Tag: cause
Prince William says he feels glad his mum introduced him to the cause of homelessness when he was a boy
PRINCE William says he feels glad that his mum introduced him to the cause of homelessness when he was a boy.
But Wills, 40, said he thought Diana, Princess of Wales, would be disappointed that more progress had not been made in tackling the problem.
He made the comments in a Red Nose Day video appeal in which he meets people helped by charities backed by Comic Relief.
The Prince of Wales spoke to Miles and Nawshin at Groundswell, a group for the homeless.
Explaining the root of his interest in the subject, he says: “My mother introduced me to the cause of homelessness from quite a young age.
“I’m really glad she did.
“I think she’d be disappointed we’re still no further on in terms of tackling homelessness and preventing it than when she was interested and involved in it.”
Miles tells him: “People who experience homelessness have solutions if you just ask them — they know what needs changing.”
The video will air during BBC One’s Red Nose Day coverage on Friday.
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TikTok Visionary Lynae Vanee is a ‘content creator down for the cause’
It’s easy to describe Lynae Vanee by all that she does: poet, producer, writer, director, social media star. But it’s the creative innovation building the resume that really defines who she is.
It radiates off of Vanee, who brims with the sheer force it takes to do all of those things at once and still remain focused and relevant in a digital environment known for its incessant, trend-based churn and systemic stifling of Black creators. To cut through all that with important, social justice-oriented content seems even more daunting.
Somehow, though, Vanee’s developed the perfect formula to position herself at center stage of digital culture’s biggest platforms, like TikTok.
“I took time to study the psychology of these apps and what gets people’s attention,” she explained. “The bite-sized format — I think that’s just what everyone modifies their art to. TikTok has been instrumental in developing careers, and it’s like that because we have this information access in the palm of our hands and we feel connected. Also, I think it promotes a space of vulnerability that didn’t exist before.”
Mashable Voices: These leaders are working to solve some of tech’s most pressing challenges
Vulnerability (or, more accurately, authenticity) is an inextricable part of Vanee’s successful brand. Online, the 28-year-old is known for the multifaceted Parking Lot Pimpin’ digital series, known affectionately as “the parking lot,” which is a short-form video series posted weekly to social platforms including Instagram and TikTok. The content resembles a variety show of education, politics, and pop culture, combining short need-to-know clips (you might have heard their “I’ma keep it Black, but I’ma keep it brief” intros) and longer stories, like her recent “Drive In” spinoff featuring Black storytellers and stage and screen stars like actor Daveed Diggs.
Vanee’s launched a longer video series on YouTube, as well, known as The Let Out, and started a podcast called Femme Time, which both center the voices of people of color in conversations on culture, mental health, and identity. Vanee sees herself as part of a movement of online creators who are, as she says, “down for the cause,” a network of people who are amplifying important information, championing diversity, and even organizing against injustice.
Vanee’s also an influencer in her own right, a brand partner, a public speaker, and even a two-time NAACP Image Award nominee. She knows exactly what she does well and how she wants to reach her audience. (“You can tell people I’m not running for office,” she noted.)
But you’d be mistaken to think this long list of accomplishments is too much for her to manage because, in her eyes, there’s still at least one thing missing from her resume: Vanee wants her own show.
That manifestation is in her Instagram bio (“Stop playing. Somebody give this girl a show.”), it’s the center of an ongoing docuseries for her Patreon subscribers, and it came up in Vanee’s recent call with Mashable, which she fielded quickly between her jam-packed day of content scheduling, NAACP Image Awards meetings, and the release of her latest interview with actor Issa Rae. Vanee on TV screens isn’t even that far-fetched, with Parking Lot Pimpin’ basically operating as a network interview show already, bolstered by a team of producing staff, and as creators naturally transition their social feeds into streaming programs.
“The basis for all of the brands that I produce is some type of education through storytelling, a comedic lens of storytelling,” Vanee explained. These stories are scripted and told in her own voice, and while that personalized touch has offered a trustworthy sense of authenticity, flexibility, and even authority in a digital space, it’s also made it difficult to welcome outside oversight.
