The firm announced TxO in 2020 to support founders who do not have access to traditional venture networks. Many of TxO's participants were women and minorities who, overall, receive very slim amounts of venture capital dollars. The announcement of the fund came during the wave of support that underrepresented founders received in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. The fund launched with $2.2 million in initial commitments, TechCrunch previously reported, with a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz and his wife, Felicia, matching up to an additional $5 million. TxO provided founders with access to tech networks, a 16-week-long training program, and a $175,000 investment through a donor-advised fund managed by the nonprofit Tides Foundation. The program went on to support more than 60 companies (like the media brand Brown Girl Magazine, food tech Myles Comfort Foods, and the maternity tech Villie). TxO garnered some criticism when it launched because it's technically structured as more of a nonprofit, rather than a traditional investment fund. Those investing in the fund are considered donors, and the money given is regarded as charity donations, rather than traditional limited partner investments....
It has been described as nutty, chocolatey, earthy and even fishy: a wildly expensive coffee that can sell for more than 100 times the price of regular brews, made from beans eaten and excreted by civet 'cats'. Scientists have long wondered what lies behind civet coffee's unique flavour. A team now says that the digested beans contain high levels of two compounds commonly used as flavouring agents in dairy products ' and these might contribute to the coffee's distinctive taste1. Civet coffee is produced across Asia. Called Kopi Luwak in its origin country of Indonesia, it grabbed international attention after being featured in the 2007 film The Bucket List. Asian palm civets (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) eat the fruit or cherries of coffee shrubs, and the seeds (commonly called beans) can be picked from their scat. These are then roasted to make coffee with a unique flavour; the resulting beans can cost more than US$1,300 per kilogram, and the coffee up to $75 per cup. These high prices drive civet-coffee tourism and incentivize farms that use caged civets to produce the brew. Several groups, including the UK-based charity The Civet Project, have highlighted serious animal-welfare concerns around these farms, noting that they might also foster viruses with the potential to cause pandemics....
Any darkening of the mind, disturbance therein, instigation to the lowest or earthly things; together with every disquietude and agitation, or temptation, which moves to distrust concerning salvation, and expels hope and charity; whence the soul feels that she is saddened, grows lukewarm, becomes torpid, and almost despairs of the mercy of God. This is how Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order of priests, described 'spiritual desolation' in 1548. He was referring to the feeling of emptiness that people tend to feel after the initial euphoria of a religious conversion. After the flush of new faith, which he calls 'consolation,' life's troubles return, people feel they have made a mistake, and they may fall away. This desolation is not merely a religious phenomenon. It describes much of our experience when something new and beautiful sparks joy and enthusiasm but later becomes tedious and tiresome. Marriages, for example, notoriously suffer from the so-called seven-year itch, when passion gives way to boredom and conflict. Similarly, new jobs are exciting and interesting for a while but then become a grind or an oppression....
Autumn Gardiner thought updating her driving license would be straightforward. After getting married last year, she headed to the local Department of Motor Vehicles office in Connecticut to get her name changed on her license. While she was there, Gardiner recalls, officials said she needed to update her photo. That's when things started to go wrong. Every time staff tried to take her photo, Gardiner says, the system would reject it. 'Everyone's watching. They're taking more photos,' she recalls. Gardiner, who works as a grant manager for an environmental conservation charity, is one of a small number of people globally who live with Freeman-Sheldon syndrome. Sometimes known as Whistling Face syndrome, the genetic condition impacts muscles around the face and skull, which can result in an undersized mouth. As more staff members at the DMV were called to help, Gardiner says she started to believe the rejected photos were being caused by her facial difference. The camera system didn't seem to work for her, she says. 'It was humiliating and weird. Here's this machine telling me that I don't have a human face,' Gardiner says....
