Things Are Good: Busting Urban Planning Myths
There’s a lot of misconceptions about how to make cities a better place to live that need to be cleared up. A popular belief is that adding more lanes for cars will help curb traffic jams – when the...
View ArticleThings Are Good: Detroit’s Farms May Save the City
Detroit is a city that has been witnessing a lot of change thanks to poor urban planning and bad economics. The past decade has been very rough for the people of Detroit and they are turning to old,...
View ArticleThings Are Good: Why Mining Matters and Why You Should Care
Despite our technological advances modern civilization relies on mineral resources just as much (if not more) than we did in the past. Our computers need rare earth material to work and other products...
View ArticleThings Are Good: Millennials Don’t Want to Work for Jerks
Generational distinctions are mostly meaningless, although sometime there is a glimpse into cultural trends based on age. One generational difference that is a good one to see (among many) is that...
View ArticleThings Are Good: Coal Museum Powered by Solar Panels
If the end of coal wasn’t obviously upon us, it is now. The Kentucky Coal Museum has switched to solar power for energy and cost savings. Yes, in what might be a wonderful display of irony, the museum...
View ArticleThings Are Good: Positively Trolling Racists on the Web
Racists aren’t smart, and recently their stupidity has been taken advantage of to make the internet a little better. The popular online community Reddit has some parts of the site occupied by racists...
View ArticleThings Are Good: The Best Interrogation Technique is to Listen
Over the course of the last decade interrogation techniques involved violence, yelling, and trying to “outsmart” the person being interviewed. Sadly that’s how interrogations were shown in...
View ArticleThings Are Good: 15,000 Scientists Want to Change Climate Change
They want to stabilize the change and, ideally, change the trajectory we’re on. Climate change is happening faster than predicted and the positive feedback loops have started (meaning that it’s even...
View ArticleThings Are Good: WikiTribune to World: “Hello”
In 2001 when Jimmy Wales launched Wikipedia he never thought that the website would become what it is today. This year he has launched (with many others) WikiTribune and hopes that it becomes as...
View ArticleThings Are Good: Kids Don’t Benefit from Helicopter Parenting
Being a parent must be hard since websites are constantly telling you what you’re doing wrong. If you’re letting your kid explore the world on
View ArticleThings Are Good: Ways to Better Avoid Fake News
Figure 1 from Cook, Ellerton, and Kinkead 2018. CC BY 3.0 The term fake news may new to the modern discourse but the idea is
View ArticleThings Are Good: Less Open Debates for a More Open Democracy
The last few years of this bizarre decade have witnessed the resurgence of hate groups. Some of these hate groups are just nicer sounding Nazis
View ArticleThings Are Good: Watch This Anti-Palm Oil Ad Banned in the UK
Palm oil gets used in plenty of consumer goods and processed foods, as a result the demand for palm oil increases every year. The problem
View ArticleThings Are Good: “Hustle Porn” Losing its Appeal
The term “hustle porn” covers all those ridiculous Youtube videos about get-rich schemes and stories by so-called hard-workers making tons of money because they “work
View ArticleThings Are Good: People Who Trust News Sources More Likely to Identify Fake News
Figure 1 from Cook, Ellerton, and Kinkead 2018. CC BY 3.0 A recent survey to find out who is susceptible to “fake news” found that
View ArticleThings Are Good: Planning for a Zero-Growth Economy
The economy is sometimes referred to as an entity outside of human control – it isn’t. We control the economy through policies and practices in
View ArticleThings Are Good: GDPR Forces NYT to Serve Better Ads
Online media companies were forced to rethink their advertiser policies last year because of the introduction of the GDPR. The New York Times decided to
View ArticleThings Are Good: No Better Time than now to Work from Home
For many office workers there is little reason to go to the office thanks to the advances in technology (it seems the only reason to be in an actual office is to be watched by a manager). The...
View ArticleThings Are Good: Avoid these Evil Tech Companies
Tech companies have transformed from the stereotypical scrappy startup to the stereotypical megacorporation hellbent on making money before all else. Google is a great example of this transition from a...
View ArticleThings Are Good: Want Better Communities? Get rid of Homeowners
\ The North American dream often hinges on owning the shelter you reside in, but with raising home prices this is a challenge for many. It may work out in the long run though as we should be creating...
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