Here’s a little Nice News-coded mindset shift for your Saturday morning. During a recent interview with podcaster Dan Harris, author John Green made the case that good news happens slowly — and therefore, it can be easy to lose sight of how far humanity has come. “If we were to really report the most important news story every day, the front page of The New York Times every single day for the last 30 years would read, ‘Fewer children died today than any day in the last 5,000 years,’” he suggested. Hear his thoughts.
Newly Discovered Map Reveals Exact Location of Shakespeare’s London Home
Leon Neal/Getty Images
The exact whereabouts of William Shakespeare’s only London home, where he may have written his final plays, have long been a mystery — but now, thanks to a newly unearthed map from the 1600s, that mystery has been solved. On Thursday, King’s College London revealed the map depicting the location of Shakespeare’s house in the city’s Blackfriars precinct.
Discovered by King’s College professor Lucy Munro in The London Archives, the document shows in detail the Bard’s sizable L-shaped property on a site that once hosted a 13th-century Dominican friary. The house was situated close to the Blackfriars Theatre and a tavern called Sign of the Cock, now dubbed The Cockpit.
While many historians believe Shakespeare left London soon after purchasing the house in 1613, the recent findings suggest he spent a little more time in the city. “It has sometimes been thought that he bought his Blackfriars property merely as an investment, but we don’t know that this is true, or that he never used it for himself,” Munro said in a news release.
She added, “We know that Shakespeare co-authored Two Noble Kinsmen with John Fletcher later in 1613, and this new evidence that the Blackfriars house was quite substantial makes it not inconceivable that some of it may have been written in this very property. We also know that Shakespeare was visiting London in November 1614 — is it not likely that he stayed in his own house?”
Together With Quince
The World Just Became Your Gym
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Blind Man Wearing Smart Glasses Completes Marathon With Help of Virtual Volunteers
Fight for Sight / SWNS
Last Sunday, Clarke Reynolds was one of over 14,000 people who participated in England’s Brighton Marathon. But completing the 26.2-mile course wasn’t the only thing he achieved: The 45-year-old also marked a technological milestone, becoming the first blind person to run a full marathon with the help of volunteers guiding him through his smart glasses.
The Portsmouth resident donned Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer smart glasses outfitted with a camera that connects to Be My Eyes, an AI app allowing people around the world to see his perspective on a smart device or laptop. Wearing the glasses, the braille artist and children’s author, who goes by the professional alias Mr Dot, completed the course in just under 6 hours and 20 minutes.
“I’m absolutely over the moon — we did it,” an elated Reynolds said after finishing the race, per a news release, adding: “My aim in doing this was to really push the boundaries of what this technology can do for me as a blind person, and I’ve done that.” His run raised over $3,500 for Fight for Sight, a nonprofit he’s an ambassador for that funds vision loss research in the U.K. Learn more about how Reynolds got to the finish line.
Humanity
Getting $750 a Month Didn’t End Homelessness — But It Did Improve Lives
Tayfun Coskun—Anadolu/Getty Images
Can giving homeless people $750 a month to use any way they choose help them move into long-term housing?
I am the director of the University of Southern California Homelessness Policy Research Institute. My research team, in partnership with Miracle Messages, a San Francisco social services nonprofit, set out to answer that question in a study that will be published in an upcoming peer-reviewed issue of Social Work Research.
In one of the first randomized studies of basic income for homeless people in the U.S., 103 homeless people living in California received $750 payments every month for a year. Then we compared their housing situations with people who were homeless but did not receive this money. All study participants met the federal definition of literal homelessness. That basically means they either stayed in a homeless shelter or lived on the streets.
In 2022, when we began this study, we expected the answer to our question would be “yes.”Read the results of the experiment.
In Other News
Scientists revealed the largest 3D map of the universe, including more than 47 million galaxies (read more)
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was saved from shutdown weeks before its final edition was set to be published (read more)
Two experimental drugs may double one-year survival rates for pancreatic cancer patients (read more)
A rare corpse flower that smells like “rotting flesh” bloomed again in a Massachusetts college’s greenhouse (read more)
Billy Crystal’s upcoming one-man show will honor the home his family lost in the Los Angeles wildfires (read more)
Inspiring Story
Talk about a win-win
In Rifle, Colorado, around 36% of residents speak Spanish at home — so two years ago, the small town’s hospital began offering training and pay raises to certify its bilingual employees as official interpreters. Since the program started, dozens of staff members have become certified, and the hospital’s number of Spanish-speaking patients has increased by approximately 50%.
Photo of the Day
Wang Zhide—VCG/Getty Images
These sharks soared through the skies in anticipation of this year’s Weifang International Kite Festival, which launches today in eastern China’s Shandong province — but they aren’t the only creatures that will take flight for the occasion. Past iterations of the festival, held annually since 1984, have featured fish, octopuses, bears, dragons, and more in the city dubbed “the birthplace of kites.”
The Best Thing to Come Home to: A Forkful Dinner
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