Model Ugbad Abdi is Among Those Changing the Face of Fashion

Teenager, Iowan, Somali, Muslim and talent agency-recruited runway model: Ugbad Abdi’s rise to stardom began just after her high-school graduation. One of NYC’s top agencies messaged her on Instagram, and months later she was walking in Valentino’s Paris show. She then walked for Burberry, Chanel, Fendi and Marc Jacobs; and appeared in Vogue’s April, August and September issues. She’s done so on her own terms: …

Link About It: This Week’s Picks

From gender neutral dolls, to racist AI, and giant inexplicable planets in our galaxy, our look around the web

Understanding the Bubbles at the Center of the Milky Way First spotted in the 1980s, a massive filament-like structure has been seen in the Milky Way some 100 times over the past 30+ years. With the supermassive black hole at its center, its “billowy lobes resemble the two halves of an hourglass” as they stretch out in opposite directions. Now, South Africa’s pioneering MeerKAT radio-telescope …

ImageNet Database Removes Images Contributing to Racist Bias

The inspiration for this week’s Image Net Roulette art installation, ImageNet operates as an online database of thousands of pictures, cataloged using 2,500+ tags. But, as this newfound popularity proved, the cataloging is steeped in systemic racism and bias. One tweet showed that no matter how many times a man uploaded his photo he was assigned “Black,” “Black African” or “Negroid”—when other options like “Doctor,” …