The buoyant U.S. dollar foundered in 2002 and it's been sinking since then. GOOD and Piece Studio look at how far our currency has fallen in just the last year.
The buoyant U.S. dollar foundered in 2002 and it's been sinking since then. GOOD and Piece Studio look at how far our currency has fallen in just the last year.View Currency: The Sinking Dollar
For the last five years, the text from my friend Hannah has arrived mid-January–Galentine’s Day is now just one month away, and will I be in attendance? Without fail, my answer is "yes." For love of Hannah and of parties, yes, but also the idea of the holiday itself: to celebrate not just the women but the people in your life whose love comes from the beauty of friendship. Noteworthy is that this year the invitation included an illustration of two grandmas in luscious pink and orange fur coats.
Galentine’s Day really does come from the television show Parks and Recreation. Every year on February 13, the indomitable Leslie Knope, the series tells us, throws a party for all of her girlfriends. The premise is “ladies celebrating ladies,” as she says. No husbands, no boyfriends, no partners, just breakfast foods and friendship, “like Lilith Fair without the angst.” At a long table, there are frittatas and waffles and gifts and stories. Galentine’s is not meant in opposition to Valentine’s Day, but in addition to it; as if to say, this kind of love deserves to be celebrated, too.
Parks and Rec was a wild success during its original time on air and continues to enjoy a fruitful life in the streaming age. The reach of Galentine’s specifically has extended far beyond the show since the eponymous episode originally aired 15 years ago, in 2010–Amy Poehler has famously continued her celebrations; plus, Michelle Obama has celebrated; it’s been added to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary as of 2022; and it’s even been deemed trinket-worthy by big-box stores.
But, as with any holiday, the stuff you can buy is not what it’s really about. As we get older, how often do we really get to be in the same room with all of our friends for a single evening? A birthday, maybe; a wedding; some other milestone. People move away, they have children, they have crazy travel schedules. It’s noteworthy that people can and do make time for such a gathering.
So this past weekend, there we were. Hannah had decorated her apartment with elegant pillar candles that gave off warm light, pink roses, and her metallic pink fringe backdrop perfect for photos. Her signature gift table, culled from her life as a dating editor, offered a bounty of books and beauty products, sexy oils and toys. We place White Elephant gifts on the table for later.
“Be hot! Have fun!” Hannah wrote for the evening’s dress code, so I picked a ripped Billy Joel concert shirt and leather pants with wild blue eyeshadow and matching patent leather boots. There were gals in red sequins, gals in satin pajamas, gals in hot pink skirts sipping rose and Prosecco and seltzer and non-alcoholic spritzes. We snacked on shrimp and caviar dip, deviled eggs, pizzas, raspberry cupcakes with swirls of pink icing and jammy centers, and chocolate pretzels. It was a bounty of glam and coziness.
Galentine's Day 2025Elyssa Goodman
I was never really a Valentine’s Day person. In fact, I spent most of them single and often railed against what felt like the nonsense of the day’s happiness only belonging to a select few. Interestingly, though, even in my angst, my parents always thought of the holiday as a day for all of us–I remember one year in college my mother sent me a giant box filled with my favorite chocolate chip cookies; another year, after I moved to New York, they sent me a giant, four-foot teddy bear. They made me feel like I mattered even when, revealing only my own defense mechanisms, I made my distaste for the holiday all-too-well-known. Having spent the majority of their own lives single, they knew how it felt. We love you, they said. You have us. Of course they were worth celebrating, too. Traditional Valentine’s Day narratives don’t always make space for love outside of romantic partnership. Real love doesn’t need only one day.
The spaces beyond traditional narratives are always the places I’ve enjoyed being most, whether it’s with Valentine’s Day, with any of my work or, well, anywhere else. And while I do have a partner now and we do celebrate Valentine’s Day, it’s in an actively more anti-establishment way, as we’re both wont to do with…everything. To be a part of Galentine’s is a thrill in its own way for the same reason. At Galentine’s Day, friendship, love of a different kind, matters. I am valuable because I am me, not because I do or don’t have a partner.
