Helsinki has completed a full 12 months without a single traffic fatality.
The success is being attributed to a multi-faceted approach by city and residents that involves lower speed limits, public transport improvements, and better street planning.
In the 1980s, the city saw around 30 fatalities per year from hundreds of injurious crashes and collisions. Over the years, as public transportation systems like buses and trams improved, fewer people relied on their cars to get around, and the rates began to fall.
Similarly, cars themselves became safer for the passengers inside of them. But deaths were still routine, as were calls that had to be made to mothers and fathers, next of kin and relatives that someone they loved had died for something as meaningless as a trip to the grocery store.
Over time, a focus on street safety led to lower speed limits along more and more city lanes, from 30 mph to 18 mph.
“A lot of factors contributed to this, but speed limits are one of the most important,” Roni Utriainen, a traffic engineer with the city’s Urban Environment Division, said to Yle news.
A data-driven approach helped city planners redesign old grid layouts to incorporate better cycling and pedestrian infrastructure in safer locations. More traffic cameras and automated speed limit enforcement mechanisms have also been deployed.
The result is that across the last 12 months ending in July, there hasn’t been a single traffic fatality since a man was killed in the city’s Kontula district.
“The direction has been positive for years,” Utriainen said, pointing out that no pedestrians were killed in Helsinki traffic in 2019 either.
The city’s approach has to be constantly updated as new trends emerge on roads, such as the arrival of electric scooters that proliferated remarkably quickly.
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With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
34 years ago today, Tim Berners-Lee released documents describing his invention of the World Wide Web. The English computer scientist designed and built the first web browser to access the new information management system. His Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) would be used for contacting informational servers anywhere in the world, the first of which was the CERN HTTPd. READ more… (1991)
James Ketchell training in his yacht - credit, Premier Marinas
James Ketchell training in his yacht – credit, Premier Marinas
Englishman James Ketchell is looking to become the first person to circumnavigate the globe on land, in the air, and at sea as he sets off in a sailboat from a harbor in Hampshire.
30,000 miles and 9 months now await Ketchell, who is undertaking the voyage alone.
The British hunger for exploring the world has lasted far beyond the Age of Exploration. Sportsman Ross Edgley is at this very moment looking to become the first person to swim around the entirety of Iceland.
While Edgley heads north, Ketchell will move south to his first stop at the Canary Islands. Opting to “round the Horn” on the return journey, he will pass the Cape of Good Hope, before sailing to Australia, then across the Pacific to Uruguay. Antigua, New York, and his home will beckon by late spring next year.
Ketchell finished his second circumnavigation in 2019 with a gyrocopter, taking 6 months and 122 separate flights. Before that, he circumnavigated the globe on a bicycle in 2013.
This latest expedition is Ketchell’s second attempt via boat, after a malfunction in 2024 ended his first.
With plenty of time, room for more equipment, and low noise pollution, Ketchell is planning to fill in his hours by livestreaming video presentations and talks to classrooms around the world.
Premier Marinas, which sponsored the voyage amongst other partners, said of Ketchell, who trained out of their Hampshire location, that they felt “incredibly proud.”
“Our team has worked closely with James to ensure he has everything he needs for a safe and successful circumnavigation,” said manager Jonathan Walcroft.
The first man ever to circumnavigate the world alone in a sailing yacht was Nova Scotia’s Joshua Slocum, setting off in 1892, and returning quite leisurely in 1895.
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A screenshot of an AI generated appeal letter for a test case - credit, Counterforce Health
A screenshot of an AI generated appeal letter for a test case – credit, Counterforce Health
The idea that American health insurance companies are using AI to analyze and adjudicate claims for approval or denial sounds terrifying, but one North Carolinian is using AI to fight back.
When Raleigh resident Neal Shah had a claim denied for his wife’s chemotherapy drugs, he thought it was rare, that he was the only one, that it was just bad luck.
