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CITY HALL – The city’s health department plans to distribute 25,000 antigen test kits for COVID-19 and more than 53,000 N95 masks to especially vulnerable residents and city employees. These …

Techirt has long discussed how in the modern era, the things you buy aren't actually the things you buy. And the things you own aren't actually the things you own. Things you thought you owned can be downgraded, bricked, or killed off entirely without much notice. That game console with backward compatibility? It no longer has backward compatibility. That smart home hub or smart speaker at the heart of your living room setup you've enjoyed for years? It not long works. The movies and books you thought were permanently in your personal catalog? Sorry, they aren't anymore. That perfectly good two-year-old phone? It no longer gets security updates, putting you and your data at risk.

This is all bad enough when talking about smart home hubs or smart refrigerators, but it's quite another thing entirely when it comes to medical implants. IEEE Spectrum has the Cory Doctorow-esque cautionary tale of Second Sight Medical Products whose Argus optical implants were commonly installed in patients in the early aughts to help them see. Accurately heralded as immeasurably innovative at the time, these devices may soon no longer work or be supported because the company that made them is going bankrupt:

"Terry Byland is the only person to have received this kind of implant in both eyes. He got the first-generation Argus I implant, made by the company Second Sight Medical Products, in his right eye in 2004 and the subsequent Argus II implant in his left 11 years later. He helped the company test the technology, spoke to the press movingly about his experiences, and even met Stevie Wonder at a conference. “[I] went from being just a person that was doing the testing to being a spokesman,” he remembers.

Yet in 2020, Byland had to find out secondhand that the company had abandoned the technology and was on the verge of going bankrupt. While his two-implant system is still working, he doesn’t know how long that will be the case. “As long as nothing goes wrong, I’m fine,” he says. “But if something does go wrong with it, well, I’m screwed. Because there’s no way of getting it fixed."

Users went from the miracle of suddenly being able to see their first Christmas tree, to the terror of the gift being taken away from them with absolutely no recourse. Not only that, the systems that were installed create new health complications if they're left installed but stop working, and are difficult to remove -- a cost that has to be eaten by the patients. The company's patients went from having their lives revolutionized by technology to, well, the opposite:

"These three patients, and more than 350 other blind people around the world with Second Sight’s implants in their eyes, find themselves in a world in which the technology that transformed their lives is just another obsolete gadget. One technical hiccup, one broken wire, and they lose their artificial vision, possibly forever."

It's quite the cautionary tale for the entire electroceutical sector, and those who assume the cutting edge technologies that help them today will stick around for tomorrow. It's one thing for your flip phone or Betamax player to become irrelevant, it's another thing for essential health devices embedded in your skull to simply stop working because their manufacturer couldn't keep their finances in order.

Missouri law doesn’t officially recognize Black History Month — a fact that surprised several Black state lawmakers this week.  “I had to double and triple check it because I thought I was seeing things incorrectly at first,” said Rep. Mark Sharp, D- Kansas City, during a Monday meeting of the House Special Committee on Urban […]

The post Missouri could become the seventh state to recognize Black History Month appeared first on Missouri Independent.

2.19.2022 DeBaliviere Place Board Packet

The post 2.19.2022 DeBaliviere Place Board Packet appeared first on DeBaliviere Place - Special Business District.

ST. LOUIS - Crown Candy Kitchen was broken into either Wednesday night or Thursday morning. Owner Andy Karandzieff posted a photo on Twitter showing that someone broke the glass of the front door. "Well my days gone to [s***] thanks to a criminal," Karandzieff wrote on Twitter at 7:11 a.m. He followed that with a [...]

Mike McIntosh, now 40, hadn’t yet been born when his mother started the family business he now runs, DDT Wines & Spirits. At one time, various family members operated about a dozen liquor stores in the St. Louis area. When his mother, Elizabeth McIntosh, wanted to open what was then DDT Liquor in Pagedale in 1976, she was unable to secure a loan. “At the time, honestly, banks weren’t lending to Blacks for small-business ideas, proven or not,” he said. “And the funny thing was, at the time…

Ameren Missouri has agreed to buy a 150-megawatt solar facility project from Chicago-based energy project developer Invenergy. The subsidiary of Ameren Corp. (NYSE: AEE) said Wednesday that the project, being developed in southeastern Illinois, could begin generating energy as soon as 2024, subject to regulatory approvals. Terms of the purchase, and the exact location of the project, weren't disclosed. A company spokesman said more details would be released when Ameren Missouri files for regulatory…

ST. LOUIS - The rain Thursday morning has flooded multiple streets in the St. Louis area. Coronado Avenue just south of Carondelet Park in south St. Louis was flooded. There was standing water that was several inches deep. The Metropolitan Sewer District was at the scene trying to get some of the drains unclogged in [...]

The newly published report identifies five main areas where the state’s innovation and entrepreneurship economy is currently lagging and offers 16 recommendations to combat those challenges.

Formerly located in St. Charles, Rock Star Tacos have taken the show to the former home of J. Smugs GastroPit.

Construction continues in full swing at many job sites big and small. Below is a sampling. Olive Crossing 14.8 ACRES 180,000+ SF OFFICE SPACE  181 APARTMENT UNITS 160 HOTEL ROOMS | DUAL-BRAND MARRIOTT  30,000+ SF RETAIL, DINING, & SERVICES These buildings in Clayton aren’t long for this world. NextSTL – Green Street Proposes Tower in […]

The post Construction Photo Roundup February 2022 appeared first on NextSTL.

The two ‘pop-up’ locations will house a total of 60 people who typically won’t go to regular homeless shelters.

ST. LOUIS - Thursday morning's rain is expected to change to freezing rain and then snow into the afternoon. MoDOT officials are urging drivers to avoid rush hour traffic Thursday afternoon. They're saying, if you can, try to make plans to leave work earlier or work from home. MoDOT's biggest concern Thursday morning is getting treatment [...]

St. Louis photographer Jess Dugan has spent much of their professional life documenting identity as a concept.…

Schmitt has sued dozens of school districts over their masking rules.

“He’s not changing his mind,” Neville Chamberlain (Jeremy Irons) reports laconically between prim puffs on his morning cigar, reading confirmation of Adolf Hitler’s plan to invade Czechoslovakia.…

O'FALLON, Ill. - Multiple cars were flooded in O'Fallon, Illinois early Thursday morning. Street flooding stranded one motorist on Bristlecone Drive, just north of I-64. FOX 2's meteorologist Jaime Travers was checking out the area in the Woods Basement Systems Storm Runner. The storm sewer system couldn’t handle all of the rain overnight, and the [...]

A controversial Missouri gun law that penalizes police for enforcing federal gun laws is facing a new legal challenge from the U.S. Justice Department. On Wednesday, the department filed suit to prevent Missouri from enforcing its Second Amendment Preservation Act (SAPA), a law that allows citizens to file suit for up to $50,000 if they […]

The post U.S. DOJ sues Missouri over law blocking enforcement of federal gun regulations appeared first on Missouri Independent.