Welcome, Gnusies and friends! I’m starting today’s GNR with a quote from a piece published in the New Yorker in May, by author and journalist Andrew Marantz:
[When there is a political paradigm shift, what] once seemed impossible now seems inevitable. Such seismic shifts appear to happen, on average, once a generation. If this pattern holds, then we’re just about due for another one.
Gary Gerstle, an American historian at the University of Cambridge, has argued, in the journal of the Royal Historical Society, that “the last eighty years of American politics can be understood in terms of the rise and fall of two political orders.” The first was the “New Deal order,” which began in the thirties, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt established a social safety net that Americans eventually took for granted. Next came the “neoliberal order,” during which large parts of that safety net were unravelled. ...By the late eighties, the ideas that had been thought of as Reaganism were starting to be understood as realism. A new order had taken hold.
A political order is bigger than any party, coalition, or social movement. In one essay, Gerstle and two co-authors describe it as “a combination of ideas, policies, institutions, and electoral dynamics . . . a hegemonic governing regime.” ✂️
“We’ve already seen, under Trump, an early version of what a right-wing post-neoliberal order might look like,” Gerstle said. “Ethno-nationalist, anti-democratic, trending toward authoritarianism.” A progressive version of post-neoliberalism is “harder to nail down,” he continued, but “we might be starting to see it unfold under Biden.” He noted the irony that “for all of Obama’s charisma, and Joe Biden’s reputation for political caution and for stumbling over his words, Biden seems likelier to emerge as the larger-than-life figure. This is where personality matters less than circumstance. Obama was stuck within a preëxisting order, but Biden is inheriting a more fluid moment.”
This makes sense to me, especially since I’ve so often read our own GNR writer Mokurai sounding very similar notes.
It’s early in this possible dawn of a “new order,” but with the passage and signing of the infrastrucure bill, coming just a few months after Biden’s American Rescue Plan, I think we’re beginning to see what it might actually look like and how it might be achieved. Each progressive executive action and each progressive legislative win builds on the one before, and they then begin to shift the national mood from distrust and apathy to a new belief in the power of our government — and crucially, in the power of individual citizens — to fix what’s broken in our nation.
On that hopeful note, I invite you to settle in with your favorite morning beverage and read about many more signs of progressive momentum — in politics, labor, the environment, and more, both here and around the world.
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Good news in politics
Slow and steady wins the race. (Thanks, Aesop — 🐢 vs. 🐇) And, of course, thanks Biden and thanks, Nancy!
Patience, persistence pay off as Biden brings infrastructure package across finish line
From the Washington Post:
Less than 10 months after taking office and several days after his party suffered a stinging defeat in the Virginia governor’s race, President Biden achieved one of his main goals: a bipartisan agreement that would make major investments in all 50 states for years to come.
Shortly before midnight on Friday, as the House passed the bill 228-206 with the backing of more than 10 Republicans, Biden’s slumping political fortunes appeared to suddenly change. After seeing his poll numbers slide for weeks, he had suddenly fulfilled a core campaign promise and notched a significant victory after months of legislative gridlock.
“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to suggest that we took a monumental step forward as a nation,” Biden said Saturday morning at the White House with Vice President Harris. “We did something long overdue, that has long been talked about in Washington, but never actually done.”
Five Things You Didn’t Know Were in “Build Back Better”— and five Republican amendments that are dead on arrival
Dems being awesome, Rethugs being total butts, as usual.
From Mother Jones:
ProPublica reporter Lydia DePillis went through the bill and noted plenty of under-the-radar items:
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Preventing new moms from being cut off Medicaid for a year following a birth
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More than $1 billion toward pandemic prevention
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A huge grant to study and strengthen manufacturing supply chains
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A commitment to mental health treatment and suicide prevention, including $2.5 billion to address community violence and trauma interventions
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$95 million for programs to increase composting
And from the Rethugs?
- Rescind all appropriated funds in the bill
- Prevent all tax changes in the bill
- Eliminate universal pre-K
- No funding to bolster the ability of the IRS to pursue high-income tax cheats
- Eliminate block grants for environment and climate justice
- Eliminate new taxes and fines on oil and natural gas production
[And last but not least:]
BREAKING NEWS: House Jan. 6 committee issues subpoenas to 6 top Trump advisers, including pair involved in Willard hotel ‘command center’
Remember, if these minions of TFG ignore the subpoenas, they’ll be referred to the DOJ for possible criminal prosecution, just like Bannon.
From The Washington Post:
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection issued subpoenas Monday to six top advisers to former president Donald Trump, including two who were active in the Willard hotel “command center” where Trump’s loyal backers oversaw efforts in January to overturn the 2020 election.
Those subpoenaed to provide testimony and documents include scholar John Eastman, who outlined a legal strategy in early January to delay or deny Joe Biden the presidency, and former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik, who led efforts to investigate voting fraud in key states. Both were present at the Willard during the first week in January.
