Welcome back to the Monday Good News Roundup, where we bring you all the good news you need to start your week off. Before we get started lets take a moment to think about the brave people in Iran currently fighting for their freedom. We hope and pray for their safety in this difficult time and that they emerge victorious in their struggle.
Alright, now onto the news.
A Texas sheriff said Monday evening his agency will open an investigation into the transportation of 48 Venezuelan migrants from the state to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, last week.
Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar, a Democrat, told reporters at a Monday news conference that his understanding was that on Wednesday a Venezuelan migrant was paid a fee to recruit 50 migrants from a resource center in San Antonio, the county seat of Bexar County.
The sheriff of the south Texas county, located about 160 miles north of the US-Mexico border, said he believes laws were broken not only in the county but also on the federal side.
A total of 48 migrants were “lured” to a hotel where they were housed for two days, according to Salazar. The migrants were flown to Florida and then to Martha’s Vineyard under “false pretenses,” he said.
Ah yes, Remember how we joked that Trump was trying to speedrun Nixon’s presidency. Now we have DeSantis trying to speedrun Trumps presidency, in that the idiot is trying to get himself arrested before he even runs. Yeah, this idiotic and extremely cruel stunt of DeSantis is really coming back to bite him. I hope he ends up in jail because of this. Or at least voted out of office.
Colorado will cancel two planned highway expansions, citing a new climate rule that advocates say should be a model for communities across America.
Officials at the Colorado Department of Transportation were set to announce on Thursday that they would halt plans to widen two freeways in the Denver region, including a particularly controversial project along Interstate 25 that would have deepened already-stark divides in some of the Mile High City’s most underserved low-income communities. Those included the Sun Valley and Valverde neighborhoods, both of which are bordered by the 4.5-mile stretch of road that would have been expanded, and whose residents already report some of the highest rates of asthma in the state.
CDOT’s decision to nix the project, along with the cancellation of a second highway expansion along Colorado Route 470 in the southeastern quadrant of the city, will free up more than $100 million in funding that the state says it will devote to enhancing the region’s bus rapid transit network and making the I-25 corridor safer and easier to navigate, particularly for people outside cars.
“People are starting to understand that these highways are really city killers,” Matt Frommer, transportation analyst with the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, told the Colorado Sun. “And we’re trying to build a more livable city. So I’m glad we’re leaving the capacity as-is.”
Once again we need fewer highways and more mass transit. So this is definitely good news to me.
It is a historic day in the annals of both sports and labor history. Minor League Baseball players, some of the most precariously positioned workers in this country, have voted to join the Major League Baseball Players Association. For the first time in the 120-year history of Minor League Baseball, the players are part of a union. This election is seismic for the lives of the players. Unions make working-class jobs better, and Minor League Baseball players could certainly use a dose of “better.” Their average salaries can run as low as $10,000 per year for the full season, and they are left with nothing if they are thrown on the scrap heap for a teenage prospect. These conditions in the minor leagues worsened as Major League Baseball secured record-breaking television contracts and profits galore.
Alright, big props to minor league baseball. Every time unions come to a new industry its good for everyone.
THE battery, as US comedian Demetri Martin pointed out, is one technology that we personify. “Other things stop working or they break,” he said. “But batteries – they die.” The observation is keener than it may at first appear. So beholden are some of us to smartphones, tablets and other digital technology, that our lives pretty much go on hold when they run out of juice. Even if it is just 30 minutes, we are apt to mourn the time lost to recharging.
If that seems like a laughable reaction, there is a serious side to this when it comes to the batteries that power electric vehicles. The fact that it usually takes hours to charge them is a major stumbling block to decarbonising transport, which is among the biggest global emitters of greenhouse gases. For humanity’s sake, charging times need to be slashed. Yet, with the fundamentals of battery science the same as they were half a century ago, the prospect of a drastic improvement looks slim.
Slim, but not impossible. Now, quantum physics could ride to our rescue. By leveraging the strange behaviour of subatomic particles, a quantum battery could charge itself much faster than any conventional device. As a handy bonus, the bigger a quantum battery, the better it performs. Although the concept is in its infancy, a recent experimental demonstration and some theoretical advances suggest that a world of uninterrupted portable power isn’t so far-fetched. One day, dead batteries could spring back to life in an instant.
I say it every week, but I love living in the future.
ive people with severe autoimmune disease have become the first in the world to receive a groundbreaking therapy that uses genetically altered cells to drive the illness into remission.
The four women and one man, aged 18 to 24, received transfusions of modified immune cells to treat severe lupus, an autoimmune disease that can cause life-threatening damage to the heart, lungs, brain and kidneys.
