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Patton Oswalt and his fans changed a troll's life with a simple but powerful act of kindness

"I'm not a man who ever cries but I had to wait to send this." ❤️✨❤️

Patton Oswalt tweet
Patton Oswalt/Twitter

Patton Oswalt being awesome to someone who attacked him on Twitter

Social media spats usually end in ugly words or blocking people—unless you're Patton Oswalt.

Actor and comedian Patton Oswalt has made a name for himself off-screen as a blunt yet caring, compassionate human. His raw openness after his wife's unexpected passing and his willingness to engage in conversations about depression and dadhood after her death has touched people's hearts and opened people's minds.

And once again on Twitter, Oswalt has proven that he is unquestionably one of the most kind-hearted dudes in Hollywood.

Oswalt shared that a man who attacked him on Twitter needed help, then encouraged people to help him.

Twitter user Michael Beatty had replied to Oswalt's response to one of Trump's tweet with "I just realized why I was so happy you died in Blade Trinity!" and "And you shoot basketball ike [sic] the sawed off little man you are."

Rather than let endless insults fly back and forth until someone finally gave up, as is Twitter tradition, Oswalt dug a bit deeper and came up with this gem:

"Aw, man," he wrote. "This dude just attacked me on Twitter and I joked back but then I looked at his timeline and he’s in a LOT of trouble health-wise. I’d be pissed off too. He’s been dealt some shitty cards — let’s deal him some good ones. Click and donate — just like I’m about to."

Beatty, a Vietnam veteran, had shared a GoFundMe describing a recent, harrowing two-week hospitalization battling sepsis, a potentially fatal blood infection, and struggles in managing his diabetes throughout. When Oswalt saw the link, he shared it with his followers and encouraged people to donate to this man who'd had nothing but nasty things to say to him.

Oswalt donated $2,000 himself toward the man's $5,000 goal. A mere few hours later, his followers pushed it over $12,000. As of the writing of this article, the GoFundMe has raised almost $13,000. Beatty responded with a humble, sincere message for Oswalt:

"Patton," he wrote. "You have humbled me to the point where I can barely compose my words. You have caused me to take pause and reflect on how harmful words from my mouth could result in such an outpouring. Thank you for this and I will pass this on to my cousin who needs help. A cascade."

Beatty followed that up with another tweet thanking everyone who donated:


Keep up the awesome humaning, Patton Oswalt. We need more of you in the world.

This article originally appeared on 01.24.19

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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.

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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.

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Jeeps have 'Easter eggs' hidden on the vehicle and people are sharing theirs

Well, this is fun.

SOURCE: TIKTOK

Little secrets to be found.

Half of the Internet learned that Jeep vehicles have hidden 'Easter eggs' on them. Apparently, the other half already knew but didn't bother to tell us.

As Joel Feder of Motor Authority explains, Jeep vehicles have had these little surprises since the 90s. Hired as a designer in 1989, Michael Santoro decided to slip an Easter egg into the Wrangler TJ. Since then, pretty much every vehicle has included at least one Easter Egg. According to Mopar Insiders, the Easter eggs can be found on each of the brand's cars.

Not everyone was aware of this fact, though, as a TikTok by jackiefosterrealtor recently revealed. The user discovered a spider hidden in his fuel tank and decided to share the Easter egg in a video.

"So I bought my first car, and a fun fact about Jeeps is that they have a hidden animal which is called an Easter egg," the user said. "I couldn't find my Easter egg for the longest time, and one day I was pumping my gas, and I saw this spider coming at me, and I thought 'oh my god', and then I realized it was my Easter egg."

@nkyrealestate 🕷JEEP WAS REALING TRYING TO GET ME.🕷🤦🏼😂 #fyp #jeepsoftiktok #spider ♬ original sound - Jackie

Now, TikTok users have been looking a little closer at their jeeps to discover the Easter eggs hidden in their cars. Most of them posted @jackiefosterrealtor's original narration over their videos to explain what was going on.

This user found a cute little lizard.

@katepetersonn Bruh wut #fyp ♬ original sound - Jackie

This user found multiple Easter eggs, including Bigfoot and a miniature grill in the headlights.

@jazzy._.boo i never realized these were easter eggs😳 #fyp #jeeprenegade ♬ original sound - Jackie

Others found jeeps on their jeeps among other Easter eggs.

