Colorado’s government has restored the freedom of its people to prepare and sell homecooked food to one another. Provided they take a food safety course, the “Tamale Act” is expected to be a boost to the informal economy by unlocking the commercial power of mama’s and grandma’s home-cooking. House Majority Leader Monica Dura said exactly […] The post Colorado’s ‘Tamales Act’ Restores Citizens’ Freedom to Buy and Sell Homecooked Food appeared first on Good News Network.

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM The feeling of not mattering, of going through a whole day without anyone really seeing you, sits closer to the surface than most people let on. Jennifer Breheny Wallace has spent years studying this. In her new book Mattering, she frames it as a gap: the distance between how valued you feel and how valued you actually are. “We are in a loneliness epidemic,” she says. “At the root of this is a mattering gap. When people don’t feel like they matter, they withdraw or isolate.” What she argues, though, is that mattering goes both ways. You can receive it, and you can give it. The practices she recommends for closing the gap are smaller than they sound. Write down one way you showed up today At the end of each day, try to name just one small way you made a difference to someone. Write it down. Maybe you listened when a friend needed it. Maybe you made a colleague laugh. Maybe you handled a hard conversation better than you expected. “This kind of self-awareness builds our own internal sense of mattering,” Wallace says. It doesn’t need to be a grand gesture. The point is to notice what usually gets missed. Keep a file of the notes that prove your value When someone sends you a thank-you card, a handwritten note, or even a kind text that landed, save it. Wallace calls this an impact file: a box or folder where you collect evidence of your effect on people. “On days when you feel like you don’t matter, you can pull everything out and remember your value.” It’s a way to push back against the stories you tell yourself when things feel hard. Make your thank-yous specific There’s a version of saying thank you that actually stays with the person. Instead of thanking someone for a gift, thank them for being the kind of person who gives that gift. “Instead of saying, ‘Thank you for this beautiful sweater,’ you could say, ‘Thank you for always being the kind of friend who knows me and knows what I like,’” Wallace explains. The same logic applies when someone gives you advice: close the loop. Tell them what you tried. Tell them what happened. Show them their time was worth something to you. Build a mattering space in your community Wallace writes about places she calls mattering spaces: anywhere outside your home and workplace where you can become a known face. A coffee shop, the dog park, a gym. Somewhere you show up often enough that people start asking after you. She shares the example of her father. After retiring, he went to the same restaurant every week for lunch, learned the staff’s names, and got genuinely curious about their lives. When he stepped away for several weeks to help care for a family member, they noticed. When he came back, a signed sympathy card was waiting for him. He had become someone to them because he had treated them as someone first. Imagine the sign everyone is wearing Wallace sets herself a challenge she invites you to try: picture everyone you meet wearing an invisible sign that asks, “Tell me, do I matter?” Then answer it in every small interaction you have. It comes back to you. “Every time we reinforce someone else’s value, we are reminded that we too are needed, valued, and capable of making a difference,” she says. “So, in reminding others that they matter, we confirm just how much we do too.”     Did this solution stand out? Share it with a friend or support our mission by becoming an Emissary.The post 5 small habits that make every day feel more meaningful first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM The question seemed reasonable enough: what heat adaptation interventions were already working in Africa’s low-income communities? Lara Dugas, an epidemiologist, and climate scientist Mark New had received funding from the Wellcome Trust’s HeatNexus initiative to evaluate what was in place. When they went looking, they found nothing. “The initial grant call was to evaluate existing heat adaptation interventions in low- and middle-income settings,” Dugas says. “But we quickly discovered that there were no existing interventions in Africa to evaluate.” So they built one. The project they created, Heat Adaptation Benefits for Vulnerable Groups in Africa, settled on a South African product called Rhinoluxe Heat Reflect, an infrared reflective paint originally made for commercial buildings, agricultural facilities, and chicken coops. It had to be locally manufactured, affordable, and scalable. Two years later, roofs had been painted across four sites: Khayelitsha, Cape Town’s largest township; Mphego village in rural South Africa; and Ga-Mashie and Nkwantakese in urban and rural Ghana. What three summers of temperature data showed Readings collected over three summers from 240 houses across the four sites found that painted roofs kept indoor spaces an average of three to four degrees Celsius (about five to seven degrees Fahrenheit) cooler during the hottest parts of the day. In Khayelitsha alone, thirty painted houses were measured against a control group of thirty unpainted ones. For Sylvia, a 49-year-old single mother in Khayelitsha, the difference translates to something specific: her children can sleep. Her brick house had been a problem every summer, with the youngest crying from the heat and her two older children struggling to focus on schoolwork. “It’s still hot,” she says. “But we have our house cooler now and can comfortably be indoors when there is the scorching sun outside. My children sleep better. For me, that means everything.” Why sleep is the health metric that matters Dugas is clear about why sleep is the data point the project is watching most closely. Building a scientific link between hotter houses and chronic conditions like diabetes or cardiovascular disease would take decades. Sleep disruption shows up within the first season, and the body of evidence connecting poor sleep to poor health is already substantial. “Better sleep isn’t just a nice-to-have,” she says. “Bad sleep has poor mental health outcomes, poor disease outcomes, and makes diseases that are already present, like hypertension, much worse.” Bongani, a 42-year-old from Khayelitsha whose roof has not yet been painted, traces what the accumulation feels like. “Heat is the worst part of my day,” he says. “Our zinc houses trap heat even into the night. We can’t sleep properly, and you wake up already exhausted. The heat makes me feel tired and angry, and sometimes I cannot even think straight.” When the temperature gets too high, he walks to a friend’s house. The friend has a painted roof. Measuring what anecdotes cannot prove alone Quantifying the benefit has required more than a thermometer. Participants across all four sites are fitted three times each summer with sleep and physical activity monitors and core body temperature sensors. Small devices mounted on interior walls collect continuous readings. Air pollution is tracked by a second sensor in each home. Blood glucose, blood pressure, and urinalysis tests round out the picture. “Anecdotal evidence only gets you so far,” Dugas says. “Someone can tell you they slept badly when it was hot, but it is important to quantify just how bad is bad?” The climate context this sits inside This research is running in a country where, according to a 2025 Lancet report, residents were exposed to an average of 13 heatwave days in 2024. Eighty percent of those days would not have occurred without climate change. The communities where the project is based are among the least equipped to absorb the added burden. Where the project goes next HeatNexus is funding nine projects in total. For Dugas, this one has reoriented what she thought her career was for. “It has been especially rewarding doing work with a direct and measurable impact,” she says. “When you paint a roof you can change people’s lives in an instant.” Postdoctoral researcher Vuyisile Moyo has spent three summers on foot in Khayelitsha, walking between painted and unpainted houses, interviewing residents, and pulling sensor readings. His view of scale is practical. “In an ideal world, every one of these roofs would be painted,” he says. “But we should start by painting schools and clinics.” The formal health data is still being compiled. What is already clear is that the gap the project set out to close, the absence of any evidence base for heat adaptation in Africa, now has a place to start.     Did this solution stand out? Share it with a friend or support our mission by becoming an Emissary.The post How reflective roof paint is cooling homes across Africa first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