The treatment drove the disease into remission in all five patients, who have now been off lupus medication for between three and 17 months. Doctors say the apparent success raises hopes for tackling other autoimmune conditions such a rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.
Once again, modern medicine gives one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse a black eye. Go get em.
The images are arresting, like arrows embedded in a leaden North Sea: a cluster of spinning turbines bobbing off-shore, harnessing the ocean wind, in a sight reminiscent of both Scandinavia and Star Wars.
That’s the vision of Norway’s World Wide Wind, which is seeking to create a radically different kind of wind turbine to optimize offshore wind farms.
Their design, known as a vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT), features its heaviest components at the bottom, allowing them to move with the wind and sea. Two sets of blades will spin opposite of each other like a helicopter, New Atlas’ Loz Blain reported.
They should generate less atmospheric wake than a traditional turbine design, allowing more towers to be jammed into an area — and oh yeah, World Wide Wind imagines them huge.
Honestly I really love wind turbines. I think they look pretty cool. But I like these new ones even better.
Class sizes in New York City’s public schools will face stricter limits under a bill Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law Thursday, despite protests from Mayor Eric Adams that it would be expensive to implement.
The bill represents a significant win for the city’s teachers union, which has repeatedly advocated to reduce class size but until now has struggled to push the policy across the finish line. It also had support from a constellation of educators and parents, who point to research that suggests smaller classes boost student test scores and can also lead to higher attendance and greater classroom engagement.
It always fills me with pride when my state does something cool like this. Way to go Governor Hochul.
We shy away from asking for help because we don’t want to bother other people, assuming that our request will feel like an inconvenience to them. But oftentimes, the opposite is true: People want to make a difference in people’s lives and they feel good—happy even—when they are able to help others, says Stanford University social psychologist Xuan Zhao.
Remember, you are not a burden and you are not causing other people trouble. The people in your life want to help you. I’m learning that myself.
More than 70 firms are taking part in the scheme where employees get 100% pay for 80% of their normal hours worked.
At the halfway point in a six-month trial, data shows that productivity has been maintained or improved at the majority of firms.
Yeah it turns out when you don’t work your employee’s ragged they work better. What a shocker huh?
In the first days of the war, as Russian troops rolled across the border and bombs threatened the Ukrainian capital, Alexander Shevchenko climbed into his black Mini Cooper and left his hometown in the rearview mirror.
But Shevchenko, an urban planner who runs his own agency in Kyiv, also had an eye on the future. On March 1, a mere six days after the invasion began, the 31-year-old posted a message on Facebook:
“As we all support the army financially our Zvidsy Agency opens additional (front)… – preparation to rebuild our country…Contact me…in case you are interested to support our idea, our country, our new chapter.”
The non-profit he has since founded, ReStart Ukraine, is one of a handful of initiatives where green-minded Ukrainians are sketching long-term reconstruction blueprints with a focus on sustainability. His rallying call prompted hundreds to answer with offers to volunteer. A week after his Facebook post, about 300 people from some 30 countries had filled out a form to help out as volunteers. A recently unveiled governmental reconstruction vision similarly conceives a country rising from its ashes and transitioning to a green economy. It marks what some experts consider the world’s first attempt at a low-carbon reconstruction.
There is much to repair.
One day very soon Putin will be gone, one way or another, and the world will be richer for it, and already people are preparing for when Ukraine rids itself of this age old barbarism, and begins the process of healing and coming back even stronger than before.
A grove of 22 mature live oaks is about the only thing left from the old Alief Community Center in Houston. The building and the rest of the site were scrapped to make way for a new, multipurpose neighborhood center and park, but the value of old-growth shade in Texas is on display in the front yard of the two-story building that’s nearing completion after two years of construction. An entry drive swoops up and around the grove, in deference to the trees, and meets up with a first level that’s been elevated above the five-hundred-year flood mark. A soaring roof covers the massive entry patio. Jonas Risen, lead designer for the building’s architect, Page, calls it “the biggest front porch in Texas.” Sixteen-foot tall aluminum letters hang above that porch, spelling out “ALIEF” like a welcome sign to the surrounding neighborhood, announcing the structure to Texas as the first multipurpose center of its kind.
The 70,000-square-foot Alief Neighborhood Center combines the functions of the sixty-year-old recreation hall it replaces, with the added bonuses of a public library, a senior center, and a women, infants, and children (WIC) clinic run by the Houston Health Department. The strikingly modern building—clad in glass, battleship-gray aluminum panels, and brick that’s a shade lighter than black—rises two stories above a 38-acre park. A public pool, a skate park, soccer fields, and courts for tennis, pickleball, and basketball are arranged around a massive playground behind the building. “We hope that this will be a model that will be replicated across the city,” said Richard Vella, assistant director of Houston’s General Services Department (GSD), who conceived of the massive project and is overseeing its completion.
