Greetings!
Greetings to all you Gnusies, Gnubies, occasional drop-ins, silent regulars, and first-timers! Come sit with us to find and share messages of hope and to celebrate all the ways good people are solving problems and triumphing over evil-doers. The task we have set ourselves here in Gnuville is to search out hope no matter how difficult the situation might be. We’ve learned over the past four years that hope can be found even in the darkest times. And with the Biden era off to a roaring start, there’s so much good news and so much hope that it’s gotten hard to pare Good News Roundups to a reasonable length!
Don’t forget that the Good News Roundup is a collaborative effort. We warmly encourage you to add your own good news finds in our comment section, The Best Comment Section on the Internet™, where sanity reigns, Gloomy Guses and Debbie Downers are encouraged to see the light, and pie fights are forbidden.
Settle in with your favorite morning beverage and get your day going with some good news, some music, and some food for thought. Sorry, it’s another long roundup!!
Introduction
Back in January, I featured the Information Diet Pyramid from Future Crunch pictured at the top of this GNR. Today I want to bring it up again, partly spurred on by NotNowNotEver’s righteous rant about the media in his most recent roundup. I think we can all use a reminder that “we are what we eat,” including the news we consume.
American media is captive to shareholder profits, which leads to policies like “if it bleeds it leads” and unwillingness to call out political malfeasance. Eyes on the screen and clicks on the website are the primary goal, so the bulk of media stories are scary and negative, and there are almost never any deep dives into important stories like systemic racism, domestic terrorism, income inequality, etc. One of the few organizations keeping a close and skeptical eye on the media is The Columbia Journalism Review, which recently published a fascinating piece by freelance journalist Lauren Harris: A day in the life of news. In it, she asked six Americans — a 35-year-old Black man from Missouri, a white teenage boy from North Carolina, a middle-aged white woman from Michigan, a 63-year-old Vietnamese man from Virginia, a middle-aged white man from Florida, and a 25-year-old Black woman from California “to log their news consumption over the course of a day and, in doing so, to probe their habits and perceptions.”
In many cases, participants viewed outlets as representing opposing political “sides” that ought to be sampled in equal measure; they made an effort to find the center and avoid the “extremes.” All shared a general sense that every news source is, to some degree, untrustworthy. And all believed—as most of us do—in their own power of critical thinking, arriving at six distinct conclusions.
There’s some bad news here. The degree to which MSM’s “bothsidesism” has infected this sample group of viewers and readers is troubling, because it leaves them feeling that they need to sample news sources on “both sides” to arrive at a truth that they feel must by definition reside in the center. This can lead, for example, to failure to accept the obvious truth of GQP sedition or of the danger of domestic terror groups like the Oath Keepers, on the grounds that stories with those messages come from sources that lean left. However, I do think it’s good news that “all shared a general sense that every news source is, to some degree, untrustworthy,” since that encourages healthy skepticism. But when news sources carry conflicting messages, where do those news consumers turn for guidance?
The danger is that the answer to that question is probably “social media.” Except for the 42-year-old Floridian, all of the respondents depend on it for news to some degree. The Vietnamese man said “ ‘To tell you the truth, social media has become a much bigger part of my life over the years. I can live without the TV media for a few days, but I can’t stay away from information online.’ ” And as the folks at Future Crunch point out, algorhithmic information comes at us totally unfiltered and unvetted. Worse, it’s deliberately addictive, junk food for the mind. That’s why they put it at the tip of the pyramid. Note that they also put mainstream media in that same category of information that we should consume most sparingly.
The factor that moves a news source from worse to better on the pyramid chart is active consent. Emails and texts may come to us because we have consented to receive them or they may be messages from businesses and political campaigns that have gotten our contact info second-hand, so they’re labelled “non-consensual information.” Farther down into the more nourishing information sources are what Future Crunch calls “humanistic information”: books, audiobooks, essays, and documentaries. These require our active participation, and we are totally in control of which ones we choose. The most nutritious sources of information are “consensual,” defined here as newsletters, podcasts, and specialist publications. Personally, I’d put “humanistic information” at the base of the pyramid. I think the reason Future Crunch made the choices they did is that they’re Millennials and techies; I’m a voracious reader in my 70s with a degree in English, so my favored sources tend to be books and essays. But this is probably a meaningless difference in approach, as long as the principle of consent is applied.
