In The Buzz Cut, we bring you a round-up of all the weird, controversial, and wonderful stories we’ve been reading all week.
This week, Meghan Markle penned an op-ed in the New York Times detailing the miscarriage she suffered earlier this year, and the “unbearable grief” she experienced in its aftermath. Public stories of miscarriage, voiced before Markle by Chrissy Teigen and Michelle Obama, have together raised the seldom-talked-about issue in the public conscience, unshrouding the phenomenon from its harmful secrecy.
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State-sponsored hackers from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are trying to steal Covid19 vaccine information, western intelligence agencies are alleging. During a time when countries are scrambling to secure enough vaccines for their respective populations, this emerges as “an intellectual property war,” security experts say.
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The beginning of the pandemic saw a shift in people’s home lives, with people suddenly finding time on their hands to step into their kitchen and experiment — with coffee, bread, and previously unthinkable recipes. But after doing just that for the better part of a year, cooking has become joyless for many. Turns out, culinary burnout is a real thing, and it’s dreadful.
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The Indian capital city of New Delhi is infamous for its hazardous pollution, but year after year, even as the situation gets worse, we see a lack of radical initiatives designed to tackle the problem. A smog-tasting project is aiming to change that — if seeing the pollution, smelling it, being choked by it isn’t enough, then maybe tasting the metallic tangs of toxic chemicals will do the trick.
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From ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com to an AI that can make fake people talk, the technology that builds real-looking faces (and even personalities) is improving at an astonishing pace — currently at the disposal of trolls, spies, right-wing propagandists and anyone else who needs a digital alias. Putting a believable mask on has never been easier.
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What’s it like living with Larry David? His daughter pens this tell-all outlining the one point of contention she has with her father — safety, and David’s utter lack of concern for security precautions, fame or no fame.
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How did the word “woke” travel from a mainstay in black culture to the social media weapon it’s wielded as today? The word has come to define the times we live in, our personalities, and our principles, but can we agree on what it even means anymore?
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The New York Times crossword puzzle is a worldwide phenomenon, but it has often been criticized to be too exclusionary, especially along the lines of race and gender, and particularly among those who get to craft it. Here, a data visualization of the clues and answers present in NYT crossword puzzles paints a picture of who it is for, and what information they get to know.
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Johnny Depp started off his career as a “heroic misfit,” as someone on the outside infiltrating Hollywood all the while slyly winking at the audience, positioning himself with them as opposed to with the fake Hollywood types. Decades later, however, his fall from disgrace has tainted his professional prowess, and how.
