Good morning, all! I’m sitting in for our niftiest GNR wordsmith, the inimitable niftywriter, who is away from home helping a family member. Please send nifty your good wishes in the comments!
Appropriately for the Wednesday after Labor Day, today’s roundup is full of encouraging labor news. And of course I found plenty of other good news from near and far. So settle into a comfortable seat with a cup of your favorite morning beverage, and let’s get started!
In honor of this being “Labor Week” (see below) and because I found so much inspiring labor news, here’s a rousing rendition of a classic labor anthem.
Eyeing midterms, Biden to hit a third battleground state this week
[Yesterday,] President Biden convened a Cabinet meeting at the White House following a pair of Labor Day events in two crucial battleground states, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Later this week, he is scheduled to head to Ohio, another state with a key Senate race on the ballot in November, to tout a new law that aims to boost the nation’s semiconductor industry. Biden’s week also includes an appearance at a Democratic National Committee event as he increasingly focuses on his party’s prospects in the midterm elections.
...[Today], former president Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, return to the White House for portrait unveilings.
This is a no-brainer. It’s great to see it being done at last.
A new program under President Biden’s infrastructure bill is set to plug up more than 10,000 wells of oil and natural gas that have since been abandoned. Once sources of energy, these derelict wells now act merely as exhaust pipes that emit methane from the basins into which they were drilled, increasing America’s emissions with no return or value of any kind.
The Dept. of the Interior has identified just over 10,000 high priority wells on public lands across 24 states that had been leased for oil and gas drilling. These are just a fraction of the over 100,000 total derelict wells that need to be dealt with, not only to reduce unnecessary emissions, but serious safety hazards as methane is not safe to breathe, and is also flammable.
“President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is enabling us to confront long-standing environmental injustices by making a historic investment to plug orphaned wells throughout the country,” said Secretary Deb Haaland. “At the Department of the Interior, we are working on multiple fronts to clean up these sites as quick as we can by investing in efforts on federal lands and partnering with states and Tribes to leave no community behind.
Of states eligible for funding, 22 have been allocated $25 million each in Initial State Grants. Arkansas and Mississippi will receive $5 million each to support methane measurement and begin plugging wells.
I love this news! Much of the online research I do when I’m gathering news for GNRs takes me to paywalled sites, especially when I’m looking for new medical research and scientific discoveries.
The White House ruled this week that scientific research which is taxpayer-supported must be available to the American public at no cost—addressing the expensive paywalls that block online viewing of studies in many journals.
The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) delivered guidance for agencies to update their public access policies as soon as possible to make publications and research funded by taxpayers publicly accessible immediately upon publishing, without an embargo or cost. All agencies will fully implement updated policies, including ending the optional 12-month embargo.
The current optional embargo allows scientific publishers to put taxpayer-funded research behind a subscription-based paywall – which may block access for innovators for whom the paywall is a barrier, even barring scientists and their academic institutions from access to their own research findings, unless they pay.
The new rule also expands the definition of a “scholarly publication” to include “not only peer-reviewed articles but also book chapters and conference proceedings.”
“When research is widely available to other researchers and the public, it can save lives,” said OSTP head Dr. Alondra Nelson. “The American people fund tens of billions of dollars of cutting-edge research annually. There should be no delay or barrier between the American public and the returns on their investments in research.”
Biden isn’t afraid to tackle thorny diplomatic challenges.
The Biden administration announced Friday that its first U.S.-Pacific Island Country Summit will take place Sept. 28-29 as it ramps up efforts to counter China’s growing diplomatic influence in the region.
The two-day meeting in Washington, D.C. will symbolize the “history, values, and people-to-people ties” between the U.S. and Pacific island countries, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
The summit comes amid administration concerns that China’s intense outreach to the Pacific islands in recent years has eroded traditional U.S. dominance in the region, fueling a potential strategic military threat to the U.S. and its regional allies.
Biden’s challenge at the summit will be to overcome a U.S. credibility gap underscored by Beijing’s controversial security pact with Solomon Islands’ and island countries’ skepticism about the U.S. commitment to address the existential threat they face from climate change .
