Category Archives: Blog

United States passports and IDs are about to get a long-overdue update.

On Wednesday, just before Pride month came to an end, the Biden administration announced plans to issue passports and IDs that feature “X” gender markers, which can be selected without providing medical documentation.

Per The 19th — a nonprofit that reports on news related to gender, politics, and policy — the American people will soon be able to choose between “M,” “F,” and “X” on these federal documents. The addition will give transgender, non-binary, and intersex individuals the freedom to identify as gender neutral or a gender different from the one listed on their birth certificate. And eliminating the need for transgender people to provide proof of gender transition from a medical professional will allow them to self-identify freely.

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Those familiar with Joe Biden’s LGBTQ policies will recall that he promised to “affirm one’s gender marker and expand access to accurate identification documents” during his campaign.

“Transgender and non-binary people without identification documents that accurately reflect their gender identity are often exposed to harassment and violence and denied employment, housing, critical public benefits, and even the right to vote,” the president’s campaign website JoeBiden.com explains.

Biden promised that as president he would push for gender-neutral IDs, and this is a noteworthy followthrough on that push for equality.

Though the exact timeframe for when people can expect to have access to “X” gender markers on documents remains unclear, per Reuters, the State Department is “evaluating the best approach to achieve this goal.”

Before any humans head back to the moon in the near future, three dummies are testing it out in NASA’s Artemis 1 mission. One is a full male-bodied manikin; the other two are female-bodied torsos. The varied manikin bodies — made with materials that simulate the stuff that makes up humans, like our skin, bones, and organs — will provide scientists important, inclusive data about radiation for future Artemis astronauts in 2023 and beyond.

NASA announced the name of the full manikin Tuesday: Commander Moonikin Campos. The name was chosen through a public poll that received more than 300,000 votes. The last name of Campos was picked in honor of Arturo Campos, who helped direct the Apollo 13 astronauts safely back to Earth after an oxygen tank failed on their spacecraft.

Commander Moonikin Campos will be decked out in a full Orion Crew Survival System suit, the same that astronauts will wear in phases of future Artemis missions. Campos is also donning a couple of sensors to detect the amount of radiation that astronauts could encounter inside the Orion spacecraft.

The female-bodied torsos, aka phantoms, were named Helga and Zohar in 2020 by the German Aerospace Center and Israel Space Agency, respectively. With radiation sensors embedded throughout their bodies, they’ll be testing out an AstroRad vest designed to protect astronauts’ vital organs from radiation. Zohar will be wearing the vest and Helga will not, allowing scientists to determine the effectiveness of the clothing.

Using female-bodied phantoms allows scientists to measure how radiation could effect women, as women tend to have a greater sensitivity to radiation than men, NASA noted in 2020. AstroRad vests have already been worn by astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) to test their fit, comfort, and mobility.

Zohar and Helga are pictured here
Credit:

NASA has historically failed women in its astronaut program, excluding them entirely in the first 19 years. Astronaut Sally Ride was the first woman selected for the agency’s program, becoming the first U.S. woman to enter space in 1983. Of the 339 Americans that have been to space, just 45 have been women.

The Artemis program has been touting that it will send the first woman and person of color to the moon in the coming years. Using female-bodied manikins in the Artemis 1 mission is key to creating inclusive designs and compiling inclusive data for scientists and astronauts going forward, and shows that NASA’s promises aren’t empty.

Artemis 1, expected to launch later in 2021, will be a three-week trip around the moon and back. Artemis 2, NASA’s first crewed mission to the moon since the ’70s, is expected to launch in 2023 and will also circle the moon before returning to Earth. The crew for Artemis 2 has not yet been determined.

Sometimes it feels real freaky to open your Maps app and see a list of the latest locations you’ve been at. You don’t want that falling into the wrong hands.

It’s even freakier to think about the myriad apps that are tracking your location pretty much constantly, and doing who-knows-what with that information.

Location services use WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS to figure out your whereabouts. They can really amp up the iPhone experience, especially if you’re an avid Find My app user or use Maps to get around everywhere. But having your location super accessible to every app might not be the best move, privacy-wise.

You should do a semi-regular checkup on which apps you may have absentmindedly enabled location services on, and turn off any you don’t want tracking your every move. Here’s how:

Location services for the iOS system

There are built-in iPhone mechanisms that either rely on location access to function, or are greatly enhanced by location access, like Find My iPhone, Emergency Calls, and Cell Network Search. But if you don’t actively use every built-in service that taps into your location, you can turn them off.

