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From the GNR Newsroom: Its the Monday Good News Roundup [1]

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

Date: 2024-07-01  

Its that time again friends, time for the Monday Good News Roundup, where the GNR Newsroom (Myself, Killer300 and Bhu) come together to bring you the stories to start your week off right.

So to start off, it was my birthday last week, and as is traditional, bad political stuff happened on the week of my birth (seems to be a tradition at this point), Usually this is because of the Supreme Court getting in some last minute bullshitery right before they go on break (and there was that don’t get me wrong), but there was also the debate, which happened on my birthday.

And of course because it wasn’t the slam dunk that everyone thought it would be, people are doomspiraling and calling for Biden to step down or some such nonsense, and, well, people far more eloquent than me have already talked on the subject, so I wont say much. What I want to say is to once again address the…. not sure what to call them, the people who refuse to vote for Biden despite the clear and present danger to our democracy, who don’t understand that voting is something you have to do every time, that change doesn’t happen over night, that if the left doesn’t vote for them, the democrats will keep going right trying to get the center vote.

And that message is: Kindly shut up.

I don’t care if you don’t like Biden, I don’t care why you don’t like Biden. Biden is your only choice this November. Its Biden, or its Trump, and if you pick any answer aside from those two its gonna be Trump.

And that includes people who say they will vote for Biden and then can’t stop shittalking the guy. Like I said. No one cares. We have a job to do, that job is to vote, and to encourage other people to vote for Biden too. You don’t do that by badmouthing him. Like I can’t believe I have to explain this to people AGAIN. AGAIN.

Like real talk, I am friends with and play dnd with someone who votes for Trump. He’s a nice guy, we don’t talk politics for obvious reasons, but he’s a good enough fellow. And I respect him a hell of a lot more than people who claim to be on my side politically and spend all their energy sabotaging our efforts. Like at least I know where I stand with my friend.

Okay, I got that out of my system, lets get on with the good news wont we?

You can’t make whisky — or vodka or gin or any other liquor — without generating some heat. The heat required to produce the billions of liters of liquor consumed each year typically comes from fossil fuels, and much of it ends up as wasted energy. But carbon emissions penalties in Europe and government incentives in the U.S. have nudged liquor producers in each region — and companies across the food and beverage spectrum — to begin embracing new technologies that can lower their carbon emissions.

Not sure if this counts as science is awesome but fuck it. Considering the previous week some people around here could use a drink.

When cities hit a certain level of bikeability, they enter a virtuous cycle where more infrastructure inspires more residents to become rider-advocates who, in turn, advocate for more infrastructure — and this year, more U.S. cities than ever have reached that critical tipping point, a top advocacy group says.

Nice to see some good self sustaining cycles for a change. They can’t all be bad.

This past May, national nonprofit the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) held their annual flagship event in Cincinnati. The event gathered 1,454 total attendees from across the country (and world) to share ideas and inspiration about urban development, the built environment, and the power of place.

Congress for the New Urbanism is a national nonprofit that champions better design of cities and towns—urban places designed for people.

“Good” urbanism, New Urbanists argue, is about much more than building good-looking and efficient cities. It’s about building cities that are designed to be “healthy places for people and businesses to thrive and prosper.”

I always thought we built this city on Rock and Roll.

Cambridge researchers may have a new adage thanks to an ingenious method that can apparently make cleaner cement as part of the steelmaking process. As a result, it seems that two dirty materials can make a clean one. While the would-be proverb isn't quite on par with offerings from Confucious, the science behind the breakthrough could revolutionize manufacturing in the building sector. It's widely reported that the cement and steelmaking industries make up about 8% and 7% of annual global air pollution.

New recycling methods are always good news.

And now for some GNR theater, just to show that maybe it wasn’t all bad news from SCOTUS this week, they do get some stuff right.

A court-appointed bankruptcy trustee has indicated plans to sell off right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' Infowars media empire to pay some of the $1.5b (£1.18b) he owes to families of the Sandy Hook school shooting victims. In a court filing filed on Sunday, the trustee, Christopher Murray, said he was planning to close operations of Infowars' owner Free Speech Systems and "liquidate its inventory". The news comes a week after a bankruptcy judge decided Mr Jones' personal assets would be liquidated to pay back the victims for spreading misinformation about the deadly 2012 shooting at a suburban Connecticut school.

