It wasn’t all bad
■ In 1958, Mort Block wrote a love song for Susan, his future wife, while serving as a petty officer in the Navy. Some 60 years later, Block pulled the lyrics from a drawer and his grandson, Matt, urged him share the song online. The 82-year-old agreed to record and release “My Love” with a group of professional jazz musicians and vocalist Benny Benack III.The ballad has now gone viral on TikTok. “Susan and I couldn’t believe it when we listened to it for the first time,” Block said. “It took us right back to the day we met.”
■ In his free time during the pandemic, high-schooler Benjamin Choi managed to develop a mind-controlled prosthetic arm from scratch in his parents’ basement.The 17-year-old Virginian built prototypes with his sister’s $75 3D printer, connecting tiny components with bolts and rubber bands. While most brain-powered prosthetics require invasive surgery, Choi’s use a pair of electrodes and a custom algorithm to move the arm with a combination of brain signals and head movements. Choi’s invention, which recently earned him funding from MIT, costs just $300 to produce. “Maybe this sounds a little cliché,” Choi said. “But you can really help people, I think, through engineering, through technology.”
■ Last month, hundreds of conservationists gathered near a 10-lane California highway to break ground on what will soon become the largest wildlife crossing in the world. The group SaveLACougars was inspired by the 20-mile odyssey of a 140-pound mountain lion discovered in the hills around Griffith Park. They helped raise $30 million for the crossing, which will allow the dozen mountain lions in the region to avoid an “extinction vortex”—when low genetic diversity causes mutations in a population, imperiling its survival.The bridge will also help save coyotes, skunks, badgers, and lizards.