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From the GNR newsroom, its the Monday Good News Roundup [1]
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Date: 2022-12-12
Happy holidays everyone from the GNR newsroom, its Monday morning and I’m on my two week vacation. I don’t go back to work until the 26th. But don’t worry, even though I am taking it easy the good news roundup waits for no one, so lets get right into it.
But there is good news: of all the harms traditional zoning has inflicted on communities, parking requirements are the easiest to fix, said Sara Bronin, former chair of the Hartford, Connecticut, Planning and Zoning Commission. Bronin was at the helm in 2017, when Hartford became one of the first cities in the United States to eliminate residential and commercial parking mandates. The year before, city leaders had tested the waters by eliminating requirements in the downtown area, a move that yielded new development projects and new proposals for reuse. “Every community should be eliminating their parking requirements,” Bronin said. Each year, more cities are eliminating or reducing such mandates. In 2021, cities from Minneapolis to Jackson, Tennessee, eliminated minimum parking requirements from their zoning codes. In the week that this article was drafted alone, cities from Spokane to Chicago to Burlington, Vermont, rolled back parking mandates.
A major win for affordable housing and a major strike back against the NIMBY’s. That’s good news if I ever heard it.
San Francisco lawmakers voted to ban police robots from using deadly force on Tuesday, reversing course one week after officials had approved the practice and sparked national outrage. The city’s board of supervisors voted to explicitly prohibit the San Francisco police department (SFPD) from using the 17 robots in its arsenal to kill people. The board, however, also sent the issue back to a committee for further review, which means it could later decide to allow lethal force in some circumstances.
You know how I always say I love living in the future? Yeah this is not one of those times. Robots should not be given guns. The only killer robots I want to see are on episodes of battle bots.
Earlier this week it was announced that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has declared UPSIDE Foods’ cultured chicken safe to eat. This approval came in the form of a No Questions Letter from the FDA in response to the application for GRAS, or Generally Regarded as Safe, status submitted by UPSIDE Foods.
Coming to a grocer near you I guess. I look forward to my new vat grown chicken nuggets. Rest assured I will be the first to try them and let you know how they are.
What happens when you close down a city street to cars? More people do non-driving things, like walking, biking, strolling, skating and frolicking in the space normally reserved for motor vehicles. Car-free advocates would say that as greenhouse gas emissions and traffic violence go down, happiness and connection go up — it’s hard to connect with your neighbors while ensconced in two tons of steel. Despite the benefits, closing streets to cars can make some people, er — a bit upset. Opponents argue that businesses will suffer (despite evidence to the contrary), congestion will increase (not so, says CityLab) and disabled and elderly people will have less access to public space (there’s a column for that). Like any change that pushes back against car culture, car-free streets face significant challenges. During the Covid-19 pandemic, cities around the world closed down streets to cars and opened them up for people. Over two years later, some of these experiments were so popular that they are here to stay. Here are four car-free streets that are still going strong or just getting started.
I hope I live to see the day when cars are officially declared obsolete and other forms of transport are embraced. I think it can happen in our lifetime.
nited Auto Workers (UAW) reformers seem set to make a historic change in the top leadership of their union, ending 70 years of one-party top-down rule. As mail-ballot votes were counted this week, it appeared very possible that the reform-oriented UAW Members United slate will eventually take all seven of the seats it contested of 14 on the union’s executive board. This is nothing short of an earthquake in one of the country’s largest manufacturing unions; the last time anyone was elected to the executive board in opposition to the ruling Administration Caucus (AC) was 34 years ago, when Jerry Tucker of the New Directions Movement became a regional director.
But until that day comes we should support the proud automotive workers as they clean up their union and get ready to improve the quality of their work. Go get em guys.
The leader of the Democratic majority elected in 2006 and 2018 was Nancy Pelosi. She restrained emotions in her caucus. After 2006, many Democrats burned with anger against the Bush administration—some even talked of impeaching George W. Bush over the Iraq War. Speaker Pelosi would not allow it. Her vision was to use control of the House to prepare the way for the impending presidential election so that Democrats could then legislate. The passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 rewarded her strategy. By contrast, the Republican majority elected in 1994 and 2010 lunged immediately into total war. In 1994, the leaders, Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay, wanted and led the total war. In 2010, Speaker John Boehner opposed the lunge and tried, largely in vain, to control it. In both cases, the result was the same: a government shutdown in 1995, a near default on U.S. debt obligations in 2011, and a conspiratorial extremism that frightened mainstream voters back to the party of the president. The signs strongly indicate that the next Republican House majority will follow the pattern of its predecessors.
