MetaFilter posts tagged with good

Jennifer stood there, quietly ovulating.

disclaimer — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 09:16:02 -0800

The results of the 2009 Lyttle Lytton Contest are in. The Contest rewards unintentionally funny lines in writing. Not to be confused with the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Those results aren't in yet.

Good News, Everyone!

WCityMike — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 09:05:27 -0800

Maybe the world isn't as good as this (more on that), but there's still ... good news, everyone! Lately, the news is so depressing lately that even the NBC Nightly News anchors need cheering up. Brian Williams' nightly broadcasts became so depressing his viewers complained (start at 1:00 into the video), and so he reached out and asked his viewers to pass along good news. They gave him plenty (RSS), enough to start a series, "Making a Difference." This need for optimistic news, noticed even by PR agencies, has guided U.K. papers like the East London Yellow Advertiser and the Burton Mail to run "good news only" pages or editions. But these papers are hardly the very first forays of the press or populace into the realm of good news. "If it bleeds, it leads" may be a fairly popular pressroom sentiment, but not in the following venues ... Twitter has the Los Angeles Times' Good News Twitter channel (RSS, replies, replies RSS); Optimistic News (RSS, replies, replies RSS, Facebook); happytweets (RSS, replies, replies RSS); and the search keyword #goodnews (RSS). Delicious.Com has busy tags for goodnews (RSS) and optimism (RSS). LiveJournal communities have a few good "good news"-aggregating communities, such as Happy News (RSS), OnlyGoodNews (RSS), Helpers (RSS), and Only_Good_News. Heck, if fed the right search terms, Google News (RSS) can sometimes even turn up glimmers of hope amongst such a barren landscape as mainstream media reporting. But the MSM just dabbles in good news; there are plenty of sites whose very purpose has been to provide a "good news" counterbalance to the "bad news" bias often seen in modern-day media. There are the big five "good news" monoliths: Happy News (RSS), Good News Now (RSS²), Global Good News³ (RSS⁴), Good News Daily, and Now Public: Good News (RSS). There's the Good News Network (RSS), Only Positive News (RSS), or Simply Happy News (RSS). There are the websites of magazines such as Ode Magazine (RSS) (who bill themselves as being "for intelligent optimists") and YES! Magazine (RSS). There's Things are Good (RSS), Optimism World (RSS), or Gimundo (RSS). There's Good News Blog (RSS), and the Good News Broadcast (RSS, video podcast, podcast RSS). There's the Digg-like Great News Network (RSS), as well as Heroic Stories (RSS) and Positive News From Around the World. There is, as earlier recommended on Ask Metafilter, the Speculist's Better All The Time (RSS⁵) — as well as GiftAnonymous, about random acts of (relatively non-saccharine) kindness, and the CSM's Making a Difference section. And there's DarynKagan.Com (RSS) (warning: autoplay.). [As well as all of this wrapped up into one big-ass RSS feed. :)] * * * * * * * * ¹And its columnists, which don't appear to be in its RSS feed: David Pollay (RSS), WonderQuest (RSS), Craig Harris (RSS), Silent Kimbly (RSS), Susan Scholl (RSS), and Reasons to Be Hopeful (RSS). ²A Yahoo! Pipes unification of a few subsections, which I'll provide here separately in case I ever forget and zap the pipe: green RSS, health RSS, heroes RSS, video RSS, more good news RSS. ³Although most of the sites linked-to herein aren't particularly religious (on purpose – searching for "good news" results in a heavy pollination of Christian sites amongst the search engine results), this one seems to be run by adherents of TM; however, its selection of covered positive news stories doesn't seem to be particularly biased towards that, and it appeared to be a site that was kept fairly well up-to-date. ⁴Yahoo! Pipe RSS feed created to filter only the news items starting with the phrase 'Positive:'. Original RSS feed. ⁵Yahoo! Pipe RSS feed created to include only this feature. Original RSS feed. * * * * * * * * Postscript: Not directly on point, but still worth including, there's an interesting blog post about Internet Optimists vs. Pessimists and the Internet personalities each kind of person cites, as well as a really interesting TED talk by Marty Seligman, the author of Learned Optimism.

variations on a theme of feeling good

nickyskye — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:28:50 -0800

Feeling Good by Nina Simone with a video by mrfnk l Feeling Good by Gilbert Price, age 23, who sang it first as a spiritual. More info on joannao's blogspot l Feeling Good by Muse l Feeling Good by My Brightest Diamond.