From an email sent by AOC:
In honor of [recent labor] wins and ongoing fights, we want to spend the week highlighting some union efforts we are especially proud of, including one happening in our own backyards! You may have heard that 11 Starbucks employees in Astoria voted unanimously to unionize their shop in June, joining the ranks of 50+ other unionized shops nationwide and making it the first unionized Starbucks in NY-14!3 AOC was proud to stand with these brave workers in their fight for higher wages, more time off, better schedules, and the power to address health and safety concerns in the workplace.
Unfortunately, like most corporations, Starbucks is outspokenly hostile to workplace organizing, and will continue to respond in kind with union-busting and retaliation. So it’s time for us to step up and help!
We’re partnering with the CoWorker Solidarity Fund, which facilitates mutual aid for people building power in their sectors and workplaces. This summer, CSF is kicking off an effort to raise money for their brand new Starbucks Workers’ Fund.
No, not good news! F’ing horrific, actually. But it’s definitely something that could begin to make some of the people who’ve been trivializing tfg’s dangerous handling of top-secret documents (like Rubio calling it a “storage issue”) do a fast and embarrassing backtrack. In other words, bad news for the treasonous Rs.
A document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found by FBI agents who searched former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club last month, according to people familiar with the matter, underscoring concerns among U.S. intelligence officials about classified material stashed in the Florida property.
Some of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them. Only the president, some members of his Cabinet or a near-Cabinet-level official could authorize other government officials to know details of these special-access programs, according to people familiar with the search, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive details of an ongoing investigation.
Documents about such highly classified operations require special clearances on a need-to-know basis, not just top-secret clearance. Some special-access programs can have as few as a couple dozen government personnel authorized to know of an operation’s existence. Records that deal with such programs are kept under lock and key, almost always in a secure compartmented information facility, with a designated control officer to keep careful tabs on their location.
But such documents were stored at Mar-a-Lago, with uncertain security, more than 18 months after Trump left the White House.
I love how much shade the judge threw on these idiots.
An Arizona judge has ordered three Republicans, including secretary of state nominee Mark Finchem and U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, to pay $75,000 in attorney fees for filing a defamation suit against a former Democratic lawmaker “primarily for purposes of harassment.”
The Republicans filed the lawsuit last year against former Democratic state Rep. Charlene Fernandez after she called for an investigation of their roles in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The judge dismissed the lawsuit in April, saying Fernandez's request was protected by the First Amendment’s rights to free speech and to petition the government.
The lawsuit was “groundless and not made in good faith,” Yuma County Judge Pro Tem Levi Gunderson ruled on [August 29th], adding that it appeared to have been "written for an audience other than the assigned trial court judge."
Gunderson said legal filings by the Republicans made irrelevant references to open borders and Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
DKos’s David Neiwert posted an excellent diary about this. Here’s how the Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington covered the story. Note the sentence I bolded — MAGATs are making history!
A New Mexico judge ordered Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin be removed from office, effective immediately, ruling that the attack on the Capitol was an insurrection and that Griffin’s participation in it disqualified him under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. This decision marks the first time since 1869 that a court has disqualified a public official under Section 3, and the first time that any court has ruled the events of January 6, 2021 an insurrection.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, also known as the Disqualification Clause, bars any person from holding federal or state office who took an “oath…to support the Constitution of the United States” as an “officer of any State” and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or gave “aid or comfort” to insurrectionists. Griffin, as an Otero County Commissioner since January 2019, took an oath to “support and uphold the Constitution and laws of the State of New Mexico, and the Constitution of the United States.”
Kooky Kev gets to close this section, thanks to his muddled metaphor that will live forever:
McCarthy: The electric cord of liberty still sparks in our hearts pic.twitter.com/3kCGR9nJ9Q
NotNowNotEver did a fine job of curating some of the best responses in his GNR yesterday, but there have been so many hilarious ones that some of my personal favorites didn’t make his list. This is a rich vein of snark that I predict will take many weeks to mine thoroughly.
