Greetings!
Greetings to all you Gnusies, Gnubies, occasional drop-ins, silent regulars, and first-timers! Come sit with us to find and share messages of hope and to celebrate all the ways good people are solving problems and triumphing over evil-doers. The task we have set ourselves here in Gnuville is to search out hope no matter how difficult the situation might be. We learned during TFG’s four years of error and terror that hope can be found even in the darkest times. And with the Biden era off to a roaring start, there’s a lot more good news, though there are also disappointments and challenges. Which means that our mission of bringing hope to our readers continues.
Don’t forget that the Good News Roundup is a collaborative effort. We warmly encourage you to add your own good news finds in our comment section, The Best Comment Section on the Internet™, where sanity reigns, Gloomy Guses and Debbie Downers are encouraged to see the light, and pie fights are forbidden.
Settle in with your favorite morning beverage and get your day going with some good news, eclectic music, videos, and food for thought.
Introduction
This is a week in which I’ll be bringing you two Good News Roundups, today and Thursday, because our regular first Thursday writer, pucklady, is currently recovering from surgery. She has asked the rest of us writers to step up to cover her once-a-month slot until she’s up to writing again. So first things first: {{{{{pucklady}}}}} !! And next is a big chorus of thanks to Mokurai for stepping up to write on upcoming first Thursdays until pucklady returns.
This is the third time in the past few weeks that one of our writers has asked for and gotten a sub. MCUBernieFan covered for Goodie on July 31st, and niftywriter nudged record territory by writing three roundups in five days (with a lot of help from NotNowNotEver on the third one). And of course I don’t want to forget hpg, who took on and totally aced the gigantic task of producing our nightly Evening Shade after NNNE needed to step down. I also want to recognize chloris creator for her standing offer to post our welcoming comment whenever that morning’s writer can't do it.
I’m bringing this up because I think these are all great examples of walking our talk. We talk a lot here about compassion, helpfulness, stepping up, taking action, taking responsibility, etc., and I think those messages are made much more effective when we illustrate them with our own actions.
And there’s another extremely important message illustrated by pucklady’s request: ask for help when you need it. Lots of us are born helpers, and having that mindset can make asking for any kind of assistance very difficult. So it’s wonderful that here in Gnuville we’re able to show both sides of the help equation: helping and asking for help. The synergism of those two actions is what makes grassroots activism work. Another way to put it is that we all need to pitch in, but to really make a difference we need a lot of other activists pitching in with us.
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Opening music
A musical intro to the good news to follow.
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Good news from the White House
Biden nominates Khizr Khan, a Gold Star father and Trump critic, to religious freedom post
Another great decision by President Joe. 2thanks posted a tweet about this on Sunday, but I thought some of you might want to see more details. There’s also an excellent new DKos diary on this.
From CNN:
Khan, who
endorsed Biden in 2020, said in 2016 that Trump "sacrificed nothing and no one," before raising a copy of the US Constitution, asking if Trump had ever read it. Khan's son, Army Capt. Humayun Khan, died in Baghdad in 2004.
The White House on Friday recognized Khan, a founder of the Constitution Literacy and National Unity Project, as "an advocate for religious freedom as a core element of human dignity." The announcement said that Khan "devotes a substantial amount of his time to providing legal services to veterans, men and women serving in uniform, and their families."
It continued: "Today's announcement underscores the President's commitment to build an Administration that looks like America and reflects people of all faiths."
In addition to Khan, the White House nominated Rashad Hussain to serve as the first Muslim Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom and Deborah Lipstadt to serve as the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism.
It’s Monday, So It Must Actually Be Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Week!
Stephen Robinson with his usual smart take, writing on Wonkette. Yeah, I know this sausage of a bill is unpalatable, but I share SR’s faith in Joe’s negotiating chops, and I also have faith in Nancy’s fierce determination to get more of the help Americans so desperately need.
The Senate completed work on the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal Sunday, and everyone's thrilled about its bipartisanship. ✂️
Hey, they should be proud. It's a big achievement. But then Sinema had to go and spoil it by saying something stupid like how the bipartisan deal demonstrates "we can put aside our own political differences for the good of the country." Ahem no. A few Republicans have grudgingly agreed to help Democrats rebuild our crumbling infrastructure while blocking voting rights legislation and an investigation into the Trump-inspired insurrection on January 6. It's safe to assume that whatever Republicans do is because they've determined it's in their own best interests, not the country's.
