[Sorry, everybody, none of my videos are showing up in the published version of this GNR, despite several attempts to add them post-publication. I have no idea what’s going on with that. So I guess you just have to open the links. Grrrr…..]
Welcome, Gnusies! I’m sitting in for our dear niftywriter, who’s dealing with Real Life™ at the moment. She assures us that she’ll be back next Wednesday. Wishing you success in your many tasks, nifty!
My opening theme today is “Why we watch the news,” a topic I chose after seeing this brilliant video by Beau of the Fifth Column:
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Beau reads DKos. After all, our slogan, “News You Can Do Something About” fits perfectly into his criteria.
So, why do you watch the news? And where do you get it from? I’m looking forward to hearing your answers in the comments.
My own answers to those questions are: first, I rarely watch the news now because I’ve given up on MSM, since my goal in accessing news is to find useful information and interesting items/perspectives I wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to. Second, I get most of my news from newsfeeds in my email from the good news sources I list in my GNRs. I also have online subscriptions to the NY Times, WaPo, and Meduza, but I choose very carefully which headlines I follow up on. For deep dives into complex news stories, I have hard copy suscriptions to The New Yorker and The Atlantic, both of which, of course, offer more than news.
In the midst of dire news, good news stories always keep cropping up, and I’ve found a lot of them for today. So get comfortable and settle in for some inspiration rather than agitation.
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Opening music
I’ve chosen nothing but soothing music for today because I’ve been listening to a lot of it this past week and it’s been helping me. Here’s a lovely rendition of the “Humming Chorus” from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly sung by Nana Mouskouri.
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Good news for and about Biden
Uvalde tells Biden to ‘do something’; he pledges ‘we will’
From AP:
President Joe Biden grieved with the shattered community of Uvalde on Sunday, mourning privately for three hours with anguished families of the 19 schoolchildren and two teachers killed by a gunman. Faced with chants of “do something” as he departed a church service, Biden pledged: “We will.”
At Robb Elementary School, Biden visited a memorial of 21 white crosses — one for each of those killed — and first lady Jill Biden added a bouquet of white flowers to those already placed in front of the school sign. The couple then viewed individual altars erected in memory of each student, the first lady touching the children’s photos as they moved along the row. ✂️
Mckinzie Hinojosa, whose cousin Eliahana Torres was killed Tuesday, said she respected Biden’s decision to mourn with the people of Uvalde.
“It’s more than mourning,” she said. “We want change. We want action. It continues to be something that happens over and over and over. A mass shooting happens. It’s on the news. People cry. Then it’s gone. Nobody cares. And then it happens again. And again.”
“If there’s anything if I could tell Joe Biden, as it is, just to respect our community while he’s here, and I’m sure he will,” she added. “But we need change. We need to do something about it.”
Biden vows to ‘continue to push’ for gun laws after visiting Uvalde
On Monday, President Biden showed that he heard what the mourners were asking him.
From The Washington Post:
President Biden, who spent nearly four hours Sunday visiting with the families of Uvalde victims, told reporters he would not give up on efforts to achieve “common-sense” gun legislation. ✂️
Meanwhile, the chairwoman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime called for hearings on Capitol Hill to give families a chance to tell their stories, and to seek ways to prevent mass shootings. “We will look comprehensively at Uvalde and the incident that occurred last Tuesday,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.), whose Houston-based district is several hours from Uvalde and Robb Elementary School, the site of the shootings. Jackson Lee attended church with the president and first lady Jill Biden in Uvalde on Sunday. ✂️
Biden recalled for reporters on Monday a visit he made to a trauma hospital in New York, where he was shown X-rays of shooting victims. “A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body,” he said. “There’s simply no rational basis for [a high-caliber weapon] in terms of self-protection, hunting.” ✂️
He added that the Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms, was “never absolute,” noting: “You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed.” At the same time, the president acknowledged that much of the power to impose gun safety regulations rests with Congress, where lawmakers have debated the issue for years. “I can’t outlaw a weapon. I can’t change the background checks. I can’t do that,” Biden said. ✂️
Some lawmakers have indicated that the Uvalde attack could spur Congress to at least limited action. “There are more Republicans interested in talking about finding a path forward this time than I have ever seen since Sandy Hook,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told ABC’s “This Week,”
For Americans, 2021 delivered healthiest finances in 8 years
Something else you’re not hearing on MSM. Grrrrrr…..
From AP:
Americans’ financial health reached its highest level in nearly a decade last year, the Federal Reserve said Monday, spurred by a strong job market and government support payments.
Almost eight in 10 adults said last fall that they were either “doing okay or living comfortably” when it came to their finances in 2021, according to an annual Fed survey, the highest proportion to say so since the survey began in 2013.
