The weight that a single word can carry is almost unfair. Volare. One of the most well-known songs in recorded music history is somehow the result of four syllables with Italian origins and Latin roots. The majority of people are familiar with it. Fewer people have taken the time to consider its true meaning or why it appears to go deeper than language typically can. In its most basic form, volare means “to fly.” That’s the neat, dictionary response. It simply appears as an infinitive verb, the kind you conjugate and move past, in travel phrase books and Italian grammar…
Author: Kelsey Myers
Kelsey Myers
Kelsey Myers is a Senior Editor at worldomep.org and a dedicated advocate for early childhood education whose work begins — and ends — with a simple belief: that the earliest years of a child's life matter more than almost anything else we can invest in. Based at a local school, Kelsey works daily alongside the children and families whose experiences inform everything she writes. She doesn't observe early education from a distance. She is inside it — in the classrooms, on the playgrounds, in the conversations between teachers and parents that shape how young children understand the world around them. That proximity gives her writing a warmth and specificity that purely policy-driven commentary rarely achieves. Through her writing at worldomep.org, Kelsey brings that same energy to readers — making the case, clearly and consistently, that early childhood education deserves far more attention than it typically receives. Kelsey shares her personal opinions on: https://x.com/Butterflyboule
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A certain type of podcast develops a small, devoted following of people who genuinely care about the topic, but it doesn’t follow trends, doesn’t employ a production company, and never quite makes it into the mainstream. That type of podcast was the BacktoFrontShow. From 2013 to 2020, it was hosted by Keir Whitaker and Kieran Masterton and produced 54 episodes with a focus on startup culture, web design, and web development. With some self-awareness, the hosts referred to themselves as “Kings of Silicon Gorge”—a lighthearted jab at the exaggerated mythology of Silicon Valley, delivered by two web veterans who obviously…
On Friday afternoon, a group of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, college baseball players were doing something no one had anticipated in the visiting dugout at Auburn’s Plainsman Park. They were triumphing. Loudly, comfortably, and with the kind of conviction that makes you question whether the outcome was truly that unexpected or if everyone else was simply not paying attention. In the first round of the NCAA Tournament, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Panthers defeated No. 4 national seed Auburn 13-8, their first tournament victory since 1999 and only the second in program history. They had a 25-31 record going into the game. Midway…
This week, something significant occurred in Frisco, Texas, and it had nothing to do with a single play on the field. After four days of annual spring meetings at its North Texas headquarters, the Big 12 Conference became the first Power Four conference to have all sixteen of its member schools sign participation agreements with the College Sports Commission. The College Sports Commission is a regulatory body that was established to bring some order to the name, image, and likeness landscape that has changed college athletics since the House v. NCAA settlement last summer. On paper, this milestone sounds bureaucratic,…
Pipe is one of the few English words with such quiet weight. It’s one of those words you use without giving it much thought, like “calling a plumber,” “watching a bagpiper at a wedding,” or “telling someone to shut up in a crowded room,” but the word itself has many meanings. A hollow metal tube buried beneath a city street, a carved wooden object a grandfather once smoked on the porch, a musical instrument with a sound that travels across open hills, or a channel through which digital data moves at speeds measured in fractions of a second are all…
The way Brent International School presents itself is intentional. No ostentatious advertising campaigns or large billboard advertisements. Situated approximately 25 kilometers south of Metro Manila in Barangay Mamplasan, Biñan, Laguna’s Brentville Subdivision, the campus exudes the calm assurance of a long-standing establishment. Brent is one of the Philippines’ oldest international schools, having been established in 1909. It still has things to prove more than a century later. The school has an ecumenical flavor rather than a strictly denominational one because of its affiliation with the Episcopal Church in the Philippines. The student body truly reflects the welcome for students of…
Once you know where the name Caraga originated, it becomes more difficult to ignore its weight. The Visayan term “kalagan”—a compound of “kalag,” which means soul or spirit, and “an,” which means land—is where the word originates. When combined, they roughly translate to “land of the spirited people,” and early Spanish chroniclers, seemingly impressed by what they saw, referred to the area as “land of the brave and fierce people.” It’s not common to incorporate that into a place’s identity. The majority of regions are named after colonial administrators, rivers, or mountains. Caraga’s name was inspired by the people who…
The name CALABARZON has a subtle sense of humor. It sounds almost like a place from a fantasy book when you say it out loud; it’s rolling, rhythmic, and a little exotic. However, the name is much more utilitarian than poetic. The initial syllables and letters of five Philippine provinces—Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, and Quezon—were combined to create this acronym. The letters “Ca” from Cavite, “la” from Laguna, “ba” from Batangas, “r” from Rizal, and “zon” from Quezon’s tail are all borrowed. Yes, it’s bureaucratic wording, but it stuck, and now a whole identity has developed around it. Located on…
A teen’s first online hangout, a middle schooler’s specially designed obstacle course, or a group of college friends who met in a Rec Room paintball arena and remained friends for years all likely existed somewhere in a virtual room that vanished after June 1. Globally, players have spent a total of 68,000 years on this platform over the last ten years. There, half a billion friendships were formed. It’s nearly impossible to retain the numbers in your mind. And it was all insufficient. On March 30, Rec Room, a cross-platform social gaming platform that allows users to create, socialize, and…
For many years, the mAadhaar app sat silently on hundreds of millions of Indian smartphones. It wasn’t flashy or particularly contemporary, but it was always there when someone needed to verify their identity at a government office, a hospital counter, or a hotel check-in desk. It fulfilled its purpose. The Unique Identification Authority of India, or UIDAI, has now confirmed that the app will soon be discontinued and replaced by a redesigned system that takes a very different approach to digital identity verification. The change is more than just a cosmetic one. When used for authentication, the old mAadhaar app…