Good morning, Gnusies! How are you doing on this third day of Daylight Saving Time? Personally, I choose to ease into it as gradually as possible. Of course the need to post this GNR and respond to comments at 4:00 a.m. PDT throws a wrench in that plan. But otherwise I’ll continue to exploit the advantages of being retired and getting to choose my own damn schedule.
Given our collective lack of sleep, I recommend that you prepare enough of your favorite morning beverage to give yourself a refill or two, because I’ve found a lot of good news for you. So fill your mug, find a comfortable seat, and let’s get started.
Opening music
Since we’re all waiting longer for the sun now, this Doors’ oldie seems like an appropriate musical opening, especially since its jangly psychedelic vibe feels a little like being jolted awake an hour early.
* * * * *
Good news in politics
President Joe Biden’s approval rating average reaches its highest point in a year and a half
🎩 to Gnusie T Maysle for mentioning this in a comment in Saturday’s Evening Shade. This piece is a welcome clarification of the reasons why Biden has had such a low approval rating during the past two years, which has been puzzling to many of us.
From Bill Palmer in Palmer Report:
President Joe Biden’s average approval rating on the FiveThirtyEight model is now at its highest point in a year and a half. No surprise. The 2022 midterm results proved that Biden was far more popular than approval rating polls had been showing. So pollsters have likely been revising their methodologies to try to catch up.
In reality, Biden’s approval rating numbers stopped making sense a long time ago. According to the polling averages, ten percent of the country – twenty percent of Biden’s own supporters – instantly turned fully against him over the Afghanistan withdrawal. This never made much sense, as most of the people condemning Biden the most loudly for the withdrawal had been anti-Biden to begin with.
At the time my suspicion was that because the entire mainstream media (particularly CNN) used Afghanistan as an opportunity to start cartoonishly bashing Biden in an effort to gin up ratings, the pollsters somehow got baited into massively oversampling that small segment of Americans who went from pro-Biden to anti-Biden over Afghanistan. This resulted in Biden’s approval rating numbers being well below his actual popularity, from the summer of 2021 onward. But while pollsters may have since come to suspect they overshot the mark, they never had any hard data to confirm it – until the 2022 midterm elections.
Even with the other major factors baked in – Roe, Trump’s unpopularity weighing down the Republicans’ prospects – the 2022 midterm results still suggested that Biden’s approval rating was likely around 50%. At the time, the approval rating averages had him at around 41%. I predicted that pollsters would take the hard data from the midterm results and use it to start gradually recalibrating their polling methodologies in an effort to revise Biden’s approval rating into more accurate territory. Sure enough, since then Biden has gone from 41% to now 44% in the polling averages.
Economy adds 311,000 jobs in February, reflecting ongoing labor market strength
From The Washington Post:
The economy churned out 311,000 jobs in February, reflecting impressive labor market strength more than a year into the Federal Reserve’s fight to cool the economy.
The unemployment rate ticked up to 3.6 percent last month, still near longtime lows, according to data released Friday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as more Americans without jobs came off the sidelines to look for work.
The February job gains came in lower than the previous month’s eye-popping numbers, but beat economists’ predictions, reflecting ongoing resilience in the labor market. That strength has been fueled by surging consumer demand in a variety of industries, especially leisure and hospitality and health care. ✂️
Meanwhile, the White House praised Friday’s news. In a speech, President Biden said that the report meant his “economic plan is working,” two years after the passage of his $1.9 trillion covid relief package, the American Rescue Plan.
“Overall, we’ve created more jobs in two years than any administration has created in the first four years,” Biden said. “[The American Rescue Plan] led to the fastest recovery of any major economy in the world. It laid the foundation for the progress we see today.”
And Elizabeth Warren forcefully warned Powell to not fuck up the strong labor market by continuing to raise interest rates.
At Hearing, Senator Warren Calls out Chair Powell for Fed’s Plan to Throw At Least 2 Million People Out of Work
🎩 to DKos staffer Laura Clawson for mentioning this in a diary on Saturday. Here’s more info and context. Kossack Egberto Willies also wrote a brief diary on it on Saturday, including a video from the hearing.
From warren.senate.gov:
At a hearing of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee (BHUA), United States Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) questioned Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on the Fed’s monetary policy plan and its projection that the unemployment rate will rise sharply to 4.6% – more than a percentage point higher than it is today – by the end of the year if the Fed continues to raise interest rates.
During the exchange, Senator Warren highlighted that the Fed’s projections suggest that nearly 2 million people will lose their jobs, and that history shows that the Fed has a poor track record of containing moderate increases in unemployment. Since the end of World War II, the economy has never avoided falling into a recession after the unemployment rate increased by one percentage point within a year. And in 11 out of the 12 times that the unemployment rate increased by a percentage point, unemployment went on to rise another full percentage point. Senator Warren expressed concern that Powell doesn’t have a plan to stop runaway unemployment increases and emphasized that the Fed must protect working families as it works to bring inflation down. ✂️
Senator Warren: Well, let me ask you about what happens if you do this. Since the end of World War II, there have been 12 times in which the unemployment rate has increased by one percentage point within one year, exactly what you're aiming to do right now. How many of those times did the U.S. economy avoid falling into a recession?
Chair Powell: You know, it's not as black and white as -- very infrequent.
Senator Warren: Just looking at the numbers, it actually is pretty black and white.
Chair Powell: (inaudible) has written a book on this.
Senator Warren: There’s been 12 times that we’ve seen a one-point increase in the unemployment rate in a year — that's exactly what your Fed report has put out as the projection. And the plan based on how you're going to keep raising these interest rates. How many times did the economy fail to fall into a recession after doing that out of 12 times?
ChaIr Powell: I think the number is zero.
Senator Warren: I think the number is zero, that's exactly right. So, then the question becomes, we have two million people out of work. Can you stop it at two million people?
