Welcome back to the Monday good news roundup. Where your intrepid good news team works hard in order to bring you the news stories to perk you right up.

Welp, its 4th of July, a time of intense patriotism, of cookouts and barbecues and spending time with family. I can imagine a lot of us though are not in the patriotic mood, considering the overwhelming ass kicking our liberties and the earth took from the Supreme Court last week.

But you know what? I’m still gonna celebrate 4th of July, because guess what? Its a holiday all about fighting back against oppression, about standing up against tyranny. The GOP seem hell bent on casting themselves as the tyrants, well, if they weren’t so hell bent on cutting funding from schools, they would probably figure out what happens to tyrants.

We will win in the end. The GOP is losing their grip on things, the Supreme Court is their last venue to hold onto power without winning elections, and they are exploit it as much as they can. But ultimately they will fail, they want to set up a minority rule in America, where things are so rigged only they get a vote. Tell me, how long do they think such a system will last? These morons can’t govern, they don’t know how to govern, and eventually they will crash and burn, and we will be there to pick up the pieces.

But it won’t even get that far, because we’re going to stop them here and now. We’re gonna get out and vote in November, keep congress, expand the senate, end the filibuster, and expand the court. We’re going to save democracy, you and me. All of us.

Before we get on to the good news, I have a few more words from a friend of mine on the rpg.net forum. my good friend s/LaSH has this advice:

A vital part of fixing things is to just keep talking.

Keep each other aware of what's happening. That tells you when it's time to take further action.

But it also lets supporters of the right-wing faction know what's really happening. The specifics matter. Nobody actually wants to be racist murderers, and they'll go to great lengths to phrase it as something else. Stripping away the Emperor's new clothes could change minds.

And it's important to keep politicians in the loop. Not just one side, but both* sides. Let them know what issues your vote follows. If they care about nothing but power, and they can get power by courting decency and the majority of the country, let them - mission accomplished.

Well, not mission accomplished. Even with overwhelming public will behind it, there's still much work to do to get the actual SCOTUS to start doing good things. But that work is easier if you've got the weight of democracy behind it. And that weight comes from you the people and your talk. --- * I don't like that there are only two sides in the USA because it makes it look like a battle between good and evil, and it is, but those sides don't automatically map to the parties. Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican President, and that could happen again.

So keep it up. Keep talking about this. We will win in the long run. It won’t be easy, and not gonna lie things might get worse before they get better, but we will win. We win hearts and minds, we win elections. We just keep going until we fix things. Until we make them better. Until we make an America that people are proud of. That’s worthy of a 4th of July celebration.

Alright, now on to the news.

Last week, MassDOT and the City of Peabody presented their proposed plans to extend the town’s Independence Greenway from Lahey Medical Center across Route 128 to Endicott Street, a project that will bring the shared-use path to the edge of Peabody’s downtown area.

Currently, the Independence Greenway is made up of two disconnected sections which run on either side of Route 1 and I-95.

The western section runs from Lieutenant Ross Park for about 3 miles before ending at Russell Street, near Peabody’s northwest border; the eastern section runs from Peabody Road to the Lahey Medical Center, between Route 1 and Route 128.

Its easy to focus on the big bad news that’s happening all around us, that we forget that in a million small ways things are getting better for people. This is evidence of that.

In 2020, as the pandemic raged, Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson sent the City Council an email introducing the idea of eliminating bus fares. At a subsequent meeting held on Zoom, the measure was introduced with no fuss.

“I was super excited, but there was little fanfare,” says Aguirre. “When we announced it, we hardly got any emails or heard anything. There was zero debate. Me and the mayor were the only ones who said anything, but we totally nerded out. Then it was like, okay, next item.”

Many cities  enacted  fare-free transit options  during the pandemic, both as a means to help essential workers and to limit interactions. But as life returns to a semblance of normal, some cities are backing away from the idea.

Almost two years later, however, Alexandria’s buses remain free.

I’m going to start taking the bus to work this week, so this is exciting news for me. Big thumbs up. Hope it comes to my town.

A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that more than six in 10 Americans (61%) now have little or no confidence in the Supreme Court after its decision Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade — a near-total reversal from the 70% of voters who expressed at least some confidence in the court right before conservative justices gained a 6-3 majority with the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett in October 2020.

To the surprise of no one, most people are royally pissed off about what the Supreme Court did. We are not alone, and we are not going back.

District attorneys in more than 10 states where abortion is now banned or likely will be soon have committed to not prosecute people for obtaining abortions, following the Supreme Court’s Friday decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

In a joint statement Friday, more than 80 elected prosecutors argued that doing so would abuse their offices’ limited criminal justice resources, though many are from states that are supportive of abortion rights.

