So what’s an “extinction burst?” I learned about this extremely useful concept from a blog post by author Martha Beck, whom a friend of mine follows. Titled “Outlasting the Extinction Burst,” it struck me as spot on and a great springboard for today’s GNR.
Somewhere, in a university laboratory, a rat sits by a machine, pressing a lever. Each push causes a pellet of food to drop from the machine. ...But then, without explanation, the pellets stop coming. The rat grows perplexed, then frustrated, then furious. Then it goes completely off the rails. It presses the lever faster, harder. It bites at the lever, kicks it, probably shouts little rat curses at it. But the pellet never comes.
And then, not all that surprisingly, the rat gives up.
This scenario, with its anticlimactic ending, is how an extinction burst works. It happens when we’ve been rewarded for a behavior, but then the reward stops. For a while, the frequency, intensity, and duration of the behavior increase. ✂️
At the time that I’m writing this, civil rights in my country are being restricted to an appalling extent. ...We can all see instances where the United States seems to be moving away from equality, rather than toward it. For those among us who have a uterus, who are BIPOC or gay or trans, it’s a frightening time.
My hope is that it’s also an extinction burst. ✂️
An extinction burst only happens when the current system is threatened with, well, extinction. That’s why I’m not just horrified by the legal and political tumult in the US, but also a little optimistic. The rat is kicking and biting the lever. The toddler is shrieking on the floor. The power structure is throwing a tantrum. ✂️
We just need to make sure the extinction burst doesn’t scare us into capitulating, into giving bullies whatever it is they want. ...We don’t have to join in the violence, physically or emotionally. We don’t have to fight with our families, throw food at the wall like a toddler or an ex-President. We just have to remind ourselves that the extinction burst means something is about to disappear. We just have to remember that the rat eventually gives up.
We just have to stay the course. ✂️
Since we’ll continue to refuse to give the bullies what they want, our strategy must be to keep on doing what we know we need to do to reclaim our nation from the kooks and criminals and not get distracted by their bluster. If we persist and continue to win the culture war and elections both local and national, there’s a good chance that the rats will finally give up and fall silent. At least their squeals will attract less attention and become less ubiquitous.
I found lots of good news for today’s roundup that will help you feel hopeful and inspired. So pour yourself a mug of your favorite morning beverage, find a comfortable chair, and let’s enjoy the good news.
It’s no news to us that there will not be a “red wave” in November, but it’s good to see that confirmed by the trend in actual election results.
Republicans in Minnesota squeaked out a win — but only narrowly — in a special election for Minnesota's 1st Congressional District, a seat they already held, last night. GOP nominee Brad Finstead won Democrat Jeff Ettinger by a slim 4-point margin to complete the term of Rep. Jim Hagedorn (R-MN), who passed away in February. While Republicans did ultimately win the seat, experts say Finstead's margin of victory shows some troubling signs for the GOP — and detract from the predictions that a so-called "red wave" is coming in November.
That's because Minnesota's 1st District is a precinct that President Donald Trump carried by 10 points in 2020, according to data from Daily Kos Elections. That means Finstead's victory is a 6-point under-performance from Trump's — not something analysts expect to see in a "wave" election year, when one party sees sweeping wins.
Republicans have been predicting a "red wave" or "tsunami" for months, pointing to President Joe Biden's sinking approval rating or polls that purport to show the party that voters want to see controlling Congress, otherwise known as "generic ballots." Yet Finstead's under-performance is part of a growing trend for Republicans in a different direction, with the party's candidates not performing as well as expected following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. ...
For example, Democratic turnout was through the roof in Kansas' Aug. 2 primary, in which voters handily defeated a state constitutional amendment that would have paved the way for abortion to be banned in the state. Another special election, held in June for a House seat in Nebraska, had similar underwhelming results for Republicans. In that race, the GOP candidate Mike Flood narrowly beat his Democrat opponent, explicitly pro-choice candidate Patty Brooks, by a lower margin than Trump won the district with in 2020.
It’s refreshing to see this in the NY Times, bastion of bothsiderism.
By Farah Stockman, member of the editorial board of The New York Times:
In March, Congress overhauled the U.S. Postal Service, which had been on the brink of insolvency for years.
In June, it passed the first major gun safety legislation in nearly three decades.
In July, it voted to make the most significant investment in American industrial policy in half a century.
Now a bipartisan group of 16 senators is working to fix the Electoral Count Act of 1887, a step that legal experts say is needed to save our democracy from another Jan. 6-style attack.
Is it everything that Democrats dreamed of? Not by a long shot.
But it’s major progress — all the more remarkable for the fact that it is happening under an evenly divided Senate. It flies in the face of the prevailing narrative that Washington is irreparably broken and that President Biden is a nostalgic old fool for even trying to reach across the aisle. Regardless of what plays now on cable news, historians of Mr. Biden’s first term will have to admit that a surprising amount got done.
Of course, we are living through a toxic and deeply polarized era in which some politicians seem to prefer seeing the country fail than helping the opposite party succeed. But as compelling as the intractability narrative is, it might be a bit overblown. Obstructionism has limits. People who win elected office can get fed up with gridlock, too. Consider what happened when Mitch McConnell tried to hold the CHIPS Act hostage for political reasons. It didn’t work, partly because too many Republicans had worked on it and wanted to pass it.
