spends about 300 nights a year living on Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas. He only leaves the ship for a few weeks a year during the holidays.
Gutridge works in IT as an engineer for a cloud solution provider and can do his full-time job right from the ship. “I do meetings in the morning and afternoons, but I can also go to lunch and socialize or meet people at the gym,” he tells Insider. “I've even met people that I stay in contact with and that have come back and cruised on this ship with me multiple times since.”
Gutridge says that living and working on a cruise ship has improved his mental health. “Working from home was isolating. I don't have kids or pets, so it's easy to become somewhat introverted, but cruising has really helped and made me a lot more social,” he says.
So, how does he afford life on a permanent vacation?
“I have a spreadsheet that automatically records all my expenses, which helps. I also set a budget every year,” he says. “This year, my base fare budget is about $30,000, and last year when I started really looking at the numbers and evaluating how much base fare I paid to be on a ship for 300 nights, I found it was almost neck-and-neck with what I paid for rent and trash service for an apartment in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.”
Currently, the average price for a one-bedroom apartment in Fort Lauderdale is $2,088 which would cost Gutridge about $25,000 a year.
Gutridge believes that the key to living on the ship affordably is loyalty programs. He’s actually spending less in 2023 than he did in 2022, even though he’s spent more time cruising.
“Now, because I cruise so often with Royal Caribbean, I've moved up in its loyalty program. My drinks and internet are free. If people are going to do something like what I do, I recommend trying different brands because they all offer something different. But once you commit to one, you should stick to it so you reach those loyalty levels,” he says.
When he’s not on the ship, he makes doctor and dentist appointments and spends time with his friends. Then, it's back on the high seas, where he has a routine. Monday through Friday, he works, eats healthy, and goes to the gym. On the weekends he'll let loose and have a few drinks.
If the ship arrives at a location he enjoys, he’ll take a PTO day from work and go sightseeing.
Eventually, Gutridge wants to get rid of his apartment and sell his car, so his primary residence is a Royal Caribbean ship. “I have a strong relationship with the crew on this ship,” he says. “It's become a big family, and I don't want to rebuild those relationships on another ship — I joke that I have 1,300 roommates.”
This article originally appeared on 9.1.23
"Concerts need to be at a reasonable hour like 5pm."
People list their most 'boomer complaints' and its pure gold
Listen, everyone complains. Sure, we like to pretend it's just boomers that reach a certain age and start daydreaming about telling kids to get off their lawns. But the truth of the matter is, maybe some of the seemingly nonsensical complaints are valid because it appears that convenience has become inconvenient in the most obnoxious way possible.
Kevin Fredricks, a comedian and TikTok creator uploaded a video answering a tweet that asked, "what is the most boomer complaint you have." Fredricks must've been waiting for someone to ask this question because he had an entire list of complaints but honestly, if you're over 30 you'll probably be nodding along.
He comes in strong with a particular disdain for QR code menus. Save the trees and all that jazz but there's something about holding a menu in your hand that helps you choose the same thing you always order so much better. Flipping the menu over is key in making food choices while dining out. Seriously, not everything has to be digital.
"Also, the TV's too loud. Matter of fact, everything's too loud. The TV, the music, turn everything down a few notches," Fredricks declares.
But the comedian wasn't done, in fact, he was just getting started and so were the people in his comments. You'd think with it being a large platform that there would be some ridiculous complaints, but they're surprisingly very valid and applicable across generations.
"Concerts need to be at a reasonable hour like 5. 9PM is too late," one person writes.
"PUT DVD PLAYERS BACK IN LAPTOPS," another shouts because why do they still sell DVDs but there's no where to play them? Do they still make DVD players or is everyone using the ones from 2005?
"Yes, I'm tired of dark shows! Between How to Get Away with Murder (HTGAWM) and Game of Thrones (GoT). Baby, 33 and I can't see. Turn on the light," one woman says.
"I hate walking in to the grocery store cause the music is so da*mn loud. Like am I picking up some food or going to a d*mn rave," a commenter complains.
@kevonstagetiktok Whats your biggest boomer complaint?
