Author: The Conversation
Tinder and other dating apps have come to define modern dating, and notoriously so. Users download the Tinder app to their phones or other devices and can then view the profiles of potential dates nearby. If they think someone might be a match, they swipe to the right on their touchscreens to show interest. If the other person swipes right too, a chat can begin, which might lead to an in-person meeting. This initial introduction involves minimal information – a photo and some basic details about yourself. The result is that romance and trust are sometimes assumed to be missing…
This year marks 100 years since radio was introduced in South Africa, through “the first experimental broadcast at the Railway Headquarters in Johannesburg” on 18 December 1923. A century on, up to 94% of South Africans over the age of 15 confirmed in a recent survey that they owned a radio set in one form or other. Radio remains firmly in place as the country’s most loved medium. Millions tune in daily to 40 commercial and public broadcast stations and over 250 community stations. Although other forms, like television, have threatened, as the song goes, to kill “the radio star”,…
The popular Netflix ‘Wednesday’ series chronicles the adventures of the Addams family’s teen daughter. After her parents send her to Nevermore Academy, a school for “outcasts,” Wednesday Addams, played by Jenna Ortega, is pulled into a perplexing murder mystery. The show is infused with elements of the supernatural but also contains scenes that may leave viewers wondering, “Could that really happen in real life?” I’m a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the Indiana University School of Medicine, where we study the effects of drugs and poisons on the body. Some of the scenes in “Wednesday” raise intriguing questions about…
Sharing platforms have become a regular part of our lives for travel and daily needs, especially for young people. In 2018, Airbnb reported that the majority of its users were millennials. And with the ongoing cost of living crisis, more people may turn to these platforms as ways to save on their travel, or to make extra money by sharing their property. Companies such as Airbnb and Turo (a car-sharing platform) are often more affordable and flexible than traditional hotels or car hire services. But using them can also expose you to liability risks if something goes awry. It might…
For most American workers who commute, the trip to and from the office takes nearly one full hour a day – 26 minutes each way on average, with 7.7% of workers spending two hours or more on the road. Many people think of commuting as a chore and a waste of time. However, during the remote work surge resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, several journalists curiously noted that people were – could it be? – missing their commutes. One woman told The Washington Post that even though she was working from home, she regularly sat in her car in the…
It doesn’t take much to get ChatGPT to make a factual mistake. My son is doing a report on U.S. presidents, so I figured I’d help him out by looking up a few biographies. I tried asking for a list of books about Abraham Lincoln and it did a pretty good job: A reasonable list of books about Lincoln. Screen capture by Jonathan May., CC BY-ND Number 4 isn’t right. Garry Wills famously wrote “Lincoln at Gettysburg,” and Lincoln himself wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, of course, but it’s not a bad start. Then I tried something harder, asking instead about…
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a question that would have been unthinkable a few years ago: do we really need to be in the office all the time? At the height of the pandemic, working remotely was viewed as a safeguard, protecting employees from the spread of infections. Over time a consensus has developed that working remotely has had benefits but has also raised health concerns. To provide some answers to the question, I did research on the experience of working remotely from the perspective of 23 female middle managers working in the South African public service. It was…
California is embarking on an audacious new climate plan that aims to eliminate the state’s greenhouse gas footprint by 2045, and in the process, slash emissions far beyond its borders. The blueprint calls for massive transformations in industry, energy and transportation, as well as changes in institutions and human behaviors. These transformations won’t be easy. Two years of developing the plan have exposed myriad challenges and tensions, including environmental justice, affordability and local rule. For example, the San Francisco Fire Commission had prohibited batteries with more than 20 kilowatt-hours of power storage in homes, severely limiting the ability to store…
When people think about artificial intelligence (AI), they may have visions of the future. But AI is already here. At its base, it is the recreation of aspects of human intelligence in computerised form. Like human intelligence, it has wide application. Voice-operated personal assistants like Siri, self-driving cars, and text and image generators all use AI. It also curates our social media feeds. It helps companies to detect fraud and hire employees. It’s used to manage livestock, enhance crop yields and aid medical diagnoses. Alongside its growing power and its potential, AI raises moral and ethical questions. The technology has…
Copper is all around us. The metal is both ever-present and invisible in our world. Copper makes reading the words on this screen possible. And the global spread of artificial light, electric power and telecommunications all required ever-increasing quantities of copper. Where does all of this copper come from? How was it produced, distributed, controlled, and sold on an ever-increasing scale? These are some of the questions addressed in a recenty published book, Born with a Copper Spoon: A Global History of Copper. The book is a global study of a metal that has transformed the globe. Contributors to the…