Galentine's goodiesElyssa Goodman
The last time I had a gaggle of girlfriends I was in high school–the group I went to prom with, did sleepovers, had birthdays, had lunch with. I have that less now. I went on a trip with some girlfriends recently, but it was my first ever “girls’ trip.” For many of the reasons I mentioned above, many of my girlfriends aren’t in New York anymore, if they ever lived here to begin with. They moved away, they had families, they have lives of their own somewhere else, though we’re lucky we intersect whenever they’re or I’m in town. For the most part, I see all of my friends on a one-to-one basis now. At Galentine’s, being invited into the fold comes with a sense of belonging. I imagine this is what Leslie Knope wanted for her gals, too. Here, with me, you matter, and you always will.
At Hannah’s we exchange White Elephant gifts, tell salty stories, make our picks from her infamous gift table. We talk about sex and skincare and bad blowouts, fostering cats and new jobs, new projects, new jewelry, new loves. Glasses are emptied and refilled, shoes are kicked off, and we take pictures with the sparkly pink fringe behind us. I think there’s a lot of this kind of party that can get lost in the Instagram of it all, but for the most part people’s phones are put away unless it’s photo time. They’re engaged with each other. Snow falls outside, but the warmth inside keeps the cold at bay. On nights like this, I am a part of a phenomenon larger than myself: Galentine’s, yes, but friendship overall. Love.
On August 11, 2014, the world was shocked to find it had lost comedic genius and Oscar-winning actor Robin Williams. Williams took his own life after a decades-long battle with depression and the onset of Lewy body dementia and Parkinson's disease.
But William's left behind an amazing career as a stand-up comic, TV star on "Mork and Mindy," and leading roles in such unforgettable films as "Mrs. Doubtfire," "Dead Poets Society," "Good Will Hunting" and "Good Morning, Vietnam."
Here, we take a look at some of his most powerful and hilarious quotes from throughout the years.
If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24 hours a day at: 1-800-273-8255. You can also chat live with someone on their site here.
Can silence drive us mad? This question arises from a unique room in Minneapolis, where visitors report eerie sensations and disorientation due to its profound silence. They often hear faint ringing in their ears, and so far, no one has lasted more than 45 minutes.
Holding the Guinness World Record for the quietest place on Earth, the anechoic test chamber at Orfield Laboratories has a background noise level of -24.9 decibels. The human audible range is from zero to 120 decibels, so a sound of negative decibels is inaudible by humans.
An anechoic chamber, meaning "no echo," achieves profound silence through its design. Fiberglass wedges coat the walls, floors, and ceilings, absorbing any internal sounds, while thick layers of brick and steel reinforce the soundproofing. This meticulous design guarantees complete isolation from external noise.
The maximum someone has stayed inside this chamber is 45 minutes. The room is so quiet that a person inside it will hear their heartbeats, even the sounds of their organs, Steven Orfield, the lab's founder, told Hearing Aid Know. “We challenge people to sit in the chamber in the dark – one person stayed in there for 45 minutes. When it’s quiet, ears will adapt. The quieter the room, the more things you hear,” he said, adding, “In the anechoic chamber, you become the sound."
But the room isn't designed for the sake of distressing or tormenting people. NASA regularly sends astronauts here to help them practice adaptability to the silence of space. Many people also visit the room to meditate, Orfield told CBS.
Yet, for most people, the room offers an eerie and unsettling experience, as it can disrupt one's sense of balance and orientation. "How you orient yourself is through sounds you hear when you walk. In the anechoic chamber, you don't have any cues," Orfield said. "You take away the perceptual cues that allow you to balance and maneuver. If you're in there for half an hour, you have to be in a chair."
Like Orfield Laboratories, the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington is also an anechoic place. It is the previous Guinness World Record holder for being the “quietest place on earth.” The room is designed in an onion-like structure that isolates it from the rest of the building and the outside world. Here too, people cannot stand the silence for too long, not more than 55 minutes to be precise.
