+
A PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM UPWORTHY
We are a small, independent media company on a mission to share the best of humanity with the world.
If you think the work we do matters, pre-ordering a copy of our first book would make a huge difference in helping us succeed.
GOOD PEOPLE Book
upworthy
Family

Woman bakes cheeky curse word pies for her grandma and it becomes a quirky holiday tradition

2023's pie is an homage to her favorite word to use while stuck in traffic.

thanksgiving pie, christmas pie, pie, baking
Canva

You never know where a holiday tradition will come from.

Tried-and-true holiday traditions certainly have their merit, but there’s something quite special, magical even, about discovering personal rituals that commemorate one’s unique life. In my household, for instance, nothing quite rings in the Christmas spirit like sipping my partner’s delicious coquito and putting up a cardboard gingerbread house for my cats.

The beauty of creating customized holiday traditions is that they can be as festive, sentimental, or as silly as you want them to be. And you never know how one small moment can become the catalyst for a tradition that sparks joy year after year.

For Jess Lydon, that tradition is baking expletive-laden pies for Thanksgiving. (This is your profanity warning—the images below contain swear words.)

“What started as a means to get a rise out of my Grammy has snowballed into a weird family tradition. I bake one pie a year,” Lydon shared to the subreddit r/Baking.

For 2023, Lydon chose the word “D---wad,” an homage to her favorite word to hurl in a fit of road rage, topped onto a decadent rosette-filled apple pie.

pie

A pie with with word “D---wad" placed on top

preview.redd.it

“Asshat,” apparently her second favorite word, was used in 2016.

Lydon also added a litany of pies from former years— “F---wit,” “Penis,”“B----,” “F--- Off”…you get the idea.

Gotta say, watching Lydon’s baking skills progress over the years (thanks in large part to using the correct tools, she notes) to something worthy of a Paul Hollywood handshake on “British Bake-off” makes this even more enjoyable.

pie

preview.redd.it

Pie with "F–wit' written in dough on top

Folks on Reddit seemed to enjoy it too. If for nothing else, to add their own profanity-themed jokes.

“A culinary and visual delight! This is the best thing I've seen all day,” one person wrote.

Meanwhile, another quipped, “Your growth in pastry work is quite touching, c---,” to which Lydon replied, “Thank you, t---. I’m pretty proud of the progress. And grateful to my family for putting up with The Early Years. The first few pies were rough looking.”

Others had suggestions for next year’s pies, including “prick,” “nimrod,” “bollocks,” and “bastard.” All solid choices.

As Lydon explained to TODAY.com, the tradition came about from trying to get a “giggle” out of her “sweet little Japanese” grandma. After seeing that first pie, which read “F--- Off,” Lydon recalled that her grandmother gave a lighthearted “double edged compliment” by saying, “Oh my, well, I can see that you’ve tried really hard. And you put a lot of effort into it.”

Sadly, Lydon’s grandmother passed away a few years after the first pie, but the cheeky tradition lived on. And in its own quirky way, it brings Lydon’s family together.

As for her Reddit popularity, Lydon told TODAY.com that she’s thrilled others shared her love of vulgar pastry making, and is happy to see that some folks might start their own version of the tradition.

“If we can make a few more people laugh because of rude words looking pretty, then I’m all for it.”

Whether it’s curse-word pies, funny sweaters, DIY decorations, or something else altogether, maybe this is a sign to create your own unique holiday tradition, however big or small.
From Your Site Articles
humor
Family

Heartbroken wife files for divorce after DNA test reveals 2-year-old son isn't hers

She first became suspicious when her son didn't have blue eyes.

via Liza Summer and Liza Summer

A woman in distress contemplates her future.

It’s pretty common to hear a story about a man whose life is turned upside down after a DNA test proves that he’s not the father of a child he thought was his. However, hearing a mother dealing with the same scenario is rare. That’s why a recent post on Reddit has so many people talking.

A user named ThrowRA-3xbetrayal claims that a DNA test shows her husband is the father of the 2-year-old boy they’ve raised but she isn’t the biological mother.

The story began 6 years ago when the couple tried to conceive but had no luck. The woman then discovered she had a “medical condition” that meant she couldn’t bring a baby to term, which resulted in a partial hysterectomy. The woman, who refers to herself as the family’s “breadwinner” took on multiple jobs to pay a surrogate to have their child.

“I still had my ovaries so we started looking into cost of a surrogate. It is really expensive! My close friend since college who'd already had 2 kids of her own, offered to serve as the surrogate for us to cut down on costs. After two disappointing IVF sessions that did not result in pregnancy, she became pregnant on the 3rd try and carried a boy to term for us,” ThrowRA-3xbetrayal wrote.

