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From the GNR Newsroom: its the Monday Good News Roundup [1]
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Date: 2022-07-11
Welcome back friends to the Monday Good News Roundup, where my intrepid GNR newsroom (consisting of Killer300 and Bhu) gather good news stories to start your week off right. Not much personal news to report, so lets get right to the good stuff.
Offshore wind power is surging around the world as countries adopt ambitious clean energy policies and as wind equipment costs decline. That growth is expected to explode over the next decade, even as the industry faces supply-chain snags and other headwinds. Those are the main takeaways from two new reports charting the recent progress and future trajectory of global offshore wind development. In 2021, countries connected 21.1 gigawatts of new offshore wind capacity to the grid, or triple the amount installed in 2020, the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) said in a report released on Wednesday. That brings the world’s cumulative capacity of offshore wind power to 56 gigawatts — only about 0.1 percent of which is spinning in American waters.
I love wind turbines, you can find them all over New York, glad to hear more are going up.
Marrakech, Morocco CNN — On the edge of the Sahara, in southwest Morocco, giant nets catch moisture from the air, turning fog into drinking water. The technique involves a fine mesh on which tiny fog droplets – typically 1 to 40 millionths of a meter – gather and merge until they have enough weight to travel down into a reservoir. Set in a dry, mountainous area, it’s the world’s largest functioning fog collection project, spanning 600 square meters, according to Dar Si Hmad, the women-led Moroccan NGO that runs it. The pilot project now provides clean drinking water to 500 people in five villages, in a region that has been severely hit by climate change-induced droughts.
I love living in the future. Its just like its out of Star Wars (Unfortunately we also have a giant slug criminal making trouble, but enough about Donald Trump HEYO!)
We started to organise. Representatives from every building met regularly to strategise. Our demands were simple: all homes must be made suitable for human habitation and unaffordable rent increases had to stop. Soon, we were ready to launch our campaign. We spoke to local media, marched in the street and worked with lawyers. But we were still ignored. We needed to speak in a language that would make these landlords listen. In May 2017, we took our fight one step further. By now, we were a network of hundreds of households. So we started a rent strike, each of us withholding monthly payments until our conditions were met. A legal fund was crowdfunded and our supporters joined us at rallies. We stood firm, proving we were the party with power.
Now this is really good news. I am very fortunate that I have a place with reasonable rent (400 a month), every other place in my current town is way more expensive. Far beyond my ability to pay. So something has to be done about rent costs.
The January 6th hearings have exposed a fundamental truth about authoritarianism: that it ultimately depends on the consent and acquiescence of individuals. The failure of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election wasn’t inevitable. There was nothing ironclad about the U.S. Constitution, courts, legislatures (including Congress), or electoral bodies to prevent Trump from remaining in power if enough people had gone along with his scheme. Instead, it took Republican officials, senior Trump advisors, conservative lawmakers, media personalities, and others — combined with significant grassroots pressure — to prevent an orchestrated subversion of the American people’s freedom to choose their leaders. It’s a powerful lesson to remember on this weekend’s July 4th U.S. Independence Day holiday.
Trump will never succeed because those who oppose him outnumber those who would support him. That is also why ultimately all tyrants fail; Power belongs to the people.
Wed, June 28th - Yesterday NDN released a new political analysis (below) which argued that a combination of recent events had begun to change the election in ways which were favorable to the Democrats (this new thread has some updated numbers which confirm the trendline discussed here). We now have three independent polls taken since the Supreme Court ended Roe last Friday which show that there has been significant movement towards the Democrats. These poll results, below, are responses to the Congressional Generic, the simple question of whether you intend to vote Democratic or Republican this fall. At the end of last week the Republicans held a 2.5 point lead in 538’s tracker. In these three polls Democrats have on average a 5.67 point lead. NPR/Marist 48% Dem 41% GOP Dem +7 Morning Consult 45% Dem 42% GOP Dem +3 Yahoo/YouGov 45% Dem 38% GOP Dem +7 In the Yahoo/YouGov poll a "Pro-choice Democrat" vs "Pro-life Republican" is 47%-32%, a 15 point Democratic lead. It's a new election. The chances of the anti-MAGA majority showing up again - as it did in 2018 and 2020 - have increased dramatically.
Its time for another blue wave to come and drown out the GOP. Its gonna be rough, but I think we can win.
More evidence of that fact:
x We now have 3 Congressional Generics since Roe ended:
NPR/Marist 48 Dem 41 R +7
Morning Consult 45 Dem 42 R +3
Yahoo/YouGov 45 Dem 38 R +7
and in this poll
"Pro-choice Dem" vs "Pro-life R" is 47-32.
