The Checkup: This 12-Year-Old Cancer Patient Will Make You Cry
• Ugh. Life really isn’t fair sometimes. That’s the sentiment most everybody’s feeling after reading about (and watching) Talia Joy Castellano’s YouTube videos, in which the 12-year-old cancer patient offers makeup tutorials. What’s particularly heart-wrenching was her announcement earlier this summer that she now has two kinds of cancer in her body: neuroblastoma and pre-leukemia, which doctors say will eventually progress to become the full-blown disease. She says having the two cancers at once is pretty rare, and there’s not much doctors can do for her. She’s deciding whether to undergo some treatments, which may not do any good, or “just don’t do it and live the time I have remaining.” So sad. What keeps Talia going, in part, is her makeup (this kid has quite the stash), which she says she uses as a “wig” to give her confidence and keep her going. Her 150 videos have over 8 million views; Jezebel has a good sampling.
• Words that you’ll now find in the Oxford Dictionaries Online: “frankenfood” (a noun, meaning genetically modified food) and “locavore” (a noun, meaning a person who eats mainly locally grown food). The more you know.
• The New York Times explains why low-fat, low-sodium cheese is kinda gross. (I agree.)