This Week in Gnuville
What I Learned From My Battle With COVID: Saturday's GNR
GoodNewsRoundup
A week ago today, after an awful night fighting an 103 degree temperature, I tested positive for COVID.
Thankfully, I am feeling much better a week late. Not 100% better — I still have a head cold and all that comes with that for me — but much better.
In reflecting on the past week I learned a few lessons that seem like they also apply to our current political situation:
1. Don’t get cocky I’d made it almost 2 years and through my kids having COVID and countless close calls, so I got cocky and, honestly, a little less careful. I still wore my mask most of the time in public but there were a few times I didn’t. Whoops. It is a good reminder that we need to stay vigilant. A lead in the polls is not an election.
2. Bad times end I felt awful for those first 24 hours but they passed. The Trump years passed. The only way out is through.
3. Panic doesn’t help My mind went nuts in the first day thinking about long covid and people who end up in the hospital. But I did well to remind myself that I can only control what I can control and that I can face anything that I need to face. That is true for all of us as well
4. Do the work now I took it easy AF those first few days. Maybe that doesn’t sound like work, but it is when you have a million things to do and you need to force yourself to stop to sleep multiple times a day. But it paid off. Each day of rest got me so much closer to healthy. Sometimes you have to work had to get to where you want to be.
5. We are not alone Thanks so much for all the kind words in the comments last week. Knowing that I was not alone and that we are all here supporting one another makes such a big difference.
As you can see, I can’t even have COVID without relating it to the midterms 😂😂
Good News Roundup for Friday, September 16, 2022: There's Nothing We Cannot Do
chloris creator
President Biden on Wednesday, at a DNC reception: “Folks, we got to remember who we are: We are the United States of America. There’s not a damn thing in the world that we cannot do when we set our mind to it. Nothing, nothing, nothing. The United States of America.”
Nothing, nothing, nothing. People will tell us things cannot be done. Why do they do that? Because it’s much easier to have us give up than to fight us.
People told Ukrainians they should just give up. Some people — probably out of genuine concern— offered to evacuate Zelenskyy. He said, in a quote that will be etched in Ukrainian history forever: “I need ammo, not a ride.” His words inspired the whole world. We all know what they have done! True, they have suffered in this fight. If they had not fought, they would have suffered much more.
Right now, we’re looking at the midterms. We need to elect Ds in order to keep the policies paid for by Putin from being enacted across the land. But this can be done. I cannot say that it will. It depends on us. Then we can get back to fighting for the things that matter — health care, the climate, education, and justice — based in the principles of Truth and Love. We may suffer in this fight. We will suffer much more if we don’t fight.
To quote President Biden again: “That’s why those who love this country — Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans — we got to be stronger, more determined, more committed to saving American democracy than the extreme MAGA Republicans are to destroying American democracy. We have to organize, we have to mobilize, and we have to vote. Get out and vote.”
Nearly all gnusies know what needs to be done, so I’m not going to spend more time preaching today. Come in, get fortified with the news — gosh, there’s a lot, Dark Brandon and Dark Merrick and their competent departments are busy — then go out and add a few drops buckets of blue to the Roevember tsunami. 🌊
Ready or Not Thursday Good News Round Up
WineRev
Good morning one and all and welcome to the Thursday edition of the Good News Round Up here under the soft, widespread wings and kindly aegis (! 50 cent word at sunrise; yikes!) of the Great Orange Wonder we all know as DailyKos. Thank you each and all for stopping by to take a gander at the News of Good and Hope AND to add your own stories, links, pointers and pictures in the Comments below.
Here’s hoping this batch of Good Reading will get you started…..reading. After all, this READING thing has been a thing for centuries. Writing (another learned skill) stuff down, whether on clay tablets, chiseled into marble, daubed onto a bit of parchment, tippled onto flattened papyrus piths, however important, or good, or whimsical, or ground-breaking it is, does not help us if we can’t read it. So we learn how: our native tongue, formed into a collection of symbols called letters, and then the symbols grouped into combinations that are pronounced a certain way and mean one or several things in conjunction with other symbol combos that go by the handy term of “words”.
Used to be a restricted thing, a reserved thing. Writing and reading were for the scholarly, the wealthy, the scribal, the holders of ritual from the deep Past…..IOW, for the Few. And yet here you are this morning, among the Many, re-enacting (as sweetthesound sweetly noted yesterday in a comment) your morning ritual of Youth and reading the back of this online, morning cereal box with your morning wake-up drink.