It's true, it's all too much. Between not being able to see shows because they're so dark, to having to subscribe to 75 different streaming services and headlights so bright you can see a party on Jupiter, we're all shaking our fists at the sky. Maybe if enough people complain, we'll at least get the streaming services to pay the light bill so we can see what's happening on the TV.
They both had childhood dogs named Toy. They both married women named Linda, got divorced, then remarried women named Betty. And that's not even where the uncanny similarities end.
Jim Lewis and Jim Springer had remarkably similar lives, despite not meeting until they were 39.
Sometimes stories comes along that seem too far-fetched or remarkable to be real. The entire Ripley's Believe it or Not? franchise is built on such stories, the ones that defy logic and reason and yet have been proven to be true.
One of those stories has recently resurfaced and it has us all scrunching our brows and questioning how it could possibly be: The tale of two twins named Jim.
According to People, Jim Lewis and Jim Springer were identical twins born in 1940 to a 15-year-old mother, but they were separated and put up for adoption a few weeks later. The fact that their respective adoptive parents named them both James (and called them Jim for short) would be a weird enough coincidence by itself, but that's only the beginning of the uncanny parallels in their lives.
As kids, both Jims were good at math and woodworking, but struggled with spelling. Both initially went into similar careers, one as a security guard and one as a deputy sheriff. Such similarities could be explained by the men sharing the same DNA, but there are far more specific parallels that are simply unexplainable.
They both had a beloved childhood dog named Toy and a brother named Larry. They both married women named Linda, got divorced, then got remarried to women named Betty. It's hard to see how these coincidences even fit into the nature vs. nurture question at all. It's just too strange.
But there's more.
Both men had identical smoking and drinking habits, both were habitual nail biters, and both started getting a distinct kind of tension headache at age 18. They both drove a Chevrolet and vacationed at the same beach in Florida, despite living in Ohio.
They even both named their sons the same name with just one letter difference—James Alan and James Allan.
The Jims first met in 1979 when they were 39 years old, after one of them decided to pursue finding the other through the court system. Their unique story caught the attention of researchers at the University of Minnesota, who were studying genetic influence on humans by analyzing twins who had been reared apart.
One of those researchers, Dr. Thomas Bouchard Jr., found the twins' similarities as jaw-dropping as the rest of us.
“If someone else brought this material to me and said: ‘This is what I've got,’ I'd say I didn't believe it,” he said, according to the New York Times. “The probability of two people independently being given the same name is not that rare. But when you start to compound the coincidences, they become highly unlikely very quickly. In fact, I'm flabbergasted by some of the similarities.”
The Jim twins were even invited to The Johnny Carson Show, which you can see here:
Having identical twins raised separately was an ideal case study, considering the ever popular nature vs. nurture question, but the bizarre similarities between the two Jims even baffled the experts. Personality traits, shared interests and the like can be chocked up to genetics to some degree. But marrying women with the same name, not once, but twice? Where's the genetic explanation for that?
Of course, there were some differences between the two men as well. They styled their hair differently, one was more of a talker while the other was more of a writer, and one of them got married a third time to a woman named Sandy. Still, those differences hardly make up for the similarities. (Seriously, a dog named Toy?)
The Jim twins helped contribute to modern genetic research in a unique way in that they lived during a fairly narrow window of time in which genetics was being studied in earnest and in which adoption agencies would break up sets of identical twins for adoption (which is no longer the case). But they also remind us that there are mysteries in this world that science can't even begin to try to solve.
Hopefully, people will keep trying, though, because we definitely need an explanation for the Linda-then-Betty marriage thing.
Now, we have Gen Alpha teenagers.
Nicole Pellegrino talks to ger Gen Alpha sister about slang.
Once you finally discover what Gen Zers mean when they exclaim “Slay!” every third sentence, Gen Alpha has arrived to make you feel even older. Gen Alpha is the official title for those born between 2010 and 2023, and the most senior have just become teenagers.
In a new TikTok video seen over 5.4 million times, Nicole Pellegrino, a Millennial-aged director of TikTok strategy for a media company, attempts to communicate with her Gen Alpha sister Simone, and bestie, using slang that she has no idea is “out.”
