Greetings, all! There’s good news popping up all over the place, so you’re in for another one of my long GNRs. Unless you have lots of free time this morning, I advise taking it in small bites! 😉
Without further ado, let’s get to it. And since so much of the news is about being on the verge of victory (in the midterms, in Ukraine, and more), I’ve chosen opening music about victory.
People get ready it's time to show What you got…
You must feel that victory, release that Energy and ride like the wind Fire in your eyes shake those Butterflies, go ahead and go For the win now
President Joe Biden on Sept. 12 announced that he would appoint Dr. Renee Wegrzyn as the first head of a newly created government agency called the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H.
According to a White House statement introducing Wegrzyn, ARPA-H is "a new agency established to drive biomedical innovation that supports the health of all Americans. On the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's Moonshot speech, Dr. Wegrzyn will join President Biden today at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston as he discusses his bold vision for another American Moonshot: ending cancer as we know it."
The statement said ARPA-H will support and fund efforts to seek cures and medications for "some of the most intractable diseases," including cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease, using a model similar to the government-led process that created the internet and GPS technology.
"ARPA-H will embrace proven models of tapping talent and expertise from across industry, academia, and government to bring new ideas and approaches, as well as the ability to marshal resources through public-private partnerships," the White House said.
The diseases ARPA-H is being positioned to address affect large numbers of Americans.
This is one of several stories in today’s roundup that Gnusie T Maysle found first and added to recent GNR comments. 🎩 to T, and an official nomination for the post of Gnusie Chief Curator!
After months of gloom, Americans are finally starting to feel better about the economy and more resigned to inflation.
Consumer sentiment, which hit rock bottom in June, has begun inching up in recent weeks. Gas prices are down. Decades-high inflation appears to be easing. And at the same time, Americans are making small changes — buying meat in bulk, for example, or shifting more of their shopping to discount chains — suggesting that many families are learning to deal with higher prices.
“While consumer sentiment is still fairly low by historic standards, we’re starting to see pretty dramatic improvements,” said Joanne W. Hsu, an economist at the University of Michigan and director of its closely watched consumer surveys. “It’s very much being driven by a slowdown in inflation, particularly with the decline in gas prices.”
That’s particularly good news for the White House, which has been hammered by criticism that it hasn’t done enough to address inflation.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Wednesday that he intends to hold a vote on a bill to codify same-sex marriage into federal law "in the coming weeks," and hopes there will be enough Republican support to pass it.
Schumer also said he would prefer to bring it to the floor as a separate piece of legislation, and not attached to a must-pass government funding bill. "Let me be clear a vote will happen -- a vote on marriage equality will happen on the Senate floor in the coming weeks, and I hope there will be 10 Republicans to support it," Schumer said at a news conference on Capitol Hill.
This is a win-win move for the Dems. Here’s Beau to explain why:
And here’s more reason to force the Rs to vote on same-sex marriage:
Seventy-one percent of Americans say they support legal same-sex marriage, which exceeds the previous high of 70% recorded in 2021 by one percentage point.
These data are from Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs poll, conducted May 2-22.
When Gallup first polled about same-sex marriage in 1996, barely a quarter of the public (27%) supported legalizing such unions. It would take another 15 years, until 2011, for support to reach the majority level. Then in 2015, just one month before the U.S. Supreme Court's Obergefell v. Hodges decision, public support for legalizing gay marriage cracked the 60% level, and last year it reached the 70% mark for the first time.
Rising national support for legal same-sex marriage reflects steady increases among most subgroups of the population, even those who have traditionally been the most resistant to gay marriage. Adults aged 65 and older, for example, became mostly supportive in 2016 -- as did Protestants in 2017 and Republicans in 2021.
Americans who report that they attend church weekly remain the primary demographic holdout against gay marriage, with 40% in favor and 58% opposed.
A long and wonderfully informative profile of AOC. Do read the whole thing.
“Sometimes people ask, ‘Oh, what’s the point of protest?’ ” she told me later, recalling [June 24, the day the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs decision]. The act of protest, she said, creates community. And participation by political leaders sends a message. “It’s really important for people to feel like their elected officials give a shit about them,” she said. “Not from on high, but from the same level.”
I’d arrived at the Supreme Court a few minutes before Ocasio-Cortez to interview protesters, and watched as she maneuvered in her plaid pink pantsuit past a small circle of antiabortion demonstrators and then waded into the sea of women and men who’d gathered to mourn.
Soon, she was speaking into a borrowed megaphone, helping to lead the call-and-response. “Into the streets!” Ocasio-Cortez shouted, pumping a clenched fist in the air. Within minutes, a sobbing young woman found the congresswoman and threw herself into her arms. “I’m so scared,” she wept. “I’m so scared.”
For a fleeting moment in front of the Supreme Court, it was possible to see the full, complicated public totality of the woman we’ve come to know as “AOC”: a 32-year-old second-term congresswoman representing one of the country’s most diverse districts. A certified celebrity. Arguably more famous than any other person in American politics without the last name Obama or Trump; beloved and loathed at competing ends of the political spectrum. Constitutionally opposed to sitting down, shutting up, and conforming to the patriotic play-theater of Washington. The right wing’s night terror in the flesh. To many foot soldiers of the fractured, contradictory coalition that is the progressive left, she represents something singular: the future. A revolutionary on the rise. The clear heir to an ascendant progressive movement. The best and possibly last—depending on how quickly some combination of fascism, religious fundamentalism, and climate change comes for us all—chance; a source of hope that things can get better in their lifetimes.
