The Wyoming Valley West School District, one of the poorest districts in the state as measured by per-pupil spending, sent an alarming letter to about 40 families. The letter informed parents that if they don’t settle their children’s lunch debts, their children could be taken away from their homes and placed in foster care.

When officials there noticed that families owed the district around $22,000 in breakfast and lunch debt, they tried to get their money back.

"By mail, email, robo calls, personal calls and letters," said Joseph Mazur, the president of the district's board of education.

But, Mazur said, nothing worked.

That's when district officials sent out the now-infamous letter to about 40 families deemed to be the worst offenders in having overdue cafeteria bills — those were children with a meal debt of $10 or more.

"Your child has been sent to school every day without money and without a breakfast and/or lunch," said the letter signed by Joseph Muth, director of federal programs for the Wyoming Valley West School District. "This is a failure to provide your child with proper nutrition and you can be sent to Dependency Court for neglecting your child's right to food. If you are taken to Dependency court, the result may be your child being removed from your home and placed in foster care."

Some county officials criticized the threat of being placed into foster care. They stated that foster-care placement should not be used as a scare tactic to collect money. It should only be mentioned when the children are abused or in danger.

Bill Vinsko, a lawyer in Northeastern, Pa. who used to work in local government, said while the area's weak tax base does put a strain on schools, many households are also struggling to get by on low wage jobs.

"And then they get a letter saying their kids might be taken away from them, it's petrifying for them," Vinsko said. "That is really scary for parents who are trying to work for the best interest of their kids."

What are your thoughts on this one? Do you think the school district have gone too far?

More details of the story on NPR.

(Image Credit: Free-Photos/ Pixabay)

Chocolate. Kids love it and we adults crave for it (or at least, people with a sweet tooth crave for it). But did you know that chocolate never had anything to do with sugar or with any other sweetener in the past?

Cocoa, the World Cocoa Foundation tells us, developed as a crop in many ancient South American cultures, including the Aztecs and Mayans. “Researchers have found evidence of cocoa-based food dating back several thousand years. The cacao bean was so significant to the local cultures, it was used as a currency in trade, given to warriors as a post-battle reward, and served at royal feasts.”

According to the foundation, “When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the New World and began the process of invading, colonising, and ultimately destroying the native cultures, they also discovered the value of the local cacao crop.”

[...]

The Spanish invaders were introduced to this bitter drink and didn’t find it to their liking. But once mixed with honey or cane sugar, it quickly became popular throughout Spain and spread into Europe.

And that is how the big change to chocolate happened. But that was just the start of how chocolate would be known in society today.

Know the rest about the bitter-turned-sweet history of chocolate over at the Cosmos Magazine.

(Image Credit: AlexanderStein/ Pixabay)

When I was a kid, I loved going through my box of crayons. And the more, the merrier because you would never know when you will need one shade over another. I also loved the funny names some of the colors have. And there are some really weird ones out there too like this list (Part 1, Part 2) of twenty color names that actually exist.

(Image credit: Art by Lonfeldt/Unsplash)

Mandarin Chinese : 脱了裤子放屁

English Translation: To do things the hard way.

Literal Translation: “Remove one’s trousers in order to fart”

— Ciaran Fitzpatrick (@CCFitzpatrick95) July 19, 2019

Twitter user @jazz_inmypants has only recently discovered the phrase "not my circus, not my monkey,” but in Polish. His Tweet about it drew people from all over to contribute idioms in various languages that you may want to adopt yourself. There are some 2,600 responses so far.  



There are more in the discussion at Metafilter. From jklaiho:

A couple of Finnish ones I didn’t see there:

”Ei ole kaikki Muumit laaksossa”
Approximately: to not be all there
Literally: to not have all of their Moomins in the valley

”Aina ei mene nallekarkit tasan”
Approx.: life’s not fair
Lit.: the gummi bears are not always divided evenly

And there's this one from Mefite alchemist that paints a picture:

“Der er ingen ko på isen"

Language: Danish

Literal: “there is no cow on the ice”

English Equivalent: “we have no problem/everything is OK”

Another favourite: "Cocodrilo que se durmió, es cartera"
Language: Spanish
English equivalent: It's a jungle out there
Literally: "The Crocodile that fell asleep is now a purse"

— Joe Shed (@redactednerd) July 21, 2019

You can browse all the responses at Twitter.  -via Metafilter

Bootleggers are people who sell illegal alcohol, often meaning untaxed alcohol, although the term has widened to mean the selling of any illegal or unofficial goods. Simon Whistler explains the origin of the term, but there's a lot more here than just etymology. We also learn a lot of trivia about Prohibition.

