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Culture

What it’s like to adopt a dog, as told through a 14-part comic.

Moscow-based comic artist Bird Born explains why adopting a dog changed his life.

What it’s like to adopt a dog, as told through a 14-part comic.

This article originally appeared on 08.23.16.


Rescuing a pet is an amazing and heroic undertaking.

7.6 million pets go into shelters each year, according to the ASPCA. And of those pets, about 2.7 million pets are rescued by humans who give them forever homes.

Moscow-based comic artist Bird Born experienced firsthand the power of welcoming a pet into your family when he adopted a dog.


Then his journey to understand his newest animal friend inspired an adorable and incredibly moving comic, too.

Follow this artist's journey to help his new friend feel welcome in his home:

Bird Born

Rescuing animals is a big commitment, and of course it doesn't come without challenges.

When adopting any animal, there's fear and uncertainty about their past life. Were they abused? Were they malnourished? How will they respond to humans?

Despite this, Born persevered with his new dog. "It took a lot of love and care to prove this animal that she was loved and needed," he writes in his comic.

Today, he can rest easy knowing one less dog is in need. And that's proof enough that adopting a dog can make the world a better place.

Joy

The best and brightest come together to tackle society’s toughest challenges

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is working to eradicate disease, improve education, and address the needs of their local community.

True

Have you ever wished you could solve some of society’s toughest challenges? That’s exactly why the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) was founded.

Established in 2015 by Dr. Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, the organization’s mission is to build a better future for everyone. CZI is working to eradicate disease, improve education, and address the needs of their local community.

Since its launch, CZI has awarded around $4.8 billion in grants to organizations whose work aligns with these values.

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Joy

28-year-old buys cruise ship apartment because it's less than renting and he can see the world

An all-expenses-paid life for about $50,000 a year? Sounds like a deal.

A cruise ship floating on azure waters.

Living the rest of your life on a cruise ship seems like the dream of the ultra-rich. You wake up every morning and have an all-you-can-eat breakfast. Spend the afternoon hanging out by the pool or touring a fantastic city such as Rome or Dubrovnik.

At night, have a drink in the lounge watching a comedian or a jazz band, then hit the sack and do it all over again the next day. Seems too good to be true for the average person, right? Think again.

Twenty-eight-year-old Austin Wells of San Diego told CNBC that he can make it happen because it’s cheaper than living onshore in Southern California and he gets to see the world. “The thing that most excites me is I don’t have to upend my daily routine, in order to go see the world,” Wells told CNBC.

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Science

Op-ed: Fermentation, the unsung hero of the cooking oil industry

This startup uses this ancient culinary art to produce environmentally-friendly oils that are better for our bodies and help reduce chronic diseases.

Via Zero Acre

Jeff Nobbs is the co-founder and CEO of Zero Acre Farms. Jeff writes about health, nutrition, and sustainability at jeffnobbs.com and @jeffnobbs.


Today, vegetable oils make up 20% of our daily calories and are the most consumed food in the world, after rice and wheat. Put simply, vegetable oils are everywhere, from nearly all packaged foods like chips, crackers, salad dressings, and coffee creamers to most restaurant meals, whether it’s fast food or Michelin-starred.

Oils extracted from crops like sunflower, soybean, palm, and canola were only widely introduced to our diets in the last century and have experienced a meteoric rise in prevalence. In the United States, the consumption of soybean oil alone has grown 1,000-fold since the early 20th century.


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Science

A juice company dumped orange peels in a national park. Here's what it looks like now.

12,000 tons of food waste and 21 years later, this forest looks totally different.

This article originally appeared on 08.23.17


In 1997, ecologists Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs approached an orange juice company in Costa Rica with an off-the-wall idea.

In exchange for donating a portion of unspoiled, forested land to the Área de Conservación Guanacaste — a nature preserve in the country's northwest — the park would allow the company to dump its discarded orange peels and pulp, free of charge, in a heavily grazed, largely deforested area nearby.

One year later, one thousand trucks poured into the national park, offloading over 12,000 metric tons of sticky, mealy, orange compost onto the worn-out plot.

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"It's the honor of a lifetime."

Only Tom Cruise can take a death-defying stunt and somehow make it incredibly wholesome.

On Dec 18, Cruise released a video while on the set of “Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One.” By “on set,” I mean he was thousands of feet above Earth looking down at a beach in South Africa.

The action star used the moment to share some love with fans of another high-octane franchise. And he did it in the most epic, yet charming, way imaginable that, let’s be honest, only Tom Cruise could pull off.

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Identity

13 side-by-side portraits of people over 100 with their younger selves

These powerful before-and-after photos reveal just how beautiful aging can be.

This article originally appeared on 12.08.17.


Centenarians — people 100 years or older — are a rarity. Their lives are often scrutinized as holding the key to aging.

Czech photographer Jan Langer's portrait series "Faces of Century" shows them in a different light: as human beings aged by years of experience, but at their deepest level, unchanged by the passing of time.

In the series, Langer juxtaposes his portraits with another portrait of the subject from decades earlier. He recreates the original pose and lighting as closely as he can — he wants us to see them not just as they are now, but how they have and haven't changed over time. That is the key to the series.

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Identity

An open letter to men who will have sex with me but won't date me.

"It's one thing if you're not into fat women — everyone has their preferences — but if you want to have sex with us without being seen in public with us, that's emotionally abusive."

This article originally appeared on 06.29.18


Many years before I got together with my boyfriend, I had a sex thing with this guy that I thought was relationship material.

He not only had an amazing body but a great personality as well. I was honest when I met him that I was looking for something more than just sex, and he led me to believe that was what he wanted, too.

Between mind-blowing sex sessions, we ordered in, played video games, and watched movies — couple things but without the label. But when I tried to get him to go to a show or out to dinner with me, he refused. My frustration grew as the months went on, and one day I confronted him.

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