If 3 Black people took a White man on a boat expedition and didn’t return with him the president would be making a speech right now.
Rest in power Nolan Wells
His name was George Stinney Jr. Let us never forget his name nor his face, and let us remember that he was the victim of one of the most appalling injustices in history simply because of the color of his skin.
A 17-year-old in Iowa boiled beets in her chemistry class and turned them into stitches that change color when your wound gets infected. Her name is Dasia Taylor. It started as a science fair project.
She wanted a low-tech version of the "smart stitches" Tufts researchers built in 2016. Those used thread wired up with sensors and a tiny chip that pinged your phone if something went wrong. Cool, but useless without a phone or a hospital that can afford it.
Her version doesn't need any of that. Healthy skin is slightly acidic, like lemon juice but much milder. When bacteria grow in a wound, the chemistry flips and turns more like soap or baking soda.
Beet juice has a quirk. The same red pigment that stains your fingers when you cook it shifts color based on what it touches. Bright red on healthy skin. Dark purple on infected skin. The switch lines up with infection almost exactly.
She tested ten threads before finding a cotton-polyester blend that soaked up the dye and changed color within five minutes. That was the prototype.
Around 1 in 40 American surgeries end in an infection at the cut, costing hospitals more than $3 billion a year. In poorer countries the rate is closer to 1 in 9. In parts of Africa it's 1 in 6. In some Ethiopian hospitals, up to a quarter of surgery patients leave with an infection.
The whole game is catching it early. Spot it in time and antibiotics handle it. Miss the window and the patient is back on the operating table.
Dasia filed a patent in 2021 and started a medical device company called VariegateHealth in 2022. The stitches haven't been tested on real patients yet. New medical device patents can take a decade. She's also looking into a side benefit: the beet pigment kills bugs like E. coli and Klebsiella in lab tests.
Smart stitches need a phone to read them. Hers just need eyes.
Black people have the right to self-defense.
Fannie Lou Hamer said, “I keep a shotgun in every corner of my bedroom and the first cracker even look like he wants to throw some dynamite on my porch won't write his mama again”
The moment Michael Jackson knew it was time to go ‘solo’ because the way the spirit of funkiness possessed his brother Marlon Jackson during Victory Tour.
The moment makes no sense to him and the fact that MJ and his other brothers didn’t even try to hide their confusion💀🤦♂️