Ontario teen says he'll live in 'modular home' invention for a year to prove it can end homelessness

He's already invented a wooden car.

By Erik Barnes

Ribal Zebian, a student from the city of London in Ontario, Canada, already made headlines last year when he built an electric car out of wood and earned a $120,000 scholarship from it. Now, he's in the news again for something a little different. Concerned with homelessness in his hometown, Zebian got to work creating a different kind of affordable housing made from fiberglass material. In fact, he’s so confident in his idea that the 18-year-old plans on living in it for a year to test it out himself.

Currently an engineering student at Western University, Zebian was concerned by both the rising population of the unhoused in his community and the rising cost of housing overall. With that in mind, he conjured up a blueprint for a modular home that would help address both problems.

15 English words that instantly change from nouns to verbs with a simple shift in our voice

English isn't a tonal language, but in this case, it kind of feels like one.

By Annie Reneau

When native English speakers try to learn tonal languages like Chinese, Thai, or Navajo, it can take a while to get the hang of it. The idea that the same syllables spoken in a different tone can change the meaning of a word is a foreign concept in English, where we shift our tone and pitch in all kinds of ways without any change in actual word definitions.

But that doesn't mean tone or pitch plays no role in English word meanings. Changing our tone and pitch to stress different syllables does change the meaning of a surprising number of words. Interestingly, there's a whole bunch of two-syllable words that follow a rule of sorts, where stressing the first syllable makes the word a noun and stressing the second makes it a verb.

Instant friendship.

Employment lawyer reveals the four text messages you should never send to a coworker

When it comes down to it, they're there to make money.

By Jacalyn Wetzel

It's not uncommon for people to have a "work bestie" or "work spouse." Often, people spend a lot of their waking hours at work, so they're bound to feel like they've made true friendships with their coworkers. Before too long, numbers get exchanged, and they find themselves venting after hours about work, but this may not be a good thing.

Ed Hones is an employment attorney in Seattle, Washington, and he is not only discouraging coworkers from thinking of each other as friends, but also sharing what texts people should never send their colleagues. As an employment lawyer, Hones sees the legal fallout of the lines between friends and coworkers being blurred. Though he isn't saying people can't text their coworkers, he lists four specific types of texts to never send in case of a lawsuit.

Photographer films empty, snowy street that sparks massive Millennial and Gen Z metaphor

"When I was in my 20s and it snowed... we would all meet at the bar."

By Evan Porter

A photographer named Josh Alvarez recently ventured out into the snow one evening and noticed something he found peculiar: No one was out and about.

The New Yorker compiled video footage from several spots around Nyack, New York and posted it to Instagram. The scene was quite beautiful, with light snow flakes falling, leftover Christmas lights shining, and a fresh layer of powder covering nearly everything. There was also dead silence and no signs of people, save for a few footprints in the snow.

"When I was in my 20s and it snowed like this," he wrote in the caption, "we would all meet at the bar. Now nobody goes out anymore. Definitely different times."