To ensure the weekend gets off to a sunny start, here's today's global round up of good news nuggets.
Van Gogh A.I.
The world’s most renowned artists never made it to the Faroe Islands, an isolated archipelago in the North Atlantic hundreds of miles from the mainland. But if they had, how would they have painted them? A new exhibition at the National Gallery of the Faroe Islands aims to answer that question, while also raising new ones about the role of artificial intelligence (A.I.) in art. The image above shows what A.I. believes Van Gogh's painting would have looked like.
Bear Force One
The internet crowned bear 747, a.k.a. “Bear Force One,” the winner of Fat Bear Week 2022. The estimated 1,400-pound giant is over 20 years old. He defeated bear 901, a six-year-old female, in the final round by more than 10,000 votes. The annual online competition is a single-elimination bracket of brown bears in Alaska’s Katmai National Park, and winners are decided by the highest number of votes. The park hosts more than 2,200 bears, according to Buzzfeed News, but only a lucky twelve are selected to vie for the title each year.
Greek Milestone
Renewable energy met all of Greece’s electricity needs for the first time ever last week, the country’s independent power transmission operator IPTO announced. For at least five hours on Friday, renewables accounted for 100 per cent of Greece’s power generation. Green Tank called it a "record of optimism for the country's transition to clean energy, weaning off fossil fuels and ensuring our energy sufficiency.”
Prestidigitation
Sleight of hand. This word conjures something grand from a simple phrase. Prestidigitation ultimately comes from the Italian word presto, meaning "quick" or "quickly," and digitus, the Latin word for finger. So, at its root, prestidigitation basically means "quick fingers."
Extra Fresh
Down in the Egyptian capital, a supermarket is taking its produce aisle to a new level of freshness. A hydroponic fridge grows different kinds of lettuce right there in the store, ensuring extraordinary freshness and zero travel miles. A hydroponic system is a way of growing certain plants in humid tubes without soil, supplemented with liquid fertilizer and nutrients. The system uses 90% less water than soil gardening, and is perfect for fast growing greens. Schaduf, the company behind this brilliant idea, hopes to expand the technology to other stores to help reduce the carbon footprint of the travel associated with fresh fruit and veg.
World’s Largest Vertical Farm to be Built in UK: The objective is to reduce the carbon footprint of food consumed in the UK, eliminate the limitations of the seasons and boost the country’s food security. Read on...
Human Composting
California has just become the fifth state in the US to legalize the composting of human bodies, a planet-friendly - and, yes, gruesome-sounding - alternative to the toxic process of cremation. The Los Angeles Times reports that Governor Gavin Newsom has signed the bill passed by the state assembly into law, though human composting won't become a burial option in the Golden State until 2027. California follows the likeminded states of Oregon, Washington, Vermont, and Colorado in paving the way for human composting, though in at least one of those, the practice is already well underway and attracting people from out-of-state.
Quote of the Day
"The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel." Steve Furtick
On this Day
15 October 1993: South Africans Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk were named the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize “for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa.”
Harvesting Wine and Solar
The war in Ukraine "may be seen as a blessing" from a climate perspective, says the head of the UN weather agency. Read on...
Mood Booster
Whatever your politics, Reagan could certainly spin a yarn.