1. Find your Settings, and scroll down to Privacy.

Of course, everything mysterious about the iPhone resides in Settings. Location service settings will be housed under Privacy.

2. Find the System Services

At the very top…

Credit: screenshot: apple

…and at the very bottom.

Credit: screenshot: apple

Tap “Location Services” right at the very top. then scroll down to “System Services” right at the very bottom.

3. Peruse the list, and make your pickings.

The full list of iOS systems that use location services will display, and you can toggle on or off whatever you choose. Your choices should depend on what phone services you use daily. But generally, services that may tap into calling, texting, data browsing, or phone setup (like Setting Time Zone, Emergency Calls & SOS, and Cell Network Search) should probably stay on, while more customized iOS services (like HomeKit, Location-Based Suggestions, and Apple Pay) can be turned off if you don’t use them.

Location services by app

Deciding which apps can access your location follows the same process, minus one step. Instead of going into System Services, stop at the list displayed after you go into Location Services in your Privacy Settings.

Your list of apps with location access.
Credit: screenshot: apple

Tap on any app to change its location access between “Never,” “Always,” “While Using,” and “Ask Next Time,” which are pretty self-explanatory options. Not all apps will have all options, depending on how they operate.

Chipotle doesn’t need to know my location at all times.
Credit: screenshot: apple

When you click on the app, you’ll also see a toggle button for “Precise Location.” Turn this off if you’d rather the app only have access to an approximate location when using its location access.

You can also turn off location services completely simply by toggling off “Location Services” at the very top of the menu of apps. We don’t recommend this, because as we said, there are definitely some iPhone services that tap into location services that we can’t live without.

But if you’re trying to live a really off-the-grid, private lifestyle – at least, as much as you can while still owning an iPhone – going completely location-less is your best bet. So go ahead, hit that toggle, and rest easy knowing that no part of your iPhone is tracking you…even if other people still could.

Recording a Zoom meeting is a helpful way to stay organized. Being able to refer back to important information at any given moment is almost like having a digital notebook on hand to offer help when you need it.

Here’s what you need to do to record a Zoom meeting:

1. Open up Zoom and start a meeting.

2. In the meeting, find your control bar at the bottom of the window and click the “Record” button, the round button with a circle around it.

Credit: screengrab: zoom

3. You’ll get a notification telling you the meeting is being recorded. You can stop recording at any time by pressing “Pause/Stop Recording,” the square button with two lines (Pause) or a box (Stop) in it.

Credit: screengrab: zoom

4. Once the meeting is over, it will automatically save as an mp4 file that you can access on your computer or within your Zoom account.

5. To find it, navigate to your meetings page.

6. Instead of “Upcoming,” click “Recorded.” You’ll find your recorded meeting there.

The file will probably automatically be titled the date of the meeting or “[insert name here]’s Zoom meeting,” but you can change it to whatever will help you find it when you need it.

You can also schedule a meeting ahead of time and set it to record by scrolling down to “Meeting options” at the bottom of the page and clicking “Automatically record meeting on the local computer.”

Credit: screengrab: zoom

If you are not the host of the meeting and you want to record it, the host will have to give you permission to do so by:

1. Moving the cursor over a meeting participant’s video.

2. Clicking the three dots icon.

3. Clicking “Make Co-Host.”

Or…

1. Finding the control bar at the bottom of the meeting window.

2. Clicking “Participants.”

3. Hovering the cursor over the participant wanting to be a co-host.

4. Clicking “More.”

5. Clicking “Make Co-Host.”

That meeting participant will now have the ability to record the meeting using the same steps as above.

If you want to record a meeting without the host being present, the Zoom Help Center indicates you need to enable automatic Cloud Recording and schedule a meeting with the “Enable Join before host option selected.”

When you do this, recording will start when the first participant joins the meeting.

Magic: The Gathering is crossing over with Dungeons and Dragons, joining these two great houses like a giant tabletop nerd mecha once more. New Magic set Adventures in the Forgotten Realms will introduce iconic Dungeon and Dragons spells and monsters to the card game next month, the collaboration bringing over 261 new cards to the game (excluding lands).

Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons are both tabletop gaming giants — fantasy games boasting huge followings of dedicated fans. Wizards of the Coast has owned both since the company purchased Dungeon and Dragons‘ original publisher in 1997, and the two previously crossed over in Dungeon and Dragons‘ 2018 sourcebook Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica.

