VOX
Why the US government murdered Fred Hampton
- Title
- Why the US government murdered Fred Hampton
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- What we aren't taught about the Black Panther Party.
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On December 4th, 1969, the Black Panther Party’s Illinois Chairman Fred Hampton was murdered by police. But his story is about much more than the raid that took his life. The movement Hampton helped create was unique, and revolutionary.
In the late 1960s, Fred Hampton helped lead a coalition of activists, working across racial lines against a corrupt city government that threatened their communities. At the core of their work were social programs, including free breakfasts, health clinics, and legal aid. Hampton named the group the Rainbow Coalition. And because of their impact, it wasn’t long before they got the attention of the police and the FBI. What followed was an assassination, and a coverup.
Watch “The Murder of Fred Hampton” http://www.chicagofilmarchives.org/pres-project...
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- Why Ethiopia is in a civil war
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- The country’s leader won the Nobel Peace Prize. Then he went to war.
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In 2019, after ending Ethiopia’s decades-long war with its neighbor, Eritrea, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It seemed like a new beginning for Ethiopia. After decades of dictatorships and oppressive regimes, he appeared to finally be putting the country on a new path.
But less than a year later, Abiy had already launched a military attack — on Tigray, a regional state in his own country. When Abiy became prime minister in 2018, he had largely supplanted Tigray’s main political party, the TPLF, as the country’s center of power. Since then, tensions between Abiy and the TPLF had escalated quickly. The political rivalry led to a dispute over an election, which led to an alleged attack on a military base — and finally to Abiy’s deployment of the military.
Abiy promised to bring pe...
- Title
- How Native Hawaiians fought the US Navy, and won
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- The reclaiming of a sacred island.
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On January 4, 1976, a fleet of boats headed toward the Hawaiian island of Kaho‘olawe. The goal: take the island back from the US military for the Hawaiian people.
Since World War II, the US military had used the island for bombing practice and decimated its land. But the story of the taking of this one island was part of a bigger history of the taking of all of Hawaii. The decades-long efforts to reclaim it would help spark a movement to renew the culture and traditions of the islands — and a push for Hawaiian sovereignty.
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Explore the full Mis...
- Title
- Why the world's most famous car race is in Monaco
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- It's got a lot to do with taxes.
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Monaco is the world’s second-smallest country, spanning only 2.2 square kilometers. Yet it's the capital of the wide world of car racing.
For more than 70 years, the country has hosted the Monaco Grand Prix. It’s one of the world’s most unusual racecourses, running through the city streets of Monte Carlo. The course goes through a tunnel, up a cliff, and passes just feet from the harbor; it's earned the nickname “the race of a thousand corners.”
Because of its design, the Monaco Grand Prix has produced some of the most memorable moments in car racing history. But that's not the only reason the race is so prestigious.
Monaco is a tax haven, and for decades has been a favorite place for the rich and famous to stash their wealth. The Grand Prix weekend is the country's biggest weekend o...
- Title
- The dark legacy of this iconic baseball stadium
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- How Los Angeles destroyed a community and built a ballpark on top of it.
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Before Dodger Stadium, LA had Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop — three neighborhoods that made up a thriving, predominantly Mexican American community in an area known as Chavez Ravine.
But in the late 1940s, the city marked that area as “blighted,” setting the stage for a decade-long battle by residents to preserve the community against threats of eviction. Ultimately, the city forced out residents with little to no compensation, clearing the way for the future baseball stadium.
The result is a complicated legacy, a story that's often missing from the history of Los Angeles, and for some, hard questions about what it means to be a fan of the LA Dodgers. Through interviews with several former residents of the area, this episode of Missing Chapter explores the story...
- Title
- Why captchas are getting harder
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- Want to watch this video? Please identify all the traffic lights first.
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It's not you — captchas really are getting harder. The worst part is that you’re partly to blame.
Correction: At 5:22, we say that Google uses reCaptcha V2 data to train their self-driving cars and improve Google maps. While they have used V2 tests to help improve Google maps, according to an email from a Waymo representative (Google’s self-driving car project), they aren’t using this image data to train their autonomous cars. For more on the future of self-driving cars, check out this article from Vox’s Kelsey Piper: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/14/21063487/self-driving-cars-autonomous-vehicles-waymo-cruise-uber
A captcha is a simple test that intends to distinguish between humans and computers. While the test itself is simple, there's a lot happ...
- Title
- Why not everyone in the US likes stimulus checks
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- And why the US wants inflation. Explained by fish.
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The US government has sent checks to millions of Americans during the economic crisis caused by the pandemic. But some economists are concerned that all that government spending could lead to inflation. If everyone suddenly has $1,200 more to spend, what will that do to the economy? Will it lead to prices going up, and money losing its value?
