The Good Gnus group is a community of readers, writers, activists, supporters, community builders, and patriots. We begin gathering every day at 7 a.m. ET to celebrate national good news. Our most active members are of course a subgroup of members of Daily Kos, whose Front Pages celebrate “News, Community, Action.” However, you don’t have to be a member of Daily Kos to be a Gnusie.
We are realists, not fools, idiots, or ostriches. We know we live in a world where active, nefarious, and evil decision-makers do very bad things, and create stress and anxiety in us, our loved ones, our friends, our neighbors, our allies, and destroy people and systems we hold dear. However, we choose to focus on the good news that people create around the country.
Sometimes we create Good News. Together we are strong and resilient. We return regularly to these pages to revitalize.
In a Good News Roundup, the weight of bearing good news is not borne by the author alone: Gnusies can be counted on to adorn the comment section with good news. Often commenters create three times as many comments as Recommendations! If you cannot linger with us for hours, I recommend you return in the mid or late afternoon, learn who your favorite commenters are, and Search for their names on return visits. We count on certain favorite Gnusies to bless us in the comments with humor, hope, history, and analysis every day.
Good News: We bring it, we make it.
Tracking Weekly Polls: Vaccinations of Our Readers: Hoof Prints on the Vaccination Veldt
Since February 21, 2021, I’ve been asking readers every Sunday to respond to this question: What is your vaccination status? I’m pleased to present the results of that polling here, and I am very grateful to those readers and members of Daily Kos who have chosen to get vaccinated and participate in the poll every week. I know many agree with me: I’m elated to see these trends of readers, Gnusie, and Kosacks!
Results of the Vaccination Polls from Sunday Good News Roundups before May 9, 2021 (Percentages)
Image: Results of the Vaccination Polls from Sunday Good News Roundups before May 9, 2021 (Data). [Open in a new Tab to enlarge or visit my Google Sheet.]
Image: Results of the Vaccination Polls from Sunday Good News Roundups before May 9, 2021 (Chart). [Open in a new Tab to enlarge or visit my Google Sheet.]
New Notes:
- This week’s chart is similar to last week’s, except that I’ve removed the orange line, which indicated the sum of Rows A, B, and C. I deleted it because some readers thought it indicated the total of vaccinated readers. The green line, the sum of rows A and C in the database, does represent the number of readers vaccinated.
- A reader suggested last week that I ask another question: Who is now completely immunized, i.e., 2 weeks post their last required shot? However, I realized that we can determine the answer to this question by checking the existing poll results. For instance, we can read the poll results of 5/2 and see that 85% of respondents received either both double vaccinations or the single. Therefore, we know that in 2 weeks, on 5/16, 85% of respondents will have reached full immunity.
Notes Repeated from Last Week:
- If you have difficulty reading the above images or if you want to nerd out over the data, you can access the above 2 images in my Google Sheet.
- The median age of Daily Kos readers is greater than the median age of Americans, and therefore we have been able to claim our vaccinations before most Americans.
- Percentages do not add up to 100 percent because of the many other polling options which I do not report in these data.
Thank you for getting vaccinated when you can and participating in our continued polling! I hope you’ll participate (again) today [all the way down at the bottom of this diary].
Now We are 4!
In the bleak-hearted days, the sagging-shoulder days, the drooping-head days, the weeping-soul days of May 2017, GoodNewsRoundup began posting her set-sail-and-aim-for-the-hope-horizon-now diaries on Daily Kos. Every day of the week but one, she posted her rants and cheer-ups, her political assessments and gentle exhortations, her action steps. She had been posting her essays on FaceBook, but looked for a wider audience, so she came here to Daily Kos.
In those days of May, commenters typically posted vertical comments of thanks or mentioned specific items from the diary, and all of her diaries did not reach the Trending List.
I noticed her diaries appeared regularly about a week after she started posting them. As Serendipity would have it, Wee Mama was the member of the Partners and Mentors Team who welcomed GoodNewsRoundup to Daily Kos! So, by the time I found the Roundups, the Mayor had already communicated with Wee Mama, who had begun republishing her diaries to the Good News group, which, incidentally, Wee Mama had founded. Good News all round!