The Washington Post detailed how Joe Biden, a real president, expertly managed the deal behind the scenes. There were no public Twitter tantrums or common gangland threats. He regularly called Republican senators while presidential counselor Steve Ricchetti kept in close contact with Republican negotiators. Biden empowered Ricchetti during the home stretch to pair up with Senator Rob Portman, the chief Republican negotiator, and hammer out final details. The previous counselor to the previous president was Hope Hicks, and that's just one of many reasons Donald Trump never delivered an actual Infrastructure Week. ✂️
The bipartisan bill still has to survive the House, where progressive Democrats are set to take the fall if anything goes wrong. But Biden's team is probably already reaching out to the liberals who don't think the current bill is adequate. He knows how to negotiate. Uncle Joe's got this.
To Fight Vaccine Lies, Authorities Recruit an ‘Influencer Army’
Whatever it takes.
From the New York Times:
Ellie Zeiler, 17, a TikTok creator with over 10 million followers, received an email in June from Village Marketing, an influencer marketing agency. It said it was reaching out on behalf of another party: the White House.
Would Ms. Zeiler, a high school senior who usually posts short fashion and lifestyle videos, be willing, the agency wondered, to participate in a White House-backed campaign encouraging her audience to get vaccinated against the coronavirus? ✂️
Ms. Zeiler quickly agreed, joining a broad, personality-driven campaign to confront an increasingly urgent challenge in the fight against the pandemic: vaccinating the youthful masses, who have the lowest inoculation rates of any eligible age group in the United States. ✂️
To reach these young people, the White House has enlisted an eclectic army of more than 50 Twitch streamers, YouTubers, TikTokers and the 18-year-old pop star Olivia Rodrigo, all of them with enormous online audiences. State and local governments have begun similar campaigns, in some cases paying “local micro influencers” — those with 5,000 to 100,000 followers — up to $1,000 a month to promote Covid-19 vaccines to their fans.
US to evacuate journalists, aid workers from Afghanistan
From AP:
The Biden administration on Monday expanded its efforts to evacuate at-risk Afghan citizens from Afghanistan as Taliban violence increases ahead there of the U.S. military pullout at the end of the month.
The State Department said it is widening the scope of Afghans eligible for refugee status in United States to include current and former employees of U.S.-based news organizations, U.S.-based aid and development agencies and other relief groups that receive U.S. funding. Current and former employees of the U.S. government and the NATO military operation who don’t meet the criteria for a dedicated program for such workers are also covered.
Unfortunately, however, there’s a major caveat: applicants have to leave Afghanistan for a third country in order to begin the process, which may take 12-14 months, and the U.S. currently doesn’t intend to provide support for their departures or long waits. Maybe we need to put some pressure on our Congresscritters and Senators and the White House to get these folks some interim help.
Other good news in politics
They served on the pandemic's frontlines. Now they're running for office.
Another silver lining from the pandemic.
From The American Independent:
"COVID really illustrated to doctors that no one was coming to help us," said Dr. Hisam Goueli, a psychiatrist in Seattle.
"If we didn't do something," Goueli continued, "this would continue to happen, and patients would continue to die."
In addition to his psychiatry practice, Goueli last year founded Doctors in Politics, a political action committee which works to recruit and support physician candidates at all levels of elected office. ✂️
"I think that when Obama was in office, there was this sense of, 'oh, okay, I can just do what I know how to do and be a doctor,'" said Dr. Gillian Battino, a radiologist and mother of six in Wausau, Wisconsin. "And then, when Trump won, there was this realization that maybe I — and I think many Americans, maybe most Americans — had stuck their head in the sand a little bit."
In May, Battino announced she was running for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin, a critical race in the 2022 cycle. Doctors in Politics endorsed her shortly thereafter.
Like Goueli, Battino pointed to former President Donald Trump's election as the catalyst for her political aspirations, but said working through the pandemic crystallized her desire to take direct action. Running as a Democrat, she's challenging incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who has repeatedly spreadmisinformation about COVID.
Testing the Georgia Voter ID Law: Results of Attempt to Obtain Voter ID Cards from a GA Registrar
Not entirely good news — the state hasn’t provided enough blank ID cards for everyone who wants one — but the efforts of the Hope Springs from Field PAC are inspiring and their test run will give the lawyers fighting against GA’s voter suppression the solid information they will need for their lawsuits. If you have a few bucks to donate to this hard-working group, just click the link above.
From a diary by Kossack snowbored, July 31:
Starting on June 12th, Hope Springs from Field PAC began canvassing in the Black Belt of Georgia, repeating our steps in the Georgia Senate Runoff, with a special emphasis on helping voters without the newly required photo IDs to obtain them. When investigating the kinds of IDs that a voter could use, our intrepid organizers from Albany State saw this, “An ID card can be issued at any county registrar’s office.” ✂️
The offer of a free photo ID that would qualify voters to vote (in person or to request an absentee ballot) is used prominently to defend this new legislation in court. It's not an issue, Republicans say, because anyone can get the required ID at their local county registrar's office. ✂️
We had a feeling, before we even knocked on our first door this summer that the state would not provide enough stock for every voter in Dougherty who needed one of these free cards to get one. When a registrar’s employee called the Secretary of State’s office to inform them that they had run out of stock, they were told to “send them to the Driver’s Services office.” Which was precisely the point. Who would knowingly want to wait in *that* line? But we had proved that the Georgia legislature was trying to suppress poor African-Americans, doing everything they can to keep them from voting. We had the proof.
