Author Archives: Carol Edwards

Well, whaddaya know – maybe angry-tweeting works sometimes after all. 

Earlier this month, Sony announced a new “Clean Version” initiative that would offer sanitized versions of its movies. Basically, the broadcast TV or airplane versions of the movies – the ones with all the bad language, brief nudity, and graphic violence cut out – would be available as extras on home video.

The response was swift and not all that positive. Several filmmakers responded with outrage – including Judd Apatow, who produced two of the movies slated to get the Clean Version treatment (Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and Step Brothers).  Read more…

More about Movies, Sony, Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow, and Adam Mckay

Welcome to the future, Grammys! Great to have you.

For the first time in the show’s history, it’s doing away with traditional ballots and switching over to online voting.

Very hip, Grammys. Nice move.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the Recording Academy hopes the transition to online voting will bring new life to the voting process, while simultaneously increasing voter turnout among the younger demographic. After all, if you want today’s youth to pay attention to something, you’ve gotta incorporate technology, right? Read more…

More about Entertainment, Music, Conversations, Technology, and Grammys

Getting into college is difficult for many students and it looked near impossible for the seniors at one school. But they didn’t let that stop them.

The seniors of Frank W. Ballou Senior High School in Washington, D.C. faced unique challenges that gave their acceptance rate into higher education a low probability. However, they took those odds and the school earned an inspirational 100 percent college acceptance rate for the graduating class.

According to WUSA9, Ballou High School is surrounded by violence and poverty. Last year, only three percent of its students met the city-wide standards for reading. Read more…

More about College, High School, Graduation, Graduation 2017, and Culture

If detachable cut-out jeans weren’t daring enough for you, fashion has even more wonders to offer. 

French label Y Project is currently peddling a product called Detachable Button Down Pants. Detachable Button Down Pants (or “DBDP”) feature 1) a large denim belt,  2) a denim garter-suspender contraption, and 3) two button-up pant legs. Notably missing: fabric covering the crotch, the butt, or the hips. Interesting!

However … that’s not to say these jeans are completely unwearable in the outside world. In fact, the website suggests styling them with a long shirtdress, which I think looks kinda cool (do not @ me).  Read more…

More about Fashion, Jeans, Weird Products, Culture, and Other

Russell Westbrook, NBA star and human supernova, announced the birth of his first son in an adorable Instagram photo in May. 

Now Westbrook just shared a photo of his boy at one-month old and, um, it sure looks like baby Noah is a chip off the old block. No, seriously: it’s actually a little eerie just how much the 28-year-old Russell and 1-month-old Noah look alike. 

The internet certainly noticed. 

More about Nba, Basketball, Baby, Russell Westbrook, and Entertainment

You love your iPhone: the form factor, the user interface, the just straight-up coolness of it all. But a peek into the early days of the now-ubiquitous device reveals a startling truth. 

It was almost awful. 

These days we take the look of the iPhone as a forgone conclusion. Sure, there’s always the question of curved or square edges and whether the back will be glass or aluminum, but the smartphone’s general shape and touchscreen front have in many ways come to define Apple’s aesthetic.

But it didn’t have to be that way. In fact, it almost wasn’t. An excerpt from a forthcoming book by Motherboard editor Brian Merchant about the development of the iPhone, titled The One Device: The secret history of the iPhone and published by The Verge, provides us with an up-close-and-personal look at what you’d probably be carrying around in your pocket right now… had things gone just a bit differently. Read more…

More about Apple, Iphone, Smartphones, Steve Jobs, and Cellphones

Fugia is only a teenager, but her sense of ambition is tangible. Just 15 years old, she has plans to be a doctor, and she understands education is the surest path to achieving her dream.

But getting an education isn’t easy. Fugia, whose parents are Somalian, is a refugee growing up in Kakuma, the largest refugee camp in existence, located in Kenya. Both logistical and cultural obstacles have prevented her from learning.

“This community of ours was not supporting the girls’ education,” she says of the camp, explaining that girls who went to school were often called “prostitutes” who don’t actually learn anything. Read more…

More about Tech, Tablets, Africa, Social Good, and Refugee Crisis

Take it straight from a major fossil fuel supplier: The world’s energy mix is changing, and it’s shifting toward lower-carbon fuels.

BP, the British oil and gas giant, said global efforts to slash greenhouse gas emissions and boost efficiency are having a tangible effect on global energy markets, with two main narratives playing out: the decline of coal, and the rapid rise of wind and solar power.

This week, BP released its Statistical Review of World Energy on 2016 data. For 66 years, this annual report has served as an energy industry statistical bible of sorts, painting the broad picture of global energy development.  Read more…

More about Science, Solar Energy, Energy, Global Warming, and Donald Trump

For anyone who wants to start investing for the first time or switch from an old-school system to a roboadvisor, there are a lot of options out there. 

Betterment, Wealthfront, and smart advisors from major banks all let consumers become serious investors and save for retirement without requiring as much money or time as personal financial advisors. But a major group of investors hasn’t been served by these options. 

Wahed Invest wants to be the first roboadvisor to allow American Muslim investors to go digital and at the same time meet Sharia standards for investing.

“While online investing may seem unorthodox to some Muslims across the globe, Muslim millennials in the U.S. have been interested in digital investment services and computer-generated, wealth management advice for some time,” said Wahed CEO Junaid Wahedna in a press release. “To date, they have been forced to use online investment platforms that don’t mirror their beliefs. Wahed offers them a solution to invest online in a way that is both sophisticated and true to their values.”  Read more…

More about Investing, Muslims, Fintech, Betterment, and Halal

Google Drive is ready to be the answer to all your computer storage needs — and not just the files you create and upload using its cloud-based services like Google Docs and Photos. 

The search giant just announced a new Backup and Sync tool, which will give everyday users the chance to save all the files and photos on their PCs to Google Drive. It’ll make file management in the cloud a more seamless experience. Rather than creating entirely new folders, the tool will recreate your desktop folder system in Drive.

Google says it made the tool with casual Drive users in mind, so this isn’t necessarily built for more complex systems that businesses tend to use. Instead, it will give individual users an easier way to backup their files. Read more…

More about Google, Google Drive, G Suite, Cloud Storage, and Tech