A victory for all those who value truth and honesty. Its good to know there will be one less right wing noise maker gumming up the works.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has announced changes to occupation requirements when applying for disability benefits. Announced on Monday, June 24, the SSA said it would remove obsolete or seldom performed occupations from a list of jobs that disabled applicants for the Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs. The list includes jobs like reptile farmer, canary breeder and railroad telegrapher. Read more: Checking Account vs. Savings Account: Which is Best for You? The list of professions, from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, is used to determine whether a benefit applicant could find another job based on their abilities, which could result in a rejection of benefits on the basis of being determined "not disabled." In all, 114 jobs are being dropped from the list.

Considering I might be going on this soon once I get my Autism diagnosis, this is good news for me.

But there’s a good chance a working fusion reactor is near. Dozens of private companies are using decades of government-funded fusion research in their attempts to build practical fusion reactors, and it's likely that at least one of them will be successful. If one is, the challenge for fusion will be whether it can compete on cost with other sources of low-carbon electricity.

So the answer is...maybe? If they can pull it off it will be quite the game changer.

General elections in Alaska. Closed party primaries and the general election in Maine. Certain party primaries in New York City and Virginia. City offices in Minneapolis and San Francisco. Military and overseas voters in Alabama and Arkansas. Ranked choice voting applies in all these varied contexts—and many more! In 2024, however, millions of US voters will choose their leaders using the method known as plurality voting. Plurality voting is still the most common voting method in the US, even though it doesn’t always foster the best outcomes for the majority of voters: unpopular or extreme candidates can win with less than majority support and personal attacks work better than discussion of issues, on the campaign trail through to the halls of power. Multiple cities, states, and other governing bodies have sought out and demonstrated another way: ranked choice voting. Ranked choice voting is simple. In trials and testing in advanced democracies throughout the world, the method has evinced benefits in partisan primaries, nonpartisan general elections, and others: it ensures that winners have the support of a majority of voters,1prevents spoiler candidates from warping election outcomes, punishes negative campaigning, and encourages more diverse and less established candidates to jump in and run for office.

Ranked choice is something worth fighting for in the future.

This week, the analytics firm Gallup released their latest annual report on global emotions, which measures the prevalence of positive and negative daily experiences. It’s a massive undertaking, with 146,000 people surveyed across 142 countries in 2023. The main takeaway of this year’s report is that the world has rebounded emotionally from the pandemic, with positive emotions—feeling well-rested and respected, laughing and enjoying, and learning something new or interesting—returning to pre-pandemic highs and negative emotions like stress, anger, worry, and sadness declining. Humanity, by and large, is resilient! We knew that already, but a reminder is always welcome. Gallup also highlighted, perhaps surprisingly, that people under 30 are the most positive of all age groups, and were ahead of the pandemic recovery curve: they returned to their pre-pandemic positivity levels a year before everyone else.

We even outnumber the gloom and doomers. Lets make sure we still have a reason to feel good in November.

Heavy industries are among the world’s worst climate polluters. Making key materials like steel, cement, and chemicals emits over a fifth of all human-caused carbon dioxide every year. Yet only a tiny slice of total climate-focused investment today goes toward efforts to decarbonize the industrial sector. This mismatch of proportions — big emissions, little funding — reflects the risky nature of using novel and expensive technologies to try to transform complex, large-scale processes. Increasingly, though, a handful of well-funded and high-profile venture firms are starting to fill that funding gap by backing early-stage companies with potentially game-changing solutions. The latest example comes from The Engine Ventures, a venture capital fund focused on climate, health, and advanced systems that spun out from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Best of luck to them, hope their plans work out.

A State Senator, a local Planning Commissioner, and a national advocacy leader all agree on at least two points – parking mandates are very harmful to communities and the parking reform movement is gathering momentum. America Walks’ June 5 webinar, “People Over Parking: Advancing Affordable Housing and Walkability through Parking Reform,” featured Minnesota State Senator Omar Fateh, author of a bill to prohibit communities across the state from enacting minimum parking requirements. Although the “Minnesota People Over Parking Act” did not become law in the 2024 legislative session, Sen. Fateh confirmed that he received strong support from members on both sides of the aisle and plans to introduce his proposal again next year.

Less parking spaces, more walking spaces.

