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Five good things · Three minutes
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KINDNESS • Good News Network
Three neighbors swam out and saved the sinking driverA car sank in a storm. Strangers were already swimming.
A 90-year-old driver lost control of her vehicle during a storm in Champaign, Illinois, in August, and it plunged into a flooded retention pond on North Prospect Avenue. As the car sank to its roof in the downpour, three local residents swam out toward it, soon joined by four Champaign Police Department officers. Together they pulled the woman free. On September 29th, the city honored them. The residents received Community Lifesaving Awards, read aloud for their families, and the four officers were given the Chief's Challenge Coin for setting their own safety aside. The driver came too, and thanked the people who reached her. Her son, who said he serves as a US Coast Guard officer, left a note on the department's Facebook post. "I know full well how dangerous rescues can be and commend you for your quick and heroic actions," he wrote. He would know.
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MEDICINE • Smithsonian Magazine
A brain implant let them speak and wave againSpeech or movement, never both. Until now.
Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco have built a brain implant that lets people with paralysis speak and gesture at the same time, controlling a digital avatar with their thoughts in real time. The work, published in Nature Neuroscience on September 14, involved two participants, one paralyzed by a stroke and the other living with ALS. Each had an iPhone-size device holding 253 electrodes placed on the brain's surface, where it can cover a wide area without penetrating the tissue. The team trained models to decode phrases like "hello" and "nice to meet you" alongside gestures such as clapping and waving. The participant who had a stroke hit 100 percent accuracy across three conversation tests. Co-author Samantha Brosler says the point is nuance. "Saying 'maybe' and nodding your head has a very different connotation than if you shake your head." She wants the next version to move fifteen joints in a single hand.
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DELIGHT • Upworthy
Firefighters bent iron bars to free a trapped boyNo power tools. Just an old trick and a crowbar.
Millions of people have watched a group of FDNY firefighters free a young boy whose head was wedged between the iron bars of a New York gate. To the boy's credit, he never panics in the footage. He waits, ears clearly in the way, while the crew figures out how he threaded himself through in the first place. The method they use involves no power tools. They wrap a heavy strap around the bars and twist it taut with a crowbar, keeping at it until the tops of the bars bend and a small gap opens below the boy's head. A firefighter positioned behind him helps ease him out without a scratch. The trick is called a Spanish windlass, an old technique firefighters apparently keep ready for exactly this. The best part comes at the end. The boy's friends, who stood beside him through the whole thing, close in with high fives and shoulder slaps. Read the full story → | ||||||||||
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DELIGHT • Smithsonian Magazine
A volunteer cleaning up trash found a 1,000-year-old canoeHe was collecting trash. He found a thousand years.
A volunteer trash cleanup dive in Wisconsin's Pewaukee Lake turned up something older than the state, older than the country. Mark Schachtner, a 45-year-old diver with the 4 Seasons Scuba Diving Club, was about to end his session on May 6 when he spotted a long object on the lake floor. He swam closer and realized it was a canoe. Possibly a very old one. "I always keep my eyes peeled," Schachtner told the Wisconsin State Journal. "The whole thing was sticking out." The Wisconsin Historical Society later dated the white oak dugout to roughly 1,000 years ago, likely carved by Indigenous communities using fire and stone around 992 to 1049 C.E. It measures 17.3 feet long and sits about 15 feet underwater. At the request of Wisconsin's tribal nations, it will stay exactly where it is. Larry Plucinski, a tribal historic preservation officer, suspects more are waiting. "No matter what lake you go to, there's probably canoes out there."
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NATURE • Positive News
She drove all night. The elephant calf finally fed from her hands.She feared an arranged marriage. Then came the elephants.
Dorothy Lowakutuk drove through the night across rain-soaked plains to reach a week-old elephant named Nemparwai, whose eyes were swollen shut after a fall into a well. The calf arrived at Reteti, Africa's first Indigenous-owned elephant sanctuary, in northern Kenya. For two nights Lowakutuk sat beside her, talking and singing. On the second day the calf scooped milk from her cupped hands and finally fed. "She became my baby," Lowakutuk says. "She wouldn't take her milk unless I was near." Reteti, founded in 2016 and run largely by local Samburu people, has reunited 60 stranded calves with their mothers. Last year it paid almost $342,000 directly to Samburu women, many of whom opened their first bank accounts. Lowakutuk is one of Africa's first female elephant keepers. She credits the animals with teaching her how to lead. "Not by intimidating, and not by fighting. Leadership has to grow from inside you."
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THE HONEYMAP
Sweet news is everywhere, if you know where to look.
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With love, The Editor
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