A growing number of prominent Republicans across the country are ditching their party's nominees in the midterm elections in favor of Democratic candidates, and many others are withholding endorsements, citing the need to fight back against "dangerous extremism." The endorsements come as the midterm election season heads into the home stretch.
More than half of voters in the United States, or 60%, will have a candidate on their ballot who either falsely denies the results of the 2020 presidential election or who won't say President Joe Biden was legitimately elected, according to FiveThirtyEight. ✂️
On Sunday, a Republican state senator in Texas endorsed Democrat Mike Collier for lieutenant governor over incumbent Republican Dan Patrick. ✂️
In Michigan, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced on Monday that 150 Republicans, including former lawmakers, business leaders, and staffers to previous Republican governors in Michigan, are endorsing her for reelection over her opponent, Republican Tudor Dixon. ✂️
In Pennsylvania, more than a dozen Republicans have endorsed Democratic gubernatorial nominee Josh Shapiro over Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano, citing Mastriano's "extremism." In July, nine Republicans backed Shapiro, calling Mastriano and his far-right views "dangerous" and "divisive," and another seven Republicans endorsed Shapiro's bid on Aug. 30.
The problem is not that congressional Republican leaders are unaware of current events. In late July, for example, when the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that gross domestic product fell 0.9% in the second quarter, it took House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy just 22 minutes to announce that the United States is now “in a recession.” The California Republican took the same message to the airwaves soon after.✂️
Late last week, Americans received more great employment news: The economy added another 315,000 jobs in August, bringing the total for the year to 3.5 million jobs, with several months to go. This is a total more in line with what we’d expect to see in a full year, not eight months into the year. It also outpaces any individual year from Donald Trump’s term.
But wouldn’t you know it, GOP leaders on the Hill responded to the job numbers by saying literally nothing about the good news. No press releases, no tweets and no public comments. They literally found themselves speechless.
These same Republicans were similarly at a loss for words a month ago. And the month before that. And the month before that. And the month before that. And the month before that.
From The New York Times:
A federal grand jury in Washington is examining the formation of — and spending by — a PAC created by Donald J. Trump after his loss in the 2020 election as he was raising millions of dollars by baselessly asserting that the results had been marred by widespread voting fraud.
According to subpoenas issued by the grand jury, the contents of which were described to The New York Times, the Justice Department is interested in the inner workings of Save America PAC, Mr. Trump’s main fund-raising vehicle after the election. Several similar subpoenas were sent on Wednesday to junior and midlevel aides who worked in the White House and for Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.
The new focus on Save America was reported earlier by ABC News.
Among the roughly half-dozen current and former Trump aides in the White House and the 2020 presidential campaign who are said to have received subpoenas this week were Beau Harrison, an aide to Mr. Trump in the White House and in his post-presidency, and William S. Russell, who similarly worked in the West Wing and now for Mr. Trump’s personal office, according to several people familiar with the events.
The Tortoise thinks he can separate tfg from any of his precioussss hoarded money? Good luck with that.
Mitch McConnell is indirectly nudging Donald Trump to help Republicans try to flip the Senate, part of a broader GOP campaign to get the former president to open up his well-stocked coffers for the rest of the party. ✂️
The private push to get Trump to financially engage in a number of battleground states comes as the former president sits on roughly $99 million, stored in his PAC. That unused cash is drawing increased attention from GOP leaders as the midterms approach, with Trump’s own endorsed candidates lagging in polls and trailing their Democratic opponents in fundraising.
As Republicans openly bemoan Democrats’ money edge across the Senate map, McConnell allies hope Trump will see his candidates’ races as referenda on his own brand — that a win could prove he’s still a kingmaker, and a loss will stain his political record. Many Trump-backed Republican candidates, like J.D. Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona, are facing serious money woes compared to their Democratic opponents .
Donald Trump is "Truthing" that he's going to sue @ProjectLincoln. I have words for him. pic.twitter.com/0Cnyu5xQ3W
[Lee Blackmon, founder of Animal Haven by the Sea Rescue, was] “listening to the news about Ukraine and all the animals displaced by the war...They need so much help. So I decided to go.” ...[After arriving in Warsaw with] no translator and no personal contact on the ground, Blackmon joined the thousands strong effort of volunteers from around the world. “Nobody had much English and I don’t speak any other languages,” he says, [A news article about Animal Haven] was all I had to show them who I was and what I was trying to do.” ✂️
[Blackmon’s plane ticket, medical supplies, and hotel and food expenses were covered by businesses and individuals in Nehalem.] ✂️
Blackmon and the Polish rescuers, as well as other international volunteers, met Ukranian refugees as they disembarked from the trains. ...The rescuers immediately supply food and other necessities. “We met a woman with her daughter in her arms and a Siamese cat clinging to her shoulders. The cat was traumatized. I was able to calm her with some...special calming drops. ... We were able to outfit her with a carrying harness and the Polish volunteers rigged a litter box. The cat wouldn’t go without one and hadn’t relieved herself for days,” he laughs, “I’ve never been so happy to see a cat take a crap.”
A Ukrainian man arrived with a stressed Belgian shepherd...She hadn’t eaten and refused all the treats rescuers offered until Blackmon pulled out some “sacred Rainer Farm beef jerky for humans, which had been given to me for my own snacking, along with some of their famous chews for dogs,” he says. “She almost took my hand off, she was so happy for something she craved.” Blackmon cherishes the moments of watching “four-leggeds” relax when their stress eases and their hunger is appeased. ✂️
Blackmon was able to communicate despite his language deficit. “Language doesn’t really matter,” he says, “there’s no barrier with animals. Once they sensed we were there to help, they relaxed.” Blackmon has always communicated easily with animals. That gift facilitated communication in a country he’d never visited, with people who spoke little or no English. “I have no idea how to speak Ukranian or Polish,”he says, “I just tuned into the animals.”