The survey of 11,000 adults was taken last October and November, when inflation had topped 6% year-over-year, though before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed gas and food prices sharply higher. The Fed did not ask any specific questions about how inflation was impacting Americans’ financial situations. ✂️
The financial health captured by the report helps explain the resilience of consumers in the face of higher prices, as consumer spending, adjusted for inflation, has continued to rise even as inflation is near a 40-year high. The report found that members of all racial groups reported healthier finances, with Hispanics showing the sharpest improvement and whites the smallest. ✂️
People with children also reported a sharp increase in financial well-being, with three-quarters saying they were doing “at least okay” financially, up eight percentage points from 2020 and four points above 2019, before the pandemic.
The boost for parents likely reflected the reopening of schools, Fed officials said, allowing more parents to work and reduce their child care expenses. The expansion of the child tax credit, included in President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion financial relief package, was also likely an important factor, Fed officials said.
Lower-income parents reported the biggest increases in their financial health. For those earning less than $25,000, the proportion that said they were doing at least okay jumped to 53% from 40%.
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Good news in politics
Sussmann, who worked for Clinton, acquitted of lying to FBI in 2016
It’s about time this nonsense was put to rest.
From The Washington Post:
A federal jury found Michael Sussmann, a lawyer for Democrats including the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, not guilty of lying to the FBI when he brought them allegations against Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential race.
Tuesday’s verdict was a major setback for Special Counsel John Durham, who was appointed during the Trump administration and has spent three years probing whether the federal agents who investigated the 2016 Trump campaign committed wrongdoing.
Sussmann was the first person charged by Durham to go to trial. Another person charged in the investigation is due to face a jury later this year.
The Sussmann jury began deliberating Friday, weighing the testimony of current and former FBI officials, former Clinton campaign advisers, and technology experts. In closing arguments, prosecutors told the jury that Sussmann thought he had "a license to lie” to the FBI at the height of the 2016 presidential campaign. Sussmann’s defense lawyers countered that the case against Sussmann was built on a “political conspiracy theory.”
'Our Blue-Collar Tough Guy.' John Fetterman Charts a New Path for Democrats
I doubt that Fetterman is the precursor to others like him, since he certainly seems like one of a kind! But I do think his toughness and his commitment to his core issues of raising the minimum wage, getting rid of the filibuster, and legalizing weed will be contagious.
From Time:
In recent elections, Democrats have focused on turning out Black and young voters while winning the suburbs. Fetterman is the rare Democrat who sees white working-class and rural voters as a key part of a winning coalition. He thinks many GOP areas are more magenta than ruby red. “We cannot afford to cede a county 80/20, like has been done in the past,” he tells the crowd in Easton. He spent the second-to-last weekend of the primary campaign in five counties that Trump won by at least 35 points.
Fetterman doesn’t expect the hardcore MAGA crowd to vote for him. “Some people think it’s about trying to go in and have some mass conversion by laying hands on Republicans,” he says. “That’s not gonna happen.” But “there are plenty of people in Pennsylvania that are open to the argument,” he adds. “And if you don’t make it, then you can’t blame them.” ✂️
While Fetterman endorsed Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential primary, he now avoids most progressive litmus tests. His main issues are raising the minimum wage, legalizing marijuana, and nuking the filibuster to help Biden get things done. He’s not a purist on Medicare for All (he’s for “expanding health care access, whatever that looks like”) and he isn’t pushing the Green New Deal. He told the steelworkers he was “pro-policing, pro–community policing, pro–funding the police,” and called the activist cry to “defund the police” an “absurd phrase.” He once called fracking an “environmental abomination,” but now says the industry has reformed enough that he sees the practice as crucial to energy security.
Fetterman isn’t running as a progressive crusader or policy wonk. He’s running to be the Democrats’ 51st vote in the Senate. And supporters believe he can get it done. “They have their own tough guy in Donald Trump,” says George Bonser, a retired steelworker. “He’s gonna be our blue-collar tough guy.”
Don’t forget our Gnusie donation link to support great Dem candidates!
If you haven’t donated yet, please send whatever you can. And if you’ve already donated, it would be great if you could do it again! As of last night, Gnusies have raised almost $16,000!
🍿 Repellent Republicans Risking Irrelevance 🍿
🎩 to Lefty Coaster for highlighting this tweet in a diary on Sunday.
Ex-girlfriend says anti-abortion Oregon GOP House nominee paid for her abortion
This is such delicious news!! Erickson, a real prick, is running against Andrea Salinas, the terrific former Oregon state representative who beat the guy in the primary that the crypto-billionaire spent millions of dollars on (I’m sure you all remember that story, but here’s a link if you need it: www.oregonlive.com/...). Salinas is a super-smart, tenacious candidate with a great record of achievement in the Oregon House, and I predict she’s going to wipe the floor with Erickson.
