E-Waste - Deal With It !

..no, really! You've got to deal with it !!!

E-waste is the name for discarded electronic devices. Phones, computers, TV and audio sets and all other appliances which feature circuitry fall into this category. Like any other waste, it too ends up in the landfills, where it rots for ages.

Silent Wednesday 41 - Judgemental America Photography Series

Photographer: Joel Parés

Venezuela - The Home of Plastic Culture and Artificial Beauty

Migbelis Lynette Castellanos Romero
Miss Venezuela 2013

Here I am, minding my own business browsing the webs on a Tuesday morning. I haven't had my coffee yet, and this man appears that shatters my believes for how spiritually void, materialistic and profane a man can be. (By man I mean a human being - just so we're clear.)

The video below is a short documentary for how the Venezuelans have pushed the female appearance to the extreme, enforcing an iron model for the female body. Everyone who doesn't meet that model is deemed unattractive, or not as attractive as they can be, which literally forces women to undergo countless of surgery procedures in order to mould their body into the standard. A standard that's completely fake.

Silent Wednesday 38 - Disney Unhappily Ever After

The Paris Syndrome - How Idealization Could Ruin Your Health

There is a city so big and popular that it comes with its own syndrome? I'm not talking about Stockholm or Jerusalem, but about Paris (as the title of this article has already suggested).

If you haven't heard of the Paris Syndrome, here is what it's all about:
Every year, there are around a million Japanese tourists in Paris. Each of them comes with big expectations for the city. But around 20 (annually) of the tourists have their dreams shattered. This causes different psychological and physical symptoms, which need taking care of. The Japanese embassy has a special hotline for cases like this.

The symptoms could include anxiety, hallucinations, nausea, depression, feeling angry or acting hostile, dizziness and much more. Everybody could get different symptoms, this is why not everyone (specially French doctors) agree that this is a syndrome. But there are similarities between all the patients. And psychiatrist have discovered the main reason for this phenomenon.

The Sony "Gaystation" Scores $4,000 In Aid of LGBTQ

The everlasting insult from Xbox fans to their arch enemy, has become a real thing last month. The so called "Gaystation" is a custom rainbow painted Playstation 4.

Silent Wednesday 29 - Social Activism Illustrations

Outsourcing is King

Last night I watched a video that just became viral and was featured on most social networks. “Who pays the price?” is a video that uncovers the ugly truth behind electronics manufacturing and the impact it has on the ones who do the actual work.

Uncovers is not really true in the sense that it's a new discovery, it simply reminds the issue and stacks the facts against the well know apple corporation.

When I looked for the producer of the video I found an American non-profit organization, which aims to develop green economy and sustainable technology, so the world will be free of problems... Fat chance...

Anyway, I was directed to a digital petition to the head of Apple, Inc. – Tim Cook. Infuriated by the video, I was a click away from sending the pre-written message, when I glanced to see what I was actually sending.

Bad For The Health Is Good For Business

       PM2.5 has been a buzzword in China for the last couple of years. With the Air Quality Index (AQI) scaling beyond the borders of the scale itself, the air pollution in the biggest cities of the country has reached new levels of bad.
Due to the heavily industrialised east coast of the country and the severely outdated technology in production, the air in major cities and centres has become seriously hazardous to the inhabitants.
PM2.5 is a particle of size 2.5 micrometers or less. It's easily inhaled and is the reason for many lung and respiratory problems including cancer. It's small enough to lodge in the cavities of the insides of the lungs and stay there for good (...or rather - bad).

That said, you must already know that buzzwords are the manna of God to business developers and entrepreneurs. You see, the thing with buzzwords is everybody has seen or heard of them, even though they might not know what they mean or stand for. They're recognizable and identifiable within seconds, and that is exactly what the people mentioned above aim for.

To create a brand everyone knows and has heard of takes years and years of marketing campaigns and advertising efforts, but buzzwords are already at that step, without time or investment.
So what do you do? You incorporate them into the product you develop and research and BAM! – instant publicity and mass recognition. Your product is already there with the simple word written on the label, or the packaging.

With PM2.5 being the major leader in the ladder in terms of health in China, naturally, people have found a way to make serious money from it.

How The World Deals With Nuclear Waste

 
 High level waste is the most dangerous by-product of nuclear power. It has the longest period of half life. In some cases, it may reach millions of years until it stabilises .

Social Media Behind The Curtains

   Social media - a term burned into the cerebrum of the whole world. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn - you name it - we know it like the back of our hand, some even better. But why is our world revolving around these seductive networks for the past ten years?

As a freelance writer, I do my job in front of the laptop and naturally have an account in most media for one reason or another. Sometimes for professional purposes like to promote my content, other times for information, news and trends, or for creating social networks and meet and befriend new people. I won't lie, I spend a quite few hours a day into social media sites and most of them are logged the whole time while I'm on the computer.

So, an image I saw today poked my curiosity into why am I compelled to maintain these profiles and update my statuses or read other people's, why are social media sites so attractive and how do they keep me coming back? After some thought and going through some materials on studies, here is what my answer is.