Goodable

In a quiet suburb north of Brisbane, one family’s Christmas lights are lighting up more than just the street — they’re lighting up the internet.

Every year, the Stricklands transform their Burpengary East home into a full-blown holiday spectacle, complete with more than 60,000 lights, an 11-metre inflatable Santa, a 3D holographic fan, and moving beam lights that wouldn’t be out of place at a concert.

The result? Their house, nicknamed “Merry Strickland,” has become a viral sensation. One TikTok video showcasing the display has racked up nearly 190 million views, drawing fans from around the world and turning the family into unlikely Christmas celebrities.

David Strickland, the man behind the magic, told The Courier Mail the display has evolved dramatically over the past four years — and hit “next level” this season.

“Aside from all the sacrifice, time and money, it really is the joy it brings,” he said. “I mean, what else can you create that is so magical and brings in so many people?”

The house now has nearly 10,000 followers on Facebook, and videos of the display regularly go viral. “We’re building a bit of a profile now,” Strickland said.

But behind the sparkle is a serious amount of work. Strickland admits pulling it all together isn’t easy — or cheap. Still, for the joy it brings to others, he says it’s more than worth it.

And judging by the crowds who come from miles around to see it, plenty of Aussies agree.

A Brisbane home has transformed into a magical Christmas spectacle, with drone footage capturing the dazzling display.The home, belonging to the Strickland family, returned after a year off, bringing their magical, viral Christmas lights display to Burpengary East once again.Matthew Worship told Storyful that he has been to the house “heaps of times” and thought it would be “magical” to fly his drone and film the Christmas lights display.

A Drone Just Captured This Family's Magical Christmas Light Display In Brisbane, Australia

People

After decades of hard work and personal loss, 88-year-old Ed Bambas was still bagging groceries at a Michigan Meijer supermarket — until a viral video changed everything.

Bambas, a U.S. Army veteran and former General Motors employee, became an internet sensation after Australian influencer Sam Weidenhofer and Detroit-based creator Mike McKinstry tracked him down and shared his story online. Inspired by a comment left on one of Weidenhofer’s videos, the pair spent two hours searching the Brighton, Michigan, Meijer store until they found Bambas smiling behind a checkout counter.

What followed was an outpouring of support: a GoFundMe campaign raised an astonishing $1.7 million to support Bambas’ long-overdue retirement.

A Life of Service and Strength

Bambas retired from GM in 1999, but in 2012, the company’s bankruptcy wiped out his pension. Then, in 2018, he lost his wife Joan after a long illness — along with the savings he had spent on her medical care. With bills piling up, he returned to work.

“I didn't have enough income to pay for this place or all the other bills,” he told local outlet WXYZ. “It wasn’t hard for me to do it because I knew I had to. I’m fortunate God gave me a good enough body to stand for eight, eight and a half hours a day.”

Even now, he visits his wife’s grave almost every day. “I think my wife sits on my shoulder and helps me do the right thing,” he said.

A Viral Moment with a Massive Impact

The moment Bambas’ story hit social media, it resonated deeply. “No 88-year-old in America should work because they have to,” Weidenhofer said. “That breaks my heart.”

The GoFundMe page, which Bambas has yet to fully grasp, reads:

“Despite everything, Ed shows up every day with quiet dignity, strength, and perseverance. His story is a stark reminder that too many of our seniors, especially veterans, face incredible challenges just to survive.”

For now, Bambas is still adjusting to his sudden fame — and to the possibility that his working days may finally be over. As McKinstry put it, “I just wanted to give him a chance to retire. At least have some comfort.”

Mission accomplished.

UPDATE: Over $1.7 Million Raised For This 88-Year-Old Veteran To Retire From a Supermarket Job

A bar in Richmond, New Zealand had an unexpected visitor that turned heads and tickled funny bones. Sprig + Fern The Meadows found itself in the spotlight after a seal pup casually wandered into the establishment, much to the amusement of patrons. The whole episode was captured on surveillance footage and shared on social media, quickly going viral.