U.S. deploys powerful scanners at border to fight fentanyl smuggling
I’ll never understand how the MAGA maniacs think they can twist news of stopping more fentanyl at the border into talking points about Dems allowing more fentanyl into the country. Ah, well...cognitive dissonance is their thing.
From The Washington Post:
...at the Mariposa port of entry, one of the border’s busiest crossings for Mexican-grown produce, U.S. inspectors used to refer only a handful of drivers for cargo screening with powerful scanning equipment to check for illegal drugs.
But on a recent morning they routed every truck through a new drive-through machine the size of a carwash. Known as a “multi-energy portal,” the equipment has allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to scan nearly six times as much cargo per day.
Construction crews were busy installing a second machine alongside it, racing to finish before peak grape season this spring, when trucks coming from Mexico are expected to roll through with 30 million pounds of fruits and vegetables per day. The harvest is an auspicious time for drug smugglers.
The Nogales crossing is the front line of the government’s beleaguered effort to stem the flow of cheap fentanyl into the United States. The synthetic opioid is fueling the most lethal drug epidemic in U.S. history, and last year, Nogales surpassed San Diego to become the southern border’s primary gateway for fentanyl trafficking.
U.S. officers have seized more than 21 million fentanyl tablets in the Nogales port of entry over the past five months, more than they did during the entire previous year, according to CBP.
Clean energy is suddenly less polarizing than you think
It’s good news for Dems when Rs get on the wind and solar energy bandwagon. Giving them money to do it is definitely helpful! 😉
By David Wallace-Wells in The New York Times:
My whole adult life, the work of fighting climate change was understood as the job of the blue team in America. The red team, we knew, just wasn’t going to play ball. ✂️
I don’t want to be naïve or to echo the predictions of previous climate Pollyannas to say that Republican cooperation is right around the corner. At the highest level, it obviously isn’t, and the work of decarbonization remains overwhelmingly a Democratic effort. But the partisan landscape may be finally changing, indeed somewhat significantly. ✂️
The Inflation Reduction Act is a spigot of spending designed to produce a decarbonization boom; while it is often described as a $370 billion piece of legislation, that analysis seems likely to significantly underestimate the ultimate size of its tax incentives, which could stretch much closer to $1 trillion with rapid renewable development. A hugely disproportionate share of that money is going to places we think of as politically and culturally red but which, thanks to their abundance of land and wind and sun, we may want to start thinking of also as green.
How disproportionate? Between the signing of the I.R.A. and Jan. 31, announcements of the largest clean-energy investments have been in Georgia and Idaho, followed by Tennessee, then Michigan, then South Carolina and Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Kansas, Nevada and Arizona. Between now and 2027, Texas is expected to add almost twice as much solar capacity as California. In expected development, Ohio, Nevada, Indiana and Florida rank third, fourth, fifth and sixth.
54% of voters want environmental factors considered in investment decisions
Biden is poised to veto this bill, and DFP’s poll indicates that once again he’s on the same side as the majority of voters.
* * * * *
🍿 Repugnant Republicans Rushing toward Ruin 🍿
'Freaks.' 'Big spenders.' Why 2024 GOP hopefuls Trump, Haley, DeSantis are ripping their own party
Keep it up, guys!
From USA Today:
Donald Trump, Nikki Haley and potential GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis are looking to fire up 2024 voters by attacking a shared target: the Republican Party.
After riding an anti-establishment wave to the presidency in 2016, Trump has amped up his attacks on Republican "freaks" and "fools" who oppose him, a continuing play for conservative voters who don't particularly like the GOP.
Others are also looking for those kinds of voters. Haley, the former Trump-appointed United Nations ambassador who has declared her candidacy, frequently attacks Republican "big spenders."
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to announce his presidential candidacy in May or June, has described some Republicans as "potted plants" when it comes to fighting the nation's culture wars.
Candidates are "going after Trump voters," said Republican pollster Whit Ayres, who has conducted surveys of GOP voters. ..."It's all part of this populist mentality that is anti-elite, anti-expertise, anti-establishment, anti-media, anti-immigrant ... anti-, anti-, anti-," Ayres said. "It's why most populists lose."
Ron DeSantis’s book ban mania targets Jodi Picoult — and she hits back
People really don’t like being told what they can and can’t do. The Rs have been in the Fucking Around phase with censorship and they’re beginning to Find Out.
Op-ed by Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman in The Washington Post:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants you to know he’d never dream of engaging in mass censorship. He held a recent event challenging criticism of his classroom book restrictions as a “hoax,” releasing a video suggesting only “porn” and “hate” are targeted for removal.
There’s a big problem with DeSantis’s claims: The people deciding which books to remove from classrooms and school libraries didn’t get the memo. In many cases, the notion that banned books meet the highly objectionable criteria he detailed is an enormous stretch.
This week, Florida’s Martin County released a list of dozens of books targeted for removal from school libraries, as officials struggle to interpret a bill DeSantis signed in the name of “transparency” in school materials. The episode suggests his decrees are increasingly encouraging local officials to adopt censoring decisions with disturbingly vague rationales and absurdly sweeping scope.
Numerous titles by well-known authors such as Jodi Picoult, Toni Morrison and James Patterson have been pulled from library shelves. The removal list includes Picoult’s novel “The Storyteller” about the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor who meets an elderly former SS officer. It contains some violent scenes told in flashbacks from World War II and an assisted suicide.
“Banning ‘The Storyteller’ is shocking, as it is about the Holocaust and has never been banned before,” Picoult told us in an email.
And given last week’s USA Today/Ipsos poll about how voters feel about the word “woke,” DeSantis’ book banning stunts look dumber than ever:
* * * * *
Good news from my corner of the world
State Department pledges crackdown 6 years after Saudi national escaped prosecution in death of Portland teen
This hit-and-run and the subsequent Saudi exfiltration of the perpetrator outraged Portlanders. Sen. Wyden has fought for six years to get the State Department to put a rule in place that will punish Saudi officials for this kind of lawlessness.
