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Good News Everyone! - the coping with everything edition
In this edition of the Good News thread, I'd love it if folks shared not just a positive news story, but perhaps a video, article, story, something that can function as a happy moment, a chill vibe, a memory that makes you smile. We're all just trying to deal with the world, so if you cannot find joy in current events, consider sharing something else joyful.
For this thread, even if something happy also reveals the sadness at the heart of the world, we're going to focus on the joy here. (Posting in misc due to the extended ask this time)
AGDQ 2026 just ended and raised $2.4 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
GDQ marathons are always positive, heartwarming, entertaining events that show the best side of the gaming community rather than all that gaming-associated darkness that I and many of us here try to avoid.
They’ve also been explicitly and deliberately inclusive since the start, so it’s an ongoing safe space for queer people and other minorities. It’s one of the few places in my life I get to enjoy the collective effervescence of a large crowd of people cheering for trans rights, for example.
I’ve been watching them since 2012-2013 (can’t remember exactly when I started) and they remain highlights for me to this day, well over a decade later. My husband and I look forward to them the way that other people look forward to, say, the Super Bowl.
To date, their marathons have raised a combined $59 million (!!!) for charities, with the median donation being less than $25. This, more than probably anything else, makes tangible for me the idea that a lot of individual people doing little things can add up to create a genuinely huge impact.
That’s a nice principle for me to keep in mind right now. It’s easy to lose sight of.
I was lucky enough to be staying at the same hotel as GDQ last January as we held our summer conference there in June '25 and do our midyear meeting and conference walkthrough stuff there. I also have an acquaintance who does a run every year (maybe more? Idk how this stuff works). I tried and failed to get a matching arcade room for our conference!
I didn't get to see much of GDQ itself but they were incredibly inclusive and it was just obvious to see from jump. I missed the vibes this year being in Reno instead.
Love GDQ and love that both you and your husband watch together. I have been trying for years to get my wife to watch with me but she cannot grasp the idea of watching someone else play video games. She is fully on board with the charity aspect at least. My three annual donations are SickKids, AGDQ and SGDQ. It is incredibly wholesome and I love that they have managed to remain inclusive as they have grown.
closed-loop spinal cord stimulator implants drastically decrease chronic pain for some, with access increasing for folks in BC. Article here
🐽 I have discovered that the pig snout emoji looks like a pink slime.
World shattering news to find out the pink slime emoji looks like a pig snout
It's a cute pig though, a newborn perfectly peach fuzzed baby pink piglet
I grew up in California which has perpetually been in a drought for all of my adult life, a fact that's not missed in the local culture. But guess what? We're out of the drought, baby!
Sesame Street: Making Crayons
This may be the reason I loved How It's Made. There is just something nostalgic and peaceful about these little crayons.
I love this! I didn’t realize Sesame Street did a crayon factory bit, but I’ve watched the Mr. Rogers counterpart so many times. I’m fairly certain How It’s Made directly owes existence to this moment in TV history.
My favorite Sesame Street clip will always be the pinball cartoon, followed closely by honorable mention A B C D E F Cookie Monster. Nostalgia overload!!
I have definitely mixed the two crayon bits in my head before, having seen both. There are so many classic bits on Sesame street. 💜
The music to the pinball cartoon lives rent free in my mind and I can't count down without singing it on that tune.
Fun fact that's The Pointer Sisters!
Thanks for sharing! That is a fun fact!
There's a guy making videos right now with a similar vibe, complete with piano music to match the visuals. Here's one on custom embroidery
I have seen these but forgot about them! Thank you!
Where the Hell is Matt?
That one was always a gooder
Vapourwave is the silliest, most nostalgic genre of "music" out there, and in a deep dive on Bandcamp, I found Death's Dynamic Shroud, a major innovator in the genre.
The good news is that (I'm guessing because of copyrighted samples) most of their discography is pay-what-you-can.
https://deathsdynamicshroud.bandcamp.com/album/ill-try-living-like-this
I love the feeling of discovering an artist you like and learning that their entire back catalog is awesome.
Thanks for this, I'm going to check it out. I do feel like Home kind of did everything and everything else has just kind of iterated on that and never been as interesting; I've definitely checked out lots of stuff since then, but kind of rapidly grew board of the genre as a whole, since it felt like nothing was really happening.
Yeah, it's really a genre whose purpose was met and then it disappeared. There are only so many weather channel VHS recordings out there or forgotten video games that you can rip off before the premise of member-berries meets bong hit get old :D
That said, the more ambient, hazy work out there is timeless. Like ambient as a genre, it's (to me) less about being present with the music one measure at a time, and more about letting it wash over you. It's your own memories served up warm, but in a way that's unlike the nostalgia force feeding that's everywhere else.
The original link definitely isn't evocative of this, but I quite like how this album sticks the landing, and focuses on my favourite old RPG soundtracks.
https://deathsdynamicshroud.bandcamp.com/album/rpg
Pandas are no longer classified as endangered! https://wwf.panda.org/discover/our_focus/wildlife_practice/profiles/mammals/giant_panda/giant_pandas_no_longer_endangered/
Yay!
What started as "What if fairies worked customer service" has turned into a long long running set of skits and deep lore, deep enough that the creator who is also a SFF author, has also written a book set in a new version of the canon*
CaFae Latte is just a simple coffee shop run by a fairy who definitely does not have a long storied past and will absolutely curse bad customers.
I linked to the first compilation but there are a whole ton, and some supercuts too. For someone who doesn't do much costume and includes diverse characters without doing questionable makeup choices they're really well done.
There are even people who cosplay the characters in their own recreations of the skits. It's a nice vibe. Creator is from Minnesota and that informs both the lore and setting they use and their current frustrations.
*C. M. Alongi describes it as the MCU vs comics where the books can contain topics that get censored on social media. Heart of Iron is the first book and it's quite good other than I think portraying Type 1 diabetes questionably.
(I'm not T1, so I may just be misunderstanding it, but one character alternates between needing OJ and insulin in a way that seems like... Probably not fully accurate)