The couple was over the moon after the birth of the boy and the surrogate became a bigger part of their lives.

dna test, paternity test, maternity testA woman in distress being comforted.via Liza Summer

“My friend and my husband started talking more and I would sometimes come home from my weekend job to find her already hanging out at our house when my husband was there,” ThrowRA-3xbetrayal wrote. “I chalked it up as innocuous and it's good for her to know my husband better since she was in the process of hopefully carrying our child for us. I was grateful to have someone helping us have a child.”

But the mother became suspicious because the baby’s eyes were brown when she and her husband’s were blue.

The mother took the child to a doctor’s appointment and she received some devastating news. She discovered that her son’s blood type is B+ while his father’s is O+ and She is A+. The doctor said it was “biologically impossible” for her son to have that blood type given his parents’.

ThrowRA-3xbetrayal thought the fertility clinic made a horrible mistake. She took a DNA test and found that her husband was the boy’s father, but she was not the mother. “Then my husband confessed that he'd slept with my friend (our surrogate) on a few different occasions during our struggle to have her get pregnant with our embryos,” ThrowRA-3xbetrayal wrote. “This means what I thought was our son conceived by IVF and carried with a surrogate isn't my son at all and was, in fact, conceived the old-fashioned way, which I can't ever do.”

The woman says that the terrible news felt like a triple betrayal. The woman has decided to divorce her husband and wants to give up any parental rights to the child. Her husband, the surrogate and her family all believe that she’s wrong to give up rights to the child that she’s raised for 2 years.

She asked Reddit’s AITA forum to tell her if she was in the wrong and the community responded with overwhelmingly positive support, affirming her tough decision.

dna test, paternity test, maternity testA happy toddler playing on the beach. via Taryn Elliott/Pexels

The most popular commenter said that she should sue the surrogate for taking her money without having her baby. “One of the things that gets me is that you were working extra jobs to pay for the surrogacy which I am assuming included her medical bills and financially supporting her. I would speak to a solicitor about suing her for your money back. She knew that if she was having sex then there was always a chance that the child was biologically hers,” they wrote.

Another affirmed the wife’s decision to leave her husband and to surrender any parental rights. “He cheated... it's not yours. I will absolutely tell you what I tell men posting this. It would be wonderful if you love the kid enough to stay, but if you're in shock and damaged too much to do so, you aren't the A**le for walking away,” they wrote.

Another pointed out that if a man were in this position, no one would judge him for giving up his parental rights. “If these roles were reversed and you were a man saying that his wife had cheated and had another man’s baby, people would have no problem telling him that he’s within his rights to leave and have nothing to do with the child if he doesn’t want to,” the commenter wrote.

If the story that ThrowRA-3xbetrayal wrote tells is true, it’s an incredible tragedy. She fought so hard to have a child only to realize she was living a lie two years later. So, let’s hope she found some solace in the hundreds of people who supported her decision to move on with her life while also sharing some great advice on going forward.

From Your Site Articles
dna tests
Joy

7-year-old's 'sympathy' card for her teacher is both funny and chilling at the same time

"It was your mom’s turn to die."

Photos by Tod Perry (representative image) and Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels

A 7-year-old girl writes a sympathy card.

Author and crime victim advocate Lindsay Schraad Keeling, 32, has people laughing and also feeling a little creeped out after sharing a sympathy card she made for a teacher when she was 7 in 1999. The card shows that even though Keeling’s heart was in the right place, she had yet to grasp how to tactfully bring up a loved one’s death at that age.

Keeling is the author of the upcoming, “The Funeral Director’s Wife” and co-author of the award-winning “Where the Trail Ends: The Kenny Suttner Story.”

It all started when the principal at Keeling's school announced to her class that the computer teacher’s mother had passed away, so they'd have a substitute teacher that day. “He didn’t ask for any drawings or sympathy cards or anything, but when I got home, I decided I wanted to do something nice for my teacher,” she told People. “I had just learned about death as a child after our pet died and my mom read me a book about dying.”

The self-proclaimed “emotional child” made a sympathy card for her teacher and showed it to her mother after she was finished. “I’m sure I was very proud of it because I excitedly showed it to my mother — who was wise enough to gently take it from me so I couldn’t give it to my teacher,” she told Today.com.

The card reads:

By Lindsay, to computer teacher
Sory teacher.
I am so sory computer teacher that your mom had to die. Sory.
But everybody hasts to die some day.
And today it was your mom’s turn to die.
Love love is in your hart.

