The Good News Thread...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-37085012

How I kicked drugs without going into rehab

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"If you are out there and struggling please know that you can always move forward and change." This was the conclusion of Kristy Ehrlich's strongly worded and very personal Imgur post. Striking photos of her transformation from a user of methamphetamine - also known as crystal meth - to a sober accountancy student and mother has been viewed more than 400,000 times.

Thirty-one-year-old Ehrlich from California posted the photo gallery of her recovery to mark the 10 year anniversary of her sobriety. She wrote that in sharing the images, and her very personal story, she was letting go of the tag of "ex-addict".

"People say: 'Well, once an addict always an addict,' and I get that. I see it and have felt it in me," Ehrlich told BBC Trending, "I have meditated and explored that thought and I disagree. I am not 'in recovery'. I am recovered. I am a whole new better person and I will never look back."
 
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/17/tottenham-court-road-tube-london-passenger-rescue - Full story here

Police praise passenger who jumped on to tube tracks to rescue man
Unknown bystander pulled man safely back on to platform at Tottenham Court Road station in central London

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Police want to trace a brave passenger who put his life in danger to jump on to tube tracks and pull a man to safety.

Just before 5pm on Tuesday a 47-year-old man was standing on a northbound Northern line platform at Tottenham Court Road underground station when he suddenly became unwell.

He stumbled on the platform and fell on to the tracks – prompting a bystander to jump on to the rails and pull him safely back on to the platform. The man was treated by paramedics at the scene before being taken to hospital. Officers said they have since been told he sustained light cuts and bruises and would make a full recovery.
 
http://bigthink.com/videos/susan-david-on-psychology-of-fear-and-demagoguery

I think this is a great article - looking at why we have such 'negativity' from the news media.


The Psychology of Defeating Fear: Low Self-Esteem and Hate Live in the Mind


Fear has always had a hold on us, but never with such fervor. Welcome to the end of times. We cannot sink lower. ISIS is at our door, our elected leaders are malevolent man-children, amber alerts are lighting up our phones, immigrants are bringing a plague of violence, someone was murdered while playing Pokemon GO, climate change is flooding our homes and starving our crops. How can we go on?


But, breathe deep and let the clouds of panic part; it turns out there’s very little correlation between the above mindset and reality. Terrorism, despite it reported epidemic, is less prevalent in the Western world now than it was in the 1970s and ’80s. Crime is decreasing. Immigrants actually lower crime in gateway cities, and don’t affect crime rates elsewhere. Rates of rape and sexual assault have been declining for decades, and are now a quarter or less of their peaks in the past. Despite Zika and Ebola hype, infectious diseases are down. The list continues and is wonderfully documented at length in Steven Pinker’s book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.


However, that’s not what we like to hear, because we don’t feel safe. This good news feels inaccurate. Why? Well, we have the non-stop news cycle to thank for that, and social platforms that turn every smartphone user into an independent correspondent capturing every horror from the grocery aisle to the protest march. We are experiencing an oversaturation of fearful messages.


“What is really fascinating when we look at the brain research around fear is that our brains proxy anything that feels unfamiliar, incoherent or inaccessible as being unsafe,” says Harvard psychologist Susan David, author of Emotional Agility. We like familiarity. We like it so much that hearing that terrorism is likely to strike us personally at any moment is somehow more comforting than the message that it’s not, because the fear is more familiar to us at this stage. We’ve come to trust it. If we hear something often enough, we associate familiarity with truth.


It even works on a personal level, where people are drawn to those who hurt them and belittle them purely because the message is familiar. It feels cozy and you’ve been there before. You know how this works. It’s scarier to try something new.


And of course fear is heavily embedded in politics. We have politicians who are effectively demagogues, who aim to inspire fear and cement our bond to them by hyperbolizing a threat to our mortality. So how can we repel deceptive messaging and see clearly?


Psychologist Daniel Kahneman identified two kinds of thinking: system 1 thinking and system 2 thinking. David explains: “System 1 thinking is the intuitive response, the emotional visceral ‘us’ and ‘them’ that can sometimes arise out of fear. System 2 is the deliberate thoughtful examination of: what is this person saying? Is it in line with how I really want to be? Is it connected with how I really want to raise my children? Is this a world that I want to support?’