But the consensus among most economists, including those in charge of steering the US economy, is that we actually want some inflation. And to understand why, it helps to think of the US economy as a fish tank.
Read more about inflation on Vox.com:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22346376/inflation-rate-explained-federal-reserve
And more about the "Sahm rule" to send out checks automatically at the start of a recession:
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/3/26/211...
- Title
- The surprising reason behind Chinatown's aesthetic
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- The iconic "Chinatown" look started as a survival strategy.
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From London, to Manila, to Melbourne, Chinatowns in cities around the world share similar design elements. And that’s on purpose. Their distinct "Chinatown" style can be traced back to a single event: the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which came on the heels of decades of violence and racist laws targeting Chinese communities in the US. The earthquake devastated Chinatown. But in the destruction, San Francisco's Chinese businessmen had an idea for a fresh start: a way to keep their culture alive, by inventing a completely new one.
Chinatown carved out a place for itself under the threat of hate and violence. Today, that legacy is staring us in the face.
Explore the full Missing Chapter playlist, including episodes, a creator Q&A, and more! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
- Title
- A sneak peek at Missing Chapter season two
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- Watch the season premiere here: https://youtu.be/EiX3hTPGoCg
Missing Chapter is back with season two. This season we’re exploring more hidden histories that didn’t make it into our textbooks. We'll cover the surprising origins of Chinatown’s architecture, what we aren’t taught about the Black Panther Party, the fight to reclaim a sacred Hawaiian island, and more.
Have an idea for a story that we should investigate for Missing Chapter? Send it to us via this form! http://bit.ly/2RhjxMy
Explore the full Missing Chapter playlist, including episodes, a creator Q&A, and more!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ8cMiYb3G5fR2kt0L4Nihvel4pEDw9od
Subscribe to our channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLXo7UDZvByw2ixzpQCufnA
Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com.
- Title
- Why the US has two different highway fonts
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- The typefaces on highway signs, deconstructed.
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When you head out on the highway in the United States, you’re probably paying attention to the signs above your car and on the side of the road — the ones that direct you to your destination. If you’re looking for an exit or a rest stop, chances are you’ll see the typeface Highway Gothic. It became the highway standard in the 1950s, born out of an initiative from the California Department of Transportation to develop a clearer and more flexible standard for highway signs.
But for the past decade, a new typeface has been trying to take its place: Clearview. This new typeface boasts wider spaces inside of letters and less chunky letterforms, and tries to solve some of Highway Gothic’s readability issues. Learn more in the video above.
More from typeface designer Tobias Frere-Jones, who...
- Title
- How rich countries are making the pandemic last longer
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- A program called Covax wants to distribute Covid-19 vaccines fairly. Is it working?
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Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, many of the world’s richest countries poured money into the race for a vaccine. Billions of dollars, from programs like the US’s Operation Warp Speed, funded development that brought us multiple Covid-19 vaccines in record time. But it also determined where those vaccines would go. Before vaccine doses had even hit the market, places like the US and the UK had bought up nearly the entire supply.
This turns out to be an old story. In nearly every modern global health crisis, from smallpox to malaria to H1N1, rich countries have bought up vital medical supplies, making poor countries wait sometimes decades for life-saving support. It’s effectively a system in which where you live determines whether you live or die of a preventable disease. Leaving a disease like Covid-19 to spread un...
- Title
- Why 99% of ocean plastic pollution is "missing"
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- The plastic we dump into the ocean might be hiding in plain sight.
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Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com.
For the past several years scientists have been trying to account for the 8 million metric tonnes of plastic that we dump into the ocean each year. The assumption was that a large portion of it was floating out in one of the large garbage patches, where swirling debris accumulates thanks to ocean gyres. But recent measurements of the amount of trash in the patches fell far short of what’s thought to be out there.
Scientists are getting closer to an answer, which could help clean-up efforts and prevent further damage to marine life and ocean ecosystems.
In a previous version of this video, we mistakenly compared the size of the Great Pacific Garbage ...
- Title
- How trucker country music became a '70s fad
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- Long-haul truckers were once country music’s heroes.
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“Ah, breaker one-nine, this here’s the Rubber Duck. You got a copy on me, Pigpen? C’mon.” This jumble of words is the first line of the song “Convoy,” a #1 country hit from 1976 that tells an action-packed story from the perspective of a truck driver. Songwriters Chip Davis and Bill Fries filled “Convoy” with banter and lingo based on communications they heard between trucker drivers on CB radio during the 1973 oil crisis.