So, to wrap up this long intro, I encourage you to examine how much of the information you consume comes without your active consent. Do most of your daily information calories come from snacking on whatever shows up on social media, or are you seeking out some full healthy meals from books, magazine articles, and podcasts? You’re in control of your information diet.
* * * * *
This song feels like an appropriate coda to the intro —
“Well, mama said,
You can't believe everything you hear”
* * * * *
Good news in politics
Republican circular firing squad in full swing because their attacks on Biden are ineffective
The smell of GQP desperation is delightful, isn’t it? (Jessiestaf and his Monday News Crew covered this story yesterday, but I can’t resist mentioning it again.)
From Raw Story (originally from Business Insider, behind a paywall):
On Saturday, writing for Business Insider, columnist Eoin Higgins analyzed the fragmenting of the GOP caucus as Republicans fail to come up with a damaging line of attack against President Joe Biden and his agenda.
"Biden, a 78-year-old moderate Democrat, has a job approval rating hovering around 60% of Americans...," wrote Higgins. "The result is a floundering GOP as the right-wing party tries to draw a contrast with a president who isn't nearly as liberal as they try to make it seem. Lacking that contrast, Republicans are lost."
With Republicans unable to either damage Biden or move on from their support of former President Donald Trump, many of them have been reduced to infighting and purges of their own for perceived disloyalty — including the exile of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) from the caucus leadership and censure of Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach the former president for his role in the Capitol riot.
"Republicans aren't just fighting each other. They're also going after their own interests," noted Higgins. "Despite the GOP's traditionally close relationship with big business, a right-wing nonprofit is targeting major US corporations over moving to the left on culture war issues. The group, Consumers' Research, is aiming ads at the CEOs of large companies like American Airlines, Coca-Cola, and Nike, for a laundry list of complaints ranging from high executive compensation to questions about product safety to allegations that products are made using forced labor overseas."
"This isn't the behavior of a party with ideas or a plan," wrote Higgins. "It's a sign that the right is flailing and doesn't have a coherent response to the new administration. Republicans have no policies to offer to change anything in the country for the better."
Texas attorney general admits Trump would have lost the state in 2020 if he hadn't blocked mail-in voting
As proof of the GQP’s undermining of democracy, this is infuriating, of course. But it’s also really good news for the future: if we can work like hell to GOTV despite Texas’s voter suppression laws, we’ll turn it blue in 2024.
From Raw Story:
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton told Steve Bannon that Donald Trump would have lost the Lone Star State in the 2020 presidential election if Texans had been allowed to vote by mail.
"Yeah, I think it's certainly critical to my state and that's why we fought off these twelve lawsuits," Paxton said. "We had them in Houston, we had them in San Antonio, we had them in Austin — we had them in the counties where you have the most liberal judges. And it was a concerted effort, nationally, with lots of money going into it."
"And just knowing that we had twelve lawsuits that we had to win. And if we had lost one of them, if we'd lost Harris County — Trump won by 620,000 votes in Texas. Harris County mail-in ballots that they wanted to send out were 2.5 million, those were all illegal and we were able to stop every one of them," he explained.
"Had we not done that, we would have been in the very same situation — we would've been on election day, I was watching on election night and I knew, when I saw what was happening in these other states, that that would've been Texas. We would've been in the same boat. We would've been one of those battleground states that they were counting votes in Harris County for three days and Donald Trump would've lost the election," Paxton said.
South Dakota governor who threatened Biden administration over fireworks loses in court
From The American Independent:
A federal judge has rejected South Dakota GOP Gov. Kristi Noem's attempt to circumvent safety rules and hold a massive Independence Day fireworks show at Mount Rushmore. He said her request amounted to asking for "judicial activism."
"This country could use a good celebration of its foundational principles of democracy, liberty, and equal protection of law," wrote Roberto Lange, the chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota.
But, he wrote on Wednesday, it would "be improper judicial activism for this Court to disregard settled law" for him to force the U.S. Parks Service to grant a permit for a July 4, 2021, show, as Noem demanded. ✂️
“Potential risks to the park itself and to the health and safety of employees and visitors associated with the fireworks demonstration continue to be a concern and are still being evaluated as a result of the 2020 event,” it explained. “In addition, the park’s many tribal partners expressly oppose fireworks at the Memorial.”