We filled out an Incident Report for every voter who didn’t have the proper picture ID to vote in Georgia... This is the very first piece of proof that Georgia Republicans are intent on suppressing the vote, keeping African-American voters from being able to vote. Yeah, yeah, we all knew that. But now we have real, documented evidence that it is so.
And we won’t stop. We have scheduled 14 more attempts to obtain these free Voter ID cards in the future in 5 Black Belt counties.
Opinion: Fact check: Is Kevin McCarthy a ‘moron’?
My favorite recent bit of political writing.
By Dana Milbank in The Washington Post:
...“He’s such a moron.”
Such an incendiary charge by Pelosi demands a fact check: Is McCarthy, in fact, a moron? Let’s weigh the evidence.
The very day Pelosi called him a moron, McCarthy complained on the House floor that the latest mask guidance came from a study in India (not so) of an unapproved vaccine (also not so) that “didn’t even pass purr review.” Was he waiting for a litter of kittens to examine the data?
The day before Pelosi called him a moron, McCarthy held a news conference to provide his latest thinking on the Jan. 6 investigation, including:
“Never before in the history of Congress has a speaker taken the unprecedented move of denying the other party to a committee of who they selected.” ✂️
McCarthy further concluded that the April slaying of a Capitol Police officer was politically motivated — “based upon if you listen to who made the killing of buying the knife and go out.”
On a retired colleague: “Former liberal senator Barbara Boxer is now has the effect of being robbed in Oakland.” ✂️
On Pelosi: “She will go at no elms to break the rules.”
On Pelosi, cont’d: “We watched time and again where she told the American public they couldn’t get a haircut — except for her. We told her that she fights for the Americans, but they make $5 million in less than a month trading stock options … on tech companies that were — that were debating inside the House; that the only reason the market went up, that they made that money was what the outcome of the stocks — or, the outcome of the bills.”
Fact-check analysis: Wuh?
Do read the whole thing. It’s worth it.
Mo Brooks Accidentally Gave Up His Immunity From Eric Swalwell’s Insurrection Lawsuit
Ha! Another GQP moron. I know this story is old news on DKos, but this is the most complete explanation I’ve seen of the somewhat arcane basis of the DOJ’s ruling. Spoiler: it’s not about inciting a riot.
From Slate:
On Tuesday [July 27th], the Department of Justice announced that it would not shield Rep. Mo Brooks from Rep. Eric Swalwell’s lawsuit against the fomenters of the Jan. 6 insurrection. The DOJ’s decision may seem surprising: After all, Attorney General Merrick Garland has continued to protect Donald Trump from E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit, signaling a broad view of elected officials’ immunity from civil suits. In Swalwell’s case, however, the Justice Department seized upon comments demonstrating that, at the Jan. 6 rally, Brooks was acting not as an elected official, but as a politician seeking to influence future elections. Ironically, it was Brooks himself who made these statements, under oath, in an effort to evade this very lawsuit. The congressman’s legal defense has turned into a legal liability. ✂️
...Brooks’ alleged torts included negligence, aiding and abetting common law assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and bias-related crimes. Brooks sought to dismiss these tort claims by invoking the Westfall Act. Under this statute, a federal official facing a civil suit can ask the Department of Justice to certify that they were acting within the scope of their employment when the alleged tort occurred. If the DOJ agrees, the United States is substituted as the defendant. And because the U.S. cannot be sued for a wide range of torts, that substitution usually ends the case. ✂️
Swalwell’s complaint cited Brooks’ call to “start … kicking ass” over and over again. It’s easy to see why: In context, this language transcends the usual partisan rhetoric, arguably crossing over into incitement of violence against members of Congress who certified the election results.
In a long, rambling affidavit, Brooks tried to counter this allegation by reframing his call to begin “kicking ass.” He testified that, in this passage, “I am talking about ‘kicking ass’ in the 2022 and 2024 ELECTIONS!” ✂️
This narrative provides perhaps the most self-defeating explanation Brooks could possibly muster at this stage in litigation. As the Justice Department pointed out in its Tuesday filing, “activities specifically directed toward the success of a candidate for a partisan political office in a campaign context” are “not within the scope of the office or employment of a Member of the House of Representatives.” That’s because it is not the “business of the United States to pick sides among candidates in federal elections.” Representatives thus cannot invoke the Westfall Act’s protections when they are engaged in “campaign efforts.”