From The Oregonian:
The fatal hit-and-run of a Portland teen by a Saudi national who fled the country before his trial — likely with aid of the Saudi Arabian government — has triggered a federal crackdown on foreign officials found to subvert the U.S. justice system, according to U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden.
Oregon’s senior senator on Wednesday announced the new “Fallon Smart” rule, named after the 15-year-old Franklin High School student who was struck and killed on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard by a speeding car in 2016. Under the rule, Wyden said, the State Department will revoke the visas of foreign officials who’ve assisted foreign nationals accused of crimes escape U.S. prosecution. The Oregon Democrat secured the provision weeks after he placed a hold on the nomination of Michael Ratney, President Joe Biden’s pick to serve as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
Wyden said he lifted his hold on Ratney’s nomination this week after the State Department committed to the new rule. The nomination on Wednesday cleared the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. ✂️
In his announcement, Wyden once again cited a 2019 investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive that found more than two dozen cases in which Saudi students studying in the U.S. vanished while facing felony charges including manslaughter and sex crimes. Seven of the cases were in Oregon, including some involving Saudis who had surrendered their passports to authorities.
...21-year-old Portland Community College student Abdulrahman Sameer Noorah, disappeared weeks before his 2017 trial in the death of Smart. He later resurfaced in Saudi Arabia, which does not share an extradition treaty with the U.S. Officials with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Marshals Service told The Oregonian/OregonLive that they believed Noorah was driven out of his Southeast Portland neighborhood in a black SUV and later used an illicit passport and private plane — both likely provided by the Saudi government — to flee.
Oregon lawmakers consider pilot program to provide $1,000 a month to low-income, unhoused Oregonians
I have to confess to being pretty tired of these pilot programs, since the efficacy of guaranteed income has been proved over and over again in the past decade, from Stockton CA to Finland. But the old Calvinist categories of “deserving” vs. “undeserving” poor are still with us, so apparently we need to keep repeating this exercise a while longer. Sigh. At least we can be confident that the results in Oregon will be the same as the results elsewhere, which might result in statewide adoption of guaranteed income not only here but in other states as well.
From The Oregonian:
Oregon lawmakers are considering a proposal to provide $1,000 a month to unhoused or low-income individuals for two years to see how it affects their ability to secure stable housing or otherwise improve their well-being.
The proposal by Sen. Wlnsvey Campos, D-Aloha, would earmark $25 million to run a guaranteed income pilot program through 2025 and fund a study of the program by Portland State University’s Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative to better understand the effects of long-term cash assistance.
The program would aim to serve people who are severely rent burdened, homeless or at risk of losing housing. Campos’ proposal does not say which of the many thousands of people in that category would get top priority for the monthly payments. But people already receiving housing assistance or earning more than 60% of their area’s median income would not be eligible.
If approved, it would be the nation’s first statewide pilot of a basic guaranteed income program. ✂️
“Evidence shows that providing unrestricted cash assistance is one of the most effective ways to reduce food and housing insecurity,” Oregon Food Bank volunteer coordinator Juan Soto wrote as part of his prepared testimony. Soto noted that Oregonians who most disproportionally experience hunger are Black, Indigenous, people of color, immigrants, refugees, LGBTQ and single mothers.
Oregon Lawmakers Will Try Again to Bring Insurers Under the State’s Unlawful Trade Practices Act
It’s time the greedy insurance industry faces consequences when they abuse their customers.
From Willamette Week:
House Bill 3243...[would] give insurance company customers the right to sue for damages by including the insurance industry under Oregon’s Unlawful Trade Practices Act. A companion bill would specifically allow Oregonians who believe their insurers have treated them unfairly to seek compensation for damages beyond the face value of their insurance policy. ✂️
Going back to the 1970s, when Oregon first passed the Unlawful Trade Practices Act, two industries enjoyed exemptions: banking and insurance. Banks’ grace period ended after the Great Recession, which came about in part because of shoddy lending practices. Lawmakers placed that industry under the UTPA in 2009.
They’ve long tried to do the same with insurers. Beginning at least as early as 2011, Democrats have introduced bills that would end insurers’ exemption. But the insurance lobby has regularly mobilized an army to defeat versions of this bill. Insurance lobbyists say the industry is already heavily regulated by the state and that the specter of lawsuits from clients will result in fewer insurance products and policies and higher costs.
Should 16-year-olds vote? This student wants you to decide.
There are two impressive young people in this story — the protagonist and the student journalist, who graduated from the Oregonian’s High School Journalism Institute and writes for her high school’s newspaper.
From The Oregonian, by high school senior Ellen Dong:
Devon Lawson-McCourt was phone-banking for a congressman by elementary school and helping steer campaign strategy for a former Oregon House candidate before they could steer a car. Today, the high school sophomore is working with state legislators on a proposal to lower Oregon’s voting age to 16.
In the U.S. today, 16-year-olds are allowed to hold a job, pay taxes, be charged as an adult in court and even become emancipated in the eyes of the state. Lawson-McCourt, who turned 16 in January, believes that they ought to have the power to influence Oregon elections too. ✂️
Lawson-McCourt helped shape a proposed amendment to Oregon’s constitution that would let 16-year-olds vote in state elections. If the Legislature agrees, the proposed amendment would head to the ballot and voters would decide on the issue in November 2024. ✂️
Lawson-McCourt was the youngest phone banker for Peter DeFazio’s campaign in 2017 as a fifth grader. Work on DeFazio’s campaign helped Lawson-McCourt secure other fellowship positions with politicians including Doyle Canning, a Democratic Primary candidate for the Oregon House, and they have now helped with more than 25 political campaigns in several different states.
“My mom always told me to stand up for myself,” said Lawson-McCourt. “The only way that I could actually do that is if I made a difference in the realm of politics because those are the people who can make a change.”
* * * * *
Good news from around the nation
In win for butterflies and loss for Texas Republicans, feds move to protect rare plant
Let’s hope this is the decisive victory in the butterflies’ battles with border walls.