@authorlindsayskeeling

Replying to @CassieMae Ask and you shall receive 💀 #fyp #sympathycard #childhood #childhoodmemories #scarystories

The card eventually found its way to a box of mementos and Keeling wouldn’t see it again for another 25 years. When she returned to her family’s home in Oklahoma after her grandfather's passing, her mother showed her the card to cheer her up.

"I was very upset, and my mother wanted to cheer me up, so she went through a box of keepsakes she’d been keeping for 25 years and showed me the ‘sympathy card’ I’d made for my teacher,” Keeling told People. Later, she posted images of the card to TikTok, where it’s been viewed over 3 million times.

Many people in the comments thought the card was unsettling, especially coming from such a young child. "This reads like you're the one who did it,” one commenter wrote. Another added, "A Sympathy card apparently written by JIGSAW,” referencing the killer in the “Saw” franchise.

@authorlindsayskeeling

Replying to @karleyr0se Let me know in the comments if y’all want to read them with me! #booktok #bookish #childrensbook #childrensbooks #childrensbookauthor #sympathycard #funny #author

The story inspired many people to share the “unhinged” sympathy cards they’ve seen children write. "My grandma died. A student gave me a card. They drew her in the casket,” a teacher wrote. "My grandpa died in December, and the card my 8-year-old made him when he got sick said, 'I hope you enjoy your life while it lasts,' with a picture of a gravestone,” another commenter added.

Ultimately, Keeling’s curious card from 1999 brought smiles to many faces and also helped cheer up some people who could use a sympathy card themselves.

“The feedback I loved the most — besides all the funny comments — was a person who said their mother had passed away recently and this was ‘the first time they had laughed in weeks,’” Keeling told Today.com. “I was so grateful that I could bring joy to people who were grieving like me.”

From Your Site Articles
children
Science

See what researchers found when they tested a bottle of Fiji Water against a glass of tap water.

Is bottled water REALLY all that bad?

via Free Stock Photos

A young woman drinking bottled water outdoors before exercising.



The Story of Bottled Waterwww.youtube.com

Here are six facts from the video above by The Story of Stuff Project that I'll definitely remember next time I'm tempted to buy bottled water.

1. Bottled water is more expensive than tap water (and not just a little).

via The Story of Stuff Project/YouTube


A Business Insider column noted that two-thirds of the bottled water sold in the United States is in individual 16.9-ounce bottles, which comes out to roughly $7.50 per gallon. That's about 2,000 times higher than the cost of a gallon of tap water.

And in an article in 20 Something Finance, G.E. Miller investigated the cost of bottled versus tap water for himself. He found that he could fill 4,787 20-ounce bottles with tap water for only $2.10! So if he paid $1 for a bottled water, he'd be paying 2,279 times the cost of tap.

2. Bottled water could potentially be of lower quality than tap water.

via The Story of Stuff Project/YouTube

Fiji Water ran an ad campaign that was pretty disparaging about the city of Cleveland. Not a wise move. The city ordered a test of the snooty brand's water and found that Fiji Water contained levels of arsenic that weren't seen in the city's water supply.

How was that possible? Sarah Goodman of the New York Times explains:

" Bottled water manufacturers are not required to disclose as much information as municipal water utilities because of gaps in federal oversight authority. Bottom line: The Food and Drug Administration oversees bottled water, and U.S. EPA is in charge of tap water. FDA lacks the regulatory authority of EPA."

3. The amount of bottled water we buy every week in the U.S. alone could circle the globe five times!

via The Story of Stuff Project/YouTube

That sounded like it just had to be impossible, so we looked into it. Here's what our fact-checkers found:

"According to the video, ' People in the U.S. buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week.' National Geographic says for 2011, bottled water sales hit 9.1 billion gallons (roughly 34 billion liters).

A 'typical' water bottle is a half-liter, so that's about 68 billion bottles per year. Divided by 52 weeks would be a little over 1 billion bottles of water sold per week in the U.S. Because that's based on a smaller 'typical' bottle size, it seems reasonable that a half billion bottles a week could be accurate.

The Earth is about 131.5 million feet around, so yep, half a billion bottles of varying sizes strung end-to-end could circle the Earth five times."

4. Paying for bottled water makes us chumps.

via The Story of Stuff Project/YouTube

Beverage companies have turned bottled water into a multibillion-dollar industry through a concept known as manufactured demand. Bottled water advertisements used a combination of scare tactics (Tap water bad!) and seduction (From the purest mountain streams EVER!) to reel us in.

