Two Ice Age babies, both found bald, for opposite... reasons Two Ice Age mammoth calves, found thirty years apart. Neither of them has much hair left, and for completely different reasons. Dima came out of a Siberian gold mine in 1977 covered in blond fur. Then Soviet preparators soaked him in benzene and sealed him in paraffin, which stripped nearly all of it and turned his light brown skin black. Every photograph you have seen of him shows the damage, not the mammoth. Lyuba came out of a riverbank in 2007 having already lost most of her hair and every one of her nails, before any human laid eyes on her. She was about a month old. Her stomach still held partly digested milk from her mother, and her intestines held her mother's dung. Baby elephants do this today, eating adult droppings to seed their guts with the bacteria they need to digest plants. One was undressed by forty thousand years. The other by four days of good intentions. And across all that time, the first thing a newborn does has not changed.show more

I genuinely cannot understand how someone can watch this... story and still stand there, looking at two women, and somehow decide that the wrong one is the victim. On one side, you have a girl (Yıldız) who has been mistreated her entire life. Since the moment she was born, she was treated like a sacrifice for a conflict she was never even part of and later we find out that this conflict never even existed. Her right to study was taken from her. She was pushed into a marriage at a very young age just imagine being six, seven, eight years old, living in fear of being tied to someone you don’t even know. She was treated like a servant in her own home, by the very people she thought were her family. And just when she gets close to the happiness she dreamed of, the man she was engaged to shows up with another wife. She gets mistreated by that wife, by his family, and even (unintentionally) by him, because he was trying to run away from his own feelings, and that only caused her more heartbreak. The whole world was literally against her. She fought through all of that, only to find out in the end that everything she suffered for was based on something that wasn’t even real. Her entire life was built on a lie. That she isn’t even part of that family that she has literally no one in this world. Now on the other side… You have a girl (Melek) who, yes, was taken from her biological mother but she was raised by loving parents. She had everything anyone could wish for: education, freedom, a happy childhood, a healthy environment. She lived her life, fell in love, went out, made choices and no one questioned her, no one controlled her. And then what did she do? She found out that her man was engaged to another woman before marrying her (and even saw him marry her) and instead of holding on to her dignity, she chose to stay, to fight for a man who lied to her, to hold onto a marriage he tried to end multiple times. She used her unborn child to keep him tied to her. She lied constantly, and her excuse was that she was “protecting her marriage” a marriage that was already broken from the moment Serhat removed that ring at the airport in episode one. She tried to hand Yıldız (a woman who had already suffered enough) over to dangerous people. Then she found out the truth about her own birth (that her father ra*ped her mother.)And still no empathy. No moment of humanity toward her own mother. All she cared about was herself. And even though none of this had anything to do with Yıldız, she still found a way to blame it on her. Instead of holding her father accountable, she went and made a deal with him to get rid of Yıldız. She literally made a deal with the devil just to hurt Yıldız one more time. And after all of that… you want me to feel sorry for her? You want me to call her a victim? I honestly cannot believe we are living on the same planet with people who see this and still say, “she’s the victim.” Not morally. Not logically. Not emotionally. There is no world where this makes sense. It’s like watching someone clearly cause harm, and still calling them the victim and actually BELIEVING it. #HalefKöklerinÇağrısıshow more

"We dropped Emma off at college Monday morning. Eight... hours later I came downstairs and found this. Buddy carried every single stuffed animal from her room to the front door. Every one. Her elephant she's had since she was four. The bear from her first Christmas. Every single one. He arranged himself right in the middle of all of them and he hasn't moved. He's 10 years old. He's been her dog since she was seven. I have no words for what I am looking at. I have no words for any of today." My husband thinks Buddy was trying to bring her back. I think he was doing the only thing he knew how to do — gathering everything that smelled like her and bringing it to the place she always comes back to. He did it one by one. All evening. While we sat in a quiet house not knowing what to do with ourselves. He knew what to do. He's 10 years old. His muzzle is going gray. He carried every single one. Emma called tonight to say she's okay. I told her what Buddy did. She was quiet for a long time. Then she said — "Don't move them. Leave them right there. I'm coming home Friday." We haven't moved a single one. Buddy is still in the middle of all of them. Waiting for Friday the way he has always waited for her — completely and without any doubt that she is coming. He has always been right about that. Drop a ❤️ for Buddy. And for every dog waiting by a door tonight for someone who is coming back Friday. They know. They always know.show more