It's a new election.
https://t.co/DdbRi3N4Nx — Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) June 28, 2022
hose same political forces have loudly celebrated the end of Roe, and yet, the reactions in the Manosphere, a more diffuse community broadly focused on men’s ambitions, needs and roles in society, have been more varied, almost surprisingly so. A thread on the MGTOW forum “Going Your Own Way,” where total disengagement with the female populace is encouraged, kicks off with a gleeful headline expressing merriment at the news and the comment: “Time to WOMAN UP and take some personal responsibility.” The first reply begins, “My hope in humanity remains stunted but maybe, just maybe, there’s a future after all,” and subsequent commenters hail the court for attacking “feminism.” Later on, however, a user writes, “mhh I don’t know how i feel about this,” followed by one who argues, “No right to abortion means that lots more babies will be born, which means lots more men will be forced into paying child support.” Yet another MGTOW agrees, referring to a father’s financial obligation to his children as “enslavement.”
The repeal of Roe v. Wade is really turning into the GOP’s personal monkeys paw isn’t it? No good will come of it for them.
Since the Court overturned Roe v. Wade, many individuals have been actively pursuing or inquiring about different means of contraceptives, especially in states with trigger laws. On Friday night, a peak in searches for "vasectomy" was detected on Google Trends. Here are some of the states with spiking inquiries about vasectomies.
Funny how no one ever talks about banning vasectomies huh.
oday, a day after its Annual General Meeting, Sompo, one of the top three Japanese non-life insurers, became the first Asian insurer to rule out insurance and investment in coal companies and companies involved in energy exploitation in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Sompo committed to rule out underwriting and investment in coal companies without transition plans by 2025. (1)
Once again, coal is on its way out.
The switch to a renewable based grid is complex, rapid and irreversible. And recent events, such as the international geopolitics that has created chaos in Australian and global energy markets – has only strengthened the case for an accelerated green energy transition. That is the main message from Australia’s Energy Market Operator in releasing the final version of its 2022 Integrated System Plan, its roadmap to a rapid transition to a grid dominated by renewables, featuring two-way energy flows and technologies that will draw on cheap, green power rather than coal, gas and oil. “Recent international events and Australian market events have further strengthened the case for the shift to renewables,” AEMO chief executive Daniel Westerman says. “Investment in low-cost renewable energy, firming resources and essential transmission remains the best strategy to deliver affordable and reliable energy, protected against international market shocks.”
The oil companies have dug their own graves, by trying to get as much money out of us as possible they just prompted us to get our energy elsewhere.
x We could all use a pick me up on the climate front. How about this: heavy duty transportation, one of the hardest sectors to decarbonize, is going to go through a radical transformation toward zero emission vehicles in the US in a matter of months and years, not decades.
1/n — Adam Browning (@adambrowning) June 29, 2022
Even Exxon Mobil thinks electric vehicles are the future. The oil giant is predicting that by 2040, every new passenger car sold in the world will be electric, CEO Darren Woods told CNBC’s David Faber in an interview. In 2021, just 9% of all passenger car sales were electric vehicles, including plug-in hybrids, according to market research company Canalys. That number is up 109% from 2020 says Canalys.
And that’s an oil company predicting that, I bet we can get it even faster.
In 2000, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved mifepristone as a method of abortion. Taken along with misoprostol, the two-drug combination is known as medication abortion or the “abortion pill.” New research from the Guttmacher Institute shows that 20 years after its introduction, medication abortion accounted for more than half of all abortions in the United States. Specifically, preliminary data from the Guttmacher Institute’s periodic census of all known abortion providers show that in 2020, medication abortion accounted for 54% of US abortions. That year is the first time medication abortion crossed the threshold to become the majority of all abortions and it is a significant jump from 39% in 2017, when Guttmacher last reported these data. This 54% estimate is based on preliminary findings from ongoing data collection; final estimates will be released in late 2022 and the proportion for medication abortion use is not expected to fall below 50%.
We aren’t going back, and for more reasons than you may think.
For the first time in nearly three decades, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives passed gun reform legislation. President Joe Biden signed it into law on June 25. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act includes billions in funding for mental health services, state red flag laws and crisis intervention programs, community violence prevention, and school safety — as well as several provisions that relate more directly to firearms and who can purchase them. Those provisions include an effort to keep guns out of the hands of people who abuse their dating partners by closing the so-called boyfriend loophole, clarifying who needs to seek a Federal Firearms License — which is likely to subject many more gun purchases to background checks — and enhancing background checks on gun purchasers under 21.
Its not everything we wanted, but its something, and its not nothing, so I think its worth celebrating. The work is far from done of course.