The epic orchestration and colorful and quotable lyrics made “Convoy” an unlikely hit — but the song actually tapped into a long history of country music that put the spotlight on the solitary lives of long-haul truck drivers. In the video above, Estelle Caswell breaks down the golden era of trucker country with country and folk music scholars Travis Stimeling ...
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- Quiet Storm: How 1970s R&B changed late-night radio
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- Quiet Storm is a late-night Black radio staple.
Link to the extended interview with Fredara Hadley: https://youtu.be/QjAd49e0H8s
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Late one evening in the summer of 1976, a Howard University student named Melvin Lindsey was tapped to fill in as a host at WHUR, the university-owned Black radio station. He chose a lineup of his favorite R&B ballads to soundtrack Washington, DC, that evening. The show was an accidental success. Shortly thereafter he was hired, and his show had a name: The Quiet Storm.
Quiet Storm radio shows have since become a staple of Black communities across the United States. In the video above Estelle Caswell, along with ethnomusicologist Fredara Hadley, break down exactly what makes Quiet Storm such a beloved black radio tradition. Also featured in the episode are radio hosts, Angela Stribling, Al Wood, and John Monds.
- Title
- Why South Africa is still so segregated
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- How centuries of division built one of the most unequal countries on earth.
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For decades, South Africa was under apartheid: a series of laws that divided people by race. Then, in the 1990s, those laws were dismantled. But many of the barriers they created continue to divide South Africans by skin color - which in turn determines their quality of life, access to jobs, and wealth. Racial division was built into the fabric of cities throughout South Africa, and it still hasn't been uprooted.
That's partly because, while apartheid was the culmination of South Africa's racial divisions, it wasn't the beginning of them. That story starts closer to the 1800s, when the British built a network of railroads that transformed the region's economy into one that excluded most Black people -- and then made that exclusion the law.
Sources and further reading:
I...
- Title
- Earworm is back! Here’s a preview
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- Watch episode one right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1BdVnpaBtY
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Vox’s Earworm, a video series that dives deep into the origin stories of sounds in pop music, is back with two new episodes in April. On Friday the 16th and 23rd we’ll drop two stories about big culture moments on the radio.
Watch past episodes of Earworm all in one place: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ8cMiYb3G5fyqfIwGjH2fYC5fFLfdwW4
Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com.
Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE
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Or Twitter: http://goo.gl/XFrZ5H
- Title
- How this New York island became a mass grave
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- And why Hart Island is changing after the coronavirus pandemic.
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Hart Island, a small piece of land off the Bronx in New York City, resurfaced in national headlines in April 2020, when New York City was the epicenter of the US coronavirus pandemic. News footage of the island’s cemetery showed trenches being filled with pine coffins, and sent shockwaves around the world. But these mass burials taking place during the pandemic are just the most recent in Hart Island’s long history.
Hart Island’s “potter’s field” cemetery dates back to 1869, and for over 150 years has served as a burial ground for over 1 million New Yorkers. Over the years, infrastructure problems and a lack of reliable public access have earned Hart Island a tainted reputation.
A 2021 analysis by Columbia Journalism School’s Stabile Center and THE CITY found tha...
- Title
- Two theories for an unsolved Soviet mystery
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- What killed 9 hikers in 1959?
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In February 1959 a group of hikers disappeared in the remote Ural Mountains of Western Siberia. A search party found their tent weeks later, abandoned along with all of their equipment. Frozen bodies were found 1,500 meters away, mysteriously underdressed for the weather conditions: most weren’t wearing shoes or gloves, and some were just in their sleeping clothes. Even stranger, three of the hikers had suffered major internal trauma — broken ribs and a fractured skull — and two were wearing clothes contaminated with radioactive substances.
Nonetheless, the lead Soviet investigator closed the criminal case into the hikers’ deaths, concluding that an “overwhelming force” is what drove them from the tent. Theories ranging from rare weather events to conspiracy to UFOs have developed ever since, to explain what is now called the Dyatlov P...
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- Is Racism Making People Sick?
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- After the events of 2020, we are no strangers to stress and anxiety. But for Black and brown Americans, that stress was nothing new. Racial health gaps have always existed, and socioeconomics and racism within the medical system have long kept equal healthcare out of reach. But what kind of toll does the experience of racism itself have on your body? Glad You Asked host Christophe Haubursin wants to know.
0:00 Intro
1:58 Is Racism Making People Sick?
4:02 Racism And Our Bodies
8:25 The Stress Gap
14:55 The Search For Healing
20:09 Wrap Up
- Title
- Is Meritocracy a Myth?
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- Education in the United States is supposed to be meritocratic, meaning a student’s achievement is measured solely by their efforts. But how do class and privilege affect opportunity, and does everyone really get the same shot? Glad You Asked host Fabiola Cineas explores how the myth of meritocracy perpetuates racism while keeping the American dream achievable only for a privileged few.