However, Adventures in the Forgotten Realms will be the first time Dungeons and Dragons‘ iconic spells and monsters will be brought into Magic‘s standard card sets.

Of course, there will also be interesting art variants for collectors to get excited about as well. All booster packs will contain cards with both the normal frame and showcase rulebook frames — those are your average Magic cards and the ones with Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual style art respectively. Art cards will only be in set boosters though, and cards with borderless frames will only be in collector boosters, so you’ll have to open a few of those if you want to pick them up.

In the lead up to Adventures in the Forgotten Realms’ release, Mashable can exclusively reveal two new Magic cards arriving in this Dungeons and Dragons inspired set: Baleful Beholder and Wish.

Baleful Beholder

Magic: The Gathering Adventures in the Forgotten Realms — Baleful Beholder
Credit: Wizards of the Coast

An iconic Dungeons and Dragons monster, the Beholder is a spherical chonky boy with numerous eyestalks capable of firing 10 different magical rays at random. Now introduced to Magic: The Gathering, Baleful Beholder is a bulky Common 6/5 Black Creature that costs six mana to play, including two Black.

It’s a hefty price to pay to get Baleful Beholder on the field, but this many-eyed nightmare orb isn’t just a big ol’ hard-hitting tank. When playing him, you also get to choose from one of two powerful effects.

I spy with my 50 billion eyes…
Credit: Lars Grant-West / Wizards of the Coast

The first is Antimagic Cone, which makes all of your enemies sacrifice one enchantment each. Though they get to choose which of their cards to give up, Antimagic Cone can still have a significant impact on the game — particularly if your opponents don’t have many enchantments to choose from.

Old school cool.
Credit: Justine Jones / Wizards of the coast

However, if there aren’t any enchantments bothering you, you may decide to go for Fear Ray instead. Fear Ray gives all creatures under your control menace until the end of the turn, meaning your opponents will have to use two defenders per creature in order to block your attacks. This can be particularly useful if you keep getting blocked by small, disposable creatures, or if your army is struggling to get past your opponent’s defences.

Wish

Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Wish is an absolutely ridiculous Rare Red Sorcery that costs only three mana to play, including one Red. Play it, and Wish will allow you to play any card you own from outside the game during the current turn. That’s right. Any card at all.

Of course you still have to pay your chosen card’s mana cost, which could be a tricky requirement to meet after paying for Wish. Even so, this card opens up a whole new realm of possibilities, and offers a ton of versatility for adapting to an opponent’s deck.

Building a Magic deck is a bit like playing scissors paper rock. A strategy which is strong against one type of player may be weak against another, and you just have to hope your tactics and build are enough to win you the day. Wish now offers a great answer to those situations where you’re longing to play that one perfect card that you know is just sitting unused in your collection.

Magic: The Gathering‘s Adventures in the Forgotten Realms set will release worldwide on July 23.

The “Live” feature on TikTok allows creators an effective way to engage with their viewers, grow their viewership, and if you’re 18 or older, potentially make a little bit of money.

But first, there are a few pre-reqs in order to have the ability to go live on TikTok.

1. Be 16 years old or older

2. Have at least 1,000 followers

If your account does not have at least 1,000 followers, the Live feature will not be available to you.

Creators between 16 and 18 with 1,000 followers cannot be given “gifts” with TikToks in-app currency, but they can still access the Live feature to stream and interact with their audiences.

Now that we’ve covered that, here’s how you can go live on TikTok:

1. Open your TikTok app.

2. Tap the plus sign (“Create”) button at the bottom of the screen.

Credit: screenshot / tiktok

3. At the bottom, swipe to LIVE.

4. Select an image and enter a title for your live stream.

5. When you’re ready, hit the “GO LIVE” button.

Tap “Go Live” to start a livestream on TikTok.
Credit: tiktok

You’re now live on TikTok! If you want to adjust your settings, tap the three dots icon at the bottom of your screen.

ExactlyNow go say hi to your fans.

A high school valedictorian’s speech was cut short when he began speaking about his experience as an LGBTQ teenager and his mental health struggles. Despite protest from his principal and pressure to stick to a pre-approved speech, he continued anyway.

