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, because once again this is a looooong GNR. I just couldn’t stand eliminating any of these stories. 💙
Introduction
I often use the intro to my roundups to reflect on something that was suggested to me by the news I read during the previous two weeks, so this morning I’m going to talk a bit about the blue shift. Not the kind that astronomers pay attention to, but instead the one that we’re seeing in the American electorate and even in the current American zeitgeist.
America is gradually turning bluer — i.e., more progressive and more big-D Democratic. If you doubt the polls and the other evidence suggesting this, you should ask yourself why the GQP is pouring all of its money and energy into suppressing the vote. Knowing how lazy and miserly they are, you have to admit that they wouldn’t be doing this if they weren’t aware that they’re on the verge of irrelevance and are scared shitless. They understand that Democrats, especially Progressives, have the momentum now, and we’re attracting more and more voters.
If you’ve been paying attention to national polls, you’ve seen how steady and robust Biden’s high approval ratings have been. [Yesterday], the Associated Press released the results of its latest polling, reported in Raw Story:
Joe Biden enjoys an approval rating of 63 percent over four months. When it comes to his response to the covid [sic], it's even better. Seventy-one percent of Americans give him a thumbs-up, including nearly half of Republicans (47 percent). The survey also "shows an uptick in Americans' overall optimism about the state of the country. Fifty-four percent say the country is on the right track...”
Mother Jones noted a similar jump in optimism among Americans:
[A poll] released [May 2nd] by ABC and Ipsos, ... showed that nearly two-thirds of Americans are optimistic about the next year—the most optimistic we’ve been as a country in more than a decade. (Seriously, the last time we felt this good about where the US was headed was 2006, ABC reports.)
You might not think that optimism is a partisan trait, but I would argue that it is. The GQPers never have actual plans to offer, they only complain and trot out their threadbare grievances. They appear fixated on the past and on their futile desire to return to it (or to their filtered version of it) while Team Blue is always looking to the future and thinking about ways to make it better than the present. Which attitude is optimistic? And which one is likelier to attract voters?
So let’s celebrate the blue shift, our sky blue optimism, and our blue collar President!
I chose this classic performance of the Miles Davis composition “All Blues” from the album “Kind of Blue” (which Wikipedia cites as “one of the most influential albums ever recorded”) as a musical portrait of Team Blue — a blending of diverse voices, pointed toward the future. The lyrics that were subsequently written for it begin: ”The sea, the sky, and you and I, / We're all blues. / All shades, all hues, all blues.”
Now on to the good news!
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Good news in politics
Biden administration announces reversal of Trump-era limits on protections for transgender people in health care
This is the right thing to do, of course, and it’s also smart politics. Voters are tired of cruel and divisive policies.
From NBC News:
The Biden administration is reversing a policy introduced under former President Donald Trump that limited protections for transgender people in health care, the Department of Health and Human Services announced on Monday.
In a victory for LGBTQ advocates, the change will bar health care providers and other health-related organizations who receive federal funding from discriminating based on someone’s gender identity or sexual orientation.
“The Supreme Court has made clear that people have a right not to be discriminated against on the basis of sex and receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation. That’s why today HHS announced it will act on related reports of discrimination,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement.
He added, “Fear of discrimination can lead individuals to forgo care, which can have serious negative health consequences. It is the position of the Department of Health and Human Services that everyone – including LGBTQ people - should be able to access health care, free from discrimination or interference, period.”
Don’t Panic Over One Weaker-Than-Expected Jobs Report
This is an excellent article which deserves to be read in full. I’ve summarized it here. WaPo looked at the story from another angle (“It’s not a ‘labor shortage.’ It’s a great reassessment of work in America.”) and so did Kossack dougbob in a diary titled “Nobody Wants to Work Anymore (For A Crappy Boss)”.
By John Cassidy in The New Yorker:
In statistical terms, the jobs figures are “noisy”—meaning that they tend to jump around, distorting the underlying trend. ...I thought of [this] on Friday morning, when the Labor Department reported that the economy had created just two hundred and sixty-six thousand jobs in April.