Dark Brandon has emerged from his Covid quarantine ready to kick ass.
And look at how great our Dem candidates in Maryland are!
President Biden will speak at a Democratic National Committee event in Maryland next week, rallying voters ahead of November’s midterm elections. It will be Biden’s first political rally in months and will serve as the kickoff to his fall midterm push.
DNC officials offered scant details of Biden’s Aug. 25 visit to the D.C. suburbs, so it was unclear whether the president would address contests nationwide or in Maryland. Democrats at the top of the ticket in Maryland are largely facing Donald Trump-aligned opponents who face an uphill battle in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans two-to-one.
The state’s historic Democratic ticket would deliver the most racial and gender diversity to ever lead Maryland government. Newly redrawn congressional maps also have made one Democratic-held congressional seat more competitive. ✂️
Democrat Wes Moore, an author, Army veteran and former nonprofit organization chief, would be the state’s first Black governor if elected in November. He faces Del. Dan Cox (R-Frederick), a first-term state lawmaker who has called the 2020 election stolen and celebrated the endorsement of former president Trump.
Rep. Anthony G. Brown (D-Prince George’s) would be the first Black attorney general if he wins. He faces Republican Michael Peroutka, who had ties to the neo-Confederate organization League of the South and spread 9/11 conspiracy theories on his radio show.
Wyden is one of my senators. Good job, Ron, you deserve to celebrate! And thanks for showing us the power of persistence.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is having a moment.
After years of banging his head against filibusters, Republican opposition, and Democratic foot dragging, the senior senator from Oregon is about to see has seen two of his signature legislative efforts turn into law. ✂️
U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) stole headlines for surprising the world and dropping his mercurial opposition to the bill, but colleagues say Wyden, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, deserves more credit.
“There is lots of credit to go around, but make sure @RonWyden is at the top of the list,” U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn) wrote on Twitter. “He has stuck with climate since the ashes of Waxman-Markey, and before others he saw the power of a straight forward incentive system.” ...Waxman-Markey was the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 219 to 212 in 2009. The Senate, where lots of bills go to die, never brought it to the floor for discussion or a vote. ✂️
...the IRA was a twofer for Wyden. Its other major plank would allow Medicare, the health insurance program for seniors, to negotiate lower drug prices, particularly for expensive drugs that have no competition after being on the market for years. On Friday, The New York Times described Wyden as the “architect” of “the most substantial change to health policy since the Affordable Care Act became law in 2010.”
My oh my, there’s so much bad news for Rs! And it’s so high profile that you’ve no doubt seen just about all of it. But I can’t resist piling on with a couple of news stories from yesterday and repeats of a few recent favorites.
Attorney Robert Costello said that lawyers for the former New York mayor were told by the office of Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) on Monday that Giuliani is a target of the ongoing probe. Giuliani has served as a lawyer for former president Donald Trump. The New York Times first reported the story.
A federal judge on Monday turned down Sen. Lindsey Graham’s bid to throw out a subpoena compelling him to testify before the Atlanta-area grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.
“[T]he Court finds that the District Attorney has shown extraordinary circumstances and a special need for Senator Graham’s testimony on issues relating to alleged attempts to influence or disrupt the lawful administration of Georgia’s 2022 elections,” U.S. District Court Judge Leigh Martin May wrote in a 22-page opinion rejecting Graham’s effort and sending the matter back to state courts for further proceedings.
The ruling is a victory for District Attorney Fani Willis, who is leading the grand jury probe that resulted in a subpoena for Graham (R-S.C.) to appear for an Aug. 23 interview. Investigators intend to query Graham about two phone calls with Georgia election officials, at the same time Trump was attempting to subvert his defeat, that included a discussion of the process for counting absentee ballots.
“Senator Graham has unique personal knowledge about the substance and circumstances of the phone calls with Georgia election officials, as well as the logistics of setting them up and his actions afterward,” May wrote. “And though other Georgia election officials were allegedly present on these calls and have made public statements about the substance of those conversations, Senator Graham has largely (and indeed publicly) disputed their characterizations of the nature of the calls and what was said and implied. Accordingly, Senator Graham’s potential testimony on these issues … are unique to Senator Graham.”
In a statement issued later Monday through his Senate office, Graham indicated he would appeal the ruling.
After a week of devastating news about former President Donald Trump, Republicans who braved the Sunday morning talk shows had a hard time defending the man who remains the leader of their party. Turns out it takes a little imagination to excuse taking top secret classified information and refusing to return them in accordance with the law, as Trump did.
Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, tried to downplay Trump’s actions by questioning whether boxes seized from Trump’s home labeled top secret/sensitive compartmentalized information really contained information at the highest secret classification. “These are labeled that,” Turner acknowledged on CNN’s State of the Union, but “we don’t know whether these are classified and rise to that level.” But when host Brianna Keilar asked Turner if he would take home documents marked as such, he had a one word answer: “No.” ✂️
Despite the awkward defenses mounted by his allies, the seriousness of Trump’s legal situation seems to have gotten through to some Republicans. When asked whether he would support Trump if he runs for president in 2024, Rounds demurred. “I’ll keep my powder dry with regards to [that] question,” he said.
