Category Archives: bathroom

Apple to Expand Smart-Home Lineup, Taking On Amazon and Google

The Cupertino, California-based technology giant has struggled in the home space and has ceded much of the market to its rivals. Its current devices remain limited in their functionality, with Apple’s Siri voice-control service lagging behind Amazon’s Alexa and the Google Assistant. The new devices — along with upcoming changes to Siri — are aimed at turning around Apple’s fortunes.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-18/apple-to-expand-smart-home-lineup-taking-on-amazon-and-google

Plastics production is skyrocketing. A new U.N. treaty effort could cap it.

Negotiators from around the world will start work this month on a treaty to reduce plastic pollution, in what diplomats say is the most ambitious round of climate diplomacy since the 2015 Paris agreement that focuses on global warming.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/02/08/plastic-pollution-un-treaty/

Has China’s “Too Skinny” Trend Gone Too Far?

The Jing Take: For years, celebrities and role models in China promoted an unattainable beauty standard: white, skinny, and young. But this unrealistic view of femininity is slowly changing thanks to the rise of new consumer trends and the influence of social media.

Nevertheless, online challenges like this most recent one prove that social media still has a distressed relationship with body inclusivity. The penchant for size-zero KOLs and idols sends women an implicit message, so it is hardly surprising when younger women glorify skinny. Read more (Jing Daily)

The Evolution of the Bathroom

The evolution of bathing goes back thousands of years, from religious ritual and social life – to today’s wellbeing haven and place of peace and solitude. Read more (BBC)

Home Trends 2021

Amazon to Offer Telehealth Service to Other U.S. Firms This Summer

Amazon said it has started to offer its Amazon Care program to employees and other companies throughout Washington state and plans to make the program available throughout the U.S. this summer. Launched in 2019 at its Seattle headquarters, Amazon Care started by offering virtual primary-care services to Amazon employees in the city. The service also has an at-home care option, where medical professionals are dispatched to perform medical services such as blood draws or listening to a patient’s lungs. Read more (WSJ)

The rise of virtual surgery

Now that the cultural resistance has been broken down, ‘Zoom surgery’ is likely to remain a feature of modern medicine. But during Covid-19 lockdowns, with travel restricted, doctors have not been able to work in other countries or share expertise with colleagues face to face. As a result, some of the cultural resistance among surgeons towards telemedicine has started to melt away. In 2020, there were ninefold and fivefold increases respectively in the number of users and procedures on Proximie’s platform. Read more (Financial Times)