[Republicans said unemployment benefits were to blame,] ...Some Democrats argued that the real problem was a lack of adequate child care...Other observers pointed to a continuing fear of the coronavirus as a factor dissuading people from going back to work.
[The author asked the opinion of ] Gregory Daco, the chief U.S. economist at the consultancy firm Oxford Economics, [who said] that April might turn out to be a “ ‘breather’ month” for the economy, before strong job growth resumed over the summer. ...“I think we have to be a little humble in the face of tremendous uncertainty and tremendous churn in the labor market,” he told me. “One jobs report is not going to make or break the economy. Things are going to be bumpy from month to month. Over the summer, we still expect the economy to experience months where jobs growth is more than a million, and maybe even two million in one or two individual months.” ✂️
What matters is the trend, and in the three months since the start of February, job growth has averaged five hundred and twenty-four thousand a month, as the White House Council of Economic Advisers pointed out on Friday. That figure indicates that the economy is rebounding strongly from the pandemic, and, this time next month, when the Labor Department releases the jobs report for May, it is likely to show a substantial pickup in hiring as that rebound continues.
Cruise Giant Says It Might Entirely Avoid Florida Over DeSantis’ State Ban on Vaccine Checks
Another GQP idiot letting his insane RWNJ orthodoxy sabotage his own state’s economy as it struggles to emerge from the pandemic. A good DKos diary about this was on the Trending list for several days.
From Daily Beast:
One of the biggest cruise companies in the world has come up with a simple solution to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ law banning the use of COVID-19 passports in the state: Completely avoiding its docks. This month, DeSantis signed an executive order that prevents vaccine passports from being issued in the state, and also blocks businesses from asking for proof of vaccination status before customers enter their premises. That’s a problem for cruise lines, which have been told [by the CDC] that they can only operate in U.S. waters if 95 percent of passengers have been vaccinated. Frank Del Rio, the CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line, reportedly said Thursday: “At the end of the day, cruise ships have motors, propellers, and rudders, and [if] God forbid we can’t operate in the state of Florida for whatever reason, then there are other states that we do operate from, and we can operate from the Caribbean for a ship that otherwise would have gone to Florida.” According to CNN, Del Rio said he has contacted DeSantis’ office.
GOP Rep. Reveals How Many Colleagues Actually Believe Trump’s Election Conspiracies
Spoiler: not many.
Which means bad news down the road for the GQP, as Kinzinger says in the final quote.
From HuffPost:
The vast majority of House Republicans, Kinzinger told CNN’s Jake Tapper, were simply boarding the Trump train in a desperate bid to preserve their jobs.
“How many actually believe it? Five, probably, if that, maybe? I don’t know, but it’s in the single, it’s low,” said Kinzinger, a vocal critic of Trump who defied his party to vote for the impeachment of the former president for inciting the deadly U.S. Capitol riot.
“People don’t believe it,” he continued. “But what they are doing is they’re sitting around saying, ‘I need to continue to exist in this job so that I can make an impact. I don’t have the courage or the strength or the ability to swing this party, so I’m going to just kinda put my head down and go along.’”✂️
Kinzinger said GOP backing of Trump’s conspiracy theories may give the party a “temporary hit, maybe you’ll win the majority, I don’t think you will.”
“But I guarantee you in the long arc of history, this is not going to bode well for Republicans,” he added.
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Good news from my corner of the world
Oregon Court Strikes Down Two Additional Permits for Jordan Cove LNG
This is excellent news for the environment. If built, The Jordan Cove facility would be the first LNG port terminal on the West Coast (there are currently two in operation on the Gulf Coast). This is exactly the kind of project that a focus on green energy would make irrelevant. This court decision also shows the importance of local citizen activism.
From Rogue Climate:
...the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) handed down another win for opponents of the controversial Jordan Cove LNG export terminal at Coos Bay, overturning two permits that would have allowed major dredging in the bay. ✂️
The land use permit approvals by Coos County and the City of Coos Bay would have allowed the Canadian corporation, Pembina Pipeline, to dredge protected areas in the Coos Bay estuary in order to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) from its proposed export facility on the North Spit. LUBA reversed these permits because the company had not justified why the areas to be dredged, which are designated for natural and conservation uses under the Coos Bay Estuary Management Plan and local zoning laws, should be converted to deep draft navigation.
