SUPER HUMANS – THE SCIENCE BEHIND SUPER POWERS

We’ve all seen the Marvel and DC Universe movies featuring super heroes and villains boasting a wide variety of superpowers from super strength, speed, flying, super senses, invisibility, mind-reading, telepathy, time-travelling, telekinesis, x-ray vision, elemental powers, animal powers, healing and regeneration – the list goes on. Sometimes it’s fun to fantasize about which super powers we would want to posess if we were ever bitten by a radioactive spider or were exposed to a mysterious substance or a ‘mad’ scientist, but those are just fantasies and make for great movie and television plots. In the real world, ‘super powers’ can look very different, but being extraordinary is possible, just not […]

HOT, HOTTER, HOTTEST – FEBRUARY 2024 THE WARMEST MONTH TO DATE

Just over nine months ago, June 2023 was declared the hottest month recorded in Earth’s history. The nine months since have set new records of their own, with each subsequent month outdoing the highs of the previous one, culminating with February 2024 outstripping all previous months of their title as the world’s hottest month to date. Sea-ice in the Antarctica is at an all-time low as a result of the unprecedented temperatures with ocean surface temperatures rising too. The high temperatures are largely affected the El Nino weather event, however this is not solely to blame – global warming and climate change are the largest culprits in […]

AVOIDING JOB SCAMS IN A TOUGH JOB MARKET

South Africa’s unemployment rate rose to 32.1% in the last quarter of 2023. What this also means is that currently, South Africa has the highest unemployment rate on the continent, and even worse, in the world too as of 2024. Globally, the job market is extremely competitive with many companies looking to cut costs wherever possible based on the tough economic climate. Sadly, one of the biggest cost-cutting mechanisms is reducing overheads by reducing employees, which is what a number of the largest tech firms have done in recent months. The aim is to do more with less, which also often requires employees that are left, to be able to […]

GOOGLE GEMINI AND THE ISSUE WITH ITS AI

Google Gemini was launched towards the backend of 2023, and was introduced as the company’s “largest and most capable AI model” to date. According to Demi Hassabis, CEO and Co-Founder of Google DeepMind, “Gemini is the result of large-scale collaborative efforts by teams across Google, including our colleagues at Google Research. It was built from the ground up to be multimodal, which means it can generalize and seamlessly understand, operate across and combine different types of information including text, code, audio, image and video.” Gemini comes in three different models that are designed to provide flexible AI-driven solutions based on the device and complexity of the task at hand.

Gemini Ultra […]

LOCALLY GROWN BRINGING IT HOME AT THE 2024 GRAMMY AWARDS

Tyla Laura Seethal, or Tyla as she is more commonly known, scooped up her first Grammy Award on the 5^th of February at the 2024 Grammy Awards. The 22 year old picked up the Grammy Award for the Best African Music Performance for her hit-song Water. The song, which has gone viral has also inspired its own dance and has become the backing track to many TikTok videos too. The music video has had over 118 million views on YouTube and has become a global phenomenon spurred on by social media.

Tyla beat out a number of very well-known African artists to take home the coveted award, including Nigerian […]

20 YEARS OF FACEBOOK

The 4^th of February 2024 marked 20 years of the social networking social media platform that we’ve all come to know as Facebook. Originally named The Facebook, the social networking service was then renamed in August 2005. The site was founded by Mark Zuckerberg as well as his Harvard College roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. The initial idea was to use TheFacebook to connect Harvard students only, but later expanded to other universities in the vicinity, then across the United States and Canada, and then in 2006, the site became public to anyone who had a valid email address and was over the age of 13.

Facebook has had its […]

TOOLS AND COURSES TO UP-SKILL YOURSELF WITH IN 2024

In a competitive job market globally, it helps to stand out from the crowd. One of the best ways to do this is through upskilling. Upskilling is essentially an opportunity to expand your capabilities and skillsets and learn something new to add to your portfolio. It is important when doing so, that these newly acquired skills add value – this can be from an educational standpoint by learning something complimentary, or by looking to further your career by adding a new skill to your professional scope of offering. It is fair to say that in 2024, some skills are in higher demand than others, and with that demand also […]

THE PROS AND CONS OF REMOTE WORK

Post Covid-19, the world came to grips with new ways of working. Pre-Covid-19, the corporate world was highly structured and, excepting unusual circumstances, required employees to be in office full-time, i.e. Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm, with some companies mandating even longer hours depending on the employee’s job description and industry. Both the finance and the legal industry were known for its strict adherence to office times and overtime. Covid-19 changed all of this because for the first time ever, having people physically in office was just not possible due to global lockdowns that necessitated everyone who wasn’t an ‘essential’ worker or in an ‘essential industry’. Employees and employers had […]

SA’S GROUNDBREAKING CASE AGAINST ISRAEL

As the war continues to rage on between Israel and Palestine, many countries globally are making their views known – either in support of Israel, Palestine or denouncing the war and ensuant genocide that is currently taking place in Gaza. Many countries have also become increasingly vocal about the atrocities taking place in Gaza, since the onset of the war on the 7^th of October 2023. Israel’s retaliation has been relentless and has resulted in over 22,000 recorded deaths accordingly to Gaza’s health ministry and over 57,000 injuries so far, approximately two-thirds of the casualties and fatalities recorded are women and children, highlighting an even greater need for an immediate ceasefire. However calls […]

SLEEPING – WHICH COUNTRIES DO IT BEST

Sleep is an essential part of life – without rest, the body cannot function. This is applicable to all mammal life-forms specifically, but particularly when it comes to human health. Sleep is not only critical to basic human health, but also aids all bodily as well as cognitive functionality. There is a reason why our brain functions better when we’ve had enough sleep, we can focus more, process faster and perform better. Rest, especially sleep, is also a crucial part of our healing process as well. That’s why when we are sick, one of the first recommendations is sleep. However, true beneficial sleep is known as deep sleep. During the deep […]