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Good News Roundup for Tuesday, October 3, 2023 [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-10-03  

This seems like an appropriate tune to celebrate healing from Mad Poll Disease.

This is definitely worth reading in full, especially if you’ve been freaking out. Then get out there and GOTV!!!

Remember: any election within the margin of error is also within the margin of effort —the work we must always put in to get enough of those who dread a MAGA future to turn out to vote. The only FDA-approved cure for Mad Poll Disease is to pay attention to what matters: the ongoing MAGA threat.

...since polling glosses itself with scientific veneer, many people don’t understand that polling is also dependent on the opinions of the pollster! To do a poll, pollsters have to make their best guess about who will eventually vote, and then “weight” the survey results they get to match the demographic composition of the electorate they expect on Election Day. ✂️

Today, I want to show that, regardless of the methodology, pollster, or publication, horse race polls— more formally known as “trial heats,” which ask respondents whom they intend to vote for—are worse than useless.This is especially true more than a year ahead of the election – but, as I’ll explain, it’s also true in the weeks and months before. ✂️

If you share this panic, you might be suffering from Mad Poll Disease. Symptoms include anxiety, problems sleeping, loss of affect, and feelings of helplessness about the future of democracy, which are only exacerbated by frantic Twitter exchanges about polling methodology and sample bias.

All of this has created enormous panic – both from Democratic partisans, and from everyone else who dreads a second (and forever) Trump Administration. Could it really be true that Americans are more likely to elect Trump after he tried to overthrow the election than before?

On Sunday [Sept. 24th], an ABC/Washington Post poll gave us all heart attacks when it showed President Biden trailing former President Trump by ten percentage points. Responsibly, the Post and ABC took pains to say that that result was an “outlier.” But, more than a year before the 2024 election—before any of Trump’s trials or jury verdicts, before House Republicans do or don’t impeach Biden, before another sure-to-be-controversial Supreme Court term, and who knows what else—pretty much every major media outlet has weighed in with headline-grabbing polls showing Trump and Biden to be running even.

The centerpiece of today’s intro is a great Michael Podhorzer piece that I came across on Friday and immediately knew needed to be at the top of the roundup. Then T Maysle linked to it in a comment on Sunday, so T gets credit, too.

Good morning, Gnusies! There’s a lot of good news to share today, so pour yourself a mug of your favorite morning beverage, settle into a comfortable chair, and enjoy some antidotes to the prevailing clickbait.

Good news in politics

Beau looks at the shutdown deal

x YouTube Video

Student Debt Update: Democrats Propose Wiping Out Lunch Costs

Aside from obviously being the right thing to do, this would be extremely popular.

From Newsweek:

Three Senate Democrats have introduced legislation that would wipe out the nation's student meal debt. Sens. John Fetterman, Sheldon Whitehouse and Peter Welch introduced the School Lunch Debt Cancellation Act, which would erase student meal debt by directing the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to pay for all debts owed to schools for lunch and breakfast programs. "'School lunch debt' is a term so absurd that it shouldn't even exist," Fetterman, the chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture's Subcommittee on Food and Nutrition, Specialty Crops, Organics, and Research, said in a statement on [September 25th]. ✂️ The legislation aims to erase the debt incurred under the National School Lunch Program, which operates in public and non-proft private schools as well as residential childcare institutions. Federal lawmakers made lunch free for public school students during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, but that program expired last year. Students who are unable to pay for their meals still receive them, but the money owed is added to a tab in their name. Fetterman and his colleagues said there are more than 30 million children across the nation who can't afford their school meals and the national public school meal debt is $262 million a year.

Wyden, Bonamici introduce bill to increase student food security

This is another good policy move that will reinforce the Dems’ support among young voters.

From Oregon Public Broadcasting:

About 60% of college students who are eligible for food assistance benefits don’t receive them, according to a federal study. Federal lawmakers, including Oregon’s Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, introduced legislation Tuesday in hopes of decreasing that percentage. A key staff person at one of Oregon’s largest public universities — the benefits navigator at Portland State — said the bill is a step in the right direction, though there’s more work to be done. Food assistance at PSU has been an ongoing conversation, with a frequently-used student food pantry and surveys showing the prevalence of food insecurity among students and staff. If passed, the “Opportunity to Address College Hunger Act” would require colleges to inform students participating in work-study programs of their eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Colleges would be required to provide those students with application documents. The bill would also task the federal education and agriculture departments with guiding states and colleges on the best ways to increase outreach to SNAP-eligible students. “I accessed food assistance when I was in college; without it, I would not have had enough to eat,” Bonamici said in a statement. “...Many students have told me about the challenges they face in putting food on the table for themselves and their families while in school. The Opportunity to Address College Hunger Act will help students overcome barriers to the SNAP program and help students get the nutritious meals they need to thrive.”

