June 1, 2025

Woodpecker Attacks Cars!

Show Notes
Transcript

A Massachusetts town deals with a woodpecker damaging vehicles. Teachers Grace and Kate from Vermont embark on a 300-mile bike ride to support immigrant students and raise funds for classroom essentials. Cigarro National Park expands by nearly 50 acres, enhancing connectivity with Sweetwater Preserve. A letter from a Titanic passenger, auctioned for $399,000, offers a historical glimpse days before the disaster. Lastly, a new technology in San Francisco enables proof of personhood through iris scanning, raising privacy and security questions.

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5 Good News Stories is a daily podcast with five positive, uplifting news stories to brighten your day. New episodes every day. Follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Part of the Caloroga Shark Media network

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Callaroga Shark Media. Hey there, Johnny Mack with five good

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news stories. A Massachusetts town is under siege from a woodpecker.

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The woodpecker is being blamed for damaging more than twenty

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five vehicles in the area. Janelle was able to capture

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the woodpecker doing the naughty things in a photo. The

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woodpecker was attacking a vehicle with its jackhammer like beak.

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Janelle went on social media and said, we have a

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vandal in the neighborhood. He was described as eighteen to

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twenty four inches tall, wearing black and white with a

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red hat. She says she knows of at least twenty

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five vehicles that have been targeted by this woodpecker, who

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usually hits the side view mirrors or windows. She told

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NBC the woodpecker showed up and landed on the windshield

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wipers of the RV in our yard and was looking

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at its reflection. We were like, you know what, I

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bet that's the woodpecker that damaged the mirrors as well.

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Good guess. Max is the co director of the Ecology

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and Evolutionary by Allergy graduate program at Brown University. He said,

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now they're a ferocious bird and they're really strong. It's

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the biomechanical equivalent of a hammer. If they're seeing the

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reflections of themselves, they don't understand it's a reflection. They

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think it's a competitor. No word on if they've caught

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the woodpecker yet. In Vermont, teachers biked across the state.

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They were advocating for immigrant students and said we couldn't

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sit and do nothing. Two first year teachers, Grace and Kate,

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founded Pedals from Pencils. Their goal to bike three hundred miles,

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gaining thirty thousand feet of elevation. Wow, that's a lot,

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while raising funds to buy essential supplies for their classrooms

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and advocate for migrant students. Their goal to reach five

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hundred dollars each to fund their next year of classroom

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essentials like notebooks, pencil snacks, hygiene items, and more. In

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a joint statement, they set of politicians learn they can

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exclude kids from public schools without public backlash. They'll keep

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going citing funding, limiting access, and dismantling public education piece

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by piece, and they won't stop one pedal out of time.

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We're pushing back against silence, exclusion, and the steady dismantling

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of the public education system. Good news, Cigarro National Park

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is expanding by nearly fifty acres due to a land acquisition.

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The Trust for Public Land acquired two properties in the

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foothill of the Tucson Mountains. It'll expand the National Park

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by forty seven acres. The expansion also improves connectivity between

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the park and Sweetwater Preserve. That is a pretty part

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of the country if you've ever been out there. I

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love the Southwest, just beautiful. Not really sure this is

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good news, but it's interesting. Days before the Titanic struck

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an Iceberg, one of the first class passengers, Colonel Archibald Greasy,

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described the vessel in a letter which was just sold

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at an auction for three hundred and ninety nine thousand dollars.

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The letter says, it's a fine ship, but I shall

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await my journeys in before I passed judgment on her. Wow,

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so we all know what happened with the Titanic. Colonel

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Greasy was on the top deck of the ship, gripping

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a railing as a plunge into the sea. He said

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he was swirled on under water before he got to

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a raft where he spent hours floating on icy waters

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before being rescued. The letter was dated April tenth, the

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day the ship set sail from Southampton, England. On April twelfth,

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that was postmarked in London. It showed up at the

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Waldorf Hotel on April twelfth. The Titanic struck the Iceberg

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just before midnight on April fourteenth, sank on April fifteenth.

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Colonel Gracie passed away eight months after the disaster, of

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quote complications from diseases, but according to The New York Times,

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as doctors and family said, he'd never fully recovered from

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the shock of the Titanic disaster. If you would like

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appreciate you supporting the show, and please understand that's how

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I make a living. Appreciate you listening. In San Francisco,

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Clement walked into a store in the Union Square shopping

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district steered into a white ORB. The ORB scanned his

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iris to generate his proof of personhood. A new company

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out there is saying there's going to be more and

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more AI agents online, and sometimes you want to prove

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that you're a human, Clement said, I think at some

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point to vote will need this. How's it work? The

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ORB takes images of your face and then compares the

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eyes to a selfie taking the app on your phone.

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Then your ID is encrypted with an anonymized cryptographic key,

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and as we all know, on the internet, nothing ever

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gets hacked, no data ever escapes. Lori Cranor, directs the

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pie Lab Security and Privacy Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

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Laurie is not sure about any of this and says,

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now I have features of the scan of my iris

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encrypted and stored on my phone, but if someone else

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gets access to my phone, or a robot to over

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my phone. A robot takes over your phone, how interesting?

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Or if a robot takes over my phone, does that

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mean they can demonstrate that they're human or maybe even

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me that I don't know, but I want to know

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more about the robots that are stealing phones. I'm intrigued

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by that. And those are your five good news stories

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for today. You have an awesome one.