Bryce Dershem graduated from Eastern Regional High School in Voorhees, New Jersey, on June 17. The 18-year-old adorned his graduation robe with a rainbow flag, and his cap with the Black Lives Matter fist superimposed on the trans flag’s stripes. He hoped his valedictorian address would inspire his classmates, who had completed high school amid a devastating pandemic and difficult remote learning.

Dershem started the speech by thanking his parents, teachers, and classmates, before bringing up his personal struggle with mental health and acceptance.

“After I came out as queer [in] freshman year, I felt so alone. I didn’t know who to turn to,” Dershem began. Then his microphone cut off.

In a video of the speech his father posted on YouTube, Dershem pauses. The school’s principal Robert Tull approaches the podium to replace the microphone with a working one, and takes Dershem’s notes with him as he leaves. Tull gestures to the administration-approved speech before walking away from the podium.

Dershem told the Philadelphia Inquirer that Tull “crumped [the speech] up into a ball,” pointed to the approved speech, and said, “You read this, or nothing else.”

“At this point I’m about to cry,” Dershem told the Inquirer.

Dershem believes Tull and the school’s administrators intentionally cut off his microphone in an effort to censor him in favor of the approved speech, which did not mention his LGBTQ identity, recovery from anorexia, or discussion of mental health issues. Tull repeatedly pressured Dershem to rewrite his speech, and had him work with the school’s head of the English department, Dershem told the Washington Post.

“They started saying things like, ‘This speech is not my therapy session,'” he added in an interview with the Washington Post.

Dershem told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the school’s administration claimed any discussion of LGBTQ issues “would just exclude people.”

“I don’t think it is really exclusionary to say one is queer.”

“But that wasn’t my message at all, and I don’t think it is really exclusionary to say one is queer,” Dershem continued.

Audience members encouraged Dershem to continue speaking as Tull replaced his microphone. Dershem, who memorized his original speech, continued.

“As I was saying … After I came out as queer freshman year, I felt so alone,” he said. “I didn’t know who to turn to for support, for guidance, for a hug. Every day at school I outwardly smiled while inwardly questioning how we were supposed to link the different facets of our identities.”

Eastern Camden County Regional School District superintendent Robert Cloutier denies the district asked students to remove mentions of their personal identity in speeches.

“Every year, all student speakers are assisted in shaping the speech, and all student speeches — which are agreed upon and approved in advance — are kept in the binder on the podium for the principal to conduct the graduation ceremony,” Cloutier said in a statement to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

He added that the district “focused on social-emotional wellness for the year’s reopening plan” and is “committed to the diversity and inclusion initiatives” established by New Jersey’s Department of Education.

But Dershem believes Cloutier’s statement is disingenuous, and alleged that the administration specifically pressured him to remove references to being queer and recovering in mental health treatment.

“If that were true, would they have tried to censor me and play it off as a mic change?” Dershem asked in a rhetoric statement to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “If that were true, [Tull] wouldn’t have crumpled a speech I worked months on…in front of my face in front of an audience of 2,000 people.”

The use of valedictorian speeches as vehicles for social commentary is on the rise. Paxton Smith, Lake Highlands High School’s valedictorian in Dallas, Texas, gave a charged address on the importance of abortion access in wake of recent restrictions signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbot.

“I am terrified that if my contraceptives fail, I am terrified that if I am raped, then my hopes and aspirations and dreams and efforts for my future will no longer matter,” Smith voiced. “I hope that you can feel how gut-wrenching that is. I hope you can feel how dehumanizing it is to have the autonomy over your own body taken away from you.”

Dershem’s speech was met with support from his classmates, teachers, and even New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, who tweeted his encouragement for “speaking truth to power.”

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Dershem said a teacher whose son died by suicide during the pandemic was especially touched by his speech.

“She hugged me and said that her son had passed away due to suicide over quarantine and my speech had just meant so much to her, and she really wished he had gotten to hear it, too,” Dershem told the Washington Post. “I thought, ‘This is the one person — this is the one person that I made feel less alone in that audience.’ That was everything for me.”

The great Facebook breakup, it seems, is not to be. At least not yet.

It was only in late December that the Federal Trade Commission alleged in a lawsuit that Facebook was a monopoly and that it deserved to be broken up into its constituent parts of Instagram and WhatsApp. The complaint, backed by attorneys general from 48 states, was dismissed Monday by a federal court.

At the heart of the court’s decision Monday is the argument that the FTC failed to conclusively make its case.

