Please pardon this brief interruption to your normal programming of doom and gloom.

Blah, blah, blah doom, gloom.

Trump, shooting, rape. 

Guns, racism, hate.

These are all dire issues that demand action now … but they're also products of the well-known media adage "bad news sells."

Fear, hate and disgusting acts of inhumanity catch attention and cause outrage, neither of which are bad things when people need to unite for change. But the thing is, the more we're inundated with extreme negativity in the news, the more immune to it we become. And the more immune to it we are, the less capable we are of making the changes that'll allow us to live in a more positive, productive society. Without a little bit of light in the darkness, apocalyptic hellscapes like ours become normalized and we accept the injustices that pervade.

Enough of that.

Every now and then, we need to be reminded that there is still some good left in this world. There is still love, miracles, laughter, peace, understanding and hope. In some small corners of the planet, the world as we know is actually exactly as you'd like it to be.

So, to jog your memory and remind you that we live on an actual planet, not a nightmarish inferno below, here are some uplifting facts about the bright side of life, if only to distract you, for a fleeting, happy moment, from your certain and impending demise.

1. Penguins mate for life, and they propose by giving their prospective mate a pebble.

2. A 6-year-old applied for a job at a railroad museum and was hired as its director of fun.

3. Cows have best friends and they get stressed when they're separated.

4. A group of bunnies is called a "fluffle." In Japan, there's an entire island full of tame fluffles.

5. That ALS Ice Bucket Challenge thing actually worked. Apparently, it made a whopping $115 million in just three days, money that went directly towards a huge ALS research breakthrough that might save the lives of thousands of patients.

6. A prison in Washington pairs up “death row” shelter cats with select inmates as part of a rehabilitation program. It seems to be a pretty wonderful thing for both the inmates and the cats.

7. Mushrooms are showing promise in clinical testing for treating depression. Actually, most psychoactive Schedule 1 drugs — MDMA, LSD, ketamine — show promise for alleviating the symptoms of many mental illnesses.

8. Some old white men are actual human beings.

9. There's a mysterious man in Salem, Oregon who goes around hiding $100 bills in toilet paper and paper towels for strangers to find.

10. In France, muslims are attending Catholic masses to show solidarity and sorrow following the murder of a priest in an ISIL-linked terrorist attack.

11. The Navy just named a ship after Harvey Milk, a gay icon and politician who was the first openly homosexual person ever elected to office in this country. It's kind of a big deal, because as of June of this year, certain sexualities were banned from joining the armed forces. Now that all Americans can join regardless of sexuality or gender expression, it's pretty cool the Navy is honoring the men and women who want to fight with, not against them.

12. MenCanStopRape is one of the first sexual health programs that places the responsibility on men, not women, to end the rape epidemic. Through training on consent, self control and respectful sexual expression, this group is taking the blame away from the victims and putting it on rapists themselves.

13. NASA had to relabel the penis sleeve for urinating in space suits from “small, medium, and large” to “large, gigantic, and humongous" because astronauts would only choose the large and they kept slipping off.

14. California is making huge strides to save the country's dying bee population by turning roadside shoulders and highway signs into bee paradises where they can access pollinating flowers.

15. Tim Harris, a man with Down syndrome, opened a restaurant that specializes in giving the customers hugs.

16. A 7-year-old boy has raised $750,000 to help pay for the medical treatments his best friend needs.

17. An animal shelter in Pennsylvania started a program where kids learn to read by reading to shelter cats.

18. The official Space Jam website has not changed since 1996 and it's fucking awesome.

19. Some 200 retired Japanese engineers volunteered to help fix the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima power station and be subjected to radiation so that young people wouldn’t have to.

20. Instead of holding a protest, a Black Lives Matter group in Witchita, Kansas joined up with the local police force for a peaceful barbeque to show solidarity in the wake of the shooting in Baton Rouge.

21. Trump got stuck in an elevator and somebody actually let him out; if that's not the picture of good nature and human compassion, nothing is.