The list also includes three members of the Trump reelection campaign: campaign manager Bill Stepien; Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the campaign; and Angela McCallum, the national executive assistant to Trump’s campaign. The committee also issued a subpoena for Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
Economy adds more than 5.5 million jobs in 9 months under Biden
From The American Independent:
...the latest report [from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics]...found that [the job growth numbers released for August and September] were too low and that the actual number of jobs added in September was closer to 312,000. The August totals were also revised up, from 366,000 jobs gained to 483,000, meaning 235,000 more jobs were added over those two months than previously estimated.
In total, this means more than 5.5 million jobs have been added since Biden's inauguration, compared with the more than 3 million jobs lost during Donald Trump's single term in the White House.
Commenting on the jobs report, Biden said Friday, "This did not happen by accident or just because. We laid the foundation for this recovery with my American Rescue Plan." ✂️
The Washington Post noted Friday that about 80% of the jobs lost during the COVID-19 pandemic have now been recovered.
Experts say that enactment of other pieces of Biden's economic agenda — including the $550 billion bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better climate and jobs package — would help support millions of additional jobs.
Powerful union calls for Supreme Court expansion
ICYMI, this good news is from a very encouraging piece from DKos staffer Joan McCarter, published on Saturday. SEIU President Mary Kay Henry is clearly a powerful truth-teller and a voice to be reckoned with.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU)—one of North America’s largest labor unions—announced its support for expanding the court in comments to the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, urging that panel to restore the court’s legitimacy. Writing for the group, International President Mary Kay Henry represents the “union of approximately two million working women and men.” That’s two million workers who “stand in the unique position of being the targets of a long-running, coordinated, and well-funded effort to strip them of their organizing and other rights via federal-court litigation.” What’s more, Henry writes, “many SEIU members, as BIPOC citizens, are also targets of an additional campaign to strip them of their voting rights. That anti-voter campaign, like the anti-worker effort, has found success with this Supreme Court.”
“We firmly believe that this democracy rests on a razor’s edge and came, within the last 12 months, very close to falling apart,” Henry tells the commission, in large part because the “interests of poor and working people have been largely shut out from government and the law, feeding the rise of anti-democratic forces to which people throughout history have turned in desperation.” Henry pleads with the commission to “not forget where we have been in the last twelve months” and to “not get lost in all the academic talk and mundaneness of Zoom meeting rooms.”
Henry makes a powerful argument for substantive reform, for the commission to not do the thing most presidential commissions do: “Please be wary of meaningless gestures at reform and of resistance to change that is camouflaged as seemingly reasonable restraint, and please interrogate what may be even your own inherent biases against change.” Such gestures include a reform the commission seems to be considering, instituting term limits, which is nibbling around the edges of a 6-3 majority that is intent on rolling back decades of progress. Spending valuable time and political capital on such a limited effort, that could ultimately be rejected by that extremist majority anyway, puts that idea “in the category of apparent reforms that may achieve nothing.”
“We believe it is long past time to expand the size of the Court,” Henry writes on behalf of the SEIU. “You have an opportunity to lend your credibility to serious suggestions that can lead to real change. Please do not waste it.”
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Good news from my corner of the world
Oregon Supreme Court upholds Portland’s renter relocation policy
This is great news. Portland renters need all the help they can get.
From Oregon Public Broadcasting:
The Oregon Supreme Court has upheld Portland’s renter relocation policy, allowing the city to continue requiring landlords to pay renters’ moving fees if they enact a major rent hike or evict them without cause.
The 5-to-1 ruling delivered a fatal blow to a four-year-long legal push by Portland-area landlords to kill the city ordinance. The council unanimously passed the rule in 2017, framing the policy as a tool to protect tenants from being priced out of their homes in the middle of an affordable housing crisis. One week after its passage, two landlords sued the city, arguing that the rule violated a state ban on local rent control.
The case has been snaking through the courts ever since. Multnomah County Circuit Court judges dismissed the suit and the Oregon Court of Appeals upheld that ruling last July.
In their Thursday ruling, the Oregon Supreme Court sided with the lower courts. The majority of justices found that the state law barring local jurisdictions from enacting rent control does not prevent policies that may discourage — but not outright ban — rent hikes.
In Oregon’s crowded specialty tea industry, Young Mountain Tea savors its connection to farmers in rural India
From The Oregonian:
[Raj Vable, an electrical engineer who is the son of Indian immigrants, earned] a master’s in environmental studies at the University of Oregon, [hoping] to “create holistic solutions to challenges rural communities face.”
In 2013, Vable partnered with Avani, an India-based nonprofit, to organize Kumaon farmers to grow tea to sell in the United States. The result was Young Mountain Tea, based in Springfield.
“From the beginning the focus has always been on figuring out how we can create sustainable livelihoods for rural communities in the mountains,” Vable said.
Tea was an obvious choice: “One, because these are farming communities, so doing something in agriculture made sense,” he said. “And two, because it was a crop they were already familiar with, so we wouldn’t be introducing new concepts or skills.” ✂️
“The depth of the relationship and the commitment we have to the people we work with is what sets us apart from traditional tea companies,” he said. “We’re really committing all the way to transforming the very model that creates tea...”