You read these words, derive meaning from them, contextualize them, ponder them, repeat them, explain them. You do this because years ago somebody sat you down and taught you your letters, and words, and sentences, and grammar…..and you read today’s Good News. And it is with deep thanks to Mrs. Struthers, and Miss McQuigg (who was so cool because she had a “Q” in her name!), and Mrs. Scott, and Mrs. Eichelberger and Mrs. Hooper that I got through the first years at Wickliffe Rd. Elementary and Learned To Read. They learned it from others, and they from yet others….and it all started in a BIG WAY for all of US…..TODAY!
FAFO: It's Mid-September, Let the Finding Out Commence! - Wednesday Good News Roundup
niftywriter
Let’s dive in to the news. Today’s theme is FAFO [F*** Around and Find Out ~ 2t] and I cannot improve on this article for opening remarks:
The Long Summer of, Uh, Let’s Say “Messing” Around Is at Last Turning Into the Fall of Finding Out, Ben Mathis-Lilley, Slate, September 13, 2022
[S]ince around 2015—or perhaps even earlier, depending on your feelings about whether unpopularity and public scorn were sufficient punishment for the individuals responsible for the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crash—the people in the United States who have done the most prominent f—ing around haven’t done much finding out. The biggest example of this is Donald Trump, whose ability to avoid the consequences of his own actions over the course of two impeachments, a special counsel investigation, and other official inquiries has become the subject of its own famous online saying.
What’s more, the Republican Party that encouraged and enabled Trump—as well as his many imitators and supporters—appeared, until about a month or two ago, to be a safe bet to win both chambers of Congress in November’s midterm elections. This remained true for some time even after Supreme Court justices appointed by Republicans handed down a widely unpopular ruling that allows for the total criminalization of abortion.
But! Since late July, there has been a wave of activity—electoral, political, and prosecutorial—that one could describe as tending toward just desserts for bozos. Consider: [more]
(The writer goes on to list about 10 significant things that have happened to begin the “finding out” phase for the traitors, then also mentions the caveats (whah whahhhh), but you know I still like our chances because shoes are still falling! *nifty*)
Good News Roundup for Tuesday, September 13, 2022
arhpdx
Greetings, all! There’s good news popping up all over the place, so you’re in for another one of my long GNRs. Unless you have lots of free time this morning, I advise taking it in small bites! 😉
Without further ado, let’s get to it. And since so much of the news is about being on the verge of victory (in the midterms, in Ukraine, and more), I’ve chosen opening music about victory.
Opening music
People get ready it's time to show
What you got…
You must feel that victory, release that
Energy and ride like the wind
Fire in your eyes shake those
Butterflies, go ahead and go
For the win now
From the GNR Newsroom: Its the Monday Good News Roundup
Jessiestaf, Bhu, and Killer300
Welcome back friends to the Monday Good News Roundup, where we bring you the good news stories that will make your day a little bit better. Things have been going pretty well these last few weeks: Biden is getting stuff done, Trump is in trouble, Putin is in big trouble. Hopefully these trends continue and we get a blue November this year. Fingers crossed!
But that’s a ways away. for now, we got good news to get to.
✂
What could go right? Saving yourself from cynicism
This opinion about humanity’s overwhelming badness isn’t confined to high school classrooms. We’re not here to convince you one way or the other—maybe when the final history on humanity’s run gets written, the outcome will be “bad” after all. But there is a lot more evidence for the “good” than is commonly recognized.
Like? Well, most recently, there have been studies showing that cooperation among strangers in the United States has increased for the past 60 years; that children who missed out on early child-mother bonding can still develop critical social skills from relationships with trusted neighbors; and that we underestimate how great it feels to be on both the giving and receiving ends of random acts of kindness. (My favorite tidbit from the last link: if the impulse to do something kind arises, pull a Nike and just do it!)
In many cases, though, the kind of mindset that raises its hand for “humans are bad” isn’t formed from our everyday interactions with people but from the barrage of the 24-hour news cycle. It won’t surprise TPN readers that yet another study has come out that says doomscrolling is literally bad for your health. The study’s lead author, an associate professor at Texas Tech University, told The Guardian that overattention to the news “could bring about a ‘constant state of high alert’” that makes “the world seem like a ‘dark and dangerous place.’”
