Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Pelosi: “He either is stupid, or he thinks the rest of us are.” Why not both?

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Joe Biden can go out like FDR, not by dying in office, but by crushing the fascists.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Everybody saw this coming.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Cole is on a roll !

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

You are here: Home / Balloon Juice / Make The World A Better Place / Let’s End The Year On A Good Note: Happier News

Let’s End The Year On A Good Note: Happier News

by | 82 Comments

This post is in: ,

A little bit of good news you  may have missed:

ETA: I forgot to mention, I had to watch with the sound on first time, then went back, muted it, and read the ticker at the bottom, which is full of more good news.

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Not exactly good news, but a bit of fun, as this reporter was a good sport when the unexpected (and painful) happened:

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This pup might find walking difficult, but he’s a champ when it comes to being a diabetic service dog:

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Despite months of fear-mongering and media hysteria, ten wolves have been released into Colorado (all from Oregon, I believe). That is our governor opening that crate:

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I love this story…and his wife’s “Where’s his heart pills!” was precious.

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A beautiful artist creates a memory in Cape Coral, FL:

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Going to end on a little more solemn note, as many are struggling, whether long term or because of the state of the world, personal grief, or just the onset of winter darkness. John Green, if you are unfamiliar with him, is a noted author, who, along with his equally successful brother, took the windfall from the sale of the film rights to his books and created a vast non-profit that helps everything from lowering the cost of tuberculosis drugs to building hospitals in remote areas.

In his personal life, he has several mental health challenges (and his brother was diagnosed this summer with cancer and completed treatment earlier this fall) and John talks about those realities, and hopefulness here:

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Also, if you need a bit more joy – here is the link to an hour of Steve Hartman’s 2023 kindness stories I will confess I’ve bookmarked it and watch one or two stories at a time to bolster my mood.

I have some good climate news tucked away, too and I’ll try to post that tomorrow if I can –  it’s now my busy time, work-wise, so we’ll have to see how it goes.

Consider this an open thread to talk about kindness, good things, and maybe about your favorite music, TV, movies, or books from 2023.

 

Reader Interactions

82Comments

  1. 1.

    Alison Rose

    I highly recommend John Green’s nonfiction book, The Anthropocene Reviewed:

    The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet – from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley’s Comet to Penguins of Madagascar – on a five-star scale.

    Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene’s reviews have been praised as ‘observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy’, with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green’s gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.

    It’s charming and funny and at times incredibly poignant and lovely.

  2. 2.

    TaMara

    @Alison Rose:  Fun part of that book – he’d quit writing after, I think, Turtles All The Way Down. But found himself putting this book together as little tidbits in a notebook, until it became a book.

  4. 4.

    RaflW

    I’m looking forward to seeing NYE fireworks at the very civilized hour of 7pm tonight at Keystone ski area. And fingers crossed for snow to finally make a return to the region at the end of the coming week. Maybe? Please!?

  5. 5.

    Miss Bianca

    I spent the morning going through all the Taylor Swift videos that everyone linked to last night, because I’d never listened to any of her stuff before, and while I can’t *quite* claim to be a Swiftie as a result, I can say that she’s an amazingly talented artist and I am so glad to have finally listened to her music, and I’m thankful she’s on the planet!

  8. 8.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Miss Bianca: I did the same thing when I was wide awake at 4 am! Even though I never really listened to her music, I admired the way she presented herself at various award shows I caught a glimpse of. For all the breakup themes, she seems comfortable in her skin.

  9. 9.

    TaMara

    @Miss Bianca: The Eras Tour movie is excellent if you find yourself needing something to rent one night (when you have 3+ hours to kill). Really gave me a newfound respect for her talent, intelligence and stamina.

  10. 10.

    trollhattan

    2023 may be the year EVs finally happened.

    Meanwhile, electric cars are already upending America. In 2023, our battery-powered future became so much more real—a boom in sales and new models is finally starting to push us into the post-gas age. Americans are on track to buy a record 1.44 million of them in 2023, according to a forecast by BloombergNEF, about the same number sold from 2016 to 2021 total. “This was the year that EVs went from experiments, or technological demonstrations, and became mature vehicles,” Gil Tal, the director of the Electric Vehicle Research Center at UC Davis, told me. They are beginning to transform not just the automotive industry, but also the very meaning of a car itself.