A woman goes missing. Weeks later, the truth comes... out… and it’s horrifying. Washington authorities say 37 year old Krista Hunt was murdered after years of alleged abuse by her boyfriend. Her body was found in a river after an extensive search. Police arrested Juan Delgado, 42, and charged him with second degree murder. Investigators say they found her blood and clumps of her hair in his truck. Her mother last saw her alive on January 25, when she was with him. He claimed she “walked away.” She never came back. Another reminder that the most dangerous place for many women isn’t the street… it’s someone they know. Justice for Krista Hunt.show more

🚨#BREAKING: A Minnesota mother, Bonnie Pierce, escaped her burning... house only to realize her toddler was still inside… ...and she ran BACK into the flames. Firefighters found her wrapped around her baby girl, shielding her with her own body. ❤️ Her daughter, SURVIVED, she saved her life. Her name is Bonnie Pierce, she was 38, a mom from St. Paul, Minnesota. On Saturday afternoon, a fire broke out in the duplex where she was home with two of her daughters. One of the girls, Aurora, did something incredible to save herself. She kicked an air conditioning unit clean out of a window and climbed through it to safety. And Bonnie made it out too. She was OUT. She was safe. But her other little girl, Grace, still just a toddler, was somewhere back inside that burning building. Her mother, Bonnie, didn't think twice. She turned around and ran back into the fire. When firefighters fought their way in, they found her. She had wrapped her own body around her daughter, shielding that little girl from the flames and the smoke with everything she had left. Protecting her baby to the very end. Bonnie was found unresponsive, she'd been without oxygen for nearly 15 minutes. She had burns over 48% of her body. First responders and doctors fought for her with everything they had. But on Monday, Bonnie passed away from her injuries. Little Grace, the daughter she shielded with her own body… SURVIVED. She's still in the hospital. But doctors say she is expected to make a FULL recovery. That is a mother's love. Her home is now covered in flowers and chalk writing from friends that say "HERO" everywhere. Please keep Bonnie's family and both of her little girls in your prayers. GOD BLESS Bonnie Pierce. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸show more

She Lived to 117. Scientists Studied Her for Months.... Her Secret Cost $2. Maria Branyas Morera ate three yogurts a day. Every single day, for as long as anyone could remember. She mentioned this to anyone who asked about her longevity, which was often, and it was the kind of advice people receive with a warm smile and then immediately discard, because we prefer our longevity secrets to involve something more exotic than a supermarket dairy aisle. Maria died in Barcelona in 2024. She was 117. Then scientists actually looked inside her, and the smiling stopped. Her gut was packed with Bifidobacterium, a bacterium almost never found in people past 110, and far more commonly associated with infants. Her body had, in the most literal biological sense, not been informed of her actual age. It was operating on entirely different assumptions. Her DNA suggested she was somewhere between 100 and 110. She was 117. Seven years younger on the inside than the calendar insisted, which at 117 is not a rounding error. That is a extraordinary number. But to appreciate why any of this matters, you need to understand what kind of person we are talking about. Maria was born in San Francisco in 1907, the year before the Model T Ford, when Theodore Roosevelt was still in the White House and most of humanity died of things we now treat with a Tuesday afternoon at the pharmacy. Her Catalan father had come to America to make something of himself, and for a while it worked beautifully. He founded a Spanish-language magazine in New Orleans, one of the most chaotic, beautiful, swampy, and gastronomically unhinged cities on the continent, a place that has always operated on the reasonable philosophy that life is uncertain and the gumbo is excellent. Then the family got on a boat back to Spain. Maria fell on deck and permanently lost the hearing in one ear. Her father died of tuberculosis before the coast of Catalonia came into view. He was 37. She was eight. Her mother arrived in Europe with five children, no husband, and presumably very little appetite for what came next. Maria managed. She nursed soldiers in the Spanish Civil War. She outlived Franco, which required considerable patience. She raised three children. She played piano until she was 108. At 113 she caught COVID-19 and dispatched it, which at that point resembles less a medical event than a statement of intent. Then she joined Twitter. Her bio read: “I am old, very old, but not an idiot.” Her last request, before she died peacefully in her sleep, was three words: “Please study me.” The geneticists obliged with considerable enthusiasm, and their subsequent paper in Cell Reports Medicine runs to forty pages of scientists explaining, in the careful and hedged language that science requires, that this woman was remarkable in ways they had not previously encountered and were not entirely sure how to explain. The yogurt, it turns out, had been doing quiet and serious work for over a century. Nomadic peoples of Central Asia were fermenting milk 8,000 years ago, long before germ theory, before microscopes, before anyone had the faintest idea what a bacterium was. They didn’t need to understand it. Their guts understood it. The knowledge was older than writing. Maria understood it too. She didn’t publish a paper. She didn’t launch a wellness brand. She just ate her yogurt every morning and got on with the extraordinary business of being alive. Gandalv / Gandalv ✦ AI-generated image. Not the actual person. Full story:show more

