Good news/kindness only (please) thread

[.Oomba.]

I hit and killed a Rottweiler last week.

I'd hit (4) deer before, and I thought
nothing could be worse than that.

I was wrong.

Shit, so sorry. I'd be devastated too.

Were you able to find the owner?

No. Black winter night out in the wooded fields of central NY.
I only saw the poor creature for an instant before it ran into me
at roughly half my speed, a black blur on a frozen black winter night.

Didn't even know it was a dog.
The entire experience was surreal.

I slowed down to nothing, looking in the rear view mirrors,
windows down, listening and looking for any kind of sign.

I couldn't get out. And why would I?

Who would imagine a Rottweiler running
head on full speed into them on a back
country road? The only reason I know what
I hit is because the collision knocked off
my front license plate, which the dog's
owner found with his dead dog. He called
the county sheriff, and several hours later,
a deputy was at my door step. When he told
me I'd killed a Rottweiler, I was devastated.

Every roadkill I've driven by this week has been excruciating.

[Vrede too]

No. Black winter night out in the wooded fields of central NY.
I only saw the poor creature for an instant before it ran into me
at roughly half my speed, a black blur on a frozen black winter night.

Didn't even know it was a dog.
The entire experience was surreal.

I slowed down to nothing, looking in the rear view mirrors,
windows down, listening and looking for any kind of sign.

I couldn't get out. And why would I?

Who would imagine a Rottweiler running
head on full speed into them on a back
country road? The only reason I know what
I hit is because the collision knocked off
my front license plate, which the dog's
owner found with his dead dog. He called
the county sheriff, and several hours later,
a deputy was at my door step. When he told
me I'd killed a Rottweiler, I was devastated.

Every roadkill I've driven by this week has been excruciating.

Wow, what are the odds?

I killed a semi once.
Late night Iowa, 4 lane interstate, left lane.
I almost missed the deer that ran in front of me, almost.
I clipped it with the front left corner of the car.
At highway speed doing so made me spin out . . . into the path of the semi that I had just overtaken in the right lane.
The hero semi driver put his truck into the right hand ditch where it landed on its side. He was uninjured, the 3 of us in the car were saved, the deer died.
Once we collected the gear that had flown off the roof rack, our only damage - maybe 25 cents worth of plastic on the headlight.
Yikes, the near death experience was my own.

[Vrede too]

Listing of somebody considers the "10 Happiest States" in the US. I can't imagine what would make people so happy about living in some of these places, but the pic at the top of the article is at Oceanside. We live about a little over a mile toward the left side of the shot.

https://www.thetravel.com/happiest-states-in-america/

More local happiness:

Black couple rented to a Chinese American family when nobody would. Now, they're donating $5M to Black community.

In 1939, the Dongs, a Chinese American family in Coronado, California, found themselves unable to rent a house amid racially restrictive housing laws that favored white buyers and renters.

Emma and Gus Thompson, a Black entrepreneurial couple in town, allowed the family to rent and eventually buy their Coronado property when nobody else would. Now, to thank the Thompsons for helping them get a toehold in American society, the Dongs are donating $5 million to Black college students using proceeds from the sale of the house.

“It may enable some kids to go and flourish in college that might not have been able to otherwise,” Janice Dong, 86, said about the plan to sell the family home they later purchased, as well as an adjacent property.

The Dong family will also work to have San Diego State University’s Black Resource Center named after Emma and Gus, who was born into slavery in Kentucky....

[O Really]

Speaking of happiness lists - another one purporting to list the 180 happiest cities in the US found 25 of the top hundred in California. Four California cities in the top ten including #1 Fremont over close to Useless country. San Diego is #15; Oceanside is #34.

https://wallethub.com/edu/happiest-places-to-live/32619

[Vrede too]

I hit and killed a Rottweiler last week.

Every roadkill I've driven by this week has been excruciating.

Bummer

Nearly roadkill:

Hero Station Worker Pulls Man From Train Tracks With Milliseconds To Spare
“It was all slow motion," the Bay Area Rapid Transit worker said.