    “We’re at a point where EVs aren’t necessarily exclusively for the upper, upper, upper class,” Robby DeGraff, an analyst at the market-research firm AutoPacific, told me. If you wanted an electric car five years ago, you could choose from among various Tesla models, the Chevy Bolt, the Nissan Leaf—and that was really it. Now EVs come in more makes and models than Baskin-Robbins ice-cream flavors. We have more luxury sedans to vie with Tesla, but also cheaper five-seaters, SUVs, Hummers, pickup trucks, and … however you might categorize the Cybertruck. Nearly 40 new EVs have debuted since the start of 2022, and they are far more advanced than their ancestors. For $40,000, the Hyundai Ioniq 6, released this year, can get you 360 miles on a single charge; in 2018, for only a slightly lower cost, a Nissan Leaf couldn’t go half that distance.

    If cars are gadgets now, then carmakers are also now tech companies. An industry that has spent a century perfecting the internal combustion engine must now manufacture lithium-ion batteries and write the code to govern them. Imagine if a dentist had to pivot from filling cavities to performing open-heart surgery, and that’s roughly what’s going on here. “The transition to EVs is completely changing everything,” Loren McDonald, an EV consultant, told me. “It’s changing the people that automotive companies have to hire and their skills. It’s changing their suppliers, their factories, how they assemble and build them. And lots of automakers are struggling with that.”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/12/tesla-chatgpt-most-important-technology/676980/

  11. 11.

    Miss Bianca

    @Sure Lurkalot: Right?? Goooo, Taylor! :)

    @TaMara: I was lobbying my boss to get this at our theater – I thought it would do a lot better than some of the dud first-runs we showed! I think she told me that there was some sort of distribution deal though AMC Theaters that meant we wouldn’t be able to get it.

    But now I’d like to watch it, for sure!

  13. 13.

    cmorenc

    I am spending New Year’s eve on an inherently optimistic event: attending my niece’s wedding in asheville, nc, dinner reception included after the wedding.  This is the moment in their lives when none of the storms are yet on the horizon that sooner or later will inevitably come along sooner or later to test the seaworthiness of the couple’s marriage.  Both bride and groom are just O-30 and each have already-established successful careers and have known each other a few years already and both respective extended families bless the marriage, and they are both already familiar with each other’s occasional moody quirks, so there is good reason to be optimistic that they will stick together until one or the other attends the other’s funeral 50-60 years into the future.

  15. 15.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @cmorenc: Bookending that, January 4 is my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary.  We are having a small family party (their choice) at their favorite restaurant this weekend.  Not many couples make it that far.

  17. 17.

    HinTN

    @cmorenc:

    both already familiar with each other’s occasional moody quirks

    Knowledge, abetted with good humor, goes a long way. Good luck to your niece and her intended. Also, Happy New Year.

  18. 18.

    Wapiti

    Good news story: sorting through my dad’s mail, I found he had gotten a check ostensibly from the Washington State AG Office. Huh?

    So I look it up on line and the check is for real. The state had sued a number of chicken and canned tuna companies for price-fixing, and won a judgement of $40 million or something. So the AG was disbursing those funds to the WA households most affected – those earning below 175% of the poverty level.

  19. 19.

    Alison Rose

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Not many couples make it that far.

    True, and what a blessing that they have done so. Apparently, the 60th anniversary gift is diamond, but I’m sure they’ll be perfectly happy with a good meal with family :)

  20. 20.

    eclare

    My cat is like Korey with regard to the comforter on my bed.  I have to scrunch it up out of the way for her to get comfy on the bed because she refuses to step on the comforter.  She will extend a tentative little paw, almost touch the comforter, and then she jerks it back.

    I am not about to try putting socks on a cat, but I’m so glad they worked for Korey.  Such a good boy.

  26. 26.

    Scout211

    The first video recapping the good news of 2023 went really quickly through so many great things that happened in 2023, but I’d like to highlight one of the  ones he cited in his news story:  ALERT California.

