๐Ÿ’ก Hopescrolling: 31 optimistic news in October

๐Ÿ’ก Hopescrolling: 31 optimistic news in October

๐Ÿ’‰ 13% decline in child deaths thanks to malaria vaccine. ๐Ÿ’ฐ Americans are getting wealthier, especially the poor. ๐ŸŒฑ Rhubarbs key to recycling electric car batteries. ๐Ÿ” CRISPR-engineered chickens resistant to flu. ๐Ÿง  New AI enables real-time brain tumor diagnosis during surgery.

Mathias Sundin
Mathias Sundin

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If you are not a subscriber to our free, weekly newsletter with fact-based optimistic news, you really should be! ๐Ÿ˜Š

In October, we experienced the Mad Max paradox in full force. At the same time as the terrible terrorist attack on October 7th in Israel, followed by a war, the world has made progress.

In fact, I wrote about this just a few days before the attack, in The Raw Power of Human Progress.

๐Ÿ’ช The raw power of human progress
In the 21st century, weโ€™ve experienced terrorism, natural disasters, wars, financial crises, and a global pandemic. Why are we not living in a Mad Max world?

During the 21st century, we have experienced events such as September 11th, the financial crisis, a pandemic, and the war in Ukraine. At the same time, over a billion people have escaped extreme poverty, child mortality has been halved, and five billion people have gained access to the internet โ€“ and much, much more.

In October, a second malaria vaccine was approved and the first one has already started reducing the number of child deaths. We have made advancements in recycling electric car batteries (using rhubarb!) Americans are getting wealthier, especially the poor. New AI enables real-time diagnosis of brain tumors during surgery. ChatGPT makes diagnoses as accurately as emergency doctors โ€“ and much more.

The negative events are often large and dramatic, but quite few. Given them, we should be living in a Mad Max world.

But we don't.

Each individual advancement is usually small, but there are many of them. Millions of small improvements every day add up to a massive tsunami of progress.

Mathias Sundin
The Angry Optimist

Hopescrolling

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๐Ÿ’ก Fact-based optimistic news in September

๐Ÿง Curing deafness in children with gene therapy - trail begins

A novel gene therapy trial aims to restore quality hearing in children with auditory neuropathy. The treatment focuses on rectifying a fault in the OTOF gene, which is pivotal for sound transmission.

Read more on Warp News

๐Ÿ’‰ 13% decline in child deaths thanks to malaria vaccine

Malaria claims the lives of half a million children every year, but the number is dropping thanks to new vaccines.

Read more on Warp News

๐Ÿš Electric air taxis to showcase at the Olympics

Electric air taxis will be highlighted at the 2024 and 2028 Summer Olympics.

Read more on Warp News

๐Ÿ’ฐ Americans are getting wealthier, especially the poor

Every group got richer, and inequality decreased over the last three years.

Read more on Warp News

๐ŸŒฑ Rhubarbs key to recycling electric car batteries

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have devised a new and efficient way to recycle metals from electric car batteries. The method enables the recycling of 100 percent of aluminum and 98 percent of lithium from used electric car batteries.

Read more on Warp News

โ™ฟ Record high employment and education levels among disabled Americans

Significant increase in full-time employment and university graduation rates among disabled individuals over the last decade.

Read more on Warp News

๐Ÿ“ฒ Oxford researchers: Overblown fears about misinformation from AI

Generative AI like ChatGPT, Midjourney and DALL-E will โ€œtrigger the next misinformation nightmare." But so far, the evidence doesn't support this claim and there are good arguments as to why that won't change, writes three researchers.

Read more on Warp News

๐Ÿ”‹ Funding for Project Energy Society

Sweden's innovation agency, Vinnova, has awarded $100,000 to Lund for the CoAction project, in which Project Energy Society is included. The goal is to create a new electricity grid with energy sharing, enabling a low fixed price for electricity.

Read more on Warp News

๐Ÿ” CRISPR-engineered chickens resistant to flu

In groundbreaking use of CRISPR gene-editing technology, scientists have engineered flu-resistant chickens. This is a first step towards reducing avian flu outbreaks.

Read more on Warp News

๐Ÿ”ฌ Breakthrough: X-ray vision into the microscopic world

"This type of information that you can get with laser-like X-rays, you just can't get by any other means," says Matthias Kling, a professor of photon science at Stanford University.

Read more on Warp News

๐ŸŒŒ Scientists make key discovery about antimatter

Scientists confirm antimatter's response to gravity. This is a key discovery that may unlock the reason why the universe is matter-dominated.

Read more on Warp News

๐Ÿšฐ MIT: Desalination freshwater cheaper than tap water

Breakthrough solar-powered system unveils cheaper desalination process Potential to produce freshwater at costs lower than tap water.

Read more on Warp News

๐Ÿง  New AI enables real-time brain tumor diagnosis during surgery

Scientists unveil an innovative artificial intelligence tool that swiftly diagnoses tumor types during surgery.