In the U.S. state of Colorado, a woman noticed... that for about 10 days, her cat had been leaving the house every day after midnight and returning a while later. However, she couldn’t figure out where her cat was going in the middle of the night. Unable to resist her curiosity any longer, the woman checked her home security camera to find out where her cat went after leaving the house, and she was absolutely shocked by what she saw 😳 It turned out that her cat had become friends with a baby deer that came into their yard every night, and the two would meet up 🥰❤️ After spending some time together and catching up, the cat would see his little friend off before returning home. Honestly, this is one of the sweetest friendships I’ve ever seen… 🥺❤️show more

For most orphans, it can take a while to... play – and when they do, we know they've turned a corner in their recovery. Lemeki surprised us all, charging around from the minute she exited the rescue helicopter! Even the guineafowl couldn't escape her playful antics. This flock became her best friend and the feeling was mutual. When she changed stables, they relocated and came to roost on her roof! Her start was extraordinary: rescued as a week-old newborn in 2018 after she was spotted in the floodwaters of the Mara River. Today she is eight years old and one of the lead females of our Voi herd, edging closer to a wild life of her own. Discover Lemeki's story, an orphan who has the honour being the first orphan ever raised at our Kaluku Neonate Unit:show more

"My mother raised four kids and buried a husband... and built a life entirely with her own hands. Last week she turned 80 and moved into assisted living. She was allowed to bring one thing that wasn't furniture. Every single one of us assumed she would bring Dad's photo or her china or the quilt she's had since 1987. She looked at all of us and she said — 'I'm bringing Bruno.' Not one of us said a single word. Because not one of us could argue with that. Because Bruno has slept beside her bed every night for seven years. Because when Dad passed Bruno didn't leave her side for two weeks. Because she is 80 years old and she has earned every single choice she makes and this one was never a question." We helped her move in on Thursday. She directed everything. Where the lamp goes. Which books on which shelf. Dad's photo facing the bed so she sees it first thing. Bruno's bed went in first. Before anything else. She told my brother — "Get his bed in there first. Everything else can wait." When we left that afternoon Bruno was already on his bed with his chin on her quilt like he'd lived there his whole life. My sister called me on the drive home. She couldn't finish a sentence. Neither could I. We are not sad about this. We want to be clear about that. Mom is okay. Mom is more than okay. Mom walked into that room like she walks into every room — like she owns it and is prepared to improve it. We are crying because of the chin on the quilt. We are crying because she is 80 years old and she has been through everything and when they told her one thing she didn't hesitate. Not the china. Not the photo. Not the quilt. Bruno. Drop a ❤️ for Mom. And one for Bruno who has been her one thing for seven years without knowing it.show more

