🛟 Quick, grab this lifeline!

🛟 Ruby to the rescue. Among the many downsides to winter: it’s fall-through-the-ice season. It’s hard to see the upside to walking on ice-covered bodies of water. Frozen lakes and ponds possess hockey bros with an uncontrollable compulsion to lace ‘em up and play some puck; they can’t help themselves, eh? But everyone else…what are you doing out there?

Anyways, a 65-year-old Michigan man was the latest to fall through the ice on a frozen lake. With his dog standing by his side on the ice above, the man was submerged except for his head and shoulders. When a state police officer arrived, he was unable to get close enough to safely throw a rescue disc to the man. So, he started to problem solve.

As they so often do, it was the dog that provided the solution to the problem.

The officer asked if the man’s dog would come if called. Sure enough, Ruby came running over and sat, awaiting further instruction. The officer tied the disc to her collar and told her owner to call her back. She rushed back to his side, disc in tow. The man was then able to grab onto it while the officer pulled the rope, dragging him up onto safer ice.

Just as her name implies, Ruby is truly a gem. Give her a statue. Throw her a parade. Scrotch that belly!

👂 You hear the good news? Hereditary hearing loss: your cruel silence will soon be broken.

A breakthrough gene therapy could soon deliver the gift of sound to deaf patients worldwide. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia seems to have successfully delivered the treatment to an 11-year-old boy who is now hearing for the first time.

The boy, Aissam Dam, was born deaf thanks to one defective gene. The gene prevented the production of a protein that allows hair cells of the ear to receive sound vibrations and communicate them to the brain via chemical signals. Safe to say the complexity of the human body never fails to astonish. Thankfully, modern medicine has its own rare ability to do the same.

Four months ago, surgeons injected Dam with a virus carrying copies of a functioning gene, which allowed the hair cells to function. Today, his hearing loss is characterized as only mild-to-moderate. After 11 years of no hearing, it took a surgical treatment and four months to reduce the hearing loss to a mild level.

This trial introduces exciting possibilities for so many suffering from gene-related hearing issues, and it’s perhaps most exciting for those not yet born, who could enjoy their full course of development with hearing intact where it otherwise wouldn’t be. They may never know a life where they couldn’t hear….and where they couldn’t learn to talk as a result.

Modern medicine. Astonishing.

🦀 Don’t be crabby. A massive fire at a Washington seafood facility could have threatened the livelihood of dozens of crab fishermen. Just before the beginning of crab fishing season, the blaze destroyed significant stores of gear and equipment, including thousands of crab pots.

The president of the Columbia River Crab Fisherman’s Association, Dale Beasley, guessed 4,000 of the 8,500 crab pots surrounding the building were ruined. Those pots cost $400 each, meaning the damage - to the pots alone - totaled over $1.5 million. The cost of replacements would have surely relegated several fishermen to the sideline for the season, rendering them unable to make a living.

But the fishing community wasn’t about to let that happen to their own.

Fellow fishermen have selflessly and generously loaned their spare equipment to those impacted, ensuring that they can get their boats on the water. Rather than see the impacted men as competitors and their loss as opportunity for gain, they banded together in the spirit of community. Evidence of that kind of generosity is more than enough reason to stop feeling crabby this morning.

🫀 The gift of life. “Oh, no, no, I got to be a donor. I want to be a donor because if I don’t do anything good on Earth, I know I will afterwards.”

Desiree Burge’s insistence on being an organ donor saved 23-year-old Katherine Herman’s life. After 20 heart surgeries, Herman’s heart failure meant a transplant had become the only option for survival. A donor was no certainty, but Burge - a 39-year-old mother-of-two - suddenly passed away from natural causes.

Burge’s heart has allowed Herman to resume a normal life, including school, part-time work, volunteering, and exercise. When she got married, she carried Desiree’s name on a chain hung over her bouquet. She’s intent on honoring the donor’s gift at every turn, and last year, she had a chance to share her progress with Desiree’s parents.

They heard their daughter’s heartbeat once more, this time powering another human life to better days ahead. They credit the meeting with helping them heal from the grief of loss. Their daughter was right: she did something far better than good after her time on Earth ended.

🥤 Have a coke and a smile. It was on this day in 1892 that the Coca-Cola Company was incorporated in Atlanta, Georgia.

In the 20th century, was there anything more American than Coke? It became more American than apple pie. Carbonated sugar water for the win, baby! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Alright, let’s do it. Let’s power-rank the best kinds of Coke.

1. Glass bottle Coke. The flavor just hits different when consumed from the classy and classic glass bottle. Makes you feel like you should be wearing a monocle and a top hat. Bonus points for the Mexican version.

2. McDonald’s fountain Coke. Would be a shoo-in for the top spot, but sometimes the syrup levels are off, and you get a watered-down drink. It’s enough to ruin not just your day, but possibly the entire year. But when it’s right, it’s RIGHT. And the large diameter of the Mickey D’s straw is an underrated factor. Phenomenal flow.

3. 12-ounce can of Coke. Just an outstanding vessel for Cola consumption, particularly when chilled to perfection. Mr. Consistency.