Yep, strap in for two years of the GOP controlled house making fools of themselves. Again. Pass the popcorn?
The Rise of the Video Game Union is an all-in-one explainer on why game workers are unionizing and the specific steps that future organizers may take. We encourage you to share the link, and we’ve also prepared a zine version that you can print and distribute in your community. In legal speak, the zine is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US), which permits distribution of the zine provided that it is not altered or modified, or used commercially. Learn how to print it in your town.
Yeah, if you don’t know, the video game industry is mostly not unionized. Which is bad because it has led to terrible work practices and sexual abuse prevalent in numerous companies (Including Activision Blizzard, Rockstar, Riot, and Ubisoft to name a few). As a video game enthusiast myself its very disheartening, and I hope the game designers can unionize and clean up the industry.
Cops who want their names to remain anonymous after a shooting or incident of misconduct may soon not have a law to hide behind. The Florida Supreme Court will finally hear arguments Wednesday regarding whether police officers can use a provision of state law meant to protect the identities of crime victims to shield themselves from public scrutiny. At least 12 other states have the rule in place, and how Florida’s court rules could have lasting consequences across the country. Several news media organizations, including the Miami Herald, the New York Times, and the Florida Press Association, have joined the monumental case in hopes of ensuring their right to obtain and publish information, like an officer’s identity.
Meanwhile, in our “Why is this a thing? Why would this EVER be a thing?” department. Lets hope that law gets taken out right quick. My goodness.
The Florida lawmaker who sponsored the state's controversial "Don't Say Gay" bill resigned Thursday — a day after the Department of Justice announced he was indicted for COVID-19 relief fraud. The big picture: Rep. Joe Harding (R-Williston) maintained that he repaid his loan after he was accused of fraudulently obtaining and attempting to obtain more than $150,000 in funds from the Small Business Administration (SBA). Driving the news: A federal grand jury on Wednesday returned a six-count indictment against Harding, who said he pleaded not guilty, after being accused of fraudulently obtaining and attempting to obtain more than $150,000 in funds from the Small Business Administration (SBA), per a Department of Justice statement.
Oh, so a GOP lawmaker who weaponized the law to hurt marginalized people also turns out to be a massive crook? I would have never guessed.
Work has begun on a high-profile transmission project that will funnel clean power directly into New York City. On Wednesday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the start of construction on the 339-mile Champlain Hudson Power Express transmission line, after the project’s developer reached an agreement with labor union leaders. The buried cables will deliver 1,250 megawatts of hydropower from Canadian utility Hydro-Québec, beginning beneath Lake Champlain, moving underground near Schenectady and Albany, then running below the Hudson River until eventually connecting to a new converter station in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens.
This is like the opposite of those awful oil pipeline stories that come up from time to time. Great news indeed.
Presidents Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin have provided key lessons for the United States and NATO in conducting information warfare. Zelenskyy has shown the importance of seizing the moral high ground to unify a nation and rally international support. Carl von Clausewitz argued that arousing the will and passion of people behind a credible cause was essential to winning a war. Zelenskyy has implemented those precepts through bold leadership that has resonated internally and externally. Putin’s efforts, however, have whipsawed him into a brick wall. Putin seems to have forgotten the first rule of information warfare: Tell the truth and be the first out there to tell it.
Hey remember when Putin was actually scary and not just a bumbling fool shooting himself in the foot every week? Yeah me neither.
Lithium-ion battery manufacturing is booming in the United States — and not just for electric-vehicle batteries produced by automakers teamed up with Asian battery firms.
On Wednesday, Kore Power, based in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, announced it has raised about $75 million of a planned $150 million investment round. The funding will allow the company to start building its “KOREPlex Gigafactory” in Arizona, where it intends to produce up to 6 gigawatt-hours of lithium-ion battery cells per year when it starts running in 2024. Kore is a rare instance of a U.S.-based company that’s making its own lithium-ion battery cells, as opposed to a U.S.-based joint venture involving leading Chinese, South Korean or Japanese battery firms.
The future is looking more and more like it will run on electricity instead of fossil fuels.
