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The ultimate Upside: a whole extra day for everyone

It’s not every day that you get a whole extra 24 hours, free, gratis, to fiddle around with. So what will you do with your 2020 Leap Day?

Some people will have to work on 29 February, alas, and some will be weighed down by the many and varied burdens of life that tend to crowd in on a promising, pristine Saturday. Some will certainly argue that this is not a free day at all, just a trick of the calendar.

But for many, the Leap Day is a cause for celebration, for weddings, proposals, quadrennial birthday parties and arbitrary antics, a day to remind us of our cosmological geodesy, our astronomical absurdity.

We asked readers how they would make the most of the extra day in February. (Why February? Honestly, I’d prefer an extra day in June.) Their answers made for a chirpy Upside piece.

But don’t let it stop there. Tell us what you did with your 29th and we’ll round up the best next week.

Elsewhere, this week’s pipeline was as diverse as any we’ve ever had:

• The judge who liberates prisoners forgotten in jail. Three-minute read.

• The 100-year life: how to prolong a healthy mind. Four-minute read (but it might save you years).

• Scrap GDP and measure real life, rich nations told. Two-minute read.

• £3,000 for dumping your car. One-minute read.

What we liked

This piece about climate adaptation in Mexico City seems to hold lessons for other big cities on the frontline of climate change.

While this Irish Times piece was a glorious tribute to the humble library. We were also quite taken with the ethereal art of fog-catching …

What we heard

Upside journalism doesn’t just report better, it creates better too. Kim Webster got in touch from Mary’s Meals to let us know of the impact of the article we ran in January about funding school lunches for Liberian kids.

She said traffic to the website had increased, as had donations to their regional office.

We’re confident, given the incredible exposure you gave the feature, that this piece will have gone a long way in helping to raise awareness of our work. Our charity was founded in Scotland, and we are keen to grow our movement in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The article did that and will ultimately, in time, allow us to feed more hungry children with life-changing daily meals in school.

Readers can make a donation to Mary’s Meals here.

Meanwhile, Adrian Lovett wrote in from York:

Thanks for the brilliant article by Phoebe Watson on 12 February. I would be really glad if you could see whether you could come up with another article looking at the work of Walter Jehne and the Healthy Soils Australia alliance, looking at the urgent need to rebuild the planet’s hydrological cycle by building the soil’s carbon sponge. I have just been watching a lengthy but very well worth watching video of him explaining his ideas.

And finally we heard from Erik Kulakauskas in Australia:

I have read your article on Finland and how the country is addressing “fake news, alternative facts, whatever” via education. Several very salient points (and I have taught at under- and postgraduate levels at two prominent Australian universities and one not so prominent, as well as senior manager experience in the corporate arena) emerge from that article.

• Encourage students to be critical not cynical.

• No Wikipedia.

• Hunt down at least three sources for the topic under examination.

Hopefully we will be smart enough here in Australia to adopt this model.

Where was the Upside?

In Scotland, where the parliament passed a bill to provide free menstrual products to people who need them.

And also at One World Media’s masterclass on solutions journalism on Thursday night where the Upside joined the estimable Jodie Jackson and Estelle Doyle of the BBC’s Crossing Divides series to sketch out the future of optimistic news. The short answer: we need to spread the word, so tell your friends.

That’s all folks. Don’t forget to tell us about your 29 February. Think you know someone who needs a bit of Upside in their life? Simply forward this email with this link to sign up.