The video starts with the seal entering the bar and ducking under a table. A patron spots it and approaches, prompting the seal to scamper through more tables. Co-owner Bella Evans initially thought it was a dog since her bar is pet-friendly. But upon closer inspection, she realized it was a seal pup making itself at home.

The patron who first noticed the seal tried his best to guide it towards the exit but struggled to do so as the seal hid next to a toilet in a restroom before finding refuge under a dishwasher. Eventually, someone managed to catch it by coaxing it into a dog crate. Evans recounted that another customer fetched the crate from their home and used pizza toppings from the pub's special menu as bait. "I just went to my fiancé, I said, 'grab the salmon! Grab the salmon,'" Evans recalled humorously.

Later in the video, viewers see staff carrying the caged seal into a vehicle belonging to New Zealand's Department of Conservation (DOC). According to Evans and information from DOC, they were already on alert for this particular seal after receiving several reports earlier that day. The DOC safely relocated it back to Rabbit Island.

"There’s been this running joke that we’ve got the seal of approval," Evans quipped about their unusual guest visit.

The video not only provided entertainment but also highlighted effective community response and coordination with wildlife authorities when dealing with unexpected animal encounters.

Baby Seal Surprises Pub Patrons With Unexpected Visit

ABC News

A Labrador-mix named Sadie is lucky to be alive after a rip current carried her out to sea off the coast of San Diego — prompting a dramatic rescue that ended in tears, cheers, and tail wags.

Sadie slipped away from her family during a football game last month, and thanks to an AirTag on her collar, her owners were able to track her general location. But as surfers spotted a dog being pulled into the ocean near the Ocean Beach jetty, the situation turned critical.

Lifeguards and a U.S. Coast Guard crew sprang into action, launching boats and personal watercraft to search for the missing dog. After more than an hour, lifeguards Garrett Smerdon and Jack Alldredge were told they had just 10 minutes left to search.

“At that point, I kind of just said, ‘Please let us find this dog,’” Alldredge recalled.

Then, against the odds, they spotted something bobbing far offshore — it was Sadie, nearly a half-mile out near South Mission Beach. Exhausted but alive, she paddled toward her rescuers.

“She was super happy to see us,” said Smerdon. “She was tired.”

Back on shore, her owners, Alexis Barcellos and Brandon Valdez, were overwhelmed with emotion. “We kind of just started crying right away,” Barcellos said after hearing the words: “The dog is alive.”

Sadie suffered some injuries to her paws and nails while trying to escape the rocky jetty, but after a week of rest — and being carried everywhere — she’s on the mend. This week, she took a trip to the pet store and even managed her first post-rescue walk.

“We are just beyond grateful she is home safe with us,” Barcellos said.

Lost at Sea: Sadie the Dog Rescued After Being Swept Half a Mile Offshore

BBC News

Devon-based artist Emily Powell has transformed her family home in Brixham into a full-blown, immersive art installation — where every wall, floor, switch, and surface is hand-painted in her signature joyful style. Dubbed The Art of the Living, the house recently opened for a limited run of public viewings, with tickets in such high demand that the event quickly sold out and amassed a 500-person waiting list.

“It started off as just trying things out in our first home,” Powell said. “We were finally out of rented accommodation — I could suddenly let loose.”

And let loose she did. Over the past decade, Powell has painted every corner of the terraced house: birds soar up stairwell walls, Parisian skylines give way to Scottish flower fields, and circus animals in party hats cavort in her daughter’s playroom. Even the fridge, toilet, and light switches have become part of the canvas.

“It’s all about the colour,” she explained. “I chose the colour to balance out how I’m feeling and how I want the family to feel in certain rooms.”

Powell, known for her bold and vibrant canvases, has exhibited at London’s Portland Gallery and recently spoke at the Royal Academy of Arts. But this open house, with its merging of domestic life and artistic imagination, is unlike anything in a gallery.

Her husband, Jack Powell, admits the house’s technicolour personality has its quirks — like accidentally leaning on wet paint or struggling to spot toys against a painted floor. “There’s not a single item of clothing I own that doesn’t have paint on it,” he joked.