An experimental treatment for advanced melanoma is poised to be the next major advance in cancer treatment, experts say. The results of a phase 3 clinical trial published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that the treatment, which uses a superconcentrated boost of the person's own immune cells, was more effective than the leading existing treatment at putting patients into remission. The trial, conducted by researchers in the Netherlands, caps off a stunning decade of progress in the treatment of metastatic melanoma, a disease that a little more than a decade ago had a 5-year survival rate of just 5%.
It really does amaze me that we, as a species, managed to obliterate one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse (now if we could only get rid of anti vaxxers)
SAN ANTONIO -- A former Border Patrol agent who confessed to killing four sex workers in 2018 was convicted Wednesday of capital murder, after jurors heard recordings of him telling investigators he was trying to “clean up the streets” of his South Texas hometown. Juan David Ortiz, 39, receives an automatic sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole because prosecutors decided not to seek the death penalty.
Good, get that monster off the street. I’m sure people in Texas will sleep a little easier with that sicko off the street.
fter yet another disappointing showing for Republicans in Georgia’s Senate runoff on Tuesday, some conservatives — like Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich and Kevin McCarthy — have begun to point to a surprising culprit: a failure to take advantage of early voting. The theory seems to be that Republicans are losing because early voting is giving Democrats a turnout edge. It follows a similar conversation after the midterm elections, when a chorus of conservatives said Republicans needed to start encouraging mail voting. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times But as more data becomes available on turnout in this year’s election, it is quite clear that turnout was not the main problem facing Republicans. In state after state, the final turnout data shows that registered Republicans turned out at a higher rate — and in some places a much higher rate — than registered Democrats, including in many of the states where Republicans were dealt some of their most embarrassing losses. Instead, high-profile Republicans like Herschel Walker in Georgia or Blake Masters in Arizona lost because Republican-leaning voters decided to cast ballots for Democrats, even as they voted for Republican candidates for U.S. House or other down-ballot races in their states.
I never thought I’d see the day, but we are finally seeing the GOP voter base turn on their awful party and its terrible candidates. The dog is biting back people! This is happening and I love it.
Durrant is a gynecologist for giants because the southern white rhinos under her care have a specific role: They are the world’s best hope to save another subspecies, the northern white rhino, from complete extinction. For this purpose, the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance carved out 3.5 acres of the 1,800-acre San Diego Zoo Safari Park and, with the help of generous donors, built the Nikita Kahn Rhino Rescue Center. A dozen rhinos trot on sandy ground just like in their original homeland the African savanna, enjoy 24/7 care by behavioral specialists and have state-of-the-art medical equipment like the garage-size, specially designed ultrasound pen where Wallis’s movement is restricted so Durrant can perform her exams. If everything goes well, the southern cows could become surrogate moms for northern white rhino embryos.
Its basically like Jurassic Park, only not terrible because they aren’t making a dinosaur theme park (don’t clone dinosaurs and stick them in a theme park kids).
ast week the artificial intelligence research lab OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, an AI chatbot that can hold conversations, produce essays, write poems and code, and more. The response to it depends on which Internet you’re paying attention to. If you’re on techno-Twitter, you’re having a ton of fun and/or hailing it as the next Messiah. If you’re more of a mainstream media kind of person, you’re likely mourning the sudden loss of several professions, mine included. Compare this Tweet from techno-Twitter: “Still blows my mind there’s zero mainstream coverage of the only thing everyone in tech is talking about. It’s like we just split the atom and everyone is talking about football.” With this first sentence from The Guardian’s coverage: “Professors, programmers and journalists could all be out of a job in just a few years, after the latest chatbot . . . stunned onlookers with its writing ability, proficiency at complex tasks, and ease of use.”
I know AI art is a scary prospect right now, but I for one just marvel at the applications, and scoff at the idea its gonna replace human artists.
Renewable energy sources accounted for 47.1% of Greece’s electricity generation in the first 10 months of the year, surpassing the share of fossil fuels for the first time, according to a report based on Independent Power Transmission Operator (ADMIE) data. “The energy crisis has de facto accelerated the energy transition. Any attempt to move in the opposite direction is harmful to the citizens and the economy,” said Nikos Mantzaris, a policy analyst with Green Tank, the think tank that published the report. Although until September 2022 fossil fuels were cumulatively ahead in the mix, increased production from renewable energy sources in October, combined with a sizable reduction in electricity demand in the same month, high gas supply prices and other economic parameters, reversed the trend, leading to a large reduction in the energy produced from fossil gas and lignite, the report states. From January to October, “green” energy produced 20,186 gigawatt-hours compared to 19,589 from lignite and natural gas. While the share of hydropower in the overall mix fell to 8.2% from 9.7% last year, the share of wind and photovoltaic power increased to 38.9% from 32.3% in the same period.
