Quote of the Day: “Love has no errors, for all errors are the want for love.” – William Law
Photo by: Nathan Anderson
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A “miracle” cat missing for five weeks was found still alive underneath a neighbor’s floorboards.
The Russian blue’s overjoyed owners believe he narrowly survived by eating spiders and bugs and licking condensation from pipes.
Arthur lost half his bodyweight while trapped in the English home, and he was only discovered when the neighbors heard distressed mewing and pulled up the floorboards.
For over a month, his owner Jo Rymill knocked on doors, stuck flyers to lamp posts, and posted on social media—never expecting she would find her missing pet just three doors down.
After five weeks of searching, the owner of an AirBnb who had recently renovated the home, posted a message on the neighborhood chat saying the tenants in her property heard a mewing beneath the floor.
Within 12 minutes nearby residents in Ramsgate, Kent, descended on the property and ripped up the floorboards to rescue frail and dehydrated Arthur.
Ms. Rymill was in line for popcorn at the cinema with her husband when the news came through.
“We jumped in the car and raced home,” she recalled. “They started sending pictures and on the way home I was saying ‘OMG! It’s him! It’s him!’
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“I thought after five weeks there’s no way he would have survived that because, logically, how could he? The first thing I did was burst into tears.
“I came out and all the neighbors were standing there holding him and it was the most amazing feeling. I still can’t believe he’s with us.”
She said their four-year-old kitty used up more than one of his nine lives after disappearing from their house on June 8.
The dirt-covered moggy was rushed to an emergency vet and spent 24 hours on a drip, while the 55-year-old feared he wouldn’t make it through the night.
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Describing Arthur’s hospital stint, she said: “At the start, we were really worried his kidneys would have gone.
“The first round of blood tests on Friday night wasn’t very good, but the next day they settled out. It’s more than a miracle – nobody can believe he survived for five weeks.
“This is the best street to live in…The message went out and everyone went ‘oh my God’ and descended.
“If we weren’t all so close, nobody would have known who to contact. The speed of getting him out is what saved him.”
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However, within half an hour he was reportedly purring and meowing to his owner.
“He has the most resilient personality,” said Mrs Rymill, who now reminds owners to make sure their pets’ microchips are up-to-date and to report them on the database if they disappear. (Watch the video about the rescue below…)
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A first-time Pennsylvania mom who was told her baby “wouldn’t make it” because he was born so small, now says he is “thriving” at home following 181 days in hospital.
Zaylan was born when Krysten Risbon went into labor 16 weeks early.
He had a hole in his heart and needed constant oxygen, but he made it—and Krysten is now studying to become a NICU nurse, inspired by the care they received.
“When I first held him he could fit in my bra,” said the 22-year-old from Altoona. “Now only his foot fits in.”
“He’s a little fighter.”
The expecting mom and the young father Janerio Reed were over the moon when they found out they were expecting their first baby in August 2022, but she started bleeding at 23 weeks/six days and suddenly was in intense pain. Turns out, she was 4cm dilated.
“They said, ‘You’re going to have this baby today… He’s probably not going to make it’,” recalled Krysten.
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She was taken to a specialized neonatal intensive care unit at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital by helicopter.
“It was scary because nobody could come with me.. I just kept thinking everything was going to be ok.”
They gave her steroids to help the baby’s lungs, and doctors were able to halt the birth for another two days, until December 23rd when he was born weighing 1-lb 6oz.
“He was so tiny he fit in the palm of my hand.”
He had surgery after being born with ROP—an eye disease which can occur when babies are born prematurely—to improve his eyesight.
Finally, Zaylan was able to come home June 21, 2023.
“It was unreal having him home, and pretty insane,” she said. “I can’t believe how small he was.
“He’s pretty funny now. He gives me the side eye. He smiles and laughs all the time.”
“He’s a miracle.”
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Krysten will start her studies to be a nurse at Mount Aloysius College this Fall.
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A young boy was headed down a neighborhood sidewalk when he made a stop at a random house with a doorbell camera—to leave a positive message of encouragement for a stranger.
The video, posted on YouTube by South West News Agency, does not identify the boy or the location, but the youth is an American walking with a few friends in a tree-lined neighborhood.
He looks directly into the camera with an earnestness and wisdom seemingly beyond his years.
“You matter, alright?
“There’s always going to be someone who cares about you.
“You’re a good person. No matter what people say about you; you matter.”
“I’m just trying to say something nice.
“You matter, man, or girl. Whoever you are, you matter to someone. Just keep that in mind. Don’t forget that.”
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Then he went on with his day, sauntering down the sidewalk with a small shopping bag, presumably headed home.
Watch the astonishing moment below…
PLEASE SPREAD THE MESSAGE With Friends Who May Need it on Social Media!
A new robotic medic could save lives in places like radiation zones that are too dangerous for nurses and doctors to operate.
Human medics can control the vehicle remotely and use the robot’s arms to check a patient’s temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, and even give injections.