🎩 to ericlewis0 for highlighting this in a diary on Sunday:
1. AG Garland has said strongly and repeatedly: no one is above the law; 2, there is a stronger case against Trump than others prosecuted for less egregious crimes (eg Petraeus, Berger); then 3, it is right to expect Trump will be charged. And any accomplices.
As Eric points out, “Weissmann is one of the foremost legal experts on the planet.”
I’m sure most of you have seen this, but just in case you haven’t, it’s an absolutely brilliant exercise in mindf***ing. And we know tfg can’t resist watching these Lincoln Project videos.
“Who was it, Donald?” “There’s no one you can trust, no one at all.”
Beau of the Fifth Column weighs in on how much the states with abortion bans are likely to suffer economically.
When a dozen young Black men and a dozen police officers gather in a church to write poetry together, there is trepidation on both sides. “They’re all pulling me aside, like they think they’re the only one, saying, ‘I am not a poet. I cannot write anything profound,’” Lakayana Drury says.
Drury is the founder and executive director of Word is Bond, a Portland nonprofit organization that works to empower young Black men. The poetry workshop is part of a Word is Bond summertime series that brings together youth and law enforcement.
The students have an easier time of it, typically, because they are used to writing assignments in English class, Drury says. It’s tougher for the officers: “Poems and police don’t usually go together.”
By the end of the workshop, many of the writers are clamoring to share their work with the full group. Their confidence got another boost this spring when the poems they wrote last July at Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church were published in Picture Me Thriving (Word is Bond, 112 pages, $20).
Decades of government policies aimed at forcibly assimilating Native Americans, guided by the notion of “kill the Indian and save the man,” included generations of Indigenous children ripped away from their families and placed in boarding schools, where speaking their language was forbidden. The cumulative result was the severe diminishment and, at times, complete loss of Indigenous languages across North America.
That legacy set the backdrop for the formation of the Northwest Indian Language Institute in Oregon in 1997. Twenty-five years later, the institute’s work remains as urgent and important as ever. ✂️
Ichishkíin language teachers from the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and Yakama Nation founded the institute in response to tribal communities’ interest in honoring and maintaining their languages. Inspired by the American Indian Language Development Institute, the founders worked with the University of Oregon to start their institute, dedicated to supporting and strengthening language revitalization through tribal, academic and community partnerships. ✂️
Programs like [Northwest Indian Language Institute] are helping to heal the trauma caused by the devastating effects of assimilation through language revitalization and preservation efforts.
This is a very moving story that’s worth reading in full.
Tamkaliks is an ongoing story about return. A return to celebration after two years of pandemic delays. A return to the homeland, and a hope for the future with even deeper roots.
Tamkaliks is the Nez Perce word for “where you can see the mountains.” In the long days of summer, the looming Wallowa Mountains to the south of the campsite were still visible from the arbor. ✂️
Taz Conner, a member of the Nez Perce Tribe and a U.S. Forest Service employee, began meeting with city of Wallowa community members like Jo Hallam and Terry and Nancy Crenshaw in the 1980s. The goal was to create an event that would welcome back the Nez Perce, more than a century after the U.S. government exiled them from the Wallowa Valley.
There are nine federally recognized American Indian tribes in Oregon, but the Nez Perce Tribe isn’t one of them. Despite its history in Eastern Oregon, the modern-day Nez Perce reservation is entirely contained in northern Idaho. While the origins of the event are sometimes described as an economic development opportunity for the city of Wallowa, Taz’s niece, Bobbie Conner, said that was never the intent of tribal organizers.
“It wasn’t really an agreement to help boost tourism,” she said. “It wasn’t an agreement to help with economic development. It was an agreement that we needed to welcome home to this country, the Wallowa country, the people whose ancestors were sent out of this country in exile in 1877.”
Given how off-the-rails insane the RWNJs have become over culture war issues, it’s good to know that our museums will have some protection. This group of trainees also includes participants from around the world who will build cultural rescue teams in their home countries.
[A] drill [last Wednesday] was the centerpiece of the 10-day Army Monuments Officer Training program, a new partnership between the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative and the U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command that aims to boost the ranks of the Army’s corps of cultural heritage specialists, the modern-day version of the famous World War II Monuments Men. The partnership was formalized in October 2019, and the first session was scheduled for March 2020. The pandemic delayed it until this week. ✂️
Since the training began Aug. 3, the participants have been taught museum operations, risk assessment, collections documentation and the handling, packing, storing and moving of objects. Thursday’s session [focused] on salvage — how to recover collections that could not be protected — and working across government agencies and with local partners. The program [ended] with a graduation ceremony Friday.
“We are looking at the disaster cycle — preparedness, mitigation, response when you have a disaster and the early recovery phase,” [Corine] Wegener [director of the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative] said. “Just like first aid for people, if you don’t have training, you freeze. We teach a basic first aid methodology for cultural heritage property … and the principles of cultural first aid in crisis.”
The 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict requires the military to have specialists on cultural heritage protection to coordinate with civilians in a crisis. The 21 participants in this first training session came from the United States, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Italy, Britain and Lebanon. ✂️
The Smithsonian has trained hundreds of museum professionals around the world and has worked with the military in the past. Although the participants will return to their civilian lives around the globe, they have formed a network and will remain connected by the training and supported by Smithsonian resources, Wegener said. “They know each other’s strengths and skills, and they may in the future be called upon to go on deployments or exercises where they might inject a cultural heritage perspective,” she said. “They are a team, even though they will be separated. That’s rare in the Army Reserve.”
