We all know plastic bottles are horrible for the environment whether they’re clogging up our landfills, littering our oceans, or letting out potentially toxic chemicals into our water sources. Amidst our extremely wasteful demand for plastic, millions of refugees around the world lack the basic resources to secure a roof over their heads. Luckily, one man is working to chip away at both of these problems by constructing sturdy: comfortable homes out of used plastic bottles. Tateh Lehbib Breica, an engineer who lives at a refugee camp in Tindouf, Algeria, has been building plastic-bottle homes for his neighbors over the past year. Typically, refugees in the area live in dwellings made…

I played a year of professional football. I should note that I am also an elementary school teacher. I was a defensive back for the New York Sharks, who compete as a team in the Atlantic Conference of the Independent Women’s Football League (IWFL). And when I say the Sharks are a professional women’s football team, I want to stress the word “professional.” These aren’t your backyard pickup games. It all started back in 2013 when my now-girlfriend sent me a link to watch Sam Gordon—a young female running back—kicking ass, breaking glass ceilings, and taking names. I replied that I would’ve loved to have played football as a girl, even though my Jewish mother never…

A federal district court judge has decided that Gardendale—a predominantly white city in the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama—can move forward in its effort to secede from the school district that serves the larger county. The district Gardendale is leaving is 48 percent black and 44 percent white. The new district would be almost all white. The idea that a judge could allow this is unfathomable to most, but the case demonstrates in the most stark terms that school segregation is still with us. While racial segregation in U.S. schools plummeted between the late 1960s and 1980, it has steadily increased ever since—to the the point that schools are about as…

Tigers are on track to make a roaring comeback. The endangered species have been striving to survive for decades, and now, their population is finally on the rise, up to at least 3,890 tigers from around 3,200 in 2010, according to conservationists.Increases were most pronounced in Russia, Nepal, Bhutan and India, home to the world’s largest wild tiger population. “For the first time after decades of constant decline, tiger numbers are on the rise,” says Marco Lambertini, director general of the World Wide Fund for Nature International. “This offers us great hope and shows that we can save species and their habitats when governments, local communities and conservationists work together.” Wild tigers have…

Though the ingenious ResistBot is a technological wonder for those who’d prefer to express their dissatisfaction with the current administration via text message, now may be the time to celebrate a more old-fashioned form of resistance. The website 5Calls.org, which nudges you to call your local congresspeople and senators about the issues most relevant to you, is about to celebrate its 1 millionth call. You read that number right—ordinary citizens have made over 900,000 calls to their representatives via 5 Calls in just over two months. We actually received an email from a staffer stating ‘The calls are working; keep it up!’ “The idea for 5 Calls was born four days after Election Day,” says…

People might want to re-think that whole idea of Kanye West running for president in 2020. The controversy seeking hit maker delivered a 40-minute political speech to a stunned audience at his show in San Jose, California, in which he declared, “I would have voted for Trump.” Unfortunately, there isn’t a full recording of the speech, which took place right in the middle of West’s concert and reportedly drew boos. However, a number of snippets captured the most-surprising comments, including the line about voting for the New York real estate mogul turned president. One fan even threw a shoe at West, from his Yeezy line nonetheless. West being West, he…

Part 6 of 14 See all › Issue 39: The OGOD Issue Next: Inside A Covert Mission To Defeat Poachers In Nicaragua  BEFORE THE FACEBOOK THREATS, before the Twitter trolls, before the aggressive online shaming and accusations of terrorism, there were posters. They first appeared at the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles on a February day in 2015. The enlarged black and white photographs depicted a horrific scene: two men in black ski masks standing over another man—appearing to be a hostage—with a sack over his head. “Students For Justice In Palestine” read the text across the top of the poster, followed by the hashtag #JewHaters. The…

Click:Poly bag making machine Two years ago, Erica Mahnken and her fiancé Michael Favour, from the No More Pain Rescue in New Jersey, received a call from someone reporting an abused pit bull. The dog had been living with two supposed drug addicts in an abandoned house with no heat or electricity. When a snowstorm hit, the couple apparently left. “I guess they went to find somewhere warm to stay, and they had left the dog behind,” Mahnken told The Dodo. “So as soon as we got the phone call, we ran and got her.” Mahnken and Favour paid a visit to the home where they found a frightened, rail-thin, pitbull…

Marathons wreak havoc on city traffic. But what about pedestrians who just want to cross the street? Marathon organizers have developed a multistep system that is a pretty damn creative way of moving pedestrians across the race course without disrupting the race.  Here’s the system in action:  At one end, volunteers use a string to funnel racers toward one side to allow groups of pedestrians to cross. A fancier solution? Temporary bridges, such as these used during the London Marathon.

Jamie Ford is no stranger to public speaking appearances, but what he witnessed at Highland Park High School in Dallas, Texas, during a recent engagement was so out of line and so bizarre, he felt compelled to publicly share his unpleasant experience with the world via a blog post that quickly went viral.  Speaking to an assembly of freshman and sophomores on a Thursday morning, the best-selling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet endured what he called a “mob” of “a thousand students trolling me” as they clapped and cheered—not in a good way—as he tried to address them.  The most damning act came in the final question of…