From The American Independent:
Republicans in Oregon's newly drawn 6th Congressional District last week chose as their nominee for the House businessman Mike Erickson, an anti-abortion candidate who has been accused of paying for an ex-girlfriend's abortion. ✂️
Political analyst Len Bergstein told the Oregon Capital Chronicle that the accusation against Erickson could hurt him in the election. [Ya think??]
In 2008, when Erickson ran a failed bid for Oregon's 5th Congressional District, his opponent in the Republican primary revealed that a friend of Erickson's former girlfriend Tawnya had allegedly said in an email in 2006 that Erickson had paid for Tawnya to get an abortion. ...Tawnya herself corroborated her friend's account of the abortion. ✂️
Erickson said that he did give Tawnya $300 and drove her to a doctor's office, but claimed he didn't know she was getting an abortion. ✂️
Still, the claim that Erickson had paid for his ex-girlfriend's abortion caused Republicans to withdraw their support, Politico reported in 2008. He won the primary, after which Kevin Mannix, the GOP primary opponent who had spread the story, refused to endorse him, calling him a "dishonest person." Erickson lost in the general election to Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader. ✂️
Erickson was congratulated on his primary win last week by House Republican Caucus Chair Elise Stefanik of New York. "Congratulations to conservative businessman Mike Erickson on his primary win in #OR06!" Stefanik tweeted after the AP called the race.
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Good news from my corner of the world
It’s official! McLeod-Skinner defeats Schrader
The results of this Congressional race were uncertain until Friday because the Clackamas County Clerk, a MAGA twit, completely messed up everything she touched. Fortunately the number of votes McLeod-Skinner received eventually outweighed the number of uncounted votes and she was declared the winner. This victory is being seen as the biggest upset of the primaries so far.
From The Oregonian:
Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader has lost his primary in Oregon’s 5th District, losing to Jamie McLeod-Skinner.
Despite the ballot-counting snafu that’s delayed results in Clackamas County, home to 45% of the district’s Democrats, enough votes have been tallied to make it clear that Schrader has no path to victory.
Both The Oregonian/OregonLive and the Associated Press called the race in favor of McLeod-Skinner Friday morning. ✂️
She will face Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the winner of the 5th District Republican primary, in the general election.
With the loss, Schrader becomes the first sitting member of Oregon’s Congressional delegation to lose a primary since 1980.
His campaign significantly outraised and outspent McLeod-Skinner’s, and Schrader also received an endorsement from President Joe Biden, despite having voted against some parts of Biden’s legislative agenda.
Schrader put out one of the more ungracious concession statements I’ve seen. This is the final paragraph:
From KMTR [Eugene, OR]:
Oregon’s Fifth is a diverse district - geographically, economically, and politically. It is a microcosm of our state and our country. I have striven to represent the entire district regardless of party affiliation, be a fiscally responsible voice of moderation, and worked across the aisle to bring our State and Country together. This is who I am and how I have served Oregon for over 25 years in elected office. The majority of Democrats have chosen a different direction for now. I do hope that at some point in time, working together as representatives of our respective districts, we find common ground instead of promoting an ideological agenda that can come back into vogue in both the Democrat and Republican parties. Our state and our country desperately need to be more unified in these difficult times ahead.
Fledgling effort aims to get measure for stricter gun laws on Oregon’s November ballot
The Progressive faith leaders behind this measure are very highly regarded, so I feel optimistic that they’ll get enough signatures. I’ve seen signature gatherers not only at our largest farmers market but also in our little neighborhood.
From Oregon Public Broadcasting:
Rev. Mark Knutson of the Augustana Lutheran Church in Portland said he’s been working to pass stricter gun laws for 30 years. ...Knutson and his team at Lift Every Voice Oregon, a small interfaith nonprofit, need a lot more people to take action if they want to get their proposed new gun laws on the ballot in Oregon this fall. They’d like to ask voters to approve Initiative Petition17, which would require a completed background check, firearm training and a permit obtained in advance to buy a gun in the state.
Requiring a permit to purchase a gun, currently the law in 10 states, reduces gun violence, according to the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. ✂️
Measure IP17 would also ban the sale of high-capacity magazines that hold more than the standard number of bullets provided by gun designers.
“And we have a lot of gun owners who support this,” Knutson said. “They want responsible gun ownership. We have hunters who support it, they don’t want 10 rounds out in the forest. …We have veterans on board who have been to war and have seen what these things will do. And they’re horrified.”