“The FTC has failed to plead enough facts to plausibly establish a necessary element of all of its Section 2 claims — namely, that Facebook has monopoly power in the market for Personal Social Networking (PSN) Services,” reads the decision.

Monday’s ruling effectively lets Facebook off the hook for what the FTC called “illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct.”

Sarah Miller, the executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, a nonprofit anti-monopoly lobbying group, argued that the FTC and the attorneys general need to step up their respective games in light of Monday’s decision.

“The coalition of state attorneys general should appeal today’s decision and the Federal Trade Commission should quickly submit an amended complaint,” she wrote in a statement to the press.

We reached out to Facebook for comment on Monday’s decision, and in response the company made it clear it’s delighted by the news.

“We are pleased that today’s decisions recognize the defects in the government complaints filed against Facebook,” responded a Facebook spokesperson in a prepared statement.

SEE ALSO: How to check if hackers are sharing your Facebook data

Which, of course Facebook is pleased. One substantial but ultimately insignificant fine notwithstanding, Facebook has a long history of avoiding real consequences for its many missteps — be they accidental or otherwise.

While Monday’s decision continues Facebook’s long winning streak — and everyone else’s losing one — all hope is not lost.

The court notably dismissed the specific complaint, not the case itself. In other words, the FTC can plead its case again. Hopefully it does so, and next time comes better prepared.

When all-time heat records break, they usually break by a degree or so. Maybe two.

The heat wave in the Pacific Northwest and beyond, however, smashed Portland’s all-time record by a whopping four degrees Fahrenheit (it may rise more), and in some places the extreme episode broke all-time records by 10 degrees.

“It’s a staggering event,” explained Jeff Weber, a research meteorologist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, an organization that facilitates and performs earth science.

What happened?

Meteorologists and atmospheric scientists already knew the heat would be oppressive and challenge all sorts of records. A potent combination of events came together: A hot weather pattern (called a heat dome) settled over the region, with temperatures also boosted some 2 degrees F (or perhaps much more) by the continuously warming Western climate (it’s significantly hotter than it was 100 years ago). What’s more, nearly 80 percent of the Pacific Northwest is in drought, and drought exacerbates heat.

But that’s not all. Another weather factor came into play and kicked things up a notch. Dry winds, traveling downslope from the east to west, amplified the heat. These type of winds are commonly known to southern Californians as “Santa Ana winds,” but have different names in different places. Generally, the winds travel down from higher elevations (like mountains in eastern Oregon) and the sinking air compresses, creating even more heat in lower areas, like Portland. (This is also called “compressional heating.”)

“It’s the perfect storm.”

Those hot winds have amplified what already was an exceptional heat event, explained Weber. Many cooler coastal areas weren’t even spared.

“It’s the perfect storm,” said Weber.

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The resulting temperatures are unparalleled in recorded history in the Pacific Northwest. Many people, and buildings, are ill-prepared for this kind of heat. Seattle, for example, is the least air-conditioned metro area in the U.S., according to The Seattle Times.

“It’s hitting an area where people don’t have AC,” noted Weber. “The discomfort level for the population is just overwhelming.” Indeed, illnesses from heat spiked in the Portland region during the extreme weather. Heat illness is serious: Among weather events in the U.S., extreme heat waves kill the most people.

Few heat waves are as anomalous as this Pacific Northwest heat event. As noted above, strong meteorological and climatic events came together at June’s end. But, overall, today’s heat or high temperature records now dominate cold or lower records as the globe warms. For example, twice as many daily heat records are set as cold records.

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Extreme events, hot or cold, happen normally. But climate scientists expect heat waves to grow more intense in a warmer world.

“Climate change is making extreme heat waves even more extreme and common,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told Mashable last week, before the record-breaking heat set in.

Honda announced its first all-electric vehicle, the Prologue, on Monday.

Slated to arrive by early 2024, the SUV will be equipped with General Motors’ Ultium battery platform, which will also be used in the upcoming GMC Hummer EV supertruck and SUV.

The Prologue helps Honda get closer to its goal of selling only zero-emission vehicles in North America by 2040. Acura, Honda’s luxury brand, will also release an electric SUV in 2024, its first EV ever.

Currently Honda only offers hybrids and plug-in hybrid options, like the Insight and Clarity, respectively. After 2024, Honda plans to launch its own line of EVs separate from the GM partnership.

Honda has a separate website for the Prologue and promised more details (and hopefully some photos) of the EV in the coming months.