Welcome to the Good News Roundup for November 4, 2024.
Love Is In The Air
One for the romantics to get things underway this week; deep in the Great Southern in Western Australia a loved-up grain farmer has dedicated 40 hectares of his land to a marriage proposal for the beautiful Sharnee.
31 year old Mitchell Thomson used a programmable sprayer to plot out the words “Will U Marry Me” before heading to the paddock, completing the spraying and waiting for the giant proposal to appear.
Mitchell’s planning almost came to nothing when Sharnee showed little interest in checking out the new drone he was using to show her the grand surprise.
But after some convincing she finally took a look and was able to see for herself what is visible from the air for many kilometres.
Google Translate’s first Indigenous Language
An arguably overdue sign of progress in Canada this week, with the first Canadian indigenous language being added to Google Translate.
Inuktut includes dialects spoken in Canada, Greenland and Alaska, and is the most widely spoken of the many Indigenous languages in the area.
Google worked with cultural representatives to ensure their model was an accurate representation of the language, given many of the complexities are not recognised by Google’s AI analysis.
Chopin Waltz Discovered in Museum Vault
Nearly 200 years after the death of Frédéric Chopin, a museum curator in New York has uncovered a piece of music believed to be “fresh” material from the Polish composer.
Experts used infrared and ultraviolet light to test the paper and ink, and analysed the handwriting and musical style, to be confident the score was in fact from Chopin.
The waltz is said to be slightly different to his wider work and runs under a minute.
It’s incredible what you can find in a museum vault!
Airline Developing Onboard Wheelchair Spaces
There could be some good news on the horizon for travellers in wheelchairs, who have always been forced to get out of their chairs and into a seat on flights.
In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration and Delta Air Lines have confirmed they are working to make it possible for people who rely on wheelchairs to fly seated in their own equipment.
It would be a gamechanger for some, and something disability advocates have been campaigning for, for some time.