Senators Advance Cannabis Banking Reform Bill for First Time

Another example of smart policy and smart politics.

From NORML (🎩 to Andrew Cockburn for mentioning this in a comment on Saturday):

Members of the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs voted [last Wednesday] to advance legislation, the SAFER Banking Act, which allows financial institutions to more readily establish relationships with state-licensed cannabis businesses. Although members of the House have passed an earlier version of the legislation — the SAFE Banking Act — on seven prior occasions, today’s vote marks the first time that Senate members have voted in favor of the measure. ✂️ According to newly released data from the US Department of Treasury, only about about 12 percent of all US banks and about five percent of all US credit unions currently provide banking services to marijuana-related businesses. ✂️ [NORML’s Political Director Morgan] Fox [stated] “Marijuana businesses’ lack of access to these necessary financial services creates serious threats to the safety of cannabis consumers and the employees that serve them, limits transparency and accountability for those operating in this legal industry, and severely hinders the ability of small businesses to effectively compete with the underground market and with larger well-funded companies.”

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🍿 Repellent Republicans Rushing toward Ruin 🍿

There’s so much news on this front that it could fill several entire GNRs. So instead of story summaries, here are some schadenfreudelicious links. And in a measure of how many there are out there, these are all from just yesterday on Daily Kos!

A livid Donald Trump rants against judge hearing his New York fraud case

Facing potential financial ruin in civil trial, Trump asks his followers to bail him out

Donald Trump is unraveling, the media is covering it up

Republicans thought they could use Robert F. Kennedy Jr. against Biden. Whoops

So much for the Supreme Court bailing out John Eastman — and Thomas recused himself.

GOP-ers Ponder Expelling Matt Gaetz for Ethics Violations After His Failed Shutdown Scheme

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Good news from my corner of the world

Oregon becomes 3rd in nation to seek federal approval for a basic health program

One of my favorite aspects of this program is that it will cover undocumented youths and adults.

From Oregon Public Broadcasting:

A group of volunteer advisors to the Oregon Health Authority has voted [on September 112th] to make the state the third in the nation to seek federal approval for a basic health program. It’s an option, established in the Affordable Care Act, that allows states to provide insurance directly to some people who make a little too much money to qualify for Medicaid. The Oregon Health Policy Board voted unanimously to approve Oregon’s blueprint application. It was the last step in a lengthy policy-making process needed for state approval of the plan after a task force last year recommended moving forward with it. It’s the latest in a series of incremental steps policymakers have taken that move the state in the direction of universal health coverage, including allowing all children in Oregon who qualify for Medicaid to stay enrolled without annual re-evaluations until their 6th birthday, allowing adults to stay enrolled for two years at a time, and extending coverage to undocumented youths and adults. The basic health program, set to launch July 2024, will cover people who earn 138% to 200% of the federal poverty level.In Oregon, about 100,000 people will qualify, the state health authority estimates.

Study says drug decriminalization in Oregon did not cause more overdose deaths

This research study is a very important corrective to the knee-jerk assumption that if drug use is escalating, the only way to combat it is by jailing users. Measure 110 was a much-needed attempt to bring medical/scientific research findings plus some compassion to the thorny issue of drug addiction, and many Oregonians including me believe it’s crucial to give decriminalization a real chance to work.

From Oregon Public Broadcasting:

Three years after Oregon voters elected to decriminalize drugs, a new study has concluded that the first-in-the-nation law has not led to increased drug use or drug overdoses. The conclusion counters an increasingly common narrative that Oregon’s drug problem is unique in the country — and that decriminalization is to blame. “Our analysis suggests that state decriminalization policies do not lead to increases in overdose deaths,” Corey Davis, an assistant clinical professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and the study’s senior investigator, said in a statement. Researchers at NYU, the Network for Public Health Law and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at 13 states with similar drug overdose rates to Oregon in the three years leading up to Measure 110 going into effect. They then compared overdose rates in Oregon to those same states in the first year after decriminalization. “Overdoses went up basically everywhere,” Davis told OPB. “What didn’t happen, is that they didn’t seem to go up more in Oregon after Measure 110 went into effect.”

