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Five good things · Three minutes
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NATURE • Smithsonian Magazine
One parrot dad fathered ten of this year's chicksThe population hit 51 birds in 1995. Then the trees fruited.
New Zealand added a record 90 kakapo chicks to its population this year, pushing the total for the flightless parrot to 325 birds, the Department of Conservation announced September 1. The species had crashed to just 51 birds in 1995, only 20 of them female. "It took about 16 years to make 90 chicks in the early days of the recovery program," conservationist Deidre Vercoe told Radio New Zealand's "Kakapo Files" podcast. "And we've just done that in one season." The kakapo is the world's heaviest parrot, weighing up to nine pounds, and breeds only every two to four years when rimu trees fruit heavily. This year brought one of the best crops in decades. The season also produced a standout. A 10-year-old first-time father named Tūterangi mated with six females and produced ten living chicks, earning the informal title of dad of the year. The next breeding season is expected around 2028. Read the full story → | |||
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DELIGHT • Smithsonian Magazine
A $30 estate sale find could sell for $250,000He showed up late, after the picking-over. Then, a hallway.
A collector who arrived late to a Michigan estate sale this July, after most of the goods had been picked over, wandered into a hallway leading to the garage and found a slate-gray painting of scattered seashells. The lower-left corner read: Abercrombie, '51. The price was $30. The painting turned out to be a long-lost work by Gertrude Abercrombie, the Chicago Surrealist once called the "Queen of Chicago," and Freeman's expects it to sell for up to $250,000 in New York on October 1. The buyer made a detour on a family vacation to an Abercrombie retrospective in Milwaukee, where the exhibition catalog held an archival photo of the very painting. Art historian Susan Weininger authenticated it. Abercrombie had given the piece to a Kalamazoo doctor in exchange for a medical procedure, and it stayed in his family for 75 years. Weeks earlier, a Freeman's specialist had told tour visitors that her paintings still turn up at estate sales now and then. He was right sooner than he expected. Read the full story → | |||
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MEDICINE • ScienceDaily Health
A new drug held back mesothelioma in most patientsCancer cells build defenses to survive. This drug takes them away.
An experimental drug controlled disease progression in 67 percent of patients with relapsed mesothelioma during a phase one clinical trial, according to research published in Nature Communications this week. Mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer usually linked to asbestos exposure, kills most patients within about a year, and treatment options remain thin. The drug, called RSO-021, comes out of work begun at the University of Vermont Cancer Center around 2015. It uses thiostrepton, a naturally occurring antibiotic, to disable an enzyme that tumor cells rely on to survive their own stressful chemistry. Without it, oxidative damage builds until the cancer cells die. Delivered through a chest catheter many patients already have, the drug was generally well tolerated, and the critically ill trial participants lived longer than those on standard care. Researcher Victoria Gibson said she was moved when a stranger contacted the lab hoping to enroll a dying father. "We just work in a lab all day working with cells," she said. Read the full story → | |||
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MEDICINE • Good News Network
Three students built a concussion test that takes three minutesA coach has seconds to decide. Now they have data.
Three Harvard University students have built a low-cost, eye-tracking headset that can screen a young athlete for a possible concussion in about two to three minutes on the sidelines. The device, called Rumble Rims, won the James Dyson Award 2026 for the United States and a $6,500 prize. Radhika Saran, Cleo Pontone and Sophia DeVito designed it to close the gap between costly clinical systems and the subjective checks coaches make in the middle of a game. The headset uses infrared light the athlete cannot see, tracks how the eyes follow and fixate during a short task, then translates the data into plain guidance a coach can read. The Centers for Disease Control estimates roughly 2.5 million US high schoolers reported a sports concussion in one year. Elliot Sawyer-Kaplan, a high school lacrosse coach who advised the team, put it simply. "Once we take the emotion out of the decision, it's not in the coach's hands." Read the full story → | |||
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DELIGHT • Google News Human Interest
Meet Scribble, the puppy training to find people in snowThe chairlift came first. The avalanches come later.
Mt. Bachelor Ski Patrol has a new recruit, and he is a young black lab named Scribble, currently in training to become an avalanche rescue dog. The Oregon mountain announced that Scribble recently completed his first chairlift ride, a milestone for a dog whose future job depends on being comfortable in places most dogs never go. He is taking his time exploring the terrain, which is the correct pace for someone who cannot yet ski. Avalanche rescue dogs learn to locate people buried in snow, work no small teams of humans are physically able to match. Scribble has a long stretch of training ahead before he earns full patrol status. For now, he is a lab getting to know a very large mountain one lift ride at a time. His progress is posted on Instagram under @scribbleonpatrol, where the main development so far is that he has figured out the chairlift. Read the full story → | |||
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THE HONEYMAP
Sweet news is everywhere, if you know where to look.
honeyletter+ is open — the whole map, the button whenever you need it, no sponsors ever. Founding rate through September 27. Become a founding member →
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With love, The Editor
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