From Courthouse News Service:
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on [February 27] declared the prostrate milkweed an endangered species and mandated new habitat protections for the plant, closing a chapter in a feud between environmentalists and those who advocate for unfettered border wall construction in South Texas.
The rare milkweed, which grows only in the Texas-Mexico borderlands, has for months been at the center of the fight between butterfly lovers and Texas officials. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican who supports new border wall construction, said last year that formally protecting the plant would create an "influx of illegal aliens" and endanger Texans. Environmental groups say the listing will help safeguard the charismatic migratory monarch butterfly, which has a deeply symbiotic relationship with the unassuming weed.
While the prostrate milkweed has a range of around 200 miles, only 24 populations of the species are known to still exist. Those are in Starr and Zapata counties in far South Texas, as well as in neighboring states of Nuevo León and Tamaulipas in northern Mexico.
It's the rarest species of milkweed, and it's a critical habitat for monarch butterflies as they head north from Mexico after the winter. Monarch caterpillars can only eat milkweed, and female monarchs only lay their eggs on milkweed. Toxic compounds in the plant, which monarchs consume, help protect the butterflies from predators and give them their signature orange hue. In turn, monarchs help pollinate and spread the plants.
Historically, the FWS said in its final rule on Monday, patches of prostrate milkweed along the Texas-Mexico border were all geographically linked. They were separated and are "very unlikely" to reconnect, the agency said, due to what it called "disturbance" in the region. That disturbance has included herbicides, oil and gas pipelines and, most notably, border wall construction green-lit by former President Donald Trump.
Minnesota House passes measure to create nation’s first Office of Missing and Murdered African American Women
The good news keeps coming from Minnesota.
From 19th News:
Minnesota’s House of Representatives passed a bill last month that would create an Office of Missing and Murdered African American Women to address disparities in missing persons cases. If the bill makes it through the Senate and is signed by the governor, it would create the first office of its kind focused on Black women in the nation.
The office stems from the findings of a 12-member task force, which was created through legislation by Democratic state Rep. Ruth Richardson to investigate the causes of violence against Black women and girls, and to report on measures that could be taken to reduce this violence.
A December 2022 report by the task force stated that despite Black women making up only 7 percent of the state’s population, they make up 40 percent of domestic violence victims. Experts say domestic violence, human trafficking and systemic poverty are all factors contributing to missing persons cases.
Black women are also three times more likely to be murdered than White women in Minnesota. Following the task force’s findings, Richardson introduced a bill to create the office, which she hopes will provide a framework for legislators across the country to address this crisis nationwide.
Mark Zuckerberg Quietly Buries the Metaverse
This story gave me a nice boost of schadenfreude.
From The Street:
There will be no press release, no big announcement, as he would have to acknowledge that he was wrong. But make no mistake: Mark Zuckerberg just buried the metaverse. The metaverse is dead.
The metaverse was supposed to be the Next Big Thing for the social-media tycoon, who in 2021 went so far as to rename his empire -- created from Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp -- as Meta Platforms.
Simply put, the metaverse is an immersive virtual world in which we are supposed to interact with each other using specialized glasses and virtual-reality headsets. ✂️
Zuckerberg has just held the funeral by turning to the next big shiny thing, namely artificial intelligence. ✂️
"In the short term, we'll focus on building creative and expressive tools," he wrote. "Over the longer term, we'll focus on developing AI personas that can help people in a variety of ways."
The legacy of the metaverse remains because Meta will continue to develop remnants of this virtual world, such as headsets, but it will be more for a target audience, such as videogamers and the crypto world.
Credit to Zuckerberg: He spares himself humiliation by surreptitiously and deftly redirecting the attention of his critics to AI, which most experts consider a true technological revolution.
* * * * *
Good news from around the world
Spain announces law promoting gender parity in politics and business
There’s been lots of good news from Spain since they elected a leftist coalition government. There, just like here, progressives create progress.
From Reuters:
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Saturday announced a gender equality law that will require more equal representation of women and men in politics, business and other spheres of public life.
The Equal Representation Law will apply gender parity measures to electoral lists, the boards of directors of big companies and governing boards of professional associations.
Sanchez made the announcement during a Socialist party rally ahead of International Women's Day on March 8. It will be approved during Tuesday's cabinet meeting before going for debate in parliament. ✂️
It is the latest in a series of equality measures announced by the leftist coalition government. In December, lawmakers passed a transgender rights bill, as well as a pioneering law covering sexual and reproductive heath that, in a first for a European country, offered state-funded paid leave for women who suffer from painful periods.
Afghan broadcaster airs rare all-female panel to discuss rights on Women's Day
The situation for women in Afghanistan is still dire, but there are glimmers of hope. I was especially encouraged to see at the end of this news item that the Taliban is willing to talk about how to re-open girls’ schools.
From Reuters:
Afghan broadcaster Tolo News on Wednesday aired an all-female panel in its studio with an audience of women to mark International Women's Day, a rare broadcast since the Taliban took over and many female journalists left the profession or started working off-air. ✂️
With surgical masks covering their faces, the panel of three women and one female moderator on Wednesday evening discussed the topic of the position of women in Islam.
"A woman has rights from an Islamic point of view ... it is her right to be able to work, to be educated," said journalist Asma Khogyani during the panel.
The Taliban last year restricted most girls from high school, women from university and stopped most Afghan female NGO workers. ✂️
The Taliban have said they respect women's rights in accordance with their interpretation of Islamic law and Afghan culture and that authorities have set up a committee to examine perceived issues in order to work towards re-opening girls' schools.
The octogenarian whose folk songs are restoring ‘the Amazon of Europe’
I know very little about Romania, so I was delighted to learn that there are old-growth forests there that Romanians are now working to protect. And this music project is a wonderful way to support those efforts.
From Positive News:
Eighty-year-old Silvia Dan learnt her folk songs at her grandmother’s knee. Having spent her life caring for livestock on her smallholding in the Carpathian Mountains, she’s now starring on an album released in the UK.