Well, we now know their claims about the superior quality of bottled water are mostly bogus. And research shows that anywhere from a quarter to 45% of all bottled water comes from the exact same place as your tap water (which, to reiterate, is so cheap it's almost free).

via The Story of Stuff Project/YouTube

5. Bottled water is FILTHY.

It takes oil — lots of it — to make plastic bottles. According to the video, the energy in the amount of oil it takes to make the plastic water bottles sold in the U.S. in one year could fuel a million cars. That's not even counting the oil it takes to ship bottled water around the world.

And once we've guzzled our bottled water, up to 80% of the empty bottles end up in landfills or noxious-gas-producing incinerators. The rest is either recycled or shipped to countries like India where poor people without environmental and labor protections have to deal with it.

On top of all that, the process of manufacturing plastic bottles is polluting public water supplies, which makes it easier for bottled water companies to sell us their expensive product.

6. There are 750 million people around the world who don't have access to clean water.

Photo by H2O for Life.

A child dies every minute from a waterborne disease. And for me, that's the core of what makes bottled water so evil.

The video wraps by comparing buying bottled water to smoking while pregnant. That may sound extreme, but after learning everything I just did about the bottled water industry, I can't disagree.

via The Story of Stuff Project/YouTube

If you're properly disgusted, here are a few ways you can help destroy the bottled water industry:

  1. Don't buy bottled water. Get a reusable water bottle. The savings will add up.
  2. Rally your schools, workplaces, and communities to ban bottled water.
  3. Demand that your city, state, and federal governments invest in better water infrastructure.


This article originally appeared on 5.7.15

From Your Site Articles
water
Joy

Why this husband buying Taco Bell for wife's 10th anniversary was actually a romantic home run

His choice literally left people in tears (the good kind)

Photo credit: Canva

Sometimes simple dates are the best ones.

When it comes to love, thoughtfulness is a far more important ingredient than spending lots of money. Sometimes having a nice bubble bath drawn for you at home feels just as lavish as any spa date. Sometimes when your partner says “I picked up this one special snack for you cause I know it’s your favorite” feels just as special as a fancy meal out.

There’s something just so personal about these moments, and that’s what makes them magical.

And it was this kind of moment recently shared between a husband and a wife on their 10 year anniversary, which they chose to celebrate with Taco Bell.

Turns out, there’s a very sweet story behind this unexpected meal choice.

In a reel posted to her Instagram, Ashley Olson shared that in April 2014, she and her now husband Willie got married at a courthouse at 23 and 25 years old.

It had been raining on their drive home, so “naturally” they drove through Taco Bell. Once back at the “cheap lil motel” they were staying at, they fashioned a table out of the room’s ironing board, and thus, their first meal as husband and wife was had.

Flash forward to their 10th year anniversary, which happened to fall on their kid’s spring break. The family had enjoyed a big trip to Europe the previous year, so nothing was really planned for the milestone. Or so Ashley thought.

Ashley had taken the kids to her parents to stay for their break, while Willie stayed home. After putting the kids down for the night, she noticed lights flickering out on her parents pier and went to check it out.

That's when she saw an ironing board, covered in candles, and Willie (who had driven over five hours to get there) with a bag of their favorite Taco Bell items.

“We laughed, cried, ate our food, drank cider, and danced to our wedding song at the end of my parent’s pier,” Ashley recalled, adding, “10 years + 2 kids later this man still pursues me, still dates me, and still surprises me.”

Ashley wasn’t the only one moved by her husband’s sweet gesture.

“Not me shouting ‘THE IRONING BOARDDD’ 😭😭😭😭 my heart cannot with this,” one person wrote, while another said “Not me sobbing over Taco Bell 🤧”

Still another commented, “Well…this guy is forcing the rest of us to up our game!! 😂”

A few had their own similar simple, yet poignant love stories…involving fast food. One person said, “My marriage has started of similar too, but it was us eating Chick-fil-A in the car with our witnesses. I love my wife so much more than a grand wedding. She’s my world.”

A few others noted how this way of celebrating seemed more attractive than other more traditional (i.e. expensive) approaches.

“Crazy how this marriage outlasts a lot of couples who had big beautiful extravagant weddings just for them to divorce a few years later. 🤣🤣👏🏼👏🏼 good for you two 🖤,” one person said, perhaps citing a study from 2014 that did indicate that people who splurge on wedding were more likely to divorce.

Another reflected, “I understand when people get married for logical, and financial reasons. But if I ever get married, this is what I want my marriage to be based on. Love, pure joy of being around your partner. Seeing their face and having a reason to smile. That natural, genuine love.”

There can be so many unspoken expectations in relationships, but at the end of the day—as long as you're celebrating the love you have for one another in the way you both want, that’s what ultimately matters.