Explaining to CNN, Hundraj Gopal at Microsoft said that in the real world, our ears are constantly subject to some level of sound, so there is always some air pressure present on the ear drums. But when someone enters the anechoic room, this air pressure zips away due to the total absence of sound reflections. In a room like this, there is no interference of noise.
Ideally, silence is intended to pacify and soothe; however, its unsettling effect in these rooms is both uncanny and intriguing. For centuries, philosophers and poets have written that “silence is not empty,” and these anechoic rooms seem to provide evidence of this.
Around 2,000 years ago, the Greek astronomer Hipparchus set out to map the night sky and measure the distances between stars in the celestial sphere. His efforts produced a “table of chords,” long regarded as the oldest known table of trigonometry. For centuries, Hipparchus was celebrated as the 'father of trigonometry.' However, researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) recently discovered that the Babylonians had beaten the Greeks to this mathematical breakthrough. After studying a 3,700-year-old Babylonian clay tablet, they found what is now considered the “oldest and most accurate trigonometric table.” The study was published in Historia Mathematica.
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Yannick B
According to lead researchers Dr. Daniel Mansfield and Norman Wildberger, the Babylonian tablet was used by ancient scribes to calculate how to construct palaces, temples, and canals, as reported by Phys.org. Mansfield first encountered the tablet, known as “Plimpton 322,” while preparing material for first-year mathematics students at UNSW. He and Wildberger decided to explore Babylonian mathematics further and investigate the tablet's contents and significance. They soon realized it was connected to trigonometry. "Plimpton 322 predates Hipparchus by more than 1,000 years," said Wildberger. "The mathematical world is only now waking up to how much this ancient and highly sophisticated mathematical culture has to teach us."
Trigonometry is a blend of three words – tri (three) + gono (sides) + metron (measure), hence it deals with the relationship between sides of a triangle. This tablet depicts a system of 15 rows and four columns to describe a sequence of 15 right-angle triangles, which decrease in inclination as the triangle is squeezed downwards. Researchers reported that originally, the tablet had 38 rows, but they could study only 15 because the left edge of the tablet was broken.
All the text on the tablet was found to be written in the cuneiform script. "Plimpton 322 contains a special pattern of numbers called Pythagorean triples," said Mansfield. According to Wolfram Mathworld, a Pythagorean triplet is a triple of positive integers a, b, and c such that a right triangle exists with legs a, b, and hypotenuse c. The triplets form an equation in which the square of two sides is equal to the square of the hypotenuse: a² + b² = c². An example is integers 3, 4, and 5, which form the equation a²+b²=c². However, the values on Plimpton 322 were found to be considerably larger like a row representing the numbers: 119, 120, and 169.
Representative Image Source: Tablet, Old Babylonian, circa 1800-1600BC. (Photo by Ashmolean Museum/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
"Our research reveals that Plimpton 322 describes the shapes of right-angle triangles using a novel kind of trigonometry based on ratios, not angles and circles. It is a fascinating mathematical work that demonstrates undoubted genius,” wrote the researchers.
Plimpton 322 was first discovered in the 1900s in present-day southern Iraq by archaeologist Edgar Banks. It was buried in the ancient Sumerian city of Larsa and now rests in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University in New York. "This is a rare example of the ancient world teaching us something new," the researchers said.
Doing the right thing isn't always easy. It requires strength, integrity, and sometimes, a lot of effort. An anonymous landlord demonstrated all these qualities with a kind-hearted gesture toward his former tenant, Chris Robarge. Chris was so moved by the surprise that he shared the full story on social media. The uplifting tale left people in tears, with many praising the landlord as someone who truly lives by his values.
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Olly
In an age where thank you letters and kind notes are becoming rare, this landlord sent Chris a heartwarming letter that left him speechless. Chris, originally from Worcester, Massachusetts, had rented from this landlord for quite some time. In August 2021, he shared a Facebook post expressing his astonishment and gratitude for the unexpected gesture.
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Jmark
“I have been sitting with this for more than a day and I am still completely beyond an actual way to describe what this act means to me," he wrote in the post. "All that I can say is that there are people who talk about their values and there are people who actually live them, and the reason I wanted to share this is that I want to encourage us all to actually live our values." Chris added, "Do it off the clock, do it when no one is watching, do it always."
