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Hello. Today is Monday. The last time we said that, this newsletter began with a bang of destruction and wall-to-wall crisis in Afghanistan, Haiti, the United States, and around the world. Each continues, and the fires have not abated. The pandemic stretches on. So, um, let’s dip out of the news cycle for a minute for the daily dose of good “news.”

Monday gets a bad rap, largely deserved, but it’s not categorically bad, as NBC News reported under the headline “Sorry, There’s No Such Thing as a Case of the Mondays.” The article’s controversial claim: The case-of-Mondays line from Office Space “embodies what most of us believe about Mondays: that it is the worst day of the week. [But] it turns out that while we feel happiest on Saturdays and Sundays, most of us don’t feel much bluer on Mondays than we do on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.” The article cited a Gallup survey by a team of researchers, led by a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science, who authored a study of mood patterns by days of the week in the Journal of Positive Psychology.

More than 340,000 respondents ranked moods by day, and most said Monday was a “bit blue,” but here’s the kicker: They said so in hindsight and differently in real time. Respondents “don’t experience Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday as different in real time, and when you ask them in the past there is a discrepancy,” the researchers found. “It probably has to do with how people judge things in the past.”

It all depends on who, where, and how you are, but I’m game to grant the comparative claim that Mondays get judged through the same prism of priors other days do, and shaped accordingly. Here, if you need them, are three good facts about Mondays:

1. Monday is the only day of the week that forms the anagram of a single word, and a bracing one: “dynamo.” Look it up; second definition.

2. Monday is the only day of the week named after the moon: MĹŤnandæg, Old English, or MĹŤnandæg, Middle English, or the Latin dies lunae, for “day of the moon.” And without the moon, this planet would spin off its axis. The moon has better claim to a day than the god of war Thor, whose grip on Thursday taints his more than the moon’s.

3. YouTube was born on a Monday (February 14, 2005). And where else can you find this recharge?

Happy Monday. Or not. Moods welcome at recharge@motherjones.com.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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