These 14 mesmerizing photos show Earth’s many forces juxtaposed against each other.
We all contain contradictions. It’s part of what makes us human. Walt Whitman wrote, in “Song of Myself”: “Do I contradict myself?Very well then I contradict myself,(I am large, I contain multitudes.)” And it’s true. You can be conservative but want to stop climate change. You can be liberal but support rights for gun owners.…
We all contain contradictions. It’s part of what makes us human.
Walt Whitman wrote, in “Song of Myself”:
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
And it’s true. You can be conservative but want to stop climate change. You can be liberal but support rights for gun owners. And though at first glance this juxtaposition, these side-by-side comparisons, might seem fraught, these combinations can also be beautiful.
In fact, the entirety of planet Earth has always been made up of a harmony of forces: fire and ice, wind and water.
These 14 images show that these contradictions and juxtapositions aren’t just OK — they’re a natural part of the world we live in.
1. Check out the soothing balance between lights deep in Antarctica. One above. One below. Both beautiful.
2. Meanwhile, in Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, fire and ice – ancient mythical enemies – create an amazing vista together.
Image from iStock.
3. And yeah, lava can be destructive, like this fiery eruption winding its way through a vibrantly green forest.
Lava from the 2007 eruption of the Piton de la Fournaise volcano on the island of Réunion. Image from Richard Bouhet/AFP/Getty Images.
4. But though fire is powerful, forests are nothing if not resilient. Like this new tree growing after a fire wiped out a forest in Australia.
Photo by Lucas Dawson/Getty Images.
5. In fact, fires open up the forest canopy, giving many plants a chance to grow, like these beautiful wildflowers. Some plants, like lodgepole pines, actually require fires to spread their seeds.
Image from iStock.
In many places it’s the juxtaposition between these two forces — plant life and fire — that create truly beautiful forests.
6. Sometimes places on Earth seem to defy the laws of physics, like these incredible, balancing mountains in China where green trees thrive against the pale, steep, rock face.
Zhangjiajie National Park, China. Image from iStock.
7. Our weather is a balancing act too.
A storm approaches Sydney, Australia. Image from Cameron Spencer/Getty Images.
8. A balance that can be both beautiful and tremendous.
Image from iStock.
9. Sometimes it’s a balance of what’s inside versus outside. This infrared scan of a hurricane highlights the incredible juxtaposition between the howling winds and peaceful eye of the storm.
10. Sometimes it’s the opposite. Things are peaceful outside and roiling inside.
Image from iStock.
11. The ocean is also great at showing this juxtaposition. The Earth is really two worlds, after all — one above the waves and one below.
Image from iStock.
12. Not to mention the way the human world bumps up against the wild one just beyond our carefully constructed borders.
Image from Ryan Pierse/Getty Images.
13. In the grand scheme of things, humankind is just another part of the balance. Balanced both with ourselves…
A single shot shows both the new and the old in Rio de Janeiro. Image from iStock.
14. …and with nature. Nairobi is one of Africa’s fastest growing cities, but just outside its borders is the wilderness of the savanna.
Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images.
It’s sometimes easy to see the divisions in everyday life and wish we could all be the same. It’s tempting to say that we don’t need labels or boxes because they divide us, but when you step back and look at Earth from a distance, you can see that it’s the balance of multiple different forces that brings it — that brings us — together to make it beautiful.
In a small village in Pwani, a district on Tanzania’s coast, a massive dance party is coming to a close. For the past two hours, locals have paraded through the village streets, singing and beating ngombe drums; now, in a large clearing, a woman named Sheilla motions for everyone to sit facing a large projector screen. A film premiere is about to begin.
It’s an unusual way to kick off a film about gender bias, inequality, early marriage, and other barriers that prevent girls from accessing education in Tanzania. But in Pwani and beyond, local organizations supported by Malala Fund and funded by Pura are finding creative, culturally relevant ways like this one to capture people’s interest.
The film ends and Sheilla, the Communications and Partnership Lead for Media for Development and Advocacy (MEDEA), stands in front of the crowd once again, asking the audience to reflect: What did you think about the film? How did it relate to your own experience? What can we learn?