If you’re unfamiliar with this bird phenomenon, about an hour before sunset, thousands of Vaux’s swifts fly around Chapman Elementary school in Northwest Portland as they prepare to roost in the chimney for the night. They’re said to be quite the talented aerialists, according to Portland Audubon.
The swifts at Chapman have been returning to their chimney roost there since the 1980s. It is one of the largest known roosting sites for swifts and thousands of people gather every year to watch them do their thing.
They flock to the school from late August through early October before they migrate to Latin America for the winter.
However, in 2020 and 2021, due to the pandemic, the public swift viewing was canceled. There were no resources in place for parking, crowd management or garbage pickup. But this September, it’s all back.
On Thursday, the New Jersey Ivy League school announcedit would be expanding its financial aid program to offer free tuition, including room and board, for most families whose annual income is under $100,000 a year. Previously, the same benefit was offered to families making under $65,000 a year. This new income limit will take effect for all undergraduates starting in the fall of 2023.✂️
According to Princeton, about 1,500 students — or 25% of the undergraduate student body — will benefit from this additional aid. Also beginning next year, the University will increase the allowance for personal and book expenses to $4,050 from $3,500 in financial aid packages to allow for more flexibility to cover those miscellaneous charges.
This is just the latest action from Princeton to make its cost of attendance more affordable. In 2001, it became the first school in the US to eliminate student loans from its financial packages and replace them with grants to ensure students do not have any debt to pay back post-graduation.
A growing number of colleges have since adopted the policy. Amherst, Harvard, and Yale have pivoted to offer grants only, and smaller schools and HBCUs have been using stimulus funds from President Joe Biden's American Rescue Plan to wipe out tuition-related student debt for its students.
Another story curated by T Maysle, who added the following comment: “how local politics are different from national..” True.
Bottom line politically is that this is good news for Dems.
One might expect that parents of school-aged children would have become much less satisfied with their own children's education over the past two years. Many parents were affected by the discombobulation caused by school closures and the need to make alternative arrangements for kids' learning. And now, there is evidence that nine-year-olds lost ground on reading and math.
But surprisingly, parents appear to be just as satisfied with the quality of their kids' educations now as they were before the pandemic.
As my colleague Lydia Saad reported in her recent analysis of Gallup's August 2022 Work and Education survey, "Parents of children attending kindergarten through grade 12 remain largely content with their oldest child's education. The 80% who are completely or somewhat satisfied is slightly improved from the 73% measured a year ago and exceeds the average of 76% that Gallup has recorded since 2001." (The exact question wording Gallup tracks is as follows: "How satisfied are you with the quality of education your oldest child is receiving?")
In short, despite all the disruptions of the past two years, there is no sign of a pandemic-era drop-off in parents' positive views of their children's schooling.
Major League Baseball will voluntarily recognize minor league players' efforts to unionize with the MLB Players Association, commissioner Rob Manfred announced Friday. The move by MLB would formally accept the MLBPA as minor league players' bargaining representative and helps to fast track the unionization effort. It's also a key step that will lead to collective bargaining for minor leaguers. The union and MLB are working on an agreement on whom the bargaining unit will consist of and they hope to accomplish that by next week.
The MLBPA launched the unionization drive Aug. 28 and told MLB on Tuesday it had obtained signed authorization cards from 5,000 to 6,500 players with minor league contracts, which exceeds the 50% threshold required to show a majority interest in unionization. If MLB had declined to accept the union, the players' association's next step would have been to ask the National Labor Relations Board to conduct an authorization election.
"We, I believe, notified the MLBPA today that we're prepared to execute an agreement on voluntary recognition,'' Manfred said during a news conference to announce on-field rules changes for next season. "I think they're working on the language as we speak."
Both sides were exchanging language Friday. Players with Dominican Summer League contracts will not be included in the bargaining unit. Players on 40-man rosters who are on option to the minor leagues have been represented by the union since 1981. The vast majority of minor leaguers, though, have not been previously represented by the union, which intends to form a separate bargaining unit with its own dues and governance structure, such as player representatives and an executive board.
MLB raised weekly minimum salaries for minor leaguers in 2021 to $400 at rookie and short-season levels, $500 at Class A, $600 at Double-A and $700 at Triple-A. For players on option, the minimum is $57,200 per season for a first big league contract and $114,100 for later big league contracts. In addition, MLB this year began requiring teams to provide housing for most minor leaguers.
...public high schools in California are starting later in the day in a statewide effort to help adolescents get more sleep and combat a national sleep crisis.
California’s SB 328 went in effect July 1. The law requires public high schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. and middle schools no earlier than 8 a.m., citing the academic benefits of a later school start time. The American Sleep Assocation (ASA) recommends teenagers get eight to 10 hours of sleep every night, but many don’t. With busy schedules, active social lives and rapidly changing bodies, teens face varying reasons for their lack of sleep.
One 2010 study found most teens are living with mild to severe sleep deprivation — with only 8 percent of U.S. high school students getting the recommended amount of sleep. Researchers found 23 percent of teens only got six hours of sleep on an average school night and 10 percent only got five hours.
The study also noted that many teens often participate in more activities than they have time for, resulting in less sleep. It’s a cycle that worsens by the fact that some high schools start as early as 7:20 a.m., while research has shown that teens don’t function well before 9 a.m. Insufficient sleep takes a toll on academic performance, with the National Sleep Foundation poll finding 28 percent of students reported falling asleep in school at least once a week and more than 1 in 5 fell asleep doing homework with similar frequency. ✂️
Not getting enough sleep has serious consequences beyond poor academic performance, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noting it can lead to teens being overweight, lack of daily physical activity and taking on unhealthy behaviors like drinking, smoking tobacco and using illicit drugs. Lack of sufficient sleep is also linked to teens being more likely to suffer from symptoms of depression.