Its finally happening, Green energy is overshadowing fossil fuels. Lets keep it going.
Our people didn’t know what carbon was,” says Dokhole. “There is no word for carbon in our local language, not even in Swahili, the national language. Yet the success of the project depended on the pastoralists understanding how the concept works and how it would affect their daily activities.” Dokhole had done his research. He understood all the nuances of carbon sequestration – the capturing, removal and storage of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) – so he settled on some vivid illustrations to reach people. “In one forum I asked them, ‘Why do you expel bad gas from your body?’ They said the foul air was not good for the body. I then asked a motorcycle rider in the meeting to rev his bike until black smoke came out of the exhaust. I told them those exhaust fumes were similar to unwanted gases warming the world resulting in more droughts and livestock deaths. “Now they were interested in the subject because the ‘bad’ air was affecting their livelihoods. But they still wanted to know how possible it was to remove it from the atmosphere. I came with a seedling and covered it with plastic for some time until it died. I told them the plant would have survived had it sucked in enough carbon from the atmosphere and stored it in the soil. The idea sank in,” he says. To date, these herders in the drought-stricken region have helped rehabilitate 1.9m hectares (4.7 million acres) of land through rotational grazing practices, thus increasing ground cover, in a move that will sequester 50m tons of carbon dioxide over 30 years, equivalent to the annual emissions from more than 10m cars.
All over the world people from all walks of life are doing their part to help the earth.
mages of a clean-energy future tend to feature wind turbines and solar panels, iconic symbols of the struggle to halt global warming. But the United States is pursuing a much wider range of solutions to drive down greenhouse gas emissions. Soon, a direct air capture facility, or a carbon capture and storage project, or a clean hydrogen hub could be proposed in a town near you. Maybe one already has. Two recent laws — last year’s bipartisan infrastructure legislation and this year’s Inflation Reduction Act — offer developers billions of dollars to build these kinds of projects. Experts say these technologies are needed to tackle climate change. They can help cut carbon from hard-to-decarbonize parts of the economy that cannot simply switch over to renewable electricity. But there are very few large-scale examples operating today. To help people visualize what all this new infrastructure could look like, Third Way, a center-left D.C. think tank, commissioned the design studio Gensler to illustrate hypothetical projects, showing how they could be integrated into communities and local economies.
I hope I get to see this green future being promised.
Using your laptop for heavy-performance tasks has its downsides, including loud fans, throttled speeds and warm cases that are uncomfortable to rest on your lap. But a new alternative to fan cooling could radically reduce these pain points and lead to thinner, more efficient laptops. The new solution, called the AirJet, is a rectangular module half the size of a stick of RAM that sits on top of the CPU to cool it. The first generation of AirJets is designed to cool down laptops, tablets and mobile gaming consoles, but later versions could be small enough to use in smartphones and VR headsets, or efficient enough to use in data centers, according to AirJet manufacturer Frore Systems. But first, AirJet will help manufacturers retain thin laptop size without sacrificing performance to keep overheating down.
When I had a laptop, we had to buy this absurd platform for it that had an extra fan for it, it took up so much space it was a mess. So this is great news as far as I’m concerned.
With the successful reelection of Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Democrats capped an extraordinary cycle—gaining a true majority in the Senate while leaving House Republicans clinging to their own majority by less than a handful of seats. Here are several quick and dirty takeaways, most of which are gleaned from a couple recent pieces penned by CNN political analyst Ron Brownstein.
The basic lowdown: Trumpism continues to be poison for the GOP, as we continue to do well.
Really that says it all I think. And I’m gonna say this, might be controversial but I stick by it, but I think 2022 was a good year. Was it a perfect year? No of course not, lots of bad stuff still happened, but it was better on average than most, and when the bad stuff did happen we rolled with the punches in a big way. We came together and fought against cruelty and oppression. And we’re gonna keep fighting into the new year.
But until then, from all of us at the GNR newsroom (Myself, Killer300 and Bhu) have a good week
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