Because I couldn’t resist...
buglady99 originally posted the tweet with the priceless image of “Vladimir Taylor Greene” in a recent comment section, and I decided it needed the side-by-side, “Separated at Birth?” treatment. If Vlad got an eyebrow trim and slathered on some mascara and eye shadow, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.
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Good news from my corner of the country
Progress continues on Bootleg fire
Every bit of progress on this monster fire helps. Of course, really getting it under control will take months.
From the Oregonian:
Firefighters battling the Bootleg fire in southeast Oregon have made significant progress in recent days, increasing containment to 84% [as of yesterday] on the nation’s largest blaze.
But fire officials are keeping a wary eye on the weather as red flag warnings go into effect and some newer fires have forced evacuations in other parts of the state.
Northeast of Klamath Falls, where the Bootleg fire is burning, temperatures are expected to go up as humidity drops by the middle of the week. That change should provide a test for the containment lines crews were able to complete under more favorable weather over the past week, said Karen Scholl, an operations chief working the fire.
“We’re not nervous about this weather,” she said in a statement. “We want this test to happen to see how our line holds, while we have crews and contingencies in place. We believe we’re in a good position to be tested.”
[Multnomah County Chair’s] Pledge [Regarding] Metro Homeless Services
Multnomah County, where Portland is located, is Oregon’s most populous county. Although homelessness is a problem throughout the state, it’s worst in this county, so the chair’s pledge is significant.
From Willamette Week:
Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury pledges [that] a tax on high-income households passed by Portland-area voters last year will make a visible difference on the streets.
“Last May, the voters in Multnomah County, Washington County, and Clackamas County had the foresight to pass the homeless services ballot measure,” Kafoury says. “...That money comes online July 1. And at that point we are going to have the ability to get people off the street and into housing. We are going to be able to fund 1,300 households in one year.” ✂️
“We’re going to be implementing some new programs that are going to quite literally change people’s lives. Not just the homeless services ballot measure that we’ve talked a lot about, but also the preschool-for-all measure, which is going to allow every child in Multnomah County to have access to high-quality, free child care. It’s going to change people’s lives. It’s going to change the trajectory of lives for the children.”
[The Portland Bureau of Transportation] Will Make Some of Its COVID-Era “Slow Streets” Permanent
From Willamette Week:
The plastic barrels that slowed Portland traffic during the pandemic shutdown are about to get more concrete, as several streets receive some upgraded bike- and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure.
The Portland Bureau of Transportation announced Thursday that some of the city’s “Slow Streets” put in place during the pandemic are here to stay. ✂️
… Eighty blocks across the city will have their plastic orange barrels replaced with concrete planters and 15 mph speed-limit signs.
According to PBOT, the decision is due to “overwhelmingly positive public response to the program.”
“Slow Streets have been a cornerstone of PBOT’s COVID-19 response since the beginning of the pandemic,” Transportation Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty said in a statement. “I am pleased that we are continuing to invest in the programs that have been proven effective over the last year and a half.”
Already, PBOT has outfitted nine intersections in Southeast with concrete markers. The rest will be installed throughout the summer and into the fall.
From my neighborhood
Isn’t this a cool idea?! There are lots of Little Free Libraries in my neighborhood, but this is the only Little Free Seed Library I’ve ever seen.
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Good news from around the nation
‘A rush to get shots’
A ray of light in the abysmal darkness of vaccine avoidance.
From The Washington Post:
They were unmoved by the urgings of President Biden to get vaccinated. They’ve spurned calls from the nation’s leading doctors, as well as from sports heroes and movie stars. But one thing is finally grabbing the attention of millions of unvaccinated Americans — the invasion of the hyper-contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. ✂️
More than 4.7 million newly vaccinated Americans have [changed their minds about vaccinations] in the past two weeks, as misgivings about the shots based on ideology, apathy or fear have taken a back seat to the desire to protect themselves and their loved ones. ✂️
Vaccine-hesitant pockets of the country turned hot spots, are at the vanguard, including Louisiana, which experienced a 114 percent increase in uptake, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Arkansas recorded a 96 percent increase, Alabama, 65 percent, and Missouri, 49 percent.
Texas last week reported its highest single-day vaccine administration in a month; the numbers, while still far from the peak earlier this year, are more than 25 percent higher than a month ago.
When Parents Said No to Their Kids Being Vaccinated, This Teenager Created VaxTeen. It's Now More Crucial Than Ever
We could write whole diaries on the great things that teens are accomplishing.