I suggested to GoodNewsRoundup that we speak by phone, and offered her a few tips to get more readers at Daily Kos. She listened, of course. I talked to her about using my community-building Daily Kos skills to get more readers and more participants, so that her diaries would stay longer on the Trending List (at that time called the Recommended List) and reach a wider office to spread her messages farther. And if you were here from those beginning days, maybe you observed my Welcome comment evolve as I invented, rephrased, and reframed new requests for participants in our growing group.
In that first phone call, Mayor Roundup shared that she expected to continue writing 5 or 6 days per week forever: She could not imagine not writing them. I knew that would be very difficult to achieve, but I did not argue with her. Sometime later, she began to give up a day of writing at a time. [More of our origin story next week. ~2t]
Please add your reminiscences in the comments:
What do you remember about the beginnings of the Good News Roundup group? What’s your story? If you are one of our dozen authors, when did you start writing Good News Roundups?
Congratulations to us! How shall we celebrate being 4 years old?
Poll #1: Who Won the Week?
Cheers and Jeers archive and future editions here. Way, way more than 2 thanks to The One, our Wicked Wizard of Wit and writer of Who Won the Week, Willhelm von kosland!
- Gail Curley, who now gets to be the one to shout "Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!" as the new Marshal of the Supreme Court
- The Pentagon, for canceling Trump’s border wall contracts, restoring the money to be used for military housing and education
- Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson, for siding with CREW and ordering the release of a memo revealing that Trump is guilty of obstructing the Mueller investigation, and former AG Bill Barr is guilty of perjury
- Theater lovers, as tickets go on sale for Broadway shows, which will open at full capacity in September
- Amtrak, which marked its 50th birthday with a president who's on board for expansion, improvement, and zippier trains
- The fresh aroma in the air at Facebook, as the oversight board votes to continue banning domestic terrorist #1 Donald Trump from re-planting his bloated carcass there
- Americans who make $75k or less, as it becomes known that the Democrats' covid relief package includes significant tax cuts for low- and middle-income Americans
- America's nurses and teachers, who have gone above and beyond the call during the pandemic, and deserve accolades during this National Nurse's Week and National Teachers Week
- The federal grand jury that indicted 4 Minneapolis cops, including Derek Chauvin, for civil rights violations in connection with their murder of George Floyd
- Karma for a traitor, as Russian sympathizer Mike Flynn forgets the words to the Pledge of Allegiance in a room full of QAnon nutbags
Bill’s Friday poll is here. If you’d like to summarize the poll results in the comments, be my guest!
Who do you think won the week? Who made a winning move after Bill's deadline on Friday?
Science
Overnight News Digest, Saturday Science Edition: Mother Trees
Rise above the swamp, Daily Kos: Welcome to the Saturday Science OND. Some topics found in this edition:
- The miracle of the commons
- Mother trees
- The gate of consciousness
- Reading sugary language on cell surfaces
- What caused the Roaring Twenties?
- Covid-19, viral therapies and cancer remission
- Wild donkeys and horses dig for water in the desert
- Linking driving behaviors and dementia
- 24 Brilliant Burrowing Animals (trigger warning)
- Gut bacteria and neurodegenerative diseases
- Chernobyl is starting to burn again
- Processed foods could be making you sick (We already knew that!)
Our map of Gnuville: 624 of us have shared our global locations!
To leave your mark, please Reply in thes to tljdk or silverfoxcruiser. Please include your city and state only, NOT street number and street. (Please persist, we are volunteers.)
Image: Two maps of the United States, one above the other. Both maps indicate the approximate locations of members of the Good News Roundup community. The lower map contains many more blue pin-markers than the upper map. Upper image: A map of Gnuville from February 15, 2019 with fewer than 50 Gnusie pins. Lower image: A map of Gnuville from March 21, 2021 with 582 pins across our orb. [Thanks Kluger2!]
If you join us regularly, are you Following us?
Tech Talk for Kosacks
- Got a Daily Kos tech question? Let us know.
- Solved a tech question recently? Please feel free to share in the comments.
- Excellent Question from May 2! (For users of desktops and laptops.)
- Ernest T Bass:
- How do I disable the Load More buttons and get all the comments to display at one time? [Thank you, Ernest, for your delightful critique! ~2t]
- WolverineForTJatAW:
- Go to this url: www.dailykos.com/comments_beta/false. All you have to do is go there, and all comments should load after that without the Load More buttons. You’ll probably have to reload any already-open pages.