The nearly all-volunteer effort to put these measures before Oregon voters has six weeks to collect and record at least 60,000 more signatures. Knutson estimates they need 200 to 300 volunteers and $500,000 in the bank to meet their goal.
[Here’s the link to donate: secure.c-esystems.com/]
Grand Central Bakery embraces new ownership structure driven by purpose, not profits
This is my favorite local bakery, with a retail shop just down the street from where I live, so it’s wonderful to know that they’re righteous as well as great bakers!
From The Oregonian:
A Pacific Northwest-based bakery chain will no longer be privately owned by family and longtime employees.
Instead, Grand Central Bakery announced that it will create a “perpetual purpose trust,” a new type of corporate structure that confers shares in a company not to individual owners but to a mission. Under this structure, company officials said, the bakery will aim to work toward upholding principles, not profit.
Grand Central will complete the transition this summer, in which it’ll become one of the few U.S. companies to be owned by a perpetual purpose trust, the bakery said in a press release. For employees, the trust ownership “means knowing that profits will stay in the business and that company leaders’ commitment to fair compensation and robust benefits will remain a priority,” the company said.
“We wanted to plan for the future and protect the company we all worked so hard to build,” Claire Randall, Grand Central’s CEO said in a statement Tuesday. “Day to day, this means things will stay the same for customers and employees and that we will continue to be independent and part of the community.” ✂️
The company said a perpetual-purpose trust also provides a “succession plan in a way that preserves company culture, values, and mission.” A seven-person independent board will oversee the trust and work with the CEO to “set direction, policies, and metrics to guide operations and decision making,” the bakery said.
Only five states — Delaware, New Hampshire, Maine, Oregon and Wyoming — have trust laws that allow for perpetual purpose trusts, according to the Purpose Foundation, a nonprofit launched in 2017 with the goal of changing capitalism’s focus from maximizing profits and shareholder primacy to focusing on a larger purpose. To do that, the foundation created a new subset of trusts that exist not for the benefit of a person or family but to fulfill some purpose.
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Good news from around the nation
New ‘Hometown Heroes Housing Program’ Helps Florida Teachers and First Responders Buy Their First Home
Some rare good news out of Florida.
From Good News Network:
A statewide program launching on June 1 will help Florida residents in over 50 critical professions, including first responders and teachers, to purchase their first home.
The $100 million Hometown Heroes Housing Program will be available to law enforcement officers, firefighters, educators, healthcare professionals, childcare employees, and active military or veterans.
The program provides assistance with down payments, closing costs, and a lower mortgage rate to first-time, income-qualified homebuyers to purchase a home in the community where they work.
Borrowers can receive up to 5% of the loan amount—up to $25,000—in assistance. Limits on income and the price of the house are determined by the specific county. ✂️
Good News Now Showing in 120 Schools in Partnership With Digital Signage Company
It’s a great idea to expose kids to good news they wouldn’t otherwise see. It might even help lift some of them out of depression.
From Good News Network:
Launching this month in over 120 schools, Rise Vision and Good News Network (GNN) are spreading positivity with uplifting news content on video screens for grades K-12. Now, students and teachers can stop and read about kindness and scientific breakthroughs on new templates created by Rise Vision.
Founded in 1997, millions of people have turned to GNN as an antidote to the barrage of negativity experienced in the mainstream media. Because of its long history, staying power, and public trust, GNN.org is #1 on Google for good news.
“Especially this year, which is our 25th anniversary, GNN is thrilled to be helping teachers and school students and staff stay optimistic in these challenging times,” said GNN founder and CEO Geri Weis-Corbley.
“Digital signage shouldn’t be complicated—it should be positive, educational, and informational. Rise Vision’s partnership with Good News Network addresses these points, while being eye-catching and fun. It adds to the conversation of increasing social emotional learning and requires no design time from educators,” said Shea Darlison, Head of Marketing, Rise Vision.
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Good news from around the world
Canada vows to ‘freeze’ handgun sales, buy back assault-style weapons
May we follow their lead, please??
From The Washington Post:
Canada on Monday introduced new gun-control legislation that, if passed, would implement a “national freeze” on buying, importing, transferring and selling handguns, effectively capping the number of such weapons already in the country.
The bill, which officials here cast as “the most significant action on gun violence in a generation,” also includes “red flag” laws that would allow judges to temporarily remove firearms from people deemed to be a danger to themselves or others and stiffer penalties for gun smuggling and trafficking.
