January 1, 2017

SUNSPOTS | 50 GOOD THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN 2016

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Last night, people around the world wildly celebrated, in intervals of exactly one hour, the Earth moving past an approximate, arbitrary point in its orbit about the sun. In New York City, specifically, thousands of people stood outside in the freezing cold for more than ten hours to watch a ball move slowly down a short to medium-length pole and then reach the bottom of that pole at the same time as the Earth reached the aforementioned point in its orbit.

And with that, we made it to 2017! A lot of people are excited that it is no longer 2016, because a lot of bad things happened in 2016. But, believe it or not, some good things happened too. Our writers racked their brains for days and managed to come up with a list of fifty good things that happened in 2016.

(Comments by Lev Akabas)

 

50. Mild November Temperatures At Cornell
49. John Oliver’s Election Coverage
48. Battlefield 1
47. Donald Glover’s Show Atlanta
46. Chad Becoming The Villain On The Bachelorette
45. PARTYNEXTDOOR 3 Album
44. Stranger Things
43. The United States Army Offering 12 Weeks Paid Maternity Leave
42. Ken Bone’s Sweater
41. The Most Exciting NBA Slam Dunk Contest In Decades
40. Microsoft Surface Studio
39. Chance The Rapper’s Coloring Book Album
38. Zootopia Tackling Race Issues In A Kid’s Movie
37. Harriet Tubman Replacing Andrew Jackson On The $20 Bill
36. Cornell Choosing A New President
35. Leonardo DiCaprio Finally Winning An Oscar

  • For the record, he won for crawling around in the snow after not being nominated for Titanic, Catch Me If You Can, The Departed, Inception or Django Unchained

34. This Bernie Sanders GIF
33. Facebook Reactions Allowing Us To Explore The Full Range Of Human Emotion
32. India Planting 50 Million Trees In One Day
31. Russell Westbrook Averaging a Triple-Double

  • Checking the Thunder box score before I go to sleep to see if Westbrook had a triple double and/or glared at someone after a dunk is the most thrilling part of every day

30. Planned Parenthood Donations In Mike Pence’s Name
29. Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump Impression

  • His impression is so good that now when I see actual Donald Trump giving an interview on an actual news station I think it’s Baldwin on SNL for a few seconds

28. Steph Curry’s Game-Winning Three Against The Oklahoma City Thunder
27. That Darth Vader Moment In Rogue One

  • You know which one we’re talking about

26. Cornell Students Getting A Free Online Subscription To The New York Times
25. The Hamilton Soundtrack Being On Spotify
24. The Hamilton Mixtape Being On Spotify
23. Unemployment In The United States Hitting Its Lowest Levels Since 2009
22. The Last Question Of The Second Presidential Debate
21. The Cornell Daily Sun’s “Sunspots” Blog Launching
20. The Airport Battle In Captain America: Civil War
19. Google Announcing Renewability Plans
18. The Chicago Cubs Breaking The Curse And Winning The World Series
17. Joe Biden Always Being There When You Need Him
16. The United States Dominating Olympic Swimming And Women’s Gymnastics

15. Dakota Access Pipeline Hatred
14. The Paris Climate Change Agreement
13. The Last Minute Of The NCAA Men’s Basketball Title Game
12. eHub At Cornell
11. Giant Pandas No Longer Being Endangered

  • This was originally ranked #1, and I’m honestly not sure why we moved it down

10. LeBron James’s Block From The NBA Finals

  • After years of doing a terrible job pretending to be a human, this was the year in which LeBron officially revealed himself to be a member of an advanced alien species

9. Ryan Gosling Being Amazing In Movies And Ryan Gosling Being Amazing In Trailers For Future Movies, In Which He Will Also Be Amazing
8. Kobe Bryant’s 60-point Final Game
7. Michelle Obama’s DNC Speech
6. Netflix Allowing Downloads
5. The Rise (And, More Importantly, The Fall) Of Pokemon Go

  • We can only hope and pray that dabbing will experience a similar fall

4. The Rise (And, Thankfully, No Fall In The Foreseeable Future) Of Memes
3. Women Of Color Making History On Election Night
2. The Cleveland Cavaliers Winning The 2016 NBA Championship
1. 2016 Being Over

 

Happy New Year!