Happy Lunar New Year, Gnusies!
I’m not a serious follower of Chinese astrology, but I enjoy its symbolism. So when I looked up the meaning of the tiger year, I was happy to find this on the site Pure Wow:
The Year of the Rat (2020) was about survival, and the Year of the Ox (2021) was about anchoring ourselves in a new reality. The Year of the Tiger will be about making big changes. This will be a year of risk-taking and adventure. We’re finding enthusiasm again, both for ourselves and for others. Everyone is fired up, generosity is at an all-time high and social progress feels possible again. ✂️
In addition to the animals, the Chinese Zodiac also cycles through five elemental types. So, this is not only the Year of the Tiger, it’s the year of the Water Tiger. Water years bring out our emotions more than any of the other elements. Water Tigers are family-oriented and have wonderful interpersonal relationships. Though they’re extremely driven and can be brash, their goal is always to do what’s best for everyone, not just for themselves. Overall, this is a year for switching careers, building teams or getting back into creative projects.
Sounds good to me! It resonates with my belief that if we work our asses off this year, we’ll see some really satisfying progress. I especially like applying this quote to progressive activists: “Though they’re extremely driven and can be brash, their goal is always to do what’s best for everyone, not just for themselves.”
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Opening music
An obvious choice!
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Good news in politics
A couple of excellent insights into why political reporting is so inaccurate
The next time you see punditry based on anecdotes (the NYTimes’ infamous “Cletus safaries” are a perfect example), remember this:
And Yair Rosenberg in The Atlantic offers an antidote to Twitter. I bolded the last sentence.
But just because something makes waves on Twitter doesn’t mean it actually matters to most people. According to the Pew Research Center, only 23 percent of U.S. adults use Twitter, and of those users, “the most active 25% … produced 97% of all tweets.” In other words, nearly all tweets come from less than 6 percent of American adults. This is not a remotely good representation of public opinion, let alone newsworthiness, and treating it as such will inevitably result in wrong conclusions.
To be clear, my own profession [cultural critic] is just as guilty of this practice. Political reporters and elite opinion-makers are often similarly misled by viral content on social media and mistake Twitter trends for electoral realities. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, I’ve fallen for this ruse myself, most notably when I discounted the viability of Donald Trump’s 2016 candidacy because my peers on social media did. To take another example, Joe Biden had few Twitter fans during the 2020 Democratic primary, but he had many more voters. Twitter is real life for the people who are on it, but most people are not on Twitter.
Biden administration boosts reproductive health protections in face of GOP attacks
One of the things I love most about our smart, compassionate president is that when he sees that one path forward is blocked, he finds another. Just what one hopes for in a leader.
From The American Independent:
As the GOP wages an all-out war against reproductive health rights, the Biden administration is taking steps to protect access to birth control and abortion. Most recently, the administration is pushing insurers to abide by the Affordable Care Act's birth control mandate.
The ACA requires insurers to cover 18 types of contraceptive methods without any cost-sharing, like a co-payment or deductible. The Guttmacher Institute, which tracks reproductive health legislation, explains that insurers can require "restrictions within a method category (e.g., to encourage patients to choose one hormonal IUD over another), but they may not favor one type of method over another (e.g., oral contraceptives over contraceptive rings)." It appears, however, that insurers have not necessarily adhered to this requirement. ✂️
The administration has responded by issuing an FAQ to insurers reminding them of their obligations under the ACA, telling insurers that the complaints are being actively investigated and that enforcement or other corrective actions could be taken. Looking forward, the administration says it is also considering whether to make changes to existing regulations to ensure complete coverage, such as making sure the FDA Birth Control Guide includes all contraceptive products approved by the FDA since previous guidelines were issued in 2019.
The Biden administration just increased pay for 50,000 military base workers
Yes, most of us already know that Biden increased the minimum wage for 70,000 federal employees, but we may not have realized the impact this will have on families living on military bases. Many of these workers are spouses trying to raise families on military salaries of under $20,000 per year. Even with stipends for uniforms, food, and housing, many military families are struggling, especially when a soldier is sent to another location and the spouse loses their job.
From The American Independent:
In a press release published on [Jan. 22], [the Office of Personnel Management] noted that those affected by the increase included "Around 50,000 Department of Defense employees of non-appropriated fund activities at military bases around the country who provide essential services to our military, including many who are military spouses."
Gilbert Cisneros, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said in a statement, "This pay increase is an important step for the civilian men and women who support the military community and their families."
An additional 9,700 of the workers entitled to the minimum wage increase work for the Department of Veterans Affairs. They include custodians, housekeeping aides, and food service workers.
The bulk of federal employees who currently earn below $15 per hour work at the departments of Defense, Agriculture, and Veterans Affairs. The new policy will apply to all agencies within the executive branch of the government, excluding the Postal Service and the Postal Regulatory Commission.