“We recognize that the vast majority of gun owners in this country are responsible and follow all necessary laws,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa. “We are, however, facing a level of gun violence in our communities that is unacceptable.” ✂️
The measures unveiled Monday come after the government banned 1,500 makes and models of “military-style assault weapons” in 2020, after a gunman posing as a police officer charged across rural Nova Scotia, killing 22 people, including a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, in the country’s deadliest mass shooting.
The government said Monday that it plans to introduce a mandatory buyback program that would offer compensation to owners of the banned firearms. Details on the program are expected this summer, and the government hopes to begin buying back the guns, including AR-15s, the kind used in the school attack in Texas, by the end of the year.
E.U. agrees to phase out Russian oil but exempts pipeline deliveries
NNNE highlighted this story yesterday, but I’m posting this article because it provides further details. This deal isn’t everything we could have wished for, but it’s an important step nonetheless.
From The Washington Post:
European Union countries finally reached a deal to wean off Russian oil, their most significant effort yet to hit the Russian economy over the war in Ukraine, though the impact will be softened by an exemption for pipeline oil, a concession to landlocked holdouts, most notably Hungary.
After weeks of negotiations, the 27 countries agreed on Monday to end seaborne deliveries of Russian oil. Pipeline deliveries will continue to flow. Several countries will also get extensions or exemptions, according to E.U. officials and diplomats.
European Council President Charles Michel said the agreement would cover more than two-thirds of Russian oil imports, cutting off a “a huge source of financing for its war machine.” E.U. officials and diplomats will still have to agree on technical details in the coming days and the sanctions must be formally adopted by all 27 nations. ✂️
Though the compromise falls short of the full and immediate ban that Poland and the Baltic states demanded, and does not address Russian gas, it still marks a turnaround for the European Union, which imported 35 percent of its oil from Russia in 2020 and in March told the United States it was too dependent on Russian energy to join an embargo.
The oil phaseout is part of the sixth round of E.U. sanctions on Russia, a package that will remove the largest Russian bank, Sberbank, and others from the SWIFT system for international transactions and ban three Russian state-owned broadcasters from the European Union, according to the proposal. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc will also take aim at top military officers and others linked to possible war crimes in Ukraine. A full list of the people and entities targeted will be published when the deal is formally drawn up.
Millionaires join activists in Davos to demand higher taxes on the wealthy
It’s great that millionaires themselves are bringing this message to Davos, the belly of the beast.
From The Optimist Daily:
[On May 22nd,] a group of millionaires joined activists in Davos to protest the annual gathering of business and political elites organized by the World Economic Forum. The group demanded that governments start taxing the rich to tackle the cost-of-living crisis and the growing gap between the rich and the poor.
The group, which calls itself the “Patriotic Millionaires,” issued a plea to world leaders attending the annual conference to make the wealthy pay more tax to address the “cost of living scandal playing out in multiple nations around the world,” reported The Guardian.
Charity group Oxfam recently warned that 263 million more people will fall into extreme poverty in 2022, as a result of the cost of living rising faster than it has in decades — that’s one million people every 33 hours. In contrast, the pandemic has been creating a billionaire every 30 hours.
“While the rest of the world is collapsing under the weight of an economic crisis, billionaires and world leaders meet in this private compound to discuss turning points in history,” said Phil White, a former business consultant and member of Patriotic Millionaires. “It’s outrageous that our political leaders listen to those who have the most, know the least about the economic impact of this crisis, and many of whom pay infamously little in taxes. The only credible outcome from this conference is to tax the richest and tax us now. Tax the delegates attending Davos 2022.”
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Musical break
This is one of the most beautiful and serene pieces of music ever recorded. Bill Evans improvised it during a recording session for the album “Everybody Digs Bill Evans.” One of the tunes on the set list was Leonard Bernstein’s “Some Other Time.” Bill started playing the introduction to that tune and then continued improvising, saying later “What happened was that I started to play the introduction, and it started to get so much of its own feeling and identity that I just figured, well, I’ll keep going.” Fortunately, the recording engineer captured it.
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Good news in medicine
First Patient Injected With Experimental Cancer-Killing Virus in New Clinical Trial
From Science Alert:
An experimental cancer-killing virus has been administered to a human patient for the first time, with hopes the testing will ultimately reveal evidence of a new means of successfully fighting cancer tumors in people's bodies.
The drug candidate, called CF33-hNIS (aka Vaxinia), is what's called an oncolytic virus, a genetically modified virus designed to selectively infect and kill cancer cells while sparing healthy ones.
In the case of CF33-hNIS, the modified pox virus works by entering cells and duplicating itself. Eventually, the infected cell bursts, releasing thousands of new virus particles that act as antigens, stimulating the immune system to attack nearby cancer cells.
Previous research in animal models has shown the drug can harness the immune system in this way to hunt and destroy cancer cells, but up until now no testing has been done in humans.