Fireworks had been banned at the national park between 2009 and 2019, due to objections from Native American tribes (on whose sacred lands the monument was built) and concerns about wildfires. In 2020, Donald Trump and his administration ignored those — and coronavirus safety measures — to hold a massive Independence Day fireworks show and political speech at the site.
* * * * *
Favorite recent political cartoons
Bill Bramhall’s spot-on commentary on the plight of the GQP:
I subscribe to Tom Tomorrow’s “Sparky’s List” so his cartoons will fall into my inbox regularly. (Here’s the subscription link). I love this take on the plutocrats insisting that we all return to the joys of commuting and working in an office:
* * * * *
Good news from the Pacific Northwest
Bob’s Red Mill is offering $5,000 grants to help farmers markets
Have a favorite local farmer’s market? Nominate it for a $5,000 grant!
From The Oregonian:
Earlier in the pandemic, the Milwaukie [OR]-based grain company Bob’s Red Mill offered $5,000 grants to restaurants. Now, they are doing the same for farmers markets.
The “Farmers Markets Forever” campaign asks people to nominate their favorite farmers market to receive $5,000. A total of $25,000 will be given to markets around the country.
“Like Bob’s Red Mill, farmers markets are all about providing good food with great heart, and our products really shine when paired with fresh produce and other local ingredients found at farmers markets across the country,” said Bob’s Red Mill CEO Dennis Vaughn. “As farmers markets were hit hard in the past year due to the pandemic, we wanted to celebrate them by supporting five lucky markets with a gift of $5,000.”
So far nominees range from the Oregon City Farmers Market to the Duluth Farmers Market to Soldotna Saturday Farmers Market in Soldotna, Alaska. ✂️
The contest ends June 30 and the five winners will be chosen at random.
Portlanders can finally recycle those plastic clamshells! (at a small price)
My husband and I signed up for this recycling service as soon as we heard about it. It’s absolutely wonderful to be able to recycle so much stuff that used to go to landfill! The option to recycle plastic clamshells is new and so welcome.
From KGW:
A Portland company up has come up with a way to deal with those plastic to-go containers often called "clamshells." They are no doubt a headache. You can't put them in curbside recycling and they seem to be almost everywhere these days.
They've been widely used in these COVID times. Clamshell containers hold salads, berries, food-to-go. The problem? They can't go in our curbside recycling bins. In fact, right now, there are no curbside recycling programs anywhere in Oregon that will take plastic clamshells.
But that's about to change. In less than two weeks, Portland recycling service Ridwell will launch its own plastic clamshell recycling program in Portland. ✂️
The company is partnering with Green Impact out of Texas to recycle the old clamshells into new ones. ✂️
Since it launched in Portland last December, the company has kept more than 150,000 pounds of hard-to-recycle trash out of the landfill. ✂️
Of course, for Ridwell to come pick up your hard-to-recycle items, you do have to be a member. Memberships start at $12 a month.
You'll get a bin and separate recycling bags for each item.
And then you'll get the peace of mind that you're doing something good for the planet.
Update: Over 1500 pounds of clamshells collected in the first week
From an email sent by Ridwell:
Wow! We have been so impressed with the response to our new clear plastic clamshell service. We’ve heard from so many of you about how excited you are to have this new solution to reduce plastic waste — and believe us, the feeling is mutual!
In our first week alone, we’ve collected a truly mountainous 1500 pounts of clamshells from over 1000 passionate Portlanders, turning them into our very first densely compressed plastic clamshell bale which you can see in the photo above. All of this would have been loose in a landfill without you. We are beyond grateful for the way you’ve embraced this new recycling opportunity, and we can’t wait to share more as the clamshells keep rolling in.
7 apple varieties previously thought lost have been located in Northwest
From the Bend [OR] Bulletin:
YAKIMA, Wash. — Seven apple varieties previously believed to be lost or extinct have been found in the Northwest...