0:00 Intro
1:44 Is Meritocracy A Myth?
2:51 Playing Rigged
6:02 What Is A Meritocracy?
8:42 Measuring Merit
14:12 Sisters
18:40 Wrap Up
- Title
- Does My Neighborhood Determine My Future?
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- Housing policy in the United States has a long history of deepening segregation. Redlining, exclusionary lending, and targeted zoning laws have all played a role in isolating minority populations while simultaneously privileging white residents. Glad You Asked host Lee Adams wants to know how this happened, and what effect residential segregation has on your future.
0:00 Intro
1:48 Checking Zip Codes
3:08 Segregated By Design
8:32 Testing For Fair Housing
11:26 Downzoning
13:02 Property Values
16:10 Lead Poisoning
19:22 Wrap Up
- Title
- Are We Automating Racism?
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- Many of us assume that tech is neutral, and we have turned to tech as a way to root out racism, sexism, or other “isms” plaguing human decision-making. But as data-driven systems become a bigger and bigger part of our lives, we also notice more and more when they fail, and, more importantly, that they don’t fail on everyone equally. Glad You Asked host Joss Fong wants to know: Why do we think tech is neutral? How do algorithms become biased? And how can we fix these algorithms before they cause harm?
0:00 Intro
1:24 Is AI Racist?
4:15 The Myth Of The Impartial Machine
11:09 Saliency Testing
13:52 How Machines Become Biased
18:33 Auditing The Algorithms
20:24 Wrap Up
- Title
- How Racist Am I?
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- This is a difficult question to ask yourself. But recent events and an increasing amount of research has shown just how much racial bias impacts our world. Before we can start the work of dismantling systemic racism, we have to first understand our own biases. Glad You Asked host Cleo Abram explores if we can measure those biases, how we shine a light on them, and what to do about them.
0:00 Intro
1:11 Racial Bias
2:13 Measuring Bias
5:40 Talking Race
7:22 Cultural Thumbprint
10:41 How Racist Am I?
13:06 Personal Responsibility
19:55 Wrap Up
- Title
- Why you can't compare Covid-19 vaccines
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- What a vaccine's "efficacy rate" actually means.
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In the US, the first two available Covid-19 vaccines were the ones from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. Both vaccines have very high "efficacy rates," of around 95%. But the third vaccine introduced in the US, from Johnson & Johnson, has a considerably lower efficacy rate: just 66%.
Look at those numbers next to each other, and it's natural to conclude that one of them is considerably worse. Why settle for 66% when you can have 95%? But that isn't the right way to understand a vaccine's efficacy rate, or even to understand what a vaccine does. And public health experts say that if you really want to know which vaccine is the best one, efficacy isn't actually the most important number at all.
Further reading from Vox:
Why comparing Covid-19 vaccine efficacy numbers can be misleading: https://www.vox.com/22311625/co...
- Title
- Why Mount Everest's height keeps changing
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- The world's tallest mountain just got a little taller — here's why.
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In December of 2020, China and Nepal made a joint announcement about a new measurement for Mount Everest: 8,849 meters. This is just the latest of several different surveys of Everest since the first measurement was taken in 1855. The reasons why the height has fluctuated have to do with surveying methodology, challenges in determining sea level, and the people who have historically been able to measure Everest.
We mention this NOAA post in the end tag of the video, which addresses another way to measure the height of mountains: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/highestpoint.html
NOAA has more information about the geoid here: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/geoid.html
More reading:
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/24/938736955/how-tall-is-mount-everest-hint-its-chang...
- Title
- The bridge design that helped win World War II
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- It’s a simple innovation that helped win a war.
The Bailey bridge was Donald Bailey’s innovative solution to a number of wartime obstacles. The allies needed a way to cross bodies of water quickly, but bombed-out bridges — or an absence of crossings entirely — made that incredibly difficult. That was only compounded by new, heavy tanks that needed incredibly strong support.
Bailey’s innovation — a modular, moveable panel bridge — solved those problems and gave the allies a huge advantage. The 570-pound steel panel could be lifted by just six men, and the supplies could fit inside small service trucks. Using those manageable materials, soldiers could build crossings sufficient for heavy tanks and other vehicles.
As impressive, the Bailey bridge could be rolled across a gap from one side to the other, making it possible to build covertly or with little access to the other side. Together, all the Bailey bridge’s advantages changed bri...
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- Glad You Asked Season 2 | Official Trailer | YouTube Originals
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- Are we automating racism? Does your neighborhood determine your future? Is meritocracy a myth? We’ll grapple with all of these questions and more on a new season of Glad You Asked. Throughout this five-part series, we’ll explore how racial injustice impacts our everyday lives— from how we code bias into our technology to how our public education system fails millions of students. Season 2 of Glad You Asked premieres March 30 on our YouTube channel.
