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Five good things · Three minutes
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KINDNESS • Upworthy
The upstairs noise turned into a twice-weekly friendshipShe recorded the noise to complain. Then she met Carole.
Heidi, who posts online as @omgitsheidiii, spent weeks annoyed by the "bowling ball" sounds coming through her ceiling. She never complained to the neighbor. She recorded the noise and vented about it online, which is what most people do instead of knocking. Then she saw the source: Carole, 85, shaking with Parkinson's as she tried to carry recycling down the stairs. The bin spilled across the ground. Heidi went to help, and the two introduced themselves. "I'm so sorry, I have Parkinson's," Carole told her, then asked if she had been too loud. "Nope, you're totally fine," Heidi said. She learned Carole has no family and hadn't eaten a meal that wasn't microwaved in years. Now Heidi visits a couple of times a week, cleans the apartment slowly, and cooks. Commenters warned her about Medicaid thresholds and suggested a broom code: three knocks on the ceiling means come up. Read the full story → | |||
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KINDNESS • Good News Network
Her calf stayed close while rescuers cut the manatee freeA guide could have kept fishing. He made the call instead.
A female manatee is swimming free off St. Simons Island, Georgia, after a fishing guide spotted her tangled in a commercial crab pot line and called it in. Capt. Davis Galland reported the July 29 entanglement, which wildlife officials say was the first ever recorded in the state. The adult was wrapped tightly in the line and buoy, with a dependent calf staying close. A three-boat team from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission raced to the Mackay River before a storm chased them off the water. Over two days, they cut away the anchoring trap and manually removed the buoy and line, which had begun cutting into her skin. Rescuers drew on techniques learned freeing dolphins and North Atlantic right whales. They also fitted her with a satellite tag. The two smaller manatees nearby made the standard net approach impossible, so the team worked by hand instead. Read the full story → | |||
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SCIENCE • Smithsonian Magazine
NASA saved a 47-year-old probe from 13 billion miles awayThey sent the command. Then waited 40 hours to learn if it worked.
NASA engineers extended the life of Voyager 2 by two years or more this July with a fix they nicknamed the "big bang," all from about 13 billion miles away. The probe, launched in 1977, is running low on power. Its plutonium supply loses roughly four watts a year, so the team turned off two heaters and a digital tape recorder, then switched on lower-power substitutes to keep the spacecraft warm enough to function. The wait was long. Because Voyager 2 sits so far out, engineers did not know their commands had worked until about 40 hours later. "At this point, almost everything functions as a heater, no matter what it was designed to do," said Kareem Badaruddin of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The save spared one of the probe's three working instruments from being shut off before year's end. Next the team wants to try the same trick on Voyager 1, which is 47 years old and does not always behave like its twin. Read the full story → | |||
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KINDNESS • GreaterGood
Firefighters found Toast the cat alive after 72 hoursThe roof had collapsed. One closet held.
A cat named Toast Malone survived 72 hours inside a burned Utah apartment complex, tucked in one of the only closets left standing after the roof collapsed. The fire began early on July 31 and burned for 24 hours, displacing residents across all 220 units and destroying several. Toast's owner had to evacuate without him. The cat refused to be caught, which is the kind of decision that looks worse by the hour. His apartment sat near where the fire started, and with hundreds of thousands of gallons of water sprayed overhead, hope faded. Then firefighters found him, wet and scared and otherwise unharmed. Salt Lake County Animal Services shared the reunion video. "Ryder and I are immensely grateful for your team," the owners wrote. "We were absolutely devastated and it still feels like a dream." Officers had worked alongside firefighters for four days, ready to go in the moment it was safe. Read the full story → | |||
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NATURE • Smithsonian Magazine
Mountain lions cut deer crashes by 76 percentFewer deer on the road. Turns out something is watching them.
Where mountain lions roam the Olympic Peninsula, drivers crash into far fewer deer, according to a study published August 5 in Current Biology. Researchers found that the presence of pumas corresponded with a 76 percent decline in deer-vehicle collisions over five years in western Washington. The reason is behavioral. When cougars are around, deer head deeper into the woods and avoid roadsides, the exact edge habitats where ambush predators like to hide. Deer also shift to daytime activity, away from the darker hours when the worst crashes happen. The team worked with five Native American communities that shared data from 503 camera trap sites and 59 collared pumas. Deer alone caused 92 percent of the 953 crashes mapped, which killed two people and cost an estimated $14.7 million. Liana Zanette, an ecologist at Western University who was not involved, put it plainly to New Scientist. "Cougars also provide this service completely free of charge."
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With love, The Editor
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