“It’s not so much that I want to give people what they want, but that I give what I want to give. I made something that was very personal to me and had a specific goal, and I want to make sure that I stick to that. What I’ve realized is that my content, while directed for the empowerment of minority communities, has attracted people from all walks of life, all shapes and sizes. Being vulnerable, I think, is one of the best tools to reach across the aisle without sacrificing the quality of your content.”
We’re creating communities for people who look like us, that feel like us, that think like us, not necessarily just people who we want to be like.
So Vanee is still pitching her vision of what a network show made in the image of Parking Lot Pimpin’ could be, not skirting around the ways her digital content pushes against many of her viewers’ comfort and the constrained envelope of what a network program normally looks like.
It’s all part of her journey.
Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Vanee has always been deeply connected to education in its many forms. She graduated with a degree in psychology from Spelman College and went on to earn a master’s degree in African American Studies at Boston University. While at heart a creative, Vanee took to teaching in her mid 20s and mentored high school students in a variety of core and extracurricular classes, often incorporating Black history.
Vanee’s even casually dropped a cosmic connection with learning to her TikTok followers, explaining in a brief video caption that her mother went into labor with her while watching the 1995 film Higher Learning, which tells the intersectional stories of students of color at a fictional university.
She’s also had a lifelong connection to the performing arts, as a public speaker, a choir singer, and a dancer, participating in a dance program at Virginia-based historically Black college Norfolk State University. “I was always surrounded by Black culture,” she said, “and was very inspired by the way we express ourselves.”
With all that in the back of her mind, Vanee found herself among millions of others seeking new modes of expression and work in 2020. She was getting back into spoken word poetry — recognizable in a cadence of speaking that a lot of her viewers pick up on in her videos even today — but was soon impacted by the stay-at-home orders of the pandemic. At the same time, a wave of social unrest was reaching its peak and, during what Vanee calls the “Black Summer of 2020,” Black communities and their allies around the nation were rising up to demand change.
Vanee felt it was the perfect moment to reconnect to her art, and what better way to combine a passion for underrepresented history, activism, and performance than with a digital series?
Thus, Vanee took to the parking lot, posting the first Parking Lot Pimpin’ IGTV video in 2020 to an audience of around 10,000 Instagram followers. Her Instagram page now boasts more than 700,000 followers.
That same year she signed on with YouTube’s Crash Course to pen a Black history series and began posting one-minute Parking Lot summaries to tens of thousands of views on TikTok.
Almost three years later, her videos are still consistently engaging followers and audiences, and she’s bringing on even bigger names as guests to her casually salient show. In terms of numbers, her TikTok page has accumulated more than 420,000 followers and 5.8 million likes. In many ways, Vanee is becoming a household name herself, rising up with a pandemic-inspired class of conscientious online creators.
On the platform today, which just honored Vanee as one of TikTok’s Black History Month Visionary Voices for 2023, her breadth of experience and interests serve to create a space for education and reflection, but also deep community building. She says that the latter is an aspect that’s been especially poignant for her as an artist, creator, and Black woman operating online.
“The feedback that I get — now that I’m able to meet people in person — is that they feel so seen and they identify with the content. It’s empowering for them as well,” Vanee said.
It’s this depth of impact that has made Vanee so effective in building a home amid our evolving digital culture, one that she plans to continue expanding through content that resonates and uplifts.
“TikTok has shifted social media, because we’re creating communities for people who look like us, that feel like us, that think like us, not necessarily just people who we want to be like.”
Staring At Screens Could Strain Cervical Spine, Cause ‘Tech Neck’
If you spend hours a day scrolling on your smartphone or tablet, you might get “tech neck.”
“Humans are upright creatures, and our bodies aren’t designed to look down for long periods of time, which puts extra pressure on the cervical spine,” said Dr. Kavita Trivedi, associate medical director of the Spine Center at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Americans spend about five hours a day on their cellphones and more on laptops and computers, Trivedi noted in a university news release. As a result, people can experience muscle stiffness, joint inflammation, pinched nerves, arthritis, and even bone spurs or herniated discs. …
“The good news is that most patients with tech neck don’t require surgery, and we have a wide range of therapies that can be very effective,” Trivedi said. “There’s no need to live with pain if it can be treated.”