Poll: Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema Set to Be Unseated by Possible Challenger Ruben Gallego in 2024 Primary Landslide
Yup, Sinema is toast. Let’s hope other DINOs also go down in 2022.
From Data for Progress:
In October 2021, Data for Progress published poll findings that captured the extent of Arizona Democratic primary voters’ dissatisfaction with Senator Kyrsten Sinema: She had the highest unfavorability rating of any elected Democrat tested in the state, and she was poised to lose her 2024 primary by a wide margin.✂️
Data for Progress’ initial polling found [progressive Rrepresentative Ruben] Gallego to be in the best position to beat Sinema in 2024. New Data for Progress polling finds that, since October, Sinema’s favorability has dipped even further — and that Gallego’s potential to secure a primary victory has increased.
Around 80 percent of likely Democratic primary voters in Arizona hold favorable views of President Biden and Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly. Among self-identified Democrats, both officials hold nearly 90 percent favorability, while among self-identified moderates, both officials hold 72 percent support. In contrast, Sinema holds -57 points net favorability overall. ✂️
In contrast, a +49-point margin of voters hold favorable views of Rep. Ruben Gallego... This represents a 7-point boost for Gallego from our October 2021 poll. A third of voters haven’t heard enough about Gallego to make a decision... It should be noted that Gallego’s 7-point increase in support comes with a 7-point decrease in the “unknown” margin from the last time we polled him, indicating that he has already made progress toward boosting his name recognition and favorability.
Among women, Gallego holds +47 points net favorability, while among Latino/a voters, he carries +53 points. Among self-described moderates, Gallego — who is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus — holds +37 points net favorability. In fact, across all demographics, he holds at least +22 points net favorability, and even this number is a bit of an outlier; it comes from voters under age 45, of whom almost half haven’t heard enough about Gallego to make a decision.
ICYMI:
‘In shock’: Public servants celebrate as loan forgiveness program finally starts working
From Daily Kos, by Laura Clawson:
Teachers, social workers, firefighters, members of the military, and other government and nonprofit workers are seeing their student debt wiped clean thanks to the Biden administration’s overhaul of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. The program was supposed to make public service work more appealing by offering the promise that, after 10 years of payments, people’s student loans would be forgiven. Instead, virtually no one qualified—just over 16,000 people as of fall 2021. That has changed.
Around 70,000 public servants have now gotten nearly $5 billion in relief, and in the end, up to 550,000 of them could get help.
This change comes because, after years of rejections because people had been paying on loans from the wrong program, or had paid a little late or submitted payments that were off by as little as a few cents—rejections that often came after people had paid for 10 years in good faith, without being told they weren’t qualifying—the Department of Education put into place a temporary fix. It allows people to consolidate all of their loans into eligible ones and submit a form to get their payments to this point—including the ones that would have previously been considered ineligible—to count toward forgiveness.
That’s 70,000 people who, after years of working for the public good and faithfully paying their loans, have gotten relief. The joy is palpable when people post about it on social media—but also the surprise that the system is now working on this front.
And another DKos diary I definitely don’t want you to miss:
Joe Trippi on an optimistic vision for 2022 and the pro-democracy movement
From Daily Kos, quoted from The Brief:
Trippi also feels optimistic about Biden’s approval ratings improving over the next few months and sees an opportunity for a true democracy coalition to form and fight back against the forces that are pushing for authoritarianism and facism:
As Covid dissipates, as people understand what’s really happening with the economy in terms of pay and other things that are going on, and inflation ... I just think that this is sort of like the bottom of Biden’s approval rating. It’s up from here, and any improvement is going to help. Overall, you start to get a sense that a true democracy coalition from the ground up is starting to come out … this is an authoritarian party versus democracy, and that that’s reaching independents, former Republicans, some moderates. I think that coalition is going to grow. That’s how we may have to overcome what they’re doing with voting rights and voter suppression. It’s all of us.
In that sense, what I want to help build is the kind of movement that we had … to use those tools to pull that coalition together. Regardless of ideology, regardless of party … it’s not ‘right’ versus ‘left.’ This is pro-democracy Americans … [against everyone else] … I really do think you’re going to see the energy behind that rise and grow every day from now until November 2022, and I really believe that Democrats will pull the House and gain some seats in the Senate. Because what’s really on the ballot? Democracy is on the ballot in November 2022.
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Good news from my corner of the world
Inspired by nationwide trend, Eugene [OR] Starbucks first in state to petition for union status
From The Eugene Register Guard:
A Starbucks in south Eugene has become the first Oregon location to join a nationwide movement by petitioning to become unionized with the National Labor Relations Board.
Ky Fireside, a barista, helped organize and collect support signatures for unionizing from 23 of the 25 workers at the Starbucks on Willamette Street near the intersection of East 29th Avenue. She said the main motivation was hearing of the perils of workers trying to unionize in Buffalo, New York, and the inability to contact higher-up management. ✂️
Starbucks has insisted during previous unionization attempts that its more than 8,000 company-owned U.S. stores function best when Starbucks works directly with its employees, which it calls "partners."