The lead petitioner in the Coos County decision was the Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition, with Citizens for Renewables intervening. In the City of Coos Bay appeal, the lead petitioner was the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians. Intervenors for the Coos Bay appeal included Citizens for Renewables, Rogue Climate, Jody McCaffree, and Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition.
“These land use reversals are further major barriers to Jordan Cove LNG. They show that yet again Pembina has failed to demonstrate the value of this project outweighs its impacts,” said Phillip Johnson of Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition, one of the lead organizations on the LUBA appeals to protect the Coos Bay Estuary. “LUBA has upheld the regulations that protect estuaries in Oregon, and we don’t think the Jordan Cove scheme can get around them. We hope that Pembina will accept the reality that Jordan Cove should never be built.”
Nez Perce Tribe gets more Wallowa County homeland back
This is a small step, but it has a lot of symbolic significance.
From The Oregonian:
The Nez Perce Tribe took another step toward reestablishing itself in its traditional Wallowa County homeland Thursday, April 29, when it received the title to the now-former Wallowa Methodist Church. ✂️
...Shannon Wheeler, who headed the tribal delegation in accepting the property, was particularly moved at the experience.
“As the story is told, the last Nez Perce who left looked back and thought, ‘We may never see this land again.’ … today, if you shed a tear that’s OK because they’re tears of joy now because of the land that is being gifted back to the Nimiipuu [“the people” in the Nez Perce language]. The people’s tears of sorrow on that day will be tears of joy.”
Laurie Day, director of connectional ministries for the Oregon-Idaho Conference UMC, confirmed the desire of the church to cement its relationship with the Nez Perce in turning over ownership of the property.
“The church has a relationship with the Nez Perce Tribe and we checked with them to see if they would like to have the building and the property because they were the original inhabitants of this land.” … She said the cash value of the property didn’t even come into play.
“It was not part of our conversation in returning the property,” she said. “It was out of friendship and it was the right thing to do.”
Oregon Now Has its First “Dark Sky Park”
From Willamette Week:
Prineville Reservoir State Park is now Oregon’s first Dark Sky Park, a designation awarded by the International Dark Sky Association to locations with minimal light pollution.
“The park offers a genuine night-sky experience for those coming from light polluted cities,” Bill Kowalik, chair of the Oregon chapter of the International Dark Sky Association, said in a press release. “Formal recognition of this International Dark Sky Park, located in rapidly growing Central Oregon, will help to educate the public and decision makers about Iight pollution and the value of the night sky to people and to our greater wild ecosystem.”
Last summer, Sunriver, Ore., was deemed an International Dark Sky Place. But securing a Dark Sky Park designation is a rigorous process that requires the least amount light pollution. In order to qualify, park staff has to replace the reservoir’s outdoor lights with low-pollution red and yellow bulbs.
Located at near the Oregon Badlands on the Crooked River, the Prineville Reservoir is one of 101 Dark Sky Parks worldwide.
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Good news from around the nation
US to halve its emissions by 2030
This summary from Future Crunch makes the point that this pledge “is a much bigger deal than most people realise. To pull it off, the country would be looking at a fundamental transformation of its industrial base. Think about what it means for all of this to happen in one decade.”
This is the kind of transformative BFD that we’re all hoping Biden will keep proposing — and putting into place by executive order when he’s blocked by the GQP.
For a much deeper dive, read the long New York Times article from which this information comes.
⚡ >50% of electricity from renewable energy (+20% from today).
💨 CO2 released from new natural gas plants to be captured and buried.
🛑 All 200 remaining coal plants shut down.
🚙 2/3 of new cars and SUVs sold to be battery-powered (+97% from today).
🏢 All new buildings heated by electricity instead of natural gas.
🏗 Cement, steel, and chemical industries adopting strict new energy-efficiency targets.
🛢 Oil and gas producers slashing methane emissions by 60%.