And in a related story...

[Gov.] Kotek directs Oregon state troopers to crack down on fentanyl distribution

Arrest the distributors and the pushers, not the users.

From Oregon Public Broadcasting:

Oregon State Police will send new resources to Portland in a bid to disrupt open air fentanyl dealing that has taken root downtown, under a plan unveiled by Gov. Tina Kotek on Tuesday. The so-called “strategic enforcement and disruptive initiative” will see state troopers teaming up with Portland police and engaging in high visibility shows of force, with troopers out in numbers along key highways. It comes as fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid, continues to drive rising overdoses and alarming headlines in Oregon and around the country. “We want to make it uncomfortable for people to be selling fentanyl in the central city,” Kotek said in a briefing with reporters Tuesday afternoon. “There will be more people watching, more detective work, more ability to see where things are getting sold and going after those folks.” Details on the new enforcement push are light. Kotek did not offer a definitive number of state police personnel that would be assigned to patrol Portland or go into details about strategy. Rather than “more uniforms on the street,” she said the extra police presence would be dedicated to tracking dealers and helping local police with prosecutions.

24-hour ‘Louie Louie’ marathon concert will feature 70 acts playing the iconic song

Portland news doesn’t get more utterly Portland than this.

From The Oregonian:

In 1963, The Kingsmen made one of the greatest rock n’ roll recordings of all time in Portland, Oregon. The Kingsmen in 1963, from left, are Don Gallucci, Jack Ely, Lynn Easton, Mike Mitchell, Bob Norby. The original “Louie Louie” was a calypso-style song, but today it transcends genre – a theory that will be put to the test when some 70 performers play it during a 24-hour marathon concert to honor the 60th anniversary of The Kingsmen’s iconic record. The original “Louie Louie” was a calypso-style song, but today it transcends genre – a theory that will be put to the test when some 70 performers play it during a 24-hour marathon concert to honor the 60th anniversary of The Kingsmen’s iconic record. The current lineup of The Kingsmen will perform the opening and closing renditions of the song at 6 p.m. Saturday and 6 p.m. Sunday at AFRU (Art Freaks Are Us) Gallery in Southeast Portland. In between, local acts will take turns with the song for a nonstop performance in every style imaginable. There will be a Tuvan throat singing version, a bagpipe version, a ukulele version and a full marching band version. Attendees will hear “Louie Louie” performed by a drag king, a singing Santa Claus, the Cleveland High School jazz ensemble and in the soothing whispers of an ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) performer. ...“We’ve got a band called Viral Tyrant doing a half-hour stoner doom metal version of ‘Louie Louie,’ " [said organizer Luke Strahota.] ✂️ Richard Berry wrote “Louie Louie” in 1955 with a rhythm based on René Touzet’s “El Loco Cha Cha.” The (innocuous) lyrics tell the story of a sailor headed home to Jamaica to see a girl. ...As Richard Berry and his band The Pharaohs toured the Pacific Northwest, “Louie Louie” became a minor regional hit. A few years later, a band of teenagers called The Kingsmen got their chance to record it at Northwestern Inc. Recording Studio at 411 S.W. 13th Ave. in Portland. Singer Jack Ely, in recently tightened braces, shouted the lyrics toward a microphone suspended from the ceiling. The result was a muffled, chaotic recording that at first seemed like a dud ­– but had actually captured a new, proto-punk, garage rock sound. ...An 18-month investigation by the FBI determined the sloppy lyrics were simply unintelligible, not obscene. But the [panic over the lyrics] launched The Kingsmen to worldwide fame. In this Sept. 5, 2013 file photo, the original members of The Kingsmen stand in front of the building where the song "Louie Louie" was recorded 50 years ago. From left are Mike Mitchell, Lynn Easton, Bob Norby and Norm Sundholm. Mayor Hales declared Oct. 5, 2013 Louie Louie Day, and a plaque commemorating the recording of the iconic song was unveiled in front of the building where the hit was recorded.

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Good news from around the nation

New California law raises minimum wage for fast food workers to $20 per hour, among nation’s highest

As Jordan Zakarin pointed out in his Progress Report blog on Sunday, Newsom is a mixed bag, and so is this new law. On the positive side, fast food workers get a decent wage at last; but on the negative side, they have had to drop their fight to make the fast food corporations liable for abuses by their franchisees, which as Zakarin mentioned “has held back organizing for decades and been a key focus of the Biden NLRB.” On balance, I’d call this a win for the workers, so I’m including it as good news.