Made by Romanian-born, Brighton-based artist Nico de Transilvania, the album – Interbeing – was recorded in the remote village of Nucsoara, where Dan is renowned for the pure beauty of her voice. A team of artists, videographers, photographers and musicians travelled to the village 180km north of Bucharest to record with Dan and local musicians on traditional Romanian flutes.
It is an area that is renowned for its old-growth forests which support lynx, wolves and bears, and is often described as the Amazon of Europe. Illegal logging has severely affected the region, so de Transilvania wanted to record the album as a way to use music to restore some of the damage. Every copy of the album sold will go towards planting native trees that are properly protected in law, in a project personally overseen by de Transilvania via her nonprofit Forests without Frontiers. So far the organisation has planted 150,000 trees over the last three years.
For Dan, whose grandmother wrote all her own folk songs, it feels right that they are now helping to restore the forests that inspired her.
“The album means a lot to me, it makes me proud that future generations will hear my ancestor’s songs – music and nature are embedded in our blood,” she said. “I am so happy that money raised will help to restore the landscape near my village – it has been devastating to see the destruction, and this project gives me hope.”
* * * * *
Musical break
* * * * *
Good news in medicine
Protein Key to Osteosarcoma May Unlock Treatments for Deadly Bone Cancers That Affect Kids
This is great news in the fight to find treatments for a particularly stubborn and devastating cancer.
From Good News Network:
Treatments for deadly bone cancers that mainly affect children may be on the horizon after experiments identified a protein that promotes cell death in osteosarcomas. Researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University said the discovery could lead to a cure for all types of skeletal tumors.
Osteosarcoma is the most common bone cancer, but it occurs mainly in children. They are linked with rapid bone growth and tend to develop in boys more often than girls due to average height differences.
Osteosarcoma has a 55% survival rate, which has unfortunately not improved this century, and scientists are keen on developing potential medicines since surgical removal of the osteosarcoma tumors is often impossible.
At Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, researchers have identified a bone matrix protein called secreted phosphoprotein 24 kD (Spp24) that binds to and neutralizes a protein called bone morphogenetic protein 2, which has properties that help the tumors grow and proliferate.
“Cell proliferation, migration, and invasiveness were all inhibited by Spp24. Treatment with Spp24 reduced tumor growth,” said Dr. Haijun Tian at Jiao Tong. “These results confirm the potential of Spp24 as a therapeutic agent for the treatment of osteosarcoma and other skeletal tumors.”
Single shot treatment offers hope to sufferers of chronic lower back pain
Any breakthroughs in treating chronic lower back pain is cause for celebration, and this one looks very promising.
From New Atlas:
“Existing treatment for chronic low back pain due to degenerative disk disease is often ineffective or the effects are short-lived,” said Dr Douglas Beall, lead author and chief of radiology at Clinical Radiology of Oklahoma.
In degenerative disk disease (DDD), the interverbral disks that cushion the spine and facilitate flexibility and movement start to erode, worsening over time and causing varying degrees of pain and mobility issues. This new treatment developed by Dr Beall and his team sees specialized cells injected into the damaged interverbral disk to encourage existing cells to grow healthy tissue.
In the three-year trial, 46 chronic back pain patients received the viable disk allograft supplementation and were monitored for pain levels across the time frame. After pain levels were assessed using the visual analog scale and functionality measured with the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), 60% of patients reported a more than 50% improvement in the condition, and 70% of recipients noted more than a 20-point change in their ODI scores, moving them from categories of severe or moderate disability to mild, or better. ✂️
While targeted injections have been in development for several years, this 36-month study also shows that allogenic therapy offers sustained mobility improvements and pain relief, all from the one minimally invasive day procedure. “This treatment may help patients return to a normal activity level for a longer period of time,” said Dr Beall. “We need better treatments for this condition since conservative care is not providing the long-term outcomes that patients deserve. Injectable allograft treatment might be the answer for many people.”
F.D.A. Approves New Nasal Spray for Migraines
The study showed that this new treatment works for only about 25% of migraine sufferers, but for them it’s a game changer. Hopefully it can be tweaked to help more patients.
From The New York Times:
The Food and Drug Administration has approved a Pfizer nasal spray for treatment of migraines that uses a different therapy from other nasal products on the market for severe headache pain, the company said on Friday.
The fast-acting treatment, which is called zavegepant and will be sold as Zavzpret, performed better than a placebo in relieving pain and patients’ most bothersome symptoms, according to clinical trial results published in the journal Lancet Neurology. Participants in the trial who took the medication were more likely to report returning to normal function 30 minutes to two hours after taking it.
The gains, though, were not significant for every patient. A study tracked the experience of 1,269 patients — half on the drug and half on a placebo — focusing on how they reported feeling two hours after using either substance. About 24 percent on the medication reported freedom from pain, compared to about 15 percent who took a placebo, according to the study.
Dr. Timothy A. Collins, chief of the headache division at Duke University Medical Center’s neurology department, said the product gave doctors a new option in a nasal spray format that patients with migraines tended to appreciate. He said the condition often comes with nausea, so swallowing a pill can be unpleasant. He also said the drug presented few side effects, like drowsiness, that had been reported with other products.
* * * * *
Good news in science
You're stuck with your same old genome, but corals aren't
Fascinating new data about how genetic mutations help species adjust to changing environments.
From Phys.org:
Some corals live to be hundreds, and even thousands, of years old. They were born with genes that were successful back in their parent's generation, so how can these old corals still be successful now? Especially in a changing climate? It's possible that the generation and the filtering of mutations that occur in different parts of a big coral act as a proving ground for adaptive genetics for the future. The new study from Stanford, Hopkins Marine Station and the California Academy of Sciences shows a novel way that some very ancient animals might be surviving. ✂️
Nearly every animal must make a living with a set of genes that remains virtually unchanged during their lifetime, but a recent study of tropical reef building corals shows something different. These very long-lived animals are constantly changing and testing their genes—and some of these changes make it into the next generation. In this way a centuries-old coral might be a cauldron of genetic innovation, and it might help prepare them for climate change.
