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Your Tax Dollars At Work: Georgia Teacher Creates 'Fart Corner' In Classroom, Calls It The 'Gas Station'
An Atlanta elementary school teacher has created a designated “fart corner” where students can pass gas without leaving class or interrupting lessons, according to NBC.
Second grade teacher Candy Sydney Browning calls the area the “gas station,” while the specific spot is known as the “gusty winds area.” Students can quietly get up, walk to the corner, take care of business and return to their seats without asking permission.
Sydney Browning came up with the idea after noticing that bathroom trips and students reacting to classmates passing gas were taking time away from lessons. She had already started encouraging students to use the restroom before lessons so they would not need to leave as often. Passing gas, however, created another distraction. Students would point fingers, move away from one another and announce who they thought was responsible.
Rather than treating it as something embarrassing, Sydney Browning wanted students to understand that passing gas is simply a normal bodily function. “It’s normal,” she told them. “But you have to excuse yourself.” Creating a specific area gave students a discreet way to do that without stopping the lesson.
They do not need to raise their hands or ask for permission, which means Sydney Browning can continue teaching while the student briefly steps away.
NBC writes that the idea soon became a normal part of classroom life. Sydney Browning said the first student to use the station attracted a few smiles and curious looks from classmates. However, no one pointed fingers or made fun of him, and eventually students stopped paying attention altogether.
“It just became a norm,” she told TODAY. She said the station has become so ordinary that she sometimes forgets it is even there.
After Browning shared the setup on TikTok, the unusual classroom rule received widespread attention. Thousands of viewers reacted to the idea, with some praising it as a clever way to normalize bodily functions while keeping students focused. Several teachers said they wanted to introduce similar areas in their own classrooms, while others shared that they already had their own versions of a designated fart area.
Not everyone was convinced. Some commenters worried that students who use the corner frequently could feel embarrassed or become targets for teasing. Others questioned whether children could really ignore a classmate walking across the room specifically to pass gas. Sydney Browning believes making the practice routine is exactly what prevents it from becoming a bigger issue. When adults and students stop treating it as something shocking or funny, it becomes less interesting.
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Trump Complained About Big Oil Profits, But Dumped Exxon Stock On Ceasefire Day
By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com,
President Donald Trump’s investment accounts sold between $500,000 and $1 million of ExxonMobil stock on April 7, the same day Trump announced a ceasefire in the Iran war and hours before Exxon shares opened 6.5% lower, according to financial disclosures reviewed by CBS News.
Exxon closed at $163.91 on April 7 before Trump announced the ceasefire that evening and opened at $153.52 the following morning. The transaction was one of hundreds of thousands of dollars in purchases and sales involving Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and other oil and gas companies during the first half of 2026, according to filings with the Office of Government Ethics as reported by CBS News.
Those trades continued through a war that sent oil prices sharply higher and delivered some of the strongest earnings for U.S. oil majors since 2022. ExxonMobil and Chevron ultimately earned a combined $26.5 billion in the second quarter as the Iran war and disruption to oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz drove crude prices and refining margins sharply higher. Exxon reported $14.5 billion in net income, more than double its year-earlier profit and its best result in four years, while Chevron reported record net income of $12.2 billion, nearly five times its year-earlier result. Trump subsequently accused the companies of making “too much money” and demanded that they cut fuel prices.
CBS reported that Trump’s accounts executed roughly 3,600 stock and securities trades worth between $212 million and $695 million during the first quarter alone. Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee estimate that his oil and gas holdings increased in value from between $13 million and $46 million at the start of the year to between $17 million and $61 million by mid-August. The estimate does not include trades made during 2026.
The White House said Trump does not direct the trades. Spokesman Davis Ingle told CBS that the portfolio is managed independently by third-party financial institutions using computer-based model portfolios and that Trump and his family cannot influence when securities are bought or sold.
Trump has not placed his assets in a blind trust, and federal law does not prohibit presidents from owning or trading individual stocks. His energy holdings remain a small portion of a fortune Forbes estimates at more than $6 billion.
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Moody's Downgrades Baltimore City's Credit Rating Amid Population Collapse
Moody's Ratings downgraded Democrat-led Baltimore City's bond rating this week, highlighting a rapidly deteriorating financial situation as declining reserves, depleted utility funds, and mounting borrowing costs strain the crime-ridden metro area best known for the hit HBO series The Wire.
Local outlet Fox Baltimore reports that the ratings agency lowered Baltimore's rating from Aa2 to Aa3, citing "declining fund balance and cash levels across all government operations," with much of the deterioration concentrated in utility and internal-service funds.
Moody's explained that the city's finances have weakened since the COVID-19 pandemic, despite efforts and forecasts aimed at stabilizing reserves. The new Aa3 rating remains investment grade, but the downgrade suggests that the municipal bond market will demand a higher rate when lending to the city.
In a statement, the ratings agency said the downgrade "reflects the trend of declining fund balance and cash levels across all government operations, largely concentrated in the utility and internal service funds."
Economist Anirban Basu warned that the city's financial position is deteriorating and that this is "not great news."
"This is a city now with over $4 billion in outstanding bonds, outstanding debt in that form," said Basu. "And the decline in the bond rating from Aa2 to Aa3 simply means that when the city goes to float its next set of bonds, it's going to pay more interest or higher interest rates on those bonds, which makes financing infrastructure and other city expenditures more expensive."
Basu continued, "A lot of our fiscal concerns, including how much we want to spend on education, how much we need to spend on infrastructure, and the fact that other city funds have also been downgraded, including the water, sewer, and internal service funds, have been downgraded recently."
Related:
Fox Baltimore stopped short of addressing a much deeper structural problem: Baltimore has seen a massive exodus of residents, losing more than 70,000 residents, or about 11% of its population, over the past two decades.
That population collapse (back to 100-year lows) has eroded the city's tax base while leaving fewer residents to support its debt, infrastructure, and public-service obligations, making the city widely unaffordable for many of the productive residents, hence the population exodus.
Related:
Years of progressive policy experiments, elevated violent crime, and left-wing governance in City Hall have transformed the city into an epic fiscal mess and, by some standards, a failed city.
Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 18:50