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Good news from around the nation
Feds Seize Millions in Sprawling Ransomware Bust
From The Daily Beast:
A hacker linked to a Russian ransomware gang that brazenly attacked more than 1,000 U.S. companies in July has been charged for his cybercrime campaigns, according to court documents unsealed Monday.
The hacker, Yaroslav Vasinskyi, a Ukrainian national, wrote the software behind the Russian-linked REvil gang’s ransomware attack against the software company Kaseya. That attack ended up infecting thousands of companies and kept them with limited operations for weeks, according to a grand jury indictment.
To date, REvil ransomware has been used in attacks against 175,000 computers around the world with at least $200 million paid, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Monday. ✂️
U.S. officials have also seized $6.1 million in connection with hacking campaigns linked to another cybercriminal, Russian national Yevgeniy Polyanin...The Biden administration has been working to go after ransomware gangs ever since Russian hacking gangs upped the ante in recent months. ✂️
Brett Callow, a security analyst at Emsisoft, a security firm that was involved in helping victims recover from the Kaseya ransomware attack, ...[said]: “The pace of disruption and arrests seems to be accelerating which is a necessary step in the fight against ransomware,” Callow told The Daily Beast. “Bounties, arrests, offensive operations, cryptocurrency seizures and other disruption actions all act as a deterrent to ransomware actors—and we seem to be seeing these things more and more often. We’re not out of the woods yet as far as ransomware goes, but it seems we may finally be heading in the right direction.”
Study: Low-income parents spend direct payments on essentials for children
This is hardly news to us Gnusies, but it’s good to have some solid research to counter the persistent myth of “welfare queens.”
From The Optimist Daily:
New research from Washington State University (WSU) expands upon [earlier] findings with a study that finds that when low and middle-income parents receive no-strings-attached payments, they increase spending on their children.
To come to this conclusion, WSU sociologist Mariana Amorim analyzed the spending of recipients of Alaska Permanent Fund payments. These payments are the closest thing the US has to an official universal basic income program. Alaskan residents receive dividends funded by state oil revenues which vary based on income and family size.
Looking at these payments, Amorim found that a majority of low- and middle-income parents who received money made more education, clothing, recreation, and electronic purchases for their children. Spending habits were analyzed using 20 years of data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys around the time payments went out to families. ✂️
This study further counters the idea that UBI leads families to reckless spending habits. Research continues to demonstrate that direct payments help families afford essentials and save for long-term goals like going back to school, starting a new career, or affording a downpayment on a home.
“The data suggests that lower-income parents are responsible using cash payments, so we don’t need to be so afraid to give poor people money that can help their families,” said Amorim.
Americans Want Racial Diversity More Than Ever Before
Aside from the good polling news, this piece makes an excellent point about the influence of media on Americans’ perception of race relations: “being aware of battles doesn't mean that people want to pick fights with their neighbors—it's an indication that they follow the news.” Another reason we need to push back against the media’s obsession with conflict and division.
From Reason:
Pew Research finds in polling results published October 13...[that] 86 percent of Americans "say that having people of many ethnic groups, religions and races makes their society a better place to live." That's a bit less than the 92 percent of Singaporeans who say the same, identical to results from Canada, and far above the 45 percent of Greeks and 39 percent of Japanese who agree. Support for diversity across the countries surveyed averages 76 percent.
Can we be sure Americans aren't just mouthing empty platitudes about tolerance? Other survey results suggest that our countrymen mean what they say.
"Ninety-four percent of U.S. adults now approve of marriages between Black people and White people, up from 87% in the prior reading from 2013," Gallup found last month. "...Just 4% approved when Gallup first asked the question in 1958."
Intermarriage isn't the be-all and end-all for assessing good will between groups, but it's a pretty good proxy. … And questions about intermarriage have been asked of Americans for more than 60 years, giving us a consistent measure of shifting attitudes. Importantly, approval of intermarriage is nearly identical (within the margin of error) for white and non-white adults, and above 90 percent across age groups and regions. ✂️
"When it comes to perceived political and ethnic conflicts, no public is more divided than Americans: 90% say there are conflicts between people who support different political parties and 71% say the same when it comes to ethnic and racial groups," Pew adds.
Note, though, that being aware of battles doesn't mean that people want to pick fights with their neighbors—it's an indication that they follow the news. They're acknowledging conflicts (which, in the cases of school curricula and the 1619 Project are about framing race relations rather than actual interactions), not cheering them on.
‘No more debt beyond our lifetime’ — NYC taxi drivers score crucial medallion bailout victory
From Daily Kos, by Kossack staffer April Siese:
After weeks of striking and 15 days without food, New York City’s taxi drivers were served a crucial victory as Mayor Bill de Blasio finally agreed to a debt restructuring plan building off an initial program that already eliminated $21.4 million of debt for individual drivers who took out loans to secure their medallions. Two dozen drivers have already had their debt fully forgiven and more than 1,100 have been interviewed to participate in the improved Taxi Medallion Relief Program.