The “game-changing” technology has potential to save lives in high-risk emergency environments, such as humanitarian disasters or war zones, say the University of Sheffield team who developed it.
And the first-of-its-kind system was developed in just nine months.
Using medical telexistence (MediTel) technology, researchers from the University’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), Sheffield Robotics and Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, created the mobile, robotic-controlled un-crewed ground vehicle (UGV).
It boasts virtual reality (VR) capability, enabling medics and operators to assess critical casualties in hazardous environments, allowing them to perform a remote triage while also ensuring their safety.
It features two robotic arms which can effectively remotely operate medical tools to perform a critical initial assessment of a casualty within 20 minutes.
That includes temperature, blood pressure and heart rate checks. It can also carry out a palpation of the abdomen and administer pain relief through an auto-injector—all while streaming real time data to the remote operator. (Scroll down to see the video demonstration.)
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“Developing and field testing a state-of-the-art, complex system such as MediTel in just nine months has been an incredible achievement and a testament to the skills and capabilities of the entire project team,” said David King, Head of Digital Design at the AMRC.
“MediTel combined existing medical devices with state-of-the-art robotics systems to develop a platform capable of allowing a remote operator to navigate through difficult terrain and provide critical diagnoses of high-risk casualties.”
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Professor Sanja Dogramadzi, director of Sheffield Robotics, said: “This platform could be used by multiple emergency response services.
They will now integrate other sensing modalities to assist patient triage.
MediTel was one of three novel telexistence technologies funded by a £2.3 million innovation competition through the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
“The project has enabled us to demonstrate the art of the possible to end users, so that we can better understand where telexistence could add value to defense and security environments,” said Dr. Nicky Armstrong, technical lead at Dstl.
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The Sheffield team hopes to build on the project’s success and explore the development of a large-scale medical emergency platform, capable of rapid deployment to humanitarian disasters.
WATCH this team do its magic…
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Quote of the Day: “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” – Confucius
Photo by: Matthew Feeney
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
A woman had just arrived at the Judge Wickersham House, an historic 1898 home in Juneau, Alaska to get a tour, when she happened upon a high-flying crisis.
One of the employees at the site greeted her by immediately asking, “What do you know about hummingbirds?”
She explained that one of the tiny birds had been trapped in the house’s foyer all morning, flying close to the ceiling in a panic for about four hours.
The woman had tried different things to get the female bird to fly out without success.
“Let’s try getting a ladder and the hummingbird feeder high up where she might notice it,” said the clever tourist who had just arrived.
While standing on the ladder for 15 minutes, the hummer actually landed on her hand several times and began sipping from the feeder.
“I felt the wind from her wings on my face and had her poke her little beak between my fingers!”
But the plan finally worked, and the moment was captured in a video.
“I can’t believe I pulled out my phone to record at the exact right moment,” said Rumble user, meadowlinden.
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“It was one of those magical moments I’ll never forget!”
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(NOTE: GNN has NO affiliation with any ads displayed by Rumble)
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Crowned Miss England, Jessica Gagen is on a mission to become an astronaut, and has just graduated from university with a bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering.
The 27-year-old became the first ever redhead winner of the prestigious beauty pageant last year in October and, after juggling competitions on the catwalk alongside her studies at the University of Liverpool, was delighted when she graduated alongside her classmates this week.
She now wants to use her degree and beauty queen title to inspire the next generation of female engineers and get more women into STEM subjects.
Her university journey was fraught with obstacles as she suffered insomnia and chest pains while combining her studies with being Miss England.
“I think it’s important that today’s youth know that sometimes things don’t go entirely to plan, and that’s perfectly okay,” said Jessica, who’s from Lancashire, near Liverpool.
“But I’m incredibly proud with what I have achieved. I don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet.
“Aerospace engineering was very challenging, covering topics like aerodynamics, structural mechanics, programming, and advanced materials. It equips candidates with a range of skills sought after by different industries, making them highly employable in the fields of science, technology and finance.
“I absolutely loved it. It certainly opens up a lot of opportunities for me and I can’t wait to see what the future holds.”
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She says she went out to celebrate “with the lads” after graduation because there weren’t many girls in her department.
When she started her college career she had no intention of entering Miss England, but after noticing the lack of females at school—only about 10 percent of her classmates were women—she made it her mission to advertise the subject to the next generation through social media, which subsequently lead her to be scouted for Miss England.
“There’s a lot of work that goes into becoming Miss England, and I really wanted to win because I knew I could use the platform to get more girls into engineering.”
Upon winning the contest, Jessica recalls, “I was ecstatic and life went crazy.
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“I had to protect my health and my grade – I was set to be traveling around the world with the Miss England team from February, a once in a lifetime opportunity. But was thrilled to be able to attend the graduation ceremony.
“The lads in class felt like little brothers, we had the best relationship and I missed them incredibly, so it was lovely still being able to graduate with them.
