There’s an iconic photograph of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that was taken as he triumphantly boarded one of the first integrated buses in Montgomery, Alabama. It was 1956 and King looks out a window, firmly at the front of the bus, almost gazing toward his movement’s next big social hurdle. The image was taken by Ernest Withers, a key chronicler of the civil rights movement — and an FBI informant. That the FBI wanted someone close and…
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire mogul and power broker who built a casino empire spanning from Las Vegas to China and became a singular force in domestic and international politics has died after a long illness. Adelson died at 87 from complications related to treatment for non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, Las Vegas Sands announced Tuesday. He was the son of Jewish immigrants, raised with two siblings in a Boston tenement, who over the second half of his life…
Usually, looking at public art is a fairly passive experience. Often, viewers are completely forbidden from directly interacting with art, much less changing how it looks entirely. But Show Your Stripes by Jim Conti, a glittery piece of public art above a vacant San Jose storefront, is different. It’s pretty enough to look at as-is, when night falls and it’s fully visible. Bars of light flicker across two sides of the building, in shifting designs and hues. But what few……
Deep in the Lost Coast of Northern California, one stand of peculiar redwood trees survived multiple logging efforts that cleared most of the old-growth in the surrounding forest. Salty ocean air and frequent harsh ocean winds through Shady Dell are thought to have caused these trees to fracture repeatedly but remain alive, and the broken trunks continue growing towards the sky, culminating in the bizarre candelabra-shaped forms we see today. Staff involved in redwood conservation say they’ve never seen……
LAUNCHub Ventures, an early-stage European VC which concentrates mainly on Central Eastern (CEE) and South-Eastern Europe (SEE), has completed the first closing of its new fund at €44 million ($53.5M), with an aspiration to reach a target size of €70 million. A final close is expected by Q2 2021. Its principal backer is the European Investment Fund, corporates and a number of Bulgarian tech founders and investors. With this new fund, LAUNCHub aims to invest in 25 startups in……
Payments company Checkout.com is raising once again. The company has closed a $450 million Series C round with Tiger Global Management leading the round — Greenoaks Capital and all existing investors are also participating. If you’re not familiar with the company, Checkout.com wants to build a one-stop shop for all things related to payments, such as accepting transactions, processing them and detecting fraud. It focuses on large merchants and tries to make its product as customizable as possible so……
Curve, the London-based fintech that combines multiple cards and accounts into one smart card and an app, has secured a Series C finding round of $95 million. The financing was led by IDC Ventures, Fuel Venture Capital and Vulcan Capital (the investment arm of the estate of Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul G. Allen), with participation from OneMain Financial, the US personal finance company, and Novum Capital. Several previous investors also participated. The fundraise brings the total investment in Curve to……
Zipmex, a digital assets exchange headquartered in Singapore, announced today it has raised $6 million in funding led by Jump Capital. The startup, which plans to become a digital assets bank, says the round exceeded its initial target of $4 million. Along with earlier funding, it brings the total Zipmex has raised so far to $10.9 million. The exchange is regulated in Singapore, Australia and Indonesia, and licensed in Thailand. It focuses on investors new to cryptocurrency with educational……
Platforms and infrastructure providers dump Parler, Microsoft unveils a new Surface and a Chinese fitness app raises $360 million. This is your Daily Crunch for January 11, 2021. The big story: Parler sues Amazon after going offline President Donald Trump has found himself banned from most of the major social media and internet platforms, with companies pointing to his role in inciting the violent takeover of the U.S. Capitol last week, as well as his continuing statements expressing support……
Pies can be finicky. Overwork the dough, and the crust won’t flake. Too-liquid filling can hesitate to set, or ooze out of the tin. Most people, as a result, stick to the pies they know how to make, or simply buy them from the store. But Stacey Mei Yan Fong, a Brooklyn-based baker, has invented nearly 50 drastically different pies over the last four years. Fong, who was born in Singapore and moved to the United States for college,……
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the fallout of the storming of the Capitol by a mob of pro-Trump loyalists (all times local): 4:20 p.m. The State Department is investigating what appears to be a “prank” after its website suggested President Donald Trump’s term would end Monday evening. The change to the department’s bio page for Trump — which displayed the text “Donald J. Trump’s term ended on 2021-01-11 19:49:00” — created an internet frenzy Monday afternoon. The flub…
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Kansas City Chiefs had to wait until the very last of the six wild-card games played over the weekend to find out who the reigning Super Bowl champions would play in the divisional round of the playoffs. As if they hadn’t sat around long enough. The Chiefs clinched the No. 1 seed in the AFC and its lone first-round bye in Week 16, allowing coach Andy Reid to sit just about every crucial…
Moya Bailey, a scholar of critical race, feminist, and disability studies, is the 2020-21 MLK Visiting Professor in the MIT Women’s and Gender Studies Program. She is an assistant professor of Africana studies and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Northeastern University. Her co-authored book, “#HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice” was published by the MIT Press in 2020, and her forthcoming book “Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance” will be published in May by NYU Press. Bailey coined……
The MIT.nano Immersion Lab, MIT’s first open-access facility for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) and interacting with data, is now open and available to MIT students, faculty, researchers, and external users. The powerful set of capabilities is located on the third floor of MIT.nano in a two-story space resembling a black-box theater. The Immersion Lab contains embedded systems and individual equipment and platforms, as well as data capacity to support new modes of teaching and applications such as creating……
Professor Emeritus John Dugundji died on Dec. 20 due to natural causes at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was 95. While Dugundji was renowned for his expertise in aeroelasticity, structural dynamics, and composite materials, those who knew him best also admired his deep knowledge and appreciation of poetry, music, history, and the arts. In true MIT spirit, instead of viewing these intellectual pursuits separately, he instead used each to inform the other — like a poem nestled comfortably……