An individual taxi driver in New York City is defined as an owner-driver who has five or fewer medallions. Those drivers owed an average of half a million dollars for their medallions and faced staggering monthly payments that have now been capped at $1,122. The city’s largest lender for medallions, Marblegate, has agreed to “restructure outstanding loans to a principal balance of $200,000, which will be constituted as a $170,000 guaranteed loan, plus a City grant of $30,000,” per a press release. “The terms of the new loan will include a 5% interest rate and a 20-year, fully amortizing term.” ✂️
The New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) has been fighting for the livelihoods and well-being of its members for years in hopes of attaining some relief in what has become a life-or-death situation for many drivers faced with insurmountable debt. Their victory Wednesday was an emotional one for those still standing. On-the-ground coverage from The City shows drivers dancing, embracing, and crying as they chanted “no more suicides.” At least eight drivers tragically took their own lives while facing debt and dwindling wages following the rise of ride-share companies like Lyft and Uber between 2017 and 2018.
Take This Job and Love It
More progressive labor changes.
From The Progressive:
Worker cooperatives offer an alternative to keeping power and profits in the hands of a few rich people. ✂️
By 2017, rideshare drivers were earning less than half what they made just four years earlier, a study found. Meanwhile, executives at Lyft and Uber have raked in tens of millions of dollars in compensation.
Now some New York City drivers...are becoming their own bosses by joining worker co-ops—democratic workplaces that are owned and run by their workers. It allows them to make a living wage and participate in workplace democracy.
In May 2021, ...2,500 drivers launched the Drivers Cooperative, a ridesharing company that lets them keep 85 percent of their fares and share in any annual profits. It has no investor shareholders or executive compensation. By comparison, Uber’s chief executive earned $64 million in 2019-2020, thousands of times more than a typical driver’s salary of about $30,000 per year, according to an independent analysis.
By July, more than 30,000 people had installed the Drivers Cooperative’s app, Co-op Ride, which can be downloaded from the App Store or Google Play and works just like other rideshare apps. “Co-op Ride is a conscious choice that you can take,” Drivers Cooperative co-founder Ken Lewis tells The Progressive.
And to wrap this up, here’s a cartoon from the brilliant Dan Piraro, creator of Bizarro, bringing gnus into the discussion of the Great Resignation!
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Good news from around the world
French bishops agree to compensate sex abuse victims
Good news that’s long overdue.
From AP:
France’s Catholic Church announced on Monday that it would financially compensate sex abuse victims by selling property assets or taking out a loan if needed.
French bishops said in a written statement they will set up an “independent, national body” tasked with addressing compensation issues. They committed to allocating money to a specific fund “in order to compensate victims,” notably by selling property or through a potential loan.
They also called on Pope Francis to send “a team of visitors” to assess the church’s response regarding child protection.
Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, President of the Bishops’ Conference, hailed a “decisive step” in a speech.
He stressed that the Church has recognized its “institutional responsibility” and decided to go “on a path of recognition and reparation that paves the way for victims to get the possibility of a mediation and a compensation.”
He’s the youngest chief in his First Nation’s history. Now he’s leading their fight against climate change.
Tizya-Tramm is just one of many indigenous climate heroes.
From the Washington Post, reprinted in The Anchorage Daily News:
At just 34 years old, [Dana] Tizya-Tramm has risen not only through elected ranks, but from the depths of addiction and trauma to become the youngest leader in the [Vuntut Gwitchin] First Nation’s history. And he’s used that mandate to aggressively combat what he says is among the most pressing threats to his people: climate change.
The shifting Arctic is squeezing the Vuntut Gwitchin on multiple fronts. Tizya-Tramm says less predictable caribou migration patterns have meant some villages can go years without a successful hunt, and the spawn of certain salmon species has dropped so low that fishing has been severely restricted in recent years.
...In 2019, the Vuntut Gwitchin became among the first Indigenous peoples in Canada to declare a climate emergency - a move that catapulted them into the international limelight. That same year they set a target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and as they strive toward the goal, the First Nation has been working to build among the largest solar farms in the Arctic.
These efforts have put Tizya-Tramm and his community at the forefront of not only saving their own way of life, but establishing models and mechanisms that others can follow.
Immigrant Textile Workers Win Long Strike Against 84-Hour Work Week in Italy
Labor activism is ramping up all over the world, not just here in the U.S.
From LaborNotes:
Tired of working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, immigrant textile workers are at the center of a growing movement by Italy's workers for the right to “8x5”—eight-hour days, five days a week.
In January, a group of 18 workers at the fabric printing company Texprint in the city of Prato launched a strike for a 40-hour work week. On October 12, three Pakistani workers returned to work victorious after a grueling nine months on strike—"never again as slaves" (mai piu schiavi), as one of their slogans put it.
