Sabrina Thompson, a NASA aerospace engineer and founder of streetwear brand Girl In Space Club (GISC), is using her passion for sneakers to ignite the curiosity of young minds in science, space, and technology. The 38-year-old’s initiative, STEMulating Art, is bridging the gap between creativity and technical skills for young minds. Designing a pair of kicks for the moon Thompson noticed that while kids were excited to meet a rocket scientist like herself, they had trouble connecting with the technical aspects of her work. Determined to bring space exploration down
Data journalist Mona Chalabi has won a Pulitzer Prize for her “striking illustrations that combine statistical reporting with keen analysis to help readers understand the immense wealth and economic power of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.” The 36-year-old’s award-winning illustrations were published in a New York Times piece entitled “9 Ways To Imagine Jeff Bezos’ Wealth” last year. POCIT sat down with Chalabi back in 2015 for a candid discussion about her work as a data journalist. “A data journalist is one who uses data as much as they possibly can
Black media mogul Byron Allen, the owner of Allen Media Group (AMG), has hit McDonald’s with another massive lawsuit, claiming the corporation has lied about its commitment to Black-owned media. Last week, Allen’s Entertainment Studios Networks Inc and Weather Group LLC filed a lawsuit against McDonald’s seeking damages in excess of $100 million for fraud/false promise, violating California Civil Code 1711. The law holds corporations to their public promises and thereby redresses corporate fraud. Fraud and False Promises In May 2021, McDonald’s pledged to increase its advertising spend with Black-owned
Two Black 22-year-old founders have raised $5 million to democratize event planning with POSH, the event management and ticketing platform that aims to take on the likes of Dice, Ticketmaster, and Eventbrite. Democratizing event planning POSH announced its public launch last week after being in beta since October 2020. Now, the platform has raised $5 million in a seed funding round co-led by Companyon Ventures and EPIC Ventures, with participation from Day One Ventures, Pareto Holdings, DoNotPay founder Joshua Browder and others. The brainchild of Avante Price and Eli Taylor-Lemire, POSH allows
In a watershed moment for the global tech industry, more than 150 African content moderators—who have provided moderation services for AI tools used by Facebook, TikTok, and ChatGPT—have voted to unionize, TIME reports. At an event in Nairobi this week, content moderators employed by third-party outsourcing companies voted to establish the first African Content Moderators Union. A long time coming The union’s establishment is the culmination of a process that began in 2019 when former Facebook content moderator Daniel Motaung was fired after attempting to unionize workers at the outsourcing
Beyoncé’s philanthropic initiative, the BeyGOOD Foundation, is set to grant $2 million to entrepreneurs and students during her Renaissance World Tour. Ten years after Beyoncé founded BeyGOOD during the Mrs Carter Show World Tour, the initiative working towards economic equity and education, is now the BeyGOOD Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public charity. “I am hugely proud of the work we have done over a decade at BeyGOOD, here in the US and around the world,” Beyoncé said in a press release. “From scholarships to the water crisis in Burundi, to helping families during
HelloBeautiful and Madame Noire’s special cover, Women To Know: Tech Titans, is a celebration of Black women blazing trails in tech. Despite making up just 1.7% of the tech workforce, Black women are leading, innovating, and disrupting the industry. So, HelloBeautiful and Madame Noire brought eight Black women changemakers and visionaries together for a shoot by Black women-owned production company Oracle Media and photographer JD Barnes. HelloBeautiful and Madame Noire also hosted a roundtable discussion with four Tech Titans: Kelsey Davis, Michelle James, Bozoma Saint John, and Kimberly Bryant. Together, they celebrated each other’s strengths and successes, were candid
EVEN, a creative platform that enables artists to sell their music directly to fans, has closed a $2.2 million seed round led by CSA Partners. Mag Rodriguez founded the platform last year to help Black and brown artists retain equity in their creative work. The blockchain-based direct-to-consumer platform allows artists to sell their music directly to their fans before uploading their music to streaming platforms. When fans purchase music, they can get access to it one to two weeks before they drop on streaming platforms, as well as exclusive content,
“This is the final straw AI,” Drake wrote on Instagram Stories after an AI-generated version of him rapping to Ice Spice’s “Munch” went viral. The Canadian artist is the latest prominent industry figure to express concern over AI-generated music. Streamers urged to take charge The Financial Times reports that Universal Music Group (UMG) wrote a letter to major streamers, including Spotify and Apple Music, to clamp down on AI-generated music. UMG, which controls about a third of the global music market, said they were concerned about AI bots training on their catalog and
Did you get duped by the ‘Balenciaga Pope’? Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll have seen the viral image of Pope Francis wearing a stylish white puffer coat. It has been viewed a whopping 27.5 million times on this tweet alone. For many, this won’t have been their first encounter with misinformation, but it might have been their first with AI-generated imagery. Although it looks realistic, the ‘Balenciaga Pope’ was created using a tool called Midjourney. It is one of the most popular generative AI tools available, alongside