The Lost Apple Project and the Temperate Orchard Conservancy announced the latest discoveries this month. Founded by Dave Benscoter, the Lost Apple Project has partnered with the Whitman County Historical Society to identify and preserve heritage apple trees and orchards in Washington and Idaho.
The groups have found 29 apples once thought to have disappeared, the Yakima Herald reported. The latest seven apples were discovered in old orchards in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
The Almota apple, which has pale yellow skin striped with red, was located southeast of Pullman on land farmed by Roy Druffel’s family. The Almota was a seedling first discovered in the late 19th century by Charles Moys near Pullman.
The Ivanhoe, described as having green or slightly yellow skin with reddish blush, was found west of Pullman at the site of what was once the Pullman Country Club.
The Eper apple variety was found near Colfax. The apple is small with greenish-yellow skin and red stripes. It is believed to be one of 34 fruit varieties imported from Hungary in the 1890s by the U.S. government and obtained by George Ruedy, owner of the Colfax Nursery in Colfax.
The Iowa Flat, a yellow apple with red blush and red streaks, was found near Orchard Avenue in Moscow. It most likely originated in Iowa and in 1901 appeared in an experimental orchard in Farmdale, Illinois.
Other varieties were found near Salem and the community of Flora in Oregon and in Waitsburg in Washington's Walla Walla County.
And a footnote on the two Oregon varieties:
Two Apple Varieties Thought to Be Extinct Have Been Found in Oregon
From Willamette Week:
Two of [the seven varieties of lost apples] were found in Oregon.
That includes the Kay, a red and yellow variety that [Dave] Benscoter found in Flora, Ore., an unincorporated town in the far northwest reaches of the state.
“It’s basically a ghost town,” says Benscoter, who lives in Washington’s Spokane Valley. “There’s a church and its steeple is half fallen over.”
The Carlough, the other thought-to-be-extinct apple discovered in Oregon, was found west of Salem... The 130-year-old variety has a yellow-green skin and was once prized for its long shelf life.
After the Lost Apple Project helps discover a missing fruit, Benscoter grafts the tree so two can be planted at the Temperate Orchard Conservancy. Over the past few years, Lost Apple Project has located 29 varieties that were thought to have disappeared. Benscoter often revisits trees after he finds and grafts them, and helps sell some trees locally.
And continuing with the theme of delicious heirloom fruit, here’s a video about what we in the Pacific Northwest are convinced is the best strawberry in the world, the renowned Hood strawberry, which is at its peak right now:
Here’s a photo that shows the color of the interior. These beauties are red all the way through. When you make strawberry shortcake with them, you don’t need any sugar — they’re sweet enough all by themselves.
* * * * *
Good news from around the nation
US recovers millions in cryptocurrency paid to Colonial Pipeline ransomware hackers
This is the first time the Justice Department has recovered ransom payments made with bitcoin.
From CNN:
US investigators have recovered millions in cryptocurrency they say was paid in ransom to hackers whose attack prompted the shutdown of the key East Coast pipeline last month, the Justice Department announced Monday. The announcement confirms CNN's earlier reporting about the FBI-led operation, which was carried out with cooperation from Colonial Pipeline, the company that fell victim to the ransomware attack in question.
Specifically, the Justice Department said it seized approximately $2.3 million in Bitcoins paid to individuals in a criminal hacking group known as DarkSide. The FBI said it has been investigating DarkSide, which is said to share its malware tools with other criminal hackers, for over a year.
Colonial Pipeline Co. CEO Joseph Blount told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published last month that the company complied with the $4.4 million ransom demand because officials didn't know the extent of the intrusion by hackers and how long it would take to restore operations. But behind the scenes, the company had taken early steps to notify the FBI and followed instructions that helped investigators track the payment to a cryptocurrency wallet used by the hackers, believed to be based in Russia.
As prisons close, communities look to repurpose buildings
From AP [You may need to copy the headline into your browser to get this to open. Links to AP stories seem to time out.]
One shuttered prison in Connecticut has been repurposed for document storage. Another is used to process and train newly hired correction officers. A third that was emptied of prisoners within the last decade remains unused.
With the state’s inmate population down by more than half from its peak of almost 20,000 in 2008, decisions will need to be made about what to do with three more prisons slated for closure, including the Northern Correctional Institution that once housed death row, which is scheduled to be shuttered next month.