"We have this issue where Starbucks calls us partners, but we have no voice," Fireside said. "We have no say. There is not an avenue for someone like me to even be in contact with anybody at any sort of executive level or really anybody above the district manager level.”
The Road Warriors
The kids are definitely all right! I’m so proud to have these young environmental heroes in my own city!!
BTW, the article also points out that the usual justification given for highway expansion — easing congestion — is bullshit: “...research overwhelmingly shows that adding road capacity ultimately draws more vehicles and increases back-ups.”
From Bloomberg CityLab:
Every other Wednesday, 15-year-old Adah Crandall catches the bus from her high school in Northeast Portland to spend the early evening with a group of friends outside the Oregon Department of Transportation’s downtown headquarters. ...Since April 2021, she and her crew have been protesting the agency’s plans to widen a slew of highways that could increase CO2 emissions by tens of thousands of tons per year.
“People don’t think of ODOT as a villain in the climate crisis, but they don’t realize that 40% of our state’s carbon emissions come from transportation, come from the freeways that ODOT is trying to expand,” Crandall told a reporter at a protest in June. ✂️
...the purpose of Youth Vs. ODOT, as the campaign is called, is always the same: These teens and 20-somethings are determined to connect the existential threat of climate change clearly and inextricably with road expansion. As far as organizers know, the effort is unprecedented in the U.S. in its sustained single-mindedness.
It also could be effective: On Jan 18, the Federal Highway Administration rescinded a key approval of the controversial highway widening that’s been a prime target of the young protesters, the Rose Quarter Improvement Project along Portland’s Interstate 5. FWHA also requested that the state redo its environmental study.
Youth Vs. ODOT’s campaign is well timed. Over the next five years, transportation departments across the U.S. will receive some $350 billion in federal highway funding — more than has ever been disbursed — from President Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. States have flexibility to spend a lot of that money on public transit, bike lanes, electric vehicles and other lower-carbon choices. But there has been little indication — even from progressive governors — that the vast majority will be used for anything other than roads.
And here’s more on the FWHA’s decision to rescind its approval for the I-5 expansion:
ODOT must redo Rose Quarter project environmental analysis, feds say
From KGW News:
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has rescinded its approval for the Interstate 5 Rose Quarter project and asked the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) to produce an updated Environmental Assessment.
The decision was prompted by changes made to the project design in the 15 months since the FHWA approved the project's original Environmental Assessment...
In a press release on Thursday, ODOT said the changes in question pertained to the new "Hybrid 3" design for the project, which the Oregon Transportation Commission directed ODOT to develop in September.
ODOT said it intended to move forward with an updated Environmental Assessment to incorporate Hybrid 3, and that the project's timeline remained unchanged, with construction set to begin in 2023.
“Updating the Environmental Assessment is an important step to advance the community’s preferred Hybrid 3 highway cover design and is a step we anticipated and are excited to take,” project director Megan Channell said in a statement. ✂️
Still, No More Freeways and other project opponents hailed the news as a victory, and called on ODOT to reconsider the project in its entirety and evaluate alternatives to the freeway expansion.
U.S. Bureau of Prisons finalizes rules for early release program that led to Oregon issues
The writer buried the lede, so I fixed that. 😉
From Oregon Public Broadcasting:
Four inmates at Oregon’s federal prison in Sheridan filed a lawsuit arguing the prison wasn’t giving them credit when it could’ve been. Last month, a judge ruled in their favor. ✂️
The Federal Bureau of Prisons announced a new rule [on January 13th] to give nonviolent offenders the opportunity for early release.
The rule is designed to bring clarity to a 2018 law passed by Congress called the First Step Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation aimed at reduce lengthy federal prison sentences.
Under the First Step Act, those federal prisoners are able to earn credits by enrolling in programs designed to reduce recidivism, such as job training and drug and alcohol treatment. Inmates who earned enough credits could get a sentence reduced by up to 12 months or the ability to complete a sentence in a community setting, such as a reentry center or home detention.
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Good news from around the nation
In rare move, U.S. judge rejects plea agreement by Ahmaud Arbery's murderers
From Reuters:
A U.S. judge in Georgia rejected plea agreements reached between federal prosecutors and two of the three white men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery, saying she was not willing to be bound to the 30-year federal prison sentence set in the agreement.
The unusual decision by U.S. District Judge Lisa Wood came after Travis McMichael, one of the three attackers due to face trial next week on federal hate-crime charges, admitted for the first time he had pursued the 25-year-old Black man because of his race. ✂️
In rejecting the federal agreement, Wood acknowledged emotional testimony on Monday by Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, and other relatives who begged the judge not to accept the deal.
They said they were alarmed that prosecutors had agreed to recommend McMichael be transferred to a federal prison for 30 years before returning him to the custody of the Georgia prison system for the rest of his life. Federal prisons are generally perceived as less brutal environments than typical state prisons.