Sheilla explains that, once the community sees the film, “It brings out conversations within themselves, reflective conversations.” The resonance and immediate action create a ripple effect of change.
MEDEA Screening Audience in Tanzania. Captured by James Roh for Pura
Across Tanzania, gender-based violence often forces adolescent girls out of the classroom. This and other barriers — including child marriage, poverty, conflict, and discrimination — prevent girls from completing their education around the world.
Sheilla and her team are using film and radio programs to address the challenges girls face in their communities. MEDEA’s ultimate goal is to affirm education as a fundamental right for everyone, and to ensure that every member of a community understands how girls’ education contributes to a stronger whole and how to be an ally for their sisters, daughters, granddaughters, friends, nieces, and girlfriends.
Sheilla’s story is one of many that inspired Heart on Fire, a new fragrance from the Pura x Malala Fund Collection that blends the warm, earthy spices of Tanzania with a playful, joyful twist. Here’s how Pura is using scent as a tool to connect the world and inspire action.
A partnership focused on local impact, on a global mission
Pura, a fragrance company that recognizes education as both freedom and a human right, has partnered with Malala Fund since 2022. In order to defend every girl’s right to access and complete 12 years of education, Malala Fund partners with local organizations in countries where the educational barriers are the greatest. They invest in locally-led solutions because they know that those who are closest to the problems are best equipped to solve and build durable solutions, like MEDEA, which works with communities to challenge discrimination against girls and change beliefs about their education.
But local initiatives can thrive and scale more powerfully with global support, which is why Pura is using their own superpower, the power of scent, to connect people around the world with the women and girls in these local communities.
The Pura x Malala Fund Collection incorporates ingredients naturally found in Tanzania, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Brazil: countries where Malala Fund operates to address systemic education barriers. Eight percent of net revenue from the Pura x Malala Fund Collection will be donated to Malala Fund directly, but beyond financial support, the Collection is also a love letter to each unique community, blending notes like lemon, jasmine, cedarwood, and clove to transport people, ignite their senses, and help them draw inspiration and hope from the global movement for girls’ education. Through scent, people can connect to the courage, joy, and tenacity of girls and local leaders, all while uniting in a shared commitment to education: the belief that supporting girls’ rights in one community benefits all of us, everywhere.
You’ve already met Sheilla. Now see how Naiara and Mama Habiba are building unique solutions to ensure every girl can learn freely and dare to dream.
Naiara Leite is reimagining what’s possible in Brazil
Julia with Odara in Brazil. Captured by Luisa Dorr for Pura
In Brazil, where pear trees and coconut plantations cover the Northeastern Coast, girls like ten-year-old Julia experience a different kind of educational barrier than girls in Tanzania. Too often, racial discrimination contributes to high dropout rates among Black, quilombola and Indigenous girls in the country.
“In the logic of Brazilian society, Black people don’t need to study,” says Naiara Leite, Executive Coordinator of Odara, a women-led organization and Malala Fund partner. Bahia, the state where Odara is based, was once one of the largest slave-receiving territories in the Americas, and because of that history, deeply-ingrained, anti-Black prejudice is still widespread. “Our role and the image constructed around us is one of manual labor,” Naiara says.
But education can change that. In 2020, with assistance from a Malala Fund grant, Odara launched its first initiative for improving school completion rates among Black, quilombola, and Indigenous girls: “Ayomidê Odara”. The young girls mentored under the program, including Julia, are known as the Ayomidês. And like the Pura x Malala Fund Collection’s Brazil: Breath of Courage scent, the Ayomidês are fierce, determined, and bursting with energy.
Ayomidês with Odara in Brazil. Captured by Luisa Dorr for Pura
Ayomidês take part in weekly educational sessions where they explore subjects like education and ethnic-racial relations. The girls are encouraged to find their own voices by producing Instagram lives, social media videos, and by participating in public panels. Already, the Ayomidês are rewriting the narrative on what’s possible for Afro-Brazilian girls to achieve. One of the earliest Ayomidês, a young woman named Debora, is now a communications intern. Another former Ayomidê, Francine, works at UNICEF, helping train the next generation of adolescent leaders. And Julia has already set her sights on becoming a math teacher or a model.