From AP:

A new law in California will raise the minimum wage for fast food workers to $20 per hour next year, an acknowledgment from the state’s Democratic leaders that most of the often overlooked workforce are the primary earners for their low-income households. When it takes effect on April 1, fast food workers in California will have the highest guaranteed base salary in the industry. The state’s minimum wage for all other workers — $15.50 per hour — is already among the highest in the United States. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law Thursday amid a throng of cheering workers and labor leaders at an event in Los Angeles. Newsom dismissed the popular view that fast food jobs are meant for teenagers to have their first experience in the workforce.“That’s a romanticized version of a world that doesn’t exist,” Newsom said. “We have the opportunity to reward that contribution, reward that sacrifice and stabilize an industry.” Newsom’s signature reflects the power and influence of labor unions in the nation’s most populous state, which have worked to organize fast food workers in an attempt to improve their wages and working conditions. It also settles — for now, at least — a fight between labor and business groups over how to regulate the industry. In exchange for higher pay, labor unions have dropped their attempt to make fast food corporations liable for the misdeeds of their independent franchise operators in California, an action that could have upended the business model on which the industry is based. The industry, meanwhile, has agreed to pull a referendum related to worker wages off the 2024 ballot.

A digital assistant will help immigrants in Amarillo, Texas

This is a righteous use of AI. We could definitely use something like this in Portland, where navigating the byzantine city bureau structure is all but impossible.

From Axios:

As cities and states invest in digital assistants to make their websites easier to use, the city of Amarillo, Texas, is hoping to set a new standard with a "digital human" that speaks dozens of languages and can help longtime residents and newcomers alike navigate City Hall. ✂️ The new "digital human" that Amarillo is building will use a female avatar, appearing on the city's website by early 2024. It will answer queries and help people request government services. "This will actually become our digital version of 311," Richard Gagnon, Amarillo's chief information officer, tells Axios. (The city's human-staffed 311 service isn't going away, he notes.) Amarillo has the most refugees per capita of any Texas city, Gagnon says, and the "digital human" is meant to ensure that "all of our citizens will get equal service. ...I have a middle school speaking 62 languages and dialects," he says. "It's a big challenge." Rather than hiring 62 interpreters, Amarillo is using technology to "integrate conversational AI into our websites" so that everyone can chat with the city online, Gagnon says. "Not only can you ask simple questions, like 'When is the library open?' but it can also direct you, so you can say, 'Hey, I would like to book a spot in John Stiff Park.' It'll take you to that website and walk you through how to do that," Gagnon says. "And oh, by the way, you can do that in 62 different languages." ✂️ A digital (or virtual) assistant is more robust than a typical chatbot — Oracle defines it as "an advanced type of chatbot that can handle more complex interactions in a conversational way." Other examples include Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri and the Google Assistant.

Promise Plus Scholarship Program Offers Free Tuition for Most Arkansas Families

Free tuition for all but the wealthiest in-state students should be the norm all over the country.

From Arkansas State University:

Chancellor Todd Shields announced a new scholarship program providing free tuition to Arkansas State University for the majority of Arkansas families, the A-State Promise Plus. ✂️ Pointing out that the median household income in Arkansas was $53,000, the new scholarship approach helps open doors to families who originally believed attending a Carnegie Research 2 university was out of their reach. “A-State has a legacy of supporting first-generation students that stretches for decades, and we recognize that for families under $70,000, sending their children to college is a hurdle,” Shields added. “We want to make sure every young Arkansan that is qualified to go to college has that opportunity. We do not want cost to Arkansas families to limit the dreams of their children.” The A-State Promise Plus is a last-dollar scholarship that will cover the remaining tuition cost once federal grants and the Arkansas Academic Challenge or Lottery Scholarship are applied to a qualified student’s account. Along with eliminating tuition costs, the “Plus” in the program is a $2,500 housing scholarship to assist first-year students who live on campus. For students who retain the scholarship, the housing support increases from the sophomore through senior year for those who continue to live on campus.

In a first, Massachusetts to ban purchase of single-use plastic bottles by state agencies

Thank you, Massachusetts. Let’s all get rid of the scourge of single-use bottles of water, please!