“The toaster oven of freedom still warms the pizza of patriotism.” — (((Space Laser Jebus)))
“…and the oscillating fan of justice still blows up the boxer shorts of our loyalty.” — CT
”the AA battery of justice, which has been in the remote control of freedom since we bought the TV that is This Great Land...” — Erin electric cord of liberty Ryan
“Meanwhile, the USB port of justice is working overtime at Mar-A-Lago” — Dr. Ohm
And of course we have to end with Dark Brandon!
pic.twitter.com/9hH3UusqKu
Five thousand duffle bags have been donated to foster kids by Project Never Again. The organization focuses on what they call "dignity through duffels." This means making sure that kids and teens in foster care aren't left with only boxes or trash bags for their belongings. When kids move homes, Project Never Again makes sure they are equipped to move with dignity.
"The feeling of carrying trash bags or boxes is not only humiliating, it's essentially adding insult to injury," explains Seema Steffany, the founder and president of Project Never Again.
Steffany is a product of the foster care system, and has firsthand experience with moving from home to home. "Moving into a foster home you really don't know where you're headed," Steffany said. "So really, handing a kid a trash bag is really saying, 'You are garbage.'"
Inside the bags that Project Never Again donates are journals, a luggage tag and a note of courage. The project's mission is to get a duffel bag into the hands of every foster child, and prevent children's belongings from ending up in trash bags in the first place.
After a [Portland] chef was laid off in 2020, he started cooking dinners for his friends and eventually several families — the number of which kept multiplying.
Out of this grew the idea for a new non-profit that aims to help families who are struggling. Michael Casper did not plan on founding an organization or preparing close to 500 meals each week for families across the region. However, the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything.
“My grandma always said if you don’t know what to do, do what you know and I know how to cook, so I just started cooking for my friends,” Casper explained.
Casper was using his stimulus money and unemployment checks for the meals he’d make and then deliver himself. He called it Milk Crate Kitchen— and every week, the number of meal requests kept growing. Sherielyn Gardner saw Casper’s efforts via Instagram. With a background in business development, she wanted to help. ...Gardner helped Casper take Milk Crate Kitchen to the next level, getting the non-profit resources and donations so he no longer had to pay for the food out of his own pocket. They also gathered volunteers to help drive delivery orders, which have now grown over 130 per week.
Milk Crate Kitchen posts the meal for the week on Mondays, allowing families until Wednesday to sign up if they need one with no questions asked.
First come the tablecloths, fine china, flatware and stemware – and then come the rulers. At the Oregon State Fair table setting competition, precision is everything.
On Aug. 24, two days before the fair opened, table setters assembled their entries inside the Creative Living pavilion at the Salem fairgrounds.
Barbara Leone of Portland used a tape measure while laying her tablecloth. She pinned a needle at the halfway point on each table edge, looped a piece of thread around each needle, and stretched the thread across the table to create temporary guidelines so her floral centerpiece and charger plates were perfectly centered. She used a yard stick to confirm her utensils were placed one inch from the edge of the table.
In honor of Labor Week, lots and lots of great news for American labor!
Amazon, Apple, Chipotle, REI, Starbucks, Trader Joe’s. It feels like every day brings a new, surprising union.
Workers are organizing at some of the most well-known companies in America and in industries previously thought un-unionizable. They’re also doing so against the tide of a decades-long decline in union membership, which led to eviscerated benefits and wages that haven’t kept pace with the cost of living. Lately, the news has been filled with stories of everyone from baristas to warehouse workers voting for unions and bargaining for contracts — a trend that makes it look like unions are at last on the rise again.
Indeed, a series of recent data suggests that these union gains are more than just headlines. From election wins to collective actions, 2022 has so far been a great year for unions. In the first half of the year, unions won 641 elections — the most in nearly 20 years, according to data from Bloomberg Law, which analyzes National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) data.
Google is famous for its cafeterias, which serve its legions of programmers and product managers everything from vegan poke to gourmet tacos — free.
But the cooks and servers behind those meals are generally contractors who work for other companies, and do not get the generous perks and benefits reserved for Google employees. So over the past few years, thousands of them have unionized, securing higher wages, retirement benefits and free platinum health care coverage.
Unite Here, a 300,000-member union of hotel and food service workers, has been steadily working to unionize Silicon Valley cafeteria workers since 2018, experiencing the most success at Google. Employed by the contract companies Compass and Guckenheimer, those unionized now make up about 90 percent of total food services workers at Google, according to the union. Workers have unionized at 23 Google offices nationwide, including in Seattle and San Jose.