The new data come from the Ph.D. work of Elora López-Nandam and her colleagues in Steve Palumbi's lab at Hopkins Marine Station at Stanford University, published January 18 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
With help from the Chan Zuckerberg BioHub, López-Nandam looked very carefully at genomes of corals by taking samples from different branches of these tree-like animals. Full genome sequences showed hundreds of places in each individual branch where the DNA was slightly different—these differences represent localized mutations in these branches.
Then she and collaborator Rebecca Albright used a new facility at the California Academy of Sciences to spawn these same corals and look at which of the mutations were passed to the gametes. Much to their surprise, because it does not happen this way in humans or most animals, many of the mutations in the normal tissues of the corals were passed on to the gametes. This means that mutations that occur during the growth of corals can then jump to offspring in the next generation.
AI re-creates what people see by reading their brain scans
This is absolutely amazing, as well as pretty creepy. The good news is that it may wind up helping people who are paralyzed or otherwise unable to communicate.
From Science:
As neuroscientists struggle to demystify how the human brain converts what our eyes see into mental images, artificial intelligence (AI) has been getting better at mimicking that feat. A recent study, scheduled to be presented at an upcoming computer vision conference, demonstrates that AI can read brain scans and re-create largely realistic versions of images a person has seen. As this technology develops, researchers say, it could have numerous applications, from exploring how various animal species perceive the world to perhaps one day recording human dreams and aiding communication in people with paralysis.
Many labs have used AI to read brain scans and re-create images a subject has recently seen, such as human faces and photos of landscapes. The new study marks the first time an AI algorithm called Stable Diffusion, developed by a German group and publicly released in 2022, has been used to do this. Stable Diffusion is similar to other text-to-image “generative” AIs such as DALL-E 2 and Midjourney, which produce new images from text prompts after being trained on billions of images associated with text descriptions.
For the new study, a group in Japan added additional training to the standard Stable Diffusion system, linking additional text descriptions about thousands of photos to brain patterns elicited when those photos were observed by participants in brain scan studies. ✂️
...the AI system was only tested on brain scans from the same four people who provided the training brain scans, and expanding it to other individuals would require retraining the system on their brain scans. So, it may take a while for this technology to become widely accessible. Nonetheless, [Iris] Groen [, a neuroscientist at the University of Amsterdam who was not involved with the work,] argues that “these diffusion models have [an] unprecedented ability to generate realistic images,” and could create new opportunities for cognitive neuroscience research.
* * * * *
Good news for the environment
‘The Ship Has Reached the Shore’
This moving video says it all about how much it means that the long fight to protect the world’s oceans has finally achieved a victory.
From Future Crunch:
After two decades of failed negotiations and political deadlock, this is the moment when UN conference president Rena Lee confirmed that nearly 200 countries have reached a landmark deal to protect ocean life, charting a path to conserving international waters. It's the first international agreement on ocean protection since 1982, and a hugely important victory for life on Earth. In Rena's words: "The ship has reached the shore."
Solar set to overtake other energy sources by 2027
This amount of progress in so short a time is truly stunning.
From Financial Times:
A little more than a decade ago, solar power was an also-ran in the global energy race. At less than 1 per cent, it had the smallest share of generation capacity of any major power source.
But all that has changed. Next year, solar photovoltaic capacity will leapfrog that of hydropower, according to the International Energy Agency. In three years, it will overtake gas-fired generation. And, in four years, it will push past coal — to boast the largest share of generation capacity of any power source.
A buildout of solar installations — from Arizona in the US to Anhui, China — has been at the forefront of a renewable energy charge that has muscled-in on the old energy order.
Now, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushes energy security concerns centre stage, the development of solar is set to pick up speed — with record breaking numbers of installations forecast in each of the next five years. ✂️
Fast falling costs have been the primary driver of the solar buildout in recent years. The average unsubsidised lifetime cost to build and operate utility-scale solar was just $36 per megawatt hour in 2021, according to financial advisers Lazard — down about 90 per cent since 2009. That compares with $108/MWh for coal, $60/MWh for combined cycle gas, and $38/MWh for wind.
UN Takes Step Toward New Way of Tracking Greenhouse Gases
From VOA:
The United Nations announced [on March 6] that it had taken a significant step towards trying to fill a key gap in the fight against climate change: standardized, real-time tracking of greenhouse gases.
The U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization has come up with a new Global Greenhouse Gas Monitoring Infrastructure that aims to provide better ways of measuring planet-warming pollution and help inform policy choices. The WMO's new platform will integrate space-based and surface-based observing systems, and seek to clarify uncertainties about where greenhouse gas emissions end up. It should result in much faster and sharper data on how the planet's atmosphere is changing.
"We know from our measurements that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are at record high," WMO chief Petteri Taalas said. ✂️
"The increase in CO2 levels from 2020 to 2021 was higher than the average growth rate over the past decade, and methane saw the biggest year-on-year jump since measurements started," Taalas said. ✂️
"There are still uncertainties, especially regarding the role in the carbon cycle of the ocean, the land biosphere and the permafrost areas," Taalas said. "We therefore need to undertake greenhouse gas monitoring within an integrated... framework in order to be able to account for natural sources and sinks. This will provide vital information and support for implementation of the Paris Agreement."
Using rain gardens to calm traffic while beautifying neighborhoods
🎩 to GoodGoodGood for linking to this in their March 10
newsletter.
* * * * *
Good news for and about animals
Brought to you by Rosy, Nora, and Rascal.
Rosy loved hearing about how Blue stayed bravely at the side of his little girl in the midst of smoke and flames until his barking could lead the firefighters to her. What a heroic boy!!
Very Protective' Family Dog Helps Rescue 1-Year-Old Girl from Detroit House Fire
From People:
An adorable one-year-old girl is safe after getting caught in a Detroit house fire, thanks to the heroic efforts of her dog Blue.
