Hey,
A little Covid related today, but whilst it is still such a big part of our lives we should continue to read up on what is happening and more importantly what needs to happen to get where we want to beā¦
Hopefully youāll learn something about emojis too š
Anyway, Cāmere to meā¦
Worth a follow š²
Two Irish Instagram pages I thought were worthy of a mention ā¤µ
Frankie @meditationsfortheanxiousmind, if you need a good laugh this morning but simultaneously a meditation about Dublinās Gay Spar, reinstating the Moro Bar, the Journalās comment section, and the mystery that is Kimmage, then head over and give his page a follow.
Also, shoutout to @reelingintheweird ā think reeling in the years but just the absurd stuff you canāt quite believe actually got aired on Irish Tv.
Few important Covid Bits
COVAX š¦
COVAX is the initiative to get vaccines to the third world by securing agreements directly with pharmaceutical companies and with countries that have surplus supplies.
It was set up by the World Health Organization (WHO) and also involves the Global Vaccine Alliance (Gavi) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi).1
They are aiming to distribute free vaccines to 20% of the worldās 92 poorest countries2. Middle-income countries, such as Mexico and South Africa can also purchase vaccines through the scheme, but will pay for them.3
4Research has found that is not only our humanitarian duty but it will be essential for trade. If the populations of developing countries remain out of work they wonāt have the money to buy exports from developed nations, similarly, huge industries such as textiles are dependent on manufacturing in developing countries.5
The purchasing of vaccines for developing countries is as much of an economic necessity for governments as it is an act of generosity.
And crucially, should we let variants run wild and unchallenged in large populations of the world, we run the risk of allowing variants of the virus to develop that could be resistant to the vaccines we are so proudly administrating6... itās a race.
The Gates Annual Letter š«
Naturally, given the past year and their particularly philanthropic focus on world health, Bill and Melindaās annual letter for 2021 is all about Covid-19.
āThe moment we now find ourselves in calls to mind a quote from Winston Churchill. In the fall of 1942, he gave a famous speech marking a military victory that he believed would be a turning point in the war against Nazi Germany. āThis is not the end,ā he warned. āIt is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.ā"
Interesting
The Syringe Emoji š
Apple & Google have redesigned it
From the release of the beta edition of iOS 14.5 Apple has redesigned the syringe emoji to remove the drops of blood and resemble that of a vaccine.
Google has followed suit and it looks like it will come to an upcoming Android version.
The process to have an emoji approved can take a year at least and it is often much longer still before it has been embraced by platforms.
So in this case a redesign has the effect of almost adding a new emoji (but not quite).
Not having blood in the syringe also makes it more versatile, it can now represent any form of injection.
Emojis are decided upon by Unicode, an organisation that is essentially the worldās standard for encoding and representing text and emojis across all devices and platforms. Almost all platforms use Unicode and it is fundamental to the success of the web we have today.
Individual companies cannot just create a new emoji out of thin air, if they did it would only work on their devices as no one elseās system would know how to represent the code, it wouldnāt work on any online services either.
They can, however, design it to look as they wish, this is also why emojis look different across platforms like iOS, Android, Windows, and so on.
It is important to understand that each emoji is not āan imageā but rather it is a character, which when typed is then displayed on every device that supports (has their own stored version) for that character.
In fact, emojis actually take up more than one character in the code, mostly two, but variations, in order to represent race and gender, can take up several characters (albeit you donāt notice, it still appears as if it is one, just the systems do)
At the end of 2018, Twitter declared that all emojis would be considered equal in terms of character count, even if they are still different lengths in the code ā previously you could use up more of your character limit with certain emojis.
Even now though, all emojis are treated as two characters, so if your tweet was just emojis you would hit the current limit in 140 emojis rather than 280 characters.
The cool image below shows the changes in styles of the syringe emoji across the different platforms over the years.
Apple, also in their latest iOS Beta, have redesigned the headphone emoji š§ to look like their new AirPods Maxā¦
We should have a go at creating an emoji, it would be gas, any suggestions?
(Itās a thorough and strict application process but Iād be willing to do it)
Smile š
Saved š·
Think š
It takes a lot of courage to list a piece of exercise equipment for sale and include ābarely usedā in the description
Thatās all š¤š½
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Guy
Disclaimer.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-55795297
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covax-covid-19-vaccine-11613577473
https://www.nber.org/papers/w28395
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/23/business/coronavirus-vaccines-global-economy.html
https://www.ft.com/content/797e3d7b-0091-4bfd-8cae-c0b5be380772