sweet news, for once
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Wednesday, Oct 28 · Five good things · Three minutes
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 TODAY IN THE APP One more, whenever you need it. Tap Something good for one true story from somewhere on the map.   |
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KINDNESS • Sunny Skyz
She spent 39 years cleaning the school. They named it after her.She thought she was there to discuss a school issue.
Marilyn Hampton, 76, spent 39 years as a custodian for Aubrey Independent School District in Texas, and next August an elementary school will open bearing her name. Hampton did far more than keep the buildings clean. She helped students with schoolwork, bought supplies for kids who needed them, and worked the ticket booth at football games. "When I could help a kid and turn their smile up instead of down, that's what I wanted to do," she said. At a recent school board meeting, she was invited to the podium under the impression she was there to discuss a school issue. Superintendent Dr. Shannon Saylor asked her to unroll a small red carpet. Printed on it: Marilyn Hampton Elementary School. She did not understand at first, then she did. One of eight siblings and the only one to finish high school, Hampton had sometimes called herself a failure for never attending college. She retired in 2022 and promptly took a job caring for infants and toddlers. Read the full story → | |||
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DELIGHT • Good News Network
Six years without a win, and they keep showing upSix seasons, no wins. They lace up anyway.
The Dartmouth High School Spartans have not won a baseball game in six years, and they keep showing up anyway. The team, based in Nova Scotia, loses roughly 80% of its games by the mercy rule, which ends play once a side gives up 10 runs in a set number of innings. The rest they lose the regular way. "Even through those large defeats, everyone has a blast on the team, we have a great time," team captain Curtis Snelgrove told CBC News. Many players had never touched a baseball before joining, since the team sets no performance standards and turns no one away. Alex Ansems, new to the sport, decided to contribute as a "vibes guy" instead. The Spartans were once co-ed. The girls split off, joined the women's league, and promptly won the first game in school history. The boys were thrilled for them. They are still waiting on their own. Read the full story → | |||
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DELIGHT • Smithsonian Magazine
Seeds lost since 1915 grew six feet tallHe nearly threw them out. Then they sprouted.
Claudio Grossi was cleaning his attic in Parma sometime in the early 1990s when he found an old sack of seeds he couldn't identify, left by a great-grandfather who started the family farm around 1915. The kernels were dry and cracked. Doubting anything would grow, he dumped them on a manure pile and forgot about them. They sprouted. One wheat grew six feet tall and produced seven ears per stalk, with kernels in yellow, black, red, white and green. "I thought it was a freak of nature," Grossi says. A Bible passage in Genesis, describing seven ears on one stalk, convinced him the grain was ancient. He was right. Researchers at the University of Parma identified it as Triticum turgidum, a poulard wheat once grown in Italy before farmers chased higher yields. It needs no fertilizer, outshades weeds, and survives drought. He named it grano del miracolo. Miracle wheat. Read the full story → | |||
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DELIGHT • ScienceDaily Plants & Animals
Tiny spiders really sleep, and scientists finally proved itEyes moving. Muscles twitching. Nobody can prove it's a dream.
Scientists at the University of Bonn have found that a tiny jumping spider sleeps in distinct stages, including a REM-like phase marked by eye movements and muscle twitches. The findings, from the university's Institute of Organismic Biology, offer the first thorough experimental evidence that spiders truly sleep rather than sit around being motionless. The subject was Portia fimbriata, an Australian jumping spider about the size of a one-euro coin that hunts other spiders by imitating the vibrations of insects struggling in webs. Researchers watched individual spiders in 12-centimeter dishes using infrared cameras over many nights, then used sound stimuli to confirm the animals were genuinely asleep and not just resting. Because they could not measure brain activity, the team relied entirely on carefully documented behavior. They are careful to say the eye movements do not prove the spiders dream. Whether these spiders dream remains unknown. For now, nobody is asking them. Read the full story → | |||
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SCIENCE • MIT News
Folded aluminum, no columns, shelters that assemble with screwdriversShip it flat. Fold it by hand. No welding required.
MIT researchers have developed an origami-based construction method that could let workers build strong, lightweight shelters from flat panels folded into shape by hand. The system turns sheets of material like aluminum into rigid unit cells that lock together into a load-bearing shell with no interior support columns. Simulations found the structures are about 3.5 times stiffer than those made with some other origami techniques, while using roughly two-thirds as much material. The appeal for disaster relief is speed. Panels ship flat, then assemble on site at an earthquake or flood with little more than screwdrivers. To prove it scales, the team hung a 23-foot folded aluminum sculpture from the atrium ceiling of the Boston Public Library. A crew with no professional construction experience built the whole thing in days. The pieces are designed so each one can only fit one way. "The structure can only exist in one configuration," said lead author Alfonso Parra Rubio. Read the full story → | |||
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