"Granting these men their preferred conditions of confinement will defeat me. It gives them one last chance to spit in my face after murdering my son," Cooper-Jones told the court. "The state of Georgia already gave these men exactly what they deserve. Please leave it that way.”
Students Are Walking Out Over COVID
When the adults fail to act, students step up.
From The Atlantic:
This month, teens across the country have been adding their voices to the debate over in-person schooling, which has so far been dominated by adults—by parents, teachers, and politicians. Last week, students from more than 20 schools in New York City participated in a walkout, and students in Boston, Chicago, and Seattle did the same. Many of them feel frustrated and unsafe. Like teachers, “we’re the ones encountering the problem every single day because we’re coming to school and we’re around a bunch of people, some who don’t wear masks [and] some who do,” says Gianna Pizarro, a 15-year-old sophomore at Burncoat High School, in Worcester, Massachusetts who participated in a walkout. ✂️
The high-school students organizing walkouts aren’t proposing that their schools go remote indefinitely, but rather that schools and students be able to do so temporarily, while case counts are higher than at any previous point in the pandemic. They’re concerned for their own safety, but also worried about bringing the virus home to a family member.
...students have been on their own in determining whether they’ve been exposed. They effectively have had to work as their own informal contact-tracing teams, asking around about peers’ test results and monitoring social media for indications of COVID cases. ✂️
In some cities, students’ actions seem to have caught administrators’ attention. The chancellor of New York City’s schools offered to meet with student organizers after their walkout last week. So far, though, one of the most reliable effects of a walkout seems to be that it begets more walkouts. Students I spoke with said that their walkouts were inspired by the organizing they saw earlier this month in New York City, Oakland, and Chicago.
Delivery Workers Cheer Restroom Access and Tip Transparency
From The City:
Starting [Jan. 24], New York City’s app-based food delivery workers are entitled to increased clarity on their daily earnings and tips, and the right to use most restaurant bathrooms, as new laws begin their rollout.
The rules emerged from a slate of landmark bills approved by the City Council last September, sparked by THE CITY’s reporting and the demands of Los Deliveristas Unidos, a labor group representing thousands of delivery workers.
The Deliveristas celebrated the new protections Sunday afternoon with a rally in Times Square...The rally drew dozens of Deliveristas, many of whom hail from Indigenous communities from Mexico and Guatemala. Workers from Bangladesh and Mali also participated.
“We’re going to see big, big changes with these laws,” upper Manhattan delivery worker Manny Ramírez, 34, told THE CITY on Friday. “The discrepancy between what the client thinks we get paid and what the apps actually pay was immense — but now there is more awareness, and we felt like we’d won with that alone.”
To Bargain With Their Landlords, Renters Form Tenant Unions
Apologies to linking to an article in WSJ (🤢), but it’s important news.
From The Wall Street Journal:
Apartment tenants are forming unions in an effort to gain leverage in landlord negotiations, a response to record-high rents and the recent expiration of eviction bansenacted during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tenant unions, also known as associations, have been around for more than a century. They have been especially active in expensive cities with large renter populations such as San Francisco and New York. Now they are spreading in places like Akron, Ohio; Milwaukee, and the Maryland suburbs.
Hundreds of new tenant unions have been formed during the pandemic, estimated Katie Goldstein, director of housing campaigns for the Center for Popular Democracy. The progressive organization with 50 affiliate groups across the country is one of a handful of activist networks advising tenant unions. ✂️
A key difference from labor unions is that tenant associations in the private housing market have almost none of the legal recognition that organized labor does, which means tenant groups have much less bargaining power.
Some lawmakers in San Francisco, responding in part to tenant complaints, said they plan to consider this year a proposal to force city landlords to meet with tenant unions. The proposal would impose temporary rent reductions on landlords that fail to do so.
Spotify and Joe Rogan Respond to Complaints About Covid Misinformation
The usual weak sauce from an online platform behaving badly. I bolded the last sentence because it says more about Spotify than Ek’s entire statement.
From The New York Times:
[CEO Daniel] Ek said that Spotify would add a “content advisory” notice to any podcast episode that includes a discussion about the coronavirus, directing listeners to a “Covid-19 hub” with facts and information. That hub includes links to health authorities like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as podcasts from news sources like the BBC, CNN and ABC News.
Ek also wrote that for the first time, the service is publishing its platform rules, which address dangerous, deceptive, sensitive and illegal content. Among them are rules barring “content that promotes dangerous false or dangerous deceptive medical information that may cause offline harm or poses a direct threat to public health,” including denial of the existence of Covid-19 or that “promoting or suggesting that vaccines approved by local health authorities are designed to cause death.”
On Wednesday, when Spotify began removing Young’s music, the company said that it has “removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to Covid since the start of the pandemic.” Rogan’s episode with Dr. Malone remains available on Spotify.
