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COVID-19 has been officially declared a pandemic (via Alexandra_Koch/Pixabay)

The World Health Organization has officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic.

To date, nearly 125,000 coronavirus cases have been reported from 118 countries; more than 4,000 people have lost their lives to the infectious disease.

“We are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday.

“We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic,” he announced.

The term, which refers to a disease epidemic that has spread across a large region (think Bubonic Plague, smallpox, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS), is not to be thrown around carelessly.

“It is a word that, if misused, can cause unreasonable fear,” Tedros explained, “or unjustifiable acceptance that the fight is over, leading to unnecessary suffering and death.”

WHO made its evaluation based on two main factors: Speed and scale of transmission, and lack of political commitment needed to control the virus.

“Let me be clear,” Tedros said. “Describing this as a pandemic does not mean that countries should give up. The idea that countries should shift from containment to mitigation is wrong and dangerous.”

On the contrary, this is a controllable pandemic—one that requires nations to “strike a fine balance between protecting health, preventing economic and social disruption, and respecting human rights.”

“We cannot say this loudly enough, or clearly enough, or often enough,” he continued. “All countries can still change the course of this pandemic.”

The Director-General doesn’t want people to focus too much on one daunting expression, though.

“Let me give you some other words that matter much more, and that are much more actionable,” he said. “Prevention. Preparedness. Public health. Political leadership.

“And most of all, people,” Tedros added. We’re in this together, to do the right things with calm and protect the citizens of the world. It’s doable.”

More on Geek.com:

• Apple: It’s OK to Clean Your iPhone With Disinfectant Wipes
• Website Pairs Hand-Washing Tips With Lyrics From Your Favorite Song
• Facebook Gives WHO Free Ads to Counter Coronavirus Misinformation

Writer: Tony Isabella / Artist: Clayton Henry / DC Comics

With everything that’s going on in the world right now, a lot of us are either spending all of our time at home or at least a lot less of it doing what we used to. The result of this newfound lifestyle is a lot more free time than we were prepared to have.

While you might think that this is the perfect time for comic book publishers to take advantage of readers as a captive audience, that hasn’t been the case. Instead of getting new releases of comics every week, most of the industry was placed on a temporary freeze.

We at Black Nerd Problems are here to help fill the void by giving you recommendations of some of our favorite comics that you can go back and check out for yourself.

If you’re not quite ready for a longer commitment, a mini-series may be right up your alley. Black Lightning: Cold Dead Hands was a succinct six issues and brought Black Lightning’s original creator Tony Isabella back to the character—and DC Comics— for the first time in over a decade.

Airing around the debut of the CW’s Black Lightning series, Cold Dead Hands served as a good primer for the character’s backstory and philosophy while giving him a more updated look outside of the disco-inspired outfit he adorned in the 1970s.

The series reintroduces an older, seasoned Jefferson Pierce taking on his arch-nemesis, Tobias Whale, as he investigates how a new brand of high-tech weapons have started to flood the streets of his hometown of Cleveland.

If you’re interested in comics pulling from real-life events, this series leans heavily on a lot of the same discussions we’re still having today in the real world about how to fight violence and community relations with local police. As someone with an interest in politics, this was right up my alley.

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The post BNP At Home Recommends: Black Lightning: Cold Dead Hands appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.

This illustration shows a night-side view of the exoplanet WASP-76b (via ESO/M. Kornmesser)

Even the sturdiest umbrella wouldn’t withstand the rain on exoplanet WASP-76b.

Researchers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have observed an extreme world where it appears to bucket down iron.

“One could say that this planet gets rainy in the evening, except it rains iron,” lead study author David Ehrenreich, a professor at the University of Geneva, said in a statement.

The phenomenon, described in a paper published this week by the journal Nature, occurs because the planet, known as WASP-76b, only ever shows one face—the “day side”—to its parent star. The opposite “night side” remains in perpetual darkness.

Located some 640 light-years away in the constellation Pisces, the giant’s ultra-hot day side reaches temperatures above 4,350 °F—so hot that molecules separate into atoms and metals like iron evaporate into the atmosphere.