Nothing to see after the first 10 seconds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFUNxRhVPAg



Phew.

[Vrede too]

Zoo Refuses To Save Drowning Chimp, So Man Jumps Guard Rail & Takes Matters Into His Own Hands

[Vrede too]

Police drone finds missing child in massive cornfield

Drone video shows the moment a missing three-year-old was found in a massive cornfield in Alto, Wisconsin.

Law enforcement was able to quickly locate the toddler using drones with thermal capabilities. The toddler was half a mile from home and was found uninjured.

Imagine searching without the drone.

[Vrede too]

New Hampshire governor helps man choking on a lobster roll (video)
New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu (R) performed the Heimlich manoeuvre to save a man choking on seafood during an eating contest.

Despite the incident, the contestant resumed the competition.

[Vrede too]

Waffle house employee is left alone in restaurant, then customers do something shocking

[GoCubsGo]

[Vrede too]

https://x.com/slater_paul/status/1855243267656323158

Did anything good happen in 2024? Actually, yes!

, but 2024 still sucked.

[GoCubsGo]

https://x.com/slater_paul/status/1855243267656323158

Did anything good happen in 2024? Actually, yes!

, but 2024 still sucked.

Big time.

[Vrede too]

Did anything good happen in 2024? Actually, yes!

, but 2024 still sucked.

Big time.

It wasn't all bad: Despite election defeat, progressives scored big wins in 2024
Organizers tell Salon how they pulled off major victories in a year marked by the rise of the far-right

... Abortion rights enshrined in seven states

Ballot measures seeking to establish or protect abortion rights were on 10 states' ballots this year as organizers fought to protect access and reverse bans enacted in the wake of the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade. Seven of those states — Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and New York — would indeed pass measures to enshrine a right to abortion access in their respective constitutions....

I'm pretty sure that women and their allies won in the other 3 states, too.

Minimum wage hikes and sick leave

a significant majority of voters in four states also voted to tangibly improve the quality of life for workers by approving state ballot measures that will expand labor rights or raise the minimum wage.

Missouri and Alaska both saw voters overwhelmingly choose to raise the minimum wage up to $15 by 2026 and July 2027, respectively, and adopt laws requiring employers to provide up to 56 hours of paid sick leave for workers. Meanwhile, 54% of Massachusetts voters also secured unionization rights for rideshare drivers, empowering them to collectively bargain for improved wages, benefits and work conditions.

In Nebraska, a Republican electoral stronghold, the "Nebraska Healthy Families and Workplaces Act" passed with nearly 75% of the vote, creating a system that allows employees to accrue five or seven days of paid sick leave depending on the size of their workplace. Under the new law, which takes effect Oct. 1, employees will earn at least one hour of paid sick leave for every thirty hours worked. The act also prohibits employers from retaliating against workers for taking that sick leave....

Anti-LGBTQ+ legislation defeated

... But the vast majority of those proposals failed. Of the 574 bills the ACLU tracked, nearly 400 have been defeated in state legislatures, including 46 of the 55 bills advanced during the 2024 session in Oklahoma, which had the greatest number of such proposals of any state.

Nearly 20 of the anti-LGBTQ+ bills were in Georgia, where organizers successfully worked to stall the progress of each proposal advancing in the state legislature. All were defeated by the end of the 2024 legislative session, which was one of the "highlights" of the year for Jeff Graham, the executive director of Georgia Equality, an LGBTQ+ rights advocacy organization that lobbied state lawmakers.

The success "really speaks, I think, to the collective power of the LGBT community and our allies here in Georgia," he told Salon in a phone interview. It "would not have been possible without the dedication of so many parents and family members, specifically of trans kids, as well as educators and medical providers that really came out in defense" of the community....

"If we recognize that we have been successful when nobody thought we would in the past, I hope that that will give people the courage and the resiliency and the determination to continue to show up for the fight," Graham said, "Because if we don't show up, we will lose."