That's just changed, with co-developers of the drug – the City of Hope cancer care and research center in Los Angeles, and Australia-based biotech company Imugene – now announcing that the first clinical trial in human patients is underway.
Protein supplement helps control Type 2 diabetes
From Science Daily:
In a study, which holds potential for dietary management of the condition, people with type 2 diabetes drank a pre-made shot before meals which contained a low dose of whey protein. They were monitored for a week as they went about normal daily life. ... the same participants also spent a week drinking a control shot that contained no protein in order to measure the results against each other.
Results from continuous glucose monitoring revealed that glucose levels were much better controlled when taking the whey supplement before meals. On average, they had two hours extra per day of normal blood sugar levels compared to the no protein week. In addition, their daily blood glucose levels were 0.6 mmol/L lower compared to when they consumed the supplement without any protein.
Dr Daniel West, Senior Lecturer and Principal Investigator working within the Human Nutrition Research Centre and Diabetes Research Group at Newcastle University, UK said: "While previous studies for a few hours in the lab have shown the potential for this dietary intervention, this is the first time that people have been monitored as they go about normal life. ...We believe the whey protein works in two ways, firstly, by slowing down how quickly food passes through the digestive system and secondly, by stimulating a number of important hormones that prevent the blood sugars climbing so high.” ✂️
18 people with type 2 diabetes consumed a small drink — in a 100 ml shot — with 15 grams of protein 10 minutes before breakfast, lunch and dinner over seven days and remained on their prescribed diabetes medication. Continuous glucose monitoring automatically tracked blood glucose levels over the course of the week. ✂️
The team intend to further explore the benefits of non-medical interventions running the study on a larger scale and for a longer period of up to six months. They also plan to look at alternative proteins, such as those that come from plant sources like peas, fungi and potatoes to open up options for vegan and religious dietary needs.
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Good news in science
Scientists identify how the brain links memories
Fabulous news for those of us finding that our memories aren’t working as well as they used to.
From Science Daily:
Our brains rarely record single memories -- instead, they store memories into groups so that the recollection of one significant memory triggers the recall of others connected by time. As we age, however, our brains gradually lose this ability to link related memories.
Now UCLA researchers have discovered a key molecular mechanism behind memory linking. They've also identified a way to restore this brain function in middle-aged mice -- and an FDA-approved drug that achieves the same thing.✂️
To enter a cell, a molecule must latch onto its matching receptor, which operates like a doorknob to provide access inside. The UCLA team focused on a gene called CCR5 that encodes the CCR5 receptor -- the same one that HIV hitches a ride on to infect the brain cell and cause memory loss in AIDS patients. ✂️
Boosting CCR5 gene expression in the brains of middle-aged mice interfered with memory linking. ...When the scientists deleted the CCR5 gene in the animals, the mice were able to link memories that normal mice could not.
Silva had previously studied the drug, maraviroc, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved in 2007 for the treatment of HIV infection. His lab discovered that maraviroc also suppressed CCR5 in the brains of mice. "When we gave maraviroc to older mice, the drug duplicated the effect of genetically deleting CCR5 from their DNA," said Silva, a member of the UCLA Brain Research Institute. "The older animals were able to link memories again."
The finding suggests that maraviroc could be used off-label to help restore middle-aged memory loss, as well as reverse the cognitive deficits caused by HIV infection.
Lasers reveal ancient urban sprawl hidden in the Amazon
From Science News:
A massive urban landscape that contained interconnected campsites, villages, towns and monumental centers thrived in the Amazon rainforest more than 600 years ago.
In what is now Bolivia, members of the Casarabe culture built an urban system that included straight, raised causeways running for several kilometers, canals and reservoirs, researchers report May 25 in Nature.
Such low-density urban sprawl from pre-Columbian times was previously unknown in the Amazon or anywhere else in South America, [says] archaeologist Heiko Prümers of the German Archaeological Institute in Bonn and colleagues. Rather than constructing huge cities densely packed with people, a substantial Casarabe population spread out in a network of small to medium-sized settlements that incorporated plenty of open space for farming, the scientists conclude. ✂️
The scientists used a helicopter carrying special equipment to fire laser pulses at the Amazon forest as well as stretches of grassland. Those laser pulses reflect data from the Earth’s surface. This technique, called light detection and ranging, or lidar for short, enables researchers to map the contours of now-obscured structures.
Looking at the new lidar images, “it is obvious that the mounds are platforms and pyramids standing on artificial terraces at the center of well-planned settlements,” Prümers says. ✂️
The Casarabe society’s network of settlements joins other ancient and present-day examples of low-density urban sprawl around the world, says archaeologist Roland Fletcher of the University of Sydney. These sites raise questions about whether only places with centralized governments that ruled over people who were packed into neighborhoods on narrow streets, such as 6,000-year-old Mesopotamian metropolises, can be defined as cities.