With every surface now covered, Powell says she’s preparing to sell the home and begin a new artistic adventure somewhere else — proving that, for her, creativity doesn’t stop at the canvas. It starts where you live.

This Artist Just Transformed Her Entire House: 'I Let Loose'

TikTok now offers breathing exercises, ocean sounds, and positive affirmations — all built into the app. These new mental wellness features are aimed at teens, but experts warn they may be less about self-care and more about keeping users glued to their screens.

The tools are part of TikTok’s new “Time and Well-being” section, where users can complete missions like limiting screen time or staying off TikTok at night to earn digital badges. TikTok says the features were designed with input from teens and mental health experts, and early testing shows nearly 40% of users engaged with the new tools.

“The algorithm is so powerful,” says Canadian TikTok creator and mental health advocate Zachery Dereniowski. “If you can do something positive while you’re on the app, that could be helpful — especially for younger users.”

TikTok says it has built in privacy protections and worked with global youth advisors.

Meanwhile, Dereniowski reminds teens to find balance offline. His own non-negotiables include exercising daily, getting seven hours of sleep, and unplugging to cook, talk with family or go outside. “No one feels good after doomscrolling,” he says. “Try different things. Find what helps you recharge.”

Tiktok Introduces New Wellness Features To Promote Healthy Habits

Science Alert

In a breakthrough that challenges decades of thinking on mental illness, scientists have identified a single gene — GRIN2A — that may directly cause psychiatric disorders when mutated.

Researchers from Leipzig University, leading the world’s largest study of GRIN2A patients, found that mutations in this gene are associated with conditions like schizophrenia, anxiety, and mood disorders — often appearing in childhood or early adolescence, far earlier than typical onset. What’s more, these symptoms can occur in the absence of other neurological issues like epilepsy or intellectual disability, which GRIN2A mutations have previously been known to cause.

“Our current findings indicate that GRIN2A is the first known gene that, on its own, can cause a mental illness,” said co-lead author Johannes Lemke.

Of the 121 people studied, 25 had a diagnosed mental illness, and nearly all carried a non-functional or “null” version of the gene. The research suggests that some psychiatric disorders — long assumed to result from hundreds of interacting genes — may, in rare cases, be tied to a single genetic culprit.

Intriguingly, four individuals who were treated with L-serine, an amino acid that supports the gene’s receptor function in the brain, showed measurable improvements in their psychiatric symptoms — including the disappearance of hallucinations and remission of paranoia.

While more research is needed, the study offers new hope for personalized treatments and earlier diagnoses based on genetic screening. It was published in Molecular Psychiatry.

Scientists Say They've Uncovered The First Gene Directly Linked to Mental Illness

A newly spotted jaguar has been documented in southern Arizona — the fifth in 15 years — reigniting hope for the endangered species' recovery in the United States.

Captured by a remote camera in November 2025 near a watering hole, the big cat was identified by its unique rosette spot pattern, much like a human fingerprint. The discovery was announced by the University of Arizona’s Wild Cat Research and Conservation Center, which monitors rare jaguar appearances north of the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We're very excited,” said Susan Malusa, who leads the center’s jaguar and ocelot project. “It signifies this edge population of jaguars continues to come here because they're finding what they need.”

Jaguars once roamed parts of the American Southwest, but their U.S. population has been virtually extinct for over a century. The few seen in Arizona are typically males dispersing from Mexico. The team hopes to gather scat for genetic testing to determine this individual’s sex and dietary habits.

As apex predators, jaguars are considered indicator species — their presence reflects the overall health of the ecosystem. Malusa warned, however, that climate change and border barriers could disrupt migratory paths and access to water, putting the species at risk.

Federal officials revised protected jaguar habitat in 2024, reducing it to about 1,000 square miles in Arizona. Despite this, recent detections like this one — and another caught on trail camera in 2024 — show the elusive cats may still be returning. In a rare sighting last year, the famous jaguar “El Jefe” was confirmed to have crossed back into the U.S.

“This species is recovering,” Malusa said. “We still have a chance to get it right and keep these corridors open.”