From The New York Times:
Workers at a Trader Joe’s in Minneapolis voted on Friday to unionize, adding a second unionized store to the more than 500 locations of the supermarket chain.
Employees at a Trader Joe’s in Massachusetts voted to unionize last month, part of a trend of recent union victories involving service workers at companies like Starbucks, Apple and Amazon.
The Minneapolis vote was 55 to 5, according to the National Labor Relations Board, which held the election.The Minneapolis workers voted to join Trader Joe’s United, the same independent union that represents workers in Hadley, Mass. Workers at a third Trader Joe’s store, in Colorado, have filed for a union election, but the labor board has not yet authorized a vote or set an election date.
Sarah Beth Ryther, a Trader Joe’s worker in Minneapolis who was involved in the organizing campaign, said her co-workers had been motivated in part by dissatisfaction with pay and benefits, issues that helped prompt the union campaign in Massachusetts. Workers have complained that the company has made its benefits less generous in recent years, though some benefits have improved more recently.
Parklife has trumped division with the news that a binational river park will be built on land once earmarked for part of the US-Mexico border wall.
The border town of Laredo in Texas had been resigned to the construction of a concrete and steel wall which threatened to separate the city and its people from the Rio Grande river – but building contracts have been cancelled following a spirited campaign by the No Border Wall Coalition. Instead Laredo officials are working with colleagues over the border in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, on a shared vision (pictured) to create an ecological restoration zone between the two cities.
The 1,000-acre project will encompass a mile-long stretch along the river’s urban cores, framed by bridges and an amphitheatre, plus a three-mile recreation area. A binational bridge will link US and Mexican citizens to a shared community space – subject to checking through customs. ✂️
“It reclaims our shared history, spurs the economy, promotes security on both sides of the river, and restores the ecological treasure we call home,” [said the San Antonio-based urban architects Overland Partners] . “The first of its kind, this international conservation project enhances our quality of life and serves as a prototype for border cities around the world to follow.”
When the shrieking MAGAt culture warriors try to destroy a beloved local institution, people fight back.
A library defunded by voters in a spat over LGBTQ books is coming closer to being saved by online donations.
Jamestown Township voters rejected an operating millage [the tax rate levied on real estate] for the Patmos Public Library Aug. 2, punching an 84-percent hole in the library’s budget.
Since then, GoFundMe campaigns have surpassed $100,000 in donations, which library officials say could serve as stop-gap funding until the library makes another plea to voters to approve a property tax to support it. ✂️
The library will lose $245,000 in property tax in 2023 because of the loss of the millage. If the library fails to reinstate a millage, it will likely close sometime in 2023, said board president Larry Walton. The library has money in savings that could be used to keep the doors open for at least the first half of 2023.
[BTW, the links to the two fundraising campaigns are Fund Patmos Library in Jamestown, MI for 2023 and Save Patmos Library & the FIRST Amendment!!!!!]
This is something that should happen in any city that has a large area of abandoned structures. It helps to solve housing problems and improves the local environment.
Last year, after Berlin’s Tegel Airport had been replaced by a new international airport at another location, workers started clearing the land for a new project: a neighborhood built from scratch with the climate in mind.
Some parts of the airport will be reused, with old terminals turned into commercial space for research and offices for startups. But a more-than-100-acre area near where the runway used to sit will be completely reimagined, with 5,000 new apartment homes built in a walkable, bikeable, carbon-neutral neighborhood with parks, schools, and stores. ✂️
The plans call for wide bike lanes and green spaces. At the edge of the neighborhood, there will be access to micromobility and existing public transit. The neighborhood will allow limited access to cars (people who are disabled, for example, will be able to drive up to their buildings), but will otherwise be car-free.
This woman is my new hero.
Natalia Popova, a 50-year old economist in Kyiv, Ukraine, ...has risked close encounters with tanks and rockets to save and rehabilitate more than 300 animals from the frontline of the Russian invasion. ✂️
[After she succeeded in rescuing an injured lion in 2018,] word spread and soon Natalia was receiving rescue requests from all over Ukraine. Her mission steadily grew from a single lion enclosure into an animal shelter, which she bankrolled herself.
When Russia invaded in February, animals began roaming Kyiv’s streets. Lions, tigers, and other wild animals appeared in the crossfire; many who had been kept as pets were deserted when their owners fled the country. Ukrainian soldiers would alert Natalia when they sighted an animal and she’d drive to the hot spots alone, trembling in the car on the way there. It wasn’t just the war that scared her. With no formal veterinary experience, she had to learn how to anaesthetise, transport, and care for animals.
Today Natalia’s shelter is home to a menagerie of animals, from lions and leopards to goats and dogs. Once an animal is rehabilitated Natalia finds them new homes outside the warzone. To date, 100 of her rescues have been relocated to Western Ukraine and 200 sent safely abroad to zoos and reserves in Poland, Spain, France, and South Africa.