“These are generations of Black women who did not have access to a school,” Naiara says. “These are generations of Black women robbed daily of their dreams. And we’re telling them that they could be the generation in their family to write a new story.”
Mama Habiba is reframing the conversation in Nigeria
Centre for Girls' Education, Nigeria. Captured by James Roh for Pura
In Mama Habiba’s home country of Nigeria, the scents of starfruit, ylang ylang and pineapple, all incorporated into the Pura x Malala Collection’s “Nigeria: Hope for Tomorrow,” can be found throughout the vibrant markets. Like these native scents, Mama Habiba says that the Nigerian girls are also bright and passionate, but too often they are forced to leave school long before their potential fully blooms.
“Some of these schools are very far, and there is an issue of quality, too,” Mama Habiba says. “Most parents find out when their children are in school, the girls are not learning. So why allow them to continue?”
When girls drop out of secondary school, marriage is often the alternative. In Nigeria, one in three girls is married before the age of 18. When this happens, girls are unable to fulfill their potential, and their families and communities lose out on the social, health and economic benefits.
Completing secondary school delays marriage, and according to UNESCO, educated girls become women who raise healthier children, lift their families out of poverty and contribute to more peaceful, resilient communities.
Centre for Girls’ Education, Nigeria. Captured by James Roh for Pura
To encourage young girls to stay in school, the Centre for Girls’ Education, a nonprofit in Nigeria founded by Mama Habiba and supported by Malala Fund and Pura, has pioneered an initiative that’s similar to the Ayomidê workshops in Brazil: safe spaces. Here, girls meet regularly to learn literacy, numeracy, and other issues like reproductive health. These safe spaces also provide an opportunity for the girls to role-play and learn to advocate for themselves, develop their self-image, and practice conversations with others about their values, education being one of them. In safe spaces, Mama Habiba says, girls start to understand “who she is, and that she is a girl who has value. She has the right to negotiate with her parents on what she really feels or wants.”
“When girls are educated, they can unlock so many opportunities,” Mama Habiba says. “It will help the economy of the country. It will boost so many opportunities for the country. If they are given the opportunity, I think the sky is not the limit. It is the starting point for every girl.”
From parades, film screenings to safe spaces and educational programs, girls and local leaders are working hard to strengthen the quality, safety and accessibility of education and overcome systemic challenges. They are encouraging courageous behavior and reminding us all that education is freedom.
Experience the Pura x Malala Fund Collection here, and connect with the stories of real girls leading change across the globe.
A grandmother’s candid take on family dynamics is getting people talking, and for many, nodding in agreement. After noticing a recurring question from frustrated grandparents online, one woman decided to address a sensitive topic head-on: why grandchildren often seem to spend more time with their mother’s side of the family.
In a recent Instagram reel, Maria DeLorenzo, 59, responded to a wave of comments, particularly from mothers-in-law (MIL), wondering how to “counteract” what feels like an uneven relationship. Her answer was simple but eye-opening.
“Kids live their lives in proximity to their parents,” she said, implying that they’re often closer to their mother. As a result, if grandparents on the father’s side don’t try to “cultivate” a relationship with the mom, aka the daughter-in-law (DIL), they may have fewer opportunities to see their grandchildren as a consequence.
“It’s not rocket science,” she added. “That’s all there is to it…so choose.”
That opinion is shared by Cheryl Groskopf, a holistic therapist at Evolution to Healing.
“It’s important to understand that grandparent relationships usually grow out of the parent relationship first,” Groskopf said. “A child’s primary sense of safety runs through their parent—especially early on. So if a mother feels supported, respected, and emotionally safe with a grandparent…the most effective mindset shift is understanding that connection with the grandchild comes through connection with the parent.”
Video sparks thoughtful debate
The Instagram video drew more than 100,000 views and sparked a thoughtful discussion in the comments.
Many parents shared personal experiences that supported DeLorenzo’s perspective. However, others felt it was an “outdated” view of MIL/DIL dynamics and argued that both the DIL and the son share responsibility for cultivating closeness.
