BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Monterey Park voted 86 percent to 14 percent last Tuesday to permanently ban data centers from the city. It is the first US city to do it through a ballot initiative. Campaign organizer Steven Kung called it “a landslide victory.” On the reasons: “The noise pollution, the air pollution, the rise in the electricity rates. The deal just didn’t make sense and it doesn’t make sense for most, if not all, cities data centers go to.” A blueprint, not just a ban Mayor Elizabeth Yang told Politico that other cities were next. “A lot of the other cities that are facing data center proposals are going to follow suit,” she said, pointing to protests nationwide and what she called a “bad reputation across the board, across the country, from other data centers that have been built in neighborhoods.” City councilmember Jose Sanchez was clear about the goal. “We hope that other communities will use the model set by residents here in Monterey Park as inspiration to stop data centers from encroaching in their backyard,” he told The Guardian. The ballot resolution named air quality, drinking water, public health, and electricity and water rates. None of those concerns are hypothetical: communities near existing data centers have watched utility bills climb as tech companies race to build out the compute infrastructure behind the AI boom. The numbers behind the backlash A Public First poll released last week found that 26 percent of Americans support building more data centers, the lowest approval of any nation surveyed. According to The Financial Times, dozens of projects worth at least $156 billion have been blocked or stalled since 2025 due to local opposition. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a bill earlier this year for a nationwide moratorium on AI data center construction until safeguards are in place for workers, consumers, communities, and the environment. Monterey Park now has something the opposition elsewhere has lacked: a finished vote, a decisive margin, and a ballot resolution other cities can study and replicate. The backlash was already underway. Now it has a model.     Did this solution stand out? Share it with a friend or support our mission by becoming an Emissary.The post Monterey Park becomes first US city to permanently ban data centers first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Learning to read does something to the brain beyond teaching it to decode text. A new study in Cortex found that adults with formal reading education recruit a distinct region on the right side of the brain when processing unfamiliar spoken sounds. Adults who never learned to read show no activity there at all. The study was led by cognitive neuroscientist Mariana P. Nucci at the University of São Paulo. The experiment Three groups: 23 highly educated young adults, 21 highly educated older adults, and 15 older adults classified as functionally illiterate. Functionally illiterate means they might recognize common signs or letters but couldn’t read a sustained text for comprehension. All went into an fMRI scanner and completed two listening tasks. First, they listened for a target word in a Portuguese story, their native language. They could follow the narrative and use context. Then they did the same in Japanese, which none of them spoke. No narrative thread, no meaning, no way to anticipate anything. Just an unbroken stream of unfamiliar sounds with one specific sequence to catch. In Portuguese, the groups looked similar. The functionally illiterate adults found the target about 90 percent of the time. Japanese separated them fast. The functionally illiterate group caught the target just 17 percent of the time. Highly educated older adults: 48 percent. Highly educated young adults: 75 percent. Where the difference shows up During the Japanese task, the educated older adults activated the right inferior frontal gyrus, a region near the temple on the right side of the brain. It’s the counterpart to Broca’s area, which sits on the left and handles speech production and language comprehension. The functionally illiterate adults showed no activity there. And performance on the task tracked closely with reading proficiency scores across all participants. The connection isn’t subtle. The researchers’ interpretation: this region applies explicit phonological analysis to sound, the kind of deliberate, conscious sound-processing that reading instruction specifically trains. Speaking a language, it turns out, doesn’t build the same thing. What reading teaches the ear to do Phonological awareness is the ability to break words into their component sounds and work with them deliberately. It’s what you’re using when you catch a rhyme, count syllables, or sound out an unfamiliar word. Reading instruction builds it systematically. A clean test: ask someone to repeat a nonsense word back accurately. It requires holding a sound sequence in short-term memory with nothing semantic to anchor it. Literate adults tend to do fine. Adults without reading education tend to drop parts of the sequence. The new study adds a specific brain region to that picture. When meaning isn’t available as a guide, literate adults have an extra resource. In this study, non-literate adults didn’t activate it. What the study can and can’t show The functionally illiterate group was small, 15 people, which limits how much the imaging data can carry on its own. It’s also hard to find people without formal schooling who’ll agree to spend time in a loud scanner. The authors are careful about one confound: the functionally illiterate participants generally had fewer economic resources and more exposure to chronic stress across their lives. Both independently affect brain development. Research using nonverbal audio tasks could help separate what literacy specifically does from everything that tends to travel alongside it. What this study can claim is a locatable, measurable difference that appears specifically when meaning is absent and that correlates with reading ability. That’s a more concrete result than a lot of work in this area has produced. Source study: Cortex —Literacy modulates engagement of the right inferior frontal gyrus in phonological processing of spoken language     Did this solution stand out? Share it with a friend or support our mission by becoming an Emissary.The post How the act of learning to read rewires the brain and changes the way you hear first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Tell us what you’ve been reading at info@reasonstobecheerful.world and we just might feature it here. Fill your cup During the World Cup, soccer fans who come to watch games at Toronto’s FIFA Fan Festival zone at Fort York will enjoy drinks from reusable cups rather than single-use ones. As Be Giant reports in a story shared by RTBC Editorial Director Rebecca Worby, when customers purchase beverages, they will be served in “sturdy polypropylene plastic cup[s].” Instead of throwing away these cups, which are designed to be used up to 500 times, customers will return them to a sorting station at the venue.  