Now, the union is tackling new territory: the South. On [August 31st], Google workers in Atlanta employed by a different cafeteria company — Sodexo — presented their manager with a list of demands and said they plan to unionize. ...On Friday, Sodexo and the union reached an agreement: Should a majority of workers choose to unionize, Sodexo would not try to block it.
[Juana] Camacho is one of about 50 women who make up the quickly growing Liberty Cleaners, a group under the New York City–based Worker’s Justice Project that started four years ago with just a few women. In July, the group celebrated the completion of a first-of-its-kind training program, developed in partnership with the State University of New York’s Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of Labor Studies, with a focus on green cleaning, technology, and labor empowerment. A few weeks ago, the group kicked off ESL training at the Worker’s Justice Project Williamsburg HUB to support women negotiating in English.
“This was a group motivated to see a change, organize themselves, and grow,” says Maria Valdez, Worker’s Justice Project Williamsburg HUB director who leads the Liberty Cleaners. The group loosely modeled itself after Los Deliveristas Unidos, a group of app delivery workers who also organize under Worker’s Justice Project.
Their early work included OSHA and “know your rights” trainings, as well as outreach to women day workers who gathered on a corner of Williamsburg, Brooklyn—known as La Parada—in search of work. As they continued to organize, the women rejected the title of domestic workers. “The word sounds like we’re being domesticated,” Valdez says. “We thought we deserved a name. … We identified as a powerful group of cleaners.”
Two years ago, roughly 20 women settled on the name Liberty Cleaners and picked the Statue of Liberty as a logo. “Many of the community are immigrant community, and the statue represents changes and better opportunities,” Valdez says.
Progressive Muse linked to this article in a comment yesterday, and I just had to re-post it today. As PM noted, the headline alone is priceless, but the article is great, too. The Russians really are circling the drain.
BTW, be sure not to miss any of the great Ukraine war coverage on DKos by kos, Mark Sumner, and annieli.
A former U.S. general has forecast the surrender of Russian forces in Kherson, a strategic city in Ukraine. The Kherson region has been almost entirely controlled by Russian troops since March... Ukrainian forces have launched a counteroffensive to take back the critical port city.
Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling commented Monday on a Ukrainian soldier's video from the frontlines showing destroyed Russian positions in Kherson. According to Hertling's analysis on Twitter, the footage indicated "extremely poor soldier discipline" and "horrible fieldcraft/training" in the Russian army. It appeared that lower-level leadership was in crisis while senior leaders were not circulating information, said Hertling. Meanwhile, morale was plunging and the potential for disease was rising, he said.
The ex-general predicted Russia's "future surrender" in Kherson.
Hertling shared more in-depth tactical observations in another Twitter thread. He noted that Ukrainian forces had begun "shaping operations"—or countering the enemy's ability to affect their maneuvers—using a combination of long- and short-range artillery strikes, Special Operations Forces, small unit teams and resistance warfare. ✂️
Ukraine's attacks with precision weapons are "confusing" the Russian army, which already has very low morale, poor leadership, and diminishing supplies—leaving the larger force in a "quandary," said Hertling.
The Singaporean government has pledged to repeal a colonial-era law criminalising homosexuality.
Prime minister Lee Hsien Loong said scrapping the law would “provide some relief to gay Singaporeans” and bring legislation inline with social attitudes.
However, Loong disappointed some campaigners by doubling down on the government’s opposition to gay marriage.
Cat Hyde and Kate Moree had the passion and drive to make a difference by repurposing waste material, while making money at the same time. Since settling on paint and co-founding Seagulls in 2004, the pair have collected around 300 tons of paint each year from the landfill.
They have grown the company to employ 14 staff members who manage 10 volunteers in their English hometown of Leeds, Yorkshire. “We started by just collecting half-used paint tins in the back of my car,” Cat said.
The team then sorts the good and bad paint and re-blends with new colors requested by customers—all at an affordable price 75% less than in the stores.
“We hadn’t heard of anyone re-cycling paint before,” said 43-year-old Cat. “We were able to work with the local council to collect all the waste paint in Leeds and recycle as much of it as we can. In the last 18 years we have diverted over four million liters of paint which would have caused 11.4 million tons of carbon.”
