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Ruth Bader Ginsburg says her pancreatic cancer didn't get in the way of her workouts

Ruth Bader Ginsburg says her pancreatic cancer didn't get in the way of her workouts

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is famous for her workouts. When the documentary RBG came out, the trailer started with her pumping iron (or rather, hand weights). In 2017, her personal trainer, Bryant Jonhson, even wrote a book about her, entitled The RBG Workout: How She Stays Strong ... And You Can Too! And when she did her fitness routine with Stephen Colbert, he struggled. The 86-year-old Supreme Court justice still gets her reps in, even after her recent bout with pancreatic cancer. Like that's going to stop her?


Stephen Works Out With Ruth Bader Ginsburgyoutu.be



The Notorious RBG mentioned her physical fitness while speaking at the University of California – Berkley School of Law. Ginsburg was part of a lecture honoring the school's first female dean, Herma Hill Kay. Ginsburg was asked if she still hits the gym after receiving three weeks of radiation treatment for a tumor last August. "I never left it," she replied. "Even in my lowest periods I couldn't do very much, but I did what I can."

RELATED: Why Ruth Bader Ginsburg's handwritten note to an 8-year-old girl matters — especially now

Ginsburg told the audience she's doing "very well," compared to how she was six months ago. It's almost an endorsement of picking up the weights, because the one-year survival rate of pancreatic cancer is 20%, and the five-year survival rate is 7%. It's still considered largely incurable.

How do you get a body worthy of the highest court in our country? Ginsburg's workout routine includes planks (instead of sit-ups), weights, and both front and side pushups with her feet (not her knees).

Ginsburg began working out after a battle with colon cancer in 1999. Her husband was concerned about how frail she looked, so she started working out twice a week. Twenty years later, she's still at it. "When I started, I looked like a survivor of Auschwitz," Ginsburg said in an interview. "Now I'm up to 20 push-ups."

RELATED: An inspiring couple shows off the success of working together for healthy weight loss

Ginsburg has been treated for cancer four times. Ginsburg also had pancreatic cancer in 2009, and at the end of 2018, doctors removed two cancerous lumps from her lungs. Ginsburg was absent from the bench for the first time in her career while she recovered. She's not planning on going anywhere. "If you've survived cancer, you have a zest for life that you didn't have before, that you count each day as a blessing," Ginsburg told the audience at Berkley.

At this point, she might just be immortal because of all those planks.

Veronica Duque wearing her famous anatomy suit

Being an educator in the American public school system is one of the hardest jobs in our nation. Not only is the work itself challenging, but with constant battles for educational funding and a student body increasingly tethered to their electronic devices, most teachers in America and around the world are navigating uncharted territory when it comes to finding ways to keep their students engaged in their studies.

And that's why when Verónica Duque came across a form-fitting, anatomical bodysuit while doing some online shopping, she thought it would be perfect visual aid to convey vital information (pun intended) to her students in Spain, in a way they'd actually remember.

Turns out, the entire internet would remember it too.

Duque's husband tweeted a collage of images from the classroom lesson, which quickly went viral, with nearly 70,000 likes. Loosely translated, the tweet from her husband Michael reads: "Very proud of this volcano of ideas that I am lucky to have as a wife. Today she explained the human body to her students in a very original way. Great Veronica !!!"

In an interview with Bored Panda, Duque explained the thought process that led her to presenting her third-grade-class with a unique approach to learning.

"I was surfing the internet when an ad of an AliExpress swimsuit popped up," she said. "Knowing how hard it is for kids this young to visualize the disposition of internal organs, I thought it was worth giving it a try."

anatomy, anatomical suit, teachers, science, cool teachers, science class, amazonThis is a teacher who cares. assets.rebelmouse.io

Online retailers like Amazon have a number of similar anatomical bodysuits for sale. While most people apparently purchase them for Halloween costumes or as gag gifts, it's now likely that Duque's viral moment will inspire some other educators around the world to take a similar approach to teaching the body basics to their students.

anatomy, anatomical suit, teachers, science, cool teachers, science class, amazonHalloween costume, check. Amazon

While some on Twitter were critical of the suit, the vast majority have praised Duque for her innovative approach to teaching. And the anatomical bodysuit is reportedly far from her first creative endeavor in the classroom.

"I decided long ago to use disguises for history lessons," she told Bored Panda. "I'm also using cardboard crowns for my students to learn grammatical categories such as nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Different grammar kingdoms, so to say."

And when it comes to the inevitable, made-up controversy that tends to latch itself onto virtually anyone that goes viral, Duque said she says there's another far more controversial stereotype she hopes her brief moment of fame will help address.

"I'd like society to stop considering teachers to be lazy bureaucratic public servants," she said. "We're certainly not." Get this teacher a raise!

