The Inconvenience Store

0:03 Hey there, I'm Johnny Mac with five good news stories. Congratulations to the bicycles. The bicycles have defeated the cars in Scotland on Leith Walk, which is one of Edinburgh's longest streets. Recently, between 8 and 9 in the morning, bicycles outnumbered cars on Leith Walk. It had never happened before in the history of the street or in the history of Edinburgh's traffic data. Cycling Scotland documented all this as part of a 48-hour nationwide traffic survey. Total bicycle journeys across Scotland during those two days hit 67,000, a 25% increase year over year. The surge was driven by Edinburgh's e-bike rental program, which has generated one and a half million trips since launching last fall. Kirstie was one of the visitors and said, I found that cycling is much quicker than driving, so that's cut a massive proportion of time for my visits. It gives you the headspace you need and allows me time to reflect and think about how I can best support the families of my caseload.

0:58 She works for a national health service. And add, seeing all the people cycling on the cycle lane is amazing. I feel much safer on the cycle lane when I know that the area is for people on bikes and there are no cars. In Northern California, two years ago, they demolished four dams on the Klamath River. It was the largest dam removal project in American history. The reason they wanted to restore a river that had been blocked for nearly a century, because the salmon that once migrated up the Klamath were largely gone. This fall, more than 20,000 Chinook salmon migrated upstream. 20,000 through waters that their ancestors used to know, now freeing flow again. Within the first year of the restored flow, the salmon repopulated approximately 90% of the range of pre-dam salmon. Pretty good. All right, David Rush. That's the guy that likes to break Guinness World Records. He's back. His latest, fastest time to flip 10 cups. You know, the cup flipping challenge that everybody was doing a couple years ago. You got to balance a cup on the edge of a table, apply a quick downward motion, and the cup lands face down. He did 10 in a row as fast as possible. He thought he'd break this record quickly. It took him five months.

2:01 The problem, he discovered, was mathematical. His cup-flipping success rate hovered around 50% per flip. To do 10 in a row at that rate happens once every thousand attempts. So he practiced, practiced, practiced. In April, he succeeded. 10 cups flipped, 6.63 seconds. The previous record was 7.59 seconds. In Seattle, in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, there used to be a 7-Eleven, but now there's an inconvenience store. I love this. Artists Lilia and Marianne, they had previously created an Ikea parody store called Store, S-T-O-R, with an umlaut or something over the O. They transformed the former 7-Eleven into an interactive art exhibition with a thesis right there in the mission statement, quote, your favorite corner store reimagined entirely by artists. Art is inherently inconvenient. In a society that rewards efficiency and mass production, artists do things the hard way. Here's how it works.

2:53 There are 14 departments. Items range from $ 1 to $ 10, 000. Among the inventory, shoulder bags sewn from old Cheetos and Lays packaging, some beeswax egg candles, a different candle that doubles as a yardstick, and keychains designed to look like nerds, gummy clusters, Oreos, and goldfish crackers. You can even get a landline iPhone that plays U2 when you answer it. And you can also buy pre-tangled USB cords. I've got enough of those. Thank you. They explained, so we want to make purchasing art really approachable because it's so important as an artist to be able to sell your work if you want to keep making art sustainably. The inconvenience stores open on the weekends from noon to four. In Norton, Kansas, the school district was carrying about $ 6, 000 in unpaid lunch debt.

3:37 That was the accumulated balance of children who had eaten lunch, but whose accounts ran short. This happens a lot in American schools and often ends with notes sent home or students getting a little less than a full meal. Then nearly 30 inmates at the Norton Correctional Facility, which is in the same area, pulled money from their own accounts and sent $ 4, 267 to the school district. The men noted they'd gone hungry growing up and they didn't want the kids in their town to have the same experience. That's pretty amazing. You know, I don't know how much money that the guys at the Norton Correctional Facility make, but, you know, pulling their money to put together 30 guys, putting together $ 4, 000, that is not nothing. And those are your five good news stories for today. Have an awesome day.