Good News Friday

~ D. J. Moore ~ Leave a comment
  • Nepal had a large decline in poverty from 25% to just 3.6% between 2011 and 2023. World Bank.
  • Rwanda has significantly increased its electricity access from 6% in 2009 to 75% as of March 2024. World Bank.
  • Morocco has slashed its under-five mortality rate by a remarkable 4.8 percent, dropping from 81 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 17 in 2022. Morocco World News.
  • Clean energy accounted for 10% of global GDP growth in 2023. PV Tech.
  • California has hit a new renewables record after exceeding 100 per cent of grid demand with clean energy sources for 30 of the past 38 days. Independent.
  • More than one in five cars sold worldwide this year will be electric. The Progress Playbook.
  • The world installed 117 gigawatts of new wind power capacity in 2023, a 50% increase from the year before, making it the best year for new wind projects on record. AP.
  • Second-generation mosquito nets prevented 13 million malaria cases in large pilot programs. STAT.

For more good news, check out Fix the News and The Progress Network.

Good News Friday

~ D. J. Moore ~ Leave a comment
  • Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo produce more than 99.7 per cent of their electricity from renewable energy. Independent.
  • Between 1950 and 2021, global life expectancy increased from 49 years to 71 years. The Lancet.
  • US to close gun show loophole and require more background checks. Reuters.
  • Buffalo saw an unheard of drop in gun violence last year. What’s behind the success? The Trace.
  • Oil spills from tankers have fallen by more than 90% since the 1970s. Our World in Data.

For more good news, check out Fix the News and The Progress Network.

Good News Friday

~ D. J. Moore ~ Leave a comment
  • Thousands of deaths avoided in 7.4 magnitude Taiwan earthquake due to strengthened building codes and infrastructure. CNN.
  • Slovakia has stopped production at its last coal-fired power plant 6 years ahead of schedule. Euronews.
  • 12 US states now get most of their electricity from renewables. The Progress Playbook.
  • Solar topped coal in Texas for the first time ever in March. electrek.
  • Massachusetts pardons all misdemeanor marijuana possession convictions affecting potentially hundreds of thousands of people. Axios.
  • Gender pay gap in Great Britain smallest since reporting first enforced. The Guardian.
  • In the US, employers added 303,000 jobs in March, the strongest in 10 months. Axios.

For more good news, check out Fix the News and The Progress Network.

Good News Friday

~ D. J. Moore ~ Leave a comment
  • Cancer mortality has declined in many countries. Our World in Data.
  • Child poverty in Uzbekistan decreases by 7.8% in two years. DARYO.
  • Populations of numbats and bilbies are recovering. Australian Wildlife Conservancy.
  • China adds 14% of world’s total solar capacity in 2023 alone. S&P Global.
  • A record 60% of Europe’s electricity was powered by clean energy sources in the opening two months of 2024. Reuters.
  • 3D-printed skin closes wounds and contains hair follicle precursors. PennState.

For more good news, check out Fix the News and The Progress Network.

The Glass Looker, Vol. 2 by Mark Elwood

~ D. J. Moore ~ Leave a comment

The Glass Looker Volume 2 details the treasure digging activities of the young Joseph Smith. (I wasn’t able to read Volume 1 since it’s out of print, but Volume 2 made sense to me on its own.) The artwork is great, especially the scary-looking toad. The end of each chapter provides quotes from the historical record so you know Elwood isn’t just making this up. Of course, the historical accounts are often contradictory and a lot of information is missing, so Elwood provides extensive notes in the back of the book justifying his narrative decisions.

Continue reading →

Andrew Johnson by Annette Gordon-Reed

~ D. J. Moore ~ Leave a comment

Andrew Johnson was born in a log cabin in 1808 in Raleigh, North Carolina. Despite being the state capitol, Raleigh was still a small town at the time. His parents were illiterate. His older sister died as a child. His father, Jacob Johnson, died soon after heroically saving three men who were in a capsized boat.

His mother, Mary (Polly) Johnson, was left to care for two boys by herself. She was a seamstress and laundress. Because Andrew had black hair and a darker complexion than his older brother William (who had freckles and light hair), there were rumors that Andrew’s biological father was a lawyer his mom did laundry for. Poor white women at the time did the same work as enslaved black women and were likewise at the mercy of the men in whose houses they worked, so the rumors are at least plausible.

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H.L. Hunt Motive & Opportunity by John Curington

~ D. J. Moore ~ Leave a comment

In the 1950s and 60s, H.L. Hunt was the richest man in the world. He hosted a conservative radio program called Life Line which told the world about the evils of JFK, RFK, MLK, and labor unions. He wanted to promote his radio show at the 1964 New York World’s Fair and spent millions of dollars on roller coasters and other investments, however his contract was cancelled and he lost all the money. Vice President LBJ told him the decision had been made by a “higher authority”, which Hunt took to mean President JFK. On the plane ride back to Dallas, Hunt told John Curington, the author of this book, “I’ve about got a bellyful of those Kennedy boys. They both need to go.”

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Good News Friday

~ D. J. Moore ~ Leave a comment
  • New study: Poverty has decreased more than we thought, as has inequality – including within countries. Warp News.
  • Real wages of low-wage workers grew 12.1% between 2019 and 2023. Economic Policy Institute.
  • Each of the past four generations of Americans (Millennials, Generation X, Baby Boomers, and Silent Generation) was better off than the previous one. SSRN.
  • In Cambodia over the last two decades, the mortality rate from tuberculosis has dropped by 45 percent, saving an estimated 400,000 lives. The Star.
  • Toxic chemical releases have declined 21% in 10 years in USA. Clean Technica.
  • Scientists say they have successfully eliminated HIV from infected cells, using Nobel Prize-winning Crispr gene-editing technology. BBC.
  • Surgeons transplant pig kidney into a patient, a medical milestone. New York Times.

For more good news, check out Fix the News and The Progress Network.

The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Sixteenth Annual Collection edited by Gardner Dozois

~ D. J. Moore ~ Leave a comment

It’s not immediately obvious, but the year in question is 1998. This whopper of a book, containing over a quarter million words of fiction, begins with a 50-page summary of all the science fiction novels, short stories, collections, magazines, movies, TV shows, and more that appeared in 1998. It’s humorous in retrospect that editor Gardner Dozois says South Park is beginning to grow repetitive and he predicts its influence is beginning to wane, since it’s still making new episodes over twenty years later.

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Good News Friday

~ D. J. Moore ~ Leave a comment
  • For the first time on record, the number of children worldwide who died before their 5th birthday has dipped below 5 million. In 2022, 4.9 million young children died – that’s fewer than half the number who died in 2000. NPR.
  • In the United States, there was a 13% decline in murder last year (the largest one-year decline ever recorded), 6% decline in violent crime, (likely the lowest rate since the late 1960s), and a 4% decline in property crime. Jeff-alytics.
  • Germany’s emissions fell by record 10.1% in 2023. Euronews.
  • Brazil installed about 17 gigawatts of solar last year, roughly equal to its entire solar market in 2021. These catapulted Brazil to the world’s third largest solar market in 2023, after China and the US. BloombergNEF.
  • Woman given a new 3D-printed windpipe in a world-first. BBC.

For more good news, check out Fix the News and The Progress Network.