A few days ago, the landlord contacted Chris to ask for his current address. Chris wondered why, but when he received an envelope in the mail, he was astonished. Inside was an honest letter and a cheque for $2,500. Chris shared pictures of both items in his post. While he had enjoyed his time renting from the landlord, this generous gesture was completely unexpected. The heartfelt letter explained that the landlord had sold his house and was giving Chris and every former tenant a share of the profit.
The landlord stated in the letter that keeping this money after the sale of the property was “exploitative and antithetical to a just society.” He even explained the math behind the amount on the cheque he had enclosed with the letter. “I tried to keep the rent equivalent to the monthly expenses of keeping the house (mortgage principal, mortgage interest, taxes, insurance, utilities, improvements). While the mortgage principal, especially in the first years of a mortgage, is a small fraction of those overall expenses, I wanted to return to you that portion of the rent you paid,” the owner described.
He also mentioned that he calculated the principal amount paid each month in the rent, split it by the tenants who were living in the house at that time, and added 40% as the increase in the house cost. “While it’s not much, it’s yours! It was a great house and I’m glad that I was able to share it with you,” he said.
After the post caught people’s attention, Chris posted an update revealing that he was keeping $500 for a car repair service, and donating the rest of the money to those who needed it the most. “I want this good deed to reach as far as possible,” he said. He offered $500 to Black and Pink Massachusetts, a prison abolition organization. Apart from this, he said he was going to fill every Worcester Free Fridge.
The post melted the hearts of people online and gave some of them "a reason to believe once again in humanity.” @g.w.smith.5 commented, “I needed to see this kind of humanity today. Thank you for that.” @virginia.bechtold too was inspired by the landlord’s generous act. She said, “This is what I’ll do if I ever own a rental property. Thanks for the inspiration.” @lisa.mullen.18 also noted, “This is wonderful...goes to show that there are good people out there.”
Chris concluded his post with a shout-out to his landlord and an inspiring message for others, “If you can't do what my former landlord did, let this inspire you to give whatever you can spare to someone or someplace that needs it."
Many lauded Chris' landlord. "What an amazing example of good karma. I’m sure you were careful to choose a landlord with similar values to you. This is wonderful," wrote Kali. Virginia added, "'Not all landlords' - this is what I’ll do if I ever own a rental property. Thanks for the inspiration." Casey added, "If this is who I think it is they are a gem of our community and one of my personal heroes (if Im wrong...well they are obviously all of those things anyways)."
Life can be a beautiful journey, but it’s also filled with challenges that leave many feeling like weary travelers. In those tough times, random acts of kindness can have a powerful impact. For one woman, a small gesture came back to her in the form of a touching text message.
A Reddit user, u/rare_cranberry_9454, shared a heartwarming story in the r/MadeMeSmile community. In the post, she revealed, “A year ago someone asked for food on freecycle.” Freecycle is a nonprofit movement of around 9 million people who give and receive stuff for free in their towns. “I sent the equivalent of $5. Today, a year later, I get this,” she added.
Below the caption, the woman shared a screenshot of a text exchange. It was a conversation between her and the stranger, an assistant part-time lecturer. “Good morning, I am truly grateful for what you did for me,” the stranger had texted. “Today I am an honors graduate and assistant part-time lecturer even if my income is still low. I’m here to tell you, when I’m alright, I will never forget you."
When the woman received the text, she was going through a roller-coaster of emotions. The simple yet heartwarming message moved her to tears. “Oh my goodness, that brought me to tears. I don’t even know what I did,” she texted back. The stranger responded, “You might have thought it was a small amount but to me, there was a huge difference from that day.” Hundreds praised the woman in the comments section, sharing their own stories of kindness. Several others shared their experiences when they felt touched by someone’s kind gesture or a supportive hand in times of need.
u/jobex reminisced about a time years ago when a bakery gifted them a pack of cookies during a financially tough time as a student. “I've never forgotten their kindness. You do remember small acts of kindness when you're in need,” they commented. u/Wildrabbitz said, “Sometimes we have no idea how a small gesture can have such a big impact on someone's life. The fact that she remembered your gesture and wanted to follow up with you to thank you is genuinely beautiful.” To this, u/rare_cranberry_9454 replied, “I know right? I don’t even remember that money and he came back a year later to thank me. Got me bawling!”