Litigating his case on phone calls that lasted for hours changed the husband and father, and he set about creating a sophisticated app that uses artificial intelligence to compare claims denial forms against health insurance contracts, before automatically drafting an appeal letter.
“For a doctor to write this, it’s not rocket science, but it still takes hours,” Shah told ABC News 11, adding that a well-written appeal letter, sent in immediately, can sometimes get denials reversed within days or weeks, but most people either don’t know they can appeal, or don’t know on what grounds they can appeal.
In fact, according to Shah’s research, 850 million claims denials occur every year, and less than 1% are ever appealed.
That’s where Counterforce Health comes in, a startup that’s created a free-to-use app for claims denials.
It’s all the more critical a service now that health insurance companies, already armed with statewide government-protected pseudo monopolies and duopolies, are using AI to deny claims within seconds of them being filed.
“Before, you used to have a reason you would deny it, and you used to have a doctor review or a nurse review it, but once AI rolled out, they could just have AI deny it,” Shah explained.
For Counterforce Health, Shah brought onboard Riyaa Jadhav, a Jill of all trades who has helped grow and expand the undertaking through her experience in both the business world and working alongside patients at Johns Hopkins University Hospital.
Together, they’ve built Counterforce to the point where it boasts a 70% success rate in appealing claims.
Thousands have already logged on; many going on to use the service.
“Sometimes when enough people get loud, enough people put pressure, then I think all of a sudden society wakes up, so I really feel like it’s really about to click,” Shah said.
WATCH the story below from ABC 11…
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A man installs a canal cat staircase - city of Amersfoort
A man installs a canal cat staircase – city of Amersfoort
Two cities in the Netherlands are mounting tiny staircases on the sides of their canals to help cats escape if they fall in the water.
Between the capital of Amsterdam and a smaller city called Amersfoort, there could be over 500 tiny staircases along the canals by the end of the year.
The initiative began when animal welfare group Party for the Animals noted a high number of drowned felines in the Amsterdam canal networks.
Locating a fund worth €100,000 that was currently unutilized in the city’s environment and biodiversity budget, the Party’s leader Judith Krom proposed that it go to funding exit points for cats to use for escaping the canals.
Animal Rights councilor Zita Pels supported the plan, and on July 10th, the Amsterdam City Council voted in favor of Krom’s proposal.
“A simple measure can prevent enormous animal suffering,” Krom said at the time according to the Independent. “The adopted motion demonstrates that as a city, we take responsibility for protecting the lives of animals.”
The current plan is for the government to work with Dierenambulance Amsterdam, another animal welfare organization, to identify areas where cats fall into canals the most, and build the staircases there.
Amersfoort, 31 miles southeast of Amsterdam, is probably a much better place to go and see the tiny kitty staircases. The municipality currently intends to build “hundreds” every year of these life-saving features.
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A deceased man’s goliath list of every book he ever read is inspiring readers young and old alike after it was turned into a popular website.
Passing away at the age of 92 on July 1st of this year, former Marine and social worker Dan Pelzer had for years committed himself to reading 100 pages every day.
When his own story had finally gone cover to cover, he had read 3,599 books of every imaginable genre, every one of which was written down in a list he kept since 1962.
That year, he began his list with Alan Moorehead’s The Blue Nile in 1962, and ending it over 40 years later with Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, in 2023. At over 100 pages, the idea to give out a copy of his reading list to observers at his funeral “wasn’t feasible,” his descendants say.
Instead, they created what-dan-read.com, where people can scroll through a digitized version of the list, find some good titles to pick next, and receive an incredible glimpse into the life of an incredible reader.
“I’ve never met anyone as curious as him,” said Marci Pelzer, Dan’s daughter. “We know he was sometimes reading at work. But he also read on the bus and everywhere he went. He always had a book open, a book in his hand. And it stimulated great conversations with all kinds of people,” she told CBC.
By 2006 he had finished 3,000 books. Flipping through the first few pages, it strikes one how much of an interest in history he had, but the great science fiction books of modern times stick out, as do pulp fictions, mysteries, and just about everything else.
The Columbus Ohio Metropolitan Library has a similar memorial project for Dan, whereby they created a special archive exclusively of texts he read. They digitized the list, used transcription software to generate about 500 titles, and manually added the rest into a PDF. They also created a searchable database complete with images of the book covers, where library goers can look up what Dan read that’s currently available to check out.
The library’s Whitehall Branch, a place Dan visited often, has also put up a physical display in his honor, called What Dan Read, with a diverse selection on stands.
Part of Dan’s personal reading rules was that a book once opened had to be finished, and Marci remembers he noted Ulysses by James Joyce as being the worst “slog” of all.
His wife later lived in a nursing home, which gave him copious hours alone during the morning and evenings to read. The second last book he ever read was one Marci recommended to him.
“It was just a list of the books he read that he kept personally so he could remember and think about them,” she said. “It wasn’t for anybody else, and most people didn’t know he had it.”
She called him a spiritual, meditative, and introspective person, interested in all kinds of dialogue with the aim of creating greater tolerance for each other.
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Quote of the Day: “This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes.” – Hannah Arendt
Photo by: Fellipe Ditadi for Unsplash+
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80 years ago today, Plaid Cymruor the Party of Wales, was founded with the aim of supporting Welsh culture in government as the progress of the 20th century led to fears that the Welsh language would become extinct. From the beginning, Plaid Cymru was stuck between Labor, the Liberals, and the Tories, arguing that the greatest share possible of Welsh rule should be reserved for Welsh people. From there they have steadily grown in support to be able to contest, and eventually win elections. READ More…
A Caribbean island’s beloved “blue dragons” have come roaring back from the brink thanks to diligent conservation efforts.
Green iguanas are the most common species of their kind, though they can sometimes turn red, and several other mottled shades of tan, brown, and grey.
That makes the blue iguanas of Grand Cayman in the Cayman Islands all the more special. Its chalky, Mar Caprese-blue scales are enchanting and made it a national symbol of Grand Cayman’s natural environment.
The largest island in the archipelago, Grand Cayman rose from the seas 2 million years ago, and these iguanas arrived on its rocky shores soon after. Like the dragons of Komodo, these blue dragons, as they’re affectionately called, eventually evolved to be the largest native land animal.
The blue coloration serves a purpose familiar in many animals. It flushes particularly vivid when the animals feel threatened, or in males during the breeding season. Melanophore cells in their skin can expand or contract to make them appear lighter or darker. A tranquil juvenile female may look almost khaki-colored, while a mature male in the breeding season is so vibrant one might imagine they could be seen from space.
They eat almost only vegetation, can grow more than three feet in length, and endear themselves to their human neighbors by displaying very familiar behaviors like yawning and sneezing.
With the arrival of humans came the introduction of invasive species, like cats and dogs. Hardly as ferocious as their mythical namesake, this led to precipitous declines in their population, CNN reports, until a breeding program and habitat protections kicked in when there may have been as few as 25 left on the island.
Now, 1,200 lizards have been released into these protected wilds, and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature recently reclassified the animal from “Critically Endangered,” to “Endangered.”
“The public’s emotional connection played a big role in the success of the restoration efforts,” Frederic Burton, conservationist and director of the Blue Iguana Recovery Program, told CNN. “Blue iguanas are part of Cayman now.”
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Some of the Airbnbs that Ryan Trahan stayed at - credit, Courtesy of Airbnb Community
Some of the Airbnbs that Ryan Trahan stayed at – credit, Courtesy of Airbnb Community
An acclaimed YouTuber whose font of fame would be impossible to describe to your grandmother just raised $11.5 million for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.
The unforgettable fundraiser centered around Ryan Trahan‘s breakneck 50-day trip around America, visiting one state each day, and attempting to find the coolest Airbnb in the process.
Making a review of each day, each state, and each Airbnb, totaling between 20 and 40 minutes of expertly produced video content, Trahan and his wife stayed in a castle, a lighthouse, a cave, a tree house, a missile silo, a potato, a barn, on a private island, on a private mountain, and even in a giant shoe.
They celebrated every million dollars raised with a cake, made many friend along the way, undertook all kinds of adventures, consumed god only knows how many coffees and perhaps energy drinks, and ended up on the very edge of the Big Island of Hawai’i in a private villa.
Their eventual decision was that the Treetopia Treehouse in Broken Bow, Oklahoma was the best Airbnb in the country.
The Treetopia Treehouse, voted as the best Airbnb in the country – credit, Courtesy of Airbnb CommunityThe villa where Trahan’s journey ended – credit, Courtesy of Airbnb Community
This strange sort of fundraiser reached a lot of ears, and 42,000 people donated to the cause. Six-figure donations were made from large companies like Airbnb, Shopify, Dollar Shave Club, T Mobile, Lectric eBikes, Hobby Lobby, and Kia, while philanthropic gifts were made by Dr. Peter Attia and fellow YouTuber MrBeast.
The whole thing seems rather bizarre, but it’s just another example—one of dozens published on GNN—of how valuable the internet has become for allowing this kind of mass distributed charity to take place.
WATCH the first episode, and maybe take the whole journey with Ryan…
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A woman and her contracted grandma - credit, Client Partners
A woman and her contracted grandma – credit, Client Partners
When a Japanese handyman contractor faced an oversaturated market, they turned to a pretty unusual solution: a ‘rent-a-grandma.’
With few other jobs available for women over 60 other than house cleaners, the company realized that for the same reason a person might want to hire a male handyman in his 60s during a homebuilding project, someone might want to hire a grandmother for a homemaking project.
Tokyo’s Client Partners started the OK! Obaachan (OK! Grandmother) service in 2011, and it’s become a hit.
“I never get bored,” 69-year old Taeko Kaji, one of the rent-a-grandmas, told the Australian ABC. “I get to go out and have these experiences and that’s why taking this job was the right decision for me.”
Client Partners allows customers to hire the services of guides and interpreters, but concern in Japanese society over run-of-the-mill, big city loneliness gave the company the idea to start renting friends, ‘aunts,’ and now even grandmothers.
“Some people may never have had a mother in the first place,” Client Partners chief executive Ms. Ruri Kanazawa told the ABC. “Our grandmother staff members, who cook for the guests and act like a mother to them, help provide the motherly warmth they need.”
Along with loneliness the service may be seen as addressing another societal challenge in Japan: the size of the geriatric population. As big as anywhere else on Earth, there are fewer and fewer working-age Japanese to support the growing number of pensioners. Working can provide better economic security, but many jobs become unavailable, especially women, to those in their golden years.
In traditional societies, the elders take on just such roles: as wisdom-holders, storytellers, adjudicators, and teachers. Client Services’ grandmother contractors very much fulfil that position—for a healthy hourly wage of around $55.
For years, ABC News reports, Japanese society saw women work until marriage, then quit their jobs, stay home to raise the kids until they enter school, then put one foot back in the job market through contract or part-time work. This generation of women, if they were married, would be secured in retirement through their husbands’ pension plans.
This contributed in no small part to the incredible economic boom experienced during the second half of the 20th century, but some women, who may have never been married, or whose husbands died young, face an extreme lack of available work.
Sharing their love and life experience with a young family is clearly an opportunity many are happy to have and happy to do.
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ACRE siding on a home - credit, Modern Mill, supplied
ACRE siding on a home – credit, Modern Mill, supplied
A groundbreaking new material made from upcycled rice husks in a zero-waste environment is giving homebuilders the option to reduce their carbon footprint while adding a rustic charm to their home’s exterior.
The product, called ACRE, offers the warmth and beauty of real wood with all the conveniences of composites, and is available as siding, decking, fencing, sheets, and trimming.
If any Americans were following the news during trade negotiations between Japan and the US, they may have learned, and maybe were surprised to do so, that US farmers grow 20 billion pounds of rice every year.
Each of those pounds are made up of hundreds of individual rice grains, each of which is covered by a hard husk, sometimes called a hull, which are normally just sent to the landfill.
ACRE inventor and producer Modern Mill is changing that by transforming this overlooked byproduct into a high-performance wood replacement that doesn’t require cutting down a single tree, and they’ve already spared 4,000 tons of rice husks from the landfill.
Unlike wheat, the rice hulls contain a significant amount of lignin, the organic polymer that forms wood.
This makes them strong and durable when processed, and capable of being harnessed for use as a building material. The husks themselves offer a tone and depth of color that the company describes as imitating tropical hardwoods like teak, ipe, and cedar.
An ACRE board – credit, Modern Mill, supplied
One pallet of ACRE material, therefore, saves a whole acre of tropical rainforest hardwoods, and in 2022 alone, 44,000 of those pallets were delivered to builders around the country.
Though prices can vary significantly, for most building projects their siding will cost between $10 and $12 per square foot.
In 2023, Modern Mill was named to Fast Company Magazine’s Most Innovative Companies list, and in 2025, in response to the devastating Palisades fires in California, Modern Mill donated siding for 20 families who lost their homes to aid recovery and rebuilding efforts.
“Our hearts are with the families and communities affected by the wildfires,” said Chris Guimond, Chief Executive Officer at Modern Mill. “We’re doing everything we can to help support relief efforts.”
ACRE is tested and certified in accordance with California fire code to be used in all areas from moderate to very high fire hazard severity.
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Quote of the Day: “Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.” – Russell Baker
Photo by: Fellipe Ditadi for Unsplash+
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
100 years ago today, the Rodin Museum opened in Paris, containing works left to the state by the famous sculptor Pierre Auguste Rodin. Centered in the Hotel Biron, Rodin wrote in 1909, “I bequeath to the state all my works in plaster, marble, bronze, and stone, together with my drawings and the collection of antiquities that I had such pleasure in assembling for the education and training of artists and workers.” Here one can find The Thinker, The Kiss, The Age of Bronze, and other of his most famous works. READ more…(1919)
Ryan Brooke inspects a sample of the new titanium – Photo by Michael Quin (RMIT University)
Engineers from an Australian University have produced a new type of 3D-printed titanium that’s about a third cheaper than commonly used titanium alloys.
A team of engineers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) developed the groundbreaking alloy by replacing expensive vanadium with more accessible elements. By rethinking how titanium alloys are designed, the team created a material with improved performance and more uniform microstructure—key factors for aerospace and medical applications.
The team has filed a provisional patent on their innovative approach, which has also been outlined in a paper published in Nature Communications.
The study’s lead author Ryan Brooke, working at the university’s Centre for Additive Manufacturing, will investigate the next steps of commercializing the technology, saying the field of 3D-printed titanium alloys was ripe for innovations.
“3D printing allows faster, less wasteful and more tailorable production yet we’re still relying on legacy alloys (like Ti-6Al-4V) that doesn’t allow full capitalization of this potential. It’s like we’ve created an airplane and are still just driving it around the streets,” he said in a university press release.
“New types of titanium and other alloys will allow us to really push the boundaries of what’s possible with 3D printing and the framework for designing new alloys outlined in our study is a significant step in that direction.”
Besides being nearly 30% cheaper to manufacture, the latest study outlines a time- and cost-saving method to select elements for alloying, providing a clearer path for predicting the grain structure so the metal can print more evenly, avoiding the column-shaped microstructures that lead to uneven mechanical properties in some 3D printed alloys.
Photo credit: RMIT
“By developing a more cost-effective formula that avoids this columnar microstructure, we have solved two key challenges preventing widespread adoption of 3D printing,” said Brooke, a PhD candidate.
He recently talked to aerospace, automotive, and MedTech industry representatives about their needs.
“What I heard loud and clear from end users was that to bring new alloys to market, the benefits have to not just be minor incremental steps but a full leap forward.
“We have been able to not only produce titanium alloys with a uniform grain structure, but with reduced costs, while also making it stronger and more ductile.”
Mingo in foreground with flamingo enclosure in Colchester Zoo in background (file photo)
Mingo pasted into foreground with flamingo enclosure in Colchester Zoo in background (file photo)
A wild otter cub has left officials baffled after he was found inside a flamingo habitat at a zoo in England.
The tiny cub now affectionately named Mingo was found all alone on the shoreline, weighing under 2 pounds (800 grams).
Only a few months old, the orphan surprised the staff at Colchester Zoo in Essex, when they found him ‘snoring’ peacefully.
“Mingo was found early in the morning, curled up on the bank of the main lake out in the open, fast asleep and snoring his head off,” said the zoo’s Jody Bedford, who initially found Mingo.
“We gave him a few hours to see if Mum would reappear.
“Knowing otters, it’s odd behavior to see a pup out in the open like he was. He seemed very strong and was very vocal when awake.”
Wild otters, which are usually born in groups of two to three and stay with their mums for around a year, are native to the UK and can be found along wetlands, rivers, and coastal areas.
Mingo was taken to Wildlives Rescue in Colchester who transferred him into the hands of experts at the UK Wild Otter Trust in North Devon.
Mingo (via SWNS)
“We’re still baffled as to how Mingo ended up in the flamingo habitat,” said Dave Webb, founder of the otter nonprofit. “It’s a total mystery.”
“But what’s absolutely clear is that he wouldn’t have survived much longer on his own.
“Otter cubs this young rely entirely on their mothers, and without immediate intervention, Mingo’s chances were zero.
“Thanks to the quick response from Colchester Zoo and Wildlives Rescue, we’ve been able to give him a second chance at life, and he’ll be released back into the wild when he’s strong enough.”
The UK Wild Otter Trust has been caring for and advocating for the protection of otters since 1998.
Their team of tireless volunteers is now working to ensure Mingo receives the round-the-clock feeding, warmth, and monitoring he needs to grow strong, before returning to the wild.
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The Labrador usually lets Hank sleep late—but not on this particular day. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
The service dog named Tommy had been with Hank Ford since he was a pup, and he knew his owner was at risk. He started nudging Hank with his nose, then pawing at him, and jumping on his body.
Get up. Get up. Get up.
Hank figured the dog needed to go outside a little earlier than normal. But when Hank stood up, he was light-headed and woozy, starting to sense that something was wrong too. He opened the door to let the dog outside, but Tommy didn’t budge.
54-year-old Hank kept feeling worse. He decided to check his vital signs with a blood pressure cuff and was startled by the results.
His pulse was a staggering 171 beats per minute.
The military veteran who had served for more than 20 years, called his local veterans hospital, but they thought his vital readings were obviously wrong, that he simply misused the machine.
Hank and Tommy both knew better, so the resident of Fort Lupton, Colorado, drove himself to the hospital, and the diagnosis arrived a few minutes later.
“They were freaking out about it,” Hank recalled, when doctors confirmed his vital signs. “It was good that Tommy woke me up.
“Something about the way he woke me up: He hasn’t done it before and he hasn’t done it since,” Hank told GNN. “Doctors said, more than likely, it would have been a stroke and it would have been a (big) one.”
What he was experiencing is AFib—an irregular heartbeat characterized by a rapid rhythm. The upper chambers of the heart beat out of sync with the lower chambers, and the condition can lead to reduced blood flow and cause strokes—or even death.
This recent event was not the only time Tommy helped save Hank’s life.
Service dog Tommy working at the golf course – Credit: Hank Ford
Years ago, Hank was in a self-described dark spot. He had spent decades of his selfless military service in high-stress situations, a hero in harm’s way. Desert Shield. Desert Storm. Bosnia. Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Then, when he left the military, he worked for years at a federal penitentiary, adding even more layers of stress.
All those experiences and memories weren’t easily forgotten. Hank had a significant case of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). He didn’t like dealing with people or going out in public. He slept a lot and stayed at home, sheltering himself from the outside world.
His doctors encouraged him to pursue a service dog. And when his hunting dogs— also Labradors—passed away, Hank reached out to the Wounded Warrior Project for a service dog. That organization helped connect him with Dogs Inc, a nonprofit that provides guide dogs, service dogs, and therapy dogs, free of charge, to people in need.
Not long afterward, Hank and Tommy were united and the impact was immediate.
“We bonded fast,” Hank said. “I have had some good connections with dogs, but nothing like what we have…
“He would key the clues I was putting out really quickly. If you stress out, he will come out and look at you and put his chin on you and be like, ‘Hey, are you okay?’ It was a calming presence. And it was really quick. I was ready to have a dog again, but wasn’t expecting what I got.”
Hank received a new best friend and a new path forward.
Life started looking a whole lot better. And when Hank’s heart was on the verge of a potentially-fatal malfunction and he was stabilized in the hospital, his wife brought the dog in to see him. Tommy crawled right up onto Hank’s bed and laid across his body.
The dog stayed there for hours, just inches away from the beating heart of the man he had helped to heal years ago. So perhaps it’s no surprise that he was the crucial first responder and hero when Hank’s heart spun wildly out of rhythm.
“I knew dogs were man’s best friend for a reason,” Hank said. “He takes it above and beyond that.”
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The first day attendance, in the old town of Basel - credit : Natalia Lorenzo, Maribel Lorenzo, Birgitte Kronsbjerg, Jonas Singer.
The first day attendance, in the old town of Basel – credit : Natalia Lorenzo, Maribel Lorenzo, Birgitte Kronsbjerg, Jonas Singer.
Average folk might have all kinds of questions about the World Economic Forum and what goes on there, but for two visionary women, the question was clear: where are all the artists?
For such a high-profile gathering of world leaders, thought leaders, and business leaders, how could there be no room for authentic creativity?
That burning inquiry inevitably led them to ask: if Klaus Schwab can organize a conference in a beautiful Swiss town and try to plan the future of human society, shouldn’t artists help expand that vision, bringing bold perspectives, fresh imagination, and the soul, story, and spirit of our time to the decision-making tables?
The Future of Humanity Experience, recently concluded across five locations in Basel during Art Basel Week, could be styled as a complementary expansion of what was inaugurated in Davos earlier this year. Hosted, energized, and enlivened through art and collaboration, four full-day events unfolded, each gathering a new constellation of 40 co-creators from diverse disciplines and from all corners of the globe to co-create a shared vision of the future.
Artists and organizers Iwona Fluda and Murièle ‘Solange’ Bolay put together the whole event in roughly 4 months, guided by a shared understanding of the scope and character of the project that almost never needed to be explained or spoken aloud.
Speaking to American media for the first time since the successful event launch during ArtBasel, the two women document their remarkable journey and success in creating what may become one of the most hotly anticipated conferences in Europe.
Event artist Replicah (Sabrina Bühlmann) invites the conference to immerse themselves in her street-side installation – credit: Natalia Lorenzo, Maribel Lorenzo, Birgitte Kronsbjerg, Jonas Singer.
Meeting in the ‘Under Davos
“I have been to Davos during the World Economic Forum 4 times at least, and I felt that creatives and artists are not represented there,” said Fluda, originally from Poland. “There is a type of void and missing space.”
“How come in this huge arena of world leaders, politicians, entrepreneurs, business people and investors there’s very little creativity or creative output visible?”
Solange, who has been attending the WEF on and off since 2007, recalls a different energy back then.
“In my opinion, it was very different then than what it is now. It was a lot more exclusive to attend the inner programs,” she told GNN. “Now, the village area has opened up to a much broader audience, and that’s where more conscious, less transactional conversations start to flow.”
According to her, Davos village is now the largest circle and what attracts the most independent thought leaders and entrepreneurs during WEF Week today. It’s also where the two women, who met through entrepreneur chats, curated an art exhibition that offered a glimpse of what stages like Davos could become if artists and creatives were given a place in the spotlight.
Originally proposed in Davos, their Future of Humanity Art Walk was a resounding success, reaching over 300,000 people worldwide, welcoming 4,000 on-site visitors, and featured artists from all continents, ranging in age from 6 to 85. With just seven weeks of preparation, what began as a small passion project quickly evolved into a full-blown immersive experience and event week during Art Basel.
“With my company MSB & Partners, we’ve been doing business transformations for over 18 years, and for the past 2.5 years, we’ve started incorporating art into these transformation processes.” Solange says. The paintings not only help inspire new ways of thinking and problem solving, she says, but act as an “anchor”, reinforcing that transformative mindset among company employees.
By Solange’s estimation, most enterprising activities focus on predicting certain trends, gravitating towards mega trends, and then somewhere in between products and services arrive on the market, a process she describes as “very brainy and calculated.”
“It’s a transactional focus versus an explorational one where we design the world we want to see.” In the case of the Future of Humanity Experience, co-designing a world was a notion both women had arrived at independently: with society changing so fast, what kind of world do we want to live in?
“We both have worked in different setups… internally in organizations; externally, as consultants, as business owners, and for me personally it was always the question about how can we really co-create things together without fighting against each other?” Fluda said.
“There really wasn’t time to think about it too much,” Solange remembers. “We were just in action mode and we were kind of ‘guided’ by a vision, that we never really spoke about, but we seemed to have and it was a very special time.”
Co-creators viewing an exhibited work by Maritsa Kissamitaki – credit: Natalia Lorenzo, Maribel Lorenzo, Birgitte Kronsbjerg, Jonas Singer.
The Future of Humanity Experience
The bootstrapped and crowdsourced events were a whirlwind 9 months of envisioning, organizing, partaking in, and debriefing after the most recent Future of Humanity Experience in Basel.
“How I operate is more like, ‘oh, there is an idea’—just this little spark. ‘I align with that, I feel like there is so much more we can do, how about we run the 1st sprint and see if it sticks?,'” Fluda told GNN. “That’s kind of my approach for anything. And then, if it does, as in this case, surprisingly, it did, then what else can we do with that?”
Some 100 artists from all around the world—from Trinidad and Tobago to China—submitted works for the exhibitions.
A week of enjoying curated art shows, presentations, open forums, and exquisite catered lunches left this reporter exhausted, but with a distinct feeling that Fluda and Solange had struck a chord with the very fabric of Western society.
The advent of the internet has seen the metaphorical ‘public square’ distributed online, while the traditional forums of our time: the corner cafe, the library, the bookstore, the townhall—have lost their relevance.
Academia’s trend towards hyper-specialization dampens cross-disciplinary dialogue; the behavior of our public intellectuals gradually came to be governed by social media engagement, and the rise of the digital influencer means that from travel, to fitness, to history and politics, topics are examined almost exclusively at the surface level.
The curated exhibitions at the Future of Humanity Experience were powerful. The themes they explored were broad and impactful, but even if an attendee has never visited an art gallery in their lives, what the event offers is the ‘forum’ as it may have been in our ancestors’ day. Here was a chance to discourse with mastery and enterprise from all over the professional world, and for the noblest of aims—co-creating a vision of the future we’d all like to see.
“I was there as a business person,” Solange says remembering her first art exhibit in Under Davos, “no one knew who created those pieces.”
“So I was able to listen to the conversations that happened in front of these canvases, and it was so interesting because it’s exactly the conversations that we want to hear happening, you know, in the boardrooms.”
After a successful launch, their outlook is broad and bright. Fluda and Solange perceive the future of the Future of Humanity Experience to be more than just an art exhibit, but a force, a forum, a service, and a community. Next year’s edition can only be bolder.
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