Starting with good news from and about Russia and Ukraine:
Is Putin circling the drain like his U.S. puppet is?
Russian officials are calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to resign amid mounting losses in his invasion of Ukraine—a rare sign of frustration as the Kremlin cracks down on dissent. ✂️
In recent weeks, Ukraine has gone on the offensive in areas near Kherson and Kharkiv, taking back more than 1,000 miles of formerly occupied territory. The Kharkiv counteroffensive caught Moscow by surprise, and Ukrainian victories forced Russian forces to retreat from key cities such as Izyum over the weekend in which some Russian supporters described as the most "difficult" day of the war.
These losses appear to be leading to increased dissent against Putin. Thirty-five Russian municipal deputies signed a petition demanding him to resign from office due to the "harm" inflicted onto Russia due to the invasion, tweeted Ksenia [Thorstrom] on Monday, who serves as a municipal deputy in St. Petersburg's Smolninskoye municipal territory.
So far, municipal leaders from several important Russian cities, such as Moscow, have signed onto the demand. [Thorstrom] wrote the petition does not "discredit" anyone, an apparent jab at Russian authorities who have charged critics with discrediting the government.
kos highlighted this tweet in a diary on Saturday. This is bad news for Vlad.
Today on Russian Telegram, we've seen conspiracy theories of Putin being Jewish, of Putin conspiring with Zelensky to destroy Russia, of Putin being betrayed by the Russian high military command, etc. These channels are read by millions of Russians, including many soldiers.
And Kossack highonthehill wrote a diary titled Bye-bye Putin?
Meanwhile, Ukraine is absolutely obliterating the RF forces. Here’s the latest from the Armed Forces of Ukraine FB page:
Ukraine officials claimed Monday that the Russian military has suspended sending new units into the war-torn country, citing growing frustration with “combat conditions.” The announcement, which has not been confirmed by Russian authorities or independent sources, comes as Ukraine has walloped Russia in a recent counteroffensive, leaving Moscow reeling as it loses territory in the eastern region of Kharkiv. “The military command of the Russian federation has suspended the sending of new, already formed units into the territory of Ukraine,” Ukrainian officials said on the general staff Facebook page. Ukraine claimed the suspension was made partially made because volunteers have refused to serve in the current conditions, upset by inaccurate casualty information and a growing number of wounded. “In particular, in Russian hospitals, diagnoses and the nature of combat injuries are deliberately simplified and no time is given for rehabilitation in order to quickly return servicemen to the combat zone,” the statement said.
As usual, kos and Mark Sumner and annieli are keeping the DKos community thoroughly informed, so be sure to check for their Ukraine diaries at least once a day. BTW, if the Pulitzer for war reporting goes to anyone but the DKos staff, it’ll be a true miscarriage of justice — they’re the only ones who’ve consistently gotten it right from the beginning.
Finally, the MSM seems to be seeing things a bit more clearly:
In the end, the Russians fled any way they could on Friday, on stolen bicycles, disguised as locals, abandoned by their units. Hours after Ukrainian soldiers poured into the area, hundreds of Russian soldiers encamped in this village were gone, leaving behind stunned residents to face the ruins of 28 weeks of occupation.
“They just dropped rifles on the ground,” Olena Matvienko said Sunday as she stood, still disoriented, in a village littered with ammo crates and torched vehicles, including a Russian tank loaded on a flatbed. The first investigators from Kharkiv had just pulled in to collect the bodies of civilians shot by Russians, some that have been lying exposed for months. ✂️
The hasty flight of Russians from the village was part of a stunning new reality that took the world by surprise over the weekend: The invaders of February are on the run in some parts of Ukraine they seized early in the conflict.
On Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that Russian forces had retreated from the Balakliia and Izyum area in the Kharkiv region, saying a decision was taken to “regroup.” On Sunday, Ukraine’s commander in chief, Valery Zaluzhny, said Ukrainian forces had retaken more than 3,000 square kilometers (1,864 miles) of territory, a claim that could not be independently verified, adding that they were advancing to the east, south and north. “Ukrainian forces have penetrated Russian lines to a depth of up to 70 kilometers in some places,” reported the Institute for the Study of War, which closely tracks the conflict. They have captured more territory in the past five days “than Russian forces have captured in all their operations since April,” its campaign assessment posted Sunday said.
The apparent collapse of the Russian forces has caused shock waves in Moscow. The leader of the Chechen republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, who sent his own fighters to Ukraine, said if there are not immediate changes in Russia’s conduct of the invasion, “he would have to contact the leadership of the country to explain to them the real situation on the ground.”
And the same article noted Ukraine’s new position on negotiations:
Buoyant Ukrainian officials said they would no longer negotiate a peace deal that would let Russia keep an occupying presence in any territory, even in Crimea and part of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions controlled by Russia or Russian-backed separatists for years.
“The point of no return has passed,” Reznikov, the defense minister, said at the Yalta European Strategy summit in Kyiv on Saturday.
And from The New York Times:
As Russia suffered its most humiliating defeat since the initial stage of the war in Ukraine, cracks emerged in the official narrative as lawmakers and pundits on state television cast doubt on Moscow’s prospects.
On Friday, as the Russian front line in northeastern Ukraine collapsed, Boris Nadezhdin, a Russian municipal lawmaker, told viewers of a political talk show on NTV, a state-owned television channel, what had once been unspeakable: Moscow cannot, under current conditions, win this war.