Even Groskopf agreed that “DILs can also be intentional about creating space for connection. Many grandparents are trying to figure out what their role is in a new family system. Small gestures like sharing updates, inviting them into moments with the child, and acknowledging their excitement about being a grandparent can go a long way toward building safe and supportive relationships.”
No matter how you slice it, effort and intention from all sides seem to be necessary ingredients for building relationships.
What a grandparent can do to build a relationship
Here are some helpful ideas, courtesy of certified parent coach Sari Goodman:
Ask the parents, “How can I help?” and then follow through.
Show up without judgment. Your grandkids may not be raised the way you would raise them, but it’s best to keep that to yourself.
Show up with compliments. Notice something the parents do well and share the observation. When the grandkids do something brilliant, adorable, or sweet, point it out.
Follow the rules the parents have established. If, for example, the children aren’t allowed to have sugar, don’t give it to them.
Compliment the DIL’s parents. Did they bring the grandchildren a clever toy? Tell them. Do they have a method for getting the grandchildren into the car calmly? Say you want to learn from them.
Ask for help. Grandparents want to feel needed. Raising kids is hard. It’s a win-win.
Ask grandparents for their opinion once in a while.
Ask grandparents how things were done when you were a child.
Be clear about the rules and policies you have established for your family.
If the grandparents are babysitting, be sure to show them where the drinks and snacks are.
If the grandparents are babysitting over a mealtime, have a meal prepared for them to eat.
Compliment their grandparenting skills.
Bottom line: all relationships take work. And very often, whether it’s with grandparents or within friendship circles, that effort pays off exponentially.
“Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative” is a quote often attributed to author and raconteur Oscar Wilde. Whether he said it or not, he’d probably wince at the idea of yammering on about the English rain or whether the autumn almanac was correct. However, he may have been missing the point of why we make small talk about the weather.
Dr. Thomas Smithyman, a clinical psychologist who helps people beef up their social skills, says we should view small talk about mundane topics, such as the weather, as a platform to show off our social competence and deepen relationships.
“Talking about the weather is this cliché, right?” he says in a YouTube video. “It’s everyone’s most dreaded, boring topic, but it works because it’s a commonality. We all have it in common. We’re all experiencing it.”
What does it really mean when you make small talk?
According to Smithyman, conversing about the weather isn’t about having keen insights into meteorology or comparing how much you’ve sweated; it’s to show that you are socially competent.
“Small talk can also signal to people that you understand how social interactions work,” he says. “If you can handle small talk, people trust you and can probably get into a bit of a deeper conversation without things getting terribly awkward. It’s just a little communication that says, ‘I know how to do this. I’m safe.’”
People usually think that being good at small talk means being entertaining, witty, or full of great stories. In reality, though, the key is to be a good listener and ask great questions. People tend to like those who appear to be interested in them. In fact, a Harvard University study found that when you ask a question and then two follow-ups, people like you more than if you quickly turn the conversation back to yourself.
Being good at small talk is about listening
“If you want to master small talk, it is luckily not about being the funniest or the most entertaining person,” Smithyman says. “If you look at good conversationalists, they don’t dominate, right? They actually are really good at making it easy for the other person to engage, because that’s what really helps a conversation flow.”
Think of it as a little test. The other person is thinking, “If this person can’t talk about the fact that it was slightly cloudy today, they’re not going to be able to help me with my existential crisis.” Or, “If they come off as awkward, or even sketchy, I’m not going to interact with them any further.”
The good news is that if you’re able to move beyond the usual introductory topics—such as the weather, sports, or traffic on the way to the party—and into more personal territory, you’ve likely been deemed a capable conversation partner and, possibly, even a friend.
The notice informed her that a neighbor had filed a complaint about her “inappropriate public displays” and “disturbance of community aesthetics.” She was baffled. She practiced at 6 AM when almost no one else was awake, wore standard workout clothes, and made no noise.
Then it got stranger. When she followed up with the HOA manager for specifics, she learned the neighbor had gone further than a written complaint. They had been photographing her in various poses and submitted the photos as evidence, arguing they were “inappropriate for children to potentially see” and were “promoting Eastern religious practices in a family community.”
