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The Continue and Persist Letter. A official-looking legal letter that encourages and uplifts people, one that tells people to keep doing what they’re doing! Surprise someone you appreciate by sending them a Continue and Persist Letter.
posted by Stark on Dec 2, 2024 - 8 comments

In the end, this is all that really matters: my most important video in 12 years (Louis Rossmann, Piped/YouTube/Invidious, 9m41s) in which Louis thanks a departing employee and wishes him well with his future endeavours. Corporate America take note: this is how it's done.
posted by flabdablet on Mar 21, 2024 - 4 comments

First:

Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov
    Biography

Second:

Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov
    NYT obituary

And oh, if ever there was a time we needed another one, two, three or more of such Russians, now comes to mind... [more inside]
posted by y2karl on Mar 11, 2022 - 18 comments

There is no real guidebook for a woman alone in her home. No one threw me a shower. To give me pots and pans. The ones I’d left behind and couldn’t afford to replace. No one to give me hammers and socket wrenches. No one told me about furnace filters or gutter cleaning or caulking. There was only me and a house and a vast gap of knowledge. Single homeowner Lyz Lenz thanks the dads of YouTube. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna on Sep 15, 2021 - 54 comments

Most of them did the lion’s share of the work and were angry with their partner. Yet many of them told me they were “grateful.” [more inside]
posted by a strong female character on May 7, 2019 - 146 comments

"I got fifteen lemons in the mail from a California friend with a lemon tree. This is what I did with them." An illustrated essay by MeFi's Own jessamyn (further story background on mefi projects). Includes secret messages, ideas for a lemon menagerie, and a variety of foods/meals. Also features community, and friends near and far. 🍋
posted by rangefinder 1.4 on Apr 23, 2019 - 52 comments

This study investigates the strains of financial distress on marital quality, and explores gratitude as a mitigating factor in these situations, when escalating spousal relation patterns might become increasingly negative.
posted by TruthfulCalling on Nov 19, 2018 - 7 comments

The Merci Train was a train of 49 French railroad boxcars filled with tens of thousands of gifts of gratitude from French citizens sent to the US in 1949. They were showing their appreciation for the 700+ American boxcars of relief goods sent to them by Americans in 1948 via a project calledFriendship Train. Each of the 48 American states at that time received one of the gift-laden box cars. Many of those boxcars still exist. [more inside]
posted by jessamyn on Mar 23, 2017 - 27 comments

Robert H. Frank, professor of economics at Cornell University, for The Atlantic: Why Luck Matters More Than You Might Think. "...the luckiest among us appear especially unlikely to appreciate our good fortune. According to the Pew Research Center, people in higher income brackets are much more likely than those with lower incomes to say that individuals get rich primarily because they work hard. Other surveys bear this out: Wealthy people overwhelmingly attribute their own success to hard work rather than to factors like luck or being in the right place at the right time." [more inside]
posted by amnesia and magnets on Apr 15, 2016 - 109 comments

New York Times Sunday Review Opinion piece "The Selfish Side of Gratitude" by Barbara Ehrenreich "Perhaps it’s no surprise that gratitude’s rise to self-help celebrity status owes a lot to the conservative-leaning John Templeton Foundation. At the start of this decade, the foundation, which promotes free-market capitalism, gave $5.6 million to Dr. Emmons, the gratitude researcher. It also funded a $3 million initiative called Expanding the Science and Practice of Gratitude through the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, which co-produced the special that aired on NPR. The foundation does not fund projects to directly improve the lives of poor individuals, but it has spent a great deal, through efforts like these, to improve their attitudes."
posted by pjsky on Jan 3, 2016 - 50 comments

Here is the story of The Day Jacques Pépin Saved My Life. That’s how I tell it, anyway —at parties, over dinner, on those occasions when a friend finds himself drowning in his own life and I’m cast as an unlikely dispenser of wisdom. That’s when I try to assure him that salvation can come in the most unlikely of guises: in the guise, say, of Jacques Pépin, who, when I, too, was lost and deep in dark waters, came along and showed me the way to back to the light.
posted by Shmuel510 on Jul 3, 2015 - 24 comments

De-cluttering your house with love: "Marie Kondo has built a huge following in her native Japan with her “KonMari” method of organizing and de-cluttering. Clients perform a sort of tidying-up festival: time set aside specifically to go through belongings. Each object is picked up and held, and the client needs to decide if it inspires joy. If it doesn’t, it needs to go." [more inside]
posted by flex on Jan 11, 2015 - 140 comments

give me gratitude or give me debt [more inside]
posted by flex on Sep 1, 2014 - 43 comments

Congratulations on winning our sweepstakes! We’re pleased to welcome you on a most-expenses-paid, open-ended trip to The Future, where you will enjoy fantastic technologies, abundant luxuries, exhilarating freedoms and opportunities, an inexhaustible supply of entertainment, and other truly ludicrous privileges. Offer may expire without notice. Please take advantage while supplies last. Prizes may not be exactly as described; some may be replaced with others for logistical reasons, but the approximate value remains the same. For example, instead of squirrels, you may receive additional birds. Bartering of prizes is allowed and encouraged.
posted by hapax_legomenon on Aug 14, 2014 - 10 comments

Writer David Dickerson tells the first time he used the word "homeless" to describe his situation to a stranger, and what effect that stranger's kindness had on his life. Now he's trying to reach out with an open letter of gratitude in hopes that he can find the amazing person who helped him. [slyt | via]
posted by quin on Apr 11, 2014 - 8 comments

Elizabeth Warren has been one of few public figures famously willing to put actual rhetorical force behind the notion that behind every American success story lies a web of civic and personal support, and probably a million small kindnesses as well. John Scalzi takes this notion and runs with it: he's written a thorough and eloquent accounting of how he's gotten to where he is, from a very humble background, and how that made the duty to pay it forward obvious and inescapable.
posted by tempythethird on Jul 23, 2012 - 245 comments

Stranded on the island of New Britain during WWII, Fred Hargesheimer was rescued by native islanders, who hid him for 8 months from occupying Japanese forces. Fred never forgot the kindness he received, and in 1960, he used his family's vacation money to return to the island to personally thank the people who saved him. Thus began a 48 year relationship between Hargesheimer and the people of New Britain. [more inside]
posted by The Light Fantastic on Mar 8, 2008 - 15 comments

A Story of Survival. The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous was established to fulfill the traditional Jewish commitment to hakarat hatov, the searching out and recognition of goodness .
posted by hortense on May 17, 2006 - 3 comments