From Time:
Like many 18-year-olds, Kelly Danielpour is preparing to start college in the fall, planning out her classes, buying dorm necessities and wondering what her roommate will be like. Unlike many 18-year-olds, she’s also spending her spare time helping teens across the country navigate vaccine-hesitant parents and get their COVID-19 vaccines. ✂️
Kelly Danielpour
She started the research for VaxTeen before the pandemic, after coming across a Reddit post from a teenager who wanted to get their routine adolescent immunizations but whose parents opposed vaccines. Danielpour fell down a social media “rabbit hole” and encountered lots of other teens in similar situations. Most wanted to know if they could consent to vaccines on their own, without parental permission, and how they could go about getting them. “I was just in awe, and I also realized how many barriers were in place,” she says. “Whenever we talk about sort of the anti-vaccine movement, we always just talk about parents. We don’t really think about kids having their own opinions on this, or being part of this conversation or having the potential to be the decision makers.” She wanted VaxTeen to be a resource for those teens, and her work became newly urgent amid the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and the pervasiveness of vaccine hesitancy. ✂️
She has focused her efforts both on access—helping teens find a vaccine clinic along their bus route that’s open on weekends, for example—and awareness, sharing fact-based vaccination information for them to take back to skeptical parents. “In many cases, convincing a parent is a teen’s only option,” she says. ✂️
“They said that a teenager couldn’t have possibly created the site,” Danielpour says—an accusation she tried to take as a compliment. “They don’t think a teen could have possibly done it, and I did.”
Instead of Issuing Tickets For Broken Headlights, Denver Police Are Handing Out Gift Cards to Get Them Fixed
From Good News Network:
A new partnership with police in Colorado is putting smiles on the faces of motorists who might not have the money to fix a broken part on their vehicle.
An Advance Auto Parts store has gifted the Denver Police Department with 100 gift cards worth $25 each to hand out to drivers who are normally pulled over by cops and given a warning or ticket to pay a fine.
“Now, when they pull over a motorist for, say, a bad headlight or a defective taillight, they’ll have the option to give a $25 gift card to help the motorist get it fixed–and get them back on the road and stay safe,” a representative of Advance Auto Parts explained.
Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen says officers have already issued the cards, and are enjoying the smiles it puts on drivers’ faces.
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Good news in sports
U.S. men’s soccer team backs women in equal-pay fight, saying USWNT should have been paid more
Thanks, guys! And thanks, Dems!!
From The Washington Post:
The U.S. men’s soccer team argued in a court filing Friday that members of the women’s national team should have been paid more than the men’s team, siding with the women in the appeal of their high-profile equal paycase against US Soccer.
In a blistering amicus brief Friday, the men’s team claimed US Soccer had underpaid and discriminated against its women’s national team players for decades, arguing that a district court judge had wrongly decided against the women last year.
The judge ruled last spring that the women’s team had not been discriminated against because they agreed to a different contract structure, and that their claim was undermined by the fact that they had ultimately been paid more than male players. But the men’s team called the ruling “flawed” and “oversimplified,” saying that the court had wrongly ignored the fact that the women’s pay relied on their performance, not just the number of games they played.
The men’s team argued that, contrary to the judge’s ruling, the women had been “pressured” to accept “an unfair and unequal" collective bargaining agreement. ✂️
...despite their initial legal victory over the women’s team, US Soccer has faced heavy criticism in public, including from Democrats in Washington, who have threatened to withhold funding for the 2026 Men’s World Cup unless the federation pays the women equally.
Belarus Olympian given Polish visa after refusing 'forced' flight home
Good for her for slipping out of Lukashenko’s iron grip! I hope she uses Poland only as a temporary stop on her way to a more liberal nation.
Female Gnusies will recognize and groan over the cliché justification given by Belarus: “emotional state” AKA “hysterical woman.”
From the BBC:
Krystina Timanovskaya, 24, is at the Polish embassy in Tokyo after spending the night secured in a hotel under protection from Japanese police.
She said she was forcibly taken to the airport for criticising coaches, and voiced fears for her safety.
Belarus says she was removed from the team because of her emotional state.
Ms Timanovskaya told the BBC on Monday that she was safe, but said she had been advised not to give further details at this stage.
The incident has again put the spotlight on Belarus, which has been ruled by President Alexander Lukashenko since 1994. Last year, nationwide protests over his disputed re-election were violently repressed by the security forces.
Some of those who joined the demonstrations were also national-level athletes, who were stripped of funding, cut from national teams and detained.
Poland's Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydacz said Ms Timanovskaya was in direct contact with Polish diplomats in Tokyo, and that Poland would do "whatever is necessary to help her continue her sporting career".
Sunisa Lee’s Stunning Olympic Victory
This is one of my favorite Olympics stories because although Oregon doesn’t have as large a Hmong population as Minnesota does, we do have a significant number of Hmong refugees living among us, and they have enriched our state’s culture immeasurably. Their cohesion and resilience as an expatriate community are deeply inspiring.
