Trending Topics

What takes 4 years to make and costs $20K? A San Francisco trash can

That costly, boxy bin is among six trash cans hitting San Francisco’s streets this summer in the city’s long saga in search of the perfect can. Overflowing trash cans are a common sight in the Northern California city, along with piles of used clothes, shoes, furniture and other items strewn about on sometimes-impassable sidewalks.
— (Fortune) (August 13)   (Pocket)

What If Cells Kept Receipts of Their Gene Expression?

At first glance, an Escherichia Coli (E. Coli) bacterium looks a bit like a Cheeto, with the same puffy cylindrical shape. But it is a Cheeto lookalike with incredible immune defenses. Behind the bacteria’s unassuming exterior are complex systems that help protect it from attacks by foreign invaders. For Seth Shipman, a bioengineer at the University of California, San Francisco, leveraging these defenses has opened new technological possibilities for recording gene expression in cells. “We’re taking a bunch of bacterial parts and repurposing them for biotechnology that they weren’t intended to be used for,” he says.
— (Wired) (August 12)   (Pocket)

Are San Francisco's NIMBYs Finally Getting Their Comeuppance?

San Francisco's homegrown hostility to new development has made it the epicenter of California's housing crisis. It will now become a testing ground for a newly empowered state government's ability to force liberalizing reforms on a city that repeatedly refuses to build.
— (Reason) (August 11)   (Pocket)

Veracyte Q2 Revenues up 32 Percent, Beat Analyst Expectations

For the three months ended June 30, the South San Francisco, California-based molecular diagnostics company reported total revenues of $72.9 million compared to $55.1 million in the same period of 2021. Q2 revenues came in well ahead of analysts' average expectation of $68.0 million.
— (Genome Web) (August 3)   (Pocket)

The gap between monkeypox vaccine demand and supply is dire in hotspot cities

In some states that have become hotspots for the monkeypox outbreak, there's a drastic disconnect between the number of doses that local health officials say they need versus what they have been allotted, an Axios Local review of a dozen states found. Why it matters: Across the nation, health officials worry that the outbreak could become the country's second major public health disaster in as many years if we don't work faster to contain it.What they’re saying: "It is something that we could contain, but it's gonna require a great deal of effort. I believe we're behind,” says Georges Benjamin, who leads the American Public Health Association.
— (Axios) (August 2)   (Pocket)

Twitter Censors All Content From The Epoch Times

Twitter Censors All Content From The Epoch Times Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times, Twitter has imposed a blockade on all content from The Epoch Times without explanation, raising further concerns about freedom of speech on the platform. The Twitter logo is seen on a sign at the company's headquarters in San Francisco, California on Nov. 4, 2016. (Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images) Beginning on the evening of July 28, the platform put up a warning on all links from The Epoch Times. A click on a link would direct users to a page titled “Warning: this link may be unsafe” which prompts users to return to the previous page.
— (ZeroHedge Opinion) (July 29)   (Pocket)

Serena Williams Is Frank About What It Means to Retire

When I heard that Serena Williams had announced, in an essay for Vogue, her impending retirement, I forgot, for a moment, the long list of her accomplishments. I didn’t think about her records, her unmatched aura of dominance, her transformation from athlete into cultural force—into someone who demanded, by simply being who she was, that people change the way they talk about female athletes, and Black female athletes in particular. Those changes resonated beyond sports. I thought about her toss.
— (The New Yorker) (August 10)   (Pocket)

Saturday sports: Serena Williams to retire; Fernando Tatis Jr. 80-game suspension - NPR

ESTRIN: I'm doing all right. Let's talk about Serena Williams. One of the greatest athletes of all time announced this week she's getting ready to leave professional tennis for good, potentially making the U.S. Open later this summer her last tournament. So when great athletes retire, we tend to talk about their legacy. But she's leaving behind a few legacies, right?
— (NPR) (August 13)   (Pocket)

Selena Gomez's Mental Health Startup Gets $100 Million Valuation - Bloomberg

Tennis icon Serena Williams’s venture fund, Serena Ventures, led the $5 million early-stage round, which was joined by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital. Brent Saunders, the former chief executive officer of pharmaceutical company Allergan, also took part.
— (Bloomberg) (August 11)   (Pocket)

Serena Williams Loses in First Match Since Saying She Will Retire

Williams’s second-round match on Wednesday at the National Bank Open was her last in Canada, and everyone wanted in on it, even Wayne Gretzky.
— (New York Times) (August 11)   (Pocket)

Serena Williams is going out on her own terms, plus why the Nets shouldn't let Kevin Durant boss them around - CBS Sports

Serena Williams is going out on her own terms, plus why the Nets shouldn't let Kevin Durant boss them aroundCBS Sports
— (CBS Sports) (August 10)   (Pocket)

Serena Williams will retire from tennis with a $260 million net worth and GOAT status. Next up: her $111 million venture capital fund with nearly 60 investments

“I’m evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me,” she wrote for Vogue. She says raising her daughter, Olympia, has never felt like a sacrifice the way tennis has. “These days, if I have to choose between building my tennis résumé and building my family, I choose the latter.”
— (Fortune) (August 9)   (Pocket)

@keyon: Serena Williams top 5 best athletes to ever do it. Across all sports.