Metz decided to recruit patients directly using social media and news publicity, and since then, she said, more than 2,000 women have been more than happy to use designated menstrual cups or external sponges and mail their blood back to the lab. They are highly motivated to help advance researchers’ understanding of a disease that is underdiagnosed, difficult to treat, and sometimes debilitating. It’s “appalling” that more scientists — whether they’re studying endometriosis or not — aren’t studying menstrual blood, which contains a combination of blood and tissue that lines the uterus, said Metz. Researchers routinely examine saliva, mouth tissue, skin, and even teeth, looking for clues about health and disease. By contrast, said Metz, menstrual effluent has been neglected. Metz is one of a handful of scientists worldwide studying menstrual blood; these researchers are looking into its potential as a diagnostic marker for diabetes, gynecologic diseases, and even toxic exposures. Because the work is still new, it could be years, even decades, before any findings influence clinical care. For now, however, the researchers are challenging the conventional view that menstrual blood is merely a waste product. Instead, they said, careful examination of this biological specimen may yield important insights into health and disease.
Some scientists need to grow up so we can expand the base of knowledge regarding certain diseases. Come on people its just blood.
The path to successfully righting this historic wrong requires work at the local election level, as much as on the national scene. It means allowing for years of sustained mobilization to remind those in power of the issues, and it demands bringing broader awareness to candidates’ positions election after election after election. The majority of us have known for years the goals of abortion opponents, and now we know how long it took them to arrive at their victory: 50 years. Abortion opponents were geared up to play the long game. They ran candidates at local and state levels, but they also ran a campaign for hearts and minds. They placed ballot measures in state after state. They focused on a cultural shift in how this country views women and their place in it. But those tactics aren’t exclusively the domain of the right. In 2011, Mississippi voters rejected a ballot measure that would have outlawed all abortions and many forms of contraception. The measure was all but ensured passage until the final weeks of the election, when a major campaign to defeat the initiative launched. It focused on how to talk with people and educate them about what the unintended consequences of the measure would be. People who opposed abortion were willing to change their minds. Elected officials publicly distanced themselves from the measure as a broader narrative brought context and nuance to a seemingly black and white issue. And it worked, even in one of the most conservative states in the nation.
This is something I have been saying for a while. Right after Roe V Wade got repealed I saw so many people who were like “All the Dems do is keep asking us to vote.” Yeah, because YOU HAVE TO KEEP VOTING. This is not a problem that is gonna get fixed with one election. We have to keep fighting and pushing forward. So roll up them sleeves.
aving an ice pack strapped to your chest – that’s how some describe the experience of taking a walk in cold weather when you have breast implants. Silicone only slowly reaches body temperature once out of the cold, so that icy feeling can persist for hours. As well as being uncomfortable, for breast cancer survivors it can be an unwelcome reminder of a disease they would rather put behind them. Every year, 2 million people worldwide are diagnosed with breast cancer and the treatment often involves removing at least one breast. But most choose not to have their breasts reconstructed; in the UK, it is only about 30%. Now a handful of startups want to change that, armed with 3D-printed implants that grow new breast tissue before breaking down without a trace. “The whole implant is fully degradable,” says Julien Payen, CEO of the startup Lattice Medical, “so after 18 months you don’t have any product in your body.” It could spell the end not only of cold breasts, but the high complication rates and long surgeries associated with conventional breast reconstruction. The first human trial of such an implant, Lattice Medical’s Mattisse implant, is scheduled to begin on 11 July in Georgia. Others will soon follow. “We expect to start clinical trials in two years’ time,” says Sophie Brac de la Perrière, CEO of another startup, Healshape.
This is pretty exciting news. my Paternal grandmother died of breast cancer, so anything that can help cancer survivors is good news to me.
Chinese space scientists have said they successfully used a huge space sail to remove debris from Earth's orbit. Announced by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology on July 6, the huge sail was launched and was successfully used to deorbit the Long March 2 rocket. The sail is made from an incredibly thin membrane, one-tenth the diameter of a human hair, and measures around 270 square feet. When attached to the Long March 2 rocket, it served to increase the atmospheric drag acting on the rocket, accelerating the process of orbital decay and removing it from orbit faster.
Sometimes its really cool to remember we live in the future.
President Joe Biden signed an executive order Friday aimed at protecting abortion rights in response to the landmark decision by the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. The President said the order will safeguard access to abortion care and contraceptives, protect patient privacy and establish an interagency task force to use “every federal tool available to protect access to reproductive health care.” It will also increase public education efforts and bolster the security of and the legal options available to those seeking and providing abortion services, according to a fact sheet provided by the White House. Biden laid out a hypothetical scenario, one that he believes to be more likely after the court’s ruling, to explain the stakes. “A patient comes into an emergency room in any state in the union, she is … experiencing a life-threatening miscarriage, but the doctor is going to be so concerned about being criminalized for treating her they delay treatment to call the hospital lawyer, who’s concerned the hospital will be penalized if the doctor provides the life-saving care,” Biden said, speaking from the White House.
I feel like this is something that people have been sleeping on. Biden is in fact doing something to protect women’s rights in the light of the SCOTUS being assholes, and I’m very grateful. Biden is a good president.
And on that note we’re done for another week, have a good and productive week and we’ll see you later.
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