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Crazy Cupid Love!
Most likely, we all went through the sensation of “butterflies in the stomach”, “singing of the soul”, and inexplicable emotions. This sensation is usually called falling in love, and sometimes you can hear people saying ‘Cupid’s arrow hit me!’.
Have you ever wondered who Cupid is and why this character is so closely related to Valentine’s Day?
Cupid is a small winged “troublemaker” with a quiver of arrows behind his back, striking right in the heart. His image is found on paintings of different eras, and the legend of the God of love comes from ancient mythology, and also, he is known as Amur or Eros (ancient Greek version).
One of the myths is relating to an emotional love story between an earth girl named Psyche and the god Cupid. Venus is said to have been Cupid’s mother and sent him to punish Psyche, just because she did not like her unearthly beauty. Later, Cupid fell in love with Psyche and became her husband. Legend says that humans could not look at the gods, so Psyche did not know what her lover looked like. It is believed that Cupid was a true “revelation” of love and tenderness, and the girl was truly happy. One day, her sisters advised her to “look” at her husband. Cupid was so angry, and he decided to take revenge for her disobeying, and once he left, all their magical gardens, a wonderful castle, and everything they had – disappeared. Psyche was left alone and because of feeling so desperate, she decided to seek help from Cupid’s mother, and she accepted the task Venus gave her.
Venus, as written above, did not love Psyche at all, and she planned to destroy her, by giving her tasks that were impossible to accomplish. However, nothing stopped Psyche, so she successfully overcame all difficulties, for the sake of her lover. Psyche’s last task was to deliver Pandora’s box containing the beauty of Pluto’s wife, the condition was not to open the box, despite difficulties!
Unfortunately, out of curiosity, Psyche looked into the box. Venus had foreseen this and hid a “dead dream” there, so this hit her.
Cupid, being so crazy in love, found Psyche lying on the ground, took away the spell and the effect of the dead sleep, and forgave her, making their love even stronger. The gods proclaimed Psyche a goddess, as they were delighted to see how powerful was her love for Cupid.
We hope that true love exists, so Valentine’s Day is a great time to celebrate love and feel Cupid’s presence, even if sometimes we open the “Pandora’s Box”…
Love wins, xoxo, Happy Valentine’s Day!
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Check out the latest Dell’s 2k QHD resolution webcam and built in mic
Dell has announced a new webcam. It features QHD video quality, a premium metal body, and a built-in microphone.
The new model, dubbed the Dell pro 2K Webcam, sits below the company’s flagship 4K Webcam, but incorporates a similar high-end aesthetic and is stable in one key respect.
This more modest resolution helps it hit a lower price of $134.99, but thankfully Dell squeezed in a noise-reducing microphone at this price point — correcting the biggest omission from the 4K model. This new camera is available globally today.
The cylindrical webcam sits on top of any monitor using a universal mount and is powered via the integrated USB-A cable.
According to Dell, the camera can handle a maximum video resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 pixels (also known as 2K or QHD) and uses image processing to apply HDR (high dynamic range) to the video, highlights and shadows when used in poorly lit environments, such as in front of a window.
One of the key features of the new Dell webcam, and one that it shares with its more expensive 4K version, is auto-framing. It uses artificial intelligence to zoom in slightly on the subject (i.e. you), then pans and zooms to keep you centered in the frame.
The Dell pro 2K webcam also offers two fields of view (65 and 78 degrees), and the Sony starvis imaging sensor delivers 2K/QHD video at 30 or 24 frames per second and 1,080-pixel Full HD at 60 can be output with , 30 or 24fps. A 720px HD option is also available and has the same three frame rate options as 1,080px.
The autofocus lens has an aperture of f/2.0 and has a 4x digital zoom. The camera is powered by a 1.5m long fixed USB-A cable. Of course, being fixed means you can’t remove it, and since it’s USB-A, people using laptops with only USB-C cables (like the Apple MacBook Air) must use a dongle.
Being limited to USB-A and having to go the route of adapters or dongles for USB-C compatibility is a bit of a sour point, but the Pro Webcam seems to make fair compromises for that lower price. Ultimately, the picture and sound quality will most likely determine if this is the better buy over the 4K version or competing options from the likes of Logitech, Microsoft, Razer, and others.
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Will genetics progress make sex bygone?
According to Hank Greely, the director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Law and Biosciences, human reproduction may become automated faster than you realize.
Greely believes that within three decades, people will no longer have sex as a way to reproduce, and instead rely on genetically edited embryos grown from skin-derived stem cells, not the combination of an egg or sperm, The Independent reported.
According to Greely, this process ensures that the embryo is free from any devastating genetic diseases, and would also be cheaper in the long run because of the money it would save in healthcare over the years. What’s more, Greely predicts that couples would be able to choose other genetic traits in their children, such as physical features and intelligence.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to say this embryo will get a 1550 on its two-part SAT,” Greely said this week at Aspen Ideas Festival, Quartz reported, “But, this embryo has a 60% chance of being in the top half, this embryo has a 13% chance of being in the top 10%—I think that’s really possible.”
This may sound far-fetched, but the gap between sex and procreation has been widening for the past 50 years thanks to the rise of fertility drugs, embroynic genetic testing, artificial insemination and in vitro fertilisation (IVF). Over the last ten years in the UK, egg freezing has increased tenfold, from just under 230 cycles in 2009 to almost 2,400 cycles in 2019. IVF birth rates in 2019 were three times higher than in 1991, and the use of egg and sperm donors has risen, too. “Now, maybe three or four per cent of the babies born in the developed world are conceived in some manner other than sexual intercourse, and I think in the future that percentage will go up,” Greely adds.
When scientists figure out how to make this work for humans, infertile and queer couples could have biological babies without needing to go through costly and risky procedures like IVF, donors or surrogates. Single people, meanwhile, could produce ‘uni babies’, using both eggs and sperm grown from their cells.
The idea may sound far-out, but according to Quartz, it already happens on a much smaller and limited scale as a way to prevent certain diseases. Although extremely expensive at the moment, advances in stem cell technology will help to drive down the cost. In addition, the amount that the government would save on not having to take care of sick babies would also make this more cost-efficient.
As many of you may worry, this is not the end of sex because recreational sex will always be with us, but it’s the end of sex as a way of procreating.
It will not be the complete end. People will still get pregnant the old-fashioned way, maybe for religious reasons, for philosophical reasons, for romantic reasons or maybe because they are teenagers and the back seat of the car is there.
“Eugenics is a slippery word; it means many things to different people. To some, it’s state-enforced reproductive control. To some, what we had was state-enforced sterilization. To some, it’s any kind of reproductive choice, but those are different things. For me, I think coercion is much more important than the issues of selection. The concern about the state or the insurance company or someone else, forcing you to pick particular babies, worries me a lot more than having parents make choices, though that raises its own set of questions.” Greely said.
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