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Cake day: June 7th, 2025

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  • As the name implies, Direct-to-Cell (D2C) provides internet and messaging by connecting smartphones directly to a satellite. Unlike Starlink, D2C doesn’t require ground terminals, “dishes,” or routers to function.

    Capabilities found in many smartphones manufactured from 2020 onwards — such as those powering Apple’s Emergency SOS via Satellite — provide the technical foundation for the connectivity.

    proven useful in humanitarian disasters, they typically rely on cooperation with local cellular carriers. This, Alimardani explains, would not be a “viable solution in Iran” as state-controlled ISPs would block circumvention methods.

    Now, however, a second generation of D2C is emerging that could overcome these limitations.










  • The new policy will be in effect at the upcoming 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and will require athletes to undergo a screening for the SRY gene, “a segment of DNA typically found on the Y chromosome that initiates male sex development in utero and indicates the presence of testes/testicles.”

    While this policy was under review from September 2024 to March 2026, there has only ever been one trans woman athlete in the Olympics, weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, who failed to make a single successful lift at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Despite this fact, the IOC policy cites its “Working Group”, a group formed in 2025 made up of specialists in sports science, endocrinology, transgender medicine, etc. and their research, which supposes that being born male gives athletes lasting physical advantages.

    The policy comes after the debate around trans athletes intensified at the Paris Olympics in reaction to Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting. In the wake of the boxing hysteria, Olympic track and field became the first sport to introduce mandatory DNA sex testing. The genetic tests, including those in the IOC policy, have already run into problems with national laws, like in France, where privacy laws restrict that type of testing.

    Additionally, these types of tests can eliminate athletes who have difference in sex development (DSD) that can result in high levels of testosterone. Caster Semenya, a South African runner, was ordered to undergo a sex test after winning at the World Championship and found out she was born with the typical male XY chromosome pattern and high testosterone but had female physical attributes. After Semenya decided not to take hormone suppressants in order to continue participating in the track and field events, she was banned from the Olympics, the World Championships and some international meets.

    This policy would require athletes with XY-DSD, like Semenya, and other athletes with a positive SRY screen, to participate in male categories and any events that do not classify athletes by sex.