There has been a renewed surge of interest in the Dutch Underground in recent years. There was The Secret Diary of Arnold Douwes; Rescue in the Occupied Netherlands published by Indiana University Press for the first time in English in 2019. That same year, there was a Dutch documentary that aired on VPRO titled De erfenis van een verzetsheld which focused on the family of Johannes Post. And now, another documentary has appeared on YouTube, titled Nieuwlande - Onverzettelijk Onderduikdorp. Unfortunately, both of these films are in Dutch only, although you may be able to follow along somewhat with the subtitles turned on. Why mention these stories here on VanWartime? Well, Johannes Post was my great-granduncle! That is all!
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The Best News of Last Year - 2023 Edition
Welcome to our special edition newsletter recapping the best news from the past year. I've picked one highlight from each month to give you a snapshot of 2023. No frills, just straightforward news that mattered. Let's relive the good stuff that made our year shine.
January - London: Girl with incurable cancer recovers after pioneering treatment
A girl’s incurable cancer has been cleared from her body after what scientists have described as the most sophisticated cell engineering to date.
2. February - Utah legislature unanimously passes ban on LGBTQ conversion therapy
The Utah State Legislature has unanimously approved a bill that enshrines into law a ban on LGBTQ conversion therapy.
3. March - First vaccine for honeybees could save billions
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has approved the world’s first-ever vaccine intended to address the global decline of honeybees. It will help protect honeybees from American foulbrood, a contagious bacterial disease which can destroy entire colonies.
4. April - Fungi discovered that can eat plastic in just 140 days
Australian scientists have successfully used backyard mould to break down one of the world's most stubborn plastics — a discovery they hope could ease the burden of the global recycling crisis within years.
5. May - Ocean Cleanup removes 200,000th kilogram of plastic from the Pacific Ocean
The Dutch offshore restoration project, Ocean Cleanup, says it has reached a milestone. The organization's plastic catching efforts have now fished more than 200,000 kilograms of plastic out of the Pacific Ocean, Ocean Cleanup said on Twitter.
6. June - U.S. judge blocks Florida ban on care for trans minors in narrow ruling, says ‘gender identity is real’
A federal judge temporarily blocked portions of a new Florida law that bans transgender minors from receiving puberty blockers, ruling Tuesday that the state has no rational basis for denying patients treatment.
7. July - World’s largest Phosphate deposit discovered in Norway
A massive underground deposit of high-grade phosphate rock in Norway, pitched as the world’s largest, is big enough to satisfy world demand for fertilisers, solar panels and electric car batteries over the next 50 years, according to the company exploiting the resource.
8. August - Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic levitation of LK-99
If the claim by Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim of South Korea’s Quantum Energy Research Centre holds up, the material could usher in all sorts of technological marvels, such as levitating vehicles and perfectly efficient electrical grids.
9. September - World’s 1st drug to regrow teeth enters clinical trials
The ability to regrow your own teeth could be just around the corner. A team of scientists, led by a Japanese pharmaceutical startup, are getting set to start human trials on a new drug that has successfully grown new teeth in animal test subjects.
10. October - Nobel Prize goes to scientists behind mRNA Covid vaccines
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists who developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines. Professors Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman will share the prize.
11. November - No cases of cancer caused by HPV in Norwegian 25-year olds, the first cohort to be mass vaccinated for HPV.
Last year there were zero cases of cervical cancer in the group that was vaccinated in 2009 against the HPV virus, which can cause the cancer in women.
12. December - President Biden announces he’s pardoning all convictions of federal marijuana possession
President Joe Biden announced Friday he's issuing a federal pardon to every American who has used marijuana in the past, including those who were never arrested or prosecuted.
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And there you have it – a year's worth of uplifting news! I hope these positive stories brought a bit of joy to your inbox. As I wrap up this special edition, I want to thank all my supporters!
Buy me a coffee ❤️
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
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"Amsterdam’s roofs have just been converted into a giant sponge that will make the city more climate resilient.
The Dutch have always been famous for their ability to control water, born out of the necessity of their homeland, much of which is below sea level.
Now, their expert water management skills are transforming the city skyline in the capital city of Amsterdam from one of terracotta tile, concrete, and shingles into green grass and brown earth.
It’s part of a new climate-resiliency trend in architecture and civic planning known as the ‘sponge city concept,’ in which a garden of water-loving plants, mosses, and soil absorbs excess rainwater before feeding it into the building for use in flushing toilets or watering plants on the ground.
If heavy rains are predicted, a smart valve system empties the stored rainwater into the municipal storm drains and sewers in advance of the weather, allowing the roof to soak up water and reduce flooding in the city.
In this way, the rooftops of buildings can be wrung out and filled up just like a sponge.
In Amsterdam, 45,000 square meters, or 11 acres of flat metropolitan rooftops have already been fitted with these systems, and the contracting firms behind the technology say they make sense in dry climates like Spain just as much as in wet climates like Amsterdam...
A 4-year project of different firms and organizations called Resilio, the resilient network for smart climate adaptive rooftops, rolled out thousands of square meters of sponge city technology into new buildings. As with many climate technologies, the costs are high upfront but tend to result in savings from several expenditures like water utilities and water damage, over a long-enough time horizon...
All together, Amsterdam’s sponge capacity is over 120,000 gallons.
“We think the concept is applicable to many urban areas around the world,” Kasper Spaan from Waternet, Amsterdam’s public water management organization, told Wired Magazine. “In the south of Europe–Italy and Spain–where there are really drought-stressed areas, there’s new attention for rainwater catchment.”
Indeed the sponge city concept comes into a different shade when installed in drought-prone regions. Waters absorbed by rooftops during heavy rains can be used for municipal purposes to reduce pressure on underground aquifers or rivers, or be sweated out under the Sun’s rays which cools the interior of the building naturally.
Additionally, if solar panels were added on top of the rooftop garden, the evaporation would keep the panels cooler, which has been shown in other projects to improve their energy generation.
“Our philosophy in the end is not that on every roof, everything is possible,” says Spaan, “but that on every roof, something is possible.”
Matt Simon, reporting on the Resilio project for Wired, said succinctly that perhaps science fiction authors have missed the mark when it came to envisioning the city of the future, and that rather than being a glittering metropolis of glass, metal, and marble as smooth as a pannacotta, it will look an awful lot more like an enormous sculpture garden."
-via Good News Network, May 15, 2024
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