@TwitterSports: There's no one like Serena Williams 🐐

TikTok might be working on a music service

TikTok has helped users discover both current and past musical artists, and now it might be starting its own music streaming service. Parent ByteDance has filed a trademark application with the US Patent and Trademark Office for "TikTok Music," Insider has reported. The service would let users "purchase, play, share, download music, songs, albums, lyrics
— (Engadget) (August 1)   (Pocket)

Universal Files Patent for Interactive Pepper's Ghost - Theme Park Insider

August 12, 2022, 4:17 PM · Ready to duel with three-dimensional wizards in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter? You could be able to do that someday soon, if Universal follows through on a patent application it has filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
— (Insider) (August 12)   (Pocket)

Activists Protest Lollapalooza 2022 Over Youth Curfew

The city’s 10 p.m. weekend curfew is waived for ticketed events like the festival, which protestors say unfairly benefits wealthy tourists and white suburban teens while penalizing Black and Brown youth
— (Pitchfork) (July 31)   (Pocket)

Animal rights activists protest after carriage horse collapses in New York due to heat - Watch

Protesters demand action after carriage horse collapsed in New York Photograph:( Twitter )
— (WION) (August 12)   (Pocket)

Obama shares tribute to Bill Russell: "Today we lost a giant"

Former President Obama remembered the late basketball great Bill Russell on Sunday, noting that he "learned so much from the way he played, the way he coached, and the way he lived his life."The big picture: President Biden also paid tribute to the 11-time NBA champion, who died on Sunday at the age of 88.Russell also won two NCAA championships and an Olympic gold medal. He served as the first Black head coach of a North American professional sports team and won two more NBA championships as coach.Obama in 2010 presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Russell, who participated in the 1963 March on Washington and sat front row as Martin Luther King Jr.
— (Axios) (August 1)   (Pocket)

Sylvia Fowles: Forever a WNBA legend, soon to be a mortician

Fowles greets just about everyone with a hug when she meets them, and I'm no different. I've come to Minneapolis to ask Fowles about her impending retirement, about the curtain falling on one of the greatest careers in WNBA history, but I quickly realize it doesn't interest her much. The 6-foot-6 Minnesota Lynx center squirms in her chair every time I try to bring up one of her numerous accomplishments: 2017 league MVP; two-time Finals MVP; four-time Defensive Player of the Year; eight-time All-Star; four-time Olympic gold-medal winner. It becomes clear she would rather delve into
— (ESPN) (August 12)   (Pocket)

Bill Russell: Basketball great who fought for civil rights

Throughout his basketball career, Bill Russell compiled a legacy of championship achievement unparalleled in any sport. As the dominant defensive player of his generation, he won an Olympic gold medal for the US basketball team in 1956, then over the next 13 years led the Boston Celtics to 11 National Basketball Association (NBA) championships.
— (The Independent) (August 6)   (Pocket)

LOVERRO: Bill Russell built his legacy off the court from life lessons

Russell, a Hall of Famer and 12-time All-Star, was the heart and soul of the great Boston Celtics teams that won 11 NBA championships — eight consecutive titles — from 1956 to 1969. He also won two NCAA championships at the University of San Francisco in 1955 and 1956 and an Olympic gold medal in 1956.
— (Washington Times) (August 2)   (Pocket)

OBF: There are the greats, and then there’s Bill Russell

He won two NCAA championships while playing for the University of San Francisco. The Dons won 55 straight games at one point. Russell won a gold medal while playing with the 1956 USA Olympic team in Melbourne, Australia, 36 years before anyone heard of “The Dream Team.”
— (Boston Herald) (August 1)   (Pocket)

NBA legend and civil rights activist Bill Russell dies at 88

A statement posted to Russell's Twitter reflected on his life's accomplishments, saying how he was "twice an NCAA champion; captain of a gold-medal-winning US Olympic team; 11 times an NBA champion; and at the helm for two NBA championships as the first black head coach of any North American professional sports team."
— (Just the News) (July 31)   (Pocket)

A 33-year-old who worked at Starbucks for 13 years got fired over a month-old violation. It led to a union walkout and a viral video that has racked up 21 million views on TikTok

A video of the group walkout at Starbucks in Tonawanda, New York, that went viral last week is the most exposure that a union action has received so far, according to Casey Moore, the 25-year-old Starbucks barista who filmed it.
— (Fortune) (August 12)   (Pocket)

Their TikTok videos of strange, rare fruit went viral. Meet Miami’s ‘fruit influencers’

Rane Roatta, 29, and Edelle Schlegel, 25, the founders of Miami Fruit, hold some of the products they sell online from their farm on Wednesday, July 30, 2022 in Homestead, Fla. Miami Fruit, an online company that sends boxes of fruits to customers around the United States and the world, uses social media to promote their products to their followers.
— (Miami Herald) (July 27)   (Pocket)