Research shows that teaching your kids that the world is dark and dangerous is not helpful to them, TPN Member Arthur Brooks writes in The Atlantic. And if the Texas Tech study is any indication, it’s not helpful to us adults, either.
Sunday Good News Roundup of Roundups ☼ WineRev! ☼ 2 Polls: Who Won the Week? AND Are you boosted?
2thanks
Boosting a Gnusie’s letter to the editor:
robctwo: My most recent letter to the editor published today:
This November is the first general election since:
Trumpites attempted a coup including an armed assault on the US Capitol with the intent of killing the VP and Speaker of the House and installing tRump as our personal lord and savior for life;
Rethuglicon Catholic Federalist Society theocrats ended Roe v Wade and promised to end same sex marriage and contraception;
Democrats implemented the program for free vaccinations for all who were sane;
Democrats passed the American Rescue plan to get us through Covid;
Democrats passed a corporate tax on those who do not pay.
Democrats passed legislation to lower drug prices;
Democrats passed legislation to grow infrastructure;
Democrats passed legislation to address climate change;
Democrats and a couple non-tRump Republicans held the Jan 6 hearings to expose the attempt to overthrow our government.
tRumpites are terrified you will remember what a threat to our country they are.
tRumpires are terrified you will remember they opposed all of the good things our Democrats have achieved.
tRumpites are terrified you will remember they want all women to be forced birthers, and their men to be force supporters.
tRumpites are terrified of brown people.
tRmpites are terrified of fellow Americans, because we are educated, compassionate and believe in the rights of all to vote, and majority rule.
tRumpites goals are to end our rights, and install their friends to rule and steal from us.
In other words, carry out Putin’s plan to destroy America.
Which side are you on?
robctwo added “Edit it, share it, enjoy.”
WineRev’s Good and Goofy Notes
After WineRev posts his G&G comment, I’ll post a link here. His G&G comments are small but worthy Good News Roundups with a welcome, a good-news tidbit, another bold-faced and centered welcome, and his this-day-in-history notes. You can find all his comments here, in case you have a hankerin’ and missed one. Meanwhile:
WineRev, last Sunday: Good morning 2thanks and kudos to you for getting up the Sunday GNR! (BTW, if something is worthy of praise but in a small way, can someone give someone else just 1 kudo? If they come individually wrapped you could give them out to more people for various good deeds instead of the giant blob of partly-melted chocolate bridge mix that hardened back into one fused blob of kudos overnight in the fridge)…….Anyway, the little bowls of Ukrainian chocolates at each table of the Gnuville Breakfast Brunch and Izyum Sunflower Shop are are very nice, Sunday morning touch, and we appreciate it.
Science
Cancer cells get tricked into giving themselves away
skralyx, member of Daily Kos: If there’s one thing the weight of the scientific evidence has demonstrated, it’s that cancer cells are, to a very good first approximation, little bastards. They try in various ways to pose as normal cells to evade the immune system while they grow out of control and wreck everything around them.
But as we continue to learn more about them, and about our own immune system, the tricks we are able to pull on them get more and more sophisticated and clever. When Joe Biden talks about a “cancer moonshot”, he’s alluding to the right level of complexity, and the right level of ingenuity.
This week, a team at UCSF shows how to get a cancer cell to score an own goal on itself by unwittingly announcing its presence to the immune system and even actively helping to attract T cells to come over and kill it. This new approach is explained in the September 12 issue of Cancer Cell.
One of Long COVID’s Worst Symptoms Is Also Its Most Misunderstood
Ed Yong, The Atlantic: Brain fog isn’t like a hangover or depression. It’s a disorder of executive function that makes basic cognitive tasks absurdly hard.
Of long COVID’s many possible symptoms, brain fog “is by far one of the most disabling and destructive,” Emma Ladds, a primary-care specialist from the University of Oxford, told me. It’s also among the most misunderstood. It wasn’t even included in the list of possible COVID symptoms when the coronavirus pandemic first began. But 20 to 30 percent of patients report brain fog three months after their initial infection, as do 65 to 85 percent of the long-haulers who stay sick for much longer. It can afflict people who were never ill enough to need a ventilator—or any hospital care. And it can affect young people in the prime of their mental lives.