“A small act of kindness for you can make a big difference for someone else,” proclaimed u/wrkrsrvltn. Another Redditor, u/elvensnowfae, shared an experience when they had overdosed as a teen and had to stay overnight in an ICU, “There was a birthday party for someone on staff that day, a nurse snuck me some pizza and cake that same night. So sweet. Over 20 years later I still remember that. Thank you for helping someone OP.”
u/I_drive_a_shitbox was reminded of an anecdote, “My grandparents always used to say ‘today you, tomorrow me’ about helping people. Never know when you could be in that same scenario. Life is a trip.”
u/_sasquatchy recollected a moment from 1989 when a young man bought them a bag of burgers and fries in Seattle, “I was barely 16 and had left home due to abusive parents. I was so ashamed at the moment that I wasn't able to make eye contact with them, but I have never forgotten their act of kindness in a world that didn’t feel kind at all.”
Reddit user u/Takun32 recalled a personal incident. "I met a nice lady who fed me because I didn't have food once so she gave me her entire lunch. She set up my plate and everything and it was insane. Other people were annoyed that I was hungry but how can you not complain when your stomach is in pain and is young (22-23), so this lady's act of kindness was heartwarming. I still remember it because it’s one of the best feelings ever. My mom passed away a couple of years at that point too, so I felt alone and didn't figure my sh*t out. But this lady reminded me what it felt like to be smothered by a mother again. I miss those days. I should go message her again."
Editor's note: This article was originally published on May 10, 2024. It has since been updated.
In October 2023, Hannah received a phone call that changed her and her little brother's life. After five years of fighting for custody, Hannah was able to adopt her half-brother TJ. So, when TJ appeared in front of her carrying his suitcase, her heart welled up with emotions of a lifetime. Ever since then, these two have been inseparable. Hannah posts about their journey together but one video left the viewers crying.
Representative Image Source: Pexels | cottonbro studio
In February, Hannah and TJ left for Florida to visit Disney World. She posted a clip of their tour on TikTok, and people all over the internet have been crying over their story. “I adopted my little brother a year ago, who had been in foster care almost his whole life, and now we’re just healing childhood trauma together,” the overlay caption of the video read. The video depicts Hannah taking her 5-year-old brother TJ on a fun trip to Disney World. “You and I are going to the airport right now to go to Disney World.” She tells him while they are seated in a car.
Uncertain still, TJ responds, “No, we’re not.” Then she points at the back saying, “Our bags are all packed and we’re going straight there.” When TJ realizes his sister is telling the truth, his hands fly to cover his mouth in disbelief. The video shows the boy carrying a suitcase featuring a Mickey Mouse design. He is seen inside Disney World ushering with thrill and playfulness. The sibling duo swings around having rollercoaster rides, merry-go-rounds, and trippy adventures. He displays a cute gap-toothy smile. Both laugh and cheer exclaiming, “I can’t believe how lucky I am!”
If you’d to know more about us and our journey, I have the full story on my instagram🫶🏻 For everyone asking how they can support sweet TJ, there is a link in my bio to a fund for his future🥹💗 #adoption #adoptionstory #fostercare #siblings #disneyworld
People were sobbing over the heartwarming footage. @s.car.lett commented, “You are an amazing person, you and your little brother deserve a lifetime of happiness and love.” In addition, several people jumped in to show their support by donating funds for TJ’s upbringing. @kymberlychase, for instance, asked if he had an Amazon wishlist, so she could buy him something from there.
The clip was also posted on Instagram where it has 3.4 million views. She revealed that TJ is her half-brother and they share the same father. Their father was into drugs and domestic violence, due to which he was put into a foster home straight from the hospital where he was born.
