Simone Manuel won two gold medals this week in Rio, making her the first American black woman to take home a medal in swimming. This is so, so important and amazing. Could we be any prouder??
Speaking of Simones who kick major Olympic butt (really, what is it about that name that leads to greatness??), Simone Biles has stolen our hearts with her insanely amazing gymnastics skills.
In non-Olympic news, these once-nearly-extinct Catalina Island foxes have successfully shed themselves of the "endangered" designation. Good job, little guys!
Speaking of hope for the future, it looks like HG Wells is still unsurpassed in his psychic abilities. He's the original Nate Silver...or something. Regardless, his visions of the future, published over 100 years ago, are shockingly accurate.A museum in Xi’an, China has cancelled its plans to evict a family of cats from its grounds after a highly justified internet uproar. Where else would the little kitties live? Won't someone think of the kitties??Speaking of our beloved felines, a cat (his name is Batman!!!) has gathered international attention due to his suuuuper adorable extra set of ears, which is apparently a rare (but not unheard of) kind of kitty genetic mutation. In fact, there are a few famous four-eared kitties: Yoda and Luntik have also attracted some attention for their awesome ears
They found another planet! And not just any planet, but a potentially habitable planet! And not only that, but it's pretty close by -- only 4 light years away, which makes it basically our neighbor (in the grand scheme of universe-things).Good news, car-commuters and audiophiles of the world: your brain receives the same benefits from listening to an audiobook as it does from reading a book. The long-held idea that listening is less work than reading is actually a myth -- after about 5th grade, your brain works just as hard to actively listen and comprehend material as it does to read it.The state of agriculture is pretty scary, but there's some hope for us all even in the face of dystopian resource scarcity and a lack of arable land. In a long-abandoned steel mill in New Jersey, a company called AeroFarms is building what will be "the largest vertical farm, producing two million pounds of leafy greens a year." But get this: the farm requires neither soil, nor water, nor light. It just needs some recycled plastic bottles and a bit of nutrient-rich mist to yield 70x the harvest. How exciting!And last, but certainly not least, is our personal hero: a little adventurous raccoon who decided to bravely climb a 700 foot tall crane so that he could finally have a perfectly peaceful pooing experience (we can imagine it's probably a bit difficult to have privacy when you're a raccoon). We get it, lil raccoon. We get it.https://www.instagram.com/p/1iQZ5Qupkq/Also, as a bonus, this little pony:[embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/BJG8Q6kjn3K[/embed]