🌲 Expanding regenerative forestry and agricultural practices to pull 20% more CO2 from the air than today.
Manhattan to Stop Prosecuting Prostitution, Part of Nationwide Shift
However you feel about sex work, this is a significant step in the direction of justice and compassion. Laws against prostitution have a long history of targeting vulnerable women.
From The New York Times:
The Manhattan district attorney’s office announced Wednesday that it would no longer prosecute prostitution and unlicensed massage, putting the weight of one of the most high-profile law enforcement offices in the United States behind the growing movement to change the criminal justice system’s approach to sex work.
The district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., asked a judge on Wednesday morning to dismiss 914 open cases involving prostitution and unlicensed massage, along with 5,080 cases in which the charge was loitering for the purposes of prostitution.
The law that made the latter charge a crime, which had become known as the “walking while trans” law, was repealed by New York State in February. ✂️
“Criminally prosecuting prostitution does not make us safer, and too often, achieves the opposite result by further marginalizing vulnerable New Yorkers,” Mr. Vance said in a statement.
The office ...will continue to prosecute pimps and sex traffickers, as well as people who pay for sex, continuing to fight those who exploit or otherwise profit from prostitution without punishing the people who for decades have borne the brunt of law enforcement’s attention.
NBC Won’t Air 2022 Golden Globes Amid HFPA Controversy
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has been an embarrassment for a long time. A strong move like this one is long overdue.
From HuffPost:
NBC on Monday said it will not air the 2022 Golden Globe Awards due to ongoing controversy with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the organization responsible for the award show.
Ahead of the awards’ 78th annual ceremony, which aired in February, the Los Angeles Times published multiple controversial reports about the HFPA, outlining ethical lapses and a lack of diverse representation within the group, including zero Black members. ✂️
In a letter released immediately after the show, Tina Tchen, president and CEO of the Time’s Up Foundation, slammed the HFPA, claiming that statements made by representatives of the group before and during the 2021 show “indicate a fundamental lack of understanding of the depth of the problems at hand.”
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Musical break
In honor of our down-to-earth, down-home President, here’s one of my favorite blues recordings, Z. Z. Hill’s “Down Home Blues”:
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Good news from around the world
How women in Cambodia’s floating villages are adapting to climate change
From Positive News:
Identified as one of the countries most at risk from the climate emergency, Cambodia also ranks a lowly 103rd on the World Economic Forum’s 2021 Global Gender Gap Index. Given that the climate crisis disproportionately impacts women, the charity ActionAid decided to launch a campaign to help Cambodian women adapt.
The campaign, She is the Answer, supports communities to become more resilient by training women to take up climate-adaptive livelihoods. The work is underpinned by research that has shown female empowerment to be one of the most effective solutions at our disposal in tackling global heating.
One of ActionAid’s projects is ...a floating garden for locals to harvest vegetables, such as cabbage and peppers. The produce is distributed among the community and surplus veggies are sold to people in neighbouring villages.
...the burgeoning Women Champions network ... helps give Cambodian women a voice when vital decisions are being made at community and government level. The project is also run by ActionAid. ...ActionAid has trained around 50 women across the country, equipping them with climate science knowledge and supporting them to play an active role in decision-making. As well as planting mangroves to help protect villages from storms, the women promote sustainable farming methods and create floating schools where future generations are taught about climate resilience.
A woman mailed her diary to a stranger, who added an entry and did the same. People have kept it going for a year.
From The Washington Post [this is behind a paywall, so I’m quoting enough to give you the gist of it].
Kyra Peralte thought keeping a diary during the pandemic might help her sort out her tangled feelings. Then she decided to drop her journal in the mail and share it with a stranger.
Peralte — a mother of two in Montclair, N.J. — started writing candidly last April about the challenges of juggling work, marriage and motherhood during a global crisis.
