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Weekly News Recap: May 14, 2021

Vincent Duckworth

Weekly News Recap: May 14, 2021

“Disaster Girl” Credit...Dave Roth

I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100. -- Woody Allen

SEASON 3 OF FUNDRAISING ASK ANYTHING

We are midway through our third season of our popular Fundraising Ask Anything Zoom Chats. Our next session will take place on May 21: What happens when your new normal is 65% of what it used to be? Or how about when something that was not possible pre-pandemic is now suddenly very much available? During times of calamity, there is also opportunity. Partnerships, mergers, and all manner of inventive and creative associations are being discussed and announced. Join us as we host a panel of experts who have or will be doing both. Mergers, co-habitation, and natural bedfellows: Fierce collaboration in the time of COVID.

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SOME GOOD NEWS

  • A woman gave birth prematurely on a flight to Hawaii. Luckily, 3 NICU nurses and a doctor were on board to help (CNN) "There were a lot of surprises on a flight to Hawaii last week, starting with the birth of a baby to a woman who didn't know she was pregnant."

  • Over a 50-year career, Edmonton nurse found her calling (and her husband) at the hospital (CBC) EDMONTON STORY "For the past five decades, Liz Baril has worked as a nurse at the University of Alberta Hospital. Until now. The 72-year-old officially retired as of Monday, a difficult decision to make as the hospital deals with the COVID-19 pandemic on top of its usual patient care. [...] In the early 1970s, she met her late husband Henry Baril at the hospital when he was a resident and patient in the polio ward. They met while some of the nurses watched the Academy Awards on the ward's colour TV. Eventually, he would live with Liz. When she worked a shift, Henry — who was paralyzed and used an electric wheelchair — would also go to the hospital to receive care."

  • SpaceX Successfully Lands Prototype of Mars and Moon Rocket After Test Flight (New York Times) #SpaceIsHard Congrats to all. "A prototype of a spacecraft that SpaceX hopes one day to send to the moon and Mars touched down in one piece on a landing pad in South Texas on Wednesday. It was the fifth high-altitude flight test of Starship, a vehicle that in several earlier test flights exploded either during or after landing."

  • Astronauts with disabilities can apply to Europe's space agency for 1st time (CBC) This is an important move forward. Nice work ESA! "Since humans began to have a presence in space, only about 550 people have been in orbit around our planet. That's because astronauts are considered the elite: well-educated, in peak physical health and skilled. There has been, however, a group who have been left out of the running, no matter how well-educated, fit or skilled they are: people with physical disabilities."

  • Listen to the Ingenuity helicopter humming through the Martian air (CBC) "First came the amazing pictures, then the video. Now NASA is sharing sounds of its little helicopter humming through the thin Martian air. [...] The low hum from the helicopter blades spinning at more than 2,500 revolutions per minute is barely audible. It almost sounds like a low-pitched, far-away mosquito or other flying insect. That's because the 1.8-kilogram helicopter was more than 80 metres from the microphone on the Perseverance rover. The rumbling wind gusts also obscured the chopper's sound."

  • The World Knows Her as ‘Disaster Girl.’ She Just Made $500,000 Off the Meme. (New York Times) #Wow "In the years since Dave Roth, Zoë’s father, entered it in a photo contest in 2007 and won, the image has been edited into various disasters from history, with Ms. Roth grinning impishly as a meteor wipes out the dinosaurs or the Titanic sinks in the distance. Now, after more than a decade of having her image endlessly repurposed as a vital part of meme canon, Ms. Roth has sold the original copy of her meme as a nonfungible token, or NFT, for nearly half a million dollars."

TOP TEN STORIES OF THE WEEK

  1. Donation gives training funds and mental health supports for local nurses (Guelph Today) GUELPH STORY Nice move RBC. Thanks! "Donations and free mental health supports have been given to hospitals in Guelph and Wellington County ahead of National Nursing Week. St. Joseph’s Health Care Guelph, Palmerston District Hospital and Groves Memorial Hospital are each receiving $10,000 from the RBC Foundation."

  2. Calgary Economic Development CEO Mary Moran announces immediate retirement (CBC) CALGARY STORY "Mary Moran announced Wednesday that she is retiring from her role as Calgary Economic Development CEO, effective immediately. Moran has served in the role for six years, and has spent more than a decade with the organization."

  3. With camps, summer programs awaiting the go-ahead, what are kids in for this summer? (CBC) CANADIAN STORY "Growing up in Quebec, Gaëtane Verna attended summer camps from the age of eight, eventually becoming a counsellor and section leader at Camp Kanawana, a venerable YMCA camp in the Laurentians, when she got older. Like many former campers, Verna has now raised two daughters who also adore their summer visits there, where she says they've learned independence, leadership skills and camaraderie. 'I always felt that camp was a really great place to work, to learn to work as a team, to meet new people, to be away from your parents, to be in nature [and] to function in a group setting that is different from school, that is different from home,' said [Verna.]"

  4. Goldman Sachs executive quits after making millions from Dogecoin (Guardian) My son invested early and just made a $275% profit. "A senior manager at Goldman Sachs in London has quit the US investment bank after making millions from investing in Dogecoin, the joke crypto asset which has risen by more than 1,000% in value this year."

  5. How Bill and Melinda Gates Have Spent Their Billions Over the Past 20 Years (Observer) "Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda Gates, are ending their 27-year-long marriage. But their shared commitment to the family foundation, also a decades-long establishment, will live on, the couple said."