Despite being $200,000 in debt for medical expenses and feed, and with no end to the war in sight, Natalia is determined to keep on going. “I will still borrow money and go to hot spots, because I can imagine the stress animals are under because of the war, especially if there’s no one there to help them. ”
Bayraktars have been crucial to Ukraine’s defense, so it’s great that there will now be a source within the country.
The Turkish company Baykar plans to build a Bayraktar drone factory in Ukraine, according to Ukrainian Ambassador to Turkey Vasyl Bodnar. “Just one week ago, the government approved a bilateral agreement and sent it to parliament to be ratified — an agreement on the construction of the plant itself,” Bodnar said in an interview with RBK-Ukraina. He added that plans for the factory have been in the works since before Russia launched its full-scale war in Ukraine, and that a site has already been chosen.
Bodnar also said that Baykar has no plans to work with the Russian government. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in July that Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed interest in partnering with the company. “I spoke directly with one of the owners of this factory, and he said that not only do they have no such plans, they can’t even imagine [working with Russia],” he said. According to Bodnar, after the initial reports of the conversation surfaced, Erdoğan's press service clarified that the discussion with Putin was “half-joking.”
I have to add this, of course.
Don’t believe the trolls and tankies — the sanctions are hurting the Russian economy, and more and more Russians at all income levels will be impacted.
Russian airlines, including state-controlled Aeroflot (AFLT.MM), are stripping jetliners to secure spare parts they can no longer buy abroad because of Western sanctions, four industry sources told Reuters.
The steps are in line with advice Russia's government provided in June for airlines to use some aircraft for parts to ensure the remainder of foreign-built planes can continue flying at least through 2025. ✂️
Aviation experts have said that Russian airlines would be likely to start taking parts from their planes to keep them airworthy, but these are the first detailed examples.
At least one Russian-made Sukhoi Superjet 100 and an Airbus A350, both operated by Aeroflot, are currently grounded and being disassembled, one source familiar with the matter said.
I heard this on our jazz station (KMHD) a few days ago and loved it. I suggest it as a soundtrack for writing postcards supporting Cheri Beasley, Stacey Abrams, Val Demings, and our other terrific Dem women candidates!
This is a truly astonishing accomplishment.
After emerging from a final risky surgery, Brazilian twin brothers Arthur and Bernardo Lima were met with an emotional outpouring of applause, cheers and tears from medical staff and family members. For the first time, the boys lay separated, face-to-face and holding hands in a shared hospital bed in Rio de Janeiro, after doctors there and almost 6,000 miles away in London worked together using virtual reality techniques to operate on the conjoined 3-year-olds.
The highly complex medical procedure separated the twins, who come from Roraima in rural northern Brazil and were born craniopagus, meaning they were connected to each other with fused skulls and intertwined brains that shared vital veins. Only 1 in 60,000 births result in conjoined twins, and even fewer are joined cranially. Medical experts had called the surgery to separate the brothers impossible.
But medical staff from Rio’s Instituto Estadual do Cérebro Paulo Niemeyer worked with London-based surgeon Noor ul Owase Jeelani of Great Ormond Street Hospital to use advanced virtual reality technology to rehearse the painstaking procedure. It involved detailed imaging of the boys’ brains including CT and MRI scans, as well as checks on the rest of their bodies. Health workers, engineers and others collated data to create 3D and virtual reality models of the twins’ brains
to allow the teams to study their anatomy in greater detail. The international teams then spent months working to prepare for the procedures, according to the British charity Gemini Untwined, which facilitated the surgery and was founded by Jeelani, a renowned British-Kashmiri neurosurgeon. ✂️
Craniopagus conjoined children have typically never sat up, crawled or walked before and require intensive rehabilitation post-surgery. Arthur and Bernardo will undergo six months of rehabilitation at the hospital and look forward to celebrating their fourth birthday together soon, Gemini Untwined said, “finally able to see each other face to face,” alongside their parents Adriely and Antonio Lima.
Researchers and entrepreneurs have developed an implant made of collagen protein from pig’s skin, which resembles the human cornea and restored vision to 20 people.
Prior to receiving the implant, most of the patients were blind due to diseased corneas. The promising result of the trial brings hope to those suffering from corneal blindness and low vision by providing a bioengineered implant as an alternative to the transplantation of donated human corneas, which are scarce in many countries.
“The results show that it is possible to develop a biomaterial that meets all the criteria for being used as human implants, which can be mass-produced and stored up to two years and thereby reach even more people with vision problems,” says Neil Lagali, professor at the Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences at LiU, one of the researchers behind the study.
An estimated 12.7 million people around the world are blind due to their corneas...being damaged or diseased. Their only way of regaining vision is to receive a transplanted cornea from a human donor. But just one in 70 patients receives a cornea transplant. Furthermore, most of those who need cornea transplants live in low and middle-income countries in which access to treatments is very limited. ✂️
Before the operation [to implant the bioengineered cornea], 14 of the 20 participants were blind. After two years, none of them was blind any more. Three of the Indian participants who had been blind prior to the study had perfect (20/20) vision after the operation.
A larger clinical study followed by market approval by regulatory authorities is needed before the implant can be used in healthcare. The researchers also want to study whether the technology can be used to treat more eye diseases, and whether the implant can be adapted to the individual for even greater efficacy.
This is especially good news in the context of tick populations exploding because of global warming.
