Mid-week collection of uplifting news nuggets to put a spring in your step.
Celestial Similarities
Scientists may have just unlocked another of the Moon's secrets. They found evidence to suggest that the Moon's inner core is solid, like Earth's. Researchers from the Cote d'Azur University and the Institute of Celestial Mechanics and Ephemeris Calculations in France developed models of the Moon's interior, hoping to shed light on our natural satellite's internal geologic structure. They determined that, not only is the Moon's inner core solid like Earth's, but it is also made up of a metal with a density close to that of iron.
RHS Digital Treasures
The Royal Horticultural Society is offering free digital access to 10,000 treasures from its archive. The items in its new online library, many of which are too fragile to handle, include books, photographs and herbarium specimens spanning 500 years of gardening history. Among the highlights are an 1876 seed book containing prints of rare vegetable varieties, and Capability Brown’s account book, which reveals in elegant handwriting that the king paid him £500 on 26 April 1765, but notes that it had been “due in March”. For more information and to access the RHS Digital Collections please visit, collections.rhs.org.uk
Against the Odds
HMV is reopening its flagship store on London’s Oxford Street. The store will sell vinyl LPs, CDs and even cassettes, as well as pop merchandise and headphones. The shop, which was officially opened by Sir Edward Elgar in 1921, had been taken over by an American candy store. New stores are also set to open in Europe in 2023, which would be a "launchpad for an exciting new era for HMV".
The Relentless Rise of Vinyl Record Sales: For the first time since 1987, music lovers are buying more vinyl albums than CDs. More...
LA to Vegas
The new $10 billion bullet train connecting Los Angeles to Las Vegas is now moving forward thanks to bipartisan support. In addition to being a blueprint for more like it, the project is projected to create 35,000 construction jobs, 1,000 permanent jobs, and significantly reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. The 218 mile rail system, constructed by Brightline, will use bullet trains that carry 1,200 passengers and reach up to 200 miles per hour.
No Plastic Bags
Philadelphia’s ban on single-use bags that went into effect in 2021 has already prevented the use of 200 million plastic bags. That would be the equivalent of filling its City Hall with plastic bags every eight months.
Non-Material Needs
Systems engineer and environmental scientist Donella Meadows on non-material needs:
"People don't need enormous cars; they need admiration and respect. They don't need a constant stream of new clothes; they need to feel that others consider them to be attractive, and they need excitement and variety and beauty. People don't need electronic entertainment; they need something interesting to occupy their minds and emotions. And so forth. Trying to fill real but nonmaterial needs - for identity, community, self-esteem, challenge, love, joy - with material things is to set up an unquenchable appetite for false solutions to never-satisfied longings. A society that allows itself to admit and articulate its nonmaterial human needs, and to find nonmaterial ways to satisfy them, world require much lower material and energy throughputs and would provide much higher levels of human fulfilment."
"It is vitally important that we can continue to say, with absolute conviction, that organic farming delivers the highest quality, best-tasting food, produced without artificial chemicals or genetic modification, and with respect for animal welfare and the environment, while helping to maintain the landscape and rural communities." King Charles III
On this Day
10 May 1994: Nelson Mandela, whose efforts to end apartheid led to his imprisonment (1962 - 90) and earned him a share (with F.W. de Klerk) of the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, became president of South Africa.
This bar only plays women’s sports on TV and, while the owner believed her idea was important, she was surprised at how successful it became. Cheers...
For the first time in hundreds of years, wildcats could be released back into the wild in England. Ecological benefits...
Mood Booster
MI 7: Dead Reckoning - New Trailer.
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