Helping people feels good and it’s easy to say yes to helping others; however, it’s not always the best course of action. Of course, this happens very often in the work environment where you and your overworked coworkers need more time to complete tasks. If you keep saying yes to
Continue readingAuthor: Adam Clare
Things Are Good: iNaturalist Goes Its Own Way
Way back in 2011 we took at a new app that helps to identify the world around, back then it was to help the California redwoods. That app is iNaturalist and it’s had a great decade plus of identifying all sorts of plants and animals. The app, which has a
Continue readingThings Are Good: Experimental Rice in Bali Increases Yields & Decreases Emissions
You love rice, everyone loves rice and we need more of it. Growing populations and the impact of the climate crisis on crops raises the stakes of rice cultivation. As a species we need to keep rice cheap, plentiful, and accessible to ensure a stable global food supply. India has
Continue readingThings Are Good: Climate Solution Simulator
Avoiding a bigger climate catastrophe should be a concern for everyone, but understanding how to do that could be a challenge for some. The EN Roads simulator is a way for people to easily understand how to end our destructive energy practices. It’s an easy to use interface that has
Continue readingThings Are Good: The AI Incident Database Catalogs AI Errors
The threat Artificial Intelligence holds is unknown and many people are rightfully concerned about the potential harm that AI can cause. The AI Incident Databaseo help us as a society to think through how we should regulate AIs by tracking any problematic issue that has been raised by the actions
Continue readingThings Are Good: Bike Riding is Not Just a Phase
Every cyclists knows that riding a bike equals freedom, you can go where you want when you want and don’t need trillions of dollars of infrastructure to operate one. Electric bicycles are getting more affordable every year and more and more people are buying them instead of getting a car.
Continue readingThings Are Good: Better Solar Helps Bitter Hops
Agrivoltaic setups aren’t new to regular readers of this site as we’ve seen many times that certain crops benefit from the shade solar panels provide; and, the solar panels benefit the farmers by producing clean energy. Now we know that hops, which flavour beer, thrive under solar panels. A German
Continue readingThings Are Good: Earthquake Protection Using Ancient Techniques
Currently earthquakes cause buildings to collapse and are therefore quite deadly, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Already there are modern high tech solutions that many earthquake prone areas use to ensure buildings don’t collapse during extreme shaking events. We can augment our current systems by using those
Continue readingThings Are Good: How Seville Stays Cool Despite Rising Heat
Climate change is increasing the average temperatures of cities around the world, which forces inhabitants to adjust to entirely new climates their cities weren’t designed for. In Spain, the city of Seville is expected to have the climate of Marrakesh in a few years time so the city needs to
Continue readingThings Are Good: Canada Starts to Reduce Oil & Gas Subsidies
A country that loves extracting fossil fuels has begun to clean up its tax rebates for the destructive oil and gas industry. Canada spent over $15 BILLION on subsidies for the oil and gas sector in 2021 alone, which isn’t just bad it’s literally funding the destruction of the planet.
Continue readingThings Are Good: Working Out Helps You Work it Out
Going for a walk can help you settle down your overactive brain and help you see things positively, and best of all it’s free! Anxiety and depression rates are increasing in North America for a variety of legitimate reasons; however, we a little working out can bring those rates down.
Continue readingThings Are Good: Transit Hub Addiction Clinics Benefit Everyone
When social services are difficult to get to then their services are used less, it sounds obvious but in too many places social services are very difficult to get to. Car centric urban designs further exacerbate inequality by limiting mobility options, or to put it another way: cars limit freedom
Continue readingThings Are Good: Save the Seabirds, Save the World
Seabirds like the puffin are cute and curious things, and it turns out that if we help them thrive we can help the carbon cycle. Habitats that are good for seabirds can sequester carbon efficiently and due to the level of nutrients can provide energy for other lifeforms. The key
Continue readingThings Are Good: Putting Names on the Climate Crisis
The people who make decisions to continue us on a path of climate catastrophe have names and addresses. We need to shame people who are actively engage in profiteering off of killing every living thing on the planet, and that’s exactly what Environmental Defence has started to do. They have
Continue readingThings Are Good: Crosswords Reduce Dementia Risk
We know that having friends can help with reducing risk of dementia in old age, but what do people with small (or nonexistent ) social circles do? They can take up leisure activities that get the brain working. Researchers in Australia have found that people who participate in active leisure
Continue readingThings Are Good: Taxing the Rich Will Save the Planet
Luxury taxes can save us from climate collapse and we should start raising taxes now. You, the reader, will not have your taxes increased and nor are you likely to be impacted by a luxury tax; however, the benefits you will gain from a luxury tax are immense. We already
Continue readingThings Are Good: Time to Move Away from Suburbia
Generic car focussed housing development. The future is 15 minutes away and it’s high time we get there. With the climate crisis in full swing we need to rethink unsustainable lifestyles and restructure unsustainable urban design into sustainable living. The concept of the 15 minutes city has gained popularity and
Continue readingThings Are Good: Snowflakes Important to Political Organizing
vote You’re likely thinking “oh no, not another political thing about snowflakes”, but I assure you this one is different. These snowflakes are conceptual and not the stereotype of a right winger getting mad because they saw a beer commercial. When it comes to organizing people to get a political
Continue readingThings Are Good: Will Kindergarteners be Better at Fact Checking than Boomers?
Figure 1 from Cook, Ellerton, and Kinkead 2018. CC BY 3.0 We tach kids how to read so why not teach them to understand how to critique what they read? People tend to be fine with that (although some basic people claim schools shouldn’t teach kids how to question the
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Climate Hole in One in Spain
????Saboteamos 10 campos de golf en todo el territorio español ????Actuamos en diez campos de golf en seis provincias españolas, con el objetivo de denunciar el despilfarro de agua que supone el golf en medio de una de las peores sequías de la historia… (1/4) pic.twitter.com/4FvK3HA3JV — Extinction Rebellion Spain
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