It’s a predicament and opportunity facing many states around the country as declining crime rates, and an emphasis on alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenses, especially drug crimes, allow them to explore new uses for prisons.
Since 2009, the percentage of U.S. residents who are in prison has dropped 17%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. That was helped along during the last year by the pandemic as many prisons furloughed at-risk inmates. The number of people incarcerated in state and federal prisons and local jails declined from bout 2.1 million in 2019 to about 1.8 million in late 2020, according to the non-profit Vera Institute of Justice.
While some new prisons have been built, many states are downsizing. Between 2011 and 2016, 94 state prisons and juvenile facilities across the U.S. closed, according to the nonprofit Sentencing Project, which tracks prison closures.
“Given the dropping crime rates, COVID and state budget crises, there have been discussions to close prisons in several other states as well,” said Nicole Porter, the director of advocacy for the Sentencing Project.
Around the country prisons have been converted into homeless shelters, centers for troubled teens and in at least one case, a movie studio.
11-year-old with Autism earns Guinness World Record for mental math skills
This is a powerful example of why it’s so important not to pigeon-hole kids who experience the world differently. They may be hiding a super-power like Sanaa’s, which would never have been discovered if her mother hadn’t noticed her amazing ability to multiply large numbers in her head.
From Bay News 9 [Tampa Bay]:
At 11 years old, [Sanaa Hiremath is] solving problems an engineering student would solve at MIT.
Sanaa was diagnosed as autistic at just two years old, and she doesn’t easily express herself. Priya and Uday said she failed math in the second grade because of her disability.
“They tested her on math,” Uday said, “They gave her pencil and paper and told her to write 1-20 and she could not because she can’t hold the pencil because she has fine grip [issues], she has poor motor issues,” and now she’s homeschooled by her mom.
“She was different from the other kids,” he continued. “That was obvious, but what was not obvious was how gifted she was in math.”
A pediatrician was so fascinated by her skills and how fast she can multiply, they wondered if anyone else has been able to do what Sanaa can, and the answer seemed to be no.
Google generated random numbers she was asked to multiply and solved them in under 2 minutes. Her ability to solve a multiplication problem so quickly has earned her a Guinness World Record title for the largest mental arithmetic multiplication problem.
To win the title, she had to multiply 12 digits in under 10 minutes. She was not allowed to be in the room when the numbers were picked and she had to be blindfolded on her way to her testing location.
“I don’t think she has any limitations,” Uday said. “Six digits, seven digits, who knows how many digits. I don’t think she has those limitations.” He said the only limitation is their ability to understand her through words.
* * * * *
Good news from around the world
G-7 countries reach agreement on 15 percent minimum global tax rate
The devil is in the details, but this is an amazing step forward. (WineRev mentioned this in the intro to his History Corner in yesterday’s GNR comments, but I think it’s an important enough story to be covered in more detail.)
From The Washington Post [behind a paywall, so I’ve quoted the main points]:
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been adamant that the U.S. needs to work with other countries to prevent firms seeking lower tax obligations from simply moving elsewhere.✂️
Under the deal, the U.S. is expected to give up some taxing rights on overseas profits of U.S.-based tech giants.
The deal enables countries to tax 20 percent of the profits of “the largest and most profitable multinational enterprises” that have profit margins of at least 10 percent. ...The U.S. objected to singling out tech companies in the deal. Yellen said that as a compromise the G-7 finance ministers agreed to apply the change to a broader set of multinational firms that the tech firms “would qualify by [under] any definition.” ✂️
Republican critics have charged that [Biden’s domestic tax proposals] would lead American firms to relocate abroad, hurting domestic jobs and investment. The international tax agreement helps the White House argue that it can lift domestic tax rates without pushing multinationals abroad, because under the agreement they would still face a minimum level of taxation.
Chef José Andrés and World Central Kitchen at work in India
If you want to help, there’s a link at the bottom of the quote to make donations.
From World Central Kitchen:
In the weeks following the massive Covid surge across India, WCK’s Relief Team has served more than 400,000 hot, nourishing mealsto hospital workers on the frontlines of the health crisis. While the largest spike of infections has passed in the big cities like Delhi and Mumbai, smaller cities and rural areas are now seeing an increase in Covid cases. Across India, between 3,000 and 4,000 people are still losing their lives every day—and medical staff have continued working under incredibly difficult circumstances to care for people in need.
