Recycling programs still can’t recycle every consumer good, which means that we still need to think about what we put in the blue box (or whatever colour it is where you live). Some plastics are too hard to recycle and some containers too hard to clean. The CBC recently ran
Continue readingTag: Direct Action
Things Are Good: Science by People for People
To the average person it might look like scientists operate in an ivory tower away from reality, which, can make engaging in scientific issues intimidating. To bridge this gap engaged citizens and scientists have launched themselves into the “citizen science” way of doing things. Basically what that means is that
Continue readingThings Are Good: Stick it to Straws
People are more aware than ever before about the damage to our planet caused by plastics. The whole life-cycle of plastics causes harm from collecting non-renewable oils to the long lifetime of most plastic products. Plastic has even been found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench (video below)! Of
Continue readingThings Are Good: Resistbot Makes it Easy for Americans to Reach Politicians
The inability to easily take action is a leading factor in why people don’t engage in political change. The creators of a new service, Resistbot, want to make it simple for Americans to have their voices heard. Resistbot is a bot you can interact with via SMS or using it
Continue readingThings Are Good: Teens are Fighting for our Collective Climate Future
Teens today are doing something their parents didn’t do: act on the knowledge that climate change is happening. Boomers did a great job of gobbling many of the worlds resources and dumping carbon into the atmosphere, subsequent generations dealt with proving that to be true. Now the current generation of
Continue readingThings Are Good: Bitcoins for Charity from The Pineapple Fund
The Bitcoin wallet shown above belongs to the Pineapple Fund, which will be emptied to fund a variety of charities. The charities aren’t chosen through a decentralized system (like Bitcoin itself) but by a person who held on to a lot of Bitcoins. The individual is suddenly so wealthy that
Continue readingThings Are Good: $150,000 Award Rejected due to Immoral Investments
money The insurance company Aviva gives a cash award for community groups that make a positive change, one of their winners this year rejected the financial award. Indigenous Climate Action were thrilled to found out they won, but not so thrilled when they found out that one issue they are
Continue readingThings Are Good: Flash North Korea for Freedom
Flash Drives For Freedom from Doug Burnett on Vimeo. The reclusive state of North Korea doesn’t like it when information leaks in or out. The government is propped up by ignorance, fear, and a lack of a viable alternative. They control their population by limiting access to knowledge; North Korea
Continue readingThings Are Good: Intersection Design Improved by Using Leaves
Got together with some neighbours and transformed a local intersection with chalk & leaves, revealing a surplus surface area of 2,000 square feet which could be re-designed as a parkette, new sidewalks, and much shorter/safer crossings. More: https://t.co/SNYkMMo0Ui pic.twitter.com/psv0MRTZXi — dave meslin (@meslin) November 29, 2017 Dave Meslin got back
Continue readingThings Are Good: WikiTribune to World: “Hello”
In 2001 when Jimmy Wales launched Wikipedia he never thought that the website would become what it is today. This year he has launched (with many others) WikiTribune and hopes that it becomes as influential as Wikipedia is online. WikiTribune exists because of the disappointing state of news media right
Continue readingThings Are Good: Why Net Neutrality is Important
The current federal administration in the USA is really challenging norms in American society, the most recent attack is on net neutrality. Earlier this year the Trump administration tried to prop-up the profits of a handful corporations at the cost of internet freedom and failed because of actions taken by
Continue readingThings Are Good: Take a Moment and Really Think about Unions
2017 has been anything but a successful year for unions. For a multitude of reasons unions have a bad reputation, although it’s thanks to unions that we have labour rights and weekends. Unions are really good at helping individuals deal with institutions that want to exploit their work; and history
Continue readingThings Are Good: It’s Time to Think Hard About our Waste Systems
Modern capitalism encourages consumption at levels previously unimaginable which has led to an inconvenient byproduct: the globalization of waste. High levels of consumption means more waste in our system, and with the gift-giving holiday next month we’re going to see a lot of wasteful purchases. This year think about what
Continue readingThings Are Good: 15,000 Scientists Want to Change Climate Change
They want to stabilize the change and, ideally, change the trajectory we’re on. Climate change is happening faster than predicted and the positive feedback loops have started (meaning that it’s even harder to stop climate change) – this is the warning from over 15,000 scientists. The Alliance of World Scientists
Continue readingThings Are Good: Use a Browser Tab to Raise Funds for Charity
Donating money, time, or resources to charities makes the world a better place, but what if you don’t have any of those things to spare? If you’re using the internet via a web browser maybe you can donate some spare CPU cycles though. A new site called Donate Your Tab
Continue readingThings Are Good: Yes in my Backyard!
For too long cities have been plagued by NIMBYism – people who chant not in my backyard. People who oppose change have held back communities for too long and now people are shouting yes in my backyard – YIMBY. In Toronto the rise of this movement has led to annual
Continue readingThings Are Good: Lessons on Dealing with Assholes
The Asshole Survival Guide is a new book by Robert Sutton, a specialist in dealing with assholes. No, he’s not a proctologist. Sutton’s research is about what makes someone behave like a jerk and what others can do about it. He’s a psychology professor at Stanford University where they actually
Continue readingThings Are Good: Positively Trolling Racists on the Web
Racists aren’t smart, and recently their stupidity has been taken advantage of to make the internet a little better. The popular online community Reddit has some parts of the site occupied by racists and the larger contingent of the community got sick of it. Some members started to infiltrate those
Continue readingThings Are Good: How One Hawaiian Mayor is Making His Town Better
Hawaii is a beautiful part of the world and like most gorgeous parts pf this planet it’s feeling the pressures of climate change. Despite the American government’s blatant rejection of science and sense in environmental policy one Hawaiian mayor, Bernard Carvalho, is bringing his community into the 21st century. Indeed,
Continue readingThings Are Good: eBird App is Helping us Understand Birds
eBird is a mobile app that has been around for a few years and used around the world. As a result the app has been used to collect a rich dataset of bird sightings which provides enough data for researchers to have a very accurate understanding of some bird species.
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