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Good news for the environment
How San Francisco Cracked the Urban Composting Code
From Reasons to Be Cheerful:
California’s environmental achievements are something to behold. The state ranks first in the U.S. for growth in solar power generation and battery storage. It’s the national leader in cumulative electric vehicle sales and public EV charging stations. And it’s one of a growing number of states that aim to run entirely on carbon-free energy in the coming decades – a goal it briefly met, for about 15 minutes, on April 30.
Now, California is once again setting the pace on a critically important (if somewhat less glamorous) climate imperative: urban composting.
On January 1, a law went into effect making it mandatory for every city and county in California to provide residents a means to separate and recycle their organic waste. The impacts could be enormous – according to climate experts, composting is one of the simplest low-tech measures humans can take to reverse climate change. Allowing food waste to decompose in landfills creates methane, a greenhouse gas dozens of times more potent than carbon dioxide. And landfills are the third-largest source of methane in the U.S. Composting has other benefits as well, from sequestering carbon and helping farmers create drought-resistant crops to creating long-term revenue streams for city governments. ✂️
How does a city fully integrate composting into its sanitation stream? Perhaps nowhere offers as clear a path forward as San Francisco, the first big U.S. city to offer composting to all of its residents. Twenty-six years later, its system remains the gold standard. ✂️
San Francisco’s pioneering program is world renowned. Over 135 countries have sent delegations to study the city’s compost and recycling systems first hand. The city collects more than 500 tons of compostable materials from its ubiquitous green bins every day..., helping to divert some 80 percent of the city’s waste from landfills. All these organic scraps are turned into high-quality compost in just 60 days at a Blossom Valley Organics facility east of the city, and then sold to local farms, vineyards and orchards.
The living coffin that transforms your body into compost
From Positive News:
When you die, would you like to be waste or compost? It’s not the gentlest of conversation starters, but it’s a question that fascinates Dutch designer Bob Hendrikx.
He’s the founder of Loop, the startup that makes the Living Cocoon coffin. Designed by Hendrikx, each one is formed of mycelium, the densely woven mat of fibres that forms the underground-dwelling part of fungi.
Each coffin takes just a week to grow – without heat, electricity or light according to Hendrikx – and then approximately two to three years to decompose along with the person’s body. Groundwater re-activates the mycelium, while the inside of the coffin is filled with a soft bed of moss, which contributes to the composting process. ✂️
“When you die, you pollute the Earth,” he said. “Your body contains 219 chemicals, and in nature there is a mushroom that neutralises toxins from the body and soil. So, we thought: ‘Why not invent a living coffin, made from mushrooms, that enables you to no longer pollute the Earth but actually enrich life after death?’”
In 2020, the first funeral using a Living Cocoon took place, which Hendrikx described as a “moving moment”. Since then, 150 people have been buried in one; the firm has started a partnership with the Netherlands’ biggest funeral company; and opened its own factory.
The Living Cocoons – which have been described as “the Tesla among coffins” – currently cost €1,495 (£1,260) plus shipping to buyers in Europe. (They are also available to US buyers.) But Hendrikx hopes to drive down the cost as production gathers pace, and the idea grows in popularity.
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Good news for and about animals
Brought to you by Rosy, Nora, and Rascal.
Greyhound Racing Is Nearing Its End in the U.S.
Nora always admires the rescue greyhounds she meets in the neighborhood and can’t understand why anyone would want to force them into a life of racing. So this news made her very happy.
From Time:
By the end of the year there will only be two tracks left in the country. ✂️
greyhound racing...reached its peak in the 1980s when there were more than 50 tracks across 19 states. Since then, increased concerns about how the dogs are treated along with an explosion of gambling options have nearly killed a sport that gained widespread appeal about a century ago. ✂️
In some states like the dog-racing mecca of Florida in 2021, it was voter initiatives that ended the sport at the state’s dozen tracks. In others like Iowa, state officials allowed casinos to end subsidies that had kept greyhound racing alive as interest declined.
“Do I think the industry is dying? Yes,” said Gwyneth Anne Thayer, who has written a history of greyhound racing. But “it’s happening way faster than I thought it would.”
Autistic boy's cat companion through to awards final
Nora raises a high-five paw to Chicken, though she’s having trouble figuring out how he got his name!
From the BBC:
Chicken, who is companion to Elliot Abery from Thatcham, Berkshire, is one of three cats shortlisted in the "Furr-ever Friends" category.