"I can't say, like, 'That's a slay'?" Pellegrino asks.
"It's not even funny how 'out' slay is," Simone replies.
WARNING: Video has adult language.
@nicolepellegrin0 Why did noone tell me slay is out #genalpha #genalphatok #genalphaslang
In the video, Pellegrino is most confused by the term GYAT (which not everyone agrees is an acronym). "What on Earth is a GYAT? A yacht?" Pellegrino asked. The Gen Alpha girls couldn’t believe that she had no idea what the acronym meant.
According to the girls, GYAT is a way to compliment someone who has a nice butt. It stands for Girl Your A** Is Thick. "If you have a BBL or if your butt shakes when you walk, that's when you would yell GYAT at somebody,” Simone clarified.
The language lesson caught many older people off guard who weren’t ready for another generation to crop up and confuse them. "I’m still trying to learn all the Gen Z slang and now there’s Gen Alpha slang too. Man, I am so old!" Jwoo991 wrote in the comments. "Why are Gen Alpha like fully formed beings? I thought they were still babies," India added.
@nicolepellegrin0 Replying to @hollymadison Gen Alpha’s out here using Siri to write essays 😹 #genalpha #genalphaslang
Seriously, are we being Punk’d?!
90s kids still refuse to believe 'Shazaam' isn't real
By now most everyone has heard of the Mandela effect where collectively a large group of people believe something that wasn't true. Some of the most famous ones are the Berenstein Bears actually being the Berenstain Bears and Jiffy peanut butter really being Jif peanut butter.
The reason it's called the Mandela effect is due to the widespread collective "memory" of the famous South African activist Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s. He never died in prison, he was released and continued his activism until his death in 2013 but that's not how people remember it.
Over the past few years the Mandela effect of "Shazaam," a movie starring the comedian Sinbad that actually never existed. Sinbad exists but not the movie that many 90s kids fully remember watching never did. There is no evidence of the existence of this movie and even the star of the movie denies he starred in the non-existent film.
But people who grew up in the 90s insist it did, some even believing Sinbad's denial to be a joke or a conspiracy that includes the government stripping the globe of the VHS tapes. Other people accept that the movie didn't exist but don't fully believe it because of the distinct memories they have of watching it as a child. So how is it possible that hundreds of thousands of people between the ages of 35 and 45 remember details of this movie?
There are some theories that make sense but the best one comes from Sinbad himself when he too was trying to figure out why people so firmly believe they saw him in "Shazaam." Sinbad's best guess is that he hosted an all night movie marathon wearing a turban dressed like Sinbad, the sailor. This was during the same time frame as the movie "Kazaam" starring basketball legend Shaquille O'neal, who played a genie. So the theory is that our brains mushed the two together, which would explain why people are spelling Shazaam with two As.
Another theory proposed by a Reddit user is that people are remembering Sinbad playing in a movie called "Aliens for Breakfast" which has a very similar storyline as "Kazaam." Both movies came out around the same time so if you piece those two movies together and throw in that Sinbad was in fact wearing a turban around the same time frame, it's the perfect recipe for a false collective memory.
It also doesn't help that in 2017, Sinbad collaborated with College Humor to pull the ultimate April Fool's prank–creating a scene from "Shazaam." People briefly felt vindicated before the joke was revealed but due to the internet being forever, the fake scene is still available, which has people using it as proof the movie existed, disregarding that no other evidence supports the claim.
The argument of the existence of this false memory just won't go away and recently popped back up sending the internet back into a meltdown.
"I watched the movie!! I know it happened I can even remember certain scenes lol," one person writes.
"I don't care what anyone says I KNOW HE WAS THE FIRST SHAZAAM #Sinbad. I can vividly remember watching him play SHAZAAM," a commenter declares.
"The thing that doesn't make sense to me is how do we all have the same false memory. It can't be explained," someone inquires.
By the way, there is no movie from the 90s called Shazaam but there is a movie by the same name minus an "a" that was released in 2019 with a different actor and different premise. But that won't stop people being fully committed to believing Sinbad once played a genie and is simply playing a long running prank on a whole demographic of people.