Xafi and Auri are Russian blue cats with mesmerizing green eyes. Those eyes are ringed in yellow, and become more blue toward the center of the iris, so the overall look changes depending on how dilated their eyes are at the moment.    



Xafi and Auri are sisters, but not litter mates, and live in Reading, UK. Their relatively new housemate is a Somali cat named Errol.



Find out more about Xafi and Auri at their website, and keep up with their photographs at Instagram. -via Nag on the Lake  

David Warren was only eight years old when his missionary father died in a plane crash in 1934. His father's last gift had been a crystal radio set, which sparked David's interest in science and technology.

By his mid-twenties, David Warren had studied his way to a science degree from the University of Sydney, a diploma in education from Melbourne University and a PhD in chemistry from Imperial College, London.

His specialty was rocket science, and he went to work as a researcher for the Aeronautical Research Laboratories (ARL), a part of Australia's Defence Department that focused on planes.

In 1953, the department loaned him to an expert panel trying to solve a costly and distressing mystery: why did the British de Havilland Comet, the world's first commercial jet airliner and the great hope of the new Jet Age, keep crashing?

The problem was the lack of evidence. Warren thought about devising a way to record what happened in a plane during a flight, just in case something went wrong. His boss didn't want him to work on it. Pilots hated the idea. But Warren knew it was a useful idea. Read the story of how David Warren invented the "black box" flight recorder (which was never black) at BBC News.  -Thanks, WTM!
 
(Image credit: the Warren Family)

San Diego Comic Con is a traditional venue for big pop culture announcements, and Marvel is continuing its rollout of announcements at the convention. Yes, there will be a Thor 4, specifically titled Thor: Love And Thunder, in which the superhero god is played by ...Natalie Portman.

Notably, Chris Hemsworth will also star in Thor: Love And Thunder, so he’s still Thor (?), but Portman’s Foster will be The Mighty Thor. Well, in addition to this development providing fodder for so many fan theories to come over the next two years (this movie is currently scheduled for November 5, 2021) there’s the matters of confusion to address: (1) Portman’s height is 5’3″ according to Google, so the idea of her as Mighty Thor is, well, something that folks will have to digest; (2) Portman was, according to Hollywood Reporter, reportedly dissatisfied while working on Thor: The Dark World (in part due to Patty Jenkins’ departure) and told Vanity Fair in 2016 that she was done with the MCU.

Read more of the MCU Phase Four news at Uproxx. 

I believe most of us have tried ordering food via food apps like Uber Eats, Postmates, and Caviar. For food app users like us, we find this type of service more convenient. We can have food on our hands with just a few taps from our fingers. We need only to wait for it. But what’s it like for the delivery men who deliver food on our hands? Andy Newman of the New York Times investigated this, by being a deliveryman himself for a few days.

For a few days this spring, I was one of them. Not a good one, but a deliveryman nevertheless. I learned up close how the high-tech era of on-demand everything is transforming some of the lowest-tech, lowest-status, low-wage occupations — creating both new opportunities and new forms of exploitation. 

[...]

Mindless as the job may seem, it is often like a game of real-life speed chess played across the treacherous grid of the city, as riders juggle orders from competing apps and scramble for elusive bonuses.

And there are risks. Nearly a third of delivery cyclists missed work because of on-the-job injuries last year, one survey found, and at least four delivery riders or bike messengers have been killed in crashes with cars this year. Riders on electric bikes face fines and confiscation, though that may change.

“The whole thing is like gambling,” said Werner Zhanay, 23, who delivers for Postmates and Caviar. “You have to be at a spot. You have to hope that there are orders there and then — do you stay at that spot?”

Find out more about Newman’s experience over at the site.

(Image Credit: Christopher Lee for The New York Times)

Large swaths of the US have been suffering under extreme heat the past few days. police in Braintree, Massachusetts went so far as to plead with the public on Facebook to keep a lid on things until cooler weather returns, because it's just too hot to fight crime. CNN had to confirm the story.

Yes, a police department really used the phrase "hot as soccer balls."

The department confirmed to CNN Saturday that the post is, indeed, legit.

Although we hate to say "cooler," as it might get people's hopes up, we can say less drastic temperatures are expected in the coming week. You have to wonder if the Braintree Police will end up busier than ever when that happens. -via Fark

The Philippine fast food Jollibee is the 24th largest fast food chain globally (coffee chains included), by number of branches, and the fifth among companies not from the U.S. It boasts 1,150 outlets in its home country and some 234 overseas outlets in 15 territories. It also has the bigger share of the Philippine market, even with its two biggest competitors combined. But like every business empire, Jollibee had its humble beginnings. So, how did this fast food start?

