OGN Wednesday

8 minutes ago
4 min read

Mid-week selection of positive news nuggets to brighten the day.

Sun setting across the ocean — Credit: Lorenzo Busilacchi | NASA APOD

Going, Going...

This seaside sunset offered a surreal experience, captured in a sea and skyscape from the west coast of Sardinia, Italy, planet Earth. The Daliesque scene is a composition of sequential exposures made with a camera and long telephoto lens. The Sun is not melting, though. Its shifting and fluid appearance as it nears the horizon is caused as refraction along the line of sight changes and creates distorted images or mirages of the reddened solar disk. The changes in atmospheric refraction correspond to atmospheric layers with sharply different temperatures and densities. Another famous but fleeting effect of atmospheric refraction produced by a long sight-line to the setting (or rising) Sun is often called the green flash.

Indie Bookstore Boom

Although online sellers like Amazon have had an undeniable impact on brick-and-mortar bookstores in the last two decades, independent bookshops are making a comeback. According to the American Booksellers Association, 422 new indie bookshops opened in 2025, a rise of 31 percent from 2024. Experts say the resurgence is driven by diverse consumer tastes and the inability of large chains like Barnes & Noble to fully meet localized demand. Despite economic pressures and competition from larger booksellers, it's good news that indie bookstores are thriving.

Novel Approach to Moving Thousands of Books: In a delightful show of community spirit, the small town of Chelsea, Michigan, pulled off a literary feat worthy of its own story.

Informal hillside settlements in Medellín

Local Ideas Spread

In the neighborhood of Golondrinas in Medellín, residents of one informal settlement developed, implemented, and tested the effectiveness of nature-based climate risk mitigation solutions as part of a larger adaptation plan. Formally launched in August 2023, the community’s plan is now a model for the entire city of Medellín’s 4 million residents and includes eight measures to address climate risks, like managing rainwater, reforestation, and eco-gardens. Crucially, many of the solutions are inexpensive and not difficult to make or implement, which is especially important for hillside settlements that are more exposed to flooding and landslides as the climate crisis worsens. What's great about this is that it demonstrates effective solutions can start at a small, local level. Plus, there’s bound to be more buy-in for adoption when residents have developed the solutions to meet their own needs.

Biodiversity Rebound

A new study in Ecuador analyzed more than 8,500 species and found that biodiversity in tropical rainforests recovers much faster than anticipated. In fact, biodiversity can rebound to over 90 percent of its original levels within just 30 years, as long as the land is no longer used for development or agriculture. Scientists found that animals play a crucial role in rapid forest recovery, with birds and mammals dispersing seeds and aerating the soil as pollinators fertilize plants.

Part of the Lusatian Lakeland seen from above — Part of the Lusatian Lakeland

Eyesore to Beauty

A project that first started in 1967 to transform disused coal mines in Germany into a massive lake complex will open its final lake for swimming and boating at the end of this month. The Lusatian Lakeland, now Europe’s largest artificial water landscape, is made up of 23 human-made post-mining lakes with a surface water area of 14,000 hectares (55 square miles). Ten of the lakes will be connected by canals in the future, to have 7,000 hectares of continuously navigable water. Decades of mining in the region left huge craters. Once considered a “wound” in the landscape, the transformation is now having a positive economic impact, benefiting both tourists and locals, and serving as a model for other coal-mining regions in Europe.

iPhone with a cracked screen — Both parties agree

US Right to Repair

It used to be that if your iPhone or Galaxy was damaged, you were at the mercy of Apple or Samsung to get it fixed as manufacturers snowed customers with a blizzard of unattainable proprietary parts and software diagnostics. But that pain hasn't been limited to smartphones, and a legal movement challenging who controls the diagnostic and reprogramming tools for anything from phones to automobiles, dishwashers and farm equipment - all of which consumers say have become increasingly difficult to get repaired inexpensively - continues to gain political momentum across the country. The right to repair is a consumer-friendly, populist message that political candidates from both the Republican and Democratic parties across the U.S. have made part of their affordability and anti-monopoly messaging. California, Colorado, Minnesota, New York, Connecticut, Oregon and Washington have all passed comprehensive right-to-repair regulations, covering everything from consumer electronics and farm equipment to wheelchairs and automobiles. Maine and Texas laws are next.

"There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew." Marshall McLuhan

On This Day

Peter Mark Roget wearing a suit and sitting in an armchair

29 April 1852: First edition of Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases is published in Britain and has never been out of print since. Compiled by British physician and polymath Peter Mark Roget, it was designed to help "those who are painfully groping their way and struggling with the difficulties of composition". The tome was created as a “treasure store” of language to aid in writing, the original 1852 edition contained 15,000 words arranged conceptually, rather than alphabetically, into 1000 categories.