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THIS IS HOW IT’S DONE.
Philanthropy can be weird sometimes. Sort of good things can be done for sort of not-so-great reasons once you dig a little deeper into the transaction. Sometimes, good things are done for totally cynical reasons. Then there are the times when a philanthropist can leave you gobsmacked in a good way. Case in point, Yvon Chouinard. Per The Guardian,
Setting a new example in environmental corporate leadership, the billionaire owner of Patagonia is giving the entire company away to fight the Earth’s climate devastation, he announced on Wednesday. Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, who turned his passion for rock climbing into one of the world’s most successful sportswear brands, is giving the entire company to a uniquely structured trust and nonprofit, designed to pump all of the company’s profits into saving the planet. “As of now, Earth is our only shareholder,” the company announced. “ALL profits, in perpetuity, will go to our mission to ‘save our home planet’.
Now, that’s putting your money where your mouth is. Amazing stuff. https://bit.ly/3RQmDFS
ANOTHER TEST PROVES EINSTEIN WAS SMART.
Score another W for Albert Einstein and his enduring theory. While you’re at it, you can score one for those high school physics teachers who love the trick physics question about which falls to earth quicker a feather or a cannonball (or some form of heavy thing…). Per Science,
A pillar of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity—and a staple of middle school science class demonstrations—has passed its most stringent test yet. A new space-based experiment aboard the European satellite MICROSCOPE has confirmed with unprecedented precision that masses made of different materials fall at exactly the same rate under gravity. It’s “really good” to have Einstein’s theory confirmed with such high precision, says Eugene Lim, a theoretical physicist at King’s College London who wasn’t involved with the work. The results aren’t surprising, he adds, but these kinds of experiments could help physicists narrow down future gravitational theories that fit with quantum theory and better predict how black holes behave. MICROSCOPE launched in 2016 to test Einstein’s Weak Equivalence Principle. Simply put, the principle states that gravity is universal. No matter what an object is made of—be it lead or sawdust—it will accelerate in the same way under a gravitational field. In one famous—possibly apocryphal—demonstration, the famed astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei is said to have dropped two spheres of differing masses from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and watched them land at the same time. (In reality, many historians agree this was likely just one of Galileo’s thought experiments.) Physicists have carried on the tradition for centuries, poking and prodding at this principle under a variety of experimental conditions.
Undoubtedly, scientists will continue to test the validity of Einstein’s theory, as they should. That said, it looks like it will continue to defeat any and all challengers. https://bit.ly/3UpV3Bd
BABY STEPS.
If there’s a short term Holy Grail for all things Metaverse and NFTs, it’s the notion of cross platform interoperability among products. Currently, the landscape is more fragmented than shattered glass. But never fear, there’s good news on the Meta-NFT front. Per TechCrunch,
The Linux Foundation has announced plans for a new collaborative initiative designed to support interoperability across digital wallets, built on an open source bedrock. The OpenWallet Foundation (OWF), as the new effort is called, is the brainchild of Daniel Goldscheider, CEO of open banking startup Yes.com, though today’s announcement reveals a broad gamut of buy-ins from multiple industry players, including Okta, Ping Identity, Accenture, CVS Health and OpenID Foundation, among several other public and private bodies. With the Linux Foundation serving as the project’s host, this gives OWF sizeable clout as it strives to enable what Goldscheider calls a “plurarity of wallets based on a common core,” according to a press release. The news also comes as regulatory bodies across the globe are moving to support competition through enforcing interoperability across systems, including Europe, which is currently trying to make messaging interoperability a thing.
Fingers crossed. Once true interoperability is achieved, we’ll need some quantum computing processing power to take the nascent Metaverse to the next lever. https://tcrn.ch/3BmyYdJ
WALKING ON SUNSHINE.
Since we started with some great environmental news, we figured we’d end on similarly great news. The CBC is reporting on a fantastic sustainability first (at least in North America).
When Bryan Adams opened his North American tour on P.E.I. on Aug. 31, people behind the scenes were attempting another first that he didn't know about. The concert was being held in Summerside, and the small city's electrical utility was trying to make the concert the first evening concert in North America to be entirely solar-powered. BluWave-ai, the company whose software powers Summerside's smart grid, came up with the idea.
The event went off without a hitch, proving that solar power can be viable when done right and implemented with realistic goals. https://bit.ly/3UfSDVm
Thanks for reading. Let’s be careful out there.