Ticks that carry Lyme disease have been on the march, spreading into more forests and brush areas around the U.S. and Europe. But lovers of the outdoors could get a new weapon against Lyme, if a new vaccine candidate performs well. It aims to protect people as young as five.
If it were to gain regulators' approval, it would become the only Lyme disease vaccine available for humans in the U.S. But it's expected to take years for the potential vaccine to reach the market. If the phase-three study is a success, the companies say, they would likely seek official authorization in 2025.
The new vaccine is called VLA15, and as of this week, it's now in the third phase of a clinical study in humans. It was created by Pfizer and French drugmaker Valneva. ✂️
The study that's now underway includes some 6,000 participants in the U.S. and Europe who are at least 5 years old and who live in places where Lyme disease is "highly endemic," Pfizer and Valneva say. The vaccine candidate provoked a strong immune response in adults and kids in earlier trials, "with acceptable safety and tolerability profiles," according to the drug companies.
The US’s Frontier system is now the fastest supercomputer in the world. It’s also the first exascale computer, meaning it can process more than a quintillion calculations per second — an ability that could lead to breakthroughs in medicine, astronomy, and more.
Why it matters: Supercomputers aren’t a fundamentally different kind of machine, like quantum computers — they work in the same basic way as your laptop, but with much more powerful hardware. This makes them invaluable tools for data-intensive, computation-heavy research.
When the pandemic first started, for example, researchers used Summit — the world’s fastest supercomputer at the time — to simulate how different compounds would attach to the coronavirus’ spike protein and potentially prevent infection. “Summit was needed to rapidly get the simulation results we needed,” said researcher Jeremy Smith in March 2020. “It took us a day or two whereas it would have taken months on a normal computer.” ✂️
The rankings: Twice a year since 1993, the TOP500 project has released a list of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world. To compile this list, it measures each system’s performance in FLOPS (“floating-point operations per second”). A floating-point operation is a simple math problem (like adding two numbers). A person can typically perform at a rate of 1 FLOPS, meaning it takes us about one second to find the answer to one problem. ✂️
In 2008, a supercomputer crossed the petaFLOPS threshold (one quadrillion FLOPS) for the first time, and since then, the goal has been an exaFLOPS system, capable of calculating at least one quintillion FLOPS (that’s a lot of zeroes: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000).
Frontier — a supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) — has taken the top spot on the latest TOP500 list, and its score of 1.102 exaFLOPS on a benchmark test makes it the world’s first exascale computer.
An interesting — and reassuring! — counter-intuitive scientific finding.
Scientists say that rather than making us lazy or forgetful, [smartphones] provide a valuable service of storing very important information of a low complexity, which frees up our brains to remember other things.
The University College London team say using a phone as an external memory not only helps people remember what’s stored in the phone, it helps them remember unsaved information too. Neuroscientists have previously been worried that using too much technology could reduce our brain function. ✂️
For the study, the team developed a memory task to be played on a touchscreen digital tablet or computer. The test was taken by 158 people aged 18 to 71.
“We wanted to explore how storing information in a digital device could influence memory abilities,” lead author Dr. Sam Gilbert said. “We found that when people were allowed to use an external memory, the device helped them to remember the information they had saved into it.” ✂️
“This was hardly surprising, but we also found that the device improved people’s memory for unsaved information as well,” said Dr. Gilbert. “This was because using the device shifted the way that people used their memory to store high-importance versus low-importance information.”
“When people had to remember by themselves, they used their memory capacity to remember the most important information,” he added. “When they could use the device, they saved high-importance information into the device and used their own memory for less important information instead.”
He also warned of the necessity of backing up important information in case the device stops working.
A birder named Stephen Gosser recently took a stroll through the woods in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, when he heard what he thought was a scarlet tanager.
These colorful songbirds are famously difficult to spot, so Gosser followed the sound of the bird’s cheerful “chick-burr” call to try to get a good look at it.
When the bird finally came into view, Gosser could tell it wasn’t a scarlet tanager. The bird did not have the brilliant red body of a male tanager nor the delicate yellow plumage of a female. This bird had brown wings, a speckled chest, and a patch of red feathers on its throat not unlike that of a rose-breasted grosbeak. ✂️
Eager to find out the identity of the bird, Gosser reached out to Bob Mulvihill, an ornithologist at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh. With Gosser’s help, Aviary staffers located the bird, collected a small sample of its blood from a vein on its wing for genetic testing, and then then released it back into the wild.
The results of that test, published in Ecology and Evolution in July, indicate that the mysterious bird Gosser found was a hybrid of a rose-breasted grosbeak and a scarlet tanager. A hybrid of these two highly diverged species has never been seen before, and its discovery raises questions about how many other hybrids may be out there waiting to be discovered.
This is my vote for the cutest animal photo of the week!
The story is behind NatGeo’s annoying paywall, but the newsletter did provide the photo and a brief summary.
From a newsletter emailed by National Geographic:
A photographer and biologist put microscopic fungi, roots, and slime molds from Germany’s Black Forest under a scanning electron microscope—and found creatures like this astounding tardigrade (above) among the forest’s essential, and often overlooked, life forms.