- Title
- Can we get rid of Covid-19 forever?
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- How to eradicate a disease, in 4 steps.
✉️ Sign up for our newsletter: http://www.vox.com/video-newsletter
As of March 2021, Covid-19 has killed more than 2.5 million people. It’s brought on a dramatic economic downfall, a mental health crisis, and has generally just put the world on pause. But we don’t have to look far back in history to see how much worse it could have been.
Smallpox was twice as contagious as Covid-19, and over 60 times as deadly. It plagued humanity for centuries, left many survivors blinded and covered in scars, and killed hundreds of millions of people in the 20th century alone. But today, smallpox has been eradicated. Through a massive global effort, we were able to wipe the disease completely out of existence.
So can we do the same thing with Covid-19? And if we can’t, what are our other options?
Read the article this video is based on, by Kelsey Piper: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect...
- Title
- Texas's power disaster is a warning sign for the US
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- America's power grid is not ready.
✉️ Sign up for our newsletter: http://www.vox.com/video-newsletter
In February, extreme cold and an unusual winter storm left millions of Texans in the dark. Many went without power or water, in subzero temperatures, for nearly five days. It was a disaster; dozens died. But even though that storm hit much of the country, the power outages were mostly limited to Texas. That’s because Texas is on its own electrical grid, separate from the rest of the country, which means it can’t easily get power from other states in an emergency.
But Texas's grid itself is not what failed. Power went out across Texas in the first place because energy sources across the state were unprepared for severe weather. And that didn’t have to happen; Texas had been warned about this exact scenario, and had actually experienced versions of it twice in the last 30 years. But they didn’t prepare.
Now the rest of the U...
- Title
- How museum gift shops decide what to sell
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- And how what’s in a gift shop affects how we see art.
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Gift shops are like the final exhibit of an art museum. They’re often located toward the exit and are unmissable on your way out the door. Souvenirs inside can range from Vincent Van Gogh socks to giant stuffed soup cans to Mona Lisa rubber ducks. But how do gift shop curators decide what to sell?
Stocking decisions often revolve around how curators want visitors to perceive the art lining museum walls. When you see a certain piece of art on a lot of merchandise, that usually means curators think that artwork is important. And thanks to a psychological phenomenon called the mere-exposure effect, the more you see that art, the more you begin to think it’s important.
Read more about this from Micaela Marini Higgs at Vox: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/7/18072114/museum-gift-s...
- Title
- How Alexei Navalny became Putin's greatest threat
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- Navalny's movement is unlike any in recent history.
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In 2006, a lawyer named Alexei Navalny started a blog where he wrote about corruption in his home country of Russia. It’s the most prominent problem under the regime of Vladimir Putin, who has ruled Russia since 2000. Putin has systematically taken over the country’s independent media, oligarchy, elections, and laws to cement his own power and wield corruption to his advantage.
That’s what Navalny set out to expose. And in 2010, he published a groundbreaking investigation into a state-owned transportation company, Transneft, which was funneling state money into the hands of its executives. The post launched Navalny into politics.
By 2016, he had become the face of Russia’s opposition movement, run for mayor, and was running for president against Putin himself. Navalny was unifying Russia’s opposition like no politician had be...
- Title
- The boxing film that was banned around the world
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- In 1910, boxing heavyweight champion Jack Johnson defeated Jim Jeffries in the "Battle of the Century," and the nation erupted.
Subscribe to Vox and turn on notifications (🔔) so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
On December 26, 1908, American boxer Jack Johnson became the first Black heavyweight champion of the world, after defeating defending champion Tommy Burns in a title fight in Sydney, Australia. Black fighters were typically denied the chance to win the heavyweight title, a de-facto line of segregation that was known as “the color line.” So when Burns accepted Johnson’s challenge and lost, the film that was distributed around the fight proved controversial.
The white boxing world set out to find a white heavyweight to beat Johnson and take back the title. That white fighter ended up being James Jeffries, a former heavyweight champion who had retired undefeated.
Their fight, hyped as the “Battle of ...
- Title
- Why Jakarta is sinking
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- The 400-year curse dragging Indonesia's capital into the sea.
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Like many coastal cities around the world, Jakarta is dealing with sea level rise. But Indonesia's biggest city also has a unique problem: Because of restricted water access in the city, the majority of its residents have to extract groundwater to survive. And it's causing the city to sink. Today, Jakarta is the world’s fastest-sinking city.