Long-haulers with brain fog say that it’s like none of the things that people—including many medical professionals—jeeringly compare it to. It is more profound than the clouded thinking that accompanies hangovers, stress, or fatigue. For Davis, it has been distinct from and worse than her experience with ADHD. It is not psychosomatic, and involves real changes to the structure and chemistry of the brain. It is not a mood disorder: “If anyone is saying that this is due to depression and anxiety, they have no basis for that, and data suggest it might be the other direction,” Joanna Hellmuth, a neurologist at UC San Francisco, told me.
And despite its nebulous name, brain fog is not an umbrella term for every possible mental problem. At its core, Hellmuth said, it is almost always a disorder of “executive function”—the set of mental abilities that includes focusing attention, holding information in mind, and blocking out distractions. These skills are so foundational that when they crumble, much of a person’s cognitive edifice collapses. Anything involving concentration, multitasking, and planning—that is, almost everything important—becomes absurdly arduous. “It raises what are unconscious processes for healthy people to the level of conscious decision making,” Fiona Robertson, a writer based in Aberdeen, Scotland, told me.
Please share other good science news with us!
(Especially JSWT, health, environment.)
Need more good news?
… arhpdx posted a list of good news sites toward the top of a recent Roundup, or you can find that same list in my comment: Good News Sources. Thank you, arhpdx and Mokurai!
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Where Ever is Herd
Morning Good News Roundups at 7 x 7: These Gnusies lead the herd at 7 a.m. ET, 7 days a week:
- The Monday GNR Newsroom (Jessiestaf, Killer300, and Bhu). With their five, we survive and thrive.
- Alternating Tuesdays: NotNowNotEver and arhpdx.
- Wednesdays: niftywriter.
- Thursdays: Mokurai the 1st, 2nd, and 5th (when there is one), WineRev the 3rd, MCUBernieFan the 4th.
- Fridays: chloris creator. Regular links to the White House Briefing Room.
- Saturdays: GoodNewsRoundup, the one and only!
- 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. For instance, we do not welcome grammar-police comments in Roundups.
Sun-High Good News Roundup: It’s a long dry trek between 7 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. ET. About half way between is noon or 1 o'clock. If you'd like to create a midday oasis post a Good News Group diary regularly at about that time, please let me know via kosmail. The team will support you. If morning is a better time for you, Mokurai says he can trade times.
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The 6 R’s of the Resistance
Joe Biden is now our President. However, we continue to stay vocal and active, we continue to pull Joe to the left, and we continue resist the GQP.
- Refresh and Rest: Take care of you, the hero: Eat well, exercise, and rest.
- Resist: Protest on the streets, call senators and representatives, etc.
- Rebel: Run for office, GOTV (Get Out The Vote), support a progressive.
- Revolt: Change the laws, change the culture, build your communities.
- Rely: Trust that millions of others are fighting the good fight.
- Rejoice: Joy promotes resilience and gives rise to hope.
How to Resist: Do Something …
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We welcome comments in Roundups every day regarding:
- National or local Good News.
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In my Sunday smorgasbord Roundups, I especially welcome the following types of comments:
- Who won YOUR week?
- Questions about Daily Kos tech issues or our map.
- Good News Roundups and you.
- How are you resisting?
- How are you supporting Democratic candidates?
- Please let’s stick to Good News today, no mews or databases.
In the comments of all Roundups, we do not welcome Grammar Police or Debbie Downers.
Top Image: A detailed sketch of a gnu drawn in brown, green, and black on white. A happy and dynamic gnu dances on its left hind leg in a classic heraldric rampant stance. Joyful letters prance above and behind the mane: “Happy Dance.” Signature: Nick Korolev, 2021. — Thank you, Starhawk, for creating the top image of a dancing gnu and for giving it to us Gnusies!
Our Roundup is almost open!
Thank you for fighting for truth and justice with all us Gnusies! 40% of our Readers don’t visit every day, 50% of us do, and 10% are here for the first time! We all do what we can. For 4 years, we’ve shared positive news, laughed, organized, resisted, rebelled, revolted without being revolting, relied, rested, mentored, created, crossed rivers, chewed our cud, puffed methane out both ends, and laughed. Here’s looking at you, kid, and standing upwind!
As always, please share more Good News than I can find or provide.
This is a group diary, and by my power I declare this Good Gnus Salo(o)n open! Let the good-news sharing and community building begin!
Power with, not power over ❤️ ✊ ❤️
2thanks (he, him)