WCK founder Chef José Andrés arrived in Mumbai last week to support our local chefs who have been cooking since early May. With India’s Chef Sanjeev Kapoor, the team is serving freshly prepared meals to more than 30 locations in 15 cities—Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Cansaulim, Chennai, Chicalim, Cortalim, Delhi, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Mysore, Thane, and Varanasi—and we hope to expand to more locations with your support.
And here’s a brief video interview of Chef Andrés, who describes his work in India and Gaza and his belief in the centrality of food as an instrument of change:
Glasgow is about to get a lot greener thanks to an ‘urban forest’
From Positive News:
An ‘urban forest’ is to be created in Glasgow over the next decade. Councils in the city have agreed to plant 18m saplings – the equivalent of 10 trees per resident.
Those behind the Clyde Climate Forest (CCF) say the project would boost tree cover in the city from 17 to 20 per cent. A fifth of the city’s outlying rural landscape will also be forested as part of the initiative.
There is an estimated 29,000 hectares of broadleaf woodland (trees with flat leaves, as opposed to conifers) in Greater Glasgow. However they have become fragmented due to urban development. CCF aims to connect these woodlands, providing corridors for urban wildlife.
Andrew Polson, joint leader of East Dunbartonshire council, said: “Trees are nature’s own green lungs, improving the air that we breathe and soaking up harmful CO2 emissions from our environment. Expanding Glasgow city region’s woodlands to create a new inter-connected forest will provide many lasting benefits.”
Various studies have established links between urban tree cover and public health. Researchers behind one project found that cases of obesity, asthma and diabetes were lower in urban areas that had more tree coverage. A report by Forest Research, the research agency of the Forestry Commission, found there were often fewer trees in deprived areas.
The CCF project team said it would plant trees in areas of deprivation, as well as on former coal mining sites around the city.
Australian court says mine approvals must consider climate harm
As the folks at Future Crunch, who summarized this story in an email, put it: “This is an even bigger deal that the Shell ruling, because Australia is the world's largest exporter of coking coal and the second-largest for thermal coal.”
From Reuters:
An Australian court ruled on [May 24th] that the country's environment minister has an obligation to children to consider the harm caused by climate change as part of her decision-making in approving the expansion of a new coal mine.
The Federal Court of Australia made the ruling in response to a class action suit brought by eight teenagers that argued the expansion of Whitehaven Coal Ltd's (WHC.AX) Vickery Project in New South Wales (NSW) state would contribute to climate change and endanger their future. [read more]
In his ruling, Justice Mordecai Bromberg said that the minister could foresee the possibility of future harm caused to the children in the case by the increase in carbon dioxide emissions from Whitehaven's expansion and therefore must recognise a so-called duty of care, or moral obligation, to the children, when approving it. ✂️
"We understand it is the first time a court of law, anywhere in the world, has ordered a government to specifically protect young people from the catastrophic harms of climate change," ...said [Ava Princi, 17, one of the students that brought the suit].
However, the court stopped short of issuing an injunction to prevent the minister from approving the expansion.
And in more good news regarding the phasing out of coal, there’s this:
G7 agrees to stop financing coal projects by the end of 2021
From ABC News Australia:
The world's seven largest advanced economies have agreed to stop international financing of coal projects that emit carbon by the end of this year, and phase out such support for all fossil fuels, to meet globally agreed climate change targets.
Stopping fossil fuel funding is seen as a major step the world can make to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, which scientists say would avoid the most devastating impacts of climate change.
Getting Japan on board to end international financing of coal projects in such a short timeframe means countries such as China that still back coal are increasingly isolated and could face more pressure to stop.
The guys at Future Crunch had a great statement in their latest newsletter that puts a nice coda on all the encouraging news about the end of coal. (I know I keep name checking them and giving you their link, but it’s because they’re so righteous and so much fun to read.)