From AP:

Gov. Maura Healey signed an executive order [on September 21st] that she says will make Massachusetts the first state to ban the purchase of single-use plastic bottles by state agencies. Massachusetts buys about 100,000 of the plastic water bottles each year. The order bars all executive offices and agencies in Massachusetts from purchasing any single-use plastic bottles under 21 fluid ounces except in cases of emergency. Healey, a Democrat, said the executive order takes effect immediately. Healey also signed a second executive order that she said will set state biodiversity conservation goals for 2030, 2040, and 2050 — and develop strategies to meet those targets. She said protections will be among the first to extend to coastal and marine habitats. “Massachusetts has a long history of being first in the nation, and we’re proud to be the first to set long-term targets for biodiversity and to ban state agencies from purchasing single-use plastic bottles,” Healey said

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Good news from around the world

Brazil supreme court rules in favor of Indigenous land rights in historic win

A wonderful piece of news that’s been a long time coming.

From The Guardian:

Brazil’s supreme court has blocked efforts to dramatically strip back Indigenous land rights in what activists called a historic victory for the South American country’s original inhabitants. Nine of the court’s 11 members voted against what rights groups had dubbed the “time limit trick” – an agribusiness-backed attempt to prevent Indigenous communities claiming land they did not physically occupy in 1988. There were emotional scenes outside the supreme court’s headquarters in Brasília on Thursday, after a majority was formed to support a ruling in favour of Indigenous rights. Some activists wept with joy; others danced. x YouTube Video

Britain goes secular

I tend to think of the Brits as more socially conservative than Americans, so I’m happy to learn that’s not true. And as Mokurai frequently tells us, this is the result of “generational turnover”: “Each new generation is more liberal than the one before.”

From The Progress Network:

For 40 years, the National Centre for Social Research, the largest independent and nonprofit social research organization in the United Kingdom, has been tracking British attitudes toward social and moral issues. In their latest report, they say that these have undergone such a “profound, long-term, secular change” that “Britain now looks and feels like a different country.” For example: In 1983, 50 percent of respondents said that sexual relationships between adults of the same gender were “always wrong.” Now just 9 percent express that view.

76 percent say that the law should allow an abortion if the woman decided on her own that she does not want to have the child, up from 37 percent in 1983.

In 1987, 48 percent agreed that “a man’s job is to earn money, a woman’s job is to look after the home and family.” Now, only 9 percent agree. Attitudes toward transgender rights have reversed sharply in recent years, however: 30 percent now say that a transgender person should be allowed to have the sex on their birth certificate changed if they want, down from 53 percent in 2019. The report puts down these massive changes to “generational turnover.” Each new generation is more liberal than the one before.

Nigeria to Expand Adolescent Girls’ Education Program to Reach 8.6 Million Girls

Secondary education for girls is transformative not only for them personally but also for their nations as a whole.

From The World Bank:

The World Bank approved additional financing of $700 m for Nigeria to scale up the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) program whose goal is to improve secondary education opportunities among girls in targeted states. The Additional Financing will scale up project activities from the current seven states to eleven additional states and increase the targeted beneficiaries to include out-of-school (OOS) girls, those who are married, and those who have disabilities. Nigeria has over 12 -15 million out of school children in the school- age group, reportedly one of the largest, with the majority of them concentrated in Northern Nigeria, where secondary school completion rates among girls are lower than the southern region of the country. There are also high levels of violence around schools and an estimated 1 million children were affected by increased insecurity in 2020-2021, many of them may not have returned to school. With girls being at risk from gender-based violence, an array of issues including poverty and negative cultural practices stand as barriers to education for girls. In the seven AGILE program implementing states – Borno, Ekiti, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, and Plateau – the number of girls in secondary schools has increased from about 900,000 to over 1.6 million. Under the program, over 5,000 classrooms have been renovated and over 250,000 eligible girls have received scholarships. The AGILE program has supported construction and rehabilitation of WASH [water, sanitation, and hygiene] facilities in secondary schools and the installation of computers and solar panels which make attending school more convenient and conducive for both girls and boys. Life skills, systems strengthening, and advocacy are other key aspects of the program which address social norms impeding girls’ education.

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Good news in medicine

Nobel Prize Awarded to Covid Vaccine Pioneers

Justice for Katalin Karikó at last!! She and Weissman are true heroes.

