Ryan Kelley

Pretending to know what I'm talking about... Every day.

[McNeil @REFLOG18]

More true then ever

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

In 1988 Dolly Parton pulled every 7th and 8th grader in Sevier County into a room and told them to pick a buddy.

She made them sign a contract.. if BOTH graduate, she hands you both $500. One fails, nobody gets paid.

The county dropout rate went from 35% to 6%.

She handed out the checks herself.

In 1989 she offered $500 to every kid in the county who wanted to go to the local college.

When Gatlinburg burned in 2016, she sent 900 families $1,000 a month for six months.

You've probably heard that part.

Here's the part you haven't:

The fund raised more than expected, so she showed up in May and handed every one of those families another $5,000 on top.

Then she quietly put $3 million into the recovery group that handles the years after the news trucks leave.

She built her county an entire hospital.

She played a benefit concert in 2007, Dollywood and the Stampede matched it, and LeConte Medical Center opened in 2010 with a birthing unit and a women's center in it.

In 2022 she started covering 100% of tuition, books, and fees for Dollywood employees.

Full-time, part-time, AND seasonal.

In 1991 she paid for a bald eagle sanctuary because the birds couldn't be released back into the wild, no press release.

And when Hurricane Helene came through here in Western North Carolina, she wrote a personal check for $1 million and her companies matched it.

She didn't owe North Carolina anything, but she helped us anyway.

She started the Imagination Library because her daddy couldn't read or write. Before he passed, he told her it was the most important thing she ever did.

Rest in Peace, Dolly 🇺🇸

[Jeremy Clarkson @JeremyClarkson]

Until last week, men over 50 were entitled to a free PSA prostate cancer check. But the government has now decided to withdraw that right. I cannot for the life of me work out what their reasoning might be.

[Ryan Kelley @lostinthewild]

If you can, help me help a great cause!

2026 Tricia Scobey Legacy Race https://t.co/2LNimb1gh7

[Olaudah Equiano® @RealOlaudah]

Women are the same everywhere. 🤣

[Community Notes & Violations @CNviolations]

Just a simple moment of respect after dropping off a package

[The Real Mike Rowe @mikeroweworks]

Postcards From the Edge

I meant to post these photos last week on my flight back from Alaska, but I feel asleep on the plane shortly after snapping this image of Mt. McKinley, which is pretty unusual, given the fact that it’s normally shrouded in mist and clouds. I slept the whole flight, got stupidly busy the moment I landed, and stayed that way for the next two weeks. Consequently, I forgot to thank everyone in Alaska for making me feel so welcome up on the Last Frontier.

I’m exaggerating, of course. I didn’t meet everybody in Alaska. I only met everybody in Homer and Fairbanks, two cities I was delighted to finally visit. I also got to meet Governor Mike Dunleavy and Senator Dan Sullivan, two politicians who I affirmatively do not disdain, and hang out with my friends from Wells Fargo, who have done more to support the skilled trades and my foundation than any other bank in the country.

Governor Dunleavy met me in Homer, at an amazing family business called Bay Weld Boats. These guys make all types of aluminum boats, and as you might imagine, they have more work than they can possibly complete. Alaska is bordered by two oceans and three seas. It also has 12,000 rivers, and over 3 million lakes. There is an astonishing amount of water up there, and the aluminum boat business is booming.

Anyway, I was there because Bay Weld Boats has hired a number of welders from a vocational school called AVTEC, which my foundation supports. Welding aluminum is very tricky and requires highly skilled tradespeople. Bay Weld Boats is always hiring, and AVTEC is doing all they can to train the next generation of Alaskan welders. In fact, we’ve had a handful of people apply for scholarships to this school, and all have gone on to do great things. For that reason, @WellsFargo donated $250,000 to AVTEC and asked if I’d present the check on their behalf, along with the Governor, who really does give a damn about his state, and the people in it.

Then it was up to Fairbanks, to visit another terrific trade school - The Fairbanks Pipeline Training Center. Actually, it was a pretty close call, getting out of Homer. For reasons that were never made clear, they canceled the only flight to Fairbanks that day. It’s a eleven-hour bus ride to Fairbanks from Homer, and I was scheduled to meet Senator Sullivan three hours hence. Happily, everyone in Homer has a pilot’s license, and something resembling a plane, usually parked in the backyard. We found one such pilot, and one such plane, and got there just in time to eat lunch with the Senator, take an extensive tour of the facility, and present another fat check to another great school, courtesy of Wells Fargo.

What makes The Fairbanks Pipeline Training Center so great? Well, for starters, they train pipeline workers, one of the most essential jobs in America. Thanks to the shale revolution, the Lower 48 are not as reliant on the North Slope as we once were, but the folks in California, Hawaii, and Washington would be absolutely screwed without that pipeline, and the workers who keep the oil flowing. I’m telling you, those men and women are unexampled in their skill, worth ethic, and pure grit. As one instructor put it, “Yeah, we’ve seen you hanging out with the fisherman on the Bering Sea. That’s a Garden Party. Come on up to the Slope, where it’s 30 below and dark all day. You’ll love it!”

After we presented the training facility with another check for $250,000, Senator Sullivan led a panel discussion that reinforced a simple truth I’d learned a long time ago, when I first started filming in Alaska. We are blessed – profoundly blessed – to have such an incredible resource as part of these United States. The entire state has a population about that of San Franciso, but is larger than Texas, Montana, and California combined. Just magnificent.