Karoline Leavitt closed her time as White House press... secretary the way a lot of people would hope to leave a demanding job: proudly standing at the podium with her husband and their two little ones. Nicholas holding their son Niko. Karoline holding baby Vivi. The whole family together in a room that is usually all business. It is a simple, striking picture of why she said she was stepping back. Two very young children. Years you do not get back. They look like a family that has already lived a lot in a short stretch of time. A toddler who has grown up around campaign trail and West Wing hours. A newborn who arrived while her mom was still in one of the most visible jobs in the country. And two parents choosing, at least for now, more time at home. Whatever you think of the politics, the photo itself is lovely. A young mother, her husband, a little boy in a button-down, a baby in her arms. Not staged for a Christmas card so much as a last look at a chapter ending. Beautiful family. Hard job. Soft landing. Makes me so proud of her!show more

From despair to hope and from struggle to triumph,... this is the incredible story of a wild elephant mother's fight for survival backed by a dedicated and professional team of foresters and vets from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu Forest Department .The mother elephant was found sick and lying on ground with her 3 months old baby roaming around her in confusion and distress.The team consulted experts and vets and successfully lifted her with the help of a crane. She was kept supported by the crane for three days while being treated by Vets. Her baby joined the herd and other siblings roaming in the nearby forests visiting the mother in the night. Thanks to the treatment,she gained enough strength and was released to freedom in the wild today. We are monitoring her to keep an eye on her well being. Gratitude and kudos to the entire team for their efforts. Way to go team 👏👍Video Credits Tamil Nadu Forest Department #TNForestshow more

Peggy lived alone at the end of Hawthorn Lane,... and the only one who really kept an eye on her was a big black Doberman named Bear. People in the neighborhood used to cross the street when they saw him. He looked like the kind of dog you read about in the wrong kind of story, all muscle and sharp ears. But anybody who actually knew Peggy knew that Bear followed her around the house like a shadow and slept on the floor beside her bed every night. Peggy was 79 and stubborn about living on her own. Her son had been after her for a year to move somewhere with people around, and she kept telling him she was fine, that she had Bear and that was plenty. One morning in the kitchen, she reached up for a mug on the top shelf and her legs just went out from under her. She came down hard on the tile and couldn't get herself back up. Her phone was on the counter, way out of reach, and the house was dead quiet except for her own breathing. Bear was at her side before she even finished falling. He nosed at her face and pressed against her, and when she told him to go, he ran to the front window and started barking, the deep kind the whole street could hear. He wouldn't stop, going from the window to Peggy and back again, over and over, until a neighbor two doors down finally came out to see what all the noise was about. She found Peggy on the floor and Bear standing guard over her, and she had the ambulance there within minutes. Peggy came home a week later with a cracked hip and a new respect for that dog. She still won't hear a word about moving. She says she already lives with somebody who looks out tor her.show more

This mom makes her eleven year old son walk... a mile around the neighborhood before he can have any screen time. She said she does this to regulate his mood and energy, to build discipline to let him know fun comes after the effort, not the other way around, and, it reduces arguments - you work first and then play later, the expectations are set. Many people focused on his walking around the neighborhood by himself but she says she lives in a neighborhood where she feels very comfortable. A lot of people applauded her for making her son get outside, that it was not only healthy for his body but for his mind as well. She said this is not a punishment. I think kids in this day and age need to be forced to get outside. Too many of us allow them to stare at screens all day long. I applaud her for her routine with her son. What do you think of her morning routine for her eleven year old son?show more

This woman is a single mother who has a... job as a delivery driver for a company that has a Fed Ex route contract. She relies on this job to support her and her kids. She just found out that the company she works for lost the contract and they will all be out of a job in about a month. She found out from someone else, not the company that she works for. 🤯 She is considering just taking her load back and walking out. This happens quite often in the delivery service field. Companies like Amazon and Fed Ex deliveries are contracted out and if those contractors don’t meet certain standards they can lose the contract. 💯 It’s possible the new contractor will hire her but nothing is guaranteed. My son just went through this a couple of years ago and they did not hire most of the drivers over to the new company. Many people told her not to quit, to stick it out and to go apply with the new company asap. She said if they don’t hire her it is just wasted time in getting a new job. She’s upset because she feels it is disrespectful of her company not to let them know personally and give them time to find a new job. I wouldn’t make matters worse. She needs the money. Stick it out and start looking for a new job. Did you know this happens regularly in the delivery service field, that contractors lose the contracts all the time and people lose their jobs?show more