Here’s a fun and clever method for dealing with CRT loonies (🎩 to Tara the Antisocial Social Worker for posting this tweet in a comment on OHD’s terrific Tweets of the Week on Sunday):
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Good news from around the world
WCK Heads to Tonga with Food and Supplies
There seem to be no obstacles too challenging for Chef José Andrés and his heroic team!
From World Central Kitchen:
The Polynesian kingdom of Tonga was devastated after the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano erupted—the eruption was hundreds of times more powerful than the first atomic bomb and generated tsunami waves in Tonga and around the world. The disaster left entire Tongan communities covered in ash and critical infrastructure destroyed.
Because Tonga is Covid-free with closed borders, the WCK team can't be on the ground as we normally do. So we flew to Fiji, began prepping food & hygiene kits (plus solar lamps & masks) for families, and found a ship to get us 500 miles across the South Pacific to deliver contactless to our partners there. They will then distribute to affected communities in coordination with the Tongan government.
In addition to the thousands of food kits on the boat headed to Tonga, we have also activated 12 local restaurants on the island, which began serving hot meals this week. They are delivering over 3,400 fresh-cooked plates to communities each day, such as chicken curry or fried chicken with cassava and rice, bread, and watermelon.
Former foes Israel and Jordan work together to combat energy and water scarcity
From Deutsche Welle:
In an act of climate barter, Jordan is gearing up to provide solar energy to Israel in exchange for desalinated water. The trade-off forms the basis of a climate cooperation deal between the two countries, which signed a peace treaty in 1994.
Under this brave new deal, water-scarce Jordan would export about 600 megawatts of solar-generated electricity to Israel, which in return would supply its neighbor with up to 200 million cubic meters of desalinated water.
According to media reports published around the time the declaration of intent was signed, a United Arab Emirates-based company would build a solar farm in Jordan, including the transmission lines that would connect it to Israel — possibly by 2026. Israel, meanwhile, already operates five desalination plants along its Mediterranean Coast and has two more in the planning stage.
"It's a win-win situation and a model for out-of-the-box thinking on climate security," said Gidon Bromberg, co-founder and Israeli Director of EcoPeace Middle East, an Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian environmental NGO.
Plans were announced for ‘fixing factories’ in the UK
I hope this trend reaches the U.S. too.
From Positive News:
The UK’s factories were the engine rooms of the Industrial Revolution, introducing the world to new ways of working, making and consuming. Can two ‘fixing factories’ in London do the same for the burgeoning circular economy?
Due to open in Camden and Brent this spring, the facilities will produce nothing. Instead their volunteer workforce will repair people’s broken electronics on a pay-what-you-like basis.
It’s all part of a plan to extend the life of electronic items, thus reducing waste and carbon emissions. Those behind the project want to open one on every high street. Read the full Positive News story here.
Millionaires called for higher taxes
This would be a good message to send to your Congresscritters.
From Positive News:
A coterie of high-net worth individuals have called on governments to make them pay more taxes to help bridge the gap between rich and poor.
The intervention follows the publication of a report last week by Oxfam. It found that the 10 richest men in the world have doubled their wealth during the pandemic, while the incomes of 99 per cent of the population shrank.
Disney heiress Abigail Disney was among 102 millionaires who signed the open letter calling for higher taxes. “The world – every country in it – must demand the rich pay their fair share,” read the letter. “Tax us, the rich, and tax us now.”
Sleuths Uncovers Evidence to Suggest Djokovic’s COVID Diagnosis Was BS
I consider this good news because it’s always good to catch an entitled asshole in a lie that’s likely to get him into further trouble. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
And now Rafa has the record that Djokovic was chasing! Pure karma.
From Daily Beast:
Tennis star Novak Djokovic dropped a bombshell this month when he revealed in court filings that he had COVID in December, arguing that his recovery should allow him to skirt Australia’s strict vaccine mandate. But the BBC has found evidence to suggest Djokovic may have been fibbing. The network obtained a batch of COVID test results from Serbia from the same period and found that the serial numbers were out of sequence with the Dec. 16 positive test result Djokovic presented to Australian authorities. His negative test result six days later also had a lower sequence number than his earlier test. The batch of results, first uncovered by German researchers and then obtained by BBC, showed that codes are issued in chronological order. “The only outlier of all the confirmation codes we’ve plotted was Mr Djokovic’s positive test,” the report says. After Djokovic’s disclosure, journalists uncovered a slew of mask-free events he attended while supposedly COVID-positive. Ultimately, his visa to play in the Australian Open was rejected on other grounds.
Read it at BBC
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Art break
Words fail me. Prepare to be amazed.
From The Washington Post:
It started when [Ella] Hawkins, who teaches early modern English at the University of
Cookies based on William Morris designs.
Birmingham in the United Kingdom, decided last year to bake a special batch of Valentine’s Day cookies to mail to her mother, who lives about 70 miles from her.
