Star War's Poe Dameron's backstory to be told in upcoming YA book

Cover art for 'Poe Dameron: Free Fall' (Alice X. Zhang/Disney Publishing)

We've gotten a glimpse of Poe Dameron's past in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but an upcoming young adult novel will explore more of his backstory. Polygon confirms that a Poe-centric book will be released on August 4. Called Star Wars: Poe Dameron: Free Fall, the novel will be written by Alex Segura of the Peter Fernandez mystery series. The book will also feature cover art from Alice X. Zhang.

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Googlers hope to inspire young girls and children of colour to pursue STEM careers

You've probably heard countless of times proclamations that we need more diversity in the STEM field. Here are some figures to think about: Girls start doubting their STEM intelligence by age six. Women make up only 25 percent of the STEM workforce. Black men and black women only make up to 3 percent and 2 percent of scientists, respectively. Not exactly the best representation, right?

That's why these Google engineers hope to inspire young girls and children of colour with a passion project in the form of the picture book, Ara The Star Engineer. Komal Singh, together with fellow female Google engineers, was inspired to start the project when her four-year-old daughter said, "Engineers are boys!" This book is not an official Google product but one that came about from passionate Googlers who want to see more of themselves in the field. All profits from the book sales will be donated to charities encouraging girls’ and underrepresented groups’ participation in STEM fields. 

New ‘Star Wars’ audiobook enlists Hollywood stars like Jon Hamm

Banking on the star power or just the really sultry voice of Hollywood’s elite, an upcoming audiobook about Star Wars: Episode IV has enlisted help from some big stars. Entitled From a Certain Point of View, this Del Rey Books audiobooks will feature the voices of Mad Men’s Jon Hamm, Neil Patrick Harris, and Star Wars Battlefront 2’s Janina Gavankar, to name a few. There will be 40 stories with each tale told by a different author about a character from the movie. Not much is known about who will voice whom but Hamm is confirmed to be voicing Boba Fett and Harris will tell the tale of an Imperial officer who’s aboard the Death Star. Gavankar will voice a different Imperial soldier from the one she voices in Battlefront 2.

The other voice actors include Now on the writing side, the authors contributing to this book include. All the authors have forgone payment for their stories and will have their proceeds go to First Book, a nonprofit that gives new books, learning materials, and other necessary tools needed by educators and organizations that serve children in need. According to Penguin Random House, the publisher has donated US$100,000 to First Book, while Lucasfilm gave 100,000 books to the charity that’s estimated to be worth US$1 million. From a Certain Point of View will be available for purchase starting October 3^rd.

Source: Star Wars

The Apple Beat: Apple Pay now an option for donating to causes and non-profits, MacBook Pros in the wild

 

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Apple Pay has been touted as the next generation mobile payments platform and Apple’s done a great job of securing global banks and partners, making ApplePay an option in major retailers and restaurants and even tuning their hardware so Apple Pay is one fingerprint or password away from enabling a quick and secure sale, even the new MacBook Pros feature a Touch ID button to make this easy.

According to their newsroom, Apple Pay now ‘makes it easier and more security to donate to nonprofit organizations.’ This is a great and safe option not just for responding to emergencies such as earthquakes, floods and other catastrophes but also for sending funds to causes, nonprofits and other charities. The list of nonprofits and charities is up on Apple’s website, it’s mostly from International and American organizations, I hope Canadian nonprofits can be included soon, specially as we’re headed into the season of giving.

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