This discovery in the moss on a tree trunk, magnified 2,400 times, marked a newfound species among the 1,300 known types of tardigrades, says photographer Oliver Meckes. “We always thought we knew a lot about the cycles of life and what happens to a tree when it falls and decays,” Meckes tells our French edition colleague Marie-Amélie Carpio. “But what we learned with this assignment was how complex these processes are, and the myriad creatures involved!”
The Arizona Water Defenders, a grassroots group, was formed in March 2021 by southeastern Arizona residents who were concerned about local wells going dry and increasingly visible ground fissures and land subsidence. There has been agricultural pumping in the area since the 1940s, but in recent years, as large-scale dairy and nut producers have bought land in the area and drilled deep new wells, water table drawdown has become more noticeable and worrisome. After contacting the Arizona Department of Water Resources and reading the state’s Groundwater Management Act, the Water Defenders began the process of initiating a ballot measure that would create Active Management Areas (AMAs) — geographic designations in which the state’s strictest groundwater regulations apply — for the Willcox and Douglas basins, southeastern Arizona's two watersheds. In May, the Cochise County Elections Office approved the ballot initiative for the Willcox Basin; the Water Defenders will submit the signatures they collected for the Douglas Basin on July 6.
If voters approve the Willcox and Douglas AMAs in November, the new management areas will be the first in the state to have been created by citizen petition. Though other examples of collaborative groundwater management exist in the West — voluntary reductions in well use in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, for example, as well as the San Joaquin Valley of California's Collaborative Water Action Program — most have come from state mandates. There have been other groundwater-related ballot initiatives, including the bans on groundwater export proposed in California’s Siskiyou and San Luis Obispo Counties, but those have largely failed.
If the Water Defenders’ ballot initiatives succeed, they will show that local, democratic approaches to regulating the West's increasingly scarce water resources are possible.
...nature-friendly methods of farming can significantly increase biodiversity without damaging food production, a long-term research project has found.
In the post-Brexit era, the Johnson government in England had focused a lot of its farming and nature policies on creating a situation where farmers and landowners would be rewarded for increasing biodiversity by returning some land to wilder states. Now, after a massive study, it’s been shown that giving some land on the farm back to nature does not decrease the amount of food produced—and provides huge benefits to nature.
Scientists from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) spent a decade monitoring the impacts of the large-scale government-funded experiment at Hillesden, a 2,400 acre (1,000-hectare) commercial farm in Buckinghamshire. Beginning in 2005, researchers created several wildlife habitats, including seed-bearing plants for birds, wildflowers for pollinators, and tussocky grass margins to support a range of birds, insects, and small mammals.
The experiment assessed the effectiveness of these agri-environmental measures in reducing biodiversity losses caused by the intensification of UK farming practices since WWII—including declines in species that are essential for agricultural production such as pollinators and predators of crop pests. ✂️
There were increases of a third across populations of all bird species between 2006 and 2016, compared to an average of just under 13% at other monitored sites, and 40% among all butterflies between 2009-2017, compared to 21% elsewhere. A previous UKCEH study of six years found overall yields at Hillesden were maintained—even enhanced for some crops—despite the loss of agricultural land for habitat creation.
Incredible photos have been posted showing the transformation of a glen in Scotland after over 20 years of re-wilding.
Carrifran Wildwood, an ecological park in the southern uplands of Scotland, was earmarked for conservation in 1996 when plans were put together by the Borders Forest Trust to restore the woodland in the glen.
On 1st January 2000, the first trees were planted, and a boundary fence was erected to stop deer from grazing on the saplings.
Fast forward 22 years and the landscape is full of life with a thriving ecosystem replanted with native species of trees.
Rewilding Britain spokesperson Richard Bunting told The Independent: “The stunning and ongoing transformation of the landscape at Carrifran Wildwood really is a beacon of hope. It’s an inspiring illustration of how communities and volunteers can make a tremendous and long-lasting impact in tackling the biodiversity and climate crises, and how nature can bounce back if we give it the chance.”
Brought to you by Rosy, Nora, and Rascal.
Rosy’s choice is this story of kind and resourceful humans rescuing a dog in desperate trouble. She has promised me that she’ll never try to explore a cave!
Gerry Keene was about 20 minutes into his caving excursion in the Tom Moore cave system near Perryville, Mo., when one of the kids with him said there was a dog ahead of them. Dogs don't usually dwell in caves, but sure enough, there was a dog curled up on the mud floor. "She didn't look real good," Keene said. “...she just basically lifted her head, but she wouldn't move at all."
...Keene left the cave and started going to nearby houses with a photo of the dog to try and find its owner. Word got around and the dog's owner met Keene at the entrance to the cave and identified her as his dog Abby, who had been missing since June 9. The owner was shocked to hear his dog was alive. Since Abby had been missing for so long, he told the rescuers that he assumed she was likely gone forever.
Keene called one of his friends, an assistant fire chief, to come help with the rescue mission. As they were about to go back into the cave system, Rick Haley, another experienced caver, came out of it. They quickly recruited him to help. ✂️
"It is an entrance to the cave that is a little technical," Haley said. "It's vertical in places. It's windy. It's very tight. Once we reached her, I did a quick assessment to see what kind of injuries she had. It was evident she had been there a long time," Haley said.
