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Just the Good Bits ☀

Saturday, October 31, 2026

A beloved custodian gets a school named after her, a strawberry farmer becomes an accidental mentor, Japan's potatoes have a banner year, and the space station gets a power boost.

🌱 Good News

A Texas school district names its new elementary school after its longtime custodian

Marilyn Hampton spent 39 years as a custodian for Aubrey ISD in Texas, and she did far more than clean: she bought school supplies, helped kids study, ran the football ticket booth and cheered students on. Now 76 and still caring for toddlers at the district's early learning center, she was invited to a board meeting under a pretext and asked to unroll a carpet reading 'Marilyn Hampton Elementary School.' She broke down in tears, calling it an honor she never imagined in her lifetime.

Source: Good News Network →

A strawberry farmer whose number ended up on an exam has been encouraging students for years

A Beijing strawberry grower named Mr. Wang had no idea his advertisement, phone number included, had been turned into a reading question on an English exam used across China. For more than a decade, curious students have called or messaged him, and he tells them all the same thing: study hard, be good, and visit him once you graduate. One of them, He Ziqi, did exactly that after getting into university in Beijing, and the farmer treated him to a Peking duck dinner.

Source: Good News Network →

Japan's Hokkaido enjoys its best potato harvest in a decade

While heat and drought hurt crops across much of the Northern Hemisphere, Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, which grows about 80% of the country's potatoes, had near-perfect weather. Sapporo saw only four days above 86°F this summer compared with 16 last year, and a cool autumn produced denser, rounder potatoes that store better. Snack maker Calbee expects to get back to its usual haul of about 250,000 tons.

Source: Good News Network →

Chinese artists and the Met team up to copy a 700-year-old Buddhist mural

A 50-foot Medicine Buddha mural that once hung in central China's Guangsheng Temple now fills a gallery at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Over three years, a team led by Zhang Jian of the Chinese National Academy of Arts worked at the Met to create a life-size replica down to every crack and faded line, with the museum's full support. The partnership has also led the Met to co-host its first major academic conference in China, a symposium on Chinese murals.

Source: Good News Network →

Steaming the soil could help organic strawberry farmers skip harsh chemicals

Researchers at UC Santa Cruz are testing machines that inject steam into strawberry beds before planting, killing the fungi, bacteria and weeds that can wipe out a crop. Chemical fumigants usually do that job but aren't allowed in organic farming and can harm people and wildlife. In a trial with four organic growers, farmers reported bigger, healthier plants and more berries.

Source: Good News Network →

🔬 Tech & Science

Spacewalkers install a new solar array on the International Space Station

NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk spent just over seven hours outside the station installing its seventh new roll-out solar array. One more array is scheduled for a spacewalk on November 5. When all eight are in place, the station's power will rise by up to 30%, from about 160 to roughly 215 kilowatts. It was Kutryk's first spacewalk and the 100th U.S. spacewalk at the station.

Source: ScienceDaily →

Meet the 'sea muppets,' seahorse lookalikes that are a family of their own

Scientists have described a new thumb-sized fish from deep reefs off southern Australia and nicknamed it the helmethead sea muppet for the dome-shaped crest on its head. It looks just like a seahorse, with a curled tail and a brood pouch in males, but it and two relatives turn out to sit on their own branch of the family tree. The only known specimen was dredged up in 2006 and misfiled in a museum's invertebrate collection for years before anyone recognized it.

Source: ScienceDaily →

Crocodiles may have survived the dinosaur-killing asteroid by chasing the warmth

A UCL-led team analyzed more than 7,000 fossils and records from over 400 species alongside climate models spanning 245 million years. They found crocodiles and their relatives mostly followed warm climates rather than adapting to new ones, spreading as far as Antarctica in hot periods and retreating to the tropics in cool ones. After the asteroid hit, regions near the equator likely stayed warm enough to give them refuges while dinosaur habitats shrank.

Source: ScienceDaily →

A nearby star system's 170-year-old planet mystery is narrowing the hunt for habitable worlds

Since 1855, astronomers have suspected that 70 Ophiuchi, a pair of stars just 16 light-years away, hides a giant planet. A University of Michigan-led study ran the most sensitive search yet and found no Jupiter-sized planets in the regions it checked. That still leaves room for smaller worlds, including rocky planets in the zone where liquid water could exist, which helps astronomers focus future searches.

Source: ScienceDaily →

A Good Bit of Wisdom

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Society and Solitude, "Works and Days"

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