What really works about Duque's presentation is that it engages students in a sensorial experiences, which helps lessons stick (and let's face it, anything that engages he sense nowadays is a godsend). But there are other methods teachers/parents can try that don't involve wearing a suit with guts on 'em.

Here are some suggestions for hands-on "DIY experiments", courtesy of the Little Medical School website:

1. Building the respiratory system by creating a model lung with straws, balloons, bottles, and duct tape

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

2. Sculpting Body parts with Play Doh

(Grab free printable mats on 123Homeschool4Me)

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

3. Build a functioning heart model

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Of course, these lessons are a little more geared towards younger students, but at the same time, it could provide some inspiration for how to get students more involved in their own learning, just like Duque did.

This article originally appeared six years ago.

Can you solve this "Wheel of Fortune" puzzle?

Is there any game show that allows contestants to royally embarrass themselves on national TV quite like Wheel of Fortune? There’s always someone going viral for taking a big swing and missing on a phrase that seemed pretty apparent to the casual viewer. And when you take a big loss on aWOF word puzzle, there are a lot of folks shaking their heads at home. More than 8 million people watch the game show every night. Yikes.

One rather notorious of the wheel was Gishma Tabari from Encino, California, whose fantasy-inspired whiff of a common phrase back in 2023 earned her a lot of groans and some support from those who thought her imagination was inspiring. The 3-word puzzle read: “TH _ _ RITI _ S _ GR _ E,” and Tabari offered the answer, “The British Ogre.” The guess surprised host Pat Sajak, who responded, "Uh, no.” Tabari must have missed that there was a space between the R and the E in the puzzle, so ogre would have had to be spelled with 2 Rs.

She also probably wasn’t aware that England isn’t a place known for its ogres. The correct answer was: “The Critics Agree.”

The answer inspired a lot of activity on X, where people couldn’t believe someone could come up with such a fanciful answer to a puzzle with such a straightforward solution.







One person even created a lovely image of what could be the British Ogre.

Although…not everyone had a problem with the guess.

"OK, the puzzle was clearly THE CRITICS AGREE but to be honest I prefer THE BRITISH OGRE because the puzzles could use some more wacky originality sometimes.#WheelOfFortune"— Pasha Paterson (@zer0bandwidth) December 13, 2023

On the bright side, the incorrect guess is an opportunity for the world to learn that ogres aren’t a significant part of English folklore. Sure, there are characters in English myths and legends that have ogre-like qualities, such as Grendel from "Beowulf," the monstrous creature that terrorizes the mead hall of King Hrothgar. There’s also the Boggart, a mischievous spirit much like a hobgoblin and trolls, which appear in some English tales although they originate in Scandinavia.

If you’re looking for ogres in Europe, France is the best place to go.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

The word ogre is of French descent and comes from the name of the Etruscan god of the underworld, Orcus. Orcus is a large, ugly, bearded giant who enjoys consuming human flesh. Ogres are primarily known for eating children, which they believe will give them eternal life.

As for Wheel of Fortune, the show will undergo significant changes over the next few years. The show’s host, Pat Sajak, 76, stepped down from the show at the end of the 2024 season after hosting it for 41 years. In September 2024, radio host and “American Idol” emcee Ryan Seacrest took over the hosting spot.

Although, it was just announced that Sajak would be making a special guest appearance on Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, performing what he called "Final Spin."

And in case you're wondering how Tabari is doing: on her Instagram she wears her "Wheel of Fortune Flub Girl" title with pride, declaring she is "British Ogre for life."

This article originally appeared two years ago.

Learning to make sounds we didn't grow up with can be tricky.

When (or if) kids learn phonics at school, they're taught the symbols that go with sounds of their country's native language or languages. People all around the world grow up learning to make specific sounds with their mouths by imitating the language(s) they are immersed in, which can leave us completely unaware of how many other sounds there are until we hear a language that's far different from our own.

Even the common foreign languages that American school kids learn have sounds that can be tricky to get down. The rolled "r" in Spanish. The nuances of French vowel pronunciations. The glottal stops in German. The sound that's a mix between "r" and "l" in Japanese. And for people learning English, one of the trickiest sounds to get down is "er," as in the American pronunciation of "bird," "world," "summer," or "percent."

Oddly enough, for as common as the "er" sound is in English, it's linguistically rare. According to the Linguistics Channel @human1011, the "er" sound is found in less than 1% of the world's languages, rarer than the click consonants found in some languages in East and Southern Africa.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

As rare as the sound is, there are a lot of people in the world who use it, mainly because it's also used in Mandarin Chinese, or at least many variations of it. So, while there aren't many languages that use it, by sheer numbers of people, it's not that uncommon.

