- Skipping couple portraits because “guests are waiting.”
Your guests are chatting, and taking selfies.
Some aren’t even there yet.
They’re fine.
YOU are the ones who’ll be looking at these photos in 20 years.
I truly love the Holy Spirit so much. I love how he loves me, teaches me, orders my steps, corrects me, guides me. The more I get to know him, the more in awe I am.
The research behind this is wild. A baby owl can sit and starve to death right next to a pile of food. Put a stuffed owl next to it, like in the video, and suddenly it'll eat. An Austrian zoologist, Konrad Lorenz, won the 1973 Nobel Prize for figuring out why.
He showed that young birds aren't born knowing who their mom is. In the first few days of life, their brain takes a kind of mental photograph. Whatever they see moving around gets locked in as "parent." After that, only that figure can switch on their feeding instinct. He called it imprinting.
Owls have it worse than most birds. They're born blind, naked, and totally helpless. A baby barn owl needs feeding every two to three hours for weeks. It can't even keep itself warm until its feathers come in. And right around the time its eyes finally open, between days 15 and 20, its brain locks onto whoever's been taking care of it. Miss that window with the wrong face nearby, and the owl is wired wrong for life.
Even the begging is automatic. In the 1950s, a Dutch scientist named Niko Tinbergen ran experiments with baby seagulls. He found the chicks were pecking at a specific shape. A long thin thing with a colored spot was enough to trigger the full begging routine, even when it was just a painted wooden stick. Take the stick away and the whole sequence shuts down. The chick can be staring straight at food, but if there's no parent-shaped trigger, its body doesn't know how to swallow.
There's a tiny patch in the bird brain that runs this whole show. It's the same part that learns and stores faces. Researchers at Cambridge and labs in Japan have mapped it down to the chemistry. They've even found a hormone that, if you inject it in the right spot, can re-open the imprinting window after it closes.
That dummy owl in the video carries 40 years of conservation work behind it. In 1982 there were only 22 California condors left in the entire world. The San Diego Zoo started feeding hatchlings with hand puppets shaped like adult condors, hiding the human handler behind a curtain. The condor population is now 607. The Bronx Zoo did the same thing last spring with a baby king vulture. The Barn Owl Trust in the UK feeds orphaned owls through owl puppets while wearing camouflage hoods, because an owl raised by humans can never be released back into the wild. It'll fly toward people, beg from them, and starve.
The dummy is the only signal the chick's brain still accepts as "mom." Evolution carved a very specific lock into its brain, and only the right shape fits.
Let’s be real for a second before anyone opens their mouth to hate, they should probably check what they’ve actually done with their own life first.
Tunde Onakoya isn’t just “a chess guy.” He’s someone who took a skill he learned in a barber shop and turned it into a movement that’s changing lives.
He’s the founder of Chess in Slums Africa…..a project that uses chess as a tool to get kids off the streets and into classrooms. Not theory. Not tweets. Actual impact.
Let’s talk facts:
>He set a Guinness World Records record with a 60-hour chess marathon in Times Square
>Has helped over 10,000 children access education and better opportunities
>Secured scholarships for kids who had zero chance before
>Runs outreach programs in places most people wouldn’t even step foot in
>Ranked among Nigeria’s top chess players
>Won major chess competitions
>Featured on global platforms like CNN and BBC
>Recognized as a top social entrepreneur in Africa
>Listed among the most impactful Africans
>Uses his platform to raise funds and awareness for education across the continent
Now here’s the part people don’t like hearing.
Social media especially platforms like 𝕏 is filled with people who:
•Have never built anything
• Have never helped anyone
• Have never taken a real risk
…but somehow have the loudest opinions.
You’ll see someone literally changing lives, and the replies will still be:
“Nobody cares”
“This is overrated”
“Clout chasing” etc
And it’s like… okay.
Because the truth is simple:
It’s easier to tweet than to build.
It’s easier to criticize than to contribute.
It’s easier to sit back than to sacrifice.
Someone like Tunde is out here doing real work…impacting real people…while a lot of the noise comes from people who haven’t even tried to do anything meaningful.
One thing I’ve learnt from my time on this platform is to take a lot of these so called “criticism” with a pinch of salt.
Not all opinions are equal.
And not everyone deserves a seat at the table of your self doubt.
If you’re building something…whether it’s tech, cybersecurity, content, whatever….just keep going.
Because visibility attracts noise.
And most of that noise?
It’s coming from people who wouldn’t last a day doing what you do.