This food and beverage empire was born in 1975 – and at the time served only ice cream. It was the brainchild of company founder and chairman Tony Tan Caktiong (generally referred to by his staff as Sir Tony in a sign of respect), the third child of seven in an impoverished family who moved to the Philippines from Fujian province in China. His father opened a small Buddhist restaurant in the southern Philippine city of Davao when Tan was a child.

[...]

People started asking for hot food, so he began providing hamburgers and sandwiches, and soon they were more popular than the ice cream. Neither of the original branches is still operating – but several of the original employees still work for the company.

The Jollibee name was introduced in 1978, first as Jolibe; it was changed to the current spelling so that it could be more easily associated with the words “jolly” and “bee” – and so that, thanks to the non-standard spelling, it could be easily trademarked.

[...]

In its early years Jollibee faced perhaps the biggest challenge in its corporate history: both McDonald’s and KFC entered the Philippine market in the early 1980s. Instead of having their usual effect of sweeping aside local competition, in Jollibee they found a competitor more attuned to the local market, and one with a particularly determined founder.

Learn more about the story of this fast food chain over at the South China Morning Post.

(Image Credit: Jansen Romero)

(Image Credit: Jollibee)

With all the research and space missions being done to prepare our way for one day bringing human civilization to the stars, there is a possibility that we can put up settlements on other astronomical bodies in space and build societies there. Earth's Moon is one candidate for that vision of living in space.

But if that were to happen, there will have already been many changes and new generations probably wouldn't be able to relate those of us who grew up on Earth. So here's an open letter for humanity who was able to venture out into space and find a safer haven out in the stars.

(Image credit: Bob Al-Greene/Mashable)

The honor was all mine. Thank you for hosting us. https://t.co/fcnLdoV4uk

— Buzz Aldrin (@TheRealBuzz) July 19, 2019

Being one of the first astronauts to walk on the moon, Buzz Aldrin has a lot under his belt. But 50 years later, he laments that NASA's program has become a "great disappointment". He says this to President Donald Trump in a press conference held at the Oval Office last Friday.

“Frankly, I’m a little disappointed in the last 10 to 15 years,” he told the president during an Oval Office press conference with Michael Collins, another Apolo 11 astronaut. “We were able to achieve so much early. Now we have the number one rocket right now in the U.S., and we have the number one spacecraft, and they cannot get into lunar orbit with significant maneuvering capability. And that’s a great disappointment to me.”

There are several possible reasons as to why Aldrin has made such criticism on the agency but it most likely comes down to financial support. Furthermore, NASA has been setting its eyes on some big goals in the coming years which would require a ton of funding, although whether the results are enough to justify the investments being made, we have yet to see.

(Image credit: Buzz Aldrin/Twitter)

A tiny but growing number of online hobbyists have been buying used, but undeveloped, film rolls. People who sell mystery film often don’t set out to trade in the stuff — these are usually picked up by coincidence.

There are many tragic reasons why these rolls could have been forgotten about – divorce, death, dementia – and many mundane ones: film processing is expensive and it’s easy to set aside a half-used roll to be finished later and simply forget about it. Used film can sell from £1 to £100 on eBay, and more and more people are gathering online to celebrate their hobby. Over the past three years the subscribers to the Forgotten Film forum on the discussion website Reddit have jumped from 822 to more than 3,000 people. The most popular post of all is an image from the 1950s of a person in an anorak framed forebodingly in front of the Niagara Falls – the film was found inside a camera in an antique store.

But where did the interest in buying mystery film come from? It may be related to a boom on “mystery boxes” sold on Ebay. Popular YouTubers in 2017 started buying these boxes which contained random items and opened them in front of a camera.

In this environment, sellers are taking a chance by listing mystery film rolls, while buyers are excitedly purchasing a portion of the past.

But why would some people buy random film rolls and develop what’s inside them? Levi Bettwieser, a 33-year-old video producer from Idaho, answers this question.

...“There’s always a feeling of overall excitement that you might get something amazing, something historically viable. Or you might get more cat photos.”... “Part of the reason I’m doing it is because I like the idea of being the first person to ever see these images; even the photographer has never seen them.”

Check out the full story on The Guardian.

(Image Credit: 15299/ Pixabay)

A 22-year-old woman named De’Erica Cooks was arrested this week and accused of aggravated assault as she attacked another woman who refused to give her a slice of pizza. The woman was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill and is being held on a $1,500 bond.

According to the St. Augustine Record, Cooks became angry after the unidentified woman said "no" to her request for a slice. An offense report says Cooks told the woman "I'm going to cut you" with a steak knife in her hand, and then tried to attack her.

The report adds that a male bystander was able to take the knife away from Cooks, but she soon found another one.

According to the report, Cooks stated that she doesn’t remember much of what happened during her fit of rage.

I guess pizza is that appealing for her.

(Image Credit: marckbass8/ Pixabay)