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Saturday • February 17, 2024
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It’s one of Nice News’ favorite unofficial holidays: Random Acts of Kindness Day. The idea for the day goes back to the 1990s in the Bay Area. According to the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, a reporter proposed “practicing random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty” to counteract a violent summer filled with negative news coverage. From this suggestion, a movement was born, and the nonprofit bearing the same name was not far behind. The celebration of National Random Acts of Kindness Day on Feb. 17 later emerged, drawing attention to how easily we can uplift others with the simplest of gestures. Check out our 17 suggestions for what those simple gestures can be.
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Marvel revealed the cast for the upcoming Fantastic Four film — take a look back at all the past lineups
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Where is the moon from? Japan’s lunar spacecraft is discovering new insights into its origin
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Acts of Kindness
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| Balancing Negative News With Stories of Kindness Boosts Mental Well-Being |
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Denis Novikov/ iStock |
In today’s media landscape, we’re inundated with a troubling abundance of negative news stories, which can have a detrimental effect on our mental well-being. It’s the whole reason Nice News exists and, presumably, the reason you subscribe to it — and there’s research to back up the value of promoting positivity amid so much darkness.
In honor of Random Acts of Kindness Day, we’re bringing around a study from last year that found counterbalancing exposure to negative news with positive narratives, particularly those highlighting acts of kindness, can significantly mitigate adverse mental health effects.
The researchers discovered that pairing negative news with uplifting stories led to less of a decline in mood compared to negativity alone. Participants who received both reported that their faith in the inherent goodness of humanity was bolstered. “I still feel that we’re fundamentally decent … and that’s worth clinging to,” one participant said, per an article from study author Kathryn Buchanan in The Conversation.
“Perhaps including more kindness-based content in news coverage could prevent ‘mean world syndrome’ — where people believe the world is more dangerous than it actually is, leading to heightened fear, anxiety, and pessimism,” Buchanan wrote, adding that positive news stories also “make people feel better and want to do good things, such as voting or donating.”
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*Please support our sponsors! They help us keep Nice News free. ♡
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Science
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| Scientists Identify Meteorites That Made Impact in Germany as “Very Rare” Type |
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| SETI Institute |
Late last month, an asteroid fell from space and made impact just outside of Berlin, Germany. No one was hurt, but it did send scientists on a mad hunt for the dispersed meteorites.
And the hunt was worth it: The team ended up identifying the rocks as belonging to a rare group called aubrites. “They make up only 1% of all known meteorites, making it very rare indeed,” Denis Vida, a meteor physics researcher, told Space.com.
In addition to being uncommon, aubrites are hard to find in the wild because they don’t look particularly special compared to other rocks on Earth. Other meteorites have a “glassy crust” that makes them easy to spot, Christopher Hamann, who took part in the search, explained in a press release from the SETI Institute in California.
“They were devilishly difficult to find because, from a distance, they look like other rocks on Earth,” added SETI Institute meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens, who bought a plane ticket from California to Germany immediately after learning of the aubrites. “Close up, not so much.”
They located more than 20 fragments, an “incredible” amount, Jenniskens told The New York Times.
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Animals
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| Mighty Megalodon May Have Been “More Slender” Than Previously Believed: Study |
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Warpaintcobra/ iStock
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Have you heard of the megalodon? Commonly referred to as “the meg,” the toothy mackerel shark went extinct about 3.6 million years ago. Now, a study published in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica indicates that the shark may have been less mega than previously believed.
“Our team reexamined the fossil record, and discovered the megalodon was more slender and possibly even longer than we thought,” lead author Phillip Sternes said in a statement, adding: “It still would have been a formidable predator at the top of the ancient marine food chain, but it would have behaved differently based on this new understanding of its body.”
Per Popular Science, it’s been difficult to put together a clear portrait of the long-gone predator because their bodies were largely built from cartilage, which is rarely preserved. So in this recent study, a team of scientists reexamined megalodon vertebrae in comparison to living sharks, and found the “strength of the spinal column” makes them less like a great white and more like the modern mako shark.
Still, the researchers noted that these observations are clues rather than certainties. “Despite the major scientific advancement in our new study, the fact that we still don’t know exactly how O. megalodon looked keeps our imagination going,” said study co-author Kenshu Shimada.
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In Other News
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Inspiring Stories
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GOAT status
As expected, college basketball star Caitlin Clark broke the NCAA Division I women’s scoring record during Iowa’s matchup against Michigan Thursday night. See her path to the milestone.
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“Awake and alert”
After being critically injured in a surfing accident in Hawaii last week, 25-year-old Austin Gibbons has made a remarkable recovery. “It is truly a miracle and we feel beyond blessed to have him back with us,” said his mother.
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Post of the Day
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@lynna_listens
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This post is quite sweet on its own, but the “more” Lynna Sutherland promises is worth reading. The story revolves around a toy chest that her students decorated for a school auction nearly two decades ago. She tried to bet on it for her baby’s room, but lost out to a student’s grandmother. Little did Sutherland know, though, that the grandma was buying it for her as a surprise baby shower gift. The woman’s grandchild, of course, is the former student who invited Sutherland to her own upcoming baby shower. “Life has a poetic way of bringing joy around again, doesn’t it?” she wrote. Check out the full thread and see the toy chest.
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*Please support our sponsors! They help us keep Nice News free. ♡
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Quote of the Day
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| “Kindness multiplies and it enables possibility. When we’re of service to people, we have the chance to make things better.”
- Seth Godin
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