She would repeatedly ask for TJ's custody but all her appeals were dismissed. After five years of living in traumatic foster care, the foster family allowed them to adopt him. “We were kicking a soccer ball around together and then all of a sudden he stopped, he looked like he was about to cry, then he ran to me and hugged me and said I missed you,” she described in the post.
Hannah has even created a GoFundMe page to raise funds to support TJ. “I adopted my 5-year-old brother after he had spent almost his whole life in foster care. This is for him and whatever he needs to have the brightest future possible (therapy, college, summer camps, sports, etc.)” she wrote on the page. So far, the couple has raised $27,369 through 947 donations.
There’s a brick building at 1226 Herron Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Polish Hill neighborhood that’s had many lives. Though it was initially built in 1917, its most lasting legacy began in 1973.
At that point it became the gay bar Norreh Social Club, (Norreh is Herron backwards) owned by Pittsburgh native Donald Thinnes, and later, in 1991, Donny’s Place. It remained in business until 2022, changing hands and sometimes names all the while. After Thinnes passed away in 2024, ownership of the building was left to his estate. Recently, however, it has been nominated for landmark preservation status. If the nomination goes through, it will be, according to Pittsburgh publication PublicSource, “the first historic landmark in Western Pennsylvania designated specifically for ties to LGBTQ history.”
Thinnes worked in Pittsburgh’s LGBTQ nightlife for almost 50 years. He made his space accessible for people across the LGBTQ spectrum, sectioning the building at different points for smaller bars–for lesbians, for the leather community, for a disco, and more. It became a community-oriented nightlife space, hosting everything from “a Country and Western reunion, Halloween parties, Superbowl parties with All-You-Can-Eat dinners, and a fundraiser in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Motorcycle Club that gave teddy bears to children in the hospital over Christmas,” according to Pittsburgh queer publication and archive QBurgh.
The site became an important space for HIV/AIDS awareness in the 1980s and 1990s as the virus swept the country, according to PublicSource. Advocacy and fundraising events were held regularly, including for those who experienced financial difficulties due to the effects of HIV/AIDS; memorials were also held in the space for those who passed from the illness.The site helped bring participants to the Pitt Men’s Study, “a confidential research study of the natural history of HIV/AIDS, funded by the National Institutes of Health,” which helped researchers to better understand the disease. Later, in 2001, it received a Certificate of Merit in Public Health, QBurgh wrote, from the Allegheny County Health Department for its contributions to Hepatitis A awareness.
The landmarking process began when Pittsburgh residents Dade Lemanski, Lizzie Anderson, and Matthew Cotter wrote a nomination assisted by historic preservation advocacy group Preservation Pittsburgh. "We believe that all who made Pittsburgh what it is today should be reflected. By trying to fill in the gaps that exist in what has received historic recognition, we hope to inspire interest in uncovering more stories and leverage other nominations,” they wrote.
The nomination has just faced significant pushback, however, from developers and from the Thinnes estate who are suing the nominators. According to another story in QBurgh, the suit claims “the nomination process has interfered with their ability to develop or sell the property and that the nominators had ‘impure motives’—a move that community activists say is a blatant attempt to silence and intimidate those fighting to preserve queer history.”
It seems Thinnes had worked out a sale of the property with Pittsburgh luxury developer Laurel Communities before his death. The attorney representing the developer and the estate claims the nomination dishonors Thinnes’ request. The nomination is still up for consideration, however, and people have already written letters of support–roughly 90, QBurgh reports. Pittsburgh’s Historic Review Commission will meet on March 5 to discuss.
Over the next few months, the fate of Donny’s Place/Norreh Social Club will be decided. Of the 191,681 historical sites filed in Pennsylvania, PublicSource writes, only 10 others demarcate LGBTQ history. If the nomination pulls forward, Donny’s Place will be number 11.
Galentine's Day 2025Elyssa Goodman
Galentine's goodiesElyssa Goodman
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Yannick B
Representative Image Source: Tablet, Old Babylonian, circa 1800-1600BC. (Photo by Ashmolean Museum/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
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