"So, a sound that's so rare that it's in less than 1% of the world's languages just happens to exist in the two most spoken languages on Earth? Can that really be a coincidence?" the @human1011 video asks. Well, yes. English and Chinese don't share a common linguistic root, so those sounds just happened to evolve in very different parts of the planet. According to some people in the comments of the video, there are regional dialects in Brazil where the "er" sound is used and in certain parts of the Netherlands as well.

Pronouncing the "er" sound is hard if you don't grow up with it, largely because it's all about the placement and shape of the tongue inside the mouth combined with the way the lips are positioned. That combination is physically tricky to show someone. This video, from a non-native-English-speaker does a good job of explaining the mouth movements that create the sound.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

What's particularly interesting about the "er" sound in American English is that it functions as a vowel sound. Most of us learned that the vowels in English are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y, and that's true as far as written vowels go, but vowel sounds are different. In the word "bird," the letter "i" is a vowel, but doesn't make any of the "i" sounds that we learned in school. Instead, the "ir" combine to make the "er" vowel sound. It's called an r-controlled vowel, and we see it in tons of words like "work," "were," "burn," "skirt," etc.

Learn something new every day, right?

Here's another video that explains the physical aspects of articulating the r-controlled vowel sound.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Most of us don't think about the fact that sounds we pronounce without even thinking about it have to be specifically learned and practiced by people who didn't grow up with them. It's not until we start trying to learn a language that's different from our own that we see how many sounds we have to work hard to make, sometimes even having to train our mouth muscles in ways they've never been used before.

It's also a good reminder to be patient and kind with people who are learning a language. It's not easy, and anyone making an effort to communicate in someone else's language deserves our grace and kudos.

You can follow @human1011 on YouTube for more interesting linguistics trivia.

Photo by Dave Husselbee / Imgur
How an obnoxious Hawaiian shirt became the running joke in a high school yearbook

The Hawaiian shirt is a controversial piece of fashion. People who live in Hawaii know how to wear them with taste and they are welcomed at almost every occasion. The shirts (known locally as Aloha shirts) originated in the 1930s and often have buttons made of shells or coconuts.

Off the island, they are usually worn by two different people: rich dudes who wear $125 Tommy Bahamas to show they can be chill on the weekends or the drunk frat guy who picked up an obnoxious one at a thrift store. The Aloha shirt is meant to portray a sense of fun and zaniness, but in the hands of the average American, it comes across more than a little "try-hard" in most cases.

Then there's writer Hunter S. Thompson, who's loud choice in fashion equally matched his flamboyant lifestyle. He's one guy who could properly pull the look off. There's also Ace Ventura.


ace ventura, hawaiian shirt, jokes, laughs, humor, funnyAce Ventura could definitely pull off the Aloha shirt lookGiphy

In 2016, Dave Husselbee, a junior at Sleepy Hollow High School in Westchester, New York, got five of his friends together and bought five loud Hawaiian shirts to wear on picture day. The idea was that the ugly shirt would be a running joke throughout the annual yearbook.

"We bought five shirts and about 10 kids knew about it before picture day," Husselbee told ABC News. Initially, the yearbook would be dotted with obnoxious Aloha shirts once every couple of pages.

Then the idea began to grow.

Other kids who lined up to have their photos taken loved the idea and put on the shirt as well. Then, some of the high school staff got in on the joke. "Some of the staff was unsure but once the chair of the science department decided to do it, all the others were enthusiastic," Husselbee said.

The lighthearted "prank" quickly grew out of Husselbee and his friends' control. All in all, sixty people wore the shirt in their yearbook photos, literally taking over the publication and turning the solemn pages into a sun kissed island-style daydream.

jokes, pranks, hawaiian shirt, fashion, kids, teens, high school, teachers, education, yearbookIt was supposed to just be five kids...via DaveHusselbee / Imgur

Once you notice the shirts, it's pretty much all you can see on any given page!

You almost have to feel bad for the other kids who put effort into choosing nice outfits for their portraits.


jokes, pranks, hawaiian shirt, fashion, kids, teens, high school, teachers, education, yearbookMore and more students and teachers kept joining in.via DaveHusselbee / Imgur

Here's just one yearbook page with 14 different kids wearing the exact same yellow Aloha shirt.


jokes, pranks, hawaiian shirt, fashion, kids, teens, high school, teachers, education, yearbookDozens of kids per page were wearing the shirt.via DaveHusselbee / Imgur

The running gag gets even more impressive the deeper you get into the yearbook.


jokes, pranks, hawaiian shirt, fashion, kids, teens, high school, teachers, education, yearbookThe coordination to pull off such a prank is impressive.via DaveHusselbee / Imgur

Seriously, how did a group of teens manage to pull this off?

