Today, a doctor, a taco enthusiast, and a former professional football player will teach us something. Evan Porter explores a quick cognitive screening exercise worth knowing about, we've got a deceptively clever solution to one of life's messiest dining problems, and Evan Porter introduces us to an NFL veteran whose remarkable mathematical accomplishment is making headlines. Not a bad collection of discoveries to take into the weekend.
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A 1-minute verbal test at home could reveal early signs of dementia. | ||
Doctor shares 60-second dementia test that can help adults spot early mental decline | ||
Simple, useful, and kind of fun. | ||
By Evan Porter | ||
A tough reality of aging is that our brains eventually start to lose a bit of their edge. We become more forgetful and process information a little more slowly. | ||
What’s hard to know without help from a doctor is whether we’re in the middle of a healthy and natural slowdown or experiencing warning signs of something more serious, like dementia. But luckily, we can test ourselves at home in just one minute. | ||
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The internet can be a noisy place. Every once in a while, though, you stumble on something that reminds you how much good is out there, and when we find it, we have to share it. (It's kind of our thing.)
So this week, with a little help from our friends at Shriners Children's™, we rounded up five of the most joyful things we found online, from a penguin's pebble proposal to a patient named Clara who's handing out teddy bears to other patients. Consider it your antidote to the doomscroll.
Your friendly neighborhood spidey at work 🙏 ♥️
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Taco lovers are blown away by the ‘Moses fold’ hack that keeps all the fillings in | ||
“The way people eat tacos should never be judged but appreciated.” | ||
By Annie Reneau | ||
Anyone who’s eaten a taco knows the struggle: you get all your taco fillings tucked in just so, but as soon as you bite into one end, the delicious guts start falling out the other. | ||
If it feels like you have to choose between a messy taco experience and a bad tortilla-to-filling ratio, you’re not alone. But there’s a brilliantly simple—some might even say divine—solution. | ||
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An Upworthiest Poll
What's your biggest taco-related frustration?
Yesterday’s Results
In yesterday's issue, we shared a simple exercise that could make the years feel a little less fleeting.
And we asked: Which moment makes you most aware that time is flying? The winner, with 46.1% of the vote, was seeing how old a friend's kid has gotten.
Seeing how old a friend's kid is: 46.1%
Realizing a favorite movie is decades old: 31.4%
Hearing a song called an oldie: 13.8%
Looking at my phone's photo memories: 8.6%
Upworthy reader Jmmccollester had someone specific in mind. “Just the other day, he was 10, and shopping for school clothes with me; a sweetheart, holding my hand to cross the street. Today, he's 21 with a girlfriend and a full-time job.”
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A 300-lb NFL player gave up football and has now solved a major 30-year-old math mystery. | ||
A former NFL player just solved a math mystery from the ’90s. His story is remarkable. | ||
He gave up football for mathematics 10 years ago, and now he’s making his mark. | ||
By Evan Porter | ||
John Urschel’s career as a football player coming out of Penn State was nothing that would normally make headline news. He was a promising guard on the offensive line, drafted in the sixth round by the Baltimore Ravens in 2014, and started around 13 games in his first few years in the league. | ||
And yet, in Baltimore and beyond, he became an extremely notable figure for one reason: in 2016, he enrolled in a mathematics PhD program at MIT while playing football full-time and facing off against 300-pound defensive tackles every week. | ||
Urschel retired from the NFL in 2017 to focus on his academic pursuits, also citing worries about head injuries and CTE. Although he’s been out of the spotlight for nearly a decade, he hasn’t been idle. | ||
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