The problem gets worse every year, but the root of it precedes modern Indonesia by centuries. In the 1600s, when the Dutch landed in Indonesia and built present-day Jakarta, they divided up the city to segregate the population. Eventually, that segregation led to an unequal water piping system that excluded most Indigenous Jakartans, forcing them to find other ways to get water.
To understand how it all ties together, and what’s in store for Jakarta’s future, watch the video above.
- Title
- The invention that fixed lighthouses
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- The most important part of a lighthouse might be one of the beautiful tools hidden inside: the Fresnel lens, a breakthrough that changed seafaring and saved lives.
As the above video shows, these lenses satisfied a need for lighthouses that could shine farther and through dense layers of fog. The Fresnel lens, invented by Augustin-Jean Fresnel, helped do that by capturing all the light coming from a lamp, and then magnifying and directing it in one direction. Suddenly, lighthouses became more useful and shipwrecks diminished.
Even today, this breakthrough is still in operation. As the US Lighthouse Society reports, more than 75 Fresnel lenses are in use in American lighthouses, and businesses like Dan Spinella’s of Artworks Florida craft replicas that capture the beauty — and functionality — of the 19th-century breakthrough.
Watch the above video to learn how these lenses work and how they saved lives.
Further reading:
- Title
- How highways make traffic worse
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- Expanding highways doesn't do what you think it does.
Subscribe and turn on notifications (🔔 ) so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Big, expensive highway expansion projects are the source of a lot US transportation funding — but they aren't a silver bullet for congestion relief. In communities that were built for cars, solving traffic problems requires much more holistic problem-solving.
At 1:00, we show a bar graph of travel times on the Katy Freeway that was originally put together by City Observatory, which has covered the Katy Freeway expansion project at length:
https://cityobservatory.org/reducing-congestion-katy-didnt/
This video was based in large part on research by Gilles Duranton and Matthew A. Turner:
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.101.6.2616
For more reading on induced demand:
https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/
ht...
- Title
- Vaccine side effects are actually a good thing
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- Why you might feel sick after getting a Covid-19 vaccine.
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Every vaccine can have side effects like muscle pain, fever, or headaches; and some of the new Covid-19 vaccines are even likelier to give you those side effects than you may be used to. But the scientists who work most closely with vaccines emphasize that when a vaccination makes you feel sick, it's almost never a bad sign. And once you understand why vaccine side effects happen, you may even be happy to get that headache.
Read more about why the Covid-19 vaccines may feel different from other routine shots: https://www.vox.com/22158238/covid-19-vaccine-side-effects-explained
Much of the data in this video came from the clinical trial reports for the first two studied vaccines to become available. You can read those courtesy of the US Food and Drug Administration:
Moderna: https://www.fda.gov/media/144434/download
Pfi...
- Title
- mRNA vaccines, explained
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- Why some Covid-19 vaccines were developed faster than any vaccine ever.
Subscribe and turn on notifications (🔔 ) so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Researchers working on Covid-19 vaccines have smashed speed records, bringing new vaccines from development to distribution in less than a year. They did this with the help of billions of dollars of unprecedented global investment -- but also, in some cases, with a new type of vaccine technology.
There are four traditional types of vaccines, and they all require the growing and handling of live pathogens in a lab, a time-consuming process than can add months or years to development. But two new types of vaccines skip that step altogether by moving that work from the lab to our bodies. mRNA vaccines, like the ones from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna; and Adenovirus vaccines, like those from Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca; do this by sending genetic instructions directly into our cells...
- Title
- The phony health craze that inspired hypnotism
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- In the 1780s, a charismatic healer caused a stir in Paris.
Subscribe to Vox and turn on notifications (🔔) so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Scientific progress in the 18th century in Europe, a period known as the “Age of Enlightenment,” was demystifying the universe with breakthroughs in chemistry, physics, and philosophy. But medical practices were still relying on centuries-old treatments, like leeching and bloodletting, which were painful and often ineffective. So when Franz Anton Mesmer, a charismatic physician from Vienna, began “healing” people in Paris using an alternative therapeutic practice he called “animal magnetism,” it got a lot of attention.
Mesmer claimed that an invisible magnetic fluid was the life force that connected all things and that he had the power to regulate it to restore health in his patients. He was a celebrity figure until the King of France, Louis XVI, commissioned a group of leading...
- Title
- Why visual effects artists love this shiny ball
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- A chrome ball is a key visual effects tool.
How do visual effects artists match their digital creations to real light? Sometimes, it involves using a very shiny ball.
Leo Bovell of Tryptyc has worked on a range of visual effects projects, but one of his most memorable experiences might be shooting in the Lincoln Memorial for an episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” His task? Replace the real Lincoln with a completely digital — and destroyed — version. To do it, he used an industry-standard HDRI map of the light in the scene.
