(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Wednesday Good News Round Up Many Cares to Give [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-25 Good Wednesday Morning! Here we are again poised to share a cup of your beverage of choice and share some good news. My life changed dramatically during and after the pandemic. I don’t need to go into the details because I am not looking for the conversation to focus on my problems. I know I have also mentioned before that I am semi-retiring (next month as a matter of fact). The transition from my old position to my new one has been a life challenge as well. Again, I do not offer this as a conversation piece but a lead up to my point that both of the personal occurrences have changed me in many ways. One thing I find myself saying more often than not is that I have no effs left to give but in reality it is that the effs I do have left to give are more focused, higher level (to me personally) and meaningful. I still have strong opinions about lots of different matters and topics but I do try focus on what is important (to me) and not all the crazy negativity. What does this all have to with the good news? Probably not a lot, but on the other hand as we all deal with the difficulties of life today, real world or personal, maybe we should choose how we spend our effs that we have left to give. Here's to having no effs to give but still giving a shit. “A person who has no fucks left to give is in fact, a very caring person. It's just a person who doesn't waste their time on what doesn't matter.” – Alison, Wardrobe Oxygen So shut out the RW grifter, ignore the nastiness. There are so many good and worthy things to focus on. Moving onward. I wanted to share a video that was presented during a conference I attended. The words struck and moved me, gave me some clarity and of course hope for our future. x YouTube Video Hope How ‘Recovery Doulas’ Support Pregnant People Struggling With Addiction When Megan Dobbs began planning how she wanted her upcoming birth to go, two goals rose to the top of her list. She wanted to be fully present and remember every moment. And she didn’t want anything to compromise her sobriety. The idea to train recovery doulas in Montana partially grew out of one of Megkian Doyle’s closely held beliefs: that one generation can chart a path out of generational cycles of substance use disorder. Doyle is the director of the Regional Community Action Team at One Health, a network of health care clinics spanning much of rural Montana. In October, the recovery doula program Doyle dreamed up celebrated its first three graduates and started training another cohort, with members hailing from small towns — Chinook, Sidney, Hardin — across Montana’s north, east and southeast regions. Kindness The Power of Sharing Patients’ Life Stories With Caregivers When Jay Newton-Small moved her father Graham, who had Alzheimer’s, into an assisted living facility, he was no longer able to tell or remember much of his life story. His daughter was asked to fill out a detailed questionnaire about his life, but she wondered, who would remember 20 hand-written pages for each of the 100-plus residents in that community? Tapping into her experience as a longtime Time magazine correspondent, Newton-Small tried a different approach: she typed up his story on one page for his caregivers and pasted it on the walls. Newton-Small says that this simple act of storytelling transformed his care. Newton-Small found the experience so transformative and so many families approached her about doing the same for their family members that in 2017, she founded MemoryWell, a platform that allows patients and their families to create short life stories with the help of professional writers. The goal is to enable caregivers to relate to their patients. Families can contribute by uploading photos and memories. The initiative has received several noteworthy awards, including the Not Impossible Healthcare Breakthrough Award in 2021. Righteousness Iceland PM joins crowd of 100,000 for full-day women’s strike The prime minister of Iceland has said she wants to achieve full gender equality in her country by 2030 as she joined an estimated 100,000 women and non-binary people in an all-day strike, the biggest protest the country has ever seen. Speaking outside her office before the start of a huge gathering in the centre of Reykjavík on Tuesday, Katrín Jakobsdóttir said the world was dragging its feet on gender equality but that Iceland was doing its best to deal with “huge issues” around the gender pay gap, gender-based violence and sexual harassment. She told the Guardian: “My dream is that we will do that [achieve full gender equality] before 2030, but I know it will take a lot of effort. US unions winning big gains amid ‘Great Reset’ in worker power Call it the Great Reset. Across the US, labor unions are winning surprisingly large contract settlements as workers have reset their expectations to demand considerably more than they did just a few years ago, and that has in turn pressured many corporations to reset – and increase – the pay packages they are giving in union contracts. The result has been a wave of impressive – sometimes eye-popping – union contracts over the past year, far more generous than in recent decades. In August, 15,000 American Airlines pilots won pay increases of 46% over four years. In a huge labor confrontation last summer, 340,000 Teamster members at UPS won raises of $7.50 an hour over five years, with drivers’ pay climbing to $49 an hour and part-time workers receiving a pay increase of 48% on average. Discover Students Build World’s First Off-Road Solar-Powered SUV–and Drive it Across Morocco Students in The Netherlands have designed a solar-powered SUV that doubles as a small camper van to produce the ultimate concept car for off-grid adventure in sunny climes. Driving it 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) across Morocco, the Stella Terra as it’s called showed a wide variety of advantages over existing electric SUVs. “Morocco has a huge variety of landscapes and different surfaces in quite a short distance,” says Thieme Bosman, events manager for the TUE team. He told CNN the car was tested “on every type of surface that a car like this could encounter.” The wide sloping roof has inbuilt solar panels that charge the electric battery while the car is driving. This allowed the creators, students from Eindhoven University of Technology (TUE), to shave off the weight of the battery packs, creating a lighter car that used less electricity to power. By shaving off weight wherever possible and crafting the Stella Terra’s body panels to have an aerodynamic shape, the car is just 2,645 pounds (1,200 kilograms), about 25% less than similar electric SUVs. “We aim to also inspire not only everyday people, but also the automotive industry, the Ford and Chryslers of the world, to think again about their designs and to innovate faster than they currently do,” says Bosman 14-year-old Invents Soap for Treating Skin Cancer and Wins Top Honor as America’s Top Young Scientist What if washing your hands to prevent getting a simple flu virus was all that was needed to prevent skin cancer? Bold as that sounds, it wasn’t an Anderson Center laureate who came up with the idea, but a 14-year-old. Heman Bekele, a 9th grader at W.T. Woodson High School in Annandale, Virginia, was awarded the $25,000 grand prize as the winner of the 2023 3M Young Scientist Challenge, with a melanoma treatment in the form of a bar of soap. As the winner of the nation’s premier middle school science contest, now in its 16th year, Bekele has been accorded the prestigious title of “America’s Top Young Scientist.” Laugh Cool! Tom Emmer's Speaker Nomination Lasted Only Slightly Longer Than 'Avengers: Endgame' I had to share this for the headline alone! One fateful fall afternoon, House Republicans—or some of them, at least—coalesced to nominate Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) to be their next Speaker. The time was around 12:30 p.m. or so on Tuesday. By 3 p.m., CNN and other outlets reported Emmer’s bid was “on the verge of collapse.” And by 4:30 p.m., Emmer stepped down. His nomination was just about four hours old at the time of death. For comparison, it would take you about 3 hours and 20 minutes to watch 2019's “Avengers: Endgame,” including previews. Not sure how often I have mentioned what a huge Green Day fan I am. Their 2004 album American Idiot really spoke of the times. I was lucky to see them live, attend their Broadway play and the kick off of the Off Broadway production here in my hometown. They have a new album coming out in January and it looks like it will speak to many issues. Here is the first track. (Premiered at the When We Were Young Festival in Las Vegas of which if I was 20 years younger and much healthier I would have been at!) x YouTube Video Apologies for the lack of current political news but sometimes I just can’t, you all know what to do though! Remember, VOTE, Be active, Listen, Be kind, but mostly VOTE! That’s it for me, take it over in the comments. Peace. ✌️ [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/story/2023/10/25/2201417/-Wednesday-Good-News-Round-Up-Many-Cares-to-Give Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/