    From Time Magazine

    Stopping Wildfires
    AlertCalifornia and Cal Fire AI Wildfire Detector
    Detecting wildfires before they spread is a challenge now plaguing much of the world. University of California San Diego’s public safety program, AlertCalifornia, is employing AI to help. Working with Cal Fire, the program trained AI to detect smoke and other early indications of fire on a feed from a network of more than 1,050 cameras placed in forests across the state. When the system spots something, it alerts the local fire department via text message. In the first two months, the system had correctly identified 77 fires before any 911 calls came in. “The greatest success stories of this [system] are the fires you never hear about,” says Falco Kuester, co-principal investigator at AlertCalifornia.

    If you live in California, this is the home page of all the cameras that are live in the state.  Zoom in to your area and check out the camera views.  It’s an amazing source and as the news video and Time article stated, it has already spotted 77 fires before 911 was called

    ETA:  Or if you don’t live in California, have fun with the cameras anyway.  LOL

  29. 29.

    Alison Rose

    @Omnes Omnibus: Easier and a mite cheaper, I’d imagine :)

    I just did the math and realized my mom’s parents had been married 65 years when my grandma passed. Just wild. I’m sure by that point, neither of them could really remember life without the other. My grandpa was almost 20 and grandma was 19 when they got married…four months before my mom was born, LOL.

  33. 33.

    evodevo

    Holy Moley…those look like Clydesdales…talk about a broken foot!  It would be like having a small car run over it…

  34. 34.

    Marc

    Our family went to see The Boy and the Heron (aka How Do You Live?) last night at the local alternative theater (meaning they serve pizza and beer).  When the daughter was in college 6 years ago, she applied (along with thousands of others) to Studio Ghibli’s open call for background artists on what would eventually be this film (we still keep the rejection letter on our kitchen bulletin board, it came on kawaii Totoro letterhead).  With that context, it eventually became clear that Miyazaki was attempting to do what the Spiderverse animations have done more successfully (by being far less conservative), represent multiple realities by using different background artists to draw each one.  Still a good film and worth seeing, but not one of Miyazaki’s best.  We recommend seeing it in Japanese with subtitles as we did (thankfully, no more Disney dub-only distribution), as it felt like a lot of the subtleties would be lost with dubbing.

  35. 35.

    narya

    @Omnes Omnibus: Lovely! I happened to be visiting my parents when their 65th came around (two years ago), and I insisted on making a nice dinner for them. By that time, going out had started to become difficult for dad, and we were all tentative because of Covid, so that worked nicely. I think they won’t both make it to the 70th, but they’ve had quite the run. I hope you and your parents and their friends have a celebration that pleases them!

  38. 38.

    Matt McIrvin

    @trollhattan: It seems like I’ve been seeing a spate of bad-news articles about EVs, that are basically “EV growth not as explosive as somebody expected”. There’s always this race with expectations.

  40. 40.

    trollhattan

    @Matt McIrvin: Any change this vast is going to have fits and starts–succeeding here, struggling there. Then there are the contra-EV forces (e.g., the entire petroleum industry worldwide) that will push FUD relentlessly, no matter what. Trump, of course.

    Car dealers in general hate them, because their lucrative service centers will find themselves twiddling their collective thumbs as ICE sales diminish.

    Guessing Omaha and San Antonio and Rapid City and West Plains have a sprinkling at most. Big California cities have a LOT of EVs, such that I’m startled at the market penetration here. (Frickin’ trucks, though, they still predominate.)

    We can’t get the charging infrastructure installed too soon. Once folks can reliably charge at work or while shopping or dining out, a lot of EV resistance will drain away.

  41. 41.

    Jackie

    @Alison Rose: Dad was very pragmatic and never judged couples who had seven or eight pound premature babies after six months +/- of marriage. And chuckled when their further full-term pregnancies weighed the same, if not less.

    When BC pills were finally legal during my senior year in high school, it was he – not my mom – who let me know if I wanted to go on The Pill he had my back. He didn’t like shotgun weddings and didn’t want any of his three daughters forced into one. He was truly one-in-a-million.

  43. 43.

