Mom has always been honest and open about her past, which is why the detail she just dropped is so interesting: 

Mom just casually revealed she had 18 kids with another man before she married Dad. 

Whoa! It’s almost like she had an entirely different life before her and Dad got together. 

Last night, upon seeing a mother pushing triplets around in a stroller, Mom, without much fanfare at all, let it slip that she’d had triplets not once, but twice prior to starting her relationship with Dad. That led to her saying, “Yeah, I had…” stopping to do the math in her head, and then finishing, “Eighteen kids with the guy I was with before I met your father.” 

Surprised that we were treating it like it was a big deal, Mom continued, “Oh, I thought I told you about that,” then, in response to being asked, “Where are your 18 kids now?” she just shrugged and said, “Who knows. I haven’t thought about them in a while.” 

After briefly changing the subject to how she was excited for Christmas this year, the 18 previously unknown children were brought up again, at which point she nonchalantly disclosed that she had been the subject of a reality show called, “Eighteen’s Enough,” which ran for six seasons on the E! network and that two of the kids were named, “Jason” because she ran out of names she liked. 

Dang! It’s easy to just see your parents as being just your parents their entire lives, so it’s hard to imagine that at one time they were the parent of 18 other kids you’ve never met. This really makes Mom seem like a whole new person!

In 2022, I helped push through the international agreement to protect biodiversity. Wars and economic pressures can make nature seem like a ‘nice-to-have’. But it is a critical asset, and Cop17 must deliver real action

When I was five, property developers came to cut down the woods behind my home in La Tuque, Quebec. My mother encouraged me to climb one of the trees in protest, then told the developers, straight-faced, that there was nothing she could do when they asked her to get me down. A few days later, the tree was cut down anyway.

I thought about that tree in the early hours of a freezing Montreal morning in December 2022, as the gavel came down on a global agreement between nearly 200 countries to halt and reverse the loss of nature by 2030. I thought about how important nature is for our health, our food security and our economies, but also how much passion there is around protecting it, and how it has the power to inspire people all around the world.

Ghana may soon come calling for Trinidad and Tobago’s former captain and manager, who is proud of his CV since his days as a Premier League striker

Dwight Yorke wants you to stop calling him a former player. “I’m not a kid trying to get into management for the first time,” he says from his home in Dubai. “I’ve done that and I want that message to come across clearly.”

The message has a deadline. Carlos Queiroz left his job as Ghana head coach on 1 October and the Ghana Football Association is searching for his successor. Yorke is among the names under consideration, along with Pape Thiaw, Aliou Cissé and Walid Regragui, the former Morocco head coach, according to Ghanaian media.

Refused a work permit at Bournemouth, Pérez comes face to face with Liverpool’s head coach in Champions League

On Iñigo Pérez’s first day as a head coach he took a call from Andoni Iraola, just as he had every day for months. They had known each other for 22 years, lived in the same residency, come through the same academy and played in the same team; they had worked side by side, manager and assistant, and embarked on an adventure together. Now, though, Pérez was having to go it alone. At 36, he had become what his friend thought he would be from the moment they met, just not so soon. “He wished me luck and said he was there for me,” Pérez said, “said that if I ever needed anything …”

Well, maybe not anything.

Inspired by a gothic cathedral partly built using human bones, this gleaming monument to recycling boasts 62,000 bricks derived from construction waste – each made by the public during a two-day brick-making festival

Museums often try to reflect the world around them, but rarely are they made so literally of their surroundings as the new design museum in Ghent. Rising above the Belgian city’s medieval tiled rooftops like an angular white watchtower, the new building has vacuumed up the city’s condemned concrete frames, windows, car windscreens, sinks and old toilets, and transformed them, phoenix-like, into a gleaming monument to recycling.

“There’s nothing new about reuse,” says Andy Groarke, co-founder of Carmody Groarke, the London-based architects who designed the €20m (£17m) project with local firms Atama and Re-st. “We’ve just forgotten how to do it.”

DEN HAAG (ANP) - De politie bestudeert de aangifte van een cyberveiligheidsincident door winkelconcern Ahold Delhaize. Volgens een woordvoerder houdt de politie ook goed contact met het moederbedrijf van ketens als Albert Heijn, Etos en Gall & Gall over het incident. Het bedrijf haalde vanwege het cyberincident uit voorzorg systemen offline, waardoor veel webshops onbereikbaar waren en de bevoorrading van winkels in de problemen kwam.

Het is nog onduidelijk of de politie ook een onderzoek begint. Ahold Delhaize deed maandag formeel aangifte, ruim een week nadat het bedrijf verdachte activiteiten in zijn IT-systemen opmerkte. Het concern meldde die ontdekking wel binnen 24 uur aan het Nationaal Cyber Security Centrum (NCSC).

Het onderzoek van Ahold Delhaize naar het incident loopt nog. Het bedrijf meldde vooralsnog geen aanwijzingen te hebben dat gegevens van klanten, werknemers of partners zijn buitgemaakt.

PARIJS (ANP/AFP) - De Franse premier Sébastien Lecornu zegt dat de invoering van de avondklok in verschillende steden heeft bijgedragen aan de rust 's nachts. De avondklok wordt volgens hem dinsdag ingesteld op plekken waar de situatie dat vereist.

De beslissingen daarover worden ter plaatse genomen door de lokale autoriteiten, aldus de premier. De avondklok werd maandag ingesteld voor verschillende steden of delen van steden. De maatregel voor Nice geldt ook nog aankomende nacht. Voor een deel van Parijs was ook een avondklok ingesteld, maar die is inmiddels afgelopen.

De avondklokken waren een reactie op het geweld van afgelopen weekend. Zaterdag liepen op veel plekken in het land grote demonstraties tegen het regeringsbeleid uit op rellen en plunderingen. Op zondag ging het op sommige plekken opnieuw mis.

(meer…)

Het bericht Maarten Wolterink verscheen eerst op Frontaal Naakt.

Keith Midson has added a photo to the pool:

Cormorants of Taroona.