HDRIs — high dynamic range images — mesh together different pictures to create a complete depiction of the light in a real scene. After that, it’s a matter of teaching a computer to cast that light onto digital objects. This technique is used for everything from creating entire scenes to providing key references for artists.
Watch the above video to learn more.
Further Reading:
Paul...
- Title
- Tech platforms banned Trump. Now what?
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- Deplatforming Trump won't stop the big lie.
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Former US president Donald Trump has now been kicked off of social media platforms from Facebook and Twitter to Pinterest. His suspension followed a violent insurrection on the Capitol in his name, and came months after Twitter had begun flagging hundreds of his posts for false statements about the election that he lost. But, as Platformer's Casey Newton explains, banning Trump was actually the easy part. Now tech platforms have a new problem: How do you combat misinformation when it's become bigger than any single user?
Casey Newton writes Platformer, a publication about the intersection of big tech and democracy: https://www.platformer.news/
Read more from Vox about how Trump's absence from Twitter and Facebook had near-immediate effects on the platforms:
https://www.vox.com/2021/1/16/22234971/trump-twitter-facebook-social-media-ban-elec...
- Title
- Joe Biden and Kamala Harris inauguration ceremony
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- On Wednesday, January 20, 2021 Joe Biden became the 46th President of the United States. Read more about the challenges before him: https://bit.ly/39LSC5q
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Skip ahead to key moments in the Inauguration program:
00:00 – Introduction
11:48 – Invocation by Fr. Leo O'Donovan
17:29 – National Anthem performed by Lady Gaga
21:00 – Pledge of Allegiance by Andrea Hall
22:34 – Swearing-in of Kamala Harris
24:42 – Musical Performance by Jennifer Lopez
29:35 – Swearing-in of Joe Biden
33:20 – President Joe Biden's Inaugural address
55:38 – Musical Performance by Garth Brooks
1:00:03 – Poetry Reading by Amanda Gorman
1:06:44 – Benediction by Rev. Dr. Silvester Beaman
Vox's feed is provided by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremoni...
- Title
- The warning signs before the Capitol riot
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- No one should have been surprised.
Subscribe to our channel and turn on notifications (🔔) so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Law enforcement agencies have said they had "no intelligence" indicating that a group of Trump supporters would overpower police and enter the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021. But journalists and researchers who study the online far right say that's not true. In fact, the groups at the heart of the riot had been planning it for days, in plain sight, on social media -- and the signs that an event like this was imminent had been coming for years.
Reporters Logan Jaffe (ProPublica) and Robert Evans (Bellingcat) describe the warning signs they observed weeks, months, and even years before a mob of Trump supporters broke into the US Capitol building.
Sources:
Propublica: Members of Several Well-Known Hate Groups Identified at Capitol Riot
https://www.propublica.org/article/severa...
- Title
- Why the American West is fighting for water protections
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- Not all rivers and streams are protected under the Trump administration’s new definition of “water.”
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For most of its nearly 50-year history, the Clean Water Act protected all US rivers and streams from pollution. But the Trump administration redefined the types of waterways that get federal protection, which affects some states in the arid West more than any other part of the country. The reason why has to do with the differences between certain types of rivers and streams.
For EarthJustice’s watershed maps:
https://earthjustice.org/features/maps-watersheds-dirty-water-rule
For more reading on the impact of the Dirty Water Rule:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/climate/trump-environment-water.html
Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox...
- Title
- 2020, in 7 minutes
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- Let’s close out 2020 by looking back at the moments that inspired us and changed us in a year unlike any other.
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2020 changed everything. From the deadly Covid-19 pandemic to protests against systemic racism and police brutality, from changing global leadership to the effects of climate change, Vox explained the moments that mattered — and the ones that brought us joy.
From voting to vaccines and from protests to pets, a look Vox broke down 2020’s biggest trends, explained in 20 charts: https://www.vox.com/recode/21727016/2020-in-charts-covid-vaccine-pandemic-election
Explore all of our 2020 reviews on Vox: https://www.vox.com/2020-year-in-review
Check out Emily VanDerWerff’s series on Vox.com called “Stories from a Lost Year,” featuring as-told-to accounts from everyday people living through 2020. https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/12/17/22177093/lost-year-2020-s...
- Title
- India's huge farmer protests, explained
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- Thousands of India’s farmers have set up camp in Delhi.
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In November 2020, thousands of farmers marched from the northern states of India to Delhi to protest farming reforms passed by Prime Minister Modi’s government. Those protests have continued throughout the month of December and show little sign of letting up. The farmers have set up camp in and around the capital city to pressure the government to repeal the laws, but the government won’t budge.
