Play this game to discover real deep-sea animals
Hey fam,
Happy February.
If it feels like nothing's going right this month, today's newsletter will fortunately prove you wrong. Lots of people around the world are still charging forward, and as always, we can take action to join them in the push for better.
Take a break from the doom with 20 stories of progress (plus many more wins from our community) coming at you hot...
Let's start with a recap of some of the best stories from January, 2025 (watch here)
🛑 A drilling lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge failed when no company placed any bids to disrupt this beautiful sacred land (Yereth Rosen|Alaska Beacon)
🍱 Indonesia launched a huge program to give free meals to 83 million children and pregnant women (Niniek Karmini & Dita Alangkara|AP)
💰 New York signed the Superfund Act into law which will make the world’s worst polluters pay to repair damages their actions have caused (AP)
🌌 The most accurate map of the Milky Way ever was created from 3 trillion observations (Evan Gough|Universe Today)
♳ Thailand banned plastic waste imports to reduce toxic pollution and plastic production (Sandra Laville|The Guardian)
🦌 16 new wildlife crossings across 16 US states were announced (USDOT)
🫖 An interchangeable kettle that can be easily repaired at home was designed by 22-year-old Gabriel Kay (Robin Eveleigh|Positive News)
🤝 And our community took all sorts of actions from building a tiny community library, to planting milkweed for monarch butterflies, making homemade puppy food, doing a no-buy year for clothes, throwing clay seed balls onto unused land, and so much more.
DO SOME GOOD: Comment your favorite story from January at the end of this post!
Monday, February 3 (watch here)
🦇 One male greater mouse-eared bat was discovered in 2002 and thought to be the only surviving member of the species in the UK, until a female was just found who appears to be of breeding age offering a glimmer of hope and resilience for the species (Patrick Barkham|The Guardian)
🧑⚖️ The UK’s biggest undeveloped oil field has been overturned by a court after massive public opposition, with the decision based on the proposal’s failure to account for emissions or damages they’d cause and therefore it’s against the law, while the movement is keeping the pressure on to ensure the decision sticks (StopRosebank)
📱 New York is banning the use of smartphones in schools next year to protect mental health and reduce distractions, with a few exceptions for safety and health, and while this is a bit ironic coming from someone posting and making a living on social media, I think we can agree that a little less screen time is good for us (Brianna Perry|Secret NYC)
🏥 And today’s community win comes from rebuilding.laura whose four year old niece has her last chemo treatment next month after a year of tumor removals.
Tuesday, February 4 (watch here)
🐯 India’s tiger population has doubled in the past decade and the nation is now home to the world’s largest population of these iconic cats with over 3,600 living on a 50,000 square mile area being protected by locals from poaching, habitat loss, and conflict (Soutik Biswas|BBC)
🛤️ Train tracks in France are getting upgraded with solar panels in a 6-month test to see if these mini power plants are a reliable way to get clean power from tracks that aren’t being used, and if successful could expand to over 280,000 acres of public train tracks around the country (Marie Beyer|PV Magazine)
🌾 Empty office buildings around the world are being converted into vertical farms as a cost effective way to fill empty corporate offices, grow local produce within them, and put abandoned spaces to use which boosts the local economy and helps improve access to healthy foods (Vittoria Traverso|BBC)
🧼 And today’s community win comes from Violetsong222 who’s turning old sheets and t-shirts into rags for washing and cleaning.
Wednesday, February 5 (watch here)
🕹️ People are playing a game on their phone that identifies deep sea animals in real life, turning anyone with a smartphone into a citizen scientist.
Because millions of images of the crazy species down there have been taken by underwater cameras, but barely any have been officially identified, which can take years.
AI-powered robots like the MiniROV are starting to help by tracking organisms to learn about their behavior and surroundings, but training this AI is tricky... So gamers are becoming some of the first people to ever see these deep sea creatures as they virtually dive down, learn about marine animals, and then classify real life recordings.
Their tags are compared to other people and the AI, which improves its algorithm that helps scientists identify more of the millions of ocean species still unknown.
This AI is expanding our knowledge of life on Earth (instead of using a country’s worth of energy just to generate images of the creepiest hands you’ve ever seen).
And it could help protect our oceans, like the Clarion-Clipperton Zone which is targeted for destructive deep sea mining yet is home to 5,580 species detected so far with only 8% officially identified, and the more we know about them and their environment, the better case we can make to protect them.
So playing games like FathomVerse might be the coolest way for us to benefit the world from the couch while snacking on chips.
Thursday, February 6 (watch here)
🌱 A closed mine in Kentucky was set to become a prison until activists stepped up to raise money and purchase 63 acres within the area outlined for the prison that they’ll instead rewild with bison and native plants while also becoming a gathering place for local Indigenous communities (Katie Meyers|Grist)
🛠️ A solar repair movement is taking shape in Africa that trains people to become “repair agents” that diagnose and fix solar-powered devices creating new jobs, reducing unnecessary e-waste, and letting more people access this cheap and clean energy, moving away from a throwaway culture into a circular economy (Peter Yeung|Reasons to be Cheerful)
🗻 A mountain in New Zealand called Taranaki Maunga was just unanimously recognized as a legal person, with all the rights of a human being, as this stunning mountain is considered an ancestor by the nation’s Indigenous Māori people and must now be better protected (Charlotte Graham-McLay|AP)
🧵 And today’s community win comes from kpswiz who started sewing their own clothes from repurposed and thrifted fabrics.
Bonus!
♻️ Reclaiming the rare minerals inside of existing tech is even more worthwhile than we thought
📉 Data shows the world may have passed the "peak air pollution" point
🕷️ Spiders smell with their legs, apparently...
Spread this breath of fresh air🪴
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Support good news & independent publishingThis newsletter was written by Jacob Simon. 800,000+ people are in our community across Instagram, TikTok, Threads, YouTube, and Bluesky. You can say hi on LinkedIn, or by emailing jacob@jacobsimonsays.com.
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