From The NY Times (gift link):

Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, who together identified a chemical tweak to messenger RNA, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday. Their work enabled potent Covid vaccines to be made in less than a year, averting tens of millions of deaths and helping the world recover from the worst pandemic in a century. The approach to mRNA the two researchers developed has been used in Covid shots that have since been administered billions of times globally and has transformed vaccine technology, laying the foundation for inoculations that may one day protect against a number of deadly diseases like cancer. The slow and methodical research that made the Covid shots possible has now run up against a powerful anti-vaccine movement, especially in the United States. Skeptics have seized in part on the vaccines’ rapid development — among the most impressive feats of modern medical science — to undermine the public’s trust in them. But the breakthroughs behind the shots unfolded little by little over decades, including at the University of Pennsylvania, where Dr. Weissman runs a lab. Dr. Karikó, the 13th woman to win the prize, languished for many long years without funding or a permanent academic position, keeping her research afloat only by latching on to more senior scientists at the University of Pennsylvania who let her work with them. Unable to get a grant, she said she was told she was “not faculty quality” and was forced to retire from the university a decade ago. ...The mRNA work was especially frustrating, she said, because it was met with indifference and a lack of funds. She said she was motivated by more than not being called a quitter; as the work progressed, she saw small signs that her project could lead to better vaccines. “You don’t persevere and repeat and repeat just to say, ‘I am not giving up,’” she said.

Scientists Discover a Small Strand of RNA to Be Key to Fighting Cancer With Our Immune System

The progress that cancer research is making is absolutely stunning. This latest study looks like it might actually lead to cures. And it owes a lot to the original work of Karikó and Weissman.

From Good News Network:

A team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has shown how a single, small strand of microRNA, known as let-7, governs the ability of T-cells to recognize and remember tumor cells. This cellular memory is the basis for how vaccines work. Boosting cellular memory to recognize tumors could help improve cancer therapies. ✂️ Our bodies have T-cells, which are white blood cells that specialize in fighting both pathogens, think of the common cold, and altered cells of the organism itself, like tumor cells. Most of the time, the T-cells are “naïve”—mustered out of duty and resting. But when they recognize foreign antigens after bumping into them, they suddenly wake up, turn into killer T-cells and attack whatever the pathogen may be, from the sniffles to COVID, or even cancer. After the killer T-cells have won their battle, most of them die. “But,” said [senior author Leonid] Pobezinsky, “somehow a few survive, transform into memory cells and form an elite task force called the ‘memory pool’—they remember what that particular antigen looked like, so that they can be on the lookout for the next time it invades the body.” … Cancerous tumor cells work by tricking the killer T-cells, turning them off before they can attack and create a memory pool, leaving the cancer to metastasize unchecked. “What we’ve discovered,” says Pobezinsky, “is that a tiny piece of miRNA, let-7...is highly expressed in memory cells, and that the more let-7 a cell has, the less chance that it will be tricked by cancerous tumor cells, and the greater chance it has of turning into a memory cell.” If the memory cell isn’t tricked by the cancer, then it can fight and, crucially, remember what that cancerous cell looks like. “Memory cells can live for a very long time,” adds [research assistant professor Elena] Pobezinskaya. “They possess stem-cell-like features and can live for 70 years.”

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Good news in science

Early Man Was Building Lincoln Log-like Structures 500,000 Years Ago, New Preserved Wood Shows

Archaeologists have been stuck in a Homo sapiens supremacy bubble for way too long. There were many hominids, and it’s absurdly narrow-minded to think that only Homo sapiens could have learned to utilize the materials around them to make their lives better.

From Good News Network:

In a true paradigm shift, persevered timbers show that early man, and potentially older species than Homo sapiens, were building wooden structures 476,000 years ago. Wikipedia lists the earliest carpentry assemblage ever found previously as a water well cover carved from oak boards from 5,600 BCE. The oldest wooden tool ever found was a carved spear from about 416,000 years ago. These 5-foot-long logs had clear signs of woodworking with stone tools, with the end of one set atop another at a right angle. There are notches cut into the ends to allow them to fit into one another, a technique that makes them seem a little like Lincoln Logs. Nothing of the sort has ever been found from this period and is rarely found from the Neolithic period. Professor Larry Barham at the University of Liverpool led the excavations on a river bank near Kalambo Falls in the southern African country of Zambia, and said that it changed how he views our early ancestors. “This find has changed how I think about our early ancestors, they made something new, and large, from wood,” Professor Barham . “They used their intelligence, imagination, and skills to create something they’d never seen before, something that had never previously existed.”

Scientists discover new electric blue tarantula species in Thailand forest

UPDATE: The photos and video I included in this story freaked out one of our readers who’s an arachnophobe, so out of courtesy I’ve removed the images. If you want to see the photos, click the link. And click this link to see the YouTube video.

