Technology

A British startup built smart glasses to help with dementia, testers say they feel like freedom

A tiny assistant in the frames could help with names, routines, and the everyday moments that suddenly get hard.

Smartglasses are becoming more and more ubiquitous, but do we really want to live in a world with mini HD cameras on everyone’s face? That discomfort is not paranoia. The privacy concerns are real, and so is the fear that everyday life is slowly turning into one long surveillance experiment.

But smart glasses designed to help people with dementia belong in a different category. As Erik Barnes reports, these AI-powered frames are built to help users remember names, follow routines, and move through the day with more confidence. Less creepy wearable tech, more assistive device for memory.

For some users, a quiet prompt at the right moment could mean more confidence, more autonomy, and fewer frightening gaps in the day.

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Friday’s results

On Friday, we shared science’s current reigning champ for the most relaxing song. 

Do GOOD readers believe music can truly alter your state of mind? Almost 60% do!

• Absolutely. One song can reroute my entire personality. (56.8%)

• Yes, but only if the right song finds me first. (25.0%)

• Nope. A playlist is not stronger than my mood. (2.3%)

• Depends. Some days need music, some days need sedation. (15.9%)

GOOD reader Levio Morgan endured PTSD and social anxiety and says music helps get them out of the flat. “Once I put in my ear buds, my playlist gets me out the door and to wherever I'm going without being filled with fear. Fear can easily turn to anger, so overriding the fear makes me a more tolerant person around others.“

Science

Drone footage just confirmed an 1820 whale tale nobody believed

Centuries of sailor lore just got a very expensive-looking fact check.

Scientists finally captured something people had been talking about since the Moby-Dick era: sperm whales smashing into things with their giant foreheads.

Using drone footage off the Balearic Islands, researchers recorded several young whales charging and colliding with each other, with enough force to make the old ship-ramming legends feel a lot less dramatic and a lot more plausible. In this story by Mark Wales (haha!), scientists share that the behavior was probably not full-blown aggression. Researchers think it may have been roughhousing, mock combat, or some other social behavior we are only now getting a window into.

A giant forehead collision is already a lot to process. The bigger surprise is what it may reveal about whale social lives.

Exploration | From the Vault

Study reveals a startling truth: Intelligence lowers our empathy toward other people

"Smart people care less about moral judgements."

A recent study conducted on adults in the UK found that people with higher cognitive ability scored lower on moral foundations. The study, published this summer in the journal Intelligence, sought to gauge people's response to the Moral Foundations Theory based on their overall intelligence. After two different studies, no difference was found between genders, but a person's intelligence revealed a different story.

In this story by Mark Wales, the research suggests that analytical thinkers tend to override their baseline moral intuitiveness. But what does that actually mean? First, cognitive ability refers to problem solving, abstract thinking, memory, logic, language comprehension, and basic critical thinking. This isn't only IQ, but a person's ability to process and apply their knowledge. Think of it as a living scholastic aptitude test (SAT.)

On March 28, 1990, the U.S. finally caught up with Jesse Owens. Ten years after his death, President George H. W. Bush presented Owens’s Congressional Gold Medal to his widow, Ruth, in a ceremony pushed in part by Congressman Louis Stokes and framed as a kind of “fifth gold medal.” That timing is the story: Owens had been world-famous since Berlin, but full official recognition arrived late, after the country had spent decades polishing the legend while being slower to honor the man.

Bush praised not just the sprinter, but Owens’s “humanitarian contributions”: by then, he was remembered not only as the athlete who embarrassed Nazi racial mythology, but as a public figure who spent years speaking to young people, serving athletic causes, and representing the U.S. abroad as a goodwill ambassador.

Owens himself was more interesting than the marble statue version. Born James Cleveland Owens, he became “Jesse” after a teacher in Cleveland misheard “J.C.”, a small accident that somehow stuck to one of the century’s biggest names.

Before Berlin made him immortal, he had already done something almost absurd: at the 1935 Big Ten meet, injured, he set three world records and tied a fourth in less than an hour, the sort of feat that coaches still talk about with disbelief. That is partly why the 1990 medal landed so well: it honored not just a famous moment, but a fuller life, gifted, funny, road-worn, civic-minded, and larger than the single story we usually retell.

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