Read more on Warp News

๐Ÿ’‰ New malaria vaccine receives WHO approval โ€“ a malaria-free future in sight?

The second such vaccine, expected to significantly bolster supply and save countless lives in Africa. A monumental step towards a malaria-free future, says WHO.

Read more on Warp News

๐Ÿฏ 40% more snow leopards in Bhutan

A 39.5 percent increase in snow leopard population from 2016, with 134 individuals confirmed. An expanded survey covering over 9,000 square kilometers of habitat reveals promising density.

Read more on Warp News

๐Ÿš˜ Self-driving cars are safer than human drivers, study shows

The study finds that human drivers are more likely to crash, cause crashes and injure others than autonomous vehicles. Self-driving cars can reduce traffic fatalities and improve urban mobility.

Read more on Warp News

๐Ÿฆพ US and Sweden are among top AI beneficiaries

US, Singapore, Sweden, the UK, and Switzerland are poised to gain immensely from AI.

Read more on Warp News

๐Ÿšฐ Desalination of salt water is getting cheaper and cheaper

Desalination is the process of removing salt from seawater or brackish water to produce fresh water. Costs have fallen dramatically in recent years, thanks to technological innovations and economies of scale.

Read more on Warp News

๐Ÿฆพ ChatGPT diagnoses as accurately as ER doctors

ChatGPT was compared to doctors in a Dutch study. Version 4 of ChatGPT made the correct diagnosis in 97 percent of cases.

Read more on Warp News

๐ŸŒก๏ธ Staying within 1.5 degrees is possible, due to record growth for renewables

Record growth of clean energy technologies boosts hope. The world is set to invest a record USD 1.8 trillion in clean energy in 2023.

Read more on Warp News

๐Ÿฆ Rhinos on the rise: 5% growth last year

Global rhino numbers increase to 27,000. Southern white rhino numbers rise for the first time since 2012.

Read more on Warp News

๐Ÿ”Œ Record global access to electricity

The number of people without electricity access will lower to an estimated 745 million by year-end.

Read more on Warp News

If you are not a subscriber to our free, weekly newsletter with fact-based optimistic news, you really should be! ๐Ÿ“ง

Most read news in August

๐Ÿ’ช The raw power of human progress

In the 21st century, we've experienced terrorism, natural disasters, wars, financial crises, and a global pandemic. Why are we not living in a Mad Max world?

Read on Warp News

๐Ÿ’‰ 13% decline in child deaths thanks to malaria vaccine

Malaria claims the lives of half a million children every year, but the number is dropping thanks to new vaccines.

Read on Warp News

๐Ÿ‘ฉโ€๐Ÿซ Towards the centaur school - part 1

I found myself sitting there again. In a teacher's room. Almost 20 years since last time. Back then as a student teacher, this time as an AI developer. Now begins a journey towards developing AI services for education.

Read on Warp News

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๐Ÿ’ก Columns, musings, essays and Optimist's Edge

๐Ÿ•ฐ๏ธ Counting the Minutes and Seconds to a Sci-Fi Future

We should create a Genesis Clock, to counter the Doomsday Clock, and count the minutes and seconds we have until dawn, writes The Conservative Futurist, James Pethokoukis.

Read on Warp News

๐ŸŒ… Climate optimism: Shake the bottle! Pop the cork!

A message from the founder of We Don't Have Time on how we make the positive climate future come sooner.

Read on Warp News

๐Ÿ”‹ Have electric cars reached price parity with fossil fuel cars now?

"...electric cars will reach the same price level as combustion engine cars by 2024," we wrote in 2021. Too optimistic, some said. You are naive, others said. Now it's almost 2024, how naive were we?

Read on Warp News

๐Ÿ’ก Read The Techno-Optimists Manifesto

We are becoming a serious counterforce. A counterforce against slowing down, stopping, pausing progress and instead accelerating it. A progress movement.

Read on Warp News

๐Ÿ’ก Musings of the Angry Optimist: Dumb money

How 'dumb money' became 'smart money', what you should do to knock down a wall, and what to do if you're inside that wall.

Read on Warp News

๐Ÿ’ก Musings of the Angry Optimist: Slowing down is more dangerous than speeding up

It certainly feels like slower progress is safer than faster, right? But when it comes to technological development, it's often the opposite.

Read on Warp News

๐Ÿ’ก Musings of the Angry Optimist: No AI pause, but the doomsday rhetoric has taken hold

Doomsday rhetoric has taken hold at the highest level, and risks damaging the future of humanity.

Read on Warp News

๐Ÿ’ก Musings of the Angry Optimist: "Optimius, please clear the table"

ChatGPT can now see, hear, and speak. Tesla's Optimus can see its own body and interact with its surroundings. A completely new type of robot is getting closer.

Read on Warp News

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