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Five good things · Three minutes
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KINDNESS • Sunny Skyz
A borrowed mallet turned strangers into his festival family.His dad had a plan to bring him home. He never needed it.
Adam James saved all year to attend Boomtown Fair in Hampshire, his first music festival, and he went alone. His dad, Andy, was worried enough about the five-day event that he had a plan to drive down and bring him home if it got overwhelming. Adam is autistic and has ADHD. "I've always put it off because I've never had anyone to go with," he said. Then he pitched his tent near a group of guys from Bristol, one of whom asked to borrow his tent mallet. That was the whole beginning of it. They noticed he was on his own and invited him to camp with them for the week. "I couldn't live with myself letting him be on his own so we took him in," said Ciaran Herniman. Adam broke his usual rule and told them about his autism. Nobody flinched. He cried when he left. Since Andy's Facebook thank-you went viral, Adam, who DJs as Adzo, has been booked to perform at Boomtown in 2027. Read the full story → | |||
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DELIGHT • Good News Network
Staff nursed a dying kitten. Now she runs the station.They found her sick at the station. Six months later, she ran it.
A tabby cat named Nakano-san was promoted to stationmaster at Nakanocho Station in Choshi, Japan, in July, complete with a cap and a medallion for her collar. Staff at the Choshi Electric Railway Co. found her last October, thin and sick with her eyes frozen shut. They nursed her back to health at the station, signed her up as an apprentice in January, and gave her the top job six months later. Her listed skills include pushing computer mouses off desks and sleeping on paperwork. The struggling railway hoped a cat might draw visitors to Choshi's temples and lighthouses. There is precedent. Wakayama Electric Railway appointed Japan's first cat stationmaster, Tama, in 2007, which lifted passenger numbers 17% that month and, by one estimate, added 1.1 billion yen to the local economy. Nakano-san's July debut drew a swarm of reporters, all there to meet the new boss. Read the full story → | |||
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DELIGHT • Upworthy
Three words on his glove, from his momShe yelled it to embarrass him. Now it's on his glove.
Payton Tolle, a 23-year-old left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, has three words written on his glove: "You're so pretty." They are his mother's words. Jina Tolle used to shout them from the stands at his high school games, meant to embarrass him. It worked, until it didn't. "I found quickly, like it meant, she loves me," Tolle said in a clip posted to Major League Baseball's YouTube page. "So now every time I look down and see that, it's my little reminder that, hey, crap happens on the field. But you're still pretty. You're more than just baseball." Jina, who had cancer, drove three hours to watch her sons play and told Payton to play with joy. He still texts her. He runs to center field before each game to talk to her. This week he tagged out the Mariners' Dominic Canzone and hugged him on the spot. One commenter summed it up: "His mama taught him well." Read the full story → | |||
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DELIGHT • InspireMore
A busful of kids sang Happy Birthday to a waving toddlerHe waves at the bus every morning. This time it waved back.
Reed Seeger turned two years old in Phoenix, Arizona, and celebrated the way he loves best, by waving at a school bus. The toddler is a regular fixture outside his family's home on busy mornings, waving to the older kids as they head to class. On his birthday, he stood on the sidewalk in his pajamas holding a giant silver balloon shaped like a 2. His mother, Logan Seeger, filmed what happened next. As the bus slowed, kids leaned out the windows to wave back, then started singing "Happy Birthday." Logan later told Storyful the driver had been engaging with the students all year. "Even neighbors have been stopping by in the morning and cars driving by have rolled down their windows to say hi," she said. Reed, for his part, has been standing outside for the bus since long before anyone thought to sing to him. He was just there for the waving. Read the full story → | |||
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NATURE • Smithsonian Magazine
They hatched 130,000 octopuses to save Italy's shellfishThe crabs are winning. So Italy hired an eight-armed predator.
Italian researchers have released at least 130,000 lab-hatched baby octopuses into the Adriatic Sea this summer, hoping the cephalopods will grow up to eat the invasive blue crabs wrecking the region's fisheries. Native to the Americas, blue crabs likely arrived in the Mediterranean via ships' ballast water, and their numbers have surged over the past decade. In 2024, experts estimated the species caused roughly $116 million in damage in Italy, destroying local shellfish and shredding fishing gear with strong claws. The Octo-Blu project, run by the University of Bologna, picked the common octopus for its hardiness and appetite. Marine biologist Laura Gentile said lab octopuses had been seen hunting crabs weighing around a pound. "That's an encouraging sign, biologically." Only about 1 percent of the millimeter-long hatchlings are expected to reach adulthood. Those that do could each eat up to four blue crabs a day. Researchers hope to know if it worked by year's end. Read the full story → | |||
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THE HONEYMAP
Sweet news is everywhere, if you know where to look.
• Every good thing we have reported, pinned where it happened •
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With love, The Editor
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