From The New Yorker:
For the past decade, Biles’s dominance has had the strange effect of dampening the suspense of competition: her teammates were vying for second place, never first. (“If you get silver, you’re the best,” Biles’s teammate Laurie Hernandez said at the 2016 Games, “because Simone doesn’t count!”) On Thursday, Biles was in the stands, cheering on both Lee and Jade Carey, a twenty-one-year-old American who took her place in the all-around. Biles’s absence from the mat restored a sense of balance: the meet, once seen as a foregone conclusion, was now a free-for-all. After the team finals, during which Lee anchored the uneven-bars lineup and stepped in to fill Biles’s spot on the floor, she described experiencing “the most pressure I’ve ever felt in my life.” But Biles’s subsequent exit from the all-around introduced a new and unexpected pressure: Lee, previously a contender for silver, now had the potential to win gold. ✂️
On Thursday, the results came down to the fourth rotation, on the floor, where the scores of the top four contenders spanned just five-tenths of a point. During the first three rotations, Lee had risen steadily in the rankings, from fourth place to second and then from second to first. But floor is not her strongest event. … Lee performed a smooth floor routine. She dropped one tumbling pass—completing three rather than four, to shore up her execution score—and ended up posting her highest floor mark yet in Tokyo. … [After leader Rebeca Andrade stepped out of bounds twice and lost the lead], Lee had won gold.
Lee, who is from St. Paul, Minnesota, is the first Hmong American gymnast to have qualified for the Olympics. She has said that she hoped to bring home a gold medal for her father, for her large family, and for the Hmong community as a whole. Perhaps the greatest highlight of Thursday’s competition was a clip of Lee’s family members gathered around the live broadcast at an early-morning watch party in Minnesota. When the final scores appeared on the screen, Lee’s mother, standing at the front of the crowd, erupted first. Then the room filled with cheers.
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Good news from around the world
EU passes landmark legislation mandating greenhouse gas emissions targets
From Future Crunch:
Heralded as ‘a law of laws’, the EU has approved landmark legislation to enshrine greenhouse gas emissions targets in law, requiring a 55% reduction by 2030, net zero by 2050, and the creation of a carbon budget for 2030-2050 that meets climate goals. It's a very, very big deal. It comes off the back of a very bad few weeks for fossil fuels, after a Brussels court ruled that Belgium’s failure to meet climate targets is a violation of human rights, and recognized 58,000 citizens as co-plaintiffs. The historic judgement follows similar, recent rulings in the Netherlands, Germany and France.
A UK charity criticised for rescuing refugees saw a 2,000 per cent increase in donations
Unintended consequences for another loud-mouth nationalist politician = good news for refugees.
From Positive News:
A UK charity that saves lives at sea saw a 2,000 per cent increase in donations on Wednesday, after it was criticised by an anti-migrant politician for rescuing refugees in the Channel.
The Royal National Lifeboat Association (RNLI) was described by Nigel Farage as a “taxi service for illegal trafficking gangs”, after the charity released footage of it intercepting refugees, including children, at sea.
Farage’s comments sparked an outpouring of public support for the RNLI, which reported a 2,000 per cent increase in donations on Wednesday (raising £200,000 in one day). The charity said it was “overwhelmed” by the response, and that its mission was to “save everyone”.
The RNLI has no role in immigration enforcement or border control. Its volunteers hand over responsibility for anyone rescued to the authorities when they reach land.
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Musical break
The stories about saving those who are now threatened in Afghanistan, about compassion for refugees in the UK, and about the Belarus athlete seeking asylum all made me think of this Playing for Change cover of the Nirvana song “Come as You Are.” We all should be welcome just as we are, wherever we want to go in the world.
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Good news in science and the environment
Community Science: Training the Next Generation to Protect our Water
More awesome teens!
From the National Wildlife Federation’s blog:
It’s been 7 years since the nation first learned about the Flint Water Crisis.
In April of 2014 the city of Flint, under emergency management by the state of Michigan, left the Detroit Water and Sewage Department and switched to the Flint River as its primary drinking water supply.
Shortly after the switch, residents noticed a significant difference in the taste, smell, and color of their water; the start of a seven-year, ongoing, battle to fix Flint.
The National Wildlife Federation worked with Flint Leaders to ensure that the voices of those affected by this man-made crisis were heard.
The Next Generation Providing Hope
The Flint Community Water Lab—the first community-based laboratory of its kind in the world—provides Flint residents with a trusted resource for free water testing for lead and other metals and PFAS/PFOS.