From Your Site Articles
relationships
Pop Culture

Why winning a bronze medal might actually be better than getting silver

The psychology of silver is harder to handle.

Photo credit: Marcus Cyron

Three young fencing medalists at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics

World championship competitions like the Olympic Games determine the best of the best in every sport. As athletes from around the globe gather to compete, we see the cream of the crop rise to the top, but ultimately only one person or team in each event can claim the coveted gold medal and No. 1 title.

Whether you win a gold, silver or bronze medal, making it onto the podium is an enormous accomplishment; to be among the top three in the world at anything is incredible. But one of the top three medals is considerably less desirable than the other two, and surprisingly, it's not the third place one.

Objectively speaking, silver is better than bronze, but from a psychological perspective, it's not. Studies that examined the facial expressions of Olympic medal winners found that athletes who win silver are less happy than those who win bronze. A study of Paralympic medal winners also found that silver medists appeared angrier and sadder than gold medal winners and angrier and more disgusted than bronze medalists.

Why does winning silver so often seem like a disappointment? There are a few theories these studies point to. One is that silver medalists tend toward more "counterfactual thinking"—engaging in thoughts like "I could have gotten gold if I'd only done this or that differently." Silver medalists tend to look up at what they didn't achieve and feel like they lost, while bronze medalists tend to look down and be thankful that they're up on the podium at all.

Another theory is that silver and bronze medal winners often have different expectations coming into the competition. Silver medal winners may expect to get the gold, or at least feel it's within their reach, so silver feels like they didn't perform as well as they'd hoped. Bronze medalists, on the other hand, may go in just hoping to do well enough to medal, so getting any medal at all is an achievement unlocked.

Case in point for silver medal disappointment: Team USA's men's 4 x 100 medley relay in swimming at the Paris 2024 Olympics. The United States has won the gold medal in that event in every Olympics for the past 64 years, so expectations were extremely high. But China took the gold in a major upset, leaving the US with a silver medal win that felt more like a loss. The more favored you are to win, the harder it is to be happy coming in second place.

Silver medal disappointment can also come from how the medals are doled out in different sports. In a sport like gymnastics, scores are compared over the entire field of finalists and the top three scores win gold, silver and bronze. But in many sports, medals are determined by elimination rounds, which means individuals or teams compete in one-on-one matches until all that's left is a bronze medal match and a gold medal match. In those sports, you win your match to get the bronze but lose your match to get the silver. So winning a silver medal feels like a loss because in that final match-up, it literally is. For a bronze, though, it's literally a win.

However, the way silver and bronze medal winners interpret their medal also depends on how close their finishes were. A silver medal winner who came very close to winning gold tends to be less happy than one with a wider margin of loss. It may be ironic that the better a silver medalist does the worse they end up feeling about the outcome, but getting close to gold just intensifies that "I could have won" feeling. Essentially, not reaching your ultimate goal is harder swallow the closer you get to it.

Of course, some silver medalists are thrilled with their standing, and again, being a top three contender in any competition is a huge achievement. That's why mindset is so important. A winning mindset means giving it your all and doing your best; it doesn't have to include comparing yourself to others on the podium or being deflated by expectations of winning.

For instance, the expectations on Simone Biles are sky high, and for good reason, but she walked away from her last two individual events in Paris with a silver medal on floor and no medal at all on beam—yet she did so without feeling disappointed.

""I've accomplished way more than my wildest dreams, not just at this Olympics, but in this sport,” Biles told reporters. “So I can’t be mad at my performances. A couple of years ago I didn’t think I’d be back here at an Olympic game. So competing and then walking away with four medals, I’m not mad about it. I’m pretty proud of myself and it’s always so exciting to compete.”

Perhaps winning gold so many times has inoculated Biles to disappointment. On the other hand, being accustomed to winning could easily lead to more of the counterfactual thinking and high expectations that plague silver medalists, but that doesn't seem to have happened to Biles. In fact, she joyfully celebrated her competitor Rebeca Andrade's gold medal win right on the podium from her silver medal spot.

Perhaps her ability to do that comes from having a specific mindset about what constitutes winning.

"A successful competition for me is always going out there and putting 100 percent into whatever I'm doing," Biles said in 2016. "It's not always winning. People, I think, mistake that it's just winning. Sometimes it could be, but for me, it's hitting the best sets I can, gaining confidence, and having a good time and having fun."

Wise words that could save some silver medalists from torturing themselves too much, as if second-best in the world somehow isn't good enough.

From Your Site Articles
mindset
Trending Stories