  6. Elon Musk shows humility, hubris in Saturday Night Live appearance (CBC) Oh Elon. :-) "Elon Musk showed a combination of humility and hubris as he opened his highly anticipated hosting gig on Saturday Night Live. The Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder opened his monologue by mocking his monotonal speaking style, saying no one can tell when he's joking. 'It's great to be hosting Saturday Night Live and I really mean it,' said Musk standing on the stage in a black suit with a black T-shirt. 'Sometimes after I say something, I have to say that I mean it.'"

  7. 11 sculpture gardens across Canada where you can view art while taking a walk (Globe and Mail) CANADIAN STORY #Lovely "During the pandemic, when just about every pleasurable pastime has been put on hold, hiking has become a go-to for escaping the doldrums of our lockdown lives. For those who have already trekked all the parks in their area and are looking for an alternative to straight-up nature trails, Canada offers a number of sculpture gardens replete with innovative, eye-catching art that’s often free to view."

  8. Ian MacQuillin: It’s time we decoupled donor-centricity from relationship fundraising (Third Sector) An important and thought-provoking article. Thanks for this Ian. "The [community-centric fundraising] article continues that fundraisers should stop seeing donors as means to a financial end and instead build different relationships that create change, while encouraging donors to work with charities because donors need charities (not the other way round) – to which many self-styled relationship fundraisers will say: 'Well, duh, obviously.'"

  9. Musings on the digital economy and what it means for prospect research (Helen Brown Group) Thanks to ViTreo's head of research, Ken Kempcke, for this one. "I also discovered that people are breeding and selling digital horses on the NFT market – one sold for $125,000 – and they’re participating in digital races. I had to check the date on the article to make sure it wasn’t an April Fools’ joke. If this isn’t a sign that people have more money than they know what to do with, I don’t know what is."

  10. Report #2 of the Advisory Committee on the Charitable Sector - April 2021 (Government of Canada) CANADIAN STORY This is an important report particularly with respect to its recommendations around the annual charitable return, the T3010. I recommend giving it a read. ViTreo's cofounder and senior counsel, Andrea McManus is a member of this committee. "The Advisory Committee on the Charitable Sector (the ACCS) was established and began its work in late 2019 as a permanent consultative forum for promoting meaningful dialogue between the charitable sector and the Government of Canada, in particular the Canada Revenue Agency (the CRA) and the Department of Finance Canada. The objectives of the ACCS are to advance emerging issues relating to charities, and to ensure that the regulatory environment supports the important work that charities do."

SEVEN LIFE AND CAREER HACKS

  1. How to Increase Your Ability to Tolerate Uncertainty (Better Humans) In these times especially, a great set of coping behaviours and activities.

  2. How to Shut Out Distractions in an Era of Constant Solicitation (Better Humans) I particularly love the task classifications: Painful, Low-value, Exciting, and Everything Else.

  3. A Posture-Perfecting Exercise You May Not Have Tried (Anna Maltby) #TwoWordsOneMuscle ...serratus anterior.

  4. Why Short-Term Solitude Makes You a Better Thinker (Forge) It is one of the reasons my daily walks have been so important, especially during the pandemic.

  5. Here’s How a 30 Minute Run Impacts Your Brain (In Fitness And In Health) I have not run in months. Time to get back to it...for this and many other reasons.

  6. The 15 Most Productive Habits You Can Have (Lukas Schwekendiek) Sometimes a great list is just what you need. This is a great list.

  7. The Line Between Vulnerability and Oversharing (Forge) I have rarely crossed the line but I worry about it all the time. And this worry is worse for women.

TOP THREE GIFTS OF THE WEEK

  1. Lambton College receives $2M for naming rights to athletics complex (Blackburn News) SARNIA STORY "Lambton College has received a $2 million sponsorship from Cestar Group for its new athletics and fitness complex.The donation will be used primarily to fund increased athletic and recreational offerings at the college and includes corporate naming rights."

  2. Quincy's Hale family donates $50 million to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (Patriot Ledger) #Boom "Granite Telecommunications CEO and Quincy native Rob Hale Jr., his mother Judith Hale and his wife Karen have pledged a $50 million donation to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, one of the largest single gifts the institute has ever received."

  3. A crypto billionaire donated $1 billion to India. Make sure you include an asterisk. (Vox) "A cryptocurrency billionaire seems to have made one of the largest contributions to save lives in India from the coronavirus pandemic: Over $1 billion. But as there so often is in the world of cryptocurrency, there is a massive catch. [...] Here’s what happened: Vitalik Buterin, the 27-year-old programmer who founded the cryptocurrency Ethereum, disclosed on Wednesday that he had contributed about $1.5 billion worth of coins to nonprofit organizations, some of which came in his own (and relatively stable) Ether. But $1 billion of that came in a donation of a more … unusual type. He donated it in the form of a meme digital currency called Shiba Inu coin — yes, after the dog breed — that Buterin was gifted for free. (Like the popular Dogecoin, which also features the dog as its mascot, the Shiba Inu coin has much hype but questionable underlying value.) But then, as is prone to happen in the topsy-turvy world of meme assets, Shiba coin proceeded to tank in value immediately after Buterin’s donation was disclosed — perhaps because buyers and sellers expected the billionaire to soon liquidate his holdings."

LAST WEEK'S MOST POPULAR STORIES

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