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10 Mar, 10 tweets, 3 min read

@DollyParton

.@DollyParton has always been more than what she appears. While some may see her as just an entertainer, she's actually a business-savvy multi-millionaire, who has found subtle ways to advocate for culture change throughout her 60-year career. 1/

Art: Sam Whitney

Dolly, an early investor into Covid-19 vaccine research, is one of our Women's History Month honorees.
Since the start of her career in 1959, she has disarmed people by allowing them to think her humble-upbringing and lack of formal education made her less than smart. 2/

But she's made strategic use of her 'trashy' bleached blonde look to gain a public platform for clearly feminist songs like 'Just Because I'm A Woman.' 3/

Way before #knowyourworth became a trendy hashtag, Parton was demanding fair pay for herself. In fact, her song '9-to-5' became an 80s anthem for the equal pay movement. #WomensHistoryMonth 4/

Other marginalized groups have found themselves reflected in Parton's music as well. Parton's 'Coat of many Colors,' although filled with Christian references, is embraced by many in the LGBTQ community as a ballad about pride. 5/

In 2018, as the Black Lives Matter movement took hold, Parton was confronted by activists who took offense to the name of one of her Dollywood theme park attractions. When told the name "Dixie Stampede" was problematic... 6/

Parton chose to revamp and rename the civil-war themed program, explaining "when you realize that [something] is a problem, then you fix it. Don't be a dumbass." 7/

Then in April 2020, as the world grappled with the magnitude of the Covid-19 pandemic, Dolly Parton used her wealth to invest in vaccine research. Her million dollar donation partly funded the Moderna vaccine which the company says is up to 95% effective. 8/

Despite her age-eligibility, Parton chose to wait to receive her vaccination until early March, so to not be seen as using her money, status, and privilege to leapfrog ahead of the line. 9/

You'll notice in WIRED's interview in the link bellow, Dolly Parton doesn't mention any of the things we just told you. She chooses instead to let her actions speak for themselves. wired.trib.al/L2lWPos 10/

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WIRED

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12 Mar

As people around the world are getting vaccinated against Covid-19, we have Dr. Özlem Türeci to thank. Not only is she the co-founder of BioNTech, but she is also half of the team that designed the first Covid-19 vaccine, with Pzifer, in under a year. 1/

Art: Sam Whitney

Dr. Türeci has had quite an accomplished career. As a physician, scientist, and entrepreneur she has founded multiple biotech companies and, along with her partner and husband, became the first Turkish Germans among Germany's top 100 wealthiest people list in 2020. 2/

She earned her doctorate from Saarland University in Homburg, Germany in the 1990s, where she also met her husband, Dr. Uğur Şahin. 3/

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10 Mar

For most organisms, decapitation is a harsh conclusion to life. Not for this sea slug. The creature separated its head from its body—and then dragged itself around to feed.

So, uh, how and why? Here are science’s best guesses 1/ wired.trib.al/wBg129U

This kind of body-splitting is known as autotomy—lizards, for instance, shed their tails to escape predation. Unlike lizards, though, this doesn’t appear to be a defensive strategy. And what the sacoglossan sea slug does next puts it in a class of its own 2/

A day after self-decapitation, the slug’s neck wound closes. After a week, it regenerates a heart. In less than a month, the whole body has grown back, and the disembodied slug is embodied once more 3/

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8 Mar

Covid-19 is more than a healthcare crisis. It's proving to be an existential crisis for working women in particular. In 2020, for the first time ever, there were more women in the workforce than men. Then the pandemic struck. 1/

#InternationalWomensDay
Art Credit: Sam Whitney

Lockdowns, remote work, virtual school, and the day-to-day responsibilities of managing a household proved to be too much. Now, more women are leaving their jobs to care for children or aging parents and sometimes both. 2/

#IWD2021
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This shift is so monumental that the number of women in the workforce is expected to at least temporarily drop to late-1980s levels. That effectively erases all the gains made in the last 30 years. 3/

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7 Mar

In 2014, 276 school girls were kidnapped in Nigeria by the terrorist group Boko Haram the night before their finals.

A lawyer with less than 100 followers tweeted about it with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, and a movement began:
wired.com/story/bring-ba… 1/

From there it exploded, with celebrities ranging from Alyssa Milano and Mary J. Blige to Hillary Clinton and Common leveraging large followings to call attention to the issue.

All the way until it landed on President Barack Obama’s desk. 2/

The online critical mass forced the White House staff to debate deploying more than $250 million in sophisticated military might to look for teenagers held by a group that had never attacked the US, on a mission essentially ordered up by Twitter. 3/

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7 Mar

@stavridisj

For the past six weeks, we’ve been releasing excerpts from ‘2034,’ a novel by @stavridisj and @elliotackerman. The book is a supremely well-informed look at a potential war between the US and China.

Let’s hope things never come to that 1/ wired.trib.al/gjJxE9o

It starts in the South China Sea, when a US warship comes upon a distressed fishing trawler. The two countries are already on the verge of war, and what happens next nearly pushes them over the edge 2/ wired.trib.al/yr6Djg0

The proceeding events are dizzying. A blackout, a sunk destroyer, a lost F-35—the US won’t understand, or at least not until it is too late, what China is up to 3/ wired.trib.al/pXmHXSX

Read 9 tweets

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6 Mar

Kevin Blatt is the man to call when you want to see if that celebrity video you have is worth anything on the open market. He’s an expert in brokering deals with those who want to expose the compromising images or the ones who want to keep them hidden. 1/
wired.trib.al/5akjnFM

When a Georgia couple bought the contents of a Public Storage unit at auction, they had no idea of the seedy world of sex tapes and hush money that it would lead them to. But with their family finances crippled by the pandemic, they decided to venture down the rabbit hole. 2/

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