upworthy
More

This father-daughter story starts with a surgery and ends with an epic tattoo.

This dad found an awesome way to make his daughter feel a little less self-conscious about her cochlear implants.

For the Campbells, hearing loss is part of their family story.

Meet the Campbell family! Image via Anita Campbell, used with permission.

Anita Campbell's mother had a cochlear implant, and her 8-year-old son Lewis wears hearing aids. She wasn't too surprised when her youngest child Charlotte was diagnosed as hearing impaired. As she grew older, Charlotte's hearing became progressively worse, which, in turn, made her painfully shy. In 2013, 4-year-old Charlotte Campbell underwent surgery to install a cochlear implant.

What's a cochlear implant you say? Well, I'm glad you asked!

A cochlear implant is a medical device that can help some deaf and hard of hearing people hear.

Image by Bjorn Knetsch/Wikipedia Commons.

For some people who are profoundly deaf or have severe hearing loss, the cochlear implant can provide a sense of sound and help them better understand speech. Now notice I said "some people" and "can provide" — that's because cochlear implants don't work for everyone. And there are even members of the deaf community who are anti-cochlear implant because they feel their disability doesn't need "fixing." While the device isn't for everyone (either by choice or by design), for some, it's an important part of being able to function in and communicate with the world around them. For Charlotte, her surgery was the key to bringing her out of her shell. According to her mom, Charlotte did a complete 180, from church mouse to "social butterfly."

In 2015, Charlotte had a second cochlear implant installed to help improve her hearing. Her dad came up with a genius way to show his support.

Even though Charlotte already had one implant, going under the knife a second time (especially at such a young age) was pretty scary. When it came time for her second cochlear surgery, her dad Alistair came up with a genius idea: dedicate his very first tattoo to his brave little girl.

They match! Image by Anita Campbell, used with permission.

Raise your hand if you're bawling. Oh, just me? Suuure.

One shaved head and 45 minutes later, Alistair showed off his brand new cochlear implant tattoo on Facebook. Of course, it didn't take long for the photo to go viral. Eventually, the local New Zealand Herald picked up the story, which is where I first found this adorable family.

Every kid has to deal with feeling different, but a family's love can make all the difference.

Even though Charlotte's a little young to understand how tattoos work, she still thinks her dad's ink is cool. Whether it's getting a tattoo, shaving your head, (or both), sometimes you have to get creative to offer support to the people you love. Feeling different or out of place can really suck, and that's where our friends and family are essential.

Maybe you aren't ready to shave your head and go under the needle for one of your loved ones (some of us don't have perfectly-shaped heads), but there are tons of creative ways you can show solidarity and support when the going gets tough. Maybe it's funny matching T-shirts, a charity dance party, or stuffing someone's room with balloons.

Alistair is a perfect reminder that going the extra mile when our friends and family need it can make those difficult times a little easier.

If you were moved by Charlotte and Alistair's story, you can make a donation to Hear 4 Kids Trust, which helps kids with hearing disabilities.

Badge
BigFuture
BigFuture Scholarships
Education

She fell in love with endangered porpoises at age 7. Now, she's on a mission to save the ocean.

True

When Rachel Heimke was seven, she realized what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. Little did she know a $40,000 BigFuture Scholarship would help her pursue her dreams.

Heimke and her parents were living an unconventional lifestyle, to say the least. The summer after she completed first grade, she and her parents boarded a sailboat and sailed from their hometown in Alaska down the Pacific Coast. The family would spend the next two years traveling on the water, passing Mexico and then sailing across the world to Australia before returning home. It was on the sailboat, watching whales and dolphins breach the water under their boat, that Heimke realized her life’s purpose.

“I was really obsessed with these little porpoises called Vaquitta, who only live in one tiny area of water off the coast of Mexico,” she recalled. “When I learned about them as a kid, there were only 22 left in the wild. Now, there are only ten.” Despite her interest, Heimke was never able to actually see any Vaquitta on her trip, both because of their inherent shyness and because they were so critically endangered due to detrimental fishing policies in the area. “That was my wakeup call,” she says. “I’ll probably never be able to see this porpoise, and I don’t want that to be true of other species.”

Now a young woman of 23, Heimke is realizing her childhood dream of ocean conservation by recently graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in ocean sciences and enrolling in a grad program in Canada to study science communication. Heimke is well on her way to achieving her childhood dream—but she acknowledges that none of this would have been possible without her ocean adventures as a child, the support of her parents, and significant financial support.