4. 8-ounce mini-can of Coke. It falls behind the classic 12-ounce because 8 ounces vanish in a few short but delicious gulps. On the bright side, you feel like you’ve made a healthy choice, because hey - it’s just a little guy.

5. 18-ounce tall boy can of Coke. You’d think more would be better, but you’d be wrong. 18 ounces is too much for a personal serving of soda. The second you crack that thing, you’re on the clock. It’s a ticking time bomb of eroding freshness. You won’t enjoy those last 3-5 ounces. I guarantee it.

6. Two-liter Coke. Not good. But if you pour the first glass on the rocks and let the carbonation settle a bit, it’s not the worst.

67. 20-ounce plastic bottle Coke. The worst. Swill for undistinguished palettes. I can’t think of a worse way to enjoy a Coke. The carbonation is all wrong - it’s too intense and it infects the drink with a bitterness that can’t be overstated. If I were in the desert and this was the only drink available, then please remember to serve one of the top three options at my funeral.

🤠 Rodeo on ice. Like we said, it’s fall-through-the-ice season. Fortunately for one calf, the ice of this pond wasn’t quite thin enough for it to fall through. But it was stranded out there nonetheless, with little hope of escape. The phrase “like Bambi on ice” exists for a reason, after all.

This time, though, it was a man helping out an animal and not the other way around. Using a very particular set of skills that would make even Liam Neeson jealous, this local cowboy unleashed a vortex of rope swinging action to grab hold of the calf and drag it to safety.

Best lasso since Ted?! We say yes.

🏊‍♀️ 99 years, 400 meters. “Swimming is a sport that will add life to your years and years to your life.”

Here’s the thing - I’m not too sure about the first part. Practicing the sport of swimming involves:

• Staring at a black line on the bottom of the pool for hours on end

• Actively making a choice to breathe instead of, you know, just doing it

• Wearing goggles so tight they leave marks on your face for hours afterwards

In the moment, it’s not the most life-giving experience.

But the second part? Adding years to your life? The proof is in the pudding…or the pool. Just ask ninety-nine-year-old Betty Brussel.

Betty just put an absolute beatdown on the age-group world record books, setting three in a single day:

• The 400 meter freestyle record? Eviscerated by FOUR MINUTES in a time of 12:50.

• The 50 meter backstroke? Backhanded by Betty. She broke it by more than 5 seconds in 1:20.42.

• The 50 meter breaststroke? Well, that record didn’t even exist for the 100-104 age group, but Betty willed it into existence.

She supports the thesis about the act of swimming itself not being particularly stimulating. “When I’m racing, I don’t think about anything,” she told the Guardian. But her secret to her long and active life? “Keep doing stuff.”

Amen, sister. Perhaps more impressive than any world record? Betty still drives herself to practice.

🏈 Wide right, made right. Buffalo Bills kicker Tyler Bass lived every kicker’s - really every athlete’s - nightmare last Sunday night. With a chance to tie the game, his field goal attempt missed wide right, reintroducing a familiar agony to fans of the long-tortured franchise.

But rather than curse the kicker, Bills fans rallied around him, and football fans nationwide followed.

Donations flooded into the Ten Lives Club, a nonprofit cat adoption group that Bass works with. By mid-week, donations totaled more than $275,000, with fans pledging $22 in the kicker’s name, referencing his #2 uniform number. It’s not always about how we perform and how we behave in the big moments Sometimes, it’s what we do in the aftermath - especially when things don’t go our way - that can rescue silver linings from pain.

🎤 Reporting on the reporter. Sideline interviews are the least interesting things in sports. Coaches and players rarely say anything of substance, offering whatever canned answer gets them out of there fastest. As a result, the sideline reporting job is often

thankless, but that wasn’t the case last week.

As Rahshaun Haylock began his interview with Russell Westbrook on his first night as the Clippers’ sideline reporter, Westbrook quickly cut him off. But he wasn’t being rude or dismissive. Instead, he turned the tables, acknowledging Haylock’s long road of work to secure the gig and inviting the audience to give him a round of applause.

It was an unexpectedly heartwarming and wholesome moment from an interview that typically offers so little. All class from Westbrook.

Congrats Rahshaun!

⚽️ An upset etched in (Maid)stone. English football’s FA Cup is a magical tournament, often pitting some of the teams in the country’s lowest leagues against global behemoths. It would be like the Portland Sea Dogs playing against the New York Yankees, only more extreme. And every once in a while, David shocks Goliath, creating memories that last a lifetime.

This weekend, it was Maidstone United, a team in the SIXTH tier of English football, upsetting 2nd-tier Ipswich Town in front of the Ipswich supporters. Sixth tier. To put that in perspective: everyone’s favorite celebrity-owned club, Wrexham United, is viewed as a long-shot underdog. But even they’re in the fourth tier with a decent shot at promotion to the third. Maidstone is two rungs lower, and they just pulled off the unthinkable: one of the largest upsets in the competition’s history.

To say the lads were buzzing would be an understatement.