Laws are a mutual contract between people. If people don’t enforce terrible laws they may as well not exist.

According to a new poll, voters in Pennsylvania said they would not vote for a sitting Republican congressman after they learned about his anti-abortion views.

The survey was conducted by Public Policy Polling, which is affiliated with the Democratic Party, and it suggested that Republican Brian Fitzpatrick would lose his seat in Pennsylvania's 1st Congressional district to Democrat Ashley Ehasz once voters were made aware of his stance on abortion.

The poll, which was conducted after the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade on Friday, June 24, said Fitzpatrick led Ehasz by seven percentage points (45 percent to 38 percent) when asked an initial question about who voters would back in November's midterms.

However, once the survey respondents learned of Fitszpatrick's anti-abortion views, Ehasz gained a massive surge in support, moving to a 10-point lead over the Republican (47 percent to 37 percent).

Last week I posted a story in which Trump was worried that the Supreme Court’s actions would ruin their midterm chances. I think this article proves that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

The culture war raged most hotly from the ’70s to the next century’s ’20s. It polarized American society, dividing men from women, rural from urban, religious from secular, Anglo-Americans from more recent immigrant groups. At length, but only after a titanic constitutional struggle, the rural and religious side of the culture imposed its will on the urban and secular side. A decisive victory had been won, or so it seemed.

The culture war I’m talking about is the culture war over alcohol prohibition. From the end of Reconstruction to the First World War, probably more state and local elections turned on that one issue than on any other. The long struggle seemingly culminated in 1919, with the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment and enactment by Congress of the National Prohibition Act, or the Volstead Act (as it became known). The amendment and the act together outlawed the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States and all its subject territories. Many urban and secular Americans experienced those events with the same feeling of doom as pro-choice Americans may feel today after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.

An interesting article to say the least, but a point to be made, we’ve won this sort of culture war before, and will do so again.

Now, conservationists are attempting to undo that fate. On 11 June, more than a quarter-century after the female flew into oblivion, they plan to release eight Spix’s macaws from captivity into the wild. Twelve more are supposed to follow at the end of the year and still more in the years to come. If everything goes according to plan, these birds will be the vanguard of a new population of Spix’s macaws in their natural habitat. The project, long hampered by infighting and overshadowed by controversy, had to overcome significant scientific hurdles to even come this far. But the biggest challenge still lies ahead.

I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t realize this was a real bird. I recognize the name from a one off gag from Mystery Science Theater 3000, but didn’t realize it was an actual bird. Still glad to see they’re making a comeback.

Republican primary voters in Colorado on Tuesday rejected three hard-line election deniers in statewide contests in favor of more moderate opponents — including a U.S. Senate contender who supports some abortion rights.

The rebuke of the far-right hopefuls came as House Republicans in more conservative areas across the country prevailed over primary challengers who criticized them for supporting a never-formed independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. And Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who had been poised to reject certification of the 2020 election results but switched his vote after the Jan. 6 attack, also advanced from his primary.

It seems like more and more people are getting tired of the big lie. Glad to hear, I was tired of it straight away.

The otters scream and snarl as we approach their cages with buckets of fish in the afternoon sun. They devour them as though they may never be fed again. Their shrill warning calls – not heard in this landscape for decades – could become commonplace as they once again populate the swamps and lagoons of Corrientes.

In time, wild jaguar populations are likely to be on the rise in the Gran Chaco. Decades of human exploitation might be undone in landscapes that are celebrated and protected by local communities.

What started on a patch of swampland has snowballed into an effort that spans a continent and has made for a wilder Argentina.

Not gonna lie, humanity has messed up a lot of the earth, but this is proof we can make it right.

One in five county councils have embraced rewilding on public land in Great Britain, with a growing number setting aside former golf courses, post-industrial scrubland and recovering waterways for nature.

From Rhondda Cynon Taf to Brighton, 43 councils in England, Wales and Scotland have launched rewilding schemes or are planning to do so in rural and urban areas, a joint investigation by the Guardian and the wildlife magazine Inkcap Journal found.

Councils, among the largest landowners in the country, have not usually been viewed as part of the rewilding movement, which is dominated by high-profile examples such as the Knepp estate in West Sussex and large-scale projects in Scotland.

Looks like rewilding is happening all over the world.

For countries looking to cut emissions, cars are an obvious target. They make up a big proportion of a country’s carbon footprint, accounting for one-fifth of all emissions across the European Union. Of course, urban driving doesn’t make up the majority of a country’s car use, but the kind of short journeys taken when driving in the city are some of the most obviously wasteful, making cities an ideal place to start if you’re looking to get people out from behind the wheel. That, and the fact that many city residents are already car-less (just 40 percent of people in Lambeth own cars, for example) and that cities tend to have better public transport alternatives than elsewhere.