At 18, when Heimke was deciding where to study ocean sciences, she stumbled upon an opportunity from BigFuture, College Board's free college and career planning site. The opportunity was the BigFuture Scholarship, which provided students the chance to win a $40,000 scholarship by completing six action items on the website. Heimke was intrigued, since she didn’t need to provide an essay, her GPA, or any test scores to enter. Her eligibility was also not tied to citizenship status or family income, so she decided to give it a shot.

“One of the action items was just going on the BigFuture site and creating a list of colleges I was interested in,” said Heimke. Another item required her to apply for financial aid through FAFSA—something Heimke was planning to do anyway. Every completed action item gave students more chances to win the scholarship, so Heimke completed all six action items quickly.

Months later, Heimke’s parents ushered her over to a call over Zoom, where she met a BigFuture representative who had some surprising news: She was one of 25 students who had won the $40,000 BigFuture college scholarship. Each year she would receive $10,000 in scholarship funding, which would cover her entire tuition bill for all four years of schooling.

“That experience taught me that it’s really important to not give up on your goals and just go for opportunities,” said Heimke. “I never thought I would win anything, but I’ve learned it's worth applying anyway. Even a small scholarship of $1,000 can pay your rent for a month,” she said. “And If you write an essay that takes an hour and you win $5,000, that’s probably the most money per hour you’ll ever make in your life.”

The tuition money made it possible for her to attend college, and for her to apply to graduate school immediately afterward without any financial burdens.

“Now that I’m in graduate school and paying for rent and a phone bill and graduate school tuition, it’s truly a blessing to not have student loan debt on top of that,” Heimke said. Because of the BigFuture scholarship, Heimke doesn’t need to pay for her graduate program either—she’s able to fund her education with the money her parents saved by not having to pay for her undergraduate degree.

One of the biggest blessings, Heimke said, was not needing to delay graduate school to work or find extra funds. With climate change worsening, entering the workforce becomes increasingly important over time.

“I’m not sure exactly what I’ll do with my degrees, but I hope to have a lot of different jobs that ultimately will work toward saving our ocean,” she said.

As a child, witnessing marine life up close and personal was life-changing. Heimke’s goal is for future generations to have that experience, as she did.

To learn more and get started, visit bigfuture.org/scholarships.

From Your Site Articles
Related Articles Around the Web
Science

MIT’s trillion-frames-per-second camera can capture light as it travels

"There's nothing in the universe that looks fast to this camera."

photo from YouTube|Nova50

Photographing the path of light.

A new camera developed at MIT can photograph a trillion frames per second (fps).

Compare that with a traditional movie camera which takes a mere 24fps. This new advancement in photographic technology has given scientists the ability to photograph the movement of the fastest thing in the Universe: light.

The actual event occurred in a nano second—that is one billionth of a second—but the camera has the ability to slow it down to twenty seconds.

time, science, frames per second, bounced light

The amazing camera.

Photo from YouTube|Nova50

For some perspective, according to New York Times writer John Markoff, "If a bullet were tracked in the same fashion moving through the same fluid, the resulting movie would last three years."


In the video below, you'll see experimental footage of light photons traveling 600-million-miles-per-hour through water.

It's impossible to directly record light, so the camera takes millions of scans to recreate each image. The process has been called "femto-photography" and according to Andreas Velten, a researcher involved with the project, "There's nothing in the universe that looks fast to this camera."


This article originally appeared seven years ago.

From Your Site Articles
science
Joy

15 years ago Craig Ferguson told us 'Why everything sucks' and it makes all kinds of sense

Is this where everything changed?

via Wikimedia Commons

Craig Ferguson speaking onstage.

Craig Ferguson was the host of The Late Late Show on CBS from 2005 to 2014. He's probably best remembered for his stream-of-conscious, mostly improvised monologues that often veered from funny observations to more serious territory.

In 2009, he opened his show explaining how marketers have spent six decades persuading the public into believing that youth should be deified. To Ferguson, it's the big reason "Why everything sucks."


"In the 1950s, late '50s, early '60s, a bunch of advertising guys got together on Madison Avenue and decided to try to sell products to younger people. 'We should try to sell to younger people because then they will buy things their whole lives,'" Ferguson explained.

The problem is, according to Ferguson, that young people are "kind of stupid."