Man I’d love to have one of those in my town.
The Inflation Reduction Act dedicates a historic $369 billion to support energy and climate initiatives, such as expanding domestic manufacturing capacity. This includes an estimated $30 billion in production tax credits aimed at accelerating U.S. manufacturing of batteries, solar panels, wind turbines and other clean energy technologies — along with tens of billions more in the form of investment tax credits and loans.
Since the legislation passed in August, a number of companies have announced major initiatives to expand renewable energy manufacturing in the U.S. But how much of that is directly attributable to the Inflation Reduction Act?
It’s hard to point to most of these announcements and say definitively that they hinged on the major legislation package, Harry Godfrey, managing director at trade group Advanced Energy Economy, said. “Making a decision around building a new facility or even expanding a facility is not something that happens overnight.”
The IRA does it again! More clean energy is on the horizon. Makes me happy, makes the earth happy, everyone wins.
The startup Air Company first made a splash three years ago by distilling vodka using captured carbon dioxide. At a converted nightclub in Brooklyn, New York, the company built a maze of tubes and tanks to turn the greenhouse gas into spirits — no grains or potatoes required. Since then, Air Company has tweaked its technology to produce another coveted, crystal-clear liquid: sustainable aviation fuel.
On Thursday, during Climate Week NYC, the startup unveiled a second, larger chemical reactor in Brooklyn. Air Company is now making small batches of CO2-derived jet fuel, including a 5-gallon order for the U.S. Air Force, which recently used the fuel to fly a large drone in northern Florida.
Pretty neat stuff. Also a CO2 to Vodka converter is something I bet Putin wish he had right about now, he could even power it himself because he’s full of hot air.
President Joe Biden has won Senate confirmation for more than 80 of his nominees to be federal judges, a breakneck speed that outpaces former President Donald Trump at this juncture of his presidency.
The Democratic-led Senate confirmed four new circuit court judges in the last two weeks, most recently U.S. District Judge Florence Pan to the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, by a 52-42 vote, bringing Biden's total to 83. By contrast, Trump had installed 69 judges at this point in his tenure.
Still, Biden is playing catch-up after Trump and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell hit the gas in the second half of Trump's term and brought his total to 231 judges — mostly young conservatives poised to shape American law for generations, including three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Yeah this was the thing a lot of people worried about when it came to Tump: All the judges that he installed. Well Biden is working hard to bridge the gap. And if we win big in November, we can keep it going and do even more. So make sure to get out and vote.
Amid an escalating series of legal woes, former President Donald Trump has seen his support amongst Republican voters drop significantly, according to a recent poll.
The poll, conducted in a collaboration between ABC News and The Washington Post, was released on Sunday and showed a steep decline in popularity for Trump now, compared to the support he had in 2020 when he secured the GOP nomination for reelection. According to the poll, which has a margin of error of 3.5 percent, 47 percent of Republican and conservative-leaning independent respondents said that they support Trump as the prospective party nominee in 2024, while 46 percent oppose the idea. This, ABC News said, represents a 20 percent drop in support from 2020.
The poll, conducted for the news outlets by Langer Research Associates, showed President Joe Biden pulling ahead slightly in a hypothetical 2024 match-up against Trump, 48-to-46, which ABC News called "essentially tied." However, when the pool of respondents was refined to include registered voters only, the match-up reversed to Trump's favor with a 48-to-46 breakdown.
One day soon, Trump will be completely forgotten by his former supporters. It seems like that day will never come someday, but it will. And all the people he fleeced and fooled will feel right foolish about it, even if they never owe up to it.
There’s lots of celebration on social media today after California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assemblymember Laura Friedman’s A.B. 2097, which will prohibit cities from setting a minimum parking requirement for developments near transit. Governor Newsom even took the time to record a short video (see below) pointing out why the bill is an important climate and housing bill.
For years, cities have required builders to including a minimum number of parking spaces in developments. Planners based the requirements on questionable assumptions, but nobody asked those questions until UCLA Professor Donald Shoup started to. In the course of his academic work, Shoup pointed out the faulty and arbitrary reasoning behind, and the many unintended consequences of, parking requirements, including driving up the cost of housing and commercial development, encouraging and even requiring driving to be the default transportation mode by assuming parking should always be available wherever one drives and increasing distances between destinations, making infill much more expensive to build, and increasing emissions.
A big win for both climate and housing, just like the article says.
And on that note we bid adieu for another week. Keep looking up towards the horizon, and also bundle up cause its cold. Fall is finally here.