The Ragged Optimist 55

Hope like static before a thunderstorm

There’s a glorious hazy light outside the studio today, as I write this. Margate Sands are looking especially pale in the sun - they’re really not golden today, but whiter, faded in the light. Mystery Island is out there somewhere in the blur of the horizon. The sound of people on the beach and families in the park across the road from the studio is strangely muted. There’s a sense of expectation: last weekend was incredibly busy, and a good weekend early in the season is usually a sign of a busy summer. The town’s charged with hope, and it feels like the static before a thunderstorm.

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1. Let’s start with Bill Gates giving away $200 billion by 2045. Gates said he believed the money would help eradicate diseases like polio and malaria, end preventable deaths among women and children, and reduce global poverty. "The picture of the world's richest man killing the world's poorest children is not a pretty one," Gates said about Elon Musk, while announcing the plan.

2. In the game Neon Hope, you have the chance to fight back against the grim cyberpunk vision of the future. “You can still change the world for the better. Do not lose hope!”

3. Books help to brace the lightweight frame of La Libreria, a demountable 24-metre-long library pavilion. La Liberia is unanchored to the ground, stabilised by a mix of ballasts and books, encased in wooden shelving that runs the length of the library.

4. Tin ingots recovered from four prehistoric Mediterranean shipwrecks off the coasts of Israel and southern France came from south-west Britain. These rich and accessible ores played a fundamental role in the transition from copper to full tin-bronze across Europe and the Mediterranean during the second millennium BC. 

5. Roman writers found the way Celtic women led their tribes remarkable, but historians have often assumed this was just the Romans claiming the Brits were uncivilised. Analysis of 57 ancient genomes from Durotrigian burial sites found an extended kin group centred around a single maternal lineage - women were the bosses after all.

6. A cross-border conservation project to create red squirrel strongholds has been awarded nearly £5m of funding. About fifty conservation groups are involved.

7. And at the other end of the scale (the scale runs from ‘small, fluffy things’ to ‘huge things with horns’), Elk could return to the UK after 3000 years. The Wildlife Trusts plan to reintroduce the keystone species into Britain’s landscapes.

8. Researchers have found that captive-bred axolotls can survive in the wild. Axolotls are critically endangered in the wild due to human interference and pollution in their habitats, so this might be the news that saves them.

9. Make Good design and make things for people with special needs, disabilities, and chronic conditions. They recently showed off a 3D printed wheelchair for children. Their work is brilliant.

10. Iolo Williams has some great footage of a wild beaver on the River Dyfi near Machynlleth.