"So the deification of youth evolved and turned into the deification of imbecility. It became fashionable to be young and to be stupid," he continued.

'Why everything sucks'

On a deeper level, Ferguson makes the point that exalting youth and inexperience over wisdom and experience runs contrary to the way of nature.

"Then what happened is that people were frightened to not be young," he said. "They started dyeing their hair, they started mutilating their faces and their bodies in order to look young. But you can't be young forever, that's against the laws of the universe."

Calling marketers' war on the over-49 set the reason why "everything sucks" may be a bit of an exaggeration. But the takeaway from Ferguson's monologue is spot-on. There's no reason to feel bad about aging. You've got experience, wisdom, probably better credit, and have learned that Saturdays are a lot more fun after you've been to bed by 10:00 pm on Friday.


This article originally appeared two years ago.

From Your Site Articles
comedy
Fatherhood

Dad and daughter relationships, as explained by 10 paintings.

The amazing bond between dads and daughters.

All illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.

I have plenty of space.


It's hard to truly describe the amazing bond between dads and their daughters.

Being a dad is an amazing job no matter the gender of the tiny humans we're raising. But there's something unique about the bond between fathers and daughters. Most dads know what it's like to struggle with braiding hair, but we also know that bonding time provides immense value to our daughters. In fact, studies have shown that women with actively involved fathers are more confident and more successful in school and business.

You know how a picture is worth a thousand words? I'll just let these images sum up the daddy-daughter bond.

A 37-year-old Ukrainian artist affectionately known as Soosh, recently created some ridiculously heartwarming illustrations of the bond between a dad and his daughter, and put them on her Instagram feed. Sadly, her father wasn't involved in her life when she was a kid. But she wants to be sure her 9-year-old son doesn't follow in those footsteps.

"Part of the education for my kiddo who I want to grow up to be a good man is to understand what it's like to be one," Soosh told Upworthy.

There are so many different ways that fathers demonstrate their love for their little girls, and Soosh pretty much nails all of them.

Get ready to run the full gamut of the feels.

1. Dads can do it all. Including hair.

relationships, fathers, dads

I’ve got this.

All illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.

2. They also make pretty great game opponents.

daughters, daughter, father

Sharing life strategy.

All illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.

3. And the Hula-Hoop skills? Legendary.

bonding, dad, child

Tight fitting hula-hoop.

All illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.

4. Dads know there's always time for a tea party regardless of the mountain of work in front of them.

family bond, parent, child-bond

Dad makes time.

All illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.

5. And their puppeteer skills totally belong on Broadway.

love, guidance, play

Let’s play.

All illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.

6. Dads help us see the world from different views.

sociology, psychology, world views

Good shoulders.

All illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.

7. So much so that we never want them to leave.

travel, inspiration, guidance

More dad time please.

All illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.

8. They can make us feel protected, valued, and loved.

protectors, responsibilities, home

Always the protector.

All illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.

9. Especially when there are monsters hiding in places they shouldn't.

superhero, monsters, sleeping

Dad is superman.

All illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.

daddy-daughter bond, leadership, kids

Never a big enough bed.

All illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.

Seeing the daddy-daughter bond as art perfectly shows how beautiful fatherhood can be.

This article originally appeared eight years ago.

From Your Site Articles
Internet

People are losing their minds over this circle-filled optical illusion

Yes, there really are circles there.

@DrGBuckingham/Twitter

The coffer iIllusion appears to be nothing but right angles, but there really are circles in there.

Optical illusions are always fun to play with, but some can be particularly challenging on the old eyes and brain. It's fascinating to see how different people process them and how quickly or slowly—or sometimes not at all—people see things that aren't really there or see images hidden within other images.

Not to brag, but I'm kind of an optical illusion savant. It usually doesn't take me longer than a few seconds to see whatever it is people say they are seeing. But occasionally an illusion comes along that stumps me to the point where I wonder if people are actually lying about what they are seeing.

This rectangle/circle illusion is one of those.

It's called the coffer illusion and was created by Stanford University psychologist and vision scientist Anthony Norcia.

It actually won Best Illusion of the Year in 2006.

The image is made up of a pattern of black, white and gray lines of various shades that create the illusion of rectangles. It's easy enough to see the rectangles.

What's not so easy to see are the 16 circles in the image. Yes, they really are there.

