The Obtain: save social media, and “leftover” embryos

—Eli Pariser & Deepti Doshi

Final week, when Mark Zuckerberg introduced Meta could be ending third-party fact-checking, it was a stunning pivot, however not precisely stunning. It’s simply the newest instance of a billionaire flip-flop affecting our social lives on the web. 

Zuckerberg isn’t the one social media CEO careening everywhere in the highway: Elon Musk, since shopping for Twitter in 2022 and touting free speech as “the bedrock of a functioning democracy,” has suspended journalists, restored tens of hundreds of banned customers, introduced again political promoting, and weakened verification and harassment insurance policies. 

Sadly, these capricious billionaires can do no matter they need due to an possession mannequin that privileges singular, centralized management in trade for shareholder returns. The web doesn’t must be like this. However as luck would have it, a brand new means is rising simply in time. Learn the total story.

Deciding the destiny of “leftover” embryos

Over the previous few months, I’ve been engaged on a piece about IVF embryos. The objective of in vitro fertilization is to create infants by way of a little bit of lab work: Set off the discharge of plenty of eggs, introduce them to sperm in a lab, switch one of many ensuing embryos into an individual’s uterus, and cross your fingers for a wholesome being pregnant. Typically it doesn’t work. However usually it does. For the article, I explored what occurs to the wholesome embryos which can be left over.

Today, accountable IVF clinics will all the time speak to folks about the potential for having leftover embryos earlier than they start remedy. However it may be actually troublesome to make these choices earlier than you’ve even began remedy, and a few folks can’t think about having any left over—or how they could really feel about them. Learn the total story.

—Jessica Hamzelou