The 10-year-old feline shares a "special bond" with her young companion, bringing calm when he is struggling, his mother said.
The winning cat will be chosen by a panel of celebrity judges on 4 August. ✂️
[Elliot’s mother said:] "When he's had a tough day or is struggling with anxiety, talking about Chicken has a calming effect on him. She just dotes on him and is never far from Elliot. I really hope their story will help highlight how incredible cats can be for people with autism.”
How London’s new Elizabeth line has created a sanctuary for birds
A bird sanctuary built from the dirt left over from building a subway! Rascal thinks this is some of the coolest news of the year.
From The Guardian:
London’s new Elizabeth line will allow commuters to start taking high-speed trains under the city this week, on part of a 73-mile route that stretches from Reading in the west to Shenfield in the east. They will not be the first travellers to enjoy the benefits of the new line, however.
On Wallasea Island in Essex, thousands of birds have already taken advantage of the £19bn rail project – on a mosaic of lagoons, islands, and bays that have been created out of 3.5m tonnes of earth that were dug up during construction of its new stations and 13 miles of twin tunnels.
Avian visitors to this newly constructed nature reserve, run by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, include avocets, spoonbills, black-tailed godwits and little egrets. Hen and marsh harriers have appeared in winter while wigeon, teal and plover have also frequented the site. ✂️
This is a nature lover’s paradise – and remarkably it has been created out of the detritus of one of the UK’s most complex, expensive, crisis-afflicted engineering projects of recent years: Crossrail, an undertaking whose price tag rose from £15bn to £19bn and whose opening on Tuesday will take place four years later than originally scheduled.
“Massive amounts of soil were dug up from below the streets of London during tunnelling needed to create the Elizabeth line,” said Rachel Fancy, site manager of RSPB Wallasea Island. “That material was given to the RSPB, allowing us to create our Jubilee Marsh, the cornerstone of our new reserve.”
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Just for fun
”He’s not lost. He’s free.”
From My Modern Met:
...a man named Matthew McCormack found a white delivery robot driving down a trail. The history professor was riding his bike along the dirt path that cuts through Lings Wood Nature Reserve in Northampton, England, when he spotted the piece of tech cruising in the same direction.
…“On my bike ride this morning, saw a delivery robot lost in the woods,” McCormack wrote on Twitter. The photo of the white delivery robot surrounded by a lush woodland soon captured the hearts and imaginations of thousands of people online. ✂️
As it turns out, the machine is one of the autonomous delivery robots belonging to Starship Technologies, a San Francisco-based company with a location in the Northampton area of the UK. After McCormack's tweet went viral, the vice president of marketing for Starship, Henry Harris-Burland, confirmed that the robot was, in fact, en route to a customer with a grocery delivery and not lost. “Our robots can traverse a variety of terrain and take the safest and most efficient route possible on every one of the 10,000–15,000 autonomous deliveries they complete daily. In this case, that route happened to be a paved path through a wooded area in Northampton, UK,” Harris-Burland writes.
Even though we have all the facts, McCormack's photo of the lone robot making its way through the woodland remains a romantic image of the futuristic machine immersing itself in nature. ✂️
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Hot lynx
www.washingtonpost.com/… What school shootings do to the kids who survive them, from Sandy Hook to Uvalde. Painful to read but vitally important to know.
www.yesmagazine.org/...Unions and LGBTQ Workers Could Be a Powerful Marriage. A gay Black union organizer makes the case that “unions could be key in transforming the labor movement by strategically organizing LGBTQ workers into their ranks.”
americanindependent.com/...Opinion: How civic education helped Germans reckon with their country's past. A thoughtful and moving argument for talking honestly in classrooms about historical injustices.
www.motherjones.com/...The Smash-and-Grab Economy. “Private equity billionaires are looting the country, leaving everyday Americans to clean up the mess—and fight for the scraps.” A righteous rant.
www.scientificamerican.com/… A New Dimension to a Meaningful Life. “Studies suggest that appreciating beauty in the everyday may be just as powerful as a sense of overarching purpose.”
walkingtheworld.substack.com/… Why I Walk. “I don’t think you can know a place unless you walk it, because it isn’t about distance, but about content. Cars suck for that.”
www.washingtonpost.com/… Saving the Sounds of an Ancient City. “Their goal is to capture in recordings what Cairo sounds like — right here, right now — before these noises disappear.”
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Wherever is herd…
🎩 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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Good News Sources
And two more from Mokurai:
And another recommended by commenter lynnekz:
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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 Sandwiches 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.
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Closing music
This is the music I listen to whenever I need healing. It feels to me like the sound of the universe breathing.
❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
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! 💙❤️