She searched the Internet for painted cookies and settled on decorating hers in pastel colors with elaborate golden swirls and miniature flowers. Her mother raved about them, and when she sent photos to friends, they were beside themselves at what Hawkins had created. ✂️
[She uses ] fine-tipped brushes, gel food coloring and vodka. ...“I actually don’t drink the vodka. I use it instead of water as a thinning agent,” said Hawkins, adding that it takes her up to two hours to decorate each cookie, known as biscuits in the U.K. “It’s one of those tricks from the cookie trade.”
[She subsequently started posting photos of her creations on Instagram. You can find them here: www.instagram.com/...]
Cookies based on medieval manuscripts.
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Good news in medicine
This could be the start of the end for drug-resistant bacteria
From Optimist Daily:
The increasing occurrence of drug-resistant bacteria is a huge obstacle humans have to overcome to save lives across the globe. Researchers have done all they can to be prepared against this challenge, such as creating a model which calculates the chance of resistance against different drug combinations. Even though there is still quite a way to go until the problem is solved, researchers have come up with some creative ideas to tackle the situation. ✂️
After a terrorist bombing attack, the patient suffered multiple injures, leading to some bone in her leg needing to be surgically removed. Consequently, an infection in this area occurred. The report, published in Nature Communications, describes how the use of bacteriophages over a three year period, freed the woman of her infection and also gave her the ability to walk again.
A research group at the Eliava Institute in Georgia, bioengineered, prepared and researched the perfect bacteriophage to use that would banish the infection. The solution was applied to the patient’s leg, alongside a mixture of antibacterial agents. ✂️
Even though this study is promising, and shows we do have means to diminish pesky drug-resistant organisms, more efficient methods of finding the perfect bacteriophages needs to be developed.
New MRI Machine Overcomes Technical, Logistical Challenges
From Laboratory Equipment:
If you need an MRI but have a pacemaker or defibrillator, are claustrophobic or obese, you may not have access to this critical technology used to diagnose a large variety of diseases. What then?
Ohio State University (OSU) researchers recently collaborated with Siemens to expand essential imaging access to all patients by designing the first FDA-approved MRI machine that bypasses previous limitations. ✂️
The...new 0.55T Free.Max scanner...is currently installed at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. While today’s clinical MRIs typically have magnetic field strengths of 1.5 or 3.0 Tesla, the Free.Max is much lower at 0.55 Tesla.
In addition to being able to accommodate patients with implanted devices, the lower magnetic strength actually provides better imaging than a traditional MRI in some cases, specifically when working with the heart. The new MRI machine can also be used for lung imaging without X-ray radiation, opening the door to new interventional procedures that could result in less radiation exposure.
“This is an important advancement for patients with cystic fibrosis, pulmonary hypertension, heart failure, COVID-19 and any other disease where we’re trying to understand the source of shortness of breath and evaluate both the heart and lungs,” said Simonetti. “The air in the lungs cancels out the MRI signal at higher field strength; however, at lower field, there's potential to see lung tissue more clearly with the MRI.”
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Good news in science
Cash Aid to Poor Mothers Increases Brain Activity in Babies, Study Finds
This story could have been filed under politics or national news, but I like emphasizing that it’s a scientific study. And anything that reinforces the argument for direct cash payments to people suffering from poverty is definitely good news.
From The New York Times:
A study that provided poor mothers with cash stipends for the first year of their children’s lives appears to have changed the babies’ brain activity in ways associated with stronger cognitive development, a finding with potential implications for safety net policy.
The differences were modest — researchers likened them in statistical magnitude to moving to the 75th position in a line of 100 from the 81st — and it remains to be seen if changes in brain patterns will translate to higher skills, as other research offers reason to expect.
Still, evidence that a single year of subsidies could alter something as profound as brain functioning highlights the role that money may play in child development and comes as President Biden is pushing for a much larger program of subsidies for families with children. ✂️
Evidence abounds that poor children on average start school with weaker cognitive skills, and neuroscientists have shown that the differences extend to brain structure and function. But it has not been clear if those differences come directly from the shortage of money or from related factors like parental education or neighborhood influences.
The study released on [Jan. 24th] offers evidence that poverty itself holds children back from their earliest moments.
‘Strange metal’ may be the future for a more energy efficient world
From Optimist Daily:
Strange metal behavior was first noticed around 30 years ago. These materials are composed of copper-oxides and carry the properties of being high-temperature superconductors. This means they can transfer electricity very efficiently, withstanding much higher temperatures with less energy loss than normal conductors.
The way in which they do this has baffled scientists for centuries, due to the complex mathematics that is needed to understand their incredible powers. “To try to understand what’s happening in these strange metals, people have applied mathematical approaches similar to those used to understand black holes,” stated Jim Valles, a professor of physics at Brown University. “So there’s some very fundamental physics happening in these materials.”
A team, led by Valles, has gotten one step closer to understanding this phenomenon. Published in Nature, the results discuss how “wave-like” entities, termed Cooper pairs, carry electrical charge through the metal. In regular metallic structures electrons carry out this job.
