Tag: small business news

As psychedelics enter a new era, Errol Morris’s new doc explores their original evangelist

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While the U.S. has been seized by both a pandemic and an epic undermining of its democratic processes, psychedelics are undergoing their own revolution. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that drugs associated with existential awakening should accompany movements like Black Lives Matter, which oppose systemic inequity. It’s in this moment that filmmaker Errol Morris has decided to fix his camera lens on Joanna Harcourt-Smith, the onetime girlfriend of psychedelics evangelist Timothy Leary, called “the most dangerous man in America” by President Richard Nixon. Timothy Leary was a Harvard lecturer and psychology researcher who, alongside assistant professor Richard Albert, created the Harvard Psilocybin Project between 1960 and 1962. The project sought to understand how the human mind interacted with hallucinatory drugs like LSD and psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, which were both legal at the time. Leary was later dismissed from Harvard for proselytizing the virtues of using LSD and for his lax if not unscientific approach to experimentation. After leaving Harvard, Leary was propelled into pop culture fame. His numerous run-ins with the law and the loud condemnation from Nixon helped seal his status as an icon of the counterculture revolution. The film, called My Psychedelic Love Story , follows the five year relationship of Harcourt-Smith and Leary as they tripped from country to country evading U.S. law enforcement and meeting new friends. Premiering on Showtime on November 29, the film is a high drama story that is rendered absurd in the light of 2020 drug legislation. Joanna Harcourt-Smith in My Psycehdelic Love Story . [Photo: Nafis Azad/Courtesy of SHOWTIME] “It’s certainly ironic that this whole thing was propelled forward by drugs laws that we now see as insane,” says Morris. “But the war on drugs has always been nonsense.” When Harcourt-Smith and Leary met, he was on the run from U.S Read More …

Inventors have raised millions on crowdfunding sites to build better masks

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In March, as COVID-19 cases spiked and supplies of N95 protective masks dwindled at the Bay Area hospital where her brother-in-law works, Megan Duong launched a local search for N95s. Along with her sister-in-law, Sabrina Paseman, Duong enlisted volunteers and tracked down 7,000 masks—barely enough to cover the needs of two hospitals for one day. “We just knew that it was not a scalable solution,” Duong said. So, Duong and Paseman, both former Apple employees, set out to invent a new tool that, they hoped, would make available mask technologies more effective and accessible. They weren’t the only inventors attempting to meet sudden, massive demand for personal protective equipment, or PPE. Experts say that PPE like masks is critical for slowing the spread of COVID-19. But for much of the pandemic, high-quality PPE has been in short supply for medical workers. Meanwhile, PPE available to the public has been of variable quality , with users complaining that cheap cloth masks, although widely available and recommended by public health agencies, are uncomfortable, hamper social interactions, and have limited effectiveness. Those issues have spurred new innovation, as inventors strive to make PPE cheaper, safer, more comfortable, and more accessible—and, in many cases, may see opportunities to turn a profit while doing so. Already, some new designs have earned praise from experts. Many others have not yet demonstrated that they’re any more effective than a standard cloth mask. “My concern is people are going to be spending a lot of money based on hype, which is not going to give them or anybody else any additional protection,” said Gary Garber, an infectious disease physician who also works with Public Health Ontario in Canada. On crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, inventors have raised millions of dollars for new designs of face masks, gloves, and other PPE. University engineering labs have turned their attention to making masks and face shields. Read More …

This Amazon exec figured out a way for customers to use cash

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For Americans without a debit or credit card, it’s nearly impossible to shop online. Amazon’s Ben Volk has devised a way for the company to accept cash, something it has technically done since 2017, but customers had to preload money into their account. With Amazon PayCode, which launched in the U.S. in September 2019, customers can pay with cash at partner Western Union after completing online checkout. Purchases arrive on their doorstep days later. “A lot of it had to come down to trust,” Volk says. (In certain countries outside of the U.S., roughly one-third of first-time Amazon customers opt to use PayCode.) Today, working with the USDA and 36 states, Volk has been piloting a way for recipients of SNAP benefits to buy groceries through Amazon. “I’m super proud to be a part of it,” he says. Read More …

Screens are lifesavers right now, but they’re still relationship wreckers

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Digital technology has been a lifeline during the COVID-19 health crisis. Yet, its impact on human relationships remains complex. It allows for work and connection in many domains, but does so in ways that are often intrusive , exhausting, and potentially corrosive to face-to-face relationships. The debate about technology’s effect on overall mental health rages on. Some researchers claim smartphones have destroyed a generation , while others argue screen time doesn’t predict mental health at all. After years of research on the topic , I have come to the conclusion that screen time can disrupt a fundamental aspect of our human experience — paying attention to one another’s eyes . Smartphones, even more than older technologies like television, have been aggressively designed to control and capitalize human attention throughout the day by drawing people’s fingers and eyes down to a screen and away from one another. Increasingly, people can’t look away. It’s all in the eyes Human beings are unique among animals— including closely related primates — in our ability to share meaning and collaborate on goals through the coordination of eye gaze. From the earliest days of life, babies tune into their caregivers’ eyes to find comfort and decipher emotion. As they grow , people build on these skills and learn to lock eyes with social partners to communicate and collaborate. The whites around human eyes are large, making them highly visible to partners. The result is humans are able to track the direction of each other’s gaze with exquisite accuracy. Some argue this evolutionary adaptation was fundamental to Homo sapiens ‘ advancement as a species . Read More …