The Flint Lab is operated and run by high school and college students, providing important education and community science opportunities that promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, exposure to technical career opportunities, and workforce development. The lab was designed to promote public health and healing while restoring public confidence in tap water in individual homes.
With the support of former Flint Mayor, Dr. Karen Weaver, the current Interim Director of the African American Mayors Association, students from the lab were able to put their newfound skills to the test at Flint City Hall during their pilot program in the summer of 2019.
“What the students are learning at the Flint Community Lab is important,” Weaver said. “They are learning to take charge of their futures and use their voices, they are learning the importance of community science and community involvement. The African American Mayors Association is committed to keeping their voices lifted and introducing this concept to communities around the country.”
Vacant Lots to Pollinator Habitat in Philadelphia, PA
This is a great idea that could be implemented in any city neighborhood.
From the National Wildlife Federation blog:
Over the past two years, the National Wildlife Federation has been working with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society to transform a network of 26 vacant lots in West and Northwest Philadelphia into 50 climate-resilient pollinator gardens. This work was made possible through a grant award from the Wildlife Conservation Society through its Climate Adaptation Fund… ✂️
These gardens improve the connectivity and diversity of habitat within the city. They also reduce the impacts of climate change through heat absorption and flooding mitigation — while also serving as a stop for migrating pollinators, which enriches biodiversity and supports a stronger ecosystem. ✂️
If you are interested in transforming vacant land in your city into pollinator habitat, we recommend starting with a 300 square foot garden and checking out National Wildlife Federation’s Native Plant Finder to determine the best plant pieces for your area. … visit National Wildlife Federation’s Garden for Wildlife webpage to learn more.
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Good news for and about animals
Brought to you by Rosy, Nora, and Rascal.
Rosy and Nora both thought this story was worth boosting:
Eyes wide shut: How newborn mammals dream the world they’re entering
From Yale News:
As a newborn mammal opens its eyes for the first time, it can already make visual sense of the world around it. But how does this happen before they have experienced sight?
A new Yale study suggests that, in a sense, mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are even born.
Writing in the July 23 issue of Science, a team led by Michael Crair, the William Ziegler III Professor of Neuroscience and professor of ophthalmology and visual science, describes waves of activity that emanate from the neonatal retina in mice before their eyes ever open.
This activity disappears soon after birth and is replaced by a more mature network of neural transmissions of visual stimuli to the brain, where information is further encoded and stored.
“At eye opening, mammals are capable of pretty sophisticated behavior,” said Crair, senior author of the study, who is also vice provost for research at Yale. “But how do the circuits form that allow us to perceive motion and navigate the world? It turns out we are born capable of many of these behaviors, at least in rudimentary form.”
In the study, Crair’s team, led by Yale graduate students Xinxin Ge and Kathy Zhang, explored the origins of these waves of activity. Imaging the brains of mice soon after birth but before their eyes opened, the Yale team found that these retinal waves flow in a pattern that mimics the activity that would occur if the animal were moving forward through the environment.
Here’s Rascal’s choice. Actually, he thinks this is no big whoop, since he totally understands the difference between one treat and zero treats and can expound on that concept at length.
Scientists Studying Crows Get Big Surprise – They’re So Smart They Understand the Concept of Zero
From the Good News Network:
Building on substantial evidence of crow consciousness, a German university has proven some crows can learn to recognize ‘zero’ as a counting unit. ...zero is not nothing, rather it’s one of the most complex mathematical concepts devised—that something can and should represent nothing, not only as the base value, but as a placeholder.
The work comes from the University of Tübingen in Germany, where professor Andreas Nieder works with carrion crows to perform intelligence tests.
The crows were shown two sets of dots on a screen and were taught to indicate if the two screens had the same values. There could be between zero and four dots. Exactly as with 1, 2, 3, and 4—when the screens showed no dots, neurons in the crow’s brain demonstrated it was understanding this was a numeric value, but that it was a numeric value that contained nothing.
It took human civilization at least until the 20th century BCE to firmly establish the empty or base value. ✂️
Nieder contributed greatly to the current theory of animal consciousness, which is that it’s possible this highest level of thought isn’t necessarily bound to the presence of the cerebral cortex, a cranial region found only in primates, apes, and hominids. ✂️
“These results suggest that the neural foundations that allow sensory consciousness arose either before the emergence of mammals or independently in at least the avian lineage and do not necessarily require a cerebral cortex,” wrote Nieder and the other authors in their corresponding paper published in Science.
And all three animal editors — none of whom are big fans of raccoons — thought you needed to see this story:
'Embarrassed' Raccoon Rescued by Georgia Firefighters After Breaking into Home
From People:
On Wednesday, the City of Dalton Fire Department in Georgia posted a photo of a firefighter holding what appears to be an embarrassed raccoon. The reason for his reaction? A little breaking and entering incident he needed help escaping from.
