🥞 One for the continental breakfast, please

🌊 97% of the Earth’s water was undrinkable. Water scarcity is becoming a more tangible issue. We talked about it last week - That’s a pretty darn scary issue. Fortunately for us, it’s also an incredible time to be alive.

We can rest at least somewhat assured that our brightest minds are preparing to tackle the problem, and they’re doing an amazing job at it. Last week, it was the University of Texas literally turning hot air into drinkable water. This week? We’re going even bigger.

It’s one of Earth’s great ironies. About 71% of Earth’s surface is water-covered. 96.5% of all that water is in oceans, right where we can’t drink it. As water scarcity concerns mount, the answer has surrounded us, taunting us with each wave that crashes on the sand.

The days of those taunts are numbered, as a team from MIT and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (bonus feel-good points for a USA/China team-up) have developed a solution that takes cues from the ocean’s natural properties of thermohaline circulation. Let’s all pretend we knew what “thermohaline” meant before today and casually drop it in conversation like a boss. Basically, it’s a process where saline-dense ocean water circulates to the bottom of polar oceans, which then forces water with lower saline content toward tropical oceans.

The team has created a briefcase-sized desalination sill that circulates seawater to facilitate evaporation using sunlight. The salt remains in the device while the evaporated vapor eventually gathers as potable water.

Solar desalination, let’s go!

With this process, apparently drinking water produced by sunlight could become cheaper than tap water. This is a legit, impactful solution with real world applicability. Hats off to the team. Imagine what we could accomplish if we kept working together?!

Alright, now here comes a galaxy brain, very dumb take: can we then just drink our way right out of our rising sea level problem?

No way, right? A fella can dream.

🏨 Can I speak to the manager? Picture this: you’ve been traveling all night. You’re tired. Cranky. Ready to put your head on the pillow and feel the sweet greeting of overdue sleep.

You arrive at your hotel and trudge into the lobby, eyes glazed over with fatigue…and there’s nobody at the front desk. In fact, aside from one maid, there don’t seem to be any employees around.

This waking nightmare confronted three Nashville tourists at a local La Quinta. Rather than melt into a puddle of despondent exhaustion (as I would certainly do), they rolled up their sleeves and got busy. They found the general manager’s card behind the desk, contacted them, and discovered the employee who was supposed to be there basically went rogue and left. After that, they took the reins of a La Quinta in crisis mode.

They fielded calls from angry customers, most of whom were concerned about erroneous credit card charges. They figured out how to assist with check-in and check-out. They even freaking made complimentary breakfast!

Why do all this? Turns out it makes for quite the TikTok saga. And if that’s the only motivation, then at least TikTok is good for something, even if it’s perverse incentive to do good deeds. But instead, we choose to believe that some people are just built different - they see a sinking ship, and they jump in to start bailing water and plugging holes.

We can passively bemoan an employee dipping out of work early and La Quinta letting us down, or we can hop in the fray and do something about it. And then afterwards, we can take our business right on down the road to Holiday Inn as the tremendous trio did.

⛽️ Propane? More like propleasure. Pollution is a problem. But what if we could reduce harmful pollution and use it? That’s what researchers from the Illinois Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Illinois have achieved.

They developed an electrolyzer capable of converting carbon dioxide pollution into propane. Best of all? It’s a relatively inexpensive process. A solution like this is said to “close the carbon cycle,” important in the global quest for greater carbon neutrality.

That’s a pretty major problem, solved. You know what it doesn’t solve though? My consistent inability to buy a new propane tank before the one attached to my grill runs out. Looks like these burgers are getting finished on the stove again. Grillmaster, coming through!

🎬 The strike is over. After 146 days, the Writers Guild of America strike is set to end after the Hollywood writers came to terms with the studios and production companies. The agreement is said to be a major win for the writers.

Among the victories? The use of artificial intelligence in the writing process to eliminate writers or reduce their pay is prohibited.

Suck on that, AI! In yo face!

The shows and movies we enjoy most are the ones that tickle our sense of humor or evoke intensity of emotion because we understand the characters’ experiences. Can AI write about the human experience? Almost certainly. But can AI write about it well? Almost certainly not.

Leave human entertainment to the humans, please.

Writers can use the software if they so choose. And guess what? Their work cannot be used to train AI. Booyah! Somebody get AI some ice, because it got absolutely burned! Good luck replacing humans if you’re not allowed to check out our stuff. Guess you won’t be finding out how Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones ends. You know what? On second thought, maybe we’ll feed you the last season of GoT so your writing turns out just as crappy.

Kidding aside, the end of the writers’ strike also means a return to work for so many crew members that were sidelined by a battle that wasn’t even theirs. Hollywood is a lot more than just writers and actors (who, by the way, are still on strike), and the wait will have been agonizing for those parties out of work from the tenuous state of negotiations.

P.S. Guess who’s the president of the Screen Actor’s Guild? Fran Drescher.

Didn’t see that one coming did you? Not my first guess either.