    FelonyGovt

    @Miss Bianca: Me too! That’s such a wonderful thing about our jackal community- I learn about new things – music, books, TV shows, etc. etc that are completely outside my little world.

  44. 44.

    m.j.

    I’ve been trying to follow some of the NYE celebrations around the world. I just saw the Red Square celebration.

    Of course it’s cold, but it didn’t seem well attended and there were some buses in the background. It also looked like it had heavy security to my untrained eye.

  47. 47.

    Yutsano

    I’ve noticed quite a few EVs here in the Seattle area. There is some charging infrastructure but it’s still woefully inadequate. Too many Teslas for my taste plus I can see how cheap they look every time I see one. But I mentioned the ID.4s have been showing up too. I’m not ready for my next car to be an EV just yet but they do look intriguing.

  49. 49.

    SteveinPHX

    @Alison Rose: Saw your comment about about John Green’s “The Anthropocene Reviewed” and went to my local library catalog. The three hard copies in the system were all checked out. So I put a Hold Request on the title.

    Makes me wonder if other Balloon Juicers beat me to the Hold Request button since I was pretty late to this thread.

    Thanks!

  52. 52.

    Geo Wilcox

    @trollhattan: We bought a Bolt EUV in November and could not be happier. I was so sick of the Suburban in the garage and now have so much room it isn’t funny. I love my little Sparky. I think the Blazer sized EV’s will come down in price because they have to. At $65K they are too expensive for most folks. They ride like a dream, I test drove 6 different models of that size and LOVED the Blazer but we didn’t want to spend another $30K on a car.

  54. 54.

    Geminid

    @Yutsano: The Infrastructure bill’s $7 billion for charging stations is finally kicking in. A Pilot truck stop near Columbus, Ohio just inaugurated the first one built under the program.

    The Infrastructure bill passed a little over two years ago, but there was a long period of rulemaking and standards-setting, and then a shorter application period. The program is being implemented by states, and Ohio’s was “early” because they had a program already going.

    A lot of the Infrastructure Bill’s programs have been like this. There’s $66 billion for improving Amtrak service, but it is only now starting to be awarded to specific projects, and many others are still in the planning stage. We ought to see more substantial progress on trains and chargers in a year, by November I hope.

  55. 55.

    zhena gogolia

    @Alison Rose: I mentioned to you that I just watched a romcom starring Zelenskyy. It made me so sad. It seemed (2011) like a normal (if not great) film made in a normal country. But then I thought, of course, because they thought Ukraine was still under their control, so they could afford to pretend to be normal.

    Anyway, VZ is charming in the film. It’s a remake of a classic Soviet film (Office Romance; this one is called Office Romance Our Time). The hero is Tolya Novoseltsev, a quintessential nebbish, brilliantly played by Andrei Myagkov in the original. A friend said, “Oh, I have to watch that! But Zelenskyy is so macho, how could he play Novoseltsev?” I said, “He wasn’t macho back then!”

  56. 56.

    frosty

    @Steve in the ATL: Ignore OO. He doesn’t understand great music!

    One of the comments mentioned that The Dentists were on an album called Children of Nuggets. Is this a contemporary version of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts of the Psychedelic Era? If so, I need to find it. That was one of the greatest compilations of garage band surf, psychedelic and jangly music I ever heard!

  58. 58.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Alison Rose: There was a joke about the girls in one branch of my family that everyone one of them was racing the stork to the altar.  My grandfather’s elder brother was born about a week after his parents got married back in 1916.

  61. 61.

    Old School

    @frosty:

    One of the comments mentioned that The Dentists were on an album called Children of Nuggets. Is this a contemporary version of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts of the Psychedelic Era? If so, I need to find it.

    Rhino came out with three box sets in the 90s:  an expanded version of Nuggets, Nuggets II (which focused on British artists), and Children of Nuggets (which covered artists from the 70s to the 90s).

    All three boxes seem to be out of print.

    Edit:  It’s streaming on Pandora.

  63. 63.

