✈️ Come fly with me...

✈️ Like father, like son. This was Ruben Flowers and his son - also named Ruben Flowers - in 1994.

They come from a whole family of pilots, boasting seven in total. The younger Ruben recalls being profoundly inspired by his father’s career in aviation, always beaming with pride on school career day. That pride led the son into his own career in the skies, recently becoming a first officer with Southwest.

This spring, the elder retired from a decades-long career with the airline. For his final flight, Ruben was joined by a special first officer for the very first time: his son. Just like that, the special photo from almost thirty years prior was recreated on an incredibly special day.

The pair shared a unique father-son experience, with the son eager to impress and the father eager to impart wisdom in the fleeting moment. Flowers’ brother and cousin, also pilots for Southwest, joined for the occasion as well, and the plane - having been made aware of the circumstances - burst into applause upon landing. Finally, a time when it’s not lame to clap at the plane touching down!

The younger Ruben has now taken to the skies with both his father and his sister. Next up? His younger brother. I want a seat at the Flowers Family Thanksgiving! There have to be some great stories there.

What an incredibly wholesome legacy.

🐕 Missing, but never lost. It’s a nightmare scenario. A toddler wanders off into the Michigan woods and is missing for hours. That sounds like a story that rarely ends well. Police, police dogs, nearby citizens, and drones joined the search late at night last Wednesday, urgently searching for the missing girl.

But here’s the thing: this two-year-old wasn’t alone.

She embarked on her expedition accompanied by two family dogs. When she was ultimately found by a citizen on an ATV, she was sleeping on one dog like a pillow, while the other laid next to her, watching over her and acting as protector. All were safe and healthy.

Dogs, man. Hang on, it’s hard to type when your eyes are welling up.

There could be an entire spin-off newsletter called We Don’t Deserve Dogs. In fact, if it already exists, permission granted to unsubscribe from this one and read that one instead.

Just kidding. Please don’t leave. We’re good for a few dog stories a month! But seriously, we don’t deserve ‘em…

💧 Out of thin air. The world has serious and mounting water supply problems. But we’re not really the newsletter to dwell on those. Dark. Scary. depressing.

We like to be a bit more solutions-oriented in the news we report. The ability to harvest drinking water out of literal thin (well, I guess thick) air is just the kind of progress we want to share.

The University of Texas at Austin (hook ‘em, Horns!) has developed new hydrogel technology that transforms hot summer air into drinking water. Using solar power, atmospheric moisture is converted in temperatures as low as 104 degrees. That’s hot, but hot regions just might need it most.

The technology is celebrated for its speed and energy efficiency. The next step will be achieving affordability in mass production to help those impoverished areas most stricken by water scarcity. It’s easy to take technology for granted sometimes, but creating a device that turns air into water quickly and efficiently is literally the stuff of miracles.

To that we say alright, alright, alright.

🚸 A loyal guardian. After 36 years on the corner of 149th and Laramie in Oak Forest, Illinois, Nancy Hullinger retired from her beloved post as a school crossing guard earlier this month. Over the course of four decades, Hullinger shepherded literal generations of kids safely to school. She helped kids shuffle along, and then many years later, she helped their kids to the same school.

She adored the opportunity to contribute to her community, whether it was fixing chains on bikes, driving class projects home so kids didn’t have to carry them, or even giving kids lunch money when they forgot it. 36 years of small but consistent deeds added up to create a community impact so large it’s now felt acutely in the void left by her absence.

Almost every community has someone like this. Don’t forget to appreciate them while they’re still in action!

Perhaps the most wholesome part of this insanely wholesome story is its origin: Hullinger became the crossing guard because she complained that there was none when her son first started kindergarten. You know what they say: if you want something done right, do it yourself.

Nancy Hullinger did it right for 36 years. Generations of Oak Forest families are forever grateful because of it. Nancy has since moved to a new community, where (spoiler alert) she’s applied to be a crossing guard. Advice to residents there: don’t try driving through the intersection when Nancy holds that stop sign aloft. Not on her watch, pal. This isn’t her first rodeo.

🎸 It could happen to U 2. On this day in 1976, Paul Hewson, Adam Clayton, and David and Dik Evans responded to a bulletin posted by Larry Mullen at the Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin. Larry was seeking bandmates.

Almost fifty years later, Paul is now known as Bono, and the quartet featuring Adam, Larry, and the Edge is now known as U2. Since their formation, they’ve sold an estimated 150 - 170 million albums. Man, think about that butterfly effect. Because those boys responded to a school bulletin, all of us had an album that we’ll never listen to preloaded on our phones!

You never know where answering the call might lead. And don’t sweat it if things don’t click at first. The group was originally called Feedback and The Hype before landing on U2.

🚗 Speedy rescue for a speedy driver. Instant karma can be a cruel, cruel force. But it’s not the only force at work in our crazy world.