It was a day of celebration for immigrant workers across the city’s industrial district, as well as for Si Cobas, the growing, militant, independent union that represents them. The union expects that the provincial labor court will soon order the company to rehire the rest of the strikers on permanent 40-hour-a-week contracts. ✂️
Since the Texprint strike began, many nearby factory workers have been inspired to strike. Many of these workers frequented the picket line and decided that they too needed to fight for 8x5. Unlike the Texprint strike, these strikes were often won quickly. One Texprint worker said that employers seemed to have learned a lesson: “They saw that those Texprint guys have been there for six months and they were smart. They figured it out.”
Texprint workers know well that fear is contagious. But as one of their chants goes, this is “a tough struggle without fear” (lotta dura senza paura). If you’re afraid, you can’t do anything, workers often explained to me. But with courage, others too will join the fight.
And in more good news for workers around the world:
Indian shop workers can finally sit down
From Reuters:
Tamil Nadu became last month the second Indian state to enshrine the "right to sit" for retail staff in law, ordering store owners to provide seating and let employees take the weight off their feet whenever possible during the working day.
"Until now, the only solace during these long shifts would be the 20-minute lunch break and the few seconds we would lean against the shelves to support our aching feet," said Lakshmi, 40, who has worked in the same clothing store for a decade.
"Even sitting on the floor if there were no customers wasn't allowed," she added, asking to use a pseudonym.
India's fast-growing retail segment is a pillar of the economy - accounting for 10% of gross domestic product (GDP) and 8% of jobs, according to Invest India, the country's investment promotion arm.
In southern states including Tamil Nadu, big family-run chains dominate the jewellery, sari and clothing segments and hire women from lower middle-class homes to serve their mainly female clientele.
The neighbouring state of Kerala brought in a similar law in 2018 following protests by sales staff in textile shops, and labour rights campaigners said the new legal amendment to protect workers' health was welcome though overdue.
Josh Cavallo: A-League player becomes only current openly gay male top-flight pro footballer
Be sure to watch the short video. It’s very moving.
From BBC Sport:
Cavallo made the announcement in a video and open letter on social media.
The A-League star said he was "finally comfortable" speaking out and hopes that opening up about his sexuality will inspire others who are struggling. ✂️
The midfielder said that trying to perform to the best of his ability while living a "double life" was exhausting and that he had spent his life "hiding who I truly am" to pursue his dream of becoming a professional footballer. ✂️
The Adelaide midfielder has received an overwhelming response since the video was posted on the club's official Twitter page..., with many praising the youngster for his courage.
Chief executive Nathan Kosima and coach Carl Veart both expressed their pride in Cavallo's announcement, with assistant coach, Ross Aloisi adding that it was clear Cavallo was living with an "incredible burden", and to see him come out made him "proud of how brave a man" he is.
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Good news in science and medicine
Novel DNA extraction method confirms identity of Sitting Bull’s great-grandson
From The Optimist Daily:
Researchers from the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre at the University of Cambridge are celebrating the successful extraction of usable DNA from a long-dead person after 14 years of effort. The method, developed by a team of scientists led by Eske Willerslev, was recently used to confirm the lineage between a South Dakota man and famed 19th century Native American Sitting Bull.
A sample of Sitting Bull’s hair has been stored at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, where it was degraded from being kept at room temperature. After Cambridge scientists carefully used their new technique to isolate and identify autosomal DNA in the genetic fragments extracted from the hair, Smithsonian researchers used the findings to confirm that Ernie LaPointe is indeed the great-grandson of Sitting Bull, who died in 1890. ✂️
LaPointe, who also has three sisters, suspected his familial relationship to Sitting Bull, whose Lakota name was Tatanka-Iyotanka, but had no way of confirming the lineage until now. After reading a magazine article about the Cambridge efforts to extract DNA from the hair sample, LaPointe reached out to Smithsonian to use the findings to confirm his family history.
This is the first time that DNA from a long-dead person has been used to link a living individual and a historical figure. It offers the potential to replicate the process with other historical figures from old samples of hair, teeth, or bones.
Scientific reclamation: How the iconic Jefferson Memorial was restored
From the Washington Post:
As early as 2015, anyone viewing the Jefferson Memorial from a distance...could see that something was wrong. … Dark splotches were growing on the iconic white dome.
Faced with the speed of change, and the increasing number of visitors and residents asking what was going on with the memorial, National Park Service analysts concluded they couldn’t fight what they didn’t fully understand. They took a patient approach, calling in scientists and their own conservation experts and embarking on a years-long analysis to determine what was attacking the memorial’s 78-year-old marble dome. ...The culprit, they eventually determined, was something that probably had been present on the monument, and nearly every other outdoor structure in most cities, for decades: biofilm.
…the Jefferson Memorial sits in the sensitive biome of the Tidal Basin. Under the constraints of the 1972 Clean Water Act, the risk of toxic runoff made any use of chemicals to clean it look like a very bad idea.
Long story short, they used lasers followed by steam cleaning. The whole process is quite interesting, so click the link for more info.
COVID-19 pandemic drove flu to historic lows, and may have eliminated one virus type completely
From ABC Australia:
As COVID-19 spread to hundreds of millions of people around the world, another potentially lethal disease — influenza — hardly reared its head at all.
And seasonal flu rates globally have been so low for the past 18 months, it looks as though one flu virus has been stamped out altogether.
Two studies — one published in Nature Reviews Microbiology in September and the other currently under review — show one of four flu viruses that infect humans each year hasn't been detected anywhere in the world since April 2020.
So does that mean it's gone for good? It's still too early to say.
There is a chance this particular virus — the Yamagata virus [responsible for somewhere between 290,000 and 650,000 global deaths every year] — might be lurking in a pocket of the world somewhere, according to Ian Barr, deputy director of the World Health Organization's Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza at the Doherty Institute, and co-author of one of the studies.
"It may re-emerge, but we haven't had a single detection of that virus in 18 months. That’s unusual, so it could be gone. We hope it’s gone.”
Prostate Cancer Breakthrough: A Protein That Stops Tumor Growth is Discovered As Remedy For Drug-Resistance
From the Good News Network:
...a new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has identified an RNA molecule that suppresses prostate tumors.
The scientists found that prostate cancers develop ways to shut down this RNA molecule to allow themselves to grow. However, when they implanted mice with human prostate tumor samples, the new treatment restored this so-called long noncoding RNA—and they’ve hailed it as a new strategy to treat the cancer which has developed resistance to hormonal therapies.
“The drugs that we have to treat prostate cancer are effective initially, but most patients start developing resistance, and the drugs usually stop working after a year or two,” said senior author Nupam P. Mahajan, PhD, a professor of surgery.
“At that point, the options available for these patients are very limited. We are interested in developing new therapies for patients who have developed resistance—and we believe the RNA molecule we’ve pinpointed may lead to an effective approach.”
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Good news for the environment
Before getting into some actual good news from COP26, here’s a tasty bit of snark from the brilliant satirists at Australia’s The Juice Media, telling some harsh truths about climate grandstanding::
Fortunately, the news from the conference has been better than expected. The folks at Future Crunch, who are definitely not naive, are impressed:
We’re at the halfway mark for COP26 and whisper it, but things appear to be going better than almost anyone expected at this point. …Usually at this stage you start hearing about logjams but for some reason they don’t seem to be as prominent this year.
Instead, in the space of one week we’ve had historic commitments on forests, coal, methane, indigenous rights, steel, development and finance, plus some very big individual country pledges, most noticeably India’s. Despite terrible political reporting giving the opposite impression, their commitment to a 2070 net zero target is absolutely massive, and would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Credible projections from the IEA now suggest that if all the new pledges are fully funded and met, global warming could be limited to to 1.8℃ this century. If you listen closely, you can almost hear that ratchet clicking. ✂️
Are the commitments enough compared to the size of the challenge? Of course not. But anyone whose theory of change is that a problem of the magnitude and complexity of climate is going to be solved by a load of over-tired, over-caffeinated diplomats under LED lights in a Scottish conference centre is making a category error. International diplomacy's job is to challenge the free-riders, but more importantly to provide a context and direction for engineers, scientists, financiers and entrepreneurs to put their minds to solving this problem. It's their efforts that cracked this thing open in the first place, and it's their efforts that may eventually make it all possible in the end.
U.S., Canada among 20 countries to commit to stop financing fossil fuels abroad
Now the challenge is to get China, Japan, and South Korea on board. They’ve committed to stop overseas funding for coal, but not for oil and gas.
From Reuters:
The United States, Canada and 18 other countries committed at the COP26 climate summit on Thursday to stop public financing for fossil fuel projects abroad by the end of next year, and steer their spending into clean energy instead.
Campaigners called the commitment a "historic" step in turning off the funding taps for fossil fuel projects. But it did not include major Asian countries responsible for the bulk of such financing abroad.
By covering all fossil fuels, including oil and gas, the deal goes further than a pledge made by G20 countries this year to halt overseas financing for just coal.
The 20 countries that signed the pledge include Denmark, Italy, Finland, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Gambia, New Zealand and the Marshall Islands, plus five development institutions including the European Investment Bank and the East African Development Bank.
"We will end new direct public support for the international unabated fossil fuel energy sector by the end of 2022," they said in a declaration.
What climate change activists can learn from First Nations campaigns against the fossil fuel industry
This story is from Australia, but it looks like good advice for activists in any country and in any arena.
From The Conversation:
1. Put pressure on the financial sector
Continuous pressure on companies in the financial sector (such as banks), which are complicit in the success of fossil fuel companies, can have an impact. ✂️
2. Join a strong organisation or alliance
First Nations campaigns against mining and other fossil fuel companies show the single most important factor in successful protests is leadership by politically powerful organisations or alliances.
3. Hit them where it hurts: the hip pocket
The Mirarr’s successful campaign [against the expansion of a uranium mine into their ancestral territory] was one of the first to use shareholder activism, and it worked. The campaigners engaged in two years of activism against Energy Resources of Australia, including forming a group of shareholders who lobbied within the project for protesters’ demands.
4. Win over the right people
...not only public outcry...[but also] Pressure ... from investor groups, including major Australian super funds, and the media over the perceived lack of accountability.
5. There’s never a perfect time to act
Be strategic about your participation in high-energy campaigns ...There is no perfect time, or single solution, to campaigning for a better future. The power of people is a resource which...needs to be nurtured.
6. Believe you can win
The Resurgence of Waffle Gardens Is Helping Indigenous Farmers Grow Food with Less Water
This such a cool technique.
From Civil Eats:
For the past 64 years, Jim Enote has planted a waffle garden, sunken garden beds enclosed by clay-heavy walls that he learned to build from his grandmother. This year, he planted onions and chiles, which he waters from a nearby stream. It’s an Indigenous farming tradition suited for the semi-arid, high-altitude desert of the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico, where waffle gardens have long flourished and Enote has farmed since childhood.
“They are the inverse of raised beds, and for an area where it is more arid, they’re actually very efficient at conserving water,” said Enote, who leads the Colorado Plateau Foundation to protect Indigenous land, traditions, and water. Each interior cell of the waffle covers about a square foot of land, just below ground-level, and the raised, mounded earthen walls are designed to help keep moisture in the soil.
Similar sunken beds for growing food with less water have been used globally in arid regions, arising independently by Indigenous farmers, including across distinct Pueblo tribes in the Southwest. “When you have ecological equivalents you often have cultural equivalents,” said Enote. As climate change deepens, he sees this tradition as one of many ways to adapt while building food security and sovereignty.
Why Cities are Taking Action to Limit Loud and Polluting Lawn Care
I’ve ranted here before about how much I despise gas-powered leaf-blowers, so you won’t be surprised that this story caught my eye.
From Audubon Magazine:
...[Leaf] blowers can be more than a nuisance. Some produce more than 100 decibels of low-frequency, wall-penetrating sound—or as much noise as a plane taking off—at levels that can cause tinnitus and hearing loss with long exposure. Beyond that, gas-powered lawn care of all kinds spews pollutants linked to cancers, heart disease, and asthma, and blowers blast air up to 280 miles per hour, eroding topsoil and sending pollen, fertilizers, and herbicides adrift. Workers who spend hours a day with equipment are most at risk.
But if blowers are loud, people speaking out about the issue have been getting louder, too—especially as more adults and kids work from home. More than 100 U.S. cities and towns now ban gas-powered leaf blowers or limit their use. ...California, where some 80 cities have issued regulations, has considered phasing out gas-powered garden tools altogether.
...volunteer groups, with names like Quiet Montclair, Quiet Clean D.C., and Quiet Clean PDX...not only push for stronger restrictions or bans, but also promote the use of quieter and less-polluting lawn maintenance equipment... As alternatives, such groups also promote electric or hand-powered tools, plus an approach that leads to less work and better wildlife habitat, such as...leaving some leaves for overwintering insects; returning mulched leaves to garden beds to act as fertilizer for plants and habitat for salamanders, snails, and toads; and waiting to spring to cut back perennials so insects can overwinter and birds [can] feed on the seeds.
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Good news for and about animals
Brought to you by Rosy, Nora, and Rascal.
Rosy just found this video, and it’s now her all-time favorite. She’s already practicing this technique. Is it working? My lips are sealed.
Nora also chose a video — Owl Kitty’s latest!
And here’s Rascal’s choice. He loves the fact that this so-called falcon looks so much like a small parrot! And of course he knows how well that crown and sceptre would suit him.
Wooden bird bought for £75 revealed to be Anne Boleyn’s – and is now worth £200,000
From The Guardian:
It was catalogued as an “antique carved wooden bird” when it was auctioned for £75 in 2019. Now it has been identified as Anne Boleyn’s heraldic emblem, the 16th-century royal falcon that probably adorned her private apartments at Hampton Court Palace – only to be removed after Henry VIII ordered her execution and the eradication of all traces of her. Its true worth is believed to be about £200,000.
The exquisite and richly decorated oak carving is in such extraordinary condition that it even bears its original gilding and colour scheme. In 1536, barely three years after it was made, Boleyn was beheaded on bogus adultery charges – just because she could not give Henry a male heir, only a daughter, the future Elizabeth I.
The falcon is to be placed on long-term loan to Hampton Court by Paul Fitzsimmons, a Devon antiques dealer, who spotted it in an auction.
And all three of my co-editors wanted this good news to be included:
Mexico Bans Animal Testing for Cosmetics
From Treehugger:
Mexico’s Senate has unanimously approved a federal bill banning animal testing for cosmetics. The decision makes Mexico the first country in North America and the 41st country in the world to ban cosmetics testing on animals.
Under the new law, cosmetic research may not include testing on animals that includes individual cosmetic ingredients or finished cosmetic products. The new law also prohibits the manufacture, marketing, and import of cosmetics whether their final formulation or some of their individual ingredients have been tested on animals elsewhere in the world.
...interest in the legislation was influenced by Humane Society International’s stop-motion animated film “Save Ralph.” The story of a rabbit cosmetic tester had more than 150 million social media views and more than 730 million tags on TikTok. It spurred more than 1.3 million people to sign a petition for the legislation in Mexico. ✂️
The anti-testing legislation in Mexico was supported by companies in the beauty business including Avon, L’Oréal, Lush, P&G, and Unilever. Many are working in conjunction with HSI through the Animal-Free Safety Assessment (AFSA), a collaborative of corporate and non-profit leaders who are developing safe, alternative methods to animal testing.
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Hot lynx
www.salon.com/...George Orwell stopped and smelled the roses, and Rebecca Solnit wants modern people to do the same. ”Solnit uses Orwell's lifelong love of gardening to ask deeper questions about the value of pleasure in our politics, the human relationship to the natural world, and what the modern left could learn from Orwell and his love of roses. ” [h/t to Kossack Chitown Kev for mentioning this in Sunday’s APR]
theprogressnetwork.org/… What Could Go Right? A pluralistic utopia. I recently signed up to get a weekly newsletter from The Progress Network, and this one is the latest. Highly recommended!
buttondown.email/.... Laura Olin, a digital guru, sends out a weekly newsletter of “lovely and/or meaningful things in the form of links, notes, and updates" which I also recently signed up for and absolutely love. The link will take you to the latest newsletter. If you want to subscribe (it’s free), go here: https://www.lauraolin.com
reasonstobecheerful.world/… Would You Compost Your Body to Create Life after Death? ”Three U.S. states have legalized ‘natural organic reduction,’ in which the dead are returned to the earth to help nourish its growth.” An intriguing idea, perfect for a week in which we’re focused on healing the planet.
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The Funnies
I found a hilarious article in The Guardian about a record collector whose collection consists of LP albums with really terrible cover art. Here’s a sampling:
This is the album that started the collection.
“[This] was such a bad cover that I bought it, I think for 10 pence.” ... [Steve] Goldman, a computer programmer, subsequently lost the album, and when the internet came along he tried to find another copy. “Of course, searching for Peter Rabbitt brought nothing but Beatrix Potter.”
Then he discovered the website discogs.com, found Roadstar again, and so began a mission.
Here’s the gem of the collection. As Goldman says of this album cover, “Why? I’ve no idea, sorry.”
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Wherever is herd…
A tip of the hat to 2thanks for creating this handy info sheet for all Gnusies new and old!
Morning Good News Roundups at 7 x 7: These Gnusies lead the herd at 7 a.m. ET, 7 days a week:
- The Monday GNR Newsroom (Jessiestaf, Killer300, and Bhu). With their five, we survive and thrive.
- Alternating Tuesdays: NotNowNotEver and arhpdx.
- Wednesdays: niftywriter.
- Thursdays: Mokurai the 1st and 2nd Thursdays, WineRev the 3rd, MCUBernieFan the 4th, and Mokurai the 5th (when there is one).
- Fridays: chloris creator. Regular links to the White House Briefing Room.
- Saturdays: GoodNewsRoundup. Heart-stirring and soul-healing introduction and sometimes memes to succumb to.
- Sundays: 2thanks. A brief roundup of Roundups, a retrospective, a smorgasbord, a bulletin board, an oasis, a watering hole, a thunder of hooves, a wellness, a place for beginners to learn the rules of the veldt.
hpg posts Evening Shade diaries at 7:30 p.m. ET every day! After a long day, Gnusies meet in the evening shade and continue sharing Good News, good community, and good actions. In the words of NotNowNotEver: “hpg ably continues the tradition of Evening Shade.” Find Evening Shades here.
oldhippiedude posts Tweets of the Week on Sundays at 6:00 p.m. Central Time — New time! Our second evening Gnusie hangout zone! In search of a TOTW diary? Look here or here.
For more information about the Good News group, please see our detailed Welcoming comment, one of the first comments in our morning diaries.
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How to Resist: Do Something …
The following invaluable list was put together by chloris creator:
Indivisible has created a Truth Brigade to push back against the lies.
Propaganda, false characterizations, intentionally misleading messages, and outright lies threaten our democracy and even our lives. We can effectively combat disinformation, despite the well-funded machines that drive it. They may have money, but we have truth and we have people. People believe sources they trust. When we share and amplify unified, factual messages to those who trust us, we shift the narrative. When we do this by the thousands--we’re part of the Indivisible Truth Brigade, and we get our country back. Join us.️
Our own Mokurai is a member. You can see his diary on the California recall here.
From GoodNewsRoundup (aka Goodie):
Most important: DON'T LOSE HOPE. This is a giant and important fight for us but, win or lose, we keep fighting and voting and organizing and spreading truth and light. We never give up.
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Closing music
❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
Thanks to all of you for your smarts, your hearts, and
your faithful attendance at our daily Gathering of the Herd.
❤️💙 RESIST, PERSIST, REBUILD, REJOICE! 💙❤️