The Navigator, Saturday, November 23, 2024
Gratitude and mental health, business quietly fighting climate change, working out for neurons—and more
Have a good weekend, subscribers!
Millions of Americans are traveling this week for Thanksgiving, the national day of gratitude and togetherness. They will gather around tables and consume traditional fare, such as turkey, stuffing, cranberries, and pumpkin pie. While politics are also on the menu this year, these few days offer a chance for family and friends to talk about the other subjects that matter, especially those closer to home.
In addition to our regular news roundup, we’ve compiled a short list of stories we’ve reported this year, focusing on family and relationships, to inspire those conversations. They’ll introduce a “well-balanced diet” of thought-provoking ideas for your dinner table.
As always, thank you for including us in your regular reads. Please keep the conversation going by leaving a comment below, and let us know what you’d like us to cover next. Your input is always important to us.
Gratitude can improve our mental health. Here’s how to create a practice. (The Washington Post)
Research shows that gratitude had a significant inverse relationship to loneliness — as gratitude increased, loneliness decreased.
What a Crackdown on Immigration Could Mean for Cheap Milk (The New York Times Magazine)
Undocumented labor quietly props up the entire American economy — but nowhere more dramatically than on dairy farms.
Richer countries are starting to pay poorer ones for climate change damages (NPR)
With climate-related disasters getting more extreme, richer countries are piloting ways to compensate developing nations, since they bear the least responsibility for causing climate change.
Opinion: A social media ban for everyone is in the national interest – not just kids under 16 (The Guardian)
Writer Van Badham, a theatre-maker and author of QAnon And On: A Short and Shocking History of Internet Conspiracy Cults, writes an Op-Ed about “being excluded from protection against monetized fear, anger and toxicity” online.
COVID-19's silver lining? Researchers find the virus has ability to fight cancer (Chicago Sun-Times)
"It's incredible, and a big surprise, that the same infection that caused so much devastation can help create a cancer-fighting cell," says Dr. Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery and director of the Canning Thoracic Institute.
Climate-driven hazards increase risk for millions of coastal residents, study finds (Virginia Tech News)
A new study published in Nature Climate Change estimates that a 1-meter sea level rise by 2100 would affect over 14 million people and $1 trillion worth of property along the Southeast Atlantic coast, from Norfolk, Virginia, to Miami, Florida.
How politics pushed businesses to fight climate change quietly (FastCompany)
The polarized election year exacerbated the trend of ‘greenhushing.’
When muscles work out, they help neurons to grow, a new study shows (MIT News)
The findings suggest that biochemical and physical effects of exercise could help heal nerves.