David says that if we can step back from our fear and see it for what it is – manipulated panic rather than data – we can protect ourselves from the demagoguery message and re-align with our true values.


It is difficult to do, and the repetition makes it harder to see straight. Here David draws on the 2016 US election as an example. “… We used to hear things that the politicians would say and we would be like, ‘Oh my goodness how can the person possibly say that thing?’ But what happens over time is the more familiar something sounds… even if the story is inaccurate, even if the story doesn't serve us, the more we are likely to become immured to it and immune to it.” Things that were said in the election six months ago that horrified people are now being met with a light-hearted ‘Oh, there we go again’.


David questions the media ethics in pushing out stories that overexpose inaccurate messages of fear that could incite violence and hatred. It familiarizes us to an incorrect message, leaving our values open to corruption.

 
Full story here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-37158370

Tickled: Film lifts lid on secret world of 'endurance tickling'

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Of all sports that are unlikely to be considered for the next Olympics in Tokyo, "competitive endurance tickling" might be at the top of the list.

However, a documentary called Tickled shines a spotlight on those who take part in it, when a TV reporter from New Zealand, David Farrier, uncovers not just a quirky sport, but a whole industry, and an underworld with allegations of cyber bullying.

Two years ago, Farrier, known for his "and finally" news pieces at his local TV station, discovered what was described as "competitive endurance tickling" videos online.

They featured young men in professional sportswear tickling each other.

A US-based company, Jane O'Brien Media, was producing the videos and offering substantial fees for anyone selected to take part in the shoots in Los Angeles

 
Look! A social worker did this! :hearteyes:
"....A few months ago a social worker poured over the papers and realized Witter was right. That social worker turned the case over to the Legal Counsel for the Elderly, which is affiliated with AARP.....“We got her this huge result in three months, which is amazing. It’s incredible,” says Daniela De la Piedra."

WASHINGTON (ABC7) -- It’s hard for 80-year-old Wanda Witter to fully comprehend the last few months of her life.

“I’m just so exasperated from all of this,” says Witter.

A week ago, she moved into a small apartment in Northwest DC. She says the air mattress is so luxurious she has a hard time getting out of it in the morning. Before that, she was homeless for some 20 years while engaged in a bizarre battle with the government that she won.

“Living outdoors there’s a lot wrong with that," said Witter. “I just can’t explain it any other way ... you are just scared to death and all I told myself was keep your head on straight."

Witter, a trained paralegal, moved to DC in 1996. She says she couldn’t find work and ended up in a shelter. She says after qualifying for Social Security she disputed the check amounts being mailed to her. She says eventually the government stopped sending her checks because she didn’t have an address. She claims letters written to government officials went unanswered.

Witter says she never gave up, “I’m stubborn and that’s it. I know I’m entitled to this and somebody is screwing me here and I know this is not right.”

Witter used a dolly to haul around three suitcases full of social security documents and research. One shelter wanted to throw them out, claiming she was a hoarder. A few months ago a social worker poured over the papers and realized Witter was right. That social worker turned the case over to the Legal Counsel for the Elderly, which is affiliated with AARP.

“We got her this huge result in three months, which is amazing. It’s incredible,” says Daniela De la Piedra.

De la Piedra proved the government owed Witter around $100,00.

Homelessness in the United States | Graphiq
“Friday the 19th, the check for $99,999 was deposited into her bank account,” says De la Piedra.

Witter plans to use the money, first and foremost, to fix health problems caused by living outside for so long. But oddly enough she fears she’ll waste the money and her second chance at life. The streets that made her tough also made her skeptical.

“I can’t imagine how to handle $100,000. I have never had that kind of money in my life.”

Wanda Witter is also interested in renewing her driver’s license and buying a car so she can travel to see family members she hasn’t seen in years.

As for the government, no comment tonight from the Social Security Administration.

http://wjla.com/news/local/homeless...urity-owes-her-100000-no-longer-on-dc-streets
 
Absolute Proof That Love Conquers All

Bridget Fitzgerald

Romeo and Juliet. Helen and Paris. Tristan and Isolde. There are love stories, and there are tales of love that blossoms in the most incredible scenarios of distress, like a desert rose refusing to be entrapped by adverse circumstance, patiently, steadfastly, and firmly unfurling to the sun.