Abby was malnourished and lethargic… Haley and Keene tried to see if Abby would walk toward the entrance, but once it was clear that was not feasible, they decided to put her in [a] duffle bag. They put out the bag and the blanket and Abby moved right on top of it. ...[They] then began the journey back together, with Keene and Haley moving Abby foot by foot and handing her over to each other until they got out of the cave. In total, the rescue mission took about an hour and a half. ✂️
After she was missing for almost two months, Abby was reunited with her owner on Aug. 6 and is recuperating.
Nora is full of admiration for these two good feline citizens, who look fierce but turn out to be...well, pussy cats. (Sorry, that fell into my lap.)
Two rescue cats who live in a hospice have been named joint National Cats of the Year 2022 [in the UK] for the “comfort and support they bring to people at the end of their life”.
Brother and sister pair, Jasper and Willow, won the prestigious award for the joy they bring to the people in St Peter and St James Hospice in Haywards Heath, West Sussex.
In 2018, the felines were adopted by the hospice to provide some companionship to those receiving end of life care.
Front of house manager at the hospice, Jackie Manville, said: “We are over the moon that Jasper and Willow have been celebrated for the important role they play at the hospice.
“Since they’ve been with us, they’ve brought comfort to so many people, whether it’s patients, family and friends, or staff.
Rascal is proud of the persistence and courage of the brave Ukrainian storks who have returned despite the war.
This picture from Ukraine of a stalwart mother stork nesting her two chicks has become a ‘symbol of hope’ for [Ukraine].
The new nest was photographed on the outskirts of Kyiv—months after a violent invasion interrupted the normal arrival of the majestic species for annual mating here.
Storks are a ‘sacred’ bird in Ukraine, where they nest every spring after wintering in Africa. ✂️
According to local tradition, storks are seen as a symbol for the arrival of spring, and as an age-old symbol of fertility. They also symbolize “a big harvest, as well as family happiness, procreation, cessation of conflicts and love for the homeland. ...[This stork] has come to symbolize not merely a mother’s devotion to her young but also the great love and devotion of Ukrainians to their motherland and a readiness not to leave,” said [Oleg Dudkin, Ukrainian Society for the Protection of Birds] . “The storks returned a few days after the Russian troops left the village and immediately began to rearrange their usual nesting place.”
Do click the link to see all of these wonderful portraits.
For the past 9 years, photographer Alexander Khimushin has been traveling the world, visiting 84 different countries. Three years ago, inspired by the idea of documenting remote cultures that are slowly disappearing due to globalization, he began his The World in Faces project. Seeking out small, ethnic minority groups around the world, Khimushin shoots incredible portraits that both honor and immortalize their culture.
Over the past 6 months, Khimushin immersed himself in the Siberian landscape, traveling 15,000 miles alone behind the wheel of an SUV to track down, and photograph, the indigenous people of this frozen land. Moving from the shores of Lake Baikal to the coast of the Japan Sea, he visited a variety of ethnic minority tribes, many of whose population is down to several dozen people.
Russia recognizes 40 different indigenous peoples living in Siberia, which range from the Evenki, whose population is spread out in different locations thousands of miles apart, to the almost extinct Tazy, whom Khimushin believes to have photographed for the first time ever.
meduza.io/… ‘We had no moral right to attack another country’. Excerpts from a book written by a Russian paratrooper about his experiences during the February invasion of Ukraine. Fascinating.
www.theatlantic.com/… The Other Ukrainian Army. An excellent (as usual) piece by Anne Applebaum. “Imperiled by Russian invaders, private citizens are stepping forward to do what Ukraine’s government cannot.”
www.yesmagazine.org/… To Help the Economy and Addiction Problems, West Virginians Draw From Within. A heartfelt piece by a man living in coal country who knows who is to blame for WV’s problems and who is working to solve them.
www.motherjones.com/… Biden’s IRA Targets a Corporate Tactic for Amassing Wealth and Avoiding Taxes. Will It Work? (The answer is yes, so the title is kinda click-baity.) A good deep dive into exactly what the 1% tax on stock buybacks will do.
thebaffler.com/… Three-Dimensional Mess. A long but delightfully witty takedown of virtual reality as marketed by Big Tech.
prospect.org/… Cut Off Private Equity’s Money Spigot. “A variety of legislative and regulatory actions would make it hard for private equity to stay in business. That should be the goal.” Amen.
news.mongabay.com/… Click here to plant a tree: Q&A with Ecosia’s Pieter van Midwood. “Ecosia is a search engine that uses its advertising revenue to fund tree-planting projects; since its launch in 2009, the company has financed the planting of more than 124 million trees.” An interview with Ecosia’s chief tree-planting officer.
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:
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!
On Saturday, Goodie introduced a new fundraising action for Gnusies with a goal of $38,000, and by the end of the day it had raised $31,000!!! As of yesterday evening, it had reached $35,802.50!
Let’s keep this miraculous outpouring of support for downballot Dems going! Can we add another $1000 by the end of the day today??
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.
Daily Kos has identified six secretary of state races in key battleground states—including Michigan—where your support could make the difference. These races have small budgets but HUGE importance for our democracy, so I'm asking you one more time: Can you chip in $1 to each of these Daily Kos-endorsed Democrats for secretary of state?
I hope today’s good news will help make this a good day for you!
Thanks to all of you for your smarts, your hearts, and
your faithful attendance at our daily Gathering of the Herd.