In his Ukraine Update on Sunday afternoon, kos posted this stunning quote from a statement Zelensky made to Russia on Sunday:
Zelensky to Russia, tonight... pic.twitter.com/6Hgot3zKhY
Other good news from around the world:
Yasmeen Lari, now 81, is the cofounder of a nonprofit called the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, which is making bamboo huts for Pakistanis stricken by floods. Spending most of her career designing sleek, modern buildings for skylines, her retirement in 2005 was interrupted by a catastrophic earthquake that saw her helping locals to shelter themselves.
This, she told Fast Company, is where she came up with the idea for her low cost, low carbon, conical shelters of bamboo. These 12×12 huts have room for 5 people, and can be assembled quickly with rope and reed mats for the roof. “You could not find other materials,” she said. “Everything was taking too much time, like bricks… You could find bamboo. And I said, ‘Okay, let’s give it a try.’” ✂️
Lari has had experience with floods before. In similar circumstances in 2010 she helped organize the building of thousands of these bamboo huts, which along with being progressively upgradable depending on the longevity of the displacement, can also easily be moved around as needs demand. These ended up withstanding floods in 2012 and 2013, at which point some had even been raised up on bamboo stilts.
To facilitate the push for widespread adoption of this idea, Lari runs a training center for emergency architecture called Zero-Carbon Campus, where designs of the original bamboo hut have been upgraded with pre-fabricated bamboo panels that can quickly be fastened together with rope. A team of five artisans from the Campus can build around 8 of these shelters a day, and Fast Company claim they survived the current flooding. However the artisans aren’t needed to assemble the shelter, and the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan has released easy YouTube guides for those who need to learn fast.
Turning gamers into climate activists is a great idea.
About 3 billion people around the world play video games, the digital content creation company Unity estimates. With such a huge population playing them, should video game designers be incorporating messaging about climate change into their products? A new survey suggests that it’s a huge opportunity.
The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication in partnership with Unity surveyed more than 2,000 video game players in the United States and found that their views on climate change largely align with the general American population—73 percent of video game players say global warming is happening and 56 percent agree it is caused by human activity. But they also found that video gamers are more willing to take action on climate change, like contacting government officials or participating in a campaign.
“Video gamers represent this really untapped or under-explored audience for potential activism on climate change,” said Jennifer Carman, a researcher at the Yale program and co-author on a report that analyzed the survey’s findings.
Another result from the survey showed that 22 percent of video gamers say they have seen climate change-related content in video games that they’ve played or watched on a video game stream, and 13 percent said they had taken action after seeing that content. Carman said she was completely surprised by this finding. The survey did not ask where, specifically, people were seeing climate content in video games.
She hopes these findings will inspire video game creators to make climate change part of their games and for climate activists to utilize games to reach people with their messaging.
Malaria is one of the worst killers of young children in poorer nations. The news about the effectiveness of this vaccine is very exciting and very welcome.
A vaccine developed by the University of Oxford provides the most effective protection against malaria yet, a study has shown.
Scientists have been trying to develop a malaria vaccine for a century, and last year the first one was approved for use by the World Health Organization.
However, a trial suggests that Oxford’s R21 vaccine offers greater protection (up to 80 per cent) than the existing RTS,S vaccine – and will be cheaper to deliver. Millions of doses could be rolled out as soon as next year.
The need is urgent. Almost half a million children died from malaria in 2020. Gareth Jenkins, of the charity Malaria No More, said that infant malaria deaths could end “in our lifetimes” thanks to the vaccines.
Excellent news about the possibility of effective treatments against one of the deadliest cancers.
Scientists say new treatments for the most severe form of skin cancer could be developed now that they’ve made a major breakthrough, discovering a way to inhibit a key growth enzyme in melanoma.
When Glutaryl-CoA Dehydrogenase, (GCDH) was inhibited in tumors they weren’t able to survive long term. Potentially this is because it’s a key source of “food,” but also because it trigged a protein called NRF2 to acquire an ability to suppress cancer. GCDH deprivation is now being theorized as a potential treatment, both through targeting pharmaceuticals in the case of a GCDH-inhibitor, or as a dietary intervention. ✂️
Starvation as a treatment and/or cure for a variety of different cancers has been explored in oncology, as tumors grow fast but require tons of energy. Tumorous cells eat a lot of sugar, but also dine on growth factors produced through protein consumption. This could be something like IGF-1, or GCDH which the researchers have discovered is especially needed in melanoma, such that it alone among 6 key enzymes utilized by the tumors caused it to stop spreading. ✂️
Further exploration showed that inhibiting GCDH in an animal model gave the NRF2 protein mentioned earlier cancer-suppressing properties. “We’ve known for a long time that NRF2 can be both a driver and a suppressor of cancer,” says Ze’ev Ronai, Ph.D, and head of the cancer center at Standord. “We just didn’t know how we convert NRF2 from a driver to suppressor function. Our current study identifies the answer.”
Good for these scientists for believing in Joy Milne’s unusual gift and using it to develop a simple, effective test.
Scientists have harnessed the power of a woman’s hyper-sensitive sense of smell to develop a test to determine whether people have Parkinson’s disease.
The test has been years in the making after academics realised that Joy Milne could smell the condition. The 72-year-old from Perth, Scotland, has a rare condition that gives her a heightened sense of smell. She noticed that her late husband, Les, developed a different odour when he was 33 – 12 years before he was diagnosed with the disease, which leads to parts of the brain become progressively damaged over many years.