Writing was cathartic, but Peralte, 44, wanted to know how other women were doing. Was she alone in her feelings or were other women experiencing the same overwhelming stress? She craved connection. ✂️
She dreamed up “The Traveling Diary” — a simple notebook that would traverse the globe via snail mail, collecting handwritten stories and, ultimately, creating community. ✂️
Peralte found her first contributor on a Zoom conference… From there, Peralte wrote a Medium article...and created a website so participants could easily add their names to the queue. Each person is allowed to keep the diary for up to three days and fill as many pages as they wish, with whatever writing or artwork they choose. Then, they are responsible for mailing it to the next person, whose address Peralte provides.
A quiet revolution: recapturing the best of the lockdown hush
From Positive News:
[During the pandemic lockdown,] seismologists reported that human-generated sound was at its lowest level ever recorded; in its place, the natural world re-emerged. For many, it was a rare bright spot of lockdown: one survey found that 94 per cent of respondents were relishing birdsong more than before.
[Now] ...what can only be described as a quiet revolution is under way. Among its prime movers is architect and urban activist Dr Antonella Radicchi. She’s turned to citizen science, designing the Hush City app, which allows people to map the soundscape of their home towns, and to identify quiet places that others can enjoy. The app records 30 seconds of ambient noise, and then asks a series of questions about the location and the person’s experience of it.
It’s being used by authorities in Berlin who are drawing up the city’s ‘quiet area plan’, where it has proved something of a revelation. The planners had assumed that ‘quiet’ would be synonymous with the city’s major parks. Thanks to Hush City, Radicchi tells me, planners are now realising that small patches of peacefulness – “canal pathways, secret gardens, all the hidden nooks” – can be just as important. The Irish city of Limerick is poised to adopt the Hush City approach, too. ✂️
As Emmy-award-winning wildlife sound recordist Gordon Hempton [told the writer]: “We’ve evolved in a world that is largely quiet. All animals rely on it for survival – to hear potential predators, or prey. You can’t feel secure when one of your most important senses can’t function properly.” ✂️
Like Radicchi, Hempton stresses it’s not about quiet at all costs. (A quiet park would be sad without the sporadic sounds of children playing.) Instead, he says, it’s about allowing “the sounds of nature, rather than machines, to dominate. You should be able to hear the rustle of leaves when the wind blows, the finer notes of a bird’s song.” You should, he concludes, “be able to hear your footsteps”.
Good news about and for animals
Southern resident orcas celebrate 3 healthy calves as researchers find J pod in best overall condition in a decade
From The Seattle Times:
“There are signs for optimism; in general over the last several years J pod is in better condition than in much of the last decade,” said John Durban, professor at Oregon State University...✂️
“There is hope in our [drone] images,” Durban said. “But it is fragile.”
After all, the region was celebrating a baby boom of southern residents in 2015 with five births — but three of those calves and two of the mothers subsequently died. ✂️
But since then a birth to L pod, L124 born in May 2019, and L125, born in February 2021, as well as the three J pod calves, have given the region something to root for: not only the new orca babies, but also their moms. ✂️
“We are encouraged that in the last two years J pod has in general been in better body condition than over much of the last decade,” Durban said. “We hope it continues and these calves can thrive. Every calf counts in a population this small.”
Rare Evidence Proves Birds Are Able to Change Their Culture to Become More Efficient
This article is difficult to excerpt, so click the link to get the details. BTW, the emphasis on the importance of population turnover in enabling animals to change their culture reminds me a lot of what Mokurai has been telling us about the dying off of conservatism.
From the Good News Network:
Birds are able to change their culture to become more efficient, according to new research from Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior.
In animals, “culture” is considered to be any behavior that is learned from others, shared by members of the group, and persistent over generations. Cultural traditions are known to exist in many animal groups, including primates, dolphins and whales, rodents, and birds.
Great tits provide a classic example of animal culture. In the 1920s, birds in a town in Great Britain were observed to open the foil tops of milk bottles to steal cream. This behavior spread over 20 years, until birds throughout the country were doing the same. ✂️
[A] new study has demonstrated that more efficient behaviors can outcompete an established inefficient behavior. It pinpoints a fundamental process—population turnover—as crucial for the ability of animals to change their traditions. Published in the journal Current Biology last month, the study, which involved teaching wild-caught birds to solve puzzles and fine-scale tracking of their behavior, provides quantitative support for the evolution of culture.