A woman meditates while doing yoga. Photo credit: Canva
“I’m literally just doing basic vinyasa flow!” she wrote.
The detail about Eastern religious practices caught significant attention when the post went viral on Reddit, and for good reason. Legal experts and housing advocates are clear on this point: the Fair Housing Act prohibits HOAs from restricting a homeowner’s use of their property based on religion. As one legal resource explains it plainly, an HOA can ban exercise broadly, but it cannot single out yoga specifically because of its perceived religious associations. The same logic applies to holiday decorations — an HOA that bans string lights for Diwali but allows Christmas lights is on legally shaky ground.
Commenters on the post were quick to flag this. “If that whole promoting Eastern religion thing is an exact quote, I feel like that right there is your ticket to fight,” wrote u/cheybananas. “They can’t just outlaw religious practices.”
Others were more focused on the neighbor’s surveillance. Several urged her to file a counter-complaint about someone photographing her on her own private terrace at dawn. “Taking photos of someone on their private residence without their knowledge or consent?” u/ok-pomegranate-6479 wrote. “Involve authorities if you have to, that’s creepy.”
A woman executes an advanced yoga pose on the beach. Photo credit: Canva
The homeowner had already come to the same conclusion on her own. After reviewing her HOA’s bylaws, she found nothing prohibiting yoga or exercise on private terraces, only a vague clause about maintaining community standards. She drafted a formal email to the HOA board requesting the specific bylaw citation they were relying on, along with copies of all photos collected of her. She also made clear she was considering a counter-complaint about the neighbor’s behavior.
“The irony is that yoga is supposed to reduce stress,” she wrote, “but this whole situation is doing the opposite.”
Her experience isn’t unusual. A Rocket Mortgage survey of more than 1,000 HOA homeowners found that more than 3 in 10 feel their HOA has too much power, and 10% have considered selling their home because of it.
This article originally appeared earlier this year.
Glenda Bridges had none of the usual warning signs. The 83-year-old Naples, Florida, woman wasn’t obese, didn’t have diabetes, didn’t have high blood pressure. But in the span of just a few days, she had three strokes. She said that one morning she woke up and “had no balance, and my vision was blurry,” according to the Gulf Coast News.
With each stroke, her brain was sustaining more damage, and doctors at NCH (the only Joint Commission-certified comprehensive stroke center in southwest Florida) needed answers fast.
Dr. Viktoria Totoraitis, a vascular neurologist at NCH, noticed something that other doctors might have missed: all three strokes had occurred in exactly the same location in Bridges’ brain. That wasn’t typical. “Blood vessels are like highways,” Dr. Totoraitis explained, “meaning they each go to a specific territory. So when a patient has a stroke, I know what blood vessel supplies that territory.” The fact that every stroke hit the same spot pointed to a single, consistent cause rather than random clotting events.
The strokes were what neurologists call wake-up strokes, meaning Bridges had gone to sleep without symptoms and woken up with them. Research suggests that roughly one in five acute ischemic strokes falls into this category, and they’re notoriously difficult to treat because the exact time of onset is unknown, complicating eligibility for clot-busting medications.
What Dr. Totoraitis needed to know next was exactly how Bridges slept. When she asked, Bridges answered: “On my side, kind of all curled up in a fetal position.” That detail, combined with something else in Bridges’ medical history, several prior neck surgeries and significant cervical spinal arthritis, led to an imaging test with Bridges positioned the same way she slept every night. The results were clear. “When she’s sleeping and curled up like that, because she does have a lot of cervical spinal arthritis, some narrowing, she was pinching off one of her vessels.”
The fix required no surgery. Dr. Totoraitis recommended Bridges change her sleeping position and wear a soft cervical collar at night. She also clarified that the fetal position is not dangerous for people without prior neck surgeries. For Bridges, though, the combination of arthritis, surgical history, and a habitual curl was cutting off blood flow to her brain every night.
Since making that small change, Bridges has not had another stroke.
Her case is an unusual one, but it carries a useful reminder: strokes don’t always look the way we expect. The fastest way to identify one remains the F.A.S.T. method: Face drooping, Arm weakness, Speech difficulty, Time to call 911. The sooner someone gets to a hospital, the more brain tissue can be saved.