The government says these new laws will modernize farming by liberalizing the industry, but India’s farmers say it will be their downfall. Under these new policies, farmers will have fewer government protections and will likely lose the government-regulated markets and prices they have relied on for decades.
To make matters even more difficult, all this is happening as India’s farmers grapple with a shrinking share of the economy ...
- Title
- The real cost of smart speakers
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- Alexa's recording you. What’s she doing with it?
Read Sara’s article about the privacy settings on your smart speaker: https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/12/9/22160427/amazon-alexa-google-assistant-siri-holidays
Correction: At 0:58, we mistakenly suggest that every 1 in 5 American households has a smart speaker. In fact, over one-third of U.S. adults has a smart speaker. We regret the error.
In 2014, Amazon debuted a simple but industry-changing product: the smart speaker. Technically the Amazon Echo was just a microphone attached to the internet that you installed in your home. But it let users ask a digital assistant, Alexa, thousands of questions and commands, and it was a hit. Before long, Google and Apple followed with their own smart speakers, and today, a device that began as a curiosity has become commonplace: one in five US households now owns a smart speaker.
Smart speakers offer convenience; much of their popularity can si...
- Title
- Why a US election in Georgia matters so much
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- The Georgia runoffs, explained.
Subscribe to our channel! http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
The US 2020 election isn't completely over. That’s because, even though we know Joe Biden will be president, we still don’t know if he’ll have a friendly Congress to work with. Congress’s lower chamber, the House of Representatives, is under Democratic control. But control of the upper chamber, the Senate, is still up in the air, because of two remaining Senate races — and they’re both in the state of Georgia.
The results of those “runoff” elections -- one between Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican David Perdue, the other between Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican Kelly Loeffler -- will determine whether Biden’s policy agenda will be ambitious or compromised. But runoff elections are actually really rare in the US. And the story of why Georgia uses them in the first place is crucial to understanding the state that will now determine the next seve...
- Title
- How virtual reality tricks your brain
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- VR doesn’t need to look hyper-realistic for our brains to believe it.
Watching someone play a game in virtual reality is a bit of a surreal experience in itself. They swing their arms around, turn their heads, and twist their bodies reacting to invisible cues all around them. From outside the headset, you might be able to see their experience on a screen. But it’s hard to believe that they could become so immersed in a virtual world that they lose track of reality around them — and yet it happens all the time.
The internet is full of “virtual reality fails” — people falling into walls and crashing through their TVs, much to their families' disbelief. Virtual reality harnesses our perception in ways video games and other media can’t. Check out the video above to learn more.
Further reading:
http://nautil.us/issue/32/space/these-tricks-make-virtual-reality-feel-real
https://apnews.com/article/35ba06aa00784732969b5ad161e43a3...
- Title
- Napoleon's missing hand, explained
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- Napoleon Bonaparte was often depicted concealing a hand inside his shirt. Why?
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Napoleon Bonaparte is one of history’s most famous figures and has been depicted in countless portraits. Often, paintings show him with one hand concealed inside his shirt. The gesture is a common feature of caricatures and impressions of the conqueror, and its frequent appearance has led to speculation about why he seemed to do it so often.
The answer is rooted in the gesture’s history. Concealing a hand in one’s coat has long signified gentlemanly restraint, and was often associated with nobility. It goes as far back as ancient Greece, when famed orator Aeschines claimed that restricting the movement of one’s hand was the proper way to speak in public.
Portraits of Napoleon adopting this pose are an example of propaganda — the most famous version being Jacques-Louis David’s 1812 painting of Napo...
- Title
- Das Sonnenfinsternis-Foto, das Einstein berühmt machte
- Date posted
- 5 years ago
- Description
- This is a republished video for our German-speaking audience. Watch the original video in English here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLxvq_M4218&t=1s
Im Jahr 1919 verhalf eine totale Sonnenfinsternis der Schwerkraft zu einer neuen Definition.
Albert Einsteins allgemeine Relativitätstheorie, die 1915 erschien, definierte Schwerkraft als Einwirkung massiver Körper, wie beispielsweise Planeten und Sterne, die den Raum, der sie umgibt, krümmen. Diese Definition wich komplett von der Isaac Newtons ab, der Schwerkraft über 200 Jahre früher als eine anziehende Kraft beschrieben hatte, die Planeten und Sterne in ihrer gegenseitigen Umlaufbahn hält. Wenn Einstein Recht hatte, würde sich auch Licht in der Nähe massiver Körper krümmen. Im Jahr 1919 machten sich zwei Britische Expeditionen auf, diese Hypothese zu überprüfen, indem sie eine totale Sonnenfinsternis fotografierten. Durch einen Vergleich der Stellung bestimmter Sterne, einmal mit der Sonne vor ...