Farms in UK Saved This Beautiful Duke of Burgundy Butterfly From Extinction
From the Good News Network:
Ten years ago the Duke of Burgundy butterfly … was found only in the southern Lake District and the North York Moors. At that point it was Britain’s rarest butterfly.
In the two decades prior, its numbers had fallen 46%. Now its population, of which the newly emerged adults will be preparing to take flight on May winds, has grown 25% between 2010 and 2020.
The Dukes on the Edge conservation program by the Butterfly Conservation was launched in 2011 in response to the dismal population surveys, and included 23 hectares of habitat restoration, management advice for 147 different sites where the Dukes were present, and rallying 1,000 volunteers ranging from land owners to concerned local citizens.
...the largest single colony in the country… was found [last spring] on the hills of a Dorset organic dairy farm, whose owner has proudly supported habitat for butterflies, including the Duke, in his fields for 20 years.
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Good news in science and the environment
Oxford malaria vaccine proves highly effective in Burkina Faso trial
From The Guardian:
A vaccine against malaria has been shown to be highly effective in trials in Africa, holding out the real possibility of slashing the death toll of a disease that kills 400,000 mostly small children every year.
The vaccine, developed by scientists at the Jenner Institute of Oxford University, showed up to 77% efficacy in a trial of 450 children in Burkina Faso over 12 months.
The hunt for a malaria vaccine has been going on the best part of a century.
The Oxford vaccine is the first to meet the WHO goal of 75% efficacy against the mosquito-borne parasite disease. Larger trials are now beginning, involving 4,800 children in four countries.
Prof Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute, where the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine was invented, said he believed the vaccine had the potential to cut the death toll dramatically. “What we’re hoping to do is take that 400,000 down to tens of thousands in the next five years, which would be absolutely fantastic.”
Other interventions, such as impregnated bednets and malarial drugs, have reduced the death toll from a million a year, he said, and those must continue. But, if the vaccine could cut deaths to the tens of thousands, they might be able to look towards “a greater goal – eventually eradicating malaria”.
Hill said the institute might apply for emergency approval for the malaria vaccine just as it did for the Covid jab.
The Manta’ Sailing Vessel is Designed to Feed on Plastic Waste for Power–While Cleaning Oceans
This is currently just a prototype. The inventor estimates that a fleet of 400 could remove 33% of the ocean’s plastic pollution.
From the Good News Network:
A professional yacht racer, annoyed by the constant sightings of floating mats of plastic garbage in coastal waters, has designed an ocean-cleaning sailboat that is powered by the waste it collects.
The 56-meter (184 feet) Manta is the first offering from racer Yves Bourgnon’s SeaCleaners Project, and would be one of the largest waste-collecting vessels on the seas, according to Reuters.
In between the three pontoons, conveyor belts scoop up trash as small as 10 millimeters, over which the Manta glides, while three trawl nets drifting behind (to a depth of 1 meter, thereby avoiding sea life) add to the onboard collection. This trash is then fed into a processing machine where crewmen sort it before moving it into an incinerator that shreds and melts the plastic—and even uses the heat and gases—to power a turbine to creates the electric power.
Paired with solar panels lining the decks and a wind turbine that harvests power from the wind coming off the sails, the Manta would be 70% self-sufficient in terms of energy, allowing it to sail around sucking up 3 tons of waste an hour, without almost ever needing to return to harbor and refuel or offload plastic.
Researchers Boost Performance of Solar Cells By Using Human Hair From a Barbershop
From Good News Network:
Researchers have used carbon dots, created from human hair waste sourced from a barbershop, to create a kind of ‘armor’ to improve the performance of cutting-edge solar technology.
In a study, the researchers led by Professor Hongxia Wang in collaboration with Associate Professor Prashant Sonar of QUT’s Centre for Materials Science showed the carbon nanodots could be used to improve the performance of perovskites solar cells.
Perovskites solar cells, a relatively new photovoltaic technology, are seen as the best PV candidate to deliver low-cost, highly efficient solar electricity in coming years. They have proven to be as effective in power conversion efficiency as the current commercially available monocrystalline silicon solar cells, but the hurdles for researchers in this area is to make the technology cheaper and more stable.