🌲 Big tree fall hard? Not anymore. On this day in 1968, US Congress established Redwood National Park to preserve some of the tallest trees on earth. By that time, 90% of the original redwoods in the area had been logged. Absolute wonders of the planet, felled. Gone forever.

Today, 96% of old redwoods on the planet have been logged, and 45% of the remaining trees are found in Redwood National and State Parks. The park hosts the tallest tree on the entire planet: Hyperion stands at a titan 380 feet. And there are a number of other redwoods right up there with it. It’s kind of mind blowing that there’s a living thing that can reach for the skies like that. Even crazier when you consider that some of the trees are believed to be over 2,000 years old. That makes them some of the oldest living organisms on the entire planet.

Those trees have stood in place for centuries, in some cases cases millennia, growing taller and watching generations of history and evolution unfold right before their trunks. They were there before us, and thanks to preservation, they’ll hopefully be here long after you and I are gone. As it should be.

Dang, really didn’t expect to be talkin’ trees this morning, and there won’t be a “Talkin’ Trees” section coming to the newsletter. But as far as trees go, redwoods are pretty damn rad.

🙂 A “Happy” ending to a scary ordeal. It’s a nightmare scenario for the family of a loved one suffering from dementia.

Harrison “Happy” Ferguson, a 71-year-old man with the illness, was separated from his friends after a John Legend concert at the Hollywood Bowl. He boarded the wrong shuttle bus, heading to East Los Angeles instead of home, beginning a terribly scary ordeal. He was missing for days afterward, riddling his family with fear and anxiety.

He walked into a sheriff’s station and asked for a ride home. As he didn’t show overt signs of distress and was coherent, he was ordered an Uber and given printed directions to his home, but in his state, that didn’t do the trick.

Enter Mark, the Great Samaritan. Mark spotted Happy walking near a hospital and recognized something was amiss. Here’s what he told ABC7 Eyewitness News:

"People I think nowadays are lacking compassion. When you see someone having a hard time, try to take your time and feel out the situation for what's really going on. You might be surprised at who they are and what they're doing. It might not be portrayed with how they appear at the time."

Mark is the GOAT. What an incredible sentiment. Because of him, “Happy” and family can be happy once more.

Man, really scary stuff. Thank goodness for people like Mark. And we thought the aftermath of Michael Scott going to an Alicia Keys concert was bad…

🏃🏿‍♀️ Unbelievably fast, literally. This record was set last Sunday, and I almost talked about it last week, but I resisted for two key reasons:

1) The Capri Sun record was simply way too much fun to skip

2) The record was smashed by such an enormous margin that it seemed too good to be true

At the Berlin Marathon, Ethiopian Tigist Assefa ran a time of 2 hours 11 minutes and 53 seconds. The prior marathon world record for a woman was 2:14:04. That means Assefa skipped breaking 2:14 AND 2:13 en route to a world record effort that surpassed the prior mark by more than 2 minutes.

That is freaking insane.

Elite athletes compete at the highest level of the marathon multiple times every year. And nobody has come even remotely close to doing what Assefa did.

She accomplished the feat wearing a newly released pair of shoes from Adidas, which are a feat of engineering and technological advancement in their own right. They retail for $499 and are good for one use. Safe to say she got her money’s worth.

🎳 When in doubt, bowl. A few weeks ago, a heated rivalry game between Colorado and Colorado State saw Colorado State’s Henry Blackburn lay a highly controversial hit on Travis Hunter. The hit lacerated Hunter’s liver, knocking one of the nation’s biggest stars - and the centerpiece of Coach Prime’s Colorado resurgence - out of action for weeks.

People were not happy with Blackburn….like at all, going so far as to pathetically issue death threats and publish his campus and home addresses online.

Who rushed to his defense? Travis Hunter.

Hunter took to social media, reminding everyone that this was just football and there was no ill will. But that wasn’t all. The two recently went bowling together, with each donating $1,000 to charity. The outing was posted to Hunter’s YouTube, and the video featured a discussion between the two about the incident, demonstrating the clear absence of bad blood.

People make mistakes, but look what can come out of forgiveness and an open mind. Also, how about bowling still bringing people together in 2023?! A real underdog story!

🎶 In your head, in your heaaaad. What else could make tens of thousands people scream “Zombie” by The Cranberries in unison? Maybe a Cranberries concert, sure. But since lead singer Dolores O’Riordan passed in 2018, that’s sadly no longer possible. Sports still have that power though.

Chills. Irish supporters belted the tune after their country’s historic victory over South Africa at the Rugby World Cup in Paris. Whatever happens the rest of the tournament, this moment will be cemented in the memories of every fan in attendance for life.

Some are uncomfortable with the political implications of singing that particular song, but we don’t think the raucous crowd is really thinking along those lines. Even Andy Bernard knows that song goes hard AF.

⚾️ Right in her lap. Lydia Olmsted is blind, has a significant hearing impairment, and loves the St. Louis Cardinals. That diehard fandom was rewarded over the weekend when a foul ball miraculously landed right in her hand. What a deserved stroke of luck.

There’s really nothing else to say here. The story speaks for itself, and it’s just so freaking awesome that it happened. Let’s go, Lydia!!