Muuse Canada will provide 532,000 reusable cups and other items, which it estimates will prevent up to 237,378 pounds of waste. Becca says: I like this comparison to IKEA cafeterias, from Scott Morrison, the general manager at Muuse Canada: “When you walk into the cafeteria there, you don’t question whether you should leave those plates and utensils and glassware there. It’s designed in a way where it’s obvious that you return the items, and it’s awkward if you don’t.” Bright ideas A new global report from the by the World Inequality Lab lays out a bold and ambitious vision that its authors say would not only keep global temperatures from rising above the 2 degrees Celsius threshold laid out in the Paris Agreement, but also improve quality of life and reduce inequality around the world.  According to a Guardian story shared by Contributing Editor Michaela Haas, the report’s concrete proposals include “hefty wealth taxes on billionaires, sharp reductions in working hours, a change in diets and a shift of investment from materially intense sectors, such as industry and mining, to education and health.” Michaela says: It’s so easy to feel defeated when it comes to climate change action, but this group of experts actually lays out a reasonable path to survival. What else we’re reading The home climate fixes that can survive the populist backlash — shared by RTBC Founder David Byrne from the Financial Times (subscription required) This Restaurant Stopped Charging for Food. And Profits Are Up. — shared by Rebecca Worby from the New York Times What barbers in CT can mean to young men. It’s ‘all in a barbershop’: comedy, community, peace — shared by Contributing Editor Geetanjali Krishna from the Hartford Courant We want to hear from you As the U.S. nears its 250th birthday, we’re asking our American readers: How is your community continuing to come together in this divisive time? The block party, the composting hub, the pop-up water station on a hot day, the community garden — we want to see how you and your neighbors uplift each other, regardless of politics. Send words, photos, even audio recordings to info@reasonstobecheerful.world. We’ll feature our favorites on our website and Instagram feed next month. And please make sure any people in your photos have given you permission to have them published. The post What We’re Reading: World Cup Carousing — With Reusable Cups appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

The ocean is an incredible place. Its waters cover 70% of the Earth’s surface, and millions of species make the ocean home. Some of the creatures are tiny while others are positively enormous. Human beings love to play in the vast waters, and because the ocean can be pretty dark, we don’t always see the animals, and they don’t see us. Tavis Boise shared an incredible Instagram video of an unexpected encounter with a whale while hydrofoil-surfing. “What started as a normal downwind foiling session turned into something I’ll never forget. While riding out off the coast of Santa Barbara, a mom and baby Gray Whale surfaced right next to me. Close enough to get knocked off by the whale-wash,” Tavis shared on Instagram. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Tavis Boise (@smallwavetav) The Whale Encounter Shocked the Surfer Tavis admitted that seeing a whale on a video or in a photo is nothing like seeing one in person.“It is easy to dream of these wildlife scenarios but once you are actually face to face with a whale, all plans go out the window. This was such a cool encounter and was less than 1/4 mile from shore,” Tavis wrote. Friends joked with Tavis about his wild whale surfing encounter. “Remind me to keep my distance from you when we are out on the water! I think you might be the wildlife magnet of SB,” someone wrote. This person shared a similar experience with a whale and lived to tell the tale. “I was keyboarding off Ledbetter once on a twin tip and I became right between the mother and the calf as they surfaced I was going about 20 miles an hour. It was one of the most insane moments of my life in the ocean,” they wrote. Tavis is braver than we are. We’ll stick to watching others surf with the whales. This story’s featured image can be found here

If you’re excited about World Cup Soccer and you love Chipotle, we’ve got a deal for you. The fast-casual chain is celebrating the start of the 2026 World Cup on June 11, 2026, with an exclusive deal. Anyone who enters a Chipotle restaurant wearing a soccer jersey after 3 p.m. will qualify for a buy-one-get-one free entrée. But that’s not all, Chipotle will also produce 53 limited-edition jerseys that loyalty members can win in the app. “Only 53 jerseys will be made available exclusively through the Chipotle Rewards Exchange for loyalty members in the U.S., with winners receiving their jerseys ahead of the tournament final. Chipotle Rewards members can exchange 10 points for a chance to win a jersey from June 10 through June 24. Fans can sign up for Chipotle Rewards at www.chipotle.com/rewards and earn free Chips and Guac with a qualifying purchase after joining,” Chipotle shared in a news release. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Chipotle (@chipotle) Chipotle Fans Are Ready to Celebrate Soccer It’s no surprise that news of the exclusive Chipotle soccer deal and jerseys has people excited. “This couldn’t have came at a better time…ty,” a fan shared on Instagram. “Just canceled my Thursday Chipotle lunch plans to get it at dinner instead,” another fan shared. This person warned Chipotle that Thursday will be busy. “yall bout to be sold out,” they wrote. “Every four years, this tournament creates an unmatched sense of excitement, pride, and community among fans around the world,” Stephanie Perdue, Senior Vice President of Brand Marketing at Chipotle shared. “We wanted to celebrate the rituals that make the experience so memorable, from wearing lucky jerseys to gathering for matchday meals with Chipotle.” This story’s featured image is by Kevin Carter/Getty Images