🐤 'Armageddon' IRL

🌀 Looming landfall: The Floridians who haven’t yet evacuated ahead of Hurricane Ira’s impending landfall are now bracing for what experts say will be a storm of historic proportions. It has continued to gather strength this week as it passes through the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and is on a collision course with the Sunshine State. Although Gov. Ron DeSantis warned residents throughout the state to be on high alert, it appears that those in the Tampa area are most at risk of property damage and destructive winds as the storm continues along its current course.

🧒 Record-breaking wish: John Cena has built a loyal fan base throughout his career as a wrestler and actor, but his most touching achievement is clearly the one for which he recently earned recognition from the Guinness Book of World Records. By granting his 650th wish through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Cena now has the most wishes under his belt of any celebrity affiliated with the program. The foundation has helped sick kids fulfill wishes of all sorts for more than four decades.

🤴 Royal visit: Following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, her grandson William and granddaughter-in-law Catherine adopted the titles of Prince and Princess of Wales. The couple spent extensive time in the nation, living in Anglesey for three years after they married and later residing in Swansea. This week, they made their first visit to Wales in their new capacity and received an enthusiastic welcome from locals.

🔥 Controversial token: A millionaire in Florida created some serious backlash when he set fire to an illustration by artist Frida Kahlo valued at $10 million. Martin Mobarak said his intention was to create a non-fungible token and use the proceeds to benefit needy children and abuse victims. Nevertheless, the thought of burning a one-of-a-kind work of art rubbed plenty of people the wrong way. Kahlo’s great-grandson called it an “atrocious act.”

If you’ve seen “Armageddon,” this story might seem like a case of life imitating art. Earlier this week, NASA intentionally launched a spacecraft toward an asteroid as part of a brand-new mission known as Double Asteroid Redirection Test — or DART, for short.

Even though this asteroid wasn’t a direct threat to our home planet, experts say Monday’s test could be the key to protecting Earth in the case that a space rock ever does begin hurtling toward use.

There’s obviously a lot of science and planning behind this complex mission, but here’s the mission in a nutshell:

• NASA chose the astroid — Dimorphos — because it orbits a larger rock and posed no danger to our planet.
• Scientists could keep an eye on both asteroids with powerful telescopes located on the Earth’s surface.
• Astronomers calculated the targeted orbit of Dimorphos by measuring its visibility as it orbited the larger asteroid.

Dimorphos was traveling nearly 7 million miles away from us and the spaceship that crashed into its surface was launched into space last year. For size comparisons, the DART craft is about the size of a typical vending machine and Dimorphos is roughly as big as a football stadium.

Aside from just being really cool, NASA administrator Bill Nelson explained why this mission is so important.

“We are showing that planetary defense is a global endeavor, and it is very possible to save our planet,” he said. “I believe it is going to teach us how, one day, to protect our own planet from an incoming asteroid.”

While tech upstarts like Uber and Lyft promised to reinvent the taxi industry, some commuters aren’t completely satisfied with the experience. If you’re looking for something a bit more uplifting, you might soon be in luck.

A company in the United Kingdom recently announced its successful test of a flying taxi. As Vertical Aerospace confirmed, the small electric-powered aircraft is capable of taking off and landing without incident.

Airlines including Virgin and American have already ordered models of the VX4, which insiders say will likely be used for short flights no longer than about a half hour. Each flying taxi can comfortably seat four occupants, so it should fit nicely within the framework already established by the taxi and ridesharing industries.

Although the test flight was conducted under close supervision inside a hangar, a spokesperson for the company said everything went off without a hitch. From here, the company will begin taking the aircraft on more demanding test flights to determine whether there are any modifications or improvements needed in its design.

Chief test pilot Justin Paines credited “many months of preparation by a huge team” for bringing about this momentous occasion.

So far, the flying taxi hasn’t received the federal certification necessary to start picking up passengers — but Vertical Aerospace hopes that will be taken care of within the next few years.

You’ve probably heard one of the countless stories about a tech billionaire giving away a large portion of his or her massive wealth to help a particular cause or boost a nonprofit charitable organization. But what about the average Joe out there?

Some studies have indicated that middle-class Americans have increasingly drifted away from giving to charities, with less than half reporting having done so in 2018 compared to about two-thirds at the turn of the century. But the truth might be a bit more complex than that statistic might make it seem.

There are a few theories behind the apparent reduction in charitable giving by average citizens over the past few decades:

• Americans have become increasingly distrustful of institutions across the board in recent years, which means they are less likely to hand over their money to supposedly charitable organizations.
• Multiple economic downturns and financial uncertainty have caused folks to become a lot more conscious about where their money is going.
• A growing number of Americans are not affiliated with any religion, which has historically been the leading recipient of charitable giving.
• There’s a good chance that the available data is not giving us an accurate account of how much people are actually giving to charity.

It’s that last point that deserves a little more context. Although more people than ever are eschewing the traditional avenues when it comes to making charitable donations, that doesn’t mean that they’re not giving at all.

The rise of crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe has revolutionized how we donate to causes that we care about, but these gifts are typically not recorded by organizations that track charitable giving. A growing number of people believe that cutting charitable groups out of the equation is a much more efficient way to give.