Then, on April 12, 2012, “the heavens opened,” Ivanov recalls, the date clearly imprinted in his memory. The driest season on record turned into the wettest, saving all of the crop. But Ivanov didn’t want the farm to reach such a crisis point again, so he began looking for solutions — and realized the answer had been above his head, and on the farm, all along. Rainwater harvesting had been introduced at Wilkin & Sons on a small scale in the 1980s, by diverting rainwater traveling through the gutters from the farm’s buildings into newly built reservoirs to store it. Ivanov then expanded the process to include the roof space of all the farm’s greenhouses and polytunnels (smaller greenhouse-like structures) and built more reservoirs to increase the amount of rainwater the farm could store. Now, pipes are attached to all the gutters within the farm’s 50 acres of covered structures, so rainwater can travel to seven reservoirs across the 650 acre property, rather than being lost to the sea.

Sustainable water use is good for us all.

Each year, US cities lose an estimated 36 million trees to development, disease and old age, many of which ultimately end up in landfills. Losing these urban trees — known to help cool their neighborhoods, lower carbon emissions and improve mental health, among other benefits — costs an estimated $96 million annually. In Philadelphia, a partnership is giving the City of Brotherly Love’s fallen trees new life. Philadelphia Parks & Rec joined forces with Cambium Carbon, a Washington, D.C.-based startup that repurposes waste wood, and PowerCorpsPHL, a local nonprofit that creates job opportunities for unemployed and under-employed 18- to 30-year-olds, to launch the Reforestation Hub in late May. Rather than sending trees straight to the landfill or the city’s organic recycling center to simply become mulch or wood chips, the Reforestation Hub (which is co-located in the city’s organic recycling center) will salvage as many trees as it can. As many as possible will be turned into Cambium’s Carbon Smart Wood, which stores 5.23 pounds of carbon in each board foot, before going on to become everything from desks and tables to fences and even decking and siding.

This is really sweet, its giving these trees a second chance at life.

Something we don’t often do here at the Monday GNR: Please enjoy this musical interlude.

It’s election season, so the narratives are flying fast and furious. One of the MAGA side’s narratives is that America has become a violent, chaotic, and ungovernable place under Biden, and that Trump will restore order. This is a replay of a narrative they successfully used in 2016, when it was sort of true; in fact, it was the theme of Trump’s convention speech. It’s natural for the MAGA folks to want to re-up this golden oldie. Their story of a world in chaos (thanks, of course, to weak and hapless Democrats) encompasses border security, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and, most importantly, spiraling crime rates. But there’s at least one big problem for this narrative: Crime is falling fast in America.

Don’t believe the GOP’s BS. Things are better under Biden.

California already gets some of its clean electricity from geothermal power plants, which harness the heat and steam found naturally near the earth’s surface. Now, the state is poised to add hundreds more megawatts of geothermal to its overall energy mix — only instead of drawing from local geysers and hot springs, the power will come from a cutting-edge project in Utah. On Tuesday, Fervo Energy announced that it secured power purchase agreements with the utility giant Southern California Edison (SCE). The geothermal startup uses oil-and-gas drilling techniques to tap heat from deep underground. Fervo began construction last fall on an ​“enhanced geothermal” project in Beaver County, Utah, which is expected to generate nearly 400 MW of around-the-clock electricity when it reaches full production in 2028.

More great news for California.

Happy Saturday all. I am grateful for the spirited debate we are having in our paid subscriber chat about Joe Biden’s struggles this week and Donald Trump’s epically bat-shit crazy debate performance. As always, folks should work hard to be civil and respectful, particularly in weighty moments like this one. As I wrote yesterday, I am taking a few days to consider everything that’s happen, read and listen to people here and whom I respect. This weekend I am most focused on making these last two days before the critical filing deadline on Sunday night at midnight really count. We need to end this critical month strong. Our community has really rallied this June, and we are very close to hitting our ambitious goals (see below). We’ve now raised more than $800,000 in the last five weeks to our critical campaigns and party committees, and in just the last two days, you all have raised $65,000 for Biden-Harris - a remarkable and deeply meaningful expression of support for Joe Biden when he needs it most.

I think this is the best not to leave you on. Remember, the wind is at our backs, not Trumps. We can win in November, so don’t stress out about last week. We’re going to do this.

See you next week everyone.

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