Unlike silicon cells, they are created with a compound that is easily manufactured, and as they are flexible they could be used in scenarios such as solar-powered clothing, backpacks that charge your devices on the go and even tents that could serve as standalone power sources.
This is the second major piece of research to come as a result of a human hair derived carbon dots as multifunctional material.
Last year, Associate Professor Prashant Sonar led a research team, including Centre for Materials Science research fellow Amandeep Singh Pannu, that turned hair scraps into carbon nanodots by breaking down the hairs and then burning them at 240 degrees celsius. In that study, the researchers showed the carbon dots could be turned into flexible displays that could be used in future smart devices.
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Today’s amazing art adventures
Andrea Love makes miniatures out of felted wool and then uses them to create short videos with stop-motion animation. I‘m addicted!
And here’s a bonus:
In Learning to Use Her Left Hand Following a Stroke 60-Year Old Chen Lie Discovers She’s an Expert Painter
If you’ve ever read anything about the difference between the functions of the two hemispheres of the brain, or if you’ve done any of the exercises in the wonderful book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, this story won’t surprise you.
From the Good News Network:
At the age of 60, Chen Lie suffered a hemorrhagic stroke which arrived “without my invitation or permission.” But the temporary paralysis of her entire right side gave her an opportunity to blossom on her left side.
As part of her recovery she had to re-learn how to do everything—from brushing her teeth to using a fork or pen—with her left hand, resulting in much frustration.
One day in a fit of boredom, and for the first time in her life, she picked up one of her grandchild’s paint brushes and just started putting color on the canvass. Happiness dawned on Chen as she suddenly could paint lovely natural scenery, despite having never painted or practiced a day in her life. ✂️
During the month of May, which is National Stroke Awareness Month, she is painting one [painting] every day and posting a picture of it on her professional artist/advocacy Facebook page, Stroke of Hope, to help raise awareness.
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Hot lynx
www.fastcompany.com/...Six Creative Ways Workers Are Taking Back Power. “The balance of power between employers and employees hasn’t been this out of whack since the robber baron era. Here are six ways that workers are fighting back.” More good news about the resurgence of labor activism!
densho.org/...Issei Mothers Played an Important—and Largely Forgotten—Role in the Japanese American Draft Resistance Movement. A Japanese American friend passed this along to me. It’s forgotten history that’s fascinating and inspiring.
www.nytimes.com/...Rosie Could Be a Riveter Only Because of a Care Economy. Where Is Ours? “...let’s begin by simply asking all Americans, what are the basic facilities necessary to enable our society to function? And then let’s fund the answer.”
www.newyorker.com/...Persuading the Body to Regenerate Its Limbs. “Deer can regrow their antlers, and humans can replace their liver. What else might be possible?” Fascinating!
www.theatlantic.com/...Scientific Publishing Is a Joke. A painfully true and very funny piece.
lithub.com/...50 Very Bad Book Covers for Literary Classics. Don’t look at these if you have a mouthful of coffee or other beverage. The art is hilariously appalling and the commentary puts it over the top.
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“Where ever is herd...”
Our resident mentor, tech guru, and town crier, 2thanks, posts this in his Sunday roundup, and I like it so much I’ve been adding it to my own GNRs. It’s a terrific guide for new Gnusies and a handy reminder for all of us.
Morning Good News Roundups at 7 x 7: These Gnusies lead the herd at 7 a.m. ET, 7 days a week:
- Mondays: Jessiestaf. Jessie’s five help us 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 Sunday afternoons at 3 p.m. ET. Our first regular afternoon Gnusie outpost! In search of a TOTW diary? Look here or here.
For more information about the Good News group, please see our detailed Welcoming comment, which is usually the first comment in our morning diaries.
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Closing music
Nobody sings “Blue Skies” as exquisitely as Willie, and this 1989 live performance includes the extra treat of Kenny Rogers playing acoustic bass, which he played professionally in a jazz band for ten years — who knew??
❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
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! 💙❤️