This comic-book-style illustration by Swiss graphic novelist Frederik Peeters shows a close-up view of the evening border of the exoplanet WASP-76b (via Frederik Peeters)

“A fraction of this iron is injected into the night side owing to the planet’s rotation and atmospheric winds,” astrophysicist Maria Rosa Zapatero Osorio, chair of the ESPRESSO science team, explained. “There, the iron encounters much cooler environments, condenses, and rains down.”

WASP-76b also has distinct day-night chemistry, according to the study.

Employing the new ESPRESSO instrument on ESO’s VLT in the Chilean Atacama Desert, astronomers identified chemical variations for the first time on an ultra-hot gas giant.

Specifically, they detected a strong signature of iron vapor at the evening border that separates the planet’s two hemispheres.

“Surprisingly, however, we do not see the iron vapor in the morning,” Ehrenreich said, likely because “it is raining iron on the night side of this extreme exoplanet.”

More on Geek.com:

• Large Exoplanet May Have Right Conditions For Life
• People From 112 Countries Help Name Exoplanets, Stars
• ESA Launches CHEOPS Mission to Study Exoplanets

Megan Smith knew early on that her commitment to fashion was going to take her places.

As a competitor on the Amazon Studios competition series, Making the Cut, Smith presented a body of work that blended strength and femininity in a way that impressed the judges. It is that same sensibility that echoes in Smith’s life. Now living in Los Angeles, Smith reflects on the journey that brought her from Kansas City to Los Angeles and her journey in fashion and being an entrepreneur. 

Born in Kansas City to a 16-year-old mother suffering from schizophrenia, Smith would learn the value of strength and perseverance early on. But beyond that, it would be Smith’s mother that first introduced her to the world of fashion and the art that clothing could be.

“Believe it or not,” Smith says, “a lot of my fashion sense does come from my mother. She had me young so we sort of grew up together. She was heavily into fashion and makeup and glamour. But it was my grandmother that taught me how to sew. So, I started making clothes for my Barbies. If I didn’t have fabric, I used my socks. Then they bought me a sewing machine. Despite her having her illness, my mother is very creative. I know there were a lot of things she wanted to do but couldn’t because of it.” 

Living in a city not widely known for being a center of fashion influence didn’t dissuade Smith from pursuing a career in the industry. With a wide range of influences around her that included everything from Prince to Ebony Fashion Fair to Vogue, it was the era of ’90s supermodels that birthed some of her earliest creations. 

“I would look at Vogue magazine and music videos and just the women around me and my family — everyone was always so well put together and fashionable living in Kansas City,” Smith remembers. “My mom and I had this deep love for ’90s supermodels. I just remember being in like Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell. We both followed them, and that influenced my aesthetic: feminine with a little bit of glam, but an edge and that all comes from pop culture.”

On Making the Cut, contestants are challenged with applying their personal design aesthetics to a variety of different styles and influences. For Smith, adapting her personal style to the weekly tasks had its challenges. Ultimately, it was her commitment to a strong personal style that allowed her to navigate through the various competitions without losing sight of her own personal aesthetic. Additionally, it was the time spent designing the creations that observers aren’t privy to, a time that Smith was able to navigate through week after week.

“The overall design process is not as smooth and easy as it looks on the show. It’s a lot of like back and forth and changing a lot of things,” Smith says. “I would start making a neutral dress, and it would turn into something completely different.  

“I think the environment of these beautiful locations like Paris and Tokyo influence how the design process changes. Working on my own at home, I can sketch out a collection, but as I started to make it, it totally changed depending on my mood or the aesthetic. 

“In Paris, it was easy to translate that aesthetic into my brand, but in Tokyo, I will admit I did get a little intimidated by the streetwear challenge. I’ve never designed streetwear in my life. My aesthetic is more clearly defined. I know exactly the woman that I’m dressing now. I just envisioned myself dressing that woman and she said she wanted streetwear. How would I translate it? I really was happy with what I created, and I think it definitely still was very true to my brand identity.”

For Smith, the next step is taking all the valuable critiques and feedback from the experience and applying it to her booming business to become a global brand.

“I have a clear vision on where I want to take my brand, and I have to thank the show for it,” she says. “Before going on the show, I had an idea, but, being a new brand, I was still figuring out a few things. As the competition went on, I was like, ‘Okay, I got this. I know exactly who [my customer] is.’ That has helped me in more ways than I can say. It gave me a lot of confidence and more drive than I already had to get my brand out there and make it big.”

Making the Cut is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

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