When it comes to laughs, jokes, and pranks, young people really have a special talent.


jokes, pranks, hawaiian shirt, fashion, kids, teens, high school, teachers, education, yearbookMore and more students and teachers kept joining in.via DaveHusselbee / Imgur


Yes, even the teachers got in on it. That's the mark of a truly good school prank — no one gets hurt, everyone can participate, and it inspires smiles even years later.


jokes, pranks, hawaiian shirt, fashion, kids, teens, high school, teachers, education, yearbookMore and more students and teachers kept joining in.via DaveHusselbee / Imgur

The school's principal, Carol Conklin-Spillane, thought the prank was a great expression of the school's fun-loving spirit.

Senior pranks, in particular, have a tendency of getting out of hand. One group of kids poured cement into the school's toilets, causing thousands of dollars in damage. Others have doused the stairwells in baby oil or destroyed the school's classroom communications equipment.

This group from Westchester definitely did it right.

"The best part is that this is who we are here at Sleepy Hollow High School," she explained. "Kids and teachers have wonderful relationships. It's a very warm, wonderful place. That's really what's special about this place. It's an example of how these four years in a person's life can be transformative. It's all about the relationships these young people have with adults."

We keep hearing about how more and more teachers are leaving the profession, how the kids are too unmanageable and rowdy and disconnected, not to mention the other systemic problems involved in education. But it's so fun to see that strong connections between students and teachers still exist.

This article originally appeared six years ago.

A still from HBO's 'Girls'

Travel back in time to 2010. For millennials entering adulthood, this meant navigating through challenges like the aftermath of the Great Recession, getting their first taste of student loan debt, and becoming increasingly vocal about social and political issues.

But 2010 also ushered in new and novel technologies, like the iPad and Instagram (granted, we might be a little jaded towards these things now, but back then, it felt like the dawning of the golden age). And let’s not forget it brought us some pretty epic pop culture moments: Lady Gaga’s famous meat dress, Kathryn Bigelow becoming the first woman to win best director at the Oscars for The Hurt Locker, the ending of Lost (!), just to name a few. That’s all without taking into account the hope many people felt as Barrack Obama entered his second term.

Point being—even with the not-so-great stuff happening, there were reasons to feel, as 36-year-old Chelsea Fagan puts it, “an ambient level of optimism about the future.” And she theorizes that it’s this feeling Gen Zers long for when they “romanticize” this time period.

In a video posted to her Instagram, she really painted the scene of her own experience as a 20-something entering the workforce—oat milk latte in hand, dodging folks on fixie bikes as Passion Pit’s “Sleepy Head” played on full blast, walking into an open space office with industrial lighting and exposed brick to perform her full time gig writing listicles, and, like other millennials, thinking she had “made it.”

“And I really feel for Gen Z,” she said, “that they never got to enjoy that period of just collective delusion, because it was not long for this world.”

"There's just so many ways in which life is more difficult and less hopeful for young people now than it was for millennials,” she would later tellNewsweek. “Even coming out of the recession, I think being in the Obama administration felt very different.”

In the same interview, she surmised that a major culprit behind this longing is our current relationship with technology, which has gone from wonder and interest to codependency.

"We weren't living on social media as much. I think people were more present, living the life that young people today don't get to enjoy as much. There's more anxiety and self-awareness because everything is so performative now."

So far, the reaction to Fagan’s video has been…palpable. By and large, fellow millennials could recall similar sentiments, particularly on the economy and tech front.

“The stock market was growing, jobs were surging, and while affordability wasn’t as good as when we were kids, it wasn’t crushing like it is today. The Affordable Care Act was brand new and still immensely powerful.”

“We were fresh post recession, deep in debt, and YET life was more affordable.”

“It was magical. We just had nothing to lose. There were no jobs and our college degrees were useless, but there was also hope that the world WAS becoming a better place. There was a yearning for a simpler time but in a wholesome way, not an alt right way. The lack of opportunities for ‘real jobs’ allowed people to be creative. And we lived an extended childhood because, why not?”

“The internet still seemed positive and hopeful, and not yet soul crushing and exploitative..”

“I miss when the Internet was fun. When chatrooms and games and fun little websites were a great way to learn and play and even meet others.”

Of course, as few pointed out, even this perspective wasn’t necessarily shared by all, especially those who didn’t come from a middle/upper class background. But the point its, it’s understandable that younger generations might envy the positive future-gazing associated with the era.

Interestingly enough, according to data from the Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Trust at Work, a pessimistic outlook mostly belongs to younger Gen-Zs, while the oldest Gen-Zs are incredibly optimistic. If you look elsewhere, you’ll see that, contrary to popular opinion, a majority of Gen Zers actually do believe they can achieve their goals. So, one could argue that while they don’t have that Millennial brand of optimism, it still shows up in its own way. After all, no matter what generation you hail from, aren’t our 20s all about having a “the world sucks, but I’m gonna make it” kind of attitude?

Our 30s on the other hand…that’s a different vibe entirely.