@katie.deren Shook #jeep #renagade #finalsathome #fyp ♬ original sound - Jackie

Some people have even found a tiny pair of flip flops on their cars.

@micaelaaaraeee welcome home to the love of my life 💕🥺👉👈 #2020 #jeepwrangler #jeepwranglerjl #wrangler #jeep #jl #jeepeasteregg #orange #car #fyp ♬ original sound - Jackie

Everyone is having a lot of fun trying to find their Easter egg.

@kennedankk

We searched the trackhawk for 30 minutes before I found it in the headlight

♬ original sound - Jackie

So. Many. Animals.

@jackieforesterrealtor even found two more Easter eggs on the front and back windows of his Jeep.

‼️PART 2: EASTER EGG HUNT‼️ WHO WOULD’VE THOUGHT?! 😂🤦🏼 THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED ME FIND THE OTHER ONES❤️ #fyp #fypchallenge #jeepsoftiktok

@jackiefosterrealtor

‼️PART 2: EASTER EGG HUNT‼️ WHO WOULD’VE THOUGHT?! 😂🤦🏼 THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED ME FIND THE OTHER ONES❤️ #fyp #fypchallenge #jeepsoftiktok

If you can't find the Easter eggs in your vehicles, NowCar.com put together a handy guide that seems to cover most of them.

Hopefully everyone can have some fun searching their cars for hidden animals and objects.


This article first appeared four years ago.

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The Monkees' acapella Christmas song shows they weren't just funny, they could sing, too

They performed "Riu Chiu," a Spanish carol, on their 1967 Christmas special.

via The Monkees/YouTube

The Monkees singing "Riu Chiu."

The Monkees have a complicated place in the history of rock music. On the one hand, they scored some of the biggest hits of the ‘60s with “I’m a Believer,” “Last Train to Clarksville,” and “Daydream Believer.” On the other, they were a band manufactured in 1967 for a TV show that did little more than sing on their earlier records.

All that changed in 1967 when they wrestled control over their musical careers from the executives who kept them out of the studio and began recording their music with the “Headquarters” album. But even though they proved to be talented musicians, The Monkees were still branded as a prefabricated band whose success was owed more to session musicians and top-tier songwriters.

Anyone who doubts the talent of Mickey Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, Davy Jones and Peter Tork, look no further than a performance on The Monkees’ 1967 “Christmas Show” episode. Like every episode of The Monkees' TV show, this one featured a musical number. But this time, instead of a rock tune with a pre-MTV video of the band monkeying around, this featured the band singing an acapella version of “Riu Chiu,” a Spanish villancico that has attained some contemporary fame as a Christmas carol. The song is attributed to Mateo Flecha the Elder, who died in 1553.

The performance highlights the band’s unique vocal abilities that stem from different musical traditions. Before The Monkees, Dolenz was a rock singer, Nesmith was a country singer-songwriter from Texas, Tork was a folk musician and Jones was an English theatrical performer best known for his performance as the Artful Dodger in “Oliver!” But in this performance, their vocals blend perfectly.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

The “Christmas Show” episode was memorable for the band’s outstanding vocal performance but also stands as one of the more memorable Christmas specials in TV history. Coming on the heels of the “Summer of Love,” the story is about The Monkees babysitting Melvin Vandersnoot, the hard-hearted child of an affluent family. After numerous attempts to get him into the Christmas spirit, the Monkees warm up his icy heart after showing him love, something all the money in the world can’t buy.

Vandersnoot, was played with incredible maturity by Butch Patrick, best known as Eddie on “The Munsters.”

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

The Monkees' television show would be canceled in 1968 and the band’s original run wouldn’t last much longer. But all four band members would remain in the music business. The Monkees would reunite in the late ‘80s after the show became popular in reruns and would continue to tour over the next four decades, although most of the time, it was without Nesmith. Nesmith would pursue a country career in the ‘70s, and even though his work received a lukewarm reception at the time, his innovative mixture of country music, humor and psychedelia has made him a pioneer in the alt-country genre. Nesmith died in 2021, shortly after touring with Dolenz.

Outside his work as the mainstay in Monkee reunions, Dolenz has starred in numerous theatrical productions and recently released an EP of R.E.M covers. He still tours as a solo act.

Davy Jones went on to perform in Monkee reunions and guest star on several TV shows, most notably on an episode of “The Brady Bunch,” where he was the target of Marcia Brady’s affection. He passed away in 2012.

