Posts by Jenifer Sako

Brody Bergner doesn’t take to strangers well, but he was looking forward, with help from his mom, to visiting Disney World. Lauren (his mom) talked to Brody for months about what her 6 year old with autism could expect when he got there. But, knowing how sensitive her son is to crowded and noisy places,...

Although there are laws protecting tenants from unscrupulous landlords, many renters find themselves at a disadvantage when rents are unexpectedly raised. However, real estate professional Rachel Bell was able to use her knowledge of the law to school her landlord when he invoked scripture to raise her rent. Her landlord pinned the rent hike to...

The beautiful, brightly colored Spix’s Macaw (also knows as the little blue macaw) was marked as critically endangered in 1994. Now, the species was confirmed by a new study to be extinct in the wild. The gorgeous bird was made famous as Blu, the lead in the movie Rio. The whole plot of the film...

The Harry Potter franchise started over 20 years ago with a series of books. Since then, we have seen movies, merch and theme parks. How glorious! But even if you claim one of the houses of Godric Gryffindor, Salazar Slytherin, Rowena Ravenclaw or Helga Hufflepuff, and you say you have nary a trace of Muggle...

Some words are simply too coarse for the royal family to utter. Social anthropologist Kate Fox revealed which words are banned, and, more importantly, why, in her book, Watching the English. 1. Tea Around the United Kingdom, tea is used to refer to the evening meal. This is considered a custom of the working class....

Streaming TV shows and movies is becoming a preferred way of watching them and more services with more selection are coming on the market soon. But the services do cost some money. Fortunately, there’s a way to shave off a few dollars. MoneyTalksNews writer Donna Freedman explains her hack for saving money on Netflix and...

The Pomodoro Technique is a great time-management tool, but some people find it a little clunky and give up on it after a while. If you’re not familiar, the traditional version involves focusing on a task for 25-minutes, then taking a 5-minute break. After four Pomodoros, you get a longer, half-hour break. People use different...

As families across the United States start a new school year, thoughts of when the next school shooting will occur mar the usual optimistic anticipation. Many conversations center around prevention, gun laws and protection. What will it take to make sure another shooting, like the ones at Highlands Ranch STEM or Stoneman Douglas High School,...

Last year, The Economist proclaimed, “Long summer holidays are bad for children, especially the poor.” This was not the first time such a claim had been made about how kids lose much of what they’ve learned over the year during breaks from school. Lawmakers, too, are concerned. Each year, bills introduced at the state level...

It’s not a disease, condition or mental health problem. The Dunning-Kruger Effect is actually a psychological  response that prevents people from realizing how inept they are. The Dunning-Kruger Effect is basically this: the more incompetent someone is at something, the less likely they realize it. Instead, they believe they are nailing it. Social psychologist David...

The Okjökull glacier was dead, declared Oddur Sigurðsson, a geologist in the Icelandic Meteorological Office back in 2014. By then, the glacier had mostly disappeared. Fast forward five years and Sigurðsson and other scientists are hiking to the old summit to place a plaque commemorating it upon the volcano it once dominated. It is officially...

Cars and animals don’t mix, and when the two collide the results are disastrous–and the bigger the animal, the bigger the disaster. Reports claim car/animal collisions cost us billions of dollars every year. The responsibility for protecting all creatures, great and small, falls on us. Especially, when animals need to cross the roads we’ve built...

Fear of flying is its own phobia, and it can affect pretty much anyone. People who can ski double-black diamonds or actively seek out the highest, fastest rollercoasters can develop a fear of air travel. And sometimes flight anxiety is so severe, it can even curtail the desire to travel and see new places or...

It may seem like a straightforward chore, but you may actually be washing your frying pans and skillets wrong. Completely cleaning your oily cookware in the sink, along with your other dirty dishes, is actually bad for the environment, according to the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Here’s how to conserve...

If you’ve traveled overseas and ended up shopping for milk, you probably noticed something: Stores in Europe keep their milk on the shelves with the rest of the beverages, whereas American stores keep milk refrigerated. It may seem a little icky, but don’t let that stop you from drinking it. Their milk is safe stored...