Sage Pasch’s unique family situation has attracted a lot of attention recently. The 20-something mother of 2 shared a 6-second TikTok video on September 29 that has been viewed over 48 million times because it shows how hard it can be for young moms to be taken seriously.
In the video, the young-looking Pasch took her son Nick to the ER after he injured his leg at school. But when the family got to the hospital, the doctor couldn’t believe Pasch was his mother.
“POV, we’re at the ER, and the doctor didn’t believe I was the parent,” she captioned the post.
Pasch and her fiancé , Luke Faircloth, adopted the teen in 2022 after his parents tragically died two years apart. “Nick was already spending so much time with us, so it made sense that we would continue raising him,” Pasch told Today.com.
The couple has two sons together, including toddler Laith, and is now a family of five.
Pasch says that people are often taken aback by her family when they are out in public. “Everybody gets a little confused because my fiancé and I are definitely younger to have a teenager,” she said. “It can be very frustrating.”
It may be hard for the young parents to be taken seriously, but their story has made a lot of people in a similar situation feel seen. “Omg, I feel this. I took my son to the ER, and they asked for the guardian. Yes, hi, that’s me,” Brittany wrote in the comments. “Meee with my teenager at a parent-teacher conference. They think I’m her older sister and say we need to talk with your parents,” KatMonroy added.
In a 2023 TEDx Talk at Laguna Blanca School, Dino Ambrosi made a startling revelation that perfectly underlines the big question of the smartphone era: What is my time worth? Ambrosi is the founder of Project Reboot and an expert at guiding teens and young adults to develop more empowering relationships with technology.
Assuming the average person now lives to 90, after calculating the average time they spend sleeping, going to school, working, cooking, eating, doing chores, sleeping, and taking care of personal hygiene, today’s 18-year-olds have only 334 months of their adult lives to themselves.
“How you spend this time will determine the quality of your life,” Ambrosi says. However, given today’s young people’s tech habits, most of those months will be spent staring at screens, leaving them with just 32 months to make their mark on the world. “Today, the average 18-year-old in the United States is on pace to spend 93% of their remaining free time looking at a screen,” Ambrosi says.
An 18-year-old’s remaining time, in months. via TEDx
The idea that an entire generation will spend most of their free time in front of screens is chilling. However, the message has a silver lining. Sharing this information with young people can immediately impact how they spend their time.
How to get teens to reduce their screentime
Ambrosi says his work with Project Reboot through on-campus initiatives, school assemblies, and parent workshops has taught him that teens are more concerned about time wasted on their phones than the damage it may do to their mental health. Knowing which topic resonates can open the door to an effective dialogue about a topic that’s hard for many young people to discuss. When teens realize they are giving away their entire lives for free, they are more likely to reconsider their relationship with smartphones.
“I actually don’t get through to a lot of teens, as well as when I help them realize the value of their time and then highlight the fact that that time is being stolen from them,” Ambrosi told Upworthy.
A Common Sense Media study shows that, as of 2021, the average 13- to 18-year-old spent 8 hours and 39 minutes a day on entertainment screen time.
“It’s important to get them to view time as their most valuable resource that they can use to invest in themselves or enjoy life and tick the boxes on their bucket list. I really want them to see that it’s something they should take control of and prioritize, because we’re all under the impression that social media is free, but it’s actually not. We just pay for it with our time.”
Dino Ambrosi speaks at a school assembly. via Dino Ambrosi (used with permission)
Ambrosi believes that young people are less likely to give their time to tech companies for free when they understand the value of their time. “I find that kids really respond to that message because nobody wants to feel manipulated, right? And giving them that sense of being wronged, which I think they have been, by tech companies that are off operating on business models that are not aligned with their well-being, is important.”
His approach to getting teens to rethink their smartphone use is similar to that of the Truth Initiative in that it educates young people about the nefarious tactics big tobacco companies used to lure and addict young people. In a way, big tech companies are doing the same thing by luring young people into their products, connecting them with friends and influencers, while providing a product that rearranges their brain chemistry.