Blue, a three-year-old pit bull/Lab mix, refused to leave the young girl's side when a fire started in the unit below the family's home, causing black smoke and flames to travel throughout the multi-family residence on Feb. 21.
"I got a phone call that the house was on fire. My fiance's brother was at the home, and he's the one that called," Janet Kelley, the child's mom and Blue's owner,
explained to the Detroit Free Press. "He was trying to rush and get the dog, the kids, and everybody out of the house."
When the fire started, the toddler was inside her playpen, so Blue stood guard until firefighters arrived and he could alert rescuers to where the child was located.
Nora was once a mom herself — she was rescued off the street with a litter of four kittens. So she really liked this story of two moms teaming up to help their babies.
A Cat and Rabbit Team Up to Co-parent Their Litters and Feed Each Other’s Babies
From Good News Network:
A cat and a rabbit have teamed up as parents of both their litters after they gave birth days apart—and they even feed each other’s babies.
The bunny known as Amy became an inter-species nanny more than two weeks ago, after Chrissy the cat moved her kittens into the rabbit hutch. Destiny Hampton had set up a hutch for Amy and her brood, but after checking in one day, discovered Chrissy snuggling up with her own newborns. ✂️
“I was a little worried at first that they might fight, or hurt each other,” said the 47-year-old woman. The wildlife rescuer and owner of Roberson Creek Farm in Tobaccoville, North Carolina, attempted to separate the pair out of concern for the babies. But that turned out to be a mistake. Both mothers immediately stopped feeding their young as a result of the stress.
The animals were not only getting along well, they were co-parenting their young. Chrissy was feeding the baby rabbits. Amy is only feeding her young once a day, so Chrissy is often picking up the slack.
“They get along great,” exclaimed Hampton on social media. “They all want to be together, the babies and the mothers. ...I think maybe [Chrissy] knew that the rabbit mom wasn’t making enough milk and wanted to help her.”
The main reason Hampton was shocked is because Chrissy “isn’t the nicest cat. ...Chrissy is feral. She won’t let me touch her, but she loves Amy apparently. The babies are all doing great, and cuddle all the time.”
Rascal doesn’t think he’s ever heard a nightingale, but he knows that they’re greatly beloved in England, and he always likes stories about humans making bird habitats better.
Ancient technique aims to boost nightingale numbers
From BBC:
An ancient system of woodland management is being planned to boost the nightingale population at an important archaeological site.
The songbirds are mentioned in Netflix film The Dig, about the 1939 excavation of an Anglo-Saxon burial ship at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. The National Trust, which looks after the site, plans to reintroduce coppicing to encourage new tree growth. It said it aimed to provide the "perfect nesting habitat". ✂️
The coppicing technique, which dates back to the Stone Age, involves the cutting of trees close to the ground on a regular cycle, encouraging fast new growth of shoots.
It will be the first time the technique has been used there since the majority of the original woodland was felled after the Great Storm in 1987, the trust said.
Jonathan Plews, National Trust ranger, said the process would allow more light into the woodland floor, which would boost flowers and bramble, which is the "perfect nesting habitat for nightingales. ...Last year we recorded four singing males at Sutton Hoo and the hope is we can attract many more through this form of woodland management technique."
* * * * *
Art break
I love how talented artists can use relatively simple materials and techniques to create amazingly life-like results.
* * * * *
Hot lynx
www.nationalgeographic.com/… Why daylight saving time exists—at least for now. A deep dive from National Geographic. (This link should open for you unless you’ve already read the free articles they offer each month.)
thnews.org/… This student was overwhelmed by ‘alarmist’ environmental education. So she designed her own college course. This story was too hard to summarize, but it’s well worth reading. So do open the link.
wapo.st/… We’re thinking about food ‘waste’ all wrong. An encouraging op-ed by chef and cookbook author Tamar Adler. “Whether food is ‘food’ or ‘waste’ is up to you.” [This is a gift link.]
www.theguardian.com/… What being a hospice volunteer taught me about death and life.“...when I finish a hospice shift, I want to take back into the outside world that sense of life stripped back to its essentials, where what ultimately matters is love.” A beautiful piece.
www.theatlantic.com/… The Oscars’ Incredible Knack for Being Wrong. A look back at the Oscars’ “history of embarrassment.”
www.theguardian.com/… Giving the middle finger is a ‘God-given right’, Canadian judge rules. This is a truly hilarious ruling. Here’s just one of the judge’s quips: “...cases aren’t actually thrown out [but in this matter] the court is inclined to actually take the file and throw it out the window...Alas, the courtrooms of the Montreal courthouse do not have windows.”
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
Good News Sources
And two more from Mokurai:
And another recommended by commenter lynnekz:
* * * * *
How to Resist: Do Something …
URGENT! Write to WI voters for Janet Protasiewicz for WI Supreme Court
There are several options. Choose one or more!
1) Vote Forward is recruiting people to write letters for the WI Supreme Court election coming up on April 4. They’re offering two separate letter campaigns, a “social” campaign simply asking people to vote and a “political” campaign that includes the candidates’ views on abortion access.
I’ll be writing for the second one. The letter template includes the following language, which I think is very effective:
As a member of the WI Supreme Court, the next justice will rule on important issues that affect everyone in Wisconsin. There are two candidates:
Janet Protasiewicz supports “a woman’s right to make decisions over her own body,” and says that she is “running to restore integrity to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.”
Daniel Kelly has expressed opposition to abortion, and says that he is “proud to stand in a long line of judicial conservatives.”
Here’s how to sign up:
First, log into your Vote Forward account through the Vote Forward homepage.
When you visit your dashboard, in most cases you'll find that you've been default-assigned to the nonpartisan (Social) Wisconsin Supreme Court campaign.
If you'd like to adopt voters from the Political campaign that includes details about the candidates on the template, click the "Adopt from a different campaign" button on the dashboard, then select the Wisconsin campaign that you'll see listed in the "Political Campaigns" section.