This new finding could have massive implications. Once scientists understand what gives superconductors these properties, humans may be able to harness their powers of energy efficiency. From energy lossless power grids to quantum computing, less wasteful systems could be set up which is important for us humans in reducing our carbon footprint on the world.
Tiny New Sensor – That Could Fit in a Smartphone – Makes the Invisible Visible
From SciTechDaily:
While the human eye is impressive, it’s far from being the most advanced natural light sensor out there. “The eyes of the Mantis shrimp have 16 different types of cells, which are sensitive to ultraviolet light, visible, and near-infrared (NIR) light,” says [Kaylee] Hakkel [PhD researcher in the Photonics and Semiconductor Nanophysics group at the Department of Applied Physics]. “And measuring the spectrum in the infrared is most interesting for applications in industry and agriculture, but there’s one major issue – current near-infrared spectrometers are just too big and expensive.”
Hakkel and her collaborators have solved this issue by developing a near-infrared sensor that fits onto a small chip. ✂️
With the sensor in hand, the researchers then tested the sensor in a number of experiments, as explained by co-first author Maurangelo Petruzzella, who is also working at the startup company MantiSpectra. “We used the sensor to measure the nutritional properties of many materials including milk. Our sensor provided comparable accuracy in the prediction of fat content in milk as conventional spectrometers. And then we used the sensor to classify different types of plastic.” ✂️
“Besides these applications, we anticipate that the sensor could be used for personalized health care, precision agriculture (monitoring the ripeness of fruit and vegetable for instance), process control, and lab-on-chip testing.”
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Good news for the environment
These sustainably powered homes can raise families out of poverty
From Optimist Daily:
...BillionBricks and Architecture Brio’s PowerHyde solar homes...tackle both the global housing issue and the climate crisis in one go.
The concept behind the carbon-negative, self-financing, and scalable housing model was the brainchild of Prasoon Kumar from India and Robert Verrijt from Singapore. The homes are equipped with solar arrays that are installed on the roof which provide homeowners with their own energy along with the opportunity to turn a profit by selling the excess power generated by their home to power companies.
Currently, the homes are built in an indigenous prefabricated assembly technique so that the product can be easily put together in remote locations. “BillionBricks homes are plug-and-play modular homes that do not need any connection to service and could be made functional from the day of completion of construction,” the company explains.
The homes are also designed to harvest 100 percent of the rainwater, clean household sewage, and make it easier for homeowners to grow their own food. There are also plans to integrate smart technologies within future BillionBricks homes.✂️
So far, sample homes have been erected in Mathjalgaon Village in India and in the Philippines, but BillionBricks has plans to establish a full community of 500 homes that will generate 10 megawatts of power near Manila, the capital city of the Philippines.
Cooling bamboo system is a green alternative to air conditioning
Aside from being effective, the structure looks like a sculpture!
From Optimist Daily:
The number of sweltering days affecting people each year in Vietnam has grown significantly in recent years as a result of climate change. Using air conditioning may help reduce people’s exposure to life-threatening hot temperatures, but always keeping them on not only results in exorbitant energy costs but also further exacerbates the effects of global warming.
In a bid to find a solution, multidisciplinary architecture agency AREP has come up with an alternative cooling system in the form of a low-tech bamboo prototype. The system uses what’s known as an adiabatic process to provide a sustainable and affordable solution to cooling down urban areas.
“For centuries, ancient civilizations cooled down their buildings by using the natural freshness of water through the adiabatic principle. To evaporate, water needs energy which is ‘absorbed’ from the heat of the ambient air, thus generating the cooling effect,” explains AREP.
Essentially, the system uses only three main components to provide a cooling effect, namely water, hot air, and bamboo — all of which are found in abundance in Vietnam. As for the creation of the actual structure, the agency approached local artisans who helped them build it according to local crafting traditions.
To prove the system’s efficiency, the team decided to put it to the test in Hanoi. According to the designers, the bamboo cooling tower succeeded in dropping the surrounding temperature by 6°C (from 30°C to 24°C), proving the system’s potential as a viable cooling solution for cities. AREP now plans to expand the solution to regionally as well as to other parts of the world affected by frequent heatwaves.
Peelsphere is a leather-alternative biomaterial made from fruit waste and algae
This material is simply gorgeous!
From Dezeen:
Berlin-based textile designer Youyang Song has used fruit peels and algae to create a biodegradable plant-based material that offers an alternative to leather.
Peelsphere is a versatile and waterproof textile that can be hardened to form accessories like buttons, or left malleable and soft for items such as bags.
Song, who originally trained as a textile designer, first started experimenting with leather made from fruit leaves after realising that there was nothing available on the market for her own designs. ✂️
[Song’s team]...devised a manufacturing process that involves extracting the fibre and pectin from [banana and orange] peel and mixing it together before grinding it into fine pieces using a bio-binder.