He also believes parents should be sympathetic and nonjudgmental when talking to young people about screen time because it’s a struggle that just about everyone faces and feels ashamed about. A little understanding will prevent them from shutting down the conversation altogether.
How to reduce my screentime
Ambrosi has some suggestions to help people reduce their screentime.
The ClearSpace app
ClearSpace forces you to take a breathing delay before using a distracting app. It also asks you to set a time limit and allows you to set a number of visits to the site per day. If you eclipse the number of visits, it sends a text to a friend saying you exceeded your budget. This can help people hold one another accountable for their screen time goals.
Don’t sleep with your phone
Ambrosi says to charge your phone far away from your bedside stand when you sleep and use an alarm clock to wake up. If you do have an alarm clock on your phone, set up an automation so that as soon as you turn off the alarm, it opens up an app like Flora or Forest and starts an hour-long timer that incentivizes you to be off your phone for the first hour of the day.
“In my experience, if you can stay off screens for the last hour and the first hour of the day, the other 22 hours get a lot easier because you get the quality rest and sleep that you need to wake up fully charged, and now you’re more capable of being intentional because you are at your best,” Ambrosi told Upworthy.
A teen boy looks at his phone in bed. Photo credit: Canva
Keep apps in one place
Ambrosi says to keep all of your social apps and logins on one device. “I try to designate a specific use for each device as much as possible,” he told Upworthy. “I try to keep all my social media time and all my entertainment on my phone as opposed to my computer because I want my computer to be a tool for work.”
Even though there are significant challenges ahead for young people as they try to navigate a screen-based world while keeping them at a healthy distance, Ambrosi is optimistic about the future.
“I’m really optimistic because I have seen in the last year, in particular, that the receptiveness of student audiences has increased by almost an order of magnitude. Kids are waking up to the fact that this is the problem. They want to have this conversation,” he told Upworthy. “Some clubs are starting to address this problem at several schools right now; from the talks I’ve given this semester alone, kids want to be involved in this conversation. They’re creating phone-free spaces on college and high school campuses by their own accord. I just think we have a huge potential to leverage this moment to move things in the right direction.”
We live in an era of incredible scientific advancements, from genetic editing to immunotherapy to nanotechnology. And yet, even the simplest science experiments using basic materials can still blow our minds.
People have been sharing what happens when you swipe two ice cream scoops against each other, with an unexpected result. It’s not surprising that some of one flavor transfers to the other. What’s weird is that both scoops transfer to each other, as if there’s an equal exchange of matter. How does that work?
Dr. James Orgill, a chemical engineer behind The Action Lab, explains the “surprisingly deep” physics principle behind the “impossible” transfer. Part of his explanation gets highly technical, involving quantum mechanics and thermodynamics. But it essentially comes down to the difference between “mixing” and “stirring.”
Orgill explains that when he first saw the ice cream transfer, he thought the chocolate and vanilla were mixing at the surface. “But the problem is that you can see that it’s not like a chocolatey-vanilla at the contact point,” he says in a YouTube video. “There’s still a clear layer of chocolate and a clear layer of vanilla.”
What’s actually happening relates to what Orgill calls “a surprisingly deep idea in physics,” which is how stirring and true mixing differ.
“This difference at first seems pedantic, but you’ll see that it turns out to be a line between reversibility and irreversibility, between systems that remember their past and systems that forget it forever,” he explains. “And once you see it, it explains not just the ice cream, but everything from fluid flows to entropy itself.”
Orgill demonstrates how stirring works by injecting blobs of dye into corn syrup suspended between two cylinders. As one cylinder spins, the colors stretch into layers and begin to mix. But when the motion is reversed, the dye blobs go back to their original places and shapes.
“This tells us something important about stirring,” he says. “It is reversible in principle. As long as material is only being stretched and rearranged into layers, the persistent state still contains a record of the past. Stirred fluids can act like history books.”
However, true mixing is a different story. The dye demonstration illustrates the principle of reversibility, but when you stir dye into a glass of water, it mixes so thoroughly that the process can’t be physically reversed.
