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For transgender students involved in a very special project at a culinary school in Pakistan, there is more to a class than just learning the art of cooking.Neha Malik used to dance at parties and weddings for a living and was, occasionally, a sex worker. Since January, she has been enrolled in a new course for the trans community at the Culinary & Hotel Institute of Pakistan.The free six-month program in the city of Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural capital, welcomed its first group of 25 trans students in January; the second group of 25 began training on Feb. 1.Now, Malik, 31, dreams of working as a chef in Dubai, the futuristic, skyscraper-studded city in the United Arab Emirates.She never misses a class. “I am so absorbed in learning that I don’t have time to dance anymore,” she added.Many Pakistanis have entrenched beliefs on gender and sexuality, and trans people are often considered outcasts in the conservative Muslim-majority country. Some are forced into begging, dancing and even prostitution to earn money. They also live in fear of attacks.The U.N. development agency said last year that the majority of trans people in Pakistan reported experiencing violence or abuse and that most reported being denied employment opportunities because of their gender identity. Just 7% were employed in formal sectors, the UNDP added.Trans women in public office and the media have raised awareness about a marginalized and misunderstood community, and overall, the community has seen some progress in the protection of their rights.Supreme Court rulings allow them to self-identify as a third gender, neither male nor female, and have underscored they have the same rights as all Pakistani citizens.Last year, Lahore got its first ride-sharing service for trans people and women in an effort to protect them from discrimination and harassment, and in 2022 Pakistan launched a hotline for trans people.“Society usually looks down on us,” said Malik. “We have to change this mindset. Now, people come up to me and ask what I do when they see me in a chef’s coat and hat.”Since classes started, students file into the Lahore culinary school with backpacks and beaming smiles, swapping their colorful clothes for white uniforms.However, it’s a struggle. They each get a monthly stipend of 8,000 rupees, around $26 nowhere near enough to live on as a student.“How can we survive on that when my rent is 15,000 rupees?” said 26-year-old Zoya Khan. Her utility bills swallow up most of it, she said.So she performs at a few events a month.“I used to earn a decent amount (from dancing), I won’t lie,” she added. But “there was no respect in it.”“Why do we come here? It’s because we see hope,” said Khan, who wants to start her own business after graduating a roadside cafe.Nadia Shehzad, the institute’s chief executive, said the project will help the trans community, a “rejected and ignored sector of society” get equal recognition.The school is trying to get government officials to help the aspiring chefs with visas to go abroad for work, Shehzad said. There are also talks with local hotels and restaurants about jobs once the students graduate with wages of up to 30,000 rupees, or about $107.Still, it’s not easy for for trans people to leave behind dancing, begging and sex work for the culinary program, said Shabnam Chaudry, a trans community leader.Many wonder if society would give them work or if people at restaurants would eat food cooked by trans chefs.In the past, Chaudry said she had seen many trans people taking makeup and sewing courses, only to fail to find jobs afterward and be forced to return to begging and dancing to survive.She is also concerned about their prospects of finding a job: Pakistan has hundreds of thousands of young people with skills and degrees who cannot find work.“In the face of this tough competition, who will give jobs to trans people,” Chaudry asked. “People are not ready to shake hands with us.” Babar Dogar, Associated Press
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Dating apps are a notoriously hostile space towards transgender users. If they list their transness in their profiles, theyre outing themselves to the world. If they dont, matches could accuse them of catfishing. Picking the right time to tell matches can feel impossible. With Match Note, Hinge wants to help these daters out. The feature, which launched this morning, lets users send a must-read note to their match before starting a conversation. The use cases extend far beyond trans users: The tool can also benefit neurodivergent daters, daters with children, and more. Listing these sensitive identity traits on a public profile can feel daunting; now, Hinge is offering a chance for users to keep some of their privacy. When youre dating, it can be vulnerable to open up to others, Hinge CMO Jackie Jantos writes in an email to Fast Company. Match Note gives all daters an opportunity to share what they feel is importantprivately and directlywith people theyve matched with.Hinges ploy to help minority datersIts a hard time to be trans in the United States. President Donald Trump has rolled back trans civil protections and encoded anti-trans language into his executive orders. His actions have also fed into an increasingly anti-trans corporate culture, as American companies continue to cow to Trump by cutting DEI initiatives. Even more companies, it seems, are afraid to say the word trans nowadays.Thats why its meaningful when Hinge announces new features specifically trying to help their trans customers. Match Note gives them more options, choosing exactly when and how they want to disclose their gender identity to other matches. Its popular, too: Of 2,000 daters who tested Match Note, 83% of trans and non-binary respondents thought the feature improved their ability to show up as their authentic self on Hinge, per Jantos.In the LGBTQIA+ community, trans, nonbinary, and queer+ folks used Match Note during testing to share more about their gender identity upon matching like highlighting from their profile that theyre trans or reminding matches about their pronouns, Jantos writes. Other members of the community, such as gay men, are using this surface to share more about their preferred sexual positions because it feels important to align on from the beginning. The tool could be useful for neurodivergent daters, too. Hinge users may not want the swiping world to know that theyre on the spectrum, for example. But that could affect their messaging patterns; with Match Note, that user could disclose their neurodivergence after matching. Or, imagine the single parent who needs their partner to love children, but doesnt want to breach the childs privacy by listing them on a public profile. With Match Note, they could save that information for just those they match with. How much do we share on dating apps?Even for traits that arent as personally sensitive, disclosures are becoming increasingly difficult. Think of the sober dater. While they may not care whether the world knows about their sobriety, its difficult to cram that into Hinges witty prompt boxes. (Generally, users dont look close enough to see a No next to Hinges glass icon.) Those disclosures also break the feeling of nonchalance that many users seek to create. What if they come off as overly earnest? Now, they can list their sobriety in a Match Note. [Animation: Hinge]Knowing when to share or repeat or go into detail about certain information can be tricky, Jantos writes. We hope this optional moment can save daters from any unnecessary confusion or heartache down the line and help you get on dates with the people youre excited about.