Milne, nicknamed “the woman who can smell Parkinson’s”, described a musky aroma, different from his normal scent. Her observation piqued the interest of scientists who decided to research what she could smell, and whether this could be harnessed to help identify people with the neurological condition.
Years later, academics at the University of Manchester have made a breakthrough by developing a test that can identify people with Parkinson’s disease using a simple cotton bud run along the back of the neck.
Researchers can examine the sample to identify molecules linked to the disease to help diagnose if someone has it.
We’re seeing more and more medical research that seems like science fiction.
Pipes a million times thinner than a human hair could deliver personalized therapies to individual cells, according to new research. The ‘world’s tiniest plumbing system’ could transform medicine by funneling drugs, proteins, or molecules to precisely targeted organs and tissue—without any risk of side-effects.
It comprises microscopic tubes that self-assemble and can connect themselves to different biostructures. US scientists from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland engineered a way that ensured the pipes are safe from infinitesimally small leaks. ✂️
It’s a significant step toward creating the first network of its kind to combat a host of life-threatening diseases.
The team worked with tubes two million times smaller than an ant and a few microns long—equivalent to a dust particle. They grew and repaired the tubes, enabling them to find and connect to specific cells. It is similar to an established technique that repurposes DNA as building blocks. They make ‘nanopores’ to control the transport of chemicals across lab-grown lipids that mimic a cell’s membrane.
But short fittings alone can’t reach other tubes. The bio-inspired technology described in Science Advances address these sorts of problems. “Building a long tube from a pore could allow molecules not only to cross the pore of a membrane that held the molecules inside a chamber or cell, but also to direct where those molecules go after leaving the cell,” said Schulman.
A new portrait from the world's most powerful solar telescope has captured the face of our Sun in exquisite detail.
Up close and personal to the giant star, at a resolution of just 18 kilometers, the middle layer of the Sun's atmosphere, known as the chromosphere, looks almost like a shag rug.
Bright hairs of fiery plasma can be seen in the [first] image..., flowing into the corona from a sort of honeycomb-like pattern of pores, more easily visualized in the [second] image... These blistering blobs are known as granules, and each is about 1,600 kilometers (994 miles) wide.
Each of these portraits is about 82,500 kilometers (51,260 miles) wide, which is only a single-digit percentage of the Sun's total diameter.✂️
The mind-boggling achievement marks the one-year anniversary of the Inouye Solar Telescope – the most powerful instrument of its kind – and the culmination of 25 years of careful planning.
The Sun's chromosphere, which sits below the corona, is usually invisible and can only be seen during a total solar eclipse, when it creates a red rim around the blacked out star. But new technology has changed that.
The more we learn about our prehistoric ancestors, the more impressive they become.
A child that lived in Borneo 31,000 years ago had its left foot amputated and survived for up to nearly a decade. It is the oldest evidence of surgical limb amputation and pre-dates the previous record by an astonishing 24,000 years.
Those who removed the lower third of the young patient’s leg must have had detailed knowledge of anatomy and muscular and vascular systems to prevent fatal blood loss and infection. Scientists hypothesize they may have had access to a natural antiseptic from the rainforest’s rich variety of plants. The leg bone shows a clean sloping cut made with a “sharp tool.”
The patient was an adolescent, aged 11 to 14. After the procedure they used a crutch, or perhaps even a prosthetic, to negotiate a difficult environment. Its gender is unknown, but most likely to be male. ✂️
“This unexpectedly early evidence of a successful limb amputation suggests at least some modern human foraging groups in tropical Asia had developed sophisticated medical knowledge and skills long before the Neolithic farming transition,” said Dr. Tim Maloney, of Griffith University, Australia. Animal attack or accident seems unlikely, as does punishment since the individual seems to have received careful treatment after surgery and in burial.
“Furthermore, during surgery, the surrounding tissue including veins, vessels and nerves, were exposed and negotiated in such a way that allowed this individual to not only survive but also continue living with altered mobility,” added Dr. Maloney. “Although it is not possible to determine whether infection occurred after the surgery, this individual evidently did not suffer from an infection severe enough to leave permanent skeletal markers or cause death.”
Finding this relatively little guy (6 feet long) is a big deal.
Paleontologists have discovered the oldest dinosaur ever found in Africa, and one of the earliest to ever evolve. ...The researchers hope the fossil can fill in critical gaps in the record.
[The sauropod] found in northern Zimbabwe is estimated to have been 6 feet long with a long tail. It weighed anywhere from 20 to 65 pounds, and was missing only some of the hand and portions of the skull.
“These are Africa’s oldest-known definitive dinosaurs, roughly equivalent in age to the oldest dinosaurs found anywhere in the world,” explains Christopher Griffin, a graduate from VA Tech’s School of Geosciences, and member of the excavation. “The oldest known dinosaurs—from roughly 230 million years ago, the Carnian Stage of the Late Triassic period—are extremely rare and have been recovered from only a few places worldwide, mainly northern Argentina, southern Brazil, and India.”
Mbiresaurus raathi stood on two legs and its head was relatively small head like its dinosaur relatives. It sported small, serrated, triangle-shaped teeth, suggesting that it was an herbivore or potentially omnivore.
Found alongside Mbiresaurus were an assortment of Carnian-aged fossils, including a herrerasaurid dinosaur, early mammal relatives such as cynodonts, armored crocodilian relatives such as aetosaurs, and, in Griffin’s description, “bizarre, archaic reptiles” known as rhynchosaurs, again typically found in South America and India from this same time period.