I think we should adopt Chilobrachys natanicharum as a Dem mascot: it’s bright blue, remarkably adaptable, and is thriving despite threats to its environment.

From USA Today:

A new tarantula species with a curious dark blue hue has been found in southern Thailand. Blue is one of the rarest colors to find in nature, which is why the coloring spotted on the Chilobrachys natanicharum is notable to scientists, according to research journal ZooKeys. The blue-violet shade found on this tarantula most closely resembles the color emitted by electrical sparks. The arachnid was collected from a Thai mangrove forest in the Phang-Nga province. ✂️ “The secret behind the vivid blue coloration of our tarantula lies not in the presence of blue pigments, but rather in the unique structure of their hair, which incorporates nanostructures that manipulate light to create this striking blue appearance,” lead scientist Dr. Narin Chomphuphuang of Khon Kaen University in Thailand wrote. ✂️ The electric blue tarantula demonstrates remarkable adaptability. These tarantulas can thrive in arboreal as well as terrestrial burrows in evergreen forests. However, when it comes to mangrove forests, their habitat is restricted to residing inside tree hollows due to the influence of tides,” according to Chomphuphuang. It is one of the world’s rarest tarantulas.

Listen as Millions of Monarch Butterflies Make One of the Rarest Sounds on Earth

From My Modern Met:

The recording of the amazing “waterfall” sound of the butterflies starts at the 3:30 mark:

x YouTube Video

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Good news for the environment

The Texas Shrimper Holding Industrial Polluters Accountable

I encourage you to clink the link and read this entire inspiring story. Erin Brockovich calls Diane Wilson the “real Erin Brockovich” because, as the story notes, “in December 2019, a federal judge awarded Wilson and her coalition a historic $50 million dollar settlement — the largest win of an individual citizen against an industrial polluter ever in the history of the Clean Water Act.”

From Reasons to Be Cheerful:

Diane Wilson ...when a fellow shrimper with three different kinds of cancer showed her a news clip from the Associated Press in 1989, [Diane] Wilson connected the dots. Calhoun County was the number-one county in the nation for toxic waste disposal, the news story read. Aluminum smelter Alcoa had contaminated Lavaca Bay and other nearby waters with mercury, creating one of the largest Superfund sites in the US. Wilson was incredulous. “We had the distinct honor of containing half the hazardous waste Texas generated,” she learned. Nobody had ever mentioned that. “I was so surprised that I called a town meeting,” Wilson says with her heavy Texan accent. “Everybody went crazy and tried to talk me out of organizing a meeting.” How dare she, a shrimper woman, question the biggest employers in the county? This was the day her “life turned 180 degrees from reclusive fisherwoman with five kids to controversial hell-raiser,” as Wilson puts it, and the beginning of a fight against some of the nation’s largest petrochemical polluters that has lasted to this day. Wilson, now 74 years old, is the founder of Calhoun County Resource Watch and the executive director of San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper, both small nonprofits and all-volunteer. Eight petrochemical plants operate in the region she calls home. Close to the largest concentration in the country, these plants make up 42 percent of the petrochemical capacity in the US. Locals call this area the “cancer belt.” ✂️ She was...just honored with the 2023 Goldman Environmental Prize at the Kennedy Center this summer, because her decades-long fight is an exemplary story of grit and determination, as well as a paradigm for how one individual could rally a community against all odds. Wilson calls it “Diane versus Goliath.”

Eco-concrete is Cementing Itself as a Climate Solution

A really cool environmental story from Oregon wine country. There are a lot more very interesting details in the full story, so I encourage you to click the link.

From Outrider:

