Author: darin
Pronoia’s Accumulating Momentum
In Bike-Friendly Copenhagen, Highways For Cyclists
When Copenhagen’s superhighway for bicycles is finished, an estimated 15,000 additional people will switch from driving to biking. It is expected to save Copenhagen’s health care system some $60 million a year.
When Pronoia Starts to Infuse the Way People Make Money, the Velvet Revolution Is Nigh
Young Workers Prefer Startups, Study Says
Members of Generation Y are shunning large corporate companies in favor of startups and small businesses. They’re an entrepreneurial group, highly versed in social media, and prefer freedom and flexibility over big corporate policies.
Pronoia for the Poor
Iceland economy is recovering from its collapse a few years ago? How? Because it has pushed losses on to bondholders instead of taxpayers, and because it has safeguarded a welfare system that shielded the unemployed from poverty.
The Pronoiac Revolution Starts With You
Honesty as a Soul-Making Activity
Honesty is not just refraining from deliberate lies, it’s the positive act of living in accordance with the deepest truth you can discover.
Stars Are Being Born Right Now
Big Financial Institutions Committing Moral Acts? What’s This World Coming To?!
Commerzbank stops speculating on basic food prices
Germany’s second-biggest lender, Commerzbank, says it will no longer participate in market speculation on basic food prices. The move came in response to international studies claiming that such speculation had played no small role in artificially pushing up food prices, contributing to widespread hunger in many parts of the world.
Have You Gotten Your Minimum Daily Requirement of Beauty?
Have You Washed Your Own Brain Recently?
Clearing metabolic garbage from your thought center
Every organ produces waste, and the brain is no exception. But unlike the rest of our body, it doesn’t have a lymphatic system, a network of vessels that filter out junk. Now, a new study of mouse brains suggests how ours handle waste: by rapidly pumping fluid along the outside of blood vessels, literally flushing waste away. The finding, reported Aug. 15 in Science Translational Medicine, could hint at how diseases like Alzheimer’s develop and might be treated.
Very Good Omen About Serving the Most Basic Needs
Getting practical about searching for a new kind of toilet better suited for preventing disease and death in developing countries.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has launched a search for a new toilet better suited to developing countries to help prevent disease and death.
A charitable foundation founded by Gates and his wife kicked off a "Reinvent the Toilet Fair" in Seattle and awarded prizes for promising innovations.
Powerful People Doing Powerful Things
President of Uruguay donates 90 percent of his salary to charity
The president said that the only big item he owns is his VW car, valued at $1,945 dollars. The farmhouse in which he lives in Montevideo is under his wife’s name, Lucía Topolansky, a Senator, who also donates part of her salary.
"I do fine with that amount; I have to do fine because there are many Uruguayans who live with much less," the president told El Mundo.
We Can Always Use More Mysterious, Uplifting Art
Intricate crop circles of Buddhist symbol for infinite time and wisdom appears in crop field
The mysterious pattern resembles the ancient Tibetan Buddhist symbol of an ‘endless knot’ – a complex loop of lines and circles used to illustrate the eternal flow of time.
Why Yes Boosts Your Health
To overcome our neural bias for negativity, we must repetitiously and consciously generate as many positive thoughts as we can.
Positive words and thoughts propel the motivational centers of the brain into action[17] and they help us build resilience when we are faced with life’s problems. According to Sonja Lyubomirsky, one of the world’s leading researchers on happiness, if you want to develop lifelong satisfaction, you should regularly engage in positive thinking about yourself, share your happiest events with others, and savor every positive experience in your life.
People You Never Heard of Are Working Hard to Fix Environmental Problems
Every year the UN selects six “Champions of the Earth”
The United Nations Environment Programme established Champions of the Earth in 2004 as an annual awards programme to recognize outstanding environmental leaders at a policy level. Six awards are given out each year to a Laureate representing different geographical regions with one additional special prize.
Generosity Gone Wild
Is There a Conspiracy to Use Renewable Energy?
Germany produced a record high amount of renewable energy in the first half of 2012, an increase of 19.5 percent from the same period last year.
Renewables now account for 25 percent of energy production, up from 21 percent last year, the country’s energy industry association (BDEW) said in a statement that reinforced Germany’s position as a leader in green technology.
Wind energy was the largest contributor of green power, accounting for 9.2 percent of all energy output, BDEW said.
Yes, There Is Such a Thing As the Science of Compassion
Empirically speaking, does the experience of compassion toward one person measurably affect our actions and attitudes toward other people? If so, are there practical steps we can take to further cultivate this feeling? Recently, my colleagues and I conducted experiments that answered yes to both questions.
Have You Actually Evaluated the Evidence for Pronoia?
The Future is Better Than You Think
People think the world is falling apart, and many are in a very dark contemporary mood. But what is curious about this situation is that in nearly every measurable way, the world is much better off than it has ever been.
Mysterious Uptick in the Search for Positivity
What We Google When We Google Love
Internet searches for positive emotions and behaviors are increasing; searches for negative emotions are staying flat. We don’t know why, but we know people are searching for what’s good in humanity.
Social Justice in Dramatic Action
Gay students graduate openly at military academies
Gay students at America’s military service academies wrapped up the first year when they no longer had to hide their sexual orientation, benefiting from the end of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy that used to bar them from seemingly ordinary activities like taking their partners openly to graduation events.