[The] launch of Rheem’s ProTerra 120-volt heat pump water heater [in July] might not seem like a big step forward in the fight against climate change. But...an efficient electric water heater that can plug into a standard wall socket is a major advance in getting U.S. households off fossil fuels. It’s also an example of what climate activists, policymakers and big businesses can accomplish when they work together. ✂️
Back in October 2018, ...nonprofit [Building Decarbonization Coalition] and New Buildings Institute gathered state policymakers, utilities and representatives of major U.S. water heater manufacturers at a conference in San Francisco to start tackling a problem that was impeding California’s building decarbonization goals: More than nine in 10 of the 14.5 million water heaters in California homes burn fossil gas. Few of those homes are wired for 240-volt heat pump water heaters, which were the only models available at the time. Asking homeowners and contractors to undertake expensive rewiring or electrical panel upgrades to support these more power-hungry replacement units could have triggered pushback from customers and contractors, and left many smaller homes or renters locked out of the market altogether.
So “we pulled together over 100 people and worked for six months on a specification for a ‘retrofit-ready’ heat pump water heater,” [Panama] Bartholomy, [executive director of the Building Decarbonization Coalition] said. The goal was to provide a clear signal to companies that their work on a novel product would bear fruit, or as he put it, to do some “trust-building — the basis of any good relationship.”
Now, more than three years later, that trust-building has paid off. Rheem’s ProTerra is expected to be followed by the launch of 120-volt heat pump water heaters from A.O. Smith, General Electric and Nyle over the coming year, said Amruta Khanolkar, senior project manager at the New Buildings Institute.
The first thing I thought when I saw these renderings was “Wakanda!”
Brought to you by Rosy, Nora, and Rascal.
Here’s Rosy’s choice:
A Transportation Security Administration K9 named Eebbers has retired after nearly a decade of service, during which he earned the distinction of being the agency's oldest working bomb-sniffing dog, as well as its cutest.
This is an objective fact (though it's also true that every dog is the best dog): Eebbers won the TSA's "2022 Cutest Canine Contest" in August, shortly before he celebrated his retirement with a treat-laden sendoff at his home base of Minneapolis-St.Paul International Airport (MSP). ✂️
"His ability to search out his trained odors amazes me every day," Jean Carney, Eebbers' handler and lifelong partner, told Minnesota's Star Tribune.
She described him as smart, gentle and polite, adding that he'd be waiting at the stairs at 3:30 a.m., ready to go to work. ✂️
… [Eebers] and Carney celebrated their last day at work, with some special surprises. Eebbers' "do not pet" vest was replaced with a standard collar and leash, meaning he could finally get scratchies from his colleagues and admirers. He was showered with stuffed toys and celebrated with several bomb-shaped cakes, and both he and Carney received commemorative plaques.
Nora and Rascal found this story irresistible:
And here’s a bonus, 🎩 to alamancedem who posted this in OHD’s Tweets of the Week on Sunday:
Surf photographer Dave Nelson got a video of a seal chasing after a ball with his dog on the beach in Santa Cruz. pic.twitter.com/VU8KOmRaQZ
And another bonus, 🎩 to kos. It’s from his Ukraine Update Sunday night:
The Ukrainian counteroffensive has been slowed down by a stubborn hedgehog. pic.twitter.com/UEIqAn0qCY
Just off the shore of the Loire estuary outside of Nantes, France, a slithering serpent rises from the water. Completed in 2012, Serpent d'océan is an impressive 425-foot (130 meters) sculpture by French Chinese contemporary artist Huang Yong Ping and is part of the Estuaire permanent public art collection along the estuary's 37 miles.
The aluminum skeleton of the serpent is continually covered and uncovered by the tides, excavating itself as the water level decreases and revealing its archeological remains. The curving shape of the serpent's spine mirrors the form of the nearby Saint-Nazaire bridge, harmonizing the creature with its surroundings.
Huang Yong Ping was a prominent figure in the 1980s Chinese avant-garde movement, and had many of his works banned by the Chinese government. In 1989, he moved to France and has since become a naturalized French citizen. Often addressing identity and the mixing of different cultures in his work, it's no surprise to see the artist introducing an animal related to Chinese mythology to Europe.
Astonishingly, given its size and sturdiness, Serpent d'océean is filled with movement. Its skeleton terminates in a thin, whip-like tail that cuts gracefully through the water, seemingly propelling the serpent's body toward the shoreline. The work continually reveals itself in different guises depending on the time of day, both due to the changing tide and the light's reflection. And interestingly, over time, as algae begins clinging to its surface, the work takes on more meaning by showing the cycle of life and nature.
www.theatlantic.com/… Why the Russian Military Brutalizes Ukraine. Hardly good news, of course, but I’m sure I’m not the only one here who has wondered where that brutality comes from. A very thoughtful and informative interview with a Russia expert who taught at the U.S. Naval War College.
www.newyorker.com/… How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London. A fascinating New Yorker piece from March that’s newly relevant.
lithub.com/...Luke Mogelson on the Far-Right, the Militia Movement, and the Threat of Trumpism. Mogelson is the reporter who recorded that amazing footage inside the Senate chamber during J6. “Right-wing militarism emerges from a sense of victimhood. Yet right-wing militants are overwhelmingly white heterosexual Christian men—no doubt the least victimized demographic in American history.”
www.newyorker.com/… The Work You Do, the Person You Are. A wonderful piece by Toni Morrison from the New Yorker archives about not confusing work with identity. “...since that conversation with my father I have never considered the level of labor to be the measure of myself, and I have never placed the security of a job above the value of home.”
lithub.com/… Gut Feelings: How Does Intuition Work, Anyway? Another interesting article from LitHub. “Many studies in psychology tell us that intuition is a very real process where the brain makes use of past experiences, along with internal signals and cues from the environment, to help us make a decision.”
www.yesmagazine.org/… For a Healthier Society, Ditch the Myth of Normal. A powerful argument that we need to stop accepting the norms of our culture that are making us unhealthy physically and emotionally.
