🤖 From pesticides to influencer pets: 10 things the future will drag us for

My son already thinks I’m cringe, I can’t imagine what his grandkids will think of me.

It wasn’t that long ago we stopped squeezing the goo out of whales to light our homes. Now we look back and think, that was nuts.

A hundred years from now, will they say the same about us? “Can you believe they burned dinosaur goo to move their cars?” Spoiler: yes, they will.

In this story by Mark Wales, Redditors listed ten everyday things our great-grandkids will absolutely roast us for. “Like, wait, grandma used to drive her own car?”

I’m calling it now. Someday, you’ll remember Greg laid it all out in a tiny article footer: First, the insurance companies will realize that the robots are safe. Then they’ll realize they’re safer. They’ll offer discounts for self-driving cars. Then it’ll shift. They’ll start charging extra for human-driven cars. People will get past their fear and follow their wallets, and boom… a self-driving world. 

Image of the day

And what did we learn?

How long does it take GOOD readers to unwind after work? Not long, apparently. Over 35% of you switch out of work mode like lightbulbs. No word on whether this is with or without our tips for mode switching after a long day.

• I switch off like a light bulb. Peace out, Boss Man (35.6%)

• Takes about an hour on a good day (26.7%)

• I get an hour or two before bed if I stay up late enough (22.2%)

• I'll let you know if it ever happens (15.6%)
  

😼* Francine the cat wandered onto a delivery truck and into a crisis

If you asked Francine, I think she’d say she was just on vacation.

This lost cat story has highs and Lowe’s. (ahem) Francine is the internet-famous feline who has lived in a Lowe’s store in Richmond, Virginia for eight years. She’s beloved. She’s adorable. She’s… gone? That was the revelation one morning in early September.

Francine had last been seen wandering into a delivery truck bound for a distribution center over 80 miles to the south.

What followed was a cat-hunt of massive scale. Was a pile of cash, a few humane traps, enough tech to televise a Super Bowl, and over 30,000 Instagram followers enough to bring this story to a purr-fect ending? I mean, this is the Daily GOOD so you can probably guess, but click through to this story by Ryan Reed to get the whole story and see a video of Francine with her favorite humans.

* - On my device, there are 12 cat emojis and only four dog emojis. Scandal.

🧥 The secret art of thrifting like a pro

Prime Day is for the weak. Real ones thrift.

You’d be forgiven for feeling that shopping at a thrift store is thrifty enough. But according to this story by Erik Barnes, if that’s where your thrifting ends, you’re leaving money on the second-hand table. He’s gathered insider advice from the people who live and breathe gently used treasures, the store employees themselves.

From showing up in biker shorts (it’s not what you think) to timing your post-holiday hauls just right, these six smart moves can help you score the best finds for the least cash.

What was happening this week, 443 years ago? Nothing at all! One day, it was October 4th, the next, it was October 15th. More than 3% of people were hosed out of their birthday presents and all because the drift in the solar year hadn’t been accounted for in the old Julian calendar. Holidays were landing whole weeks away from when they were meant to be. So the powers that be ginned up a new calendar, skipped ten days, and we’ve been doing things the same way since.

I say if we’ve done it before, we can do it again! Hear me out, 13 months, exactly four weeks each, one unnumbered holiday day at the end of the year to get to 365. And the best part (to my OCD writer brain)? The “bers” go back to where they should be. SEPTember, OCTober, NOvember, DECember, become months 7, 8, 9, and 10, respectively. Add 10k years to the year number so we can stop using negative numbers for BC and you’d have a coherent calendar that covers all of human history!

Patent pending, Yours Truly, this December 1st, 12,025 - Daily GOOD New Calendar.

(With nods to Kurzgesagt and the International Fixed Calendar.)

A GOOD Throwback is a new segment we’re trying, in which we explore things we might have covered if we’d been around at the time.

Do you have something GOOD to share?

We’re always on the lookout for uplifting, enlightening, and engaging content to share with readers like you. If you have something you think should be featured in the Daily GOOD, let me know!

💬 From the group text…

These are the essential questions of our day! Clearly, T. rex couldn’t scratch its tail with those tiny arms, but could it bite its tail to get some relief?

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