The social enterprise says that, in order to offset that much CO2, 68 million trees would need to be planted.
The company also gives a lift to those of different backgrounds. “We’ve helped previous offenders, those who have struggled with their mental health, and young people who have been isolated.”
More than 6 percent of Americans will develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in their lifetime. This potentially chronic condition disrupts lives, and can lead to or exacerbate existing health issues such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and suicidal thoughts. Despite the high prevalence of PTSD, the US Food and Drug Administration has only approved two medications to treat this condition—sertraline and paroxetine—and both have shown only limited effectiveness in reducing PTSD symptoms.
PTSD is also common among military veterans; more than 10 percent of US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) patients experience these symptoms. Two years ago, researchers at Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) and the White River Junction Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Vermont began to investigate whether existing medications may improve PTSD symptoms, with funding from the National Institute of Mental Health.
During an initial exploratory analysis among a national cohort of VA patients, the researchers unexpectedly found that several new direct acting antiviral (DAA) medications used to treat hepatitis C virus infection were associated with PTSD symptom improvement. ✂️
Now, in a new, follow-up study, the researchers have conducted a more rigorous analysis to examine and compare the effectiveness of the previously identified DAAs in PTSD symptom improvement. ...the new study found that the medication combination glecaprevir and pibrentasvir had the strongest association with PTSD symptom improvement among the DAAs most prescribed in the VA.
A small device brought recently to Mars just created breathable oxygen out of the Red Planet’s carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere.
While the Perseverance Rover’s search for life has capitalized most of the headlines, additional equipment brought along like “Moxie” (Mars oxygen in-situ resource utilization experiment) and the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, have both been totally successful.
Sustaining a human presence on Mars would require breathable oxygen, which is obviously too much of a burden to transport in cylinders aboard the limited cargo of a spacecraft. Fortunately, scaled up versions of the newly-tested Moxie, which is currently about the size of a school lunchbox, could do the oxygen-emitting work of over 100 trees, and be hooked up directly to a habitation. By the end of 2021, Moxie had been able to continue producing oxygen at consistent rates of 6 grams per hour through day and night, and through a variety of weather conditions. This is about the same as a single grown-up tree.
Along with providing a permanent human settlement on Mars with air, the oxygen can be turned into rocket propellent for return journeys to Earth through a fairly straightforward chemical engineering process.
“The only thing we have not demonstrated is running at dawn or dusk, when the temperature is changing substantially,” said principal investigator of the Moxie mission at MIT, Michael Hecht. “We do have an ace up our sleeve that will let us do that, and once we test that in the lab, we can reach that last milestone to show we can really run any time.”
A thin film of plastic was, for the first time ever, turned into tiny diamonds in the blink of an eye after being shot at with a laser beam.
Synthetic diamonds are valuable for their hardness and are used to make high-quality cutting and polishing tools, but equally so for their thermal conductivity, and electrical insulation.
Opening up synthetic diamond production from plastic could lead to more demand for water bottles and other containers which often end up in the sea.
The breakthrough also has implications for planetary science, and the researchers who managed this philosopher’s stone-like transformation said it sheds light on what goes on inside the ice giants Neptune and Uranus.
How exactly was something that costs pennies turned into the hardest and one of the rarest minerals on Earth? At their fundamental level, diamonds are simply a solid form of carbon...
High school teacher Lisa St. Coeur Cormier was strolling with her dog near her home on Canada’s Prince Edward Island when something caught her eye. She often finds sea glass when she’s walking Sammy, but this day she thought she spotted a branch or tree root poking out of the sand.
“I saw something about two feet long with a strange shape,” said Cormier, 36, who lives in Charlottetown. “When I looked closer, I realized there was a rib cage. And around that, there was a spine and a skull.”
Cormier, who used to be a middle school science teacher, immediately knew it was a fossil. But she never imagined how rare and old, or the excitement that would develop from her discovery that day, Aug. 22.
