Advances in Science & Conservation
GHOSTSGRAVITIONAL WAVES ARE REAL!!! Thanks, risktaking science. I hope you can stick around…- Pandas off the endangered species list
- Measles declared eradicated in North & South America
- First solar-powered airport in Africa opens (George Airport in South Africa–and note: The only other solar-powered airport in the world is in India)
- SpaceX successfully landed a rocket on a drone ship (named after a Culture ship, for the record) at sea
- The number of tigers living in the wild increased for the first time in 100 years
- Evolutionary biology-style research led to evidence that some fairy tales could be 6000 years old
- First HD photos of Pluto’s surface
- 40 new international marine sanctuaries, including the world’s biggest, established
- Flowing water on Mars!
- Evidence that public smoking bans are working
- Colorado River restoration efforts are working
- World hunger, childbirth mortality rates, poverty rates in East Asia, homelessness in the US, malaria deaths, and more continued to decrease, while life expectancies in Africa, use of and global growth forecasts for renewable energy, charitable donations in the US, worldwide spending on aid for refugees increased (I know that last one is not entirely a good sign)
- India halted the building of coal-burning power plants for at least a decade
- President Obama continued to designate new national monuments
- A multi-way agreement protected most of British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest from logging
- The movements of Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, and Io captured on video for the first time
Progress in Politics & Government
- Elections of the first female, first black, and first Asian-American attorney general in California (hi Kamala Harris!); first Vietnamese-American woman elected to Congress (Stephanie Murphy); first Latina elected to the Senate (Catharine Cortez Masto, also first female senator from NV); first openly LGBTQ+ person elected as governor (Kate Brown, bisexual governor of Oregon); Somali-American former refugee, Ilhan Omar–a Muslim woman–makes several firsts as one of Minnesota’s representatives in Congress, and there are more.
- Tammy Duckworth, veteran and disabled woman, elected to US Senate
- Diane Humetewa confirmed as first female Native American federal judge
- Hillary Clinton won more votes in the presidential election than any white male candidate in US history
- Carla Hayden became the first female and first African-American Librarian of Congress
- Obama became first US president to visit Hiroshima
- The US Treasury Department announced that asshole president Andrew Jackson would be replaced on the front of the $20 bill by Harriet Tubman, and in Canada, Black civil rights hero Viola Desmond was announced to become the first woman on the front of a bill.
- More states in Mexico legalized same-sex marriage
- The US Departments of Education and Justice sent a letter to all school districts supporting students’ rights regarding gender identity, and warned of potential lawsuits and lack of funding if these civil rights were not upheld
- Massachusetts passed a public accommodations protection bill for transgender people
- More municipalities and counties in Taiwan legalized same-sex marriage, and the national government worked on steps in that direction
Sports Bright Spots
- African-American Simone Biles won the most awards of any US gymnast ever in a single Olympics
- Singapore, Bahrain, Fiji, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Kosovo, Puerto Rico, Tajikistan, and Vietnam all won their first Olympic medals
- African-American Simone Manuel’s victory became the first African-American woman to win an individual Olympic gold medal in swimming
- First Iranian woman to medal in the Olympics, Kimia Alizadeh Zenoorin (taekwondo)
(Pop) Culture and Assorted Cool Stuff
- First hedgehog-petting cafe opened in Japan (and my Yokohama friends went! and they got hedgehog-pooped-on…)
- Channing Dungey became the first African-American to be in charge of programming at a major US broadcast network
- Aziz Ansari was the first South-Asian-American actor nominated at the Emmys for leading role in a TV series (this year’s Emmy nominations were the most ethnically diverse so far)
- The Man Booker Award was won for the first time by an African-American, Paul Beatty (also, first time for any American)
- Hamilton hit the road
- The Tokyo-Hokkaido Shinkansen line started running
- New museums opened around the world, including the Videogame Museum, the National Blues Museum, the reopening of SFMOMA, the Etches Collection Museum of Jurassic Marine Life, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the expansion of the National Museum of Scotland, a southern Taiwan branch of the National Palace Museum,
- Tracer, apparently
- The Merriam-Webster Twitter account, what can I say
- Teen Vogue started kicking ass–let’s chalk that up to Elaine Welteroth, the youngest and first African-American Editor in Chief
And in SF/Fantasy…
- Ava DuVernay announced as the first female African-American director of a major live-action feature film (for A Wrinkle in Time)
- All of the top 10 films by worldwide gross were science fiction or fantasy (counting comic books and talking animals)
- First Filipina Hugo winner (Michi Trota)
- First Filipina Nebula nominee and winner (Alyssa Wong)
- First woman to win an Oscar for visual effects (Sara Bennett, for Ex Machina)
- First time a zombie movie was a huge hit in South Korea (good news for zombie fans, anyway)
- Michelle Yeoh announced as the captain in Star Trek: Discovery, and Sonequa Martin-Green as the main character
- Pacific Rim 2 is happening, with John Boyega
- Lots of stuff in comics, including Ms. Marvel, queer Wonder Woman, all sorts of Black Panther news, and other things that more qualified people are writing about
- Lots of good (queer) stuff on TV and online, not all of which I’ve seen: “San Junipero,” Carmilla, Steven Universe, Supergirl, Wynonna Earp
- Movies like Ghostbusters, Rogue One (even though I have mixed feelings about it), Moana (even though I still haven’t seen it), and Arrival
I know there’s a lot more, and I also know that none of it makes up for the lack of progress in some areas, backward movement in other areas, ongoing crises that are being essentially ignored, and all of the things we’re legitimately worried about for 2017.
But, to borrow from Rogue One, it’s a lot harder to resist if you don’t have hope.
Note: No citations because I’ll never get to my next post if I add those! But all of these can be googled. If you can’t find something, or if I made a mistake. let me know.