Why does Mary look younger than Jesus in Michelangelo's... Pietà? The answer is one of the most beautiful in art history... Mary is holding the body of her 33 year old son, but she looks 20. Critics noticed it the moment the sculpture was unveiled in 1499. The mother of a man who has just been crucified would have been in her late forties or early fifties. Michelangelo had carved her as a girl. His own biographer, Ascanio Condivi, was the one who finally asked him why. The answer Michelangelo gave is preserved in Condivi's Life of Michelangelo and has been repeated for centuries: "Do you not know that chaste women stay fresh much more than those who are not chaste? How much more in the case of the Virgin, who had never experienced the least lascivious desire that might change her body?" Most modern critics treat this answer as a half-serious deflection. Michelangelo was famous for his sharp tongue and refused to explain himself to people he considered beneath his intellect. The deeper answer is older, and it lies inside one of the greatest poems ever written. In the final canto of Dante's Paradiso, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux begins his prayer to the Virgin with one of the most extraordinary lines in Italian literature: "Vergine madre, figlia del tuo figlio." "Virgin mother, daughter of your own son." Michelangelo, who knew Dante by heart, was carving that line into stone. Mary is younger than Jesus because Jesus is older than the universe... because she gave birth to her own creator. But there is another reading, simpler than either of those, and it is the one I find myself thinking of today. Every mother who has held her child has held them at every age at once. The infant is still inside the toddler. The toddler is still inside the teenager. The young man on her lap, even dead, is also the boy she nursed and the baby she first carried home. And maybe that's why Michelangelo did not carve Mary as the years had aged her. He carved her as love had kept her: outside of time, outside of grief, holding her son the way she had always held him... Happy Mother's Day. -- -- -- If you enjoyed this, I write a weekly newsletter read by over 50,000 people who love rediscovering the beauty of the past. You can join us here: I write about beauty in all its forms. If you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible.show more

Little Zigi is a man in a mission. What’s... the rush – catching up with mum for a drink! Just like us, mother-child relationships vary by elephants. For instance, Lima Lima is loving but quite laidback with her son, Lenny. She gives him (and herself!) a long leash. Zongoloni takes a very different approach. She is hawkishly protective of Zigi and he, in turn, is like her little shadow. We can understand why Zongoloni keeps her family close: Rescued in 2013, she stands out as one of our most heartbreaking orphan cases. Her mother was shot by poachers and then left to an agonising, drawn-out demise. Zongoloni was just a baby at the time, yet she stayed by her mother’s side until the very end. Having witnessed the very worst of mankind, it took a long time for Zongoloni to trust us. Over the years, however, she learned to love again – a love she now passes on to her son. Learn more about this remarkable elephant mum and her adorable son:show more

Yesterday, we visited a small town in the Central... Region to campaign, and I came across a little store with Hon. Ken’s picture boldly displayed in front. Out of curiosity, I stopped by and met an elderly woman inside, and what followed was an incredible conversation. She told me that her story with Hon. Ken began back in 2005, when 31 petty traders (all women) approached him for help. Hon. Ken supported each of them with ₵5 million, which was before the currency redenomination. She used that money to start her small store and, out of gratitude, wrote Hon. Ken’s name on the shop front. When Hon. Ken visited the town again in 2008 and saw the shop, he was deeply touched and gave her ₵5,000 more to expand her business. Today, that same woman proudly told me that Hon. Ken is sponsoring two of her sons, one at the University of Ghana and the other at KNUST. This is the kind of real-life impact that speaks louder than words, a story of compassion, empowerment, and leadership worth emulating.show more

quick reminder that this was literally her plan from... day one. let eşref fall in love all over again, get betrayed by his own rüya and only tell him the truth when he’s in pain and can’t have her anymore. it was never about anything else, it was always her taking her revenge. the only thing she never planned was him loving her this much and her schemes only bringing them closer. with all of this happening, çiğdem’s story endedshow more