It turns out the fossil is probably about 300 million years old, possibly from a species that no longer exists, said John Calder, a geologist and paleontologist from Halifax, Nova Scotia. That’s before the Jurassic period, when dinosaurs roamed the earth about 200 million years ago. “There aren’t very many specimens from this period, so it was an incredible find,” Calder said about the fossil. ✂️
“Something like this comes along every 50 to 100 years,” said Calder, who wrote a book about the geology of Prince Edward Island. “I thought, ‘My goodness, it needs to be collected right away before more bits wash away.’ ”
Calder estimates that the fossil is from the end of the Carboniferous period and into the Permian period. “It is likely a reptile or a close relative, but it could also be unknown,” he said. The fossil had probably recently been exposed to the elements and was in danger of washing away in the tide, he said.
Bridgestone has invested $100 million into farming a desert-dwelling herb to replace the rubber tree for rubber production.
Guayule (Why-OO-lee) produces rubber as a form of protection, and owing to its Chihuahuan Desert heritage, doesn’t need any irrigation. Guayule comes from the Asteraceae family, which includes species like chamomile, daisy, asters, marigold, and chicory. It was used by the Mesoamerican civilizations as a kind of rubber, which is the same reason that Tempe Farming, which usually grows cotton or alfalfa, is covering 25,000 acres of its farmland with this plant.
Haveas, the tropical rubber tree, is expensive, climate intensive, and risky to farm. They are vulnerable to pests and disease, and labor intensive to cultivate and harvest. Most passenger cars for this reason use 90% synthetic material for tires, and only 10% natural rubber. However there are still some products made entirely of natural rubber—large truck tires for example.
Bridgestone R&D have spent years breeding a lineage of Guayule that produces exceptional amounts of its rubber, and it wants to scale up production as fast as possible, not only for economic and climate reasons, but because Guayule rubber tires perform better than haveas rubber.
In a recent test, Bridgestone rolled out a racing tire with a sidewall of Guayule rubber for an Indycar race. “We use racing as a testbed,” Nizar Trigui, chief technology officer at Bridgestone Americas, told Fast Company. “In a very demanding application, like open wheel racing in IndyCar, we have shown that it actually gives us similar or better performance.”
A South African court has revoked Shell’s licence to explore for oil and gas along the country’s east coast; a biodiverse region popular with whales.
The Eastern Cape high court ruled on Thursday that a government decision to grant Shell the right to conduct seismic surveys there did not follow fair procedure. Judges also said that it failed to take relevant considerations into account, such as the impact on communities and nature.
The case was brought by environmental groups and local communities. Greenpeace described the ruling as a “monumental victory for the planet”. Shell said: “We respect the court’s decision and have paused the survey while we review the judgment.”
Climate litigation is increasingly being used to halt fossil fuel projects. According to the London School of Economics, climate-related lawsuits have doubled since 2016.
The UK’s surging renewables sector got a boost this week with the completion of the world’s largest offshore windfarm.
With a fair wind, Hornsea 2’s turbines will be able to power around 1.4m homes – equivalent to about 5 per cent of UK’s total. The facility is located off the coast of Yorkshire.
“Not only will Hornsea 2 provide low-cost, clean energy for millions of homes, it has also delivered thousands of high-quality jobs and billions of pounds of investment in the UK’s offshore wind supply chain,” said Duncan Clark of Ørsted, the firm behind the facility.
Hornsea 2 won’t hold onto its new title for long, however. Nearby Dogger Bank wind farm is due to come online next year, and will be capable of powering around 6m homes.
Brought to you by Rosy, Nora, and Rascal.
Rosy loves this heartwarming story of the enthusiastic welcome 80 beagles received in Portland after they were rescued from an abusive research facility in Virginia.
Nora was delighted to learn that cats are the symbol of the city of Odesa and that they’re inspiring Odesa’s residents. Slava Ukraini!!
DKos’s PWB Peeps posted some wonderful street art from Odesa featuring cats:
Rascal always enjoys finding out about giant prehistoric birds. And how could you not want to know more about “demon ducks of doom”?!
Scientists have finally cracked a 41-year-old mystery about an ancient eggshell from a large, extinct terrestrial bird with a demonic nickname.
In 1981, researchers in Australia discovered the charred remnants of numerous eggs from several cooking fires used by prehistoric humans, dating to about 50,000 years ago. Some of the eggs were identified as those of emus. But a few oversized specimens belonged to a second, unknown bird. For years, scientists argued about the identity of that large bird. But given the eggs' size and age, over time, two contenders emerged: Progura, a group of large turkey-like birds, or Genyornis, sometimes referred to as "demon ducks of doom" because of their huge size and evolutionary relation to the smaller waterfowl.
Now, a new analysis using sophisticated protein sequencing technology and artificial intelligence has put the debate to rest. The results, which were published May 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, firmly establish the eggs' identity as Genyornis newtoni, Australia's last "thunder bird."
Genyornis newtoni was an intimidating creature. It stood over 6.5 feet (2 meters) tall and tipped the scales at up to 530 pounds (240 kilograms) of beak, bones and feather-clad muscle, according to the Australian Museum. "I can imagine that having this mega duck looking down at one should be fairly unnerving!" lead study author Beatrice Demarchi, an archaeologist studying bones and other organic materials at the University of Turin in Italy, told Live Science in an email.
Fittingly, these mega ducks also laid large eggs; each weighed around 3.5 pounds (1.6 kg), about the size of a melon. Genyornis' huge eggs would have been an ideal source of protein for Indigenous Australian people, provided they could safely collect them from the big birds' nests. In fact, the scientists now suspect that humans' appetite for the melon-size eggs may have helped drive Genyornis to extinction, according to The Natural History Museum, London.
www.yesmagazine.org/… For American Labor, the Past Isn’t Past. “Organizing is contagious. Is it any surprise the ownership class prefers that we forget our own history?”
www.yesmagazine.org/… The Past, Present, and Future of Work. An article from the same Yes! Magazine issue as the one above. “What if “work” were a thing we chose to do with our time because we wanted to do it and not because we needed to keep destitution at bay? ”
theconversation.com/… Beyond GDP: changing how we measure progress is key to tackling a world in crisis. “...on the first day of his ill-fated presidential campaign in March 1968, Robert F Kennedy chose to talk to his audience about the limitations of gross domestic product. ...[But] growth in GDP remains to this day the predominant measure of progress across the world.”
civileats.com/… Op-ed: Now Is the Time for Cooking Schools to Offer Culinary Activism 101. “Institutions traditionally focused on fine-dining could pivot to empower an army of activist chefs eager to feed their communities and address the food insecurity crisis.” An inspiring call to action by Robert Egger, the founder of DC Central Kitchen.
jessica.substack.com/… Sex Isn't Consent to Pregnancy. “The entire ethos of those who think women should have no say about what happens to and inside of their own bodies comes from the same exact patriarchal underpinning that says women exist solely for men and their desires—be it sex or procreation. ” A righteous rant.
A tip of the hat to 2thanks for creating this handy info sheet for all Gnusies new and old!
Morning Good News Roundups at 7 x 7: These Gnusies lead the herd at 7 a.m. ET, 7 days a week:
hpg posts Evening Shade diaries at 7:30 p.m. ET every day! After a long day, Gnusies meet in the evening shade and continue sharing Good News, good community, and good actions. In the words of NotNowNotEver: “hpg ably continues the tradition of Evening Shade.” Find Evening Shades here.
oldhippiedude posts Tweets of the Week on Sundays at 6:00 p.m. Central Time — New time! Our second evening Gnusie hangout zone! In search of a TOTW diary? Look here or here.
For more information about the Good News group, please see our detailed Welcoming comment, one of the first comments in our morning diaries.
And two more from Mokurai:
And another recommended by commenter lynnekz:
We now have TWO amazing GNR-powered fundraisers that our own Goodie has started on ActBlue! This is the first one, which has so far raised over $80,000:
But after seeing some more House races edging into toss-up territory thanks to voters everywhere starting to favor Dems, Goodie figured we should try to fund those races, too:
You can donate to either or both! But I think the new fundraiser is especially important, since these campaigns haven’t been in the spotlight until recently and the total raised so far is only a little more than $3000.
BTW, five of these 22 candidates are from my neck of the woods: Kim Schrier (incumbent in northern WA state who’s been targeted by the NRCC), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (running against a MAGAt for Jaime Herrera Beutler’s old seat in SW WA state), Val Hoyle (running against a MAGAt to replace retiring Peter DeFazio — this is a vitally important race with lots of R $$ coming from out of state), Jamie McLeod-Skinner (who beat DINO Kurt Schrader in the primary and is running against a conservative R who’s anti-abortion, anti-Covid-restrictions, and pro-guns), and Andrea Salinas (running in Oregon’s new 6th district against a MAGAt tarnished by scandal).
Note: Lots of you have been justifiably complaining about getting text messages from the campaigns you donate to on ActBlue, like Goodie’s campaigns here. The way to stop this is:
An invaluable diary by peregrine kate on DKos, full of recommendations for all the ways each of us can take action. Check it out!!
Here’s an easy action you can take RIGHT NOW:
Donate to two organizations providing support to people in no-abortion states who need assistance getting abortions.
National Network of Abortion Funds
Both of these organizations provide help with transportation, medical fees, hotel stays, etc., for those who have to travel out of state for an abortion. NNAF is a central clearing house for that assistance, The Brigid Alliance does that work directly.
Indivisible has created a Truth Brigade to push back against the lies.
Propaganda, false characterizations, intentionally misleading messages, and outright lies threaten our democracy and even our lives. We can effectively combat disinformation, despite the well-funded machines that drive it. They may have money, but we have truth and we have people.People believe sources they trust. When we share and amplify unified, factual messages to those who trust us, we shift the narrative. When we do this by the thousands--we’re part of the Indivisible Truth Brigade, and we get our country back. Join us.️
Our own Mokurai is a member. You can see all of the diaries in the Truth Sandwiches group on DK here.
A suggestion from chloris creator:
new!!! Tax-exempt organization complaint referrals. 13909. This has been filled out for the NRA, but, hey, you can use it for a lot of other organizations. How about if some of us white folk go into some of the MAGA churches and video record what they’re saying?
“The process to get the NRA's tax-exempt nonprofit status revoked has become simpler. All you need to do is save this form and email it to eoclass@irs.gov. It's all filled out for you. You just need to click send.” Allen Glines
Note that the IRS protects your anonymity: The appropriate checkbox is already checked: "I am concerned that I might face retaliation or retribution if my identity is disclosed."
PLEASE RETWEET! The process to get the NRA's tax-exempt nonprofit status revoked has become simpler. All you need to do is save this form and email it to eoclass@irs.gov. It's all filled out for you. You just need to click send. pic.twitter.com/xw5MGEJZEk
This suggestion comes from Kossack Ocean Rain (bolding mine):
My friends and I are carrying around pens and sticky notes and/or big mailing labels (things with adhesives that don't cause property damage when removed) and writing messages such as:
- Defend Choice — Defeat Republicans in the Midterms Nov. 8 - On Nov. 8 Vote Blue — or else the GOP will take your right to birth control too -Vote Pro-Choice in Midterms Nov. 8 - Roe, Roe, Roe Your Vote — Midterms Nov. 8
You can also include state-specific primary date voting info. if applicable (like for the NO vote in Kansas on the abortion question). In red states, people are including abortion access website links. We're placing them in public restrooms, highway rest stops, transit stations, shopping malls — any high-visibility place. We'd love it if some DailyKos-ers would do the same and spread the idea far and wide on social media. Thank you!
Most important: DON'T LOSE HOPE. This is a giant and important fight for us but, win or lose, we keep fighting and voting and organizing and spreading truth and light. We never give up.
And I’ll add a recommendation for you to check out Activate America (formerly Flip the West), which is recruiting people to send postcards to Dem voters. What I like most about them is that their messages are very specific and to the point. Here’s a sample text for the cards being sent to Dem voters in NC:
The threat of losing your right to abortion is not hypothetical. We must elect politicians who will protect our freedoms.
Cheri Beasley, a longtime supporter and advocate for abortion rights, is the the clear choice for North Carolina. Vote for Cheri Beasley for US Senate.
Thanks, [Your first name or initials], volunteer
Yesterday, Progressive Muse posted a helpful list of all the campaigns that Activate America is soliciting postcard writers for:
I’ll end with more inspiration from Pete Seeger.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old For the union makes us strong.
Thanks to all of you for your smarts, your hearts, and
your faithful attendance at our daily Gathering of the Herd.