Take a look:

Seriously, at first my brain said, "Nope." How could there be circles? All I see are straight lines. Straight lines horizontally. Straight lines vertically. Not a single curved line anywhere in sight. How can there be circles if there are nothing but right angles in the image?

So I did what any self-respecting social-media-savvy person would do and started scrolling the comments to see if anyone explained how they saw circles.

(Warning: Spoilers ahead if you're still trying to see the circles on your own.)

One way to see the circles is to focus on the vertical bars between the rectangles. For some, that makes the circles suddenly pop off the screen.

For those who need more of a visual clue, someone broke it down with colored shapes, literally circling one of the circles.

Once you see them, it's pretty easy to switch back and forth, but hoo boy, does it take a while to actually see them the first time.

Why is that?

According to an explanation from Associate Professor Alex Holcombe and PhD student Kim Ransley from the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney, the reason we have a hard time seeing the circles at first is because of our brain's strong tendency to identify objects in what we're seeing. The lines come together to form edges, contours and shapes, and our brains fill in the objects.

"For most people, the grouping into rectangles initially dominates," the authors write. "This may be because rectangles (including the ones we see in door panels) are often more common than circles in our daily environment, and so the brain favours the grouping that delivers rectangular shapes."

I figure it's also likely due to the rectangles looking more 3D (therefore like a real object) while the circles appear as 2D.

Aren't our brains amazing?


This article originally appeared two years ago.

From Your Site Articles
Joy

Two women at a Texas Denny's realized it was short-staffed so they jumped in and started cooking

'We just looked at each other and it wasn't even a question. We both knew what we had to do.'

Courtesy of Sylvia Arrendondo

Strangers help restaurant serve customers.

We've all been there. Standing in line to be seated at a fairly busy restaurant while your stomach growls in protest. But when two women left a concert one summer evening in 2022 in search of food, they had no idea they'd find themselves taking orders and cooking the food. Sylvia Arrendondo and her mother Idalia Merkel went to a local Denny's in Texas and were seated by another customer before realizing the restaurant was extremely short-staffed. Instead of taking their business elsewhere, they decided to roll up their sleeves and get to work.


Arrendondo wrote about the unique experience on her Facebook page where she explained that only two people were working. One was serving tables and the other was the cook. As for the man that was acting as host and seating new guests, he had no idea what he was doing because he didn't work there. He told Arrendondo and Merkel that his wife used to work at Denny's so she started helping to serve tables and he decided to help get people seated.

woman working in a restaurant kitchen

Idalia Merkel helping cook.

Courtesy of Sylvia Arrendondo

The service industry has been hit hard by the pandemic and the subsequent "great resignation."

Complaints about low wages, poor management, and rude customers that abuse staff members are just a few of the reasons cited by people who have left the industry. It may be surprising for some to learn that the federal minimum wage for tipped employees like servers and bussers is just $2.13 an hour. The rest of the wage is supposed to be made up of tips, which, depending on where you work, may be split at the end of the night between other workers. This act of splitting tips is called "tip pooling" and is calculated by number of hours worked.

Splitting tips after a long day of work dealing with customers who may not have been so kind would understandably make some upset. But it didn't take a deep dive on the treatment of restaurant employees for Arrendondo and the other customers who helped out. They saw two seemingly college-aged kids doing their best to keep the place running and they didn't hesitate to jump in to help, completely unpaid.

When asked why she didn't just leave, Arrendondo said, "We just looked at each other and it wasn't even a question. We both knew what we had to do."

"This was probably the most beautiful act of American unity that I have personally encountered," Arrendondo told Upworthy. She added that the sole paid server would occasionally start to cry before being comforted by the cook, only to return the favor when he would get overwhelmed.

Talk about community.

These two kids had exhausted all of their resources, including calling their manager multiple times. And instead of customers getting angry, demanding better service or walking away, Arredondo and Merkel stepped up. The kindness of this group of strangers will surely stick with these employees and the people who were involved.

"The strength, courage and integrity by these two workers was beyond admirable. My mom and I have never been so proud and happy to help," Arrendondo told Upworthy. "After all, we have all been there."

Eventually after some convincing, the two employees shut the restaurant down and Arrendondo and Merkel went home much more tired than anticipated. They were still hungry, but full of gratitude and pride.


This article originally appeared two years ago.

From Your Site Articles
acts of kindness
Trending Stories