Big thanks to the Governor and the Senator for making time to support the trades, and an even bigger thanks to Wells Fargo for showing up where they actually do business, and putting their money where their mouth is. As for the rest of you, mikeroweWORKS is currently accepting applications for the next round of work ethic scholarships. AVTEC and the Fairbanks Pipeline Training Facility are both supported. Apply at https://t.co/ju76O0XWgC.

[Brick Suit @Brick_Suit]

This skateboard trick may never be eclipsed.

Danny León, a Spanish Olympic skateboarder, set up this shot and landed it during today's eclipse in Spain.

Perfect planning!

[Ryan Kelley @lostinthewild]

https://t.co/Hv6WZfX7oa

Let's get those likes!!!

[Dylan K @MightyDylanK]

Spain just went dark in the middle of the day.

Total solar eclipse. Absolutely unreal. 🌑🇪🇸

Tarragona, Spain 🇪🇸

[Aj Castelletto @FictionsByAj]

@NatlParkService *Pspspspsps irresponsibly*

OH SHIT!!!

[Chris 🦝🀄 @ShuntaroKusko]

@NatlParkService i may pspspspsps at jimothy, is that okay?

[National Park Service @NatlParkService]

Pspspspsps responsibly.

[the Sports ON Tap @thesportsontap]

In 2014, the Cincinnati Bengals cut Devon Still.

Then they immediately signed him to the practice squad, for one reason only. So his health insurance wouldn't stop.

His four year old daughter had just been given a 50/50 chance to live.

June 2, 2014. Doctors walk into a waiting room and tell Devon Still that Leah, his four year old, has stage four neuroblastoma. A pediatric cancer. Fifty fifty odds.

Still was a defensive tackle fighting for a roster spot. He missed most of training camp to be at the hospital, and when cuts came, he didn't make the 53 man roster.

For most players that's the end. No team, no salary, and critically, no insurance.

The Bengals signed him to the practice squad anyway. Not because they needed him. Because it kept his family covered, and gave him the freedom to fly to Philadelphia to be with his daughter whenever he needed.

Then head coach Marvin Lewis and the organization did something else.

They started selling Devon Still's number 75 jersey, and announced they would donate ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of the proceeds to pediatric cancer research at Cincinnati Children's Hospital.

A backup defensive tackle's jersey.

It became the best selling jersey in the NFL. Fans of other teams bought it. Rival organizations ordered them in bulk. Opposing players wore them.

The Bengals eventually handed Cincinnati Children's a check for $1.3 million.

Leah, meanwhile, was fighting. Chemotherapy. Radiation. Surgery to remove a tumor. Stem cell transplants. Her father documented all of it publicly, because he decided that if his family had to go through it, other families shouldn't have to feel alone in it.

Then on March 25, 2015, Devon Still posted this:

"June 2, 2014 and March 25, 2015 are days I will remember for the rest of my life."

296 days after the diagnosis, Leah Still was in remission.

There was one more scare, a serious complication from the transplant that summer. She beat that too. By December 2015, her scans showed no evidence of disease at all.

She got a Wheaties box. She and her dad won the Jimmy V Perseverance Award at the ESPYs, and she recorded a video message thanking everyone who helped her beat up cancer, because she was too sick to attend in person.

The Bengals eventually released Devon Still for real in September 2015.

And they made sure his medical insurance would stay active for five more years anyway, whether or not another team ever signed him.

Leah is a teenager now. Healthy. She and her dad have written children's books for kids going through what she went through.

Her advice to those kids: "You're not fighting this alone."

An NFL team spent a roster spot on a dad instead of a player.

For more stories like this, follow us on any platform @thesportsontap

[Ryan Kelley @lostinthewild]

https://t.co/MJTkXblgHt

[Jose @GuardsBurner_]

Lmao the White Sox broadcast was in the middle of saying Steven Kwan shouldn’t be trying to hit home runs…

“When you’re not a power hitter but trying to act like one.”

[Curiosity @MAstronomers]

On August 2, 1971, near the end of their final excursion on the Moon, Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin placed a memorial plaque on the lunar surface in honour of 14 deceased astronauts and cosmonauts. Beside it, they placed a small aluminium sculpture known as the Fallen Astronaut.

The plaque bears the names of Charles Bassett II, Pavel Belyayev, Roger Chaffee, Georgi Dobrovolski, Theodore Freeman, Yuri Gagarin, Edward Givens Jr., Virgil Grissom, Vladimir Komarov, Viktor Patsayev, Elliot See Jr., Vladislav Volkov, Edward White II and Clifton Williams Jr.

[Curiosity @MAstronomers]

Worth more than every data center combined.

[Black Hole @konstructivizm]

Eleven years ago, after traveling more than 4 billion kilometers, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made the closest approach to Pluto of any spacecraft in history, flying at an altitude of less than 13,000 km above the surface 🟡

This image was taken when New Horizons was approximately 450,000 km from Pluto's surface.

[Dudes Posting Their W’s @DudespostingWs]

I don’t think people realize how absurd this is. Scottish runner Josh Kerr just broke the mile world record in 3:42.66, an average speed of 16.2 mph. Most people couldn’t even briefly reach that speed, let alone sustain it for an entire mile.