A teenager was speeding away from police at over 100 miles per hour when he crashed his car, ultimately ending up trapped beneath it. Those same officers who were in pursuit, aided by some Great Samaritan bystanders, were able to quickly lift the car just enough for the injured but alive teen to escape. With mere moments marking the line between life and death, every bit of extra strength was a difference maker.

Instant karma was ready to sink its teeth into the speeder, but Great Samaritans had other plans. It’s unclear if the fast driving was motivated by family-related hijinx, but we blame Vin Diesel for it nonetheless. Far too fast and a little too furious.

Dominic Toretto didn’t even need any help to lift a car in those movies. Outrageous.

@datkaban

Dom is him. #capcut #edit #fyp #viral #tiktok #video #foryou #fypシ #foryoupage #fastandfurious #meme #memes #popular #music #sound #phonk ... See more

🧃 A record of lunch table lore. Sometimes this section heralds incredible achievements of the human will, the amazing evolution of human capability, and the glory of world class triumph. Sometimes it’s pure fun.

This time it’s both! Okay, really, it’s more the latter, but when the world record for the fastest time to consume a Capri Sun goes down, we’re contractually obligated to cover it.

An Indian man, Fayis Nazer, crushed the pouch in 8.02 seconds, the first in history to dip under 10 seconds. Now maybe that doesn’t sound particularly remarkable - Capri Suns are only 6 fluid ounces. But here’s the catch: to set the record, you have to begin with both hands flat on a table, unwrapping the straw and puncturing the pouch only after the clock starts.

Pretty sure it’s harder to find that hole than it is to find a vein to draw blood! Imagine doing it under pressure?!

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Guinness has received more than 100 applications for the record since April. I vow to make it 101 in the near future.

Anyways, if I had to pick my Mount Rushmore of elementary school lunchtime drinks, I’m going with:

• Little Hugs: Fun shape, fun colors, pure sugar.

  

• SqueezIts/Kool-Aid Bursts: These came in the weird, plasticky twist bottle, but that bottle made the drink hit different. Bonus points to SqueezIts for changing color.

  

• Hi-C: Just a diabolical bait-and-switch for parents. Oh wow, 100% of Daily Value in Vitamin C! Yeah, with more added sugar per ounce than Coke. Sweet, sweet nectar.

  

• Capri Sun: Challenging though it may be, there’s just something engaging about assembling the straw and pouch for action. And the commercials were all-time. Capri Suns nearly miss Mount Rushmore for taking 8 seconds to drink though. Gone in a flash.

Honorable Mention: Yoo-hoo, Sunny Delight, Guzzlers, Hawaiian Punch.

⚾️ This one’s for mom. There were three notable first pitches thrown out at baseball games in the last week: sports personality Stephen A. Smith, musician Kid Cudi, and Brusdar Graterol’s mom.

The most impressive delivery? Ysmaila Graterol in a landslide.

The pitch capped off an emotional week for the Graterols, as Brusdar pitched in front of his mother in the major leagues for the very first time. It was the first time she had seen him pitch since 2015 and the first time they saw each other at all since 2016. Since then, travel restrictions and visa issues have prevented a reunion, with Ysmaila remaining in their native Venezuela.

Brusdar credits her with fighting with him through all of the tireless training that went into pursuing his baseball dream and a better life. With Ysmaila in the stands, he threw a scoreless inning of relief, waving to her as he returned to the dugout overcome with emotion. She’ll remain in Los Angeles as the Dodgers pursue another World Series, and by the looks of it, if they need pitching help, she might be good for a few outs.

🇪🇺 The Eurotrip dreams are made of. Professional athletes love to play it cool. They’re expected to. But sports fans love to let their passion show, so when their athletes do the same, it makes them all the more relatable.

Newcastle United’s Jacob Murphy couldn’t hide his delight last week as the Champion’s League anthem played at Milan’s San Siro. Newcastle were set to play their first match in the Champion’s League - a tournament featuring Europe’s top teams - since 2003, twenty long years ago. For most professional footballers, playing in the competition is the pinnacle of the job.

The look on Murphy’s face is precisely the look you should see when a dream comes true. Now all he has to do is help Newcastle keep the dream alive…

🐧 Penguins on your stoop. Sports are rich with longstanding tradition - some purely for pageantry, others for continuity. Few traditions, though, will create memories as long-lasting as a what the Pittsburgh Penguins do for their season ticket holders.

Each year, the tickets are hand-delivered by members of the Penguins themselves. If you live in the Pittsburgh area and have a reactive dog, be careful; once he gets through terrorizing the mailman, he just might end Sidney Crosby’s season.

In an era where sports feel increasingly impersonal, this hyperlocal and sincere tradition reinforces our motivation for watching sports in the first place: togetherness and shared experiences.