Category Archives: Blog

Elizabeth Warren’s announcement that she took a DNA test to prove she has a Native American ancestor likely inspired countless people to pursue genetic testing to investigate their own family lore. 

Yet there’s a reason why the Democratic senator’s declaration was met with harsh criticism, including from the Cherokee Nation’s secretary of state Chuck Hoskin Jr., who said Warren was “undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage.”

Indeed, there are sensitive, appropriate ways to talk about potentially having Native American ancestors. The Massachusetts lawmaker actually got it right when she made the critical distinction that an ancestral link is not the equivalent of belonging to a Native American community or culture, nor should it entitle people far removed from an ancestor to seek or claim tribal status.  Read more…

More about Native American, Elizabeth Warren, Dna Test, Ancestry, and Social Good

Tech reporters Jake Krol and Matt Binder talk Techtober and the Razer Phone 2. Read more…

More about Mashable Video, Razer Phone, Technically Speaking, Techtober, and Tech

Orange Is the New Black will conclude after its seventh season next year. The prison drama based on Piper Kerman’s memoir of the same name was one of Netflix’s first original TV shows, premiering in the summer of 2013.

Creator Jenji Kohan said in 2017 that she had plans to end the show after seven seasons. Kohan is now an executive producer on Netflix’s GLOW, another hyper-specific female narrative that took viewers by storm with its debut.

“I’m going to miss playing on the edge of one of the most groundbreaking, original, and controversial series of this decade,” actress Kate Mulgrew said in the farewell announcement video. Read more…

More about Entertainment, Television, Netflix, Orange Is The New Black, and Oitnb

This week, on Technically Speaking: Jake Krol and Matt Binder discuss the latest tech headlines, including Techtober, Photoshop coming to the iPad, and Netflix accounting for 15% of the internet’s data. Read more…

More about Ipad, Netflix, Mashable Video, Photoshop, and Razer

A student in Davis, California has claimed that around two weeks ago, she and a co-conspirator gave nine classmates cookies containing her grandfather’s ashes.

At least some of the students were aware there were ashes in the cookies before they consumed them, police told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday. Others were apparently unaware and were “horrified” when they found out. 

So far, it is unclear why the student felt motivated to bring desserts with human remains in them to school. Since the cookies have already been eaten, it is also unclear how we can be sure they contained ashes at all — although a classmate of the alleged perpetrator did say he “didn’t believe her until she pulled out the urn.” Read more…

More about Cookies, Weird News, Culture, and Web Culture

Back in July, Tesla announced it had signed a deal in China allowing it to build up to 500,000 vehicles a year there. Now Elon Musk’s company has acquired the land to build its manufacturing facility in Shanghai.

The location of the Chinese Gigafactory was set as Shanghai because it has a free-trade zone, which means there’s no need to partner with a local Chinese company before manufacturing can begin. As Reuters reports, the Shanghai government sold Tesla a plot of land that’s roughly 860,000 square meters (213 acres) in size.

The cost of the land hasn’t been confirmed by Tesla, but the Shanghai Bureau of Planning and Land Resources lists a recent auction for a 864,885 square meter plot of land as costing just over $140.5 million. It seems unlikely two pieces of land of roughly the same size would be sold so close together, so this is probably what Tesla paid. Read more…

More about Tesla, Gigafactory, Tech, Elon Musk, and Big Tech Companies

Welcome to the beautiful world of watching Rihanna vogue to various songs on Twitter.

It’s pretty straight forward: People have started editing a clip of Rihanna dancing during her ANTI tour to other songs like Azealia Banks’ “Anna Wintour” or Lady Gaga’s “Judas.” Like the “Party Rock Anthem” meme, her choreography matches tons of songs. 

The meme’s been around since at least April, but it seems to have recently resurfaced. Shortly after the A Star Is Born premiere earlier this month, Twitter user @slayjoannex tweeted a clip of Rihanna dancing to “Hair Body Face,” a song from the film’s soundtrack. Obviously it fits perfectly, and has since inspired a few others. Read more…

More about Twitter, Memes, Rihanna, Culture, and Web Culture

Tech reporters Jake Krol and Matt Binder break down the impact Photoshop could have on the iPad. Read more…

More about Ipad, Mashable Video, Photoshop, Technically Speaking, and Tech

Nintendo’s icon and star, Mario, just got the best Halloween tribute ever.  

A jack-o’-lantern that was carved in the shape of an 8-bit Mario back in his 2D days has circulated around Reddit. The carving is extremely detailed, and it nails the exact pixelated look of the character.

Reddittor WobWobRob posted a photo of their jack-o’-lantern on r/gaming where it was praised by the community. Quite honestly, it’s a really incredible work of art.

The work that went into carving the pumpkin is nothing to scoff at either. The creator explained that they had used a “pixelated grid” in order to accurately carve the correct amount of depth for certain parts of Mario’s body. Read more…

More about Reddit, Halloween, Mario, Culture, and Gaming

YouTube is down, and the internet doesn’t know what to do.

The video platform was inaccessible on Tuesday night, either showing a server error, a blank page, or broken images when people tried to load the website. 

The YouTube app also showed the same problems.

YouTube wrote in a tweet that it was “working on resolving” the issues, and apologised for any inconvenience that may have been caused.

More about Youtube, Social Media, Big Tech Companies, Tech, and Social Media Companies