Jaguars are the only big cats native to the Americas and the third-largest cats in the world, behind lions and tigers.

New Jaguar Spotted In Southern Arizona, Marking Fifth Sighting In 15 Years

Talker News

A new AI-driven listening system is poised to become a major tool in the battle against wildlife poaching in central Africa, using sound to track gunshots and alert rangers in real time.

The system, developed by researchers from Cornell University’s K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics and the Elephant Listening Project, uses a network of autonomous recording units (ARUs) — low-power microphones spread across rainforests in Gabon, Cameroon, and the Republic of Congo — to detect the sound of illegal gunfire from poachers.

"The proposed system utilizes a web of ARUs deployed across the forest, each performing real-time detection, with a central hub that handles more complex processing," said Naveen Dhar, who leads the project.

Tackling the Noise of the Jungle

Rainforests are among the noisiest environments on the planet. Cracking branches, falling trees, and dripping water constantly compete with the sounds of birds, bugs, and animals — and have proven a nightmare for traditional gunshot detection systems. These systems often produce too many false alarms, wasting valuable time and resources.

To fix that, Dhar and his team created a lightweight neural network capable of running directly on the microphones’ microprocessors. It scans incoming audio for “gunshot-like” signals and filters them in real time. If the system suspects a gunshot, it triggers a verification process.

Nearby microphones check for the same sound, and if multiple devices confirm it, a central hub pinpoints the location. The system then sends GPS coordinates to rangers on the ground, allowing for rapid response to poaching threats.

Real-Time, Low-Cost, and Scalable

The technology has been designed to be energy-efficient and adaptable to low-power hardware in remote regions — an essential feature for large-scale deployment in vast forests. Dhar says the goal is to create an open-source, affordable system that can work anywhere in the world.

"Down the road, the device can be used as a tool for rangers and conservation managers, providing accurate and verifiable alerts for on-the-ground intervention along with low-latency data on the spatiotemporal trends of poachers," Dhar explained.

Future updates to the system could allow it to recognize specific types of guns, as well as other human threats like chainsaws or vehicle engines, expanding its utility in broader conservation efforts.

From Lab to Field

The project is still under development, but early results are promising. Dhar is expected to present his findings at a joint meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and the Acoustical Society of Japan in Honolulu, Hawaii.

If successful in field tests, the system could offer conservation teams one of the most effective tools yet for combating poaching in real time, providing not just reactive capabilities but valuable data on when and where poaching is happening.

By turning the forest’s soundscape into a live information network, the team hopes to shift the balance — helping rangers get to the scene faster, and giving endangered species like elephants a fighting chance.

Microphones in Rainforests are Stopping Illegal Poaching With Real-Time AI Audio Tracking

A windswept expanse of rock high in Bolivia’s Andes has just been confirmed as the largest dinosaur tracksite ever recorded — a staggering prehistoric snapshot capturing the final days of the dinosaurs.

In Torotoro National Park, researchers have catalogued nearly 18,000 individual tracks at the Carreras Pampa tracksite, left by small- and medium-sized theropods — two-legged, mostly carnivorous dinosaurs — some 70 million years ago, shortly before the asteroid that ended their reign.

“This is one of the premier dinosaur tracksites in the world,” wrote a joint US-Bolivian team led by paleontologist Raúl Esperante of the Geoscience Research Institute, whose findings were published in PLOS ONE.

The site breaks multiple records:

16,600 three-toed prints across more than 1,300 trackways

1,378 swim tracks, where dinosaurs paddled through shallow waters

289 isolated prints, claw scrapes, tail drags, and other rare impressions

All of them were made by theropods, the group that includes T. rex, Velociraptor, and today’s birds.

A Perfect Fossil Storm

The location was once the muddy shoreline of a freshwater lake. Its unique mix of soft, carbonate-rich mud and fine silicates created ideal conditions for preserving footprints: wet enough for animals to leave deep impressions, but firm enough for those marks to hold their shape until buried by later sediment.

That rare combination, scientists say, allowed not just footfalls but tail drags, claw marks, and swim scrapes to remain frozen in time for tens of millions of years.