Why do all of these stories matter? They matter because they show the tide has turned. The fossil fuels industry is now firmly on the wrong side of both history and company balance sheets and there's nowhere else left to run. Carbon needs to be accounted for, there is no escaping it. The science has been telling us, our experience of wildfires, freak summers and extended winters has been telling us, and now finally, the mood music is telling us, from the courtrooms of The Hague to the boardrooms of Seoul and the factory lines of Zwickau.
We've been singing this tune in this newsletter for years now, and to finally see both the economic and political realities catch up to the scientific and technological ones feels a little unreal, and incredibly hopeful.
* * * * *
Here’s a musical coda to the good environmental news. John Denver performed this song only once, in a live concert. This recording was edited from the live performance to remove his banter with the audience.
* * * * *
Good news in science
Bees Actually Bite Plants to Make Them Flower Early – Surprising Scientists
From Good News Network:
Despite their name, there’s no bumbling in a bumblebee’s movements. They are busy surveying your yard for the tastiest and richest supplies of nectar and pollen.
They’re also biting tiny chunks out of leaves as they go along, but are neither ingesting nor bringing the leaf fragments back to the hive. Instead, like so many gardeners with their pruning sheers, the bees are manipulating flowers into blooming earlier than normal, a discovery that has scientists buzzing.
Between the time of their emergence and the month of April when flowers are plentiful, buff-tailed bumblebees in a Swiss research lab were observed over several trials to prune the leaves of preferred plants while not in flower when the bee colony had been deprived of pollen. This was in contrast to the actions, both in the lab and on the building’s rooftop, of another colony that was not pollen-deprived.
Additionally, they had a profound effect on the plants they pruned. Their nibbling enticed flowers out of a tomato plant a whole month early, and black mustard plants two weeks early. ✂️
Such a profound development in our understanding of a well researched insect is exciting, and a collection of biologists had a lot to say to National Geographic about the finding.
Some suggest it was an exceptional display of communication between not just different species, but different kingdoms, as the biting of the leaves might be the bee’s way of alerting the flower to its need for food and offering its services as a pollinator in return.
NASA Just Broke the ‘Venus Curse’
From Scientific American:
Although it raised a plethora of tantalizing questions about the planet’s past and present, Magellan marked the last time NASA sent a dedicated mission to Venus. Just as [Sue] Smrekar and other Venus-minded researchers were beginning to grapple with the planet’s mysteries, as unveiled by Magellan, sensational claims of life on Mars captured the public imagination. Today, a quarter-century later, most of the global planetary-science community still remains wrapped up in the so-far-fruitless search for Martian life. All the while, Venus—an acidic, superhot, arid and presumably lifeless wasteland—has languished in the shadows.
“Currently, the Venus community is a bit like Boston Red Sox fans prior to 2004, who lived under the ‘curse of the Bambino’ for endless decades,” Smrekar says, referring to the baseball team’s 86-year championship drought. Yet like some of her steadfast colleagues, she has remained motivated through decades of disappointment by one of the most compelling unanswered questions in planetary science: What transformed Venus—a near twin of Earth in size and composition—into such an unearthly and downright apocalyptic state? Why did these two similar, adjacent planets have such staggeringly divergent stories?
Perhaps the time for answers has finally come. NASA is about to pick which interplanetary mission—or pair of missions—it will send into space next. The space agency has four options: one would visit a moon of Neptune, another would rendezvous with a Jovian moon, and two would return to Venus. Smrekar is the principal investigator of one of those Venusian hopefuls, and the entire community is holding its breath alongside her.
“We are all desperately hoping the ‘Venus curse’ will be lifted,” she says. Will it?
To make a very long story short, it will:
EPILOGUE
On the afternoon of June 2, NASA administrator Bill Nelson made an announcement to the world: the venerable space agency was heading back to Venus with not one but two missions.
* * * * *
Good news for and about animals
World’s Tiniest Pig at 10-Inches Tall, Once Thought Extinct, Is Returning to the Wild
From Good News Network:
Like the keystone in an arch that holds all the others in place, the endangered pygmy hog of North India is the keystone species of the Terai grasslands, and while those other large mammals can live elsewhere, the hog cannot. Therefore you have a situation where protecting a 10-inch tall pig has the added benefit of protecting the 300-pound tigers and 8-ton elephants.
Presumed extinct until it was discovered in 1971 in the Indian state of Assam by a tea plantation worker, it wasn’t until the 1990s that conservationists began breeding the pygmy hogs in captivity.