Peter Tork was a mainstay of The Monkees’ live performances through numerous reunions and played in a band called Shoe Suede Blues. Tork died in 2019 after a long battle with cancer.

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Couple's 'Merry Gen Xmas' song is the ultimate holiday anthem for 80s kids

"Nobody did Xmas like Gen X."

Holderness Family Music/Youtube

Wow, the things people did for a Cabbage Patch doll.

Once upon a time—the 70s and 80s, to be exact—Christmas didn’t have iPads, or FaceTiming grandma, or comparing gift hauls on social media. Instead, it provided trees filled to the brim with tinsel, holiday figurines that looked ancient and quite possibly possessed, and the only “high tech” toy in sight would be something battery operated. Or maybe one of those new fangled “video games” everyone’s talking about.

But alas, time moves on. These once cool and trendy gifts, along with many Gen X staples, have now become relics of a bygone era. Kim and Penn Holderness of The Holderness Family have a knack for capturing this strange phenomenon—otherwise known as growing older—in the form of endearingly funny parody songs and sketches.

Whether they’re poking fun at the *thrill* of perimenopause or the utter dismay of hearing your favorite jams get demoted to waiting room music, their videos offer equal parts nostalgia and relatable humor…and sometimes even certifiable bops!

Take for instance their recent "Merry Gen-Xmas" song, where Kim and Penn pay homage to when the holidays were simpler. When Pac Man, Teddy Ruxpin, Cabbage Patch Dolls and other rudimentary toys could make children’s spirits soar.

Keep listening to the tune, however, and the Holdernesses don’t spare us of the more…ahem…questionable aspects of Gen X Christmases—smoking inside being the norm, around a plethora of flammable materials, just to name a big one.

As icing on the cake, Kim and Penn include a ton of old childhood photos submitted by their viewers, which really take you back. So. Much. Sepia.

Watch how “nobody did Xmas like Generation X” below:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Feeling seen, Gen Xers? Judging by the comments, you’re not alone. So many folks flooded the comments section of this one with their own similar childhood memories, or their own personal version of “LOL.” A few were even moved—and many felt a wave of appreciation to have grown up in a simpler time. Read below.

“Remember when we used to make ashtrays in school for gifts.”

“Goodness I wasn't prepared to get emotional watching this. As an 80's kid this was such a great bit of nostalgia. You all outdid yourself on this one.”

“As someone born in '69, I am so grateful I did not grow up in an electronic bubble! We knew how to have fun because we made it. This video is absolutely incredible, Thank you for making it!”

“Why am I crying? This is funny but making me cry too.”

“This song is awesome. It embraces nostalgia, but also acknowledges that not everything in the past was good.”

“Seriously getting teary-eyed at that. I'm a Xennial and so my memories of the early Christmases are vague. But I always love looking back at the photos. Me and my cousins all in matching Christmas dresses, yes made by my mom, and most likely worn the next year also.”

And boy, those Cabbage Patch dolls really brought out the worst in humanity, didn’t they?

“I'm a 60s and 70s generation fella. When the 80s rolled around, and when they showed on TV how people were fighting over those Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, I and others of my Generation were shocked in horror. MY WORD ! Those people should have been in the WWF ! In fact, I think the WWF would shivered in fear of those crazy CPF (Cabbage Patch Fighters) ! It was a whole different experience for my generation, seeing such things.”

“I can recall when I was 10 or 11 at the height of the Cabbage Patch Doll craze. I never wanted one, I was too old for dolls then, but we were at a store shopping when a shipment of them was revealed. I will never forget it, this crowd of women attacked that large pyramid of dolls like animals. Running, screaming, fighting. It was a spectacle I'll never forget. It was really disgraceful. It was weeks before Christmas.”

But also, the best…

“My parents were teachers and could NOT afford a cabbage patch doll so my mom made me one, with Pink hair! (She purchased the head at the craft shop) I was SOOOOO happy! The lady at the shop said to ‘be sure to stuff it really well’ so 41 years later this homemade doll is still standing up, arms out like she’s expecting a big hug. My sweet mom signed the bum with her own name and I still have it today. Rip to my mom who made me SO happy as an 8 year old!!”

Thanks to Kim and Penn for for giving us all a trip back in time, and all the complex feeling that come with it.

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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.

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