Geek Knowledge Base
In late March, Claire Rezba heard about the tragic death of Diedre Wilkes. Wilkes, a 42-year-old mammogram technician, had died alone of covid-19 in her home, her four-year-old child near her body. Rezba, a physician based in Richmond, Virginia, was shaken. “That story resonated with me,” she says. “She was about my age.” Wilkes’s death […]
Each innovation challenges the norms, codes, and values of the society in which it is embedded. The industrial revolution unleashed new forces of productivity but at the cost of inhumane working conditions, leading to the creation of unions, labor laws, and the foundations of the political party structures of modern democracies. Fossil fuels powered a […]
As businesses of all sizes welcome a fearful and anxious workforce back to the office, they are simultaneously challenged with ensuring a safe work environment. The stark reality facing business owners still navigating the covid-19 pandemic is the diligence required to limit infectious spread. Corporations are taking note: plexiglass barriers, clearly marked walkways, and hand-sanitizing […]
Facial recognition technology is being deployed in housing projects, homeless shelters, schools, even across entire cities—usually without much fanfare or discussion. To some, this represents a critical technology for helping vulnerable communities gain access to social services. For others, it’s a flagrant invasion of privacy and violation of human dignity. In this episode, we speak […]
On December 5, Earth is getting a delivery of something literally out of this world: some small grains and dust snatched up from an asteroid 180 million miles away. Once safely back on Earth, the fragments of Ryugu will help scientists learn more about how the solar system formed. JAXA, Japan’s space agency, launched Hayabusa2 […]
President Trump’s conspiracy-theory-fueled plan to overturn his defeat in the 2020 elections targeted six states that President-elect Joe Biden narrowly won: Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada and Georgia. All six of those states have now certified their vote counts—with recounts sometimes even increasing the victory margin for Biden. The confirmation of the results has correlated […]
The news: The UK’s regulator has approved Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine, making it the first country in the world to provide emergency authorization for a covid-19 vaccine. The UK had already signed an agreement to buy 40 million doses of the vaccine due to be delivered this year and in 2021, with the first batch set to […]
The first lab-grown, or cultured, meat product has been given the green light to be sold for human consumption. In the landmark approval, regulators in Singapore granted Just, a San Francisco–based startup, the right to sell cultured chicken—in the form of chicken nuggets—to the public. Just had been working with the regulators for the past […]
The attorney general has long been one of the president’s chief apologists. Not this time. Powered by WPeMatico
The attorney general has long been one of the president’s chief apologists. Not this time. Powered by WPeMatico