Vintner Remy Drabkin, the owner of Remy Wines, knows a lot about grapes, particularly rustic varieties that originated in Italy. But until Drabkin converted a barn into a winery last year just outside McMinnville in western Oregon, she didn’t know much about concrete, which also originated in Italy —being invented 2,500 years ago by the ancient Romans. As mayor of McMinnville, however, Drabkin was aware that the making of concrete, which is produced by mixing cement, sand, gravel, and water, accounts for around 7% of the global carbon dioxide emissions in our atmosphere, according to the Global Cement and Concrete Association. ✂️ Drabkin hired John Mead, an Oregon contractor and mechanical engineer, who suggested they search for carbon-neutral concrete for the winery’s foundation. Discovering that no such product was commercially available, they set out to create their own, joining the global race to shrink concrete’s carbon footprint — a move so critical that the U.S. government and the cement industry are getting on board. ✂️ Last year at the Remy Wines, after months of experimentation, failures, and weekly durability tests, they finally hit paydirt. The crucial ingredient was an additive known as “biochar,” a carbon-rich form of biomass that resembles burnt wood chips. Often derived from plants, the biochar that Drabkin and her team ultimately turned to came from the treated “bio-solids” in wastewater plants. “It’s basically poop,” Drabkin said. Vintner Remy Drabkin shows off her hands after pouring eco-concrete The biochar is heated without oxygen and doesn’t produce CO2, instead trapping carbon and methane within, and when it’s added at the later stages of the concrete mixing, it replaces some of the sand required. According to Mead, by creating concrete that has trapped both the carbon dioxide and the methane from sewage products, which normally would be released when the organic matter decays, the process offsets the CO2 released in making cement and ultimately produces concrete that goes beyond carbon-neutral because it sequesters more carbon than is emitted during production. An assessment by environmental contractor James Salazar, who is now Sustainability Director at WAP Sustainability, showed that the Remy-Mead concrete is carbon-negative, trapping more CO2 than is emitted during its production.

Waterfleas hold key to cleaner environment and better human health

I love all the surprising ways researchers are finding to remove toxins from the environment.

From University of Birmingham:

The humble waterflea, or Daphnia, could unlock successful wastewater treatment Tiny waterfleas could play a pivotal role in removing persistent chemical pollutants from wastewater – making it safe to use in factories, farms and homes, a new study reveals. Scientists and engineers have discovered a method to harness Daphnia to provide a scalable low-cost, low-carbon way of removing pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and industrial chemicals from wastewater. This approach avoids the toxic byproducts typically associated with current technologies. The researchers have developed technology that allows them to retrofit populations of waterfleas into wastewater treatment plants. What makes their technology unique is the selection of strains based on their chemical tolerance which the researchers ‘resurrect’ from past environments. ✂️ Senior author Professor Luisa Orsini, from the University of Birmingham, commented: ...“The water flea's remarkable ability to remain dormant for centuries allows scientists to revive dormant populations that endured varying historical pollution pressures. Leveraging this trait, researchers sourced strains with diverse tolerances to chemical pollutants, incorporating them into the technology.” ✂️ Co-author Professor Karl Dearn, also from the School of Engineering, University of Birmingham, commented: “We introduced these remarkable water fleas into custom containment devices to refine effluent before its final release. Once in place, our technology largely maintains itself, attributed to the water fleas' clonal reproduction capability.” Lead author and University of Birmingham PhD student Muhammad Abdullahi added: “This novel nature-inspired technology provides a potentially revolutionary process for sustainably removing persistent chemical pollutants from wastewater. By preventing these chemicals from being discharged, we can protect our environment and biodiversity.”

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Good news for and about animals

Brought to you by Rosy, Nora, and Rascal.

Dogs and wolves can remember where people hide food, scientists have found

No surprise here, says Rosy.

From The Independent (UK):

Dogs and wolves appear to remember where people hide food, suggesting they are capable of a form of social learning known as observational spatial memory, according to scientists. Observational spatial memory is a skill that involves the ability to remember and mentally map the layout of an environment or scene by simply observing it. It allows individuals to retain and later recall information about the arrangement of objects, landmarks, or locations in their surroundings. Aside from humans, birds, aquatic animals like dolphins and sea lions and insects such as bees are known to possess varying degrees of observational spatial memory. Previous research has suggested that wolves and dogs – who diverged from wolves around 40,000 years ago – may possess observational spatial memory but not much is known about their abilities. For the study, published in the journal Plos One, researchers in Austria conducted experiments with nine timber wolves and eight mongrel dogs at the Wolf Science Center in Ernsbrunn, Austria. Each animal was tested on the ability to find four, six, or eight hidden caches of food. In some instances the dogs and wolves observed the human hiding the food, in others, they had to locate the cache that was already hidden. The first five food caches were found more quickly by both dogs and wolves when they saw the food being hidden, as compared to not seeing where the food was concealed. This suggests that the animals did not just use scent in order to find the food, the researchers said, providing further support to the hypothesis that both wolves and dogs are capable of observational spatial memory.

Chicken and Pugsley

Here’s a twofer that Rascal chose in honor of his departed friend Nora: a delightful and amazing video featuring a bird and cat who adore each other. I was especially moved by how they comforted each other when Chicken and Pugsley’s first cat friend died.

x YouTube Video

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