Welcome to first
Welcome to the round up!
A place to find some quick news and pop culture summaries that are easy to digest. From entertainment to politics to something, ANYTHING that is happy to finish us off. Happy articles are not my first choice, I go for the crime-y-ist most salacious stories. But a person can only read so many of those before it starts to affect your every day life. So at the end of each round up you will find one heartwarming, joyous, adorable, or just random story to balance the regular newsroom. I can’t believe you have even read it this far thank you so much! Now let’s get to it.
Entertainment News
An All Female “Crew” Go Into Space And Are Mocked Online
Katy Perry and Oprah's best friend went to space for 11 minutes. It was the first all-female spaceflight… since 1963. So not the first, women have been to space before, women have worked at NASA since the early 1960s in all capacities. But this is historical as the first all female group to make and spend their hard earned money to go into space and that is an accomplishment. While it is ridiculous the various women's movements have tried to claim this trip as a great achievement for women- it is a great achievement for science and tourism. The first computers, the first cell phones, the first cars, were all unobtainable to the common man (or woman) at first- but overtime through market competition and technological advancements they became commonplace. The same could be true for trips to space and that is something noteworthy indeed.
Medical News
What We Know And Don’t Know About ADHD
The New York Times dropped a bomb of an article politely saying that we know nothing definitively about ADHD and maybe are over medicating our kids. Whoops.
From 2012-2022 the prescriptions for drugs to combat ADHD like Adderall and Ritalin have increased by 58%. That's a lot of people taking drugs for something that we now think is only part biological and part environmental. Take a kid out of their unstable household who doesn’t have a bedtime, a healthy meal, regular exercise, or mentally stable parents and maybe they won't need to be put on medication to sit through class. Maybe they really have intense neurological issues but who will ever know if there's an easy fix with a label of ADHD and a drug to calm him down. By no means is this a call for kids to be removed from the home- but a warning that everything around us affects us. Adults can get stuck in this too. Everyone loves a good label and oftentimes life can feel so overwhelming, the blame game can help ease some relief.
Now back to the article, most scientists working on the topic “agreed that the condition is produced by some combination of biological and environmental forces, though there is little consensus about the relative importance of each.” So basically we don’t know. Just another example of how doctors are trained. They hear a list of symptoms and they treat them - obviously not all doctors are like this, but when the average patient spends 5.2 minutes with a doctor is that really enough time to go through their daily life and address a root problem? Or is it just enough to prescribe them with something that will give them immediate results.
The most encouraging quote from this article came from a study by the M.T.A. group that followed children through young adulthood and noticed how within a year the vast majority would have ADHD symptoms come and go throughout their life. “Rather than trying to treat and resolve the biology, we should be focusing on building environments that improve outcomes and mental health.” Now that is something we can all get behind.
Read the full article here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/magazine/adhd-medication-treatment-research.html
Time For Something Happy
A Boy Put A Message In A Bottle And Actually Received A Response
A 4 year old boy sent a message in a bottle, after it traveled over 4,000 miles he got a reply! The father suggested there was only a 3% chance it would survive and make it to anyone let alone someone who would read it and respond.
The bottle island hopped in the Caribbean from Barbados and ended up in St. Lucia. Now the 4 year old has one of the most unlikely pen pal.
Read their sweet interaction here:
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/four-year-old-is-ecstatic-to-receive-reply-to-his-message-in-a-bottle-and-wonders-if-he-has-to-send-another-bottle-back/