Good Guide - a Guide to Buying Good

one_bean — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:21:58 -0800

"Good Guide provides the world's largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of the products in your home." Now in iPhone.

Hope on the Battlefield

chunking express — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 17:23:23 -0800

Hope on the Battlefield by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman. An article on our "intense resistance to killing other people. A resistance so strong that, in many circumstances, soldiers on the battlefield will die before they can overcome it."

the goverment owes you $60

specialk420 — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 12:57:56 -0800

Telephone excise tax refund
Get your $60 + bucks back from the government... and do something good with it (beware talking website). Via the always excellent Ian Masters today.

Equality Ride is for all of our human rights

parmanparman — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:17:57 -0800

Soulforce Equality Ride! Soulforce, a nationwide organization working to end religious discrimination of gays and lesbians are in the middle of their second annual Equality Ride to raise awareness of Christian colleges and universities that discriminate against queer students. G L B T Q students are discriminated against everywhere. The Riders have been met with both open arms and anger. The Reverend Mel White, who runs Soul Force, ghost wrote Billy Graham's and Jerry Falwell's autobiographies and worships at Falwell's church in Lynchburg, VA in silent protest. Previously.

The bunny's name is Lapis.

Drunken_munky — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 13:19:40 -0800

Touch this bunny to make it happy (slightly NSFW). Ubisoft developer Heather Kelley has an interesting Nintendo DS game concept meant to "improve actual sex in the world". I've always wanted to improve that.

Am I Evil?

JakeEXTREME — Fri, 25 Jun 2004 07:05:44 -0800

Coincidence or contortion? Ivan Panin deciphered a numeric code in the Bible. Known as Gematria, the 'code' implies the Bible could not have been written without Holy assistance. Panin offered an open challenge for someone to create text using a similar pattern, yet no one was able to create one(nor tried).

However many people doubt the authenticity of the code though. The code is found in the same verses using different translations. It is also claimed that Panin manufactured his own translations to create this mathematical phenomenon.

Whether or not you believe, you can determine how good or evil any text or website is.

Gates the Philanthropist

giantkicks — Sat, 27 Sep 2003 12:40:17 -0800

Bill Gates, the philanthropist. It's not mentioned enough that the world's richest man, through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has donated more than $3.2 billion to combat disease and improve education for the poorest people of the world. Bill and his wife Melinda have pledged to give most of their money away before they die -perhaps following Carnegie's philosophy "The Gospel of Wealth" in which he states that the rich have a moral obligation to give away their fortunes.- Just last week they donated $168 million to combat Malaria in Africa, this came "atop $120 million" they already gave towards fighting the disease. Not only is "Malaria, the Terrorist's Friend," but worse every year it sickens 300 million and kills 1.1 million. -does donating Linux to the world make Linus Torvalds a Philanthropist?

Good news for the new year

sheauga — Wed, 01 Jan 2003 18:27:07 -0800

Ring in a New Year with good news from the web: Infamous Ugandan rebel ends years of reclusion to call for talks. Peace may be coming to Sumatra, Sri Lanka, Congo and Cyprus. Bill Gates, Sr. wants his kid to preserve the estate tax. Sudanese women launch sex strike to end civil war. Sentimental, choked-up politician says, "If at the end of my mandate all Brazilians have the possibility to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, I will have fulfilled the mission of my life" -- and is honest enough to admit this won't be easy.

fpatrick — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 05:22:19 -0800

Promiscuity is good. I knew something felt right about the '70s. (courtesy of Arts & Letters).

todd — Wed, 25 Oct 2000 16:34:58 -0800

Good Magazine. Some amusing stuff here. Eg, right now the home page has "An Interview with Neal Pollack Using Questions Intended for Mark Kingwell that Refer to His New Book."