Fortunately the hogs, which represent the last living species in the genus porcula, breed like, well, pigs, and now between 300-400 are roaming the Terai grasslands again—while another 74 stay in captivity awaiting reintroduction.
This is all down to the work of the Pygmy Hog Conservation Program, (PHCP) established in the ’90s by Gerald Durrell of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust.
Big cat comeback? Florida strikes bipartisan deal to help endangered panthers
From The Guardian:
In a political culture where bipartisan legislation is a rare species, lawmakers in one state have come together to agree major new conservation efforts that will help that other endangered animal – the Florida panther.
The big cat, whose habitat has a history of being swallowed up and its numbers hunted by humans, is expected to benefit from a $400m cash boost.
Legislation recently passed in Florida with unanimous support will boost protected land and expand “wildlife corridors” running almost the length of the state.
Conservationists believe the bill has a good chance of being signed when it reaches the desk of the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, ready to go into effect on 1 July.
The bulk of the spending will be set aside to protect wildlife corridors under the Florida Forever land conservation program, creating a network of undeveloped public and private patches of land so animals can safely cross the state, a local CBS affiliate reported.
Expanding protected territory will help the threatened panther roam more freely and safely, as well as helping other wildlife, such as bears and plant life, with connected land “spanning from the Florida Bay in the south to the Georgia and Alabama borders”, Tori Linder, managing director for advocacy group Path of the Panther, said.
* * * * *
Cool photography
The 2021 Milky Way Photographer of the the Year
All of these photos are astounding. This one was taken in Utah. Click the link to see them all.
From Capture the Atlas:
* * * * *
Hot lynx
gijn.org/… Tips for Using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine in Your Next Investigation. This article is meant for journalists doing deep research, but it’s a good intro to the Internet Archive’s amazing Wayback Machine, “which archives and makes available much of the public web at the rate of more than 1 billion archived URLs per day.”
www.noemamag.com/… The Intelligent Forest. “Recognizing that forest ecosystems, like societies, have elements of intelligence would help us leave behind the old notion that they are inert and predictable.”
www.thecut.com/… The Clock-Out Cure. ”For those who can afford it, quitting has become the ultimate form of self-care.”
apnews.com/… Big cheese no more: UK drug dealer caught out by cheese pic. He posted a photo of himself holding up a choice piece of Stilton, and European police caught him by reading his fingerprints. (Which is kinda scary...)
www.newyorker.com/… Silver Linings. A gallery of gorgeous photos of women who stopped dying their hair during the pandemic. As a woman who’s had white streaks for many years, I applaud the other women who are getting comfortable with their silver hair.
* * * * *
Wherever 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: pucklady the 1st Thursday, Mokurai the 2nd, oldhippiedude the 3rd, MCUBernieFan the 4th, and Mokurai the 5th (when there is one).
- Fridays: chloris creator. Regular links to the White House Briefing Room.
- Saturdays: GoodNewsRoundup. Heart-stirring and soul-healing introduction and sometimes memes to succumb to.
- Sundays: 2thanks. A brief roundup of Roundups, a retrospective, a smorgasbord, a bulletin board, an oasis, a watering hole, a thunder of hooves, a wellness, a place for beginners to learn the rules of the veldt.
hpg posts Evening Shade diaries at 7:30 p.m. ET every day! After a long day, Gnusies meet in the evening shade and continue sharing Good News, good community, and good actions. In the words of NotNowNotEver: “hpg ably continues the tradition of Evening Shade.” Find Evening Shades here.
oldhippiedude posts Tweets of the Week on Sundays at 6:00 p.m. Central Time — New time! Our second evening Gnusie hangout zone! In search of a TOTW diary? Look here or here.
For more information about the Good News group, please see our detailed Welcoming comment, one of the first comments in our morning diaries.
* * * * *
Closing music
I’ll close with Sly Stone’s cheery song about unity in diversity, presented by the good folks at Playing for Change.
❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
Thanks to all of you for your smarts, your hearts, and
your faithful attendance at our daily Gathering of the Herd.
❤️💙 RESIST, PERSIST, REBUILD, REJOICE! 💙❤️