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U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright says it’s critical that the nation be out in front when it comes to artificial intelligence, and that means having reliable and affordable sources of electricity to meet the growing demands of the technology sector.Wright made the comments Tuesday before touring Sandia National Laboratories. On Monday, he visited Los Alamos National Laboratory, home to the top secret project during World War II that created the atomic bomb.A fossil fuel executive and graduate of MIT, Wright highlighted the labs’ legacies and said they will play a role in what he described as this generation’s Manhattan Projecta critical scientific undertaking that will change the course of the world in ways yet to be imagined.To win the AI race, he said the nation needs reliable and affordable electricity and the infrastructure to move it around.“I’m a believer,” Wright said, adding that nuclear power will be part of the solution. How big is the nuclear piece of the energy pie? Federal energy analysts say the U.S. has generated more nuclear electricity than any other country and that plants here have supplied close to 20% of the nation’s total annual electricity since 1990. That’s enough to power more than 70 million homes.Nuclear power makes up less of the world’s portfolio when it comes to generating energy than other sources, Wright said. That’s despite plants having small footprints and running on small amounts of material that pack a big punch.“It’s playing a shrinking role in our energy pot,” he said. “That doesn’t square.”However, many states are looking to nuclear energy to fill the gap as more data centers come online and tech companies develop more energy-thirsty AI tools.Arizona already is home to one of the nation’s largest nuclear plants and utilities there have teamed up to explore the potential for building more. Meanwhile, California extended the life of its last operating nuclear plant with the help of more than $1 billion in federal funding. Officials say the Diablo Canyon plant is vital to California’s power grid.In Wyoming, TerraPower, a company started by Bill Gates, broke ground last summer on what officials say will be one of the first advanced reactors to operate in the U.S. What does it take to feed nuclear power plants? Nuclear power plants are fueled with uraniumthe mining and milling of which is a major sticking point for environmentalists who point to legacy contamination from early operations in western U.S. states and on Native American lands. Concerns still swirl today, with some groups criticizing the revival of mining near the Grand Canyon.The back end of the fuel cycle also is an issue, with commercial reactors across the country producing more than 2,000 metric tons of spent fuel annually, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Most of the waste remains at the sites that produce it because there’s nowhere else to put it.Private companies plan to temporarily store spent fuel in New Mexico and West Texas. In the case of Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether federal regulators have the authority to grant licenses for such facilities to operate.Barring a permanent solution, both Republican and Democratic leaders in the two states have said they don’t want to become the nation’s nuclear dumping ground.Wright acknowledged the challenge of spent fuel, saying there are “some creative ideas” on the horizon that could lead to long-term storage solutions at multiple sites around the U.S. Is there a clear path for more nuclear power? U.S. President Donald Trump has set the stage, signing executive orders aimed at stoking American innovation when it comes to AI, declaring a national energy emergency, and establishing a national council that will be focused on “energy dominance.”The administration also supports a multibillion-dollar venture by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank that involves building data centers and the electricity generation needed for further AI development.The Biden administration, too, had touted nuclear power as a way to meet demands without emitting greenhouse gases. The administration last year set a target of at least tripling nuclear power in the U.S. by 2050.Standing in a corner of the national nuclear science museum in Albuquerque, Wright noted that the nation’s nuclear history began in large part in New Mexico with the development of the atomic bomb.There are many reasons for the lack of progress over recent decades, including government regulations he called overly burdensome. Beyond ensuring human safety, he said the high bars that have been set have stifled the development of next-generation nuclear power.“Our goal is to get that out of the way, bring private businesses together, and figure out what kind of nudge we might need to get shovels in the ground and next-generation small modular reactors happening,” he said. “I think they will be part of the solution.” Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press
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