The story of Sigi and Hanka Siegriech is one of these stories.

The Siegrieches met and fell in love in one of the most impossible situations imaginable: a Nazi concentration camp. While both are over age ninety now, they are still in love and over the moon for each other to this day, seventy plus years later.

Merely teens during one of the biggest and most complex, violent events in human history, Sigi and Hanka spotted each other while captive in the Czestochowa labor camp. Each remembers the moment crystal clear.

The year was 1944, the day: New Year’s Eve.

Sigi’s description of describing his soulmate is impassioned and touching. He said of the moment he saw the young Hanka:

“I lost my mind. When I saw her, the whole world was turning around me. I saw a pair of beautiful eyes, and I heard bells ringing.”

It surprised Sigi. How could he even think about love in a place like this, at a time like this? After all, he admits with the strength and brevity of one who’s seen far too much, “I had no interest in girls... I was a skeleton.”

Yet the Polish teen was transfixed.

“There was a pair of beautiful eyes looking at me, with a smile like I never saw in my life.”

Who knows where courage comes from? Who knows why we are given great opportunities? Sigi didn’t, but didn’t let that stop him. He pushed aside any doubts and approached the jewel-like eyes. It was gentle, innocent, and kind: they shared a simple conversation. But this left an impression on both.

Before the end of the night, he’d done what he’d never unexpected: he gave this mystery girl a kiss on the cheek.

Touching her face today as she told her side of the stor, 71 years later, Hanka was still entranced. She couldn’t forget that moment, saying simply, quietly, “I remember the first kiss.” She touched her face while saying this, echoing what she had done, 71 years prior. She had done it the first time because she wanted to hold onto it forever.

His biggest charm to her is no shock to those who have even read of the terrors of the age: “He was very gentle.”

While he was gentle to his love, he was a fighter as well.

Sigi made bullets. At least, he was supposed to. He spent his required activity sabotaging the Nazis, making his supply of bullets purposefully too small for their gun barrels to use properly. Officers of the Gestapo found out of his deception and came looking for the heroic teen. Sigi, running for his life, hid in a construction site. He put all his trust in new love Hanka, who in turn would save his life.

Hanka snuck to see Sigi in the night and brought necessities: smuggled pieces of her bread ration and a blanket she made just for him so he could withstand the below 15 degree chill as he tried to formulate his next move.

Then, on her second visit, a mere 18 days after the pair had met, she appeared again with the best of all possible news: the camp was liberated. The beautiful words escaped her throat: “They’re gone. We are free.”

The young couple, who had lived at the edge of desperation and survived through the hope of each other wasted no time. They were married the following day.

Today, they have one daughter, Evelyne, and while only a few of their classmates survived the horrific Holocaust events, they have lived to the golden ages of 91 and 93.

The couple, who cannot imagine being apart after all this time, already have their gravestones planned, side by side.

Hanka and Sigi.

It’s an impossible adventure, an incredible tale, and it proves love truly does conquer all.
 
Louisiana did not need this after all the flooding they have had in the past days and weeks. We live in its path. We have lost one tree thus far and electricity out for a moment.

GOOD NEWS:
The tree hit no wires and missed a water access by three feet. It could not have fallen in a better place. I love these winds, as they could be much worse.
 
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...7-year-old-cousin-to-give-her-a-10178569.html

Australian student Tommy Connolly, 23, adopts his pregnant, homeless 17-year-old cousin to give her a chance at 'a better life'

Thousands of pounds have been raised to help the unlikely family after his moving story emerged

A 23-year-old student in Australia has been inundated with messages of support and praise after taking in his homeless, pregnant cousin when she had no one else to turn to. Tommy Connolly, an aspiring athlete at the University of the Sunshine Coast, said he hadn’t seen his 17-year-old cousin for more than a decade when he moved to resume his studies and decided to get in touch.

