In 1884, Ulysses S. Grant was dying of throat cancer and was dead broke.
His money was wiped out by a swindler who stole his fortune.
Desperate to leave something for his wife, he agreed to write his Civil War memoirs and was close to signing a contract for a meager 10% royalty.
Mark Twain stepped in, called the deal robbery and offered Grant 70% of the profits through his own publishing company.
Grant raced death to finish the book, completing it just days before he died in July 1885.
It became one of the greatest memoirs ever written.
The royalties left his widow nearly half a million dollars, about $16 million today, and the book has never gone out of print.
Holy fucking shit. Caine considered leaving the circus.
He always wanted to know what the rest of the world looked like. He could have used this to figure it out. He chose to stay and use the internet to help the humans instead. Because he loves them so much. I need to sit down.
Michelle Obama once asked her mother why she was holding Barack's hand on election night. Her mother replied, "His father left when he was two. He lost his mother to cancer. He was moments away from becoming the leader of the free world with no parents, so I took his hand."
This is how you protest. Not with cutest signs, not with cringey chants. Not with stupid hats. You roll up your sleeves and fuck some shit up.
I never thought in 2026, that i’d be rooting for Albania and Iran. But here we are.
John C. Reilly questions why human rights have become political
"If you stand up for human rights, why is that a right or left thing? Why aren’t people on the right wing concerned about human rights?"
"Elon Musk says, 'don’t be fooled by the empathy trap'. ... Empathy is not a trap, empathy is a superpower. It’s what makes human beings exceptional, our ability to look outside ourself”
"Do unto others ... It's crazy that we have to argue for these things"
(via It's Open Pod)
Millions of honeybees escaped into a rural Texas neighborhood after a semitrailer carrying about 400 hives tipped over, officials said. https://t.co/1GmlUkbskP
It's so fucked how he was abused by his wife in his final months. She kept his kids from a previous marriage from visiting him and when he died, she practically stole the body and had him interred in Norway to spite them. He wanted to be buried in Glendale btw...