I don’t drive, so I’m fine with getting rid of cars for the most part. Lets do it.

A couple of years ago, banning the construction of new gas stations anywhere in the United States would have seemed like a far-fetched idea. But it could soon become a political reality, not in a public transit dreamland, but in the sprawling, car-centric city of Los Angeles.

I think if gas prices stay as high as they are, people wont be mourning the death of the fossil fuel industry when it finally goes down.

SHANGHAI, June 17 (Reuters) - China will ban new steel, coking, oil refining, cement and glass projects in key zones, the government said on Friday in a wide-ranging policy document aimed at tackling pollution and meeting the country's climate goals.

It said China would step up efforts to establish a zoning system to manage environmental risks and take action to reduce heavy industry in already polluted regions, river basins and urban areas.

China has really been doing better on environmental issues of late.

Canadians can now apply for interest-free loans up to $40,000 to make their homes more eco-friendly, thanks to a new program launched by the federal government.

In an effort to help up to 175,000 Canadians make their living space more energy efficient, the Canada Greener Homes Initiative will now provide loans between $5,000 and $40,000 per household for major green retrofits. This is a new addition for the initiative, which launched in May 2021 and initially only offered grants ranging from $125 to $5,000 to households making eco-friendly upgrades.

Good news if you are in Canada and you need a project to keep your hands busy and make your home a little more green.

CHICAGO — Chicago police officers will no longer be allowed to chase people on foot simply because they run away or give chase over minor offenses, the department said Tuesday, more than a year after two foot pursuits ended with officers fatally shooting a 13-year-old boy and 22-year-old man.

The new policy adheres closely to a draft policy put in place after those shootings and gives the department something it has never had: permanent rules about when officers can and can’t engage in an activity that can endanger themselves, those they’re chasing and bystanders.

Good. Cops need to be brought to task and made to act in a responsible manner and not just as jack booted thugs.

When Bouldin says, ​“ all this,” she refers to the years-long battle communities across West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina have waged against the Mountain Valley Pipeline and its proposed Southgate extension.

When Bouldin and fellow organizers Lynda Majors and Donna Pitt met for a discussion via Zoom in March of 2022 , the MVP’s prospects seemed dim.

Originally priced at $3 .7 billion, the MVP’s costs have ballooned to over $6 .2 billion, the project is over three years behind schedule and has faced millions of dollars in fines for violations of clean water protections. A number of recent legal setbacks

have set the pipeline back further, but years of experience have made these organizers cautious.

All over the world we are fighting against greed, pollution and injustice. And make no mistake, we will win.

Grassroots organizers in Uganda and Tanzania have been speaking out against EACOP for years, sometimes at great risk to their own safety. But in a testament to the project’s significance for biodiversity and human rights, the campaign to stop the pipeline is now entering a new, increasingly global phase.

EACOP threatens to displace some 100,000 people whose homes lie in the pipeline’s path. It would cut through over 200 rivers and the basin of Lake Victoria, a source of irrigation and drinking water for 40 million people. It would also negatively impact numerous protected areas in Uganda and Tanzania, including national parks and wildlife reserves. However, it is the pipeline’s potential contribution to the climate crisis — 34 million tons of carbon emitted into the atmosphere annually — that has made stopping it a priority for climate activist groups not only in Africa, but in Europe and the United States

There isn’t a place these pipelines pop up that people don’t come together to oppose them, it really warms the heart.

Time for a musical interlude. Ladies and gentlemen, THE FOO FIGHTERS.

It’s not exactly the bottom of the market. But these days, he’s mostly left the "5 percent" behind and is signing deeds over to schoolteachers and restaurant managers, people who never thought they’d be able to afford new construction.

Thompson’s business is alive and thriving; every one of its recent projects has turned a profit, he says, and financing hasn’t been too hard. Thompson’s secret: the argument he lost seven years ago. Despite his efforts in 2015, new homes of the size he once built are now illegal in most of the city. But in exchange, almost any residential lot is now allowed to have up to four modest homes on it.

Welcome to Portland, America’s new test tube for rediscovering the "missing middle" of the housing market.

I may never own a home of my own, but it would be nice to do it someday, maybe.

Also, one more video, about the California high speed rail (Which is actually good).

Well, I think that does it for this week. Everyone have a happy 4th of July. Rest up, have a burger or a hot dog or anything, then rest and get ready for the fight ahead. We’re going to win.