An eclectic collection of positive news stories from around the globe.
King's Penthouse
A luxurious suite of “rooms with a view”, built for the son of William the Conquerer but partly destroyed in the English Civil War, has become accessible to visitors for the first time in almost 400 years, thanks to a new viewing platform at one of England’s most dramatically situated castles. The King’s Tower was built in 1107 for William’s son Henry I at Corfe Castle, which sits on top of a steep hill on the Purbeck peninsula, on England's south coast in Dorset. Constructed from gleaming white limestone inside the imposing fortification, the 23-metre (75ft) tower was Henry’s personal penthouse, built to the highest standards of luxury and including an “appearance door” from which he could be seen by his subjects far below.
Marine Protection
The regional assembly of Portugal’s Azores Islands has just signed off on the creation of the largest protected marine area in the North Atlantic - reaching international conservation goals well ahead of time. This places the archipelago at the forefront of global ocean conservation that aims to achieve the goals set by the United Nations of protecting 30 percent of the Earth’s land and sea by 2030 under a global pact adopted last year. The network will encompass almost 300,000 square km (115,830 sq. miles) and ensures the preservation of underwater mountain ranges and vulnerable marine ecosystems, including deep-sea corals, hydrothermal vents, and marine species.
First SMS Text
On 3 December 1992, when rotary phones could still be found in some households, 22-year-old engineer Neil Papworth made history by pressing send on a now-ubiquitous form of communication. He used his personal computer and England's Vodafone network to transmit the world’s first SMS text message - just two simple words - to a colleague’s mobile phone. Papworth worked for a now-defunct IT services company that was developing a messaging service, and the big moment was merely part of a day’s work. “It didn’t feel momentous at all,” he later said, adding: “I had no idea that first text was going to snowball eventually into this thing we call texting today.” The following year, Nokia released the first cellphone with SMS capability. Those two simple words were: Merry Christmas.
Choose Your Language
Microsoft Teams meetings are getting a new interpreter feature that lets each participant speak or listen in the language of their choosing. Interpreter in Teams uses real-time AI-powered speech-to-speech translation to simulate your speaking voice during meetings. A preview will be available in early 2025 that will include up to nine languages and the ability for the interpreter feature to simulate your personal voice in a different language. It’s part of a series of AI-powered changes coming to Microsoft Teams. Meeting transcription will soon support multilingual meetings so that up to 31 translation languages will be supported for a meeting transcript.
Oxford Word of 2024
'Brain rot' has been announced as the Oxford word of the year for 2024, defined as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging”. More than 37,000 people voted to help choose the winner from a shortlist of six words drawn up by Oxford University Press, the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary. The five unsuccessful shortlisted words included 'demure', that refers to reserved or responsible behaviour; 'dynamic pricing', where the price of a product or service varies to reflect demand; 'lore', a body of facts and background information related to someone or something; 'romantasy', a fiction genre combining romance and fantasy; and 'slop', low-quality content online generated using artificial intelligence.
Record Breaker
Nothing much to see here; just the Guinness World Record holder for the largest building shaped like a chicken (which begs the question, are there several towering chicken-shaped buildings?). This 114-foot-tall, six-story chicken structure is also a hotel, so if you appreciate poultry and don’t mind sleeping in a windowless room, consider checking (“chick-ing”?) in for $80 per night. The avian-themed hotel, nicknamed Cano's Chicken, is set on the island of Negros Occidental in the Philippines and stands as a monument to the “calm yet commanding creatures,” hotelier Ricardo Cano Gwapo Tan told CNN.
“Nothing makes us feel more connected than when we are engaged in a healthy balance of thoughtful speaking and hardcore listening.” Esther Perel
On This Day
3 December 1967: Christiaan Barnard of South Africa performed the first human heart transplant, at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.
Today's Articles
Viagra Image Overhaul: Successive new studies reveal that Viagra helps prevent dementia and Alzheimer’s.
Mood Boosting Video
Crazy or What? Wingsuit flight through alarmingly narrow hole in rock.