"You never know what the day is going to hold when you show up for your shift as a firefighter," the post read. "Sure, there may be the occasional cat needing to be rescued from a tree, but a raccoon? That's a new one."
According to the post, officials were called to help the wild animal out of a home in Dalton after the creature seemingly made its way inside, presumably looking for food.
"As you can tell, he was pretty embarrassed about it, but it's really nothing to be ashamed of," the post continued. "We all need a helping hand every now and then."
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From the archives
Can reading make you happier?
From The New Yorker, June 9, 2015:
An intriguing piece about what happens when you consult a “bibliotherapist.” I’d never heard the term before or known that there were people dispensing reading advice professionally! (Sounds like a good side hustle for an English major...)
Here are excerpts from the opening paragraphs:
Several years ago, I was given as a gift a remote session with a bibliotherapist at the London headquarters of the School of Life, which offers innovative courses to help people deal with the daily emotional challenges of existence. I have to admit that at first I didn’t really like the idea of being given a reading “prescription.” I’ve generally preferred to mimic Virginia Woolf’s passionate commitment to serendipity in my personal reading discoveries, delighting not only in the books themselves but in the randomly meaningful nature of how I came upon them (on the bus after a breakup, in a backpackers’ hostel in Damascus, or in the dark library stacks at graduate school, while browsing instead of studying). ...
But the session was a gift, and I found myself unexpectedly enjoying the initial questionnaire about my reading habits that the bibliotherapist, Ella Berthoud, sent me. Nobody had ever asked me these questions before, even though reading fiction is and always has been essential to my life. I love to gorge on books over long breaks—I’ll pack more books than clothes, I told Berthoud. ... In response to the question “What is preoccupying you at the moment?,” I was surprised by what I wanted to confess: I am worried about having no spiritual resources to shore myself up against the inevitable future grief of losing somebody I love, I wrote. I’m not religious, and I don’t particularly want to be, but I’d like to read more about other people’s reflections on coming to some sort of early, weird form of faith in a “higher being” as an emotional survival tactic. Simply answering the questions made me feel better, lighter.
We had some satisfying back-and-forths over e-mail, with Berthoud digging deeper, asking about my family’s history and my fear of grief, and when she sent the final reading prescription it was filled with gems, none of which I’d previously read.
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Hot lynx
www.dailykos.com/… The Mystery of Anti-Vax & Anti-Mask. A spot-on diary by new Kossack Kat Ignatz [I love the Krazy Kat name and avatar!] built on Berkeley economic historian Carlo Cipolla’s The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity. Kat concludes “Maybe, we shouldn’t concern ourselves with why anti-vax/maskers act like they do. Perhaps, we should simply accept them as an incredible danger...and we should just do everything we can to do more good than they do harm.”
“Doing more good than they do harm” could be Gnuville’s official motto!
www.theatlantic.com/...The Time Tax. “The issue is not that modern life comes with paperwork hassles. The issue is that American benefit programs are, as a whole, difficult and sometimes impossible for everyday citizens to use.” A perceptive rant about the cost of red tape.
www.newyorker.com/… Inequality Has Soared During the Pandemic—and So Has C.E.O. Compensation. ”What would it take to arouse a sense of financial restraint among America’s top corporate executives and the people who set their pay? More than a global pandemic, it turns out.” Grrrrr…
www.bloomberg.com/… Young Talent Isn’t Following the Money to Wall Street. ”Long hours, the pandemic and the lure of startups are taking their toll on recruitment for the traditional investment banks.” Too bad, so sad /s
mentalhealth.cityofnewyork.us/… B-HEARD: Transforming NYC’s Response to Mental Health Crises. “On June 6, 2021, New York City launched a pilot program in which both mental and physical health professionals are responding to 911 mental health emergency calls for the first time in our history.” And the results look promising.
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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, 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 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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Want to do a good deed today?
Follow this excellent suggestion from Progessive Muse, which was also boosted by 2thanks on Sunday:
If you want to write a note/postcard of support to the officers who testified:
Officer Harry Dunn and Sergeant Aquilino Gonell are U.S. Capitol Police so they would be reachable here:
United States Capitol Police
119 D Street, NE
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-1677 USCapitolPolice@uscp.gov
Officer Daniel Hodges and Officer Michael Fanone are D.C. Metro Police. Their contact information is:
Metropolitan Police Department
300 Indiana Avenue, NW
Washington , DC 20001
(202) 727-9099 mpd@dc.gov
A Sample Letter:
Dear Officer __________,
Thank you for your bravery on January 6, and on every day since.
Thank you for protecting our democracy.
Truth matters.
[Your Name Here]
Closing music
In honor of heroes.
❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
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! 💙❤️