- Save that URL by any method (Favorite, Bookmark, copy to a text document, email it to yourself, tattoo), in case Fate mangles your computer's cookies. [Thanks, Wolvie, you saved a lot of us a lot of grief, and I learned something easy, beautiful, and useful! (For brevity and clarity, I edited Ernest’s and Wolvie’s answers) ~2t]
Where Ever is Herd
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: pucklady the 1st Thursday, Mokurai the 2nd, oldhippiedude 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 8 p.m. ET, 5 p.m. PT— 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.
The 6 R’s of the Resistance
Joe Biden is now our President. However, we continue to stay vocal and active, we continue to pull Joe to the left, and we continue resist the GQP.
- Refresh and Rest: Take care of you, the hero: Eat well, exercise, and rest.
- Resist: Protest on the streets, call senators and representatives, etc.
- Rebel: Run for office, GOTV (Get Out The Vote), support a progressive.
- Revolt: Change the laws, change the culture, build your communities.
- Rely: Trust that millions of others are fighting the good fight.
- Rejoice: Joy promotes resilience and gives rise to hope.
"Biden has been incredibly responsive to the progressive movement," [Jamaal] Bowman said, recounting a recent meeting between progressive House members and White House chief of staff Ron Klain. "He told us point-blank: Keep pushing us. Keep us honest." [Sahil Kapur and Alex Seitz-Wald, NBC News]
How to Resist: Do Something …
Are you looking for a new focus now that we have good people in charge? Fighting voter suppression might be for you! Nothing is as important!
What can you do?
- Contact your local representative NOW to encourage them to pass the For the People Act. This link makes it easy to do!
- The ACLU plays a key role in filing lawsuits that often stop voter suppression. Get involved with them at this link.
- The League of Women Voters work year-round to combat voter suppression through advocacy, grassroots organizing, legal action and public education. You can get involved with them at this link
- Volunteer with Black Votes Matter at this link. They have on the ground work in 10 states and people from other states can write postcards, phone bank, fundraise, and text.
- Spread The Vote works to get voters IDs before voting begins. You can volunteer with them at this link.
- Finally, when it comes time to pass HR1 (the new voting rights act) the Democrats will have to end the filibuster to do it. It will not pass without that. 10 Republicans will not vote for it. So, when the time comes, you will need to call, call, call and call your Senators to push them to do this. If you live in Arizona, Montana, or West Virginia, you may want to put in for some vacation time to really devote yourself to it. It will be the only option. Get ready! [GoodNewsRoundup]
We welcome comments in Roundups every day regarding:
- National or local Good News.
- Links, stories, music, videos, quotes, tweets. (No tweets or images of the saffron chlamidiot, please.)
- Your resistance activity.
In my Sunday smorgasbord Roundups, I especially welcome the following types of comments:
- Who won YOUR week?
- Questions about Daily Kos tech issues or our map.
- Good News Roundups and you.
- How are you resisting?
Top Image: Starhawk created this diary’s top image of the rampant gnu and gave it to the members of the Good News Roundup group (Gnusies)! Thank you, Starhawk! This is a quite detailed sketch of a gnu drawn in brown, green, and black. A happy and dynamic gnu dances on its left hind leg in a classic rampant heraldric pose. Joyful letters prance above and behind the mane: “Happy Dance.” Signature: Nick Korolev, 2021.
The Roundup is almost open!
Thank you for fighting for truth and justice with all us Gnusies! 40% of our Readers don’t visit every day, 50% of us do, and 10% are here for the first time! We all do what we can. For 3-1/2 years, we’ve shared positive news, laughed, organized, resisted, rebelled, revolted without being revolting, relied, rested, mentored, created, crossed rivers, chewed our cud, puffed methane out both ends, and laughed. Here’s looking at you, kid, and standing upwind!
As always, please share more Good News than I can find or provide.
This is a group diary, and by my power I declare this Good Gnus Salo(o)n open! Let the good-news sharing and community building begin!
Power with, not power over ❤️ ✊ ❤️
2thanks (he, him)
Addendum: In the early morning of May 10, I edited the Tech Talk section to clarify that I had edited the words of Ernest T Bass and WolverineForTJatAW and to revise the reason to save the potent url, at Wolvie’s request and suggestion: