Good news

Hamilton movie now going to be released on Disney+ on July 3, rather than the original plan of theatrical release in late 2021. Super pumped to see the original cast version.

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I got to see it when it opened in San Francisco (second opening after broadway) with several of the original cast members.

Usually I hate when things are hyped so much, but this is one of the few times something has completely lived up to and exceeded the hype for me. I’m really glad more people will be able to see it.

A decade ago over 40% of the UK’s electricity came from coal. This week, it clocked up its first full coal free month since the advent of the power grid in 1882. Gizmodo

Sweden has closed its last coal-fired power station two years ahead of schedule, becoming the third European country to exit coal. Independent

The world’s largest wealth fund has blacklisted Glencore, Anglo American, Sasol, AGL and four Canadian oil firms for excessive emissions. Reuters

Chile has become the 2nd South American country - and the 7th in the world - to update their national Paris Agreement climate action plan. Reuters

The IEA says greenhouse gas emissions will fall by more than 8% this year, the largest annual decrease ever recorded. NPR

Abu Dhabi has announced the lowest price ever for solar - 1.35 US cents per kWh. That’s 45% lower than just three years ago. Forbes

Sudan’s new government has outlawed the practice of female genital mutilation, a major victory for women’s rights campaigners. NYT

Pennsylvania has banned child marriage, the third state to fully outlaw the practice after Delaware and New Jersey. CBS

Germany’s parliament has banned so-called “gay conversion therapy” the fifth nation to do so after Malta, Ecuador, Brazil and Taiwan. NBC

Brazil’s Supreme Court has overturned rules that limit gay and bisexual men from donating blood, a victory for LGBTQI+ people in the country. Reuters

An Israeli billionaire is planning to deliver hundreds of generators that can produce drinking water out of thin air to Gaza, “because they are our neighbors and it’s a great pity to look at them suffering from such severe water shortages.” Times of Israel
Canada has introduced an immediate ban on semi-automatic assault weapons. 1,500 models are covered by the new prohibition. NYT

Government data has shown that US traffic deaths fell in 2019 for the third straight year, even as overall road use increased. Reuters

The UK government has announced a £2 billion package to create a ‘new era’ for cycling and walking infrastructure in the wake of the pandemic.

The Welsh government has announced plans for a national forest running the length and breath of the country, "connected ecological network.” BBC

Wildlife experts in Belgium are getting excited to welcome the country’s first set of wild wolf cubs in more than 100 years. Brussels Times

Bald eagles have made a huge comeback in Wisconsin in the last 45 years, thanks to the DDT ban, the passage of endangered species laws, river cleanups under the Clean Water Act and public support for nest monitoring. ABC

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My 18 year old cat wasn’t eating, going from 20 lbs (he’s huge), to 15 lbs. We brought him to vet and they said he’s fine other than his teeth needs to be heavily cleaned and probably causing him pain. They did that and we brought him home, and started giving him some wet food every day instead of every 3rd day. He starts waking us up at 4am crying for food. We figured his teeth were still causing him pain and he couldn’t eat dry food at all, so we gave him wet food all the time.

About a week goes by and he’s not getting better, so we bring him back to the vet. Vet calls us and says “yeah there’s nothing wrong, he just likes wet food more” :expressionless: and sure enough after we lock him out at night for a while: crunch crunch crunch

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The Russell Howard Hour has a good deeds segment on his show

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Had the same issue with our dog a couple years ago. Turns out she just went diva on us and didn’t like her food anymore.

hairtoss.gif

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That’s the first time I’ve ever heard of a “Switch”, “Switch Lite” or “Animal Crossing”. Yes, I’m old.

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‘Your foot looks like a deer hoof that’s got Covid.’ looooool

Lmaooo ‘And by the way, you look like a fake-ass Karl Malone with a wife-beater.’ looool

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Good news thread makes me chuckle! I watched an old SNL the other night from the 70s where Fred Willard hosted, presumably they aired it as a tribute since he died, and they had Dan Akroyd on doing his Jimmy Carter impression where he was imploring the country to get off oil and onto…COAL

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Dan Ackroyd isn’t that bad.

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The hell is going on with Shaq’s foot?

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Renewables have toppled coal in energy generation in the US for the first time since 1885, the year that Mark Twain published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and America’s first skyscraper was erected in Chicago. EIA

Denmark’s government has approved a new climate plan quadrupling total offshore wind energy capacity in the next decade, and including the construction of two titanic offshore ‘wind energy islands.’ KEFM

In the last three weeks, the world’s one-millionth public electric vehicle outlet was installed, Germany made it mandatory for all gas stations to include electric chargers, and the EU committed to one million public chargers by 2025.

New Zealand will provide free sanitary products in schools across the country in an effort to tackle period poverty - where girls and women are unable to afford or access sufficient menstrual hygiene products. CNN

The GAVI vaccines alliance has raised $8.8 billion to fund programmes until 2025, exceeded its target of $7.4 billion. This will help immunise 300 million more children against measles, polio and diphtheria. Reuters

The Ashaninka people of the Amazon have won a decades long court battle against the forestry industry, setting a precedent that will “define hundreds of thousands of cases on environmental crimes in Brazil.” MPF

In 2005, all the waste from Ljubljana, Slovenia’s capital, went to landfill. Today 68% of its waste is recycled, and its landfill receives almost 80% less rubbish, putting it at the top of Europe’s recycling leaderboard. Guardian

China is increasing environmental funding to $57 billion this year, up by almost 10% from 2019. This includes a national green development fund, and major new conservation programs in the Yangtze and Yellow river basins. Reuters

China has also removed dogs from the list of animals that can be treated as livestock. While this hasn’t stopped the notorious Yulin dog festival, in the long run it effectively ends the sale of live dogs for food and fur. SMH

Industrial engineers have developed a highly porous sponge that can absorb more than 30 times its weight in oil, and are now talking to the US Coast Guard and ocean conservation groups about using it for oil spills. Forbes

Researchers have successfully taught surgical robots to make sutures by watching Youtube. The team needed 78 instructional medical videos to train its AI engine to perform the procedure. TechXplore

A game-changing imaging technique called cryo-electron microscopy has for the first time, discerned individual atoms in a protein. “There’s really nothing to break anymore - this was the last resolution barrier.” Nature

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Posted by a friend of mine in NYC:

They say sometimes tragedy changes things. Well this city is about to have an outdoor seating Renaissance that’s never been seen before here.

Under Giuliani there was very little outdoor seating. He felt that licenses were a money maker for cities so he charged a lot.

Under Bloomberg he thought outdoor seating was a quality-of-life issue and he looked at trying to block off whole streets for example Broadway Astor Place etc. and he haves the price for outdoor seating which in turn made a lot of new places pop up. Only negative was they all seem to close except maybe Esperanto at around 10 PM.ďżźďżźďżź

What’s going on right now is five times that. Set up blocking off streets they are allowing all the restaurants to take over the parking spots in front of the restaurant to make for more seating. It’s AWESOME.

If you’ve ever lived in Italy or Spain and gotten used to eating late at night outside somewhere with friends. That’s happening here.

Remember all the violinist, mariachis, etc. you see performing when you travel. Well the other a tiny brass band came down the street performing for everyone outside. I felt like I was in New Orleans.ďżź

We were sitting outside drinking till he’s leaving midnight in front of Frankies and the Gray Mare. Random they’ve also gotten rid of law where you need to move your car twice a week …they made into one day a week which is pretty cool too.

Anyways. It’ll suck on a really humid nights but I’ll be eating dinner my usual 9 or 10 PM with my friends every night outside. And for anyone infatuated with masks yes I will have masks and the tables are all social distanced. 

I LOVE NEW YORK CITY

It would be cool if this sticks around. LA should have this everywhere with 300+ days of outdoor weather a year.

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https://twitter.com/terrencelws/status/1284127528337252353

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The UN Security Council has unanimously agreed to a global ceasefire, adopting a resolution that demands a general and immediate cessation of hostilities around the world, in order to unite efforts to fight the coronavirus in vulnerable countries. UN

COVID-19 is poised to usher in the biggest retreat for global meat eating in decades. Global per-capita consumption in 2020 will fall to the lowest in nine years, and the 3% drop from last year represents the biggest decline since at least 2000. Bloomberg

Meet Hasina Kharbhih, whose NGO, has, in the past two decades rescued over 72,000 women and children trafficked across India, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Nepal. Ozy

This one got swamped by pandemic news, but it’s still a big deal - Congo has declared the second-largest Ebola outbreak ever is over after two years. Channel News Asia

Germany will almost double funding for the WHO this year, contributing more than half a billion euros. “We need a strong, transparent and accountable WHO today more than ever,” said the country’s Health Minister Jens Spahn. DW

The US Supreme Court has passed a landmark ruling protecting LGBTQIA+ citizens from workplace discrimination. Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the decision: “It is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that person based on sex.” BBC

The US imprisonment rate is at its lowest level in more than two decades, with the greatest decline coming among black Americans, whose imprisonment rate has decreased by 34% since 2006. Pew

… and as rates fall, former prisons, jails, and detention centers are being converted from facilities that confine people into ones that support them, such as mental health clinics, community centres and homes for former convicts. FreeThink

Georgia’s parliament has passed a landmark democratic reform, bringing the distribution of parliamentary seats into line with the national vote results, and ending the excessive consolidation of power by a single political group. Eurasia

Volkswagen, one of the world’s biggest carmakers, just produced its last ever combustion vehicle at Zwickau, one of its biggest factories in Germany. That factory is now Europe’s largest electric vehicle plant. Next Web

California has approved a groundbreaking policy to wean its trucking sector off diesel, requiring manufacturers to sell a rising number of zero-emission vehicles from 2024, a ‘major step’ toward reducing the state’s emissions. Reuters

Amazon India has eliminated all single-use plastic in its packaging across fulfillment centers in the country, and local rival Flipkart says it has cut down the usage of plastic packaging in its own supply chain to about 50%. Reuters

Germany has agreed to end the sale of single-use plastic straws, cotton buds and food containers from July 2021, bringing it in line with a European Union directive intended to reduce the amount of plastic waste. DW

Pakistan has just announced the creation of 15 new national parks, expanding protected areas from 12% to 15% of the country, and creating 5,000 ‘guardians of nature’ jobs for young people in the next three months. Gulf News

More than two million people gathered in northern India last week, and planted 250 million trees to tackle climate change. AP

You know those online petitions? Sometimes they work. Following a campaign that garnered more than 280,000 e-mails from concerned shoppers, beauty retailer Sephora has banned mink-fur eyelashes. Independent

Following a concerted reintroduction effort two decades ago, Kentucky is now home to the largest population of elk east of the Mississippi. Their homes are the hillsides of former coal mines. NYT

Indistinguishable from magic

It’s one thing knowing there’s ice on Mars, another actually seeing it. Check out this flyover of the 2km deep Korolev crater on the planet’s northern polar cap. Youtube

Alphabet Loon has just switched on its first fully commercial service: 35 floating balloons providing 4G internet across an area of 50,000 km² in the western and central areas of Kenya, including the capital, Nairobi. The Verge

NASA engineers are using generative design algorithms to help them fabricate portable life support systems for their next generation space suits, reducing the mass of some components by up to 50%. Wired

A San Diego startup has launched the world’s first autonomous freight network, a 50 truck service operating between six major cities in Arizona and Texas. Vox

Australian researchers have genetically modified cotton to make it naturally-coloured, a breakthrough they hope will remove the need for harmful chemical dyes. ABC

Scientists from Duke University have invented a hydrogel that’s finally strong enough to replace arguably the most amazing substance in the human body: the cartilage in human knees. Science Alert

Engineers at Festo have built one of the most beautiful, elegant machines we’ve ever seen, a bionic swift (any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature). Youtube

Off the beaten track in the dark forest

What’s the greatest science fiction movie of the last three decades? Clue - humanity gets its ass kicked, and the themes almost perfectly align with the current political moment in the United States. New Yorker

Great interview with sex anthropologist, Helen Fisher. “We’ve evolved three distinctly different brain systems for mating and reproduction: sex drive, feelings of intense, romantic love, and feelings of deep attachment.” Nautilus

This translated essay, The Coronavirus Pandemic and a Once-in-a-Century Change, from one China’s most respected international affairs scholars, Yuan Peng, is an excellent window into how the country views this current geopolitical moment.

If you’ve visited a yoga studio at any point in the last decade, chances are you’ve heard the strains of at least some of this 2014 sunset set from Above & Beyond. Beloved by yogis everywhere, for good reason. Soundcloud

Someone asked Twitter for recommendations on the best essays ever written and now there’s a list and it’s amazing. Start by picking only three, don’t choose more you’ll be overwhelmed, and give yourself plenty of time and space to read. Notion

Pankaj Mishra gives us a political economy masterclass on the implosion of Anglo-American capitalism. “ COVID-19 has shattered what John Stuart Mill called ‘the deep slumber of a decided opinion’, forcing many to realise that they live in a broken society, with a carefully dismantled state .” LRB

You know that thing you’re doing every night? It’s called doomscrolling, and you really need to stop. The promise of good news or some kind of answer always feels one click away. It’s not, or at least, you won’t find it in the news or on social media. Wired

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https://www.facebook.com/historyofmusic2016/posts/2448929435406976

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Gary Larson, author of acclaimed comic strip The Far Side, has gotten into digital art and is making comics again.

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The size of the global coal power fleet fell for the first time ever in the first six months of 2020, with more plants shutting than starting operations. Did someone just say, ‘tipping point’? Guardian

The world’s most valuable company has committed to becoming carbon-neutral by 2030, a pledge that covers its entire supply chain and the lifecycle of all its products, including the electricity consumed in their use. Guardian

The UK’s biggest pension fund, with over nine million members, is divesting from fossil fuels, a landmark move for the industry. Guardian

The world is losing its taste for meat. Production fell last year, and will do so again in 2020 (there have never been two consecutive years of decline). Globally, we’re already at peak pasture, and it now looks like we’re approaching peak beef. Bloomberg

Since 2007, the majority of the world’s countries - 113 countries - have reduced their armed forces, 100 have reduced military expenditure and both imports and exports of weapons have reached their lowest levels since 2009. GPI

A major new study in The Lancet has shown that the average number of children a woman gives birth to has fallen from 4.7 in 1950 to 2.4 in 2017, and will drop below 1.7 by 2100. Global population is now on track to peak in the middle of this century. BBC

Indonesian officials are vowing to end the controversial custom of bride kidnapping, after videos of women being abducted sparked a national debate. Jakarta Post

After more than 30 years of Islamist rule, Sudan has outlined wide-reaching human rights reforms including allowing non-Muslims to drink alcohol, abolishing public flogging, and scrapping the death penalty for renouncing Islam. BBC

Huge, huge win for indigenous rights in the United States. The Supreme Court has declared that because of a treaty signed in 1866, up to half of Oklahoma’s land must be returned as the sovereign possession of the Creek Nation. E-Tangata

More than one million people in the UK have given up smoking during the COVID-19 pandemic. More people quit smoking in the year to June 2020 than in any year since surveys began in 2007. BBC

Parents in OECD countries now spend twice as much time with their children as they did 50 years ago (except for France because, well, France). Economist

Vietnam has banned all wildlife imports and closed illegal wildlife markets, as part of the global response to the threat of zoonotic diseases. WAN

Researchers have shown that noise levels around the world have fallen by 50% in the last six months, the quietest Planet Earth has been since humans developed the technology to listen. They’re calling it The Anthropause. Vice

Britain’s woodlands now cover as much of the country as they did during the Middle Ages, thanks to 20th-century forestry and rewilding practices (Robin Hood eat your heart out). Times UK

25 years after gray wolves returned to Yellowstone, they’ve transformed the ecosystem and stabilized elk populations. “Elk aren’t starving to death anymore.” NatGeo

Indistinguishable from magic

Archeologists have excavated thousands of tools from a cave in central Mexico, showing that show Homo sapiens were living in North America 15,000 years earlier than we previously thought. This is a big one. Science Alert

The world’s largest host of open source code has just finished burying 21 TB of digital film, containing all its active public repositories of code, underneath a mountain in the Arctic. Github

Did you know that life is right-handed? Apparently the genetic helix of all animals, plants, fungi, bacteria and viruses on Earth twists to the right ( our resident scientists knew this one, but it’s news to everyone else on the team ). Nautilus

51 former US special forces soldiers received psychedelic treatment in Mexico using 5-MeO-DMT and Ibogaine. They reported significant reductions in PTSD, depression and anxiety, and four out of five participants said it was the most personally meaningful and spiritually significant experiences of their lives. Chronic Stress

The internet has a new toy called GPT-3; the most powerful AI language model ever built. It’s basically an autocomplete: capable of writing creative fiction, generating functioning code, composing thoughtful business memosand much more. It’s also biased, like the humans it apes. The Verge

Climate groups and tech companies have created a coalition that will use satellite data, machine learning and earth-based sensors to monitor all of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions - down to individual power plants, ships and factories - in real time. Vox

The CRISPR family just grew bigger. The newcomer is called CasΦ (pronounced “Cas-phi”). It’s half the size of the better known Cas9 protein, allowing it to reach into the nooks and crannies of DNA that were previously inaccessible. FreeThink

Off the beaten track in the dark forest

Scott Ludlam has written us all a love letter from 2029, and there are some parts that made us want to cry. If you’ve never heard of him, he’s probably the single redeeming factor in Australian politics in the past decade. Read it. Please. Guardian

Looking for something small and beautiful to watch on lockdown? Try this 14 minute film, about a young girl on the streets of Mumbai, from legendary Indian stop motion artist, Suresh Eriyat. It took eight years to complete, a genuine work of art. Youtube

The newsletter revolution rolls on. Inside Hook have compiled their 80 best single operator newsletters on the internet. Some really good suggestions here.

For months, Ed Yong has wrangled the pandemic’s complex science and politics into one journalistic masterwork after another. Nothing though, compares to his latest, searing, epic on the nightmare unfolding in the USA. Seminal. Atlantic

Meet Audrey Tang—a hacking prodigy, trans woman, and Taiwan’s digital minister, responsible for kicking coronavirus ass. This is what 21st century leadership looks like. The sooner we realise that, the quicker we’ll be able to rebuild. Wired

The six best science fiction novels of 2020, according to Tom Hunter, the director of the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Come for the recommendations, stay for the deeply satisfying discussion. Five Books

If birds left tracks in the sky, what would they look like? For years Catalan photographer Xavi Bou has been capturing birds in motion, using digital manipulation to display their flight paths as flowing, contorting ribbons and, well, you really need to see this for yourself.

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