“Over time, especially when you’ve created lots of thin layers with lots of surface area, diffusion smooths everything out,” Orgill explains. “Diffusion is the random thermal motion of atoms and molecules. Statistically, two initially separate groups of particles will spread out and interpenetrate. Once that happens, there’s no way to reverse the process. True mixing has actually occurred.”
Orgill then delves into the weeds of entropy, quantum mechanics, Loschmidt’s paradox, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and the irreversibility of time. What does that have to do with ice cream? Well, not much, thankfully.
“Luckily, our original ice cream experiment turns out to be a reversible process,” Orgill says. “What’s happening there is not mixing at the surface.”
Using two pieces of Play-Doh, Orgill shows that the ice cream scoops are actually “gouging” one another, not mixing.
“Imagine two spheres sliding past each other,” he explains. “As they pass, each sphere overhangs the edge of the other just a little bit. That overhanging section gets stressed out and torn loose. So instead of atoms diffusing together, the chocolate scoop rips a chunk out of the vanilla. And at the same time, the vanilla rips a chunk out of the chocolate. Those chunks get pressed onto the opposite surface at the same contact location. Both sides lose material and both sides gain material in the same spot. They’re not mixing. They’re taking bites out of each other.”
He explains and demonstrates that the same thing would happen if two planets were to collide. Bringing it back to a much smaller scale, people in the comments also note that the same thing happens when two cars scrape against each other.
Seeing Orgill’s models makes it easier to understand how such transfers happen. Essentially, the two objects smear a layer (ice cream, paint, or even planetary material) onto each other from opposite directions at the same time.
From ice cream cones to quantum mechanics to colliding planets—isn’t science fun?
You can follow The Action Lab on YouTube for more science explanations.
When a drunk woman grabbed her husband’s face and kissed him at a Los Angeles bar, @toastedciabatta stayed cool. No confrontation, no scene. When the woman’s friend rushed over to apologize, she smiled and said, “He’s a hot guy, I get it.” Later, when their groups crossed paths again, she let it go entirely.
She thought she’d handled it well. Then she went home and couldn’t stop replaying it.
In a TikTok posted in late August, she walked through the whole night, explaining that as her husband stepped up to order drinks, a woman approached him, held his face, and tried to kiss him on the mouth. He turned away just in time, so it landed on his cheek. The woman walked off. A friend of hers spotted the wife nearby and immediately started apologizing. The wife, not wanting to embarrass anyone, kept things light. The friend apologized again, explaining that her friend was very drunk. The wife told her not to worry about it.
But something about the moment stuck. Not because she wished she’d gotten angry, she made that clear, but because she felt she’d let something genuinely not okay just dissolve into the noise of a crowded bar. In the video, she said she imagined going back and calmly asking the woman if she remembered what she’d done, and making clear that kissing a stranger without their consent isn’t acceptable regardless of how much you’ve had to drink. “Is there a ‘right’ way to handle something like that?” she asked viewers. “Did I completely miss my shining opportunity for a justified bar brawl?”
The internet had opinions, and they weren’t all what she might have expected. The Mary Sue covered the response, noting that while some viewers backed her composure, “Girl, you’re GENTLE PARENTING at a BAR???” became something of a rallying cry in the comments. A number of people pointed out that the real issue wasn’t how she handled a social awkwardness but that her husband had been kissed without his consent, full stop, and that framing it as a question of her reaction somewhat missed the point. “He was just assaulted in front of you,” one commenter wrote, “and you just asked like ‘you OK that was weird?’”
Bar patrons drinking on a busy night. Photo credit: Canva
Others pushed back on that framing, arguing that the woman was clearly too drunk to have a meaningful conversation and that nothing said in that moment would have landed anyway. “That is a conversation she needs while sober,” one user noted.
A smaller contingent said they would have handled it very differently. “I probably would not have been that understanding,” wrote @brooklynn_beast. “I’d start swinging.” @birdmo_k was more measured: “It’s assault. I would have called security.”
The split in the comments is the real story. Most people watching agreed the kissing woman was wrong. What divided them was whether a calm non-reaction is grace under pressure or something closer to normalizing behavior that shouldn’t be normalized.
For more videos like this, you can follow @toastedsourdoug on TikTok.
This article originally appeared earlier this year.