A tip of the hat to 2thanks for creating this handy info sheet for all Gnusies new and old!
Morning Good News Roundups at 7 x 7: These Gnusies lead the herd at 7 a.m. ET, 7 days a week:
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.
And two more from Mokurai:
And another recommended by commenter lynnekz:
Goodie’s first GNR-powered fundraiser for 38 close House races raised over $80,000, giving each campaign over $2000. Now she has focused on 22 more House races that really need our help, and we’re almost half way to the goal of $44,000, which will give $2000 to each of these Dems.
I feel like I have a personal stake in this fundraiser, because five of these 22 candidates are from my neck of the woods: Kim Schrier (incumbent in northern WA state who’s been targeted by the NRCC), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (running against a MAGAt for Jaime Herrera Beutler’s old seat in SW WA state), Val Hoyle (running against a MAGAt to replace retiring Peter DeFazio — this is a vitally important race with lots of R $$ coming from out of state), Jamie McLeod-Skinner (who beat DINO Kurt Schrader in the primary and is running against a conservative R who’s anti-abortion, anti-Covid-restrictions, and pro-guns), and Andrea Salinas (running in Oregon’s new 6th district against a MAGAt tarnished by scandal).
Note: Lots of you have been justifiably complaining about getting text messages from the campaigns you donate to on ActBlue, like Goodie’s campaign here. The way to stop this is:
An invaluable diary by peregrine kate on DKos, full of recommendations for all the ways each of us can take action. Check it out!!
An absolutely epic diary by Brainwrap listing all the competitive races in the entire country for House, Senate, Governors, Secretaries of State, Attorneys General, State Supreme Court Justices, and more!! Do not miss this!
Here’s an easy action you can take RIGHT NOW:
Donate to two organizations providing support to people in no-abortion states who need assistance getting abortions.
National Network of Abortion Funds
Both of these organizations provide help with transportation, medical fees, hotel stays, etc., for those who have to travel out of state for an abortion. NNAF is a central clearing house for that assistance, The Brigid Alliance does that work directly.
Indivisible has created a Truth Brigade to push back against the lies.
Propaganda, false characterizations, intentionally misleading messages, and outright lies threaten our democracy and even our lives. We can effectively combat disinformation, despite the well-funded machines that drive it. They may have money, but we have truth and we have people.People believe sources they trust. When we share and amplify unified, factual messages to those who trust us, we shift the narrative. When we do this by the thousands--we’re part of the Indivisible Truth Brigade, and we get our country back. Join us.️
Our own Mokurai is a member. You can see all of the diaries in the Truth Sandwiches group on DK here.
A suggestion from chloris creator:
new!!! Tax-exempt organization complaint referrals. 13909. This has been filled out for the NRA, but, hey, you can use it for a lot of other organizations. How about if some of us white folk go into some of the MAGA churches and video record what they’re saying?
“The process to get the NRA's tax-exempt nonprofit status revoked has become simpler. All you need to do is save this form and email it to eoclass@irs.gov. It's all filled out for you. You just need to click send.” Allen Glines
Note that the IRS protects your anonymity: The appropriate checkbox is already checked: "I am concerned that I might face retaliation or retribution if my identity is disclosed."
PLEASE RETWEET! The process to get the NRA's tax-exempt nonprofit status revoked has become simpler. All you need to do is save this form and email it to eoclass@irs.gov. It's all filled out for you. You just need to click send. pic.twitter.com/xw5MGEJZEk
This suggestion comes from Kossack Ocean Rain (bolding mine):
My friends and I are carrying around pens and sticky notes and/or big mailing labels (things with adhesives that don't cause property damage when removed) and writing messages such as:
- Defend Choice — Defeat Republicans in the Midterms Nov. 8 - On Nov. 8 Vote Blue — or else the GOP will take your right to birth control too -Vote Pro-Choice in Midterms Nov. 8 - Roe, Roe, Roe Your Vote — Midterms Nov. 8
You can also include state-specific primary date voting info. if applicable (like for the NO vote in Kansas on the abortion question). In red states, people are including abortion access website links. We're placing them in public restrooms, highway rest stops, transit stations, shopping malls — any high-visibility place. We'd love it if some DailyKos-ers would do the same and spread the idea far and wide on social media. Thank you!
Most important: DON'T LOSE HOPE. This is a giant and important fight for us but, win or lose, we keep fighting and voting and organizing and spreading truth and light. We never give up.
And I’ll add a recommendation for you to check out Activate America (formerly Flip the West), which is recruiting people to send postcards to Dem voters. What I like most about them is that their messages are very specific and to the point. Here’s a sample text for the cards being sent to Dem voters in NC:
The threat of losing your right to abortion is not hypothetical. We must elect politicians who will protect our freedoms.
Cheri Beasley, a longtime supporter and advocate for abortion rights, is the the clear choice for North Carolina. Vote for Cheri Beasley for US Senate.
Thanks, [Your first name or initials], volunteer
Progressive Muse posted a helpful list of all the campaigns that Activate America is soliciting postcard writers for:
For this morning’s closing music, here’s a mind-boggling video from last year that I just discovered. If this tiny girl can shred drums like this, anything is possible! So let’s go do what the pundits are telling us is impossible: GOTV to create a crushing Blue Wave from coast to coast!
Thanks to all of you for your smarts, your hearts, and
your faithful attendance at our daily Gathering of the Herd.