The mixture forms sheets of leather-like material that can be dyed using natural dyes. Finally, the team laser-cuts and 3D-prints the sheets into different sizes. The resulting material is [biodegradable,] waterproof and can be embroidered, woven or sewn into a variety of final products.
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Good news for and about animals
Brought to you by Rosy, Nora, and Rascal.
Rosy just looooooves this husky/human collaboration. And I confess it’s become an ear worm (but not an annoying one) ever since I first heard it.
BTW, the South African musician who calls himself The Kiffness does lots of these collaborations.
Of course Nora chose the delightful backstory of Willow for her contribution today!
First kitty: Willow Biden, new White House cat, hails from Volant, Pennsylvania, farm
BTW, Rick Telesz is now a candidate for Congress, running against Rethug Mike Kelly in Pennsylvania’s 16th district. Kelly is the asshole who brought the suit against no-excuse mail-in voting in PA, which the Commonwealth Court just ruled unconstitutional.
From Erie Times-News:
As Jill Biden addressed a crowd of Democratic supporters on Rick Telesz's Lawrence County farm on the eve of the 2020 presidential election, a gray, shorthair tabby cat hopped on the back of the makeshift stage and pranced in front of her with its tail standing tall, catching the attention of the now-first lady.
The crowd broke out in laughter.
"She was speaking and she stopped, acknowledged the cat, but the cat continued to walk down and jumped and sat on a chair in the front row, right in front of her," Telesz recalled... "Even after she got done talking, she made some comments toward the cat."
A few days after the election, a Democratic party official phoned Telesz.
"The gentleman says, 'I don't know how to ask you this, Rick.' And I thought, 'Oh boy, I'm in trouble now,'" Telesz said. "But he goes, 'Dr. Jill Biden was wanting to know if you would allow her to adopt that cat.'” ✂️
Rick Telesz with Willow.
[Telesz had voted for Trump in 2016 but then changed parties and was featured in campaign ads for Biden.] Telesz's veterinarian had joked with [him] that he would one day end up "in D.C.," he said.
"When I got the call asking if they could have the cat, I called my vet and I said, 'doc, guess what? I got the call from D.C.' He got all excited, asks 'where are you going?' I said, 'No, they don't want me. They want the cat.'”
Rascal, being a fan of snuggles himself, chose this sweet story of a Java sparrow in Hawaii who loves to snuggle with the woman who rescued him when he was a tiny fledgling.
And because we all love butterflies, my co-editors wanted me to share some great news about Monarchs:
Amazing Quarter Million Monarchs in 2021 Western Migration – Up From Just 2,000 the Year Before
From Good News Network:
The Xerces Society just released numbers from their annual Western Monarch Count—and the tally was remarkable. The nonprofit announced that 247,237 monarch butterflies were observed across overwintering sites, a 125-fold increase over last year.
Volunteers counted insects at 283 different overwintering sites, and celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Xerces Society Thanksgiving tally. ✂️
This year’s total of nearly a quarter million monarchs illustrates a considerable rebound from 2020’s all-time low of less than 2,000—and the two previous years’ tallies of less than 30,000 individuals overwintering. ✂️
There are more questions than answers as to why western monarchs bounced back at the rate they did in 2021. It is unlikely that there is a single cause for such a complex migratory journey and a single year’s increase.
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Hot lynx
newsletters.theatlantic.com/...Why I’m Buying the Ida B. Wells Doll. Black scholar and author Imani Perry explains why “I, a 49-year-old Black leftist feminist intellectual, will be buying that very cute doll.”
www.washingtonpost.com/…Why did Spotify choose Joe Rogan over Neil Young? Hint: It’s not a music company. “This isn’t really a story about Rogan or Young. It’s a story about Spotify. And, despite public perception, Spotify isn’t a music company. It’s a tech company looking to maximize profits.”
www.optimistdaily.com/… The psychological reason we’re so taken with Wordle. “The fact that we are all trying to solve the same puzzle brings us together.”
www.theatlantic.com/...What If We Just Stopped Being So Available? “With the mass adoption of email and smartphones, ...the ‘acceptable’ window of response time has gotten much smaller. Someone could conceivably apologize for their delay when responding in the afternoon to an email sent that morning.” A valuable perspective.
aeon.co/...English is not normal. An eye-opening and charmingly written piece by a professor of linguistics at Columbia. Did you know that “hickory, dickory, dock” comes from the words meaning “eight, nine, ten” in Celtic??
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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 all of the diaries in the Truth Brigade group on DK 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.
And I’ll add a recommendation for you to check out Activate America (formerly Flip the West), which is recruiting people to send postcards to Dem voters whose GQP Representatives voted against the infrastructure bill. The message is about all the benefits of the new law so they’ll be likelier to vote for the Dem challenger.
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Closing music
Another inspiring world-wide collaboration from Playing for Change:
❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
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! 💙❤️