Protect yourself from future neck pain by holding your phone at eye level as much as possible, she advised.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for submitting the article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Tesla warns Full Self-Driving can cause crashes, recalls 362,758 vehicles
Tesla is recalling 362,758 of its vehicles – nearly every EV equipped with Full Self-Driving Beta, its driver assistance system – according to a recall notice put out on Thursday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
The NHTSA notice specifically claims that the Full Self-Driving software, a beta feature that costs Tesla owners an extra $15,000 on top of the cost of the vehicle, “allows a vehicle to exceed speed limits or travel through intersections in an unlawful or unpredictable manner increases the risk of a crash.” The notice goes on to provide examples of unsafe behavior such as the vehicle traveling straight in a turn-only lane, proceeding through a yellow light without due caution, and approaching a stop-sign without coming to a complete stop.
In addition, the Full Self-Driving system “may respond insufficiently to changes in posted speed limits” and does not “adequately account for the driver’s adjustment of the vehicle’s speed to exceed posted speed limits.”
The recall affects a slew of Tesla vehicles with Full Self-Driving Beta including 2016 through 2023 Model S and Model X cars, and 2017 through 2023 Model 3 cars. 2020 through 2023 Model Y vehicles with Full Self-Driving are also affected.
While Tesla issued the recall voluntarily out of “an abundance of caution,” CEO Elon Musk was not happy with how the news was being reported.
“The word ‘recall’ for an over-the-air software update is anachronistic and just flat wrong!” Musk posted in a reply on Twitter.
However, it should be noted that the document filed by Tesla to issue the recall is called “Safety Recall Report” and the NHTSA issued the notice as a recall.
This move comes just days after a TV ad demanding the NHTSA take action regarding safety concerns with Tesla’s Full Self-Driving air in major U.S. metropolitan areas during the Super Bowl. However, we should note that according to documents, Tesla officially made the decision to issue the recall on Feb. 7.
As a result of the recall, Tesla will be issuing a free over-the-air (OTA) software update to the affected Tesla vehicles. Owners will received notification letters, which will be mailed by April 15.
Tesla’s autopilot is not part of the recall, however, according to previous reports, the NHTSA has been investigating the issue with that system as well. The U.S. Justice Department is also probing Tesla over safety concerns and claims from the company regarding its autopilot system and Full Self-Driving feature as well.
Tesla admits Full Self-Driving beta may cause crashes, recalls 363,000 vehicles
Apparently those Super Bowl ads finally did the trick. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced on Thursday that Tesla is recalling nearly 363,000 of its vehicles because the Full Self-Driving software may cause a crash. Specifically, the NHTSA cites a risk to “exceed speed limits or travel through intersections in an unlawful or unpredictable manner increases the risk of a crash.”
In all, the recall impacts 362,758 vehicles. They include, according to the announcement, “certain 2016-2023 Model S, Model X, 2017-2023 Model 3, and 2020-2023 Model Y vehicles equipped with Full Self-Driving Beta (FSD Beta) software or pending installation.”
The NHSTA initially launched its investigation into Tesla’s much-hyped Full Self-Driving system back in August, 2021 following years of fatal highway accidents and terrifying social media posts documenting the software’s seemingly self-destructive behavior. Initially it was just an engineering analysis looking into why Teslas kept chasing parked firetrucks but, last June, the agency upgraded that defect probe, enabling it to demand a recall from the company over this issue, which is how we ended up here.
“We’re investing a lot of resources,” NHTSA acting head Ann Carlson told reporters in January. “The resources require a lot of technical expertise, actually some legal novelty and so we’re moving as quickly as we can, but we also want to be careful and make sure we have all the information we need.”
Tesla will release an OTA update, free of charge to its customers to rectify the issue, Reuters reports. This recall follows a litany of similar corrective actions taken throughout 2022 for everything from funky tail lights to overheating infotainment systems to noisy seat belt chimes — even that gimmick Cyberquad for Kids got the regulatory hook.