2) Postcards to Voters also has a campaign for Protasiewicz. 🎩 to Progressive Muse for the following info:
The Postcards To Voters campaign for Judge Janet Protasiewicz (pro-tuh-SAY-witz) is a go! Bolding is mine:
… Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler and his team agreed to coordinate with us on the massive statewide mission to send fun, friendly, fully-handwritten election reminders to as many Democratic voters as possible to get Judge Janet Protasiewicz elected to their Supreme Court. And it is our honor to have been asked to play such a meaningful role in their winning GOTV plan.
On April 4, 2023, Wisconsinites will vote to fill an open seat on their state Supreme Court. It will be an election to determine whether that body will have a conservative or a progressive majority through 2025. This race will shape voting rights, decisions on election subversion, legislative district lines, and so much more. It will also likely have a larger effect on the 2024 presidential race than any other contest in the country in 2023.
For too long, extreme members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court have followed their own partisan beliefs, not the rule of law. Judge Janet is the best candidate to return common sense and the rule of law back to the court.
Ben has recorded a detailed 9-minute video that goes into what's happening there and what's at stake. You can watch it here: Google link
And here is a fun campaign ad video that can help you learn how to pronounce Protasiewicz: Twitter link
Thank you for writing to help WisDems flip Wisconsin's State Supreme court. The outcome will affect the whole country which is why we're leaning into this as our biggest writing effort of 2023.
Write on!
The writing instructions are a bit more detailed than normal, with information about Wisconsin’s unusual addresses and an optional message about voting early. To write for Judge Janet:
Returning Postcards To Voters writers can use these methods to request addresses:
•Text HELLO to (484) 275-2229.
•
Email (if you have trouble with the linked address, you can use Postcards@TonyTheDemocrat.org instead, which will be answered by a human)
•
Slack.com
If you are new to Postcards To Voters, you can get set up by texting or emailing:
•Text JOIN to (484) 275-2229
•
Email
3) Activate America has also organized a postcarding campaign for Protasiewicz:
In the swingiest of swing states, Wisconsin, an important upcoming election will determine the balance of power in the state’s divided 4-3 Supreme Court. Vital decisions on abortion rights, election rules, unions, and so much more are on the line. Activate America is excited to turn out Democrats who will side with democracy and decency in this election.
We are writing postcards to pro choice voters asking them to vote for Judge Janet Protasiewiczfor the Wisconsin State Supreme Court election on April 4.
Please mail postcards as they are completed; final mail by date is March 22.
Activate America does not provide postcards or stamps; Scroll down if you want suggestions on where to get postcards.
Get postcarding supplies now for runoffs and special elections
Just because the November 2020 election is over doesn’t mean that we can put away our postcarding supplies! There will be runoffs and special elections that we’ll need to encourage infrequent Dem voters to participate in. Sign up now to write for Postcards to Voters, and bookmark Activate America. PtoV will text you about new campaigns, but you’ll need to check in with Activate America to see what campaigns they’re writing for.
I like to buy my cards from PtoV because that’s one more way to support them. Here’s my favorite, which costs $18 for 100 cards:
And FWIW, these are my favorite pens — not too thin, not too thick, don’t bleed through: Stabilo Pen 68 Felt-Tip Pen. Even though the ink is water-based, once it’s dry you can get it wet and it doesn’t run.
NEW! A fun way to support World Central Kitchen
I don’t need to tell Gnusies how much good WCK has been doing for many years, most recently in Ukraine, Turkey and Syria. They’ve just announced the arrival of their first cookbook:
You can preorder The World Central Kitchen Cookbook now, and it will be available on September 12. All author proceeds from the book will support WCK's emergency response efforts.
Learn
🎩 to alamancedem for this very important link: 21 day anti-racism challenges. Challenge yourself to learn more, bring it to your workplace, share it with friends and colleagues. We can all benefit from sharpening our awareness of racism.
I’ll add another suggestion: a documentary titled “Traces of the Trade,” currently available to stream for free on Kanopy (a streaming service offered by public libraries around the country). Here’s the thumbnail description from Kanopy:
Katrina Browne uncovers her New England family's deep involvement in the Triangle Trade and, in so doing, reveals the pivotal role slavery played in the growth of the whole American economy. This courageous documentary asks every American what we can and should do to repair the unacknowledged damage of our troubled past.
This film especially asks what the legacy of slavery is for white Americans. It points to the fundamental inequity and institutional racism that persists and to the broken relationship between black and white Americans. It invites every viewer to consider what it will take to move beyond the guilt, defensiveness, fear and anger which continue to divide us.
Abortion assistance
Here’s an easy action you can take RIGHT NOW:
Donate to two organizations providing support to people in no-abortion states who need assistance getting abortions.
National Network of Abortion Funds
The Brigid Alliance
Both of these organizations provide help with transportation, medical fees, hotel stays, etc., for those who have to travel out of state for an abortion. NNAF is a central clearing house for that assistance, The Brigid Alliance does that work directly.
And here’s another resource for women seeking abortions which I discovered recently: Women on Web. They provide abortion pills worldwide for women who need to use them immediately and also for women who want to keep a supply on hand. You can make donations on their website to further their work.
Get the truth out
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.
Call out tax exempt organizations whose political stance violates IRS regulations
A suggestion from chloris creator:
Tax-exempt organization complaint referrals. 13909. This has been filled out for the NRA, but, hey, you can use it for a lot of other organizations. How about if some of us white folk go into some of the MAGA churches and video record what they’re saying?
“The process to get the NRA's tax-exempt nonprofit status revoked has become simpler. All you need to do is save this form and email it to eoclass@irs.gov. It's all filled out for you. You just need to click send.” Allen Glines
Note that the IRS protects your anonymity: The appropriate checkbox is already checked: "I am concerned that I might face retaliation or retribution if my identity is disclosed."
Goodie’s action steps
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.
* * * * *
Closing music
Here’s another sunshine oldie to close with.
❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
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! 💙❤️