Jessica now spends a lot of time visiting schools up and down the country giving free talks about STEM subjects, aimed to advertise them to the next generation.
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She plans to go back to school and get her Masters degree but will continue the pageant circuit by competing in the 71st annual Miss World Contest in December.
With an eye toward space her ambitions include becoming an astronaut—the first beauty queen in outer space.
INSPIRE Girls to Show Off Beauty AND Brains By Sharing on Social Media…
Whether enjoyed in a latte, Americano, or even a martini, espresso coffee provides an ultra-concentrated jolt of caffeine. But it might do even more for one’s alertness over the long run, according to new research.
In vitro laboratory tests shows espresso compounds can inhibit tau protein aggregation, which is one of the processes believed to be involved in the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
Although the exact mechanisms that cause dementia are still unclear, a protein called tau plays a significant role. In healthy people, tau proteins help stabilize structures in the brain, but when certain diseases develop, the proteins can clump together into fibrils.
Scientists believe the ‘tangles’ are one of the key causes of dementia – slowing thinking and memory skills.
Some researchers propose that preventing this aggregation could alleviate symptoms. So, Mariapina D’Onofrio and colleagues at Verona University in Italy—where they drink a lot of espresso—wanted to see if compounds in the coffee could prevent tau clumping in lab experiments.
The researchers pulled espresso shots from store-bought beans, then characterized their chemical makeup using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. They chose caffeine and trigonelline, both alkaloids, along with the flavonoid ‘genistein’ and ‘theobromine’—a compound also found in chocolate—to focus on in further experiments.
RELATED: Drinking Coffee Might Give You a 64% Better Chance at Living Longer Than Those Who Don’t, Study Says
These molecules individually, along with the full espresso extract, were incubated alongside a shortened form of the tau protein for up to 40 hours. As the concentration of espresso extract, caffeine or genistein increased, fibrils were shorter and didn’t form larger sheets, with the complete extract showing the most dramatic results.
Shortened fibrils were found to be non-toxic to cells, and they did not act as “seeds” for further clumping.
In other experiments, the researchers observed that both caffeine and the espresso extract could bind pre-formed tau fibrils.
SHARE THIS: Good News For Pregnant Women Who Love Drinking Coffee
Italians knock back some 30 million espressos each day in little cups, and multiple studies in the last decade showed that the drink could have beneficial effects thanks to its antioxidants and plant chemicals which dampen inflammation.
Regular consumption has been linked to reduced risk of premature death—protecting against heart disease, type 2 diabetes, liver disease, Parkinson’s and some cancers.
Prof D’Onofrio said: “Coffee extracts contain a large variety of bioactive compounds exhibiting health-beneficial effects. We were able to identify the most abundant constituents.
“We have presented a large body of evidence that espresso coffee is a source of natural compounds showing beneficial properties in ameliorating tau-related pathologies.”
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Although much more research is needed, the team, which published their results in the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, says that their preliminary in vitro findings could pave the way toward designing bioactive compounds that could protect against neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s.
RAISE a Cup to Good Health By Sharing This With Coffee Drinkers on Social Media…
Our partner Rob Brezsny provides his weekly wisdom to enlighten our thinking and motivate our mood. Rob’s Free Will Astrology, is a syndicated weekly column appearing in over a hundred publications. He is also the author of Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How All of Creation Is Conspiring To Shower You with Blessings. (A free preview of the book is available here.)
Here is your weekly horoscope…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY – Week of July 22, 2023
Copyright by Rob Brezsny, FreeWillAstrology.com
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
Leo theologian Bernard McGinn defines mysticism as “the consciousness of the immediate presence of God.” In other words, people having a mystic experience are filled with a visceral sensation of the divine intelligence. It’s not just an idea or concept; it’s a deeply felt communion infused with intimate tenderness. You Leos will be more likely than usual to have such contact in the coming weeks—if you want it. If you don’t want it, or don’t believe it’s real, or don’t think it’s possible, well, then, you can of course resist it. But why not give it a whirl? There’s nothing to lose, and it could be fun.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
Here’s a parable for you. Once upon a time, there was a woman who could read the future in the night sky. She regarded the planets and stars as her divine informants. On one moonless evening, she took a walk down a dirt road near her home. It was so dark she could barely see two feet ahead of her. Oops! She should have brought a flashlight. Lost in wonder, she gazed up at the heavenly bodies, watching and listening for revelations they might have for her. Then one of the lights, the planet Saturn, whispered, “Stop and look down, friend.” The woman turned her eyes from the sky to the ground just in time to find she was two strides away from stepping into a deep, muddy hole. What’s the moral of the tale? Here are some possibilities. 1. Sometimes the heights provide useful information about the depths. 2. Soaring visions may help you tune in to practical details. 3. To become aware of important facts you’ve overlooked in your daily rhythm, consult your higher mind.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
A Libran writer I know received many rejection notices when he launched his career. I was amazed at how undaunted he was. In fact, he was the opposite of undaunted. He taped copies of his rejection notices to his bedroom wall. Seeing the evidence of his failures motivated him. It drove him to improve his writing and churn out even more articles. It fueled his search for a wider array of publications that might host his work. During the fourth year of this approach, luck and fate turned in his favor. Within the next eight months, 12 of his pieces appeared in print. My muses tell me, Libra, that you need to hear this story right now.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
The cartoon character Bart Simpson is one of the stars of The Simpsons animated TV show. According to him, “Life is a paradox. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.” While that principle may sometimes be true, I believe you will be exempt from it in the coming weeks. In fact, I suspect you will be as free as it’s possible for a human to be of grueling contradictions, frustrating oppositions, clashing truths, and paralyzing contraries. There’s a good chance you will also outwit and avoid annoying incongruities and silly arguments. Congratulations in advance, Scorpio! Take full advantage of this phase of simple clarity.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
The dragon has appeared in the myths and legends of many cultures. Europe, China, and Mesoamerica are just a few places where the fire-breathing flying reptiles have fascinated the human imagination. In some traditions, they are dangerous and predatory. In China, though, they have been harbingers of good fortune and symbols of great power. Emperors claimed the dragon as their special emblem. In assigning the dragon to be your soul creature, Sagittarius, I am drawing from Chinese lore. What would you like to accomplish that would benefit from you having access to fierce, dynamic, indomitable energy? Call on the dragon for help and power.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
“There is a world of people who will love you for who you are,” writes author Cheryl Strayed. “A whole, vibrant, fucked-up, happy, conflicted, joyous, and depressed mass of people.” In the coming months, one of your prime tasks is to specialize in communing with these folks. Make it your intention to surround yourself more and more with interesting, imperfect, ever-changing life-lovers who appreciate you for exactly who you are—and who inspire you to grow more and more into the full idiosyncratic glory of your authentic self.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
What psychic or prophet is most popular with a-list celebrities? I can assure you it’s not me. Few of my millions of readers are world-famous. What about the planet’s most scientifically accurate astrologer? Who might that be? It ain’t me. I don’t regard astrology as a science, and I mistrust those who say it is. In my view, astrology is a mythopoetic language and psycho-spiritual system that nurtures our souls and helps liberate us from our conditioning. We shouldn’t try to get “scientifically accurate” information from it. Now I encourage you to do what I just did, Aquarius. Have fun telling people who you are not, what you don’t believe in, and which goals you aren’t interested in pursuing.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
To come up with your astrological reports, I study the positions of the sun, moon, and planets in relation to your sign. That’s the technical part of the work, the framework within which I unleash my intuition and imagination. To augment this work, I meditate and pray, asking higher powers to guide me in providing useful information for you. I often consult books written by my favorite astrology writers. (Currently reading Steven Forrest’s The Elements Series.) I also ask my deep mind to slip me info that might not be accounted for by traditional factors. How about you, Pisces? How do you do the work that you love and care about? Now is a good time to take inventory and make necessary adjustments.
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
Your deep psyche will soon well up with extra creativity and fertility. I hope you will eagerly tap into these gifts. You should assume that you will be more imaginative and ingenious than usual. You will have an enhanced ability to solve problems with vigor and flair. In what areas of your life would you love to gently erupt with a burst of reinvention? Which of your habits might benefit from being cheerfully disrupted? Give yourself permission to change whatever bores you.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
My teacher Paul Foster Case said the color yellow is midway between warm, exciting red and cool, calming blue. “Yellow has an equilibrating influence,” he wrote. “It stimulates the finer functions of the brain, is of assistance in developing alertness and discrimination, and helps to establish emotional balance.” According to my astrological analysis, Taurus, you should emphasize this hue in the coming days. If you call on yellow to help strengthen the qualities Case describes, you will place yourself in sweet alignment with cosmic rhythms.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
Because I enjoy joking with you, I am slightly tempted right now to give you one of the following nicknames: Fidgety, Twitch, Jittery, Quivers, or Shakes. But I will take a more serious tack. Let’s instead see if we can influence you to slow down, stabilize your rhythm, get really steady and secure, and stand strong in your foundational power spot. Would you consider adopting any of the following nicknames? Anchor, Unshakeable, Sturdy, Rock Solid, Staunch, Steadfast, Resolute.
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
The sometimes overly clever author Oscar Wilde said, “When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.” I reject that warped view of reality and assure you it will have no bearing on your life in the coming weeks. If you formulate your prayers with care and discernment, they will lead you to rewards, not problems. Maybe not the exact rewards you imagined, but still close to your hopes and helpful in the next chapter of your life story. (PS: No sloppy, lazy, careless prayers, please. Be precise and clear.)
WANT MORE? Listen to Rob’s EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES, 4-5 minute meditations on the current state of your destiny — or subscribe to his unique daily text message service at: RealAstrology.com
(Zodiac images by Numerologysign.com, CC license)
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Quote of the Day: “Don’t brood. Get on with living and loving. You don’t have forever.” – Leo Buscaglia
Photo by: Jan Brennenstuhl
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quotes page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
The discoveries yielded at a new excavation site at the Roman city of Pompeii have everyone talking—about the undeniably familiar shape in a beautifully preserved fresco.
Yes indeed, the item sitting on a silver platter in the depiction looks an awful lot like one of the other things the city of Naples is famous for: pizza.
The dig site is located in a 32,000 sq. foot (3,000 sq. meter) “insula” or neighborhood that was first excavated in the 19th century. Archaeologists at the time found what’s been identified as a laundry, and left the rest alone.
Returning to the insula on Via Di Nola, archaeologists have found a bakery oven, a kitchen shrine adorned with serpents, remains of a mattress, exquisite frescos, and skeletons.
“Every room in every house has its own micro-story in the grander story of Pompeii. I want to uncover those micro-stories,” Gennaro Iovino, the co-lead excavator, told BBC.
The building in which these treasures were found is suspected to be a wholesaler, but nevertheless, the wealth of the merchant(s) that ran it is conspicuous. The atrium of the building featured a skylight where lion-headed statues poured rainwater down into a basin, probably surrounded by plants.
The right-hand side of this area has a massive oven that could have baked 100 loaves of bread per day. Without a shop window, Iovino and his team believe the oven made bread for wholesale. It’s here that the fresco of the pizza was first discovered, making a splash worldwide after it was announced in June.
However, the archaeologists remind us, there’s almost no chance it’s pizza since tomatoes are native to South America, and mozzarella hadn’t been invented yet. They hypothesize it’s focaccia bread with toppings.
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In any case, the park director, Gabriel Zuchtriegel points out how the ancient pizza/focaccia sits upon a silver platter, representing pizza’s history as rising from a poor man’s food to crown jewel of culinary invention.
“How can we not think about pizza, also born as a ‘poor’ dish in southern Italy that has now conquered the world and is served in Michelin-star restaurants?” Zuchtriegel said in a statement.
Also in the building were discovered the charred remains of a mattress in a bedroom, and the skeletons of two women and one child. As often as the well-preserved ruins of Pompeii yield treasures, they also yield tragedies, and it’s all too clear that these three Romans sought shelter from the volcano under a staircase, only for it to collapse on top of them.
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In the middle of the room, another fresco depicts the myth of Achilles who dressed up like a woman to avoid fighting in the Trojan War. In another area, designated as a kitchen, two beautiful yellow serpents coil along a shrine covered in a burnt burgundy background.
For all of the discoveries Pompeii has yielded, a whole one-third of its total space is unexcavated.
“Much of that will be for future generations,” Alessandro Russo, the co-lead archaeologist on the new dig, told the BBC. “We have a problem to conserve what we’ve already found. Future generations may have new ideas, new techniques.”
SHARE This Awesome New Discovery From The Famous City…
A young woman in Canada’s Saskatchewan Province recently garnered 8.7 million views on a TikTok video of her planting 4,545 trees in a single day.
The video’s author, Leslie Dart, doesn’t have a career in forestry, and rather recently entered the workforce in aerospace manufacturing, a field in which she recently graduated at Durham College in Ontario.
The tree-planting is simply a popular summer job for university students that can nevertheless absorb some people with its deeply-meaningful monotony.
For sometimes 15 hours a day, Leslie slams a spade into the ground, levers out the dirt, drops in a seedling, tamps it down with her boot, and moves on to the next one.
This kind of tree planting is mandated by certain provincial laws to be done in conjunction with logging. Pretty much every tree that’s logged for Canada’s prosperous timber industry is replanted by paid volunteers like Leslie, who makes between 17 and 44 cents per seedling planted, and has planted 372,290 trees over the past three summers.
Sometimes the work is on the desolate remains of an area scorched by wildfires, other times it’s in humid logged forest on uneven ground, filled with overgrowth of spikey Devil’s Club, and swarming with mosquitoes. Wherever her spade takes her though, she says it’s deeply rewarding work which becomes such a part of one’s life that they come back year after year to volunteer.
MORE GOOD FOREST NEWS: Planting Trees in a City 30 Years Ago May Have Lowered the Risk of Deaths From Diseases
“I think every parent in Canada should be sending their kid out tree planting because it will take your child and it’ll turn them into a worker,” Kenny Chaplin, a veteran planter of 35 summers and works in the film industry, as well as a substitute teacher, told the Terrace Standard.
“They’ll learn how to work, they’ll have responsibility. They’ll have money in their pockets.”
@lesliedart Another day, another 3,500 trees in the ground. 🌲 It’s kind of fun to think of every work day like planting a tiny forest :) #treeplanting #forestry #replant #planttrees #greenplanet #afforestation #treeplantingbc #planttreesgetdegrees #womeninforestry #helicopter #heliwork #treeplantertok #treeplantingtok #treeplanting2022 #treeplanter ♬ AIN'T GONNA STOP - Carol Kay
Another tree planter who spoke with the Terrace Standard was photographer and filmmaker Rita Leistner, who worked as a war reporter during Iraq War II.
OTHER MARATHON TREE PLANTERS: Turkey Will Declare a Holiday Dedicated to Planting Trees After Young Man’s Tweet Goes Viral
“When I worked in war zones, and people asked me: what prepared me for that work, I told them: tree planting in Canada,” she said.
Reforestation requirements for logging companies and following forest fires have seen 1.6 billion trees replanted in western Canadian provinces, and with devoted individuals like Chaplin and Dart, it’s easy to understand how.
WATCH her in action…
@lesliedart I planted 4,545 trees today 🌲 Going to do it all again tomorrow, yeehaw! #treeplanting #forestry #replant #planttrees #greenplanet #afforestation #treeplantingbc #planttreesgetdegrees #womeninforestry #heliwork #treeplantertok #treeplantingtok #treeplanting2022 #treeplanter ♬ Get It Get It Get It - Kalin And Myles
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At a resort in Honolulu, sport’s ultimate softy Shaquille O’Neil decided to give a swarm of kids the absolute memory of a lifetime by pretending he was drowning and allowing him to ‘save’ him.
Although the water was less than waist height for the 7.1-foot-tall man, he flopped over on his side, floating listlessly as if he had a heart attack. The kids all pitched in, and 7 of them were needed to turn the giant over onto his back before swimming him to safety.
At that point, the man, the myth, the legend, stood up and thanked them for saving him.
The pair of videos obviously accumulated millions of views on TikTok.
Capturing this was Daniel Chavez, a self-identified Shaq fan, who nevertheless felt conflicted as to whether or not he should record the famous LA Lakers center-turned-sports analyst while on vacation.
“Part of me was like, hmm, should I film this?” he said. “Or, no. 2, should I just enjoy the moments? No. 3, I’m like, he’s relaxing, he’s on vacation, why am I gonna bother this guy’s privacy? But the journalist in me said, ‘No. No, this guy’s being real right now, he’s being such a cool guy. I’m sure people would love to see this side of him.’”
Later in the lobby, Daniel was able to meet Shaq in person, who was “so humble” and even agreed to have a photo with the TikToker.
GNN is always on the lookout for a Shaq attack of kindness, and has reported on his exploits of showering kids with Nintendo Switches and PS5s, tipping a waitress $4,000 because she asked, paying for a stranger’s engagement ring for a smile, converting a family home into one that’s wheelchair accessible for a young boy, and taking a young man with oversized feet to his personal cobbler to fit him with 10 pairs of size 18 kicks.
WATCH the ‘rescue’ below…
@incatico Shaq is such a cool guy tho #shaq #hawaii ♬ PAW Patrol Opening Theme - PAW Patrol
@incatico The kids brought back Shaq! 😂 #shaq #hawaii ♬ Sound Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh (Remastered 2022) - Official Sound Studio
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An artist in Portsmouth is creating mosaic portraits of famous figures like Gandhi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Queen Elizabeth II using pebbles.
47-year-old Englishman Justin Bateman first started making abstract art in 2018 using organic materials and came up with the idea of using stone after tracing the outline of his bicycle with pebbles.
Since then Justin has created over 100 pieces and laid over a million pebbles in total, despite each piece taking up to five weeks to complete.
“Sometimes the stones in a particular location suggest an appropriate subject,” said the full-time artist who finds locations and then marks them on Google Maps for later.
“At other times the location is selected according to criteria such as proximity, layout, stone composition, and urban or natural aesthetics. If a suitable location and stones present themselves I will try to make the work.
Justin’s art is physically demanding. He can spend hours at a time on the floor creating his portraits, and says that he can’t think of doing anything else with his time until it’s finished.
MORE LAND ART: Check Out the Winners of the Stone-Stacking Championship in Europe – LOOK
Each piece can take between three days and five weeks to create depending on the size and complexity.
“The simplicity of the final outcome is deceptive because it takes a huge amount of time to conduct research, prepare color maps, collect stones, complete the work, and then photograph,” says Bateman.
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“Sometimes I will remake them countless times using different stones to find the right combination.”
Like a Tibetan sand mandala, he believes the greatest value in his work is its impermanence, and as such he first chose not to monetize it.
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“Sometimes I accept commissions or requests, if the timing is right or they align with my own intuition as something that should be made,” he said. “Not more than 10% of my work becomes permanent.”
In Europe, this style is known as “land art” and can be very popular at times. There’s even a land art festival in Scotland every year.
WATCH the masterpiece in timelapse below…
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Is there anything in science more exciting than when an ancient legend is confirmed by modern research?
Archaeologists in Mexico were able to experience this exact triumph when they found evidence that a mythical underground city lies undisturbed beneath the altar of a church—exactly where a Spanish legend stated it would.
In the time of Babylon, there emerged from Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley a culture known as the Zapotec which could create monumental stone architecture, sophisticated crafts and artwork, as well as a written and spoken language that predated Mayan, Mixtec, and Aztec. They were among Mesoamerica’s first great civilizations, and existed longer than perhaps any other, from 700 BCE to the time of Spanish conquests when they were part of the Aztec Empire.
Legend has it that the Zapotec built a great labyrinthine city called “Lyobaa,” or “place of rest,” centered around a large cavity found in the earth which they believed was the gateway to the underworld.
Later, venturing Spanish missionaries were so repulsed and frightened to explore more than a few yards into the tunnel network that they “ordered [the] infernal gate to be thoroughly closed with masonry,” wrote a Dominican chronicler named Francisco Burgoa.
Now, a collaboration between the Mexican National Institute of History and Anthropology (INAH), the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and the Association for Archaeological Research and Exploration called the “ARX Project Lyobaa” has discovered a “vast underground labyrinth” underneath the 15th-century Church of San Pablo, all but confirming the Zapotec legend.
The collaboration began at the archaeological site of the Zapotec city called Mitla, where murals, mosaics, and a monument stone palace are still seen above ground today.
The researchers created a 3D model of Mitla’s subterranean passageways using a combination of three geophysical scanning technologies—ground penetrating radar, electrical resistivity tomography, and seismic noise tomography—all of which left the archaeological site above undisturbed.
MORE MESOAMERICAN DISCOVERIES: Ancient Mayan City Hidden for Over 1,000 Years Discovered by LiDAR
The model shows a very large hollow void underneath the precise location of the altar inside the church that was built on the Mitla site. Additionally, the void appears to be connected with another significant geophysical anomaly located immediately to the north of the church.
“Burgoa’s account speaks of a vast subterranean temple consisting of four interconnected chambers, containing the tombs of the high priests and the kings of Teozapotlán,” reads a press release on the truly epic discovery.
“From the last subterranean chamber, a stone door led into a deep cavern extending thirty leagues below ground. This cavern was intersected by other passages like streets, its roof supported by pillars.”
The electrical tomography confirmed the existence of two passageways between 18 and 26 feet below the ground. They enter the void from the east. Their scanning also revealed what could be the barricaded entranceway Burgoa spoke of.
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The size and scope of the passageways surprised the researchers, who conclude that more work is needed before we can truly comprehend what has been found.
“Additionally, the study has revealed evidence of an earlier construction stage of the Palace of the Columns, Mitla’s most important and best-preserved ancient monument, as well as several other geophysical anomalies that may be interpreted as tombs or buried archaeological structures,” the press release reads. “These findings will help rewrite the history of the origins of Mitla and its development as an ancient site.”
Further studies of this kind are already scheduled for this September, meaning that the true scope of the mythical Lyobaa could be illuminated before the year is out.
CELEBRATE This Incredible Story Of The Past Coming Alive On Social Media…
Moved by a desire to help people deal with grief and angst caused by COVID-19, Brexit, and the climate crisis, artist Annie Nicholson wanted to create a space where the public can shake out grief and unravel their climate angst.
Nicholson is collaborating with The Loss Project, K67 Berlin, and Street Soundsystem to realize this ambitious public art project.
The kiosk is a refurbished K67 kiosk, a modernist design gem associated with ad hoc post-Soviet spaces, chip stalls, newspaper stands, student cafes, and shelters, which evokes a legacy of European unity and collaboration.
As well as DJ sets, there’ll be meditation and yoga workshops, dance classes, and “grief raves” where clubbers can request tracks that remind them of absent or lost loved ones. It will be located in London’s Canary Wharf before eventually touring Europe and the UK.
Nicholson got the idea in the debilitating aftermath of the deaths of her mother, sister, sister’s partner in a helicopter crash, and her father of cancer a few years later year.
During times of grief or anxiety, it can be difficult to find joy. Dancefloors bring people together in powerful ways, and allow people to process complex feelings in a physical way.
“The dance floor has been a space of silence and safety as I have navigated the many great losses and painful grief in my life throughout the past decade, and having successfully installed public realm projects around grief and mental health over the past two years, we have noticed a distinct change in how people wish to connect and come together. There is an overwhelming need to shake out your grief physically right now,” said Nicholson.
OTHER WAYS OF GRIEVING: Wife’s Humorous Obituary For Late Husband Goes Viral – ‘Cause of death: Being dead sexy’
She further points out that dance is used in funerary rituals around the world, but particularly among indigenous nations, such as in Māori, Yoruba, and Jamaican cultures, Unsurprisingly however, this expression is not common in grieving periods on the British Isles.
“Improvised dance – where you just move to show how you feel – improves divergent thinking and the ability to solve problems,” Nicholson told the Guardian. “But we generally don’t consider ordinary dancers who aren’t particularly good to be valuable even though the dancefloor can be a site of solidarity, repair and even healing.”
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The crown jewel in a recent revitalization project of a London industrial area is a “rolling bridge” made of squares powered by a hand crank.
The bizarre spectacle of two large squares gradually inverting the deck of the pedestrian footpath to allow boats to pass underneath a canal lends the new Cody Docks community in London a touch of Victorian-era chic tinged with steampunk madness.
Architect Thomas Randall-Page freely admits it’s not possible to justify everything about the square rolling bridge. It could have been cheaper, it could have been powered by hydraulics or electricity, or it could have been a much simpler design.
But its childish fun, its imaginative function nestled perfectly within its surroundings leaves Randall-Page believing it to be exactly what Cody Docks needs as it transitions from an old 19th-century industrial wharf where the Thames meets the tidal River Lea to a creative community.
Reopening the dock to the Lea’s waters required the removal of a dam and the introduction of a footbridge over a canal where barges would pass into a refurbished mooring.
“To move it from one position to another takes about 20 minutes,” says Randall-Page calmly. “It was important to have that manual aspect, partly because it’s a very low-energy solution in terms of you’re not relying on external power solutions, and partly because there’s a way in which that simplifies things; there’s a whole lot less that can go wrong.”
“If something does begin to go wrong you notice it, you literally feel it getting harder to move. So it’s kind of a haptic check-in process,” he said in a micro-doc about his bridge.
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For someone wondering how the square portals of the bridge roll, it’s because they’re mounted on rails built into the sides of the canal wall which undulate up and down like hills on the horizon. This symmetry allows the whole bridge structure to smoothly roll through 180 degrees to a fully inverted position facilitating the movement of boats from the river to the dock.
Randall-Page said his design was inspired by a visit to a friend’s boat. At times, he had to help his friend pass through canal locks, and the architect took an immediate liking to the low-tech yet smart and hands-on Victorian design of the lock mechanism.
JUST LIKE THIS: The World’s First Boat Elevator Helped Turn Scottish Canals Into Green Veins of Joy
“There’s something very nice about being able to look at the thing even if it’s stationary, and kind of be able to read something about how it works,” he said. Everything’s on show, the winches are on show, the tracks are on show, and if you’ve got your head screwed on you can follow the logic of how this thing works.”
WATCH the mini-doc below…
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Scientists for the first time have witnessed pieces of metal crack, then fuse back together without any human intervention, overturning fundamental scientific theories in the process.
If the newly discovered phenomenon can be harnessed, it could usher in an engineering revolution—one in which self-healing engines, bridges, and airplanes could reverse damage caused by wear and tear, making them safer and longer-lasting.
The research team from Sandia National Laboratories and Texas A&M University described their findings today in the journal Nature.
“This was absolutely stunning to watch first-hand,” said Sandia materials scientist Brad Boyce.
“What we have confirmed is that metals have their own intrinsic, natural ability to heal themselves, at least in the case of fatigue damage at the nanoscale,” he told the Laboratory’s press.
Repeated stress or motion causes microscopic cracks to form in machines’ metal components. Over time, these cracks grow and spread until the whole device breaks, or in the scientific lingo, it fails.
The fissure Boyce and his team saw disappear was one of these tiny but consequential fractures—measured in nanometers.
“From solder joints in our electronic devices to our vehicle’s engines to the bridges that we drive over, these structures often fail unpredictably due to cyclic loading that leads to crack initiation and eventual fracture,” Boyce said. “When they do fail, we have to contend with replacement costs, lost time and, in some cases, even injuries or loss of life. The economic impact of these failures is measured in hundreds of billions of dollars every year for the U.S.”
Self-healing, as much as it sounds like something from science-fiction, is actually thousands of years old. The Romans realized that making concrete with certain ingredients like lime clasts allowed it to heal itself over time.
More recently, engineers at the University of Illinois have found how to make self-healing lithium-ion batteries out of a polymer-based electrolyte that doesn’t form harmful lithium dendrites that can cause shorting and explosions.
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Khalid Hattar, now an associate professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Chris Barr, who now works for the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, were running the experiment at Sandia when the discovery was made. They only meant to evaluate how cracks formed and spread through a nanoscale piece of platinum using a specialized electron microscope technique they had developed to repeatedly pull on the ends of the metal 200 times per second.
Surprisingly, about 40 minutes into the experiment, the damage reversed course. One end of the crack fused back together as if it was retracing its steps, leaving no trace of the former injury. Over time, the crack regrew along a different direction.
Hattar called it an “unprecedented insight.”
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A lot remains unknown about the self-healing process, including whether it will become a practical tool in a manufacturing setting.
“The extent to which these findings are generalizable will likely become a subject of extensive research,” Boyce said. “We show this happening in nanocrystalline metals in vacuum. But we don’t know if this can also be induced in conventional metals in air.”
Yet for all the unknowns, the discovery remains a leap forward at the frontier of materials science.
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