He found out that his cousin had been sleeping rough on the Gold Coast, was 32 weeks pregnant, had no shoes or phone and was almost illiterate. With the baby’s father in jail and her parents not on the scene, Mr Connolly said he took his cousin in “to make sure she’d keep the baby, stay off the streets and have a better life”. Writing on Facebook, he said: “This was her only option. She's spent more time on the streets than anywhere else, and knows the police better than she knows her own family. “She could write the book on traumatic experiences. Not many people know her story. It's very intense. Nobody deserves the life she's had.”

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http://indy100.independent.co.uk/ar...would-be-like-if-men-had-periods--WyGJ7ZG8F_W

PLEASE CLICK THE LINK TO THE FULL STORY (NSFW) ITS HILARIOUS


For women, getting their period can be a traumatic affair; forced to contend with cravings, cramps and sometimes even worse.

So what would it be like if men had them?

Feminist and political activist Gloria Steinem summed it up in her essay If Men Could Menstruate:

Clearly, menstruation would become an enviable, worthy, masculine event:

Men would brag about how long and how much.

Young boys would talk about it as the envied beginning of manhood. Gifts, religious ceremonies, family dinners, and stag parties would mark the day.

Sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free.

Statistical surveys would show that men did better in sports and won more Olympic medals during their periods.

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James said:
http://indy100.independent.co.uk/ar...would-be-like-if-men-had-periods--WyGJ7ZG8F_W

PLEASE CLICK THE LINK TO THE FULL STORY (NSFW) ITS HILARIOUS


For women, getting their period can be a traumatic affair; forced to contend with cravings, cramps and sometimes even worse.

So what would it be like if men had them?

Feminist and political activist Gloria Steinem summed it up in her essay If Men Could Menstruate:

Clearly, menstruation would become an enviable, worthy, masculine event:

Men would brag about how long and how much.

Young boys would talk about it as the envied beginning of manhood. Gifts, religious ceremonies, family dinners, and stag parties would mark the day.

Sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free.

Statistical surveys would show that men did better in sports and won more Olympic medals during their periods.

12122-is9k2h.jpg
Click to expand...

:m077::m077::m077::tearsofjoy::tearsofjoy::tearsofjoy::tearsofjoy::tearsofjoy::tearsofjoy::tearsofjoy:
 
I have been enjoying the paralympic games in Rio (as team GB exceed their medal total from the London 2012 games), more interesting than just "who wins" are the incredible life stories of the athletes who have competed (and man they compete, I was watching the wheelchair fencing yesterday). It has been shown on Channel 4 in the UK - and showcased by a great TV programme, called The Last Leg. Glancing through the news I caught up on this story of someone who sadly, due to an accident never managed to get to the games, as they had wished. It is in itself a story of forgiveness and atonement. Worth a look.

Click the link for the full story
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/artic...e-rider-forgives-the-man-who-caused-car-crash

Paralympic hopeful horse rider forgives the man who caused car crash
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A Paralympic dressage hopeful says she's no longer angry at the man who destroyed her dream of competing at the Paralympics in Rio.

Adam Hill crashed into the car 21-year-old Kate Hunter was inside on the A46 Lincolnshire in December 2013.

Both Kate and her friend Beth were left with multiple injuries following the crash.

Adam, who is now 36, was jailed for 15 months for causing serious injury by dangerous driving.

But 12 months on, Kate and Adam have become friends.

 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/triathlon/37402716

Jonny Brownlee: Alistair helps brother over finish line in dramatic World Series finale


Exhausted Briton Jonny Brownlee needed to be helped over the finish line by brother Alistair in a dramatic end to the Triathlon World Series in Mexico.

Leading with 700m left, Jonny, 26, began to weave over the road in hot and humid conditions in Cozumel.

Third-placed Alistair, 28, caught his brother, propping him up for the final couple of hundred metres before pushing him over the line in second place.

They were overtaken by South African Henri Schoeman, the eventual winner.

Victory in Mexico would have given Jonny the world title, but second place left him just four points behind Mario Mola.

The Spaniard was fifth on Sunday to top the overall standings.

Jonny, Olympic silver medallist at Rio 2016 and a bronze medallist at London 2012, collapsed to the ground the moment he crossed the finish line.
 
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