    Anotherlurker

    I just finished re-reading “Motel of the Mysteries” . It is a deadpan , tongue firmly in cheek homage to the genre of science writing for the masses.

    https://www.amazon.com/Motel-Mysteries-David-Macaulay/dp/0395284252/ref=rvi_d_sccl_2/145-8039956-6895823?pd_rd_w=A2SxW&content-id=amzn1.sym.f5690a4d-f2bb-45d9-9d1b-736fee412437&pf_rd_p=f5690a4d-f2bb-45d9-9d1b-736fee412437&pf_rd_r=JQC0HSF3GRPDN175Z3W7&pd_rd_wg=rFKnG&pd_rd_r=e0319ece-9200-4311-bd89-0fff104f52bf&pd_rd_i=0395284252&psc=1

    Give it a try.

  64. 64.

    Dan B

    @trollhattan: As an EV driver for 8 years I love all the new and improved options.  The issue here is finding a charger that is working.  People steal the cables for the copper and they don’t get fixed.  You find out only after arriving at the charger.  There should be information available on the internet like it used to be.  Otherwise I haven’t driven an ICE vehicle in at least four years.  They seem so clunky.

  65. 65.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Jackie: ​
      No one ever said any of girls in my family were good girls. OTOH, they all went to the Normal School/Teachers College and taught grade school.* I prefer to think of them as liberated.

    *Supposedly, my great grandmother Clara’s idea of discipline was so lax that kids were climbing in and out of the windows of her classroom.

  67. 67.

    Dan B

    @Wapiti: I got a check from AG Bob Ferguson.  He’s such a good guy and probably the next governor.  He’s not much in the charisma / superhero department but more than makes up for it with good works.

  69. 69.

    Dan B

    @Matt McIrvin: My partner follows the EV’s are failing stories.  They seem to be funded and promoted by fossil fuel money and some conservative deep pockets.  There’s always a plausible deniability angle.  They often focus on how it will be impossible to supply enough lithium while ignoring the massive investments in mining and the new battery technologies.  Following the new battery technologies is very exciting.

  70. 70.

    Dan B

    @trollhattan: There’s at least one curbside fast charger attached to a light pole.  Once these begin to proliferate it will change people’s perception.  Seeing is believing.

  73. 73.

    Geminid

    @Dan B: A lot of the critiques of EVs along these lines leave out factors like recycling of batteries and as you say, advances in materials science relating to batteries.

  75. 75.

    Dan B

    @Dan B: Forgot to add: one fast charger ‘in Seattle’.  It’s on MLK in Southeast Seattle, a mixed race and income neighborhood.  Seattle City Light is going to have to upgrade.   The number of EV’s in the city seems to double every year

    Sesttle City Light or Puget Sound Energy has invested in a windfarm in Montana approximately 400 miles away.

  79. 79.

    Geminid

    @Dan B: There are a couple of big wind projects going up in New Mexico that will supply electricity to Arizona and California. One is northeast of Albuquerque, in the Cline’s Corners area, and is projected to produce 1050 MW. The other, SunZia Wind, will be bigger, at 3,575 MW. It will be built southeast of Albuquerque, in Lincoln, Torrance and San Miguel Counties.

    Pattern Energy is developing both. A key part of both projects is transmission. The two projects will share a corridor to Arizona, using high voltage, direct current lines.

    Pattern announced 4 days ago that they had closed on $12 billion in financing for the Sunzia Wind and SunZia Transmission projects, and will commence construction. This was big news on clean energy-related new sites because it will be the largest clean energy infrastructure project ever built in the U.S.

    I’m not sure what the entire schedule is, but Vespa Wind says they have a contract to supply 242 × 163MW turbines for the SunZia Wind project, with deliveries starting in the 1st quarter of 2025 and the last turbines to be commissioned in the first half of 2026.

  80. 80.

    Chris T.

    @trollhattan:

    We can’t get the charging infrastructure installed too soon. Once folks can reliably charge at work or while shopping or dining out, a lot of EV resistance will drain away.

    I’m trying to work out some sort of switched reluctance pun here, but can’t quite get it to work…

  81. 81.

    Chris T.

    @Dan B:

    There should be information available on the internet like it used to be.

    The EVgo app has info on their chargers, and although it’s not always right, it’s been good enough for my purposes.

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