Even more remarkable, the site was never disturbed by later overlying tracks — preserving individual behaviors in crisp detail.

“The tail traces suggest that dinosaurs exhibited some form of locomotive behavior in response to sinking into soft substrate,” the researchers noted. In some cases, their tails dragged as they stumbled through the mud. In others, scratch marks show them paddling through shallow water, barely touching the lakebed below.

Tracks vary in size from tiny 10 cm prints to footprints over 30 cm long, most belonging to human-sized theropods that likely stood around 1.5 to 2 meters tall. The footprints are generally aligned in two main directions, indicating dinosaurs were moving back and forth along the shoreline — likely feeding, patrolling, or searching for water.

In total, the team identified 11 distinct track types, some even showing sharp turns or sudden changes in gait — details rarely preserved at other sites.

A Window Into a Lost World

While fossilized bones offer clues about dinosaur anatomy, tracksites like Carreras Pampa give scientists something much more intimate: behavior.

It’s not just what these dinosaurs looked like — it’s how they moved, how they swam, how they slipped in the mud or dragged their tails when the going got tough. That kind of insight is rare and helps reconstruct what these animals were actually doing in their environments.

The research team says Carreras Pampa now qualifies as a Lagerstätte — a scientific term for fossil sites of exceptional preservation and richness.

They call it both an ichnologic concentration (for the sheer number of tracks) and an ichnologic conservation Lagerstätte (for how well those tracks reveal the behavior of extinct animals).

With its record-setting number of theropod prints, swim tracks, and preservation variety, Carreras Pampa doesn’t just add to the fossil record — it redefines what’s possible to discover about the daily lives of dinosaurs.

And in doing so, it brings one ancient lakebed — and the creatures who once roamed its muddy edges — vividly back to life.

Scientists Uncover 18,000 Tracks at the World's Largest Dinosaur Tracksite

Dolphins get chatty when they’re learning something new.

That’s the takeaway from a new study by Italian researchers who found that bottlenose dolphins in captivity increase their vocalizations during enrichment activities like training, play, and feeding. The findings, published in PLOS ONE, could lead to better practices for improving dolphin welfare in marine parks and aquariums.

“Our findings show that dolphins tend to ‘speak’ much more during structured moments like training, feeding, or play,” said lead author Dr. Francesco Di Nardo of Marche Polytechnic University. “It reveals how closely their vocal activity reflects their social and emotional engagement.”

The team monitored seven dolphins — two males and five females — at Oltremare Marine Park in Riccione, Italy, over a 24-hour period. Using acoustic analysis, they tracked the dolphins’ vocal patterns and matched them against their activity schedule.

The result: dolphins "talked" significantly more during organized activities than they did during downtime. This included a rise in the number, variety, and duration of whistles and pulses, the two main types of dolphin sounds.

“These vocalizations vary with social context, environmental conditions, external stimuli, and communication,” said Di Nardo. “They reflect dolphins’ cognitive and behavioral complexity.”

In other words, when dolphins are active and engaged — whether they're learning something new, coordinating with each other, or interacting with humans — they become more vocal. Researchers believe this increase in communication suggests higher motivation, stronger social coordination, and emotional involvement.

The study adds to a growing body of evidence that dolphins are not just intelligent but deeply social creatures. And while enrichment is already a part of managing captive dolphins, understanding how their vocal behavior responds to different activities could help zoos and aquariums design better welfare programs.

“Captive dolphins require enrichment activities, such as training sessions and play interactions,” Di Nardo said. “But best practices could be improved with a more detailed understanding of what activities motivate and engage them.”

The research team also released their full database of recorded dolphin sounds, hoping it will serve as a tool for future studies.

“Working with these highly social animals is truly inspiring,” Di Nardo said. “They remind us how much we can learn about the marine environment and the relationships among its inhabitants.”

He acknowledged that the study had limits, including its small sample size and short duration. But he believes future research that compares different types of enrichment across various environments could offer even deeper insights.

For now, the study offers a clear message: dolphins are at their most vocal when they’re engaged — and keeping them active and stimulated might be key to keeping them happy.

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