Daniel Crag traveled from San Diego to Glacier National Park in Montana in May 2026 for an adventure exploring the natural landscape. Things took a dramatic and unexpected turn on May 28 when Daniel noticed a Grizzly cub beside him. He quickly realized that the cub wasn’t alone. “At that point, I did what they kind of teach or train you to do: just alert the bear so you don’t startle. You make them aware,” he told CBS 8. “So, I did that. ‘Hey bear! Hey bear! And it kind of had its nose in the snow, maybe smelling something, and looked up at me. And as soon as we looked at each other, it charged at me.” Daniel Crag Miraculously Survived Daniel Crag shared terrifying details from the attack with the news outlet. “I just kind of thought ‘this is it.’ It bit down on my arm, dragged me maybe 20 feet,” he recalled. “I kind of flipped, landed on my backside, opened my eyes, and the bear had continued running down the mountain.” He explained that the grizzly bear crushed the bones in his arms that required surgery and left him with some pretty high bills. But Daniel said he’s not going to stop his outdoor adventures just because of a little bear attack. “It’s part of who I am,” he told CBS 8. “It’s not gonna stop me.” Daniel Crag created a fundraiser to help offset his medical bills, and he’s raised more than $52,000. He let donors know how grateful he is for their support. “Your kindness and expertise saved my life, and I am thankful beyond words. If you are able to support my fundraiser, your generosity will help me move forward and heal. Thank you for being part of my journey,” he wrote. “All proceeds exceeding medical related expenses will be donated to the National Park Service.” This story’s featured image can be found here

Walking down the street in a busy city isn’t where people expect to encounter wild animals, but people in Japan have learned to expect the unexpected. The Associated Press recently shared terrifying surveillance footage of an encounter between a man just walking down the street and a bear ready to attack. The bear appeared out of nowhere and chased the man in a residential area before running away. According to the AP, this wasn’t the first bear attack. “A bear injured four people in a Japanese residential area on Tuesday in the latest case of an attack by the animals in an area of the country where bears have increasingly encroached on the human population in recent years,” according to a social media post. The Bear Attack Got People Talking Seeing the bear running up to the man in broad daylight caused mixed reactions online. Some thought the video was funny. Like this person who wrote. “Hahah. It’s kind of like he was playing. It was really scary, but once he pushed the guy, he just ran away. I think the guy wearing all black made the bear think he was a pal.” Others think the humans are the problem and the bear wouldn’t attack if we hadn’t moved into their home. “My favorite part is the statement saying ‘bears have increasingly encroached on human populations,’” a comment reads. “I assure you….that is backwards.” “Don’t they mean ‘where the humans have encroached on the bear population?’” Another person agreed. Then, of course, people couldn’t help but give a bit of advice to follow in the event of a bear attack. “Don’t ever run! Throw your arms up and out to appear bigger and yell. Running makes them chase and attack,” a follower suggested. This story’s featured image can be found here